Road to Berry Edge, The (21 page)

It was a very long day. Not being able to go out made you want to, Nancy discovered, and she thought of what she would have been doing at the house. She missed it already.

There was only one bed left in Michael's house. She put the children to sleep there and she and Michael sat in chairs. She wasn't tired, she was too worried for that.

The next day he went out and Nancy knew what was happening. She knew that Rob had to move the coal and that they weren't going to let him. The works would come to a halt and then nobody would be making a wage, the whole of Berry Edge would be stopped. She waited by the window all the long day for Michael to come back, and when he didn't she tried to keep the children content. It was not easy, they were already fretting at having to stay inside with so little to do. Nancy had exhausted her ideas.

In the middle of the afternoon, Vera came over and took
the children and Nancy went up to the works to see what was happening. She was so worried. It was frightening. The short autumn day was dark, the good weather was finished, it was cold and unfriendly.

*

Rob had no idea who had alerted the police; he had known it would only make things worse. He had seen similar problems in other places. He tried to get the police to leave, but all the time the situation grew worse. Somebody set his house on fire. The miners laughed and cursed him, watching as the flames danced behind what had been boarded-up windows. Luckily there was no one in the house at the time. Vincent and Harry were out with him, and Ida and his mother had gone to the Normans'. In a very short time the house was well alight, and the police and firemen had appeared, trying to keep people away from the blaze.

There was more to worry about. Hundreds of miners had gathered at the Diamond Pit and they were not a happy crowd, shouting obscenities and jeering. As before, they began to throw not just what they found but what they had obviously brought with them for the purpose, big pieces of brick mostly, small sharp stones that hurt just as much, fired hard. The night was cold, dry and clear. Every sound, every movement seemed amplified until the din was deafening, the great showers of stone frightening.

No one could get near the big trucks of coal, nobody could reach the railway. Michael and the other leaders had positioned their men well, and there were so many of them that even with the police there was no way that Rob and the officials could reach what they needed.

It was the height of frustration for him. Berry Edge would come to a halt if he could not succeed here. He thought of the capital that he had put in, of the time and effort. He and Harry had sold most of their business ventures to prop up this giant ailing steelworks. Rob had even asked Vincent to buy his share of the house he loved so much, the abbey that
had been his home. Vincent had refused. Instead, he had, much against his judgement he said, loaned them money. It would all come to nothing if he failed here. Berry Edge would go down and he and Harry would be bankrupt.

He glanced at his brother-in-law dodging bricks and wished for the thousandth time that he had not let Harry come with him in the first place, and that he had not let him put his money into it, even though without that money the steelworks would have closed. Harry was caught here now whether he wanted to go on or not.

It seemed at last that they were making progress, that they were moving forward, gaining ground with the help of the police. A yard or two and then a yard or two more, the missiles lessening as time went on, until finally the pitmen had no more and began shouting abuse and then coming forwards and fighting.

Rob's heart misgave. This was worse than he had thought, hand to hand fighting like a war. He could not win like this, had not thought the men so against him as to go this far. He could see Michael quite close and the policemen carrying or dragging people off, some of them injured, some of them resisting, shouting.

Harry was close beside him as though in protection, and Vincent was at hand. Rob prayed that neither of them would get hurt. They had been through difficult times before but nothing like this. Michael was very close now, and he thought that if they got any nearer they would be fighting each other. He couldn't bear to think what that would be like.

And then suddenly somebody dragged at him. Something from somewhere effectively stopped him. He thought it was strange. Nobody was that close yet, he was not fighting. Yet he couldn't move. He couldn't do anything, the impact against him was so huge that although he felt nothing there was an enormous numbing, like running into a huge wall. It not only stopped him, it held him there like great hands
for long, long moments. Then it drew him down towards it like a lover and the ground came up to meet him.

*

Everywhere, Nancy saw, there were people about, and as soon as she left the rows she could smell smoke. As she began to get nearer to Rob's house, she could see the flames, and the fire brigade and policemen, and people gathered to see the place burn. It was burning well. The flames were coming out of every window, and the smoke was thick and black, and went everywhere and smelled hot and dirty. Nancy couldn't believe that she had been there so recently, that the house had been neat and clean until people started breaking the windows.

She kept her shawl well around her head so that she wouldn't be recognised, but nobody was watching. The fire fascinated them. Some were even pleased. The men joked and stamped their feet in the cold just far enough back from the police, but she was afraid that fighting would start because they began to shout and jeer and move around. She went on as quickly as she could through the crowds.

At the pithead of the Diamond Pit where the coal was due to be moved towards the mills the men were gathered, and not just a few of them, to stop the coal being shifted. The police were there too, Nancy could see them.

She couldn't see Michael at first, but she picked him out because of his height and because he was right in the middle of things. The miners were throwing anything they could find, and the police were trying to keep the miners and the people moving the coal well apart. To Nancy's dismay, Rob was there too and Harry, and even Vincent. There was a lot of shouting through the cold, still night. Nancy kept well back. There were few women about; most had retreated to their homes. It was awful. She thought of Rob holding her against him so that she would not be frightened or hurt in the kitchen at his house, and she
thought of Michael holding each of her children with one hand, seeing her home. She was horrified at how quickly things had changed.

The police were being hit by stones and bricks now, and were beginning to try and arrest the miners. In the middle of it all, Nancy clearly heard a bang. It was the same sound that you could hear when you went walking in the countryside around Berry Edge. Her dad always said that you would think men would give animals Sunday off, but they never did. When she was little and went walking with her dad, you could hear the sounds above the clear Sunday skies. It seemed to Nancy such a desecration to take life on the Sabbath.

It was a shot. After it, though there was slight confusion, it seemed to her that the general noise ceased within seconds and that where the Berry Edge works rose in the cold evening sky you could hear silence.

Everything stopped, the men were stilled, only Nancy moved because she heard somebody cry out. It was her instinct that took her there, it was like a mother's instinct somehow because she knew that cry for grief and despair, every mother knew it.

It seemed that people were moving, but they were moving slowly and quietly back whereas she was moving quickly forward, pushing her way through to where she could see Michael standing tall and still. When she reached him she knew that it had been Michael who had cried out. He must have tried to go forward, because two policemen were holding him back, and the look on his face was horror.

Harry Shaw and his father were crouched down as though they were miners, and Rob was lying on the cold ground, blood oozing over the white shirt which Nancy had ironed a day or two ago. Nancy didn't know who to go to first. She wanted to beat the policemen off Michael and shriek that he was not capable of hurting anyone, that he was kind and
good and loving, but she knew that she could do nothing. She pushed through and got down beside Rob.

‘No,' she said, ‘no.'

He looked narrowly at her and smiled before he closed his eyes.

Faith went to the hospital with Harry and Vincent. At the time it seemed the right thing to do - she didn't know why exactly, when she got there she couldn't do anything. She waited in a cold grey corridor in the quietness and thought about what it had been like when John died and of how badly she had treated Rob.

In one way she had been glad to get away from Berry Edge. The streets were not safe, the Berkeley house had burned all that evening and well into the night, and the cries and shouts from outside frightened her so much that she couldn't rest in any way.

Rob's mother and Harry's mother were at her house being looked after by her father and mother. Nobody had gone to bed, she guessed. Rob's mother had not even offered to go to the hospital, like somebody who had been through too much and couldn't manage another problem like this.

As she waited, Harry came out of the room where Rob lay in a hospital bed. She got up. Vincent was sitting with her. Nobody said anything.

‘What's happening?' she said. ‘Is Rob going to be all right?'

‘The bullet went through his lung and into his shoulder blade but they've got it out. He's conscious but he's got some fever. I want you to go in there and pretend to be Sarah.'

Faith stared at him. ‘Who?'

‘I want you to …' Harry stopped, and then he looked up and his eyes were drenched. ‘He thinks she's there but he can't find her.'

‘Who on earth is Sarah?'

‘My sister. She was his wife.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘He didn't want you to know.'

‘Why not?'

‘He didn't want anybody here to know. He wanted to keep that part of his life separate, after Sarah died.'

Faith could not imagine Rob married. More than that, she could not imagine him having gone through the kind of pain she had experienced with John.

‘She died nearly three years ago. Please, Faith, I think it would help.'

‘What makes you think he won't recognise me?'

‘He doesn't recognise anybody. Do it for me, please.'

‘Is he going to be all right?'

‘I don't know. I don't think anybody knows yet.'

Faith opened the door of the room and walked softly inside. He was not alone, a nurse was there, but she smiled and drew back away from the bed when she saw Faith. Faith went across and stood by the bed. She thought he was unconscious because he didn't seem to know that she was there and he was quite still. He looked like John lying there. Faith took hold of his hand. He stirred slightly and said, ‘Sarah?'

‘Yes.'

He said nothing else, but he didn't let go of her hand. Faith stood there for a long time and then tried sitting on the chair by the bed, but it was too awkward so she sat on the very edge of the bed. From time to time he seemed to think that she had left him and tightened his grip on her fingers and said her name, and she reassured him. As the daylight began to come through the window in dark grey shadows, he looked at her and said, ‘I love you, Sarah.'

‘I love you too,' Faith said.

*

It was very dark by the time Nancy reached Michael's house. People had been at work there. They had boarded up the doors and windows, there was no way she could get back in. As she stood there, Vera came out of the house with the two children.

‘I daren't take you in, Nancy, I'm sorry,' she said.

Nancy was half inclined to go back to Faith's house. They would take her in, she knew; more than likely they would let her stay, give her money, help her, except that she couldn't. Rob had not seemed like the enemy until now. But now he had taken everything from her. Now he could be dead and Michael and ten other men, as far as she could judge, had been arrested and taken away. Nancy wanted desperately to weep over Michael. She didn't know what was going to happen to him. She hadn't realised that she had come to depend on him so much, that they had become close. She couldn't think what she would do without him now. She missed him already, and it was then that Nancy realised how much she loved Michael and acknowledged to herself that he had quite possibly loved her since the moment they met. She picked up Clarrie into her arms and took William by the hand and began to walk up the hill in the direction of the station.

*

She found a room in Durham. One room was all she could afford and even then she didn't like the look of it. She tried to find work but it would have meant leaving the children and she had no one reliable to leave them with any more. She missed Vera, her company and her understanding.

Nancy could not believe that it was Christmas. She had never spent a Christmas cold, hungry and frightened. She had no friends here, the weather was dark and wet and foggy and the back streets of Durham were slimy with dirt. The river was leaden.

There was work to be had but she dared not leave the children in that tiny room alone. She could not take in any kind of work other than needlework, so in the end that was what she did. Nancy was no better than anyone else at such things and it was pitifully paid. They could barely exist. The children stayed in bed most of the time.

She thought about the year before, going for a walk with Michael and how fine the day had been. Alice had been alive then and the children had been happy.

Michael was sentenced to six months in Durham gaol along with ten other men, but Tom Cowan, the man everybody thought had shot Rob, was nowhere to be found. He had left his wife and four children.

Rob, she discovered from gossip, began to get better slowly. The strike was finished after he was badly hurt, the men did not go on. Vincent and Harry Shaw ran the works in Berry Edge and there was no more talk of disruption.