Above the Harvest Moon (24 page)
Privately Jake thought Lily Hopkins would be getting the worst of the deal and if it hadn’t been for Hannah’s distress he would have been shouting for joy she was rid of Adam. Knowing how much Joe thought of his older brother he didn’t voice this, saying instead, ‘No change with the lockout then?’
Joe shook his head. ‘Things are really bad. And what makes it worse is that the rest of the world is going along on its own sweet way. Nobody’s interested in the dispute any more, it’s gone on too long. They’ve got coal coming in from abroad and for them coal is coal. They don’t care if it comes from our old enemy the Germans or Timbuktu. There’s bairns in rags with no shoes on their feet, pigeons have been let go, hens have stopped laying and been eaten and even the bairns’ pet rabbits have gone the same way. I tell you it’s as bad as it could get, man.’
Jake shook his head. He had feared things would come to this but he would gladly have been proved wrong, if only for his mam’s sake. He nodded to the sack and basket. ‘There’s some bits to take with you when you go.’
‘Thanks, man. Mam’ll be grateful. That last lot of logs you dropped off a couple of weeks ago has nearly gone.’
Jake took the hint. ‘I’ll bring some more this week. Tell her, would you?’
‘Aye, I’ll do that, Jake. I tell you, every last speck of coal has long since gone from the tips. Most folk have got nothing to make a fire with. No heat to warm the house, no hot water, not even to make a cup of tea with. Amy Stamp who was, her who lives across the road with her mam and married that lad, Ivor Hutton, you know?’ Jake nodded. ‘She lost her latest a couple of nights ago. A week old it was and it froze to death, according to the quack. Word is they were so on their uppers the bairn had blankets made out of old newspapers. Mam said she’d have had it in our house if she’d known. But folk don’t say, see? They all soldier on.’
Joe raised his eyes and looked at his half-brother. ‘And the thing is, Jake, the thing that eats me up . . .’ He stopped, shaking his head and biting his bottom lip which was trembling.
‘What, man? What is it?’
‘In spite of all the misery and suffering and hatred, I’m glad the lockout’s lasted like it has.’ He gulped deeply. ‘I’m scared to death about going back down, Jake. I don’t know how I’m going to stand it. I’m having nightmares every night, I feel I’m going mad—’
‘You’re not going mad.’ Jake looked into the young face. He was very fond of Joe, half-brothers though they were. Even Naomi had more than a bit of her da in her but Joe was all their mam. ‘And if it helps, I know how you feel. I only went down once, when I was a lad of nine or thereabouts.Your da thought it a bright idea but as that cage descended, it was like going into hell. According to your da I made a fool of him by being sick and then passing out in the tunnel. He’d got special permission from the gaffer to let me see what was what. Well, I saw what was what and I’d have topped myself before I went down again.’
‘Mam never said.’
‘She doesn’t know. It was your da’s idea and I was bad for a week after with the skitters but he said he’d beat the life out of me if I told so I never did.’
‘Why did he make you?’
Jake could have said,‘Because he’s always been jealous of the love Mam’s had for me, me being someone else’s son, and he’s got a nasty streak the size of Wearmouth Bridge running through the centre of him.’ But he didn’t. Instead he shrugged. ‘Trying to toughen me up maybe? I don’t know. The point is I know how you feel and you don’t have to go down again. I said I’d find you work here in the first month of the lockout, didn’t I? And the offer still stands. It’s up to you. Like I said, you’d have to board with Clara and Frank but they’re a nice old couple and she’d be tickled pink to have someone other than Frank to fuss over. I know you wouldn’t want to leave Mam’s—’
‘It’s not that, I wouldn’t mind that. It’s . . .’
‘Adam.’
‘And Da. They’re . . . Well, you know how they are.’
Aye, he knew how they were all right. The pair of them wouldn’t lift a finger if he was drowning except to push him further under but they ate the food he sent each week and warmed themselves by the fire his logs and coal kept going. He bit back on the hot anger, looking at Joe’s unhappy face for a long moment before he was able to say, ‘Well, it’s up to you, lad. All I’d say is if you really think you can’t go down again, the time to make a move is before the lockout ends. That way you’ve the excuse that you’re earning money for the rest of them if nowt else. Of course farm work might not be for you—’
‘It would be. It is. I don’t care how hard I’d have to work, you know that, if I was up top breathing the fresh air with the wind and rain and sun on me face.’
‘I don’t know so much about the fresh air, not near the pigsties or when the cattle are mucked out in the winter.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Aye, he knew what Joe meant. Jake’s expression was soft, his tone warm, when he said, ‘You turned eighteen this summer. Maybe it’s time to do what you want to do rather than what pleases Adam or your da. It’s your life, Joe.’
‘Aye, I’ve been thinking along those lines since you first offered me a job, to be truthful. And now this latest with Adam and Lily . . . It’s stuck in me craw, Jake, if you want to know. I tried to warn him he’d lose Hannah if he carried on but he just laughed at me, took the mickey because I hadn’t had a girl.You know.’ Joe looked at his hands, his face burning, as though the admission was shameful.
Took the mickey because he hadn’t had a girl, and Joe only eighteen. Jake shook his head. Wouldn’t Adam split his sides if he knew that he, at thirty, was in the same boat. Oft times he’d considered visiting one of the numerous bawdy houses down by the docks when he was in town, but something in him had been repelled by going where umpteen other men had gone. Seamus had said in the past that he didn’t give a lass a chance, that it was his manner rather than his face that kept them at a distance and he was probably right. Certainly there had been the odd one or two who’d made it plain they were game if he was but he hadn’t been drawn to any of them. Eliza Dobson for instance. She was neither plain nor pretty and her figure was good, but that simpering way she had was beyond irritating. And so he chastised his flesh with hard gallops on his hunter and physical work, leaving the farmhouse when everyone was asleep some nights and walking for hours to do away with the burning in his loins.
‘Jake.’ Joe brought his attention back to the present. ‘There would be all hell let loose if I came. Are you prepared for that?’
‘Me?’ Jake smiled. ‘It won’t affect me one way or the other, believe me. I shall still go and see Mam when I want to, I assure you, and that’s who I’m concerned about. The rest of them,’ he shrugged, ‘I can take them or leave them, to be truthful, Joe. Naomi will still come and see Hannah if I know anything about it.’
Joe nodded. ‘She’s tougher than she looks.’
‘Anyway, think about it.’
‘I’ve thought. I can’t go back down, that’s the bottom line. I - I’ll tell them tonight. With all that’s happening with Adam and Lily, it might, well, deflect things from me a bit.’
‘You’re not as daft as you look.’
‘Just as well, eh?’ Joe returned smartly and they both laughed just as Hannah came into the kitchen.
She looked at them. She had spent the last fifteen minutes standing at her bedroom window fighting the urge to give way to the storm of tears in her breast, knowing once she started she wouldn’t be able to stop for a long time. She felt hurt, so hurt, and humiliated and stupid, and here were these two, who’d she’d thought were her friends, laughing. They cared that little about how she was feeling. Her head drooping, the urge to cry was back tenfold but then a stern voice within her said, ‘None of that, don’t give him or them the satisfaction.’
‘Joe has just told me he’s going to come and start work on the farm.’
Whether Jake had guessed how their laughter had affected her, Hannah didn’t know, but his voice was gentle, so gentle it nearly undermined all she had just told herself.
‘Good news in the midst of bad,’ he continued softly, ‘don’t you think?’
‘Yes, oh yes.’ Genuinely pleased, Hannah smiled at Joe before walking across to the range and moving the big black kettle deeper into the fire to bring the water to the boil for the tea she had mentioned earlier. Turning, she said, ‘I’m so glad, Joe. It’s right for you, I know it is.’
‘Aye, I think so.’ Joe looked as though he had had a weight taken off his shoulders, and this was confirmed in the next moment when he said on a note of surprise, ‘I feel different now I’ve made up me mind. I should have done it weeks ago.’
‘Well, you’ve done it now.’ She poured hot water into the teapot and brought it to the table along with four cups and saucers. When the tea was mashed she poured it out, pushing the milk and sugar towards Joe along with a huge piece of cake. Then she made up a tray for Seamus who had gone to lie down in his room a short while ago, saying he felt like a nap.
Jake offered to take the tray and when he had left the kitchen, Joe swallowed a mouthful of cake and said quietly,‘Mam’s beside herself at our Adam, Hannah. She thinks the world of you, you know. She’s called him every name under the sun and so has Naomi.’
Slightly mollified, Hannah took a sip of her tea. ‘I hate him,’ she said flatly. ‘You can tell him that when you see him.’
‘Me mam said he hadn’t the gumption to recognise a rose on a dung heap.’
‘Did she?’ Rose’s support was warming. She had missed Naomi’s mother more than she would have thought possible since she had come to the farm.
‘Even Da said Adam wanted knocking into next weekend and he’s always on Adam’s side no matter what. But not over this. They think he’s barmy.’
‘What’s she like, this Lily Hopkins?’
‘Brazen,’ Joe said promptly. ‘She’s been after Adam for ages, ever since he finished with her before.’
‘He went out with her before?’ Hannah didn’t know why but this made everything worse. ‘What does she look like?’
‘She’s all right.’ Joe looked longingly at the cake. ‘Ordinary. Not a patch on you.’
Hannah cut him another big piece of cake and watched him while he ate it. ‘On second thoughts, Joe, don’t say I hate him. Say it didn’t bother me a bit, that - that I was out walking with Daniel Osborne when you left and you heard us laughing. Say that.’
Joe stared at her, a little bewildered. ‘Aye, all right.’
She wasn’t going to let Adam see that he had broken her heart, she would rather die. Her chin rose with her thoughts. He could have this Lily Hopkins and if she ever saw them out she would smile and chat as though he had never meant a thing to her. She would show him. Him and his piecrust promises.
Jake came back within a few minutes. He shook his head and said, ‘He’s not well, he does far too much. The doctor told him to slow down months ago but you can’t tell him anything. Don’t say I let on though.’
The three of them sat and chatted about this and that for an hour or so, Hannah forcing herself to appear natural and unconcerned about Adam’s betrayal in front of Joe and Jake. For once she was relieved when Joe stood up to go. She gathered up the last of the seed cake and put it in the basket with the eggs and butter, saying, ‘Are you sure you can manage the sack and basket by yourself ? It’s a long walk home.’
‘Lass, I’d walk ten times as long for what’s in them.’
They both accompanied Joe to the end of the lane, waving until he’d disappeared out of sight. Hannah stared after him. She wouldn’t see Adam walking down there again. Adam. Oh, Adam, Adam. The pain in her heart was so bad she didn’t know what to do with herself.
‘You were great.’ Jake’s voice was very deep and very soft at the side of her. She glanced at him and what she saw in the handsome marred face caused the dam to break. Shaking with sobs she made no protest when he took her in his arms, holding her against his massive chest as she cried and cried while he made soothing noises above her head. His tweed jacket smelt of pipe smoke. It was comforting, as was the warmth of another human body.
It was a long time before she could pull herself together sufficiently to raise her head, and then a large white handkerchief was pushed into her hand. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, pushed a few damp wisps of hair from her face before managing a wobbly smile. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’
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