After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  He would have liked to draw up the corner chair for her and really talk to this child who saw beyond the confines of her world to things that should not be, but felt constrained. She would sooner be away downstairs, warmed by the fire.

  She started to speak and he leant back and looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Are we going to the pantomime this year, Da?’ she asked, wanting to talk about patterns and life and themselves but knowing that here was a man who had no use for her chatter and none of the need she had for company. She wanted a reason for not turning to the door and stepping out into the gloom of the landing that led to no one she wanted to be with and nowhere she felt at home. But she had only been allowed into this room for punishment and she knew that here there was no place for her either.

  Oh Annie, my little love, Archie thought, thank God you have no thoughts to torment you, no loneliness to plague you, just your wonderful zest for life, the love of tomorrow and he desperately wanted the brightness of her youth, now and in the future; the nearness of her small warmth and her interest. But he tried to restrain this intrusion into his daughter’s life and merely nodded at her request and again when she pleaded that they should all be together for the trip, Don too.

  There was a silence between them, her hazel eyes looked up into his.

  He could bear it no longer. ‘I love you, darling child,’ he murmured, so softly that Annie could only guess at what he had said. She leant forward to try to hear again and he reached out to her and kissed her soft cold cheek. Annie wondered again what he had said.

  He dropped his arm from around her. As he had feared, the time had passed when he could expect love from his family and he knew that the blame was only with himself.

  ‘Off you go now,’ he said, patting her. ‘Find Betsy for some tea.’

  Annie went, feeling that something had slipped from her, something important and she couldn’t quite see what it was. Silly old fool, she hissed, hurt and angry as the door shut behind her leaving her cold and alone. He doesn’t care whether I’m alive or dead; all he cares about is his bloody shop and his booze. Well I just don’t give a damn. He can drink himself sodden. I just don’t care about you any more, she hurled silently at the door. You and she’s just as bad as one another, her with her beer in her tea mug. You with yours in that posh glass. You must think I’m daft, the pair of you, if you think I don’t know what’s going on and she flung herself down into the kitchen to find it deserted with practically no fire left.

  It’ll be me to make the tea again, she thought. Bet’s in the shop and she’ll be too sozzled to turn a hand to anything. She opened the door into the passage that led up through the basement into the shop. Bet was sitting behind the counter on the high stool, her hand resting limply round her mug, the earthenware jug to one side. Annie saw the jug was nearly empty and thought of the clumsy evening ahead of them as Betsy slipped and slumped around the kitchen.

  ‘Shall I do the tea then?’ she asked, her voice indifferent and hollow in the deserted shop.

  ‘Aye lass, I’ll be a while yet.’ She did not look round and Annie did not expect her to. What closeness there had been had become submerged somehow during the long grey weary days, weeks and months of depression and despair.

  ‘May doesn’t mind having Tom, does she?’ she asked over her shoulder as she began to leave.

  ‘No, God bless her,’ murmured Betsy, her lips so stiff with beer that some trickled from the corner of her mouth and she lifted a distorted hand and wiped it back on to her tongue. ‘It’s the best for him, I reckon, with things as they are.’

  She half turned, tears brimming, her breaking heart clear in her eyes but Annie refused to notice. She forced herself to feel revulsion since it did not hurt as much as pity. She thought, as she left, of Betsy’s buttocks and sagging thighs planted on top of her seat, her legs wide apart, her feet lolling on their sides, straining against dirty brown shoes. At least her da kept himself a bit neater, she thought.

  It’d be one pennyworth of chips tonight and a piece of fish, no one else would be in a fit state to eat. She felt weary and had a pain and that night Annie had her first period. She came down from her room, her cardigan wrapped round her shoulders, held together with a hand small with cold and touched Betsy who was slumped face forward on the table, her snores rattling her gaping lips and blowing across the pool of saliva that had oozed casually from beneath her tongue.

  Annie shook her again, shivering in the cold of dead embers. It was no good. She stood, frightened and in pain, not wanting to go upstairs again to the smell of the oil lamp. For a moment she held her cardigan together with her chin, the knitted rows scraping her skin and awkwardly piled some kindling on top of paper and began the range for the kettle. The gas stove would be quicker but did not give the same warmth and it smelt funny so she put some coal on and knelt as it took hold. Somewhere she knew there was a hot-water bottle and that, pressed to her stomach, would ease the ache.

  The kettle was singing gently now as she looked round the room. The dresser was bare of all but a few plates and the door dragged as she opened the cupboard which was full of old sheeting but right at the rear of the pantry she found it. She scraped her knuckle on the stopper but, as she filled it, the heat became a balm. Betsy stirred and Annie called to her.

  ‘Betsy, I’ve come on, what do I do?’

  ‘What’s that you say?’ Betsy reared up, her eyes glazed and heavy. ‘What’s that you say, my pet?’

  She reached for Annie who stepped back out of reach of the flailing hand.

  ‘It’s me, Betsy, I’ve come on and I don’t know what to do.’

  She hated it, every bit of it, having to expose herself to this woman, to anyone, in this most secret of things and her face was hot with humiliation.

  Betsy shambled to her feet, leaning her weight on one hand and pushing off from the table towards Annie.

  ‘It’s a bloody shame, that’s what it is, and you such a bit of a bairn.’ She crossed her arms. ‘Now don’t you go mucking in the lanes with any of them boys. Just you keep yourself to yourself or it’ll be trouble and this house has enough of that as it is.’

  Annie backed away towards the sink.

  ‘I just need something to wear, Betsy, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to make do, same as me.’ She staggered to the linen cupboard and pointed. ‘There, see that pile of old rags, not the sheets, those at the back. Take ’em, use ’em, wash and boil ’em then use them again. Now, I’m off to bed. I suppose he isn’t in?’

  Annie shook her head as Betsy nodded towards the door. ‘Put the guard up and some ash on that fire,’ she slurred heavily towards the end and left the room.

  Annie looked at the rags bunched in her hand. Da might come in at any moment and she crept out of the door, her boots slopping at her bare ankles, up the dark stairs and into a bed grown cold. Safe, clutching the stone bottle, her head beneath the blanket, it seemed very lonely up on the top floor. It wasn’t fair that Tom had an Aunt who loved him. She felt for the Australian Christmas card which had arrived this morning and told of the baby Eric and Sophie were so proud of and which they had named Annie.

  She beat the mattress, crumpling the card and hating the child who had taken her place and her name. She thought of her body, bleeding and sticky and railed at it for taking the child’s body from around her thoughts and feelings and replacing it with one which would soon be really adult, not just pretend. She lay quiet, hearing her own breathing. Tom would be here tomorrow and maybe Don and she thought of the scarves she had knitted. It was Christmas Day in the morning.

  Archie sat in Bob Wheeler’s front room. It was a long walk across town but he had felt the need to stretch his legs and see his friend. Bob lived near to the Bigham colliery because, he said, he liked the sound of the pit wheel.

  The two men had been silent for some time. Bob had found the suspension of the seven-hour shift and less pay a poor Christmas present, he had said. It was a poor
reward for a strike which started as a general one and ended yet again as a miners ‘down tools’. His face was set and he looked back over his years in the union and despaired. Archie asked:

  ‘Why didn’t you go ahead and strike in 1919 when coal was booming and they desperately needed you? With unemployment so high you had no bargaining power this time. It seems all wrong.’

  Bob shook his head. This is what he had been awake thinking about for the last three nights. He had moved the clock on to the landing in the end because the ticking had drummed ‘1919’ again and again. He had feared all along the General Strike would fail. It was the wrong time. ‘You don’t need to tell me that, man. We thought we’d get the support of all the workers, but the essential services continued. The country kept going in other areas with the volunteers and the government did well with their propaganda.’

  ‘Didn’t the TUC support you properly?’

  Bob laughed. ‘As much as anyone could do in conditions of such low employment. But it was more than that. They were worried, Archie, I think, especially after the Mail published a leader saying that a general strike was almost the same as revolution. The Council want respectability in order to be able to negotiate with government in the long term. They don’t want a revolution, I don’t know anyone that does. Changes, yes.’ They both nodded and Bob leaned forward and poured whisky into Archie’s glass and added more to his own. He must put back that clock, when he was sleeping better. It had been his mother’s.

  ‘Anyway, after a few days, Samuels arranged a meeting with the TUC to end the General Strike and they arranged terms, but they were bad terms. The workers came out with nothing, just less pay. And you know what, Archie?’ He leant forward and pointed with each word. ‘There were no miners’ leaders there. The Council wanted the strike ended because they knew nothing was to be gained by it so we were on a hiding to nothing, but the miners were bloody livid. They’d been baton-charged by the police in Newcastle and all they were getting for their pains was another hiding, so they stayed out for another seven months, not that it did them any good. They came out with less pay, just like the others, only they’d starved for seven months to earn it. The whole thing was bloody stupid.’ He was talking to clear his own mind, running through the events of the past few months, trying to make sense of it all.

  Archie held his glass up to the fire, tilting it so that he was looking through the liquid at the flames. The fire was set in a blue-tiled surround which was matched by the curtains and chairs. It was a plain room but spotless. Bob had good neighbours, he had told Archie, and the wife came in to run a duster round from time to time.

  ‘So why did they decide to strike now not in ’19 when there was full employment and the country needed coal? There were stockpiles this time Bob.’

  Bob nodded, throwing his hands up in despair. ‘I know, I know, but the government were withdrawing their subsidy and the miners were told they’d have a drop in pay and longer working hours again. It was desperation and anger I suppose, anger over 1919.’ He stopped.

  Archie said again, ‘But you didn’t strike then and got better conditions.’

  Bob took a deep breath. He remembered those times vividly. He’d come back from the war and his da was ill but not too ill to take an interest in what was going on and they’d sat up late talking, hoping for public ownership of the mines. His da would have died happy then, but it didn’t work out that way. ‘Yes, we got better hours and wages but we did not get public ownership, which was the main demand. Look Archie, Lloyd George arranged to set up a commission under Sankey if the miners postponed their strike which they did.’ He was speaking clearly and slowly as though to a schoolroom of children, thought Archie, but he felt it was Bob’s way of controlling his feelings.

  ‘The Federation and the owners agreed to a compromise at an interim stage of the inquiry, hence the hours and pay and then public ownership or state control, whatever you want to call it, was considered and – glory be – Sankey came out in favour. But, and it’s the biggest “but” you’ll find, the government betrayed the miners and refused to accept the recommendation.

  ‘Under the owners, you see, the profits are not ploughed back into the industry to increase efficiency and safety. There is no security. There is no attempt to set up other industries now that coal and steel are in decline.’

  Archie knew all this but he let his friend continue. He seldom spoke as such and it would do him good.

  ‘The men are bitter, Archie. It’s something they’ll never forget, never forgive. Betrayal ruins trust forever, it will affect relations between the government and the miners for a long while yet.’

  ‘And how do they feel about the unions now? Surely they’ll feel let down. First it’s the government, then the TUC, or maybe that’s how it will look in their eyes?’

  Bob rose and walked to the window. It was snowing. He drew the curtains and returned to his seat and smiled at Archie.

  ‘You’re right. They’ll see that in conditions of high unemployment there is little the unions can do. Membership will fall off, dues will lessen so there will be a decrease in financial support and even weaker unions. It’s a vicious circle.’

  He saw that Archie’s glass was empty and refilled it. ‘It’ll be a white Christmas anyway, the sledges will be out tomorrow.’

  Archie nodded absently. ‘Will the government leave it at that? Allowing prevailing conditions to curtail your power?’

  Bob smiled. ‘That’s the interesting one of course. They’re preparing another bloody Disputes Bill, trying to stop us striking, supporting each other. We shall just have to wait and see whether it leaves us toothless. Labour will not be able to oppose it in the Commons with its small party.’ He sipped his drink. His throat felt dry from the long discussion. ‘I would like to see the day when even the middle classes will have unions. That and better employment figures. That will give us conditions for a concerted push, a better world.’

  Opposite him, Archie nodded his agreement, his mind dwelling on Bob’s last words, and then he felt the familiar feeling of panic come to him here, in this safe front room. He made his movements slow and careful as he raised his glass and took a drink. He tried to stop the words which were forcing themselves out into the room but it was no good.

  ‘I was once in a concerted push, you know,’ and he laughed, but it was not a humorous noise, ‘or rather should have been.’

  Bob Wheeler had been deep in the problems of the unemployed, chasing them round in his mind and he took a moment to grasp what Archie was saying. He sensed then the giving of a confidence, one that he feared might ruin the tenor of their friendship based on a comfortable, somewhat detached atmosphere of political discussion which never grew intimate. He looked at Archie rather more closely; he was drunk but that was nothing unusual. There was something else though now, something which darkened his eyes, pulling him back to another time and place.

  Bob was attempting to defuse the situation. ‘I was always at the back of the big push you know. The transport columns never got to the front. They were shelled though.’

  Archie seemed not to have heard and Bob knew that he had lost him for now. He had seen it and listened before to those who had never quite left the war behind. The fire leapt in the grate as he leant forward and put on a log. He liked log fires and had one every Christmas Eve. There was a small Christmas tree by the window, lit by the glow from the gas lamp. The pine smell filled the room and presents for his neighbours lay amongst its branches until tomorrow when he would take them next door in time for Christmas lunch.

  He waited.

  Archie said again, ‘Or I should have been.’ He looked up as Bob pushed a log further on. The flames curled round and began to blacken the wood.

  ‘It was all a bugger. Best forgotten,’ Bob soothed quietly.

  But Archie was not to be dissuaded.

  ‘The barrage had started in the evening. We were to attack the next day. You see, they liked to soften up the Germans first, but
all it did was warn them we were coming and shake the ground so the trenches began to crumble. I was sent with my platoon to replace the sandbags and shore up the trenches. We worked all night.’ His voice was measured and too slow. He was not seeing the fire but the wet earth. ‘It had been raining you see, raining for days and Ypres is heavy clay. We couldn’t dig deep trenches because of that so we had had to build up the traverses and lay duckboards because of the mud and if you fell off you drowned. The water couldn’t run away you see, it just went on making mud, inches, then feet, and they wanted us to go for a big push.’ His laugh was sudden and harsh. ‘Bloody mad they were. You couldn’t walk in that mud, let alone storm the bloody huns. No man’s land was a marsh by then.’

  Bob handed him a drink. ‘Come on, Archie, have this and where’s your pipe?’ But Archie couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see the drink.

  All he could hear was the noise of the whizz-bangs, the machine-gun fire. He felt his hands beginning to shake and he put them between his thighs. He did not have time to breathe deeply, there was too much to say.

  ‘I was to take my men over in the first push at dawn. The sun rises in the east, but of course you know that. Just for a few moments as dawn came up we could see the Germans before they saw us, and in those few precious minutes we could get out and over the top and maybe not get killed.’

  Bob took a swallow of his Scotch. Archie was rocking backwards and forwards, but Bob was not alarmed; it was a familiar pattern with other friends, other survivors. He waited, hoping that when it was over Archie would not regret his confession because Bob now knew that this is what he was about to hear.