A Crimson Dawn (4 page)

Helen bustled across the room. ‘Let's take a look at you. By, look at those bonny brown eyes - big as spoons - just like your da's!' She gave Emmie a kiss on the forehead. ‘Are you hungry? Looks like you could do with a bit fattening. How's your mam?'

Emmie's lip quivered at the mention of her mother. Helen gave her a swift hug. She smelled of baking and raw onions. ‘Don't you worry, pet. Auntie Helen'll look after you till you're strong enough to gan back. Your mam and sister won't know you once we've put a bit flesh on your bones. How about a cup of milky tea, eh? Do you drink tea?'

Emmie nodded. She watched the plump-faced woman dart around the room, talking all the while and issuing orders.

‘Will you wake Samuel - and don't let him turn over again.' As Rab disappeared up a ladder into the loft, Helen went to the door and called for her youngest son. ‘Peter, time for dinner!'

A thin-faced boy with a watchful gaze appeared silently in the doorway and gave Emmie a quizzical smile. He did not look much older than she.

‘Are you a lass?' he asked. ‘You look like a lass.'

‘Yes, she is. Now wash your hands and set the table,' his mother ordered. ‘An extra place for Emmie, remember. Save your questions for later.'

Emmie looked on warily as one by one the boys gathered around the table. Samuel had fair hair that stuck out like straw. He yawned and winked at her. Peter continued to stare at her and ask again if she was a girl. Helen doled out plates of steaming mince and onion with a solid dumpling perched on top.

‘If you cannot eat the dumpling, Emmie,' Samuel teased, ‘we can play bowls with it later.'

‘Take no notice,' Helen snorted. ‘Eat what you can, pet; the lads'll finish what you can't.'

Emmie took small mouthfuls, her stomach too knotted to eat the tasty-smelling food. She kept glancing up at Rab, who was sitting beside her. When he cleared his plate and got up to go, she clutched at his jacket. He gave her a look of surprise.

‘I have to gan to work now, lass. Me and Samuel. But Peter can keep you company.'

Her eyes brimmed with tears and he quickly dug out another stick of liquorice. With a brisk ruffle of her hair, he jammed on his cap and led his brother out.

‘You look worn out,' Helen said in concern. ‘You have a lie down till your Uncle Jonas gets in. Peter, fetch a blanket from the dresser.'

Emmie tried to stay awake, but the heat of the room and the exhaustion she felt soon overwhelmed her.

When she woke, the sun had left the doorstep and a burly man with bushy grey moustache and side whiskers was sitting by the hearth reading a newspaper. For a moment she lay still, staring at him. He must have sensed it, for he suddenly looked up and frowned.

‘John's bairn,' he said in a booming voice that made her jump. ‘I can tell right enough. Helen, she's awake!'

To Emmie's relief, the woman came rushing in with an armful of washing. ‘Don't go scaring her with your big voice,' she chided. ‘Emmie, this is your Uncle Jonas - he was a great friend of your father's and he wouldn't harm a fly. But he's a bit deaf from working at the pit forge, so he doesn't know he's shouting.'

Emmie sat up and gazed at the man who had been like a brother to her own father. He could tell her stories about the man she could hardly remember, just like Nell told her stories about their past life in a long-ago world.

She swung her weak legs over the side of the sofa and cautiously walked towards him. She had never seen such a hairy man. Grey hair sprouted from his ears, his cheeks, his upper lip and sprang from his head in an unkempt mane. Wiry eyebrows framed bold blue eyes like thatch. He reminded her of a picture on Miss Dillon's wall of Moses parting the Red Sea.

‘Uncle Jonas,' she asked, ‘will you tell me a story?'

He looked at her fiercely. ‘Story, did you say?'

She nodded.

Helen laughed. ‘He's not got much patience for tales and story-telling, pet. Rab's the one with a head for stories.'

Emmie's face fell.

‘What kind of story do you want, lassie?' Jonas barked.

Emmie swallowed the tears welling in her throat. ‘About me da,' she murmured.

He looked quizzically at Helen and she explained what the girl had said.

Suddenly, his severe face broke into a warm smile. ‘Oh, I can tell you stories about your father till the cows come home.'

With that, he dropped the newspaper and drew her under his strong arm.

By the following May, Emmie found it difficult to remember a time when she had not lived in the noisy, vibrant household in China Street. The MacRaes were loving, boisterous and argumentative. Samuel and Rab fought and laughed in equal measure, while strange Peter talked to himself or retreated into the loft to play his penny whistle.

Mealtimes would be punctuated by hot debate over politics and religion, a local quoits match or British treatment of the Boers. Neighbours would call in to share a bowl of tobacco and good conversation. Jonas declared all war waged by governments as imperialist and Emmie puzzled that they had not celebrated victory in the Boer War with bonfires and fireworks as they had in Gateshead.

Rab and his father would argue over the housing given to pitmen by Oliphant.

‘He hasn't spent a farthing on the cottages since they were built,' Rab declared. ‘We don't even have proper sewers. We'd all be better off with a rent allowance and find somewhere fit to live in.'

‘Where?' his father scoffed.

‘County Council can build houses. But they won't as long as folk prefer to crowd into Oliphant's hovels.'

‘At least it's a roof over our heads when trade is slack,' Jonas pointed out.

‘Aye, and you're at the beck and call of Oliphant. If you complain about the middens, he threatens to hoy you out.'

It amazed Emmie how the father and son could be shouting at each other one minute and laughing over a remark made against them the next.

Even her Aunt Helen waded into these verbal battles. One evening after tea, she got up from the table and put on her coat and bonnet.

‘Where do you think you're going?' Jonas growled.

‘To me Guild meeting,' she announced. ‘Medical officer's giving a talk.'

‘But you haven't cleared the table—'

‘No, you and the lads can do that for once. Like it says in that paper of yours, if lasses are to play their part in the class struggle, the men have to help out more so we can gan to our meetings.'

‘What paper?' Jonas demanded.

‘The one Rab was reading me.'

They all gawped at her.

‘And don't you dare leave it all to Emmie - she's got her spellings to practise.' With that, Helen hurried away to the Cooperative Women's Guild, leaving Rab and Samuel hooting with laughter at their astonished father.

Emmie grew to love her adoptive aunt and uncle, who had mollycoddled her through the winter and encouraged her at her lessons. She had a proper coat and boots to go to school in and a warm truckle bed next to theirs to snuggle into at night when the wind howled in the chimney. Week by week she had grown stronger, shaking off the lethargy and breathlessness that had confined her to bed at home. Only one severe bout of wheezing and cold had kept her confined to the house most of January. Helen had plied her with hot infusions, steam baths and rubbed her chest with grease, while Rab had kept boredom at bay by reading to her. He had walked to Blackton, a larger neighbouring colliery, and borrowed novels from the penny library in the Miners' Institute. He read her history books and poetry, despite Helen's chiding not to give the girl a headache. Samuel, when he sat still for more than a minute, played cards with her and taught her how to whistle.

All of them had lusty singing voices and were the mainstay of the socialist Clarion Club in the village. They shared a tin-roofed hall with the Co-operative Guild. Here, they put on short plays and concerts, and ran a socialist Sunday school to rival the religious ones at the Methodist chapel and Blackton's parish church. Emmie loved to hear the MacRae boys sing and was thrilled to be given the job of announcing the acts at their spring concert.

Most of all, Emmie was revelling in being back at school. The teacher, Miss Downs, was stricter than Miss Dillon, but the hours at school flew by. For the first time in ages, she was able to join in skipping games in the school yard and play with the other children. She had been taken under the wing of a talkative girl, Louise Curran. Louise was athletic and prone to be bossy, but she stuck up for the new girl when others tried to pick on her.

‘If you want to fight Emmie, I'll get me big brother on you,' Louise declared, facing down a couple of the older girls. Louise's older brother, Tom, had a reputation as a fighter and the threat seemed to work. Emmie marvelled at the way Louise befriended her and was happy to follow in her wake. The MacRae boys teased her.

‘Our Emmie's gettin' in with the Bible thumpers,' Samuel crowed.

‘Aye, Currans will give you a ticket into heaven,' Rab winked.

‘What d'you mean?' Emmie asked, bewildered by their mirth.

‘Take no notice,' Helen answered. ‘It's just ‘cos the Currans are good chapelgoers.'

‘Aye, and Liberals,' Rab grunted.

‘And think they own the lodge,' Jonas joined in.

‘And live in Denmark Street,' Samuel said in a posh voice.

Emmie put her hands on her hips and answered back. ‘Well, Louise is me friend and she's canny and what's wrong with ganin' to chapel, any road?'

The boys clapped and burst into laughter.

‘Good on you, Emmie,' Rab cried, ruffling her hair, ‘sticking up for your marra.'

Much of what the MacRaes said baffled her, but she loved them all the same. Sometimes, Emmie felt guilty at not missing her mother and sister more. For the first few weeks, she would dissolve into tears at the mere thought of her mother. She missed her gentle way of speaking, the times she would let her sit on her lap while she worked, her sad smile. Emmie hugged a pair of mittens at night because they smelled of her mother. When the smell faded, she wore them to remind her of her mother's hands cutting and sewing.

On Boxing Day, Dr Jameson had brought Mary and Nell up to Crawdene in a borrowed horse-drawn trap, and the MacRaes had made a fuss of their visitors and fed them well. The boys had entertained them with songs and Peter's whistle, and Nell had joined in, her slim face flushed and excited at all the attention. She had turned fourteen and grown, her brown hair pinned up like an adult's, and Emmie was bashful with her suddenly mature sister.

‘I'm thinking of going on the stage,' Nell announced to the consternation of her mother.

‘I'll come and watch you any day,' Samuel grinned, making Nell giggle.

But as far as Emmie knew, her sister was cleaning Dr Jameson's surgery and running messages. A card had come on her tenth birthday, but she had heard nothing for over a month. An Easter visit had been called off because of a freak snowfall on the fell. Instead, Emmie had gone to chapel with the Currans and the planned picnic had ended in a snowball fight, with Tom Curran shoving an icy snowball down her back. High-spirited Tom was belted by his father for making Emmie cry. Full of remorse for getting him into trouble, Emmie had given him her paste egg.

Emmie was at the Currans' now, helping Louise's mother make egg sandwiches for the Sunday school outing to Oliphant's Wood. The houses in Denmark Street for colliery officials were bigger than most, with proper stairs up to two bedrooms, which had fireplaces and casement windows instead of skylights. No Curran needed to sleep in the kitchen, which Mrs Curran kept spotlessly clean and tidy. No matter that her husband was an important deputy at the pit, he was not allowed beyond the scullery door with his filthy pit clothes and boots. Tom had to change in the wash house and hop across the yard in his underdrawers, to Emmie's blushing amusement.

Today Tom was getting his own back. As the youngsters set off up the cinder track to the woods, he pulled the ribbons out of Emmie's hair and ran off laughing.

Furious, Emmie dropped her parcel of sandwiches and ran after him.

‘Come back. I hate you!'

She was lithe and fast, but no match for brawny Tom, who pushed tub loads of coal for miles underground and could sprint like a hare.

‘If you want them, come and get them!' Tom taunted, and disappeared into a mass of bluebells among the trees.

Emmie thrashed around, trying to find him, growing crosser and crosser as her wavy dark hair fell in front of her eyes.

Suddenly, Tom reared from behind a tree with a deafening roar. Emmie screamed, making him hoot with laughter. He dangled the ribbons at her. She lunged.

‘Give 'em over, Tom!'

‘Give me a kiss first,' he challenged.

Emmie looked at him in disgust. ‘I don't kiss lads.'

‘No ribbons then.'

Emmie turned her back and stalked off. Tom ploughed after her, trampling bluebells.

‘A secret then,' he bargained.

Emmie stopped and faced him. ‘What d'you mean?'

‘You tell me a secret and I'll give you yer ribbons.'

‘Don't have any,' she said impatiently.

Tom stood over her, tall and grinning, his hazel eyes teasing. For the first time it occurred to Emmie he would be considered handsome.

‘Who's your favourite lad - out of them MacRaes?'

Emmie was nonplussed. ‘I don't have one. They're all canny.'

Suddenly, Tom caught her by the arm. ‘If there was an accident at the pit and only one of them was saved - which one would it be?'

Emmie swallowed. Tom was not smiling any more.

‘You have to say or you won't get your ribbons back ever.' His grip tightened on her arm. Fear flickered in her stomach.

‘Rab,' she whispered.