Forever Yours

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘I see more than enough of my mates down the pit, lass,’ he’d stated, when she’d shyly brought the matter up one day. ‘I might have the odd half with them afore I come home now and again, just to be sociable, but I’d rather look at your pretty face than their ugly mugs and I’ve told ’em so.’

  Shocked, she’d asked him if they’d been offended and he’d roared with laughter. ‘Any one of ’em would swap places with me like a shot, given half a chance,’ he’d told her. ‘They know it and I know it. I’m a lucky man.’

  She knew she was lucky too, she counted her blessings every day. Cosy and snug now Stephen’s body warmth was enveloping her, Hannah knew a moment of pure joy. She had the best husband in the world and God had given them Constance: she couldn’t ask for more. And they’d never had to live with in-laws as so many young couples did. The occupants of Sacriston had doubled in her lifetime, and although the mine owners were constructing more housing, it was a slow business; however, just two weeks before they’d wed last year, old Mr and Mrs Atkinson had gone to live with their married daughter in Sunderland. Mr Atkinson being a close pal of Stephen’s da, he’d tipped him the wink and Stephen had been first in the colliery office. She’d never forget the look on Stephen’s face when he’d come to tell her.

  ‘Good night, lass.’ Stephen’s voice was slurred with sleep as they lay close, breathing almost the same breath. ‘And I’ll bring the little ’un to you when she wakes up; don’t you go getting out of bed.’

  ‘’Night, love.’ Oh aye, she was lucky all right. In this tiny world that was hers, she had everything she wanted. With careful managing they paid the rent each week, and if towards pay day the stew held more dumplings and less scrag ends, Stephen never complained. Not that it’d been like that over the weekend though; her mam had brought a ham-and-egg pie and a basin of sheep’s-head broth, and Stephen’s mam had been determined they didn’t starve too, bless them.

  The baby was fast asleep, just the odd little snort or snuffle disturbing the silence, and the glow from the banked-down fire took the edge off the blackness. Hannah’s eyelids closed and she drifted off too, her last conscious thought of her daughter and how long it would be before she woke them for a feed.

  Vincent knew exactly which house he was making for in the ten rows of terraced streets which made up the Cross Streets and stretched in regimented lines from Front Street. For months on end after Hannah had married Shelton he’d left the cottage in the middle of the night and come to stand across the road from where she lived, hidden in the darkness as he’d stared for hours without moving. Nothing was violent enough or deep enough to describe the hatred he’d felt towards Stephen Shelton, a hatred and rage which had stretched to include Hannah when he’d first heard she was expecting Shelton’s child. He’d prayed with a passion that Shelton would be killed in one of the numerous accidents that occurred weekly down the pit, and that the shock would cause Hannah to miscarry. Only then would he be able to sleep at night. He had pictured it in his mind so often he had been stunned when he’d heard the baby had been born alive and healthy.

  The terrace of eight houses was in darkness as he had expected, since there were no street lamps in the Cross Streets. He stood, his hands deep in his pockets and the fingers of his right hand stroking the can of oil as the sleet fell, melting on contact with the ground. He would be best going round the back – it was more feasible a fire would start in the kitchen. His mind was giving him instructions almost independently and he obeyed it, making his way to the back of the terrace and walking along the dirt lane which bordered the tiny backyards and shared privies, one to each two houses. When he reached Hannah’s backyard he again became still, waiting.

  What exactly are you waiting for? his mind asked him derisively. You’ve been waiting long enough, haven’t you? Get on with it.You’ve either got the guts to go through with this or you haven’t.

  He’d got the guts. His body jerked as though a puppeteer was pulling the strings. From the day he’d walked away unscathed from the rockfall which had taken his father and six other miners, and told his mother he’d kill her if she ever touched him again, he’d known he could do anything. Twenty-four hours trapped in the bowels of the earth before the rescue team had got them out had taught him a lot. The terror he’d felt in that pitch blackness as he’d waited to die hadn’t been as bad as the numbing fear and shame he’d lived with for six long years. He had vowed then that if he got out alive, she wouldn’t lay another finger on him. It had been a baptism of fire, that first day down the pit, but it had saved him. That was the way he looked at it. The pit – and his mother – had never held the same fear for him again.

  He made no sound as he entered the backyard which was shared with the house on the left to Hannah’s, passing the lavatory and the communal tap which was the sole means of water for the residents. His heart thudding fit to burst, he tried the latch on the back door and it opened immediately. No one ever locked their doors in the tight-knit mining community.

  He stepped first into a tiny scullery just big enough to hold the tin bath which was hung on the wall by a long wooden peg. On another wall there were more pegs and Stephen’s working clothes hung there with his boots beneath on the stone flags.

  There was a step up into the kitchen, and he could see dimly by the glow coming from the banked-down fire in the open black range. In front of the range was a steel fender, three feet long, and positioned by this was a clothes horse on which various articles were drying. A scrubbed kitchen table with four chairs tucked beneath it, a high-backed wooden chair with faded flock cushions, another much smaller table holding a tin dish for washing dishes and pans, and an enormous clippy mat in front of the range made up the sum total of the furniture, and all the items looked well-worn. There were no cupboards on the bare whitewashed walls, merely four shelves on the wall opposite the range, and these held a conglomeration of crockery and cutlery, along with items of food and other bits and pieces.

  Vincent’s lip curled as his gaze swept round the room. And she’d settled for this rather than what he could have given her? In the last few years he’d taken any extra shifts that were going and seen to it that the cottage looked real bonny, but what was the use of that now? All his striving had been for one thing and one thing only – and that was finished with. He wouldn’t have her now if someone paid him to. He couldn’t begin to explain, even to himself, why the birth of the child had affected him the way it had, but something in him – something elemental and primitive – was repelled and enraged by it to the point of madness.

  He shook his head as though the action could clear his mind. The night was quiet and still, the only sound was the ticking of the wooden clock on the mantelpiece over the range.

  No more hesitating. He fetched the can out of his jacket pocket along with a box of matches. He doused the clippy mat, the flock cushions on the chair and the clothes horse with the oil, before tipping an oil lamp standing in the middle of the kitchen table on its side and letting the oil spread out in a thick flow. Then he lit the first match.

  Matthew Heath had the stomach-ache. He had been holding his belly and wriggling in pain for over an hour in the bed he shared with his two older brothers. As the cramps intensified, he knew he’d have to pay a visit to the privy in the backyard. He also knew what the problem was. He had filched a couple of the big cooking apples his mam had left from the sack he and his brothers had brought back home in the summer. The apples were stored on brown paper under the eaves in the roof and were forbidden fruit: his mam had issued dire warnings as to what would befall anyone who had the temerity to pilfer one.

  He had worked hard for them apples though, he thought to himself in justification of the crime. Not like his brothers who’d messed about something rotten. Farmer Todd had said he’d done the work of a man that weekend, and he wasn’t one for buttering you up, not Farmer Todd. And yet whenever his mam baked one of her apple pies or crumbles, his brothers got the same portion as him. It wasn’t fa
ir. And so he’d decided to level things up, that was all.

  Another cramping pain made him squirm. Stifling a groan, he slid out of bed and fumbled in the darkness for his jumper and trousers laid ready for morning on the back of a chair, pulling them over his undershirt and drawers. It’d be freezing outside. The day had been biting cold and their mam had said she could smell snow in the air and she was never wrong.

  Picking up his heavy hobnail boots, Matthew crept silently on to the small square landing separating the brothers’ room from that of their parents. He didn’t want to wake his mam. She had a nose on her like one of his da’s ferrets for smelling things out, did his mam, and even though he’d moved the other apples along to disguise the fact that two were missing, she’d know somehow.

  He stopped in the hall to feel for his coat on the row of hooks attached to the wall, but didn’t pause to put it on, such was the urgency in his bowels. It was only when he was sitting on the wooden seat with the hole in the middle that he pulled it on, his teeth chattering.

  The power of the fermenting apples in his system ensured it was over half an hour before he left the privy, and his only thought was to get back to the warmth of his bed. He was frozen, inside and out. But halfway across the yard he paused. There was a light brighter than he’d seen before shining from the house next door where the Sheltons lived. He liked the Sheltons. Mrs Shelton was bonny and Mr Shelton hadn’t told on him when he’d accidentally kicked a can full of pebbles he and some of the other bairns had been having a game of footy with, straight through their kitchen window. Mr Shelton had been mad, but he’d said the fact that he hadn’t run away with the others but had stayed to face the music made them square. Aye, the Sheltons were all right.

  It was only when a curl of black smoke dimmed the light for a second that he realised he was seeing leaping flames. He stared transfixed as the kitchen curtains blazed, the material eaten up so quickly he barely had time to blink before they were gone. And then he was galvanised into action. Wrenching open his own back door, he yelled for his parents at the top of his voice before again running into the yard, and as he did so the sash window in the bedroom above the kitchen next door was pushed up. He could hear the sound of coughing and choking, but when Mr Shelton leaned out, he was holding what looked like a tightly wrapped bundle of clothing in his arms.

  ‘You down there. Can you catch her?’

  For a moment he didn’t realise Mr Shelton was intending to throw his bairn out of the window, but when he did he braced himself. ‘Aye, Mr Shelton. It’s me, Matt. I’ll catch her.’

  He didn’t have time to think about it. One moment he was under the window and the next he’d fallen to his knees with the impact of seizing the bundle before it hit the ground.

  He heard Mr Shelton say, ‘Thank God. Good lad,’ before he turned back into the room moments before smoke billowed from the open window. He sat on the cold flagstones cradling the baby and he thought he heard Mr Shelton coughing and shouting, ‘Wake up, lass. Wake up!’ as his parents and brothers ran out into the yard, along with the neighbours on the Sheltons’ other side, Mr and Mrs Preston.

  When his father and Mr Preston tried to enter the house the flames and smoke beat them back, and although his mam was shouting and screaming up to Mr Shelton, he didn’t come to the window again. Nor could Matt hear him coughing any more.

  The fire was out and he was sitting in his da’s armchair in front of their range when Mrs Shelton’s mam and da arrived. He knew his da had gone to fetch them – they only lived in the next street – and when they came into the kitchen he heard his mam softly say, ‘We can’t get him to let go of the bab, Mabel. He keeps saying he had to catch her.’

  When Mrs Shelton’s mam crouched down in front of him he raised his eyes from the baby’s tiny face to look at her, but his arms tightened round the bundle on his lap. He saw that the lady he’d always known as Mrs Gray was crying, although her features were blurred with his own tears. Her voice sounded broken, funny, when she said, ‘You’re a brave lad, Matt. Do you know that? A brave lad. But for you, Constance wouldn’t be here right now.’

  Her voice quivered and her husband’s hand pressed her shoulder as he murmured, ‘Hold on, lass, hold on. There’s the bab to think of. She needs you now.’

  Matthew saw Mrs Gray swallow hard before she spoke again: ‘I’m Constance’s grandma, hinny. I know you’ve got two nice grandmas, haven’t you, and you like to visit them, no doubt. Well, Constance is coming to stay with me so I can feed her and look after her. You can come and see her whenever you want, would you like that?’

  He gulped over the lump blocking his throat. Mr and Mrs Shelton gone, just like that. ‘You look like her.’

  ‘What’s that, pet?’

  ‘Mrs Shelton – you look like her.’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s to be expected. She’s my daughter.’

  Mabel Gray’s voice cracked and she made a little sound which caused Ruth Heath to wrinkle up her face in sympathy. She stood looking down at her neighbour kneeling by Matthew, unable to take in the enormity of what had happened. That lovely young couple, and them only just having had the bairn. And Mabel was right. But for the lad, the bairn would be lying alongside of her mam and da.After all the neighbours had formed a human chain from the tap in the yard and put the fire out with every bucket they had between them, they’d discovered the two rooms upstairs hadn’t been consumed by the fire. Nevertheless, the young lass and her husband had been lifeless when they’d reached them. It’d been the smoke, of course. The lass had still been lying in bed, it didn’t look as if she’d ever woken up, but after Stephen had got the bab out he must have been overcome. Tragedy, it was. Terrible.

  When Ruth saw her son pass the baby to Mabel a moment later she expelled a silent sigh of relief. Thank goodness. For a while there, she’d thought the whole thing had turned Matt’s brain, the way he wouldn’t let go of the bairn an’ all.

  Mrs Preston had made a pot of tea and now as she silently handed everyone a cup, Ruth took hers with a nod of thanks. The smell of smoke was strong; it’d take days, weeks even, for it to disperse, and the damage next door would take some putting right, but that was nothing compared to the lasting heartache this night had caused. There was no telling what had started the fire. The clothes horse might have been too close to the range maybe, that was easy done, she herself had scorched the odd thing or two over the years, but whatever had caused it the result had been devastating. A babbie robbed of her mam and da and two sets of families grieving.

  As though her thoughts had conjured them up, a knock at the back door preceded Stephen’s parents and three younger, unmarried sisters entering the kitchen. The girls were crying and Stephen’s father looked stricken, but such was the expression on Stephen’s mother’s face it brought a rush of tears to Ruth’s eyes.

  No one said anything, but as Hannah’s mother made room on the settle where she was sitting rocking the child in her arms, Stephen’s mother sank down beside her, reaching out and stroking the downy forehead of the sleeping baby with the tip of her finger. The two looked at each other, as one in their pain, and as Ruth wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing-gown, she thought, At least the bairn will be loved. There’s no doubt about that. But it won’t be the same as having her mam and da, will it, God bless the poor little mite.

  They had the funeral on the following Sunday so everyone could pay their respects and not lose a shift. The whole village turned out despite the deep snow and ice which had hit the north-east the day after the fire. It being the Sabbath, all the shops were closed and the quietness which pervaded the village on a normal Sunday was more intense, seeming to pulse like a live thing as the men and boys from both families walked the funeral route, surrounded by male friends and neighbours.

  Every pair of curtains in the village was closed and the women and children who lined the street were silent as they watched the cart carrying the two coffins make its way to the graveyard north of t
he Cross Streets. Afterwards, family and close friends gathered at the Grays’ house where Mabel and her two remaining married daughters and Stephen’s mother and sisters had prepared a spread.

  Vincent McKenzie had followed the coffins along with his workmates, knowing it would raise eyebrows if he didn’t, but that wasn’t the only reason. He wanted to be near Hannah one last time. The short service was held over the open graves and when the first clods of earth hit the wood and Hannah’s father stood shielding his face with his hands as the tears dripped through his fingers, the man’s grief didn’t move Vincent.

  ‘This is your fault,’ he wanted to say. ‘You let her walk out with Shelton, you let her marry him. This is your fault – and now see what’s happened.’ But of course he remained silent, standing slightly apart from the other mourners, his stomach churning with the sickness that had been with him for days.

  He watched as Matthew Heath was called forward by Hannah’s father to lay a wreath at the foot of each grave which would eventually be laid on top of the mounds of earth when the grave-diggers had finished their work. His eyes became pinpoints of black light as he stared at the young boy. But for this lad’s interference Stephen Shelton’s brat would be where it should be – six foot under. Instead it was alive, a reminder of Hannah’s duplicity and her union with Shelton.

  He was almost the last person to leave the cemetery. The sky had been heavy and low all day and now the snow began to fall in great white flakes.

  ‘We’re in for another packet.’ One of the grave-diggers passed him as he stood just outside the gates. ‘All this afore Christmas don’t bode well for the New Year. It’ll be a long, hard winter sure enough, you mark my words.’