After the Storm (13 page)

He was thinner these days, so maybe it was as well that May, Betsy’s sister, asked him more often. Poor bairn, at least his aunty fed him up good and proper, brought a bit of colour into his cheeks, and he liked being with May’s boys, especially Davy. He was older than Tom but good with him. She bit her lip as she thought of the two more in his class who had gone down with consumption. She’d heard Betsy telling Ma Gillow in the shop last week and the anxiety she had felt then clutched at her again. She rubbed her face violently to chase the thought away. Yes, he must go more often to his aunty, much more often; she would make sure of it because Tom must be kept safe. She reached for the towel which was already damp after Betsy.

‘Get down here, Annie, for God’s sake,’ she heard Betsy call and leant against the basin, glad of the interruption, a new train of thought.

Thank God it was for the last time; this match, these pies. Next Saturday she’d be able to go to Grace’s to read her comics. She’d take Tom too and Grace would be sure to share her liquorice with them, she always did. Grace was lovely that way. Tom would buy some pink mice too, now that he’d taken over from her on the manure round. She was glad she’d passed it over; at 13 she was almost a woman and muck sales didn’t fit in with that. She straightened herself and undid the plait that she now slept with every night. Yes, there were some waves, not many but a few. She put her shoulders back and looked at her chest but there were still only the smallest of bumps. Grace was enormous and even her shadow wobbled when she walked.

She hoped Tom wouldn’t cram all the mice into one pocket again. They had come out in bits last time, all over Grace’s floor. Her da had roared with laughter and given them money for another two pennyworth. He was never cross, Grace’s da wasn’t. Even when his stump was swollen and new after his leg had come off in the coal fall he had still smiled but there had been new deep lines round his mouth.

It was strange when he lost his leg, she thought. When the siren went Betsy and me were washing and never thought it was him. You’re always frightened it will be someone you know but you never really think it will be. The siren had gone on and on that morning and they’d seen the women pass the door, shawls
over their heads but without their usual faces. They were blank and empty and there had been Grace’s ma but she hadn’t seen them. The women never saw anything until they knew their man were safe, or not.

It was the week after they had been to the beck and seen the mating but it wasn’t warm then, or did it just seem as though it wasn’t. She tried to remember but could not.

‘Will you get down here, girl.’ Again she heard Bet call.

‘Coming, Bet,’ she shouted. ‘Keep your ’air on,’ she added but more quietly; no good looking for a clout she thought.

She rubbed her teeth with the flannel. Bye, they’d had some good laughs, her and Grace, even after Georgie and Don had become too old for the gang although it wasn’t quite the same with just the three of them. She thought of the time her da had bought a load of manure off Sid at the allotment and come home tutting at the way some of the neighbourhood children earned themselves a few extra pence. Sid had been her muck man, selling it off for her but she was the one with the shovel heaving up steaming blobs from the road and Beauty’s stable. Her da would have killed her if he’d known.

She squeezed the flannel dry and hung it over the edge of the basin, then tried to find a dry bit on the towel which was worn to a thread. It hurt her chapped hands. She envied Don away in Yorkshire, galloping across the wide moors he had told her about. It must be good to be a boy, to get away.

It was strange where her da found the money to drink so much, and Betsy too now, breathing heavy breath into her face all day. It made her repulsive and what’s more she didn’t half clout now. At least Da never became slobbery, just quiet, deathly quiet as though there was a wall drawn up around him. She sat on the edge of the bath, first putting the towel beneath her, the iron was cold enough for her to stick to, she grinned. What did he do in that study all day she wondered, except booze.

He had started going in there when ‘Churchill’s returned to the gold standard,’ he had groaned. She remembered him coming in and saying that. It sounded so silly, what the hell was a gold standard? Let some silly old fool return to where ever he wanted, she thought, I’m making me tea if you don’t mind. Then he had rushed off to see the glorious and good Mr Wheeler who she had shortened to God but that was no loss
because he was never in the shop now, Annie thought, her right foot arching and stretching. Good for slim ankles Grace had said.

‘For the last time, get down them stairs or I’ll belt you.’ The call came louder this time and she went down now, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

Archie heard her as she passed the study. He threw down the pen with trembling hands, his letter to Joe finished and took another drink, feeling the heat as it burned down his throat. The trembling improved. His shoulders hunched as he pored over the figures yet again but the answer was no different – he was finished.

Albert had been quite right to bow out of the partnership a year ago, no point in them both going down but it still grated, especially the look of supreme pleasure that had for one brief moment lighted Albert’s face when he had sat back and listened as Archie told him he was near to ruin and needed the bolster of the partnership more than ever. Albert had shaken his head and said that he was sorry, he must think of himself and that he was sure Archie would not keep him to an arrangement which would destroy both their father’s children. That would mean total shame for the family name.

Archie remembered wanting to put his hands round Albert’s neck and squeezing until the veins bulged on his forehead and his bloodshot eyes blazed. But the man was right, of course; it was logical that one of them should survive.

This year, 1926, had been the crunch for the business, that and Churchill’s gold standard budget of the year before. The General Strike, though, that was what had ended it for him. It might have been over in a few days for the rest of the workers but the miners stayed out for months. They starved, so he starved and it had been little better when they had returned to work, for wages had been even less, if indeed there had been a pit left open to take the men.

And Bob had said last night that this was a picnic compared to what was to come. What was it he had said? Archie gulped at his drink as he tried to organise his mind, it was difficult for him to hold the thread of his thoughts these days; he knew it was the drink but was glad because he did not want to be able to think coherently. Now, Bob had said that Europe, including Britain, would be in trouble if they had to repay their American war
debts. That our economic well-being depended on America’s economic stability. If that went, debts would be recalled, world trade would slump, industry would collapse and he seemed to sniff that this could be a possibility. He was usually right, but then it really wouldn’t matter, would it? ‘Would it?’ he said aloud and smiled, cradling his glass in his hand, feeling the cut patterns in the crystal. He finished his drink, picked up the letter addressed to Joe and smiled again. He ran his finger round the rim of the empty glass and it rang, a low continuous note. He withdrew the stopper of the matching decanter and poured a large drink and pondered his success and failures.

A good thing to come out of the last few years had been the football team and through that had begun his friendship with Bob. Sport had worked as a morale booster during the war when, well behind the lines, on yellow gorze-flecked land, his platoon had kicked a ball and forgotten for a moment the hell and concentrated on a victory of smaller proportions. It had worked here too. He had approached Bob with a plan and the men Bob sent had warmed to the idea of victory also. The team had become important to them and had pushed the lack of a job into the background for an hour or two and the pies he provided had kept their hunger at bay for just as long.

His friendship with Bob had grown through their efforts to set up the matches and it had satisfied a hunger of his own. A hunger for conversation of a kind he had known before and during the war. Every week they met either here or at Bob’s home the other side of Wassingham and discussed things other than the declining money in the till or what he wanted for tea, as Betsy increasingly insisted on calling it. Almost as though she was challenging him. Into the small hours they would talk about world affairs and matters which took him beyond the confines of his life. And so Bob had kept his starvation at bay, he thought wryly, but now he could no longer help the men with their’s, for there was no money in the till to pay for the pies which were served at the end of each game and he, Archie Manon, felt that now was as good a time as any to hand over to someone else.

The whisky was slipping down smoothly now and his hands were quite steady. Might just as well drink the remaining stock as pour it down the drain he thought sourly, aware that his
thoughts were becoming increasingly disjointed, his movements more clumsy, but that was comforting.

He looked at his son’s photograph set in a wooden frame standing behind the decanter. I wanted so much for you, Don, he thought. A racehorse owner, not a stable lad and so much more for Annie. A better education, more opportunities to see another life, to move from here and make something of herself. It’s all been such a waste of time. He saw that his glass was empty again and refilled it and sat, elbows resting on the table until even bitter thoughts became blurred and slipped away before they could dig in and spiral into his brain.

Annie knocked on the door and, turning the handle, entered. He was just sitting there, his face towards her, his eyes fixed on where she was but not seeing her.

‘Da,’ she began, then louder, ‘Da, Ted’s come for you, they’re waiting outside to go to the field. Betsy called up to tell you.’

He frowned with the effort of concentration and leaning forward said clearly and distinctly:

‘I can do nothing more for you, Annie. I have nothing that will help you make your way in this world except to say, for God’s sake, girl, marry above you and get out of here. Never marry down.’

Violence made him spit and Annie watched the bubble rest on the shine of his desk and wondered how much he’d had and it wasn’t even breakfast.

They heard Betsy call up from the basement door and Annie said, ‘Come on, Da, let’s find you a piece of bread before you go.’ She moved before him down the stairs, impatient with this man and his never-ending misery, but knotted up inside because of it.

Betsy stood by the brass fender which no longer shone, with arms folded as Annie cut a hunk of bread and handed it to her father. He passed out of the door, taking his coat off the hook as he went, looking at neither of them, and Annie thought that once he would rather have been seen dead than in clothes that were as torn and dirty as that coat was. The tea was stewed and coated her teeth with bitterness.

‘He’s been at it again,’ she said and Betsy nodded but was too tired to care. She pressed her hand to her breastbone, her indigestion was bad again she thought.

‘Come on girl, give us a hand with these pies or they’ll never get cooked and hand me some of that magnesia while you’re at it.’

She was mixing the pastry, and flour clouded the table as she pummelled, her sleeves rolled above her elbows. She pointed with a flour-covered finger. ‘For God’s sake, next to the salt.’

Annie reached up and passed it over, tying the apron round her waist. It was warm in here.

‘’Ere, take over from me while I get this down me.’ Betsy moved to the sink with the magnesia.

Annie plunged her hands into the mixture. She hated the way the lard slipped through her fingers, then clung to her as it became pastry.

‘Though God knows it’s the wives and bairns who need it as much as the men but who are that lot to give a monkey’s.’ Betsy elbowed her to one side and the bitterness in her voice penetrated Annie’s thoughts of Grace and the new dress, the one she’d worn to school on the last day of term. Must be nice to have men in the family who were in work. Grace’s brothers were all in the same pit as Georgie, Grace said.

‘Still,’ Betsy continued, ‘if they don’t have the men to feed for one lunchtime at least it’s one more helping for the kids.’

‘But not a hot slice of meat and potatoe pie though,’ replied Annie, as she washed the carrots and potatoes under freezing water, then chopped them. ‘You’re right, Betsy, it’s a bloody disgrace.’

The clout knocked her to one side. ‘Don’t swear. You’re nothing but a bairn and bairns don’t swear.’

The back door opened and Tom walked in. Annie knew that he’d heard the crack as Betsy’s hand had caught her head. ‘Not growing another cauliflower, are we, Annie?’ He was smiling but his eyes were angry as he turned her head, lifted her hair and checked. ‘All right, bonny lass.’ He turned and glared.

‘You shouldn’t do it, Mam.’ But Betsy ignored him. Annie ruffled his hair, her ears ringing. He was nearly as tall as she was now.

‘Go and sit by the fire and get warm. We’ll be out taking these little bits of heaven to the men soon.’

He grinned and passed her the towel to dry her hands, then walked over to the table. His jacket was torn at the pocket and his scarf was too thin to be of much use. It was so discoloured
that its stripes were indistinct. His boots clumped as he crossed the floor.

He stuck his fingers in the bowl and rubbed it round and licked it.

‘Bring those tats here, pet,’ Betsy called to Annie. It was her way of saying sorry, Annie knew. Tom winked at her. ‘The women will make do with their smithering of dripping and be none the worse for it,’ Betsy continued.

‘But …’ Annie retorted.

‘And take your jacket off, Tom,’ Betsy called to him. ‘You’ll not feel the benefit when you go out. And you Annie just get done with your mithering, there’s nought you and I can do about it.’ She wiped her hands down her apron which was stretched taut round her body which seemed to get fatter by the day, Annie thought.