After the Storm (11 page)

‘Did you hear that, Georgie?’ Tom shouted. ‘Annie wants one of your bees to do a nasty on our Grace and there’s no way I’ll be putting bicarb on that sting!’

They were passing the last of the terraced houses which fronted directly on to the cobbled streets.

‘Mind your head on the cage, Tom,’ Annie shouted, and he ducked beneath the canary which Old Man Renton had put out to hang above his door. It was singing, though it stayed in the shade of the cover which was half over the cage.

‘It must be grand for the birds not to have to go down in the pits any more,’ said Tom. ‘Do they miss it, do you think?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Annie suddenly oppressed by the houses which seemed to press in on her, to trap her in the heat and dust, to make everything seem dark. The coal-dust covered the bricks and the cobbles, bringing gloom with it.

It was a relief to reach the wasteland with its space and grass-hillocked ground. Grace’s uncle tethered his goats here, but there was only one today.

‘Did the others go into the allotments once too often then and eat the prize marrows?’ Tom asked, shifting in the saddle to look around. The clip of Beauty’s hooves had changed to a soft thud as they crossed towards the lane which led through the trees to the meadow and then the beck. It was still some way off and shimmered in the heat.

Grace shook her head. ‘Not this time, Tom. Me uncle’s been laid off an’ all. They’ve sold off the billies for meat. They need the nanny to feed the bairn. Me aunty’s gone dry.’

‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘the billies don’t half pong.’

Annie grimaced at the memory. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I used to kick the ball up here with Don before he had his good one. If there was a wind …’

‘And I always thought that was you, Annie,’ chipped in Tom.

They laughed and let Beauty stop to crop at the grass. The noise of tearing grass and clinking bit added to Annie’s growing sense of freedom. She turned to look back at the streets they had left, cut off from the world as though someone had sliced through them with a knife.

‘You’d have thought someone would have curved ’em round a bit, or dotted a few to make it look nice, not just plonked ’em here.’

‘It’s to do with the owners of the pits, I reckon,’ Grace said. They both looked round as they heard Don and Georgie call them from far ahead, then returned to looking at the town.

‘They just stopped building when the miners had enough houses,’ Grace continued. ‘They didn’t care what it looked like, didn’t think the likes of us needed anything nice.’

The older boys were racing back towards them and Don panted up to Annie. He stopped and caught his breath.

‘That stupid pony’s supposed to make it quicker,’ he gasped,
and began to bounce the ball at Annie’s feet. The dry earth flew over her sandals. She kicked it away and as he scrambled after it, Tom said:

‘No, she’s supposed to make it better, and she does, Don.’

Don scooped the ball up, flicking it underarm to Georgie who fielded it with his hand and then dribbled it away from the others.

Don strolled back until he reached the pony, then glared at Tom. ‘I’ve told you two that it’s a boy, a bloody boy.’ His thin face was screwed up.

Annie pulled up Beauty’s head, clicking with her tongue to move on. ‘She’s what we want her to be and so she’s a girl.’ They were moving forward now at a leisurely pace. She tilted her chin and looked at him sideways. ‘Anyway, clever clogs, tell us why they just stop the houses like that?’ She waved her hand towards them.

Don turned back to look. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘They just stop,’ Grace said, ‘that’s what we’re talking about.’

Tom was standing up in the stirrups to look, wobbling in time with Beauty’s stride. ‘They’re so ugly. Someone’s just dumped them there, in the middle of nowhere.’

Georgie was walking with them now. ‘It’s on top of a seam of coal and that ain’t nowhere to the bosses,’ he said softly. ‘They’d get the workers here by giving them a roof, then the poor sods couldn’t leave if the wages got bad because they’d lose their houses as well.’

‘Good idea, that,’ grunted Don and sidestepped round Annie to take the ball off Georgie. ‘Come on Georgie, race you to the lane.’

Annie watched them go. She would have liked to run too, but Grace would have found it too much.

Tom called softly. ‘That’s not a good idea, is it, Annie?’ His face was troubled.

‘Nay, lad, you’d think some of them would go away now wouldn’t you? They can call their homes their own these days you know.’ She looked over her shoulder again. ‘There’s something that keeps them all together, I reckon.’

‘Us all together, you mean,’ Grace corrected her.

But Annie knew that was not what she meant. She looked back again and still she thought of the town and its people as
them. She wished she did not. She wanted to feel that she belonged somewhere and then she looked at Tom and felt a surge of warmth; here was an us, she thought.

Even across the unbroken wasteland there was no wind, and there was a hush because the pit wheels were idle, over on the other side. They couldn’t even hear the bleating of the sheep as they grazed on the grass-covered slopes of the older slag-heaps. Poppies sagged in the heat at the side of the grass track and Grace said she would pick some on the way back, but Tom said they would die and that he would paint her one instead. Annie saw that the boys had reached the lane now and were about to disappear into its darkness. Tom had seen too and wriggled free of the stirrups.

‘I’ll get down now, Annie, and give the old lady a break. I want to run a bit and Georgie said he’d show me how to blow on grass and make it whistle.’

He was already throwing his leg over the saddle and was on the ground and away before Beauty could stop. He flung the picnic over his shoulder as he ran.

‘Crumbs for lunch,’ Annie said, laughing, and slipped round the front of the pony so that she was walking with Grace. She slipped her arm through the other girl’s. Grace always smelt nice and she let her look at her arithmetic in class. It saved her getting caned too often by that old witch Miss Henry. Old Dippy Denis had never hurt them and he’d let Grace come up a grade into his class even though she was a year younger than the rest. She’d be 9 now, thought Annie, but she’s better than the rest of us. Quick at her work, but not a swot.

‘It was a shame about old Dippy,’ she said to Grace who nodded.

‘I wonder why he did it.’

‘Me da said it was the war.’ Annie remembered her da’s hands when he’d heard about it and how they had started shaking. ‘When the lorry hit the playground wall and the bricks came down he must have thought it was a shell. That’s what me da said anyway, and the boys who stood and watched must have looked like Germans.’ She saw again how Dippy had thrown himself on the ground in the playground, screaming, then crawling towards the bricks, then on to the boys who had stood rooted to the spot. He had grabbed at two but had not had time to kill them.

‘He’s still in the loony-bin, isn’t he?’ Grace asked, fanning herself with her hand. ‘It’s so hot.’

Annie thought of Dippy being locked in a dark room with bars away from the sun and the sky and the birds. He had been 26, her father had said. There were so many years to live, she thought, shut away.

She said. ‘He looked so kind. When they took him away there were tears all down his face. It was raining but I know they were tears.’

She looked up at the sky. It was so blue with light white clouds. War could only happen when it was grey and wet. People could not fight on a day like this, no one could do anything but feel this feeling. She drew a deep breath. This feeling that she thought perhaps was joy. Sophie had always called her a joy and delight and a day like this sounded like those words.

She looked sideways at Grace to see if she felt it too but Grace looked uncomfortably hot. Some of her curls had stuck to her forehead and cheeks. She walked over on the sides of her feet as though they hurt. It was a shame she would never put on a swimsuit, otherwise they could have had a swim in the beck. Betsy had told Annie to put hers in with Tom’s, but she had not. She knew Grace would be upset. She said it was because her skin was so fair that she wouldn’t strip off, but Annie knew it was because she felt fat and ugly. But she wasn’t, she was lovely. Grace pulled her blouse in and out trying to get cool and, as they entered the lane, Annie snapped off a beech twig from the hedge that ran along between them and the fields of corn. She found one with plenty of leaves and handed it to Grace.

‘Fan yourself with that, bonny lass.’ She dug into her pocket and fetched out a piece of apple. It was warm and covered in bits, but Beauty wouldn’t care. It was cooler here with the branches locked into one another over their heads like fingers creating a church and steeple. The birds were louder than she had ever remembered, caught as they were in this tunnel of leaves. The boys had slowed and were not far ahead now and, as they approached, they heard the screech of Tom’s grass whistle.

Georgie had stopped altogether and was peering into the hedge off to the left. Annie saw him beckon to Tom and together
they bent down. She saw that Tom’s face was still but his eyes were dark with concentration. She pulled Grace with her and they trod softly up behind.

‘Get a look at this then, Tom,’ Georgie was whispering. ‘See the hind legs?’

It was a bee, its head deep into a cornflower and pollen stuck so thickly to its back legs that it seemed impossible that it could ever fly. But it did and soared out and up, past Tom, who flinched and then Georgie who did not move a muscle.

‘It might have stung you,’ hissed Annie, pulling at Georgie, frightened for them both.

He turned and shook his head. ‘Suicide for them. They only sting if there’s no alternative. They can’t take their sting out again you see. It’s a once and only weapon. Protection of the hive is what it’s all about, deep inside their heads, I reckon.’

Annie had not heard death mentioned since the fair six weeks ago. How strange to think that it could be discussed so casually by other people.

Georgie strolled forward, on to the meadow with Tom. Annie and Grace brought Beauty, Don had gone before them. ‘They fan themselves like you to keep cool you know, Grace,’ Georgie said. ‘With their wings, in the hive.’

‘Clever, aren’t they, Georgie?’ marvelled Tom.

‘Do the others miss them when they sting and you know …’ Annie faltered.

Georgie dropped back to walk beside her. ‘’Spect so, but it’s life really. It’s happened, it had to happen.’ He paused. Grace had walked on to be with Tom. Beauty was swishing her tail to be rid of the flies. ‘A bit like your ma really. Perhaps she felt there was nothing else to do and the rest just have to go on. Just like the bees.’ He coloured now, and took her hand in his as they walked, squeezed and was gone. She watched him catch up with Tom who was chasing Grace with a spider.

No one had spoken of her mother since that night and she was glad now that someone had. Her face was relaxing again and she allowed herself to notice the birds above her and the corn which waved in the slight breeze that had now appeared. Bees could die and still the sun came out. She wouldn’t think about people yet but she could still feel the heat of Georgie’s hand around hers.

The hives lay across the other side of the beck in Mr
Thompson’s land. He owned the meadow too, the one in which they sat and which ran up to the beck. He had said Georgie could bring them all today.

‘We come all the time anyway,’ boasted Don. But Annie thought it was nice not to have to post a look-out for once.

She was sitting on the bank of the beck with her feet flopping in the water. Tom was in his swimsuit, the one that Betsy had knitted before her hands had slowed her up too much. He had brought a jam jar tied round the neck with string; it had made red marks on his hands where he had wound it round so that he could hang on tight as the water tried to tear the jar from him. The beck was not more than a foot deep here in this hot dry end of the summer but already his costume was sagging with the wet and he looked like a sack of potatoes.

‘Caught any yet?’ she called.

He shook his head but did not look up. His legs were so pale they could do with a good dose of sun and she wished she was in there too but down at the deep pool which lay beyond the willow that hung in the water just by Tom. Instead she pulled her dress up over her knees and lay back on the grass next to Grace. It was rich and warm and green. She turned over, pulling herself further on to the grass with her elbows, then lay on her face, breathing in the freshness.

Grace spoke lazily at her side. ‘Me mam says that’s what they get the consumptives to do. Pure oxygen, me mam says. The grass eats our breathings out and spews back good pure stuff. Gives you rosy cheeks, me mam says.’

‘Someone should bottle it then,’ said Annie, too lethargic to speak clearly. ‘Give it to the miners with the black spit.’

‘Me mam says they can do that, in the hospitals.’

Annie raised herself on her elbows so that she could peer out through the high grass across the meadow. There was a sheen of yellow from the buttercups; black-eyed daisies sat in wide clumps. She could hear the thud of Don and Georgie’s boots as they kicked the balls and their shouts as they gave directions. The plop of Tom’s jar sounded behind her as he scooped it out and back in again when he had checked on a catch.

‘Your mam talks to you a lot,’ she remarked to Grace as she turned on her back, flinging her arm over to shield her eyes. She saw red spots dart themselves across the inside of her lids and hoped Grace hadn’t heard the note of irritation in her voice.

‘She wants me to get on, see,’ Grace said, stirring at Annie’s side. Annie knew that Grace was too hot but could not imagine ever feeling that way herself. The heat oozed into her and she loved it.

‘What will you do then, Gracie, when you’re grown?’

‘Me mam wants me to go into the library I reckon. It’s clean and quiet with a nice sort of people.’

Annie laughed out loud. ‘It’s quiet right enough, Gracie. Remember being chucked out for giggling when Don got the hiccups.’ They both lay back grinning. ‘But what do you want, Grace?’