The Stony Path Read Online Free PDF Page B

as it suited her to let him think along those lines she’d go along with that for the time being. She had enough to put up with without him mauling her about.
     
    Nathaniel’s consideration brought no shred of tenderness into her thinking, only contempt for what Eva saw as his lack of gumption in asserting himself.
     
    The hot summer night was stifling and the stench from the privies in the backyards drifted in through the partly open window, causing Eva to wrinkle her nose and swallow hard. The man at the side of her stirred slightly, grunting once or twice before he resumed his periodic snoring, and as she pictured the small, skinny body topped by wiry, dirty-coloured hair and indeterminate features, a wave of bitterness engulfed her.
     
    This place and him, and his brats too. It wasn’t to be borne, it wasn’t, but what could she do? Nowt. Bad as this was, it was better than the workhouse. She breathed in and out very slowly as her heartbeat pounded in her ears. But that was all you could say for it. And her mam had said she was lucky. Lucky!
     
    ‘What about if you’d bin promised to one of the Silksworth miners, eh, or Whitburn or Ryhope?’ Alice had railed at her the day before. ‘The hovels some of them poor devils live in aren’t fit for pigs. There’s no yards or washhouses or coalhouses or drains, an’ the middens are shared by ten or more families with one tap atween ’em. Two rooms, an’ the floors seepin’ filth an’ the smell enough to knock you backwards, an’ here’s you, goin’ to have a two-up, two-down an’ your own privy. You don’t know you’re born, girl, that’s your trouble. You ought to be down on your knees thankin’ God for your luck in landin’ Nathaniel Blackett. Aye, you should that.’
     
    Well, she knew who she had to thank for her present circumstances all right, and she’d see her day with her mam and da if it was the last thing she did. Eva’s green eyes narrowed in the blackness and they were alive with hate. But she had to go careful if she still wanted to see Henry, and she had to see him. She had to. He was part of her, wound into her innermost being like parts of her own body. She would die if she couldn’t at least see him.
     
    She could have prevented him marrying that scrawny scarecrow if her mam and da had let them alone. She inclined her head to the thought, her face grim. If she’d been able to tell him about the bairn he’d have stood by her; why else would she have made sure she fell? She knew her Henry. She wouldn’t have named anyone and likely her da would have gone mad, but he wouldn’t have thrown her out, not if Henry had stood his ground and said she had to stay. And then they could have been together with no one knowing who had fathered the bairn but Henry, and the bairn would have been a means of keeping him tied to her forever. But now that cord had become a noose around her neck ...
     
    Acid hot tears burnt their way down her cheeks but she still remained perfectly still.
     
    Oh aye, she’d see her day with her mam and da all right, her time would come. And now the bitterness became a tangible entity, lying heavy in the room. She’d never had no truck with religion – as far as she could see it was just a tool the preachers and such used on gullible folk who didn’t bother to think for themselves – but if there was any truth in what her da had flung at her, seconds before he’d left her at the church door in the town, then she’d go along with that. ‘The devil looks after his own.’ Well, maybe she’d find out the truth of that statement in the years to come, because there certainly wasn’t anyone else who would be looking out for her.
     
    She slowly drew the sleeve of her heavy calico nightdress across her wet face as she sniffed and gulped a few times. Henry had treated her shamefully and she didn’t deserve it, not from him, but it had been her da who had pushed for Henry and Hilda to be wed. It had. She clung on