Netherwood01 - Netherwood

by Jane Sanderson

  By now the police had taken up their positions, two of them in front of each house. There were a few seconds of uncertainty as the policemen, self-conscious, waited for orders, then a shout went out from behind – perhaps from one of the mounted police, no one could be sure.

  ‘Get a bloody move on!’

  It was as if an electric current passed through the uniformed men; as one, they started forwards and into the homes, and still the assembled crowd stood motionless, their watchful silence a more powerful reproach than any words. But as the muddy road in front of the houses began to fill up with the trappings of domestic poverty, a hubbub began, low at first but rising, though not of complaint so much as resignation. It was remarkable how swiftly the work was being done. Until this point the miners and their wives had not been certain that the evictions would really take place, so the sight of their threadbare rugs, thin, stained mattresses, tin baths, tables and chairs, all stacked in careless heaps or upended in the dirt, was shocking to them. The police, in their haste and embarrassment, were dragging large pieces of furniture out of the houses and flinging smaller items out of opened windows, heedless of where they landed. From where she stood she saw a small box of children’s playthings fly from an upstairs window and spill its contents on the ground: a ball, a shabby dolly, a spinning top. It was an outrage and an insult, thought Eve. She imagined her own possessions being handled in such a way, and bridled at the thought. She wanted someone to scream at the policemen, demand that they stop their callous work, but remarkably there seemed to be no anger brewing in the crowd around her.

  ‘Why don’t you rail against them?’ she said, voicing her thoughts but addressing no one in particular.

  ‘Nay, lass, it’s not t’bobbies fault,’ said an old man. His eyes were rheumy and red-rimmed with cold and Eve felt a powerful longing to feed him with hot soup. ‘It’s them bastards want stringin’ up,’ he said, tossing his head contemptuously in the direction of the pit offices, which were unoccupied today. ‘An’ there’s not one of ’em man enough to face t’music.’

  ‘Oi!’ a woman on the other side of Eve shouted, as a well-trodden rag rug sailed from her bedroom window. ‘Watch what you’re doin’ with that carpet – it’s priceless!’

  She cackled at her own black humour and there was a smattering of laughter from the crowd. Someone else had struck up an accordion, adding a bleakly festive air to the grim proceedings. Another man, standing on a footstool and ringing a small, brass handbell, began an ironic auction of his own belongings, as if his furniture was piled around him by choice, not force.

  People were moving quickly now, galvanised into action, hauling the contents of their houses on to waiting drays. Only the very old and the very young hung back, out of the way, watching the show with bewildered eyes. Eve took one end of a chest of drawers and its owner, a young woman with a sweet, sad face, accepted the help wordlessly. Together they lugged the piece of furniture to a small cart and heaved it into position. Back and forth they went until all the pitiful pieces of a domestic life were out of the dirt and on the cart. Eve moved on, to see how else she could help. Ahead, on a low wall, a man was standing berating God, the police force and the colliery owners in a stream of colourful invective. But he was drunk and no one paid him much attention except for a small group of children who had gathered round him and were listening, solemnly. A light rain, insubstantial but insidious, began to fall.

  ‘Marvellous. Now we can all be wet as well as cold and miserable,’ said a familiar voice. Eve turned towards it and smiled.

  ‘Reverend Farrimond,’ she said. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’

  ‘As are you, dear, as are you.’ Samuel Farrimond, Grangely’s Methodist minister, beamed at her and clasped her cold hands briefly in his own. He was a handsome man in his late fifties, urbane, well-read, mildly eccentric and entirely incongruous in the largely illiterate community in which he lived. But he’d come to Grangely twenty-five years ago and saw there a project so worthy of his energy and so needful of his Christian commitment that he had never been able to leave. Eve, whom he had known for almost all of her life, regarded him as the saving grace of her childhood, a font of kindness and integrity in a cruel and uncertain world. For his part, Reverend Farrimond saw in Eve the living embodiment of what made his task here worthwhile. She stood before him, beautiful as she ever was, eyes lit with indignation and her skin glowing from the exertions of the brisk march down the hill into town. She looked unlikely here: well-nourished, properly wrapped against the cold, unburdened by defeat. Seeing her now reminded him how very much he missed her in his congregation. It was six years, at least, since he’d seen her.

  ‘Excellent young woman, to come here today,’ he said.

  ‘’ow are you bearin’ up?’ said Eve. Unused to compliments, she was not adept at receiving one and usually chose, as she did now, to ignore it.

  ‘These are trying times,’ he said. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.’

  Eve smiled. Reverend Farrimond had literary leanings and a rather theatrical delivery which sometimes gave the impression of ostentation, but Eve knew there wasn’t a kinder heart in the county. He was a very dear man, she thought.

  ‘Where will they all go?’ she said, coming back to the point.

  ‘Ah, Eve, pertinent and practical, as ever,’ he said. ‘Some of them have family elsewhere and therefore places to go, albeit temporary. Many, however, have nowhere to turn.’

  ‘But they do ’ave you,’ said Eve.

  ‘Indeed they do,’ he said. ‘Indeed they do. As many as we can manage will be housed in the chapel and my own home, be it ever so humble. Also, as I speak, a canvas village is being erected for the rest.’ He waved an arm in a vague southerly direction, indicating the fields beyond the town.

  ‘Tents?’ said Eve, incredulous.

  ‘Army bell tents, fifteen of them, each one large enough for thirty people, perhaps more in extremis. A padre friend of mine took pity on our plight. Not a permanent solution, but, for now, nothing short of a godsend and what we lack in comfort we shall make up for in compassion. Spare blankets and hot food gratefully received. Do spread the word. Now, my dear, I must take my leave. Much to be done, much to be done. Bless you for coming.’

  Reverend Farrimond swept off. He had spoken lightly to Eve, but she knew he would be feeling the burden of every sorrow, fear and pang of hunger suffered by his flock. Their cares were his own.

  ‘Reverend Farrimond!’ she called out on an impulse, but he had been swallowed up by the crowd. She stood for a moment lost in thought, then, aware that the rain was making the task in hand more urgent, she threw herself back into the common effort.

  By nightfall Grangely’s houses were evacuated. They stood blank-eyed and bereft of life in the dark, some of them with doors or windows still open to the elements. A few meagre possessions lay scattered in the mud, discarded by the inhabitants or dropped inadvertently from departing carts. Two hundred men, women and children were billeted in the chapel, twenty-four were in Samuel Farrimond’s small house, and a further five hundred were sheltering in army tents, a stone’s throw from their former homes.

  Eve got her lift back to Netherwood with Solomon Windross, but had to wait for him up on the crags in the teeth of the wind for almost an hour. He’d been busy, he told her somewhat sheepishly, moving three families and the contents of their houses to Sheffield. They had family there, he said, but no means to make the journey.

  ‘Solomon Windross, I do believe you have a ’eart after all,’ Eve said.

  ‘Aye. Well,’ said Solomon. He clicked his tongue at Bessie. ‘Get on,’ he said, and stirred her into a steady plod home.

  Chapter 9

  The earl was alone in the dining room. That is to say, he was alone at the table, for in fact there was rather a crowd in the room. Strategically and discreetly placed around the perimeter were four footmen in green-and-gold livery, while Parkinson, soberly clad in his immaculate bla
ck tailcoat with silver buttons, stood motionless near the door. The table was set for six, but Saturday luncheon was always an informal, come-when-it-suits-you affair, so Lord Hoyland was in no way perturbed at the absence of his family members. On the contrary, he found his newspaper rather better company than his family, with the notable exception of Henrietta who could always be prevailed upon to talk rationally on the subjects closest to the earl’s heart: the estate, the collieries and the damnable impertinence of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association.

  On the long sideboard were cold cuts, pickles, bread and a pat of butter, the Hoyland crest now incomplete on its surface since the earl had started tucking in.

  ‘What’s your take on the Grangely affair, Parkinson?’ he said.

  The earl was prone to this, a sudden unlikely question to whoever was closest, be they family, friend, servant or complete stranger. His valet was more accustomed to it than Parkinson, being more frequently with him in close quarters, but the butler, too, had to be always on his mettle.

  ‘A regrettable business, m’lord,’ he said now. A typical Parkinson response, nicely ambiguous, leaving him free to join his master on whichever side of the debate he favoured. He had a whole arsenal of non-committal replies for just these occasions.

  ‘Quite, but entirely predictable, what?’

  ‘Indeed, m’lord.’

  Lord Hoyland folded the Chronicle and set it to one side. It was the local weekly, which he read every Saturday and which every Saturday got his dander up with its tendency to romanticise the struggles of the proletariat.

  ‘If I owned this blasted newspaper I’d veto strike coverage,’ he said. ‘Why pay the troublesome blighters the compliment of publicity?’

  ‘Quite,’ Parkinson said.

  ‘What mystifies me is that the whole damn business dragged on for so long.’

  ‘Baffling, m’lord.’

  ‘Mind you, the owners are scoundrels. No interest in mining, except what it can earn them, what!’

  ‘Shameful, m’lord.’

  ‘And the colliers are wastrels. Wastrels employed by scoundrels. If you ask me, they deserve each other.’

  ‘Oh, Papa, do leave poor Parkinson alone.’

  This was Henrietta, who breezed into the dining room with a rosy outdoor flush to her cheeks and a beech leaf caught in her hair. She was fresh out of the saddle, brimful of energy and good health. She grinned at the butler.

  ‘You’re off the hook now. He can harangue me instead.’

  Divided now in his loyalties, Parkinson executed a graceful, all-purpose incline of the head and pulled out a chair for the new arrival.

  ‘May I serve you with lunch, your ladyship? Or would you prefer to help yourself?’

  ‘A slice of everything going, please,’ she said, then turned to her father. ‘Simply gorgeous out. Cold, though. By the way, Jem said to say he’s repairing the fencing by the gallops if you want to find him.’

  Lord Hoyland reached across to extract the rogue leaf and said: ‘Any sign of Tobias? I want to take him to New Mill today. I thought, if he’s actually there at the sharp end, as it were, it might help him take an interest.’

  Henrietta said nothing, though her expression was easy enough for her father to interpret.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘Uphill struggle.’

  ‘Losing battle, more like. Ooh, yum. Thank you, Parkinson.’ A brief silence descended while the butler placed a loaded plate in front of her, then she said: ‘Terrible business at Grangely. Have you been over there?’

  ‘To Grangely Main? Don’t be absurd. None of my business.’

  ‘Well, no. But perhaps we could help. I’m sure they must be desperate for donations.’

  The earl, irritated by her wrongheadedness, spoke sharply.

  ‘Condone the strikers? Preposterous notion.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ she said, mildly. ‘I suppose it was more the children I was thinking of.’ Her face clouded briefly, then immediately brightened.

  ‘Tell you what though, Daddy. I’d love a trip to New Mill with you.’

  He looked down and sawed at his roast beef. ‘Also preposterous.’

  ‘Why? I’d love to. Nothing I’d like more, in fact.’

  The earl looked at his daughter fondly.

  ‘Do let’s,’ she said, sensing weakness.

  ‘It’s no place for a lady, Henry.’

  ‘I’ll go in disguise. Toby’s trousers fit.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I shudder to think how you discovered that.’

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You won’t get Toby there in a month of Sundays. So take me – in a dress, something dowdy though – and I’ll tell him what he missed. We’ll snare him that way. Make him feel he’s missing all the fun.’

  He smiled. There was perhaps method in her madness.

  ‘Your mother mustn’t ever know,’ he said.

  ‘Marvellous!’

  ‘You’ll need sturdy boots. And a hard hat when we get there.’

  ‘Even better.’ She beamed at him. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Meet me at one. I’ll have Atkins keep the motor in the yard so we can slip out the back way.’

  They shared a complicit smile, then gave their food the attention it deserved.

  Saturday was, without any shadow of a doubt, Seth’s favourite day of the week. Eve and Arthur’s eldest was an earnest, thoughtful boy, who spent more time than your average ten-year-old contemplating life and all its facets. So when he settled on Saturday as the first of the seven contenders, it was after scrupulous consideration of the merits of the other six. Even so, his careful list of the attributes of every day put Saturday ahead by an indisputable margin. There was no school, of course – a significant point in the day’s favour but not, in fact, the chief source of the boy’s pleasure. Unlike most of his peers, Seth found schoolwork easy enough to be enjoyable and any dread he claimed to feel on a Monday morning was entirely feigned. His only school-related complaint was Miss Mason’s insistence on openly praising Seth’s ‘thirst for knowledge’ or ‘inquiring mind’, with which unwelcome compliments she singled him out from the pack. He wondered time and again at his teacher’s failure to understand that the pack was where he wanted to be.

  No, the absence of school wasn’t part of it at all. What Seth loved about Saturdays was the mixed array of special qualities that each one held in varying measure. The smell of a ginger cake in the oven, perhaps, on this one day of the week that Eve baked what she called ‘fancies’; the spring in her tread that meant his mother was neither cross nor tired; an idle quality in the air, a feeling of liberty and leisure that sometimes evaporated if he didn’t make himself scarce quickly enough to escape a chore, but at least existed as a possibility when he first woke; the certain fact that the next day was Sunday and his father’s cap and jacket, with their smells of outside and underground, would still be on the hook with everyone’s things when Seth came downstairs in the morning. All these things, and more, had accumulated over the years in Seth’s subconscious mind to make him treasure the prospect of a new Saturday. And today was more special still, since his father had promised Seth he could accompany him to the knur-and-spell match on Netherwood Common. Not to play, of course; the visitors this time were near-neighbours from Rockingham way and they were a sly lot, not above stamping a good, long ball into the ground so it couldn’t be counted, so there was no room for a novice on the Netherwood team. He would be allowed to carry Arthur’s pummel though, and his prized stash of clay balls, and he was bound to be needed as a seeker – his young, keen eyes could follow the small, white knurs as they flew through the air, no matter how many yards they went, or how awkwardly they landed.

  Arthur, sitting in the tin tub in front of the parlour fire, was in a cheerful frame of mind too. He’d got in just after half-past one after a satisfactory shift at New Mill and walked into the kitchen to be granted a warm smile from Eve, which boded well for his Saturday night prospects in the marital bed.
Added to this pleasing train of thought was the match later this afternoon, piping hot water in the tub and a mug of strong tea just within reach on the mantelpiece. What else could a working man ask for? More hot water, that’s what.

  ‘Seth,’ he shouted and, as if he’d been waiting for the call, the boy stuck his head round the door.

  ‘See if your mam can manage another bucketful, son,’ said Arthur.

  Seth staggered in moments later with a fresh pail of hot water which he’d dipped into the great set pot in the kitchen.

  ‘Tip it over mi ’ead,’ said Arthur. ‘In a steady stream, like. We don’t want a flood on yer mam’s rug.’

  To Seth, the water seemed to be still simmering in the zinc bucket, and it scalded his hands where it splashed, but he had never yet fetched water that was too hot for his dad. Arthur tilted his head back to receive it, and let it pour over his face, through his hair, down over his shoulders. He handed Seth the long-handled brush and the boy diligently scrubbed at the parts of his back that were still dirty. Arthur liked to be clean, scrubbing at his nails and jiggling fingers in his ears, winkling out the coal dust from every cranny and crevice. Seth’s grandfather, Ephraim Williams, had never let anyone scrub his back. He left it black, the dust ingrained like oil on a wooden table top, to keep it strong. Seth never knew Ephraim, but Arthur had told him stories, especially about the black back, so that in Seth’s mind he held a clear image of his grandfather: doughty, heroic, deeply superstitious. Ephraim believed coal dust had healing qualities; wash it away, he told Arthur, and you sap your strength. He died in a firedamp explosion and was carried out of the pit with his eyes, nose and mouth packed with the stuff, so Arthur took against the theory and Eve was grateful for it. The wives of black backs had the filthiest linen in the country.