Reach for Tomorrow (40 page)
He was surprised to see Jessie in his mother’s kitchen and his face reflected this, but along with the surprise there was a wariness - as well there might be, thought Jessie self-righteously. Her face was cold as she looked across the kitchen at Annie’s youngest, and he, sensing the maternal wrath, straightened and returned the look, before turning to his mother and saying, ‘You on strike or somethin’? Where’s me breakfast?’
‘It’s comin’.’ Annie’s voice was agitated and the look she bestowed on Jessie in the next second was a pleading one. She’d been feeling bad since the New Year, right bad, and her usual medicine that she’d been taking on and off for years wasn’t helping much. And Dr Meadows was no help, fancy him saying he wanted her to take it easy and then suggesting she go to the hospital for tests! She wasn’t setting foot in that place!
Take it easy indeed. Would taking it easy get Arthur’s and the lads’ suits to the pawn every Monday morning so they could eat, and collect them of a Saturday once Shane and any of the others who’d got work during the week paid their bit? Or would it help her to scour the shops at closing for any stale loaves and scrag ends going cheap, or hang about near the market looking for bruised fruit and the like? And what about working all hours with the washing she took in, and then going round to Mrs Brent’s on Higham Hill, and scrubbing her massive house from top to bottom twice a week? Take it easy! She’d paid out good money for him to tell her she’d got to take it easy, that was the top and bottom of it, and she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
‘I’ll be seein’ you, Annie.’
Jessie didn’t look at Shane again as she said her goodbyes but as she stepped fully into the yard he appeared at the door alongside his mother, his tone confrontational as he said, ‘What you doin’ round these parts first thing in the mornin’?’
‘She came to see me, there’s nowt wrong with that is there?’
Jessie heard Annie’s voice, and she knew her friend didn’t want her to voice the real reason for her presence, but no power on earth could have stopped Jessie from throwing her satisfaction in Shane McLinnie’s face as she said, her voice cold and very even, ‘I came to tell your mam that Rosie had a bouncin’ ten-pounder last night, a boy, as bonny a bairn as ever I’ve seen.’
Shane stared at her. He didn’t say a word, he just stared at her, and such was the power in his gaze that Jessie took a step backwards as she thought, He’s evil. He might be Annie’s son, and certainly our Molly is no better than she should be, but this is something different.
She was aware of Annie’s white face as she turned away, and also that Shane was watching her as she walked to the end of the yard and opened the gate into the mucky back lane, but she didn’t look back, and it was only when she emerged into the street at the end of the lane and began walking towards the tram stop that she found she was shaking.
By, she could see why her Rosie had steered clear of that one right enough, aye, she could. And to think that she used to think him a nice lad, well set up in fact and a good catch for some lass. There had even been a time when she’d imagined him and Rosie . . . She shivered, but it was less to do with the chilly April morning that carried the odd drop of icy rain in its raw wind than the realization of her own lack of discernment. Her James always used to say she couldn’t see the wood for the trees, and he was right, God rest his soul. He’d been right about a lot of things, her James, like her being her own worst enemy for one. She had been a silly woman the last few years, a very silly woman, but she had Joseph now and he’d already asked her twice to marry him. And she’d say yes, but in her own time. Maybe in a few months or so. But for now there was Erik. ‘We’ve a grandson, James.’ She breathed it out, her eyes misty with the joy and thankfulness that had been bubbling inside her since the evening before. ‘A bonny little lad an’ he’ll never have to set foot inside a mine. That gladdens your heart, don’t it, like it does mine.’
Once Rosie was on her feet again and the bitterly cold winds and snow and sleet of April and May had given way to a serene June and blazing July, number seventeen The Terrace was subject to a steady stream of visitors. Both Flora and Sally were quite smitten with little Erik, and their shared adoration of the tiny infant made for some merry tea parties on sunny summer afternoons.
Flora was still living close to Davey’s lodgings, and he had accompanied her several times on her visits to Rosie and Zachariah and taken a great interest in the child. Likewise Peter Baxter, who also escorted Flora on occasion and who seemed quite reconciled to Flora’s friendship with Davey.
Seemed
. But Rosie suspected differently. Peter was a gentleman and a quiet and unassuming individual, but Rosie recognized a tenacity in the mild-mannered man that was at odds with the placid exterior. He said little but observed greatly, and on the one or two occasions when he and Zachariah had been left alone they had apparently got on like a house on fire, despite their vastly differing political affiliations and the fact that Peter was third-generation ‘money’.
Seemed
. But Rosie suspected differently. Peter was a gentleman and a quiet and unassuming individual, but Rosie recognized a tenacity in the mild-mannered man that was at odds with the placid exterior. He said little but observed greatly, and on the one or two occasions when he and Zachariah had been left alone they had apparently got on like a house on fire, despite their vastly differing political affiliations and the fact that Peter was third-generation ‘money’.
Peter continued to employ Davey on a regular basis at his father’s shipyard, and certainly on the one or two occasions Rosie had seen the two men together she had been unable to detect any noticeable ill feeling or rancour, but still . . . The old saying ‘still waters run deep’ was always at the back of her mind when she contemplated Peter Baxter, and Rosie was sure he had by no means given up his pursuit of her friend. It had merely gone under cover.
Little Erik James flourished under all the tender care and love which was lavished on him, and no one was more besotted than the infant’s father. Zachariah was the epitome of the doting parent and he didn’t care who knew it. The baby had been a good size at birth and had never had the fragility of a newborn child, and right from day one Zachariah had horrified the attending midwife, along with Jessie and a few others, by insisting he was involved in the daily care of his son. Rosie wasn’t surprised; Zachariah was the only man she had ever come across who took it upon himself to share the housework and mundane chores as a matter of course. But to the other women, steeped in the age-old traditions of the north where ‘men twer men’ and even the lowest scavenger - the common nickname for the corporation soil men who cleaned out the dry closets or ‘netties’ with their long shovels - considered ‘women’s’ work beneath their dignity, Zachariah’s practical involvement with his son was nothing short of scandalous.
However, it was interesting that both Flora and Sally, who were often able to view Zachariah in action, waxed lyrical on the topic to Davey and to Mick, until both men became more than a little tired of Zachariah’s halo.
But it wasn’t Zachariah that Davey was thinking of as he walked home from the shipyard on a bakingly hot evening in mid-July. The extreme heat had brought back the flavour of Egypt and his life on Mohamed’s farm. He could feel the warm, sun-soaked days and muggy nights, smell the intoxicating odour of freshly irrigated earth and thirsty vegetation and crops, the heady, sweet perfume of magnolia flowers.
The Sunderland street melted away, and in front of him in his mind’s eye were hot dusty cart tracks in baked earth. He had felt out there, working on the land, that he had truly come alive for the first time. The work had been hard, very hard, and he had discovered that a farmer’s life was a twenty-four-hour cycle of endless toil and labour - you lived it and breathed it all the time, there was no whistle telling you it was time to clock off and go home. But the overall satisfaction had been immense. He had been out in the fresh air, seeing the sky, feeling the breeze on his face. And here . . . Here there was the shipyard. And Flora.
What was he going to do about Flora? Davey wrinkled up his nose as he walked; the journey home to Mrs Riley’s took him through the back lanes and alleyways and the bad smells from some of the hatchways were overpowering in the hot weather. He cared about her; she was a good lass, pretty and lively, and she’d had a rough deal the last few months . . .
Oh, stop your yammering.
The voice in his head was so distinct that he almost turned round to see if someone had spoken. What was he trying to skirt round the issue for?
Oh, stop your yammering.
The voice in his head was so distinct that he almost turned round to see if someone had spoken. What was he trying to skirt round the issue for?
Flora would make a lovely wife for the right man, and for a time he had thought that man was destined to be Peter Baxter, but over the last few months he had begun to wonder. Of course Flora wasn’t-- His brain closed down on that other name and now he actually ground his teeth as he walked, irritable with himself and the whole situation.
If he had stayed a week or two in Sunderland, just until he’d discovered how the land lay with Rosie, this wouldn’t have happened. But now he had got further and further entangled in all their lives - Flora’s, Rosie’s, Zachariah’s - and it wasn’t doing him any good, not deep inside where his conscience and his reason lay. And there was the bairn, Erik. He could feel his guts twisting every time he set eyes on the child. In a way he could understand why Shane had reacted in the manner he had that night. Oh, not the twisted nasty side of it, that was just plain vicious and pure McLinnie. Nevertheless, when Zachariah had told him Rosie was expecting and he had had to face the fact that she was carrying another man’s child in her body it had near crucified him. But he loved little Erik, he was a bonny baby and he could understand why Zachariah was so proud of his small son, he had every right to be.
He needed to make a fresh start, that was it at bottom, and perhaps Sunderland wasn’t the place to do it. What was he thinking? He
knew
Sunderland wasn’t the place to do it. But there was Flora; he enjoyed her company and, more than that, he cared about the lass deep inside.
Damn it all.
The feeling of confusion grew.
knew
Sunderland wasn’t the place to do it. But there was Flora; he enjoyed her company and, more than that, he cared about the lass deep inside.
Damn it all.
The feeling of confusion grew.
He couldn’t go back to Mrs Riley’s, not yet, he needed a drink, and not a cup of tea. Davey turned sharply at the end of the street and more by instinct than reason made his way to the Colliery Tavern which, being close to Southwick Road and the Wearmouth Colliery, was a regular haunt of miners and had been well known to him and Sam in the old days.
There were a few men in the bar when he entered, most of them nursing a pint of beer, and one or two raised their hands to him and nodded, but it was Ralph Felton, whose father had been a pal of his da’s, who said, ‘Davey, man, over here.’
Davey nodded, ordering and paying for his pint before he joined the four men clustered round a table near the big square window of the taproom. ‘How you doing?’ He spoke directly to Ralph but his gaze included all of the party.
‘Same as the rest of the poor blighters round these parts.’ The bitterness was tangible. ‘Never thought we’d see the day when we was sold down the river by our own, but it’s happened. Aye, it’s happened all right. Nine days the General Strike lasted in May, a paltry nine days, an’ here we are still battlin’ it out. Makes me sick to me stomach.’
There were murmurs of assent from all present, and then Ralph said, as Davey’s face revealed what he was thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not havin’ a go at you, man, don’t think that. You was out of it all years afore an’ good luck to you an’ all. No, it was the TUC that cut our legs out from under us when they went caps-in-hand to the government, the lily-livered so-an’-sos. An’ that after we was called traitors an’ worse for objectin’ to a wage cut an’ longer hours.
Traitors!
By, I’d like to ram the word down Churchill’s throat, so I would. What did they expect with their threats of lockouts an’ all?’
Traitors!
By, I’d like to ram the word down Churchill’s throat, so I would. What did they expect with their threats of lockouts an’ all?’
Davey nodded. His sympathies were all with the men sitting so despondently round the table. Winston Churchill’s inflammatory speech for ‘unconditional surrender by the enemy’ in May had made him no friends among Britain’s miners, and the government’s import of large quantities of food at the beginning of July, along with the constant import of coal from abroad from the first month of the strike, constituted insult to injury. Add to that the recent Coal Mines Bill for longer working hours - something the militant Labour MPs had contested with such vigour that they’d stormed the House of Lords shouting ‘Murder Bill’ and ‘Four hours for you, eight for the miners’ - and it was no wonder men were prepared to starve, aye, and see their families starve, rather than give in to what they saw as blatant exploitation by a system that had used them like dogs for decades.
‘How long do you think you can hold out?’ Davey asked quietly.
‘As long as it takes, man.’
Again Davey nodded, and then, after draining his glass, he stood up and walked across to the bar, ordering five pints and taking them back to the table. He passed them round silently and they were accepted silently. He might be an ex-miner but he was still one of them, and there was no need to thank your own. Every man at the table would have done the same in Davey’s position and they all knew it. It was something that was imbibed with their mother’s milk, this fierce shoulder-to-shoulder mentality, and the women of the north were no less fervent than the men.
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