Eliza's Child (22 page)

Tot was embarrassed when she met him at the school gates. ‘You needn't have come, Mam,' he said, glancing sideways at his classmates. ‘I walk home by myself now, I'm not a little babby.'

And he wasn't; that was very evident, she realised. At ten years old he was almost as tall as she was herself and looking more like Jack, apart from his eyes, every day. Her heart swelled with pride just to look at him. She couldn't believe she had such a big lad as he was becoming; she was only twenty-eight after all!

‘I was passing, that's all, and I thought you and your marras would like a ride home,' she said apologetically.

Four or five of them jumped into the tub trap with alacrity and poor Dolly had to pull them all home, Thankfully the school was only a few streets away from the house in Gilesgate.

It was as they turned into the street that a voice hailed her from a passing cab. ‘Eliza!'

She glanced at the cab, which had drawn to a halt, and felt a shock like cold water as she realised it was Jonathan Moore.

‘ELIZA,' HE SAID.
‘It is so nice to see you again.'

‘My name is Sister Mitchell-Howe,' said Eliza. ‘I can't say I'm happy to see you.' Jonathan Moore had put on a little weight and there was a sagginess about his face though his eyes were the same as ever, even to the same expressionless gaze.

‘Well, Sister Mitchell-Howe, you have come up in the world, I see. You're as lovely as ever, though.'

Eliza ignored this remark. The sight of him had brought the events of the night before she left Jack vividly to mind. She could barely look at him let alone speak to him. He had brought the cab he was in to the side of the road and halted in front of her so she began to ease Dolly around it.

‘Wait, you're not going?' Jonathan asked.

‘I have to take the lads home,' she replied. She was flustered, filled with dislike. ‘Why can't you leave us alone?' It was an irrational remark considering the fact that she hadn't seen him for some years. Except for the once, she remembered; he had stood on the edge of the crowd of off-shift miners when Miley was being buried.

‘There is no cause to be unpleasant, Eliza,' said Jonathan. ‘I simply wished to say how I admire you for the way you have got on in life.'

The boys in the trap were beginning to get a little boisterous, standing up and pushing and shoving each other. ‘Are we going?' one asked.

‘Aye, we are,' Eliza replied. ‘Gee up, Dolly.' She managed to get around the cab and set off along the street and round the corner to where she stabled the pony.

She hurried Tot into the back door of the house despite his protests and closed the door after her.

‘Who's that man, Mam?' he asked.

‘Just a man I used to know,' she answered. ‘I don't want anything to do with him.'

‘Why? He seems like a nice man,' said Tot. But he was losing interest. ‘Can I go out and play quoits? The lads are playing a match today.'

‘When you've had your tea,' said Eliza. By that time Jonathan would have gone away, she thought. She had a feeling he was still somewhere about. She felt jumpy, unsettled.

Bertha came in, her eyes shining and her cheeks rosy. ‘Charlie and me have set the date,' she said. ‘We are getting wed in October, as we thought. It is a good time for the farm, before the threshing.' She liked the farm and enjoyed working with the animals. Charlie's mother was teaching her the dairy work, expecting Bertha to take over the heavy jobs such as the scrubbing and the butter-churning, but Bertha was not afraid of hard work. She knew little else. But the older woman had spoken sharply to her for giving a mewling kitten a saucer of milk and she mentioned this to Eliza.

‘I'm not supposed to feed them, you know. They have to learn to hunt the rats and mice,' she said. ‘But the kitten looked so thin and poorly.' Bertha looked sad for a minute but brightened up as she thought of her wedding. ‘I've got enough money to buy some decent material to make a dress. You'll help me, won't you?'

‘I will, of course I will. I'm so happy for you, Bertha,' Eliza replied, smiling at her friend.

‘Will you be able to manage with the lad an' all?' Bertha asked anxiously. ‘That's the only thing that bothers me.'

‘Well, he's a big lad now,' said Eliza. ‘I was going to enter him for a scholarship to Newcastle School. Or I might even be able to afford the fees; I think there are some assisted places. Mr Collier is looking into it for me.'

‘By, won't that be grand,' declared Bertha, looking relieved. ‘He could do anything, your Tot, I always said he could do anything. He's got a brain on him all right. He's a grand lad, he is an' all.'

‘I couldn't have managed without you, Bertha,' Eliza said. ‘It was a lucky day for me when I met you. Now it's time for you to have a bit of happiness.' The two women busied themselves with the meal as they chatted to each other about their day.

‘How did Lottie take it, then, when the Missus died?' Bertha asked. She always showed an interest in Lottie and how she was getting on, with both of them coming from a workhouse background.

‘She wasn't too bad when I left,' said Eliza. ‘Though what she'll be like when she's on her own with Mr Green, I don't know. He's a penny-pinching old sour-face, he is.'

‘Poor lass,' Bertha said with feeling, and Eliza nodded her agreement.

The evening passed away pleasantly enough. As Bertha was not going out the two women sat beside the fire after the boy had gone to bed and talked about the future. Yet at the back of Eliza's mind there was a shadow hovering, the shadow that was Jonathan Moore. Years ago, he had seemed obsessed with her but then he just seemed to give up the idea he had of getting her to stay with him. She had seen very little of him for years. Today, however, out on the road so close to where she lived, she had the feeling that he had been waiting for her, and was still waiting for her. It made her flesh creep to remember that night when he had claimed her. Oh, she would never forget it.

When she went to bed she dreamed vaguely threatening dreams and he was always there; not that he did anything to her, not specifically, but she felt he might.

Bertha was away to the farm betimes next morning, for she had promised Mrs Carr that she would help with the early morning milking. The women she worked with in her cleaning business already had their duty list for the day. That was something she had learned working in the Infirmary: the importance of everyone knowing exactly what their duties were. So she could afford to take the morning off her own work. After all, milking couldn't be so hard, could it? She would soon get into the way of it. She had to because it would all be her job when she was wed.

‘You're late,' her future mother-in-law greeted her as she opened the door of the cowshed. ‘It's six o'clock already. I thought I told you to start at five-thirty?'

‘I'm sorry, I had some last minute—'

‘We don't want excuses.' Charlie's voice came from the back of the shed. ‘You have to be reliable in farming, you know. The animals don't like it if you're not.'

‘Well, I'll do better in future,' Bertha said meekly. She had already learned that it did not pay to answer back to her future mother-in-law. Charlie wouldn't like it.

By the end of the first hour her back ached, her wrists ached and her fingers were as stiff as pencils. Mrs Carr disappeared into the farmhouse kitchen, muttering something about cooking breakfast for Charlie and his hind, Barney. Bertha was left with a list of instructions: carry the pails of milk into the dairy, skim it for foreign bodies and have it ready to take out on the streets of Gilesgate to sell.

‘I'm not going out selling the milk!' she protested.

‘There's no reason why you shouldn't,' said Mrs Carr, pursing her lips. ‘I'm sure I've done it myself afore the day.'

Well, I'm not, Bertha said to herself as she watched the older woman go in the kitchen door. She was not, she insisted to herself. She felt as though she had done a fair day's work already and she was ready for her breakfast. Then there was dairy work to do after that.

‘How are you managing?'

Charlie came round the corner and, glancing round to make sure no one saw, kissed her on the lips. Bertha immediately felt better, her lips tingled and she felt funny inside.

‘Grand, I like it,' she said untruthfully.

‘I'll just turn the cows out, then we'll go in for something to eat,' he said.

‘Good, I'm starving,' Bertha replied.

‘Well, just take that dead kitten out and put it on the muck heap, will you? Can't have it beginning to stink the place out, can we?'

‘Dead kitten?'

Bertha hadn't seen the dead kitten, being so busy with learning how to milk the cows properly, but now she went over to the corner of the cowshed where there was a pile of dirty straw and there it was, the stiff, emaciated body of the little animal she had been about to feed the night before.

‘It's starved to death, Charlie,' she said sadly and was amazed when he laughed.

‘Aye well, it should have learned to be a bit quicker on the hunt, shouldn't it? A kitten's no good if it doesn't learn its job, is it? There's no sentiment in farming, lass.' He caught her downcast expression. ‘Give it here, lass, I'll do it,' he said. ‘You'll have to harden up, though, when we're wed, I'm telling you.'

By ten o' clock, Bertha was on her way home to see to her little business. The image was firmly fixed in her mind, the image of Charlie picking the kitten up by the tail, striding to the door and throwing it on the muck heap. She did not tell Eliza about it. Eliza wasn't all that fond of Charlie, she could see it, though of course Eliza tried to hide the fact.

Eliza was on her way to see Peter Collier at the temporary offices the union had in the city. She sat in the tub trap and held Dolly's reins, but it was a straight road to the offices and in truth she had little to do. The roads were fairly busy but Dolly knew them well and was wise in the ways of threading through traffic. So Eliza had time to think even though she was at the same time watching out for any sign of Jonathan Moore.

Autumn was on the way and already some of the leaves on the trees were turning colour and there was a sharpness to the air. Though it was still only August it heralded a hard winter.

She thought about the evening before when she had gone back out to see a couple of patients, one of them Billy, the miner with the bett hand and threatened blood poisoning. Billy had been asleep when she went in.

‘Oh, he seems better,' said Eliza, laying a hand on his forehead to check his temperature. It was cooler than it had been that morning. She checked his bandages; they didn't appear to have been removed so Betsy must not have touched them.

‘Aye well, he wasn't better,' said Betsy, her voice hard. ‘The poor lad was nearly weeping with the pain earlier on.'

‘Well,' said Eliza, ‘it must have eased off.'

‘Aye, it would,' replied Betsy. ‘I went in to the chemist and got some paregoric for him. That's what's given him a bit ease.'

Eliza could see now that Billy was drugged; she could smell the camphor from the paregoric as well. She looked at his lower arm for the tell-tale red line running up to his armpit. It was still there but fainter.

‘I'll leave the dressing until the morn,' she said. ‘You won't touch it?'

‘Billy wouldn't let me,' Betsy admitted.

‘Well, don't try while he's asleep,' Eliza warned. ‘I'll come back then.'

If Billy recovered and his hand was saved Betsy would put it down to the paregoric, which was a camphorated derivative of opium that would make Billy sleep but would not have an effect on the infection in his hand.

Eliza smiled as she drove along the narrow lanes of Durham. What did it matter so long as Billy got better and kept his hand? A one-handed miner was not much use to anyone. The family would be thrown on the parish and likely end up in the workhouse.

She arrived at the union offices and dismounted from the tub trap. Though it was still fairly early in the morning she could see through the uncurtained window that Peter was already at his desk, working. But he put down his pen, rose to his feet and smiled at her.

‘Now then, bonny lass,' he said in greeting. ‘You're a sight for sore eyes on a grey morning. Do you want to see me for something in particular or is this just a friendly visit?'

‘Both, really,' replied Eliza. ‘I wanted to ask you about a high school for Tot.'

‘Ah.' Peter looked thoughtful. ‘I tell you what, Eliza, sit down and I'll see about some tea. It's just about my time for a break, any road.' He went to the inner door and called through it. ‘Fetch a pot of tea, please, Meg. And two cups.'

Eliza sat down on a hard chair before the desk and Peter sat opposite. He leaned forward with his elbows on the blotting pad and his hands folded under his chin.

‘You want him to go to high school? Aye, of course you do, you want the lad to make something of himself. He's got the brains an' all. You mentioned it before, I know, and I have been thinking about it. Only I don't know, I don't think he can go through the union. We are going to sponsor some scholarships but Tot is not a miner's son, that's the trouble. Sugar?'

Eliza nodded. She supposed that she had expected that Peter might be in a position to at least give Tot a chance to try for a scholarship. She sipped her tea and tried not to show her disappointment. Peter was an honourable man; he wouldn't do such a thing. She watched as he rose to his feet and closed the door between his office and the other room. She was completely unprepared for what he said next.

‘There is one way it could be done,' he said.

Eliza sat up and gazed at him attentively. ‘Yes? I'd do anything, I would, only tell me.'

‘If Tot was my stepson he would be entitled to enter for a scholarship to a school.'

Eliza was speechless. She just couldn't believe she had heard him aright. Peter Collier was almost as old as her father, why, he must have been in his forties. His dark hair was speckled with grey and there were deep lines in his forehead and running down the sides of his mouth. But he had nice eyes, kind eyes and he had been a friend to her when she needed one.

‘You – you want to marry me?'

‘I think you would be a good wife, Eliza. Oh, I know I'm not as young as I was but we could be good together. We could work for the pitmen and their families, in our different ways.' He looked at her face; she seemed astonished. His own confidence plunged. ‘See, Eliza, don't give me your answer yet. Give yourself time. You have Tot to consider.'

After Eliza had gone, Peter sat staring at his work, but he wasn't seeing it. Why hadn't he told her the truth? he asked himself. Why had he found it so impossible to tell her he had feelings for her, that he wanted to marry her for herself, not for practical reasons at all? Because she might reject him out of hand, he thought dismally. He was a middle-aged man with more grey in his hair than black and she was still a young woman. He couldn't bear it if she rejected him. It was better to go on as they were, good friends.