Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘They’ve released them,’ he panted. ‘MacGuire brought them back a short time ago.’

  ‘Thank the Lord!’ Fanny Kirkup gasped, and Louie thought her mother would cry in front of them all. She felt a sudden pressure on her own throat, as emotion flooded it; her husband and brothers were safe.

  Moments later Sam and Bomber, Eb and Davie tramped in at the kitchen door, bedraggled but still defiant. There were hugs of relief and tearful reunions in the cramped room. However, the euphoria of their return was soon dispelled when Sam told them that he and Bomber had been charged with police intimidation, and that the others were among those charged with resisting arrest. A subdued silence settled on the room.

  ‘When will you be summonsed?’ Samuel Ritson asked his son, voicing the concern of them all.

  ‘A couple of weeks.’ Sam let out a heavy sigh. He felt such a turmoil of anger at the police, and guilt towards Louie for the obvious distress this had brought her, that he could hardly look her in the face.

  ‘Sit down, lads,’ Fanny urged. ‘There’s a bowl of soup for you.’ Hilda helped her mother serve out the hot broth.

  Louie’s eyes pricked with tears to see how Sam winced with pain as he lowered himself on to a kitchen chair. His right eye was almost closed with the bruising around it and he had cuts to his right temple. She put a hand out and squeezed his.

  ‘Are you all right, Sam?’ she asked shyly.

  Embarrassed by the concern, he ignored her question. ‘You should be at home resting, not waiting up for me.’

  ‘She would have been if it hadn’t been for Minnie Slattery,’ his mother complained, using the girl’s maiden name with a sneer. ‘Fancy making her go out picketing in her condition.’

  Sam looked at Louie sharply. ‘Is that true? Were you there this morning?’ Louie nodded unhappily. ‘I’ve never heard anything so bloody daft in all my life!’ he exploded, and stood up. Louie burst into tears.

  ‘Don’t upset her. It was my idea,’ Minnie told him defiantly. ‘Anyways, Sam Ritson, you should be proud of your wife for standing up to the bosses and holding a banner at the pit gates. You’re always telling us how we must stand together and fight. Well, that’s just what we were doing - me and your Louie and our Margaret - not fighting with our fists and getting arrested, but giving them as good as we got all the same.’

  Sam gawped in astonishment at Minnie’s outspoken criticism. Bomber looked warily at his mate to see how he would take such brazenness from his wife.

  That’s right,’ Davie laughed suddenly, releasing the tension in the room, ‘and the lasses made a better job of it than we did by the look of things. All we succeeded in doing was getting nicked.’ He winked at Minnie who returned a saucy look. Louie sniffed and smiled at her brother. Davie grinned back. ‘And don’t you worry yoursel’ about us, pet, they’ll not put us away for having a bit of a scrap.’ He led Eb and Bomber into the parlour for their supper. Sam’s anger deflated.

  ‘I’m sorry, Louie,’ he apologised, lowering himself on to the bed beside her, and stroking her hair with quick, self-conscious movements. ‘I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. It’s just this trouble with the bosses. Are you all right, pet?’

  ‘I’m just fine,’ Louie assured him. ‘All I care about is getting you safely home. Go and get something to eat, then we’ll be off, eh?’ Sam leant over and kissed her lightly on the top of her head. Louie smiled at her mother as Sam obeyed and followed the others into the front room.

  Eleanor spent a fruitless afternoon searching for Eb; there was no sign of him anywhere. She returned to the house and ordered her maid Bridget to draw a hot bath, after which she had supper brought up to her room. Thomas Seward-Scott looked in to see her after dinner and found her sitting on the window-seat gazing listlessly out on to the terrace below. They could hear the laughter of Beatrice and Reginald playing a late game of croquet on the lawn.

  ‘You can’t go on blaming Reginald for everything,’ her father told her directly. ‘He was only doing his best to break this infernal strike.’

  ‘He could have got Beatrice killed,’ Eleanor answered accusingly. Her father drew up a chair beside her.

  ‘That’s not what makes you so angry though, is it?’ he guessed. ‘I think you’re more concerned for the miners who were injured than your own family. Reginald tells me you’ve been down to the village and telephoning Dr Joice every hour.’

  Eleanor turned and held his look. ‘And aren’t you concerned for them, Daddy?’ she demanded quietly. ‘Don’t you care what happens to these people if the strike isn’t resolved soon?’

  ‘It lies within their hands to solve it,’ he answered matter-of-factly. ‘We weren’t looking for a fight.’

  ‘Reginald was,’ his daughter contradicted him roundly, ‘and he wants unconditional surrender. We have the resources to sit it out until the miners are starved back to work, isn’t that so? Well, that doesn’t seem fair to me.’

  The coalowner sighed and got to his feet. Why was his elder daughter afflicted with such a wretched dose of conscience? he wondered with irritation. She was obsessed with what was fair rather than what was practicable; just like her departed mother, Constance, he thought wearily. Thomas wanted his daughter to stand with her own kind, but he suspected she would not. As he stood up, his attention was drawn to a watercolour sketch in the window recess. The unfussy, bold strokes were recognisably a likeness of Eleanor. There was a stark beauty about the simple painting.

  ‘When was this done?’ he asked her with interest, momentarily diverted from his brooding thoughts.

  ‘Some months ago,’ his daughter answered vaguely, fixing intently on something in the garden below.

  ‘It’s good.’ Her father smiled. ‘It may not be the most flattering portrait, but it captures something of you, my dear. Who is the artist?’

  ‘Oh, an acquaintance of Isobel’s.’ Eleanor answered lightly, but felt her mouth go dry. ‘He’s not a real artist, it was just done for fun.’

  ‘He should carry on his art if this is anything to go by.’ Thomas was enthusiastic. He glanced around the room and saw paintings of birds and animals done by the same unstylised hand. ‘I think you’ve discovered a new talent,’ he said with surprise. ‘Not like those awful Vorticists or whatever you call them that glare down on us at breakfast.’ Eleanor laughed and turned towards him. Thomas was quick to notice her flushed face. ‘I could live with these paintings - don’t hide them away up here.’

  ‘I wasn’t hiding them.’ Eleanor flicked a disinterested hand at them, but her manner was defensive and her father decided not to assuage his curiosity further that evening. There was always a reserve about his elder daughter that he never dared to penetrate. Beatrice and her desires he understood and felt at ease with; Eleanor he loved but would never fathom what drove her. He kissed her on the head and walked over to the door.

  As he reached for the brass handle his earlier resolution to lecture her returned. ‘You must do what you feel is best,’ he told her, ‘but I’ll not let you put the future security of The Grange and its business in jeopardy, Eleanor, and Reginald is its future. Don’t interfere with his handling of the strike.’

  Confused, she watched him leave the room. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ she said out loud to the closing door. Had she given herself away by blushing like a schoolgirl over Eb’s modest paintings? If her father pressed her further about this mysterious painter, Eleanor wondered, would she be honest with him?

  Until the early hours of the morning, Eleanor read by candlelight, enjoying its dim cosiness that reminded her of holidays spent at her mother’s home in the Highlands. She was sure quiet, determined Constance MacKenzie would not have stood idly by while her villagers suffered hardship.

  The next morning, after breakfast, Eleanor received a call from Isobel. She told her friend that Hilda had come bearing bad news; Eb had been among those arrested.

  ‘He’ll stand trial before the end of May,’ Isobel said.

/>   ‘Does that mean prison?’ Eleanor asked, feeling sick inside.

  ‘I doubt they’ll be let off with nothing,’ Isobel said, ‘not with your sister and Reginald having been involved. It’ll probably just be a fine in Eb’s case. He was only going to Sam’s rescue when they bundled him into the van.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ Eleanor answered dully.

  Isobel hesitated then made up her mind. ‘He’s at Greenbrae now if you want to come down and talk to him.’ Eleanor’s spirits lifted at once at the thought of seeing Eb.

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ She brightened as she put down the receiver.

  On the way to the village she planned how she could pay Eb’s fine without him refusing. The shock of hearing about his arrest had jolted her out of her listless confusion. From now on, Eleanor determined, she was going to play a useful role in this dispute, no matter what her father or Reginald had to say.

  In the Memorial Hall the following day, an angry crowd of miners were gathered to hear news of the strike and put voice to the rumours that they had been duped by the coalowners. Sam stood on a chair and rapped out his accusations.

  ‘There were strangers planted among us on Monday,’ he told them, ‘non-union men who took the tainted gold offered by the Seward-Scotts as payment for causing violence.’ There were shouts of dismay and threats of revenge. ‘I saw a stranger next to me pull a brick from his jacket and deliberately chuck it at the first van. That same man was a police informer, grassing on us union men during the fight -I saw him pointing out our comrade Bomber Bell to the coppers.’

  Voices swelled in anger and Johnny Pearson nudged Sam. A stream of policemen were pushing their way into the back of the hall. Sam continued, undaunted.

  ‘The bosses put about the rumour that scab labour was coming into the pit so we would be out in force. They ordered in coppers from outside the area to harass us. They paid their lackeys to start the trouble, so they could arrest our leaders.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Superintendent MacGuire shouted from halfway down the hall. ‘We’re breaking up this meeting.’ Jostling began around the uniformed men.

  ‘What gives you the right to try and silence us?’ Sam called down at the burly, bewhiskered officer.

  ‘Under the state of emergency, meetings that are likely to cause a breach of the peace are banned. Come on, Sam, I don’t want to have to arrest you again.’

  ‘See how the law are in the pockets of the coalowners.’ Sam ignored the warning and raised his voice. ‘They’re too frightened to let us speak. There’s a copper been sitting here the last half an hour writing down everything we’ve been saying.’ Sam jerked his thumb contemptuously at a plain-clothes policeman sitting on the end of the third row. The young man, Alfred Turnbull, jumped up nervously and looked to his superior for help as a pitman next to him grabbed his notebook and tore out his notes.

  ‘Right, lads,’ MacGuire roared, stung by Sam’s implication that he was Seward-Scott’s lapdog, ‘get everybody out.’

  His constables, most of them full-timers drafted in from Durham, began to hustle the listeners from their seats.

  ‘Don’t let them bully us!’ Sam urged from his chair in blatant defiance of the superintendent. ‘If we stand together against the tyranny of the Establishment, we’ll win. They’re scared of us. MacGuire,’ he challenged, ‘you’re a decent man; don’t betray your own kind for the likes of Seward-Scott. His heart’s as black and hard as the coal we dig - he doesn’t care for you or me or any of us pit folk, can’t you see that?’

  Around them the atmosphere simmered; Robert MacGuire hesitated in his unwelcome task and for a moment the miners resisted their removal, aware of his irresolution. Sam pressed his advantage.

  ‘The strike is won,’ he declared. ‘We’ve shown the solidarity of the working man. Now the Government will be forced to listen to our grievances. This country has been built on the backs of the working class, now it’s time we had a share in its prosperity.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Sam Ritson.’ MacGuire suddenly rounded on him. ‘It’s your so-called fellow workers who’ve betrayed you, not the likes of me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sam asked him angrily.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ The older man shouted louder so all could hear over the rising noise. ‘The TUC have called off the General Strike. It’s over, Sam.’

  The din of argument ebbed as the words carried across the hall. Sam gaped at him, speechless.

  ‘It’s a lie,’ Bomber accused the police officer who had once been his football trainer and idol. ‘He’s just saying that to get us out of here.’

  ‘The TUC would never call off the strike without consulting the miners.’ Sam had regained his composure and retaliated quickly.

  ‘It’s not a word of a lie,’ MacGuire insisted. ‘The strike’s off. Now I’ll give you five minutes to leave this hall or you’re under arrest.’ He turned on his heel and strode from the room while the meeting broke down in a confusion of argument and denial.

  Sam stormed out after the superintendent, with Bomber and Johnny and John Kirkup at his side.

  ‘We’ll go to Hawthorn Street,’ Sam ordered. ‘Iris has a wireless. We’ll see if this is true.’

  But by the time they had reached the Kirkups’ house, the village was buzzing with the rumour that the General Strike was over.

  ‘They’ve given in,’ Jacob Kirkup confirmed the news to his son-in-law, disbelief edging his words. ‘Ten days misery and nothing to show for it. What a pointless, pointless sacrifice.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. Louie was sitting in the doorway looking pale and shocked, Fanny was silent; Sadie stood in the yard subdued by their pain, twisting a skipping rope in her bony hands.

  ‘The bloody traitors,’ Bomber raged at the crackling wireless. ‘It was our fight, how dare they call it off when nothing has been won?’

  ‘It’s still our fight.’ Sam roused himself from the hurt that felt like a winding kick in the stomach. Physical blows he could take, but this numbing sense of betrayal by his own kind could bleed him to death. ‘They may have called off the General Strike, but they’ll not beat the pitmen into submission so easily.’ He thumped the table aggressively.

  Jacob Kirkup looked across at the dark, square-jawed man who was now one of his family and admitted a grudging admiration. He disapproved of his son-in-law’s atheism and Communist leanings, but Sam was driven by a conviction and sense of justice that was as strong as his own Christian beliefs.

  ‘Striking has never got us anywhere,’ Jacob cautioned. ‘The forces against us are too strong.’

  ‘Maybes,’ Sam answered, his dark eyes fierce, ‘but we don’t win anything unless we fight our own battles. The TUC aren’t going to do it for us, so we must carry on the struggle ourselves.’

  ‘Aye, Sam’s right.’ Louie spoke up unexpectedly. ‘We’re on our own now, but we’re not beaten.’

  Sam swung round in surprise with the others. She was smiling at him, her pale face resigned to further hardship.

  ‘By, my lass has spirit!’ Sam beamed at her proudly. He stepped over to the door and grabbed Louie’s hand, squeezing it in his own. Nothing more was said between them, but Louie knew the tender look in his brown eyes told her she was loved.

  It was John who voiced the uncertainty that hung over them all. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  During the next week, Sam threw himself into the organisation of relief for the villagers who were feeling the lack of earnings most. Bomber and John were in charge of clearing and chopping dead wood from the dene to provide fuel for the greedy kitchen ranges that were the only means of cooking and boiling up water. Sadie and her friends joined in the dirty game of picking over the spoil heap for cinders, going out with buckets of soapy water to soak the coal dust as it smouldered like a brooding volcano; only then was it cool enough for the children to handle.

  After dark, Sam led nightly raids over the pit yard wall to gather the coal st
rewn around the tracks, dodging the watchmen and roaming policemen. He was fairly certain MacGuire knew of his activities, but as yet had not interfered. Since the clash with the pickets, relations between the pitmen and the local police had grown increasingly strained, and Sam guessed it was only a matter of time before another such incident cut the final strand of civilities between them.

  The stolen coal was distributed around the village or sold at the tradesmen’s doors of the bigger houses where no questions were asked about its origins. The money raised in this way went to buy food for the relief centre set up in the chapel hall on North Street. This had been Louie’s idea.

  ‘Minnie’s talking about applying to the parish for money,’ she had told Sam one evening, as he was about to depart on a raid. Sam shot her a look of concern. No one went cap in hand to the Board of Guardians and submitted to their humiliating tests unless they were desperate. At the back of everyone’s mind lurked the horror of the workhouse in Durham from which there was slim hope of escape once admitted.

  ‘Bomber never told me things were getting that bad,’ Sam said.

  ‘They’ve got nothing left,’ Louie continued unhappily, ‘and Jack’s sickly, but they’ve got nothing to buy medicines with. I said I’d ask Eb to fetch them something from the allotment, but he’s already supplying the Dobsons and the Parkins as well as all of our family.’ She did not add that she had already lent Minnie the money they had put by for when the baby came. Sam did not need to know about that yet.

  ‘We can’t sit back and see our friends throw themselves on the mercy of the parish,’ Sam fretted.