‘What?’
‘Don’t . . . don’t have a drink the next little while. Not . . . till we’re sorted.’
Sandy stared into the face of the woman he had loved since he’d first set eyes on her some twenty-odd years before. She had been bonny then, she still was bonny, but now her looks had taken on the weariness of all the women round about. She was canny, frugal, she could make a penny stretch to two and she had needed to often since the bairns had come, but never a word of complaint. There had always been something hot for him and the bairns come evening, be it broth with bare rib bones to suck at and new bread from a flat cake to mop up the last tiny drop when things were extra tight. She had always been a great believer in filling the belly and keeping the range going day and night so there was always somewhere warm to curl up near; the rest, even the rent money, she always said, came second. He didn’t know what he would do without her. ‘Aye, lass, I promise.’
‘You mean it?’
‘I’ve said, haven’t I?’ And then he did something unheard of in the middle of the day in broad daylight. He kissed her, hard and long, the sort of kiss kept for the night hours and the warmth of their double bed. And Joan kissed him back, her arms tightening round his broad shoulders. She hoped Carrie and David had the same sort of feeling she and Sandy shared, she thought suddenly, but she just couldn’t tell. In fact she couldn’t work the pair of them out at all if she was being truthful. Course, it was early days yet, and being caught out like they’d been didn’t make for a good start in anyone’s book, but all that taken into consideration, there was something she couldn’t put her finger on in all of this.
A little earlier, in an effort to expel some of the twins’ pent-up energy, made all the more volatile due to the fact the two small boys couldn’t even play in the yard or back lane owing to the driving rain and howling wind, she had set them the task of scrubbing the floorboards and furniture in the bedroom they now shared with Billy. Mindful of this she pushed Sandy away from her, half smiling as she muttered, ‘Give over, man, that’s enough. And where’s Billy? Didn’t he come back with you?’
‘A few of the lads have gone for a jar in the Tavern.’
‘And you didn’t want to join them?’
‘I thought you’d be wonderin’ what was what.’
Joan stared at him for a moment, and her voice was soft when she said, ‘Aye, I was. Sit yourself down then and I’ll get you a sup. There’s a bite of sly cake I made not ten minutes ago if you’re peckish. Or a shive of stottie cake with a bit of pork dripping.’
Sandy glanced across to the thick pastry covering an old dinner plate. It would be generously filled with currants and sugar inside, and no one made pastry like Joan. His mouth watered but he shook his head, saying, ‘A cup of tea’ll do for now.’ They were all going to have to pull in their belts for as long as the strike continued, so he might as well start now.
Joan had an inkling of his thoughts but didn’t press him, her mind only half on Sandy. Once upon a time David, as Billy’s best pal, would have automatically come back here on a day like this one, but recent events had changed all that. Sandy had lost a lad he’d looked on almost as one of his own, and Billy the pal he’d been thick with since he could toddle. Who’d have thought it? As for her, she was missing her lass more than she would have thought possible. Renee’s going had been natural somehow, and something of a relief, with her and her da always at loggerheads, but she felt Carrie had been ripped away from her. And with every Tom, Dick and Harry doing their sums from the day David and Carrie had wed in such a rush . . .
Joan finished mashing the tea, straightened her bowed shoulders and adjusted her thick linen pinny before she brought the teapot to the table. Enough, she told herself firmly. It didn’t help anyone brooding like this, and she’d enough on her plate with four hungry mouths to feed and next to nothing coming in. And things’d get worse before they got better, that was for sure. Like her mam had always said, take life in bite-size pieces and it won’t choke you, and if anyone had known the truth of that statement, her mam had, the troubles she’d borne in her time.
Alec Sutton was one of those who had been doing his sums of recent weeks since his brother’s hurried wedding. At first he had been inclined to agree with his mother that David’s bolt from the blue had been aimed to take the edge off the news of his engagement to Margaret, but this turn of mind had not lasted. There might be no love lost between himself and his youngest brother, but David was too canny to fuel speculation and gossip just to attempt to put his nose out of joint. No, there was more to this than that. But that the lass should be Carrie McDarmount, of all people . . . He would have sworn on oath that the girl had been a virgin when he’d taken her that night, and to his knowledge David hadn’t had anything to do with her, or any other lass for that matter. But no one wed with such haste except for one reason.
It was the recollection of the stricken expression on Carrie’s face just after he’d announced his engagement which prodded Alec towards the inevitable conclusion, causing him to take several deep draughts of air as his heart raced like a greyhound.
Was it possible? And the answer came, aye, it was. Too true it was. He’d been verging on mortalious that night, the last thing on his mind had been the possible consequences of taking her without due precautions. But if what he suspected was true, if Carrie
had
fallen for a bairn, what the hell was David doing marrying her?
Alec brooded on various scenarios, eventually deciding on the obvious one. Carrie was both quick-witted and pretty, and David was as green as they come. She’d seduced him into sleeping with her and then immediately declared he had to marry her in case she was pregnant; at least one of his pals had been caught that way. Now if a baby materialised she’d tell the poor fool it was his, and he would bet his last shilling a bairn
was
on the way. The crafty baggage. He found himself smiling. David would have been putty in her hands.
Whatever, he was off the hook. If this had turned out differently, if the chit had turned nasty, it might have ruined everything he’d worked towards the last couple of years. He’d have denied anything Carrie McDarmount said of course, but mud sticks. Margaret may be smitten with him but her father was a different kettle of fish. Sharp as a razor, Arthur Reed was. He’d got the mother eating out of the palm of his hand though, Alec thought complacently and everyone knew Arthur Reed wasn’t a well man. Dicky heart, the rumour was.
Well, if nothing else, this was a salutary lesson in making sure he visited a certain establishment in the East End more regularly. There was always one of Ma Siddle’s lasses available for him, and most of them were well worth the prices she charged. Moreover, Ma was discreet, which was why he’d decided to patronise her whorehouse over the others some years ago and he’d never regretted it. Aye, he wouldn’t make a mistake like the McDarmount girl again, not now he was sitting pretty. He had to keep his eyes fixed on his prospects.
By, David was a dolt. With all his holier-than-thou preaching and such, his brother still hadn’t had the sense to keep it in his trousers when she’d played him for a fool. What were the odds she’d allowed him near her just the once, claiming he was the first, and then played him like a violin afterwards? Idiot. His upper lip curled in a sneer as he compared his present position in life to that of his brother. Before he was finished he’d have a house on the outskirts, Hendon way perhaps or maybe Roker or Seaburn. A maid, a horse and trap, even one of those new-fangled automobiles which were becoming increasingly popular since the war. The solicitor, two doors up from the shop, had just bought himself the latest model of the Austin Tourer - he could see himself in that.
Alec continued to allow pleasant visions of the future to engage his senses, putting any further thoughts of Carrie and David out of his mind with the ruthlessness which was habitual to him. He knew where he was going in life and exactly how to get there. That was all that mattered. And the pangs of disquiet that had attacked his conscience now and again since the night of Walter’s wedding became duller and duller, until they bothered him not at all.
Chapter Seven
‘I’m sorry, David, but I have to do this. Please try to understand. It’s for us, can’t you see that?’
David stood staring at his wife. When he had walked in just a minute ago and seen Carrie huddled over her baking board on top of the rickety old table where their pans normally sat, he hadn’t realised at first what she was about. Then he had seen the papers, paste powder, blue touchpapers and paintbrush and it had dawned on him what she was doing. He’d bellowed her name and made her nearly jump out of her skin, but after the initial shock she had eyed him resolutely, her soft mouth trembling a little but otherwise her stance firm.
‘It’s slave labour, making firework cases at home. You’ve always said that yourself.’
‘I know.’ Her chin went up and he knew he was in for a battle. ‘But needs must.’
‘You’re not doing it, Carrie. Look at you, sweating and tired, and for what? What are you getting?’
‘Five shillings for ten gross of crackers.’ She heard him groan but ignored it, continuing, ‘And I was lucky to get it, I tell you straight. There’s always more willing workers than work available, I know that from what Renee has said in the past, but when I went to see Mr Fleming he remembered me from before.’
‘
You went to see him?
’
‘Aye, I did.’ She’d known he wouldn’t like it, but as she had said, needs must. Mr Fleming was a kind man at heart, and she knew he was aware of her circumstances.
Since the General Strike had collapsed, just nine days after it had started, the miners had been on their own. At first the lodge had paid ten shillings a week to their miners; that had lasted two weeks. Then it was five shillings a week and that had lasted three weeks. Then four shillings a week for one week and three shillings for three weeks. And then nothing. The lodges simply couldn’t cope any more. It was up to each individual to do what he could and each family to manage the best they could. The fellowship dinners, once merry affairs organised by supporters, had become soup kitchens, and Carrie knew - as one of the original members of the Wearmouth Feeding Committee - the soup was now as weak as dishwater. People were starving, it was as simple as that, and when a family decided they had to go into the workhouse, no one blamed them. It was no disgrace to be a pauper, the only shame lay in being a blackleg.
The strike coming when Carrie was just beginning to feel relief from the constant sickness meant she had been able to get involved in all the fundraising. Brass band concerts, dances, raffles, lotteries, talent competitions, athletic contests, the inevitable boxing matches, coconut shies, skittles, darts, ‘guess your weight’, pony rides and a whole lot more had sprung into being. The sea’s resources were pillaged. Women and children picked winkles, crabs, seaweed and anything else which was edible, and collected driftwood and coal washed up on the beaches. Sand was washed in buckets and sold to builders for a few pence; coal tips and rubbish dumps were combed for anything that could be burned, repaired or sold. Church halls were turned into knitting factories by miners’ wives, using woollens scrounged and unwound to produce ‘new’ items. Men who had spent all their working life down the pit turned into temporary carpenters, decorators, tinkers, gardeners and much more. It was a common sight to see bairns following carthorses and picking up the manure, some even collecting dog faeces and dividing them into black and white bags - the colour being dependent on what the animals had eaten - which they sold to folk for their gardens.
But now a long, hot, hard August had drawn to a close and resources were spent. Carrie had watched David collect fish and vegetable scraps from the market and from people’s bins, and walk miles into Chester-le-Street, and sometimes as far as Consett, to sell them to smallholders and people who kept hens and pigs. But now even this source of keeping themselves alive had dried up. The rent hadn’t been paid in months. Ada Bedlow, now a firm friend, had declared it could wait, but it couldn’t wait, not for ever. And yesterday, when she had called in her mam’s and seen the twins, pale and washed-out and alive with ringworm and impetigo, and her mother barely able to open her mouth for ulcers, Carrie had known she had to defy David and go and beg for work at the firework factory. She would have done it weeks ago but for knowing how wretched it would make him feel. But his pride wasn’t more important than their surviving, and that was what this had boiled down to.
Carrie knew a few of the miners - one or two who had worked shoulder to shoulder with David in the past - had given in, and these men were labelled blacklegs. More were being brought in from other counties too, and the bitterness was fierce. David, along with other men, often one from every family involved in the strike, was now engaged in day-to-day picket duty, but she knew from what he hadn’t said rather than what he had that her father and Billy were still cold-shouldering him. It seemed incredible at a time like this.