The Black Candle

by Catherine Cookson

  Neither of them could see the girl, but they knew her to be still there because part of her shadow was visible on the grass. And then they were both startled when a hand came groping through from the other side, and they almost fell on their backs from their hunkered positions when they saw the hand feeling around the soil near the root of the tree. They saw the fingers, brown-stained and hardly discernible from the earth, scratching into it, then stop and disappear for a moment, to come back again with a piece of shale or rock, and scrape with this until a hole about six inches deep was made. They watched fascinated and almost breathless as a small leather pouch was pressed into it before being covered by the earth. The hand was withdrawn again but only for a moment. They watched it now placing two pieces of stick, apparently to mark the hole; then it was withdrawn, the brambles were pressed back into place, and a long, low sigh came to their ears.

  They allowed a full minute to pass before slowly getting to their feet and looking over the hedge, to see the figure skirting the field again.

  ‘That was Lily Whitmore. Did you see who he was?’

  ‘Aye, I saw who he was.’

  ‘And she’s got her belly full. God, wait till this gets…’

  So quickly did the hands come on his throat that the younger man fell back into the bushes, only to be pulled forward again and shaken. And now he was gasping, ‘You gone mad, our Joe?’

  ‘Not as mad as you’ll find me if you dare open your slack mouth about this do. D’you hear me?’

  ‘Leave go of me.’

  ‘I’ll leave go of you when I’m finished. Now listen to me. You say one bloody word about what’s happened over that hedge and you won’t know what horse’s kicked you. But the first one’ll be Andy Davison. You mind Andy Davison? He did six months for you. He did six months that you should have been doin’ in Durham because when you were on the run you planted the stuff in his cree. By God! If I’d known as much then as I know now, you would have gone along the line. Well, Andy’s still waitin’ to find out who did the dirty on him. An’ if you live to survive what he’ll do to you, then you’ll wish he had done the job properly, I can tell you that. Now that’s only one thing, for then there’s me ma and the insurance money. If she knew about that, you’d be out through the door with a broken skull, as much as she’s all for you. And that’s not forgettin’ Farmer Atkinson’s barn.’

  ‘I…I didn’t do that. Well, I mean…’

  ‘You egged daft Davey on to do it, didn’t you? And where is he now? In the loony bin. Why I haven’t split on you afore, God alone knows. But I’m tellin’ you this time, just one word, just one little whisper in the factory, or anywhere about, and you’re for it. You’d have been for it years ago if I hadn’t been thinking of Ma.’

  ‘Aye, an’ Lily Whitmore. You’ve always been sweet on her.’

  ‘Well, I’m goin’ to tell you somethin’: I’m goin’ to be more sweet on her; I’m goin’ to marry her.’

  ‘Huh! Marry her? Me ma wouldn’t stand for that.’

  ‘I’m not worried about what Ma’s goin’ to stand for in the future. I won’t be there; you’ll be head of the house and lookin’ after her.’

  ‘Just because of that?’ Fred Skinner pointed down towards the hidden bag, but his brother Joe did not reply directly; he said, ‘I don’t know what’s in there. Whether there’s ten or fifty, it would be all the same to me; but we’ll find out, shall we? ’Cos I’d only have to leave it there for a matter of minutes and you’d be back, wouldn’t you?’

  Joe pulled the little bag from the earth, but he didn’t open it, he put it straight into his pocket, which brought forth from his brother, and in a tone of disbelief, ‘You’re not goin’ to see how much is there?’

  ‘No; because it doesn’t belong to me. But see that bag there’—he pointed down to the blackberries—‘you can take that back to Ma, and if you want to open your big mouth you can tell her I’ve gone a courtin’.’

  ‘What! You mean to take her on then? You’re kiddin’.’

  ‘You should know me by now, Fred, I never kid; I leave all that to you.’

  ‘You’ll be the laughin’ stock.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll be the laughin’ stock if it gets out it isn’t mine. But it isn’t goin’ to get out that it isn’t mine, is it, Fred? You understand me? If you don’t, I’ve been wastin’ me breath this last five minutes. And you know what I said then; and just as I don’t kid I don’t break promises.’

  After staring at his brother Fred Skinner stooped and grabbed up the basket, and he had taken two steps backwards before he said, ‘You think you’re a bloody great guy, don’t you? There’s been no holdin’ you since you got that leg-up in the factory.’

  Joe answered quietly, ‘You’ve got a tidy way to go; get home.’

  ‘Aye. And you, you’ve got a tidy way to go an’ all. They’re right what they’re sayin’: you’re aimin’ for manager; but you’ve got no learnin’, even with your night classes, ’cos you’re still only about half a step from where you started.’

  When Joe took in a long deep breath Fred turned sharply away and walked down the root-encrusted path. His hand in his pocket now gripping the little bag, Joe stood watching his brother until he disappeared, the while thinking: No learnin’. Well, he’d show him. Aye, he would. He’d have learnin’.

  As if the thought had acted as a spur, he turned about and ran along by the hedge to where the sycamores met the wood.

  Here, the boles of the trees were comparatively clear, which enabled him to pass through to the path on which the horse had emerged only minutes before, and he paused and looked across the field, considering: If he ran would he catch up with her before she reached home? Would she have gone straight home, though? But where else would she go? One place surely she wouldn’t go, and that was anywhere near Ponder’s Lane, because, being a Sunday and the weather like it was, the lane and the fields beyond would be thick with courting couples and those out to make a start on it, just as the drystone walls would be with the lads sitting on them watching the parade of giggling lasses, supposedly going flower-picking. And they did pick flowers, cowslips early on, then buttercups and daisies. The fields around Low Fell and Birtley were stripped on a Sunday. Bairns would take bunches home, but the lasses mostly would scatter theirs or, later, lie on them. That many of them should have been at chapel or church might have been noticeable in the number of empty pews; but not so in the Catholic church. There, they would be packed with the Irish. It wasn’t so much fear of God but the fear of the priest with that lot. Lily was Irish; well, at least her stepfather was.

  He started to run. What would he say when he got to the house? I want to see Lily? And what would her reaction be? Surprise? If only he could catch up with her before she reached home.

  Five minutes later he saw her. She was standing against the wall of the factory, the Mordaunt Black Polish factory where she worked, where they both worked, and which building, with others, bordered the built-up area of Gateshead Fell.

  At this end was the unsavoury but sweetly named district of Honeybee Place, four long rows of houses, each named after birds: robin, hawk, finch, and lark, even though the only birds to be seen in this quarter were the gregarious sparrows, except where, in a house, you might find a caged linnet, goldfinch or bullfinch, or, out in the fields beyond, you might startle a lark to rise and then stand watching in wonder as it soared in its singing.

  On weekdays this particular area would be swarming with dark-coated and shawled figures, a beehive indeed as horse-driven lorries were loaded with the produce of the factory. Now there was only this young girl.

  She had been leaning, head bent, against the wall, but on the approach of footsteps she straightened up quickly, then stopped when she recognised the man coming towards her.

  ‘Hello, Lily,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied, and her hands going nervously to her hat, she straightened it and pulled the sides of her hip-length, dark blue coat together, as if to hide th
e front of her print dress. Then when she saw the hand come from Joe’s pocket and his fingers uncurl to reveal the bag that only a short time before she had buried, she put a hand over her mouth and fell back against the wall, gasping.

  ‘’Tis all right. ’Tis all right,’ he said. ‘This is yours, isn’t it?’

  She didn’t speak, but her head moved from side to side; and now he went on, his voice low, ‘I happened to be on the other side pickin’ blackberries for me ma. She has them every year. You and he stopped just afore me on the other side of the hedge. There was no time to get away; but then’—he shrugged his shoulders—‘if there had been I still would have stayed…Here, take it.’ Her hand did not leave her mouth, and he stared at her in silence for a moment before he said, ‘I’m going to ask you a question. I know I make me mouth go in there’—he nodded towards the wall—‘I’ve got to, to keep them up to scratch, but…but do you dislike me?’

  The hand slid slowly down to her chin, then gripped the top of her coat before she shook her head, saying, ‘No. No.’

  ‘Do you like me then?’

  There was a pause while her eyes widened and her lips opened and shut without emitting words. And then they came in a low whisper: ‘Yes. Yes, I like you all right.’

  ‘Aye, well now’—his head was nodding—‘that’s out of the way. Now another question, important this to both of us…Will you marry me?’

  The hand went across her mouth again, tightly now, pressing out the moist cream skin of her cheeks till they looked like distorted pink balloons.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You would?’ The hand slipped from her mouth and now she muttered, ‘You would? I mean, marry me?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve said.’

  She now looked at the small bag that was still in his hand and which was resting against his waist now; and then in a bewildered fashion she said, ‘But…but I don’t know how much is in there.’

  ‘God in heaven!’ His voice had been almost a yell and now he looked first one way then the other along the building before poking his head towards her and saying, ‘An’ neither do I. What are you suggestin’? You think because…because of this…?’ He now threw the bag at her, but her hand didn’t go out to catch it and so it fell to the ground.

  When she made no move to retrieve it he picked it up again and thrust it into her hand, saying angrily, ‘That doesn’t say much for what you think of me.’

  She was stammering now, ‘W…w…well, I…I meant, Joe…what…what I mean is. Oh, I don’t know.’ Her head drooped onto her chest and as tears ran down her face and with the side of her forefinger she wiped them off her upper lip and her chin, he said, ‘Give over. Give over. But get it into your head, whatever’s in that bag’s got nothin’ to do with it. I’ve always had a fancy for you…well, I mean, over the past two years, since you were sixteen or so. So has many another round about. And yet you seemed to keep yourself to yourself, but apparently not enough.’

  Her head was bowed again.

  ‘But I’m not blamin’ you, not entirely, because those bastards will get what they want one way or t’other: money talks for them.’ He stood for a moment looking down at her bent head; then, his voice changing and a small smile spreading across his lips, he said, ‘Anyway, I can’t be as bad as the workhouse, can I?’

  ‘Oh, Joe.’

  When she raised her head he stood looking into her beautiful tear-filled eyes. He didn’t know whether they were grey or green, he only knew they changed with her mood. He’d seen them sparkle with laughter at the antics that some of the lasses got up to, then shed pity, like they had done one day last week when old Fanny Culbert collapsed at her bench and died.

  His head now drooped as she said, ‘I’ll never forget this to my dyin’ day, Joe. An’ I’ll be true to you till the end, however long or short.’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s good enough for me. Now, let’s get down to brass tacks. You’d better get home and break the news. I’ll come along with you but…well, I won’t go in. I’ll give you ten minutes or so, then I’ll come and see what reception you’ve had and we’ll take it from there, eh?’

  ‘Aye, Joe. Yes, Joe.’

  ‘Well, come on; leave that wall alone, it’s supported itself so far.’

  She took a step forward and then, looking down at the bag that she was still clasping in her hand, she said, ‘You’d better keep that, because if I go in home with it, I won’t come out with it. I know that much.’

  ‘Aye, there’s something in that.’ He took the bag from her; then dangling it by its string, he said, ‘But it would be a good idea if you opened it, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You do it.’

  Untying the string, he pulled the top of the chamois-leather bag open, then tipped the coins onto his palm. There were five gold sovereigns, and they both stood looking at them for a moment until he said, ‘Well, you’ll be needing things later on; but in the meantime I’ll do as you say, I’ll hang on to it.’

  She stood looking at him as he put the coins back into the bag and then placed it in his trouser pocket; but when she still stood as though undecided, he urged her forward saying, ‘Well, come on then. Let battle begin.’ Which had its effect for she now walked briskly by his side along by the factory wall, then across the dried-mud-ridged front, past the stables where the horses were champing while at their Sunday rest, and so on to the first row of Honeybee Place. And here the stench of the middens hit them with a force engendered by the heat.

  The smell did not make them nip their noses or put a hand over their mouths because, through use, they were inured to it. They made their way down between the two-roomed houses, stuck tight together as if for support, and the line of so-called dry lavatories fronting them. One midden was allotted to two houses. Inside would be a rough stone erection stretching across the full width and acting as the frontal support of a stretch of wood with a hole in it. Outside and in the back wall near the bottom would be a hatch which could be lifted up in order to clean the midden.

  The idea was for ashes from the coal fires to soak up the effluent; but there never seemed enough ashes to meet the need and so the lane beyond was polluted through the bursting hatches.

  It was a disgraceful quarter, the townspeople said, but Honeybee Place, like its counterpart of Bog’s End in Fellburn, had been there before the town had come into real existence. Every new mayor was going to make it his business to wipe out the place. But then, of course, the question would arise: where would he propose to house the people until new habitations could be built for them, because they must be near their work?

  Joe hated this quarter, and he thanked God he hadn’t been brought up here. Yet one minute’s walk from the rows was Honeybee Hollow. Only five houses were in the Hollow, and they, too, supported each other. But there was the difference: they were stone-floored, and besides the two rooms downstairs, each had an attic above and a wash-house leading into a backyard. And what added so much to the difference was the tap at the bottom of each yard and next to it the private closet, the same type as the others, but private, almost as great a privilege as the tap. In consequence, the occupants of these five houses had always considered themselves a cut above those in Honeybee Place.

  But Lily Whitmore lived in 29 Hawk Row, and as they turned out of Robin Row, Joe stopped and said, ‘Look, I’ll wait here. I’ll give you ten minutes and then I’ll come along. What’ll you say to them?’

  She cast her eyes downwards as she said, ‘I’ll…I’ll say you want to marry me.’

  He gave her a little smile as he said, ‘I’d like it better if you said, I want to marry him, or, I’m going to marry him.’

  She made an effort to return the smile, then nodded and said, ‘Well, I’ll say something like that.’

  ‘Does he get rough?’

  Her whole body gave a slight shudder before she said, ‘He has. He used to, but…but I’ve stood up to him lately.’

  ‘That’s the way. Well, stand up to him again. And don’t
forget, I’ll be just outside waiting.’

  ‘What’ll you say to him?’

  ‘You leave that to me. Well, go on. Don’t fret. Everything’ll be all right.’

  He watched her walk away, zigzagging between the children playing on the road. She walked good, straight. She was a lovely girl. His want of her had grown over the past months. But so had that of a number of fellas, and they were lads of her own age. Well, he was only twenty-three; what was five years difference? And he’d be more able to take care of her than any of them. But God, what he’d like to do at this minute would be to gallop, as that fella had galloped through that wood, and get him by the throat, and choke the bloody life out of him! Oh, he would love to do that, and take the consequences. Aye, the consequences. But if he took the consequences he wouldn’t have Lily, and you couldn’t have everything in life.

  When she had disappeared through a doorway halfway along the street, he turned his attention to the children playing on the road. One was squawking its head off. It was naked except for a rough calico nappy and it was crawling to where its elders, ranging between three and five, were playing chucks, throwing up a cube-shaped stone while attempting to snatch up smaller stones before it should descend again.

  The cries of the children were strident, happy; their faces, dirty and sweat begrimed, were laughing; except for the crawling baby. He watched as one of the bigger girls, definitely all of five years old, screwed round on her knees, thrust out her arms, grabbed up the child and plonked it on her lap with a practised hand. She could have been the mother or the grandmother. His thoughts told him she was learning early in her particular school of life.

  He did not possess a watch; he relied for the time on the buzzers from the factory: six o’clock start, eight o’clock break, twelve o’clock break, and five o’clock finish. Some factories kept their employees working till six, or later, and there was no buzzer to signal their release.