Eliza's Child by Maggie Hope

The weather had changed and rain threatened while a cold wind blew from the north-east. She carried Thomas on her hip inside her shawl and he leaned against her, his eyelids drooping. She bent her head and kissed him on his hair, now turning as dark as her own.
    â€˜Mind, you are a bonny lad,’ she sang softly to him and his eyes closed properly. A few drops of rain began to fall and she put her head down and hurried into Haswell. She would shelter in Benson’s doorway until it passed. It was probably only a shower.
    â€˜Come inside, lass.’ Mr Benson opened the door behind her and motioned her in. ‘The rain won’t last long, then you can be in your way.’ He was a pleasant enough chap, thought Eliza as she followed him into the warm interior of the shop-cum-workroom. A middle-aged man with grizzled grey hair going thin on top and a kindly smile, he chatted to her as he took up his plane to continue smoothing the piece he was working on.
    â€˜Your man’s away delivering the day,’ he said between strokes. ‘I bless the day I set him on, I do that. A good workman is Jack, you should be proud of him.’
    â€˜Well, I am,’ said Eliza, but in her own mind she thought, with a few reservations.
    â€˜Used to work on the Duke of Northumberland’s estate, so I understand.’ He looked up from his work and stayed his hands for a moment. His eyes were bright and enquiring, as though he wasn’t quite believing of that.
    â€˜Aye, he did,’ said Eliza. ‘Him and his da.’
    â€˜A good position that. I wonder he would come south to work in a colliery village.’
    Eliza didn’t know what to say to that so she simply smiled and nodded.
    â€˜I suppose you wanted to be near your family,’ he went on. ‘Women are like that.’ He shook his head in disapproval. ‘It’s a pity, though. I’m glad to have him, you understand, but he was better off up in Alnwick, wasn’t he?’
    Eliza was angry. What had Jack been saying to him? That everything that had happened to them was her fault? She opened her mouth to tell him the truth but then closed it again. How could she say anything against Jack to his employer? Mr Benson was looking at her kindly. No doubt he thought he had given her a gentle reprimand and she should not have influenced her man. Mr Benson was a pillar of the chapel in Haswell and a lay preacher who sometimes came to Blue House to preach.
    He returned to his rhythmic planing of the chest he was working on. Evidently he felt he had done his duty and made his point. She turned and gazed out of the window. The sky was clearing and the rain had stopped. She’d best go before she said something she would regret.
    Negotiating the lane to the cottage was difficult. The rain had turned the dried mud into a quagmire and she slipped and slid her way along, clutching Thomas to her. He struggled and cried in protest and she was glad when she got to her front door without actually falling. Her boots and the hem of her dress were thick with mud and streaked with coal dust and she was thoroughly out of humour, in contrast with how she was in the bright beginnings of the day.
    Later though, looking pensively out of the window, she noticed that the climbing rose she had planted under the window was starting to bud and she smiled to herself. No one, not even Jack, would think of looking underneath the rose to where she had hidden the necklace wrapped in oiled canvas among its roots. Next time, and she was sure there would be a next time, she would not be left destitute when Jack got the gambling fever.
    Jack came in very late in the evening after his trip around the countryside. Eliza had not bothered with a candle, for not only did the fire show a good light but moonlight was streaming through the window to where she sat in the rocking chair he had made for her. Thomas had been in bed and asleep long since and there was an appetising