Road to Berry Edge, The by Elizabeth Gill Read Free Book Online

somebody’s face. The rage in him felt like a volcano running over the top, and it wasn’t just the insults or the way that the men had shown their disrespect, it was the whole of Berry Edge somehow against him all that time. He didn’t see himself, he didn’t really see Michael, it was white heat just like the furnace, like the steel pouring, pure and high and liquid, all that it should be, just himself and that.
    The men were well backed, shocked. When he had gone in, the murmur of pub voices had felt like a caress. He could have been at home here, had thought for seconds together that he was and then he remembered. Berry Edge was always like this, it was the foundry that had belonged to him. The people didn’t care what he felt like or what he thought, here it was only what they could see; and they had seen him as a coward, as weak, and in Berry Edge there was no place for the weak except on the bottom being trodden into the ground.
    Michael came back at him. The pub was suddenly a great big space in the middle with only himself and Michael, the odd chair breaking like sticks, clattering across the floor, and the smell of beer and tobacco became to Rob the most wonderful memory, the smell of the steelworks, the men’s clothes warm and sweated, sand and boots and all those things which he had forgotten for so long. Berry Edge smelled like nowhere else, even though he had been in factories and foundries all his life. He was a boy again with a boy’s dreams, standing at the doorway of the works knowing where he belonged, the heat of the steel pouring, the cold of the snow outside, the men pausing and smiling and talking. He had loved that foundry like nothing else, it had been his like it would never ever belong to John, it was his because of the men, their company, their friendship, their skills. They would work with him and the results were cleanand solid and important. He had belonged here on the high fells where men had built the iron works because of the raw materials. He had thought it would always be his home, that he could shape and mould it like the steel, that he could create something important here but it was gone, it was all long gone and he knew it now. These men were not his friends any more, they were not his workmates. They hated him just like everybody else. They would have liked Michael McFadden to kill him, they would at least have liked Michael McFadden to leave him senseless on the floor. But Rob was clearheaded, never more so than now. Michael had been drinking.
    By the time Rob could see beyond the rage, Michael McFadden was down on the floor and not about to get up. In the silence there were moments of distilled satisfaction while Rob took in the assembled men with one sweeping look.
    â€˜Anybody else?’ he offered.
    The men shifted but nothing happened, and then Harry touched him on the shoulder.
    â€˜Come on,’ he said. He talked softly, persuaded Rob outside into the bitter air and then the world crashed around Rob. He stopped, leaned back against the house next to the pub.
    He thought, everything he touched he spoiled, everything he went near he lost. It was Berry Edge after John died. It was his nightmare. He had sworn never to come back. Guilt swamped him, took over, sweated its way through his body in spite of the cold night. He could never belong here again and he hated it because it had spoiled his life. It got him awake in the crawling hours of the night with its knives and whisperings, gnawing away until he could see a white image in his head of the person that he had tried to be, the person inside, that he was so sure he was meant to be, injured and bloody and on the ground; and it was because of this place.
    Harry waited for a few moments and then asked anxiously, ‘You hurt?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜You sure?’
    â€˜Yes.’ He looked at Harry and was glad for the first time that Harry had come with him. ‘Do you think