by Maggie Hope
‘Got you!’ he cried. ‘What the hell are you doing in here? You’re trespassing, Catherine!’
Jack stood still, his arms holding her for a brief moment before releasing her. She was trembling, as much from shock as anything else. She felt a fool standing there in her robe and clutched it to her. She waited for him to tell her it was over between them finally. She tried to move away but he still held her firmly.
‘Forgive me, Catherine,’ he said, his words muffled as he buried his face in her hair. ‘I’m sorry I went away in such a hurry this morning. I had to think.’ He paused for a moment before going on. ‘Well, now I have and I know I want you more than ever. I want us to be married and settled like any other old married couple. I want it more than anything.’
Cath breathed out air from her lungs she hadn’t even known she had been holding. But she still wasn’t sure he meant what he was saying. Not after a whole day of convincing herself that he wanted nothing more to do with her.
‘And it doesn’t matter about—’
‘Hush, hush,’ he interrupted her. ‘Nothing matters except this, nothing at all.’ Together they walked into the bedroom.
It was much later when they emerged and went downstairs to see if they could find anything else to eat in the kitchen cupboards. While Cath was foraging through them, Jack rang the Hall to let his father and Sadie know where they were.
‘Have you heard the news?’ Henry asked. ‘It was on at nine o’clock tonight. It was that monster, Eric Bowron, the one who attacked Sadie!’
‘What?’
‘It was him! I mean, it was he who killed that little girl. He’s done it before. There was one near where he was stationed in the army and they think it was he who attacked little Annie, not that poor boy in Winterton. All these years that simple-minded boy has been in a mental hospital and he did nothing!’
After Jack put down the receiver, he walked slowly into the kitchen and told Cath.
Cath sat down abruptly for she felt her legs would no longer hold her. ‘I should have known,’ she said. ‘Of course I should have known. That poor little girl.’
‘Don’t feel guilty, my love,’ said Jack. ‘It wasn’t your fault. People can’t believe anyone could be so evil, not anyone they know, at least.’ He sat down opposite her and took her hand across the table. ‘It’s over now,’ he said. ‘He won’t be hurting anyone else.’
Jack and Catherine were married on Easter Sunday, 1951 in Wesley Church in Newgate Street. It was a quiet wedding, for Henry and Sadie were in France where Sadie was still recuperating.
Mark came to the wedding; in fact, he was best man. Cath and Jack had talked it over and decided the best thing to do was forgive and forget. Alf gave Cath away and little Hans presented her with a silver horseshoe for luck. Patsy and Jim came, with Annie looking better and prettier than she had in years. She had blossomed in the last few weeks, though she wouldn’t put herself forward to the extent of being bridesmaid. Nevertheless she smiled and held up her head and showed no signs of nervousness or fright when the wedding party came out of the church and a crowd gathered round to admire.
Jack put his arm around Catherine and they smiled for the photographers from the Auckland Chronicle and the Northern Echo. Aunt Patsy preened in her powder-blue suit and lacy hat, and Jim looked embarrassed. But it was Annie who almost stole the picture from her sister and her new husband.
Annie looked like any other girl of her age. She had lost the timid, hunted expression that had been so characteristic of her for most of her life. Her happy smile lit up her face and made her look almost as pretty as the bride.
At the reception in the Queen’s Hotel she played with her little half-brother, Hans, who toddled after her, followed by his anxious mother, Gerda. Watching her, Cath was filled with gladness for her.
Jack and Catherine slipped away while the party was still in full swing. They had decided to honeymoon fairly close to home, for Jack was full of plans for the estate now that most wartime restrictions had finally been lifted. They had booked a suite at the Grand Hotel in Scarborough.
‘I love you, Mrs Vaughan,’ Jack said softly as he opened his car door for her. Catching her to him he buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of her.
‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, Jack?’ she asked.
‘Better than all right,’ he replied. And they set off together into their new life.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Adam Lamb for his advice on the history of mental health in the area and especially Winterton Hospital in the period after WW2. Also my sister Margaret and her son-in-law Stephen Luke for their help. Durham Records Office is, as always, a valuable source of information to me. Any errors are of course entirely my fault. I have combined fact with fiction for the sake of the story.
Read on for an extract from:
The Coal Miner’s Daughter
Also by Maggie Hope
Available now from Ebury Press
Chapter One
Hannah crouched in the kitchen, her younger brother and sister clutched tightly to her.
‘Aah, aah, aah, Nora, Nora – ’
The tortured voice coming from the front room rose higher and higher and Jane and Harry buried their faces in Hannah’s skirts, their hands covering their ears and their bodies racked with sobbing. Hannah stared unseeingly out of the window, desperate to get away from the sound of Da’s pain. But Betty had told her to keep the young ones in the kitchen, ‘out of the way’, she had said. Betty was twelve and she was in the front room with Mam, in case she was needed for anything when the doctor came.
There was another voice in the front room now – the doctor, that was whose voice it was, Hannah realised, and she looked down at the heads in her lap.
‘Whisht now,’ she said softly. ‘Whisht. The doctor’s here, he’ll make Da better, he will, you’ll see.’ But suddenly there was a scream from the front room worse than anything that had gone before and Harry wrenched himself away from Hannah’s grasp and ran to the back door and out of the yard.
‘Harry, Harry!’ she called, releasing Jane and racing after him, and even though he was only four years old and she was ten, she didn’t manage to catch him until he was halfway down the row.
‘Harry! I told you you had to stay with me!’ she cried, pulling him roughly to her and then Jane was there, hanging on to her skirt and shrieking with terror. ‘You left me, you left me!’ Jane cried and she and Harry set up such a bawling they could be heard all along the pit rows.
‘Howay in along of me, hinnies.’
The calm, sympathetic voice caused all three children to look up. It was Mrs Holmes who lived in the end house, the official’s house; she was picking Harry up in her arms and cuddling him into her, not caring that his tears were staining her white pinafore.
‘That’s right, Phoebe, take them in. Just until the ambulance goes, anyroad.’
Hannah looked round and saw that a cluster of women had gathered round them, all clucking in sympathy.
‘Your da will be all right, you’ll see,’ said one. ‘Go on along of Mrs Holmes now, Hannah, take the bairns inside, that’ll be best.’
In the distance there was the clanging of a bell, getting nearer and nearer. Hannah knew what it was: the Union ambulance, coming to take Da. She watched the end of the back alley and sure enough the green-painted ambulance went by, slowing as it turned into the front row.
‘Howay, pet,’ she said to Jane, and, taking the smaller girl’s hand, she followed Mrs Holmes and Harry into the kitchen of the end house.
Mr Holmes was sitting in front of the fire, still black from the pit. The sight of him made Hannah close her eyes tightly but she couldn’t cut out the vivid picture she had of her da, lying on a board on a flat cart as his marras, as miners called their workmates, brought him home from the pit, with Mr Holmes, the shift overman, walking in front of the pony as he tried to pick out a path which avoided any potholes.
‘Now then
,’ said Mrs Holmes, ‘sit ye down. I’d wager you haven’t had your dinners yet, have you? Now I have a nice pan of broth on the bar keeping hot, you shall have a bowlful each.’
The children looked at her with round eyes, even Hannah. The broth smelled really meaty and they hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Harry’s stomach rumbled; he glanced up at Hannah anxiously and Mrs Holmes noticed it.
‘Howay, Harry, your mam won’t mind you having something to eat in our house,’ she encouraged him. ‘I’ll put a cushion on this chair so you can reach the table comfortably. Now, lasses, sit on the form at that side. Don’t worry, I tell you, your mam won’t mind. And after, I’ll give you a can of broth to take home for the others. That’ll help your mam out, like.’
The children sat round the table, Harry balanced on a fat, round cushion filched from Mr Holmes’s chair, and soon they were tucking into bowls of Mrs Holmes’s broth. At least, Harry and Jane were tucking in; Hannah’s throat had closed in, she found she couldn’t swallow after the first mouthful. She stared at the yellow globules of fat floating on the top but she wasn’t really seeing them. Instead she was listening for the ambulance bell starting up again, taking Da away.
‘It looks badly,’ Mr Holmes said quietly to his wife but not so quietly that Hannah’s sharp ears didn’t hear. ‘Poor lad’s back’s broke, I doubt.’
‘A fall of stone, was it?’ asked Mrs Holmes.
‘Aye. The deputy had fired the shot all right, none could fault him; he’d got the men back out of the road first and the coalface came down. It was after the black dust thinned and settled and the men were returning to the face that it happened. Jake was the first back. He was always the first, always eager to get back to work. You know the name he had for hard work. Well, the shot must have disturbed a fault in the roof, loosened the stone, for suddenly there was a rumble and the men jumped back, away from the danger, they all knew what it meant, but Jake was caught when the stone came down. There wasn’t a lot, the others soon got it off him, but the damage was done.’
Hannah stared at her broth, feeling sick. She looked up at the wooden beams of the kitchen ceiling, imagining them falling on her and Jane and Harry, and shuddered. Suddenly, she knew she was definitely going to be sick and she mumbled something to Mrs Holmes, and rushed out to the drain in the yard and retched and retched.
Mrs Holmes glanced at her husband, biting her lip. ‘There, now, we shouldn’t have said anything in front of the bairns,’ she said. ‘That Hannah’s a sensitive lass.’
Jane and Harry had stopped eating and were gazing through the window at their sister who was crouched over the drain.
‘Don’t worry, now, she’ll be all right,’ Mrs Holmes reassured them. ‘I’ll fetch her back, poor lass.’
Hannah’s eyes were watering and she was trembling violently when Mrs Holmes took hold of her shoulders and drew her back to the kitchen door.
‘Howay, lass,’ Mrs Holmes said, ‘it’s the shock, that’s what. You have to be strong now, you big ones, for the sake of little Jane and Harry.’ She offered Hannah a large handkerchief, a real one, not a piece of rag, which was what the Armstrong children usually used for a hanky, and Hannah wiped her face. They paused in the doorway as they heard a motor starting up, followed by the loud clanging of the bell on top of the union ambulance and Hannah’s trembling increased until she was shaking uncontrollably.
‘They’ll be taking him to the County Hospital,’ said Mr Holmes. ‘Eeh, lass, you’re shivering, come away in by the fire and have a warm.’
‘Thank you, Mr Holmes,’ Hannah said, surprising herself at how normal her voice sounded, ‘but we’ll have to get back. Betty said we had to stay in the kitchen, she’ll be mad if she can’t find us.’
‘All right, lass, if you want to,’ said Mrs Holmes. ‘Wait on a minute, though, I’ll give you that broth. It’ll likely do for your mam and Alfred.’
Hannah stood quietly, with Jane and Harry hanging on to her skirt, as Mrs Holmes went into the pantry and brought out a large tin can with a lid in the form of a cup. Picking up the pan, she filled the can with what was left of the broth.
‘Poor bairns,’ Mrs Holmes said to her husband as she watched the children go down the yard and out into the back lane. ‘Whatever’s going to happen to them now?’
‘Jake’ll get compensation,’ said Mr Holmes.
‘Hmm!’ His wife’s expression showed plainly what she thought of the compensation rates for hewers who were injured in the mine.
‘Where’ve you been?’ demanded Betty as the children trooped into the kitchen of the Armstrong house. ‘Mam’s gone in the ambulance with me da and I have to get some dinner ready for Alf when he comes in from work. An’ you let the fire get down, it’ll be ages before it’s hot enough to cook anything.’
Betty had one of her mother’s aprons tied round her thin twelve-year-old body and drooping almost to her ankles. She was a tall girl, with fair hair and brown eyes, now red and strained-looking.
‘Mrs Holmes took us in her house,’ volunteered Jane. ‘She gave us some grand broth, Betty, we’ve brought you some an’ all.’
‘You shouldn’t take food off folk!’ snapped Betty. ‘You know Mam says we haven’t to.’
Jane looked crestfallen and Hannah put the can of steaming broth on the table. ‘Mrs Holmes said Mam wouldn’t mind, not when we’ve trouble in the house,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we take some to Mrs Gittens when Mr Gittens was hurt in the pit? Anyroad, it’ll do nicely for Alf’s dinner. Mam just made the bread this morning, it’ll be grand and fresh for him with the broth.’
Betty looked undecided, she was very conscious of the fact that she was in charge of the household, if only temporarily, but she glanced at the smouldering fire and back at the can of broth on the table and made up her mind.
‘Don’t leave it on the table to get cold, our Hannah,’ she said. ‘Get the pan from the pantry and put it on the bar to keep warm. Alf won’t eat it if it’s cold, will he?’
Hannah rushed to do Betty’s bidding.
It seemed to Hannah in the next few weeks that she was always rushing to do Betty’s bidding. The moment she came in from school, even as she walked down the yard, Betty was issuing her instructions. ‘Fetch a bucket of coal in’, ‘Peel the taties’, ‘Go to the shop’ – even little Jane had to do her share. For Mam was busy with Da, who had been sent home from the hospital in a boxlike bed on wheels, unable to sit up or move his body from the chest down. He lived in the front room now and it was Alf who came in black from his work on the screens where he cleaned the coal of stone. Alf sat in Da’s chair by the fire though he was only fourteen years old, and waited for Hannah to fill the tin bath with hot water from the boiler by the fire and demanded his dinner on time. For Alf was the only one bringing in a wage now, even if it was only four shillings a week.
‘Seventeen and tuppence,’ said Mam the first time Alf brought home Da’s weekly compensation. ‘It’ll be fourteen and ninepence when they take off the war money an’ they’ll be doing that, sure as shot, now the war’s over and done with. An’ we can’t live on that, there’s only one thing for it, we need another wage coming in.’
‘Mam! I can’t go to work, I’m not thirteen yet,’ said Betty, suddenly looking very young and vulnerable.
‘Not you, pet,’ answered her mother. ‘Our Robert’ll have to come home.’
Hannah sat beside Jane and Harry on the horsehair sofa and all three gazed at Mam. What was she talking about? thought Hannah. Robert wouldn’t want to come home, he didn’t like it in Winton. Why, the last time he’d come he’d told her that he was going to work on the carriers with his uncle Billy when he left school. Robert lived with Grandma Armstrong, miles away in Consett; they hadn’t even seen him for almost a year.
‘Robert’s only thirteen, Mam,’ said Betty.
‘Aye. Well, he can take the leaving exam like Alf did. If he knows his letters and his figuring, the gaffer will take him on, he’s sure to when his fat
her broke his back in the pit. You and Alf will have to look to your da on Saturday, Betty, while I go to Consett and tell your grandma. Best not put it in a letter. I’ll away up to see the manager now, see about getting him a job.’
Nora Armstrong looked the three younger children over critically.
‘Hannah, wash Harry’s face, you three are coming along of me. It won’t hurt to show the manager I’ve got bairns to feed an’ all,’ she said as she looked in the mahogany-framed mirror which hung over the high mantelpiece. She smoothed her dark hair away from her forehead, then, satisfied with her appearance, went to the middle door which led into the front room.
‘I’m going up to the colliery office, Jake,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right for a while, will you?’
‘Aye, I’m fine. I’m enjoying the rest, lying here,’ came the sardonic reply.
‘I’ll only be half an hour,’ Nora said. ‘I’m taking the little ones; Betty will be here, though, if you want her.’
‘Well, get away, woman, if you’re going,’ Jake answered irritably.
Nora took her shawl from the hook on the back door and wrapped it round her.
‘Are you not going to wear your Sunday coat?’ asked Betty, sounding surprised.
‘No. It’s better not to let them think I’m well off, a shawl’s the best thing,’ said Nora.
They walked up the row, Nora holding Harry’s hand and Hannah behind with Jane. The children were quiet; even Hannah was nervous of meeting the colliery manager, while Jane and Harry looked white and strained. It wasn’t far to the pit yard and the colliery office was just inside the gates, a red brick building with steps leading up to the entrance. Parked beside the steps was a motorcar and sitting in the passenger seat was a boy of about fifteen, a boy in a suit with a Norfolk jacket and a proper collar and tie and his dark hair slicked back over his ears.
‘Look, Hannah, a motorcar,’ cried Harry, grinning with delight. ‘By; isn’t it grand? What does it say, Hannah? Those letters on the front, I mean.’ Harry was fairly dancing round the car; he touched the gleaming coachwork and the bright silver of the headlights. ‘When I grow up I’m going to have a motorcar just like this,’ he declared.