‘She’s expecting,’ Mrs Armstrong said flatly.
Mrs Harton and Mrs Armstrong were sharing a cup of tea in the kitchen of Lizzie’s house. They didn’t know that she was about to walk down the stairs. She stopped short, something inside of her suddenly hurting badly with the knowledge, she didn’t quite know why. Jon and Mavis Robson. It didn’t seem possible, it didn’t feel right. He couldn’t have, could he? Not that she cared. She hadn’t spoken to him for weeks. He could have been hurt down the pit and she wouldn’t have cared. And yet in those cold silent hours of the night it occurred to her more than once that something could happen to Jon Armstrong down the Victoria, he could be injured or even worse he could die, and she would be left with the sound of that slap under her hand, the feel of his lean cheek, the bitter look that he had given her and the silence between them. For days she had wanted to make peace with him and now suddenly it seemed too late.
She had tried to think of why he had knocked Sam down and thrown the pretty gold locket far off into the sea, why he had treated her so badly and spoiled her happiness. She wondered if perhaps it had something to do with the day of the chapel picnic, if he thought he had some claim on her; she could think of no other reason - yet Jon had kissed plenty of other girls, and obviously that and more with Mavis Robson. Lizzie couldn’t take it in. She stood there chilled to the bone. For weeks she had ignored him, and during those weeks had seen nothing more of Sam though she had longed to. She had wanted to go round to their house but her pride wouldn’t let her and in that time Greta had been there often.
Lizzie didn’t understand. Everything, was going wrong. She tried to picture Jon married to Mavis Robson, because he would have to marry her now. He would go and live with Mavis Robson in another house in another row because Jon was a good worker and could have his own house. His mam would have to get by without him and so would everybody else. Mavis was a bonny lass with dark brown hair and matching brown eyes, and she had run about after Jon for months. Now it looked as though she had caught him.
‘You mean Mavis Robson?’ she heard her mother say.
‘No.’ Mrs Armstrong sighed and lowered her voice but it was difficult to discuss anything quietly in a miner’s thinwalled house. ‘Our Sam’s lass, Greta.’
‘Greta?’ Lizzie’s mam sounded shocked, and worse. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said.
‘I know. Whatever will Lizzie say?’
At the top of the stairs in the winter gloom Lizzie sat down heavily. This was worse, this was the worst ever, and in a split second she remembered again the gold locket shining as it spun through the air. Her cheeks went hot and her stomach felt sick. Sam couldn’t have done such a thing. He couldn’t have done that to Greta and then made up to her.
‘A baby in the house,’ Mrs Armstrong said. ‘She’s more than four months gone now.’
‘Are they going to live with you?’
‘I want them to live with her folk but Sam won’t.’ Lizzie thought of Greta Smith living next-door, taking Lizzie’s dream away. Greta growing big with Sam’s baby. She sat there in the cold until Mrs Armstrong left and then her mother came to the bottom of the stairs.
‘Are you there, Lizzie? I didn’t hear you go out so you must be. Come down and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
She went off back into the kitchen and Lizzie slowly followed. She felt ill. Every bone ached and she was tired and the thumping in her head made a pain over her eyes and the fact that she wanted to cry and wouldn’t let herself made it worse. She sat by the kitchen fire with the hot cup comfortingly in her hands and her mam sat down with her.
‘The Armstrongs aren’t the only lads in the village, you know. There are plenty of others.’
Lizzie didn’t trust her voice for a few moments and then she managed to get out, ‘I cared about him.’
‘I know you did, but look at how he turned out. You’re a bonny, good lass, you could have anybody you wanted. And it might be much better than that. You never know. You’re young yet, there’s plenty of time. They’re a bad lot, you know, Sam doing that and their Jon fighting. There’s only Alf left and he’s so quiet you wouldn’t know he was there. They’re just like their dad was.’
*
That spring, when Sam and Greta had been married for less than five months, she had a baby, a little boy. Lizzie didn’t go next-door again and Mrs Armstrong had more sense than to ask her. Harold and his lass were courting and were always sitting about in Lizzie’s house so that she was glad when the fine weather came and she could go outside. She often heard the baby screaming through the thin walls, and Sam and Greta shouting at one another which they seemed to do a lot of, and Mrs Armstrong complained to Lizzie’s mother about how much work there was to do because Greta was no housekeeper.
‘Her mother’s mucky so it isn’t surprising,’ she said.
Lizzie wished that she didn’t enjoy hearing how mucky Greta was, what a bad mother Greta was, and how often Sam and Greta had rows. She had cried a lot over Sam Armstrong and had told herself that she would never bother with another lad. She stayed at home and helped her mam. Rob and May were to be married that summer and May didn’t have much time for Lizzie so she went off walking by herself on the beach as the nights grew lighter and the flowers began to show like yellow stars in the grass. She would lie in their sand dune and wish things were different. One night Sam was lying there when she reached the dune and she hesitated and would have turned but he said, ‘Don’t go.’
Lizzie hadn’t realised until then that it was Sam she hated now and not his brother but she sat down, some way from him.
‘How’s Greta and the bairn?’
‘Fine. It’s a bit cramped.’
‘Yes, it will be.’ Talking to him was impossible for the first time. Lizzie could think of nothing to say, she didn’t even want to be there.
‘Is that a new frock? It’s bonny. You’re bonny.’
‘Don’t say things like that to me. You didn’t want me. You wanted Greta.’
‘I didn’t know.’ Sam looked at her with warm brown eyes. ‘I didn’t think you’d turn out so bonny. Being married’s awful. Greta whinges all the time and the baby cries all night. I can’t stand it. I never wanted to marry her. I didn’t. I wish it was like before.’
It was exactly what Lizzie had wished so many times and then all of a sudden she didn’t. She looked at Sam Armstrong and knew that he was the worst thing that a man could be in a pit village. He was soft. And to think she had cared for him. However could that have been? She didn’t care about him now. She got up and left him there in the sand dune and gave him no more thought as she made her way home.
*
May was married to Rob Harvey in June. The days were hot and long and the nights short and sticky. They were married in the chapel and the Armstrongs had a meal which was going to be in their house but the weather being so warm they put the borrowed tables outside. Mrs Armstrong had baked and cooked until she couldn’t see the top of her kitchen table and it was a fine spread. Lizzie thought that May had never looked bonnier in her new blue dress.
That week Lizzie had been in the Armstrong house several times helping May and her mother with the preparations, and she was excited about the wedding. Her mother had made for her a light summer dress, the prettiest she had ever had. It was a deep rose pink and when she looked into the mirror that morning she was surprised at the girl who looked back at her. The large dark eyes were bright and clear, she had pretty blushed cheeks, creamy skin, her black hair was held back with ribbons and had its own sheen to it, and she had the dress. Lizzie was almost satisfied.
May had been round to Lizzie’s house more than once that week and they’d talked in whispers. May was glad to be leaving. Rob didn’t want a house of his own. They were going to live with his parents. Next-door Greta was in the way and Jon and Greta didn’t get on, May said.
Jon Armstrong was behaving like the lad Lizzie’s mother thought him, coming home drunk and bruised on Saturday nights and never speaking to Lizzie until she didn’t know what she’d say to him if he ever did. Jon never saw the inside of chapel and when Lizzie ventured to his house there were no more books. He had taken to going walking with Mavis Robson and the lass from the store and one or two others. His mother was less than happy with him and told Lizzie’s mother that Alf was the only good son she had.
It being a chapel wedding there was no drink. Lizzie thought that the only reason for Jon Armstrong’s scowl. Everybody else seemed happy enough, sampling the sausage rolls and the sweet cakes and drinking tea and talking and laughing.
The afternoon grew hot and some of the lads and lasses made that their excuse to leave the tables. Some of them wandered away down to the beach; even Sam and Greta left the baby with her mother and disappeared. The women fussed and stood about, the men gathered to smoke and talk, and the children played ring games in spite of the heat. The lass from the store was there because she was a friend of May’s, and she was almost as fair and pretty as Greta. Lizzie watched her talking and looking up at Jon, and he was smiling then, but when he looked at his sister there was no pleasure in his face. Later he walked away by himself in the direction of the beach and after a good five minutes’ hesitation, Lizzie followed him.
It wasn’t nearly as warm there with the breeze coming off the sea. There was nobody about but Jon. She wondered what had happened to all the others. The sea was deep blue, the waves making barely a splash as they broke. He lay down at the top of the beach and by the time Lizzie reached him, silently, because of the soft sand there, he had closed his eyes. She didn’t know what to say.
‘Jon?’ He opened his eyes quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. ‘You could have told me.’
‘About what?’ he said.
‘I didn’t know what there was to tell.’
‘You must have had a fair idea.’
‘I didn’t know she was having a bairn. You can sit down, I don’t own the beach.’
Lizzie promptly sat.
‘He says he didn’t want to marry her,’ she said shyly.
‘No, well, if you don’t want to get your feet wet, you don’t go and paddle in the water, do you?’
‘Don’t you like weddings?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve only smiled once all day and that was at Annie. Maybe it’s this type of wedding you don’t like?’
‘What’s that?’
‘No beer.’
‘Aye, maybe that’s it.’
‘But May’s your sister and Rob’s your friend—’
‘He’s not my friend!’ Jon cut in, and Lizzie sat back a little.
‘You go drinking with him,’ she said.
‘I go drinking with a lot of lads.’
‘Don’t you like him then?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Couldn’t you have stopped her?’
‘I did try. Do you listen to your Harold?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Well, then.’
Lizzie remembered what Sam had said about Rob killing the pony.
‘He’s not soft,’ she said.
‘He isn’t that,’ Jon said grimly. ‘If he lays one finger on her, I’ll kill him.’
‘He won’t do that, Jon,’ Lizzie said.
She went down to the water to paddle. She took off her shoes and stockings and left them a little way up from the waves and then walked through the shallow water before standing letting it wash over her ankles and the sand sink through her toes. It was wonderfully cold.
‘Come out,’ he said from behind her.
Lizzie hadn’t seen him or heard him approach. She turned around.
‘What?’ she said.
Jon lifted her out by the waist. To her own astonishment, instead of protesting at this treatment she let him hold on to her and she stood on tiptoe and put her arms up around his neck and let him kiss her. It didn’t matter to Lizzie that she was only one of three or four girls whom Jon had kissed that summer, neither did she mind that he kissed her now as fiercely as his brother had done because although the kiss was hot and deep it was nothing like kissing Sam. She didn’t know why it didn’t worry her, and when he didn’t let her go she was quite happy there with her arms around his neck and her toes in the sand and his body close to hers and his mouth so sweet.
*
Lizzie did a twirl in front of her tiny bedroom mirror and laughed at herself, reliving for the thousandth time the afternoon of May’s wedding day. The cool water running under her toes, the sun warm on her body, and his mouth on hers. They had walked back up the beach together and Jon had put his arm around her waist and she had liked the possessiveness of the action. She did another twirl and then ran out of the door and down the stairs.
‘You’ll break your neck coming down them stairs like that,’ her mother said, looking up from the kitchen table where she was baking. She looked Lizzie over carefully.
‘And just where do you think you’re going?’ she said.
Lizzie faltered.
For a walk?’
‘Oh, yes, and what about that pile of mending there is in the kitchen?’
‘I’ll do it when I come back.’
‘I suppose Jon Armstrong’s going for a walk too, is he?’ her mother queried, looking at her.
Lizzie hesitated.
‘He’s waiting for me at the gate.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, Mam, please.’
‘I thought there was something,’ her mother said, wiping floury hands. ‘I saw you on Saturday afternoon, sneaking off.’
‘We weren’t.’
‘Lizzie, I’ve told you before and I’ll say it again. That lad is going to make some poor lass the worst husband in the world.’
Lizzie stood at the foot of the stairs, hesitating, her eyes full of tears. Her mother sighed.
‘What do you want, Lizzie, a baby a year and a husband who drinks? Because that’s the kind he is. He’s got a temper too. He’d knock you about when you crossed him. His father was like that, just the same, big and good-looking. Every lass in the village wanted him, and poor Flo thought she’d got a catch. Tom used to come back on a Saturday night full of beer and leather her, and the bairns and all, Jon especially because he stood up to him. That lad’s been brought up with fighting, he knows nothing else. And Tom …’ Lizzie watched her mother’s cheeks go pink. ‘He was always interfering with her, gave her no peace. That sort of thing … it isn’t nice, you know, Lizzie.’
‘Isn’t it?’ she said softly, not wanting to break her mother’s train of thought and thinking back to the way that Jon’s kisses made her feel, like she wanted to lean all over him and give in.
Her mother wrinkled her nose.
‘When the candle’s out men are different. Mucky. Then you get a big belly.’
‘Jon wouldn’t do that.’
Her mother laughed harshly.
‘Wouldn’t he? You just give him half a chance, my lass. Them Armstrongs, they’re all alike. Look at Sam. Jon Armstrong’ll be a hard man, Lizzie, you mark my words. He’ll lead some woman a pretty dance.’
‘Can I go, Mam?’
‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?’
‘Please.’
Her mother sighed and relented and she skipped out of the house and down the yard. They went walking on the beach and she thought about what her mother had said. She knew that Jon had a temper, a slow heavy kind of temper which left you breathless, but she didn’t think he was like his dad. Tom Armstrong had been the sort who shouted and hit out. Jon was at his most dangerous when he talked soft and pleasant and sarcastic at you like you were daft. Then she remembered him shouting and swearing at Sam and knocking him down. She would have thought that having a father like Tom would have put him off beer and fighting but it hadn’t.
He was nothing like that now. He laughed and chatted and they walked a long way because the tide was well out and the sands went on for miles that way without a break and the evening was fine and still, and then they ran up the beach and collapsed, exhausted, at the top of the dunes, breathing heavily and laughing. And then he asked her softly, ‘You were late coming out. Was that because of your mam?’
Lizzie looked respectfully at him. You couldn’t put one over on him.
‘She doesn’t want me to see you. She doesn’t like you.’
‘The thing is, do you like me?’
‘I’ve always liked you.’
‘No, you haven’t. You always liked our Sam.’
‘That was different.’ It wasn’t the answer Jon wanted to hear, she knew as she said it.
‘You chase half the lasses in the village,’ she said.
It had come as a surprise to Lizzie to find that this mattered to her. Her feelings had changed. She didn’t know when or how but the brothers had changed places in her mind. At first she was disgusted with herself, behaving like the other lasses did just because Jon was big and good-looking and had kissed her down by the water’s edge. She’d relived that kiss so often that she thought she might die for the lack of another.
Jon didn’t look at her now as he said softly, ‘You do want me here, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
He kissed her, gently and deliberately, and she reached up with both hands to draw him nearer. Her fingers were in his hair, her eyes closed, her lips parted, and a sweet warmth stole over her body. He put both arms around her so that the top of her was crushed against him. She couldn’t have got away, so fierce was the hold, but Lizzie didn’t want to get away, she wanted to get nearer, to have more of the kisses that were making her feel this wonderful and new sensation. When he released her she made a little noise of disappointment in her throat. She sat back and blinked and looked at him. Jon was frowning. Had she done something wrong? The rejection so soon after the pleasure brought tears into her eyes and she had to blink several times to get rid of them and swallow hard and clear her throat.
‘Will you be my lass?’
Lizzie met his gaze, unbelieving.
‘I thought … you didn’t like it.’
He smiled and then it was all right, she knew it was.
‘I like it, Lizzie. So, will you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ And since she didn’t dare throw herself at him, in the strange daft way that she immediately wanted to, she smiled brilliantly at him. As she stifled the desire to hurl herself at him he smiled back at her, his eyes very blue and warm.
‘Howay then.’
Lizzie shook her head.
‘Come on. I won’t hurt you and I won’t get you like our Sam got Greta.’
Lizzie had never been cuddled before in her life and it was as wondrous an experience as the kissing had been. She flung herself at him and he laughed and caught her into his arms. She buried her face against his chest and put both arms around the solid warmth of him. Eyes closed there against his shirt, she was happier now than she had ever been. Jon Armstrong was the whole world to her now.
‘Oh, Lizzie,’ he said, burying his face in her hair, ‘I’ve thought about you a lot. You always were the bonniest little lass in the world, running after our Sam and now I’m going to make you all mine. You won’t go with no other lad, will you?’
‘No,’ Lizzie said, smiling with delight.
He crushed her nearer.
‘I’m never going to let go of you, never ever,’ he said.