The Miner’s Girl Read Free Page A

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 theroad 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 theycould 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