The Miner’s Girl (27 page)

Kirsty chatted about the carol service they had had at St Anne's, the Church of England, which stood next to the Town Hall.

‘We thought we would pick you up as we were so near,' she said and asked how Benjamin had done and Merry answered normally, saying how beautiful he had sounded singing ‘Away In A Manger'. Kirsty said he should sing it tomorrow for them and she would play the piano for him and by the time they reached the house Benjamin had stopped trembling and was glowing with all the praise.

Merry realised properly then that she and Benjamin were not on their own against the world as she had always been. The Macreadys were so kind and caring and it was
a lovely feeling. A feeling she could not remember having since she was small and there was Gran and Ben and her living in the deserted village of Old Pit.

The next day they were invited to the Macready's house for Christmas dinner. Merry helped Maisie with the cooking and Kirsty wandered in and out of the kitchen getting in the way, but in the end the feast was prepared and was everything Merry had read about but had never been able to afford.

After the Christmas pudding had been flamed and ‘oohed' and ‘aahed' over, with Benjamin's eyes as big as saucers before it was demolished, Kirsty insisted that they sit in the drawing room for a while before the dishes were attended too. There was a decorated Christmas tree such as Merry had never seen except in the magazines in Jos Turner's shop, and crackers and paper hats. And for tea, there were mince pies and cake. But best of all, Kirsty had bought a proper sketchpad for Benjamin and a paint box. Not a small, children's paint box but a large one, with squares of watercolour and a palette and little jars of brilliant colours and assorted brushes.

Benjamin was starry-eyed and reluctant to go next door to the flat when the time came. But he was sleepy and went to bed with little demur.

‘It was grand, Mam, wasn't it grand, Mam?' he said even as his eyes were closing.

Later, sitting by herself in the living room, Merry couldn't settle to the jersey she was knitting for Benjamin. She worked on a few rows then put it aside and wandered over to the window looking out onto Eden Hope below. A moon had risen and the frost on the slate roofs of the houses glinted. There was a ring round the moon and Merry gazed at it, remembering when she and Ben were small. Gran had said they were in for hard weather when that happened. As she was standing there, something flitted across the path outside, a shadow, that was all. She could not tell what it was. She stared out for a few minutes but there was nothing else, no movement at all. Most people were at home celebrating Christmas with their families. It must have been her imagination. Merry sighed and closed the curtains and sat down again by the fire.

She had saved and bought a child's box of watercolours from Turner's shop for Benjamin, giving him it that morning in the stocking he had hung on the mantelpiece for Father Christmas to fill. The nuts and orange and bar of chocolate she had put in the stocking along with the water-colours were all she could afford but she had been so looking forward to seeing Benjamin's face when he saw the paint box. And his face had been a picture, a picture of a small boy trying to hide his disappointment.

Kirsty's gift on the other hand had filled him with joy. It was a real, grown-up set and must have cost a
lot of money in an artist's supply shop in Darlington or Durham City.

All Benjamin's talk now was of Kirsty and the doctor: how Kirsty had shown him how to mix colours properly to get the right shade of green for the fields; how most tree trunks were not really brown but a variety of colours.

‘I'm going to be a painter when I grow up,' he declared. And Dr Macready had taken him fishing in the Wear and he had come home proudly carrying two brown trout.

I'm jealous, Merry thought. Jealous because they can give him more than I can. I should be pleased, and I am in a way, but I'm jealous. At least he's safe here from Robbie Wright and his mother. That is the important thing.

Merry wrapped up her knitting and went to get ready for bed. But once there she lay on her pillow still feeling restless and unable to sleep. Her thoughts wandered to Tom Gallagher, Benjamin's father. Even after all this time she could picture his face vividly in her mind's eye. The thought of him brought a yearning to her, which was silly for hadn't he made it plain that he didn't want her, had never wanted her? Benjamin had been the result of a man and woman being thrown together in a storm and it was plain that he must have regretted it for he had not come near her afterwards. He had probably forgotten all about her.

How could she forget him though, when Benjamin looked so much like him? She had tried to tell herself he looked like her brother and he did, but sometimes, especially as he grew older, she could see Tom's very smile in him, his gestures.

Merry turned over onto her other side and pummelled the pillow. In the night, lying on her own in the dark, the same thoughts returned to her quite often, though she tried to dismiss them as just coincidence. There was no doubt that Tom and her brother Ben had looked alike and now Benjamin too. Could there possibly have been a connection between Ben and Tom? It was a puzzle that had been staring her in the face forever but with all her family gone she had no one to ask, and if Gran had been alive today, could she have asked?

Merry turned again and lay on her back, telling herself she had built all this up in her mind and it was downright silly. Of course there was no connection. She closed her eyes and at last felt herself drifting off into sleep.

Almost the next minute, or so it seemed to her she heard the patter of gravel against her window. Her eyes flew open and she lay perfectly still listening, poised to run to the house to alert the doctor. Was someone trying to break in to the surgery? No, they would not have thrown anything at an upstairs window, of course not.

‘Merry!'

The call was low, so she only just heard it but then it came again. She got out of bed and went to the window, moving only a corner of the curtain to look out. On the moonlit path below there was the figure of a man standing, legs astride and looking up at her. She dropped the curtain. No, it couldn't be, she told herself. But then he called again and this time there was something familiar in the voice.

‘Merry! Let me in, it's me, Ben.'

Ben? A wild hope whirled within her, but no, it couldn't be could it? She had to force herself to open the curtain and look out properly. Ben looked up at her. Oh yes, it was Ben's face and it was Ben's voice – even though it was so many years since she had seen him, it was him.

She didn't think any more, but rushed downstairs, through the surgery and opened the door – and there he was, her brother Ben.

Merry put a Lucifer to the gas mantle that hung from the ceiling in the living room and blinked as light flooded the room. It was all a dream, it had to be, she told herself, and stood absolutely still for a couple of seconds. If she turned she would wake up and she didn't want to wake up from this dream. At last, she did turn and he was still there looking at her with a sort of half smile on his face. She stared at him; he had a deep tan and his hair was lighter than she remembered, bleached almost white.

‘You're taller than you were,' she said stupidly. He laughed and stepped forward, and then she knew that he was real – he was there and she could feel his arms around her as he kissed her on both cheeks before stepping back.

‘It would be a bad job if I wasn't,' he said. ‘I'm a man now, Merry. Aren't you going to ask me to sit down?' His accent was different somehow, his words clipped.

‘Yes. Yes of course, sit down, sit down.' She was gabbling, she thought dimly and sat down herself before she fell down, she felt so strange.

‘Oh Merry, Merry, I've dreamed of this day so many times,' he said as he took a seat in the chair opposite hers.

‘But where have you been?' she suddenly demanded, anger bursting through her elation at seeing him. ‘I thought you were dead! It was cruel, Ben, why did you go?'

‘I didn't just run away, Merry,' he said and the light in his eyes died as he thought about that time when he was a young lad and Miles Gallagher had come upon him in the garden at Old Pit. A rage built up in him as it always did when he allowed himself to recall it. He looked down at his fists, which had curled into balls, the knuckles white.

‘What then? What happened? Ben, I thought you were dead! Dead under that fall of stone in the entrance to the drift up in the woods beyond Old Pit. We searched, Ben. The lads from Eden Hope helped me. I found a rag from your trousers, Ben.' Reaction set in and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Where have you been?' she cried angrily.

‘South Africa,' said Ben. ‘I joined the army when the war began. And after the war I didn't come home with the rest, I worked my way round the world on a tramp steamer.'

‘But why?'

‘He put the fear of God into me,' Ben replied simply. ‘I was only a young lad after all.'

‘Who? Who did that? Why?'

The questions were crowding Merry's brain. All the anguish she had suffered since he went dimming her delight in seeing him again and realising her precious brother was not dead, he was here, real, alive. She rose to her feet and touched him, feeling the warm skin of his hand, his smooth blonde hair. He really was alive. ‘Why?' she demanded again, sharply this time. Surely he could have got in touch, found some way to let her know where he was?

‘I wrote. When I thought it was safe, I wrote. But I only had the address at Old Pit. And I was frightened
he
would find out and he would do something to hurt you. He's an evil man, Merry. He still is. He must not find out I'm back.'

‘Who? Who, Ben?'

‘Miles Gallagher. You know him? The mine agent?' He saw by her face that she did. ‘He hasn't tried to hurt you, has he?' Ben started to his feet but Merry shook her head.

‘No, no, of course he hasn't. Why should he?'

Miles Gallagher, she thought. Tom's father. Dear God, Benjamin's grandfather. Did Ben know about her son, named for him? She couldn't ask, not yet, not now.

‘Ben, I don't understand any of this.'

She had not accepted his death, not at first – after all they hadn't found him. The young miners had dug away at the newest fall in the entrance to the drift mine but they had been unable to shift the hundreds of tons of stone and shale that had fallen before that. Half the hill, it had looked like to her. And when she found the rag there had been the niggling thought that Ben was there, under some of that rubble. Yet without a body there had been hope. Oh, she was so muddled and mixed up.

‘Make a cup of tea, lass, will you? I haven't had a decent cup of tea for I don't know how long.' Ben sounded weary and no wonder. Merry made the tea and came back to him. He was sprawled back in the chair, his legs stretched out, to the fire, his eyes closed. He looked so tired and so young though of course he was only a couple of years younger than she was. She had always felt older though, always looked after him when he was small. She felt a rush of tenderness towards him.

He heard her footsteps and opened his eyes and sat up. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I've been living at Old Pit. Hiding out really. ‘ She handed him a pint pot of tea and he took a long swallow. ‘Thanks, pet, I needed that. I only light a fire at night in case someone seems the smoke.'

‘Tell me what happened that day at least,' she said.

Ben sat back and allowed himself to remember the day the man he found out later was Miles Gallagher
had found him in the garden at Old Pit. The details were fixed firmly in his mind. He'd been apprehensive at first and his instincts had been right, he thought bitterly. Then when the man had said he would take him a ride on his horse he had reckoned he might not be so bad after all. But at the ventilation shaft along by the woods he had been scared. For a minute he had thought the man would tip him into the shaft and he was terrified of falling into the darkness below. He would never get out, Merry would never know where he had gone.

Ben remembered falling, then nothing until he woke up – he was on a ship with other boys and they told him they were going to South Africa to become farmers. The other boys were all orphans, or so Harry told him. Harry was the boy in the next bunk to him in the stifling place between decks where they slept and spent a lot of their time. They were allowed on the lower deck once a day for an hour in the afternoon, emerging pale and blinking into the sunshine or shivering in the wind and rain.

‘I'm going to be rich,' Harry asserted. ‘Father Donovan said if we work hard and save our money we will be able to buy our own farms, they're dirt cheap there.'

Every day the ship's captain came to see Ben. He and another man would look at the wound on Ben's head and ask how he was.

‘How did I get here?' Ben asked. His head ached and ached and he couldn't think straight. (‘My brain felt scrambled,' he told Merry as he sat nursing his pot of tea in the snug room over the surgery.)

‘Never you mind,' said the captain. He looked at the man with him who was a doctor, or so Harry told Ben. ‘You're very lucky you're going out to a fine life in the colonies. A rich man you'll be, the lads at home will be jealous as hell.'

There was only Merry, he had to write to Merry as soon as he got to wherever he was going. Then he had to find his way back to Old Pit because Merry couldn't manage without him.

Ben told his tale in a quiet monotonous voice but there was a suppressed anger beneath it; Merry could sense it. Now he went quiet, staring into his pot of tea.

‘I was past myself with worry about you,' said Merry. ‘That wicked, wicked man. But why? Why did he do it?'

‘That I don't know. What I do know is that when we landed the captain handed me an envelope with a note inside. It was from him, I knew, though it wasn't signed. And he said that if I did come back or tell anyone it would be you who would suffer.'