by Diana Norman
‘That’s what I thought,’ Makepeace said, ‘but it’s him got us the money, not me. I’m going to sign.’
On Makepeace’s last night at Theobald’s Road, those who had loved Dapifer and his second wife gathered round Susan Brewer’s dinner table for what was, though none of them said so, a delayed wake. Alexander Baines came to join John Beasley and so, because it was Sunday and the theatres were closed, did Aaron; Mr Burke’s Company had returned to London for a winter season after its Triumphant Tour of the Provinces and was resting before setting off to delight Ireland in the spring.
Dr Baines took the opportunity to examine Aaron and declared himself well pleased. ‘Ye have the constitution of an ox, young man.’ He was less happy with Makepeace: ‘I’ve seen fatter maypoles. Are ye eating, woman?’
Baines was another who’d been caught up in the undertow of Dapifer’s death. Catty had spread word around Town that he was an incompetent doctor who’d ignored Dapifer’s dangerous condition. It was taking time for his practice to recover from the damage; worse, Baines was flagellating himself. ‘Who’s to say she’s no right? I told him his heart was weak, begged that he take more rest, but mebbe I should have done more than warn the dear man.’
‘What could you have done?’ Aaron was explosive. ‘The hag’s merely chucking dust in people’s eyes so they won’t look in her direction, that’s all. She’s the one who irked him to death at the last, her and Conyers. Bloody strumpet.’
‘Oh, oh’—Susan Brewer covered her face with her hands—‘why don’t we all get on the next boat to Boston, or somewhere? I can’t bear this country any more.’
‘I’d come,’ Beasley said. ‘England’s too bloody Tory for me.’
‘Ay . . .’ Baines was wistful. ‘It’s no a bad plan, that. Pandering to English nobility was naiver my idea of serving Hippocrates, mebbe I’ll come with ye. What does our Makepeace say to it?’
‘She says there’s two people to be ruined before she can go.’
‘Lass, leave vengeance to the Lord, ye’re no fit for it. Look at ye.’
‘ “A spaniel, a woman and a walnut tree, The harder you beat them the better they be.” Pip used to say that. They’re beating me into being better. I’m going to bring them down.’
The two boys, Josh and Andrew Ffoulkes, arrived together into a riotous welcome. At his own suggestion, Lord Ffoulkes was having his portrait painted by Joshua Reynolds in order to keep in touch with his friend. He’d gained leave from Eton to come up to Town for a sitting and stay the night with his guardian. ‘Conyers has gone to Almack’s with her,’ he told Makepeace bitterly. ‘If he asks, which he won’t, I’ll tell him I spent the evening with friends. It’s true.’
She was concerned that an eleven-year-old boy should be walking the footpad-infested streets of London at night but he said he’d commanded one of the Grosvenor Square carriages to bring him, calling for Josh on the way. ‘I told Miss Reynolds Josh was the son of my old nurse—that’s true too, in a way—and I was taking him to see her.’
Another of her enemies’ sins: forcing a child to use deception in order to stay in touch with those who loved him. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes.’ He was able to pass most of his holidays on his Kent estates with his servants, with whom he was happy enough. ‘I don’t like visiting them much,’ he said of Catty and Conyers. ‘They’re very excitable, you know . . .’ It was a gentleman’s languid condemnation such as Dapifer might have used and it brought tears to Makepeace’s eyes. ‘ . . . but I’m all right.’ She hoped that he was; there was a reserve to him she hadn’t seen before, though not with her. ‘I miss you,’ he said.
‘I miss you too.’
She turned to Josh. ‘Are you all right?’ Betty’s son had suddenly shot up, becoming lanky but with the promise of good looks. She hated the fact that he was in brightly coloured livery like any other negro servant.
‘Fine, I’m doin’ fine,’ he told her. ‘Sir Joshua’s lettin’ me paint some of the drapery in Andy’s portrait.’ But he too had become guarded.
It was Andrew who said: ‘Reynolds don’t let his apprentices paint much though, do he, Josh? You mostly run errands for his sister, don’t you?’
‘I’m all right, I’m learnin’,’ Josh said, staunchly.
She didn’t want them brave. Not yet, not yet. The glowing patina of expectation was being rubbed off them both; the world would not, after all, be wonderful. She supposed that even while they hurt, they were more fortunate than most—she thought of Andra Hedley, down the pit at eight years old—but her arms twitched to hedge the two of them about and save what was left of their shine.
They were all happier once they’d crammed themselves around Susan’s small dining table, as if they’d formed a protective circle against the dark. Jugs of porter helped, and so did Baines’s contribution of a bottle of malt whisky.
Susan patronised the local shops and had provided capons, fish pie and cow pudding. ‘You can never get pork round here,’ she said, puzzled.
Beasley, scoffing, explained Jewish dietary laws.
He likes her, Makepeace thought. How much it was difficult to guess. And Susan liked him, though he shocked her and she had been quick to go to her landlord to procure him other accommodation nearby. No, that horse wouldn’t run. Pity, it was time both of them settled down. Why hasn’t Susan gone back to America? Why struggle on over here? She’s got wealthy relatives. Lord, I couldn’t spare her.
What about Baines? He’d be suitable. No, he still fancies he’s in love with me, though he ain’t at all. Just like Pentecost Pringle. Dr Baines had settled down to a contented life as a single man on the excuse of unrequited passion.
Aaron? He’d been attracted to Susan on the boat coming over, but that had faded. There’s probably some actress now . . . anyway, Susan treats him like a brother.
Picking over her friends like a miser over a hoard of jewels, Makepeace felt how precious it was, this unbreakable circlet of ill-matched friendships, how freeing to be given this little holiday from hate to play with them.
It didn’t stop her getting up before dawn the next morning and catching the stage coach to begin the six-day journey that would take her back to her coal mine. She had other riches in mind.
Chapter Seventeen
THEY bought a Newcomen engine and housed it, suitably adapted, in the flooded shaft—the one Hedley imaginatively called Shaft A. The machine clunked and after every clunk came the bronchial wheeze as water was raised to a wooden soakaway that ran to a stream and from there to the sea. You could hear it, clunk-wheeze, clunk-wheeze, from as far away as the Factor’s House and the but ’n’ bens.
At first it sent rooks scattering from the trees while its inexorable regularity took humans to near madness, but gradually the sound entered flesh and bone; birds ceased to take notice of it and the humans adapted so that Makepeace, walking to and from the mine, and Betty, sweeping the yard, unconsciously moved in time to its rhythm.
Another shaft—Shaft B—was sunk. Then a ventilation shaft, to let out the gas that had been accumulating in the mine since it was abandoned.
For Makepeace, keeping the books as she sat in the Factor’s House parlour, now her office, pounds were escaping faster than the gas. Tunnels had to be safely propped with timber: Hedley refused to rely on the old wasteful method of leaving pillars of coal to keep the roofs up; this was to be the most up-to-date bloody mine in Northumberland. Doors had to be constructed to encourage draught along the tunnels; rails laid; wagons purchased; the staith (a pier) built at the sea’s edge from which coal could be lowered into the keels (boats) to sail it to the great collier fleet on the Tyne for delivery to London. Miners hired . . .
‘We’re not going to have enough damn money,’ screeched Makepeace.
‘Have to get more then, pet,’ Hedley said, and went back to work.
Grumbling, she slammed the door behind him; the early spring day was chilly. ‘And not a bloody lump to put on the
bloody fire.’
Spring came and went in hard work and expense.
One day in June, with the sun so hot that the arc of moorland around them stood to rigid attention while, in the east, a vacillating haze on the sea made the eyes water, Makepeace suddenly raised her head from the accounts. Betty came hurrying in from the kitchen with Philippa; they both had hands covered in flour from making patties.
The noise of the pump had changed.
‘Come on.’ Makepeace took Philippa’s hand, Betty took the other, and between them they swung the child out of the yard towards the mine with Tantaquidgeon behind, keeping his unvarying pace.
Jamie Hedley, his wife Ginny, two children and a dog Makepeace had never seen before joined them, running down the track from the but ’n’ bens.
Hedley was standing by his engine shaft, shrugging as if it was nothing. ‘She’s dry,’ was all he said. But Makepeace knew him now, could sense the triumph in the very stance of his body.
Like a couple of allied generals meeting on a field of victory they shook hands. ‘Now do we get coal?’
‘Got to clear the fall first, pet,’ he said.
‘Why not start now? Time’s money.’
He ignored her. He was looking around. ‘Where’s that bloody dog?’
‘Here, Andra.’ Jamie had a ball of string leading from his hand to the neck of one of the most miserable bitches Makepeace had ever seen. ‘Stray,’ he told Makepeace. The dog was wearing a harness with a pocket which held a candle.
Women and children followed the men to the new wheelhouse at Shaft B where a large basket hung from a windlass over the platform beneath which was the pit.
Hedley swung the basket to the shaft platform. ‘In you get, pet.’ He lifted the dog in and got in himself. When Jamie tried to climb in with him, his brother pushed him away. ‘Who’s going to man the bloody wheel?’
‘Let us coom, marra.’
‘Stay here, tha bugger. Get ’em all out and when Ah’m down, howay thasself.’ Leaning over the side of the basket, he pushed until it swung into the mouth of the shaft. ‘Let away.’
The windlass shrieked. Makepeace, leaning over the safety rail, watched the basket and its cargo descend at speed until it was lost in the darkness. ‘What’s he going to do?’
‘Test for fire-damp.’
A ratchet had stopped the windlass of its own accord. Jamie pulled on a lever, his eyes on the swinging chain threading down the pit. ‘Howay wi’ ’em, Ginny.’
His wife began shooing the other women and the children out of the shed. When she pulled at Jamie’s sleeve, he shook her off and she left with the others, leading them down the hill to sit on the grass in a dip out of sight of the mine. ‘Reet, bairns, who’ll get most dayseyes and pittlybeds?’
As the children ran to pick flowers, Betty said: ‘Why the dog?’
‘Carries the candle aheed on a long lead. She drops deed or blows up, you’ve found fire-damp.’ She wiped sweat off her forehead. ‘Deor, it’s het.’
‘What happens then?’
‘Get another bloody dog,’ Ginny said and Makepeace, sitting beside her to help with the daisy chain, noticed her hands were trembling.
Hadn’t he said . . . ? She asked quietly: ‘Wasn’t there another brother?’
‘Ay. Peter. Deed in Walker’s explosion. Poer sod, only nineteen. Blown up shaft an’ fifty yard off, split like a herring.’
‘Fire-damp?’
‘Fire-damp.’
‘Look, Mam.’ Philippa showered daisies and dandelions into Makepeace’s lap.
‘Lovely, pet. Stay here a bit.’ She got up and walked up the hill to the wheelhouse. Jamie Hedley was by the wheel, watching the motionless chain. ‘Howay, bonny lass,’ he said, not moving, ‘a fireball could blow us all into etornity.’
‘You go then,’ she said.
‘He’s me brother.’
‘It’s my coal.’
In the quiet they could hear the new, gentler note of the pump as it kept the mine dry and the low drawn-out liquid notes of curlews on the moorland teaching their young to fly. Hedley calls them whaups. She thought of him following the dog with the lit candle on its harness through darkness and knowing, however long the lead between, that if it came across a large enough concentration of the silent enemy the flame would ignite it, them, the whole damn mine.
She sat down with her back against the rail. It was hot; the place smelled of machinery and warm new wood. Sun formed a wide square on the floor by the doorway, sparrows fluttered among the roof beams, the chain on the windlass didn’t move.
Jamie was watching her. ‘You and Andra sparkin’, pet?’
‘Sparking?’
‘Lovers.’
‘No, we’re not.’
He nodded and turned his attention back to the rope.
Lord, these people, reducing things they didn’t understand into their own little worlds. His Ginny couldn’t think beyond the price of her next dinner so how could he recognize the phenomenon of a businesswoman? That’s my capital down there, fellow. Why wouldn’t I worry about it?
Years went by. At last the chain jerked. Jamie shouted: ‘He’s hoom! She’s clear!’
By the time the basket was up and the two Hedleys, complete with dog, came down the hill, Makepeace was sitting with the other two women, busily helping her daughter make a daisy chain.
Later, back at her office, she and Hedley argued. He wanted to hire miners right away.
‘If we’re just clearing the fall, we don’t need skilled men yet,’ Makepeace pointed out. ‘We can shift it ourselves with a few others. We’ll hire women to pull the corves, they’re cheaper.’
He pounded on the table. ‘Didn’t I tell you no women down pit?’
‘And didn’t I tell you we’re running out of money?’ she screamed back. She pressed her fingers against her temples; it had been a bad day.
Hedley looked at her with his head on one side. ‘Jamie said you were concerned for us.’
‘I was concerned for the bloody mine,’ she told him.
Here was the trouble with an equal partnership, neither had a casting vote. But she knew she was right; there was still horrific expense to be laid out when they reached coal; even now she would have to go cap in hand for more investment.
To tempt skilled miners away from other collieries would mean building accommodation for them and their families. And Hedley, damn his eyes, wanted pit ponies to drag the corves of coal to the surface, not women, not boys, which meant more outlay, stables, feed . . . They hadn’t constructed the wagon-way yet, nor the staith, nor bought the wagons . . .
She shouted at him. He shouted at her.
Betty came in with a tray of nettle beer to say they’d woken Philippa.
‘Will you tell this lug-headed miser she knows fuck about coal,’ Hedley roared at her.
‘An’ you tell this ground-hog want don’t mean git,’ raved Makepeace, reverting to American in her rage.
Betty said: ‘Ain’t tellin’ you two gumps nothin’ ’cept quit cussin’. You forgittin’ tomorrer’s Sunday?’ There was to be a church outing next day and she was looking forward to it.
When Betty had gone, Makepeace went to the window and threw the contents of her tankard outside. ‘I can’t drink this piss.’
‘You don’t like nettle beor?’ Hedley was amazed.
‘No.’
‘I wor brought up on it,’ he said.
‘You can tell.’
She hadn’t seen him laugh before; it was a loud surprise.
‘Fifty-fifty, bonny lass,’ he said, back in a good temper. ‘We’ll use women to clear the fall, temporary like, but it’s men for the coal and paid enough to keep their wives at home where they should be.’
Where they should be . . . He reckons I’m a freak, she thought, but had the sense to say: ‘Done.’
They shook hands and she held the front door for him. He stood for a moment on the threshold breathing in the sweet night air.
�
�You reckon me a freak, don’t you?’ she said.
He said: ‘No, pet, I reckon you should be wed.’
‘When pigs fly.’
The next morning, dressed in their Sunday best, the two households met in the yard and headed seawards down the track with their children and provisions on the donkey. The yellow bitch, looking considerably better than she had yesterday, slunk along behind: Andra had named her Persephone.
Instead of heading for the fishing village where a tiny church tower rose among a prickle of roofs, they turned left to a large, flat expanse of grass on the edge of the sea.
‘Why aren’t we going there?’ Makepeace asked, pointing at the tower. According to her reading of the Raby title deeds, not only did the village belong to her but she held the advowson to the church.
‘Priest lives in Morpeth,’ Jamie told her. ‘Don’t coom often. Anyway, he cast us out, divvn’t he, Andra?’
‘Apostates,’ Hedley said.
They were Methodists and had been ever since John Wesley had come to the north-east to spread his message of Christ’s love to its unlettered masses in the ’forties. He’d stood in Sandgate, one of the roughest streets in Newcastle, and begun singing the hundredth psalm to four or five curious onlookers whose number had swelled to five hundred and then fifteen hundred as he preached. The Hedleys had been taken to hear him as boys by their grandfather.
Up to then, Andra explained, the Church of England had more or less left the labourers of the north-east in their spiritual darkness, but it became upset that Wesley, however much he professed orthodoxy, commanded huge outdoor congregations of pitmen and their families with his message that Christ loved them as sincerely as he loved the coal-owners. In consequence Raby’s absentee priest had suddenly turned up in its parish church to tell them they were rebels.
‘We were,’ Hedley said. ‘We’d seen the light.’
They were still seeing it. The field already held three or four hundred people with others still threading in—Makepeace wondered where, in this wilderness of sea and moorland, they’d all come from.
The hot sun was tempered by the nearness of the sea that fretted the edge of the field into hummocks like grassy bollards in the water. The crowd was quiet and only seagulls and the whistling of redshanks bobbing along the shore vied with the preacher’s voice, except for the occasional shout of ‘Je-sus’ from Tantaquidgeon for whom it seemed to reawaken memories of the Boston meeting house. Whoever the preacher was, his message of a simpler Christianity was familiar to Makepeace as well, but it carried fewer threats of Hell-fire than had the Puritan pulpit-thumpers she remembered, and more hope of salvation.