Extracts from Dancing in the Wilderness
Part 1. Arriving at the Ends of the Earth
Denniston - Burnetts Face, 1908
Etta would never forget the day she arrived at Burnetts Face. Even before she came to where the sun never shone all winter, even before she saw the tiny, makeshift houses rising from acres of soot and bare dirt, even before she heard for the first time the never-ending rumble of the coal bins passing through the middle of town, Etta knew she had come to the ends of the earth.
Two months in a cramped boat travelling from Southampton to New Zealand had been only just endurable. As the deck of the Kumara heaved and tossed while she leant over the side and was sick for what seemed like the thousandth time, she'd consoled herself with the thought of the dock in that distant land where the vile journey would be over.
The dock had at last materialised as the small provincial town of Westport, a river harbour next to a small geographical bulge on the wild, wet, windswept West Coast where unfamiliar bush seemed to crowd right down to the hostile sea. She and her husband Ted had stayed in Westport for two days, never far from the ever-present sound of the sea pounding on the steep stony beach, while their few sticks of furniture were unloaded from the Kumara and sent on to their new home to await their arrival.
Looking out the window of the railway carriage as the train steamed slowly northward, Etta stared on a hostile landscape devoid of life except for miles and miles of bush and trees. She had never seen so many trees.
In less than an hour, she was standing on the Waimangaroa railway station, surrounded by her treasures: her trousseau collected over the last few years packed neatly in its box; her new, most precious Bexley dinner set, made of the best china her father could afford, with gold edging around deep brown, russet and pale apricot hand-painted anemones and daisies; and a chest filled with everything she would need for setting up house for the first time in her life. Until this moment her treasures had been the bolster for her flagging courage. But now even they lacked the power to revive her enthusiasm.
Not particularly strong of will nor outgoing in nature, Etta was at her best in the simple, quiet domestic routines of her home in Chesterfield. In the shabby, much loved vicarage that had been her home these past twenty years, Etta found satisfaction in the familiar and the predictable. With her mother and sisters Fanny and Cora, her world had encompassed little more than visiting her father's parishioners, taking food to the needy and attending church on Sundays. Right now, twelve thousand miles from this, Henrietta Makepeace Jackson was not at her best and she knew it. In fact, she was feeling very sorry for herself. This journey had taken every ounce of willpower and resolve.
There she stood, not much more than five feet in height, dressed in brown, fading skirts under a worn black woollen coat trimmed with ageing astrakhan. The close-fitting coat curved sharply in at her narrow waist before spreading slightly to cover more ample hips. Her black, low-heeled, high-button boots covered feet so small they hardly touched the ground beneath her.
A loud whistle made her start. The train departed, belching black smoke and steam, leaving Etta and Ted at the station. Not far away, another young couple also stood amid a pile of cases. Behind them a mother holding a baby was frantically trying to keep three small children close by while her husband started carrying their many bags and boxes over to the station steps beside the road.
"Where do we go now?" Etta asked Ted as he counted their cases.
"Up the hill," he said, pointing inland.
Etta looked at the distant hill with foreboding. At home in Chesterfield it would have been called a mountain. It seemed to be as high as the heavy grey clouds and it was covered in dense, dark green bush. Not a house in sight.
From half way up, behind a small knoll, the vegetation was split by a long perpendicular scar of railway track carrying coal wagons up and down. To Etta, they seemed to be going up into the sky. Ted was gazing up at the hill with admiration, his eyes shining with excitement.
"That's it. The Denniston Incline," he said, lingering over the name. "The eighth wonder of the world they call it. A marvellous feat of engineering. D'you know Etta, it brings down fifteen wagons and one hundred and twenty tons of coal every hour. Brings them straight down the side of that steep hill - from two thousand feet. It's almost as steep as a ladder. Every foot and a half forward, you go up a foot in height. My goodness, that's steep. I can't wait to be working on it."
Etta didn't mind waiting. She didn't like the look of it. She felt a prickling at the back of her eyes and willed herself not to cry. This was not the time to appear weak or homesick. This was the time to support her husband. She brushed away a threatening tear with her gloved hand and smiled thinly at Ted.
"How do we get up there?" Ted asked the stationmaster, who was supervising the transfer of piles of fresh vegetables and groceries to go up the hill.
"Walk," he said bluntly. "There's no road. You take the bridle path. It's about seven miles. Should take you two or three hours. Give me your things and I'll see they get up there for you. Might even be there by the time you arrive."
"How do they get up there? Can't we go the same way?"
"Afraid not. We send goods up in the empty coal wagons, returning uphill for more coal. We used to let people go up there too, but it got dangerous. Some of the wagons came off the rope and took off. You wouldn't stand a chance if you were in a runaway wagon. Besides, the first time the women go up in these bins, they scream for dear life. It terrifies them. So now everyone has to walk."
Etta looked longingly at her boxes containing her treasured dinnerset, the linen she had painstakingly embroidered for her dinner table and her bed, and more than ever wished she could get back on the Kumara and go home to the cobbled streets of Chesterfield, the church with its twisted spire, the moors beyond the town; home to her mother and sisters, where the familiar patterns of each day would soon erase this nightmare. She could imagine sitting in a coal bin, screaming for dear life like the stationmaster said, surrounded by all her lovely things, watching them smash into tiny pieces around her as they came crashing down in a runaway wagon.
Walking up would be tough, but it would be preferable to that.
"Where does the path begin?" she said. There was no going back. The only way was up that steep hill, so she might as well get started and get it over with. Picking up her skirts to climb down from the station, Etta set off behind Ted following the stationmaster's casual wave. She didn't let herself look back at her trunk and boxes stacked there forlornly, waiting to be deposited into a dirty coal wagon and jerked roughly skyward.
Westport, January 22nd, 1997
What a dump! She didn't remember it being this bad. Driving slowly down the main street of town, Stephanie winced at the depressing sight, dimmed by faded memory but now coming back with that same old stultifying, suffocating, oppressive feeling: over-wide, gaping, empty streets, big heavy shop verandahs shading dark empty windows; fanciful facades hiding flimsy, rusting corrugated iron side-walls. Banks. Petrol stations. Real estate agents. And the biggest store of all was an enormous video hire outlet - probably the sole evening entertainment.
Through her Dior sunglasses, Stephanie peered with mounting dismay at passing shop windows parading an assortment of jumble and dross she wouldn't be seen dead with. Worse still, there was no sign of a decent café bar or restaurant and she had already driven over half way along the main street.
A wet Wednesday in Westport. Once her home town. For the immediate future it would be her home. And it was a dump.
Stephanie parked the red Mazda MX rental in one of the numerous empty spaces on the main street and got out the map supplied by the rental company. Westport took up only one small page - easily fitting the whole town into the same space as the cosy London suburb she had not long left.
She was hungry after the fast, non-stop drive over from Christchurch, which had gone very smoothly except for the stupid pukeko thing that had run in front of her car and made a disturbing bump as she'd driven over it.
She hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast on the early morning flight down from Auckland and food was now essential. However the frilly, scalloped net curtains in the window of the electric blue Do Duck In were enough to turn anyone off food. Besides, she could remember it when it was the town milk bar - the place where all the high school kids would gather on the way home, linger over a Coke or a milkshake if you had the money, just hang out if you didn't. The place where you could meet boys, where you hitched your uniform up even higher, dragged your socks down even lower, and wore pale pink lipstick and gold hoop earrings even though it was against the rules.
The instant she opened the car door the cold hit her. She gasped involuntarily and sank back down in the car seat to recover, closing the car door again quickly. It was the middle of summer for heaven's sake. When she left Christchurch on the other side of the alpine pass, it had been around twenty five degrees and sunny. People were in shorts and T-shirts and the rivers she'd passed were filled with people swimming, launching jet boats and generally enjoying the summer sun. Here it'd be lucky to have reached twelve Celsius and there was a strong cold wind blowing from the sea. A westerly. She remembered them.
Up on Denniston they blew like buggery for days on end, never letting up, sleeting rain, sometimes blowing so hard they took the iron off the roof. It had been a huge relief to get away from the winds and the rain all those years ago. Must have been twenty five years at least since she'd escaped, without even a backward glance as her mother used to say. Couldn't get out fast enough. She was seventeen then so, yes, it would be twenty-five years exactly. Got out as soon as she could and ran away to Christchurch to be a journalist. To be anything really, just to get away from the Coast. But the goal was to be a reporter on The Press daily newspaper. In the end, she'd got the job. Persistence paid off. She'd hassled the old editor until he'd given in and found her the lowliest place in the newsroom, writing flower show results and captions for photographs of the royal family. But what a training ground. And now here she was, high up the corporate ladder with a fancy job title, huge salary, fast car, cellphones and electronic gadgets coming out her ears, generous expense account, all the perks, and what was there to spend it on? Sticky buns and square pies at the Do Duck In?
When she'd accepted this job she had known, from all those years growing up on Denniston, that Westport wouldn't exactly be Hilton living. She'd welcomed the idea of a change really. After years living out of suitcases in posh hotels and expensive apartments, the thought of returning to her roots had appealed. But now confronted with the reality, Stephanie wasn't so sure. She felt like starting up the car again, driving back over the hill to Christchurch and catching the next flight back to London. But she couldn't do that. Her professional reputation would never recover, for one. And then there was the family thing. She was forty-two. She couldn't deny the existence of a family for the rest of her life. She'd seen her mother last week and her two older brothers when she'd popped down to Tauranga for the weekend - in between heavy meetings at Fielders - to catch up with Mum and try and make up in some small way for the years of patchy correspondence and apparent disinterest. She knew there was no way Miriam would be there. She'd still be floating around in Christchurch in a dopey haze, no doubt living off the State or her children.
She and her big sister Miriam were chalk and cheese, which was why they'd had such a major falling out all those years ago and hadn't spoken or written since. But her arrival had prompted her brothers Geoff and Tom to come and see her at Mum's retirement place "by the sea," as she'd always called it.
"When Zac retires, I want to live somewhere by the sea," she often used to say, and everyone knew she didn't mean Westport.
Poor old Dad. Born during the first world war and christened Anzac because it was so popular in 1916, he'd been brought up on Denniston and spent his adult life down the mines - first up on the hill then, when Denniston closed, down at Stockton. When Dad was made redundant from there, he followed the coal and moved with Mum up to the mines at Huntly. That's where Mum had fixed her eye on Tauranga as the place to go. So when Dad retired, they'd sold up and moved to the seaside until Dad died a few years ago, in '89. Stephanie had been in Canada at the time, embroiled in a major crisis, and hadn't been able to come home for the funeral, an omission she still regretted. She'd always loved her Dad. And her Mum. It was just that there didn't seem enough time in her crowded life to fit in family as well as friends, work and more work. She sometimes felt it was swallowing up her life, but right now her career was everything. It had certainly brought her a jetset lifestyle and a standard of living to which she was happily accustomed. And now the career had brought her home - at least for the meantime.
She picked up the map sitting on the passenger seat and found the street her motel was in. Two blocks away. The regional office of Fielder Forests (New Zealand) Limited was further back, just off the main street. And right here, if the sign was to be believed, was an espresso. Pray that somebody in Westport had learnt how to make one in the last twenty-five years.
Stephanie gathered up her big, black squashy leather bag from the passenger seat and stepped out of the car. Her tiny feet, encased in immaculate black and gold size three Gucci loafers hit the patched and rutted wet bitumen with a dull thud. She'd arrived. For better or worse, Stephanie Hunter was back.
The following letters home to his father in Chesterfield were written by Ted Jackson in the intervening years between the action of the novel, but didn't make it to the final cut. They are reproduced below for those who are interested in finding out more about life on Denniston in these historic times.
May 25, 1909
Mr Arthur Jackson
Chesterfield
Dear Father and Mother
I am pleased to announce that on April 14, 1909, your first grandchild, Josephine Laura Jackson was born. She is a bonnie wee girl and quite the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. Henrietta was in labour for a very long time, but all was well in the end. We are both very proud of her and I cannot take my eyes off her when I am home. It is hard to believe she is my own. Of course, I would like to have sons so that they can play in the brass band, but there is plenty of time for that. There is a family up on Denniston, the Cummings, with six in the band at present - father and sons. Sometimes it seems as if they have taken over the entire band with their trumpets, cornets, euphonium and trombone. Our band is very favoured. Five of our bandsmen have been selected to travel to England to represent New Zealand in band competitions. That proves we are one of the best in the land. No other band had so many players chosen to be in the New Zealand Band.
There is a new library now at Burnetts Face. The Incline brings the Westport paper up daily to the library. Sometimes I go in to read it before work, and almost always after work, especially if there is something going on with the union. It is a great help being able to read. There are quite a few miners up here who cannot read at all and many a time I have helped them with what's in the newspaper or in the union papers. I remember finding it hard at the time, but I am very glad you insisted I learn to read properly before I went down the mine, and kept me at it after then too. There is always something to read for the union. Reading music for the band is also handy. I will be making sure my children have a good education and can read and write well. There is no excuse up here. There are two junior schools and a high school with very good teachers.
The weather remains a disappointment. It always seems to be raining or foggy, and it gets very cold in winter and very hot in summer. It takes over an hour to walk to work, and over an hour to walk home again at night. On top of that is the time to walk from the mine entrance to our site in the mine and back, and that can take a long time too. We still don’t get paid for all this walking time which remains a sore point with the union. In winter, I leave home in the dark after breakfast and come home in the dark for dinner. Then I am down the mine all day where it's dark too. I can go for several weeks without ever seeing daylight. I'll be like the pit ponies needing blinkers if this keeps up every year!
But there are compensations. This year, Henrietta has been spending a lot of money on new clothes, new furniture and other things for the house. The pay is better here than at home in England, so we can afford it. She has even bought this fancy hat with flowers and feathers. She will be quite the lady and nobody at home would recognise her!
Of course with Josephine here, she has also been ordering up cots and things for the baby. She is already planning to smock some dresses for Josie and there will be lace and pink roses everywhere. In our tiny house I sometimes wonder where everything can go.
I have settled in to the life quite well on the whole. John and I often go up to the boxing matches and whippet races on Denniston. Once a year there are horse races too, and this year I went to have a look. The horses trot round with a sulky behind carrying a driver and you can bet on them like at home. I have taken a shine to playing rugby and have joined one of the miners' teams. I have a lot to learn but am getting the knack and have scored a try now. It's hard on your knees playing up here because the ground is so stony, but you get used to it. Most weekends in the winter it seems to be raining anyway, which softens the few patches of earth in between the rocks. Cricket in the summer will be easier on my knees so I may give it a try!
The steep Incline provides us with some entertainment too. It is a popular place with the young boys on Sundays, when they ride down the rails on wooden boards called cuddies. Of course nobody is supposed to go down the Incline, but a few brave miners have done so in a hurry to get to the bottom. I don’t intend to try it. I've seen their white knuckles as they depart, gripping the back of the wagons, looking terrified. You hear tales of runaway wagons on the Incline but the only one I've heard of was when several cases of whisky were coming up from the hotel down below and the wagon broke away and took off back down the Incline some way before veering into the bushes. Three Scotsmen took it upon themselves to go in search of the precious cargo. But all they found was splintered glass. There wasn't a drop left so their journey was in vain. They had to climb up the steep hillside empty handed.
I was hoping that the ground at Burnetts Face would be more fertile than on Denniston. We have tried to establish a garden but I think we will have to give up on it. Henrietta has planted two climbing roses and some flowers in a small garden I dug out for her in the front of the cottage. I have tried with some runner beans and a few green vegetables. But even the occasional summer sunshine does not seem to help and I do not think we will try again. Our friends warned us that it would be impossible to get a garden going up here, but after the good example you set at home I wanted to at least give it a go. However, I have to admit they were right and I will devote my energies to something more rewarding in future.
I thought of keeping some hens in the back yard, but they tell me that the weather is too cold and they won’t lay. They were right about the garden so I expect I'll take their word on the chooks too. They say people have tried to keep all sorts of animals up here to provide extra food, but the climate's just too tough and the ground too hard. There was a cow up here for a while, giving her owners fresh milk every day which would be a nice luxury. They walked her all the way up the hill from Waimangaroa and fed her on vegetable scraps. She did quite well for a while. But there are no fences and Daisy took to wandering into everyone's yard and eating anything left outside - even the washing. One night she disappeared and has never been seen again. Nobody has tried to keep a cow since. Someone kept a pig up on Denniston for a while, fattening it up for Christmas. But when Christmas came, they were so attached to it they didn’t have the heart to kill it. So they sold it to the butcher down the hill.
You would also be amused at some of the nationalities here. There is a Swede, a Danish family, a Russian and a Slav, as well as a lot of Irish, Scots, Welsh and Australians. They all bring their traditions and cooking styles and I am always surprised and delighted at the different dishes they bring to the concerts and dances. Last week, one of the Irish families came to live in the village - for the second time! They were here several years ago and became very homesick so saved up their fare back home. But when they got there, they found it wasn't as good as Burnetts Face, so they had to save up again to come back. I expect they will be here to stay this time!
It's not such a bad place really. You get to like it after a while. When the current school mistress first arrived she pined for her home in Westport and was forever saying she wanted to go back there. But after a few months she was enjoying the attentions of a young man working in the Coalbrookdale mine and now her transfer has come through she says she doesn’t want it any more and wants to stay!
You and mother will be pleased to hear that I am still going to church every Sunday. I find it quite enjoyable sometimes because every week there is a different preacher from a different religion. Henrietta says she still prefers the Anglican vicar and his service, but he only comes about once a month at the most. Sometimes when the weather is fine, Henrietta walks up to Denniston to go to the church there. If she can persuade me, I go with her. But I would rather have the variation in services at the Burnetts Face Mission Hall. The Salvation Army is quite a treat with the tambourine and drum. Mother would be horrified I'm sure!
I will write before Christmas and tell you more news of Josephine. Henrietta says she would like to have a photograph taken of her. A family portrait perhaps. I will send one over to you.
Your dutiful son
Edward.
_____________________________
October 3, 1912
Mr Arthur Jackson
Chesterfield
Dear Father
It is with great pleasure that I write to tell you that you have another grandson. Thomas Arthur Jackson was born on August 19, 1912. Henrietta was attended by the midwife and all went well. Now Harry has a little brother and he is already trying to play with him.
I do not seem to see much of Henrietta at all now that she has two little ones again. She is absorbed with her boys and the domestic chores and always seems to be very busy.
But I have been keeping very busy too. The Denniston Brass Band continues to do well and we have good numbers, although we are not winning as many competitions as we used to. The band really needs a good conductor. We have been talking of splitting off and forming a special Burnetts Face Band but haven't been able to find a good conductor either. My friend John and I spend a lot of time with the band, as well as in the billiards club up on Denniston. We have become quite good at billiards and also at euchre and five-hundred, but we stay away from poker. There are too many professionals coming through for me to get involved with such a game. The miners have a clubrooms on Denniston with a billiards room, a card room and a bar and it is a very convivial place. We also hold a lot of union meetings there.
The union is taking up more and more time, which is why this letter is so late and I am sorry for its delay. For the past year things have been getting very hot with gold miners up in Waihi now in trouble. It all started when the engine drivers there wanted to set up their own union with an arbitration clause written in. Some time later, a group of miners split off and wanted to join them. Well you can imagine, the rest of the miners weren't having any of that and before too long the Red Feds' supporters were called in to save the day.
A few days ago, several Red Fed leaders were in court charged with disturbing the peace and other trumped up charges. All they did was walk down the street whistling the Red Flag and protest at the terrible situation the miners are in. The judge sentenced them to a year in gaol if they didn’t pay the fine of twenty pounds. Well of course they didn’t pay so the judge had to send them to prison in the end. Now they are languishing in the Mount Eden Gaol in Auckland and there's a terrible fuss going on about it. The mine company bosses have been playing very dirty and are in cahoots with the police. It has got very nasty indeed. Men threw boiling tea over each other in the streets of Waihi, and there have been fist fights. I wouldn't be surprised if we get involved at some stage and go out in support of them. The main cause of it all is this damned arbitration. The Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894 worked very well for a time and workers were given many of the wage rises they asked for. But then the judges started saying we were getting too many wage rises and they started turning us down. Meanwhile, of course, the mine company and its bosses are making a pile of money and keeping most of it for themselves. It's been a long time now since we had a wage rise, but under the Arbitration Act we can't do anything about it. "Arbitration is the cross upon which the workers will be nailed and a judge of the Supreme Court will be employed to plant the crown of thorns upon the head of Labour." So said Patrick Hickey, one of the Red Fed leaders of our time.
This morning I read in the newspaper (I go up to the library to read the paper every morning if I can before work, and always on the way home) that the Waihi situation came to a head. Five brave Red Fed supporters, including one woman, were routed in the Waihi Hall, driven out by rabble-rousers with guns and sticks. It just shows you how low they will go when they will attack a woman. One of the Red Feds was hurt bad and one was killed, shot dead by a traitor with a revolver. But the police won’t do anything about it. The killer is getting off scot free. The Waihi paper has published the name of fifty-five Red Fed followers and given them forty-eight hours to leave town. It's a shocking miscarriage of justice and we will not stand by and let this happen to our brothers up north.
It keeps me very busy going to meetings a lot of the time. Henrietta says I'm hardly home. But it keeps my mind off thinking about little Josie and what happened last year. Henrietta doesn't talk about it. Not to me, anyway. She talks to her friends I suppose. I hope she will get over it. I think she would like to have her mother here, especially earlier this year. But we both know that is impossible.
This is probably the most remote community in New Zealand in many ways, but the people are very united and everyone does their best to make a go of it.
Two weeks ago this Wednesday, pretty young Mary McGregor was wed to my union committee brother Dick Roberts, and what a wedding they had. It was raining, so Mary and her two bridesmaids arrived in the baker's cart. This meant they would not have to get their dainty shoes dirty walking through the mud. But when they got to the church, the minister was nowhere to be seen. He was coming up on horseback from down the hill and it was a good half-hour before he arrived. The wedding feast was a sumptuous affair with lots of lovely food baked by the ladies of Denniston and Burnetts Face.
Afterwards, as it was just getting dark, a crowd of us went along to the hall for a concert. There were recitations, singing and dancing and Mary played her violin ever so beautifully. When we all came out of the hall, nobody wanted to go home, so the entertainment continued at Mary's mother's house, then spilled next door into their neighbour's place, and next door again, until there were houses all along the street with a party going on. One would be singing Irish songs, another Scottish dancing, the next one a lovely tenor song, then a game of two up or crown and anchor, and so on. Henrietta had already gone home by this time and I think Mary and her new husband had sneaked away too, but I stayed on a while longer. It would have been impossible to stay to the end of the festivities. It seems they went on for several days until Mary's relatives from down the hill finally went home. Such are the compensations for living in a remote town on the other side of the world!
I often miss my home. I will always think of Chesterfield as home. But I have found some good times and some good brothers here.
I will keep you informed about the union and Waihi, and about the family.
Your son,
Edward.
_____________________________
October 12, 1914
Mr Arthur Jackson
Chesterfield
Dear Father
Work has picked up in the mines these past two months with the start of the war. This has been a Godsend for us because the demand for coal has been falling off in the last year or so. Electricity and gas have come to the cities, although not to our home in Burnetts Face yet, and so people do not have so much need of the coal. But the warships steam through tons of it every day, so that will keep us going. They say that the coal company was looking at laying some of us off until the war broke out. It shows there's a silver lining behind every dark cloud. Most of us have only just finished paying off the money we owed at the store after the strike so we are glad of the work.
We've been told miners are priority labour so if the men here are called up we won't be allowed to enlist. I was thinking it might be a chance for me to visit you and mother back home, if I got called up. It is a long time since I saw my home and I would like to see you again. But it looks as though I will be spending the war in the mine.
Our new daughter Amelia is very bonny and Mother would love to see her. We call her Millie. She sits up and smiles and likes to crawl around the floor getting into all sorts of mischief. Not walking yet, but it will not be long. Henrietta has made her so many pretty dresses, she looks a picture. The boys are growing fast and keep me very busy on Sunday afternoons kicking a rugby ball around the Denniston Recreation Ground. It remains a regular venue for picnics and games with the children when the weather's fine.
We have been offered a house up on Denniston and I think we will take it. Now that the bus goes every day from Denniston to the mines, it would save that long walk up from Burnetts Face to Denniston. That was why so many people lived in Burnetts Face, because of the extra walk, often in the dark, and not to mention the snow and cold winds and rain. So we will soon have a new address. I will write to you and tell you what it is.
Henrietta is looking forward to all the shops up there on Denniston, and the Anglican Church at the end of the street. She also says the library up on Denniston is better and lets the ladies in for longer hours. She does love to read.
I think the children will like the confectionery shop. The windows are full of jars of brightly coloured sweets and the children are always standing outside in the street with their noses pressed against the window glass. I think our two boys will be there first thing when we move.
For me, it will mean I can be closer to the club and the billiards room there. I am still careful of the drink. I know I can't take my liquor and so I concentrate on the billiard balls instead of the whisky glass.
Henrietta has ordered a new Royal Doulton dinnerset from England and is very excited about when it will arrive. Unfortunately several pieces of the dinnerset her parents gave us at our wedding got broken over the years, so I have asked her to buy the best set she can find. I find it hard to believe myself that we can afford such luxuries, but the wages remain good, especially now that the war means the demand for coal is back.
Sadly, I must report the death of my good friend and neighbour Alfred Downes. He had phthisis. I remember hearing some of the old miners coughing like he did when I was working alongside you. Poor Alfred coughed his heart out these past few months. It is a terrible thing and I hope never to get it. You are lucky not to be touched. Now that you are retired, I expect it will not bother you. Fortunately, Alfred left his wife well provided for. There were no children and he was a very moderate man, not a drinker or gambler so he had quite a bit put by, they say. Mrs Downes has been given the job of postmistress and I think she really enjoys seeing everybody from the village almost every day. She is a great source of gossip, Henrietta says.
Since the last strike I have taken a lesser role in the union. I came very close to not getting my job back, so the bosses told me. They said if it wasn't for the new baby, I'd be on my way. But I told them I had my fill of strikes and union affairs. The union is strong enough without me. The old union leaders soon took over the union the bosses tried to form and it is doing well. Even now, they are talking of setting up a national miners' union, which might be a good thing. Then they plan to go for a big wage increase. We will see. I am happy to leave it to the younger firebrands now. I've lost a bit of the fire in my belly since that time in Wellington. Like I told you, it was a very sobering experience. Made me set to thinking about what's most important in life.
The close shave we had with Henrietta and the baby made me realise that some things are more important than arbitration and principles. I've got a good paying job, a snug roof over my head and about to have a better one, a loving and lovely wife, and three beautiful children. That reminds me. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another one in the new year. Henrietta says she thinks she might be in the family way again. So another grandchild for you father! Maybe we will produce an entire brass band yet! I have plans for Harry and Thomas already, and Harry shows quite an interest in my cornet when I am practising at home. You can be sure that as soon as they are old enough, they will be off to band practice with me to learn a thing or two.
I will write when there is further news of the baby and work.
Your dutiful son
Edward Jackson.