The Miner’s Girl

by Maggie Hope

  Benjamin was starry-eyed and reluctant to go next door to the flat when the time came. But he was sleepy and went to bed with little demur.

  ‘It was grand, Mam, wasn’t it grand, Mam?’ he said even as his eyes were closing.

  Later, sitting by herself in the living room, Merry couldn’t settle to the jersey she was knitting for Benjamin. She worked on a few rows then put it aside and wandered over to the window looking out onto Eden Hope below. A moon had risen and the frost on the slate roofs of the houses glinted. There was a ring round the moon and Merry gazed at it, remembering when she and Ben were small. Gran had said they were in for hard weather when that happened. As she was standing there, something flitted across the path outside, a shadow, that was all. She could not tell what it was. She stared out for a few minutes but there was nothing else, no movement at all. Most people were at home celebrating Christmas with their families. It must have been her imagination. Merry sighed and closed the curtains and sat down again by the fire.

  She had saved and bought a child’s box of watercolours from Turner’s shop for Benjamin, giving him it that morning in the stocking he had hung on the mantelpiece for Father Christmas to fill. The nuts and orange and bar of chocolate she had put in the stocking along with the water-colours were all she could afford but she had been so looking forward to seeing Benjamin’s face when he saw the paint box. And his face had been a picture, a picture of a small boy trying to hide his disappointment.

  Kirsty’s gift on the other hand had filled him with joy. It was a real, grown-up set and must have cost a lot of money in an artist’s supply shop in Darlington or Durham City.

  All Benjamin’s talk now was of Kirsty and the doctor: how Kirsty had shown him how to mix colours properly to get the right shade of green for the fields; how most tree trunks were not really brown but a variety of colours.

  ‘I’m going to be a painter when I grow up,’ he declared. And Dr Macready had taken him fishing in the Wear and he had come home proudly carrying two brown trout.

  I’m jealous, Merry thought. Jealous because they can give him more than I can. I should be pleased, and I am in a way, but I’m jealous. At least he’s safe here from Robbie Wright and his mother. That is the important thing.

  Merry wrapped up her knitting and went to get ready for bed. But once there she lay on her pillow still feeling restless and unable to sleep. Her thoughts wandered to Tom Gallagher, Benjamin’s father. Even after all this time she could picture his face vividly in her mind’s eye. The thought of him brought a yearning to her, which was silly for hadn’t he made it plain that he didn’t want her, had never wanted her? Benjamin had been the result of a man and woman being thrown together in a storm and it was plain that he must have regretted it for he had not come near her afterwards. He had probably forgotten all about her.

  How could she forget him though, when Benjamin looked so much like him? She had tried to tell herself he looked like her brother and he did, but sometimes, especially as he grew older, she could see Tom’s very smile in him, his gestures.

  Merry turned over onto her other side and pummelled the pillow. In the night, lying on her own in the dark, the same thoughts returned to her quite often, though she tried to dismiss them as just coincidence. There was no doubt that Tom and her brother Ben had looked alike and now Benjamin too. Could there possibly have been a connection between Ben and Tom? It was a puzzle that had been staring her in the face forever but with all her family gone she had no one to ask, and if Gran had been alive today, could she have asked?

  Merry turned again and lay on her back, telling herself she had built all this up in her mind and it was downright silly. Of course there was no connection. She closed her eyes and at last felt herself drifting off into sleep.

  Almost the next minute, or so it seemed to her she heard the patter of gravel against her window. Her eyes flew open and she lay perfectly still listening, poised to run to the house to alert the doctor. Was someone trying to break in to the surgery? No, they would not have thrown anything at an upstairs window, of course not.

  ‘Merry!’

  The call was low, so she only just heard it but then it came again. She got out of bed and went to the window, moving only a corner of the curtain to look out. On the moonlit path below there was the figure of a man standing, legs astride and looking up at her. She dropped the curtain. No, it couldn’t be, she told herself. But then he called again and this time there was something familiar in the voice.

  ‘Merry! Let me in, it’s me, Ben.’

  Ben? A wild hope whirled within her, but no, it couldn’t be could it? She had to force herself to open the curtain and look out properly. Ben looked up at her. Oh yes, it was Ben’s face and it was Ben’s voice – even though it was so many years since she had seen him, it was him.

  She didn’t think any more, but rushed downstairs, through the surgery and opened the door – and there he was, her brother Ben.

  Twenty-Six

  Merry put a Lucifer to the gas mantle that hung from the ceiling in the living room and blinked as light flooded the room. It was all a dream, it had to be, she told herself, and stood absolutely still for a couple of seconds. If she turned she would wake up and she didn’t want to wake up from this dream. At last, she did turn and he was still there looking at her with a sort of half smile on his face. She stared at him; he had a deep tan and his hair was lighter than she remembered, bleached almost white.

  ‘You’re taller than you were,’ she said stupidly. He laughed and stepped forward, and then she knew that he was real – he was there and she could feel his arms around her as he kissed her on both cheeks before stepping back.

  ‘It would be a bad job if I wasn’t,’ he said. ‘I’m a man now, Merry. Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?’ His accent was different somehow, his words clipped.

  ‘Yes. Yes of course, sit down, sit down.’ She was gabbling, she thought dimly and sat down herself before she fell down, she felt so strange.

  ‘Oh Merry, Merry, I’ve dreamed of this day so many times,’ he said as he took a seat in the chair opposite hers.

  ‘But where have you been?’ she suddenly demanded, anger bursting through her elation at seeing him. ‘I thought you were dead! It was cruel, Ben, why did you go?’

  ‘I didn’t just run away, Merry,’ he said and the light in his eyes died as he thought about that time when he was a young lad and Miles Gallagher had come upon him in the garden at Old Pit. A rage built up in him as it always did when he allowed himself to recall it. He looked down at his fists, which had curled into balls, the knuckles white.

  ‘What then? What happened? Ben, I thought you were dead! Dead under that fall of stone in the entrance to the drift up in the woods beyond Old Pit. We searched, Ben. The lads from Eden Hope helped me. I found a rag from your trousers, Ben.’ Reaction set in and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Where have you been?’ she cried angrily.

  ‘South Africa,’ said Ben. ‘I joined the army when the war began. And after the war I didn’t come home with the rest, I worked my way round the world on a tramp steamer.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘He put the fear of God into me,’ Ben replied simply. ‘I was only a young lad after all.’

  ‘Who? Who did that? Why?’

  The questions were crowding Merry’s brain. All the anguish she had suffered since he went dimming her delight in seeing him again and realising her precious brother was not dead, he was here, real, alive. She rose to her feet and touched him, feeling the warm skin of his hand, his smooth blonde hair. He really was alive. ‘Why?’ she demanded again, sharply this time. Surely he could have got in touch, found some way to let her know where he was?

  ‘I wrote. When I thought it was safe, I wrote. But I only had the address at Old Pit. And I was frightened he would find out and he would do something to hurt you. He’s an evil man, Merry. He still is. He must not find out I’m back.’

  ‘Who? Who, Ben?’

  ‘Miles Gallagher
. You know him? The mine agent?’ He saw by her face that she did. ‘He hasn’t tried to hurt you, has he?’ Ben started to his feet but Merry shook her head.

  ‘No, no, of course he hasn’t. Why should he?’

  Miles Gallagher, she thought. Tom’s father. Dear God, Benjamin’s grandfather. Did Ben know about her son, named for him? She couldn’t ask, not yet, not now.

  ‘Ben, I don’t understand any of this.’

  She had not accepted his death, not at first – after all they hadn’t found him. The young miners had dug away at the newest fall in the entrance to the drift mine but they had been unable to shift the hundreds of tons of stone and shale that had fallen before that. Half the hill, it had looked like to her. And when she found the rag there had been the niggling thought that Ben was there, under some of that rubble. Yet without a body there had been hope. Oh, she was so muddled and mixed up.

  ‘Make a cup of tea, lass, will you? I haven’t had a decent cup of tea for I don’t know how long.’ Ben sounded weary and no wonder. Merry made the tea and came back to him. He was sprawled back in the chair, his legs stretched out, to the fire, his eyes closed. He looked so tired and so young though of course he was only a couple of years younger than she was. She had always felt older though, always looked after him when he was small. She felt a rush of tenderness towards him.

  He heard her footsteps and opened his eyes and sat up. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been living at Old Pit. Hiding out really. ‘ She handed him a pint pot of tea and he took a long swallow. ‘Thanks, pet, I needed that. I only light a fire at night in case someone seems the smoke.’

  ‘Tell me what happened that day at least,’ she said.

  Ben sat back and allowed himself to remember the day the man he found out later was Miles Gallagher had found him in the garden at Old Pit. The details were fixed firmly in his mind. He’d been apprehensive at first and his instincts had been right, he thought bitterly. Then when the man had said he would take him a ride on his horse he had reckoned he might not be so bad after all. But at the ventilation shaft along by the woods he had been scared. For a minute he had thought the man would tip him into the shaft and he was terrified of falling into the darkness below. He would never get out, Merry would never know where he had gone.

  Ben remembered falling, then nothing until he woke up – he was on a ship with other boys and they told him they were going to South Africa to become farmers. The other boys were all orphans, or so Harry told him. Harry was the boy in the next bunk to him in the stifling place between decks where they slept and spent a lot of their time. They were allowed on the lower deck once a day for an hour in the afternoon, emerging pale and blinking into the sunshine or shivering in the wind and rain.

  ‘I’m going to be rich,’ Harry asserted. ‘Father Donovan said if we work hard and save our money we will be able to buy our own farms, they’re dirt cheap there.’

  Every day the ship’s captain came to see Ben. He and another man would look at the wound on Ben’s head and ask how he was.

  ‘How did I get here?’ Ben asked. His head ached and ached and he couldn’t think straight. (‘My brain felt scrambled,’ he told Merry as he sat nursing his pot of tea in the snug room over the surgery.)

  ‘Never you mind,’ said the captain. He looked at the man with him who was a doctor, or so Harry told Ben. ‘You’re very lucky you’re going out to a fine life in the colonies. A rich man you’ll be, the lads at home will be jealous as hell.’

  There was only Merry, he had to write to Merry as soon as he got to wherever he was going. Then he had to find his way back to Old Pit because Merry couldn’t manage without him.

  Ben told his tale in a quiet monotonous voice but there was a suppressed anger beneath it; Merry could sense it. Now he went quiet, staring into his pot of tea.

  ‘I was past myself with worry about you,’ said Merry. ‘That wicked, wicked man. But why? Why did he do it?’

  ‘That I don’t know. What I do know is that when we landed the captain handed me an envelope with a note inside. It was from him, I knew, though it wasn’t signed. And he said that if I did come back or tell anyone it would be you who would suffer.’

  Merry gasped. ‘Are you sure it was the mine agent?’

  ‘Miles Gallagher. Yes I am. I’ve been back a week now and I’ve seen him.’ Suddenly he yawned. ‘Sorry. I’ve had little sleep since I’ve been back at Old Pit.’

  ‘Why don’t you stay? I can make you a shakey-down bed in here.’

  ‘No, I can’t. I can’t risk it. Not until I do something about him. I’ll go now. I’ll be back though. And Miles flaming Gallagher will get what’s coming to him, I promise you.’

  ‘Be careful, Ben, please.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be careful, pet, never fear,’ her brother replied.

  He kissed her forehead and went to the door. After she had seen him out she went back upstairs and put out the gas and lit a candle to go into the bedroom. She undressed quickly, blew out the candle and climbed into bed but her head was too full of Ben and she lay awake until it was almost morning before dropping off to sleep through sheer exhaustion. Consequently she woke tired and with an aching head. But still, not even that could dim the joy of having Ben back and alive.

  There were so many questions buzzing round in her head though. Questions about Tom’s father, the thought of him was hanging over her joy menacingly. Why had he done what he had to Ben? Ben was just a young boy when it happened, how could he have hurt the mine agent? Then there was her own son, Ben hadn’t asked about him, did he not know? In fact he hadn’t asked anything about her, how she had managed, about her marriage, not anything. But then there hadn’t been much time and perhaps he hadn’t heard anything as he was in hiding and wouldn’t have spoken to anyone from Winton Colliery or Eden Hope. She would go to Old Pit this afternoon, she decided, it was Boxing Day and she was free. Benjamin was spending the afternoon with Mrs Macready having a drawing lesson.

  Merry didn’t walk along the waggon way from the pit yard to get to Old Pit. She didn’t want to meet anyone from the pit villages so she took a footpath through the fields to Coundon, turning off on the path that led down past Parkin’s Farm. She hurried past the farm buildings but there was no one about. The day was rawly cold, already darkening and icy rain had started to fall. There was no one about at all; even the cattle were indoors at this time of the year and the only sounds were of rain dripping from the trees.

  She climbed the sodden stile and her feet squelched in the puddle at the other side. Dirty water went over her shoes and her stockings were soaked. Gritting her teeth she plodded on until she came to the place where she had grown up but there was no sign of Ben and her heart lurched with disappointment. She stood by the pump and looked about her. Old Pit was much the same as she remembered it. Two of the houses had had their roof slates removed and there were other things missing but evidently there hadn’t been much worth salvaging.

  The door to the end house was open about an inch but it was warped with the rain and was stuck fast. She tried pushing it but it was hopeless. She walked round the side to the back door and found that it opened with a screech of wood on the flagstone when she pushed hard enough. There were no stairs to the upper floor – where they had been short pieces of metal jutted out from the wall.

  Merry felt a surge of sadness as she remembered how her grandmother had struggled to keep the place clean and neat and tidy, and now it was simply a ruin. Leaves swirled in the corner with the draught and the iron range was red with rust instead of polished and shining from black lead.

  Ben had covered his tracks well; she could see no sign of him, though there were ashes in the grate and a few cinders even. Merry went closer and saw a faint glow of red just dying. She went beneath the hole of what had once been the top of the stairs and called softly.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Merry! Why have you come here? I told you it was dangerous. Are you sure no one saw you?’

  ‘No, no they di
dn’t,’ said Merry. ‘There’s nobody about, Ben, nobody at all. It’s Boxing Day, the pits are off and any road it’s blooming awful weather.’

  ‘Howay, come on up,’ said Ben and let down a roughly knotted rope ladder. ‘You can climb that, can’t you?’

  ‘’Course I can,’ she asserted, though in truth the ladder swayed alarmingly as she stood on the first rung and she clung to the rope. Eventually though, she reached the top and Ben helped her into what had once been the bedroom. He was wearing a dark-blue topcoat such as a seaman might wear with the collar turned up on his neck, yet when he had touched her his hand was icy. There were a couple of blankets on top of some dried bracken in a corner and a pile of rags that he had obviously been using as a pillow. A chair with a broken back was there too and a small stool – a cracket, the miners called them, when they were used in the pits in very low seams. She looked in horror at this evidence of how poorly he was living in this bitter weather. As if to emphasise it rain began pattering at the window, some getting in immediately through the ill-fitting frame.

  ‘Heck, Ben, you can’t live like this,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve lived in worse places and when I was but a bairn an’ all. When you toil in the gold mines and it’s so hot you fancy your brains are frying, all that keeps you sane is the thought of an English winter.’

  She gazed at her brother: his skin was burned dark bronze and showed no sign of fading; his eyes had become shuttered and cold and she guessed he was looking back to those days. Her heart ached for him.