The Miner’s Girl (16 page)

‘I'd best stay in a lodging house tonight,' said Merry. She and Robbie were standing in the market place. They had been waiting for the horse bus to take them back to Winton Colliery, but thinking about it as she stood there waiting, she had decided not to go after all. She fingered the purse in her pocket, feeling the few coins through the thin fabric and wondering how much it cost to stay in a lodging house. Perhaps she had enough to last the week at any rate.

‘You'll come away home with me,' declared Robbie. ‘Me mam's bark is worse than her bite, man, she won't let you stay out in the cold.'

‘Will she not?' Merry murmured. She thought Doris Wright would cheerfully let her stay out in the cold, would even chase her out with a broom, the one she herself had been using as a crutch. She put her bandaged foot on the ground experimentally, trying her full weight
on it. ‘It feels a bit better, Robbie. I don't think it is broken. If I find a place in the town this afternoon I can look for a job the morn.'

Robbie snorted. ‘Don't talk so daft, lass. You'd be much better coming home. There's others would take you in any road.'

Merry thought about it. Of course there were the Hawthornes, but she didn't really know them that well, even though Jim Hawthorne had sold them the goat. No, she would not put herself back in the position where she was beholden to anyone as she had been at the Wrights' house.

‘I'll stay in the town,' she said. ‘Tomorrow I'll get a job, you'll see.'

‘Oh aye, and what about your leg?' asked Robbie. ‘Going to hop to work then?'

‘It's getting better,' said Merry. ‘I've got my things now an' all. If I stay here I can start looking for work first thing in the morning.' She lifted her bundle. ‘I won't come back with you now, Robbie, I'll find a place don't bother about' me.'

‘Don't be a bloody fool!'

Merry looked at him going red in the face, his temper rising in a way that reminded her of his mother. But he wasn't going to stop her, not now she had made up her mind.

‘I'm off,' she said. ‘Thanks any road.' With a tremendous effort she managed to stop herself from limping as she made towards Bondgate.

‘Merry!'

Robbie started after her and caught hold of her arm. ‘You'll do as I say, or—'

‘No, Robbie, I won't,' she said determinedly. People were in the market place, waiting for horse buses or wandering round the stalls and they were beginning to take notice. One burly stallholder started towards them as though he was going to intervene.

‘Let the lass alone,' he shouted and Merry took advantage of the fact that Robbie turned away to face the stallholder to slip away in the crowd, and was soon walking along the narrow street that was Bondgate. There were a couple of small lodging houses there; she had often seen the notices in the windows. Once she heard Robbie shout her name but she didn't look back.

He had helped her a lot and she should be grateful to him, she knew, and felt guilty. But she wasn't about to let him tell her what to do. And she wasn't going back to his mother's house, not even if she starved. Besides, she had a plan. She wasn't going to starve, she was going to make something of herself even if she had to start scrubbing floors or working on the coal screens at some pithead.

It was almost dark when Merry made her way up the drive of Miles Gallagher's house. She hadn't been thinking of it as the agent's house at all, just as somewhere she might get news of Tom. Once she had got somewhere to live the worry about Tom came to the front of her thoughts, for something must have happened, she was sure of it. Tom would not just abandon his work at the workhouse hospital, nor his surgery in Winton. Nor was he the sort of man who would take a girl down then forget about her, no, he was not.

She would just ask at the house if he were there, if he was all right. Her leg throbbed as she hobbled up the drive and she knew she should rest it – she would, just as soon as she found out about Tom.

Merry had rented a tiny room in Back Bondgate. She had had to pay 3/6d in advance and she knew there was no way she could pay for a second week unless she got a job. She was walking now with the help of the stick but tomorrow she would have to walk without it, she knew that. No one would take on someone who needed a walking stick.

A horse came trotting round the corner of the house and Merry shrank into the hedge for it was Mr Gallagher, Tom's father, the man she had been dreading meeting. But of course he had seen her and pulled up his horse beside her and glared down.

‘What are you doing here? Get off my property or I'll call the constable,' he said, his tone as harsh as his expression.

‘I want to see Dr Gallagher,' said Merry, standing her ground. She hadn't done anything wrong, so he had no right to speak to her like that, she thought and lifted her chin, determined not to be browbeaten by him.

‘Do you indeed? And why did you want to see him?'

‘I have a message for him. I have his coat; he left it.'

‘Well, you won't see him here,' said Miles. ‘And if you have his coat why haven't you brought it?' He stared at Merry searchingly. ‘Aren't you the girl I saw with him in his trap once? Pestering him, are you? Well, you won't any more, my girl. Now be off with you before I do call the constable. Or take this to you!'

He raised his whip threateningly and she shrank away instinctively.

‘Go on, you heard what I said.'

Miles was grinning, now he'd seen the flash of fear in her eyes. Merry turned and went down the drive, forcing herself to walk rather than run. Behind her she heard the horse start to follow her but she did not look round. She had forgotten all about her ankle though her hand gripped the stick, ready to do battle if she had to. At the gate she turned for the market place, still not looking back, on edge, her pulse racing, her tense
muscles aching. She did not relax until the sound of the horse's hooves faded away as Miles Gallagher took the opposite direction. Suddenly her ankle throbbed painfully, though it was not as painful as her feeling of humiliation.

Back in her attic room in Back Bondgate, Merry sat on the bed, for there was no chair, and munched the penny dip she had bought from the butcher down on the street. The bread bun contained no meat but it had been dipped in the juices and fat that had come out of the meat the butcher had roasted only that morning and it was tasty and satisfying. Then she drank the sweet tea she had brought up from the kitchen she shared with all the other tenants and lay back on the bed.

She needed to rest her leg – had to if she was ever going to get work to pay for her room and food. She closed her eyes but sleep didn't come, not at first. She thought about Tom and his father. She had been wrong about Tom; he must be keeping out of her way. He didn't want to see her. Maybe he was just like his father and despised her. She saw his face in her imagination and she couldn't really believe that. No, his eyes were kind; he worked hard for workhouse folk, didn't he? And the people of Winton spoke well of him. Anyway, he looked more like Ben than his father, she thought drowsily. Even if all three had the same colour eyes, his father's were cold and hard.

Something niggled at her as she drifted into sleep – there was something about the Gallaghers, what was it? But the warmth of the bed and a full stomach lulled her and she slept.

At nine o'clock the next morning Merry was walking down Newgate Street once again. She was thankful that the swelling in her ankle had almost gone, as had the pain, so at least that meant it wasn't broken. She had even been able to leave her stick behind in the lodging house. She wore her black serge skirt, which she had sponged and cleaned only a day or two before when she was living at Winton Colliery, and her only decent blouse under her shawl.

The sun shone and there was an air of coming spring about. Everyone she passed seemed to look cheerful at the change in the weather, and Merry's natural optimism bubbled inside her. She would go up one side of Newgate Street and down the other, she decided, looking at all the notices in the windows for any that advertised for help wanted. Surely someone would employ her? Of course they would, all she had to do was persevere. Hadn't Sister Harrison once said that anyone could get work if they tried hard enough? Merry had wondered about that at the time but now she was going to put it to the test.

She had walked all the way to Cockton Hill and back on the other side of Newgate Street, almost into
the market place once again, when she saw a notice in Turner's newsagent shop.

‘Boy wanted to sort and deliver newspapers and do odd jobs,' it read. ‘Apply within.'

She could do that, she thought and better than any boy.

‘I can do it,' she insisted to Mr Turner. ‘As good as any boy and better.'

‘It's not the job for a lass,' said Mr Turner.

‘What's the difference? I'm strong, let me try, please. I need a job, really, mister, I do.'

Mr Turner hesitated and looked at her searchingly. She was a little under average height but she was young and strong – he could tell by her hands she had been used to hard work. And he was sick of training up boys who more often than not got up to tricks when they should have been doing their rounds and were less than useless in the shop.

‘I'll work for nothing for two days and show you what I can do,' said Merry. ‘Please, mister.'

‘It only pays seven shillings a week any road,' said Mr Turner. He had reduced the amount by sixpence on the spur of the moment.

‘That's all right,' said Merry though she had been hoping for more. She stared at the grizzled man with pepper and salt sideburns and stomach bulging slightly under the waistband of his trousers. Please say yes, she prayed.

‘Three days trial for nothing?' he asked.

‘I . . . all right,' Merry said, though she would have to do without her dinner for one of those days.

‘Can you start now? Mind though, today will just be a half day. It's twelve o'clock already.'

So Merry found herself unloading boxes from the carrier's cart out the back and carrying them into the storeroom. Then she was running about the shop fetching and carrying for Mr Turner until Mrs Turner came in with his dinner plated up and in a basket. The sudden smell of the food made Merry's stomach flip over and Mrs Turner must have noticed the hungry look in her eyes. She was a stout, middle-aged woman with iron-grey hair pulled back in a bun at the back of her head and a black-beaded dress.

‘Is this your new boy then?' she asked Mr Turner ironically.

‘Now Mrs, don't you create,' her husband answered. ‘She's doing a trial for us for nothing, just to show that she's as good as a lad.' He grinned at his wife but she did not smile back.

‘Is she then? Well, in my humble opinion a labourer's worthy of his hire even if he's a she. It's three o'clock already; has she had any dinner hour?'

‘She didn't start 'til twelve, man,' Mr Turner protested. ‘By, lass, you 'll have me bankrupt before you know it. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're too soft by half.'

His wife ignored him and addressed Merry. ‘Have you had any dinner, lass?'

‘It's all right, I'm not really hungry,' said Merry, though the smell of Mr Turner's dinner in the basket was making her stomach rumble.

‘Rubbish,' Mrs Turner said briskly. ‘A lass your age is bound to be famished by this time of day.' She turned to Jos and handed him the basket. ‘Go and eat your dinner in the back. I'll go over the road and get the lass a bit to eat.'

She came back with a roast beef sandwich with more meat in it than Merry had eaten in a fortnight. ‘Get that down you, lass. No, don't thank me, you'll work the better for it. I can see you're doing a good job here.'

She glanced around at the shop. The counter was gleaming where Merry had polished it, the glass front sparkled from her application of a chamois leather, and the papers were laid out in neat rows. Then she nodded to Merry.

‘Right then, I'll go in the back and make a cup of tea. Just watch the shop for us.'

Merry went back to her room at six o'clock more content than she had been in an age. At least about that part of her life. The thought of Tom was ever present though, but she tried to hold it off for she couldn't bear to let it fill her thoughts. She bought a bag of chips at the fish shop in Bondgate, filled a bottle with water from
the tap in the yard and sat on her bed to eat her supper. Her ankle throbbed a little but it was back to normal size and she massaged it a little before going downstairs for a basin of hot water from' the kitchen. There was no one there, in fact there were no sounds in the house at all. It was that time of the evening, she thought. As she went upstairs she heard voices behind one door but that was all.

Merry washed herself all over and slipped into bed. There were noises – laughing and shouting in the street below – but that did not disturb her. She was asleep in minutes but was plagued with dreams of Tom and his father and woke up in a sweat in the early dawn. The pain of humiliation of the previous morning seared her mind, together with the bittersweet memories of Tom as he had been in the deserted village. She had to forget him, she told herself fiercely. It was obvious he didn't want her or he would have sought her out. It wasn't that he was bad, he had just given in to a moment's temptation. And anyway, he was far above her, wasn't he? His father had made that plain enough.

A pale grey light was coming through the threadbare curtains. She had to get up, had to be at the shop in time to help Mr Turner sort the newspapers for the morning rounds and then she had to go out on deliveries. She had to forget about Tom, she told herself again.

Outside on the street there was a cold wind channelled down the narrow, medieval street and she drew her shawl around her shoulders. At least she'd thought to wear both her vests and warm petticoat. She would be a couple of hours out in the cold, she reckoned, delivering papers to South Church Road and Kingsway.