The Black Velvet Gown Read online

  ‘The morrow, early.’

  He turned his head as he asked, ‘What about your bits and pieces? Mary Ellen…’ He checked himself, then said, ‘I’d store your bed and things.’

  There was a cynical note in her voice as she replied, ‘Yes, I know you would, and Mary Ellen too, but I’ve thought about me bits and pieces over the last few days. It took money and hard grime to get them and I don’t want to give them up, so Arthur Meddle and Kate are going to take them into their place for me. They’ve hardly anything upstairs except the shakey-down, so they’ll be glad to make use of them for a time. And Kate’s a clean and careful woman.’

  His head still turned towards her, he said, ‘You haven’t been idle then?’

  ‘No, Ted, I’ve never been idle in me life, whether it was workin’ with me hands or me head.’

  ‘You’re a strange lass, Riah. I’ve never met anyone with as much gumption. If I don’t see you again, because I go down at two o’clock an’ you’ll be away afore noon when I rise, I wish you luck. In all you do, I wish you luck, Riah.’

  ‘Thanks, Ted.’

  She waited until he had taken so many steps from the doorway, and then she went to it and closed it. And now standing with her back to it, she pressed her hands flat against its rough wood, and, her even white teeth coming down sharply on her lower lip, she made a small sound; it was the echo of a groan deep within her. Gumption, he had said she had. She could go back to where she had come from, she had said. If they had nothing else, they would have fresh air, she had said. Her gumption, at this moment, she knew was threaded with fear and she knew exactly the welcome that awaited her when she went back from where she had come; and as for having fresh air, if nothing else, the fresh air she remembered from those far times reeked with the stink of fish.

  She brought herself from the door and went towards the fire, and taking up a bucket of small coal that stood on the hearth, she flung its contents on to the back of the grate. As she did so a cloud of dust went up the chimney, but the rest wafted its way over her face. She puffed at it for a moment; then taking a cloth from the brass rod that ran under the wooden mantelpiece, she went to the table and began to wipe it down.

  Of a sudden she stopped and, pulling from underneath it a wooden stool, she sat down and, leaning her elbows on the table, she rested her head in her hands. She wanted to pray but she could find no words; and anyway, Seth had always said, God helps those who helps themselves. He used to laugh when he said it because he called it a contradiction: as he said, if you didn’t help yourself, then nothing happened and you blamed it on God. She had often wondered what he had talked about with the Methodist man in Gateshead who appeared to be a good Christian, because at bottom Seth hadn’t much time for God and His doings; even the Bible, he said, was just stories thought up and written by men.

  She had learned a lot from Seth. He had taught her to use her mind, and he had taught her to read and write, as he had them all. She had been proud of the fact that she was mother to the only children in the three rows who could write their names. This alone had set them all apart. Seth could have taught lots of men in the rows to read and write, but they were afraid in case the pit keeper split on them to the manager, because reading was frowned upon, and, as some of the older men had pointed out forcibly to Seth, it got you nowhere except in trouble with those that provided your livelihood. And after all they had them to consider: you didn’t turn round and bite the hand that fed you.

  Only two men in the rows had braved the wrath of the owners and the management and sat in of a night with Seth: Arthur Meddle and Jack Troughton. But they’d had to pay for it. They, like Seth, had been put on to poor seams down below, seams that gave more rock than coal and where a twelve-hour shift barely brought in three shillings.

  Oh, education had to be paid for and paid for dearly. But what filled the head didn’t fill the belly, and Seth had always been aware of this. That’s why he had prepared for a rainy day. For ten years he had prepared for that rainy day, saving only coppers some weeks, a shilling others. In the first month of their marriage he had told her of his scheme to save, because he didn’t always want to work in a mine, and he envisaged buying a little cottage of their own and a piece of land. And she knew that in the first year he had saved one pound fifteen shillings. But strangely, from that time onwards he had never told her how much he put away each week. He was paid once a fortnight and some pay days he had put as little on the table as a single sovereign. He had been sparse in his dealings with a number of things. After the second year of marriage he had never said he loved her, but she took it for granted that he did; nor had he been gentle with her without expecting to be satisfied in return.

  He had first seen her when she was fifteen, when, late on a free Saturday afternoon, he had walked along the Shields quay. She had been standing amid a group of fishwives. Her head was bare and she wasn’t wearing the usual thick blue flannel voluminous skirt with its white apron in front, nor the crossover body shawl, but she was in a blouse dress, the top layer of the skirt taken back and pinned under her buttocks, and she had a yellow patterned neckerchief over her shoulders. The skirt came just below her calves, and she had clogs on her feet. He said it was her eyes that he noticed first. He said he spotted the intelligence in them when they first looked at him.

  From that day he had come to the quay on a Sunday and any free Saturday night he had; and on his sixth visit he spoke to her. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘You are a fisherman’s daughter?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t look like one,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, what did you expect me to look like? Cod, salmon or smoked fresh herring?’

  He hadn’t laughed but said, ‘You know what I mean.’ And that had caused her to be silent.

  It was on that day that her mother said, ‘Who was that pit lout you were talking to?’ And she had asked, ‘How do you know he’s a pit lout?’ And her mother’s answer had been, ‘You can tell, the coal’s got into his veins. There’s blue marks on his brow. Have nothing to do with him,’ she had warned her. ‘There’s plenty of fisher lads for your choosing. If you feel ripe the sooner you look among them the better.’

  Odd; she had never liked her mother; but she had loved her father. He had put out to sea one day with her two brothers when she was ten years old and they were never seen again. Three boats were lost that day, two from North Shields and one from the south side.

  She’d also had a strong dislike for the smell of fish, and she wondered why that was because she had been reared on it. She had been forced to eat so much fish that her stomach had revolted; cod in particular made her retch. At times when this happened her mother would say she took after her grandfather for it was known that he was a landsman and finicky, besides which he was a squarehead Swede, and had hair so fair that it was as rare among their own men as a woman’s bare backside.

  Her first-born, David, took after the squarehead, for he too had hair and skin that stood out markedly from the children about the doors; and, working in the fields as he did, his hair became even more bleached by the sun, and, unlike that of many of his age down the mine, was not matted with coal dust or running with head-lice.

  That was another thing that Seth had been particular about: everybody had to wash all over on a Friday night, summer and winter alike. He himself washed his upper parts every day and his water couldn’t be used again. But on a Friday night he saw that the children one after another went into the tin bath, and she herself followed them; then he, last of all, washed himself straight down.

  She had come to like the ritual on the Friday nights. It added to the feeling that her family were different. The only time the routine was broken was when Seth lay on the plank bed in the corner of the room waiting for the hearse to come and take him away. He had died only that morning; but he was to have the honour of being ridden to his grave in a hearse. That honour wasn’t awarded to the poor very often
unless there was a great whip round to pay for an undertaker. But in the case of the cholera the authorities transported all the bodies to the graveyard in a hearse.

  She sighed deeply now, then rose to her feet. It was on half past six; the children would be in from the fields shortly. Johnny, seven, and Maggie, six, had been stone picking on Bateman’s farm for the past two weeks. It was hard work for bairns from eight in the morning till six at night. And then there was the mile walk there, and back. But sixpence a week was sixpence a week and not to be sneezed at. David who was working near Gateshead Fell, brick carrying for the men who were putting up houses, was getting three shillings a week. And Biddy who was a year younger was working in Mrs Bateman’s kitchen for a full one and six a week and her food. Five and sixpence from four of them was nothing to what they could have earned down the mine. But she had been with Seth all the way in being determined that none of her bairns should go below if she could help it.

  But now they would all lose their jobs because there wasn’t a house to be let within miles, and no farm mistress would take her on with the addition of four youngsters. She had even made a suggestion to Mrs Bateman, and the farmer’s wife had laughed at her, saying, ‘If I had a pigsty, missis, I could let it for rent. Anyway, what use could I put four of them to? Things are bad; we can hardly sell our stuff in the market at times. And it’s your lot that cause it, with their strikes. Strikes. My word! I know what I would do with them; gaol them; shoot them.’

  She hadn’t answered the woman, for what answer could she give to gaol them, shoot them?

  But as regards rent: that was a point nobody but herself knew about, for she could pay the rent on any cottage, and all because of Seth’s little hoard…But what was she talking about, terming it little? Eighteen pounds, fifteen shillings was a small fortune. It was odd when she came to think about it. Seth had known he was dying, yet he never mentioned the money or where it was hidden. She had known for a long time it was behind one of the bricks in the fireplace. But most of them were loose, and she had never attempted to pry because, being sharp-eyed and sharp-witted like he was, he would have known, and that would have caused a difference between them, and she had never wanted that.

  Although during the past years the warm feeling she had for him had dwindled and its place had been taken by respect, they still lived a peaceful and comparatively happy life; at least so she had told herself, especially when she’d had to clamp down on the inner feelings and unrest that rampaged about the stomach at times, those times when a little gentleness, a touch of the hand on her hair, or her cheek, or his arm thrown over her in the night would have sufficed to soothe the unrest within her. But he wasn’t a man like that, so life had gone on from day to day.

  Bridget was the first to come home. She was known as Biddy. She was tall for her nine years and was of the same colouring as her mother. Her hair might have had a brighter sheen, but her eyes were the same brown, and her height promised that she would grow taller than her mother. All her movements spoke of liveliness, the way she lifted her feet, the turn of her head, her lips that opened to laugh easily and often at something she herself had said, because she was of a quick wit.

  ‘Hello, Ma,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, hinny,’ said Riah.

  ‘She let me keep the slippers. But then they wouldn’t hold much water, would they?’ She now stuck her fingers through the holes in the house slippers. ‘I nearly said, “Thank you very much, missis, you can pass them on to the next one,” but I thought I’d better not.’

  ‘I should think better not. You shouldn’t be cheeky.’

  ‘I’m tired, Ma.’ The brightness went out of the child’s voice for a moment, and her mother said to her, ‘Well, sit yourself down then. There’s some broth ready.’

  The girl sat down on a cracket near the fire; then turning her head to her mother, she said, ‘She was like the prophet from the Bible, Ma. She spoke of nothing else but doom because we are leavin’. I don’t think she wanted to lose me.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t, because you can work as good as anyone twice your age. Of course, she wouldn’t.’

  ‘You know what she said, Ma?’

  ‘No. What did she say?’ Riah was putting some wooden bowls on the table.

  ‘She said we were all too big for our boots, and you would find your mistake out she said, bein’ able to write your name wouldn’t peel any taties…She can’t write, Ma. None of them can, not even the master; he counts up the cans of milk with straws in a jar.’ Her face now broke into a broad smile and she bent forward, her arms hugging her waist, as she said, ‘You know what I did the day, Ma?’

  ‘No. What did you do?’

  ‘Well, when she sent me over to get the milk, I stuck in six more straws.’

  It was a long time since Riah had laughed, but she turned and leant her buttocks against the side of the table and, like her daughter, she also leant forward and with her arms around her waist, too, she laughed until the tears came into her eyes. Then not knowing whether she was laughing or crying, she went swiftly to her daughter and sat down beside her on another cracket, and, taking her hands, gripped them tightly as she said, ‘We’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. As long as we can laugh we’ll be all right. Oh, dear me!’ She shook her head. ‘What a fuss there’ll be when she tries to find the other six pails of milk.’

  ‘I thought of that, Ma,’ Biddy’s face was wet. ‘And I could see the missis skittering around blaming everybody for drinking them; and then it might dawn on them that the cows couldn’t give all that much extra in one day, and then they would start to think.’

  Riah now nodded her head and bit on her lip, ‘Yes, and who would they think about?’ she said.

  As they were laughing the door opened, and when the boy came into the room and dropped his bait tin and cap on to the table his mother rose and, looking at him, said one word, ‘Well?’

  He answered quietly, ‘He didn’t mind. He said I was a fool, ’cos there’s another twenty to step into me shoes.’

  ‘They wouldn’t work like you.’

  ‘Yes, they would.’ He moved his head slowly. ‘When you’re hungry you’ll work twice as hard, and most of them are hungry.’

  She turned away as if ashamed of depriving him of his work. But quickly she was confronting him again, her voice harsh as she said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here. There’s no other way. Anyway, you said yourself you would be glad to get away because it was killing work.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ He nodded at her now, his tone soothing. ‘But I’m just afraid I won’t get another job, for I wouldn’t be able to fish, ’cos you know I can hardly stand going over in the ferry let alone go out to sea.’

  ‘Nobody’ll expect you to fish; there’ll be plenty of other work in Shields. There’s chemical works there, and there’s Cookson’s glass works, blacking factories and nail-making places. When I was a young lass the place was alive with factories and there’ll be many more now. Then of course there’s the boat-building. Oh, there’ll be heaps to choose from, more than around here. This place is a dead end.’

  ‘But where’ll we live?’

  She paused and half turned from him before she said, ‘Well, we’ll stay at your granny’s for a time, and then we’ll get a house.’

  ‘Me granny doesn’t like us.’

  Riah turned and looked at her daughter now and drew in a deep breath before saying to her, ‘That’s as may be, but when people are in a fix she’s all right that way; I mean, she’ll help. Anyway, it’ll just be for a day or two till I can look round. And as your da always said, education’s starting there, people are looking ahead. There’s Sunday Schools an’ things.’

  ‘We can beat anybody from Sunday Schools.’ Biddy now glanced at her brother as she added, ‘We could beat them at Sunday School, couldn’t we, Davey?’

  The boy didn’t answer; he was looking at his mother. ‘Have we any money to carry on with?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes’—she nodded�
��‘we have money to carry on with.’ She hadn’t told them what she had found in the bag behind the loose bricks, the fourteenth one she had taken out of the fire breast, because she was of the opinion that no matter how much children were told to hold their tongue, they let things slip out, particularly if they thought they were rich, and eighteen pounds fifteen shillings would have spelt a great fortune to them at this moment.

  The boy waited, his eyes narrowed towards her as if he was expecting her to go on, but she turned towards the fire and opening the door of the round oven she took out an earthenware dish which she carried to the table and there ladled out two bowlsful of soup, saying as she did so, and at the same time jerking her head towards the bucket at the end of the room, ‘Wash your hands. And then after your meal you’d better go down to the burn and starting bringing up the water for the bath.’

  ‘’Tisn’t Friday.’ Biddy was now seated at the table, spoon in hand and halfway to her mouth, and her mother answered, ‘No, it isn’t Friday, and I doubt if there’ll be any more Fridays for a long time. We’ll have to see how it goes.’

  ‘Will we have to wash in the river at Shields?’ There was a twinkle in Biddy’s eye and her mother slapped her face gently with the back of her hand, saying, ‘You’ll have to put up with worse things than that afore you’re much older, girl.’

  Presently she looked towards the narrow window and said, ‘The others are late.’

  ‘They are likely waiting for Paddy’s cart,’ Davey said as he sat down at the table. ‘He sometimes gives them a lift.’

  Presently, speaking as if to herself, Biddy said, ‘They get tired, especially Maggie. Her back aches. It isn’t right…’tisn’t…’