It was a good match between Notts and Villa — no goals at half-time, two-none for Notts at the finish. The colliers were hugely delighted, especially as Flint, the forward for Notts, who was an Underwood man well known to the four comrades, did some handsome work, putting the two goals through.
Ephraim determined to go home as soon as the match was over. He knew John Wharmby would be playing the piano at the “Punch Bowl”, and Sam, who had a good tenor voice, singing, while Chris cut in with witticisms, until evening. So he bade them farewell, as he must get home. They, finding him somewhat of a damper on their spirits, let him go.
He was the sadder for having witnessed an accident near the football-ground. A navvy, working at some drainage, carting an iron tip-tub of mud and emptying it, had got with his horse on to the deep deposit of ooze which was crusted over. The crust had broken, the man had gone under the horse, and it was some time before the people had realised he had vanished. When they found his feet sticking out, and hauled him forth, he was dead, stifled dead in the mud. The horse was at length hauled out, after having its neck nearly pulled from the socket.
Ephraim went home vaguely impressed with a sense of death, and loss, and strife. Death was loss greater than his own, the strike was a battle greater than that he would presently have to fight.
He arrived home at seven o’clock, just when it had fallen dark. He lived in Queen Street with his young wife, to whom he had been married two months, and with his mother-in-law, a widow of sixty-four. Maud was the last child remaining unmarried, the last of eleven.
Ephraim went up the entry. The light was burning in the kitchen. His mother-in-law was a big, erect woman, with wrinkled, loose face, and cold blue eyes. His wife was also large, with very vigorous fair hair, frizzy like unravelled rope. She had a quiet way of stepping, a certain cat-like stealth, in spite of her large build. She was five months pregnant.
“Might we ask wheer you’ve been to?” inquired Mrs. Marriott, very erect, very dangerous. She was only polite when she was very angry.
“I’ bin ter th’ match.”
“Oh, indeed!” said the mother-in-law. “And why couldn’t we be told as you thought of jaunting off?”
“I didna know mysen,” he answered, sticking to his broad Derbyshire.
“I suppose it popped into your mind, an’ so you darted off,” said the mother-in-law dangerously.
“I didna. It wor Chris Smitheringale who exed me.”
“An’ did you take much invitin’?”
“I didna want ter goo.”
“But wasn’t there enough man beside your jacket to say no?”
He did not answer. Down at the bottom he hated her. But he was, to use his own words, all messed up with having lost his strike-pay and with knowing the man was dead. So he was more helpless before his mother-in-law, whom he feared. His wife neither looked at him nor spoke, but kept her head bowed. He knew she was with her mother.
“Our Maud’s been waitin’ for some money, to get a few things,” said the mother-in-law.
In silence, he put five-and-sixpence on the table.
“Take that up, Maud,” said the mother.
Maud did so.
“You’ll want it for us board, shan’t you?” she asked, furtively, of her mother.
“Might I ask if there’s nothing you want to buy yourself, first?”
“No, there’s nothink I want,” answered the daughter.
Mrs. Marriott took the silver and counted it.
“And do you,” said the mother-in-law, towering upon the shrinking son, but speaking slowly and statelily, “do you think I’m going to keep you and your wife for five and sixpence a week?”
“It’s a’ I’ve got,” he answered sulkily.
“You’ve had a good jaunt, my sirs, if it’s cost four and sixpence. You’ve started your game early, haven’t you?”
He did not answer.
“It’s a nice thing! Here’s our Maud an’ me been sitting since eleven o’clock this morning! Dinner waiting and cleared away, tea waiting and washed up; then in he comes crawling with five and sixpence. Five and sixpence for a man an’ wife’s board for a week, if you please!”
Still he did not say anything.
“You must think something of yourself, Ephraim Wharmby!” said his mother-in-law. “You must think something of yourself. You suppose, do you, I’m going to keep you an’ your wife, while you make a holiday, off on the nines to Nottingham, drink an’ women.”
“I’ve neither had drink nor women, as you know right well,” he said.
“I’m glad we know summat about you. For you’re that close, anybody’d think we was foreigners to you. You’re a pretty little jockey, aren’t you? Oh, it’s a gala time for you, the strike is. That’s all men strike for, indeed. They enjoy themselves, they do that. Ripping and racing and drinking, from morn till night, my sirs!”
“Is there on’y tea for me?” he asked, in a temper.
“Hark at him! Hark-ye! Should I ask you whose house you think you’re in? Kindly order me about, do. Oh, it makes him big, the strike does. See him land home after being out on the spree for hours, and give his orders, my sirs! Oh, strike sets the men up, it does. Nothing have they to do but guzzle and gallivant to Nottingham. Their wives’ll keep them, oh yes. So long as they get something to eat at home, what more do they want! What more should they want, prithee? Nothing! Let the women and children starve and scrape, but fill the man’s belly, and let him have his fling. My sirs, indeed, I think so! Let tradesmen go — what do they matter! Let rent go. Let children get what they can catch. Only the man will see he’s all right. But not here, though!”
“Are you goin’ ter gi’e me ony bloody tea?”
His mother-in-law started up.
“If tha dares ter swear at me, I’ll lay thee flat.”
“Are yer — goin’ ter — gi’e me — any blasted, rotten, còssed, blòody tèa?” he bawled, in a fury, accenting every other word deliberately.
“Maud!” said the mother-in-law, cold and stately, “If you gi’e him any tea after that, you’re a trollops.” Whereupon she sailed out to her other daughters.
Maud quietly got the tea ready.
“Shall y’ave your dinner warmed up?” she asked.
“Ay.”
She attended to him. Not that she was really meek. But — he was her man, not her mother’s.
A SICK COLLIER
She was too good for him, everybody said. Yet still she did not regret marrying him. He had come courting her when he was only nineteen, and she twenty. He was in build what they call a tight little fellow; short, dark, with a warm colour, and that upright set of the head and chest, that flaunting way in movement recalling a mating bird, which denotes a body taut and compact with life. Being a good worker he had earned decent money in the mine, and having a good home had saved a little.
She was a cook at “Uplands”, a tall, fair girl, very quiet. Having seen her walk down the street, Horsepool had followed her from a distance. He was taken with her, he did not drink, and he was not lazy. So, although he seemed a bit simple, without much intelligence, but having a sort of physical brightness, she considered, and accepted him.
When they were married they went to live in Scargill Street, in a highly respectable six-roomed house which they had furnished between them. The street was built up the side of a long, steep hill. It was narrow and rather tunnel-like. Nevertheless, the back looked out over the adjoining pasture, across a wide valley of fields and woods, in the bottom of which the mine lay snugly.
He made himself gaffer in his own house. She was unacquainted with a collier’s mode of life. They were married on a Saturday. On the Sunday night he said:
“Set th’ table for my breakfast, an’ put my pit-things afront o’ th’ fire. I s’ll be gettin’ up at ha’ef pas’ five. Tha nedna shift thysen not till when ter likes.”
He showed her how to put a newspaper on the table for a cloth. When she demurred:
“I want none o’ your white cloths i’ th’ mornin’. I like ter be able to slobber if I feel like it,” he said.
He put before the fire his moleskin trousers, a clean singlet, or sleeveless vest of thick flannel, a pair of stockings and his pit boots, arranging them all to be warm and ready for morning.
“Now tha sees. That wants doin’ ivery night.”
Punctually at half past five he left her, without any form of leave-taking, going downstairs in his shirt.
When he arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon his dinner was ready to be dished up. She was startled when he came in, a short, sturdy figure, with a face indescribably black and streaked. She stood before the fire in her white blouse and white apron, a fair girl, the picture of beautiful cleanliness. He “clommaxed” in, in his heavy boots.
“Well, how ‘as ter gone on?” he asked.
“I was ready for you to come home,” she replied tenderly. In his black face the whites of his brown eyes flashed at her.
“An’ I wor ready for comin’,” he said. He planked his tin bottle and snap-bag on the dresser, took off his coat and scarf and waistcoat, dragged his arm-chair nearer the fire and sat down.
“Let’s ha’e a bit o’ dinner, then — I’m about clammed,” he said.
“Aren’t you goin’ to wash yourself first?”
“What am I to wesh mysen for?”
“Well, you can’t eat your dinner — ”
“Oh, strike a daisy, Missis! Dunna I eat my snap i’ th’ pit wi’out weshin’? — forced to.”
She served the dinner and sat opposite him. His small bullet head was quite black, save for the whites of his eyes and his scarlet lips. It gave her a queer sensation to see him open his red mouth and bare his white teeth as he ate. His arms and hands were mottled black; his bare, strong neck got a little fairer as it settled towards his shoulders, reassuring her. There was the faint indescribable odour of the pit in the room, an odour of damp, exhausted air.
“Why is your vest so black on the shoulders?” she asked.
“My singlet? That’s wi’ th’ watter droppin’ on us from th’ roof. This is a dry un as I put on afore I come up. They ha’e gre’t clothes-’osses, and’ as we change us things, we put ‘em on theer ter dry.”
When he washed himself, kneeling on the hearth-rug stripped to the waist, she felt afraid of him again. He was so muscular, he seemed so intent on what he was doing, so intensely himself, like a vigorous animal. And as he stood wiping himself, with his naked breast towards her, she felt rather sick, seeing his thick arms bulge their muscles.
They were nevertheless very happy. He was at a great pitch of pride because of her. The men in the pit might chaff him, they might try to entice him away, but nothing could reduce his self-assured pride because of her, nothing could unsettle his almost infantile satisfaction. In the evening he sat in his armchair chattering to her, or listening as she read the newspaper to him. When it was fine, he would go into the street, squat on his heels as colliers do, with his back against the wall of his parlour, and call to the passers-by, in greeting, one after another. If no one were passing, he was content just to squat and smoke, having such a fund of sufficiency and satisfaction in his heart. He was well married.
They had not been wed a year when all Brent and Wellwood’s men came out on strike. Willy was in the Union, so with a pinch they scrambled through. The furniture was not all paid for, and other debts were incurred. She worried and contrived, he left it to her. But he was a good husband; he gave her all he had.
The men were out fifteen weeks. They had been back just over a year when Willy had an accident in the mine, tearing his bladder. At the pit head the doctor talked of the hospital. Losing his head entirely, the young collier raved like a madman, what with pain and fear of hospital.
“Tha s’lt go whoam, Willy, tha s’lt go whoam,” the deputy said.
A lad warned the wife to have the bed ready. Without speaking or hesitating she prepared. But when the ambulance came, and she heard him shout with pain at being moved, she was afraid lest she should sink down. They carried him in.
“Yo’ should ‘a’ had a bed i’ th’ parlour, Missis,” said the deputy, “then we shouldn’a ha’ had to hawkse ‘im upstairs, an’ it ‘ud ‘a’ saved your legs.”
But it was too late now. They got him upstairs.
“They let me lie, Lucy,” he was crying, “they let me lie two mortal hours on th’ sleck afore they took me outer th’ stall. Th’ peen, Lucy, th’ peen; oh, Lucy, th’ peen, th’ peen!”
“I know th’ pain’s bad, Willy, I know. But you must try an’ bear it a bit.”
“Tha manna carry on in that form, lad, thy missis’ll niver be able ter stan’ it,” said the deputy.
“I canna ‘elp it, it’s th’ peen, it’s th’ peen,” he cried again. He had never been ill in his life. When he had smashed a finger he could look at the wound. But this pain came from inside, and terrified him. At last he was soothed and exhausted.
It was some time before she could undress him and wash him. He would let no other woman do for him, having that savage modesty usual in such men.
For six weeks he was in bed, suffering much pain. The doctors were not quite sure what was the matter with him, and scarcely knew what to do. He could eat, he did not lose flesh, nor strength, yet the pain continued, and he could hardly walk at all.
In the sixth week the men came out in the national strike. He would get up quite early in the morning and sit by the window. On Wednesday, the second week of the strike, he sat gazing out on the street as usual, a bullet-headed young man, still vigorous-looking, but with a peculiar expression of hunted fear in his face.
“Lucy,” he called, “Lucy!”
She, pale and worn, ran upstairs at his bidding.
“Gi’e me a han’kercher,” he said.
“Why, you’ve got one,” she replied, coming near.
“Tha nedna touch me,” he cried. Feeling his pocket, he produced a white handkerchief.
“I non want a white un, gi’e me a red un,” he said.
“An’ if anybody comes to see you,” she answered, giving him a red handkerchief.
“Besides,” she continued, “you needn’t ha’ brought me upstairs for that.”
“I b’lieve th’ peen’s commin’ on again,” he said, with a little horror in his voice.
“It isn’t, you know, it isn’t,” she replied. “The doctor says you imagine it’s there when it isn’t.”
“Canna I feel what’s inside me?” he shouted.
“There’s a traction-engine coming downhill,” she said. “That’ll scatter them. I’ll just go an’ finish your pudding.”
She left him. The traction-engine went by, shaking the houses. Then the street was quiet, save for the men. A gang of youths from fifteen to twenty-five years old were playing marbles in the middle of the road. Other little groups of men were playing on the pavement. The street was gloomy. Willy could hear the endless calling and shouting of men’s voices.
“Tha’rt skinchin’!”
“I arena!”
“Come ‘ere with that blood-alley.”
“Swop us four for’t.”
“Shonna, gie’s hold on’t.”
He wanted to be out, he wanted to be playing marbles. The pain had weakened his mind, so that he hardly knew any self-control.
Presently another gang of men lounged up the street. It was pay morning. The Union was paying the men in the Primitive Chapel. They were returning with their half-sovereigns.
“Sorry!” bawled a voice. “Sorry!”
The word is a form of address, corruption probably of ‘Sirrah’. Willy started almost out of his chair.
“Sorry!” again bawled a great voice. “Art goin’ wi’ me to see Notts play Villa?”
Many of the marble players started up.
“What time is it? There’s no treens, we s’ll ha’e ter walk.”
The street was alive with men.
�
��Who’s goin’ ter Nottingham ter see th’ match?” shouted the same big voice. A very large, tipsy man, with his cap over his eyes, was calling.
“Com’ on — aye, com’ on!” came many voices. The street was full of the shouting of men. They split up in excited cliques and groups.
“Play up, Notts!” the big man shouted.
“Plee up, Notts!” shouted the youths and men. They were at kindling pitch. It only needed a shout to rouse them. Of this the careful authorities were aware.
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’!” shouted the sick man at his window.
Lucy came running upstairs.
“I’m goin’ ter see Notts play Villa on th’ Meadows ground,” he declared.
“You — you can’t go. There are no trains. You can’t walk nine miles.”
“I’m goin’ ter see th’ match,” he declared, rising.
“You know you can’t. Sit down now an’ be quiet.”
She put her hand on him. He shook it off.
“Leave me alone, leave me alone. It’s thee as ma’es th’ peen come, it’s thee. I’m goin’ ter Nottingham to see th’ football match.”
“Sit down — folks’ll hear you, and what will they think?”
“Come off’n me. Com’ off. It’s her, it’s her as does it. Com’ off.”
He seized hold of her. His little head was bristling with madness, and he was strong as a lion.
“Oh, Willy!” she cried.
“It’s ‘er, it’s ‘er. Kill her!” he shouted, “kill her.”
“Willy, folks’ll hear you.”
“Th’ peen’s commin’ on again, I tell yer. I’ll kill her for it.”
He was completely out of his mind. She struggled with him to prevent his going to the stairs. When she escaped from him, he was shouting and raving, she beckoned to her neighbour, a girl of twenty-four, who was cleaning the window across the road.
Ethel Mellor was the daughter of a well-to-do check-weighman. She ran across in fear to Mrs Horsepool. Hearing the man raving, people were running out in the street and listening. Ethel hurried upstairs. Everything was clean and pretty in the young home.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 606