Eliza's Child Read online

  ‘Did you not go to school?’ asked the man in a clerical collar and the black garb of a clergyman who happened to be walking past on his way to the cathedral, she presumed.

  ‘No, sir,’ Eliza muttered. She burned with the shame of it.

  ‘It is not too late, you know,’ he said kindly. ‘We are holding adult classes in the Town Hall. It will cost you two pounds only for the whole course—’

  ‘Please, sir, just read it to me,’ cried Eliza, and Thomas woke and began to whimper. The clergyman hastily read the notice, then, lifting his hat, hurried away.

  FOR SALE

  JOINER’S WORKSHOP AND RETAIL PREMISES

  An opportunity to take over a thriving business.

  APPLY:

  JOSEPH MENZIES AND SON

  19 SILVER STREET

  DURHAM CITY

  Eliza stood gazing after him for a moment then stared at the notice again, trying to decipher it for herself. But it was just a mass of symbols to her. She began to walk away.

  ‘Is something wrong, Missus?’ a concerned voice asked, but she shook her head blindly and stumbled on, for once oblivious to Thomas’s cries. Down Silver Street and over the bridge, up the hill a short way then right to the street where she lived. The door was locked; she rarely locked it after her so Jack must be in. She banged on the knocker and called, ‘Jack!’ There was no answer. But she did have a key, she remembered, and fumbled in her reticule for it. Once inside she left the crying baby in the baby carriage in the entrance and ran through the house. Drawers were open and their contents spilled out. She ran up the stairs, still calling, ‘Jack! Jack!’ But he wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t, one part of her mind told her. She went down the stairs and picked up Thomas. He was soaking wet.

  ‘Whisht, babby, whisht,’ she murmured to him. ‘I’ll have you dry in a minute.’ First she had to make sure Jack had not found the necklace. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen and gazed at the trail of sugar that spread from the press to the kitchen table. The bag was on its side on the floor by the table and it was empty.

  Eliza was frozen into stillness until Thomas’s cries and his scrabbling at the bodice of her dress made her sit down almost automatically and undo the buttons and allow him access to her nipple. The baby sucked, frantically at first then more slowly. She looked down at him and Thomas stared back with wet, reproachful eyes though he was still nursing. Milk dribbled down his chin and wet her dress but she was barely aware of it.

  ‘Oh, Thomas, what is going to happen to us?’ she whispered. Thomas blinked and grabbed her finger and held on tightly. Both of them jumped when there was a loud knocking at the front door. Eliza waited, her heart thumping in her chest and her nervousness communicated itself to Thomas, who stopped sucking and began to wail. The knocking came again, louder this time. Eliza covered herself and went to answer it.

  ‘Now then, Missus, we don’t want any trouble. We’ve come to take what owes, though. You’ve to be out by noon.’ The burly men on the doorstep thrust past her.

  ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing?’ Eliza shouted and Thomas howled louder. But she knew what they were doing, oh yes, she knew. They were candymen, bum bailiffs.

  ‘Howay, Missus. We’re only doing our job, like,’ said the one who had spoken before. The other one was clearing the hall table, emptying drawers onto the floor then pulling it away from the wall. ‘I have the papers here if you want to see.’

  ‘I’ll take this out, will I?’ the second candyman asked his mate. ‘It’s in the road here.’ He had hold of the baby carriage.

  ‘You can’t take that, it’s the babby’s,’ cried Eliza.

  ‘Aye, but he can,’ said the one who was evidently the boss. He nodded to his mate. ‘Gan on then.’ He turned to Eliza. ‘Look, Missus, if I was you I’d be getting you and the bairn’s clothes together. You can take them and something to put them in, a bundle or something.’

  Eliza stared at him. The man hadn’t a cruel face; in fact if she saw him in the street she would have thought him an ordinary, kindly sort of man, most likely with a family of his own. ‘Please, I need it to get the bairn and my things to my da’s house,’ she said, her voice trembling.

  He pursed his lips and for a moment she thought he was going to let her take the baby carriage but in the end he shook his head slowly.

  ‘Nay, lass, you can’t get round me, I can’t afford to lose this job. Just take your things and go. I’m doing you a favour letting you do that. I could send you off now wi’ nowt. Away wi’ you now. Your man hasn’t paid any rent for weeks.’

  Half an hour later Eliza was walking up the street towards the railway station. She had the baby, tucked into her shawl and slung against her breast, supported with one hand and in the other hand she carried the bundle. Thomas was sleeping after his feed so at least that made it easier for her.

  ‘Is something the matter, hinny? Can I give you a hand?’ a woman, standing at her open front door, asked. She stood with her arms folded over her skinny chest and in spite of her offer didn’t move to help at all. She was avid with curiosity. Eliza noticed for the first time that there were a few women standing about and watching her. They must know exactly what the matter was. They would know the candyman’s cart with his name painted on the side.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said as haughtily as she could. ‘I’ll manage fine. I’m just going to see my parents for a few days.’

  She didn’t look back and see the women smiling knowingly at each other. She straightened her back and strode on towards the railway station at the top of the hill. When she got there she bought a second-class ticket for Shotton. It wasn’t a good idea to ride in the third-class open carriage with Thomas; he might catch his death. But it made a frightening hole in the few shillings she had left in her purse.

  At least Eliza had a seat in the compartment. A wooden seat, for it was second class not first, but still a seat, so she alighted at Shotton station fairly rested. Outside, the late afternoon was already darkening and a few drops of rain fell. She tucked the shawl more securely round Thomas and picked up her bundle. It was two or three miles to Blue House and she would like to get there before it was totally dark. The road was barely a track and stony and she couldn’t afford to trip and fall, with Thomas in her arms. She set off, the wind blowing wet in her face at times so that she was thankful for the bends in the track.

  She was about a mile from her parents’ small house in the row by the pithead when she had to stand aside for a horse and gig coming up behind her. As it passed, one wheel dipped into a hole filled with rainwater and splattered her already wet dress with mud. It was the last straw for Eliza.

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’ she shouted, rather unfairly, for the track was narrow enough and the driver hadn’t had the chance to avoid the pothole. He stopped the gig a few yards further on and waited for her to catch up.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Aye, I am,’ said Eliza. ‘You might have knocked me and the bairn down.’ He looked at the woman with the filthy dress and sodden hair and a baby wrapped in her shawl. She was soaked through and so was her bundle. Just at that moment Thomas began to struggle against the wet confines of the shawl. His tiny fist and arm fought free and waved in the air and he let out a furious cry. Eliza’s tone changed immediately as she put down her bundle and lifted the baby to a more comfortable position.

  ‘There now, pet,’ she said. ‘We’ll be at your grandma’s in a minute or two and she’ll have a fire to warm you, you’ll see.’

  ‘Poor little mite,’ the man said. ‘Come on, I’ll help you into the gig. Going to Blue House, are you? So am I.’ He climbed down and helped Eliza into the gig, throwing her bundle on the floor after her.

  Chapter Four

  ‘ELIZA!’

  Mary Anne opened the back door just as her daughter reached it. ‘How did you get here? On a stormy night an’ with the babby an’ all. By, you want something to do bringing the canny bairn o
ut on a night like this. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t catch his death an’ you an’ all!’

  ‘Let me in, Mam,’ said Eliza. ‘I can’t get past you.’

  Mary Anne, now she had paused for breath, stood aside and Eliza came into the kitchen where the warmth from the fire in the grate radiated through the bars. Now she had reached Blue House she felt ready to drop. She was shivering and white-faced and her hair had escaped its pins and hung down her face in rat’s tails.

  ‘Eeh, lass, take those wet things off. Here, Tommy, take the bairn while I see to the lass.’

  Tommy, who had been sitting in the wooden rocking chair by the fire, enjoying his first clay pipe after the back shift down the pit, stood up ready to protest at being asked to do anything after grafting on the coal face, but on looking into Eliza’s face he took his grandson and held him in one brawny arm while putting his pipe down on the hearth with his other hand. The three boys, the only survivors of the six born to Mary Anne, sat in a row on the old horsehair sofa. They were still in their black, having come in with their da from the pit. The youngest, seven-year-old Miley, was asleep and leaning against the wall of the inglenook. He had only been a doorkeeper in the pit for a few weeks and hadn’t yet got used to the long hours and the dark. Albert and Harry sat and stared at their father holding the baby. He had loosened Thomas’s clothes and a small fist waved in the air. Steam was already rising from him and he let out a cry.

  ‘He’s a braw babby, he is an’ all,’ Mary Anne observed. ‘Good lungs on him, the Lord be praised.’

  ‘I’d best change him, he’s that wet,’ said Eliza. ‘Only all his spare clothes are wet, the whole bundle.’

  ‘By, I don’t know, our Eliza,’ snapped Mary Anne. ‘Why you brought him out in this weather is beyond me.’

  ‘I had to,’ Eliza replied. ‘The candymen were in the house and Jack was away out.’

  ‘The candymen? Whatever for?’

  ‘Jack hadn’t paid the rent and he is in debt an’ all.’

  Mary Anne paused only for a minute. She was well used to dealing with crises. ‘There’s an old shawl in the bottom drawer of the press. You’ll have to wrap him in that. Get on with it,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you some dinner.’ She took some soused herring out of the oven and added a dollop of mashed potato from the pan on the bar then set the plate on the table for Eliza.

  ‘That’s thy dinner, Mary Anne,’ Tommy protested.

  ‘Aye well, I’m not hungry now. I’ll have a bite later on. Mebbe you can bring me a penny pie from the inn?’

  ‘I’m not going out the night,’ Tommy asserted. ‘I have nowt.’

  ‘I’ll give you tuppence for a pint of porter,’ Mary Anne coaxed him. ‘Me an’ our Eliza have to talk.’

  Eliza was already starting to eat but she paused in the act of lifting the fork to her mouth. ‘Are you sure, Mam?’

  ‘Get it down, our Eliza. I have to get the bath ready for the lads; young Miley there should be in his bed.’

  ‘Aye, poor bairn, he doesn’t like the dark. I found him begging a bit of candle from the night-shift men coming on. Then I had to carry him up the ladders, I was fair done in by the time we got to bank.’

  Mary Anne gave her youngest a worried glance. ‘Mebbe he’s too little for the job. He’s still a babby.’

  ‘I was minding the doors, lifting the fire-flaps when I was his age,’ said Tommy. ‘It never hurt me. He’ll have to get used to it, be a man.’

  ‘Tommy, he’s just a babby, I telt you.’ As she talked, Mary Anne was setting the tin bath down before the fire. She poured hot water in it from the iron kettle on the bar and added cold from the bucket she had brought in earlier from the pump in the street. It was water pumped straight from the pit, for Blue House was a wet pit, but it was clear and fairly pure though smelling a bit of the coal dust.

  Miley protested when she woke him and took off his clothes but sat docilely enough in the water. She soaped a piece of flannel and washed him while having the usual argument with Tommy. ‘Dinna flannel his back, woman!’ Tommy roared. ‘You’ll weaken it, he has to grow with it strong, the washing’ll make it femmer!’

  ‘There’s plenty of time for him to get a strong back,’ said Mary Anne, not raising her voice at all. ‘Any road, don’t shout, you’ll wake the babby.’

  Thomas was warm and dry and fast asleep, wrapped in the old shawl and laid across his grandfather’s knees. In spite of the shabby furniture, the scrubbed table bare of a cloth, and the battered press and ancient settee, it was cosy in the kitchen. The fireplace was small and without an oven or water boiler or even a proper hearth, just a stone and an iron fender with a brass rail, but it was home to Eliza and she was slowly relaxing. All she felt for Jack at that moment was a slowly increasing anger. After the boys were washed and tucked into the bed upstairs in the one bedroom, she took the baby from her father and laid him on the settee. He slept on, seemingly none the worse for the soaking.

  ‘Now then, our Eliza,’ said Mary Anne as she sat herself down in the chair just vacated by Tommy, who had gone to the inn, ‘you’d best tell us what’s happened. Have you left your man? If you have, you’ll get no sympathy from me. You’ve made your bed and you’d best lie on it. I know what you said, Jack’s got himself in a right bad seam, by the sound of it, but you should stick by him. For better for worse, the minister says. And any road, what are you doing getting a ride from that one, the new owner’s son? He has a name for himself, he has, and you want nowt to do with him.’

  ‘The owner’s son? Is that who he was? Eeh, Mam, I didn’t know. But he was coming this way and I was fairly on me last legs, I was.’

  ‘Aye, likely. Just don’t do it again, the neighbours might see. You don’t want to get a name for yourself, do you?’

  ‘No, Mam,’ Eliza said meekly.

  ‘Well then,’ said Mary Anne.

  ‘Mam, I had nowhere else to go and Jack wasn’t there. He took off, I told you.’

  Mary Anne sighed. ‘Well, there’s nowt to be done the night any road. But you must see we can’t keep you. I’m sorry, lass. Did you not manage to save anything?’

  ‘No, I did not. Jack took the necklace out of the drawer. That was all I had. The candymen let me keep a few clothes for me and the bairn, but that’s all.’

  ‘Aye well, we’ll leave it for the night and work something out come the morn,’ said Mary Anne, sighing heavily. ‘You’d best sleep down here on the settee with the babby. I cannot have him waking the lads through the night. They have to go on shift first thing.’ She shook her head worriedly. ‘I don’t know about our Miley. He’s taken badly to sitting in the dark for twelve hours at a time.’

  Eliza went to sleep the minute she laid her head down. She was worn out with the day and her sudden change of fortune. She didn’t even hear her father come in and hang his jacket on the hook behind the door before slipping through to the front room where he and Mary Anne slept.

  Mary Anne was awake. She was worrying, her mind going round and round her problems and getting nowhere. Tommy lit the stub of a candle and handed her the pie he had brought from the inn.

  ‘I cannot eat it, Tommy,’ she said.

  ‘Aye you can,’ he replied stolidly. ‘Get it down you, woman, we cannot do with you being bad an’ all.’

  In fact she found she was ravenous as she took a bite and gravy ran down her chin. She caught it with her forefinger and pushed it into her mouth. By, it was grand, she thought. Likely she would feel better after she got it down. Tommy took off his boots and stripped to his undershirt, then climbed into bed. He usually went straight to sleep but after a while she realised he was lying awake.

  ‘Tommy?’ she whispered.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Our Miley looks badly, Tommy, I wonder if he should have the shift off the morn.’

  Tommy moved restlessly. ‘He has to get used to it, Mary Anne, you know he has. In a month or so, he’ll be fine. The other lads were.’

  ‘I don’t know,�
�� she fretted, thinking of the lad she had lost from bad blood. He’d only got a graze when he fell against the pillar of coal that was supporting the roof. In the dark it had been, his stump of a candle had run out. It had turned to the bad though and spread to the rest of his thin little body.

  Tommy grunted. ‘He’ll be fine. Look you, he’s close to me, I made sure of that. The other two are with me an’ all, they’re better off with me.’

  ‘An’ what about our Eliza and that canny babby?’

  ‘Aw, man,’ Tommy said irritably, ‘things’ll look better come the morn. Any road, I need me sleep. It’ll be five o’clock and the pit hooter going before we know it at this rate. Shut thee gob, woman.’ He softened this last remark by turning over and flinging an arm around her. ‘Things’ll be all right I tell you,’ he said, ‘settle down.’

  Things! Mary Anne told herself. Aye well, mebbe he was right. She turned her thoughts to her daughter and little grandson. Once she had thought that Eliza had made a good marriage, one away from the pits. But Jack had turned out to be a gambler and gambling was the ruination of families. Hadn’t Mr Wesley said so? Any road, Eliza and her babby had to be kept somehow, fed and all. Mebbe there was work at the pithead for there surely was none anywhere else in the village, not for a lass like Eliza.

  Eliza, for her part, was lying awake too, despite her weariness. She was thinking of Jack. Where was he? Oh, she was so angry with him she was churning up inside when she thought of the happenings of the morning. To have the candymen, the bum bailiffs, throw her out of the house, by, she’d not be able to lift her face in the street again, she was so mortified. Eliza turned over on the lumpy settee and almost fell off its narrow seat. The horsehair prickled her skin even through the old blanket her mam had covered it with. She thought of the comfortable bed she and Jack had shared at his father’s house. But then she thought of her mother-in-law’s sharp tongue and the way her father-in-law had tried to rule their lives, hers and Jack’s. Old John Henry had a nasty tongue, too, and he hadn’t failed to use it on her. He’d made scathing remarks about her family, contemptuous ones about pitfolk. By, she was sick of being put down, she was an’ all.