Road to Berry Edge, The (22 page)

It felt as though the winter would never end. Sometimes Nancy walked along Old Elvet towards the prison, thinking that somehow if she did so, Michael would know that she was near. She had the awful feeling that he might think Rob was dead - there was nobody to tell him otherwise - but she could not see him or contact him because he was allowed no letters or visitors.

One night in March when the weather was just as bitter as ever and the children were asleep, she could not resist going out just for a few minutes. Their room seemed as much of a prison as wherever Michael might be.

She stood in the middle of Elvet Bridge, she didn't go to the far side where Elvet began. Further along the dark streets there were what she thought of as evening people, prostitutes, gamblers and drunkards. She lingered for only a little but was reluctant to go back to the tiny room where the children slept, where there was no comfort of any sort, nothing but the night to be endured. As she leaned over the bridge somebody touched her on the shoulder. Nancy
jumped and turned around. A man was standing behind her, a middle aged, quite well dressed man, smiling.

‘How much?' he said.

Nancy pushed back against the cold stone of the bridge and shook her head.

‘Pretty lass like you,' he said. ‘I'll pay you well.' The coins in his hand glinted under the lamplight. Nancy's only thought was flight, but he got hold of her and began to drag her across the bridge and into the shadows beyond where the steps led down to the river. Nancy protested, cried out. There was no one to see, no one to take any notice. Then suddenly her assailant was attacked. He let go, seemingly as surprised as she was. A small young woman with an umbrella rained blows upon his head.

‘That'll learn you,' she said, and watched in some satisfaction as he ran off. Then she turned to Nancy. ‘Are you all right, pet?'

‘Yes, now. Thank you.'

‘The place isn't safe these days. Oh, I've buggered my brolly. You shouldn't be here, you know. Lasses come here to be picked up.'

‘He offered me money to begin with.'

‘Much?' her rescuer said hopefully.

‘I can't remember now.'

‘I'm not surprised. Do you want to come back and have a cup of tea?'

‘I can't. I've got two bairns, asleep.'

The young woman looked at her.

‘Bring them,' she said. ‘Don't worry, I'm not a snatcher or from a mucky house, at least not so's you'd notice.'

She said her name was Claire. Nancy knew that she had to trust somebody. They went back to the dingy room. Claire looked around.

‘It's no place for bairns,' she said. She picked up Clarrie and left Nancy to bring William, and then they walked back through the town to a part where the houses were neat and
well kept. When they got inside she shouted, ‘Susannah? We got visitors.'

From the front of the house a woman emerged. She was the most beautiful woman that Nancy had ever seen, with honey coloured skin and dark hair and eyes, tall and not slender, gently rounded. She carried a tiny baby in her arms.

‘Some bastard tried to accost her on Elvet Bridge. I'll need a new umbrella.'

Susannah smiled. ‘She's always doing that, hitting men and having to buy umbrellas. We never have one when it rains, too busy using them as weapons. Are you all right?'

Claire led the way upstairs shortly afterwards and put the children into a clean bed in a spotless room. When they went back downstairs, the kettle was over the fire and Susannah was sitting with her baby held in against her shoulder.

Nancy couldn't help being pleased. They gave her tea and sandwiches and scones and listened intently when she told them what had happened. There was a long rather strange silence when she had finished.

‘They say that Mr Berkeley's a lot better,' Susannah said.

‘I heard that, and going to Nottingham for Easter. And Miss Norman's going with him.'

Claire made a noise of disgust. ‘I thought she was an old maid, thirty at least and had lost her looks,' she said.

‘Yes, she isn't young any more and she certainly couldn't be thought of as beautiful, but she's very nice,' Nancy said.

‘Nice? Is that what men want?'

‘Claire—' Susannah said.

‘Do you know Mr Shaw?' Nancy said.

Claire looked at Susannah and when Susannah said nothing she said, ‘Aye, I know Harry Shaw. I was what he did on Saturday nights for a while.'

Nancy suddenly felt very uncomfortable and, although she didn't want to look at the beautiful dark woman on her other side, she couldn't help it. Susannah smiled.

‘So now you know. We're whores,' she said.

‘But you … but you …'

‘He would have done it to you and left you,' Claire said, ‘maybe without a penny, and if you do intend something like that there are plenty of lasses just along the street from there who'd do it cheap. That's not the way, not unless you want to end up dead or diseased or hungry. Mind you, I wouldn't recommend it as an occupation. There must be summat else you can do.'

‘I've got the bairns. I don't know what to do.'

‘What about this Michael? When will he be out? Can't he keep you?'

‘He got six months and I have nothing.'

‘Have you ever worked?'

‘Just housekeeping.'

‘You can stay with us, Nancy,' Susannah said.

‘We don't do it no more,' Claire said. ‘Made our money. We're ladies of leisure now and we could do with somebody to look after us. You'd be good with the bairn, having two of your own.'

So Nancy stayed. It was a curious way to live, without men. Nancy was happy here. The house had big fires in every room and comfortable beds upstairs. The furniture was good. Nancy knew, because she polished it. When she went shopping there was plenty of money for good food, so the cooking was a pleasure. Nobody came in from work complaining, difficult, wanting anything. During their free evenings, they sat around the fire with the children and drank French wine and ate and laughed a lot and talked. There were secrets, Nancy suspected, but they were not day to day ones. For one thing Susannah never spoke about her child, the tiny baby whom Nancy grew to love, and Claire rarely talked about anything other than gossip and important things like whether there was enough food in the house.

The baby was called Victoria after the old queen and was a much easier baby than either of hers had been.
Nancy wondered whether this was just because she had experience of children; Victoria was happier with her than she was with either Susannah or Claire though Susannah doted on her baby.

‘You'll spoil her, picking her up all the time,' Nancy recommended as Susannah took her from her cot every time she cried.

‘I can't help it. I love her so much.'

She would sit for a long time feeding the baby, humming in a soft voice, staring into space. Nancy remembered doing the same thing herself, though Susannah had a better time than she had in spite of everything. Her life had been filled with the fear of Sean.

One afternoon, when Susannah was asleep by the front room fire and Nancy was cuddling the baby in the kitchen, Claire came in from doing the shopping. She had had the two children with her. They went off upstairs to play.

‘She's lovely, isn't she?' Claire said. ‘She was a surprise. Susannah had a miscarriage years ago and then nothing. I wished she would miscarry this time an' all, the tears we had. She went through a lot for this little speck.'

‘She's bonny like her mother.'

‘She looks like him. He was the bee's knees,' Claire said.

‘Does he know?'

Claire shook her head. ‘Him being a gentleman and all that. And he was really canny. Asked her to marry him, he didn't even know she was expecting. She in her wisdom turned him down. And do you know why? Because she's bloody well daft about him. It took a man to be that nice to her to break her bloody heart. When I think of all the bastards we've known. He was like strawberry jam, you'd save him for Sundays if you could.'

‘Why wouldn't she marry him?'

‘He was too high up. Can you think what it would be like? Could you see yourself up there, doing the ladylike
thing and pretending that you knew what you should do, how to talk to your maid and lift the right knife and know about poetry? It isn't just that he's a gentleman or that he's rich really, it's … the people he likes, the people he goes about with, they're people who've had real schooling. You don't know what they know and you could let them down all the time, and people would laugh at them through you, and that's harder than having people laugh directly at you, don't you think?'

‘He has no other children then?'

‘No. I said to her that he would want to know Vicky was his, she's such a lovely baby, he would like to know and he wouldn't try to take her, at least I don't think he would. We went away for a while. I wouldn't have come back if it had been me, would you?'

*

They seemed to think that because he was big he would be trouble, Michael thought, so they knocked him about a lot to start with. You kept your eyes lowered and called everybody sir and there was no way past things. There was never quiet, there were too many people around for there to be any peace, there was no privacy and no rest and he was tortured by thoughts of Nancy, of what had happened to her and to the children and most especially of what had happened to Rob. Michael's mind gave him Rob dead nightly. It gave him slowly every second of what had happened, of Harry crying and Vincent staring and Rob realising what had happened when he was hurt, stopping there amongst the bricks and stones and people, the surprised look in his eyes, falling towards the ground and then lying there, the blood beginning to seep slowly through his shirt. Michael convinced himself that Rob was dead and that he had caused it until he heard reports from Berry Edge that Rob was alive.

He had seen nothing, convinced himself that it was Tom Cowan who had tried to murder Rob. Surely he was the only man with a gun and had threatened to do it, but Michael did not remember even seeing Tom as close as he would need to be to shoot Rob. Michael blamed himself. He had done this, he had resented and hated Rob and stirred up the feelings of the other miners because he was so bitter that Rob had never come home, that this place which he was supposed to have loved mattered so little to him that he let it decay and rot until the people had lost hope. Michael had wanted Rob to pay for that neglect.

His mind gave him Nancy alone and hungry on the streets of Berry Edge with nobody to take her in. Harry Shaw would look after her, surely to God he would, but then Harry was so concerned for Rob that everything else might go from his mind. Harry didn't see Nancy make her way through the crowd towards Rob. He didn't seem to notice her down on her knees, the stricken look in her eyes. All her concern
was for Rob. Michael tried not to think about that during the long hours of the night and he prayed every day to a God he could not envisage for Nancy's safety.

He tried hard to convince himself that Rob was all right. It was the only way that he could hate him. If Rob was permanently damaged in some way because of what had happened, Michael felt that the guilt would better all his other feelings. He didn't want Rob hurt in such a way, he had just wanted to better him for all the neglect over the years. He wanted Rob to know what living at Berry Edge had been like during those years. For Rob to come back and succeed in so many ways seemed the ultimate offence to Michael, and it did not make up for the time which had gone before. Mixed up in this also was the constant picture in his mind of Rob leaving. He was jealous of that, that Rob could feel himself able to leave whereas Michael felt obliged to stay and look after his ungrateful family. Sean and his mother were dead; he no longer saw any of his sisters, they had married, had families and forgotten about him. They too had moved away. Rob had gone and made his life good and then come back and attempted to do the same thing in Berry Edge, and Michael could not forgive him. As long as Rob was not badly hurt he could be hated. The hatred grew and got easier the more they knocked him around and humiliated him and worked him, made sure that he didn't eat, that he had little rest.

At first he slept on a plank bed, two planks of wood without a mattress, and then a hard bed. If you did anything wrong, like speaking, because you were not allowed to talk, they put you on bread and water for days. Not that that was any particular hardship, the food was so bad that it was inedible anyway.

If your work wasn't up to standard you got no food at all. Mostly it was weaving and sewing, and Michael found it difficult, so very often he wasn't allowed to eat.

If you answered back they clouted you round the head, and if you forgot your number they hit you. The clothes and boots were much too small, the cells were dark and some of the prison orderlies were brutal. If they took a dislike to you they knocked you about. You learned to speak without moving your lips but Michael soon learned not to speak at all.

In the beginning he thought he would be there forever. Then after the endless days of routine he stopped caring about what happened. It didn't matter particularly, that was what pits did to you. You knew how to withstand hardship, and his past experience of his father and mother and Sean had made him resilient. He kept telling himself that it would soon be over. He did as he was told, he gave them no excuse to hurt him badly and every night when he couldn't sleep he brought his one luxury to mind.

He thought of the previous Christmas when he and Nancy had gone up and sat on the fell beyond Berry Edge. He thought of how beautiful she was. He tried not to think that Nancy was never going to love him because of their Sean, he just thought of how beautiful she had been that day and of what a lovely day they had had.

There was one thing about the good things that happened to you. You had them permanently, you had them forever. That perfect time with her was his alone, and he thought that it was possibly one of the few times she had ever been happy with a man. That was another reason he could hate Rob, because he knew how Nancy liked and admired him. It wasn't fair to hate Rob for that; in a way it was almost too easy and too low, because Rob was also one of his perfect memories.