The Most Precious Thing

by Bradshaw, Rita

  Alec Sutton was one of those who had been doing his sums of recent weeks since his brother’s hurried wedding. At first he had been inclined to agree with his mother that David’s bolt from the blue had been aimed to take the edge off the news of his engagement to Margaret, but this turn of mind had not lasted. There might be no love lost between himself and his youngest brother, but David was too canny to fuel speculation and gossip just to attempt to put his nose out of joint. No, there was more to this than that. But that the lass should be Carrie McDarmount, of all people . . . He would have sworn on oath that the girl had been a virgin when he’d taken her that night, and to his knowledge David hadn’t had anything to do with her, or any other lass for that matter. But no one wed with such haste except for one reason.

  It was the recollection of the stricken expression on Carrie’s face just after he’d announced his engagement which prodded Alec towards the inevitable conclusion, causing him to take several deep draughts of air as his heart raced like a greyhound.

  Was it possible? And the answer came, aye, it was. Too true it was. He’d been verging on mortalious that night, the last thing on his mind had been the possible consequences of taking her without due precautions. But if what he suspected was true, if Carrie had fallen for a bairn, what the hell was David doing marrying her?

  Alec brooded on various scenarios, eventually deciding on the obvious one. Carrie was both quick-witted and pretty, and David was as green as they come. She’d seduced him into sleeping with her and then immediately declared he had to marry her in case she was pregnant; at least one of his pals had been caught that way. Now if a baby materialised she’d tell the poor fool it was his, and he would bet his last shilling a bairn was on the way. The crafty baggage. He found himself smiling. David would have been putty in her hands.

  Whatever, he was off the hook. If this had turned out differently, if the chit had turned nasty, it might have ruined everything he’d worked towards the last couple of years. He’d have denied anything Carrie McDarmount said of course, but mud sticks. Margaret may be smitten with him but her father was a different kettle of fish. Sharp as a razor, Arthur Reed was. He’d got the mother eating out of the palm of his hand though, Alec thought complacently and everyone knew Arthur Reed wasn’t a well man. Dicky heart, the rumour was.

  Well, if nothing else, this was a salutary lesson in making sure he visited a certain establishment in the East End more regularly. There was always one of Ma Siddle’s lasses available for him, and most of them were well worth the prices she charged. Moreover, Ma was discreet, which was why he’d decided to patronise her whorehouse over the others some years ago and he’d never regretted it. Aye, he wouldn’t make a mistake like the McDarmount girl again, not now he was sitting pretty. He had to keep his eyes fixed on his prospects.

  By, David was a dolt. With all his holier-than-thou preaching and such, his brother still hadn’t had the sense to keep it in his trousers when she’d played him for a fool. What were the odds she’d allowed him near her just the once, claiming he was the first, and then played him like a violin afterwards? Idiot. His upper lip curled in a sneer as he compared his present position in life to that of his brother. Before he was finished he’d have a house on the outskirts, Hendon way perhaps or maybe Roker or Seaburn. A maid, a horse and trap, even one of those new-fangled automobiles which were becoming increasingly popular since the war. The solicitor, two doors up from the shop, had just bought himself the latest model of the Austin Tourer - he could see himself in that.

  Alec continued to allow pleasant visions of the future to engage his senses, putting any further thoughts of Carrie and David out of his mind with the ruthlessness which was habitual to him. He knew where he was going in life and exactly how to get there. That was all that mattered. And the pangs of disquiet that had attacked his conscience now and again since the night of Walter’s wedding became duller and duller, until they bothered him not at all.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I’m sorry, David, but I have to do this. Please try to understand. It’s for us, can’t you see that?’

  David stood staring at his wife. When he had walked in just a minute ago and seen Carrie huddled over her baking board on top of the rickety old table where their pans normally sat, he hadn’t realised at first what she was about. Then he had seen the papers, paste powder, blue touchpapers and paintbrush and it had dawned on him what she was doing. He’d bellowed her name and made her nearly jump out of her skin, but after the initial shock she had eyed him resolutely, her soft mouth trembling a little but otherwise her stance firm.

  ‘It’s slave labour, making firework cases at home. You’ve always said that yourself.’

  ‘I know.’ Her chin went up and he knew he was in for a battle. ‘But needs must.’

  ‘You’re not doing it, Carrie. Look at you, sweating and tired, and for what? What are you getting?’

  ‘Five shillings for ten gross of crackers.’ She heard him groan but ignored it, continuing, ‘And I was lucky to get it, I tell you straight. There’s always more willing workers than work available, I know that from what Renee has said in the past, but when I went to see Mr Fleming he remembered me from before.’

  ‘You went to see him?’

  ‘Aye, I did.’ She’d known he wouldn’t like it, but as she had said, needs must. Mr Fleming was a kind man at heart, and she knew he was aware of her circumstances.

  Since the General Strike had collapsed, just nine days after it had started, the miners had been on their own. At first the lodge had paid ten shillings a week to their miners; that had lasted two weeks. Then it was five shillings a week and that had lasted three weeks. Then four shillings a week for one week and three shillings for three weeks. And then nothing. The lodges simply couldn’t cope any more. It was up to each individual to do what he could and each family to manage the best they could. The fellowship dinners, once merry affairs organised by supporters, had become soup kitchens, and Carrie knew - as one of the original members of the Wearmouth Feeding Committee - the soup was now as weak as dishwater. People were starving, it was as simple as that, and when a family decided they had to go into the workhouse, no one blamed them. It was no disgrace to be a pauper, the only shame lay in being a blackleg.

  The strike coming when Carrie was just beginning to feel relief from the constant sickness meant she had been able to get involved in all the fundraising. Brass band concerts, dances, raffles, lotteries, talent competitions, athletic contests, the inevitable boxing matches, coconut shies, skittles, darts, ‘guess your weight’, pony rides and a whole lot more had sprung into being. The sea’s resources were pillaged. Women and children picked winkles, crabs, seaweed and anything else which was edible, and collected driftwood and coal washed up on the beaches. Sand was washed in buckets and sold to builders for a few pence; coal tips and rubbish dumps were combed for anything that could be burned, repaired or sold. Church halls were turned into knitting factories by miners’ wives, using woollens scrounged and unwound to produce ‘new’ items. Men who had spent all their working life down the pit turned into temporary carpenters, decorators, tinkers, gardeners and much more. It was a common sight to see bairns following carthorses and picking up the manure, some even collecting dog faeces and dividing them into black and white bags - the colour being dependent on what the animals had eaten - which they sold to folk for their gardens.

  But now a long, hot, hard August had drawn to a close and resources were spent. Carrie had watched David collect fish and vegetable scraps from the market and from people’s bins, and walk miles into Chester-le-Street, and sometimes as far as Consett, to sell them to smallholders and people who kept hens and pigs. But now even this source of keeping themselves alive had dried up. The rent hadn’t been paid in months. Ada Bedlow, now a firm friend, had declared it could wait, but it couldn’t wait, not for ever. And yesterday, when she had called in her mam’s and seen the twins, pale and washed-out and alive with ringworm and impetigo, and her mother barel
y able to open her mouth for ulcers, Carrie had known she had to defy David and go and beg for work at the firework factory. She would have done it weeks ago but for knowing how wretched it would make him feel. But his pride wasn’t more important than their surviving, and that was what this had boiled down to.

  Carrie knew a few of the miners - one or two who had worked shoulder to shoulder with David in the past - had given in, and these men were labelled blacklegs. More were being brought in from other counties too, and the bitterness was fierce. David, along with other men, often one from every family involved in the strike, was now engaged in day-to-day picket duty, but she knew from what he hadn’t said rather than what he had that her father and Billy were still cold-shouldering him. It seemed incredible at a time like this.

  With her father in mind, Carrie now said, ‘Who was in your shift for picket duty?’

  ‘Damn the picket duty.’ David was not going to be deflected. His voice raw, he repeated, ‘You’re not doing it, Carrie.’ Here she was, liable to have the bairn at any time in the next few days, and as big as a house, and she had not only defied the unwritten law that said she shouldn’t be seen outside in the street, she had actually gone to the factory to ask for work despite what he had said some weeks earlier when she’d raised the matter.

  At one end of the table were brown papers spread out and pasted. In her lap lay the cases already rolled; to the right of her was a pudding basin and paintbrush covered in paste. He had the urge to fling out his hand and sweep the lot on to the floor.

  ‘David, but for Ada we’d be on the streets right now.’ Carrie’s voice was low but nonetheless determined. ‘There’s nothing in the cupboard to eat and not a penny to buy anything. ’

  ‘I thought Ada was picking up a few bits from Marleys for us yesterday?’

  ‘No, I told her I didn’t want her to do it any more. She . . . she let something slip the last time she brought stuff in. Apparently our credit stopped weeks ago, along with everyone else’s round here, but she didn’t want to tell us. She’s been buying us food out of her own pocket and her without two farthings to rub together. The bread and cheese we ate this morning was the last of anything.’

  ‘Marleys stopped our credit? By, that’s ripe. Thought he was supporting us all as long as it took.’

  ‘It’s a small shop, David, and he’s bairns of his own to feed. They can’t live on thin air, any more than we can. All the shops, even the Co-op, are the same. They’re tired of it all.’

  He stood looking at her, despair working a muscle in his jaw as though he had a tic. He felt sick to his stomach. All their efforts over the last weeks and it had come to this. And it had been their efforts, not just his. Even when Carrie had begun to show to the extent it wouldn’t be seemly her working in the soup kitchens or helping organise the events, she had taken on knitting at home before people had run out of old woollens and such to donate in the last couple of weeks. And in a strange sort of way he thought the strike had helped to get them over the awkwardness of living together in one room. He still turned his back while she undressed and scuttled under the covers, and he’d not seen so much as a bare ankle since they’d been wed, but he didn’t mind that as long as she was feeling more comfortable with him. Their joined purpose in seeing the cause succeed and unity of mind had brought them together a bit, he felt. Or maybe he was just fooling himself. Clutching at straws. And now she was proposing to slave away all day for a pittance, but a pittance, he had to admit, which seemed like a fortune in their present circumstances. Nevertheless . . . ‘I’ll do something, anything, but I don’t want you working on them things.’

  For a moment Carrie wanted to scream the truth at him, so weary did she feel. Since the strike had dragged on, people in work had got fed up with donating and lending and helping, and she couldn’t really blame them. The same ones tended to get pestered all the time. Gardens were maintained to the last blade of grass, scissors and knives and garden shears had been sharpened repeatedly, and some housewives - the kind ones - had more tea cosies, doorstops and clippy mats than the big shops in Bishopwearmouth. He’d said he would do something, but the last few days he had tramped miles without so much as the whiff of a job.

  With the government refusing to let the workhouse Guardians give coal miners a penny - if they wanted relief they could go into the workhouse with their families to get it, that was Chamberlain’s attitude - there was nowhere else to go. And she would die before she went into one of those places, and work till she dropped on her feet before she saw her mam and da and the others go in. Walter and Renee were just about getting by on Renee’s wage although they were weeks behind with the rent, but Renee could have helped their mam out a bit by pawning some of their furniture. But if her sister didn’t want to do that, she didn’t want to. She couldn’t force Renee to help out at home and when she’d broached the matter with her, Renee had got very much on her high horse.

  Carrie took a deep breath and spoke to David from the heart. ‘I’ve had a couple of weeks of doing nothing and I can’t stand it,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not made that way, David.’

  ‘You’ve kept this place clean and got us meals.’

  ‘Which doesn’t take more than half an hour at most.’ With no coal to light the range, they’d been eating bread and cheese, and any food they could get from the market stalls at the end of the day, such as bruised fruit or the scrapings of cooked ham or chitterlings and dripping.

  ‘But look at you.’ The wave of his hand took in her swollen stomach and puffy ankles. ‘And what about when the bairn comes?’

  He knew immediately he’d made a mistake. She never mentioned the coming event; it was as though she had blocked it out of her mind, and any reference to the baby by him always got the blank dead look he was receiving now. ‘I’ll manage.’

  It was final and David recognised it as such, even as he continued to argue with her for a few minutes more. In truth, he didn’t know what they were going to do. The last few nights he hadn’t slept a wink worrying how he was going to provide food for them to eat, and they had nowt for the bairn when it came, not so much as a few rags to use for nappies.

  From the beginning of the strike the miners’ halls had given out second-hand clothing and boots, particularly for the bairns, when they knew the need was genuine but plenty of desperate families wouldn’t ask for charity, despite the fact their bairns were running around in rags with their backsides hanging out and no shoes on their feet. Others had been up to get something or other more than once, some on the quiet and some militantly declaring to anyone who would listen that it wasn’t ‘handouts’. They were all owed something for the blood, sweat and tears they’d put in over the years, and were still putting in.

  Of the two camps, David knew he was in the former. How his pride would stand up if he saw Carrie in boots with more holes in them than leather, and the baby without a stitch, was another matter, and he prayed it wouldn’t come to that. His suit and one decent shirt and tie had long since found their way to the pawn shop, along with the dress, hat and shoes Carrie had been wed in. They both now only possessed the clothes they stood up in, which Carrie would wash and dry overnight when necessary.

  He stood awkwardly staring down at her bent head as she rubbed soap over the metal roller she was using because it was sticking. Her hair was still as shining and silky as if she washed it every night in a fancy shampoo, and the curve of her long slender neck brought an ache to his chest and his loins. He still couldn’t look at her without wanting her, and that in spite of her being so far gone and about to pop, he thought wretchedly. He’d die for her without even giving it a thought, and here he was standing watching her work herself to death. Maybe she would have done better without him after all; his good intentions seemed to have dragged her further and further down.

  And then she looked up and smiled at him. ‘There’s some tea in the pot although it’s a bit stewed. Ada brought it in earlier,’ she said softly. ‘She made out she fancied an af
ternoon cuppa with me and then wouldn’t take the tray back, saying she’d forgotten she’d got a pot on the hob at home. I don’t know what we’d do without her, do you?’

  He forced himself to smile back although he was horrified to find he wanted to cry.

  Perhaps something of what he was feeling showed in his face because the next moment Carrie pushed the baking board to one side, rose to her feet and touched his arm gently in one of the rare physical gestures she made now and then. ‘It will all work out, David. The strike won’t last for ever and we’ll get through.’

  He felt himself tense slightly as she touched him; he always did because if he didn’t have absolute control of himself he knew he would grab her and crush her to him. Other times, when the desire sprang up so hot and strong it was unbearable, he would take a long walk, even as far as Seaham on occasion. The nights were the worst. Lying beside her as she slept, rock hard and his loins on fire for hours, he thought he’d go mad at times. But it was worth it. She was worth it. He still couldn’t believe it sometimes when he opened the door and there she was, waiting for him to come home.