The crash of the plate as it smashed against the wall of the kitchen, spraying fragments of teacake in a wide arc, caused Rose to jump violently. Her hand to her mouth, she shrank against the table as Wilbur stood to his feet, glowering at her. ‘You’re not taking in washing or owt else. Get that through your head once an’ for all. The day that happens’ll be the day after they put me six foot under an’ I can’t do owt about it. Until then I’m master in this house. Me. Not him, all right?’
He glared at her before grabbing his cap and stuffing it on his head. Rose said nothing as he left the house by way of the back door, but once he had gone she drew in a deep shuddering breath. He was all of a two-an’-eight and no wonder, what with the lockout and what it might mean. He wasn’t daft, Wilbur. He knew the coal owners and the government would fight dirty. Whenever a group of workers protested about poor living standards or dangerous working conditions, the same old labels were bandied about in the papers. ‘Organised menace.’ ‘Wicked and treacherous.’ She plumped down on a hard-backed chair, reaching for her own cup of tea with a shaking hand. ‘Where will it all end?’ she murmured to herself. ‘And when?’
Adam was saying much the same thing to Hannah in the kitchen at the back of the shop but in contrast to his mother his voice was bright and animated. ‘I don’t know how it’ll work out, lass, but I do know we’ll be a sight better off at the end of it than we are now. All the lads know that the government, especially Churchill and his gang, together with the coal owners and the owners of every other industry in the land, want to destroy the unions once and for all. But there’s more of us than there are of them, that’s what they’re forgetting, and if we all stick together we can come out of this smelling like roses.’ He grinned. ‘Would you like that? Me smelling of roses?’
She didn’t care how he smelt and her eyes told him so. He kissed her, long and hard, and then held her close as he said, ‘I’ll come round later once you’ve had your tea. Do you think your mam will do the last hour or two so we can go for a walk before it’s dark?’
‘I’ll ask.’ This latest from her mother, offering to work in the shop in the evenings so she could see Adam, was only one of the surprises of the last weeks. She had thought there would be ructions when Adam had come to the house on the afternoon of her sixteenth birthday and made his intentions plain. Instead her mam had been all sweetness and light, immediately agreeing they could start courting. It hadn’t improved her mam’s attitude to her the rest of the time, in fact she was more snappy and prickly than she had ever been, but where Adam was concerned, everything was hunky-dory.
‘I’ll come just after six.’ He kissed her again, his hands wandering up under the swell of her breasts before Hannah caught them and brought his fingers back to her waist. He accepted the silent reproof without comment, he always did but she knew he would try it on again. After a moment he raised his head, saying, ‘I’d better get going. There’s a meeting at the Tavern.’
She walked through into the shop with him and saw him out. Her uncle was tied up with a customer and didn’t look their way, and she returned to the job she had been doing before Adam’s arrival - stacking tins on the shelves. Once the customer had left, her uncle began to clean the counter with a damp muslin cloth, working it round and round the wood for what seemed to Hannah an inordinately long time.
‘I don’t want him coming in here at all times of the day and night. This is a working environment. Does he understand that?’
‘What?’ She turned and looked at her uncle. He was red in the face and obviously in a tear about something. ‘Adam came to say the miners are out,’ she said quickly by way of explanation. People had talked of little else but the impending showdown for the last week.
‘Be that as it may, I don’t want him in here unless he’s buying.’
Her face changing, Hannah straightened. ‘I see.’
‘And don’t take that tack with me. You wouldn’t expect to be able to go and see him at the pit, would you? Or visit the shipyard or the glassworks for a nice little chat? Just because this is a shop it doesn’t mean every Tom, Dick or Harry can waste your time.’
He was angry, furiously angry, and she didn’t understand why. People called in all the time for a gossip, it was part of the going-on, and they didn’t always buy something. Her temper rising, Hannah said, ‘Mr Routledge was in here half an hour yesterday talking about the match on Saturday and he didn’t buy anything.’
‘Mr Routledge is a friend of mine.’
‘And Adam’s my friend.’
‘This is my shop, are you forgetting that? And you and your mother live under my roof.’
‘No, I’m not forgetting that.’ She faced him squarely, her eyes flashing. ‘Neither am I forgetting that you get your money’s worth out of the pair of us.’ She wasn’t sure this applied where her mother was concerned but it suited her to ignore that for the moment. ‘Mam takes care of Aunty so you don’t have to have a housekeeper or a nurse, and I work for nothing, remember? I could leave here tomorrow and get a job in a factory or somewhere and you’d have to pay out for an assistant or even two. And you know it.’
‘You ungrateful little scut.Where do you think you’d be now if I hadn’t took you and your mother in? Eh? You answer me that. I’ve looked after the pair of you for years.’
She stared at him, at his greasy face and big fat wobbly belly and it came to her that any affection she’d once had for her uncle had died, the death knell having rung on New Year’s Eve. Quietly now, she said, ‘Anything you’ve done, you’ve done because it suits you. And I am grateful that you took us in, whatever you might think, but it doesn’t mean I’m beholden to you for life.’
She expected more angry words and it took her aback when he just stared at her and seemed to deflate. Suddenly he seemed to lose inches. ‘I don’t want to argue with you, lass,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I’ve never wanted that.You know how much I - me an’ your aunt - think of you. But that Adam is not the one for you. He’s too much of a lad where the lassies are concerned. I know the type.’
For a moment she was sorely tempted to throw her knowledge about him and her mother in his face. Only the thought that it would make living at home impossible and that her aunty might get to know about the affair stopped her. She was almost sure it was over; certainly there was a coolness between her mother and uncle these days, and she didn’t want to be the one to cause her aunt unnecessary pain. But for her uncle to criticise Adam after how he’d behaved. Stiffly, she said, ‘I like Adam Wood and he likes me.’
The look she hated came over her uncle’s face and his voice held the soft thickness that went hand in hand with it when he said, ‘You’re a bonny lass, you could have anyone.You don’t want to throw yourself away on a miner, now then. And not one like him who’s had umpteen lassies that I know of—’
‘Stop it.’ She actually stamped her foot. ‘I won’t listen to this. I’m seeing Adam and that’s that. And I trust him, I trust him absolutely. He would never do anything to hurt me.’
‘And you think you could stomach being a miner’s wife? If it came to that? Scrimping and scraping and never having a penny to your name? One bairn after another until you’re an old woman at gone thirty?’
He was angry again but she preferred that to the squirmy creepiness that always made goose pimples prickle her skin. ‘If necessary.’ She was ramrod straight. ‘But it won’t be like that. After the unions win, the miners will get a decent wage and everything will change. Adam says so.’
‘Adam says so, does he?’ Her uncle nodded his head. ‘Well, we’ll soon see if Adam is right, won’t we? But I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
When, three days later, the General Strike began and workers in almost every industry laid down their tools and walked out, Hannah refrained from saying ‘I told you so’ to her uncle. Buses and trains stopped, factories were silent, docks deserted and offices empty. Britain’s workforce united.
Nine days later it was over. But no
t for the miners. As the rest of the country returned to work, Lord Londonderry, the Durham coal owner, vowed he would smash the pitmen’s union from top to bottom and he meant it. The miners were now on their own.
Hannah sat in Rose’s kitchen listening to Wilbur, Adam and Joe talk, and although she didn’t understand all that they were saying, she knew they would be fighting long and hard. She glanced at Naomi who was now the sole breadwinner in the house. She was listening with rapt attention to the menfolk. Then Hannah met Rose’s gaze. They stared at each other for a moment until Rose’s eyes dropped to the sock she was darning.
Hannah continued to look at Naomi’s mother for a second more and then she, too, lowered her gaze. What she’d read in that brief unguarded moment had shocked her. Surely Mrs Wood thought the miners were right to stand out against the pit owners? The lodges in every district of every coalfield were determined to raise money and they’d already organised fellowship dinners where the mining families were sure of a good meal while the men discussed ways and means of making ends meet. Adam had told her all sorts of things had been discussed - brass band concerts, athletic contests, dances, boxing matches, talent competitions, coconut shies. Practically everything you’d find at a fairground. And the weather was good now for May and they had the whole summer in front of them. It had been a shock when the other trade union leaders had welshed on the colliery workers, but it had strengthened the miners’ resolve, if anything. They were standing up for what was right, for their wives and bairns; couldn’t Naomi’s mam see that?
It was another half an hour before Adam stood up, holding out his hand to her as he said, ‘Fancy a walk, lass?’
She nodded, pulling on her coat and straw bonnet as they left the kitchen to a chorus of ‘Ta-rahs’ from Naomi and her mother and Joe. Mr Wood said nothing but he smiled at her.
There were still a few bairns playing outside in the street as they emerged from the back lane, several involved in a game of hopscotch with an old boot-polish tin, and a little group playing mothers and fathers with a real bare-bottomed baby who kept crawling away from his five-year-old ‘mother’, much to her very verbal annoyance. Hannah glanced down at the dribble-nosed infant who was demonstrating his considerable lung power in protest at being confined in one place. She knew his mam. Amy Stamp was only eighteen months older than her and she was already expecting again.The rest of the children were the baby’s young uncles and aunties. Amy’s mother had a bairn regular as clockwork every twelve months. Since Amy had wed and her husband had joined the family, there were well over twenty folk crammed in the two-up, two-down house.
She didn’t want to live like that. The thought sprung into being and she acknowledged it had been at the back of her mind since the row with her uncle. She didn’t want to have one bairn after another as decreed by the Catholic church. She didn’t want a life forever fighting the thick mud from the back lanes and the dirt from the town’s filthy industrial chimneys either. No privacy, no time or energy to do anything but get by.
‘Penny for ’em?’
Adam was peering at her. Shaking herself mentally, she forced a smile, taking his arm as she said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Adam wouldn’t understand. He was very much like his father in the way he saw things. She had heard him rib Joe when his brother had made everyone a cup of tea one day after Naomi’s mother had sprained her wrist. Adam would have expected Naomi or even her to do it.Women’s work was women’s work. Men brought in the wages, provided for their families and therefore didn’t lift a finger in the home.
She had mentioned the incident to him once they were alone, asking why he had teased Joe for helping his mother. ‘Helping Mam?’ he’d said in surprise. ‘That’s Naomi’s job.The trouble with Joe is he’s as soft as clarts and Naomi can be a lazy little madam when she wants to be.’ End of conversation. No matter that Naomi worked hard at the jam factory and brought in a wage too.
The May evening wasn’t cold but Hannah shivered. Adam put his hand over the one she had through his arm and said, ‘Come on, we’ll walk up Newcastle Road and cut through Grange Park Avenue to the back of the cricket ground. They’ve got a couple of benches where we can sit and it’s out of the wind.’
The further they walked, the more open it became. They were in the outskirts of Southwick now and there were some very nice houses with a garden at the front and rear to be seen. They came to the spot Adam had spoken of, which was a small park area with rows of elm trees bordering it. It had been a fine day and the sky was still blue, the clouds snowy white. The scent of May blossom from the trees in the park drifted in the air and the wind had died down to a breath, the area being sheltered. Hannah wondered how many other lassies Adam had sat with here as he put his arm round her and drew her against him. And then he kissed her and it didn’t matter.
There weren’t many people about, just a young family at one end of the park and another couple like themselves sitting on a bench some twenty yards away. When Adam raised his head, he settled her into the crook of his arm. ‘The strike won’t last for ever, you know that, don’t you?’ he said softly. ‘And once I’m earning again we can go to the pictures or dancing at the Pally.’
Hannah nodded. She didn’t care where she went as long as she was with Adam. They sat for a minute or two watching the father of the young family kicking a ball with his son, who couldn’t have been more than four or five, while his wife sat watching with a little baby on her knee. The man was in a suit and they looked well-to-do.
‘Do you ever think about leaving the pit and moving away, perhaps down south?’ She hadn’t meant to say it, it had just popped out as she watched the young husband.
‘What?’
‘Well, all this with the strike and everything and the pit being so dangerous, I just wondered if you’d thought about doing something else.’
Adam stared at her as though she was talking double Dutch. ‘I’m a miner.’
‘I know. I just wondered . . .’
He smiled. ‘You’re a funny little thing at times, you know that?’ And then his voice grew husky as he murmured,‘But bonny, so bonny. Aw, Hannah, you’ve no idea what you do to me.There’s not a lass in the country can hold a candle to you. I’m the luckiest man alive.’
She melted when he said things like this. He kissed her again but when his hand slid under her coat and cupped her breast, she drew back quickly. ‘Don’t. Someone’ll see.’
She watched his white even teeth drag at his lower lip for a moment, then his right shoulder moved upwards in a gesture that held irritation.‘We’ve been seeing each other over eight weeks now and I’m not made of wood.’
‘I know.’ She didn’t mind him touching her on the rare occasions they were alone, once or twice in his mam’s kitchen when everyone else had gone to bed and another time when he’d walked her home and stood in the darkness of the back alley. At least not much. At first it had just been a light touch on the outside of her clothes but the last time he’d tried to lift her jumper and his hands had been hard and insistent. She knew it was wrong. Her mam hadn’t told her much about the birds and the bees when she had started her monthlies two years ago, but she had been very clear that one thing led to another and that that had to be avoided at all costs. Quite what that entailed she wasn’t sure, but she knew it could lead to the worst fate that could befall a lass, that of having a baby without being wed.
‘I’m not going to do anything to hurt you.You know that, don’t you?’ Adam’s face had softened when he saw her distress.‘But I’ve been used to—’ He stopped, waving his hand as he said, ‘It doesn’t matter. But I know a thing or two. You wouldn’t have to worry, that’s what I’m saying.’
She stared at him in silence, then moved her lips one over the other before she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t want them to quarrel.
‘Aye, well, we’d better be getting back.’ And then, as she still looked at him with a troubled face, he smiled, drawing her into his arms again but this time just kissing the tip
of her nose. ‘Don’t worry, I know you’re a nice lass. I wouldn’t be walking out with you otherwise, would I? We’ll take it slow if that’s what you want, all right?’ He kissed her again, warmly.
Relieved, she kissed him back, and then as he drew her to her feet, she said again, but without really knowing why, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’ll be better once the strike’s over,’ he said, as though that had a bearing on the situation. ‘And you’ll love the Pally, they have some right good bands there on a Saturday night. By, some of the lads’ eyes’ll pop out of their heads when I walk in with you on my arm.’
Her smile was more natural now. He was himself again. Everything was all right.
‘Aye, once the strike’s over we’ll paint the town red, lass. That’ll show ’em.’
She wasn’t sure who it would show but she laughed anyway and they went home arm in arm.
Chapter 8
Over the next weeks it became clear there was going to be no easy resolution to the lockout. And a lockout was what it was, in spite of most of the miners calling it a strike, maybe because that way it seemed as though they were in charge, as if it was the working man taking the action instead of the employers. Gradually it became commonplace to see miners fixing roofs and cleaning chimneys and grooming dogs or ponies, or digging gardens.
Above the Harvest Moon Page 8