Episode 3: The Children

"Is tea ready?" asked the boy, standing with his arms on the table, which was laid with a cloth and cups and saucers.

"Take your arms off the table! Yes, when your father or Annie comes in. They're turning the soft coal men up ----"

"Can I 'ave summat t' eat?"

" 'Summat t' eat'--who says that! You can have 'something to eat' when you have your tea."*

The boy dragged his way to the foot of the stairs, two white wooden steps of which intruded into the kitchen.

"Don't drag your feet!" said the mother, watching him, "They want mending often enough."

The kitchen was small and full of ruddy firelight. The fierce coals piled their beautiful, glowing life up to the chimney mouth. The white hearth looked hot, and the redness was on the bright steel fender. The uncovered floor was worn with hollows, but its soft deep red was unsullied. The tea-table shone white and comfortable, and the scarlet chinz on the sofa under the window was warm and full of invitation. The boy sat on the lowest stair, in the far corner, cutting a piece of white wood with a blunt knife. He struggled with determined little fists. His mother moved about the oven, and glanced at the clock. Then she tried the potatoes and pulled the saucepan back on the hob from the fire. She left the oven door slightly ajar, and the room was full of the smell of stewed meat. She glanced at the clock again, and began cutting bread and butter. It was half-past four. When she had cut four or five thick slices, the woman stood, with nothing to do but wait. The boy still bent over his piece of wood.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He did not answer.

"What are you making?" she repeated.

"A tram," he answered, meaning a little truck such as is used down pit*.

"Don't make a litter", she said.

"They on'y go on th' steerfoot mat*," he replied.

"Very well," said his mother, repeating his words to correct their vulgar pronunciation,"see they do only go on the stairfoot mat*, and then shake it when you've done."

She turned away. Her son was very much like herself, yet something in him always pained her, and roused her opposition. He had his father's brutality, without his father's frank boisterousness.   She glanced again at the clock, and took the potatoes to strain them in the yard. The garden andthe fields beyond the brook were closed in uncertain darkness. When she rose with the saucepan, leaving the grate steaming into the night behind her, she saw the yellow lamps were lit along the highway that went up the hill away beyond the space of the railway-lines and the field.   Then again, she watched the men trooping home, fewer now, and fewer.

Indoors the highest flush of the fire had passed and the night pressed round the ruddy glowing room. The woman put her saucepan on the hob, and set a batter pudding near the mouth of the oven. Then she stood unmoving. Irritation and suspense gathered like the thickening darkness: then, gratefully, came quick young steps to the door. A child hung on the latch a moment, and a little girl entered.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, sniffing, "Stew! Can I have some, mother?"

She began pulling off her clothes, dragging a mass of curls  just ripening from gold to brown  over her eyes with her hat.

"Well," said her mother. "Shut the door! You're late, aren't you?"

"Why, what time is it? We had a lovely game of king o' the mountain down Nethergreen. Oh, mother, is tea ready? I thought of it against the crossing, an' I run*, for it did seem beautiful -- tea."

She hung her grey scarf and her clothes on the door. Her mother chid her for coming late from school, and said she would have to keep her at home the dark winter days.

"Why, mother, it's hardly a bit dark  . The lamp's not lighted, and my father's not home yet."

"No, he isn't. But it's   quarter to five! Did you see anything of him?"

The child became serious. She looked at her mother with large, wistful blue eyes.

"No, mother, I've never seen him. Why? Has he come up an' gone down Old Brinsley? He hasn't, mother, 'cos I never saw him."*

"He'd watch that," said the mother bitterly,"he'd take care as you didn't see him, child.* But you may depend upon it, he's seated in the 'Prince o' Wales' He wouldn't be this late."

The girl looked at her mother piteously. The boy sat with his head bowed over his bit of wood. The mother let loose, now, the silent anger and bitterness that coiled within her. She said little, but there was the grip of "trouble," like the tentacle of an octopus, round the hearts of the children.

"Let's have our teas*, mother, should we?" said the girl plaintively; with woman's instinct for turning aside from the thing she feared. The mother called John to table. He took the mat to shake the bits in the fire first.

"Nay," said his mother,"that's a sloven's trick!" and she put him back with her hand. "Take it outside."

He went very slowly. She opened the door for him and leaned out to look across the darkness of the lines. All was deserted: she could not hear the winding-engines.

"Perhaps," she said to herself,"he's stopped to get some ripping* done."

They sat down to tea. John, at the end of the table near the door, was almost lost in the darkness. Their faces were hidden from each other. After the first piece of bread, the girl asked:"Can I have cobbler's toast, mother?"

"Can I?" said John.

The mother hesitated awhile.

"Yes," she said at last,"only it's a waste of butter, and you generally want twice as much if you have toast."

The girl crouched against the fender slowly moving a thick piece of bread before the fire. The lad, his face a dusky mark on the shadow, sat watching her, transfigured as she was in the hot red glow.

"I do think it's beautiful to look in the fire," said she pensively.

"Do you?" said her mother. "Why?"

"It's so red, and full of little hot caves--and it feels nice so, and you can fair smell it."*

"It'll want mending directly,"* replied her mother. "And then if your father comes he'll carry on and say there never is a fire when a man comes home wet from the pit. A public house is always warm enough though."

There was silence till the boy said complainingly:"Make haste, our Annie*."

"Well, I am! I can't make the fire do it no faster*, can I?"

"She keeps waflin* it about so's to make 'er slow," grumbled the boy.

"Don't have such an evil imagination, child," replied her mother. "I'm sure it's done now, Annie, you're only making all the butter drip out. Look!"

"I don't like it soft on the buttery side," complained the girl quietly, looking at her piece of bread where the butter was bubbling in places, with patches browning elsewhere.

Soon the room was busy in the darkness with the crisp sound of crunching. The mother ate very little. She drank her tea determinedly, and sat thinking, full of anger. When she rose and took the Yorkshire pudding from the oven her accumulated anger was evident in the stern, unbending head. She looked at the pudding in the fender, and broke out:

"It is a scandalous thing as a man can't even come in to his dinner.* If it's crozzled* up to a cinder I don't see why I should care. Past his very door he goes to get to a public  house, and here I sit with his dinner waiting for him ---- "

She went out of the house, returning directly with a dustpan of coal, with which she mended the fire. As she dropped piece after piece of coal on the red fire, the shadows fell on the walls, till the room was almost in total darkness.

"I canna see,"* grumbled the invisible John. In spite of herself, the mother laughed.

"You know the way to your mouth," she said. She set the dustpan outside the door, and came in, going across to the pantry to wash her hands. When she came again like a tall shadow on to the hearth, the lad repeated, complaining sulkily:

"I canna see."

"Good gracious!" cried the mother irritably,"you're as bad as your father if it's a bit dusk!"

Nevertheless she took a paper spill* from a sheaf on the mantelpiece and proceeded to light the lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room. As she reached up  her figure displayed itself just rounding with maternity.

"Oh mother----!" exclaimed the girl.

"What?" said the woman, suspended in the act of putting the lamp-glass over the flame. The copper reflector shone handsomely on her, as she stood with uplifted arm, turning her face to her daughter.

"You've got a flower in your apron!" said the child, in a little rapture at this unusual event.

"Goodness me!" exclaimed the woman, relieved, and a little annoyed. "One would think the house was afire." She replaced the glass and waited a moment before turning up the wick. A pale shadow seemed to be floating weirdly on the floor.

"Let me smell!" said the child, still rapturously, coming forward and putting her face to her mother's waist.

"Go along, silly!" said the mother, turning up the lamp. The light seemed to reveal all the suspense and suppressed wrath that held the little room. The woman felt it almost unbearable. Annie was still bending at her waist. Irritably, the mother took the flowers from out of her apron  band.

"Oh mother--don't take them out!" cried Annie, catching her hand, and trying to replace the flowers.

"Such nonsense!" said the mother, turning away. The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, with exaggerated tenderness, murmuring:

"Don't they smell beautiful!"

Her mother gave a short laugh.

"Hateful!" she said. "I hate them. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk  he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his coat. When I smell them I could always think of that, me dragging at him to get his coat off ---- "

She looked at the children. Their eyes and their little parted lips were piteous. The mother sat rocking in silence for some time. Then she looked at the clock.

"Twenty minutes to six!" In a tone of fine bitter carelessness she continued: "Eh, he'll not come now till they bring him. There he'll stick! He needn't come rolling in here in his pit-dirt, for I won't wash him. He can lie on the floor ---- Eh, what a fool I've been, what a fool! And this is what I came here for, to this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door. Twice last week -- he's begun now ----"

She silenced herself, and rose to clear the table. When she was actively engaged she could endure, but as she sat still her fury seemed to sway like fighting imps within her, and to break out of her control.

Annie trotted after her mother with the tea-things, and helped to wipe them, chattering all the time, almost feverishly chattering. Anything was better than the clouds of silence that would settle on them. When there was no more housework to be done Annie stood disconsolate for a moment. She felt almost unequal to the struggle with the pressure of the trouble. Yet, in childish dread of abnormal states, in terror of an approaching climax, she forced herself to play.

"Our John*, should we play at gipsies?"

They hung an old red table cloth from the sofa to their father's large arm-chair, and in the corner behind it was their gipsy caravan. They played with peculiar intentness, were brilliantly fertile in inventions, united in terror against the oncoming of they knew not what. John was a tinker and Annie sold clothes-pegs. They knocked at the dresser and interviewed an imaginary housewife; they knocked at the pantry door, and an imaginary dog flew at them, when John had the pleasure of kicking it under the jaw, they knocked at the stair foot door, and sold two pegs, putting them under the mat, they could make no one hear at the parlour door; then John returned to the pantry and was given a lading can to mend. Whilst he soldered it Annie washed the clothes. When it was finished he took it back: "And did you get tenpence, John? Oh that's very nice! Now what should we have for dinner?"

"A hedgehog," suggested John gruffly.

"Oh, no, not hedgehog!"

But he insisted, and it had to be baked in clay. In a few seconds it was done: a pair of the father's stockings, black specked with red, rolled in a duster for clay. Annie was forced to pretend to eat, though she dithered at the bare idea.

At last they wore the game out, and John demanded "pit."*
This Annie hated, but she would have played anything to avoid a crisis.

John crept under the sofa, and, lying on his side as his father had taught him, pretended to be hacking a hole in the wall with a little stick -- "holing a stint," he said. Meanwhile Annie dragged up a little box on wheels, and put in it all the boots and slippers -- loading a waggon" -- and then "taking a carfle* to the bottom." John could grunt and sweat in safety under the sofa, but Annie had only her horse to address: "Gee Dobbin! Whoa!" and the game at last grew to be too much of a burden to her. She had no more heart to play.

The mother all this time sat in her rocking-chair making a "singlet"* of thick cream-coloured flannel, which gave a dull   sound when she tore off the grey strip at the edge. She worked at her sewing with energy, listening to the children, and her anger wearied itself  of pacing backwards and forwards like an impotent caged creature, and lay down to rest, its eyes always open and steadily watching, its ears raised to listen. Sometimes, even her anger quailed and shrank, and the mother suspended her sewing, tracing the footsteps that thudded along the sleepers outside; she would lift her head sharply to bid the children "hush," but she recovered herself in time, and the footsteps went past the gate, and the children were not dragged out of their play-world.

But at last Annie sighed, and gave in. She glanced at her waggon of slippers, and loathed it. Hesitating, faltering, she dragged it to a corner and left it, turning plaintively to her mother.

"Read us a tale, mother!" she pleaded.

Her mother had bent her head over her sewing. If there was one thing she shrank from doing, it was from lifting up her voice, which was like a child in rebellion, and would need all her efforts to command; sulky, it was, with shut lips.

"Shall you, mother?" insisted the girl. John, under the sofa, lay still to hear the answer. The mother looked at the clock. It was a quarter to seven, and they were not to be undressed for bed till seven. A quarter of an hour may be an age.

"Which one?" she asked, temporising.

"The Fir Tree!" and gladly the girl turned to the dresser and took from one of the drawers an old volume of Andersen.

"Now look," she said, "let me get it!" and she quickly found the place. The child's demonstration of gaiety loosened the lips of the mother's silence, and she began to read, listening to the sound of her own voice. John crept out like a frog from under the sofa. His mother looked up:

"Yes," she said. "Just look at those shirt-sleeves!"

The boy held them out to look at them, and said nothing. The reproof was a sign that the mother had in some measure recovered her usual equilibrium, and as such was grateful. The tale began well, but somebody called in a hoarse voice   down the line, and the old silence woke up and bristled in the room, till two people had gone by outside, talking. Then the mother continued to read, but it was a mere barrenness of words. The same subtle determination that had kept the children playing made the mother read the tale to the end, though it had no meaning for anybody. At last it was finished, and:

"There!" she exclaimed in relief. "You must go to bed now -- it's past seven o'clock."

"My father hasn't come," said Annie plaintively, giving way at last. But her mother was primed with courage:

"Never mind. They'll bring him when he does come -- like a log." She meant there would be no scene. "And he may sleep on the floor till he wakes himself. I know he'll not go to work to-morrow after this!"*

The children had their hands and faces wiped with the flannel, and were undressed on the hearthrug. They were very quiet. When they had put on their nightdresses, they kneeled down, and the girl hid her face in her mother's lap, and the boy put his face in his mother's skirt at the side, and they said their prayers, the boy mumbling. She looked down at them, at the brown silken bush of intertwining curls in the nape of the girl's neck, and the little black head of the boy, and in front of her eyes shone love and pity, and close behind pity stood anger, with shadowy hate, like a phantom, and scorn, glittering and dangerous; all these on the darkened stage of the mother's soul, with pity and love in front. The children hid their faces in her skirts, and were full of comfort and safety, and they prayed to her, for she was the God of their prayers. Then she lighted the candle and took them to bed.

When she came down, the room was strangely empty, with a tension of expectancy. The mother took up her sewing and stitched for some time without raising her head. Meantime her anger was accumulating. She broke the spell sharply at last, and looked up. It was ten minutes to eight. She sat staring at the pudding in the fender, and at the saucepan to the inside of which bits of dried potato were sticking. Then, for the first time, fear arrived in the room, and stood foremost. The expression of her face changed, and she sat thinking acutely.