Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Eb’s parents took the news worse than he had expected. As he packed his clothing and paints into an old kitbag, they railed at him for his foolishness and the sin he would be committing.

  ‘She’s a married woman,’ Fanny wheezed at her eldest child. ‘What could you be thinking of? How long has this affair been going on? You’ll be the death of your poor old mother!’ she cried. Louie tried to calm her, without success.

  ‘Look how you’ve upset her,’ she chided her brother when they were alone for a moment upstairs. ‘I knew nothing good would come of this.’

  ‘She’s a fine woman,’ Eb insisted. ‘She doesn’t deserve their criticism or scorn. She’s done a lot for this village - for our family. It was thanks to her that you weren’t evicted from Gladstone Terrace when Sam was in gaol, didn’t you know that?’

  ‘No,’ Louie blushed at the news, ‘I didn’t. But,’ she argued, ‘no matter what she’s done for us, in their eyes she’s still married.’

  ‘Only in name,’ Eb answered, folding up the tie Eleanor had bought him the previous summer. ‘Her husband treats his animals with more respect than he ever gave Eleanor. No one criticises his long-standing infidelity to her.’

  ‘I don’t know about such things,’ Louie answered uncomfortably. ‘What the posh folk get up to is their business not ours.’

  Eb snorted at the hypocrisy.

  ‘And how long do you think her infatuation with you will last?’ Louie demanded desperately. ‘A month, a year, two years, before she tires of you too?’

  Eb swung round and glared at his sister. ‘Is that all you think we mean to each other - a passing fancy?’

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’ Louie demanded. ‘I just worry for you.’

  ‘That’s not what really bothers you, Louie,’ Eb answered grimly. ‘Isn’t it more to do with her being the boss’s wife and me working class? That’s what all this fuss is about. You’re worried about what Sam will say to his comrades when they hear his brother-in-law’s taken up with someone from the wrong class.’ Louie went puce at the words, astonished by the barely suppressed rage in her placid eldest brother. ‘Well, you’re all just as bad as them at the big house, with your prejudices and snobberies. I’ve bowed to it for too long. Now I’ve got a chance of being happy with the woman I love and I’m going to take it!’

  ‘How dare you insult your own family like that?’ Louie was close to tears. ‘Mam’s right - you’ve always thought yourself above the rest of us. You’re not fit to call yourself a Kirkup!’

  Even as she threw the accusations at him, Louie felt a churning regret. But the words were out and the air between them was poisoned like the foulness in a gassy pit. Eb winced at her outburst, his blue eyes full of fury, but he uttered not a word more. Louie followed him downstairs, cursing herself for having antagonised him and destroyed any last chance of changing his mind.

  Eb picked up his cap and jacket from the back of the chair. Sadie and Raymond watched him in awe from the corner of the hearth, where their play was suspended.

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ Eb announced. ‘I’ll call in and see Hildy on the way.’

  His parents stared back at him wordlessly. John, the only one attempting to eat his dinner, studied his bowl of broth. Louie stood rooted to the floor, her face ashen.

  ‘Goodbye, Mam.’ Eb approached his mother and tried to kiss her cheek, but she turned it aside. ‘Da.’ He nodded at his father.

  ‘Unless you see the error of your way,’ Jacob pronounced, ‘and apologise for the shame you’ve brought on your parents, you’ll not step over my doorstep again.’

  Eb seemed visibly shocked by the harsh finality of his father’s decree, but he did not argue. As he hastened to the door, he touched Louie’s shoulder in farewell. She could not be disloyal to her parents and show weakness now, so she gave him no goodbye kiss.

  Unexpectedly, Sam stepped forward and lifted the kitbag on to Eb’s shoulder. He had taken no part in the row that had raged all morning and he felt pity for his old comrade. Eb had stood by him in the past and even gone to prison for his sake and he would not cold-shoulder him now.

  ‘Good luck, Eb,’ he grunted at his brother-in-law. ‘Be true to what you believe in.’ Sam stuck out his hand and gripped Eb’s firmly.

  ‘Thanks, Sam,’ Eb answered gratefully, with a ghost of a smile. Then he was swinging out of the door and out of their lives for good.

  Louie stared after him, unable to comprehend the abruptness of her brother’s going. Behind her she could hear her mother beginning to sob.

  ‘See to your Mam,’ Sam ordered Louie. ‘I’m going to get some kip before my shift.’

  Hilda could only spare a few minutes from her duties at Greenbrae. She listened intently to what Eb told her.

  ‘I’ve told Miss Joice that I’ll come back and do the garden from time to time. John’s going to take over the allotment.’

  ‘So why are you pulling such a long face?’ Hilda asked, her head on one side.

  Eb sighed. ‘It’s Louie.’ He voiced his concern. ‘I expected Mam and Da to be upset - it’s come as a complete shock and I know it’s hard for them to understand. But Louie - I’ve hurt her feelings badly. I don’t want to be cut off from her too.’

  ‘She’ll come round,’ Hilda comforted. ‘Louie can’t bear a grudge for long - it’s not in her nature.’

  ‘Will you tell her I’m sorry?’ Eb asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Hilda promised.

  ‘You’re a grand lass.’ Eb smiled in relief at his younger sister and gave her a hug. ‘And you’ll come and visit us, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Hilda grinned. ‘I’ve only read through half of Miss Eleanor’s books, I’ll be calling on you for a few years yet.’

  She kissed her brother goodbye and hurried inside as a bell summonsed her to an upstairs room. Eb marched away from Greenbrae, through the foliage-choked dene and out of the village on the road leading to Durham. Although he could hear the familiar clanking and hiss from the pits, spitting their farewell behind him, he did not look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  John and Marjory were married in the Wesleyan Chapel on North Street in October. To Louie’s pleasure, Sam was best man and Sadie a bridesmaid alongside Marjory’s sister Beth. It was a happy occasion with a chance to get together with friends and neighbours outside the chapel and later at the Hewitsons’ home in Holly Street. The Ritsons were invited and Louie enjoyed a natter with Sam’s sisters, Mary and Bel.

  ‘Hasn’t Raymond come on?’ Bel exclaimed as if he were Louie’s own, and Louie basked in the admiration. ‘He’s full of life, your Raymond.’

  They watched him playing in the yard with Bel’s daughter Betty, squabbling over a ball. Betty was bigger and held on to the ball, giving up interest in the prize immediately Raymond conceded defeat and wandered off.

  ‘It’s nice to see your Aunt Eva and Uncle Jack here,’ Bel said pleasantly. ‘I haven’t seen them since—’ Abruptly she broke off and coloured furiously. Louie knew Sam’s sister had suddenly remembered that the last occasion to bring them to Whitton had been Davie’s funeral.

  ‘Aye, it is nice,’ Louie answered quickly, ‘especially for Mam. She hardly gets out these days with her bad chest and it’s company for her.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d like to come to one of our meetings?’ Mary piped up enthusiastically. Louie had heard Mary was now a member of the Baptist Church on East Street. ‘We have a magnificent speaker visiting us next month. Pastor Graham says he can slay people with the Holy Spirit. He could cure your mother,’ Mary suggested eagerly.

  ‘I’ll mention it to her,’ Louie smiled, wishing she felt half Mary’s uncomplicated conviction. Privately she believed that her mother’s ailments went deeper than a bronchial chest; there was a sickness of spirit that plagued and gripped her in a grey depression. Today she alternately smiled and wept, overcome with happiness for John and Marjory and regret that the last of her sons was leaving home. Yet Louie knew that what gna
wed at her mother’s spirit the most was her sense of bereavement for Eb as well as her beloved Davie. Eb was absent from the family gathering; he hadn’t been invited to the wedding. Louie knew John would have asked him, but he would not go against his parents’ wishes. She too longed to be reconciled with her eldest brother, but she knew contact with him would be seen as disloyal to her parents.

  Waving John and his new wife away from the Hewitsons’, Louie was engulfed in sadness. They would be living only three streets away in Daniel Terrace, but it might as well have been in the next county for all she would see of her brother. There would be no more Saturday evenings around the piano without Eb to play it, or Iris to lead the singing.

  How had her closely bound family fallen apart so rapidly? Louie wondered forlornly. Her father stalked the house like a fretful visitor, increasingly content to spend his evenings at the Institute or his free afternoons walking up on Highfell. Once in an argument with Hilda he had said that both Davie and Eb had betrayed him; now he never mentioned either son. Yet Louie saw the haunted look of doubt trouble his face when he prayed in chapel and she was unsure what his inner thoughts were. Like a true Kirkup he kept his feelings to himself.

  Tomorrow there would be only her parents, herself, Raymond and Sam left in the house at Hawthorn Street that had once burst to overflowing with family and friends. Was she frightened of being alone with Sam? she wondered. They carried on the appearance of a harmonious couple, but they did not share their hopes or fears as once they had done.

  Two or three times Louie had caught Sam playing with Raymond, making him figures out of his pipe cleaners or knocking a ball against the yard wall. But he had quickly busied himself with something else when he saw his wife watching and he seemed oblivious to the young boy’s adoration. Raymond yearned for his Uncle Sam’s attention, but to little avail.

  Louie suspected Sam looked at Raymond and saw Davie, the brother who had committed the ultimate betrayal and sold his labour while his comrades starved. It seemed so unfair that a small boy should be saddled with his dead father’s shortcomings, but deep down Louie understood the acute hurt that Sam had suffered. Whether she could forgive it for blighting her own marriage was another matter.

  Still, she thought resignedly, there would be Sadie home at weekends and Hilda on her nights off and the lively chattering Raymond. At least, Louie smiled to herself, she had Raymond.

  One afternoon in December, Sam was returning home from working down the valley when he saw an ambulance roaring out of the village. It spluttered past him along the Durham Road, billowing fumes as he jumped into the ditch to get out of its way. Briskening his pace, he saw a group of villagers gathered about the corner of Railway Terrace, opposite the rail tracks running alongside the leafless dene. Darkness was descending quickly, but he could just make out the anxious stance of the bystanders.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Sam asked, approaching the group.

  ‘Been an accident on the tracks,’ a man told him.

  ‘A young bairn’s been knocked over,’ a small woman added worriedly, ‘crossing the line when a truck hit him. Just a laddie no more than three. It’s a crying shame.’

  Sam felt a wrenching pull in his guts at the news, yet he could not understand the source of his unease.

  ‘It was a lad?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye,’ she nodded.

  ‘Whose lad?’ he demanded.

  She shrugged. ‘From up the village. Bonny bairn with red hair. Don’t know the family.’

  Sam breathed in sharply as if he had been winded. He refused to believe what his instincts were telling him. A boy with red hair, a three-year-old. Raymond was big enough to be taken for three.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Sam forced himself to ask.

  ‘Not when he left in the ambulance,’ the man interjected. ‘Mind you, he was in a bad way, poor wee lad.’

  Sam did not stay to hear any more. He took off up the hill towards Hawthorn Street at a sprint, ignoring the tiredness of his limbs after a day’s work and a long walk home.

  Turning into the street he could see the open back door throwing light on to the darkening lane. There was a huddle of neighbours gathered in the yard. It was true then, Sam thought, feeling sick; the news had reached Louie and her parents; friends were gathering to be with them.

  He clattered through the gate and pushed his way through the visitors. He could see Louie half inside the house, her face shadowed by the light thrown out behind her.

  ‘Louie!’ Sam gasped and reached forward to grab her.

  ‘Sam?’ Louie queried in astonishment. ‘What’s wrong?’

  For a moment he hesitated, confused by her bemused look.

  ‘Where’s Raymond?’ he croaked.

  ‘He’s here,’ Louie answered, nonplussed. Sam glanced beyond her and saw the boy kneeling beside Sadie on a kitchen chair, playing with his ‘stick men’ as he called Sam’s pipe cleaners. Raymond looked round enquiringly at Sam’s voice and his face lit up in a happy grin at the sight of his uncle.

  ‘Look, Sam!’ He held up a wiry figure for approval. A wave of relief washed over Sam at the domestic scene and his exhausted legs almost gave way as his weakness shook him. Without hesitation, he went over and threw his arms around his nephew, gripping him tightly to his filthy jacket.

  ‘Sam,’ Louie reprimanded, ‘he’s just had a bath and you’ll make him black.’

  Self-consciously Sam let go and turned round, feeling foolish. He caught sight of his sister Mary and her friends peering in curiously at the back door.

  ‘Mary’s here to sing carols for Mam,’ Louie explained, seeing Sam’s confusion. ‘You’re just in time to hear them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sam’s head sagged as he plonked himself down on the chair next to Raymond.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Louie asked in concern. ‘You haven’t been drinking, have you?’ she asked more suspiciously.

  ‘No.’ Sam laughed shortly. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  In came the carol singers, while Louie poured her husband a cup of rejuvenating tea. Raymond wheedled his way on to his uncle’s lap during the singing, but no protests were made about the coal grime on his nightclothes.

  Later, when they were upstairs in bed, Sam told Louie what he had seen and heard on his return home.

  ‘The poor parents,’ Louie whispered so as not to wake Raymond or Sadie beyond the curtain, ‘what must they be feeling now?’

  ‘Aye,’ Sam sighed, ‘I feel guilty thinking about it. For a minute I was just so thankful it was someone else’s bairn when I saw Raymond safe.’ Louie edged nearer his side and slipped a hand tentatively on to his bare chest.

  ‘You do love him, don’t you?’

  Sam gulped, ‘Aye,’ almost inaudibly.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Louie said softly and kissed his cheek. ‘I thought I’d lost you. You’ve been so different this past year. I want my old Sam back.’

  She heard him snort quietly in the dark. ‘I can’t promise I’ll be any different to live with, Louie,’ he answered honestly. ‘We’ve all been changed by what’s gone on. There are certain things I can’t forgive - will never forgive! The way the bosses treated us, the way we were betrayed. The bairn we lost,’ he added hoarsely, ‘all alone in that tiny grave.’

  Louie felt a spasm at his words. Because he never mentioned their baby, she had not known he ever thought about her. As far as she knew Sam had never been to visit Louisa’s solitary grave on the Common where Eb had buried her. But his words suggested otherwise. They lay in silence for a while, then Sam continued quietly.

  ‘But I do know that I’d never have got through any of it without you, Louie. I’m not good at saying what I feel,’ he growled, ‘but I love you, pet. I know it sometimes seems like I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, Sam.’ Louie nestled into him tenderly. She pulled his jaw towards her and kissed his mouth.

  ‘I’ve seen how much you love that bairn,’ Sam rolled on to his side and faced her, ‘and if we can’t have one of our own
, I’ll be a father to this one.’

  Louie wanted to weep at Sam’s loving words. As he leaned over to embrace her, the tears came.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked startled. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted?’

  ‘Aye, it is.’ Louie tried to control her crying. ‘But it may be too late.’ Louie took a deep breath. ‘Sadie brought news today from Durham.’

  ‘Go on,’ Sam said stiffly.

  ‘The Ramshaws have heard from Iris. She’s touring in a pantomime. She’ll be in Durham for Christmas.’

  A week later, a letter arrived from Iris requesting that she have Raymond for Christmas at her parents’ house. ‘I’ll come and fetch him on Christmas Eve after the show,’ her childish writing told them. What was to happen after the holiday when Iris moved on was not explained. Louie tried hard to hide her disappointment that the boy would not be with them for the special festival and immersed herself in seasonal rituals, baking mince pies, and cutting out paper streamers and hanging them about the house. The look of excitement on Raymond’s face as they decorated the parlour made her heart ache.

  In the end, Sam decided it would be best if they dispensed with the waiting and took Raymond into Durham to meet his mother. They sent word via the Ramshaws that they were coining.

  ‘We could see the pantomime and have a look round the shops - you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he asked Louie, falsely cheerful.

  They boarded the morning train on Christmas Eve. Sam had come off the night shift three hours before and had grabbed a couple of hours of fitful sleep. Louie clutched a small bagful of her nephew’s clothes and their present to him of two metal soldiers which she had spotted at a bazaar and spent precious housekeeping money to procure. Raymond was bursting with excitement at the treats in store; a ride on the train, fish and chips for dinner and something called a pantomime which he was told all children enjoy.

  ‘And you’ll see your mammy,’ Louie told him with a grimace of a smile, ‘and stay with her for Christmas. Aren’t you a lucky lad?’