by Maggie Hope
She looked down at Meg and saw the doubt in her eyes. ‘You’ll be thinking about your da. He’ll be fine an’ all, you’ll see. When he gets used to it, like.’
‘Aye, Mam, he will,’ said Meg, but in her heart she wondered. They closed the door behind them and went down the path by the quietly munching horse to the gate, and turned in to Auntie Phoebe’s garden. And the thought ran through both their minds, at least they had kin near now. Phoebe might just be a cousin but she was kin, and kin was security.
As they went into the kitchen, the smell of boiled bacon and pease pudding and fresh-baked bread filled the air, and Meg felt her stomach rumble. By, she was starved. Even though it was a warm summer’s evening the fire was lit and a large black iron kettle simmered on the hob. Jack and the carrier were already sitting at the table and Phoebe was standing with a loaf in her hand, cutting thick slices of bread and butter. Meg watched as she spread the thick, creamy butter and cut, spread and cut, spread and cut. Her mouth watered as she watched.
‘Howay in an’ sit you down. I was only waiting for you before I mashed the tea. Now don’t be shy, help yourselves, there’s plenty.’
Auntie Phoebe, plumper and older than Meg remembered her, picked up a large tea caddy with a picture of Whitley Bay on the lid and spooned the tea into the large brown pot warming on the fender. She looked happy and excited as though she was enjoying herself hugely. She paid special attention to Meg, filling up her plate and giving her real milk in her tea. Meg didn’t like to say she didn’t care for it, she’d got used to condensed milk.
‘Tot’s on the night shift, filling in like, he won’t be back before midnight. But he’s looking forward to meeting you all, aye he is.’
The bread was crispy on the outside and still warm on the inside so that the butter melted into it, and Auntie Phoebe was liberal with the butter. And the milk. ‘Farm milk, fresh from the farm like the butter,’ she said. Luxury to the family from the coast.
Meg tucked in, relishing the taste of the hot pease pudding and ham and swallowing the milky tea manfully. But her head began to droop after a while and she could hardly lift the food from her plate to her mouth. Dimly, she heard the chatter of the grown-ups but everything was fading from her consciousness.
‘Will you look at the bairn!’ Auntie Phoebe cried suddenly. ‘She’s already asleep, poor pet. Will I take her up and put her in with the little ’uns?’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Jack, and picked Meg up bodily. Though she protested sleepily she really enjoyed being treated like a child again. Even though she was nearly ten and old enough to earn a living.
‘It’s up the loft for you, my bairn,’ said Jack, and pushed aside the curtain which cloaked the bottom of the stairs and took her up and laid her on the shakey-down bed which already held Jack Boy and Alice and Miles. Meg woke up enough to slip out of her dress but she went to sleep in her petticoat to the sound of Auntie Phoebe’s voice floating up the stairs.
‘Did I tell you about Ralph Grizedale? Eeh, what goings-on there is! Well—’
Ralph Grizedale, Meg thought as she drifted on the edge of the sleep. She knew him, didn’t she?
Chapter Five
In the kitchen, Phoebe was continuing her tale without noticing that both Hannah and Jack had taken on guarded expressions when she spoke of Ralph Grizedale.
Hannah did not in fact hear what was being said at first. At the mention of her hated brother-in-law’s name she was lost in bitter memories. The day of the evictions at Eldon, the look of terror in Meg’s eyes that day, a look a mother could never forget. But, worse, there was the memory of the cruel pain Ralph had inflicted on her sister Nell.
Poor Nell. She had been so determined to marry him, she could hardly believe her good fortune when she did so. Anything Hannah said to discourage her was discounted as merely envy at a younger sister netting a rich husband. Hannah still blamed herself for not being more convincing in her arguments. And so Nell had suffered years of pain and degradation at the hands of Ralph, for her first two babies were stillborn. And then there was that terrible day he had beaten her half to death when she was seven months pregnant. Jonty had come soon because of it and Nell had died. Her lovely, lovely Nell.
Dragging her thoughts back to the reality of sitting round the supper table in Cousin Phoebe’s house, Hannah pushed back her bitter feelings before they could engulf her. She lifted her eyes from her plate and saw that Phoebe and Jack were looking at her expectantly as though they were waiting for her to answer a question.
‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at Jack and then at Phoebe, not even sure which one had been speaking to her. ‘What was that? I was dreaming. Tired, I think.’
‘Not very nice dreams an’ all,’ commented Phoebe. ‘Not judging by the look on your face. No, I was telling you about Ralph Grizedale, your poor Nell’s man. Eeh, if anybody deserves their come-uppance it’s that one. Why, man, there’s poor little Jenny Mitchell, her from the bottom row. She went to the Hall to work six months since and now she’s back with a big belly. An’ she’s not the first. Jenny wouldn’t have gone there else, but her mam needed the money, she was desperate.’ Phoebe pursed her lips in disapproval and sat back in her chair with her arms folded over her ample bosom.
‘I tried to warn them, you know, but folk’ll never listen to good advice, will they? An’ there’s no one to put a bridle on him at the Hall now, not now his da’s gone. Not like when it was with your poor Nell.’
‘It would have been better if his da hadn’t made him marry Nell,’ put in Jack.
‘Eeh, but Jack, the bairn would have been born out of wedlock then,’ Phoebe said, before reflecting, ‘aye, well, mebbe it would have been better. Some things are worse than being an orphan an’ all.’ She paused to catch her breath before launching into the story of Ralph’s latest iniquity, the one she had been leading up to. ‘I didn’t tell you about the little lad, did I? Your nephew he’ll be, an’ didn’t you nurse him when he was a babby an’ your Nell died, poor thing? What’s his name now?’
‘Jonty? What about Jonty?’ Hannah sat up straight in her chair, anxiety coursing through her veins. ‘Has something happened to Jonty?’
‘Well, man, it depends on what you mean by happened,’ Phoebe said judiciously, and picked up her tea cup and drained it. She didn’t go on until she had placed the cup back in its saucer and she had sat back again. Hannah could have screamed at her.
‘It’s like this, Hannah. Grizedale’s Master of the Hunt now – oh, aye, he’s proper in with the County set. Or some of them, I should say – the wild young ones. By, things have changed since old Grizedale’s day! They don’t usually come over here, like, but there they were that day, riding all over the place. The farmers round about were up in arms. Last February it was, aye, and fences got broken down, and stock got out. Why, that farmer on the Auckland road out had a gander killed by a horse. You know what ganders are like for defending their own. An’ then they even went through the pit yard and the fore shift just turning out! I tell you, there was war on, there was.’
‘But what about our Jonty?’ Hannah said softly, evenly, her nerves at screaming pitch, holding her temper on a tight rein.
‘Oh, aye, Jonty.’ Phoebe reluctantly shortened her story and came to what Hannah wanted to know. ‘Well, they rode through the village, the hounds baying and the horses galloping after them with no thought for the folks running out of the road.’ Indignantly, she shook her head from side to side. ‘They can’t get away with that sort of thing nowadays, you know. Not in 1884, they can’t. They might have done once upon a time …’
‘Aye, but what about Jonty?’
Phoebe halted abruptly as she saw the impatience in Hannah’s face. ‘Eeh, sorry. But I get so flaming …’ She composed herself and leaned over the table before going on.
‘Well, as I was saying, along come little Jonty. I looked for him most particular, him being kin, like. Riding a proper horse he was, an’ all, not a little galloway. Eeh, he looke
d ever so little perched up there but he trotted on grand, he wasn’t a bit frightened of the horse nor nowt. But he was being careful, you know? Didn’t want to hurt anybody, I reckon. But, by, his da, he turned and yelled at the bairn to get on, an’ then he came back himself and slashed at him with his whip, and what with that and Jonty’s horse getting upset, like—’ Phoebe paused and cast a pitying glance at her cousin. ‘Jonty fell off.’
‘Was he all right?’
It was Jack who asked the question for Hannah found herself unable to.
‘Well … he would have been, but his da’s horse kicked him on the thigh. The bairn’s right leg was broken. I don’t think there was much else, though he was stunned and bruised. They took him to Doctor Brown’s surgery an’ he set the leg. But they shouldn’t have moved him, the doctor said. We tried to tell them that. Why, us pit folk know what to do about broken bones, if we don’t we ought to, we see plenty. But no, they were gentry and they don’t take any notice of us. The lad cried out when they took him up, it was a bad break like. He’ll always have a limp now, Doctor Brown says.’ Phoebe shrugged. ‘Could have been worse, like. That Ralph Grizedale, though, callous sod.’
Hannah was weeping tears inside for her dead sister’s son. Hadn’t she promised Nell she would look out for him when her sister was dying, her face all bruised from a blow from Ralph, and the baby coming early through it? Oh, it was all her fault, it was. She should have realised what was going on before Nell fell wrong with Jonty. And if she hadn’t told Ralph’s father when Nell told her, and if Mr Grizedale hadn’t …
If. There had been so many ifs and might have beens. She had promised Nell she would watch over Jonty, but what could she have done? She and Jack had had to move away, they’d had to live, hadn’t they? At least, she had told herself, Jonty wouldn’t starve, not as the heir to Grizedale Hall.
Conversation at the table flagged, even Phoebe’s tongue quietened as she saw how stricken Hannah was. She cast about in her mind for something cheerful to say, something to lighten the atmosphere. She wished she hadn’t mentioned Jonty. In the end, she simply stood up and began collecting the dishes together.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Hannah dully, but Phoebe shook her head vigorously.
‘Nay, nay, you go your bed. You must be fair worn out what with the new babby coming an’ all. No, I’ll stack the dishes in the pantry an’ have them washed in a couple of shakes come the morn. I’ll just leave a place for Tot when he comes in. He’s fond of a bit of ham an’ pease pudding an’ all.’
‘I can wash up …’ began Hannah, but Phoebe shooed her and Jack out of the door.
‘Away to your bed, the pair of you. I won’t wash the pots up tonight. Tot’ll need the hot water that’s in the set pot, he’ll be coming in black. I’ll soon get a bucket in from the pump in the street come the morning.’
‘We’ll say goodnight then,’ said Jack, and taking Hannah’s arm he led her out and into the house next-door. He and the carrier had erected the brass bed earlier so it wasn’t long before Jack was drifting off to sleep in it, the silence disturbed only by the carrier’s snores coming up the stairs from his shakey-down in the kitchen.
‘I’ll have to go and see him, Jack,’ Hannah whispered. ‘Eeh, I’m not sure we did right now. Coming here, I mean. I wasn’t thinking it was so near to Grizedale Hall.’
Jack turned over and slipped his arm around the swollen body of his wife, feeling the kick of new life within her. ‘It’s not so close,’ he said, ‘he’ll never think of us being here, pet. But I don’t think you should try to see Jonty. What if Ralph catches you?’
Hannah didn’t answer. If she went to see Jonty and Ralph saw her, would he make trouble for Jack at the pit? They had their own bairns to consider and the new one coming, one more to feed. She lay awake long after Jack fell asleep. She heard the night shift come out, the colliery whistle calling the fore shift in. And later she head the soft, ‘Goodnight, then,’ as Tot left his workmate to walk up the short garden path, and the soft scuffling noises as he opened the door of his house and pushed the bolt in after him. Then at last she slept.
Meg was up at six o’clock next day. She rushed into her dress and went outside into the street to fetch water from the pump for her wash. At least it wasn’t far, she thought, right outside Auntie Phoebe’s house. She considered getting Jack Boy up to carry water in to Mam’s house, but he was still fast asleep, along with Alice and Miles. There was no sign of Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot, either, but then Uncle Tot wasn’t going to work until after dinner, she knew, they would be having a lie in. Softly, Meg closed the door behind her and went next-door where she found Hannah and Jack already up. They were breakfasting on bread and jam washed down by hot black tea, for Jack had to be at the colliery offices by eight o’clock, and before then he was going to put up the children’s bed. The carrier had taken his fifteen shillings promised for the job and was already on his way back to the coast.
‘Morning, pet.’ Hannah looked up as she lifted the sneck of the door and Meg was struck by how pale and wan she was, with great dark circles under her eyes.
‘Morning, Mam, Da.’
She gave them both a peck on the cheek and helped herself to a cup of tea from the large brown pot with its mismatched lid. The lid was willow-patterned and pretty against the brown. Meg couldn’t remember when the true lid of the tea pot had been broken or where the pot of the willow-patterned lid had got to. The lid had been with the pot for so long they seemed like a pair to her.
Sitting down at the table, she added a dollop of condensed milk and took a long swallow. By! It was lovely after that wishy-washy stuff of Auntie Phoebe’s.
‘You mam’s a bit tired,’ Jack said to her. ‘Try to do your best for her today, will you, lass? An’ keep the bairns out of her way.’
‘Aye, Da, I will.’
Meg spread plum jam over a thick slice of bread and took a bite, savouring the sweetness of the jam against the nutty flavour of bread made from unbleached flour.
‘Aye. I know you will, lass.’ Jack rose and patted her head. ‘I’ll away and get the bed up then.’
The day was filled with putting the house to rights. The floors had been scrubbed the day before, but the doors and windows had to be scrubbed too with washing soda to remove the greasy finger marks. Then there were the curtains to hang at the front window and the furniture to be pushed into position. The bricked yard had to be swilled and the steps scrubbed with sandstone. After all, they couldn’t let the neighbours think it was a family of tinkers come to live alongside them.
They were just about done when it happened. Hannah was unrolling the clippie mat before the fireplace in the kitchen, bending down to straighten a corner, when she suddenly gave a cry and fell full-length on the mat.
‘Mam!’
Meg practically tumbled from the chair where she had been fixing the heavy cotton-net half-curtain to the window, and the chair fell over with her unheeded. Dropping the curtain, she ran to her mother and turned her over on to her back, screaming as she saw the deathly pallor of Hannah’s face.
‘Mam, Mam!’ she cried, picking up one cold hand and holding it to her own warm face. Was her mam dead?
‘What’s the matter, our Meg?’
Jack Boy came in from the yard where he had been told to keep the little ones amused until the house was ready. He stood in the doorway uncertainly, little Miles peeping round the leg of his raggy-edged short trousers. His hand went to his mouth and he stared, horror-stricken, at the sight of Hannah on the floor, lying so still.
‘Go and get Auntie Phoebe!’ Meg shouted at him, and still he stood, as though rooted to the ground. ‘Go on, now!’
But there was no need to go for Auntie Phoebe. She had heard the commotion through the thin wall which connected the houses and was already bustling up the garden path to the front door. She fairly ran through the front room to the kitchen, and at the sight of Meg kneeling on the floor beside her prostrate mother, she took cha
rge at once.
‘Jack Boy, go on, lad, take the bairns out somewhere.’ Jack Boy hesitated and she took him by the shoulder and turned him round bodily. ‘Hadaway, lad, this is no place for you. Take them down to the pit head and wait for your da. He won’t be long now, back shift must be coming out. Don’t fret, son, you mam’ll be fine, you’ll see.’ Firmly, Auntie Phoebe closed the back door on him and only then did she turn her attention to Hannah.
‘Is she dead?’ whispered Meg.
‘Nay, lass, of course she isn’t. It’ll be the babby, I should think. Look, she’s coming round already.’
And indeed Hannah was moaning slightly and turning her head from side to side. Suddenly her eyes flew open and she looked about her, at Meg’s tear-stained face and from there to Auntie Phoebe’s kindly one. She struggled to sit up, mumbling incoherently, but Phoebe took hold of her shoulders and prevented her.
‘Lie still a minute, pet, pull yourself together, that’ll be best. Then me and Meg will get you up to bed. I’ll put the kettle on and make you a nice cup of tea. You’ve been doing over much, that’s what. Is the babby coming, do you think?’
‘Eeh, no, it can’t be the babby coming yet. I reckoned another month or six weeks.’ But even as she spoke, a spasm of pain crossed her back, radiated round her side and gripped her. She cried out with the shock of it and Phoebe pursed her lips.
‘Aye, well, another month or not, we’ll be better off with you upstairs and abed. Then Meg can run for the midwife.’
Hannah had no option but to agree. Slowly the older woman and the young girl managed to get Hannah up the bare wooden staircase to the bed, though not without a few stops on the way while she gasped at the severity of the pains gripping her. Meg was frantic with the worry of it. Her mother’s hair was sticking to her forehead and the sweat was running down her neck in tiny rivulets. For Meg it was the longest journey of her life.