Above the Harvest Moon (38 page)
She returned to the kitchen and busied herself with the mutton broth she had simmering on the hob, skimming off the murky surface and adding a couple of dessertspoonfuls of rice, a chopped leek and some other vegetables to the scrag of mutton and bones before returning it to the hob. The evening meal seen to, she was just about to clear away the farm food when the kitchen door was thrust open and Adam came in.
Rose saw his eyes go immediately to the kitchen table and she could have kicked herself. She hadn’t realised it was so late. With the bairns off school for the Christmas holidays and Jake calling in, she’d lost track of time.
‘The big man’s been round then?’ Adam addressed his father, not her, throwing his bait can down on the table as he spoke.
‘Oh aye, he’s been.’
Wilbur had brightened up as soon as Adam appeared. Nowadays, even if Adam worked a double shift into the night, Wilbur would wait up for him. She had remonstrated with him at first but since she had come to understand that Adam was her husband’s link with the pit Wilbur had worked in since a lad of thirteen and, more than that, his pride, she’d left well alone. She steeled herself for the inevitable question and like clockwork it came.
‘So, lad,’ Wilbur said, his voice as offhand as he could make it, ‘anything doing yet then?’
Depending on Adam’s mood he would respond to the question he heard six times a week with mild impatience or downright irritation. She couldn’t blame him. Since Wilbur had lost his job, six times a week added up to a fair few times her son had walked in to the same words, and there was always a note of heightened desperation after Jake had called.
Whether Adam had noticed this too and the knowledge moderated his reaction she didn’t know, but her son’s voice was sympathetic when he said,‘There’s nowt, Da. Maybe after Christmas, eh?’
‘Aye, aye.’Wilbur clutched at the lifeline.‘Things have got to ease up soon. I met Seth Todd a couple of days ago and he reckons some of the old-timers’ll be set on again in the New Year. Mind, he’s only working ’cos he nipped up to the colliery the day there was that accident and three men were injured and asked to be taken on. A dozen or more raced each other to the gates even as the poor devils were being carried out. If I had to get back down like that I’d tell ’em to shove it.’
Rose met her son’s eyes for a moment. They both knew that if Wilbur had heard about the accident, he’d have been there with the others. Every time a man came home and said he’d been given the sack, his neighbours would slink off, shamefaced admittedly but with a thin wife and bairns crying because their bellies were empty, what could you do? Shaking off her thoughts, Rose said briskly, ‘Get yourself washed and I’ll have a cup of tea and a shive of sly cake ready. Dinner’ll be a while yet.’
Ignoring her, Adam turned to his father again. ‘Hannah come with him?’
‘Aye, she brought some bits for the bairns for Christmas. There’s something for Sadie an’ all.’
Adam’s eyes were hard. ‘My bairn’ll have nowt that comes from him.’
Rose stared at her son, anger uppermost. Reminding herself with some effort that he had a lot on his plate what with Lily and the bairn and, not least, working down the pit for a pittance, she said nothing. She’d long since become reconciled to the fact that her eldest son and her second-born would always be at enmity with each other. She took the kettle from the hob and carried it into the scullery where she emptied the contents into the tin bowl which served for daily washing, adding most of the pail of cold water at the side of the stone sink so the water was tepid. She placed a bar of blue-veined soap and a large rough towel by the bowl, then walked back into the kitchen, saying briefly, ‘It’s ready.’
Adam gave no word of thanks, brushing past her with a face like thunder. Rose hurriedly cleared the table after using the remaining water in the pail to fill the kettle which she placed on the hob. When the tea was made she poured three cups, giving Wilbur his before bringing out the sly cake. Glancing at her husband, she said, ‘Do you want a piece before your dinner?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.’
He glared at her, his eyes narrowed. ‘One of these days . . .’ He allowed the threat to hang in the air for a moment before he growled, ‘Aye, I want a bit, why wouldn’t I?’
There was silence in the kitchen until Adam came and sat down. He drank his tea in a few swallows, then pushed his mug towards his mother for a refill without speaking or looking at her. After finishing the sly cake and drinking half of his second mug of tea, he said to no one in particular, ‘Hannah all right then, is she?’
It was Wilbur who said, ‘Aye, far as I know, lad. She looked as bonny as ever.’
‘Come clean about her and this Daniel yet, has she?’
Rose looked at her husband and he at her, and for a rare moment their thoughts were joined. Tentatively, Wilbur said, ‘I think you’re on the wrong tack there, lad. From what I can tell, she’s one of them lasses that keeps herself to herself. Likely all that with her uncle’s put her off.’
Adam leant back in his chair but it was to his mother and not his father, he said, ‘Say it. I know you’re thinking it.’
Rose raised her eyebrows.
‘That it was me who put Hannah off, as Da terms it. Well, let me tell you, the pair of you,’ his eyes briefly turned to his father before returning to Rose, ‘she’s pulling the wool over your eyes. She was seeing that lackey of Jake’s before me and her fell out, Joe said as much back then.’
‘Not to me he didn’t.’ Rose met her son’s angry gaze and although her voice was low it was firm. ‘Hannah’s a good lass, she wouldn’t do something like that.’
‘You don’t know the half.’
‘I know enough to recognise the type of lass who behaves herself and them who don’t and you got caught by one of the latter.’
‘Huh!’ Standing up with enough force to send his chair tottering, Adam slammed out of the kitchen.
When they heard his footsteps in the bedroom he shared with Lily, Wilbur said, ‘He’ll freeze up there.’
‘That’s up to him, isn’t it?’ Rose cleared away the mugs and the remains of the sly cake with jerky movements.
‘We’d be hard pressed without what he brings in.’
‘We’d have to manage, wouldn’t we? And Stephen’s wage is double that of Adam’s.’
‘That’s not Adam’s fault.’
Maybe it was the fact that for once her husband’s voice was more sorrowful than angry, but suddenly Rose’s irritation and resentment drained away. Plumping down on one of the hard-backed kitchen chairs, she said, ‘I know, I know. And Adam’s a hard worker, I’m not denying it. I just wish . . .’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Useless to say she wished things had been different between Jake and Adam and that Adam was free of the pit and working alongside Stephen - it would be a red rag to a bull. Looking hard at her husband, she said, ‘Hannah’s a good lass, Wilbur.You know it same as me. And this - this
obsession
he’s got about her and this lad, it’s not healthy, even if he wasn’t a married man with a bairn. You’ll have to talk to him.’
obsession
he’s got about her and this lad, it’s not healthy, even if he wasn’t a married man with a bairn. You’ll have to talk to him.’
‘Me?’
‘Aye, you. It’s been going on for too long. I thought it’d fade after a while but you heard him tonight.’
Wilbur’s head jerked to one side as it sometimes did these days. The nervous tic had started shortly after the miners had gone back after the General Strike and had got worse in the last little while. ‘I’m saying nowt. He’s allowed his own thoughts, even the damn owners can’t take away a man’s thoughts and I’m blowed if I’m going to tell him how to think.’ She saw him cast her a side-long glance. ‘Anyway, like the lad says, who knows what goes on up at that farm? Jake wouldn’t stand in her way if she took up with Daniel, that’s for sure, he’d look at it as one in the eye for Adam.’
‘Give me strength.’ Rose’s infuriated mutter brought Wilbur sitting up straighter but in the same moment the back door banged and a second later Naomi hurried into the kitchen, her face white and pinched with cold. In the ensuing bustle of getting Naomi’s wet things off and her daughter’s blue feet soaking in a bowl of hot water laced with mustard, the conversation was put to one side. But it was not forgotten, not by Rose, and the worry that had begun two years before on Christmas Day when Adam had disappeared for a large part of the afternoon and returned in a white-hot rage was stronger. She hadn’t believed his explanation that he had met some pals and finished up having a row with one of them then, and she didn’t now. He had been to the farm that day, knowing Jake and Joe were out of the way, she felt it in her bones, and whatever had transpired between him and Hannah had not been to his liking. And these walks he took sometimes, even in the winter if the weather wasn’t too bad.Where did he go? Adam had never been one to walk. Was he trying to spy on the lass? But it was no good her saying anything.
Naomi was looking a mite better, with the colour back in her cheeks, and Rose busied herself stirring the broth and then setting the table. It was only his da who would be able to get through to Adam and with Wilbur thinking the sun shone out of his eldest son’s backside, she might have known he’d do nothing to upset him.
Should she have a word with Jake on the quiet?
And then she answered herself with an immediate no. Whether she was right or wrong, Jake getting involved would be like the spark to a powder keg. No, the best she could hope for was that she was wrong. Failing that, that Adam would come to his senses by himself. But would he? Please, God, make him see sense.
She sliced the two loaves of stottie cake she had baked to go with the broth into big chunks, praying as she worked.
Chapter 21
No one looked twice at the two shabbily dressed individuals who had just climbed down from the harrier’s cart at the back of the Bishopwearmouth cemetery. Even if they had, no one would have recognised the smaller of the two.The years had not been kind to Silas Fletcher. His indulgence in most of the vices known to man had stripped him of his good looks, and with the passage of time his face had taken on a sour yellowness as his thin wiry body had seemed to shrivel. Only his eyes remained the same, the permanently bloodshot whites emphasising the bullet-hard quality of the black orbs. His companion, a long lean individual with a permanent stoop, was equally unprepossessing.
It was this man who now said, ‘You sure we’re doing the right thing, Len?’
‘Aye, I’m sure.’ He had called himself Leonard Craggs when he had arrived down south and no one, not even Sid who had been a crony for over twenty-five years, knew any different. ‘I told you, it’s got too hot for me in London, I need to give it a bit of time to cool down with Dave Kane breathing down my neck. One warning to make meself scarce was enough.’ He glanced down at his right hand and his bandaged fingers.
‘Still hurt?’ Sid said sympathetically.
‘If you’d had your fingers broken one by one in a vice operated by one of Kane’s gorillas, would it hurt?’
‘You shouldn’t have squealed to the law the last time you got caught. You were lucky it was just one hand. I’ve known Dave Kane put a man in a wheelchair for life for less than what you did. Kenneth Gray—’
‘All right, all right. I don’t want to hear about Kenneth Gray.’ Silas swore under his breath. ‘Look, I told you, I’ve got family round these parts I can perhaps tap for a bob or two. Folk who’d rather forget I exist.’
‘How do you know they’re still alive?’
‘I don’t. That’s what we’ve come to find out, remember?’ said Silas with heavy sarcasm. ‘But the main thing is we’re far enough away to satisfy Kane and I know this area like the back of my hand, the old part of the town at least. Especially the East End where the action is. Stick with me an’ you’ll be all right.’
Sid glanced at Silas’s bandaged hand. He looked doubtful.
Delving into his coat pocket, Silas counted the money he was carrying in a smart black leather wallet. ‘We’ve a few days’ board and lodging with nice grub courtesy of that gentleman’s generosity back at Euston. Not that he knew he was being generous of course.’ Silas smiled, showing stubs of blackened teeth. ‘Not bad, considering I usually use my right hand.’
‘You’re a marvel, Len.’
They had begun walking as they talked and now Silas glanced up and down Chester Road.The day was bitter, the cutting edge of ice in the rain but he wasn’t downcast. Like he’d said to Sid, he’d make a few inquiries about Rose and his brothers and sisters but he wasn’t expecting anything from it. If Rose or any of them were alive, ten to one they’d be living hand to mouth and he wasn’t about to advertise his return for a few measly pennies. His main reason for coming back to the north-east rather than going elsewhere was that he knew all the old haunts and dens, it was familiar ter-ritory which would give him an edge. Two or three months here, six at the most, and he could return south. Maybe not London though. His broken fingers were throbbing. And he’d keep his head down for a while when he left here. If Kane had wanted to put the wind up him, he’d succeeded.
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