The Miner’s Girl

by Maggie Hope

  ‘It’s too late to get the ambulance now,’ Dr Macready was saying, oblivious of her anger. ‘I’ll have it here first thing it the morning. Now, the Board of Health has to be notified and the house will have to be fumigated. You have a little girl, too, haven’t you? She will have to be inoculated. Then—’

  ‘Dr Macready, if my bairn dies I’ll have your head on a platter,’ said Merry as he blinked and looked straight at her.

  ‘We’ll do our level best not to let that happen,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. But even doctors have to have time off, you know.’

  ‘You should—’ The words rushed hotly to her lips but Dr Macready interrupted her.

  ‘We’re not helping him standing here arguing, are we?’

  Merry looked down at Benny, his eyes wide open and so unnaturally bright, looking up at her. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘At the moment, just watch him. Don’t attempt to get him to drink. I’ll go and see to everything and come back when I can.’

  It was the worst night of Merry’s life even though the boy slept fitfully at intervals. She felt the sound of his rasping breath would haunt her forever. Dr Macready came in twice.

  ‘Good, good,’ he murmured. ‘He’s no worse.’ The doctor was there when Robbie came in from work, early in the morning, for he’d started on fore shift.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted from the back door. ‘Where’s me breakfast?’ She didn’t reply and they could hear his pit boots drop to the floor as he took them off in the kitchen. He came through to the room in his stockinged feet and pushed open the door.

  ‘I said, where is my breakfast?’ he enunciated slowly, menace creeping into his tone.

  Dr Macready looked up at him coldly. ‘Don’t make so much noise,’ he said. ‘This child is seriously ill.’

  Robbie glanced at the two of them standing by the bed, then at the boy lying in it. ‘Aye well, I suppose I’ll have to see to meself,’ he said and went out, clashing the door behind him. They could hear Alice begin to cry upstairs.

  ‘Let your husband attend to her,’ the doctor said as Merry took a step forward automatically. ‘I will immunise her after we get Benjamin away. Though I doubt it’s too late.’

  Merry was not allowed to go in the ambulance with Benny. At least he was too ill to realise that. And afterwards Robbie was unusually quiet, even when Alice developed the disease within a few days and followed her brother to the isolation hospital.

  Merry and Robbie took the horse bus into the town on the Saturday afternoon, both of them smelling faintly of carbolic acid as everything in the house had been fumigated. It was the first time they had gone anywhere together since they were married. They stood outside the window of the ward where the little patients had had their beds turned round so that they could see their parents outside. The window was opened a little way at the bottom so they could hear.

  ‘Mam,’ Benny croaked when he saw them. He didn’t look at Robbie nor did he plead to come home as all the other children in the ward were doing. ‘Our Alice is bad, I heard the doctor say.’

  ‘Howay, you’ve seen the lad now. We’ll go and see Alice,’ said Robbie.

  ‘I’ll come back, pet,’ Merry promised.

  They couldn’t see Alice because she was in a steam tent. In the office at the end of the ward the sister, looking formidable in her starched, square linen cap, told them that the dreaded diphtheria membrane was growing across the little girl’s throat.

  ‘Doctor is going to do a tracheotomy, that is he will cut into the child’s windpipe and put in a tube so she can breathe,’ Sister said.

  ‘No bloody doctor is going to cut my bairn’s throat,’ Robbie said forcefully.

  ‘Would you rather we left her to choke to death?’ asked Sister and the brutality of it struck Merry to the heart.

  Robbie opened his mouth to shout but just at that moment the doctor in charge came in, nodded impersonally to the parents and spoke to Sister.

  ‘Is everything ready?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ she replied and Merry and Robbie found themselves ushered out of the office. Robbie, collapsing in the face of such authority, keeping to the side and with his head down, walked along the corridor to the door at the end and into the fresh air with Merry behind him. Outside, he took a Woodbine from a crumpled packet and lit it with a match cupped in his hand against the wind.

  ‘This is all your bloody fault,’ he growled at Merry. ‘It was your little bastard that brought it into my house.’

  Merry didn’t answer him. She walked back along the outside of the ward to the window where Benny’s bed was still turned round so he could see outside. His eyes brightened as she came within his view.

  ‘I brought you a bar of chocolate,’ she said to him. ‘But I had to give it in to the nurse. She said you would get some at tea time. You will eat it, son? It’s good for you.’

  Benny nodded. ‘I’ll save some for Alice,’ he promised.

  ‘I don’t think she’ll want it, not today,’ she replied. He at least looked a little better, she thought thankfully. The fever seemed to have left him or at least gone down.

  The bell rang for the end of visitors’ hour so she blew him a kiss and smiled, though how she managed it she didn’t know. He looked so frail lying flat and with only one thin pillow. That was because they worried about any strain on the heart; she knew that. He wasn’t allowed anything to read either, in case it damaged his eyes. And Alice was worse; oh God, what did she look like?

  The visitors were trailing down the path to the road outside the hospital. Robbie was there, yet another cigarette cupped in his hand, his cap pulled down over his forehead.

  ‘Let’s away,’ he said when he saw her. ‘I cannot stand this damn place.’

  ‘I’m going back to see how she is,’ Merry said suddenly and turned on her heel. She got as far as the reception desk.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t go any further,’ said the sister there, a different sister than the one she’d seen before.

  ‘I have to know how my bairn is,’ said Merry and the woman sighed as she stood her ground.

  ‘Very well, I’ll send a nurse,’ she said. It was all a waste of time really, Merry thought as she walked back to where Robbie was standing by the gate.

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ the nurse had reported.

  Benny came home six weeks later, taller and thinner and looking as though a puff of wind would blow him over. Alice did not come home. Dr Macready explained to Merry how the toxins from diphtheria could seriously damage the heart and little Alice had succumbed. Benny was left with weak eyes and a heart murmur.

  ‘He must be kept in bed for a few weeks,’ said Dr Macready. ‘He will improve, you’ll see. I’ll come in to see him when I can. Meanwhile try to build him up, feed him as well as you can.’ Dr Macready was very kind.

  ‘It’s because he feels guilty about not being here for the bairn when he was needed,’ said Annie from next door.

  ‘He’s due to some time to himself,’ said Merry. ‘He wasn’t to know.’

  ‘He should get somebody with a bit of common sense instead of that daft Maisie,’ Annie said tartly.

  * * *

  Merry walked up to Mr Parkin’s farm to get fresh milk for Benny. Mrs Parkin gave her six eggs, still warm from the nest and the butcher in the Co-operative Store slipped her some beef dripping with a liberal layer of jelly.

  She was terrified Benny would have a relapse and had to try to feed him up. Benny was all she had left now Alice lay in the churchyard on Eden Bank. There were a number of small graves there, the earth freshly turned and jam jars with wild flowers beneath the cheap markers. Merry called in on her way back from Parkins’ Farm, staying longer than she ought to have done so that when she arrived home Robbie was already there.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he asked truculently.

  ‘I called at the graveyard,’ she said, putting her basket down on the kitchen table. ‘Where’s Annie?�
� Annie had said she would keep an eye on the lad; pop in and out.

  ‘I sent her packing. He’s old enough to look after himself.’ Robbie never called the boy by his name.

  ‘I’ve got a cow heel in the oven for you, it won’t take a minute,’ said Merry.

  ‘An’ what have you got in here? You’ve been spending my hardearned money on the bastard, have you?’ Robbie peered in the basket and saw the can of milk and the eggs.

  ‘Eggs? Fresh eggs and milk, be buggered! Well, I’m blowed if he’s going to get them. I haven’t had a nice boiled fresh egg since I don’t know when. Put them on now, I’ll have them.’ He lifted the can of milk, took off the cap and put it to his lips.

  Merry sprang at him and grabbed for the can. ‘Put that down, it’s for Benny’s dinner,’ she shouted. Taken by surprise he let go of the can and it fell to the floor, spilling half its precious contents. She went down on hands and knees to save what she could but he kicked her out of the way, her head landed against the table leg and she was knocked out.

  Twenty-One

  ‘Do you want me to have a word with him?’ Dr Macready finished off the dressing he had put on the side of Merry’s head and reached for a roll of bandage. He secured the dressing with the bandage then stood back and regarded his handiwork. ‘Not bad, really,’ he murmured. ‘Should have had a stitch though. Well, what about that man of yours?’

  ‘No, don’t do that, Doctor, please.’ said Merry. The wound on her scalp stung and her whole head throbbed. ‘He’ll be angry enough as it is. He’ll think I’ve been moaning to you about him.’

  Dr Macready knew she was right. Any trouble between husband and wife, short of actual murder, was considered a private matter. If a man hit his wife, well then, she must have done something she shouldn’t. That was the accepted thinking and not just in the pit villages.

  ‘What about the boy?’ he asked. ‘This is doing him no good. He hits the boy too, doesn’t he?’

  ‘All fathers leather their lads, else they go wild.’ But even as Merry said it a vivid picture came back to her of the last time Benny had annoyed Robbie. Robbie had taken off his belt and gone for the lad until Merry couldn’t stand it any longer and she got in between them. She had felt the belt across her own back for that. If Alice hadn’t started to scream in fear and panic it would have gone further. She felt the familiar feeling of desolate loss as she thought of Alice, and swallowed hard.

  ‘He doesn’t hit the lad, not since Benny was in hospital,’ she said.

  ‘It’s going to start again though, isn’t it?’ Dr Macready persisted. ‘The boy is not strong enough to stand it, you realise that?’

  ‘What can I do?’ The cry was agonised as Merry sat down suddenly, the pain in her head intensifying.

  She had come to to see Benny out of bed and bending over her, touching her face with trembling fingers. There was no sign of Robbie; he must have gone down the allotments.

  ‘Mam! Mam!’ He was crying.

  She managed to get Benny back to bed and was sitting on the edge of it herself as the room swam around her when Dr Macready walked in, pausing only to give a brief knock at the back door.

  ‘Morning, I was in the street anyway so I came in to see how—’ he began and stopped as he saw them through the open door of the room. ‘What’s happened here?’ though he already had some idea.

  ‘Me dad hit me mam,’ said Benny before she could hush him. ‘He wanted to drink the milk.’ Benny’s face was white with red blotches and his eyes glittering with unshed tears.

  ‘No, Benny,’ said Merry. ‘It wasn’t just like that.’

  Dr Macready thought it probably was just like that and he began to get angry. He checked Benny’s pulse and felt his forehead, gave him a tablet and told him to stay still. ‘I’ll just see to your mother,’ he said. ‘Be a good boy and lie very still. It would be best if you had a nap.’

  He led Merry out of the room and sat her down on the horsehair settee before looking at her head, probing the area round the wound with firm but gentle fingers.

  ‘Where is he now?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose he went down the allotments,’ Merry replied. ‘Or he could be at the Club with his marras.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of leaving him?’

  Merry could hardly believe the doctor had asked. No one left their husbands, not in the mining communities, not around here. How would they live, her and Benny? Not even the workhouse would take them in if she left Robbie. But still, she had dreamed of it. Dreamed of finding work, of living in the deserted village at Old Pit as she had done when she was growing up. But no one would help her, she knew, not if she left her husband.

  ‘What could I do? Especially now with Benny the way he is. He needs looking after, good food and that. You said so yourself, Doctor.’

  ‘Yes, he does. But you have to face it, Mrs Wright, he’s in danger here. You both are.’

  Dr Macready was well aware that he was advising her to go against all the public opinion of the age. For a woman to leave her husband was unheard of, but he liked Merry, knew her for an intelligent woman who had had more than her fair share of knocks in her young life, physical and mental. And he had a plan. But first of all he had to talk it over with his wife.

  ‘I’ll have to get on with my rounds,’ he said. ‘Please think about what I said. I’ll say good day to you now.’ He picked up his hat and bag and went out.

  She watched him through the window as he walked down the yard and turned into the back street, a short, thickset figure with greying hair and kind blue eyes. He meant well, she knew, but what did he know of her life really? He was from the Scottish highlands or some such place, miles away from the Durham coalfields.

  Merry peeped into the room. The furniture had been pushed back against the wall to make space for Benny’s narrow bed. He was asleep, his breathing soft and hardly discernible so she went in and bent over him, feeling his forehead; it felt cool to the touch though his eyes were still a little red. He muttered something and turned over onto his side. She heard footsteps in the backyard and went out to the kitchen quickly, closing the door behind her. If Robbie didn’t see the lad he might forget about him for a while.

  It wasn’t Robbie but his mother who opened the door and came in without so much as a knock or word of greeting. Merry’s heart sank even further and the throbbing in her head began anew.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are, madam?’ Doris Wright demanded. Her cheeks were mottled red with anger and she strode in towards the range, then turned to face Merry.

  ‘Good morning, Doris,’ said Merry. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Our Robbie’s just been in and he’s in a right state with himself. I had to give him something to eat an’ all, as his own wife couldn’t be bothered. Too busy running about after fresh milk and eggs for your by-blow, my Robbie said. He works all the hours God sends down the pit and you spend his money on that . . . that—’

  ‘Watch your mouth,’ Merry advised and Doris Wright fair danced with rage.

  ‘Watch my mouth, is it? By, Robbie said he only had a drink of the milk an’ you went berserk! Everybody else has to make do with tinned, concentrated milk but not your precious darling. No, if you’d looked after our Alice half as well as you do him, she might be alive today. I told our Robbie that. He reckons the bairn always came second to Benny, he reckons—’

  ‘How dare you come in here and say that!’ Merry said angrily. She sat down on the settee suddenly for her head felt fit to burst and she saw flashing lights before her eyes. But this was nothing compared to the fury rising in her.

  ‘I’ll say what I like – this is my lad’s house, not yours. If it wasn’t for him you’d be out on the street, and I doubt the workhouse would have you after your carrying on. Somebody has to tell you, Robbie’s too soft hearted. He—’

  ‘Soft hearted?’ Merry began to laugh. She put a hand up to the dressing on her head. ‘Do you see what he did t
o me?’

  ‘No more than you deserved, I’ll warrant. It’ll be nowt more than a scratch but you have to play it up, haven’t you? You’re a bloody actress an’ what’s more you have the morals of one.’

  ‘Mam? Mam?’ The raised voices had awakened Benny in the room.

  ‘It’s all right, pet, I’m coming,’ Merry answered. She got to her feet, took hold of the older woman and forced her out of the door, her anger lending her strength. She didn’t even answer Doris’s jibes but thrust her out and closed the door after her and shot the bolt. She could hear Doris shouting outside but she ignored her and went through to the boy. ‘It was nothing, just someone shouting in the back street,’ she said.

  ‘I thought it was Granny Wright playing war with you.’ Benny sighed and leaned against her as she put an arm around him.

  ‘It wasn’t anything,’ Merry insisted. Benny’s eyes were closing again, his fair lashes fanning his cheeks. She could feel his bones through his nightshirt; he felt incredibly frail to her.

  Dr Macready was right, she thought. She had to get away. If Annie would keep an eye on Benny tomorrow while Robbie was out of the way on shift, she would go and ask Jos Turner if he could give her her job back. It was the only way out she could think of. Then if she could get a place of her own with a little bit of land she could keep a nanny goat as she used to do at Old Pit. Goat’s milk would build Benny up. Robbie wouldn’t allow her to have one on the allotment as some did.

  Merry went out to the kitchen and looked at her reflection in the looking glass over the mantelpiece. She didn’t look too bad, she thought, though the bandage didn’t help. Still, she could pull her hat down over that to hide it. Her headache was lessening as she tried to work out a plan. If Annie kept an eye on Benny she could be in and out of Bishop Auckland in a couple of hours. Robbie often stayed down the allotments for that long then went down the Club for a pint before coming home.

  Now she had made up her mind, Merry was afire to get on with it. Within twenty minutes she was on the horse bus going to the town and half an hour later she was hurrying down Newgate Street to the newsagent’s on the corner.