by Maggie Hope
Thomas got to his feet. ‘You stay where you are, Jack,’ he said. ‘I could do with some practise with a shovel anyroad.’
By, he was a good man was her dad, thought Hetty as she watched his back, which was all of him she could see, rising and falling as he dug away the snow. But when he got back in the bus and sat down beside her, he was panting slightly.
‘I’m out of condition, pet,’ he said, giving her a rueful glance. ‘But never mind, there’s talk of the pit starting up shortly. We’ll get three days only but it’s better than nowt.’
Hetty smiled in delight. ‘Oh, Dad, isn’t that grand?’
‘Aye, grand,’ he said laconically. ‘But I reckon I’ll have to get myself into better condition than this if I want to make any money.’
The bus stopped at the garage and the driver went into the office. The passengers watched anxiously and there was a chorus of groans when he came back out.
‘Sorry, folks,’ he said. ‘I daren’t go no further. There’s the bad bank over to Morton Village and I don’t want to get stuck there. So it’s everybody out, sorry.’
‘Howay then, lass, we might as well get started,’ said Thomas and shouldered the basket box. Together they faced into the wind and tramped up the bank and along the road to Morton Main. But when the pit winding wheel and slag heap appeared mistily through the snow, it was all worth it for Hetty. The snow clung to the slag heap, making it look like a mountain she had seen at the pictures, in the Alps that had been. The winding wheel with the little houses clustered at the bottom could have been Switzerland too, like the overhead railway which took Mary Pickford and her lover to the top of the mountain.
‘Home at last,’ said Thomas, and Hetty came back to Morton Main which after all was just a pit village in Durham with its houses in long terraces. They turned into the yard of the house in Office Street and it was home and her heart filled with love for this place which was lovelier by far than any Alpine village, of course it was.
All the family was gathered in the kitchen, except for Eddie of course. He was making cars in Oxford and rarely managed to get home. But there was Mam and Cissy and Frank, and they clustered round her, and Cissy held out her arms to be held. Hetty hugged her and kissed her and the tears sprang to her eyes.
‘Where’ve you been, Hetty?’ asked Cissy, and Mam laughed and said Cissy was always asking for her, she never forgot. The fire was hot for though the coal allowance had stopped when the men were locked out, Dad and Frank had scavenged the slag heap for small bits of coal that had been thrown away and the blaze was satisfying and warm. They all sat round the old black-leaded range and talked and talked.
Mam had ham broth bubbling away on the gas ring and Hetty had a great bowl of it, with pieces of leek and carrot and turnip floating in it. The leeks and carrots had been grown in the garden but Frank had ‘liberated’ the swede from Farmer Buck’s field, and very nice it was. Mam worried when he brought one in but Frank said the family should come before any farmer’s cattle, and anyroad, surely they wouldn’t miss one measly old turnip?
Hetty had to tell them all about Yorkshire though in truth all she knew was Fortune Hall and the village at the bottom of the hill where most of the men worked in the drift mines, would you believe, or had done when they were working but the depression had hit them an’ all. And they weren’t even coal mines but something called alum and ironstone, which was needed for the steel mills when they were working.
Hetty told them about Christmas at Fortune Hall and how there was a giant Christmas tree in the hall with garlands and lanterns and baubles. How there was a present for everyone under the tree, even for the staff, and she opened her basket box and showed them her Christmas gift. The family was silent for inside the bright wrapping paper were two pairs of black lisle stockings.
After a minute Mam cleared her throat and said, ‘They’ll be very useful, pet.’ Frank and Dad looked at each other and Hetty saw they were scowling.
‘We had a lovely dinner on Christmas Day,’ she said, quickly wrapping the stockings back up and pushing them in her box. ‘And I went to the service in the chapel at three o’clock. Then on the night the family had a party. There was dancing in the hall. They were doing the Charleston, Mam. Just like on the pictures it was.’
Hetty stood up and, humming the tune, danced a few steps, her whole body suddenly alive, hands making circles in the air.
Frank laughed. ‘You look as though you’re washing the windows, our Hetty,’ he scoffed, and she sat down again, deflated.
‘Well, it was nice,’ she said. It had been nice: the electric light flooding the hall as though it were day, the ladies’ dresses, so short and skimpy and in the latest fashion, shimmering as they whirled about, their feet tapping on the parquet flooring which Hetty would have to polish the next day before any of the guests were out of bed. Not that she minded, oh no, she had loved to watch them. And the men in their white ties and elegant tail suits laughing and talking and drinking punch from the bowl on the side table, which Hetty had the job of refilling more and more often as the evening went on. Everything glittered and sparkled and once, when she thought no one was looking, she took a few sips of the punch, and by, it was lovely, all fruity.
‘Go on, Hetty, have some more,’ said a voice in her ear. ‘No one will see, they’re all too busy.’ It was Master Richard. Nervously she pushed the glass behind other abandoned ones on the table.
‘I … I was just about to take the dirty glasses back to the kitchen,’ she murmured, and pulled a tray towards her and started to fill it. Her hands were shaking so badly she knocked a glass on the floor. The record on the gramophone had just come to an end and the splintering sound on the hard floor rang loud and clear. There was a sudden hush.
‘That will come out of your wages, girl,’ said Havelock Fortune, crossing over to her and speaking quietly. Someone put another record on and the music started again. Hetty heard it dimly, a song which always sounded slightly scandalous to her: ‘The Black Bottom’.
‘It was my fault, Father,’ Richard said. ‘I knocked her hand.’
Havelock gave him a level stare then turned to Hetty. ‘Get a dustpan, girl, and clean that up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
As she worked her way round the floor where the dancers were shrieking with laughter now and the dancing was becoming wilder, she lifted her head and saw Matthew Fortune, his arm around a girl as he drew her into the alcove under the sweeping staircase.
‘No, Matt,’ the girl was saying weakly, but she was following his insistent lead, her silvery dress clinging to her body and shimmering even in the shadows. Matt looked up. He saw Hetty’s startled gaze and threw her a dismissive glance, indicating the green baize of the kitchen door. Hetty fled, intimidated. When she returned with the dustpan and brush, she kept her head averted from the alcove under the stairs.
The evening was spoiled for her. Her feet hurt and her head throbbed dully, probably from the alcohol in the punch. She had only had a few sips, but then it was the first time she had ever tasted alcohol. She swept up the pieces of broken glass and took them out to the kitchen and she may as well have been invisible for all the notice the crowd in the hall took of her. Except for Master Richard who smiled at her as she passed.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said to her. ‘It’s Christmas. You’ll be going home in a day or two, won’t you? That will be nice for you.’
Hetty’s forlorn feeling fell away to be replaced by a small glow within her. Yes, she was going home for the New Year, and would see the family again. Would Cissy have forgotten her?
The snow was halfway up the back door when Frank opened it the day after Hetty arrived home, though it was a fine day, cold and crisp with a blue sky and clouds as white as the snow scudding across it in the sharp wind. Hetty dug out a path to the gate, for Frank and Thomas were off with their shovels on their shoulders to offer to dig the paths out for anyone in Old Morton who was willing to pay them a penny for the service.
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Afterwards she went to see if Dorothy was home, and there she was, and the two girls ceased to be adult workers as soon as they told each other their news and then they were bairns again. They got out their old sledges and polished up the runners, which Dad had made from brass stair rods, and went sledging down the road until the gritting cart came along and then they went on to the old pit heaps and sledged down them, pretending they were on an Alpine run. By, it was grand, Hetty thought, there was nowhere like Morton, not anywhere in the world. But then she saw that some of the pitmen had cleared the snow on the far side of the latest slag heap and were grubbing for small coal, their hands red and chapped and their mufflers tied tight around their caps, and her happiness dimmed.
Why didn’t they open the pits? Everybody needed coal, didn’t they? She asked Dorothy what she thought but her friend pulled a face and shook her head.
‘My dad says they only need the miners when there’s a war nowadays,’ she said. ‘They use electric instead of coal.’
‘Let’s go home, it’s dinnertime,’ said Hetty sadly. But when she had filled herself up with broth and Mam’s home-made bread she began to feel happy again and all ready to rush out once more with her sledge.
‘Can I come, Hetty?’ asked Cissy.
Hetty hesitated but her sister looked so anxious that she nodded her head. ‘All right, but mind you do as I say,’ she warned. So Cissy was dressed in her warm coat and hood and her legs encased in button-up leggings which Mam had got on the second-hand stall in Bishop Auckland market. One of Dad’s scarves was tied round her neck and criss-crossed over her chest and she wore the mittens Hetty had knitted her for Christmas with a pair of Frank’s old socks over the top to stop them wearing out.
The pit heap looked too steep when they had Cissy with them so they took the sledge into the field where the pit ponies were kept when the pits weren’t working. The ponies weren’t there, of course, it was too cold. No, they were in the stables up at the farm where it was warm and they had good hay and oats to eat, paid for by the mine owner.
‘A good pony costs a lot of money,’ Dorothy’s dad had said once to Hetty’s. ‘Men can be replaced any time.’
‘Aye, well,’ said Thomas after a short silence, ‘I wouldn’t see the poor beasts hungry meself. It’s not their fault, the state of the world.’
Hetty remembered that as she and Dorothy pulled the sledge with Cissy sitting on it up the slope of the field. It wasn’t too strenuous, a hard frost had already settled on the snow and there was a deep icy crust to it. At the top they turned the sledge round and Dorothy sat in front with Cissy behind her. Hetty pushed and jumped on the back though there was hardly room and she had to put her legs around Cissy. The sledge flew down the bank, faster and faster, and Cissy shrieked. There was a fence at the bottom which separated the field from the edge of the slag heap and it was coming towards them far too fast by Hetty’s reckoning.
‘Watch out, Dorothy!’ she shouted. ‘Turn before you get to the bottom.’ But whether her friend heard she couldn’t tell though Dorothy was pulling as hard as she could on the rope which was supposed to steer the sledge. And the sledge did swerve slightly for it hit a hummock of grass sticking up out of the snow and suddenly Hetty was lying on her back in a deep snow drift, all the wind knocked out of her.
It took a minute or two for her to collect her wits before she realised Cissy had stopped shrieking, and she sat up and pushed the snow aside and saw the men from the heap had abandoned their sacks and were running down to the bottom where the sledge was upended in the snow. And she couldn’t see Cissy, though Dorothy’s red scarf she could see, it was tangled round the runner of the sledge.
‘Cissy!’ Hetty cried as she scrambled to her feet and plunged through the snow, her legs so wobbly that she slipped and slid and fell down and even rolled at one point, and then she slithered to a halt by the group of men.
‘Bloody hell,’ said one of them quietly. ‘The poor bairn.’ He was bending over a bundle about three yards up the slag heap and was feeling it with his hands. Turning to his companions, he said, ‘Gan and alert the safety men. We need the doctor. And someone get the stretcher from the ambulance room.’
‘Howay, pet, this is no place for you,’ a man’s voice said, and Hetty looked up into Mr Cowie’s face – Mr Cowie who lived in Chapel Row and was a marra of her dad.
‘But where’s Cissy, Mr Cowie?’ she whispered. ‘Where is she?’
‘They’re going to take care of her now,’ he answered as he put an arm around her to take her away. But he paused and looked back.
‘That’s not Cissy,’ he muttered to himself. ‘That’s Dorothy James.’
Hetty wrenched herself away from his arm and rushed over to where the men had turned Dorothy over and were brushing the snow from her face. She lay still, her eyes not quite closed, her face unmarked but for the blood beginning to matt her fair hair, just above her right ear.
‘Where’s Cissy, Dorothy?’ Hetty shouted at her. ‘Where’s Cissy?’ She trembled from head to foot, a fierce trembling which shook her head and her teeth and even the slope of the pit heap including the stone by Dorothy’s head which was a peculiar shade of red. And then she saw Cissy: a small round hump in the snow by a post in the fence. She hadn’t been found before because the men didn’t know she was there so they weren’t looking for her, and anyway she was wearing a covering of hard snow like a blanket, only one hand sticking out. It was that which Hetty saw. Frank’s sock was missing, but the mitten which Hetty had knitted was still on the hand.
Mr Cowie picked Hetty up as though she were a baby and carried her round the pit heap and up the bank to the village, and she let him for her brain had stopped working. She couldn’t see anything but the small hillock of snow with the mitten sticking out of it. But when she got to the top of the street she heard Mam’s voice and she was screaming for Cissy. Hetty lifted her head and saw her running up to her and held out her arms to her mam.
‘I’m sorry, Mam, I’m sorry … it was my fault, I shouldn’t have taken her,’ she said. But Maggie didn’t even see her; she ran straight past Hetty and Mr Cowie and on down the bank to where the men were bringing up the stretcher.
‘My bairn, my bairn!’ Mam was moaning and leaning over the bundle lying there, stopping the men who were struggling through the snow until Dad reached her and held her away and Hetty could see that it took all his strength to do it. And then Hetty saw Mrs James running towards them, her mouth open as she struggled for breath, her hair streaming down her back where it had escaped from its pins. She hunched over the second stretcher for a minute and then she turned to Hetty.
‘It was your fault, you young hooligan!’ she said. ‘I always said you’d get my lass into trouble!’ She pushed her face into Hetty’s and the girl shrank back.
‘Steady on, missus,’ said Mr Cowie. ‘It wasn’t the lass’s fault at all, don’t light into her. She’s had a shock an’ all, man, can’t you see that?’
‘A shock? A shock did you say? I’ll give her shock!’ She turned back to Hetty. ‘It should have been you, Hetty Pearson, do you hear me?’
Chapter 5
Hetty thought of that day obsessively for months, even years. Had she been too enthusiastic in pushing the sledge at the top of the bank? Should she have been more careful when Cissy was aboard?
‘A freak accident, Hetty, that’s all it was, pet,’ her father had said. ‘It wasn’t your fault, no, nowt of the sort. The Lord giveth …’ But he had bowed his head and looked away from her into the fire and the arm he had put around her in comfort had fallen away. And Mam – well, Mam didn’t say anything. She simply looked at Hetty and Hetty was sure that Mam blamed her.
Eddie came home. Hetty was out doing the messages at the Co-op store and when she arrived back he was already there, sitting in the kitchen where the curtains were kept drawn against the light in these days before the funeral, according to custom. At first Hetty hadn’t recognised him in his good suit and white sh
irt, she thought it was a new minister who had come to make arrangements for the funeral. Then he had risen to his feet and taken a step towards her.
‘Hetty,’ he’d said, and put his arms around her, and she had laid her head against his chest.
‘Did you remember to buy bread, Hetty?’ asked Mam, and Hetty lifted her head. Mam had hardly spoken to her since the accident and when she did it was always instructions to do this or that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered. Mam always made the bread but now there wasn’t enough fuel for the oven, not when Dad wasn’t going scavenging on the heap. Though the neighbours were good and many a bucket of coal or kindling was left by the yard gate, it wasn’t enough.
‘I’ll walk back with you,’ said Eddie. As they walked down the street to the corner and along the wet and slushy road to the store, they were silent. But then they had to pass the field and Hetty’s eyes were drawn to it. The snow was patchy now and the bank looked very steep.
‘You know,’ said Eddie, taking her arm, ‘I’ve always found it hard to sledge on grass. You too, I suppose. You’d have expected it to be hard going. But the ground was fast because the ponies had eaten the grass down to the bare earth and it had frozen underneath. You weren’t to know, Hetty. Don’t blame yourself, lass.’
She said nothing, she was too full of misery. They got to the store and bought the bread and Hetty managed to avoid most of the eyes that were turned on her, whether in sympathy or blame. Eddie carried the basket home which was something he must have learned to do in Oxfordshire for if any of the boys had seen him with a basket in his hand in Morton Main they would have called, ‘Lassie-lad!’ Hetty thought. Briefly she marvelled that she could think of anything so ordinary at such a time but small, irrelevant thoughts ran through her mind on top of the misery, and maybe if they hadn’t she would have gone completely mad.