The Emerald Valley (31 page)

She remembered thinking that she must get well for him. With Oliver to live for, she must not die! She remembered planning, too. One day they would be married and she would go to chapel riding in the ribbon-decked pony and trap as brides did. And then they would live together and he would be able to tell her stories and sit by her bed and hold her hand all the time, not just when she was ill and not really able to appreciate it.

And the panacea had worked. Miraculously Amy had begun to get well. For thirteen weeks she lay on her stomach on the kitchen sofa, then she had to be pushed out in her old push-chair until they taught her, with great patience, to walk again. Almost a year out of her life, a year of pleasure and pain, small triumphs and crushing setbacks, a year she would never forget.

But as her body healed, Amy's heart began to break. Oliver Scott came less often now and she felt more bereft and lonely than she had ever felt in her life. Depression began to set in, depression fuelled by boredom and the taut feel of healing skin, broken only by such moments of wonderful joy as when, on a visit to his parents, he remembered to send her a postcard – a jolly, bright picture of a plump, bare-bottomed child sitting on a drum, with the caption: ‘I'm sitting on it so's you can't beat it.' ‘Well, I don't know, the doctor sending that!' Charlotte had said. But Amy had kept it beside her bed, insurance against the growing feeling that Oliver no longer cared.

He's forgotten me, Amy had thought. He's forgotten all about me. She lost interest in everything, lying listlessly while the blackness inside her head made her wish she had died after all.

And then one day Mam had brought her the brown paper parcel.

‘Dr Scott left this for you. It's for Christmas really. But I don't suppose he'd mind if I let you open it now.'

Her heart had swelled. Oliver had not forgotten. With eager fingers she tore at the paper and extracted the contents. A card, inscribed: ‘To the bravest little girl I ever met.' A whole pound of butterscotch when butterscotch usually came in ounces, not pounds. And the teddy!

She had never seen a teddy before. Teddies were brand-new toys, fresh from America and named for some politician or other. Amy thought it was the most wonderful thing she had ever been given.

Satisfied, she had tucked it under her arm, holding it close. In the months that followed, it went everywhere with her, brightening the dark moments and giving her a feeling of warmth and comfort.

Even when Oliver Scott married Grace O'Halloran, Hal's eldest daughter, and left Hillsbridge, the bear had not been put aside. Amy had been sad for a little while, yes, wishing he could have waited for her, but she was getting better all the time and life was beginning to open out again for her. She was out of the tunnel into daylight, and the bear was with her.

Now, all those years on, she sat in the small front bedroom of her home looking at the bear and feeling once more the warmth and comfort she had felt then.

That crisis in her life had come and gone and she had survived. Others who had had similar accidents had not been so lucky, she knew. The severity of a scalding in uncooled bath water had claimed their lives, but not hers. And if she could survive that, she could survive anything else life might throw at her. She was a fighter. She had fought then, and she would fight now.

With a small, determined smile, Amy took the bear and hid it in her jumper drawer. She would have liked to put it on her bed, but if Barbara or Maureen found it they would want to play with it and she didn't want it damaged. Better to keep it and bring it out sometimes to remind herself that however dark life sometimes seemed, there was always a way of fighting through. Better to preserve it as a memento of what she had been through – and what she could go through again, if necessary.

Heartened and refreshed, Amy returned to the task of clearing the guest room for the new small visitor who had added yet another dimension to her already topsy-turvy life.

‘Harry – hey, Harry, what d'you think?' Reg Clements turned the corner of the Rank just as Harry emerged from his pigeon loft, and half-running along the cobbled path, his pale freckled face showing two red high spots of anger. ‘What d'you think – there's a man gone in to work this morning at Middle Pit!'

‘Who's that, then?'

‘“Nosey” Parker, from down Market Cottages. He went in when the safety men did and stayed about three-quarters of an hour. He was seen, of course, and all the men who were down on the Bridge got round the gates to give him a cheer when he came out.'

‘A cheer?'

‘Well, you know, kick up a din and let him know how we feel about blacklegs! Cor – I wouldn't be in his shoes now, darned if I would!'

‘Well, the dirty creep!' Harry said.

It was the last week of August and the strike showed no signs of ending. There were rumours from time to time, it was true, raising the hopes of men who had tightened their belts week after week as the Relief Fund dwindled and their weekly payments fell far below the breadline. From five shillings for full members and two-and-sixpence for boys such as Harry and Reg, the payments had been halved, and this week there was to be no handout at all. But the majority of the men were as determined as ever. This time there could be no surrender; they could not afford to give in and go back to work for less money than they had been earning when they came out – not after all they'd been through. So they let their children go away to stay with people who could afford to keep them, accepted what charity there was with as much dignity as they could muster, and met each new day of inactivity with faces grown gaunt and grim, but eyes that burned with the fervent belief that in the end justice would surely prevail.

Some, it was true, behaved in a way that Charlotte described as ‘letting themselves down'. After one rally in Bath, Ewart Brixley – still a hothead though he was now old enough to know better – had been amongst a gang of a dozen or fifteen men who had tried to scramble into one taxi-cab. In the ensuing struggle the taxi driver had been assaulted and a policeman who came to take things in hand had his helmet knocked off. The man responsible for that had been given three months'hard labour and Ewart had been lucky not to be amongst the gaggle who got a month for being drunk and disorderly.

‘There's no sense in it – that sort of thing does no good at all,' Charlotte said when she heard. ‘I hope you've got more gump than to get yourself mixed up in anything like that, Harry!'

Harry had not bothered to reply. Privately he agreed with his mother, but it would have sounded a bit stick-in-the-mud coming from a boy of his age if he had said so. And in any case, if she didn't know him better than that by now, she should do.

He was working as hard and as tirelessly as ever – harder, perhaps, for as money grew shorter the dances and concerts raised less and the Relief Fund began to be dependent on the regular contributions of sympathisers – not only big concerns such as the Co-op, but individuals like George Young, who somehow managed to make sufficient sacrifices themselves so as to contribute ten shillings a week out of their own meagre pay-packets.

The strike had brought fun, of course, as well as despair. The young people made the most of their freedom and thoroughly enjoyed the nightly dances that were held in the various recreation grounds around the outskirts of Hillsbridge. And it had also brought tragedy. One little boy who had left Hillsbridge Station with a group of colliers'children for a fortnight under canvas paid for by the Lady Slessor Fund, was back less than a week later in a pitifully small oak coffin with silver-plated fittings. Riding on a load of hay he had slipped off, rolled down the bank and under the rear wheels of the wagon.

‘It's terrible!' said Charlotte, who was in town when the hearse bringing him back passed slowly through. ‘Just think if it was our Alex or May!'

‘Where is it they've gone?' asked Peggy, who was with her.

‘Down to Eastleigh, in Hampshire. The two of them are together with some well-to-do businessman. They'll be coming back full of grand ideas, if I know anything about it. Our Sarah didn't want them to go, that I do know, but what can you do?'

That was just it. What could anyone do but tighten their belts, look for ways to survive and hope and pray it would all be over soon. Which was why there was so much anger at the thought of one man strike-breaking,

‘Reckon he'll go in again tomorrow?' Harry asked Reg.

‘Dunno. Shall we walk down and see?'

‘Yes. Can do.'

The next day was fine, bright and warm. Altogether it had been a brilliant summer, apart from a few violent thunderstorms such as the one which had killed five cows, a bull and a horse in a field out beyond Withydown with one huge flash, and thrown six hikers to the ground on the road to Bath. But today the skies were clear and blue as Harry, Tommy and Reg walked down the hill.

Though they were early themselves, there was already quite a crowd gathered in the Market Yard and outside the Miners'Arms. ‘Nosey'Parker would have to pass that way in order to get home to Market Cottages from Middle Pit and the men were determined he should not slip past without their making him aware of their disapproval.

‘Blackleg!' one man muttered and another added: ‘If this was still the war, they'd be handing him a white feather.'

‘Good idea. That'd show'un!'

Someone was despatched to raid the hen-pens down in Glebe Bottom in search of a white feather.

‘Bring enough and get some tar from thick tar-spraying machine they'm doing the roads with and we could tar and feather'un!' someone else added.

Harry began to feel uneasy. He hoped this was not going to get out of hand. But the feather-seeker was soon back empty-handed, complaining of being chased out of the henpens by an irate cottager wielding her sweeping brush, and almost at the same time Sergeant Eyles came marching around the corner with a force of the extra police strength which had been drafted into Hillsbridge in case of trouble.

That would put paid to any really crazy schemes, Harry thought with a sense of relief. He had no wish to see any of his mates sent off for three months'hard labour.

The crowd settled down to waiting once more. Harry was surprised at the number of women there – it was almost as if they were angrier on behalf of their menfolk than the men were themselves. One group, a noisy cluster from ‘Batch Row' – one of the poorest areas in Hillsbridge – were in a huddle under the wall of the Miners'Arms, and from the amount of gesticulating and head-wagging and the occasional loud shriek of laughter, Harry suspected they were up to something. This was no laughing matter, and a few minutes ago the women had been anything but amused.

‘What do you reckon that lot think is so funny?' he asked Tommy, who only shrugged.

‘Dunno. Oh, I don't half wish I had a fag!'

The others agreed. They had not experienced real hardship as some families had done. Molly Clements, the boys'stepmother, was a good manager like Charlotte, and at this time of year the gardens were mercifully full of vegetables. But oh, it seemed so long since they had been able to enjoy the luxury of a few shillings to jingle in their pockets, a packet of Woodbines and a pint of beer!

‘Look out – isn't that “Nosey” coming now?' Reg said.

Sure enough, a small bent figure in working togs had emerged from the collier gates. ‘Nosey'Parker was older than many of them – forty if he was a day – and the best part of thirty years spent underground had given him the unmistakable gait of a miner. As he walked towards them, head bent against the expected jeers and catcalls, Harry saw the police begin to move in. There might be abuse for the blackleg miner, but there would be no violence … or so it seemed.

But Harry – and the police – had reckoned without the women. As ‘Nosey' approached, they watched closely in a silence that contrasted sharply with the noisy barracking of the men. Then, as if at a given signal, they swooped, surrounding him.

‘Stinking rat!'

‘Want a bath before you go home, Nosey? You don't want to go home dirty, do you?'

The police began to run towards the heaving group. They had anticipated any trouble would come from the men, not the women, and before they could get within striking distance a dozen eager hands had overcome Nosey's flapping struggles. Three of the women held his arms pinioned, two more held down his feet while the others tore at his clothing. Then, just as the first policeman reached the perimeter of the group, another woman came running out of the Miners'Arms carrying a pail. The policeman made to stop her, but she dodged him nimbly and as the others parted to let her through she hurled the water. Some splashed the policeman, quite a lot drenched the attacking women. But most went exactly where it had been intended to go – over ‘Nosey'Parker. After the first shrieks the laughter began, unquenched by the angry shouts of the police, and as the women scattered ‘Nosey'was exposed to Harry's view – a sad, scrawny figure in dripping, dirty-white underpants.

He hasn't been underground at all! Harry thought indignantly. No miner would think of wearing long underpants under his rushyduck trousers – it was much too hot!

But it was a passing thought only.

Harry's brother Ted would probably have laughed as loudly as anyone at the sight of ‘Nosey'; Fred, who had been killed in the war, or Jim, might have stared unmoved; Jack might have been faintly disgusted by the vulgarity. But Harry felt none of these things.

With a wisdom beyond his years Harry found himself looking beyond the stark fact that ‘Nosey'had betrayed his comrades and seeing what lay behind it – the despair, the heart-searching, the hunger and desperation. And the same sense of helpless anger that had filled him when he looked at his bedridden father rose in his craw again – anger that an honest, sober, hard-working man should be subjected to such indignity through the need to keep his family.