With Love From Ma Maguire (25 page)

And now, in May of this year, what Ma had prophesied was about to finally happen. On the Friday night, every loom and mule shuddered to a halt and the workers moved among machines for a last wiping down and oiling. There was a grim silence about them; not a one could be heard rejoicing at the thought of England closing down for a whole week if not more. ‘Ah well.’ Ma folded her final cut. ‘I suppose we’ve seen it coming.’

Meg Butterworth clucked her tongue. ‘Aye. Try telling that to my lot come next Thursday and no tea on the table.’ As always, Meg’s mouth twisted itself into exaggerated shapes as she spoke and Ma found herself wondering, not for the first time, whether or no she’d discovered the true origin of the Lancashire dialect. The noise in the mills was usually so loud that messages had to be mouthed and the Bolton folk seemed to have taken this habit home with them, lips stretching this way and that, faces changing shape constantly during speech.

‘Eeh well,’ said Meg now. ‘No use mithering over it, I suppose. Best get home and stop in bed for a week. You don’t feel so clemmed in bed. Mind, he’ll be at home too, so I don’t want to give him no ideas. Nay, if I’m not careful, we shall be having another mouth to feed. How’s them twins of your lad’s?’

‘Fine, Meg. They’re doing great, ready for school soon.’

‘And Paddy?’

Ma looked up to heaven. ‘Don’t talk to me about him. I knew it wouldn’t last, all that business about turning over a new leaf now he’s a father. He’s doing a bit of droving when it suits him, though he’s not allowed to kill on account of his hand. Still spends a lot of time messing around with horses, going to fairs and the like with farmers. When he’s sober, that is.’

Meg nodded sagely. Her own husband wasn’t too clever when it came to drink and she often turned up with a black eye or a bruised cheek. ‘They’re buggers with a pint inside them. I’ve told him often enough, I might be only little but I’ll get him one of these days.’

‘What’ll you do?’

‘Poison his bloody dinner, grease the stairs—’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Aye, I know I wouldn’t. And so does he.’

Ma wandered towards the door, wondering how it was that Meg Butterworth carried on worshipping a husband who beat her mercilessly every payday. She stopped in her tracks. Richard was being carried in on a chair, supported on one side by Paddy and on the other by his own son. She folded her arms and watched this sight, her head on one side as she considered the irony of it. The twins’ grandfather being supported by both their fathers. If it wasn’t so dangerous and tragic, it might be funny.

They set the chair down and she studied the man who hadn’t been expected to live anything like this length of time. He was truly old now, shrivelled and shrunken, a shell of a man but with a light still burning brightly in the fevered eyes.

He nodded. ‘Ma?’

‘Good evening.’

Paddy removed the driving gloves and smiled at Charles. He’d done a fair bit of work for the Swainbanks lately, was becoming quite an expert driver, in fact. Perhaps he should have cards printed, ‘Patrick Maguire Driver and Drover’. That appealed to him, he liked a play on words.

‘What the bloody hell are they up to?’ asked the old man now. ‘Bring them all over here, Charles. Let’s see what they’re made of.’ The two younger men went off to gather the weavers together.

Ma coughed self-consciously. ‘Is this just for the benefit of our shed?’

‘No.’ His breathing was laboured. ‘I’ve been in every room. If I could get on my knees, then I would—’

‘It wouldn’t do any good, for there’ll be no coal—’

‘We’ve stocks, haven’t we?’

‘For a month or two.’

‘Enough, I’d say.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘They’ll be out a while, the miners. What can you expect when they’ve had wages dropped? The rest of us are just standing by them for a week or so.’

‘Waste of bloody time,’ he gasped, his cheeks darkening.

‘You should be in your bed.’

‘While you close my mills?’

‘It’s not me! This was a proper decision, a vote—’

‘Philly?’

‘What?’

‘How . . . how are they?’

She bit her lower lip. ‘They’re well. But I’d feel more comfortable if Paddy wasn’t getting so familiar with that son of yours.’

Richard coughed so that he might breathe more easily. ‘What would you do, I wonder?’

‘If what?’

‘If I had our . . . little agreement wiped out? Would you hold them up as Swainbanks, poor little mites?’

‘You know that I could not do such a thing. Not now that they’re born and well grown.’

‘You’d never have done it anyway, would you?’

‘No.’

‘Then you won’t keep me to the deal?’

She looked at him for a moment or two. ‘I suppose not.’

He grinned and she caught sight of the handsome man he had once been. ‘It’s all right, lass. We won’t back out of it now. Charles is a good lad – two of his own now. Peter and John. He knows he wronged the girl, Philly. He’ll not let the kiddies down.’

‘It’s glad I am to hear it.’

Richard delivered a somewhat breathless sermon from the confines of his chair, telling the assembled weavers and tenters how foolish were their ways, issuing the occasional veiled threat about closures and no work for the future. No one seemed too impressed. The old man was weak, his son promised to be a softer option than old Richard had been in his heyday. And when all came to all, right was on the side of the workers. Time these bloated capitalists got the odd lesson.

Everyone went home to a very strange week of silence, a holiday that wasn’t quite a holiday because folk’s future seemed to hang by such a slender thread these days. All the uncles did a roaring trade, queues stretching either side of the three brass balls every morning, everything from father’s suit to the best brasses pawned against starvation. When it didn’t rain, the skies were clear and beautiful; this was how life might have been in the valley if the mills had not sullied the atmosphere each working day. But there was a listlessness, a feeling of unreality to it all.

An extremely strange lady called Sarah Leason came down from her house on the moors, stepping for the first time ever on cobbles, sending her man to call at the colliers’ cottages she owned. She stood at the end of Delia Street where just four houses belonged to her. Ma Maguire came out of the end house, a tray of flour cakes held in her arms. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Are those for the strikers?’ asked Miss Leason.

Ma indicated the affirmative, wondering what this posh-knob was doing hereabouts. ‘I’m on strike meself too,’ she said defensively.

‘And so you ought to be, my good woman. Are you a spinner?’

‘A weaver, Ma’am.’

‘It’s Miss. Miss Sarah Leason.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ They’d heard of her. She kept a very peculiar household by all accounts, barn door left open for tramps, then there were tales of cats, dogs and even donkeys roaming everywhere. And her dad had been a pit owner too . . .

‘What’s your name?’ barked this eccentric lady.

‘Maguire. They call me Ma.’

A thin hand in a fingerless black glove thrust itself forward and touched the tray. Ma studied the tiny creature in its cape and fusty grey dress, like a blackbird, she was. Or like something from another century altogether.

‘I’m calling in my rent books.’ Beady eyes fixed themselves on Ma’s face.

‘You’re not . . . not putting them on the streets, Miss?’

A weak laugh escaped from thin pale lips. ‘Not on your nellie, Ma! I’m letting them stop rent free until this bloody mess is over. You’ll be back in a day or two, you and the others. But my lot won’t. I’ve sold the pits but kept the cottages. They’ll pay me not one penny while they’re out and they’ll have no empty rent book sitting on the table as a reminder of their supposed inadequacy.’

Ma stepped back, her breath temporarily taken away. So it was true, then. Not all the rich folk were against the strike. And the way this one talked, like an ordinary woman – swearing too!

‘My family killed dozens of men and children, Ma Maguire. This is my small way of making reparation.’

‘Then God will know it.’ There was a small catch in Ma’s voice.

‘Yes, well you can leave God out of it, because I’ve no time for fairy tales. I stopped believing in God after Pretoria. If there is such a being, then it’s something that plays with the earth like a ball, bouncing it about from time to time to see how many of us fall off. No, I place my faith in creatures. We could learn a lot from them.’

Ma shifted the weight of the tray on to her right hip. ‘You sound like my son. He won’t eat flesh at all, lives on turnips and apples most days.’

‘Sensible chap.’

Ma sighed. ‘Aye, but there’s another part of his diet I didn’t mention. Stout and Irish whiskey . . .’

‘A sure sign of sensitivity,’ said Miss Leason. ‘He can’t face the inhumanity of it all. I’m the same myself. Got a fox at the moment, a poor terrified creature hunted half to death by silly great men. I don’t know what to do with him, for he trusts me now and probably trusts all men because I’ve healed him. If I keep him, he’ll pine for his own kind. If I let him go, then he’ll be hunted right to a kill. The wildest of creatures, Ma.’ Her eyes misted and her voice was small and hurt. ‘Yet he would never damage his own. We kill. We kill all things living, ourselves included.’ She brought herself together suddenly, clicking her tongue against her teeth. ‘Bring this son of yours to me.’

Ma looked down at the tray. The small fierce gentlewoman snatched this item from Ma’s hands. ‘I’ll hold on to the bread for you.’

It was a meeting of minds. Ma stood aside while Miss Leason propounded her theories, heard while her son agreed to go up to The Hollies and help with planting and weeding and harvesting. All for no pay, all in his spare time and just for a few vegetables and fruits.

‘Money’s almost gone, you see,’ snapped the tiny woman. ‘I had families to care for, mining families – and no one to stop me doing what was right. I’m the last of an iniquitous line, Mr Maguire. The house has gone to seed and I need money to feed my animals. Any help you might give will be appreciated.’

‘I’ll help you, Missus.’

‘Miss.’

‘Right then, Miss. I’ve debts to pay too, ’cos I killed a lot of beasts when I was slaughtering. So I’ll come up the odd weekend and give you a hand.’

Ma delivered her flour cakes, wondering all the time about Miss Leason who seemed not to have the price of a loaf for herself, yet who came down in her dusty carriage with her one remaining servant to reduce her income so drastically. That, concluded Ma, was what having principles meant. She felt honoured to have met such a lady.

All kinds of people showed their hands that week. Vicars and priests patrolled streets arm in arm while they gave out shillings and oranges. Councillors from both sides collected up money and distributed it throughout the poorer wards, doctors treated the sick without charge, shopkeepers gave ‘tick’ without knowing whether or when the debts would ever be paid.

At the beginning of the second week, everyone returned to work. Everyone except the miners. Ma hated this. She walked past Pierce Murphy’s door on her way to the mill, head bent with the shame she felt, lips tightened against words she must never say. For she had promised that she would be ‘good’ in return for the weaving job.

Pierce chased after her. ‘Ma?’

‘Hello, lad.’

‘Tell them . . . tell them we understand. Well, some of us do, at least.’

She laid a hand on his arm, her eyes bright with anger. ‘Some of us must work to keep those of you who must not.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the three further miners’ houses. ‘These four families belong to Delia Street and to Miss Leason. You will be cared for. Others have landlords too. And did you know how much the churches take from coal? Did you know that colliery land is rented from the highest in the country, paid for by the pit owners? If the owners hadn’t such high rents to pay for ground to work, then your wages would improve. Tell that to the Archbishop in London, for he’s surely a very wealthy man. The miners must take all they can from whoever owes it.’

‘I’ll tell the committee—’

‘They already know it. It’s a fierce fight, for you’ve taken on some powerful people.’

‘I feel sick to the stomach, Ma.’

‘Molly will be down with your bread and soup. Don’t give in, Pierce.’

They didn’t give in. Thirty-six weeks they stayed out while other industries struggled on the brink of starvation for the lack of fuel. Attempts were made to break the strike, but strikebreakers themselves were broken repeatedly by determined opposition. People died, people survived. Slates at shops ran into impossible figures and few pledges were redeemed over those months.

When it was finally over, shattered men went back into the earth’s bowels with little flesh on their bones and for not much pay. Ma Maguire watched the sun rise on the day that the four doors opened, saw the men greeting one another in the middle of the cobbles, noticed how they clung together in their relief and humiliation. Ma was on short time, would not be required until the afternoon. So she sat as the winter sun brightened the sky, her eyes filling with tears. Even the sun seemed to mock this morning. Even the sun held just an empty promise.

Fergus had got out somehow. He kept doing it, kept going off to look for a mate, came back every time he got hungry. Miss Leason and Paddy patrolled fields and moors, he whistling between his teeth every few seconds, she calling the fox’s name in her silly girlish voice, a voice that certainly didn’t belong to a woman in her sixties. A strange figure she cut, thought Paddy, in men’s overalls and with great big wellies on her feet. They paused for a breather and a sup of lukewarm tea from the bottle he carried.

‘Paddy.’ She slumped against a wall. ‘I think we have to let him go this time.’

‘Aye,’ he agreed with reluctance. ‘Happen he’s found a safe place, Sarah. He might have a Missus – babies too afore long. Try and look on the bright side . . .’

‘I can’t. They’ll all be chasing him in their silly red coats, dogs tearing him to bits, some savage creature taking his brush as a trophy . . .’