by Maggie Hope
Mrs Pearson ignored this. ‘What did she do?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. She served our family well. My mother thought very highly of her, you know. She misses Hetty terribly.’
The two women stared at him, faces blank.
‘Then why no reference?’
‘My mother is an invalid, she doesn’t have much to do with the running of the house.’ Richard was well aware that this sounded lame. ‘Shall I write a reference?’ he asked.
‘We haven’t any good paper,’ said Maggie. ‘If you want to you can send one, though I doubt Hetty will come here. But she must have done something.’
‘It was nothing to do with you, was it? You weren’t after our lass? I’ve heard of that sort of thing. It happens all the time with our young girls when they go out to place. We tell them to be careful but it’s the young gents, man, they think they have a right—’
‘Mam!’ ejaculated Maggie. ‘That’s enough now.’
The old lady subsided, though she pursed her lips and her face was red with anger.
‘I think I’d better go,’ said Richard, rising to his feet. He wished heartily he had never come. He felt flushed and embarrassed and didn’t know what to say to defend himself. ‘I will send a reference anyway. Good morning to you both.’ He made as dignified an exit as he could manage.
‘You see, our Maggie,’ said Mrs Wearmouth as they watched him walk down the yard and round the corner. ‘If you hadn’t been so blooming hard, Hetty would have come home.’
‘Mam, I wasn’t meself. I haven’t been since Cissy was killed.’
‘Aye. Well, I know that right enough. When I think of that poor lass I get mad as hell, though, and that’s swearing! I’m right fed up of you getting the dismals fretting over Cissy. No matter how much you grieve, you’re not going to bring her back.’
‘I know.’ Maggie picked up the scrubbing brush and turned it over and over on the table, hardly aware of what she was doing. ‘Thomas was stamping mad an’ all when I told him what I’d said to Hetty last time she was here. He kept hoping she would come back but I doubt it. Eeh, Mam, I get such black moods on me and I don’t care what I say when I do.’
‘It’s your time o’ life,’ commented Mrs Wearmouth. She got to her feet and went over to the rubbing board and began rubbing away at Thomas’s pit shirt as though her life depended on it. ‘But still, you had no right to speak to the lass like that. Now you’ve driven her away, and mind, you’ll regret it when you’re getting older an’ you haven’t got a daughter left. Sons isn’t daughters, not by a long chalk.’
‘I wonder where she’s at? Have you any idea, Mam?’
Maggie too got to her feet and began going through the piles of washing on the table before throwing them in the tin bath underneath which was filled with blue water for rinsing. The habit of keeping on working no matter what was ingrained in the two women.
‘No, I haven’t. She hasn’t written to me in many a long day. By, though, lasses! They’re a worry to their mothers from the day they’re born to the day they die,’ said Mrs Wearmouth, illogically contradicting her previous comments on the subject.
Thomas came in from the pit which was working again, although the men were on short time, only three shifts a week. Maggie waited until he had had his dinner and bath before broaching the subject of the visitor.
‘Richard Fortune, it was,’ she said. ‘The lad, like.’
‘A nice smart young lad an’ all,’ observed Mrs Wearmouth. She had washed and dried out the tin bath and now she filled it full of clothes. ‘I’ll just hang this lot out,’ she said, making for the front door and the garden. As she always said, she was not one to interfere in her daughter’s life; she’d be well out of the road while Maggie discussed it with her man.
He listened to what his wife had to say in silence. Then he went over to the high mantelshelf and took down his old pipe and Maggie, well used to his ways, waited.
‘I don’t believe my lass did anything wrong,’ he said at last. ‘Why, she’s been at that place for years now, why would they keep her on if she hadn’t a good character? No, I bet it was the lad was after her and his folks were frightened he would marry her. So Hetty had to suffer.’
Maggie stared at him. He had his pipe going to his satisfaction now and sat back in his chair, puffing at it, but his eyes were thoughtful.
‘I was too hard on her,’ said Maggie. ‘She would have come home if I hadn’t been too hard on her.’
‘I said, didn’t I? She was just a bairn, you can’t blame her for what happened to Cissy. But there,’ he added hastily as his wife showed signs of agitation, jumping up and going over to the window and back again, her face working, ‘it’s a while back now. It’s the living bairn we have to see to, pet. And I tell you what – I’ll have to find her. I’m laid off tomorrow, I’ll go to look for her.’
‘But where, man? We don’t know where to look!’
‘That’s true. But I can take the train to Saltburn, mebbe ask around. You know how she always liked Saltburn.’
‘A waste of money, I think,’ declared Maggie. ‘Why, man, you don’t know where she is really, do you?’
Thomas gave her a hard stare. ‘I’m going, woman,’ he said. ‘I won’t be wasting any money, I’ll go on me bike and you can make me up some bait. Just a sandwich will do.’
‘Oh, I know you think it’s all my fault,’ cried Maggie. ‘But I’ve told you, I couldn’t help meself. Do you think I’ve never wished I could take back the words? Anyroad, hadaway if you want to. Not but what I don’t think biking forty miles to Saltburn and forty miles back isn’t too much, an’ you having to go to work on Wednesday.’
‘Look now,’ Mrs Wearmouth intervened, for she had hung out the washing at breakneck speed and come back in with the empty basket, ‘I have a bit put by. Take your fare home on the train at least. You can take the train, can’t you?’
‘Thanks, Ma,’ said Thomas. He was still looking at Maggie as he spoke, his face grim. ‘But as it happens, I have a bob or two meself. The cavil I’m on’s a good ’un this quarter, even if I am only on short time – a really good seam. We’ve no bairns to keep, have we? Nothing to think on but ourselves.’
Rising to his stockinged feet, he tapped out his pipe on the bar of the fire and replaced it on the mantelshelf. ‘I’m away to bed,’ he declared. ‘An’ mind, Maggie, don’t call me up for supper, not tonight. I want to be up as if for first shift in the morning, get a good start, like.’
He went upstairs and after a minute the women heard the bedsprings creak as he climbed in. Maggie looked at her mother, but Mrs Wearmouth merely shrugged and went back to the dolly tub to finish off the last of the weekly wash. ‘I tell you, our Maggie, if your man gets it into his head to do something there’s no use trying to stop him. Anyroad, he might find the lass. We’ll wait and see.’
‘Yes.’ Maggie cleared the last of the washing from the table and dried it down. ‘Mind,’ she said after a long silence, ‘our Cissy was a little angel, she was. Mebbe too good for this world.’
But her mother had heard her on the same theme so many times over the years she finally lost patience.
‘Aye,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘An’ so’s our Hetty a lovely lass, and she didn’t deserve what happened no more than you did. You know how she loved the bairn!’
‘Mam—’
Whatever Maggie had been going to say, both women stopped glaring at each other and looked up at the ceiling. Thomas was hammering on the floor.
‘Will you two had thee gobs and give a man some peace when he’s come in from the pit? Or will I have to come downstairs an’ shut them for you?’
The women subsided. Thomas had never raised a hand to any of his family in his life; it was not the threat which silenced them. Both were pitmen’s wives, they had been always used to having to creep around the house when their men were off shift. They looked guiltily at each other. It had come to a sorry pass when they had forgotten Thomas needed his sleep
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Chapter 12
Hetty descended from the bus in the village of Smuggler’s Cove and looked around. It was far from the idyllic fishing village she had expected. Yet the fact cheered her somehow. There were the stone houses of an old village all right, but added on to them were rows of late-ninteenth century miners’ houses, very like those at home in Morton Main. She could almost feel herself back there. Besides the two chapels she could see, there was a school and what looked like an inn though it proclaimed itself a coffee house on its faded sign.
The bus turned round and went back along the road past the mine buildings which stood at the entrance to the village. Hetty was alone in the square, apart from a group of urchins who appeared running along the bank of the stream, one with a gull’s feather stuck behind his ear and a tiny homemade bow and arrow. The cowboys chasing him were screaming war-whoops and one was waving a crudely carved wooden gun. Suddenly a door opened and a young woman stepped out and shouted at the boys.
‘Bobby! Jimmy! Come away from that beck. I’ve told you and told you not to play there – you’ll fall in the water as sure as eggs is eggs!’
The leader of the cowboys, a boy of perhaps four years, stopped running. From across the stream Hetty could see his deep sigh of impatience with women.
‘But Mam—’ he began, before his mother interrupted.
‘You do as I tell you, Bobby, or your dad’ll tan the hide off you when he gets in from work. You know that beck’s mucky.’ Hetty had noticed it was a bright orange colour, the banksides and stones stained with it. Everything looked rusty. From the iron workings, she thought, the way a stream by the pit at home was stained black with coal dust.
The boys trooped across a footbridge into the square. Hetty turned to ask the woman if she could direct her to Overmans Terrace, but she had disappeared inside again, the door firmly shut.
A car came into the square and the boys turned to stare; obviously cars were not too common in this little place. They made no effort to move from the middle of the road where they stood and to Hetty it seemed that the car wasn’t slowing down either.
‘Get off the road, boys!’ she shouted, and they turned to stare at her. The car had pulled into the side by the inn. A man got out and went inside. Bobby stuck out his chin belligerently.
‘I don’t have to do what you say,’ he said. ‘You don’t live here.’ But at the same time, he looked over towards his home, obviously fearing his mother had heard. ‘Come on then, lads,’ he said to his followers who were clustered round him, ‘let’s go down on the beach and play.’ He cast a baleful glance at Hetty.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Can you tell me where Overmans Terrace is?’
‘You mean Hoss Muck Terrace,’ stated Bobby. ‘What do you want to know for?’
Before she could answer, one of the smaller boys spoke up, the one with the feather stuck behind his ear, the Indian of their game.
‘I live in Hoss Muck Terrace, missus.’
Hetty smiled at him, a lad of no more than three or four, small and thin, one sock falling down where he’d lost his garter and a hole in the sleeve of his grubby jacket. His eyes were green with dark lashes, though his hair was fair. ‘Will you show me where it is?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘Aw, go on then, we didn’t want to play with you any-road,’ said Bobby. He stepped forward and gave the lad a shove which sent him stumbling into the kerb. Before Hetty could say anything, Bobby and his gang were racing away, streaming along the path to the beach. An off-shift miner, walking down from the pigeon duckets which dotted the hillside, shouted at them, but they swerved round him and were away.
The boy left behind sniffed and wiped his hand across his nose. He stared after the others for a minute. Then he took the feather out of his hair and threw it on the ground. ‘I didn’t want to play with them anyroad.’
‘I’m Hetty Pearson. What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Charlie Hutchins.’
Hetty held out a hand to him. ‘Come on then, Charlie Hutchins, show me where you live.’
The boy thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, refusing to take hold of Hetty’s. But he sniffed again and smiled.
‘Down here,’ he said, and led the way back along the bus route.
Hetty didn’t know how she had missed it. The tin plate on the edge of the small terrace was plain to see: ‘Overmans Terrace’, it read, black on white. The houses were right by the entrance to the pit but were well-built with neat gardens at the front and clean, net-hung windows, sparkling in the sun.
‘Who do you want?’ asked Charlie as they approached. ‘Our house is that one on the end.’
‘I think I want your house, Charlie,’ she said.
‘Do you? Me dad’s in, I’ll tell him.’ He ran ahead and opened the door. ‘Dad, Dad, there’s a lady—’
‘All right, Charlie. Now go out and play. Only half an hour, mind, then your dinner will be ready.’
‘Righto, Dad.’ The lad flashed a grin at Hetty and walked down the path, swinging his bow against the dull grass at the side aimlessly.
‘Come in. Alice said you might be here. Hetty Pearson, isn’t it?’
Hetty stepped over the threshold and into a tiny vestibule with the staircase running straight off it and a door to the right leading into a living room. The room was clean enough and the floor even had a square of proper carpet on it, brown with a fawn floral pattern. There was a chenille cloth on the table with an empty vase in the middle. There were clean but nondescript curtains hanging at the window and a bright fire in the grate. As she entered, a man rose from a well-worn leather armchair by the range. Mr Hutchins, of course. Yet he looked different somehow, younger, in a Fair Isle pullover and corduroy trousers.
‘Sit down, Hetty Pearson,’ he said, indicating the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, a rocker with a flowered cushion on it, just like her dad’s. He wasted no time in getting down to business. ‘It’s a housekeeper I want, you know that? Five shillings a week and your board. If you take the job I’ll expect you to see to the house and the little ’uns. Make my meals when I come in from the pit. Do you think you can do all that? You’re not very old.’ He looked doubtful, and she hastened to reassure him that she was old enough.
‘I can do it. I’m nineteen. My dad’s a miner – a coal miner, that is. I’m used to the men doing shift work.’
‘Of course, Alice said. Well, I’m on night shift all the time,’ he said, ‘so it is quite all right for you to sleep here. At present a girl from the village does that but she’s going to train as a nurse. Next week, in fact.’ He regarded her solemnly and she looked steadily back. He had green eyes, remarkably similar to Charlie’s.
‘Well, that’s good,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I can manage the work.’
‘You haven’t asked about the older children yet,’ he reminded her. ‘They’re at school at the minute, though they’ll be in shortly. There’s Peter, he’s ten, and Audrey, she’s seven. You can stay and have a bite with us if you like, meet them? If you decide to come, when can you start?’
Hetty realised the job was hers, it had been as simple as that. Of course, Alice had talked to him about her. And he evidently didn’t have much time to look about, he had to have someone to stay with the children when he was at work. Briefly she wondered what had happened to his wife.
‘I’ll have to give notice at my lodging. A week, I think.’
‘Can you start tomorrow? I’ll square it with your landlady.’
Hetty felt as though she was being rushed along too swiftly. ‘Well—’
‘Make up your mind, don’t waste my time.’
‘Yes, I can start tomorrow. And really, there’s no need to speak to my landlady. The rent is paid up till the end of the week.’
After all, she would be lucky to get anything else without references, she had found that out since she’d left Fortune Hall. He seemed a decent man, and Alice knew him. Though he was a bit abrupt.
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Riding home on the bus, Hetty had few misgivings. After all, most of the day Mr Hutchins would be in bed; he had only stayed up today to meet her and see to the children’s dinner. But she did regret leaving Saltburn, regretted it greatly as the bus drove down the hill by Cat Nab, the conical hill right next to the beach. It had been used as an ancient burial ground, Mr Jordan had told her. He was very knowledgeable about local history. She looked up at the imposing buildings on the very top of the cliff opposite, the ‘new’ Saltburn built in Victorian times, as opposed to the ancient Saltburn which had once been a haven for smugglers.
Oh, she would be sad to leave it, she would, the jewel streets radiating down to the horseshoe-shaped cliff above the pounding North Sea. She was still downcast at the thought of leaving when she heard her name being called.
‘Hetty! Where have you been? I’ve looked all over for you.’
For half a second she thought it was Richard’s voice, but no, it was Matthew’s. Her pulse raced uncomfortably. She blushed and looked down, remembering the beach hut.
‘Hello, Matthew.’
‘Is that all you have to say? No “Hello, my love, how pleased I am to see you”?’ He took her arm and drew her into the doorway of the chemist’s by the bus stop. ‘I’m pleased to see you, Hetty. I’ve thought of nothing else but seeing you for days.’
Even as he said it, he realised it was true. Once he’d got what he wanted, he had thought he would be bored to death with her. Why, he thought he’d only come here today because he had nothing else to do and he enjoyed deceiving Richard. But seeing her again, he began to wonder.
Richard had pestered him to know where Hetty was, but Matthew had insisted he didn’t know. Well, his brother was such a fool, he’d even gone up to Durham to look for the girl. It was rather fun keeping him guessing. But looking at Hetty now, he wanted her again. There was something about her that he couldn’t fathom and certainly couldn’t forget. At least, not yet.