The Stony Path (16 page)

However, three hours later, bedecked in the new dress and with the cream ribbon which exactly matched the lace on the collar and cuffs wound amongst her chestnut curls, Polly wasn’t thinking about anyone but Michael.

This was a special day, a momentous day, she knew it. Even the weather had conspired to make it so, the heavy snow which had been forecast holding off and a tentative, weak winter sun breaking through the grey clouds now and again.

‘You look right bonny.’ Ruth’s voice was a little awestruck – the finely dressed, beautifully coiffured young woman in front of her was almost a stranger.

Polly smiled at her sister but said nothing, her gaze returning to her hands, which were sticking out of the fine lace cuffs like two swollen pieces of red meat. It was a shame about her hands – this was the sort of dress that should have lily-white soft hands complementing it – but she couldn’t remember the last time her hands hadn’t been chafed raw. Still, the dress was bonny, and perhaps no one would notice.

When Polly walked into the kitchen, Ruth following her down the stairs a moment later, she found her grandda and da hadn’t followed their normal procedure on a Sunday and retired to the barn after they had washed and changed, but were sitting in front of the range smoking their pipes. Knowing they had waited to see her in the new dress, Polly felt suddenly shy, and this was reflected in her voice when she said, ‘It . . . it fits all right now.’

‘By, lass.’ Henry rose slowly to his feet, his stunned expression widening into a beaming smile. ‘You look a picture, aye, you do. A real picture. Doesn’t she, Da?’ And then, calling to his mother, who was slicing the ham on the stone slab in the scullery, he said, ‘Come an’ see your bonny granddaughter, Mam.’

Her grandfather had added his praise to that of her father, but when her granny came through she stopped on the threshold for a moment or two before walking slowly over to where Polly was standing. ‘Oh, hinny.’ Alice’s hand came out and touched one sleeve of the dress but the faded eyes were on Polly’s bright face. ‘Hinny.’

‘Do you like it?’

Like it? Alice continued looking into the face she had always considered beautiful but which now – under its array of carefully positioned rich burnished curls – had taken on a new dimension. The large, thickly lashed eyes were intent on hers and Alice knew she had to say something, but the fear that had gripped her made her voice weak when she said, ‘You look bonny, lass, real bonny.’ Pray God she was wrong about the other thing, pray God, because this was no bairn or slip of a lass standing in front of her, but a full-grown woman who was arrestingly lovely. She had watched Polly and Michael over the last three years – for the first twelve months after the incident at the river she had felt she’d thought about nothing else – but although there had been times when a certain glance between the two young people or an inflexion in their voices had disturbed her, there had been nothing specific to pin her worry on. And so she had comforted herself with the assurance that she was imagining things, fretting unnecessarily because of what she knew about their parentage.

And Frederick wanted Polly. Oh, aye, now she was sure about that – not that she’d ever have admitted it to Walter. And although the lass still thought of her mother’s stepbrother as an uncle, he was no relation to her at all. Looking like Polly did, it was only a matter of time before she was spoken for; it was against all nature that she wouldn’t wed early. How they would cope without Polly, Alice didn’t dare to contemplate, but Frederick would see his own wife’s kith and kin all right – Polly would make sure of that.

Polly felt disappointed. She didn’t know why exactly, but there had been something in her grandmother’s manner, a flatness almost, that was puzzling and hurtful. Her granny didn’t like Miss Collins’s dress, but couldn’t she at least be glad her granddaughter had something new and bonny to wear on her birthday? Polly was standing straight now, her face unsmiling, and then she flinched inwardly – although no trace of it showed on her face – as, in another break from tradition, Hilda’s slow footsteps informed those in the kitchen that Henry’s wife had taken the unprecedented step of venturing downstairs before her stepbrother arrived.

Polly quite literally braced herself for the moment when her mother entered the kitchen, and as she half turned her head and saw Hilda standing looking at her, she forced herself to smile naturally and say, ‘Hallo, Mam. Thought you’d come down early for the birthday celebrations then? The others aren’t here yet.’

‘I’m well aware of that.’ The narrowed blue eyes looked her up and down, their pale opaqueness like thin ice, and then Hilda walked across to the hardwood saddle, adjusting the flock cushions before she seated herself and said, ‘It’s too old for you, that dress. I can’t think what Miss Collins was about, thinking that colour would suit you.’

Polly heard the others, even her sister, protest, but funnily enough, her mother’s spite had the effect of putting iron in her backbone. ‘I disagree.’ It was cool and cutting. ‘But then I’ve heard it said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we both know exactly how you view me, don’t we, Mother?’

It was the first time in Polly’s life that she had ever addressed her mother by the more formal title, and everyone in the room was aware of it, along with the fact that the young woman standing so proudly in the middle of the room had an authority about her that had been made all the more noticeable by the fine clothes. She neither looked nor sounded like young Polly.

To say that Hilda appeared taken aback was putting it mildly, and Henry had the unique – and very pleasant – experience of seeing his sharp-tongued wife lost for words in the moments before the sound of a horse and trap outside in the yard indicated that Frederick had arrived.

Michael was feeling sick with a mixture of nervous excitement and apprehension, and this feeling had been mounting steadily over the last weeks. He had known for years he was going to ask Polly to marry him, and for almost as long that she would accept when he did, but now the day was here – now it was actually
time
– the reality was overwhelming; not least how he could contrive to get her alone for a moment or two to pop the question.

It was like a menagerie every week in that farmhouse kitchen. He frowned to himself as he looked ahead into the snowy landscape where his mother and half-brothers were striding ahead, their footsteps making deep indentations in the virgin snow. Since Ruth had pushed Polly into the river that time, his grandparents had been adamant they all stay in the kitchen or about the farm buildings, and such close proximity with the others had made any courting impossible. Courting! He gave a mental snort at the word. He hadn’t even held her hand in years. Every Sunday, come rain, hail or snow, they’d have politics and religion and every other subject under the sun raked over until its bones were showing. He hadn’t minded at one time, but since the urge to be alone with Polly had grown, he’d got sick of the sound of the others’ voices.

‘You all right, Mike?’

As Luke turned round and called, Michael raised his hand in response, saying, ‘Aye, I’m fine, man.’ Luke was the only one who called him Mike; to nearly everyone else he was Mick or Michael. And Luke was the only person – apart from Polly and his father – he had any time for. He was a good bloke, Luke, and intelligent too. How he and Arnold came from the same mother and father he’d never know. His eyes now fastened on the back of Arnold’s head and narrowed with dislike. He was a big ignorant nowt, Arnold, but nasty with it, and cunning. Michael was afraid of this brother, and he knew Arnold sensed it and used it to his advantage. Same as Arnold had sensed he and Polly liked each other, and never missed an opportunity to make snide comments about her. Never when Luke was around – Arnold had a healthy respect for Luke’s fists and caustic tongue and he knew Luke looked on Polly and Ruth the same as sisters – but when they were alone that was a different matter.

Michael brought his eyes from the big bulky shape of Arnold but his thoughts continued to flow on. He was a vindictive so-an’-so, his eldest brother, and nothing would convince him other than that Arnold’s carping about Polly – which had grown with the years – was a result of Polly making it clear she had no time for him. And she could do that, Poll; with just a glance of those deep blue eyes she could put you in your place all right. He grinned to himself. But if things went right today he’d soon be away from Arnold and the town and the pit. Aye, the pit ... His stomach knotted at the thought of it. What was the betting the talk in the kitchen would touch on the mine explosion in France again? Three weeks running they’d had that, and aye, it was criminal that over a thousand miners had died and that it could happen here as easy as winking, but Sunday was his day away from that hell-hole. He felt for the families in Courrieres as much as the next man, but he didn’t want the pit rammed down his throat every minute of every damn day.

And he knew exactly how many days he’d been underground. They were engraved on his mind, his soul, and his innards still broke loose from the casting of his stomach every time he descended in the cage the same as they had that very first morning he’d gone into hell.

The blackness, rats the size of small cats, the foul language, men reduced to animals as they squatted a bit away from where they were working to do their business, which created a smell – especially in-bye, where it was particularly warm – that was unimaginable; that was bad enough. As was crawling along on his knees under a roof held up by props that looked like matchsticks when you thought about the tons of stone and coal and muck above you, and always –
always
– with an ear half cocked as you listened to what the roof was doing. The ‘bowking’ noise that different layers made when they cracked, the ‘fissling’ noise which meant the floor was beginning to creep and the warning rattle that meant you’d got seconds to get to safety. Michael brushed his hand across his face, which his thoughts had caused to become damp with sweat, and then pulled his cap down more firmly over his forehead.

And still there were the explosions that gave no warning at all, especially in bad weather, when the atmospheric pressure was low. He had learned not to vomit when he saw a man injured by a fall of stone or coal, or trapped by a pocket of gas that had exploded when a hewer’s pick had released it. Death and injury and roof-falls and foul air had been part of his life for two years now, and he knew he would go mad if he didn’t get out of there soon. The terrible feeling that he’d kept under control all that time, when his heart started to pound against his ribs and reverberate in his eardrums until his head felt it was going to explode and the sweat ran in his oxters, that feeling was going to take him over one day soon.

He breathed deeply several times and then lifted his head to see the farm in the distance. But it wouldn’t take him over would it, because there was Polly and the farm, and they both meant life and sanity. He knew his da didn’t feel the way he did about the pit, nor Luke and Arnold, and he didn’t understand why he was so different. He’d fought against it at first until he realised he wasn’t going to win, and it had only been the thought of marrying Polly and them moving into one of the farm labourers’ cottages and working on his grandda’s farm that had kept him going. And the good Lord had kept him safe. Aye, he praised God for that. He’d spilled out his guts many a time to Father McAttee in confession and it had helped him get through the next week. And now it was time.

The thought spurred him on to catch up the others, and as he neared them Luke turned and waited for his approach, whereupon they stood together for a moment, their faces turned to the clean, crisp wind that carried the scent of snow in its biting embrace. ‘Canny, eh?’ Luke’s eyes were sweeping the white fields and snow-dusted trees and hedgerows before his gaze lifted to the wide expanse of light-washed sky. ‘Makes you want to breathe it all in and let it wash all the styfe of the pit out of your lungs.’

Michael nodded, and then turned to look Luke full in the face. He was good-looking, his half-brother, and he certainly had enough lasses giving him the eye, but Luke also possessed something Michael knew he didn’t have which had a drawing power all of its own. There was a well of life in him, a virility that was strong and potent, and even without his attractive features and big solid frame, Luke would have been compelling. Luke would never be beaten. Michael acknowledged a pang of admiration that was tinged with envy. Luke would fight and keep fighting until his dying breath and always get what he wanted.

‘Look at your mam.’ Luke brought Michael’s attention to the large, formidable figure of Eva that even Arnold was having difficulty keeping up with. ‘She can fair move when she wants to.’

‘And she always wants to when we’re going to the farm.’ The two exchanged a grin before Michael added, ‘I can understand it, mind. There’s nothing I like better than being out here.’

‘Aye.’ Luke nodded but said nothing more as the two started to walk again. He knew Michael loved the farm as much as he hated the pit, and he had seen what working underground was doing to his young brother. He also knew how Michael felt about Polly. He felt his guts twist in spite of himself. If it had been anyone else but Michael, anyone else, he would have used every trick in the book — fair means or foul – to supplant him in Polly’s affections. But he couldn’t set himself up against Michael, not Michael.

Apart from the fact that Michael was his baby brother and the link between them had always been strong, he recognised that in the slight, almost willowy figure of the young lad at the side of him there dwelt an intrinsic goodness, a gentleness, that was rare. And Michael needed to get out of the pit; it was killing him slowly, inch by inch.