One Snowy Night

by Rita Bradshaw

  Of one mind, he and Fred fought to reach Ronnie and their father, aiming to stay on their feet amid the bodies on the ground and those folk struggling to get up to avoid being trampled by the horses’ hooves. He was close enough to Ronnie to see his little brother’s terrified face and his father slightly bent over the lad as he tried to protect him, when it happened. One of the policemen, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, saw what his father was doing, and purposely aimed for him. He brought his truncheon bang smack into the middle of John’s forehead, and as he crumpled, the policeman stretched right up in his saddle to take another swing at Ronnie who had frozen with fright. For a split second it was like watching something in slow motion, something that you know is going to happen but which you are powerless to prevent.

  Who threw the half-brick that hit the young policeman in the middle of his face Adam would never know, but there was no doubt that whoever it was saved his brother. One moment the raised baton had been aimed to smash down on Ronnie’s head, the next it had fallen from the policeman’s hand as he collapsed on the horse’s neck. As Adam grabbed Ronnie, Fred reached them, and then the three of them were pulling the inert figure of their father up off the ground. Somehow they struggled to the edge of the crowd, expecting any moment to have their skulls caved in. People were trying to get away and scattering here and there, some being chased by running police who were still striking out with vicious intent, and others, like them, lugging the injured along as best they could.

  ‘Pete and Walt?’ Fred gasped as he and Adam lifted their father between them and stumbled away from the crowd, Ronnie not saying a word for once.

  ‘They’ll have to look after themselves. We need to get Da home.’ And Ronnie too, by the look of it, although Adam didn’t voice this. His brother was covered in their father’s blood and where the red wasn’t showing stark and vivid, his face was as white as a sheet and he was clearly in shock.

  By the time they reached their parents’ house John had been violently sick twice and had regained consciousness enough to keep up a steady animal-like moaning. This sound, together with the sight of her husband covered in blood, vomit and horse faeces, was enough to send Adam’s normally unflappable mother into a panic. After stripping his clothes off him down to his vest and long johns, Adam and Fred cleaned their father up the best they could and put him to bed. He had a lump the size of an egg on his forehead and was mumbling a load of gibberish, both eyes were swollen shut and blood was still oozing from his nose although it wasn’t streaming as it had done at first.

  Ronnie had the skitters and had already been in and out to the privy umpteen times when Walt and Pete came in a while later, both bloodied and bruised but two of the walking wounded, unlike some of their comrades. According to Walt, a number of men had been arrested and taken away, and still more carted off to hospital and – Walt had added grimly – to the morgue if the sight of them was anything to go by.

  It had been a disaster from start to finish.

  The streets were quiet and deserted when Adam walked home some time later, and as he walked he knew he had made up his mind about one thing. No more marches, no more picketing, not for him at least. He wouldn’t be a scab, but neither would he put himself in the way of harm and leave Alice without a da. It was as simple as that. When this damn strike would end he didn’t know but somehow he’d have to see that his family got through. He owed Olive and the bairn that.

  Chapter Twenty

  Adam looked down at his plate. He had been expecting a bowl of the dirty-looking water that went under the name of fish soup that he and Olive had eaten for the last three days since he had found some fish and vegetable scraps under a stall at the market. He had managed to snare a rabbit a few days before after walking four miles into the country and waiting for nearly twenty-four hours in the bitter cold before one took the bait, and that had been eked out with potatoes each day for Alice. But this wasn’t rabbit.

  He said nothing but raised his eyes to Olive who had just sat down herself. It was late and Alice was in bed; he had been walking for hours, going as far as Washington knocking on doors and asking if the householder wanted any odd jobs doing, all to no avail. It was October and the strike had been going on for six months; people had given all that they had in money, food, clothing or little bits and pieces they didn’t want any more but which could be sold for a few pennies.

  Olive met his gaze. She had always been thin but now she was skeletal, her skin pasty and her long, narrow face appearing almost fleshless. He knew that ever since the strike had started she had been going without so Alice could eat, the spectres of consumption or pernicious anaemia ever present. Although Alice was pale and washed-out-looking, up to now Olive had been able to prevent the ringworm and impetigo that practically all the bairns hereabouts were now suffering from, along with mouthfuls of ulcers, bleeding gums and eyes full of sties.

  Her hands clasped together but her voice calm, Olive said, ‘It’s a couple of slices of the brawn my mam brought round and a few potatoes and peas.’

  He noticed that the slice on her own plate was paper thin and this moderated his tone when he said, ‘And how did your mam get the shin beef and cow heel and ham bone to make the brawn? They’re slowly starving on your da’s war pension as it is.’

  ‘It was given them.’

  ‘By her.’

  ‘By Ruby, aye. She is their daughter, after all.’

  Keeping hold of his temper with some effort, Adam said tightly, ‘And she would have meant for them to eat what she gave, not give it away, surely?’

  ‘She—’

  ‘What?’

  He knew the food was for them, Olive thought. In July when the strike had still dragged on Ruby had come on a visit and brought their mam various things and left a shopping bag full of food for Adam and Alice and herself too. She had made the mistake of telling Adam this rather than hiding the food and slowly doling it out, which in hindsight would have been the sensible thing to do, but she hadn’t expected his reaction. He’d been furious that day, refusing to eat anything Ruby had given them and telling her that she and Alice must have it between them, but that she wasn’t to accept another thing from her sister. She didn’t tell him that there had been five shillings along with the food that day, and when Ruby had visited their mam twice since then and each time left shopping and a few shillings for them, somehow she had managed to conceal it from Adam. It had meant Alice was fed and for that she would have defied the Devil himself. But Adam was looking ill and his clothes were hanging off him and today she had made the decision that enough was enough.

  Very quietly, she said, ‘You need to eat and keep your strength up, Adam. How are you going to be able to work down the pit when the strike’s over if you’re ill? Ruby – Ruby wants to help us.’

  ‘I don’t want her help.’ Now his voice was like the crack of a whip. ‘Let her play the Lady Bountiful with your mam an’ da – I’ll look after us.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘But you can’t,’ but she bit it back just in time. When the strike had first begun it hadn’t been so bad. Adam had joined his da and brothers and other men fishing the rivers and the sea, and she and Alice with the women and children picking winkles, crabs, seaweed and sea coal. Adam had fetched sand from the beach, washed it in buckets and sold it to builders and anybody else who could use it, and as a family they’d gone to the farms dotted around the countryside near Sunderland and picked potatoes and turnips and got paid a few pennies by the farmer or given swedes and kale and other vegetables by way of payment. She and Alice had gone to the lodge hall and joined the little army of women and bairns making clippy mats and tea cosies and scarves and socks with old woollens kind folk had donated, and the men had set to digging gardens, fixing roofs, cleaning chimneys and even doing tinker’s work by repairing kettles and pans and doing soldering jobs. Everything and anything they’d done as a community, all pulling together and united by common purpose, and in spite of t
he worry of where their next mouthful of food was coming from and how the rent was going to be paid, she’d found she was actually happy. Adam had been different; they’d been standing shoulder to shoulder like a real married couple and he had talked to her and even laughed now and again. But he hadn’t touched her in bed. It was as though in his softening attitude towards her that side of things had become unimportant to him, which she didn’t understand. He was a man, wasn’t he, and men had needs as he had demonstrated since their marriage night.

  And not just men. Since she had admitted to herself that she loved him, she had longed for the very thing that she had feared for so many months and years; for his hands on her body, him inside her, needing her, wanting her, if only for the slaking of that primeval physical hunger on his part. When he took her he knew it was her and not Ruby beneath him. But he still cared about Ruby; even the way he was over her sister trying to help them out proved that. He didn’t want to appear any the less than he had always been where Ruby was concerned. It shouldn’t hurt, but it did.

  Bone weary and suddenly bereft, she spoke what was in her heart for once. ‘She’s not looking down on us, Adam. Ruby isn’t like that, you know she isn’t. And you need something in your belly.’

  He moved his head from side to side but he didn’t snap at her as she had expected. Instead of demanding she be quiet, he said softly, ‘I didn’t expect you of all people to be championing your sister.’

  ‘Why? I did her a great wrong, not the other way round. And – and I ruined your life too.’

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I might have agreed with you about that once, but things change. People change.’ His voice sounded tired as he went on, ‘I had to see her again to realize that the girl I loved is no more and the woman she’s become wouldn’t suit me any more than I would suit her. At first, after I saw her in the street that day, I told myself she’d had to change because of the circumstances you and I had thrust upon her, but I don’t think that’s it now. She was always a go-getter. We used to laugh about it, her and I, and she’d call me a stick-in-the-mud. But I don’t think we would have continued to laugh about our differences, Olive. Not for long, anyway. I looked at her that day in her fine clothes and talking different and I told myself she was just trying to ape her betters, but the thing is she always was better. Better than round here, I mean. She would never have needed me like I needed her. She would have been my world but I wouldn’t have been nearly enough for her.’

  His world. Oh, that she could have inspired such love in him; she would gladly give the rest of her life for one day and night of him feeling like that about her. Through her misery, Olive managed to say evenly, ‘Be that as it may, what I did was unforgivable.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t, because Ruby forgave you and so do I. All right? And I wasn’t whiter than white, now, was I? And that night gave us Alice, don’t forget that. Can you honestly say you would change it if you could and not have the bairn?’

  She shook her head, her throat too full to speak.

  ‘You’re a good woman, Olive.’ And when she went to protest, he held up his hand. ‘You’ve put up with me without complaint for one thing,’ he added in a lighter tone, aiming to bring a smile to her face, and when she continued to stare at him, her eyes expressing her pain and something else, something that caused him to become hot with surprise and embarrassment, he suddenly found himself out of his depth. She was fond of him. More than fond. After all he’d put her through and the way he had used her in the bedroom, worse than a man would use one of the whores down at the docks, she loved him. He didn’t know what to do. Strangely, because never in a month of Sundays would he have expected to feel this way, he had the desire to comfort her. Just that, comfort her.

  He stood up, moving round the table and then drawing her to her feet and into his arms, and when her thin, taut body relaxed against him and her head buried itself in his shoulder, he murmured, ‘We’re a team, lass, you and I an’ the bairn.’ He couldn’t say he loved her because it wasn’t true, but as he held his wife to him it dawned on him that he didn’t know himself at all; perhaps no man did. Four years ago he would have sworn on oath that Ruby was the right one for him and that in losing her his life was over. And he had stubbornly held on to that belief, refusing to consider anything else, rejecting his daughter and causing this woman in his arms untold misery. But now, now he knew that if Ruby was to walk in here this minute and ask him to go away with her, he’d say no. And mean it. What did that say about him? He didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand anything these days, but one thing he was certain of. He cared about Olive and he wanted to make her as happy as he could, her and the bairn.

  He could feel her trembling through his own body and, pity uppermost, he said softly, ‘If it means that much to you I’ll accept anything your sister gives with good grace, all right? I don’t like it, any more than I like having to take what amounts to handouts from other folk since this strike started, truth be known. Every time I knock on someone’s door asking if they’ve any work they want doing and see their faces, I know they’re sick of us, and who can blame them? Some of the women whose menfolk are in work have had their knives and scissors almost worn away with sharpening, and they must have more tea cosies and doorstops and clippy mats than they know what to do with. I was brought up to look after me own and ask nowt of anyone and all this sticks in my craw, lass.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Through her tears, she mumbled, ‘And you do look after us.’

  ‘Not really, and we can’t win this fight. Everyone knows it but no one’s saying it. The rest of the world is going along as normal – no one’s interested in the coal miners any more. They’re getting coal from abroad and to them coal is coal. They don’t care if it comes from our old enemy the Germans or anybody else, damn them. That is, if they even bother to consider where it’s from, which I doubt. The general strike came and went and folk were inconvenienced for a few days but that was all it meant to them. This struggle’s been for nowt, that’s what gets me the most.’ He put her slightly from him, looking down into her tear-drenched face as he said, ‘Come on, come and eat your dinner an’ I’ll eat mine but only if you add a bit more to your plate.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. Like you said to me, you need to keep your strength up. Alice needs you.’ He paused. ‘And so do I.’

  In the middle of November the miners finally agreed to end the pit strike. Seeing their wives and children starve in freezing-cold houses with no heat, no hot water, no food and with everything they had in the pawnshops, accomplished what the coal owners and the government had been unable to do. Bairns weak from eating scraps that should have gone to pigs and sleeping on the floor under old newspapers because their beds and blankets were in the pawnshops had beaten the men. They had lost everything and won not one concession; it was a defeat of momentous proportions.

  On the day that the colliery opened, Adam joined the other miners gathered at the gates. It was a bitterly cold day and sleet was falling, the sky leaden and dark. There was a list of names on the noticeboard on the gate beside the terms that had been up there for seven long months and which they’d fought so hard and suffered so much to change. If your name was there, it meant you had a job. If it wasn’t, it meant the owners were having their final revenge on those they saw as troublemakers and agitators. Adam’s name was there, along with his brothers’. His father’s wasn’t. The five of them stood together, staring at the board, his father’s mouth working as though he was chewing something. John hadn’t been the same since the night he had been so badly injured. He had barely known what day it was for some time, and when he had finally come to himself he had been subdued and distant, often not speaking for hours on end.

  Now as John stared at the list he shrugged. ‘Thought as much.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Da.’ Adam shook his head. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘When did fair have anything to do with it?’

  ‘You an’ M
am’ll be all right,’ Walt said quietly. ‘We’ll all see to that.’

  ‘You’ve got your own families to take care of.’

  ‘Aye, an’ you an’ Mam are part of ’em. We’ll all put in a bit till they take you back on, and they will sooner or later. You’re one of the best hewers in the pit, everyone knows that.’

  Adam had been reading the list. There were a lot of skilled men like his father who were excellent workers whose names were absent because of their political beliefs and the way they’d spoken up in the past. He swallowed hard. Those that could go back would – families were depending on them – but if they’d thought they had it bad before it was going to get a darn sight worse. The owners had them by the short and curlies, that was for sure. They wouldn’t be able to wipe their noses without risking the sack.

  The four brothers stood together and watched their father shuffle off down the street. Adam had never thought of his da as an old man; John was over sixty, it was true, and his life down the pit since he was a lad of thirteen had marked his body, but his zest for life and belligerence and pride of himself as the head of a family of five lads had made him seem ageless. But not any more.

  As one, they walked through the colliery gates and into the yard where the deputy eyed them up and down. Most of the deputies Adam liked – they were just miners like him, he’d told himself in the past whenever one of them had docked a lad’s wage or argued the toss about something or other – but this one, Norman Boyce, was a nasty bit of work and a boss’s man to the soul of him.