The Black Mountains (16 page)

THEY MARCHED up the hill side by side, Jim and Ted on the pavement and Fred walking in the gutter. Into Ridge Road they turned, past Captain Fish's house and the other big houses. They knew that Evan could get home to Purldown by following this road until it met up again with the main road to Bath, and if they did not catch up with him before he got there they intended to knock him out of his house. Evan Comer would not be allowed to threaten their sister and get away with it.

When the gateway leading to the woods came into sight, however, they were all surprised to see a figure standing there. It was too dark to see at a distance who it was, but as they got closer, they exchanged glances.

It was Evan. He had not moved from where Dolly had left him. He was leaning over the gate, his head bowed like a drunk.

As they approached, he looked up and saw them. A look of surprise and fear crossed his handsome face, and without a word they closed in around him. Fred took one of his arms and Ted the other, pinning them behind him, and as they did so, something fell out of his hand and lay shining on the ground.

Jim bent to pick it up. It was a knife, the blade still extended from the fancy handle. So Dolly had been right. He straightened, pointing the sharp blade at Evan's throat.

Evan winced away from the sharp point, but Jim let the knife rest there while Ted and Fred held him fast.

“You little bugger!” He spat the words at him. “You do that to my sister, and you've got us to deal with!”

“I didn't … hurt her …” Evan spluttered, almost choking with fear. “I didn't touch her … I wouldn't!”

“Well, I think you did. She wouldn't be in the state she's in for nothing.” Jim presses the knife point further against Evan's throat.

“Don't … don't hurt me … I didn't … I wouldn't…”

Jim brought his face dose to Evan's, and saw the fear glittering like tears in his eyes.

“You leave her alone then. If you go near her again, you know what you'll get—all right?”

“Yes… yes…” Evan sobbed.

With one movement Jim lowered the knife and brought his knee up into Evan's groin. He heard, and felt, the breath come out of him in a choking explosion. Then, as his body jerked convulsively Ted and Fred let go of his arms, and he folded up on to his knees, retching.

For just a moment the three of them stood over him, watching with satisfaction, but they did not touch him again. They were not bullies.

Leaving Evan retching on the ground they turned and walked back down the hill, and when they came to the thickest part of the hedge, Jim thrust the knife deep into it.

It was summer, 1913, and the Hall household was busy with preparations for a wedding. Jim had asked Sarah Brimble to marry him, and Charlotte was only surprised that it had taken him so long.

Sarah was a pretty girl, with soft brown curls and eyes to match, and she would have been a very willing bride. But Jim had hesitated over settling down. He had seen too many of his friends rush into marriage, only to lose their enthusiasm when the responsibilities began piling up—wailing babies, a complaining wife if they spent too long over a pint or a game of quoits at the Miners Arms, and wages they were no longer able to call their own.

One warm evening in June, however, he and Sarah went for a walk up to the down. On the way back, they found a field gate that was easy enough to climb, and sat down under the hedge for a rest. It was pleasant there, and soon they were kissing and cuddling.

“I never met a girl who likes to be kissed as much as Sarah does,” Jim had confided to Fred. “Though she won't let me go any farther. If I so much as try, she goes into a mood and tells me, if I don't watch myself, she won't go out with me any more.”

Today, however, Sarah seemed different. When Jim pushed her back into the long grass; she went on kissing him, her body soft and yielding. Even when she felt him bunching up her skirt, she made no protest. The scent of the grass was around her, and the desire she had resisted for so long ached within her. He parted her legs with his hands, and she let him, afraid, yet mesmerized by her own longing, and there beneath the violet evening sky they made love.

Afterwards Sarah cried; she lay with her head turned away from him, the tears sliding down her cheeks.

“What's the matter?” he asked, raising himself on one elbow, looking down at her. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, but went on sobbing.

“What then?” he asked. “I love you, Sarah, there's nothing to cry about.”

Still she did not answer, and he moved away a little impatiently.

“Oh, well, if you won't tell me.”

She twisted her head then, looking at him with eyes brimming with tears.

“Don't you realize what we've done? I could be going to have a baby!”

The shock of it made him go cold. Stupid as it seemed, he just hadn't thought of it. He was so used to her stopping him just when he most wanted to go on that he simply had not thought beyond the yielding beauty of her body and the all-consuming fire in his own. Now, he looked down at her, shaken but still trying to retain a masterful air.

“It'll be all right. It was the first time. It couldn't happen the first time.”

“It could. I know girls it's happened to. Oh, Jim, I don't know what I'd do! The disgrace…”

She began to cry again, and feeling guilty, he said, “We could always get married.”

Her tears stopped as if by magic. “Oh, Jim, could we? Really?”

“Course we could. We'd have to get your father's permission— mine, too, come to that. I shan't be twenty-one until next year. But they wouldn't object, would they?”

She shook her head. “ No, I know they wouldn't. Oh, d'you think we could make it soon? Just in case? Then we could always make out the baby was early.”

“Well…” He experienced a moment's panic, but Sarah was smiling at him with eyes that were still bright with tears and already he was beginning to think he'd like to make love to her again. “ I'll see O'Halloran and find out if there are any houses going,” he promised.

CHARLES O'HALLORAN was the general manager of Hillsbridge Colliery Companies, a bluff north-countryman with a reputation for fairness, although he was a hard taskmaster.

Jim went to see him the next day, and Hal, as he was popularly known, told him there was a cottage he could have right away, provided he was prepared to put it in order. Cockahoop, he called in at the Miners Arms, where Sarah worked, to tell her they could begin to make their plans, and then went home to break the news to the family.

The announcement, naturally, was greeted with great excitement. James smiled and nodded to himself as if he could not believe it. The boys teased Jim and called him a fool, and Amy bobbed up and down demanding to know if she could be a bridesmaid. Only Charlotte gave him a narrow, probing look, and Jim had the uncomfortable feeling that she had seen through his sudden decision and knew the reason behind it.

“Have you got anywhere to live?” she asked shortly.

Jim nodded. “ There's a house empty in Pit Cottages, along under South Hill Batch,” he told her. “It's been empty some time, Hal said, and it'll need a bit of doing to, but it will be very handy for me getting to work. Just up the pit path and I'll be there.”

“Whose place can that be?” Charlotte asked, puzzling. Pit Cottages was a line of houses sandwiched between the long, ridged batch and the railway line on the south-west side of the valley, and far enough from Greenslade Terrace for her not to be acquainted with the people who lived there.

“Well, whoever it was, they bain't there now,” James said reasonably, and Charlotte turned back to Jim with characteristic briskness.

“If it's empty it'll be damp and dirty,” she told him. “ You'd better ask Sarah if she'd like me to help her get it cleaned up. With two buckets and scrubbing brushes, it'll be ready in half the time.”

The date had been set for six weeks time. Besides helping Jim and Sarah at the cottage, Charlotte found herself caught up in the wedding arrangements, for although they were primarily the responsibility of the Brimbles, living next-door-but-one it was inevitable that she should find herself almost as involved as they were. There were guest lists to be planned and food to be organized. The chapel service had to be decided upon, and Stanley Bristow's wagonette booked. Charlotte also had to arrange her family's outfits. Amy and Dolly were taken care of. Sarah had asked them to be her bridesmaids, along with her own sister, Queenie, and she was having their dresses made for them—an expense Charlotte could hardly credit. But the boys' best suits had to be cleaned and pressed, and Charlotte treated herself to a new flower at Fords draper's shop to put in the lapel of the good silk coat she always wore on special occasions. For Harry, Charlotte went to great lengths to save on her housekeeping and managed to run up a neat little sailor suit for him.

At last the great day arrived. Some of the rank walked down to the chapel for the service, and the rest stood in their doorways to watch the families leave.

Charlotte, James and the boys set out first, though Charlotte was certain something would go wrong the moment her back was turned. Then just before noon, Dolly, Amy, and Queenie Brimble emerged, dressed in pink with daisy wreaths in their hair, and climbed into Stanley Bristow's wagonette, which had been especially decorated for the occasion.

A few moments later, Sarah herself came out of the house with her father, and the watching neighbours gasped in awe. She looked beautiful in her simple, cream-silk dress, with a circlet of orange blossom in her hair. Stanley shook the reins and as the pony trotted off, the occasional tear formed in the spectators' eyes.

As Sarah walked into chapel the same breathless hush hung in the air while the organ poured forth its melodious song. Down the aisle she went, on Moses' arm, and stood where Jim was waiting for her.

Charlotte looked with pride at her eldest son standing at the altar—once he had been her baby. Twenty years ago it might have been, but to her it seemed like only yesterday that she had looked at him, her first-born.

Of course, he hadn't been the only one for long, and he'd had to adjust his ways and become independent. She remembered the day when he'd started school, three years old and yet somehow appearing so grown-up in comparison with Dolly and Fred. Her heart had been in her mouth that day, just as it was now, because although it was a beginning, it was also an end.

Soon all her children would go their own ways, and the house would be empty instead of full of banter and quarrels and laughter. The time would come when she would be old and useless, no longer needed by any of them …

When the ring was on Sarah's finger, though, and she walked down the aisle on Jim's arm, the moment for tears had gone. Instead there were congratulations and laughter and a great show of seriousness, while Peggy's son, Colwyn, who was trying to set himself up in business as a photographer, disappeared with his camera under an absurd black sheet and was gone for so long that Ted started tapping on his back to ask if he were still there.

At last Colwyn was satisfied, and the wedding party climbed into Stanley Bristow's wagonette for the journey home. In the street, people stopped to watch them pass and wave. But none watched with such round-eyed wonder as the small figure who knelt in the bedroom window of number twelve Greenslade Tenace.

Rosa had watched them go, and waited patiently for their return. She would have liked to go down to the service, but the Brimbles, who had never cared for the Clements family, had not invited them to the wedding breakfast, and Ada had too much pride to allow Rosa to go when she hadn't been asked.

So Rosa had to content herself with watching from the window, and when she heard the clip-clop of the horse's hooves, she pressed forward eagerly, with her nose close to the pane. Her eyes slid quickly over Dolly, Queenie, and Amy, whom she hated, and came to rest on Sarah, and as they did so, they grew dark with longing.

Perhaps one day that would be her, riding in a wagonette with orange blossom in her hair. People wouldn't snigger then, or point their fingers at her. They wouldn't say all the nasty things that made her feel lonely and hurt. They'd be admiring, smiling, wishing her well. Especially if…

Her gaze took in the Hall family, sitting together on one bench of the wagonette, and as she concentrated on Ted, the breath caught in her throat and her heart swelled within her.

How handsome he was. A warm, excited feeling grew deep within her. From the time she had been able to walk she had adored him and not understood her feelings, except that she wanted to be with him all the time, to see him if not to speak to him, and simply know he was there.

Now, still without really understanding, she knew the way she felt was bound up with Sarah and her wedding dress and the wagonette ride to the chapel, and she stood at the window savouring every detail, storing it away in her memory.

“Get away from that window! Don't let them know you're looking!” Ada's shrill voice brought her sharply back to reality, but for a moment, Rosa defied her mother, craning out of the window and trying to recapture the magic of the moment. But it was too late. The dream had shattered, the moment was gone forever.

Rosa's mouth puckered tight with disappointment.

“Come away from that window, do!” Ada repeated, and Rosa swallowed at the knot of tears that gathered in her throat.

Disappointed she might be, at losing the precious illusion. Left out she might be, but even at twelve, she was too proud to let anyone know just how much she cared.

A WEEK after the wedding, Sarah was able to tell Jim he was not to be a father just yet. She had known before that, but wondered if the good news would make Jim change his mind about the wedding. It was a short respite. By the end of the summer she was pregnant, and Charlotte, not quite certain whether to be pleased or horrified, was looking forward to the arrival of her first grandchild.