30 SEPTEMBER 1897, ASHINGTON COLLIERY, NORTHUMBERLAND
Agnes Robson hurried into the church hall, smiling an apology at the gentleman in charge, and took her usual place at the easel nearest the window. The other young artists – half a dozen of them, ranging from eight to fourteen – were already busy with their paints and brushes. Agnes lifted the sack off her canvas to reveal a half-finished study in oils. She inhaled the fumes, allowing the familiar smell to settle her quickened breath, picked up a brush, and chewed the end while she contemplated the composition.
She had been attending the art class – which was held every Saturday afternoon for the children of pitmen – for four months. Since graduating from watercolour to oils, she had discovered that the paint did not dry completely between each class, and she could still work and manipulate last week’s efforts if she needed to. Mr Brownley, the art teacher who came up on the train from Newcastle, had suggested she take the painting home to work on it during the week, but she had declined. Her mam did not like her coming to the classes. She had to leave her job at the laundry an hour early to get here, and Mrs Madsen always paid her a penny less on Saturdays because of it. So, each week she bought a bag of boiled sweets from Mr Storey’s shop and bribed her fellow artists so they wouldn’t tell on her. As for Mrs Madsen, well, she had come up with a plan to keep her quiet, too.
“That’s coming along very nicely, Agnes. What do you think you need to do to improve it?”
Agnes looked up coyly through her dark lashes to see the tall figure of Michael Brownley at her right shoulder. He wore a paint-splattered smock over his smart tweed suit, but splodges of paint daubed his leather shoes. He never bothered to clean them. Obviously he didn’t get into trouble like Agnes did. The girl always took her clogs off to paint, and her darned stockings, braving the cold of the wooden floor. As the classes had run through the summer this had not been a problem up until now, but as autumn was approaching, she might have to reconsider her attire.
She curled her toes, then lowered her eyes from the kind, handsome face of her tutor, to contemplate her painting. It was a view from the railway bridge that separated the twin pit villages of Hirst and Ashington. The track sloped gently to the right, leading the eye to the edge of the canvas where it continued in the viewer’s imagination. To the left of the track was the blackened brickwork of Mr Storey’s general goods shop on Station Road; then, in the distance, silhouetted against a splash of sky, was the giant wheel of the pithead, blocking out the sun. But as the track curved away, the light returned, with the brightest part of the painting in the top right corner.
Agnes contemplated her tutor’s question. How could she improve it? She took the tip of the brush handle out of her mouth and used it to point to the foliage on the trees, sparsely lining the track. “Can I change the colour, Mr Brownley? Of the trees? They was green when I started it, but now they’s orange and yella. I was looking at it on the way ower. The picture’s changed ower time.”
The tutor smiled at her, his full lips pushing back the whiskers of his moustache and beard. Agnes’ heart skipped a beat.
“Of course you can change it. It’s your creation. You can do what you like. But why do you want to do it? How do you think it will improve your painting? Is it just because the scene you imagined has changed, or is there some other reason?”
He paused, looked deeply into her dark brown eyes, then said: “Perhaps it reflects a change of emotion?”
Agnes felt her cheeks flush. The lad next to her tossed her a curious look, then returned to his charcoal sketch.
“I’m not really sure, Mr Brownley. It’s just that it doesn’t feel right with the green. And… and…”
“Yes,” he said, leaning in, until she could smell the sharp scent of his aftershave cutting through the turpentine miasma. “And what? Don’t be scared to say what you feel, Agnes – there is no right and wrong here.”
She swallowed hard. “Well, it’s because of the sun. Or the lack of it. The pithead blocks it oot. But I want to show that it’s still there, in a way, through the natural things. Though the leaves are dyin’ they’ll be back. They’ve sucked in the sun. And they’ll take it with’em. Where e’re they go.”
Brownley sucked in his breath. “That’s beautiful, Agnes. Beautiful. You have an artist’s soul.”
Agnes flushed again. “Th-thank you, Mr Brownley.”
“You will help me clean up afterwards, won’t you?” asked the tutor as he moved on from his prize pupil to give some attention to his other charges.
“Aye. I will.”
Agnes pulled on her stockings. Then her bloomers. Michael Brownley ran his finger down the girl’s spine.
“I hope it didn’t hurt too much,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Agnes.”
“No. It didn’t hurt.”
“Then what’s the rush?”
“I need to help me mam with the tea. It’s getting dark.”
Brownley rolled over on the makeshift mattress on the floor and looked through the window, smeared with coal dust. The girl was right; it was getting late. He had been a fool to let time slip by. The hall caretaker would be here soon to lock up.
He sat up and pulled on trousers and vest while the girl thrust her arms and head through her pinafore and started re-braiding her hair into two pigtails. She looked so young with clothes on. Despite having the body of a woman, Agnes Robson was barely more than a child. A pang of guilt struck him.
He hoisted his braces over each shoulder, then quickly pulled the sack cover over the painting he was working on. It was a nude of Agnes, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her long black hair cascading over her naked white body. It was a very tasteful painting, he thought, with no breasts or genitalia on show. He was glad of that. He did not want to disrespect the girl. In fact, he regretted giving in to his base urges in the first place. He shouldn’t have done it today. Nor last week.
He pulled out his wallet and counted out some coins. It was twice as much as he normally gave her for posing. He knew she would use some of it to pay off the woman at the laundry – to keep her quiet about coming to art classes – so it would be money well spent.
“Th-thank you, Mr Brownley.”
His hand closed over hers, then he lifted her small white fist to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “No, thank you, Agnes. Thank you.”
Agnes hurried up Station Road, trying to beat the last rays of sun as they slipped over the edge of the world. At the building site where they were constructing the new Methodist chapel, she stopped to let a horse and cart pass, then readied herself to run the last few hundred yards to her house at the end of Eleventh Row.
“Is that you, Agnes?” She heard a voice behind her and turned to see a young woman, in her mid-twenties, holding a small boy by the hand.
“It is, Mrs Denby.”
The woman clicked a padlock shut on the door of a shack. The corrugated iron structure was the temporary home of Trinity Methodist Chapel, which hosted Sunday School classes and church services for the more religious-minded miners. The Methodists were just one group trying to save the souls of the men who descended into the black bowels of the earth, and they had to share the mission field with Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Salvationists. The art classes were held in a Church of England hall.
“Will we be seeing you at Sunday School tomorrow, Agnes?”
Agnes lowered her eyes, not wanting to meet the probing gaze of the minister’s wife. Can she see I’ve just sinned?
“I’ll have to ask me mam. She might need me to help with the bairns.”
“You can bring the bairns with you, Agnes. We have room for them all.” She looked down at her young son huddled next to her.
The young woman smiled as she gestured to the makeshift building. “At least we will when the new chapel’s built. But you know we won’t turn anyone away, don’t you?”
“Aye, Mrs Denby, I know that. But it’s still up to me mam.”
“Should I come ask her?”
Agnes imagined her mother, peeling tatties, with one bairn hanging to her skirt and another screaming in the crib, while she boiled water on the fire for her da’s Saturday night bath. She wouldn’t thank Agnes for bringing a God-botherer home with her, not at the busiest time of day. And she wouldn’t thank her for being too late to help with the tea, either.
“That’s all right, Mrs Denby. Don’t worry, I’ll ask her meself.”
“You do that, Agnes,” said the woman, kindly. Then she winced and raised her hand to her swollen belly.
“You all right there, Mrs Denby? Is the bairn kickin?”
“Aye, she is.”
“She?”
“We’re hoping for a girl, Agnes. A little sister for young Christopher. Aren’t we, pet?” The young mother tousled the golden curls of the little boy. He grinned up at Agnes.
“Good night then, Mrs Denby. Will you be getting home all right?”
“I will, thank you Agnes. The reverend’s just gone to fetch the cart. I hope to see you tomorrow.”
“Aye, Mrs Denby, me too.”
Agnes picked up her skirt and hurried across the road, then down the alley that ran alongside the colliery terraces, her clogs clacking on the cobbles. The Robson house was on the very end of Eleventh Row – the street closest to the pit. The pit bell rang, jangling her nerves. Her da would be home soon from his shift. He’d be wanting his bath, then his tea; then he’d head doon the Kickin’ Cuddy for a few pints with his mates. Only when their father had left for the pub would the Robson children be able to have their baths. She would have to help wash the littluns first. Then Agnes would have her turn. Then her mam. Her brother, eleven-year-old Jeremy, would have a bath on the morra when he got back from his night shift doon the pit.
She spotted Jeremy’s dark head bowing into the pigeon coop at the top of the vegetable allotment backing onto their house. One of his birds had won top prize at the last community gala, coming first in the race from Morpeth to Ashington. It was only five miles, but he was dead proud of it.
Agnes smiled. Jeremy was a clever lad. And a gentle soul. Too good for the pit. But what choice did he have? What choice did any of them have?
She turned the corner into Eleventh Row and startled the neighbour’s cat, stalking a rat down the middle of the railway track. Each row of terraces – ninety-six houses per street – was separated by a rail line which, every morning, carried in coal for heating and carried out night soil from the outside toilets, known as netties. There was one netty for every two houses. The Robsons were a family of six. Their neighbours, eight. The cat hissed at Agnes. Agnes hissed back.
She opened the little gate, passed the coal shed, and pushed open the kitchen door. And there before her was the scene she had just imagined when talking to Mrs Denby: her mam was peeling potatoes while her four-year-old brother, Frank, clung to her pinny, and the baby – Emma – cried in the crib.
Her mother looked up, her eyes bone weary. “The babby needs a new nappy. Thought you’d never get back. What took you so long?”
Agnes made a point of putting some money into the tea caddy on the shelf then turned to pick up her baby sister. The stench hit her like the whiff of a slop bucket.
“I was talking to Mrs Denby. The reverend’s wife.”
“The Methodist?”
“Aye. She was askin’ if I was coming to Sunday School on the morra.”
Mrs Robson sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “I’ll need ya at home.”
“Aye. That’s what I told her.”
Agnes put a towel on the proggy mat in front of the fire where the cauldron of water was boiling for her da’s bath. The tin tub would be unhooked from its peg on the wall when her da was ready for it. She lay down her wriggling baby sister and unhooked the nappy pins.
The child had produced a good-sized stool. She wiped the bottom clean, rolled up the old nappy to be emptied later into the netty, and put a fresh one on. Clean, warm, and finally getting some attention, the baby grabbed at Agnes’ pigtail that swung tantalizingly across the child’s face. Agnes smiled and tickled her tummy, eliciting a delightful giggle from the youngest member of the family. Worried that he would be missing out on the fun, the four-year-old also made his way to the mat and threw his arms around his older sister’s neck. “Can we play pit ponies, Aggie?”
“Aye pet, after tea. All reet? I need to help our mam first.”
Mrs Robson smiled. “Thanks pet. When ya’ve finished there, get the bacon oot the larder, will ya?”
“Aye mam.”
Mrs Robson suddenly stopped and looked intently at her eldest daughter kneeling on the floor. “What’s that on the back of ya pinafore?”
Agnes looked over her shoulder, trying to see what her mother was referring to.
“There on the hem.” Her mother put down the potato knife and walked over to the hearth. She bent down and ran her finger along the hem of Agnes’ skirt. She stood up straight, her lips pursed, her finger erect and accusing.
Agnes swallowed hard. Her mother’s finger was coated in bright ochre oil paint. The same colour she had used to change the foliage on her painting from summer to autumn.
“Have you been gannin behind me back?”
“What? Whatya mean?”
“Don’t play coy with me, missy. You’ve been gannin to that art place instead of workin’. When I told you not to.”
“I haven’t! I put four shillings in the caddy. Mrs Madsen gave me the full amount. Check for ya self if ya don’t believe me!”
Mrs Robson pulled back her hand and slapped her daughter across the face.
“Don’t use that tone of voice with me, lass!”
Agnes fought hard to hold back her tears. Then she walked to the caddy and emptied it onto the table, flicking out the four shillings she had just put in. “See, it’s all there. Count it ya self if the money’s all ya care aboot.”
Her mother’s face softened and she reached out her hand and patted her daughter’s shoulder. “No pet. The money’s not all I care aboot. And I’m sorry I hit ya. But…,” she cupped Agnes’ chin in her hand and stroked her cheek with her thumb, trying to wipe away the redness of the slap, “… I’ve been hearing things. Aboot that posh bloke who comes up from the Toon. He never tried anything when ya was there, did he?”
Agnes pulled away from her mother, making a show of putting the money back into the caddy. “Whatya mean, try anything?”
“Don’t be coy, lass. Ya know.”
Agnes sighed and put the lid back on the caddy. Her face was still stinging from her mother’s slap. “Aye, I do. But no. He didna try anything when I was there.”
“Ya swear?”
“Aye Mam. I swear.”
The Morpeth Herald
14th October 1897
BODY FOUND IN ASHINGTON PIT
ASHINGTON COLLIERY – the body of a man has been found at the bottom of Ashington Pit. The dead man was discovered last Sunday morning (the 7th) at the change of shift. It is believed his neck was broken.
The man has been identified as Mr Michael Brownley (28) of Newcastle upon Tyne. Mr Brownley, who was a lecturer at the Newcastle School of Art at the University College, ran free art classes for the children of pitmen in Ashington and Hirst. He had been running the classes at St John’s Church in Hirst most Saturdays since June 1897.
It is unclear how Mr Brownley came to be near the pit, which is over a mile from the church and not in the vicinity of the railway station. The miners who found the body at the bottom of a shaft, temporarily shut for maintenance, say they smelled alcohol on his breath and that his clothes were muddy and dishevelled.
Police said that Mr Brownley was last seen at the Kicking Cuddy public house having a drink. They speculate that he may have been intoxicated and become disorientated on his way back to the train station.
Police are asking for any witnesses who may have seen Mr Brownley leaving the Kicking Cuddy around eight o’clock to contact them.
Mr Brownley is survived by his widow who is expecting their first child.
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