The Black Mountains Read online

  She nodded. “I wish you would Rector,” she said with a touch of her old dry humour. “He’s more likely to listen to you than to me.”

  The Rector looked at her, seeing a woman who was handsome still despite the lines that lack of sleep had etched on her face, and whose spirit and determination might sometimes be dimmed by despair, but never quenched. He saw a woman who would fight for her own with every last ounce of her strength, and he was filled with an admiration that momentarily humbled him.

  THREE WEEKS LATER, Hillsbridge was buzzing with news of another accident.

  “You’ll never guess who’s dead!” Peggy Yelling said, coming into Charlotte’s kitchen.

  Charlotte, who was just sponging Amy’s face and hands, looked up and smiled briefly.

  “Oh, hello, Peg. Who is it then?”

  “The Rector!” Peggy told her. “And quite a to-do it’s caused too!”

  “Oh, my Lord! Was it his heart?” Charlotte asked, remembering the Rector’s complaints about his health when he had visited her earlier.

  “Oh, it sounds like it.” Peggy bent to restrain Harry from tipping the contents of her bag on to the floor. “But wait till you hear the story. There was a horse and trap stopped up in the hill by Fords the drapers, and one of those newfangled motors came through. You know the noise they make, spluttering away, especially on the hills! Well, it frightened the horse and it ran away.”

  Charlotte patted Amy’s face dry. “Oh, I say! Blooming motors! But where does the Rector come in?”

  “He was down on the pavement outside the Rectory when he heard it coming,” Peggy went on, full of her story. “ From what I hear, he went to try and stop it. But it was too much for his heart. He collapsed, right there in the street. And by the time they got a doctor to him, he was gone.”

  “Poor man,” Charlotte said. “ Whatever will his wife do?”

  Peggy sniffed loudly. “She’ll have to leave the Rectory, of course. But I can’t see her leaving Hillsbridge, can you? She enjoys her little bit of power too much. While she’s here, she’s still the Rector’s wife.”

  Charlotte nodded, her heart sinking. For a glorious moment she had seen herself free from the fear that haunted her, of Caroline Archer telling what she knew—or might know.

  “What happened to the horse, Mrs Yelling?” Amy asked.

  Peggy smiled at the honey-coloured curls, which was all she could see now Amy was lying down again.

  “Oh, it kept going until it got tired, I reckon. And with having to go up a hill again, it wouldn’t be long, would it, my lamb?”

  “Well, well, poor man,” Charlotte said again.

  And it was only after Peggy had gone that she realized just what his death would mean to her—no more wages, and, after all, no Hardlake Trust. Unless he had already done something about it. But the Reverend Andrew Archer, whatever his good intentions, had always been one for putting things off to the last possible moment. Only his death, it seemed, had been premature.

  Chapter Four

  Through the autumn and winter the Hall household seemed to revolve around Amy.

  For thirteen weeks she had to lie on her stomach, although when the crisis point had passed, Dr Scott agreed that James could carry her upstairs to her own bed at night and down again in the morning. Her sofa became the focal point for the family, who never left her side for more than a few minutes.

  Dolly came down from Captain Fish’s whenever she could to sit with her sister, and the older boys saved all their loose change to buy small presents to cheer her up—a jar of bull’s-eyes, a book of rhymes, a small china figurine of a shepherdess. James set aside an hour every night to sit with her, holding her hand and telling her the stories she loved to hear of when he had been a boy; even Harry and Nipper came to see her often, Harry pulling himself up to look at her over the arm of the sofa and Nipper licking her hand.

  As for Jack, no matter how many times Charlotte told him he was not to blame for what had happened, he was still wretched with guilt, and every moment he could spare from his studying he spent with her, reading to her and letting her help him sort out the cuttings for his scrap book on aeroplanes and Charlotte’s on the Royal Family. Then, when she was well enough, he took her out every afternoon in Harry’s push-chair. She would have to be taught to walk again, Dr Scott had said, but for the moment the push-chair was the best way to get her out of the house and put some colour in her cheeks.

  “Give it a miss today. She’s already been out with me this morning,” Charlotte said to Jack on more than one occasion, but he only smiled.

  “Amy wants to go again, don’t you?” he said, and Amy nodded, looking at him with such adoration in her eyes that Charlotte was both touched and amused. Amy idolized Jack. She always had done. But he was no longer her only hero. The other was Dr Scott.

  From the beginning Oliver Scott had talked to her in the same serious way he talked to adults, and that had made her feel very grown-up. But more importantly, he winked at her and chucked her under the chin with a “That’s my girl!” when he finished changing her dressings. Soon she had begun to look forward to his visits, even if they did mean a few minutes’ agony, and lying on her stomach, her eyes tightly closed, she imagined what it would be like to one day be his wife.

  “He’ll wait for me, I know he will!” she thought, choosing to ignore the fact that as she was only nine years old and he would have to wait a very long time.

  By Christmas she was so much better that he only visited once or twice a week, and Amy missed him. She was bored and miserable, and she cried a lot, losing her patience with everything and everyone, even Jack.

  “I wish my back was really bad again—you were all much nicer to me then,” she grizzled one dark, December day.

  “Don’t be so silly. You’ve forgot just what it was like or you wouldn’t say that,” Charlotte told her sharply.

  “I haven’t. At least Dr Scott used to come and see me,” she went on, her voice muffled by the cushion. “ He’s forgot all about me now. He doesn’t care any more.”

  Charlotte stood for a moment, hesitating. What Amy did not know was that last time he had come, Oliver Scott had brought with him a large brown paper parcel and asked her to give it to Amy at Christmas. At this very moment it was hidden away in her ‘corner’—the magical place behind her dressing-table which was always reserved for surprises. To give it to Amy now would be to cheat, but Charlotte could not help thinking it might be just the thing to cheer her up. And this Christmas there would most likely be quite a few treats for her over and above the usual oranges, apples, and a small toy, even though money was tighter than usual.

  “Dr Scott hasn’t forgot you at all,” she said, making up her mind. “ I’ve got something upstairs that he brought for you.”

  Amy’s face brightened. “Oh, what is it? Can I have it?”

  “I’ll get it,” Charlotte said. “ But don’t think I’m going to make a habit of giving you Christmas presents early. And what Dr Scott’s going to say, I don’t know.”

  She went up and got the parcel and gave it to Amy, smiling at the child’s delight. It was good to see her happy—and she sent up a prayer of thankfulness that Amy was alive and able to share Christmas with them.

  “Can I open it, Mammy?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Yes, go on,” Charlotte told her, and then watched, pleased, as Amy unwrapped the parcel to disclose a large, cuddly toy bear.

  “Oh, it’s a Teddy!” she cried. “And look, here’s some butterscotch, too! A whole pound!”

  It was almost too much to believe. Teddy bears were the most up-to-date of toys, and sweets generally came in ounces, not pounds.

  “If you aren’t a lucky girl, then tell me!” Charlotte said. “And look, he’s put a card in with it. Shall I read you what it says? “ For the bravest little girl I ever met.” That’s you, Amy.”

  “Yes,” she said, laying back down to rest, the Teddy bear tucked under one arm and the butterscotch clasped in
her other hand.

  Through the long weeks that followed, they were her special treasures. The bear was not to be removed from her sight, and the butterscotch was nibbled at, only as a treat.

  “I want it to last forever,” she said, when Harry came bothering her for a piece. “He can have anything else, I don’t mind what it is, but not my butterscotch.”

  And Charlotte, smiling, understood.

  CAROLINE ARCHER moved out of the Rectory at the beginning of March.

  Although a new Rector had arrived in the autumn—a pleasant-faced bachelor named Reuben Clarke—she had persuaded him to let her remain in residence until she had completed negotiations for a pretty, honeysuckle-covered cottage in the shadow of the church.

  On the day she moved, Charlotte had let Amy walk down to the shops for the first time, taking Harry’s push-chair to bring her back up the hill again. They stood talking to Mercy Brixey, Redvers’ mother, while idly watching the crates and boxes coming down the drive to be stacked in the waiting removal wagon.

  “Poor soul, she’s going to miss it all, isn’t she?” Mercy said sympathetically, but Charlotte did not agree. She thought it would be a miracle if Caroline Archer gave up anything but the house. Already she had made it plain she intended to continue running the Mothers Union, the Christmas Bazaar and the summer garden party, and as long as she stayed in the town, she would be ‘the Rector’s wife’ to the people of Hillsbridge.

  It was her good fortune that Mr Clarke was a single man, and Charlotte wondered with some amusement what would have happened if he had had a wife. But instead he had a housekeeper, young and pretty enough to make tongues wag behind his back. And what went on behind closed doors at the Rectory was a subject for ribald speculation amongst the men at the Miners Arms.

  A few weeks after Caroline Archer moved out of the Rectory, however, the people of Hillsbridge had other, more important things on their minds than the morals of their new spiritual leader. The pits came out on strike for better wages, and soon it was affecting them all.

  The Halls, of course, already missing Charlotte’s money from the Rectory, felt the pinch almost at once. Although James was a full union member and able to draw ten shillings a week strike pay, the boys were only half members, which meant they only got five shillings each. With the town strangely silent, the peace disturbed only by school bells instead of the usual orchestra of sirens and hooters, the miners gathered on the County Bridge between the railway lines to chat, and played endless games of billiards in the games room at the Victoria Hall, the town’s magnificent community centre.

  But by the time the third week of the strike came and went with no sign of a settlement, tempers were beginning to fray.

  “Tis all very well, but we don’t seem to be getting nowhere,” Moses Brimble remarked one day to a crowd of his companions as they squatted against the wall outside the Miners Arms. “ Here we are, not asking for half nor quarter what they’m asking for in Yorkshire and South Wales, and yet they won’t settle with us.”

  “Well, we’m sticking together now, ain’t we?” Walter Clements said.

  Moses snorted. “Sinking together if you ask me. It’s getting like that now we can’t even afford a pint of beer or a bit of baccy. And there’s nothing much in the gardens this time of year, neither.”

  “That’s true enough,” Walter agreed. “But you must admit, the Co-op have been pretty good to us.”

  There was a murmur of general agreement. The Co-operative Society was strong in Hillsbridge—it owned a bakery, a dairy and a farm as well as a shop that sold everything from hardware to fresh fish—and in this time of trouble it was taking its responsibilities seriously, reducing the price of bread to fourpence for a large loaf and planning to provide free dinners for the school children.

  “It’s the young’uns I can’t understand,” Moses went on, changing the subject. “They’m treating it like a holiday, most on ’em. Even fixing up football matches against those ruddy policemen they’ve sent in case of trouble.”

  “Well, you can’t blame them,” James Hall put in. “ Lads stuck around with nothing to do day after day. It’s a darn sight better than getting up to mischief if you ask me. It’s what our union is about that I can’t understand.”

  The others turned to look at him. James was a hard-working and respected man in Hillsbridge, and he had been in the pits longer than many of them.

  “What do you mean?” Walter Clements asked.

  “Change for the sake of it,” James said vehemently. “To get away from this strike for a moment, take the way we’m paid. We’ve always done our sharing out in the pub, haven’t we. Always. Now what have they done? Brought out a law to stop it I can’t see no sense in it.” He paused, and the others nodded their agreement.

  “Then getting back to this strike,” James went on. “Danger money they say we’m after. Well, we’m in no more danger now than we ever was. We’ve got no wages coming in, we’m having to take charity to put bread in our children’s mouths, and go out on the batch picking coal to keep a fire going in our grates. And for what? The bosses’ll have us in the end. They’m bound to.”

  The miners grunted and spat, but they did not argue. Most of them agreed with him, particularly the older ones. They were a peace-loving bunch, apart from a few hotheads like young Ewart Brixey, Redvers’s older brother, who was forever trying to stir them up to fight for a better deal and would, some said, end up working for the union instead of Sir Richard Spindler, the owner of Hillsbridge Collieries. But in general they echoed his sentiments—that what had been good enough for their fathers was good enough for them. All they wanted was to be allowed to get back to work. The fun of idleness had palled now. The Hillsbridge miners were not enjoying the strike.

  THERE WERE THOSE, however, for whom the strike was an eventful time, and Dolly Hall was one of them.

  Although she had brought Evan Comer, the Co-op delivery boy, to the coronation street party with her, things were far from serious between them, and Dolly sometimes wondered if she was doing the right thing in continuing to walk out with him.

  He was good to her, there was no denying that—almost too good. All their outings were arranged to please her, and she was afraid to admit she liked or wanted something because, almost inevitably, it would turn up as a present next time he came to see her.

  “I wish you wouldn’t, Evan,” she told him time and again, but he did not seem to realize she meant it.

  “I’d do anything for you, Dolly,” he said. But instead of being pleased by his adoration, she found it made her nervous. He was so intense! And she couldn’t help it if she didn’t feel the same way. She liked him, yes, but that was all. And she would have liked him a great deal better if he hadn’t made her feel so trapped.

  But Dolly was only human, and she was flattered by Evan’s attentions. He was a really promising footballer, the rising star of Hillsbridge Town, admired by her brothers for his skill, and by all the girls for his dark good looks. It was nice to feel that when he could have taken his pick of the girls, he had not only chosen her, but put her on a pedestal. And so, against her better judgment, Dolly let the affair rumble on.

  One mild March evening, however, things came to a head. They were out for a stroll when they heard music coming from the town square in front of the Victoria Hall, and when they went to investigate, they found a Band of Hope temperance meeting in full swing.

  They stopped to listen, and Dolly made fun of the speakers, teasing Evan that she was going to sign the pledge.

  “You wouldn’t really, would you, Dolly?” he asked seriously.

  “Of course, I would!” she affirmed, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing. “Drink is the instrument of the devil. Mrs Durrant next-door says so.”

  “Instrument of the devil!” he retorted “ Don’t talk so silly! It’s the working man’s pleasure.”

  “Well, I think it’s wicked!” Dolly said airily, but at the sight of his face she couldn’t hold the laugh
ter back any longer. It came out in a loud explosion, and she stood with her hands pressed over her mouth.

  Evan’s face darkened “You’ve been having me on,” he accused.

  “Yes,” she admitted, through her giggles.

  “Don’t you try to make a fool out of me, Dolly,” he said, and his tone abruptly stopped her laughter.

  “What do you mean? It was only a joke!” she told him, but he did not answer, and a chill ran up her spine.

  They walked on in silence, following the main street away from the square and past the church. Here, under the churchyard wall, a path branched away to the fields and the river where Ted had swum on the Sunday morning he had first found Nipper, and Evan turned Dolly along this path.

  “I don’t think I want to go that way,” she said, nervous suddenly. “Let’s stick to the main road.”

  But Evan’s fingers tightened on hers, and he leaned back against the wall, pulling her towards him.

  “I’m sorry, Dolly,” he said.

  He sounded so miserable, her soft heart went out to him.

  “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have teased you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” he agreed, “not the way I feel about you, Dolly.”

  He pulled her close then, kissing her as he had never kissed her before. His mouth moved on hers with rhythmic insistence, and his hand slid over her back to squeeze her hips closer to his. Dolly, off balance, let herself lean against him and felt something within her respond to his maleness and his desire. But as his free hand began to fumble with the buttons on her blouse, she tried to push herself away.

  “Evan, no! Stop it, please.”

  “But why?” He held her firm, his breath hot on her face. “ You’re mine, Dolly. I wouldn’t hurt you. I only want to feel you, that’s all. Just for a minute.”

  It was something in his attitude that frightened her more than what he was trying to do. All boys tried. She’d known that since she was fourteen. But this was no light-hearted raid for what he could get. There was more to it than that.