Chrissie's Children (12 page)

She could hear him, a plaintive, frightened, small voice mewing from under the pile: ‘Mam!
Mam!
’

‘It’s all right, bonny lad!’ Lizzie called to him. ‘I’m coming to get you out! Just lie still!’ She began digging into the wreckage, tearing at the laths that
in turn tore her fingers. When she strained to lift and shove lengths of the rotten timber that had been the rafters she left bloody imprints on the dirty wood. Her flowered cotton dress was torn
and filthy, her cardigan ripped in a dozen places, but she found the boy.

First she uncovered a leg, a bare foot shoved into old plimsolls with holes in uppers and soles, scratched, bruised and dirty skin. Then shorts that had been patched in the seat, followed by a
jersey worn into holes through which showed a shirt washed thin. Lizzie lifted one more baulk of timber, held it propped up with her shoulder as she balanced on the pile of rubble and tossed aside
the last of the plaster that covered little Freddy. She grabbed him by the waistband of his shorts and hauled him out of the hole in which he lay. He scrambled to his feet and Lizzie told him,
‘Go and find your mammy.’

She saw him start, running out through the gap in the wall, then she tried to throw off the timber pressing on her shoulder. As she did so she slipped on the rubble and fell, the timber falling
on top of her. It was no heavier than other lengths she had thrown aside but she was tiring now. She fumbled to lift it, awkward because of her position, lying on her side. Then she heard a
creaking and groaning, looked up and saw the roof sagging. Its beams had been holding the two side walls apart, but now the roof collapsed and the side walls fell inwards. Lizzie saw the whole mass
dropping towards her and screamed, screamed again, then was silent. The dust rose in a much bigger cloud this time, standing above the other houses for long minutes before the wind dispersed
it.

Peter Robinson was one of the many who ran to the scene and helped to clear away the rubble. He saw the crushed body as it was uncovered and recognised it as that of a woman
from the street next to his. It was gently lifted out by a score of hands and he stood back, shaken and shocked, as it was carried past. He could not know that he was soon to witness another
violent death.

Paco Diaz arranged the funeral with the help of the neighbours. Some of them advised that he order horses to pull the hearse and carriages, being traditionally more in keeping
with such a solemn occasion, but he settled on a black motor hearse because that was cheaper. Afterwards there was the usual tea with boiled ham and some discussion as to how much compensation
would be paid – but not in the hearing of the family. Paco never told anyone how much he received.

Helen was pale and hardly uttered a word for a week. Her mother had been taken from her without warning. Helen had kissed her in the morning as she left for school and never saw her again. They
would not let her look at Lizzie in her coffin because even the undertaker’s art could not conceal the battering she had received from the tons of timber and brickwork.

On the morning after the funeral Paco sat back from his empty plate, having eaten the breakfast Helen had cooked for him on the fire. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand then told her,
‘Now you must look after the house and everything. Fetch some paper and write what I say.’ He had never tried to write English. When Helen brought a sheet of paper, pen and ink bottle,
he dictated: ‘Dear miss, now I am alone I must have the daughter to keep the house so she finish school today.’

Helen pleaded with him while the ink dried on the pen and the paper, with the letter only half done. She told him how important it was for her to get her School Certificate and then go on to be
a nurse, told him it was her mother’s wish. He only shook his head, implacable and uncaring. ‘No, no. School no good for girl. Other girls can be nurse but I need you here. This is
woman’s place.’

Juan, still eating, put in, ‘That’s right. Same as we have to work. Cleaning and cooking is a woman’s job.’

‘No more talk,’ said Paco. ‘Write the letter,’ and he lifted his hand. Helen dipped pen in ink, finished the letter in a shaky copperplate and gave it to her father to
sign.

She took the letter to school, gave it to her headmistress and returned home. She had not seen Sophie or any of the other girls and could not have trusted herself to say farewell without
bursting into tears. But she cried when she got back to the empty house, cried for what she had lost – her mother and her hopes and ambitions – and for what lay ahead of her: virtual
slavery as the servant of the two men.

Then she dried her eyes and started work.

Next morning Chrissie drove Jack to work in the Ford. He was on his way to the Balkans to try to obtain a contract for a ship to be built in the yard. His case was in the car
but he had to pick up some papers from his office. As Chrissie steered the Ford across the bridge and turned down the road to the yard, Jack said, ‘This civil war in Spain is a bad
business.’ The war had broken out only weeks before with Franco leading a revolt against the Spanish government.

Chrissie nodded agreement. ‘There was a report in the paper this morning of nearly two thousand being executed by Franco’s men.’

Jack said flatly, ‘Franco and Hitler are two of a kind.’

Chrissie braked the Ford at a T-junction to let a lorry loaded with coal pass by. The lorry was grinding along slowly and as Chrissie eased the car forward she saw a youth running some fifty
yards behind the lorry. He wore a collarless shirt, its sleeves rolled up above the elbows, and patched dungarees. He was carrying a shovel. Then Chrissie swung the car in through the open gates of
the Ballantyne yard and he was lost from sight.

Peter Robinson had borrowed the shovel and was following the lorry to find where its driver was going to deliver his load of coal. Peter hoped then to earn a shilling by shovelling the load into
the buyer’s coalhouse. The lorry slowed, turned into a cobbled back lane then halted at one of the back gates that ran down either side. The driver switched off his engine and got down from
the cab. As he did so the back gate opened and a stocky man, stripped down to a vest and trousers with braces dangling, came out into the lane. He had brawny arms and held a shovel in one big
hand.

Peter, resting on his own shovel while he caught his breath, saw that he was out of luck. This man was ready to unload his own coal. The back of the lorry tilted, the load poured out raising a
cloud of black dust and the stocky man started shovelling it through the hatch into his coalhouse. Peter turned and walked away.

Across the street was the fence of Ballantyne’s yard. His yearning for work drew him to peer through a crack in the fence, looking enviously at a world where men had regular jobs and
pay.

It was a small, secluded corner of that world. He could see the stern of a partly built ship, the steel gleaming with fresh paint and dotted with neat lines of rivet heads. Few men were working
there. Gallagher, the burly, florid foreman, and McNally, his big crony with the scarred face, stood close to the fence. Another man was perched at the top of a ladder that leaned against some
staging erected along the ship’s side. Peter knew him: Harry Henderson, timid and nervous, with a worn-out wife and three small and usually near-naked children. Harry turned his head now to
shout, ‘This doesn’t look too safe.’

His voice came thinly, almost drowned under the hammering and clangour of the yard. Peter wondered what Harry was on about. He withdrew his eye from the crack to wipe it because the draught was
causing it to water. He heard Gallagher shout back, more clearly because he was closer, ‘That’s all right! Get on with it – or I’ll find somebody that will!’ McNally
laughed raucously.

Peter set his eye to the crack again and saw why Harry Henderson had complained. The staging had, at first sight, appeared to be wide enough for a man to walk, provided he had a good head for
heights, being thirty or forty feet above the ground, but now Peter saw that it consisted of only a single plank less than a foot wide.

Harry Henderson had taken in that scarcely veiled threat from Gallagher and, desperate to keep his job, set his feet on the plank. He hesitated, peering down at the drop beneath his feet.
Gallagher shouted again, ‘We want that gear down here for another job! Now
get on wi’ it!
’

Harry moved one foot, then another. Peter saw that Harry had been set the task of sending down a block and tackle and coil of rope hanging from the staging at the far end of the plank. He edged
towards it, one foot sliding ahead of the other, arms outstretched to balance him.

The gull seemed to appear from nowhere. Suddenly it was there, swooping past Harry’s head with a flap of its wide wings and a shrill cry, which was echoed by Harry, startled, as he threw
up one hand to fend it off. As he recoiled from it, he stepped backwards into empty air. Harry Henderson’s arms windmilled wildly and then he was falling, shrieking all the way down until he
landed on head and shoulders and the cry was cut short.

The men working on the ship further along its side could not see the staging from which Harry fell as it was hidden by the curve of the stern. Nor had they heard his shriek and fall, lost in the
din of the yard. Peter saw him lying there, still, saw Gallagher and McNally run to him, kneel over Harry’s body, then rise. McNally climbed the ladder and walked the plank without fear or
doubt, at home up there. He used the block and tackle to haul up more planks, one by one, as Gallagher fastened them on below. He laid them on the staging so there was a walkway over two feet wide.
Then he descended the ladder, joined Gallagher and they ran off up the yard.

Peter had stood frozen with shock, but now he began to think, and quickly. Then he, too, ran.

Jack was in his office, handing over to James Irving, his manager, and picking up the papers he wanted, when his white-faced chief clerk brought the news that a man had fallen
from some staging and been killed. Jack said heavily, ‘Oh, dear God.’ Chrissie stood at his side, her hands to her face. After a shocked moment, he told his manager, ‘I want a
full report and names of witnesses. Someone must tell his widow or his mother. One or two of his friends should go along.’ There would be an inquest, compensation to be settled and paid. Jack
knew the man by sight, could put his face to the name, knew him to be a good worker.

He sighed and looked at his watch. ‘I have to go to catch my train.’

Irving, in his forties, competent and experienced, said sympathetically, ‘Of course, I’ll see to everything here. And good luck.’ He, as much as anyone, knew how important it
was that Jack should obtain a contract. The existence of the yard and his job, like hundreds of others, depended on it.

Jack and Chrissie went down to the Ford where it stood outside the offices. As they stepped out into the open they saw Gallagher only a few yards away. A youth ran in between the gates, set wide
to let out the Ford. Sweat ran in beads down his face and his shirt was stuck to his back. He carried a shovel and Chrissie recognised him from less than an hour earlier. He halted in front of
Gallagher and panted, ‘I hear you’re short of a man now.’

Gallagher gaped, for once taken aback. Jack Ballantyne glared, outraged, and demanded, ‘How dare you? The man’s only been dead a few minutes! Have you no sense of decency, no
respect?’

It was Peter’s turn to be taken by surprise because he had not seen Jack and Chrissie come out of the offices, all his attention being on Gallagher, but he recovered quickly and answered,
‘Aye, Mr Ballantyne.’ He recognised the yard’s owner and his wife. ‘And I’m sorry. But I’ve got a widowed mother and a little brother and we’re living on a
pound a week from the Relief. I need a job to feed them. That’s all I’m asking for, Mr Ballantyne; a job.’

Chrissie turned her head so only Jack could see her face and murmured, ‘We would have found one for Matt, and I think this lad’s desperate.’

Jack looked past her and asked, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Peter Robinson.’ He met Jack’s glare, unashamed, hungry and hoping, but honest.

Jack’s gaze shifted to Gallagher and he told him, ‘Take him on.’

Gallagher swallowed his anger and answered, ‘As you say, Mr Ballantyne.’

Peter said quickly, ‘Thank you, Mr Ballantyne.’

Jack climbed into the car and Chrissie slid in behind the wheel. She set off to drive him to the station. He sat in silence for some minutes as they wound through the streets, and Chrissie did
not disturb him, knowing he was upset by the accident. Then as they were crossing the bridge he glanced down at the river and the yards that lined its banks and said, ‘I don’t like that
chap.’

Chrissie protested, ‘Be fair, you’ve only just taken the lad on.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Not him. I’m talking about the foreman, Gallagher. He knows his job and gets the work done, but there’s something about him . . .’ He shrugged.
‘It’s just a feeling I have. Maybe it’s only imagination and I’m being unfair.’

Soon they were at the station, and Chrissie stood on the platform, waving as the train pulled away with Jack leaning out of the window of a first-class carriage. She managed a smile and called
after him, ‘Good luck!’

Back at the yard, Gallagher had turned away from Peter with a jerk of the head, indicating he should follow. Peter did, and when they were some yards from the other men Gallagher stopped,
confronted him and snarled, ‘You’ll wish you’d never shoved your ugly mug inside that gate!’

Peter held his ground as Gallagher thrust his face close. ‘Will I?’

‘Aye, you will.’ Gallagher was furious because he had cronies lined up for jobs in his gang and would have given Harry Henderson’s place to one of them.

Peter did not know that and opened his mouth to say, ‘I won’t fall like Harry did,’ but then he said nothing. If Gallagher thought Peter had seen the ‘accident’,
and he and McNally covering up their guilt, then Peter’s own life would be at risk. He had intended to use blackmail if he had to, in order to get the job, but Jack Ballantyne’s
intervention had rendered it unnecessary. He saw now that it would have been a fatal mistake because Gallagher would have shut Peter’s mouth. Besides, Peter was sure that Ballantyne’s
yard would have insurance to cover its workers against compensation claims, but if Peter told a coroner that Gallagher had caused the death of Harry Henderson, then Harry’s widow could only
look to Gallagher for compensation – and she would get nothing.