by Maggie Hope
Rose looked back at her father. ‘Help me get her into bed,’ she shouted at him. Alf, who had been standing with his mouth open, seemingly numb with shock, came to her and between them they carried Sarah through to her bed in the other room.
‘Get the doctor, Dad, go on!’ Rose shouted as she pulled the covers over her mother’s rigid form.
‘Yes. Yes, I’ll go now,’ he replied, a meek, frightened little man now. He pulled a coat over his wet clothes and pushed his feet into his boots and fled out of the front door, across the garden to the path which was a short cut to the main road and the doctor’s house.
Rose felt her mother’s face with the back of her hand. Oh, God, it was so cold. She put coal on the fire from the scuttle by the side. The children crowded round her, crying softly now.
‘Rose, Rose!’ they cried, and after a moment she put an arm round them both and hugged them to her. All three of them stared at their mother’s face, willing her to open her eyes.
‘It’s because she got out of bed, isn’t it, Rose?’ Michael said. ‘She’ll be all right when she’s had a sleep, won’t she?’
Chapter Six
‘The poor woman’s had a seizure,’ Kate said to Marina. She lifted her half-eaten dinner out of the oven where Marina had put it to keep hot when Mary Sharpe had come running up the yard, crying her heart out.
‘Rose says can you come, Mrs Morland?’ she had gasped.
‘Why, what’s the matter?’ Kate was rising to her feet even as she asked. ‘Is it your mam?’
Mary had nodded, and wiped the tears and snot from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Me mam … she’s bad,’ she had said, and hiccupped and sniffed together.
‘I’ll have to go.’ Kate was already halfway to the door.
‘Why, man, what about your dinner?’ grumbled Sam. ‘You’ll make yoursel’ bad next, running after folk.’
Kate ignored that as did Marina. ‘I’ll keep your dinner hot, Mam,’ she said, and tried to persuade Mary to stay. ‘I’ll give you a plate, too,’ she coaxed, but Mary didn’t even hear. She was out of the door in front of Kate and away like the wind. Kate didn’t even take off her pinny, but followed as she was, even to her house slippers.
Marina, her father and Lance were left to eat their meal and speculate on what was wrong.
‘Mind, she must be bad for Alf Sharpe to let anybody in. The man’s going off his head,’ Lance commented. ‘On the booze, no doubt.’
‘Nay, he couldn’t hold down that job if he was a boozer,’ his father returned. ‘I know he gets a skinful on a weekend but he doesn’t drink when he’s going to work. He’d soon get the boot if he did.’
‘Aye, well, the day may come,’ said Lance. ‘But anyroad, if he ever treats me like he treats the young lads he has under him, he’ll soon know the feel of my fist.’
‘Don’t talk so soft, lad –’
Marina’s thoughts wandered off. Somehow she couldn’t finish her meal. She got to her feet and took her plate through to the sink. She scraped the food into the scrap pail and rinsed the plate under the tap before going back into the kitchen and lifting the rice pudding out of the oven and serving it to the men. Afterwards she took the scrap pail down to the allotments to where ‘Farmer’ Brown, a neighbour and her dad’s friend, kept a sow and litter. Farmer, as his nickname implied, loved working with animals and on the land. The fact that he dug coal for a living was some joke of the gods, according to Sam.
Peeping down John Street, she saw the doctor’s car outside the Sharpe house. Should she go along after her mother and see if she could help? No, she’d only get in the way. But she felt so sorry for Rose, and after all she was her friend. Marina could think of nothing else for the next hour until her mother got back. By then the men had gone up to bed for their time-honoured Sunday afternoon nap.
‘A seizure?’ Marina said now. ‘Is that like a stroke?’
‘Aye. Just a fancy name for it,’ said Kate. ‘I offered to take the twins but Alf wouldn’t have it. Said he’d telephoned the post office at Shotton, his sister lives near to it. “She’ll be through on the next bus,” he said. And practically pushed me out of the door.’
‘I didn’t know Rose had an aunt,’ said Marina.
‘Aye, well, she has evidently. Let’s hope she’s not as queer as her brother. After all, I helped Rose change her mother’s bed, I combed Sarah’s hair for her and plaited it out of the way, and I fed the bairns. And all that man could do when I’d finished was glower at me and push me out of the door. I tell you what, our Marina, he might be an overman at the pit but he’s pig ignorant. Though I will say for him, he looked worried to death about Sarah. Kept standing right up close to her. The doctor had to tell him to move so that he could examine her.’
Marina nodded. ‘Did the doctor say anything else? I mean, I thought he’d have sent Mrs Sharpe into hospital –’
‘Not him. Says she’ll be all right looked after in her own home. Though, mind, when I think about it, she’ll likely be happier at home.’ Kate looked sombre. ‘If you ask me, she hasn’t got long at all. That lump on her neck’s getting bigger every day. I reckon the doctor thinks the same as me. Let her stop in her own home, like. Anyway he gave her an injection, though as far as I could see she was out like a light, wasn’t feeling a thing.’
‘That’s a blessing then if she has no pain at least,’ said Marina. Poor Rose, she thought, what must it be like to lose your mother? And poor twins an’ all, they were only six.
Alf Sharpe certainly looked like a man frightened out of his skin. As soon as the doctor and Kate had gone he was back in the room by his wife’s bed, muttering something to her even though she had barely opened her eyes and had failed to respond so far to anything anyone had said.
I’ll tell him in a minute, thought Rose, I’ll tell him to leave me mam alone. I know what he’s doing and why and I’ll tell him so. She had just come down from taking the twins to bed. Michael had cried himself to sleep and Mary was white-faced and quiet, too quiet. Rose went in and stood at the foot of her mother’s bed. Her father was right by the pillow, head bent to Sarah’s, whispering harshly. She just caught the words.
‘You saw nowt, Sarah, nowt at all. What did you want to get out of bed for anyway? I tell you, you saw nowt and now look what’s happened.’ He was practically eyeball to eyeball with his wife.
She was staring up at him and as far as Rose could see there was absolutely no expression on her face at all.
‘Oh, you agree now she got out of bed and came to see what you were doing, do you, Dad?’ Rose asked acidly. ‘I thought you told the doctor she just fell by the bed?’
‘Well, it’s all the same!’ Alf twisted his head round and glared at her. ‘An’ don’t you contradict what I say neither or you’ll be sorry.’
‘Well, come away from her now. You leave her alone, do you hear me? Because I might not have said anything to the doctor, but by heck I will say something to Aunt Elsie. I will, I’m telling you!’
‘You’ll say nowt!’ snapped Alf. ‘There’s nowt to say. I don’t know what you’re talking about sometimes. Anyroad, I won’t have her staying here. She can take young Michael home with her. You can manage Mary and your mother.’
‘You’re not going to separate the bairns?’ cried Rose. ‘You’re not! I’ll –’ She stopped abruptly as something about her mother caught her eye. A flicker of … was it consciousness? It was definitely something, a ripple of emotion, something, crossing Sarah’s face. Rose rushed to the head of the bed and shoved her father aside.
‘Hey, what do you think –’ Alf expostulated, caught off balance for a minute. But she wasn’t listening.
‘Mam? Mam? Can you hear us?’ cried Rose, taking hold of her mother’s hand, so stiff and heavy it was and cold too, even though Rose had built up the fire and brought down an extra blanket from her own bed to pile on top of her mother’s. She rubbed the poor hand and stared at her mother’s eyes. The windows of the soul, they said. Did she
blink just then? She had, and the blue lips moved. Rose could swear they had moved. ‘She moved, Dad, she did!’
Alf Sharpe peered over her shoulder. ‘Hadaway, lass,’ he said. ‘She’s past talking, she’s not budged a muscle.’
Rose stood up straight and glared at him. ‘You don’t care one bloody jot, do you?’ she demanded.
‘Aye, I do,’ he asserted. ‘She’s me wife, isn’t she? Me an’ your mam, we used to have some good times, you know, years ago.’ He dropped his eyes and rubbed his nose with his forefinger then walked from the room. Rose heard the armchair by the fire creak as he sat down in it. She pulled the bedclothes up to her mother’s shoulders and dropped a kiss on her pale cheek then she too left the room. Her father was leaning forward, pulling coals down from the shelf at the back of the fire with the coal rake.
‘We all used to have good times, Dad,’ she said. ‘What happened? Why did you change?’
‘Me? I didn’t change,’ he replied. ‘It was you, you and your mother, both of you. Neither of you want me now. You never touch me, you never run and give me a kiss when I come in from work, you never give me a bit of loving …’
Rose could only stare. He looked really badly done by, his tone pathetic. Good Lord, he really believed what he was saying. For the first time she had an inkling that he thought his attitude towards her was natural, not wrong at all. But he wasn’t ignorant, he knew enough to be secretive about his ways, keeping folk out so there were no prying eyes seeing what went on. And he was frightened Mam would say something …
Rose shook her head to clear it of the dark images which crowded in on her. She opened the oven door and took out the two plates of dinner which Kate Morland had put in to keep hot for her and her father. The gravy was dried and the meat kizened and curled up at the edges but when she set it on the table for him, Alf ate his way steadily through it. Rose herself ate a few mouthfuls before giving up. They sat in silence, the door to the room open, Rose listening keenly, eager to hear even the slightest sound from the bed.
‘We’ll try to make a bit of Christmas for the sake of the bairns,’ Aunt Elsie said to Rose. ‘Have you got anything put away for them?’
‘Oh, yes, what I could get. You know what it’s like.’ Toys and small luxuries were slowly coming into the shops, though the export drive took the best.
Aunt Elsie had arrived on the half-past-five bus, wasting no time when she got her brother’s message. ‘Well, you know how it is, I’ve nobody but meself at home now,’ she had said when Rose had expressed surprise at her speed. Uncle Tom Brown had been killed in the pit before the war and Aunt Elsie lived in a council house on what the locals called the ‘new site’ on the edge of Shotton Colliery. The family used to visit her there at one time, but during the war, when Elsie worked in the munition factory and Mam had begun to fail, the visits had dropped off, probably because of Alf. But here she was now and Rose was grateful for it. She felt as if the load she’d carried for weeks was at last being shared.
‘Now then, our Alf,’ was Elsie’s only greeting to her brother. She made no attempt to kiss his cheek or anything like that.
‘How are you doing, Elsie?’ he responded and managed a thin smile.
‘Champion,’ she said. ‘In the room, is she?’ She had put her weekend bag on the table and gone straight through to see her sister-in-law. Rose followed behind her and watched as Aunt Elsie stood by the side of the bed and studied Sarah, before shaking her head. She looked round at her niece.
‘By, Rosie, it’s a bad do, this,’ she said, and drew her lips down at the corners. Rose felt the tears suddenly prickle at the back of her eyes. She turned away, just in case her mother should be able to see from her blank, open eyes, and went out into the kitchen, empty now for her father seemed to have abandoned his responsibilities to his sister and gone out. Though where she couldn’t think. He wouldn’t be able to get a pint until the Club opened at seven o’clock. And it was Monday tomorrow, he had to work.
‘Has she been like this since it happened?’
Rose jumped. She had sat down by the fire and was drying her eyes on the hand towel, which she’d pulled from the brass rail over the range, so she didn’t notice Aunt Elsie enter the kitchen.
‘Yes.’
‘Come on, lass, bear up,’ Elsie said bracingly, putting an arm awkwardly around her shoulders. ‘Where’s that brother of mine anyway?’
‘Out.’
Elsie nodded. ‘Aye, he would be. Well, never mind, let’s have a nice cup of tea. Where’s the twins?’
‘Oh, I forgot. They were tired out, you know, they saw Mam fall. So I put them to bed. By, they’ve slept two hours, I’d best get them up.’
‘No, leave them a few minutes, they’ll take no harm. They can stay up a bit later the night,’ said her aunt. Rose pushed the kettle on to the fire and set the table, bringing out bread and butter and sliced Spam. She’d been going to stew plums for tea and make custard but it was too late now. Instead she brought out a cake she had been saving for Christmas.
‘I brought a few things and me ration book, of course.’ Elsie said now. ‘By, who’d have thought there would still be rationing two years after the end of the war? We all believed the Labour government would see things right, but now we’re beginning to wonder. I know those poor folk on the continent are in a worse state than we are, or at least that’s what we’re told, but who won the flaming war? That’s what I want to know.’
Rose found to her surprise that she was hungry. She ate her way through the bread and butter (well, marge), and had a piece of cake, all the time listening to Aunt Elsie talk while keeping an ear open for her mother and the twins. And in spite of all her troubles, she was comforted.
Chapter Seven
There was a letter for Marina among the Christmas cards which came to the house on Christmas Eve. Kate picked it out and handed it over to her. ‘Oh, look, this is for you,’ she said. ‘Who do you know in North Yorkshire? Apart from Hetty and Penny that is. This is a man’s writing.’
Marina took the letter and turned away in case her face betrayed the rush of excitement she felt when she saw Charlie’s narrow hand. ‘I expect it’s just someone from work, down there for Christmas,’ she said. She felt wretched in a way. Why couldn’t she acknowledge Charlie, tell her family all about him, be proud of her gorgeous boyfriend? After all, the family would have to know when they got married, wouldn’t they? But still, she kept him a secret as he wanted her to, though she told herself she had no doubts about him, she loved him, didn’t she? And here was a letter, proof that he couldn’t get through the Christmas vacation without her.
‘Well, go on, open it,’ said Kate, who couldn’t imagine that Marina could have anything which she wanted to keep private from her. Reluctantly, she slit the top of the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper.
It was a note rather than a letter. There wasn’t even a proper signature, just a C, and a sweeping line underneath it. Very stylish, she thought.
‘Meet me in the usual place in Durham,’ it read. ‘7 p.m. Boxing Day. I have tickets for the concert at St Nicholas’s.’
Marina stared at it, a feeling of resentment beginning to quell her excitement. Who did he think he was, not even getting in touch for over a week and then summoning her like this?
‘What is it?’ asked Kate. She peered over Marina’s shoulder and Marina let her. After all, there was nothing suspicious in the note, nothing at all. ‘Who is it? Why didn’t whoever it is sign his name properly? Affected, that is.’
‘It’s not a man, it’s a woman … Celia. You must have heard me mention her? She works in the Surveyor’s Department. She’s on holiday, comes back on Boxing Day.’ Even as she said it, Marina amazed herself with how easily the lies rolled off her tongue. She didn’t even know why she was lying, or why Charlie wanted their meetings kept quiet. In any case, she wasn’t going to meet him, she decided. To heck with him! She wasn’t at any lad’s beck and call.
It was 7.05
p.m. on a cold and frosty Boxing Night when Marina walked up Silver Street from the bus station to the market place in Durham City. There were very few folk in the street; she had to stand to the side of the narrow thoroughfare only once as a bus lumbered down, bumping over the cobbles. In the market place there were more, a fair number of people making their way to St Nicholas’s in the corner opposite. And under the statue of Lord Londonderry on his horse, their own special place, stood Charlie, his college scarf wound round and round his neck and chin, his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets. Her pulse quickened at the sight of him.
‘There you are,’ he said, and cupped her chin in his hand and kissed her lightly on the cheek. His lips were warm in contrast to the frosty air. ‘I was beginning to think you hadn’t got my note, that you weren’t coming.’
‘I nearly didn’t.’
But Charlie hadn’t heard, he was drawing her along to the church, eager to join the queue. ‘Did you say something?’
She shook her head. He put an arm around her and bent his head closer. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you before I went home. It was difficult. You know what families are like.’ He laughed deprecatingly. ‘Did you have a nice Christmas?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Marina replied like a polite little girl. It had been the usual family Christmas in the miner’s cottage in Jordan; the government had allowed everyone extra rations and so Kate had made a fruit cake, even securing a covering of almond paste from the Co-op. There had been a duck, courtesy of Farmer Brown, a cock chicken and mounds of vegetables and gravy. Even a fruit-laden pudding and sauce, flavoured with a quarter-bottle of rum Dad brought up from the Club. And afterwards, tangerines and hazelnuts and presents from the family. ‘You didn’t send a card,’ she said now and was immediately sorry, for it sounded like an accusation.