Eliza's Child (27 page)

PETER SPENT A
restless night tossing and turning in his bed as he went over the conversation he had had with Jonathan Moore and then the one with Eliza. When he fell asleep just before dawn he dreamed of Eliza. She was watching him, he thought, not saying anything, simply looking at him with a reproachful, sad expression in her lovely eyes. When he awoke he couldn't get her out of his mind. He could not concentrate on anything that was going on in the office.

Now that the hated yearly bond was finally abolished, there were so many other injustices to be fought against, to be set out in a reasonable manner so the owners could not say the miners were becoming too demanding. Oh yes, there was plenty of work. Only today he found himself unable to concentrate on the paper he was working on, a paper asking for an allowance of half an hour's pay for the daily necessity of checking the ribs and stocks of coal left to support the roof of the coal seams where the coal had been extracted. And for the insertion of wooden pit props where needed.

‘Peter, get your mind on the job, will you? This is the second time I've had to ask you.' John Woodward, one of his fellow workers, leaned over Peter's desk and raised his voice. ‘You dreaming?'

Peter started and looked up at his friend. ‘No, I'm sorry, I was just working something out, that's all. What was it, John?'

‘I would say you were in love if I didn't know you better,' said John.

‘Well, you might be right,' Peter replied but smiling, to show it was only in jest.

‘Nay, not you,' said John. ‘You're wedded to the job, I know you.'

‘I'm only human,' Peter retorted.

They discussed the problem in hand for a few minutes then John said, ‘It's almost bait time; we might as well talk while we eat.'

‘No, I won't if you don't mind, John,' said Peter. ‘I have to be away to Brancepeth this afternoon and I want to call in somewhere first. So I'll go now. I'll be back afore six. I'll see you then.'

John looked surprised but nodded his agreement. Mebbe Peter did have something other than the union on his mind. He did not usually move from his desk when he took a break but ate as he worked.

Peter often walked when journeying from one place to another for he didn't own a horse. There was a horse bus went out by Brancepeth way, however, and he reckoned that if he visited Eliza he could make up the time by taking it to the village. He set off for Gilesgate and Eliza's house.

He had been hard on her, he knew it. When he had listened to Jonathan Moore talking about her, saying the most outrageous things, it had aroused jealousy and anger he hadn't known was in him. Jonathan Moore was a man he had always disliked, apart from the fact that he was a mine owner, a member of the enemy class. His sort thought they were doing the ignorant pitmen a favour by allowing them to work in the pits. They thought the risks they took with their precious capital was more important than the risks the men took with their lives every day, fighting against gases such as choke damp and fire damp and the terrible stythe that ruined their lungs and made them old men at forty.

Peter's thoughts returned to Eliza. She had admitted that what Moore had said was true or at least that there was some truth in it. He remembered the half-smile on Moore's face as he had talked about her.

‘Ask her,' Moore had said. ‘You don't have to take my word for it.'

Unbidden, the tune of the old ballad, ‘The Mine Owner and the Pitman's Wife' ran through his thoughts. He shook his head as though to clear it. When he had proposed to Eliza he had told himself that it was because she would be an asset as a wife for any union official. She came from a mining family; she knew what he was fighting for. Oh, he was fond of her, he was indeed; he remembered the night he had taken her in when her little lad was taken by that blackguard, Jack Mitchell. She had been past herself, poor lass, she was so distraught. Aye, she had had a struggle all her life, he reckoned.

He had been too hasty, he thought. And he had hidden behind his work as though it was a protective wall, using it as an excuse not to show how he really felt. Now he had to put things right, ask her to marry him and tell her the real reason he wanted her to.

‘Mr Collier! Come in, come in,' Bertha exclaimed as she opened the door to him. ‘Are you wanting to see Eliza? She's not here, she went up to Alnwick yesterday.'

Peter raised his eyebrows. ‘Alnwick?' he said. ‘Whatever for?'

‘It's the bairn, the lad, Tot, he's run off, Mr Collier. He said he was going to ask his uncle to take him on as an apprentice. Eliza's gone after him.' She told him about the note and how they had both gone to Newcastle to try to intercept Tot.

‘I thought mebbe it was a message from her when the knock came to the door,' she went on. ‘I thought I'd best come home in case the lad changed his mind. They often do when they run away, don't they?

‘They do,' said Peter. He bit his lip. The silly lad, he thought. Newcastle was a dangerous place for a lad and if he had got there and hadn't enough money to buy a ticket for Alnwick goodness knows what might have happened to him. Someone might have taken him from the station. He himself had heard of lads being enticed aboard boats bound for foreign parts when they strayed by the quayside. But surely Tot had more sense than let it happen to him? Peter berated himself for imagining the worst like an hysterical woman.

‘I'll come back the night,' he said aloud. ‘I'm sure Eliza will find the lad. Any road, nothing will happen to him, I'm sure. He's not a bad lad, he's only in a hurry to grow up and be a man.'

‘Aye,' said Bertha. But she sounded dubious. Still, best not to meet trouble afore it came, she said to herself. Going into the kitchen, she got the flat irons out of the cupboard and put them on the bar to heat by the fire. She took the old blanket she used as an ironing cloth and spread it on the table, and brought out the basket full of ironing that should by rights have been on its way back to the owner that morning. She spread a shirt on the blanket and took an iron from the bar with an old cloth to protect her hand. She spat on it and it sizzled satisfactorily and she started to press the under-manager's Sunday shirt, sleeves first then tails and back, and finally the double front. There were two collars but they were separate. The lad might have run off but still money had to be earned to pay the rent and buy a crust.

Peter took the horse bus to Brancepeth and, remembering he hadn't eaten his bait, took the bait tin out of his pocket and the sandwich from the tin. He ate it as the bus jogged along, looking out all the while just in case Eliza's lad had changed his mind about where he was running away to and was about somewhere close.

He had been hesitant about asking Eliza to wed him, fearing she would refuse. He was a fool really, he thought, trying to rationalise how he felt about her, saying it would help her get the lad into a school. He had talked about how they could help people, their own people, together. He had not talked about love. He wasn't sure if he did love her, the idea was so new to him. And of course she had said she didn't know, she would have to think about it.

It was only when he felt such rage when Jonathan Moore had boasted about enjoying her favours that he began to analyse his own feelings. His thoughts were interrupted as the bus stopped in Brancepeth and people began to get off. He put the bait tin back in his pocket and climbed down on to the dusty road. There was work to do; he couldn't let the men down, they had to come first.

Eliza stood in the churchyard watching as the small procession wound its way towards the newly dug hole prepared for Annie Mitchell-Howe. Though she had been in the church for the main service she had slipped out early to take her place under a tree out of the line of vision of anyone standing at the graveside. She was no longer a member of the family; she had left Annie's son even before he had died. She was a scarlet woman. She half-expected the old woman to sit up in her coffin and point a finger at her for having the temerity to be there. Now she was being silly, she said to herself. The vicar went through the words of the committal part of the service and the coffin was laid in the ground. There were very few mourners and of those only her son Henry and his wife Amelia availed themselves of the soil offered them to throw in. It was only a few minutes after that before the churchyard was empty but for the sexton who was shovelling in soil.

Now it was safe to come out with no one to see her, Eliza swiftly left and walked up the road towards the Hall. A grandiose name for a house built by a tradesman for himself, she thought, but then John Henry had been like that.

She came to the low wall surrounding the house but did not go in. She was looking for any signs that Tot had been there. You never knew, he might have come during the funeral service after all. But though she walked all round the property, looking in the windows and ducking out of sight if anyone looked out, she didn't see the slightest sign of Tot. She saw Henry and Amelia and a strange man in a black suit with a stand-up collar and the maid who had let her in the evening before, but there was no sign of a child.

She would look around the cottage where Annie had lived for the years of her widowhood, some of them with Tot. He might, just might, go there. But when she got there, there was no one; even the woman she had spoken to was gone.

The day was slipping away and she was no nearer to knowing what had happened to Tot or if anything had happened to him indeed. Her heart missed a beat at the thought that anything might have happened to him. Dear God, she prayed, do not let anything bad happen to him, please God.

Eliza climbed on to the train going back to Newcastle with despair in her heart. Where was he? Oh, she would agree to him leaving school and training to be a cabinet maker; she would do anything he wanted, she really would, if only he was home and safe.

‘What are we going to do now?' Mrs Bates asked her husband, her voice despairing. ‘We should have called the doctor last night and the polis an' all.'

Farmer Bates bit his lip. He felt guilty, for hadn't he put the cost of the doctor against the lad's life? He gazed at the boy, his face swollen and discoloured grotesquely and his eyes still closed. He had no experience with bairns, he thought, but he knew what he would do with a young animal he found in this state. Only you couldn't put a bairn to sleep like you could an injured calf or lamb. He transferred his gaze to his wife. She was sponging the lad's face again and as she did so his eyelids fluttered.

‘He's coming round!' said Farmer Bates. ‘Look, he's coming round.'

‘Nay, he is not,' replied his wife. ‘He's done that a few times during the night; I've kept a watch on the lad. No, I reckon you'd best fetch the doctor and if you don't want to pay I will out of the egg money.'

Mrs Bates looked after the hens and the agreement was that the money from selling eggs was hers to spend. She looked at her husband, waiting for him to protest, but he did not.

‘I'll send the lad as soon as he comes,' he said. In this case the lad he meant was a thirteen-year-old he had taken on straight from school. He lived in Chester-le-Street but his day on the farm started at dawn when he mucked out the horses. ‘I'll get him now,' said the farmer.

Dr Jones was a young man who had recently bought a practice from Dr Ridley, who had had a stroke. He was in his eighties and still working, but at last he was forced to retire. Still, the young man was living in his house for a while and Dr Ridley liked to hear everything that went on during the day so that it was late when the younger man got to his bed. So Dr Jones was feeling tired to say the least when he had to turn out with Amos, the farmer's lad, to attend a young lad who seemed to be a vagrant or a runaway. He'd be lucky to get his fee, he reckoned, and he needed all he could get after spending the whole of the capital left by his mother on buying the practice in Chester-le-Street. Consequently he was not feeling his usual sunny self as he carried his shiny new Gladstone bag into the farmhouse.

Mrs Bates looked at him suspiciously. ‘Where's Dr Ridley?' she asked.

‘Dr Ridley has retired. I'm Dr Jones, I've taken over his practice.' As the woman was still crouching protectively over a young lad who was lying prostrate on the settle, he asked her to move away, which she did so reluctantly. The doctor sighed.

‘How long has he been like this?' he asked.

‘My man brought him in from the roadside last night. He'd been attacked by a couple of drunken tramps,' Mrs Bates replied. Then, having decided to trust the young doctor after all, went on, ‘He's fluttered his eyelids a bit once or twice but he hasn't come to.'

‘Have you called the police? We don't want ruffians roaming around attacking children.' Dr Jones was feeling gently round the bruise on Tot's face and now he felt around the back of the boy's head. ‘Ah yes,' he said as though to himself, ‘there's a lump there as well. I think he must have bumped it on a stone when he fell. That's probably caused the concussion.'

‘Knocked him out, do you mean?'

‘I do. I think it's best to leave him here, lying flat on his back. Don't try to wake him up.' The doctor got to his feet, still looking down at Tot. ‘He's fairly well dressed for lads round here. And in pretty good condition physically. Someone is probably looking for him.' He snapped his bag closed. ‘That will be three and sixpence for the call out,' he said.

‘Three and sixpence? By, that's seven dozen eggs, man! Do you think I'm made of money?' Mrs Bates sounded remarkably like her husband suddenly.

‘It is early in the morning. But if I have to make a return visit it will only be two shillings,' said Dr Jones evenly. He was determined not to go without his money. The farm looked prosperous enough.

Mrs Bates gave him an expressive glare but she went to a drawer in the dresser and took out a bag, which clinked satisfactorily. She counted three shillings and sixpence out carefully and handed it to him.