The Black Mountains

by Janet Tanner

  “I’m looking for Walter Heath,” he said to the nursing sister, a tall, kindly-looking woman.

  “Over in the corner. He’ll be pleased to see you, I should think. He hasn’t had anyone in to visit him today, poor lad.”

  Jack walked in the direction she had pointed. Walter was almost hidden behind a crate that covered the bottom half of the bed. But what surprised Jack even more was the cotton wool type of wadding that covered his body.

  “Walter!” he said, shocked, and the boy looked up in surprise.

  “Sir!”

  “How are you, Walter?”

  “Not so good if I tries to move, sir. It bloomin’ well hurts.”

  “Dear me!” Jack sat down beside his bed, noticing that the wadding extended even to the boy’s fingers, holding them apart. “I brought you some books and a comic or two, but I can see you aren’t going to be able to read them yet. Never mind, at least I can tell you what we’ve been doing at school today.”

  Beneath the fever, the boy’s face brightened.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  For twenty minutes or so, Jack sat talking. Then, when it seemed to him the boy had had enough, he got up, stacking the reading materials on the locker beside his bed.

  “I’ll be going then, Walter.”

  “But you’ll come again?” the boy asked eagerly.

  Jack smiled. “ I’ll see what I can do. Just you concentrate on getting better, young man.”

  Leaving the boy, he went back into the corridor, following the signs for the main entrance. He was not really taking much notice of the people he passed and when a nurse came towards him pushing a trolley he stepped aside automatically. Then, as she stopped, staring at him, he looked up into a welcome familiar face.

  “Stella!” he said “I don’t believe it!”

  “Jack! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m visiting. And you’re working. I didn’t know you were back in this country, let alone in Bristol.”

  “Didn’t you? But …” she looked puzzled then shrugged. “ Oh, never mind Are you teaching yet?”

  “Not officially. I’m still supposed to be training. At the university.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, you’re looking very fit, Jack.”

  “You too.”

  “I always was disgustingly healthy. How’s your leg?”

  “I almost forget it’s not mine.”

  “Hah! There speaks a veteran! And married life, how does that suit you?”

  “Married life?” he repeated, surprised.

  “Yes. Didn’t you get married?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Oh, I thought you were engaged.”

  He shuffled. “Oh, that. It all fell through.”

  An authoritative figure appeared at the end of the corridor, and Stella made a face.

  “Oh cripes, that’s Sister. I shall have to go. One of these days I’m going to see if I can’t pass my exams so I can be the one to do the bossing around for a change.”

  He laughed. She hadn’t changed.

  “Nice to see you, Stella.”

  “You too.”

  When she’d gone, he felt elated. It had been nice to see her. What was it about her that could make him feel like this, warm through and through? She’d had the same effect on him in London and he’d put it down to the fact that he was just recovering from the most traumatic experience of his life. But it was nothing like that now.

  He couldn’t get her out of his mind all night, and before long he was wishing he’d tried to make some arrangement to see her again. She might have refused of course. A girl like Stella wouldn’t be short of company. At least she wasn’t married, for he’d carefully noticed the absence of a wedding ring.

  The thought reminded him of the remark she’d made about him being married. Odd that, to have half a story. It wasn’t as if the Rosa affair had ended only yesterday. It was a long time ago now. And yet, why should she know? Why should he imagine for even a moment she might be interested in him, or anything to do with him?

  But he hoped all the same, that he would see her again, and the hope gave him an extra reason for going back to the hospital to visit Walter. He went the very next evening, but as he walked through the grounds and endless corridors, there was no sign of Stella.

  When he entered Walter’s ward there was already a visitor beside the boy’s bed, a fat, pasty-faced woman who appeared to be bursting out of her tightly buttoned coat.

  She must be Walter’s mother, Jack assumed. He went towards her, holding out his hand but she merely sniffed, eyeing him with narrow suspicion.

  “I’m Jack Hall,” he began. “ I don’t know if Walter had told you about me …”

  “Indeed he has!” The woman’s chins were quivering. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr Hall.”

  “And I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs Heath.”

  But there was no answering smile on her face.

  “I’m pleased to meet you so as I can tell you what I think of you, bothering my boy. Don’t you know how ill he is? And you come in here, pushing books under his nose. Why, you’re as bad as that interfering bugger who brought him in here—poking into things that don’t concern you.”

  “I’m sorry you see it like that, Mrs Heath. I was concerned about Walter. He was in my class when he was taken ill, and …”

  “Yes, an’ all the work yon expect him to do, it’s not surprising! Enough to give him fever of the brain, if you ask me!”

  “Oh really!” Jack exclaimed. “ You don’t seem to realize, Walter is a bright boy.”

  “I’ll thank you to leave my boy alone, and not go putting ideas in his head!” Mrs Heath said indignantly. “He’s got enough of them without the likes of you making him ten times worse.” She stood up, gathering the books and comics Jack had brought the previous evening and thrust them into his arms. “Now take these with you, and don’t come here bothering him no morel”

  “But Mrs Heath …”

  “Go on!”

  Her raised voice had attracted the attention of the ward sister. She came bustling up, and Jack, deciding this was a case where discretion might usefully be the better part of valour, apologized, bid goodnight to the round-eyed Walter, and beat a hasty retreat, pushing the pile of comics into the arms of the surprised sister as he went.

  He was beginning to see what Hugh Eastment had meant when he talked about the difficulties of educating these people. And although he felt he had failed Walter badly, he could not help being glad that by the time he left hospital and took his place once more at school, he, Jack, would be safely back at university. For he couldn’t see what credibility he could possibly have after being chased out of a hospital ward by the boy’s irate mother.

  It was only when he was out in the road that he remembered he had not seen Stella again and knew there was no way, now, that he could go back into the hospital to look for her. But he wouldn’t let it rest, he decided. As soon as he could, he would look her up again. And unless she had some very good reason for not going out with him, he’d do his best not to take no for an answer.

  FOR THE next few days, the newspapers were full of the imminent miners’ strike.

  Jack had always been against militant action, but as he studied both fact and comment he began to see there was little else the men could do.

  Since their agreement with Lloyd George in the autumn their meagre pay award had been whittled away bit by bit by inflation; and in any case most of the pits were on short time. They had pinned their hopes on the promises of the National Wages Board, only to be disappointed when quite suddenly, in the middle of March, Lloyd George announced that he intended de-controlling the mines.

  That precipitated the crisis. The owners had no intention of being held to any rash promise made on their behalf by the Government. They huffed, puffed and fudged the issue, and the miners’ representatives saw only too clearly what would happen in the long run. There would be more men out of work and a devalued wage packet for tho
se lucky enough to have one at all.

  Thinking they had the so-called Triple Alliance behind them, they stopped work at midnight on 31st March.

  Within days Hillsbridge was like a ghost town. Without the hooters and sirens, without the turning pit wheels, without the coal carts grinding through the streets everything was unnaturally quiet, and not even the groups of men, gathered on the street corners at unusual hours, could lift the air of unreality.

  “Strikes—I can’t abide them!” Charlotte said crossly as she did her weekend baking. “They don’t do no good—more harm if you ask me. You just end up worse than you started.”

  “But there comes a time when a man’s got to take a stand,” James argued.

  She snorted again. “ That’s all very well—if you can afford to do it. I’m not so worried about us—we’ll get by—but take our Jim. How’s he going to manage? No work, no pay. That’s the way it is.”

  “Don’t worry, they’ll see him all right” James told her. “Tom Heron, the agent, is going to find out if we’m entitled to unemployment pay and there’s bound to be a relief fund opened up sooner or later to help them with young’uns.”

  Charlotte ignored this, pounding at the dough with unnecessary vigour.

  “It don’t do no good,” she said again. “ They say the pump men are coming out too, and the engine winders and the ventilation men. What’s going to happen, I should like to know? The seams will get flooded and then where will you be? I even heard a story today that the poor ponies over at Grieve Bottom might be drowned.”

  “That’s rubbish, Lotty,” James said mildly. “They’ll make sure the ponies be safe. You needn’t worry your head about that.”

  “Well, all the same, I don’t hold with it!” Charlotte went on. “If they’ve got any sense, they’ll go back before May Day. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  But they did not go back before May Day. When the townsfolk gathered in the recreation ground for the big Labour Gala, the pit gates were still locked, and the speeches made by the leaders from the wagons that had been loaned for the purpose were mostly all concerned with the struggle that was going on in the coal-field.

  They had to stick it out, that was the message. If they didn’t, they’d be right back where they started—and most likely even worse. The miners cheered, their spirits refreshed by the stirring music of the four bands, and the feeling of comradeship that came from being determined to see this thing through together, even though they had been betrayed by their allies.

  But they had no way of knowing that before the strike was over, they would be stirred to a mood of violence worse than any of those present had seen in their lifetime.

  JACK KEPT his promise to himself to see Stella O’Halloran again as soon as his teaching practice was over, by finding out what hours she was working at the hospital and waiting for her one evening outside the gates.

  He was prepared for her rejection when he suggested he should take her out, but she appeared quite willing, and they arranged to have dinner together to talk over old times, on the following Friday.

  Jack was ridiculously anxious that it should turn out well, thinking at first it was because it was so long since he had taken a girl out. But as the day drew nearer, he realized it was more than that. It was important for it to be successful because he wanted to impress Stella, not just as any girl, but as herself.

  He need not have worried. From the time he collected her from the hostel where she had a room, they were comfortable with each other. The meal was a success, Jack handling the menus with impressive authority.

  Stella, however, was not overawed as some girls would have been.

  “You’re really spoiling me,” she said, puffing a face as she saw the prices on the menu. “And on a student’s grant, too!”

  Jack laughed. “Losing a leg in the service of one’s country does have certain compensations, especially if one happened to be an officer,” he commented drily.

  She nodded. “ There are plenty of poor Tommies as badly off as you and worse, trying to scrape a living now, and you treat me to a meal like this.”

  “It’s a special occasion,” he told her. “But don’t expect such a lavish outing next time, will you?”

  “All right, I won’t”, she laughed, and he noted with a sense of elated surprise that she had not denied that there would be a next time.

  Over a meal of roast lamb, washed down with wine, they brought each other up to date on what had happened since the long-ago London days, Stella describing with brevity and humour what must have been hell, France in the last weeks of the war, and Jack explaining the method of teacher training he was now undergoing and his reasons for deciding on the university course.

  But he made no mention of Rosa.

  Although meeting her again had convinced him their engagement would indeed have been a disaster, the pain of rejection was still there. Just why he was so sensitive about it he was not sure, but he thought it might be because at the back of his mind he believed the loss of his leg had been responsible in some way for her change of heart and sudden flight.

  He knew this was unreasonable—he had already lost his leg when she exchanged Ted’s company for his. But he wondered if that might actually have been some kind of morbid attraction for her in the first place, before she realized she couldn’t after all go through with it.

  That night when he left Stella at the door to her hostel, they made arrangements to meet again the following week, and Jack, although tired, was pleased with the way the evening had gone. The pleasant, warm feeling was back, surrounding him as it always seemed to when Stella was around, and he felt exhilarated as he took a taxi back to his lodgings.

  Why hadn’t he looked her up before? he asked himself. Why had he just let her go? There was no answer to that, but he was determined not to let her go so easily again.

  APRIL came and went, and May, and the warm sunshine mirrored Jack’s happiness.

  For the first time in his life, everything seemed to have come together just as he wanted it. He was busily engaged day by day in the sort of study he found most fascinating, and soon he would be embarking properly on the career he had always wanted. His personal life too was rewarding — not the wild, passionate elation he had known with Rosa, but something which was just as good in its own way, warmer, safer and more comfortable. He took pleasure in the way Stella looked, the tone of her voice, her cool touch. When they were together, he felt happy and strangely complete, and when they were not, he missed her, storing up every arousing or interesting experience to share with her.

  But after a while, be noticed another reaction, one he thought of as very odd. If he began to think about how things might be if he and Stella remained together, a tight, choking feeling he could not explain began inside him, closing in like a straight jacket, until he found some way of channelling his thoughts into a different direction.

  It was the same when they were alone together. He kissed her and held her with tenderness, but if ever he felt the stirrings of breathless desire, a shutter came down almost at once, blocking off feeling and producing the same sense of inexplicable claustrophobia.

  At first, he did not worry about it. But as the weeks passed and the days became longer and warmer, he began to realize he could not go on like this forever, shutting himself off from extremes of emotion and refusing to plan beyond the next few casual meetings.

  Already, people were beginning to look on them as a couple. Stella was always included in invitations from his friends, and he from hers, and his landlady had commented on one occasion that he should look for a teaching post with a house to go with it. At the moment, he thought Stella was quite happy with things as they were, but it might very well be that before long she would be thinking along the same lines as his landlady. Sooner or later she was almost bound to look for some commitment, and the thought of that made his stomach knot in panic and everything in him cry out in silent protest.

  Why? he asked himself. Why should h
e feel like this? He was so fond of Stella, he had begun to think he was in love with her, yet the very thought of telling her so made him feel physically sick, and he would almost rather not see her than have her expect more from him than a transitory love.

  But why … why? She was a nice girl, a wonderful girl, and plenty of men would give their eye-teeth to be in his position. So what was the matter with him that he should feel like this?

  It was Charlotte who gave him a glimpse of the truth.

  He had come home, as he so often did, for a cup of tea and a couple of her delicious home-made johnny-cakes, and he was sitting in the kitchen with her and Harry when she suddenly raised the subject of Stella.

  “When are we going to meet this girl of yours?” she asked bluntly.

  “But you know her, Mam,” he said. “You’ve known the O’Hallorans for years.”

  “You know what I mean, Jack,” she said impatiently. “If you don’t want to lose her, you ought to do something about it. I know there’s a shortage of men, thanks to the damn war, but you can’t expect a girl like her to wait for ever.”

  Oh no! he thought. Not Mam, too!

  “Give me a chance,” he retorted. “ We’ve only been going out together a couple of months.”

  “Long enough to be fixing up some kind of an understanding,” Charlotte told him tartly. “ Don’t you know there’s talk of Hal retiring soon? If he goes back up North where he came from, like as not she’ll go, too, and that’ll be the last you’ll see of her.”

  Although annoyed, Jack said nothing. Mam was biased of course. She’d always wanted him to marry someone to suit her ideals, and she no doubt thought Stella was a good match. But it wasn’t knowing that that made him turn away silently. It was hearing her put his own thoughts into words.

  “You know what I think?” Charlotte went on, ignoring his stony response. “I think you’re afraid she’ll let you down like Rosa Clements did. Well, you’re wrong, Jack. She’s a very different girl. I know that Rosa business hurt you more than you ever let on, but it was all for the best and you mustn’t let what happened mar your life.”