Netherwood (16 page)

Reverend Farrimond stayed for quite some time; long enough to fully observe the extraordinary and instant ease with which the two women accepted each other. He sat by Eve at her kitchen table with a mug of tea, his comfort levels returned to normal. Ellen and the baby were sitting under the table scrutinising each other amiably. Anna was busy at the sink. Earlier, she had put the kettle on and brewed the tea and Eve had watched her with detached interest; she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had performed this simple task for her. Her great bout of weeping had had a cathartic effect, leaving her drained but also peaceful. She felt she could sleep at last, and would in fact have dearly liked to lie down and close her eyes, but the minister demanded her attention, asking her questions for which she had no answers.

‘Eve,’ he said. ‘Eve?’

She looked at him. ‘Mmm?’ she said.

‘I said, you must give some consideration to your future.’ His voice was kind but firm. ‘What will you do to earn a living?’

She shrugged but didn’t reply, preferring to stare hard into her mug of tea as though it might provide a vision of the future. Anna began to wash the dishes that were piled in the sink.

‘You must apply yourself to this matter, dear,’ said Reverend Farrimond. ‘The Sheffield workhouse is full of women who found themselves in your position’ – Eve looked up at him
now, shocked out of apathy – ‘and too often they were propelled into penury not so much by circumstance as by their own lack of will.’

‘This is Netherwood, not Grangely,’ said Eve. She sounded defiant, and the minister was glad to hear it. If Eve was to thrive without Arthur, she needed spirit.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘But the fabled generosity of your benevolent earl is likely to be sorely tested if you can’t pay the rent.’

Eve was silenced by the irrefutable truth of his argument.

Anna said, ‘What do you do well?’ She said
vot
and
vell,
and it sounded strange and exotic in Eve’s little kitchen.

Eve looked at her. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I was t’wife of a miner, mother of his children.’

Anna left the sink and walked to the table. She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, sweeping away Eve’s remark. ‘But just think for a moment. What do you do well?’

‘I was a good wife,’ said Eve, bridling a little. ‘I’m a good mother. But no one will pay me for that.’

‘So. A good wife and mother has many jobs – which of these do you do best?’ said Anna. Her tone was that of a patient teacher, coaxing an answer from a reluctant pupil. It seemed curious to Eve, in this most curious of situations, that this woman, this displaced foreigner, had such command. The vague notion flitted across her mind that she’d need to keep an eye on that.

Reverend Farrimond beamed. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘Of course!’

Both women looked at him.

‘She cooks!’ he said to Anna, then to Eve: ‘You cook!’

‘Everybody cooks,’ said Eve. She was utterly perplexed.

‘Everybody cooks, but nobody cooks like you,’ he said.

Anna sat down opposite Eve at the table and smiled at her.

‘Then you should sell you food,’ she said.

‘Your
food,’ said Eve.

‘Maybe mine, but also yours,’ said Anna.

Eve and the minister laughed, and Anna laughed too, though she had entirely missed the joke.

Eve said, ‘Oh aye, I expect there’s a fortune to be made in raised pork pies and drop scones.’

‘If not a fortune, maybe a living,’ said Anna. Eve looked doubtful. She’d exchanged food often enough for other goods and services, but to ask people to hand over their hard-earned money for food they could just as well make at home – it made no sense to her.

Reverend Farrimond said: ‘Anna’s right, Eve. All you need to do is open your front door at the same time every day and sell your marvellous pies and pastries. There’d be a queue from here to Turnpike Lane by the end of the second day.’

Eve shook her head. ‘It’s barmy,’ she said. ‘I’d be a laughing stock.’

‘First, we must try,’ said Anna. Eve, noting the ‘we’, felt a wave of comfort.

‘And if it doesn’t work, we try something else,’ Anna went on. Under the table Ellen said
‘sam-zing’,
quietly to herself.

‘So, it’s settled,’ said Reverend Farrimond, which Eve thought was hardly the case, but she let it pass because she had no better suggestion to make and, anyway, she was already thinking that she’d better pop out to the Co-op for more flour and lard.

D
own by the railway lines there was a long, straight cinder path which ran parallel to the tracks, so close to them that one small step sideways put you right on the ironwork. Seth and Eliza were forbidden from coming here; once, years before, a boy of eleven had been killed when he caught his foot underneath one of the rails. The train had sliced the foot clean off at the ankle like a knife through butter and the boy had blacked out then bled to death. That’s how the story went, at any rate. Seth was sceptical; he spent hours down at the railway line – in spite of the ban – and he couldn’t see how it was possible to trap a foot so thoroughly that you weren’t able to pull it free. In any case, there was nowhere for a foot to fit – there just wasn’t a gap big enough. Seth thought it was a tale invented to scare children, and it had certainly worked on Eliza, who had added it to the list of places she feared to tread, along with the cemetery and the kiln yard at the brickworks – all of them, in her view, arenas of certain death.

But Seth loved it, especially if he was alone, like today. There were two sets of lines on this side of town and if you walked away from Netherwood, towards Long Martley Colliery, there was a place where they converged, criss-crossing
each other as if they’d had a change of mind about their destination. Seth would sit right on the sleepers, tracing with his fingers the geometric shapes made by the tracks at the intersection. If a train came, there was plenty of warning; even before the engine appeared, the tracks would vibrate under his hands and the birds would always fly up in alarm from the trees. It was another reason for his scepticism about the dangers lurking at the railway lines; the trains advertised their impending arrival in so many ways that even if you were deaf and blind you could still step out of danger. Seth thought you could only die here if you wanted to. That, he could understand. Time it right and bang, you’d feel nothing.

He wandered aimlessly back towards Netherwood, dragging a stick in his left hand so that it bounced rhythmically off the wooden sleepers. It was a fine stick, straight and long, and someone had whittled the end of it into a point, like a caveman might have done to hunt wild boar. He raised it above his shoulder like a spear and looked for something to aim at, but nothing seemed to present itself and he lowered it, letting it scrape on the track again. If it was early summer the path would be bordered on the right hand side by hundreds of foxgloves and Seth would have whipped the flowerheads to see the bees rise in alarm from the purple thimbles. But now, with no such sport to distract him, his thoughts strayed back to the unwelcome realm of home; it was so hectic this morning that his mother hadn’t even noticed him leave, let alone ask where he was going. The house smelled constantly of baking and there were pies and puddings piled up on the table but he wasn’t allowed to eat any of them because they were going to be for sale on Monday morning. Eliza and Ellen were playing a stupid game with that woman’s baby, and that woman herself was bustling about the kitchen as though it was her own. She and her baby had moved into his bed, in the room he had always shared with his sisters, and now he had a makeshift
mattress on his mother’s bedroom floor and Ellen was in the big bed with her. Eliza had begged to sleep with the baby, so she slept where she always had. Seth hated the new arrangement and was three days into a silent protest, but no one had noticed yet. He longed for his father.

The big church clock struck three. At exactly this time, two weeks ago, he was on the common with his dad. To chase this thought from his head, Seth took the stick in two hands, raised it above his head and smashed it down on the iron track. It splintered but didn’t break, so he brought it up again, and again thrashed at the track with it, and this time it split into two pieces which he tossed on to the sleepers. Since Arthur’s death, grief kept arriving unannounced in great, engulfing waves. It happened again now and he let himself be swept along, abandoning himself to the pain, wailing and shouting like a boy overboard. Then, like a miracle, he heard his father’s voice: ‘Seth!’

It wasn’t close, but it wasn’t too distant either. Certainly it sounded real, not ghostly. Seth looked wildly about him. He thought the voice wasn’t behind him, and he stepped off the path and on to the railway line. Then he heard it again.

‘Seth! Over ’ere, son.’

From where he stood Seth felt the rattle and boom of an oncoming train. He was on the sleepers now, between the tracks. Perhaps if the train hit him, he would see his dad. Perhaps that’s what he had to do.

‘Seth, lad, move!’

A man suddenly loomed into Seth’s vision, smaller and stockier than his father. He was heading towards him, running frantically down the other side of the track, pumping his arms like pistons and hurtling forwards but looking backwards at the oncoming train. Then, just as it bore down on Seth, the man turned his head.

‘Move, Seth, move!’ he screamed, but his voice was drowned
out by the fearsome rush and roar of the train, and Amos Sykes had to wait until fourteen empty coal wagons had rattled by before he saw Seth standing safe on the other side of the tracks, staring at him with hostile eyes.

Amos had been at the allotments with Clem when he’d heard, from the direction of the tracks, an animal sound, a violent keening, like the scream of a vixen calling for a mate. Clem, cloth-eared, hadn’t heard a thing and was mid-sentence when Amos, having turned to identify the cry, suddenly sprang over the back wall and ran down the embankment on to the railway. The old man was still scratching his head in puzzlement when Amos reappeared, now accompanied by young Seth Williams. Amos, puffing with effort – the embankment was steep behind the allotments – had to catch his breath before he could speak, leaning with his hands on his knees and his face dripping beads of sweat. The lad, though, just looked cold. He shook, and his face was grey, like putty.

Clem had a fire going in an old metal dustbin and he led Seth over to it, dragging an upturned crate to the edge of the heat so that the boy could sit. Amos, who was upright now and breathing more comfortably, said, ‘Tha shouldn’t be laikin’ on t’railway.’ His relief had turned bad, and his voice trembled with anger.

‘I weren’t laikin’,’ said Seth, flatly. ‘I were thinkin’.’ He glared at Amos as he spoke, but his voice was hopeless, not defiant. By ’eck, thought Clem, this lad’s in a bad way.

‘Well, think somewhere else in future,’ said Amos, glaring back. He’d recovered from the exertion of the run and the climb, but he was still feeling the effects of the shock. He had thought, for a few awful seconds, that he’d be visiting Eve today with news of a second tragedy.

Seth looked away and for a moment sat silently, watching the red glow through the holes that Clem had made around the bottom of the bin. Then he said, ‘I thought you were my dad. You said, “Over ’ere, son,” and it sounded like my dad.’

Amos softened at once. He went to Seth and placed a hand on his shoulder. It all made sense of course – Seth had been stricken with grief, but until Amos had shouted, the boy had been safe on the path. It was only after he called that Seth had put himself in harm’s way.

‘Ah. Right,’ Amos said. ‘Sorry, lad.’ He felt awkward, because he hadn’t had a lot of practice at giving comfort; his old dog Mac was his only companion at home, and even he was a self-reliant kind of animal who rarely sought physical contact. But a deep and barely acknowledged part of Amos felt he owed it to Arthur to watch over his boy.

‘S’all right,’ said Seth. He was sorry too. He didn’t want to hate Amos; he liked him. He smelled a bit like his dad, and his hands, like Arthur’s, were calloused and coal-marked, the black ingrained in the cracks and whorls of his skin like gradient lines on a map. Seth looked around at the hard brown soil of the vegetable beds, divided by rough paths of muddy brick. A low fence of woven twigs and branches divided this plot on either side from the next, and there was a small shed at one end with a selection of wooden-handled tools leaning up against it: a hoe, a spade, a shovel and a pick. Nothing grew, and the beds looked impenetrable as rock.