A Mother's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  ‘He’s gone, lass,’ said Kitty and held out her arms and Katie flung herself into them. Her grandmother looked down at her and stroked her hair. ‘It’s no good taking on, Katie, all the wailing in the world won’t bring him back.’ She took hold of Katie by the upper arms and held her and looked into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry about Billy an’ all, lass,’ she said. ‘He was a canny lad.’

  The ensuing days were like a nightmare for the girl. She had a few days’ compassionate leave from the hospital and the way she felt it didn’t matter whether she had or not, she couldn’t leave her grandmother. For there was another blow, Tucker, Kitty’s son and Katie’s father, had been injured and was in the County Hospital in Durham. Betty came round the very next morning to borrow the fare for her and her mother to go to see him. And Kitty did not say a word about Hannah not having a penny saved for emergencies but handed Betty a pound note from the Rington’s tea tin which she kept on the corner of the mantelpiece.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Katie.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Betty. ‘I think he’ll just want to see us just now.’

  ‘I’m his daughter too,’ said Katie and Betty gave her a funny look.

  ‘Well, it’s me and me mam he’ll want to see,’ her sister answered.

  Katie forced her eyes open and uncurled from the foetal position she had been in all night in an effort to preserve body warmth. A faint light penetrated the thin cotton curtains so it was morning at least. The night had been icy cold. Stretching her legs out her feet landed on the oven shelf near the bottom of the bed. Her grandma had put it in the bed last night and then it had been lovely and warm but within an hour it was cold, bitter January weather. Katie shivered, her nose, stuck outside the bedclothes, felt numb.

  Steeling herself, Katie pushed back the blanket and old coat and the new proddy mat that Gran had worked over every night for weeks ready to lay it down before the kitchen fire on Christmas Eve. Usually it kept out the worst of the cold but now the house hadn’t been warmed by the fire in the range because there was no coal in the coal house to light a fire. And, as the miners had been forbidden to pick at the slag heap for bits thrown out with the waste slag and stone, the house just got colder and colder.

  Katie jumped out of bed and pulled on her clothes, shivering violently. She thrust her feet into her shoes, no socks, as they had finally fallen to bits. More darns than sock they had been and now even the darns had disintegrated.

  Downstairs, to her surprise there was a bit of fire in the grate and Gran was sitting over it, drinking tea from a pint pot. Even as Katie reached the ranges the fire collapsed in on itself and fell with a shower of sparks, dying in the ash can beneath. It had only been paper and a few twigs, how Gran had managed to boil a kettle was a mystery. But looking closely, Katie was horrified to see a hard, brown bookback, charred and almost gone.

  ‘Gran! That wasn’t my library book!’

  ‘Eeh, lass, I was desperate,’ said Gran, guilt making her cheeks red and mottled.

  ‘But I’ll have to pay for it,’ wailed Katie. ‘Where will I get the money?’

  ‘Aw, don’t be so soft,’ said Gran, guilt making her angry now. ‘How can they make you pay for it when you’ve got nowt? Nay man, they cannot make you pay.’

  Katie didn’t reply, what was the use? She sat down heavily on one of the hard wooden chairs by the table, close to tears.

  ‘There’s a drop of tea in the pot,’ Gran said, coaxing.

  ‘Bloody hell, this place is enough to freeze the balls off a brass—’ Noah had come down the stairs, trousers at half-mast, braces hanging down. His collarless shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. His feet were bare and white, the toes gleaming blue. He rubbed his hands together as he strode over to the range and stared disconsolately at the by now nonexistent fire.

  ‘Hey!’ said Gran. ‘Watch your language. I’ll have no swearing inhere.’

  Katie woke up with a start. She had been dreaming of her childhood, she realised. Well, if only Noah had still been here, he could swear as much as he liked, she thought. Even Gran would not object. But he wasn’t here, and neither was Billy. She felt so full of pain she couldn’t bear it. Wearily she got out of bed though she felt as though she never wanted to get up again. If only she could just burrow here, under the bedclothes and never come out. But downstairs she could hear the muffled sounds of her gran moving about: filling the kettle, settling it on the fire. Gran coughed a harsh, hollow sound. Gran needed her, she had to go downstairs and help her gran.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘OH, IT’S YOU,’ said June. She stood for a moment in the doorway before reluctantly standing back to allow Katie to go into the house. Billy’s father and mother were sitting on either side of the fireplace. The curtains were drawn, denoting a death in the house and as a mark of respect and the gas mantle was burning, giving off a dim yellow light. The door was open to the front room and the middle of the floor had been cleared of furniture so that the coffin could stand there on its trestles.

  The bodies were coming home today, the post-mortems were finished. The men had died from fractured skulls or crushed chests and most had suffered burns. Katie averted her eyes from the doorway of the waiting room.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Wright, Mr Wright,’ she said. The lump in her throat, which made it so hard to swallow, grew larger. She clasped her hands tightly, digging the nails into her palms.

  ‘Aye lass,’ said Mr Wright. ‘I know you and Billy were fond of each other. I’m sorry for you an’ all.’ Mrs Wright held a hankie to her nose and stared at the drawn curtains, She sniffed.

  ‘June will make you a cup of tea, Katie,’ she said. ‘Sit down lass.’ June thrust the kettle on to the fire, looking very angry. Or was she simply grieving her brother? Katie couldn’t tell. She sat down on the horsehair chaise-longue, which was at right angles to the fireplace.

  ‘Billy and me—’ Katie stopped as tears threatened then started again. ‘Me and Billy were going to get married when I’d finished my training,’ she said. She could feel the ring lying on her breastbone, could almost have drawn the circle of it against her skin.

  June made a noise, choked off, derisory. She took down the tea caddy from the mantelpiece and spooned tea into a brown pot; poured boiling water on the leaves.

  ‘What did you say, pet?’ Mrs Wright asked.

  ‘Nothing. But I was thinking, I can’t help it, Mam, I was thinking that if Katie had really wanted to marry our Billy she wouldn’t have put him off all the time, would she?’ She poured tea into a fine china cup from the set kept for visitors and handed it to Katie, slopping a drop in the saucer as she did so. Katie kept her eyes on the cup. She pressed a finger hard against her upper lip to hold back the tears. She couldn’t speak to defend herself.

  ‘Now then, June, I’ll have none of that sort of talk,’ said Mr Wright. ‘Our Billy will be coming home in an hour or so and we will show respect.’

  ‘Why but, Dad—’

  ‘Your dad said that’s enough June,’ her mother intervened. Katie took a sip of tea that scalded her tongue. She stood up and put the cup and saucer down on the table. She couldn’t stay another minute, she felt, or she would die of it. Everything in the room reminded her of Billy. She could almost see him walking through the door from the front room.

  ‘I have to go now, Mrs Wright,’ she said. ‘My gran needs me to help her.’ Katie was amazed at how normal her voice sounded. There was barely a tremor.

  ‘Aye, of course, lass,’ said Mrs Wright. June made another derisory sound but Katie was past taking notice of her.

  Katie walked to her parents’ house in a haze of pain.

  What was she going to do without Billy and her grandda? Oh, God, she didn’t know.

  Scrubbing down the stairs with the strip of oilcloth in place of a stair-carpet running down the middle, Katie welcomed the hard work. She concentrated on getting dirt out of the corners then left doors and w
indows open while everything dried out so that when Hannah came home from the hospital she complained loudly.

  ‘Bloody, hell, Katie, it’s freezing in here! Do you not know it’s still only March?’

  ‘Leave the lass alone, Hannah, she’s doing her best,’ said Gran. ‘The house will soon warm up.’ Gran sounded tired. She looked tired too, thought Katie, her face was red and sweat beaded her brow. She had just finished black-leading the range and polishing the brass and the fireplace twinkled in the light from the fire she had just relit. She should have taken Gran home before now; the old woman was using work to try to escape her misery just as she was herself.

  The day of the funerals, the Methodist Chapel was packed. The Church of England had held the funerals for their two members in the morning and the one Baptist funeral was after the Methodists so that the whole day seemed to be taken up with them.

  Men crowded round outside the chapel for the pit was idle as a mark of respect. So when Matthew Hamilton arrived in the Bentley, which was gleaming in the pale sunlight, they watched him sullenly for since the night of the accident most of them were beginning to know who he was.

  ‘I’ve not seen him bother to attend a funeral afore now,’ one man observed. ‘Do you think he’s seen the Light?’ The others smiled; one even gave a guffaw, which was quickly suppressed.

  ‘Nay lad, I reckon there’s something else to it,’ he answered. The men made way in silence for Matthew to enter the chapel.

  He walked straight ahead, ignoring them. Inside he looked quickly around and then went down the aisle to the row just behind the rows reserved for the bereaved families. He sat down beside Parsons and Thompson who moved along the pew to give him plenty of room.

  Parsons had been surprised to see him on the night of the accident but he was even more so now. What had got into the boss? Yesterday they had discussed the coroner’s findings, ‘death by misadventure’ had been his conclusion as they had expected. And Parsons had put forward his opinion that the dead men had contributed to the unfortunate fall of stone by their own negligence and therefore were not entitled to full compensation. He had sat back, sure that Matthew would agree and instruct his lawyers accordingly but Matthew had not.

  ‘Three hundred pound per family for every man lost will not break the company,’ he had said and the other two men had gazed at him as though he was going off his head.

  ‘I know that is the agreed amount,’ Parsons had said after a moment. ‘Agreed by the Owners’ Association that is. But it will create a dangerous precedent. And the other owners will not like it. I would advise against paying out without a fight. After all, there is some evidence that the men may have contributed to the accident.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Matthew had replied and changed the subject, indicating that that was the end of the matter. He looked around the chapel built by the miners fifty years before according to the date on the stone above the door. It was an austere place, he thought with cheap boxwood pews and a floor of bare boards. A homemade black cover hung on the lectern especially for the funerals; in the corner was a pipe organ with an organist playing soft, solemn music. The organ was reedy, the music thin.

  Then everyone was standing as the coffins were brought in preceded by the minister in a black plain gown. The coffins were covered with wreaths of flowers. They would have done better to save their money, he reckoned. But miners and their families were a superstitious lot.

  ‘I am the resurrection and the life—’ the minister intoned as the coffins were carried down the aisle and laid on the trestles. Then Matthew forgot about the others as he saw Katie coming in, supporting an old woman who must be her grandmother. For the rest of the service, while the minister delivered sentimental twaddle about the men who probably had been hard-drinking, work-shy scum rather than the saints he was portraying them as, at least in Matthew’s opinion, he watched the back of Katie’s head, occasionally glimpsing her profile as she turned a concerned face to her grandmother.

  And more than one miner watched the big boss rather than paying attention to the service and a few of them came to the same conclusion as to what he was doing there when he should have stayed with his own folk and left them to their grief. Then the organ was playing ‘Gresford’, the miners’ hymn and they were standing to sing the Twenty-Third Psalm.

  ‘When are you due back at the hospital?’ Matthew asked. The funerals were over, the mourners leaving the cemetery. Already the crowds were thinning out. Parsons and Thompson lingered on beside Matthew until he told them they could go, then Matthew had stood by his car waiting for a chance to speak to Katie. And of course she came over to him, as he had known she would, if only to thank him for coming.

  Katie was still wrapped in a haze of grief, she hadn’t even thought about the hospital or anything else except the necessity of getting over these few days, hoping and praying all the time that the heavy weight on her heart would lift, even a little bit. She had read the letter from Matron of course. An official letter giving her time off until the day after the funeral but no more. After all, the letter implied, a grandfather was not really a next-of-kin. Though it was very sad and the senior staff joined with Matron in offering Katie their every sympathy. But tomorrow, Sunday, she was to report for work on A Ward, men’s surgical.

  ‘Early tomorrow. I’ll have to go this evening.’

  ‘Then I will take you back,’ said Matthew. ‘Now, no argument, I insist.’ He sounded like an elderly uncle bestowing a favour, he thought, so went on. ‘Only if you wish it, of course. But it will be easier for you.’

  ‘I can’t go until after the funeral tea,’ said Katie. She looked over her shoulder to where her gran was standing by the undertaker’s car. ‘Look, I’ll have to go, thank you, Mr Hamilton,’ she said swiftly, edging away.

  ‘I’ll call for you at seven, will that be all right? I have to go into Bishop Auckland in any case,’ he added. It was all he could think of as a reason for hanging around for two hours. Two men walked past and glanced curiously at him standing by the Bentley, the chauffeur sitting behind the wheel, his expression impassive. Knowingly, they looked from Matthew to Katie but neither of the two noticed.

  ‘What do you make of that, eh?’ one said to the other.

  ‘Nay lad, surely not,’ said the other. ‘And her lad hardly cold in his grave.’

  ‘Nowt so queer as folk,’ the first one replied.

  Matthew got into the car. ‘Home Lawson,’ he said. ‘I won’t need you tonight. I have decided to drive myself.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Well thank God for that, the chauffeur said to himself. He was absolutely fed up with hanging about miserable pit villages and damp cemeteries. It was enough to give anyone the hump, he said later to Daisy when she slipped into his cosy flat with his supper on a tray.

  Once home, Matthew popped his head around the drawing-room door. Mary Anne was sitting on a hard chair by the fire, working away on her embroidery frame. She looked up at him and smiled. At last he was showing some feeling for his workers, going to the funerals of those poor miners. Perhps he was not so hard-hearted as he tried to make out.

  ‘Are you staying in, Matthew?’ she asked. ‘If so, I’ll order an early dinner. You must be hungry—’

  ‘No, don’t bother, I’m going straight back out,’ he said. He looked at her, trying to hide his distaste. Her skin was sallow and beginning to show lines around the mouth and dark shadows under the eyes. She was breeding again, let’s hope she would carry this one for the full nine months and deliver a healthy boy. Then at least he would not feel constrained to go to her bed.

  ‘But Matthew, you’ve just come in, where are you going?’

  ‘A meeting in the Royal, there’s a chance of a government contract,’ he lied glibly. ‘Can’t stop, I must go and change.’ Mary Anne was left looking at the closed door. But the uppermost feeling in her mind was relief, she could have Cook prepare a tray with something light, perhaps a clear soup, a little chicken. She was prone
to heartburn with this baby and that was something that hadn’t bothered her with the others. Perhaps it was a good sign? Oh, dear God, she hoped so.

  At ten minutes to seven, the Bentley glided to a halt on the end of the rows at Winton Colliery. Matthew sat behind the wheel, considering whether to go to the house and knock for Katie or to wait for her here for she would be bound to come out shortly.

  Oh, for goodness sake, he was simply doing a girl a good turn, wasn’t he? At least, that was what people would think. And come to think of it, did he care what these pit folk thought? Not at all he decided. He got out of the car and walked down the row to the front door of the house where she lived.

  Katie had had just about as much as she could manage to take without screaming out loud. She felt weary to death and every limb ached. She fetched and carried for two and a half hours for the friends and neighbours who came in to offer their commiserations and stay to the funeral tea of cold ham, salad and pease pudding. She had buttered bread until her wrists ached and she felt her fingers might drop off.

  Worst of all she had nodded her head and accepted the sympathy of everyone, the whole village perhaps. Her eyes were scratchy as sandpaper and there was a persistent throb behind her right eye that increased from simple pain to agony and back again every time she moved. All the time she kept a careful eye on her grandmother who was looking older and more frail by the minute. She feared she was reaching breaking point. Kitty sat in the Room in the rocker that had been Noah’s and was now brought in from the kitchen to stand by the sofa. Kitty sat in unaccustomed idleness, she drank cup after cup of strong black tea.

  Hannah was there. It was the first time she had been in her mother-in-law’s house since Katie was small. She had not come to help Katie but then, no one expected it of her. She sat on the opposite side of the fireplace on the sofa with Betty by her side. ‘Me and your gran would like some more tea, Katie,’ she sang out at intervals. ‘And mebbe a nice piece of that slab cake that’s on the table there.’