Justice Is a Woman (2 page)

the bridge into Gateshead and through the town and on into Fellburn; and there it skirted the docks and

Bog’s End, ran by the park and up Brampton Hill, past the large residential houses

standing in their own

grounds, and on through the new suburbs which were built on yet another hill, from

which could be seen

the headings of the Beulah pit and the pit village in the distance; then past the walled estate of Lord

Menton, which gave way to a stretch of open country that rose slowly upwards to Joe

Remington’s

home, the house known as Fell Rise. You couldn’t see anything of the house until you

topped the Rise

and there, in the distance, you saw what looked like a miniature church spire. Not until you were well

past the belt of trees, past a large paddock and had turned in through the iron gates and up a drive

bordered by larches, did you realise that the spire was the roof of what appeared to be a glass

observatory.

This part of the square tower rose above a number of red-tiled roofs and was enclosed in glass from

where the whole surrounding countryside could be viewed. One could imagine too that

each room on

the second floor of the house had its own separate roof for there were four lead-lined gutters running into

pipes down the front of the house. Below the deep eaves the walls were covered to almost the

ground-floor windows with wooden scrolling. All the woodwork was painted red, as was

the main door,

from which four shallow steps led down to the shingled drive.

To the left of the drive the shingle gave way to a paved courtyard, one side bordered by outhouses and

stables, the latter now used as a garage. At right angles to this were the kitchen quarters; and set deep

into the wall of the third side of the patio, in the main house, was a huge stained-glass window.

To the right of the drive the house was bordered by a narrow terrace from which two sets of steps led

down to a wide lawn. This itself was edged by the netting of a tennis court; and around the whole area

were well tended flower beds. The remainder of the seven acres of grounds lay at the

back of the house:

there was a kitchen garden, at the end of which were four long greenhouses, and a formal i7 rose garden;

then a small lake and woodland.

As David drew the car to a stop in front of the main door, Joe jumped out, then held out his two hands

to Elaine, saying, “Well, here we are! You’re home, Mrs. Remington.” He assisted her

from the car,

took her arm and escorted her to the foot of the steps; but there he pulled her to a

momentary halt and

called over his shoulder, “Be seeing you, Clan. Thanks, David.”

There was no reply from Mr. Egan, nor one from David, except that David inclined his

head towards

him, smiled and nodded.

“Must you, darling?”

“Must I what?”

They were at the top of the steps now and Elaine, smiling faintly, said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter; I suppose

it’s you.”

“Oh, you mean saying goodbye to old Clan?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean.”

“Well—’ There was a slight alteration in the expression on Joe’s face: the buoyant

breeziness faded for a

moment and his broad features became set as he stared at her before saying, and with no lightness in his

tone now, “ You don’t understand them yet; but then, you’ve got a lifetime for that. “

As he went to open the door it was almost pulled out of his hands, and they were

confronted by a small

stout woman, and when she exclaimed, “Well! well! I was up with himself and didn’t

hear you,” he

replied jovially, “Hello there, Mary. Well, here we are then.” 18 “And only just in time, I’d say; another

day and you wouldn’t have got back.”

Mary Duffy was speaking to Joe but she was looking at her new mistress, and to her she now added

politely, “I hope I see you well, ma’am, and you enjoyed your honeymoon.”

“Yes ... yes, Mrs. Duffy; thank you. Although naturally I was sorry it had to be cut short.”

“Well, there’ll be more than that cut short afore this is over, I’m thinkin’ I’m glad you’re back.” She

was looking at Joe again.

“Himself is still away up there; his legs are givin’ him gyp, an’ don’t I know it: he must have sharpened

his temper at the same time he was stropping his razor this mornin’ ‘cos he hasn’t got a civil tongue in his

head, not even for the cat.”

“Well’ Joe pushed the old woman gently in the shoulder ‘don’t tell me you can’t deal

with his temper,

you’ve had plenty of practice. The day you let him off with anything I’ll know you’re slipping.”

He turned now and looked to where his wife was ascending the stairs;

then, bending swiftly to Mary, he said, “A nice tea, China, in about twenty minutes. And I hope there’s

plenty of hot water.”

“It’s as usual.”

Mary Duffy watched young Joe, as she thought of him, running up the stairs after his

wife, and when he

had disappeared from view she did not immediately return to the kitchen quarters but

remained perfectly

still, for in her mind’s eye she was picturing a little boy descending the stairs for the i9

first time on his

own, one small hand trying to encompass the stout rails of the balustrade, while the other pushed off the

hand that would have assisted him.

The picture in her mind moved on, and she saw the boy at the age of seven standing

practically on the

spot where she was standing now, his eyes and throat full of tears, and endeavouring not to let them flow

while he waited for his mama to come down the stairs and escort him to the boarding—

school for young

gentlemen. That had been the end of one long fight and Mama had had the final word.

“Justice is a woman,” she ‘had been fond of saying. Aye, and she was right, justice was a woman, and

she had passed sentence on himself; she had made him pay for his misdeeds, more so

than if he had

stood before the final judge.

And now it was as if the years had slipped away and the past was the present, for that bit of

short—skirted humanity who had just gone up those stairs was as like his mam in face

and manner as if

she had been born again. It was strange, very strange that he should choose one like that..

Still, things were more even now. Young Joe might be like his father in lots of ways, stubborn,

self-willed, and vulnerable, aye, vulnerable, but he had one up on his father: he’d had education and he

could use his tongue; he wouldn’t have to resort to bloodies and buggers and blasts and sods to get over

what he meant, and in doing so scorch the sensitive ears of his lady wife. No, young Joe could sieve the

thoughts in his head through his zo teeth, and when they hit you they stuck in like

splinters. No, that

young madam wouldn’t have it all her own way as his mother had had, and she thanked

God for it. But

as yet he was running like hot butter all over her.

Tea, he said, in twenty minutes, China. She swung her heavy body around and walked

slowly towards

her kitchen.

Elaine had removed her outer clothes and was now taking in the sitting-room that

adjoined the bedroom,

the room Joe had said was once known as the boudoir. It still had traces of that boudoir about it, which

Elaine had already decided in her mind she would eliminate as soon as possible, for the be tasselled

velvet pelmets cut down the light from the two windows, one at the front of the house looking south, the

other set in the west wall, giving a view over the gardens. Then there was the Louis XV

suite: a very nice

framework, but the tapestry had lost all its original colour and was threadbare in parts.

Well, she would

alter that too.

“What were you saying?” She looked up at Joe as he bent down towards her and

repeated, “I was

saying, Mrs. Daydreamer, how would you like to accompany me to the floor above and

say hello to

your father-in-law?”

“Oh, Joe!” She gave a little impatient movement of her head, even while smiling at him.

“I want a bath and a change of clothes, and more than anything I want a drink.”

“Well, as I told you, tea should be up at any minute now. No; I said twenty minutes.” He looked at his

watch.

“Another ten minutes. But it isn’t tea you want, is it?” He poked his face down towards her, and when

she smiled at him with compressed lips he kissed them before straightening up, pointing his finger at her

and saying, “No drink before dinner.”

“Don’t bully me.”

Again he was bending over her; again his lips were on hers; then, holding her face gently between his

hands, he said, “Who could ever have the heart to bully you ? Persuade, coerce, flatter, beg, but not

bully.”

Gently she pressed herself from him and laid her head against the back of the couch, and, smiling at him

softly, she said, “Go and see your father. Tell him I’ll be up as soon as I’ve had a bath and changed and

had ... a sup of tea.” She mouthed the last words in an imitation of the Northern dialect.

Joe smiled happily as he left the room, hurried across the wide square landing and ran up the stairs to the

second floor, where his father had spent most of his time for the past three years. Why a man who was

suffering from severe arthritis in most of his joints should want to spend his time in this part of the house,

where the four large rooms were partly attics, was puzzling until you actually entered the rooms; then the

views from the windows provided one answer. But the main reason that kept Mike

Remington up here

most of his time was that two of the rooms were used as his workshops.

Mike had been an engineer before he became a businessman; now incapacitated, he had

returned to his

original trade. In a small way, it could be said, for he worked in wire and wood. Slowly and painfully he

created churches, houses and ships. However rough he might be with words and towards

people, he

was, and always had been, tender with wood.

The last but not the least of the attractions of the second floor was that if you had the agility to climb the

steep staircase, you had a view from an observatory that was second to none in the

county, for on a clear

day you could see beyond Fellburn to the bridges that spanned the river at Newcastle; and in the

opposite direction, away over the pit-heads, you could see the upper outline of the mighty cathedral at

Durham.

When Joe pushed open the first door on the landing he was surprised to see his father sitting by the

window that overlooked the drive, his gnarled, twisted fingers idle for once.

When the head was turned towards him, Joe said quietly, “Hello, there. What’s the

matter? Have you

decided to go on strike before the others? You can be blacklisted for that, you know.”

He was now standing in front of the man whose shoulders covered the back of the chair and still gave off

the impression of strength, as did the big iron-grey-haired head above them. Although the flesh on the

face was sagging, particularly around the eye sockets, his father was still handsome. But it was the clear

steely blue of the eyes that gave power to the face, and now they were directed on his son, and what

they saw made some part of him ache, for it was as though he were looking inwards at

himself when his

body had been vital, his back straight and his joints moving freely in their sockets.

“You’ve been in the house fifteen minutes,” he said accusingly.

“Have I?” Joe looked at his watch.

“Yes, you’re right; fifteen minutes. What did you expect me to do? Bound up the stairs and leave my

wife, my new wife, to find her way around?”

“Summat like that.” There was a quirk on Mike’s lips now which gave way to a smile,

then a chuckle, in

which Joe joined.

“Well, how did it go?”

“Like any other honeymoon.”

“That’s not sayin’ much.”

Joe now turned and, pulling a chair forward, sat down, saying, “Everything’s fine, except that we could

have done with another week.

I cursed the strike. “

“You wouldn’t be the only one; there’s going to be hell to pay afore this lot’s over. Just imagine it: the

whole bloody country coming out; everything at a standstill; it’s unbelievable.”

“How about our lot?”

“Oh, our lot.” Mike scratched his ear.

“Well, you’ve got something on your hands there, lad, I can tell you.”

“But more than half of ours aren’t union men.”

“No, that’s true, but a good third of them are. And if sympathy doesn’t get the rest to join, the name

blackleg hurled at them often enough, or being dragged up an alley and the guts beaten out of them, might

help to change their minds.”

“Aw, I don’t think it’ll get that far.”

“Lad, you know nowt about it; so far in your life you haven’t seen men really hungry.

And that’s not the

worst. They can go without it themselves, but when their wives and hairns have cramps in their bellies for

want of a bite, then I say, look out!”

“What does Geordie think? He’s in charge, he should know the feeling.”

“Aye, he does, ‘cos like me he’s seen this happen afore. Oh aye, he knows the feeling all right; he’s got

reason to. He remembers being punched silly by some bloke from Birtley. He was in the pits then, just a

young lad. His father had died and was buried down below they never found him and he