by Janet Tanner
Ted took a step towards her. “ Becky, you’re coming with me.”
Her eyes went to her father, and she covered her mouth with trembling hands. “You’ve killed him!” she whispered through her fingers.
“I’ve winded him, that’s all, but I’ll break his bloody ribs if he ever tries anything like that again. Now, get your things, Becky. You can’t stay here.”
On the floor. Alfred began to stutter a protest, and Winnie raised her eyes appealingly to her daughter.
“Becky!” Ted said sharply, but she did not move, standing as if mesmerized by the scene before her.
Alfred, wheezing and coughing, pulled himself on to his knees.
“Get out!” he gasped, and his weak voice was somehow more awe-inspiring than his stentorian roar. “ Get out before I call a policeman and have you arrested.” His face diffused, he clutched his chest, and gasped again. Winnie fell upon him, loosening his collar and whimpering softly, and Rebecca, pale and trembling, caught at Ted’s arm.
“Please go, Ted—please. You’ll only make things worse. Oh, don’t you see what you’re doing?” The tears filled her eyes and began to run down her cheeks, and frustration and anger rose in Ted again. He looked from the small, anguished face to the man and woman on the floor, and realized that for the moment there was nothing more that he could do.
He crossed to the doorway, towering now above the heaving body and looking with distaste at the sweat-beaded head.
“I’ll go for now,” he said. “But I’ll be back. And don’t you lay a finger on Becky, either, or I swear I’ll break your bloody neck!” Then, not trusting himself to stay in the house a moment longer, he pushed open the kitchen door and went out.
Somehow he had to get Rebecca away from that madhouse, he thought as he wandered back the way he had come. And he had to do it soon, before her spirit was broken completely by her monster of a father. Somehow he had to get her far enough away from Hillsbridge so that Alfred was no longer able to reach her with his bullying and his threats. How he would do it, he didn’t know. But if he thought hard enough, there had to be a way …
Tossing the belt into the thickly woven centre of a nearby lavender bush, Ted dug his hands into his pockets, and walked towards the scarlet sunset.
ALL NIGHT Ted lay awake, tossing and turning on his hard flock mattress as he ran over the events of the evening again and again, and searched for an answer to the seemingly insoluble problem of how to get Rebecca away from her father.
But it was the following Monday that the germ of an idea was soon in his mind. It was dinner-time, the half-hour break when the miners squatted down together along the sides of a roadway, to eat their cogknocker and cheese and drink their cold tea.
Today, James and Ted had been joined by Walter Clements and Reg Adams, a Bath-born lad who had recently begun work at the pit as a carting boy.
To Ted and to the others, Reg was something of a puzzle. In some ways, he reminded Ted of Jack, for he had the same quiet manner, and the same lack of interest in what Ted termed “the good things of life.” But there the likeness ended, for Reg seemed far more knowledgeable about what was going on in the outside world than Jack had ever been, and there was a wiry strength about him that surprised everyone who saw him dragging a putt of coal.
When he had first come to apply for the job, O’Halloran had privately given him a week at the outside, and had even speculated that the lad might not come back after his first day. But the days had become weeks, and Reg was still there, working as hard as he had to and no harder, and entertaining his work-mates with his strange talk and his wild predictions about the course of the war.
That dinner-time, the talk had somehow turned to conscription.
“It’s bound to come,” he said in his soft, almost girlish voice. “You’ve only got to read the papers to know that.”
In the light thrown by their candles, the others had exchanged glances. They hadn’t read anything about it in their papers. There’d been talk, yes, but talk was cheap, and there still seemed to be train-loads of young men responding to Kitchener’s war cry without bringing in conscription.
“You know what it’s going to mean, don’t you?” Reg chattered on, and Walter laughed deprecatorily.
“Oh, ah, we do. There’ll be a lot more like you after nice safe jobs in the pit, while our lads are off out to fight Kaiser Bill.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Reg said earnestly. “If they bring in conscription, it’ll mean you can’t go. Didn’t you know that?”
“Can’t go? What d’ee mean?” James asked. “How be ’em going to stop us?”
The boy threw a crumb of cheese towards a mouse who had seen the circle of light and approached it boldly.
“They’ve got to have coal,” he explained. “And mining is one of those jobs you can’t have a woman doing. Well, when all the men who don’t work in the pit get called up, there won’t be none to take up any vacancies down here. So they’ll have to make sure there aren’t any vacancies—leastways, as few as they can manage. And it’ll be the same with munitions, they say.”
The other three men stared at him. They hadn’t thought of it that way, but now it had been pointed out to them, they could see the sense of it. Most men in Hillsbridge worked in the pits anyway, but a good few of those who didn’t had joined up already, and most of the rest had professed themselves willing to “ attest” since Lord Derby had called for it. And if conscription came in, there wouldn’t be an able-bodied man between nineteen and forty-one left in England, let alone here in Hillsbridge.
“That’s why you come here to work, isn’t it, Reg?” Walter Clements asked, voicing aloud the question most of the men had muttered behind Reg’s back. “ You want to get out of being called up.”
“That’s right,” the boy admitted “They might get me anyway, of course. After all, I haven’t been here all that long, and I can just imagine some red-faced pen-pusher taking a delight in sorting out those of us who ran to the coalfields after the war started. But at least it’s a chance.”
James, thinking suddenly of Fred, whose expected letter home was several weeks overdue, and who might, for all he knew, be wounded or dying, stabbed the air with a vehement finger.
“You’m one of them slackers they’m after, Reggie,” he said bitterly. “And I hope they bloody well catch up with ’ ee.”
The boy chewed slowly on his cogknocker, then raised his head to look directly at James.
“I suppose that’s what a lot of folk think,” he said philosophically. “Well, that’s, just too bad.”
Ted rubbed his chin.
“Why, Reg?” he asked. “Are you scared, or what?”
“Course, I’m scared. I bet they’re all scared when it comes to the point. But that’s not why I don’t want to go.”
“Why then?”
“Because it would mean leaving me mother to cope with the youngsters and my father all by herself, and she’s not fit.”
“What’s wrong with your father, then?”
“He’s a cripple. He used to drive a mail van in Bath, and he had an accident that really bad winter—1910, wasn’t it? The hill was slippery, the horse couldn’t stand, and the jumping van ran away with him. He tried to stop it—there was this taxi cab coming up, you see—but it went over his legs. Since then … well, he can’t do no work, nor nothing else much, neither.”
A silence fell on the little group. Accidents, men who couldn’t work any more, both were too close to home for them to mock again.
“So that’s it, you see,” Reg went on. “ I do most things me father would do if he was fit. The next two to me are girls, and they’re both away in service, and then there’s Bert, but he’s not well. He had scarlet fever when he was a nipper, and it’s left him with a dicky heart. So I’m sort of relied on, really.”
James drew the back of his hand across his mouth in a gesture of embarrassment.
“Don’t take no notice of what I said, Reg lad. I didn’t
know the half of it, did I?” he conceded, and the others muttered their agreement, made awkward suddenly by the discovery that they could know so little of the personal troubles of a boy they had worked alongside for a month and more.
For his part, Ted was horror struck by the catalogue of woes that made his own childhood seem like one long holiday. But when he returned to work, drawing the putt along the topple, it was the earlier part of the conversation that returned to his mind.
Supposing Reg was right? he thought, and conscription did mean that no one from the pits could be accepted into the military. Might that not only be a short step away from the day when miners would be obliged to stay in the pits—for the duration of the war at least? And who could say how long that would be? Why, already all the folk who had predicted it would only last a few months had been proved wrong. Already more than a year had gone by, and there was no sign of an early armistice. Good grief, if they brought in some sort of law about it, he could be stuck in the pit for years.
Ted momentarily slackened his pace, resting on his heels and letting his back support the weight of the tub, while a sinking feeling swept through his body.
Since meeting Rebecca, he’d been too preoccupied to give any more thought to leaving the pit, although he didn’t suppose anyone would threaten his father’s livelihood as Gait had done.
And times had changed, too. Whereas before carting boys had been hard to come by, now there were plenty of lads who, for one reason or another, were thinking on the same lines as Reg Adams and deciding that the coalfield might be as good a place as any to hide away for the duration of the war. And they, Ted realized, could be his passport out of the pit. But if Reg was right, and some kind of compulsion was going to be brought in, he’d have to do something about it—and quickly.
Ted crawled on, wishing desperately he could get out of the dark tunnels and into the green quiet of one of the woods behind his home.
He couldn’t stay in the pits for years, he was certain of that much. As long as he did so, there was not much future for him, and none at all for his hopes of taking Rebecca away from her father. He couldn’t ask her to live in a poky cottage, even if he could find one. She was worth more than that. And the thought of seeing her worn down by too much work and too many babies was painful to him. He wanted Becky—wanted her so much his whole body ached for her—but not on those terms.
No, he would have to try and take her away—right away—so that they could start again. But what could he do that would raise enough money to keep them both? Go to the Welsh coal-field, maybe, where seams were thick and colliers paid good wages—or even to Yorkshire. More than one lad had packed his bags and headed north. But to do either meant leaving Rebecca alone with her father, at least until he could find a home for her.
If only she’d marry me now, Ted thought. She could live with Mam for a while. There’s plenty of room now with half the family gone, and she’d be company for Mam, too.
Grunting, he emptied the tub of its load and set off back to the face. Maybe he wouldn’t be doing this again too many times, he thought. Maybe before Christmas there’d be some new lad carting for James, and he, Ted, would be off to make a new life.
That evening after he had washed and changed, Ted told Charlotte he had to give someone an urgent message. Then, without waiting for the question that was forming on Charlotte’s lips, Ted made his way down to see Marjorie at Fords.
Tonight, he did not hesitate outside the shop, but went straight in. Marjorie was tidying fixtures, but when she saw him a strange expression crossed her face. She climbed down from the steps so rapidly that she almost fell, and he wondered briefly if she had overheard the commotion the night before.
“Ted Hall, what are you doing here again?”
He glanced around to see if Mrs Ford was in evidence “I wanted you to give Rebecca a message for me.”
“Oh Lord, you don’t know then.”
“Know what?” he asked, mystified.
“She’s gone, Ted.”
“Gone? Gone where?” he repeated stupidly.
Marjorie’s face was flushed, and she patted her hair with a small, distracted movement.
“I don’t know. All I know is she’s gone. The car came for her first thing this morning, and I heard them say it was for the station at Bath. Then he came out—Mr Church—and Rebecca, and all her cases. He’s packed her off somewhere, out of your way I should think. But I’ve no idea where she’s gone, or when she’ll be back. Knowing him, maybe she never will be.”
Ted stared at her, too shocked to even begin to understand the implications of what she had told him. Then, dazed, he turned and left the shop.
Chapter Fourteen
As Ted left the shop, someone watched from a window that overlooked the street.
In her starched cap and apron, Rosa Clements, the Ford’s new housemaid, looked as demure as the strictest of mistresses could have wished, and only her eyes revealed the turmoil of emotion within her.
It worked! she thought, and excitement, rising inside her in a sharp, dizzying rush, made her shake so violently that she had to hold on to the cream-painted window sill for support. It worked—I got rid of her! But, oh, I wish I hadn’t seen his face. I wish I hadn’t seen how much he cared …
Rosa had been in love with Ted for as long as she could remember. It seemed there had never been a time when she had not wanted him, or when one glance, idly thrown in her direction, had not made her heart sing. As a child, she had followed him everywhere until he had told her to clear off. But that had not lessened her love. For a while it had hurt, but little by little her love had grown again, and she had gone back to sitting at the upstairs window of the little house in Greenslade Terrace to watch him go whistling up the rank, or standing with her back against the outhouse wall while the others played hopscotch, staring intently at his house, willing him to come out and speak to her.
Even in those days, she had tried to make spells or put a charm on him. She had gathered herbs and wild flowers on her lonely expeditions through the woods and mashed them into paste in her room at night when her brothers were asleep. But for all that she had believed in them, they had never worked—except for the one she’d woven the night after she’d found him crying because his dog had disappeared. Yes, she’d got it right that time, but the others, the important ones, to make him smile at her or notice her, hadn’t worked at all, and Rosa had begun to doubt the thing she hoped most of all was true—that it was not Irish tinker’s blood that ran in her veins, but pure Romany—the blood that carries the secrets of spells and curses handed down from generation to generation, and weaves an age-old magic, and sees the future. Above all things, Rosa wanted that, maybe even more than she wanted Ted. For if she could make spells, all things were possible. And if she were a Romany, or even a witch, she would be someone in her own right at last.
Rosa Clements had been born at the turn of the century. She drew her first breath when the trees were bursting with new green life and pink and white blossoms hung heavily upon the apple trees. Between spasms of pain as she fought to bring her daughter into the world, Ada, had looked at the apple trees through the dusty bedroom window and tried to find an omen in their beauty, or at least a reason for hope. It was less than eight months since she had wed Walter Clements, and she knew that tongues were wagging in Hillsbridge. What was more, she knew what they were saying. For there were plenty of people who had seen her creeping out of the market yard, where the fun fair wintered, on the evenings when Walter had been working a back shift that last year before their marriage. And when the fair had returned the following year, those same people watched eagerly to see if a certain swarthy young man was still amongst their number.
Ada had pictured him as she sweated and laboured that day in the spring of 1900. She closed her eyes and saw again the dark-skinned face, the thick curling hair and the deep, jet eyes that could tempt and tantalize. She heard his mocking laugh, and saw the muscular, weather-tanned shoulders
that were as different from Walter’s fair-skinned puny frame as could be. As the pain intensified she fancied she heard the raucous music of the merry-go-round, and when it seemed that the fire deep inside her would tear her in two, somewhere on the edge of her consciousness he was there, riding around and around, legs splayed to balance himself against the sway of the merry-go-round, one careless hand resting on a wooden support, the other stretched out as if to invite her once more to his caravan.
As Rosa grew, there were others, too, who remembered. When her hair grew thick and dark, and they saw the lustre of her black eyes, they nudged one another and whispered in triumph. They’d been right, then, in what they’d suspected, right when they’d speculated that Walter, simple as he was, had taken for his wife a woman who was no better than she should be. But the thing they’d all have given a good deal to learn was whether or not poor Walter knew.
Years passed. Ada bore Walter five more children, all sons, and all as pale skinned as Rosa was dark. In the process she grew thin and scrawny, and her hands, once her pride and joy, became red and knotted. She no longer went to the market yard in winter, and although no roving-eyed fair man would invite her into his bed now, she was still looked on as a common whore. As if they needed some excitement in their own drab lives, the townspeople kept alive the rather pitiful figure who walked with a quick, nervous stoop and who would probably not survive the results of another night of abandoned love.
Rosa, too, came in for her share of notoriety. At school, the other children, who had been told without explanation to keep away from her, treated her with a mixture of fascination and fear, but none wanted to be her friend, and Rosa, who was always more at home in the woods and under the stars, kept to herself. Once, she asked Ada what it was that made people avoid her, but Ada busied herself with her washing, turning her back on Rosa and sinking her arms elbow deep in the steaming water.
