Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Do as Mam says,’ Louie ordered firmly. ‘Hildy, take Sadie upstairs.’

  When they had gone her mother whispered, ‘She’s in the front room. She came about two hours ago. Your father was here. By, what a shock he had. He’s gone to the chapel to prepare for his service tomorrow, not a word said.’

  ‘Mam, who’s in the front room?’ Louie sat down on the arm of her chair. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘She says she’s called Iris Ramshaw.’ Her mother took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. ‘She turns up here bold as brass demanding to see our Davie.’ Louie’s heart sank as the story unfolded. ‘Said she’d found out where he lives from the store grocer and she won’t go until she sees him. Well, your father wanted to know exactly who she was.’

  ‘Well?’ Louie held her breath, the suspense of having Davie’s secret girlfriend sitting just feet away behind the closed door proving unbearable. ‘Tell me what she’s like, Mam.’

  ‘Her father runs a public house in Durham.’ Fanny shuddered as she spoke. ‘You can imagine what your father thought of that. He stormed out the door and he hasn’t been back since. I mean, Louie, that’s not the place to get yourself a wife.’

  ‘Has she had anything to eat?’ Louie was immediately practical. If there was going to be a domestic crisis they might as well all face it on a full stomach. Her mother looked blank for a moment.

  ‘I gave her a cup of tea an hour ago, but she hardly touched it.’

  Louie, able to wait no longer, marched into the parlour. Iris was sitting in the half-gloom, back erect on the horsehair sofa. The room smelt cold and unused with no fire in the grate.

  ‘I’m Davie’s sister, Louie,’ she said to the shadowy figure. ‘Can I get you something to eat?’ There was no reply. ‘I’ll make you a sandwich anyway and a cup of tea. How do you like yours?’

  ‘I’ll do without, thank you,’ Iris replied quietly.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Louie cajoled. ‘You’ve been here hours and not had enough to keep a mouse going.’ Iris leaned forward and in the light from the window Louie saw her smile. She had a lovely oval face with wavy hair that shone auburn at the edges.

  ‘You’re like Davie,’ she said. ‘I like my tea without sugar, thanks.’

  By the time Davie finally trudged down Hawthorn Street, his bad leg was aching with the fatigue of the walk from Durham. He braced himself for his father’s wrath, knowing he would think the worst of him and not believe his story about missing the bus. Davie hardly cared; he just wanted to lie down and rest his throbbing leg.

  To his astonishment, most of the family were still gathered in the kitchen when he hobbled in the back door. There was a pot of tea on the table and the heel of a loaf of bread reminding him how hungry he was.

  ‘By, I’d love a cup o’ tea,’ he said breezily, thinking it best to go on the attack first. ‘Any pie left, Louie?’ He glanced at his sister for support. She gave him a frosty look and he wondered in dread whether she had told them about his escapade in the river. Looking round he saw both brothers turn away awkwardly, his father’s face thunderous.

  His mother broke the silence. ‘You’ve got a visitor, Davie.’

  ‘Stand up, young woman,’ his father added in his loud preaching voice, ‘and tell him why you’re here.’

  In a dark corner of the room, Iris stood up. Davie’s stomach lurched to see her, his mouth dropping open in disbelief.

  ‘Iris,’ he gulped, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘So you admit you know her?’ his father barked.

  ‘Aye, of course I know her,’ Davie became defiant at his father’s implied disapproval. ‘She’s the lass I’ve been seeing in Durham.’

  ‘So it’s true.’ Jacob Kirkup rapped the table with his knuckles.

  ‘Oh, Davie,’ his mother sighed.

  ‘And why shouldn’t it be true? Iris is a grand lass and just as good as any of you.’ Davie turned to Iris. ‘I tried to see you in Durham today - that’s where I’ve been. I missed the bus home.’ Iris gave him a nervous smile; she looked so pale, Davie thought.

  ‘Don’t you compare your mother and sister to this woman,’ his father barked.

  ‘Just tell the lad.’ Eb spoke up, glaring at his father. ‘Keep the sermon for later.’ His father looked at him with indignation.

  ‘Davie,’ Iris interrupted, finding her voice at last, ‘I came to tell you.’

  ‘Tell me what?’ Davie’s eyes were full of concern.

  ‘I’m expecting.’

  ‘Expecting?’ Davie repeated, quite astounded.

  ‘She’s going to have your bastard.’ His father’s voice was more disappointed than angry. There was a tense silence while they waited for his reaction.

  Davie swallowed down his shock.

  There won’t be any bastard,’ he said resolutely. ‘Iris and I are going to be married.’

  Chapter Six

  Eleanor, alone in the dining room, toyed with her kedgeree. Reginald had breakfasted early and gone to meet Hopkinson, the mines agent, and her father was spending the weekend with his shipping friends the Swainsons, at their Northumberland country house. Beatrice was in Scotland, or was it London? Eleanor could not recall. She pushed away her plate, rose and told Bridget her maid that she was going out for a walk.

  Taking her ebony walking stick from the elephant’s-foot holder in the hallway, Eleanor headed aimlessly past the glasshouses and the walled garden and found herself taking refuge in the water garden with its languid green pools and dribbling stone fountains hidden among the thick overhanging trees and rhododendron bushes. As children, she and Rupert had played endless games of hide and seek in these woods, along with their friends Isobel and Reginald.

  ‘Reginald,’ Eleanor sighed aloud. Reginald thought she was pregnant and she was carrying on the pretence because she did not have the strength to tell him the truth. When she did not eat and went straight up to bed after dinner he gave her a possessive kiss on her head, as if she were a child, and told her to rest. It was true her monthly periods had stopped, but Eleanor knew she was not carrying Reginald’s longed-for son. Her belly was shrivelled and barren, like the rest of her, she thought with self-loathing. There was nothing in her life that seemed able to lift her from her mental and physical fatigue, not even the concerned friendship of the Joices. She had no appetite for anything any more.

  Summer was drifting on and soon she would have to tell Reginald that there might never be any hope of a child. They had tried and failed; she had failed. God did not mean them to have children. Eleanor no longer knew what was the purpose of her life.

  Perhaps Reginald would be relieved that he would not have to visit her stark room at night. She knew he found her bedroom a depressing place, but its black furniture and white walls expressed better than words how she felt about her colourless life.

  Crossing the stile above the waterfall she stepped into open fields and kept on walking. Breathless now, she halted every few yards to shield her eyes and squint over the ripe, rustling corn fields spread below, and to listen to the sounds of sheep munching the turf around her on the moor. Gaining the top of Highfell Common she could look into the valley that held Whitton Grange. It was hazy with smoke from scores of coal fires burning away on this hot August day, obscuring the lines of brick houses and the dark sentinels that were the Beatrice and Eleanor pitheads.

  An image of Hilda Kirkup, the miner’s daughter with a head bursting with ideas and a zest for life, came into her own mind. How could this squalid village have given birth to such a vivid imagination, while she, with all the advantages of privilege and a good education, was bereft of a single original thought? Reginald still believed their class was born to rule because nature had bestowed on them a higher intelligence. But the ruling class had led all those young men into war with Germany, and what could have been more stupid than that?

  Eleanor stopped and fingered the small volume of poems she carried in her pocket. She would go now and hand i
t to Isobel for Hilda to read and enjoy. Greenbrae lay like a doll’s house on the edge of the dene far below; it would take half an hour at her slow pace. Eleanor set off for the woods that confined Whitton Grange to the valley floor.

  ***

  Hilda and Eb sat in companionable silence against the rough wooden fence that marked their allotment. Not for the first time Eb had slipped the book of war poems by Wilfred Owen out of its brown paper wrapper and edged haltingly across the bleak and angry words. As Hilda immersed herself in her novel he read again ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’.

  ‘What’s a pall, Hildy?’ he asked diffidently.

  ‘What’s a what?’ she asked, her finger keeping her place in the book as she looked up.

  Eb read the line.’ “The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall”, it says here.’

  ‘It’s the cloth they put over a coffin,’ Hilda explained. ‘It means the soldiers that died and didn’t have a proper funeral will still be remembered by the lasses that miss them.’

  Eb nodded and bent his head to read on. ‘Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.’ That last line haunted him. The other poems, with their graphic descriptions of the horror of the trenches that conjured up the very smell of death, were too much for him to bear. He could not read them. But this poem was simple and sad; it opened up a crack of light on his memory of the war and through it he was able to remember the friends who had not come back.

  He started and dropped the book at the scream that rang through the woods just to the left of them. Hilda jumped, her eyes wide. Eb scrambled to his feet and vaulted over the fence. As he ran along the path into the woods a pheasant came flapping out of the trees and skirted the top of the corn in the neighbouring field. Emerging after it was a fragile figure in a cream dress and a short-brimmed black hat, walking with the aid of a stick. As she came out of the shade he recognised her pale thin face and dark-ringed eyes.

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Seward-Scott?’ he asked, seeing how her breath was wheezing and laboured. She stared at him oddly as if he had no right to speak, and then her face changed as she smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause alarm,’ she apologised. ‘It was that bird. It just flew up in front of me and I screamed. Quite ridiculous.’ She laughed falsely, embarrassed to have been heard.

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Eb felt at a loss as to what else to say. When the lady from the big house had visited them in their own home he had not been the least bit in awe of her. But here out in the open on her estate, he was acutely aware of the gulf that divided them, and to his annoyance found himself blushing like a schoolboy.

  ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ Eleanor asked, unsure.

  ‘Eb Kirkup, ma’am,’ he answered, lifting his cap and scratching his head self-consciously.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Eleanor smiled at him again. ‘Hilda’s brother. How is your sister?’ Before Eb could answer, Hilda ran up, having come round through the allotment gate.

  ‘It’s you, Mrs Reginald.’ Hilda beamed in delight.

  ‘Yes, Hilda, it’s me.’ Eleanor smiled with pleasure at the girl’s open enthusiasm. ‘I have something for you, as a matter of fact. I was on my way to Miss Joice’s house—’ Abruptly she stopped, glancing warily at Eb, wondering if she should mention the books in front of him.

  ‘Oh, Eb’s canny,’ Hilda assured her. ‘He knows about my books and reading.’

  ‘Good,’ Eleanor said with relief and pulled the volume of verse from the pocket of her thin lace jacket. ‘It’s Yeats, he’s an Irish poet.’

  ‘Thank you, miss.’ Hilda took the book reverently. ‘I’ve nearly finished Wuthering Heights. Is it going to have a sad ending? Eb and me were reading in the allotment. We’ve got some of Louie’s shortbread with us, would you like some?’

  Eb looked at his sister in astonished annoyance; he did not want anyone to spoil the quiet of their morning, especially this Seward woman. His heart sank when Eleanor replied, ‘That’s most kind of you, Hilda.’

  Hilda led the way back excitedly to the allotment. Eb glanced around to make sure no neighbour was watching. There was only old Mr Stephenson nearby, pottering about behind a veil of sweet peas. Eb heard the pitman’s habitual cough and spit as he carried on unaware of the nugget of gossip that lay within his grasp.

  Eleanor picked up the book Eb had been reading before he had time to hide it.

  ‘What do you think of Wilfred Owen?’ she asked him directly. Eb tugged uncomfortably at his blond moustache and shrugged.

  ‘My brother doesn’t like to talk about the war, miss,’ Hilda answered protectively.

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’ Eleanor found herself apologising again to the tall miner with the impassive fair face. He was ill at ease with her, his sharp blue eyes dodging away from hers every time she met them. As Hilda disappeared inside the corrugated hut she tried to explain.

  ‘You probably think I shouldn’t have lent such harrowing poems to Hilda. But then how can the young learn how terrible war is if they don’t read such things?’

  ‘A poem can’t ever tell how terrible it was,’ Eb replied, anger igniting . What did this woman know of war, cocooned as she had been in a beautiful house far from the mud and stench and agony of the Front?

  ‘No, you are right,’ Eleanor admitted humbly. ‘I can never understand what men like you went through. But when I read the accounts of soldiers like Owen I believe war is a horrible evil that must never be allowed to happen again.’ She fixed her dark eyes on his face. ‘So many friends lost - so pointless. I lost a brother who meant the world to me,’ she added softly.

  Eb was taken aback by her quiet passion; the things she said echoed his own hidden, unexpressed feelings. Suddenly his anger evaporated. In her face he saw a glimpse of her brother Rupert, though her look was reflective and world-weary while his had been full of boyish zeal. She had old eyes, he thought, under the thick, dark brows.

  ‘So you’re a pacifist,’ Eb said, pulling out for her a low stool that he had used below ground.

  ‘Isn’t everyone now?’ Eleanor countered. ‘Even the old warmongers don’t have the stomach for fighting any more. Everyone’s happy to drink cocktails and make money these days as if none of it ever happened.’ Eb was surprised by the bitterness in her voice.

  ‘Not all of us are making money,’ Eb grunted, glancing at her silk dress with the lacy collar and beaded front, ‘or drinking cocktails.’

  ‘No, how stupid.’ Eleanor’s pallid cheeks flushed pink at the edges. ‘There I go again, saying the wrong thing.’

  For all she knew, this sturdy man in his grubby striped shirt and ragged necktie was not working at all. Perhaps that was why his face and forearms were weathered from the sun instead of showing the grey pallor of most colliers. There was an awkward pause, then Hilda appeared from the hut with shortbread and a bottle of homemade lemonade. Eb was embarrassed by the frugal offering, although the shortbread had been made as a treat. But their guest accepted the proffered biscuit gracefully as if she was always served shortbread off old newspaper.

  ‘And are you looking forward to the start of term, Hilda?’ Eleanor asked the girl.

  ‘Yes, miss.’ Hilda squatted at Eleanor’s feet and watched her eat. ‘Our Louie’ll be glad to have me out from under her feet too,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not very handy at cooking and cleaning and the like.’

  ‘Hildy would have her nose stuck in a book all day long if she could,’ Eb said gruffly.

  ‘Don’t you approve of girls reading?’ Eleanor eyed him.

  ‘Oh, Eb likes books too, miss,’ Hilda answered for him. ‘He gets me to read to him while he digs the garden.’

  ‘Helps pass the time,’ Eb mumbled, ‘and keeps Hildy out of my way.’

  ‘Of course.’ Eleanor bit on the shortbread, amused by Eb’s bashfulness.

  ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘it’s a shame Hildy has to leave school at Christmas, seeing as she likes learning so
much. It was different for the rest of us - couldn’t wait to leave school and start work. But our Hildy’s got more brains than the rest of us put together.’

  The young girl smiled at her brother’s description.

  ‘Why should you leave school, Hilda?’ Eleanor asked, concerned. ‘Miss Joice says you are her best pupil and I can well believe it.’

  ‘I’ll be fourteen, miss,’ Hilda answered.

  ‘But surely you can stay on longer? You could be a teacher or anything you wanted if you persevered at school,’ Eleanor urged.

  Hilda looked at her in surprise at the fanciful suggestion. ‘Mam says I’ll have to find work - maybes domestic work in Durham if I’m lucky.’

  Eb saw Eleanor’s slim face crease in perplexity.

  ‘We can’t afford to send Hildy to the grammar school in Durham - what with the train fares and the uniform - even though she won a scholarship at eleven. Anyways, my father doesn’t hold much with girls having an education. Hildy will be needed at home or to bring in a wage if she can.’

  Hilda sighed. ‘It’s worse now, what with our Davie and his new wife Iris living with us and a bairn on the way—’

  ‘Davie’s married?’ Eleanor asked in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ Hilda nodded, ‘last month. Iris is canny, but she doesn’t lend much of a hand. And the baby will be with us after the New Year and you know what a handful they can be—’

  ‘That’s enough, Hildy,’ Eb warned. He slid Eleanor a look and saw spots of pink grow along her prominent cheekbones. Hilda was unaware of the embarrassment she had caused. All at once her face lit up with an idea.

  ‘Miss, d’you think you might find me a place up at the big house?’

  ‘Hilda, mind your manners!’ Eb protested.

  ‘The domestic arrangements are not my concern, Hilda,’ Eleanor answered, flustered. ‘I leave such things up to the housekeeper, Mrs Robertson. Perhaps you would care to write to her - I would put in a good word,’ she added hastily, seeing the girl’s downcast expression.

  ‘Thank you, miss.’ Hilda brightened. ‘Mam would be so pleased if I went to work at the big house like she did.’