by Maggie Hope
‘We’ll go down to the Black Swan.’
‘Can we just stay here for a little while?’
‘Cath, what do you think I am? I’m not made of stone.’
Cath sighed. ‘Righto. We’ll go.’
They drove down Langley Dale and into Staindrop where he pulled up outside the Black Swan.
‘Your parents won’t be about, will they?’ Cath had painful memories of the time she had drunk too much wine at the Drummonds’ house.
Mark laughed. ‘Don’t worry. They bought a television. They won’t be able to tear themselves away from it.’
They sat in a corner of the snug and Cath drank lemonade while Mark had a beer.
‘They don’t do food,’ said Mark. ‘We can go to—’ he stopped short as the door opened and in came his mother and father with another couple. They were laughing together over something and at first, Daphne didn’t notice Mark and Cath sitting quietly in the corner. When she did she stopped laughing.
‘Excuse me a minute,’ she said to the others and walked over to them. Mark stood up.
‘Hello, Mother,’ he said.
‘Mark. Were you going to let me know you were in the village?’ So far she had ignored Cath, but now she looked at her properly. ‘How are you, Miss, er, I don’t think Mark ever told us your surname.’
‘Raine. Catherine Raine,’ said Cath. Mark began to apologise for his omission but his mother interrupted him.
‘Raine? Where are you from?’ she demanded. Then, realising she sounded abrupt, she went on, ‘I used to know some Raines from one of the colliery villages near Bishop Auckland, Eden Hope, it was. I don’t suppose you are related in any way?’ It sounded like a casual question, but Cath detected a note of strain underlying her tone and was puzzled. She looked closely at Mrs Drummond. Under her make-up she was very white. Perhaps she was ill.
‘Well?’
Cath glanced at Mark then returned to the question. ‘I am, yes. I was brought up in Eden Hope.’
‘Eden Hope?’
‘Are you all right, Mother?’ Mark moved to his mother’s side and cupped her elbow. ‘Do you want to sit down?’
Daphne shrugged him off. ‘No. No, I don’t. Where’s your father?’ She was trembling with some strong emotion and Cath’s heart sank. Mark’s mother seemed to hate her.
‘What’s the matter? What is it?’ Nigel Drummond had come up behind his wife and put his arm around her.
‘Nigel,’ she whispered. ‘This – this girl is from Eden Hope Colliery. Her name is Raine.’ She looked up at him piteously. ‘I want to go home.’
Everyone in the room was looking at them; it had gone very quiet. Mark stepped towards Cath, who had risen to her feet.
‘We’ll go with them, see if there is anything we can do. Get a doctor, perhaps?’
‘No!’ The cry was loud in the snug. ‘I don’t want her in my house. Nigel!’
‘It’s all right, dear. Come on, we’ll go.’
As they went out of the room with Nigel supporting his wife, he murmured apologies. Mark and Cath followed them on to the pavement.
‘I’ll sit in the car. You go with them,’ said Cath. ‘I don’t mind, really I don’t.’
She sat in the car and watched as they walked up the road and over the green to their home. She sat for twenty minutes, then half an hour and then it was a full hour. She didn’t know what to do. She considered going to the front door of the house and knocking, telling Mark she would catch a bus to Bishop Auckland and find her way home from there. But she was nervous of doing that.
Daphne hated her for showing up that Sunday lunchtime. Yet it wasn’t that; it was something worse than that. It was finding out what her name was and that she came from Eden Hope. Daphne obviously had heard of her mother’s reputation, perhaps of the trouble with Annie. A girl was attacked and a lot of people thought it her own fault, that she must have done something to provoke it.
Maybe it was just the fact that she came from a mining village. Some people still thought of the miners as scum. And Daphne was a social climber if ever she saw one. A miner’s daughter just wasn’t good enough for her son, who had been an officer in the army.
Bitter thoughts chased themselves round and round in Cath’s head. She couldn’t work out why any of this should make Mrs Drummond ill. She was suddenly aware of how cold she was: stiff and cold. She got out of the car and buttoned up her coat and walked up and down for a while. In the distance she saw the last bus from Barnard Castle to Bishop Auckland coming along the road. It halted at a stop further up the road and she scribbled a hasty note to Mark. ‘Caught the bus. Cath.’ It was all she had time for as the bus drove up to the stop a few yards away. She pushed the note under the windscreen wiper of the car and ran to the stop.
‘Took your time, didn’t you?’ asked the conductor. ‘We want to get home tonight too, you know.’
‘Sorry,’ Cath replied. ‘Thanks for waiting.’
As they drove out of the village and through the darkened fields she gazed at her reflection in the window unseeingly. She was tired and hungry and she had yet to find her way from the town to Half Hidden Cottage for the buses would have stopped running for the night. Well, she would just have to walk. Mark must have forgotten she was waiting outside the house. Yet he had said he loved her.
Cath took the short cut through the fields to Winton then walked up the old wagon way to Eden Hope. It was very dark, but cut at least a mile from her journey and the railway lines were easy to follow even in the darkest patches. She was almost too tired to be nervous. She concentrated on putting one foot before the other and counting the sleepers.
She passed the part where the line divided, one going to Old Pit. She could see the tops of the old houses, now in ruins, as a ray of moonlight came through the clouds and showed them in a break in the trees and overgrown bushes by the line. She shivered and quickened her step. ‘Rest in peace,’ she whispered as the local children did when they passed.
In spite of the short cuts it took over an hour for Cath to reach the final path that led up through the woods to Half Hidden Cottage. By this time she was exhausted and she paused for a few moments before the climb. Looking back on Eden Hope the only lights seemed to be those of the colliery yard. The miners were working extra shifts as the country was still recovering from the war. As she watched, the winding wheel turned to bring up the cage and soon there was a string of lights twinkling along the streets as the night-shift men made their way home. For all that she was going in the opposite direction, they made her feel she wasn’t quite alone in the night. She turned and plodded steadily up the path. At least the sky had cleared properly and the moonlight lit the way.
Cath had almost reached the point where the path levelled out and became broader when she thought she heard footsteps behind her. She stopped and listened but after a few seconds decided she must have been mistaken. It was probably one of the miners going to the end houses of the village. Pit boots had steel studs and they were very noisy.
At last she got to the end of the path and was almost on the road. The opening to the drive of Half Hidden Cottage was only a few yards away. Thank goodness for that. She had been mad to come home the way she had. She could have knocked on her father’s door and asked for a bed for the night. Gerda would not have been too pleased, but she—
‘Got you!’
The voice coming out of the darkness behind her shocked her to the core. She pulled her arm away violently but it was held in a vice-like grip. She screamed.
‘Nay lass, no one will hear you, not here. And if they did they’d think it was nowt but a vixen. There’s a few foxes round about.’
It was Eric. Still in his pit gear he switched the light in his helmet on and the beam fixed on her face and reflected on his. He was grinning, the whites of his eyes gleaming in a face blackened with coal dust.
‘Let me go, Eric, let me go!’ she hissed at him but for answer he pulled her to him and held her practically immobile. The memory
of the time he had held her down on the grass all those years ago came vividly back to her. ‘What do you want?’ she asked desperately, feeling the hardness of his body and smelling the rank, sulphurous smell of damp coal on his clothes. She struggled to free herself but he was too strong for her.
‘I just wanted to remind you of what I said before,’ he replied. ‘I meant it. But mind, I was surprised to see you the night when I came to bank out of the pit. Been out whoring, have you?’
‘Leave me alone, Eric!’
Cath stopped struggling; she had to control her fear, had to make out she wasn’t frightened.
‘Oh aye, I’ll leave you alone,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t touch you, you filthy bitch.’ He held her hands with one of his and ran the other over her body, squeezing her breasts and grasping at her between her legs. She had to move then, even though he twisted her arms cruelly backwards.
‘No, I’ll not touch you this time,’ he said. ‘Mind, I’m not finished with you yet. We’ll meet again,’ he said, taking his hand away. ‘You’re not to my taste at all, any road. No, I just thought I’d show you what a real man is like.’ He pulled one of her hands down and pressed it against his crotch, moving suggestively as he did so.
Cath was suddenly galvanised into action. She grabbed his belt with her free hand and kneed him as hard as she could. Eric let go of her and howled with anguish, bending double with the pain. Cath didn’t wait another moment. She turned and ran as fast as she could, her exhaustion forgotten.
It was only minutes before she was pounding up the drive and fumbling with the lock of the front door of Half Hidden Cottage. All the time she expected to hear him coming behind her, but she got inside and locked the door and leaned against it until her heartbeat slowed.
She went upstairs and ran a bath, even though the water was barely tepid. Getting in, she scrubbed the coal dust and the feel of his hands from her body then changed the water and did it all over again. At last she got out and wrapped a towel round her and walked back to her bedroom. As she passed her mother’s room she could hear her gentle snore; Sadie had not woken.
Cath climbed into bed and lay in the dark and at last the events of the day crowded in on her, one awful image succeeding another as she tried to push them out of her mind. She hardly knew if she was waking or dreaming as she saw Annie’s sad face then Daphne Drummond’s, filled with contempt and, over all, the grinning mask of Eric’s as he said he wasn’t finished with her. Towards morning, she began to weep and she wept steadily for a while. Then, as though the tears were the beginning of healing, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter Twenty-five
‘What in the world’s the matter with you?’ demanded Sadie. ‘I’ve asked you twice when you’re going back to Durham. Are you going deaf?’
Cath started and turned round from where she had been gazing out of the sitting-room window at nothing in particular.
‘Sorry. What did you say?’
‘I asked you when you were going back to Durham. Only I’m expecting Henry this afternoon and he won’t want you hanging around like a wet week.’ Sadie gazed critically at Cath. ‘An’ another thing, you’re losing weight. Your clothes are hanging off you. You are beginning to look like a refugee from Belsen.’
‘I’m all right. And I’m going back this afternoon.’
‘Good.’ Sadie’s eyes narrowed as she prepared to continue her litany of complaints. ‘You’re not having a bairn, are you? Sometimes people go very thin at first—’
‘I’m not having a bairn!’ The denial burst out of Cath. ‘Leave me alone, Mam, please.’
‘Well, all right. But before you go get yourself something to eat.’
‘Righto.’ Cath went into the kitchen and took bread and cheese from the pantry and cut herself a cheese sandwich. She mashed a pot of tea and called Sadie through for a cup. Sadie sat with her elbows on the table holding the cup to her lips and watched while Cath ate the sandwich.
‘You should have put some pickle on that,’ she observed.
‘Mam,’ said Cath, putting down her sandwich. ‘Mam, has anyone been hanging around lately?’
‘Hanging around? Don’t be daft, Henry would give anyone short shrift if they hung about here. Go on, eat your sandwich. You’re not going until you do. You’ve had nowt today so far.’
Cath was a bit surprised and touched at the show of concern; it wasn’t one of Sadie’s characteristics. Her mother had even noticed what she had eaten. She warmed to her.
‘Any road, what do you mean?’ asked Sadie.
‘Well, do you still get any resentment from the folk at Eden Hope?’
‘Of course not. I don’t see them often. I don’t go that way. Henry and me go to Newcastle when I want anything to wear and he sends me groceries down from the Hall.’
‘It’s just that Eric Bowron is back from the army—’
Sadie interrupted. ‘Oh, listen, that’s Henry’s car. I’ll go and let him in.’ She put down her cup on its saucer with a clatter and rushed out to the front door.
Cath heard their voices in the hall and then they went into the sitting room and closed the door after them. Well, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind man, Cath thought, as she took the pots to the sink and washed and dried them. She might as well go. In any case, it wasn’t likely that Eric would bother her mother, not when Sadie had Henry to protect her. Some good things came out of the relationship after all.
Half an hour later she popped her head round the door and said her goodbyes then let herself out in good time to catch the bus to Durham. As she turned the corner from the drive she saw Eric standing across the road. He was just standing, leaning on the fence with one leg crossed over the other and grinning. Fury erupted in her. She strode across to him, not even considering keeping a safe distance between them.
‘What do you want? What?’ she screamed at him. His grin grew wider.
‘By,’ he said, ‘you’re fair stotting, aren’t you? And here am I just minding my own business, taking a walk in the countryside on a nice Sunday afternoon. Everything’s not always to do with you, you know.’
‘I’ll have the law on you, I will, I will,’ Cath shouted at him. ‘And if I find out it was you bothered our Annie and made her—’
‘Bothered your Annie? She’s the loony, isn’t she? I never bothered your Annie in me life.’ He looked up the road. ‘Were you going for this bus that’s coming up the road? You’d best hurry or you’ll miss it.’
The bus was indeed coming up to the stop and Cath had to run and wave at the driver to catch it. She jumped on and took a seat, looking out of the window as she tried to catch her breath. Eric was still standing there. He was nodding and smiling and waving his arm as though he was seeing her off. Abruptly she looked away.
Yet her anger had somehow cleared her fear of him. She wasn’t going to let him get the better of her, oh no, she was not. As the bus moved away she turned back to him and smiled, a contemptuous sort of smile, she hoped. She did have the satisfaction of seeing his eyes shift before they lost eye contact.
Suddenly she felt ravenously hungry. She rummaged in her bag for the half-bar of chocolate she had left from the last time she’d been to the pictures and ate some of it. Then she allowed herself to fall into a doze, which was interrupted every few minutes as the bus pulled into a stop. She’d had next to no sleep last night. Tonight she would cook a proper meal and go to bed early.
In Gilesgate she went straight up to her room and closed the curtains to keep out the darkness of the late afternoon. Stripping off her clothes she put on an old nightgown and fleecy bedjacket and looked in the cupboard behind the curtain to see what supplies she had in. Not much, she saw: a tin of Heinz spaghetti and a couple of sprouting potatoes. Well, she’d just have a lie-down and worry about food later.
It was warm under the bedclothes and her legs, aching from all the walking she had done the night before, sank into the soft feather mattress. She thought about Mark with an aching sense
of loss. Surely he would have come out to her if he’d thought about her at all? She couldn’t let her feelings for Mark run away with her. But she was too exhausted to think about it for long, let alone worry about it. Slowly her eyes closed and she slept.
There was a Christmas party at work. Not much of a one, just a few drinks and titbits, and it was held in the last hour of the working day so that anyone who lived at a distance from Durham could get home at a reasonable time. They crammed into the new manager, Mr Graves’s, room and he poured glasses of cheap fizzy wine or orange juice for them.
Joan, who had left the year before to get married, came in with her baby in a pushchair and everyone oohed and aahed at the tiny boy.
‘You’re not courting at the minute, then?’ Joan asked Cath.
‘Emm, well, not really,’ said Cath, thinking of Mark. But it looked like he’d finished with her.
‘Well, you did right to get rid of that Brian, he was a drip,’ said Joan. ‘Enjoy your freedom while you can. This party is likely to be the highlight of my Christmas. My Charlie’s not one for going out much.’ Joan had married a boy from the Surveyor’s Department. She had an air of discontent about her.
Cath took a limp sausage roll from the plate on Mr Graves’s desk and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘At least you’ve got Jimmy,’ she said. ‘He’s a little darling.’
‘You should hear him in the middle of the night,’ said Joan. ‘Charlie doesn’t get up, of course, he has to go to work next day. And for a little ’un, Jimmy can pee like a navvy with twelve pints of beer in him. I can’t wait to get him potty-trained. I’m sick of dripping nappies.’
‘Aw, Joan, cheer up a bit, will you? I tell you—’
She was interrupted by Mr Graves who came over to them and began chatting, asking Joan about Charlie and ogling Cath as he had taken to doing lately.
‘I tell you what,’ said Joan when he had moved on reluctantly. ‘He fancies you.’
