The Most Precious Thing

by Bradshaw, Rita

  There had been an air of suppressed excitement about the marchers as they went into the church, and this feeling had spread to the large crowd outside which included reporters and photographers and dozens of bairns. Walter, however, had hardly said two words since he had met his father and brother that morning for the walk into Jarrow. Billy and his father had intended to accompany them but at the last minute they had both got a shift at the colliery, and no one in their right mind ever refused work.

  Now Walter turned to David, his voice low as he said, ‘Aye, I’m all right.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I said I’m all right.’

  ‘Aye, and pigs fly. You middling or something?’

  Walter stared at his brother, and then, as Ned began to talk to one of his cronies from the pit who had also made the journey into Jarrow to support the marchers, he said, ‘I’ve had a do with Renee.’

  ‘So, what’s new?’

  ‘This was different. I . . . lost me temper. I hit her, man, and the bairn, our Veronica, she walked in on it.’

  ‘You struck her?’ David knew quite a few men who used their wives for punchbags or wouldn’t think twice about a cuff round the ear if they thought their spouse deserved it, but Walter was not one of them. Their da had brought them up never to raise their hand to a woman and he couldn’t quite believe his brother had hit his wife.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, man. I’m not proud of it. But she--’ Walter broke off, shaking his head. ‘Oh, what does it matter! I hit her and Veronica saw enough to know what had happened. She’s had a job to look me in the face the last few days. What do you think I should do?’

  David said nothing for a moment. There was the odd drop of rain blowing in the icy wind and it was freezing cold, but the look in Walter’s eyes was bleaker than the weather. ‘Talk to her,’ he said at last. ‘Your Veronica’s a canny little lass. Explain it was a mistake, that you regret it--’

  ‘I don’t.’ Walter’s head had been hanging down but now he raised it, and David caught his breath at his brother’s expression. ‘I regret the bairn being upset but Renee deserved it, and more. I tell you, I don’t know how I’ve kept me hands from her throat plenty of times. Only the thought of what would happen to Veronica has stopped me. She’s a devil, David.’

  A loud cheer signalled the fact that the service had ended and the marchers were coming out. David took his brother’s arm and drew him to one side. ‘Don’t talk like that, man. It can’t be as bad as that.’

  ‘It’s worse.’ Walter was speaking slowly and quietly, and it carried more weight than any shouting. ‘She thinks I don’t know but she’s been carrying on with someone for years, someone at the factory, like as not. I’ve walked the streets some nights when she’s supposed to be out with some pal or other, looking for her and this bloke. I’m surprised I’ve not copped a good hiding, the number of courting couples I’ve disturbed in me time.’

  David stared at his brother. ‘That’s daft, man,’ he said weakly. ‘I mean, I know things haven’t been too good between you two for some time, but a fancy man?’

  ‘I know, all right? Same as you’d know if it was you.’

  There was a short silence which David was too shocked to break.

  ‘I reckon he’s got a car or a van or something, he must have or I’d have found them by now.’

  ‘But . . .’ David shook his head as though he’d been punched in the face. ‘What would you do if you did find them?’

  ‘Beat him into a pulp, do for him most likely. Her an’ all.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  Walter screwed up his eyes as though they were smarting. Then he looked directly into David’s and said, ‘I do mean it. Oh, I mean it, man.’

  There was a crab seller a few feet away, one hand on her hip, the other holding a basket balanced on her head. ‘Nice boiled crabs,’ she was shouting, ‘ready to eat. Cr-a-bs, cr-a-bs, nice boiled crabs.’ Men were streaming out of the church and the band struck up just feet away.

  ‘Come over here, man, I can’t hear meself think in this circus.’ David pulled his brother clear of the crowd. ‘Promise me you won’t go walking the streets again,’ he said urgently. ‘Not without coming for me first. We’ll go together if you need to try and find them, but promise me you won’t go alone.’

  ‘I don’t do that any more.’ It was weary. ‘But thanks, David.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’

  ‘Would you have? If it’d been your Carrie?’

  David wrinkled his face against the thought. ‘No.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  The marchers and the harmonica band disappeared round a corner and the folk who weren’t following them to the outskirts of town began to drift away in twos and threes. Ned came hurrying up, accompanied by a roly-poly figure of a man with a smiling pug’s face. David recognised him from somewhere.

  ‘I’ve bin lookin’ all over for you two,’ Ned said breathlessly. ‘You remember Terry Proudfoot, lads? Amos’s brother?’

  ‘Oh aye.’ David and Walter nodded to Terry who had moved down south when they were bairns.

  Terry nodded back, his red-cheeked face smiling as he said, ‘By, lads, I wouldn’t have known you if I’d passed you in the street and that’s the truth.’

  ‘We’re sorry about Amos, Terry,’ David said and shook his hand. ‘He was a grand man.’

  ‘Aye, lad. Aye, he was.’

  Amos had finally lost his fight with pneumoconiosis on the last day of September and his funeral was later that day.

  ‘I’m taking our Ethel, Amos’s wife’ - Terry raised enquiring eyebrows at the three of them and they all nodded, although Walter and David hadn’t known the name of Amos’s wife - ‘back south with me. Me an’ Mildred have got a couple of spare rooms and we can make her comfortable enough, bless her.’

  ‘Terry’s done all right for himself,’ Ned put in. ‘Isn’t that right, Terry?’

  ‘Aye, well, I can’t complain. It was hit an’ miss in the first couple of years but the bairns mucked in and between us we’ve made a go of it,’ Terry said. ‘I’m in the automobile business, lads, on the used cars side. By, it’s the way of the future and no mistake.’

  ‘Four showrooms, Terry’s got now. Isn’t that right, Terry?’ Ned was presenting the other man like a fairground show.

  ‘Aye, four it is, right enough, and I’m thinking of a fifth come the spring. We all thought sales would drop a couple of years ago when they brought in this compulsory driving test lark, but not a bit of it, I’m glad to say.’ Terry’s face had lit up as he was speaking and it was clear to the three men watching him that he was passionate about his work. ‘Mind, I can’t see the need for this thirty miles per hour speed limit they’ve brought in, but if it’s saving lives like they say it is, I don’t suppose you can complain, can you?’

  ‘No.’ David could see from Walter’s slightly glazed expression that his brother was feeling as lost as he was. None of them had even sat in an automobile, let alone driven one. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’

  ‘London’s changing, though, with all these traffic lights and whatnot, and I’m not too sure it’s for the better meself.’

  ‘Is that where you are now, London?’ David interjected.

  ‘Aye, that’s it, lad, and it was the best thing me an’ Mildred ever did when we took ourselves down there. I kept on at our Amos to come in with me, but he wouldn’t. Stubborn old so-an’-so. He’d be sitting pretty if he had but you couldn’t tell him anything. Mind, he thought the world of you, Ned.’ Terry turned to David and Walter’s father and gripped his arm. ‘Right good to him you were and I’m grateful. You all got time for a jar now the show’s finished? ’

  David stared at Amos’s brother. It was one thing to come and give the marchers a hell of a send-off like plenty of men on the dole or between shifts had done from as far as Newcastle and Sunderland because they supported their cause, quite another to view it as some sort
of entertainment because you happened to be up north with some time to kill.

  ‘Look, I’m getting a taxi back to town; why don’t you three ride with me and we’ll have a drink at the Grand,’ Terry said jovially. ‘I’m staying there while I’m up here and to tell you the truth I’d appreciate the company. The wife wanted to stay with our eldest who’s just presented us with our first grandchild last week, so I’m all on my own and I’ve never been one for my own company. What do you say?’

  ‘Aye, man, we’ll have a drink with you.’ Ned answered for them all, though he could see his sons were feeling uncomfortable.

  Terry Proudfoot might have begun life as a miner’s son in two rooms in a house at the Back of the Pit, but it was clear he had risen some way since then. His light grey check suit, highly polished black boots and black homburg were of good quality, as was the dark grey overcoat trimmed with fur at the collar. He wore his coat open, revealing the mound of a portly belly under the fine cloth. He looked prosperous and pleased with himself, and as far removed from the folk he’d once called his own as the man on the moon. Pawning the fire irons or bread knife, scrabbling for cinders on the tip or following the coal cart to pick up lumps shaken out by potholes or tram lines - what did Terry know about such day-to-day living? mused David as he and Walter followed the two older men down the street. Although he’d known it once.

  Back in Bishopwearmouth, David made his excuses and left the other three outside the Grand. He told Ned he didn’t relish the thought of entering the smart hotel dressed in his working clothes, whatever his father and Walter felt about it. He would go and have a tidy up at the allotment, spend an hour or two getting it ready for the next owner. Carrie was busy rushing through a special order the shop had asked her for, so he didn’t want to get under her feet at home.

  It was cold on the allotment, bitter in fact, but David found he was enjoying the physical work out in the open air, with an icy north-east wind blowing and the clouds scudding across the low sky. He had needed to do something after Walter’s revelation.

  He mulled over everything his brother had said as he cleared the hard ground of debris and lit a large bonfire. But once he was digging over the frozen earth, his thoughts moved on to the talk of war which was beginning to appear in the newspapers again. He had heard more than one miner say that Hitler could do whatever he liked if it brought in work. Everyone knew you couldn’t have a war without coal - lots of it.

  David straightened his aching back and stood with one hand resting on Amos’s old spade, staring up into the grey sky.

  Idly he watched a cloud shaped like a dog chasing one which could have passed for a cat. It seemed years rather than months since the Durham Miners’ Gala in July. It had been a rare good day this year, not just because the sun had shone on the banners and bands, stalls and sideshows, but because they had all gone together - him, Carrie and Matthew, Walter and his family, Carrie’s mam and da, Billy and the twins, and his own parents. Billy had brought along the lass he’d been courting for a while - a nice lass even if she didn’t say two words the whole day - and because everyone was together out in the open it had made things easier with Sandy somehow, less awkward. He remembered he’d thought at one point that he wished it could always be like this, everyone getting on and no sniping between Walter and Renee or his mam and da.

  He shook his head at himself, lifted his cap and raked back his springy black hair before replacing the cap on his head. As he bent to start digging again, he saw his father and Terry Proudfoot come in through the side gate at the rear of the allotments. He raised his hand to them and his father waved back, and even from a hundred yards he could see the difference in his da’s face.

  He thought at first his father was well oiled. By, I hope he can hold it until the funeral’s over at least, he reflected wryly, but then, as the two men got nearer, he saw it wasn’t that. His da looked ten years younger, his face alive and his eyes bright. Ned was still some thirty yards away when he shouted, ‘I’m glad you’re still here, lad! Have I got some news for you.’

  When his father reached him he didn’t speak straight away as David had expected; he waited until Terry had come puffing and panting to their side. ‘Tell him, Terry,’ he said. ‘Tell him what you said to me not an hour since,’ and then before Terry had a chance to open his mouth, ‘He wants me to go and work for him, lad, down south. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Work for him?’ David stared at his father. Terry was nodding enthusiastically, still trying to catch his breath. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Lookin’ after this new showroom he’s openin’ come spring, that’s what. An’ what’s more, he’s on about me havin’ drivin’ lessons with one of his lads an’ havin’ me own car.’ Ned couldn’t get the words out quick enough. ‘Me with me own car, lad,’ and he chuckled like a bairn.

  ‘But . . .’ David’s gaze moved from one to the other before settling on his father’s beaming face. ‘You don’t know the first thing about cars.’

  ‘There’s nowt he can’t learn, lad, and me lads will see to it he gets a good grounding afore March. Besides, he’ll be managing the new place for me, there’ll be plenty of young wind-snappers doing the donkey work. I want someone I can trust in there, that’s the thing. Someone I know won’t be on the fiddle. Me lads see to the other places but there’s only four of them so I was wondering what to do about this new one, and I owe your da, David. Ethel’s been singing his praises since I got down here, saying how good he’s been to her and Amos with the allotment an’ all. Always popping stuff in and spending time with Amos. Not everyone bothers to do that nowadays, lad.’ Terry shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Aw, man, I was glad to do it.’ Ned rubbed at his nose as he was apt to do when embarrassed. ‘And a few bit veg is nowt.’

  ‘Aye, but Ethel says it was the good stuff you gave them, Ned. None of the old rubbish. And when you managed to sell some veg if things went well, it was their pocket that saw the result. She said they had a job to get you to take a bit of baccy money. Without what you slipped them on the sly it’d have been the workhouse, according to Ethel, although why the daft pair didn’t tip me the wink as to how things were I don’t know. But that was Amos, stubborn as a cuddy and as proud as Punch.’

  David was gaping at his father in amazement. He knew his da had sometimes managed to sell the odd few boxes of vegetables round the doors when there was a bit over - which wasn’t often by the time he’d looked after Amos and himself and slipped Renee and Carrie some stuff - but he had always assumed his da had kept the money for the hard work he’d put in. And all the time he’d been looking after Amos and Ethel. Well, well. Talk about live and learn.

  ‘So? What do you say?’ His father’s deep brown eyes, so like his own, were searching.

  ‘Good on you, man, if you want to go.’

  ‘Want to go? By, lad.’ Ned couldn’t go on but David saw that his shoulders had straightened and his head was up at the thought of a good regular job. His mother had stripped his father of every shred of self-worth in the last years, and it was only now, seeing the transformation in front of him, that he realised just how much it had hurt his da.

  The thought of his mother made him say, ‘What about Mam? What if she doesn’t want to go? You know what she’s like.’

  There was a moment of silence which seemed to swell, before Ned said very softly, ‘I shall be goin’ alone, lad.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Aye.’ Ned wetted his lips. ‘I’ve had me fill over the years, lad, an’ that’s the truth. She’s treated me as less than the muck under her boots an’ I can’t stand the sight of her no more than she can stand the sight of me.’

  Terry had turned his head away and was scuffing a clod of earth with his shiny boots.

  ‘But . . .’ David was at a loss.

  ‘You think the less of me for it?’

  ‘No, Da.’ It was immediate. ‘No, but I just can’t take it in. Will . . . will we see you again?’

&nb
sp; ‘Oh aye, lad, bless you.’ It was Terry who replied. ‘You and your dear wife and any of them who want to pay a visit will be made more than welcome, you rest assured on that. You just write and let your da know when you want to come down and there’ll be train tickets provided, all right? On me. And that stands for as long as your da stays down south, which I hope will be indefinitely. By, it’ll be right grand to have someone from the old days to jaw with of an evening over a pint or two. The wife is forever in one or the other of the bairns’ houses, and it’ll be worse now our Nell has had her bairn. Be a magnet, that babby will. She’s already spent a small fortune on kitting out the nursery for him as it is.’