An Orphan's Secret

by Maggie Hope

  ‘It’s Da,’ she began at last. ‘He’s so bitter about your father. Da said that it was him who swayed the board of the railway company and had us all evicted. The whole street, even though it was just us Maddisons he wanted out. Da couldn’t get work round here then, he was blacked and we had to go away. And in the end Da had to go down the pit, there wasn’t any other work. He was always so frightened of being shut in anywhere, and it was because of your father that he had to go down the pit.’

  Meg paused, thinking of her father. Did they keep him locked in that asylum at Sedgefield? she wondered. Did he even know if they did? The silence lengthened and the room grew darker, only the firelight casting a glow upon the two sitting there. Meg’s happiness had dimmed as she remembered her father, her sense of foreboding returning.

  ‘I never knew why you went, I always thought it was my fault,’ Jonty murmured. He rose to his feet and went to the chest of drawers by the wall. Opening the top drawer, he took out what looked to be a bundle of rags. He returned to his seat and showed it to Meg. It was an old peg dollie. She took it, puzzled, not knowing what the significance of it was.

  ‘A peg doll?’ she asked.

  ‘Your peg doll, Meg. I went back to your street and there was nothing there, the houses all boarded up and empty. There was only that peg doll, lying in the road. So I brought it home with me.’

  She turned to face him, full of compassion for the little boy he had been. He must have felt truly deserted by her and her mother, she realised. She took his face between her hands and kissed him tenderly, the eiderdown slipping from her white shoulders and breast. Love and passion leapt between them once again and old ills were forgotten and somehow healed as they clung to each other. And Jonty picked her up and carried her to the bed where they made love, deep satisfying love which gripped the whole of their love-starved bodies and carried them to heights they had never dreamed existed. And afterwards they slept, a deep, trouble-free sleep.

  Meg woke slowly, almost in continuation of a dream she was having, a delightful, happy dream though she couldn’t remember what it had been about. The room was pitch black. The fire had gone out. She felt Jonty’s arm around her, his knee thrown over hers, and listened to his deep, steady breathing. Putting up her hand, she felt the shape of his face and ran her fingers through his hair. Oh, he was her lovely man. She almost sang the words to herself. Somehow she knew that whatever happened she would not be parted from him, not ever again. Hadn’t she always known that Jonty would come looking for her? Jonty, her shining knight.

  But waking brought her everyday cares back to her. Alice would be worried about her, she thought suddenly, and instantly slid out of Jonty’s arms and from the bed. He murmured slightly but slept on. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom now. She went to the window and held the curtain back to peer out at the sky.

  The rain had stopped. Small clouds were rushing across the full moon. She watched it, still under the spell of the enchantment which Jonty had brought to her. There was a ring round the moon, it was beautiful; a ring round the moon meant a frost, she mused.

  ‘Meg?’

  She dropped the curtain and turned back to the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, holding out his arms to her. ‘Come back to bed, you’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I have to go,’ she answered. ‘Alice will be worried about me. And Kit and Tucker will be wanting me.’

  Jonty didn’t argue. He got out of bed and lit the candle on the ornamental mantelshelf as Meg pulled on her clothes. Her dress was quite dry now but the shawl was still sodden with the rain. She bit her lip. It would be cold without her shawl, if the frost ring round the moon was anything to go by. But Jonty had already thought of that. He found her a coat of his own to pull on over her dress. It was too big, of course, the sleeves dangling over her hands, but who was to see it at that time of night?

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked, and he opened his watch.

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  Meg was relieved. At least it wasn’t already the middle of the night.

  ‘I’ll saddle up,’ he said, finishing tying his boot laces and taking her hand to lead her from the room. They crept down the stairs and into the hall. There was no light coming from under the door of Ralph’s study and no sound until, just as they opened the front door, there came a tremendous snore and a clatter. He must have moved in his sleep and knocked something to the floor.

  ‘Jonty!’ Meg froze for a second but his arm was around her and he was sweeping her out of the door. It was but a moment later when he led out his horse and they were away, cantering down the drive to the road.

  They were approaching Winton Colliery when the whistle blew. Meg’s heart sank. It must be time to change shifts. The night shift was coming to bank and the fore shift would be going down. There would be men walking from all over the village and a man and a woman on a horse would set tongues rattling all right. Besides, she didn’t want to go against her brother’s decree.

  ‘Put me down here, Jonty,’ she whispered urgently, and he brought his horse to a halt but didn’t loose his hold on her waist.

  ‘I’ll take you as far as the house, Meg,’ he protested. ‘It’s too late at night for you to be out on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘There’ll be men about, there’s nothing to fear.’

  Reluctantly, Jonty dismounted and lifted her down.

  ‘You’ll come in the morning?’ he asked.

  Meg hesitated, thinking of his father and berating herself for being silly. How could the candyman hurt her now? She had Jonty, hadn’t she?

  ‘I’ll come,’ she said.

  ‘What time? I’ll meet you on the track.’

  ‘Ten, I’ll be there at ten o’clock,’ said Meg, and sped away the short distance to the house.

  ‘Mind, it’s nice of you to come home,’ Alice said grimly. There was no sign of Jackie, he must already have gone out to work. Alice was banking up the fire for the night, the lamp already out and the candle lit on the table.

  Meg bit her lip. She had no excuse, she knew she hadn’t.

  ‘I got wet, I went somewhere to dry out and I fell asleep,’ she offered.

  Alice gave a short laugh. ‘A bit lame, that one is for an excuse,’ she snapped. ‘Kit was wanting you, and Tucker an’ all. They’d both had a bad time at school today.’

  ‘At school? Why?’ Meg looked her surprise.

  ‘Oh, why do you think, man? The other bairns were jeering at them all playtime.’

  ‘Jeering?’ Meg still didn’t follow. Why would the others jeer at Tucker and Kit? ‘What for?’

  ‘Because of Da,’ Alice said flatly. ‘Kit was crying his eyes out. Said they were dancing round him singing his granda was a loony and his Auntie Bella an’ all. They said we were all loonys. And that lad of Sally Hawkins, he was leading them on. And Tucker heard them and laid into them and he came home with a bloody nose.’

  Guilt flooded over Meg. There she had been, happy as a larrikin with Jonty, and all the time her lads had needed her. She’d let them down. She stared at Alice, not knowing what to say, and Jonty’s coat fell from her shoulders and on to the clippie mat. Alice looked pointedly at it but said nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ Meg said at last. ‘Are they in bed now, did they go to sleep?’

  ‘Oh, yes, they’re asleep. It took me till now to settle them. Jackie was all for going up to the school that instant and having a word with the master. But I thought it wouldn’t help. Best just let it die down. It never does any good, interfering with the bairns.’

  Alice picked up the candle from the table and moved towards the stairs and Meg picked up Jonty’s coat and followed her. The sisters shared the back bedroom now with the two boys.

  By the flickering light of the candle, Meg looked down at Kit’s tear-stained face. The child hiccuped softly and turned away from the light and Meg’s heart ached for him. She moved the light so that she could look at
Tucker, lying with his back to Kit, only his nose showing above the blanket. She moved the blanket down a little to inspect his face. There was a trace of blood still on his nose and his upper lip was split open.

  ‘Hurry up and put out that candle,’ Alice whispered hoarsely, from her narrow bed in the corner of the room.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Meg, and blew out the light and undressed in the pale moonlight which filtered through the thin curtains. She climbed into bed, being careful not to disturb the boys, and lay on her back, thinking. Something would have to be done, she knew that. She would have to find somewhere else for herself and her boys, but where? Jonty would try to help her, but she knew something now of his circumstances at home, his feeling of obligation to and love for his grandmother, the need to protect her from his father.

  Maybe he could find her a cottage in Shildon? She could keep herself and her children. All she needed was a home for them, a place where she could bring the boys up away from Winton Colliery.

  I’ll meet him tomorrow, she thought, he’ll help me, he will. She had to get away before it became apparent to the whole village that she was having another baby, a baby Wesley was certain to deny was his.

  Twenty-Eight

  Next morning the sun shone from a blue sky and the air was warm in a north-eastern version of an Indian summer. It would probably last no longer than a day or two, but the children were determined to make the most of it. When Meg woke up she could hear girls’ voices as they played at hitchy stones in the back row, and under her window Tucker was talking earnestly to someone.

  ‘I showed them lot, didn’t I?’ he boasted, and a boy’s voice answered.

  Saturday! It was Saturday. How could she go to meet Jonty when it was Saturday? Jackie usually worked back at the pit on a Saturday morning after fore shift, if he could. And Alice went to Auckland to a class. So she couldn’t leave Tucker and Kit. Surely Jonty would understand?

  Meg got out of bed, washed in cold water at the wash stand and put on her clothes. She had slept late, she realised. Alice’s bed was already made. She must already be preparing to go out. Downstairs, the wall clock was striking nine. Meg blinked. She had never slept so late before. Alice was already gone. But the kettle was simmering on the brass-handled bar and the kitchen had been swept and dusted. Meg combed her hair and put it up before the overmantel mirror, pinning it securely with hairpins. Then she went to the back door.

  Tucker and Kit were playing there, and Meg was pleased to see that Walter was with them. At least Tucker’s best friend hadn’t turned against him. She was about to call to them when she was struck by the game they were playing.

  The large iron mangle stood in the yard and the boys had the tin bath propped against it, forming a sort of tunnel. Tucker had appropriated the cracket stool from the kitchen and was leaning against the small stool with the piece of sandstone which Alice used to scour the steps in his hand. The other two boys sat on their hunkers, each with their hands full of small stones from the road. They were watching him gravely as he tapped the stone against the tin of the bath, making a sharp, hollow sound. He tapped twice and held his ear with one hand in a parody of listening, then repeated the action, intoning in a sing-song voice as he did so:

  Jowl, jowl and listen, lads,

  And hear the coal face working,

  There’s many a marra missing, lads,

  Because he wouldn’t listen, lads.

  As he finished the old jingle, repeated over generations by old pitmen to the young, he began to scramble out from under the bath. But the other two boys were quicker. They jumped up and showered it with stones, and when that didn’t prove satisfactory, knocked the bath down over Tucker, laughing uproariously.

  ‘We won, we won,’ shouted Walter. ‘It’s my turn now.’

  ‘Tucker! Kit! What are you doing?’ Meg cried.

  Tucker pushed over the tin bath and got to his feet, mystified as to why his mother was so upset. All three boys stared at her, laughter gone now.

  ‘We were only playing, Mam,’ Tucker mumbled at last. ‘We’re going to be pitmen when we leave school.’

  ‘I’m not,’ asserted Kit, ‘I’m going to be a farmer.’

  ‘A farmer? What do you want to be a farmer for?’ demanded Walter. ‘Any road, how can you be a farmer? You haven’t got a farm.’

  ‘It’s only cissies as is farmers, any road,’ Tucker said, full of scorn for such an idea. ‘Proper men go down the pit.’

  They began a heated discussion of the relative merits of farming and coal-mining until Meg intervened, cutting it short.

  ‘Never mind that now, get this mess cleaned up, I’ll have to swill the yard after you. And Auntie Alice just did it yesterday. Then you can have some bread and jam. Anyway, Tucker, I thought you were going to be a soldier?’

  ‘No, I’m not. A pitman’s the best.’ He nodded his head to emphasize the words.

  Meg grinned and went inside. She made herself a cup of tea and got out the loaf and jam. Tucker was right to some extent in that all lads went down the pits here, following their fathers usually. But if Kit wanted to work on the land then he would. He would never have to go down the pit if he didn’t want to and she could do anything about it. Not like poor Da.

  She cut bread and spread it with jam for the three boys and sat down to eat herself. But she had only taken a few mouthfuls when she felt sick and had to rush out into the yard and bend over the drain, retching miserably, throwing up what little she had eaten. She leaned against the wall and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘Are you badly, Mam?’

  She looked down at Kit’s anxious little face, his mouth besmeared with plum jam, and smiled wanly.

  ‘No lad, I’m fine, I am. Something went down the wrong way, that’s all.’

  Kit looked relieved and she took his hand and went back into the house with him. That settled it. She had been nauseous the first few months in all her pregnancies so she was sure now. She had no choice but to ask Jonty to help her.

  ‘Can we go up the bunny banks, Mam?’ asked Tucker, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Me and Walter? We’ll get some brambles for a pudding.’

  ‘I want to come! I want to come!’ Kit danced up and down before his brother.

  ‘Aw, man, I have you trailing after us all the time,’ said Tucker, disgusted. Kit tried Walter. Sometimes Walter let him go with them on their expeditions, he was a kind-hearted lad. And so it proved this time.

  ‘Howay, then,’ Walter said. ‘Mind, you’ll have to keep up wi’ us, and don’t fall down no holes neither.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meg said doubtfully, reminded of that terrible day when Kit fell down the old shaft.

  ‘Aw, Mam, all the lads go, there’s nothing to hurt,’ argued Tucker. And it was true, the children of the rows usually wandered around the countryside and no harm came to them. Maybe she was being overprotective because of Kit’s accident?

  ‘Well, you watch the little ’un,’ she admonished, and they went whooping up the yard and along the rows, scattering the girls’ hitchy stones as they went.

  I could go to meet Jonty, Meg told herself after they had gone. She glanced at the clock. It was half-past nine. If she hurried she could be there not too long after ten and still be home to give the boys their dinner, she reasoned. Oh, she wanted to go, she wanted to go so badly. But Tucker and Kit, what if they should need her in the meanwhile? Last night she had failed them, staying with Jonty when she should have been home when they needed her. And the time Kit fell down the pit shaft, if she had kept a better watch on them maybe it wouldn’t have happened. The weight of her inadequacies as a mother lay heavily on her.

  In the end, Meg decided she could not go. On the other hand, she could not wait another day before seeking Jonty out. Her mind was full of uncertainties, fears and hopes she hardly dared to express even to herself. The morning dragged on. She had thought that Alice would be back by one o’clock, but she must have missed the horse bus from Bishop Auckland.
At ten past one there was no sign of her sister.

  Her brother Jackie came in and she took his dinner of pan hagglety from the oven and served it to him. As she spooned out the layers of potato and onion and bacon, covered with bubbling cheese, she considered asking him to keep an eye out for the boys. But one look at his weary face convinced her she couldn’t do that. Jack needed his bed. He was working so hard in the pit, and at the same time working for his deputy’s ticket. That was the reason he had stayed on at the pit that morning.

  Meg brought in the tin bath and filled it from the boiler on one side of the range with the ladling tin before sitting down and pouring herself some tea. She felt she couldn’t eat a bite herself. Jack ate silently, hungrily. After all, he had had nothing but his bait of bread and jam since the night before. After he finished his meal he lit his pipe and sat a few minutes before the fire before stripping to the waist and bathing the upper half of his body.

  ‘Wash my back, Meg,’ were the first words he had spoken since greeting her as he came in the house. Jackie didn’t understand about her and Jonty, she thought miserably. She knew how hard it could be for a man if there was talk about his sister, and she and Wesley had already provided enough of that. She soaped the proffered flannel and rubbed away at the coal dust and dried sweat.

  It was time the bairns were back, she thought, suddenly beset with anxiety. Jack took himself off to bed and she went to the end of the row, looking along the road for any sign of them. There was none but Alice was walking along from the stile where the shortcut to Bishop Auckland came out on the road, swinging her basket by her side.

  ‘I had to walk back,’ she said. ‘The lecture went on and on, you would think the teacher had no home to go to.’

  The sisters went into the house and Meg served Alice her pan hagglety.

  ‘You saw to Jack, then,’ she commented, giving her sister a level stare. ‘I thought you might have gone off again, leaving him to get his own dinner.’

  Meg flushed, remembering how she almost had gone to meet Jonty.