Nineteen
When Irene awoke her first morning in Seaton Town she did not even imagine that she was at her aunt’s, she was too comfortable for that. She remembered that it was Sunday, she remembered that it was Christmas Eve. She turned over, luxuriating in the warmth of her bed and then she realised that she was in the pitman’s house and she opened her eyes and got hastily out of bed.
The kettle was singing by the time she made her way down the treacherously steep stairs. Mary Ann turned smiling from the fire. Irene didn’t know what to say.
‘I’m sorry to have put you to such trouble and at Christmas too.’
A polite woman would have said that it was no trouble, leaving Irene feeling no better but Mary Ann came over and said, ‘You need a cup of tea, lass, sit yourself down and don’t fret.’
When the tea was poured Mary Ann sat with her.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘they’re both out. I want you to tell me what happened.’
‘There isn’t much to tell. My father wanted me to marry Robert Denham and I didn’t want to. He took it for granted that I would and he became very upset about it when I refused.’
‘Why didn’t you want to wed him?’
‘He’s very nice of course but . . .’
‘He wasn’t as nice as a certain pit lad we won’t name.’
Irene blushed but she said stoutly, ‘David’s not a pit lad.’
‘He is now, my girl—’
‘He was going to be an engineer. He was good too—’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He’s lucky to have work at all.’
‘I know.’
‘This Robert Denham,’ Mary Ann said slowly, ‘a gentleman, was he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Money?’
‘Oh yes, lots of that.’
‘A job?’
‘He’s a solicitor.’
‘Nice family?’
‘Very nice.’
‘And you turned him down for a lad who had no name, no family, no job, no money and didn’t even care about you? Eh, lass, you want your head read.’
‘I couldn’t help it. I knew David didn’t care about me, he told me about his girl at home. He went back to ask her to marry him and she was already engaged to somebody else.’
‘Aye, I know. That’s my granddaughter. Her parents would never have let her marry him.’
‘But he had a good job and—’
‘He lost it.’
‘That was because of me. When my father found out that I wouldn’t marry Robert because of David he threw him out. It was my fault he lost his job.’
‘And your father sent you away?’
‘To stay with my aunt in Newcastle. I was very unhappy there but I had nowhere else to go.’
‘So you asked Blake to bring you here?’
‘No, I wouldn’t have done that. It was his idea. He took me out for tea and then my aunt saw us outside and he could see what she was like. He wouldn’t let me go back in.’
‘You love Blake?’
‘He doesn’t care about me, Mrs McLaughlan. You said yourself—’
‘I think in the circumstances you’d better call me Mary Ann. You’re obviously no better than the rest of us. There’s a saying that goes something like – “be careful what you wish for, the gods might grant it”.’
‘I wish they would. I’d take the chance. Will you help me?’
‘To learn to graft like a pitman’s wife and be our Irene? Are you sure?’
‘I want him,’ Irene said.
* * *
She went to church with them. Irene had never been inside a Catholic church and was surprised at how ornate it was and how full and she was glad to be there. The ground outside was icy. Back at the house she helped with the dinner and it was a better dinner, Irene thought critically, than her father’s cook turned out on a Sunday.
She helped to wash up and afterwards she took a walk with Blake on the sands. There was no snow or ice there just a bitter wind coming off the sea and the waves crashing over the harbour. The wind twisted the sand into peculiar shapes and when she and Blake ventured on to the pier the sea spray stung her face.
He was very quiet. He had never been noisy but he was quieter than he had been when she had known him in Sunderland.
‘Ralph and Mary Ann will go to midnight Mass but we don’t have to go,’ Blake said.
‘I’d like to go. Do they sing carols?’
‘I don’t know. I was never there.’
‘Aren’t you a Catholic?’
‘No. I always tell people that I’m Church of England but it isn’t true. I’m nothing really. I was never christened. My mother wasn’t married and it was a big disgrace. Even after she died a lot of people never spoke to my grandparents again. I don’t think it was considered polite for me to go to church. It might have upset respectable people. Mind you, the bloody vicar was always at the farm. Maybe he thought I could be saved.’ Blake grinned at the idea of Mr Lawrence.
‘Is that why people don’t call you by your christian name?’
‘I don’t know. My grandparents used to call me Davy.’
‘I think it’s the nicest name in the world,’ Irene said. ‘Do you let other people use it?’
‘I might,’ Blake said.
* * *
Mary Ann found her an old dress and a pinny when the men went to work and she showed Irene how to cook. Irene burned herself half a dozen times that first week and had dark patches on her hands and arms. There was such a lot to do and Mary Ann’s standards were high. Never had Irene thought about having servants but she wished now that she had not taken her prosperity for granted. She was only glad that Mary Ann and Ralph did not have a house twice as big. The floors had to be scrubbed, the meals had to be ready, there were vegetables to peel and meat to pore over and clothes to wash and brasses to clean and furniture to polish.
Every Friday Mary Ann did what she called ‘turning the house out’. The rugs were lifted on to the washing line and beaten, the floors were swept, the whole house received what Irene had known only as spring cleaning before now. Monday was washing day. In bad weather like now the clothes could not be hung outside and were put around the fire filling the whole house with steam and making the place damp and cool because the fire was too occupied with them to heat the room. There was baking day and breadmaking day and there was the shopping to be done.
They went together to do the shopping and Mary Ann introduced Irene to her neighbours. It was most women’s only social life. Men went out in the evening but women were at home with the children, the darning and the fire. Irene tried not to sound different from these people but she couldn’t help her accent and they couldn’t help the way that they stared.
‘Ooh, aren’t you posh?’ Esther said the first time that they met. Esther was Will’s lass. Will was the lad that Blake worked with and since they were friends Irene tried hard to be friends with Esther but it wasn’t easy. Esther had never read a book or heard a piece of music or seen a painting or had a new dress. Her mam bought her dresses ‘off the market’ as Esther called it.
Irene was lucky. People who went to church or chapel did have a social life as there were different things on at the church during the week and sometimes she went with Mary Ann. Occasionally one of the neighbours dropped in for a cup of tea and there was the chat after church on a Sunday. Other than that it was all work. Irene had never worked so hard in her life. Blake was on different shifts different weeks and somebody had to get up and look after him. The water had to be hot, the meal had to be ready when he came in and when he went out his clothes had to be prepared and put out and his bait put up. Irene began to think that pitmen were the most exacting men in the world. A dirty fingermark or a burned scone was a disaster here.
The houses had thin walls and she could not get used to the idea that there was never silence. If she had had time she would have gone to the beach for the quiet but there was always too much to do and people would have thought it strange that she wanted to spend time alone. Blake worked so hard that he did not seem to appreciate her efforts and Irene was shocked at how little money there was. It went on necessities and there was no more for anything else and now she knew that Robert Denham had been a gentleman. The men here wasted no time with flattery or polite walks. If there was time on a Sunday and the weather was fine which it rarely was she and Blake could take a walk in the country or on the beach. This was all the recreation they had together. Nobody had a car or ventured away much, it was too expensive and every day was a work day except Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Irene began to long for a new dress, a book to read from her father’s library and the time to read it, an afternoon sitting by the fire talking about art and music. She longed to go to a concert or to hold a conversation which was not about work or other people. She tried to make friends but she had no gossip, she sounded so different, she had been educated up to a point. Even if there was free time Blake spent it with Will and with Will there was Esther. Irene could not even pretend to have anything in common with Esther except that they now looked alike. Their hands were red and sore with work, their complexions pale from not being outside.
One Saturday that winter Irene burned the stew and made it bitter. She knew that there was no room for waste. Any kind of meat was expensive to them. She ran upstairs into her room and burst into tears in spite of Mary Ann’s protestations.
A minute or two later she heard footsteps on the stairs and Blake knocked lightly, opened the door and said from there, ‘Can I come in?’
Irene, sitting on the bed, facing away from him, scrubbed at the tears.
‘I’m sorry about the dinner,’ she said, ‘Mary Ann must think me very stupid.’
‘She doesn’t think that at all. She’s very fond of you. Everybody has to learn.’ He sat down on the bed and though she knew that he was watching her Irene didn’t look at him. ‘Do you hate it?’
He caught her offguard with the soft question.
‘Yes,’ Irene said and the tears fell even harder though she had not meant to say that and not meant to cry. It was just such a relief to be able to tell somebody. ‘I don’t mean it. I don’t hate it—’
‘It’s all right. It’s all right to hate it.’
Irene shook her head but the tears didn’t stop. ‘It isn’t nearly as bad as Aunt Martin’s. It’s just that . . .’
‘It’s so hard.’
‘Yes. How did you get used to it?’
‘I didn’t really. There just wasn’t any other way.’
‘Couldn’t you go back to the country?’
‘There’s nothing to go back to any more. I don’t belong there. I have nobody.’
‘Neither have I.’
‘You’ll be able to go back eventually.’
‘I don’t want to go now. They obviously don’t care about me. You brought me from Aunt Martin’s because you’re kind and you could see how it was.’
‘To this,’ he said, looking around the small freezing room. Outside the back lane was covered in frost.
‘It’s a lot better than what I had. It’s a lot better than Aunt Martin’s and Mary Ann and Ralph are very kind.’
‘Wash your face then. If she thinks you’ve cried she’ll be upset.’
Irene went over and poured some water from the jug into the basin and washed and dried her face and tidied her hair. She felt much better after that. She even managed a smile.
‘Crying helps.’
‘Come downstairs to the fire,’ he said. ‘I would bet you any money that Mary Ann’s made you a cup of tea.’
* * *
William Bedford was not the most handsome man in the world, Irene decided when she met him, but he was certainly one of the kindest. He was a typical Durham pitman, short and broad-shouldered with brown hair and a north-west Durham accent but from the moment they met Irene liked him. He stood back in amazement in the street when Blake introduced them and said, ‘Irene, you must be the bonniest lass in the whole world. Can I take you for a walk on Sunday?’
Irene laughed and shook her head.
‘Why, has this lad got a claim on you?’
‘No, he hasn’t.’
‘Howay then.’
‘What about your Esther?’ Blake reminded him.
‘Oh aye, I forgot about Esther,’ he said and winked.
* * *
Sometimes on Sundays they went out with Will and Esther and when the fine weather came they went walking on the beach and Esther and Irene took off their shoes and stockings and paddled in the water.
It was fun. Irene hadn’t had much fun in her life. One such afternoon when they had all been paddling in the water Blake and Will had gone up to the top of the beach where the sand was soft and she and Esther had walked along a little way, their feet in the water. When they came back Will was sitting up, smoking a cigarette but Blake was lying down with his eyes closed. Irene plumped down beside him.
‘You haven’t gone to sleep?’ she said.
‘Too many hard shifts this week,’ Will said.
‘He had a lie-in this morning. Didn’t you, lazy-bones?’
He opened his eyes, sat up and made as if to grab hold of her and Irene yelled and got up and ran. She ran along the beach and around the corner but she was laughing so much that she couldn’t run very fast and he caught her, lifted her off her feet in both arms and took her down to the water’s edge and pretended to throw her in until she was clinging to him and laughing and protesting. No one had ever taken such liberties before and Irene knew that as a young lady she should have been horrified but she wasn’t. And then he bent down and kissed her. Irene had never been kissed before. Her upbringing prompted her to protest, to say something, to try to get away but she didn’t. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the experience. Robert Denham would never have done such a thing, he would have talked and tried to persuade her, perhaps even asked her permission. Irene liked the way that he kissed her, there was nothing tentative about it. She couldn’t bring herself to stop him, she just lay there in his arms and learned how to kiss him.
Afterwards when he let her go and put her down and they went back around the corner to where Will and Esther were sitting up the beach, talking, Irene was rather ashamed of herself and later when she walked back with Blake she didn’t know how silent she was until he said, ‘What’s the matter?’
Irene stopped, blushed and didn’t look at him.
‘Nothing. Why should anything be the matter?’
‘You haven’t opened your mouth in ten minutes and that must be a record for you, and you’ve got a face the colour of strawberry jam.’