by Maggie Hope
A miracle, they called it in the rows. There should have been a gang of them working the face in the narrow seam but the others had moved out to the loftier entrance passage to eat their bait when it happened. Jack Maddison, as he did so often, worked on alone, not bothering to break for food.
His son pieced the story together and told it to his family that night, with Miles lying in the front room and his father insisting on staying in the back yard so that Alice took him out a chair and gently sat him in it.
‘The stone didn’t kill Miles, nor hurt young Thomas either,’ said Jackie. ‘Not directly, that is. Miles was killed by a cart. There’s an incline just there, the seam is in a dip, you know. The putter lad had just started work again and the galloway was having a job getting started up the incline. The pony was pulling and Owen was pushing but they were making no headway so Miles left his bait and went to give a hand. They got the tub going and Miles stood back but when the tub was halfway up the galloway stopped dead. His ears pricked, like they do when something’s up, and then the weight of the truck pulled him back and it rolled down the rails and knocked the putter lad down.’
Meg and Alice looked at him, puzzled. How had that killed Miles and buried Da? But Jackie wasn’t finished.
‘The tub came off the rails, like,’ he continued. ‘And then the stone fell, right behind it, blocking off the entrance to the seam. The other lads saw it all. That was what put the wind up the pony, he knew it was coming. The lad was hurt bad, they thought he was dead, but they couldn’t get him out till they got the pony and tub out of the way. Miles was frantic, they said, what with Da under the stone an’ all.
‘They had to unload some of the coal and manhandle the tub back on the rails to get it out of the way but the air was thick with dust and Miles bent down to try to see if they’d got it right. And it fell on his head.’
There was silence in the kitchen as they pictured the scene in their minds, the frantic haste to get the boy out, one disaster falling on top of another. It was broken by Auntie Phoebe coming into the kitchen.
‘I’ve brought you a pan of broth,’ she said, carrying the heavy pan in and putting it down on the brass-handled bar hooked over the grate. ‘I know you likely don’t feel like eating, but you have to keep your strength up to get over the next few days.’
Meg rose to her feet. ‘I’ll have to get back to the bairns,’ she said dully.
‘No you don’t, not at all,’ Auntie Phoebe said firmly. ‘Tot went round there earlier on. He’s brought them round to our house. They’re in bed this minute, they’ve had their suppers and they’re tucked up in my back bedroom.’
Meg sat down again. The shock of the day’s happenings had got to her and her legs felt as though they were made of jelly.
‘Thank you, Auntie Phoebe,’ she said. ‘Dolly Bates was going to see to them, but I couldn’t expect her to have them all night.’
‘Aye.’ Auntie Phoebe nodded her head in the direction of the already darkening yard. ‘We’ll have to do something about your da an’ all,’ she said grimly.
Meg looked at her brother and sister. ‘Maybe you’d better try, Alice,’ she said. ‘He might not take kindly to me, like.’
‘Nay, lass,’ Auntie Phoebe shook her head. ‘I don’t think he knows who it is talking to him at all. He just sits there, staring at the wall.’
‘We’ll all go,’ suggested Jackie, and they trooped out into the back yard.
‘Da?’ said Jackie. ‘Howay, Da, you can’t stay out here, man. Howay in and sit by the fire, it’s getting cold out here. Dark an’ all.’
Their father gave no sign of having heard them.
‘We’ll try to help him up,’ decided Meg. ‘Come on, Jackie, you take one side and I’ll take the other.’
She stood by her father’s side and slipped one arm under his armpit and Jackie did the same at his other side.
‘Now, one, two, three, heave,’ she said, and after an initial resistance, Da was on his feet.
‘I’ll come behind,’ said Alice.
It was weird urging Da to walk forward, Alice pushing gently from behind. Puffs of coal dust came from him for they had not yet succeeded in getting him to change his clothes or bathe. But he walked, albeit slowly, until they reached the door, when he came to an abrupt halt.
‘Come on, man, Da,’ urged Jackie.
‘We’ll leave the door open for you,’ said Alice.
‘Aye, we won’t close the door,’ said Jackie, and pulling and pushing, they at last managed to get their father inside and over to the hearth and into his chair.
‘His hands are like ice,’ whispered Meg, distressed. ‘Let’s try to get him cleaned up and some hot broth inside him. He’ll come round, he will, it’s the shock. That’s all. He’ll come round when he gets over the shock.’
The tin bath was filled with hot water and Da sat there unresisting as Jackie and Meg stripped him of his pitclothes down to his pit hoggers, the short cotton under-trousers worn down the pit. They washed him and dried him as if he were a child and dressed him in a clean shirt and trousers.
‘Stand up now, Da,’ they said, and he stood up obediently. ‘Sit down now, Da,’ they said and he sat down. Meg brought him a bowl of broth and put the spoon into his hand and he took the spoon but didn’t use it. She took the spoon from him and tried feeding him with the hot soup but he closed his mouth firmly and turned his head away.
‘Leave him be,’ advised Auntie Phoebe. ‘Likely he’ll be better tomorrow.’
The next day, Da was no better. He still sat in the chair and stared ahead of him. Neighbours and friends came in to pay their respects to the family and offered him their condolences, and he sat without speaking so that they were at a loss what to say next.
The kitchen became filled with a terrible smell for he was incontinent and the sisters were obliged to close the room off to visitors, receiving them only in the front room where Miles lay in his coffin. A closed coffin, because nothing could be done to make Miles’s head anywhere near presentable for viewing.
The colliery doctor came and went and returned with another. A mind doctor, the pit folk whispered, one from the asylum at Sedgefield. He asked that they be left alone with Da, and Alice and Meg and Jackie went into the front room where Miles lay and listened to the murmur of voices from the kitchen. Then the doctors came out and talked to the family.
‘He’ll be better off in hospital,’ said the colliery doctor. So Da was taken away in a green van to the asylum, the day before his youngest son was to be buried. The folk in the pit rows watched as he was driven away.
The funeral was held on a Friday morning bright with sunshine which glinted off the steel toecaps of the men who followed the family to the graveyard, Miles’s workmates and others who were off shift. There were flowers. The union had sent a wreath and the owners another, beautiful exotic flowers brought in from the south, dwarfing the family wreath of garden flowers, roses and lilies. Overhead the birds still sang in the distance, the wheel of the winding engine still turned and the collier whistle blew. Afterwards the men lined up to to pay their respects but no one mentioned Da.
Meg and her two boys followed Alice and Jackie home for the funeral tea, wishing fervently that it was over. She didn’t know how they were going to get through the afternoon. But she did, as did Alice and Jackie. The hours went by and at last it was evening and everyone had gone. Meg put the boys to bed in Auntie Phoebe’s house, in a spare bed in Bella’s room, and left her to mind them. Then she went slowly round to sit with Alice. For Jackie was on night shift, he had to go back to the pit, and it was unthinkable to leave Alice on her own in the silent house.
A horse was tethered by the tap at the end of the row. Jonty’s horse. Meg’s pace quickened and she ran up the yard and burst into the kitchen and into Jonty’s arms, holding him to her, feeling the solid strength of him, drinking in the scent of him. And she wept, tears rolling down her cheeks, great sobs wracking her body.
Alice watche
d, wondering, and the attraction Jonty had held for her withered and looked a very poor thing in comparison to the passion between her sister and him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jonty had not heard of the accident until he was on his way back to the Hall that day. He had waited and waited for Meg, sitting on the grassy knoll. While he waited he made plans for the future, what they would do, he and Meg and her boys, when he was free to go away and take her with him. Dreamily, he stuck a stalk of grass between his teeth and chewed on it idly.
Canada, that was the place. There were lots of opportunities in Canada, he mused. They would go to Canada and buy a farm. He could make a go of it, he knew he could. No one would know they weren’t married to each other. The boys would soon forget their early life. He would be a father to them, he would train them in farming. They would have a much better life, better prospects. Farming in Canada offered so much more than a life in the mines of County Durham.
He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, noticing with surprise that it was already two o’clock. Meg must have been delayed by something. He would wait another hour.
Jonty smiled as he looked at the watch. It had been his grandfather’s. Grandmother had saved it for him until he was twenty-one and put it in his hands on his birthday.
‘He would have wanted it to come to you,’ she had said. It was an old watch with a cover and when the cover was opened it played a tinkly tune: ‘Bobby Shafto’. The wonder was that she had managed to save it from being sold by his father, he mused. Carefully he replaced the watch in his waistcoat pocket and got to his feet, walking to the path and looking up and down the length of it. There was no sign of Meg, but Bill, from the miners’ row, was limping up the path with the aid of a stick, a whippet looking as old as his master walking along beside him.
‘Good day, Sir,’ said Bill, looking stern. The gentleman was seen loitering there far too often nowadays. It would not be long before others beside him and his marra began to wonder who it was he came to see.
‘Afternoon, Bill,’ said Jonty. ‘Nice dog you’ve got there.’ He smiled and bent to pat the dog but it backed away, growling.
‘He doesn’t like strangers coming round here,’ said Bill shortly, and went on his way.
Jonty stared after him, puzzled. Bill had been so friendly at other times. He went back to the stand of trees and waited half an hour longer. She wasn’t coming, he realised, the disappointment heavy on him. Disconsolate, he mounted his horse and rode away. He might as well visit Farmer Teasdale, he thought. He still had to explain why the repairs to his barn would be delayed until next month though how he was going to do this he had no idea. He could hardly say he had given the money to his father to spend on whisky and women.
Jonty was riding along the road when he heard the ambulance coming up behind him, the bell clanking to warn of its approach. Hastily, he pulled over to let it go past, thinking, There must have been an accident in some local mine or other. It was not the fever ambulance, it had to be the new one bought by the Durham miners’ union only recently. He followed it on until he came to the entrance to Teasdale’s place, seeing the farmer just coming out of the barn.
‘There’s been an accident, I think,’ said Jonty.
‘Aye, Winton Colliery it was,’ Farmer Teasdale answered, shaking his head in solemn sympathy for the pit community. ‘My lad told me when he came back from his dinner. He lives in the village with his mother, travels back and forth on his bike.’
‘A bad one, did he say?’ asked Jonty. He was filled with concern for Meg. Was any of her family involved?
‘One killed,’ the lad said. ‘One with his back broke an’ all. They’ve taken him to the County Hospital in Durham.’
‘That must have been the ambulance I saw a minute since,’ said Jonty.
‘Aye.’
‘He didn’t happen to know who was killed, did he?’
Farmer Teasdale turned away and called up the yard. ‘Ted! Ted!’ A stocky youth came out of the byre and looked over to them.
‘Aye?’
‘Who was it killed, like, did you hear owt about it?’
Ted walked down to them, wiping his hands on his sacking apron.
‘It was Miley Maddison as was killed,’ he said. ‘An’ young Owen Thomas had his back broke. An Miley’s da, he’s trapped under the stone.’
Jonty’s first instinct was to gallop to Winton Colliery. In fact he was already on his horse and turning it round when the farmer spoke.
‘Are you going already?’ he asked, his eyebrows lifting.
‘I’ve just remembered something. I’ll see you later,’ Jonty mumbled, suddenly remembering the need not to betray his love for Meg.
The next few days he agonized over Meg and her family, desperately wanting to go and comfort her. But she was a married woman, he told himself, he had to be careful.
And then he thought of something else. Why he hadn’t thought of it before he couldn’t imagine. He was kin, wasn’t he? He could go to ask after them quite legitimately. He would go to see Mrs Lowther, test the water, so to speak. No one could object to that.
He wasted no time in following the thought through. Within the hour he was riding along the road to Winton Colliery, going along the top of the rows to Pasture Row and tethering his horse by the end house. It was already evening, but he could not wait until the next day. He felt if he did not see Meg tonight he would go mad.
‘Eeh, hello, it’s Jonty isn’t it?’
Auntie Phoebe was at the gate of the second house, the house he knew was that of Meg’s father. He stepped forward and held out his hand.
‘I thought I would come, offer my condolences,’ he said.
‘Why, come away in, there’s only Alice there. Meg’s putting the bairns to bed and Jackie’s at the pit, but you’ll be more than welcome.’
Jonty hesitated, remembering how unwelcome he had been made the last time he was here. Auntie Phoebe shook her head.
‘It’s different now,’ she said. ‘Poor Jack, they took him away.’
‘Took him away?’
‘Howay in, lad, we can talk inside. I’m telling you, no one will say you nay.’
Alice was inside, tidying up after the funeral tea. She looked worn and tired and her eyes were red with weeping.
‘Look who I’ve brought to see you,’ announced Auntie Phoebe triumphantly. ‘It’s your cousin Jonty.’
Alice stared at him in disbelief. What was Auntie Phoebe on about now? This was Mr Dale, the man who had rescued Kit from the shaft at Old Pit.
‘Mr Dale?’
‘Please forgive me, Alice,’ he said. ‘I know I said my name was Dale. It’s not, it’s Grizedale. And it is true, I am your cousin. I thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with me if you knew who I was.’
‘It was Jack who took against you,’ Auntie Phoebe declared. ‘And the poor man’s not here, they took him off to Sedgefield.’
Jonty was horrified when he heard the full story of what had happened during the last few days, and blamed himself for not being there to support Meg and her sister through it all. What did it matter what people said? But he had no time to ask any questions for just then the door burst open and there was Meg, his darling Meg.
‘Well, I cannot believe it!’
Both Meg and Jonty heard Auntie Phoebe’s exclamation, but it was Jonty who found the strength of will to take hold of Meg’s arms and put her from him. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her, anxiously trying to help her control herself. He glanced over to the older woman who was staring, open-mouthed.
‘We know each other,’ he explained. ‘We met the day Kit fell into the shaft at Old Pit. I’ve met her since, we sometimes talk.’
Even in his own ears his explanation sounded weak but Alice, the quick-witted Alice, jumped in and backed him up.
‘Yes, Auntie Phoebe, that’s right. Oh, he was so good that day, going down the shaft after little Kit and bringing him up. And he came ov
er to see how Kit got on an’ all, I was there when he came, he brought Kit a rocking-horse.’
‘Well,’ said Auntie Phoebe, looking from Meg to Alice and back to Jonty. ‘You didn’t say it was Jonty. That’s right though, you were telling Alice why you didn’t give your proper name before. I never knew you were so well acquainted with our Meg, though.’
Shakily, Meg dried her eyes and stuffed Jonty’s handkerchief in her apron pocket. She made a desperate attempt to cover up for herself and Jonty, embarrassed for him more than she was for herself.
‘Auntie Phoebe, is Bella all right on her own? It’s getting dark. You know she doesn’t like the dark.’
Her aunt forgot all about Jonty at the mention of her beloved Bella. She jumped to her feet and made for the door.
‘Aye,’ she said, ‘I don’t want the lass to be getting her nightmares again. She’s had them ever since Miley went, poor lad. I’ll see you again, Jonty, don’t keep away now, will you?’
The house seemed quiet. Alice rose to her feet and drew the thin curtains over the window and lit the lamp above the table. She turned back to the other two and bit her lip as she saw the way they were looking at one another. Meg was heading for a lot of trouble and heartache if she went on like this, she thought sadly.
But, ‘I’ll make some tea,’ was all she said.
Jonty jumped to his feet. ‘No, not for me. I must get home. I’ll have to go round by the road as it is. There’s no moon tonight, it’s not safe to ride over the fields, can’t see the rabbit holes in the dark.’
‘Yes, of course. Well, it was nice of you to come,’ Alice said formally.
‘I’ll go to the gate with you,’ Meg said quickly, too quickly. It was all too painfully obvious to Alice that her sister wanted desperately to hang on to him for a few seconds more. She watched as they went out of the door and even though they did not touch, it was as though they were joined together somehow. Her sister who had always been so sturdy and strong, both physically and mentally, had an air of fragility about her, and the man with her was bending irresistibly towards her, concern and support flowing from him to her. Alice felt foreboding rise within her as she watched.