Pearl of Pit Lane

by Glenda Young

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

A dramatically powerful and romantic saga of tragedy and triumph, perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Rosie Goodwin.

'Put me to work on the pit lane, would you? Is that all you think I'm worth?'

When her mother dies in childbirth, Pearl Edwards is left in the care of her aunt, Annie Grafton. Annie loves Pearl like her own daughter but it isn't easy to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Annie knows the best way to supplement their meagre income is to walk the pit lane at night, looking for men willing to pay for her company.

As Pearl grows older she is unable to remain ignorant of Annie's profession, despite her aunt's attempts to shield her. But when Pearl finds herself unexpectedly without work and their landlord raises the rent, it becomes clear they have few choices left and Annie is forced to ask Pearl the unthinkable.

Rather than submit to life on the pit lane, Pearl runs away. She has nothing and nowhere to go, but Pearl is determined to survive on her own terms...

(P)2019 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: November 14, 2019

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

The Promise

July 1919

‘What are you doing sitting out in the rain?’

Pearl looked up into the face of her friend Joey, who was making his way towards her. As he walked, his bad foot dragged behind him. Pearl’s skinny dog, Boot, lay on the wet ground at her feet, and when Pearl didn’t reply to Joey’s question, he raised his black head and nudged her hand with his nose.

‘Annie’s busy; she’s dressmaking upstairs in our room. She wanted me out of the way,’ Pearl said. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground, unable to face Joey when she was spinning him a lie. But how could she give him the honest reply he deserved? She couldn’t tell anyone the truth. It was her and Annie’s secret what happened in their room.

Joey pulled his thin jacket around him, but it proved useless against the rain. ‘Shove along then,’ he said, forcing his way on to the step.

Pearl moved to one side, letting her friend sit next to her. Rain dripped from the end of her nose. Her long auburn hair was plastered against her head, and her blouse and skirt were wet through. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them towards her.

‘Annie’s busy?’ Joey repeated. ‘What’s so important that she won’t let you stay inside on a day as wet as this?’

Pearl knew it would be a relief to tell someone, and with Joey being her best friend, there was no one better to confide in. So many times she’d wanted to tell him what was really going on, but she’d always held back out of respect for Annie’s wishes. She didn’t want to get her aunt into any kind of trouble. If she did tell, once the secret was out, there could be no taking it back.

The yard where Pearl and Joey sat belonged to landlord Bernie Pemberton. Bernie also owned the room above, where Pearl and Annie lived, and the haberdashery shop below, Pemberton’s Goods, where Annie worked by day. But it was Annie’s night-time work that Pearl was sworn to secrecy on.

‘Isn’t Annie working in the shop today then?’ Joey asked. Pearl knew he’d keep on with the questions until she gave him a reply.

‘It’s early closing day,’ she said. At least that bit was true, it was early closing day, although what came out of her mouth next was a line she had spun many times before. ‘She says she needs all the space upstairs to spread the dressmaking material about.’

She looked at Joey’s mucky face underneath his worn and frayed cap. He was a thin boy, small for his age, and two years younger than Pearl, who was almost sixteen. She was almost a woman, Aunt Annie kept telling her. Pearl understood only too well that her aunt meant she was nearly of an age to do the same work as Annie did. But Annie wasn’t talking about her shop work in Pemberton’s Goods. She was referring to her second, secret job that she took on to earn extra cash, work that Pearl did not approve of and did not want at any cost. She’d seen the way Annie lived, taking men off the street to her room, and she knew that, whatever happened in her future, she herself wanted a life that didn’t need to be kept secret. She wanted a life that wouldn’t get her into trouble, one that meant she wouldn’t need to hide from the coppers on their rounds like Annie had to do.

Pearl had been promised a job working behind the bar at the Colliery Inn as soon as she turned sixteen, and it was an offer she couldn’t afford to turn down. Until then, she kept the room clean for her aunt, mended her clothes, and spent her free time making clippy mats from old scraps of rags. She’d even sold one of her mats in the shop. Annie had hung it up for sale and it had caught the eye of one of her customers.

Pearl hooked her arm through Joey’s and the two of them huddled close. If anyone had seen them, if anyone had been daft enough to be walking by in the rain, they might have thought the pair were brother and sister, sitting on the doorstep with their skinny dog, waiting for their mam to come home. But the truth was that Pearl’s only relation was her aunt, and the only person other than Pearl who cared about Joey was his mam, Kate Scotch, a short, bird-like woman not much taller than her son. His dad had run off before Joey was born.

‘Were you going somewhere just now?’ Pearl asked.

‘The pit,’ Joey replied. Pearl noticed the sadness in the way he said the two words. It was the same sadness that was always there now when he spoke of the place he used to work.

‘Mam says I have to go and ask for my old job back. I’ve told her I’ve asked already, but she says I have to keep trying.’ His voice trailed off.

‘Do you want to go back?’

Joey reached down and stroked Boot behind his ears, the dog’s favourite place. ‘Mam says I have to.’

‘I wouldn’t want to go back after what happened,’ Pearl said softly.

‘Everyone says not to blame myself, Pearl, but I do. They say it was the pony’s fault, but I should have been concentrating. If I’d been looking in the right direction like the gaffer taught me, I would have seen the coal tub coming loose. I just didn’t see it, Pearl. It was my fault, I know it was.’

Pearl heard his voice break, it was a conversation they’d had many times since Joey’s accident. He’d been working with a pit pony, which had been killed when one of the coal tubs fell from the track. Joey’s life had been saved by a quick-thinking older lad who also worked on the tubs, but the accident had taken its toll and left him with an injured leg. Where once he would run through the back streets of Ryhope or kick stones along the cobbles, now he walked slowly, with a limp. It had taken its toll in deeper, unseen ways too. It was the nightmares he hated most, seeing the dead body of the pony in his dreams.

As the two of them sat on the doorstep, the rain stepped up a notch and started hitting the ground faster, harder, like a song Pearl and Joey were getting used to hearing that had suddenly changed key.

‘Can’t you go inside at all?’ Joey asked.

Pearl glanced up at the window, the curtains drawn in the middle of the day. ‘Not yet,’ she replied.

‘What about the shop? Can’t you wait in there until Annie’s finished work?’

Pearl shook her head. ‘I’m supposed to be in the village,’ she said, remembering the task that Annie had sent her to do. She nodded towards Boot, who was lying on the ground, his dark velvet eyes keeping watch on her and Joey. ‘Annie says I have to sell him.’

‘Boot? No!’ Joey cried. ‘You’ve had him for ages, you can’t just get rid of him.’

At the sound of his name, Boot stood to attention and shook himself from side to side, splattering rain against Pearl and Joey from his heavy wet coat.

Pearl shielded her face with her hands. ‘Boot, stop it!’ she scolded.

The dog waited for another command, but when none came, he laid his wet head on Pearl’s knees.

‘She says he costs too much to feed. We barely have enough food for the two of us most days. She reckons High Farm might buy him. He’s a good ratter, and Ralphie, the farmer, could do with a dog like him.’

‘Are you still working mornings at the farm?’ Joey asked.

‘Just until next week. Got myself another job as soon as I turn sixteen.’ Pearl smiled. ‘It’s not much, just helping at the Colliery Inn – cleaning mainly, washing the pots and sweeping the yard – but they’ve offered a bit more money than the farm.’

Joey stroked Boot under his wet chin. ‘Will you miss him if he goes?’

‘Of course. But it’s not as if he’s really our dog; he just turned up one day and we’ve never been able to get rid of him.’

‘We could walk down to High Farm now if you want. I’ll come with you. Mam’ll never know if I don’t go to the pit. And you won’t tell her, will you, Pearl?’

‘Course not. You can trust me.’

‘You asked if I wanted to go back to work there,’ Joey began. ‘And the truth is, I don’t, not after the pony died.’

‘But what’ll you do for a job if you don’t go back?’

‘Maybe there’ll be work at the farm,’ Joey replied hopefully, but both he and Pearl knew that jobs in Ryhope were hard to come by. No matter how willing Joey was, his injured leg would go against him if he went up for jobs against stronger, bigger lads. And with soldiers returning from the war, Ryhope had plenty of big, strong lads being given a hero’s welcome along with their pick of available work. Joey pushed his hands against the doorstep to help him as he tried to stand. He still couldn’t put much weight on his leg; the pain was too much to bear. He steadied himself against the brick wall.

‘I know where we can go,’ Pearl said, her face lighting up. ‘We’ll sit in the Co-op doorway; it’ll be dry under the canopy. And when it stops raining, we’ll walk down to High Farm.’

She grabbed Joey’s arm and helped her friend gain his balance.

‘Come on, Boot,’ she commanded, and the dog followed as they headed from the yard into the lane. Joey lagged behind and Pearl slowed her pace to match his. She held out her arm to him. ‘Want to hook on?’

Without a word, Joey slipped his arm through hers and Pearl supported him as he limped along. Boot scampered ahead of them, oblivious to the rain, while Pearl huddled inside her thin shawl and Joey pulled his cap down to shield his face as they walked along the back lane of Dawdon Street. The row of lime-washed cottages was rarely called by its full name by anyone who lived there. Being so close to the Ryhope Coal Company mines, Dawdon Street was simply one of the many ramshackle pit lanes.

Upstairs in the flat above the shop, Annie Grafton took the shillings offered to her by the man whose name she didn’t know.

‘Same time next week?’ he asked.

‘I don’t keep an appointments book,’ Annie replied matter-of-factly. ‘You know where to find me if you want me. I might be here when you come calling next.’

‘Depends on how you feel, eh?’ he smirked.

Annie kept silent. Whether she walked the pit lane or not depended on how broke she was. As the man bent to tie his shoelaces, she took a good look at him. It was her first proper inspection since he had taken up her services. His shoes had a shine to them that she didn’t often see from the men she met in Ryhope. And his black suit and waistcoat weren’t frayed like many she saw. He stood, straightened his tie and ran a hand through his thick dark hair. But Annie knew well enough not to ask any questions. The men who came to her were there for company, not conversation. She simply provided a service and was paid for her time; it was a matter of supply and demand. At least that was how she’d long ago squared her way to earn extra cash: it was a job that she turned to when she had to. Just a job.

‘You’ll see yourself out,’ she said. It was a command rather than a question. Annie knew from experience that some of the men liked to loiter, treating her as if she were their girlfriend when she was anything but. She saw herself as a businesswoman who dictated her own terms. Apart from the hours she was contracted to work in the little haberdashery shop downstairs, her time was her own. She set the rules for the business she conducted upstairs, kept all the money she earned and worked only when she needed to. It was an arrangement that had suited her for years, since before Pearl was born.

As soon as she heard the door slam downstairs, she took the shillings and put them in her jar. It was filling up nicely but it was still nowhere near enough to pay what she owed. Even with her work in the haberdashery shop, her wages didn’t cover her debts to her landlord and almost every shopkeeper on the colliery. And as if things weren’t bad enough already, her landlord, Bernie Pemberton, was the same fella who owned the shop downstairs where she worked, making him her employer too.

Most of the shops on the colliery had been good enough to let Annie put groceries on the slate, allowing her to pay when she could. The problem was, she hadn’t been able to pay anyone yet, and her credit had been withdrawn by most of the shops. First, though, there was the rent to find, for where would she and Pearl be without a roof over their heads? She had to take care of Pearl; it was what she’d promised her older sister Mary on the night she died, and she would never go back on her word. She knew that Pearl didn’t approve of how she made her living, but what else could she do when there was so little money to be made in the shop? There were bills to be paid and two mouths to feed, as well as their greedy dog.

Pearl had grown into a young woman Annie was proud of, but she caught her niece looking at her sometimes in the same way that Mary used to do when they were girls. Pearl had Mary’s looks about her. It was like looking into the past each time Annie looked at Pearl. Pearl had her mother’s long auburn hair that parted in the middle and fell to her waist. She had the same pale skin as Mary, almost translucent; the same nose, the same rosebud mouth. But the similarities ended when it came to her eyes. Pearl’s gaze held a hint of steel. When she was focused on something, concentrating on working on the colourful clippy mats, her eyes narrowed with determination in a way that Mary’s never had.

Annie reached for her sister’s hand. It felt as light as air; cold, papery skin stretched taut on bony fingers.

‘Promise me three things, Annie,’ Mary said.

‘I’ll do anything for you. You know that.’

‘Look after Pearl, won’t you? Give her a home, Annie, please.’

Annie dipped her head to her sister’s hand and gently kissed her cold skin.

‘I’ll love her as if she were my own.’

‘The second thing I want more than anything in the world. Find a job, Annie. I beg you. A real job.’

It was a conversation they’d had many times in the past, and now, on her deathbed, Mary made her request for the final time.

‘You know how hard it is . . .’ Annie began.

‘Please, Annie. For Pearl’s sake. Show her there’s another way to survive. Teach her that there’s a choice, another way to be a woman when she grows up. She doesn’t have to sell herself to men, not like you and I have had to do.’

Annie shifted her gaze from Mary’s pale face, unable to look her in the eye, unable to promise that she could turn her life around, even for her dying sister.

‘I’ll try,’ she whispered.

‘No, Annie, I need you to promise. You can’t deny me this, can you, not now?’

Despite her grief and sadness, Annie couldn’t help but smile at Mary’s words. Her bossy older sister was still calling the shots, even as she lay dying.

‘I promise,’ she said at last.

But she crossed her fingers as the words left her lips. She would try; that was all she could do. She knew that anything more might be beyond her. She thought perhaps Mary knew that too.

Mary rested her head against the pillow propped at her back. She closed her eyes. Annie sat for a while watching her sister, who was little more than skin and bones now. Her chest barely rose with each breath. It was some moments later when she opened her eyes again.

‘There’s one final thing,’ she said. ‘Promise me you’ll tell Pearl who her dad is.’

‘You know?’ Annie whispered.

‘I’ve always known. She’s Edward’s,’ Mary said, her voice suddenly strong.

Annie bit her bottom lip and tried to stop her tears. The last thing she wanted was to cry in front of her sister, who was so close to death now.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

Mary swallowed hard, with difficulty. ‘There was only ever Edward in the end.’

‘Will I find him to tell him about her?’ Annie asked.

‘No.’ Mary was firm. ‘His family made their wishes known. They said I wasn’t good enough for him, and he had to do as they bid. But I want my baby to know she was loved by both parents.’

‘Of course,’ Annie said.

A thin smile appeared on Mary’s lips before her head sank back against her pillow and her eyes closed for the final time. Annie remained at her bedside, silent tears falling. She was still holding Mary’s hand when Dr Anderson arrived, but he was too late to help. He laid his hand on her shoulder.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The baby is awake and she needs you.’

Annie took one last look at her sister, then stood from her chair, grateful for Dr Anderson’s arm, for her legs felt as if they had turned to stone. Mary’s last words lodged in her heart.

‘Will you name the child Mary, after your sister?’ Dr Anderson asked.

‘No. Mary has already named her Pearl, for our mother.’

‘And will she take your surname? Pearl Grafton?’

Annie thought for a moment, remembering her promise to Mary that Pearl would always know who her dad was. She shook her head.

‘No, she’s Edward’s . . . Pearl Edwards.’

‘Pearl?’ Annie called down the stairs. ‘Pearl? Are you still out there? You can come up now, he’s gone.’

She wasn’t surprised when there was no reply. She knew Pearl wasn’t daft enough to have waited outside in the rain. She’d have found shelter and warmth somewhere on the colliery, or she’d be at Joey’s house; the two of them were inseparable. Annie wished she could let Pearl stay in the shop when she was working upstairs. But she had to lock up on early-closing day. She’d left her in there once, and Bernie Pemberton had found her and threatened Annie with the authorities, even though Pearl had been safe, warm and asleep. She’d never dared do it again.

When Pearl was a baby, she’d slept on a shelf on the landing, out of sight of Annie’s callers. When she grew to be a toddler, Annie left her with any of her friends who wouldn’t grumble too much about it, although she could never reveal the real reason she needed a babysitter. Only her friend Dorothy knew the truth, for she also worked the pit lane. Dorothy took Pearl in when she could, but when she had night-time work of her own, Annie was often left to beg favours from others. Whatever happened, she was determined to keep Pearl from the reality of how she earned her extra cash. But now Pearl was a young woman, almost sixteen, and she knew only too well what her aunt did to make money.

Annie stood in her bare feet, listening to the rain hammering against the window in the dark room. She wondered if Pearl had managed to sell Boot as she’d asked her to do. What use did they have for the dog? If they could get money for it, all the better. They certainly couldn’t afford to feed it any more.

She pulled at the bed sheets, straightening them as best she could. She turned the eiderdown the right way round and plumped up the pillows. The bed was so neat after she had finished that anyone looking at it would never have guessed what had just taken place in the room. With the bed tidied, she pulled her cotton housecoat about her slim waist and ran a comb through her long brown hair. It was as she began plaiting it that she felt a cold drip of water against the back of her neck.

‘Flaming hell! Not again!’ she cried.

She ran from the bedroom to the small alcove on the landing and pulled her cast-iron pan from a shelf. Back in the bedroom, she placed the pan on the floor where water was splashing on to the wooden boards. With the pan in place, the water fell with a dull drip-drip from the leak in the ceiling. But then she heard another dripping noise and looked up to see that a new leak had opened up.

‘Heaven help us!’ she yelled, fetching a brown earthenware bowl and positioning it next to the pan. She scanned the ceiling, ready to find another bowl if needed to stop the rain falling on to the bed or Pearl’s corner of the room, where blankets and clothes were piled. On the floor next to the clothes was the clippy mat Pearl was working on. A large piece of hessian was stretched taut on a wooden frame and dotted with blue and red strips of rags. Annie knew how heartbroken her niece would be if she came home to find it sodden after all the hard work she’d put in. But apart from the two leaks, the ceiling looked intact, for now.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she glanced out of the window, but all she could see was the dark sky. The best thing she could do would be to get the coal fire going, for even though it was summer, the rain made it feel like the darkest winter day.

She dressed quickly, pulling on a shapeless blue cotton dress and pushing her arms into the short sleeves. She was intent on heading out to the yard to bring in a bucket of coal. She’d need to bring in water too, to wash off the scent of the man with dark hair. He hadn’t smelled earthy, like the miners who came to her did. Even after they’d bathed, their skin was still grimed with coal. Nor had he smelled clean and freshly scrubbed like the soldier who had come to her just the week before. She wondered if she’d see more soldiers now that the Great War was over. A smile played around her lips as she thought of the money soldiers might spend, and she wondered if she dared charge more.

She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled on her black boots. As she walked towards the door that led to the stairs, her boot heel became stuck in a hole in the floor.

‘Damn thing!’ she cried. She yanked her foot from the floorboard and made a mental note to remember to cover it with a blanket when she returned with coal and water. The hole in the floor was another problem that Bernie had ignored her requests to fix.

‘I’ll get on to it some time,’ he said every time Annie brought up the problem.

‘Actions speak louder than words,’ Annie said each time he ignored her request.

Down at the Co-op, Pearl and Joey had been moved on from sheltering in the doorway.

‘Get away now, the pair of you!’ a stocky man yelled from inside the store. He was wearing a brown apron pulled tight across his bulging stomach. ‘Get back up the colliery where you belong. Pit rats!’

‘In here,’ Pearl said as they left the doorway. She disappeared under a high archway and Joey followed. ‘It leads to the stables at the back of the store. We can wait here; we won’t be in anyone’s way and no one will see us. We can stay here until it stops raining.’

Pearl, Joey and Boot stood under the archway and stared out at the rain. It was still coming down heavily, splashing up from the road. Joey turned and looked at the cobbled courtyard with its stables where the Co-op horses and delivery carts were housed.

‘The horses here are looked after by the same vet who sees to the ponies at the pit,’ he said. ‘He was the vet who was called out when I had the accident.’

Pearl saw the sadness come over his face again. It happened each time he spoke of what had happened at the pit some weeks ago. She’d noticed he’d lost his smile since then; it didn’t come as readily as it once used to do.

‘Aye, the vet’s a decent fella, but he couldn’t save Ned,’ Joey continued.

It was the first time he had spoken the pony’s name since the accident.

‘You liked that pony a lot, didn’t you?’ Pearl asked.

Joey’s face brightened for a moment. ‘He was the best, everyone said so.’ He turned his face away from Pearl. ‘You know, they call pit ponies the workers who never go on strike. They never come to the surface, not even for a week’s holiday in the summer. I asked one of the lads there once, Adam he was called, if I could take Ned up for a holiday, just for a day, so that he could graze on some grass and feel the sun on his back. But I was told no. It was daft really, as if a fourteen-year-old boy like me could have any say in how the pit is run.’

‘At least you asked,’ Pearl said. ‘It’s more than many would have done. Animals aren’t daft, Joey; Ned would have known you liked him and that you would never have hurt him on purpose.’

‘He’d wait for me every morning; he’d stand there and wait especially for me. He wouldn’t let any of the other lads harness him. It had to be me. And he’d do tricks, Pearl, you should have seen him. He could pick up a water bottle with his teeth and drink the water right from it. And at bait time he’d wait for titbits the lads would throw down.’

‘He sounds like a right character,’ Pearl said. She watched Joey’s face, animated now as he talked about his pony.

Joey pushed his hand into his trouser pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. He opened it up carefully, taking care not to tear it, and handed it to Pearl. She looked at the drawing of a pony’s head, with big dark eyes and pointed ears. There was a sadness to the eyes that drew her attention. She’d had no idea that her friend was so talented. She’d thought she knew everything there was to know about Joey.

‘Is this Ned?’ she asked, astonished at the quality of the picture. ‘Did you draw this?’

‘I wante. . .