Friendship's Bond

by Meg Hutchinson

  ‘No, Alec.’ She had caught at his hands. ‘You were no coward; like everyone else in that square you were taken by surprise.’

  ‘I ran away, Ann.’

  ‘No.’ Her sharp reply had rung on the morning air blessedly quiet beyond the sounds of factory and workshop. ‘You did not run away and I ask you not to do so now. It would be a worry to me, Alec, wondering were you well, were you safe; please, I know this is hard for you, that you want to return home to your family, but until this dreadful war is ended that has to wait.’

  There had been no more discussion. Rinsing the butter pats Leah often referred to as ‘wooden hands’ Ann’s thoughts remained with Alec. They had walked on in silence but she had seemed to feel the turmoil in his mind, asking why the relatives he had spoken of, those who were to meet him in England, had not been there at the dockside? Why in all his months in this country there had been no word?

  Her fingers were now slippery with water and one of the several metal ladles she reached for dropped against the stone of the sink. Ann gasped, a sudden fear ripping through her at the hard dull sound.

  Vivid in its clarity, graphic in every detail, a picture flooded into her mind, a scene taking place in that Great Maritime Square.

  There had been a rumble, a sound like distant thunder. She had glanced at the sky; it was clear, a blue promise of a day free of snow.

  Ann saw herself turn to glance along the length of that vast square, undecided as to whether she had tried hard enough. Should she return to the house? Search again for that ‘most precious possession’?

  Once gone from Russia there would be no further chance to preserve the honour her father had spoken of, no chance to keep her own promise given at the moment of his death. She had glanced towards the huge arched entrance to the seaport; the ship – if she missed her ship!

  It was not only overhead, that rumble of thunder. Alive in her mind it sounded as it had on that day, coming nearer, a constant repetitive drumming . . . and the people. Caught up in the confusion of finding her way and then in her indecision about whether to return to search those rooms again, she had taken little note of people scattered around. Then loud above the throb of still-distant sound had come shouts, men calling to others emerging from doorways or running from side streets; tall, short, young and old they had come together in groups, their faces set in expressions of anger, some waving fists as they shouted. But she heard too the cries of women, frightened cries as they were pushed from the way of the assembling men, screams of fear from children knocked accidentally to the ground, echoed by mothers hauling them to their feet only to push desperately through what had become a solid line fronting the port entrance.

  What was happening? Where had all these men come from? Why were they shouting?

  She had tried to ask but they had not understood her questions nor she their responses; yet their gestures, the rough hands pushing her away could not be mistaken: she should leave the square.

  But they would not let her pass. With arms locked together, the chain of figures refused to give way. She had decided to wait in the shelter of some doorway; whatever this protest was about it would soon be over, the men would disperse and she could enter the port, enquire after the next ship leaving for England.

  She had taken one step, one step only before being caught by the arm.

  A stillness had settled over the crowd. Their cries had died away but not that other noise, that pounding pulsating beat, bouncing from wall and stone paving, echoing and re-echoing until like a great net of sound it closed over the square.

  ‘Forgive please my rudeness . . .’

  It had come like a gift from heaven. The man now releasing her arm had spoken in English. Relief flooded through her. ‘Please, I am trying to get into—’

  She had got no further; his words spoken quickly as her own brushed aside her intended request for assistance.

  ‘My friend, Mr George Spencer . . .’

  ‘George Spencer!’ Her exclamation had carried above the din yet he had continued as though she had not spoken.

  ‘. . . we worked together at the British embassy.’

  He worked at the embassy! She had felt a slight flicker of suspicion. That day she had visited she had seen no person dressed like this man and the boy who stood beside him. They were not attired in the smart clothes she had seen there, these two like the mass of men blockading the entrance to the port wore rough shabby coats and caps, threadbare trousers tucked into worn-through boots: garments seen in the poorer parts of the city.

  Had the threat of demonstrations, maybe of violence, been a factor in her father’s decision to leave Russia?

  ‘I would not ask this of you but my friend he made a promise.’

  He would not ask what of her? Her attention had been distracted from what the man had been saying; she had been about to apologise when a sudden roar had erupted, a volley of noise making her turn to look again at the lines of figures at her back all of them now with raised arms waving and shouting towards the entrance to the square.

  ‘Please . . .’

  Once more her arm had been caught and this time a sharp tug whipped her round to face the man but with a gasp she had glanced beyond the pair confronting her, looking instead at a troop of mounted uniformed men with sword and pistol at the ready, horses’ hooves striking sparks from the flagstones as they dragged to a halt.

  ‘Please . . .’

  The hand had shaken her arm demandingly but her attention had focused on the figure at the head of what had to be a body of soldiers. Astride a huge black horse, sword held above his head, the bemedalled figure called to the demonstrators.

  The words had passed over her head but not so the defiant answer rising to meet them.

  ‘Niet . . . niet.’ That word she understood. ‘No . . . no!’ Loud in its defiance it had sounded along the square.

  ‘Please, the promise of my friend, it was . . .’

  ‘Niet!’ The crowd’s rising anger had drowned that one voice, the one she should have listened to.

  She stared at the ladle lying in the shallow well of the sink while regret stabbed at her with sharp fingers.

  The man had named her father, was about to tell her the promise which had been given. But even as he had tugged at her arm, had tried to shout above the din, her eye had caught the flash of a sword sweeping downward and with it the crack of a pistol shot. His hand had slipped slowly down her arm, over her hand, sliding away from her fingers. As though in some terrible nightmare she had watched the figure slump to the ground, watched it fall on to its back and a stream of scarlet blood spurt from the open mouth while the dying eyes tried vainly to finish its message.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Hill Rise be a long walk for legs ancient as mine so I be askin’ you brings your answer along of my ’ouse.’

  ‘Get along with you Leah Marshall, you should be ashamed fishing for compliments.’

  ‘Compliments you says, be long past time for them.’

  ‘There you go again.’ Edward Langley’s laugh rang across a wide earth-packed yard. ‘Incorrigible is what you are, incorrigible but pretty so I guess I can forgive you.’

  ‘Forgiveness is it!’ Tartness did not quite mask the fondness in Leah’s tone. ‘It be y’self should be a beggin’ o’ the Lord for that, y’self askin’ Him forgive the lies you speaks.’

  The man lifted his brown eyes to the sky for a few moments before returning his attention to Leah, whose head was shaking at what she obviously expected to follow her censure. ‘You see,’ Edward Langley’s smile spread across handsome features deeply tanned by exposure to all weathers, ‘no lightning . . . that is clear proof the Lord agrees with me Leah Marshall is a pretty woman.’

  Leah released a snort of feigned disparagement but her heart warmed as strong arms caught her, whirling her several times before setting her down. All three had greeted her that way from becoming young men. Leah left the yard, full of memories. First would come Joshua, his laugh ringin
g as he swept her up; tall and strong even at fifteen years of age he could lift her easily as he might a doll; then would come Daniel, close as a shadow on the heels of the brother who was his sun, determined as ever to do exactly as Joshua. But then neither was to be allowed to outdo Edward. He too would catch her up, hold her as he might his own mother, the mother taken in childbed when he was eight years old. The boy had hidden his grief from his father realising even at such a tender age that the man already carried a heavy enough burden of sorrow. But in her home, the house of his best friends, he had cried with his young face hidden in her lap, sobbed at the pain of losing his mother.

  Had she tried to become mother to Edward? Leah shook her head at the thought. She would never do that.

  Disturbed by her approach a trio of rabbits darted across the heath, tails bobbing white among the dark green bracken. A trio! The scampering rabbits became three young boys racing one after the other. Joshua, Daniel and Edward. As infants they had played together, as children they had attended school together until the age of eleven, when they could each leave to work full time for their living, Edward on his father’s dairy farm and her own sons on the plot given her as compensation by the colliery following Joseph’s death. The long hours of toil had not been sufficient to part the three completely for their few free hours had seen them walk and talk in these very fields, though often when he was visiting, Edward’s eyes had rarely left Deborah.

  She had hoped. Leah blinked against gathering tears. She had asked the Lord could the pair come one day to marry, could the affection of children become the love of a man and a woman? But then war had called all three. They had wept together, she and Deborah, shared the sorrow of seeing brothers and friends march away, sat together in the long soul-numbing hours when those brief messages had informed them Joshua and Daniel would never come home, would never again sweep mother and sister into their arms.

  She had mourned her sons, longed for them, prayed for them as so many mothers in this and other lands trapped in the bitterness of war, yet had thanked God for the mercy that had let Edward Langley return from that horror. He had suffered a bullet wound to the leg so was to be repatriated. She had thought Deborah would, if not dance with joy, at least be full of smiles. But Deborah had not smiled.

  Her daughter had reached for her coat. She was going to the chapel but had shaken her head when Leah said they would go to give thanks together. She had not pressed Deborah nor had she followed. Overcome at the news of Edward’s safety, Deborah had needed a little time alone to thank the Lord for His bounty.

  A little time! Leah gasped at the pain cutting through her heart. Noon had given way to evening, the yellow sunlight of afternoon becoming emblazoned with the gold and crimson banners of sunset before ceding to the purple-grey of night. It was then she had gone herself to the chapel. Deborah was not there. She had frowned in confusion on being told her daughter had not been seen there by wives and mothers who in breaks between shifts at their places of work would slip into the chapel to pray for husbands and sons fighting at the front. But of all the women she had asked none had seen Deborah go into or leave that building in Queen’s Place. She had asked the same question of folk as she had looked for her daughter in the adjoining Queen Street, the busier Holyhead Road and almost every other street of the town, then when she returned home to find Deborah was not there she had repeated the process; asking, searching until the market place had emptied of customer and trader, the beer houses had closed their doors for the night and the last street lay empty and deserted. She had walked the long dark hours of night going from town to heath where the open coal shafts lost in the depths of shadow held less terror for her than the fears beginning to build in her heart.

  Men exchanging shifts at coal mine and steel foundries had shaken their heads at the woman out on the heath before dawn had lightened the sky and all had answered the same.

  No one had seen Deborah!

  No one had seen her pass on the road, or cross the waste ground off Lea Brook, no one had watched her come to the bridge spanning the water, no one had seen her fall in.

  Leah herself had found her child. A fast-flowing current had thrown and then held her daughter among the thick reeds hiding its verge from the bracken and low bushes of yellow flowered gorse that grew on open land.

  She had almost passed by without seeing. With tear-swollen eyes and numbed by hours of unrelenting anxiety she would have walked by, never have seen . . . never have found! But she had seen and she had found.

  She recalled the scene in all its detail as her fingers twined in the soft cloth of the shawl, reaching for the comfort which never came.

  She might have been beyond that spot, might never have witnessed that horror, but Fate had decreed otherwise. It was not to be given to Leah Marshall that she be told her one remaining child had been found by another, that she see her only when washed clean and laid in her coffin.

  With a shuddering pain-filled breath Leah stared into yesterday.

  Night was at last surrendering to dawn; the first beams of the rising sun flashing scarlet defiance over the narrow river had gleamed across a tiny island of colour, highlighting the patch of peacock turquoise.

  For a moment it had felt her feet were fastened to the ground yet tired as it was her brain had recognised what lay there trapped in the inky water, had recognised the material of the coat Deborah had so loved to wear, a coat of an almost identical colour to her lovely eyes.

  But those lovely eyes had been closed, their fringe of long lashes resting on cheeks the colour of marble, and the long fair silken hair was now threaded with slime-covered weed, weed wrapped round the floating figure clutching it. Every eddy of water threatened to rip the body from her grasp; but in that it had failed.

  She had cradled her dead child. There in the birth of a new day, alone beside that river, she had held her daughter close, had crooned softly the lullabies she had sung to her as an infant, rocked that cold, cold body as she had when pains of croup or fever had resulted in restless nights, had in the lonely silent dawn kissed that lifeless face gently as at every bedtime.

  Her words a mere whisper, Leah murmured to a daughter she could not see. ‘It were only goodnight, child, it were not goodbye for I can never say that word; it be as it is along of your brothers and your father, you don’t be gone for you bides ’ere in my heart where you will ever be.’

  Why had Deborah not gone to the chapel? How come she had gone instead to the river? And how in God’s name had she come to fall into the water?

  Walking on, Leah remained with her thoughts. The years had provided no relief from heartbreak and certainly none from the agony of a question carried in her most secret heart.

  She had put that question to no one, especially not to Edward Langley. His face had been alight that day he had come to the house, happiness at the prospect of seeing the girl she had known he loved apparent on every feature. That happiness had died as painfully as Leah’s own.

  Edward! Even in her remembered sadness Leah smiled. War had left its mark on him as it would leave it on many yet, but he remained the same honest, trustworthy man she had watched grow from the cradle, a man so different in every way to the one she would speak to next.

  Holding her shawl about her shoulders, ignoring the quick March breeze tugging playfully at her bonnet, Leah retraced her path across the open expanse of heath and meadow which bordered a heart of iron and coal.

  The Black Country. She let her glance rove over the vista of chimneys rising like a huge flock of crows black against the skyline.

  The Black Country was how this very heart of England was described, a term well justified by the pall of smoke overlying the town, a perpetual veil of grey shutting out much of the beauty of daytime skies and then cloaking the majesty of stars spread across the night void. A forest of chimney stacks belched foul black breath from iron works, collieries, steel and brass foundries. Street upon street of tight packed houses huddled close to each other, and to the gr
udgingly spared communal yards with their shared outhouse and privy. From every roof rose the smoke of coal fires, the one weapon with which families fought the damp of old dilapidated homes, their every brick robed in black soot.

  No building escaped. Not even the House of God. Leah’s glance rested a moment on the church of St Bartholomew. Black as any other building it gazed down from its hilltop on the town it had served for centuries.

  She sighed heavily. How Wednesbury must have changed during those hundreds of years; how it had changed from the days of her own childhood. It had been so different then. Yes, parents must have found it hard raising a family just as now in this soot-ridden town, but for her as for the children she had played alongside worries of that nature did not exist. She had run with others barefoot across fields, she had gambolled and tumbled among stalks of wheat tall as herself, had danced among stately rows of barley.

  So many happy reminiscences, so many cherished memories, but none were so treasured as the recollections of when as a young woman she had walked with Joseph.

  ‘We shouldn’t go walkin’ amid the crops, a farmer’s labours be hard, it be unkind of folk to go destroyin’ o’ what he works long to produce.’

  Joseph, her ever thoughtful Joseph. Even as a young man his actions had been considerate of other folk before himself. So they had taken their strolls here on the heath, his hand shyly taking hers only when they were beyond the sight of houses.

  Feeling the brush of bracken against her boots she was again with Joseph, who was laughing at a young girl dressed in her Sunday best gown, her sliding feet hidden among deep drifts of daisies while her cream cotton skirts caressed the heads of kingcups and rich purple clover.

  Leah sighed. Where was the golden wheat speckled with scarlet poppies? It was gone, never to gleam again, buried beneath stretches of earth blackened and scarred by the ravages of coal mining. The colour-strewn heath and meadows, once-lush pastures, all that delight was now swallowed beneath an ever-expanding dark sea called industry. The ache of losing it felt almost physical. Standing a moment, she stared ahead. There had been so many changes, and Wednesbury groaned beneath the insatiable demand.