Friendship's Bond by Meg Hutchinson Read Free Book Online Page A

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    Edward! Even in her remembered sadness Leah smiled. War had left its mark on him as it would leave it on many yet, but he remained the same honest, trustworthy man she had watched grow from the cradle, a man so different in every way to the one she would speak to next.
    Holding her shawl about her shoulders, ignoring the quick March breeze tugging playfully at her bonnet, Leah retraced her path across the open expanse of heath and meadow which bordered a heart of iron and coal.
    The Black Country. She let her glance rove over the vista of chimneys rising like a huge flock of crows black against the skyline.
    The Black Country was how this very heart of England was described, a term well justified by the pall of smoke overlying the town, a perpetual veil of grey shutting out much of the beauty of daytime skies and then cloaking the majesty of stars spread across the night void. A forest of chimney stacks belched foul black breath from iron works, collieries, steel and brass foundries. Street upon street of tight packed houses huddled close to each other, and to the grudgingly spared communal yards with their shared outhouse and privy. From every roof rose the smoke of coal fires, the one weapon with which families fought the damp of old dilapidated homes, their every brick robed in black soot.
    No building escaped. Not even the House of God. Leah’s glance rested a moment on the church of St Bartholomew. Black as any other building it gazed down from its hilltop on the town it had served for centuries.
    She sighed heavily. How Wednesbury must have changed during those hundreds of years; how it had changed from the days of her own childhood. It had been so different then. Yes, parents must have found it hard raising a family just as now in this soot-ridden town, but for her as for the children she had played alongside worries of that nature did not exist. She had run with others barefoot across fields, she had gambolled and tumbled among stalks of wheat tall as herself, had danced among stately rows of barley.
    So many happy reminiscences, so many cherished memories, but none were so treasured as the recollections of when as a young woman she had walked with Joseph.
    ‘We shouldn’t go walkin’ amid the crops, a farmer’s labours be hard, it be unkind of folk to go destroyin’ o’ what he works long to produce.’
    Joseph, her ever thoughtful Joseph. Even as a young man his actions had been considerate of other folk before himself. So they had taken their strolls here on the heath, his hand shyly taking hers only when they were beyond the sight of houses.
    Feeling the brush of bracken against her boots she was again with Joseph, who was laughing at a young girl dressed in her Sunday best gown, her sliding feet hidden among deep drifts of daisies while her cream cotton skirts caressed the heads of kingcups and rich purple clover.
    Leah sighed. Where was the golden wheat speckled with scarlet poppies? It was gone, never to gleam again, buried beneath stretches of earth blackened and scarred by the ravages of coal mining. The colour-strewn heath and meadows, once-lush pastures, all that delight was now swallowed beneath an ever-expanding dark sea called industry. The ache of losing it felt almost physical. Standing a moment, she stared ahead. There had been so many changes, and Wednesbury groaned beneath the insatiable demand.
    Ugly, noisy, a cancer on the beautiful face of nature; those buildings were all of that but . . . Leah sighed with acceptance. Objectionable as was their presence, the twenty-four-hour ceaseless clang and clamour, the perpetual pall of acrid smoke, those workplaces produced many of the materials with which this country was fighting for its life.
    So much had already been given to that fight. How many scars had been left on the hearts of families robbed of their menfolk, and how many yet would be called to face that terrible sorrow?
    ‘How many more? Lord, how many more before the world comes to