Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Louie dropped her head so Iris could not see the rising flush in her cheeks. ‘Aye, but it was different for you and Davie,’ she mumbled. ‘You’d like - well, knew each other already.’

  Iris felt a sudden pang of sympathy for her young sister-in-law, worldly-wise in so many ways and yet a complete innocent about men. She knew that if she laughed now, Louie would never forgive her.

  ‘That’ll just come natural too,’ she told her gently. ‘You mustn’t be afraid. Has your mam never told you about marriage, Louie?’

  Louie shook her head bashfully. ‘Only about housekeeping and that.’

  Iris sighed. ‘Listen, we’ll start getting you dressed,’ she said firmly, ‘and old Iris will tell you the facts of life while we’re about it.’

  Looking back, Louie remembered floating through the service, the lusty hymn-singing and the scent of flowers washing over her. Then she was outside with Sam in the bright sunshine, clutching the bouquet that Eb had made up for her and smiling happily at the crowd of well-wishers in the street. She glanced surreptitiously at Sam and thought how handsome he looked with his parted hair newly cut, and his collar stiff and white below his cleanly shaven square chin. His diffident smile changed his whole face and softened the intensity of his brown eyes.

  Then to the delight of them both, they heard the colliery band strike up and appear from behind the chapel to play them back to Hawthorn Street.

  ‘It was Eb’s idea,’ Hilda told Louie with a broad smile of crooked teeth. ‘He knows how you like to hear the band.’ Louie squeezed Sam’s arm as she proudly slipped her own through his. It’s a mark of how important they think Sam is too, she thought with a thrill.

  Back at the house, the parlour and kitchen were packed to bursting with relations and friends tucking into the spread of food that the Kirkups had managed to lay on for their guests.

  Liza Ritson, a handsome woman in a large-brimmed old-fashioned hat covered in mock flowers, complimented Louie and her mother on the quality of the chicken sandwiches and the homemade cakes and biscuits. However, her husband Samuel, a small wiry man with deep-set dark eyes, was not so happy about the lack of alcohol to celebrate the proceedings. Jacob Kirkup had been adamant that tea and ginger wine or lemonade were all they needed to refresh their thirsts. Davie saved the situation by taking Mr Ritson into the wash-house where he had hidden a few bottles of beer that he had persuaded Iris’s father to donate. Soon Sam and John and Sam’s brother-in-law Johnny Pearson had all found it necessary to call in at the wash-house on their way back from ‘going across the road’ to relieve themselves of vast amounts of tea.

  By the time Jacob became aware of the illicit drinking party in the outhouse, the crime was committed and the bottles were empty. Iris calmed the rising tempers by starting off the singing. Soon Eb was striking away at the piano and Iris was joined by Sam’s sister Bel who loved a singsong. Together they sang ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo” and other musical favourites, then they all joined in traditional songs, such as The Lambton Worm’ and ‘Do Y’Ken John Peel?’

  Davie started off ‘Cushy Butterfield’ and sang it raucously with Iris, slipping a possessive arm around her waist and thinking of the time they had first sung it, when they had met two years ago at the Big Meeting.

  Louie looked at them enviously, wishing she and Sam were so easy in each other’s company. She turned to find Sam eyeing her. His brow was furrowed, as if something was causing him doubt, and her palms began to feel clammy in the hot parlour. Was he regretting their marriage already, she wondered anxiously? Soon they would have to leave. Sam had managed to procure a room from the colliery management, a tiny dwelling in Gladstone Terrace, a row of temporary cottages thrown together when the first pit had opened. The previous week, Louie, with Hilda’s help, had scrubbed it clean, and her brothers had carried in a large bedstead and a solid kitchen table and chairs. One room was hardly a glorious start to their married life together, but it would be their own and was already crammed with the presents and second-hand furniture they had been given. Louie had not yet dared tell Sam about the magnificent tea set gifted to them by the lady of The Grange. It was still in its luxurious box, under her brothers’ bed upstairs.

  All at once she was nervous about leaving the crowded conviviality of her parents’ home, its cosy familiarity. Now the memories seemed so precious to her; the touch of the well-polished mahogany furniture, the noisy chatter of Sadie and Hilda around the hearth, the sight of her mother quietly knitting while her father read by the light of the paraffin lamp. She would miss Davie’s friendly banter, Eb’s silent presence as he wandered in after a day out of doors, even John’s flashes of temper. They were all a part of the home’s character like a well-worn clippy mat that she could not bear to throw out; they represented her girlhood here. And she would miss Iris and her bonny baby Raymond. Her moody, infuriating, generous, lazy, beautiful, funny sister-in-law, whom she had determined to hate, had ended up as her friend. Louie knew the grudging affection was mutual. Tomorrow morning it would no longer be her job to give her nephew his early bottle by the warmth of the kitchen range. With a pang she watched him gurgling and clutching Davie’s finger as her brother showed him off to the Ritsons. Louie missed Raymond already.

  Suddenly Sam was at her side, clearing his throat. ‘It’s time we were off, Louie.’ The singing had stopped, and attention was focused on the departing couple. Sam took his leave of his family.

  ‘Louie.’ Her mother kissed her cheek, her eyes filling up with tears. Louie knew she would not cry, she had never seen her cry, but it touched her all the same to know her mother would miss her too. She hugged her father and he kissed the top of her head affectionately.

  ‘You’ll be just up the road,’ he smiled encouragingly; ‘we’ll see you in chapel tomorrow.’ Louie nodded, knowing her father would be preaching.

  She hugged her brothers, cuddled Sadie who had burst into tears at her going, and promised her cousin she could come and stay one night soon.

  ‘Bye, Hildy.’ She hugged her younger sister. ‘Take care of Mam, won’t you?’

  ‘‘Course I will,’ Hilda reassured her. ‘I’m not as daft as you think.’

  ‘I’ve never thought you were daft, our Hilda.’ Louie flushed to think of how bossy she had been at times.

  She ignored the nagging guilt she felt at leaving Hilda to cope with the household as well as her job at Greenbrae. They would all just have to manage without her; she was entitled to a life of her own with Sam. She took Raymond in her arms and kissed his soft cheeks. Reluctantly she allowed her mother to remove him firmly from her hold.

  ‘Give us a hug then.’ Iris grinned, her slim face rosy from singing. Her eyes sparkled knowingly as she whispered in Louie’s ear, ‘Remember what I told you and there’ll be nowt to be frightened of.’

  Louie laughed nervously.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ Sam took Louie by the hand.

  ‘Women’s talk,’ Iris replied cheekily, and winked.

  Minutes later they were out in the street, waving goodbye to their friends and neighbours, Sam clutching a canvas kit bag borrowed from Eb, full of Louie’s clothing. Louie stepped out of number 28 Hawthorn Street as Mrs Sam Ritson, leaving behind the ghost of Louie Kirkup the spinster on the scrubbed and sandstoned doorstep.

  At the end of the street they turned into Holly Street and then on up to the top of the village. Neither of them broke the awkward silence until they reached 16 Gladstone Terrace. I’ll clean the window again come Monday morning, Louie vowed, seeing how the small downstairs window of their one-roomed cottage was once more thick with grimy dust from the pits which now loomed over their home. ‘You know the inside’s clean when the outside’s good,’ her mother always said. But in Hawthorn Street it had been possible to turn away and look down towards the dene and pretend that the pits and their clouds of filth were not there. Here, the squat, blackened group of houses seemed to huddle together for protection from the vast brick buildings, and the two pi
theads with their unblinking wheel-eyes that watched fortress-like over them.

  ‘It’s a start,’ Sam said defensively, seeing the dismay on his young wife’s face. ‘It’s more than a lot have got to start with an’all.’

  ‘Aye,’ Louie sighed, and followed him inside.

  She found comfort in busying herself about the cramped dwelling, rearranging her few possessions and spreading her best tablecloth over the rough square table that Wilfred Parkin and his father had made for them. The yellow and blue embroidered flowers with which Hilda had helped decorate the cloth brought a splash of colour into the dingy room.

  ‘I’ll get the kettle on,’ Louie said with false brightness, then realised the fire was not lit and the stove was cold.

  ‘I’ve had enough tea to float the Fleet,’ Sam grunted, loosening his tie and stiff collar. He gave a groan of satisfaction as it relieved the constriction around his neck.

  ‘I’ll go and get the coal in for the fire anyway.’ Louie felt the panic rising in her throat.

  ‘In your wedding dress?’ Sam laughed in surprise. Louie looked away, feeling tears pricking behind her eyes. She was at a loss as to how she should act. The wretchedness of the room with its smell of damp pressed around her like prison walls. She was trapped in here with this strange man, and his proximity was frightening. To her shame she allowed herself to succumb to the overwhelming need to weep.

  ‘Louie?’ Sam’s voice was puzzled as he stopped his undressing to stare at her. ‘What you crying for?’ Louie could not answer except with louder sobs. He’ll never forgive me for this, she thought miserably, he’ll send me back home and I’ll be a disgrace to all the family.

  A moment later she felt his arms around her shoulders. ‘Come here, Louie pet,’ Sam said gently. ‘You would think you’d been locked in with one of the bosses the way you’re carrying on. I’ll treat you right.’

  Louie half laughed and half cried at his kind humour, burying her face into his broad shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ she apologised, her voice muffled in his shirt. ‘It’s been such a grand day; I don’t know why I’m crying like a silly bairn.’

  ‘It has been a grand day, Louie,’ Sam patted her head, ‘but you mustn’t get too emotional, it doesn’t do you any good.’

  ‘No.’ Louie drew away from him and blew her nose hard on her handkerchief. She felt her self-control returning rapidly.

  They changed out of their wedding clothes and went for a long walk, over Highfell Common and back through the dene. As they stood on the Common and looked over at the woods that surrounded the secluded mansion, Louie told Sam about the present from the big house. To her relief, Sam found it amusing that his enemy Reginald Seward-Scott should have spent, probably unknowingly, a fraction of his profits on a wedding gift for a man he despised and feared.

  Arm in arm they strolled back to the village.

  ‘She seems canny, Mrs Reginald,’ Louie ventured, testing Sam’s good humour. ‘Our Hildy sees quite a bit of her over at Greenbrae. She says she’s not like other posh people, she treats her like a friend. Hildy says she’s always speaking to our Eb, too.’

  Sam frowned with disapproval. ‘They shouldn’t let her get too friendly,’ Sam warned. ‘Her type aren’t like us, Louie, even Eleanor Seward-Scott - no matter how canny she may seem, she cannot change who she is. When it comes to a fight, she’ll stick with her own, and her friendship with Hildy or Eb won’t be worth tuppence-halfpenny.’

  ‘Why does everything have to be a fight with you, Sam?’ Louie asked impatiently.

  ‘Because that’s the only way our class ever gets anything,’ he answered emphatically. ‘Nothing gets handed to us on a plate, Louie, remember that.’

  When they got home the fire that Sam had lit before going out had taken, and Louie boiled up a bowl of potato soup for them both. They ate hungrily and in virtual silence. Afterwards, she made up the bed that stood in the corner taking up a third of the room.

  While the evening light still shone in through the thin curtains, Sam and Louie consummated their marriage; at first awkwardly and with fumbling bashfulness, later, as it darkened, with more assurance and growing intimacy.

  Louie lay peaceful at last, nestled under Sam’s arm, listening to the calls of men passing along the street on their way home from the pub.

  ‘Will you come to chapel tomorrow?’ she asked him softly. Sam shifted his arm.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting,’ he answered shortly. ‘Meetings come first, Louie.’ Yawning, he turned over and settled himself to sleep.

  Louie lay awake for a long time, envying Sam his even, untroubled breathing as he slept. She tried to work out if she was happier now than she had been yesterday, and thought that she probably was. Anyway, it did not matter now; she had chosen a life with Sam Ritson and she was going to make the best of it. The clock on the mantelpiece struck twice, and then Louie remembered nothing more.

  Chapter Ten

  Married life for Louie was working out fine as far as she could tell. She had made their tiny home as comfortable as possible, with new nets at the window and her mother’s best second-hand clippy mats by the hearth and bed. At the weekend, out would come the polished silver teapot from Mrs Seward-Scott, with its dainty sugar bowl and cream jug to match. With it sitting on a lacquered tray given by the Dobson family, and placed on her best embroidered linen tablecloth, Louie imagined she had the finest tea table in the county.

  Through the week she would scrimp and save the meagre housekeeping that was left after their bills had been paid, so she could put on a special spread for the Saturday tea. Sometimes Sam would invite in Bomber and Minnie from down the street, as Minnie was now hugely pregnant and her mother, Mrs Slattery, had more than enough mouths to feed without helping them out. Bomber’s parents had refused to speak to their son since he had married a Catholic.

  The week before Christmas they sat around Sam and Louie’s kitchen table, having had their fill of teacakes and jam, cheese and scones, wholemeal loaf and - Sam’s favourite - Louie’s homemade custard tart.

  ‘Have some more jelly and pears,’ Louie pressed Bomber.

  ‘No ta.’ Sam’s redheaded workmate leaned back in his chair and patted a full stomach. ‘That was grand. I only get to eat as good as this when I’m here.’

  Minnie was immediately riled. ‘Don’t expect me to go baking all week, Bomber,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve hardly the strength to walk up the street, with carrying your baby.’

  ‘Looks like you’re carrying a football team in there,’ Sam teased, not wanting a row to spark after Louie’s hard work in laying on the large tea.

  ‘Feels like it an’ all.’ Minnie gave out a loud sigh, her face flushed beneath her thick, curly dark hair.

  Louie got up quickly to clear the plates. Minnie had asked her to be there at the birth; she was now considered a trainee midwife after delivering Iris’s baby, and Mrs Dobson had taken her to help out at several births since. She slipped a look at Sam, but he was not watching her. They had been married nearly five months and yet nothing had happened. It was the only blight on her happiness that she was still not pregnant. She avoided her mother’s look of enquiry each time they went to Hawthorn Street for the traditional family Saturday evening around the piano. It was even worse with Sam’s mother when they called for Sunday lunch and she would be making a fuss of Bel’s baby daughter, Betty. ‘This’ll all come to you soon, Louie,’ she would smile as she bounced Betty playfully on her knee. ‘It’d be nice to have a grandson next, wouldn’t it, Samuel?’ And she would nod her greying head of hair at her husband absorbed in the newspapers.

  Louie could only escape to help Sam’s sisters, Bel and Mary, with the washing-up. ‘Don’t mind Mam.’ Bel squeezed her arm after one embarrassing mealtime of unsubtle hints from Louie’s mother-in-law. ‘She’s just daft about bairns. She misses our sister Lizzy and her two boys, that’s all.’ Louie hardly knew Sam’s eldest sister; she had moved away to Yorkshire with her mining husband
at the end of the war.

  Mary had snorted. ‘Can’t think what all the fuss is about - they’re either crying or dirty or wanting feedin’ - or all three. I’m never going to have bairns.’

  ‘Mary’s going to be a nun.’ Bel raised her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘I’m going to be a missionary,’ Mary corrected. ‘A Presbyterian missionary like Miss Kennedy who spoke to the Guild last week.’ This surprised Louie, who thought she was still with the Evangelicals.

  ‘You mean like in foreign countries, preaching to the heathens?’ Louie asked with interest.

  ‘Yes.’ Mary nodded decisively. ‘I’m going to convert the heathens to God like Miss Kennedy and help all the poor people.’

  ‘God help the heathen bairns,’ Bel said under her breath as she went to claim Betty from her doting grandmother.

  Still, Louie felt the pressure from her family and Sam’s, whether spoken or not, the continual watching for signs that their marriage had been blessed. ‘Babies only happen to the good ones,’ she had heard Mrs Dobson say repeatedly to the mothers of the babes she had just delivered. Louie thought that was so unfair; she was no worse than either Iris or Minnie. But she was learning to be less impatient with life, and told herself that if it was meant to be, it would happen all in good time.

  By the time Louie had stacked up the plates in the small pantry that was curtained off from the room, the conversation had thankfully switched from babies.

  ‘It’s bad,’ Sam was saying. ‘There’ll be men idle by the end of the week who won’t see work again for months.’

  ‘Not just before Christmas?’ Minnie cried in dismay. ‘They won’t be laying you off will they, Bomber?’

  ‘Why no!’ Bomber was falsely cheerful. ‘You know how Sam likes to paint the picture black - they don’t call him Lenin at the pit for nothing.’

  ‘It won’t be us just now.’ Sam ignored his friend’s joking. ‘We’ve got a good cavel and they need us where we are. But they’ll try and cut our wages and make us work more hours for less - that’s the Christmas present the Seward-Scotts have for us this coming year.’