Title: Dress With Grace
Author: Sheila M. Sharpless
ISBN: 978-1-62420-141-7
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level: 2
TAGLINE
Brought up in a poor mining
family Grace was ambitious. A qualification in millinery, prior to ambulance
driving in the Great War, provided a spur.
BLURB
The story
tells of Len, a miner; his wife Emily; two sons, Jimmy and Arthur; and twin
daughters Grace and Ellen. A mining accident leaves Len and Jimmy jobless, and
to make ends meet, Emily has to work. The Great War sees the young ones enlist
and heartbreak when one is reported missing. A young doctor appears after the
war is over and sees the family through an unpleasant experience.
Grace has a
dream that has always with her. Will it come true? Will she achieve her ambition? She moves to London to find out where she
meets people who wish to help but setbacks depress her. However, unforeseen
forces are building to help her.
EXCERPT
"Come on Jimmy me boyo. Get up. We'll be late
for the next shift, let alone the first one."
"Oh Da do I have to? I'm that tired. Can't I
have a day off?"
"Day off?" shouted Len, his dad.
"I've never had a day off in me life. Come on, yer mam's done yer bread
and tea to take. The lamp lighter's been round already."
Len yanked the blanket off Jimmy and pulled him out
from under his mam and da's bed where he slept each night. Jimmy was eleven
years old, had left the school set up for working class children and was now
able to work in the mines. He was a good looking lad with brown tousled hair,
bright blue eyes full of questions and a very expressive face. Sometimes he
felt really happy and grown up, working beside his da whom he adored. At other
times, he hated it, the darkness, the cold dripping water, the smell and the
rats that ran across his feet.
Perhaps just as bad, the journey down in the cage,
but he knew it was a way of life, the way it would be till either his lungs
gave out or he was too old to carry on. Although he hated the mine, he was a
courageous boy knowing he had no option but to follow his da. Sometimes too, he
felt jealous of his sisters, Grace and Ellen, twins. At ten, they worked in the
clothes factory. Girls weren't allowed in the mines and after the act of 1891
they were supposed to attend school daily. Unfortunately, money was needed for
the family so they rarely attended even though education was free and
compulsory. Until this Act, parents had to pay a penny a week but many parents
were unable to afford it. Jimmy was sent to school because it was considered
more important for boys, but the girls grumbled about the work they had to do
more than Jimmy did about his. "Awful hard they work us," grumbled
Grace.
"Yes." Ellen joined in. "If we dare
to talk they'll take some of our wages."
"At least you're mostly in daylight, you two,
and you can see the sky." Jimmy thought they were lucky, much luckier than
he was. "I never see the daylight. It's dark when we go in, dark when we
come out, and we know it's dangerous, not like yours."
Ellen stood with her hands on her hips. "Well
that's all you know. Those sewing machines can stitch your fingers to the plate
if you aren't careful, and the rollers, bye, young kiddies have fallen asleep
on the loom and lost their heads almost. Been badly hurt anyway."
"Jimmy, will you come now?" Len was
getting angry.
"Coming Da." Jimmy rushed off, shouting.
"Bye, bye Mam," Emily handed Jimmy his bag of bread and his jug of
tea as he followed his da, who was hurrying to the mine.
Although it was late summer, the early morning was
chilly, and Jimmy shivered as he walked down their street, Shaftesbury Street.
Jimmy liked the name, because the street had been named after a prime minister
and it made Jimmy feel quite proud when, if he was asked where he lived, he
would say, "456 Shaftesbury Street."
A lot of miners were neighbors and sometimes Jimmy
and his da would walk along with one or two, chatting about the football team
or just about the mine, or the weather.
Passing St. Thomas's they heard the church clock
strike four times. Four o clock. Their shift began at four thirty. They began
to hurry past the row of terraced houses, each like their own, the front door
opening on to the street. Two up, two down, a lavvy outside the backdoor, and a
big sink in the kitchen for washing clothes and people.
Jimmy knew nothing else. He was born there as was
his da and until his wedding would continue to live there. He loved the little
house and particularly the kitchen where they all sat round the big, scrubbed
wooden table. There were chairs, rather old and scruffy for the grownups but
the children sat on a bench Len had made from a plank and two large pieces of
wood, which he brought in one day from a wood merchant he knew. By the range,
was an old armchair where Da liked to sit after supper. The cover of the chair
was fraying, and you could see the coarse horse hair stuffing underneath. If
you sat on it in bare legs it prickled horribly, but the kitchen was the family
room, warm and cozy. Sort of friendly, Jimmy thought.
He was proud of his da, who was not a tall man, but
strong, muscular with a thatch of brown hair, which rarely seemed free of the
coal dust, despite his harsh rubbing with soap. Brown eyes which could look so
kind, but also, when he was angry, blazing. Len was a good but stern husband
and father with fixed ideas of his place in the family. He was a stubborn man
and although he was never sentimental he cared a great deal for his family.
Looking up at him now, Jimmy noticed on his da's
face the little blue marks that many miners got from the long and close contact
with the coal.
It was nearly sunrise. The sky was getting lighter
and they were hurrying up Pitt Hill, with the mine workings towering high above
them. Jimmy saw other miners gathering, some coming up a different hill,
Strawberry Hill, hurrying to get to work on time. Others were coming from another
direction, crossing the moor, up from Glendower Valley. Yet more were behind
them, leaving Shaftesbury Street as he and his da had done. Some two or three
were singing, the sound taken up by others and ringing down the valley.
Jimmy suddenly remembered, it was the horrid
foreman, Joseph Evans, on duty that day, the one they all hated. He was a bully
and never gave anyone a good word. He'd threaten any boy, who wasn't working as
fast as he said, with the strap. Many boys felt the leather belt on his leg or
bottom, 'though the man would never dare, if he saw the boy's da watching. He
was a mean looking man, tall, swarthy, as if the coal dust had got into his
skin, his hair, his arms, permanently. His eyes seemed to be too close
together, and yet he could fix anyone with a steely look, leaving the smaller
children shaking with fear.
Once into the mine building, Jimmy knew how much he
hated going down in the cage. It was always the same, first the crowding in,
squashed so tightly that people pushed, trod on toes, dug elbows in ribs. Some
had flattened noses and the dreadful feeling of your tummy falling out as the
cage made its quick rattling way down to the coal face. It always began with
the foreman pushing you in and shouting.
"Come on, get in. I haven't got all day to
wait."
Someone would say, "Ow, get off my foot."
The reply came, "Well stop pushing then."
Then the foreman, "Shut up talking, come on
there's six more to get in yet."
Jimmy got into the cage and there were the usual
groans from everyone as the pushing and squashing became more and more
unbearable with breathing almost impossible. When the cage reached the mine
floor, everyone got out, while the foreman grumbled at them, telling them what
to do, shouting at them,
"Come on you boys, you'll be hurryers. Know
what that means?"
They have to know, so they say, brightly,
"yes," even though they know it's one of the hardest jobs in the
mine, and taxed all their strength.
"Yes sir, it's pushing the coal cart, one
pulls and another pushes."
Then the foreman gave them a push and said.
"Go on then, get on with it."
He turned to another boy.
"You, boy, and you, you're carryers. Know what
I mean?''
"Yes sir, we carry the coal, in a
backitt."
For once the foreman was pleased and said,
"Yes. One puts the backitt on the other's back, and then he carries the
coal you put in it. Right?"
"Yes sir."
These two knew only too well of the backache that
would follow.
"Go on then and be quick about it. You
littl'n," he turned to the smallest boy "you will be the pump
boy."
At this the little boy began to cry, "I don't
w-want to b-be a p-pump boy. The w-water comes up and nearly drowns me. The
r-rats eat my b-bread."
In spite of the boy's obvious terror, the foreman
had no sympathy.
"Shut up, yer little misery. Yer've only gotta
open a door and let the hurryers through. I don't want ter tell yer
again."
One of the adults got angry and said to another,
"'E oughta be horse whipped, the way 'e treats those litt'luns." He
started towards the foreman but others held him back.
"Calm down mate, you won't do good making a
row. You'll only get into trouble."
"Yes," came the reply, "but I reckon
Lord Salisbury, who stopped kids under the age of ten working underground,
would do something about the way these children are treated if he knew."
"You gonna tell 'im then?" joked someone.
"No, get over," was the reply.
The day, as always seemed to be endless, although
all miners had to get used to the dark and the noise of men with their large
tools hacking at the coal seam. Jimmy sometimes felt smothered, unable to
breathe properly. At last came the time to go back up in the cage to walk back
to the comfort of his home where his mam would be waiting.
