by Mary Easson
I go back to the wardrobe where only the dress is left hanging, alone and forlorn. I push it to the back and close the doors. Someone will find it and make use of it one day. I check the drawers carefully. Each one is empty and I close up the trunk. The valise is a little on the heavy side but I will manage it on my own.
John
I visited Dr Lindsay the very next day after I came home and he looked me over, declaring me fit for work but said it would be better if I worked above ground for a bit, to see how I got on, then he wrote out a certificate for the employer. He was fascinated by my wounds and took a long time examining them, especially the one in my neck. He probed me for what I knew about the procedures, marvelled at the skill of the surgery performed under field hospital conditions, and said he had seen nothing like it on the British side. It was fortunate that the enemy had picked me up and not my own people, he jested. He said he would write to the professors at the universities – he was sure they would want a good look and could learn a lot from my case, if I was willing to cooperate.
At the pit office, Sandy took my name and certificate with a big grin. He said Mr Brownlee was organising the names personally and I had to come back at the start of the year to find out where I had been allocated. I thanked him, said it was a shame it was too cold for football, and he said he would be chapping on my door as soon as the conditions improved.
I headed for Bert’s house and found Mrs Broadley there on her own. She told me Bert was away for a doctor’s assessment but she would tell him I had called round when he came back. I said I was sorry to hear about Geordie’s passing, he was a fine lad, and would be much missed. She smiled in a pained but thankful way as she closed the door.
Mrs Duncan said she was glad to see me. She invited me in but I could see she was helping her grandchildren with their reading so I declined. I gave her my condolences for Rob and she said how much she missed him. I think she was meaning the old Rob. She thanked me for being such a good friend to him as I turned to go. She could never have guessed what was in my head at that moment as the memory of my last meeting with him, the manner of his passing, and my part in it flooded into my head. But something in my eyes as I fought for the right thing to say maybe gave me away.
‘Rob was lost tae us a lang time ago, John,’ she said sadly. ‘Mind hoo ye gang.’
I had to pass the Graham house and Minn came to mind, though in truth she is rarely out of it. I saw her in the distance yesterday evening so I know that she’s not employed at Netherside anymore. Had she been coming in my direction I would have tarried, made an excuse to engage her in conversation, but it’s probably just as well she wasn’t. I’ve often lain in bed at night wondering what I will say to her when the time comes.
I went back to the house and helped my mother where I could. She is hard wrocht with my father’s illness and I can see how it’s taking its toll on her. He’s at death’s door but, knowing Alex Birse, he’ll make heavy weather of it and fight to the last. My mother was spooning soup into his mouth one day when she told him Auld Nick must have the doors to Hell barred and was probably keeking out from the inside, hoping he would go away.
He managed to whisper, ‘I’ll slip in efter you,’ before another coughing fit sent the soup all over the clean sheets. ‘Thon’s what ye get for yer impertinence,’ he told her.
I miss having Jim in the house but he got home quicker than me and in better shape. He’s taken employment in Allerbank Pit at the brushing. It wasn’t practical for him to stay in Stoneyrigg, the walk each way to Allerbank being nearly an hour, so he took lodgings in the rows near his work. I look forward to his next visit home, a big smile on my face at the thought of it.
Davy is another kettle of fish and I watch him with interest. I’m struck by the changes in him but they are superficial. He still has the sleekit look of a cat on the prowl and fingers in too many pies. But he is working hard for the men through his position with the union and is well versed on matters of politics and industry. Steeny might be influencing him in that regard, steering him towards methods that can improve things through negotiation but I’ve known my brother for too long to be sure he won’t revert back to his old self. He is certainly more civilised in his habits. He’s taken to brushing his teeth and combing his hair. He tells my mother he’s changing his underwear weekly whether it’s needed or not – which has her in stitches – and he hasn’t once been caught spitting into the fire during meal times in all the days since I’ve come home. It’s enough to make me think there must be a woman in his life. I want to like him in the way brothers should like and respect each other but I cannot. I’ve lived under the same roof for too long, have been hurt too many times to let my guard down. I know that when his anger is up next, and things are not going to plan, I’ll be fair game. As soon as my father dies, Davy will be the man of the house. He’ll rule the roost and woe betide anybody who gets in his way.
A letter from the professors in Glasgow arrives sooner than expected. I’ve been invited to visit them today and they’ve sent me the fare for the journey so that I’m not inconvenienced. Mother has made me a piece – four slices of best plain bread from the Co-op thickly spread with butter and home-made raspberry jam. To think I was longing for this only weeks ago! As I walk along the road to the station, neighbours say Aye, John as they pass, men touch their bunnets and I do the same. I have entered the world of men. Women say Mornin’ and smile. And I say Mornin’ and smile back. It is the way of a civilised world to acknowledge each other’s existence with a simple greeting, to live together, and get along.
I am so enthralled by the pleasure of small things that I do not see who is coming along the road towards me. She is leading a group of children of various sizes and ages but I hardly notice them. My eyes are fixed on her, and her alone. She’s a little rounder and fuller in the face and her long black hair is pinned up on the back of her head but she is still the beautiful girl I admired across the schoolroom so many years ago. Her eyes are kind and they crinkle up at the sides when she smiles at me from far away, and I love her for it. But there is a sadness behind the full curve of her lips. It’s there in the shadows that fade into her pink cheeks. It’s there in the way she holds her head a little to the side, and the way her shoulders are hunched though that might be down to the weather. I know what happened, Minn, I say but not out loud. I know how much you must have loved him but it wasn’t enough and that must be a hard thing to bear.
‘Mornin’, John,’ she says.
I touch my cap, quite dumbstruck.
‘Say Mornin’ to John, Robbie,’ she says and that’s when I pay attention for the first time to the small child holding her hand.
He looks up from the folds of her skirt and waits a bit before doing as he’s told.
It takes a second or two to register. She has a bairn. I hunker down beside him, take his small gloved hand in mine and say that I’m pleased to meet him. He is his father’s son and no mistaking it.
‘He’s a fine lad, Minn,’ I say.
She has a hand on his shoulder and brings him in close to her. ‘Thanks, John.’ And they go on their way with the other children, back up the station road. Then she remembers something and calls out to me.
‘I’ll see you efter when I come round for ma supper! I’ve been invited!’
I raise my hand and watch her walking off with her bairn, talking all the while to him.
Supper, I say to myself. Minn is coming to supper at the house.
I am rooted to the spot and cannot move as it dawns on me. Davy? Davy and her? It cannot be, no it cannot be Minn. But why else would you… come for… supper? Surely not! I want to run after her and tell her what he’s like. She has suffered too much already to be shackled to him.
Then it comes to me – a plan! I could ask her to come with me to Glasgow and we would never need to come back. We could live like brother and sister and could be happy together. I could giv
e her and the boy a home and work hard for them. Maybe in time, things would change between us, once she saw how much I care for her. But the Glasgow train is coming to a halt in a skoosh of steam and I have to run because the timetable for the Caledonian Railway Company waits for no man and I am out of time.
I take my seat in a fog of disbelief, the truth of it dawning on me. As the countryside begins to move faster and faster past the window, I hurtle towards a future that is quite different to the one I played with in my imagination for long enough. The frosted hills are bonnie in the sunshine, in spite of the pits and the quarries that mark their flanks. There is no more beautiful sight than the hills of home though they may be no match for the spectacular mountains of Switzerland that held me and nursed me back to health. When I think back to the way those lofty peaks encircled me as I healed, I see them only for the prison they were, keeping me from my own place and the people who are dear to me. I cannot help but wish that I had come home sooner but it was not in my power to do so.
My heart is heavy as we approach the city and I know that I cannot live with regret and what could have been. If it is too late to change what might already have been arranged, I have to look forward and make the best of it.
Minn
It is a strange and wonderful thing that connection I feel with the folk I am acquainted with from my years at Blackrigg School. I greet them knowing that they know a lot about me and have a place for me in their memories. They know my father and where I live, the names of my sisters and who they’re married onto. They remember me in those years when I was growing up and all of my future was a mystery, and I mind the same about them. We knew the things that went wrong in families but we never blamed each other because we had no say in where we’d come from and who we lived with. Though it’s not in my nature to criticise the path that my school friends have taken, I know that’s not true of everybody. Some are quick to condemn what other folk have done or blame them for the misfortune that has befallen them. It’s hurt me to the core to know how some who I counted as friends carp about me behind my back because I have a child out of wedlock but I’ve found a strength I didn’t know I had before Robbie came along. Only Sarah and Annie know who the bairn’s father is and they will never tell. We are the best of friends and I owe them such a debt of gratitude.
When I see John coming down the road towards me, I feel that he will not pass judgement on me for having a bairn and no husband to show for it. John hasn’t had an easy time of it and understands that life doesn’t always turn out the way you might want. And so it proves. He is genuinely taken with Robbie and I am glad that he will be his uncle soon. There’s a sadness about John that makes me want to reach out to him, to protect him like a mother for a son or a sister for a special brother. I feel that we will be good friends as well as sister and brother-in-law when I am married to Davy. I held off from making the decision for long enough but my bairn needs a father and my mind is made up for his sake.
I am walking towards the steading with the children when I hear somebody running along Main Street. We stop our chattering, and even the bairns are taken with the sight of the woman, hurrying in our direction. It’s Miss Fraser but she isn’t coming to speak to us, as she normally would if she saw us. She’s stopped at the door of Smiddy Cottage and is taking her time rearranging her coat and putting a lock of hair back in its rightful place. She is staring at the door as if she has something very important to say and needs to go through it in her mind. She glances back and forward along the street and that’s when she catches sight of me and Robbie and the rest of the Graham clan.
I give her the biggest wave and an even bigger smile and she waves back before stepping forward to knock at the door. Whatever has to be said cannot wait any longer. The door has opened and there seems to be a bit of a delay while she’s left out in the cold. I take a deep breath as I wait to see what is about to unfold. Her hand goes to her throat and she steps back from the door, her eyes darting across the front of the cottage as if she is wondering what is going on inside and how long she will have to wait, even though she has already waited these many years past. I can see that she’s anxious but she’s standing her ground. Her mind is set. Then out comes Neil Tennant in his jacket and scarf and a moment later he has taken her hands in his while she speaks to him, saying her piece. He pulls her towards him and is suddenly sweeping her up in his arms, holding her like he’s making up for lost time. She reaches up to touch his hair and he kisses her full in the mouth for the longest time. They cannot take their eyes off each other. Then they begin walking up the hill road together, his arm around her.
I watch – entranced – until they are out of sight.
It’s a fine bright day with all of the frost about. The children are ahead of me, running and skipping, laughing together, full of stories and fun. We follow them, me and the bairn, hand-in-hand as we make our way towards the Rows.
‘Oan ye gang,’ I say to him, loosening my grip. ‘Catch them up.’
‘Robbie! Come oan!’ shouts Tommy, right on cue.
The bairn looks up at me, hesitant, and my heart melts. Then he takes off at a run into that beautiful icy morning when the sun is shining and the only sound is the laughter of children ringing out in the frozen air.
Author’s Note
In the final year of the Great War, my grandfather went ‘over the top’ with his battalion. As he ran towards enemy gun positions, he was wounded and left for dead in no man’s land. It is not known how long he lay injured in the stinking mud of the Western Front but he was discovered alive by a party of German soldiers sometime later. In an enemy field hospital, a German doctor performed life-saving surgery on his throat. Although the details are unclear, this may have involved the removal of cartilage from his hip to replace what had been damaged and, possibly, the repair of blood vessels in his neck. During the weeks that followed, he was removed from a POW camp by inspectors from the International Committee for the Red Cross ‘for humanitarian reasons’. They took him, with thousands of others, to Switzerland where he recovered during the final months of the war. The operation, performed under field hospital conditions, was so in advance of anything being done on the British side at the time that, after the war, he was asked to report to medical professors in both Edinburgh and Glasgow that they might learn from his case.
I was aware of this story when I was growing up and was slowly being drip fed triumphalism and the glorification of war by the British state. I never questioned the bravery, courage and sacrifice of soldiers and their families on the Allied side but, equally, I was never taken in by the wholesale condemnation of the people they faced across the battlefield. The humanity shown by the German working party, the medical staff of a German field hospital, and the workers of the ICRC saw my grandfather’s life spared in the midst of a conflict that took the lives of millions of others in the most brutal fashion. Were it not for the humanity shown towards my grandfather, my mother and her siblings would not have seen the light of day, nor the generations that came after. It is no exaggeration to write that, ultimately, I have the kindness of strangers to thank for the life I have today.
It was this story that inspired me to find out more about the life and times of my grandparents and, more widely, the people of the Scottish coalfield. That research led me to write Black Rigg and now its sequel, The Cold Blast. Hopefully, there will be a third in the series. Whilst the characters portrayed are entirely fictitious, the wider historical background is not.
PS Thank you to Billy for his factual account of a deceased West Lothian miner being taken home to his family by a group of his fellow workers after he had been killed in an accident in the pit. Finding no one at home, the body of the deceased was being delivered through a window when his widow appeared on the scene.
Also, thank you to Elaine for her description of her grandmother’s fur coat, worn in a group photograph of her family on the occasion of their eviction from their rent
ed company cottage in Cowie, Stirlingshire, following the death of her husband, Elaine’s grandfather, in a mining accident.