Ned swore, a particularly base profanity which David had only ever heard underground, and he said quickly, ‘I came to see if Da was all right. One of those maniacs nearly brained him and he was a bit groggy on and off on the way back.’
‘Huh.’ Alec made an impatient movement, shaking off his mother’s arm. ‘If you were so concerned you’d have been better off talking him out of going. But that’s you all over, wind and water with half a brain.’
‘At least I’m not prostituting myself.’ He hadn’t meant to say it, the words had just come from an inner knowledge inside himself as to how to really get under his brother’s skin.
Alec’s face was now bereft of colour, his lips drawn back from his teeth and his eyes like green flame. Again Olive was hanging on to him but now it was with all her strength as Alec tried to rise to get to his younger brother. ‘Don’t, don’t, Alec. Remember you’re going to dinner there tomorrow night and you don’t want your face marked. Think of your position.’
‘He thinks of nowt else, Mam. Didn’t you know? I wouldn’t be surprised if the lass has made a nice little collar and chain to lead him about with.’
As Alec flung his mother off him and sprang to his feet, Lillian screamed loudly and shrilly. It was Ned who leaped between his two sons initially, holding Alec off David with the stocky force of his small body, and then Olive caught hold of Alec again, pleading with him not to fight.
In the moment Alec had come for him David had known he was no match for his brother, not with one hand tied behind his back, as it were. Nevertheless he stood his ground and didn’t give an inch, glaring at Alec over Ned’s head before Lillian’s whimpering cooled his rage enough for him to say, ‘To hell with you, Alec. You’re not worth it.’ He turned. ‘I’ll see you, Da,’ he called over his shoulder above Alec’s wild threats, and then he was outside in the backyard. He stood for a few moments in the fetid, still air, aware he was panting and that his hand, which had got jostled in all the pandemonium, was giving him gyp.
He had burned his boats as far as his brother was concerned. He stood breathing deeply for a moment or two before crossing the yard and opening the gate into the back lane. And he wasn’t sorry. He pulled his cap further down on his forehead. Tonight had been coming for a long time and they had both known it. Funny, but they had never been able to stand the sight of each other right from bairns.
He began walking, slowly at first and then more quickly. One thing was for sure, he’d miss seeing Alec and his mam like he’d miss a hole in the head. Lillian and his da had already got into the habit of stopping by Brooke Street now and again, so nothing need change there. The house in James Armitage Street had been full of strain and strife for as long as he could remember; it had never been a home. He’d felt more settled in one room with Carrie than he ever had living under his mother’s roof.
The twilight was thick when David entered the house in Brooke Street to find Ada waiting for him, all of a twitter. Carrie’s brother had gone to get her mam and Mrs Symcox, Ada gabbled, her mam’s pal who’d said she’d help at the birth. The baby was coming, and from the pains the lass was having it wouldn’t be too long about it neither.
Carrie’s baby was born at three o’clock the next morning. It was a fine healthy boy, with the sort of lungs that guaranteed he would get attention when he demanded it.
David was sitting by the fire with Ada in her crowded sitting room which smelt strongly of cats when Ann Symcox came to tell him the news, adding that the birth had been so quick it was like the lass had been on her fourth or fifth rather than her first. She didn’t remark on the fact that Carrie had behaved somewhat strangely in the minutes after the child was born, first of all refusing to hold or see it, and then, when her mother had insisted, staring at the small screwed-up face and tiny limbs for what seemed like ages before she suddenly reached out and grabbed the infant, and burst into tears. But then a confinement, even a straightforward one like hers, took it out of you.
The range was glowing with coal provided by Ada when David walked through, and Carrie was sitting up in bed with the child in her arms. Mindful of the part he was expected to play, David sat down beside her, saying softly, ‘How are you feeling, lass?’
She was flushed and had obviously been crying, and the sight of her tear-stained face moved him more than he would have thought possible.
Carrie didn’t answer him directly; what she did say was, ‘It’s a little laddie,’ as her fingers gently stroked the small downy head.
‘Aye, I know.’ David tweaked back a corner of the shawl - Carrie’s shawl - which the child was wrapped in. He stared down at the little blotched face and squashed nose. He didn’t know what he’d expected to feel, but in the event he felt very little. In fact it all seemed quite unreal. He found it hard to imagine that this tiny scrap had been in Carrie’s stomach just hours before. ‘He’s bonny,’ he said weakly after a few moments, becoming aware that her mother and Ann Symcox were waiting for some reaction from the proud father.
‘He’s a beauty.’ Joan’s voice bordered on the indignant.
‘There’s not a man alive who could look at a newborn babbie an’ call it a beauty with his hand on his heart,’ Ann Symcox said briskly, calling forth a grateful smile from David. ‘But give it a day or two an’ you’ll see for yourself, lad. You’ve got reason to thank the Lord tonight, He’s done you proud.’
For a split second David’s eyes met Carrie’s, and now his voice was of a quality which satisfied even Joan when he said, ‘I know that, Mrs Symcox. I’m a very fortunate man.’
Chapter Nine
Alec married Margaret Reed at the end of September. The wedding was a lush, grand affair which was talked about for weeks afterwards by those who attended. David and Carrie were not of this number.
At the wedding breakfast the bride’s father presented the newlyweds with the keys of a fine little house overlooking Mowbray Park. Mr Reed also announced that his new son-in-law would no longer be managing one of the Reed shops but would join him in overseeing the running of the small empire. The clapping and cheering had gone on for ages, and Margaret Reed had flung herself into her father’s arms, her plain face aglow.
All this was related to Carrie by Renee, a bitter and simmeringly angry Renee. It appeared she had been carrying twins, one of which still remained despite the crude abortion which had taken the life of its sibling. It afforded Carrie’s sister little satisfaction that she was making her husband’s life hell as a result.
What were they going to do, Renee asked furiously, if the strike still hadn’t ended by the time the baby was due? When she told Walter he would have to look after the child while she returned to work, he had flatly refused even to consider such a proposal. Bairns were women’s work apparently, and if the three of them starved to protect his manhood, so be it. ‘I hate him, Carrie.’ Renee’s voice had been full of a cold, black fury which had struck a chill in Carrie. ‘I really, really hate him. Doesn’t he see the only thing between us and the workhouse is my job?’
By November, Walter and even the most staunch union men were forced to admit they weren’t going to win the fight. Everyone’s credit had run out long ago. The last speck of coal and tiny cinder had been gathered from the tips, it was icy cold and there was nothing to make a fire with. Without the lifeblood of the range there was no heat to warm the house, no hot water for cooking or washing, nothing to keep out the raw winter chill. Everything that could be pawned had been pawned and whole families were starving, nature culling the weakest - the elderly and the very young - first.
Not a day went by without Carrie giving thanks for the fact that the child was such a good baby, crying only when he was hungry and smiling long before he was six weeks old. With Matthew at her side in a makeshift crib consisting of one of Ada’s cabinet drawers, she worked from first light to late at night, the money she earned enabling them to buy coal for the range and food to eat. She had long since ceased worrying about the back rent. That would have to be de
alt with when David was in work again, but until then it was enough to stay alive and well.
Since she had called round to see her mother one day and found the twins shivering under old newspapers, all the blankets in the house having been pawned, she had slipped Joan a few groceries each week. These, along with small contributions from any neighbours with menfolk in the factories or shipbuilding yards, and even from a reluctant Renee, had kept her parents, Billy and the twins alive. Nevertheless, Carrie lived in fear that the illnesses like consumption and pernicious anaemia which were rampaging through the mining community would strike one of her family, and it was only the fact that she had to eat enough to provide good milk for Matthew that stopped her from cutting out meals in order to give Joan more.
She loved the child. She hadn’t imagined that such intensity of love could exist before she had looked into the small red face in the minutes after his birth. After all the agonising, all the nights when she had lain awake tormenting herself with what she would do when the baby was born, it had been so simple. He had needed her, for his very existence he had needed her, and he was so bonny, so perfect.
And still the strike went on.
In the end it was the state of the women and bairns that persuaded the Miners Federation of Great Britain to advise their members to go back to work. Lists of names went up on all the noticeboards throughout Durham. If a man’s name was there, it would mean his family could eat. If it wasn’t, it meant the man concerned had been labelled a troublemaker or agitator by the powers that be, and it didn’t matter if he’d worked for the colliery for a lifetime.
David’s name was on the list, along with Walter’s and Billy’s. Ned and Sandy’s were not. Those who were allowed back, went back. They all knew they hadn’t only lost the battle, they had lost the war.
‘Lass, all I’m asking is that you see sense. I’m in work again, I can provide for us. You don’t need to do this.’
‘I want to do it.’
‘And what I want counts for nowt. Is that what you’re saying?’
Carrie looked up from the baking board. It was five days before Christmas, she had been working since six o’clock in the morning and it was now just after nine at night. Her eyes were red rimmed, her breasts bulging with milk for Matthew’s ten o’clock feed and she was very, very tired. It was on the tip of her tongue to scream a few home truths at David. When the miners’ executive had conceded to the government’s demands, the owners had agreed ‘temporarily’ not to cut wages below pre-April levels - except in Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland and North Wales. David had gone back to work a beaten man, his wage packet smaller and his working day longer. She knew it, he knew it, the whole country knew it.
Instead of being put on face work where a man could just about earn a living wage if he was lucky and hadn’t too many dependants, David, like many others, was doing labouring work until there was an opportunity for face work. He fetched and carried, cleaned things, shovelled pony dung, oiled, greased, lifted, pulled, loaded and unloaded, and all for the princely wage of seventeen shillings and threepence. He knew, the same as everyone else, that a man could be sacked with no explanation and no comeback.
And he was enduring the humiliation which every working day held for her and the bairn.
The knowledge checked her tongue. Instead of shouting that they were neck high in debt which his wage had no hope of even beginning to clear and that she would like nothing more than to never see another firework in the whole of her life, she forced herself to take a deep breath. ‘It won’t be for ever,’ she said evenly, looking full into his angry face. ‘Please, David, don’t take on.’ They had been having this conversation for the last hour and it was a familiar one, but she was determined not to give in. They were going to rise up out of the mire if it took her last breath, and they needed every farthing she brought in. That was an inescapable fact whether David chose to recognise it or not.
David was standing with his back to the range, his jacket lifted as he warmed his buttocks in the heat of the fire. It had been a pig of a day and he was exhausted, but it was the accident which had occurred shortly before the shift ended which had him all out of sorts. That, and the sight of Carrie working herself into an early grave, he thought sourly.
He’d been cleaning out the stables when he heard a scream, and he had known immediately the accident was a bad one. A miner could be half dead before he’d make a sound. Along with others, he’d run in the direction of the screams, copping a blow to his head on the roof of the workway which made him see stars for a while. It had been Kenny Lloyd, a big handsome hewer built like a circus strongman, and both his legs had been sliced off clean as a whistle below the knee by the steel rope of a tub. A stupid accident for someone as experienced as Kenny, but tired minds, weary limbs, poor visibility, misunderstandings, carelessness or faulty and worn equipment were creating more accidents than they’d ever had before the lockout. The months of the strike had ensured that timber had rotted, water had gathered and lots of gas had been released. The mine was a disaster waiting to happen, they all knew it, but to voice such sentiments would relegate the speaker to the blacklist of unemployables.
The memory of Kenny’s horrified face as he had clawed for his severed legs, the feet still grotesquely encased in his big working boots, haunted David. He tried to shake it out of his mind and stared at his wife as she began working again. Carrie’s quiet tone hadn’t fooled him. He knew that the tilt to her small chin and the way her full mouth was set tight meant she wasn’t going to budge on this, and the galling thing was that he knew she was right. They did need what she was bringing in, desperately, but damn it, he hadn’t meant it to be like this.
He turned his head away, inadequacy tearing at him, adding to the torment in his body which was with him day and night. Several times recently he’d told himself he should just roll over and take her one night and be done with it, that no other man would have waited this long. But the memory of how she had looked that night in her da’s backyard stopped him. He wanted it to be different for her the next time, he wanted to be different from the scum who had forced himself on her all those months ago.
The white knight on his charger . . . David’s mouth curled in abrasive self-mockery. A white knight was meant to rescue the fair maiden from her distress, not add to it by working her to death.
The child made a soft mewing sound in its sleep at Carrie’s feet, bringing David’s gaze to the drawer and its tiny occupant. And that was another thing, he had expected to be able to have some feeling for the baby - it was Carrie’s after all - but every time he looked at it his guts twisted. She’d admitted she had thought she loved its father once, and there was no doubt she loved the child passionately now it was here, so had that revived some of the old feelings for the man who had sired it? Did she wish she was with him right now, instead of stuck in this one miserable room, living hand to mouth?
Perhaps he should have asked the name of the father after all. In fact he still could. Certainly it would bring an end to the list of names which swirled round his head as he lay beside her each night, his body burning and his soul sick, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off the bloke concerned. But it wasn’t just that, not really. Once he knew his name, once it had been spoken between them, it would always be there, spoiling everything. Crazy, but that’s how he felt.
Aw, to hell with it! He didn’t glance her way again as he stomped across the room on his way to the privy, but the aggression in his movement was not lost on Carrie.
She sat staring across the empty room when he had gone, her hands idle. She knew what would ease some of the tension between them, but the thought of it brought a fear which constricted her throat and made her nauseous. A gurgle from the baby at her feet brought her eyes downwards, and she smiled as she saw the wide-open, smoky-flecked eyes looking up at her. Matthew’s eyes were beginning to change colour, she thought. She reached down and lifted him on to her lap where he immediately rewarded her
with a toothless grin. She prayed his eyes wouldn’t be green, or at least not the clear vibrant green of his father. She had hoped he would take after her in his colouring but it was still too soon to tell one way or the other.
She hugged the child to her for a moment before opening her blouse and baring her breast to the eager little mouth. He fed lustily, gulping hard and making contented little sounds which again brought the corners of her mouth lifting.
Maybe things would work out between herself and David if she just let life take its course. Let it happen naturally.
She was shirking the issue and she knew it, but as she heard his footsteps approaching she kept her head down and didn’t look up when he entered the room.
Christmas was a quiet affair. For the miners it meant two days without pay, for their wives it meant having to see their bairns do without even the tangerine, penny, pink sugar mouse and secondhand toy they usually managed to stuff into a stocking on Christmas Eve. Everyone was glad when it was over.
The Most Precious Thing Page 14