The Incomers

by Moira McPartlin

  She tries to remove her own mask of self-pity but does not know if she succeeds. She opens the door and is confronted with a woman who smiles but cannot hide the sadness in her eyes. Mrs Winski holds out a tray of seedlings to Ellie.

  ‘I bring you strawberry plants,’ she says. ‘Too many dat man of mine grows – he want to give you some.’ She pushes the tray towards Ellie. ‘Dat was his wish. Please take.’

  Ellie prises her shaking hand from the door frame and takes the tray from Mrs Winski then looks past the older woman, out into the garden as if expecting Mr Winski to appear. Then she remembers her manners.

  ‘Please come in. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Mrs Winski follows Ellie’s gaze and looks round at the garden. She bends down and plucks one of the many mature weeds that have invaded the cracks in the path; she looks at it then rolls it between her finger and thumb before putting it in her pocket.

  ‘Is a nice day,’ Mrs Winski says. ‘Why we no’ sit out here?’

  Ellie bows her head and says, ‘Yes, you are correct, Mrs Winski, why not sit out here?’ She puts the tray of seedlings on the coal bunker and turns back to her kitchen, ‘I will get you a chair and put the kettle on.’

  How to start a conversation with this woman? Ellie rehearses many beginnings but she should not have worried because as soon as she returns with chairs, Mrs Winski starts to chatter like the gaudy birds of home.

  ‘Thank you for looking after my husband,’ she begins. ‘Dat must have been a shock.’

  ‘I am sorry for your pain.’

  ‘You know, first I want go back to Poland. Dat is what we should have done when this trouble start but Marek, he did not want go back. He was stubborn man, dat man of mine; he did not want fail his family here.’

  ‘You have family here?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not now.’

  Ellie can hear the kettle boil but she does not want to leave this story. Mrs Winski takes a white ironed handkerchief out of her pocket, she picks off the dead weed and flicks a speck of earth from the cloth and returns the weed to her pocket.

  ‘Dat was not so clever, eh?’ Despite her heavy accent Ellie detects a hint of Scottish in her voice. She winds the handkerchief round her finger, her eyes remain dry.

  ‘We came over five years now. The mines in Poland are dangerous, poor paid. We hear new mines open in Fife, Scotland. Marek and I, we marry ten years already.’ She looks at Ellie and shakes her head. ‘No children. But Marek, he has two younger brothers, Brunon and Borys. Much younger than us, like our own, they were. Marek, he want better life for them. Better than he had. He take them here, for trade apprenticeships. Here they earn apprenticeships.

  ‘One, Brunon, he electrician, Borys a fitter. They go college, one day a week. Imagine, not one, two of our family in college. They learned good English. Marek, his was not so good but they teach him well. They make rule with him: he must speak English before nine o’clock at night. After nine we speak Polish. Boy, was dat man of mine silent before nine.’ She laughs. ‘And after nine we struggle like hell get word in sideways.’

  Ellie becomes aware that the kettle still boils. If she does not rescue it soon it will boil dry. But she cannot leave Mrs Winski while she is staring into her memory.

  ‘Great storyteller, dat man of mine. He know such history of his country. Such bloody history too. His favourite saying would be “Anna, if we can survive our bloody history we can survive anything.”’ She stops and dabs her nose with her handkerchief.

  ‘Let me make you some tea.’

  The widow remains in her position with her handkerchief round her finger, staring at the garden. Ellie hands her a mug of nettle tea and waits for a reaction, for she is sure this woman will approve.

  ‘He laugh lots – after nine. He would sing folk songs and tell of horrors in war. The boys were not born until after but inherited dat hardship.’ She shakes her head. ‘We thought we take them to safety.’

  ‘What happened?’ Ellie follows Mrs Winski’s gaze but cannot see the painful images that reflect in the older woman’s eyes.

  Mrs Winski takes a sip of tea and nods her head. ‘Is good, you must give me recipe.’

  Ellie remains silent, she is good at waiting.

  ‘Did you know dat luck is bad for miners go under ground on Christmas Eve? Men don’t come, even when they should.’ Mrs Winski begins. ‘Dat pit manager, he knows shift will be short staffed, so he ask young boys who already work dat day shift to stay work back shift – ‘work a doubler’ is called. They are keen, those boys of mine. Marek, he been sick and not go, he was one of those the boys making up work for.

  ‘They were both working in same area, this not usual, but this night it was way it was. Brunon, he became electric, all men stood back, Borys try help. The men there say they try stop him but he go to his brother and he become electric too. They are taught not touch electric people but his brother is hurt and he is tired. Both die.’ She stops talking then, and heaves breath into her lungs as if she has been underwater. Still she sheds no tears.

  ‘Marek, he blame himself. He should have been there, he could have saved at least Borys. He would not have let him touch his brother. He sink into blacker hole than the one he works in.

  ‘The men they try help Marek.’ Mrs Winski smiles and turns to Ellie, ‘They are good people here. They help, they bring gifts, they say prayers, they put flowers on grave, but they cannot speak to Marek in his own voice, cannot comfort him. I, who speak his language, cannot comfort him. At work they make jokes with Marek, include him in their games, this does not work, so they give up, they have own troubles.’ The woman’s voice becomes quiet and Ellie can hear tears in her breath. ‘I blame him too – sometimes, not always, I cannot help, but never say to him, not out loud.’ She beat her breast. ‘In here I blame him and he know. Guilt is like rust, eat you while alive.’

  Ellie remembers the story the girls told her of the men in the pit bullying the Polish man; did they have this wrong? Was it really just their way of trying to help him?

  ‘He sink lower, he no’ go doctor. I beg him go home Poland but he wants stay. Too proud to go home, he believe our family will call him coward. So we stay.’ Mrs Winski shakes her head. ‘I do not cry now, I have no tears left. Past months I watch dat husband of mine fight his way through each day. He walk in woods.’ She smiles at Ellie, ‘He like you very much but he worry for you. He say you look unhappy, he know what unhappy is, he say you should tend your garden more, you look like gardener, like him.’ She points to the tray of strawberry plants sitting on the bunker. ‘He know you look after these well.’

  Ellie feels tears roll down her face.

  ‘Do not cry for him, his pain is gone.’

  Mrs Winski takes hold of Ellie’s hand and examines it in the same way Mary did on their first meeting, but the older lady does not remark on her colour. ‘He is right, dat man of mine, these are gardener’s hands, Marek know these things. He also know you could not help him. His torture is over, he is at peace.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Ellie says. She hears Nat chattering, awake from his nap. She must go to lift him but is frightened this woman who has lost so much will be hurt at the sight of her baby.

  ‘Is dat baby awake?’ Mrs Winski asks.

  ‘Yes, but he is good, he will play.’

  ‘Please, I will like hold baby, if dat okay.’

  When Nat sees Mrs Winski he holds out his arms to her in welcome and blinks his eyes at the older woman.

  ‘Look at dat, this baby flirt with me,’ Mrs Winski says.

  Poor baby, Ellie thinks, he is so sociable and I give him no company.

  Mrs Winski takes him and kisses each of his fingers in turn, then sits him on her knee and points to the red breast bird who is nosing for some food.

  ‘See robin, now where his wife is?’

  ‘What will you do?’ Ellie asks. ‘Will you go back to Poland?’

  ‘No, there is nothing there for me.’ She kisses the top of Nat’s head. ‘
I stay here. I have friends here. I clean church every Friday, I go Woman’s Institute, I sometimes go to bingo in club.’ She picks the weed out of her pocket and rolls it round in her finger. ‘I grow vegetables and wins everything at the village show.’ She puts the weed back in her pocket. ‘I am well.’

  She hands the baby back to Ellie and looks hard into her eyes. ‘Are you?’

  At first Ellie can feel that familiar tightening in her chest but when she takes a deep breath it is as if she is breathing in the refreshing wind that blows off the big river.

  ‘I will be well.’ She points to the plants. ‘I have strawberries to plant.’

  Mrs Winski squeaks the gate open then turns. ‘You speak good English,’ she says. ‘Dat is a good thing, I thinks.’

  The Pairty Line

  ‘Ah’m fed up hearin’ aboot fitba’.’

  ‘Ken whit ye mean – it’s a’ ma man can talk aboot these days.’

  ‘It’s bad enough the noo, whit’s it gonnae be like wance the World Cup actually sterts? Ah’ll no get a look in wi’ the paper, nor the telly.’

  ‘They buggers at the BBC ‘ll cancel everything onyweys.’

  ‘It’s they smarmie Inglish commentators ah cannae stond.’

  ‘Mebbes we should huv a pairty fur awbudy that disnae want tae watch fitba’.’

  ‘Whit team is yer man supportin’?’

  ‘Brazil.’

  ‘Ur they no aw blackies?’

  ‘Naw, thirs nae blackie countries playin’ this time.’

  ‘Why no’ like?’

  ‘They aw took the huff.’

  ‘Whit fur?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Well, who’s oor blackie gontae support?’

  ‘She better no’ support Ingland.’

  ‘She’ll no’ dae that – ah’m shair.’

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Since the day of Mrs Winski’s visit Ellie has remained out of her lazy bed after seeing James off to work. By nine o’clock each day she has Nat fed and dressed and ready to play in his sand pit in the garden while she tends to her crops, then they will take a trip into the forest to collect free food.

  James had built a sturdy deep sand pit for Nat in the small patch of land in the garden Ellie had not yet cultivated.

  ‘Come on, Ellie,’ James had said as he hammered wooden stakes into the ground. ‘You can’t claim the whole garden for your vegetables.’

  James had always thought a sand pit would be fun for their son, but when Ellie saw the delight her small boy took in filling up cups with sand and emptying them out, a wave of homesickness over took her. In his motherland Nat would have played in the compound with the other children, watched over by the many grandmothers while Ellie went to the fields with the younger women to tend her crops. The sand would not be boxed in; it would be the dry red earth he sat in, the earth of his motherland. Then she remembered the heat and the flies and the many times when the crops failed and she had to agree with her husband this was better.

  It is still too early to go back inside. Nat’s cheeks glow with health after their foraging trip to the forest. Today has been a good day. Although Ellie has begun to harvest some crops from her vegetable patch, she still enjoys her trips into the forest to search for native food. But there is one place, however, that she cannot revisit. The sight of the hanging man is too fresh in her brain and the memory buzzes round her head like so many flies.

  She breathes in the fresh air as she stands at her kitchen door; the air is sweet here. Why had it taken her so long to notice that? Nat can stay out a bit longer with his cups and spade, she thinks. She checks round the garden to ensure there are no dangers for him. Here is safe. In her country a mother would not leave her child alone in the yard. Danger is everywhere, not only from snakes but from the rabid dogs that roam free, but with so many other children to play with a child is never alone.

  Ellie places her small son in the sandpit and checks James’s latest handiwork, the shiny new catch on the gate, before going into the house to change out of her wellies. The basket of fungi she has just collected needs identified; Mrs Watson’s book lists many species, along with their uses and harms. Ellie knows she must get this right. She begins to read the first page then decides she can do this later, these fungi are not like leaf; they do not wither and die as soon as they are picked. This can wait, she has a small son who already spends too long on his own and has no one else to play with.

  Ellie closes the book and is just moving to the open door when she hears Nat bellow. The noise comes not from the sand pit where she left him, but from the gate. Ellie tumbles out of the door to see the blonde-haired scarecrow girl run away from her with arms stretched out in front. Clutched in her grubby hands is Nat. His face crumples into an indignant yell. The newly fixed gate lies open behind them.

  ‘Nat!’ Ellie shouts. ‘Carol! Stop!’

  Ellie plucks the hem of her skirt into her fist and with speed she has never known her heavy body to possess, she runs. Her sandals sink into the ground, wet seeps between her toes, damp and chilling, but she soon forgets this when she sees where the child is headed. Carol does not run back to the village, down the track, but turns towards the woods. Ellie almost catches her at the nuns’ graves but a tree root reaches up and grabs her toes, and she falls. Her hand scrapes the earth and her arm collapses underneath her. She picks herself up and starts to run again but the girl has reached the other side of the clearing. Despite the pounding in her chest, Ellie feels her heart almost stop; she now knows where Carol is taking Nat.

  ‘Oh God, no! Please God, no!’

  Ellie is sure the girl cannot successfully cross the pipe carrying her son. She has watched children perform this dare before. They wobble enough without a load, and this girl holds her baby.

  It has rained bits and pieces all week, and the burn is flowing high against the bank.

  ‘Please, come back.’ Ellie tries to keep her voice calm but can hear her own desperation. ‘Please, he is a baby. You will drop him.’

  The girl looks round but does not falter. Ellie tries to make her legs go faster but despite the girl’s bundle and her heavy frame, she is nimble in her Wellington boots and her feet are not hampered, like Ellie’s, by a long trailing skirt and sandals. The gap between them widens. Ellie watches in horror as the scruffy child steps onto the pipe.

  ‘No!’ she screams.

  Her resolve to stay calm dissolves and is replaced by the acrid smell of her fear. She sees the girl does not have a proper grip of Nat. The water foams brown as in the cataracts of the salt river of home.

  Ellie begins to pray. To pray for something she knows to be impossible, she prays for the Carol girl to clear the ten or so feet across the pipe. The girl is almost halfway across when Ellie reaches the water’s edge. To follow would be what any mother would do, but Ellie stops and stares down at the foaming water and tries to push down her fear. The girl moves Nat under one arm and Ellie can see he is too heavy for her. He begins to struggle.

  ‘No, baby, do not struggle!’ She shouts above the roar of the water. She realises she has made a big mistake when she sees his neck twist, his head turns this way and that, trying to locate the source of her voice. He is slipping from the girl’s arms. The girl hitches him up and steps over the middle section. Nat now sees Ellie and struggles harder, and suddenly he is free from the restraining arm. Ellie witnesses the terror in her son’s eyes as he tumbles towards the water. The brown foam engulfs the black curls.

  Her breath has disappeared with the run; she must find breath. Ellie hears her own screams in her head but like in a dream she cannot hear the sound coming from her mouth. She thrashes down the banking until she reaches the burn, but he is gone. She clambers the bank and runs, following the flow. His clothes snag a branch that holds him; Ellie reaches to grab, but he is gone again. Like a rag doll he bobs towards the pool that swirls and holds the water for a few minutes before it continues underground and on to the village.

&nbs
p; Like the pool the Sister kicked Ellie into when she was a child, it looks deep. Ellie must catch Nat in this pool before the burn widens further and disappears under ground, then he will be lost. The pool is shallow at the edge. The water drags Ellie’s skirt as she wades into the pool. She splashes forward to grab Nat. Water covers his head, she can’t reach him, she must go deeper, she begins to scream as hard as she had when they took her from her village to go to school, as hard as her depleted lungs will allow. Her fingers touch his sleeve, she grips, and then it is gone.

  A dark figure flashes past her, pushing her back towards the bank. Through her screams she hears a splash. The priest thrashes the water out of his way and with one movement grabs the baby and shakes him out. He kicks his way to the other bank and lays the baby on his front. Ellie feels the wet fabric of her skirt seep into her bones; she is on her knees, by the water’s edge. The priest coughs and spits as he pumps two fingers against the tiny body. He then turns him on his back and begins to breathe into his mouth. Waits and breathes again.

  Ellie rocks back and forth on her knees, clutching the juju that hangs around her neck, chanting ‘Please God, do not take my baby. O Virgin Mary, you watched your son die, do not let my son die too.’

  She shivers, even though the sun has come out fully from behind clouds and opens the flowers. She wants to cross the water but cannot; she continues to kneel on the other side and watch the priest. He lifts his head a little, as if waiting. A faint squawk drifts over to her side and then she sees a tiny chubby hand reach out and touch the priest’s face. Ellie collapses her head into the earth and wails thanks to the Virgin Mary for saving her baby. When she lifts her eyes again, the priest stands with Nat cradled in his arm.

  ‘We need to take him to hospital,’ he shouts across the pool, motioning for Ellie to move further along the bank away from the noise.

  ‘Is he fine?’ she says, her throat and lungs hurting; she has screamed too hard.