After the Storm (27 page)

She ran her finger along the frame. The creosote had stained the grey to dark brown. She could miss him here, in private. She could let the pain come and think of his laugh as he held her on the bike, his hands as he stroked her body on the sand, miss his voice, his eyes.

The glass pane was dirty where dust had collected at the base and her finger came away grey, not greasy-black from the pit dust. She peered through the window out to the wall and above it there was sky, pale blue sky with clouds streaked and still. There was no slag mountain, just clear air. She felt a racing panic, an urge to run, to get free, to be back again in Wassingham.

She moved past the bike, past the window to the door then back again, to the end where there were dry dusty sacks stacked one on top of the other then sat on the floor, her arms clutched round her knees and she rocked herself, her head down, remembering Grace and her dimpled legs and her soft arm which was good to hold. Remembering Don when he had given her Da’s watch, remembering Tom when he fell in the beck and did a wee. Yes, she would remember that and Georgie, looking up into the sky at his precious mating bees which no one could see but which everyone could picture.

She put her mouth to her knee and smelt her skin. She would think of that day when things got bad. She would think of holding Tom and making him believe that sometimes things would work out. She lifted her head to the window, shrugging her hair back out of her eyes. Yes, that’s what she would do and what’s more she’d make bloody sure they worked out and what wasn’t going to was being given everything for free; it made her a prisoner here, it tied her tighter than rope would have done. She leant back against the wall, her hands clasped loosely now and watched a tortoiseshell butterfly at the window, caught in the square beams of light. The dust was tumbling around it, caught too, and she pushed herself suddenly from the floor and quietly cupped the tortoiseshell in her hands, edged open the door with her arm and threw it gently into the air which was bright and hurt her eyes, then walked along the path leading to the greenhouse and opened the door.

The humid heat made her flinch, it seemed to spray out at her as she moved amongst the tall staked tomato plants and felt the weight of the red fruit in her hands as she crouched and sucked in the fresh smell. They were so glossy red, with dew caught on the leaves. Condensation streamed down the inside of the glass although it had been whitewashed against the heat.

‘Lovely, aren’t they,’ said Val behind her.

Annie spun round and up, knocking a tomato off and watching as it fell and split and the pips oozed out on to the dark rich peat.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said, backing off.

Val smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter, my dear, they’re so ripe they are ready to drop on their own. Pick me some, there’s a love and I’ll get on with the lettuce. Bring me the basket when you’ve done, dear.’

The basket was large and Annie did not know how many to pick; whether to pick them with the green bits or not. So she did four with, four without.

Val was over by the vegetable patch. One row of lettuce had gone to seed and she was bent over feeling the hearts of the rest.

Annie waited beside her while she pulled up one, then another. Rich dark soil clung to the roots, even when Val shook them. Even have better soil than we do, Annie thought. It’s not bloody fair and she remembered the dry thin soil of Wassingham that baked as soon as the sun shone.

She watched as Val threw the roots into a wooden-sided bunker which had no top and stood next to the vegetable patch.

‘That’s my compost,’ explained Val. ‘Must have a compost or you don’t get the goodness. Mustn’t waste anything in a garden you know. If you take out, you must put back.’

She smiled as she put the lettuce into the wicker basket that Annie still carried. ‘A few radishes now, I think.’

She stooped and pulled up several red orbs and laid them on top of the lettuce.

‘I used to sell me pony’s plops,’ said Annie. ‘Manure’s good for the garden too, you know.’

She stood as Val moved along to the chives and knelt by the bed. ‘I like to be able to pay me way, you know. Makes me feel better.’ She waited to see if Val would understand.

Val looked up, her face was red now from the heat, then
down again as she picked a few more thin chive shoots. At last she said:

‘Why don’t you go in and talk to Sarah, Ann. She’ll understand. I promise you she’ll understand. Give us a hand up now.’

Annie moved and grasped her elbow; her fingers sank into the warm flesh as she tugged. Val took the basket from her and Annie did not want to let go of that arm but she turned and walked from Val to the house, her chin up, her fists clenched, looking for words which would tell Sarah she was strangling her, not setting her free.

Sarah was reading the paper in the sitting-room and Annie did not knock but walked straight in, her boots loud on the wooden surround.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

Sarah looked up and over the paper, then laid it on her lap.

‘Yes, Ann.’

‘That’s just it, you see,’ Annie blurted out. ‘Me name’s Annie but you can call me Ann because I haven’t got any choice. You keep me, pay for me food and school and I don’t earn it so you can tell me what to do, even change me name if you want. I can’t let that happen. Me name’s Annie and I want to earn me keep or I can’t say what I think, I can only say what you think.’

Her hands were down by her side and her chin was jutting. Her eyes had not left Sarah’s face while she had spoken but in the silence that followed she looked away; at the fireplace, at the lamp with a shade made of coloured glass sections, at the photograph beside it of women wearing hats and veils and men in funny trousers. They all wore long slats on their feet and it was snowing. She hadn’t said all that she had meant and it had come out badly. She had wanted to be calm and talk as Sarah did but she didn’t know how.

Sarah had her finger to her mouth, she was frowning and Annie clenched her hands but stayed standing still.

‘Please sit down.’ Sarah pointed to the chair opposite. ‘We’re both tired you know, we’ve been on the road for quite a long time this morning and your uncle, I’m afraid, is a most difficult man.’

Annie did so. ‘He’s all right but I worked me way there and
got sixpence as well. I never felt beholden to him.’ She was leaning forward, her elbows on her knees.

Sarah smiled ruefully. ‘Oh dear, Annie. You are quite right of course, but I am your godmother you see and so I do have a certain right to act
in loco parentis
.’

And what the hell does that mean thought Annie and was about to say as much when Sarah laughed.

‘I’m sorry, you must make allowances, Annie. I’m not used to children you see. What I mean is that I can undertake, in your case, the role of parent but,’ and she put her hand up as she saw Annie about to interrupt, ‘you are quite right. I am not your parent. Therefore, if you feel as you do, we must remedy the situation.’

‘Do you mean I can earn me keep then?’

‘I consider that you will earn your keep if you work hard and find a career that is worthwhile.’

‘Or marry Georgie,’ challenged Annie.

Sarah paused. ‘Yes, we did agree to that, did we not, but marriage does not necessarily mean you do not have a career.’

‘But I still need to earn me keep for me own sense of being me.’

Sarah sat back and looked steadily at Annie, then to the window. She nodded. ‘Very well, I accept your point but I shall have to sort something out. Can you give me a bit of time?’

Annie sat back, her hands under her legs against the prickles. ‘As long as it’s not too long,’ she insisted.

‘I promise,’ Sarah said and smiled.

Success surged through Annie. She would be a person who had rights and that was what she had wanted. She breathed a deep sigh and smiled at Sarah. It was the first one that they had exchanged. The clock was approaching four o’clock, the fire was laid for this evening.

‘Is that you?’ she asked, pointing to the photograph. ‘What are those things on your feet?’ she asked when Sarah nodded.

‘Skis for sliding upright down snow slopes. You must try it some day, you’d enjoy it, I’m sure. It would present a challenge.’ Sarah moved over and picked it up and passed it to Annie, who noticed for the first time that there were lines under her eyes, grey in her brown hair.

‘How old are you, Sarah?’

Sarah looked at her and laughed as she turned to sit down.
‘I’m 38 and Val is 45 but you mustn’t ask anyone else their age. It is considered rather rude.’

Annie nodded and looked again at the photograph. ‘You look young here, but very thin.’ She looked more closely at the photograph. ‘So very thin. Were you ill?’ She was thinking of the boys in Tom’s class with consumption, but not him, thank God.

‘No, not ill. Shall we just say that I had been having trouble eating. It was called the cat and mouse game, Annie, and one day I shall tell you more about it but now, now I think it is time I sat and thought carefully about what we should sort out to solve our problem. Can you for now go and help Val with the salad, Annie?’

Annie nodded, rose and left the room. She stopped outside the door and went back in.

‘Thank you, Sarah,’ she said and Sarah smiled. ‘I’ll ring the gong from now on, shall I? That’ll be a start.’

And Sarah nodded.

That night, Sarah lay in bed too tired to sleep, too full of the change in her life. The curtains were not drawn since there was a full moon and she could never bring herself to waste the strong colourless light which lit the bedroom, bringing no detail but an awareness of shape.

She shook her head slightly at what must be almost an obsession with waste, much like Val’s with her compost but then she’d been with the family for thirty years so was as imbued with tradition as she was. It was her father of course. Waste, I cannot abide waste, she heard him say with a clarity of remembered sound that startled her. And the vividness of that particular scene that was so long ago took her unawares.

Her father had entered the sitting-room, the same one that Annie had stormed into today in those dreadful boots. Must do something about those tomorrow, Sarah reminded herself. Yes, he had entered the sitting-room rather later than usual dressed as always in his black suit and starched collar which was his uniform as manager of the hardware store. Hardware was an understatement since Mr Mainton, as the town always called her father, never Martin Mainton, had built up the store into more of an emporium for the owners, a complacent and rich family called the Stoners.

Sarah frowned as she fought to remember what she and her mother had been doing and then sighed with recognition. Embroidery. Her mother was explaining that embroidery should be as neat at the back as at the front since it was somewhat like underwear. Seldom seen but always clean and tidy, and they were laughing gently together.

Waste, I cannot abide waste, he had said as he had come rushing in. She had never known her father to walk, it was beyond his capabilities. They had looked up, not startled because they were used to his fads but a little wary, especially her mother who had suffered recently under the burden of producing meals which her father had decided would stimulate their ‘flushing systems’ as he had called it.

What now, her mother had said in that voice. With a flourish, her father had produced two bicycles. Exercise and freedom, freedom to enjoy the countryside, the beauties of which are being wasted by you. You have energies which are being wasted, he had finished and had stood there beaming.

The next day, she remembered they had obtained split skirts and were soon traversing the country lanes and indeed they found freedom. She and her mother had travelled for miles stopping for picnics and talking. Talking about the dreams and aspirations of her mother, her frustration at wanting to do so much and not being able to within the confines of a provincial society and marriage, though her father had been an enlightened husband. Sarah had spoken of the suffragettes; it was 1910 and she was 19 and her mother had applauded their efforts, their bravery.

Her father had relished their adventures and was proud of their independence though their neighbours were somewhat shocked especially the Thom sisters next door who played the piano at the picture house in Gosforn. But Sarah had always thought they were, in reality, envious. What would they think now about this girl living with her, because they were still next door, though no longer at the cinema.

That summer, her parents had determined that their daughter should be equipped with skills which would enable her to weather the rest of her life, good or bad. All they could afford was a secretarial course but it was the best. Sarah sighed with satisfaction and pushed herself up on to her pillows. The moon was half obscured by fast-moving clouds, much as it had
been so often when she was driving ambulances during the war. That was another of her father’s fads. Both his women should learn to drive. A waste of potential he had roared and pushed his wife into the driving-seat. She had hated it but Sarah loved the feeling of power.

She had taken a job in London, staying with Aunt Jesse, her father’s sister, and it was there she had become involved with female suffrage. She had worn green and purple rosettes; marched and spoken at rallies, been punched and pushed by hecklers for her pains as she left the halls. There had been spit down the front of her jacket when she had returned from one meeting. She had thrown it away and cried in her room, unable to bring herself to wipe it away.

When she was a member of a group blocking a road near Trafalgar Square, she had been arrested. The cobbles they were sitting on had been cold in that winter of 1912 and she remembered how they had been told by their leader to go slack when the police picked them up and threw them into the van but she hadn’t expected the pain and the bruising as she hit the studded floor of the vehicle.

Aunt Jesse had come for her in the morning but she was charged with causing an obstruction and breaking the peace. The sentence was three months in prison. She had gone on hunger-strike like the rest, like her friend Norah, but they had been kept in separate cells and Sarah moved in the bed as she remembered the fear of dying, the hunger, being alone and then after days or was it weeks they had come and pushed the tube into her nostril and down her throat. She thought her nose, her throat, her chest would burst and then finally it entered her stomach. Each day they had done that, pouring liquid, not much but enough to keep her alive and each time, when they had left her and she had still not screamed and struggled, she had been proud of herself but had lain in fear hour after hour until they came again.