Chapter 1 - Page 2

walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas
and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks
in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches,
little privet hedges, and dormer windows for the attics. But that
was outside; that was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all
the colliers' wives. The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was at the back
of the house, facing inward between the blocks, looking at a scrubby
back garden, and then at the ash-pits. And between the rows,
between the long lines of ash-pits, went the alley, where the children
played and the women gossiped and the men smoked. So, the actual
conditions of living in the Bottoms, that was so well built and
that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury because people must live
in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.

Mrs. Morel was not anxious to move into the Bottoms,
which was already twelve years old and on the downward path,
when she descended to it from Bestwood. But it was the best she
could do. Moreover, she had an end house in one of the top blocks,
and thus had only one neighbour; on the other side an extra strip
of garden. And, having an end house, she enjoyed a kind of aristocracy
among the other women of the "between" houses, because her rent
was five shillings and sixpence instead of five shillings a week.
But this superiority in station was not much consolation to Mrs. Morel.

She was thirty-one years old, and had been married eight years.
A rather small woman, of delicate mould but resolute bearing,
she shrank a little from the first contact with the Bottoms women.
She came down in the July, and in the September expected her
third baby.

Her husband was a miner. They had only been in their new home
three weeks when the wakes, or fair, began. Morel, she knew, was sure
to make a holiday of it. He went off early on the Monday morning,
the day of the fair. The two children were highly excited.
William, a boy of seven, fled off immediately after breakfast,
to prowl round the wakes ground, leaving Annie, who was only five,
to whine all morning to go also. Mrs. Morel did her work.
She scarcely knew her neighbours yet, and knew no one with whom
to trust the little girl. So she promised to take her to the wakes
after dinner.

William appeared at half-past twelve. He was a very active lad,
fair-haired, freckled, with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian
about him.

"Can I have my dinner, mother?" he cried, rushing in with his
cap on. "'Cause it begins at half-past one, the man says so."

"You can have your dinner as soon as it's done," replied the mother.

"Isn't it done?" he cried, his blue eyes staring at her