After the Storm (31 page)

Had Annie, he wondered, forgiven her father yet for killing himself? He, Tom, had because Archie had not been his real father. Oh yes, he had been upset, he had grieved but he had forgiven him, but he doubted whether Annie had, whether she ever would. He remembered her saying that she hated him and could never forgive him. Well, he wasn’t about to forgive his ma. It was the same thing, he would write and tell her or perhaps he would keep it all inside. It was better there.

He felt Grace’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Me da knows who your father was, you know. Barney Grant he was, their family came up from the Welsh mines years ago. He had a lovely singing voice me da says. Blue eyes and black hair.’

Tom saw the breath from the nostrils of the sheep grazing nearby. He turned over and said sharply.

‘Is that all he knows?’ So his surname should have been Grant should it. He had often wanted to know his name.

‘That’s all he’ll tell you.’ She sighed and stroked his face. ‘He thinks you should go and make it up with Betsy too. He says it’s not right for a boy to hate his mam.’

Tom stood up, brushing his trousers free of grass. The farmer was hitching the cart to his horse now, urging him to the track which led eventually to Wassingham. Tom stooped and packed the flask away, offering it wordlessly to Grace before he did so. She shook her head, watching him anxiously. His mouth was set in a thin line, his brow was furrowed in a scowl and his movements were rapid and sharp, almost violent. He was seldom angry and she felt the tears come to her eyes.

She stood up and he snatched the blanket from beneath her, shaking it. The grass flew up and into her eyes; she buried her head in her hands and tried to blink the dust from them. Tom saw and dropped the blanket, brought her hands from her face and lifted her eyes.

‘In your eyes is it, Gracie? I’m sorry, lass.’ He dug into his pocket and with the corner of his handkerchief slipped out a piece of grass which was in her eye, then lowered her lid over the bottom one until at last it was clear and the tears had stopped. His face was close, his eyes concentrated on hers as he searched for stray grass and dust. Then, satisfied, he said:

‘I’m not a boy any more, Grace. I feel a man and I’ll be doing a man’s job in two months. I can’t change how I feel.’

He dropped down and secured the clasp of his bag.

‘Won’t change,’ Grace corrected.

He stood up now and took her by the shoulders. The wind was whipping the hair across her face, he felt the cold through his jumper.

‘Can’t,’ he shouted. ‘If I could, I would but I bloody can’t. I love me Auntie May but me mam broke me heart when she sent me away and then Annie went and that was her fault too.’

Grace pushed him away from her and slapped him then, hard across the face and red marks came almost immediately.

‘Annie, Annie, Annie. All I ever hear is bloody Annie. I’m here too but for all you care I could be one of them sheep cropping the bloody grass.’

She was red in the face with rage and he felt the heat and the pain from the slap and kissed her hard on the mouth, pulled her against him so that her warm soft body was pressed to his. It was his first kiss and he had not known that lips were so soft and he wondered whether he should breathe or not. He did not.

At last they drew apart but he held on to her arms.

‘I’m telling you for the last time Grace, you and Annie’s different. She’s me sister just as much as if Barney had been her father. We’re part of one another. I love her, she loves me but when she’s not here I feel as though half me bloody heart’s gone too. If you went, I would probably feel that the other half had gone. But don’t bring Annie up again like that. It’s different, what I feel for you both.’ He was shaking her now and she nodded and then smiled.

‘Don’t forget your book,’ she said as a page began to blow away again.

He raised his arms and galloped after it, stamping his foot hard down on it.

‘I’ll take you out for some chips in February, when I’m working,’ he shouted as he came back with it bunched into his pocket. ‘Until then, you can take me.’ He grabbed her to him and kissed her cheek, then picked up the bags and made her wear his jacket as they set off back up the hill.

‘I never did get the farmer right,’ he murmured as they turned and watched the cart disappear round the hill. ‘I can’t get me figures to come alive somehow.’

‘Annie wants you to go to art school you know. She’s frightened of the pit for you and so am I. Look what it did to me da.’

‘It’s not going to get me, bonny lass. Maybe one day I’ll go but it’ll take money you see. Anyway, there’s time enough.’

‘And you’ll see your ma, will you?’

She felt him tense and saw the muscle in his cheek jump.

‘Maybe,’ is all he said. ‘Maybe.’

Annie was smoothing down her new blue dress which slid over her skin and hung soft from her shoulders. She turned before the long mirror which was screwed to the inside of the mahogany wardrobe in her room and then she heard Tom’s voice.

‘I should stay here in the hall,’ replied Sarah. ‘It is somewhat improper to visit a young lady in her bedroom.’

But his steps were nearer and she faced the door, hiding her laugh in her hands.

‘You lovely boy,’ she cried and ran to him. His dark jacket was prickly and his chin rough as he held her tight and swung her clear off the ground.

‘Aye, but you’ve grown,’ Tom laughed. ‘In three months you’ve grown, bonny lass. And in quite the right ways too.’

She held him from her and grinned.

‘Don’t be improper,’ she mimicked Sarah and minced from him with one hand on her hip. ‘Come on, is Don downstairs?’

She grabbed his hand and moved towards the door but he pulled her back. ‘On me back then,’ and her laugh jogged in her throat as he reared towards the stairs with her on his back and then on down, past the prints. She leant her head on the back of his and felt his warmth as he spun to a halt on the bottom step. Don was waiting, his elbow on the banister, his eyebrows raised.

‘Not made a lady of you yet, then?’ he drawled and she flung her arm round his neck and kissed his cheek. His moustache was very bushy now and she wondered how he ate without it getting in the way.

‘I sometimes feel that day will never arrive, Donald,’ called Sarah as she came through from the kitchen with an apron on.
She had been cutting egg sandwiches for tea and Annie could smell them from here.

‘She hasn’t got ears, you know,’ Annie whispered to Tom. He hitched her further up his back. ‘She’s just one big flap that picks up everything.’

Don frowned and Tom laughed. Annie knew it would be all right. Sarah liked to be teased.

‘I don’t think we wish to go into my anatomy just yet awhile, Annie. Why don’t you go into the garden and see the hens?’ Sarah smiled and walked back to the kitchen and Annie winked over at Val who had come to the door and was laughing.

She dug her heels into Tom. ‘Come on then, get a move on.’ Tom edged out through the back door, still with her on his back and then he galloped down the garden, past the rose-bushes which were stunted with pruning and Annie felt the air jogged from her and the garden tipped and lurched. She waved wildly to the Thoms across the fence and turned to look back, beckoning to Don.

‘Hurry up,’ she called and her voice sounded as though she was rolling over cobbles.

He didn’t see her as he talked through the window to Sarah in the kitchen. Tom dumped her by the wire but still kept an arm round her waist as he struggled to regain his breath. She held on to his shoulder and he kissed her cheek. Her hair was loose and kinked, almost curly and he touched it.

She grinned. ‘I put it in lots of plaits at night. Sandy, one of the girls at school, taught me that little trick. It’s better than just a few. Do you like it? She’s nice; red-haired and blue-eyed but not plump like Grace. Couldn’t she come, Tom?’

She’d said it all in one breath and her face was wistful as he shook his head.

‘She’s working tomorrow, bonny lass, and her Frank was in a fall in the pit, so she’s home nursing him.’

Annie gripped his arm. ‘Not bad is he, not like his da?’

Tom smiled and squeezed her to him. ‘Just a bit of a knock. The coal fell behind him and he had to be dug out so he was bloody lucky. She sends her love.’

Annie bit her nail. Suddenly she was back in Grace’s kitchen, laughing as Tom spilt his pink mice all over the floor, back in the dark streets, the beck and on the moors. Back where the wind tore through her hair on the beach, back where slag-heaps
loomed wherever you looked and coal-dust coated the trees. Then Tom slapped her hand from her mouth, lightly, but enough to bring her back to the light and the cleanliness of the garden and the hens, but part of her still called for the past while the other sank back into the space and light of the present.

‘Don’t bite your nails, hinny. It’s a disgusting habit, or that’s what our Gracie would say.’ He was smiling at her, his blue eyes deep into hers and she knew she would be all right if she could still feel his arm round her, see his pictures as the years went by. All right if the pit didn’t get him and fear clutched at her and she banged the wire to attract the hens towards them.

‘We’ll feed them in a moment,’ she said, ‘when Don gets here.’ Anything to put that image from her mind. She looked round for Don again.

He seemed to have been a man for years and years she thought. Above and away from the two of them, always busy with his own plans, never needing them, seldom writing when he moved away. She felt like a fly Beauty’s tail would want to swat when she was around him. He was old, he’d been old for a long time and she couldn’t find ground between them that she could walk on and reach him. But she loved him. He was her brother.

She watched Tom as he squatted by the wire and stuck his finger through, waggling it to attract a hen. ‘She’ll think it’s a worm and nip you,’ she laughed, pushing him so that he nearly fell over.

He stood up again, taking his cap from his pocket and slipping it on to the back of his head. He moved his shoulders as though his back ached and suddenly she remembered.

‘Your back,’ she gasped. ‘I must have hurt you when I was having me ride. Here, let me have a look.’

She darted behind him and held up his jacket and the shirt with it and her skin went cold as she saw the raised red scars. She heard Don strolling up the garden behind her and turned.

‘Look at this will you, Don. I’d have bloody killed him if I’d been there.’ Her lips tightened with rage and she touched Tom’s back with her fingertips.

Don had walked on past and was clucking through the wire at the hens.

‘Teachers have a job to do,’ he said. ‘Tom’s like you, all mouth. He probably asked for it.’ He twanged the wire with his
finger and moved further down to see the cock which was pecking at corn left over from this morning.

Annie felt the old irritations rise up as she tucked Tom’s shirt back. She wanted to slap Don’s face, push it into the wire so that he had red marks and then tell him he had too much of a mouth on him and begged for it. But Tom winked at her. Albertitis, he mouthed, his hand up and she nodded and shrugged. Nothing had changed, she thought, between them all, but wished that it had. She pulled a face at Don behind his back.

‘If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that,’ Don said without turning his head and her eyes widened at Tom and then they started to laugh and she moved up to Don and put her hand on his shoulder, hoping he would stay next to her and talk. Tom nodded quietly at her and she showed Don her best layer. He moved from her to take some corn and flicked it through the wire. Her stomach tightened and she looked away, not at Tom, not at Don, but at nothing until she was able to smile again through lips that were stiff.

She gave them bowls and watched as they took in the corn and spread it about, laughing at the hens that pecked and chattered and pushed to reach the choice piles, leaning on the wire while the weak sun fell on her back. Don had let her touch him for a while at least. She would not tell them yet of the card she had received this morning from Georgie saying that he had left Wassingham and was in the Army now. That he would come for her later and that he loved her and always would. She had left it under her pillow and would allow herself to look at it and feel it again tonight and until then would not think of him being where she could not imagine him, not see him sitting or standing in a place she recognised.

The wire lurched as Tom slammed the gate behind them and screwed the wire shut. He stood next to her and looked back at the house. The winter sun was low and he pulled his cap further down over his eyes and took out his pad while Don walked over to the greenhouse. He sketched in the french windows of the sitting room, the flagstones and rose bush in the tub which was pulled close to the house for frost protection.

‘I need colour really,’ he murmured and Annie looked over his pad, shading her eyes as she studied the house again. He had caught the essence of the place.

‘It’s lovely here,’ Tom remarked. ‘Are you happy?’ Looking at the house not at her.

Annie moved to the laurel tree and picked at a dark leaf. ‘It’s too early to answer that. I love the comfort, the ease. It’s electricity here.’ She heard the pride in her voice. ‘But it’s still strange, still as though I’m not really here.’ She was going to continue but Don called over.

‘How much do you make on the eggs then?’ The cinders were wet from yesterday’s rain and did not move beneath his feet but stuck to the soles of his boots as he came towards them.

‘Enough,’ replied Annie and waved to Val as she came to beckon them in to tea. ‘Coming,’ Annie called. ‘Race you in, Don.’ She grinned at him, willing him to run with her, but he shook his head and walked with his hands deep in his pockets towards the house so she walked beside him, pointing to the vegetables and the shed which was full of garden furniture, as well as her bike.

‘Well, you have done well for yourself then, haven’t you,’ he murmured before they reached the kitchen and she wanted to tell him that she would, somehow, make it up to him one day. She would give him his share of her good luck.