Union Belle

by Deborah Challinor

  She stood there listening to his boots crunching up the path at the side of the house then, when the sound had faded completely, she went inside again and shut the door.

  She hugged the boys as hard as she could when it was time for them to go to school. Davey clung to her, but Neil stood rigid and unresponsive. She walked with them to the front gate and watched them until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

  Then she gave Fintan his breakfast, stoked the range, changed into her walking shoes and put her coat on. She picked up her bag, stepped out onto the porch and closed the back door behind her for the last time.

  She sat by herself on the train, but no one she knew was in her carriage anyway, which was an immense relief. She was sick of talking, and especially of lying. She’d had enough of lying to last her a lifetime.

  The small, dirty coal towns she loved so much rolled past as the train lumbered across the damp countryside towards Huntly, but she didn’t see them; they were part of the old Ellen and there was no room in her heart for them any more. There would be new towns soon, and a new life.

  As the train pulled into the Huntly railway station, she collected her bag from the seat beside her and moved to stand by the carriage door, anxious to be off the train as quickly as possible. She could see him already, leaning against the side of his truck, waiting for her.

  The door opened and she stepped down onto the platform and walked towards him, not hurrying now but moving confidently and with her head held high. He saw her then, and the special smile he kept just for her spread across his lovely, welcoming face. He stepped forward, his arms opening to embrace her.

  She was barely six feet away from him when she heard it, a small, panicky voice behind her.

  ‘Mum! Don’t leave me!’

  She spun around. Near the wooden bench that ran along the side of the station building, a little boy was stamping his feet, his face red and wet with tears. A harassed-looking woman stood glaring down at him.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m only going to the toilet,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right for five minutes, surely!’

  In an instant Ellen knew it was too late, for her and for Jack. She felt something inside her shift, and she knew it with a clarity that almost knocked her off her feet.

  She turned back to Jack and his smile had gone because he’d seen it too—he’d seen in those few echoing moments everything that was in her heart.

  ‘Oh, Ellen,’ he said.

  She dropped her bag on the platform, feeling as though she wanted to collapse beside it.

  ‘I can’t come with you, Jack,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave them. I’m so sorry.’

  He stepped forward and so did she, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing herself against him as hard as she could to capture the feel of his body, his warm strength and the precious smell of him.

  ‘I love you, Jack Vaughan,’ she whispered.

  ‘I love you too, Ellen McCabe,’ he whispered back. ‘You know where I’ll be. I’ll wait for you, for as long as it takes.’

  The pain in Ellen’s heart was so terrible she felt as though she were burning. She nodded and stepped back, then picked up her bag and walked away from him, back the way she’d come.

  EPILOGUE

  2004

  The cat has moved out from under the coffee table, and is lying stretched out on the floor in front of the gas heater. In the sudden, thick silence of Ellen McCabe’s sitting room, Cathy can hear it making funny little snoring noises.

  Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the old lady’s story, she feels like crying, but can’t because historians aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing, not even inexperienced students.

  She clears her throat. ‘Can I ask, Mrs McCabe, did Tom take you back?’

  The old lady nods. ‘He did.’

  Cathy is surprised at the extent of her relief, and then smiles, because she likes a happy ending.

  Then Mrs McCabe says, ‘Would you turn the tape off now, dear?’ It’s an order, not a request. ‘The rest of this isn’t for anyone else’s ears, but I might as well tell you, you’ve come this far.’

  ‘Oh, OK, no problem.’ Cathy presses the button and settles back to hear the end of the story.

  ‘He took the baby too,’ Mrs McCabe says, her timing perfect.

  Cathy’s jaw drops.

  Mrs McCabe laughs, a surprisingly loud and hearty sound for such a frail old woman. ‘I knew that would get you, dear,’ she says.

  Even Matt smiles; he’s back now, sitting quietly on the couch, listening but saying nothing.

  ‘You were pregnant?’

  ‘Only just. About four weeks, give or take.’

  ‘And Jack was the father?’ It’s an extremely rude question to ask, but Cathy can’t stop herself. She’s glad the tape isn’t running.

  ‘Oh, no question, and when she was born she was the spitting image of him. Dark curls, black eyes, the lot. It was hard for Tom, her looking so different from him and from the boys, but he loved her anyway, he really did. Well, you couldn’t not, really, she was such a lovely child. We called her Sarah.’

  Cathy says, ‘So you got your little girl after all?’

  ‘I did, although she’s not a little girl any more. She’s Matt’s mother.’

  Cathy gives Matt a quick sideways glance, and suddenly sees in him the face of the man Ellen McCabe fell in love with more than fifty years ago. A shiver of something both eerie and sad scuttles up her spine.

  ‘And were things…was it all right between you and Tom in the end?’ she asks after a moment.

  ‘In the end they were, but it took a while. It was very hard for him, it was hard for both of us. Half the town wouldn’t speak to me for quite some time.’ But Mrs McCabe shrugs, as if to say it didn’t really matter then and it certainly doesn’t now. ‘He was a good man, Tom, and a forgiving one. Things came right eventually. We had a good life.’ She laughs again. ‘I suppose we did become my mother and father, really, me with my illegitimate daughter and him with his wayward wife. They say history never repeats, but it does, love, it does. Although Tom didn’t turn into an alcoholic and I never insisted on having the newest and best of everything, so I suppose we weren’t exactly the same. I still appreciate a nice fridge, though. Davey buys me a new one every couple of years. I don’t know why, but he does.’

  ‘What did happen to the boys?’ Cathy asks.

  A shadow crosses the old lady’s lined face. ‘They both went on the coal as soon as they left school. Neil went to Australia a year after that, to work in the mines at Illawarra, and never really came back. He’s retired now, with a grown-up family of his own. I don’t think he ever quite forgave me for what happened.’ Then she brightens. ‘But Davey’s still here. His boys are both miners up at Huntly East.’

  And Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah’s in Hamilton, but she comes through at least once a week. Matt’s at Huntly East too, and flats with a group of rowdy boys in Hakanoa Street, don’t you, love?’

  ‘Yes, Gran.’

  Cathy says, ‘You said earlier that Tom died quite a while ago.’

  ‘Yes, he did. In 1977, from lung cancer.’

  ‘From smoking?’

  Mrs McCabe shakes her head. ‘Silicosis, from the coal dust.’

  ‘That must have been very hard for you.’

  ‘It was, but it wasn’t unusual. Not then, anyway.’

  Then Cathy asks the question she most wants to hear the answer to. And did you ever see Jack again?’

  Ellen McCabe gives Cathy a long, contemplative look. She’s clearly tired now and Cathy wonders whether she’s finally asked a question the old lady doesn’t want to answer.

  But, eventually, she says, ‘Matt, bring me the letter, will you?’

  Matt gets up and crosses the sitting room to a china cabinet with a large cut-crystal bowl on top of it. Under the bowl is tucked a yellowed envelope. He draws it out and hands it to his grandmother.

  She opens it carefull
y, making sure not to tear the fragile papers inside.

  ‘I was sent this in 1967,’ she says. She puts on a pair of glasses, clears her throat and begins to read:

  Dear Ellen McCabe,

  You don’t know me, but I know who you are. I married Jack Vaughan in 1959, and a day never went past that I didn’t know he was still in love with you. He married me because he got me pregnant, and I believe that was the only reason he did.

  But Jack died recently. He was killed with the other fifteen men in the explosion at Strongman Mine. I would not have got in touch with you, because your ghost did nothing but blight my life with Jack, but he left instructions that I send this note to you in the event that anything ever happened to him, and because he was a decent man I am doing this.

  I don’t know you personally, and I hate how you came between Jack and me, but I wish to God I knew what it was you had over him, because I never saw a man who loved a woman more than he loved you.

  Yours faithfully,

  Mrs Gina Vaughan

  Cathy stares at Ellen, stunned.

  The old lady retrieves another slip of paper from the envelope. ‘This is the one from Jack.’ She takes a deep, measured breath and bends her head again.

  Dear Ellen,

  This note is just in case anything ever happens to me, and if you are reading it, then something has. At the time I am writing it, I am still waiting for you, and if you never receive it then I will still be waiting.

  I love you more than anything, and the months we had together were the best of my life. I have never met anyone like you, and I expect I never will again.

  So no matter what happens, Ellen, remember that I loved you then, I love you now, and I will love you always.

  Yours always and for ever,

  Jack

  As Cathy presses the heel of her palm against her eyes to blot the moisture there, she sees that Mrs McCabe has tears coursing down her own face.

  For a second the two women, one at the end of her life and the other only starting out, are united.

  ‘My God,’ Cathy says, ‘how did you feel when you read that?’

  Mrs McCabe stares down at her hands for a long time, then slowly looks up. ‘Just for a minute, I felt as though I was with him again,’ she says. ‘Yes. That’s how I felt.’ Then she clears her throat again, and sits up straighter in her La-Z-Boy. ‘I’m sorry, love, but I’m very tired now. Do you think you’ve got everything you wanted to know?’

  Matt gets to his feet and comes to stand protectively behind her.

  ‘There’s just one more question, Mrs McCabe, if you can manage it.’

  The old lady nods.

  ‘Was it worth it? The strike?’

  Mrs McCabe’s head sinks onto her chest and her eyes close, and Cathy wonders if she’s fallen asleep. But, finally, she speaks.

  ‘You can turn your tape recorder back on for this bit.’

  Cathy does.

  ‘No, in a lot of ways it wasn’t worth it. We all stood strong in the end, one way or another, and we still all lost something. When I was young I thought there was no battle in the world that couldn’t be fought and won. I thought we could take on the government and beat it, and I thought that the love of a wonderful man would give me the strength to walk away from my children. But I was wrong, on both counts.’

  ‘Would you do it all again?’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ellen McCabe smiles. ‘Yes, love, I would.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Pukemiro is a real town, and most of what happens in this story regarding the Waikato coalminers’ strike, from late February to the beginning of July 1951, actually did happen. But other aspects of the story are completely fictional. None of the characters in this story is real, either, except for those whose names already appear in the history books, and any resemblance to actual people is a genuine coincidence and certainly not intentional.

  But to make the story as historically accurate as possible, I interviewed various people who were involved at the time of the strike, in one way or another. So thank you to Fred Rix, Tom and Rita Hunt, Noel Tregoweth, and Betty and the late Tiny Brown, and to the other, anonymous, interviewees, and also to Dora Janssen for providing me with a list of people to talk to.

  I also consulted archives relating to the strike, and to what life in Huntly and Pukemiro was like then. So thanks also to Linda Wigley, Director of the Waikato Coalfields Museum, and her staff, for access to photographs, mining manuals and other documents, and Rosemary Marshall, District Librarian at the Huntly branch of the Waikato District Library, and her staff, for access to the Huntly Press. Also very useful was a collection held by Hamilton City Libraries, called The Huntly Coalfields Oral History Project, and a book researched and compiled by Gwyneth Jones, called When Coal Was King.

  A final thank you, too, to Lorain Day and the team at HarperCollinsPublishers, for their support and encouragement, and to Anna Rogers, for another excellent editing job.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Deborah Challinor is the bestselling author of the Children of War trilogy: Tamar, White Feathers and Blue Smoke. She has also written two non-fiction books about the Vietnam War: Grey Ghosts and Who’ll Stop the Rain?

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Praise for the bestselling Union Belle:

  Union Belle is a clever and honest read…read it for the exquisite love story and the candid exploration of small-town Kiwi life in the 50s. It will have the most cynical of you wondering if you’ll ever meet your true love.

  Herald on Sunday

  It’s a book I kept sneaking back to whenever I had a spare quarter hour. It would make a great New Zealand movie. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.

  North & South

  This book delivers a dollop of fascinating archive information with a flourish of romance.

  Next

  [Challinor’s] continuing fascination with what made us who we are, as New Zealanders, comes across in this latest book.

  Wanganui Chronicle

  Challinor’s strengths are in using the little things, the everyday details of that time, to infuse her stories with life and, in this case, heartbreaking drama.

  The Daily Post

  COPYRIGHT

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published 2005

  This edition published in 2012

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  Harpercollins.co.nz

  Copyright © Deborah Challinor 2005

  The right of Deborah Challinor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  ISBN 9781869505948 (pbk)

  ISBN 9780730445012 (epub)

 

 

 
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