Sure enough, without taking a pause, Mrs Mullen went on, ‘I just thought I’d pop in and see if you’ve heard about Constance Shelton, Ruth? I know you were close to her an’ her grandma at one time, and when our Fanny told me the news I couldn’t believe me ears. “Are you sure it’s her?” I said to our Fanny, and she said her Seth would know the lass anywhere. “Great big blue eyes and the spitting image of her mam”, he said. No mistaking her.’
When Mrs Mullen came up for air, her grandma said, ‘What
about
Constance, Sarah?’
‘She’s back. Back here. Well, not exactly here – she’s too good for the village now, by all accounts. She’s taken Appleby Cottage, the one the other side of Findon Hill where Colonel Vickers used to live. Bonny place, you know? Seth went to deliver a wagonload of coal and logs and said he nearly died when she opened the door. Some house agent from Chester Le Street had set everything up, but he didn’t know who the new owner was, and there she stood. Bold as brass. Thanked him and gave him a good tip an’ all, like she’d been born to it, he said. You didn’t know then? That she had moved into Appleby Cottage? That she was back?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘That’s what I said to our Fanny. “Ruth would have told me if she knew,” I said. “She’s not one for being secretive for no reason. Open as the day is long, that’s Ruth Heath”.’
Rebecca hid a smile. It was obvious Mrs Mullen
had
suspected her grandmother had held out on her.
‘Likely she’ll pay you a call soon,’ Mrs Mullen continued. ‘Came on Friday from Yorkshire, she said, when Seth asked her, and when he went round the back to the outhouses with the coal and logs, there was a horse in the stable and a bonny trap. This house agent bloke saw to that an’ all. Seth found out from Mrs Duckworth whose daughter is married to the smith. So’ – Sarah Mullen looked her neighbour full in the face and now there was a note of what could be termed aggression in her voice when she said – ‘how does a lass like her come by the means to have all that?’
Rebecca watched her grandmother’s face stiffen. ‘What do you mean?’ Ruth asked with deceptive mildness.
‘Just what I say. It was all cloak and dagger, Constance leaving here, don’t you think? And no one knew where she went. We only had Mabel’s word for it that the lass had gone into service and she’s a beautiful-looking girl. When I saw her at Mabel’s funeral there were plenty of men who couldn’t take their eyes off her.’ Mrs Mullen’s ample chin settled into her neck.
‘I know for a fact that Mabel used to visit Constance at her place and that she was employed as a scullerymaid before she saved the little lad from being trampled by a horse,’ Ruth said coldly. ‘After that, the family were grateful to her and no wonder. And Mabel was a friend of mine. A very good friend.’
‘Oh aye, I know, lass. I know.’
‘I’d as soon believe your Fanny had gone bad than Mabel’s lass, and since when was it a crime to be bonny?’
‘Now look, Ruth, I didn’t mean—’
‘You ought to be careful what you insinuate, Sarah Mullen, when a nice lass’s good reputation is at stake. And a lass who has friends in high places an’ all.’
‘Well!’ Rebecca watched as Mrs Mullen seemed to visibly swell, but she thought her voice now carried a note of apprehension when she continued, ‘I came here in good faith, Ruth, to tell you the news, knowing you thought a bit of the family, and now you accuse me of ’sinuating. Me, of all people!’
‘Constance Shelton has been treated like a daughter by that family since she saved the son and heir,’ said Ruth, warming to her theme and telling herself a little exaggeration was called for. This had to be nipped in the bud right now. If Constance
was
back to stay, then for the lass to have any hope of a reasonable life, the wagging tongues had to be silenced from the beginning – and who better to start with than the ringleader of any gossip? ‘They think the world of her and rightly so. That is where any reward has come from and she deserves it.’
‘Aye, well, that’s all right then,’ Mrs Mullen spluttered, backing towards the door. ‘I’d better go and see to me dinner; himself will be back from the pit shouting the odds afore long.’
When the door shut behind her grandmother’s neighbour, Rebecca finished buttoning her coat before she said, ‘By, Gran, that told her,’ laughter in her voice. When her grandma didn’t smile back, she said, ‘She hasn’t upset you, has she?’
Her grandmother had been staring at the door. Now she gave a little start, shaking her head, but the tone of her voice belied her words when she said, ‘No, no – I’m all right, hinny.’
‘What’s the matter, Gran?’
‘It’s nothing, lass, not really. It just seems strange that Constance didn’t let us know she was back, that’s all.’
‘I’m sure she will. She probably wanted to surprise you, but with the weather so bad it’s stopped her coming.’
‘Aye, mebbe.’ Her grandma didn’t sound convinced.
‘Da saved her life when she was a baby, didn’t he? I’ve never even seen her, you know.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you have, hinny,’ Ruth said absently. ‘Anyway, you get yourself home. It’s coming down thicker than ever and you don’t want to be out in this.’
Rebecca said goodbye and left by the back door. It was only a few yards down the lane to her own backyard, and she glanced back at her grandma’s house before she went inside. She hoped Constance Shelton came to see her grandma before too long. Her gran had clearly been upset that she’d heard about her homecoming second-hand. Blow Mrs Mullen. Her gaze travelled to the house on the far side of her grandmother’s. She’d stir up trouble in heaven itself, that woman, as her mam had been wont to say.
Once in the scullery she stamped the snow off her boots and changed into her slippers before entering the kitchen. It had been a rule of her mother’s that they all changed their footwear in the scullery, be it rain, hail or shine, and for a moment she stood looking round the dark room before she lit the oil lamp. The banked-down range gave off a muted glow, but even in the faint light the white-washed walls and dresser with her mam’s fancy dinner set – used only on high days and holidays – radiated the spruceness she had grown up with. Her mam had liked things spick and span, and even after she started working for Mr Wood she had made sure their own house remained spotless and they came home to a hot meal. Rebecca sat down on a kitchen chair with a little plump. She suddenly wanted to cry.
It had stopped snowing when Matt emerged out of the pit gates, but the fresh fall on top of what had been deep-packed snow made walking treacherous. He hadn’t hurried once the cage had brought them to the surface, letting the rest of his shift queue in front of him to give in their lamps and token. When Andrew and George had called to him once they were ready to leave he’d waved them off, saying he’d catch them up. He had no intention of doing so, however. He didn’t want to have to talk to anyone tonight.
He’d had one of what he privately termed his ‘moments’ whilst working on the face today; a time of such blind panic and fear of being shut in and trapped beneath the earth that he’d had to bite the inside of his mouth until the blood ran to take his mind off what was going on in his head.
Was he going mad? Satisfied that his brothers had gone, he began to walk through the clean white world in front of him that was so different from the filth and stench of the pit. Joe Benson had snapped last year, running amok and nearly braining himself when he’d cracked his head on the roof where he’d been working. In the asylum now, Joe was, and his wife and bairns in the workhouse.
He shivered, the contrast to the heat and humidity he’d laboured in for hours and the bitingly cold air outside hard to adjust to. He lifted his face to the black cloudy sky which promised more snow and breathed long and deeply, pulling the icy air into his lungs over and over again.
He needed to get out of the pit before he went barmy. He was sick of working in a black hole surrounded by rats and mice and beetles with feelers as long as bootlaces. He was sick of being reduced to little more than an animal grubbing away, eating his bait along with dust, sweat and grit every day and smelling the stench of human muck and even treading in it sometimes. He wanted— He stopped abruptly, shaking his head like a boxer after a hard blow.
Pack it in, he told himself harshly. Thinking like this only made things worse. He had to get on with it. He had it easy compared to some and he was alive, wasn’t he? And with all his faculties. Not like them poor devils who had bought it just before Christmas at the Hutton Colliery near Bolton. Three hundred and fifty men and boys gone in one blast and over a thousand bairns without a da. Nice Christmas present. And that colliery had been held up as one of the safest and best equipped. They were all death traps, every last one of them.
Even the final stragglers had passed him and now he stood on Blackburn Bridge, looking over the sparkling white countryside towards Nettlesworth as the quiet cold night settled around him. There were none of the usual sounds. All the farmers hereabouts had brought their animals in from the fields and nothing stirred.
But there he was wrong. A movement from the lane behind him caught his eye and he turned to see Vincent McKenzie pass him. Their gaze met for a moment, expressing mutual loathing, and then the weighman strode on without a word being exchanged.
The moment of tranquillity broken, Matt followed in his wake, but slowly, his eyes fixed on the big, portly figure in front of him. McKenzie was the most hated man for miles and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. Indeed, he openly relished it. Even the owners and the managers weren’t detested in the same way. They were of a different class and as such had no link with the miner on the coalface, but McKenzie had been one of them, a working pitman. Matt knew any one of a number of men who would kill him if they got the chance and could get away with it, and it had crossed his mind more than once. Particularly so in the last weeks when he’d had to watch his own father being subjected to McKenzie’s special brand of viciousness. Fourteen shillings his da should have earned last week, and his wage-packet had contained less than half that amount after McKenzie put his oar in.
He’d suffered himself under McKenzie’s trumped-up fines when he’d first gone to the coalface, but after his marriage to Tilly, McKenzie hadn’t seemed to bother with him much. Likely he’d got it in for other blokes by then. It didn’t take much.
He was still thinking about the weighman when he reached home. It was gone half-past ten. He’d been on the afternoon shift from two until ten at night, but Rebecca was waiting up for him. He’d told her many times that she needn’t. He’d be happy with cheese and pickles and cold meat for his dinner but she insisted he needed a hot meal when he came in from the pit.
She bounded up out of her chair like a puppy when he walked in, fussing round him while she got the tin bath full and then disappearing upstairs until he called her to say he was dressed again. She had waited to eat with him, and once they were seated at the table with a plate of steaming hodge podge each and between them a plate of stottie cake she’d made earlier, they talked of this and that while they ate. She always tried to make him laugh as she related the happenings of the day in the shop, and she usually succeeded. He looked at her as she cleared their dirty plates and fetched a bread and butter pudding out of the oven, and his voice was soft when he said, ‘You’re a good lass, none better. Larry’ll be a lucky man if he holds on to you.’
She went red with pleasure, hiding her embarrassment by bustling about still more as she dished up the pudding.
‘So what time did old tight Turner let you out today then?’ Matt asked after a bite or two.
‘Oh, Da, he’s not tight, not really. And Mrs Turner gave me a big bag of bacon bits that I took round to Gran. There were some whole rashers in there which she’d slipped in when I looked once I got outside, and an end which was an inch thick an’ all. She’s so nice, Mrs Turner.’
‘And you took them to Gran’s? Bless you, hinny. I bet that cheered her up. Did you stay and have a bit of a crack with her? She looks forward to that.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘But then Mrs Mullen came in just as I was leaving and I think she upset her.’
‘Mrs Mullen upset your gran? How?’
‘She was full of it, you know how she is sometimes. She was saying that Constance Shelton has come back home. She’s got a cottage near Findon Hill and she moved in at the end of last week. I think Gran was upset ’cos she hadn’t known anything about it.’
Matt carefully lowered his spoon to his bowl. ‘And Mrs Mullen’s sure it’s Constance Shelton?’
‘Oh aye.’ Rebecca nodded, taking another mouthful before she said, ‘Her daughter Fanny – well, her husband Seth – delivered some coal and logs to Appleby Cottage and he recognised Constance.’
‘Appleby Cottage? The Colonel’s place?’
‘Aye, yes.’ Rebecca glanced at her father. ‘You all right, Da?’ When Matt inclined his head, she went on, ‘And Mrs Mullen was saying how did she get the money to buy such a grand cottage – Constance, I mean. And Seth, Fanny’s husband, said she’s got a bonny horse and trap an’ all. Mrs Mullen tried to make out . . . well, that Constance hadn’t been working in service but had been doing something else. You know? And then Gran went for her, she really did. She sent her away with a flea in her ear. She said the family Constance has worked for thought the world of her and they’d given her the money. Do you think that’s true, Da?’ There was a strained quality to Matt’s voice when he said quietly, ‘I’m sure it is and I’m absolutely certain Constance would never do anything like Mrs Mullen’s nasty little mind conjured up.’
Rebecca’s voice was uncertain when she said again,‘Sure you’re all right, Da? What’s the matter?’
Matt made a huge effort to pull himself together. She was back. Impossible though it was, she had returned home. But Appleby Cottage? He had gone into the kitchen there once as a lad when the Colonel’s wife had had a bunch of them picking the apples in the orchard at the back of the house for a few pennies apiece. She’d given them lemonade and a bun each in the middle of the afternoon and they had sat in the kitchen hardly daring to move. It had seemed like a palace at the time. What the rest of the house was like he didn’t dare to imagine, but it was big – four bedrooms reportedly, and all under a thatched roof that set off the cottage to perfection. And Constance had chosen to live there.