Lynda La Plante - The Legacy

Lizzie-Ann had decided to marry her young man with the limp. Evelyne made Jim feel welcome, even though it meant an extra mouth to feed in the house. He was good-hearted, and made Lizzie-Ann smile again. The wedding was a simple affair, and Lizzie-Ann wore the dress Evelyne had brought home from Cardiff. The couple had no honeymoon, they just took over the front room, and life went on as usual. At least the house (unlike so many others) throbbed with life now, a bit too much at times as they still had four lodgers. Lizzie-Ann dropped numerous hints about how awful it was that they could be so cramped while Doris Evans’ house stood empty. It had been more than six months since Doris had been buried, and still no word from Dr Collins.

Evelyne hurried home from the brick factory. It had been boiling hot in there, and working right next to the kilns made you sweat your guts out. She wanted a good wash before going up to the school. Already they called her a schoolmistress, although she wasn’t actually qualified, but she liked it and got on well with the two proper teachers.

Ben Rees was standing by the door, his bike propped up by the wall. He had one of the dreaded yellow telegrams in his hand.

‘No, Ben … Ah, don’t say it’s for us, no, please … no.’

Dicken was gone, and two days after the telegram arrived they got his last letter, telling them how well he was doing, and that he might make sergeant within the month.

Hugh seemed unable to take any more pain, his whole body sagged as if the wind had been punched from his huge frame. He still struggled up every morning and went off to work, but he was so silent, so empty, it was as if his soul had already slipped from his body.

As she had done all her life, Evelyne held the last tenuous threads of the family together. She had to keep on working, she had to keep going up to the school, but she no longer went to church, she couldn’t, and she didn’t care what wrath He sent down on her. How could there be a God who would take each and every one of her brothers, and leave them with nothing?

In August, one of the hottest Augusts ever, Evelyne prepared for another burning day in the factory. She noticed her Da had gone off to work without his tea caddie. She sighed, he’d be dying of thirst by twelve, she’d just have to be late. The sun blazed in the cloudless sky, birds sang, the grass smelt good and all over the hedgerows the flowers were blooming. The further up the mountain she walked the cleaner the air was. The raspberries hung thick and ripe, and she ate them as she walked, thinking that on the way back she would fill her skirt with them to make a tart.

She walked down the further slope of the mountain, crossed two streams and a field of cows. Her legs were getting tired, and she realized just how strong a man her father must be to take this long trek day in and day out. The winter months must have frozen him, the rain soaked him, and then he spent all those hours down the mine. When she reached the small pithead she asked for Hugh Jones, and was directed to a shaft at ground level. Black-faced men called ‘hello’, and five women sitting in the sun called to her and waved. This new mine took quite a few women at the pithead to sort the coal. They were as black as the menfolk, but they were laughing and joking and soaking up the sunshine.

Evelyne edged along the coal seam. She had to bend almost double, and the blackness was just as Mike had described, so thick she couldn’t even see a shadow. She called out, directing her voice towards the sound of hammering and the click-click-clicking of the pickaxes.

She passed two trams being pushed out by Dai Roberts, who grinned at her and said to keep on walking, and to watch her step as it sloped steeply. The air was getting so thick she was gasping for breath as she inched her way along the tunnel — her hands were her only guide.

‘Hugh Jones. Hugh Jones!’

She could barely draw breath and the blackness was so heavy she didn’t know whether to turn back or go on …

‘Hugh! Hugh Jones…’

As Evelyne turned a bend in the tunnel she saw her father, lit up by the flame of a single candle. His face was stricken, his eyes stared into the blackness as in a nightmare. Evelyne ran to him, knowing what must be in his mind, that he must have thought there was some other tragedy, could there be another? She was quick to shout that she’d brought his tea caddie.

Hugh held his blackened arms out to her and she clung to him. With barely enough air to keep the candle flame flickering, with no more than four feet of space to work in, the massive man had to hunch himself nearly double to chip away at the face.

Evelyne felt his powerful arms holding her as he had when she was a little girl. In the blackness the grief that filled both of them was released, and they cried together, their tears mingling with the coal dust that dominated their lives.

The war was over, and home-made paper chains were strung across the streets, trestle tables were erected on the cobbles and from God knew where came buns, cakes, biscuits and lemonade for the kids.

There was hardly a family in the village that had not lost a loved one in the mines or in the mighty war that had raged across the Channel. Now the lads who had survived were coming home, and their families went crazy. They sang in the streets, they belted out the old tunes on the piano and they held hands and sang ‘God Save the King …’

Evelyne rushed around handing out cakes, and handmade crackers with no bang! in the middle, but containing little gifts made by some of the old women for the children. It was a wonderful day, and everyone crowded into Mrs Morgan’s to drink her home-brewed wine.

Evelyne was standing well to the back of the crowd as the home-brewed wine took effect, and the singing reached a raucous level … Evelyne left the stuffy house. Some older women, well inebriated, grouped on a corner, looked at her with pitying faces as she walked on up the cobbled street.

‘Ah, poor thing, she’ll never get herself a lad now, left it too late … or maybe with her being so tall she’ll get one who’s injured, disabled, you never know.’

Evelyne Jones was twenty-one, that was all, but her eyes mirrored the anguish she had experienced. Hugh Jones could see her striding up the hill, her lean, tough body, high cheekbones and flame red hair, her strong legs like an athlete’s … he closed his eyes, dear God, how he wished she was one of his boys come home.

Lizzie-Ann could have given herself a miscarriage, she ran so fast. The thick bundle of letters all addressed to Evelyne Jones was in a brown paper parcel, and she had to sign for them at the post office. She signed after a hell of a row with Ben Rees, who was livid because he hadn’t had a chance to snoop through them. He’d dropped his bike in fury — that bloody girl was always a little bugger, and her with another kid on the way when she was no better than one herself. Ben picked up his red bike and threatened to strangle Alfred Moggs’ illegitimate grandson, half coloured he was, with black, curly hair. The little bugger had already let the air out of Ben’s tyres once this morning.

Evelyne took the thick brown envelope with the red line across it and started to open it, with the entire class of nosy children peering through the glass door, the headmistress looking on, and Lizzie-Ann gasping. Before Evelyne had a chance to examine the contents, Lizzie-Ann’s waters broke, and the children sniggered that she’d wet herself. The headmistress, a flat-footed woman in her late sixties, took over the class while Evelyne ran for Doc Clock.

The Doctor now had the only privately owned motor vehicle in the village. This was patted, polished, and sat in by the Doc but in the driver’s seat he was absolutely hopeless. More than once he had been found still sitting in the car as it teetered on the edge of a ditch, his face concerned and puzzled, his specs dangling from one ear.