‘Will you, Ginny? Please? It sounds marvellous.’
‘I loved the stage, Lizzie, but there’s things here I love more, and I can’t have both. So I shan’t be going back to London. Not to stay, anyway.’
Charlie sighed, favouring Lizzie with his most caressing glances. ‘That’s a very great pity. I mean a pity that you, Lizzie, should be denied your chance. Your sister’s very hard, but perhaps she’ll relent in the end if you talk to her.’
‘Don’t look at her like that,’ Ginny snapped. ‘She’s only eleven years old – she’s not even in long frocks. Get on home, Lizzie, go now.’
Lizzie looked resentful. ‘But you said you wanted me to come with you, Ginny.’
‘Well, now I don’t, so go home. Run all the way.’ There was such an edge to her voice that Lizzie did run.
Charlie laughed. ‘No need to be jealous of the child, Ginny. She is only a child.’
‘Aye, she is only a child, so you remember that, and leave her alone.’
They walked on for a while. At length, Charlie broke the silence. ‘I believe I forgot to offer you my condolences on the sad loss of your father. I’m sure it’s a great grief to us both to be able to walk about the village unmolested, and I suppose your mother will miss her regular beatings.’
It was growing dark, but she saw the malicious gleam in his eyes. She turned heel and with a deft flick of her wrist lifted her skirt a bare inch above her ankle as she walked rapidly away, a gesture borrowed from the ladies of the Empire and one she had used many times on stage. She looked over her shoulder with a beguiling smile.
‘Come on, Charlie,’ she cooed, ‘I’ll show you the path I took through the woods that night I ran away from you after the races.’
He laughed and followed her. ‘How unpredictable you are. One never knows what you’ll do next. You’re insane to think of throwing yourself away on that fellow Jude, you know, Ginny. I know that’s what you’re about. He can never satisfy you now.’
Among the trees, and out of sight of the village she hitched up her skirts to her waist and threw the weight of them over her arm. Smiling eagerly up at him, she entwined her fingers in his hair and drew his head downwards until their lips met.
‘But you can, can’t you, Charlie? I long for the sort of satisfaction you can give me.’
She kissed him again, then with her fingers still gripping his hair, she drew his face ever downwards until it was level with her hips. She thought of her father and young Joe lying dead in the flooded mine, of her own dead baby and of Jubilee, and jerked her knee upwards with a right good will.
An instant later Charlie sprawled on his back, holding his nose and mouth. She let her skirts drop and leaned over him, hands on hips. ‘I bet you never predicted that, Charlie. I’m a champion street fighter’s daughter and I see I don’t fail the breed. So there’s a one from my father. He’d want his debts to you paid.’
He lay clutching his face, too stunned to reply, and for a second she was sorely tempted to pay her own debt to his friend with the toe of her boot, but she forbore and walked away, rubbing her knee.
She’d hardly gone twenty yards when she saw young Arthur leaning against a tree waiting for her. ‘I wanted to know what you were doing with that bugger now Martin Jude’s making a bloody fool of himself over you, so I followed you. And now I do know, so that’s all right,’ he said.
Chapter 24
‘I come in the name of Him who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, to speak a word of comfort to you,’ the Methodist minister addressed them all. ‘He took our mortal nature to become a “Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. He stood by the graveside as you do today, and Jesus wept. My pulpit is now the mounds of earth which have been dug out of these graves and my text is the open grave and the bodies of our dear brothers who lie sleeping there, mourned so bitterly by their dearest friends now gathered round them. Take comfort. There is one who has been down into the grave for us, and he has dispersed all its darkness and driven away all its gloom and he has hung up the lamp of his love, and we need not fear to go down to the place where they laid our Redeemer, because it is not the end. “I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
Thousands of mourners and spectators witnessed thirty burials that day, and it seemed as if every village for miles around had been emptied of its inhabitants. There was a strong force of police in attendance, but their presence was unnecessary. The crowd was quiet, solemn and respectful. The largest proportion of people were pitmen with their wives and families, and their sympathy for the bereaved was heartfelt. It could hardly be helped with such vast numbers present, but Ginny was dismayed to see graves that had been carefully planted with flowers and shrubs trampled upon as people tried to get near enough to hear the services read.
Ginny’s gaze was riveted on poor Maudie, who stood with her mother and sisters. She was listening intently to the minister’s words, now seeming resigned to her catastrophe. As she stooped to pick up a handful of earth and cast it on to her husband’s coffin, the babe in her arms began to cry. Her mother reached out to take him from her, but Maudie held him all the closer and turned away. Ginny clasped Martin’s hand and held him tight.
The following day, in the Catholic part of the cemetery, the priest read the service over twelve victims, including thirty-three-year-old Andrea Lazlos. Martin was with her when Ginny herself threw the earth on his coffin, vowing that the names Ara Jera and Jan Staovsky should be inscribed along with his on the headstone.
Martin put an arm around her waist and drew her close to him as they walked home through a village wreathed in black crêpe. ‘You’re a good lass,’ he told her.
She turned and kissed his cheek. ‘And you’re a better lad.’
For one long melancholy week, they saw cortège after cortège pass through the village. The sight of the mourners would have melted a heart of stone, but the people Ginny pitied most deeply were those like the Hoods and her mother, who had no body to lay to rest. Their grief could have no climax and no focus.
During that week Martin called to see them every day. He and Emma would sit at the kitchen table devouring the papers, reading the more striking or contentious passages aloud to the rest of them.
‘Just listen to this,’ he exclaimed one evening, reading from the Chronicle. ‘ “Mr and Mrs Vine would like to express their sincere condolences to all the bereaved families and assure them that they mourn with them in their affliction.” ’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Aye, they’re in mourning all right. They’ve killed the goose that laid the golden egg, and that’s the only death they care about. The rest of us are too easily replaced.’
Ginny’s mother and young Arthur nodded grim agreement, but Ginny pictured Mr Vine’s joyless face and his sympathetic, bloodshot eyes. ‘He must have cared something. He went down with the rescue parties. He nearly got killed an’ all,’ she said.
‘He’d a good right to go down with the rescue parties. He was the cause of it all. The owners wanted the coal out fast and cheap, so he surrounded himself with men who hadn’t the guts to object to breaches of the safety rules. Not to mention the fact they sometimes weren’t fit to be in the pit after drinking with him,’ Martin replied.
Ginny said no more, but thought of her days with Charlie, and the comfort she herself had found in drink. Living with Charlie’s sister couldn’t be any easier than living with Charlie, and in her heart of hearts she pitied Robert Vine and blamed his wife and her brother’s greed and ambition for driving him to drink and spurring him on to risk men’s lives.
‘Why, what about this, man?’ Emma exploded, reading from a national daily. ‘ “It is possible that the firing of a blast may have been coincident with the escape of sufficient gas to cause the explosion, but it will never be known whether a blast was fired or not. The only remaining suppositions are that a safety lamp had been damaged so that its flame was exposed or that one of the miners had use
d a naked light. So careless are some of these men that a miner has been known to make a hole through the gauze of his safety lamp to get a light for his pipe!” ’
Martin’s face was a picture of disgust. ‘It’s always the same. The blame’s never fixed where it belongs. We get the papers full of Mr Vine’s heroic attempts to rescue the men, and Mr Vine’s hairbreadth escape from death, and Mr Vine’s generosity to some of the bereaved families he’s bought off for a pittance. They say nothing about him knowing perfectly well that gas was giving off in the broken workings and still bribing the men to use powder. The manager’s the man with all the authority, and the responsibility’s his, nobody else’s; 1906, and they’ve learned nothing from the disasters of the past century. Or they have, but making money matters a lot more than keeping men alive. Oh, aye, and the fireman’s reports have gone missing and that comes as no surprise. Ultimately, there’s only one person to blame, and that’s the manager.’
‘It’s not going to be pinned on him, though,’ said Emma. ‘It’ll roll off his shoulders right down the ranking until it’s saddled on some poor lad that’s dead and buried, as like as not.’
There was a knock on the front door. Dreading it being Charlie again, Ginny moved to answer it, but young Arthur frowned and motioned her to sit down with a look of authority that was so like her father’s that she obeyed before she had time to think. He answered the door himself, and a moment later ushered Tom Hood and his wife into the kitchen.
‘We had the requiem for our Joe yesterday,’ said Tom quietly, his face haggard. ‘So we’ve come to see your mother, Emma. I think you’ll know what it’s about.’
‘We’ve all a good idea what it’s about,’ said their mother.
‘Well then, Arthur Wilde refused to desert our lad when he was injured and he ended up losing his own life. We’ll never forget that, and we’ll be proud to have Arthur’s lass for our daughter-in-law. The only snag is, conscience won’t let us agree to anything but a Catholic wedding.’
A look of scorn passed fleetingly over their mother’s face. It was gone in a moment, and she nodded her agreement.
Emma was in transports. ‘Does Jimmy know?’
‘No. We wanted to ask your mam first. You can tell him yourself, and you’d better publish the banns.’
When the jury finally returned the verdict, Martin was outraged. He bought the hottest paper off the press and read it over and over again. ‘ “. . We are unable to attach blame to any single individual. At the same time the jury are of the unanimous opinion that the cause of the explosion was the unsafe working of the dip-board of the colliery. The jury consider that blasting with powder was highly injudicious and should not have been allowed by the under manager or prosecuted by the workmen.” The under manager! Who the hell do they think he gets his orders from? I would love to write to the papers and tell them what really went on,’ he exclaimed.
‘Why don’t you?’ asked Ginny. Both Emma and Martin stared at her as if she were an imbecile.
‘Because an anonymous letter’s no good, and if I sign my name to it I’ll be blacklisted,’ he said. ‘Why else do you think a deputy stands up and tells a pack of lies at the inquest? Because he knows if he tells the truth he’ll never get another job and the owners’ll try to throw the blame for the accident on him, so he denies on oath that any shot firing was authorized while the pit was full of men and boys. Nobody’ll tell the truth, not where it counts anyway, because they all need their jobs – but they’ll all chunter enough in the club and the Cock among themselves.’ He paused, then added, ‘And I’m as bad as the rest, otherwise I would write to the paper and tell them all there was shot firing with the pit full, and everybody knew about it, and the manager ordered it because the owners wanted it done.’
‘Write, then. You could have a job managing me. I could carry on working the halls,’ said Ginny. His answer was exactly what she had anticipated.
‘I’ve not sunk so low yet that I want to be living off a woman. When we get married, I’ll earn the wages and you can look after the babies.’
‘When we get married, Martin?’ she asked.
‘Aye, that’s the plan. That’s if I ever manage to get another job. I thought you knew,’ he grinned.
She smiled. He was as unlike Charlie as any man could be. In Martin’s world it was a man’s duty to provide for his wife and no man worthy of the name would let it be otherwise. There would be no marriage until he could support her. Attempts to persuade him otherwise were doomed to failure, and she knew that to persist would demean him in his own eyes. Frustrating though it was, she loved him all the more for it.
‘Write your letter,’ she said. ‘Something’ll turn up, I know it will.’
‘You sound like Mr Micawber,’ said Emma. ‘There’s not much going to turn up round here until the pit’s working again, and I don’t see that happening for months, if not years.’
Ginny took Martin by the hands and stared earnestly into his face. ‘You’re probably blacklisted already for speaking out at the inquest, so write your letter, and send it to the papers. You’ll never rest until you have.’
He turned back to the paper, and after several minutes’ silence made up his mind. ‘I will. I’ll do it this minute. You can read it over before I send it, Em. Make sure it’s all right, like.’
Lacking a stamp, he left the letter with Ginny for her to post, but the following day he was on the doorstep before the post office opened.
‘I’ve been tossing and turning all night, going over it all in my mind. I want to send it, for the sake of everybody that got killed and their families, but I’ll never get work in this county again if I do, so I don’t know how we’ll ever get wed.’
‘We’ll emigrate. I’ve heard California’s a good place.’
He grimaced. ‘I’ve thought about that too, but there’s another thing. I don’t want to leave Mam Smith. She’s been as good as a mother to me, and I think Philip’s all she lives for. If I took him away from her, it’d be the final straw. I think she’d give up the ghost.’
Ginny stiffened slightly, and he saw it. ‘I know she’s been a bit sharp with you, but she’s a good heart at bottom, and she’ll come round in the end.’
He gave her such a look of appeal that she softened and smiled reassurance. ‘I’m going to post your letter, and it’ll be all right. I know it will.’ And that’s the best lesson I ever learned from Charlie, she thought. If you want any luck, make your own.
Emma’s face brightened. ‘The landlord’s got a buyer for the Cock. He says he’ll be doing a flit in a month or so. The new owner’s from London – just wants the place for an investment. He’s looking for a manager.’
‘There’s a job would do for you, Martin,’ said Ginny, suddenly animated. ‘Why don’t you go and see about it?’
‘I know nothing about looking after pubs,’ he protested, and Ginny looked crestfallen.
‘There’s not a great deal to it,’ said Emma. ‘If you keep me on, I’ll teach you the ropes. You’re used to managing the Union money, you should be all right keeping the books, and I can add up. The only thing I can’t teach you is the cellar-work, how to keep a good pint, but you could easily learn that from the landlord before he goes.’
‘You’ve nothing to lose,’ Ginny cajoled, ‘and at least if you get the job, our Emma’ll still have hers. You can keep her on.’
‘Go on, Martin. Get to the Cock now and find out where the agent is – I think it’s a firm of solicitors in Wearham who’re dealing with it. It might be a case of first come, first served, and you’ve nothing to lose by trying,’ said Emma.
After he’d gone, Ginny read his letter over again, imagining what his feelings would be when he saw it in print. She slotted it back in its envelope and licked the glue. It might be fun to keep him in suspense for a while, to make his relief all the greater when the time came. On the other hand, there would be no marriage until he was sure he had a job, and what if he changed his mind in the meantime?
She frowned as she reached for her coat, suddenly filled with nervous anticipation, unsure that she could bear much more suspense herself.
A brisk walk to the post office worked off some of her agitation. She stuck the stamp firmly on the envelope, and dropped it into the post box to hear it land with the knell of finality.
Later that morning young Arthur walked into the kitchen and dropped a couple of rabbits on the floor. ‘We netted six, but I let the other lad take four. They’re a lot worse off than us. I’ll skin them when I’ve had a bite to eat. We spotted Parkinson and his sister in their yellow motor. I think he was on his way to the station. He’s got a pair of real shiners.’ He grinned at her, eyes dancing. ‘Ginny man, I wish you’d seen ’em.’
‘They’ve printed it!’ Martin caught up with her as she was making her way home from Maudie’s house the following Monday morning.
‘You sound surprised,’ Ginny smiled.
‘I am, and it looks worse in the paper than it did when I wrote it. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear from Mr Vine’s solicitors. How will you like being bespoken by a jailbird?’
‘They can’t lock you up for telling the truth.’
‘Even if they do, it’ll be worth it. But what I do next, I don’t know. I’ve tried for work at every pit for miles, and there’s nothing.’
‘You’ve heard nothing about the tenancy at the Cock, then?’
‘That’s the last job I expect to hear about, and that’s saying something.’
Emma was in the yard possing a tubful of clothes when they walked through the back gate.
‘Come on in and have a look at the paper. They’ve printed Martin’s letter,’ Ginny told her.
The house was full. Her mother was dressed and sitting by the kitchen fire brushing her hair. Ginny was struck by the quantity of grey now mixed among the brown, and the many lines around her eyes and mouth. Lizzie was standing at the sink washing crockery. Martin handed Emma the paper folded back at the right page. Arthur, who for a wonder was polishing his own boots, looked up. ‘Don’t keep it to yourself, Em. Read it out.’
A Sovereign for a Song Page 24