by Maggie Hope
‘Nobody,’ said Bob, twisting his face away.
‘It was Ralph Cornish, Mam,’ said Alf. Alf was already kneeling before the tin bath, stripped to the waist and lathering himself with a bar of carbolic soap.
‘Ralph Cornish? But he’s a full-grown man!’ exclaimed Mam. ‘Whatever did he do that for?’
‘He said our Bob was cheeky,’ said Alf. He bent over the bath and dipped his head under the water, rinsing off the lather before reaching for the towel which Hannah was automatically holding out to him.
‘An’ were you, Bob?’ Mam asked quietly.
There was a low growl from Jake. ‘If he was, do you think that gives a ruffian like Ralph Cornish the right to hit a bit lad like Bob? What are you thinking about, woman?’
‘I didn’t say anything, Mother,’ said Bob. He was the only one to call Nora Mother. ‘We were just coming out of the pit-yard gate and he pushed me out of the way and I asked him who he thought he was pushing, that’s all.’
‘I told you to keep out of his way,’ said Alf. ‘He takes after his da, that one, they’re both of them bullies.’
Jake swore. ‘By God,’ he said, ‘if I only had the use of my legs I’d go up there now and show him what for. Like his da, do you say? He hasn’t got a da, that one, or if he has, nobody knows who it is. Wesley Cornish took up with his mother when Ralph was a bairn. Aye, and left his own wife and bairns to God and Providence an’ all, he did. That Ralph’s a bas –’
‘Jake!’ Nora cut him off sharply. ‘The children are listening. Don’t use bad language in my house.’
Hannah and Jane were indeed listening, wide-eyed. Their father’s head was moving restlessly from side to side in agitation on the pillow of the ‘chariot’. Harry got under the table and stuck his thumb in his mouth.
Hannah’s brow creased in puzzlement. What did Da mean, Ralph Cornish hadn’t got a da? She couldn’t understand that at all.
‘Why, man, it’s enough to make a saint swear,’ said Jake, but his voice was quieter though still bitter. Nora shook her head at him and turned back to Bob.
‘Let’s get that face washed, lad,’ she said. ‘Betty, come on, we’ll empty the bath and fill it with some fresh water.’
‘It’s cold water that eye needs,’ counselled Jake. Before his accident he had started a first-aid course as part of his training to become a deputy. An ambition which was lost now, ‘like snow on the oven top’, as Nora had commented sadly.
‘You’ll have to wash up the dishes tonight, Hannah,’ said Betty. ‘I’ve got enough to do with the mending and darning.’
‘But we have to go to the choir practice, it’s the last one before the carol singing,’ said Hannah, dismayed. Hannah loved the chapel choir. She had a fine voice, pure and strong for her age and already showing signs of deepening to mezzo-soprano.
‘If you hurry you can still go, it’s not until six o’clock, is it? I can see to your da after that,’ said her mother, and Hannah relaxed.
‘We’re going carol singing all round the village on Sunday night,’ she announced happily. ‘Mr Hodgson says we’re even going up to the manager’s house, even to Mr Durkin’s house an’ all. We’re taking the little harmonium too, if it doesn’t snow, like.’ She was torn between wanting it to snow for Christmas and wanting to sing with the accompaniment of the harmonium.
Nora’s face hardened at the mention of Mr Durkin. She had not forgotten the humiliation she had had to endure from him at the colliery office.
‘You’ll not get much out of the agent,’ she observed tartly. ‘And his house is a mile and a half away from the village an’ all, it’ll be a long way to walk for nowt. Still, I dare say Mr Hodgson reckons he knows best, he’s the choirmaster, after all.’
The snow came during the night, but left only a thin covering, which crisped into ice crystals soon after it fell. There was a little more on Sunday morning, as the children sat in Sunday school, and Mr Hodgson, who was a Sunday school superintendent as well as choirmaster, had a harder time than usual keeping order. The children were excited to see the soft flakes falling past the high windows. They sang ‘In the Deep Mid-Winter’, and Hannah threw herself into it heart and soul, imagining to herself the Baby in a cold, draughty stable with snow falling outside just as it was falling in Winton now.
By the time the Sunday school was out, the snow had stopped and a strong, freezing wind was blowing down on them from the fells to the west.
‘I’m cold,’ whined Harry. Hannah tied his muffler in a cross over his chest and fastened it at the back.
‘We’ll have a race home,’ she said. She and Harry went whooping along the row and into the house, with Jane trailing behind them looking white and cold.
‘Does Father Christmas come tonight?’ Harry asked his mother as he’d asked her every day for a week.
‘Only to good boys and girls,’ said Nora.
‘Father Christmas!’ said Bob scornfully, but his mother quelled him with a look.
At seven o’clock, the choir assembled outside the chapel. Hannah stamped her boots on the frozen ground and tucked her chin in her mother’s shawl which was tied over her coat, but she was so excited she didn’t really feel the cold. This was the first year she had been allowed to sing with the grown-up choir, not just with the Sunday school singers, and she held her candle carefully even though it was not yet lit, not here under the street lights lit by gas from the colliery. The candle was for when they walked out to the manager’s house in Old Winton and then on up to Durham Road, where Lord Akers’s agent, Mr Durkin, lived.
‘You stick close to me, mind,’ Betty admonished. ‘I don’t want you dancing off on your own like you do.’
Betty was more bossy every day, Hannah reflected as she moved her fingers about inside her mitts in an attempt to warm them up. The mitts were really a pair of Da’s socks but they were nice and warm, each sock folded over on itself to make a double layer of wool. There was a burst of male laughter and she looked over to where Alf was standing with a group of men and boys. He was holding his hand in a funny way, she thought; staring hard, she saw the tiny red glow and realised he was holding a cigarette, turned back into his cupped hand to hide it. Quickly, she moved to stand between him and Betty. If Betty saw Alf smoking she would be sure to tell Da.
When Mr Hodgson came out with Laurie, his son, who was the organ player, they were carrying the tiny harmonium between them. At last the singers were off.
‘By, it’s grand, isn’t it, Betty?’ Hannah cried as they trudged away from the rows of miners’ cottages to the village. They had sung two carols at each end of each row. Alf and his friends had rattled their collecting boxes labelled ‘METHODIST MISSION TO THE POOR’ and almost every household in the rows had contributed a penny; Mr Holmes had put in sixpence. Hannah crunched the thin, icy layer of snow beneath her boots, fairly dancing along as she wondered what it would be like to be ‘the Poor’ and not have any money at all, not even the compensation, nor a house to live in. She gazed up at the clear starry sky and wondered which one was the Star of Bethlehem.
‘It’ll be grand when we get back home,’ said Betty dourly. Hannah’s excitement dimmed a little, but only for a minute. They had just reached old Winton and Mr Hodgson halted before the Black Boy. The choir gathered round the harmonium under the swinging sign with its picture of a little pit lad with a candle in his hat.
‘Once in Royal David’s City’ rang through the air and men tumbled out of the inn, some with tankards of beer in their hands. Hannah knew a lot of them, for they were neighbours and friends of her father’s. There were some disapproving looks among the choir but the collecting boxes were satisfactorily heavier by the time Alf and his friends had done the rounds of the drinkers and she was glad for the sake of the Poor.
However, farther along the street the choir met with the opposition. The vicar and his party of waits from St Martin’s, the village church, were out carol singing too. After the first clash of hymns, Mr Hodgson decided the be
st thing to do was take his choir elsewhere.
‘We only show them up with our singing, anyroad,’ he said. ‘Howay, lads and lasses, we’ll away up to Durham Road to the agent’s place.’
‘Mebbe you’d better go home, our Hannah, it’s a long way to Durham Road,’ said Betty.
Hannah gasped with dismay. ‘I want to come,’ she cried. ‘I can walk, I’m not tired.’
‘Let her come, Betty,’ said Alf, ‘lest we never hear the last of it.’
‘Well, all right,’ Betty conceded, ‘but you’d better keep up, mind.’
Durham Road was really nearer to Bishop Auckland than Winton and the party set off on the short cut across the fields. It was quite a climb in places but Hannah forced herself to keep well to the front of the party, just to show Betty she could manage.
At last they reached the house and trooped up the drive. The laughing and talking quietened as they approached the house, most of them walking more slowly as they got near to the imposing stone pillars before the front door.
‘Now then,’ said Mr Hodgson, ‘light your candles now. Don’t step on the grass, mind, keep to the gravel.’
Guilty feet shuffled off the grass and the choir clustered round the harmonium, their uplifted faces lit by the glow of the candles. Hannah gazed at the light shining through a chink in the curtains and her heart began to beat rapidly. She was frightened of Mr Durkin – would he chase them away? Mr Durkin didn’t like pit folk, he’d said so that day at the colliery office.
The harmonium started up and the choir sang ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’. Suddenly they were bathed in a light which put the candles to shame as the curtains were drawn back.
‘Electric,’ breathed Hannah. She’d seen electric light before, but only in the shops in Newgate Street. She forgot to sing as she gazed into the room, at the red plush armchairs and the huge Christmas tree in the corner, twinkling with gold and silver ornaments and topped by a big fairy with shining silver wings. And then she forgot about the Christmas tree as she saw Timothy, the boy who had been in the car, standing by the window, smiling straight at her.
The choir finished their carol and the door opened. Hannah shrank back against her sister but it was not Mr Durkin who came to the door, it was a stranger, tall and haughty, dressed in a funny sort of black jacket and striped trousers.
‘The master says you’re to come into the hall, and mind you wipe your feet,’ he announced grandly, looking over the heads of the choir as though he was speaking to the trees at the end of the drive. Hannah looked uncertainly at Mr Hodgson but he was moving forwards quite unperturbed and the choir was following him.
They were ushered into a large hall, all gleaming, polished wood and with a red carpet in the middle. At one end there was a wide staircase and there was even carpet going up the stairs, not a strip of linoleum like they had at home.
Mr Durkin and Timothy came through a door at the side and Hannah was thankful to see that the agent was smiling.
‘Good evening to you all,’ he said and they all mumbled a reply. Hannah smiled shyly at Timothy and he smiled back.
‘Can you sing “Still the Night”, do you think?’ asked Mr Durkin.
‘Yes, sir, of course.’ The choirmaster beamed. He glanced down at Hannah and hesitated. ‘I wonder, sir … our little Hannah here, she has a lovely voice and she’s been rehearsing it for the Sunday-school party. Would you like to hear her sing the first verse, sir? Then we’ll all join in the second.’
Hannah’s throat closed up and she stared up at Mr Hodgson, her dark eyes filled with fright. Surely he wasn’t going to make her sing for Mr Durkin! But Mr Hodgson chose not to see the appeal on her face; instead, he took hold of her shoulder and drew her to the front of the choir.
‘Now then, pet,’ he encouraged her, ‘just pretend you’re singing in the chapel. Sing it just like we practised.’ Drawing a tuning fork from his waistcoat pocket, he struck the note, and Hannah opened her mouth obediently, though she was sure she wasn’t going to be able to sing at all.
But sing she did, faltering a little over the first few notes but then losing herself in the lovely old carol. Her pure tones gained strength and rang out over the choir and the well of the staircase lent resonance to the music. The choir joined in the second verse and after a while Hannah was conscious of a new voice. Looking across at Timothy, she realised it was his baritone she could hear.
There was a moment’s silence after the hymn before Mr Durkin finally broke it. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Timothy, fetch some mince pies from the kitchen.’ He took a gold watch out of his waistcoat pocket and peered at the dial pointedly. ‘Well, good night to you all and a merry Christmas.’ He turned and went back through a door at the side of the hall, not even noticing the collection box held up by Alf. Mr Hodgson sighed.
Timothy came back and handed round a plate of mince pies and the choir ate them quietly. Seeing the collection box, he fumbled in his pocket and put in a sixpence.
‘You have a lovely voice,’ he said to Hannah, and she smiled shyly.
‘You an’ all,’ she answered.
‘Well, we’d better be going, we still have to go to the manager’s house,’ said Mr Hodgson and he ushered the choir out of the hall and down the drive.
Hannah looked round just before they got to the gates and saw Timothy standing at the window, watching them. On impulse, she gave a little wave and he must have seen her for he lifted his arm and waved back. Hannah felt a tiny glow of happiness. Was he lonely in that big house with his father and the snooty man, she wondered.
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First published as The Pitman’s Brat in 2004 by Piatkus Books
This edition published in 2014 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company
Copyright © 2004 Una Horne writing as Maggie Hope
Extract from The Coal Miner’s Daughter © Una Horne writing as Maggie Hope, 1994, 2017
Maggie Hope has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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