His mam had been sitting as he had left her when he returned and asked her if she was happy. He sat at her knee on the floor with his legs crossed, his hands playing with the rag rug beneath him which was a mixture of blues and red worked into a soothing design. She nodded. The fire was hissing as a damp coal dried out and she explained that she was happy because she was her own woman now.
Is it enough for you though? he had asked. You’re a young woman still and she had laughed in a great peal that made him smile even as he remembered it and told him that 33 wasn’t young round their way and that, aye, it was enough for her since she had not known a man’s touch since his father.
Tom had said nothing but had felt the shock run through him as he thought of Archie and the years of their marriage. She had gazed calmly into the fire, her hair neat in its bun, her floral frock spotless with its small round-edged collar.
She explained how Archie had not wanted a wife and that she was pleased now because it enabled her to remember Barney more clearly. He was a good man, your da, she had said, and had gone on to tell that he was a face-worker in the pits until the war and she would be eternally grateful that, when he’d died, he hadn’t been the same as poor Davy stuck like a rat in a trap but in the open air though it had been raining and he hadn’t liked the rain. She had stroked Tom’s hair with the back of her hand. So like him you are, she had said, and, thank God, soon there’ll be no more pit for you my lad and never another war.
She had sounded distant as though she was remembering things long gone which were still clear but only for her to see. He was a real bonny lad he was, Tom, strong but not tall; I wish you’d known him.
He had not asked her more then but he would another time because he was hungry now to know and see and feel his father. To know what he sounded like, know what he painted, what he drew because, as he had his father’s body, he would also have his talent.
As he passed the first houses of Gosforn he throttled back to quieten the bike. His arms were shaking now from the vibration and from tiredness but his mind was racing still with thoughts and feeling and decisions he must make.
Annie woke to the sound of knocking but couldn’t for a moment think what the noise meant, then she heard Val and Sarah calling.
‘Who is it? Just a moment.’ Then Sarah spoke more quietly to Val. ‘Better fetch the poker.’
Annie leapt from bed into her dressing-gown and slippers, then on down the stairs. When Sarah opened the door, Tom stood there.
His face was grimy from the road dust with white patches where his goggles had been, his lip was swollen and his cheek cut. He wore his dark jacket only and she knew he must be cold. Pushing past Sarah who stood speechless in the hallway, her hair tucked up in a net, she pulled him in, feeling the trembling in his body as he clung to her.
‘Davy’s dead,’ he said and Sarah gasped and Val moved up behind them.
‘Shut the door, Sarah,’ said Annie with one arm round Tom. She moved with him into the sitting-room as she would have done with one of the patients in the ward. ‘Can we have some tea, Val, or perhaps cocoa would be better.’
She put on the light and sat him in the chair near the fire which had been banked up for the night and still gave off a little heat. Sarah sat down looking frail suddenly, while Val disappeared into the kitchen. Annie was calm as she sat on the arm of Tom’s chair, one hand on his shoulder.
‘I’ve been to Mam’s,’ he said. ‘We talked and she helped but he was too young to die, Annie. It was that bloody pit; it had been closed too long and the maintenance had just not been done. God, if he were here now, he’d be slanging the bloody owner something shocking.’ His voice broke but there were no tears. He punched one hand to the other then winced and Annie saw his bruised knuckle.
Val brought him cocoa and he held it between both those hands and sipped and talked while they listened and watched but said little until he was talked out, until he was tired, finally tired.
Annie still sat on the arm of his chair with a hand on his shoulder. The photograph of Sarah skiing shone in the light from the lamp next to it and outside the birds were beginning to stir as the dawn threatened to bring a weak sun to the early morning. It was four o’clock and she leant over him and gently touched his face.
‘And how did you manage these cuts? Were you in on the rescue then?’ He looked up at her, his lids heavy, his face drawn with exhaustion. God, he was so tired now, so bloody tired and still hadn’t told her of his decision.
‘Annie, I won’t be going into business with you now. I shall have to take over from Davy,’ he sagged back in the chair, unable any more to keep awake, to cope with the voices that were jumping in his head, clamouring to be heard.
Annie and Sarah fetched blankets down from the chest and pillows and together they made him walk to the settee, removed his jacket and boots and he was asleep before they closed the door. Annie went with Sarah to her bedroom, crossing to the window and looking out through the open curtains. The sky was lifting into a paler shade and against it the trees were grey not black any more and soon colour would be flooding into the garden, into the road which she overlooked.
She turned. ‘It’s a pig’s ear, isn’t it, Sarah?’
Sarah was sitting in the cane chair near the bed, her pink wool dressing-gown folded round her and the satin quilted collar turned up at the back. She reached to her neck and flattened it.
‘That’s one way of putting it, my dear.’
Annie moved to the bed and sat on the thick blue blanket which was still crumpled and thrown back just as it had been by Sarah when Tom had knocked. The floral bedspread was folded neatly at the foot of the bed as it was every night before Sarah went to bed; as hers was too.
‘Of course it is the grief talking,’ Sarah went on. ‘He won’t give up his art so easily.’
Annie had meant Davy’s death but she pulled herself round to Tom’s words. ‘He won’t give up his art, you can bank on that, but he means what he says. Our Tom always means what he says. It’ll be his way of paying back I reckon, if he takes over Davy’s activities.’ She nodded because she understood.
‘Oh I can see that, he was so very fond of the boy and it is such a waste, such a tragedy, but Annie, what about you, the business course you had decided to do?’ Her voice was concerned.
Annie looked down at her hands as she drew the dressing-gown around her. She had made it at school during needlework and the seams were puckered and it did not hang straight but the colour suited her; a pale green which made her look a bit fatter, rather more of a woman. But what about her future, she thought, and felt a sense of release now, a release which would always be tinged by fear though. Fear for Tom working in the pit because she could not bear to lose the bonny lad, could not bear it if he died under that stinking mass of coal.
Sarah was frowning at her, her eyes concerned, her hands pressed tightly together.
‘I’d like to nurse, Sarah.’ Annie knew now that she had wanted this ever since she started work at the hospital. She picked some fluff from the blanket and rolled it into a ball between her thumb and finger which sprang back when she released it.
‘But Annie,’ Sarah protested. ‘My dear, it is such hard work, so little money and you would need to leave us, to live in the hospital.’ Her face had paled and her hand was across her mouth. Annie looked at the ball of fluff, she would not look at the face that went with that voice.
‘I know all these things, Sarah, but I need hard work, it makes me feel myself somehow. It’s all I’ve known up to now, you see. This has been a holiday for me, a rest to sort myself out. It’s time I got back into the real world, a bit like Tom, I suppose.’
She looked at Sarah then. She was sitting back in her chair, her hand away from her mouth and lying casually on her lap and her expression calm. Annie knew the effort that it took and was more grateful than she had ever been to Sarah before.
‘I don’t want Tom to go back down the pits but I can’t stop him. He must be fr
ee to make his choice.’ Annie was picking her words extremely carefully. ‘Davy’s death has given me the freedom to choose too and nursing is really all that I want to do, at this time. I don’t want to start the business yet.’ She would not say that nursing would give her freedom from Sarah, from the burden of taking from her all the time. This would hurt the woman she had grown to love.
To be earning, instead of enrolling on a course which would cost Sarah money, was a luxury she craved. She was determined to lift herself up, to be somebody, as Sarah wished, but it had to be done on her own and nursing would pay her, give her lodgings and the responsibility for other people’s well-being in a professional sense. She wanted to be Sister Manon, a person in her own right, and that was a kind of freedom.
Sarah had risen and come to sit next to her on the bed. She took her hand and smiled. ‘If that is what you want, my dear child, then of course we shall pursue it.’
Her voice sounded almost as usual and any tremor could have been put down to tiredness. Annie put her arm round her.
‘Thank you, Sarah.’
They understood one another and sat quietly thinking and remembering the calm of their time together, the ties which now held them. Sarah stirred herself at last.
‘I think that it might be an idea however to keep something of an eye on our young Tom. What we don’t want is a bad seam coming his way because of his socialist activities. I rather feel he could become a little extreme under the circumstances.’
‘I know,’ replied Annie. ‘That’s what I can’t bear to think of. Imagine if he was hurt.’ But she could not go on. Sarah patted her hand.
‘I think I shall mention it when I write to Bob Wheeler,’ she mused.
Annie jerked up her head. ‘God. You write to God.’
Sarah burst out laughing. ‘We correspond from time to time, my dear. But I’m not sure that he’d appreciate the promotion you’ve heaped upon him; he’s an atheist after all.’
‘But why do you write to him?’ Annie protested. ‘He’s old and dry and Da’s friend anyway.’
Sarah sighed. ‘Don’t be silly, Annie. He’s been a good friend to you. How else do you think I knew that things were not as they should be when I came for you. Poor Bob thinks he was in some way to blame for your father’s death; he feels he could have done more to stop it happening and we talked at the funeral, before and after the crystal decanter episode.’ She nudged Annie who blushed but said nothing. ‘I asked him to check up on things and he did. He’s a good man.’
So Da, thought Annie, you’ve left someone else with a packet of grief too have you, a burden of responsibility and she remembered how her father had hated nurses and it made her decision even sounder.
‘Please write to him then, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Tom’ll need all the help he can get, one way and another.’
As Tom left for Wassingham that morning he dug in his pocket and brought out Da’s watch. ‘It’s from Don,’ he said. ‘He wanted you to have it, to keep.’
Annie felt the cold of the silver in her hand and the chain flopped over her hand and swung to and fro. She looked at Tom who shuffled his feet and climbed on to the bike, his head away from her.
‘We had a bit of a talk yesterday and he’s seen sense about the loans and one or two other things.’
She looked at his hands again, at his split lip and cheek.
‘He’s all right, is he?’ she asked.
Tom lifted his leg and brought it down on the kick-start; the engine roared into life. He nodded.
‘He’s fine,’ he shouted. ‘We’re going for a drink next week.’ He looked suddenly bleak and she cupped his face in her hands.
‘I love you, Tom. You must be careful, bonny lad. Careful in that pit and with your mouth at the meetings.’ She was shouting to make herself heard above the noise of the bike and he nodded as he leant forward and kissed her cheek.
‘You’re sure about the nursing then, are you?’ he asked in her ear. Sarah was on the step watching.
She nodded. ‘I’ll get me school certificate and then I’ll go to Newcastle but you must keep on painting though you’ll need a teacher. Somehow we must get you a teacher.’
He grinned and pulled at her hair and before he could go she pulled his hands to her lips. ‘You must be careful,’ she insisted as he slipped the clutch and pulled away from her.
‘Be careful,’ she called after him as he turned to wave and the smell of exhaust lingered where he had been.
CHAPTER 18
Tom clutched Grace’s arm and pulled her through the back gate into the yard. Betsy had daffodils growing in a tub by the edge of Beauty’s stable and they were bright with only a light covering of black smut. She was cool and her mouth tasted soft and clear and her lips pressed back and her body was hard against him.
‘That’s enough of that, you two, it’s Sunday,’ laughed Betsy from the kitchen door and they turned and waved to her.
‘I know it’s Sunday, that’s why I’m only kissing her once, before lunch anyway,’ Tom tilted his cap on to the back of his head and leaned over Beauty’s stall, stroking her and bringing out the apple which had been stored in crumpled newspaper along with the rest since last autumn in May’s cupboard. It was wrinkled and soft, a murky yellow, but Beauty ate it dripping juice into his hand which he kept beneath her mouth, letting her nibble and kiss him with her warm blackness.
Grace leant against his side, her head on his shoulder. ‘We’ll take her for a walk this afternoon, shall we?’ she asked, stroking the pony’s ear so that she twitched away from her. ‘Up the beck. It’s warm enough.’
Tom slipped his arm around her, pulled her even closer against him, moving his hand upwards until he could stroke her breast. Her nipple hardened and she moaned softly. ‘I’d like that,’ he murmured. ‘It’ll take me mind off tonight.’
Grace pulled away, her head up and her curls spinning as she stalked from him to the kitchen, her buttocks jumping beneath her yellow dress. Tom laughed and called:
‘I’d like that even if I didn’t have the meeting tonight.’
He watched as she shook her fist at him before disappearing in to Betsy.
He was nervous and leant on the stall with both arms, letting Beauty lift her head and blow hot breath into his chest. Annie had said it was time he did it, time he gave the talk that Davy should have done six months ago but which his death had prevented. Betsy had agreed with Annie and promised him a lamb roast to put some iron in his blood.
He sighed and smoothed Beauty’s fringe. The days in the pit stretched endlessly now that there was no stopping-point any more, no art school to make the minutes and hours seem an irritation to be endured temporarily. That fact had clouded his grief for Davy and made his anger sharper for, if he was to stay here and take Davy’s place, he wanted the men to feel anger along with him, to fight for something better, to work in the bloody pits and be able to afford food for hungry bellies. He wanted those out of work to feel that they should be employed and, if they weren’t, to have, as a right, enough to live on without losing their dignity. Davy had been right to make them want to talk, make them want to think and he owed it to the lad to take his notes and make them into words.
He felt soft hands slide round his waist and her breasts and belly press into his back and buttocks. ‘Come away in, bonny lad,’ Grace said. ‘Your mam’s ready to see your ugly mug, you know.’
Betsy was pouring out steaming water from the greens into the sink. She held the lid on and kept the gap to half an inch and Tom felt the damp heat as he kissed her and took the pan from her.
‘Don’t let them fall out, like you did last week,’ Betsy scolded and he grinned.
‘Taken the gravy water out first then, have you?’ he replied with a wink to Grace.
‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, would you?’ Betsy sniffed and went back to stirring the thick liquid on the top of the oven.
Grace was laying out the knives and forks and Tom saw that there were spoons to
o.
‘Having a pud today then, are we?’ He tipped the greens out into the bowl.
‘Aye, lad, thought you’d need a lining to your stomach if you’re to be telling the lads what they should be thinking tonight.’
Tom sat down; there were three places laid, so Joe was out at Newcastle again then. He was glad; he wanted his mother to himself. Joe was all right really but he was her boss, wasn’t he, so it made for a funny feeling. Funny-looking bloke and all, he was, long and thin and jerked his head a bit like that cock of Annie’s bat at least he didn’t crow. Just sat there looking as though he should have a drip on the end of his nose and always with a worried look on his face. Maybe it was his age, 50 was getting on a bit.
He smoothed the cloth with his hands, there was black dirt under his fingernails and a flick of green paint on his cuff. May would grizzle when she saw that but Tom guessed that she liked it really for it gave her something to do, something to pound at in the tub; take out her rage at the pits which had sent two of her boys away to the factories and crushed the breath out of the other.
‘I’m not trying to tell the men how to think, Mam.’ She brought the meat to the table and the juice of the lamb oozed from beneath the joint and the fat was cooked to a crisp. She smiled at him and passed the carvers.
‘You do it, bonny lad, and get yourself sat down, Grace.’ She pointed to the chair opposite Tom and sat down herself. She looked pleased, her mouth lifted in a smile and her blue eyes relaxed. Her hands were not so swollen today Tom noticed as he took the knife from her.
‘Better are they?’ he asked. Grace was putting the plates in front of him and, as his ma nodded, he cut the meat and lifted two slices on to each plate. It was pink in the centre and his mouth watered. He wondered if the rich aroma would float through the window and out past the back doors of the other houses in the street and the thought made him feel uncomfortable. There’d be no meat for most of the buggers today, he thought, or the next day or the next. The carvers had bone handles and they were well balanced.
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