On Sarah’s first birthday Miss Rose and Miss Ann came to the cottage. They carried between them a large hamper, and Miss Rose carried a long cardboard box in the crook of one arm. In the box was a beautifully dressed doll and in the hamper was a great quantity of baby clothes which, explained Miss Ann, had been packed away in the attic, and only yesterday Miss Rose had remembered them, and did Katie think she’d be able to alter them to fit Sarah?
The tears came into Katie’s eyes at the kindness of these two ladies.
There were such good people in the world. There were bad, oh yes, yes; but, on the other hand, there were many more good people. She looked at Miss Rose clasping Sarah, and Sarah clasping the doll, and she sent a prayer of thanksgiving to God for guiding her to the Misses Chapman.
This took place in the morning. When Joe came in at six o’clock he started on his tea; then, pushing his plate away before he had finished, he walked to the door and from there beckoned Katie outside. The evening was soft, the air was filled with the smell of wallflowers and lilac, the birds were singing, and Joe said, ‘Katie, I want to go back.’
She looked down at him—for Joe hadn’t grown much—into this thin face, into his kindly eyes, and she shook her head at him before saying, ‘Oh no, Joe.’
‘I can’t stand it here, Katie; it’s getting on me nerves. I was rude to Mr Worsley the day.’
Again she said, ‘Oh no, Joe.’ But now she had her hand to her face.
Joe bowed his head. ‘I couldn’t help it, Katie, ’cos I keep thinkin’ all the time of Jarrow and the shipyard. I was happy there. I wouldn’t go back to the pits, but I felt I’d found me place like in the shipyard. Those few weeks in the boiler shop were the happiest I’ve known in me life…Look, Katie, I’ll go back on me own an’ find lodgin’s. I’ll go to Mr Hetherington. He’ll get me lodgin’s; I know he will. He was sorry I left; he said everybody didn’t take to it like I did, they just work ’cos they had to. He’ll set me on if he can.’ He now looked up at Katie and added, ‘It isn’t as if you hadn’t anything to get by on—I wouldn’t go if you hadn’t; but I can’t stick it here.’ He flung one arm out indicating the open land and the abundant greenery. ‘It drives me mad all this, it’s so quiet.’
‘Aw, Joe.’ She bit hard on her lip but she couldn’t stop the tears running down her cheeks. ‘I thought we were settled. It won’t be the same if you go. Me ma…well, you know what she’s like now, hardly a word. I haven’t a soul to say a word to me all day, except when the ladies come along. Oh, Joe, it’ll be awful without you, and I won’t be able to get a place because of Lizzie and the child.’
‘I’m sorry, Katie.’ He caught hold of her hand. ‘I don’t want to leave you, honest I don’t, but I’ll go daft here, I will.’
There was a movement behind them and they both turned to see Catherine standing in the doorway. She was looking straight at Joe, and speaking directly to him she said, ‘Did you say you were goin’ back, Joe?’
He made a small movement with his head, ‘Aye, Ma.’
‘Well, I’m goin’ with you; this is no place for me.’
‘Ma, Ma, you can’t. What’ll we go back to? The Row?’ Katie’s voice was harsh now. She had taken control of the household; she had done her best; she had got them this lovely little house amid peace and quiet; they ate well, and slept soundly; when they awoke in the morning it was to fresh air, not to a filthy stench; and yet her mother wanted to go back, and Joe wanted to go back. Suddenly all words of protest dried up in her and, bowing her head and pushing past her mother, she went indoors and into her little room, and there she threw herself on to her bed and sobbed.
The Misses Chapman appeared in a state of great distress when Katie told them of their coming departure, but she made it plain that she didn’t want to leave, but her mother and brother did, so she must go with them. While she was speaking she had watched the colour drain from Miss Rose’s face; then she watched Miss Ann go to her sister and put her arms about her and say, ‘There, there, Rose. There, there, we’ll see to it.’ That had been yesterday, and now here were the two sisters sitting in the cottage making a startling proposal to her.
They wanted to adopt Sarah.
Katie stared at them dumbfounded for a moment. Then, stooping instinctively and gathering up the child from the cradle as if to protect it from an onslaught, she shook her head vigorously, saying, ‘No! No! Oh no, I couldn’t ever. Thank you all the same, but no.’
Miss Ann was speaking now, gently. ‘Have you a home to take her to, Katie?’
‘No, but we’ll soon find one; if not in Jarrow, in Shields. There’s plenty of houses in Shields.’
‘I know this has come in the form of a shock to you, but I think on reflection you might reconsider. You see, we can offer Sarah great advantages. She would be well educated; she’ll never know want of any kind; moreover, she’ll be loved. It isn’t as if you will be letting her go to someone who didn’t really want her. Miss Rose, as you have seen, loves the child, Katie, and you have said yourself that the child is greatly attached to her. We’ll…we’ll go now and leave you time to think it over, and please, please think carefully, Katie.’
The two ladies turned towards the door. Then Miss Rose, coming back, put out her hand and touched Katie’s arm, saying softly, ‘I know what I’m asking of you, but I…I love her so. I’ve…I’ve seen other babies, but not one that has touched me as she has done, and I promise you I’ll spend my life seeing to her needs.’
Katie said nothing. The chill had already settled on her heart, and it grew colder when the door had closed on the visitors and she looked from Joe to her mother. It was a long time before either of them spoke; then Joe said, ‘You’ve got to think what’s best for her, Katie; you’ll never get a chance like this again. And…and when you get back and you want to go to work you’ll have to put her out to be minded.’ As he finished speaking he glanced quickly at his mother with an apologetic look in his eyes. Katie, too, looked at her mother. She knew what would happen once they got back to Jarrow. There would be journeys to the quay corner; there’d be Lizzie to see to…besides the child. There’d be no chance of her going out to work, and when the money was gone from the shift they’d have to depend on Joe. She knew it wasn’t fair to Joe, but she couldn’t give up her child, she couldn’t. If she had been asked when she was carrying it would she give it away she would have said, without hesitation, yes, but not now…‘It’ll have a fine education and want for nothing; moreover, it will be loved.’ That’s what Miss Rose had said. Well, it would never have more love than she could give it. But there was no hope in her to give it an education of any sort, or to promise it would never want for food or warmth. She could only promise it it would be brought up in the smoke, dirt and grime of Jarrow or Shields.
Joe said now, very quietly, ‘You might get married again, Katie, and have another one. She…Miss Rose, I mean…there’s no chance for her; she’s thirty, if she’s a day.’
For the first time in her life Katie rounded on her brother, crying, ‘Shut up! Shut up! You know nothing about it, an’ I won’t marry again.’ On this she turned from her mother’s staring eyes and Joe’s bent head and Lizzie’s laughing, gaping face and went into the bedroom, and there, sitting on the edge of her bed, she held the child closely to her, rocking it backwards and forwards. Then, stopping the movement abruptly, she looked down into the child’s face and Sarah laughed up at her with eyes just like her own.
Almost daily since the child was born she had searched its face for some feature that might identify it as a Rosier. Although it had looked like herself from the first day, she knew that children had a habit of changing; but Sarah resembled herself more closely as time went on, at least the self she once was. This had comforted her, except at times when she thought that perhaps her daughter would grow up to be a Rosier inside, a particular Rosier. Yet the nature of her child, seen so far, showed only a reflection of her own inward character—again as it had once been, laughing, free…She
couldn’t let her go, she couldn’t. She was rocking the child once more when the door opened and Catherine came in.
Katie stared at her mother and saw that the dazed look had lifted almost entirely from her face. She kept her eyes on her while she seated herself on the other side of the bed, and when she started to speak she thought, with not a little resentment, she can talk all right when she likes. She’s likely been all right inside all the time; she just doesn’t want to bother any more, for now Catherine was saying in a quiet, persuasive tone, ‘It’s the best thing, lass. What chance is she going to have back there? And remember, many of them never see five. Get a bout of fever, typhoid an’ such, an’ they’re gone, if they’ve not already been took with whooping cough or diphtheria. Don’t I know. There’s little chance for youngsters back there. But with them’—she gave a lift of her head—‘she’d have every chance. She’d have all the things I dreamed about givin’ you.’
‘Would you have let me go, Ma?’ There was a deep note of bitterness in Katie’s voice, and Catherine looked away for a moment before she replied, ‘Aye, I would. It wouldn’t have been easy, but I would. Given a chance like you have, I would.’
Although she sounded sincere, Katie couldn’t believe her mother, yet it was at this moment, she knew, that the decision was made; the child had already gone from her. She knew that should she take it back to what Jarrow had to offer and anything should happen to it, what she had suffered through Bernard Rosier, Mark Bunting, and the death of her father would be a pinprick compared to the mountain of remorse that would weigh on her for being the cause of depriving her child of a better chance in life, perhaps of life itself, for, as her mother said, many of them died before five.
Suddenly she began to cry, loud uncontrolled crying, unlike any crying she had done before; not even when the hour came for her da to be hanged had she cried like this. It was like an avalanche of sorrow pouring from her body, getting stronger with its flow.
Joe came into the room and took the child from her, and Catherine held her in her arms, but her mother’s affection now brought her no comfort, only a strange, growing resentment; for no matter how the Misses Chapman had pleaded, and no matter how Joe had backed them up, it would have made no difference if her mother had, as she had done for months past, kept quiet. But it was as if she was saying to her, you owe me something. I’d have your da here the day but for you. You’ve caused all this, so do this one thing that is not only good for the bairn but will simplify matters back there, and ease our plight.
And it was in this moment, too, that she realised that her mother had never liked the child. She had never touched it unless she’d had to. It was a child of sin, unintentional, but nevertheless sin.
The thing was settled; she had lost her Sarah.
BOOK TWO
ANDRÉE, 1865
Chapter One
At ten minutes to five on a January morning in 1865 Joe closed the door of No. 14, Crane Street behind him and walked up through Temple Town in South Shields. The air cut at his throat like a knife; the black darkness seemed filled with ice and all pressing on him. He could feel it on his skin; it was as if he wasn’t wearing two coats, a shirt and a singlet; and he might not have hobnailed boots on, for his feet were already stiff with the cold. But he had the comfort of knowing that before an hour was out he would be sweating.
As he neared the corner of a street, a few yards from the low wall that bordered the river, two small hopping figures came out of the darkness and joined him, saying, ‘You, Joe?’ and got for a reply, ‘Who else, you think—the devil?’
‘Coo! Joe, it’s a freezer, ain’t it?’
‘Aye, Ted, ’snifter all right…You awake yet, kidder?’
The twelve-year-old boy, towards whom Joe had turned his head, gave a shudder and through chattering teeth replied, ‘I’m gonna try for the docks next week; this mornin’ march is too much of a bloody good thing.’
‘Oh you get used to it, man; you’ve only been on it a few months. An’ I’m tellin’ you, Bob, there’s no chance in the docks, else I’d be there meself…But no, I wouldn’t.’ Joe pushed out his chin. ‘It’s Palmer’s for me, even with the trek. Not that I like it, mind, but I’d rather do it in the mornin’ than at night, comin’ home dead beat. Aw, man, I could fall asleep on me feet.’
‘Me an’ all,’ said Ted.
‘It would be all right if they would pick us up or summat an’ take us there,’ said Bob.
Joe put his head back and let out a bellow of a laugh. It was a deep, manly laugh, and at nineteen Joe was a man. Although he was still small, below medium height, he was broadly made and his voice was deep and pleasant. He said now, ‘Let’s do a sprint,’ and began to run up the long road by the new Tyne Dock wall, past the stables where they heard the horses champing at their bits, and past the dock gates, without much bustle yet. The bustle here wouldn’t start for another hour; at about the same time it would start in Palmer’s Shipyard three miles away. After a while they stopped for want of breath and Joe asked, ‘Is that better?’
‘Aye,’ said Ted.
‘How about you, Bob?’
‘I’m warmer,’ said Bob, ‘but I wish I was there.’
‘Now don’t keep yarpin’ on.’ As a man of years, Joe admonished the young boy. ‘You’ll have somethin’ to grumble about if you’re out shortly. Then you’ll have plenty of time to lie in an’ all; but remember, it’s better to walk on a full belly than sleep on an empty one.’
‘Do you think there’ll be a strike, Joe?’
‘It’s lookin’ like it. If Andrew Gourlay doesn’t get his way there will be. It’s a nine-hour day or nowt. The only thing we’ve all got to do is to stand together.’ He addressed the boys as if they were staple men of industry.
‘Me da says when men stop spittin’ we’ll get a nine-hour day,’ said Bob now.
‘Your da’s wrong then,’ said Joe. ‘It’ll come. It could be here now if they’d all hang together and not have so many bloomin’ little craftsmen’s unions, all going at each other’s throats.’ Following this piece of wisdom there was silence between the three of them, until Joe said, ‘Come on; let’s do another sprint.’
‘But we’ll only have to stand and wait for the gates to open if we get there too soon.’
With a gentle cuff along the ear, together with a ‘Come on, Dismal Dan’, Joe urged the boys forward, and again they were running. They passed the Jarrow Slacks and made across the fields, cutting off the quay corner, and so entered Jarrow.
Joe never went round by the quay corner if he could help it; it reminded him too much of his mother and the times he had to go and fetch her home. From the very week they had come back she had started going to the quay corner again and standing staring out at the gibbet pole. Katie had become worn out with trailing after her, and so it had been part of his day’s work to take the road to the quay corner when he left the shipyard, and there nearly always, and in all weathers, he would find her, just standing staring.
It was on a black day such as this one tended to be that she had caught pneumonia, and within a fortnight she was gone. At times he was weighed with a sense of guilt concerning her—he had been very fond of his mother—but he couldn’t help but admit to himself that life was much easier without her. There was only Lizzie now, she was a problem all right, but Katie saw to her. But here again his conscience worked overtime when he wondered how long Lizzie was likely to last. She was so fat and swollen up she could hardly walk now, and she had taken to crying out aloud and making weird wailing sounds. He didn’t envy Katie stuck with her all day.
When they came on to the main road the half-past-five buzzer sounded. It was like a trumpet in their ears, and Joe remarked, ‘We’ve made good time this mornin’.’
A flat cart trundled by them, its presence made visible by a swinging lamp near the driver. On the cart itself sat a number of men, their legs dangling over the side, their bodies making a darker pattern of blackness. When Ted suggested they sho
uld hang on the back Joe answered quickly, ‘Don’t be daft; you’ll get the whip or a kick in the teeth.’
‘I wish I could take the cart,’ said Bob now; ‘but I’m not payin’ fourpence a day. It’s robbery. A third of me wages for a ride there and back to Shields!’
‘Well, from where he comes it’s a good four miles, and he’s got to get back there.’
‘He takes night-shift chaps back,’ said Bob. ‘He’s coinin’ money.’
‘I went in the steamer to Tynemouth on Saturda’,’ said Ted; ‘there and back for fourpence, half-price. Eeh, it were grand.’
‘You’re barmy,’ said Bob. ‘Wait till Blaydon time comes, an’ you won’t have a penny put by for the races, like last year.’
‘Aw, give over, man, an’ shut your clapper. By that time I’ll have a rise. Mr Palmer hissel told me t’other day that he was goin’ to double me wages ’cos I’m a good lad. “Ted,” he said, pattin’ me on the heid, “they don’t come like you every day. Without men like you the Defence would never have been finished. Nor would the last troopship’s keel’ve been laid. It takes men like you, lad, to build a battleship in three months.”’
At this point Ted found himself flying into the roadway from a push of Joe’s big hand; then they were all laughing.
A little farther on and they were just three small dots in a mass of moving blackness, men coming from all districts of the town converging on the shipyard. The clatter of their boots was like the sound of an army marching out of step.
Katie Mulholland Page 18