Heart of Coal by Jenny Pattrick Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing. It will pass over.’ A pause … ‘I love you, Mama.’
    ‘Pass over? You may be wrong, sweetheart. There are quick tongues and long memories up here. As we both well know. Also, I will be blamed as a mother.’
    Rose’s voice is sharp now. ‘None of that, Bella. Blackmail doesn’t suit you. No one will blame you, and you know it.’
    Bella ploughs on. ‘And what about Michael? Will he marry such a thief? Will the Hanrattys want such a daughter-in-law?’
    ‘Who knows?’ laughs Rose. ‘Who cares?’ And, after a pause in which Henry imagines her flinging around the room in her mad, wild way, ‘Michael knows what I am.’
    Yes, thinks Henry, standing in the dark, I believe he does. But do you understand Michael, I wonder?
    Judging the temperature inside to have cooled sufficiently, and the temperature of his own body to have lowered too far for comfort, Henry Stringer tiptoes back to the gate, lets it creak and click, then walks smartly onto the veranda.
     
    LATER in the evening, after spirited argument over the rights and wrongs of Boer and British, followed by Rose’s analysis of the failings of the Westport Coal Company’s expansion plans, and Henry’s defence of them, the subject of the new road is aired. Rose is alight with the possibilities. Tonight she wears cream sprigged muslin, good enough for a formal dinner party, and far too lovely for a quiet night at home, but Rose is like that. Conventions of any sort slide away from her quick as butter on a hot griddle-iron. Shejumps up now from her chair by the fire and gestures out the window.
    ‘Can’t you see it, Mr Stringer? The Track holds us back in the nineteenth century! Eighteenth, you could well say. What modern town, let alone the top coal producer in the country, can countenance access like that? The new road will open up Denniston to the world!’
    She dances around behind Bella’s chair and hugs the old lady around her plump, black-ribboned neck. ‘And Mama here will be the first to descend in the comfort of a horse and trap.’
    Henry cannot resist the argument, though he knows he’s on dangerous ground. He could scarcely be happier, warm by the fire, well-stoked with Bella’s tea-cake, his pipe filling the air with spicy fragrance and this sharp young woman as sparring partner.
    ‘I say the new road will spell the end of Denniston,’ he says, pointing his pipe stem sternly at the two women. What a picture they are together!
    ‘The end!’ cries Rose, striding to stand over him. ‘Would you have us all stand still and let progress pass us by? Henry Stringer, you old fogy, you head-in-the-sand!’
    Henry wags his head at her. ‘That is immaterial to the argument, Rose. Argumentum ad hominem! Stick to the facts of the matter. You say the world will come to Denniston. But think of the other possibility. Denniston, Rose, may well go down to the world. Down your precious new road and away. Denniston could bleed to death slowly, inevitably, drop by drop, family by family.’
    Rose glowers. ‘Never! The men will stay where the work is, and the women will stay with the men. What miner will spend half his day travelling when he can live at the mine mouth? You are wrong, Mr Stringer.’
    ‘Well, we will see.’ Henry, though he won’t admit it, hopes Roseis right. An enduring, prosperous Denniston is part of his dream.
    ‘And Brennan agrees,’ says Rose. ‘He knows the miners. He says the new road will be another engineering wonder. People will line up to travel here.’
    ‘And down.’
    ‘Brennan says we will become a tourist destination.’
    ‘Brennan is a dreamer,’ laughs Henry, then wishes he had kept quiet. He is disturbed to see Rose wound so tight. She stands with her back to him, looking out into the dark. She’s trembling. But why? It’s unusual for Rose to take anything seriously, even an argument. On most occasions it is Henry himself who becomes tense and flustered, out-argued by his clever pupil.
    He stands,