by Maggie Hope
All too soon they were crossing the road to Four Winds.
Mary Anne looked older, smaller and thinner. But her greeting was as warm and her smile as wide as it had ever been.
Kate took the bluebells through to the kitchen and put them in a plain glass vase and stood them on the windowsill.
‘They look nice there,’ observed Robert who had followed her through. He looked ready to dally and talk but Kate pushed past him.
‘We will go in to your mother,’ she said even though Mary Anne could be heard having a conversation with Dorothy about the embroidered cushions Dorothy had started making as a hobby.
The two women spent a pleasant afternoon chatting and drinking tea and Dorothy came in and sat with them after clearing the tea things. Robert sat apart, watching them and listening and only saying something when his opinion was asked. Mary Anne glanced at him often, noting the way he watched Kate, his expression unreadable. And she looked at Kate too. For the first time it occurred to her that there was some sort of a spark there and she wondered about it. Were they falling for each other? It was a novel idea to her but not really unwelcome. Except that she didn’t want Robert to be hurt.
‘Perhaps we should be on our way, Robert,’ she said, putting down her cup. ‘You know I wanted to drive up Weardale before going home.’
‘Oh, did you, Mother?’ He couldn’t actually remember her saying that but Weardale was a scenic ride out and why not go up there? His new pale blue Bristol car was a delight to drive anywhere. But it was a shame to leave Kate’s so soon when he had been looking forward to seeing her all morning. But there was nothing else for it.
Once in the car after saying their farewells Mary Anne turned to Robert. ‘Be careful, Son,’ she said.
‘What do you mean? I’m always a careful driver,’ he replied.
Mary Anne shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean that. Never mind, it’s probably nothing.’ She had had few worries with this eldest son of hers, and if she admitted the truth he was her favourite among her children. She didn’t want him to get into something that would only give him heartache.
‘Let’s go down by Winton Colliery,’ she said on a whim. ‘I’ve not seen it before.’
‘OK.’ Robert was quite willing. He drove down the hill and along past the old aerial flight engine house and the entrance to the bunny banks and on to the towering winding wheel and colliery buildings to the ends of the colliery rows. Turning the corner he parked opposite the back alley of West Row.
Mary Anne gazed at the little houses, each with a yard and coal house and earth closet with their iron sliding covers where the waste was shovelled out. Each cover bore the stamped imprint of Hamilton Ironworks. She gazed at the windows of the mean little houses, most of them shining clean and sparkling in the late sun and with dolly-dyed lace curtains hanging at them.
‘Why don’t we put flush toilets in them?’ she asked Robert. ‘For goodness sake, this is the second half of the twentieth century.’
‘We can’t, Mother; they don’t belong to us any more. The mines were nationalised, don’t you remember? The houses went with the mine.’
‘A jolly good thing too,’ said his mother. ‘I expect the government will do something about them now.’
‘Yes. Well, it certainly pleased the miners themselves. Seen enough?’ he asked and she nodded. He started the car and drove along the road to the end of the rows and past the pre-fabs, each in their own little plot of garden. Most of the gardens were bright with flowers and though the little houses were pre-fabricated they looked as though they belonged to a different age altogether from the pit rows.
They drove up the dale in the long evening twilight as far as Wearhead and Alston then returned by Teesdale. They were quiet now, both of them, each occupied with their own thoughts as the moors stretched out on either side of them, seeming to go on for ever. Mary Anne was wondering if Matthew had met Kate before he saw her in the hospital, perhaps when he was visiting Winton Colliery? She remembered that she had thought there was some gleam of recognition in his eyes that awful day when she had lost her baby and Kate had been a young girl on the ward. An extremely pretty young girl, she had to admit.
She glanced at Robert’s profile as he concentrated on keeping the car on the narrow road that went over the tops and down into Forest in Teesdale. Thank God Matthew was not his father. And the thought reminded her of Bertram and the usual niggle of worry that came to her every time the thought of her youngest son raised its ugly head.
Chapter Thirty-three
KATE AND DOROTHY decided to walk down to the village themselves after tea. Dorothy was getting slower and slower these days being troubled with her ‘rheumatics’.
‘I have to keep going though,’ she said determinedly. ‘Otherwise I’ll just seize up altogether.’ They walked slowly down as the birds sang their evening songs and Kate felt at peace with the world. At the entrance to the bunny banks they watched for rabbits and were delighted to see a couple nibbling at the grass before scudding for their holes as they noticed the intruders.
‘I’m surprised there’s any left after the way they were hunted during the war,’ Dorothy observed and they turned away to continue their walk.
They weren’t the only ones out on the road in the evening sunshine. Quite a few couples, some with young families, were walking up past the pit yard. As they passed the winding wheel whirred and the safety men spilled out of the cage. They were building pit-head baths, the building half finished already but for now the men had to walk home in their black as they had always done.
‘Evening, Missus,’ they said as they passed. ‘Grand evening.’
‘Lovely,’ the women chorused. Kate felt suddenly happy and it was so long since she had felt so happy that she didn’t at first recognise the feeling. But all that ended when a couple walking up the bank stopped in front of them.
‘Don’t June, leave it,’ the man said.
‘I will not leave it,’ his wife replied. ‘Why should I? I’ve been waiting long enough to tell the hussy a few home truths and now’s me chance.’
Kate stood stock-still. A family with two young children brushed past her but she barely moved. This was the confrontation she had been expecting for a long time and it had finally turned up. The happy feeling slid away and disintegrated into nothingness. She lifted her head and faced her brother’s wife.
‘Hello Willie,’ she said. ‘Hello June. Do you know Dorothy? Dorothy is my friend.’
‘Is she now!’ snapped June. ‘And there I thought she was your skivvy.’
‘Hey you, watch your tongue!’ Dorothy exclaimed. ‘Don’t you call me a skivvy.’
‘Well, what else are you?’ June demanded. ‘An old woman like you slaving after madam here; you should be on your pension and the likes of her looking after you.’
‘June,’ said Willie warningly but Dorothy was well able to take care of herself.
‘You don’t know what you are talking about, lady,’ she snapped. ‘Get out of our way or old woman as I am, I’ll make you.’
Kate had been frozen for a few moments but she suddenly caught hold of Dorothy’s arm as June began shouting invective. Dorothy felt her trembling and saw the look of gilt on her face. Good god, the poor lass thought she deserved all this! Ignoring June and her demented shouting she turned and led Kate back up the road to the house, walking steadily and holding on tight all the way. Glancing back over her shoulder she saw Willie doing the same thing with June but June was fighting against him.
When Dorothy and Kate got to the door it was Dorothy who found the key in Kate’s bag and opened it. She took her into the sitting-room and poured her a glass of brandy but Kate shook her head.
‘Come on, Kate, get a hold of yourself now,’ said Dorothy. ‘The brandy will do you good. No? Well, I’ll make a pot of tea. That’ll set you right.’
Dorothy went into the kitchen and busied herself with the tea. By, she thought, she could kill that woman with her bare hands.
Afterwards Kate hardly knew how she got back to Four Winds. If it hadn’t been for Dorothy she thought she might not have done. June had brought it all back: the horror of the pit disaster, losing Billy and her grandfather. How her grandmother had cast her off because of Matthew. When Dorothy made her a cup of cocoa she drank it obediently and went to bed though she was sure she wouldn’t sleep.
She did though, restlessly, her sleep punctuated by vivid dreams of the past. The time when she had opened the back door of the house in West Row and seen her grandmother working on a new mat, the mat frames propped on two chairs. The beautiful blue cloth she was working into a circle.
‘That’s my coat, Gran,’ she cried in her dream and Gran shook her head.
‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s my new mat.’
She worked the blue on and on until it filled the whole of the mat frame and Kate had shouted at her to stop and give her bonny blue coat back and Gran simply smiled and worked on, digging her prodder into the harn, in, out.
Kate woke with a start and turned over on her back. She glanced at the luminous dial of the clock on her bedside table. It was ten minutes past two. She had to be up at a quarter to seven to get to the hospital on time. The wind was soughing through the trees at the back of the house and whistling down the chimneys and it was almost as if it was playing a tune. And the branches of the plum tree at the front of the house beat a tattoo against the window in time to it.
Her mind returned to her sister-in-law’s words. Wild words about how Kate had betrayed Billy and her family, what it had done to Gran, her going off like a whore with a married man because he was rich.
Had she done that? Kate wasn’t sure. All her memories of that time were so hazy. She wasn’t even sure what she had felt for Matthew. Had she loved him? Well, whether she had or not afterwards there had been Georgina and everything was worth it because of Georgina. And now she had gone. Sometimes she wondered if Georgina had been a dream. A lovely sweet dream that had turned into a nightmare that would stay with her for the rest of her life.
‘Now you come here, lording it over the rest of us in your big house,’ June had said. ‘Playing at being a nurse until you get sick of it again; pretending you want to help folk no doubt. Well, we’re on to your game, lady. Lady Muck, I don’t think!’
Kate turned over on to her side and stared through a chink in the curtains at the clouds scudding across the sky. The wind had lessened now, the whistling in the chimneys stopped. It rustled softly through the leaves of the plum tree.
‘Stop it, June! Do you hear me?’ Willie had shouted as he grabbed June’s arm and pulled her away. ‘Stop making a show of yourself! Let the lass alone!’
June had struggled to free her arm but Willie was too strong for her, he dragged her away and down the road back to the village. Over his shoulder he had looked at Kate, standing there so white-faced and with her eyes dark and large and staring.
‘Take no notice, lass,’ he’d said.
‘Oh no, take no notice,’ June had shouted and he turned fiercely on her. What he had said then Kate couldn’t hear as they moved away.
‘Come on, Kate,’ said Dorothy. ‘I think you could do with an early night any road.’
Kate didn’t go into Winton much after that. She did her shopping in Bishop Auckland. Sometimes she met Ethel and asked her up to tea or something but even Ethel was not as friendly as she had been. There was nasty talk in Winton Colliery Rows; Kate knew it.
Chapter Thirty-four
TIME WENT ON, Kate entered her second year of training and it was hard.
‘I don’t know why you do it,’ Dorothy said one morning. ‘It’s not as though you need the money. Two hundred pounds a year for goodness sake. You pay me more than that.’
Kate was rushing through her breakfast standing up at the kitchen table because she had overslept. She gulped a mouthful of tea and buttered a piece of toast. ‘Well, I’m on holiday after today,’ she said through a mouthful of toast.
She had planned to have a few days’ rest and quiet, maybe go over to see Mary Anne. She had been promising to long enough. Dorothy was going to stay with her cousin in Hart. She liked to be beside the sea for a while. ‘The wind off the North Sea blows the germs away,’ she said.
Kate got into her little car and drove out of the drive and down the bank and up the other side. She was doing her three months stint in the operating theatre and she was thoroughly enjoying it.
Sometimes, lately, she forgot for a whole day at a time about Georgina. And then, when she remembered, the feeling of guilt was almost unbearable and she felt worth-less, unfit to have been Georgina’s mother and was that why she had been taken away from her?
Nonsense, she told herself, forcing herself to push the idea away, dismiss it from her mind. It was a natural part of the grief process, she’d read that somewhere. But she had to get on, keep her mind on her training. This time she was going to finish it, she was determined she would.
Kate parked the car in Escomb Road and ran up the ramp to the theatre. Today Mr Pierce was operating and he had a long list of patients to get through. There was one gastrectomy, two cholecystectomies and two appen-disectomies. Kate put on a theatre robe and wound a white turban round her hair and put a mask over her mouth and nose. The operating table was to be scrubbed, the sterilising to see to and then she was to act as the anaesthetic nurse, helping Dr Gibbon in the anteroom to the theatre.
The day went by in a blur as she worked, hurrying to do as Dr Gibbon asked, then whatever Theatre Sister asked. Then, when the theatre porter and nurse from the ward went through the swing doors to the ramp that led to the wards with the patient on a trolley, there was the clearing up to do. The washing of the instruments ready for the steriliser, filling the drums with clean swabs ready to be sterilised in the autoclave, tidying the anaesthetic anteroom.
At half past five she was free to go home. She took off her gown and hat and combed out her hair that was sticking to her scalp with the heat in the operating theatre. Then she could pull on her coat and hat and leave, for a whole fortnight. As she went out of the door she was followed by a chorus of, ‘Have a good time!’ and ‘You lucky devil!’ and the air was fresh and the wind cool on her hot face as she walked down the ramp to Escomb Road and her car.
There was a man leaning against the bonnet, it was too far away to recognise him at first. Then she saw it was Robert, his fair hair haloed in the late afternoon sun. As she approached he stood up straight and went to meet her.
‘Kate,’ he said and his pleasure at seeing her was plain to see. He took her hands in both of his. ‘How are you, Kate?’ he asked.
‘Hello Robert. What are you doing here?’ It was a while since she had seen him and then it had of necessity been a flying visit for she had been on a split shift and had to go back to the hospital for the evening.
‘Oh, business,’ said Robert vaguely. ‘Let’s go back to the house and I’ll explain. Or would you like to go for a meal? There must be one or two places where we could go in a town like Bishop Auckland.’
‘No, we’ll go back to the house,’ she replied. She got into her car and set off for Four Winds and he followed in his Bristol. She felt ridiculously happy to see him. It was just because Dorothy was away and she didn’t want to face an evening on her own, she wasn’t in the mood, she told herself as she turned into the drive and took her car straight into the garage to leave room for his on the driveway.
‘Won’t you stay for dinner? I’ve a couple of pork chops in the fridge and plenty of salad stuff in the garden,’ she said. Thank goodness for Dorothy who had insisted on stocking up before she went off to Hart Village. There was even a bottle of wine. She had had it in since Christmas for though she had got used to drinking wine when … when she lived in Fern Moor Cottage (her mind skirted round the thought of Matthew), she still felt it was slightly wicked to drink alone.
They worked together in the kitchen, chopping lettuce and slicing tomatoes and cu
cumber still warm from the greenhouse and she took a breath when she shouldn’t have while she was slicing onions and tears ran down her cheeks and he had to wipe them dry.
He was in charge of grilling the chops and they came out only a little charred round the edges.
‘You’ll still have to eat them,’ Kate warned. ‘It’s a sin to waste the meat ration.’
‘I like them like this,’ he said. He had opened the wine and gave her a glass and they toasted each other. She sipped from it as she set the table in the kitchen and slowly the evening began to take on a magical quality. She didn’t know whether it was the wine or Robert and she was having too good a time to care. It was so rarely that she had such a pleasurable change to her routine.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said as she put out the plates of food. She went into the sitting-room for the candle in the silver holder that normally stood on the mantelshelf in case there was yet another power cut. In the middle of the table it shed a soft glow as they ate and the shadows outside darkened.
This was the first time Kate had been alone with Robert, really on her own. Always before there had been Dorothy or sometimes Mary Anne. In fact it was the first time she had been alone with a man since Matthew died. They finished the meal and moved into the sitting-room and Robert put a match to the already laid fire.
Afterwards, Kate thought it must have been the effects of the wine for she didn’t move away when he took her hand and sat on the sofa and pulled her down beside him. He kissed her lips, lightly at first then with passion, his tongue probing between her lips and teasing hers. He touched her breasts under her blouse and felt the nipples harden in immediate response. He looked down at her face; her eyes were closed and a pulse beat at her temple.
‘Kate,’ he breathed and undid the buttons and pushed her bra out of the way. Her skin felt warm and inviting. He rubbed the base of his thumb over a nipple and she moaned as he took it between his teeth. Suddenly it became urgent and they stripped off their clothes and fell to the floor and he took her there, on the hearthrug before the fire.