Ravenscliffe (24 page)

‘I may not be joining you,’ he said levelly.

‘What new nonsense is this?’ She laughed brightly to disguise her discomfiture.

‘It’s time I began to make amends,’ he said and he walked to the door where, just in the nick of time, he remembered his manners and paused, turning to Clarissa with a civil smile. ‘Will you excuse me?’ he said.

‘Where are you going?’ She felt disorientated and a little queasy. Never had Teddy resisted her so completely and so coolly.

‘To talk to Henry,’ he said and he left her standing there,
incongruously slight and delicate amid the dark green and burgundy of his bedroom, but aware that all her feminine wiles had failed her and she was powerless for the first time in their marriage to influence him.

T
he night before Seth started work at New Mill Colliery he had woken Eve in the darkness, just like he had sometimes done as a little boy. He had his own room at the new house, which was supposed to be – and in many ways was – a wonderful thing, though he minded more than he would ever say that he couldn’t still hear his mam breathing while she slept. But it wasn’t that he was missing her company on this occasion: simply that he was missing his dad’s scarf, the one Arthur had always worn to work on cold mornings, the one Seth now believed he needed for his own walk to New Mill in three hours’ time. He had been up for over an hour – turning his room upside down looking for it – by the time he burst in on Eve: and then, because he himself was wide awake and agitated, he had walked bold and forthright in to her bedroom, making no attempt at softness or quiet.

‘Mam! Wake up,’ he said urgently, stabbing at her unconsciousness with his words.

She sat upright instantly, immediately alert to her child’s presence. There were no curtains at these windows yet and the moon in a cloudless night sky washed her room in an ethereal silver light.

‘Seth, love,’ she said. ‘What is it?’ Her heart pounded in her chest but there was no reprimand in her voice: to have him come to her in this way seemed like progress.

‘My dad’s scarf,’ he said in the challenging tones he saved for her. ‘It’s not ’ere.’

‘Yes it is,’ she said evenly. ‘I put it in a trunk myself.’

‘Which trunk, then?’

‘T’brown one. It’s still downstairs – but Seth, I’ll fetch it out in t’morning. Get some more sleep.’ Still she held her voice steady, as if there was nothing she expected more than to be dragged from the depths of sleep and asked the whereabouts of Arthur’s plaid scarf.

‘No. I want it now and I’ll get it mi’sen.’ He tried to be gruff but his voice still had the piping pitch of a young boy in spite of the fact that today he was a working man. He lingered, though, at the perimeter of her room and she held his gaze, willing him to say that he’d had second thoughts about his decision; that he wanted to go to school today, where he belonged. But instead he clamped his mouth against soft words and left her looking at an open doorway. For a few moments she stared at the space where he’d been, then she lay back down on her bed to stare at the ceiling and listen to the sounds of the night out on the common. She wouldn’t sleep again tonight, that much she knew.

In the kitchen, two hours later, Eve and Anna stood side by side with their backs against the range waiting for the kettle to whistle. It had taken the Kitchener two days to make the journey from stone cold to piping hot, but now it radiated warmth and this simple fact was remarkably cheering, immensely reassuring: a sign that this big, old, empty house could in due course be tamed and transformed into a home.
Everything they’d brought with them was too small: this was the principal problem at the moment. The scrubbed pine table, a tight fit in Beaumont Lane, seemed spindly and insubstantial in its corner of this new kitchen. The two armchairs and the couch were spread out in the parlour, lonely and awkward-looking, like unfashionable first arrivals at a party; and in the bedrooms the chests of drawers, the beds, the wardrobes – all of them were diminished by their surroundings, none of them able to fill their new positions with the solidity and permanence that they’d accomplished perfectly well in the old house. Anna had plans, of course – she was never without a plan of one sort or another – but the view she took was to go slowly in these matters: Ravenscliffe was theirs, this was the main thing. The house was clean and bright and – thanks to the range and the newly swept chimneys – warm enough for comfort. If the furniture lacked heft and girth, well, what did it matter? There was still a chair for everyone to sit on, and enough cups in the cupboard to hold the tea when it was poured.

‘Have you definitely woken him?’ Anna said. She meant Seth who, after half the night prowling the house, had fallen into a profound sleep from which Eve had struggled to rouse him.

‘Mmm,’ Eve said. ‘Like raising t’dead, though.’ He’d been wrapped in the scarf as well, his mini-Arthur face poking out of the tunnel of wool that he’d made around his neck: as comical as it was devastating. She would be glad when today was over: it was too weighty, too full of morbid significance. Her head ached with it, and there was a constant threat of tears, a lake of them, biding its time, waiting to spill. On top of all the bigger worries – Seth’s wasted intelligence, the dangers at New Mill, his enduring fury with her – was the smaller one of how the boy would feel walking alone to the colliery among all those miners. He should be walking in the lee of his dad’s broad shoulders, thought Eve, although if Arthur was still here
to accompany him, Seth wouldn’t be going to the pit today at all. He’d be getting up with Eliza and looking forward to nothing more frightening or hazardous than a conker fight in the school playground.

‘D’you think I could walk with ’im?’ Eve said.

‘No,’ said Anna emphatically.

‘Well, it’s only that I need to be at t’mill by half-five and it’s not much out o’ my way to go by t’pit.’

Anna looked at her askance. The kettle began its shrill serenade and she picked it up off the stove to fill the brown teapot, inhaling like a connoisseur the pungent vapour released by hot water on the loose leaves.

‘You’ll make him look fool,’ she said. ‘Walking to work with his mother, like child on first day at school. It’s out of question.’

‘I know,’ Eve said. She did. Seth wouldn’t let her, anyway. But she had a persistent mental image of Seth’s skinny little frame picking its way sadly across the common in the dawn light, then trailing through the streets of Netherwood to the pit yard. In her vision, no one spoke to him or even nodded hello, and a bitter wind blew against him as he walked. She shook her head to dispel the picture and the boy himself walked into the kitchen, looking more robust and a good deal less tragic in the flesh than in her imagination.

‘Eggs?’ said Eve mock-brightly.

Seth screwed up his face. ‘I’m not ’ungry,’ he said, but he sat down at the table anyway. It was too early to leave, even for a new boy.

‘You should eat something,’ Eve said automatically.

Seth nodded at the spanking new snap tin that Eve had crammed with bread and beef dripping. ‘I can have a slice o’ that later,’ he said flatly.

‘Can I just say …’ said Anna, from a safe distance, ‘… you really don’t have to go, Seth. If you want to, you could
change your mind.’ She spoke not so much out of concern for Seth – who she believed would learn best from his own mistakes – but out of concern for Eve. She spoke the words she knew Eve would like to say but daren’t, because she couldn’t risk a row on this of all mornings. Coming from Anna, the statement lost its inflammatory potential and Eve flashed a swift, grateful look at her friend. Seth said: ‘Aye, well, I’m set on it now.’

‘So. Fair enough,’ said Anna. ‘This is good thing, to know your own mind.’

A silence descended. Seth stood, picked up the snap tin, and tucked it in the pocket of his jacket. He looked so small, so vulnerable, that Eve had to press her hands between the range and her backside to stop herself from falling on him in maternal distress. Anna glared at her: do not cry was the message.

‘Right,’ Seth said. ‘I’ll be off, then.’ His voice cracked marginally because at this moment of departure he suddenly felt the burden of trying to be a man when he’d only turned twelve the day before: and, after all, it was a lonely prospect, walking to work without your dad. But just as he made to leave there came a sharp, startling rap at the front door and the three of them stared at each other, because a knock at quarter to five in the morning surely heralded disaster, or – at the very least – unwelcome news. No one moved. Again, the rap at the door and this time Eve, Anna and Seth moved as one from the kitchen and across the hallway and Seth, newly conscious of being the man of the house, pushed forwards to lift the sneck. He opened the door to reveal Amos, flat-capped and overcoated, grinning down at the boy whose face now broke into a genuine smile of sheer delight.

‘Thought I’d missed you,’ Amos said. ‘Can’t ’ave thi walkin’ on thi own to t’pit. I thought I’d offer my services.’

‘Amos,’ said Eve feelingly. She was humbled by his
thoughtfulness, speechless with gratitude. He looked at her, smiled pleasantly, then looked across at Anna.

‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘I need some ’elp rallying voters if I’m not to be a right washout come polling day.’

‘Later today?’ Anna said. ‘I’ll be here.’

He nodded at her, pleased: she was as important to his campaign as Enoch. More important: she was the reason, if truth were told, that he was running.

‘Right, young fellow-my-lad. You come wi’ me and I’ll give you t’lowdown as we go.’

Seth, back straight, head held high, gave his mother and Anna a cursory, manly wave as he sauntered off with Amos. From the doorstep they watched them go.

‘Amos is so kind,’ said Anna. ‘So lovely.’ Her cheeks were pink and Eve laughed and nudged her knowingly.

‘What?’

Anna turned, tossing her chin and stalking back through to the kitchen, but her indignation meant nothing; she knew exactly what Eve was getting at.

Later, in a quiet house, Anna stood at her sewing table – now housed in its own sewing room, such was the space at her command – and let the fluid weight of the ivory satin slide between her hands. She had designed the wedding dress herself, sketching ideas again and again in the face of Eve’s discouragement, until finally she presented her friend with a drawing of a dress that didn’t provoke an instant rejection. It wasn’t that Eve had ideas of her own: rather, the opposite. If Anna had allowed it, Eve would have married Daniel – and he wouldn’t have raised an objection – in her navy serge skirt and Sunday blouse, so the parade of beautiful gowns that sprang from Anna’s imagination provoked in the bride-to-be
a sort of bashful, horrified recoil from showiness that had proved a challenge to overcome. In the end, and because she really couldn’t bear to see Eve married without a bridal gown, Anna had managed to come up with a design that combined modesty with low-key elegance and Eve, worn down by Anna’s persistence, had pointed to it and said yes. It was still in the earliest stages: still more a swathe of loose fabric than a dress. Anna had a tailor’s dummy that shared Eve’s dimensions and now she lifted the satin up and over, pinning it at the back so that it clung to the contours and fell to the floor in sleek ivory ripples. The neckline was crucial: Anna wanted a wide, shallow line, which she would trim with antique lace, delicate and intricate. More of the same lace was destined to adorn the sleeves too: Medieval sleeves, which followed closely the length of the arms then ended in a soft pointed flare just below the wrists. She worked without a paper pattern because she held the image in her head and she would never make such a dress again. It was to be unique: Anna’s gift to Eve, her homage to their friendship, a token of her love. These were weighty themes and Anna knew, if she tried to express them in words, they would embarrass Eve or come out wrong. So the dress was important: the dress said everything she wanted to say. She beetled away at it like the Tailor of Gloucester, sewing and snippeting and piecing out the satin, and this is how Amos found her, entirely absorbed in the task in hand and her mouth clamped tight around six pins that, one at a time, were being carefully placed in the yards of fabric from which, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, a dress was beginning to emerge. She didn’t hear him come in, but she acknowledged him calmly when she realised he was in the room. For his part, he registered a detached interest in the fact that he could look on what was clearly to be Eve’s wedding dress with no particular emotion, no pang of regret or twist of the heart. It was the little seamstress, her sweet fresh face intent on the
job in hand, who held all his attention, and this, too, he registered with the same detached recognition. The storm of emotion Eve had once provoked in him had truly broken and been replaced, as storms so often were, by a bright, clear calm.