After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  Albert of course had blustered and created but Sarah had seen his type before. Out of my way, she had said, as he tried to prevent her coming further into the house, or I shall get the law on to you.

  His mouth had fallen open, she recalled, and what a mouth it had been. Very few teeth and what there were would not invite closer examination.

  This child that you have living with you, she had begun, stripping her gloves off and sitting by the fire, in his chair, she hoped. I shall take her with me tomorrow, you have done quite enough damage.

  She remembered his mouth, opening and shutting and the abuse which had been hurled from it had been quite entertaining.

  That’s quite enough of that, she had said. Annie is to come with me now.

  She can’t, he had said, moving in towards her. She had learnt self-defence years ago and had been totally unperturbed. Albert was a bully and would not attempt any violence on a grown person she had been quite sure, and if he did, she would make short work of him. He had quite a beer paunch on him and looked flabby.

  She had allowed the tirade to go on for quite some time; it so often defused a situation, she felt. It was amazing how many aggressive husbands, being sued for divorce, entered the office and then left, mild as lambs, after expelling a great deal of hot air.

  Albert, of course, had not wanted Annie to leave. She’s mine, she remembered he had kept saying. But, Sarah Beeston had said, she is nobody’s but her own. She is old enough to leave you and if you make a fuss I shall call the police and explain to them that you initially employed Annie as an under-age servant, and what is more, subjected her to considerable abuse, is that clear? She had stood up at that point and he had actually stepped back.

  In fact she was not too sure of her rights in the case but how was he to know that. She would check when she arrived back at the office.

  He had told her to get out and she had said certainly not, not until Annie was home, then they would both remove themselves in the morning. It would be an uncomfortable night on a chair for her, but she had known worse. But now, back to the matter in hand, she thought.

  Annie had been looking at Georgie, drinking him in and he had kissed her hand and smiled.

  ‘Me da gave me nought to be proud of,’ she said. ‘He was a bloody fool who stuffed himself with gas to save getting on with it.’ Annie was fighting for her life now, her fists were clenched and she was standing, leaning forward, her chin tilted, spitting out the words at Sarah.

  Sarah applauded her courage, aware that, inside that rigid body, a heart thought it was breaking and who knows, it might have been.

  ‘Sit down, Annie, let me talk to you both.’ Sarah stirred her tea and her voice was gentle; she was moved by this child more than she cared to show.

  Georgie was waching her closely, she saw, and he put out his hand and held Annie’s arm. ‘Sit down Annie, let’s hear what –’ she saw him hesitate. ‘I’m sorry, what do I call you?’

  ‘Sarah,’ she said. ‘I am Sarah Beeston.’

  ‘Let’s just hear what Sarah has to say, Annie.’ His voice was soothing. Sarah felt the atmosphere become calmer and was aware of Georgie’s power.

  ‘Now listen to me. You have no choice but to come, Annie, because Albert has agreed. You could, I suppose, go and find a job elsewhere but I doubt whether Albert would give you a reference.’ She knew that she would have to convince Georgie if she was to succeed, so she continued. ‘Naturally, if you still want to marry when you are of age, we shall reconsider. In the meantime, I am offering you the opportunity to be free to make a choice about your future. Here there is no choice.’

  ‘But there is …’ cried Annie.

  ‘Hush now, pet.’ Georgie turned back to Sarah. She could see the fear in his eyes, the pain. His voice was still steady but it was only through a desperate effort, this she could tell.

  Things are going to get worse in the pits.’ Her eyes were steady as she talked directly to Georgie. ‘You know as well as I do that coal is not being sold as it once was, that more pits must close; that you can no longer strike effectively for better conditions, with the Trades Disputes Act in force. You are in work today, Georgie, but your pit might close tomorrow. Unemployment benefit is low. MacDonald’s Labour government won’t do anything to improve that.’ She held up her hand to forestall his protest and silently thanked Bob for his political information. ‘They might want to but they can’t. It’s obvious. The Liberals and Conservatives will combine against them to thwart it.’

  It was what was being said in every pub, on every street corner and Georgie could only nod and affirm the truth of what she said.

  ‘There’s a depression coming that will make the others look like a picnic. The North will suffer as it always does. With luck you would both manage. But is that what you want? Just to manage? I want to get Annie out. I do not want her to breed children with rickets and consumption, and neither do you, I am quite sure.’

  Georgie was hurting, probably more than he had ever done before, but she had to go on.

  ‘Neither do you, Georgie.’

  Annie broke in. ‘I love him, I want him as he is. That is the life I want for myself,’ but already she was remembering that train at the beck and the life outside and hated herself for the glimmering of wanting, of needing to go.

  ‘Just for a while, Annie,’ Georgie was saying, ‘just for a while.’ He was raising his voice to get through to her. Shout at me, Georgie, she was thinking. Shout at me so I don’t hear this other half of myself. She gripped him, afraid that he would see her conflict, afraid that he wouldn’t.

  Sarah was watching them keenly and saw Annie’s face and knew that it would be all right. The talk went on, back and forth, loud then soft, until Georgie said, ‘I’ll come at ten o’clock.’ Georgie was speaking now to Sarah and she nodded, placing her tea mug down. She did not enjoy another’s pain.

  His voice was deathly tired and Annie wanted to stop the clock, stop everything because it was going too fast. Too fast to think. Too fast to go back to the beginning and start again. She rose as he kissed her and told her he would be here in the morning and that what was said made sense. He said that it was time he left Wassingham to sort something out for himself and that he would come back for her when he was ready, and she was ready. He seemed not to care that Sarah was there and kissed her hard and held her close to him. Then he turned and left without saying goodbye to Sarah, desperate to be gone before he could change his mind and drag Annie with him.

  Annie walked to the door but did not open it, just stood facing it.

  ‘I belong to him,’ she said.

  Sarah sat silent for some moments, not trusting her voice because she remembered the sparkling wedding of cousin Archie and Mary. The christening of this lovely child, for she was lovely, just like her mother; and intelligent. And for that reason she had to give her all that she could.

  She finally said: ‘I want to provide you with the opportunity to be free to make a choice of belonging with someone, but never to someone else. Perhaps one day you will be glad and now we shall wash up the mugs and we shall leave at 10.15 in the morning.’ Her voice was firm. ‘You must say your farewell to George when he arrives at ten, but before that perhaps it would be an idea to see Tom and Betsy, and perhaps Grace.’

  Annie was too tired to wonder how Sarah knew so much about her.

  She still stood facing the door.

  ‘We belong together you know. I will marry him. I’ll make something of myself and then I’ll marry him.’ She half wanted to go to that world out there; she knew that now and knew also that Georgie had known and had made it easy for her, but still she could hardly breathe for the love of him, and the pain of separation would be another ache to put into the black box. Was there no end to being torn apart? she wanted to cry.

  Sarah nodded to herself. She had depended on a short sharp action. It had proved successful.

  CHAPTER 10

  Tom sat in the corridor outside the headmaster’s stud
y. His legs were set firmly on the floor and his hands lay in his lap, just touching. He felt the damp heat where finger met finger and put them instead on either thigh. At 13 he felt too large for the chairs which were short-legged and small-seated and, since this morning, he felt too old for school. The brown of the corridor paint was unrelieved by even a timetable and would look a good deal better for a few of me paintings, he thought. You could get a good run of them down there, though the light was poor. He found that he could think like this, just as he would ordinarily, but all the while, underneath, there was the great deep gouge of Annie’s going running like a silent groan. He felt tired and unreal as he allowed those few minutes to rise to the surface; it was as though he could not leave the memory alone.

  He heard again her call to him as he turned the corner to cross into school, just a few hours ago. Tom, Tom, she had called, and it sounded torn down the middle with jagged edges and he had felt the hairs lift on the back of his neck. She was at the head of the alley, off to the left of the gates, standing with one hand against the wall as though she needed its support and he had been unable to move towards her.

  His feet had stuck to the ground as though they had taken root like the gnarled oaks up on the start of the hills behind the town. He had thought of their brown-sinewed strength because he could not bear to look across at her standing there with such pain running down her face in streams of tears. His breath had beaten in and out through his mouth as everything around him stopped. Her tears were rolling down her cheeks past a mouth which was white like May’s dough as it lay in the bowl and Annie never let him see her cry. He had stood and watched her and her eyes were on his as she walked slowly over the road, her hair lying in unkempt strands, unkinked by overnight plaits.

  She had begun to run when she was halfway across and he watched as she favoured one foot.

  He had let her come right up to him, still not moving because of the great weight which was settling in him. He had felt her breath on his face as she said she was leaving today.

  He looked at her boots then, not at her eyes, not at her mouth which was saying the words again and again. Slowly, as though they hurt her throat, the words kept coming but he would not look at her. Would not listen. It was her boots which had held him; cracked and scuffed.

  You should tie your boots better he had said, stooping and grasping the flapping ends. You should tie your bloody boots better, then you won’t get blisters. He had pulled the laces savagely until they cut into his hands, telling her again and again that she should tie them, while she told him each time that she was leaving in a voice that stabbed and twisted in his chest so that he could hardly breathe.

  Don’t keep saying that, he had shouted in the end, but she did. She told him that she was leaving for Sarah’s in Gosforn this morning. That she did not want to go but that a piece of her did and she hated herself for that. He heard her but he would not listen. He had felt her pulling at his jacket until it lifted taut from his shoulders; he heard his bait-tin fall to the ground.

  He had tugged and tied a bow, then a double and then he had felt her hands in his hair and she pulled until he could stand the pain no longer and lifted his head as Don had done in the allotment that day and he smelt again the leeks and saw the sunshine and the lead coins. And could not bear that she should leave him here. Then finally he had stood.

  You’ve never come to see me at this time before, he shouted, blaming her, hating her. His voice had been loud and fierce and she had taken his head between her hands and there were still tears running off her face on to her faded dress but no sound of crying from her and finally he listened as the bell sounded in the yard and the children filed one by one into the school. She told him that she was going and with whom and when.

  He watched the rope left swinging on the lamppost as it ground slowly to a halt. He saw the women come out of the open-doored houses with brooms, sweeping the dust into the road. He saw the cages emptying at the top of the slag, churning up the black slope behind the streets, up and up just as they had done yesterday and the day before and he wondered how they could when Annie was leaving.

  He had looked at her then, her dark hair and thin face with dark patches beneath her hazel eyes, hazel like the nuts which lay on the ground on the paths leading to the beck, and knew that nothing could be the same again if she left him, but he lifted his arms which felt heavy and clumsy and pulled her to him and the wet of her tears and her warm breath were against his skin as she told him everything. He rocked her and himself and his tears were gulping gasps whilst hers were still silent.

  It’s this big black gaping hole in me belly, he had said, to think of you gone from here and he saw that the women had finished their sweeping but that the cages were still travelling and dumping the slag.

  He stroked her tangled hair and soon there were no more words from her and he brought out his handkerchief, tugging at her hair as she had done, but gently.

  Lift up, bonny lass, he had said, or you’ll be going to school with a bald head and you’d need to polish that every day and she had laughed and wiped her face in the white linen as she swung from him and leaned back against the wall.

  She had looked up at him and smiled saying that it was the choice. Yesterday it was all so certain; she was staying here, each day was the same and, in time, she would marry Georgie.

  He had stood sideways to her, his shoulder rubbing the wall, listening as she explained how suddenly last night nothing was sure, there was this chance and she wanted it but wanted to stay here too, to stay here with everyone.

  Sitting in the school passageway Tom felt again the warmth of the two pennies he had jingled in his pockets and the heat of his legs through the trousers. He had asked what Georgie said and she had looked at him then with all the pain he had ever seen in her face, as much as on her father’s death, or the day of the fair. Georgie, Annie had replied, made it easy for me but I could still have fought but I didn’t and her voice cracked and her lips trembled too much for her to say more and then he had gripped her chin and made her look at him, telling her that she was brave to go and that the world did not stop at Wassingham; he and Georgie would come to her at Sarah’s. She was to go, to get out and he meant it, however much it hurt, he meant it. He had not cried as she had pulled him to her, kissed his eyes, his cheeks, his lips then torn away, running from him back up the alley, still favouring her foot.

  He shifted on his chair and pressed hard down with his hands. He must not cry here, in the corridor. He focussed on the cracked linoleum, covered in smeared mud, stabbed with studded boots. The headmaster had still not called him in and he wanted to be back in the classroom, busy, not sitting with time to think. The chair was digging into his thighs where the wooden frame stood above the sunken cane. He sat on his hands, trying to lift himself level so that he was more comfortable.

  What did the old man want, he thought, pushing Annie slowly back to a manageable depth. The Head, Wainwright, couldn’t know he’d been late because Mr Green had cornered him the moment he entered the school and sent him to the art room to do the pictures for him. He smiled wryly at the term ‘art room’, for it was an old store-room with poor light and a few tables and paints.

  It couldn’t be the lateness then because Mr Green would not have told on him. He liked Tom too much. He sighed as the bell rang in the playground to call in the others for afternoon school. It went on and on, like it was the start of the second coming. That Nobby Jenkins loved his bit of power and leant into the bell like a miner leant into a rock-face and bye, he was giving a good shake today, thought Tom, and that was because Nobby knew there was someone outside the Head’s study. Other people’s trouble gave that lad strength in his elbow. It’d be the same when he started in pubs. He’d throw his beer back at the first spot of scandal and still be licking his chops for more.

  Tom stirred. He’d make no pitman, that grubby little misery, and he looked at his own hands and nodded. Maybe he did like to handle a paintbrush but he was
good and strong an’ all. No nancy boy like Nobby liked to make out; his voice had broken already, hadn’t it?

  They were coming in from outside, slipping into the classrooms lying either side of the corridor. He nodded at those who waved and those who glanced at him furtively, crossing his arms and extending his legs. He wasn’t nervous, not after this morning.

  One boy slipped out of the line leading into Mr Thomas’s room.

  ‘You all right, man?’ It was his friend Ben. They were to start in the pits together in February. ‘Has he seen you yet?’ His blond hair had a centre parting and was cut very short.

  ‘Awa’ with you Ben. If I’m held up here, tell me Auntie May I’m at the library.’ It was a lie she would easily believe. His aunt was used to him catching the worms in that book place, as she would say, and he would laugh as he always did and say that one day he’d bring her one home, a book worm that is. And she’d shriek and say he’d get a dose of liquorice if he ever did that and Davy, his cousin, would wink and grin.

  Ben nodded. ‘What’ve you done, man?’ he asked.

  Tom shook his head. The corridor was empty now. ‘Nothing, I’ve been painting all morning. Get along with you Ben or you’ll be here next.’

  ‘Take care now, lad, he’s already thrashed Sam today,’ Ben said and scooted back into his classroom.

  The headmaster was a cruel bastard, Tom thought. It was no wonder some had looked sideways at him as he sat here. It was said he’d been sent back from India after he’d lost his position at a mission school or that’s how Green had put it to another teacher when Tom had been busy in the art cupboard. The sun had addled his brains which was why he was so short-tempered. The man hated it in the North, Green had said, the cold, the squalor, and blamed everyone but himself for having to be here.