The Most Precious Thing (9 page)
‘I know, Mam, I know.’ Alec led his mother across to the table, pulled out one of the chairs and pushed her down on to it. ‘I’ll make us a nice cup of tea and while it’s mashing I’ll tell you what Margaret’s mother wants for the wedding, shall I? She’s set her heart on a do at the Grand and no expense spared. What do you think of that?’
‘The Grand?’ Olive was smiling again. ‘Oh, lad.’ She caught hold of her son’s hand, beaming up at him, and neither of them noticed when Lillian left the room.
‘Tell me again what she said, and word for word, mind, from the time you caught sight of her in North Bridge Street.’
‘For cryin’ out loud, woman.’ Sandy twisted restlessly in the bed but his voice held no real irritation. The truth of the matter was that he was worried sick himself, he admitted silently. His lass hadn’t been right since Christmas, all white and wan looking, and he could swear she was thinner than ever. The East End was still a hotbed of consumption and other things, and with that damn firework factory being located so close to the docks . . . ‘You noticed her coughin’ at all?’ he asked his wife abruptly, frightening Joan to death in the process.
‘Coughing? Oh, Sandy! Our Carrie? You don’t think . . .’ Joan sat bolt upright in bed, one hand clutching the neck of her faded red flannel nightgown.
‘Lie down, woman, you’ve pulled all the covers off, an’ no, I don’t think! I was just askin’, that’s all.’
Joan slid down beside him again, her cold feet automatically finding the warmth of his body which was better than any stone water bottle. Although the room was in total blackness she knew he was rubbing his hand round his face, something he did when he was troubled. She pressed closer to him, one arm round his wide thick chest. ‘What did she say?’ she asked again.
‘I’ve
told
you.’ And then, when Joan said nothing, he sighed. ‘She was walkin’ steadily, not hurryin’, just steady like, an’ I hailed her an’ asked her what the hell she was playin’ at, worryin’ us both to death. An’ she said she’d had to wait longer than she thought at the market for the sell-offs. I asked where Lillian was an’ she said she’d made her go home ’cos of her mam bein’ liable to play up if the lass was late. I said you were fair out of your mind an’ she said she was sorry but she wanted to get the best prices she could, an’ then she went for me for comin’ out to look for her with me foot bein’ bad.’
told
you.’ And then, when Joan said nothing, he sighed. ‘She was walkin’ steadily, not hurryin’, just steady like, an’ I hailed her an’ asked her what the hell she was playin’ at, worryin’ us both to death. An’ she said she’d had to wait longer than she thought at the market for the sell-offs. I asked where Lillian was an’ she said she’d made her go home ’cos of her mam bein’ liable to play up if the lass was late. I said you were fair out of your mind an’ she said she was sorry but she wanted to get the best prices she could, an’ then she went for me for comin’ out to look for her with me foot bein’ bad.’
‘How does it feel now?’ Joan asked softly. He’d insisted on going himself even though it had taken him a full minute to force his boot on and there had been no question of lacing it up.
Again she felt, rather than saw, the irritated flap of his hand. There was silence for a moment and then Sandy said, ‘You’ll have to talk to her the morrer an’ get to the bottom of it.’
‘I’ve tried, you know I have.’
‘Aye, I know, lass, I know, but we can’t carry on like this.’
Joan nodded, murmuring, ‘Aye, all right.’
His arm came round her and he pulled her close into his side. ‘Now you get to sleep, lass, an’ don’t worry, all right? I’m not havin’ you make yourself bad over this. Whatever’s wrong with the bairn I’ll sort it.’
Joan made no answer to this, but she reached up and kissed the stubbly square jaw before lying quietly again.
Don’t worry, he said, and there was him beside himself. There had been plenty who’d said she could do better than Sandy McDarmount when she’d started walking out with him - her own mam and da included - but none of them saw the man she knew.
True, she’d come near to braining him with the frying pan on occasion when he was well-oiled and playing the goat, but he wasn’t a drinker like some she could name. The trouble was, Sandy only had to have a pint or two to be falling over and the drink always made him silly.
She knew plenty who could sit down and drink all night and then get up and walk out of the door as though they’d been supping water, or others who regularly got so drunk they couldn’t speak. They’d stagger home, flopping down on to the hearth, there to sleep right through until the buzzer sounded for the next shift, often with their bairns stepping over them where they lay. Nothing was said about them of course, because ‘they could hold their drink’. Her lip curled in the darkness. How she hated that phrase. A man could come home and knock ten bells out of his wife and bairns, but because he hadn’t made a fool of himself outside, that was all right. Well, she wouldn’t swap her man, not for all the tea in China she wouldn’t. He was all heart, was Sandy, in spite of playing devil’s faggarties at times.
She’d seen him give his last bit of keepy-back money he’d earmarked for baccy to the ex-soldiers who’d been too badly injured to get a job after the war, and who came round the doors selling bobbins of thread and bootlaces. And only she knew how it affected him when he recognised one of the blind ones who walked up and down queues playing battered old fiddles or mouth organs as ex-comrades from his early days down the pit, along with the ones with no legs who sat on mucky pavements outside the theatres, drawing pictures of animals and birds and scenes from the Bible with chalk.
Sandy stirred beside her. ‘You reckon our Renee might wheedle it out of the bairn if you have no joy?’
‘Renee?’ Joan blinked, striving to keep her voice matter-of-fact when she said, ‘She might. Aye, she might at that. I’ll put it to her the morrer if I get nowhere.’ By, he must be worried to suggest bringing Renee in, normally the mere name of their eldest was like a red flag to a bull, Joan thought, her brow wrinkling in the darkness.
And it was this last which guaranteed she lay awake with her mind buzzing until dawn was breaking.
At the other end of the street, David, too, was enduring a sleepless night. Strangely, it wasn’t the fact that he’d walked the streets with his father for over two hours before he could persuade him to return home which was now keeping him tossing and turning, or that Alec had still been awake when he’d entered the bedroom he shared with his brother, and in the resulting row - albeit in low, hushed voices - they’d both said unforgivable things. Rather it was the memory of how Carrie had looked in the few brief minutes before she’d left that had really disturbed him.
He hadn’t seen her since the night of the wedding, and there had been little of the laughing-eyed, high-spirited girl he’d known all his life in the white-faced figure standing so quietly in the sitting room. Even allowing for his mother’s barbed tongue and what might have gone on before he and his father and Alec had entered the house, his gut feeling was that something was terribly wrong with the lass.
His heart was thumping against his ribs, causing his breath to catch in his throat as yet again - as he’d done hundreds of times in the last weeks - he grappled with the events of that night before Christmas. He was certain now that something major had happened to Carrie. He would make sure he had a word with Lillian tomorrow before she left for church with his mother and find out exactly what had occurred at the market. His sister had spoken of Carrie being bad, but that could mean anything. He might even accompany the women to church, depending on what Lillian revealed, even though once he had started work he, like his father and brothers, only attended Holy Trinity on high days and holidays. But Carrie would be there, and it might be the best chance he’d have to take her aside for a minute or two.
A thought was hammering at the edge of his mind, a possibility he’d kept at bay by sheer willpower the last weeks because to give it free rein was unbearable. Now, as his muscles tightened in his limbs, so taut he could feel cramp beginning to work in one leg, he forced himself to relax. He loosened his joints one by one and breathed deeply, emptying his mind of everything but the physical state of his body.
It was proving to be a long night . . .
Chapter Five
It was beginning to snow as David stood outside Holy Trinity church the next morning, the flakes of white sharp in the keen north-east wind and the ground frozen rock hard beneath his feet. He could see Carrie some yards away standing with her mother and the twins, but as convention demanded he was in a group of men which included her father and brother, and the subject of conversation was the usual one - that of the anticipated fight involving the unions against the government and the coal-owners.
David had intended to walk past the men as he exited the church but Sandy had caught his arm, drawing him into the circle. After Carrie had told her father that he had had nothing to do with getting her drunk on sloe gin the day of Walter and Renee’s wedding, Sandy had come to him cap in hand, and ever since had been at pains to make sure their relationship was back on its old comfortable footing. It was proving an irritant.
‘I tell you, lads, if the government thought they could get away with passin’ a law to prevent workin’ men an’ women gettin’ educated an’ thinkin’ for themselves, they would,’ Sandy was saying militantly. ‘What say you, David?’
David nodded perfunctorily. If Carrie moved away from her mam, even for a minute, he’d go over.
‘The owners have made up their minds to crack down on us: the writin’s been on the wall for years. With them so-an’-so’s in Japan an’ America an’ the like producin’ cheaper than us, our industries should have pulled their finger out an’ come up with better or different, but what have they done? Gone on in the same way but demandin’ we accept reduced wages an’ increased hours so their profits aren’t cut, an’ safety is their last consideration. Luxury, that’s become.’
‘Aye, you’re right there, man.’ Another miner joined in, his rough-hewn, pockmarked face red with indignation. ‘An’ you say a word out of turn, just a word, an’ they label us the “new red threat” an’ “worse than the Hun”. Lost a brother an’ two of me lads in the last war, an’ me leg’s still peppered with bits of shrapnel where I copped it afore they brought me back to work the pit again, an’ they dare call me a traitor to me country.’
‘There’ll be a fight come May, you mark my words, an’ that Baldwin sittin’ there like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, an’ the other ’un, Churchill, with cigars the size of a bazooka stickin’ out of his gob, they’ll both be at the front of it. Nowt but music hall acts, the pair of ’em.’
‘Aye, but acts with the power to bring Britain to its knees, man. Don’t forget that. Britain an’ us too, I reckon.’
‘
What?
’
What?
’
The chorus of voices that greeted this last declaration suggested it was not a popular one, and in the general hubbub that resulted, which included phrases such as ‘You’re a bloomin’ Jonah if ever there was one’ and ‘Strikes me you’d better make up yer mind whose side you’re on, man’, David made his escape.
Carrie had her back to him as he approached, but Joan McDarmount caught his eye and smiled at him, although he was too worked up to respond with more than a twitch of his mouth. ‘Carrie?’ He touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Could I have a word?’
Perhaps because of the mental battle he’d had with himself all through the service which had left him thinking he didn’t know which end of him was up, his voice sounded abrupt, even harsh, and as Carrie turned he saw that her expression was apprehensive. ‘Hello, David.’ It was low. ‘I . . . I’ve been meaning to have a word with you. To apologise for how I was and my da getting the wrong end of the stick.’
Aw hell, she thought he was being prickly, that he’d come to get his pound of flesh for that night. He felt himself flush, the colour suffusing his face. This was off to a bright start. ‘Forget it, that’s not what I want to talk to you about.’ And yet it was - the circumstances which had led up to him finding her in the yard anyway. The thought threw him; it wasn’t going at all as he’d planned.
Carrie’s mother was still standing by although she was tied up with the twins who were finding it hard to stand still for a few minutes, and now it came to him that he couldn’t do this in front of inquisitive eyes and flapping ears. He had to get Carrie alone, it was the only way they could both talk frankly, and damn what anyone thought.
Carrie was smiling uncertainly although he noticed it didn’t touch her eyes. ‘Well, I’m sorry anyway. You were only being kind and I jumped down your--’
‘Carrie, I need to talk to you privately. Can I walk you back home?’ Her eyes widened momentarily as he interrupted her, and when she didn’t answer, he said, his voice as low as hers had been but the tone urgent, ‘Please? It’s important.’
For a second he thought she was going to refuse. Then she shrugged her shoulders slightly and nodded. Turning to her mother she raised her voice to make herself heard above the twins who were now squabbling about something or other. ‘Mam, I’m cold. David’s going to walk me back.’
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