Eliza's Child (8 page)

‘Leaving your wife and bairn to God and providence, that's what you did. Howay now, what have you to say for yourself?'

‘I …' Jack spluttered. He was uncharacteristically out of countenance.

‘You can say nowt, can you? What sort of a man are you? Our Eliza and the babby would have starved but for me an' Tommy!'

‘I knew you wouldn't let that happen,' said Jack quietly.

‘Oh aye? Supposing Tommy wasn't in work? Supposing he and the lads had been laid off? They couldn't have gone to another pit, you know that, not when the yearly bond was signed. Bad cess to it!' Neither Mary Anne nor any of the pit folk ever mentioned the hated yearly bond without the curse on it. Now she was working herself into a rage, not just with Jack's behaviour but also with all the frustrations and hardships of her life. And Jack was the only one she could take it out on.

‘By, you're a nowt, Jack Mitchell-Howe, in spite of your fancy name, you are an' all. Some fella should give you the hiding of your life! It's a pity your mam didn't—'

‘Mam, give over,' said Eliza. ‘Jack's back now.'

‘Aye, all ready to do it again,' said Mary Anne.

‘You've just come from chapel,' Eliza reminded her. ‘You're supposed to forgive folk, aren't you?' She was forgetting her own bitterness and anger with Jack and in face of her mother's tirade felt the urge to defend him. Jack himself stood blushing like an errant boy.

Mary Anne glared at her daughter for an instant then shrugged. ‘Aye well,' she said ‘I speak my mind. Wait until Tommy comes back in and see what he makes of it. Likely he'll want to knock him into the next world.'

‘No, he won't,' said Eliza. ‘Jack is my man, after all.' And so it proved. When Tommy came in from the ‘toss penny' school at the back of the pithead he had had a run of luck and won a couple of shillings, which he had spent on a couple of tots of rum for his marras. He was in too good a mood to fight with anyone and went straight into the front room for a lie-down.

‘
I'VE RENTED US
a house in Haswell,' said Jack. ‘At least it is a short walk from Haswell. I want Thomas to grow up breathing clean fresh air.'

‘Haswell? What are you going to do in Haswell? You'll never settle there, Jack.'

‘It's just for a short while. When I'm properly on my feet again I'll write to my father. He'll take me back into the business when he realises how well I've done.'

Eliza stared at him in disbelief. ‘Oh, Jack, he won't. Don't think he will, man.' He was fooling himself, she thought in despair. John Henry would never take him back, no matter what Jack did. And if he did she would never go back to Alnwick. She had been treated as less than dirt by Jack's parents.

‘He might,' Jack asserted. ‘I am the eldest son, Eliza.'

‘Aye. The one cut off without a penny,' said Eliza and smiled grimly. ‘Well, we'll wait and see. Meanwhile we have to live. I asked you, what are you going to do in Haswell?'

‘Oh, didn't I say? I'm going in with Mr Benson, the cabinet maker.'

‘Going into partnership with him or working for him?' Eliza was surprising herself by how she questioned everything Jack said. It was as though she was at last seeing him as he really was. What choice did she have, though? She had to stay with him. Besides, she still had feelings for him. When her mother had berated him she had been defensive of him.

‘Get your bundle together, Eliza,' he said now. ‘Then we'll have a mashing of tea and be away.'

‘Whose tea will that be?' asked Mary Anne with a hard look.

‘Mam!' Eliza was shocked. Her mother was usually hospitable with what she had.

‘Aye well,' said Mary Anne. ‘It's hard not to be mad with that one.' She shrugged and went on, ‘Aw, hadaway then. I'll mash the tea, you go and pack your bundle.'

Jack and Eliza set off towards Haswell along the path through the fields that Eliza had taken the day before. Eliza carried Thomas and Jack the bundle. She thought about the time they had travelled to the house in Durham in very different style and how happy she had been. This time she wasn't so sure that their troubles were over. She had kissed Mary Anne's cheek awkwardly when they left.

‘I can't thank you enough for all you've done for us, Mam,' she said softly. ‘Don't be angry, eh? Jack's my man and I have to go with him, you know I do. I wed him, didn't I?'

‘I know lass, I know. By, it's hard for a woman in this life,' Mary Anne replied. ‘Though mind, it's hard for lads an' all. When I think of Miley in the pit and him so frightened of the dark – eeh, what's the good of talking. But I can't help wondering what God's been thinking about letting it happen. I know it's a sin.'

‘I'll be back whenever I can,' said Eliza. There was nothing else to say.

The house Jack had rented was up a muddy lane about a mile the other side of Haswell. It stood next to another exactly the same but ruined, both by fire and the elements. There was a garden, rank with dead weeds, though under the tiny window of the downstairs room there were a few green spikes of spring flowers showing against the dirty sandstone of the cottage wall.

‘It's better than it looks from outside,' Jack said quickly when he saw her expression. He pushed open the batten door and led the way in. The downstairs room was as poky as the miner's cottage she had just left but there was a back door, she saw. It had only a rusted iron sneck to the door and daylight could be seen through it. But Jack must have lit the fire in the grate and the room was reasonably warm. There was a table and two wooden chairs and even a rocker by the hearth. A hanging cupboard on the wall by the fireplace completed the furnishings. There was a rough wooden ladder leading up to the upper room, which must be half inside the roof, Eliza judged. She said nothing but sat down in the rocking chair with Thomas as Jack added a log to the fire from the pile on the hearth. A thick depression was settling on her. Jack was talking quickly as though to cover her silence.

‘I got some groceries in,' he said. ‘And I can get some eggs from the farmer who owns this place. I've made the bed upstairs. It'll be all right, Eliza, really it will. The bairn can sleep with us until I've made him a cradle. I'll soon make some bits of furniture, you'll see. It's my trade, after all.'

Eliza watched him, the expression on his face, for he was eager to show her how earnest he was to make it up to her. He took the iron kettle that stood on the stone before the fire and took it out of the back door to fill.

‘There's a spring, it's lovely sweet water,' he said over his shoulder.

‘Hmm,' said Eliza.

‘Aw, howay, Eliza,' he said. ‘I know it's not as good as Durham but it's better than nowt, isn't it? We'll be together after all. I spent most of my winnings getting the necklace back for you but I've got a job with old Benson. He's getting too old for the work and I'll be able to take over before you know it. It's a grand chance, Eliza.'

‘We'll see,' said Eliza. She thought of the necklace, hidden in the pocket she had sewn into her skirt. By, she thought, she would make sure he didn't take it away again, she would an' all.

May came in and Thomas was crawling all over the floor and even beginning to pull himself up to a standing position with the aid of a chair or the table leg. The weather was turning fine after a wet spring and there were primroses in the grass growing along the hedgerows in the lane.

Eliza was hanging out the washing in the strip of garden at the back of the cottage one morning towards the end of the month. Thomas was standing by her side and clinging on to her skirts with tight little fists. When she moved along the line she dragged her foot and he leaned against her and walked with her, concentrating hard on not falling. She smiled down at him, ‘Who's a clever lad then?' she asked and he cooed and gurgled back at her.

‘He'll be working as a trapper boy before you know it and bringing in good money,' said a voice behind her. She looked back towards the cottage in surprise; there was no way into the garden except through the house.

‘How did you get in?' she asked. ‘I didn't ask you in!' The front door was open but they were so isolated here on this lane. The only other person who ever used it was the farmer and he had another way in to the farm.

‘The door was open,' said Jonathan Moore. ‘I must say, Eliza, you look blooming. It suits you living in the country.'

‘What do you want?' she asked. She felt very nervous at being on her own; something she hadn't felt before since coming to the cottage. Bending, she picked up Thomas and held him to her. The baby stared at the intruder with his violet-blue eyes, so like his mother's now, unwavering. He put a thumb in his mouth.

‘I was just passing on my way to see Farmer Dean,' Jonathan said smoothly. ‘I heard you were living here with your husband. He came back then? Is he staying or planning to desert you again?'

‘He's not!' Eliza blurted out. ‘He didn't desert me before, he was coming back and he did, as soon as he could.' Thomas was becoming upset, she could feel it. ‘Go away, Jonathan Moore,' she said. ‘Leave us alone. Jack will be in for his dinner in a minute.'

Jonathan laughed. ‘No, he won't,' he said. ‘He's working on a tallboy up at our house. I left him there. He won't be finished before nightfall. So I said that as I was coming to see Farmer Dean I would call in and let you know he won't be in for his dinner. He can have bread and cheese with the other servants in the kitchen.'

He had planned this, Eliza realised. He was here to finish what he had started in her mother's house. She clutched the baby tightly and Thomas began to cry.

‘Put him down, Eliza,' said Jonathan. He closed the space between them and stood very near. He held out a hand and touched the baby and Thomas shrieked louder.

‘Shut him up, Eliza,' said Jonathan.

‘Ssh, babby,' she said. Then, ‘You said you wouldn't force me. Were you lying?' She spoke very softly, trying to reassure the baby.

‘I was not,' he replied. His voice was as low as hers. ‘Before I'm done, Eliza Mitchell-Howe, you'll be wanting it as much as I do.' He ran a finger down her neck, exposed as it was with the top two buttons of her dress undone on this balmy May morning. He touched the swell of her full breasts and she stepped back automatically.

‘Don't touch me,' she said.

‘Are you there, Missus?' Jonathan stepped back as Farmer Dean appeared in the doorway of the cottage. ‘I couldn't make you hear, so I came through – oh! Good morning, Mr Moore.'

The farmer looked curiously from one to the other of them and Eliza felt the colour rising in her face. She bent forward to hide it and stood Thomas against her leg again. He clutched at her dress, burying his face in the rough serge.

‘Good morning, Farmer Dean,' said Jonathan, quite unfazed. ‘I was on my way to see you so you've saved me a journey up the lane. I wanted to talk to you about the chances of driving a shaft on your land.'

‘You did? But I thought the limestone shelf here was too thick to get at the coal,' said the farmer. ‘That's what I was told when it was surveyed before.'

‘Well we're not sure—' said Jonathan vaguely. He looked at Eliza. ‘Now I've delivered the message from your man, we'll leave you in peace.' He took the farmer's arm and led him back through the cottage. ‘Jack is doing a job for us at the house,' he said offhandedly. Within a few moments the two men were gone and Eliza and Thomas were on their own again.

‘Why doesn't he leave me alone, Thomas?' Eliza asked the baby.

‘Da, da,' he replied and smiled at her, his face grubby with streaks of soil he'd picked up from the garden.

‘Aye, you're right,' she said and scooped him up and took him inside. She would have to tell Jack about him.

‘Has he touched you?' Jack demanded when she brought up the subject of Jonathan Moore that night. ‘I mean, if he has I'll—'

‘Nay, he hasn't,' she replied quickly. She could still feel the touch of his finger in the neck of her dress but she couldn't really call that
touching
her, could she?

‘Well,' said Jack, ‘that's all right, isn't it? Likely he's like that with all the girls.' He nibbled at the skin beneath her ear. ‘Let's away to bed.'

‘But, Jack, he threatens to, he says things—'

‘Aw, man, Eliza, he's not hurt you, has he? We have to keep on the right side of folk like the Moores. They can put a lot of work in my way. I know you wouldn't let him do anything, would you?' Jack was beginning to sound impatient. Obediently she followed him up the ladder to the bedroom under the eaves. In the light from the candle he carried it looked a lot better than when she had first seen it. Jack had made a dressing table for her and a bed and cot with a wooden hood to keep out the draughts. They were plain and built with offcuts from Mr Benson's workshop but Jack was very good at his job and they made the room look quite luxurious compared to what it had done before.

Their love-making was deeply satisfying and as usual she forgot everything else but him. Afterwards, as she drifted off into sleep, the thought of Jonathan Moore came back to her but somehow it didn't seem to matter so much. He was not important. She had Jack and Jack would look after her and Thomas. He was not going to desert her again; she had his solemn promise.

All the same, for a while Eliza kept the front door of the cottage closed and took out the sneck so that it couldn't be opened from the outside when Jack was at work. After all, you never knew, there might be gypsies about, or Irish tinkers. There were a lot of those since the famine. But the spring had turned into summer and no one came down the lane except Farmer Dean, and Eliza lapsed into leaving her front door ajar to let in the air, just as her mother had always done. There were no locks on the doors around here.

One afternoon in July she decided to walk into Haswell and maybe go on to Blue House if Thomas wasn't too tired. He was getting big now, too big to carry far, but he could walk fairly well by then. If she let him make his own pace he usually managed to get to where they were going. Jack had gone to Sunderland to deliver a cabinet and the long empty day and light evening stretched ahead of Eliza and she was bored. Anyway, she hadn't been to see her family for more than a month.

She and Thomas ambled down the lane, Thomas stopping to pick daisies, or rather daisy heads, and handing them to her, smiling. ‘Dais, dais,' he said, pleased with himself.

‘Daisies,' said Eliza. ‘Say daisies.'

They came out onto the road into Haswell, which was thick with dried mud, black with the coal dust, and rutted with the passage of coal wagons, so that she had to take Thomas's hand to help him over the ruts. A bee buzzed busily among the blossoms of the ‘black man's baccy' plant and the blossoms filled the air with their perfume. Eliza felt supremely happy, a feeling that only a few months ago she thought she would never have again.

Thomas was stumbling with tiredness now and she picked him up and carried him on her hip.

‘Not far now, pet,' she said and turned off on to the path across the fields to Blue House colliery. Soon the colliery buildings came into sight. There were a few men hurrying about in the yard, and corves of coal were being drawn up to the shed where the platform with the coal screens was housed. Through the gaps in the wooden wall she could see the women and girls bending over the moving belt and picking out stones from the coals.

Dear God, it was back-breaking work! She was well out of it, she was indeed. This lovely spring day emphasised the fact. She walked on to the colliery rows. Most of them had their doors open to let in the air, though here it was polluted with the smell of the midden and the coal dust. Some women were standing in the doorways taking the air and children played in the dust at their feet. There was no proper pavement and the road was hard-packed, rutted mud, so the dust was inevitable.