‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Irene, you really must go, your father wouldn’t like you being here, you know he wouldn’t.’
‘He wouldn’t like you being here either if he could see the place.’
Blake persuaded her out of the door. Irene hated leaving him there.
* * *
Early and late that week Irene went to his lodging but he was never there. It was not until the following Sunday afternoon that she saw him and then he insisted on seeing her outside. It was cold but clear. They went to the park and Irene sat down on a bench there and when he saw that she was going to walk no further he sat down too.
‘You’ve been out all week.’
‘I wish you would stop coming to the house,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘My landlady doesn’t like it. I don’t want to have to find new lodgings.’
‘I never see you.’
‘Irene, you’re not supposed to see me. What would your father say?’
‘He didn’t mind all these months when you’ve been coming to the house.’
‘That was different.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
He looked at her and Irene looked down.
‘That’s not true,’ he said, ‘your father doesn’t want me there any more. What’s happened?’
‘I refused to marry Robert Denham.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t care about him,’ Irene said and pulled her hat further down over her eyes.
‘Poor Robert.’
‘Poor Robert nothing. I didn’t realise he was so arrogant and conceited. He thought all he had to do was ask. He’s never taken me anywhere, he’s never even sent me a bunch of flowers. What does he think I am, a piece of furniture?’
Blake said nothing. Irene looked at him.
‘Did you assume that she was going to, whatever her name is?’
‘I suppose I just wanted her so badly.’
‘That’s not fair either, you know, to assume that a woman wants you.’
‘I thought she loved me.’
‘Well, she obviously doesn’t, does she?’
‘No, she doesn’t.’
‘Oh, David, I’m sorry.’ Irene forgot that she was in public and put her arms around him and to her delight he held her there but only for a few moments.
‘Don’t be sorry. It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You must go home now.’
* * *
That evening her father called her into his study and there was a look on his face which Irene had never seen before.
‘So,’ he said, ‘there was a good reason why you didn’t want to marry young Denham. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘That you cared for another lad.’
Irene couldn’t think what to say or where to look.
‘How did you find out?’ she said.
‘I had a report that you were seen at his lodgings and in the street with him and that you were embracing him in the park this afternoon. Such a lack of taste, my dear.’
‘Oh, that,’ Irene said.
‘It is true?’
‘Yes, it’s true. I care for him very much but he doesn’t care for me. He went home to marry his girl and she’s become engaged to someone else. That was comfort this afternoon, not passion.’
‘How could you learn to care for a man like that?’
‘Do you mean because he’s poor?’
‘He’s a working-class nobody, Irene.’
‘How strange, I thought you had some regard for him yourself.’
‘That was before I learned that he wanted my money.’
‘Your money?’
‘You said yourself that he cared nothing for you but he has a good deal to gain by the connection, has he not, now that he knows of your regard.’
Irene sunk her pride.
‘He knew about my feelings for him long before and did nothing.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘I didn’t need to tell him,’ Irene said.
Sixteen
When Blake went into work the following day he was dismissed. He was given the money owed to him and thrown out and not just metaphorically, two burly men were there to see him off the premises and into the street, bruised and knocked and left lying in the dust, and it mattered. It was not just the money, it was not just the work, it was not just the place or the not knowing what to do next, it was not even just Simon and Irene. Most of all it was Sylvester Richmond who mattered. It proved to Blake that the man who meant so much to him had never cared for him but only treated him as light entertainment for Sundays and for a workman who was worth nothing. And suddenly all the anger over the years which had not been given room found it – against the Harlingtons for putting him off the farm, against Charles Vane for denying him a name and a family and a home, against the Lowes for him not marrying Annie and against Sylvester Richmond for trying to take away the future. The anger filled Blake and ousted every other feeling. He swore to have revenge against them all, to give them back what they had done to him, to make them aware, to make them sorry. He lay there momentarily outside Richmond and Dixon’s front gates and promised himself to see his day with them all.
He didn’t know what to do after that. He looked for work but so did hundreds of other people and when the interested ones could not be provided with any reference they lost interest and Blake had nowhere to go. He saw Simon in the street that first week. Simon looked as if he would have given much to have avoided the meeting but they came face to face on an empty pavement one evening and Simon hesitated, looked embarrassed and finally stopped.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘What did I do?’ Blake demanded.
‘You made up to my sister.’
‘I did nothing of the bloody kind.’
‘Yes, you did. You were seen with her, at your lodgings, in the street, kissing her in the park.’
‘I don’t care anything for your sister and she knows it.’
‘My father thinks differently.’
‘Your father wants to think differently,’ Blake said from between his teeth.
‘Then you should do better than to kiss her in public.’
‘I didn’t kiss her. Did he really think that I would go behind his back? He doesn’t think much of me, does he?’
‘No, he doesn’t. Why should he?’
‘Because he knows me quite well by now. I thought that would have been sufficient.’
‘My father gave you a leg up when you needed one. He doesn’t owe you anything.’
‘He owes me common courtesy and the right to explain myself before he kicks me out.’
‘You’re not going to get that.’
‘You tell him then that if he thinks he can do this to me and get away with it he’s wrong—’
Simon laughed. ‘Don’t be stupid, there’s nothing you can do.’
‘You just wait,’ Blake said and he walked past Simon and went on up the road.
After two weeks Blake hadn’t found any work. The money he had saved was coming in handy after all, he thought
ruefully. He was sitting in his room reading one evening, in spite of the cold weather, when Mrs Southwark came up and sniffily told him that there was a man in the front hall asking for him. Blake went down and saw the tall figure of Ralph standing there.
‘Get your things,’ he said, ‘you’re coming home with me.’
‘Ralph—’
‘Don’t waste your breath arguing. I was told not to go back without you and I won’t. Howay then.’
There wasn’t much to take, just his clothes and a few books.
He paid Mrs Southwark what he owed her and heard her complaining from her front door all the way down the misty street.
When he reached their house he stepped up into Mary Ann’s kitchen and there she was, smiling and there was also the most wonderful smell of beef stew.
‘There you are,’ she said, coming forward and taking him into her arms and all the hurt and resentment and loneliness dissolved. Blake gave in and buried his face against her.
‘Oh, Mary Ann,’ he said, ‘I’ve made such a mess of things.’
Mary Ann held him close.
‘Never fret, my precious,’ she said, ‘folk always do sooner or later. You’re not alone.’
She fed Blake one of the best meals of his life and sent him to bed and he slept well into the next day. After that Ralph provided him with the appropriate clothes and took him to the pit and they set him to work.
It was such a shock to Blake, not just because he had been using his head and not his body for so long but because even when he had done farmwork from dawn to dark and beyond it was not as hard as this. Nothing, he concluded, could ever be as hard as this.
The pit was a shock: the Hutton Seam, three or four miles in with poor roadways, the air hot, stifling and bad, the dust a fine film two or three inches thick, like walking on a carpet of it, the small oil lamps getting lower and lower as the lack of air became worse. The seam was three feet high, men lying down at full stretch in the darkness.
At first all he could see was shadows and all that could be seen of the men for dust and sweat was the whites of their eyes.
It was weeks and weeks before he got used to it but there were compensations. For a start there was the kind of comradeship which Blake had never met before. They didn’t seem to care that he was an outsider with a different accent. When he worked in such conditions and did his best he was one of them right from the start. The job was too hard to be done without the certainty that every man in the pit was looking after every other man. He soon picked up their language, mostly from his friend, William Bedford, who showed him what to do. Blake soon got to know Will’s patient tones when he wasn’t getting something right.
‘Why Davy man, what are you doin’?’
‘Nowt. What for?’
‘Give’s it over here, man, and I’ll show you. Like this, man, like this.’
Will had called him Davy from the first and Blake didn’t like to correct him. It reminded him of his grandparents and how happy he had been then.
There was always comfort too because at the end of the shift no matter when it was Mary Ann was there. The food was good and plentiful, the house was shining clean, the clothes were washed and ironed, the water was hot and ready and she was kind and welcoming and these things made the work bearable. In some ways life was easier than it had been at the shipyard because he had never gone home to a woman then, he had not realised the value of marriage. He began to make good money too and tipped it up fortnightly to Mary Ann even though she objected and told him that she didn’t need it all and insisted on giving him a fair proportion back.
‘Keep some. Save,’ she said.
‘Later. I want you to have it now. If it hadn’t been for you and Ralph I don’t know what I would have done.’
‘One of these days you’ll want a wife and then you’ll need your money.’
‘I don’t want a wife.’
‘Get away. A bonny lad like you. Just give them time, some lass’ll have you round her little finger.’
Blake tried not to think about Annie. He thought that Ralph and Mary Ann must have known something of what had happened because they did not mention her in his presence. There seemed no chance now that he would ever have the kind of job which would make him respectable to her and in any case it didn’t matter. She claimed to love Alistair Vane and they were soon to be married. Blake wasn’t looking forward to Christmas.
One Saturday night late that autumn when Blake had made a rare trip into Sunderland with several other pitlads he saw Simon in one of the pubs. Simon had obviously had a few drinks by then. He came over and clapped Blake on the back and offered to buy him a drink and the others sat him down and welcomed him. In company Blake was determined to be polite and asked after his father and then Irene.
‘My father’s fine. He and Irene quarrelled. Didn’t you know? I suppose you wouldn’t. He sent her to live with my Aunt Martin.’ Simon pulled a face.
‘Put her out?’
‘Might as well have done. Aunt Martin’s a witch. Runs a school up in Newcastle.’
‘What would Irene do there?’
‘I don’t know. Behave herself I imagine. He wasn’t very pleased with her about you.’
‘She didn’t do anything.’
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ Simon grinned.
‘How could your father do that?’
‘I expect he doesn’t like deceit. So you’re a pitman now, are you? How are the mighty fallen?’
Next to Blake was Will.
‘I think he’s drunk,’ he observed.
‘You’re a shrewd judge of men, Will,’ Blake said, putting an arm around his shoulders.
Blake thought a lot about Irene after that night. He could not imagine that she had been sent away. He thought of her unhappy and when he saw Simon again which he did just before Christmas he asked for the aunt’s address. It was not that he intended doing anything about it, he just wanted to know. He was having enough trouble with women as it was. The pit lasses knew by now that he was not married and everywhere Blake went, from church to the town, they were there and he wanted nothing to do with any of them.
Mary Ann tried in vain to get him interested. She invited various ones to tea even though he begged her not to. To him they were all just not Annie and to his surprise they were not Irene.
He thought of her dressed in fine clothes, running down the stairs, sitting with him in the garden. He thought of her pretty hats and her soft hands, of her playing the piano and reading books and supervising the servants in her father’s house and he wondered what kind of a place she had gone to and he thought that it could not have been so very bad. Perhaps by now she had changed her mind and agreed to marry Robert Denham or some gentleman like him. It was more than likely. Irene was the ideal gentleman’s wife. She knew how to hire servants and order dinner, he thought, smiling. And then he wondered what kind of a woman her aunt was and whether she had made many friends and he convinced himself that she was perfectly happy. She would probably be better off away from her father. He thought of her dancing at parties with men who knew about musical evenings and supper and things like that. Irene was probably having a wonderful time.
Simon seemed disinclined to give Blake his sister’s address so Blake took him up a back alley by his shirtfront and convinced him that it wasn’t worth what Will called ‘a good clout in the gob’.
‘Learn to fight down the pit, did you?’ Simon sneered.
‘Want to find out?’ Blake shoved him back hard against the wall and banged his head off it. ‘I thought you were going to be a soldier. Don’t you know how to use your fists?’
‘I’m a gentleman. I wouldn’t dirty my hands on you.’
‘Have you heard from Irene?’
‘I don’t write to her.’
‘Well, that’s nice.’
‘She’s only a woman.’
‘You lump of horseshit,’ Blake said.
‘My father didn’t send her there to have a good time.’
‘Like that, is it? The address?’
When Simon didn’t answer Blake hauled him away from the wall and pulled back a bunched hand and Simon told him what he wanted to know. Just for plain satisfaction Blake got him down in the back lane and pushed his face into a big dirty puddle and he told Simon that muck always finds its own level.