spent his wages supping with his cronies. It was always the same palaver: he’d be ashamed and crawl home to sleep off the drink when she wasn’t looking, and then pretend none of this had happened.
Why should she wait a minute longer when there was someone at hand to guide her through the dark streets?
‘Wait, Mr Ackroyd, I’ll come with you…’
She spent the night at Granny Simms’s, sleeping in the chair. When it was morning, and there was no sign of Dad’s return, Mirren thought he would be lying snug in one of the refuge huts on the side of the railway track, hiding until he was sober enough to face her sullen anger. So she went to school with a heavy heart and thought no more about it.
She ran home at dinner break, hoping there would be smoke coming out of the carriage, but there were strangers waiting on the doorstep with Granny Simms, who nodded gravely as she saw her. There was a funny look in her eyes as Mirren approached more slowly.
She recognised Constable Fletcher, who was kind. He took off his helmet as he spoke.
‘You’ll have to be brave, lass. There’s been a terrible accident. Yer dad got knocked over on the track.’
Mirren shook her head, not wanting to hear what was coming next, wanting to run, but her legs had turned to jelly so she shoved her hands over her ears. It was Granny who put her arms around her shoulders and held her tight.
‘He wouldn’t’ve known a thing, love. He fell asleep on the line. He must have taken a short cut and slipped.’ Her eyes were full of tears.
Mirren couldn’t believe what she was saying. ‘Dad’d never cross the line at night. He said I must never do that. Where did it happen? You’ve got it all wrong. The track’s miles from the Green Man.’
‘I’m sorry, lass, but he must have been taking a short cut down the line in the early hours. He was hit on the down line–the night sleeper from Glasgow and him Scotch-born and all…Let yer granny make you a cup of tea,’ said the constable.
‘She’s not my granny,’ Mirren screamed in fury. ‘My real granny lives up the dale on a farm.’ At Christmas there was usually a parcel of clothes from Grandma, which never fitted, and a printed card from the Yewells of Cragside Farm. The rest of the year there was nothing.
‘I want to see my dad.’
‘That’ll not be possible,’ whispered the constable. ‘There has to be an investigation.’
‘I have to go and see if it’s him. It might not be him,’ Mirren said, not listening. This was all some strange nightmare she was living in and soon she would wake up. How could her dad be gone and have left her all alone?
‘Come on, Mirren, you’ve had a shock,’ Granny Simms whispered, ignoring the earlier betrayal. ‘She’ll stay with me until such times—’
‘But it’s all my fault,’ Mirren cried out. ‘I should’ve waited and brought him home.’
‘Now how do you make that out, young lady?’ said the policeman, kneeling down so close up she could see the hairs sprouting out of his nose.
‘I should have stayed on. He told me to stay outside on the bench, but I was cold and came home. He needed me and I wasn’t there. It’s all my fault.’ The hot tears began to roll down her cheeks. ‘I want my dad. I have to tell him I’m sorry.’
‘Now none of that, child,’ said one of the strangers, a man wearing a clerical collar. ‘Mr Gilchrist was a grown man and should’ve known better than to leave a child alone in the dark outside a pub,’ he tutted in her defence, but his words gave no comfort.
‘I’m afraid there’s many as does round here,’ answered the constable. ‘The child was right to go home. In his befuddled state, Paddy wouldn’t know what time of day or night it was. Don’t fret yerself, lass. It were an accident and a cruel one at that, just before Christmas.’
‘That remains for the coroner to decide,’ the parson replied. ‘The railway line is always a temptation, an easy way out of life’s troubles.’
‘Not in front of the kiddy, sir,’ snapped the constable. ‘She’s got enough to bear as it is, without putting that burden on her.’
But the words were spoken and a seed of doubt sown in turbulent soil. Mirren had sensed early that a force greater than her childish adoration always drew her father towards danger. He’d once lived in a world of soldiers. When he sat in the Green Man there were old pals from the war who supped and sang that ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ song that made him cry. Once she had rooted in his tin box of papers and found a likeness of him, standing so straight in his uniform, his dark hair plastered down and his moustache waxed. He looked so strong and handsome, but when he caught her staring down at it he almost slammed the lid on her fingers.
‘Put that away. There’s nothing in there for you!’
‘Is that you?’ she’d asked, looking at his kilt.
He’d stared down at the young man and shook his head. ‘Never seen him afore.’ His voice was cracked and his breath smelled of stout, his skin was grey, his shoulders stooped as he fought the demons she was too feeble to conquer. She never opened the tin box again because it was where he kept his wounds and pain, out of sight of a child’s prying eyes.
‘It is good to see this child Miriam has signed the pledge.’ The parson pointed to the badge on her lapel. ‘A weakness for strong drink is bred in the bone. Do you belong to the Band of Hope?’ He was changing the subject, trying to make polite conversation.
‘Yes, she does,’ Granny Simms interrupted. ‘She’s a regular at their banner parades and treat in the summer. She wears that blue ribbon all the time.’
‘Good. That’s a start, young lady, and next we must get the Welfare to sort out accommodation. She can’t stay here alone,’ he added.
‘She’ll bide with me tonight. This lass’s not budging from where she knows best,’ Granny said, holding her tight. Mirren’s eyelids were drooping, her mouth was dry, her head whirring as her legs buckled. ‘Look at the poor mite. She needs a mash of sweet tea. There’s friends enough round here to see to the poor bairn in her sorrow.’
They stumbled up the steps and into the fug and clutter of Granny Simms’s compartment, where Brian sat dosing with his dog on his lap. He didn’t know yet. He hadn’t heard the news.
For a second, life was as it always had been, bread and dripping on the table as if her world had not been turned upside down and she left alone.
If only she’d stayed with Dad, if only it was yesterday all over again. But the mill buzzer hooted at dinner time as normal. How could something terrible happen and the mill chimneys went on smoking just the same? She started to shake and couldn’t stop.
Granny shoved something bitter on her lips. ‘Sip it slowly, lass. It’ll calm you down,’ she coaxed, but Mirren spat it out.
‘It’s spirit. I know that smell. Don’t make me break my pledge.’
‘Bugger the pledge…It’s the only medicine for shock.’
‘What am I going to do?’ Mirren cried, feeling the hot whisky slipping down her throat. It tasted bitter. How could anyone pay good brass for such poison?
‘First things first. We’ll see yer dad buried good and proper and you kitted out to do him proud. Everything else can wait until then. Yer a good lass and sharp as a knife, but you’ve not gone far to find your sorrows. Happen something will turn up for you.’
‘I’ll have to go in the orphanage, won’t I?’ Everyone at school knew of the orphan kids, in their grey uniforms and cropped hair, who walked in lines around the town and had no parents to care for them.
‘Over my dead body! You deserve better and, as you said, I’m not yer real kin. It’s time them as are got to know what’s happened,’