Читать книгу A Darker Domain - Val McDermid - Страница 18

Friday 14th December 1984; Newton of Wemyss

Jenny had been one of the first in the queue at the Miners’ Welfare and she’d hurried home with her pitiful bounty, determined to get a pot of soup going so there would be something tasty for the tea. She rounded the pithead baths building, noticing all her neighbours’ houses were in darkness. These days, nobody left a welcoming light on when they went out. Every penny counted when the fuel bills came in.

When she turned in at her gate, she nearly jumped out of her skin. A shadowy figure rose from the darkness, looming huge in her imagination. She made a noise halfway between a gasp and a moan.

‘Jenny, Jenny, calm down. It’s me. Tom. Tom Campbell. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’ The shape took form and she recognized the big man standing by her front door.

‘Christ, Tom, you gave me the fright of my life,’ she complained, moving past him and opening the front door. Conscious of the breathtaking chill of the house, she led the way into the kitchen. Without hesitation, she filled her soup pan with water and put it on the stove, the gas ring giving out a tiny wedge of heat. Then she turned to face him in the dimness of the afternoon light. ‘How are you doing?’

Tom Campbell shrugged his big shoulders and gave a halfhearted smile. ‘Up and down,’ he said. ‘It’s ironic. The one time in my life I really needed my pals and this strike happens.’

‘At least you’ve got me and Mick,’ Jenny said, waving him to a chair.

‘Well, I’ve got you, anyway. I don’t think I’d be on Mick’s Christmas card list, always supposing anybody was sending any this year. Not after October. He’s not spoken to me since then.’

‘He’ll get over it,’ she said without a shred of conviction. Mick had always had his reservations about the wider ripples of the schoolgirl friendship between Jenny and Tom’s wife Moira. The women had been best pals forever, Moira standing chief bridesmaid at Jenny and Mick’s wedding. When it came time to return the favour, Jenny been pregnant with Misha. Mick had pointed out that her increasing size was the perfect excuse to turn Moira down, what with having to buy the bridesmaid’s dress in advance. It wasn’t a suggestion, more an injunction. For although Tom Campbell was by all accounts a decent man and a handsome man and an honest man, he was not a miner. True, he worked at the Lady Charlotte. He went underground in the stomach-juddering cage. He sometimes even got his hands dirty. But he was not a miner. He was a pit deputy. A member of a different union. A management man there to see that the health and safety rules were followed and that the lads did what they were supposed to. The miners had a term for the easiest part of any task - ‘the deputy’s end’. It sounded innocuous enough, but in an environment where every member of a gang knew his life depended on his colleagues, it expressed a world of contempt. And so Mick Prentice had always held something in reserve when it came to his dealings with Tom Campbell.

He’d resented the invitations to dinner at their detached house in West Wemyss. He’d mistrusted Tom’s invitations to join him at the football. He’d even begrudged the hours Jenny spent at Moira’s bedside during her undignified but swift death from cancer a couple of years before. And when Tom’s union had dithered and swithered over joining the strike a couple of months before, Mick had raged like a toddler when they’d finally come down on the side of the bosses.

Jenny suspected part of the reason for his anger was the kindness Tom had shown them since the strike had started to bite. He’d taken to stopping by with little gifts - a bag of apples, a sack of potatoes, a soft toy for Misha. They’d always come with plausible excuses - a neighbour’s tree with a glut, more potatoes in his allotment than he could possibly need, a raffle prize from the bowling club. Mick had always grumbled afterwards. ‘Patronizing shite,’ he’d said.

‘He’s trying to help us without shaming us,’ Jenny said. It didn’t hurt that Tom’s presence reminded her of happier times. Somehow, when he was there, she felt a sense of possibility again. She saw herself reflected in his eyes, and it was as a younger woman, a woman who had ambitions for her life to be different. So although she knew it would annoy Mick, Jenny was happy for Tom to sit at her kitchen table and talk.

He drew a limp but heavy parcel from his pocket. ‘Can you use a couple of pounds of bacon?’ he said, his brow creasing in anxiety. ‘My sister-in-law, she brought it over from her family’s farm in Ireland. But it’s smoked, see, and I can’t be doing with smoked bacon. It gives me the scunners. So I thought, rather than it go to waste…’ He held it out to her.

Jenny took the package without a second’s hesitation. She gave a little snort of self-deprecation. ‘Look at me. My heart’s all a flutter over a couple of pounds of bacon. That’s what Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill have done between them.’ She shook her head. ‘Thank you, Tom. You’re a good man.’

He looked away, unsure what to say or do. His eyes fixed on the clock. ‘Do you not need to pick up the bairn? I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking about the time when I was waiting, I just wanted to…’ He got to his feet, his face pink. ‘I’ll come again.’

She heard the stumble of his boots in the hall then the click of the latch. She tossed the bacon on to the counter and turned off the pan of water. It would be a different soup now.

Moira had always been the lucky one.