Free The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin Page B

Martha had been confined on Monday night. By Saturday afternoon she was up, waiting… waiting for him, for Robert.
    He arrived at eight o’clock, to find her in the kitchen alone. He entered so quietly she did not know he was there until the sound of his cough made her spin round as she stood, still bent over the fire. They stared at each other, he quietly, without rancour, she with that terrible bitterness burning like dark fire in her eyes. Neither spoke. He flunghis cap on the sofa, sat down at the table like a weary man. Immediately she went to the oven, drew out his plate of cooked dinner kept hot for him there. She placed it before him in that same terrible silence.
    He began to eat, casting quick glances at her figure from time to time, glances that became charged with a strange apology. At length he said:
    “What’s like the matter, my lass?”
    She quivered with anger.
    “Don’t call me your lass.”
    He understood then what had happened; a kind of wonder stirred in him.
    “What was it?” he asked.
    She knew he had always wanted a daughter. And to cut him more she told him that his daughter was dead.
    “So that was the way of it,” he sighed; and then: “Did ye have a bad time, lass?”
    It was too much. She did not deign to answer at once; but with embittered servitude she removed his empty plate and placed his tea before him; then she said:
    “I’m used to bad times like, since ever I knew you.”
    Though he had come home for peace, her savage attitude provoked his tired blood.
    “I canna help the way things hev gone,” he said with a sudden bitterness to match her own. “I hope ye understand they gaoled me for nowt.”
    “I do not understand,” she answered, hand on her hip, facing him.
    “They had their knife in me ower the strike, don’t ye see!”
    “I’m not surprised,” she retorted, panting with anger.
    It was then that his nerves broke. What, under heaven, had he done? He had brought the men out, because in his very marrow he feared for them in Scupper Flats, and in the end they had scoffed at him and spat upon him and let him go to gaol for nothing. Fury seethed in him, against her and against his fate. He lifted his hand and struck her on the face.
    She did not flinch, she received the blow gratefully. Her nostrils dilated.
    “Thanks,” she said. “That was good of ye. ’Twas all I needed.”
    He sank back into his chair, paler than she. Then he began to cough, his deep booming cough. He was torn by this paroxysm. When it had passed he sat bowed, defeated; then he rose, threw off his clothes, got into the kitchen bed.
    Next day, Sunday, though he awakened at seven, he stopped in bed all forenoon. She was up early and went to chapel. She forced herself to go, enduring the looks, slights and sympathy of the Bethel Street congregation, partly to show him up, partly to establish her own respectability. Dinner was a misery, especially for the lads. They hated it when open anger came between their father and mother. It paralysed the house, lay upon them like a degradation.
    After dinner Robert walked down to the pit. He expected to find himself sacked. But he was not sacked. Dimly he realised that his friendship with Heddon, the miners’ agent, and with Harry Nugent of the Federation had helped him here. Fear of real trouble with the Union had saved his job for him at the Neptune.
    He came straight home, sat reading by the fire, went silently to bed. Next morning the caller woke him, at two o’clock he was in the pit working the early fore shift.
    All day long she prepared for his return in that same storm of unappeased bitterness. She would show him, make him pay… she kept looking at the clock, waiting for the hours to pass.
    At the end of the shift he returned, dead beat and soaked to the skin. She prepared to wound him with her silent anger, but somehow the sight of him killed all the rankling in her heart.
    “What’s like the matter?” she asked instinctively.
    He leaned