Free Shelter from the Storm by Elizabeth Gill Page B

no.’
    ‘Good, because your father has invited the Robsons around tonight.’
    ‘What?’ Esther Margaret glared at her through her tears. ‘Doesn’t he know that I hate Billy Robson?’
    Her mother stared.
    ‘How can you hate him?’
    Esther Margaret’s throat closed so tightly that she couldn’t speak.
    ‘Esther Margaret …’ Her mother moved closer. ‘There is no point in you thinking that you will ever have anything whatsoever to do with Joseph Forster. Your father would not allow it. He has bad blood. You could not be happy with someone like that. Be sensible and the adult you think you are and then you will understand. Billy is one of us. He is very fond of you—’
    Esther Margaret began to laugh.
    ‘He’s so fond of me he put his hands on me in the hall.’
    ‘How can you say such things?’ Her mother faltered. ‘You used to be such a truthful girl. I don’t understand what happened to you. Billy will do well, he has ambition. He will very likely be manager after your father. Don’t you think that would be very nice for all of us?’
    Esther Margaret stopped laughing and put her hands to her eyes as the tears fell. And then she faced her mother.
    ‘Do you think nice is all I want? Do you think nice is all I can hope for?’
    ‘I think you must learn not to speak in so intemperate a manner. It’s very unbecoming in a young girl.’
    Esther Margaret pictured herself in a pile of hay, almost naked, being pleasured by a young man her parents allied withthe Devil. It took all her restraint not to laugh again. Her mother was brisk.
    ‘Wash your face and comb your hair and then come downstairs. Billy and his parents will be here soon. I won’t have any more of this nonsense,’ she said.
    Esther Margaret went to the window. She wondered what Dryden was doing. She knew that he went back to Mrs Clancy’s for something to eat and then he went to the pub. He didn’t have any friends. Was it more lonely for him or was this worse?
    *
    Dryden stood in his usual place in the Golden Lion. Nobody bothered him. They were used to seeing him there. Nobody spoke except the landlord; quite often he would talk to Dryden if he was not too busy. It was just general chat but Dryden was glad of it. Otherwise there was nothing else to do but go back to his room and watch the darkness for a long time before going to sleep. He wondered whether Tom would come. They were very often on the same shifts so when he went to the pub Tom was almost always there with his friends, Ed and Wes and others. Wes hadn’t knocked him about again since the time Tom had stopped him. In his mind Dryden had created a whole volume of books about Tom, about the childhood they had not had together and all the days since, when Tom was not his friend or his brother. If he thought hard enough he could see them, the world that he had made up, created for himself when Alf and Mary Cameron were his parents and he had lived with them in the house in Prince Row which looked over the pit where they worked. He had a vision in his mind, he knew it wasn’t true but it was there, of Tom on his father’s shoulders being carried high along the row, and then he imagined himself there and Tom running beside Alf, and Mary waiting at home with a fire and the tea ready and the doors to shut the darkness out.
    Most precious of all was the reality of that day in the pub, that one golden magical Sunday dinner-time when Tom had puthimself between Dryden and Wes, and even though Dryden had attempted to convince himself a hundred times that Tom must have had some motive other than protection he could not see it. He did not need to protect Wes. Dryden would not have hit Wes in a thousand years, not with all his friends there. He would lie in his bed late at night and remember Tom Cameron’s back; it was the most sacred thing in his life. He was there for ever between the pub wall and his brother’s back and he was safe. It was the first time that he had felt safe in