Read The Chainmakers for Free Online Page B

angry, don't pretend you don't know why!'
    'I don't know why! Honest... honest! What's to do...?'
    'You, Will Gibson! That's what's to do! Burnin' a ling fire and our Dottie middlin'. I'll bet there's no milk in the house neither!' Will's sheepish look let Anna know she was right.
    'You knew very well I had a bit o' money and would help! You'm too proud by half our Will.'
    Will sighed, and fell into step beside her as she started to walk again.
    'It ay that I'm proud,' he tried to explain, 'It's just that we can usually manage, but Mary ay bin able to work for a while...'
    'Exactly! So why didn't yer ask?'
    'Well... I didn't like...'
    'Exactly!' Anna said again. 'Too proud.' She stopped and caught at Will's arm. 'Don't you understand our Will?' she said, almost pleading. 'There ain't no room for bein' proud, not in a proper family, and most of all not when a babby is sick. Babbies come first Will, you know that. Our Dottie's surely worth a bit o' pride?'
    Will's big hands fumbled on the handle of the coal bucket. 'Arr, you'm right our Anna. I'm sorry.'
    'Promise me Will, if ever you're in trouble, money or anythin' else, you won't keep it to yerself. Promise,'
    Will smiled. 'I promise, ma wench. An' yo' promise me an' all... if you'm ever in a fix...'
    'Yes Will, I promise. Now let's see what's up with our Dottie...'
    An hour later, having helped Mary make up a good fire and spoon some of the Infant Preservative down Dottie's wheezing throat, Anna made her way through the dark streets towards the pit bank. You weren't really allowed to help yourself, but even if someone saw her they would turn a blind eye, provided she only collected slack. It was a thin broken coal, almost like dust, but if you banked up the fire with it at night it gradually solidified into a mass, and in the morning a few prods with the poker would break it into a good blaze.
    Reaching the coal bank, she climbed a little way up, glad of her new boots, and dug the galvanised bucket fiercely into the slack. 'I wonder,' she thought as she began to scoop with her hands, 'I wonder what Florence and Robert would make of it if they could see me now?'
    ~
    George Gibson took a swig from the bottle of "seconds", a beer made from the second fermentation of the hops, and then slung the bottle back into the bosh to keep cool. He pulled on the bellows and took a white hot rod from the fire. With a few well directed blows he shaped it into a horseshoe shaped link, then inserted it into the last link of the chain before beginning to hammer again. The black thoughts had been at him again today and he would be glad to see the back of his shift. In summer George often started work as early as four in the morning and finished at lunchtime, to complete his quota before the heat became unbearable, but on dark winter mornings when he didn't start until seven the shift seemed to go on for ever.
    He splashed water from the bosh on to the hood over the fire and finished off the link by working the Oliver with his foot. The leaden weight in his chest would not go away, and no matter how he tried the dark thoughts returned. His frustration lay in the knowledge of his own limitations, for there was nothing he could do for Sarah... his Sarah. The time for change was long gone, perhaps it had never existed. Their dream was exactly that, just a dream. From the moment they had been thrown off her father's farm with curses ringing in their ears, there had not been a time when there was enough money to last out the week. Their endeavours as newly-weds, when they had walked every day, slowly making their way towards the burgeoning industrial towns of the Black Country, existing on love and hope and little else, now seemed the height of folly, a youthful game played by ignorant children unaware of the cards stacked against them.
    After several false starts George had at last found work at Sandley Heath, with a gaffer who needed a fourth man to complete his team making cable chain for the ocean