A Mother's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  ‘It’s all very well, lady, but you still haven’t explained how you came by that coat,’ said Gran and Katie’s heart sank. It was afternoon and Katie had eaten the best meal she had had in a fortnight. They sat by the fire talking about Noah and what a wild one he had been in his younger days drinking and playing toss ha’penny behind the pit heaps and being chased by the polis.

  ‘Mr Hamilton bought it Gran. I told him I couldn’t accept it but he insisted and he was bringing me back here and it was so cold—’

  ‘Hmm!’ said Gran. ‘You shouldn’t have put it on. What’s folk going to think? They were all eyes and ears when he was here before. There’s not something going on between you two is there? An’ him a married man?’ Kitty gazed at her granddaughter hard yet again. And when Katie didn’t reply immediately her worst fears began to take hold.

  ‘Katie Benfield, answer me!’ she shouted and Katie jumped in her chair.

  ‘No, Gran, there isn’t,’ she said. ‘He’s a kind man, that’s all.’

  ‘A kind man? A boss, a big boss at that? Who the heck do you think you’re trying to fool our Katie? Has that lecher had his way with you?’ she demanded. ‘By our Katie I thought I’d taught you different from that! If your grandda were here he’d be mortified. As it is he’ll be turning in his grave, I never thought to see the day.’

  ‘No he hasn’t, we didn’t!’ Katie shouted suddenly, unable to listen any more. ‘I told you, he’s just a kind man and I met him when I nursed his wife and he used to come to see her. I told you, Gran, I did.’ Was she protesting too much? Even in her own ears it sounded as though she were.

  ‘Aye so you did. Then you come walking in here bold as brass, wearing a fancy coat that would have cost a decent man a month’s wages. I tell you, our Katie I don’t know whether to believe you or not. He comes to the end of our street in that fancy car and you in it bold as brass, I could have sunk through the floor when I saw you, I could

  Gran had sat down suddenly and Katie’s eyes filled with weak tears as she looked at her, the old woman looked so sad and vulnerable once the anger left her.

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you, Gran, I’m sorry,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll go to the store and get something nice for our tea, will I?’

  ‘If you like. But don’t you dare wear that flaming coat, do you hear?’

  ‘No, Gran, I won’t,’ Katie replied. Just at that minute she would have agreed to go to the store in the buff if that was what her gran wanted.

  ‘Well then,’ said Gran, mollified a little. ‘But are you sure you’re fit for it now?’

  ‘I am,’ said Katie. ‘It’s not far is it?’ She wanted to feel the wind on her face, smell the smells of Winton Colliery. She needed to.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MATTHEW SPENT THE rest of the day going round the company mines in the area. He told himself he liked to keep his finger on the pulse of all his enterprises and that was the reason he was still here. There were a thousand and one things he could be doing back in Cleveland but they would have to wait.

  The manager of Eden Hope Colliery was just sitting down to drink a cup of tea made for him by his secretary. He looked up at the door when Matthew walked in unannounced, angry at the intrusion but his attitude changed when he saw who it was. The tea slopped in the saucer as he put the cup down hastily and got to his feet.

  ‘Mr Hamilton! Sir! Mr Parsons did not tell me to expect you today, I’m sorry I’m—’

  ‘Stop babbling man, I was in the area that’s all. Now, I want to check the books if you don’t mind. I’m not satisfied with the production figures.’

  By the time he left the manager, pale and sweating, in the pit yard, Matthew was into his stride. He went into Winton, hesitated by the end of the colliery rows and went on to the colliery. Mr Thompson had been forewarned of his coming, however, and was somewhat better prepared and the agent Mr Parsons was there, so Matthew did not have to go into the town to see him. Consequently it was quite early when his business was finished.

  He would go back to see if Katie was all right, he decided. To hell with what the old woman thought or any of the nosy neighbours come to that. So it happened that, as he turned the corner to the ends of the rows, he saw Katie just emerging from the back street, dressed in a shapeless coat of indeterminate colour somewhere between grey and brown. Even in the coat she looked beautiful, he reflected. Her large dark eyes contrasted with her fair hair and pale face. He wasn’t used to this urge to protect, which swept over him when he saw her. He stopped the car and leaned over and opened the door.

  ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you wherever you want to go.’

  Katie stopped where she was and stared at him in dismay. Oh, he should just go away, she thought. He caused so much trouble without even realising it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Just passing,’ said Matthew blandly. Katie walked over to the car and leaned down to speak to him.

  ‘Please don’t come here,’ she begged. ‘My gran is going mad, you’ve no idea. I know you mean it kindly, but she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t understand at all.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. But she’s not here now, is she? And it’s almost dark. No one can see much in the dark. Are you going to the shops? I’ll take you there, it’s no trouble.’ Matthew spoke perfectly reasonably yet his tone was insistent. He sat there, making no move at all to go away. In the end Katie just got in the car, thinking it would at least get him to move away from the rows. Besides she was cold in the old, threadbare coat and weary. Her grandmother’s words rang in her ears.

  Now as Katie sat in the car she glanced up at Matthew. Had they really made love in that hotel or had she dreamed it all? If they had, she should hate him, she should be scandalised at him, she should be stamping mad at him. Yet she wasn’t. There was no room in her for any other emotion than her despair and unhappiness at the deaths of the two men across from the table to a chair and was sitting prodding a ring of blue in the ham, a sort of fine sacking.

  ‘I got some pressed tongue, Gran,’ said Katie. ‘I know you like a bit of tongue. It’ll be nice with your homemade bread and a bit of but—’ She stopped and stared at the ring of blue, already outlined on the harn. Gran was beginning to fill it in, stabbing the prodder and cloth through the harn over and over. She didn’t look up at Katie.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Don’t be daft, lass, you can see what I’m doing,’ said Kitty. ‘That blue was just the colour I had in mind for this pattern. It’ll look grand in front of the hearth in the Room.’

  Katie didn’t answer; she was incapable of it for a minute or two. She looked at the blue cloth on the table, the front of the coat, the buttons still on it. The back of the coat was missing and the scissors beside the strips of cloth rolled into a ball told it all. Gran must have started to cut up the coat as soon as she went out of the door.

  Gran leaned over and picked up the ball of cloth, peeling a strip from it. ‘I’ll just do this one before we have our teas,’ she said. She spoke calmly but Katie could hear the underlying tension.

  ‘Why? Why did you do it? You had no right! You hadn’t Gran, no right at all!’ Her voice rose, her heart beat wildly.

  Kitty put down the prodder and stood up. ‘What do you mean, I had no right? You’re my granddaughter, I’ve had the fetching up of you all these years and I won’t have you bringing shame on this house. What will the minister say? I won’t be able to hold my head up in chapel, why I won’t even be able to put my nose outside in the street if I let you take such presents from men like that Hamilton! He’s the devil himself, Katie, can you not see it? What do you think your grandda would say? He’d put you out on the street, so he would!’

  Katie took hold of the remnants of the coat and held the soft, fine wool to her face. ‘You were sly, Gran, that’s what you were. You waited until I was out, didn’t you? You planned to do it.’ She felt weak and weary and without the strength to shout
though she felt like screaming and not necessarily about the coat.

  ‘Well, you weren’t going to wear it again, were you?’ asked Gran, her tone hard and clipped. ‘Not here you weren’t not if you wanted to live in my house. And don’t you call me sly, lady, you who’ve been carrying on with one of the bosses. Did you know the pit was going on short time again? No, I bet you didn’t, you don’t take any notice of what goes on with your own folk, none at all! Three days a week, that’s what the men are going to be on from Monday next. How’s a man supposed to keep a family on three days’ pay? How, I ask you, tell me now. Go on, ask your fancy man, any road!’

  ‘He’s not my fancy man, Gran,’ said Katie. She felt so tired. She felt as though her back would break in two at any minute. There, just between her shoulder blades.

  ‘He’s not, isn’t he? Well, if he’s not, he bloody soon will be! An’ look what you’ve done now, making me swear!’

  ‘Gran I swear to you—’

  Kitty’s fury suddenly erupted. There were bright spots of red on her cheeks, her eyes flashed and she practically danced as she screamed at her granddaughter.

  ‘What do you think it’s like for me when the women say you’re a whore? I tell you, they don’t believe you’re working at that hospital now. Not when they’ve seen your fancy man and his flash car hanging about. Aye the word’s going round the rows already! And your Betty an’ all, poor lass, she says the folk at work are always making nasty remarks about you an’ what can she say back? Because it’s true, isn’t it? Tell the truth for a change, will you?’

  ‘All right, all right!’ Katie suddenly shouted, desperate to make Kitty stop. ‘Yes, it’s true!’

  Gran sat down with a bump. For a minute she couldn’t speak. Then she said, ‘Get out of this house, Catherine Benfield and don’t come back here again. Don’t come near me again; don’t even come back to Winton Colliery. ’Cause we don’t want your sort here. You’ve broken my heart and all I can say is thank God your grandda wasn’t here to hear you say it. Go on, get out.’

  ‘Gran!’

  Katie couldn’t believe she was hearing it. Surely it was another dream, a nightmare, she would wake up soon and it would all be just as it was before, when her grandfather was alive, when Billy was alive. When there had been no pit disaster at Winton Colliery.

  ‘Don’t you Gran me, Catherine Benfield. You’re no granddaughter of mine, indeed you’re not. Nor your Grandda’s neither. If I never see you again it’ll be too soon. Hadaway out of my sight!’

  Katie turned blindly for the door; fumbled with the sneck and finally managed to get it open. The cold air rushed in. She turned back to her grandmother in mute appeal.

  ‘Gan on, I told you,’ said Kitty, still riding on top of a wave of rage. ‘An’ close the door after you, I can feel the draught.’

  Katie went out, pulled the door to after her and ran down the yard and along the back street to the ends of the rows. She didn’t know where she was going, she simply knew she had to get out of Winton Colliery. The streets were deserted and the air damp and smelling of the gases from the coke ovens up by the pit yard. But it was a smell she had known all her life and it meant home to her.

  ‘Good for the chest,’ her grandda had used to say. The memory went through her mind as she stumbled into Matthew’s arms. Matthew had got out of the car to stretch his legs before setting off back to Teesside and thinking himself all kinds of a fool for waiting here so long for nothing. Only now it wasn’t for nothing, he told himself triumphantly, as she fell against him.

  Kitty Benfield stared at the closed door, expecting any minute that Katie would come back and she would forgive the lass now. Katie would be sorry and after all the lass was not well and needed looking after, anybody could see that. She shouldn’t have been so hard on her, losing her temper like that. She’d said things that shouldn’t have been said, she had. Noah had always said she had a quick temper. She flared up easy, that was it but she soon got over it. When Katie came back in she would make her a nice tea with the pressed tongue.

  Kitty took the black kettle from the bar and shook it; it was almost empty. She went out to the pantry where the single cold-water tap was in the corner with a bucket underneath to catch the drips. A nice hot, strong cup of tea would do them both good. She filled the kettle and carried it back to the range using two hands. By, she felt as weak as a kitten.

  ‘Serves you right for getting in a rage,’ Noah said inside her head. Kitty nodded, it was nowt but the truth. She leaned over to settle the kettle on the cinders and caught her foot on the chair supporting one end of the mat frame. She fell heavily, off balance and struck her head on the steel fender and the kettle fell too, spilling the water over her and the mat frame. The ball of fine blue wool strips rolled off into the corner leaving a trail of blue on the proddy mat and the stone flags of the floor.

  Kitty was stunned, the kitchen swam crazily before her eyes. She closed them. She would just lie here a minute and collect herself. Any road, Katie would be back, of course she would be back and she would help her to get to the sofa for a lie down.

  It was very quiet, she dozed for she knew not how long. She could hear the ticking of the clock but she couldn’t see it. The gas mantle flickered and went out, the penny meter needed feeding. Katie would do that too. Kitty drifted off again. The fire settled down with a shower of sparks but she didn’t hear or see it.

  It was Betty who found her the next day. Betty, who had always been jealous of the closeness between Katie and their gran.

  Part Two

  Chapter Seventeen

  Christmas Eve 1939

  ‘YOU CAN WEAR your new dress tomorrow, Georgie,’ Kate said. ‘Now be a good girl and go to sleep.’ She leaned forward and kissed Georgina on the cheek and the little girl flung her arms around her mother’s neck.

  ‘Is Father coming tomorrow, Mam? As well as Father Christmas?’ The question was an appeal really. Georgina had waited and waited for Father to come home. She had stood by the landing window, which afforded a good view over the fell to the distant road, which led away to Middlesbrough in the north and Whitby in the south all the morning, and then again in the afternoon until the weak winter sun went down behind the rising ground to the west.

  Kate gazed at her daughter’s eager little face. Georgina’s deep blue eyes, so much like hers, looked back earnestly. They were the only things that Georgina had inherited from her, the strong lines of her face were Matthew’s as was the fine dark hair. It was the combination that made Georgie so beautiful, her mother decided. Poor Georgie, what would become of her?

  ‘Goodnight, goodnight, mind the bugs don’t bite,’ she said, in the nightly ritual her grandmother had kept up with her when she was a child. She got to her feet and went to the door.

  ‘Will he, Mam? Will he?’ Georgina refused to have her query ignored. Kate sighed and turned back.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I can’t promise though. But don’t worry, he’ll send a lovely present for you—’

  ‘I don’t want a present Mam. I want Father to come,’ said Georgie, her lower lip turning down.

  ‘Go to sleep now, Georgie,’ Kate said. ‘And if your father does come tomorrow you must call me mother. Mam is just a secret name, just between the two of us, isn’t it?’ Georgie nodded and Kate closed the door and went down the stairs into the little sitting-room she used when Matthew was not at home.

  At home, she thought wryly. This was not his home though, was it? He lived in that great mausoleum of a house over by the Tees. With his wife and his family. His proper family. His very proper family, his wife was a lady. Katie remembered her vaguely, from the days when she had been a probationer nurse and his wife had been brought in, an emergency miscarriage. But her memory of Mary Anne was misty, it was so long ago.

  Kate went to the cupboard in the corner of the room and brought out half a dozen ready-wrapped parcels which she carried through to the tree in the dining-room. She placed the parcels around the t
ree. Most of them were for Georgina but there was one for Matthew and one for Dorothy, the maid of all work.

  When she had arranged then to her satisfaction she went out into the hall and listened in case there was any sound from Georgina’s room. Satisfied there was not, she went through to the kitchen where Dorothy was just brewing the tea.

  ‘By, I’m looking forward to that tonight,’ Kate said. She slipped into one of the plain Windsor chairs that stood around the table. Dorothy poured two cups of tea and put one before Kate. She went to the cupboard on the wall and came back with ginger biscuits and arranged them on a plate. Then she sat down and watched Kate stir sugar into her tea.

  Dorothy felt sorry for Kate. She had been with her since before Georgina was born, seen her change year by year. She had seen the eager young girl watching and waiting for him to come home; had seen the eagerness fade to disappointment on far too many occasions.

  ‘Are you expecting the master home tomorrow, Mrs Hamilton?’ she asked and Kate put down the spoon and looked up, smiling.

  ‘Oh, yes, I am, Dorothy,’ she said. ‘He promised Georgie he would be home by dinnertime. Lunch,’ she added. Matthew frowned when she said dinner instead of lunch and tea for dinner. Only sometimes it was easy to forget, especially in the rush of excitement she felt when he came home.

  Dorothy pushed an errant lock of white hair back under her cap and took another sip of tea. She selected a ginger biscuit and bit into it thoughtfully. What the heck did it matter what a meal was called, that was what she always thought. And for why did he keep the family here, hidden away in a fold on a God-forsaken moor? Kate was a woman to be proud of, not one to be tucked away out of sight. Just because she spoke with a Durham accent she supposed and hadn’t been brought up a lady. Dorothy had seen some of these so-called ladies and Kate was worth ten of them. By, if he let them down the morrow he deserved scalping, he did an’ all.