The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  Their glances held for some seconds before Polly said, ‘Grandda ... Grandda needs to be looked after properly.’ He waited, his gaze concentrated on her face. ‘I wondered, if we put the farm up for sale, how much money would be left after we had paid our debts?’

  Frederick felt a quickening in his body but he strove to hide his excitement as he said, ‘Very little, if anything at all. The farmhouse itself is a liability as it is, and forty acres is not a great deal of land, as you know.’

  ‘So you virtually own the farm now?’

  Frederick was taken aback, albeit slightly, by the forthright question. He let go of Polly’s hands and turned away, aware he had to choose his words carefully, but before he could do so Polly said quietly, ‘The farmhouse is almost uninhabitable as it is, certainly in the winter, and Grandda’s medicine is expensive.’

  ‘Aye, I know.’ He was facing her again, and now he took her hands in his once more, shaking them slightly as he said, ‘But your grandda doesn’t have to live there, none of you do. You must know how I feel about you, Polly. I want nothing more than to make you happy, and if you would consent to be my wife it would make me the happiest man on earth.’

  It was not in Polly’s nature to play the coquette, and Frederick was again flummoxed by her straightforwardness when she answered quickly, ‘But I don’t love you, not in that way. You know about Michael and my feelings for him remain the same even though we’ll probably never see each other again. I don’t want to hurt you, you’ve been so good to us all, but I would never be able to love you as you deserve.’

  All this talk about love, thought Frederick, and what was the emotion when it all boiled down to basics? A biological urge to procreate. That was it at bottom. But of course women couldn’t bring themselves to accept that; they had to fabricate their own niceties about the act. He adopted his most understanding face as he pushed Polly gently down into the seat she had vacated a moment or two earlier before pulling another chair in front of her and sitting down himself. ‘You mustn’t worry about that, my dear,’ he said kindly. ‘I understand what you are saying, of course, but I want you for my wife, and I know if I don’t marry you I shall marry no one.’ That was a good line; he had been told that one by a friend of his who had assured him women couldn’t resist such a declaration. ‘And putting aside my love for you, there are so many other reasons why a union between us is right. Your family will become my family and come under my protection here, you have my word on that, and the two farms can join together as one. It will wipe out any debts and I might even be able to make something of the land.’

  She had to try, just one last time. She had read something recently, and although she wasn’t sure of her facts, she understood banks sometimes lent money to businesses in situations like this. ‘I could try to borrow the money to pay you back, from a bank, perhaps? If Grandda put the farm up as surety on a loan—’

  ‘A bank?’ Frederick’s laugh was harsh. ‘A bank wouldn’t touch you, my dear, not in your present circumstances, besides which, you can’t trust banks. It’s only land and bricks and mortar that mean anything, and money you can see in your hand. Never set foot in a bank if you know what’s good for you, that’s my advice. Besides . . .’ He looked at her almost sorrowfully now. ‘When they knew of the extent of your debts . . . Oh, Polly’ – he now took her hands again, his face earnest – ‘say yes to me, my dear, and make me the happiest man alive.’

  She had known, hadn’t she? From the moment she had seen the devastation at home, she had known. She had been sitting with her head bowed as she stared at their joined hands, but now Polly lifted her blue gaze to his waiting eyes. ‘I ... I can’t promise you that I will come to love you, but I can promise that I will try, and also that I’ll be a good wife,’ she said in a small but clear voice. ‘If you are satisfied with that, then yes, I will marry you, Frederick.’

  And so it was done.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The banns were read out for the first time two Sundays later, on the sixteenth of September, the day after the newspapers reported that twenty-five men had died in a Durham pit disaster. Although the accident was big news, it couldn’t compare to the extensive spread the TUC conference at the beginning of the month had merited, with nearly five hundred delegates representing a million and a half union members attending and causing waves of concern to flow in high places up and down the land. What was the country coming to, with workers demanding their ‘rights’? Rights? The only rights they should be allowed were the ones given them by their betters. Such was the mood among many of Britain’s mine owners and land owners, and many northern pits were feeling the bite of increasing hostility between management and union members. It was unfortunate that it was in this charged climate that Luke and Arnold first heard of Polly’s impending marriage.

  Polly had written to Luke to inform him that the family were now residing at Stone Farm due to extensive damage to the farmhouse, and that she had accepted a proposal of marriage from Frederick – the ceremony to take place at the end of October. The letter caused a row between the two brothers that made all their previous altercations appear mild.

  ‘The dirty little baggage.’ Arnold was all but foaming at the mouth when he finished reading the short note Luke had passed silently to him. ‘She’s fooled us all, you see that, don’t you? She never intended to marry Michael, she was just using the milksop to get Frederick interested. She fancies herself the lady wife of that upstart, does she? By, I see it all now. The filthy, conniving whore—’

  ‘That’s enough.’ Luke had leapt up from his seat so suddenly the chair had gone flying back against the wall, and he was glaring down at his brother, who was sitting with his injured leg propped up on the cracket.

  The two men were just about to eat their evening meal which one of their neighbours, Elsie Appleby, had prepared and dished up for them before disappearing to see to her own family’s dinner. Luke was now paying this same neighbour to tend to Eva during the day – his stepmother had suffered a complete breakdown, according to the doctor – and take care of the washing and ironing, and all their meals. Elsie did what she was paid to do, but with her own large family of ten children to look after, it meant the shine and sparkle of Eva’s houseproud days were a thing of the past.

  ‘You’re determined not to see it, aren’t you? It’s staring you in the face in black and white, and still you’re too damn stubborn or stupid to see what she is. She’s had her sights set on Stone Farm all along, that’s what this letter says.’

  ‘The letter says they have been forced out of their home through no fault of their own, and Frederick’s done the Christian thing and taken them in.’ Which was more than he himself would have been able to do, Luke reflected bitterly. He was working extra shifts now when he was able to get them – Arnold’s compensation money wouldn’t stretch far, and with his father’s wage gone it meant they were hard pushed, even without Elsie Appleby to pay.

  He’d thought of Polly often in the last weeks – dreamed of her both when he was awake in the bowels of the earth and when he was asleep – but he had told himself he had to give her a chance to get over Michael and for his situation to clear before he could even begin to attempt to persuade her to see him as something other than a big brother type figure.

  ‘Christian thing?’ Arnold swore loudly before he continued, ‘By, man, you’re as thick as two short planks if you think that. All them books and things he’s brought her over the years has been a means to an end. She knew what he was about all right, and now she’s got what she wanted. I wouldn’t be surprised if she caused the damage at the farm on purpose to give him a jog to get a move on, and once she was sitting pretty at his place she brought him up to scratch. And how? You asked yourself that then? I bet his bed’s been warm the last few nights.’

  ‘If you could stand on two legs I’d ram that last remark down your throat.’

  ‘Maybe, but it don’t alter nothing. She’s scum, like the dockside dollies an’ s
uch, but at least they’re honest enough to admit what they are. I’d sooner trust them any day than Polly Farrow.’

  ‘The trouble with you is that your mind is a sewer, it always has been, and it taints everything it touches.’ Luke’s face was white but his eyes were dark with fury, and the two brothers stared at each other with absolute loathing before Luke snatched up his cap and stormed out of the house. If he stayed there a minute – a second – longer he would forget Arnold’s leg had been broken in three places and land him one to take him into next weekend.

  Arnold’s teeth continued to grind together for some moments after Luke had left, his eyes staring blindly across the room as he inwardly cursed Polly. The trouble that trollop had caused; leading them all on, acting the innocent! But he’d known, he’d known what was at the back of those great blue eyes of hers, and he’d been proved right, hadn’t he? By, he had. He could see now why she had acted the virtuous maiden with him when he had showed his hand – bigger fish to fry than a common miner for Polly Farrow. Didn’t think he was good enough, did she? But he’d show her. If it was the last thing he did, he’d make her regret the day she turned him down. No one treated him like muck and got away with it.

  The plate of thick rabbit stew in front of him was slowly congealing, its sweet smell suddenly rising up in his nostrils as he glanced down at the table, and he reached out, his face savage as he threw the plate across the room. It smashed against the range, shattering into pieces and causing the fire to sizzle as the stew cascaded into the flames. He’d see her like that one day, broken and crushed. The thought took the tenseness out of his body and he slowly relaxed back against the chair, taking a piece of bread from the plate in the middle of the table and beginning to chew on it. Aye, he’d see his day with Polly Farrow all right, and he’d teach her a lesson she’d never forget. And in the mean time, if there was any way he could make her life just a little bit less hunky-dory, he’d do it. There were more ways to kill a cat than skinning it, and this particular little alley cat would be crawling to him on her knees before he was finished.

  Once outside, Luke crossed Southwick Road and plunged into the warren of streets the coal industry had spawned. The smoke from Wearmouth colliery and countless industrial chimneys hung over the rooftops like a black pall, but Luke had lived in Monkwearmouth all his life and he didn’t notice the smoke and stench which poisoned vegetation and human beings alike. The town depended on its collieries, riverside industry and shipping, and the busy clangour meant growth, and growth meant wages, and wages meant food in hungry bellies.

  The evening was oppressive; the whole month had been a stormy one, and Luke could feel the weather pressing against his eyeballs as his head pounded. There were numerous bairns playing their games on the pavements and in the gutters, some of them barefoot and most none too clean as they threw their pebbles or bits of coloured glass for hopscotch or careered madly round in the air hanging on to a piece of rope one of them had tied from the iron arm of a lamppost.

  The occasional open door omitted strong smells of cabbage and other unsavoury odours as Luke walked by, and on one doorstep a girl was busy fixing her younger sister’s hair into tight rag corkscrews to the accompaniment of vigorous protest from the infant in question.

  It was just after he saw one little mite – who couldn’t have been older than six or seven – staggering along under the weight of one of the stoneware jars known as a grey hen that Luke decided to make his way to Carley Road. The jars carried up to a gallon of liquid when full, and it looked like the local beer shop had filled this particular one to the brim from the crablike walk the child had been forced to adopt under its weight. The little girl had just reached a doorway in front of Luke when a blowsy, dirty woman appeared on the threshold. She grabbed the child by the ear, making her squeal, and lugged her into the house, crying, ‘’Bout time an’ all! Your da’s bin callin’ for this for half an hour an’ more. You’ll feel the side of his hand the night, Tess me girl.’

  Poor little devil. Luke had stopped, he couldn’t help himself, and as the woman went to close the door she noticed him looking at her, and read the condemnation written all over his face. Their glance held for a moment, and then she looked swiftly up and down the street before tossing her head and stepping backwards into the filthy interior, banging the door shut behind her.

  By, in spite of everything he had a lot to be thankful for. His family life might never have been much to write home about, but at least it had been devoid of the shame and humiliation some of these bairns suffered. What was it David Lloyd George had said recently during some address or other? Oh, aye, he had it now. ‘Britain is the richest country under the sun, yet it has ten million workmen living in conditions of chronic destitution.’ Well, there weren’t many of Sunderland’s poor that would argue with that, Luke thought bitterly. It was the next bit of the speech, ‘The imprudent habits of gambling and drink cause sixty per cent of the poverty’, that had caught him and others on the raw. ‘Drink is the most urgent problem of the hour for our rulers to grapple with,’ Lloyd George had continued. Luke had actually laughed out loud when he had read that. Drink was the most urgent problem? What about the hopelessness and desperation caused by families of fifteen and more being packed into two rooms along with an army of rats and bugs and cockroaches? Why did the powers that be think men and women drank themselves silly anyway, if not to escape their miserable lot? But it was the bairns, like that little Tess back there, who were the real victims. She’d be lucky to survive to adulthood.

  The name stayed with him and brought his father into his mind, and he turned left at the corner of Bond Street into Wallace Street, before cutting through at the back of the vicarage of St Columba’s Church, off Swan Street. He skirted round the side of the Cornhill glassworks into the street where his father’s woman had lived before the pair of them had left town, and then stood aimlessly for a moment or two as he looked up and down Carley Road. Tess’s next-door neighbour’s husband, Bert, had taken him aside at the pit a couple of weeks after his father had left and muttered that Tess had got word to Joan that they were all right and could his wife let Nat’s lads know, but it had been evident that Bert had been uncomfortable in the role of go-between and Luke hadn’t mentioned his father to Bert since. But now, suddenly, the need to hear if they knew any more was strong.

  He thrust his hands into his pockets as he considered whether he should go the next step and make enquiries as to which house was Bert’s, but before he could come to a decision he heard his name called by a familiar voice. Stifling a groan, he turned, his eyes alighting on Katy Chapman and another young lass who were coming towards him, their arms entwined and their faces bright. ‘Look who it isn’t.’ Katy dimpled at him as she got closer, and Luke reflected, and not for the first time, that she was a bonny lass, with her fair fluffy hair and dark eyes. But forward. Definitely forward.

  ‘Hello, Katy.’

  ‘Hello yourself.’

  Luke sighed inwardly. Katy’s manner was coy, it was always that way around him. The Chapmans lived next door but one in Southwick Road, and Katy was a few months older than Polly, but it could have been a few years older, such was the knowledge shining out of her big brown eyes. And then he checked the thought sharply. It wasn’t Katy who had just got engaged to a man old enough to be her father, and a wealthy man to boot. The censure was savage and sharp, and he acknowledged that he hadn’t realised until that very moment how bitterly disappointed he was in Polly, or how Arnold’s words had struck home. If she had really loved Michael she wouldn’t be marrying Frederick a few months later; she didn’t have to do that. If they were finding it difficult to cope with Henry gone and Walter laid up, they had only to sell up and move into town – they’d get a fair bit for the farm as it stood. But Polly liked farm life. Luke’s eyes narrowed. And she obviously liked Frederick – enough to agree to share the marriage bed with him. His guts twisted and tightened and it was a second or two before he realised that Katy had bee
n talking and he hadn’t heard a word.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ His eyes focused on the pretty pert face in front of him, which was looking distinctly put out.

  ‘I asked how your mam was.’ Eva was always referred to as such by their neighbours and friends.

  ‘Not too good.’

  Katy stared at him for a moment, then bit on her lip, her face straight as she said, ‘Me an’ Gert are going to the Picture Hall.’

  It was both an invitation and a question, and Luke replied to both as he said, ‘I’m on my way to see a friend of me da’s. He lives round here.’

  Katy paused for a moment. She was glad he wasn’t going to meet a lass, but she’d spoken to Luke Blackett umpteen times in the last twelve months or so and he had never followed up. Why was it you only had to look at some lads for them to take liberties, and others – or more especially Luke – didn’t seem to cotton on? She wetted her full red lips and fluttered her eyelashes a little as she adjusted her brown felt hat more securely on her curls, before saying, ‘You ever been to the Picture Hall, Luke?’

  She was a brazen little piece. Luke hid a smile as he looked more closely into the big brown eyes set in skin that resembled thick, warm cream. But she certainly had something. Nevertheless, the thought of accompanying Katy and her friend to Sunderland’s first permanent cinema – opened four months previously at the north end of the bridge in Bonnersfield, and billed as ‘the Premier Picture Hall in the North of England’ by its owner, George Black – was like a betrayal to Polly. ‘No.’ It was succinct, but he softened his abruptness with a smile – he found Katy’s boldness amusing in spite of himself.