‘Pit folk aren’t like us. They live under the ground - and eat coal. Never get to see daylight. More like animals than humans, Dolly says. You’ll be tret like a slave - like Cinderella.’ She came at Emmie, making scary noises, laughing when her sister screamed.
The more their mother told Nell to stop her nonsense, the more she persisted. But on the last night, when Emmie could not sleep, Nell cuddled up close and stroked her hair.
‘Won’t be for ever,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll get well again, then come back to me and Mam. Course, by then I’ll be working for the doctor, so it’ll be better than this.’
Emmie burrowed into Nell’s hold. So often her sister was a monster by day, yet kind when they lay in bed together, their mother working late to catch the dying summer light. Tomorrow night there would be no one to cuddle.
‘Tell me the story of when we were bairns,’ Emmie whispered. ‘About the house and the park.’
She was lulled to sleep by her sister’s hushed words of a beautiful home with soft beds and a park nearby with grand railings and trees as tall as houses.
The next day, Nell carried Emmie’s jute bag with her much-mended spare clothes, to the station. Even this short walk left her exhausted. Emmie hung on to her big sister and cried. She had been told there were only boys in the MacRae household. Tonight there would be no Nell. Even an angry, contrary Nell was better than no Nell at all.
‘Didn’t mean it about pitmen being animals,’ Nell muttered, kissing her on the head. ‘They’ll be canny and kind and spoil you rotten. You’ll not want to come back.’
‘I will,’ Emmie sobbed, as Nell pulled away.
Emmie stared out of the carriage window for a last sight of her sister before she disappeared in the steam of the locomotive. She clung to her mother’s clammy, calloused hand and wondered when she would ever see Nell again.
Her mother kept repeating, ‘They’re good people. You’ll be grand. We’ll come and visit. It’s not for ever.’
Emmie was too anxious to say a word.
At Swalwell Station they stood waiting, Mary gazing round nervously for someone she recognised. Moments later, a broad-shouldered youth who had been eyeing them from the entrance sauntered forward whistling. His upper arms strained at the seams of his too-tight jacket. His blue eyes stared out from rings of coal dust that much scrubbing had failed to erase. To Emmie, he looked terrifying.
‘Mrs Kelso? I’m Rab MacRae - come to fetch Emmie.’
His deep booming voice sent the girl scurrying behind her mother, burying her face in her skirt.
‘Rab!’ Mary said in amazement. ‘You’re all grown up. Haven’t seen you since you were Emmie’s age. Must be sixteen by now?’
‘Seventeen,’ he grinned. ‘Is that Emmie hiding in your dress? I don’t bite, lass. Well, only when I haven’t been fed.’
Mary tried to prise her daughter from behind her, but the girl clung on, whimpering.
‘Has your mam not come?’ Mary asked anxiously. ‘I expected her to be here. Emmie’s not used to lads.’
‘Mam’s getting dinner ready and I can walk twice as quick.’ Rab got down on his haunches. ‘Haway lass. Do you like liquorice?’
Emmie shook her head.
‘She’s not used to the taste.’
‘By heck, you’ve a treat in store,’ Rab chuckled, and produced a long string of the sticky sweet. He waved it at the frightened girl. ‘You bite one end and I’ll bite the other.’
Her mother coaxed her out, encouraged by the boy’s friendliness. He reminded her of a young Jonas.
Emmie peered up into Rab’s intense blue-eyed gaze. Was he trying to trick her like Nell did, by offering something he would then snatch away? Swiftly, she grabbed the end of the dangling liquorice and bit into it.
Rab roared with laughter and let go his end. ‘You can eat the rest on the way to Crawdene.’ He took the jute bag from Mary Kelso. ‘Haway, lass, it’s mince and dumplings for dinner.’
Mary hugged her daughter briefly then pushed her forward. ‘Go with Rab now and be good for Mrs MacRae.’
Emmie walked a few steps, then the enormity of the moment overwhelmed her. She turned and gave her mother a beseeching look. But Mary waved her on. Emmie’s vision blurred in tears and she swallowed hard, trying to be brave. Her mother would come for her soon. She gripped the black liquorice stick and turned to follow Rab.
Out of the station, she struggled to keep up with his big strides, and by the time they were at the edge of the village she was gasping for breath and crying for her mother. Rab, who had been chatting to her all the while about his family and the chickens they kept and the girls in the street she could play with, stopped and bent down.
‘Jump on me back, lass,’ he ordered, ‘or we’ll have grown beards by the time we get home.’
Emmie scrambled on to his back and clung on tight. Wayward curls of hair from under his cap tickled her cheek, but she liked the soapy smell of his neck. He strode up the hill, away from the river, as if she were weightless, talking to her between snatches of song. Emmie did not answer, but relaxed against his warm back, lulled by the rhythm of his walk, gazing at the swaying corn. She dozed off and woke to the sound of Rab’s boots crunching on a cinder track.
‘This is the short cut through Oliphant’s Wood,’ he told her. ‘Me and Samuel catch rabbits in here, but you’re not to tell anyone.’
Emmie gasped as the light filtered through the branches overhead.
‘You all right, lass?’ Rab felt her tense. ‘We’ll be out in a minute.’
‘I like it,’ she whispered close to his ear, ‘the sun peeping through the leaves.’
She felt his grip tighten round her legs. ‘That’s grand.’
He began to speak in a rhythmic voice, almost to himself.
‘Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.’
Emmie recognised the poem: ‘Up-hill’ by Christina Rossetti; one of her favourites, which Miss Dillon had read to them often. Timidly, she joined in the final verse.
‘Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.’
They laughed in delight that each should know it. Emmie soon clammed up again as they emerged from the sheltered woods. Before her stretched narrow lanes strewn with washing and rows of brick houses puffing smoke. She felt dizzy at the vast sky overhead and the steepness of the hill dropping away below them. Children called to Rab as he ducked under a line of flapping shirts, curious to know who the girl was. Abruptly they turned in through an open door, Rab almost bending double, and a moment later he was tipping Emmie on to a high-backed sofa. ‘Delivered - one Emmie Kelso,’ he panted. ‘Doesn’t say much, but she can spout poetry.’
Helen bustled across the room. ‘Let’s take a look at you. By, look at those bonny brown eyes - big as spoons - just like your da’s!’ She gave Emmie a kiss on the forehead. ‘Are you hungry? Looks like you could do with a bit fattening. How’s your mam?’
Emmie’s lip quivered at the mention of her mother. Helen gave her a swift hug. She smelled of baking and raw onions. ‘Don’t you worry, pet. Auntie Helen’ll look after you till you’re strong enough to gan back. Your mam and sister won’t know you once we’ve put a bit flesh on your bones. How about a cup of milky tea, eh? Do you drink tea?’
Emmie nodded. She watched the plump-faced woman dart around the room, talking all the while and issuing orders.
‘Will you wake Samuel - and don’t let him turn over again.’ As Rab disappeared up a ladder into the loft, Helen went to the door and called for her youngest son. ‘Peter, time for dinner!’
A thin-faced boy with a watchful gaze appeared silently in the doorway and gave Emmie a quizzical smile. He did not look much older than she.
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‘Are you a lass?’ he asked. ‘You look like a lass.’
‘Yes, she is. Now wash your hands and set the table,’ his mother ordered. ‘An extra place for Emmie, remember. Save your questions for later.’
Emmie looked on warily as one by one the boys gathered around the table. Samuel had fair hair that stuck out like straw. He yawned and winked at her. Peter continued to stare at her and ask again if she was a girl. Helen doled out plates of steaming mince and onion with a solid dumpling perched on top.
‘If you cannot eat the dumpling, Emmie,’ Samuel teased, ‘we can play bowls with it later.’
‘Take no notice,’ Helen snorted. ‘Eat what you can, pet; the lads’ll finish what you can’t.’
Emmie took small mouthfuls, her stomach too knotted to eat the tasty-smelling food. She kept glancing up at Rab, who was sitting beside her. When he cleared his plate and got up to go, she clutched at his jacket. He gave her a look of surprise.
‘I have to gan to work now, lass. Me and Samuel. But Peter can keep you company.’
Her eyes brimmed with tears and he quickly dug out another stick of liquorice. With a brisk ruffle of her hair, he jammed on his cap and led his brother out.
‘You look worn out,’ Helen said in concern. ‘You have a lie down till your Uncle Jonas gets in. Peter, fetch a blanket from the dresser.’
Emmie tried to stay awake, but the heat of the room and the exhaustion she felt soon overwhelmed her.
When she woke, the sun had left the doorstep and a burly man with bushy grey moustache and side whiskers was sitting by the hearth reading a newspaper. For a moment she lay still, staring at him. He must have sensed it, for he suddenly looked up and frowned.
‘John’s bairn,’ he said in a booming voice that made her jump. ‘I can tell right enough. Helen, she’s awake!’
To Emmie’s relief, the woman came rushing in with an armful of washing. ‘Don’t go scaring her with your big voice,’ she chided. ‘Emmie, this is your Uncle Jonas - he was a great friend of your father’s and he wouldn’t harm a fly. But he’s a bit deaf from working at the pit forge, so he doesn’t know he’s shouting.’
Emmie sat up and gazed at the man who had been like a brother to her own father. He could tell her stories about the man she could hardly remember, just like Nell told her stories about their past life in a long-ago world.
She swung her weak legs over the side of the sofa and cautiously walked towards him. She had never seen such a hairy man. Grey hair sprouted from his ears, his cheeks, his upper lip and sprang from his head in an unkempt mane. Wiry eyebrows framed bold blue eyes like thatch. He reminded her of a picture on Miss Dillon’s wall of Moses parting the Red Sea.
‘Uncle Jonas,’ she asked, ‘will you tell me a story?’
He looked at her fiercely. ‘Story, did you say?’
She nodded.
Helen laughed. ‘He’s not got much patience for tales and story-telling, pet. Rab’s the one with a head for stories.’
Emmie’s face fell.
‘What kind of story do you want, lassie?’ Jonas barked.
Emmie swallowed the tears welling in her throat. ‘About me da,’ she murmured.
He looked quizzically at Helen and she explained what the girl had said.
Suddenly, his severe face broke into a warm smile. ‘Oh, I can tell you stories about your father till the cows come home.’
With that, he dropped the newspaper and drew her under his strong arm.
Chapter 4
1903
By the following May, Emmie found it difficult to remember a time when she had not lived in the noisy, vibrant household in China Street. The MacRaes were loving, boisterous and argumentative. Samuel and Rab fought and laughed in equal measure, while strange Peter talked to himself or retreated into the loft to play his penny whistle.
Mealtimes would be punctuated by hot debate over politics and religion, a local quoits match or British treatment of the Boers. Neighbours would call in to share a bowl of tobacco and good conversation. Jonas declared all war waged by governments as imperialist and Emmie puzzled that they had not celebrated victory in the Boer War with bonfires and fireworks as they had in Gateshead.
Rab and his father would argue over the housing given to pitmen by Oliphant.
‘He hasn’t spent a farthing on the cottages since they were built,’ Rab declared. ‘We don’t even have proper sewers. We’d all be better off with a rent allowance and find somewhere fit to live in.’
‘Where?’ his father scoffed.
‘County Council can build houses. But they won’t as long as folk prefer to crowd into Oliphant’s hovels.’
‘At least it’s a roof over our heads when trade is slack,’ Jonas pointed out.
‘Aye, and you’re at the beck and call of Oliphant. If you complain about the middens, he threatens to hoy you out.’
It amazed Emmie how the father and son could be shouting at each other one minute and laughing over a remark made against them the next.
Even her Aunt Helen waded into these verbal battles. One evening after tea, she got up from the table and put on her coat and bonnet.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Jonas growled.
‘To me Guild meeting,’ she announced. ‘Medical officer’s giving a talk.’
‘But you haven’t cleared the table—’
‘No, you and the lads can do that for once. Like it says in that paper of yours, if lasses are to play their part in the class struggle, the men have to help out more so we can gan to our meetings.’
‘What paper?’ Jonas demanded.
‘The one Rab was reading me.’
They all gawped at her.
‘And don’t you dare leave it all to Emmie - she’s got her spellings to practise.’ With that, Helen hurried away to the Cooperative Women’s Guild, leaving Rab and Samuel hooting with laughter at their astonished father.
Emmie grew to love her adoptive aunt and uncle, who had mollycoddled her through the winter and encouraged her at her lessons. She had a proper coat and boots to go to school in and a warm truckle bed next to theirs to snuggle into at night when the wind howled in the chimney. Week by week she had grown stronger, shaking off the lethargy and breathlessness that had confined her to bed at home. Only one severe bout of wheezing and cold had kept her confined to the house most of January. Helen had plied her with hot infusions, steam baths and rubbed her chest with grease, while Rab had kept boredom at bay by reading to her. He had walked to Blackton, a larger neighbouring colliery, and borrowed novels from the penny library in the Miners’ Institute. He read her history books and poetry, despite Helen’s chiding not to give the girl a headache. Samuel, when he sat still for more than a minute, played cards with her and taught her how to whistle.
All of them had lusty singing voices and were the mainstay of the socialist Clarion Club in the village. They shared a tin-roofed hall with the Co-operative Guild. Here, they put on short plays and concerts, and ran a socialist Sunday school to rival the religious ones at the Methodist chapel and Blackton’s parish church. Emmie loved to hear the MacRae boys sing and was thrilled to be given the job of announcing the acts at their spring concert.
Most of all, Emmie was revelling in being back at school. The teacher, Miss Downs, was stricter than Miss Dillon, but the hours at school flew by. For the first time in ages, she was able to join in skipping games in the school yard and play with the other children. She had been taken under the wing of a talkative girl, Louise Curran. Louise was athletic and prone to be bossy, but she stuck up for the new girl when others tried to pick on her.
‘If you want to fight Emmie, I’ll get me big brother on you,’ Louise declared, facing down a couple of the older girls. Louise’s older brother, Tom, had a reputation as a fighter and the threat seemed to work. Emmie marvelled at the way Louise befriended her and was happy to follow in her wake. The MacRae boys teased her.
‘Our Emmie’s gettin’ in with the Bible thumpers,’
Samuel crowed.
‘Aye, Currans will give you a ticket into heaven,’ Rab winked.
‘What d’you mean?’ Emmie asked, bewildered by their mirth.
‘Take no notice,’ Helen answered. ‘It’s just ‘cos the Currans are good chapelgoers.’
‘Aye, and Liberals,’ Rab grunted.
‘And think they own the lodge,’ Jonas joined in.
‘And live in Denmark Street,’ Samuel said in a posh voice.
Emmie put her hands on her hips and answered back. ‘Well, Louise is me friend and she’s canny and what’s wrong with ganin’ to chapel, any road?’
The boys clapped and burst into laughter.
‘Good on you, Emmie,’ Rab cried, ruffling her hair, ‘sticking up for your marra.’
Much of what the MacRaes said baffled her, but she loved them all the same. Sometimes, Emmie felt guilty at not missing her mother and sister more. For the first few weeks, she would dissolve into tears at the mere thought of her mother. She missed her gentle way of speaking, the times she would let her sit on her lap while she worked, her sad smile. Emmie hugged a pair of mittens at night because they smelled of her mother. When the smell faded, she wore them to remind her of her mother’s hands cutting and sewing.
On Boxing Day, Dr Jameson had brought Mary and Nell up to Crawdene in a borrowed horse-drawn trap, and the MacRaes had made a fuss of their visitors and fed them well. The boys had entertained them with songs and Peter’s whistle, and Nell had joined in, her slim face flushed and excited at all the attention. She had turned fourteen and grown, her brown hair pinned up like an adult’s, and Emmie was bashful with her suddenly mature sister.
‘I’m thinking of going on the stage,’ Nell announced to the consternation of her mother.
‘I’ll come and watch you any day,’ Samuel grinned, making Nell giggle.
But as far as Emmie knew, her sister was cleaning Dr Jameson’s surgery and running messages. A card had come on her tenth birthday, but she had heard nothing for over a month. An Easter visit had been called off because of a freak snowfall on the fell. Instead, Emmie had gone to chapel with the Currans and the planned picnic had ended in a snowball fight, with Tom Curran shoving an icy snowball down her back. High-spirited Tom was belted by his father for making Emmie cry. Full of remorse for getting him into trouble, Emmie had given him her paste egg.
THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love Page 3