Why Luke himself came to the farm every week, however, was a different kettle of fish. How often had he told himself he was barmy, doo-lally, to put himself through it? But he couldn’t stay away, that was the heart of the matter. Perhaps when the thing was settled, when Michael had asked her – and Michael would ask Polly to be his lass, and soon – it would allow him to cut the thread that pulled him back here week after week. It didn’t do him any good, that was for sure. His body burned for nights afterwards and many a time he’d been tempted to ease himself with Olive Robson or Nancy McClean, or lately Katy Chapman. But he didn’t want Nancy or Katy, or any of the others who made it clear they were willing.
He might move away altogether. As they came within fifty yards of the farm, Luke’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. That was the answer. There was always one of the Newcastle pits, or maybe Harton Colliery in South Shields. Harton was a particularly wet pit and subsequently the wages were higher. One of his da’s brothers lived in Boldon Lane; he could board with them until he got sorted, and from what his da had said in the past, South Shields wasn’t so different to Sunderland. There were the same huge steamships coming up the river, many with foreign names, blowing their horns and whistles ready for their bales, crates and barrels to be offloaded on to the docks in big rope nets, with hundreds of men shouting to the fellers operating the slings, telling them where to set them down and grabbing them with hooks as they descended. The same Sunday-morning markets at the quaysides where you could buy anything for a few pence, and the quacks and tricksters would be gathered selling their wares and doing their acts; and rowing races on the river itself – be it the Tyne or the Wear – when everyone would be shouting and cheering, and once the winner passed the finishing line, the foghorns blasting and the ships’ whistles blowing was enough to deafen a body, and everyone went mad jumping up and down.
Aye, he wouldn’t want to move to a little village pit, not after living in Monkwearmouth close to the Wear. He’d got used to the parks with their shuggy boats and swings and lakes chock full of tadpoles and tiddlers, not to mention the beach, where all the local lads and lasses did their courting.
The thought of the evenings when he had watched young couples sedately marching the sands brought his mind back to Polly, and now, as Luke followed Michael across the farmyard to where the open kitchen door was emitting the sound of chattering voices, he gave a mental nod to the prospect of Harton Colliery.
Nothing was going to change here; he could forecast exactly how the next months and years were going to develop. He had no wish to exist on the perimeter of Polly and Michael’s life as a benevolent uncle figure to their bairns, and that was what would happen sure enough. It was time to leave Sunderland. He’d miss his da, though. He paused at the kitchen door and raised his eyes to the grey-white sky above, in much the same way Polly had done the day before. But his da had seemed happier of late. He looked younger, lighter, somehow, and Luke had even caught him singing ‘Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie’ the other night, when his da’d been having his wash-down in the tin bath in front of the fire. He couldn’t remember ever hearing his da sing before and he’d wondered if he’d got a load on, but his breath hadn’t smelt of beer or whisky. So maybe things were looking up at last between him and Eva.
Luke brought his head down into his neck and narrowed his eyes as he heard his name called from inside the room. They were waiting for him. His hand fingered the small package in his jacket pocket. And as it looked as though this was the last birthday party he’d attend here for quite some time, he’d better put a brave face on it. So thinking, he pushed the door wide and walked into the house.
Chapter Seven
The bedroom was not overly small, being the whole of the upstairs of the three-roomed cottage, but crammed full as it was with old, somewhat battered furniture, it gave the appearance of such. But as Nathaniel stretched and wrinkled his toes, flexing his arms before his hands made a pillow for his head, he reflected that a king’s palace wouldn’t suit him better. And it was all to do with the woman who was now nudging the bedroom door further ajar with her foot, her hands being full with two cups of steaming-hot tea.
‘Thanks, lass.’ Nathaniel sat up straight as he took his cup, and as she slid under the covers beside him and he felt the nearness of her, her soft, warm voluptuousness under the old flock dressing gown she’d pulled on before leaving the bed some minutes before, his body hardened in spite of the fact they’d only just made love. But she did that to him, his Tess. He had never met anyone who was so big, and he didn’t mean in the physical sense, although she had plenty of meat on her bones – she made two of him at any rate. No, he meant the fount of loving, of tenderness, of generosity that made up the core of her. Even his Dora, God rest her soul, hadn’t loved him like Tess did.
‘There’ll be a bite of panhacklety later on when your dinner’s got down, if you want it.’
‘That’s like askin’ a dyin’ man if he wants the lifeline thrown to him.’
‘Oh, you.’ Tess smiled as she wriggled against him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. She took a sip of her tea before saying, her voice quieter now, ‘Doesn’t she wonder why you don’t want any tea come Sunday night these days?’
He’d wondered about that himself until he had realised Eva probably didn’t notice what he ate and drank. ‘I always have a bite of somethin’ on me plate to show willin’, and the lads wolf down the lot fast as blinkin’ anyway. Besides – ’ the tone of his voice changed, a bitter note creeping in – ‘Eva wouldn’t care if I slowly starved in front of her, lass, an’ that’s the truth.’
‘Oh, Nat.’ Tess bit on her lip for a moment before she said, ‘I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it agen, she doesn’t know when she’s well off.’
‘Aye, maybe.’ What had he ever done to have this woman love him like she did? The thought swept away all the bitterness the mention of Eva had caused. He could hardly believe there was a time when he hadn’t been coming to this house and losing himself in the great warm expanse that was Tess, but it had only been the last twelve months, since the accident at the pit had taken her man. Nathaniel had been working with Perce when it had happened – a piece of roof had fallen on his skull and split it in two – and although he’d never liked the man, he’d felt obliged to go and see his widow and offer a little comfort in telling her Perce had died instantly and without suffering. And that had been the start of it.
Tess had made him welcome with a cup of tea and a piece of lardy cake when he’d called to see her at the house in Carley Road at the side of the Carley Hill wagonway, and by the time he’d left – some two hours later – he had known her marriage had not been a happy one. He hadn’t known Perce had regularly used her as a punch bag, that had come later, along with the fact that Tess – in spite of her big hips and buxom appearance – had had one miscarriage after another all through her ten years of marriage. Mind, Perce’s fists had helped them along.
Nathaniel drew in a long, hard breath and, reaching down, put his tea on the bare floorboards before doing the same with Tess’s cup. ‘I love you, lass.’ He folded her into his arms as he spoke, his voice thick. ‘You know that, don’t you? An’ all this skulkin’ about don’t sit well, you deserve better than that.’
‘I don’t mind, lad.’ Tess twisted in his arms, her hand coming up to his face, which she stroked softly. ‘I don’t mind anything as long as you keep coming here. The last twelve months have been the happiest of me life, and though I know I shouldn’t say it, Perce being dead an’ all, I thank God everything happened as it did. But I don’t want to cause trouble for you, that’s the last thing I want. If Sunday afternoons and the odd evening in the week is all we have I’ll be content with that, aye, an’ count meself lucky. But I’m worried it’ll get back to her some day soon.’
‘There’s not much chance of that.’ He wished there was if the truth be told; it would take the decision of what to do out of his hands. ‘She’s never had anythin’ to do with anyone, you know that. Kept herself to herself an’ even got on the wrong side of our Eustace’s wife, an’ that’s no easy thing to do.’
Tess nodded. Carley Road was separated from the gridwork of streets that fanned out from Southwick Road by the Cornhill glassworks, but one of her neighbours – married to a miner – had a sister who lived next door to Nathaniel, and she had some stories to tell. In a community where a woman’s lot involved a constant fight against poverty, dirt, disease and the dreaded words ‘laid off’, good neighbours and family sometimes meant the difference between the workhouse or struggling through. ‘But that Eva, she’d see you in hell afore she’d lift a finger,’ Joan had said more than once as they had gossiped over the backyard wall. ‘There was our Mildred, just had the bairn an’ right poorly with it, an’ did Eva offer to take the other uns, even for an hour or two? Did she blazes. Not even a pot of tea an’ a comfortin’ word when all she’s got to do all day is sit on her backside with the menfolk down the pit an’ her youngest at school, an’ they’re not hard up, not compared to most. An’ it was Nora on Mildred’s other side – God bless her – who took the bairns an’ fed ’em an’ brought in an evenin’ meal once Don was home from the pit. An’ Nora’s not got two pennies to rub together, not with her brood to feed an’ clothe. By, she’s a crabby, tight so-an’-so, that Eva. I pity her menfolk, I do straight.’
That conversation had occurred some years before Tess had met Nathaniel, and Joan had related other incidents over the years about ‘Lady Blackett’, as she referred to her sister’s neighbour. Bearing in mind her own unhappy marriage and the misery that went on behind closed doors, Tess had always kept an open mind about such matters, however. Who knew what this Eva was putting up with in private? Most folks thought Perce was a good bloke – salt of the earth, she’d heard him referred to as more than once. And suffering and despair affected different people different ways. By all accounts this Eva was one of them who kept everything just so – Joan said that according to Mildred, Eva didn’t just stone the front step with a scouring stone to give it a smart cream-edged finish, but scrubbed the footpath outside the front door to boot – so maybe she had her own problems and keeping herself to herself and her house like a new pin was her way of coping.
And then Tess had met Nathaniel, and within the space of a few weeks life had become a beautiful thing. When he kissed her she felt like a goddess, aye, she did. And the things he said and did ... He was the most caring man alive, he was, and whatever had gone on in his wife’s life before Eva had met him, she ought to be on her knees thanking God every night for such as him.
Tess had worried at first, knowing how house-proud his wife was and how he must be used to everything looking nice, because she was not like that and she knew it. Dirty mare, Perce had used to call her before he’d swiped her one. But she wasn’t dirty, just untidy, and it didn’t worry her if a bit of dust mounted up now and again. For years – with the constant misses month after month, sometimes three a year – she’d felt too tired and washed out to do much, but she wouldn’t think of them times now. They’d gone, they were dead and buried along with Perce.
‘Joan, next door, I reckon she’s got a good idea about us.’ Tess’s big brown eyes with their flecks of green were anxious as they looked up into Nathaniel’s face. ‘She doesn’t miss a thing, that one.’
Nathaniel said nothing for a moment. Tess was thirty-one years old but she looked nearer forty; she’d had a hell of a life with Perce. And he wanted to make her happy, he
ached
to make her happy. He wanted to fill her life with joy, with laughter, with all the things she had missed in being married to a drunken thug of a man. He wanted to wake up beside her in the morning and lie down beside her at night, to sit with her in front of the fire in their own place with the front door keeping the rest of the world out. But there was Eva, and he was a Catholic. If he asked Tess to come away with him it would be to live a life of sin, and she was a respectable woman, a good woman. He couldn’t ask her to do that; even if they moved far away where no one knew them it wouldn’t be fair on her. But this, this carry-on wasn’t fair on her either. ‘I’m sorry, lass.’ His voice was heavy.
‘Oh, I don’t mind, not for meself, I’m thinking of you,’ Tess said quickly and with an earnestness that was genuine. ‘I don’t know if she’s said owt to her Bert, but with him knowing you and the lads ...’
Nathaniel shook his head. ‘He’s not one for jawin’, Bert, but whatever happens we’ll face it together, lass. All right? An’ the lads aren’t bairns any more, they’ll understand. They’ve lived with Eva for years an’ all, don’t forget.’ But would they? Would they understand him taking up with another woman, because that was the way they – anyone – would look at it. But Tess wasn’t just another woman, she was – well, she was his other half. That was the way he felt about it. He was incomplete without her and since meeting her he knew he had felt like that all his life. Oh, he’d have been happy enough with Dora if she’d lived, and he’d have never looked the side another woman was on, but what was between him and Tess transcended words. Maybe if he’d been an educated man he could have found words to describe it, but he just knew he wouldn’t want to live a day without her. Not an hour, a minute.
‘Here, finish your tea, lass.’ He bent down and lifted up Tess’s cup, but before she took it from him she looked at him lovingly and touched his face again, her voice as soft and enveloping as her body as she said, ‘If it ever gets too difficult for you, if it meant losing the lads or something, I’d understand if we had to call it a day, Nat, and I’d be thankful for what we’ve had. More than thankful.’