by Maggie Hope
‘What are you after?’
Alice halted close to her sister and glared at him uncompromisingly. Meg stood quietly, holding her basket in front of her like a shield.
‘I want to talk to Meg,’ he said. ‘Your Jackie said I couldn’t go in, I had to wait out here.’
‘Quite right an’ all,’ snorted Alice.
‘Can I come in, Meg?’ he asked.
‘Our Jackie’s the gaffer in the house now,’ snapped Alice. ‘If he says you can’t come in, you can’t.’ Her eyes glinted like chips of blue ice as she nodded to give emphasis to her words.
‘I have to talk to you, Meg,’ he insisted. ‘We can’t let everybody in the row know our business, can we?’
‘Do you think they don’t, like?’ Alice asked with a hard laugh.
‘Alice,’ Meg at last found her tongue, ‘go in now. Tell our Jackie I want to fetch him in.’
‘Meg! Don’t be so soft, man, he just wants something from you. You don’t think he’s come to pay for his bairns’ keep, do you?’
‘Go on, Alice,’ Meg said quietly, and her sister exploded, turning to Wesley and letting rip.
‘By, Wesley Cornish,’ she yelled, losing control altogether. ‘If you were my man you wouldn’t have done to me what you’ve done to Meg. She’s been a saint to you, and you carrying on with that Sally Hawkins like that, even before Kit was born. Aye, you wouldn’t have done it to me, I’m telling you. I’d have knifed you first!’
Wesley looked at her, her cheeks red with anger and her eyes snapping and flashing and he was unable to suppress a spark of admiration for her.
‘Nay, lass,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Nay, if I was your man, I’d have used a knife on meself.’
Meg decided it was time she intervened. She was beginning to be afraid that Alice, in her fury, would attack Wesley physically and that would be a mistake. Woman or no woman, Wesley would knock her down for it.
‘Go on, Alice,’ she urged. ‘Go on, ask Jackie, I don’t want any trouble in the row.’
Reluctantly, after a final glare at Wesley, Alice marched inside the house, coming out a minute later.
‘Jackie says you can come in.’
Once inside the kitchen, Wesley glanced nervously at Jackie and Alice before speaking to Meg.
‘Private, like,’ he insisted.
‘You can say what you have to say here,’ snapped Jackie. By his side his fists were clenching and unclenching; his lips were compressed so tightly they had a thin white line round them.
‘No, Jackie,’ said Meg, ‘we’ll go in the room.’ She led the way through the connecting door and sat down on the settle, indicating for Wesley to sit opposite her. She shuddered slightly, deliberately not looking to the side where Miles’s coffin had stood. It would be a while before she stopped seeing it in her mind’s eye whenever she looked that way.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I heard they took your da away. I’m sorry, Meg.’
She studied him, well aware that he had not come to see her just to offer his sympathy. Though not yet thirty, already his paunch bulged out below his chest and broken veins littered his face. His hazel eyes were bloodshot, she noticed, and unbidden came the thought of clear dark eyes – Jonty’s eyes.
‘Aye,’ she said flatly.
‘Er . . . I was thinking, Meg,’ Wesley said awkwardly, looking down at his hands. ‘There’ll only be your Jackie and Alice living in the house now?’
‘Say what you’ve come to say.’
Wearily, she got to her feet and walked to the window, staring out at the garden.
‘Well, I mean, like, there’s plenty of room for you and the lads here, isn’t there?’ Wesley blurted out.
Bitterness welled up in Meg. ‘You mean you want to take my house away from me?’ she demanded.
‘Aw, Meg, look at it from my side,’ he pleaded. ‘Sally’s cottage is falling to bits and what with the pay cuts an’ all, we could do without paying the rent. I need the house more than you.’
Meg stared at him. He was actually going to take her house from her. She couldn’t believe it.
‘You can live here, you know you can, man,’ argued Wesley. ‘Now your da’s not here, you and the lads can have his bedroom.’
‘Da will be coming home. What then?’ she asked evenly.
‘Aw, no he won’t, he’s gone crazed, everybody knows that, or why would they take him to Sedgefield?’
‘He’s not crazed! It was just the accident, he’ll be coming back!’ cried Meg.
‘Hadaway, man, he’s a loony. Always has been . . .’
The door from the kitchen burst open and Jackie stormed in, glowering at Wesley. He looked so menacing that Wesley stepped back from him and cut off what he had been going to say.
‘Get out of here, Wesley Cornish, get out of our house, or I’ll put you out meself,’ Jackie shouted.
‘Hey! Who do you think you’re talking to, like?’ blustered Wesley, but nevertheless he was moving to the door, whilst keeping a wary eye on Jackie.
‘I’m not going to fight you, man, not now, I’ll go. This is a bad time for you, too soon after your trouble, like.’
He walked to the back door before turning and speaking directly to Meg.
‘I want the house, Meg, I want it for me and Sally. She’s my lass and it’s me has the house through the colliery, I have a right to it.’
‘Get out!’ Jackie exploded in a fury and ran to the door after him, but Wesley was gone, down the yard and away up the row before any neighbours thought to join in the argument. For Wesley had felt the cold disapproval of his fellow pit folk, intensified this last week since tragedy had hit the Maddisons. He knew it wouldn’t take much for the whole row to turn on him and help Jackie throw him out of the village, let alone the house. But still, Sally would be waiting for him in the tumbledown house in the old part of the village, the part which had been a hamlet in the days before coal reigned in the county.
Twenty-Six
‘Well, what did she say?’
Sally, a new baby on her knee, was sitting by the fire in the dirty kitchen. Ashes had spilled over from the ash box on the hearth and some even on to the filthy proddy mat under her chair. There was a strange smell in the air, a sickly smell which permeated the whole house. Bed bugs, Sally said it was, they couldn’t get rid of them. They were embedded in the crumbling plaster, coming out to plague them at night.
‘I’ll have to go back, later on like. Mebbe it’s a bit soon,’ he said, excusing his lack of success.
‘You get away back there, Wesley Cornish! I want that house,’ yelled Sally, jumping to her feet and waking the baby who began screaming in fright. Wesley was saved for the moment by the pit whistle, the fore shift men were coming to bank.
‘I will in the morn, I have to go to work now,’ he reasoned with her, beginning to take off his clothes and change into the pile of pitclothes by the hearth, still lying where he had left them the day before.
‘Some bloody man you are!’ snarled Sally with cutting contempt.
Wesley bent his head without replying, concentrating on getting dressed for the pit and out of the house away from her scorn.
‘Could you not have dashed me pitclothes against the yard wall, Sally?’ he said, careful to speak softly. If she thought he was complaining she wouldn’t make him any dinner to come back to. ‘Get rid of the coal dust, like?’
‘Don’t you tell me what I should have done. An’ me just out of childbed!’ bawled Sally.
‘No, no, I’m not.’ Placatingly he dropped a kiss on her cheek and went out to work.
‘Are you going to let him have the house?’ enquired Alice. She was pinning on her hat before the overmantel mirror for she was going out tonight. She had started going to classes in Bishop Auckland a few weeks before, determined to educate herself, get a certificate so that she could start some vocational training. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do but she was sure she didn’t want to stay in the
village and be kept by her brother, taking on other women’s housework and washing in the way Meg had had to do for a bit of extra money. Plenty of time to decide what she was going to do the next year, when she finished her course.
‘What else can I do?’ asked Meg.
Alice picked up her exercise book. She would have to be going if she was to walk to Auckland and still get there in time. There was a horse bus now, running from Winton Colliery to the station, but it cost a penny each way and she could only afford to use it for the return journey.
‘Well, for a start, I think you should go back into your own house. If you stay here any longer, Wesley will say you don’t need it.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Meg. ‘I might go over tomorrow. I have to make some sort of a fight. Any road, our Jackie will likely be getting wed soon, he’ll want the house then, won’t he?’
‘Getting wed? He’s never said anything about a lass to me,’ exclaimed Alice.
‘No, I know, but you know how he is, he doesn’t tell us much about anything. He could meet somebody and decide to get wed all in a hurry, couldn’t he?’
Alice went to the door. ‘That’s a fact, then it’ll be me an’ all who’ll be in the way. Well, I’m off.’
Next morning, Meg sent the boys off to school and went round to George Row. The house seemed very quiet as she let herself in, the fire dead long since in the grate and the iron range beginning to show signs of needing a polish with black lead before the rust took over. Well, she thought, a bit of hard work would keep her occupied. Besides, she needed to get the oven hot. Her money had run out and she would have to start up her baking business again.
She got out her box of cleaning materials and soon was brushing rhythmically, burnishing the range till it shone. Without washing the black lead from her hands, for to do that she needed hot water and hot water wasn’t to be got until she had the fire lit and the boiler heated up, she laid the fire with sticks and cinders and a shovelful of good round coal on top and put a lucifer to it. Then she put the tin blazer in position and leaned back on her heels, watching the sticks catch alight through the bars and hearing the chimney roar as the blazer did its work.
A knock at the front door made her get to her feet and hurry to answer it, rubbing her hands across her forehead as she did so. It must be Dolly, she thought, she would have heard her working through the thin wall which separated the two kitchens. But it was not Dolly, it was Jonty.
‘Oh!’ Meg looked at him and lifted the sacking apron she wore to do the range so that she could hide her grimy hands in it.
Jonty smiled. ‘Can I come in?’
Wordlessly, she stood back so that he could enter, blushing with embarrassment that he should have caught her looking such a sight.
‘I was just cleaning up,’ she mumbled, closing the door behind him.
‘So I see,’ Jonty said gently. He touched her brow where her hand had left a sooty streak, and his touch was a caress.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ Meg whispered.
‘I had to see you. Your aunt told me you were here.’
‘Oh Lord,’ sighed Meg. He had been to Pasture Row and now here he was in George Row. Everyone would know.
‘I am your cousin, Meg,’ he pointed out. ‘Isn’t it perfectly natural to come to see my cousin at a time like this?’
Meg nodded, not convinced. She led the way into the kitchen and took down the blazer and a lovely warmth spread into the room immediately.
‘I’ll have to wash my hands, I’ll put the kettle on.’ But as she turned to the kettle on the hearth, Jonty took her into his arms and held her tightly to him, caring nothing about the state of her hands or her apron.
‘Jonty! You’ll get black lead all over you,’ she protested, but it was a half-hearted protest to say the least. Her emotions, still so raw after all that had happened, were easily roused. She clung to him, eyes closing as he brought his mouth down to hers and she was caught up in a sea of feeling which threatened to drown her.
Jonty held her for a few moments then he sat down on the chair by the fire and took her on his knee.
‘You shouldn’t have come, folks’ll talk,’ she murmured in his ear.
‘Shh, my love.’ He rocked her to him and Meg felt the waves of comfort and love coming from him to her, and could no more have put him away from her than fly to the moon.
‘Well! I’ve never seen anything like it.’
They were brought out of their private world by a voice at the window, the voice of a woman shocked to the core. Meg jumped to her feet and stared at the kitchen window, at the woman standing outside, a baby in her arms.
‘Sally Hawkins!’ gasped Jonty, and the woman nodded her head triumphantly.
‘Aye, it’s me, Master Jonty,’ she said. ‘How’s your da, then?’
‘You know Sally?’ asked Meg, eyes widening in surprise as she looked from Sally to Jonty.
‘I do,’ he said grimly. ‘She was a housemaid at the Hall until my father threw her out when she got pregnant. Grandmother gave her five pounds to see her through.’
Meg was about to ask him why his grandmother should do that, but Sally was hammering on the back door by now. Meg opened the door and let her in.
‘What do you want, Sally?’ she asked, her brow wrinkling as she got a whiff of sour milk and strong body odour.
‘Aye,’ sneered Sally. ‘You can speak to me now I’ve found you out, eh? An’ you, Master Jonty. Not too high and mighty now, are you? As bad as your da, aren’t you? Except at least he wasn’t messing about with a married woman. You wait till my Wesley gets home, he’ll show you what for an’ all. Pretending you’re better than us when all the time you’ve been rutting . . .’
‘Shut your dirty mouth, you slut,’ Meg snapped, and Sally turned on her.
‘Slut, is it? And what about you, eh, carrying on with a fancy man in Wesley’s house? Aye, well, it’ll be my house now, see if it isn’t.’
The baby in her arms began a fretful crying and Sally sat down in the chair recently vacated by Jonty and bared her breast to suckle him, not bothering to cover up in front of Jonty. She looked around the room, taking note of the furniture, the clean mats on the floor and the fresh curtains hanging at the window.
‘Aye,’ she said with a satisfied air, ‘I reckon I’ll be moving in tomorrow. And don’t you go taking anything away, mind. It was Wesley’s money bought this stuff and it belongs to him. You have no right to nothing, you haven’t.’
Jonty glanced at Meg, seeing the angry glint in her eye at the thought of losing her house. He felt helpless. What could he do to stop this girl, his father’s ex-mistress, from blackening Meg’s reputation? Oh, it was all his fault. He cursed himself for being too weak to keep away from his Meg. He desperately wanted to take her and her boys and ride away with them, away from this dreadful slattern of a woman, away from her brute of a husband.
‘I’ll give you money,’ he said.
‘No! No, you won’t, Jonty,’ cried Meg. ‘You can’t go that road, there’ll be no end to it, man.’
‘How much money?’
Sally had a sudden gleam to her eye as she pulled one breast away from the baby and put him to the other. Milk spurted out of the breast, wetting her bodice where there was already a large patch stiffened with sour milk.
‘Five pounds,’ said Jonty, trying to remember how much he had left of this month’s dividend. What with his father and now Sally, he would have nothing over, he thought.
‘Ten,’ said Sally quickly.
‘I haven’t got ten.’
Meg had by this time pulled herself together. She saw clearly that one payment, no matter how much, would never satisfy Sally.
‘Have you finished feeding the bairn?’ she asked in a deceptively quiet voice.
‘Aye,’ said Sally, wrapping the baby up in his filthy shawl and holding him against her shoulder.
‘Right, then, out you go!’
Meg took hold of Sally’s shoulder
s and pulled her up from the chair, pushing her unceremoniously out of the door.
‘Hey! Watch what you’re doing, will you? You’ll hurt the babby,’ Sally shouted, but Meg had her outside and the door bolted firmly against her in a trice.
‘You’ll be sorry, Meg Cornish, you see if you’re not. I’ll put Wesley on to you, I will, as soon as he comes in from the pit.’ Then Sally stood at the back window and screamed abuse.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Meg,’ said Jonty. ‘The whole village will know about us now, your life will be hell.’
‘The whole place’ll know all right, these walls are paper thin,’ said Meg. ‘And if they don’t know now, they soon will. You don’t think they would have kept their mouths shut, do you, Wesley and Sally? I don’t care how much you paid them.’ She drew the curtains to shut out the sight of Sally and after a minute they heard her go off down the yard, still shouting insults over her shoulder.
Jonty looked gravely at Meg. ‘I’m sorry. I never meant to get you into trouble like this. Do you want me to stay here? If she comes back with Wesley it could get very nasty.’
Meg sighed. ‘No, love, best not,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll just go back to Da’s house. Wesley can have this lot.’ She was dispirited. One disaster seemed to be following another. She considered telling Jonty about the other thing which was on her mind, but decided against it. Not today. She couldn’t bear to pile more trouble on to him and nor could she take any more emotional scenes herself. She might be wrong, any road, she told herself, what with Miles’s accident and Da and all, it could just have been that which had upset her rhythm.
‘You’d better go, love.’ She lifted her face to his for his kiss, feeling incredibly tired.
‘How can I go, leaving you to face all this?’
‘Go on, Jonty. I’ll meet you tomorrow, if you like.’
‘You’re sure you’ll be all right? Will Jackie be at home? Promise me you’ll go to your aunt’s place if he’s not. I don’t want you facing those two on your own.’
Meg smiled gently, knowing she was better equipped to face Wesley and Sally than he was. Jonty was such a gentleman, a gentleman born, she thought fondly. He wanted to protect her.