The Miner's Wife

by Diane Allen

  ‘Well, one of us will have to work, and I suppose our Jack will not be the only one not turning up this morning,’ Sam growled, then put his pipe and Vesta case in his pocket, before going out of the back door.

  ‘That lad gets worse. But don’t you think I’ve any sympathies for you, either. Broken ribs or no broken ribs, you can make yourself useful around the house. I really don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you two.’ Betty took Jack’s half-eaten dish of porridge away from under his nose and stood washing up at the sink.

  ‘Well, if I’d won that fight, you wouldn’t have had me to worry about. I’d have booked myself a passage to America with the winnings. They are calling out for miners and railway engineers over there. They are even giving you your own piece of land, if you help them on the railroads.’ Jack looked up and moved gingerly from the kitchen chair to the one next to the fire.

  ‘You wouldn’t leave your poor mother, would you, our Jack? This is your home, and it always will be.’ Betty turned and looked at her eldest son. She had had no idea that was what he’d been thinking.

  ‘I know, Mother, but things are changing. There’s not always going to be lead in these fells and, if there is, folk will be able to buy it cheaper than we can mine it for. Besides, I’m fed up with always being in Sam’s shadow. He’s got the looks and the gob on him, he gets whatever he wants and I never get anything.’ Jack reached for his clay pipe and winced when he strained the muscles around his ribs as he took it from above the fireplace.

  ‘You mean he’s got the lass that had taken your eye and all? The bonny slip of a thing that works in the shop? He might have her now, but he’ll not keep her! Women and our Sam are like sand in your hand – there one minute and gone the next. Just be patient. You mark my words, something will go wrong and that will be the end of that fling.’ Betty sighed as she scrubbed out the porridge pan.

  ‘Aye, well, if she’s any sense about her, she’d see how callous our Sam can be. That lass he went out with, about this time last year, found him at the fair. She was carrying a baby in her arms, but Sam was having nothing to do with her, even though she was nearly on her knees, begging him for help. And Meg saw it all going on. I bet she’ll be having second thoughts this morning about having anything to do with Sam.’ Jack drew on his pipe and sat back and thought about the scene that all three of them had witnessed.

  ‘The baby’s not his, is it? He’d better not have got a lass into trouble, else he’ll be answerable to me.’ Betty stopped her scrubbing and turned round, looking red in the face and angry.

  ‘Nay, I don’t know – but it could be. She was a bit forward with her affections with quite a few folk. Sam’s never said anything about her anyway, but he was in a bad mood for the rest of the fair. That’s why he went on the lash. My God, he’ll be suffering in that mine, but like he says, he’ll not be on his own. To make matters worse, look at the weather. It’s pissing down; he’ll be sodden before he gets to work this morning.’ Jack grinned.

  Betty shook her head. ‘You’d think you hated one another, to hear you talk. It’s a good job I know better. Aye, the weather’s bad. Before you know it, we’ll have snow as well as rain, and then you’ll be dragging your feet up that fellside to work.’ She went back to her pots.

  ‘Another reason to go to America – it would be a whole lot warmer than this hole,’ Jack said quietly.

  ‘I’ll have no more talk of going to America, do you hear? Not while you are living under my roof,’ Betty shouted.

  ‘Aye, I hear,’ Jack mumbled. But his mind was set. He’d been keeping some of his wages in a box under his bed, without his mother knowing, and another six months should see him right. Then he’d book a passage and free himself of his mother and brother, and make a life for himself doing what he wanted to do.

  Meg leaned on the shop counter, her face cupped in her hands and her feet tapping to a tune she had heard being played by the fiddler at the fair, which was going round and round in her head. She looked out of the window and watched as the rain came down in torrents. There wouldn’t be many customers in the shop today, she thought, as she looked round the dark, low-beamed shop. The weather had even stopped Harry from taking his daily walk – the first time since her arrival that he had missed his visit to Reeth. However, he didn’t seem to have any incentive to help her in the shop, staying by the fire with his pipe and paper and catnapping, once he was on his own.

  Meg yawned; she’d not slept well since the fair. The picture of Sam rejecting the woman and her baby kept replaying in her mind, and the niggling question of whether the baby was his had still to be answered. That, along with Jack’s warning about his brother’s wanton ways, was beginning to play on her mind. Perhaps she should not be taken in by Sam’s winning grin and dashing good looks. Perhaps he was as shallow as Peggy Dobson had hinted. Or was she just jealous, like Jack was?

  But Meg had only to think of the words that Sam said to her, and the way he touched and held her, and her heart fluttered like the trapped late-summer butterfly that was trying to find an escape to freedom through the shop’s glass windows. He’d won her heart and soul, if he did but know it, and every minute away from him seemed a minute too long. Even though the rain was pouring down, she would make her way to the bridge, their secret meeting place, that evening. The river wouldn’t be that swollen yet. She could shelter and wait for him under the spanning arch, and yell at him when she heard him call her name. He was bound to come to her – he’d promised – and a drop of rain would not quench the desire to hold one another, of that she was sure.

  Lost in her dreams, Meg was suddenly woken from them as the shop door flew open, the bell above it nearly breaking away from its coil, as Frank Metcalfe burst into the shop without his usual batch of baking.

  ‘Where’s Harry? I need Harry!’ Frank yelled. ‘For God’s sake, fetch him. I was minding my own business, urging my old nag on, when I happened to look over the top of the bridge into the rising waters below. It was then that I spotted her: a body, just lying there. She must have gone and thrown herself in! The poor lass, she’s dead for sure; she’s half in the water and half out. Tell Harry I need his help to get her out, and I’ll go and knock on a few more doors for the men of the village, before she gets washed downstream when the waters rise. Harry, bloody well move yourself, you lazy old bugger. I know you are at home; it’s too wet to be going to get your leg over in Reeth. Move, and come and give me a hand!’

  Frank yelled through to the back room once more, then flew out of the door, leaving his horse and cart outside the shop while he knocked on the door of anybody who lived nearby, telling them the same tale and asking for help.

  ‘What’s he yelling, that bloody mad fool?’ Harry came in from the back room where he’d been catching up on his sleep, and listened while Meg told him what had been said. ‘Give us that lump of rope, lass, from up on that shelf. We might need it. And go and get a blanket from your bedroom, then bring it down to the river bridge. She might not be dead, if we are lucky. Whoever she is, she must have been bloody desperate, as there is not enough water in that beck yet to drown yourself in.’ He grabbed his oilskin coat from behind the back-room door, slung the rope over his shoulder and ran out of the shop, leaving the door wide open.

  Meg ran upstairs and grabbed the blanket from the bottom of her bed, then went to the back room, placing the fireguard around the fire. She quickly put her shawl round her shoulders and then abandoned the shop, to join the crowd that was gathering at the base of the bridge that spanned the River Swale. She couldn’t get there fast enough, and the breath in her throat hurt as she ran the last few yards, before peering down into the ebbing waters of the mighty river.

  She watched as Harry and Frank and two other men pulled the body of a woman out of the river onto the bank. The crowd gasped as the body revealed its secret, once she was rolled onto her back. When the shawl tied tightly around her was undone, it revealed a baby underneath the woman’s loose blouse, its feet tucked into her
skirts and bound by the tightness of the shawl that had been wrapped around them both.

  ‘God rest their souls.’ A woman wailed and crossed herself, as both mother and child lay dead on the bank.

  ‘Does anyone here know who she is?’ Harry looked round the crowd and up to the archway of the bridge, and watched as Meg made her way through the crowd. ‘Don’t come near, lass, it’s not a pleasant sight.’

  ‘But I know her, Uncle Harry. I saw her at the fair on Saturday. I think she’s called Margaret Parrington, and that’s her baby.’ Meg’s eyes filled with tears as she bent down and looked at the once-beautiful Margaret, her long wet hair straggled along the shingle and the dead baby lying on top of her, as if suckling on her breast. The memory of her and Sam arguing crossed Meg’s mind, and she felt angry and frustrated at the thought that Sam might have had something to do with this.

  ‘She’ll be the youngest of the Parringtons from Fell End. I heard her father and mother had thrown her out,’ Frank said, as even he – tough as he was – brushed a tear away from his cheek.

  ‘It’s a sad do. There’s too many lasses getting in the family way, with no man to stand by and wed them. It’s alright sowing a few wild oats when you are young, but you should be a man and stand up to your commitments when needed.’ Harry looked down at the dead pair.

  ‘Here, Uncle Harry, cover her with my shawl and stop everybody gawping at her.’ Meg took off her shawl and passed it to Harry, who covered most of Margaret’s body with it, while Meg stood getting soaked to the skin in the pouring rain.

  Harry looked up at the crowd. ‘Somebody fetch the preacher and bring the handcart from the chapel. We’ll put her in there until her parents come for her, if the preacher gives us permission. Surely her parents will show her some mercy now,’ Harry whispered to Frank as they both looked at the bodies lying under the shawl. ‘Will you go and tell her folks? You ken them and I don’t. Or should we leave it to the preacher? But he’ll only give hellfire and brimstone to them, and that’s the last thing they’ll want to hear.’

  ‘I’ll go. I’ll drop your baking off and then go back down the valley to tell them. Meg, you come with me, this is no place for a young woman. Then you can take receipt of the baking. It’s a good job you are the last shop on my rounds, else I’d not have been able to go.’ Frank shook his head and left Harry and the other men from the village with the bodies, as he and Meg climbed up from the river bank and followed the road into the village and back to the shop.

  ‘I know what I’d like to do to the lad who got her that way,’ Frank growled. ‘But her parents should have taken pity on her. She isn’t the first to have got into that state, and she won’t be the last. These things happen. I should know, I ended up having to get wed pretty fast myself.’

  Meg said nothing, but all the time she couldn’t help but think about Sam dismissing the poor, begging woman, and the mood he had been in afterwards.

  ‘Now, will you be alright until Harry gets himself back?’ Frank lifted the tray of baking from the canopied cart and put it down on the shop’s counter. ‘It wasn’t the prettiest thing to see, and you are nobbut young. Harry will need a change of clothes, as you do, by the looks of you. It’s raining harder than it seems, and your hair is sodden. Go and get changed before you catch your death – we can’t be losing you. Old Harry would be lost without you, as the shop had gone to the dogs before you came along.’ Frank smiled at the crestfallen lass. ‘Chin up. That, I hope, will never happen to you. Remember not to get your head turned by any fancy words that a lad says to you, and to keep your legs together – although it’s not my place to tell you such. Right, I’ll be away. I’m not looking forward to telling her parents the news, but somebody has to do it.’

  Frank stopped for a second in the shop’s doorway as he saw the preacher running down the road, following the cart from the chapel that was used for funerals.

  ‘Aye, it’s a sad day. I wish I’d never seen her. Why she had to choose that bridge to end it on beats me, when she was from Reeth. She must have walked five miles to get here.’ He shook his head and closed the door behind him, leaving Meg cold and shivering in the gloom of the shop.

  Her thoughts were as dark as the day as she turned over the ‘Closed’ sign for a few minutes, while she went upstairs to change out of her wet clothes and towel her hair slightly drier. Why had Margaret Parrington thrown herself off that bridge? The river wasn’t as deep as further down the dale, or as fast-flowing. Could it be that the bridge held a certain meaning for her? Meg couldn’t help but wonder if Margaret had met Sam, just like she did, beneath its arches, and that that was the reason for her choice. As it was, there would be no meeting with Sam Alderson there tonight – or any other night, come to that. Not now, for the dead woman and her child would be there to haunt them. But she did need to speak to Sam and find out the truth. Was the baby his or not? And if it was, what was she going to do about it?

  She changed quickly into a dry blouse and warm skirt and went to the shop door to turn the sign back round to ‘Open’. Her hair was still wet as she started to put the baking onto the shop’s shelves, when the doorbell sounded again.

  ‘Bloody hell, it’s wet out there. It’s a good job it isn’t the Bartle Fair today, else it would have been up to nowt.’ Jack entered the shop quickly, with his jacket over his head, and winced in pain as he pulled it back onto his shoulders. ‘It might be bloody wet, but there seems to be a lot of folk about the village. What’s going on, do you know?’ He grinned at Meg as she turned and looked at him.

  ‘There’s been an accident. Well, when I say “accident”, it’s more like a death, down at the bridge. That’s what all the commotion is about. The preacher is down there now. They should be bringing the bodies back up, to be put in the chapel.’ Meg glanced at Jack, and didn’t really want to tell him the news.

  ‘Bodies! You mean there’s more than one? What the hell has been going on down there?’ He stared at Meg.

  ‘It’s Margaret Parrington, she’s thrown herself into the Swale – both herself and her baby. She’s drowned herself. The poor woman’s drowned herself out of desperation.’ Meg broke down and cried in front of Jack. Until then she’d been strong, but when she had said the words and seen a flashback of the scene that she had just left, emotion got the better of her.

  ‘Oh my God! Margaret was at the fair on Saturday – we all saw her talking to Sam. I thought then she looked terrible. But come here, you. You look upset, and you didn’t even know her.’ Jack held his arms out for Meg as she sobbed and cried in them, wincing in pain as he did so.

  ‘No, I’m alright. It was just the sight of them both, and the little baby still in her arms. It was all blue and lifeless; it didn’t deserve a death like that, nor did she.’ Meg blew her nose with her handkerchief and looked up at Jack. ‘I’m crying for selfish reasons, because I’ve been wondering if Sam was the father. His mood seemed to change after he had seen her, and Margaret seemed to be begging him for something. He doesn’t deserve anyone’s love, if he can be that callous not to look after his own.’ Meg held back her sobs and waited for what seemed an age before Jack replied.

  ‘If it was Sam’s baby, he’s said nothing about it to me. He was sweet on her for a while last year, but I don’t think he went that far with her. You needn’t worry your head about it. He’d have been sure to have told me if he thought it was his, so stop worrying.’ Jack tried to put his arm round Meg to comfort her, but she stood a little away from him.

  ‘But why did she throw herself from this bridge? It’s the same bridge that Sam and I meet under – and it was he who suggested it. Did he meet Margaret there, too? I’m beginning to think he’s exactly what my parents warned me of: a low-life miner.’ Meg breathed in deeply and wiped her swollen red eyes again.

  ‘It’s just coincidence. Nothing more. You are reading too much into things.’ Jack hated himself for slighting Margaret, as he went on to clear his brother’s name. ‘Everyone knew Margaret Parrington
– half the men in the dale will have been with her, she was that popular. Although I shouldn’t talk ill of the dead.’ He bowed his head and then raised it to look at Meg. ‘There’s nothing that can be done. But stop your worrying that Sam had anything to do with it, because he hadn’t, I promise you. He’d have told me; he tells me everything.’

  ‘Alright, I’ll believe you. But I can’t get the picture of Margaret and the baby out of my head. It was so shocking,’ Meg whispered. ‘Can you tell Sam I’ll not meet him tonight, that it’s best if we play it by ear for a day or two? There were some angry people down at the bridge, after seeing poor Margaret. They will have it in for you miners, I expect.’ Meg smiled wanly at Jack. She didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but Sam would have to answer a few questions when she did see him.

  ‘That’s nowt fresh. It’s always us miners who have done everything that happens over here.’ Jack leaned on the counter. ‘Oh, my bloody ribs – they don’t half hurt! And our Sam isn’t much better.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with you both?’ Meg asked, suddenly concerned for the brothers’ welfare.

  ‘We got a pasting by that bloody big Mick. He’s broken my ribs, so I’m not at work. And our Sam is black and blue all over. You wouldn’t want to see him anyway, as he’s not a pretty sight,’ Jack said.

  ‘But he’s alright, isn’t he? He’s not broken anything?’ Meg quizzed.

  ‘Happen his nose. It is hard to tell, as everything’s that swollen. But he’s gone to work, which is more than I have. That’s why I’m here, wanting half an ounce of Kendal Twist. And my mother wants her usual, whatever that is.’ Jack stood upright and noticed Harry about to come into the shop, as he looked through the window in the door. ‘And you can give me a quarter of humbugs, please, Miss Oversby.’ He winked at Meg as Harry entered.