Maggie Rowan Read online

  She leant her head wearily against the window sash and continued to gaze through the net curtains into the distance. The sun had sunk now, and the afterglow was turning the corrugated shacks dotting the allotments into little houses of rainbow fairydom. From a chimney stack in the distance a thin spiral of dark-coloured smoke rose through the changing hues. She could almost see Christopher Taggart stoking up the boiler to cook the swill, his thoughts meanwhile playing around Seymour’s bicycle shop…He wanted a bicycle shop, and she wanted a child.

  The colours of the afterglow stopped their moving into one another; the noise from the room below faded away, even the smoke from the stack became fixed like a corkscrew in the air; only the thought that had leaped into her mind moved; it moved and spread itself and covered the earth; then it contracted again and came back to its birthplace, and with its impact she flung herself round from the window and stood, her back pressed to the wall, her hands spread out flat against it as if she was being confronted by some gigantic possibility which had taken on concrete form. She heard a voice that she did not recognise as her own whisper, ‘But he’s weakly.’ Then on the whisper, cold and harsh, came her own voice, ‘But I’m not!’

  She walked slowly to the bed and sat down on Ann’s clothes, and when the whisper came again, saying, ‘They’ll all laugh, the place’ll be in an uproar,’ she lifted her shoulders, and, as if in advance, the laughter rose through the floor from the room below. She pressed out her lips until their thin line took on a shape. She would pay even that price on the chance that she would be a married woman and have a bairn. Slowly her arms folded themselves over one another, and she pressed them to her with a rocking movement, and she closed her eyes and looked into the future and into the mysterious caverns of her mind, where lay concealed the knowledge that from no man could she expect love, but from a child…a child of her own body…she might even…be adored.

  She was not aware of how long she sat metaphorically hugging this amazing possibility to her; it was the concerted cries of the children yelling, ‘The twins! The twins! They’re going to do a turn!’ that made her rise from the bed, irritation flooding her again. How often her fingers itched to wind the ears of the precocious Taggart boys. She suspected that they often used her for their mimics…She wouldn’t put it past them for doing it now. Her suspicions led her on to the landing, and leaning over the banister, her face grim, she listened. But what came to her was the voice of Sep Taggart ordering his sons ‘to do’…their mother and the priest.

  Amidst the urging cries of the company, Kitty Taggart’s voice called, ‘Not on your life! What if himself was to walk in! Stop it, I tell you!’

  ‘Go on,’ ordered their father. ‘The bit about himself coaxing a bit of belly pork out of her.’

  There was a medley of laughter and cries. ‘Go on, Alan; you do your ma. And don’t forget to knock the drop off the end of your nose, mind.’

  Maggie’s nose wrinkled in disgust, and she thought: And into the flour when she’s baking, no doubt. There came to her a call for order, and she heard a voice almost identical with Kitty Taggart’s, and another, thick with the Irish brogue, representing the priest’s.

  Her face expressing her scorn, she was about to turn back into the bedroom, when she heard the back door burst open. For a moment she thought it was her brother Tom; he had gone to work today, fearing no doubt that if he lost a shift he’d be stood off, like the Baxter boy who lived three doors down. But it wasn’t Tom. She heard a man’s voice calling, ‘George man! George!’

  The footsteps hurried along the passage and the twins’ voices were suddenly hushed as the man spoke.

  In the moment of uncanny silence followed by the mad rush of feet Maggie knew what had happened. Softly she moved back into the bedroom and to the window. Yes, the street was astir, doors opening and people running. Well! Well! For it to happen at this moment! Her thoughts flew to David Taggart. He was one of the trained rescue workers. A slow smile spread over her face. If this fall was like any of the others he could be there ’til morning…So much for the wedding night.

  She turned her head towards the door as quick, light footsteps sounded on the stairs, but she was looking out of the window again when her sister rushed into the room.

  ‘There’s been a fall.’

  ‘So I gather.’ Maggie did not turn round, but she heard Ann’s quick intake of breath.

  ‘Well, how you can stand there doing nothing I don’t know!’

  On this, she did turn and look at her sister rapidly divesting herself of the finery it had taken her hours to don. ‘What d’you expect me to do, run down to the pithead?’

  ‘That wouldn’t hurt you…Do you realise our Tommy may be in it; he’s still down.’

  ‘He may be. On the other hand he may not. There’s no need to go mad until you know. And even then it won’t help.’

  Ann paused in the act of pulling a skirt over her head. ‘Sometimes I don’t think you’re human.’ Her voice broke: ‘You could even be glad it’s happened, to break up my wedding. Why did you stay off, anyway? I didn’t ask you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t ask me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  Ann dragged a coat from the wardrobe. ‘But don’t you see, if anything happens to our Tommy, me mother’ll go mad.’

  Maggie did not reply, and Ann rushed from the room; and Maggie heard her calling, ‘Mother! Where’s me mother?’

  Again Maggie turned to the window. There was her mother, flying down the street behind the running figures of her father and Sep Taggart in their pit clothes, and there were the wives of the Taggart men shepherding their children home; their men would already have flown on ahead to change.

  Soon there was no sound coming from downstairs, or from the streets; a peaceful, soothing quiet lay upon the house. As she was about to turn from the window she caught sight of Christopher Taggart. He was jumping the stile with an agility that for the moment wiped out his deformity. His face was upturned towards the fading light, that abnormally large face, the eyes too big and the mouth too wide and the cheek bones too prominent. It was the face of a giant, and in the changing light seemed to reflect a giant’s massive beauty…He would have been a handsome man, she mused, had his body been straight. But had his body been straight, then she could never have hoped to carry out the scheme that was growing with startling swiftness in her mind. She watched him running past the window and down the street; and as her eyes followed him she felt in the position of a god who held his future in the palm of her hand.

  Nellie Rowan stood at the pit gates with her face pressed close to the bars. The coldness of the iron did not cool the fever of her brain, although the same bars had turned her hands to stiff pieces of flesh. It was nearly an hour now since the gate was last opened, and then only to let people in. During the four hours she had stood there no-one had left the pit yard. But for an occasional light from an opening door or from a swinging lamp the yard was in darkness; but away in the far distance, at the top of the two broad flights of steps, there were a number of lights, which kept going in and out as the milling figures up there blotted them from her view.

  There were no whispers or debating talk now from the mass of people pressed about her; the cage was going down, and everyone was waiting again with suspended breath.

  It seemed an endless period of time before the whisper passed over the crowd, ‘It’s coming up!’

  Nellie listened to the whisking, grinding sound of the wheel as it pulled up the cage to the surface. So still had the night become that she heard the faint clank of the iron bar that stood in place of a door being lifted from the cage. Then came the sound of footsteps on the ironwork of the top flight of steps. They were muffled on the lower wooden flight, and were lost completely when they reached the coal dust of the yard.

  There was still no movement from the crowd, until the measured tread of men’s feet was heard on the concrete square that fronted the lamp house, the first-aid post and the group of offices
. Then it was only a short, combined sigh.

  The gate was torn away from Nellie’s hands, and she was forced back as a car moved slowly into the crowd. It was an open car, and the swinging lamps, held aloft by the men in the crowd, showed up the burly figure of Caffley, the agent. He was gazing pointedly ahead as if unwilling to face the looks of pain and resentment which he knew were all about him.

  The car moved slowly and silently into the main road. Then a single voice crying, ‘Bloody bloodsucker!’ seemed to send it spurting away. The voice was echoed from different parts of the crowd, not loudly, but in low growling undertones.

  ‘Why don’t he get hissel doon?’

  ‘How would he like to keep seven bairns on forty bob a week, eh? You can’t run a bloody great mansion on that, can you? And who keeps him and his like in their fancy houses? We do!’

  ‘You’re lucky to be getting forty bob,’ said a toneless voice; ‘I’ve got one lad to keep all of us. And a pound he gets, after starting as a screener at eight and tuppence in nineteen thirty-two. Now, after four years, a pound!’

  The woman’s voice faded away in hopelessness, and another took its place, thick and harsh. ‘They say he’s standing thirty off next week.’

  ‘Let him; there’ll be a riot.’

  ‘What we want to do is to put our bloody heads together and see Peter Lee and get the union to—’

  ‘Aw, the union! Only damn good they are is for calling a strike. We had enough of the last.’

  ‘Now don’t you shout the union down, missis. Some day it’ll be a power. It’ll move more than mountains, it’ll move pits…Aye, pits.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ It was a woman’s voice thick with scorn. ‘Is this any place to open your gobs? And I notice you’re all top men who are letting off your wind…and the ones who can run their whippets.’

  ‘Look here, I’m only on top because of me accident.’ This voice came high and angry. ‘And what’s whippets got to do with it, anyway?’

  ‘There’s got to be men on top or there wouldn’t be any down below, missis. And men must have some recreation,’ a reasonable voice silenced the men…and almost the woman, for she came back, saying, ‘Aye they must have their recreation, beer for the whippet if there’s nee bread for the bairn.’

  No-one took this up, the voices dying away in shamefaced silence, and once more the sound of the wheel dropping its burden into the earth was heard.

  Talk. Talk. Men were always talking. And about frightening things, like strikes, victimisation, and being stood off. Ann drew closer to her mother and put her hand on her arm as if she might, in the act of giving comfort, draw comfort from her. She had always pitied her mother for having to bear the anxious, rugged, uncertain life of a miner’s wife; now she herself was irrevocably linked to that life, and it was going to be even harder for her because she had not her mother’s strength; she hated and feared the pit. Her fear was woven like a net about David, and because of it she had even tried to persuade him to look for another job. He had been honestly amazed.

  ‘What! Leave the pit on my own?’ he had said. ‘Without being stood off? Nobody in their right senses would do that, lass…not these days.’ His tender laugh had proved her senselessness, even to herself. And now, after only a few hours married, the pit was telling her who was master of her life…and David’s…and her mother’s and father’s…and everybody’s in this town. But mostly at the moment it was master of Tom’s life. She was forgetting that. Her David was down there; but this time he was on the right side of the fall. But Tom…

  She cast a glance towards her mother. She was looking stern and forbidding, and you couldn’t really tell what she was thinking. But if anything should happen to Tom, it would surely drive her mad; he was the star in her sky, and he shone for her alone. She loved the three of them; yes, she did, even though it was hard to believe that she could have an affection for their Maggie. Yet on Tom alone she poured her adoration; and even her reticent nature could not wholly conceal it.

  A short while ago, when she was crying, her mother had admonished her, saying, ‘Have faith; he’ll come up.’

  Yes, but how would he come up? Lying on his back or walking? Oh, she hated the pit, hated and loathed it. What would happen if she had to stand outside these gates, waiting as she was doing now, but for David. Would she be able to keep calm, at least outwardly, like her mother? No, it would drive her off her head. A woman behind her started to whimper. And another said, ‘Go home, Mrs Blackett; think of the bairn.’

  The whimper turned into broken words: ‘He might never see it.’

  ‘Now, now. It’s only a light fall they say.’

  And the woman’s voice whimpered again: ‘That’s what they said two years ago. They were nearly through then; and there was another fall…Perhaps they’re all gassed…!’ Her voice rose to a point.

  ‘Sh!…Sh! Don’t talk like that…Go home, woman!’ It was a stern reprimand from different quarters.

  Nellie’s fingers tightened on the bars of the gate as she listened to the woman…Not gassed. Not that. It won’t happen. No; it mustn’t happen! She sent her command to the heavens, lifting her head to the skies, black yet alight with stars. Then her head drooped, and she leaned it for a moment against the gate…Would he be sitting down there going over in his mind his little sermon for Sunday? Only last night they talked about it whilst she was finishing the baking for the wedding. He had stood by her, his shoulder level with her own, so tall was he already; and he had told her some of the things he was going to say when he took his first service in the tiny village chapel at Lemton. Her face had glowed with the heat from the oven, but more so with pride for her boy. Only seventeen, and going to speak in the chapel! The Reverend Mr Fraser said he had the makings of a minister…Oh, if he could only be a minister! He would if he could; Mr Fraser would help him. But he just laughed at the idea, saying he knew what he could do and what he couldn’t, and he wasn’t up to being a minister; if there was to be any ministry for him it would be down the mine. And now he was down there in his first accident. Would this make him change his mind?…What did it matter so long as he was safe?

  Kitty Taggart’s voice broke in on her thinking, as it had done several times already. Endeavouring to be hushed, it was still strident. She was pushing her way through the crowd with more hot tea or broth or food of some kind. Feeding the body was the only way in which Kitty could express her sympathy, and it took a prolific form.

  But even her voice was silenced as the sound of bounding footsteps on the iron stairs made themselves heard above the murmur of the crowd.

  The footsteps paused once in the yard, then came on, and a man stopped at the gate and held up a lamp. His eyes shone white out of his black face, and the light shone into the red wetness of his mouth as he called, ‘They’re nearly through, and they’re all right.’

  The questions came flying at him:

  ‘Anybody hurt?’

  ‘How long afore they’re up?’

  The answers swept hope through the people. The suppression they had forced on their voices was released. They whispered no longer, but called to each other as if across a great distance.

  Nellie said nothing. For a long while after the man had gone back she remained staring into the yard. Then seeming to remember Ann, she turned to her, and her remark was characteristic: ‘Davie won’t be long now, he’ll be up shortly.’

  And Ann, in relief this time, began to cry again.

  But they were not up shortly. The stars had moved high into the firmament and the dew of the dawn was soaking into the crowd before the first liberated man passed through the gate. The crowd was not so large now as it had been; the emotion seekers from the centre of the town who had helped to swell it had taken to their beds when the night became raw. But it was still large, and each man was soon surrounded and lost in his family.

  Through the lifting darkness Nellie saw her boy. He was walking between his father and David. His eyes met hers and he smiled. But when he
reached her no words were spoken; as if by common consent Nellie walked on ahead with her son, leaving George and David with Ann between them to follow after.

  They had left the people and the kindly pats and comforting words well behind and walked the half mile along the main road to where the colliery houses began before Nellie spoke. And then she asked softly, ‘Were you frightened, lad?’

  It was a while before he replied, ‘No, Ma; I don’t think I was; just sort of surprised. And then that went off too.’

  ‘It hasn’t made you feel you don’t want to go down any more?’ He laughed, a gentle, mature and understanding laugh. ‘No, Ma; it hasn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right. You know what they say: the devil looks after his own and only the good die young.’

  ‘Don’t! Don’t say things like that!’ Nellie spoke sharply, as she was in the habit of doing to his father when he came out with something raw. Then she added contritely, ‘Oh, lad, you know what I mean. God has been merciful.’

  They walked on for some further way in silence before Nellie spoke again. ‘What did you do with your time?’

  ‘Oh, we yarned a bit’—he gave a small, embarrassed laugh—‘and I talked.’

  ‘What did you talk to them about?’

  ‘Oh, just anything that came into my head. Bits of Rupert Brooke…you know, the poet. And then’—he paused—‘I told them some of what I am going to say on Sunday.’

  ‘What! And they listened? John Blackett and Findlay, and those Catholics?’ There was incredulity in her voice.

  ‘Well’—he laughed quietly—‘I didn’t say it like a sermon; I said it like Mr Fraser does and like he told me to…I just talked. They didn’t think it was anything to do with a sermon, not even anything to do with God…A funny thing happened though; I got stuck, and was searching for a word when Flora let out a bray, like she does when she’s fed up and wants her feed. Oh, we did laugh.’