Shelter from the Storm (3 page)

The morning was breaking with an orange sun suddenly spilling in at the window where nobody had bothered to draw the curtains. Dryden Cameron opened his eyes. The bed was a puddle of light. Somebody shouted across the street outside beyond the open window and he could feel the breeze in the room which had made its way over the top of the heather. From down below in the kitchen came the clatter of pots and pans, dulled by space and floorboards, but the room was safe, the door shut, the bedclothes a landscape of heaps and troughs, the pillows soft like clouds.

The girl was still asleep, the landlord’s niece, Betsy, up from Darlington for the weekend. It had taken him two days to get her here, and that was a record. Dryden yawned. It was Sunday morning and there was no rush. She opened her eyes almost the moment he willed her to and smiled in response to his smile, and Dryden moved nearer and kissed her.

‘What are we going to do today?’ she said.

The trouble with women, Dryden thought, was that they always wanted to make plans, instead of just enjoying the moment. He kissed her harder to shut her up and leaned over her and in a little while she had stopped talking and was concentrating on what they were doing. It was mid-morning before Dryden got out of bed and poured water into a bowl and
began washing his body. She watched. He didn’t mind that. Most of the women he knew had never seen a man naked. Strange. Then he began to dress and she sat up.

‘You’re not going?’

This was the tricky bit. Sometimes he left before they woke up, which was easier. The trouble was that having a woman in the morning was very different to having her in the night, and he enjoyed it. But you had to leave, and doing it neatly was a problem.

‘I have to,’ he said, and made it sound regretful. She let the bedclothes fall away from her body. It was a good idea, Dryden thought, one of the best. That and crying. He smiled politely as her eyes filled with tears. Dryden watched them cascade down her cheeks, then he edged the window open farther and left without a backward glance, dropping into the back lane. She was at the window, he heard her speak his name, but she wouldn’t dare shout or make any fuss.

He walked quickly out on to the main street. People were going to church, all done up in their Sunday best. Drunks from last night were lying in doorways, one or two still asleep. Children were playing in the road. He walked into Mrs Clancy’s boarding house at the bottom of the street. It always smelled like the aftermath of a party, with cigarettes, beer, grease and just now the overwhelming smoke of frying. Mrs Clancy herself came out of the kitchen, eyes red and watering, a spoon in her hand. Dryden followed her back in. The kitchen was dark and contained a big table. There was evidence of other people’s breakfast; the table was littered with empty plates, crumbs and mugs that had contained tea. Somebody had used one mug as an ashtray. Mrs Clancy thrust a plate of food under Dryden’s nose. It was all cooked hard but he was hungry. The tea came out of the pot almost black. Dryden put three spoonfuls of sugar into it and drank it down, and then he left the kitchen and trudged upstairs.

It was almost dinner-time so most people had left their beds
and he had the luxury of a couple of hours without anybody snoring beside him before he judged that the pubs would be open. The bed was lumpy and smelled of other people’s feet, but he was used to it. He slept. He woke up at exactly the right time and put on his clothes and his shoes and walked slowly down the street, savouring the idea of beer.

The pub was only just open. The fire was on and several men were already inside. Dryden took his beer without a word. Nobody spoke to him. He was used to that. The men here were people he worked with. They didn’t talk to him at work and they didn’t talk to him here. There had been a time when he had cared, but that was long gone. He had thought that he might leave, though it occurred to him that if you could not be accepted in the place where you had been born then it was very unlikely that you would be accepted any place else. As he drank his beer he could see his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and he knew — he had been told many times — that it was the reflection of evil. Parents in the village drummed into their daughters that they were never under any circumstances to go anywhere near him, but Dryden knew as well as anybody that the Devil always cast himself in irresistible forms and several of the girls in the village had proved that to be true. It was as though they were drawn by the silence, the very wickedness.

That morning Dryden was well aware that his half-brother Tom Cameron had come into the pub just after him. Tom had lots of friends and they came in with him, talking and laughing and shouting at the landlord, who was shouting back at them. Tom was about to get married. Dryden knew this because he worked alongside Tom and was often in the same pub and he heard the talk and the jokes. Tom was to be married to Vinia Brown on Easter Saturday. That was only a week away.

Vinia Brown lived in a little house by herself in Irish Back Street. Dryden could not understand why Tom was marrying her. He could have her as often as he wanted, so why bother? She worked in Miss Applegate’s shop at the top of the Store bank,
just up from the Store’s drapery department, and she was one of the few girls in the village who really, really disliked him. Dryden didn’t understand that; he hadn’t done anything to her. He knew when people were deliberately ignoring him. Some of the better-off lasses did that and it was all right, but Vinia looked straight through him, like the nasty cold wind off the fell which wouldn’t go around and cut your face. And then he realised why it was. It was because she was going to marry Tom.

Dryden stood by the bar and drank his beer and didn’t bother anybody, and Tom and his friends at the far end of the bar became very drunk and the drunker they became the more they took up of the bar until everybody else moved away, because they understood what it was like when you were only a week away from being shackled. The laughter got louder, the beer was drunk and they occupied all the bar except the corner where Dryden was standing. He was just about to move well out of their way when Wesley Mathers backed into him and turned around, glaring.

‘Come out the bloody road, you!’ he said.

Dryden was bigger than him; he was bigger than most of the young men in the village except Tom. Tom was a giant. Dryden didn’t say anything. It wasn’t cowardice, it was common sense. There were at least ten of them. They would have no compunction at all in kicking him senseless. He would have moved except that Wes was very drunk and didn’t let him, knocking into him again on purpose and waiting for his reaction. Dryden did nothing. Wes called him ‘a gypo bastard’ and then picked up Dryden’s beer and poured it over him. Dryden lost his temper and went for him. And then for the first time ever he was suddenly very close to his brother. Tom got in between them pulling Wes away, and then with his back to Dryden he was saying into Wes’s face, ‘Nay, nay, lad.’

‘He thinks he can drink in here with other people. Black bastard!’

In all of Dryden’s eighteen years nobody had ever defended him against anything and he could not believe it was happening.

‘I promised her. No fights,’ Tom said.

‘You shouldn’t let him in here, George!’ Wes shouted at the landlord.

Dryden was feeling better, in spite of the fact that he was soaked. Tom turned around.

‘Do you want another drink?’ he asked.

‘No thanks,’ Dryden said, and he levered himself away from the bar and walked out.

After that he felt worse. It had taken Tom eighteen years to speak to him. They worked together, they lived five minutes’ walk away, but neither Tom nor their mother, Mary, had ever acknowledged him in any way, and he did not see why things should be different now. It was not right that Tom should make him feel anything positive. He was glad of the anger. He went out and walked a long way across the moors. The wind dried his clothes and when he had walked away his feelings it was well past dinner-time. He had gone much farther than he intended, so it was the middle of the afternoon by the time he came back to the village. As he did so he could see a small figure standing in the middle of the Cutting Bridge not far away from the houses. He recognised her immediately. Every man in the village knew the figure of Esther Margaret Hunter; she was the bonniest thing that had ever lived. She was one of the better-off lot and ignored him although she went to church and was supposed to be a Christian. Dryden didn’t really care; he didn’t expect people like the daughter of the Store’s manager to speak to him. He would have walked straight past her but for the fact that Esther Margaret was crying.

‘Here,’ he said, pushing a handkerchief at her. She took it without looking at him. She mopped her face and blew her nose thoroughly three times and then she tried to return the soggy, slimy ball of cotton.

‘No,’ he said.

She stuffed it into her coat pocket.

‘He came to tea,’ she said, glaring at the cut below, where the railway lines were. ‘With his mam and dad. He’s boring and … he looks like a pig. After this morning too, for them to plan it and …’

In Dryden’s opinion she shouldn’t cry. Crying did nothing for women’s looks, though there had been a great number of times when he had enjoyed their tears, usually when he left them. He wasn’t enjoying Esther Margaret’s tears at all. They were ruining her looks, had deprived him of his best handkerchief, which he had stolen off the market, and he had no idea what she was talking about. He leaned back against the bridge and put his hands in his pockets and waited. He imagined her stripped and under him with her golden hair free and that was quite nice, except that she sniffed loudly twice and ruined the image. She had an exquisite mouth. She took his handkerchief out of her pocket and assaulted it further. Dryden was of the opinion she would have done better to throw it away rather than return it once again to her coat pocket.

‘He tried to kiss me,’ she said finally. ‘He got me in the hall near the coats and then he …’

The lad had done more than kiss her, Dryden thought ruefully, and he had made a mess of it. He had frightened her.

‘He’d probably never done it before and it was a mistake,’ he offered.

She looked at him properly, realised who he was and stiffened. Dryden leaned back farther against the stone wall and looked away across the fell, giving her time to decide whether to stay or not.

‘He was all hands and …’ She pulled a face.

‘Not nice, eh? First time, was it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You remember.’

‘I’ll never forget it.’

Neither of them said anything else after that, but she didn’t
seem to have any inclination to go back and he didn’t blame her. Maybe the dreaded whoever-he-was was still at the house, which he would be if he had been invited for tea because it wasn’t teatime yet. He had mucked his chances up good and proper, and before they had even sat down to eat. Manners were important in these things. She came closer (not to him especially, and he wasn’t surprised — she probably wouldn’t want to get near a lad again for months) but she leaned and looked over the bridge and he remembered being a child and doing something similar just as the train went under, waiting for the steam to come up towards him and the heat and the smell and the idea of going somewhere. He had sometimes thought of catching a train and going away. He had sometimes thought of putting himself in front of one.

And then she was looking at him. Had she got bored with the view, nothing but railway sleepers and rails?

‘You have got the most amazing eyes,’ she said, staring.

Dryden was very uncomfortable. Women were always saying such things. It made him feel like a circus animal. He turned away but then it got worse. She squeezed his arm in acknowledgement of having been rude and apologised.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

After that Dryden considered it was all fair and square, but he didn’t rush it, he gave her the benefit of what had always appeared to him to be two big pieces of coal staring back from the mirror at him. She fell for it. They did it every time. Women were hopeless about things like that. If he could have liked them for it he would have. As it was he just leaned forward and very slowly kissed her. No hands or other contact, it was sweet and light, and after what had happened earlier he knew she would either like it or run. She liked it. She was so innocent. He enjoyed that innocence in women. It was their downfall and they deserved it. Esther Margaret pressed against him. Dryden let her but he didn’t try to pull her any closer, he just accepted the sweet fresh taste of her mouth and the soft feel of her body.

Tom’s mother had wanted Vinia and Tom to move in with them, to live in Prince Row, and when they had refused she had tried to talk them into getting a house two doors away where Mr Price was on his last legs. Vinia prayed that Mr Price would live to be a hundred and her prayers were answered; Mr Price made a sudden recovery from what had been his deathbed and was seen out and about in the main street within a week. That Sunday afternoon, the last before the wedding, Tom’s mother had invited her to tea to make the final arrangements, though as far as Vinia could see there was nothing to do.

She was annoyed. In the first place Tom had gone out and got drunk at dinner-time, and when she turned up for tea he was still upstairs sleeping it off. Sober, Tom was the man of her dreams. Drunk, he was just like all the others, and she preferred not to see him that way. In a village where miners were ten a penny she thought she had chosen well. Tom was so big that nobody would fight with him. He was good looking and made a pretty amount at the pit because he was strong and able. Lots of young men had tried to court her but Vinia would have none of them until Tom noticed her, and after that she found it difficult to say no. She wouldn’t have found it difficult today, she thought it was wrong of him to drink like that when they were about to be married, but it was the usual practice in the village so she
could hardly expect any less. He was marrying her and not in haste; they had done nothing wrong. Vinia had a great sense of what was right and wrong and she had allowed Tom Cameron nothing more than a few kisses. When he would have taken more she stopped him, which had not been easy. She had her own small house beside the Variety Theatre and they had been alone there many times. The truth was that Tom liked her house, he liked the peace, he liked being away from his mother. Sometimes she thought that one of Tom’s main reasons for marrying her was to get away from his mother.