Kate and Lizzie didn’t go home, as though their staying on would somehow alter things. They sat in Jon’s office and drank tea; at least Lizzie sat, in Jon’s chair behind the desk. Kate stood by the window which looked out over the pit yard.
‘Widows are invisible, you know, to other people,’ she said. ‘They don’t exist. They’re pitied and ignored. Long after Charles died I had to wake up to those letters which came addressed to Mrs Charles Nelson as if even though he was dead I still belonged to him, like I wasn’t a person.’
‘Was that why you wanted to get married again?’
‘I suppose it was. It isn’t polite, being widowed. It’s perfectly acceptable for men of course. Perhaps we ought to request to be burned as if we were in India.’
‘I should go home. The baby will want feeding.’
‘Have you decided what to call him yet?’
‘Eddie and I talked about it but to be honest I think he thought it would be a girl. I can’t call him Florence.’
Kate giggled.
‘You weren’t really going to call your daughter Florence?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s hideous.’
‘I’ll have to ask-’ Lizzie stopped short. Kate went over as she got up and put both arms around her. ‘I have to go back to the house,’ Lizzie said, ‘I really must. He’ll be screaming his head off by now and Jon’s mother … How am I going to tell her, Kate? I’ve been telling her for three days that everything will be all right. He’s the only son she has left.’
‘At least Eddie hasn’t got a mother,’ Kate said with a shudder. ‘The things you end up being grateful for. Shall I come back with you and tell her?’
‘Would you, Kate?’
‘Of course I would.’
Being numb, she decided, had some merit. She didn’t know how long the numbness would last because it had not been like this when Charles died. She remembered feeling vast relief and some guilt and after a while an immense sense of freedom and relief that she had the chance to do what she wanted at the mines. Power. But Jon had never tried to take that power from her. He had always insisted that the mines were hers and if she had allowed he would have talked to her about them, even encouraged her to go there and take part in what was happening. Perhaps, she thought, if the child had lived things would have been all right. Now there was nothing ahead but a vast desert. She remembered once hearing somebody say that being a widow was like being a bird with a broken wing. That was how it felt now.
She went back to the house with her friend and there Lizzie fed her screaming baby and Kate took Mrs Armstrong off into the sitting-room and told her. She took the news so calmly that Kate was worried but Mrs Armstrong looked hard at her and said, ‘I was expecting it sooner or later,’ and went off upstairs.
Kate returned to the kitchen. The baby was quiet now. May was putting the children to bed. Kate wanted to put off going home for as long as she could possibly manage it. The idea of going back to nobody but her aunt and Charles’s mother made her feel so sick that she was faint. When the baby finally slept she and Lizzie sat by the kitchen fire. The evening grew late and Kate remembered how she had hated the nights when she was alone. However would she go back to her room and not have the line of light under the door or hear Jon moving quietly about in the next room? She didn’t think that she could bear it. As she gazed into the fire Lizzie said to her, ‘You do love him, don’t you, Kate?’
‘Yes. Isn’t that awful now? He doesn’t care for me, you see; he never has done. I was always just there, first in the pit office and then in the way. And when somebody doesn’t love you, you want so much not to love them that you make yourself believe it. I hate him because he doesn’t love me. He can make me want him and yet he never once said that he loved me. I wish he had. I’d rather have had my intelligence insulted with lies.’
‘Had you ever thought about telling him?’
‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. He told me that he was with me for two reasons; the first was the child and the second was the pits. You try going to bed with somebody like that. The only thing was that Charles had been so awful to me that Jon was easy by comparison. He didn’t hurt me. At least not until Friday night…’
‘Friday night? He hurt you?’
Kate hesitated. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Did you have a fight?’
‘It doesn’t matter now, does it? He’s dead and you’ve lost Eddie. Eddie was the nicest man I ever met.’
‘Sometimes he was. Sometimes he was impossible. I’d give anything to have him back.’
As she spoke there was a slight commotion outside and Kate saw a carriage pull up.
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘it must be my aunt coming to take me home. They must have heard.’ But as she looked the driver got down and helped a tall dark man out of the door and Kate gave a little scream. ‘It’s Jon!’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly, Kate.’ But she was already out of the back door and through the yard. There she stopped short, thinking she was having some kind of dream. His clothes were torn and his face and hands were covered in coal-dust and blood, but he looked happily at her and grinned.
‘Thought you’d have had your blacks on by now, Kit,’ he said.
She couldn’t think of anything to say, her eyes filled with tears. He pulled her into his arms quite roughly and crushed her to him so that she couldn’t breathe.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.
‘Making plans, were you?’ he said against her hair.
‘Oh, Jon.’
Behind her she sensed Lizzie hovering and heard him say flatly over her head, ‘He’s all right. You didn’t think I’d let your husband die?’
*
They put Eddie to bed. The doctor came. Kate bathed Jon’s face and hands by the kitchen fire and when Doctor Ingalls had come down from making his main patient comfortable, he said to their worried faces, ‘He’ll be fine but it will take time, and as for you, Jon, you should go to bed and be careful of those hands. I’ll give you something.’
Lizzie had made up Jon’s bed. Kate didn’t like to leave him but he was exhausted and she made herself go down into the kitchen.
‘How’s Eddie?’
‘He’s asleep. I think it’ll take a long time, especially that leg. It’s in a bad way. He said it wasn’t so bad before Jon dragged him out.’ And Lizzie smiled. ‘Whatever will I say to him?’
‘Anything is better than “I don’t love you”,’ Kate suggested.
The next morning, thinking that Jon would sleep for most of the day, Kate offered to go with his mother and the children shopping to give the house some quiet for the two men and Lizzie was left alone with her washing and the baby, whom they’d named Alfred. She was pegging out the last lot when she heard somebody behind her and when she turned Jon was standing a little way off, near the kitchen door.
‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked.
‘Are you trying to make every day Monday?’
‘I was busy yesterday. I didn’t know about the old shaft in the wood. I never thought about it. It was very clever of you.’
‘No, it was just luck.’
‘If it hadn’t been for you …’
‘Eddie would have done exactly the same. He was the one who was hurt.’
‘Yes, but you …’
‘I could have left him, that’s what you mean? You always think the worst of me.’
‘That isn’t what I mean. I didn’t think the worst of you, Jon. How can you say that?’
‘Where’s Kate?’
‘She took the children out so that the house would be quiet for you and Eddie. Jon, I’m so grateful—’
‘Don’t be.’
‘Jon Armstrong, you …’
‘Yes? Go on, shout at me. It makes me feel normal, but try not to smack me round the face. It hurts.’
Lizzie hesitated for a moment and then she threw herself at him. Jon caught her just as though she did it every day. She could feel his arms fasten around her. She reached up both arms to his neck and kissed him on the mouth.
‘You could have died,’ she said.
Jon smiled into her eyes.
‘I thought I was never going to see your back yard and all your washing again,’ he said, ‘and to think I hated the smell of it!’
*
Kate came back with the children.
‘What are you doing out of bed?’ she said, finding Jon sitting in the garden.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Your hands are a mess and you’re exhausted.’
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘We can talk later when you’re better.’
‘No, it won’t wait. I treated you so badly.’
‘Jon, you’re incapable of treating a woman badly, physically at least, I already knew that. I’d had experience. You like women too much to hurt them.’
‘I didn’t go to bed with Lilian Marshall … or anybody else.’
‘Jon—’
‘Just let me spit it out, please. It all went through my head a hundred times when I was down there. I thought I wasn’t going to come out. It was only the thought of you marrying Joseph Moorhouse that got me through.’
Kate laughed.
‘I had it all worked out,’ she said, ‘I was going to find rich men for Lizzie and me.’
‘She doesn’t want anybody but Eddie.’
‘No. I know.’
‘I didn’t mean to trap you into this, Kit. I don’t want you to think that I did it for the mines.’
‘I never thought that,’ she said.
‘Didn’t you? The truth is I couldn’t help it. I wanted you so much and you were so rich and I’m not - I’m not ever going to be like Joseph Moorhouse, rich and influential and—’
She put her hands on either side of his face.
‘Oh, do shut up,’ she said. ‘I love you.’
‘What, really?’
‘Really. From the very first moment we met on the beach. You know that. You knew it always.’
‘No. Fancying somebody isn’t loving them. You just liked the look of me.’
‘It’s a consideration,’ she said.
‘Let’s go home. I want to take you to bed properly.’
‘With those hands?’
‘I’ll manage.’
*
It was weeks before Eddie was any better but at last he started going around on crutches and complaining and Lizzie was so relieved.
‘Will you stop kissing me?’ he said.
‘I thought you liked me to kiss you?’
‘Not like I’m little Alf and not in front of other people. I’m going back to work.’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘I could go to the office. Jon needs me there.’
‘No. And you are never, ever going down a pit again in your life,’ Lizzie said, turning away to fold some clothes. They were in her kitchen.
‘You what?’ Eddie said, and she heard the warning note in his voice and turned. ‘Look, it’s my job to go down the pit and when I’m good and ready I will, so don’t start telling me what to do. Tomorrow I am going back to work.’
‘Good,’ Lizzie said, turning back to her ironing.
It was autumn and Eddie was hell to have at home and she wanted things to be as normal as possible considering what had happened. She was quite glad to be rid of him the next day.
Just before noon a carriage pulled up outside and Kate got out. Lizzie went out to meet her.
‘Let’s sit in the garden. Jon’s mother is busy in the kitchen,’ Lizzie said, and since the day was warm they went around the side of the house to the front and sat on an old bench in the sunshine.
‘How’s Eddie?’
‘He’s gone to work. Thank goodness.’
Kate laughed.
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘I think I’m expecting.’
Lizzie cuddled her.
‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘What does Jon say?’
‘I haven’t told him.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I don’t know, I just can’t.’
*
Things had changed at the pits since the accident. Jon was to his men some kind of hero and they were happy to have him and Eddie go drinking with them every Saturday fortnight when they got paid. He and Kate stayed at the mine manager’s house and on Sunday they stayed for dinner. The other weekends they socialised. Jon said that if she would give him the one Saturday night he would do whatever she wanted on the other. Kate put him through hell. She accepted invitations to dinner, to parties, and worst of all to musical evenings. She thought that she would never forget a particular night when a young lady was playing the harp. There was on Jon’s face an expression of the most excruciating boredom that Kate had ever seen. He didn’t normally drink but when he got home that night he went into the library and swallowed what was for him an extremely large amount of brandy, casually saying to her as she watched him, ‘Would you like some?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You didn’t really enjoy it?’
‘Well…’
‘We could stay at home instead of going to these dos.’
‘Not so long as you go drinking the other Saturday.’
‘Once every two weeks!’
‘We only go out once every two weeks,’ Kate pointed out, and went off to bed.
Jon followed her. He sat down on the bed.
‘Nobody could have enjoyed that, Kate. You just like putting me through it.’
‘Yes,’ she said sweetly.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re my husband.’
The lamps were lit and there was a big glass of hot milk on her side of the bed.
‘Since when did you start drinking hot milk?’ he asked her.
She looked at him but didn’t answer.
‘Are you going to tell me or am I meant to guess?’
‘I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to frighten you.’
‘I’m not frightened. Don’t shut me out.’
‘I didn’t mean to. There’s something else as well, Jon.’
‘What?’
‘I want to come back to the office. I’m not going to stay here and play tea parties. I want my office and babies.’
‘Babies? How many do you want?’
‘Lots,’ Kate said roundly. She put her arms around his neck and smiled into his eyes.
‘I’m going to go and see how they’re getting on with sinking the new pit on Monday,’ he said. ‘You haven’t seen it yet. How would you like to come along?’
‘I’d like that. I’ve been thinking and I’ve got some ideas about it, you know.’
‘Something told me you might,’ he said. And he kissed her.