The Most Precious Thing (4 page)
David shook his head at himself, disturbed momentarily by the bitterness the thought held. He should get himself a lass, he told himself, and then maybe he could sleep as soundly as Alec at night. Here he was at eighteen and he’d never so much as kissed a girl, and more than one lass had let him know they were willing to walk out with him. He might not be an oil painting but he wouldn’t crack no mirrors either.
He finished the last of the beer, his gaze still fixed on his brother whose bright eyes and flushed face bore witness to the fact that he had been drinking a drop of the hard stuff along with the ale, and that he was well on the way to being plastered. Alec was the only one in the family who could get blind drunk and not feel the lash of their mam’s tongue. Couldn’t do no wrong in their mam’s eyes, could Alec, and yet from a bairn it’d been him who had been the cause of all the mischief and unpleasantness in the house, with Walter and himself picking up the tabs, of course, David thought sourly.
Damn it.
Again David shook his head, irritated by the inner carping. If he didn’t like how things were, why didn’t he get out from under his mam’s roof - it didn’t occur to him here that he had left his father out of the equation - out from the area, maybe even out of the pit? There were other pits, and there were other ways of life too, especially down south. He was young; if he was ever going to make a break, now was the time.
Again David shook his head, irritated by the inner carping. If he didn’t like how things were, why didn’t he get out from under his mam’s roof - it didn’t occur to him here that he had left his father out of the equation - out from the area, maybe even out of the pit? There were other pits, and there were other ways of life too, especially down south. He was young; if he was ever going to make a break, now was the time.
He had listened to his da and the other older miners talking, and he believed their predictions that the next year was going to be like none they had seen before because the coal subsidy ended in May. When the coal-owners had told the government they were going to increase miners’ working hours and reduce wages, the government had started paying them a subsidy rather than tell them they weren’t allowed to do that, but there hadn’t been a man or boy down the pits that hadn’t known they were living on borrowed time. His da maintained the government, especially Churchill and his gang, together with the coal-owners and the owners of every other industry in the country, wanted to destroy the unions, and in May all hell was going to be let loose. So wouldn’t it make sense to get his backside out of it before the worst happened? Aye, it would, he felt it in his bones, and when all was said and done, there was nothing to hold him in the slowly dying north.
Immediately the thought mocked him as the image of a young girl with shining chestnut hair and midnight-blue eyes sprang into his mind.
Carrie had looked so bonny today, grown-up, different. He groaned deep within himself. He should have
asked
her. He would, he would speak up and to hell with it; at least he would know then, once and for all. When she and Lillian came back from wherever they’d taken themselves off to, he would take Carrie aside and speak what was in his mind. His guts twisted with a mixture of apprehension and excitement as he continued to hammer home the decision, his gaze focused on the door and his beer glass forgotten in his hand.
asked
her. He would, he would speak up and to hell with it; at least he would know then, once and for all. When she and Lillian came back from wherever they’d taken themselves off to, he would take Carrie aside and speak what was in his mind. His guts twisted with a mixture of apprehension and excitement as he continued to hammer home the decision, his gaze focused on the door and his beer glass forgotten in his hand.
Chapter Two
As always when she entered Lillian’s house, Carrie found herself marvelling at the difference to her own home. True, both had three rooms, a scullery, and a fair-sized paved backyard with the privy at the end, which was cleared by hand each week, and in both dwellings water was from a tap in the yard and heating and cooking by the range in the living room, but there any similarity ended. And, strange as it would seem to most folk, Carrie admitted, she much preferred her own home, shabby and threadbare as it was.
She stood just inside the back door, looking round the Suttons’ antiseptic-clean scullery and its row upon row of shelves laden with various items, those in boxes bearing neat labels. There was always an overpowering smell of bleach in this room, enough to make your eyes water at times. The tin bath was propped against one whitewashed wall and next to this stood a small table with a shelf beneath it, the upper part holding a bowl and other utensils, the lower scrubbed and scoured pans.
‘Come on.’ Lillian took her hand, pulling her through into the living room where the smell of burning coal from the big black leaded range didn’t quite disguise the lingering odour of bleach from the flagstones beneath their feet. Here there was no old battered saddle with great darned flock cushions you could curl up on, and no creaking rocking chair placed at an angle to the range so the man of the house could toast his toes on the fender after a hard day down the pit. Instead the only seats were six hardbacked chairs with stiff upholstered bottoms, grouped round a table which always boasted a white cloth over the oilcloth beneath. A china cabinet stood in one corner and a small dresser in another, and the lace at the window was starched into permanent billows. The full, dark brown velvet curtains made the room always seem dark even on the brightest summer day.
The enormous thick clippy mat in front of the range at home - a lovely warm place to sit and dream and look into the flickering flames of the fire, even if it did collect the dust and bits - was represented by a thin fringed rug at Lillian’s, and Carrie never trod on it without feeling she shouldn’t. Lillian had told her once that her mother always made the men strip off their pit clothes in the yard before coming into the scullery where the bath would be standing filled with water, and when Carrie had enquired what if it was raining or freezing cold, and didn’t they ever bathe in front of the fire, Lillian had just shrugged, saying, ‘That’s me mam for you,’ as though it was sufficient explanation.
It was from that day that in her bedtime prayers Carrie had started to thank God each night for her own mother. She had always known a miner’s life was hard and a miner’s wife’s no better, but now she noticed her mother’s cheery singing and her chirpy chatter as she went about her tasks of scrubbing, washing, ironing, cleaning, polishing and baking, in a place nearly always steamy with clothes drying and pans boiling, and always smelling of sweaty boots and coal dust. And if her mother wasn’t busy darning in the evenings or finishing some ironing or preparing meals, she’d have her box of old rags out and would be working away on the clippy mat she made each year in time for Christmas. The old one would then be moved into one of the bedrooms, and the one from the bedroom was transferred to the scullery.
‘Sit down, lass.’ Lillian pushed her down on one of the hardbacked chairs before producing the bottle hidden under her cardigan like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. She looked at Carrie, her brown button eyes bright and her mouth stretched in a wide smile. ‘Me granny swears this is the best drink this side of heaven. She’s known far and wide for her sloe gin, is me granny.’
‘Won’t the bottle be missed then?’
‘Not the way they were all guzzling the beer, not to mention the whisky me da took.’
Lillian had fetched two mugs as she’d been talking and now she poured a generous measure of the dark liquid into each. She handed Carrie hers and said, ‘Bottoms up, lass,’ before plumping down on a chair on the opposite side of the table.
‘Ooh, it’s nice, sort of . . . blackcurranty. No, not blackcurranty, it’s . . . What does it remind you of, Carrie?’
‘Sloes?’
It wasn’t particularly witty but both girls were convulsed with laughter again, and they continued to titter as they sipped at the deceptively innocuous drink.
Some time later, when the level in the bottle had dropped to half, Carrie became aware of a wonderful sense of contentment and happiness. How could she ever have thought this room was cold and unwelcoming? she asked herself. It was bonny, so bonny. Everything was bonny. Suddenly the ever present spectre embodied in the words ‘locked out’, which had first entered her life four and a half years earlier when every colliery in the country had been closed and padlocked against its workers to force the miners to accept reduced wages, harder working conditions and longer hours, was gone. The bairns she and Lillian had passed on the way to the house, little mites of five and six who had been lugging a half sack of coke they’d collected from following the coke cart for hours and picking up the pieces that rolled off, ceased to tug at her consciousness. Life was a beautiful thing and anything was possible if only you wished hard enough.
She stretched her legs out in front of her, admiring the brocade of her dress across her knees; the folds of the material shone in the mellow light of the oil lamp Lillian had lit when they’d first come in. Glancing at her friend she saw Lillian was pouring them both another measure of sloe gin, her brow furrowed in concentration and both hands on the bottle as though it weighed a ton.
‘There, lass.’ The task accomplished, Lillian fell back against the unyielding wood of the chair, her mouth fixed in a wide grin. And when she raised the mug to her lips only to miss her mouth entirely, pouring the contents down the front of her dress, Carrie found herself laughing with her friend as though she’d never stop.
Neither of them heard the back door open or the footsteps in the scullery, so when Alec’s voice cut through their laughter and brought both girls’ heads jerking to the doorway, Carrie’s fright caused her to slop the remainder of her drink all over the pristine white tablecloth. ‘What the hell . . .’ Alec’s voice died away as he surveyed his sister and little Carrie McDarmount and the severely depleted gin bottle which told its own story.
‘Ooh you, our Alec. Look what you’ve made Carrie do.’ Lillian tried to rise to assist Carrie who was desperately mopping at the stain with her handkerchief but she found her legs wouldn’t hold her. She subsided into her seat again, and said plaintively, ‘I’ll get wrong from mam now an’ it’s all your fault.’
They were stewed, the pair of them. Even in his own intoxicated state Alec could see the girls were totally inebriated. He stared at them, his mouth open in a slight gape. His mam would skin Lillian alive if she came home and found them like this.
Carrie stared back, but in spite of the dawning dismay at the pickle she was in she found herself thinking, oh, but he looks grand in that dark suit and white shirt. He was so handsome, so perfect, she loved him so much. He had to ask her to be his lass one day, he just had to.
‘I don’t need to ask what you’ve been up to, do I?’ Alec’s voice held amusement chiefly, but when he added, ‘Mam’s going to have your hide for this, Lil, you know that, don’t you?’ the benign expression on Lillian’s face changed to one of fuddled alarm.
‘You won’t tell, Alec?’ Lillian managed to pull herself up and stood swaying slightly, one hand held out in supplication to her brother. ‘Please, please, Alec, say you won’t.’
‘What about all this?’ He gestured towards the stained tablecloth and the gin bottle, his gaze moving over Carrie’s flushed face as he did so. She was still staring at him, and when he read the look in the deep blue eyes he found himself smiling slightly. So that was the way of it, was it? She was sweet on him. He looked harder at the young girl and found he liked what he saw. Some time in the last weeks and months his sister’s little friend had become all grown up. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? She was going to be a beauty if he wasn’t mistaken, with that russet hair and wonderful creamy skin.
‘I’ll . . . I’ll get out the spare tablecloth an’ put this in to soak. If you say you spilt something on it, Mam won’t go for you, you know she won’t.
Please?
’
Please?
’
Lillian stumbled towards her brother, tripped on the rug and would have gone head first into the range but for his hands shooting out and steadying her. She began to cry maudlin tears. Alec shook his head impatiently. ‘All right, all right, cut the blubbering but I shall want payment for this, mind. I’ve a good few socks ready for darning and a couple of shirts minus buttons, and you know what Mam’s like when it comes to mending. Once in a blue moon if we’re lucky.’
‘I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise,’ Lillian gabbled emphatically. ‘Aw, thanks, man. Thanks, Alec.’
‘Get yourself to bed before you break your neck.’ He pushed her towards the door. ‘I’ll see to the cloth before I walk Carrie back, all right?’ And then he picked up Lillian’s mug, held it to his nose and sniffed. ‘By, Lil, this is Gran’s brew, isn’t it? You’ve started at the deep end sure enough,’ but his eyes were on Carrie as he spoke and he was smiling.
She smiled back, nodding at Lillian as her friend said a subdued goodnight and disappeared, and then watching Alec as he stripped the cloth off the table and took it through to the scullery. He returned a moment later, fetched a new cloth from the dresser and spread it over the oilcloth. ‘There.’ He grinned down at her and she felt her heart thudding frantically. ‘Good as new.’
She had wanted to say she’d help him but the old shyness was rendering her dumb. Pull yourself together, say something intelligent, she told herself frantically. Show him you’re not a bairn but as good as all those lasses who set their caps at him. ‘I . . . I’m sorry about the cloth. You’ - she was going to say you made me jump but changed it to - ‘startled me,’ thinking it sounded better.
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