Kate stood by the window in her aunt’s drawing-room and thought how strange everything was. When she had first arrived in the north she had thought it a big room. It looked tiny to her now.
‘How long will it be before the Victoria can be used again?’ she asked as she turned around.
Mr Forrester looked hard at her.
‘It could be many months. It could be a considerable time before the bodies of those men, including your husband and your uncle, can be brought out.’
His voice was cold with disapproval. He was wrong, Kate thought. She was sorry. She was sorry that her uncle had died even though he had forced her to marry Charles. She was sorry that Charles was dead too, even though he had married her for his own selfish reasons and treated her afterwards with a good deal less affection than he reserved for his horse. But she was a lot sorrier that fifty good pitmen had died.
‘We must see to it that the men who worked in the Victoria are given work in one of the other pits. Is that possible, Mr Forrester?’
‘It may be possible for some of them. There is a good deal to sort out. There are all kinds of legalities
‘I’m aware of that. I’m also aware that the Victoria men are going to be put out of work and that there are going to be many widows in the village. I want nobody put out of a house and I want proper financial provision for them and their dependants.’
‘That can’t be done immediately, Mrs Nelson, because of the legalities.’
‘I think you’ll find that I have talked to the bank and that money will be made available until the legalities are settled.’
‘You’re an unnatural girl, that’s what you are,’ her aunt burst out. ‘To think of such things at a time like this, with Charles and your uncle dead.’
‘Somebody has to think of them. Somebody has to take the responsibility,’ she said calmly. ‘I’m only being practical.’
What her aunt didn’t know was that practicality was the only thing left. Kate couldn’t eat or sleep or read or concentrate on anything. She didn’t know whether the men were dead and still could not convince herself.
But her aunt acted first over one thing. When Kate went down to breakfast one morning soon afterwards Rose was brisk.
‘I’ve told Albert that we shall need the horse and trap. We’re going into Sunderland to order some new clothes.’
‘New clothes, at a time like this?’
‘It’s called mourning, Kate,’ Rose said severely.
She said nothing. Her aunt wanted to believe that the men were dead so she could begin the process of grieving for her husband. Her aunt was lucky; she, like most women, knew nothing of mining. She believed what she was told. She thought that her husband had died before he had suffered in mind or body. Kate had wanted to believe that, but she didn’t, not fully. She didn’t want to lie awake night after night thinking that men she had despised or hated, men who had done her wrong, men who had driven her away, were going to die horrible lingering deaths. All she wanted was to run somewhere, far away, and never come back, with a man who was kinder to her than anyone had been since her father had died. She couldn’t go now, she couldn’t run away, shut any of it out. She had to face it all. She got ready and went into town with her aunt, wishing she didn’t have to spend time that way. She despised her aunt’s ignorance, her accepting mind, and envied her the peace.
When Kate first saw herself in black - and the clothes were expensive, finely cut and in good material - she was astonished at how she looked. It turned her hair to flames and her skin to cream. In her green eyes there was the brightness of anger. The dresses hung perfectly, they were so full and so carefully stitched, the jet ornaments like black tears.
When she suggested that she ought to go back and live with Charles’s mother, her aunt cried.
‘How can I stay here alone?’ she asked. ‘I have never lived alone.’
‘Then come with me.’
‘I don’t want to leave the house.’
‘The house belongs to the mine,’ Kate pointed out as gently as she could, ‘and when the water is drained from the Victoria there will be a new mine manager.’
Her aunt stared uncomprehendingly.
‘You can’t mean to re-open it?’
‘Certainly I do. There’s a lot of coal down there. Have you any idea how much it cost to sink that pit and what we’ve paid since to keep it going? It would be a waste and worse than that, if I didn’t make the mine safe again and work it, the men will have died for nothing. What do you want, Aunt, a monument?’
Kate knew the moment that she started this little speech that it was wasted, that her aunt - a chemist’s daughter - had no understanding at all. She knew how to be a wife, how to conduct the day-to-day running of a home but she had never ventured into the realm of ideas and it was too late now.
‘You can make your home with me.’
It felt strange saying the words. For the first time she felt older than her aunt; she felt as though she was the adult and her aunt a rather large child who had to have everything explained and pointed out. It was hard work. She arranged for Rose’s belongings to be taken to the big house and for her aunt to have some rooms of her own so that the three women would not be obliged to live too closely, but it was not easy. Charles’s mother did not say much but she was offended at the invasion. The will had been read, however, and everything would soon belong to Kate so there was nothing that she could do.
Kate felt no triumph at her own wealth and power. She was rather nervous of it though she tried not to let this show. And she had never liked Charles’s mother, who seemed to think shopping a good occupation for a woman. Kate lay in bed at night and imagined herself far away with Jon Armstrong, maybe even as far as America, living in a cosy house, lying safe in his arms during the dark nights, making plans with him, running some kind of business, perhaps even having a child, doing the normal everyday things which women did - including shopping. Reality was waking up alone, angry, with nowhere for that anger to go.
They were like crows, dressed in black. Three widows all living together, Kate thought, with so much in common and yet nothing.
For a long time after the accident she saw nothing of Jon. She had made sure that he and Eddie were taken on at the Isabella but she did not feel as though she could go to their house without good reason, and so the time wore on - and then she found the reason. She had been making plans and decisions and she needed to talk to him. She could have called him to the office but she didn’t. She went to the house.
It was Monday again. Kate thought that she could grow to hate Mondays. Lizzie’s kitchen was full of wet washing because there had been rain at midday and Kate could see immediately that the other woman was horrified to see her. She stuttered a greeting, blushed for the state of her kitchen, moving the clothes horse from around the fire while apologising and offering to make tea.
Kate could have cried. She did not understand how, having lived with them for a few days, she could have forgotten that routine was important to the pitmen’s families and that whatever happened Lizzie would wash on Monday which was consequently the worse possible day to visit. Lizzie’s days were filled with men coming in and going out and needing clothes and baths and food and comfort so that they could do their difficult job. Kate envied her that. There were no men in her own life, no comings and goings at the house which seemed to echo with emptiness. She envied Lizzie her work, her life, her child, and especially her men. She recognised too that it was her changed status that so embarrassed Lizzie now.
‘I didn’t come to make a nuisance of myself. I just wanted to see Jon and it seemed easier to come here. I’ve missed you all.’
Her protestations made no difference. She had imagined she and Lizzie sitting around the fire with the child, drinking tea and eating cake and being the same, but it was not like that.
The kitchen was steamy and smelled of soap. Mary cried and Lizzie walked up and down with the child in her arms while Kate drank tea she didn’t want. She wished she had not come. The two men came in off shift while she was there. Eddie regarded her in silence as he stepped into the kitchen. Jon looked her up and down.
‘Black suits you.’
Kate was so grateful that his manner towards her had not changed she could have hugged him.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What, now?’
Kate didn’t misunderstand. He was dirty, tired and hungry.
‘What’s wrong with now?’ she said, shouting above Mary’s crying.
‘Go into the front room,’ Lizzie said. ‘There’s no fire, mind you.’
Jon shut the door. Even then Mary’s screams came through clearly.
‘Monday’s not a good day for visiting,’ he said.
‘Monday’s not a good day for anything. I’ve been busy.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘How’s the Isabella?’
‘It’s dry.’
She smiled at him.
‘You’ve done a lot,’ he said.
‘Do you think I have, Jon?’ She was eager to hear someone she respected tell her that she had got something right. Mr Forrester and her mine managers thought that most of her ideas were mad. They were too polite to tell her this but Kate never felt more like a woman than when she was in their presence, trying to achieve something.
‘More than Charles or his father ever did.’
She was encouraged.
‘I want you to help me.’
‘Me?’
‘How?’
‘I want the Vic back,’ she said. ‘I want you to get it for me. And after that I want you to manage it.’
‘That’s a tall order. I’m not an expert.’
‘I have the experts. I also have Forrester and old Williams. I want somebody on my side. You’ll be qualified soon to manage the mine and I want you there. You can have the mine manager’s house; you can move in any time you like.’
‘Kate, it’s only theory I’ve studied. I don’t know anything about managing pits.’
‘And what else are you going to do - stay down and hew coal until you’re too old? Then what? Sort out the rocks with the old men? Hewers grow old quickly. You’ve been down there a long time. What are all the books for? What’s the learning for, Jon, if you don’t intend to use it?’
‘I do intend to use it, but not here.’
She stared at him.
‘Not here? Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Oh, I see. So you’re only here until you qualify, is that it?’
‘That’s it, yes.’
‘Don’t you want to work for me, even if you could have the Vic and the manager’s house and good money? You won’t get better. You haven’t any experience of managing or engineering. It would take you a very long time in the real world to get that far. You’re not very old yet. Don’t you want the Vic?’
‘It won’t be mine. It’s yours. Everything here’s yours. I’m not going to die down there like Charles and Alf and Sam and my father. You don’t understand. I hate that pit. It’s taken from me everything I’ve ever cared for.’
‘Don’t you want to better yourself and the Victoria?’
‘No, I just want to get out.’
‘It isn’t going to be like that any more, Jon. There will be fair wages and good housing. I’m going to have model pits. You’ll have Mr Forrester to help you, and old Williams. He knows all there is to know. Please, Jon, I need you here. I’m just a woman to them. I need somebody to help me, somebody I can talk to, somebody who won’t discount my ideas immediately because I’m female. Somebody who doesn’t think I’m stupid. Every time I move they fight me. Please.’
‘If I stayed, everybody would say it was for what I thought I could get.’
‘Isn’t that why anyone is anywhere? I can’t run away now. You can’t think how often I’ve wanted to. I have to stay here and face everything and talk to men who think that mining is a rich man’s hobby. And Mr Forrester who tries to baffle me with figures, and old Williams who tries to confuse me with technicalities. You and I could learn to run the Vic together. We’ll have lots of help.’
*
It was dinnertime the next day and Jon had told Lizzie.
‘I suppose now you’ll have to learn to ride a horse?’ she said, banging plates down on to the table.
‘What for?’
‘That’s what all posh folk do.’
They were in her kitchen and she was laying the table with her back to him, being unnecessarily energetic. Jon went up behind her and got hold of her and turned her around. She still clutched a fistful of cutlery.
‘Would you rather I went away?’ he said.
‘You didn’t even say you were thinking of going.’
‘Did you want to know?’
‘No, I didn’t and I wanted to hear this even less. You’ll make a mess of it.’
‘I could hardly make a worse mess of it than letting it flood and drown everybody.’
Eddie came in then and, looking from one to the other, said, ‘Something up?’
‘As though enough hadn’t gone wrong,’ Lizzie reproached.
Eddie looked enquiringly at Jon and he laughed when Jon told him.
‘You needn’t laugh, I want you to come with me.’
‘And put up with you telling me what to do?’ Eddie looked thoughtfully at him. ‘Are you going to go and live at Farrer’s house?’
Lizzie put the dinner on the table.
‘Will you come and keep house for me then?’ Jon asked her over the noise.
‘Certainly not. I’ve got my own house.’
‘You and Eddie could have nearly all of it. All I need is one room and my dinner. It’s a nice house and we could have help.’
‘People would say I was getting above myself. Anyway, Eddie wouldn’t, would you?’
‘Is there a billiard room?’ he asked.
‘It’s Farrer’s house, Eddie, not Nelson’s,’ Jon said with a grin. ‘You don’t play billiards, anyroad.’
‘I might,’ he said.
*
That Sunday when Kate called Lizzie was just washing up after dinner. Jon asked Kate if she wanted to go for a walk. She had come early in the afternoon for just that reason and they went in the same direction as they had done on that special misty Sunday afternoon so long ago when she had wished he would kiss her. She tried to pretend to herself that nothing had happened in between, that Charles had never married her, that the Victoria had not flooded. It was almost autumn. The grass was long in the wood, covered with leaves, and the days were cooler and shorter. Kate wished that she could relive that day and the days with Jon back then which had been some of the best times of her life. Finally, when they stopped on the edge of the wood, she said, ‘So, have you decided?’
‘Yes. I’ll take the Vic and I’ll do the best that I can, but I want Lizzie and Eddie to come too.’
‘Does she want to?’
‘No.’
‘Isn’t that going to be awkward?’
Jon smiled.
‘Unlike you, my petal, Lizzie is a pit wife. She’ll go because Eddie wants to go. Anyroad, she hasn’t seen the house yet.’
‘You like to make her happy, don’t you?’
‘It’s always been one of my first considerations.’
‘Are you going to call me “your petal” in the office?’
‘No, Mrs Nelson.’
‘You don’t like mining, do you?’
‘It’s a dirty, dangerous, insane way of making a living. I think it’s the hardest thing there is. It’s bad enough for men.’
‘I like it,’ she said.
‘Yes, well, you don’t go down the pit.’
‘But I intend to,’ Kate said as she set off walking again.