Eliza's Child (7 page)

Eliza was drooping with fatigue but still she was thinking of Jonathan Moore and whether he would take it out on her that she had refused his advances. Had he really thought she would
go
with him? Or had it been her imagination? No, it had not, she decided. Why else would an owner give a pithead lass a ride home?

Eliza finished her broth and her mother took the bowl from her.

‘Away to bed, lads,' said Mary Anne, and they climbed the ladder to the attic room, murmuring their good nights. The last sound Eliza heard was the squeak of their iron bedstead as they climbed into bed. She did not hear her father come in from the Blue Bell Inn nor the sound of his hobnailed boots dropping on to the rag mat before the fire. He tiptoed past the settee where she lay and went into the front room to Mary Anne.

COME SUNDAY MORNING
Eliza found she couldn't put her foot to the ground without it throbbing painfully. She lay for a moment or two after her first attempt, gathering her strength. It was barely light outside and only a thin grey light penetrated the small window. It must only be about five or six o'clock she surmised. Thomas was crying and trying to sit up in his drawer on the stone floor beside her. It was cold, for the fire had died to the merest hint of red among the ashes.

She had to get up to see to the baby, she told herself. In any case, she needed to pass water. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the settee then made herself get to her feet before hobbling to the old bucket that served her for a chamber pot. She went back to the baby, finding it easier to hop than hobble.

Thomas was dripping wet yet again and his legs waved furiously in the air, damp and cold. She removed his nappy rag and cuddled him to her so he could suck.

He was old enough now that she should think of getting him used to taking other food besides milk. Her mother gave him broily but he wasn't keen. But if she herself got a job further away from home he would have to eat something during the long hours she was away.

Eliza sat and pondered on her problems while Thomas fed. She pulled the thin blanket over them both and cuddled him. His limbs were warming up at least. When he had finished she laid him down on the settee and his eyes followed her round the room as she raked out the dead ashes and built a small pyramid of twigs and bits of dried moss over the remaining cinders. A small curl of smoke rose and she blew hard on a cinder until it suddenly glowed red. The moss and thinner bits of twig darkened and smoked, then tiny flames appeared. After that she soon had the fire burning. She put on a few pieces of coal her brothers had brought in the night before and propped the tin blazer on the bar to draw the fire.

Her leg was throbbing mercilessly by the time Eliza had a proper blaze. She filled the kettle from the water bucket standing by the side of the fire and placed it on the flames. Usually, on Sundays, her mother made tea with fresh tea leaves and there was some sweetened condensed milk left in the tin she had bought at the shop a few days ago. Eliza measured out a spoonful of the precious tea leaves and added a little of the condensed milk. By, it was lovely to have something sweet, she reflected. She dipped a finger into the tin and took a tiny amount and put it on Thomas's tongue. His mouth worked and he made a smacking sound with his lips. Eliza smiled at him.

‘That's nice, pet, isn't it?' she said. The kitchen was beginning to warm up. Eliza sipped her tea, as the light infiltrating the tiny window grew stronger. She could hear voices coming from the other room so she put the kettle back on the fire, added a little more tea to the pot and, when the kettle boiled, brewed more.

‘I've made some tea, Mam,' she called through the door, and Mary Anne came out with a shawl over her nightgown and took two cups through for her and Tommy.

Eliza pulled on her weekday dress and put the kettle on for water to wash her good one. By this time she was getting used to the throbbing pain in her foot. Using the broom with a cloth over the bristles as a crutch she took her slop pail outside and hopped to the midden at the end of the row to empty it, trying at the same time not to breathe the malodorous air around the muckheap.

Mary Anne was just coming through with the empty cups. ‘Thanks, lass, that was nice,' she said. ‘Shout up to the lads, will you? I'll make some porridge for them. Before they go to Sunday School.' The boys were learning reading and writing and their numbers at the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School. Already they could write their names, even Miles, the youngest. Mary Anne was very proud of them. She tried to save a halfpenny each week for them to take for the offering.

The boys went off happily enough after porridge laced with the scrapings from the condensed milk tin. They were followed soon after by their parents who were going to the service in the little chapel at the top of Albert Street. Eliza was left with the baby and strict instructions to rest her leg.

‘You'll be good for nowt if you don't,' Mary Anne warned her as she went out of the door with Tommy. He had on his only jacket, the one he wore to go to the pit though not to work in. It was hot in the pit and the men usually worked in pit hoggers, a sort of cotton drawers and a cut-off old shirt. In any case, the jacket had been well dashed against the outside wall to get rid of any coal dust. He also wore a pious expression, being fairly newly converted. In fact he hadn't given up the drink entirely and was still quite easily persuaded to join in a game of ‘pitch and toss', behind the pit heap on a Sunday afternoon after chapel.

Eliza was smiling to herself about her dad's relaxed attitude to John Wesley's teaching as she wrung out her good dress and hung it over the string line above the fire. She dared not go so far as to hang it outside, not on a Sunday. The row was solidly chapel and it would shame her mother for washing to be hung out on a Sunday.

‘Ahem!'

Eliza turned in surprise at the sound from the door and in the process put some weight on her injured foot and winced with the pain. She had thought the row deserted with everyone at chapel or Sunday school and she hoped fervently that was true, because Jonathan Moore was standing there and poking his head round the door to look at her. If anyone saw him it would be around the rows like wildfire that she was carrying on with the owner's lad.

‘May I come in?' he asked. Not waiting for a reply he stepped through the doorway, having to bend his head to do so.

The barefaced impatience of him, thought Eliza. Coming to the house when he had been the cause of her accident an' all.

‘What do you want?' she asked, forgetting for the minute that he was her gaffer and she had to be polite to him.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. ‘Please!' he replied. ‘I simply wanted to make sure you were all right. You went off in such a hurry and I'm sure I don't know why. I was, after all, simply taking you home. Along a short cut, it's true, but—'

‘That track leads nowhere,' said Eliza.

‘No,' he admitted, ‘you're right. But you surely don't blame me for doing what any red-blooded man would do if a bonny lass like you got into a trap with him? Not for the first time, either. Now then, admit it, you fancy me. Just playing hard to get, aren't you?' He was walking towards her as he spoke and instinctively she grabbed her broom, which was leaning against the stone fire surround.

Jonathan Moore stayed his approach. ‘What are you going to do with that?' he asked softly. ‘Defend your honour? The honour of a pithead lass?' He laughed loudly and Thomas whimpered then began to wail.

‘Get out,' said Eliza. ‘Please go now before I stick this handle where it hurts.' Her heart was beating so loudly she thought he might hear it. He stared at her for a minute or two then looked towards the baby, who was still crying.

‘You'd best put that down and see to your child,' he said.

‘When you get out,' said Eliza. He took another step towards her and he was directly in front of her. He leaned towards her and she jabbed him hard in the stomach with the broom handle.

‘Ah!' The air was expelled from his body and he bent over for a second or two. In that short time she had crossed to the baby and picked him out of the drawer that served him as a cot and hugged him to her. She looked to left and right frantically for a way to get round him to the only door of the pitman's cottage, but there was none, he was directly in the way. He straightened and glared at her and his face was full of anger.

‘Don't you touch me,' she warned though she was shaking with fear. Dear God, what was she going to do? By, he picked his time, he did, when he knew the rows would be just about empty.

‘Nay, I won't touch you,' he replied. ‘I've never yet forced a lass, I haven't felt the need. Mostly they're willing enough.' He chucked Thomas under his chin. ‘As you will be when you've thought about it.'

‘I will not,' Eliza avowed. Jonathan Moore smiled. ‘Oh aye, you will.' He was close enough to lift a hand and she shrank back, but he simply chucked Thomas under his chin again and the baby smiled and gurgled and hid his face in his mother's shawl.

‘Shall I do it to your mam?' he asked and laid his finger on Eliza's neck, crooking it under the collar of her dress. She moved sideways quickly and he laughed.

He walked to the door before turning and saying, ‘Don't bother to come to work on Monday. I'm afraid your employment is at an end. Unless, of course—' He didn't finish the sentence but left.

Eliza breathed out slowly. She sank on to the settee, feeling nothing but relief at first. Then her ankle began to throb with pain. She had been on it too much, she knew, but what could she do? And what was she going to do now? She had to earn her bread. The Poor Law Guardians would not help her while she was living with her family and not while her husband was alive. She had nothing. She lay back against the head of the settee and closed her eyes. She was still holding the baby and he struggled to sit up on her lap, making unmistakably demanding cries.

‘Aye then,' she said. ‘All right,' she said and sat up straighter. He smiled at her with satisfaction and her mood lightened. How could she say she had nothing when she had Thomas? He was so precious to her. He was all she had of Jack and just now she ached for Jack. She buried her nose in Thomas's neck and breathed in the baby smell of him.

The sound of someone at the door made her jump, her pulse fluttering wildly. He'd come back and it would be another hour before the family returned. When she saw who it was for a minute she thought she must be hallucinating.

‘I reckoned you would be here,' said Jack. It was as if her longing for him had somehow spirited him up. But when he strode over to the settee and took her and his son in his arms he was solid and very real.

‘Oh, Jack!' Eliza cried and clung to him. Between them, Thomas wriggled and protested and they moved apart a little. ‘Where have you been?' Eliza couldn't bear to let him go yet her joy at the sight of him was turning to anger.

‘I—' Jack began but she didn't allow him to finish.

‘Do you know what you put me through?' she shouted at him and Thomas began to wail. ‘I lost my home! I've had to work at the pithead! Have you any idea what I've been through?' She was on her feet yet again and her foot suddenly gave way so that she fell back on to the settee. She sobbed now, her spurt of anger almost spent. Automatically she rocked Thomas to reassure him.

‘I know,' said Jack. ‘But I swear to you I never thought for a minute that they would take the house from you, I didn't.' He sat down on her father's chair by the hearth. ‘I had to go, pet, they were after me. They would have killed me if they'd caught me.'

‘You owed so much? You were gambling when you'd promised me you wouldn't ever gamble again? Jack, man, what about me and the bairn? You never even told me you were running away. Why didn't you take us with you?'

‘I couldn't. Anyway it was partly your fault. If you'd given me the necklace when I asked for it I could have sold it and the money would have held them off for a while. Why, there was a big race on at York and I had the winner, it was a certainty, I tell you—'

‘For the love of God, stop it, Jack. You never learn, do you? You can't win, you cannot!'

‘I won before, I won enough for the house and the business, didn't I?'

‘Aw, Jack, don't talk soft; you lost it all again, didn't you? I tell you, you don't win in the end.'

They were quiet for a minute or two; both of them were swamped with emotion. Then Jack said bitterly, ‘I knew there would be hell to pay when I came back.'

‘Watch your language,' said Eliza, equally bitterly. ‘You don't want Thomas to pick up bad language, do you? Any road, you took the necklace after all, didn't you? No thought to how I was going to manage—'

‘I said, I didn't think they would take the house! An' I've come back as soon as I could, haven't I? I needed the necklace to start over again.'

‘So even that's gone, has it?'

Jack reached into his pocket. ‘No, it has not,' he asserted. ‘I bought it back. Eeh, Eliza I have so much to tell you, you wouldn't believe.' He brought out the case with the necklace in it and smiled. It flashed through Eliza's mind that he appeared to think that would make everything all right again, for he smiled at her as he handed it over.

‘Howay then, Thomas,' he said, taking the baby and holding him up in the air. Thomas crowed and gurgled and slavered down his chin.

‘Mind,' said Jack, ‘he's grown hasn't he?'

Eliza opened the case and gazed at the necklace. ‘When you pawned it why didn't you send me some money? You knew how hard it would be for me.' But she was aware he wouldn't think of her, not when the gambling fever was on him. He wouldn't think of anything else then, of course not. She shut the case with a snap and handed it back to him. ‘You might as well keep it, it does me no good,' she said.

‘Aw, don't say that,' said Jack. ‘If it hadn't been for the necklace I wouldn't have been able to get back on my feet, would I?'

‘You are back on your feet, then? Really?'

‘I am, my love. I'm going to get you a home to be proud of and everything you and little Thomas want.'

‘For how long, though?' Eliza was still bitter. ‘Until the next big race, that'll be it, won't it?'

‘Nay, Eliza, it won't happen again. I swear it will not.'

‘Mind, where've you been all this time, then?'

Absorbed in each other, neither of them had heard the door opening again. Mary Anne came in and shed her shawl and hung it on the hook behind the door before going forward and confronting Jack from only a foot away. Hands on hips, she thrust her face forward and glared at him.