The Miner's Wife

by Diane Allen

  She picked up her pitchfork and stabbed the partly dry hay, throwing it up into the hayloft, frightening a roosting barn owl as she did so. It flew out of the barn like a silent ghost and was chased by a flock of crows, until it made its escape into the woods that followed the beck side. She watched as the owl swooped and dived and ducked the onslaught, birds of the day attacking a night creature that was in their territory. Men, she thought, were not too dissimilar: anything that seemed to be weak was often shunned and derided by them. But sometimes they were wrong, and the weaker ones were perhaps the stronger, just not in that place or time. After all, the barn owl could spot the slightest movement in the dark night, when the crow would fly blindly and would have to be content to roost until the morning. Tom was like the crow: blind to Meg growing up; and one day she would retaliate and he would not like what she would say to him.

  Agnes had noticed how Meg had bitten her tongue of late, and how she was beginning to lose respect for her father and his harsh words. If he wasn’t careful, Meg would leave them one day; she was old enough now, with a good head on her shoulders, and bonny with it. Agnes stopped for a second and looked out of the barn doorway. Thank God: Meg had turned up; through the pouring rain she could see her, bedraggled and sodden, helping her father load the sled before driving the horse up the steep meadow towards the barn. She heard the coarse, harsh words that Tom was yelling at his daughter, as tears ran down Meg’s face and mixed with the rain.

  Tom Oversby was a bastard and she should never have married him; she should have listened to her parents when they warned her and begged her not to wed him. But instead she had been smitten with him and, despite her parents’ pleas, they had married within six months. Six months later she was regretting that wedding day. Tom never hit her, but the constant verbal abuse and belittling of her ground her down; and now he was doing the same to Meg. Agnes breathed in and stepped out into the rain, grabbing the horse’s harness as it, too, dropped its head and looked worn down by the harsh words.

  ‘She’s bloody back. She’s been trailing down into Appersett, visiting that Baines lass, or so she tells me. The gormless bitch hadn’t noticed it was raining,’ Tom snarled as he started to unload the cart. ‘Look at it – this is worth nowt!’ He forked the hay down from the cart, and Meg and her mother both stood with their heads down, knowing that it was no good saying anything when he was in such a mood.

  ‘It’s brightening up. Look, it’s only been a good hard shower.’ Agnes lifted her head and looked down the valley towards Wensleydale. ‘The rest will soon dry out in the morning – all’s not lost, Tom,’ she said as the rain began to ease.

  ‘You know nowt, you stupid woman. Take this stupid bitch home with you, and get me some dry clothes. I don’t want to see either of your ugly faces again today, if I can help it,’ Tom snorted, and stabbed forkfuls of the damp hay into the barn. ‘We’ll be bloody lucky if the barn doesn’t combust, with this damp stuff inside it. If it does, it’s you two’s fault,’ he shouted at Agnes and Meg as they walked away together.

  ‘I hope it does go up in flames – and him with it,’ Meg whispered to her mother.

  ‘Shush now, he will hear you,’ Agnes muttered.

  ‘Good, because I hate him – father or no father.’ Meg turned her head and watched him on top of the hay-filled sled, forking the hay off. ‘I hope he falls off the sled and breaks his neck.’

  ‘Quiet, child. Stop it with your wicked thoughts – you don’t mean them.’ Agnes put her arm around her daughter and concentrated on her walk home, along with worrying about just how long Meg could live under the same roof as her father without coming to real blows.

  Meg looked at her reflection in the wardrobe mirror as she sat on the edge of her bed. Supper had been spent in silence, her father not talking to her or her mother. So as soon as it was dark and all her jobs were done, she had decided to retreat to the privacy of her bedroom and leave her mother to sit alone with her bad-tempered father. How her mother put up with his ways, she did not know; but unless she wanted to cause a family scandal, she had no choice, Meg presumed. She knew one thing: she herself was not prepared to take much more of it. He was a bully, but he was not always going to dictate her life – of that she was sure. However, if she wanted a lift over to Gunnerside with him on Thursday, she would have to act like the perfect daughter and do whatever he bade, to gain his trust.

  She looked out at the moonlit night as her candle flickered in her small bedroom over the porch, and prayed for a fine day tomorrow, to help him in with the dried hay and get back in his good books. She had to go and meet Sam, although it was a shame that Jack would not be there. In truth, she liked Jack slightly more than Sam. He was quiet and not as sure of himself, and she had caught him a time or two giving her a secretive glance when he thought she was not looking. But it was Sam she was to meet on Thursday, so that was that.

  She blew out the candle, pulled the counterpane around her chin and gazed up at the ceiling. Please, please let the sun be shining and her father in a good mood in the morning, else life would not be worth living.

  4

  The swallows and swifts screeched and dived above Meg’s head as she climbed up beside her father on the small donkey cart as it stood in the farmyard, loaded with butter and spare produce from the small garden that was Meg’s pride and joy.

  ‘Make sure you ask how Mary is. I know she’s not been so good of late.’ Agnes looked up at her daughter, who looked exceptionally beautiful in the early-morning sunshine. Her long, dark hair was tied back neatly with a blue ribbon, and her plain blue dress matched her eyes, while the small binding of lace softened the look around her neck and cuffs.

  ‘I will, and I’ll make sure I get a good price for the lettuce and cabbage.’ Meg smiled down at her mother, wishing that her father would get a move on in stirring the horse and cart out of the yard, before her mother picked up on her feeling of excitement. Her father she barely needed to speak to, but her mother knew her all too well, and Meg was frightened that at the slightest indication of the happiness and butterflies flitting about in her stomach, her mother would start to question why.

  ‘Take care on that road, and I’ll look forward to seeing you back later in the day.’ Agnes stood back and watched as her husband and daughter trotted out of the yard and down the farm path, stopping at the gate at the bottom of the field for Meg to climb down and open it, as her father drove the horse and cart out onto the main road. She watched as they carried on their way, and hoped that both would be wary of their words to one another on their trip. It had been a hard week since that rain-drenched Sunday, but at least the pressure had been taken off them with the new week bringing good weather, enabling the remaining hay to be gathered, and Tom to simmer down and not take his wrath out upon Meg. A day over in Swaledale together might bring them a little closer. Neither had an agenda, except to go there and come back, once the butter and vegetables had been delivered. Tom’s spirits were always a bit higher after a gill or two and a catch-up with one or two locals in the King’s Head each week. It also gave her a chance to have a day to herself, without having to worry about the friction that seemed to be building between father and daughter. It was beginning to wear her down, and it was good to have time to sit and enjoy the day without any concerns.

  Meg and her father sat silently as the horse trotted along the road past the Green Dragon Inn, which brought back memories of the stolen afternoon with Sam and Jack; and then onwards, passing the magnificent Simonstone Hall, before climbing steeply up the moorland road with its sweeping bends and rises that tapered along the fell edge, gradually bringing the stunning scene of rich pastureland and the glittering River Swale into view, down in the bottom of the valley. Meanwhile, the fell tops were busy and filled with the noise of the lead-miners at work.

  ‘Look at the buggers, they are ruining the fellsides with their hunt for lead,’ Tom growled as they dropped down to the valley floor, following the River Swale’s banks through shade
d glades and yellow, buttercup-filled hay meadows. ‘They’ll not stop until there is nothing left of these fell tops. And what for? To line some rich man’s pockets down in London, or the like.’

  ‘But there has always been lead-mining here. I remember my mother telling me when I was small that the Vikings were the first to find it, when they invaded our lands,’ Meg answered back.

  ‘They might have done, but they didn’t make a mess like this lot have done lately. It’s all in the name of greed,’ Tom moaned as he flicked the reins over the back of his horse, urging it on through the small village of Muker. ‘There wasn’t half these houses when I was a lad. Now they are built with stones from the beck bottom, and crammed to the rafters with miners and their families, living any end up. There’s more miners than farmers here – this new industrial age has a lot to answer for.’

  They drove on in silence.

  ‘Get out my way!’ Tom shouted at a drove of ten Galloway packhorses with lead-ingots strapped to the side of them, and the drover dawdling as the poor animals dealt with the weight. ‘If they are not knackered now, they will be by the time they get to Richmond. I bet they will be thankful for the newfangled railway line that’s been built there, else they would still be hauling lead to the mouth of the River Tees at Stockton. On their return journey they will get no rest, either, as they will be made to carry stores or coal back to the mines, after going up to the Tan Hill coal-mines perhaps, poor buggers.’ Tom looked ahead of him as he passed the packhorses; the lead horse had a bell that tinkled loudly, making his own horse toss its head and shy. ‘Get on, you soft ha’p’orth. It’s only a bell,’ he swore at his old horse, as she jolted the cart and took offence at the noise she was unfamiliar with.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Blossom. They’ve a lot harder life than you, old girl,’ Meg shouted down at the only horse they had on the farm.

  ‘Aye, it’s no life over here. This dale is usually cut off in winter from our end of the dale, as well you know. You’ve got to be hardy to survive here,’ Tom said. ‘This ’un wouldn’t last five minutes with twenty stones of lead across her back every day.’

  Meg looked around her and couldn’t help but think that although, far above her in the fells, was an industry that dealt in filth and grime, down below the valley floor was a beautiful place. The meadows were lush and the ancient stone walls ran up and down the valley sides, with many a well-to-do house set back out of sight behind strategically planted trees. No wonder the Vikings had made their way up the River Ouse and then up the Swale tributary, to the valley that bore their long-forgotten names right along its length – Muker meaning ‘the narrow acre’ in Norse, and Gunnerside being named after the Viking king, Gunner, and his summer pasture. They must have settled in the summer months when all was pleasant, Meg thought, because in winter it was like her father said: the dale was a grim place to be, cut off from the rest of civilization, sometimes for months on end. She looked up as they crossed the bridge into Gunnerside, passing the blacksmith’s and the forge, her father bringing Blossom to a halt in the narrow street between the King’s Head and the shop owned by Mary and Harry Battersby, whom she had always known as a surrogate aunt and uncle.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand unloading the cart, and then I’ll take Blossom to the forge for young Calvert to look at her; she’s needing reshoeing, so he can measure her up and then next week we’ll get them put on her. I shouldn’t be long, as he’ll know from our past visits what I need. Then I’ll go for a gill and a bite to eat at the King’s. You stay at Harry and Mary’s, or wait outside the door of the King’s Head. I don’t want to see your face in there, though. It’s no place for a young woman.’ Tom watched as his daughter climbed down from the trap and picked up one of the baskets that were filled with butter. He then followed close behind her, with a sack of vegetables and the other basket of butter.

  ‘Now then, Tom, Meg, I thought it was about time for you two to be showing your faces. The old lass ’as just shouted down from upstairs and asked if you’d been or not.’ Harry Battersby took the laden basket out of Meg’s hands and patted her on the back. ‘Well, it’s like you said last week: your mother’s been busy and sent us plenty; and by the looks of your father, he’s been busy in the garden and all.’ Harry glanced into the hessian sack and grinned at Tom, who didn’t contradict him from thinking the vegetables were all his hard work.

  ‘How is Mary, Harry? Is she improving any?’ Tom asked, as Meg unpacked her basket and placed the warm, almost melting butter on the marble slabs in the cool pantry of the little village shop.

  ‘Nay, she’s not so good. In fact, she’s going downhill fast. I dare say I’ll not have her much longer, and then I don’t know what I’ll do.’ Harry looked down at his feet, holding back his emotions in front of the man he had known the best part of his life. ‘She says she’d like to see your Agnes – will you be good enough to bring her over with you next week? They’ve always been close, haven’t they? Maybe she wants to have one last talk to her?’ Harry lifted his head and looked at Tom; the man was a different breed from himself, for Tom was hard and didn’t show his emotions, so as he spoke he tried to hold back with his own.

  ‘I’ll bring her over, Harry. But now I’ve got to take my horse to the Calvert lad, as she needs reshoeing; and go for a bite to eat and drink before she takes us home. Meg here has brought her own bread and cheese with her and is going to stay with you or wait outside until I’m ready. Either way, tell her not to get in your way; or she’ll help, if you want something doing.’

  Tom made for the doorway of the shop, which was stocked with almost anything anybody could want. He wasn’t going to stay and listen to Harry Battersby’s woes, as he had enough of his own. Besides, it was a warm day and he’d looked forward to a long, cool drink of the King’s Head’s finest porter. He patted his friend on the back; although they were both the same age, Harry’s hair was still dark and he had a ruddy complexion, making him look younger than he was. The years of serving behind a shop counter had not weathered his skin, like they had Tom’s. But in his eyes there was a sadness, for Harry knew all too well that his wife was dying.

  ‘Right you are. Meg, do you want to pop your head round the door and spend a minute with Mary, as she’d appreciate seeing a new face?’ Harry Battersby smiled at Meg as she put the empty baskets down and started to unpack her father’s sack of fresh vegetables, placing them on the wooden table outside the shop window, following in her father’s footsteps out of the shop.

  ‘I can, Uncle Harry, and if there is anything else you want of me, just ask.’ Meg felt that she couldn’t do anything other than give the heartbroken man her support, even though she was counting the minutes until she could go and meet Sam. She made her way through the shop, taking in the smell of paraffin, soap and a mixture of scents that assailed her senses. The shop was full of everything the farmers and miners in the dale needed, from packets of seeds to candles, tea and tins on shelves that reached to the ceiling, and fresh food on the counter, not to mention what lay in the dairy behind the shop: flitches of bacon, butter, eggs and milk were kept cool in the spotless whitewashed room between the shop and the stairs that led to the couple’s living quarters.

  ‘Aye, just go up the stairs. She’ll have heard your voice.’ Harry went into the dairy to check how much butter had been delivered to him, and to send the money owing back with Meg, leaving her to climb the wooden stairs to the bedroom where Mary Battersby lay.

  ‘Is that you, Megan? I thought I could hear your voice.’ Mrs Battersby raised herself on her pillows and smiled at the young woman in front of her.

  ‘How are you feeling, Aunt Mary? You look a little improved today,’ Meg lied as she looked at the skeletal form of Mary and remembered her when she was such a beautiful woman.

  ‘Do I? I don’t feel it. I think these old bones are about done, lass.’ Mary reached over for the glass of water on her bedside table, but couldn’t quite manage to reach it.

  ‘Here, let me
help you.’ Meg reached for the glass of water and stood over her as Mary took a delicate sip, before passing it to Meg and placing her head back down onto the pillows, then closing her eyes. Meg couldn’t help but notice the stench of ailing flesh as Mary moved; her breast cancer was eating her alive, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. ‘It’s a lovely day out there, Aunt Mary, the meadows are full of buttercups and all the farmers are waiting to start their haytime. We’ve just finished, so my father’s glad to have got it in for another year.’

  ‘Aye, Swaledale is always a couple of weeks behind Wensleydale in starting its harvest; it always has been that way. How I wish I could see them buttercups and meadows – you make the most of those sights while you are young. Life’s too short, and is gone before you know it. Don’t you waste your time with me, lass, go and enjoy the day.’ Mary fought for her breath and tried to smile at the young woman looking worried in front of her. ‘Tell your uncle I’m going to have a sleep now, and for him not to worry.’

  ‘I’ll tell him, Aunt Mary.’ Meg turned round and left the dying woman behind her. It was a terrible thing to happen to one of the nicest women she had ever known, and she felt sorry for the couple, whom she had known to work hard all their lives.

  ‘I know, she’s seen enough of you and wants to sleep. It’s all she does nowadays. Thank you for giving her a minute or two, though; she will have appreciated seeing you. Now, here’s your money for your mother and father – it’s all there. And if you can ask your mother if she’ll come and see Mary next week, we’d both appreciate it; Mary keeps asking for her.’ Harry passed Meg the money and bit his lip, trying to control himself.

  ‘I will, Uncle Harry. Would you like me to do anything else while I’m here?’ Meg held her breath; she had to ask him, but what she really wanted was to escape and make her way to Sam.