‘I’ve caught the sun, that’s all.’
‘No, you haven’t, you little fibber.’
‘It’s none of your business, David Blake,’ she said and walked off. Blake followed, laughing.
‘What’s funny?’
‘You sounded just like a pit lass.’
‘It’s what I am.’
Irene walked off and he followed her back up to town. That night Irene worried about what she had done and in the end when they went upstairs to bed she knocked on the door of his room.
‘David, I want to talk to you.’
He opened the door and Irene went in and then she said quickly, ‘I don’t want you to think . . .’
‘I didn’t think it, Irene.’
She looked gratefully at him.
‘You don’t know what I’m going to say yet.’
‘Yes, I do.’
Irene stared at him. ‘I just felt so awful afterwards.’
‘Why?’
‘It was the first time.’
‘Robert Denham never kissed you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, no wonder you didn’t want to marry him. Don’t worry about it, Irene. It was only a kiss.’
Irene didn’t know what to say to that so she just nodded and went to her own room and thought about him holding her so carefully down by the water and his mouth so gentle and warm.
* * *
After a while when even Mary Ann thought Irene had nothing left to learn about housework she said to her, ‘I think I’ve found you a little job.’
‘What sort of a job?’
‘At the corner shop on Bamburgh Street. Would you like that?’
‘Yes, I think I would.’
‘Are you any good at adding up?’
Irene said gravely that she was.
‘Mrs Patten’s got a bad leg. She could do with a nice lass to help her.’
Irene put on her coat and went straight round to see Mrs Patten and she got the job. Irene had never before felt the satisfaction of job-finding. The little shop on the corner was suddenly a place full of promise. It would get her out of the house, she would meet different people and Mrs Patten’s shop was so neat and organised just as Irene would have organised it if she had had the chance. The jars of sweets stood in a row, and the various bottles shone in the light. The shelves were free of dust, there was a curtain which partitioned the shop from the rest of the house and behind the counter were potatoes and vegetables and all kinds of household items. Mrs Patten told Irene how much she would earn and Irene fairly danced home.
Mary Ann was very pleased. They had a cup of tea to celebrate and when the men came home Irene couldn’t wait to tell them. Ralph seemed pleased but Blake said nothing much and later that evening when Mary Ann and Ralph went off to a do at the church, much to Ralph’s disgust, Irene looked straight at Blake as he sat by the fire and said, ‘You might at least have been pleased for me.’
‘I am pleased for you.’
‘But?’
‘You shouldn’t have to go out and work.’
‘I can keep myself if I do.’
‘You shouldn’t have to.’
‘You would rather that you kept me, would you?’
Blake looked at her. ‘You’re a lady, Irene.’
‘That’s lovely for us all then, isn’t it? I’m supposed to sit here on my backside—’
‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Your language certainly isn’t very ladylike.’
‘Well, you just listen to this. It’s nothing to do with you what my language is like and if I want to go out and work and bring some money in, the least you could do is be pleased for me!’ Irene ran out of the room and up the stairs.
It wasn’t long before she heard him come upstairs and say, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you should be.’
‘I just wanted to look after you for a while. It made me feel less guilty, I think.’
‘There’s no reason for you to feel guilty. I want to help. Mary Ann and Ralph are so kind.’
‘I didn’t mean to spoil it for you, Irene. I just kept remembering how things were.’
‘They aren’t like that any more.’
‘Because of me—’
‘It wasn’t because of you,’ Irene wrenched open the bedroom door. ‘It wasn’t because of you. Sooner or later I was going to break out of being a lady and do something my father didn’t like. It was inevitable. I couldn’t have married Robert Denham or anyone like that. He didn’t see me as a person, just as a wife.’
‘Isn’t a wife a person?’
‘Not that kind of wife, there to arrange flowers and look nice and stand back admiring the husband.’
‘I see.’
‘I thought you would eventually.’
‘Just one thing.’
‘What?’
‘If you have to come home late in the dark you’ll let Ralph or me walk you.’
‘Of course I will,’ she said, smiling.
Twenty
That spring Annie became pregnant. Alistair’s father was delighted and boasted about the baby to anyone who would listen. Annie said little to her sister about the baby because she knew that Frank and Madge would have loved a child but her family was pleased and her mother hugged her.
Charles Vane was convinced that the child would be a boy, an heir for Western Isle and went on and on about it until Annie became worried that her child might not be a son.
She spent a great deal of time alone after they were married. Alistair’s father seemed to need him always at Western Isle, mostly, Alistair said, because his father went to the various marts and spent all day getting drunk with his friends but Annie was lonely and often walked over to Grayswell. There she heard her parents discussing the fact that Mr Harlington might sell them the farm. He needed the money. Her father, however, was having no luck in borrowing. As Alistair was the person who now did the books for Western Isle she said to him one warm evening, ‘Do you think there is any way your father might be persuaded to lend my father the money he needs to buy Grayswell?’
‘I wondered when we would get to that. My father doesn’t have any money. As a matter of fact we’re in debt and have been for some time.’
‘In debt? How’s that? I always thought . . .’
‘He can’t afford the way that he lives. He hasn’t farmed well enough to be extravagant and he’s been extravagant for years now.’
‘But he bought us this.’
Alistair sighed.
‘I didn’t want to tell you. The bank loaned him the money. He insisted on buying it.’
‘But why, when he doesn’t have any money? My father works hard and they won’t lend him what he needs.’
‘I don’t know. If he would let me run things, alter things it wouldn’t be so bad but he won’t. He thinks he knows best about everything. He goes on buying expensive cars and new machinery and antiques for the house, paying too much money for everything. My grandfather was a shrewd man but my father’s just the opposite. I think that’s why he drinks so much. It’s easier than facing his responsibilities. He’ll get like old Harlington shortly. At least Frank has some qualifications. He can make a living.’
It was not until then that Annie realised how fond she had become of the little farm. It seemed truly theirs now. She and Madge sat in the tiny garden on warm days where Blake’s grandfather had grown produce for the house. There was an ancient plum tree there and an apple tree. She dreamed of making jam in the autumn. Her mother sometimes came for a cup of tea and Annie had coaxed from the oven the most wonderful pies and bread. The house had lost its cold feel. She and Alistair had laughed and talked and made love there. She had decorated the rooms and bought several pieces of pretty furniture. The sitting-room had vases of spring flowers now and the fruit trees were filled with blossom. They had a sheepdog and a lazy tabby. She had even ventured to the stream which ran down the hill to put her feet in its clear cold water. The idea of having to go to Western Isle and live with Alistair’s parents was not a happy one. She liked having her kitchen, her privacy, somewhere of their very own.
The feeling of insecurity did not go away. Charles continued spending money which they did not have while not giving Alistair the freedom to run Western Isle as he wanted to and make some money.
As well as this things were not good at Grayswell. Her father and mother badly wanted the farm. Her father’s family had farmed there for many years and if they were to be given the opportunity to buy it they wanted to make sure that they were able so they were saving every penny.
Tommy and Clara were married in the summer and Annie’s parents seemed more anxious than ever that their dream to own Grayswell should come true but they had no money and Frank’s father had not indicated that he would sell the farm yet, but they knew that it would happen eventually.
Annie wished that Madge had been pregnant as well and that they could have had their babies together. It was more important than ever now that war seemed to get closer every day. Rose prophesied that Hitler was going to try and take over the world no matter how much he might pretend not to. When Annie and Alistair ventured to the pictures and saw the newsreels she was always so glad to come back outside and know that everything was peaceful in the dale and to feel that it might always be so.
That summer as the baby grew inside her Annie lay in the garden, dreaming of the wonderful times they would have together when it was born. She thought of names and knitted small clothes. Alistair was rarely at home, there was so much to do at Western Isle during the warm weather. She missed him so much that sometimes she ventured down to the farm but not often. The Vanes had not forgiven her for marrying their son and made it clear that she was not welcome there. They always made her feel as though she was interrupting something important and one afternoon when her mother-in-law was giving tea to a friend they sat and talked for over an hour, ignoring Annie until she got up and left and toiled back up the hill to the quiet comfort of Sunniside.
Twenty one
Esther and Will were married that summer and had their own house. It was of more interest to Irene than any big house had been in her other life. It had two rooms upstairs and two down, a tiny scullery, a yard and nothing more. Irene would have given anything for such a house of her own and she helped Esther to scrub it out during the first week it was theirs and to furnish it as best they could out of what little money they had, but one thing was certain. There was no cleaner house in the county. She found a freedom too in their home that she had not in Mary Ann and Ralph’s home, just because Esther and Will were the same age. Often Blake walked to the shop in the early evening and they went on to have supper with Will and Esther. Esther, like most pitmen’s wives, was a good cook and Irene looked forward to these evenings spent around Esther and Will’s kitchen fire.
They talked after supper. Sometimes Will and Blake went out to have a pint of beer while the women washed up and Irene liked these times. She and Esther had grown much closer and now they had so much in common. They sat talking by the kitchen fire and then later sometimes played cards or silly games, most of which were suggested by Will.
Often if Blake was on the late shift Will would go to the shop and walk Irene home. Sometimes he bought Black Bullets in the shop and gave them to her. Other times he brought flowers for her. Irene was convinced that he stole these from other people’s gardens. Once they were even Sweet William. It made Irene laugh. He also flattered her, telling her how bonny she was and how she would make somebody a good wife.
‘Aren’t you going to marry Davy then?’ Will said, one night as he walked her back.
‘Has he said something?’ Irene asked eagerly.
‘No. He never talks about owt, nowt important anyroad,’ Will said.
‘There’s another girl,’ Irene said. ‘He’s loved her all his life and she married somebody else.’
‘I thought . . . I might be wrong but I thought he might have kissed you one day on the beach.’
‘He did.’ Irene tried to laugh. ‘He mustn’t have liked it, he never did it again.’
Will stopped.
‘You’re a wonderful lass, Irene, and you mustn’t think like that. It’s just that he – he doesn’t find things easy. It took me ages to get him to be friends, like he doesn’t sort of know how to make friends with people and that’s a lot easier than getting a lass to love you.’
‘You don’t seem to find it hard.’
‘Ah no, but I’m a funny bugger, me,’ Will said and laughed and squeezed her waist. ‘Dinna worry none, Irene, it’ll be right.’
‘I hope so. I want a house like you and Esther have and – and . . .’
‘Now don’t start on about babies, Irene, I haven’t got that far yet,’ Will said and Irene laughed.
‘Have a Black Bullet,’ she said, taking the sticky white bag from her coat pocket.
* * *
By the end of the autumn Esther was pregnant and Will went about with a big smile on his face. Esther showed Irene how to knit and she knitted bootees for the baby.
‘Very nice,’ Blake said gravely when she showed them to him.
‘I’m very proud of these. They’re my first attempt.’
They walked up to Esther and Will’s house with the bootees and afterwards since the night was fine they walked through the town and on to the front and the pier. It was late October but the waves were slow-moving and small and the few ships in the harbour bobbed a little. When they reached the end of the pier Blake turned and looked at her.
‘I wondered . . .’ he said, ‘if you might like to get married.’
It was, Irene thought later and savagely, quite the most inelegant proposal that any girl had ever had.
‘What?’ was all she managed.
‘I thought you might like your own house, it would be better and we could . . .’
‘We could what?’
Blake looked past her, though there was nothing special to look at, just the sea. He didn’t say anything else. Irene would have walked away and left him there but he stopped her. He put both hands on her waist and then he kissed her. Irene pushed him away. She was angry now.
‘You don’t care about me, you never did—’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Since when? You kissed me once down on the beach in the summer. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last lad in Seaton. Just because Will has a wife and a baby and a house of his own—’
‘It isn’t because of that.’
‘What then?’
‘I just couldn’t . . . I just wanted . . .’
Irene walked away very quickly and left him there.
* * *
One evening when she and Mary Ann were in on their own together Mary Ann sat down by the fire with her and looked across at her and said, ‘What’s up, lass?’
‘Nothing. At least . . . I don’t think so.’
‘But something’s happened?’
Irene put down the sock she was inexpertly trying to darn and said, ‘David asked me to marry him.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was the way he did it, Mary Ann, like he was asking for four ounces of wine gums. He doesn’t love me. I thought in time that he might come to, that my wanting him to might make the difference but it didn’t.’
‘So why did he ask you then?’
‘Because of Will and Esther, because they’re so happy and have a house and a baby.’
‘Seems like a good enough reason to me. People have married for worse. But you said no.’
‘If he’d put it differently, but he didn’t.’
‘Well, if he does it again you could try saying yes.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What for?’
‘I told you, he doesn’t care about me. He still cares about your blessed granddaughter.’
‘She’s expecting her child any time and Blake needs a wife and a future. He may not love you now, Irene, but you could make him love you if you married him. You’re a good bonny lass and clever and once you married him and had a bairn . . . He’s loyal and responsible and he uses his wits. If you don’t marry him somebody else will and then you’ll lose everything.’
‘I could marry Geoffrey.’
Geoffrey was a young man with a car who worked in Sunderland and called in at the shop every morning. He had asked Irene to go out with him on several occasions.
‘Yes, you possibly could but you don’t care for him like you care for the other and you wouldn’t be happy.’
Irene went out with Geoffrey several times over the following few weeks. She and Blake scarcely spoke. If he was in when Geoffrey arrived he was even civil to him. Irene didn’t understand until Christmas came and Mary Ann slyly invited her lodgers to kiss under the mistletoe at the beginning of a modest party she was holding for the neighbours. Just the touch of his lips convinced Irene. It was the least passionate kiss in the world, since Mary Ann and Ralph and half a dozen other people were there, but during those weeks Geoffrey had kissed her several times and not once had it felt like this. Later they went to midnight Mass, it was Christmas Eve and on the way back snow began to fall and they lingered, letting Ralph and Mary Ann get further and further ahead but he didn’t stop and offer to kiss her. Irene was so frustrated that she wanted to hit him.
That Christmas it snowed. Will built a snowman in the yard, stuck some mistletoe on his head and insisted on Irene kissing the snowman. Esther made her first Christmas cake when she had morning sickness with the result that it was so disgusting they had to give it to the seagulls. Will was reluctant even to do that, he said it would give them bellyache. They had a party and played charades and lottery and on New Year’s Eve, when they were both rather drunk, Will dragged Irene behind the pantry door and kissed her so hard that she wished he would do it again and swore the next day not to drink any more sherry.
It had been a good party, Blake and Will arm-in-arm singing, and Blake more relaxed than Irene had seen him in a long time.
In the New Year Blake and Will were always on the same shift, going out together, Blake whistling some tune, calling for Will on his way. Every Saturday night they went out and came back happy and at the weekends took short cold walks by the stormy sea, coming back to the house, a big fire, teacakes and blackberry jam.
One afternoon in early February, a bleak cold day, the pit siren went late in the afternoon. Irene had to stay there and look after the shop because Mrs Patten was not well and had gone to bed but after a short while, Ralph, white-faced, came into the empty shop and Irene’s heart dropped.
‘It’s not David?’
‘No, it’s Will.’
Mrs Patten said that she should just close the shop and go so Irene did, her hands shaking. She put on her coat and Ralph walked with her along the dark narrow street.
‘Is he bad?’
‘They didn’t think so at first but aye, he’s not so good. They took him to hospital.’
Irene wanted to go to the hospital with Esther but Ralph wouldn’t let her because he said that Esther’s parents and Will’s parents were there and she would only be in the way so they went home. She hadn’t really thought of it as home until then. She had never imagined that a little pit house could seem so comforting, or was it Mary Ann McLaughlan’s arms where she took her wet face and shocked body for refuge?
‘Where’s David?’ she asked eventually.
‘I don’t know.’
They sat around waiting for news. Mary Ann would have given Irene some tea if she would have eaten it. In the end they went to bed, they had work to go to the next day but Irene lay, straining her ears for any sound.
She got up and went to work as usual but Mrs Patten sent her home after dinner because she was so tired and upset and there was not much to do.
As soon as she walked in the door she knew that things were worse. Ralph was not at the office, he had come home and he and Mary Ann turned and looked at her.
‘What is it?’ she said.
Mary Ann glanced patiently at her husband.
‘Will died this morning,’ he said.
‘No. No, he can’t have.’
Mary Ann took her coat and gave her tea with lots of sugar and Irene sat down by the fire before she thought.
‘Where’s David?’
‘He went out.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know where. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.’
‘I think I should go and find him.’
‘Just leave him alone. He’ll come round,’ Mary Ann advised.
Blake came back when it was late and Irene had given in and gone to bed.
He went to work the next day just as ever and the day after and Irene thought of how he usually went out cheerful, calling in for Will. She thought of him having to go down without Will to the very place where Will had been so badly hurt and of having to stay there for a full shift and most of all having to come back out on his own and not to have Will to jostle or shove good-naturedly up the road. No plans would be made to have a drink later or for walks at the weekend.
On the day of the funeral he even ate his tea and then went out and came back late, singing loudly. That fortnight he drank his pay. Irene had never seen anybody get so consistently drunk. Even Simon had never been that bad. He was late to work, he didn’t eat. Mary Ann and Ralph said nothing and when Irene would have the older woman stopped her.
‘Give him time,’ she said.
The following fortnight Blake was never late for work, didn’t go drinking once and gave his pay to Mary Ann, apologising. But the fun was gone from their lives, all the light. He was silent. When he wasn’t at work he sat in his room, reading, so he said when asked. Irene had the uncomfortable feeling that he never turned a page.
Irene went out with Geoffrey since it was the only way she could get out. She had been to see Esther but the girl was surrounded by family and Irene felt pushed out. Geoffrey took her to the pictures. He came into the house when he picked her up and had a word with Ralph and Mary Ann. When she came back they had gone to bed but Blake was there. Geoffrey didn’t linger. He kissed her goodnight and left. Blake was sitting by the kitchen fire. Irene couldn’t decide whether he was drunk or not since he didn’t talk to her. She went to bed.
The next day he didn’t go to work, he didn’t even get out of bed and on the following two days he got up but didn’t speak to anybody or eat. He left the house and didn’t come back until it was late and had been dark and cold for hours.
Ralph wanted to talk to him.
‘If he doesn’t get himself back to normal soon they’ll get rid of him,’ he said, ‘and there are no jobs.’
Irene thought about Will and Esther. She couldn’t believe that everything was spoiled, that the happiness was gone. She thought of paddling in the sea in the summer and of the fun they had had after Esther and Will were married. Esther had had to give up the house now that Will was dead. Irene avoided going anywhere near the street where they had lived, she couldn’t bear it. She missed Will so much that it made her angry. Nothing good ever lasted and Esther was getting bigger with their child.
On the Sunday Mary Ann and Ralph went to evening Mass and when Blake came in for his tea only Irene was there.
‘There is something to eat presumably, is there?’ he said.
‘Of course there is.’ There was broth and ham sandwiches. Mary Ann had made the broth the day before and left the sandwiches in case he should come home.
Irene watched him eat and then she said, ‘Are you going to work tomorrow?’
Blake looked sharply at her. ‘Why?’
‘Ralph says that if you don’t go soon they’ll get rid of you.’
‘Aren’t you seeing Geoffrey tonight?’
‘Not on Sundays.’
‘Oh, right. He has a job to go to.’
‘He’s an engineer in Sunderland.’
‘Lucky Geoffrey.’
‘David, you’ve got to go to work—’
‘I heard you the first time, Irene. What difference does it make to you anyway? You keep yourself. You’re independent. You don’t have to worry about whether I go to work.’
‘I understand how you feel. I know how much you miss Will. I miss him too. You’ve lost something you can’t get back no matter how much you try.’
‘He was the best friend I ever had. I thought . . . I thought we might be given enough time together so that it would stop being a luxury, so that I would stop holding on to each second for fear there wouldn’t be another. And I was right, I was right to be afraid.’