Durham Trilogy 01. The Hungry Hills Read online

  Iris was finishing the last refrain of ‘Oh, Danny Boy’ at the piano, and Davie was in heaven. The afternoon and evening had been spent in the stuffy warmth of the Market Inn, boozing with Tadger and flirting with Iris Ramshaw, the publican’s daughter. Her interest in him appeared lukewarm, but with each beer, Davie fell deeper in love with her slim, petulant face and bright hazel eyes.

  Finally Iris had been persuaded to sing to the accompaniment of the piano. Davie marvelled at the sudden vivaciousness that took hold of her the moment she began performing and the strong melodious voice that vibrated out of such a small body and mouth.

  ‘You should be on the stage, bonny Iris,’ Davie shouted in her ear amid the applause. ‘You’ve the voice of an angel.’

  Iris leaned away from the flushed face of her admirer, reeking as it did of stale alcohol. Admittedly it was a passably handsome face, with wicked blue eyes that promised fun, but it was boyishly young, the upper lip nurturing soft down that yearned to be a manly growth of hair. His smart appearance was marred by the stiff collar which had become disengaged and stuck out from his neck like small wings. Still, he liked her singing, and anyone who told her she should be a professional singer warranted some encouragement. She bestowed a smile on Davie Kirkup and her fate for the evening was sealed.

  Abruptly, a fight broke out in the doorway of the pub and chairs began to fly. There was uproar and the splintering sound of bottles smashing as the dispute between two rival pitmen spread through the bar.

  Davie ducked just in time to avoid a blow from an unknown fist, saw Iris in the doorway of the back room, turned her around and bustled her out of an open window into the marketplace.

  ‘Get your hands off me!’ she shouted with indignation, tumbling on to the cobbles. Among the sea of empty bottles in the square was a straggle of holidaymakers who had not yet retreated to the outlying villages.

  Davie squinted in the sudden daylight that stabbed his eyes. ‘You’re best out of that battle, pet,’ he said, pulling her up. ‘I just want to protect you, Iris lass.’

  Ramshaw’s eldest daughter did not need much persuasion to abandon her post; she had been serving since morning and had seen none of the revelries in the town. She supported her rescuer as he weaved unsteadily across Elvet Bridge and down to the riverside. The noise of the town receded as they strolled along the riverbank, breathing in the warm evening air and listening to the birds’ contented evening gossip.

  ‘Sing for me, Iris,’ Davie requested, pulling her down beside him under a tree. Walking was to him a fruitless pastime unless it got him somewhere.

  ‘Why should I?’ Iris pouted, straightening out her brown skirt.

  ‘Because you’ve got the bonniest voice I’ve ever heard.’ Davie put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Just for me, Iris, please.’

  She shook off his hold but could not prevent a smile at his persistence. ‘Very well, then. What do you want to hear?’

  ‘“Cushy Butterfield”, for a publican’s lass.’ Davie grinned, and began to sing the chorus:

  ‘She’s a big lass an’ a bonny one,

  An’ she likes her beer;

  An’ they call her Cushy Butterfield,

  An’ aw wish she was here!’

  His laughed and gave him a swipe of her hand across his bristly fair hair. She began to sing ‘Weel ay the Keel Row’ and Davie joined in the chorus. After that she drew up her knees and clasped her hands round them as she sang a traditional love song in a strong, sweet voice.

  ‘Aw’ve had mony sweethearts, in maw wooing life,

  And had mony offers to be a good wife;

  But me heart beats for yen, aye an’ faith it beats true,

  He’s a bonny keel laddie wi’ bonnet se blue.’

  Davie lay back, eyes closed, listening to the honeyed words drift over the sluggish water of the River Wear, the heavy scent of mature foliage all around. When she finished, they seemed spellbound by the silence the song left, until the sensuous summer sound of a wood pigeon hooting in the trees above released them.

  ‘You’re a canny singer.’ Davie rolled towards her and sat up. They looked at each other as the light faded from the sky and the grass around them darkened.

  Iris allowed him to kiss her on the lips. Singing always aroused a deep restlessness in her and Davie happened to be there, an audience to appreciate her talent. His kisses were enthusiastic, and in spite of his slim appearance, there was a pleasing strength in his shoulders and arms; but then he was a pitman.

  At that thought, she pushed him away. No colliery lad was going to get her into trouble; a life of drudgery washing coal grime from his clothes, surrounded by a pack of squabbling bairns was no life at all.

  ‘Just another kiss, Iris,’ Davie urged, craving more of her moist mouth. His head swam from the effects of the drink and the closeness of her body.

  ‘I’ll be missed,’ Iris replied, standing up and shaking out the creases in her skirt. She ignored the quickening thump in her chest that kissing him had started. ‘And you’ll have missed the last train.’

  Davie heaved himself up, disappointed by the outcome of the day. She was right; he would have to walk the ten miles back to Whitton Grange and face the wrath of Jacob Kirkup for the next week.

  ‘Can I see you again, Iris?’ He fell in step with her, hoping with his usual optimism, to salvage the situation.

  ‘You know where I live, Davie Kirkup,’ she answered, then, seeing his dejection, added, ‘If you ever get away from that pit, I’d be pleased to see you.’

  He grinned and smacked her cheek with a kiss; all was not lost. There was something different about Iris Ramshaw that drew him like a moth to the oil lamp. He had notched up a few conquests in the village and thought he knew just how to please a lass, but not this one.

  They parted in the marketplace and Davie began the long trudge home. Thoughts came, met and vanished in his head. What had happened to Tadger? Iris Ramshaw’s eyes were the colour of honey. Would he be able to get into Durham to see her again before next Big Meeting? Louie would be furious with him for slipping away at the start of the day.

  As Davie sobered up on the long march home, and the sky lightened his way into the valley that held Whitton Grange, he whistled the tune of ‘Cushy Butterfield’ and thought pleasant thoughts.

  ***

  Mrs Eleanor Seward-Scott was holding a musical evening at The Grange, the modest Georgian country house that had grown up into a sprawling mansion with Victorian bell tower and turrets and Gothic windows and archways that proclaimed it the king of the countryside. She took pleasure in these musical gatherings that had been such a feature of her mother’s entertainment when she had been alive; Lady Constance had played the grand piano beautifully and sung Scottish ballads in her soft, unaffected Highland voice, before tuberculosis had robbed her of life.

  Eleanor could not sing. Instead she thrived on the convivial companionship and conversation that such occasions brought; her close friend Isobel Joice, the local teacher, was there with her father Dr William Joice, and there were her own father’s friends the Swainsons, who were shipping magnates. Eleanor’s husband Reginald was a passably good singer in spite of his rather abrupt, military delivery; but the evening had really taken off when her younger sister Beatrice’s friends from Cambridge had entertained them with a sketch from their college revue. Even stuffy Reginald had shouted ‘Bravo!’ and the Swainsons’ rather silly daughter Harriet had gone into uncontrollable giggles.

  ‘This has been a wonderful evening, Eleanor.’ Isobel thanked her with a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ Eleanor pleaded. ‘Stay for a nightcap.’

  Isobel smiled regretfully at her friend. ‘Papa’s really very tired. But you’ll call and see us during the week, won’t you? Now that term’s finished I’ve got bags of time to chat. We’ll discuss Winifred Holtby’s new book.’

  Eleanor’s thin face lit up at the thought; she liked nothing better than to curl up on the Joices’ sofa an
d discuss books and ideas with Isobel and her father.

  ‘That’s a promise,’ Eleanor agreed. She turned and saw Mrs Swainson trying to extract her husband from the earphones of the new wireless set that her father was showing him. Eleanor smiled; her father had to have all the latest gadgets available and he had hardly been able to sit still through the entertainment in anticipation of showing his friend his latest toy. Thomas Seward-Scott was a man of action and progress who had kept a controlling hand on his estates and mines rather than trust all to his agent. His own father, Oswald Scott, had done the same before him. Eleanor’s grandfather had secured the hand of the Seward heiress and injected her haphazardly run estates with his own ruthless energy. Thomas had all his father’s energetic temperament and business sense, and had made a small fortune from his mines before the war with Germany, when prices had been high. But since Eleanor’s elder brother Rupert had been killed in the Battle of the Somme, it was Reginald, himself a Scott and a second cousin of Eleanor’s, who was to be successor to the Seward-Scott fortune. How very appropriate their marriage had seemed in 1914, Eleanor remembered ruefully. Reginald had even adopted the Seward into his name.

  Eleanor glanced at her husband. He stood in his evening tails and starched shirt, propped against the grand piano, cigar in hand, chatting to Beatrice’s latest boyfriend, Charlie Ventnor. Reginald was tall and good-looking, with a well-trimmed moustache and a strong chin; he was moderately intelligent, supremely confident and held strong opinions. Yet Eleanor could not now remember why she had married him.

  ‘Fix me a whisky and soda, darling,’ she said as she joined the young group that was staying at the house. Her sister Beatrice was often stupid and irresponsible, like so many of the young these days, but Eleanor loved it when her vibrant sister deigned to come home from her partying in London or Cambridge and filled the quiet house with guests.

  Reginald gave his wife a censorious look as she flicked open her cigarette case and inserted a Turkish cigarette into the end of a long ivory holder. She ignored his disapproval.

  ‘Turkish or Virginia?’ She offered the case to Charlie.

  ‘I’ll have a gasper, thanks, Ellie.’ Charlie reached for an ordinary cigarette.

  ‘No one calls her Ellie, silly,’ Beatrice slipped her hand playfully through Charlie’s arm. ‘Eleanor’s far too highbrow for that.’

  ‘Gosh, sorry.’ Charlie blushed. ‘Damn silly name anyway - Ellie, I mean, not Eleanor, of course.’

  ‘Just shut up, Charlie,’ Beatrice ordered, and took a puff of his cigarette. ‘Let’s all dance now those stuffed shirts have gone.’

  ‘Beatrice!’ Eleanor tried to sound disapproving.

  ‘Oh, I know they’re yours and Daddy’s friends, sis, but they’re not exactly ripping fun, are they? And as for that Harriet Swainson, she spent the whole evening simpering and making cow’s eyes at Charlie.’ Eleanor could not help laughing. ‘Come on, Charlie, you wind up the gramophone and Sukie and I will show you how to dance the modern way. Harry’s got some of those American jazz records from his cousin in New York, they’re absolutely topping.’

  ‘Not Negro music.’ Reginald humphed in disgust.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Reggie,’ Beatrice teased him, ‘even Daddy listens to American jazz on the wireless, don’t you, Daddy?’

  ‘I shall retire to bed,’ Thomas Seward-Scott grinned indulgently at his younger daughter, ‘and leave you young things to dance the night away.’ He kissed his daughters and withdrew.

  Eleanor, watching Beatrice and her friends roll back the animal rugs and dance on the polished floor to a new Irving Berlin number, wished she had half their energy. A walk around the grounds with the aid of a stick still left her feeling breathless and exhausted. Neither could she join in their games of tennis, but preferred to lie in the shade of the trees and read. It annoyed Reginald that she did not join in any more, but then most things she did seemed to annoy her husband.

  To avoid further disapproval from Reginald, she walked over to the decanter and poured her own drink. To her relief, he did not notice, being transfixed by Beatrice and Sukie’s dancing. Beatrice looked so attractive, with her brown bobbed hair shaped with a new permanent wave and her green eyes underlined with black, giving her a vampish look. Her lips were shaped like Cupid’s bows in a bright red which matched her nails, and she showed off slim legs as she hitched up her evening dress and kicked.

  ‘Beatrice tells me you’re a friend of Dr Marie Stopes.’

  It was quiet, dark-haired Harry with the American cousin who spoke.

  ‘I suppose I am.’ Eleanor considered him and puffed on her cigarette holder. ‘I took an interest in her birth control clinic in Holloway when she first started. I’d like to set up a similar thing here one day.’

  ‘Bit risqué, isn’t it, all this talk of sex and contraception for the masses?’ He smiled.

  ‘Maybe, but such education is necessary.’ Eleanor was not embarrassed by the subject. ‘If you saw the poverty and overcrowding in pit villages like Whitton Grange you’d agree.’

  ‘So you’re a bit of an expert on sex and marriage then?’ Harry’s look was disconcerting. Eleanor knew Reginald was suspicious of him because he wore outrageously wide Oxford bags, and shoes of brown and white.

  ‘I may have read her books, but that doesn’t make me an expert. As you can see, we have no children,’ Eleanor answered sardonically; she would not let him see how she really felt about her infertility.

  The record had finished and Reginald crossed the room to monitor his wife’s conversation with the dubious Harry Stanton, who certainly did not seem like the youngest son of a baron to him. For a moment he viewed his wife objectively; she was too thin to be pretty in the conventional sense, although a lack of figure seemed to be all the rage these days. But she was elegant in the shimmer of black silk that swathed her svelte frame, her too-short cropped bob of black hair hidden in an exotic orange and black turban that complimented the prominent bones of her face and the large dark-brown eyes that dominated all. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent, and in daylight she looked pasty and older than her thirty-one years; but in the electric lamp-light she looked energised and interesting, which was obviously what Harry Stanton thought.

  ‘You have a modern wife,’ the young undergraduate said in his easy drawl as Reginald joined them.

  ‘Has she been boring you about the suffragettes again?’ Reginald snorted. ‘No, don’t tell me; Eleanor has been recounting the speeches of those awful Bolshies who were haranguing my colliery workers in Durham today. Everyone else has the sense to avoid the city on Gala Day except my wife.’ Reginald sounded more sarcastic than he had meant to be.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling, Durham was full of people today,’ Eleanor countered.

  ‘We were discussing Dr Stopes, actually,’ Harry intervened quickly, sensing trouble in which he wanted no part.

  ‘Really, Eleanor, this is hardly the time or place,’ Reginald reproved.

  ‘For what, Reggie?’

  ‘For talk about - you know,’ he blustered.

  ‘Birth control?’ Eleanor supplied the words.

  ‘Exactly.’ Her husband gave her a warning look. He was so tediously sensitive about the subject, Eleanor thought wearily, as if she was likely to go telling this boy details about their inability to produce a child. Reginald blamed her of course. He thought it was a result of her being force-fed in prison before she came to her senses and married him. But she had only been incarcerated for a week before her gaolers discovered she was someone of consequence and released her. No, their problems went deeper than that, but Reginald was the last person with whom she could discuss them. Their lovemaking was joyless and, more tragically, fruitless; but that was none of Harry Stanton’s business.

  ‘What would you like to talk about, Reggie, darling?’ She smiled, knowing just how to annoy him. ‘About your stocks and shares, or the price of coal? Harry, what do you know about mining?’


  ‘Absolutely nothing, thank God.’ Harry laughed. ‘They say it’s such a grubby little job.’ He made his escape, finding Reginald Seward-Scott’s conversation as boring as last year’s fashions.

  ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’ Reginald gave his wife a contemptuous glance. His spark of attraction towards her had dissipated; as a mark of his disapproval he would not visit her room later. ‘Those grubby little jobs, as your admirer cares to call them, keep you in the house that you love. Always remember that.’

  A few days later, Eleanor called on Isobel Joice and they sat on wicker chairs in the Joices’ mature walled garden with its glimpse of the leafy dene beyond, facing away from the packed rows of colliery houses. Isobel’s father was out on a call and they drank leisurely cups of tea, talking about everything from literature to Beatrice’s latest escapades in Mayfair.

  ‘I’m thinking of returning to London with her when she goes,’ Eleanor said quietly, her gaze intent on a cascading clematis. Isobel shaded her eyes with a hand and squinted at her friend in surprise.

  ‘For a shopping trip?’ Isobel questioned.

  ‘No, for longer. I had a letter from Marie Stopes yesterday; she’s cock-a-hoop about the libel appeal going her way. She’s asked me to plan a lecture tour for her around the north.’

  ‘You could do that from here,’ Isobel commented.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor admitted, ‘but I also need to get away.’ She looked directly at her friend. This fair-haired schoolmistress, her oldest friend, who should have been her sister-in-law had her brother Rupert survived the war, was the only person to whom she could really talk. ‘Things aren’t any better between Reggie and me; the only thing he wants from me is a son and heir and I can’t give him one.’ Eleanor reached for her cigarette case and holder on the portable Indian table. Isobel waited in silence as she lit up. ‘If I can’t be a mother, Isobel, I might as well be useful doing something else, like helping at Marie’s clinic or something. Reggie’s so wrapped up in selling coal to the Scandinavians or whoever he won’t even notice I’ve gone.’ She blew out smoke vigorously. ‘I want to do something useful with my life like you have. You’re a born teacher, you always have been.’