Road to Berry Edge, The (6 page)

‘Are you all the help there is?' Rob said. ‘We'll have to do something about that so that you can go home to your children at a proper time.'

‘Shall I walk you?' Harry offered.

‘I'm safe on the streets here, it's my home,' Nancy said.

Nancy bandaged Rob's hands and after that she went. Mrs Berkeley stayed upstairs with her husband. Rob and Harry sat by the fire.

‘How does your father seem?'

‘He's dying.'

Harry looked into the fire for a little while and then he said, ‘You gave me the impression that the works here was little more than a smithy, but it seems to me quite a big affair?'

‘It is.'

‘Then why do your parents live like this?'

‘I don't think they have any money.'

‘But they must have made money out of it, Rob. We live lavishly compared to this.'

‘They're modest people, unlike your parents.'

‘Why be modest when you can live well?'

‘They live among the people who work for them. Perhaps it was just tact in the beginning. Now I think it's necessity.'

‘What did you hope to achieve by coming back?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Your mother didn't even kiss you, after ten years. Ida kisses me every time I go out the door or come back.'

‘You didn't kill your brother.'

‘I don't think you're going to better that one here, Robbo.'

‘I don't think so either,' Rob said.

Michael pushed aside all offers of help as he left the Station Hotel. His whole body ached, his face especially, but it was his heart that bothered him most. He could feel his hate for the Berkeleys stir and light. How could Rob come back now after all this time, and looking like a dog's dinner, all neat and talking like a southerner, as though he had never belonged here?

He thought back to that night ten years ago when Rob had left, several weeks after the death of his brother, when all Berry Edge was against him. He had come to the house - they had remained friends for years after they were children even though they didn't work together. Michael had been in the pub with Rob when John drowned so he knew for certain that Rob had had nothing directly to do with it, though he also knew how fiercely the brothers had quarrelled. He was tired by then of saying to people that Rob had not pushed his brother over the bridge. It was what they wanted to believe, so they believed it.

He knew that life had become intolerable for Rob during those weeks, that his parents had blamed him, that his friends at work had talked about him, that many people had stopped speaking to him, that Faith Norman had been left as good as widowed four weeks away from her wedding. She had almost collapsed. John Berkeley's death hung over Berry Edge like a pall.

He remembered standing outside the house in the bitter cold wind.

‘I'm going away, Mickey.'

‘Away? Away where?'

‘Anywhere that isn't here.'

‘But you can't.'

‘What else can I do? My parents are heartbroken, people hold me responsible, I hold myself responsible—'

‘You shouldn't. I fight as bad as that with our Sean twice a week at least.'

‘Your Sean's used to drink.'

‘It was an accident, Rob.'

‘That's not how it seems. I have to get out of here. Come with me.'

For a moment it seemed to Michael a possibility, a light. Getting away. And then reality clutched him. His father was dead, he had four sisters and his mother to support.

‘There's your Sean, you don't have to stay.'

‘Our Sean drinks his pay, you know that. I have my mam to keep and the girls to look after. I can't go anywhere.'

He remembered Rob's despair. He remembered Rob walking away, remembered how he had felt watching Rob leave the rows, wondering how long it would be before he came back. He remembered missing him and how from the beginning things had gone downhill, like the guts had been taken from Josiah Berkeley. He no longer treated the people of Berry Edge as his extended family, he no longer provided seaside trips in the summer for the children or parties in the winter for his men and their families. Margaret Berkeley had sat on councils and committees, helped those who needed her. Even the lowest, most feckless families in Berry Edge had known that the Berkeley family was there for them, Josiah to keep the work coming in and the money going out: Margaret to smooth the problems, Rob in the works alongside the men and John, his father's
best helpmate, backing him always, clearsighted with new ideas and new ways.

The structure had collapsed, the support was gone. Margaret went daily to her son's grave, Josiah often took to his bed with small ailments that he would once have shrugged off. The works suffered, the people saw that the heart had gone from Berry Edge. Houses were not maintained, work was no longer well done. Berry Edge lost its reputation for turning out fine steel. It was as though the self-respect and motivation had left when John died.

Michael had heard that Rob was coming back. He had expected the same cowed young man who had left, but Rob had walked into that pub and there was everything about him that exuded success and prosperity. His hands had seen no work for many a long day, Michael thought, he was nothing to do with Berry Edge, his neat shiny hair and his perfect suit. It was as though Rob hadn't aged at all, but the men in the pub were ill dressed, ill housed, older and tired. They had lost their self-respect. They were living in this dirty, worn, down at heel place on short time without comfort of any kind while Rob was tall, slender and sleek, good looking and rich. All Michael had wanted to do was push a big fist into his face. Rob had done well, Michael could see by his clear grey eyes. He did not belong here any more and he had no right to come back here and flaunt the satisfaction of his existence in other people's faces. The worst thing was that he seemed to think he had a place here, a right.

If Michael's own face hadn't hurt so much he would have smiled. He had forgotten the basics, of how much courage, how much guts it took to achieve that apparently artless perfection. Rob had had ability. Nobody had seen that ability, his parents had been too busy attending to their obedient, pious son to notice, but Michael knew it. The works had been Rob's whole world, even as a child. He had had such plans for it and would bore Michael for hours about
how he would alter things when he ran the works, how he would make conditions better for the men. There would be baths and showers and a proper dining room that served good food, sold as cheaply as possible. He would build new houses beside the moor for good clean air and they would have three bedrooms, a bathroom and electricity. There would be better schools and places of leisure and the men would be able to buy their own houses by paying monthly into a building society. He would expand the works with new machinery so that it would all be more efficient and turn out better products. On and on he would talk while Michael lay back in the heather on the moor with his eyes closed. He had tried to point out to Rob that he would never run the works, that John would be given the steelworks at Berry Edge but Rob couldn't see that, he thought that his love for the place would remove all obstacles.

Between then and now, Michael thought Rob had achieved whatever, and more, he had set out to achieve. Michael had never seen a rich man before now. He had seen two tonight and not newly rich, not that kind of flashy rich that some men use to show their achievements; it was way beyond that with a modesty, a sureness, an acceptance of their wealth.

And Michael had underestimated Rob. He could call himself names for that. Twenty years of Berry Edge had put the kind of steel into Rob that no amount of success or prosperity could ever remove. He had knocked Michael across that room with more authority than Michael had ever seen in a man. There was a small part of Michael that was glad, pleased he had come home, warm at his success; but most of him just hated Rob for having loved it all so little in the end that he did not come back sooner. He had let it all rust and decay and fall apart until the people had ceased to complain about the Berkeleys. No one spoke Josiah's name. They did not care that he was dying, that his wife had turned into a shabby shadow who neglected her home
and her responsibilities. Many people had left, shops were closed, businesses had shut down. Children went hungry and barefoot in Berry Edge. The back streets were dirty and tumbling down. Men propped the walls outside the houses so often there were dark patches where they would stand, and the women fought a perpetual battle to keep their children clothed and fed on permanent short money.

Robert Berkeley owed a debt to Berry Edge which he could never repay, Michael thought, and his coming back now was just the final insult.

Michael didn't go home, he didn't want to. He was the only one left there now, the girls were up and married and Sean was dead. There was only his mother. Michael hated her. She never sat down. From dawn to dark she scrubbed and polished and cleaned. There was no comfort, there was no sympathy. There was nothing for a man coming back from the pit. She didn't cook because she didn't want to dirty the pans, the fire was never lit in the front room for fear somebody might move a cushion. They lived on small, neat sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and weak tea.

He wanted to leave, often he almost left but she had no one. Her daughters had moved away and didn't visit. She had no friends, only Nancy came to see her. His mother hated Nancy, lovely kind Nancy with the golden hair whom his brother had abused in every possible way. Michael's love for Nancy was the only thing that kept him going and he knew now that she would never love him. She thought he was Sean.

He made his way helplessly to Nancy's house and waited outside for her. He liked her damp, shoddy house. There was always a good fire, there was always hot food, there was always Nancy singing and cuddling her bairns and even though she didn't trust him she would smile and fuss and make tea. He stood back in the shadows and waited for her to come home. It would not be long, the children were to collect and put to bed.

*

When Nancy got home Michael was standing outside waiting for her.

‘I heard all about it,' she said, looking him over for damage. She opened the door, the house was cool, the fire had been banked down all day. She opened it up and lit the lamp, then she looked carefully at him. Bruises were darkening on his face and there was blood.

‘Mr Berkeley made a good job of you, didn't he?' she said.

‘I was drinking.'

‘He came back here to try and help—'

‘Help? The place doesn't need help, Nancy, all it needs is a bloody undertaker. He knew when he left what would happen, and now look. Ten bloody years. There was nobody but him to do anything about it. That brother of his, for all his fancy ideas he didn't know half what Rob knew, what the men were called, how the place worked. He could do almost everything. Now look at it, and most of these houses aren't fit for pigs. How could he do it, Nancy, how could he make such a mess of things and then leave and not come back? He's gutless.'

‘Are you going to sit down?' Nancy said, and when he did she bathed his face like she had done Rob's, only there was a lot more damage.

‘I can't go home like this,' he said roughly when she had finished. ‘Can I stay here? I'll sleep on the couch, I won't get in the way or be here in the morning.'

‘You aren't fit to go anywhere,' Nancy said. ‘He made a mess of your face. Do you hurt anywhere else?'

‘Just bruises, nothing serious.'

‘Right. I'll go and get the bairns from Vera. Put the kettle on, will you?'

They sat down to eat when Nancy had reheated the stew from the day before. Michael took one mouthful and stopped.

‘Something the matter with it?' Nancy said. Sean had been
in the habit of throwing his plate across the room when he didn't care for his dinner. Even William was looking anxiously at Michael.

‘It's the nearest thing to heaven, Nancy,' Michael said.

Nancy smiled in relief and William went back to concentrating on his plate.

‘Mr Berkeley doubled my wages. We'll have meat every day,' Nancy said.

‘Did he now? When was this?'

‘Tonight. And there's to be more help.'

‘He's probably thinking that you should have had compensation for what happened to Sean.'

‘Sean was drunk, Michael, and well you know it, and so were others.'

‘They should never have been allowed in the works.'

‘He'd already been sent home twice that week for being drunk. What are they supposed to do, smell everybody's breath as they go in?'

‘I can see he's made an impression with you already. Who's the other one?'

‘That's Mr Shaw. They both talk lovely.'

‘What does he do?'

‘I don't know. He's rich,' Nancy concluded.

‘How do you make that out?'

‘Well, when people are just sort of respectable, you know, I mean like those who live in the terraced houses up near the park, they're not like that. The people Vera works for, they treat her awful. Now Mrs Berkeley she treats me nice, but Mr Berkeley and Mr Shaw, they treat me like I'm special.'

‘That's just because you're young and bonny.'

‘I don't think it is. I think it's because they're real gentlemen. I never saw a real gentleman before. Mr Shaw took the coal bucket off me, he didn't know how a fire lights. You should've seen him trying to do his unpacking. He's never done that, and their clothes … I never saw anything like them.'

‘Their suits,' Michael said.

‘Ooh, yes, lovely. And their shirts. Somebody packed them properly, somebody who knows about things like that. Mr Shaw said the maids live in at his house. He offered to walk me back.'

‘I'm glad he didn't,' Michael said.