She blessed the Burns for their deliverance of her and threw herself into her twice-nightly shows in and around London, using her wealth of new material.
Meanwhile, Charlie entered a new phase in his pursuit of her, one that kept her in an almost constant state of apprehension. He never lost an opportunity to accost her, whether he was with another girl or not. He would refer to her as his Galatea, and award himself full credit for the success of her career. He often sent her flowers, which she returned. He openly told her would-be suitors that he knew her in the biblical sense and was her husband in all but name, laughing at her embarrassment and the Burns’ fury. She was once stung to reply that he was husband in all but name to dozens but he merely grinned and said, ‘Ah, you forget that the rules of the game are rather different for men than for women, my hinny. A man is expected to pursue women and he’s applauded for his success. A woman is despised. And you were such a naughty little hinny with me, quite the naughtiest I’ve ever had. I think it only fair to warn them.’
He proposed marriage regularly. She was never certain whether he was serious, but would not have married him now under any circumstances. She reminded her maid never to leave her alone with him.
Chapter 19
It was nearing the third anniversary of her arrival in London and she pined for northern skies, a breath of northern air, the sounds of northern speech and northern music.
Daffodils bloomed in her garden, closely followed by tulips. She dreamed one night of Maria standing in bright sunlight in a garden full of flowers, holding her golden baby. They smiled at each other and Ginny had such a feeling of peace that she sighed in ecstasy, reached out to touch them and felt Maria’s hand reassuringly in hers. They are happy, was her last comforting thought, a balm to her spirit as she sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.
She awoke late and while she lay with her eyes closed in that half world between sleep and wakefulness she became aware of a face barely visible through the darkness surrounding it, a face of fear staring through the gloom. Martin. She awoke with a gasp and sat bolt upright, heart racing, with a single thought in her mind. Go to him.
She talked the experience over with Agnes and George, who were no interpreters of dreams or portents and could offer no advice except that belief in such things was mere superstition. Unconvinced, Ginny insisted, ‘I’ve got to go home. I’ll fulfil tonight’s engagement, but I’m cancelling the rest and I’m taking the first train home, come hell or high water. I’ll send my mother a telegram to expect me.’
‘Are you sure that’s wise? Your father’s made his feelings absolutely clear, and the signs are that your mother’s given you up as well. If they blame you for shaming them in the eyes of their neighbours it might be better for all concerned if you stay away,’ said Agnes.
Ginny hesitated, remembering the way her mother hid her bruises from the village for shame, then set her mouth in a determined line. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Then you know your own business best, and it must be so. At least matters will be resolved one way or another,’ said George, ‘but be warned against expecting very much. Don’t build up too much hope and remember you’ve got friends here if they’re unkind.’
Before the show she half-heard mention of a disaster somewhere, and there was talk of shareholders losing everything. Ginny tried to obliterate a sense of foreboding by concentrating her whole being on her art, on this, her last performance. On stage she was sparkling, hilarious, gaining true rapport with the audience. She dropped a deep curtsey in response to rapturous applause, then raised her head to look in wonder over row after row of laughing faces and clapping hands, feeling utterly detached, like a creature belonging to a different world a million miles away.
As she removed the greasepaint her maid told her that there had been an explosion in a mine in the north, and a lot of people stood to lose a lot of money. She hurried to join audience and fellow artistes in the bar to find out more. An impresario stopped her to congratulate her on her performance and to tempt her into his show with a small fortune. Suddenly she spotted Charlie waving at her and turned away from him to engage herself in conversation with the impresario, vainly hoping that Charlie would take the hint and go away.
‘I say, Ginny, it’s Annsdale, you know,’ he called as soon as he was within earshot. He was waving the evening paper over his head and pushing his way through the crowds towards her. ‘Scores of men trapped underground, Read it.’
He thrust the paper under her nose. She looked at it and saw only her vision of Martin’s face as the floor swam up to meet her.
Dreading the discovery that Martin was either dead or buried alive, and wondering what sort of a welcome she would get in Annsdale, she lay awake all night. Before daybreak she put on the shoes he had given her, the first time she had worn them since she’d tramped the streets of London looking at the big houses, not daring to knock on any door to ask for work.
George and Agnes went with her to the station. Seeing Charlie boarding the same train in the grey dawn light, Ginny felt a stab of panic, fearing his behaviour towards her in Annsdale would be as bad as that in London, that he would make her name a byword for immorality. George nodded ominously in his direction. ‘Now he’s lost money on his mining investment, he’ll be looking for another source of income.’
She took her seat alone in a first-class carriage, and gazed out of the window as the town sped by, comforted by the thought that London held two true friends she could return to if she found none at home. She looked for the twentieth time at the newspaper report.
. . . a rush from the pit shaft of smoke and dust, which for a moment completely enveloped the headgear and hung like a pall over the pit and its surroundings, was a signal not to be mistaken by anyone who has experience of colliery disasters. As the boom of the explosion reverberated along the valley, men, women and children were seen rushing to the pit along roads and footways from all directions, all frantic to know the worst . . .
‘Oh God, oh God.’ Ginny shut her eyes for a moment, picturing them, her mother and the bairns, Mam Smith and Philip, Enid and the rest of the women of the village among them. She cursed the slowness of the train and the length of the journey, wishing herself among them right now but helpless to speed her arrival. She read on.
Annsdale Colliery is the property of Messrs Vine, Wood, Tyas and Parkinson and Co. and is situated in a valley a few miles from Durham. Its means of communication is a line of railway connected by sidings with all the pits in the valley and thence with the whole railway network.
It is to the coal trade that the area owes its present phenomenal prosperity. Instead of the few tons that were formerly sent out by different small pits in the neighbourhood, thousands of tons daily are now sent to the surface by this pit alone. From a small village Annsdale has grown to a populous and thriving district.
As to the number who went down to work this morning, and the number who escaped through the Edmunds shaft, our information is uncertain. At first it was thought there were two hundred deaths, then under a hundred. Amid the excitement and grief, we have been unable to gain reliable information.
Suddenly Charlie entered her carriage and sprawled on the seat facing her, looking unusually morose.
‘I wonder you dare go back to Annsdale, Charlie, with my father after you.’
He snorted. ‘I have a financial interest which overrides any concerns I might have about him. A good deal of my money is sunk in that mine. An irate father pales into insignificance in the teeth of a setback like this one. In any case, what reason have I to avoid him now? See your left hand, Ginny? You still wear my ring. Your father objects to men who seduce girls they’ve no intention of marrying, but my dearest wish is to marry you. I’ll make him my father-in-law as soon as you name the day. And if you’ll excuse my saying so, you’re the one who should be ashamed to go back to Annsdale, still refusing the man who has the prize of your virginity,’ he looked at her and added, like a knife thrust, ‘the man to wh
om you have borne a child. I wonder what the good people of Annsdale will think of that?’
She coloured as she took his ring off her finger, and put it into his hand. She had an impulse to beg him not to betray her, to plead with him to behave as a stranger to her when they got back, to say ‘Please, Charlie, don’t put me to shame,’ but she knew it would only make him worse. He would apply any pressure, subject her to any humiliation, and resort to any means to get his own way. Pleas for forbearance would achieve nothing but to increase his triumph over her. Wiser by far, she thought, to give him no greater sense than he already enjoyed of his power to destroy her hopes. Charlie would act in his own interests, and she must expect it. Her feelings for Martin Jude must remain her own deep secret.
‘Isn’t it funny, Charlie, you wouldn’t marry me when I kept asking you, and now I’ve made my mind up never to marry you. So why keep asking?’
‘Perhaps it’s the challenge, little hinny. And all my objections to taking you for my wife have been removed. I find I quite relish the idea now. You’re my equal in income. You behave and sound like a lady. I know I could safely present you anywhere. We suit each other so well in bed I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since you left me. I can give you a deeply satisfying married life. Take the ring back, Ginny.’
‘No. And you can’t give me a deeply satisfying married life because you can’t give me love. There’s no love in you. You couldn’t have treated Charlotte or Jubilee as you did if there were. You wouldn’t want to destroy my reputation if you loved me.’
‘Exasperating girl. You drive me to it with your repeated rejection and humiliation of me, but I mean to have you, Ginny, and I will get my way in the end.’
‘Do you want a pitman for a father-in-law, then? Isn’t that beneath you?’
‘Ah, Ginny, we live in London. Your father will remain safely tucked away deep in a mine somewhere in Annsdale, quite out of sight and out of mind. Perhaps he’s among the men who are trapped, or even killed. Have you noticed something?’
‘What?’
‘We’re quite alone in this carriage, and it will be hours before we get there.’
‘Charlie, if you make one move towards me, I’ll pull that communication cord. Things are a lot different now to what they were that first night in your house. I’m better known, and better dressed, and better spoken. I’ve got money. I’ve been taken for a lady, and I’d be believed. Touch me, and I’ll have you thrown off the train.’
He shrugged and gave a taut smile. ‘As if I would. You are too much of a lady now for that, and I’m certainly too much of a gentleman. It’s very strange though, Ginny.’
‘What is?’
‘That you refuse me, yet you’ve had no other man. I take a keen enough interest in you to know for a fact that you haven’t. It pleases me, because I hate a trollop, and it encourages me. But I do wonder at it. I’ve met none to compare with you, and I must assume you haven’t met my match.’
‘I wouldn’t expect to meet your match in another hundred years,’ she said, voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘Like the song says, “I was a good little girl ’til I met you”, and I went back to being a good little girl once I’d got rid of you.’
‘You say such cutting things, Ginny, but I sometimes suspect there’s more to it.’
To her relief, an elderly man joined them at the next station. Conversation stopped, and she sank into hideous reverie, wondering anew who might be dead, who trapped among the men and boys that she knew. Her brother Arthur must be old enough for the pit now, and her mind recoiled from the thought that he or her father or, above all, Martin, could well be one of them.
After a seemingly endless and wearying journey, they reached Annsdale and stepped off the warm train into a gust of cold wind. When she saw Emma waiting for her, Ginny’s heart leapt. She went to throw her arms around her, but Emma determinedly kept her distance and her manner was cold.
‘Well, here you are, and I wouldn’t have recognized you. Quite the lady. We’re going to have a lot more important people from London visiting us soon. I see you’ve brought your fancy man.’ She nodded towards Charlie.
‘I’ve got no fancy man.’ Ginny marvelled at the change in Emma, who looked a grown woman. ‘How bad is it?’
‘Worse than you can imagine. “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow . . .” ’
‘I say, that’s a quote from Hamlet, isn’t it?’ Charlie asked, a supercilious smile playing on his lips.
‘What if it is?’ Ginny demanded. ‘What business of yours is our conversation?’
‘None, none at all.’ He looked at Emma, still smirking. ‘Except Shakespeare translated into hinny does strike rather oddly on the ear. I mean no offence, of course.’
Even in the lamplight, Ginny saw Emma look as shamefaced as a servant girl caught stealing the spoons. Shakespeare was obviously something else Charlie thought too good for a pitman’s daughter.
‘Look, here’s your sister in her horseless carriage, come to carry you off, Charlie. So goodbye for ever.’
‘What an amusing girl you are, Ginny. Not for ever. Until I see you again, my little hinny, and so I will, very soon, when I come to ask your parents for your hand. I do hope your news is not very bad.’ He took her by the waist and attempted to kiss her but she averted her face. He got into the yellow Daimler with a sigh and waved to her, but she received no acknowledgement from Helen. Without a word or a glance in Ginny’s direction, she ordered her chauffeur to drive off.
‘Yon’s a good man to keep company with, if you can take insults as compliments,’ said Emma. ‘Don’t bring him near me again.’
‘I’ve not brought him, he’s come on his own. And I don’t want him near me.’
‘He didn’t seem to think so. We’ve not been able to hold our heads up round here since it got out about you and him. But you needn’t worry about any trouble from me father, and neither need he. Not for a bit anyway, and probably never. He’s trapped underground with the rest, and we don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. So you can come and stop with us. And I was going to tell you the worst when your fancy man interrupted us but maybe I’d better save it until you’re sitting down at home.’
‘He’s not me fancy man,’ said Ginny, ‘and what was it? Tell me. Is it Martin? Is Martin dead?’
‘What’s Martin got to do with you? No, it’s not Martin. Martin got out by the other shaft. It’s the ones who were working in the dip who’re still trapped.’
‘I want to go and see for myself what’s happened,’ said Ginny. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘You’d better pick your bag up, then. It looks as if it cost plenty. I’ll not be carrying it for you.’
‘I never expected you to.’
They walked rapidly towards the pit and joined a dark fringe of people standing ankle deep in mud at the bottom of the bank, awaiting news which never seemed to come, and which all knew would be bad, come when it might. They stood patiently, illuminated by the ruddy blaze of a cresset standing at the entrance to the sawing shed. Ginny recognized a few of her former neighbours but none acknowledged her, all seeming concerned only with anxieties of their own. The policemen on duty at the mouth of the shaft clapped their gloved hands together for warmth. A couple of doctors waited, wrapped in blankets against a biting wind that swept across the dismal open space in eddying gusts. A shivering crew of reporters crowded over the pit-cabin fire.
Emma’s face looked like a mask. ‘We stood here all day yesterday, but there’s too much wreckage in the shaft to let them get the cage down, and that’s been damaged. It’s all got to be shifted and mended before they can do anything. They reckon there’s fires down below, and some are saying there can’t be anybody left alive.’
They waited with the rest until frozen to the bone by the wind, then walked on home. Their mother was sitting at the quilting frame, looking thinner and more unkempt than Ginny could ever remember. She stopped in the doorway, suddenly nervous of g
oing in.
Her mother didn’t look up from her work. ‘Well, you’ve come all this way, you might as well step over the threshold.’
It was the only sort of greeting Ginny felt she had any right to expect, but it was far from the one she’d hoped for. ‘Hello, Mam,’ she murmured.
Her mother avoided her eyes. ‘Put the kettle on, Emma. Now you’re here, you’d better take your coat off, Jane.’
Ginny sat with her hands in her lap, fidgeting with the material of her dress, stealing nervous glances at her mother and clearing her throat from time to time. After a couple of minutes her mother looked her in the eye.
‘I must say, you look in a better condition than the prodigal son, and a better condition than many an honest girl round here.’
Ginny’s hands became still. ‘Oh, don’t, Mam. I haven’t lived with him for over a year and if I look well, it’s on money I’ve earned singing in the music hall, fair and square.’
‘Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done enough to make sure we’ll never live it down, you must know that. What makes it worse is you knew what he was before you went. Your father spelt it out for you.’ Her mother’s voice was harsh.
‘I didn’t know, not really. I was fifteen years old, how could I understand what he was like? If I could make it any different I would, but I can’t.’ Her lip quivered as she met her mother’s stony gaze. ‘I’ve not been with him for over a year, Mam. I never will again. Are you going to hold it against me for ever?’ She averted her face to hide the tears that welled up in an instant.
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