Reach for Tomorrow

by Rita Bradshaw

  However, it was interesting that both Flora and Sally, who were often able to view Zachariah in action, waxed lyrical on the topic to Davey and to Mick, until both men became more than a little tired of Zachariah’s halo.

  But it wasn’t Zachariah that Davey was thinking of as he walked home from the shipyard on a bakingly hot evening in mid-July. The extreme heat had brought back the flavour of Egypt and his life on Mohamed’s farm. He could feel the warm, sun-soaked days and muggy nights, smell the intoxicating odour of freshly irrigated earth and thirsty vegetation and crops, the heady, sweet perfume of magnolia flowers.

  The Sunderland street melted away, and in front of him in his mind’s eye were hot dusty cart tracks in baked earth. He had felt out there, working on the land, that he had truly come alive for the first time. The work had been hard, very hard, and he had discovered that a farmer’s life was a twenty-four-hour cycle of endless toil and labour - you lived it and breathed it all the time, there was no whistle telling you it was time to clock off and go home. But the overall satisfaction had been immense. He had been out in the fresh air, seeing the sky, feeling the breeze on his face. And here . . . Here there was the shipyard. And Flora.

  What was he going to do about Flora? Davey wrinkled up his nose as he walked; the journey home to Mrs Riley’s took him through the back lanes and alleyways and the bad smells from some of the hatchways were overpowering in the hot weather. He cared about her; she was a good lass, pretty and lively, and she’d had a rough deal the last few months . . . Oh, stop your yammering. The voice in his head was so distinct that he almost turned round to see if someone had spoken. What was he trying to skirt round the issue for?

  Flora would make a lovely wife for the right man, and for a time he had thought that man was destined to be Peter Baxter, but over the last few months he had begun to wonder. Of course Flora wasn’t-- His brain closed down on that other name and now he actually ground his teeth as he walked, irritable with himself and the whole situation.

  If he had stayed a week or two in Sunderland, just until he’d discovered how the land lay with Rosie, this wouldn’t have happened. But now he had got further and further entangled in all their lives - Flora’s, Rosie’s, Zachariah’s - and it wasn’t doing him any good, not deep inside where his conscience and his reason lay. And there was the bairn, Erik. He could feel his guts twisting every time he set eyes on the child. In a way he could understand why Shane had reacted in the manner he had that night. Oh, not the twisted nasty side of it, that was just plain vicious and pure McLinnie. Nevertheless, when Zachariah had told him Rosie was expecting and he had had to face the fact that she was carrying another man’s child in her body it had near crucified him. But he loved little Erik, he was a bonny baby and he could understand why Zachariah was so proud of his small son, he had every right to be.

  He needed to make a fresh start, that was it at bottom, and perhaps Sunderland wasn’t the place to do it. What was he thinking? He knew Sunderland wasn’t the place to do it. But there was Flora; he enjoyed her company and, more than that, he cared about the lass deep inside. Damn it all. The feeling of confusion grew.

  He couldn’t go back to Mrs Riley’s, not yet, he needed a drink, and not a cup of tea. Davey turned sharply at the end of the street and more by instinct than reason made his way to the Colliery Tavern which, being close to Southwick Road and the Wearmouth Colliery, was a regular haunt of miners and had been well known to him and Sam in the old days.

  There were a few men in the bar when he entered, most of them nursing a pint of beer, and one or two raised their hands to him and nodded, but it was Ralph Felton, whose father had been a pal of his da’s, who said, ‘Davey, man, over here.’

  Davey nodded, ordering and paying for his pint before he joined the four men clustered round a table near the big square window of the taproom. ‘How you doing?’ He spoke directly to Ralph but his gaze included all of the party.

  ‘Same as the rest of the poor blighters round these parts.’ The bitterness was tangible. ‘Never thought we’d see the day when we was sold down the river by our own, but it’s happened. Aye, it’s happened all right. Nine days the General Strike lasted in May, a paltry nine days, an’ here we are still battlin’ it out. Makes me sick to me stomach.’

  There were murmurs of assent from all present, and then Ralph said, as Davey’s face revealed what he was thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not havin’ a go at you, man, don’t think that. You was out of it all years afore an’ good luck to you an’ all. No, it was the TUC that cut our legs out from under us when they went caps-in-hand to the government, the lily-livered so-an’-sos. An’ that after we was called traitors an’ worse for objectin’ to a wage cut an’ longer hours. Traitors! By, I’d like to ram the word down Churchill’s throat, so I would. What did they expect with their threats of lockouts an’ all?’

  Davey nodded. His sympathies were all with the men sitting so despondently round the table. Winston Churchill’s inflammatory speech for ‘unconditional surrender by the enemy’ in May had made him no friends among Britain’s miners, and the government’s import of large quantities of food at the beginning of July, along with the constant import of coal from abroad from the first month of the strike, constituted insult to injury. Add to that the recent Coal Mines Bill for longer working hours - something the militant Labour MPs had contested with such vigour that they’d stormed the House of Lords shouting ‘Murder Bill’ and ‘Four hours for you, eight for the miners’ - and it was no wonder men were prepared to starve, aye, and see their families starve, rather than give in to what they saw as blatant exploitation by a system that had used them like dogs for decades.

  ‘How long do you think you can hold out?’ Davey asked quietly.

  ‘As long as it takes, man.’

  Again Davey nodded, and then, after draining his glass, he stood up and walked across to the bar, ordering five pints and taking them back to the table. He passed them round silently and they were accepted silently. He might be an ex-miner but he was still one of them, and there was no need to thank your own. Every man at the table would have done the same in Davey’s position and they all knew it. It was something that was imbibed with their mother’s milk, this fierce shoulder-to-shoulder mentality, and the women of the north were no less fervent than the men.

  It was just this inbred passion of looking after your own that was causing Annie such turmoil as she knocked at the door of Baxter’s shipyard office immediately before Flora was due to leave that night. She felt torn all ways, and desperate - oh aye, desperate all right, she thought wretchedly, as the door opened. If she spoke, she was letting her lad down, and if she didn’t . . . No. She had to. That was the end of it.

  ‘Mrs McLinnie?’ Flora’s voice was high with surprise. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry, lass, I’m right sorry to be botherin’ you at work. I can wait outside till you’re done . . . ?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, come on in.’ Fortunately Christine Wentworth had gone home an hour early to nurse a tooth-ache, and the day shift had been gone a good half-an-hour, so all was quiet. ‘I was just about to leave anyway. What is it?’

  Flora was shocked at the sight of Shane’s mother. Annie had lost weight since she had seen her last at the beginning of the year, the big plump body seeming to have shrunk inwards, and her face, devoid now of most of its fat, showed every line and wrinkle. Flora knew Rosie and Jessie were worried about Annie and she could understand why now, but it was Annie’s air of nervousness that struck Flora most, and this was enhanced when the older woman said, ‘I’ve got to be quick, lass. I’m supposed to be out at the shops but they’ll be wantin’ their dinner.’ And then she appeared to just run out of words and stood, gasping slightly and looking straight into Flora’s bewildered face.

  ‘Sit down, Mrs McLinnie.’ Flora pushed Annie down into Christine’s vacant chair, and when the old woman’s shoulders remained bowed and her clasped hands - one thumb passing swiftly backwards
and forwards over the fingers of the other hand - rested in her lap, again Flora thought, She’s not well, she’s ill.

  And then Annie began to talk, and Flora found she had to sit down too. It seemed someone, a man, had called at the house the night before asking for Shane. ‘Late it was, gone half eleven,’ Annie said jerkily. ‘Arthur an’ the lads were in bed but I’d got a bit of ironin’ I wanted to finish, it’s no good tryin’ to do it with my lot millin’ about. Anyway, I’d just bolted the back door when he knocked an’ nearly made me jump out of me skin. Appeared he wanted a word with our Shane like I said, an’ when I told him the lad was abed he said for me to go an’ wake him. “Tell him it’s about that bit of Danish business, he’ll know what I mean,” he said. Well, I was a bit rattled, lass, to tell you the truth, him thinkin’ he could call at that time of night, but when I said it’d have to wait till mornin’ he got nasty. “It’s me that’s doin’ your lad the favour, missus,” he said, “an’ it’s in his interest not to have it broadcast.” Well, I was still arguin’ with him when our Shane comes down.’

  Here Annie was starting to sway gently back and forth in her agitation, and Flora reached out and patted her arm, not knowing what else to do.

  ‘Anyways, our Shane didn’t look none too pleased to see this fella with me, an’ he’d got him out in the back yard afore you could spit, tellin’ me the while to get meself to bed. I went up, lass, but the window was open with it bein’ so close an’ all, an’ I’ve always had a pair of cuddy lugs on me that could hear the grass grow, ’specially if there’s any jiggery-pokery afoot. I couldn’t hear everythin’, the other fella was talkin’ all muffled like, but although our Shane was whisperin’ his voice carries, always has done, an’ I heard enough to keep me awake all night. He’s up to somethin’, an’ it concerns Rosie’s husband, Zachariah. I heard his name a few times an’ I reckon he was this Danish business the other fella spoke of. Our Shane means to do him harm, lass. I feel it in me water.’

  ‘Do him harm?’ Flora’s voice was urgent. ‘How, Mrs McLinnie?’

  ‘I wish I knew, lass.’ Again Annie rocked herself before she continued, ‘But I was thinkin’ if you had a word with Davey Connor on the quiet, he’d perhaps frighten our Shane off? The lad could say he’d heard some talk in one of the bars, somethin’ like that. If our Shane thinks he’ll be fingered it’d put the wind up him sure enough. Oh, lass . . .’ Annie stared into Flora’s concerned face. ‘I’m worried out of me wits where this lot could lead.’

  So was Flora. She stared at Shane’s mother for a few seconds before saying weakly, ‘Oh, Mrs McLinnie.’ And then after a longer pause, ‘You’ve no idea when this . . . attack is going to take place then?’

  Annie shook her head, and they sat looking at each other for a moment more before she said, ‘I didn’t know where else to come, lass. I just couldn’t bring meself to tell Rosie with her so happy with the bairn an’ all, an’ there’s nothin’ Jessie could do except worry herself silly. An’ then I thought of Davey Connor.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs McLinnie.’ It was a stupid thing to say in the circumstances but Flora wanted to sound reassuring. ‘I’ll see Davey, I promise, and he’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Thank you, lass.’ The words were scarcely audible. ‘But . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Best make it soon, lass.’

  ‘Tonight. I’ll see him tonight, Mrs McLinnie.’

  Davey stayed for some two hours in the pub, and he wasn’t any nearer to making a decision on the thoughts which had troubled him earlier as he listened to the men’s talk and catalogue of bitter grievances. When he rose to leave Ralph said, ‘You back home for good then, Davey?’ and he hesitated a moment before he answered.

  ‘I’m not sure. Still thinking about it.’

  ‘By, man, in your shoes I wouldn’t have to think over-long. ’ There was a general nod of acquiescence as Ralph added, his tone harsh, ‘You wouldn’t see me for dust.’

  Once in the street Davey walked quickly, looking straight ahead, but his blank countenance masked a sick tumult of emotion which curdled the beer in his belly. He was going to have to make a decision one way or the other, and soon. Those men had epitomized what he could expect of the future if he stayed round these parts. If he left, if he put everything - and everyone - here behind him, he could work on a farm down south maybe, start afresh?

  It was just after eight o’clock when Davey strode down the back lane of Crown Street and into the communal yard which had been witness to him growing up from a babe-in-arms, but now it was number nine he entered, not number eleven. When he opened the kitchen door of Mrs Riley’s and saw Flora sitting to one side of the blackleaded range sipping a cup of tea, it was all he could do not to groan out loud.

  He hadn’t wanted to see her tonight, not tonight. Tomorrow maybe, when he had had time to think about what he was going to do, but tonight his confusion and the churning emotions he was trying to contain made him poor company. Nevertheless, he smiled as he said, ‘Hallo there, and what’s brought you out the night?’

  ‘I need to speak with you.’

  There was no answering smile on Flora’s face, and something in her grey eyes stiffened his expression as he said, ‘Oh aye? Problems?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  He normally had his evening meal with the Rileys when he got home from the shipyard, but since the hot weather he hadn’t been able to face the rabbit stew and dumplings or other such fillers Mrs Riley favoured, so now, when the old lady said, ‘There’s cold meat an’ bread an’ cheese in the larder, lad,’ he answered, ‘I’ll have it later, Mrs Riley, don’t worry.’ And to Flora, ‘I’ll just go and change and then perhaps we can go for a walk?’

  There was still no smile on Flora’s face as she nodded and then lowered her gaze to the cup in her hand, and when his eyes met those of his landlady, and she raised her eyebrows in mute enquiry, he shrugged his shoulders before leaving the room.

  What now? He tried to curb his impatience as he swiftly changed his work shirt for a clean one, before slicking back his thick wavy hair with a touch of brilliantine. Since his sojourn abroad he had rebelled against the regulation caps and mufflers of the north without which no respectable working man would think of leaving the house.

  He had to remember the lass had only recently lost her parents in terrible circumstances, and however well she appeared to be coping on the surface, she must still be going through hell underneath.

  When he returned to the kitchen Flora had finished her cup of tea and rose immediately, making her goodbyes to Mrs Riley and preceding him to the back door without speaking directly to him, but once they were outside in the lane and walking away from the house, her manner, which had hitherto been constrained, underwent a lightning change. Her voice was charged with urgency when she said, ‘I had to come tonight, Davey, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I hadn’t. I just didn’t feel it could wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘Steady on, Flora.’ He took her arm as she stumbled over a ridge of baked mud in the narrow lane, and then, as they passed a group of children playing chucks in the dusty crevices, he said, ‘Wait till we’re out in the street, lass, you’ll turn your ankle along here if you don’t concentrate on where you’re treading. Whatever it is it can wait a minute or two more.’

  He took his hand from her arm once they reached the solid pavement beyond the dirt back lane, and for a few moments they walked rapidly down the terraced street. He was aware she was in a right stew about something and in an effort to comfort her he said, ‘Come on, lass, this isn’t like you. Calm down now.’

  ‘How would you know what’s like me?’

  Her tone checked further commiseration and he stared at her as she continued, ‘You don’t know anything about me, not really. Good old Flora, bounces back from anything, nothing ever really gets her down. That’s what you think, isn’t it? Well, I do have feelings, Davey Connor.’

  ‘Aye, aye, lass. ’Course you do.’
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br />   ‘And I’m sick of pretending otherwise while we’re on the subject. You’re a man, it’s so much easier for you. Now isn’t it?’

  Davey had the feeling he wasn’t going to win this one whatever response he made and his face must have spoken for him because in the next moment Flora said, ‘I’m sorry, I am, that wasn’t fair.’

  Davey was feeling embarrassed and somewhat out of his depth, but he was aware there was an element of truth in what Flora had said. He had always tended to expect her to be, if not exactly the clown, then amusing and easygoing. And it wasn’t fair.

  ‘Look . . .’ Flora’s head was down and she didn’t look at him as she said, ‘Can we go to a café somewhere and sit down? There was one panic after another in the office today, and with this heat and all I don’t feel like walking.’

  ‘Aye, yes, all right. There’s Prinn’s at the end of the next street, or we can call in the Pike and Feather if you fancy a glass of shandy? They’ve got a little garden at the back with some tables and chairs.’

  ‘Prinn’s will be fine.’ Her voice was so prim it made him want to smile but he restrained himself.

  The café was small and very basic, simply six oilcloth-covered wooden tables with four straight-backed chairs tucked under each, and a large wooden counter down one side which led directly into the owner’s kitchen. Apart from Mrs Prinn herself, who appeared immediately the little bell on the door tinkled their entrance, the café was empty, and once Flora had seated herself at a table by the window Davey fetched two cups of tea and two iced buns of dubious freshness.

  Flora remained silent for a few moments after he had placed her tea and bun in front of her, and then she said, ‘Mrs McLinnie came to see me this afternoon just as I was about to leave work.’ As she continued to speak, relating the conversation almost word for word as best as she remembered it, Davey listened with growing incredulity.