Durham Trilogy 02. The Darkening Skies

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Our precious sugar,’ Anna lamented.

  ‘Oh, Sara!’ Rosa caught sight of her friend. They hugged each other in sympathy. ‘Thank you for trying to help us.’

  ‘Sam says they’ve taken …’

  Rosa nodded. ‘Mam’s going down to the police station to try and see them as soon as we’ve cleared some of this mess.’

  ‘We shall be all right once Papa and Paolo come home again,’ Anna Dimarco said stoically.

  Sara looked at Rosa, but saw her face ridden with doubt.

  ‘I wish Joe was here,’ Rosa said.

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ her mother snapped, ‘so we will have to manage on our own.’

  ‘Not on your own,’ Sara replied. ‘I want to help.’

  Mrs Dimarco looked up from her sweeping, her handsome face ghostly and lined with fatigue. They looked at each other for a long moment, Sara wary, Anna suspicious.

  At last, ‘Thank you,’ Mrs Dimarco said quietly and bent again to her sweeping.

  Some time later Louie appeared, having seen Stan off to school.

  ‘You get along to the police station and see what’s what,’ she told Mrs Dimarco. ‘Sara and I can get on with the clearing up.’

  Anna needed little persuasion to go, taking Sylvia with her, while Rosa stayed and looked after the children. But they returned disconsolate an hour later having been refused permission to see their husbands.

  ‘They will tell us nothing,’ Anna fretted. ‘Why are they holding them? Are we all criminals now because of our Italian blood?’

  Sara and Louie could say nothing that would ease their fear and shortly afterwards they had to leave for work.

  ‘I’ll get Sam to have a word once he’s back off shift,’ Louie promised as she left.

  The day dragged on interminably as they piled the broken furniture in the shop hoping it could be salvaged, and made an inventory of all that had been destroyed. Sara returned at lunch time and took Bobby off to scrounge some boarding to nail up the gaping windows. She kept Dolly Sergeant’s doleful warning to herself.

  ‘Feelings are running very high towards them Italians,’ the grocer had told Sara, sucking in her cheeks. ‘I don’t think you should be seen with them, lass.’

  ‘They’re good customers of yours,’ Sara had been indignant.

  ‘Used to be,’ Mrs Sergeant sniffed. ‘But Mr Dimarco’s been arrested and I don’t suppose we’ll be doing business again.’

  ‘He’s just being asked a few questions,’ Sara had retorted. ‘They’ll not hold him for long. He hasn’t done anything that’ll keep him in prison.’

  Mrs Sergeant shook her head. ‘I don’t have anything against Mr Dimarco personally, but he’s an Italian and people see him as the enemy now. I’m just warning you, lass, for your own good. They’ll not let Mr Dimarco or his son out until the war’s finished, you mark my words.’

  In the late afternoon, Anna and Sylvia returned to the police station with a parcel of clothes and toiletries for their men. For brief minutes they were allowed to see one another, but their strained exchanges left the women feeling more apprehensive than ever. The stocky Sam Ritson, of whom Anna was rather in awe, was there in his dirty pit clothes trying to pump the sergeant for information, but Turnbull had thrown him out and been barely courteous to them.

  As the women emerged, a group of youths who had gathered outside the cells jostled around them with sneers and abusive language. They abandoned the idea of waiting for news and hurried for home.

  ‘It’s too dangerous to go again,’ Sylvia had warned her mother-in-law. ‘Those boys wish to harm us.’

  ‘I’ll go and wait,’ Sara volunteered. ‘I’ll come as soon as there’s any news.’ No longer did Anna protest that it was family business, so Sara hurried away.

  Arriving outside the police station, she saw a scene of confusion. A police van had driven up and was surrounded by shouting and jostling youths being pushed back by a line of constables. Sara, straining to see what was happening, caught a glimpse of Mr Dimarco’s hatless greying head among the throng as he was forced into the van. As Paolo was pushed after him, the crowd surged at them like baying hounds but the police heaved them aside as the van revved into life and lurched past the protestors.

  Sara ran up to a policeman. ‘Where are they taking them?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll not be letting them out in a hurry. Collar the lot, Churchill’s said, and he’s right.’

  Sara felt sick. She could not return with such dreadful tidings to the anxious women at Pit Street so, deciding to alert Sam and Louie first, she ran to Hawthorn Street, stumbling in the back door to find a furious row in progress. Sam, still in his filthy pit clothes and haggard from lack of sleep, was berating a resentful-looking Raymond who had just returned from work.

  ‘I’m that ashamed of you! A lad of mine—’

  ‘I’m not your lad!’ Raymond struck back. ‘You’re just my uncle - I’ve never had a proper father.’

  ‘Raymond!’ Louie looked close to tears. ‘Sam’s always done his best for you - we both have.’

  ‘I’ve always had to share him with all the other lads,’ Raymond said angrily. ‘Pat Slattery and Joe Dimarco - aye, he thinks more of Joe than me. But the Dimarcos are traitors - that’s what the lads say. I was just being patriotic.’

  ‘Patriotic!’ Sara choked with anger at his words. They all turned to stare. ‘How does it help our country to attack innocent families and drag away their men?’ she demanded. ‘We’re supposed to be fighting the fascists - not behaving like them.’ She advanced on Raymond furiously. ‘What you did last night was unforgivable - cowardly! How dare you criticise Joe as a traitor when he’s away training to defend all of us - Joe, who stopped you being beaten up by Normy Bell’s gang! Have you forgotten what Joe did for you, Raymond? Are you no better than louts like Normy Bell?’

  Raymond felt a wave of shame at Sara’s stinging rebuke. How had he become involved in such a dreadful attack? he wondered miserably. He had allowed himself to be led by the angry lads at the pit with their cries about patriotism and hatred of foreigners, and all because Rosa had made him feel foolish for caring for her while she slept with another man. But he had known the Dimarcos all his life, helped out in their shop and always been welcomed as Joe’s friend. His was the greater betrayal.

  He flinched under Sara’s contemptuous stare, unable to bear her disapproval of him. ‘I didn’t smash the shop up,’ Raymond defended himself weakly. ‘I -I just went along to protest - I didn’t know it would get out of hand.’

  ‘Well, it did,’ Sam growled, ‘and now Arturo Dimarco’s spending a second night in the cells wondering how he’s going to feed his family now his business is gone.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Sara said, still shaking from her furious outburst. ‘They’ve taken them away - no one knows where. And there’re lads out looking for trouble again - and no one to protect the family.’

  Louie gasped but Sam was quick to answer.

  ‘We’ll have to protect them - you an’ all Raymond,’ he ordered sharply. ‘Start knocking on the neighbours’ doors - I’ll not see women and children harmed, no matter what their race. I’ll go for some of the lodge.’

  Sara saw Raymond hesitate, fear on his slim face.

  ‘You owe it to Joe,’ she challenged.

  ‘Yes, son,’ Louie added, her eyes brimming. ‘Show yourself you can be as brave as your father was. He lost his life saving another man.’

  Raymond gulped back his fear, gripped by another wave of remorse at what he had done. Since the attack a year ago, he had been terrified of violence, of being at the receiving end of a beating. Last night he had felt safe as one of the pack, half intoxicated by their crude jingoism against the Italians. But as the attack had grown out of control, Raymond had run away in horror. He saw now how much he had hurt his own family and Sara, too. They watched him and Raymond knew he would be judged for the rest of his life on the way he acted now.

 
He swallowed. ‘I’ll go and get Mr Parkin,’ he said and followed Sam out of the house.

  Louie sent word to Hilda to come and look after Jacob and the young evacuee, Stan, while she went with Sara to be with the Dimarcos and break the news that their men had been taken away.

  ‘Sam’ll find out where they’ve taken them,’ Louie tried to reassure Mrs Dimarco. ‘I’m sure they’ll be back soon.’

  But nothing they said could erase the tense worry from the faces of the Italian women as they settled the children for another uncertain night.

  As darkness came again, Sam set up a picket of union men and neighbours who had responded to the call to protect the Dimarcos from further attack. They gathered outside the Pit Street shop, a solid phalanx of miners, ready to fend off the rioters of the previous night.

  The sky was lit by a bright moon that threw shadows across the street and illuminated the skeletal wheel of the Eleanor pithead at the top of the bank. Just as Sam thought the danger had passed over, figures appeared out of the shadows. Tonight they came softly and in less numbers, like a guerrilla army that wished to be undetected. They stopped short at the sight of their elders amassed around the shop doorway.

  ‘Be off with you!’ the burly blacksmith Ernie Parkin shouted. ‘We want no more trouble in this village.’

  Normy Bell stepped forward. ‘We’re not making trouble - it’s them I-ties in there. We want the enemy out of Whitton.’

  ‘The men have gone,’ Sam answered sternly, squaring up to the youth. ‘Leave the women and bairns alone or I’ll break your bloody neck.’

  Normy stepped back, only too well aware of Sam Ritson’s reputation as a fighter.

  Indecision infected the crowd as their leaders held back and Sam knew bullies like Bell were only brave when they were sure of outnumbering their opponents.

  ‘What should we do?’ Normy mumbled belligerently to a smaller man behind him. As he stepped aside, Sam recognised Alfred Cummings’s jowly face in the moonlight.

  ‘So you’re behind all this, Cummings,’ Sam said scornfully. ‘Alfred Cummings, the biggest coward of them all!’

  Alfred Cummings looked at Sam with venom. He hated him with a loathing that had grown like a cancer, year by year, since the dreadful strike of 1926 had killed his first wife through malnutrition. Radicals like Sam Ritson had been responsible for the months of misery; if they had given in sooner his first wife might still be alive.

  ‘You’re the biggest traitor of them all, Ritson, defending these foreign muck against your own kind,’ he accused. ‘Just like you betrayed your own kind back in ‘26.’

  Sam stepped forward, outraged by the vindictive words. It was men like Alfred Cummings who had voted to return to work who had destroyed the strike and made the sacrifice of their people pointless. Seven gruelling months, during which he had gone to prison and Louie had lost the only bairn she had ever been able to carry, had all been for nothing because Cummings and his kind had thought only of themselves.

  ‘Don’t you talk to me about betrayal.’ Sam shook as he spoke, the frustration and bitterness of years of unemployment fresh in his mind once more. He clenched his fists, thinking of how Cummings’ toadying to the bosses had given him a comfortable prosperous life.

  Ernie Parkin put a restraining hand on his friend. ‘He’s not worth the bother.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’ It was Raymond who suddenly sprang forward to Sam’s side. ‘My uncle’s right - Cummings is the traitor - he killed my father!’

  ‘Raymond Kirkup, you little runt!’ Normy Bell shouted in surprise. But Raymond no longer cared what Norman Bell thought of him as he glared at Cummings.

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ Cummings glowered at the tall youth.

  Raymond jabbed a finger at him, furious. ‘You were deputy the day my dad and the others died in that explosion - Sam told me. Everyone who survived said there was enough gas in it to blow them all to Germany, but you still made them work in it - just to impress the bosses. You’re a bloody murderer!’

  Raymond raised a wiry arm and landed a fist in the overman’s astonished face. The gesture was like a match to explosives and the two sides fell on each other with punches and kicks. Louie and Sara, who had crept to the window to witness the confrontation, watched in horror at the confused brawling as old scores were settled. They saw Raymond and Normy Bell hammering away at each other, while Sam blackened Cummings’s eye before he ran off. To Sara’s amazement, Colin’s huge bulk detached itself from the shadowed chaos and threw Normy Bell off Raymond where he lay on the ground, kicking the belligerent Bell out of the way. He pulled Raymond up.

  ‘I wish I’d hit the bastard myself years ago,’ Colin panted and Raymond suddenly realised that Colin was referring to his own father.

  The fight raged for nearly fifteen minutes, the original aggravation over the Dimarcos forgotten. Then they heard the blast of a constable’s whistle and the troublemakers began to scatter. Constable Simpson arrived with three other policemen and told the pitmen to go home. Sam and a handful refused and Simpson thought better of challenging them.

  Raymond, his nose broken, was taken inside where Louie fussed over him. Anna Dimarco insisted Sam and the other men came in for a hot drink before returning to their watch.

  ‘What a carry-on,’ Louie tutted, bathing Raymond’s face, while Anna Dimarco and Sylvia made Bovril. ‘Isn’t there enough fighting in the world without you men having to settle old scores?’ She gave Sam a severe look.

  ‘Cummings had it coming to him for a long time,’ he grunted.

  ‘I understand now.’ Sara said, her face sad.

  ‘Understand what?’ Louie asked.

  ‘Why you all hate my uncle Alfred so much. I never heard anything about his part in the explosion that killed Raymond’s father.’

  ‘It was all a long time ago,’ Louie sighed. ‘It doesn’t do any good to open up old wounds.’

  But Sara could tell from the tender way she treated Raymond that Louie was secretly proud of the boy she’d adopted all those years before.

  Sara became aware of Rosa hovering in the doorway of her bedroom, rocking Mary in her arms as she watched Raymond with timid eyes. Raymond glanced away embarrassed by her attention.

  ‘We ought to be getting home,’ Louie said with a gentle shake of Raymond’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Sara, we’ll be more use to Mrs Dimarco once we’ve had a bit sleep.’

  ‘Aye and I’ll get downstairs again,’ Sam said, slurping off his drink, preparing to follow the other men.

  Reluctantly Sara gathered her jacket and beret. But, as they said their farewells and promised to return in the morning, they heard footsteps clumping up the staircase. Everyone turned and held their breath to see who the latecomer was. The door swung open.

  ‘Joe!’ Sara gasped.

  Joe stood in his uniform, his chin unshaven and his dark eyes wide.

  ‘Merda! What the hell’s been going on here?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Joe listened with increasing anger to the account of the previous night’s riot and the arrest of his father and brother.

  ‘But how did you know we were in trouble?’ Anna asked her son, perplexed.

  ‘I didn’t. We were passing through Carlisle on our way to a new camp and I saw what they’d done to the Italian shops there, so I jumped the train and came home. I never expected it to be this bad…’ Joe’s handsome face looked harrowed.

  ‘It would have been worse,’ Rosa spoke up, ‘if it hadn’t been for Sara and the Ritsons - and Raymond - he stopped them harming any of us.’

  ‘Aye.’ Joe looked gratefully at them all and put a hand on Raymond’s shoulder, saying, ‘Thanks, marra.’

  Raymond dropped his gaze guiltily, but his uncle and aunt remained loyally silent. He did not like to admit that it was Sara’s scorn that had made him take action and he had been gratified by her look of approval as she helped Louie bathe his cuts. But, glancing at her now, he saw her face full of tenderness for Jo
e.

  Sara felt a sharp longing as Joe’s dark eyes met hers, but she was inhibited in front of her elders. Joe, too, appeared reticent, betraying the guilt he felt at not having been there to protect his relations.

  ‘Anyway, I’m here to take care of you now,’ he said turning to Rosa.

  ‘What about the army?’ Louie interrupted. ‘You’ll get into all sons of bother if you don’t go back, surely?’

  They’ll give me leave.’ Joe stood up and put an arm around his mother’s shoulders, ‘My family must come first.’

  ‘They’ll give you court martial!’ Sam retorted. ‘You must go back tomorrow - we’ll look after your mother and family.’

  ‘No! I’m staying until me dad and Paolo come back,’ Joe began to bluster.

  ‘Listen, lad, first we have to find out where they’ve been taken,’ Sam reasoned. ‘Then we’ll make a fuss until they’re released - but that could take weeks, months. It should help - you being in the army - but you’ll do your dad no favours if you’re thrown in prison for desertion.’

  Joe sighed with frustration.

  ‘Signor Ritson is right,’ Anna said, squeezing her son’s hand. ‘You must go back, Joseph. It’s what your father would want. We will manage.’

  Sara looked across at Mrs Dimarco and saw a look of stubbornness in her brown eyes. Sara realised Joe’s mother was more resilient than she’d thought, and felt a flicker of hope for the shattered family.

  Joe eventually bowed to the combined pressure of family and friends.

  ‘All right, I’ll go tomorrow,’ he said grudgingly.

  Just then, baby Mary began to cry where Rosa had lain her in Granny Maria’s old clothes basket. Joe looked startled, then realisation dawned.

  ‘My niece?’ he queried. Rosa nodded. ‘I forgot,’ Joe smiled. ‘Let me look at her.’ He went over and plucked the squawking baby from the basket, unabashed by her protests. ‘You’re a little angel!’ He grinned over the bundle and rocked her vigorously. ‘As pretty as your mother, yes?’