Shelter from the Storm (7 page)

‘We mustn’t keep the young people,’ Thaddeus said.

‘I hoped to have the pleasure of asking Miss Morgan to dance,’ Mr McAndrew said.

‘I would be delighted.’

They went off. Her father was anything but delighted, Joe thought. After a short while he said softly, ‘Do me a favour, Joe. Go and cut in.’

‘I’m a terrible dancer.’

‘Aye, but you’re a good lad. Go and do it.’

Joe did. McAndrew was obviously displeased but couldn’t say so and Luisa didn’t seem happy about her change of partner. Joe trod on her.

‘I don’t know why you pushed in when you’re so clumsy,’ she said.

‘I thought you might want to be rid of him.’

She looked hard at Joe.

‘Why should I?’

‘He’s old and …’

The music ended, which was lucky because Luisa had stopped dancing.

‘He’s not old,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose he’s much above forty.’

She walked away.

When Joe got home his father was eager for details.

‘She’s a fine lass. She’ll do for you. Danced with her twice, eh? Thaddeus will be pleased. Make a push, there’s no point in waiting. When are you seeing her again?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’ll ask them to tea.’

Joe was horrified at the idea.

‘I dare say she’ll breed well, not like her wretched mother. She’s like Thaddeus’s mother was, plenty of spirit. You’ll enjoy that, eh?’ He dug Joe in the ribs. ‘We could do with some decent breeding — and there’s money. You could be like a son to Thaddeus, Joe. He likes you, thinks well of you.’ He slapped Joe on the back.

Joe wanted to say that he had no intention of marrying Luisa Morgan but he didn’t because he doubted anything would come of it. He could not believe it when his father actually asked the Morgans to the house for tea. It was laughable. His father drank nothing but whisky or brandy, and it was this sacrifice which made Joe realise how keen his father was on the idea of a marriage between himself and Luisa. He would have given a great deal not to be there. Jacob found cups and saucers in the cupboard and washed crockery and flicked a duster over the drawing-room furniture. It was a fine day, and once free of dust the furniture did not look too bad, though the paintings on the walls were so dark as to be indecipherable and the rug, which had been thick and red, was faded and patchy. The chairs were threadbare and the occasional tables stood on thin, rickety legs.

Alice Morgan was by nature a gentle person, Joe thought, but even she could not disguise her dismay at the state of the house that had been her friend’s home so long ago. Luisa was openly disparaging.

‘I didn’t realise you were this poor,’ she said. ‘And you live so far away from everything. Don’t you get bored or do you go to university and so aren’t here much?’

‘I work at the pit,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve always worked there.’

‘No doubt that accounts for your stimulating conversation.’

Joe’s face turned to fire.

‘Though I have to say that you are uncommonly good looking. Every girl at the party noticed. You obviously don’t take after your father.’

‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ Joe managed.

Luisa glanced around her.

‘There isn’t anywhere to walk. You have no garden to speak of and there’s nothing to be seen for miles but what you can see from here. How bleak it is. Have you been to Edinburgh?’

Joe shook his head.

‘My aunt lives there. I’m to go and visit. George — Mr McAndrew — has promised to show me around. There will be parties and outings and I’m to have new dresses and there’ll be the theatre and shopping.’

‘It sounds very exciting,’ Joe said.

She looked at him for a long time.

‘You aren’t taken with me at all, are you?’ she said bluntly.

‘I think you’re very beautiful.’

She laughed.

‘Haven’t you ever wanted to get away?’ she said.

‘Yes, but I can’t.’

Why not?’

‘My father, as no doubt you can see, is a drunk. The village depends on the pit and I’ve always been there. I know all there is to know so I have to be there.’ Joe hadn’t realised until he said it that it was the truth. She could talk all she liked about shopping and theatres but it wasn’t real. Everything that mattered to him was here and, much as he would have loved to cast off the responsibility, he knew in his heart that he couldn’t.

Her eyes mocked him.

‘How important you are. My father says that if you don’t get some help over the next year or so the pit will go under. He has taken a liking to you. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a boy. There
was a boy but he died in infancy. I don’t think my parents have ever forgiven themselves. Let me just tell you this. Nothing in the world would induce me to marry a man as poor as you and with so few prospects.’

‘I haven’t asked you,’ Joe said, stung.

‘No, but you were going to, or are you so stupid that you don’t realise your father and my father are plotting together? I intend to marry George McAndrew.’

‘Why?’

‘He can give me the whole world, furs, clothes, jewellery, houses, carriages, travel, and most especially of all I shall get away from this horrible dull place and from all these dull people. George is exciting, he knows everybody and I can win him. Such a prize.’

‘I don’t think your parents see it like that.’

‘The only reason my father won’t want me to marry George is because George doesn’t need his silly little foundry. George tolerates my father because he wants me. He has no interest in my father’s business — it’s nothing to him.’

‘What does your mother think?’

‘I think she wants me to marry better than she did so I don’t believe she minds very much, though she considers George much too old. I could hardly do worse than she did, unless of course I married you. Perhaps she’s worried that I might want you because you look like an overgrown choirboy.’ She laughed.

When they had gone his father retreated to the study and a generous glass of whisky and called Joe to him there.

‘Well, what did you think? A beautiful girl, eh, and her father’s business into the bargain.’

Joe said nothing. He didn’t need to. Thaddeus came often after that to the pit and in time reported that Luisa had gone to stay with Alice’s sister in Edinburgh.

‘Going to work in a shop?’

Her mother made it sound as though she had taken to prostitution, Esther Margaret thought.

‘Miss Applegate is very respectable.’

‘Miss Applegate is an old maid,’ her mother said, ‘and you are not going to work for her.’

‘My father works in a shop.’

‘Your father is the manager of the co-operative society department store and that is different. Young ladies do not work.’

‘I want to do something.’

‘Then you can come with me and clean the church. It will be good for your soul.’

‘I want to do a job, with money.’

‘There’s plenty to do here. Your father would never permit you to take up work outside the house. It isn’t respectable. You wouldn’t want to end up like Miss Applegate.’

Her mother told her father when he came home and Esther Margaret was sent to her room supperless — like a child, she thought.

Two Sundays after Easter, Esther Margaret’s parents went to visit her Aunt Florrie, who wasn’t very well. It would mean, she shyly confided to Dryden, when they met as usual on the Cutting
Bridge, that they would be able to spend a little more time together. He seemed doubtful. It had not occurred to Esther Margaret that she would have to persuade the worst boy in the village that she really did like his kisses. She had not expected him to be open and worried; she had thought he would be devious and sly.

‘It isn’t a good idea,’ he said. Perhaps he was losing interest. ‘If anybody saw us … What would you say to your dad?’

Esther Margaret was inclined not to care whether or not her father found out. Her parents had no idea that she was unhappy. She could have accused them of lacking imagination. They didn’t mind what she did or what her state of mind was; they didn’t care that they had seen off Joe and that they had invited into their house a lad she despised. She thought people had got it all wrong about Dryden. It was just that he was lonely. He had not tried to put his hands on her or to do anything he shouldn’t have done — nothing but the odd kiss. It seemed to her that what he really wanted was company, but she was entranced by the kisses, lay in bed thinking about them, wanted him to draw her close and … but he didn’t. She couldn’t sleep for thinking about him. She knew it was a sin to think about his body but she couldn’t help it, the more she tried to the less it worked. She conjured pictures of him naked and in her arms. It made her blush just to think about it. Her parents not being there for a whole day was too much of an opportunity to miss. Peggy would not notice what she did. They could go for a walk. The days were getting warmer. They could have a picnic by a stream; nobody would see them. They could spend hours together.

Things did not, however, go according to plan. Her parents changed their mind about what time they were leaving and it was a good two hours before they finally went, and after that Peggy was all over the house.

‘Are you not off yet, miss?’ she said twice as she went past the bedroom door. Esther Margaret had tried to be devious and now was despairing. She had told Dryden she would meet him on the
bridge at nine o’clock, and it was now well after eleven. He would have given up and gone home by now. She was meant to be having her Sunday dinner with the Robsons. To her discredit she had lied and told her parents she was going. She would have to think up some excuse for the Robsons later. She was not going to be in the same house with Billy.

Peggy finally went downstairs and did not come back. Esther Margaret stuffed food and drink into a bag and then she heard a noise behind her, and when she turned around Dryden was standing in the doorway. She almost screamed.

‘Shh!’ he said, ‘Sorry. You didn’t come.’

Esther Margaret flew to him.

‘I was so afraid that you wouldn’t have waited.’

‘Miss Esther!’ Peggy shouted up the stairs. ‘I’m away now.’

Peggy had been given the day off since everybody was going out. Esther Margaret went to the head of the stairs and wondered what would have happened if Peggy had left a couple of minutes sooner and had seen Dryden walking into the house or going up the stairs.

‘Right,’ she said brightly. ‘See you tomorrow.’

She listened as the back door slammed and then she went back to Dryden.

‘She could’ve seen you.’

‘She didn’t,’ he said. ‘I came in the front and I could hear her singing in the kitchen with the door closed and I knew your parents must have gone by now.’

Esther Margaret realised quite suddenly that it was the first time she had ever been in a bedroom with a man. If you could call him a man — he looked so young and strangely vulnerable, innocent.

‘You ready, then?’ he said.

‘I packed the food.’ She went over and opened the basket and Dryden looked hungrily in at the contents.

‘Is it apple pie?’ he said eagerly.

‘We have the whole day.’ Suddenly she could hear rain
throwing itself at the window, and when she ran across she could see it was beginning to fall heavily. She couldn’t believe it; nothing was going right. He came to her and they stood watching from the bedroom, the whole countryside turning greener as the rain poured down.

‘We can’t go for a picnic in that,’ she said. ‘I am so stupid. We don’t have to go. We can stay here. They’ll be gone all day and Peggy won’t be back.’

‘What if somebody comes, though?’

‘I’ll lock the doors.’

She ran downstairs and did so, and then ran back. Dryden was sitting on the bed. They would have to stay upstairs, she thought; people were passing the windows. As she watched he let himself fall back, drop completely into the covers, and it was such an act of abandonment somehow, such a relaxation, that she started to laugh. She went over and sat down beside him and looked at him, and it was as though his eyes drew her. She found herself kissing him with no more encouragement than that, and it was a kiss like never before. She was frustrated because Dryden didn’t touch her and didn’t make more of it. She broke away and sat up and said, ‘This isn’t how I thought you were.’

‘Oh?’

‘I thought you were … low and mean and wicked.’

‘I am,’ Dryden said with a touch of humour. ‘Mind you, I did spend twelve years being birched and preached at and starved. You’d think I would be a much better person by now but I don’t claim owt. I can recite great pieces of the Bible. Would you like to hear some?’

Esther Margaret said nothing and he laughed and sat up and then he put one arm around her and drew her down on top of him and after that he was everything she had thought he was and she was glad. It made up for what had happened since the first conversation she had held with Joe Forster in the churchyard. Things could have been so civilised, her parents could have reacted differently. Joe cared about her, she knew he did, hadn’t
she heard it from his own lips? Why could they not have been allowed to see one another? Would it have been so very dreadful? If his father hadn’t liked it they could have waited a year or two until Joe was older and could find some sort of business to establish himself in. She would have been proud to be with him, and surely in the end his father would have relented. Did it matter so very much that Joe had a pit and a crumbling country house and she had nothing but respectability? Was it such a difference? They could have found a house, it didn’t have to be anything special, and he could have come home to her in the evenings and they might have had a child or two. It hadn’t seemed like so much to ask, other people had that and more, but obviously it was, it was as unlikely as that they should gain the moon and the stars.

She no longer cared. Dryden was familiar with women’s clothing and his hands were deft and her body went completely out of control as it had been threatening to do since the first time he had kissed her. It seemed so wicked too, that this was happening in her parents’ house, in her own bedroom, in a place where nothing but godliness had existed for as long as she could remember. Her parents always did the right thing and they had encouraged her to do likewise, had brought her up to be God-fearing and good. The only good thing about this was how it felt. Dryden’s look of innocence was camouflage. It soon became apparent that he had done this before and knew a great deal about it. His body was smooth and brown and to touch it was like a dress her mother had once had — silk. She remembered how when she was a little girl, and her mother could still pick her up, feeling the soft warmth of her mother through the material.