It was not the first time that Kate had seen Jon at the office. Her uncle didn’t like people fighting and since Jon was constantly in trouble he was occasionally brought in and told off. It hadn’t happened much lately though and although Kate didn’t want Jon to get into trouble she missed seeing him.
She knew a good many of the pitmen by now but to her Jon was special, not just because he had been kind to her and helped her the day that she fell off Dolly but because he made her feel like no one else had ever done before. He made her nervous; she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be doing when he was there, and couldn’t think about anything else in his presence. To her dismay she found herself closing her eyes at night thinking what fine eyes Jon had and how tall and slender he was. In vain did she give herself lectures on the subject. She liked him and there was no way past it.
At the end of the foreshift on that particular day Jon had walked across to the office and asked if he could see Mr Farrer. Kate remembered well the last time that Jon had been fighting and in trouble. She had sympathised with him.
‘Don’t worry,’ she had told him, ‘he feels as if he ought to shout but it doesn’t mean anything.’
Jon smiled and Kate felt an inexplicable happiness.
‘Thanks, bonny lass,’ he said.
‘I’m not a bonny lass,’ she said seriously. ‘I have too many freckles.’
‘Sun-kisses,’ he said.
Kate had been happy for days afterwards.
Now she greeted him with a smile and tried to be sober.
‘You haven’t been fighting again, have you?’ she said reprovingly. ‘He didn’t send for you?’ She looked all over his face for evidence.
‘No, I just wanted a word with him. Is he in?’
‘He was a minute ago. I’ll ask.’ And Kate went beyond the half-glassed door into the inner office where her uncle said that he would see Jon. She was desperate with curiosity, but she tried to keep busy. She had her own tiny office outside her uncle’s. It made her feel important; she was not just a clerk like the others were but she made her uncle’s life easier by arranging his appointments and seeing to the people who came in and opening his post and making sure he got to where he had to go at the right time and a hundred other things. She loved being there.
After a few minutes her uncle called her in.
‘Young Armstrong’s getting married. He needs a house.’
Kate felt as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water over her. She did nothing for what seemed to her like a very long time but was in fact only a few seconds. She stared at Jon. He couldn’t possibly be getting married. He was too young. And then she remembered what her aunt had said about the pitmen having to get married, some of them. Her aunt spoke scathingly and said they were like animals. Had Jon got some girl into trouble? Was he like that? There was another reason that he couldn’t get married. Kate didn’t quite understand but it was all to do with the fact that she thought she would have known if he had had a girl, that he wouldn’t have flirted with her like he did, that he wouldn’t have put his hands on her waist, that somehow she would have known there was someone he cared for. It wasn’t possible. Jon couldn’t get married. She would lose him then and she had not recovered from losing her father yet.
Prompted by her uncle she found a house for Jon but she was so pale that her uncle sent her home early, and it was the first time that she had been glad to do so.
The pit had been a shock to her at first. The pitmen seemed to have no respect. They were not like other men. When she ventured out of the office at the end or beginning of shifts some of the young ones whistled and laughed and brought the blood rushing into her face and the desire to run back into the office to her feet, but she soon learned that there was another side to them. When she spoke to them singly they called her ‘pet’ or ‘flower’ or ‘sweetheart’, and although Kate knew this wasn’t respectful either it was kindly meant. She had learned to decipher their rough words. They often teased her. Kate had never been teased before, her father had always been serious. She found that she liked being among these men and they were not so different from the intellectuals of London. The old men who sorted the coal in the shed near her office were happy to talk. They told her stories of pit disasters and holidays and their families. When she rode her horse through the village they waved at her and if she stopped on the way to work or back to admire babies or speak to children she soon found herself invited into tiny spotless cottages where the kettle appeared to be always on the boil for a pot of tea. The women talked about their men and their families and their neighbours and Kate learned a great deal about them.
She grew to like her way of life. She grew to love the pit and all the comings and goings. She loved to discuss the problems and the work. Her aunt despaired of her at mealtimes, and at social events she was bored. Her ears strained for talk of work among the young men she met. She asked them questions but was rewarded with laughter or strange looks.
She knew that her uncle and aunt looked on her differently now. She knew that her aunt was disappointed, that she had wanted Kate to be a daughter to her, but it was no use, she couldn’t be. She knew that they were determined that she should have the best. She was sure that they had spent money which they should not have spent, on her horse and on small parties at the house and on expensive material which her aunt had made into dresses. Kate cared nothing for any of it. She tried to please her aunt because they had taken her in but the truth was that Aunt Rose bored her. Other women, except the pitwives, bored her. She hated their inactivity and their frivolous minds. She hated the talk of domestic things. They did not read or care about politics or what went on in the world. Kate found men’s conversation much more interesting but she was not invited to join in. If she ventured near they stopped talking or made pretty remarks for her benefit. She thought she was likely to die of boredom.
After she’d started work at the office she had been happy, and caught up in that happiness was Jon Armstrong. Kate did not realise until the day she learned that he was to marry how much he meant to her. She knew that it was foolish but when she reached her bedroom she sat down on the bed and wept so much that her aunt suggested they should send for the doctor. When Kate refused, her aunt insisted that she should undress and get into bed. A fire was lit and the bed was warmed. Her aunt brought her a hot drink and Kate lay and watched the day turn into dusk and wished more than she had ever wished anything in her life that Jon Armstrong should not get married. She saw with a new and stunning clarity that he could not marry anybody else. It was not possible, it could not happen. God would not let it happen.