A Mother's Gift (30 page)

‘We have a fridge, Mam,’ said Georgie. To her the pre–fabricated houses looked tiny, smaller even than the houses in the mining rows.

Kate laughed and stood up. ‘I know that. But somehow I never expected there to be one in Winton Colliery. Apart
from
in the manager’s house, that is. Let’s go down and have a proper look, shall we?’

They walked back down the road and put the picnic things in the boot of the car. Kate peered into the wing mirror, looking at herself critically.

‘How do I look?’ she asked.

‘Oh Mam, you look fine, of course you do. You always do.’

They walked along the top of the rows, drawing curious glances from the few people about. So far, Kate had seen no one she knew. A few boys were playing in the middle of the street with a cricket bat and a tennis ball and wickets chalked on the wall of a coal house. Kate hesitated at the top of West Row, wondering whether to go down and look at the house where she grew up. In the end she walked down the back alley to the gate and looked over into the yard.

‘Our Katie! What the heck are you doing here? Slumming it a bit, aren’t you?’ A woman had come out of the back door with a tin bath full of wet washing and she halted and stared at them.

‘Mind Ethel, that’s a grand way to talk to your sister,’ said Kate, unfazed, though she had not expected to find Ethel so easily. She walked up to the woman and pecked her on the cheek. ‘So you and Dave got me Gran’s house, eh?’

Ethel sighed. ‘You’d best come in,’ she said and led the way.

The kitchen was different. There was a utility sideboard instead of Gran’s press and a gas stove of all things in a
corner
. The walls were distempered a light lemon colour. The range was still large and black-leaded with a brass rail under the mantelshelf and on one side there was an old picture of Noah and Kitty and on the other a tinted one of Thomas and Hannah. A bright fire burned in the grate despite the warmth of the day.

‘Sit you down,’ said Ethel and picked up the iron kettle and shook it, decided there was plenty of water in it and placed it on the coals. Turning, she looked Georgina up and down.

‘This is your lass, is it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, sorry. This is Georgina,’ said Kate. ‘Georgie, this is your Aunt Ethel.’ She looked a little apprehensive, a child out of wedlock was not looked upon lightly in Winton Colliery. At least not as she remembered it.

‘How do you do?’ said Georgina, lifting her chin and holding out her hand.

‘By, she’s a fancy talker an’ all,’ said Ethel. ‘How do
you
do, pet? You’ve got the Benfield eyes any road. Though you must have got that black hair from your dad.’

Kate beamed. Ethel was taking this altogether better than she had expected. She had always been such a shadow of Betty and Betty was a bitter sort of girl when they were younger. Now Ethel was different, more tolerant.

‘I haven’t got much in, it being washing day and I haven’t been to the store,’ said Ethel, putting out a plate of Yorkshire parkin.

‘We’ve had our lu – dinner,’ said Kate. ‘We brought a picnic and ate it up by the old aerial flight engine house.’

‘Mind, you needn’t to have done that,’ Ethel declared. ‘We are family after all.’

‘Well, I didn’t know how things were now, I thought you might not want us in your house,’ Kate said deprecatingly.

‘Aye but we might as well let bygones be bygones,’ said Ethel. ‘Dave’s in the back shift and the bairns get their dinners at school now, there never were such times. So I’m not rushed for time. I’ll just hang these clothes out though, they could be drying.’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Kate.

Georgina was fascinated. She watched through the window as the two sisters hung out the lines of clothes in the back yard. The sheets were taken out of the yard and strung across the back alley. As they worked they talked about the days gone by, what an old devil Grandda Noah had been. How their father had lingered on for a while after the accident before he died and how Hannah had gone soon after. How the pit yard had been bombed in 1940 and nothing hit but the lamp cabin. How Betty had met and married a Canadian airman and gone to live in Canada from where she sent food parcels home with notes like she was blooming Lady Bountiful. How Dave, who’d been a Territorial, had gone into the army, the DLI, and been in Tunisia and Italy and come home unscathed. They were still talking when they came back in with the empty peg bag and while Ethel brewed the tea. Yet not a word had been said about Kate and Georgina and what had happened to them. Kate was talking in exactly the same accent as Ethel by now.

‘An’ what do you do, pet?’ asked Ethel at last.

‘I’m going to Durham University in October,’ said Georgina.

‘Eeh you’re not, are you? That’s grand! I don’t think we’ve had anybody in the family going to university before. Mind, my lad Tom is bright, real bright. He’s always top of the class at school. Get a scholarship he will, his teacher says.’

The afternoon slipped away and Tom and his sister Grace came in from school. They stood about silently, looking at the visitors with the striking dark blue eyes of the Benfields. It was plain to see they were all related.

Shortly afterwards Kate decided it was time to be on their way.

‘Come again,’ said Ethel. ‘Eeh, our family used to be all over the rows and look at us now. Only me and our Willie. And his sour-faced wife.’ She paused and looked hard at Kate.

‘Did you know he married Billy Wright’s sister? Well, he did. He’s an overman now and she reckons they’re too good for the likes of us. They’ve got an official’s house over at the other end of the rows.’

They walked to where the car was parked at the end of the row, Ethel and the two children with them. Tom hung about the car, looking at everything; he even wanted to look under the bonnet.

‘My dad’s getting a car,’ he said, speaking for the first time. ‘He’s going to get an Austin ten,’ he told Georgina. ‘Only the waiting list is too long for a new one, see.’

‘I see.’ Georgina nodded her understanding. ‘This one
is
second-hand too, of course. But it’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘It’s grand,’ said Tom fervently.

‘Come back soon,’ Ethel was saying. ‘Never mind what anyone else thinks neither. It was all so long ago, any road. I don’t blame you for getting away from here neither. They were desperate times, before the war. So don’t forget, come back to see us.’

‘I will.’ Kate and Georgina got in the car and Kate started the engine. Ethel leaned forward and spoke through the car window.

‘You know, they
were
desperate times. Me mam had to let you go to our gran. She used to get dreadful head-aches an’ all, me mam, the megrims. An’ the doctor used to have no time for her. Said she was just lazy and looking for excuses. But in the end it was a brain tumour took her. An’ she had a hard time with me da before he died. She used to tell me all about it.’

They drove home with the sun behind them, lighting the fields and hedges. In places farmers were reaping and stacking corn, it was a beautiful early evening.

Georgina and her mother were quiet, Kate with a reminiscent look on her face and Georgina simply sitting there, digesting what she had seen and learned. On the way out they had stopped by the cemetery.

‘Wait here, I want to go in alone,’ said Kate. So Georgina sat and watched as her mother stopped by a sort of monument and stood for a moment, head bowed. It must be the monument to the disaster when her great-grandfather was among those killed, Georgina realised.
And
Billy of course. Billy, her mother’s sweetheart. Georgina waited ten minutes then went in and stood beside her mother. She took hold of her hand and felt it trembling. There was nothing she could say to comfort her, she knew. It had all been so long ago.

‘I TOLD YOU
it would be a nine-day wonder,’ said Dorothy. ‘You see, they’ve forgotten all about you and Matthew Hamilton.’

She and Kate were sitting in the kitchen over a cup of tea and the papers. Now that Kate was mobile she popped into Roseley every morning and picked them up. There was a short piece concerning the ironmaster’s will and Kate had feared they might have picked up on it and repeated the old gossip but there was nothing.

‘Just as well now Georgie’s away to Durham,’ Kate replied. She paused for a moment before coming up with what was uppermost on her mind. ‘I’m thinking of selling this house, Dorothy. I want to move back to Winton Colliery.’

Dorothy put down her cup so suddenly her tea sloshed a little into the saucer. She stared at it then got up and took it to the sink where she wiped it before sitting down again. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose I could retire, find a little place for myself. They are building a few council flats on the
edge
of the village. Or I could go to Australia and see my grandchildren.’

‘Dorothy! Won’t you be coming with us?’ Kate was shocked.

‘You haven’t asked me, have you?’

‘Dorothy Poskett, don’t be a fool,’ said Kate. ‘I shouldn’t have to ask, you’re part of the family. Unless … Maybe you don’t want to go so far away? Oh, Dorothy, I’m sorry. I took it for granted that you would come with me.’

‘It’s not so far is it? I can always come back to Roseley for a visit if I wanted to.’

‘You’re a good friend, Dorothy,’ said Kate and leaned across to squeeze Dorothy’s hand. Dorothy smiled. ‘And with Georgie in Durham it would be just as easy for her to come to Winton as it is to come here,’ Kate went on. Her thoughts were racing; she had seen a house for sale in Winton old village. A lovely house, next to the chapel and with a large garden at the back. It was not grand enough to make Winton folk look askance at her but big enough with three bedrooms and a bathroom and a new kitchen. Or there was the one on the top of the bank on the way to Bishop, that was a lovely house too. And it would be almost as airy as the moors so Dorothy would like it. She wasn’t so sure about Georgina. But then, Kate had resigned herself to the fact that Georgina would be unlikely to want to live with her in the future. She had her own life.

Georgina was almost twenty and in her second year at Durham. She was doing well and planned to spend the
summer
vacation in Europe with friends. All of which meant she was home less and less each year and though Kate knew it was inevitable she was lonely.

‘I wouldn’t hold her back,’ she said, almost to herself.

‘Who?’

‘Georgie.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Dorothy. Then, ever practical, she went on, ‘You couldn’t if you wanted to.’

The letterbox rattled and Kate went through to the hall to pick up the post and skimmed through the few letters to see if there was one from Georgie. There was and her heart lifted. She took it back into the kitchen to read for Dorothy loved to hear the news from her beloved girl as much as she did herself.

‘Dear Mam and Dorothy,’ it began. All Georgie’s letters began like that though it was understood that Kate read them first in case there was any private business.

‘I’ll be home this weekend,’ Kate read aloud and looked up, smiling. ‘She’s coming home, Dorothy,’ she repeated and Dorothy nodded.

‘I’ll make parkin,’ she said. ‘The lass always liked parkin.’

‘I’ll come on Friday. Mr Richards says it is imperative that I attend a meeting at Hamilton Hall. I’ll tell you all about it when I come. Best love, Georgina.’

‘Friday. That’s today,’ said Dorothy. Kate forgot all about her plans for going to Bishop Auckland to the estate agents. There was Georgina’s bedroom to make ready and she would help Dorothy with the baking. And then there would be extra shopping to get in, she would
do
that now. With the car it was so easy to slip into the village.

Georgina turned east off the Great North Road and drove towards the coast. The MG was a little harder to handle than her mother’s car but she had loved it since the day she was told it was ready to be picked up at the Morris garage in New Elvet. Normally diving it made her feel happy and carefree and since the end of petrol rationing in May she took every opportunity to get out in the car. But today she was in a bad mood. Had been since the day before yesterday and the telephone call from Robert Richards. Mr high and mighty Robert Richards, she thought savagely. Who did he think he was, her father? Sometimes she thought he had designs on her mother, the way he looked at her. Well, even if they worked and she would do her best to see they did not, that wouldn’t make him her father.

There she had been a good obedient girl and told him her plans for the summer as he had told her she must and he had rung her up in college and told her they were out of the question.

‘You must come here and spend some time getting to know the business,’ he said.

‘I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to,’ Georgie had retorted.

‘That’s true, you don’t. But then, you will lose your inheritance. Do you realise that?’

The upshot had been that she had agreed to attend the meeting at the Hall. ‘I will bring my mother,’ she said. That would upset him in case it upset his mother and
Bertram
and that mouse of a sister of his, she thought. Bertram especially, he was such a child.