Eliza's Child (28 page)

‘I'll come back tonight if you think he needs me,' said Dr Jones. ‘Just send the lad.'

‘I don't think you will,' said Mrs Bates to the unconscious boy. ‘By, he never even left a drop of medicine. I don't know where he gets his prices from.'

The farmer came in for his breakfast and they discussed the situation over home-cured ham, eggs and black pudding.

‘Well, the doctor must have thought it wasn't serious,' said Farmer Bates. He cut a piece of ham and held it on his fork for a moment while he thought. ‘I reckon we should call in the polis,' he said at last and put the ham into his mouth and chewed. ‘I'll send the lad.'

‘You'll not get much work out of him if you are forever sending him on messages,' observed his wife.

‘Aye, that's a fact,' he replied. ‘Still, we'd best do it.'

It was about two hours before the policeman turned up on the doorstep. ‘I understand you've got an injured lad here,' he said as he followed the farmer into the kitchen.

‘Aye, we have,' said Farmer Bates. ‘An' you've taken your time getting here. I've had to hang about near the house this morning when I should have been up in the far field, seeing to the tups.'

‘I had a busy morning an' all,' the policeman said imperturbably. ‘There's a lot of lawlessness about these days.' He took out his notebook and pencil. ‘Is this the lad?' He indicated the boy, still lying on the settle. ‘What do you reckon happened to him?'

‘He was set on by a couple of tramps,' said Farmer Bates. ‘Mind, they should be run out of the county, ruffians like them lot.'

‘Aye. It would save me a bit of bother,' said the policeman. ‘Now, tell me what happened.'

JONATHAN MOORE SAT
by the manager's desk in the office at Blue House colliery. He eyed the three men standing, cap in hand, before the desk. One of them was Tommy Teesdale, Eliza's father. He was black from the pit and stooped over like Jonathan had imagined an underground hobgoblin would be in the stories he had listened to as a child. The only resemblance he had to Eliza was his dark eyes, shining out of the blackness. This was a miners' deputation. Now that the union had some clout the men thought they could make demands. Well, he would show them who was in charge now his father was gone. He was. And he would close this pathetic little pit down before he would give in to the union. It was the least productive of his mines.

‘What we want, Mr Robinson, is a proper allowance of coal for every pitman's house. It's only fair like, nearly all the other companies have agreed to it,' said Tommy, addressing the manager. Jonathan looked up at the ceiling, yellowed with the smoke from clay pipes, and pursed his lips. The other two miners watched him covertly. He was dressed in smart fawn trousers and riding boots in the style of a military man. He had on a white shirt with a high, soft collar and a black coat over it. He had crossed one leg over the other and he tapped at the sole of the boot with a riding whip, betraying impatience.

‘Well, lads,' said Robinson, glancing sideways at the mine owner, ‘we will have to discuss the matter. I will let you know what we decide.'

‘And we need half an hour of the shift for seeing to the safety,' Tommy went on doggedly. He did not look at Jonathan but he was aware that the owner was glaring balefully at him.

‘I—' the manager began, but he was interrupted by the mine owner, who suddenly sat forward in his chair and put both feet on the ground.

‘Enough!' he roared. ‘You think because we had to recognise the union you can ask for anything! Well, I tell you, Tommy Teesdale, you cannot, no indeed.'

‘We need to clean up the coal dust afore we set the black powder,' said Tommy stubbornly. ‘We cannot afford—'

‘Get out! Get out and don't come back. Look at you, call yourself a hewer? You don't look as though you could swing a bloody pick, you do not indeed. No wonder the pit's doing so badly if it's men like you we're using. Get off the premises before I call the constable, do you hear me?'

‘What?' Tommy was startled, confused; this was something he hadn't bargained for. No one had ever suggested he wasn't up to the job before and he couldn't believe it was happening now. And by the looks on the men's faces, neither could any of the others. Even the manager was open-mouthed. Tommy was a champion hewer and he still had a couple of years left in him before he would have to go on datal work and be paid by the shift, not by how much coal he shifted. He might be small and bent but he was a man of iron.

‘You heard me,' said Jonathan grimly. ‘And the rest of you be off too unless you want to go too.'

‘We'll stop the pit,' said the miner beside Tommy. He stepped forward. ‘You have no right, Mr Moore,' he said.

‘Go on strike and I'll have you all out of your houses,' Jonathan warned. ‘I'm not having you men telling me what to do, not in my own pit. Haven't we provided you with the work, kept your families fed? Do your bloody worst, that's what I say!'

‘Now then, lads, consider—' the manager, Mr Robinson, began, alarmed at the way the confrontation had blown up. How had it come to talk of striking? It had been a routine meeting and if Moore had not been there it would have been sorted amicably somehow.

‘Right then, Mr Moore,' said Tommy, drawing himself up to his full five feet two inches. ‘I'm going. Don't think I won't get taken on at some other pit, I will. I'm well known as a hewer to reckon with, I am. Howay, lads, I don't need you to stop the pit for me. I'll get along, you just see if I don't.'

‘Aye, and take your family with you, I want you out of that colliery house by the end of the week. Or I will bring in the candymen.'

‘Mr Moore, it's Thursday today,' the manager put in. He didn't like the way things were going here, he did not indeed. There would be strife; he could feel it coming in his bones.

‘So it's bloody Thursday, is it? Aye and it's Friday tomorrow and I want them out, the lads too. Three of them, aren't there? Pay them off.'

Tommy's back stiffened with outrage. ‘Do you think my lads would stay after I've gone? Nay, they will not. An', think on, they can go now, they can an' all. Now they're not bound to the pit, thanks to the union.' He stalked to the door before turning and putting in his final shot. ‘Three, did you say? Aye, there was three, Albert, Harry and Miley, and good lads they are. At least Albert and Harry are good lads and they look fair to making fine hewers. Miley now, he will not be doing any hewing, no, on account of he's dead and in his grave. Killed in the pit, he was, or as good as.'

The three men walked out and for a few minutes there was silence in the office; the manager didn't speak because he was shaken into silence after the way the meeting had gone. Jonathan didn't say anything for a few minutes either. Then he got to his feet.

‘I'll go over the accounts with you tomorrow, Robinson,' he said in his normal tone of voice. ‘Just now I have things I must do.'

‘Will I pay Tommy Teesdale what he's owed the morn?' asked Mr Robinson. ‘He'll be up for it, it being the fortnightly pay day.'

‘You will not. He's forfeited it, the insolent rabble-rouser.'

Mr Robinson stared after his departing figure. By, he was a hard man, Jonathan Moore, he thought. Harder even than the usual run of mine owner. He might have remembered how young Miley Teesdale had died. But then, there was no sentiment in business.

The coal was showing signs of petering out any road, in the seams of Blue House. No doubt Jonathan Moore would use this little episode to get rid of the pitmen. Mr Robinson sighed. He himself was getting on in years and he had a bit put by for his old age. But he had thought the owner might find places for the men in his other pits. It didn't look as though that was going to happen. Tommy Teesdale was likely only the first to be turned off.

Jonathan mounted his horse and rode away from Blue House. He should have been feeling better for having vented his spleen on Eliza's father but in fact he did not. All he felt was a deep frustration and a longing for the woman. She was in his blood and he couldn't get her out. Even now he felt a longing to turn away from his road home and go to Durham to at least catch a glimpse of her. He resisted it but he knew it would turn into a compulsion. He was beginning to hate her for it.

He wondered what Collier had said to her when she saw him. He grinned as he thought of it. Oh, he had really enjoyed describing the details of the night he had spent with Eliza to him. The fact that it had been in her man's bed too, that had added to the spice of it. He thought of Collier's face as he said the words. The union man would not be able to look at Eliza again, he, Jonathan Moore, had made sure of that. And yet that hadn't lightened his black mood either; he was still filled with fury and frustration.

‘Why on earth have you brought your tools home with you?' asked Mary Anne anxiously. Surely they hadn't closed the pit, she wondered anxiously, and felt a familiar tightening in her chest. She tried to breathe calmly, deeply as Eliza had taught her to do.

‘I've been turned off, Mary Anne,' said Tommy, shamefaced. He had not been turned off in his working life before, for he was a champion hewer. Besides that, he had always worked under the bond system and was unable to leave a pit once he had put his mark on the bond paper. He had celebrated the end of the yearly bond and the fact that he was free to seek work elsewhere should he want to. But the possibility had not crossed his mind that he might be turned off.

Mary Anne sat down heavily on the cracket stool by the fire. The cracket had been made in the pit by her father for use in a low seam where he had to sit down or squat to swing his pick. Tommy had one almost the same and now he was carrying it by the hole in the middle of the seat, which was there for the purpose, and his pick, broad miner's shovel and black powder tin. He laid them all down in a heap just inside the door.

‘Why?' was the only word Mary Anne could manage to get out.

‘It was Moore, the young one,' said Tommy. He took his clay pipe from the mantelpiece and poked at it with his index finger. There was a little unburned baccy in it so he lit a taper at the fire and lit it before he went on.

‘We went in to ask for the proper coal allowance like the union said. And half an hour datal to see to the safety. Moore was there. He went wild and turned me off.' Tommy looked at his wife. ‘We have to get out of the house by the morn. But it'll be all right, it will, I'll get on at another pit.'

‘Will you? What makes you think Moore won't blacken your name to the other owners? Don't they all stick together? You know they do!' Mary Anne's voice was rising; her eyes were suspiciously bright in her now flushed face. She thought of something else. ‘What about the lads?'

‘The lads an' all. They'll be bringing their picks and shovels.'

Mary Anne suddenly found it even harder to breathe. She held her mouth open and gulped air.

‘Don't, Mary Anne, don't take on,' urged Tommy. He was thoroughly frightened now. ‘It'll be all right, I said, haven't we got our Eliza? She'll take us in, man, she will!'

‘Why did he do it, Da?'

Tommy hadn't noticed the two boys had come in and were piling picks and shovels on to the pile made by their father.

‘Nay, lad, he just went mad.'

‘Bloody gaffers!' said Harry bitterly. He was a tall, thin lad, taller than his father and gangly, though he had the shoulders of a pitman.

‘Harry, don't you swear,' said Tommy. ‘Where did you learn language like that?'

The lad could have said from his father, for Tommy, unless he was in chapel, was not above the odd obscenity, but he did not. ‘Sorry, Da,' he replied meekly. ‘Are you badly, Mam?' He had just realised that his mother was breathing badly and had turned a funny colour. He went over to her and put a hand on her arm.

‘I'm fine, son,' said Mary Anne and indeed she was getting over the first shock and her breathing had steadied. ‘We'd best get packed up then. We'll go to our Eliza's till we get somewhere.'

‘You sit still, me an' Albert will do it. When we've had our dinners.'

‘Eeh, what am I thinking of?' said Mary Anne. ‘There's stew and dumplings on the bar waiting for you. It won't take a minute to dish it out.'

‘I'll dish it out,' said Tommy. ‘You sit down, you have to look after yourself.' He busied himself putting out plates and spoons and brought the heavy iron pan to the table and sat it in the middle. ‘After this we'll pack up,' he said. ‘I'll get the carrier; I have a bob or two to pay him. We'll be out the night. I'm not waiting for the candymen to come the morn. I'd not give that young Moore the satisfaction.'

‘Aw, Da, I don't want to move to Durham,' said Albert as he ate his stew. He quartered a dumpling carefully and stuck his fork into one quarter. ‘Mebbe I can get on at Thornley.'

‘He doesn't want to leave his lass,' said Harry, his teeth gleaming from his coal-blackened face as he grinned.

‘You get on and finish your dinner,' his father advised. ‘You can get your wash and help your mother, do you hear me?'

‘Yes, Da,' said Harry and bent over his meal.

‘We'll have to leave the chapel,' Mary Anne said sadly.

‘Aye well, there's other chapels,' said Tommy. ‘Go on, Albert, if you've finished, fetch the water in for your mother.' It was always the woman's job to bring in the water for washing and every other purpose but the lads had got used to doing it as Mary Anne wasn't up to it now.

Usually the men went straight to bed after a shift but there was no time for that now. After all, they did not have to go back to the pit in time for fore shift that night.

It was eight o'clock on the Friday evening when Eliza arrived back at the house in Gilesgate after seeing at least a few of her patients. She hadn't got back from Alnwick until late in the afternoon and Bertha had left her a note telling her of two people who wanted her to call in.

‘I am cleening the chaple,' Bertha had written. ‘Then quire practice. Mr Collier was heer.'

Then Tot had not come home. Eliza felt a rush of disappointment that was like a great weight on her chest. Automatically she washed her hands, picked up her bag and went off see some of her patients. She was tired, tired and anxious, but still, if she was needed then she had to go. Besides, she had to make a living.

It was already dark by the time she turned Dolly into the back street. As she came to a halt by the stable she glanced across at the back of the house and her heart leaped as she saw there was a lamp burning in the kitchen. Someone was there; it had to be Tot. Oh, thank God, thank God indeed. Not even waiting to uncouple the pony she ran up the yard and into the house, stopping dead as she saw, not Tot, but her mother and father and her two brothers.

‘What are you doing here?' she blurted.

‘Eliza, is that the only welcome we're going to get?' asked Mary Anne. ‘Where's the lad, any road? Mind, we had a carry on finding the place but we found someone who could tell us where the nurse lived. And when we got here the house was empty. If our Albert hadn't read that note Bertha left—'

‘Mam, what is it? What's wrong?'

Mary Anne fell silent and looked down at her hands, which were twisting on her lap.

‘I've been turned off, lass,' said Tommy. ‘Me and the lads an' all. We had a day to get out of the house an' all. I thought we would be out by night-shift time yesterday but it was your mam. We couldn't hurry her.'