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

crying. Perhaps, thought Bridie, he’s full of common sense and doesn’tlike the sound of banging, crashing and men putting the world to rights.
    One of the men leaning back against the wall, the same one as before, shouted across, ‘What are you talking about? We’re right well looked after at Mart’s pit and at Easton, and it’s said that they’re setting up some sort of co-op, like at the Hall hotel. Do I have to bloody spell it out, Sammy, and you too, Ted, that the workers’ll get shares, or some’at like that, so they gets some of the profits? What do you bloody want, bells on it? We’ll be the bloody owners then, without breaking windows, or heads.’
    The conversation was interrupted again, this time by a load of bairns, running along, elbowing one another, shouting, ‘First there gets the gobstopper.’
    The men parted, then closed again, like the Red Sea, Evie thought. Sammy wasn’t finished. ‘Aye, and what if it’s a load of hot air.’
    James gripped her arm and nodded towards the shop. ‘There he is, inside.’
    Bridie saw Tim in his black uniform, talking to another man, also in uniform. The man was patting Tim on the back and they were shaking hands, laughing. Why, when their Meeting House was in such a state?
    Bridie and James stood there, ignoring the buffeting of people pushing past them, just staring at their cousin. Bridie wanted to rush across and drag him away, back to Easton, back to them all.
    James muttered, ‘I didn’t really believe it. Notreally, but to see him there, looking exactly like a fascist . . .’ He turned to Bridie, his face pale and anguished. ‘Which means he really is one, Bridie. I needed to see it to believe it, here, inside.’
    For a moment they stood there, speechless. On the pavement the men still argued, the children still raced along. Together, hand in hand, they walked back down Warton Street. The lads were still playing football. One kicked it towards James. ‘Give us a kick, mister.’
    He kicked it back, barely looking. They walked to the bus stop, gripping hands all the way, neither able to speak, though Bridie’s mind jolted with each step. He was a miner’s son. He was part of a family that was socialist. How could he wear a uniform that stood for so much that none of them could bear?
    ‘How could he?’ she asked.
    ‘Because he can,’ James said quietly. She had never seen him so angry. Or was it anger? There was something else there as well.
    He squeezed her hand. ‘He’s his own man, or perhaps his mother’s man, and nothing to do with us any more.’ His voice broke. She stared ahead.
    Church must have finished, because there were women grouped around doorsteps; others walked towards them, in their smarts. Some were in a hurry. Her da said the vicar, priest or minister had to time it right: church doors shut, pub doors open.
    She looked up at the sky. It was blue with a fewwhite clouds. It was all as it had been when they woke, but nothing was the same.
    James sat next to her on the bus to Easton. ‘We’ll need to think, because we must protest, and it’s nothing to do with him. We’d do it anyway.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, but neither knew what they were really going to do. It was just noise.
    They left the bus at Easton Co-op, when it parked up prior to its return journey to Hawton. They tramped the lanes, watching the larks, seeing that the wheat was ripening, and the lambs were fattening. They diverted to the beck, hurrying now, because it was ‘home’. But when they arrived, it wasn’t, because usually it was the three of them.
    ‘I feel so useless because I can’t change what’s happening with him,’ James said.
    They returned to the road, walking along to the bridge. They gave their sandwiches to the boys leaning over, trying to catch minnows with jam jars.
    ‘By, Bridie, that’s grand, right nice cheese.’ Jonny Earnshaw was lifting the corners of the sandwich and showing off the innards to his gang. ‘Tell your mam,