Quelling her nerves at the thought, Carol chatted excitedly with Val about the preparations for the children’s party at Christmas and the adults’ disco. With all the strife in the village since some of the men had returned to work, there was a determination among the Women’s Group to make this Christmas as happy as possible for the striking families.
‘We raised over two hundred pounds at the pie and peas supper,’ Carol told her, ‘and the raffle’s selling well.’
‘That’s great,’ Val nodded, ‘and Lotty tells me you’ve been writing to your supporters in London too.’
‘Aye, they’ve promised money to buy presents for the kids. And Charlie reckons we might get help from the miners in France - the lodge’s been in touch with our twin town. Mind, it’s going to take so much organising to make sure every bairn gets something this Christmas.’
‘You’ll manage,’ Val smiled. ‘It’s nothing short of a miracle what the Women’s Group’s done for the village up till now.’
Just before Carol was due to leave for the prison, she got an urgent call from Joanne. Her neighbour Sheila was in a terrible state. She was a quiet woman, too shy to join their group, but they had taken a special interest in her because she had produced one of their ‘strike babies’, as they affectionately called the newborns. Joanne had found her weeping alone in the house with her young baby.
‘The baby was blue with cold,’ Joanne said on the telephone. ‘Sheila’s been using rags as nappies. I heard the bairn crying through the wall and couldn’t stand it any longer. Her husband doesn’t like us interfering, but I don’t care. Can you come round and help? I can’t calm her down.’
Carol went immediately. She rang Charlie and told him to go without her; she would meet them all at Septimus Street. She took the last of the week’s housekeeping from the drawer in the sideboard and stopped to buy disposable nappies and baby milk on the way.
‘Sorry, Carol,’ Joanne whispered when she arrived, ‘I just thought you’d be able to cope with her.’
They changed the baby’s urine-soaked clothing, covering his sore bottom in protective cream, and made him up a bottle. Sheila had been trying to feed him herself, but her milk had dried up soon after she had left hospital. Then Joanne wrapped him up snugly in the pram that the group had bought for Sheila and took the baby out into the crisp wintery air.
‘I’ll take him up to school and bring your Sandra home with Mark,’ Joanne assured Sheila as she left.
Carol held and comforted and listened to Sheila’s cries of despair for over an hour. She was near to breaking. They had sold everything worth selling to pay for baby equipment and now, without telling her husband Tom, she had borrowed money from a lender who had come round the doors, and she did not know how she was going to repay the man.
‘And I just keep looking at me bonny baby and thinking how I can’t give him anything.’ Sheila broke off sobbing again. ‘Sometimes I wish I was dead.’
Carol hugged her. ‘You mustn’t say that. Listen, how much do you owe this moneylender?’
Sheila sniffed. ‘It started as just a loan of fifty pounds. But now with the interest, I owe him over a hundred and fifty. Tom’ll kill me if he finds out what I’ve done!’
‘No he won’t,’ Carol said gently. ‘The group’ll try and help you out. We’ll see what we can do about paying off this man. In the meantime, we’ll make you up some extra parcels of baby stuff for little Harry. Looks like you could do with a bit of feeding up, an’ all.’ Carol looked at her. ‘Why don’t you bring Harry down to the Welfare during the day for a bit of company?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that,’ Sheila said in panic. ‘Tom wouldn’t want it. He likes me at home. He doesn’t approve of the women getting together like you have, thinks you’re all getting above yourselves.’
Carol bit back a retort about Tom’s views, thinking that she must find a way for Sheila to get out more or at least be visited by some of the group more regularly. She should not have to shoulder these burdens alone and Carol was thankful that Joanne had intervened when she did.
Sheila must have seen the look on her face, for she added quietly, ‘I don’t think like he does. I might have at the start but now I think it’s grand what you’re doing. And you with a husband in prison. I couldn’t have stood Tom going to gaol. But I don’t want him going back to work either, not before everyone else. That’s why I borrowed the money.’ She crumpled into Carol’s arms again.
‘I know. You’ve done your best, don’t blame yourself. Now let us help you a bit, eh?’
Carol stayed with her until Joanne got back with the children.
‘Sandra can come in and have tea with us this afternoon,’ Joanne offered. ‘You get yourself off home, Carol.’
But Carol was worried about leaving Sheila on her own. ‘What time will Tom be back?’ she asked.
Sheila shrugged. ‘Not till late. Stops out all day somewhere.’ Her look slid away from theirs. Carol wondered if Sheila’s husband was being unfaithful and felt real anger at the man for causing his wife such pain.
‘I’ll look after Harry for an hour then,’ Carol insisted. ‘You go and get some sleep.’
Sheila hardly protested. Soon Carol discovered there was no electricity. She sat in the dark, with Harry huddled inside her coat trying to keep him warm.
Sheila slept on and Carol did not like to wake her.
Later she gave Harry a cold bottle of milk and changed him again by the light of a candle, thinking she would go straight to Charlie and sort out their reconnection in the morning. She thought with frustration of Mick arriving at Septimus Street without her, but there was no telephone in the house to let them know of her delay.
The door banging open startled her. Tom, a man she knew little about except that he had come from Cumbria to work in the pit and married Sheila, stood before her, stony-faced.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked, startled and then indignant. ‘Where’s the wife?’
‘Don’t worry, Sheila’s getting some sleep,’ Carol answered civilly, ‘and Sandra’s having her tea next door. I’m just helping out for an hour or two.’
‘Helping out?’ he grumbled. ‘We don’t need your help. We can manage on our own.’
‘It seems to me Sheila could do with a helping hand,’ Carol said, trying not to sound too critical. ‘It’s difficult at the best of times with a new baby and Joanne was just keeping an eye.’
Tom advanced on her, smelling of stale beer. ‘That nosy bitch from next door? I don’t need lasses from the bloody Women’s Group telling my wife what to do. So the pair of you can just piss off!’
Carol was shocked. She felt like dumping the baby and running, but steeled herself to stand up to him. She could not leave him drunk and in a foul temper alone with newborn Harry and the unsuspecting Sheila.
‘I said I’d wait until Sheila woke up,’ Carol said, standing her ground. By now Harry was crying again.
‘I don’t want you in me house!’ Tom shouted, seizing her by the arm and dragging her towards the door.
Carol struggled to shake him off and hang on to the baby at the same time. Panic filled her throat. She cried out. ‘Watch the baby!’
Tom swore at her foully and smacked her on the side of the head. Carol ducked away.
Sheila appeared in the doorway behind them, her exhausted face pale and terrified in the candlelight.
‘Please don’t,’ she whimpered.
Tom veered round at the sound of her voice, distracted for a moment. Carol staggered over to the pram and put Harry down still yelling. Tom was shaking his wife and swearing at her for allowing strangers into the house.
‘Leave her alone!’ Carol cried and rushed over to push him away.
Tom threw her off with a punch in the face. Carol fell back, the pain shooting from her eye into her head.
Someone must have heard the screams because there was a hammering on the front door and when no one came to answer it, it was flung open, letting in a
gust of icy wind that snuffed out the candle.
Carol was crouched on the floor, dizzy and sick from the punch, unable to see who had come to their rescue. Then arms seized her and pulled her up from behind. Men’s voices argued and a scuffle that she could not see took place. Sheila was wailing in distress.
As her good eye grew used to the dark, Carol saw Tom being manhandled down the corridor by two or three other men. She recognised Sid and John. There was a lot of shouting. But then a voice spoke her name and she turned to see who had yanked her up off the floor.
Mick’s cropped head of hair was close to hers.
‘Oh, Mick!’ Carol gasped and felt she would faint. His arms came round her in support and she fell against his broad body. She hugged him tightly and buried her face in his shoulder. She began to cry with shock and relief and could not stop. He held her and stroked her head and whispered that she was going to be all right.
‘I’ve missed you so much!’ she cried.
‘Me too, pet,’ Mick told her and kissed her head. ‘Let’s get you home.’
It was then Carol saw Sheila crouched on a chair by the window, clutching a whimpering Harry.
‘Mick,’ Carol stopped him.
He read her mind. ‘They can come home with us tonight if you want,’ he agreed resignedly.
Minutes later, Joanne was there with Eddy who had come round with Mick to find her. Joanne insisted that Sheila and the children should stay with her and John.
‘You and Mick need some time together,’ she told them firmly.
Carol was relieved, but wondered anxiously if Mick had agreed to have the family so that he would not be left alone with her. She dismissed her fears quickly. It was all too easy these days to conjure up worries where they did not exist.
Tom had been taken away by the men to sleep off his drunken rage elsewhere. They would deal with him in the morning, John Taylor said; he was a man at the end of his tether.
Carol and Mick returned home, awkward with each other once the initial thrill of being reunited was over. Lotty had put Laura to bed and she was already asleep, drained by the excitement of seeing her father again. Carol was thankful that her daughter did not have to see Lotty bathe her swelling eye with icy water.
‘I hope people don’t think you did this,’ Carol teased Mick. But he seemed upset by the suggestion and she wished she had kept quiet.
Lotty left quickly and they went to bed. Mick held her while she told him of the busy preparations for Christmas and tried to describe what had happened over the months of his absence. Mick said little. She did not know what he was thinking or feeling. When she tried to ask him about prison, he clammed up.
Carol told herself to be patient and that she would discover more in time. Her heart beat faster at the thought of lying with him again, but soon he was turning over and telling her goodnight. She lay for a long time, fighting back tears of frustration and loneliness. It was in these dark hours of the night that the fears kept at bay during the day flooded into her mind, leaving her anxious and sleepless.
But she must have fallen into an uneasy sleep eventually, for she woke before dawn to find the bed empty. In a panic she sat up, calling out Laura’s name. Then she saw a figure curled up on the floor under a blanket and realised that it was Mick. He was back. He should have been beside her in their bed.
Carol lay back, stifling a sob of despair. She could hardly bear to think of more endless months without intimacy with Mick. Once they had made love regularly, without thinking. Now she found those times hard to remember. It was like looking back on the lives of two different people. But then that’s what they were, Carol thought bleakly. Whatever the outcome of the strike, neither of them would ever be the same again.
The three weeks leading up to Christmas were hectic. Carol had never been so busy and was thankful to be occupied. The women went fundraising round the shops of Durham and Whittledene, clanking buckets and forcing themselves not to look into the packed shops filled with gifts and clothes they could not afford. Carol shed tears when an old lady came up to her with a box of biscuits.
‘I’m just on a pension, but I want you to have these. It’s not right what they’re doing to you,’ the stooped pensioner said. ‘I wish I could give you more.’
They spent long hours at the Welfare, preparing and cooking meals and making up food parcels and sorting out donations of presents for the children’s party. Carol and Joanne and May called on all the businesses in the village for contributions to the Christmas party and the raffle. When Carol suggested they approach Proud’s, the others were horrified.
‘We’re not going begging to that man!’ May snorted. ‘He’s making money hand over fist out of the strike.’
‘Exactly,’ said Carol, ‘so he can repay a bit of it to those that need it most.’
‘You’ll get nowt out of him,’ May declared, ‘and I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of saying no.’
But Carol went and found Vic in his dingy office at the bus depot. She noticed that the secretary that had replaced Kelly was middle-aged and motherly and wondered whether Fay had had a hand in picking her.
Vic seemed pleased to see her, as if nothing had happened over the past year. He did not refer to their last stormy meeting and she did not allude to his affair with Kelly. She would play his game.
‘You never come to see us,’ he chided.
‘I’m too busy, just like you,’ Carol replied evenly.
‘We miss seeing you. The girls are always asking to see Laura,’ he smiled.
‘We haven’t moved,’ Carol reminded him. ‘Bring them round,’ she suggested, knowing he never would.
Vic gave a charming shrug. ‘Perhaps when this little difficulty is over, we can all get together again.’
Carol was rendered speechless. Little difficulty! Did he really see it as no more than that? And then it struck her that that was probably how Vic did see the strike. He saw it only in terms of how it affected his business.
It had taken a hammering when no buses were needed to ferry the men to the pit from the outlying areas, and the day trips and holiday bookings had suffered from lack of cash among the miners. But he had overcome this by securing lucrative contracts to bus in the scabs; the little difficulty had turned into a business opportunity. The social consequences of the strike were not his concern, Carol realised, and he would not be swayed by appeals to his conscience. So how was she going to get money out of him for the striking families?
‘When this is over,’ Carol said lightly, ‘we’ll all have to go on living beside each other. You’ll want the holiday business back again once the men are working, won’t you?’
‘Go on,’ Vic said, intrigued. He had been expecting a tirade.
‘So it might make good business sense to be seen to be generous this Christmas towards the miners.’
‘I can’t get involved in your politics,’ Vic said uneasily, ‘this Women’s Group thing.’
Carol stayed calm. ‘No, not for the strike fund as such. But you could make a donation to the children’s party - to the families’ Christmas fund.’ She looked at him levelly. ‘It might get a mention in the local paper.’
A grin spread slowly across Vic’s bearded face. ‘Yes, I like that idea. Publicity too, not anonymous. It might give Proud’s a lot of good will in the future.’
He laughed. ‘God, Carol, you’re wasted in this place. I think I married the wrong sister.’
Carol hid her distaste at that remark. She forced a broad smile, telling herself the more she pandered to his vanity, the more money she could squeeze out of him.
‘We’re looking for a hundred pounds,’ she said lightly. Her heart hammered, for she knew from Kelly how he hated to waste money giving to charities. He would bargain down to forty or fifty at the most, she suspected.
He was giving her one of his flirtatious looks. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll double the amount if you do something for me.’
Her stomach beg
an to churn, hoping it had nothing to do with Kelly.
‘I’ll give the kids’ party two hundred pounds for a Christmas kiss from you,’ Vic laughed softly. ‘One big grown-up kiss on the lips, of course.’
Carol felt sick at the suggestion. She was revolted at the thought of kissing this man. But for two hundred pounds...
Carol crossed the room and came round his desk. ‘Write out the cheque first,’ she said, still smiling. Vic chuckled and did so, handing her the precious piece of paper.
Then he patted his knee for her to sit down. Carol forced herself to perch on his lap and stiffened as he put his arms round her.
‘Relax,’ he murmured, pulling her towards him. He fastened his moist mouth over hers and pressed hard against her, forcing his tongue between her lips, round her teeth and into her mouth. He made a sucking, grunting noise as if he would devour her and Carol thought she would retch. When his hand slipped round to squeeze her breast, she pulled away.
‘Time’s up,’ she breathed.
She could see his eyes were full of lust, his cheeks flushed.
‘We could do this again,’ he smiled, squeezing her thigh as she stood up. She turned away before she betrayed her revulsion. ‘Or are you still involved with my old mate, Pete?’
Carol felt herself go puce at the mention of the journalist’s name.
‘I was never involved.’
Vic gave his infuriating laugh. ‘That’s not what Kelly told me.’
At the mention of Kelly, Carol almost turned on him to give him a mouthful. But she checked herself just in time. He might cancel the cheque.
‘Thanks for the donation,’ she said, smiling once again.
Then she was out of the office, rushing past the disapproving secretary who had probably listened to everything and into the cold, wet December half-light. She ran down the street, clutching the cheque and gasping for fresh air. She felt dirty and cheap, hating herself for what she had done, hating the man who had humiliated her and hating the strike for making the sordid little episode necessary.
Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone Page 35
