Free A House Divided: An Easterleigh Hall Novel by Margaret Graham

‘You make sure you tell Aunt Evie, Mr Burton. She could do with another clip round the ear.’ They both laughed.
    Bridie murmured, ‘Enough of that, or I’ll tip your cap out of the window, Mr Burton.’
    ‘Fighting talk,’ Mr Burton cackled.
    When the bus pulled up at the market square, they followed the others off and slipped away, weaving through the back streets, as good people hustled to church, the women in their best, the men in suits. All the time the winding gear loomed; the sulphur was all-pervading.
    On corners, groups of miners murmured, their heads close together. Some children swung from ropes attached to lamp posts. It was Sunday: no school, no washing or ironing, just church, or chapel. James kicked back a football to a group of lads, made of scrunched-up newspaper sewn inside a child’s jumper. It was light and the breeze took it, but one lad was after it like lightning, calling, ‘Thanks, mister.’
    They took a turn left, but it was the wrong way. James tried a right, down between the backs of terraces. A wireless was playing church music in the scullery of one house. A dog barked in the yard ofanother, working itself into a frenzy as they passed. They came out onto Warton Street. ‘It’s up here,’ Evie said. ‘It should be on the corner, shouldn’t it?’
    James nodded. They both slowed, uncertain suddenly. Evie grabbed his elbow. ‘Come on, we’re only having a look, and he might not be there. Surely he wouldn’t be violent? Surely?’
    James didn’t answer, just stepped out a little faster until they turned the corner. A group of miners milled on the pavement, peering towards the Meeting House across the road. Two of them eased away and propped themselves up against the side wall of the end of the terrace, rolling cigarettes.
    The Meeting House was a hive of activity, with bangs and crashes coming from inside. Outside, there was a sound almost like chalk scratching on a blackboard as one man swept the glass from the broken windows into a heap. Another shovelled the piles into a wheelbarrow. Next to Bridie one man said to another, ‘Aye, well, the Reds didn’t half come with a wallop, so what d’you expect them Blackies to do? Gotta defend yerself, man. Stands to reason. Anyone came at me with an iron bar, he’d get a bloody fist ’n’ all.’
    Another man crossed the road from the left and walked along the pavement towards them, his boots crashing into the ground. He pushed past Bridie, his cap well down, a Woodbine hanging limp from his mouth. He shoved in between the men in the front, saying, ‘Shut your noise, Sammy. Aye, I’d havestormed the buggers, an’ all, for whipping up trouble like they did the days before. This is our town, our pit, and they come in here from God knows where, dropping them flyers, talking their talk in the pubs. Crazy buggers. They might as well have given invites to go along and smash ’em to smithereens, so think on, man.’
    ‘Big Jim’s got a point, Sammy,’ one of the men leaning against the wall called.
    The group laughed, without amusement. Sammy tipped his cap back. ‘Now you put it like that . . .’
    ‘I bloody do, man,’ Big Jim muttered, then raised his voice against the clatter and crash of glass, as the last bits clinging to the window frame were bashed out. ‘There’s a good few pitmen going over to this lot, forgetting their roots. Right fascist pigs, they are, clever ’n’ all. Get your brains in gear, or this lot’ll bash ’em out on the pavement, and it’s that they’ll be sweeping up next.’
    He shouldered on past the group, who looked after him. One man said, ‘He’s right, yer know.’
    Another ground out his stub on the pavement and toed it to the gutter with his hobnailed boots. ‘Hush your noise, Bob. We need someone to take on t’owners, and this lot seem to have some ideas.’
    James looked at Bridie. He was listening as hard as she was. Two women made their way past, one pushing a pram. The baby was