‘Oh, lad, lad.’ Mrs Riley sprang up at the sight of him, her hands going out towards him and her head bobbing. ‘Where’ve you bin? Mr Riley an’ our Douglas’ve bin scourin’ the streets lookin’ for you the past two hours or more.’
‘Where’s me mam?’ He didn’t answer her question. And then, when one hand went to her throat and the other clutched at her shawl, he said again, his voice sharp now, ‘Mrs Riley, where’s me mam? What’s happened?’
‘She’s gone, lad.’
‘Gone?’ He stared at her stupidly. ‘Where?’
And then, as her meaning hit him with the force of a sledgehammer, he groped at one of the straight-backed chairs under the table and sat down quickly, her voice coming at him through the ringing in his ears.
‘You couldn’t have done anythin’, lad, not even if you’d bin home hours ago.’ Mrs Riley had her hand on his shoulder and was talking rapidly. ‘I found her meself just after half four when I nipped round with a bit of bacon an’ some stuff our Emily had got hold of.’ Mrs Riley’s married daughter, Emily, had a husband who dabbled in the black market, and as Mrs Riley’s oldest friend, Davey’s mother came in for a share of the contraband. ‘Dr Maynard reckons she’d bin gone some hours, afore mid-day he thought. Heart attack.’
‘A heart attack?’ Davey looked up into the kindly face dazedly. ‘But she was as fit as a fiddle apart from her rheumatism an’ the indigestion keeping her awake some nights.’
‘Aye, well the doctor reckons them dos she put down to wind was her heart.’ Mrs Riley shook her head slowly. ‘You know how she was about goin’ to the quack. Wouldn’t be told. Eee, it gave me a turn, I don’t mind tellin’ you, lad, findin’ her like that.’
‘Where is she now?’ He couldn’t take this in.
‘In the front room, lad. She’d’ve wanted to be laid out there. Mr Riley an’ our Douglas fetched in the trestle we used for our mam.’ The hand on his shoulder was patting him as she talked. ‘Mrs McClancy said she’d come in later an’ help me do the necessary for your mam if that’s all right with you, unless you think the lasses will want to do it? Or there’s the undertakers?’
Davey thought of his three sisters and shook his head. ‘No, Mrs Riley, I think me mam would’ve liked you to see to her.’
‘Aye, I do an’ all, that’s settled then. We’ll lay her out.’
‘I . . . I must see her.’ Davey lumbered unsteadily to his feet, his head spinning. He took a step towards the door and then paused, turning and taking the little woman’s hands as he added, ‘Thank you, Mrs Riley. Thank you.’
‘Aw, lad, lad. You know how much I thought of her, closer than me own sister, she was. Bin through thick an’ thin together, your mam an’ me, an’ the war was only a part of it.’
‘I know, I know.’ Now it was Davey who was doing the patting.
‘I’ve got a bite of somethin’ at home for you when you’re ready, lad. It’s in the oven, keepin’ hot. You tap on the wall when you’re ready an’ I’ll pop it round.’ Mrs Riley wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron and bustled out of the door with her head down, pulling her shawl more tightly about her as the cold hit.
Poor Mrs Riley, she’d miss his mam. Davey stood for a moment in the kitchen and for the first time in his life he thought of it as empty. The lump in his throat became choking. He’d miss her too. She’d been a good mam, a loving mother, not like some round these parts who put on a show outside and became harridans and worse with their own menfolk. No, she’d been too giving if anything and his brothers and sisters had always taken full advantage of it. He felt something hot and wet drop onto the back of his hand and looked down at the teardrop in surprise. He hadn’t been aware he was crying. He squared his shoulders, raised his chin, and prepared to walk through to the front room as the tears became a flood that coursed down his young face.
Chapter Four
It was a full five weeks after the pit disaster and eight days after Davey’s mother had died before Rosie opened the door to Flora one cold February afternoon when Zachariah was out, and it was Flora who had to be helped up the stairs and into the sitting room as she burst into tears at the sight of her friend’s face.
‘I can’t believe all that’s happened, I just can’t believe it.’ Flora’s pretty face was white, her grey eyes enormous. ‘And me da didn’t even write and tell us, he didn’t say a word.’
The two girls were sitting in the bigger of the two rooms which now housed the kitchen table and two straight-backed chairs and the kitchen dresser at one end, and her father’s old armchair and the five-foot wooden saddle with its flock cushions set in front of the fireplace at the other, with a space of four feet separating them. On the floor in front of the small grate was a large clippy mat, so heavy Rosie had difficulty in lifting it, and her mother’s deep blue front-room curtains were hanging at the windows. Sam’s small collection of dog-eared secondhand books were stacked neatly on a small cracket placed against the wall in one corner - Rosie couldn’t bear to part with one of the painstakingly acquired little hoard - and a large orange box and a big ugly chest held all their clothes. There was absolutely no room for anything but the two three-quarter size beds in the other room.
Her mother’s stiff horsehair suite had gone, along with the brass bed, the sale of which had meant Rosie needn’t worry about the rent for a few weeks, and her father’s Sunday suit and those of the two lads had swelled the coffers a little more.
Rosie shifted on the saddle where she was sitting with her arm round Flora’s shoulders as she reflected, and not for the first time, that she knew why Mr Thomas hadn’t written his daughter and wife about the accident. The tightlipped Welshman - who had a prestigious job at the Castle Street Brewery, which employed over two hundred staff and owned about a hundred and fifty licensed houses in the district - wanted his only daughter to associate with better than a mining family. The Thomases lived in a nice, terraced, double-bay-fronted house in the better part of Fulwell, which had its own garden front and back. Rosie had gone to tea there once and returned home with stories of the splendour and space, and the fact that Flora had a bedroom all to herself, but out of loyalty to her friend she hadn’t mentioned, even to Sam, that she had hated every minute of it. Mr Thomas was a tyrant and his little mouse of a wife had scuttled about nervously in an atmosphere that had seemed to Rosie to be choking. Since that day she had felt desperately sorry for Flora.
So now she said, drawing Flora close for a moment more before moving to stand with her back to the glowing embers of the fire, ‘Likely he thought it best. You couldn’t have done anything being so far away and you would only have worried.’
‘I’d have come home.’
Yes, she would have, and that was exactly why her father hadn’t told her, Rosie thought perceptively. He couldn’t control Flora as he could her mother and he knew it.
‘Well you’re home now.’ Rosie managed a bright smile, Flora was feeling worse than she was right at this minute. ‘And I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you.’
‘How . . . how have you settled in?’
‘All right.’ Rosie shrugged, her face betraying none of the worry she was feeling. The jobs at Bradman’s hadn’t materialized, mainly due to her mother saying all the wrong things when they had gone to talk to the manager the day after Mr Nebb had tipped Davey the wink the two lasses had off and skedaddled. She had done it on purpose, Rosie knew it, and she hadn’t pressed her mother to go with her on her subsequent searches for work. But it wasn’t just the way merely living ate into their reserves that kept Rosie awake at night. She had thought Davey’s manner - first when he’d told her the coast was clear at Bradman’s and then when he had helped to move them in the coal cart - was due to his mother dying so unexpectedly, but now she wasn’t so sure. They had been at Benton Street over a week and he hadn’t called round once, and at his mother’s funeral he had barely spoken to her except to announce his plans for the future.
Her thoughts prompted her to say, ‘Have you heard about Davey’s mam?’ in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage.
‘Davey’s mam?’ Flora’s eyes sharpened on Rosie’s face. ‘No?’
‘She died, of a heart attack.’
‘
Davey’s mam?
’
‘The funeral was Thursday.’
‘No.’ Flora stared at her in open amazement, her full-lipped, wide mouth agape. ‘I can’t take all this in, I just can’t.’
‘And Davey’s had enough of the pit. He--’ Here Rosie had to pause in order for her voice not to wobble. ‘He told me at the funeral he’s thinking of leaving these parts now his mam’s gone, getting right away altogether.’
‘Well turn me over and call me Katie.’
The saying was a favourite one of Flora’s and brought a smile to Rosie’s lips despite the direness of the circumstances. ‘Your da would go mad if he heard you say that.’ Mr Thomas was always lecturing his outspoken daughter to conduct herself like a lady.
Flora shrugged unrepentantly. ‘Everyone knows Katie Flanders has been no better than she should be since she’s been knee high, now then. Aw, Rosie . . .’ Flora shook her head bewilderedly. ‘What’s happened? I can’t imagine Davey going off. I know you can never tell with lads but I’d have bet me last penny Davey was soft on you.’
Rosie averted her head - Flora’s gaze was searching - before she said, ‘Well that’s what he said, Flora. And he was deadly serious.’
‘Can’t you talk to him?’
Rosie looked at her friend, her very dear friend, and her voice was flat when she said, ‘No, I can’t talk to him, Flora, ’course I can’t, and you wouldn’t if it was you.’
Flora nodded her acceptance of the statement, and as Rosie joined her again on the saddle the two girls were quiet, their bodies shoulder to shoulder as they sat staring into the tiny flames licking round the base of the fire. The bang of the front door followed by thudding footsteps and voices on the stairs brought Rosie to her feet. ‘They’re back.’ Her mother had taken Molly and Hannah to see their grandma in the East End. ‘You’ll stay for a bite, Flora?’
‘If you’re sure.’ Flora was feeling strange. When she had left Sunderland five weeks ago the world had been the same as it had always been. Granted, she had known she was going to take up the post of assisting Miss Wentworth in the office of W. Baxter and Sons, a small shipyard on the north side of the river, on her return from Wales, but that had held no surprise. Her father was a close friend of the Baxter family and the arrangement had been in place for months. But this with Rosie, her da and the lads dying and now Davey leaving, had turned everything upside down. Didn’t Rosie care that Davey was going? Flora asked herself silently. Because
she
did, she couldn’t bear to think she might not see him again. The pain that always accompanied thoughts of Davey - or more especially Davey and Rosie - caught at her throat causing her to swallow hard. She knew Rosie had always imagined it was Sam Flora liked and she hadn’t disabused her friend of the notion. In fact she had actively encouraged it, because a blind man could see where Davey’s fancy lay. And she liked Rosie - loved her - she was the sister she’d never had, which made things all the more confusing and horrible.
‘What? ’Course I’m sure, you daft thing. Oh Flora, you don’t know how I’ve longed to see you. I’ve missed you so much and everything has been so awful.’ Rosie caught Flora’s hands, her eyes moist, and Flora felt the coals of fire smoulder on her head. She couldn’t be so nasty as to wish that she had got it wrong about Davey, could she? Especially when she knew how much Rosie liked him? But it was exactly what she wished and the self-knowledge was mortifying.
‘Do you want one of Sam’s books to remember him by?’ Rosie said this last quietly as the door to the room swung open and Molly and Hannah entered at a gallop, and at Flora’s nod, Rosie continued, ‘We’ll sort it out before you go and I’ll walk with you to the tram. I want to tell you something.’
‘What?’ Flora didn’t like the look on Rosie’s face.
‘I can’t say now but it’s to do with Shane McLinnie.’
‘The dirty blighter!’
It was so exactly Flora, and so very definitely everything her father had tried to drum out of her, that Rosie found herself laughing as she clutched at her friend’s arm and whispered, ‘Shush, Flora, not so loud.’
‘And you haven’t told your mam anything about it?’
The two girls were making their way to the tram stop through dark streets where the frozen pavements were like glass.
‘I couldn’t, Flora, not the state she’s in, and Mrs McLinnie is her friend. I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble between the two of them. All round it seemed better not to worry her.’
‘Well, remind me to show you a little trick my cousin Ronald taught me for putting a lad in his place if he gets frisky,’ Flora said darkly. ‘I haven’t had the need to use it meself, but I can’t think of a nicer bloke to try it out on than Shane McLinnie.’ She made a sharp upward movement with her knee as she spoke and winked expressively. ‘He’ll get the message with that right enough.’