Page 22 of Mine before Dawn
Inside, in awkward blocky handwriting, were the words:Thought you might like this one.And she did.
There wasn't a name or signature but there was no mistaking who had left it for her.
As if there was any doubt.
She had stared at it for a very long time before carefully placing it in her bag. Then, she had carefully folded the note and saved it in her old purse like a treasure.
After that, came War and Peace, second-hand and heavy.
Mavis had nearly dropped dead laughing when she saw Asha trying to lug it around.
“Christ alive, does he think you’ve got eight spare hours a night?”
Then, came slimmer books.
Dog-eared romances with women in dramatic gowns on the cover and heaving bosoms while men clutched them against impossible storms.
One had a kiss so scandalous painted on the front that Asha immediately hid it in her apron pocket with wild eyes watching for Mavis. The next day she wrapped the cover with a newspaper and read it during her lunch break.
Another book contained passages so risque she found herself reading the same page twice before realizing her face had gone hot.
Mavis caught sight of one while changing barrels.
“Oh Lord,” she barked, snatching it up. “Where’d he even find this filth?”
Asha tried to take it back quickly.
“It is not filth,” she mumbled.
“Man’s clearly trying to court you through literature,” Mavis muttered darkly. “And giving you the wrong idea, girlie. God help us all. I am going to talk to his mam about this.”
But despite herself, Asha began looking forward to the gifts.
After she once paused near a charity stall and briefly touched a cookbook she could not afford, an old baking book appeared two days later at her doorstep.
When she mentioned to Mrs. Wilmslow that she used to enjoy poetry, a thin volume of Keats arrived the following week.
James never talked about it. And she never knew how he knew.
But sometimes she would glance up while wiping tables and find him watching her from across the pub with that same quiet intensity.
It was like he was waiting for a sign.
Chapter 8
One year later.
Meanwhile Wakefield itself was slowly changing.
The old mining town had begun filling with new faces over the past few months. Men came for work from all over, drawn by the mines, the mills, the brickworks, the engineering plants and the busy wharves along the Calder. Barges still crawled through Thornes Wharf carrying coal and raw materials, though Patrick muttered with a shake of his head that the river trade was dying.
Some of the newcomers were coloured folk like herself.
Caribbean men with deep rolling laughter. Indian and Pakistani workers who travelled in groups to the factories and brick-making yards.
A few Chinese families had opened narrow little shops near the market streets, selling dried mushrooms, strange sauces in bottles, silks and bright tins with labels no one could read. Children pressed their noses against the windows while older folk muttered suspiciously about foreign things.
The town tolerated the change in the way a man tolerated the icy rain—grudgingly and miserably.
