The Black Mountains (71 page)

For the rest of the day, he couldn't forget Walter. Even reading in the newspapers that another miners' strike was imminent only took his mind off the child for a short while. It was as if, in some strange way, he had become responsible for him.

When he had finished his tea, Jack made up his mind to go over to the hospital to see the child. It was a Friday, so he did not have a lesson to prepare for the morning, and he set out, stopping on the way to buy some oranges and apples and a few books that he thought might interest Walter. Whether he would be able to see him or not, he did not know, but at least he would be showing an interest.

He had chosen his time well. It was visiting hour. He established which ward Walter was in and pushed open the swing doors, wondering how he would be received if any of the boy's family were visiting. There were people sitting beside most of the children's beds, but Jack could not see Walter anywhere.

“I'm looking for Walter Heath,” he said to the nursing sister, a tall, kindly-looking woman.

“Over in the corner. He'll be pleased to see you, I should think. He hasn't had anyone in to visit him today, poor lad.”

Jack walked in the direction she had pointed. Walter was almost hidden behind a crate that covered the bottom half of the bed. But what surprised Jack even more was the cotton wool type of wadding that covered his body.

“Walter!” he said, shocked, and the boy looked up in surprise.

“Sir!”

“How are you, Walter?”

“Not so good if I tries to move, sir. It bloomin' well hurts.”

“Dear me!” Jack sat down beside his bed, noticing that the wadding extended even to the boy's fingers, holding them apart. “I brought you some books and a comic or two, but I can see you aren't going to be able to read them yet. Never mind, at least I can tell you what we've been doing at school today.”

Beneath the fever, the boy's face brightened.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

For twenty minutes or so, Jack sat talking. Then, when it seemed to him the boy had had enough, he got up, stacking the reading materials on the locker beside his bed.

“I'll be going then, Walter.”

“But you'll come again?” the boy asked eagerly.

Jack smiled. “ I'll see what I can do. Just you concentrate on getting better, young man.”

Leaving the boy, he went back into the corridor, following the signs for the main entrance. He was not really taking much notice of the people he passed and when a nurse came towards him pushing a trolley he stepped aside automatically. Then, as she stopped, staring at him, he looked up into a welcome familiar face.

“Stella!” he said “I don't believe it!”

“Jack! What are you doing here?”

“I'm visiting. And you're working. I didn't know you were back in this country, let alone in Bristol.”

“Didn't you? But …” she looked puzzled then shrugged. “ Oh, never mind Are you teaching yet?”

“Not officially. I'm still supposed to be training. At the university.”

“Oh, yes. Well, you're looking very fit, Jack.”

“You too.”

“I always was disgustingly healthy. How's your leg?”

“I almost forget it's not mine.”

“Hah! There speaks a veteran! And married life, how does that suit you?”

“Married life?” he repeated, surprised.

“Yes. Didn't you get married?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, I thought you were engaged.”

He shuffled. “Oh, that. It all fell through.”

An authoritative figure appeared at the end of the corridor, and Stella made a face.

“Oh cripes, that's Sister. I shall have to go. One of these days I'm going to see if I can't pass my exams so I can be the one to do the bossing around for a change.”

He laughed. She hadn't changed.

“Nice to see you, Stella.”

“You too.”

When she'd gone, he felt elated. It
had
been nice to see her. What was it about her that could make him feel like this, warm through and through? She'd had the same effect on him in London and he'd put it down to the fact that he was just recovering from the most traumatic experience of his life. But it was nothing like that now.

He couldn't get her out of his mind all night, and before long he was wishing he'd tried to make some arrangement to see her again. She might have refused of course. A girl like Stella wouldn't be short of company. At least she wasn't married, for he'd carefully noticed the absence of a wedding ring.

The thought reminded him of the remark she'd made about him being married. Odd that, to have half a story. It wasn't as if the Rosa affair had ended only yesterday. It was a long time ago now. And yet, why should she know? Why should he imagine for even a moment she might be interested in him, or anything to do with him?

But he hoped all the same, that he would see her again, and the hope gave him an extra reason for going back to the hospital to visit Walter. He went the very next evening, but as he walked through the grounds and endless corridors, there was no sign of Stella.

When he entered Walter's ward there was already a visitor beside the boy's bed, a fat, pasty-faced woman who appeared to be bursting out of her tightly buttoned coat.

She must be Walter's mother, Jack assumed. He went towards her, holding out his hand but she merely sniffed, eyeing him with narrow suspicion.

“I'm Jack Hall,” he began. “ I don't know if Walter had told you about me …”

“Indeed he has!” The woman's chins were quivering. “I'm pleased to meet you, Mr Hall.”

“And I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs Heath.”

But there was no answering smile on her face.

“I'm pleased to meet you so as I can tell you what I think of you, bothering my boy. Don't you know how ill he is? And you come in here, pushing books under his nose. Why, you're as bad as that interfering bugger who brought him in here—poking into things that don't concern you.”

“I'm sorry you see it like that, Mrs Heath. I was concerned about Walter. He was in my class when he was taken ill, and …”

“Yes, an' all the work yon expect him to do, it's not surprising! Enough to give him fever of the brain, if you ask me!”

“Oh really!” Jack exclaimed. “ You don't seem to realize, Walter is a bright boy.”

“I'll thank you to leave my boy alone, and not go putting ideas in his head!” Mrs Heath said indignantly. “He's got enough of them without the likes of you making him ten times worse.” She stood up, gathering the books and comics Jack had brought the previous evening and thrust them into his arms. “Now take these with you, and don't come here bothering him no morel”

“But Mrs Heath …”

“Go on!”

Her raised voice had attracted the attention of the ward sister. She came bustling up, and Jack, deciding this was a case where discretion might usefully be the better part of valour, apologized, bid goodnight to the round-eyed Walter, and beat a hasty retreat, pushing the pile of comics into the arms of the surprised sister as he went.

He was beginning to see what Hugh Eastment had meant when he talked about the difficulties of educating these people. And although he felt he had failed Walter badly, he could not help being glad that by the time he left hospital and took his place once more at school, he, Jack, would be safely back at university. For he couldn't see what credibility he could possibly have after being chased out of a hospital ward by the boy's irate mother.

It was only when he was out in the road that he remembered he had not seen Stella again and knew there was no way, now, that he could go back into the hospital to look for her. But he wouldn't let it rest, he decided. As soon as he could, he would look her up again. And unless she had some very good reason for not going out with him, he'd do his best not to take no for an answer.

FOR THE next few days, the newspapers were full of the imminent miners' strike.

Jack had always been against militant action, but as he studied both fact and comment he began to see there was little else the men could do.

Since their agreement with Lloyd George in the autumn their meagre pay award had been whittled away bit by bit by inflation; and in any case most of the pits were on short time. They had pinned their hopes on the promises of the National Wages Board, only to be disappointed when quite suddenly, in the middle of March, Lloyd George announced that he intended de-controlling the mines.

That precipitated the crisis. The owners had no intention of being held to any rash promise made on their behalf by the Government. They huffed, puffed and fudged the issue, and the miners' representatives saw only too clearly what would happen in the long run. There would be more men out of work and a devalued wage packet for those lucky enough to have one at all.

Thinking they had the so-called Triple Alliance behind them, they stopped work at midnight on 31st March.

Within days Hillsbridge was like a ghost town. Without the hooters and sirens, without the turning pit wheels, without the coal carts grinding through the streets everything was unnaturally quiet, and not even the groups of men, gathered on the street corners at unusual hours, could lift the air of unreality.

“Strikes—I can't abide them!” Charlotte said crossly as she did her weekend baking. “They don't do no good—more harm if you ask me. You just end up worse than you started.”

“But there comes a time when a man's got to take a stand,” James argued.

She snorted again. “ That's all very well—if you can afford to do it. I'm not so worried about us—we'll get by—but take our Jim. How's he going to manage? No work, no pay. That's the way it is.”

“Don't worry, they'll see him all right” James told her. “Tom Heron, the agent, is going to find out if we'm entitled to unemployment pay and there's bound to be a relief fund opened up sooner or later to help them with young'uns.”

Charlotte ignored this, pounding at the dough with unnecessary vigour.

“It don't do no good,” she said again. “ They say the pump men are coming out too, and the engine winders and the ventilation men. What's going to happen, I should like to know? The seams will get flooded and then where will you be? I even heard a story today that the poor ponies over at Grieve Bottom might be drowned.”

“That's rubbish, Lotty,” James said mildly. “They'll make sure the ponies be safe. You needn't worry your head about that.”

“Well, all the same, I don't hold with it!” Charlotte went on. “If they've got any sense, they'll go back before May Day. That's all I've got to say.”

But they did not go back before May Day. When the townsfolk gathered in the recreation ground for the big Labour Gala, the pit gates were still locked, and the speeches made by the leaders from the wagons that had been loaned for the purpose were mostly all concerned with the struggle that was going on in the coal-field.

They had to stick it out, that was the message. If they didn't, they'd be right back where they started—and most likely even worse. The miners cheered, their spirits refreshed by the stirring music of the four bands, and the feeling of comradeship that came from being determined to see this thing through together, even though they had been betrayed by their allies.

But they had no way of knowing that before the strike was over, they would be stirred to a mood of violence worse than any of those present had seen in their lifetime.

JACK KEPT his promise to himself to see Stella O'Halloran again as soon as his teaching practice was over, by finding out what hours she was working at the hospital and waiting for her one evening outside the gates.

He was prepared for her rejection when he suggested he should take her out, but she appeared quite willing, and they arranged to have dinner together to talk over old times, on the following Friday.

Jack was ridiculously anxious that it should turn out well, thinking at first it was because it was so long since he had taken a girl out. But as the day drew nearer, he realized it was more than that. It was important for it to be successful because he wanted to impress Stella, not just as any girl, but as herself.

He need not have worried. From the time he collected her from the hostel where she had a room, they were comfortable with each other. The meal was a success, Jack handling the menus with impressive authority.

Stella, however, was not overawed as some girls would have been.

“You're really spoiling me,” she said, puffing a face as she saw the prices on the menu. “And on a student's grant, too!”

Jack laughed. “Losing a leg in the service of one's country does have certain compensations, especially if one happened to be an officer,” he commented drily.

She nodded. “ There are plenty of poor Tommies as badly off as you and worse, trying to scrape a living now, and you treat me to a meal like this.”

“It's a special occasion,” he told her. “But don't expect such a lavish outing next time, will you?”

“All right, I won't”, she laughed, and he noted with a sense of elated surprise that she had not denied that there would be a next time.

Over a meal of roast lamb, washed down with wine, they brought each other up to date on what had happened since the long-ago London days, Stella describing with brevity and humour what must have been hell, France in the last weeks of the war, and Jack explaining the method of teacher training he was now undergoing and his reasons for deciding on the university course.

But he made no mention of Rosa.

Although meeting her again had convinced him their engagement would indeed have been a disaster, the pain of rejection was still there. Just why he was so sensitive about it he was not sure, but he thought it might be because at the back of his mind he believed the loss of his leg had been responsible in some way for her change of heart and sudden flight.