When Tilly finally put the cup down on the seat beside her, he said quietly, ‘How long has it been going on? Or perhaps I should ask if it ever stopped?’
‘It did stop,’ she said quickly. ‘When we got wed it was over, I swear it, and for years it remained like that, but when I went to work for him again . . .’ She looked down at her hands gripped together in her lap, the knuckles showing up like bleached bones. ‘I’ve no excuse, Matt. I know that.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘No.’ It was definite. ‘I thought I did once, when I was a young lass, but no.’ She drew in a long breath, raising her head and glancing quickly at him before looking down at her hands once more. ‘You probably won’t believe this, and I don’t blame you, but before I thought I was – was pregnant, I’d told him I wanted nothing more to do with him in that way. I’d finished it, once and for all.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me – in the early days, I mean? Admit you’d tricked me into marrying you? Why did you keep up the pretence even after you knew I knew?’ It was something that had puzzled him for years.
Colour suffused her thin cheeks then ebbed almost immediately. ‘At first I was frightened.’ She gulped, her hands twisting in her lap before becoming still once more. ‘And I thought if I kept to my story you just might believe me. Stupid, I know. But after a while it wasn’t that, but because—’
‘Because what?’
‘I – I realised I loved you and I knew you would never love me if I told you the truth.’
Matt put a hand to his mouth and rubbed it slowly, pulling his lips first one way and then the other. Dear gussy, what a mess they’d made of things. What an unholy mess.
‘I knew you wanted Constance.You did want her, didn’t you?’ And then before he could reply she went on,‘Not that that matters, not now, but at the time I imagined if I told you about Rupert you’d go looking for her. I hated you and I loved you and. . .’ She shook her head. ‘And time went on and I couldn’t back down, I suppose.’ She leaned against the high wooden back of the seat, her voice but a whisper as she said, ‘I couldn’t believe you’d keep it up, the not touching me, not after how you’d been when we were courting. I thought you’d come round eventually.’
There was something nagging at the back of his mind and then he realised what it was. ‘You said you thought you were expecting again. You’re not then? There’s no bairn?’
‘No, there’s no bairn,’ she said flatly.
‘So why tell me? Not just about tonight but any of it?’
‘The midwife examined me.’ Her voice expressed a kind of terror. ‘She said I’m ill, that I need to see a doctor. This’ – she touched her stomach and for the first time he noticed a roundness that was at odds with the thinness of the rest of her – ‘is a growth. That’s what she said.’
He stared at her. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I haven’t felt right for a long time but in the spring it got worse. I – I think she’s right.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you go and see the quack before?’
‘I don’t know. Some days I didn’t feel so bad and then I’d tell myself I was all right. Other times I put it down to – to women’s trouble. I thought it would pass.’
‘You thought it would pass.’ He repeated her words.
‘You know me, I don’t like doctors,’ she said defensively. ‘If you’re not sick before you see them you are after, the things they put in your head, and all to sell you a bottle of medicine that’s coloured water, like as not.’
‘Tilly—’ He stopped abruptly, and when he next spoke the note of exasperation was gone. ‘You’re seeing Doctor Fallow tomorrow. He might be young but that’s to his advantage. He’s fresh out of medical school apparently and full of all the newfangled ideas and advances that are happening.’
She didn’t reply immediately, and when she did speak it was to say very quietly, ‘I’m frightened, Matt.’
Again he stared at her in the dim light from the oil lamp in the middle of the kitchen table. It was probably a trick of the shadows but her eyes looked lifeless, like a corpse’s in her white face. He wanted to say there was nothing to worry about, but it wasn’t a night for useless platitudes. He wondered how it was that his anger had vanished, to be replaced by a wish to comfort as he said softly, ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
The look of surprise on her face heaped coals of fire on his head. Still more were added when she murmured tremblingly, ‘Would you? Would you come?’
He nodded. The need to say he was sorry for how he had behaved towards her over the years was strong, but under the circumstances it would smack too much of the hypocrite. Anyway, as his mam was fond of saying, actions speak louder than words. He would see her through this, however it turned out. He owed her that at least. He owed her a lot more but it was too late to turn back the clock, and maybe he wouldn’t act any differently if it was possible, being the pig-headed man he was.
His voice even softer, he said, ‘Come on, lass. Let’s get you to bed. You look all done in.’
Chapter 18
Two months later, on a bitterly cold November day when the cavalry were called to ride out to restore order in Welsh coal-fields, Tilly Heath died. According to Dr Fallow, the disease had gone into her liver, which had precipitated her sudden end. And this, the young doctor said privately to Matt, was actually a blessing in disguise. He had seen people linger on for months in unbearable pain and anguish, and Tilly had been spared that.
Matt knew the doctor meant well but he had looked into the dead face of his wife and his heart had cried out in protest, a remorse gripping him that was comparable with nothing that he had felt in his life before. Even the torments of his love for Constance paled before this terrible regret and guilt. He had made Tilly’s life miserable for sixteen years.
True, he had provided for her and unlike some men he knew he had never asked her to account for every penny of the housekeeping he gave her each week, or quibbled if she bought this or that for herself or Rebecca. Indeed, compared to most of the women hereabouts she had lived very comfortably. With having only the one bairn it had been rare they had had to scrimp and save or go without, and he had often worked double shifts to make sure they had money put by for the rent and food should he fall ill for a bit or one of the strikes drag on. But that was just material wellbeing. And right now it didn’t mean a jot.
He had been holding Tilly’s hand and talking to her when she had slipped away in the middle of the night, although according to the doctor she had been unable to hear or feel anything since she’d fallen into a coma two days before. Nevertheless with his conscience crying loud he had sat in a chair by the bed every moment when he wasn’t at work, dozing now and again but most of the time pouring out his heart in a way he had to acknowledge he would never have done if she had been conscious. He had cared for her the best he could since the morning after her visit to Chester Le Street. Dr Fallow had confirmed the midwife’s diagnosis and Tilly had gone rapidly downhill. It was as though in knowing what was wrong, her body had given up.
And now she had gone. It was too late to make amends, too late to start afresh. He had known she wanted more bairns in the early days and he had deprived her of that, along with so many other things.
Rebecca cried when he woke her in the morning with a cup of tea and told her the news, and she continued crying for most of that day. When she was still crying the next day after a sleepless night, Matt called Dr Fallow to the house. The doctor spent a few minutes alone with Rebecca and then came downstairs to where Matt was waiting in the kitchen.
‘I’ve given her a strong sedative. She should sleep for a good few hours once it’s taken effect, but you might like to have a chat with her in a moment before she goes to sleep. It’s only natural she is upset about her mother, but I feel there’s something more bothering her – something she needs to get off her chest. Are the two of you close?’
‘Yes. No.’ Matt shook his head to clear his min
d. ‘What I mean is, we were up until a while ago. There’s a lad she likes and who likes her, it caused a bit of bother as her mother and I didn’t think she was old enough to start courting. But aye, I’d say me an’ the bairn are close.’
Dr Fallow placed a gentle hand on his arm. ‘Rebecca is a young woman, Mr Heath, not a child. And young women can be emotional, very emotional. It might be as well to remember that when you speak to her.’
Matt saw the doctor out, then stood in the hall for a moment, looking up the stairs. He’d got Tilly laid out in the front room and Rebecca beside herself upstairs. What had happened to their humdrum going-on? And that about Rebecca being a young woman; what had the doctor meant by that? He didn’t think she could be . . . His heart stopped and then raced so fast the blood thundered in his ears. No, no. Rebecca was a good girl.
But bonny, bonny as a summer’s day, and lads would always be lads. Maybe they’d all but thrown her into Larry Alridge’s arms by taking the stance they had? And with Tilly being so poorly he hadn’t had time to concentrate on anything else over the last couple of months. Come to think of it, Rebecca had flitted about the place like a silent little shadow when she hadn’t been taking a turn with her mam, once she was back from the shop.
He took the stairs two at a time but stopped on the tiny landing to compose himself before he tapped on the door. Her dull, ‘Come in,’ had him swallowing against the panic gripping his vitals.
‘Doctor Fallow said he’s given you something to help you sleep.’ He smiled a brittle smile. She looked so small lying there in the narrow iron bed as though in contradiction of Dr Fallow’s statement that she was a young woman. But the doctor was right. Rebecca would be seventeen soon and Tilly had already been seduced by that piece of scum in the post office by then. She had been barely fifteen when he had first taken her. Fifteen. Matt had wanted to go round and smash the postmaster’s face in when Tilly had told him that. And him acting the respectable pillar of the community!
Matt sat down on the chair by the side of the bed, reaching for Rebecca’s hand which remained limply in his. ‘Doctor Fallow thinks there’s something more than this with Mam bothering you, lass. Is he right? You can tell me, you know. Whatever it is.’
For answer she shut her eyes and fear swamped him. It was a moment or two before he could trust his voice to sound normal. Then he said softly, ‘Is that a yes or a no, hinny?’
She mumbled something, and when he bent his head and asked her to repeat herself, there was a long pause before she muttered, ‘I – I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘So there is something?’
Slow, painful tears fell over the dark lashes of her lower lids and she jerked her hand free, turning over on her side away from him. ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’
He drew in a long slow breath, searching for the right words. ‘Is it anything to do with Larry?’ he asked quietly.
‘What?’ Her voice, though muffled, carried a note of surprise.
‘Larry Alridge. I wondered if you’d had an argument or something, or if he’d upset you?’
‘Larry?’ She turned back to him, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightdress. ‘I’ve hardly seen him since Mam was took bad, although he’s walked me home from the shop a few times. He’s waiting till my seventeenth . . .’
Relief robbed him of speech. So it wasn’t that. Thank You, God, thank You. Aware of her eyes on him, he nodded, as though the question had been of little significance. ‘Then what is it?’
‘I can’t – I mean – ’
When she burst into tears again he dropped on to his knees by the bed and gathered her into his arms and he soothed her quietly. ‘There, there, hinny, come on. We’ll get through . . . What?’ He put his ear closer to her face to catch her spluttering words.
Straightening, he raised himself to sit on the side of the bed, still with her head against his chest. ‘Don’t fret, hinny. Of course your mam knew how much you loved her,’ he said gently. ‘Where has all this come from?’
‘But that’s just it, Da.’ She twisted round, raising her streaming eyes to his. ‘I don’t think she did because I didn’t know till she was poorly. We – we never got on, me and Mam.You know we didn’t, and I was horrible to her at times. I – I didn’t like her. I loved her but I didn’t like her. She used to say I always saw your side of things and she was right.’
She buried her face in his chest and above her head Matt shut his eyes. The sins of the parents crippling the children. From a tiny bairn she’d been made to choose between them. Not by him. Oh no, not by him. That was one thing he could say in absolute truthfulness in his defence. But he had been part of the cold war which had damaged this child. And whatever Dr Fallow said, that’s what Rebecca was. A child. His child. It might not have been his seed that brought her into being, but no bairn from his loins could be more his.
‘Listen to me, lass.’ He had to lie now, and lie convincingly if she wasn’t going to be weighed down with guilt for years, maybe the rest of her life. ‘Your mam did know you loved her.’ As she moved restlessly, he put her from him and looked into her face, his hands holding her upper arms. ‘Do you know what she used to say to me? “That lass is a carbon copy of me, that’s why we come up against each other all the time. But it says a lot if you can fight but still love each other”.’
She was quieter now, looking at him, and warming to his theme he went on, ‘Your mam used to say the pair of you would never see eye to eye on anything. She used to laugh about it, hinny, after some disagreement or other. She liked to think you were a chip off her block, that’s how she put it. But she never, ever, doubted you loved her. That I do know.’
‘You – you can’t be sure.’
‘Oh aye, I am. Here . . .’ He reached for the small white Bible Rebecca had been given after her Confirmation, which was kept with a few other books on the shelf above the bed, and placing his hand on the cover, he said, ‘I swear she knew you loved her, hinny, and that she loved you. Before God, I swear it. All right?’
‘Oh, Da.’
Her relief was palpable; the weight had been lifted and that was all that mattered. For a moment he thanked the God he’d just sinned against that she was still young enough to accept the gesture as confirmation of the truth. ‘Now go to sleep with an easy mind, lass. All right? If your mam was back here tomorrow, and well and fit, the two of you would still carry on in the same old way, and to tell you the truth I think she enjoyed it. She was always proud of the fact you’d got a bit of what she called spirit.’
Her smile was absolution for the lies which had tripped out of his mouth, and when she said, ‘Da? Will you stay with me until I go to sleep?’ he nodded.
He sat stroking her forehead as she drifted off almost immediately, and he made sure she was deeply asleep before he went downstairs. It was midday on a Thursday morning. Normally he’d have been at work and Rebecca would be at the shop and Tilly— He put a hand to his brow. He couldn’t think of Tilly.
The kitchen was as warm as toast but he didn’t want its comfort. Knowing that nothing short of an earthquake would rouse Rebecca for a good few hours, he bolted the back door and pulled on his coat and cap before leaving by the front door which he locked behind him. He needed to walk. He would go stark staring mad if he didn’t leave the house for a while and that coffin lying on trestles in the middle of the front room.
The last glories of autumn had faded away and it was a dank, bitterly cold landscape that greeted him as he made his way to Plawsworth Road, turning left into Cross Lane after a while. Open fields stretched either side of him and the season’s dreary hue matched his mood. There had been a sharp frost the night before and the ground was still frozen, the stark, bare trees and grizzled countryside shrouded in a slight mist. Within the empty fields crows glided, emitting their cackling cries, and a number circled noisily overhead as he walked.
When he reached the Cross Lane Bridge he stood for some minutes, gazing blankly in fr
ont of him. Three-quarters of a mile away his da and brothers were grubbing away down a big black hole, as he himself would be doing tomorrow, he thought dully. And all the tomorrows following it. He looked at the blue marks on his hands full of the coaldust he’d take with him to the grave, and felt a moment’s piercing bitter-sweet relief that he didn’t have a son to follow him down the pit. That was one anxiety he hadn’t been called to bear, being responsible for taking another human soul into that hell-hole.
He pulled his muffler closer round his neck as the chill wind blasted his ears, but his lungs expanded as he sucked in the clean cold air. George and Andrew had never felt like he did about the pit, he knew that. They hadn’t been able to wait till they left school and went down like their father, and in spite of their carping and daily grumbles about working conditions and such, he knew neither of them would have wanted anything else. He found that incomprehensible.
Even now, after twenty-six years of being a miner, he still had moments when, deep underground, his bowels seemed to come loose and shake, and he wanted to throw up. The desire to get out, to escape the millions of tons of rock above him would be so strong he would have to shut his eyes and press his arms against his chest to quell the panic. He hadn’t noticed it so much before that first fall umpteen years ago when he’d still been courting Tilly, but after that the fear in him had grown until some days it was a battle to get into the cage and begin the descent into what he privately termed Hades.
He’d tried to bring up how he felt with George and Andrew once when the three of them were having a drink in the Colliery Inn, but they’d looked at him with such blank bewilderment he hadn’t pursued the matter. George had his canaries in a shed in his backyard with an outside wire enclosure attached so they could fly out and sit in the sun when they wanted to, and Andrew had his whippets and his darts, and they were content. As long as they had a few coppers for a drink and their baccy, they didn’t ask for more. He wished he could feel like that.
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