With the coal strike prolonged for another two months, there was no chance of Probyn escaping his wife’s nagging about money; nagging about everything. And she had no valid reason to complain; it was not as if her children were reduced to taking their daily meal at The Big Drum along with the strikers’ children, for Probyn’s army pension saw to that.
But whilst they might have scraped by financially, the long period of unemployment took its toll in other ways. Being at home so much with Eliza made their differences more noticeable. He tried to get out as much as he could, hunting for rabbits with the boys, to the allotment or the Old Comrades’ Club, but it was impossible for him to stay out as long as she appeared to want. Even when he helped around the house she seemed irritated by his presence – true, any woman would have been, even the gentle Grace had had her moments under pressure, but any altercation with her had been followed by loving amends. There was no such atonement from Eliza.
The more she nagged him the more he resorted to comparison. He and Grace had enjoyed such lovely conversations; all Eliza wanted to do was bicker or carp. Oh, Grace had argued with him, she had been a fiery little thing at times, but there was none of the nastiness that had begun to creep into Eliza’s admonishments. She could be really offensive to those who went against her.
In recognition of this, Probyn finally began to empathize with his children, felt sorry and ashamed that he had inflicted such a mother upon them. It had just seemed the right thing to do at the time.
* * *
The coal strike pressed on, summer bringing no alleviation of the nationwide depression. Crippled by years of industrial action, factories lay idle, grass sprouting from their roofs, the only sign of industry provided by nesting sparrows, the windows smashed by the bored gangs of unemployed whose number had swelled to two million.
Even when the miners’ dispute was finally settled by the introduction of a profit-sharing scheme, there was no sense of triumph, for previous experience had shown that it would be a hard climb back to normality.
Probyn doubted that he would even achieve it, for it seemed to him that since the war the whole world had gone mad. Though a truce had been declared in Ireland it looked as if the rebels were set to acquire independence. His father’s words sprang to mind: ‘Start breaking Britain into bits and where will it stop? Next thing you know that’d be the end of our Empire.’ What on earth had all those thousands of brave men spent four years fighting for? Fighting and dying …
‘What do you think, Father?’
Joe’s voice startled him from his thoughts. Eyes coming back into focus, Probyn saw not a boy but a young man in long trousers, smiling at him expectantly.
‘Well now!’ He injected his voice with admiration. ‘What a dandy. Twizzle round, let me have a good look.’
Affecting a manly gait, Joe swaggered before his audience for all he was worth, flourishing a comb and running it through his slicked-back auburn hair, even being so impudent as to take a Woodbine from a packet on the mantel and insert it between his lips, though not going so far as to light it, taking theatrical puffs as he strutted about, making parents and children laugh.
‘Oh, give over,’ begged a grinning Clem, ‘you’re making me puke.’
‘Let the lad have his bit of glory!’ Eliza was in a good mood at the thought that Joe would soon be adding to the household budget, and had purchased the bargain trousers in an end-of-season sale.
‘I had to wait till bang on my fourteenth birthday to get long trousers,’ objected Clem, though only jokingly.
Joe looked shocked at the thought that he might be stripped of his new-found manhood, but Eliza was benevolent. ‘He’s only got a couple of months to go; it’d be daft to put them away. But we shall have to sort you some old ones out for pit wear.’
Probyn was swift to correct this misapprehension. ‘The lad won’t be going down any pit.’
‘What?’ Eliza’s good mood quickly transmuted to annoyance.
Eyes fixed to her expression, the children saw it as an ebbing wave, placid waters rippling away to reveal the hard pebbled beach beneath, and, at this sudden drop in temperature, they went about their business, leaving the parents to differ.
‘Where will he be going then, if you don’t mind telling me?’
‘I’ve got him a job behind the counter at the Maypole.’
‘Oh, that’ll earn rich rewards, I’m sure!’
‘You never complained that Clem didn’t work at the pit.’ The preferential treatment of his eldest son had not gone unnoticed. Had he been a jealous type Probyn might have resented Clem.
‘He’s got bad lungs; that one’s as fit as a lop!’ She jabbed a thumb at Joe. ‘Anyway, he’ll only be on the surface to start with.’
Probyn donned a look of obstinacy. ‘No he won’t, because I want something better for him.’
‘You call shop work better?’
‘Soon as he’s old enough he’ll be joining the army.’
Having come to learn of Probyn’s stubborn streak, Eliza knew it was pointless arguing with him and made do with a vexatious retort: ‘Good! Then at least we won’t have to feed him.’
* * *
But of course it would be some years yet before Joe could enlist and the poor boy was to suffer many a grumble about his lack of earning ability, especially when his stepbrother Edwin turned fourteen not long after him. Without consultation of anyone, Eliza despatched her own son to the pit manager’s house to seek employment, thereafter Beata and her sisters were to take it in turns to fill his bath, to bash his clothes and clean his boots, to scrub the coal dust from his back, and to listen to his howling complaints that the naphtha soap was taking the skin off along with the grime. With others shouldering the extra work, the money Edwin earned as a pony-driver cheered his mother up no end, though her pleasure still had its barb.
‘Look!’ she told Joe upon opening their wage packets one payday, both boys having laid them unopened on the table alongside their father’s. ‘See how much more you’d earn if you did a job like Ed’s?’
Joe did not respond. What did it matter how much he earned when his stepmother took it all and gave him only sixpence in return?
But his father defended him. ‘He makes his contribution, that’s good enough for me. It’s Joe’s wages that have helped us to get back on our feet after the strike.’
Eliza retorted, ‘We’d get back on our feet a whole lot faster if—’
‘He is not going down the pit.’ Probyn remained adamant.
‘Oh, it’s good enough for my lad but not yours! I’ll tell you what, if we are getting back on our feet it’s because of the person who juggles the money.’ She tapped her chest as if to attach the accolade. ‘We’re going to have to wait till the end of the year now before the next one leaves school and brings in a wage.’ This would be Madeleine. ‘You could make it so much easier by—’
‘No! Be told, woman.’ And Probyn’s face denied any further argument.
* * *
Probyn cast his mind back, trying to recall the moment when he had started to regret marrying Eliza: bitterly regretted it. Oh, there had always been doubts. At heart he had known she was only marrying him to give herself a more comfortable life, but he had ignored his own judgement, for he was an honourable man, and he had managed to get by until recently. Now he saw her for what she was, a lazy money-grubber with ideas above her station, using his children as unpaid servants.
Trapped in his misery, there was no comfort in the church for one who had changed his religion as easily as shedding a dirty pair of socks. Baptized a Wesleyan, he had turned Catholic in order to marry Grace, and now had jettisoned both for … what had it been for? Not because he was enamoured with the Church of England but for the sake of going to bed with a woman who had metamorphosed to a shrew. He thought of poor Charlotte to whom he had promised to write but never had. How differently things might have turned out had he been allowed to marry her – though he would never blame his elder son an
d daughter for their opposition; by his own self-centredness he had brought this calamity upon himself. No, alas, not just on himself but upon his dear children. He felt deeply ashamed.
Character traits, long suppressed, began to resurface. Now, whenever she asked him to do things he took his time, wilfully refusing to be hurried. The more she urged him to comply the more obstinate he became, knowing how furious it made her and taking malevolent glee in it. Often, he would ignore her altogether, seemingly oblivious to her presence.
But, whilst it might appear to others that he was utterly calm, below the surface an acid pool of resentment simmered, and, to protect his sanity he began to drift off into his memories. Christmas came, a time when, as a child, he had dreamed of the small treats that might appear in his stocking, or of the feasts and games that Aunt Kit would put on. Now, besides dear Grace, he thought of folk long dead – his mother and father, his first love, Emily, his best pal, Greatrix, lost comrades …
Out the latter came, marching in their hundreds from the dark recesses of his mind, decomposing corpses, headless torsos, disembodied faces of soldiers he had trained. He examined each one, trying to look beyond the horrific wounds, forcing his mind to reshape them into the whole human beings they had been before he had packed them onto the trains that had taken them to destruction. Then, unable to mend them, he placed them back in the cupboard and shut the door.
In an attempt to put as much distance as he could between himself and Eliza, on his days off he began to go further afield in quest of succour. Yet it was not his sisters to whom he turned, for the years of estrangement over his marriage to Grace had made him guarded in his dealings with them. Even when attending Aunt Gwen’s funeral and being reunited with them for the day, he said nothing. No, it was to his old army pal he went. When first wed, he and Eliza had gone together to visit Bert Dungworth and his wife in the next village; now Probyn went alone, making excuses for his dragon of a wife. Even here he was unable to talk of his marital difficulties, however much he and Bert had shared in war, but at least he felt at home.
Relying on this bolthole, he was devastated to find his knock unanswered one day and, not knowing where else to turn, he caught the train to Pontefract and thenceforth made for the army depot.
Despite none here being familiar, the moment the occupants heard that he was an old RSM, he was drawn into their bosom, shown around every inch of the barracks and plied with questions as to how it had been in his day, fêted throughout the afternoon and long into the evening, copious amounts of ale being imbibed as he regaled them with regimental exploits.
Not for a long time had Probyn felt so exhilarated, admitting this to his eager audience as he noticed the time on the clock and sighing what a shame it was that he would have to leave.
There came an inebriated chorus of dismay and calls for him to have just one more drink with them.
It took little persuasion. He allowed them to refill his glass, not wanting this happy time to end. When they offered him a cot for the night he accepted gladly and drank with them long after tattoo had dimmed the rest of the barracks.
But intoxicated as he was, the depressing reality could not be shaken off and was with him as he closed his eyes: he could not escape her for ever.
* * *
For a moment when the bugler called reveille, he was seventeen again, the sound jerking him upright and out of bed in order to escape Corporal Wedlock’s wrath. But there was no one else in the room.
Flopping back onto the edge of the bed, he sat there for a while rubbing his face, a cloak of dismay settling upon him as he pictured Eliza’s face when he went home. How he hated her.
Trying to force his mind into coherent thought, he remembered that he was on a late shift and hence there was no urgency to leave. But his children might be worried, and, only out of concern for them did he hurry to his ablutions, enjoying a fried breakfast before eventually leaving for the railway station.
His arrival back at Denaby coincided with the procession of children to school and a moment of gladness occurred when he saw his own amongst them and stopped to exchange a few warm words.
But once their cheery little faces had gone on their way, his former dark mood was reinstated as he made his way home, imagining Eliza’s greeting.
His prediction was accurate, her angry enquiry spearing him the moment he opened the door. ‘And where the hell have you been?’
‘I’m sorry if you were worrie—’
‘Oh I wasn’t worried!’
‘No, I didn’t think you would be somehow.’ He spoke quietly, taking off his jacket and fitting it over the back of a dining chair. ‘But just for your information, I spent the night at the depot with some army friends. I had no intention of inconveniencing you and I’m sorry.’ The look on his face warned her not to persist.
‘I suppose you want feeding.’ Her nostrils were flared, as if the very sight of him caused her distaste.
‘No, thank you. I had breakfast there. But I’d appreciate a cup of tea if there’s one going.’ He sat at the table, picturing his nagging wife being hit by a bus and imagining what joy and relief he would feel at her death.
Stiff of limb, Eliza brought him a cup of tea. ‘I was just reading the newspaper but you can have it if you like.’ She did not seem overly eager to give it up.
When he politely declined, she went back to reading it herself, not another word passing between them.
Waiting for his tea to cool, Probyn shoved his chair back, rolled up his sleeves and went to fetch his boots. Choosing not to employ his usual fireside seat, for this would bring him into closer proximity with her, he put an old newspaper on the table and began to set out his tin, brushes and cloths. Her felt her eyes on him, thought he heard a tut of exasperation, but ignored it and launched into his task.
Throughout his life, in times of worry or anger, Probyn had always found therapy in the cleaning of his boots, failing to recognize that lately he had become obsessive in this task.
Trying her best to read, Eliza was constantly distracted by the scrubbing of bristles upon leather. There would be comparative silence for a few moments whilst he applied more polish and saliva, then the brushing would start up again. On and on it went until she could withhold her irritation no longer and slapped the newspaper on her lap. ‘For God’s sake, aren’t they clean enough? You’ll polish the blasted things away.’
He showed not the slightest hint of having heard her, his arm propelling the bristles vigorously back and forth.
Simmering, she went back to reading the newspaper and found something that might distract him. ‘I wonder if this woman’s related to you. Kilmaster’s not a very common name.’
Even now he ignored her, continuing to buff his boots to a mirror-like gloss.
‘It’s one of these legal things: anyone wishing to contest the last will and testament of Ann Kilmas—’
‘Oh, dear God.’ Probyn stopped polishing, groaned and closed his eyes, before eventually looking up at her. ‘It’s my stepmother.’ Wearing an expression of guilt, he tried to recall the last time he ' had contacted Ann. Having received the occasional letter from her, he could not remember at what point the correspondence had dried up.
‘Does it say when the funeral is?’
Eliza’s tone lacked interest. ‘It’ll be long past now. She died a while ago.’
Feeling ashamed, he said he would have to write condolences to her offspring.
‘Well, whilst you’re at it, see if she’s left you anything.’ Eliza turned the page.
Probyn beheld her with reproach. ‘What sort of a person would they think I am?’
‘A sensible one! I take it this is the woman you told me about who got the benefit of your aunt’s house when your father died?’ At his nod, she grew more strenuous. ‘Then you’re entitled to it!’
‘I would have heard by now if I had got a mention. It’s my own fault. I didn’t treat her very well.’
‘She’s not the only one! So I’m e
xpected to make ends meet looking after your children while you let others have what’s yours?’ And she continued to scold him for throwing away this chance when money was so tight.
Under her badgering, he retreated into his impenetrable shell and went back to polishing his boots.
‘At least contact a solicitor!’
But he steadfastly ignored her, making her more furious than ever.
‘Right!’ An angry rustling of paper. ‘I’ll send for a copy of the will myself then!’
* * *
Eliza did send off for a copy of the will, but it was to do her not the slightest good, for there was no mention of Probyn’s name, Ann Kilmaster having left everything to her own children.
‘And quite right,’ approved Probyn, when she told him.
Naturally, it was the wrong thing to have said, but then every word he uttered seemed to annoy her whether intentional or not.
‘Oh yes, your own wife’s condemned to turning sheets whilst others line their pockets, but that’s quite all right!’ An old sheet spread upon the table, with a vicious set of mouth Eliza ran her scissors through its threadbare centre, then grasped the two outer edges and began to pin them together in readiness for darning.
He wondered, as he sat trying to read his evening newspaper through yet another haranguing, trying to focus his mind on the print and not the torrent of abuse that was fast inducing a headache, how long it would take for life to reach the point where it was no longer bearable and he would have to walk away or kill her.
* * *
The following morning, Probyn was awoken by a splitting headache, the very act of opening his eyes causing him to feel sick. He remained prone for some while, reluctant to move either to right or left, and feeling strangely disorientated, until a tap from the knocker-up told him what time it was.
Feeling Eliza stir beside him, he muttered without looking at her, ‘I don’t feel like getting up.’
A Different Kind of Love Page 41
