The Miner's Wife by Diane Allen

Author:Diane Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

14

‘Just look at the state of you two! Whatever possessed you to take him on?’ Betty Alderson chastised both her sons as they sat at the kitchen table, battered and bruised.

‘Don’t moan, Mother, we are in no fit state to be lectured.’ Sam hugged his cup of warm tea and glanced across at his brother, who was not well enough to go to work, with two of his ribs cracked and bandaged. He himself was sporting two black eyes, along with a thumping headache, brought on mainly by the amount of alcohol he had consumed when they were enjoying themselves at the fair.

‘I thought, at the age you both are, you’d have more sense by now. But no, you are still as daft as brushes and not as useful, either.’ Betty stood with her hands on her hips and glared at both of them. ‘You’d better tell the boss man, Sam, that Jack will not be fit to work this week. What we will do for brass, I don’t know. I presume you are going to work, once you’ve got yourself sorted?’

Betty looked as Sam picked up his jacket and put it on, then pulled his cap down over his eyes. She’d lectured them both all day Sunday, after hearing them roll home the worse for wear. And now Jack was definitely not fit for work, and Sam didn’t sound as if he’d be worth much as a worker for the Owd Gang, this wet Monday morning.

‘Well, one of us will have to work, and I suppose our Jack will not be the only one not turning up this morning,’ Sam growled, then put his pipe and Vesta case in his pocket, before going out of the back door.

‘That lad gets worse. But don’t you think I’ve any sympathies for you, either. Broken ribs or no broken ribs, you can make yourself useful around the house. I really don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you two.’ Betty took Jack’s half-eaten dish of porridge away from under his nose and stood washing up at the sink.

‘Well, if I’d won that fight, you wouldn’t have had me to worry about. I’d have booked myself a passage to America with the winnings. They are calling out for miners and railway engineers over there. They are even giving you your own piece of land, if you help them on the railroads.’ Jack looked up and moved gingerly from the kitchen chair to the one next to the fire.

‘You wouldn’t leave your poor mother, would you, our Jack? This is your home, and it always will be.’ Betty turned and looked at her eldest son. She had had no idea that was what he’d been thinking.

‘I know, Mother, but things are changing. There’s not always going to be lead in these fells and, if there is, folk will be able to buy it cheaper than we can mine it for. Besides, I’m fed up with always being in Sam’s shadow. He’s got the looks and the gob on him, he gets whatever he wants and I never get anything.

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