The Miner’s Girl Read Free

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 shehad 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 werebunched 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