Eve and Her Sisters Read online

  Eve and Her Sisters

  Rita Bradshaw

  Headline Publishing Group Ltd (2010)

  Tags: Saga, Historical, Fiction

  * * *

  Synopsis

  Following their father's death in a mining accident, sisters Eve, Mary and Nell journey to the Michaelmas fair at Gateshead to be put up for hire - it is that or face the workhouse. Eve, who has looked after her younger sisters since their mother's death, cannot bear the thought of them being separated so she is indebted to innkeeper, Caleb Travis, when he takes pity on her and agrees to hire them all. Over the years, Eve's gratitude towards him turns to love, but Caleb is blind to Eve's feelings as he is infatuated with Mary. It is to take many more years of heartache before he realises his mistake. An utterly compelling,dramatic and heartbreaking love story.

  Eve and her Sisters

  RITA BRADSHAW

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2008 Rita Bradshaw

  The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may

  only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,

  with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic

  production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the

  Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7594 3

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE - 1909 - The Departure

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART TWO - 1912 - Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary . . .

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART THREE - 1916 - Homecomings

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  PART FOUR - 1918 - To Everything There is a Season

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  PART FIVE - 1925 - Different Kinds of Love

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she still lives today. At the age of sixteen she met her husband - whom she considers her soulmate - and they have two daughters and a son and three young grandchildren. Much to her delight, Rita’s first attempt at a novel was accepted for publication, and she went on to write many more successful novels under a pseudonym before writing for Headline using her own name.

  As a committed Christian and passionate animal-lover Rita has a full and busy life, but her writing continues to be a consuming pleasure that she never tires of. In any spare moments she loves reading, walking, eating out and visiting the cinema and theatre, as well as being involved in her local church and animal welfare.

  For some fascinating facts about Rita Bradshaw’s novels and to read Rita’s top ten writing tips don’t miss the exciting extra material at the back of this book - Just for You.

  Dedication

  For my darling Mum. I know you’re in a better place but I miss you more than words can say. You were the best mum in the world and such a special lady, with the biggest heart of anyone I’ve met. Give Dad a kiss for me, precious one.

  And my Pippa, such a beautiful and faithful dog and so tolerant and gentle. It’s not the same without your doggy smiles and dear old face.

  Author’s Note

  A certain amount of artistic licence is necessary with a story such as Eve’s, but where possible actual events have been recorded as faithfully as possible. For example, the pit disaster which begins the story occurred on 16 February 1909 and claimed the lives of 168 men and boys. The miners’ local inspector, Frank Keegan, was acclaimed a hero for his part in rescuing twenty-six men; for any football fans, he was the grandfather of Kevin Keegan. Likewise, the hirings which took place at the annual Michaelmas Fair did happen. Folk were lined up like cattle at the market and inspected in much the same way.

  For any of you who lament ‘the good old days’, spare a thought for the working class in the early twentieth century. Having said that, they could teach us a thing or two nowadays!

  Love suffereth long and is kind.

  1 Corinthians, 13:4

  PART ONE

  1909 - The Departure

  Chapter 1

  The moment Mrs McArthur from next door burst into the kitchen without even knocking once at the back door, she knew. A few seconds before, she had heard a man’s voice in the McArthur’s back yard shouting for Mr McArthur, and something in the tone had caused her hands to still on the dough she was kneading.

  ‘Eve, lass. There’s been a fall an’ they reckon it’s a bad one.Your da and the lads are down, aren’t they? Quick, hinny.’ Mrs McArthur didn’t wait for a response but flew out of the house as fast as she had arrived.

  The door hadn’t closed behind the little woman before Eve was scraping the dough off her hands and pulling off her pinny. She ran into the hall without stopping to wash her hands, grabbing her coat and hat from one of the pegs on the brown painted wall.

  When she opened the front door she saw people running in the direction of the pit, men pulling on their jackets and caps as they went and women carrying babes in arms with little ones hanging on to their mothers’ coat-tails. In spite of the number of folk, an eerie quiet prevailed, only broken by the odd person or two banging on a front door to alert a friend or neighbour. If there was panic, it was of the numb, fatalistic kind.

  Eve joined the tide heading for the pit gates, doing up the buttons of her coat as she went. She passed one or two women standing on doorsteps, and outside the corner shop a small group had gathered, not talking, just watching.All their faces reflected the same thing, silent pity laced with thankfulness it wasn’t their man or child trapped hundreds of feet under the ground.This meant their menfolk worked at South Moor Colliery or even the West Shieldrow pit a mile north-west, not that one pit was safer than any other.

  On reaching the colliery gates Eve joined the swell of people which was being added to minute by minute as word of the disaster spread. She saw Mrs McArthur and her married daughter, Anne Mullen, standing close together and she edged towards them. Anne had only got wed three months ago in November and Eve’s eldest brother had been best man. As she reached them, Anne noticed her and reached out to grip her hand. ‘Your da and Frank down, lass?’ she murmured, her face chalk white.

  Eve nodded. ‘And William. He’s just been made a hewer and they put him with Da and Frank.’ The week before, William would have been doing repair work and there
fore on a different shift. She remembered how pleased he had been when the deputy had said he could join his father and brother; the repair shift worked longer hours for a smaller basic wage than the hewers. She bit hard on her bottom lip to stop it trembling.

  She had always been frightened this day would come. The West Stanley Colliery, or Burn’s pit as it was known locally, had been the scene of an explosion over twenty years before and had taken the lives of her maternal grandfather and his three sons. Her parents had just got married at the time and they had taken in her grandmother, there being no other menfolk left. Grandma Collins had lived with them until the day she died, two years ago, and four years after the fever had taken Eve’s mother. Eve had loved her grandma but the old woman’s stories about the pit had regularly given her nightmares.

  A snowflake drifted aimlessly in the bitterly cold air and somewhere behind her a woman said, ‘We’re in for a packet, you can smell the snow coming,’ before becoming silent again.

  Her grandma had viewed the pit as a live entity, Eve thought, her eyes fixed on the yard beyond the gates which fronted the lamp house and the first-aid post, the colliery office standing behind them. Her grandma had always maintained the pit was capricious at best and malevolent at worst, delighting in playing a deadly game with the men and boys who came to plunder its black gold. Certainly Burn’s pit seemed no more inclined to give up its wealth than the other five collieries dotted about in the town of Stanley on the western edge of the Durham coalfield.

  ‘Don’t worry, pet.’ Mrs McArthur turned to her, patting her arm for a moment before her eyes returned to the yard where her husband, along with the rest of the rescue team, were ascending the two flights of steps leading to the cage which would take them down into the bowels of the earth. ‘Your da an’ Will an’ Frank’ll be all right. It might not be as bad as they think, you never can tell.’

  ‘You think so?’

  The desperation in Eve’s voice brought the older woman’s eyes to her again. ‘Aye, aye,’ she said ‘Don’t fret.’ And then she glanced at her daughter over Eve’s head. Her look, had it been put into words, would have asked how much bad luck the Baxter family could be expected to bear. First the pit taking all the Collins menfolk years ago, and with Peter Baxter having been brought up in the workhouse as an orphan there was no kin on Eve’s da’s side. Then poor Molly, Eve’s mam, dying of the fever like that before her rightful time, and old Ma Collins following two years ago which meant the running of the house was thrust on the shoulders of this little lass at her side, and her only eleven at the time. For sure, the lass hadn’t had much schooling since then till she had officially left at Christmas when she was thirteen. And it was no good the School Inspector coming round shouting the odds in such cases, they turned a blind eye if they had any sense. With her da and two brothers to wash and cook for and her sisters to see to, the bairn’s place had been in the home.

  It was several hours later before news filtered through to the men, women and children at the pit gates, and then it was as bad as it could be. The explosion which had ripped through the coalface, snapping the props holding the roof like matchsticks and blocking the inroads and outroads to the section, had resulted in nearly two hundred men and boys being trapped below millions of tons of rock, coal and slate. The rescue teams were going to have their work cut out and it would be a long job, no doubt about it. Everyone knew what that could mean. Fatalities. Lots of them.

  Eve watched as Anne clutched at her mother. ‘He might be burnt, Mam. Doug might be burnt or gassed or—’

  ‘Ssh, our Anne. Don’t talk like that.’

  ‘I can’t bear it if anything happens to him. An’ our Larry . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘Our Larry could be hurt an’ all.’

  ‘That’s enough, lass.’ At the mention of her son who had been working alongside Anne’s husband, Mrs McArthur’s face had twitched. ‘The best place for you is home if you’re going to talk like that, now then. It’s no good thinkin’ the worst, that don’t help no one. Your da’ll find them an’ bring ’em up, you know he will.’

  Turning to Eve, Mrs McArthur’s face softened. ‘Why don’t you go home an’ all, hinny? You can’t do nowt here an’ Nell an’ Mary’ll be back from school any minute. I’ll come an’ fetch you if I hear owt.’

  Eve nodded. The crowd was not as large now as it had been at eleven o’clock that morning. Women had had to return home when children had become so cold they had begun to cry, and since the snow had begun to fall in earnest more had left. She herself was frozen to the marrow. When she tried to walk she would have fallen but for kind hands catching her as she stumbled.

  Slowly and stiffly Eve retraced her footsteps. Once clear of the colliery she made for Clifford Road which led on to Murray Street where she lived. The house was a two-up, two-down terrace in a street identical to its neighbours and exactly the same as other clusters of streets built round the remaining five collieries at different points of the town. Probably as a result of the proximity of the six pits, Stanley had grown over the years and become much larger than the normal pit village but remained just as dirty. Smut and grime coated every building and the pavements and back ways bore evidence of the jet-black phlegm the miners spat to clear their sooty lungs. Today, though, with the snow settling thick and glittering like diamond dust in the dull light, the town appeared almost clean for once. The bitter cold even managed to dilute the smell from the privies in the back yards. These were full to brimming and due to be emptied the following day by the scavengers with their long-handled shovels.

  Eve approached the house by way of the back lane. No one in the family came home through the front door and even in time of crisis the unwritten rule held. She pushed open the rickety wooden gate into the back yard and passed the brick privy and the small washhouse-cum-coalhouse next to it.

  The back door, like that of any other in the neighbourhood, was never locked, and she stepped straight into the small scullery off the kitchen. Facing her was an old wooden chair without a back, on which boots were cleaned, and above this a row of pegs hung. In this confined space her father and brothers stripped off their filthy pit clothes each evening, whatever the weather, and washed in the tin bowl waiting for them on the backless chair which Eve had filled with warm water. When they had dressed in their spare set of clothing hanging on the pegs and come through to the warmth of the kitchen, she would take the pile of trousers and jackets out into the back lane and beat the coal dust out of them. Then they would take their place on the pegs ready for the next shift.

  Eve paused, her eyes on the pegs. The sick fear she had been battling with throughout the long hours at the pit gates rose to the fore. They had to be all right, they had to be. Anything else was unthinkable. She crossed her arms over her middle as though she had the stomach ache, swaying slightly as she closed her eyes and prayed a frantic prayer consisting of muddled words and phrases. Her da, her lovely da. And Frank, he was only twenty-one, and William just eighteen.

  After a few moments she raised her head, an inner voice telling her she had to be strong. She wanted to lay her head on her arms and give vent to the tears which had been choking her all day but she must not. She must not cry. If she cried, it would mean there was something to cry about and she didn’t know that yet. She mustn’t tempt fate.

  She wiped her feet on the old cork mat, opened the scullery door and stepped up into the kitchen. Immediately the warmth from the range washed over her and again, as she glanced round the room, she wanted to cry.The open fireplace with its black-leaded hob, the oven to the right and rows of pans to the left, the gnarled wooden table covered with oilcloth beneath which six hard-backed chairs stood, the long wooden settle and her father’s ancient armchair to one side of the fire - all took on a poignancy which she would have termed silly only yesterday.

  She took off her hat and coat and threw them on the settle. The room was dark, the light almost gone even though it was only mid-afternoon. With the weather worsening outside, she lit
the two oil lamps before seeing to the range fire which had nearly gone out.

  The dough was ruined. She stared at it. But it would suffice for stottie cake, she couldn’t waste it. She’d intended to make a pot pie for dinner with the steak and kidney she’d bought from the butcher the day before, but there was no time for that now before the girls got home. She’d make one tomorrow. Her da and the lads would likely need a good hot meal once they were home. For tonight Nell and Mary would have to be content with the last of the bread from yesterday, along with the remainder of the cheese and chitterlings. She had some pork fat on the slab in the pantry too, they could dip the bread in that if it was too dry.Tonight would have to be a make-and-mend meal, as her mother had been wont to say on the occasions she’d spring-cleaned.

  Mam, oh, Mam.

  The longing for her mother’s arms about her hadn’t been so fierce in years. Quickly she busied herself with practicalities. Taking the big black kettle from the hob she went into the scullery and out into the back yard, gasping as the cold and snow hit her. After filling the kettle she returned it to the hob. The fire was now blazing but she stoked it up still more, putting plenty of coal on. Her father and brothers being miners, coal was never in short supply.