Durham Trilogy 02. The Darkening Skies

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Aye,’ Louie sighed, ‘you must be proud of your lad.’

  Suddenly Raymond pushed back his chair without finishing his tea and grabbed his jacket. ‘Well, some of us are in the thick of it here,’ he snapped, ‘and facing danger underground every day. How many people think of that?’

  Sara looked at him in astonishment, puzzled over his anger which seemed to be directed at her.

  ‘I’ll be late for me shift,’ he muttered, marching out and banging the door.

  Outside, he at once regretted his surliness. Why did it matter so much that Sara was carrying Joe’s child? He was ashamed of his jealousy towards his old friend and he had not meant to demean Joe’s courage in the battlefield. But he couldn’t help resenting the fact that the army lads would all get medals for their bravery when this rotten war was over, whilst the pitmen’s efforts would soon be forgotten.

  As he tramped unhappily through the frosty evening, boots crunching in the dark, Raymond was aware of someone hurrying after him.

  ‘Haway, Raymond, what’s got in to you?’ Sam complained. ‘No need to take off like a runaway train, eh?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Raymond muttered. ‘I forgot you were on the same shift.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant - and that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?’ his uncle guessed, falling into step with Raymond’s long stride. His nephew did not answer. ‘It’s no good fretting after something you can’t have,’ Sam continued bluntly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Raymond was defensive.

  ‘I mean, stop wasting your time over Sara.’ Sam was brutal in his frankness, ‘It’s Joe she’s chosen, not you. But you don’t have to let that spoil your friendship with either of them - and they’ve both been good friends to you, Raymond, don’t forget that.’

  Raymond stopped in his tracks, shocked that Sam should have guessed his feelings. He gulped. ‘I know they have,’ Raymond was contrite, ‘and I don’t mean to…’ He carried on walking.

  The gates of the pit yard loomed ahead. ‘You haven’t had much luck with lasses yet,’ Sam said more gently, ‘but one day you’ll find the right one - like I found your Auntie Louie.’

  ‘How did you know I felt that way about Sara?’ Raymond mumbled, his face burning.

  ‘Louie notices these things,’ Sam said wryly. ‘There’s not much gets past your aunt.’ Raymond grunted in agreement.

  Reaching the pit perimeter fence they saw others ahead and Sam added quickly, ‘Perhaps it’d be best if you didn’t call round to Pit Street so often, eh? No point giving yourself extra strife. You could come down to the boxing club if you like. I know you’re not keen on fighting, but it’d be somewhere else to go.’

  Raymond was grateful for his uncle’s concern and, not for the first time, wished that Sam had been his real father. He and Louie had been all that a lad could have wished for in parents.

  ‘Ta, I might do that,’ Raymond smiled as they caught up with their marras in front.

  ***

  In the New Year of 1944, an influx of young men came to the pit, directed there by the government to help meet the voracious demand of the war for extra coal. They were nicknamed ‘Bevin Boys’ after the Minister of Labour and the ones in Whitton Grange were housed in primitive hostel accommodation in a disused church hall. Rosa came home from the canteen with stories of how there were fights at the hostel every weekend among the locals and the Bevin Boys. One newcomer, the son of a wealthy industrialist who had made no bones about his distaste for the job he was forced to do and his rough surroundings, had been attacked walking home from the pub.

  ‘His left eye was all closed up,’ Rosa grimaced on her return from the canteen, ‘and he could hardly walk.’

  After that, attempts were made to lodge the new workers among the villagers and it was no surprise to Sara to find one living at Louie and Sam’s home when she called in February.

  ‘Malcolm’s a grand lad,’ Louie told Sara. ‘He’s from Edinburgh. Raymond’s been friendly to him and suggested we took him as a lodger, now Stan’s gone back to Gateshead to start work.’

  ‘The day this house has no lodgers will be the day they pull it down,’ Sara teased the older woman.

  Louie chuckled. ‘I do like the company,’ she admitted. ‘And the house is that quiet with Stan gone.’

  ‘And how’s Raymond?’ Sara asked. ‘I never see him these days. Is he courting at last?’

  Louie shrugged evasively. ‘He’s always out and about - you know Raymond. Now, tell me about yourself,’ she changed the subject. ‘You’re looking bonny and you’d hardly know you were carrying a bairn of seven months, you’re that trim.’

  ‘I feel fine,’ Sara smiled, enjoying the fuss that was made over her by the older women. Anna and Elvira had wanted her to stop working straight away, but Sara had insisted she was needed at the hospital. ‘This bairn’s a lively one,’ she covered her stomach under the tight skirt with protective hands, ‘a footballer like Joe, I reckon.’

  ‘Have you heard from him recently?’ Louie asked, making some hot barley water for her visitor.

  ‘Aye, I got a letter two days ago. He’s that excited about the baby,’ Sara grinned. ‘If it’s a boy he wants it called after his brother Paolo - but anglicised as Paul. And if it’s a girl he wants to call it Louise.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Louie looked surprised. ‘Is it a family name?’

  ‘No,’ Sara said, taking the mug of hot juice, ‘it’s after you, Louie - because you’ve been such a good friend to the two of us.’

  Sara saw tears spring immediately to Louie’s blue eyes and the pitman’s wife turned away quickly to pick up a pile of ironing. A minute passed while Louie sorted the clothes and kept her back to the girl.

  ‘You don’t mind do you?’ Sara asked at last.

  Louie cleared her throat. ‘Mind?’ she whispered. ‘I’m touched to the heart, pet, so I am.’

  Sara wrote to Joe of Louie’s delight at his idea. She spent the lengthening spring evenings as she had spent the long winter ones, pouring out her thoughts and feelings to her husband in tiny writing on scraps of cheap quality paper. In return she got short, tender notes, telling her to rest and keep healthy for their baby’s sake, full of how much he missed her. In only one letter did he refer to being in Italy directly.

  ‘The mountains are massive and it’s bitter at night,’ Joe wrote in his slightly scrawling handwriting. ‘But they’re not like anything else I’ve ever seen. They’re barren and beautiful and little flowers grow in no soil at all. When this is all over, Sara pet, I’m going to bring you here to see them — the hills of my forefathers.’

  But in the middle of the month the Dimarcos were appalled to hear of the bombing and destruction of the ancient mountain monastery of Monte Cassino in their home region.

  ‘Surely that was not necessary?’ the white-haired Arturo exploded, scandalised by the attack. ‘It’s a place of God. Santa Teresa! My cousin Giuseppe is a monk there.’

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, Arturo,’ Anna tried to calm him, knowing how his moods could swing from listlessness to rage in seconds.

  ‘I will be upset!’ he stormed around the sitting-room.

  Sara kept quiet, thinking only of where Joe might be in all the destruction of the futile attack.

  But Anna knew her husband’s outrage was tinged with real fear for the safety of their remaining family in Italy, for Domenica and Pasquale and Arturo’s mother who were in the path of the advancing war. They heard nothing to lessen their anxiety and by mid March their worst fears were realised when the wireless announced the bombing of Cassino itself, the nearest town to their family village. Later they learned it had been reduced to a city of rubble.

  Sara did not know how to comfort her parents-in-law who had relations scattered around the countryside of Cassino, and Sylvia became as withdrawn and subdued as when Paolo had died, worrying over her own parents and family. Only when the spring turned to early summer did news finally reach them from Italy that Domenica
was alive and her two children safe, as well as Elvira’s eldest daughter, whose nunnery had miraculously escaped destruction. But the letter brought a sad footnote that Nonna Maria had died of a heart attack when they had fled for refuge to a neighbouring valley.

  Arturo was plunged into a deep gloom at his mother’s death and became further withdrawn. Sara went with Anna and Rosa to light a candle for the old grandmother in St Teresa’s and Sara recalled the sharp-eyed matron who had chaperoned them at the Carnival dance and told her that the green dress suited her. Sara would never know whether Nonna Maria would have approved her marriage to Joe. Probably not, Sara thought, yet she would always remember Granny Maria’s kind crinkled face and bright dark eyes smiling in greeting as she sat in the sunny backyard and peeled potatoes.

  Away from the Dimarcos’ private grief for what was happening in Italy, there was a mood of excitement and optimism in the bustling village. The Eleanor pit was at full production and rumours were rife of an imminent invasion of France. Slogans appeared on walls, exclaiming ‘Second Front Now!’ and Hilda came home for some leave after a spell in the south full of high morale.

  ‘London’s bursting!’ she told Louie and Sara. ‘I met that many foreign folk - Poles and Frenchies and Norwegian sailors - and Yanks of course. Eeh, I’ve never had so much fun.’

  Neither Louie nor Sara questioned Hilda closer. She had been four long, dreary years without Wilfred and working away from home had given Hilda a taste for independence that she appeared to relish. Louie wondered briefly how her sister would settle to married life in Whitton Grange with the plodding Wilfred, should he return safely one day, but she kept her doubts to herself.

  In early May, work at The Grange hospital slackened as half the army staff packed up and moved off south to become part of the Expeditionary Force making ready for France, and Sara finished work, her girth suddenly spreading in the final month of pregnancy. She borrowed looser fitting clothes from the taller Louie and took short walks with Rosa down to the dene to pick bluebells, impatient for her baby to be born.

  Then the momentous day of June 6th arrived and the news that the invasion was on. Everyone gathered around their wireless sets, eager for information, and, although work went on as normal at the pit, all talk was of the invasion of France. As far as Sara knew, Joe and her brother Tom were still in Italy where the Allies were making grim progress north in order to engage German forces away from the Second Front.

  That evening, Sara met Raymond walking down from the allotment as she sat on a tree stump overlooking the burn, watching children play close to the disused railway siding. Raymond looked at her warily in the evening light, shivering at the memory of that place where Joe had saved him from a savage beating five years ago. Norman Bell would think twice about taking him on these days, Raymond thought. Now he was a head taller than Normy and twice as agile. He pushed the bad memory away.

  ‘Heard the good news?’ he asked cheerily, as if anyone in the whole country could be in ignorance of the events of the day.

  ‘Aye,’ Sara smiled, chewing on a strand of wild garlic and looking plumply content. Raymond tried not to stare at her huge belly and round breasts bound in his Aunt Louie’s faded, flowery dress. ‘I just wish it could all be over and our lads come home,’ she added, betraying her worry.

  ‘It’ll come soon,’ Raymond encouraged, ‘and you’ll have a bairn for Joe to be proud of an’ all. Just think of that.’

  Sara felt a stab of affection for the lad who had befriended her ever since she had come to the village. ‘I think it’s on its way now,’ she said softly, pressing her hand over the dull pain in her side.

  ‘What is? The bairn?’ Raymond was aghast.

  ‘Aye,’ Sara laughed, ‘I’ve been having these twinges for the last hour. I thought they would pass off, but now I think it’s the real thing.’

  Raymond coloured with shock. ‘Haway then, get yourself home. You can’t go having a baby in the dene!’ He stretched out his hands.

  Sara took them and allowed herself to be hauled up from her seat. She felt so ungainly as Raymond led her back up the village, but he did not seem to mind her waddling progress and kept a protective hold. Delivering her safely back to Pit Street, Raymond left her to the fussing Elvira and no-nonsense Anna who scolded her daughter-in-law for wandering about on her own in such a condition.

  Anna packed Sara to bed and the women gathered around to assist and encourage as the labour progressed, banishing Arturo and Bobby to man the shop below. But Sara’s excitement waned as the half-dark night wore on and nothing happened, just the dull pains and an overwhelming tiredness. Then, as day came once more and Anna opened the window to allow in the cool morning air, Sara’s contractions began in earnest. Rosa stayed by her side, wiping her face and body, while Sylvia kept the inquisitive children out of the way.

  Sometime after her waters broke, Sara was aware of a commotion outside the bedroom and Anna disappeared to admonish her family.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sara asked weakly, exhausted with the pain and lack of sleep.

  ‘Just the children wanting to be in,’ Rosa said calmly, puzzled by the sound of her father’s raised voice.

  ‘It sounds like Mr Dimarco,’ Sara panted, though she was past caring what the dispute was about, only desperate for her agony to end. There were moments when she felt she could bear the pain and then the contractions would seize her again and leave her crying for relief.

  ‘Just you concentrate on the Dimarco who’s taking such a time to come in to the world,’ Rosa teased.

  ‘Lazy like its mother,’ Sara whispered, with a weak smile.

  Outside the room Anna stood rigid with fear at the sight of what her husband was holding. Sylvia was trying to quieten the children.

  ‘Open it,’ Anna whispered.

  Arturo fumbled helplessly with the telegram and Anna snatched it from his useless fingers. The message was brief and stark enough for even her poor English to comprehend.

  ‘Santa Maria, please no!’ she gasped, gripping the letter and closing her eyes in numb disbelief.

  ‘Joseph,’ Arturo asked hoarsely, ‘E morto?’

  Anna nodded and handed him the message. Arturo let out a wail of anguish that shook Anna out of her stupefied state.

  ‘Be quiet!’ she ordered her husband, glancing at the closed bedroom door. ‘Sara must not know of this until after the baby is born.’

  ‘Anna!’ Arturo sobbed and held out his arms to her for comfort. But she could not succumb to her grief now, else the young girl in the next room would guess the worst.

  ‘Stop it, Arturo!’ She forced herself to be sharp. ‘If Sara hears you, the news might kill her - or the baby.’

  Elvira stepped between them and guided the helpless Arturo back down the steps. Anna said a silent, desperate prayer for courage and went back in to the bedroom.

  Somehow she managed to keep the pain from showing as she helped Sara bring her child in to the world. What a sorrowing world it is that welcomes you, little one, Anna said silently as Sara, screaming, finally pushed her baby from her womb.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Anna said, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Paul Joseph,’ Sara cried happily as her mother-in-law laid the querulous bundle in her arms. Anna turned, choking back a sob and hurried from the room. Sara looked at Rosa perplexed.

  ‘She’s always emotional about babies,’ Rosa smiled and leaned forward to kiss her new nephew.

  But later that day, when they had both slept, Sara and Rosa learned that Joe was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sara’s grief was so profound that even Joe’s family could not bring her comfort. Her joy at Paul’s arrival turned to hysteria at losing her husband and those summer weeks, when the country was gripped by the fortunes of the Allies in France, were the blackest Sara had ever known. The successes and setbacks of the invasion through Europe passed in a blur as she was beset by periods of bitter anger and limp depression.

  Mos
t distressing of all was her inability to find solace in her young baby. Almost immediately her milk had dried up and she was unable to feed him and his constant crying jarred on her torn nerves. It was Rosa who showed the greatest patience and nursed baby Paul through the night and prepared his bottles of milk every day.

  Anna and Arturo arranged for their grandchild to be christened at St Teresa’s that August and strangely, while Sara mourned, it was to Arturo that the boy’s arrival gave a new purpose in life. It was as if the young Durham woman’s deep grief had frightened him out of his own self-absorption.

  ‘I never realised how much she loved our son,’ Arturo whispered to Anna one night as they lay in bed listening to Elvira’s even breathing. ‘I’m glad they went against our wishes and married - at least Joseph had that brief happiness before…’

  The clock ticked loudly on the small chest of drawers.

  ‘And they gave us Paul,’ Anna murmured. ‘He is like our Joseph with his black hair.’

  ‘His hair is brown, Anna,’ Arturo contradicted.

  ‘His eyes remind me of Joseph.’

  ‘His eyes are green like Sara’s.’

  ‘But they are big like Joseph’s,’ Anna protested.

  Arturo sighed. ‘Why can Sara not be happy with her bambino? he asked. ‘Paul came like a gift from heaven at the very time Joseph was taken away.’

  Anna leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Perhaps that is the reason,’ she whispered. ‘She would rather have our Joseph.’

  ‘But Paul needs his mother’s love!’ Arturo grew agitated.

  Anna was more philosophical. ‘Give Sara time, Arturo, she will grow to love her son. And we shall love him until she is ready.’ She kissed her husband on his leathery cheek.

  The late summer brought news of the liberation of Paris and then Brussels, and Anna and Arturo decided Sara’s depression might lift if she were to go home before the autumn set in. She had been once before, shortly after Joe’s death, but had returned almost immediately, as if being close to Joe’s family brought her a modicum of relief. This time Lily Pallister came down to Whitton Grange to fetch her daughter and meet the Dimarcos. Lily stayed overnight with her brother Alfred who displayed little sympathy for the traumas the Dimarcos had undergone.