Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Promise?’ Iris held his gaze suspiciously.

  Davie’s face relaxed into its familiar grin. ‘Aye, I promise.’

  They walked out of the hall into the September sun, arm in arm, oblivious to the storm they were about to create.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I’ll not let you do it!’ Jacob Kirkup thundered at his youngest son. ‘No son of mine will betray his own kind as a scab, do you hear me?’

  ‘I don’t have any choice.’ Davie’s slim face scowled. ‘Me and Iris have discussed it over and over.’

  ‘And why didn’t you talk to your own family about it first?’ his father glowered at him accusingly.

  ‘It’s a matter for Davie and me,’ Iris piped up, annoyed at the way she was being ignored. ‘He’s doing it for me and the bairn - it’s nothing to do with you, Mr Kirkup.’

  Her tall, bearded father-in-law turned and gave her a dismissive look. ‘As long as my son lives under my roof, whatever he does concerns me.’ Iris gave a humph of frustration. Louie exchanged wary glances with her mother, who sat motionless in her chair, hands gripped in her lap.

  Davie thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and went on the offensive. ‘You don’t believe in the strike either. It’s got us nothing but empty bellies and empty pockets. Look at Mam.’ Davie nodded at his listless mother. ‘She’s not eaten a decent meal for weeks.’ Fanny looked at him unhappily, silently pleading for her favourite son to stop his rebellion.

  ‘Don’t you tell me your mother’s bad health is my fault.’ Jacob trembled with rage. His fingers itched at his broad leather belt as if he would use it against Davie as he’d done when his son was a boy.

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ Davie answered petulantly and spat into the reeking fireplace. He leaned against the mantelpiece, his back to his hostile family.

  ‘Don’t waste your breath talking to a waster like him,’ John vilified his brother. ‘He’s always thought of himself and no one else.’ The brothers exchanged hostile looks.

  ‘That’s not true.’ Iris crossed the kitchen and stood by her husband. ‘Davie’s thinking of me and Raymond.’

  John laughed derisively. ‘Ask him how much he was thinking of you up at Stand High Farm.’

  ‘Don’t, John.’ Louie threw her brother a furious look.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Iris demanded.

  But she got no reply. Their arguing was cut short by Sam walking in, shaking the rain from his upturned collar. Louie shivered from the damp draught he brought in with the open door. The room fell silent as Sam and Davie considered each other.

  ‘I hear you’ve been to speak to Naylor this morning.’ Sam’s voice was calm.

  ‘Aye,’ Davie replied sullenly. ‘What’s it to do with you?’

  ‘Sit down, son.’ Sam indicated the chair Iris had just vacated. No one else challenged Sam’s authority and Davie reluctantly sat down. Still standing, Sam leaned both fists on the table and fixed his brother-in-law with an intense look. ‘I can understand your reasons for wanting to give in to Seward-Scott,’ he began quietly. ‘He’s made life tough for all of us. Don’t you think I want to get back to work too? My Louie has suffered more than most from this lock-out and sometimes I’ve been near to breaking myself.’

  Davie glanced up at Sam in surprise; he could not imagine this pitman leader ever having doubts about anything.

  ‘We’ve lost the fight, Sam man.’ Davie flinched under his brother-in-law’s dark gaze.

  ‘No, we haven’t, not by a long way.’ Sam raised his voice. ‘As long as we all stick together, we can’t lose.’ His fists clenched white as he spoke. ‘The bosses are trying to break us down, district by district - split our ranks. Can’t you see, Davie?’ he reasoned passionately. ‘As a union man you must abide by our lodge decisions. We’ve voted to stay out on strike and that means all of us. Whatever we do we must have unity - when it’s time to go back we’ll all go back together.’

  ‘But we’re not united,’ Davie argued. ‘There’re lads already back at the pit.’

  ‘Just a handful out of hundreds of pitmen.’ Sam jabbed the bare table top with a forefinger. ‘We’ll persuade them they’ve made the wrong decision.’

  Louie felt a stirring of unease at the menace in her husband’s voice and the steely set of his face. Her anger at Davie’s selfishness was tinged with fear for his safety.

  Davie hung his head, overwhelmed by his family’s censure and Sam’s lecturing. He did not feel strong enough to resist them all. Perhaps Sam was right and he should wait a while longer. Iris saw the indecision in her husband’s boyish face and was riled by his weakness.

  ‘Are you going to let Sam Ritson tell you what to do?’ she ridiculed. ‘Have you no mind of your own?’

  Davie bit his lip, goaded by her disdain. He would not be humiliated in front of Iris just to please Louie’s Bolshie husband. Sam might starve for his principles, but his own needs were much simpler. Davie pushed back his chair.

  ‘Aye, I’ve a mind of my own. As far as I can see, unity and lodge votes have got us nowhere,’ he answered back. ‘I don’t understand what all this hardship has been for - unless it’s to give clever men like you a name for themselves.’ Davie’s small chin jutted out at Sam in defiance.

  ‘Davie!’ Louie remonstrated, but he ignored his sister’s shocked face.

  ‘Well, I’m not a clever man,’ he glared at them all, ‘I’m a hungry man with a hungry wife and bairn - and I’ll provide for them any way I can.’ He turned to Iris. ‘I start next week as a hewer, with three shillings a day bonus on top of wages for the first fortnight.’

  Iris’s face broke into a smile of relief; she flung her arms around his neck and boldly kissed his mouth in front of the others. Louie felt a sick dread in the pit of her stomach at the finality of Davie’s words. Sam thumped the table in disgust.

  ‘Oh, son.’ Jacob Kirkup’s expression was pained; he looked up to the ceiling. ‘What have I done to deserve a lad who’ll betray his people for a bag of silver?’

  ‘I’ll not speak to you again, Judas.’ John glared at his brother with hatred.

  ‘That’ll be no miss,’ Davie snapped back.

  ‘Stop it lads!’ Fanny unexpectedly broke her silence and pulled herself to a standing position. ‘This is still your father’s house and we all have to get by under the same roof. I’ll have no more shouting in my kitchen.’ Her dark-ringed eyes blazed and Louie could see her mother’s malnourished hands shaking as she faced Davie. ‘I think what you’re about to do is wrong, though God knows when I hear Raymond coughing I can understand why you’re doing it. But whatever happens,’ she turned now to John, ‘he’s my son and he’s your brother and I’ll not have him hounded out by your sharp tongue.’ The Kirkup men fell into a sullen silence at her critical words.

  Sam, who had not taken his eyes from Davie’s belligerent face, called to his wife. ‘Come on, Louie, we’ll not stay while there’s a scab amongst us.’

  Louie hesitated, seeing the shimmer of tears in her mother’s eyes. Then she stood up and walked over to Sam, lifting her coat off a nail in the back of the door.

  ‘Call again soon, Louie pet,’ her mother said.

  ‘Aye, I will,’ Louie agreed quietly, loath to leave her mother alone with her warring family.

  Sam briskly ushered her out, but stopped long enough to deliver his final message. ‘Cross that picket line, Davie Kirkup,’ he warned, ‘and you’ll be a leper in Whitton Grange till the day you die.’

  On a chilly morning in late September, Davie went back to the pit. He was among a small group of young men, including Tadger Brown, who were lured by the prospect of a hewer’s job. No longer would they have to shift heavy tubs of coal around the pit, risking being run over by a wagon or trampled on by a nervous pony. As hewers they were now the elite of the pitmen, grafting at the coalface like their older brothers and fathers had done.

  ‘We would’ve had to wait another ten years to get a job like this,’ Tadger
commented brightly, his breath suspended in a cloud before him in the covered van that was transporting them to the pit. ‘They’re the daft ones, not us.’

  Davie lifted a flap of canvas and peered out of the van, but it was too dark to see more than the shadow of houses about them. Around him he could hear the crunch of boots; several dozen policemen had been drafted in to protect the fifteen men in the van.

  ‘They’ve stopped my union benefits.’ A voice at the end of the bench spoke up nervously. The vehicle lumbered on, jolting over the rough lanes towards the pit gates.

  ‘Let’s start our own thrift fund,’ another suggested. ‘Give our families a bit of insurance - shilling a week, say?’

  There was a general murmur of agreement, then they fell silent again. Davie scrutinised the man opposite him, the one who had suggested the insurance fund. Under his large cap, his face was angular, with a thin moustache. Davie realised he had never seen the man before.

  ‘You’re not from round here, then?’ Davie enquired.

  ‘No,’ the other man shook his head, ‘I’m from t’other side of Durham.’

  ‘Why d’you come here?’ Davie was intrigued.

  ‘I was the only man wanted work in my village.’ He sounded more defensive. ‘It wasn’t safe for me and the missus, so they moved us here.’ There was no reply from his companions so he added bitterly, ‘I had four bairns to support - until the baby died last month. I’ll dig coal for any bugger before I see another of my bairns die.’

  The silence was no longer awkward as they felt drawn to each other in their common plight. The van laboured up the final stretch to the pit. Suddenly shouting broke out ahead.

  ‘Pickets,’ Tadger muttered apprehensively.

  Moments later, the canvas protection around them was pelted with stones. They heard the scuffling of a crowd just feet away from where they huddled.

  ‘Scabs! Scabs!’ the chant went up. ‘Let us at the bastards!’ The abuse went on incessantly as the van crawled and sputtered its way to the gates. Davie could feel the force of bodies jostling the wagon and for a few minutes he thought they were going to be overturned. Then came the sound of their uniformed protectors smacking into the demonstrators with their truncheons. He wondered if Sam and John were among the pickets. Well, it was their own daft fault if they were, he thought savagely; they were the ones causing the division between the pitmen, not him.

  ‘Don’t worry, you get used to it,’ the stranger assured him. ‘Just think of your family until you’re safe inside that pit.’

  Davie forced a cheerful smile. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard someone call a pit safe,’ he joked.

  ‘Safe as houses, the Eleanor and Beatrice,’ the man laughed.

  The van surged forward, nearly throwing the men off their makeshift seats. The gates clanged shut behind them and the noise of the pickets’ obscenities subsided. Inside the yard the men disembarked in a chatter of relief and made their way to the winding house.

  Running the gauntlet of angry pickets became a twice-daily event, at the beginning and end of Davie’s shift. He closed his eyes and ears to the bitter frustration of the union men who harangued him from the other side of the van walls. Each day he was herded with the other blacklegs like shamed criminals into the anonymous van that the pit management had hired to bring them to work. Each day, scores of policemen were there to provide a safe passage through the angry demonstrators lining the road to the pit.

  ‘We know who you are,’ they shouted, ‘and we know where you live.’

  But at the end of the fortnight, Davie took home his first pay packet for many months. He sent Iris out to the store and she came back with bacon ends for a substantial broth, jam and butter, tea, cocoa and tinned fruit. With the milk they could now afford she made semolina pudding for Raymond with a generous dollop of jam. Sadie, who was home from school for the weekend, helped her stagger back with bags of flour, sugar and eggs for Fanny to do her longed-for baking. The fire was stoked up with the coal Davie earned as part of his wages and the small kitchen was once again bathed in firelight and the smell of warm bread.

  Yet for Jacob and Fanny their delight at the sight of Raymond and Sadie cramming their mouths with the welcome food was blighted by their guilt at sharing such bounty. At the thought of their hungry neighbours, each mouthful felt stodgy and indigestible. Sam and Louie stayed away and declined tea with them that Saturday and John refused to eat Iris’s food, taking himself off to Marjory Hewitson’s family for his meals.

  Eb seemed devoid of appetite too, and Hilda curtailed her afternoon off and returned to Greenbrae on the pretext that the Joices were entertaining that evening and needed her help. Jacob rebuffed his wife when she offered him a second cup of tea and hastened out to spend the evening at the Institute working on his sermon for the following day.

  Only Iris seemed undaunted by the strained atmosphere around her. After she and Sadie had cleared away the plates and washed up, she instructed Davie to bring in the tin bath from its hook in the yard and fill it with steaming-hot water from the boiling pot. With Raymond put to bed and Davie away to the pub, she undressed behind the clotheshorse and steeped herself in the warm water. For half an hour she lathered herself with her new bar of Lux soap and luxuriated in the steamy warmth of the kitchen, singing musical hits to herself. On the other side of the screen of clothes Fanny sat sewing on buttons with the thread her daughter-in-law had bought, while Sadie, engrossed in some homework at the kitchen table, sucked a pencil under the phosphorous glow of a paraffin lamp.

  This is the life, Iris smiled to herself, eyes closed in a half stupor. Her stomach was full, her skin clean and smelling of soap, and her bones warm. She hummed cheerfully and thought erotic thoughts in anticipation of Davie’s return from the pub. He would be in a good humour; she was mellow and ready for love.

  Suddenly the cosy calm was shattered by a deafening crash and the violent splintering of glass, as a brick came hurtling into the peaceful kitchen. Iris screamed in shock as she floundered for her towel. Fanny gasped and dropped her mending.

  ‘Sadie, get under the table!’ her aunt ordered, fearful of a further attack. The slight girl slid off her chair and cowered under the solid table. The offending brick lay inches away, having ripped a hole in the thin linoleum as it landed. Reaching out to touch it, Sadie realised her hand was bleeding, though the sight of her own blood did not alarm her. She crouched there, heart hammering, as the women took charge. Iris, wrapped in her towel, leapt over to the window and pulled the flimsy curtain across the gaping teeth of glass. She heard someone running away but it was too dark to make out the assailant’s face.

  ‘Mind your feet,’ Fanny warned, but Iris already felt her soles smarting as broken fragments of glass pierced her skin.

  ‘What the bloody hell do they think they’re playing at?’ she shouted in fright.

  ‘Watch your language,’ Fanny reprimanded.

  ‘They could have killed one of us.’ Iris was indignant. ‘Are you all right, Sadie?’ She peered under the table. The frightened girl nodded.

  ‘You can come out now, pet,’ Fanny coaxed. ‘They won’t be back.’ Cautiously, her dark-haired niece emerged from her sanctuary.

  ‘I’ll go and check on Raymond,’ Iris said. ‘To think, it could have been the parlour window —’ She shuddered.

  ‘You get the brush and pan, Sadie, and we’ll get the floor swept up before there’s any more harm done.’

  As the young girl moved towards the cupboard, Fanny noticed she was hurt.

  ‘Let me take a look at that,’ she demanded. She tutted at the wound in the skinny hand. ‘Why didn’t you say you were bleeding, lass?’ she remonstrated. ‘Let’s get this washed and bandaged up first.’ She felt sick and faint as she tended to Sadie’s cuts and then saw to the splinters in Iris’s feet. How could anyone contemplate attacking innocent women sitting in the quiet of their own home? she wondered, scandalised. But looking at Iris’s wincing face as she daubed her lacer
ated feet, Fanny knew it had only been a matter of time before the bitter anger of the village was turned against them for harbouring a blackleg. Her own beloved Davie, a traitor to his people, had brought that brick hurtling through their window. A wave of humiliation flooded over her at the thought of how the Kirkups were now despised.

  When Jacob returned he went white with fury as Fanny told him of the attack on his home and family. It was a subdued Davie who took his father’s lecturing that night, the pleasant fuzz of inebriation evaporating quickly in the cold shock of what had taken place.

  ‘I’ll ask Naylor to house us somewhere else,’ Davie suggested resignedly.

  ‘You don’t have to give in to the threats of troublemakers,’ his father answered more leniently. ‘They were just bad lads - no union men would have done this.’

  ‘They’ll come back again,’ Davie sighed, ‘and I’ve brought you and Mam enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘If you packed in your job at the pit, we’d all be able to live here safely,’ his father growled.

  ‘No,’ Davie replied stubbornly, ‘there’s no going back now. Iris and I’ll move out just as soon as we can.’ He got up quickly and shut himself in the parlour before the tears in his mother’s eyes spilled over.

  The pit management found Davie a dilapidated house in Whitton Station, a half-mile from Whitton Grange. The only other person who knew them there was Davie’s new workmate, Alfred Hutchinson, the stranger from East Durham. He and his wife Molly and their three remaining children lived two doors away in Station Lane. Davie and Iris’s house consisted of a downstairs kitchen-cum-parlour and an upstairs bedroom. It had been vacant for some time. The rooms were inches thick with coal dust and grime and they had to share the earthen closet with three other families, but Iris set to work with vigour, cleaning and scrubbing her new home. Molly offered to mind Raymond while her new neighbour tackled the dirt, fetching her cups of tea at regular intervals. Iris gulped them down thankfully, her throat and eyes irritated by the ubiquitous dust.