A Crimson Dawn (2 page)

Flora laughed. ‘Some of Sarah's cooking would be a treat, thank you.'

Mousy hobbled beside her, chatting about changes since she had last visited.

‘There's two more residents come - one a medical student, the other a trainee vicar like Mr Oliphant. Think they'll be here till Christmas. Dockers' Union are holding their meetin's here now, an' all. Oh, and there's a concert on Friday night - some Scotch singers - so you'll want to come to that, eh?'

‘I'll insist on a front-row seat,' Flora smiled.

Mousy liked to tease her about being Scottish, though she seldom went back to Edinburgh since her parents had died. As an only child, she had nursed them both through illness and then used their legacy to put herself through medical school; one of Sophia Jex-Blake's pioneering women doctors. She had given up much to do so - a leisured life on a private income or a suitable marriage. Now, at thirty-two, she was safely past marriageable age. Gateshead was her home and hard work her lot. She would not change it for anything.

Sarah scolded her into a seat with a bowl of broth and ordered Mousy back to the entrance with a sharp, ‘Don't think you're ganin' to sit here suppin' tea.'

Sarah's list of grumbles about untidy residents, noisy youth club and unwashed dockers was interrupted by the welcome appearance of Charles. He sauntered in with a big grin, hands in pockets, fair wiry hair untamed. He had the ruddy, full face of a country squire rather than the academic he was, a cherubic look that belied his twenty-six years. Flora's heart skipped a beat as she smiled back.

‘Ham broth, my favourite! Just what the doctor ordered. Flora, I hope you haven't eaten it all? Sarah, sit back down - I can help myself.'

Sarah tutted in disapproval and rushed to serve him. She had refused to flout convention and call him Charles, as he had suggested, or allow him to help in the kitchen. He might like to pretend he was one of them, living among Gateshead's poor, but they all knew he was gentry, one of the Oliphants of Blackton. And hadn't Mousy said he was heir to Major James, and due to inherit a huge estate and half a dozen pits on the fell? He should be ashamed of himself, playing at being kitchen boy, was her opinion.

‘I thought you'd met a surgeon and run off to London,' Charles teased Flora between slurps of soup. ‘You've been neglecting us, Doctor.'

Flora snorted. ‘You're not the only one saving the world - others are busy too.'

He reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I know. You're a wonderful woman.'

Flora blushed under Sarah's critical gaze and withdrew her hand quickly.

‘I want your help, Charles, to track down a mining family. I think they might live in one of your father's villages.'

Charles rolled his eyes. ‘Do you hear that, Sarah? She's only interested in my connections, not in my good looks or personality.'

‘Be serious for a minute,' Flora said, losing patience.

He bolted the rest of his soup and stood up. ‘Thank you, Sarah, delicious. I must go and say prayers at the youth club and hope they haven't tied the new student teacher to the flagpole. Would you like to come, Doctor?'

Flora nodded, wondering if she had annoyed him with mention of Major James. Charles was easily irritated by reference to his coal-owning father, as if he was embarrassed by his vast wealth. But she wanted nothing from him financially, and if it would help Emmie Kelso then she would keep on asking.

As they walked out of the kitchen and across the quad, she hurriedly told him about the sickly girl.

‘She's such a bright little thing and the mother doesn't like keeping her off school, but she's in a bad way. That terrible place! Raw sewage spilling out of a communal midden and no ventilation in those hovels. Can you believe people are still having to live like that in this day and age?'

Charles shook his head. ‘We've conquered half the globe and helped ourselves to its riches, yet the common man sees none of it.'

‘And the common man's wife sees even less,' Flora retorted.

‘Can't you alert the sanitary officer?' Charles suggested.

‘Oh, he's been,' Flora grew more indignant, ‘but his orders fall on deaf ears. The magistrates won't enforce improvements because they are also the rate payers who don't want the expense. Those slums were condemned over twenty years ago, but they're as overcrowded as ever.'

The summer evening light retreated behind the tall brick buildings; the chapel bell began to toll. Flora stopped in the doorway to the hall. This place was incongruous, like a university college dropped in the middle of Gateshead's teeming back-to-backs, an oasis of learning and pleasure amid the relentless poverty. It was a brave, madcap idea to bridge the social chasm - young, idealistic students living among the poor to bring about social change. Flora had heard from Charles how the Settlement Movement had begun with Oxford students going to live in London's East End to teach and research into poverty. It had been a revelation to both social classes and the idea had soon spread to other industrial cities, often instigated by universities or theological colleges. Like the fountain that splashed in the centre of the courtyard, the place revived her flagging spirits.

Charles sensed her mood and took her gently by the arm.

‘I'm sorry I was flippant before. Any mention of my father … I don't want to go through life expecting privileges just because I was bom an Oliphant - or for people to expect favours.'

Flora held his look in the twilight. ‘I'm asking for Emmie's sake, not mine.'

‘Of course. I'm sorry. I'll do what I can to help.'

He looked so boyishly unsure that Flora's heart squeezed in sympathy. She told him about the MacRaes of Crawdene.

Charles gave a mirthless laugh.

‘You've heard of them?' she queried.

He nodded. ‘Jonas MacRae is notorious in Crawdene - he started a socialist Sunday school in opposition to the chapel. Imagine that! In a village that's ninety per cent Methodist. The last I heard he was trying to set up a branch of the Independent Labour Party.'

‘Well, I applaud him for that - they support women's emancipation,' Flora said.

‘Yes, but miners round here are almost solidly Liberal. Men like MacRae are too radical for most. He's what my father would call a troublemaker and Mousy would call a “worky ticket”.'

Flora looked dashed. ‘So you think I'm wrong to interfere and go looking for these MacRaes? Mrs Kelso talked of Jonas as a good, hard-working man.'

‘I'm sure he is,' Charles said quickly. ‘And you're right to try on the girl's behalf. You can't let her die; it's unthinkable.'

‘But sending Emmie into a household of atheists?'

‘Why not?' Charles laughed. ‘Better to be atheist than dead.'

‘That's a strange notion for a future vicar,' Flora remarked.

‘God can use atheists to build a better world too,' he smiled. ‘I'll make enquiries and find out where they live, though I don't think you'll have any difficulty finding them.' He hesitated. ‘I'd offer to come with you, but I really don't think it would help to have the boss's son pleading your cause. From what I hear of Jonas MacRae, he'd say no on principle to an Oliphant.'

Briefly, she touched the hand that still rested on her arm. ‘Thank you, Charles. I just needed to hear I was doing the right thing.'

‘Come on,' he said brightly, ‘let's go and sort out the little anarchists in here.'

Together, they mounted the steps towards the shouts and shrieks beyond the hall door.

***

It was the following Saturday afternoon before Flora had a spare moment to make the journey to Crawdene on her bicycle. Armed with an address from Charles, she left the sprawl of Gateshead and the smaller riverside towns behind. Doubts soon set in. She had no idea what these people were really like or whether her request would be a huge burden. Only the thought of Emmie lying panting in that squalid room, and Charles's encouragement, kept her peddling forward.

The climb grew steeper. She dismounted and pushed her bicycle up the last slope, into a westerly wind. Finally, Crawdene hove into view over the lip of the hill: a long line of terraced cottages with shorter streets running off into surrounding fields fringed by woods. Dominating the skyline, a short walk further uphill from the village was the Liddon pit, named after Charles's dead older brother. The pithead was flanked by sheds and a massive spoil heap. She passed a solidly built brick Methodist chapel and a more modest hall with a tin roof. As they drew closer, Flora noticed the cottages were back-to-backs, the lanes in front mere rutted tracks. In winter they would be rivers of mud. On the breeze came a pungent smell of cesspools. Her heart sank. Emmie would be exchanging one dismal, unsanitary home for another. She stopped, debating whether to turn and leave before she was noticed.

Suddenly, she was hit by a fresh blast of wind. It smelled of honey and hay. A cock crowed. She was reminded of childhood holidays in the countryside of East Lothian. Flora looked around more closely and noticed how some of the pitmen had carved out allotment gardens on steep ground across the dusty lanes. Sheds, made of old fencing and corrugated iron, clung on precariously amid chicken coops, rows of onions, climbing runner beans and sweet peas. It was the mix of colourful flowers grown among the practical vegetables that made Flora press on. This was ten times better than any riverside slum.

She stopped at the co-operative store, crammed with tins, sacks, jars and cooking utensils. Shoppers stood aside for the tall, red-headed stranger in her outlandish cycling breeches and listened to her ask directions to the MacRae house.

‘Aye, they're here all right,' the head shopkeeper laughed. ‘Old Jonas still trying to turn Crawdene into Utopia.'

A woman snorted. ‘Well, he's got a job on his hands.'

‘Not in any bother, are they?' another asked suspiciously. ‘That Rab's a wild one - and young Samuel's not much better. Turning their mam grey.'

‘No,' Flora said quickly, ‘there's nothing wrong. I'm just visiting on behalf of a friend.'

A third woman took her to the door and pointed up the hill and off to the right.

‘Don't listen to them - the lads are canny,' she said in a hushed voice. ‘Bit hot-headed like their da and some take offence at them not ganin' to the chapel, but they'd give you the shirts off their backs if you asked them. Up there. China Street - number eighteen - left-hand side.'

Thank you,' Flora smiled. ‘It's an unusual address, isn't it?'

The woman chuckled. ‘Reckon pit owner stuck pins in an atlas when he named the streets. We've got the whole world in Crawdene from Italy to Siam.'

Flora had to stop herself telling the woman she was right. Except it had been twelve-year-old Charles and his four-year-old sister, Sophie, who had prodded their father's atlas to choose the street names. Charles had told her the story with that mixture of shame and amusement he displayed when talking about his family.

Leaving the bicycle at the store, being looked after by two eager boys, Flora picked her way between the ruts and open drains to China Street. Groups of children stopped their games to stare, but there were few men, just two elderly neighbours sitting out on stools and a glimpse of a man bent over a spade in his allotment.

A dark-haired woman with lively eyes answered her knocking, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Aye, I'm Helen MacRae. If it's Jonas you're after, he's down at the hall, getting it ready for tonight's speaker.'

‘Oh…' Flora paused, wondering if there was any point speaking to Helen without her husband.

Helen took charge of the situation. ‘Looks like you need a sit-down. Come away in. I'm putting on a broth for the lads.'

Flora followed the pitman's wife into the low-ceilinged cottage. ‘We're expecting a good turn-out for the meetin', but Jonas shouldn't be too long - unless he's already arguing with the speaker,' she laughed.

‘What's the occasion?' Flora asked, intrigued.

‘Independent Labour Party - monthly meetin'. Jonas started a local branch after he heard Keir Hardie down Gateshead. There's a debate tonight on universal suffrage.'

‘How interesting.' Flora was impressed, despite her disquiet about the MacRaes' reputation.

‘But you haven't come to hear me prattle on about politics. Please sit down. You'll have a cup of tea, Miss …?'

‘Dr Jameson. And thank you; that would be very welcome.' Flora sat on the horsehair sofa and glanced around the kitchen-parlour. The furniture was solid: a well-scrubbed table with five chairs, a chiffonier that probably pulled out as a bed, and a big chest of drawers. The range was arrayed with pans and a large blackened kettle. The hearth was sooty and the fender dull, but the boots beside it were well polished, and a warm smell of baking made her mouth water.

There were pictures of landscapes on the wall and a large family photograph: Helen in an old-fashioned bonnet beside a stout man with a thick moustache and side whiskers and, in front of them, a row of three solemn, handsome boys. Beside it hung a large framed text proclaiming the Socialist Ten Commandments. Flora had a pang of misgiving. She did not want Emmie to be left with troublemakers. But when Helen thrust a warm scone and a cup of tea at her, Flora dismissed her doubts. Any arrangement over Emmie would only be for a few months - a year at the most.

With plate balanced on her lap, Flora launched into her story about the Kelsos. Helen's round face creased in concern.

‘Poor Mary! We thought she'd remarried. Jonas's letters got returned saying she'd gone away - we just assumed - with her not keepin' in touch, like. And they were such bonny baims. Nelly, wasn't it? What a live spark. And wee Emmie, bright as a button and full of chatter for one so young. Like she'd been here before.'