Durham Trilogy 02. The Darkening Skies

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Sam looked uncomfortable. ‘Best to leave the lad be, Louie. If we make a fuss he’ll only see her behind our backs. He’s not that interested in lasses - it’ll blow over.’

  Sara wondered what all the fuss was about. Raymond was a good-looking young man now and it was not surprising if he was courting someone.

  ‘I know you’re not that friendly with the Bells,’ Sara said, ‘but why shouldn’t Raymond be allowed to go out with Nancy?’

  Louie and Sam exchanged looks. Sam coughed and began to clean his pipe.

  ‘It’s a family thing,’ Louie answered vaguely and got up to clear Raymond’s dirty plate. Sara wondered if they disapproved of Nancy because she was a cousin of Normy Bell and feared Raymond might get into trouble again by too much contact with the Bells. But it was obvious Louie did not want to discuss the matter and Sara let the subject drop.

  Sara forgot about the concern over Raymond as the summer brought alarming news of the allied defeat in the Egyptian desert and Rommel’s capture of Tobruk. She knew from hints in Joe’s letters and rumours in the village that his battalion had been moved from the Middle East to Africa and that he would be amongst the fiercest fighting. In the last letter before the battles of May and June, he had surprised her by referring to her brother Tom.

  ‘We’re in the same company,’ Joe had written. ‘He ignored me at first, but I was teaching some of the lads scopa and he joined in. We play for cigarettes. Tom’s a right miserable bugger when he’s got no smokes, so I let him win a bit.’

  Then the letters had stopped and Sara and the Dimarcos waited anxiously for news of Joe, as telegrams arrived in the village reporting the deaths or imprisonment of other people’s sons and husbands. Only much later did they hear the full extent of the carnage in the desert that decimated the DLI battalions, but by then a letter had arrived from Tom, reporting them both alive.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t written to you before,’ her brother’s tone was contrite, ‘and I regret the way I spoke to you about Joe. I could blame Uncle Alfred for the thoughts he put in my head about you two, but that wouldn’t be fair. It was me. I couldn’t see why you wanted to go and marry an Italian when they were against us and I was still that angry about Dunkirk and seeing my mates killed. But your Joe’s a canny lad, keeps us all laughing here. Mind, he’s terrible for scrounging smokes. I was wrong about Joe. I thought he’d be windy when it came to fighting - like we expect foreigners to be. But he’s got some bottle. Reckon he saved my life in one attack, but I can’t write about that with the censors.

  ‘When I come home, Sara, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Take care. Love Tom.’

  Scrawled at the bottom Tom had added, ‘Go and see Mam. She misses you.’

  Sara thought of home and how remote Stout House seemed to her now. She had only been home once to help with the hay-making since returning to live in Whitton Grange two and a half years ago and she had not seen or heard from her mother since she had married Joe. Her only source of news was from her sister Chrissie, who wrote long and interesting letters about life on the farm.

  From Chrissie she had heard the extraordinary news that cousin Colin was living with her old schoolfriend Beth and her boy Daniel at Rillhope, Beth’s husband John having disappeared to sea at the beginning of the war and never been heard of since. Sara wondered at the scandal her cousin must be causing, but from what Chrissie said, their country neighbours seemed to have accepted the situation as a consequence of war.

  Bill and Mary were expecting their second child that autumn and there was much chat of Sid Gibson helping around the farm. Her mother, however, was seldom mentioned and Sara determined she would make an effort to travel home before the end of the summer.

  At the end of August, Sara took an unpaid week off work in the laundry and arranged a lift as far as Stanhope, prepared to walk the rest of the way if necessary. She went round to say goodbye to Louie and found her in a state of distress; Jacob had had a stroke.

  ‘The doctor’s been. He’s paralysed down one side - can’t speak,’ Louie said tearfully. ‘Doctor’s trying to get an ambulance, but there was a raid on Sunderland last night, he says, and the services are stretched.’

  ‘Perhaps I could get one from The Grange?’ Sara suggested. Louie shook her head.

  ‘He doesn’t want to leave here, Sara, I can see it in his eyes. This has been his home since he married,’ Louie said forlornly.

  Louie sent Sara in to the parlour where Jacob had been moved the previous winter when he had become housebound. ‘It might cheer him to see you,’ Louie said in hope.

  Sara found the old man lying in bed, with young Stan sitting beside him reading to him from a tattered Boys’ Own annual. His grey, expressionless face looked like a death mask, then the old preacher’s fierce blue eyes opened and watched her approach. His useless mouth tried to form coherent words as Sara took hold of his large, veined hand lying immobile on the sheet, and she tried to interpret what he said. She gave up and chatted to him about a letter she had received from Joe, saying he was on local leave while the regiment was in refit.

  When she stood up to go the old man appeared agitated, as if he were trying to tell her something.

  ‘Is it Louie you want?’ Sara guessed. Jacob moved his head on the pillow. ‘Hildy then?’ This time he sighed with weak frustration. Sara looked helplessly at the faithful Stan, whose freckled face peered anxiously at his adopted grandfather.

  ‘He wants to see his son,’ Stan told Sara. ‘He wants to see Ebenezer.’

  It was Sara who went and telephoned Eb from the back-shop in Pit Street and asked that he come to see his father.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but he’s not here.’ Eleanor’s cultured voice was apologetic. ‘He’s taken Rupert camping for a few days before he returns to school.’

  Sara let out a gasp of frustration. ‘Where have they gone? Can you contact them? Old Mr Kirkup’s very weak.’

  ‘They’re somewhere up the valley from Whitton,’ Eleanor answered. ‘I’d drive out and see if I could find them, but I’m on ambulance duty tonight.’

  ‘That’s all right, we’ll find them.’ Sara rang off.

  When Raymond came off shift, Sara and he set out to comb the surrounding Common and the hills beyond the pit village before the light went. It was a still night, fragrant dust lifting from the heather as they tramped across the moor towards an angry sunset in the west. A blood red sky, Sara thought uneasily, and wondered what Joe was doing in far-off Africa under his sky of bright stars. If his regiment was being replenished and revived in bustling Alexandria, it must only be a matter of time before they were sent back to the front line.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re bound to find them.’ Raymond squeezed her hand, misunderstanding her silence. ‘It’s good of you, Sara, to stay and help Auntie Louie out. I know you should have been off home for a holiday.’

  Sara smiled. ‘I care about your family, Raymond - you’ve all been good to me. And Mr Kirkup’s a great old man, for all his stubbornness. It’d be so sad if…’

  ‘Aye, it would,’ Raymond agreed.

  The hillside dipped down towards a sheltered stream screened by gorse bushes and the pair followed a sheep track into the gloom.

  ‘Your aunt’s worried you might be seeing young Nancy.’ Sara spoke to the shimmer of flies suspended in the last shafts of evening light. ‘Why’s that?’

  Raymond seemed taken aback by her directness, then shrugged. ‘Nancy’s mam and my mam never got on. I think Auntie Louie’s worried my mam will find out I’m seeing Minnie Bell’s daughter.’

  ‘So you are seeing her?’ Sara queried.

  ‘Aye, but there’s no need to bother Auntie Louie about it, mind,’ Raymond mumbled.

  ‘Are you serious about the lass?’ Sara persisted.

  Raymond flushed, wondering why he was so embarrassed talking about such things with Sara. He could not possibly tell her that he courted the giggling Nancy to take his mind off thoughts of her. Sara was Joe’s wife
and he must push the daydreams he had about her from his mind for good. ‘You’re as bad as my aunties with all your questions,’ he laughed.

  Sara got no proper answer as a moment later Raymond spotted a tiny canvas tent pitched by the side of the burn. Hurrying nearer, they heard Eb’s strong voice and found the artist and his son Rupert squatting over a small fire, toasting bread and, as far as Sara could gather, talking about poetry.

  It took only minutes for Eb to dismantle the tent and pack it in to his old rucksack, while Raymond helped Rupert extinguish the fire. They tramped back across the hills, Eb setting an urgent pace and the others struggling to keep up with him. Sara noticed Rupert’s moodiness at his precious camping holiday being abandoned so abruptly.

  ‘What were you reading back there?’ she asked, attempting to make conversation.

  ‘A poem,’ he mumbled, his dark head bent. ‘A war poem, but it never mentions the war.’ Rupert’s frostiness thawed as he spoke.

  ‘Oh.’ Sara was nonplussed.

  ‘My Uncle Rupert wrote it during the Great War. It’s called “The Hungry Hills” and Mama got it published - but Uncle Rupert was dead by then, killed at the Somme. I’m called after him, Dad says.’ The boy’s studious face looked proud in the moonlight.

  ‘That’s grand,’ Sara replied and changed the subject, not wanting to talk of war.

  Eb entered the parlour with Louie. It was shrouded by blackout paper and Louie was aware of the smell of the old man’s incontinence and Sam’s stale pipe tobacco. A paraffin lamp hissed on the table and threw shadows in to the corners, and Louie wondered if Eb was reminded of his childhood when his job had been to trim the lamp wicks before school. The family piano which he had often played on happy family Saturday nights, stood hunched and silent next to the iron-framed bed that held the wax-like figure of their father.

  As Eb drew close the rasping wheeze in the old man’s throat grew louder and Louie saw how Eb was aghast to see the shrunken state of Jacob’s once-muscled body, victim to decades of stone dust which had settled on his lungs. The same slow death would have been her brother’s, Louie thought morbidly, had he remained at the Eleanor pit, so ironically named after Eb’s wife. She silently worried about Raymond working down the pit but for the moment that couldn’t be helped. The alternative was worse…

  ‘Father?’ Eb spoke gently, pulling a chair near the bed. Quietly, Louie withdrew.

  His father’s eyes opened in their deep hollows, taking a moment to focus. For an instant they registered alarm and then recognition at the tall, bearded man who hovered over him, looking the image of himself as a younger man. Jacob held out one trembling hand, the other lying useless on the bedspread, and tried to speak.

  Eb could make out nothing. ‘Oh, Da, why did we leave it so long?’ he cried in remorse. ‘It’s been as much my fault as yours for this daft quarrel. Many a time I’ve nearly come, in the hope you might see me - and Eleanor and Rupert. But I was always frightened for their sake that you might be hostile towards them.’

  Eb gripped his father’s hand, seeing how the old man’s throat worked to form words in reply. Jacob gave up, tears welling in his faded blue eyes.

  ‘I know you’re as sorry as I am, Da,’ Eb said softly, ‘so don’t try and tire yourself. There’ll be time for words when you regain some strength.’

  For a while, Eb sat with the dying Jacob and told him of his life in Durham, of Eleanor’s work as a councillor and Rupert’s prowess at English and cricket.

  ‘He wants to be a writer,’ Eb laughed. ‘Who would’ve thought we’d have a budding poet in the family, eh?’

  Half of Jacob’s face seemed to lift in a smile. His hand moved from under Eb’s and pointed with exhaustion at the door as he grunted a name.

  ‘Rupert?’ Eb queried. The old pitman sighed in affirmation. ‘Aye, he’s out-by, waiting with our Louie and Raymond. Would you like to see him?’

  Eb took the rattling noise in his father’s throat to mean yes, and he retreated into the subdued kitchen to fetch his son. Rupert’s dark, bespectacled eyes looked wary, but he did not flinch from his father’s request, following him into the gloomy parlour to meet his censorious grandfather.

  Sara sat with Louie, helping her make a pair of shorts for Stan. Louie had made the young boy abandon his vigil and had sent him off to bed when Eb arrived to make his peace with his parent.

  ‘What do you think they’re saying?’ Sara asked, curious at the reconciliation. Louie shrugged.

  ‘It’ll be all one-sided,’ she sighed, ‘but better late than never, as they say.’

  Twenty minutes later, Eb and Rupert reappeared and Louie could tell her brother had been weeping. Perhaps one day she could ask what had been said after these years of separation, but now was not the time.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ Eb said hoarsely and went out in to the yard to be alone.

  Jacob hung on for two more days, drifting in and out of consciousness. Louie sensed the peacefulness that had settled on her father’s battered spirit after Eb’s visit and was not surprised when he slipped into death early one September morning, while she was stoking up the kitchen fire and preparing him an infusion of mint picked from Sam’s allotment.

  Word was sent round to the neighbours and family that the funeral would be held the following Saturday. Cousin Sadie came to help and Hildy arrived from Newcastle the day before, but their brother John and family sent word from Derbyshire that travelling was too difficult. He would come and pay his respects when he could.

  Sara stayed to help Louie with preparations for the wake, half relieved at the excuse not to visit her own family. She felt cowardly, but justified her decision by telling herself the Ritsons needed her more at that moment than her own family did.

  Unexpectedly, Raymond’s mother Iris Ramshaw blew in on the day of the funeral. Louie had sent word to the last address they had for her in London and it had been forwarded to the theatre where she was just finishing the summer run of a Noel Coward musical. Fond of her old father-in-law, and thankful of the excuse to escape the bomb-battered capital, Iris rushed north to see her family.

  ‘By you’ve grown, young man!’ she exclaimed on seeing her son Raymond. ‘As handsome as his father, too,’ Iris kept telling everyone that day. Raymond revelled in her admiration and Sara saw it reflected in his blue eyes as he watched his vivacious mother take centre stage in the crowded cottage after the funeral.

  Sara gawped at the actress, slim and long-legged in a gaudy pink dress with black spots which clashed with her reddened hair under her neat, veiled black hat. Sara was mesmerised by her incessant chatter and attractive, heavily made-up face. She was so different from the village women; Sara was not surprised she had never settled among them. Iris had Raymond’s quirky humour, but there was a tough brittleness about her too that was unlike anything in her son. Iris apologised to Louie that she had nothing more suitable for a funeral.

  ‘Still,’ Iris patted Louie, speaking in the semi-southern accent she had acquired, ‘your da isn’t here to tick me off, bless him. Wish I’d seen him before…’ She waved a hand and, popping another biscuit in her mouth, edged round the table to speak to Eb and Eleanor.

  Raymond hovered at her side and fetched her cups of the precious rationed tea that Louie had provided with contributions from the Parkins next door.

  ‘How long can you stay, Mam?’ Raymond asked eagerly.

  ‘I’ll have to go Monday, pet,’ she told him, running a slim hand over his cropped hair. ‘But I promise I’ll be home for Christmas this year - or you can come to me - I’ll show you London town.’

  ‘Not while the Jerries are still bombing it you won’t,’ Sam butted in.

  ‘Still Mr Sensible, aren’t you, Sam?’ Iris teased, winking at Raymond. ‘Well, I’ll just have to come up here and liven you all up a bit. Whitton’s like a morgue these days - oops, sorry, Louie.’ Iris’s pretty slim face blushed as she glanced across at her sad sister-in-law.

  ‘Whitton’s canny,�
�� Raymond defended his home town. ‘There’s always some’at good on at the pictures.’

  ‘And who are you taking to the pictures, then?’ Iris smiled, swinging an arm about her son, who now towered over her. Raymond flushed and Sara waited to see if he would confide in his mother. But he obviously did not want to risk incurring her disapproval and diverted the conversation to Sara.

  That evening, Sara invited Iris round to the Dimarcos’ parlour, sensing her restlessness in the Ritson household and the relief on Louie’s mournful face at a respite from the talkative Iris. Sadie left and Louie and Hilda settled to a quiet evening of reminiscence while the Dimarcos gave Iris the attentive audience on which she thrived.

  It was after eleven when Iris said her goodbyes and Sara went out into the cool darkness, to see her safely away. The whitened doorsteps and kerbstones gleamed in the blackout, like ghostly trails showing the way home.

  ‘Take care, Sara pet.’ Iris kissed her as if they were old friends, ‘Joe’ll be back safely, you wait and see.’

  As she turned to grope her way home, a couple came past them in the shadows.

  ‘Hey, is that you, Raymond?’ Iris shouted in recognition of the tall figure, arm-in-arm with his girlfriend. The pair stopped but kept their distance.

  ‘Mam,’ Raymond muttered.

  His furtiveness only increased Iris’s curiosity. ‘Introduce us, then,’ she laughed.

  There was a pause and a muffled whispering, then Raymond said, ‘You know her, Mam. It’s Nancy Bell.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Kirkup,’ Nancy chirped.

  Sara saw Iris visibly flinch at the girl’s greeting. ‘Are you all right, Iris?’ she asked in concern as the older woman grabbed her arm for support.

  ‘Let me see you…’ Iris whispered.

  Nancy and Raymond stepped forward together and Iris shone her dimmed torch in the girl’s round face, framed by black curls. She looked nervous and very young.