by Maggie Hope
Mary Anne was all sympathy for Lottie and full of condemnation for Alf Green. Lottie’s anxious heart began to settle down a little. She found herself telling this motherly woman all about her life in the Green household, withholding only what Alf had done to her in bed.
‘The lads are all right, only Noah, that’s the eldest, he’s a bit of a bully. He bosses his brothers and he tried to boss me. But Mattie now, he’s the little ’un, he’s only six and he misses his mam. I feel rotten at leaving Mattie. Do you think I should go back to see to Mattie, Mrs Teesdale?’
‘Nay, I don’t,’ said Mary Anne stoutly. Her experience and intuition told her there was more to it and she could make a good guess as to what it was. ‘I know it’s a shame but you have to think of yourself. Any road I have an idea. Go and fetch our Eliza for me, will you?’
‘Aye, I will,’ Lottie replied and hurried from the room.
‘I’m in a bit of a hurry, Mam,’ Eliza began as she came into the front room. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you and you can think about it on your way.’ She paused for a minute, then went on, ’I’m going back to Stanley, Eliza. The lads need me.’
‘But you can’t, Mam, you’d not manage,’ said Eliza patiently. ‘So what’s the good of talking about it?’
‘I can and I will,’ said Mary Anne stubbornly. ‘That is … if Lottie here will go with me.’ She turned to the girl. ‘How would you like to do that, Lottie? You would have a home, and a bit of pocket money. I can’t promise you more than that. And in return, you could help me with the work, what do you say?’
‘Mam!’
‘Mam what?’ Mary Anne said, turning to her daughter. ‘You haven’t room for the lass, have you? It seems to me to be just the answer.’
‘I will,’ said Lottie, but Mary Anne and Eliza were arguing now and neither heard her.
‘I’ll come, please, please let me,’ said Lottie louder, and this time both women stopped talking and turned to her.
‘Stanley is different to Durham,’ said Eliza. ‘And it will be hard work, two lads at the pit and Da, and you will have to look after my mam sometimes, when she’s badly.’
‘I’m used to that,’ said Lottie. She gazed anxiously from Eliza to Mary Anne and back again. Oh, she desperately wanted to go to live with Mary Anne, she did, aye she did. Mary Anne was like the woman she imagined her own mother would have become had she been spared. She could be happy with Mary Anne.
Eliza was not slow to see the appeal in the girl’s eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk about it when I come back. I have to go now.’
Of course when she came back later in the day she found it was all decided and she had no say in the matter.
‘I’m not a bairn,’ Mary Anne said in a firm, no-nonsense tone. ‘I’m not in my dotage, neither. Lottie is coming with me and Tommy and that’s an end to it.’
‘By, you’re definitely feeling better,’ Eliza replied. ‘I gather Da had no say in it either?’
‘Aye, he did.’
Mary Anne nodded her head in the direction of Tommy, who was sitting by the fire with his stockinged feet up on the fender. ‘Your da is the man in our house.’
Tommy grinned at Eliza. ‘Aye, I’m the gaffer in our house,’ he said. ‘Whatever the wife says goes.’
Lottie was happier than she could ever remember being and that was even before they got to Stanley. They caught the train to Stanley, for Eliza said the weather was too cold for Mary Anne to go in the tub trap and, in any case, Eliza had to catch up on her work. Not that it was warmer on the train, the third-class carriage being open to the elements, but it was quicker. And they were muffled up to the eyes in shawls and with a blanket over their knees. Tommy had walked the distance, about ten miles. As he was not working, he reckoned he had no right to spend money on the train when he could very well walk.
The day was fair: the sun was shining as they rode across the fields and past the small colliery villages where smoke curled up to the sky and the smell of the coal and coke ovens mingled with the smoke from the engine, but Lottie didn’t mind that.
‘Cover your mouth with your shawl, pet,’ advised Mary Anne when Lottie coughed, and obediently Lottie did. Her dark eyes peered over the rim of the shawl as she gazed at the horizon of the moor or down into the valley where sheep were still out and finding some grazing despite the grass being chewed right down and the hedges being bare of leaves. But they had their thick winter coats on, she mused, and there were no little lambs. Not yet, not this high or this north. Someone had told her that, she couldn’t remember who. It wouldn’t have been a teacher, not at the workhouse where the main lessons were mending and cleaning.
Mary Anne watched her with a slight smile on her face. By, she thought, she had been lucky to find her really, a lass who was used to hard work and good-natured to boot. Not that there weren’t many in search of work but Lottie, well Lottie had touched her heart with her pinched little face and the way she had of peering earnestly about her.
‘You like to ride behind a locomotive?’ Mary Anne asked in the manner of her youth when most engines were colliery locomotives.
‘Oh, I do,’ Lottie asserted. She had forgotten her ordeal for the minute, the train had taken her out of herself. ‘This is the first time I’ve done it,’ she confided.
‘Nay, it’s not!’ Mary Anne was surprised for a moment, then realized that of course Lottie had had little chance of doing anything except skivvying and when she did have time to herself she wouldn’t be able to afford the time or the money to ride the train.
‘I’ve seen them, of course,’ said Lottie. ‘But I’ve not been out of Durham, except for Sherburn Hill that is.’
‘Aye well, mebbe you’ll like Stanley better than Sherburn,’ said Mary Anne.
‘Now the train’s pulling in, best collect our bundles and baskets.’ For Eliza had packed ham and one or two other things for them to take with them.
Tommy was waiting at the station with a borrowed trap for Mary Anne and the luggage.
‘Are you not pleased to see us, Tommy?’ asked Mary Anne. ‘You might at least say you are, even if you don’t want to give me a hug.’
‘What, on the station platform?’ her husband asked, looking scandalized. ‘Don’t be so forward, woman!’
Chapter Seven
For Lottie, the house in West Stanley was not all that different from the house in Sherburn Hill. The work was hard and the hours long – that was the same – and there was Mrs Teesdale, an invalid just as Mrs Green had been. But the Teesdale boys were older and already working in the pit and then there was Tommy, as different from Alfred Green as it was possible to get. Yet there was a world of difference between the two households, really.
‘Just call me Mary Anne, pet,’ Mrs Teesdale said. ‘An’ nobody at all calls Tommy anything but Tommy, except for the lads.’
‘By, she is a lovely woman,’ Lottie told herself as she washed the dishes or cleaned after the lads, dashing the pit clothes against the wall of the coalhouse and causing the air to sparkle like the night sky as showers of coal dust fell to the ground.
Of course, some nights she got very little sleep when the lads were on different shifts and Tommy on permanent fore shift. For he had been taken on as a datal man, clearing up coal dust and small coal after the hewers and putters, and he worked the first shift of the day, starting at midnight. The putters were just young lads like Harry and a bit careless. As they pushed and heaved at the coal tubs to get them to where the pit ponies could reach – for some of the seams were too low for the beasts – they often shed coal dust and bits from the top.
So it fell to Tommy and men like him to sweep up. The great dread of management and men alike was fire and if a spark from a stud in a pit boot ignited coal dust, or worse, if there was firedamp lurking, the result could be – well, it didn’t bear thinking about. So Tommy went in before the hewers and sometimes left after them and all for less pay, but at least he didn’t hav
e to swing a pick for ten hours at a time as they did. Tommy got home about ten every morning except Sunday, which was his day of rest.
‘By,’ he said to Mary Anne one morning as he knelt before the tin bath in his pit hoggers (which were short trousers or underpants), washing the coal dust from his body, ‘I never thought the time would come when my lad would be a hewer and me good for nowt but sweeping up.’
‘Aye well,’ Mary Anne replied, ‘it’s better than not working, isn’t it?’
Lottie, who was standing by the table washing up after his meal, smiled. She put the last pot on the tin tray to drain and picked up the tin bowl of water to empty outside. It was time for her to disappear discreetly out of the kitchen while Tommy removed the hoggers and finished his ablutions.
She walked up the yard and emptied the dish in the gutter, then stood by the gate with the dish in her hands and looked about her. Children were playing in the back street, a narrow alley unpaved and with deep cart ruts running its length. They were playing kicky-off chock, a game that involved one boy kicking an old tin can as far as it would go and calling out a name. Any boy not in hiding by the time the second boy got the tin and brought it back to base was out. Even as she stood, a lad pushed past her and into the yard, diving behind the wall.
‘Hey, lad, watch it,’ said Lottie, but good-naturedly. When she was little in the workhouse, she mused, they hadn’t time for such games. She looked up the street to where a woman was standing on a chair and reaching up to string a washing line across from one side to another. It was Mrs Hutchins, a young woman who looked not much older than Lottie, but she already had three little bairns. By, it must be nice to look after your own man and bairns, she thought. Come the day, though, oh yes. Lottie took a deep breath of the air before she turned and walked up the yard and into the house. She could get another breath of fresh air when Tommy was in bed and before Harry came in from the pit. Only by that time of the day it would smell a bit sulphurous, as the coke ovens were opened. Still, folk said that was healthy, good for the lungs.
Tommy was dressed and smoking his pipe by the fire. His braces dangled by his side and his stockinged feet were propped up on the new steel fender. Mary Anne was very proud of her fender; she had bought it with Tommy’s first pay at West Stanley pit. At least she had put a deposit down on it of two shillings and was paying it off at sixpence a week.
‘It’ll only take twenty-one weeks, there’s one week extra for the tallyman,’ she had said to Lottie who, despite her lack of education, knew that it only took twenty sixpenny payments plus two shillings to add up to the eleven shillings and eleven pence the fender had cost at the Co-op store. Plus a penny for the tallyman. Sixpence was a bit excessive, Lottie reckoned.
‘Howay then, Tommy, hadaway to your bed, Lottie has to get on with the work, man,’ Mary Anne said now. She hadn’t done much at all but she was already tired and besides, the smell from Tommy’s pipe made her chest feel tight even though most of the smoke went up the chimney.
‘Can I not have a pipe in peace now?’ he asked and coughed long and hard. ‘Now look, woman, you’ve set me off,’ he said when he could get his breath.
‘Nay, it’s the baccy as sets you off,’ Mary Anne replied tartly.
‘Aye well it clears me tubes.’
Now he was sweeping, the coal and the stone dust got into his ‘tubes’ even more than it had before, and Mary Anne knew it. Still she chivvied him until he stood up, knocked out his pipe on the bar of the fire and set off for bed. At the foot of the narrow staircase that went up directly out of the kitchen to the bedroom upstairs, he paused to deliver a final shot.
‘One of these days, woman, I’ll take off me belt and show you who’s boss,’ he growled.
‘Aye, aye, I know,’ she replied. ‘Now away up the loft wi’ ye.’
Albert and Harry had a chiffonier bed in the front room. When folded up it looked like a fine piece of mahogany furniture; only it was not often folded up, for the lads were on different shifts at the pit. Lottie slept on a horsehair sofa in the kitchen. It was not an ideal arrangement, Mary Anne knew that, but there was little choice. The house they had been allocated by the pit was a two-down and one-up, and the one-up had a small pane of glass in the roof to let in a little light. It was a typical miner’s cottage, though some owners were building two-bedroom and even three-bedroom houses now to attract experienced pitmen to newly opened pits. Tommy was experienced but too old now.
Mary Anne pondered the situation as she sat by the fire and Lottie boiled water and carried it to the poss tub in the yard, grated soap and stood on a small stool called a cracket to agitate the clothes vigorously with a wooden poss stick. Mary Anne watched broodingly.
It was becoming increasingly hard for her to climb the stairs to the bedroom. Sometimes the pain in her chest was more than she could bear. Mrs Brown, who was something of a wise woman, made her an infusion of foxgloves but it didn’t work as it had used to do. Soon she and Tommy would have to change bedrooms with the lads.
‘You’ll be fine, a lady of leisure when Lottie comes to work for you,’ Tommy had said. And most of the time Mary Anne could make out she was better than she had been; maybe was getting over whatever it was that ailed her. Sometimes, and these times were getting more frequent, she could not.
She sat brooding on it when Harry turned into the gate and strolled up the yard, his bait tin swinging from his belt and his boots ringing on the stones. He had his helmet pushed back from his forehead and showing a white line above his black face and he grinned as he saw Lottie’s small figure standing on tiptoe on the cracket to lean over the poss tub. Harry was sixteen now and had a little finger shortened where he had trapped it between the tub and the side of the way, but it didn’t hamper him at all.
The deputy overman had bound it up for him. ‘Now then, lad,’ he had said bracingly, ‘mind you don’t get something more important trapped, you’d best keep a better look out.’ Harry had even finished his shift as a putter.
‘I want to be a hewer like Albert and you, Da,’ he had said to Tommy.
‘Like I was, you mean,’ Tommy replied. ‘Just watch what you’re bloody well doing in future.’
That had been a few months ago and Harry had been told he could start hewing on the following Monday. So he was full of himself as he walked up the yard.
‘Howay, Lottie, where’s me dinner?’ he cried. ‘I could eat a horse, man!’
‘Aye well, I cannot do everything at once,’ Lottie replied, her face emerging from the depths of the poss tub. ‘I’ll be in in a minute and fix you a bite. It’s washing day mind, I haven’t had time to do much.’
Harry’s face fell for a moment, but nothing was going to dim this triumphant day for long. He went into the house and found his mother bending over the heavy iron frying pan.
‘Mam! What are you doing? I’ll do that,’ he cried, taking the pan from her hand and settling it on the bar. ‘Sit down, Mam, will you?’
Mary Anne was only too happy to sit; she sank into the chair feeling as though she had been kicked in the chest.
‘Lottie!’ Harry shouted as he turned for the door to get the girl, but she was already on her way in, wiping her hands on her apron as she came. ‘Me mam’s badly,’ he went on, giving her a hard stare.
‘Nay, I’m all right,’ Mary Anne managed to say, and indeed the pain was receding as she sat back in the chair.
‘What are you doing, letting me mam lift the frying pan?’ Harry demanded, giving Lottie a black look. His mood was changed completely by the sight of his mother’s white face.
‘I didn’t, I …’ Lottie protested, but she too was worried at how ill Mary Anne looked. ‘I was coming, Mary Anne,’ she said, ‘you should have left it. It won’t take but a minute.’
‘I’ll get Mrs Brown,’ said Harry, taking a step towards the door, but his mother stopped him.
‘No, don’t do that, I’m better now,’ said Mary Anne. ‘Don’t bother her, she’ll be busy, it’s was
hing day.’
‘I don’t care what day it is,’ Harry declared.
‘Don’t, do you hear me?’ Mary Anne’s voice was definitely stronger, and in fact she was looking a little better.
Harry looked at her and turned back. ‘Well, don’t try to lift anything again.’
Mary Anne briefly considered telling him not to tell her what to do, but didn’t have the energy.
Lottie looked at her and smiled. ‘It’s my fault, I should have had the meal ready,’ she said. ‘But I just have to fry the taties and that. There’s cold mutton from yesterday and I made a dish of pickle.’
Harry took off his jacket, hat and pit boots and put them in their usual corner, ready for Lottie to dash and scrape. He didn’t wash his hands, for everyone knew coal dust was black but clean, and he sat down at the table, waiting.
‘You’ll be starving, son,’ said Mary Anne. ‘But Lottie won’t be long now.’ Oh, he was a lovely, canny lad and handsome even in his black, she thought. He shouldn’t have to wait for his dinner, no indeed. They had done enough of that when the lads were on their own in Stanley. Though neighbours had been kind, and why wouldn’t they be to three lads like hers? No, two, there were only two now, her bonnie lad Miley was dead and gone. A familiar fog of depression hovered but she shook it off, refusing to dwell on her loss.
Lottie put two plates of food on the table and one on a tin tray for Mary Anne to eat on her lap. Mary Anne was not hungry but she made an effort, spooning some mashed potato into her mouth. Lottie sat down at the table beside Harry.
‘You watch my mother, Lottie, won’t you?’ Harry said in a whisper.
‘I will,’ Lottie replied. ‘Mebbe she should have the doctor?’
Doctors were not frequent visitors to the miners’ wives. The miners yes, because of the many accidents, but their wives lived their lives mostly without the benefit of medical help. The idea was new to Harry, even though when she had been staying with his sister Eliza, Mary Anne had seen the doctor often. But then, Eliza was a nursing sister, she had grown out of their ways.