Northern Girl (19 page)

‘Aye, it’s a bit of a shock, all right,’ Jack answered. He shook his head, feeling sympathy for his son, before adding quietly, ‘Bah, ah thought ’ee had more sense than that, like. He’ll have ter marry her, don’t yer think, lass?’

‘I don’t know, Da. He’ll need time, no doubt, to get used to the idea.’

In the scullery Mam was flustered, busying herself cutting the apple pie, when Tom said, ‘I had no idea, Mam.’

‘Well,
we
had no idea that you’d even taken up with a lass over there, Tom. Yer kept that one quiet enough. Yer can’t bury yer head in the sand over this one, lad, yer’ll have ter face up to it one way or the other, yer know.’

‘I didn’t tell you about her, Mam, because I thought that was the end of it, like. What with me coming back to England and her living in France—’

‘Do yer love ’er?’ Hannah interrupted.

‘Aw, Mam, how can you ask us a question like that?’ he shook his head.

‘Well, it’s simple enough, lad. Yer either love ’er or yer don’t,’ she said abruptly.

He’d never seen his mother in this mood before. ‘Look, Mam, I loved her when I was over there, and I even got to love her family. But I knew all the time that I had to come back to England and my own family. She … Maddie, I mean, doesn’t speak much English, and, well, you know what my French is like! So there was no future as far as I could see. You must see that yourself, Mam.’

‘All ah can see at the moment, lad, is that you’ve got a bairn on the way.’ She carefully didn’t mention the word ‘marriage’. The thought of her beloved son
marrying a stranger from another country was hard for her even to think about. As she walked past him to take the pie to the table, she said crossly, ‘Whatever were yer thinking of, lad!’

She placed the pie on the table none too gently, and looked around at her family, at a loss as to what to say to them.

Rene put a hand on her arm. ‘It’ll all be sorted somehow, Mam. Try not to worry too much. Let’s just wait and see what this girl’s brother has to say, eh?’

‘Well, more ter the point, what are we goin’ ter say ter ’im, when ’ee gets ’ere?’ Hannah said, looking anxious. ‘And I hope he can speak English, an’ all!’

‘Even if ’ee can ’ee’s goin’ ter have a job ter understand us, lass!’ Jack put in.

Tom came back to the table and glanced towards his father as he sat down. Jack looked at him, sympathy in his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

‘What
is
up with you lot? Yer look as if yer’ve lost five bob, and not even
found
a tanner!’ Jeannie observed between gulps of fizzy pop and pie.

‘Get on with your pie,’ Rene said. ‘And don’t talk with your mouth full.’ Her scolding was only half-hearted.

‘The custard’s got a skin on it!’ Grandda Elliott complained loudly, as he picked up the heavy white jug.

‘Oh, give uz it ’ere,’ Hannah said quickly. She scraped the skin off the top, before pouring the custard on to his piece of pie.

Jeannie, swallowing the last mouthful of hers, said,
‘Will yer come and play tiddlywinks with uz, our Tom?’

Tom, feeling a desperate need to get away from the table and out of the room to think things through, answered, ‘Of course I will, lass. Go and get them, and we’ll put them on a stool out in the yard.’

‘What do you say before you leave the table, Jeannie?’ Rene warned, seeing that she was about to leap up.

‘Oh, can ah leave the table?’ Jeannie said. Rene, still not satisfied, prompted her with a nod of the head and waited.

Jeannie sighed, ‘
Pleeeese!
’

‘You may.’

Hannah caught hold of Tom’s arm as he carried the stool towards the back door. ‘How can yer think about playin’ tiddlywinks at a time like this, lad?’ she asked, with more than a touch of annoyance.

‘I can’t hear myself think in here, Mam. I need to get outside for a while.’

‘Well, yer’ll not get ter think much with our Jeannie talking fifty ter the dozen,’ Hannah answered sharply.

‘Just give us a bit of space, Mam, will you? I’ll be all right in a bit.’ He said this gently, while setting the stool down in the yard.

Thankfully, Dominic didn’t arrive that Sunday, and the next morning Rene went off to work early, about
the same time as Jack. Mam was getting Jeannie ready for school, while Tom was still upstairs – on orders from Hannah to get his bedroom organized for an extra guest before he went for his interview at the building site in Bishop.

He had filled the family in as much as he could with regard to Madeleine and her family. They’d all been wide eyed with fascination, and were now looking forward to meeting Dominic, albeit a little warily. He himself was at sixes and sevens, with no idea what he was going to do. It still seemed possible, in a hazy way, that he might not have to get married, that things could be sorted out differently. He was half-hoping Dominic would have the answer.

Once he gets here he’ll be able to see for himself how impossible it would be for her to live here in this house; or for me to go to France, for that matter, Tom thought. And why do I keep referring to Maddie as ‘her’? She has a name, for God’s sake! It’s because using her name makes her too real. But this
is
real! He’d reminded himself of that over and over throughout the night. He couldn’t even think properly now. He didn’t
want
to think, he’d decided, by the time he came clattering down the stairs and shot straight out of the front door.

Jeannie came rushing in from the scullery, where she’d been having a wash, shouting, ‘Gran! Was that our Tom goin’ out in a mood? Cause ah nearly jumped out of me skin, ’ee made so much racket!’

‘Take no notice, pet,’ Hannah answered. ‘He’s got things on his mind at the moment.’

‘’Ee wants ter think himself lucky ’ee hasn’t got ter go ter school like me,’ Jeannie answered.

Hannah put her arm around her granddaughter and smiled. ‘Eee, yer brighten the place up, yer do, our Jeannie.’

‘Gran, did ah tell yer ah had ter write a composition all about my hero, at school?’

‘No, yer didn’t, pet. And who did yer write about?’

‘Well, ah wrote about me dad, and about how brave he was goin’ on all those bombing raids in his aeroplane. And then how he was shot down in France, and how he might still be tryin’ ter get ’ome …
home
.’ She corrected herself. ‘Nobody ever seems to talk about him any more. Ah won’t cry if they do, yer know, Gran.’

‘Oh pet! Ah know yer wouldn’t. You’re a brave girl yerself, you know, just like yer dad. But if he was comin’ home he’d have been back be now. The war ended a while back. But ah’ll tell yer what! If ever yer want ter talk about yer dad, yer can always talk ter me, yer know, pet.’

‘But what about me mam? What if she wants ter talk about him?’

‘Well, ah think for the time bein’ she likes to talk about him in her own mind, because she still misses him, pet, and it’s still too painful for her ter talk out loud about him. That’s why she’s occupyin’ herself with her new job now. And ah think it’ll be good for her, you’ll see.’

Jeannie suddenly flung her arms round Hannah’s soft and reassuring form, while Hannah, who was discreetly
wiping a tear from her eye with the bottom of her pinny, said more brusquely than she intended, ‘Now, come on, lass, we’ve school ter get to.’

The chap sitting opposite Dominic on the train turned out to be pretty friendly. In fact he even recommended a guesthouse. The journey was delayed by a suicide on the line. In fact, they were stuck in a siding for so long that it was impossible
not
to converse. And even though Dominic hadn’t wanted to get involved in small talk, they struck up a conversation – as much to alleviate the boredom as anything else. Dominic was quite pleased with his mastery of the English language, and his fellow traveller – Donald Henderson – was good company.

The guesthouse was only a stone’s throw from Darlington Station, and when Tom finally arrived there at five in the morning – and mentioned Donald Henderson’s name to the landlady – she gave him a very warm welcome. Apologizing for its lack of space, she showed him to a small but clean attic room. ‘Mind you, you’re lucky to get a room at all on a Sunder, lad,’ she said. ‘In
fact, ah wouldn’t normally have let yer in, but if yer good enough fer Don Henderson, yer good enough fer me!’

Although Dominic couldn’t understand everything she said, he couldn’t help smiling at his prim and proper landlady. She had a peculiar falsetto voice, and held her head high, looking disapprovingly down her nose at him. One thing his school English lessons hadn’t prepared him for was her strange dialect. Donald Henderson had been much easier to understand, but then he was a well-travelled businessman, living in London. Dominic really hoped that Tom’s family weren’t going to speak like the landlady; things were bad enough without having to suffer the embarrassment of a language barrier. He took some comfort from the fact that he’d been able to talk to Tom. Even though their conversations had been strained at times, they’d mostly understood each other. But there’d been times when even Tom had come out with words or phrases that bore no resemblance to anything Dominic had been taught. They’d had some good laughs over that, but it had been different, then. He and Tom had shared the same sense of humour, and that had got them through the language problems. He wasn’t sure a shared sense of humour was going to help now.

To Dominic’s horror, there had been no trains running to Bishop Auckland on Sunday. He’d had a whole day
to kill. Shattered and anxious, he’d lain on top of the bed in fitful sleep, emerging only for dinner late in the afternoon.

At 7 a.m. he was woken by the sound of a long piercing whistle. Bleary-eyed, half-asleep, he sat up, and for a moment had no clue where he was. Then there was another whistle, and he realized the sound came from the station across the road.

What did today have in store for him? he wondered. He guessed that Tom’s family – if they’d received Maman’s letter, of course – would be just as curious about him as he was about them. What would they be expecting?

Seized by a sudden panic, he got up, washed, and went down to the small dining room, where he was served, as on the previous day, by a plump teenager who looked as if she’d prefer to be somewhere else. He picked at his porridge and reconstituted scrambled egg, and, relieved the teenager had drifted off and he didn’t have to apologize to her for eating so little, hurriedly went back to his room to pack.

When he got downstairs the landlady was hanging around waiting for him in the hall.

‘Yer off then, are yer.’ It was more of a statement than a question.

‘Yes, I am off as you say, and thank you again, madame, for taking me in yesterday.’

With a limp flap of her hand she answered, ‘Oh, go on with yer, it was a pleasure, I’m sure.’ She laughed girlishly, pleased to be referred to as ‘madame’ by
this handsome young man with the foreign accent.

Dominic took his wallet from inside his jacket pocket and asked, ‘How much, please?’

The landlady, snapping to attention at the mention of money, said, ‘Well, ah’ll have ter charge yer full price ah’m afraid, even though yer didn’t eat yer breakfasts. Was they not ter yer liking?’ she asked.

Dominic stood frozen for a moment, trying to work out exactly what she’d asked.

Seeing his puzzlement she explained, ‘Breakfast not good?’

‘Oh,
le petit dejeuner
!’ Dominic laughed. He answered as diplomatically as he could, ‘Yes, good. But I was not hungry for the porridge and eggs. I eat little at home. Maybe just a croissant,
avec confiture de fraises
. And a cup of coffee, of course!’ Madame’s face was a picture when he teasingly used a little French. After all, it couldn’t do any harm to let people know just how puzzling a different language was.

She chose to ignore the French, and in a slightly indignant tone now, she said, ‘Well, it’s not right ter waste food! It’s difficult to come by, with rationin’ and all that. So yer see, ah’ll have ter charge yer for it, lad.’

‘I understand very well, madame. It is the same at home, also,’ Dominic answered.

‘Yes, well, that’ll be two pounds two and sixpence, please,’ she said, looking slightly embarrassed.

Dominic pressed the money into her hand and closed her fingers around it, saying, ‘Thank you very much again, madame.’

‘Ay, lad, yer can stay here any time you have a mind ter,’ she said with a smile. ‘And good luck with whatever it is that yer’ve got on yer mind.’

Dominic, catching her meaning more from her concerned expression than her actual words, looked at her in surprise.

She went on, ‘Ah can see that yer burdened with something, lad. So let’s hope yer get it sorted, eh?’

‘Thank you,’ was all he could think to say, as he headed for the station.

He stopped to ask an old railwayman for directions as he entered the booking hall. ‘Train for Bishop should be on platform five,’ the man answered. ‘Yer’ll be in Bishop in half an hour or so. But make sure yer get on the right train, mind,’ he cautioned. ‘Then yer just need ter get on the number eleven bus to Evenwood, and anybody’ll tell yer where ter get that, lad! Yer lucky yer can speak such good English, so yer’ll have no bother,’ he said confidently.

But Dominic wasn’t confident at all. And, as for being lucky with the English language, huh! Little did the old boy know just how hard he’d had to work at it over the years.

Having taken a right turn, platform five was now looming before him, and he experienced a moment’s apprehension, before thinking, Right, this is it! Just get on with it, Dominic.

Tom’s meeting with the builder at Bishop Auckland had gone well, and he was going to start the job in a week’s
time. He felt extremely pleased with himself. He’d even got on the right bus this time – the number eleven heading directly for Evenwood village – not wanting to make the same mistake as when he’d first arrived, and had to walk all that way. It was a shame he wouldn’t see Maisie, of course, with her being on the number twelve. But it was for the best; he wouldn’t be good company for her while Maddie was on his mind. He was well aware that his family could only do so much: it was down to him alone to sort out the problem.