The Black Mountains Read online

  “Evan, don’t!” she said again, but he took no notice, stopping her protests by kissing her again and again until she could hardly breathe. His hands seemed to be everywhere now, on her breasts, her bottom, hoisting up her skirt, fumbling and groping, and with a shock she realized his trouser buttons were undone.

  “Evan Comer, will you behave yourself!” she cried sharply.

  His hands stopped their probing and she pushed herself away, straightening her clothes.

  “What do you think you’re up to?” she asked indignantly. “And put yourself straight, do! You look disgusting!”

  Her tone sobered him, and shamefaced he buttoned his trousers.

  “I’m sorry, Dolly …” He reached out to put his arm around her again, but she stepped away. “ I couldn’t help myself, Dolly. You know how I feel about you.”

  “That’s no excuse,” she said.

  But she was weakening now, and he rushed on, “ Do you think we’ve known one another long enough to get married?”

  “Oh!” she said, surprised “Are you … are you asking, Evan?”

  “I suppose I am.” He patted his hair tidy with an unsteady hand. “I’ve been thinking about it a long while, but I’ve been putting off saying anything. I was so afraid you’d say “no”.’

  “Oh, Evan!” Dolly said, confused. The trapped feeling was back, stronger than ever, and she didn’t know what to say to him. It would be foolish to turn him down out of hand. He was a good-looking boy with a steady job, and all her friends would regard him as quite a catch. And just now, when he’d kissed her so masterfully, it had been quite nice until he’d gone too far.

  But she didn’t love him, not the way she wanted to love the man she married. And she was scared of his odd, intense ways.

  “I don’t know, I’ll have to think,” she said, hesitantly.

  They walked in silence back to the town square where the Band of Hope temperance meeting was just breaking up. Evan had to go to the public convenience on the corner of the Victoria Hall to relieve himself, and while Dolly was standing on the pavement waiting for him, she noticed a young policeman on duty at the back of the crowd giving her sidelong glances.

  She guessed he was one of those drafted in to deal with the strike, and in his uniform he made an impressive figure. Dolly always enjoyed the fact that boys found her attractive, and immediately found herself flirting discreetly. She felt he might be about to come over to speak to her, when Martha Durrant, an enthusiastic supporter of the Band of Hope, descended on her, saying how pleased she was to see that young people were interested in temperance. Mrs Durrant had barely finished when Evan was back.

  By the time she reached home, Dolly had almost forgotten the young policeman again. But he had not forgotten her, for the next day he came rapping at the backdoor of the house. Cook was severely startled to find a policeman standing on the other side of the door and was heartily relieved to discover that the purpose of his visit was to ask Dolly if she would walk out with him.

  Dolly had been thinking about Evan all night, and had decided that she did not want to marry him, but telling him so was going to be difficult She reasoned that, perhaps if she went out with someone else once or twice, he would begin to understand that she simply didn’t feel as he did, and not pursue the matter.

  Dolly accepted the young policeman’s invitation, and on her next night off they went to listen to a Welsh male voice choir who were giving a concert in Victoria Hall in aid of the striking miners.

  The next morning when Evan arrived with Captain Fish’s groceries, he was in a furious temper. Dolly, who was cleaning the silver on the kitchen table, realized as soon as she saw his thunderous expression that he knew of her outing the previous evening. Despite her protestations that they were not engaged, Evan’s temper flared, until Dolly finally fled from the kitchen, her eyes spilling with tears.

  It wasn’t until five minutes later, when she heard his horse clip-clop away, that she dared return to the kitchen. The room was empty—Cook had gone to the shops for some good beefsteak for the evening meal—and the door was still flapping open as Dolly had left it. She sat down, her mind in a turmoil, and endeavoured to resume her cleaning. It was then that she noticed the captain’s heavy silver cigarette box was missing.

  At first she could not believe it. She looked again and again through the silver on the table as if it might miraculously appear. But it was gone!

  It had been there, of that she was sure. Tears began to gather behind her eyes, but this time they were tears of outrage. Evan must have taken the box! It couldn’t have been anyone else! But why should he do such a thing—and what was she going to do about it?

  For a moment she stood undecided, but the thought of telling Captain Fish and having him send a bobby after Evan was not a very pleasant one. In an odd way she felt guilty for even having been mixed up with someone who would resort to stealing, and she shrank from admitting it.

  “I’ll go after Evan myself!” she said aloud.

  Without even stopping to take off her cap and apron, she hurried out. She knew the way Evan went from here—to the two or three other big houses on Ridge Road, then back again and over the brow of the hill to the cottages on the other side. For a moment she stood in the road, looking up and down, wondering which way to go. A child was kicking stones into a hopscotch on the opposite pavement, and she called out to her, “ Has the Co-op cart gone back yet?”

  The child shook her head and Dolly started off up the road. Just as she reached the drive of the last of the big houses, she saw his cart coming out. At the same moment he saw her, and flushed scarlet.

  “Just a minute, Evan, I want you!” Dolly called.

  He reined in the horse, his guilt plainly written all over his face.

  “Where’s that cigarette box?” she shouted at him. “ Come on now, I know you’ve got it.”

  He looked around embarrassed, trying to shut her up. “Dolly, I …”

  “Are you going to give it back, or am I going to call a bobby?”

  He jumped down from the cart on to the road beside her. “ For goodness sake, keep your voice down! The whole road can hear you.”

  “I don’t care if the whole of Hillsbridge can hear me!” she shouted. “How could you, Evan? Stealing while my back was turned …”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You did, too. Don’t tell me you’re a liar as well as a thief.”

  He was really flustered now.

  “All right all right, I took it,” he conceded. “ But I only did it for you.”

  “For me?” she spat.

  “To get some money to buy you something nice. I thought maybe if I got you that brooch you’ve had your eye on in the jeweller’s window, you might change your mind.”

  “Evan Comer! If that’s not the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard! You think you can buy me with a brooch!”

  “No, Dolly, you’ve got it all wrong …”

  “Wrong, is it? And what about all those other things you’ve given me? Did you get them with stolen money, too?”

  “No, of course not,” he protested. “ I don’t know what came over me. It was thinking you’d finished with me, like—and then there was the cigarette box right there on the table. I took it without thinking.”

  “And you can put it back the same way,” Dolly ordered “I’ll have it this very minute, Evan, if you don’t mind.”

  Shamefaced, he reached under the seat of the cart and got out the cigarette box. She took it from him and hid it under her apron.

  “I’m glad you’ve seen sense, Evan.”

  She turned away, but he called after her “ Dolly, just a minute! When will I see you?”

  Her chin went up, and her lips set in a determined line. “I’m sorry, Evan, but I don’t want to see you any more. Not now.”

  “But, Dolly …”

  He looked so wretched she almost weakened again, but making up her mind, she said decisively, “I’m sorry, Evan. Mammy wouldn’t
like me getting involved with someone who could steal. She’s very particular about us only ever having what belongs to us.”

  Then, before he could say anything else, she turned and hurried back down the road. The cart still had not passed her when she reached the gates of the house, and looking over her shoulder, she saw it pulled into the side of the road. Evan was recovering himself, she supposed, but she did not wait. She wanted to get the cigarette box back inside the house before Cook came back and missed it— and her.

  Luck was on her side. Cook was still out, and she was able to replace the box with no one any the wiser. But she did not change her mind about Evan. A man who could steal was not the man for her, even if he had done it on the spur of the moment. And somehow she felt it was probably not the first time. Dolly knew she would never be able to trust him again.

  She told nobody of the incident with Evan, not even Charlotte, who was somewhat dubious about her giving up a local boy for one of the policemen who would be gone when the strike ended.

  “Nothing will come of it, you know,” Charlotte warned her.

  “Oh, Mam, I don’t want anything to come of it!” Dolly replied impatiently. “I don’t want to get married yet. There’s a lot of things I want to do first—like learning to be a cook. And I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a bit of fun while I’m young.”

  Charlotte nodded. She would like to see Dolly settled, but let her have a good time first, as long as she knew where to stop.

  “Just as long as you don’t get too attached to this bobby, that’s all,” she said.

  It was much the same thing as she had said to Ted about Nipper, but this time her advice was heeded. When on Easter Eve the miners voted to accept the pay and settlement terms offered them, and the police were marched out of Hillsbridge for the last time, Dolly’s heart was still intact, though she promised to write to her policeman boyfriend if he wrote to her.

  It was Evan who was unable to forget, Evan who brooded while love turned to hate, and plotted his revenge on the girl who had spurned him.

  THE PIT WHEELS were turning again, and the men were back at work, but in the Hall household things were not easy, for the six-week strike had left them in severe financial difficulties.

  Although Charlotte had scrimped and saved wherever she could, the list of things for which money was needed had grown and grown. All the men’s boots were in desperate need of repair. Amy needed new clothes for she was getting up and about now, and nothing she had worn before the accident would fit her. As for Jack, he needed school books.

  During the strike, William Davies had been very kind, providing what Jack needed out of his own pocket because, he said, he did not want Jack’s chances to suffer. But he could not afford to do so for ever. A schoolmaster’s salary did not allow for it, and Charlotte had begun to think Jack would have to leave school after all.

  To her surprise, however, James did not leap at the idea as she had expected.

  “There’s not much work going at the moment anyway,” he said philosophically. “ If you ask me, he might as well bide where he is.”

  “Well, I shall have to start looking around myself,” Charlotte said. “ Maybe there’s something I could do in the evenings when you’re home to look after Amy and little Harry.”

  But although she made inquiries she could find no work. Too many other women had the same thing in mind.

  “I believe it’s going to come down to taking in washing like Ada Clements,” Charlotte said. But there, James drew the line.

  “That’s one thing I’m not having,” he told her firmly. “Wet washing about the place all the time isn’t healthy, and our boys are too big now to want to be running about fetching the baskets of dirty stuff and taking back the clean like the Clements boys. And besides,” he added, “ if you want to finish up with hands like Ada, I suppose that’s up to you, but I shouldn’t like it, I can tell you.”

  Charlotte only smiled. Ada’s hands were not a pretty sight—red and scrawny as the rest of her, but with the amount of washing she had to do for the family, hers were often almost as bad. But if James hadn’t noticed, she wasn’t going to tell him. It pleased her that he thought her hands were still nice enough to be worth saving. And that night, as well as preparing an extra batch of dumplings to conceal the absence of meat in the supper-time stew pot, she found the energy to turn an old petticoat of her own into a pretty new pinafore for Amy.

  Early in July Charlotte heard that the manager of the Palace Picture House was looking for another cleaning woman. At present it was taken care of by Bertha Yelling, Peggy’s sister-in-law, but it was such a popular place for all kinds of entertainment that it was more than one person’s work to keep it clean, and now there was talk of opening the room beneath the picture palace for dancing classes, too.

  It was Peggy who told her—she had got to hear about it through Bertha—and without wasting any time, Charlotte put on her hat and went to see about it. The result was that she was taken on and was able to start right away. It was a day-time job whereas she had really wanted an evening one, but it would have to do.

  Peggy agreed to look after Harry for the hour or so she would be gone, and Jack, who was breaking up now for the summer holiday, would be at home with Amy. By the time he went back to school in September, Amy would be well enough to return also—or so Charlotte hoped. Already she had missed a whole year’s schooling!

  Charlotte started the job with her usual vigour, but her enthusiasm did not last long. The picture palace was a dirty, unpleasant place, dim and dusty, and the rows of red plush seats were impregnated with stale cigarette smoke. Charlotte, who had never seen a moving picture in her life, soon knew every inch of the place, from the projection box to the upright piano that provided the stirring accompaniment.

  The picture palace was situated in Glebe Bottoms, a narrow lane that dipped away from the main street on the north side of the Miners Arms, and one morning as Charlotte plodded up to cross the road and climb the hill for home she was surprised to see Dolly coming down, a basket on her arm.

  “Where are you going to, then?” she asked, stopping and resting her own bag against her legs.

  Dolly indicated the shop at the foot of the hill where the roads joined.

  “Cook asked me to come down to the County Stores for some things she wants for a special cake.”

  Charlotte nodded. Although they bought the bulk of their groceries from the Co-op, who delivered, none of the ‘nobs’ would be seen on their premises, nor allow their servants to be seen there either. The ‘posh’ shop was the County Stores.

  “Mam, I’m ever so glad I’ve seen you,” Dolly said suddenly.

  “Why’s that then, Dolly?” Charlotte asked, noticing that her daughter’s usually tranquil blue eyes were troubled.

  “It’s Evan, Mam. I don’t know what to make of him.”

  “Evan? But I thought you finished with him back in the spring.”

  “I did. But I don’t think he’s taken it even now,” Dolly said. “ I wasn’t there yesterday when he came with the groceries, but he asked Cook to give me a message. He wants to meet me tonight. He said he’s going to call for me.”

  “Why?” Charlotte asked.

  Dolly shook her head. “That’s what’s worrying me. It seems so funny after I told him definite I didn’t want to see him any more.”

  “If you take my advice, you won’t go—unless you want to take up with him again, that is,” Charlotte said. “I must say he seemed a nice boy to me, but if your mind’s made up, it wouldn’t be right to build up his hopes for nothing, would it?”

  “You’re probably right, Mam. Anyway,” Dolly hitched her basket up on her arm, “ I’d better be going, or Cook’ll be after me for these things. Captain Fish is having visitors this afternoon, and it’s all a go, I can tell you.”

  She went across the road to the shop, and Charlotte stood waiting. For some reason she felt uneasy about Dolly.

  As they walked back up the hill togethe
r, the talk turned to other things. Captain Fish had recently bought a gramophone, and Dolly was so entranced by the music of Harry Lauder and Marie Lloyd that could be heard almost as clearly in the servants quarters as in the drawing-room that she forgot Evan long enough to tell her mother all about it.

  “It’s wonderful really,” she enthused. “And since it came, Cook and me have been singing “Stop your tickling, Jock” all day long.”

  “Cook has?” Charlotte asked, surprised.

  Dolly giggled. “She says it takes her mind off her bunions.”

  “Well there is that to it I suppose,” Charlotte conceded.

  But when they reached the point where the roads branched, Evan sprang to Charlotte’s mind once again.

  “When he calls for you, Dolly, I should just send a message down that you don’t want to see him,” she said. “P’raps I will, Mam,” Dolly replied. “I’ll have to think.”

  ALTHOUGH it was officially Dolly’s evening off, Captain Fish’s visitors had stayed later than he expected, and she was still in the throes of clearing up when Evan came knocking on the door.

  “I’m sorry, Evan, but I’m nowhere near finished,” she told him. “And I can’t stand here dripping soap-suds all over the mat, either.”

  His eyes narrowed, giving his handsome face a hostile expression. “I’ll wait.”

  “Well, you can’t come in here, and I’ll be ages yet,” Dolly said, hoping he would give up. But he didn’t.

  “That’s all right. It’s a nice evening. I’ll stop outside,” he said.

  It was another hour before Dolly had finished clearing up and changed out of her print working frock. But Evan was still sitting outside the backdoor on the low wall that bordered the vegetable garden.

  “What is it you want to see me about?” she asked, shaking off the hand he tried to put on her arm. “ I haven’t changed my mind, you know.”

  “I just want to talk to you,” he wheedled. “ Can’t we go for a walk? I don’t want everybody listening,” he said insistently.

  “Oh, all right. Just up the road and no further.”