“An’ Bones found the blue-bottle in his sarsparilla… well, I say, Mr. Gowlan…”
“Ah, call me Joe, Mrs. Sunley. Treat me like one of the family, mam.”
He was getting them, he’d get them all soon enough, the thrill of it went to his head like wine. This was the way, he could do it, he could take hold of life, squeeze the fat out of it. He’d get on, have what he wanted, anything, everything, just wait and see.
Later, Alf invited Joe to see him feed his pigeons. They went out to the yard, where the pearly doves preened themselves, ducked their heads in and out of Alf’s home-made dovecote, delicately pecked the grain. Removed from the presence of his wife, where he sat mute and mild as milk, Alf revealed himself a little hero of a man with views beyond his pigeons upon beer, patriotism and Spearmint’s prospects in the Derby. He was affable to Joe, proffered a friendly fag. But Joe chafed, burned to be back with Jenny. When the cigarette was smoked, he excused himself, drifted back into the house.
Jenny was alone in the back room. She still sat upon the sofa, deep in the same magazine.
“Excuse me,” Joe murmured. “I was wondering if you would show me my room.”
She did not even lower the magazine which she held with her little finger elegantly crooked.
“One of the kids will show you.”
He did not move.
“Don’t you go out for a stroll at night… on your half-day… like this?”
No answer.
“You serve in a shop, don’t you?” he tried once more patiently. He had a vague remembrance of Slattery’s — a big plate-glassed drapery stores in Grainger Street.
She condescended to look at him.
“What if I do?” she said flatly. “It’s none of your business. And when it comes to that I don’t serve. That’s a low common word and I hate it. I’m at Slattery’s. I’m in the millinery and extremely refined work it is too. I hate anything that’s common and low. I hate men who work dirty more than anything.” And the magazine went up again with a jerk. Joe rubbed his jaw reflectively, taking her all in, neat ankles, slender hips, trim little bosom. So you don’t like men who work dirty, he thought with a secret grin; well, by gum, you’re going to like a dirty worker in me.
EIGHT
For Martha the disgrace was terrible; never in all her life had she dreamed of such a thing, no, never. It was horrible. As she went about her work in the kitchen, testing the potatoes with a fork, lifting the pot lid to see that the stew was right, she tried not to think about it. But it was no use, she had to think. In vain she fought it, battled it away, the thought that she, Martha Redpath that was, should have come to this. They had always been decent folk her folks, the Redpaths, decent chapel folk, decent Methodist folk, decent collier folk, she could go back a full four generations with pride and find never a blemish on the stock. They had all worked underground decently and conducted themselves decently above. But now? Now she was not a Redpath, she was a Fenwick, the wife of Robert Fenwick. And Robert Fenwick was in gaol.
A spasm of bitterness went over her face. In gaol. The scene burned her, as it had done a hundred times, the whole burning scene: Robert standing in the dock with Leeming beside him, Leeming of all men; James Ramage on the bench, coarse and red-faced and bullying, not mincing his words, saying exactly what he thought. She had gone to the court. She would go, it was her place to go. She had been there, she had seen and heard everything. Three weeks without the option. She could have screamed when Ramage sentenced him. She could have died; but her pride kept her up, helped her to put on a stony face. Her pride had helped her through those frightful days, helped her even this afternoon when, returning with her messages from the town, the wife of Slogger Leeming had waylaid her at Alma corner and remarked with loud-voiced sympathy that their men would be out on Saturday. Their men and out!
With a look at the clock — the first thing Sammy had got out of pawn for her — she pulled the tin bath before the fire and began to fill it with hot water from the wash-house. She used an iron pot as dipper and the journeys to and fro with the heavy weight taxed her severely. Lately she had not been well, indeed, she knew she was not well and just now she felt weak and shaky. She had a pain too. For a minute she had to stop to ease the catch in her side. Worry, she knew, had done it, she was a strong woman; she felt she would be better if only the child within her showed signs of life. But there was no movement, nothing but a dragging heaviness, a weight.
The clock struck five, and shortly after the tramp of feet echoed along the Terrace, the slow tramp of tired men. Nine hours from bank to bank and the Terraces to climb at the end of it. But it was good honest work, bred in their bones, and in her bones too. Her sons were young and strong. It was their work. She desired no other.
The door opened upon her thought and the three came in, Hughie first, then David, and finally Sammy with a sawn balk of timber tucked under his arm, for her kindling. Dear Sammy. Always thoughtful of her. A rush of warmth came round the brooding coldness of her heart, she wanted suddenly to have Sammy in her arms and to weep.
They were searching her face; the house had been oppressive these last days; and Martha had been oppressive too, hard on them and difficult. She knew that and she knew that they were searching her face. Though she had been to blame it hurt her.
“How, mother,” Sammy smiled, his teeth showing white against the black coal dust that sweat had caked on him.
She loved the way he called her mother, not that “mam” in common usage here; but she merely nodded towards the bath that was ready and turned back to set the table.
With their mother in the room the three lads took off their boots, jackets, their pit drawers and singlets, all sodden with water, sweat and pit dirt. Together, naked to the buff, they stood scouring themselves in the tiny steaming bath. There was never much room and it was always friendly. But there was not much joking to-night. Sam in a tentative way nudged Davey and grinned:
“Ower the bed a bit, ye elephant.” And again remarked: “Whey, mon, have ye swallowed the soap?” But there was nothing genuine in the way of fun. The heaviness in the house, in Martha’s face, precluded it. They dressed with no horse-play, sat in to their dinner almost in silence.
It was a beautiful dinner, huge helpings of savoury stew with onions and floury potatoes. Martha’s dinners were always beautiful, she knew the value of a good dinner to a man. Now, thank God, that the wicked strike was stopped she could let them have their food. She sat watching them eat, replenishing their plates. Though she did not feel like eating herself, she drank some tea. Yet even the tea didn’t help her much. A stray pain started in her back, tugged at her breasts, and slipped out of her again before she recognised the nature of the pain.
Her sons had finished dinner. David was the first to rise, going to the corner where his books were kept, seating himself on a low stool by the cheek of the fire with a pencil in his hand and jotter upon his knee. Latin, Martha thought glumly, he’s doing Latin now, and the thought, striking across her bitter mood, irked her strangely. It was part of Robert’s doing, this education, this wanting the boy to go to college, to sit for the scholarship next year, to get above himself. Robert had started him with Mr. Carmichael at the old Bethel Street night classes. And she, coming of a long line of pitmen, a proudly class-conscious woman, despised book learning in her own kind, and felt that no good would come of it.