After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  Tom smiled; this’ll get them going he thought. ‘Then it should be paid direct to the women, that’d settle that argument and give the lasses their own income.’

  He watched as men turned to one another and the volume of argument and discussion grew louder and louder. They were talking and that is what Davy had wanted and, bye, he wished Annie had been here to clip back her ears at what he had said about giving it to the women. She’d have been right surprised, right glad, but it wasn’t just for her he had said it; he’d done it because it made sense.

  He turned and moved over to the chairs where Davy’s mates were sitting. They were leaning forward and talking amongst themselves and he listened as he heard Frank say, ‘I’d forgotten Davy said that.’

  ‘Well he did,’ Tom replied pocketing his notes and standing with his hands in his pockets. ‘It makes sense you know. It’ll be hard enough to get union backing for the idea but if you make it payable to the women it’s different somehow. It doesn’t affect their bargaining position so much, does it, when they come to negotiating wages.’

  He looked as a smile slowly spread itself over Frank’s face. ‘Come over to the bar for a drink, lad.’ He rose and took Tom’s arm but Tom looked over at the men, milling towards the bar which had opened at the end of the hall, at the smoke and the dim lights which had now been lit and his legs felt heavy with tiredness. His head ached with the noise and it was as though a band was being drawn tighter and tighter and he shook his head.

  ‘I’ll get on back now, Frank.’ He shook his hand, then the others. The grips were firm, the faces friendly. ‘I’m tired now and me feet is killing me.’ They joined in his laughter and he pushed down the steps, through the men, his back stinging with slaps and his head full of their arguments until at last he was out, into the cool air. He drank in the spring-laden coolness, felt the fine drizzle, relished the quiet once the door swung shut behind him.

  He dug in his pocket for his cap, stuck it on his head and sauntered down the street which was dark with many windows boarded up and houses deserted, their tenants gone from them to the South, to anywhere which might give them a living. Yes, the men were arguing, talking; they would have more to think about tonight than how hungry they were, how they were going to last until the end of the week. His boots slipped slightly on the wet cobbles and he hunched his collar up against the increasing wetness.

  He was not going home but to the pub where he and Davy had sat the night before he had died. Don had not been there at the meeting and he was glad really. He wanted to be quiet for a moment, to think back over this evening, to think back over Davy’s words and check that he had said all that he had wanted the men to hear. Bye, it was a powerful feeling, that it was, standing there knowing that they were listening, knowing that they were chasing around in their minds for questions, answers and arguments. It was a bit like looking at a painting; sizing up the texture, the light, whether the artist had caught the moment, what he was trying to say. He shouldered his way through the doorway of the pub, undoing his jacket and easing the white muffler until it hung loosely.

  ‘Just half a pint,’ he said to the barmaid. His voice was hoarse and his throat slightly sore. He took the glass from her, sucking at the froth and taking a mouthful of rich brown beer, feeling it slip down his throat and soothe the rawness.

  ‘You’d better watch yourself, young man. Speaking out like that could see you out of work. One of the Socialist League, are you?’

  Tom knew the voice, low and measured and thoughtful but it was a long time since he had last heard it. He did not turn his head, just took a sip before saying. ‘I belong to nothing, Mr Wheeler, and my business is none of yours.’

  Bob Wheeler laughed. ‘Two half pints, please. You’ll have another, won’t you, Tom? Revolution is thirsty work.’

  Tom turned. ‘Hardly revolution, Mr Wheeler, and aye, I’ll have another drink.’ The man had aged, he thought. His hair was now quite grey, his face thinner and his skin was dry and deeply lined.

  ‘Let’s sit down?’ Bob waved towards a booth in the corner.

  The pub was quiet but then there weren’t many with money for beer these days, as I’ve just been saying, thought Tom ironically. The lights were muted and the curtains at the windows were drab and uneven though the table they moved to was spotless. Tom’s glass left a wet ring.

  ‘You remember me then, do you?’ Bob Wheeler said.

  ‘I remember when you used to visit Archie Manon.’

  Bob nodded and brought out his pipe, filling and lighting it while they sat in silence. He had been waiting to speak to Tom, waiting since he had received Sarah’s letter asking him to keep an eye. There had been little for him to do so far but if tonight was anything to go by this lad would need a bit of a rein on him, a bit of steering or no pit would touch him. He would be marked down as an agitator, a trouble-maker as his cousin had been. He sucked at his pipe looking over at the lad as he drew on his pint. Maybe he would side-track him with union business. Tom was a good-looking boy, heavy set with intelligent blue eyes and a manner much older than his 16 years. Oh yes, Tom Ryan, there’s not much I don’t know about you, my lad, he thought, and I daresay rather more than you know yourself.

  He smiled to himself at the tone of Sarah’s letter; it had been urgent and worried. Well, let’s see what we can do about it all, eh? And he shifted in his seat, pleased to be involved again with Archie’s family, pleased to be able to pay off his debt but perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps it was because he was lonely that he was prepared to become interested in this young man with the jutting chin. He had spoken well, there was no doubting that and he had caught the men in his hands, something that was hard to achieve.

  ‘So, how many points did you make tonight, then?’ Bob asked.

  Tom looked confused; he had been thinking of Davy and the night they had sat here and had overheard the group who were going to duff up Don. It seemed an age ago.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Two main ones, I suppose.’ He sat back on the seat and looked at Bob.

  ‘That’s what I reckon, lad.’ He acknowledged Tom’s look of surprise. ‘Oh yes, I was there, a union official should know what the members are getting up to! It was good, lad, but leave it at one point each meeting and only up it to two if you must. People don’t remember a great deal, you know.’

  Tom leaned forward, his brows lowering, his face interested. He was going to learn from this man tonight and they talked then until closing-time and on some more in Bob’s house.

  It was strange, Tom felt, walking into the small two up two down that Archie used to visit; that he had visited the night before he had killed himself. He wondered whether Archie had sat here as they were doing, round the kitchen table with the fire glowing in the grate, the kettle heating on the range. The table was covered with a heavy wool cloth with darker tassels which caught on Tom’s thighs as he sat down. A jug of beer frothed between them and Bob poured them each a mug.

  ‘It’ll keep us going until the kettle’s boiled,’ Bob laughed and Tom nodded and looked at the photographs on the wall to the right of the dresser which had only a few plates propped on the shelves. A man and a woman looking stiff in Victorian dress peered down at them and Tom could see the likeness between Bob and the man.

  He pointed and asked, ‘Is that your da then?’

  Bob craned round and nodded. ‘Yes, it is. He was a good man. Bought this house, though it took a lot to do it. He was a pitman, Tom, though I never was; I went into the office.’

  ‘Me da was a pitman an’ all,’ Tom said tracing the weave of the wool cloth on the table. Bob knew already. He had done some ferreting about, as he had told Sarah, and found out quite a bit about Tom’s background, about Barney Grant.

  ‘I know, lad,’ he said. ‘I know that Barney Grant was a good face-worker, a good pitman.’

  Tom sat up, his eyes eager. ‘You knew me da then, did you?’

  ‘No, not exactly but I knew of him.’ He had found some of Barney
’s mates, those who had been in the pits with him; joined up with him. He’d found them through the union records and they had wanted to talk but mostly about the war and so he had let them, listening as they spoke of Ypres, which they called Wipers. They told him of the salient which guzzled up lives like a bloody great pig and the waterlogged trenches that never moved forwards. They told him too of the tunnels, one hundred or so feet deep, which the big nobs, as they called the Generals as they spat into the gutter, had thought were a good idea.

  One of Barney’s friends explained that the idea was to blow the Germans up. He was a cripple of 35 who had broken his back in the pits in ’25. Survived that bloody mess, he had hissed, to lose me back in the pits; like that Barney, you know, but Bob did not know and had said so looking along the mean streets which converged on to the corner where they were all standing. The man had shaken his head in disgust. They needed miners, you see, he had sneered, miners to carve out the tunnels, build up the shafts and then lay the charges beneath the German front-lines so what did they do, they took us off the surface, didn’t they, brought us down into the clay and put us to work, like bloody rats in a trap again.

  They wanted to shift the Germans back off the salient, the man had grunted as Bob frowned, and they couldn’t do it from the top so we crept along beneath them, quiet as bloody mice because they were tunnelling too. We lived down there, one of the other men explained. I can still hear the pumps as they kept the water out he had said with a shudder, but not the dampness, so you still coughed and your skin looked white in the lights but at least they had light and electric they were too. The other men nodded and one said that it was grand what could be done when the nobs wanted it enough, while the other cursed and became restless.

  Bob had passed round Woodbines and brought them back on to the subject and learned how the men had lived and worked down there until the tunnels were long enough and deep enough and the poor buggers above them had been blown to bits. Went up like a bairn’s mud pie kicked by a horse, the cripple had said, but Barney Grant didn’t see it, did he. He was killed when the bloody ceiling fell in two weeks before. The man had hunched himself forward in his wooden wheelchair and stabbed a finger at Bob. Gone all the way from our pits, he had said, to die in a bloody frog’s. They hadn’t told Barney’s missus, of course, not that she was his real missus but you know what we mean and Bob had nodded and he remembered their faces even now as they had walked away from him, not wanting a drink, just wanting a job. He had watched them as they walked down the street, all but the one who had told him the most. He was being pushed by his mates. They had all been at Ypres together; they were all out of work together.

  He sighed and put his beer down, moving past Tom to the bread-tin, bringing out a loaf and some cheese from the dresser.

  ‘Have a Scotch,’ he said to Tom, hoping that he would not ask but knowing that he would.

  ‘No thanks, I never touch it,’ replied Tom. ‘Tell me about me da.’ His face was serious, his eyes steady.

  ‘Have some cheese.’ Bob cut some bread and passed it over on the point of the knife. He moved a plate to the lad and some cheese. ‘Tell me, when are you going to start your painting again?’

  But Tom did not eat his cheese, did not answer Bob, so, in the end, the older man sat back in his chair and told Tom about his da. About his life as a pitman, about his marrers who had been with him until his death. Tom sat quietly while the fire dwindled and the kettle puffed its lid gently up and down. Silence fell between the men and Tom thought of his mother and knew that he would never tell her that Barney had not seen the sky when he died.

  The hours passed as they sat at the table, the older man and the young one talking of Barney, of Betsy, Annie and Grace. Of Don and Albert, of the pits and what could be done. Bob had known Davy, known his thoughts and he grew now to know Tom’s.

  Tom heaped his bread with cheese as early morning came; some crumbled and fell and he picked each bit up, pressing it against his finger then sucking. It was a sharp salty taste and went well with the beer, and then the tea which they made an hour later. His muscles felt loose and he was leaning easily back in his chair. He must remember to tell Don how God had been made man; he would appreciate that, would that canny lad.

  It was three when he reached for his jacket and shrugged himself into it. The next day he’d be for it with Grace; she’d be cold at his hangover when he came into the library after the shift to read up on Van Gogh.

  ‘It’s his colour, his fragmented impressionism,’ he explained to Bob as he left his house. ‘That’s what I like. The life in his brushwork.’ And Bob told him that he should not be wielding a putter’s shovel alongside a palette knife.

  ‘Grace says that he paints as though he has one of her migraines,’ replied Tom as he waved to Bob from the street. ‘I’ve got to stay in the pits. It’s just something I’ve got to do for now but me mam’s sorting out a studio so that’s going to make it grand.’

  As he walked back through the streets to May’s, Tom pulled his jacket round him and shivered but it was not the cold, it was the thought of the black pit waiting for him.

  Betsy lay beside Joe in the double bed that she had shared with Archie. She was naked beside him, his hand lay on her breast, it felt cold and damp. She could still feel his weight on her as he had thrust his body into hers, kissed her with thin lips, his breath on her face, his tongue probing her mouth. She had closed her eyes and thought of her clean white room above, her patchwork quilt which would be too small for this bed and about her son who needed a studio; which he would now have.

  CHAPTER 19

  Annie was relieved that Sarah was coming with her to Newcastle Hospital for her first day. They drove in on roads lined with fields and copses which slowly merged into the spacious houses of the suburbs and then into streets lined with terraces clenched tight against clumps of factories which belched black smoke. Gulls wheeled over the hospital as they approached, flying in from the docks. The sky was lighter over there, as it always was by the sea, Annie thought, remembering the call of the gulls and the cold of the sea as it had dragged the sand from beneath her feet.

  Sarah stopped the car at the entrance to the tall redbrick building. A statue of Queen Victoria looked over them to the town and the bedding plants had been cleared from around the plinth as it was September.

  ‘So,’ said Sarah as the engine jumped, then died. ‘So one day they will put up a plaque saying that on September 1932 at two-thirty in the afternoon Nurse Manon began her career.’ She laughed and laid her leather-gloved hand on Annie’s arm.

  Annie sat back, feeling the leather-seamed seat, seeing the dark brown wood of the dashboard, the pot-pourri that hung in muslin from a knob and which Sarah said would trick you into thinking the Morris was a new car with new smells. She remembered picking the oily lavender and the rose petals which they had then dried, together with the herbs.

  ‘You’ll feed the hens then, Sarah?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sarah nodded. ‘And sell the eggs, taking the money towards Don. But I’d far rather send it to you, my dear. Remember that you get no pay for the first quarter and then it’s only thirty shillings a month.’ She was pulling her gloves from her hands, finger by finger.

  ‘I’m fine. I’ve saved enough from the job and the patients’ collection means that I can manage.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ urged Sarah.

  The side entrance, where they had been instructed to assemble was signposted and Sarah’s footsteps were brisk as they walked quickly past the trimmed lawns, down the path alongside the long-windowed building until they were there. The door was closed and Annie felt the same trembling, the same tightness in her stomach that had come on her first day of school. She looked at Sarah.

  ‘Does this remind you of something?’ Their eyes met and they smiled. But it was not the same, Annie knew. Today she was to begin her freedom.

  ‘I’ll be home on my first day off then, Sarah, if that’s all right.’ She leant fo
rward and kissed her and Sarah’s hand came up to her shoulder and held her close for just a moment and then she was gone.

  Inside, the hall was lined with white tiles and there was a smell of disinfectant. Eight girls sat on a bench in the corridor and there was space for two more. Annie sat down and smiled at the girl next to her.

  ‘I’m Annie Manon,’ she said. ‘From Wassingham.’

  The girl, who was sallow-skinned and thin, returned her smile. ‘I’m Julie Briggs from Whitley Bay and I’m scared to death.’

  The girls laughed, all along the line, and leaned forward; words came slowly and then laughter joined them. Julie was 18 too, she told Annie, and had come over by train. She was the last of her family to leave home and the only girl. Her brothers were fishermen and married.

  Sarah pulled on her gloves as she walked back to the car, skirting the lawns she did not really see and people who nodded and she did not acknowledge. The drive home seemed too quiet and too long whereas the three years with Annie had disappeared with a speed she would not have thought possible. She would not cry, could not cry while she was driving, but the loss of the child who had filled her life would always be hard to bear, too hard to speak of, even to Val. She wondered how she would fill her evenings, her weekends until that day off, the day Annie came home.

  There would be no more hot cocoa at the end of each day with Annie, no more of her friends home for tea. Would Tom still come with Grace, or Don, now that Annie was not here?

  She put the car into third gear to take the corner which led out from Newcastle. Her ward, her child was free now and she must be on her guard never to restrict that freedom.

  Julie and Annie shared a room in the nurses’ home and they prodded the beds and felt the stiffness of the blankets, then walked down green-painted corridors and stairs until they found Sister Tutor as they had been instructed. She was in a dark navy uniform and cap and wore a frown which looked as though it was never wiped away.