Shelter from the Storm (6 page)

‘You should go home,’ he said. ‘It’s getting dark.’

‘I am going.’

He nodded and let go of her again and they walked in the failing light back towards the village as the evening drew in around them. He stopped before they reached the houses.

‘You shouldn’t be seen with me,’ he said.

‘I’ve behaved very badly this week.’

‘With me.’

‘No, not with you. With just about everybody else. I’ve been horrible. I’ve lost where I was, as if I’ve gone past it and now I can’t get back.’ It was strange, talking to him; it was as though there were a new person inside her who could say such things.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t try to, maybe it’s too difficult.’

‘I want to see you.’

‘You shouldn’t. Go home. Your mother will wonder where you are.’

‘I want the night.’

‘No.’

He gave her a little shove in the direction of her home and she walked as somebody in a dream back to the house where her mother, for the second Sunday running, came anxiously into the hall.

‘I was worried. It’s almost dark.’

‘What is there to hurt me here?’

‘Come and have some tea.’

She went in by the fire and it was all familiar but it was not the same. She had been a child and was a child no longer. The air was stale and the rooms were too used and she did not want to be there as she had done. Home was suddenly something to be despised, to be rid of. It was hated. She wanted to push back the walls, to tear off the roof, to see the stars, to be outside and dancing, whirling around the streets, laughing and shouting and free like never before. She no longer liked her mother or father, she wanted nothing of their ideas. She wanted Dryden Cameron, she wanted the feel of him, the taste of his lips and the touch of his hands and the special way that he looked at her as though nothing else on earth was important. She wanted to run and run with him, to go somewhere new, to see places she had not seen before, to know things she had not known, to walk with him in the light. She couldn’t eat her tea, she couldn’t talk. She went to bed early, worn out, and dreamed dreams of darkness.

*

The first night Tom came back and said there was short time so it was only four nights that week that Vinia had to wait up for him, but it was difficult right from the beginning. It was almost one o’clock by the time he got back to the house and then he had to
wash and eat his meal and she had to clear up and make everything right. When she got to bed Tom wanted her, he would not let her sleep, and then she had to get up early and go to work. She sneaked about the room, dressing, but Tom awoke in spite of his tiredness, sitting up and enquiring, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To work, of course.’

Tom looked puzzled.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The shop opens at half past eight. I’m going to be late.’

‘Get your clothes off and get back in here.’

‘I can’t do that, Tom.’

He reached out of bed and got hold of her and brought her back to him and began to pull at her clothes. It might have been funny but it wasn’t, and when she objected he stopped and said slowly, ‘Pitmen’s wives don’t work, there isn’t time for it. I’ll want a big meal in the middle of the day because I want it digested before I go to work, and I need my bait putting up and there’s the housework and the shopping and whatever else you’re going to do to make me comfortable.’

‘But … what will I do all day? Stay here?’

‘That’s what housewives do, yes.’

‘But Miss Applegate is expecting me.’

‘I doubt she has a shopful,’ Tom said, and he pulled her clothes off her and had her before he went back to sleep.

Mary Cameron came to see her that first day and wandered about the room — the house had only one room and a pantry downstairs — taking note of any dust or disorder.

‘Those brasses could do with a good clean,’ she observed. ‘The brasses in my house are done every week. You’d have been better off in Prince Row with me to keep an eye on things. That isn’t bought bread, is it? My Tommy isn’t used to bought bread.’

‘I made it,’ Vinia said.

‘You’ll have to do better than this, my girl, my Tommy’s used to the best. The house is to be turned out every day and his meal should be on the table when you hear him coming through that
passage. You’ll have to get your ideas brightened up. I wish you could have had Mr Price’s house.’

‘I wouldn’t want Mr Price’s house. This is my home,’ Vinia said.

Mary glared at her.

‘Don’t you back-answer me or I’ll tell our Tommy. You stole him from me. The least you could do is keep a decent house.’

Tom was late in from work that evening; he had gone straight to the pub, so his dinner was overcooked. He looked hard at it and then at her.

‘My mother caught me outside the pit. Don’t argue with her, Vinny, she’s had enough problems in her life. What is this meant to be?’

‘It got a bit well done. You’re late.’

‘Well done?’ Tom sat back in his chair. ‘You’d better make me summat else and quick.’

‘There isn’t anything else.’

Tom took the plate and threw it across the room. Vinia watched, fascinated, as it hit the wall and the pieces went everywhere, and then Tom got up and smacked her across the face. Nobody had ever touched her before in anger. Tom was big and his hands were big and it hurt. She stood staring at him for a second. Then the world caved in. She ran up the stairs, the rods clinking back into place under her feet, and there she sought the sanctuary of her bed. Her face throbbed and stung. She cried until she couldn’t cry any more, and then she heard Tom’s more ponderous steps. He pushed open the door. It creaked.

‘Look, Vinny, I’m sorry.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, you know I wouldn’t. I shouldn’t have had the last couple of pints. I didn’t mean to yell at you.’ Vinia turned farther away and wouldn’t speak to him, so in the end Tom gave in and went back downstairs. She couldn’t forgive him.

The next day Tom clattered about getting ready for work and when he wanted to kiss her before leaving the house, as usual, she turned her face away. Tom hovered.

‘You have to forgive me before I go.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘It would be better if you did.’

‘Why would it?’

And then she realised, looking into his serious, repentant face. Miners always made up with their wives before they left for the shift in case they didn’t come back and all that was left was the guilt.

‘Oh, Tom,’ she said, and cuddled him.

‘We’ll do better,’ Tom said.

She did not understand why she cried after he had gone. When she looked in the mirror there was a livid bruise on one side of her face. It was then that she realised she could not go out. Everybody would see that Tom had hit her. She stayed in and made do with what food they had, but it wasn’t much. She cleaned and polished but all Tom said when he came home was, ‘Where’s my tea?’

‘It won’t be a minute, Tom. I’ve been busy.’

‘Doing what?’ He looked about him at the shiny house.

Vinia found herself running between pantry, oven and table while Tom sat and waited, watching her. When the meal was ready, minutes later, he ate in silence. Afterwards she washed up and then Tom washed and changed and she realised that it had already become a routine. He would go to the pub every night unless he was on shift, and then he would go at dinner-time.

He hadn’t been long gone when Esther Margaret arrived. There was something bright and shiny about her which Vinia didn’t recognise, though the look didn’t last beyond her coming inside. She stared.

‘Have you hurt yourself?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’

Esther Margaret was not deceived, Vinia could tell. In a place like this plenty of men knocked their wives about.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Vinia wanted to cry but pride prevented her. She was so glad
to have a visitor — anybody but Tom’s mother would have done — but to have Esther Margaret there was a pleasure.

‘I came to ask whether you would mind if I went after your job. I called in and Miss Applegate said you wouldn’t be there any more and I want to do something.’

‘Will you parents like that?’

‘My father works in a shop.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I have to!’ Vinia was surprised at her vehemence. Esther Margaret looked ashamed but she went on, ‘I can’t go on being just their daughter. I’m suffocating.’

Vinia didn’t say anything.

‘Would you mind if I did?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t mind. I’d be glad for you.’

Esther Margaret hugged her. Vinia didn’t know what to say to that either. People weren’t given to hugging each other.

*

Thaddeus Morgan owned a steel foundry and a big house in Wolsingham, the first village at the beginning of Weardale. He sometimes came to the office at the pit to see Joe’s father, though of late his father had been there less and less. Joe could hear his father’s voice when Morgan invited him to a party.

‘You haven’t met my lass, have you, not since you were little ones? She’s the bonniest lass in the county. Next Saturday, Joe.’

When Joe went home that evening his father was waiting and was all questions about Thaddeus Morgan.

‘She’s the one for you,’ his father said. ‘Looks and money.’

Joe could not imagine Thaddeus wanting to ally himself with penniless pit-owners but then he remembered Thaddeus Morgan shaking his head over his father’s ways and saying, ‘There’s plenty of coal to be got out, if only your father would bring things up to date.’

Modernising meant borrowing money, Joe thought, and his father could not be brought to do that, but he could see that
Thaddeus wanted the connection. Foundries and pits went hand in hand in a sense, since it was good coking coal they produced. Thaddeus had no son and was inclined to look favourably on him. This idea was reinforced that Saturday when Joe walked the three miles down the hills and followed the river up to Wolsingham. There were lush green fields down here in the valley and pretty farmhouses, some of them hundreds of years old, in grey stone. The fields were full of sheep and there were horses and cows and all along the road were trees on either side. The house itself had a long drive with a gatehouse and there were big gardens with lots of trees. It was an extensive stone building with ornamented turrets and a kind of walkway outside on the upper storey.

When Joe arrived he could hear music and the sound of many people. The only people he was used to in crowds were workmen, which he didn’t think would be very helpful. Inside, Thaddeus spotted him straight away in the huge hall and came across smiling in welcome, introducing him to various young people, pointing out his daughter, who was on the other side of the ballroom. She was surrounded by young men. Thaddeus laughed in appreciation and said Joe would meet her later. Joe was uncomfortable. She looked beautiful to him and was laughing and chatting and he could not forget how Esther Margaret had treated him, and although Luisa Morgan was undoubtedly charming and wonderful, as her father had said, it worried him. She even looked like Esther Margaret, with fair hair and blue eyes. She wore a simple white dress and a string of pearls. She came across to him.

‘My father told me to introduce myself. Are you going to ask me to dance?’

Taken aback by her directness, Joe said he couldn’t and she insisted on teaching him, to general groans from other young men. Joe just wanted to get away. He trod on her several times and it was such a humiliating experience, his face burning, everybody watching. The less clumsy he tried to be the worse it became. She talked at him all the time. Joe tried to concentrate.

‘They say you’re very like your mother. Did she really run off with another man? How delicious. I wish my mother would run off. I can’t abide her.’ She nodded her head in the direction of a frail-looking woman who was standing to the side of the ballroom, talking and smiling.

‘You don’t like your mother?’ Joe couldn’t believe that anyone, given the luxury of a mother, could possibly dislike her, however bad her faults.

Luisa laughed.

‘She’s boring, and so is my father. They don’t go anywhere or do anything and the people they know …’ She raised her eyes.

When the dance was over he found himself beside Mrs Morgan.

‘I knew your mother,’ she said. She had gentle eyes and fine hands. ‘We went to school together here, to the convent.’ She looked around as though someone might overhear their conversation, and then she said to him, ‘I have long wanted to meet you but your father, you know, would never agree to it. I was good friends with your mother. I’m sure your father does his best but … You look exactly like her. I always wondered and I’m so pleased. You see, however … however difficult her life was she would never have done the things people believe she did. Your mother was a fine, upstanding person, loyal and true, and she loved you.’

‘She ran off and left me.’

Her eyes hardened slightly but he could see that it was only resolution. She shook her head.

‘I have always found that very hard to believe. You were the greatest delight of her life. Try to think well of her, Joe, whatever people say.’ She clutched his hand for a moment and then Thaddeus bore down on them, bringing Luisa with him.

‘Find the boy something to eat,’ he directed her, and she obediently took Joe away to the supper table, but all the time she was looking past him.

‘Who are you watching?’ Joe asked.

‘Do you see that man with my father?’

Joe glanced in the direction in which she was nodding and saw Thaddeus Morgan with another man of about the same age.

‘That’s George McAndrew. He’s very, very rich and has never been married though women have set their caps at him for years. He would never have any of them. He owns shipyards on the Clyde and pits too and a good many other things.’

Joe could see nothing remarkable about the man. She offered to introduce them. When they went across, Thaddeus put his hand on Joe’s shoulder, much to his surprise, and introduced him as the son of a dear friend. Mr McAndrew was polite but his hot little eyes, which lingered on Luisa, made Joe feel uncomfortable. She was all smiles in encouragement and it seemed to please him; his thin mouth began to turn up at the corners.