A Sovereign for a Song Read online

  ‘He ought to be more careful what he says about people. His loose mouth’s just got our John a bloody good hiding.’

  Enid’s flabby features sagged even further. She sat down heavily on a kitchen chair and groaned. ‘I got here as fast as I could.’

  Emma put a comforting hand on the perspiring woman’s shoulder. ‘It would have been a lot worse if you hadn’t.’

  A few moments later their father appeared. ‘What’s all this about, Enid?’

  She repeated the story.

  ‘Well, it’s a bit late to come telling us all this, like. I’ve just given him a belting he won’t get over for a week.’

  ‘Well, I’m right sorry, Arthur, but Alf didn’t realize until he came into the kitchen and saw the peel on the table. I wish you hadn’t hit him.’

  ‘Hit him!’ exclaimed their father. ‘I’ve nearly bloody killed him just like your Alf expected me to when he told me. And now he sends you round to make excuses for him. Bugger off home, Enid, and tell your man he’s a liar and a coward, and he’d better watch what he says in future, or he’ll get the next pasting. And tell him to get a fresh set of marrers while you’re at it, or I will.’

  ‘Well, Arthur,’ said Enid, stung to a retort, ‘Alf didn’t tell you to beat the living daylights out of John, that was your idea. Happen you won’t be so hasty in future.’

  ‘Aw, get away home, woman,’ repeated their father.

  Enid left. Deflated, he slowly settled himself into his armchair. When their mother came downstairs, he met her look of anguish and reproach with one of defiance.

  ‘Well? What the hell am I supposed to do when a grown man tells me he’s had stuff stolen by me own son?’

  ‘You could have listened to your own son, Arthur. Even a criminal gets a chance to speak in his own defence.’

  ‘Aye, well, what’s a kid going to say? He’s going to deny it, whether he’s done it or not. Who’s going to take a kid’s word against a grown man? Start doing that, and you’ll have them doing aught they bloody well like.’

  The atmosphere was leaden. Their father maintained a moody, sullen silence while their mother quietly gathered warm water and towel, and a clean shirt for John, and went upstairs. Emma studiously averted her eyes and avoided her father’s gaze, but Ginny returned him a black and significant stare with an arrogance that matched his own.

  ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ he grunted.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  He picked up one of John’s boots and threw it at her, but it fell short. The aggression had gone. He loved to feel himself in the right, and Ginny sensed that being so patently in the wrong weakened him in his own eyes. She felt herself safe from attack for today, at least.

  ‘Well, look at something else, or you’ll get a taste o’ what he got.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose so,’ she said, ‘you’re good at that.’

  ‘You’ll screw your head off if you twist it much further,’ remarked Ginny, watching John as he stood in front of the fire the following morning and looked over his shoulder into the mirror, trying to get a good view of his back.

  ‘I know whose head I’d like to screw off. Just look at the bloody mess he’s made o’ my back, man. It looks as if it’s covered in tramlines. An’ I’ll bet you anything you like he’ll expect me to be at work tomorrow as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, so I don’t think I’ll take your bet,’ she answered, stepping up to the mirror as he moved away, and brushing the long black hair she had just unravelled from its thick plait.

  ‘Have you seen it, though?’ He displayed his bruised back, and waited for her comment. When none was forthcoming, he went on, ‘A day at work nearly killing yourself and when you come home, you get this. I can’t work tomorrow in this state.’

  Ginny shrugged helplessly. ‘There’s not a lot I can do about it, like.’

  John started putting on his shirt. ‘Well, there’s something I can do about it. I’ll get myself a berth and ship out.’

  ‘No,’ said their mother. ‘A life at sea is harder than the pits in a lot of ways. You’d be away from home from one year’s end to the next. You could get stuck on a ship for months at a stretch with a skipper who makes your life a misery. Some of them are real brutes.’

  ‘Sounds like home from home,’ said John.

  ‘Well, whatever’s happened here, there’s certainly a lot worse things happen at sea – it’s an old saying and a true one.’

  ‘But I hate the pit, and I hate me dad, and I can’t see how anything could be worse than the two o’ them put together.’

  ‘Your dad doesn’t like it either, and hewing with a pick and shovel is the hardest job in the pit, you know that. Your dad’s working in feet of water just now and the coal’s hard getting – but he’s hardly ever lost a shift, and he brings the money home. It’s because of his hard work that you’ve never gone without, any of you.’

  ‘Aye, and we’ve never gone without a good hiding either, and neither have you. “Mair kicks than ha’pennies,” like our Ginny says.’

  Their mother sighed. ‘Ginny’s got too much to say. Life was never easy for your dad, either. He was beaten black and blue by his parents.’

  John’s jaw was set in a line of rebellion and resentment. ‘Aye, well, he’s carrying on the family tradition then. So will you stop making excuses for him, Mam? There’s plenty of other men round here work hard but they don’t all ill-treat their families like he does. Look at her,’ he nodded towards Sally, ‘double pneumonia at four year old, because the old swine comes home drunk and chucks you all out into the pouring rain. And don’t pretend that wasn’t the cause of it, because we all know it was. If it’s hard for him, he makes it a bloody sight harder for everybody that has to live with him.’

  ‘Look, John,’ pleaded their mother, ‘your dad won’t touch you again. It was a genuine mistake, and I know he’s sorry.’

  ‘You know more than me then. He hasn’t told me he’s sorry. He hasn’t told our Sal, either.’

  Ginny saw a change in John, they all saw it. The John of the day before yesterday had been easy, soft, pliable. Today’s John was hard, unyielding and closed to argument. Their mother had no more answers for him. And it wasn’t likely that their father would tell John he was sorry, they all knew that. His pride forbade it, as well as his notions of what was conducive to good discipline – plenty of physical chastisement to be administered by him and accepted without question or protest by them. He was out, taking refuge from his family at the club, and was likely to be lying low there until the events of the previous day had begun to recede from the family consciousness.

  Emma looked up from where she knelt tying Lizzie’s boots, a pair of battered but well polished hand-me-downs which had once been her own.

  ‘Come on, John,’ she said. ‘Mam cannot help it. Get your tie on, and let’s get these bairns to chapel, give her an hour’s peace.’

  Ginny saw a look pass between her mother and Emma. As if they understood the impossibility of deflecting John from his new purpose by argument, they changed the topic altogether.

  ‘Go on,’ said their mother. ‘Get your jacket on and comb your hair. Go out for a blow while it’s fine. Our Sally’s not fit yet.’

  ‘It’s a bonny day. We’ll maybes have a walk in the woods by the river on the way back.’ Emma had Lizzie and young Arthur ready, and as soon as Ginny had replaited her hair and laced her boots, the five were off, muffled up against the cold.

  The door of the tiny, stone-built chapel, which advertised itself proudly as ‘Primitive Methodist New Connexion’, was wide open. Mr Jackson and his wife were already seated in one of the polished oak pews. Enid turned and gave them a nod, but her husband studiously failed to notice their arrival. Emma ushered the children into the pew in front of them, and John and Ginny followed.

  ‘I wonder what the sermon’s going to be?’ said John. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighb
our? That might make a good one.’ The contemptuous tone, intended to demean and loud enough for everybody to hear, startled Emma and made Ginny smile. Christian forbearance this was not. As she turned to face him, Ginny had the satisfaction of seeing Mr Jackson’s face flush red like a beacon. Enid bit her lip, and Ginny gave her a reassuring look before glancing at John. His lips were twisted into a grimace of bitter sarcasm.

  After a sermon which contained nothing to make Mr Jackson uneasy, nor anything which could give satisfaction to John, they went for a stroll by Annsdale Beck, a tributary of the River Wear, and walked towards Old Annsdale. About a dozen streets and a Norman church, the ancient mother village was surrounded by farms and lay two or three miles from the colliery, and maybe six or seven from Durham City.

  ‘I love this time of year, a chill in the air and the trees red and gold,’ said Emma, as they dawdled along the thickly wooded beck-side, kicking up fallen leaves. She stopped suddenly and turned to John. ‘Don’t go to sea.’

  He watched Lizzie and Arthur running on in front for some moments. ‘I’ve a good mind to. I’m sick of the way things are in our house. The way he treats us all, to begin with. It’s bad enough to take a belting for something you’ve done, but to get one on the word of that blind old fool Jackson, without even getting the chance to go and face him with his lies is more than I can stomach.’

  ‘But it’s worse for Mam than it is for us, and she puts up with it,’ Emma pleaded.

  ‘She’s got no choice. She’s got bairns, no money, and no family to go to. I have got a choice, if I can get a job away from here.’

  ‘It’s a pity we’ve licked the Boers. You could have joined up and gone to South Africa to give them a hiding.’ Ginny’s eyes sparkled with the thrill of adventure.

  ‘Yes, and maybe get killed, like the blacksmith’s lad,’ said Emma.

  ‘Well, there’s other places. You hear of people going to Virginia, Australia, Canada, all over the place. But you never hear tell of any of ’em coming back,’ said Ginny.

  ‘But just think about poor Mam, left behind,’ urged Emma. ‘She’d miss you, so would I. Especially our Sal. Look how upset she’s been since yesterday. It’s made her poorly. Didn’t you notice?’ She put her small hand on his sleeve, and looked into his face, brown eyes earnest. ‘And it’s not only that, John. Mam needs that bit of money you bring in. She says it makes all the difference having two men working, instead of only one.’

  ‘Oh, well I don’t know,’ said John, affecting indifference, but smiling at the flattering phrase ‘two men’. He paused. ‘Well, maybe I won’t go away. Or if I do, I’ll send home as much money as I can afford.’

  ‘If I were a man, I’d go away!’ cried Ginny. ‘I’d go away and make my fortune, and come back rolling in money, and lord it over everybody that ever lorded it over me. Especially that old bugger Arthur Wilde.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘You’d better not let the old so-and-so hear you, or you’ll cop it. Think what Mam would say – “that’s your father you’re talking about”. Don’t go, John.’

  ‘No, don’t run away to sea, Johnny. If they run out of food they kill the cabin boys and eat ’em!’ Ginny bared her teeth, and snapped in his direction, as if to take a lump out of him. ‘So don’t go to sea, Johnny. Stay here where you’re safe – well, barring a regular belting, that is.’

  Chapter 2

  ‘Do you think Maria’s ever going to get better, Mam?’ Ginny stood by the kitchen window, the bright autumn sun hot upon her shoulders as she ironed Maria’s washing, boiled, possed, dolly-blued and starched into brilliance by her mother. Maria Jude and her husband lived with Mam Smith, Maria’s mother, a couple of streets away in Snowdrop Terrace.

  ‘I don’t know, pet, but they’ll need their washing, anyway. Hurry up with the ironing, and we’ll get it aired and take it back this afternoon. Our Em’ll lend a hand if you’re getting tired, or I’ll take over.’

  ‘No, I’m all right.’ Ginny bent over the kitchen table, padded with a thickly folded blanket and a well-scorched old sheet, and set to again with a will, stopping occasionally to put finished items on the clotheshorse to air by the fire.

  Her mother was kneeling on the clippy mat, kneading half a stone of dough in the heavy clay panchion. After giving it a final pummelling, she covered it with a tea towel, and set it to rise before the fire. ‘I know one thing, though, they deserve better luck than they’ve got. I don’t know what Martin’s going to do if she dies, or her mother either, come to that. He’s worshipped the ground she walks on since they were both fifteen years old.’ She paused. ‘When he was eighteen, he was crushed by a roof fall at the pit. I think it must have broken his back. It was six weeks before anybody knew whether he’d walk again, never mind work. But she stuck by him. She’d have married him even if they’d had to live on the parish, if he’d let her. There’s not many lasses would have done that. That’s for better or for worse for you. It’s a miracle he was well enough to dance at their wedding, and a right bonny pair of lovebirds they were.’

  ‘I remember that, and now she’s got consumption – about the worst luck you could have, I should think.’ Ginny thought for a while, then with a rare flash of insight said, ‘You know, Mam, I think that’s the most important thing about a man, not how clever he is, or how hard working, but what’s his luck?’

  ‘There’s a lot of truth in that, Ginny,’ her mother laughed. ‘The secret of living a charmed life is to be born lucky. Well, I never had much luck, so I hope you may do better. Still,’ she added quickly, superstitious enough not to want to tempt providence, ‘there’s plenty a sight worse off than us. We’ve a comfortable home, a good fire, and enough to eat.’

  ‘Aye, and there’s some a sight better off an’ all!’ exclaimed Ginny. ‘And I’m all for being among ’em. What I’ve noticed is that it’s the best people who usually have the rottenest luck – like Martin, and you, Mam!’

  ‘Don’t you start criticizing your dad again,’ her mother warned so Ginny held her peace. But the notion of luck had captured her imagination, set itself into her mind as a hard, diamond-bright pole-star.

  By two o’clock Ginny was packing the carefully aired and folded linen into the laundry basket. ‘I think that’s everything.’

  ‘Here, I’ll have a walk on with you, help you carry it,’ offered John, just up and dressed after the luxury of a late sleep on his alternate Saturday off.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t drop it in the dirt,’ their mother warned. ‘I don’t want all that work to do again.’

  ‘Who is it, Ma?’ Ginny heard Maria call from the front room, as she and John knocked at the open kitchen door of eleven Snowdrop Terrace. A fire roared up the chimney, so that the place was warm in spite of the ventilation.

  ‘It’s Ginny back with the washing, pet,’ a plump woman, with greying brown hair and a world-weary expression answered. She turned to Ginny and clucked a not entirely convincing disapproval. ‘Why, bonny lass, it’s all dried and ironed. I told your mam I’d do that!’

  Ginny was quick to claim some credit. ‘It’s all right. We put them out for a good blow, so the drying wasn’t much bother, and I did most of the ironing.’

  ‘Aye, well, I hope you’ll get your reward in Heaven,’ she sighed, ‘ ’cause there’s none down here.’

  ‘There is,’ said John, ‘and Mam says she’s not forgotten how many times you’ve helped us. So how’s Maria?’

  ‘She says she feels better, but I think she’s worse if anything,’ said Martin, who was half sitting, half lying in the armchair beside the kitchen fire, with a sleeping two-year-old sprawled across his chest. ‘There’s no hope. There’s no hope, and it’s useless for us to torture ourselves by trying to hang on to any.’ He spoke in a low voice, so that Maria, in the other room, could not hear what was being said.

  She heard something. ‘Martin? What are you talking about? Where’s the bairn?’

  ‘He’s here, bonny lass, fast asleep.’ Tall, fair and w
ell proportioned, with muscles hardened by hewing coal, Martin stood up, with the child cradled in his arms. ‘Come in and have five minutes with her,’ he invited, ‘but don’t stay much longer than that. She soon gets tired.’

  He led them in to her, and laid the child on the bed beside her. Her blue eyes looked unnaturally brilliant, her skin so white it seemed translucent, except for two pink spots over her cheekbones. Hair glinting in a shaft of sunlight, she pulled herself up to greet them. ‘Hello, Ginny, John. How do I look today, do you think?’

  ‘Like one of God’s angels, Maria.’ Ginny saw Martin stiffen and flushed, cursing her tactlessness.

  Maria smiled. ‘Not yet, I hope,’ she answered quietly, turning to feast her eyes on the sleeping child beside her. ‘Isn’t he a canny bairn, Ginny? Look at his bonny hair. As old as the century. I hope he lives to be a hundred, to see it out. My golden boy. When he’s asleep like this, I wish I’d half a dozen.’ She looked intently at little Philip’s face. His eyelids fluttered and he smiled, as if he knew what she was saying. She sighed. ‘But when he’s awake, he tires me out. I have to leave him to Mam and Martin. Maybe it’s as well I only had the one. I don’t think I’ll live to see 1903, and one’ll be enough for them to take care of if I’m with the angels sooner than I want to be.’

  Ginny shot a glance at Martin to see his eyes fill with tears. ‘Nobody’s going anywhere, lass,’ he said. ‘You’re going to get well again, and then we’ll have a dozen.’

  Maria smiled and the blue-veined lids began to close over her eyes. She lifted them again, and looked directly at Ginny.

  ‘Ginny, you’ve to have me new shoes. I’ve only had them on once, and they’ll not fit Mam. They’ll fit you like a glove.’

  ‘Shush,’ said Martin. ‘You’ll get better and wear them yourself, when I take you to the races.’

  ‘Aye, all right, Martin.’ She smiled, eyelids drooping again.

  Martin lifted the child and ushered them back into the kitchen. ‘Come on, now. She’s had enough.’