Free The Emerald Valley by Janet Tanner

before half-past eight, your Dad said.’
    â€˜All right.’
    A faint smile lightened Charlotte’s worried expression. Stubborn and opinionated as he could be at times, he was still her baby, youngest of the brood and the last she would have now. ‘You’re a good boy, Harry,’ she said.
    When she had gone back up the path Harry checked on his pigeons once more and locked up the house before following her. In the scullery he washed his hands at the stone sink and took off his cap to comb his hair. Then he went through into the kitchen.
    â€˜Mam says you’ve got some beans for me to take down for our Jim.’
    James was sitting in his favourite chair beside the hob and as he turned his head with an effort Harry could see he had deteriorated quite a lot even since teatime, shrinking and slumping as he did when his chest was bad. The heavy rasp of his breathing filled the room.
    â€˜Ah – I wish you would, Harry.’ The effort of speaking exhausted him for a moment. ‘There’s a few geranium plants too, though tell him not to put them in till May,’ he went on when he could manage it. ‘I’d come and get them for you, Harry, but I think I’d better stay where I be …’
    â€˜I’ll get them for him, don’t you worry,’ Charlotte said, adding with a snort, ‘And you thought you were going to go down to the pub yourself! I said you were born silly!’
    James opened his mouth to answer, but a fit of coughing took him and though he managed to bring up several sizable globules of phlegm, when the fit had subsided his breathing was worse than ever and he slumped back into his chair. Harry viewed him with alarm. He looked like a wizened old man and there was something very disturbing about the way his eyes, pale and watery, gazed fixedly into space as he fought for breath.
    Harry had grown up with his father’s ‘turns’, but this was as bad as he had ever seen him.
    â€˜I’ll go and take the plants off Mam,’ he said, grateful for an excuse to escape from the familiar room that seemed suddenly oppressive.
    The plants were tied neatly in bundles with newspaper round them. James had clearly put in some time on them before the ‘turn’ came on. Charlotte gave Harry the beans in a tobacco tin to put into his pocket and stacked the plants together in a seed-box.
    â€˜Can you manage them like that, or shall I put them in my string bag?’ she asked.
    â€˜I can manage them like that!’ Harry said hastily. He had no intention of being seen in Hillsbridge carrying a string shopping bag, no matter what it contained!
    â€˜Here you are, then.’ Charlotte handed it to him. ‘Don’t be late, now. And I wish you’d tell our Jim how bad his Dad is this time,’ she added.
    Harry nodded. ‘I will. Don’t worry.’
    But as he walked along the Rank the sense of foreboding he had felt so strongly in the house melted away. Out of earshot of that awful rattling breathing and with the fresh air in his nostrils instead of the faint sickly-sweet smell that seemed to emanate from James when he was unwell, it was easy to tell himself it was just another of his father’s ‘turns’.
    Harry settled the plants more comfortably in his arms and whistling a fairly tuneless version of ‘The Sheik of Araby’he turned the corner and started down the hill.
    The Miners’Arms was and always had been the ‘local’for the men who worked the black seams at Middle Pit, South Hill, Starvault and the other collieries within the Hillsbridge bowl. It stood in the centre of the town, facing a rival hostelry, the George, across the width of the main Bath Road. But the George was the pub used by ‘the nobs’ – colliery managers and business men, the secretary of the Cooperative Society, the mill owner and Ralph Porter the timber merchant, known as the richest man in Hillsbridge.