‘Aye, aye, I can see that.’ Her aunt continued to hold her close for another moment and then pushed her away, saying, ‘Now it’s all out in the open, you’ll come again?’
Hannah nodded. ‘I don’t come into town much though.You must come to the farm too and see everything. ’
As Hannah wiped her eyes, Jake said quietly,‘I second that, Mrs Casey. You’ll be very welcome.’
‘Thanks, lad.’ Agatha smiled at the tall broad-shouldered figure. ‘And I’m right glad about your bit of luck an’ all by the way, inheriting the farm and everything.’
Neither Hannah nor Jake acknowledged Edward Casey as they left the shop part of the house, and it wasn’t until they were seated in the horse and trap and halfway down the street that Hannah said,‘Do you think she’ll come?’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’
‘I don’t know. She - she’s so different, I suppose.’
‘Didn’t you expect her to be? After all the years of being incarcerated in that one room, her life has been turned around and it looks like she’s going to make the most of it. Good luck to her, I say.’
Her eyes misted. He didn’t understand. But then why would he? And how could she explain that she felt she’d suffered a bereavement? He’d think she was daft. But it was true. The old Aunt Aggie had gone and in her place stood a woman who was almost a stranger. She should have gone to see her when she was still poorly, maybe then the bond wouldn’t have been broken. Or maybe she should have explained about her uncle’s attempted rape. Her aunt would have understood then that she couldn’t have faced going back to the house with her mother and uncle still in residence. Oh, she didn’t know - perhaps nothing would have made any difference. One thing was for sure, it was too late now.
The tears gathering in her throat threatened to choke her, and she turned her head and concentrated on the view ahead as the horse and trap turned into Southwick Road. Blinking her eyes clear, she told herself fiercely she was not going to cry. Her aunt was well and healthy and making a new life for herself and her uncle had got his come-uppance to a degree. Furthermore, her mother was out of the picture. Things had settled at the farm again after the trauma of Joe’s death and then Seamus’s, and Naomi and her young man were coming for Sunday tea at the weekend, weather permitting. Everything was fine, or as fine as it could be after the recent tragedies. It just didn’t feel like it, that was all. And still, deep inside, although she was trying not to dwell on it, she was constantly steeling herself against the day when Jake would take up with someone and the decisions she would have to face then.
PART FIVE
1929 - The Resurrection
Chapter 20
The last two years had been uneventful and mildly prosperous on the whole for the residents of Clover Farm, in spite of the increasing unemployment nationwide.
The newspapers reported the country was in the middle of a slump, something the working class were well aware of.The number of broken men, women and children entering the grim walls of the workhouses, the babies crippled with rickets, the children with ringworm and TB and a whole host of other diseases, the men who quietly ended their lives rather than see their families starve, had risen month by month since the General Strike.
It was foreign competition that was causing the problem, the newspapers chirruped, along with the Wall Street crash. The northerners’ answer to that was they had been living in a slump all their lives, and what could stockbrokers jumping off skyscrapers across the ocean have to do with anything? And if things were so bad for everyone, why were semi-detached houses with bathrooms and indoor privies being built all over the hockey down south? The country had always been split in half, the men said over their pints of beer - one of which had to last all night - and the politicians and powers that be regarded northerners as second-class citizens.
So the bitterness grew. Marches to protest at decreasing wages and lost jobs became normal, along with the violence which often ensued.
It said plenty for how desperate things had become in the Wood household that when Rose asked Jake to take Stephen on at the farm when he left school the day after his fourteenth birthday, there was no murmur of complaint from Wilbur or Adam. Wilbur hadn’t worked in months, and with the cuts in the miners’ pay packets, Adam’s wage was almost on a par with what Naomi brought home some weeks. Wilbur’s last shreds of pride were tied up with Rose not working and in this one thing she dared not defy him. But they couldn’t manage on the two small wages and Jake’s food parcels. And so in the autumn Stephen left for Clover Farm.
Now it was the day before Christmas Eve, and Hannah and Jake had called at the house in Wayman Street weighed down with bags of this and that for Rose, and stocking-fillers for the younger children. Outside the house was a crystal white world.The snow was thick on the ground with more to come in the heavy laden sky, but inside Rose’s kitchen it was warm, the fire in the range casting a mellow glow over the old battered furniture and scrubbed flagstones.
Wilbur was there, sitting in his chair in front of the range. Each morning he ate his breakfast and left the house as though he had a shift, only to spend hours standing about on street corners with old pals who were in the same position as him. In rain, hail and snow they banded together, hands in pockets and eyes dead. Adam was now his father’s connection with the pit. As long as his son was working, Wilbur felt he had a chance of returning.
Lily was round at her mother’s with the baby. It appeared she was there most of the time these days. Things between her and Adam had never been good, according to Rose, but now they were at rock bottom. Rose glanced at the twins who had been forced to stay in the house rather than play with their friends, owing to the fact their boots were more holes than leather, then she put her head close to Hannah’s and murmured, ‘She keeps threatening to clear off for good and I wish she would, may the good Lord forgive me. But at least when she’s round her mam’s she’s not under my feet, and her mam an’ da have taken to having Sadie most weekends now.’
Hannah nodded. Rose, who loved all children, hadn’t taken to her first grandchild, possibly because little Sadie was distinctly precocious and inclined to hour-long screaming tantrums if thwarted. She was also the spitting image of her mother. ‘Doesn’t Adam mind her being at her mam’s so much?’
‘He’d pack her bags himself, given the slightest chance.’
‘But the child, Sadie? She’s his bairn,’ Jake put in quietly.
‘She’s Lily’s bairn,’ Rose said in a low voice with another glance at the twins to make sure they weren’t listening. Having satisfied herself they were engrossed sitting on the clippy mat sorting out the bag of marbles Jake had brought them, she continued, ‘From wanting nowt to do with her when she was born, once she was crawling and talking a bit, Lily’s been all over her.’ She paused. ‘Mind, to be fair, I can understand that, the way the marriage has gone. I suppose the bairn’s a comfort.’
Jake and Hannah exchanged a glance. In an effort to divert the conversation from Adam’s marital problems, Hannah said, ‘And Adam? Are things any better at the pit?’
‘No, an’ not likely to be.’ Normally,Wilbur remained as silent as the grave during their visit, but now he entered the conversation with a scowl. ‘He worked all of last week, and when there was a fall an’ they needed extra he did a double shift, and at the end of it he come away with a pay packet with just over a pound in it. Them and their damn trumped-up fines.’
‘But couldn’t he say something, Mr Wood?’
Wilbur’s look was pitying as he surveyed Hannah. ‘One word and he’d be finished, and if he’s finished now we’ve all had it. The blighters know that. They know how we’re placed.’
Jake said nothing. His stepfather was longing to let fly at him, he knew the signs, but of late Wilbur hadn’t dared. In a minute they’d have a list of Adam’s virtues if Wilbur ran true to form.
‘They had him shovelling on his knees for a penny farthing a yard and his legs under water from the time he went in till the time he come out, and does he whine about it? Does he heck. He’s a good lad, none better, an’ anyone who says different is a liar.’
‘Aye, all right, all right,’ Rose intervened, and as the look between wife and husband caught and held, it was Wilbur who lowered his head first.Turning to Hannah, Rose said, ‘Your aunt and uncle are away for Christmas then? Somewhere foreign, I understand. I’m surprised they shut shop at what must be their busiest time.’
‘Aunt Aggie’s selling the business,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘It was all signed and sealed the day before they left so I know she won’t mind me saying now. They may not return to England at all but she’s going to write to me when she decides what to do.’
‘Is that so? Ee, Bart’s family will be hard pressed. They rely on the lad’s wage.’
‘The new owners are keeping him on. Aunt Aggie was insistent about that.’
They continued to chat for a few minutes more but with Wilbur sitting glowering in his chair, they didn’t prolong the visit. Rose saw them out, watching Jake help Hannah into the small two-wheeled carriage and then waving as he clicked the horse into motion and they disappeared into the now thickly falling snow.
She didn’t immediately return to the kitchen but stood on the doorstep for some minutes, her mind miles away. She had long since given up on the notion that had assailed her at one time after Seamus’s death, that of her lad and Hannah getting together. She didn’t know what had put it into her mind but once there, it had stuck for a while. Hannah was a good lass, a kind lass. If anyone could see past Jake’s appearance to the man beneath, it was Hannah. As though the thought had been a criticism of Jake in some way, she followed with, and the lass would have been doing herself proud if she’d looked the side he was on. There was no one better than her lad, no one in the whole world. He wasn’t just big in size but in his heart as well, and there was a depth in him none of her other children had, even Naomi. But there, it hadn’t happened and as the months had gone by she’d told herself it was a daft idea. One thing was for sure, the lass was so bonny she could pick and choose.
Sighing, Rose shut the door. Adam was still of the mind that Daniel, Jake’s manager, meant more to Hannah than the lass let on and he might be right. They didn’t know what went on at the farm after all. But Hannah wasn’t walking out formally with him or else she would have told Naomi. Although the two of them didn’t see so much of each other these days, they were still close. Naomi . . . Rose sighed again, irritably this time. She wished her daughter would see that Stuart Fraser would never be any good to her.Two years they’d been courting and he messed her about something rotten. What with Adam and Naomi, perhaps she should be thanking her lucky stars Jake hadn’t got a lass and seemed content enough. But then, you could never tell with Jake. Quiet waters ran deep with her firstborn.
‘Took him long enough to go.’
As she stepped into the kitchen,Wilbur glared at her but as was happening more and more these days she returned his look, saying, ‘It was good of him to come in this weather and bring the bits for the bairns and the food for Christmas. There’s a whole ham and one of their turkeys, along with butter and cheese and whatnot. Have you looked?’
‘I don’t need to look. I knew you’d tell me soon enough.’
‘And why not? It’s what keeps us going. The least you could do is to be civil to him.’
‘I was civil.’ He shot the words at her, his voice heavy with suppressed rage as he added, ‘Sure signs I’m not bringing anything in these days, the way you talk to me. Things have come to a pretty pass when there’s no respect in a man’s house from his own wife.’
Rose said nothing to this. She took the items Jake and Hannah had brought out of the bags and placed them on the kitchen table. The presents for the children, which Hannah had already wrapped, she put out of sight in one of the cupboards. She didn’t hurry to put the food away even though she knew the sight of it was infuriating Wilbur still more. She took a brown packet from the table. ‘Stephen’s sent his wage packet. Do you want to open it?’
Taking Wilbur’s silence for refusal, she slit the brown paper with her fingernail, her face softening as she counted the folded notes inside. Jake had told her he had given Stephen a Christmas bonus. What he had meant was she now had enough to buy the twins and Peter new winter boots, with a bit more besides.
She went across to the mantelpiece and lifted down the metal tin with a picture of the late Queen on the lid and added half a sovereign and two two-shilling pieces to the couple of coins inside. That would take care of the worry about the rent over Christmas. They would still be in arrears but when the rent man called tonight she could pay enough off the back to keep him happy. She went into the scullery and put the notes away in a small linen bag she wore pinned to the inside of the bodice of her petticoat. They hadn’t a drop of beer or hard stuff in the house for Christmas, and if she knew anything about her husband and son they would put that before new boots for the bairns.