CHAPTER ONE

The Early Married Life of the Morels

Mrs Morel had been married for eight years when she and her family moved to the mining town of Bestwood.

They had only been in their new home three weeks when the town fair began. Morel, her husband, had left early in the morning. William, a seven-year-old boy, left after breakfast. Annie, who was only five, cried to her mother that she wanted to go to the fair. But Mrs Morel did not know any of her neighbors well enough to trust them with taking her little girl to the fair. So she promised to take her after lunch.

William returned for lunch at half past twelve. He was a very active boy, with blond hair.

"Can I have my lunch now, mother?" he asked.

"You can have your lunch as soon as it's ready," said the mother.

"Is it ready yet, I'm going to be late," he said, while his blue eyes stared at her.

"No, you won't," she said.

When lunch was ready, William ate it very quickly. As soon as he had finished, he ran for the door and left without saying a word. Annie started crying that she wanted to go to the fair too.

"You shall, you shall," said Mrs Morel.

So, later in the afternoon, she and her daughter climbed the hill leading to the fair. Mrs Morel did not like fairs. She went to get Annie some sweets. When she returned, William ran up to her with two cups he had won.

"I won these in the game where you have to throw the balls into the holes," he said, very excited.

She knew that he had won them for her.

"They are very pretty," she said.

He was full of excitement now that his mother had come. He thought that she was the most beautiful woman at the fair. The small boy took great pride in his mother. So he was very sad when she told him that it was time she and Annie went home. He stood watching them walk down the hill, but soon the excitement of the fair took hold of him again.

William returned home at half past six. He asked if his father had returned yet.

"No, he will be drinking with his friends is my guess," said Mrs Morel.

When her children went to sleep, Mrs Morel was left alone. She thought about her life and how nothing in it would change until the children grew up. She thought about the child that was growing inside her and how at the bottom of her heart she knew that she didn't want it. She hated the child's father, drinking himself stupid at the fair. She told herself that she would leave if it wasn't for William and Annie.

At half past eleven her husband came home. His face was very red above his black beard. She knew that he was drunk. He talked on and on in a drunken way about what had happened that day. Mrs Morel, who was tired and sick of his talk, went to bed as soon as possible.

Mrs Morel had come from a proud old family. Her father, George Coppard, was an engineer. He was tall and handsome, with blue eyes. Gertrude looked more like her mother, small with brown hair. But her personality was like her father's, strong and proud. George Coppard, whose father had lost all his money when the cloth business became bad, George hated his own poverty. He was a bitter man. Gertrude hated how he treated her gentle and kind mother.

When she was twenty-three she met the twenty-seven year old Walter Morel at a party. He was tall with black hair and a big black beard. He was very different from the men she had met before. He laughed loud and often, and he seemed full of life. She was the opposite. She was usually quiet and thoughtful. Nothing excited her more than an argument with an educated man. At heart she was a very serious woman.

Walter Morel thought she was amazing. To the miner she represented all that was outside of his world. She spoke very well and in an educated way. This thrilled him. She watched him dance. He danced very well, as if it was natural for him to dance. His grandfather had come from France and married an English girl. Gertrude watched him dance and laugh and thought that he was wonderful. Her father never danced or laughed; he was far too serious. And even though she was very much like her father, there was something about this young miner that captured her imagination. He seemed so full of happiness and life.

He came and stood in front of her. She felt warm inside as if she had been drinking wine.

"Will you come and dance with me?" he asked.

She told him that she couldn't dance. She looked at him and smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. It made him forget everything else. He sat down beside her.

"I don't think I'll dance either," he said.

"Are you a miner?" she asked.

"Yes, I started when I was just ten years old," he replied.

She looked at him in amazement. A new type of life opened up before her eyes. She thought about the hundreds of miners working below the earth. He seemed very brave to her. He risked his life every day and did it happily. Her heart went out to him.

A year later they were married. He had promised not to drink. For three months she was perfectly happy. For three months more she was very happy. They lived in a house he said he owned, which had new furniture. It was small, but she did not care, so long as her husband was with her. Sometimes she tried to talk to him about serious things. He would listen, but she could tell that he did not understand. He seemed most happy when there was a job to do around the house. He was very good at making or fixing things.

They had been married seven months when Mrs Morel found out that the house he said he owned was in fact owned by his mother and that there was still a large amount of money owed for the furniture. His lie destroyed her trust in him.

Morel was good to her when William was born. But she felt lonely now when she was with him. William was a beautiful child, with golden hair and bright blue eyes. She cared greatly for the child and the father was jealous. Morel's temper had become so bad that when the child cried he would hit it. Mrs Morel would scream at him and he would leave to get drunk. She knew now that he had never stopped drinking.

William was one year old, with long golden hair; when one Sunday morning he was downstairs playing with his father, his mother could hear them from her bed. Then she fell asleep. When she woke up and went downstairs she found William sitting on the ground surrounded by his long golden hair. Morel had cut all the child's hair off.

"What do you think of him?" he asked.

"I could kill you!" she screamed.

"You don't want him looking like a girl, do you?" he said.

She started to cry. Morel sat with his head in his hands. When she stopped crying, she said that she had been silly. But his act had put further distance between them.

As time went on he began to drink more and more. He also made less and less money. He would give his wife money each week to keep the house. But the amount would depend on how much he had made. For he always kept enough money to buy his beer. Mrs Morel did not know if she preferred the weeks when he made a little or a lot. When there was little, she had a hard time buying all she needed, but when there was a lot, Morel would come home drunk every night and cause trouble.

At the time of the town fair Morel was making little money. Mrs Morel was trying to save for the new baby so it made her very angry to see her husband wasting money on getting drunk. The day after the fair was a holiday. At half past nine, Morel's best friend Jerry Purdy came to the door. The men were planning to walk to the large town of Nottingham. They set off across the fields, stopping to drink at every place they passed. They had lunch in Nottingham. All afternoon they drank and played games. At seven-thirty they caught the train home. When they reached Bestwood they stopped for a final drink. The next day was a workday and the thought of it started to make the men feel bad, so most of them began to go toward their homes.

Morel had felt good drinking with his friends and the thought of going home made him angry. When he reached the front gate he could not open it so he kicked it and broke it. He surprised his wife when he came rushing through the door.

"My God," she said, "coming home drunk again!"

"I'm not drunk, woman!" he yelled.

He sat down at the table, rested his two arms on it and thrust his face towards his wife.

"I'm not drunk," he said, "nobody but a mean little dog like you would say such a thing."

"You go and spend our money on drink, like there is nothing else to spend it on," she returned.

"I haven't spent anything today," he said.

"So you get this drunk without money, do you?" she asked.

"Get out!" he screamed.

"No!" she screamed back.

He got up and moved towards her. She backed away, but he took hold of her and pushed her out the door and locked it. She found herself out in the cold night. The shock of what had just happened and the anger she felt filled her. It was some minutes before she began knocking at the door when there was no answer she went to the window. Through it she saw Morel asleep with his head on the table. It was a long time before her knocking woke him. When it did, he came to the door.

"Open the door, Walter," she said coldly.

He did, but by the time Mrs Morel had entered and locked the door again he was half way up the stairs to bed. Drunk and too ashamed to face her he was already asleep when she came to bed.

(end of section)