by Maggie Hope
‘I will get my own place as soon as I’m able,’ Lottie was saying. ‘I’ll go to see Mr Scott at the Post. He will give me work, I know. And I do have some money, to see me over until then.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Lottie,’ said Eliza dully. She felt her heart was breaking. How could Lottie not feel that too? The lass was altogether too self-possessed. Why wasn’t she weeping for her man? She should be, especially a man such as Thomas.
She should not have gone to her mother-in-law, Lottie realized as she unpacked her things in the small back bedroom of the house in Gilesgate. It was the bedroom she had been given when she first came back from Stanley all those years ago. She stared out of the window at the houses opposite, not really seeing them. Well, here she was, back to where she had been then. She had succeeded then and she would succeed again, she told herself. And the sooner she started the better.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Lottie! How good to see you,’ said Mr Jeremiah. He had come out of his office to greet her as she climbed to the top of the stairs and she felt a rush of warmth because he had done so. ‘Come in, do, and I’ll order tea. You would like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?’
He smiled down at her and she was struck afresh by the deep blue of his eyes. His tawny hair had thinned a little and here and there was speckled with grey, but the effect was to make him look even more distinguished than she remembered him. As she offered him her hand and walked before him into his office it was almost like coming home, or at least back to a well-remembered and loved place. Her heart warmed a little for the first time since Thomas’s desertion.
‘Thank you for seeing me. I know this is a busy day for you,’ Lottie murmured.
‘Nonsense! I will always have time to see you,’ he replied, before going to the door and calling, ‘Jackson, are you there? Fetch some tea, will you? Oh, and get some of those little cakes from the baker’s please.’
A voice answered from below and Mr Jeremiah turned back into the room. Up until then he had been having a humdrum sort of a day, but the sight of Lottie had brightened his mood considerably.
He sat down opposite Lottie. ‘Well then, Lottie. I can still call you Lottie, can’t I? Now you are a married lady?’ he said, not waiting for a reply. ‘How are you? Do you like living in Newcastle?’ He paused, then went on, ‘And Thomas, how is Thomas?’
‘That I wouldn’t know,’ said Lottie steadily. She stared down at the black cotton gloves encasing her clasped hands before continuing. She felt embarrassed at telling Jeremiah that her man had left her. ‘Thomas and I don’t live together any more.’
‘I’m sorry, Lottie,’ he said quietly. No more than that, but she felt he understood that she didn’t want to talk about it.
‘Are you living back here then? In the same place?’
‘With my mother-in-law for the minute. Then I want to find a place, a room at least, somewhere overlooking the Wear. By Prebends Bridge, for preference.’
‘Well then,’ he said. ‘As it happens I am in dire need of a lady to do the job you were doing before you left. There have been one or two but they don’t stay long. Most of them are just waiting until they get married.’ He paused and looked at her closely. ‘Are you interested in coming back?’ he asked.
Lottie sighed with relief. She had steeled herself to ask him for work; it was almost as if he knew that. But then, Jeremiah had always seemed to know what she was thinking. She smiled.
‘Oh, Mr Jeremiah,’ she said, ‘that is exactly why I am here.’
‘It is? And there I thought you had come to see us for old times’ sake.’
Lottie blushed. ‘Oh well …’ she began and then noticed his dark blue eyes were twinkling at her. ‘It is lovely to be back but I do need some work.’
‘You have not made your fortune writing books then?’
She laughed. ‘Not yet. But I’m trying.’
‘You have a lot of talent, Lottie.’ He was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at her. ‘Can you start today?’ he asked eventually.
Lottie didn’t hesitate. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘There has been some unrest in the mining villages, even among the miners who live closer in to the city. The usual thing: the owners want to reduce wages and the pitmen want to reduce their hours of working. I want you to go out to West Stanley and find out the wives’ point of view. Not just Stanley but one, maybe two of the other places. Do you think you can do that?’
Lottie stared at him. ‘Do you think I can do it?’ she asked eventually. It was such a big job, and she had done no reporting for such a long time. When would she get time to write her own book, the book Mr Bloom was expecting on his desk before the autumn?
‘I wouldn’t ask if I did not,’ said Jeremiah with a half smile. ‘It’s an article, Lottie. Maybe two thousand words at the most. What do you think?’
An article, not so big a job. ‘I can,’ she said.
Jeremiah smiled. ‘Good. You can take Edward with you, he will take photographs.’
There was a knock on the door and Jackson came in with the tea tray. He smiled and nodded at Lottie as he put it down before her. ‘Good to see you, miss,’ he said before going back out.
‘Oh,’ said Jeremiah. ‘There are biscuits. You will do the honours, won’t you, Lottie?’
As Lottie sipped tea and nibbled a biscuit she felt there was some constraint between them as she surreptitiously watched Jeremiah. He was as courteous, even friendly, as ever, but not as free and easy as he had been. He looked older too: there were lines on his face that she couldn’t remember being there before.
‘Your father, is he well? And your wife …’
‘My father is fine. He will be in later, you may see him,’ Jeremiah said rather quickly. ‘My wife is not well, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She put her cup and saucer back on the tray and rose to her feet. ‘Well, I think I may as well start right now,’ she said. ‘It’s early, I can catch the horse-bus to Stanley.’
‘What are you going to do? I mean, do you have a plan?’ Jeremiah rose to his feet too and came around the desk to show her to the door. He opened it and stood to one side to let her through. ‘Do you know anyone in Stanley?’
‘I do as it happens, I have friends there, a mining family. It will be nice to see them again.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then. Well, it’s nice to see you again, Lottie,’ he said, and looking up at his face she could tell he really meant it. ‘I’ve missed you, we all have.’
‘Thank you. I’ve missed you too. The office, I mean,’ she added quickly and Jeremiah held out his hand to shake. His handshake was warm and firm and reassuring.
‘I will wait for you to get in touch then,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Lottie.’
Lottie hesitated before answering. ‘You know Thomas’s stepfather is a union official, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘Some might think my views are influenced by him. His mother is a friend of mine and we keep in touch.’
‘I’m sure you will be fair-minded, as you always were in your articles, Lottie,’ Jeremiah answered.
As she walked along the street towards North Road where she could pick up the horse-bus to Stanley, she realized how true it was that she had missed Jeremiah. The image of Thomas had faded from her thoughts for the first time since he left. Not that it had dominated them but it had been there, never really out of her mind. The difference between the two men was so marked. Thomas was such a charming man when he wanted to be, but he was unreliable, dishonest and, in the end, a gambler and a thief.
After the experiences she had endured during her early life, she needed an upright man, a rock, a man she could rely on. A man such as Jeremiah, she thought wistfully.
‘Lottie Lonsdale, I don’t believe it!’
Dora, Albert Teesdale’s wife, sat back on her heels, with the black lead brush in her hand. The steel fire irons were to one side, already polished, and there were black smuts on Dora’s hands and
cheek and on the sacking apron she wore around her waist to protect her dress, instead of her usual white pinafore.
‘Hello, Dora,’ said Lottie, as she stood in the open doorway to the kitchen/living room in West Stanley. She had been feeling unsure of her welcome and Dora’s tone of voice stopped her walking straight in, as she would have done in normal circumstances. The kitchen looked much the same as when Mary Anne had reigned over it, except for the fact that the walls were no longer lime-washed but covered in a black wallpaper decorated with large cabbage roses. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Nay, I’m all right,’ said Dora. ‘Albert’s not too grand. His chest.’
She pushed herself up with the help of the wooden cracket on which she had her cleaning gear. Dora was heavily pregnant. She looked pale and tired and her face was puffy.
‘Mind, it’s a bit since we saw you,’ she said with emphasis on the ‘you’. She looked hard at Lottie. ‘Well, come in and sit down if you’re coming,’ she went on. ‘Speak quietly, though. Albert’s in bed, he’s on night shift.’
‘Thank you.’
Lottie moved into the kitchen and pulled out a chair from the square scrubbed table in the middle. It was one of two; she recognized them as the plain, unpolished chairs sold by the Co-operative stores that had been varnished by Mary Anne. There was a long form at the other end of the table for the children to sit on. It too was varnished to a dark, almost black colour.
‘I’ll put the kettle on but you’ll have to wait until the fire gets built up. I let it go down while I did the fireplace.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Lottie. Now she was here, she felt some constraint about broaching her reason for coming.
‘I wouldn’t mind a cup myself.’
Dora mended the fire with the aid of a few sticks and small lumps of coal. When it blazed up to her satisfaction she pushed the iron kettle back from the bar on to it.
As they waited for the water to boil, Albert came down the stairs in his stocking feet. His braces hung down over his trousers and his shirt was collarless. He stared at Lottie, unsmiling.
‘Mind, we are honoured,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen you for a year or two. We might have been dead and gone for all you cared. What’s all the bloody racket any road? When a man’s been down the pit all night he should get a bit of peace in his bed after.’
‘Albert,’ said Dora.
‘Albert what? I’ve said nowt but the truth, have I?’
‘Hello, Albert,’ Lottie intervened. ‘How are you? I’m sorry if we woke you, I thought we were being quiet.’
‘What do you care how I am, or any of us for that matter? My mam gave you a home when you were out on your arse and what did she get back? Eh? Eh?’
‘Albert!’ Dora said again.
‘Aw, don’t Albert me, she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t after something, would she?’ He glared at his wife. The kettle lid began to lift and fall as the water boiled. ‘Well, are you making tea or not? If not, I’ll away down the club for a pint of ale. I’ll get no more sleep the day with a strange voice nattering on all the time.’
‘I’ll be going soon,’ said Lottie. ‘I just came to see how you were getting on.’
She couldn’t talk about her article now, not with Albert there.
‘What about the tea?’ asked Dora.
‘Let her go, she’s not interested in us, Dora, man!’
Lottie hurriedly said goodbye and backed to the door. She could hear Albert’s voice shouting at Dora as she went off down the street, glad when it eventually faded away.
There was a corner shop on the end of the street which sold just about everything that the families might run out of before the Co-op store cart came around on Fridays. Inside there were a few housewives, shopping baskets in hand, waiting their turn to be served. Lottie recognized one or two of them as her neighbours when she had lived with the Teesdales. They turned around to inspect the newcomer as she opened the door and the bell jangled above her.
‘Eeh, it’s little Lottie!’ cried one. ‘What are you doing back here, Lottie? The last I heard you were living in Durham or Newcastle and were a famous writer!’
The speaker was Dot Turner, who lived a few doors along from the Teesdales. She was a blowsy woman with untidy fair hair, blue eyes and red cheeks, and she stood with her arms folded across her ample bosom and grinned at Lottie. Lottie smiled back at her. Dot was a woman who said whatever came into her head without thinking about it first, but there was no real harm in her.
‘I don’t know about the famous bit,’ she replied. ‘I have written a book and it has been published but I don’t know how well it will do.’
‘Get away, lass,’ Dot declared. ‘That’s more than anyone here as done. Most of us cannot write our own names, man!’
‘You’ve written some bits for the Durham Post, though, haven’t you?’
This came from the shopkeeper, who seemed to have abandoned her serving in her interest in the newcomer.
Lottie admitted this was true.
‘Are you going to write about us, now?’ asked Dot.
This was so near the truth that Lottie was surprised for a minute. ‘I’m hoping to write an article about miners’ wives,’ she admitted.
‘Aye, well, I reckoned it had to be something brought you back,’ a thin woman with a grubby shawl said, nodding her head in emphasis. ‘You wouldn’t be slumming here otherwise.’
‘Aw, get along wi’ ye, the lass has family here,’ Dot asserted. ‘Didn’t she marry Eliza Teesdale’s lad? Anyway, pet, what do you want to know?’
‘The editor wants me to ask the opinions of the miners’ wives about the present dispute between the owners and the men,’ said Lottie. The women began to laugh.
‘By, you’re as good as a turn, Lottie Lonsdale,’ said Dot. ‘Don’t you think so, Meggie?’ Meggie, the shopkeeper nodded her agreement.
‘The dispute between the owners and the men? Don’t you mean the owners trying to get the pitmen to work all hours for nowt and the men determined to stop them and get paid a decent wage?’
‘I reckon you could say that,’ Lottie admitted. Even this small interchange had given her some idea of the women’s opinions, she thought. ‘All right, yes, that’s what I mean. I’m just trying to be even-handed for the readers of the Post. It’s a city paper and there are a lot of readers who are against the men causing trouble in the workplace.’
There, she’d done it again, she realized as soon as she uttered it. She had been away from the miners and their families too long. They would never use language like that. They would think she was against them. The women had stopped smiling and were looking at her with suspicion.
‘By, Lottie Lonsdale,’ said Meggie. ‘You have changed. You’re on the side of the bosses now, aren’t you? Well, you’ll get nowt out of us, I’m telling you.’ Meggie’s man was a shotfirer down the pit.
There was a murmur of agreement among the women. ‘You’ll away back to Durham if you know what’s good for you,’ one of them said, her voice rising to a shout. ‘An’ you married to the union man’s lad. Shame on you.’
‘No!’ Lottie protested. ‘I’m not on the side of the bosses! I was just saying what some people think, that’s all. I’m for the ten-hour day, I am. Especially for the lads. I just wanted your opinion that’s all. The Post reports things fairly, they do. It’s just …’
‘Aw, hadaway, will you, lass. You’re not making things any better,’ said Dot. ‘If you don’t know what we think by now, after all the time you spent among the pit folk, you’ve been going around with your eyes and ears shut.’
‘Aye, I’ll go.’
Lottie turned to the door, then turned back. ‘But I think I can say that feelings are running high in West Stanley any road. I promise I’ll put the case as best I can.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Meggie drily. ‘Well, a man working down the pit is worth a fair wage, that’s all we’re saying.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘You’ve been to West Stanley?’ said Eliza. ‘By, I wish I’d have known, I would have come with you. I’m worried about Da. Did you see him?’
Lottie had to admit she hadn’t even thought of Tommy or Harry when she was in the mining village. ‘I think they must have been on shift,’ she said. ‘I saw Albert and Dora, though, they were all right.’
‘It’s time Da was out of the pit,’ said Eliza. ‘I thought he should come to live with us here. I could keep an eye on him. His chest is worse since he went on datal work.’ She did not mention that with Lottie in the house there was not really space for Tommy, but Lottie was well aware of it.
She would move out to make room for Eliza’s father, Lottie thought to herself, though Eliza would not ask it of her. It was time to look for a place on her own again and she thought of the little house where she had lived before going to Newcastle with Thomas. She regretted leaving it now, oh yes she did indeed.
‘Tommy will be fine,’ she said, trying to reassure Eliza. ‘Harry will let you know if he isn’t, even if Albert does not. You know your father is independent. He’ll want to work as long as he can.’
‘Still, he’s into his seventies now. He’s worked in the pit since he was nine years old.’ Eliza bit her lip. ‘Then there’s Thomas. I wonder where Thomas is. What is he doing? Surely he’ll get in touch soon,’ she said. ‘He’s a good lad really, Lottie, you know he is. He’ll have a good reason for staying away, you’ll see.’
Lottie looked at her mother-in-law. What could she say? Poor Eliza was worn down with worry, what with her son and her father, though she didn’t know the true extent of the trouble Thomas was in and Lottie hadn’t the heart to tell her.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she replied, then excused herself to go and write up her notes.
The following day she visited some of the local pit wives before going to see Mr Jeremiah in the early afternoon to show him her notes, which still needed some knocking into shape before she wrote the final article. She was a little unsure of herself; after all, it was a long time since she had worked on the paper. His smile as he rose from his desk as she went into his office was heart-warming.