A Mother's Gift by Maggie Hope

A car came up: behind them with its lights already on and they lit up the first of the miners’ rows and reflected on the slanting rain. It slowed for a moment and Katie looked at it, it seemed familiar somehow. And was that Mr Hamilton sitting in the back? No, of course it couldn’t be, what would he be doing here on a night like this? Though it was a posh car and with a chauffeur.
    ‘Where the heck have you been, Katie? There must have been some queue at the store the day.’ Gran’s words greeted her as she opened the back door. Billy had gone off to his parents’ house, promising to call back for her at half past six.
    ‘We’ll go to the pictures. It’s
The Singing Fool
,’ he had said. ‘You’d like to see it, wouldn’t you?’
    Katie had assured him she would. Now, she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and was shaken to see that it was already four o’clock.
    ‘Sorry, Gran,’ she said, looking contrite. ‘I met Billy Wright and we went for a walk.’
    ‘In this weather?’ Kitty looked at Katie’s flushed face and nodded her head. ‘Ah well, there’s no harm done. We can have a nice talk the night when we’ve had our teas.’
    ‘I said I’d go to the pictures,’ Katie admitted and her grandmother pursed her lips and spoke sharply.
    ‘Oh well, that’s all right. Just treat the place like a hotel, do.’
    ‘Oh Gran, I’ll tell him I can’t go, I’m sorry, I never thought,’ said Katie and Gran sighed.
    ‘No, you go on, I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I want to listen to the play on the wireless any road.’
    ‘Sure?’ Katie looked doubtful but in the end she went off down the row to meet Billy. As she turned the corner she bumped into her father, striding along with his head bent against the wind, his hands deep in his pockets.
    ‘Watch out, lass,’ he said and stopped as he saw who it was. Tucker Benfield never said much to Katie on the occasions when they did happen to meet. To her he always seemed a silent sort of a man dominated by Hannah, his wife and Katie’s mother. But now he gazed at her as though he were seeing her for the first time for years which wasn’t strictly so. His mother and Hannah had always been at each other’s throats and he liked a quiet life, which was why he usually had to sneak off if he wanted to see his parents. Which wasn’t very often.
    ‘Dad,’ said Katie and she looked back at him. Tucker was like Noah to look at, she thought. But not at all like him in nature. If he had been he would have seen much more of her, she reckoned. Noah wouldn’t have gone months without seeing his daughter, no, he would not. Thomas, the baby who supplanted her at home, had died at six months and Gran had said Hannah wanted Katie back and the two women had fought over her. For once Tucker had asserted his authority.
    ‘Let the bairn bide where she is,’ he had said and from then on there had been a coldness in the family. And Katie still didn’t understand why she was the one who had been given away, as she called it. Even if it was to Gran and Grandda.
    ‘Now then, Katie,’ Tucker said now. ‘I’m away to see me mother.’
    ‘That’ll be a surprise for her,’ she answered. ‘How long is it since the last time? Six months, is it?’
    ‘Don’t you be cheeky, lass,’ he said but his face had reddened. ‘Any road, I thought you were in Middlesbrough, learning to be a nurse.’
    ‘I am. I’m on my day off.’
    Tucker looked keenly at her. ‘You seem well enough, like,’ he said.
    ‘I am. And the others, how are they doing?’
    ‘All right, though your mother has a bad chest this cold weather.’
    ‘Oh,’ Katie replied. ‘Sorry.’ She waited but though he stood there he didn’t say any more.
    ‘Well, I have to go.’
    ‘Be seeing you then.’ Tucker turned and went off down the back street of West Row.
    They talked to each other as though they were strangers, Katie thought, as she walked along the top of the rows to meet Billy. That’s