by Maggie Hope
‘That’s nice, pet, isn’t it?’ she said. The kitchen was beginning to warm up. Eliza sipped her tea, as the light infiltrating the tiny window grew stronger. She could hear voices coming from the other room so she put the kettle back on the fire, added a little more tea to the pot and, when the kettle boiled, brewed more.
‘I’ve made some tea, Mam,’ she called through the door, and Mary Anne came out with a shawl over her nightgown and took two cups through for her and Tommy.
Eliza pulled on her weekday dress and put the kettle on for water to wash her good one. By this time she was getting used to the throbbing pain in her foot. Using the broom with a cloth over the bristles as a crutch she took her slop pail outside and hopped to the midden at the end of the row to empty it, trying at the same time not to breathe the malodorous air around the muckheap.
Mary Anne was just coming through with the empty cups. ‘Thanks, lass, that was nice,’ she said. ‘Shout up to the lads, will you? I’ll make some porridge for them. Before they go to Sunday School.’ The boys were learning reading and writing and their numbers at the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School. Already they could write their names, even Miles, the youngest. Mary Anne was very proud of them. She tried to save a halfpenny each week for them to take for the offering.
The boys went off happily enough after porridge laced with the scrapings from the condensed milk tin. They were followed soon after by their parents who were going to the service in the little chapel at the top of Albert Street. Eliza was left with the baby and strict instructions to rest her leg.
‘You’ll be good for nowt if you don’t,’ Mary Anne warned her as she went out of the door with Tommy. He had on his only jacket, the one he wore to go to the pit though not to work in. It was hot in the pit and the men usually worked in pit hoggers, a sort of cotton drawers and a cut-off old shirt. In any case, the jacket had been well dashed against the outside wall to get rid of any coal dust. He also wore a pious expression, being fairly newly converted. In fact he hadn’t given up the drink entirely and was still quite easily persuaded to join in a game of ‘pitch and toss’, behind the pit heap on a Sunday afternoon after chapel.
Eliza was smiling to herself about her dad’s relaxed attitude to John Wesley’s teaching as she wrung out her good dress and hung it over the string line above the fire. She dared not go so far as to hang it outside, not on a Sunday. The row was solidly chapel and it would shame her mother for washing to be hung out on a Sunday.
‘Ahem!’
Eliza turned in surprise at the sound from the door and in the process put some weight on her injured foot and winced with the pain. She had thought the row deserted with everyone at chapel or Sunday school and she hoped fervently that was true, because Jonathan Moore was standing there and poking his head round the door to look at her. If anyone saw him it would be around the rows like wildfire that she was carrying on with the owner’s lad.
‘May I come in?’ he asked. Not waiting for a reply he stepped through the doorway, having to bend his head to do so.
The barefaced impatience of him, thought Eliza. Coming to the house when he had been the cause of her accident an’ all.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, forgetting for the minute that he was her gaffer and she had to be polite to him.
Jonathan raised his eyebrows. ‘Please!’ he replied. ‘I simply wanted to make sure you were all right. You went off in such a hurry and I’m sure I don’t know why. I was, after all, simply taking you home. Along a short cut, it’s true, but—’
‘That track leads nowhere,’ said Eliza.
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘you’re right. But you surely don’t blame me for doing what any red-blooded man would do if a bonny lass like you got into a trap with him? Not for the first time, either. Now then, admit it, you fancy me. Just playing hard to get, aren’t you?’ He was walking towards her as he spoke and instinctively she grabbed her broom, which was leaning against the stone fire surround.
Jonathan Moore stayed his approach. ‘What are you going to do with that?’ he asked softly. ‘Defend your honour? The honour of a pithead lass?’ He laughed loudly and Thomas whimpered then began to wail.
‘Get out,’ said Eliza. ‘Please go now before I stick this handle where it hurts.’ Her heart was beating so loudly she thought he might hear it. He stared at her for a minute or two then looked towards the baby, who was still crying.
‘You’d best put that down and see to your child,’ he said.
‘When you get out,’ said Eliza. He took another step towards her and he was directly in front of her. He leaned towards her and she jabbed him hard in the stomach with the broom handle.
‘Ah!’ The air was expelled from his body and he bent over for a second or two. In that short time she had crossed to the baby and picked him out of the drawer that served him as a cot and hugged him to her. She looked to left and right frantically for a way to get round him to the only door of the pitman’s cottage, but there was none, he was directly in the way. He straightened and glared at her and his face was full of anger.
‘Don’t you touch me,’ she warned though she was shaking with fear. Dear God, what was she going to do? By, he picked his time, he did, when he knew the rows would be just about empty.
‘Nay, I won’t touch you,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never yet forced a lass, I haven’t felt the need. Mostly they’re willing enough.’ He chucked Thomas under his chin. ‘As you will be when you’ve thought about it.’
‘I will not,’ Eliza avowed. Jonathan Moore smiled. ‘Oh aye, you will.’ He was close enough to lift a hand and she shrank back, but he simply chucked Thomas under his chin again and the baby smiled and gurgled and hid his face in his mother’s shawl.
‘Shall I do it to your mam?’ he asked and laid his finger on Eliza’s neck, crooking it under the collar of her dress. She moved sideways quickly and he laughed.
He walked to the door before turning and saying, ‘Don’t bother to come to work on Monday. I’m afraid your employment is at an end. Unless, of course—’ He didn’t finish the sentence but left.
Eliza breathed out slowly. She sank on to the settee, feeling nothing but relief at first. Then her ankle began to throb with pain. She had been on it too much, she knew, but what could she do? And what was she going to do now? She had to earn her bread. The Poor Law Guardians would not help her while she was living with her family and not while her husband was alive. She had nothing. She lay back against the head of the settee and closed her eyes. She was still holding the baby and he struggled to sit up on her lap, making unmistakably demanding cries.
‘Aye then,’ she said. ‘All right,’ she said and sat up straighter. He smiled at her with satisfaction and her mood lightened. How could she say she had nothing when she had Thomas? He was so precious to her. He was all she had of Jack and just now she ached for Jack. She buried her nose in Thomas’s neck and breathed in the baby smell of him.
The sound of someone at the door made her jump, her pulse fluttering wildly. He’d come back and it would be another hour before the family returned. When she saw who it was for a minute she thought she must be hallucinating.
‘I reckoned you would be here,’ said Jack. It was as if her longing for him had somehow spirited him up. But when he strode over to the settee and took her and his son in his arms he was solid and very real.
‘Oh, Jack!’ Eliza cried and clung to him. Between them, Thomas wriggled and protested and they moved apart a little. ‘Where have you been?’ Eliza couldn’t bear to let him go yet her joy at the sight of him was turning to anger.
‘I—’ Jack began but she didn’t allow him to finish.
‘Do you know what you put me through?’ she shouted at him and Thomas began to wail. ‘I lost my home! I’ve had to work at the pithead! Have you any idea what I’ve been through?’ She was on her feet yet again and her foot suddenly gave way so that she fell back on to the settee. She sobbed now, her spurt of anger almost spent. Automatically she rocked Thomas to
reassure him.
‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘But I swear to you I never thought for a minute that they would take the house from you, I didn’t.’ He sat down on her father’s chair by the hearth. ‘I had to go, pet, they were after me. They would have killed me if they’d caught me.’
‘You owed so much? You were gambling when you’d promised me you wouldn’t ever gamble again? Jack, man, what about me and the bairn? You never even told me you were running away. Why didn’t you take us with you?’
‘I couldn’t. Anyway it was partly your fault. If you’d given me the necklace when I asked for it I could have sold it and the money would have held them off for a while. Why, there was a big race on at York and I had the winner, it was a certainty, I tell you—’
‘For the love of God, stop it, Jack. You never learn, do you? You can’t win, you cannot!’
‘I won before, I won enough for the house and the business, didn’t I?’
‘Aw, Jack, don’t talk soft; you lost it all again, didn’t you? I tell you, you don’t win in the end.’
They were quiet for a minute or two; both of them were swamped with emotion. Then Jack said bitterly, ‘I knew there would be hell to pay when I came back.’
‘Watch your language,’ said Eliza, equally bitterly. ‘You don’t want Thomas to pick up bad language, do you? Any road, you took the necklace after all, didn’t you? No thought to how I was going to manage—’
‘I said, I didn’t think they would take the house! An’ I’ve come back as soon as I could, haven’t I? I needed the necklace to start over again.’
‘So even that’s gone, has it?’
Jack reached into his pocket. ‘No, it has not,’ he asserted. ‘I bought it back. Eeh, Eliza I have so much to tell you, you wouldn’t believe.’ He brought out the case with the necklace in it and smiled. It flashed through Eliza’s mind that he appeared to think that would make everything all right again, for he smiled at her as he handed it over.
‘Howay then, Thomas,’ he said, taking the baby and holding him up in the air. Thomas crowed and gurgled and slavered down his chin.
‘Mind,’ said Jack, ‘he’s grown hasn’t he?’
Eliza opened the case and gazed at the necklace. ‘When you pawned it why didn’t you send me some money? You knew how hard it would be for me.’ But she was aware he wouldn’t think of her, not when the gambling fever was on him. He wouldn’t think of anything else then, of course not. She shut the case with a snap and handed it back to him. ‘You might as well keep it, it does me no good,’ she said.
‘Aw, don’t say that,’ said Jack. ‘If it hadn’t been for the necklace I wouldn’t have been able to get back on my feet, would I?’
‘You are back on your feet, then? Really?’
‘I am, my love. I’m going to get you a home to be proud of and everything you and little Thomas want.’
‘For how long, though?’ Eliza was still bitter. ‘Until the next big race, that’ll be it, won’t it?’
‘Nay, Eliza, it won’t happen again. I swear it will not.’
‘Mind, where’ve you been all this time, then?’
Absorbed in each other, neither of them had heard the door opening again. Mary Anne came in and shed her shawl and hung it on the hook behind the door before going forward and confronting Jack from only a foot away. Hands on hips, she thrust her face forward and glared at him.
‘Leaving your wife and bairn to God and providence, that’s what you did. Howay now, what have you to say for yourself?’
‘I …’ Jack spluttered. He was uncharacteristically out of countenance.
‘You can say nowt, can you? What sort of a man are you? Our Eliza and the babby would have starved but for me an’ Tommy!’
‘I knew you wouldn’t let that happen,’ said Jack quietly.
‘Oh aye? Supposing Tommy wasn’t in work? Supposing he and the lads had been laid off? They couldn’t have gone to another pit, you know that, not when the yearly bond was signed. Bad cess to it!’ Neither Mary Anne nor any of the pit folk ever mentioned the hated yearly bond without the curse on it. Now she was working herself into a rage, not just with Jack’s behaviour but also with all the frustrations and hardships of her life. And Jack was the only one she could take it out on.
‘By, you’re a nowt, Jack Mitchell-Howe, in spite of your fancy name, you are an’ all. Some fella should give you the hiding of your life! It’s a pity your mam didn’t—’
‘Mam, give over,’ said Eliza. ‘Jack’s back now.’
‘Aye, all ready to do it again,’ said Mary Anne.
‘You’ve just come from chapel,’ Eliza reminded her. ‘You’re supposed to forgive folk, aren’t you?’ She was forgetting her own bitterness and anger with Jack and in face of her mother’s tirade felt the urge to defend him. Jack himself stood blushing like an errant boy.
Mary Anne glared at her daughter for an instant then shrugged. ‘Aye well,’ she said ‘I speak my mind. Wait until Tommy comes back in and see what he makes of it. Likely he’ll want to knock him into the next world.’
‘No, he won’t,’ said Eliza. ‘Jack is my man, after all.’ And so it proved. When Tommy came in from the ‘toss penny’ school at the back of the pithead he had had a run of luck and won a couple of shillings, which he had spent on a couple of tots of rum for his marras. He was in too good a mood to fight with anyone and went straight into the front room for a lie-down.
Chapter Eight
‘I’VE RENTED US a house in Haswell,’ said Jack. ‘At least it is a short walk from Haswell. I want Thomas to grow up breathing clean fresh air.’
‘Haswell? What are you going to do in Haswell? You’ll never settle there, Jack.’
‘It’s just for a short while. When I’m properly on my feet again I’ll write to my father. He’ll take me back into the business when he realises how well I’ve done.’
Eliza stared at him in disbelief. ‘Oh, Jack, he won’t. Don’t think he will, man.’ He was fooling himself, she thought in despair. John Henry would never take him back, no matter what Jack did. And if he did she would never go back to Alnwick. She had been treated as less than dirt by Jack’s parents.
‘He might,’ Jack asserted. ‘I am the eldest son, Eliza.’
‘Aye. The one cut off without a penny,’ said Eliza and smiled grimly. ‘Well, we’ll wait and see. Meanwhile we have to live. I asked you, what are you going to do in Haswell?’
‘Oh, didn’t I say? I’m going in with Mr Benson, the cabinet maker.’
‘Going into partnership with him or working for him?’ Eliza was surprising herself by how she questioned everything Jack said. It was as though she was at last seeing him as he really was. What choice did she have, though? She had to stay with him. Besides, she still had feelings for him. When her mother had berated him she had been defensive of him.
‘Get your bundle together, Eliza,’ he said now. ‘Then we’ll have a mashing of tea and be away.’
‘Whose tea will that be?’ asked Mary Anne with a hard look.
‘Mam!’ Eliza was shocked. Her mother was usually hospitable with what she had.
‘Aye well,’ said Mary Anne. ‘It’s hard not to be mad with that one.’ She shrugged and went on, ‘Aw, hadaway then. I’ll mash the tea, you go and pack your bundle.’
Jack and Eliza set off towards Haswell along the path through the fields that Eliza had taken the day before. Eliza carried Thomas and Jack the bundle. She thought about the time they had travelled to the house in Durham in very different style and how happy she had been. This time she wasn’t so sure that their troubles were over. She had kissed Mary Anne’s cheek awkwardly when they left.
‘I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done for us, Mam,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t be angry, eh? Jack’s my man and I have to go with him, you know I do. I wed him, didn’t I?’
‘I know lass, I know. By, it’s hard for a woman in this life,’ Mary Anne replied. ‘Though mind, it’s hard for lads an’ all. When I think
of Miley in the pit and him so frightened of the dark – eeh, what’s the good of talking. But I can’t help wondering what God’s been thinking about letting it happen. I know it’s a sin.’
‘I’ll be back whenever I can,’ said Eliza. There was nothing else to say.
The house Jack had rented was up a muddy lane about a mile the other side of Haswell. It stood next to another exactly the same but ruined, both by fire and the elements. There was a garden, rank with dead weeds, though under the tiny window of the downstairs room there were a few green spikes of spring flowers showing against the dirty sandstone of the cottage wall.
‘It’s better than it looks from outside,’ Jack said quickly when he saw her expression. He pushed open the batten door and led the way in. The downstairs room was as poky as the miner’s cottage she had just left but there was a back door, she saw. It had only a rusted iron sneck to the door and daylight could be seen through it. But Jack must have lit the fire in the grate and the room was reasonably warm. There was a table and two wooden chairs and even a rocker by the hearth. A hanging cupboard on the wall by the fireplace completed the furnishings. There was a rough wooden ladder leading up to the upper room, which must be half inside the roof, Eliza judged. She said nothing but sat down in the rocking chair with Thomas as Jack added a log to the fire from the pile on the hearth. A thick depression was settling on her. Jack was talking quickly as though to cover her silence.
‘I got some groceries in,’ he said. ‘And I can get some eggs from the farmer who owns this place. I’ve made the bed upstairs. It’ll be all right, Eliza, really it will. The bairn can sleep with us until I’ve made him a cradle. I’ll soon make some bits of furniture, you’ll see. It’s my trade, after all.’