The Miner’s Girl (14 page)

‘Do you think we can't manage to get you down to Winton then?' Davey asked. ‘Were you expecting someone else?'

‘No, no, I'm ever so grateful to you both for coming to help me.'

‘Well, we can manage you fine. We've got the maintenance cart on the end of the waggon way, and a nice blanket to keep you snug.' Robbie knelt down beside her and looked her over. ‘Your leg, is it? Your ankle, eh? You'll see, we'll manage fine.'

They did, of course, wrapping her up in the coat and making a chair with their hands to carry her between them to the cart, where they covered her with the blanket and the oilskin on top.

When they finally reached the pit yard at Winton Colliery the snow had stopped and the sky cleared. The moonlight created an eerily beautiful landscape with the slag heap covered in snow like an Alpine mountain towering by the side and the winding wheel whirring above them. The cage came to bank and decanted the men from the heat of the mine to the icy cold of the north wind blowing through the yard; they stood for a moment shivering as long drags were taken on the first pipes lit after ten hours, and men coughed deeply before heading home.

It was all like a dream to Merry as she lay on the maintenance waggon. But she had to sit up now, shrug off her weariness and decide where she was going to go and how she was going to get there. There was no possible way for her to get back to Oaklands tonight. Robbie was before her, however.

‘You canna go back the night. You'd best come to me mam's,' he said. ‘Me and Davey will take you there. You can sleep in our Mona's bed.'

‘Mona might not like it,' said Merry.

‘She's nowt but a bairn, so she'll do as she's told,' Robbie asserted. ‘Howay, Davey, give us a hand here.'

Davey opened his mouth to say something – he was tired and wet and wanted his supper and had had quite enough of tonight's adventure.

‘It's a working day the morn,' he muttered.

‘What? Did you say summat?' asked Robbie, giving his friend a hard stare.

‘Nay. I said nowt,' said Davey and held out his hands to make a cradle with Robbie's.

‘You understand, Dr Macready, the lad was caught out in the snowstorm last night. I'm a little worried about him; this morning he seems to have a fever. He should have had more sense than to go out on call to a panel patient in such atrocious weather. There was probably nothing much the matter with her anyway. You know what they're like.'

Dr Macready grunted, a sound that could have meant anything. He thought of the family he had just left – four children down with whooping cough, two of them frail and unlikely to survive. But there was no point in fighting the prejudices of men like the mine agent who seemed to be permanently at war with the workforce.

‘I tell you plainly, I wanted Tom to take a private practice in the town,' Miles went on. ‘What future is there in practising in a place like Winton Colliery?'

‘There is the satisfaction of helping people who need it,' said Dr Macready, who had never been in a position to buy into a private practice and didn't want to in any case.

‘If I could see my young colleague?' The doctor grasped his black leather bag and turned to the stairs. ‘I have a surgery in half an hour.'

‘They'll wait,' said Miles but he led the way up the staircase to Tom's room. Polly had been sitting by the bed but now she rose to her feet hurriedly and bobbed a curtsey.

Tom appeared to have been dozing but when the two men came into the room he came awake. His face was flushed and his eyes bright; a pulse beat at his temple, fluttering.

‘Perhaps you will help me, my dear,' the doctor said to Polly and she stepped forward to unbutton Tom's nightshirt so that Dr Macready could examine him. He took his time, making a thorough examination, then he smiled at Polly. ‘Cover him up, my dear,' he said. ‘Thank you.'

‘You don't have to tell me, Doctor,' Tom said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘I can feel it.'

‘Rest easy, Doctor,' Macready replied. ‘You have nothing to do but get well. You know the importance of rest as well as I do.' He motioned to Miles who had been standing silently by, almost as shocked by the deteriorisation he saw in Tom as he had been by the appearance of his son late the evening before. He followed the doctor out of the room.

‘How do you find him, Doctor? You should have been here sooner! But the weather, we couldn't get hold of you—'

‘I don't think a few hours delay would make a great deal of difference,' Macready interrupted. ‘You did the
right thing, putting him straight to bed and keeping him warm. I got here as soon as I could.' In fact he had been up all night, first with a difficult birth and then the children with whooping cough. These he hoped to get into Oaklands today if the roads were clear enough for the horse ambulance – then, perhaps, he would be able to snatch a few hours sleep this afternoon. Except that Tom's surgery would have to be attended now as well as his own.

‘He has acute double pneumonia and will have to have professional nursing,' the doctor said now. ‘I can arrange for that if you wish; a day and a night nurse is essential. I won't hide the fact that the crisis could go either way when it comes.' Miles paled and Dr Macready looked at him keenly. ‘Sit down man, you've had a shock. I assure you I'll do my best for him, apart from his being a friend of mine he is a very good doctor and we can't afford to lose anyone of his calibre. But with poulticing and the right treatment . . .' He let the sentence trail off.

Miles had recovered himself and now rose to his feet.

‘Thank you Doctor, I'm sure you will. I'll let you go now, I'm sure you need to get on with it.' He led the way to the door, his attitude plainly saying waste no more time. After Macready had gone, he stood in the hall for a moment, biting his lip. Briefly he thought of the other one – was he being paid back for his treatment
of
him
? Miles shook his head, dismissing the thought. It was stupid; he didn't believe in such things. He climbed the stairs to Tom's room. The lad would recover – why shouldn't he? He would have the best treatment he could possibly get.

Merry was laid on the horsehair settee in the corner of the Wrights' kitchen. Apart from the fact that her ankle throbbed and the horsehair pricked her legs through her thin skirt, she was desperately uncomfortable.

Mrs Wright didn't want her there; she made that fact obvious having said hardly anything to her since Robbie and Davey brought her in.

‘Merry lives at Oaklands,' Robbie had explained to his mother. ‘She can't get home tonight, not when she can't walk. I knew you wouldn't mind if I brought her here, Mam.'

Mrs Wright didn't answer, nor did she smile a welcome. She simply stared at the girl so that embarrassment filled Merry. She considered asking Robbie to take her to the Hawthornes, for surely they wouldn't turn her out. But Robbie was taking off his pit boots and stretching his legs out on the fender towards the fire. She couldn't ask him to go out again.

Doris Wright lifted the heavy iron kettle from the fire and mashed the tea in her large brown pot with the cracked lid. When it was brewed she poured tea into
a pint pot and added three sugars before handing it to Robbie. Robbie glanced up at her.

‘Give Merry a cup of tea, Mam,' he said mildly. He winked at Merry and said by way of excusing his mother, ‘She always thinks of me and Da first, like.'

His mother poured a cup of tea and added a spoonful of condensed milk and took it over to the girl. ‘What sort of a name is Merry, then?' she asked as she held it out.

‘It's short for Miranda. My gran said it was her mother's name,' said Merry. ‘Thank you for the tea.' She took a sip of the dark-brown liquid, which was hot and sickly sweet.

‘It sounds daft to me,' said Doris. She looked at her son and back at the girl. Merry could almost see what was going through her mind. Mrs Wright thought Merry was setting her cap at her only son and she didn't like it.

‘We can't help our names, Mam,' said Robbie. He smiled at Merry. ‘How does your ankle feel now, lass?'

‘Not so bad,' said Merry, though in truth the pain from it was making her feel sick. She was beginning to think a bone was broken and if it was, what would she do? Already Sister thought she wasn't reliable, coming on to the ward tired and late because she had been out looking for Ben.

The thought of Ben brought it all back – finding the piece of cloth yesterday in the entrance of that ancient drift mine.

‘What's up?'

Robbie had been watching her and noticed immediately when her expression changed to one of distress. ‘Is it worse? Should I go and get the doctor?'

‘Don't be so bloody daft, man,' said his mother. ‘Dr Gallagher would be spitting blood if you called him out on a night like this just 'cause a lass has sprained her ankle.'

Something stopped Merry from saying the doctor had already seen her ankle. ‘No,' she said, ‘I was just remembering –' how could it ever have slipped from her mind? ‘– I was up in the woods looking to see if I could see any sign of where Ben had gone and I found this.' She pulled the square of cloth from her pocket.

‘What's that?'

‘It's a patch from Ben's trousers.'

‘Where did you find it?' Robbie leaned forward to get a good look at the piece of cloth. ‘We were all over there when we were looking for the lad.'

‘In the entrance of an old drift mine.'

‘Eeh, I didn't know there was one there.'

‘Yes. Up by that rock overhang, behind the bushes. The entrance is all overgrown but if you look hard enough you can see it. It was covered with wooden planks at one time but they've rotted away. And so has one or two pit props from just inside. There's been a fall of stone there, where the pit props have fallen.'

Merry began to cry, suddenly overwhelmed by everything – the realisation that Ben was probably under the rubble in that forsaken mine entrance; that she had forgotten him because she herself had a bit of pain from a sprained ankle. She had even acted like a loose woman with Dr Gallagher, letting him do what he liked. The inside of her thighs and her knickers still felt wet with it. And Ben lying there under the rubble unheeded. She was bitterly ashamed of herself.

Robbie walked over to her and knelt beside her. ‘Never mind, lass, I'll get the doctor the morn when I get back from the pit. I have to go in a minute, I'm on fore shift, but I'll go for him, I promise. And me mam will look after you, won't you, Mam?'

He patted her head clumsily and offered her a grimy handkerchief. ‘You'll be all right, Merry, I'll look after you. See if I don't.'

Robbie was absorbed in her and so didn't see his mother's expression as she stood behind him, but Merry did. Doris Wright was spitting fire, and looked as though she was ready to consign Merry to the flames of hell or at least throw her out of the house into the snow. But she said nothing, at least, not in words, though her gaze at the girl was full of hate and spoke volumes.

The letter was addressed to Merry at the house on the end of Middle Row, the Wrights' house, for she was still there. It was signed by the Clerk to the Guardians and
it was from the Wrights' house that she had written to the Board two days before, explaining her absence from the wards.

She stared at it in disbelief. It just couldn't be true; it must be some nasty prank being played on her. How could she help it if she had broken her ankle? For that was what was wrong with it, Dr Macready had told her, when he put it in a splint of gutta-percha bound with a flannel bandage.

‘It should heal quickly if you don't put any weight on it, lassie,' he had told her. ‘Come to see me in a month's time at the surgery. It's not a bad break, I'm sure.' In fact he was not entirely sure it was broken at all but in such cases he considered it best to treat a suspected break like an obvious one.

Merry hardly believed it was broken, preferring to believe Dr Gallagher who had said the night it happened that he didn't think it was broken at all, but was merely sprained. Tom Gallagher – the thought of him made her tingle. She couldn't think of him, not now.

‘Are you sure it's broken, Doctor?' she had asked Dr Macready anxiously. He had frowned blackly and Merry had blushed – it was an impertinence to question a doctor's judgement. Yet her time working at the workhouse hospital had taught her that doctors did not always know as much as ordinary people thought . . . though she trusted Dr Gallagher.

Hurriedly Merry got to her feet with the aid of a sweeping brush with a clean duster over the bristles; it made a reasonable crutch. She limped over to the table and began to clear the dirty crockery left there since breakfast into an enamel bowl. Every time she saw the frowning disapproval of Robbie's mother she felt she ought to be trying to find somewhere else to live – anywhere – a spare corner out of everyone's way where she could wait until she could walk on her damaged ankle.

Now she hopped to the fireplace, lifted the kettle and poured hot water over the pots. She added soda and a grating of coarse yellow soap, and began to wash up, standing on one foot and bending the other leg so that she was supporting it on a chair.