Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Miss Joice is a spinster,’ Hilda countered after a minute of silent reflection.

  ‘Exactly,’ Louie replied. ‘Teachers are spinsters ‘cos they’ve got too much knowledge. That’s what I’ve been telling you.’

  Hilda picked up John’s cap and gave her sister a direct look. ‘So who are you going to marry, Louie?’

  Louie felt herself blushing at so direct a question. ‘Eee, how should I know? I’m not even courting yet,’ she answered primly.

  ‘Will it be one of John’s friends or Davie’s?’ Hilda pursued the subject in her usual methodical way. It wasn’t worth mentioning Eb; most of his friends had died in France.

  ‘Maybes,’ Louie held up a pair of trousers and inspected them. ‘More likely one of John’s with him being a hewer. They earn the best money. Davie’s friends are just putters and drink all their wages at the pub. I’m going to marry a respectable lad like Mam did.’

  ‘Like Sam Ritson?’ her sister asked. ‘His Da’s a church warden at St Cuthbert’s and he’s been something important at the lodge, I’ve heard John say so.’

  ‘Sam Ritson?’ Louie scoffed. ‘Da says he’s a Communist and doesn’t believe in God. I’ll not be marrying the likes of him!’ She vigorously folded up the trousers and slapped them on the neat pile. ‘Anyways, he sounds boring. John says he’s always talking about politics and getting back at the bosses. And our Davie says he cannot dance to save himself and he never goes to the socials. My lad will be a canny dancer, but.’

  ‘Eb thinks Sam Ritson will be a great leader,’ Hilda persisted. ‘He speaks up for his marras when there’s things to be said at the pit. Eb and John think he’s canny.’

  ‘Shut your mouth about Sam Ritson,’ Louie answered with annoyance, and, tossing her hair over her censorious straight back, led the way into the house.

  In the cosy kitchen there seemed hardly room to stand. Fanny Kirkup was warming the teapot with boiling water from the kettle that always sat snug on the hob of the black kitchen range.

  ‘Mind that bath, Ebenezer!’ she warned as her eldest lifted the zinc tub full of dirty water, narrowly missing the dark head of Sadie, his eight-year-old cousin. She squatted on the floor oblivious to the danger, twisting paper sticks for the parlour fire.

  ‘We’ve dadded the clothes, Mam,’ Louie announced, looking for approval. Jacob Kirkup smiled at his daughters, his scrubbed face as clean and shiny as a pitman’s could be, and greeted them with a kiss on each fair head. He was tall for a miner and although he was into his fifties, his body was firm and muscle-bound from the relentless daily hewing of coal. Only his beard, completely white, and the snowy hairs among the red on his head betrayed the premature ageing of an energetic man.

  ‘Hilda, set the table,’ her mother ordered, ‘we’ll all eat in the front room together this morning.’ She gave Davie a sharp look; he was already helping himself to a thick slice of bread and cheese from the central table. Louie reached up for the caddy on the high mantelpiece and spooned a generous amount of tea into the warmed pot.

  ‘This is a proud day for the Kirkup family,’ Jacob smiled as he settled into his seat at the parlour table. ‘Our John helping to carry the lodge banner, aye, it’s a grand day.’ He patted his second son on the back and John grinned, his fair face shaved, and raw from scrubbing, with tiny creases of black in the lines around his eyes. The men took their seats at the table first while the girls served them with porridge and bacon.

  ‘And Eb’s playing in the band,’ Hilda piped up, licking grease from her fingers.

  ‘Aye,’ her father agreed.

  ‘Better not drink too much, our John,’ Davie mumbled, his mouth full. ‘Don’t want Keir Hardie to fall off the banner into the gutter, now do we?’

  John’s temper flared at once. ‘You’re the one who should be told. You better stay out the gutter ‘n’ all.’

  ‘That’s enough, lads,’ their father reprimanded sharply, ‘or I’ll cuff the pair of you.’

  ‘Who’s Keir Hardie?’ Sadie asked shyly, hovering at her Uncle Jacob’s elbow.

  ‘He was one of our greatest leaders, pet.’ He smiled at his niece allowing her to butter his bread for him. ‘Not a Liberal, mind you, but a fighter for the working man.’

  ‘Keir Hardie supported the suffering-gettes too,’ Hilda added, struggling under the weight of the teapot.

  ‘Suffragettes,’ her father corrected.

  Hilda splashed more tea into Eb’s cup. ‘Miss Joice said so. Keir Hardie said it was wicked what they did, making those ladies go to prison and making them eat up their noses.’

  ‘Be quiet and pour the tea, Hildy,’ her mother warned, bringing in another plate of bread. Louie looked warily at her father, knowing that for some reason, talk of suffragettes put him in a bad mood.

  ‘Miss Eleanor was a suffering-gette, wasn’t she, Mam?’ Hilda persisted. ‘You always said she was the nicest of them at the Big House. Miss Joice said Miss Eleanor went to prison too.’

  ‘Aye and look what it did for her.’ Jacob Kirkup suddenly exploded. ‘She’s like an old woman hobbling around with a stick, an embarrassment to the Seward-Scotts, she is. To think our pit’s named after her as well. They wouldn’t have named her the Eleanor if they’d known the way their eldest daughter would carry on. I don’t want to hear any more talk of Eleanor Seward-Scott, Hilda, do you hear? Women like her don’t know their place, that’s what.’

  Hilda looked up startled and spilt tea on the green baize tablecloth.

  ‘Hilda, look what you’ve done!’ her mother scolded. ‘You’re that clumsy you’ll lose your own head one of these days.’

  Louie rushed for a cloth to stem the spillage and Sadie looked on with wide, nervous dark eyes as Hilda’s cheeks turned flame-coloured.

  Eb ruffled her hair comfortingly as he pushed back his chair, his breakfast finished. ‘Don’t worry, lass,’ he whispered quietly. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he announced. ‘The band is meeting at the pit gates in ten minutes, John.’

  ‘Aye, I’m coming.’ His brother stood up and the two of them left the room to get ready.

  After that there was a rush to finish off breakfast and clear away and the girls quickly forgot their father’s angry words in the excitement of preparation. With the picnic prepared, Louie revelled in the luxury of putting on her best clothes. Standing before the parlour mirror, eyeing the young girl with her bound-up hair and blue-ribboned boater, she felt almost attractive.

  ‘Listen, there’s the band coming, Hildy!’ She flew to the window and peered out through the net curtains. She could hear the low thud of the big drum, the rhythmic blast of trumpets and brass, and the vibration of hundreds of feet on the march, as the colliery band and its supporters swung down Hawthorn Street.

  ‘Come on, Sadie.’ She helped the young girl into her coat and grabbed her hand firmly. Sadie could be awkward about bands, the noise and the crowds of people seemed to terrify her. But today Louie’s enthusiasm seemed to make her orphaned cousin brave, and they stepped out into the street together.

  In the fresh early light the family tagged on to the stream of villagers following the band. Louie’s chest contracted with pride to see Eb up front, music clamped to his instrument, a frown of concentration on his face. Then she spotted John bearing one of the front banner cords, Keir Hardie’s bearded face nodding approval from the massive flag swaying above him. Fluttering beside the miners’ hero, the image of a strong-jawed pitman grasped a pick in an aggressive salute.

  The banner passed and they fell in behind, beckoned on by the large flapping picture of a distressed woman and her sorrowing children on the back of the banner. ‘We Succour the Widows and Orphans’ it promised, a kindly union official offering a sympathetic hand to the woman in black. The picture always made Louie want to cry for the poor, sad children, and she glanced at Sadie, wondering if it would upset her ‘too. But the child was humming tunelessly under her breath and making a tentative skip as she gripped Louie’s hand. Louie decided
that Sadie probably could not remember her parents. After all, she was only two when her father was killed in France and four when her mother, Louie’s auntie, died of influenza.

  The miners of Whitton Grange and their families walked the half-mile to Whitton Station and boarded the special trains for Durham City that ran all morning. It was only when they arrived in Durham that Louie realised Davie was nowhere to be seen. She was momentarily annoyed by his disappearance; she wanted to parade through the narrow medieval streets with Davie making jokes at her side. There had not been a Big Meeting for three years because of the lockout in 1921, and Davie had promised he would dance through the town with her; but then it was typical of her favourite, wayward brother to make promises he forgot to keep. So she allowed the raised voices and laughter around her to sweep all thoughts of Davie to the back of her mind.

  To Louie, Durham was the ‘city on a hill’ to which her father would exhort the congregation to aspire when he thumped the pulpit on a Sunday. She always marvelled at the tall houses with glimpses of secluded ornate gardens, and the wealth in the shops: jewellers with chiming carriage clocks, men’s outfitters and ladies’ haberdashers with hats suspended in the windows like exotic stuffed birds. She longed to work in such a shop, for some kind, wealthy lady who would let her try on all the silliest fashions. But today many of the shop fronts were boarded up, their treasures hidden from the pit folk while the traders cowered at home.

  Louie knew there was no escaping Whitton Grange for any fancy shop; since leaving the strictures of the classroom, life had been a relentless round of household chores, and the euphoria of leaving school had evaporated like froth on a washing pot. But on Gala Day she could dream of something better.

  ‘Are you going to see Minnie?’ Hilda latched on to her other arm as they were jostled down the hill from the station.

  ‘If she can get away,’ Louie answered. Her best friend Minnie Slattery was in service in a boarding house, part of a large private school in the town. Her parish priest had given her a good reference and she had been hired as a lowly laundry maid, but being a Catholic she was lucky to be hired at all. Service or home; that was the dreary choice until they found husbands, Louie thought. She had not heard from her friend since she went away, and she longed to hear all Minnie’s news.

  ‘Hold on to Hildy,’ Jacob Kirkup instructed Louie, ‘and keep next to your mother.’ He lifted Sadie’s skinny body on to his shoulders in one easy swing so she could look out over the crowds and avoid being trampled underfoot. She clung on to the brim of his hard hat, delighted to ride so high.

  Louie and Hilda skipped arm in arm, nearly whipped off their feet by the tide of bodies that moved relentlessly onwards. The tunes of bands clashed and mixed together as one phalanx of miners merged with another. As they swept on down the North Road and past the former Miners’ Hall with its impressive octagonal clock tower, Louie could see an endless wave of caps and dark suits moving ahead of them across Framwellgate Bridge, their brightly coloured banners proudly held high. The girls sang as they paraded past the bystanders and Louie felt she would burst with pride.

  ‘Mam, look at the people who’ve come to watch us. I bet they wish they were us,’ Louie smiled at her mother. For a moment, looking at the older woman’s pasty face with the dark-ringed eyes, she thought her mother was going to cry. She was dressed in her best blouse and purple skirt with matching brimmed hat; Louie was always proud of her mother’s neatness and beauty. But now her face was glistening with sweat and her usual liveliness was subdued. She looks tired, Louie thought, and vowed she would help out more tomorrow.

  About the time the last of the bands reached the racecourse by the riverside and the banners were arrayed around the platform of prestigious speakers, Davie was beginning his third pint of beer in the Market Inn. Disappearing from his father’s watchful eye had been ridiculously simple, and he half suspected his father had allowed him to slip the leash. Whatever, he was happy in the fug of human bodies and ale, with his drinking partner Tadger Brown.

  ‘Here’s to the union,’ toasted Tadger.

  ‘The union of lads and lasses,’ they chorused together, laughed and downed half a pint.

  ‘Your John’s a lodge man now, Davie. Must be proud of him, but.’ Tadger pulled a solemn face, knowing how the brothers sparked.

  ‘Proud as a lion, Tadger.’ Davie nodded seriously. ‘It makes me happy just thinking of him stuck in the Temperance tent celebrating with a cup of tea.’ Davie grinned.

  ‘The cup that cheers but doesn’t inebriate,’ they cried in unison, raising their glasses again. Davie finished his beer first and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He half turned as someone nudged his shoulder on their way to the back sitting room.

  ‘Watch yourself,’ a girl shouted at him crossly, her tray of drinks wobbling precariously.

  ‘Sony, pet,’ Davie smiled, and then looked again with interest. She was about his own age, slight, with auburn hair hanging in loose curls about her shoulders. Her face was made up; hazel eyes highlighted and lips reddened, and he was immediately attracted by the look of disdain she bestowed on him.

  ‘We’ll have a couple of pints when you’re finished,’ Tadger said, slurping off his dregs.

  ‘I’m serving in the back room,’ she answered with a curl of her lip.

  ‘Then we’ll sit in the back.’ Davie turned and followed her so closely that her hair brushed his chin. It smelt of tobacco smoke, but he caught a heady scent of flowers from her neck. ‘What’s your name, pet?’

  ‘Iris,’ she replied shortly without glancing round.

  ‘That’s a bonny name for a bonny lass,’ Davie persisted, fighting his way behind her through the throng of drinkers. She did not reply, banging down the tray on one of the tables and off-loading her cargo. As she turned to go, she gave Davie an appraising glance, a half-smile and a ‘Two pints was it?’

  ‘Aye, bonny Iris,’ Davie winked, and knew he was going to enjoy the rest of the Big Meeting far from the fiery speeches, the brass bands and the Cathedral service.

  The voice of Ramsay MacDonald rang out over the crowds of pitmen and women, but Louie and Minnie walked away arm in arm, stopping to eye the passing bandsmen and gawp at the fair stalls by the riverside.

  ‘So this is the first time you’ve come into the town?’ Louie asked incredulously.

  ‘Aye.’ Minnie nodded her dark head. ‘I’m that tired at the end of the day I haven’t the strength to go window-shopping, even if I was allowed out. I’m up early, work all day - just look at me hands, Louie! Like raw carrot sticks. Washing for all the bairns at home was a holiday, I can tell you.’

  ‘But what about the lads, Minnie? Must be grand to live in a house with all those posh lads.’ She nudged her friend playfully.

  ‘Lads,’ Minnie snorted, ‘I don’t get to see any. Even if I did, I wouldn’t be allowed to talk to them. One of the nannies got the sack this term for talking to boys.’

  Louie looked at Minnie in horror; she was beginning to think life at home in Whitton Grange was not so bad after all.

  ‘Let’s go and watch the boxing, Louie,’ Minnie was suddenly dragging her sideways. A short man in a striped waistcoat was beckoning in the passers-by, challenging the young men to fight his champion, the Black Bear from Germany.

  ‘Eee, we can’t go in there, Minnie!’ Louie giggled nervously and looked behind her. They seemed to have lost Hilda who had insisted on tagging along behind. She must have stopped to gaze at the gaudy musical horses at the last roundabout ride. Her vague sister would never find her own way back to the Rechabites’ tent where her mother was helping to serve tea to the thirsty bandsmen and their wives. ‘I’ll have to look for Hildy,’ Louie said with exasperation.

  ‘In a minute.’ Minnie gave a cheeky smile that made her nose wrinkle and her green eyes narrow. ‘Just for a laugh, Louie, I don’t get many laughs these days. Haway, just for me.’

  Louie could not resist her plea. With a last look around to make sure n
o one she knew was watching, she followed her friend behind the tent flap.

  ‘Come on, ladies,’ the fairman encouraged, ‘you’re about to see the fight of a lifetime. Come and cheer on your ‘ero.’

  Louie grabbed Minnie’s hand in nervous anticipation. ‘I can see fighting any week at the top of Hawthorn Street,’ she whispered to her friend in mock disapproval.

  ‘Well, the only wrestling I get is with the mangle, so come on.’

  The tent was already crowded and the smell of bodies under the warm canvas was overpowering. Louie covered her mouth with her hand and wished she had not been so easily led. An enormous man, stripped to the waist, with thick growths of black hair sprouting from his chest and underarms, was parading around the raised ring. Louie blushed at the sight but could not take her eyes off him.

  ‘Do we have our first challenger?’ the man in the striped waistcoat boomed as he jumped up on the side of the ring. The Black Bear from Germany growled like an animal and the audience booed and whistled. There was a commotion on the far side as someone was pushed forward by his companions.

  ‘Haway, man, and get up there!’

  Louie started at the familiar voice, then she caught a glimpse of her brother John’s excited mustachioed face across the canvas floor. What would her brother say if he saw her standing there? Louie shrank beneath her boater, eyes pinned to the ground.

  A cry went up as a man pulled himself into the ring. Louie glanced up tentatively and saw a thickset young man, with cropped brown hair and a clean-shaven square face, rolling up his sleeves. His raised fists and forearms were hard and muscled, like the figure of the worker beside Keir Hardie on their lodge banner.

  And that was Louie’s first real impression of Sam Ritson.

  Chapter Two