Contents

About the Book

A terrible choice between her sweetheart and her reputation…

Orphaned from birth, Mary Trent has always dreamed of the day she can escape from poverty, and when she meets the dashing young doctor Tom Gallagher, it seems her prayers have been answered.

But an untimely pregnancy spells disaster and the threat of returning to a life of destitution. Is a marriage of convenience the only thing that can save her?

From the author of Orphan Girl and Workhouse Child

About the Author

Maggie Hope was born and raised in County Durham. She worked as a nurse for many years, before giving up her career to raise her family.

Also by Maggie Hope

A Wartime Nurse

A Mother’s Gift

A Nurse’s Duty

A Daughter’s Gift

Molly’s War

The Servant Girl

A Daughter’s Duty

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Orphan Girl

Eliza’s Child

Workhouse Child

Prologue

1962

‘They should never have got permission,’ said Mrs Morrison, and Edie Wright, in front of her at the store counter, nodded glumly. The noise outside the shop became louder so that both assistants and customers had to shout to make themselves heard. An enormous digging machine was rumbling past, on its way to the opencast mining site, halfway between Winton Colliery and Eden Hope Colliery. Flurries of dust came through the open door and an old miner, waiting to buy cigarettes, coughed.

‘The Coal Board can do whatever it wants to do,’ Jane, the girl behind the counter said. She went over to the cheese slicer and expertly cut half a pound of Cheddar and wrapped it.

‘One and sixpence ha’penny, please,’ she said. ‘Anything else?’

‘No thanks, pet,’ said Edie and turned back to Joan Morrison. ‘My Don’s seen the plans, you know. He reckons they’re going right up to Old Pit.’

Joan sighed. ‘I hope not. It’s a piece of history that place. They should leave it alone.’

The women nodded. All of them had played ‘House’ in the old village, in their imaginations the ruined houses becoming a proper row, like the ones in Winton Colliery. The lads had played Cowboys and Indians and lately, British and Germans in and out of the buildings, pretending they were falling down because they’d been bombed. They’d had no thought for danger then. And now the Coal Board had the area fenced off with high banks of topsoil reinforcing the fences.

They’d said they would put it all back when they were finished and perhaps they would. At the moment the NCB was bent on winning the last ounce of coal from the seams once worked by underground miners by extracting it more efficiently from the surface. And they would put the old slag heaps in the hole too and the valley would be green again.

It was the following week when Big Geordie, the giant digger that pulled a dragline behind it over long stretches of ground going deeper and deeper into the earth as it created its own valley, came across an old gallery a couple of hundred feet down. There were wicker corves in one place, which disintegrated as the air got to them and an old shaft with broken ladders leading up to the surface.

‘By heck, I wouldn’t have liked to live in them days,’ a burly worker said as they broke off to eat their bait. ‘They had a bloody awful life them old pitmen. Fancy doing a shift underground and then having to climb up ladders to the top.’

The other men nodded and chewed on their sandwiches as they thought about it. The buzzer went and they got to their feet. Four more hours and they could go home to their dinners. A cold wind blew down the valley.

‘That was one thing that was better,’ Jack Morrison said. ‘It was always warm in the pit.’

‘Aye,’ one replied. ‘Sometimes too blooming warm.’ He climbed into the driver’s cabin of Big Geordie and started the engine.

The great machine worked on and on trundling along the bottom of the man-made valley, broadening it out. Until they uncovered something which made them all down tools for a day.

A tunnel, or gallery actually, following the line of the coal seam they were ripping from the earth had been found. In the tunnel there were the remains of men and, heart-breakingly, boys who could have been no more than eight or nine, together with pit ponies still attached to small waggons with bits of leather harness. Both ends of the gallery had been sealed with falls of stone and coal to a width of fifty or more yards.

‘It’s a mark of respect,’ said Jack Morrison, facing the site manager in his portable cabin. He stared at Ben Atkinson across the desk. Ben shook his head.

‘It happened a long time ago, man,’ he protested. ‘In those days there were no proper plans for the mines, let alone detailed maps. We wouldn’t have exposed it on purpose, would we?’

‘No, mebbe not. But we have. And now we have to do something about it,’ said Jack.

‘Well, we are doing something. The authorities have been notified, haven’t they? There’ll be an inquest. But there’s nothing to stop us extending at the other side, is there?’

‘I’m the union representative here and I say we’ll stop work as a mark of respect,’ said Jack, taking on a stubborn look.

‘Well, I’ll get on to the Area Office again, that’s all I can do,’ said the manager.

The site lay idle that day and the next. There was a report in the local paper.

‘There’s one person who ought to be asked,’ Mr James, the Methodist minister wrote in. ‘Merry Gallagher was born in one of the cottages of Old Pit and she insists it happened on the very day of the disaster. Of course she is very old and frail but she is in full possession of her faculties. I understand she lost her grandfather, father and brother in the disaster.’

‘Mother, there’s a bit about you in the paper today,’ said Marian Gallagher. ‘It’s in connection with that curious story of the entombed miners that was in a few days ago. Would you like me to read it out to you?’ Taking the answer for granted, Marian settled down on the chair beside her mother’s and read out the minister’s letter. ‘What do you think of that?’ she asked when she had finished. Sitting back she removed her spectacles and rubbed her nose where they had rested.

Merry said nothing for a moment and Marian felt a twinge of concern. Had she better call the doctor? After all, her mother was so very frail now and this finding of the entombed miners might have stirred her feelings too much. But suddenly Merry began to speak.

‘Tell Mr James I want to speak to him,’ she said. ‘And he can bring that newfangled tape recorder with him. I had the whole story of the disaster from my gran. And what happened to the families that were left. I reckon it’s time it was told.’

One

Vera Trent moved heavily from the table to the fire. As she carefully lifted the lid of the pan steam gushed out so that she had to jerk her face back out of range. The potatoes were boiling a little too fast, she thought, and pulled the pan back on to the bar a little, next to the kettle. Still holding the piece of sacking she used as a pan holder she sat down on the rocking chair and closed her eyes. Just for a minute, she told herself. She laid her hand across her belly, feeling the baby within her. Only one more month to go, she thought.

There was an ache in the bottom of her back and she leaned forward and rubbed at it. Catching sight of her feet she sighed. She couldn’t get her boots on now – her feet were too swollen so she was wearing a pair of Lance’s thick pit stockings to protect herself from the cold shooting up from the flagged floor.

She gazed around her, noting with pleasure the gleaming press and the floor, scrubbed only yesterday. Maybe she had worked too hard yesterday but she had been filled with energy and determined the house should be clean from top to bottom.

The pit hooter blew and she rose to her feet and picked up the pie she had ready on the table and opened the oven door to put it in. And then it happened. The whole house shook and the pie was jerked out of her hands by a force that terrified her. Losing her balance she fell heavily against the steel fender, catching her head a glancing blow from the poker that was jerked out of its stand.

Dazed, she lay on the clippie mat as pain shot through her belly.

‘Lance!’ she cried but of course Lance wasn’t there, he hadn’t come in yet. She felt the poker by her side and grasped it. If she could hit the iron fireback with it she could get help from May Morrison. If only she could stand up.

Suddenly there was a loud rumbling, the ground trembled again and the iron kettle that had been teetering on the bar fell onto the fender, spilling boiling water over her shoulder and splattering her face. Vera screamed once before she lost consciousness.

May Morrison ran out of the house into the back yard when the earth tremor came. She was standing, unsure what to do, when a rumbling, thundering crash shook the houses again. A few slates came sliding from the roof into the yard and she ran to the gate.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Albert, May’s husband, who had been in bed as he had worked the fore shift, pushed the sash window up and stuck his head out of the window. A slate came down and narrowly missed him so he hastily drew back inside. And then Vera screamed and at that moment the pit hooter blew, a long continuous blast that made terror spring up in every person in the village. The children who had not been crying began now, sobbing and wailing.

‘It’s the pit,’ said May, rather obviously for everyone was out of the houses now and they all knew what it was. ‘My God, there’s been an explosion.’ She looked over her neighbour’s gate; there was no sign of Vera yet her house had been shaken too and her man was down the pit. She ran up the yard and into the kitchen, followed by her daughter, Dora, and stood in horror at what she saw.

‘What is it, Mam, what’s wrong with Mrs Trent?’

May started. ‘Never you mind! Go on and fetch old Ma Trent, will you? Tell her the babby’s started.’

Half an hour earlier, Lance Trent had been working underground in the Low Main Seam putting the coal to the shaft bottom, driving the pony that was pulling the tub along a narrow railroad. He was desperate to get this last tub of coal to the shaft bottom before the buzzer signalling the end of the shift blew but all his efforts were frustrated by the pony.

‘Howay now, Bonny, nearly finished,’ he said trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. Ponies knew when they were winning. Bonnie was a small Shetland pony with intelligent eyes and he had been sluggish all through the shift. Now he wedged himself at an awkward bend in the tunnel and stood, four-square. Lance knew that the pony knew he couldn’t get at him there, force him to move on. The ponies soon find out these places, he thought savagely.

‘By, I could have done with old Peter,’ said Lance to himself. Peter was his usual pony but he had had a stone fall on his shoulder, cutting it, so he was away recuperating. Bonny had a reputation among the miners; he was too clever by half.

‘Go on, lad,’ Lance said again. ‘I need the money, man.’ He was forcing himself to keep his voice low, reassuring. ‘Nearly home now.’

The buzzer sounded and suddenly Lance erupted with rage. He had not made enough money this fortnight to keep himself and Vera, let alone pay for the lying-in woman. What was more, the rest of the men on his cavil blamed him for not managing the pony better. Suddenly his frustration got the better of him and he kicked out at the only bit of pony he could reach – his steel toecap connected with a hock and the skin broke.

Bonny squealed and jumped causing the coal tub to overturn and hit a pit prop, one that should have been replaced days earlier but the gaffer had said the maintenance could be done at the weekend. The pit prop bent and broke, and then the next one to it and the one after that. Lance, crouching against the fallen tub heard a great rumbling and began to cough as coal and stone dust started to fall.

Bonny’s bucking was ever wilder, his eyes rolling in terror, but Lance couldn’t get to him even if he’d wanted to. He wouldn’t have been able to calm him anyway so he tried to move backwards between the tramlines but the roof started to fall as more props broke. It was close to the junction with the main way and pit props were going down like ninepins. Bonny’s screaming stopped abruptly as man and pony went down, both hit by great chunks of stone.

At the top of the shaft the engine house that worked the winding wheel bringing up the cage for both men and coal shuddered and strained, then the engine stopped altogether as below ground there was a great explosion. Coal dust had been disturbed, the air was thick with it and lurking firedamp – methane – had been ignited by a falling miner’s lamp. Fire raged.

‘Oh God, oh God,’ whispered Tommy Trent, ‘it couldn’t be worse. Our poor Lance.’

‘Do you think me dad is dead, Grandda?’ asked Johnny. The group of miners clustered together. Johnny had just joined the men working the cavil, the part of the coal seam allocated to the group of marras. He had been looking forward to the pie his mother had promised she would bake.

When the noises came even Johnny knew exactly what they meant, as the roof caved in, cutting them off from the way out. They crouched together, heads down as stone dust swirled in the air, choking them.

‘Grandda!’ he croaked and Tommy managed to reach him and put an arm around him.

‘They’ll get us out, lad,’ said Tommy, for Johnny was only just coming up twelve. But Tommy knew there was next to no hope. Behind them the roadway had been cut off, so they couldn’t even try for the old shaft. And already the air they were breathing was becoming foul.

‘Howay, lass, see if you can push,’ said Peggy Trent, though Vera’s eyes were closed and her face blue white. Vera gave no sign of hearing. Indeed, May thought, she looked as though it was already too late for her. But the baby’s head was crowned – it would surely come. Almost imperceptibly the girl lying on the clippie mat let out a tiny breath.

‘If we could just get her up on the settee,’ said May.

‘Well, we cannot move her,’ Peggy answered. ‘Not ’til the bairn comes.’ She slid her hand over Vera’s belly, found the right place and kneaded. Vera moved slightly and the baby’s head came out, the little face red and screwed up with effort. After that it was only minutes before Peggy had her out.

‘It’s a bit lass,’ said May. ‘By, she’s a fighter an’ all.’ For the baby’s fist waved in the air and from her open mouth came a loud wail of rage.

‘Tak’ her,’ said Peggy, and May pulled a piece of worn blanket from the line over the fireplace and wrapped the child in it. Peggy was bending over Vera, looking in dismay as blood gushed suddenly and then stopped.

‘I’ll give you a hand getting her up,’ said May as she laid the baby in the bottom drawer from the press, in lieu of a cradle.

‘There’s no hurry now,’ said Peggy sadly. ‘She’s gone. Will you get a blanket to cover her, May? And can you stay for a bit? I have to go up to the pit yard to find out what’s happening.’

‘Eeh!’ May looked stricken, for in the urgencies of the last half-hour the fact that something had happened at the pit had slipped her mind. How could that have happened? Just because her own Albert was safely off shift. ‘You go on, Peggy, I’ll attend to things,’ she said. All of Peggy’s menfolk were on shift. In spite of herself May couldn’t help a profound though guilty thankfulness that it wasn’t her own.

Peggy picked up her shawl from the back of the chair where she had dropped it when she came in and wrapped it round her thin shoulders. She could do nothing for Vera now. All her instincts were drawing her to the pithead.

Albert came in just after Peggy left, dressed in his pit clothes, his leather and tin hat on his head, his knee protectors strapped on.

‘I didn’t like to come in before,’ he said. ‘Oh no, the lass isn’t dead, is she?’

‘Aye, she is,’ May replied. ‘You can lift her onto the settee for me if you like.’

Albert picked up Vera, still with the blanket covering her and laid her as carefully as he could on the horsehair settee. Then he turned back to his wife.

‘I have to go, lass,’ he said. ‘I might be needed at the pit.’

‘Aye,’ said May. ‘Hadaway, lad, I know. Mind, be careful.’

‘I will.’

After he’d gone, May filled an enamel bowl with the water left in the kettle, and some cold from the bucket in the pantry. Then she laid the baby on her knee and washed her. Peggy had tied off the cord with cotton thread, which May inspected and it seemed all right. She dressed the baby in one of the flannelette nightgowns she had found in the drawer and tied a rag on for a nappy. The baby didn’t cry, just made sucking motions with her mouth. May mixed up a little sugar and water and tried to feed her but the baby would have nothing of it. In the end she carried her up the street to the yard of a woman who had birthed a baby only a few days before, Eliza Wearmouth. She didn’t go in, for it would bring bad luck on the house to take a baby inside before it had been christened. Eliza’s man was one of Albert’s marras so he must have escaped the explosion too, which meant that Eliza would not be among the women waiting at the pithead.

By this time, the baby was screaming and Eliza came straight out. Thank God, thought May, she had been right.

‘It’s Vera’s babby,’ she said and told Eliza what had happened.

‘Eeh, poor bairn,’ said Eliza, and thought for a minute. ‘I tell you what, you go back and I’ll come, give her a bit tittie.’ She banked the fire and wrapped her own sleeping infant, John Henry, in the corner of her shawl, then followed May down the street to the end house.

‘Eeh, man!’ she said when she saw Vera’s body lying on the settee covered in a thin, old sheet. ‘They’ve got their troubles in this house the day, haven’t they?’

‘They have that,’ May agreed. ‘Peggy’s away up to the pit yard now, waiting to see what’s happened. Aye, but I doubt it was a bad accident. My Albert’s up there an’ all. With the rescue workers I should think.’

‘Aye, Big John an’ all,’ said Eliza. She bent over the press drawer and clucked in sympathy at the baby who was sniffling quietly by now. Eliza laid her own John Henry at the other end of the drawer and picked the new baby up. The baby nuzzled at her bare arm, making sucking noises. Eliza opened her blouse and offered her the breast and the baby clung to it. ‘She seems strong enough, any road,’ Eliza commented as she settled herself in the rocking chair by the fire. ‘It’s a good job I have plenty of milk for the both of them.’

‘Aye. The first bit of luck in this house the day.’

May glanced over at the settee. ‘I don’t know whether to wash the lass or wait for the doctor. The authorities get funny these days, you know, if you do anything without a death certificate.’

‘Daft, I call it,’ said Eliza. ‘Doctor Brown will have enough on his hands up at the pit. And it doesn’t take a doctor to tell that one’s gone, poor soul.’ She lifted the baby and changed her to the other breast. ‘I tell you what though, you’d best let the fire die down. An’ pull the settee as far away from the range as it’ll go. It might be the night before he gets here.’ She looked down at the baby in her arms. Sated now, she had let go of the nipple and was dropping off to sleep. Her little fists were bunched up tight as a prize fighter’s and there was a furrow between her brows.

May came over and looked down at her, wiped a bubble of milk from the corner of her mouth. ‘Mind,’ she said softly, ‘she looks like a fighter, an’ she’ll need to be an’ all, poor motherless bairn. I reckon she’ll have a hard row to hoe, this one.’

She took the baby from Eliza and laid her back in the makeshift cradle. Then she sat down in the chair opposite her friend. ‘We’ll have two minutes while we can,’ she said. ‘By, they’re a long time at the pit. I doubt, I doubt.’ What she doubted she didn’t say.

Both women gazed into the dying fire as the burnt-out crust of it collapsed in a shower of ash, the red coals dying to grey.

Two

‘Will you stand up for the babby at chapel?’ asked Peggy. ‘I’m going to call her Miranda after me own mother. Merry for short.’

‘I’d love to be godmother,’ replied Eliza. ‘But what about May?’

‘Aye well,’ said Peggy, ‘May and Albert are away at the weekend. He’s got work at Thornley, over past Durham. I’m away to see the minister now.’

She wrapped Merry in the end of her shawl and held her close for the wind was biting as it was channelled down the row. Peggy had lost weight since the disaster, she just couldn’t eat any road, she told May when she tried to persuade her to.

Eliza watched as Peggy went out of the door and took the black path along the line. There was no chapel at Jane Pit, as the colliery was too small for that, so Peggy had to go up through the fields and along the path to the road and down to Winton Colliery, a distance of two miles.

‘Peggy looks blooming awful,’ Eliza told Big John when she went round to see to his tea. ‘She’s that thin.’

‘Well, what do you expect, woman?’ asked John. ‘She lost her man, her son and her grandson in the explosion, didn’t she? And then to lose the bairn’s mam an’ all . . .’

‘Aye, I know, John,’ Eliza replied. ‘That babby’s all she’s got in the world. But if she doesn’t look after herself Merry’ll have no one. Then it’ll be the workhouse for the poor mite, won’t it?’

‘Merry? Is that what she’s calling it? Bloody fancy names at a time like this an’ all.’

‘It’s after her own mother,’ said Eliza. ‘I like it. Any road, I’m going to stand up for her. Sunday likely.’

‘I expect so. If I get this job at East Howle we’ll be leaving. They reckon there’s some fine two-bedroomed houses an’ all, with a proper staircase.’

Eliza stared out of the window at the house opposite. It was empty now for already the people were beginning to go looking for work elsewhere. Some of them had only stayed for the funeral service that had taken place the week before. Oh God, she thought, I hope the young lads didn’t suffer. The men an’ all, of course. There was no way of telling for they were entombed in the pit. The gaffer had explained there was no way they could be reached, what with the shaft being blocked off at the bottom and water seeping through. So the pit was abandoned, the shaft capped with a wooden cover nailed over it. The whole of the village, those who were left, that is, had watched as it was done.

Eliza turned round and faced Big John. ‘I’m staying a few weeks more,’ she said. ‘I have to give that bairn a chance and it’s too early for her to have to suck pap.’

‘Eliza pet, your heart’s too big for your own good,’ said John. ‘What do you think we’re going to live on if we stay here? You have your own bairns to think about.’ He didn’t sound angry, just weary.

The whole community was weary and bitter. The company had just left them here. The gaffer didn’t even care if they stayed in the houses or not. They were no good to him now, houses or men. There had been no compensation for the widows and orphans, no extra for the men left when the pit closed down. Though the union were fighting for that now it was too late for the folk of Jane Pit. Aye well, thought Big John, bitterness got a man nowhere.

‘Just another week then?’ asked Eliza. She had picked up her own baby and now she began to change the clout on his bottom. She knew it was hopeless, they had to look after their own. And if she starved, her milk would go any road.

‘We’re moving in the morn,’ she said to Peggy a couple of days later as she held little Merry to the breast. ‘I’m that sorry, Peggy. How will you manage?’

‘The Lord only knows,’ said Peggy. She sat down heavily on the cracket that had belonged to Merry’s father. Lance had been so proud of the stool he had made when he first started at the pit. But she couldn’t think about Lance now, not now. She had the living to think of.

‘Eeh, Peggy, I don’t know what to say,’ said Eliza. ‘I’ve got fond of the little lass an’ all.’

‘You have to think of your own,’ said Peggy. She roused herself, forced herself to be pleasant. ‘There’s one thing for sure, we’re not going to the workhouse, not while I have breath in my body. I’ll find work, never you think I won’t. And at least we have a roof over our heads, me and the babby. I was just thinking, any road – I could take in washing couldn’t I? With all the empty houses there’s plenty of space to dry it here. No, no, I reckon I’ll go round the houses, see what I can pick up.’

As soon as Eliza had gone Peggy slung the baby in her shawl and went down to the other end of the rows where Jim Hawthorne had a nanny goat. It was tethered along the track and she’d seen it often – why hadn’t she thought of it before?

‘You just caught me, missus,’ Jim said. He was loading a handcart with his furniture, his young sons struggling to help. His wife sat at the door, looking bewildered, her baby in her arms. Poor Bessie Hawthorne had been a bit strange since the disaster when all of her five brothers had been killed.

‘Where are we going, Jim?’ she kept repeating, and when he patiently told her, ‘but why, Jim?’

Peggy’s heart dropped to her scuffed black boots. ‘I was hoping for goat’s milk for the bairn,’ she said. ‘But if you’re going—’

‘I tell you what missus,’ said Jim. ‘You can have the old nanny goat. I doubt she’ll have another kid and I can’t trek her halfway across the county. She’s nearly past it, man.’

‘I can’t pay for her,’ said Peggy. ‘I’m sorry, lad.’

‘No, you tak’ her, it’s all right. At least I have the family left to me. You need the milk any road. I’m off over to the east of the county, and like I said, old Nannie wouldn’t stand the journey. You’ll soon get the hang of milking her. Howay now, I’ll show you.’ He took a pan from a box on the handcart and strolled over to the goat, Peggy following him with Merry.

‘See now, she’s as gentle as a baby hersel’. Just grab her dugs firmly and squeeze gently like this, you’ll manage.’

Peggy laid the baby down on the grass and did as she was told. It took a few tries but in the end she had a satisfying half-full pan of warm, frothy milk. At the same time she had milk spattered all over her blouse and down her skirt but that was matterless, clothes would wash.

‘I’ll fetch her along to your end for you,’ said Jim. ‘I can spare a few minutes.’

‘Eeh, thanks, Jim, I’ll never forget you,’ said Peggy.

‘Getaway, it was nowt,’ he declared and strode off with a wave of the hand.

Peggy looked about her. Already half the folk had gone, she thought sadly. Whoever would have thought it – a few short weeks ago? She went in and changed the baby’s nappy and laid her in the drawer. The milk she took through to the pantry at the back of the house where it was cool. Outside she could hear the goat bleating so she went out and drew water in a bucket from the pump standing on the end of the rows. The agent had had the pump put in when the union had petitioned for one. After all it was a wet pit and the water, after percolating through the rocky ground, was pure and sweet as spring water.

Outside it was very quiet. A few more families had moved off and some of the windows already looked dark and desolate without their dolly-dyed net curtains, the doorsteps not yellow-stoned for more than a week.

‘I doubt I’ll be on me own,’ she said softly to herself. But where could she go? She put the bucket of water down where Nannie could reach it and watched as the animal drank. It was no good thinking like that, she thought. Any road, she wasn’t on her own, was she? She had Merry and now she had the animal, Nannie. She’d best try to gather some fodder for the beast with winter coming on. She could start that tonight and then tomorrow she would go about outside the village and see if she could get any washing to do.

The afternoon was turning cooler, so she’d best make herself a bite of dinner, she reckoned. Not that she felt hungry but she had to keep her strength up for the sake of the babby. There were carrots and turnips in the garden, Tommy had made sure of that. And she had the heel end of a bit of cheese to flavour them. And maybe, if she got enough milk from Nannie she’d be able to make some cottage cheese with what Merry didn’t want, and flavour it with some of the herbs that grew about the place. There were the gardens of the empty houses an’ all, she thought. There might be some foraging there.

Peggy sighed, she couldn’t fool herself. It was going to be a tight few years ’til the bairn got up a bit. But she couldn’t afford to look further than the winter that was coming on.

Miles Gallagher, agent for a number of collieries in the area, happened to be looking out of the drawing-room window when Peggy, with the baby slung in her shawl from her shoulders, trudged up the drive. She hesitated for a moment and hoisted her bundle a little higher against her breast, then turned to go around the house to the back.

He knew that woman, he thought idly, and racked his brains to remember where he had seen her. Of course, it was at the memorial service for those killed in the explosion at Jane Pit. She was the one who had turned her head and stared levelly at him as he took his place in the front row of the mean little chapel, alongside the manager, Jack Mackay. Jack had been a little uneasy about having the service only a fortnight after the disaster.

‘Supposing they’re not all dead yet?’ he had asked. ‘Supposing there’s an air getting in to them?’

‘Nonsense,’ Miles had replied robustly. ‘Of course they are all gone. An act of God it was.’

It was then he had felt the old woman’s eyes on him; he’d turned and met the direct stare. A feisty one that, he had thought. But his conscience was clear, he had persuaded the owner to give the widows and orphans an average week’s pay to help them get over the first few weeks. What more could anyone do? Mining was a business after all. And the enquiry, such as it was, had not put any blame at the door of the management.

The woman was walking back down the drive now, her head bent, whether over the child or in dejection it was difficult to see. The domestic staff had orders not to give charity to anybody – they couldn’t start that or the house would be besieged by mendicants. Still . . . on impulse, Miles rang for Polly, the parlour maid.

‘Who was that woman with the child, Polly?’ he asked when she answered the bell.

‘Mrs Trent, sir,’ said Polly. ‘She was the one—’

‘Yes, I know who she is,’ said Miles. The one who lost her husband, son and grandson in the accident, he thought. ‘Was she begging?’

‘No, sir. She’s a washerwoman now, sir,’ said Polly. ‘She wanted to know if we had any work for her.’ She kept her voice neutral though she was full of sympathy for Peggy Trent. She had felt terrible when Cook had explained that they did their own washing.

‘I’m good with fine linen, embroidery and such,’ Peggy had said. ‘I used to work in the bishop’s laundry.’

‘A long time ago though, Peggy,’ Cook had said. ‘Thirty years it must be.’

Peggy had nodded. ‘Well, thanks anyway. I’d best be on me way,’ she said and walked back round the house and down the drive.

‘Mrs Trent used to work in the bishop’s laundry,’ Polly said now. ‘She’s good with fine things.’

‘Thank you, that will be all,’ said Miles dismissively. Polly bobbed a curtsey and went back to the kitchen. She’d tried, she told herself, done her best for the woman. In the old days, when Mrs Gallagher was still alive, things had been different. She always did her best for destitute folk. Mr Gallagher was harder.

Normally Miles would have forgotten all about the incident. After all, miners’ widows were ten a penny, weren’t they. But it had put him in mind of Jane Pit. He really ought to go there, and check that the joiners had done their job properly in capping the pit; see if there was anything else that could be salvaged and perhaps used elsewhere. He would ride, he decided. There was no proper road anyway and his hunter, Marcus, could do with the exercise.

That woman, Mrs Trent, was climbing over the stile that led from the fields to the footpath alongside the old waggon way. She climbed stiffly, awkward because she was carrying a baby in her shawl. He pulled Marcus up and waited impatiently for her to get out of his way. Marcus snorted and she looked alarmed for a moment and then, safely over the stile, she stood back. The baby cried suddenly, not loudly but a thin wail. Bittersweet memories rushed back at him – his son Thomas in Mary’s arms on the day he was born. It had been a difficult and prolonged labour and Mary was exhausted. She had lain back against the pillows, her dark hair spread out around her. Her face had been as white as her nightgown and she hadn’t lasted the night through.

‘Come on, woman, get out of my way!’ he barked and the old woman stumbled but managed to keep on her feet. Miles bent down and unfastened the gate by the stile and went through, turning off for Jane Pit, leaving Peggy gazing after him.

There was not much to salvage, he decided. Though there were slates on the roofs of the houses that could be used again, and doors. Most of the houses were empty but there were still one or two occupied. He would tell the colliery joiners to wait a week or two before stripping them – there was plenty of time, he thought. New rows would have to be built at Eden Hope where they were sinking a shaft to Busty seam, but it wouldn’t be working for months yet. Still, they could take the roof slates from the engine house and rip out the iron staircase. Owners liked to see evidence of thrift.

He was mounting his horse to return home, watched by a group of urchins who stared up at him with large eyes and their thumbs deep in their mouths as though they would eat them altogether, when he saw the old woman, Peggy Trent. She came round the top of the rows and trudged down to the end house. She looked careworn; weary to death. The baby had stopped crying and was looking out at its bleak world with large, solemn eyes.

On impulse he trotted up to them.

‘Come to the house tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There will be fine laundry for you to do.’

Now why did he do that? he asked himself as he trotted down the waggon way. He must be going soft. But after all, he hadn’t been satisfied with his dress shirts the last time they had been laundered. Poor Mary used to do them herself when she was alive. No one else could do them as she had.

‘Eeh, thank you, sir,’ said Peggy and her dark eyes lit up as she smiled, and suddenly he realised she wasn’t so old. Her hair had a white streak in it and there were lines at the corner of her eyes and mouth, but she stood upright with the baby in her arms and when she moved off she walked with a spring in her step that he hadn’t detected earlier.

Miles watched for a moment then went on his way. She was probably younger than he was, he reflected. These miners’ wives looked old at forty, it must be the life they led. He forgot about Peggy as he turned his horse and trotted off along the path by the line. He would go to Winton Colliery, he decided. He might as well while he was near. Besides, he wanted a word with the manager there.

She had one customer, Peggy thought as she milked the goat that evening. She leaned her head into Nannie’s rough hide squeezing rhythmically and the warm milk squirted into the pan. Thank God for it, she thought. It provided a lifeline until she managed to get more work. When she had finished she pegged the goat out on a fresh patch of weeds and grass and carried the milk into the house.

Merry was still asleep in her drawer, her thumb stuck firmly in her mouth. Peggy gazed at her for a moment. There was a furrow between the baby’s eyebrows and she smoothed it with her forefinger. Poor little mite, she mused. Poor little orphan. Peggy prayed she would be spared long enough to raise her. God save her from the workhouse.

Moving away, she stirred the fire and put on a small shovelful of coal. Tomorrow she would have to find time to scour the pit heap for pieces. She broke up a crust of bread into a bowl and added a sprinkling of sugar. There was the end of a cinnamon stick in the pantry, she remembered, left over from last Christmas. She would grate a bit on the broily as a treat. Warming a little of the milk she poured it over the bread and the smell of cinnamon rose from it. Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, dwelling on the memories the aroma evoked.

Christmas last, when the family had been all around her, Tommy had brought in holly and ivy and they had garlanded the house. She had made a plum pudding and they had eaten it after the chicken she had got from the farmer up by Coundon in exchange for a day’s turnip snagging. They had potatoes from the garden and sprouts, and a turnip from the farmer’s field; Vera had confided that she had fallen for another baby after all this time.

Suddenly her memories were interrupted by the sound of the baby crying and Peggy was brought back to the present. Her face was wet, she realised, as she put the bowl of broily to keep warm on the hearth and went to attend to Vera’s baby.

‘Aye, well,’ she told the child as she lifted her out of the drawer. ‘You’ll learn, pet. Crying gets you nowt in this life.’ She wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron and brought a clean clout to change the baby’s dripping nappy. Merry had stopped crying almost as though she understood her and was gazing at her grandmother with eyes that were already turning brown.

Peggy rocked her gently. ‘Aye, you’re a bonny bairn,’ she sang softly and with the baby on one arm warmed more milk for her feed. Tomorrow she would have to go to a chemist’s and see if she could get a rubber teat – she already had a medicine bottle that would do. She’d scoured it well under the pump, but for now she would have to spoon the milk into the baby’s mouth.

Three

Peggy opened the door of the little house on the end of the row and the wind howled in. Snow had piled against the door in a solid block but now bits fell inside. She would have to dig a path to where she had Nannie stabled in an empty house opposite. Well, she might as well get started. Bringing the fire shovel from the back kitchen she set to shovelling snow, closing the door behind her as soon as she had enough room. Methodically she worked her way past the frozen pump to the house and finally was able to open the door.

Nannie was lying on the thin pile of straw she had managed to get the animal for bedding. She didn’t move as Peggy went in. Bending, she felt the goat – she was cold, very cold but she was alive. Peggy brought some wisps of hay for her to eat and Nannie chomped on them weakly.

She had to face the fact that she could no longer feed the old goat, Peggy realised. Besides, Nannie had stopped giving milk. The blizzards that had raged for the last few days had cut off the tiny village from the world. In the old days there had been other people and they had helped each other. The boys and young men had made rough snow shoes and clambered up the hill to Coundon or along the line to Winton Colliery. But Peggy and Merry were on their own now, their last neighbours having gone in the autumn.

‘To Auckland, Mrs Trent,’ John Blackburn had told her. ‘I’ve work at Toronto pit. The promise of a house soon an’ all.’ The Blackburns had been the last to go, so now all the houses were empty except for hers.

Well, thank goodness she had bought a stone of flour the last time she had earned two shillings for working as a washerwoman. And she had a little yeast growing in the pantry. She looked at Nannie now, and the old goat looked back at her with trusting eyes before nuzzling in her bedding straw, looking for bits she could eat.

Peggy went back into the house. Merry was sitting up on the bed Peggy had brought into the living room so they could take full advantage of the fire. Not that the fire was very big, she had to use the coal sparingly to spin it out. There was no picking on the slag heap in this weather. The heap was covered in hard snow and the coal beneath was frozen solid too.

‘I’ll get you a bite of breakfast, pet,’ said Peggy. She went into the pantry and inspected the food shelf. There was a small quantity of oatmeal and a tin of condensed milk, already opened and half gone. No meat, no cheese. Of course she knew there wasn’t, but still she stared at the shelves in the forlorn hope she had overlooked something. Peggy’s shoulders sagged and for a moment she felt complete and utter despair. Dear God, the two of them could starve alone in this deserted village. Behind her, she could hear Merry talking and singing to herself as she played with her peg dolly.

Peggy came to a decision. She broke the ice in the water bucket and dipped a small pan in, taking enough water to make gruel for the child. She cooked it on the smoky fire and added condensed milk until it was at least sweet and more palatable. Then she put some on a plate and picked up Merry to feed her. The rest she put back on the hob to keep warm. She would have a spoonful or two herself and the rest would feed the baby later on.

When she had finished feeding the child she made a sort of playpen on the clippie mat with the aid of chairs and the washing line. ‘Sit there, petal,’ she said. ‘Be a good bairn now.’ Merry played happily, banging a spoon on a pan. Thank the Lord she’s a contented bairn, thought Peggy as she took the carving knife from the kitchen drawer and went outside.

Twenty minutes later and she was back. There was blood on her apron and in her hair and on her face but she had done it. Merry had fallen asleep, lying face downwards on the mat with her bottom stuck in the air. Gently, Peggy lifted her and laid her on the bed, careful not to get any blood on the baby. Then she took off her apron, boiled a pan of water and washed her face and hair.

Next door Nannie’s carcase dripped blood from its gaping throat into a battered tin dish.

Miles Gallagher stood at the dining-room window and watched the snow as it came floating down onto the trees and bushes outside. He was restless; fed up with the weather which had kept him from his work for the last three days. He drained his coffee cup and turned to where Edna, the housemaid, was clearing the breakfast table.

‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Tell Cook I won’t be in to lunch.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Edna, glancing involuntarily at the snow through the window and looking surprised.

Miles was soon riding his horse down the drive and out on to the Durham road before taking a small farm road that lay in the lee of a stand of trees and so was sheltered. The farmer had been along here during the morning and some of the snow was trampled down making progress easier. As he went he looked down into the valley, seeing the pithead of Winton Colliery a hazy dark grey through the snow.

The chimney was smoking and a row of coal trucks were going along the waggon way. The work went on unaffected by the weather, he thought. On impulse he turned aside and urged his horse through a field gate and down in the lee of the hedge to Winton.

The fore shift were coming up, the wheel buzzing round as the cage disgorged miners into the yard, their eyes showing white on their black eyes. They shivered as the cold air hit them after the warm temperatures underground and hurried along not speaking for the main part in their rush to get home.

Miles went into the office where the manager sat with a roaring fire behind him. He got to his feet hastily.

‘By, Mr Gallagher, I didn’t expect to see you,’ he said. ‘Were you wanting anything in particular? I sent the figures up—’

‘Morning to you, Watson,’ Miles replied. ‘Sit down, man, I’ve just called in for a minute.’

They discussed a few items of the business over cups of strong tea the manager’s secretary kept hot on the hearth, but Miles soon rose to his feet for he couldn’t leave Marcus too long in this weather, even though he was partially under cover in the overhang of the engine house.

On another impulse he took the path along by the waggon way that led along to Jane Pit, which was already being called Old Pit, thinking he might as well visit Eden Hope while he was about it. Near Winton the path was sparsely covered with snow as it was protected by the huge slag heap to one side, but as he approached Jane Pit Marcus had to stumble through huge drifts that stretched down from the exposed hillside, and on past the waggon way. In the end Miles had to dismount and lead the horse.

He almost turned round and went back but he was close to the deserted village by this time and the snow had begun to come down thick and fast. Marcus could do with a rest, he reckoned. There would be shelter in one of the houses, for the men had not yet begun to strip the roofs of slates, though some of the doors had been removed.

Grateful to get out of the weather, he led Marcus into what had once been a kitchen. It had an iron range that was now red with rust, while the flagged floor was wet and struck cold even through the stout leather of his boots.

‘Godforsaken place,’ he muttered. What on earth had possessed him to ride here anyway? In the back of his mind there had been the thought he could strike out up the field for the Coundon road but that was bloody stupid. And in any case, the ride hadn’t settled the restlessness that bestirred him lately. He carried it with him.

Miles went to the doorway and watched the snow. He glanced back along the line – the trail he and the horse had made was almost obliterated; they would have to go soon. He’d just give Marcus a few more minutes. The horse had found a straggle of weed that had pushed its way up between the flags by the window and was nibbling delicately.

He glanced the other way to where the top of the old water pump stuck out of the snow, the tap with a long icicle hanging from it. It was all a bit eerie he thought, the empty houses with their blank windows looking out onto the snow, some of them with glass in them and some without.

Then he noticed the thin wisp of smoke coming from the end house on the opposite side. Someone was there, someone still living in the house. Even as he realised it, a baby’s cry echoed above the soughing of the wind. Good God, how could anyone survive here?

Miles glanced back at Marcus. He wasn’t going anywhere, he decided, there was nowhere for the horse to go. Pulling his collar up around his ears he set off, picking his way along the track, stumbling through snow that was almost to the top of his knee-high boots. As he approached the door he could hear a woman’s voice singing.

‘Clap your hands for daddy coming down the waggon way, a pocket full of money and a cart load of hay.’

Looking through the window he could see the woman with a child on her knee and the little one was laughing now and clapping her hands to the old tune.

Peggy’s hair hung down her back. It had taken all morning to dry for there was a fairly small fire in the grate and that was covered by a large iron pan in which stew was cooking. There was a rich smell filling the house, which Peggy reckoned smelled like mutton, old ewe in fact. She had found an onion to flavour the stew and added salt.

Poor old Nannie, she thought. ‘But needs must when the devil drives,’ she said aloud. She often found herself talking aloud to herself these days – after all, there was no one else to talk to except the babby.

The knock on the door made her jump, her heart beating wildly. How could anyone be out there when everyone had left and the place was snowed in? For a second or two superstitious fears filled her but then common sense prevailed and she put the baby in the makeshift pen and went to the door. Nevertheless she shouted through it before lifting the sneck.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Let me in, woman! I’m not going to hurt you!’