Reach for Tomorrow

by Rita Bradshaw

  She was speaking through her teeth, her eyes fixed on his face through the starry snowflakes as she told herself she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t betray any weakness to those narrowed eyes watching her so intently, or he’d be on her again.

  ‘Aw come on, Rosie lass, be kind. You know how I want you--’

  ‘You touch me again and I’ll scream enough to wake the dead, I swear it,’ she warned tightly. ‘You go and see Mary Linney if you want that sort of thing.’

  Shane held Rosie’s gaze for some moments before he muttered, ‘I dinna want her. How many more times? I only want you.’

  She didn’t say anything more, merely glaring at him as she brought herself away from the wall where she had been leaning for support. She had to get home. She wasn’t safe until she was enclosed within her own four walls, but she must not run; she had to walk carefully, steadily. It was only her composure that was holding him at bay.

  As Rosie began to walk along the pavement, the snow covering her black elastic-sided boots and brushing the hem of her thick serge skirt, Shane fell into step beside her. He made no further attempt to touch her and he didn’t speak, but her heart was thudding like a sledgehammer as they reached the end of Chapel Lane. Forcer Road was poorly lit and never had the distance to number ninety-seven seemed so long, but then she could see her own front door and she had to restrain herself from breaking into a sprint.

  She had her key ready in her hand and once they reached their respective doorsteps immediately inserted it into the lock, but he caught her arm as she stood on the step. ‘You comin’ in for the bairns?’ His voice was soft and made her want to be sick.

  ‘No.’ She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she spoke but she was aware of his eyes sliding over her face, and it was all she could do not to scrub at her skin where they had rested as she almost fell into the dark hall, slamming the door shut behind her and leaning against it for a moment as she tried to compose herself. He wouldn’t have dared to do what he’d done tonight if her da and the lads were still alive. Shock and anger were making her face burn and the bile rise like acid in her throat. Or maybe he would? Her eyes narrowed in the blackness. Aye, maybe he would at that.

  It was some seconds before she straightened her back, but her head was still bent as her thoughts travelled on. And what if it had been summer, and she hadn’t been muffled up to the nines? What if he’d caught her in a back alley somewhere? Would he have treated her like Mary Linney, tried to force her even? She wouldn’t put anything past him. Oh, she wished she knew more about all that side of things, bairns and marriage and all that, but her mam had never discussed anything with her. The little she did know she had gleaned from Flora, whose mam did at least answer her questions when Flora asked her. Rosie still remembered the terror she had felt the summer before when she had awoken in the middle of the night to find blood all over the bottom sheet. She had thought she was dying, that there was something wrong inside.

  She could have asked Mrs McLinnie anything though, which was funny when you thought about it, with her being Shane’s mam. Oh, he was horrible that Shane, filthy. She raised her head, gulping spittle into her dry mouth as she heard her mother call from the kitchen. And she was glad they were moving to Hendon now, she was. The other side of the world wouldn’t be too far.

  It was snowing and freezing hard when Davey Connor walked through the colliery gates and into the dark street beyond, and as he glanced round at the luminous new world he found the glistening white purity actually pained him. He couldn’t go down again, by all that was holy he couldn’t.

  He lifted his hand in acknowledgement to the shouts of farewell from some of his workmates and walked steadily down the street without looking to left or right, but once he was clear of Southwick Road he had to fight the desire to run and run and keep running until he left Sunderland and the nightmare of the pits far behind him.

  By, he felt odd, queer. He lifted his hand to his brow and it came away damp with sweat despite the freezing cold. There’d been a moment down there today, more than one if he was being honest, when he thought he was going to have to give the distress signal and get out as this feeling had engulfed him. He couldn’t take it, he couldn’t stomach going down into that black hell every day for the rest of his life.

  The panic threatened to take him over and he turned off the main street, entering a cut between two houses known as Bog Alley that led to a small patch of waste ground which was used by the surrounding neighbourhood as a dumping site. Once he was out of sight of the street he leant against an old stack of rusty corrugated tin, drawing in deep gulps of the icy air as he willed himself to calm down. Damn it. Damn it. What was he going to do? This feeling, this terrifying, acrid blind fear that turned his bowels to water and made him sweat like a pig wasn’t getting better as he’d hoped - it was worse if anything.

  Every time he went down he could see the bodies, or bits of bodies in some cases, strewn about in the grotesque mayhem of death. Some of them had been unrecognizable, and that was bad enough, but it was the ones that still bore some resemblance to human beings that had affected him the most.

  Old Frank Carter in the last section where the roof hadn’t come down sitting with his bait tin in his hand for all the world as though he was going to eat his fill, but with all of his clothes burnt and melted into his blackened skin. And young Peter Fowler, it had been the poisoned air that had got him right enough; the look on his face . . .

  Stop it. Stop it. ‘That’s enough.’ He said the words out loud with his eyes closed, but the picture was carved into the screen of his mind and there was no getting away from it. He had been fifteen, young Peter. Fifteen. And Rosie’s brother Phil, still nothing more than a young lad. He was glad he hadn’t been there when they had come to Sam. He couldn’t have taken that and remained half sane. He snatched his cap off his head and tilted his face upwards.

  There was an emotion threatening to burst out of his chest that was indescribable but he knew he dare not let it have free rein. Once out in the open he didn’t know where the pain and anguish would take him, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of letting go. And all this talk of what he was going to do - he shook his head at himself, his eyes springing open and his upper lip curling in self-contempt - he knew what he was going to do all right, what he had to do. He had to get over this, and damn quick too, there was nowt else for it. He was a miner.

  He shivered, but it was the storm within that was causing his blood to run like liquid ice. Aye, he was a miner, and his da had been a miner, and his grandda and his grandda’s da afore him. And the pit had taken each one of them in its own way. His grandda and his great-grandda had died of the coal dust eating into their lungs - silicosis they called it, according to one of Sam’s books, but all he’d known as a bairn was that his grandda fought and gasped for each breath, his eyes wild at times as he’d died inch by inch. His own da had bought it in a mine disaster the year before Davey had first gone down. He had been one of three miners buried alive in a fall of side from a wet slip in the area where they had been working. They had brought him home that same day, almost to the time he would have returned from his shift, and his mam had taken hours laying his da out. When he’d gone into the front room to see him he had found it difficult to believe the scrubbed white figure lying so still and serene was his da. He had been so clean, even his fingernails . . .

  He levered himself off the mound of tin and shook his curly thick hair to dislodge its coating of snow. Before this last fall his life had looked so straightforward. There’d been Sam, who’d always been like a brother to him from when they had first played in the streets together as snotty-nosed bairns, and he knew Sam had been all for him and Rosie getting together when she was old enough to start courting. And that would have fitted into the plans he and Sam had in mind. Oh aye, Sam and Rosie had understood what made each other tick right enough, there would have been no difficulty there. And him and Sam would have made a go of that little farm they’d dreamed
about, Castletown way maybe, or perhaps Herrington, and once Rosie had been wed to him she’d have been clear of these streets she hated so much and out in the country, and there would have been Sam’s wife for company for her - whoever that might have been. By, them Sundays when the four of them, him and Sam and Rosie and Flora, had walked their legs off until the town was far behind them and the world had become a picture of brilliantly green fields and hedgerows and the like, seemed like another lifetime now.

  He shook his head again but now the movement was savage. Whisht, what was he doing harping on like this? Sam was gone, the dream of their partnership was gone, and there was only grim reality left. And reality told him he’d be working underground and taking care of his mam for years yet, because one thing was for certain, the rest of her brood wouldn’t lift a finger. Four older brothers he had, and three sisters, and they’d all cleared off and got married the first chance they’d had, leaving him with the old lady. Not that he didn’t love his mam, he did, and he was only too aware of the hard life she’d had. And Rosie? The name caught at him with equal pain and pleasure. By, Rosie was special all right. The last few months had seen a change in her that plain fascinated him and something had been signed and sealed this morning. But - he paused in his thinking, breathing hard through his nose - he would have to wait a while longer before he showed his hand and asked her to start walking out. Sam and Phil had done a good job in warning the lads off, and he didn’t blame them, it was only right and proper they’d looked out for their sister, but her innocence meant he couldn’t rush her, especially with all she’d got on her plate now. No, he’d go nice and easy, but man - his breathing quickened as his pulse raced - she was going to be his.

  ’Course there’d be her mam and the bairns in the picture for a time but they’d sort something out, they’d have to. He couldn’t wait until the bairns were grown up to wed her, that could be ten years or more and he’d go round the bend before then. He’d like to tie the knot as soon as she was old enough if she was willing. And her eyes this morning had told him she would be willing.

  Davey straightened his back as the chill of the raw night penetrated his rough working jacket and muffler, congealing the perspiration on his skin with wintry fingers, and after shaking his hair once again, pulled his flat cap out of his pocket and stuck it on his head. By, the air smelt bonny the night - fresh, clean, like he imagined it must have done in the Garden of Eden if them stories in the Bible were to be believed. Sam had believed them. He caught at the thought, finding it strangely comforting. Aye, Sam had believed all right. He’d maintained it was man, not God, who had messed up creation, and they had had some right good discussions - if not arguments - about that and other things, and Rosie had put in her twopennyworth and all. Rosie . . .

  Suddenly the longing to see her, if only for a few minutes, was so strong he could taste it. He’d nip round now on his way home and ask how she had got on in Hendon. The decision made, he turned swiftly and walked back along the narrow cut and into the dimly lit street again, his size-eleven hobnailed boots leaving deep indentations in the snow which was already an inch or two thick.

  He took a couple of short cuts down the back lanes before he reached the alleyway that led through into Mapel Avenue, and as he neared the corner he saw two figures alight from a tram - a rotund man and small woman - who then preceded him into Chapel Lane. The couple were walking quickly, the woman holding on to the man’s arm as she picked her way through the snow, and as Davey was in no hurry to overtake them he followed some twenty or so yards behind, aware the snow was coming down thicker than ever.

  At some point - probably when he stopped to tie his bootlace - he lost them altogether in the swirling white cloud in front of him, but because they were still at the forefront of his mind he gave more than a cursory glance at the couple standing close to the wall of a house halfway down Chapel Lane as he passed. He couldn’t see the woman - the man’s back was obscuring her from view - but it was the unmistakable intent of the man and the intimacy of the entwined couple that caused Davey’s head to swivel. They appeared to be fully clothed but what they were about was obvious, and then, at the same time that he recognized the man was Shane McLinnie, he heard him groan a name, her name, and caught just a glimpse of the small figure clasped in McLinnie’s arms.

  He stopped, he couldn’t help it, and then he walked on quickly into the silent world ahead of him which almost immediately swallowed him up with blank anonymity.

  Rosie. Rosie. His guts were twisting and he had the feeling he was shrinking, reducing down to a little speck of nothing. How could he have got it so wrong? How could he? And Shane McLinnie of all people? Didn’t she know what he was like? Couldn’t she see he was the scum of the earth?

  He found he was swearing in his mind as he marched along, the profanities helping to burn up the sick churning that had stripped away all his manliness and brought a humiliation so deep that he didn’t think he’d ever rise up out of it. And to think he’d refused Jenny Rowand when she’d offered it on a plate! And Hilda Casey, she’d been giving him the eye for months, along with her sister. But he’d had it in his mind to keep himself. Keep himself. He laughed deep in his throat, the sound bitter and low. Man, how they’d all laugh if they knew. Aye, they’d have a field day at his expense and love every minute of it.

  He had passed the promenade at Seaburn, bare and desolate in the winter night and not at all like the bustling place of the summer months, when large numbers of bulky canvas tents were stored there and rented out to sun-seekers for the day, and walked on through the open fields past Whitburn Bay and into Whitburn itself, before reason asserted itself. His mam would be worried. He stood in the shadow of the gable end of a house and adjusted the muffler more securely round his neck as the wind blew the snow in mad flurries. Even if she assumed he’d stayed on extra he was never this late, he’d better get back.

  It was gone eight o’clock before he caught sight of the sails of Fulwell Mill, and another ten minutes after that before he entered the back lane of Crown Street and then the communal yard that number eleven shared with the two houses either side of it. He noticed a piece of rag had been tied round the tap in an effort to keep it from freezing up. That’d be Mr Riley, he did the same every night and every morning it was frozen solid.

  When he pushed open the back door Davey was immediately aware something was wrong. For one thing there was no evening smell of cooking coming from the blackleaded range and the fire was low, and for another Mrs Riley was sitting in his mother’s chair to the right of the bread oven and she had been crying.

  ‘Oh, lad, lad.’ Mrs Riley sprang up at the sight of him, her hands going out towards him and her head bobbing. ‘Where’ve you bin? Mr Riley an’ our Douglas’ve bin scourin’ the streets lookin’ for you the past two hours or more.’

  ‘Where’s me mam?’ He didn’t answer her question. And then, when one hand went to her throat and the other clutched at her shawl, he said again, his voice sharp now, ‘Mrs Riley, where’s me mam? What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s gone, lad.’

  ‘Gone?’ He stared at her stupidly. ‘Where?’

  And then, as her meaning hit him with the force of a sledgehammer, he groped at one of the straight-backed chairs under the table and sat down quickly, her voice coming at him through the ringing in his ears.

  ‘You couldn’t have done anythin’, lad, not even if you’d bin home hours ago.’ Mrs Riley had her hand on his shoulder and was talking rapidly. ‘I found her meself just after half four when I nipped round with a bit of bacon an’ some stuff our Emily had got hold of.’ Mrs Riley’s married daughter, Emily, had a husband who dabbled in the black market, and as Mrs Riley’s oldest friend, Davey’s mother came in for a share of the contraband. ‘Dr Maynard reckons she’d bin gone some hours, afore mid-day he thought. Heart attack.’

  ‘A heart attack?’ Davey looked up into the kindly face dazedly. ‘But she was as fit as a fiddle apart from her rheumatism an’
the indigestion keeping her awake some nights.’

  ‘Aye, well the doctor reckons them dos she put down to wind was her heart.’ Mrs Riley shook her head slowly. ‘You know how she was about goin’ to the quack. Wouldn’t be told. Eee, it gave me a turn, I don’t mind tellin’ you, lad, findin’ her like that.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ He couldn’t take this in.

  ‘In the front room, lad. She’d’ve wanted to be laid out there. Mr Riley an’ our Douglas fetched in the trestle we used for our mam.’ The hand on his shoulder was patting him as she talked. ‘Mrs McClancy said she’d come in later an’ help me do the necessary for your mam if that’s all right with you, unless you think the lasses will want to do it? Or there’s the undertakers?’

  Davey thought of his three sisters and shook his head. ‘No, Mrs Riley, I think me mam would’ve liked you to see to her.’

  ‘Aye, I do an’ all, that’s settled then. We’ll lay her out.’

  ‘I . . . I must see her.’ Davey lumbered unsteadily to his feet, his head spinning. He took a step towards the door and then paused, turning and taking the little woman’s hands as he added, ‘Thank you, Mrs Riley. Thank you.’

  ‘Aw, lad, lad. You know how much I thought of her, closer than me own sister, she was. Bin through thick an’ thin together, your mam an’ me, an’ the war was only a part of it.’