A Mother's Gift (15 page)

‘Now then, June, I’ll have none of that sort of talk,’ said Mr Wright. ‘Our Billy will be coming home in an hour or so and we will show respect.’

‘Why but, Dad—’

‘Your dad said that’s enough June,’ her mother intervened. Katie took a sip of tea that scalded her tongue. She
stood
up and put the cup and saucer down on the table. She couldn’t stay another minute, she felt, or she would die of it. Everything in the room reminded her of Billy. She could almost see him walking through the door from the front room.

‘I have to go now, Mrs Wright,’ she said. ‘My gran needs me to help her.’ Katie was amazed at how normal her voice sounded. There was barely a tremor.

‘Aye, of course, lass,’ said Mrs Wright. June made another derisory sound but Katie was past taking notice of her.

Katie walked to her parents’ house in a haze of pain.

What was she going to do without Billy and her grandda? Oh, God, she didn’t know.

Scrubbing down the stairs with the strip of oilcloth in place of a stair-carpet running down the middle, Katie welcomed the hard work. She concentrated on getting dirt out of the corners then left doors and windows open while everything dried out so that when Hannah came home from the hospital she complained loudly.

‘Bloody, hell, Katie, it’s freezing in here! Do you not know it’s still only March?’

‘Leave the lass alone, Hannah, she’s doing her best,’ said Gran. ‘The house will soon warm up.’ Gran sounded tired. She looked tired too, thought Katie, her face was red and sweat beaded her brow. She had just finished black-leading the range and polishing the brass and the fireplace twinkled in the light from the fire she had just relit. She should have taken Gran home before now; the
old
woman was using work to try to escape her misery just as she was herself.

The day of the funerals, the Methodist Chapel was packed. The Church of England had held the funerals for their two members in the morning and the one Baptist funeral was after the Methodists so that the whole day seemed to be taken up with them.

Men crowded round outside the chapel for the pit was idle as a mark of respect. So when Matthew Hamilton arrived in the Bentley, which was gleaming in the pale sunlight, they watched him sullenly for since the night of the accident most of them were beginning to know who he was.

‘I’ve not seen him bother to attend a funeral afore now,’ one man observed. ‘Do you think he’s seen the Light?’ The others smiled; one even gave a guffaw, which was quickly suppressed.

‘Nay lad, I reckon there’s something else to it,’ he answered. The men made way in silence for Matthew to enter the chapel.

He walked straight ahead, ignoring them. Inside he looked quickly around and then went down the aisle to the row just behind the rows reserved for the bereaved families. He sat down beside Parsons and Thompson who moved along the pew to give him plenty of room.

Parsons had been surprised to see him on the night of the accident but he was even more so now. What had got into the boss? Yesterday they had discussed the coroner’s findings, ‘death by misadventure’ had been his conclusion
as
they had expected. And Parsons had put forward his opinion that the dead men had contributed to the unfortunate fall of stone by their own negligence and therefore were not entitled to full compensation. He had sat back, sure that Matthew would agree and instruct his lawyers accordingly but Matthew had not.

‘Three hundred pound per family for every man lost will not break the company,’ he had said and the other two men had gazed at him as though he was going off his head.

‘I know that is the agreed amount,’ Parsons had said after a moment. ‘Agreed by the Owners’ Association that is. But it will create a dangerous precedent. And the other owners will not like it. I would advise against paying out without a fight. After all, there is some evidence that the men may have contributed to the accident.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Matthew had replied and changed the subject, indicating that that was the end of the matter. He looked around the chapel built by the miners fifty years before according to the date on the stone above the door. It was an austere place, he thought with cheap boxwood pews and a floor of bare boards. A homemade black cover hung on the lectern especially for the funerals; in the corner was a pipe organ with an organist playing soft, solemn music. The organ was reedy, the music thin.

Then everyone was standing as the coffins were brought in preceded by the minister in a black plain gown. The coffins were covered with wreaths of flowers. They would have done better to save their money, he reckoned. But miners and their families were a superstitious lot.

‘I am the resurrection and the life—’ the minister intoned as the coffins were carried down the aisle and laid on the trestles. Then Matthew forgot about the others as he saw Katie coming in, supporting an old woman who must be her grandmother. For the rest of the service, while the minister delivered sentimental twaddle about the men who probably had been hard-drinking, work-shy scum rather than the saints he was portraying them as, at least in Matthew’s opinion, he watched the back of Katie’s head, occasionally glimpsing her profile as she turned a concerned face to her grandmother.

And more than one miner watched the big boss rather than paying attention to the service and a few of them came to the same conclusion as to what he was doing there when he should have stayed with his own folk and left them to their grief. Then the organ was playing ‘Gresford’, the miners’ hymn and they were standing to sing the Twenty-Third Psalm.

‘When are you due back at the hospital?’ Matthew asked. The funerals were over, the mourners leaving the cemetery. Already the crowds were thinning out. Parsons and Thompson lingered on beside Matthew until he told them they could go, then Matthew had stood by his car waiting for a chance to speak to Katie. And of course she came over to him, as he had known she would, if only to thank him for coming.

Katie was still wrapped in a haze of grief, she hadn’t even thought about the hospital or anything else except the necessity of getting over these few days, hoping and praying all the time that the heavy weight on her heart
would
lift, even a little bit. She had read the letter from Matron of course. An official letter giving her time off until the day after the funeral but no more. After all, the letter implied, a grandfather was not really a next-of-kin. Though it was very sad and the senior staff joined with Matron in offering Katie their every sympathy. But tomorrow, Sunday, she was to report for work on A Ward, men’s surgical.

‘Early tomorrow. I’ll have to go this evening.’

‘Then I will take you back,’ said Matthew. ‘Now, no argument, I insist.’ He sounded like an elderly uncle bestowing a favour, he thought, so went on. ‘Only if you wish it, of course. But it will be easier for you.’

‘I can’t go until after the funeral tea,’ said Katie. She looked over her shoulder to where her gran was standing by the undertaker’s car. ‘Look, I’ll have to go, thank you, Mr Hamilton,’ she said swiftly, edging away.

‘I’ll call for you at seven, will that be all right? I have to go into Bishop Auckland in any case,’ he added. It was all he could think of as a reason for hanging around for two hours. Two men walked past and glanced curiously at him standing by the Bentley, the chauffeur sitting behind the wheel, his expression impassive. Knowingly, they looked from Matthew to Katie but neither of the two noticed.

‘What do you make of that, eh?’ one said to the other.

‘Nay lad, surely not,’ said the other. ‘And her lad hardly cold in his grave.’

‘Nowt so queer as folk,’ the first one replied.

Matthew got into the car. ‘Home Lawson,’ he said. ‘I
won’t
need you tonight. I have decided to drive myself.’

‘Yes sir.’

Well thank God for that, the chauffeur said to himself. He was absolutely fed up with hanging about miserable pit villages and damp cemeteries. It was enough to give anyone the hump, he said later to Daisy when she slipped into his cosy flat with his supper on a tray.

Once home, Matthew popped his head around the drawing-room door. Mary Anne was sitting on a hard chair by the fire, working away on her embroidery frame. She looked up at him and smiled. At last he was showing some feeling for his workers, going to the funerals of those poor miners. Perhps he was not so hard-hearted as he tried to make out.

‘Are you staying in, Matthew?’ she asked. ‘If so, I’ll order an early dinner. You must be hungry—’

‘No, don’t bother, I’m going straight back out,’ he said. He looked at her, trying to hide his distaste. Her skin was sallow and beginning to show lines around the mouth and dark shadows under the eyes. She was breeding again, let’s hope she would carry this one for the full nine months and deliver a healthy boy. Then at least he would not feel constrained to go to her bed.

‘But Matthew, you’ve just come in, where are you going?’

‘A meeting in the Royal, there’s a chance of a government contract,’ he lied glibly. ‘Can’t stop, I must go and change.’ Mary Anne was left looking at the closed door. But the uppermost feeling in her mind was relief, she
could
have Cook prepare a tray with something light, perhaps a clear soup, a little chicken. She was prone to heartburn with this baby and that was something that hadn’t bothered her with the others. Perhaps it was a good sign? Oh, dear God, she hoped so.

At ten minutes to seven, the Bentley glided to a halt on the end of the rows at Winton Colliery. Matthew sat behind the wheel, considering whether to go to the house and knock for Katie or to wait for her here for she would be bound to come out shortly.

Oh, for goodness sake, he was simply doing a girl a good turn, wasn’t he? At least, that was what people would think. And come to think of it, did he care what these pit folk thought? Not at all he decided. He got out of the car and walked down the row to the front door of the house where she lived.

Katie had had just about as much as she could manage to take without screaming out loud. She felt weary to death and every limb ached. She fetched and carried for two and a half hours for the friends and neighbours who came in to offer their commiserations and stay to the funeral tea of cold ham, salad and pease pudding. She had buttered bread until her wrists ached and she felt her fingers might drop off.

Worst of all she had nodded her head and accepted the sympathy of everyone, the whole village perhaps. Her eyes were scratchy as sandpaper and there was a persistent throb behind her right eye that increased from simple pain to agony and back again every time she moved. All the
time
she kept a careful eye on her grandmother who was looking older and more frail by the minute. She feared she was reaching breaking point. Kitty sat in the Room in the rocker that had been Noah’s and was now brought in from the kitchen to stand by the sofa. Kitty sat in unaccustomed idleness, she drank cup after cup of strong black tea.

Hannah was there. It was the first time she had been in her mother-in-law’s house since Katie was small. She had not come to help Katie but then, no one expected it of her. She sat on the opposite side of the fireplace on the sofa with Betty by her side. ‘Me and your gran would like some more tea, Katie,’ she sang out at intervals. ‘And mebbe a nice piece of that slab cake that’s on the table there.’

‘Leave the lass alone, I’ll get it,’ said Gran, suddenly noticing Katie’s white face. She got to her feet and stood, swaying alarmingly.

‘Now then, you sit down before you fall down,’ Hannah advised kindly. ‘Katie’s a strong lass, she can manage. Can’t you, Katie?’

Katie nodded and cut a couple of slices of the slab cake, the kind that was always supplied by the Co-op store as part of their funeral tea. The store had taken care of everything, arranging the funeral, cars, chapel service, minister and cemetery plot and also, the tea. For a discount, of course, in a sad case like this one.

Katie was trying not to think of the funeral tea that was going on at the same time in the next street in the Wrights’ house. She had managed to slip in for a few minutes to pay her respects but it was all so unreal.

‘Don’t upset me mam any more than she is!’ June had snapped when she saw Katie at the door. ‘I thought you’d be busy with your grandda’s funeral, any road?’

‘I’ve just called for a minute,’ said Katie.

‘Aye well, I don’t think you should go in, me man and dad are in a state as it is. I’ll tell them you called, will I?’

Katie had stumbled back down the yard, her feelings too frozen even to cry.

She looked around the Room now as she handed over the slab cake. Most of the visitors had already gone, thank goodness. Soon Gran would be able to relax.

‘Will you watch her while I get my things ready to go back to the hospital, Mam?’ she asked softly so that Gran didn’t hear, hating having to ask. ‘Only I must go back-’

‘Oh, aye, hadaway, get on back to Teesside,’ said Hannah. ‘I’m sure you’ll be glad to leave all this misery behind you—’ She stopped speaking, as there was a loud knock at the door. Everyone turned to look for it was the front door, unused for months until today when the coffin holding the remains of the master of the house had been carried out to the hearse.

Who was it? No one asked but the question hung in the air. No one went to the door until Kitty roused herself.

‘Answer the front door, pet, will you?’