by Maggie Hope
Meg sighed. If she was honest to herself she knew she wanted to see Jonty too. But there was Da. Da was so bitter, and he was never bitter about anybody else except the Grizedales. And Da had been through so much, how could she hurt him by going against him?
‘I don’t know, Auntie, I don’t. I might have a talk with Da but if he’s still dead against it, well, I’ll do what he wants.’
Auntie Phoebe looked as though she was prepared to continue the argument but Meg left and went back to her own work. But she couldn’t help her mind wandering, imagining what it would be like to meet Jonty.
She would have to do something about her blue dress, she mused, she couldn’t afford a new one. Though Auntie Phoebe would lend her the sewing machine and maybe she could get an off-cut at the store. If she was going to meet Jonty, that is. She didn’t really need a frock else.
The rest of the morning Meg was occupied rubbing and scrubbing and mangling while her mind ranged over the possibilities of making a new dress. She would have to look her best, just in case she was to meet Jonty. After all, he was gentry.
When Meg did bring up the subject with her father, she received a very unpleasant shock. He became so angry and upset that she gave up the idea of meeting her cousin. Jack Maddison, the quiet, gentle man who hardly ever spoke to anyone, who never lifted a hand to the bairns or anyone else for that matter, mouthed an oath and flung his arm across the table, scattering pots and plates to land in a broken heap in the corner of the kitchen with butter thrown out of the butter dish and oozing down the white-washed wall.
‘I’ll not have it! Do you hear me, Meg?’ he shouted, his voice loud and harsh, and he leaned over her and raised his fist to her so that she cowered back from him. And then he stormed out of the house, leaving his daughter to stare after him as he banged the gate shut and disappeared up the row. Her blood pounded loudly in her ears as she looked at the yellow stain running down the wall and mingling with the brown tea leaves at the bottom. The teapot, Mam’s brown teapot with the old willow-patterned lid, was on its side with the spout knocked clean off and the lid broken in half. Meg’s mind went numb. All she could think of was clearing up the mess.
She went outside for the coal shovel and sweeping brush and cleared up the broken bits of pottery. She’d never get the stain off the wall, she knew she wouldn’t, and what were they going to do for pots? There were only two cups left whole in the house and she couldn’t go to the store for more, it wasn’t payday this week. The miners were paid out last Friday and the money was about gone. It was only payday once a fortnight at the pit. Whatever had Da done that for?
‘Our Meg!’
Meg looked round to see Alice had come in and was staring in astonishment at the sticky mess in the corner.
‘Da did it.’
‘Da?’ Alice was incredulous. ‘Did he have an accident like?’
‘No, he did it on purpose,’ said Meg. ‘He was in a temper.’
‘A temper?’ Alice showed her disbelief. ‘Da’s never in a temper.’
Meg’s control snapped and she shouted at Alice, ‘Well, he was in a temper the day. Now stop asking so many questions and give us a hand here, will you?’
‘But what’re we going to use for our tea the night?’ continued Alice, though she fetched a wet cloth and tried to clean the stains from the wall.
Meg had been wondering the same thing and all she could come up with was that she and Alice could drink out of jam jars, Jack Boy and Miles could use the two remaining cups, and Da would have to use the earthenware jug.
‘I’ll go next-door and see if Auntie Phoebe has a spare teapot,’ she said when at last the mess was cleaned up and the broken pots tipped into the ash closet. And while she was round there she would have a serious talk to her aunt, she determined.
‘But where’s he at now?’ Auntie Phoebe asked after Meg had told her what had happened.
‘I don’t know, I suppose he’s just walking it off,’ said Meg. ‘But I want you to promise me, Auntie Phoebe, not to mention Jonty or Mr Grizedale in front of Da again. And you can tell Jonty that when he comes. Tell him we don’t want to see him. Tell him what you like but don’t let him try to see us.’ Meg was earnest and trembling with the need to impress on Auntie Phoebe how important it was to her and her father.
Auntie Phoebe was wide-eyed and solemn as she saw the unshed tears in Meg’s eyes. ‘He didn’t hit you, did he, lass? Your da I mean? By, I cannot abide violence, there’s no need for it, no need at all. Why, I would have done what Jack said any road. He just had to say.’ She nodded her head to emphasize her words and Meg forebore to remind her that was not what she had said earlier in the day. She was only grateful that her aunt had agreed to it now. Thanking her, Meg hurried back to her own kitchen to wait for the return of her father.
Jack was on fore shift, going out just before midnight, so she cut his jam sandwiches and put them in his bait tin and filled his water bottle fresh from the pump on the end of the row. But she waited and waited. The house grew quiet and Da did not return. The pit whistle sounded to signal the night shift coming to bank and to warn the fore shift men it was nearly time for them to go down. And still he didn’t come.
It was two o’clock in the morning before Jack Maddison made his unsteady way up the garden path and when Meg opened the door for him he practically fell into the house. For the first time she could remember her father was rolling drunk, too drunk to go to work. It was the first shift he had missed since the death of her mother.
Next morning, Jack had reverted to his normal self, silent and impassive. He didn’t say anything about where he had been or what had been said the day before. After breakfast when Alice and Miles went out to school he took his spade into the garden and dug over the potato patch so that the frost would break the soil down over the winter, staying out for most of the day.
Meg said nothing either, simply going about her work, heating the flat iron by the fire and ironing the clothes over a blanket laid on the kitchen table. She called Jack Boy up for his night shift at the pit and made suet pastry to line a basin for the meat pudding she intended for the meal. But though the work was the same, she herself felt different, Da had changed everything. No longer could she dream her lovely dreams about Jonty as her shining hero and the absence of them would leave a gaping hole in her life, impossible though she knew they had been really. Da was what mattered to her, Da and the bairns, and she would never chance doing anything to hurt any of them.
When Sunday came, cold and dreary with a bitter north-easter blowing with a foretaste of winter, she hurried the children home from Sunday School and kept them shut up inside for the rest of the day playing games in the front room. The worsening of the weather made a very good excuse. Though Miles and Alice both argued about it, Meg was adamant.
Eleven
‘There’ll be trouble for you, Jack, I’m telling you.’ Uncle Tot was sitting at the opposite side of the fireplace to Meg’s father. He was sucking deeply on his clay pipe and swirls of smoke were wreathing around him before being drawn up into the chimney over the brightly burning fire in the grate.
Meg watched the two men, her father and Uncle Tot, foreboding welling up inside her. In spite of the heat of the fire she shivered. Uncle Tot looked so grave, leaning forward in his chair and pointing with the stem of his pipe to get across the seriousness of what he was saying. Meg looked from him to her father. Da was sitting there quietly, courteously listening to the older man, but his expression remained calm.
‘You’re in the union, aren’t you? Aye, of course you are. Your mates wouldn’t work with you if you weren’t. The union’ll make it official, Jack man. You don’t want a cut in your pay, do you lad?’
‘I’ll not go on strike,’ he said mildly.
‘Why, man, you mean you’ll just let them cut the pay ten per cent without making a fight for it?’ Tot was growing exasperated, Meg could see his face getting redder and redder.
‘It didn’t get us anywhere
when we struck on the railways, did it, Tot?’
‘The pits are not the railways,’ said Uncle Tot. ‘And have you thought what it will be like after, when the pits get back to normal? Pitmen stick together, Jack, they won’t forget a blackleg. You won’t remember what happened after they brought in the Welsh in the seventies. If it’s the pay you’re thinking about, you’ll be worse off in the long run. When the men got back to work, the Welsh had a hard time of it all right.’
‘I can look after meself.’
‘Aye, mebbe you can. But there was many a blackleg in those days found there was no pay on payday no matter how hard he worked in the pit after the rest of the men were back at work. The tally discs off the tubs would go missing before the coal reached bank so the coal wasn’t credited to them.’
Jack paused and Meg could see the indecision on his face. But in the end he stuck to his resolve.
‘I’m not joining any strike.’
Meg listened unhappily. Oh, she’d known it was coming ever since last year when the owners wanted the men to take a fifteen per cent cut. The dispute had rumbled on till the year turned and now it was 1892 and the owners were insisting on ten per cent. And the miners were going on strike.
‘We’ll stick together, lads, they’ll have to give in,’ was the cry Meg heard whenever she passed a group of miners in the village or squatting on their hunkers at the end of the pit rows.
Uncle Tot rose to his feet and knocked the dottle from his pipe into the fire before going to the door.
‘I promised Phoebe I’d try to change your mind, Jack,’ he said, ‘but I can see I’m not going to. I don’t know what the railway bosses did to you, lad, but you’ve no fight left in you.’
It wasn’t the railway bosses, thought Meg, just one of them. Ralph Grizedale. It was him who’d broken her da. And the memory came back to her: running up the old line, with Mam and the baby, the terror she’d felt, the candyman running after them . . .
Meg shook her head to rid it of the old nightmare so vividly recaptured in her dreams and always when something bad was going to happen. Hadn’t she had it only last night?
‘I’ll make a cup of tea, Da,’ she said, and filled the kettle from the water bucket and placed it on the glowing coals. Jack nodded absently, lost in a dark world of his own.
Oh, early in the evening, just after dark,
The Blackleg miners creep te wark,
Wi’ their moleskin trousers an’ dorty short,
There go the blackleg miners!
Meg held on to Miles and Alice, keeping them close to her side as the children clustered at the end of the row saw them coming back from the store.
‘Take no notice, Miles,’ she hissed. ‘I told you you shouldn’t have come with us.’
Miles, a sturdy twelve-year-old now, squared his shoulders.
‘They might have tipped your basket if I hadn’t come,’ he said grimly. ‘With three of us they won’t be so brave.’
The children were forming a ring round them, holding hands and skipping to the old Tyneside song. Miles carried on walking, looking straight ahead as they were forced to move their circle ahead of him.
They’ll take your tools an’ duds as well,
And hoy then doon the pit of hell,
It’s doon ye go an’ fare ye well,
Ye dorty blackleg miners!
So join the union while ye may,
Don’t wait until your dying day,
For that may not be far away . . .
The song was interrupted as one of the little girls stumbled and fell, taking some of the others with her.
‘He pushed me!’ she screamed, and angry growls came from the row as a couple of burly miners rushed out to avenge the girl. It was Albert Pierce and his younger brother Henry, Meg saw, both of them stocky, broad-built men, though only of average height. They were in an ugly mood and Miles was seized and flung down the back street to land sprawling in the central gutter, banging his head against a brick. He lay there, dazed, while the miners turned their attention to the two girls. Meg held on to Alice as they were shoved roughly down the row before the two men.
‘Leave us alone!’ she cried, standing over Miles who was slowly getting to his feet. ‘You’re just a load of bully-boys, that’s what you are. Hitting a young lad like that, you should be ashamed.’
‘Nay, lass, it’s the other way round. It’s you Maddisons that should be ashamed. Dirty blacklegs, bloody scabs.’
‘Howay, Meg, howay home.’ Alice was white and terrified. ‘Take no notice, that’s what you said.’
‘Aye, that’s right, run away home, you’re not fit to be among decent folk,’ Albert Pierce snarled.
‘What did you say?’ Miles was on his feet by now, his temple already showing a red bump from its contact with the gutter. His fists were up and he was fairly dancing with rage as he pushed his sisters behind him.
‘You run home, Alice,’ hissed Meg, ‘get Da.’ What had started out as a game on the part of the youngsters was turning into a nasty fight now that two of the fathers had taken over. Miles was only twelve, he’d get a hiding. He couldn’t defend himself, not against two men.
‘Aye, fetch your da. We’ll give him what for, an’ all.’
The men grinned at each other and allowed Alice to escape down the row. Miles lunged out at the nearest one and was knocked flat on his back for his pains. Meg screamed and ran to him but Miles was already getting to his feet again. She looked round wildly. Where was everybody? Usually there were women in the yards, gossiping over the walls to each other, but not one was in sight. The back doors were all firmly closed. Oh God, where was Da? Where were Jack Boy and Uncle Tot?
‘Leave the lass alone! And the lad an’ all.’
A man was coming down the row. Meg was practically weeping in relief as the miners turned away to see who it was.
‘Fighting with lasses now, are we?’ asked Wesley Cornish.
‘It’s the blackleg, man, we weren’t hurting the lass,’ Albert Pierce said, though his brother looked sheepish. He was a marra of Wesley’s and Wesley was something of a leader among the younger pitmen.
‘He’s only a lad, he’s had enough,’ Wesley growled. He stood by Miles and Meg with his legs apart and his hands on his hips, outstaring the Pierce brothers. Meg felt a rush of gratitude to him, already he had made her feel safe. Wesley was tall and strong and as hardened in the pit as the Pierce lads. The brothers were turning away now, muttering to themselves, it was true, but no longer threatening them.
‘Get away in the house!’ Albert Pierce shouted to his children, venting his anger on them. The youngsters scattered.
‘Did they hurt you, lass?’ asked Jack Maddison who came running up at that moment. ‘I was out the front talking to Tot, I didn’t hear what was going on till Alice came and told me.’
‘I’m all right, Da,’ said Meg, ‘Wesley stopped them doing anything much. But our Miles is a bit battered.’
‘Aye. Well, he shouldn’t be a blackleg, he’s too young to stick up for himself,’ said Wesley. ‘But don’t think I’m on your side, cos I’m not. Blacklegs is scum.’ He glowered at Jack. ‘An’ you want to look after your lot a bit better an’ all.’
Jack stared at him. ‘Aye. Well, I suppose I have you to thank. But it doesn’t matter much any more, the owners have padlocked the gates. The horses are up on bank an’ all. It’s a lockout, an’ it looks like they’re not in a hurry to open the pit up again. Tot Lowther’s just told me, he was up at the pit when they put the padlock on.’
* * *
‘We’re going to join the strike, Da,’ Jack Boy was standing before the kitchen fire shoulder to shoulder with Miles. ‘You can stay at work if you like, but me and Miles, we’re joining the men.’
Meg, following her father into the house, looked fearfully at Da. He was so dead against the strike. Why were men so stubborn? she wondered wearily. There was Miles, a great purple bruise disfiguring his head. She’d have to get some cold cloths on
that the day. At least she was thankful for one thing: if there was a lockout, Da couldn’t go down the pit, he’d have to join the men.
‘Aye, well, it’s matterless now,’ he said. ‘It’s a lockout, we couldn’t go to the coal face if we wanted to. Do what you want, it won’t get you any strike pay, you’re too late.’
Meg hadn’t thought of that. What were they going to live on? Alice was still a pupil teacher, and brought nothing in. And there was no one among the miners’ wives lying in, no babies due. There’d be nothing there for her to earn herself. There was a bit put by but not much. Black despair engulfed Meg. How long would it last? And coal . . . the coal would stop too. It was only the end of February, how could they keep warm and cook without coal? Meg’s thoughts raced round and round, looking for answers. She was eighteen years old now. She’d thought that with the bairns grown, all except Bella, that is and she was living with Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot, things would be easier. But instead they were worse. Sighing she fetched a bowl of cold water in from the pump and got a flannel.
‘I’ll bathe that bruise for you, Miles,’ she said, but the boy shrugged her off impatiently.
‘Leave us alone, our Meg,’ he said, ‘I’m not a babby.’
She looked at him in surprise. It was the first time he had challenged her authority. He really was grown up, she thought, even if he was only twelve years old. Ah, well, no doubt the bruise would go down of its own accord in a day or two.
‘Look what we’ve got, our Meg.’
She was on her knees by the kitchen fire, trying to coax enough heat from a few broken branches of wood to boil the pan of soup she had made from the last of the potatoes and carrots and onions. She gasped with surprise when she saw inside the sack which Jack Boy and Miles had brought in. Round black balls of pitch were there, about half a hundredweight.
Jack Boy grinned in delight when he saw her face. ‘They’ll soon get the fire going,’ he said.