One Snowy Night Read online

  RITA BRADSHAW

  One Snowy Night

  For Muffin, my precious little furry baby,

  who helps keep his mum sane in this mad world.

  Acknowledgements

  The following books helped enormously with research for this story:

  The Langhorne Sisters by James Fox

  My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst

  Tommy Turnbull, A Miner’s Life by Joe Robinson

  Durham Miners’ Millennium Book by David Temple

  Contents

  PART ONE

  Betrayal, 1922

  PART TWO

  Choices, 1924

  PART THREE

  Goodbyes, Reconciliations and New Beginnings, 1926

  PART FOUR

  A Woman of Substance, 1928

  Epilogue, 1935

  PART ONE

  Betrayal

  1922

  Chapter One

  It was the first week of March. The bitter north-east wind was such that it sliced into flesh like a knife, and the young woman gingerly picking her way on the compressed snow was muffled up to the eyeballs, her felt hat pulled well down over her forehead and her woolly scarf covering the bottom half of her face. The deepening twilight was offset by the brilliance of the mantle of white covering the trees and hedgerow in the lane she was walking down, but Ruby Morgan was blind to the winter wonderland around her and the glow of the setting sun.

  It was the eve of her wedding. She should be home dealing with the last bits and pieces that still needed to be done, she told herself, not tramping about in the freezing cold and getting chilled to the bone. Her mam had said much the same thing as she’d pulled on her outdoor things:

  ‘What on earth is your Adam thinking of, Ruby, asking you to meet him in Snowdrop Lane tonight of all nights? It’s a good fifteen minutes’ walk and the pavements are lethal. You’ll go a cropper and end up hobbling down the aisle with a stick tomorrow – that’d be a fine state of affairs, wouldn’t it! If he wants to see you, what’s wrong with him coming here? Barmy, this is, lass.’

  Ruby hadn’t argued. She agreed with her mother. But it had seemed disloyal to Adam to admit it, and so she had merely shrugged and continued buttoning her coat.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Her mother had appealed to the other two people sitting at the kitchen table, her tone sharp. Ruby’s father had disappeared behind his newspaper by way of reply, which hadn’t surprised her. Since he’d come home from the war he was a shell of his former self, having watched both his sons die in the carnage of the Somme campaign and sustaining serious injuries himself in the last months of the war in the heavy fighting on the Western Front. But – Ruby’s brow wrinkled – Olive had been unusually quiet. Normally her sister had an opinion about everything. Although Olive was only three years her senior she was as sour as an old maid and they had never got on. It was rare her sister missed an opportunity to add her two penn’orth to things, especially if Olive could side with their mam against her.

  Catching sight of Adam waiting for her in a curve in the lane, all thoughts of her sister were gone. Raising her hand she walked faster, only to land up on her bottom in the snow as her feet slipped on a patch of ice. He reached her in moments, lifting her up, but then as she giggled and tried to talk she found herself pressed against his chest so tightly she could hardly breathe. When at last he released her she gazed in concern at his dear face, his handsome face. She knew every expression, every little nuance because hadn’t they loved each other since they were bairns larking about in the playground? But she had never seen him looking as he was now.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’

  And when he didn’t answer, merely staring at her with haunted eyes, she said again, ‘What’s the matter? Why did you want to meet here? I couldn’t believe it when your Ronnie turned up at the shop with the note. Why didn’t you come yourself?’

  She didn’t add that Mrs Walton, the owner of the costumier establishment where she had worked since leaving school some years ago at the age of thirteen, had been less than pleased to see Adam’s grubby little brother, Ronnie, marching into her immaculate shop with his snotty nose and holey trousers demanding to see ‘Adam’s Ruby’ as he’d smeared the contents of his nose across his face with the sleeve of his coat.

  ‘I couldn’t come myself,’ said Adam, even his voice sounding different.

  ‘But why not? You’re on the early shift, aren’t you?’ Adam was a miner at the Wearmouth Colliery like his father and older brothers, and since they’d become engaged on Ruby’s sixteenth birthday she had been collecting her bottom drawer. Adam had saved hard too after paying his board to his mam. They had both been determined to rent a two-up two-down terraced house when they got wed and to have enough money to partly furnish it too. A few weeks ago a house had come up in Wood Street, a stone’s throw from the colliery, and Adam had snapped it up. They’d had a lovely time buying furniture, even if it was all second-hand, but she didn’t mind that, nor it being a bit of a walk to her place of work in Southwick. She knew she’d landed on her feet when she’d taken up the position of trainee dressmaker with Mrs Walton. The elderly widow had no family and treated her more as the daughter she’d never had than an employee. Mrs Walton had helped her sew her wedding dress along with the two bridesmaid’s frocks for Olive and Ellie, Ruby’s best friend, and she’d insisted on paying for the material and the hundreds of tiny seed pearls on the bodice of Ruby’s dress. It was her wedding present, she’d said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Adam had been staring at her and now he said quietly, ‘It’s nothing to do with what shift I’m on. I – I had to talk to you without anyone else around.’ He took a deep breath, his voice cracking as he muttered, ‘Oh, Ruby, Ruby. I can’t believe it’s happening.’

  ‘You’re frightening me.’ She took a step backwards.

  ‘Promise me you won’t hate me. Say it, say you won’t.’

  Ruby had always loved Snowdrop Lane. It was a favourite spot for courting couples, especially in the summer. She and Adam had often met here in the past when wild flowers dotted the grassy banks either side of the path and dappled sunlight slanted through the trees. Although only a short distance from the gridwork pattern of terraced streets stretching to the north and east of Wearmouth Colliery in Monkwearmouth where a pall of smoke hung day and night, the air smelled different in Snowdrop Lane. You could almost imagine you were in the country. But tonight their special meeting place wasn’t working its magic.

  Again she said, ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘It – it’s down to New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘New Year’s Eve?’ Ruby echoed in bewilderment. That was weeks ago.

  ‘You know, when you and the others came to ours to see the New Year in.’

  She stared at him. She remembered that night only too well – she’d hated every minute of it. She loved Adam and he was, thankfully, as different as chalk to cheese from his father and three older brothers who looked upon any and every occasion as an excuse for a drinking bout, as did most of Adam’s relatives, it appeared. She hadn’t wanted to accept the invitation from his parents, which had extended to her own parents and Olive, but her mother had insisted it would look rude if they refused and that with the wedding coming up it was better to keep everything nice and friendly. By ten o’clock most of the family and friends who were squeezed into the Gilberts’ kitchen and front room had been the worse for the whisky and beer they’d poured down their throats, and even her own da had sat in an armchair smiling blearily at everyone and quite unable to form his words. She’d later found out that Adam’s older brothers had made it their mission to get him drunk, partly, Ruby suspected, because Adam made no secret of the fact that
he didn’t want or need to drink the way they did, which had always riled them.

  Carefully now, because she didn’t want to make him feel worse than he already did about that night, she said, ‘Isn’t that all forgotten now?’ By the time the New Year had been welcomed in Adam had been three sheets to the wind and wobbly on his legs, and his brothers had carried him upstairs to his bed and dumped him on it, rejoining the party and telling all and sundry they wouldn’t let their little brother live it down. She had endured another hour at the Gilberts’ before she had been able to persuade her parents and Olive to leave, and then she and her mother and Olive had had to practically carry her father home. The next day Adam had had a terrible row with his brothers and refused to accept their apologies, which he’d maintained – rightly as it happened – had been prompted by his mother. It was only the fact that his oldest brother was best man and Fred and Peter ushers that had brought them speaking again in the last few days. Whilst Ruby could see Adam’s point of view, his tangible bitterness about the affair was a little extreme in her private opinion but she hadn’t dared voice this, so angry was he.

  ‘Forgotten?’

  To Ruby’s amazement he hit his forehead several times with the flat of his palm, and at this point she thought, he’s ill, he must have banged his head down the pit or something. Accidents happened all the time but if they weren’t serious the miners carried on working. Adam’s father was living proof of this. Some years ago he’d fractured a bone in his ankle but had still dragged himself to the colliery each day, the threat of no work, no pay, getting him through. To the present day he walked with a limp.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever’s the matter it will be all right.’

  ‘You know how drunk I was that night, don’t you? You know I wasn’t in my right mind?’ His voice almost a whimper now, he whispered, ‘I love you, Ruby. You’re everything to me.’

  ‘Adam—’

  ‘I hate her. She knew what she was doing, she wasn’t as drunk as all that whatever she says now. She came upstairs to find me, didn’t she? Is that someone who’s pie-eyed?’

  The chill that flickered down Ruby’s spine had nothing to do with the weather. Through the feeling of dread she heard her voice saying quite calmly, ‘Who is “she”?’

  His face stricken, he opened his mouth but nothing came out for a moment. He swallowed hard, his eyes roaming over her face before he muttered, ‘Her, Olive.’

  ‘Olive?’ She couldn’t have heard right, not if what she thought Adam was saying was true . . . ‘Olive, my sister?’

  ‘She came up to the bedroom when the rest of you were downstairs and I thought at first it was you. I couldn’t see clearly – it was dark – and she lay down. She was all over me, doing things, and I . . . Oh, hell, Ruby, don’t look like that. She helped herself, that’s the truth of it, because I was in no state to stop her. The drink, it made me—’

  ‘You did it with Olive?’ Shock kept her voice flat. From when they had first understood about the birds and bees, they’d agreed their wedding night would be special. Through all their fumblings, all the times when the temptation had been almost overpowering, they’d managed to stop. ‘You took my sister down?’

  ‘No, I’ve told you, she took me. I tried to throw her off but it was too late, and afterwards . . . I hoped it wasn’t true, that I’d dreamed it or something, but she came to the colliery gates as bold as brass a couple of days later. She said I’d wanted it as much as her, that I’d been giving her the eye all evening, that I’d . . . Oh, all sorts of rubbish. She told me she was going to tell you if I didn’t.’ His jaw clenched. ‘And I said I’d kill her if she breathed a word. I meant it an’ all. And she knew I did because she didn’t come back, not then, not till yesterday. She was waiting for me and she told me. I could have strangled her with my bare hands.’ His face worked and his breath caught in a sob.

  The sky above them was running rivers of gold. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets she had ever witnessed, and with the birds mostly having settled for the night and just the occasional faint noise from the industry lining the River Wear in the distance, Snowdrop Lane was magical. It added to the unrealness of what was happening.

  Numbly, Ruby whispered, ‘What did Olive tell you?’

  ‘There’s going to be a bairn.’ He scrubbed at his wet eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I didn’t believe her, not last night when she told me. No one falls for a bairn the first time. I met her at Dr Upton’s this morning because I said I wanted to hear it from him and he said it’s true right enough. An’ she’s told Father McHaffie an’ all. Apparently she went straight there to the church yesterday when she left Dr Upton. According to her, Father McHaffie’s going round me mam’s tonight to tell them I’ve got to marry her for the sake of the bairn.’

  Feeling was surging in, hot and fierce, cutting through the initial shock. She wanted to hit him, to pound her fists into his chest; but instead she said, ‘Why didn’t you stop her when you realized it wasn’t me? You could have done something, you must have known.’

  ‘It was too late by then. She’d got me fired up and – and I hardly knew what I was doing.’

  ‘You knew enough to give her a bairn.’

  ‘Ruby—’

  ‘No, don’t say you couldn’t stop because you could have if you’d really wanted to.’

  He moved his mouth as though he was going to answer but no words came out, and as she stared at him she knew she had hit the nail on the head. In those minutes, when he had been with Olive, all that had mattered was the needs of his body. Hate spiralled up in her for both of them and it equalled her love for him, enabling her to say, ‘If she’s expecting a baby then you’ll have to marry her. Father McHaffie will see to that.’

  ‘I can’t, I won’t.’ His voice throaty, he pleaded, ‘You love me, Ruby. You’ve always loved me. I know we couldn’t stay round here but we can go somewhere else, down south maybe, and get married there. She’s brought this on herself – she’ll have to weather the storm.’

  Weather the storm? He knew as well as she did what Olive’s life would be like if she was left to face this alone. They would crucify her, all the neighbours and folk hereabouts, the self-constituted avengers who would hide their pleasure at Olive’s persecution under a banner of righteousness. And although at the moment she would like nothing more than to leave Olive to her fate, there was her mam and da to consider. The shame of his daughter giving birth to a bastard would kill her da, and that’s what Olive’s child would be if Adam didn’t marry her. There would still be avid gossip and speculation because of the circumstances and some mud would stick, but the cloak of respectability that Adam’s ring on Olive’s finger would bring would stop the worst of the hounding and give the child protection.

  This last thought caused Ruby to say, ‘And what of the baby, your baby?’

  He waved his hand as though that was of no consequence, and his next words confirmed it. ‘It’s hers, not mine. She did this on purpose to trap me, don’t you see? She’ll manage, she’ll have to. There’s your mam an’ da, or if they throw her out there’s the workhouse.’

  Of all that had passed between them, this shocked Ruby the most. The workhouse, that huge bogeyman of bricks and mortar that hovered over the poor from birth to death and was the thing of nightmares – he would see his child brought up in those terrible confines?

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘I do, I do. Please, Ruby, listen to me. We’re young, we can make a good life for ourselves down south and we needn’t ever come back here. Everything’s better down there anyway – we’d be in clover, I know we would. I’ll make this up to you, I swear it. We’ll forget all this in time as long as we’re together.’

  She felt sick to her stomach and through the agony of mind he appeared almost a stranger. Not because he had slept with her sister but because of how he was talking now. A growing realization that she didn’t know him the way she thought she did was frightening.
He looked like he’d always done, like her Adam, but the person in front of her was not the lad she’d committed her life to. And if she didn’t know Adam, if she’d got that wrong, then she didn’t know anything or anyone. A horrifying panic made her feel as if she was shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller, and it was only when he reached out to her again, taking her arm, that she came back to herself.

  The push she gave him took him completely by surprise and sent him sprawling backwards as his feet slipped on the ice and compressed snow. As he struggled up, her voice was like the crack of a whip.

  ‘Don’t touch me. Here –’ she flung her engagement ring at him, which he caught instinctively – ‘I don’t want this.’

  ‘Please, Ruby, no. Listen to me—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more, and as for us being together, that’s over. You’ve gone with my sister, my sister. I hate you both and I always will. You disgust me.’ There was a moment’s stark silence. ‘Whatever happens now, however things turn out, I never want to see you again so if you’re going to run away from this and take the easy way out, don’t use me as an excuse. I wouldn’t have anything to do with you if you were the last man on earth, Adam Gilbert. I mean it.’

  He could see she meant it. Adam looked into her great chocolate-brown eyes, the ring they’d chosen together pressed into his palm, and knew he’d lost her. It was inconceivable, unthinkable, but those drunken, exhilarating, shameful minutes on New Year’s Eve had cost him his Ruby, his love. Never again would he run his fingers through her silky blonde hair that was such a striking contrast to her dark eyes, or hold her close to him. All the lads had been after Ruby from when he could remember, but he had always known she was his. She’d never played the coquette or flirted. Straight as a die, Ruby was.

  Desperately, even while knowing it was hopeless, he whispered, ‘Please, lass, please. I’ll crawl on my knees if that’s what you want. I’ll do anything, anything, Ruby.’