The Letter (28 page)

The final stage of the illness came more quickly than anticipated. Shirley’s daughter arrived from Birmingham, Alice arrived from Manchester. Tommy and Dad joined the women devotedly nursing Shirley as she had done for so many. She didn’t need to be told she was dying. Mercifully by then she mainly slept.

Tommy and his sisters were resting in the kitchen while Margaret made Shirley comfortable. Albert was shovelling coal into a bucket in the yard. Margaret could hear him through the open window. A waft of scented sweet violet blew in. Margaret closed the window. She had last smelled the perfume in India on the day she received word of her mother’s death. She called for Albert, waking Shirley who lucidly asked her to look after him and Tommy, and be a friend to his sisters. Shirley died before Albert and the others reached the top of the stairs.

The death dispelled any animosity between Alice and Margaret. The funeral was dignified and sorrowful but Albert, declared, “I’ll not walk behind one more coffin from this ’ouse.”

*  *  *  *  *

Albert took a house on Cliff View. It was further from the main road than Barnburgh Street with a high hard-red brick wall enclosing the back yard, and an outside lavatory that flushed. The street ran out of steam in a patch of open ground surrounded by a few scrubby trees called ‘The Rec.’ Colliery Officials’ houses with neat gardens were close by. A path led to the allotments where miners indulged their passion for fresh air, growing vegetables and gaudy chrysanthemums in orderly rows; a glimmer of beauty in a cheerless scene.

Margaret wasn’t the kind of wife Albert wanted for Tommy, and Cliff View was the last place she expected to be, but it was done. The first Saturday night she spent there Margaret couldn’t sleep. In the morning she decided to go to mass. Tommy accompanied her as far as the local Catholic Church.

The spiritual comfort from the mass made Margaret more secure. She couldn’t go to Communion. Divorced people weren’t allowed to receive the Sacrament but anyone could go to mass. She’d been angry with her father for suggesting she get an annulment of her marriage to Ben. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea?

Tommy had said he’d have breakfast waiting. The inviting smell of frying bacon greeted Margaret’s return. “Don’t ask where that’s come from” Albert said, as Tommy put a plate of bacon and eggs on the table.

“What about you and Tommy?”

“We’ve ’ad ours” Albert said, running the polishing brush over his going-out black shoes.

She didn’t need to be asked twice and didn’t notice Tommy go upstairs.

Albert loitered by the back door. He tossed his watch into his waistcoat pocket. “What kept yer?” He said to Tommy, who had changed from his work a day clothes to wearing a sports jacket and flannels.

“We’re going out Margaret, me and mi dad.”

“Come on lad. Let’s be ’aving yer,” Albert chivvied. “Margaret, vegetables ont draining board, spuds int sink… meat’s ont side,” and they were off.

Margaret finished her breakfast. An hour passed with
no sign of Tommy or his father. Where had they gone? She
examined the pile of vegetables. Soft green and yellow striped caterpillars crawled out from the dark green cabbage leaves. Margaret flicked them into the stone sink, swished them down the plughole and rinsed the leaves.

Short of something to do she scrubbed the dirty potatoes and carrots with a small bristle brush lying on the wooden draining board; cut away the carrot tops, trimmed outgrowing lumps from the potatoes, chopping them into regular shapes to fit the saucepans. The onions made her eyes water. The raw meat turned her stomach. Disgusted, she gave up.

Father and son returned full of cheer and Miners Welfare beer, took off their ties and meticulously hung up their jackets. Albert began sharpening the carving knife before he realised there was nothing to carve. No Yorkshire puddings and no Sunday dinner! It was too much even for Tommy. Margaret shouted above their loud complaints, “I can’t cook!”

“Can’t cook?” Albert said incredulously. “Tha’s ’aving me on…” Margaret shook her head, “By gum lass ther’s nowt to it.”

“But I’ve never needed to.”

“Well tha needs to nar!”

Albert cooked the dinner teaching Margaret the essentials: the right kind of fire, glowing hot, not smoky, the timing of the vegetables and the meat done to a turn. His Yorkshire puddings rose to the top of the oven, firm on the outside, soft and creamy inside; soaked in thick meaty gravy.

Margaret copied the men, mopping the plate clean with a slice of bread. “Tha’ll be alreet next Sunday,” Albert said going to bed for his traditional Sunday afternoon sleep.

*  *  *  *  *

Doctor McArthur examined Margaret, peered over his half moon spectacles and said, “Well lassie?”

“It’s not my first pregnancy.”

“I can tell that.”

Margaret briefly outlined the circumstances. The doctor thought he’d seen everything in his years in Denaby but the last thing he expected was to be treating the former wife of a fellow doctor, married to a labourer. He asked how she was coping and Margaret answered that she was finding it tough.

“No one here, apart from Tommy and Albert, knows I have children. If anything goes wrong with the birth will you send me to the Western Hospital in Balby, not The Montague?”

“Do you think Tommy’s bothered what people think?”

“No but I do. I’ve got to start again. That’s difficult enough. I don’t know if I could do it if my past came out.” The doctor raised his eyebrows. “I love my Indian children, doctor. I had no choice but to leave them.”

Margaret hadn’t known what his response would be but the doctor arranged for her to be admitted to Western Hospital for the birth.

Florrie offered to help when Margaret’s time came but Albert said if Doctor Mac wanted Margaret to go into hospital it was for a good reason. He guessed why she’d chosen The Western. It was rarely used by Denaby people. Florrie could call in and look after Tommy and him instead.

*  *  *  *  *

The baby was born jaundiced and a month premature.
Tommy’s daughter, something for him to live for, he’d get a job. Make her proud of him. The nurses joked they’d throw him out if he asked to go down to the nursery again.

Margaret was glad to be in the clean orderly ward away from Tommy’s exuberant delight. There were feeding times and sleeping times and few occasions to cuddle new babies, routine was far more important. Mothers were made to rest on their beds and gather strength for returning home. Denaby wasn’t home, more like a stage on which Margaret played various roles. She was convincing but each time she picked up Tommy’s daughter she felt like a traitor. She chose not to breast feed and when it came to choosing a name there was only one on her lips… Pavia.

Tommy named the baby Elizabeth, after the king’s daughter.

Chapter 36
 

The unpredictable tremors in Tommy’s limbs increased. Outbursts of rage and blinding pains in his head drove him into the sanctuary of the bedroom where he screamed and shouted like a man possessed, until it passed. Then he’d lie like a lost soul with his broken head in Margaret’s lap. She often fell asleep wondering what was going through his mind, but he couldn’t remember any of it. He took to sleeping on the floor but neither of them got any rest.

“Come to bed,” she coaxed, turning back the covers. He crept in putting his cold feet on her legs. “You’re freezing” she said, moving further into the bed. “Come under the blanket.”

They often talked or made love under the tented bedclothes so as not to wake Elizabeth or Albert. The night hid his wounds. “Sleep, Tommy” she said drowsily as they lay so close their heads touched.

Margaret woke choking. Tommy’s hand was round her throat. He was gabbling menacingly. He squeezed harder. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. It sounded like Japanese or Chinese. He came round straddled across her.

“You were dreaming, Tommy.”

“Dreaming! I mm… might have killed you.”

He stumbled out of the bedroom and into his father.

“What’s up lad?”

“Dad, s… send Margaret to Scotland,” was all he could get out of his son.

“Margaret, what’s going off?”

“I’m not going anywhere, dad.”

“Ow the bloody ’ell can I ’elp if you won’t say owt…?”

Margaret didn’t need help now. She wasn’t afraid of the present. It was the future that held her fears.

*  *  *  *  *

Doctor Mac said the grenade blast had shaken Tommy’s
brain so badly that it could be years before his condition improved. Margaret asked about the long term prognosis. The doctor chose his words carefully, “What you see is pretty much what you get. The pioneering surgery used on Tommy is experimental. You see lassie by all rights he should be dead. We don’t know much about the treatment of survivors like him.”

The doctor wasn’t convinced anything could be done to alleviate Tommy’s condition but a quiet spell in hospital might help everybody.

Tommy was admitted to The Royal Infirmary at Sheffield. Albert and Florrie suggested sharing the visiting to give Margaret a break but Tommy got upset when they tried it. They could afford the bus fares to Sheffield for hospital appointments, but visiting daily was an extra financial strain. Albert paid the bulk of the cost. Margaret was fighting bureaucracy for a better pension. The form filling and tribunals were endless; the begging for hand outs demeaning.

*  *  *  *  *

From December decisions about anything were
impossible. Heavy snow transformed the cindered streets.
There were snowball fights and sledging. Snowmen guarded the entries to the backs. Men became like the pit ponies out to holiday grass.

There was no let up with the weather. Power lines were down, blizzards blocked roads. Coal was in great demand but transporting it hazardous. Trains and lorries ground to a halt. Areas of the country were cut off for weeks. Albert’s coal arrived on schedule. Mineworkers were entitled to free coal. It was part of their wages. He shovelled a path through waist-high snow to the coal house. Margaret kept it clear with hot ash. Black henna-like lines patterned her hands, sore from mending the hungry fire.

In India, Muni had made a mixture of olive oil and sugar to massage and soften Margaret’s hands. In Denaby, Margaret used it to get rid of the dirt and prevent the roughened skin from scratching Elizabeth. Albert accused her of gross extravagance. Didn’t she know this was England? As if she could forget!

The glistening snow turned slimy grey.
The everlasting
wet washing drying on the wooden clothes horse round the
fire and keeping Elizabeth clean were a dreary depressing background to life. Then there was the cost of everything now she wasn’t working.

Margaret spent hours cooking, scraping every scrap of waste food and vegetable peelings into buckets at the bottom of the yard. Albert called them ‘slop buckets.’ A man came regularly to empty them. Sometimes she was so drained she didn’t want to get up in the morning.

Floods followed snow and for a few days the bridge over the River Don was submerged cutting off the pit. Groups of flint-eyed men gathered at the water’s edge,
testing the depth with sticks. Some miners waded through,
swearing as the icy water crept up their legs. There was no room for weakness. Miners fought the elements or the owners when they had to.

Albert said that to go down the pit you had to be strong in the arm and weak in the head but Margaret didn’t appreciate his humour. She had come to believe that the circumstances of their birth dictated the miners’ future. She admired the risks they took underground and their dogged persistence in fighting for better working conditions. They might not have books but they were clever, resourceful and loyal to each other.

*  *  *  *  *

As soon as the water receded Albert went back to work the night shift in the pit time-office. In the morning he was late arriving home. Margaret went out of the back yard gate to look for him and found him leaning blue-lipped against the entry wall. She reached for his pulse.

He tugged at his overcoat, “For Christ’s sake woman! Get this bloody thing off mi and I’ll be alreet!”

For once Margaret did as she was told. Under the coat, wrapped around Albert’s slight frame, was a side of freshly butchered pork encased in newspaper and string.

He hauled himself up the back step and into the kitchen. Margaret cut off the string and unrolled him. “Tha knows nar what slops were for,” he said, getting his breath back, “to feed pig int allotment. Its mi ’alf share; slaughtered when bobbies were too busy wi weather to notice owt else.”

He sliced thick fatty lumps off the pork and fried them for breakfast. “This’ll keep cold out,” he said, giving seven months old Elizabeth the crispy rind to bite on. The grease dribbled down the baby’s chin. “Gis it ’ere lass,” he said wiping Elizabeth’s chin with his shirt.

“Dad…”

“It’ll be reet, Margaret.” He gave Elizabeth another piece. “She likes it.”