An Orphan's Secret

by Maggie Hope

  ‘I can get it, I told you,’ Jonty repeated.

  ‘Aye. And I’m not going to believe you until I see the money for myself.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  Jonty went into the house and climbed the wide staircase, desperately trying to work out the best way to handle his father.

  ‘Is that you, Jonty?’ his grandmother called and he poked his head round her door.

  ‘Yes, Grandmother. I won’t be a minute, I have something to do, then I’ll be up to see you and we’ll have a chat. You’re feeling all right, still?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine,’ she answered. ‘You’re so good to me, Jonty, such a good boy. What would I do without you?’

  He smiled and hurried on to the old nursery. In the toy box, under the few remaining toys, he had hidden his money box. The nursery was one place he was fairly sure his father would not think of looking. Taking the key from his waistcoat pocket, he unlocked the box and took out twenty pounds before hiding the box carefully away again.

  The money was all that was left of his last dividend and it had been earmarked for repairs at Home Farm. Now the repairs would have to wait.

  Back in the yard, Jonty showed his father the four five-pound notes, being careful to keep them out of his reach.

  ‘Ten now, and ten next week,’ he said.

  Ralph’s eyes widened, his scepticism turning to anger. He stepped forward aggressively, demanding to know where the money came from.

  ‘A bequest,’ said Jonty. ‘Now, do you agree or don’t you?’

  ‘A bequest?’ sneered Ralph. ‘Who in hell would leave you anything? Not your mother’s family, that’s a safe bet. Those pitmen haven’t a penny to scratch their arses with.’

  For the moment, Jonty had to ignore the insult to his dead mother’s kin. He had the living to protect now.

  ‘It was Grandfather,’ he admitted.

  Ralph laughed aloud. ‘Are you trying to say I wouldn’t know if you had been left anything in the old man’s will? Don’t be bloody daft, man, I heard it read myself.’

  ‘Not in his will, no,’ answered Jonty. ‘He put it in trust for me when I was born. He kept it from you because he knew you wouldn’t rest till you had it. Now, I assure you I can pay you ten pounds a week. It will be worth it to keep you away from Grandmother.’

  ‘Keep me away from her? Why, that sly old bitch must have known about it all this time! Conspiring against me, they were, their only son. All for the low-born get of a miner’s daughter. I’ve a good mind to go up and tell her now, I have.’

  ‘But you won’t,’ said Jonty. ‘Oh no, you won’t. If you do you will not get a penny from me.’

  ‘How much have you got?’ Ralph changed his tack. ‘How much did the old man rob me of?’

  ‘He robbed you of nothing. And I have no intention of telling you how much I have,’ Jonty said firmly. He could see that his father was wavering, dying to get his hands on the money in Jonty’s hand.

  ‘Ten pounds isn’t enough. If you’re offering me ten pounds, it must mean you can afford to give me twenty. Twenty’s not too much to give for your beloved grandmother, is it?’ Ralph looked cunning, he thought he could bargain with his son.

  Jonty put the money in his waistcoat pocket, deciding to chance all on a last bluff.

  ‘Right then, Father,’ he said. ‘Go on, tell her. Do what you like, I’m sick of it all. I’m going to take my money and emigrate, make a new life for myself in Canada.’

  ‘And what about your whore?’ asked Ralph with a sneer, but he looked somewhat uncertain now, as he saw the money disappear from view.

  ‘I won’t care what you tell people, not if I’m not here to face them,’ said Jonty, his expression bland, though his heart beat painfully at the thought of the humiliation Meg would endure if their affair was bruited about the village. I won’t let it happen, Meg, he vowed, silently, as he turned on his heel and walked away.

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I didn’t say I didn’t agree,’ cried Ralph, running after him.

  Jonty halted, forcing himself to keep calm as he faced his father again.

  ‘Go on, I’ll take the ten pounds,’ said Ralph. ‘I’ll say nothing, keep my mouth shut.’ After all, ten pounds a week would buy a fair ration of whisky. With ten pounds in his pocket he could afford to go off to Darlington more often. There was a barmaid in The Hole in the Wall he had his eye on, young and full-breasted and happy to make a little extra to supplement her wages. Girls these days weren’t so keen to go with him without payment in advance.

  ‘You’ll keep away from Grandmother?’ Jonty insisted.

  ‘What do I want with a snivelling old—’

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Jonty, pressing home his advantage. ‘She has the right to expect some respect from you.’ He took the money out of his pocket and handed over two five-pound notes.

  Ralph smiled his satisfaction as he took them. Life was definitely taking a turn for the better he thought. He was off to Darlington, as fast as his horse could take him.

  What a sot he is, thought Jonty as his father rode out of the yard. He went indoors and tidied himself up before going upstairs to his grandmother’s room. At least one good thing had come out of it, they were unlikely to see much of his father until the money had run out.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long, Grandmother,’ he said lightly, dropping a kiss on the old lady’s cheek. ‘I had things to attend to.’

  Twenty-Four

  Meg was happily preparing the picnic basket one day the following week when the midday quiet of the colliery rows was shattered by the sound that was dreaded by everyone there, from the oldest down to the youngest school child. The piercing racket sounded over the rows, shrieking loudly before settling into an undulating wail like some tone-deaf monster. It was the call for the rescue men.

  Dear God, she prayed, the happy anticipation which she had felt all the morning dropping from her and leaving in its place a dreadful fear. She was running to the back door for her old shawl in a split second, desperately going over in her mind which miners were down the pit at that time. Was Da? Or Jackie, or Miles? Miles, of course, Miles was there, and Da. Jackie was on night shift, he would be home, thank the Lord.

  Maybe it was a false alarm, she told herself, maybe it was just a small fall of stone, someone injured. But as she joined the crowd of women hurrying from the rows to the pit head, she knew the siren would have stopped sooner if that were so. No, this was something more.

  The women half-ran, ashen-faced, not talking to one another, not even looking at one another. And Meg knew they were thinking as she was herself, Let it not be my man, my lad. Let it be someone else, please God, let it be someone else. And were ashamed of wishing it to be so though still they wished it.

  Alice joined Meg by the entrance of the pit yard and the sisters huddled together, united in their fear.

  ‘A fall of stone.’

  The whisper came back to them through the thong. The cage had come to bank and the viewer, the colliery manager, was stepping in with the under-manager.

  Alice and Meg looked at each other. A small fall of stone wasn’t always so bad. It would be localized. Da and Miles could have been a mile away, working another seam. The faces of all the women had lightened slightly. Not a major disaster, then.

  The men were coming up, the rest of the shift, the ones not needed for rescue work. The women watched anxiously, hoping to see their own men among them. There were thankful murmurings going on all around Meg and Alice as wives found their husbands and mothers their sons. But there was no sign of Miles or Da.

  ‘They’ll be in the next lot up,’ said Alice, not looking at her sister.

  ‘Aye, they will,’ said Meg.

  They waited, watching the winding wheel spinning round and round as the cage went up and down, anxiously peering at the men who emerged from the pit. An ambulance drawn by two sturdy galloways pulled into the yard. The women drew to one side to let it pass. The ambulance was
a fairly new acquisition by the union. Before that the injured were often taken away in flat carts. Now only the dead were. The ambulance had a red cross painted on the side in brave new paint and the crowd looked at it nervously.

  One or two of the younger boys who had come out of the pit and were standing around looking solemn, fingered their collars.

  ‘Touch collar, never follow, don’t come to my door,’ they chanted quietly.

  ‘It’s taking a long time,’ said Alice, and Meg nodded her agreement.

  Jackie came running into the pit yard. He had been away up the fields when the siren went and had had to run all the way back. He had changed into his pitclothes ready to go down if he was needed.

  ‘The face is a distance in bye,’ he said. ‘It will take a while.’ He had caught Alice’s remark and answered it as he went past his sisters. ‘I’ll see if I can find anything out,’ he promised, going off to join the knot of miners preparing to go down with a second rescue team. But he did not return with any news. He glanced over to Meg and Alice and then he was stooping to step into the cage and was gone. And they waited and waited.

  ‘You go back for the bairns coming in from school,’ said Alice.

  Meg shook her head. ‘No, no, they’ll be all right, they’re old enough to wait. I can’t go till I know.’

  Alice left it at that. Meg was right about the boys, they were a miner’s children. They would wait quietly, along with a lot of other children in the rows.

  And then the whistle blew and the great wheel began whirring again and a shout went up.

  ‘They’ve got one lad! He’s alive.’

  They were manoeuvring a stretcher with a man strapped to it out of the cage. The man screamed. Only it wasn’t a man, it was a lad, a boy of twelve or thirteen, and his body was lying at a strange angle, his head right back on his shoulder blades, and he was screaming.

  ‘It’s Owen Thomas,’ someone said and they watched as he was put into the ambulance and the colliery doctor climbed in beside him. After a few minutes, the screaming stopped, become a low whimpering as the doctor gave him something to ease his pain. And the driver turned his horse and drove out of the pit yard.

  The wheel was moving again. It was a full-grown man this time, he fairly filled the stretcher.

  ‘Who is it?’ Meg ran forward and caught hold of the sleeve of one of the men. ‘Who is it?’

  It was Wesley who stepped forward. He had been a member of the first rescue team and had helped to carry the injured boy.

  ‘Come away, Meg, come away,’ he said, the first soft words he had had for her in years. ‘You can’t do anything. It’s Miles. Don’t look, Meg, it’s his head. Howay, lass, don’t look.’

  Meg pulled her arm away from Wesley. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, he was just trying to torment her, she thought wildly. But Alice was standing with tears streaming down her face and Auntie Phoebe came and put an arm around each girl and drew them away.

  ‘Hold up now, you have to hold up. There’s your da yet.’

  ‘What?’

  Meg stared stupidly at her, what was she saying? She turned to Wesley, unable to put the question into words, but she didn’t have to. He was nodding sombrely.

  ‘He’s under the stone, Meg, we haven’t got him out yet.’

  Da under the stone. Da who had always been terrified of being in confined spaces, who had surprised everyone when he went down the pit to earn enough to keep his family. And now he was buried.

  ‘We still could get him out alive,’ said Wesley. ‘He wasn’t working directly under where the stone fell, he could be in a pocket of air. He might be fine, Meg.’

  Fine? Da, buried alive and still fine? Dear God, she prayed, let him be dead. He was a railway man, not a pitman. Why had he stayed in the pits when his family had grown? Her thoughts were racing round and round, jumping wildly from one thing to another.

  ‘Howay, lass, there’s nothing you can do. It could be a while yet before they get to him. You and Alice, you have to go home and see to things for Miles,’ said Auntie Phoebe. ‘I’ll ask Dolly Bates to keep an eye on your lads.’

  So Alice and Meg, with Auntie Phoebe and Uncle Tot, followed the flat cart to Pasture Row, the cart which held the body of their young brother Miles, twenty years old that week.

  The rescue team with his son among them got Jack Maddison out alive, hardly a scratch on him. They had been sure he was dead. Every few minutes they had jowled on the coal with a stone and listened for an answering jowl from the trapped man, but none had come.

  ‘Did you not hear us, Da?’ Jackie had cried, but his father had withdrawn into himself. He sat passively on the stool he had used to lean on so he could swing his pick in the confined space, the pick in his hand still. He made no move to follow them out of the hole they’d made in the fall of stone. Jackie and his marra had to lead him, bit by bit, forcing his hand open to release the pick first to make it easier for them to get him out. There was hardly a scratch on him.

  A miracle, they called it in the rows. There should have been a gang of them working the face in the narrow seam but the others had moved out to the loftier entrance passage to eat their bait when it happened. Jack Maddison, as he did so often, worked on alone, not bothering to break for food.

  His son pieced the story together and told it to his family that night, with Miles lying in the front room and his father insisting on staying in the back yard so that Alice took him out a chair and gently sat him in it.

  ‘The stone didn’t kill Miles, nor hurt young Thomas either,’ said Jackie. ‘Not directly, that is. Miles was killed by a cart. There’s an incline just there, the seam is in a dip, you know. The putter lad had just started work again and the galloway was having a job getting started up the incline. The pony was pulling and Owen was pushing but they were making no headway so Miles left his bait and went to give a hand. They got the tub going and Miles stood back but when the tub was halfway up the galloway stopped dead. His ears pricked, like they do when something’s up, and then the weight of the truck pulled him back and it rolled down the rails and knocked the putter lad down.’

  Meg and Alice looked at him, puzzled. How had that killed Miles and buried Da? But Jackie wasn’t finished.

  ‘The tub came off the rails, like,’ he continued. ‘And then the stone fell, right behind it, blocking off the entrance to the seam. The other lads saw it all. That was what put the wind up the pony, he knew it was coming. The lad was hurt bad, they thought he was dead, but they couldn’t get him out till they got the pony and tub out of the way. Miles was frantic, they said, what with Da under the stone an’ all.

  ‘They had to unload some of the coal and manhandle the tub back on the rails to get it out of the way but the air was thick with dust and Miles bent down to try to see if they’d got it right. And it fell on his head.’

  There was silence in the kitchen as they pictured the scene in their minds, the frantic haste to get the boy out, one disaster falling on top of another. It was broken by Auntie Phoebe coming into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve brought you a pan of broth,’ she said, carrying the heavy pan in and putting it down on the brass-handled bar hooked over the grate. ‘I know you likely don’t feel like eating, but you have to keep your strength up to get over the next few days.’

  Meg rose to her feet. ‘I’ll have to get back to the bairns,’ she said dully.

  ‘No you don’t, not at all,’ Auntie Phoebe said firmly. ‘Tot went round there earlier on. He’s brought them round to our house. They’re in bed this minute, they’ve had their suppers and they’re tucked up in my back bedroom.’

  Meg sat down again. The shock of the day’s happenings had got to her and her legs felt as though they were made of jelly.

  ‘Thank you, Auntie Phoebe,’ she said. ‘Dolly Bates was going to see to them, but I couldn’t expect her to have them all night.’

  ‘Aye.’ Auntie Phoebe nodded her head in the direction of the already darkening yard. ‘We’ll ha
ve to do something about your da an’ all,’ she said grimly.

  Meg looked at her brother and sister. ‘Maybe you’d better try, Alice,’ she said. ‘He might not take kindly to me, like.’

  ‘Nay, lass,’ Auntie Phoebe shook her head. ‘I don’t think he knows who it is talking to him at all. He just sits there, staring at the wall.’

  ‘We’ll all go,’ suggested Jackie, and they trooped out into the back yard.

  ‘Da?’ said Jackie. ‘Howay, Da, you can’t stay out here, man. Howay in and sit by the fire, it’s getting cold out here. Dark an’ all.’

  Their father gave no sign of having heard them.

  ‘We’ll try to help him up,’ decided Meg. ‘Come on, Jackie, you take one side and I’ll take the other.’

  She stood by her father’s side and slipped one arm under his armpit and Jackie did the same at his other side.

  ‘Now, one, two, three, heave,’ she said, and after an initial resistance, Da was on his feet.

  ‘I’ll come behind,’ said Alice.

  It was weird urging Da to walk forward, Alice pushing gently from behind. Puffs of coal dust came from him for they had not yet succeeded in getting him to change his clothes or bathe. But he walked, albeit slowly, until they reached the door, when he came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Come on, man, Da,’ urged Jackie.

  ‘We’ll leave the door open for you,’ said Alice.

  ‘Aye, we won’t close the door,’ said Jackie, and pulling and pushing, they at last managed to get their father inside and over to the hearth and into his chair.

  ‘His hands are like ice,’ whispered Meg, distressed. ‘Let’s try to get him cleaned up and some hot broth inside him. He’ll come round, he will, it’s the shock. That’s all. He’ll come round when he gets over the shock.’

  The tin bath was filled with hot water and Da sat there unresisting as Jackie and Meg stripped him of his pitclothes down to his pit hoggers, the short cotton under-trousers worn down the pit. They washed him and dried him as if he were a child and dressed him in a clean shirt and trousers.