by Maggie Hope
‘The mines? I thought you were going on the farms?’
‘Aye, well we were sold off like cattle at the other end. Most of the lads were Catholics and some of them went to farms. Me, I went to a mine owner. I was in the mines three years before I got away.’
‘You’re home now,’ she said softly.
‘Aye, but I can’t come out into the open until I’ve seen to him.’ He shook his head as though clearing his mind, went to the window and peered out. ‘You sure no one followed you?’
‘No Ben, no one did.’
‘Well, there’s no one there, any road.’ He turned back into the room, smiling self-consciously. ‘I’m not worried, really, I can take care of myself now and you an’ all. This Gallagher chap is only a man after all.’
‘Still, best be careful, Ben,’ said Merry.
‘Oh, I will, believe me, I will,’ he assured her. ‘Now, come and sit down and tell me what’s been happening to you in all these years.’ He squatted on his hunkers against the wall in the age-old way of miners, and Merry took a seat. This was the moment she had been dreading. She wondered how to tell him about Benjamin and about her failed marriage. About the fact that Miles Gallagher’s son was Benjamin’s father. He was looking up at her expectantly but she was hesitant about where to begin. In the end he helped her.
‘I know you have a son, that you must have been married,’ he said. ‘What happened? Did your man die?’
‘No, he’s not dead, no,’ she replied. Once she started on the story of her marriage she told it as it had happened, right until the day when Robbie had locked her out.
‘The rotten sod!’
Ben had listened with only the occasional ejaculation of anger or surprise. She stumbled over the telling how the diphtheria epidemic had taken little Alice, almost taken Benjamin.
‘Oh my God, I’m sorry, Merry,’ he murmured and she looked down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap as the pain of it came back in full force. Still, she went on, glossing over the times Robbie had hit her, but not about the way he had treated Benjamin. When she came to tell him of the day her husband had put her out of the house he jumped to his feet and paced the room.
‘I’ll kill him, I will, I’ll flaming well kill him!’ he said savagely.
‘No, Ben, don’t, just leave it. He did Benjamin and me a favour, really. We’re both of us happier where we are.’
Merry got to her feet and looked around the room again.
‘You can’t stay here, Ben, of course you can’t. You will have to find somewhere else.’
‘I will, don’t worry about me, Merry,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be all right.’
Walking home she pondered on the fact that he had hardly mentioned Benjamin; asked not a single question about him. But it would come out; it had to, she thought. And what would he think when he found out who Benjamin’s father was?
Twenty-Seven
Merry looked around the flat when she got home, seeing anew how comfortable it was, especially in comparison to the conditions at Old Pit where Ben was living. She was so glad to see him, to know he was not dead and yet . . . already she was worrying about him, worrying what he was going to do. For he must have a plan, he had probably been thinking of a plan all the years he was exiled.
The questions whirled around in her head until it ached. Why had Mr Gallagher done what he had done to a lad as young as Ben had been? He had gone to such extraordinary lengths to get Ben away, he must have bribed the captain of that ship taking orphans to the colonies. Yet it would have been so easy to get rid of Ben in that drift mine or down the old ventilation shaft. But he had stopped short of killing the boy. Why?
Ben could sleep here sometimes, she decided as she dusted the waiting and consulting rooms ready for morning surgery – providing he came secretly after Benjamin had gone to sleep and left early in the morning. Benjamin was a good sleeper, rarely waking once he was settled for the night. She would insist on it next time she saw him, otherwise he would end up with pneumonia. Tomorrow she would somehow manage to take him a basket of food, a pie perhaps, soup to heat up.
She gave a last glance around the surgery and went upstairs to prepare Benjamin’s supper, feeling a little better about Ben now she could do something for him. Yet still she was worried about him for she knew he was determined to get revenge on Tom’s father and Miles Gallagher was a powerful man in the area.
Merry refused to think about how she was going to tell Ben about her son, his namesake. She would have to, of course, and yet again wondered what he would do when he found out the boy’s father was Miles Gallagher’s son.
Tom was just ending surgery when the telephone rang. He sighed heavily as he picked up the receiver. He had had an interrupted night, being called out to a minor accident at the mine. Then the surgery had been full after being closed for the Christmas holidays and he had a full list of house calls to start – now this was probably yet another.
‘Dr Gallagher,’ he said even as he was finishing writing up the last patient’s notes. If it wasn’t too urgent he would be able to snatch a cup of coffee before he set off. Lunch was likely to be very late.
‘Tom!’
He sat forward, leaning his elbow on the desk. It was his stepmother and she sounded almost hysterical.
‘Yes? What is it? Is something wrong, Bertha?’
Bertha gave a strangled sound that could have been a laugh or a cry. ‘Wrong? Wrong? Tom, there has been an accident.’
‘Father? Is it Father?’
‘My father and yours, Tom, both of them, the fools went down the Winnipeg! Oh, I don’t know what to do, Tom, I don’t. How could they do this to me?’
‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Tom was having trouble making his stunned brain take in what she was saying.
‘Dead? Of course he’s dead, what do you think? He’s—’
‘I’ll be right over,’ he said and put down the receiver so he didn’t hear the end of the sentence as she went on about him being an old man and Miles should never have allowed it to happen.
Within half an hour Tom had arranged for the neighbouring practice to take over his day’s work for him and was driving out towards Willington which was north of the river and the sharpest way to get to Winnipeg Colliery. He was thankful that he had recently bought a car, a Wolsey, which he had second-hand from a colleague who had bought it on impulse but couldn’t get the hang of driving it, and whose wife hated it. Otherwise he would not have been able to afford an automobile, not yet – after all, a new car of the same type cost £260. As it was it cost him less than £200 and had taken all his savings. He judged it well worth it, however; it saved him time, being all of five-horse power. It was a two-seater but after all, he hadn’t a family to consider.
Bertha was in the sitting-cum-drawing room of her father’s house, not sitting down but striding up and down in agitation.
‘Oh, you’re here,’ she greeted Tom. ‘He’s not back yet; he’s arranging for the . . . body to be brought home. Though probably there will be a post-mortem, won’t there? Oh, I don’t know what is happening, we women just have to wait, that’s what men expect, isn’t it?’
Tom looked at her in perplexity. ‘Who?’ he asked. His mind had gone completely blank.
Bertha looked at him impatiently. ‘Who what? Miles, of course. He didn’t even come to tell me himself, sent an overman would you believe.’
‘My father? You mean he’s all right?’
Bertha sighed impatiently. ‘I said so, didn’t I?’
She had not, Tom thought but didn’t say. ‘And your father, what happened?’
‘The old fool went down the mine with Miles and slipped into a hole or something, I don’t know. Now look how he’s left me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tom. ‘Sit down, do. This has been an awful shock to you. I’ll ring for some tea, shall I?’ He went to the bell pull by the side of the fireplace and tugged the cord.
‘Sorry. Yes of course.’ Bertha sat down by the fire but wi
thin a couple of minutes was up again and striding to the window, looking out, then coming back. When the maid brought in tea, Tom poured her a cup, added milk and two spoonfuls of sugar and took it to her. He sat down opposite her chair with his own cup and watched her as he sipped. He could give her a sedative but really he should call the family physician. She was bursting with nervous energy and would be totally exhausted if she didn’t slow down.
‘Here he is now,’ she said from the window where she had carried her tea. ‘Now we’ll find out what happened.’ She put her cup down on the windowsill and turned to face the door, her demeanour showing how she was bracing herself.
Miles was very pale and there was a small cut on his cheek that was blue-black with the coal. He also had a bandage on his hand but as far as Tom could see that was the extent of his father’s injuries and he sighed with relief.
‘Father!’ he said, ‘I was worried about you.’
‘I’m all right,’ Miles said briefly, crossed over to where Bertha was standing by the window and took her hand.
‘I’m sorry, Bertha,’ he said.
‘It’s true then?’ she asked and he nodded.
Bertha shook off his hand and strode to the fire where she turned and stood, legs apart and with her hands on her hips. Her face twisted with anger, not grief. Tom, watching, though she must be holding off her grief by whipping herself into a rage and he bit his lip.
‘How could you do it?’ she screamed at Miles. ‘Why did you take him down the mine? Why?’
‘I–I couldn’t stop him, it was his idea, he—’
‘Rubbish, you could have stopped him, he’s an old man!’ She was glaring at him, her face suffused with colour and her eyes bulging.
‘Bertha,’ said Tom, moving towards her and laying his hand on her arm. ‘Sit down, Bertha, please. You’ve had a terrible shock.’
‘A shock is it? My husband leads my father to his death and then hasn’t the nerve to come and tell me himself? He sent an overman for God’s sake, an overman from the pit.’ She shook off Tom’s arm in the manner she had shaken off his father’s. Her whole body was trembling with the depth of her feeling. ‘Well? Have you nothing more to say to me?’ she shouted.
‘I’m sorry, Bertha, I really am,’ said Miles. Tom looked at him.
‘I think you had better sit down, both of you in fact,’ he said and Miles made to sit but Bertha screeched at him again.
‘Don’t you dare sit on any of my chairs, Miles Gallagher, you’ve been down the pit, haven’t you? Look at you, you’re filthy. Go and clean yourself up. Go on, I can’t bear the sight of you.’
Miles shrugged and glanced at Tom, then walked to the door like an old man. It was the first time Tom had seen him like that so he strode quickly to the door himself and opened it.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked in a low voice as his father went out. ‘Shall I come with you? She doesn’t mean any of this, you know. Shock takes people in different ways.’
Miles shook his head and headed towards the stairs. Tom glanced back into the room and seeing Bertha’s figure beginning to slump decided he had better see to her first. He was just in time to catch her as she fell and laid her on the chaise-longue. The faint lasted only seconds though and she sat up and looked at him with pain-filled eyes.
‘Keep still,’ he ordered. ‘It was just the shock.’
Bertha began to cry as at last the grief for her father hit with full force. She lay back against the raised end of the chaise-longue and sobbed. Tom got her fresh tea, adding brandy and sugar, and she sipped at it between hiccuping and dabbing at her eyes. After a while she became quiet.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked and she nodded. ‘I’ll just go up and see how my father is,’ he added. ‘Shall I call the maid?’
‘No.’
Tom gazed at her with concern until she said, ‘Oh for goodness sake, leave me alone and go and see to your precious father.’ He nodded and went out and up the stairs. Miles was in the bathroom looking at the cut on his face in the mirror over the basin.
‘I must get rid of the coal mark,’ he said to Tom.
‘I doubt you can, but we can try,’ Tom replied.
He dabbed at the small cut with cotton wool soaked in a solution of hydrogen peroxide. ‘It could put a dressing on it but really it is better open to the air,’ he said. ‘How do you feel now? I could give you something—’
‘No, I don’t want anything, I told that Doctor whatshis- name at the pit.’
‘Sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ Miles said shortly. ‘For God’s sake don’t fuss.’
Tom shrugged. ‘All right. But take it easy, please. Have a warm bath, not too hot, and a rest. I’ll stay and attend to whatever has to be done.’
Tom was at the door when Miles said suddenly, ‘Were you up at the pit yard this morning, Tom?’
‘No, of course not, I was at home. I had just come not long before you came in, Bertha telephoned me. Why?’
‘Nothing, I just thought I caught a glimpse – no, it was nothing.’ Tom nodded and went out. No doubt his father had been suffering from the effects of the accident and then the sudden emergence into the light as he came to bank.
When he went out Miles locked the bathroom door, ran the bath and climbed in. He had been going to anyway. He stretched out on the deep iron-enamelled tub and let his thoughts wander back over the happenings of the day. Bertha he didn’t give a second thought to. Oh, he had said he was sorry and he was, but not for what had happened to her father. The old sod was past it anyway, so he was better out of the road. Now he could put the next stage of his plan into action.
No, what he was sorry about was that it hadn’t turned out the way he had planned. And he had planned it meticulously, prodding the old man to go down to the second level with him and without the manager, on a day and at a time when there were few men in the mine, so it was easier to make sure there were no witnesses.
‘I think it is important to keep a thorough watch on the way the seam is being worked out,’ he had said to old Porritt. That was how he thought of him, always old Porritt. ‘Carney is as trustworthy and efficient as most managers but after all, he is just an employee. Employees haven’t got your interests at heart, of course they haven’t. No, I think we should go down ourselves and then we’ll know exactly what he’s talking about.’
Carney, the manager had reported that the pit props all needed replacing as the roof was showing signs of sagging in one particular area. Near where they were thinking of going down a level, it was. He wanted good Norwegian spruce pit props and a more efficient ventilation engine than the ancient one in use.
‘It works perfectly adequately,’ old Porritt had protested and sent Miles down to look at it. It was a long time since he himself had ventured down the mine. For Miles it was the perfect opportunity to put his plan in motion.
‘You must come and see for yourself,’ he had told the old man. ‘It is not too far from the shaft bottom, so you won’t find the walk taxing. In any case, I’ll be with you.’
It would be easy, he had thought. All he had to do was walk behind old Porritt and hit him with a lump of stone when he wasn’t looking. It would look as though the stone had fallen from the badly supported roof. But in the event, part of the roof had fallen as a pit prop cracked and sagged, and stone had fallen on Porritt’s prone body.
He had had a bad fright, Miles told himself as he stretched out in the warm water. He had actually been hit himself by flying debris and had had to jump back and run for the main way, stumbling over the rails and falling, hitting his head on a rail. By, that was a bad moment.
Still, it had lent his story credence. Miles reached to the side for the loofah and soap and scrubbed at his arms. Gingerly he felt the small wound on his cheek. He hoped Tom had got rid of the blue coal scar, he thought. Such scars were the marks of the common pitmen and not suited to someone of his status, for he was now an owner besides being the agent for Arthur Bolton and Co. Or he
soon would be – there was only Bertha in the way now.
It was as he was pulling on his robe that he remembered the man he had seen in the pit yard. It was funny that – for a minute he had been sure it was Tom. But Tom hadn’t been there, so it must have been his imagination or a trick his eyes played on coming out of the pit into the bright light on top.
For the first time in years he thought about the boy he had put on the boat at Hartlepool. With hindsight it had been a daft thing to do, he reckoned. Much better to have done what he intended to do in the first place – put him in the old ventilation shaft or throw him over the roof fall in the drift mine. Yet somehow he hadn’t found himself able to do it.
He was letting his imagination run away with him, he decided as he reached for the bath towel on the rail above the bath. It must have been another fair-haired man he had seen, he told himself. The other one would likely be dead by now and if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have the means to come back and seek revenge. He was half-dead when he last saw him.
He stood up and wrapped the towel round himself and climbed out of the bath before rubbing himself dry. He felt strangely lethargic yet exhilarated. No doubt it was something to do with the brush with death he had experienced. He went into the bedroom and climbed into bed. No need to face Bertha again today. Tom would look after her. That lad was altogether too much like his soft-hearted mother.
When Tom looked in the bedroom a few minutes later Miles was fast asleep and snoring. He stood and gazed down at his father for a few minutes; felt for the pulse at his temple. It was a little fast but quite strong and steady. He pulled the eiderdown up round his father’s shoulders and went out, closing the door quietly after him. The rest would do him good and besides there would be things to see to tomorrow.
Downstairs Bertha was also asleep, lying on the chaise-longue and making small bubbly noises through her rather thin lips. Tom pondered what to do, then went to the telephone in the hall and rang his deputy in Borden and asked if he minded taking over for another day or so.