D16 The Gillyvors Aka The Love Child by Catherine Cookson

Author:Catherine Cookson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 1990-05-20T14:00:00+00:00

Part Four

THE BLOW

The winter of 1881 2 had been a severe one. There were days when the roads were impassable because of the heavy falls of snow; and conditions were made even worse when the thaw set in.

She hadn't kept the promise to herself to give up her post, telling herself that the child needed her. However, she was relieved, yet at the same time sorry, whenever the weather made her visits impossible.

The severest snowstorm occurred in February. It went on for four days.

Huge drifts blocked the roads, trains were unable to run, and when eventually the thaw came the rivers overflowed their banks, flooding much of the land in and around the villages; only the moors seemed to escape. And perhaps this was as well, for in the second week of March, two pit families and a single man made their home on the moors, at least on the edge of it and as near as possible to Nathaniel's woodland fence, in order to get a little shelter from the trees.

They had been there for three days before Nathaniel and Anna, having gone down to the wood-pile to replenish the house stock, came across them; and they were aghast at hearing the sound of a child coughing its heart out under one of the tarpaulin shelters, three rough habitations that Nathaniel wouldn't have offered as shelter to his goats. The company consisted of three men, two women, and five children. One man had a fire going in a holed, square, tin box and had erected a tripod over it on which a kettle was swinging. And when Nathaniel spoke to them across the railings, saying, "Dear! Dear! This can't go on," the man said, "We ain't takin' any of your wood, mister."

"I'm not talking about wood," said Nathaniel, harshly now.

"I'm talking about the conditions under which you are living and that child coughing in there." He pointed to the tarpaulin and makeshift walls of oddments of furniture. And he said, "You only had to come and ask. You know you could have used the barn; others before you have done so."

The man came towards the fence now and the other two men and one of the women followed, and it was the first man who spoke, saying in a quiet voice, "Aye, I know that, mister. You've been very good, and you needn't have been, with what they've done to you and your lot. But we didn't want any more trouble to come on you. So we'll be all right here for the next day or two, then we'll shift. We're goin' into the town. We'll get something; if not, the workhouse will have to keep us.

But that'll be over me dead body. I'll swear on that. And we'll all see our day with that lot back there. " He thumbed over the moor in the direction of the mine.

"Livin' on the fat of the land, they are. We're turnin' out more bloody coal now than we ever have; three times as much as twenty years ago.

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