After the Storm (25 page)

He turned back to the table and sat down and then she said:

‘Trouble is it, you’ve been having with your back?’

She spat and the iron sizzled. She leaned into her work again, backwards and forwards.

‘I was thrashed today,’ Tom said. He felt tired. ‘She’s gone, you know.’ But he knew she would already know, word went round like a slag fire that hit the surface. ‘She’s gone and I did a painting and the bloody man thrashed me for it.’

May folded the clothes carefully, making a neat square of the tablecloth she had finished.

‘I know she’s gone, lad, but you’ll see her soon.’ Her voice was full of kindness. ‘Now lift up that shirt, lad, let’s be seeing it.’

He felt a flood of relief. She would soothe the hurt, which did not pain him like that black hole which had grown since this morning, but the soothing would help that too and make him feel less alone.

He hung his jacket on the hook and then tried to ease the shirt from his back. It was stuck to the flesh. May tugged her apron straight as she moved round the table towards him.

‘Give it to me,’ she said and turned him round. She just held his shoulders, didn’t lift his shirt or even tut.

‘Get sat down again,’ she ordered and her voice was carefully flat. ‘I’ll get Davy in here.’

She bustled past him, not looking at him, out into the yard, banging on the wash-house door.

Tom lay his head down on the table. He was so tired, so bloody tired and the pain from his back seemed to go up to the top of his head and down to his legs and the ache for Annie was everywhere that the thrashing wasn’t.

Suddenly Davy was there before him, crouching down and lifting up his head. Tom felt as though he had been asleep but his eyes had not been closed.

‘That’s a rare old belting you’ve had, my bonny lad.’ Davy’s eyes were smiling but there was a blackness behind them. He stood and took the bowl of lukewarm water from his mother and the cloth and sponged the shirt free. Blood reddened the water darkly and Tom tasted the blood in his mouth from the lip he was biting. He must not cry out in front of a pitman and he forced the sheet of pain to lift by talking.

‘So you’re out of the pit now, Davy?’

There was a soft laugh from Davy, whose lean dark face was transformed. He was a miserable-looking devil, May always said, until he smiles and then the sun comes out from where it’s hiding and we all have a bathe in it.

‘Well lad, how word gets around.’

May snorted as she piled up the linen and carried it to the cupboard. ‘Less talk and more work and this wouldn’t happen my lad. More money than sense it is. More mouth than sense if you ask me. What’s the point of setting the world alight if we have to put the sugar back in the cupboard?’

Davy dug Tom in the ribs. ‘The kettle’s boiling again,’ he said, ‘rattling its top off.’ And they both laughed.

‘We’ll find out how you got your lugs on to that news later,
our Tom, but I want to find out how you picked up this little masterpiece.’ He was wrapping round greased clean flannel and the heat was taken out of his back and he felt the tension ease in his neck. He liked the feel of Davy’s hands, quick and firm, as they passed the strip of sheeting round and round his body. It made him feel like a bitty bairn again.

Davy stood up. He groaned and Tom wished he had thought to stand up. Pitmen hated to crouch; they spent all day doing it and their backs were creased for life.

‘You’d like the pattern on your back, Tom,’ joked Davy. ‘Stick it up on the wall, you would, boy, but I’d like to know the name of the artist if you don’t mind.’ He was carrying the bowl back out to the scullery and May called for a sprig of thyme to be put in the stew.

Tom watched him as he lifted the lid and followed the steam as it puffed out up the chimney. He took a sip of tea and poured some into Davy’s cup as he sat down. The smell of thyme wafted now, faint to begin with but increasing to a pungent thickness.

‘It was that bugger Wainwright,’ he said and saw May return to the room and stand with her hands on her hips. She had taken down a string of onions from the hook by the pantry and they rocked across her full thighs. He went over the scene for them; it was vivid still but full of colour and there had been none in that room apart from his pictures.

‘He said that, did he,’ remarked Davy at length. ‘I think you’ve just been thrashed for another man’s work, Tom lad. He’s wanted to belt me often enough and never found the excuse. Called me a guttersnipe radical.’ He patted Tom’s knee. ‘Me mam’s right, I’ve more mouth than sense.’ He sat back in his chair.

‘It was a good painting was it, lad? Worth the cane-work?’ he asked.

‘The best I’ve done,’ said Tom. ‘It’s in me jacket.’

At their look of surprise, he added: ‘I painted another before I came home.’

Davy laughed and signalled for him to stay put and fetched it himself, raising his eyebrows as he studied the painting. Tom felt again the cold of the field, the fear of the panting men, his own breath rasping in his chest as he ran and left her. Now he’d had his beating too and the aching felt a little better.

Aunt May took the picture from Davy and said: ‘Redistribution of wealth, isn’t that what Wainwright said?’

Tom protested. ‘It was Annie sharing out the pies.’

Davy laughed and slapped him on the back before he remembered, ‘Sorry lad, I forgot. I wouldn’t mind taking this for a poster though because that’s what it is right enough. It’s a good one boy. Your Annie had the right idea.’

‘Davy, lad,’ warned May, ‘don’t start the boy off on your ideas. See where it’s got you, on the blacklist. No pit’ll have you now.’

Davy shrugged, his face closed and no longer smiling. ‘Someone’s got to say something.’

‘Leave it to the unions, Davy,’ his mother said as she cleared the jam from the table and gave him the knives and forks to put round. She waved Tom back into his seat. ‘You,’ she commanded, ‘sit down and don’t listen to this man. Eighteen and he thinks he knows everything.’

She flounced out to the kitchen and began to chop up the leeks.

‘Why are you out then, Davy?’ Tom asked.

‘Oh, the overman kept giving the best seam to his mates. It’s piece-work in these pits you see, Tom, or if you don’t, you soon will when you go down. And those in the better seams get pickings; more money. Should be done by ballot, by luck, not by favours. I told the overman, see, and he had me out.’

Tom looked at him as he finished laying the places and perched himself on the fender.

‘Why didn’t you leave it to the union then, Davy, like your mam said? You’re a union man.’

‘Because since the General Strike, the unions have no teeth, man. Now the owners can use the workers to get rich and get away with it more than ever before, and the overman can flex his muscles and do us rabble-rousers down, as your Mr Wainwright called us.’

Tom narrowed his eyes as he remembered the headmaster. ‘I don’t want to go back, Davy. He’s a bully.’

Davy looked at him firmly beneath his brows. ‘You’ll go back and stay until you leave to go to work. You don’t let bullies chase you away. Look at your Annie, she stayed with that bloody old bully Albert and now she’s free of him, thank God. I
wonder if she’ll go on giving away pies to people?’ And he laughed.

Tom smiled and wanted to put the ache back where it had been, well below the surface.

‘What did Wainwright really mean by redistribution?’ He forced himself to listen to the answer, to keep his mind on things outside himself.

‘Sharing boy, that’s all it means.’

‘But why did he belt me?’

‘Because, I suppose, one way of doing it is to tax everyone harder on their incomes, that would take more from the rich, spread it about a bit. Makes those with money right mad to think of it. It’s sharing, like I said.’

‘And who were Marx and that other one then?’

Davy laughed. ‘No more questions, get on with your tea. You’ll learn soon enough when you’re working.’ He lounged out to the kitchen. ‘I’m just off to see someone about a heavy right arm, Mam,’ he said and May just nodded.

‘A warning, that’s all my Davy.’ Tom saw him nod.

He took a sip of his tea but it was cold.

May called through the door. ‘What about going to see your mam, tell her about Annie?’

‘She’ll already know,’ he replied and May shook her head.

‘She’ll like to hear it from you.’

He shook himself into his shirt and then his jacket. ‘Maybe I will, Aunt May, but I’ve to go and tell Grace first.’

‘Putting your girlfriend before your mother then is it?’ She stood in the doorway and grinned, shaking a spoon at him. He dodged round her.

‘I’ll be in for tea,’ he called, avoiding her blow which never landed.

He walked down the back alley, his hands in his pockets since it looked more grown up and did not jog his back so much. His girlfriend, Aunt May had said, and he wondered how Grace would take to that, her in higher school and him a year younger. But soon he would be a working man and she would like that. He felt as though he had changed today, grown up. He would not see Betsy, of that he was more sure than anything, because it was her fault that Annie had gone and he hated her even more now. If she had fought Joe and made him take them both he
would not have gone to May’s and she would not have gone to Albert’s. They would have stayed together and Sarah would not have needed to come …

At ten-thirty prompt, Sarah edged the bull-nosed Morris away from the front of Albert’s blank-faced shop, leaving the chattering groups to disperse once the novelty of a car like this, driven by a woman, for goodness sake, had been talked to death. Georgie was not there to wave to Annie.

He had arrived at ten and had stood quite still, in the doorway of the kitchen, his cap held loosely between slack hands. He had looked at Annie steadily and her eyes had held his and had answered the question they held from the deepness of her life.

Worldlessly he had turned and leant against the wall, one foot wedged against his bike. He had taken out his cigarette paper, rolled it round tobacco teased along its centre while she had stood close enough to touch the length of her body against his as he licked and lit the cigarette. She breathed in the scent of sulphur as he sucked in the smoke. She opened her lips as he slipped it from his mouth to hers and she felt his moisture as she had done before, so long ago and they remembered without words those months and weeks and every minute between then and now.

He had not kissed her but had cupped his hand about her cheek and laid his face against hers. I’ve still to teach you to hang by your arms on that bar, he had said, and she had whispered, I’ll love you all my life, my love.

And now she was gone from him, leaving him and while Sarah peered through the windscreen, steering the car clear of tram-lines, she looked back as the juddering cobbles changed to asphalt and the car climbed the hill out of the town. She could see the slag creeping ever nearer to the houses which looked as though they were banked against the black advance. She could hear in her memory the whine of the cages which were swaying
as they lurched and climbed steadily higher up the coal-dust mountains to discharge at the peak a dense choking black cloud.

She looked to the front, to the hill which was unfolding as they, in turn, climbed and wanted to wrench at the door handle and fling herself back down to Wassingham while she still had the time because, once you left, you never came back, never truly came back. The crest was drawing nearer, the car engine was groaning, then it hesitated, as Sarah changed into a lower gear. Now, her mind screamed, now, but the crest was here and they were over and the world was in front of her in a burst of light. Sweeping fields and trees flicked past faster and faster and her knuckles were white on the door handle. She turned and looked back but now could only see the hill, not the town which clutched Georgie and Tom in its grip. It’s too late, she told herself, and the tearing inside seemed quieter. It’s too late now, she repeated to herself.

It took two hours to travel to Gosforn through rolling countryside that was dotted with pit villages and ironworks that belched foul smoke onto sprawling mean streets. Sarah pointed over to Newcastle on the left but Annie could see nothing of the city with its bright lights and theatre drapes, just grey smoke bulging from pencil chimneys into a late August sky. She could not yet speak to this woman who had stirred her into betraying Georgie, betraying Tom.

Sarah’s house was not joined to another, none of the houses were, Annie saw, and the light seemed to pour through the gaps lightening the whole road.

There were gated front gardens which ran down to the pavement and Sarah’s was shielded by a clipped privet hedge. The car jumped as the engine died.

Sarah set her hat straight and gathered up her bag.

‘Take your things then, Ann, and you do not need those sandals any more, they are far too small.’

‘I’m keeping them,’ replied Annie as she clutched them to her and slammed the car door. She lifted the latch on the wooden gate and walked up the path to the front door past the privet hedge which sported pollen-heavy flowers and separated this house from the neighbours.

Inside, the brown and white tiles looked crisp and cold and
her boots clicked loudly as she walked along behind Sarah, past the hall table. She stopped to look at the large gong which stood by it. There was a brush on the table and a few letters stacked in a neat pile. She put her cardboard suitcase down and brushed her hair in the mirror. It was still the tangled mess it had been this morning.

‘I usually brush my coat with that,’ said Sarah gently. ‘You might find it full of fluff.’ She stood in the doorway to another room and Annie hurriedly put the brush back.

Sarah spoke again. ‘That table is walnut, it has a nice grain hasn’t it? Incidentally we ring that gong twice for meal times. It’s a bit like a race and goes back to my father, I suppose. Once means on your marks, twice means it’s on the table and things are going to get a bit frosty if you are not waiting for it.’

Annie looked along the passageway which went on past Sarah, down to a closed door. She looked back again at the brush and felt the heat from her reddened cheeks. It all seemed very strange and she felt so alone.