Mrs Harton wouldn’t let Lizzie go next-door where the curtains and doors were closed for days. On the day of his brothers’ funeral Jon didn’t even look up to see Lizzie, never mind speak to her. She tried to be patient but he didn’t come to her. She had a great desire to dash out of her house and up their back yard and hammer on the door and throw herself into his arms. But she didn’t. She waited.
Kate had just as little comfort. Her uncle for some reason didn’t shut his door when he saw Jon and she was forced to endure the interview.
The autumn sun shone through her grimy office window like a mockery.
‘The company …’ Her uncle paused. Kate had seen him and heard him at home, calling the company names which she had thought would never pass his lips, and it came to her then that her uncle’s work was a necessity not a luxury like hers. He managed the Victoria because he was paid to. He liked the Nelsons no better than anybody else. ‘The company accepts no responsibility for what happened. You know as well as I do that the Victoria is as safe as we can make her. Some… man must have removed a vital support by mistake, that’s all I can think. We’re very careful, Armstrong, very careful indeed.’
Kate sat hunched behind her desk holding on to her breath. She knew that Jon had a ready temper. Any display of it here and he would lose his job and his house and any chance of working in the Durham coalfield again. He had to accept now that there would be no compensation of any kind from the company. Kate sat there listening to his silence. She had heard her uncle say at home that there wouldn’t be a penny because if the company offered money it would mean that they acknowledged blame, and if they did that there would be a case to answer and as far as anybody knew there was not and he doubted whether anything could be proved. Her uncle did not fear the union who had apparently already turned down Jon’s request for help. One man had even blamed Sam and there had been a fight. The rumour was that Jon Armstrong had almost killed him.
After the silence had gone on for so long that Kate didn’t dare to breathe, her uncle said, ‘You won’t be eligible for another house now, Armstrong. One man, one house. And your brother’s widow and her mother will have to be out of their house by the end of the week.’
Jon walked out without a word. He brushed past Kate and didn’t even look at her. When he had gone she went through into her uncle’s office.
‘I should’ve sacked him as well,’ George Farrer said.
Kate looked levelly at him. Her uncle snapped a pencil in two and threw both halves on the desk.
‘I thought he’d give me reason to. I couldn’t even find out about the fight. They closed ranks. He’ll cause trouble before he’s through with that lad, real trouble.’
*
That evening Lizzie was sitting at the table with her mother and Harold and Enid when Jon arrived. They had just finished their tea. She was so relieved to see him that she got up and went to him, but he didn’t encourage or touch her. He looked past her to her mother.
‘How’s your mam?’ asked Lizzie’s as though they didn’t live next-door and meet every day.
‘Grand. Mrs Harton, I cannot marry Lizzie.’
The words came out in such a rush that Lizzie stared at him.
‘Aye, I know,’ her mother said.
‘Greta’s expecting another bairn and her mam’ll be put out of her house on Friday.’
Lizzie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘It isn’t true,’ she said. ‘Because of Greta.’
Jon looked at her then. His eyes hadn’t lost the blankness that they had held ever since he’d been brought up out of the pit with his dead brothers.
‘I can’t let our Sam’s bairns starve.’
‘Isn’t there anybody else to take them?’ Lizzie said, and she heard her voice wobble. He didn’t have to answer the question because as they stood there in silence, not touching each other, her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered. Her face worked and then she broke down and turned towards her mother in a storm of weeping, and for the first time ever her mother took her into her arms. Harold and Enid got up and went into the other room.
Jon would have left but as he tried to she pulled away from her mother and flew to him and put herself into his arms, clutching at the lapels of his jacket, her slim fingers white at the knuckles. The tears brimmed and fell and she heard the front room door click as her mother went out. Lizzie said his name over and over until he pulled her to him and kissed her mouth sweetly to bruising and all over her face, kissing away the tears, and then he held her from him and Lizzie stood back and let him walk out.
After that there was silence except for the fire crackling. Lizzie stood in the middle of the room where he had left her, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, unable to believe what was happening to her. Everything was finished, the happiness was all gone, and there was nothing but a great big hole. There was nothing to replace it. How frightening, she thought, like a cliff edge. She had done that once when she went away for the day down the coast. She had stood on the edge of a very high cliff, the sea way way below and the jagged rocks, knowing that if her feet slipped or if she stepped forward or if she was given even a small shove she would fall, lose her footing and fall, with nothing to clutch on to. It was like that now. It was like dying.
Her mother came back into the room.
‘You have what you wanted now,’ Lizzie said.
Her mother threw her such a look but the words tumbled out regardless.
‘You never wanted me to marry him. You said you’d rather I slaved in somebody’s house all my life …’
‘Oh, lass, I wouldn’t have had it be like this.’
‘Jon won’t ever be able to marry anybody now. He’ll have to keep all those people for always.’
‘Greta’s a bonny lass. Somebody’ll take her on. Even with her mother, maybe.’
Her own mother was trying to make a joke, Lizzie thought in surprise. She never made jokes.
‘Do you think they might?’
‘I’m sure of it.’ And Lizzie’s mother cuddled her again. That was another surprise. ‘Just give it a little time. It’ll all come right in the end. Things always do.’
*
Jon walked quickly up the yard and down the row and through the village. He didn’t stop. He wanted to but there were people about and he knew that they pitied him, that either they would avoid him or come over to say something meaningless that he had heard a dozen times already. He couldn’t stand that. If he stopped he would run all the way back to Lizzie and get hold of her and never let her go again, but as long as he kept walking there was a part of him which didn’t believe that life could be so bad. It wasn’t possible that he could lose her.
He stopped outside Greta’s mother’s house. The evening was not over yet but the rest wouldn’t be as hard as that.
Greta’s mother, Nellie, was sitting over a meagre fire as though she had a cold. The kitchen was already stripped bare leaving only the basics as they had been. She managed a smile for him as he walked in. She was a small faded version of Greta with silver-gold hair and tired eyes, a sharp, bitter woman whom Jon had never liked. Greta looked up too. She was a different kind of lass from Lizzie though she too had been crying, and there were dark shadows under her bonny eyes.
Her hair was the colour of ripe wheat and for all her grieving her body was ripe and rounded and her cheeks like peaches, but Jon didn’t care for any of that. He didn’t like her and he knew very well that she didn’t like him. He blamed her for seducing Sam, thought that she had deliberately given herself to him because her father was a bully and she wanted to get out of the house. And although Jon knew that she was not to be blamed for wanting to get away from a man like that, Sam was gentle and vulnerable and she had seen that and played on it. She had made him miserable both before and after their marriage. Greta was the kind of lass who didn’t like to be touched except when it suited her.
Right now Jon just wished that she had never existed. She was his burden now, she was the weight for his back. Her body was not yet showing the second child, it was early in her pregnancy and the first baby was crying in her arms. In similar circumstances Jon thought he could have felt sympathy for any woman but Greta didn’t give him the chance. She looked at him without pleasure and her eyes were dull. In two days she and her mother would be on the streets and she could expect no help when people’s initial sympathy had gone. She would have to find work where she could and keep her mother and two bairns somehow. The child, a little boy called Tommy, stopped crying now and she put him down into his wooden cradle, the cradle which Alf s clever fingers had made. Jon tried not to think about Alf. He missed Sam, it was true and that hurt, but he missed Alf with the numbness of disbelief.
‘What do you want?’ Greta said.
‘I want to talk to you, in the other room.’
‘Don’t trouble yourselves,’ her mother said, getting up wearily. ‘I’m going to my bed while I still have one. Is your mother all right, Jon?’
‘Aye, she’s fine.’ People had been asking for days and he had been answering the same way. They had to ask, to show they cared, and he had to answer. His mother had to be all right, there was nothing anybody could do about it even if she wasn’t.
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ Greta demanded, and her chin came up in the same way as it had done when they were having an argument.
Jon took badly to being defied. He hadn’t known that he would because he had for some reason assumed that grief and fright would have made her pliable. They hadn’t, and somehow it pleased him and annoyed him all at the same time.
‘You have to be out of here by Friday.’
‘I know.’
‘We will not.’
Jon sighed inwardly. Why did she have to argue and make this worse than it was? He didn’t want her there any more than she wanted to come.
‘You don’t have a choice.’
Greta fairly spat.
‘It’s nowt to do with you!’
‘They’re Sam’s bairns.’
‘He’s dead,’ Greta said harshly. ‘Anyroad, you’re daft. You can’t keep me and my mam and two bairns, and your mam and you and Lizzie and whatever bairns come.’
Jon held her gaze.
‘I’ll not be keeping Lizzie,’ he said.
Greta stared at him. Tears drenched her eyes like a sudden rain shower and she backed away.
‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I’m going away from here. I’ve got the money from the union. I’ll take in mending. I’ll find a place for us and …’
‘You won’t. They’re Sam’s bairns and they’re going no place. Tell your mam she can’t bring the furniture, there isn’t room. Tomorrow.’
‘No. Not tomorrow and not any day.’
Jon looked hard at her.
‘Do you think I’m like Sam, Greta, to be mucked about by you? If you aren’t down our house by the time I come off shift tomorrow, I’ll come up here and fetch you. Now, I’ll organise your things to be brought. You just bring your mam and yourself and the bairn. And don’t go being stupid and thinking there’s any other way.’
He waited for the argument but nothing happened. Greta stood with her head down, well backed off, and said nothing. Jon went out, slamming the door, letting go of his breath as soon as he got outside, and he thought that if she caused trouble tomorrow he would kill her.
But she was there the next day. Her mother looked gratefully at him and the two older women, to his relief, got on much better than he had thought they would. He had explained to his mother that it was necessary but had thought she would not want her house invaded in this way. He had not thought of how lonely she was with only himself for company, and he was not there most of the time. He had also reckoned without the attraction of her grandson. She loved babies and children and this was a part of Sam that she could never lose. He came back to the usual spotless house and a fine dinner and the sound of his mother laughing, which made him feel better. She was sitting by the fire with the baby in her arms, Greta’s mother opposite. They were drinking tea and gossiping. But from the beginning Greta was sullen and silent.
She and her baby had the room next to his and the two women slept downstairs in the front room. They got on with the housework and saw to the baby, but Greta did nothing and never spoke to him.
Jon was on the backshift that fortnight, forcing himself to go, telling himself that there was no choice, coming back when the light was gone, hoping that he might sleep for what was left of the night, sleep and not dream.
Greta and her mother had been there for more than a week before he had the dream. Eight days of Greta’s sullen silence and him holding back his temper, eight days of resenting that she was not Lizzie, and the wanting of Lizzie so bad, and the waiting for his brothers to come home from the pit each day like they never would. That night it all jumbled up in his head and it was the worst dream he had ever had.
The roof fell in and he didn’t waken, he couldn’t. He tried and tried but he couldn’t wake up. He wasn’t ever going to waken again and there was no air and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe and his lungs were bursting and then there was this awful screaming, and when he came to he didn’t know where he was. The shaking was uncontrollable, the sweat was running off him, and worst of all a gold and white vision was there among the wrecked sheets and pillows, taking him in her arms. Nasty sullen Greta, all white nightgown and golden hair, drew him against her.
‘Go away,’ Jon managed.
‘Shh. It’s all right now. You’re at home.’
He wanted to move away, felt that he would never again have any credibility whatsoever with Greta. She would have the loan of him forever. His mind told him that but his body was still stuck in that black hell and shook and sweated and grieved and couldn’t move from her. She drew him closer and he kept his eyes shut against her shoulder. She smelled all clean and normal and now she was stroking his hair. Jon took several deep breaths and then moved back.
‘Did I wake you up?’
‘I wasn’t asleep. I was awake with the bairn. Bairns never sleep much. When the baby’s born I’ll maybe be able to find somebody to marry me out of your road. Then you and Lizzie can get wed.’
There was a strange guilty look on her face.
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said.
‘You don’t understand. I should never have married Sam. I didn’t make him happy and he didn’t make me happy neither. I’m not going to be the cause of making you unhappy and all. I won’t do it.’
‘Don’t you miss him?’
‘No. Isn’t that awful?’ And Greta shuddered. In the next room the baby began to cry and she slid off the bed. As the crying turned into a wail she hurried out. Jon lay back down again in the peaceful silence which followed.
It wasn’t dark in the room at all, it had just been his nightmare. The curtains were half-open and the dawn had broken. The room was bathed in light from the new day. Within a minute or two he had closed his eyes and gone to sleep and didn’t dream any more.