The Cold Blast

by Mary Easson

  ‘What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ I reply. How I enjoy this moment at Richard’s expense!

  We snigger, me and my small coven of conspirators.

  ‘Rationin’,’ says Ellen. ‘Who would’ve thoucht it?’

  ‘As long as it’s done richt,’ says Mary Birse who is cradling Peggy’s grandchild in her arms.

  ‘An naebody’s takin’ advantage,’ adds Ellen, squeezing the boy’s hand.

  Food rationing is making everyone’s life difficult but we understand why it is necessary after four years of war, and as long as the men at the Front are well fed, we will thole it and make the best of it. It is one of our contributions to the war effort.

  When the tea arrives the child is passed onto Peggy.

  ‘Wee Archie here’s been poorly thur twa-three days past,’ she explains, ‘But Mary assures me he’s oan the mend.’

  ‘I am glad,’ I say, rewarding the boy’s gaze with a smile. Peggy’s daughter and grandchildren have been living with her since her son-in-law was killed at the Somme. The boy in her arms was born after his father left for the Front.

  I try to hide the sorrow I feel for little Archie, named for the father he will never know. Pity is not welcome here.

  ‘The bairns are a great comfort,’ Peggy says when she sees me looking. ‘Their Uncle Sandy fair dotes oan them.’

  Ellen sighs at the mention of Sandy. She is thinking about her own boy, Bert, who is in France. ‘I’m gled Geordie and Eddie are here still but it’s hard oan them. They’re wishin’ they were awa’ like the rest – it disnae get onie easier.’ She looks at her friends for confirmation.

  Peggy nods. ‘Somebody’s got tae bide an’ win the coal.’

  ‘Aye, though there’s little thanks for it,’ says Mary bristling. But her thoughts are with the twins, Jim and John, who like Bert are at the Front.

  ‘Mind,’ she adds, ‘It’s guid tae ken they’re ootby the gither. They’ll be watchin’ each ither’s backs, mark ma words.’

  ‘They’re guid lads,’ says Ellen.

  ‘Onie word?’ asks Peggy.

  Ellen and Mary shake their heads.

  ‘Me neither,’ she says.

  I glance at the photograph in the metal frame high up on the mantelpiece. A dark-haired young man in a uniform stares back at me. He is serious, giving no hint of expression or thought. Rob Duncan, Peggy’s elder son, has been posted missing these three months past.

  ‘Still,’ says Mary, refilling everyone’s cup, ‘Nae news is guid news, eh?’

  Chapter 2

  John

  When I wake the room is filled with light and I try to sit up but to no avail. It must be time. I can’t understand why nobody’s called me. The hooter will have gone and all of the men with it. And here I am in my bed like a prince in a palace without urgency or purpose but to delight in the specks of dust dancing in sunbeams slanting in through high windows, the smell of beeswax and starched cotton sheets filling my head with memories of the meadow by the Red Burn. We called it the Meadie when we were boys and, more than anything, I want to be there.

  I turn over onto my side to speak to the pals and pain shoots through my hip like a bullet from a sniper’s rifle. When the focus in my eyes returns, I see them lying row on row down both sides of the room. I’m glad, knowing I’m not by myself, that they’re with me and we will leave together when the time comes.

  A woman’s hastening towards me, almost running. She is all in white with an extravagant scarf covering her head. I wonder what colour her hair is and if it is long and black, like a girl I know from my village back home. The woman is talking to me and has a worried look akin to anger on her face. Maybe I’ve done something wrong. I fear my life has been full of scoldings because this is a familiar feeling though I do not understand what she’s saying. Her words sound foreign just like the lassies who called to us from the roadsides as we marched past with our tails up – when we disembarked from the ship. I remember a great big ship and a grey fog and a feeling of excitement in my stomach that quickly turned to regret. The woman again, she might be a nurse – or a nun, God save us! She’s holding my head so I can drink as she brings a cup to my lips. She’s nodding, telling me to drink a wee bit more because I’ve only managed a few drops. The pain in my neck makes it hard and I feel I must have lost some of my swallow but the need to survive surpasses all. So I drink.

  And it tastes sweet.

  She tells me it is Good, Good then Soup, Soup is good and she hurries away. I wonder if she has gone to fetch some soup but as I watch her white figure disappear, the blackness of fatigue carries me far away from this place where there is sunlight and soft beds and water and women in white who hold my head in their arms and tell me to drink as if I matter, as if I am worthy of this day when the sun shines from a blue sky through the open window.

  In my darkest dreams, shadows play on walls hewn from hard rock by men stripped half-naked in yellow lamplight. They lie on rough wet ground, pressed into bruising spaces too small for arms to swing through the dust-laden air. They mark time with hammer and pick. Ding, ding, ding. Wheels rumble past on metal rails, heavy wagons are pushed by skinny boys with large hands and dirty faces. This is the world I come from, my world of dark shadow and half-light, of rhythmic sounds, metal on stone, warnings called out against the constant racket of men and machines employed in the winning of coal. My shovel scrapes out dross to the railhead where others fill the hutches. The seam is coming away easily and the hewers are pleased. They remind me to pass on a message to the fillers.

  Mak sure the hutches are tagged richt or we’ll no get paid whit we’re owed. Hoo mony thus faur? Three?! Fower surely?! Tell a lad tae follae them up tae the fit o’ the shaft. Keep a tally, mind. There’s plenty would be happy to tak what doesnae belong them, and no blush wi’ the shame o’ it. Folk that would call ye freen and ithers whau wouldnae bother tae pretend. Him frae the Back Row, new flitted frae Rowanhill wi’ a wife and six weans, for instance. I kent his faither, somebody says.

  We all know what that means, the seeds of suspicion have been sown.

  And the Foreigner – the Russian – new on the payroll, him that lodges wi’ Pretty Peggy Duncan. He’s a funny wey o’ lookin’ at ye, has he no? Odd thon yin. As queer as his big moustache. A different breed, brocht up on black breid and sausage. No like us, no, us that’re fed on guid Scotch breid, pure white bar the crust – weel-fired – an’ raspberry jam frae the Co-operative Store.

  At last, the noise subsides and hutches stand still. Pickaxes and shovels are abandoned as groups of men and boys collect, hunkering down, backs against the wall near the main underground road. It’s cooler, almost fresh there. Thank Heaven for small mercies. Sweat’s wiped from a dozen foreheads; pieces are retrieved from the pockets of jackets. A slurp of cool water from a bottle, or lukewarm tea out of a tinny slakes the thirst of a dusty throat. I see my comrades: the fillers, the drawers, and the colliers. We work together, winning the coal to earn a crust like the one in my hand. It tastes of the moist earth, the air, and the ripening sun; butter from a fat cow and a spread of jam made from berries, the taste of summer preserved in sugar. I want to make it last forever but it is gone in seconds, as usual. I’m famished. There’s never enough or so it seems. I’ll have to get back to work to earn another. Nothing else for it. On and on it goes, a never-ending cycle of work, rest and play. Food, sleep, and football with the pals but always with work at the heart of it. World without end.

  Water is seeping from the stone above. Drip, drip, drip. Every drop merciless and slow, stinging my eyes with stone fragments. I feel a panic rising in my throat, from my stomach, in my heart. I smell fear, the smell of death or, worse, that which is beyond death, what we do not know. I hear the shrieking sounds of hell, a loud bang like a gun, and a curse in the black night. A hand is holding mine in a firm grip and I grasp even stronger as i
f holding onto life itself. A small light is coming towards me out of the darkness. It is carried by a man with moist eyes, red-rimmed in a black face. His teeth are rotting in his head but his smile is kind.

  John? Are ye there, John?

  Aye, I’m here.

  I am John.

  It is me.

  Lying here, four years later, in a foreign place, I remember the days after that accident in the pit as if it was yesterday. I mind how I came to, opening my eyes and feeling the grit in them immediately, shaking my head and blowing down my nose like the old horse in MacCallum’s hay field; how I raised a hand to brush away the coal dust only to find I was safe at home in bed. I screwed up my face at the ceiling, seeing the familiar damp patch dried to a pattern of brown rings like mud round the edge of a pond after days of better weather. When I moved my head I could see a gap in the timbers, through the slates to the sky. Another flurry of plaster floated downwards. I raised my aching body onto an elbow and brushed away the debris from the pillow, too quickly, too late to save the injured hand. I mind how I held that hand out afore me, till the sickening ache subsided.

  Blissfully unaware, Jim lay at my side. An earthquake could come and go, shaking our small cottage to its foundations, and he would sleep on. The sounds of morning came in through the open window: the gush of water from an outside tap into a tin pail and the swallows swooping in and out of the eaves as they built their nests of mud. Then a hacking cough and low muttering in the other room, followed by a loud bang of a door. Alex was up and about, off to the dry closets for his morning constitutional so I took my chance. I used the chamber pot, dressed as fast as my bruised body allowed and threw a shirt at my twin brother.

  ‘Get up, Jim. Up.’

  Groan. His usual reply.

  ‘Davy.’ I turned to the other bed. ‘Davy. You an a’.’

  I didn’t wait for the stream of insults that would come from my elder brother when he surfaced, as always needing to apportion blame for the dawning of another day to be spent down the pit. Instead, I escaped into the front room where mother was busy. She nodded towards the bandaged hand.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, settling in at the table where a basin of warm water and disinfectant was waiting. I tried to hide the pain as she eased the bandage off where it was stuck to the wound. She watched me put my hand in the water, said to let it soak for a bit. I swallowed hard and the pain soon subsided to a nauseating throb.

  I remember studying her while she worked that morning, as if seeing her for the first time: how she made tea; ladled porridge into plates for the four men in her life; removed the cover from the milk jug; shooed away flies that appeared from nowhere. Her hair was mostly grey by then, kept in place at the back with a few pins, her blue eyes as bright as a bird’s, her arms and hands strong because of the work she did. I thought she seemed slower than before, her body thicker round the middle where her cotton pinnie was tied. I realised I’d not noticed what had been happening right before my eyes. The passage of time and the changes it wrought. Strange how the loss of somebody can focus the mind, make you see what’s round about you more clearly, in much brighter colours. Did I take her for granted like the rest of them? I couldn’t imagine how bleak that place would be without her.

  She made it home.

  She lifted my hand out of the water and took a good look. It would heal just fine. The doctor had made a good job of it she told me – a clean cut with a big pair of shears and very little loss of blood. I’d soon get used to the loss of a finger, she assured me. I was lucky I hadn’t lost a lot more in the accident. What sort of work could I have looked forward to with just the one hand?

  I tried to feel blessed, pushing away thoughts of Charlie, the man who had died. I remembered his tight grip, how he’d held onto me there in the darkness, a slab of rock pinning us both down; how the hold had lessened as the man slipped away.

  She took a towel to pat the wound dry then dabbed it with iodine, applied a fresh bandage and a big leather mitt that buttoned at the wrist to protect the hand while I was at work. She said I would be back to my normal place down below within a week or two, that the pain would lessen when I got it into my head that the crushed finger was gone for good. It was only a memory now and I’d to forget about it. Get on with it, she said. It’ll pass. It did you no good to dwell on the past. I met her eyes to say thank you and she turned away, back to her work at the fire.

  Then the peace was disrupted by the man I called father, Alex Birse, who came bursting in through the door with what could have been a smile on his face.

  ‘Nice lookin’ lassie, thon Minn Graham,’ he said. ‘She’s gey...’ he thought for a bit and settled for ‘brazen.’

  ‘Brazen? She’s no brazen. She’s a guid lass. Ay smilin’, no like some folk I could mention.’ Mother sounded exasperated. ‘Whit kinna wurld would it be if we were a’ like you?’

  He washed his hands in the basin, scrubbing the skin and his nails like his life depended on it. ‘She’s ower auld tae be wavin’ tae a grown man like me in the street,’ he said at last. ‘She’s no a wean onie mair, if ye get ma drift.’

  I kept my head down, stared at the spoon in my hand so that I wouldn’t have to look at him.

  He turned in my direction deciding, obviously, that I needed a stir. ‘Ye could dae worse than Minn Graham.’

  My heart beat loudly in my chest till I was sure he could hear it. I did not dare look up, just waited for the twist of the knife in my back.

  ‘If she wid hae a scrawny specimen like yersel which I hae ma doubts aboot richt enough,’ was what he came up with.

  ‘Leave the lad alane, Alex. Yer no content bar yer gettin’ at folk!’ Mother said.

  He sat in his usual place and his frown deepened as he liberally sprinkled salt on his porridge before adding some milk, then slurped it down whilst she poured tea into four cups. He tutted his displeasure loudly, rubbing his forearm where an invisible drop of tea had splashed, acting as if a gallon of scalding liquid had been poured onto his skin with malicious intent.

  Mother saw me watching him, half-knowing what I was thinking.

  ‘Drink yer tea, John,’ she ordered.

  I did what I was told. As usual, the atmosphere had changed since Alex had come in. You could cut it with a knife – a blunt one at that. Even the light coming in through the window had dimmed. He never missed a chance to put me down and it made me wonder why this man had opened up his house to me in the first place, giving a home to a poor abandoned orphan, with nowhere else to go but the poorhouse. I took his taunts as I had done my whole life, without a word, grateful for what I had in life and even more grateful for the life that I didn’t have and which could have been so much worse. But something had changed that morning that surprised me, something about the way he had talked about Minn Graham cut deeper than anything he’d ever had to say about me, which was plenty. I stored it away for another time, tried to concentrate on my bowl of porridge. The milk was creamy, almost sweet against the saltiness of the oatmeal. I would have told mother how good it was, had we been on our own.

  Jim appeared, radiating warmth, straight from a deep sleep; a tousled head; a clean work shirt half-tucked into baggy trousers. He murmured a sleepy greeting and I felt better for his arrival. Then loud cursing in the back room and the clatter of a chair on the hard floor had me on nettles again.

  ‘Whit the...?!’ Alex sprayed spit and porridge across the table. ‘B’Jesus! Whit’s he daen through by? Can he no find his breeks in thon wee room?’ He pushed away his empty plate, ladled three large spoonfuls of sugar into his tea and stirred vigorously.

  Eyes heavy, encrusted yellow with sleep, Davy entered the room at a run. He’d barely flopped into his chair before the spoon was in his mouth and porridge was surging down his throat. He grabbed some bread and applied a generous layer of jam.

  Alex watched Davy stuff his mouth to overflowin
g. ‘Fur the love o’ God, whaurs yer manners? God forbid ye ever get an invitation for tea at the Big Hoose!’

  I felt a little cheered as someone else felt the force of our father’s ire.

  ‘Got tae go,’ muttered Davy, rising quickly. He emptied the contents of a cup of tea into his open mouth, grimaced through his yellow teeth.

  ‘Yer lookin’ the worse for wear,’ barked Alex.

  Mother pushed Davy’s lunch into his pocket and pressed a tinny of tea into his hand.

  ‘Yer needin’ tae get in at a decent time,’ Alex called after him as he made for the door.

  There was no reply.

  ‘Ye should be in yer bed, no roamin’ aboot the place tae a’ oors!’ he bawled.

  The door slammed shut.

  When the windows stopped rattling in their frames, peace descended for which we were grateful. Mother plonked a piece tin and a tinny on the table in front of Alex. I wondered if it was a hint for him to be on his own way. She fetched a piece for me and Jim, and an egg each in a twist of paper.

  ‘Whit’s this?’ asked Alex, his frown deepening though it hardly seemed possible.

  ‘Eggs, boiled,’ she shot back.

  ‘Eggs? Are we made o’ money a’ a sudden?’ He looked as if the sky was about to fall in.

  ‘There’s fower wages comin’ intae this hoose. The boys deserve a treat. Somethin’ t’ look furrit tae when they’re hard at their work, tae keep them gaun.’ She saw him looking at his piece tin. ‘You’ve got yin tae, Alex, dinna fret.’

  ‘Sounds kinda extravagant tae me. Ye niver ken when the work’s gaunnae dry up. I’ve telt ye there’s a stoppage oan the horizon, if the union disnae get its wey. Could last a while, like the last yin.’ He shoved an arm into his jacket which he hefted up over his back as if it weighed a ton. Haversack over one shoulder, he thrust the tinny into a pocket. He could have left it at that – he’d already had the last word – but he felt compelled to give a parting shot from the doorway.