Eliza's Child

by Maggie Hope

  Eliza watched him, the expression on his face, for he was eager to show her how earnest he was to make it up to her. He took the iron kettle that stood on the stone before the fire and took it out of the back door to fill.

  ‘There’s a spring, it’s lovely sweet water,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Aw, howay, Eliza,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not as good as Durham but it’s better than nowt, isn’t it? We’ll be together after all. I spent most of my winnings getting the necklace back for you but I’ve got a job with old Benson. He’s getting too old for the work and I’ll be able to take over before you know it. It’s a grand chance, Eliza.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Eliza. She thought of the necklace, hidden in the pocket she had sewn into her skirt. By, she thought, she would make sure he didn’t take it away again, she would an’ all.

  May came in and Thomas was crawling all over the floor and even beginning to pull himself up to a standing position with the aid of a chair or the table leg. The weather was turning fine after a wet spring and there were primroses in the grass growing along the hedgerows in the lane.

  Eliza was hanging out the washing in the strip of garden at the back of the cottage one morning towards the end of the month. Thomas was standing by her side and clinging on to her skirts with tight little fists. When she moved along the line she dragged her foot and he leaned against her and walked with her, concentrating hard on not falling. She smiled down at him, ‘Who’s a clever lad then?’ she asked and he cooed and gurgled back at her.

  ‘He’ll be working as a trapper boy before you know it and bringing in good money,’ said a voice behind her. She looked back towards the cottage in surprise; there was no way into the garden except through the house.

  ‘How did you get in?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t ask you in!’ The front door was open but they were so isolated here on this lane. The only other person who ever used it was the farmer and he had another way in to the farm.

  ‘The door was open,’ said Jonathan Moore. ‘I must say, Eliza, you look blooming. It suits you living in the country.’

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked. She felt very nervous at being on her own; something she hadn’t felt before since coming to the cottage. Bending, she picked up Thomas and held him to her. The baby stared at the intruder with his violet-blue eyes, so like his mother’s now, unwavering. He put a thumb in his mouth.

  ‘I was just passing on my way to see Farmer Dean,’ Jonathan said smoothly. ‘I heard you were living here with your husband. He came back then? Is he staying or planning to desert you again?’

  ‘He’s not!’ Eliza blurted out. ‘He didn’t desert me before, he was coming back and he did, as soon as he could.’ Thomas was becoming upset, she could feel it. ‘Go away, Jonathan Moore,’ she said. ‘Leave us alone. Jack will be in for his dinner in a minute.’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘No, he won’t,’ he said. ‘He’s working on a tallboy up at our house. I left him there. He won’t be finished before nightfall. So I said that as I was coming to see Farmer Dean I would call in and let you know he won’t be in for his dinner. He can have bread and cheese with the other servants in the kitchen.’

  He had planned this, Eliza realised. He was here to finish what he had started in her mother’s house. She clutched the baby tightly and Thomas began to cry.

  ‘Put him down, Eliza,’ said Jonathan. He closed the space between them and stood very near. He held out a hand and touched the baby and Thomas shrieked louder.

  ‘Shut him up, Eliza,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Ssh, babby,’ she said. Then, ‘You said you wouldn’t force me. Were you lying?’ She spoke very softly, trying to reassure the baby.

  ‘I was not,’ he replied. His voice was as low as hers. ‘Before I’m done, Eliza Mitchell-Howe, you’ll be wanting it as much as I do.’ He ran a finger down her neck, exposed as it was with the top two buttons of her dress undone on this balmy May morning. He touched the swell of her full breasts and she stepped back automatically.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said.

  ‘Are you there, Missus?’ Jonathan stepped back as Farmer Dean appeared in the doorway of the cottage. ‘I couldn’t make you hear, so I came through – oh! Good morning, Mr Moore.’

  The farmer looked curiously from one to the other of them and Eliza felt the colour rising in her face. She bent forward to hide it and stood Thomas against her leg again. He clutched at her dress, burying his face in the rough serge.

  ‘Good morning, Farmer Dean,’ said Jonathan, quite unfazed. ‘I was on my way to see you so you’ve saved me a journey up the lane. I wanted to talk to you about the chances of driving a shaft on your land.’

  ‘You did? But I thought the limestone shelf here was too thick to get at the coal,’ said the farmer. ‘That’s what I was told when it was surveyed before.’

  ‘Well we’re not sure—’ said Jonathan vaguely. He looked at Eliza. ‘Now I’ve delivered the message from your man, we’ll leave you in peace.’ He took the farmer’s arm and led him back through the cottage. ‘Jack is doing a job for us at the house,’ he said offhandedly. Within a few moments the two men were gone and Eliza and Thomas were on their own again.

  ‘Why doesn’t he leave me alone, Thomas?’ Eliza asked the baby.

  ‘Da, da,’ he replied and smiled at her, his face grubby with streaks of soil he’d picked up from the garden.

  ‘Aye, you’re right,’ she said and scooped him up and took him inside. She would have to tell Jack about him.

  ‘Has he touched you?’ Jack demanded when she brought up the subject of Jonathan Moore that night. ‘I mean, if he has I’ll—’

  ‘Nay, he hasn’t,’ she replied quickly. She could still feel the touch of his finger in the neck of her dress but she couldn’t really call that touching her, could she?

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘that’s all right, isn’t it? Likely he’s like that with all the girls.’ He nibbled at the skin beneath her ear. ‘Let’s away to bed.’

  ‘But, Jack, he threatens to, he says things—’

  ‘Aw, man, Eliza, he’s not hurt you, has he? We have to keep on the right side of folk like the Moores. They can put a lot of work in my way. I know you wouldn’t let him do anything, would you?’ Jack was beginning to sound impatient. Obediently she followed him up the ladder to the bedroom under the eaves. In the light from the candle he carried it looked a lot better than when she had first seen it. Jack had made a dressing table for her and a bed and cot with a wooden hood to keep out the draughts. They were plain and built with offcuts from Mr Benson’s workshop but Jack was very good at his job and they made the room look quite luxurious compared to what it had done before.

  Their love-making was deeply satisfying and as usual she forgot everything else but him. Afterwards, as she drifted off into sleep, the thought of Jonathan Moore came back to her but somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much. He was not important. She had Jack and Jack would look after her and Thomas. He was not going to desert her again; she had his solemn promise.

  All the same, for a while Eliza kept the front door of the cottage closed and took out the sneck so that it couldn’t be opened from the outside when Jack was at work. After all, you never knew, there might be gypsies about, or Irish tinkers. There were a lot of those since the famine. But the spring had turned into summer and no one came down the lane except Farmer Dean, and Eliza lapsed into leaving her front door ajar to let in the air, just as her mother had always done. There were no locks on the doors around here.

  One afternoon in July she decided to walk into Haswell and maybe go on to Blue House if Thomas wasn’t too tired. He was getting big now, too big to carry far, but he could walk fairly well by then. If she let him make his own pace he usually managed to get to where they were going. Jack had gone to Sunderland to deliver a cabinet and the long empty day and light evening stretched ahead of Eliza and she was bored. Anyway, she hadn’t been to see her family for more than
a month.

  She and Thomas ambled down the lane, Thomas stopping to pick daisies, or rather daisy heads, and handing them to her, smiling. ‘Dais, dais,’ he said, pleased with himself.

  ‘Daisies,’ said Eliza. ‘Say daisies.’

  They came out onto the road into Haswell, which was thick with dried mud, black with the coal dust, and rutted with the passage of coal wagons, so that she had to take Thomas’s hand to help him over the ruts. A bee buzzed busily among the blossoms of the ‘black man’s baccy’ plant and the blossoms filled the air with their perfume. Eliza felt supremely happy, a feeling that only a few months ago she thought she would never have again.

  Thomas was stumbling with tiredness now and she picked him up and carried him on her hip.

  ‘Not far now, pet,’ she said and turned off on to the path across the fields to Blue House colliery. Soon the colliery buildings came into sight. There were a few men hurrying about in the yard, and corves of coal were being drawn up to the shed where the platform with the coal screens was housed. Through the gaps in the wooden wall she could see the women and girls bending over the moving belt and picking out stones from the coals.

  Dear God, it was back-breaking work! She was well out of it, she was indeed. This lovely spring day emphasised the fact. She walked on to the colliery rows. Most of them had their doors open to let in the air, though here it was polluted with the smell of the midden and the coal dust. Some women were standing in the doorways taking the air and children played in the dust at their feet. There was no proper pavement and the road was hard-packed, rutted mud, so the dust was inevitable.

  Even so, lines were strung across the street from iron hooks in the walls of the cottages and washing hung on them under the watchful eyes of the women. Should a cart make its way along the women would rush out to rescue the clothes. Usually the cart drivers called out to let them know they were coming but Eliza knew some drivers did not.

  As she drew near the house belonging to her mother in the long, straggly street she realised there was some kind of meeting going on. A group of men were sitting on their hunkers along the wall. This was the position most comfortable to men who spent their working lives in this position, wielding a pick and shovel in small seams of coal. A man was walking up and down in front of them as he talked and by his accent he was from further west in the county.

  Eliza was alarmed. He looked like a union man and if he was they were in serious danger. And anyway, what were they doing having a meeting in broad daylight? As she approached her father got to his feet and looked at her.

  ‘Hadaway inside to your mother,’ he ordered. ‘This has nowt to do with you, nowt at all.’ The group of men were all staring at her as though they didn’t know her and the man stood waiting for her to go.

  ‘Da, what are you doing?’ she cried.

  ‘I telt you, get inside,’ he ordered again. Eliza stood by the door to the cottage, trembling. The door opened and her mother’s arm came out and grabbed her shoulder and pulled her inside. The door was closed behind her.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘WHAT ARE THEY doing out there in the middle of the rows?’ Eliza asked. ‘Are they just looking to be thrown into Durham gaol? For God’s sake, Mam!’ She was shocked and full of fear, not just for her father but also for them all.

  ‘They have to do something,’ said Mary Anne. ‘They’re laid off and have been for a fortnight. What are we supposed to live on, then?’

  ‘But the pit’s working, I saw it,’ said Eliza. She sank down on to the settee with trembling knees. The day had started out so fine and she had felt so happy walking over from Hazelrigg Farm. Now everything was changed, even the sun had gone behind a cloud. Danger was everywhere, or so she felt.

  ‘Aye, the pit’s not idle but half the men are, your da and the lads among them. It’s the fault of the bond,’ Mary Anne sounded bitter. ‘The shop won’t let us have any more on the slate and we don’t even know if they can go back to work next week. It depends on orders for coal, that swine Moore says. If they hadn’t signed a bond they’d be free to look for work elsewhere. There’s that big pit at Murton. There’s hundreds of pits in the county but the men can’t go because they are bound to Blue House. Him out there reckons it’s time the bond was abolished.’

  ‘But what if Mr Moore sees him here? They’re not even behind the slag heap or in the clay pit, Mam!’

  ‘No, but why should they hide? Anyway, the lads are on the lookout at the top of the rows.’

  ‘I didn’t see them,’ Eliza said. ‘I hope they haven’t wandered away.’

  ‘Nay, they wouldn’t,’ Mary Anne asserted, though she looked uncertain. ‘If they are I’ll skelp their behinds, I will an’ all.’

  The two women were quiet for a while, then Eliza stood Thomas on the floor by the settee so he could hold himself up and went to the table where she had dumped her basket when she came in. ‘Put the kettle on, Mam, I’ve brought a paper of tea and a few bits,’ she said. ‘We can have a cup of tea, any road.’

  ‘Nay, lass, you don’t have to do that. We’ll get through, we always do. Tommy caught a rabbit up at the bunny banks early on the morn. We’ll have a stew later.’

  ‘An’ we’ll have some tea now,’ said Eliza. ‘I’m ready for it.’

  ‘Does your man not mind you bringing us stuff?’

  ‘Even if he did I just have to say how you kept me and the bairn when he deserted us,’ Eliza said in a hard tone. ‘He’s doing fine at Benson’s, any road.’ She took half a pound of sugar and a pound of barley from her basket. She had been going to make barley water for Thomas but that wasn’t important now.

  ‘If you’re sure,’ said Mary Anne. ‘I can make barley porridge for the lads, that will fill their bellies.’ She looked brighter, less careworn as she filled the kettle from the bucket of water standing by the hearth and placed it on the fire. ‘I wasn’t going to put the fire on when there was nowt to cook,’ she said. ‘But the lads brought some coal in from where a wagon overturned on the black road.’

  Outside, there was a rumble of men’s angry voices. ‘One of the first things we will do is ask for a proper coal allowance,’ the stranger was saying. ‘It’s off the map that we should labour all day getting the coal and not have enough for our own fires.’

  ‘Just what we were thinking,’ Mary Anne said to Eliza. ‘I tell you what, we do need a union and we won’t get it without a fight. But it’ll be a hacky mucky fight, I can tell you.’

  Oh aye, it would, Eliza thought as she brought the last bag out of the basket. ‘Six eggs, two for me da,’ she said.

  ‘He’ll be glad o’ them,’ said Mary Anne quietly. ‘An’ I’ll do the bairns some eggy bread. It’ll be a treat when they come in.’

  She measured out a careful spoonful of tea and poured boiling water on it. They drank it without milk but as a treat they sweetened it with a little of the precious sugar. A few minutes later the door opened and Tommy came in and with him, the stranger. They were quickly followed by the three boys, all panting from the run up the row.

  ‘Up the ladder, now,’ said Mary Anne, shepherding them to the corner where the ladder led up to their bedroom. ‘Keep quiet an’ all.’ They nodded and fled upstairs as a peremptory knock on the door made everyone jump. The sneck was lifted and in walked Jonathan Moore.

  ‘I didn’t say come in,’ Tommy muttered and Jonathan smiled.

  ‘No? Aye well, it’s a pit house, isn’t it?’ He looked at Eliza, who had risen to her feet and taken hold of Thomas. The baby gazed at the interloper and put his thumb in his mouth. Jonathan smiled at the baby for all the world as though he was a welcome visitor.

  ‘He’s growing,’ he said to Eliza.

  ‘What do you want, gaffer?’ Tommy asked. ‘Are we back to work the morn?’ Jonathan shook his head. His smile had vanished and he stared at the stranger.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s my cousin from yon side of Durham,’ Tommy replied.

  �
��He doesn’t look like you,’ said Jonathan Moore.

  ‘Does he have to?’

  ‘There are agitators in the area. I had a message from the Owners’ Association.’

  ‘Are there now?’

  ‘If anyone is caught inciting to riot he’ll be for a spell in Durham gaol.’

  ‘Are you speaking for your da or are you just a lackey of the Owners’ Association, then?’ This time it was the stranger who spoke and Jonathan reddened with anger. The stranger turned to Tommy. ‘I can speak for meself, don’t fash yourself,’ he said and turned back to Jonathan. ‘I’m Peter Collier,’ he said. ‘Here to tell my cousin that our granda is dead.’

  Eliza looked up in surprise. Her great-grandfather was indeed dead and had been since before she was born. Peter Collier was looking at Jonathan Moore, one eyebrow raised quizzically. Mary Anne licked her lips nervously but Tommy lifted his chin.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘A grand old man an’ all. When is the funeral?’

  ‘Saturday, four o’clock,’ Peter Collier answered before turning back to Jonathan.

  ‘Well, Mr Moore?’

  ‘Get off our property before you are thrown off,’ said Jonathan. ‘If I find out you are in any way connected to the rabble-rousers I’ll see every last one of you hounded out of the place.’

  ‘Your da made his mark on the bond as well as me,’ said Tommy. ‘It has three months to run an’ all.’

  ‘Father signed the bond,’ snapped Jonathan. ‘He is not an ignorant pitman. But don’t think we cannot throw you out, we can and we will. Good day to you, Eliza Mitchell-Howe.’ He turned and stalked out. Tommy went to the tiny window and saw him walk up the row.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said to the man who called himself Peter Collier, and they all smiled. This time they had bested the owner’s son but Eliza doubted he would leave it at that. But she was taken aback when her father turned to her.

  ‘Why does he speak to you like that? Have you been with him? I’ll bray the hide off you if you have!’