Union Belle Read Online Free Page A

hall.’
    ‘Probably.’
    Gloria regarded her daughter with a sort of resigned sympathy. ‘I’ve got a nice bit of ham you can have, if you like.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    The men began to arrive at eight o’clock, knocking on the back door and greeting Ellen politely as they came in. They weren’t supposed to be meeting like this, according to the newly imposed emergency regulations, but no one was particularly bothered. They weren’t allowed to picket, display or distribute posters or subversive literature, or organise protest marches either, but all were topics on tonight’s agenda.
    By a quarter past eight, six members of the Pukemiro Mine Workers’ Union committee were crowded around the kitchen table; the president Pat Wickham, Frank Paget, Bert Sisley, Vic Anscombe, Lew Trask and Tom. As union secretary, Tom would be chairing the meeting and recording the resolutions.
    ‘Where’s Jack?’ he asked as he wrote the date and time in the record book.
    ‘Saw him up the street,’ Pat Wickham replied. ‘Should be here in a minute.’
    Tom checked his watch. ‘Well, we can’t wait,’ he said, and declared the meeting open.
    Several of the men lit cigarettes and Ellen placed an ashtray in the centre of the table. Neil and Davey were in bed, but she knew they would both be lying awake in the dark, eyes wide with the excitement of it all.
    She rearranged the damp tea towels draped over the plates of supper waiting on the bench, and was on herway out of the kitchen when there was another knock on the back door. Tom got up, so she continued on into the sitting room, where she planned to finish reading the latest Woman’s Weekly , then do a bit of sewing. She was making herself a new dress to wear to young Dallas Henshaw and Carol Selby’s wedding this coming weekend, and still had the hemming to go, which she always preferred to finish by hand because it looked so much neater. The dress, made from material she’d gone all the way to Pollock & Milne in Hamilton to buy rather than the fabric shop in Huntly, was in a dark-blue taffeta with a low back and a snug waist. The material had been an end-of-bolt, which was why she’d been able to afford it, and its length meant that the skirt wasn’t as full as she would have liked, but it was still a new dress.
    She left the windows and curtains open because of the heat and, although only the standard lamp was on behind her, the moths and mosquitoes soon arrived. But the insect killer was in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and as she didn’t want to interrupt the meeting she resigned herself to an evening of slapping and scratching.
    Tom stuck his head around the door an hour and a half later, just as she was putting the finishing touches to the hem.
    ‘Can you make us a pot of tea, love? We’ve finished and we’re having a few beers, but Frank’s having a cuppa.’
    Ellen nodded and put her sewing to one side. Frank Paget had sworn off the booze a year ago, and not before time as far as his wife, Ellen’s best friend Milly, was concerned. Frank had always been the last person to leave social events, and was always legless when he finally did, tripping and staggering and swearing his way home, more often than not arriving to a locked door and his pyjamas biffed out onto the front lawn. It had been quite funny for a while, but hadbecome less and less amusing as time went on, especially for Frank’s family. Eventually he’d started smashing windows to get into his house, then one night he’d smashed Milly, resulting in a visit from the local doctor to tend to her broken nose and split lip.
    Milly and the kids had moved out after that and gone to stay with her parents in Taupiri, and Frank had really hit the skids for a couple of months. Ellen had wanted to go and talk to him about sorting himself out, but Tom had told her to keep out of it; according to him, Frank would come right in his own time. But then Milly’s father had been seen banging on Frank’s front