Eliza's Child (25 page)

‘No, I do not,' Eliza replied and smiled at him. ‘It was nothing, nothing to bother your head with, any road.' Tot didn't look very convinced but said no more.

Eliza brought out the pan of stew she had made the day before and heated it on the fire. She cut slices from the new loaf she had bought on the way home and put out three plates. Bertha would be coming in from delivering bundles of washed and ironed clothes and she would be wanting her supper early for she was sure to be meeting Charlie. She was meeting Charlie every blessed night nowadays, thought Eliza. Still, it would be nice to have a quiet night in by herself after the lad was abed.

She had a lot to think about.

JONATHAN WAS SEETHING
with anger as he drove home to the substantial stone house he had had built on Haswell moor during his short marriage. It was isolated, about a mile and a half away from any of the pit villages that surrounded it. His wife had insisted on it. She had read and taken notice of the works of Pasteur and Lister and she was a firm believer in the need to prevent the spread of noxious diseases. And noxious diseases were rife in the pit villages, with their giant midden heaps. So often the only water supply serving a couple of hundred pitmen was a single standpipe and that situated close to the heaps.

‘I will not live close to these people,' she had said, rather grandly or so Jonathan thought. After all, her father may have been an ironmaster but he was definitely not landed gentry. He had begun work as an iron puddler in his youth.

But the money she brought with her built the house and allowed him to buy more land to sink pits, and for a while he had even forgotten about Eliza. Eliza, who had been like a running sore in his mind, he had wanted her so much. Then his wife had died, ironically of childbed fever, and the child, a puny little thing, had died with her. Jonathan had set about finding the whereabouts of Eliza, which he had done through her brother Albert. The lad was an uncomplicated soul and readily gave his sister's address in exchange for a pint of porter.

Eliza was still as bonny as she had always been, Jonathan had realised. He was older now and she was a widow, and with all he had to offer her it would be easy to get her, to have her, to feel her body against his again. The memory of that inflamed him with desire.

As he drove home, Jonathan gradually calmed down and began to plan a strategy. He would have her and it would be through the boy, oh yes, he would have her. But first of all he had to do something about that pesky union leader, Peter Collier, who was an agitator and a threat to the realm if ever there was one. Oh aye, he, Jonathan Moore, would see him in Durham gaol, he would indeed. But first of all he would have a word with him concerning Eliza.

Eliza knew she should go straight to Peter and tell him of her meetings with Jonathan Moore but she had been used to dealing with her own problems for so long and she liked her independence. Still, she regretted telling Jonathan that she and Peter were practically betrothed. She was uneasy as to what he might do.

Bertha came in and they sat round the table and ate their supper and immediately afterwards Bertha went out. There was some constraint between them and it distressed Eliza but she didn't know what she could do about it. She missed the closeness there had been between them. Charlie did not come to the house now and Eliza supposed it was because of her. He thought she had too much influence on his future wife.

‘If I can't go down the pit with the other lads then I want to be apprenticed to a cabinet maker,' said Tot, raising the subject of his leaving school yet again as soon as they were on their own. Eliza looked at him with surprise. His father was not mentioned between them and hadn't been for a long time. She wasn't even sure if he knew his father had been a cabinet maker.

‘A cabinet maker? Why?'

‘I just do. I could make chairs and things.'

‘Well, you cannot,' said Eliza. ‘You are going to school, a good school and that's all there is to it.'

‘I want to leave school. I can read and write and figure, and why can't I leave school?'

‘Don't argue with me, Tot, I said no and I meant no,' said Eliza sharply. ‘And you should be studying your books instead of wasting your time. Go on, into the front room with you. Those books cost money and I want you to make full use of them.'

Tot mumbled to himself but he went into the front room with a book listing the kings and queens of England. Though how he would find knowing all about them would be any use to him at all he didn't know, but his mother thought it might. His mother's thinking was a mystery to him. He threw the book down on a chair and stood by the window, gazing out at the hedge across the road and the field rising behind it. He would be a cabinet maker, he told himself. He would run away and go to work for a real man. His mother was just a woman and she shouldn't tell him what he was going to do.

‘Are you reading that book?' his mother's voice came to him through the half-open door.

‘Yes, yes, I am,' he replied and picked it up and flung himself on the mat face down and opened the book up at random. ‘Richard the Lionheart,' he read aloud. Now that was a daft name, wasn't it? How could a man have a heart of a lion?

In the kitchen, his mother sighed and stretched her feet out along the brass rail of the fender. She would go to see Peter tomorrow, she decided. Best get to him before Jonathan Moore did so she could warn him.

She would not be able to go until she had seen to her patients, though. She had three around the door and she had promised Dr Gray that she would go back and check on the nurse who was attending little Matilda Prentis. And at eleven-thirty there was the funeral of Mrs Green. She needed to go to the church at least if not to the tea afterwards. It was a mark of respect.

It was four o'clock before Eliza found herself free to go to see Peter. It wasn't very far away, but she had to be back to see to Tot so she took Dolly. The pony wasn't too keen on going out again and ambled along the road with her head down and Eliza let her. When they arrived, she tied the nosebag on to the pony's muzzle and left her on the roadside contentedly nuzzling at her oats and chopped hay.

‘I'll fetch you a drink when I come out,' she whispered in Dolly's ear and she whickered in return.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Collier's gone home for the day. He has a meeting tonight at Murton,' said a man in answer to her query. ‘Can I give him a message?'

‘No, thank you. I'll see him myself,' she answered. Well, she told herself, it wasn't too much further to go, just a few streets away. Only she had to take the nosebag off Dolly and the pony seemed almost human in the look of disapproval she gave.

Eliza walked along, leading her. It was a lovely evening and her thoughts went back over her day. Matilda Prentis was obviously much better when Eliza saw her earlier. Her temperature was down and she was propped up on pillows, taking a little gruel that Dr Gray had prescribed for her. The nurse had followed Eliza's instructions, either willingly or under the scrutiny of the doctor, Eliza didn't know which.

Mrs Green's funeral had been sad. Her daughter Joan had turned up at the chapel and there had been a blazing row between her and her father, which only ended when the minister intervened.

‘Not here,' he had said sternly to them both, and Mr Green glared and looked ready to tell the reverend gentleman to mind his own business but checked himself just in time.

‘You don't know what he's like,' Joan had said to the minister. ‘He's a devil, I'm telling you.'

‘Show some respect for your poor dead mother,' the minister had replied, sounding stern and sharp for someone who was noted for his gentle demeanour.

The neighbours, some of whom were there out of respect and friendship, and some looking forward to a substantial sit-down funeral tea, were agog.

‘You watch out, young Lottie,' Joan said to the little maid, who was setting off for home ahead of the rest so that she could get the kettles on for the tea. ‘Don't stand for any impittance from him.' She nodded meaningfully. Lottie looked bewildered but didn't reply. The last Eliza saw of her she was leaving the churchyard at a trot.

She was approaching Peter Collier's cottage. She halted the pony outside of the house and attached the nosebag once more.

‘Can I hold your Galloway, Missus?' a small boy asked hopefully. ‘I'll do it for a penny.'

‘A penny?' Eliza asked, smiling.

‘A ha'penny then, go on.'

‘All right then, I'll pay you when I come out,' she said. She was still smiling when she knocked at the door of the house before opening it and walking in, as was the custom thereabouts.

‘Good evening, Peter,' she said and her smile broadened. He was sitting at the table eating, though he didn't seem to have much of an appetite, judging by the way he was pushing the food around with his fork. He looked up at her and for a minute she thought he must have been expecting someone else for his frown was formidable. He did not rise to his feet immediately.

‘Eliza,' he said heavily, and put down his knife and fork. Now he got to his feet and turned his back on her as he reached to the high mantelpiece for his pipe and tin of tobacco.

‘Is something the matter, Peter?' she asked uncertainly.

‘You might say that, aye,' he replied and set about filling his pipe and tamping down the tobacco. He did not look at her as he did so. Oh, he had heard the rumour of the bet all right but Jonathan Moore had shocked him with what else he said. Was it all lies? He wanted to believe Eliza, oh he did.

‘Has there been a disaster, then? In one of the mines?'

‘Nay, there has not, not that I've heard, any road,' he said.

‘Well, then?'

‘I had a caller the day,' said Peter. He held the pipe in his hand, still not putting a taper to it.

‘Jonathan Moore,' she said. She had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. Oh, she should have got here sooner, she should indeed. What had Jonathan said to Peter?

‘Is it true?'

‘Is what true?' she hedged. ‘What did he say?'

‘You lay with him when you were wed to Jack Mitchell? Is it?'

‘I didn't. It was not like that.'

‘Did you?' Peter persisted, for she sounded hesitant.

‘Jonathan Moore is chasing after me. He threatened you when I told him we were almost betrothed.'

‘Is it true?'

‘Aye, it is. Don't look at me like that, Peter. Jack used me as a stake in a bet—' She stopped, for Peter had sat down again and put his head in his hands. She sat too, in the chair opposite him.

‘You knew that Jack had treated me badly; you knew he was a gambler, a fanatical gambler,' she said. She stared at the scrubbed wood of the tabletop, finding herself unable to look at him.

‘I didn't know about Moore,' he replied. ‘He says you are lovers, you've just had a disagreement. He said he would kill me if I didn't leave you alone.'

‘He's a cruel man, Peter, cruel and dangerous.'

‘Yet you let him into your house yesterday.'

‘I had to. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone. There were people about, neighbours. I didn't want them to think we were meeting.'

It sounded lame even in her own ears. The lines of wood grain on the tabletop were in a sort of pattern, broken where there was a small split, no doubt caused by soap and water and a scrubbing brush. She ran her finger along it as she tried to form the right words to tell him of what had happened and why she had invited him in.

‘I came here to say I would marry you,' she said at last.

‘I thought you wanted to get here before Moore could tell me the truth,' said Peter.

‘I did want to speak to you before he did,' Eliza admitted. ‘But I've told you the truth.'

‘Eliza, Eliza,' Peter replied, looking at her properly for the first time. ‘It will not do, it won't. I have to consider the union. This is a critical time for us. We are at last making progress, standing up for ourselves against the owners. Jonathan Moore is an owner. He is our enemy.'

‘You're turning me away because a man like that tells lies about me? I thought you had feelings for me, I really did.'

Peter sighed. ‘I did. I do. But I can't throw away the chance we have now, the chance to make our mark in the world. We can show people that the miners are not just ignorant ruffians; we are free men and we want our rights as free men. Don't you see?'

Eliza slowly rose to her feet. ‘You didn't have feelings for me, not really. Not as a man should have for a wife,' she said sadly.

‘I am fond of you, Eliza,' he replied.

‘But you love the union more. Goodbye, Peter.' She turned and went out into the street. She took the nosebag from Dolly and put it back in the tub trap and picked up the reins.

‘Hey, Missus, what about me ha'penny?' It was the little lad who had been holding the horse for her. She hadn't even noticed him as she came out of Peter's house. Now she rummaged in her purse and found a penny and lobbed it to him.

‘Eeh, ta, Missus,' said the lad, his grin threatening to split his face.

‘Gee up,' she snapped at Dolly and the pony started to amble away in a slow walk. ‘Gee up, I said,' she snapped again and flapped the reins hard on Dolly's back and the walk turned into a trot.

It wasn't just because of the lost chance for Tot to get a union scholarship to a good school, she realised. Even though she had been unsure about it when Peter had made her an offer, she regretted the loss of it now it was gone. Contrary was what she was, she thought wryly.

‘I'll get an apprenticeship with my Uncle Henry. You wouldn't let me be a cabinet maker so I am going to Alnwick. I will write to you soon.'

The note was signed, ‘Your son, Thomas.' There was not a mention of love or affection for her but she shouldn't expect it, she knew. Tot had been reserved in such things ever since she brought him back from Alnwick.

Eliza stared at the beautiful copperplate handwriting, which was beaten into all the children at the national school, where a rap across the knuckles was the punishment for untidy handwriting. Her numbed mind couldn't think of anything else for a few minutes before grief flooded her mind. She sat down at the table where the note had been left in the middle propped up against the glass salt cellar, the silver salt spoon sticking out at the side. Thomas, he had signed himself and he never did that. He had always insisted his name was Tot ever since he was old enough to say it.