Before Mr Justice Dowry passed sentence the man’s family had to be removed from the court.
Chapter Twelve
It was on a beautiful soft day in early August that the cart came to the little village of Hilton, lying between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle. It was a four-wheeled flat cart driven by an old shaggy-haired horse.
The cart was covered by a canvas canopy supported by four poles. It had the appearance of a square covered wagon. The cart passed through the village and stopped on the outskirts; it wasn’t always wise to come too near the houses. Some people got nasty and turned their dogs loose; they always thought you wanted something for nothing, but Katie was always quick to hold her hand out with money in it before she asked for anything. They had taken three weeks over the journey from Jarrow. They had travelled by the coast road to Sunderland, then on to Seaham Harbour; from there they had cut inland, bypassing Durham and coming to Bishop Auckland. And now Joe was restless, wondering when Katie was going to stop.
Between blowing on the fire and wafting the sticks with his cap he whispered, ‘When are we going to settle, Katie? We’re getting farther away from the towns; I’ll never find work around here, ’cos it’s wilder than any part we’ve come across yet.’
‘There’s no hurry for you to find work, you know that,’ Katie whispered back. Then, leaning nearer to him, she said, ‘Did you notice the stone cottage standin’ back from the road about a mile before we came to the village?’
‘Where the blacksmith’s shop had been? Aye, I did; but it was tumbled down.’
‘The main thing is it was empty. We could repair it. It might be let cheap. I’ve been thinkin’ I’ll take a walk back in the mornin’ and have a look round.’
Joe screwed his face up as he looked at her and asked, ‘You’d be content to stay out here in the wilds?’
‘Yes, yes. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t it different from Jarrow and the filth and the smell?’
‘There’s new houses going up there all the time; we could have got a better one…’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Katie’s voice sounded harsh, adult. ‘What would have happened if I’d rented a new house and us not supposed to have any money, and after the under-manager comin’ again and asking how I’d been left, and him saying he was sure there was money somewhere? He said they had searched the house; you know he did.’
‘Aye, I know. I’m sorry, but…but Katie, I wouldn’t like to settle out here.’
‘We’ll settle where we can, Joe. She wants peace; she’ll never find it back there.’ Katie rose from her knees and went to the cart, to where her mother was sitting with the child in her lap. ‘Come on, Ma; give her to me and get down and stretch your legs.’
Obediently Catherine handed Katie the child, and as obediently she stepped down on to the grass and began to walk slowly about.
Katie, the child in her arms, said to Lizzie, ‘Come on, now, and you’ll soon have a drink,’ and Lizzie sidled off the tail end of the cart, smiled widely at Katie and rolled towards the fire.
Joe unharnessed the horse and staked him by a long rope to allow him to feed—not that the animal would have strayed far, he was too old and tired; also, he was content with his new owners.
Katie sat on the grass feeding the child, while with her free hand she fed the fire with bits of dry twig from a sack which they kept slung under the cart to be used when they couldn’t find wood or when it was raining; and like this she waited for the kettle to boil, every now and again glancing round to see that her mother was still with them.
She had thought that once she had got Catherine away from Jarrow and the quay corner she would recover her balance, but as yet there was no sign of it. For days after her da had been hanged her mother would walk through Jarrow without a covering to her head or a coat and would stand at the quay corner in front of the little white cottages at the point where the River Don ran into the Tyne. She would stand looking across the expanse of the Jarrow Slacks, the great mudflat that twice a day was covered by the tide flowing in from the North Sea and swelling the river.
Dotted here and there on the mudflat high black posts were standing. So many enterprising people, like Simon Templer, had had ideas of what could be done with the Jarrow Slacks, and the posts had been the beginning of one idea that never reached fruition. Over a foot square and ranging from eight feet high above the mud line, they looked ominous; and they were, for on one of them about thirty years earlier a man had been gibbeted. His name was William Jobling; he was a miner and on strike, and when out for a walk with a mate he stopped for a drink at an inn on the South Shields road, and it should transpire that a magistrate named Mr Fairless happened to be passing by on his pony. The two men dared to argue with the magistrate and Jobling’s friend hit out at him, giving him a blow from which he later died. Jobling’s friend Armstrong disappeared from the scene, but the authorities had Jobling and they hanged him for the murder of the magistrate. The execution took place in public, and later the man’s body was covered with pitch and gibbeted on one of the posts in Jarrow Slacks. This event had taken place during Catherine’s lifetime. She was a child at the time, but she well remembered seeing the dangling, putrefying body, which the soldiers guarded until the stench became too much for them. The penalty for removing the body was death, but it was eventually removed, supposedly by Jobling’s mates. And it was to that place where she had stood as a young girl, looking towards the horror, that Catherine returned daily. It was as if she could see Rodney, who had no burial place, hanging from the black post out there.
At first Katie didn’t know where her mother went. It was a woman from the white cottages overlooking the Slacks who came and told her. From then onwards part of Katie’s daily routine was to try to keep Catherine away from the scene, and if she should escape her vigilance to go and fetch her back.
The life had gone out of Catherine. She was a being now without a will, except the will to die. Even this mustn’t have been strong enough, else she would have taken measures to end her life.
And so Katie had thought up the idea of the cart to get them all away. But there was more than one reason why she wanted to leave Jarrow. There was Miss Theresa. Miss Theresa was wanting to help her, but somehow she didn’t want her help. She wanted no help from the Rosiers, no one of them, for it was they who had put her where she was today; put them all where they were, even her da. Moreover, she was embarrassed by Miss Theresa, for she treated her as if she were the same as herself. So she had bought the cart and horse in Gateshead, and one morning at four o’clock she had loaded them all with household goods, even Lizzie, and set off to walk the four miles to the cart and horse. And now it had brought them this far.
The following morning Katie, taking the child with her and leaving Joe with whispered orders to watch her mother, made her way back to the village and there enquired as to who owned the stone cottage with the broken roof farther down the road.
‘Oh,’ said a little fat woman who was feeding her hens at the bottom of a garden, ‘that belongs to the Misses Chapman. Never been lived in for years, gone to rack and ruin.’ And on Katie asking her where she could find the Misses Chapman she was told, ‘In the Dower House. Not in the big house, that was their cousin’s, Mr Arnold Chapman; the ladies preferred the smaller house.’ She pointed across the open moorland to where in the distance stood a pair of iron gates. ‘Go inside them,’ said the little woman, ‘and to the right of the lodge. You won’t find anyone in the lodge because Alice Worsley sees to the Misses Chapman and her man does the garden and such, but if you go right up to the house they will see you. They are nice ladies, the Misses Chapman; they’ve done a lot for the village in their time, and their father and grandfather afore them.’
After thanking the woman Katie hitched the child up in her arms and went towards the gates, then through them to the house.
The pleasure the sight of the long, low, white creeper-covered house gave her brought something like a smile to her, but it was only an i
nward feeling, she showed no expression of it on her face; the face that had smiled and laughed so readily now looked like a piece of alabaster, and, in repose, just as set. As she neared the house, out of the open door came a tall, middle-aged lady with a garden basket on her arm. She paused for a moment and stared across the terrace down at Katie and the child, then called cheerfully, ‘Are you looking for Alice?’
‘No, ma’am; I’m…I’m looking for Miss Chapman.’
‘Oh.’ The lady came forward to the top of the steps. ‘I’m Miss Chapman.’
‘Good morning, ma’am.’ Katie dipped her knee.
‘Good morning.’
‘I’ve…I’ve come to see if you would think of letting me your cottage?’
‘Our cottage? But the lodge is taken. I have…’
‘I mean the one down the road.’
‘Oh, that! But it isn’t habitable, the roof’s rotting and no-one has lived in it for years.’
‘I’d be very much obliged, ma’am, if you’d rent it us.’
‘Is your husband with you?’
Katie lowered her lids for a moment, then said, ‘No, ma’am; he’s…he’s dead. It’s my family I have with me, my…my mother, who is sick, and my sister and my brother.’
‘How…how did you get this far? Have you come from the town by trap?’
‘No, ma’am; we’ve come from Tyneside, from Jarrow. We’ve got a cart.’
Ann Chapman stared at the thin young girl with the beautiful, sad face and remarkable eyes. Then she came slowly down the shallow steps and stood within a yard of Katie, and on closer inspection she remarked to herself, Dear, dear, such an unusual face, and come all this way from the coast on a cart. She said now, ‘I don’t think you’d be able to live in the cottage, it’ll need so much repair.’
‘We could do that, ma’am. My brother is very handy; he’s very good with wood. He can make stools, and chairs, and things.’
As Miss Chapman stood considering, there came round the side of the house another lady, not so tall as this one but younger and prettier. Miss Chapman turned to her and said, ‘Rose, dear, this young woman, who is a widow, is wanting us to let her and her family have Putman’s cottage, but I’m saying it isn’t habitable. Yet she thinks they could do the repairs themselves.’
Miss Rose Chapman came and stood near her sister, and she looked at Katie for a moment, then at the baby in her arms, but she didn’t speak and Miss Ann went on, ‘They came from the coast, the Tyne. They’ve come by cart. It’s a long journey, don’t you think, Rose, to come by cart?’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Rose’s voice was low and unemotional. She turned her eyes to her sister then back to Katie and said, ‘How old is your baby?’
‘Just over five months, ma’am.’
‘May I look at it?’
‘Yes, yes, of course, ma’am.’ Katie pulled the shawl back from the child’s head and showed its sleeping face to the two women. Miss Rose now moved two steps nearer to Katie, and she stared down at the child for a full minute without speaking; then, looking over her shoulder towards her sister, she said, ‘It’s a beautiful child, isn’t it, Ann?’
‘Yes, yes, Rose; it’s a beautiful child. You take great care of it.’ Miss Ann nodded towards Katie. ‘It’s so very clean.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘What do you call it?’ Miss Rose addressed Katie stiffly.
‘Sarah, ma’am.’
Now Miss Rose turned round, her back towards Katie, and looking at her sister she said quietly, ‘I think they might be able to repair the cottage, Ann. Perhaps Worsley could give them a hand.’
Miss Ann looked hard at Miss Rose, then she inclined her head forward and smiled and said, ‘Yes, dear, perhaps that could be arranged.’
Katie closed her eyes, swallowed and said with deep gratitude, ‘Thank you, ma’am. Thank you, indeed. An’ we’ll be able to pay the rent. You needn’t fear about the rent, we’ll be able to pay it.’
‘Oh, the rent.’ Miss Ann’s head went up. ‘We couldn’t charge you very much rent for it, not in the state it is in at present…You said you had a brother; how old is he?’
‘Just turned fifteen, ma’am.’
‘Well, then, perhaps we could come to an arrangement. Perhaps he could help Worsley, our gardener and handyman. We had a boy from the village but he has gone into the town. The town is attracting so many of them these days. Yes, I think we could come to some arrangement.’
Katie now bent her knee, first towards Miss Ann, then to Miss Rose, but as she turned to go she hesitated and said, ‘Will the key be there, ma’am?’
‘Oh, the key.’ Miss Ann laughed, a high amused laugh. ‘I’m afraid there’s no key; you’ll find it open. My cousin’s coachman used to live there, but my cousin is away so much abroad that he doesn’t keep many staff now. I think there are bits of furniture in the house too. I’ve never been near it for years.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. Thank you ever so.’ Again Katie bent her knee to each, then hurried away, her heart lighter than it had been for many a long day. They would have a house; Joe would have a job. They might be able to keep a few hens and have a garden, and when her mother got better, which she would do in this peaceful atmosphere, she would be able to look after the child and Lizzie, and then she herself would find work at one of the big houses round about.
The black curtain that shrouded their existence was lifting. She could see their life moving into quiet, peaceful lanes. There would always be a sadness on them, for no life would be long enough to make them forget what had happened, but through time they wouldn’t feel it as acutely as they did now.
The very air of this place was like a balm, and those two ladies were like angels. Katie looked down at her child and whispered aloud to it, ‘Yes, like angels they are.’
As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months Katie became filled with a sense of security. There was now some colour in her cheeks, and twice recently she had laughed at the antics of the child as she crawled about the floor.
The cottage was a daily source of wonder to her. She couldn’t understand how such beautiful furniture had been left to rot. There were two chests of drawers, a carved settle, a black oak chest, and a corresponding refectory table, two real beds and many other smaller items, among which were two sets of heavy brass candlesticks. All the pieces, Katie realised from their quality, must have come from the big house, for she had glimpsed similar ones in the Rosier place.
Joe had mended the roof carefully, plastering the broken tiles, then fixing them back into place. Together they had whitewashed the stone walls inside and out, scrubbed the mould off the furniture, then polished it with wax. When all was complete they had laid the three bright rugs that Miss Ann had given them in the living room, and it was home—a home that Katie had never imagined possessing.
But as time went on she shut her mind to the fact that of the three thinking people in the household she was the only one that was finding any form of satisfaction in their new surroundings. During the day Joe went up to the house and worked in the garden and did odd jobs, for which he received three shillings a week and the cottage free; added to this he brought vegetables home daily. In his spare time he whittled at things. He made a cradle on rockers for Sarah. He cut and hand-polished pieces of oak and made rough platters with them, and all the while he worked he sat quietly, as if he were brooding.
Then there was her mother. Catherine occasionally helped with the chores, but for most of her time she sat staring ahead, staring straight back into the past. She didn’t speak more than half a dozen words a day.
Katie told herself she was better, much better, since they had settled here; but she wished she would talk more, move about more, for then there might be a chance of getting out to work. There were several big houses within walking distance of the cottage, and she was sure she could get daily work if she tried. Miss Ann would recommend her; she knew she would. Her shift was very much lighter than it had been when they firs
t sewed the sovereigns on to it; she had a little over a hundred pounds left. The solicitor’s bill had been seventy five guineas, and there had been her granda’s funeral to pay. She had seen that he was put away decently, and she had bought the horse and cart. Besides which they had all to be fed for weeks. The way they were living now she reckoned the money would last them just over three years, but what then? What if her mother didn’t improve? It would be years before she could leave the child on her own…Added to this there was the ever-present burden of Lizzie.
But then, she kept telling herself, three years was a long time, and before then something nice would happen. In this place only nice things could happen. She supposed it was because of Miss Ann and Miss Rose; she still thought of them as angels, Miss Rose particularly. There was hardly a day went by that Miss Rose didn’t call in on them; at least not on them, but on the child. She had a great liking for Sarah, and Sarah for her. Sarah always gurgled happily when held in Miss Rose’s arms. She had said to Miss Rose only yesterday, ‘She’s taken a great fancy to you, ma’am.’ And Miss Rose had looked at her and smiled that half-shy, half-sad smile of hers as she asked, ‘You really think so?’ And Katie had answered, ‘I do indeed, ma’am.’
Katie found she always wanted to be nice to Miss Rose, because Miss Rose, like herself, had known sorrow, only a different kind of sorrow. She had heard her story from Alice. Miss Rose’s affianced husband had been killed in the Crimean War and she had never been the same since. She had been very gay at one time, Miss Rose had, so Alice said, but now, to use Alice’s own words, Miss Rose’s heart was buried with Mr Francis and she would die an old maid, like Miss Ann. But then Miss Ann had never been bespoken, and, as they said, what you never had you never miss. But it was different for Miss Rose.
Katie Mulholland Page 17