by Maggie Hope
Oh, Jack, she cried inside. You didn’t have to leave me and the bairn, not again. I would have stood by you, I would. Now here she was back at Blue House and she had to find work of some kind for she had to keep herself. There was no way she would take little Thomas into the workhouse, no, never. Yet her mam and da couldn’t keep them, that was for sure. She thought of her brothers with pity. The two older ones were putting, drawing the corves of coal through the low seams not big enough for a man. Bent double over the wagons, one pulling in a harness like an animal and one pushing. They had both had sore spots on their backs and after their mother had washed them she had put vinegar on them. They had whimpered a little when it stung the button-shaped sores from catching their backs on the the roof of the seam. And there was little Miley, a trapper boy, sitting by the fire doors. By, she swore to herself just before she fell asleep with exhaustion in spite of her uncomfortable couch. By, my Thomas will not do that, no indeed he will not. Beside her little Thomas slept on a blanket in a drawer from the press.
Eliza woke from an exhausted sleep when Tommy came downstairs carrying Miley and with the other two lads behind him. Her mother was already up. She had lit the fire and was heating a pan of broily, milk and crusts of bread sweetened with a little sugar. The only light was that from the fire, for Mary Anne was saving the candle end for Miley. She had put it in his bait tin, his food box, so it would be a nice surprise for him. The boys, all three of them, were rubbing their eyes.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said sharply, ‘you’ll most likely just rub them sore and that’ll make them really bad.’
‘My eye itches,’ said Miley.
‘Aye. It’s the coal dust,’ said Tommy. He was eating a thick slice Mary Anne had cut from the heel of bread, left after putting a slice in each of their bait tins. ‘You’ll get over it. Howay now, the pit hooter will be blowing again in a minute.’ It blew as he swallowed the bit of bread and the lads hurriedly finished their broily and licked the tin bowls clean.
‘Ta ra,’ said Mary Anne as she handed each of them a bait tin at the door. She bent to kiss little Miley, but he was having none of that, for after all, he was a worker now, wasn’t he?
‘Be’ave, Mam!’ he said, ducking his head and racing after the others. Mary Anne sighed and went back to the fire. She shook the kettle and nodded her head. There was enough water left in it for them to have a drop of tea, she reckoned. Eliza was changing Thomas’s sopping wet nappy and the baby was gurgling and waving his legs in the air.
‘Howay then,’ said Mary Anne. ‘Have a bite of breakfast.’ The pit hooter had stopped blowing and it was suddenly peaceful in the little room. She cut the heel of bread in two and smeared the two halves with dripping before mashing the tea and pouring out two cups. ‘I’ll need some more yeast before I can make new bread for them coming off shift,’ she said as she sat down with Eliza to the meal.
Chapter Five
‘I’LL GET THE messages,’ said Eliza. ‘I’m going to the offices to see if they’ll put me on the screens. Next week. Then I’ll make the bread when I get back. You’ll watch Thomas for me, won’t you?’
It was a couple of days later and yet again there was bread to be baked in the communal baking oven in the pit yard. Mary Anne had to bake three or four times a week to keep her family going. If Eliza kneaded and worked it up ready, that being the main part of the work, Mary Anne would take it to the baking oven, where she would meet the other women for a ‘bit of a gossip’, as she would say. The working of the dough gave her a pain across her chest and she was glad of Eliza doing it.
Eliza tied her shawl round her shoulders and set off towards the pithead that loomed over the short rows of cottages clustered round. She would go to the office first and she might catch the owner in. The men were paid every other Friday in the Blue Bell and the owner would be there later on but she couldn’t go in a public house.
‘Get a stone of flour and a quarter of yeast, will you? A bit of butter would be lovely an’ mebbe a bit of brawn, if you can get it on the slate,’ said Mary Anne, looking hopeful. ‘And mebbe a screw of tea?’ After all, it being the end of the fortnight, the tally would likely be paid today. The shop was owned by the pit and the money advanced for groceries deducted at source.
Eliza knocked on the office door and a gruff voice told her to come in. The young man sitting in the chair beside the manager was the same one who had given her a lift in his gig two nights before. He looked up and stared at her without a sign of recognition on his face.
‘Well, what do you want?’ the manager asked. ‘It’s a busy day for us, we haven’t time to waste. So get on with it.’ He was recently promoted; Eliza knew him as a shift overman who had often been in dispute with the men such as her father. Robinson was his name and he had a hard reputation in his dealings with the men. It stuck in Eliza’s throat to call him sir but she did.
‘Please, sir, I wondered if there was work on the screens? I’m a good worker and strong.’ She didn’t look at the other man but she was very conscious of his gaze.
‘Aren’t you Tommy Teesdale’s lass? I thought you got wed and went off to Northumberland? Where’s your man?’
‘He’s dead,’ said Eliza. Well, he was dead to her, she thought bitterly. She would never have him back now, not if he offered her a gold cow.
‘You have a baby, haven’t you?’
It was the other man who spoke, his voice quiet but authoritative. Eliza looked at him. He had sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, which were clad in good quality broadcloth, one over the other. His knee-high boots, though mired with the mud and black coal dust of the pit yard, were of highly polished leather. He had a superior look about him, she thought. Well, he was no better than she was.
‘I have a baby, yes, sir,’ she replied. ‘My mother will be seeing to him.’ She turned back to Jim Robinson. ‘Can you give me a start?’ she asked.
‘Well—’ he began but was interrupted by the man sitting by his side.
‘For God’s sake, man, set her on. I haven’t time for this, I have to be somewhere.’
‘Aye, Mr Jonathan, sir,’ said Robinson hastily, then to Eliza, ‘start the morn. Six o’clock sharp. What name do you call yourself now?’
‘Elizabeth Mitchell-Howe,’ she replied and ‘Mr Jonathan’ cast her a surprised glance.
‘A double-barrelled name,’ he said with a hint of sarcasm.
‘My married name,’ said Eliza stiffly, omitting the ‘sir’.
As Eliza walked to the shop just around the corner from the office, she was jubilant. At least her mam and da wouldn’t have to keep her. It was hard work on the screens, she was well aware of that, but at least it was work and would put her over for a while. Of course, Jack might come for her, if he got lucky again. But even if he did, she told herself, she wouldn’t let him talk her round again. He’d let her down once too often.
Eliza walked into the shop on the corner by the yard gates and went in to do battle with the shopkeeper. Fifteen minutes later she returned to her mother’s house in Alice Street, triumphant. Mary Anne put the kettle on to celebrate with cups of fresh tea.
Coming home the next night after ten hours picking stone from the coal as corve after corve came up the shaft, Eliza didn’t feel so lucky. She was bone-weary, as weary as the donkey travelling round and round, winding the corves up on the end of the rope. It stood with its head drooping almost to its feet as she walked past it, patiently waiting for the horse keeper to untie it and take it away. Eliza’s head drooped too, onto the shawl thick with coal dust that covered her aching breasts.
She had rushed home in the half-hour she was allowed for her dinner and breast-fed little Thomas while wolfing down a slice of her mother’s warm stotty cake spread with a thin layer of melting butter. She had washed it down with warm, sweet tea and then almost ran back to the pit yard.
Now as she went through the door opening directly into the kitchen-cum-living room and heard Thomas wailing hungrily, she knew sh
e had to do something, anything, to earn her living otherwise than sorting waste from the coal.
‘There now, here’s your mam,’ her mother said to the baby. ‘Howay, Eliza, give the bairn suck. I’ve tried cinder water and sugar water but he’ll have none of it.’
‘I’m fair clemmed meself,’ said Eliza as she shed her dirty shawl and picked Thomas up from the drawer where he was lying and waving his fists in the air in temper. She settled him at the breast and adjusted her clothing, pulling a cloth over herself modestly. The boys were seated on the settee and she turned slightly away from them.
It was warm in the kitchen. A pot was bubbling on the fire and giving off delicious smells when Mary Anne lifted the lid and stirred the contents. The sensation of the baby pulling on her nipple was pleasant and Eliza was soothed and sleepy.
‘I wonder if that man of yours is coming after you,’ said Mary Anne.
‘Aw, Mam, I don’t care if he does,’ said Eliza. ‘He can keep away for all I care.’
‘Eliza!’ said Mary Anne, shocked. ‘He’s your husband!’
‘Aye well, he should act like a husband,’ said Eliza, her voice hard. The mention of Jack had brought her out of her trance-like state. ‘He’s no good to me like he is.’
Mary Anne sighed. ‘Aye well, you wed him and you know what the minister says, marriage is for life.’
Eliza didn’t reply. She lifted Thomas from her breast and held him over her shoulder for a minute to get rid of any wind, then put him to the other breast. The sound of him suckling made her look down at him. There were tears still drying on his cheeks and she wiped them away with the cloth she was using as a shield. Babies shouldn’t have to wait for their suck, she thought bitterly. It was all Jack’s fault. The sudden change in her circumstances struck home with renewed force.
‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had your supper,’ said Mary Anne, noticing she was upset. ‘Everything looks better on a full stomach.’
‘I will not,’ said Eliza forcefully. ‘Indeed I will not, full stomach or not. I am going to find a way to live without Jack. He will always be a gambler.’
Mary Anne looked shocked but just then Tommy came in from the inn where he had been to collect his and the lads’ wages for the last two weeks. He looked grim.
‘What’s up with you?’ Mary Anne asked, but her heart sank as she began putting the food on the table. She had a fair idea what was wrong. ‘That thief Robinson robbed us again, has he?’
‘Shaking tubs, man,’ said Tommy. ‘Six tubs he says weren’t full and he won’t pay.’
Sometimes the owners and the managers colluded to rob the miners of the wages they were due by employing someone to shake the corves and tubs so that the small coal settled and left room at the top. Consequently they could say the tubs weren’t full. The pitmen received nothing for tubs that were not properly full.
‘By, I don’t know how he sleeps on a night,’ said Mary Anne bitterly.
‘It’s the young gaffer, he was there the day,’ said Tommy. He sat down on the chair by the fire and unbuckled his knee protectors and took off his helmet. The firelight glinted on the coal dust on his worn pit jacket and breeches. He bent and removed his clogs and put them by the fire to dry, for the leather uppers were soaked through with working in the wet seam. Eliza watched him as he took off his jacket, taking a few coins from the pocket before dropping it on the flagged floor. Mary Anne would pick up his pit clothes later and dash them against the outside wall of the house to rid them of excess coal dust before drying them by the fire.
‘By, that lad’s worse than ever his father was,’ said Mary Anne. She stared at the money on the table, fourteen shillings and sixpence for a fortnight’s work from her man and all three of her sons. Of course the tab from the shop would be already paid and deducted before Tommy saw it. She wished they hadn’t bought brown now but it had been a little treat for the boys. Eliza knew what her mother was thinking.
‘The bairns enjoyed their tea, Mam,’ she said softly. ‘Any road, next week I’ll be bringing in something extra.’
‘Aye, well, we have to live,’ said Mary Anne. ‘Although sometimes I don’t think the gaffer agrees with that. Likely he thinks we should work for nowt like those poor black folk in America.’
‘Nay, man, if nowt else they must get their bread,’ said Tommy. ‘But I think we’re likely worse off, nobody has to feed us.’
A minister had been to the chapel to give a talk and he had told them all about the poor black folk in America. The whole congregation had been up in arms about the iniquities of the slaveowners in America. Just about everyone had given a penny towards the fight for justice in the slave states.
‘Aye well, they’re not free, are they? Stands to reason we’re better off than them.’
‘Why, man, how are we free? We’re bonded to the pit for a year after we’ve made our mark, aren’t we? The owner can do as he damn well likes with us after that.’ Tommy hawked and spat phlegm mixed with coal dust into the fire where it sizzled among the cinders.
‘You didn’t have to make your mark,’ Eliza put in. She was tired and very low in spirits. All she wanted was to put her head down. The baby lay heavy in her arms. She looked down at his sleeping face, the firelight flickering across it. ‘Where’s your daddy then?’ she whispered to him. By, she’d never forgive Jack, never. Not for letting her down like this, never again.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Tommy was saying. ‘I could have left and gone looking for other work but I’d likely be no better off in another pit. They stick together, the owners, don’t they? An’ what else could I do? I’m a pitman; always was an’ always will be.’
In the quiet that followed, there were only the noises made by Mary Anne as she prepared the bath for Tommy and the dropping of a cinder in the grate. Eliza was glad when the family went to bed at last and she had the kitchen to herself and her baby. She heated more water and bathed Thomas and then washed the coal dust from her own face and body; something she couldn’t do while the boys and her father were there. It was a matter of decency.
Oh, she would better herself, she would an’ all, she thought as she laid down on the settee at last. She would think of something, but for now she was bone-weary; her eyes closed as she stretched out her aching limbs.
Eliza woke suddenly, disorientated. Her mother was stirring the fire and adding a few sticks to coax it into a blaze before raking coal down from the shelf at the back of the grate. It was still dark, the only light that given by the flames of the fire. Outside, the pit hooter began to blow its warning that the first shift was due. It must be half-past five then, Eliza thought groggily. Mary Anne went to the bottom of the ladder and called up to where it disappeared into the bedroom.
‘Howay, lads, time to be away,’ she called. ‘I’ve warmed up a bit porridge for you and I’ve got a bit sugar to put on it,’ she added as an inducement. Thomas began to cry in protest at being woken up.
‘Give me a bit porridge, Mam,’ said Eliza as she reached for the baby in the drawer beside her. She settled him to the breast first, for sometimes he took a while to take the first feed of the day and she needed to fill his stomach. It was a long time before dinner, when she would be able to feed him again. Once settled, she could hold him in one arm and eat her own breakfast.
The family was still eating when the pit hooter sounded again; a warning that there was only ten minutes for them to get to the pithead. Eliza swallowed the last spoonful of porridge and followed the boys down the yard and up the lane to where lights burned by the pithead, throwing the shape of the buildings into black relief against the sky.
It was a cold, dark morning and she shivered and pulled her shawl tightly round her shoulders. There were a few other women there, some with men’s caps over their hair in an attempt to keep out the coal dust, but Eliza had a cotton square she knotted round her head, covering her forehead and her ears. The corves began to come up, dragged by the donkey working the pulley, and the job of sorting the ston
e from the coal started.
After a while, Eliza found she could work at it without thinking and allowed her thoughts to wander. Where was Jack? By, if she could get hold of him she’d show him what for, she thought savagely. But then, she couldn’t get hold of him so thinking like that was going to get her nowhere. No, she had to have a plan. First of all, she had to find other work that didn’t make her back feel as though it was about to break in two, but what? Before her marriage she had worked at Brands the butchers in Haswell. She had cooked meat for pies and tripe and onions to sell, but also she had swept the shop and cleaned the shelves and swilled down the yard after the butchering. It had been hard but not as hard as this. But Brand had married a young lass when his first wife died and now she did all that so he didn’t have to pay anyone else.
Saturday afternoon she would walk into Haswell and try every shop in the High Street. Or there was Wheatley Hill or Thornley. Surely she would find something? She worked on automatically, her thoughts going over and over the possibilities. She was very quiet and the women working at her side nudged each other and grinned.
‘Her man’s left her,’ one said in a low voice. ‘Thought she was something better than a pithead lass, she did.’
‘Couldn’t even keep her man,’ her neighbour observed loudly. She was not above having a set-to with one of the others. Livened the day, it did. But Eliza was oblivious to what they were saying. A strand of dark hair had escaped from her kerchief and she pushed it back absent-mindedly, leaving a streak of coal dust across her forehead. She was still trying to think of a way out when the hooter went and the screen stilled for the half-hour allowed for dinner.
‘I’m looking for something else to do,’ she said to Mary Anne when she was settled once more with Thomas at her breast.
