Vincent had taken up his position a few yards down the lane from Appleby Cottage at nine o’clock, and it was now midnight. In spite of his thick coat and the bottle of brandy he’d swigged at now and again, he was frozen to the bone. He’d burrowed himself a spot in the hedgerow next to the stout trunk of an oak tree, just in case his silhouette should show against the white snow if anyone passed by going to or from the farm near Tan Hills Wood, but he hadn’t seen a soul – apart from a pair of wood mice, that was. They’d emerged from their subterranean burrow to forage for whatever they could find in the most sheltered part of the hedgerow, finding a snail each which they’d eaten by nibbling through the shells. He’d watched them for some time until they’d finished their feast and scampered off further afield, and they’d been completely oblivious of his presence. The sleek, quick-witted wood mice were his favourite rodents. He admired their intelligence and the way they gathered and stored food in times of plenty for winter consumption. He’d found a deserted bird’s nest once which had contained over a pint of hidden rose hips. But he wasn’t here to observe mice tonight.
He shifted slightly. His feet were numb with cold and the crystal-clear air was sharp with the scent of frost. The moonlight was bright and with the reflection of the snow it made the night seem almost like daytime.
How long would it have been before he knew Constance had returned to these parts if he hadn’t seen Matt Heath that morning? But he had seen him. He sometimes took a walk round the reservoir in the morning if he wasn’t on duty at the pit till the afternoon shift. He liked observing the birds which lived on the banks and in the water, and it was rare he met anyone. That particular morning the snow had been thick but he’d got in the habit of feeding a family of mallards he’d observed since the summer, and he’d known they would be hoping he’d turn up with the weather so bad. Food was scarce, and they had a whole host of other ducks and birds to compete with.
His mission completed, he’d been leaning against the trunk of a tree which was set up high on the bank which overlooked the main road, trying in vain to light his pipe, when a figure had emerged from the lane opposite. Instinct had caused him to duck down. It didn’t do for any of the men at the pit to know his habits. One of the reasons he hadn’t ended up in a ditch with his head split open was because he was more cunning than they were.
He recognised Matt Heath straight away and his eyes narrowed as he watched the other man pause for a moment and look back whence he had come. What was Heath doing, dressed up in his Sunday best by the look of it, and acting . . . He couldn’t find a word to describe how Heath was acting, but it intrigued him. When Heath turned and walked a few paces back down the lane before once again stopping and turning around, it aroused his curiosity even more. It was a full minute before the man seemed to make up his mind about something and then he strode off towards the village, but when he came to the bend in the road which took him out of sight, he again paused and looked back towards Findon Hill.
Once Heath had disappeared, Vincent waited another ten minutes before emerging on to the main road, and then he quickly crossed it and entered the lane. He knew where it led – he knew every inch of the surrounding countryside. Where the badger sets were; where the foxes lay in specially dug-out places, waiting for a rabbit or hare to stray nearby; the hollow trees where bats hibernated; and which tawny owl had territorial rights over which piece of land. When he had come to the Colonel’s old place and seen smoke rising from the chimney, he’d paused. Heath’s footsteps in the snow had ended at the cottage.
His interest in the identity of the occupant of the cottage had been such that he’d debated whether to go and knock on the front door, but something had stopped him. He’d waited for a while and then left, but within twenty-four hours he’d made it his business to find out who was occupying Appleby Cottage. When he looked back, he had known by Heath’s behaviour who it was though. He’d never forgotten the night umpteen years ago and the look on Constance’s face when she’d appeared out of the crowd waiting at the pit gates and thrown herself into Heath’s arms. Something had been going on even then. Heath might have married the other one but something had been going on with Constance, as sure as eggs were eggs. He should have trusted his instincts, Vincent thought bitterly. Constance looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth but she was cut from the same cloth as her mother. The pair of them had ruined his life with their false smiles and eyes that promised heaven on earth. And look at her now – as shameless as one of the whores he’d visited once upon a time.You didn’t get the sort of money she would have needed to buy Appleby Cottage and live like a lady by being in service, not the sort of service the old couple had insisted she was in, anyway. And she’d hardly been back two minutes and Heath was visiting her on the quiet, as well he might. The old wives would have a field day if they knew he was Constance’s fancy man, and his wife still warm in her grave.
He ground his teeth, his hands bunched into fists at his side. He’d see his day with the pair of them; he’d make them both suffer, but her most of all. Oh aye, he’d take his time with her, make it last until she was begging him to put her out of her misery. She’d laughed at him for the last time.
A movement on the sleeve of his coat caused him to glance down. A web spider was crawling down his arm close to her intricately woven web in the hedgerow, the fine threads of silk highlighted with a dusting of frost. He carefully raised his arm and deposited her on a nearby twig from which she scuttled out of sight. He stared at the web. It was beautiful but deadly for any unwary insects.
Hannah had woven a web stickier than any spider’s, he thought morosely, but unlike an arachnid, her aim had been to torment and frustrate her prey, to make him think she was the answer to all his dreams and desires when really she’d been laughing at him the whole time. Like mother, like daughter.
The lights in Appleby Cottage had long since been extinguished. If Heath was going to make an appearance after his shift he would have done so by now. He’d had several nights on the trot waiting here to catch him, and he didn’t fancy another few hours of freezing his vitals off. But he’d surprise him sooner or later. His hand reached inside his coat, feeling for the handle of the kitchen knife he’d brought with him. He wouldn’t kill him, not quite. He wanted him to witness everything he was going to do to her before he finished him off.
Vincent eased himself slowly out of his hiding-place, flexing his shoulders and rotating his neck a couple of times before he began to walk home.
‘When’s Constance coming again to see you, Gran? Did she say?’ Rebecca was sitting in Ruth’s kitchen having a hot buttered teacake and a cup of tea, and outside the February afternoon was dark and stormy. It was four o’clock but the lamps had already been lit for over an hour, and the whirling snow beat a frenzy against the windowpane. It being a Monday, the first one in February, Rebecca had finished work and brought the latest offering from Mrs Turner – a bag of speckled vegetables and the tail end of a wedge of ham-and-egg pie – straight to her grandma’s. Ruth had told her Constance had been round to see her that morning, her sixth visit since she’d moved back.
‘Sometime later this week, hinny.’ Ruth glanced at her husband who was sitting snoring in his armchair in front of the range, his bad leg resting on one of the kitchen chairs. Quietly she fished in her pinny pocket, bringing out two sovereigns. ‘She slipped me these on the doorstep as she was leaving, on the quiet, you know?’
Rebecca nodded. She didn’t need to be told her granda wouldn’t have liked what he’d have seen as charity if he knew; he was like her da in that respect. He’d protested a bit about the bag of groceries Constance had brought on her last visit, and it was only when Constance had got upset and said she thought he regarded her as family and wasn’t family supposed to be able to support each other, and look at all the times she’d been fed in this kitchen as a bairn, that her granda had softened. Men were funny in that respect. She didn’t understand it. You couldn’t make a meal out of p
ride and it didn’t help with paying the rent either. And why, if you liked someone, did them having money make any difference anyway? Her grandma said Constance hadn’t changed one bit.
As though her grandma had followed her train of thought, Ruth said even more quietly, ‘Your da’s not come round yet then? He’s not been to see her apart from that one time?’
‘No.’
‘It’s upset her, you know. She’s not said owt – well, she wouldn’t, would she – but I can tell. I can’t understand him, I can’t straight. He thought the world of her when she was a bairn, and what does it matter if she’s well set up now? Men! They’re a different breed, lass. And what’s going to happen to your granda, I don’t know. He insists he’s going back to the pit but I can’t see it meself, not with his leg so bad.’ Ruth sighed heavily. Her husband had driven her to distraction since he’d been laid up and he wasn’t helping himself by trying to do too much too quickly. Dr Fallow had laid it on the line the last time he’d called. He’d given him a right dressing-down, telling him he’d put his recovery back weeks by his antics. Where was it all going to end? She knew Matt wouldn’t see them in the workhouse, but if they moved in with him and Rebecca they’d be a millstone round his neck, whatever he said to the contrary. Sighing again, she whispered, ‘I told your da what I thought, about him refusing to see Constance and stopping you from visiting the lass. We had a right two-an’-eight about it.’
‘I know, he told me.’ Rebecca stared at her grandma. She loved her and had always been able to say anything to her, but she didn’t know if she should say what she was about to say. Then, throwing caution to the wind, she leaned forward until her head was almost touching Ruth’s and murmured, ‘Gran, do you think he likes her? You know, in that way? Do you reckon that’s why he’s so funny about her having money now?’
Ruth surveyed her granddaughter for a moment. ‘I have to say it’s crossed my mind, hinny. Would you mind if that was so?’
‘Mind? No. Why should I mind?’
‘Well, with your mam an’ all.’
‘Oh, Gran.’ Rebecca’s voice carried a thread of irritation. ‘You know how it was between Mam and Da. They never got on, let’s be honest. In fact, they couldn’t stand each other half the time.’
‘Rebecca!’
‘They didn’t, Gran, and you know it. And . . .’ Rebecca paused a moment. There was frankness and there was frankness and she didn’t know how her grandma would take this next bit. ‘I was born very early after they were wed, wasn’t I?’
‘Rebecca.’ Now Ruth was truly shocked. ‘You came early – you were premature, that’s all. By all the saints, lass, what have you been thinking?’
‘That they had to get married because they’d jumped the gun,’ Rebecca answered honestly. ‘Not because they really wanted to.’
‘Dear gussy.’ Ruth fanned herself with her pinny.
‘Can you truthfully say you’ve never suspected anything?’
Ruth was at a loss. This granddaughter of hers came out with such things, it would never have done in her day. She stared at Rebecca. Of course she’d had her misgivings. Rebecca had been such a bonny plump babbie for a premature child. She had seen one or two of them in her time and they’d mostly resembled skinned rabbits for the first month or two of their lives, bless’em. Scrawny arms and legs with their feet and hands looking too big for the rest of them. Rebecca had been a little dumpling – you could never have called her underweight.
She swallowed before managing to mutter, ‘Ee, lass, you shouldn’t say such things. Your da would have a blue fit if he heard that.’
Ignoring this, Rebecca went on, ‘And if that was the case, if Mam suddenly found herself expecting, it could well have started them off on the wrong foot, so to speak. Do you know what I mean, Gran? Perhaps they resented it. Both of them.’
Helplessly, Ruth picked up her tea and swigged it down scalding hot. Whatever next?
‘That’s what I think anyway,’ Rebecca said firmly.
‘Your mam and your da have always loved you very much, lass. You know that, don’t you?’ Ruth managed weakly.
Rebecca nodded. ‘Just not each other,’ she said sadly.
‘Oh, hinny. Don’t get upset.’
‘Maybe Constance was the person Da was supposed to marry and there was someone else meant for Mam. Larry was saying the other night that he believes we all have several lives mapped out for us, like a crossroads with streets going in different directions, and it’s up to us which one we choose. Sometimes it’s the right one but sometimes we go down the wrong street, and then . . .’ Rebecca shrugged.
Ruth stared at her granddaughter. ‘I’ve never heard such codswallop.’
Rebecca grinned. ‘That’s what he thinks anyway.’
‘Well, I think—’
But Rebecca never got to hear what her grandma thought. There was a terrific thump on the back door which brought her granda shooting up in his chair and cursing when it pained his leg, and then Mrs Burns from two doors down was shouting, ‘Ruth, there’s a fall, lass. There’s a fall!’
And from that moment everything else was unimportant.
Chapter 23
The sound he had hoped never to hear again in the rest of his life was still ringing in Matt’s ears. A second after it had started he’d found himself flying through the air and then his head had hit rock and he must have passed out. He lay in the pitch blackness wondering if he still had two arms and two legs, his mouth filled with dirt and his head aching worse than any hangover.
The air was thick with a mixture of grit and coaldust as slowly he rolled over on to his back and then sat up, spitting out as much of the dirt that was choking him as he could. He didn’t need to be told that the roof had come down; it was only a matter of how bad the fall was. Nearly all the big pit disasters were caused by gas explosions. It took no more than a hewer’s pick to release a pocket, and in the sort of bad weather they’d been having lately the atmospheric pressure was low so more gas would be about, especially firedamp. Bearing in mind that only a few lungfuls of firedamp could kill a man and it was lighter than air, he didn’t stand up. He thought the blast had come from behind him, from the direction of the mothergate, and the shift had been moving inbye towards the tailgate.
Matt had been one of the first in the group of men. George had been in front of him, but Andrew and his sons, Jed and Toby, along with George’s three lads, had been messing about having an argument about their respective football teams whilst they’d collected their lamps and hadn’t been in the first cage to descend. He and George had gone on without them, tired of the argument which was a familiar one and never got anywhere. A bit like the football teams concerned.
He tried to call George’s name but his mouth and throat were so caked with dust it took two attempts before he could manage it, and then there was a muffled groan at the side of him. It took another few minutes to establish there were five of them in the pocket of road where the roof still held. It had come down behind and in front of them but the main fall had been behind them where the rest of the shift had been following. George had become silent after this. From what Matt could make out in the blackness his brother was bleeding heavily from a head wound; his hair was matted and sticky, and from his cautious exploration there was a pool beneath his head. Matt had taken off his own shirt and wrapped it round George’s head; it was all he could do.
Apart from George there was one other man injured; Reg had been behind Matt in the roadway and one of his legs was pinned beneath a large slab of rock. Matt and the other two, Stan and Monty Griffiths who were brothers, had attempted to lift it off him but they couldn’t budge it and had had to admit defeat. The three of them, panting with their efforts, sank down to the floor; the Griffiths brothers either side of Reg, and Matt next to George who was still silent. Fearfully Matt felt inside his brother’s coat and under his shirt for the beat of his heart. It was there but faint and when he patted his face, saying, ‘George? George, come on, m
an, wake up,’ there was no answer.
‘How is he, Matt?’ one of the brothers asked.
‘Not good.’ He couldn’t say any more, he didn’t want to start blubbing like a big lassie.
‘Don’t worry, man. He’s a tough old bird, is George. He’ll be all right. They’ll be coming for us soon.’
Aye, but how long would it take the rescue team to work through the who-knew-how-thick wall of stone and coal and pit-props separating them from life-giving air? And what about the rest of them? Andrew and his sons, George’s lads and the others? Had they been burned alive or crushed and suffocated under tons of rock? Sacriston Colliery was like many others in the Durham coalfield. So much coal had been taken out of it and so many long roadways cut, that subsidence was an ever-present danger along with everything else. They all knew it and lived with it.
As he sat in the darkness listening to Stan and Monty’s low voices chivying Reg along now and again, Matt wondered why the fear which had been with him at the back of his mind since the last fall wasn’t paramount. He’d had nightmares about this happening for years, but maybe that was it. It had happened, the thing he’d been waiting for, and the sixth sense or premonition, call it what you will, had been fulfilled. And he really wouldn’t have minded so much if it hadn’t been for Constance’s return to Sacriston.
He breathed deeply before reminding himself he was using up precious oxygen that way.
For years he’d thought there was no chance of seeing her again. She had risen so high – why would she bother to come home now her grandma had gone? And if she did, he’d expected it to be a flying visit to see Molly and her other relatives.
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