Eliza's Child by Maggie Hope Page A

smell from the pot of stew simmering on the bar of the fire.
    â€˜By, it’s good to be home,’ Jack said as he came in. ‘Don’t get up, hinny, you look a picture sitting there in the moonlight.’
    Eliza laughed and stood up anyway. ‘Who’s to give you your supper if I don’t get up?’ she asked. ‘You’re fond as a gate.’ But she was pleased all the same. For by, he was a grand lad. If only he didn’t gamble, she couldn’t help thinking. There was always a part of her now that stood aside coldly and watched even in their most intimate moments.
    Over supper she told him about Peter Collier and the meeting the men had had in broad daylight outside her parents’ house. ‘It frightens me, Jack,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what they would do if they were thrown out of the house.’
    â€˜Hovel, more like,’ said Jack, spooning meat into his mouth before mopping the gravy with a heel of bread. ‘Some of the pit houses have ash closets nowadays instead of a stinking midden at the end of the row. Mebbe your da would be better off finding himself a more modern pit. Mind, I don’t hold with agitation. The men and the gaffers should be able to come to an agreement about their differences, settle them, like.’
    â€˜Sometimes the men have to band together to get their just rights,’ Eliza declared, which was a bit strange for she had been against just that earlier in the day.
    â€˜Rights? They don’t have any rights,’ said Jack. He sat back in his chair and took the clay pipe he had taken to smoking lately out of his pocket. ‘Any road, get us a light, pet.’
    Jack didn’t really understand, she thought. But then Jack was not a miner.

Chapter Ten
    â€˜ I’M GOING UP to Alnwick to see me mam,’ said Jack, one Saturday morning in July. He had just walked in the door of the cottage though he had only been gone about two hours. Eliza looked up from scouring the hearthstone in surprise and was even more shaken to see Henry, his brother, behind him.
    â€˜What is it? What’s happened?’ She rose to her feet, still holding the piece of wet sandstone she had been using.
    â€˜Da, Da,’ chirruped Thomas in delight, and waddled towards him from under the table where he had been playing with a peg dollie. For once, Jack ignored him even though Thomas clung to his gaitered legs. The baby howled and Eliza picked him up automatically. She gazed anxiously at Jack then Henry. Her brother-in-law nodded curtly.
    â€˜Me da’s dead,’ said Jack. ‘Henry came to tell me. He’s had a job finding us and the funeral is at four o’clock. We shall have go into Durham for the train.’
    â€˜Haven’t you got your trap, Henry?’ Eliza asked.
    â€˜It’ll take too long,’ said Henry. ‘We must get back. Mother wanted Jack there, she’s fallen to bits, like.’
    Eliza thought of the hard-faced woman she knew. She couldn’t imagine Annie falling to bits over anything but still, John Henry was her husband and despite everything that had happened she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman.
    â€˜Do you want me to tell Mr Benson, Jack?’ she asked. ‘I can go into Haswell if you like.’
    â€˜He knows. It was there I met Henry. Make us up a bite to take with us, pet.’
    Within ten minutes the two men were on their way, taking Henry’s trap to the station and leaving it at the stables there. She watched them drive down the track to the road, their shoulders touching in the small vehicle. She had not seen them so close together since she had known them. Then she went into the cottage, quiet now but for Thomas mumbling to himself as he played with his dollie.
    What was going to happen now? she wondered. Would Jack be able to go home to Northumberland for good? Would Annie forgive him and welcome him home? Eliza looked at little Thomas,