A Mother's Gift (2 page)

‘I’ll tak’ her,’ she had said to Hannah and Hannah had
merely
looked at her and nodded. Hannah had about given up, what with feeling sick and bone weary all through her pregnancies and this last one was the third in two years.

‘It’s no good you complaining, mind,’ Kitty had said to Noah when she carried the bairn into the house. ‘We’ve got this bairn now and we have to fetch her up.’ To give him his due, Noah said not a word. Why, after all, it happened quite often that a grandmother took a bairn that was one too many. And there was no denying it was sweet to hold the little thing and Katie had been a good bairn, sleeping through the night once she had her belly filled with good milk. And look at her now, a lass to be proud of.

Katie looked like Noah an’ all, a real bonny lass she was with dark blue eyes and wavy fair hair and straight limbs, not like a lot of the bairns in Winton where rickets was the scourge of the babbies. Her own younger sister, Ena, hadn’t walked till she was three, her legs bent out in a bow.

‘I just wanted to say, thanks for giving us time to hide the good tea service, Kitty, I’m ever so grateful.’

Katie and her gran glanced up. Dottie Dowson from next door was standing in the back doorway, hesitating for only a courtesy moment before coming in and standing before the range. She was a stout woman and her pinny was pulled tightly round her waist, straining at the thin strings tied at the back. She looked hopefully towards the kettle on the side but the fire was almost out and the teapot out of sight in the pantry.

‘By, I’m fair clemming for a cup of tea,’ she said.

‘Aye well,’ said Gran, who had come through from the room with Katie close behind. ‘There’s no coal and what’s more, I’ve swept the coal house out, there’s not so much as a teaspoonful left. So how I’m supposed to mak’ a drop of tea I don’t know.’

‘Aye, me an’ all,’ sighed Dottie. ‘I’ll have to go to the soup kitchen again for a bit of dinner for the bairns.’

Kitty looked at her. So far the Benfields had not been to the soup kitchen which operated from a room behind the infants school. And she couldn’t bear the thought that they might have to go now. She looked hopelessly at Katie and Katie caught the look and something shrivelled inside her. But if Gran wanted her to go to the soup kitchen then she would go, she decided, never mind if the girls from school saw her there. It was her fault the Means-test man had got in before the lads had the sofa hid and it was up to her to do something about it.

‘I’ll come with you, Mrs Dowson,’ she said.

‘Eeh, no, lass,’ said Gran but her voice trembled unconvincingly.

‘I will, I don’t mind, honest,’ said Katie. But half an hour later as she stood in line with a large bowl held before her and a paper bag for the bread in her pocket she minded all right. Especially she minded when a group of girls from the grammar school got off Radley’s bus, talking and laughing until they saw Katie standing there, her back turned towards them in a forlorn hope they wouldn’t see her. Not that they said anything nasty, oh no. After all, they had been her friends at the junior school and she had won a scholarship to go to the grammar
school
with them but Gran hadn’t been able to afford the uniform.

‘Hello, Katie,’ June Wright had called and blushed and the girls had walked on talking quietly to each other and June had glanced back and away quickly when she saw Katie was still looking. Katie’s throat burned and her heart beat sickeningly for she knew they must be talking about her. And it was then that she vowed to herself that she would get out of Winton, she would make something of herself. Oh yes she would if she died in the attempt.

Moving along with the queue Katie had her bowl filled with vegetable broth with bits of ham floating in it by Mrs Brown, the wife of the manager of the Co-op store.

‘I’ve put some extra bread in for you, Katie,’ Mrs Brown said kindly. Katie blushed and stammered thanks she could hardly get out because her throat was closing up tightly but at last she was free to go home as fast as the slopping broth would allow her to walk.

‘Flaming hell, what’s this muck?’ Noah demanded when he sat down at the kitchen table to eat his share. ‘By, our Kitty, you know damn well I don’t like broth.’ His face was red with anger and for a minute Katie thought he might chuck the lot out into the yard but he didn’t.

‘What do you expect when the pit’s laid off?’ Gran demanded. ‘Do you know the Means-test man’s been round this morning? Put a price on my sofa he did an’ all.’ Her voice quivered as she spoke, no anger there, just despair.

‘You mean this is from the soup kitchen,’ said Noah. ‘Why man, is it any wonder a man turns to drink?’

‘It’s well to be seen you had the price of a pint!’

Noah sighed. He picked up his spoon and began ladling the soup into his mouth, swallowing fast and in between mouthfuls taking great bites out of a crust of bread in his other hand. The truth was he hadn’t had the money for a pint, he had gone into the club intending to put the price on the slate. Only Les, behind the bar, had shaken his head.

‘Nay, Noah,’ he had said. ‘The slate’s full enough. You’ll have to find threepence if you want a pint.’

Noah had stared at him in disbelief. ‘Hey,’ he had demanded, ‘haven’t I always paid me dues as soon as I could?’

‘Aye, I know, lad,’ said Les. ‘But I can only sub you so far, be fair, man. I have the brewery to pay and I don’t mind telling you they’re getting a bit restless like.’

Noah had gone a fiery red with the humiliation but he held his head up and glared at the club steward. ‘Well, by hell,’ he’d said. ‘If I go out now I tell you, I won’t be back! I’ll walk to Coundon first.’ He glanced around the bar for support but as it happened the place was almost empty, only a domino-playing foursome of aged miners sitting in the corner nursing half-pints which had lasted them since the bar opened at eleven. They had looked up at the sound of the altercation at the bar but quickly turned back to the dominoes. Noah looked back at the steward. He was polishing glasses and whistling under his breath and obviously not caring if Noah and all the rest of the laid-off miners deserted for Coundon.

Noah strode to the door then glanced around once
again
. ‘Aye well,’ he said. ‘I could do with the exercise any road. I’m away then.’ The steward didn’t reply.

Now as Noah rammed bread into his mouth and washed it down with tea which was the colour of cat’s piss it was that weak for it was borrowed from a neighbour, Noah felt the blackness of despair descending on to his shoulders and spread up into his head.

‘WILL YOU BE
in for lunch today, Matthew?’

Matthew Hamilton glanced up from the letter he was reading, a faint frown of irascibility creasing his forehead.

‘What?’

Mary Anne Hamilton bent her head over her plate quickly. What had she said to annoy him? It had been a perfectly reasonable question after all. The vague unhappy feelings that lurked as usual in the back of her mind moved forward a little.

Matthew caught the small defensive gesture and his irritation rose. Good God, why was she such a mouse? She acted like a mouse; she even looked like a mouse with her mouse-coloured hair and pale blue eyes. Her lips quivered timidly even as he watched. He fought down his feelings, made himself smile.

‘Sorry, no, I won’t be. I have to drive over to Auckland. I will probably be late for dinner too. You needn’t wait for me.’

‘But Matthew, we have the Dawsons coming!’

‘Can’t be helped. That fellow Parsons evidently cannot dot his i’s or cross his t’s without me.’

Why didn’t Matthew sack him then, get himself an agent he could depend on, Mary Anne thought rebelliously. If there was one thing she dreaded more than another it was having to entertain Matthew’s fellow ironmasters and other business colleagues on her own. That Henry Dawson could hardly be bothered to speak to her and he took very little trouble to hide it. He was a boor of a man who had worked his way up out of the gutter and had been too busy making money to learn the ways of civilised society. Mary Anne sighed. Not much different from Matthew, really, she reflected.

Matthew looked up as his stepson, Robert, came into the breakfast room closely followed by Maisie, his stepdaughter. Oh, Mary Anne had her uses, he thought, not least the fact that she had brought with her the controlling interests in Richards rolling mills from her first husband and mines on a very productive section of the Durham coalfield from her father. A pity then that she was so plain. He looked at her now, her face transformed by the smile with which she greeted her children. Her eyes glowed, there was even a little pink colour in her pale cheeks.

‘Good morning, Maisie, morning Robert,’ she said, her voice soft with love.

‘Morning Mother, morning, Father,’ said nine year old Robert. Maisie stood with her head hanging, her fine hair dressed in a thin mousey plait, the same colour as her mother’s. Matthew felt the usual twinge of irritation. The
child
was either stupid or timid as a mouse before him. What did she think he was going to do to her?

‘Where is Miss Morton?’ he asked gruffly and Maisie stepped back. ‘Shouldn’t you be at your lessons by now?’

Maisie stepped back as though she thought he was going to hit her, he thought and his annoyance grew. Robert, however, looked him in the eye.

‘She’ll be down directly, Father,’ he said. What he didn’t say was that Maisie had wet the bed again and Miss Morton was changing the sheets herself instead of the laundry maid who was under orders to report such a happening to him. Matthew had decided that at five it was well past the time Maisie should have got over such a dirty habit.

‘Come and kiss your mother, darlings,’ said Mary Anne and the two children went to her. Matthew got to his feet and put his post into his attache case.

‘Right, I’m away,’ he said, before Mary Anne could suggest the children kiss him too. It always made him feel so awkward when they did. In any case he had told Lawson to have the Bentley waiting outside at nine o’clock and it was that time now.

It was one o’clock before the cream-coloured Bentley entered Bishop Auckland.

‘Stop at the Queen’s Head, Lawson,’ said Matthew and the car purred to a halt obediently. Lawson got out and opened the back door for Matthew. ‘I’ll be half an hour, that’s all,’ said Matthew and disappeared into the hotel. Eddie Lawson watched him go and then went across the market place to get himself a pie and a half-pint of ale. It
would
likely be late before he got home for his tea. They had stopped off at the ironworks before setting off for West Durham and no doubt the gaffer wanted to visit his mines before he saw the mines agent. He liked to go poking around all his works unannounced, no doubt thought it kept the managers on their toes as well as the men. Woe betide anyone he caught slacking.

At least the strike was over, had been for a month. But by hell, he wouldn’t like to be in the position of any of the pitmen this Christmas of 1926. There would be some pretty poor Christmas dinners. And some of the poor sods hadn’t been taken back on at all, the owners were in a position to pick and choose.

Noah walked in the back door as Kitty was trying to boil the kettle on a fire made up of twigs from the elderberry bush in the garden and a copy of
The Worker’s Chronicle
. It had been issued by Newcastle Trades Council for Action, way back at the beginning of the strike. He was just in time to see the headline, ‘A FIGHTING LEAD TO THE WORKERS!’ curl up and brown.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted at her and shoved her out of the way. But he was too late to retrieve the paper. Growling with anger he turned to her and raised his hand.

‘I wanted to keep them copies!’ he shouted.

‘Aye, go on, hit me,’ Kitty shouted back at him as she squared up to the six foot of him and his powerful miner’s shoulders. But instead of hitting her, Noah lowered his hand and sank into the wooden rocker by the fire. He felt
for
the half a fag he’d dumped earlier in the day and put behind his ear for safe keeping.

Kitty was nonplussed. She watched as he looked at the cigarette end before putting it back behind his ear. By, she thought, her anger changing to compassion in a second, he hasn’t got any fags left. He must be saving that for the night. If she had three ha’pence she would have given him it to go and get a packet of five Woodbines at Meggie’s shop in the wooden hut on the end of the rows. But she hadn’t even a penny for the gas meter. Tonight they would sit in the dark with no fire or they could go to bed early.

Noah looked up as Katie came in with a bowl of broth covered by a plate in her basket. She gazed back at him apprehensively. This was the second day in a row she had had to go to the soup kitchen and she expected her grandfather to explode with rage. Her heart beat unevenly.

Noah did get to his feet. ‘Put that slop down, lass and howay along o’ me,’ he said. ‘I’ll get something to burn on the flaming fire.’ He grinned suddenly at what he had said.

‘Flaming fire! That’s one thing it’s not! Not in this house, any road. But it will be, you wait and see. Whoever heard of a pitman without a bit of coal for his fire?’

‘I don’t know what the heck you’re on about,’ said Kitty.

‘Sit yoursel’ down and have a bite to eat, you daft ha’porth.’