‘Aye, lad. Aye, he was.’
Amos had finally lost his fight with pneumoconiosis on the last day of September and his funeral was later that day.
‘I’m taking our Ethel, Amos’s wife’ - Terry raised enquiring eyebrows at the three of them and they all nodded, although Walter and David hadn’t known the name of Amos’s wife - ‘back south with me. Me an’ Mildred have got a couple of spare rooms and we can make her comfortable enough, bless her.’
‘Terry’s done all right for himself,’ Ned put in. ‘Isn’t that right, Terry?’
‘Aye, well, I can’t complain. It was hit an’ miss in the first couple of years but the bairns mucked in and between us we’ve made a go of it,’ Terry said. ‘I’m in the automobile business, lads, on the used cars side. By, it’s the way of the future and no mistake.’
‘Four showrooms, Terry’s got now. Isn’t that right, Terry?’ Ned was presenting the other man like a fairground show.
‘Aye, four it is, right enough, and I’m thinking of a fifth come the spring. We all thought sales would drop a couple of years ago when they brought in this compulsory driving test lark, but not a bit of it, I’m glad to say.’ Terry’s face had lit up as he was speaking and it was clear to the three men watching him that he was passionate about his work. ‘Mind, I can’t see the need for this thirty miles per hour speed limit they’ve brought in, but if it’s saving lives like they say it is, I don’t suppose you can complain, can you?’
‘No.’ David could see from Walter’s slightly glazed expression that his brother was feeling as lost as he was. None of them had even sat in an automobile, let alone driven one. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’
‘London’s changing, though, with all these traffic lights and whatnot, and I’m not too sure it’s for the better meself.’
‘Is that where you are now, London?’ David interjected.
‘Aye, that’s it, lad, and it was the best thing me an’ Mildred ever did when we took ourselves down there. I kept on at our Amos to come in with me, but he wouldn’t. Stubborn old so-an’-so. He’d be sitting pretty if he had but you couldn’t tell him anything. Mind, he thought the world of you, Ned.’ Terry turned to David and Walter’s father and gripped his arm. ‘Right good to him you were and I’m grateful. You all got time for a jar now the show’s finished? ’
David stared at Amos’s brother. It was one thing to come and give the marchers a hell of a send-off like plenty of men on the dole or between shifts had done from as far as Newcastle and Sunderland because they supported their cause, quite another to view it as some sort of entertainment because you happened to be up north with some time to kill.
‘Look, I’m getting a taxi back to town; why don’t you three ride with me and we’ll have a drink at the Grand,’ Terry said jovially. ‘I’m staying there while I’m up here and to tell you the truth I’d appreciate the company. The wife wanted to stay with our eldest who’s just presented us with our first grandchild last week, so I’m all on my own and I’ve never been one for my own company. What do you say?’
‘Aye, man, we’ll have a drink with you.’ Ned answered for them all, though he could see his sons were feeling uncomfortable.
Terry Proudfoot might have begun life as a miner’s son in two rooms in a house at the Back of the Pit, but it was clear he had risen some way since then. His light grey check suit, highly polished black boots and black homburg were of good quality, as was the dark grey overcoat trimmed with fur at the collar. He wore his coat open, revealing the mound of a portly belly under the fine cloth. He looked prosperous and pleased with himself, and as far removed from the folk he’d once called his own as the man on the moon. Pawning the fire irons or bread knife, scrabbling for cinders on the tip or following the coal cart to pick up lumps shaken out by potholes or tram lines - what did Terry know about such day-to-day living? mused David as he and Walter followed the two older men down the street. Although he’d known it once.
Back in Bishopwearmouth, David made his excuses and left the other three outside the Grand. He told Ned he didn’t relish the thought of entering the smart hotel dressed in his working clothes, whatever his father and Walter felt about it. He would go and have a tidy up at the allotment, spend an hour or two getting it ready for the next owner. Carrie was busy rushing through a special order the shop had asked her for, so he didn’t want to get under her feet at home.
It was cold on the allotment, bitter in fact, but David found he was enjoying the physical work out in the open air, with an icy north-east wind blowing and the clouds scudding across the low sky. He had needed to do something after Walter’s revelation.
He mulled over everything his brother had said as he cleared the hard ground of debris and lit a large bonfire. But once he was digging over the frozen earth, his thoughts moved on to the talk of war which was beginning to appear in the newspapers again. He had heard more than one miner say that Hitler could do whatever he liked if it brought in work. Everyone knew you couldn’t have a war without coal - lots of it.
David straightened his aching back and stood with one hand resting on Amos’s old spade, staring up into the grey sky.
Idly he watched a cloud shaped like a dog chasing one which could have passed for a cat. It seemed years rather than months since the Durham Miners’ Gala in July. It had been a rare good day this year, not just because the sun had shone on the banners and bands, stalls and sideshows, but because they had all gone together - him, Carrie and Matthew, Walter and his family, Carrie’s mam and da, Billy and the twins, and his own parents. Billy had brought along the lass he’d been courting for a while - a nice lass even if she didn’t say two words the whole day - and because everyone was together out in the open it had made things easier with Sandy somehow, less awkward. He remembered he’d thought at one point that he wished it could always be like this, everyone getting on and no sniping between Walter and Renee or his mam and da.
He shook his head at himself, lifted his cap and raked back his springy black hair before replacing the cap on his head. As he bent to start digging again, he saw his father and Terry Proudfoot come in through the side gate at the rear of the allotments. He raised his hand to them and his father waved back, and even from a hundred yards he could see the difference in his da’s face.
He thought at first his father was well oiled. By, I hope he can hold it until the funeral’s over at least, he reflected wryly, but then, as the two men got nearer, he saw it wasn’t that. His da looked ten years younger, his face alive and his eyes bright. Ned was still some thirty yards away when he shouted, ‘I’m glad you’re still here, lad! Have I got some news for you.’
When his father reached him he didn’t speak straight away as David had expected; he waited until Terry had come puffing and panting to their side. ‘Tell him, Terry,’ he said. ‘Tell him what you said to me not an hour since,’ and then before Terry had a chance to open his mouth, ‘He wants me to go and work for him, lad, down south. What do you think of that?’
‘Work for him?’ David stared at his father. Terry was nodding enthusiastically, still trying to catch his breath. ‘Doing what?’
‘Lookin’ after this new showroom he’s openin’ come spring, that’s what. An’ what’s more, he’s on about me havin’ drivin’ lessons with one of his lads an’ havin’ me own car.’ Ned couldn’t get the words out quick enough. ‘Me with me own car, lad,’ and he chuckled like a bairn.
‘But . . .’ David’s gaze moved from one to the other before settling on his father’s beaming face. ‘You don’t know the first thing about cars.’
‘There’s nowt he can’t learn, lad, and me lads will see to it he gets a good grounding afore March. Besides, he’ll be managing the new place for me, there’ll be plenty of young wind-snappers doing the donkey work. I want someone I can trust in there, that’s the thing. Someone I know won’t be on the fiddle. Me lads see to the other places but there’s only four of them so I was wondering what to do about this new one, and I owe your da, David. Ethel’s been singing his praises since I got down here, saying how good he’s been to her and Amos with the allotment an’ all. Always popping stuff in and spending time with Amos. Not everyone bothers to do that nowadays, lad.’ Terry shook his head sorrowfully.
‘Aw, man, I was glad to do it.’ Ned rubbed at his nose as he was apt to do when embarrassed. ‘And a few bit veg is nowt.’
‘Aye, but Ethel says it was the good stuff you gave them, Ned. None of the old rubbish. And when you managed to sell some veg if things went well, it was their pocket that saw the result. She said they had a job to get you to take a bit of baccy money. Without what you slipped them on the sly it’d have been the workhouse, according to Ethel, although why the daft pair didn’t tip me the wink as to how things were I don’t know. But that was Amos, stubborn as a cuddy and as proud as Punch.’
David was gaping at his father in amazement. He knew his da had sometimes managed to sell the odd few boxes of vegetables round the doors when there was a bit over - which wasn’t often by the time he’d looked after Amos and himself and slipped Renee and Carrie some stuff - but he had always assumed his da had kept the money for the hard work he’d put in. And all the time he’d been looking after Amos and Ethel. Well, well. Talk about live and learn.
‘So? What do you say?’ His father’s deep brown eyes, so like his own, were searching.
‘Good on you, man, if you want to go.’
‘Want to go? By, lad.’ Ned couldn’t go on but David saw that his shoulders had straightened and his head was up at the thought of a good regular job. His mother had stripped his father of every shred of self-worth in the last years, and it was only now, seeing the transformation in front of him, that he realised just how much it had hurt his da.
The thought of his mother made him say, ‘What about Mam? What if she doesn’t want to go? You know what she’s like.’
There was a moment of silence which seemed to swell, before Ned said very softly, ‘I shall be goin’ alone, lad.’
‘Alone?’
‘Aye.’ Ned wetted his lips. ‘I’ve had me fill over the years, lad, an’ that’s the truth. She’s treated me as less than the muck under her boots an’ I can’t stand the sight of her no more than she can stand the sight of me.’
Terry had turned his head away and was scuffing a clod of earth with his shiny boots.
‘But . . .’ David was at a loss.
‘You think the less of me for it?’
‘No, Da.’ It was immediate. ‘No, but I just can’t take it in. Will . . . will we see you again?’
‘Oh aye, lad, bless you.’ It was Terry who replied. ‘You and your dear wife and any of them who want to pay a visit will be made more than welcome, you rest assured on that. You just write and let your da know when you want to come down and there’ll be train tickets provided, all right? On me. And that stands for as long as your da stays down south, which I hope will be indefinitely. By, it’ll be right grand to have someone from the old days to jaw with of an evening over a pint or two. The wife is forever in one or the other of the bairns’ houses, and it’ll be worse now our Nell has had her bairn. Be a magnet, that babby will. She’s already spent a small fortune on kitting out the nursery for him as it is.’
It was another world. David knew he was probably staring gormlessly but he couldn’t help it. Bairns up here were lucky if they top and tailed with umpteen others and had a change of clothing to their name, and here was Terry talking about fixing up the child’s room and decking it out as though it was nowt. ‘When will you go?’ he asked his father.
‘Straight after the funeral. Terry wants to get back and there’ll just be time to see our Lillian before we catch the train. Walter already knows and I shall leave your mam to break the good news to Alec. They’ll be able to chew me over all they like but I shan’t be around to hear it. I shall tell her as I leave for the funeral and likely she’ll clap her hands. It’ll mean she’ll probably go to Alec’s which is what she’s always wanted, the sun having always shone out of his backside.’
The three of them were silent for a moment, then Terry thumped David lightly on the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t forget, lad, whenever you want to pay a visit you’ll be welcome. ’
‘Aye, thanks.’ David nodded and turned to his father. ‘I’ll see you later then. At the funeral?’
‘Aye, aye, you will.’ Ned’s voice was preoccupied now, as though he had already left. ‘I’d best get home and get sorted then.’
‘You do that, Da.’
David waited until the two men had passed through the side gate before he followed them out of the allotment. He needed to marshal his racing thoughts on the way home before he told Carrie his father’s news.