‘Why don’t you give in your notice to Arthur Bolton?’ Bertha demanded. They had been sitting at breakfast in what had been her father’s house and was now hers. The coroner’s verdict upon her father had been accidental death and he had been buried the day before. In the afternoon his will had been read and, as expected he had left everything to his daughter with the proviso that Miles should have control of the mine.
‘Notice? Why on earth should I give notice?’
Miles looked up from his perusal of The Times with an expression of astonishment, though in fact he had been expecting it.
‘Because we have this place now,’ said Bertha with uncharacteristic patience. ‘Why should we live over by Winton when we have this lovely house here?’
‘You can keep on this house anyway.’
‘Miles, what is the point in keeping two houses?’
Miles folded his paper and put it on the table. ‘I don’t want to discuss this now. I have to go to Eden Hope as I have business with the manager. After that I have an appointment in Durham City. If it gets too late in the day I will stay at Tom’s.’ He paused for a moment and considered his wife. She was pale, the only colour on her face was the tip of her bright red nose. ‘Besides, it is too soon to come to any decisions – you are still overwrought my dear,’ he added.
Bertha erupted. ‘We’ll talk about it now! This is my house and I won’t be told to shut up, do you hear me?’
‘I should think they could hear you in the kitchen,’ said Miles. He rose to his feet and walked to the door. ‘I’ll send Rose in to you. I told you that you were overwrought.’
Bertha, even more infuriated, was left shouting after him but he wasn’t in the mood to listen.
‘I’ll take the trap, John,’ he said to the stableman. ‘The mistress might want the carriage.’
‘Yes sir.’
John, who had been Mr Porritt’s stableman, backed the pony between the shafts and saw to the traces. There was something about Miles he didn’t like – he had been too eager to take over from the master in John’s opinion.
Mr Porritt might have been an old man but he had been a working mine owner for a lot of years and before that he had been fond of telling folk that he had started down the pit as a boy of six. The miners John met in the Pit Laddie tavern in the village had shaken their heads when they heard of the accident. Of course accidents happened – they were acts of God or the result of carelessness – but there had been something not right about that one.
Old Porritt was well able to read the coal face, aye, and listen to it to, at least as well as any of the old men who had spent their lives underground. And he would be very aware of outworn pit props.
Jowl, jowl and listen lad
And hear the coal face working.
One of the aged miners had quoted from the rhyme that every pitman learned as a young lad.
Still, when did coroners take notice of the likes of pitmen? John thought about it as he watched Miles drive out of the gates and take the road to Bishop Auckland. But there was nothing he or the miners could do anyway, no matter what they thought. Even so, Miles Gallagher should have looked out for the old man, at least.
Miles took the train to Durham, leaving his pony and trap in the station stables at Auckland. He was quite happy and confident for his master plan was going well so far, the worst part already over. Now he felt he had earned himself some relaxation. He left the train at Durham and took a cab to Silver Street. Once there he walked the rest of the way to his destination, which was down one of the streets leading down from the other side of the market place – a small house with nothing about its outward appearance to show what it was.
His discreet knock was answered almost immediately and he was drawn inside by a maid in white cap and apron who dropped a quick curtsey.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said as she closed the door after him. ‘Who do you wish me to call?’
‘Er, Lysette, I think,’ he replied.
It was almost five o’clock when Miles emerged from the house and walked back towards the market place. Ben was sitting in a teashop close by the town hall waiting patiently. He had been shadowing Miles since he had returned to the country and by now he had worked out some sort of pattern. Miles strolled along over the cobbles and passed by on the opposite side of the statue of Lord Londonderry that stood in the centre of the wide square. Ben took the opportunity to throw a florin on the table for the startled waitress and slip out behind a couple of housewives and their children.
Miles was oblivious to Ben’s presence as he hailed a cab from the rank before the town hall but Ben heard him call up to the driver, ‘Borden Colliery.’
Ben nodded to himself. He had already established that Borden Colliery was where Tom Gallagher lived, the same Tom Gallagher who had shamed his sister. Merry swore he was not a bad man, not like his father, but then she was a woman and obviously still had a soft spot for Tom in spite of the fact that he had deserted her. That was another score he had to settle with the Gallaghers but for the time being it would have to wait until the main job was finished.
Ben paused for a moment considering his next move and then strode off towards Jennings and Co., an estate agents in Elvet.
‘I am interested in buying a house somewhere in the Neville’s Cross area,’ he told the young man who came forward to meet him.
It showed how different he looked compared to when he had been living rough in the deserted village, that the young man gave him his undivided attention. Ben was dressed in an impeccable single breasted suit with cutaway coat and narrow trousers that was the epitome of the well-dressed gentleman in 1903.
He made appointments to view a number of properties in the coming week before returning to his motor car, which was parked in the yard of Elvet railway station, a small station on the outskirts of the city. He drove back as far Coundon, only a mile or two from Winton and Bishop Auckland, where he had rented a room in a back street lodging house that catered for working men. It was bare of comforts but he at least had a room to himself and it was clean. Above all, the woman who ran it was totally uninterested in what her lodgers did or did not do so long as they paid their rent every Friday.
Once in his room, Ben changed into clothes more suited to a workman. He took a file from under his mattress and sat down at the window as he reviewed what he had gleaned that day. After a moment or two he took a pencil from his waistcoat pocket and began writing. Half an hour later the file was up to date and he read it through before closing it and replacing it under his mattress.
‘I must go to see Merry tonight,’ he murmured to himself. He ran his fingers through his hair before rising to his feet and taking a bottle and glass from the clothes cupboard in the corner. He poured himself a tot and took it back to the window where he sipped the single malt in appreciation. Sometimes in this shabby, bare, little room, he missed the little luxuries he had become used to over the last year or two. But this style of living wouldn’t last much longer now, he thought, not if things worked out as he had planned.
‘Ben! I wasn’t expecting you tonight,’ said Merry. She closed the door quickly after him and led the way into the cosy sitting room. ‘Are you hungry? I have some panackelty left from our supper, or I could cook bacon and eggs if you liked?’
‘No, I’m not hungry, thanks Merry. I had something in Coundon.’ In fact he had eaten pie and peas in The Durham Ox and the food was lying heavily on his stomach. ‘A touch of bicarbonate of soda would be welcome though,’ he went on, smiling ruefully.
Merry mixed him a teaspoonful with a little water and he drank it in one gulp. Taking the glass from him she asked, ‘Are you all right? You shouldn’t be living as you do, really you shouldn’t.’
‘I’m not.’
Ben explained about his lodging in Coundon. ‘I won’t be there long either. I have decided to take a house in Durham City, and have been to the estate agents today. A house in Neville’s Cross, I think. And I want you to move in with me, Merry, you and the boy.’
‘Durham City? How can you do that? Afford it, I mean?’ Merry was dumbfounded.
‘I’m not destitute, Merry,’ said Ben. ‘In fact I am what you might call quite well off after my time in South Africa.’
‘But, how?’
‘It’s a long story, pet. The fact is, though, I have enough to buy a decent house in the city, and enough left over to live on and keep you and the lad an’ all.’
For all there was a faint foreign intonation to his speech, Ben still spoke in the idiom of the north-east of England, and Merry found it endearing. But leave here and go to Durham, live off her brother? She felt she couldn’t do that.
‘It’s good of you to ask me and I’m truly grateful, but I can’t,’ she said.
‘Of course you can, there’s no reason why you can’t,’ Ben argued. ‘Go on, tell me a good reason.’
‘I’m all right here,’ Merry replied. ‘I like it. And Dr Macready and Kirsty have been good to me; I couldn’t let them down. And there’s Benjamin – I can’t move him yet again. He’s set on going to the Friends’ School and he loves Kirsty too. I know he’ll only see her at the weekends but still—’
‘But the boy can go to Durham School – it’s a good school too. He’ll have a good chance there. Merry, all the time I’ve been away I’ve dreamt of coming home and us being together as we used to be, looking out for one another. Merry, you have no reason really or the reasons you have don’t matter much.’
Merry thought of the small grave in the cemetery at Eden Hope and knew she wasn’t yet ready to abandon it. And besides, she told herself, here she was independent, she was useful to Dr Macready and was learning a lot about being his assistant, which was almost as good as being a nurse.
‘They matter to me, Ben,’ she said.
‘Merry, listen to me, I want you and the bairn with me. I’m worried for you. Miles Gallagher has something against us both, I’m sure he has—’
He was interrupted by the opening of the sitting-room door. Neither of them had heard anyone coming up the stairs but a second later Dr Macready walked in. He looked from Ben to Merry and back again before speaking.
‘What’s going on? Who is this man, Merry?’
Dr Macready was standing there dressed but in his carpet slippers and looked very angry indeed. Merry stared at him, colour staining her cheeks almost as though he had caught her entertaining a lover. As she hesitated Ben stepped forward and held out his hand.
‘I’m so sorry we disturbed you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I am Merry’s brother and I’m very glad to meet you.’
Dr Macready looked at him sceptically. ‘Her brother? I didn’t know she had a brother.’
Merry found her voice. ‘Well I have, Dr Macready. I didn’t mention him before because I thought he was . . . dead. Doctor, this is my brother Benjamin. I named the boy after him. Ben, this is Dr Macready, my employer.’
Dr Macready studied the face of the man before him and, evidently satisfied, shook his hand. ‘How do you do?’ he said formally. ‘Now I look at you I can see who you are. Not that you look so much like Merry but the boy seems to take after you, in colouring at least.’ He still looked a little puzzled though. Both Merry’s brother and son reminded him of someone else, the brother in particular. He just couldn’t put a name to whom it was though it hovered in the back of his mind. It would come back to him of course, he told himself, for he prided himself on his good memory.
‘Well, Merry, it’s nice to know you have some family. I always thought you and the boy were on your own,’ he said.
‘My brother has been in South Africa. I thought he was dead,’ she replied.
‘Well, that’s great that he isn’t. Look, it’s very late, I’ll go now and leave you in peace.’ He turned to Ben. ‘I’m sure we will meet again. I would love to hear about your travels.’
‘I will look forward to it, Doctor,’ said Ben as Dr Macready nodded and went back down the stairs.
‘Damn,’ said Ben. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know I was here. It might get back to Miles Gallagher. I didn’t want to put you in any danger.’
‘But surely I’m not,’ said Merry, looking surprised.
Ben gave her an exasperated look. ‘For goodness sake, Merry, haven’t I told you it’s dangerous for you?’
‘But Miles Gallagher hasn’t threatened me before. If he wanted to he could easily have found out where I am. I think you’re worrying too much, Ben.’
‘I’m not, believe me, I’m not.’
‘Well,’ said Merry, ‘I don’t think Dr Macready is a friend of Miles Gallagher. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he even knows him.’
Ben had sat down beside the dying fire but now he got to his feet. ‘I’m not going to argue now, Merry. It’s time we were both in bed. But I’m not giving up on this either. I’ll away now and let you get to bed.’