The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Why?’ It was immediate and aggressive.

  ‘You know why.’

  Ruth made no answer, but stood looking at Polly, her face set.

  ‘He’s not right for you, Ruth. You must see that. You deserve someone a hundred times better than Arnold.’

  ‘He won’t be a miner all his life.’

  ‘I’m not talking about him being a miner,’ Polly said sharply. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, for goodness’ sake. I’m talking about him, the man. The last time we had this conversation you promised me you’d think carefully about what you were doing.’

  Ruth blinked rapidly, and as her eyes fell away from her sister’s she said, ‘I did, I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s all right for you. You’re married, no one is going to label you a spinster,’ Ruth said bitterly.

  ‘You’re eighteen years old, not thirty-eight or even twenty-eight! You’ve got the rest of your life in front of you.’ Polly shook her head, her face softening as she said, ‘You’re a pretty lass, Ruth. Don’t throw your life away on Arnold Blackett.’

  Ruth looked at her quickly, and just for a brief moment Polly saw a glimpse of the little sister who had always run to her older sibling with her troubles before their mother had done her best to sour her daughters’ relationship. ‘But what if no one else asks for me, Polly?’

  ‘They will. I promise you they will. And it would be worse to be married to the wrong man than not married at all.’ Then, as Ruth’s gaze honed in on her sister’s face, Polly forced a bright note into her voice as she realised she might have given too much away. ‘Why don’t you come into town with me next time I go? You used to do that at one time and we had fun, didn’t we, when we used to go to Binns cake shop and restaurant or to Grimshaw’s Elephant Tea House?’

  ‘Aye, I know, but Arnold said—’

  Ruth stopped abruptly, and as her sister’s face turned scarlet Polly said, ‘Yes? What did Arnold say?’

  Ruth just stared at her, her eyes flickering and her mouth opening once before shutting again. Polly’s voice changed tenor as she said again, ‘Ruth? What did Arnold say?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Ruth.’

  ‘He said I hadn’t to say anything. He was trying to protect me, warn me in case I heard anything . . .’

  Ruth’s voice trailed away and now she gazed at her sister miserably as Polly said, ‘You will tell me, Ruth, if we have to stand here all day, and I shall know if you’re lying.’

  ‘It’s just that there’s been some gossip about what happened that day when Da hang— When Da died,’ Ruth stuttered. ‘Michael leaving like he did, and you . . .’

  ‘And me what?’

  ‘You doing all right for yourself and marrying Frederick and all. Some people seemed to have put two and two together about Michael being our half-brother, and they think you were . . . well, carrying on with him, and then for you to marry your uncle . . .’

  ‘He is not our uncle.’ Polly’s voice was flat and low. Ruth’s words had seemed to freeze her blood. She understood, now, the sly looks and nudges that occurred occasionally in certain shops she frequented when she accompanied Frederick into town on market day. Shops Arnold knew she frequented. He had been saying things about her, wicked, disgusting things. She knew it.

  ‘No, I know that,’ Ruth agreed quickly, ‘but you know what folk are like.’

  Aye, she knew what folk were like all right – or one particular man at least. Polly stared at her sister, and then she said, her voice still flat and quiet, ‘So that’s why you stopped accompanying me into town? Because you were ashamed to be seen with me?’

  ‘No, no.’

  Yes, yes. And that was also why Mr and Mrs McCabe from the confectioner’s in High Street West always made a point of serving her themselves – to show everyone they were for her. A little glow warmed the ice round Polly’s heart. The McCabes had known her since the first time she had accompanied her father into town on market day, and he had treated her to a quarter of stickjaw and two ounces of rhubarb-and-custard sweets from the little shop, which was always redolent with the smell of winter mixtures and aniseed fudge. To this very day, Mrs McCabe continued to slip her a piece of Boy Blue liquorice nougat every time she left.

  ‘You should have told me, Ruth.’ And then Polly said, as Ruth continued to stand mute, ‘You know Arnold was behind these supposed rumours, don’t you? You see that?’

  ‘That’s exactly what he said you would say if I told you, which is why I didn’t,’ Ruth fired back suddenly. ‘He knows you don’t like him.’

  ‘No, Ruth, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, I do!’ All the defiance was back, the brief moment of softness gone. ‘And you don’t like it because he likes me rather than you, admit it. You can’t bear for him not to be falling down at your feet. Well, he told me how you tried to make up to him years ago and he wasn’t having any of it.’

  Polly stared at the red-faced girl in front of her in amazement. ‘You can’t believe that.’

  ‘I do.’ Ruth’s chin was out and her eyes were narrowed. ‘Well, Arnold is never going to want you because he is mine, do you hear? And he’s going to ask me to marry him soon, so what do you think about that?’

  Polly’s eyes widened before growing darker, and she spoke with a startling crispness as she said, ‘I think you would be making the worst mistake of your life, that’s what I think, but if you are determined to throw your life away on a man who is a liar and a rogue, that is up to you.’

  ‘He isn’t! How dare you say that!’

  ‘Because it is true, and if you weren’t such a silly girl you would see if for yourself. He’ll make you terribly unhappy, Ruth. He’s not capable of anything else.’

  ‘I hate you!’

  As Ruth whirled round and made for the stairs, Polly stood looking after her, jumping slightly as her grandmother opened the door to the bedroom she shared with Walter and peered out. ‘Trouble?’ she asked softly. ‘We couldn’t help hearing, hinny.’

  Polly looked at the old woman and nodded slowly. ‘I told her what I think of Arnold. He’s not right for her, Gran.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad lad when you get to know him. He’s been right good to your grandda, now then. Give the lad a chance, hinny, eh? See how it goes.’

  Oh, Arnold had played this so well, she had to give him that! He’d managed to get them all – except Betsy – eating out of the palm of his hand with his soft soap. ‘He’s dangerous, Gran,’ Polly said quietly, ‘and cunning with it. Ruth told me about some gossip that’s been going around, and it could only be Arnold behind it.’

  ‘Oh, lass, surely not.’

  ‘It’s about the day Da died, and – and other things.’ She found she couldn’t bring herself to repeat what Ruth had said.

  ‘But we knew at the time that there’d be them that wouldn’t swallow the tale of an accident,’ Alice said softly, after glancing back into the room where Walter was asleep in the big feather bed. ‘It doesn’t mean Arnold’s said anything. Folk jaw, lass, an’ there was a fair bit happened in a short time five years ago. Be glad for her, hinny. It’s what she wants.’

  Was she mad, or was it the rest of the world? Polly asked herself silently. She remembered Arnold’s eyes the night before when she had caught him looking at her – they had been black and hard and had bored into her for a second before he’d turned away. No, it wasn’t her. It wasn’t. He was working on Ruth, and the end result would be that he would come and live here. She would not let that happen, even if she had to raise hell and fall out with every soul in the farmhouse in the process.

  ‘I’ll talk to you later, Gran.’ Polly smiled at the old woman as she turned away, but her countenance wasn’t so light as she walked down the stairs. Again she found her thoughts turning to the one person she felt would have a real understanding of what Arnold was up to. Perhaps Luke would come soon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Luke did not co
me soon. In fact it was many weeks before he visited Stone Farm, and then it was with a message to say that Eva was very ill and not expected to last the week, and that she was asking for her mother.

  It was Polly who answered the door to him one bitterly cold November day – the heat of the baking-hot summer England had both enjoyed and endured being nothing but a distant memory. The last two months had been difficult ones: Alice had been taken ill with acute bronchitis in the middle of September and it had been touch and go for a few weeks in spite of the twenty-four-hour care Polly had given her grandmother. Even now the old woman rarely left her bed and was a shadow of her former self, but since she had moved back into her old room – Ruth had slept with her mother for a few weeks while her grandmother was at her worst so Walter was disturbed as little as possible; Polly resting on a single pallet by the side of the bed – Alice’s spirits were higher.

  But the extensive nursing and lack of sleep had taken its toll, as Polly’s pallor and the deep shadows under her lovely eyes indicated, and Luke’s voice was concerned as he said, ‘You look tired, lass. Have you been bad or something?’

  ‘Didn’t Arnold tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  Polly had stood aside for him to enter as she’d spoken, and now, as he turned to her in the hall, she said, ‘Gran’s been poorly – bronchitis.’

  ‘No, Arnold didn’t tell me,’ Luke said flatly.

  ‘She’s much better now.’ Polly opened the door to the sitting room, and as Luke followed her, the old feeling swept over him with renewed force. It was a palace of a place, this farm, and it had taken Polly as far out of his reach as the man in the moon. She was the wife of a gentleman farmer now; the knowledge twisted his bowels every time he came here, which was why he visited rarely. Oh, he was in no doubt Arnold bowed and scraped to Frederick every time he saw him, which was why his brother had his feet very firmly under the table, but Luke would rather cut his tongue out than do the same. He was a miner, and even if a good proportion of society – Frederick’s sort of society, at least – thought he was the scum of the earth, he knew different. The men he worked with were worth twenty – a hundred – times the likes of Frederick Weatherburn.

  ‘Have you heard from your father at all? Is he well?’

  Luke brought his thoughts back from the road they were following, but his voice was still tinged with bitterness as he said, ‘Aye, he is, although no thanks to the government. They gave him a medal in January and then tell him he’s a traitor in July when he’s on strike. Now where’s the reason in that?’

  Polly nodded. When Nathaniel had been involved in the terrible pit disaster at Hutton Colliery near Bolton, where he and Tess had settled, he had apparently been instrumental in rescuing the one sixteen-year-old lad who had survived. Three hundred and fifty men and boys had died in the explosion at the Lancashire pit, and messages of sympathy had flooded in from all round the world for the wives and loved ones of the dead, and the thousand bairns who had lost their fathers. Nathaniel hadn’t wanted the silver medal he’d received, but he’d been told refusing it would be an insult to the memory of King Edward VII, who had created the silver and bronze medals for ‘heroic miners who endanger their own lives in saving, or endeavouring to save, the lives of others from perils in mines or quarries’. And so he had taken it, reluctantly, but it had given him no pleasure. As he had said to Tess at the time, ‘Medals come cheap, lass. I’d far rather see King George doin’ somethin’ about makin’ the owners an’ viewers pour some money into safety, but that’s as likely as the Pope marryin’.’

  ‘But he’s happy?’ Polly now asked softly. ‘Him and Tess?’

  ‘Aye, they’re happy.’ Luke smiled at her. Polly was the only person within the family who knew he was in contact with his da. ‘They’ve set up as a married couple and no one knows different, but it looks as if they’ll be able to make it legal within the week,’ he added soberly.

  As he explained the purpose of his call, Polly shook her head slowly. ‘Gran can’t come, Luke. It’s impossible. She’s far too ill.’

  ‘Aye, aye, I understand, lass. Arnold didn’t say anything, else I wouldn’t have come.’

  He wouldn’t have come. Stupid, stupid for it to hurt so much. She searched her mind for something to say, but all she could think of was that he’d said he wouldn’t have come.

  Luke glanced down on the bowed head and slender shoulders. She was too thin. Beautiful still, even more beautiful, but then he thought that each time he saw her afresh, but now the loveliness had a fragility to it that spoke of exhaustion. And then, as Polly raised her head and said, ‘What am I thinking of? You must have a hot drink after coming all this way. There’s tea or coffee, or hot ginger if you’d prefer it?’ he spoke the words he had promised himself time after time he would never say: ‘Are you happy, Polly? With him, Frederick?’

  Polly stared at him. How could he ask her a question like that after what he had just said? And then her conscience smote her. He had always looked on her as the little sister he’d never had, she knew that – it was natural he’d be concerned for her. She knew she was looking awful, but she’d only had cat-naps for the last few weeks, and even now she was back in Frederick’s bedroom, she wasn’t sleeping properly. In fact if anything she’d preferred the straw pallet at the side of her grandmother’s bed to the big feather bed she shared with her husband. For three years now there had been a big bolster down the length of the bed, and when she had first placed it there, after a particularly humiliating episode with Frederick when he had blamed her for the fact that he had been unable to make love, she had slept better. But lately her mind had been occupied with the problem of Ruth and Arnold, and – not least – the rapidly failing health of her grandmother, and most days she was awake well before dawn.

  ‘He has been very kind to Gran and Grandda, and my mother and Ruth too.’ In fact Frederick and her mother were as thick as thieves.

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

  Don’t do this, Luke. She stared at him mutely.

  He would give anything to be free of this desire for her that was with him day and night. He had thought he could assuage it with Katy Chapman, but it had got in the end so the mere sight of the other woman had been a reproach. For months he’d tried to finish it with Katy, after he’d realised he just couldn’t bite the bullet and ask the lass to marry him, but she’d played up and things had turned nasty. Three of her brothers had waylaid him up a back alley one night and he’d been off work a week, but at least that had been the end of it. By, he was a fool. He’d had it on a plate with Katy and they’d got on all right, so why, why, when push had turned to shove, hadn’t he been able to make that final commitment? And then the voice of his mind said – as he looked into Polly’s great violet-blue eyes – why ask the road you know? He needed to get away from Sunderland, right away, and if that doctor who had come to Eva last night was right, it wouldn’t be long before his obligation to his stepmother was over.

  ‘So?’ His heart was pounding against his ribs at the nearness of her, and for the life of him he didn’t know why he was persisting with this. ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was short and abrupt, but what else could she say? Polly asked herself painfully. It would do no good to tell him how things really were, and even if she did, Luke could do or say nothing to help. This wasn’t like when he had saved her from Arnold in the barn or pulled her out of the river. She had made her bed and she had to lie on it, and she wasn’t going to whine or complain about it either. If she could go back five years she would still do exactly the same – even knowing what she now knew about Frederick – because the reason, those two dear old people lying upstairs, hadn’t changed. And then, in a bid to change the subject, she said, ‘This relationship between Arnold and Ruth, Luke, I don’t like it. He’s . . . odd, your brother.’

  Luke had turned away when she’d first spoken, but now he faced her again, his voice flat as he said, ‘He’s worse than that, Polly,
much worse, but Ruth’s nowt but a bit lass. She’ll tire of him.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Right at this moment, the last thing he cared about was Arnold and Ruth. ‘Look, I need to get back,’ he said shortly, ‘else I’ll miss my shift. I’ll explain how things are to Eva.’

  ‘I’ll come and see her.’ She didn’t want to but it was clear no one else would. ‘Frederick has business in Bishopwearmouth tomorrow, so I’ll ride in with him.’

  Polly in Southwick Road? Luke glanced round the sitting room, at the roaring fire in the hearth and the shining furniture, and thought of the state of the house when he had left it that morning. His chin lifted and he said briefly, ‘As you like.’

  What was the matter with him? As Polly followed him to the front door she was biting her lip. He seemed irritable, angry even. But then Eva was his stepmother – the only mother he had ever known – and regardless of what she thought of her aunt, Luke had lived with Eva for as long as he could remember, and had been a better son than many a natural one would have been in similar circumstances. Arnold hadn’t been able to move out of Southwick Road quick enough once his leg had healed after the accident at the pit five years ago. It must be horrible for Luke now, knowing Eva was going to die. She touched his arm as they reached the door, and as he turned to look at her she said, ‘I’m sorry about Eva. I should have said that sooner.’