Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone Read online

  NEVER STAND ALONE

  A heartrending and impassioned drama:

  the third in The Durham Trilogy

  JANET MACLEOD TROTTER

  THE DURHAM TRILOGY: heartrending sagas

  set in Durham’s bygone mining communities

  Praise for NEVER STAND ALONE:

  ‘A gritty, heartrending and impassioned drama’

  Newcastle Journal

  ‘A tough, compelling and ultimately satisfying novel ... another classy, irresistible read’

  Sunderland Echo

  ‘She pulls no punches, tells it like it is and taps directly into your emotions. Excellent’

  Northern Echo

  ‘The gritty, unforgettable story of families torn apart by the conflict that divided a nation...a powerful story’

  World Books

  Copyright © Janet MacLeod Trotter, 1997

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.

  Published by MacLeod Trotter Books

  Mobi edition: March 2011

  ISBN 978-0-9566426-6-0

  www.janetmacleodtrotter.com

  Janet MacLeod Trotter was brought up in the North East of England with her four brothers, by Scottish parents. She is a best-selling author of 15 novels, including the hugely popular Jarrow Trilogy, and a childhood memoir, BEATLES & CHIEFS, which was featured on BBC Radio Four. Her novel, THE HUNGRY HILLS, gained her a place on the shortlist of The Sunday Times’ Young Writers’ Award, and the TEA PLANTER’S DAUGHTER was longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel Award. A graduate of Edinburgh University, she has been editor of the Clan MacLeod Magazine, a columnist on the Newcastle Journal and has had numerous short stories published in women’s magazines. She lives in the North of England with her husband, daughter and son. Find out more about Janet and her other popular novels at:

  www.janetmacleodtrotter.com

  By Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Historical:

  The Jarrow Trilogy

  The Jarrow Lass

  Child of Jarrow

  Return to Jarrow

  The Durham Trilogy

  The Darkening Skies

  The Hungry Hills

  Never Stand Alone

  The Tyneside Sagas

  The Tea Planter’s Daughter

  The Suffragette

  A Crimson Dawn

  A Handful of Stars

  Chasing the Dream

  For Love & Glory

  Scottish Historical Romance

  The Beltane Fires

  Mystery:

  The Vanishing of Ruth

  The Haunting of Kulah

  Teenage:

  Love Games

  Non Fiction:

  Beatles & Chiefs

  CHAPTER ONE

  1976

  Carol pulled a face in the mirror.

  ‘I look about twelve!’ she protested, staring in dismay at the way the hairdresser was yanking her shaggy brown hair out of its usual feather-cut into a high ponytail. ‘And the dress - God, the dress!’

  ‘Stop swearing Carol,’ Nancy Shannon scolded her youngest daughter. ‘The dress is a picture.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ Carol contradicted, tugging at the high lacy collar above the yards of flowery pink cotton and matching bolero that were to be her bridesmaid’s dress. ‘I look like summat out of a pantomime.’

  ‘Something out of a pantomime,’ her mother corrected automatically.

  ‘If Kelly or my mates catch sight of me, I’ll never live this down,’ Carol continued, unabashed.

  ‘Girls have friends not mates,’ Nancy said, giving herself a sideways view in the vast bedroom mirror and smiling with approval at her trim figure in the cream silk suit. ‘I don’t know where you learned to talk like that.’

  ‘The same place you did Mother,’ Carol goaded, ‘Brassbank Secondary Modern. Only you decided to go posh when Dad got the job as pit manager, didn’t you?’

  Nancy flushed, glaring at the silent hairdresser, defying her to show so much as a smirk at this remark.

  ‘Now you listen here, you little madam-’ Nancy broke off as her eldest daughter entered the room, looking pink and flustered in her mammoth white dress.

  ‘Here comes Cinderella,’ said Carol.

  ‘Darling you look wonderful,’ Nancy cried, jabbing Carol in the back. ‘Your father is going to be so proud of you.’

  Carol thought for one brief moment that her mother was going to succumb to tears at the sight of Fay in yards of Laura Ashley satin and lace and crown of false flowers in her permed brown hair. But she had never seen her mother cry, not even when Grandma Hutchinson had died, and it did not happen now. Nancy Shannon’s heavily made-up face with its false tan and bright lipstick struggled successfully to compose itself under the stiff waves of dyed blonde hair.

  Fay did not notice her mother’s moment of emotion; she was fare too distracted with worrying about the day ahead.

  ‘Do you think I’ve overdone it on the eye shadow? Vic prefers the natural look.’

  ‘Is that why I’ve got to look like Little Bo Peep today? To please the wonderful Vic?’

  ‘Shut up Carol,’ her mother snapped. ‘Fay, you look just right. Vic Proud’s a lucky man to be marrying you and he knows it. Your father and I have been looking forward to this day for so long – it’s worth all the expense.’

  A good investment, Carol thought wryly. Her parents couldn’t believe their luck that Fay was marrying Brassbank’s most up-and-coming businessman with a fleet of coaches and two new travel shops opening up in Whittledene New Town. Fay had chosen one of the mock Georgian houses in the nearby village of Brassy as their marital home and had spent the past three months dragooning an army of decorators and joiners and landscape gardeners into producing the eight wonder of the world. Everything was split-level, built-in, shiny new and cream; from the kitchen cupboards to the Habitat furniture and deep pile carpets. They had a Jacuzzi in the bathroom and a fountain in the ground-floor lounge that lit up a lurid green at night. Carol had annoyed Fay by likening it to Santa’s grotto. Yet the cost of this marriage and the wedding was staggering to Carol.

  ‘Don’t worry Mother,’ she smiled impishly under her halo of pink flowers, ‘I’ll elope on the back of a moped to save you a bit of money.’

  Nancy gave her a sharp look but Fay snorted, ‘You’ll have to catch a man first, and heaven help him when you do.’

  Carol was dismissive. ‘I’m not going to catch any lad. Girls don’t need men as the only way to get on in the world any more. At least some of us don’t.’

  Fay’s large-featured face turned crimson, her brown eyes watering. ‘It’s not like that with me and Vic. We’re marrying because we love each other. I’ve got ambitions too, you know. Vic’s going to help me set up a health food store in Whittledene with a sliming centre – wholefoods, herbal remedies – all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t let her get to you,’ their mother intervened. ‘You and Vic have a grand future ahead of you. As for Carol, well, she’s never going to get on in the world hanging around with the likes of Kelly Laws and the village boys. She wasted her time at school and refused to go to college. Now all she wants in life is a measly part-time job in a second-rate bo
utique.’

  ‘I’m right here,’ Carol smarted, ‘you don’t have to talk about me as if I’m out of the room all the time. And Bowman’s isn’t second-rate it’s-’

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Shannon,’ Margaret, the hairdresser, dared to intervene, ‘it this how you want Carol’s hair?’

  Nancy stifled a waspish remark and glared at her daughter. It was the first time she had really looked at her youngest for an age. With her long wavy strands of shaggy hair pulled off her face, she could see the full features: the large mutinous mouth and wide nose, arresting and sensual rather than pretty. It struck her how alike she and Fay were, except the elder girl had her father’s deep-set brown eyes while Carol’s were large and green and fixing her with their perpetual defiant look. Those eyes, Nancy shivered, so direct and accusing.

  ‘Cut the fringe,’ she ordered and turned to help Fay with her veil and train.

  ‘No, Mam, not the fringe,’ Carol pleaded. Margaret hesitated, wishing this ordeal at the colliery manager’s house was over.

  ‘Yes the fringe. You’re going to look smart for one day in your life. And don’t call me Mam.’

  Carol backed away. ‘Don’t bring those scissors anywhere near me.’

  ‘It’s just typical!’ Fay suddenly screamed. ‘You’re deliberately trying to spoil my special day. Can’t you do as Mother says for just once?’

  With alarm, Carol saw her sister’s eyes fill with tears. She had resisted assaults on her fringe for years, but seeing Fay in such a wound-up state, Carol capitulated. As much as she resented being paraded down the aisle in flounces of pink, she didn’t want to ruin things for her sister, however over-the-top it all seemed.

  ‘Okay, Margaret,’ Carol said, ‘do the wicked deed. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, mind, Fay.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Fay almost managed a smile and Nancy’s taut face relaxed a little.

  While Margaret snipped, Fay fretted again over which outfits to pack for her mystery honeymoon.

  ‘Why such secrecy?’ Carol asked. ‘How can you pack if you don’t know where you’re going?’

  ‘It’s romantic,’ Fay said in irritation.

  ‘Bikinis in Alaska – yeah very romantic.’

  ‘Very funny. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You think romance is sitting on the back of a draughty motorbike or drinking beer on the beach. When you’ve seen a bit of the world like I have, you’ll realise there’s life beyond Brassbank.’

  ‘You’ve been to Corfu twice and you’re moving a mile away; hardly the world.’

  ‘It’s a step up from here,’ Nancy snapped. ‘Put them all in,’ she advised, ‘and if you need anything else Vic will buy it.’

  After that there was no more time for argument. The wedding cars arrived: a cream Rolls-Royce for the bride and father while Nancy and Carol followed in a metallic silver limousine, with two small nephews of Vic’s who were dressed in blue velvet pageboy suits. Carol felt some sympathy for them as they tugged at their stiff collars and pulled at the constricting breeches, while her mother ordered them to stop climbing on the front garden walls and get in the car.

  ‘Make sure they behave themselves in church, Carol,’ her mother fretted. ‘Keep a tight hold on that David, he’ll be climbing over the pews given half a chance.’

  ‘Yes Mam,’ Carol sighed, lifting the smallest black-haired boy off the wall.

  ‘Don’t let him get your dress dirty!’ Fay shrieked. ‘He’s been jumping in the flower beds.’

  Carol watched her sister growing more puce by the second under the canopy of white lace and flowers. It was already hot and not yet eleven o’clock. Her father’s bald head was prickled with sweat and his bulldog face was an uncomfortable crimson above the starched collar of his hired morning suit. He had been standing outside for half an hour, not wanting to get embroiled in the bickering upstairs and concerned that the small pageboys might do permanent damage to his prized display of bedding plants, still blazing with colour despite the unusually dry summer.

  Carol thought her father looked quite distinguished in his formal black jacket and pinstriped trousers that managed to hide his spreading paunch. Today he looked tall and benign and fatherly under his brindled moustache. The etched frown and shrewd brown eyes softened with pride for his eldest daughter.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he kept repeating to Fay, ‘I’m going to be the proudest man who ever took his daughter up the aisle of St Brandon’s.’

  ‘Dad, stop it,’ Fay said with a mixture of laughter and reproach. ‘You’ll make me cry and smudge my make-up.’

  ‘Do hurry up, Ben,’ Nancy carped. ‘We don’t want to keep Vic waiting too long. Now into the cars everyone. Half the village will be out to see us. Let’s give them a sight for sore eyes.’

  Carol winked at the small boy in her arms. ‘Come on Davey, we’re not allowed to escape till after the fashion parade.’

  ‘Why’ve they got sore eyes, Auntie Carol?’

  ‘It’s just an expression. Mam wants us to look our best for the half dozen people who didn’t get invited for the wedding.’

  ‘In the car, Carol.’ Her father gave her a warning look.

  Carol bundled the two boys into the limousine. She breathed in the smell of leather; one of her favourite – along with petrol and coal fires in winter. Her family thought she was weird about smells, especially her father who prided himself on growing the best perfumed roses in Brassbank.

  It took five minutes for the wedding party to arrive at the church gates, driving up the steep bank out of the mining village towards open fields and the squat towered medieval church of St Brandon in prosperous Brassy. Within the time it took her mother to slap the boys’ knees twice for fidgeting, they had left the ranks of brick colliery houses, bustling high street, patchwork of allotments and busy park, and emerged into an oasis of ancient trees and ivy-bound walls. Gone was the incessant clank and throb and the mine, the haze of smoke that hung over the colliery even in summer, the blackened brick and overhead electric cables that reached between houses like giant washing lines.

  On a hot sultry Saturday in Brassbank, people came to their doors to talk, grandmothers took children to the shops clutching hands and purses, and men padded out in slippers. But in Brassy, Carol noticed, the main street was deserted and still as a cemetery. Up here the air was cooler – catching a hint of sea breeze that set leaves softly rustling - and the houses set apart and hidden behind high walls. Brassbank hummed, chattered and sweated; Brassy breathed quietly and fanned itself gently in the heat.

  A long line of cars was parked up on the verge either side of the old lych gate, including Vic’s green Triumph Stag sports car which would be used to whisk Fay away after the reception at Brandon Castle to their mystery destination.

  ‘Look at all those people at the gate,’ Nancy exclaimed, pushing the boys out of the limousine and smoothing down her skirt. ‘I see Val Bowman’s come to have a gawp.’

  Carol squinted against the sun to pick out her employer, who waved and smiled. Typical of warm-hearted Val to take time away from her shop on a busy Saturday to wish them well. She and Nancy were related on the maternal side and Carol felt Val should’ve been invite, but Val had gone beyond the pale when her sister Lotty had married into the Todds. The Todds and the Shannons did not speak; something to do with village history. The Todds were union people, while Ben Shannon had gone over to the management side many years ago, and they never met socially. To Carol, these petty divisions were baffling and she was constantly in trouble from her mother and sister for transgressing them.

  ‘Carol!’ a voice screamed from the throng on the footpath. ‘Over here, you blind old bat.’

  She turned and screwed up her green eyes. Kelly, unmistakable in a tight shocking pink t-shirt and orange shorts, was waving madly. Her red hair was tied up with a trailing Indian scarf that Carol had persuaded her to buy from Bowman’s boutique, even though they both knew it wasn’t her style.

  ‘Hiya, Kelly,’ Car
ol shouted back. ‘Bet you wish you could be in this snazzy gear, eh?’

  ‘Shut up and keep walking,’ her mother hissed.

  But before they could pass safely, Kelly was darting out and emptying a bag of rice all over them. Nancy shrieked as rice found its way beneath her silk jacket and into her strappy shoes.

  Carol laughed. ‘That’s supposed to be for the bride after the service, you daft idiot.’

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from. It’s pudding rice and it’s on special offer at Marshall’s.’

  Nancy was still shaking herself down, her heavily tanned face turning a strange orange, when Carol’s brother Simon appeared to usher them in. Simon looked handsome in his formal suit even though his blond hair was cut unfashionably short for the police force. His decision to join the force had pleased their parents and her mother was triumphant that he did not intend to follow his father into the mining industry.

  He winked in encouragement. ‘I know it’s bad for your image, but you look fantastic in pink.’

  Carol smiled. ‘You look pretty good too, in spite of that terrible hair cut.’

  Simon gave Fay a broad smile as she appeared on her father’s arm, and led Nancy down to the front, while Carol held hands with the page boys and whispered, ‘If you manage not to stand on Auntie Fay’s train, I’ll treat you to ice cream at Dimarco’s.’

  One squealed, the other said loudly, ‘That’s not a train, it’s a sheet.’

  Carol laughed low. ‘Well keep off the sheet.’

  Fay turned to hush them. Carol mimed zipping her mouth to the boys, who grinned, then the organ burst into the bridal march and they were setting off down the aisle.

  Carol was mesmerised by the rich colours – crimson altar cloth and the psychedelic patterns from sun shot through stained glass – and the earthy smell of fresh flowers mixed with cold dank stone. This church had stood here for seven hundred years looking out on the temperamental North Sea, while deep below the layers of black coal lay waiting to be roused like a beast from sleep. She shivered to think that she was a part of it: the cycle of birth and growing up, of grafting and striving, of decay and dying that had gone on for centuries in this ancient corner of County Durham. What would her contribution be? A measly part time job in a second rate boutique. For a moment she yearned for something greater, something exciting that would make a difference.