It was some time before she moved. It was Lizzie’s whimpering that stirred her, and as she looked wearily towards the bedroom door her gaze was caught by the hessian sack that Joe had brought in. It was lying between the wall and the chiffonier. She hadn’t noticed it before, she had forgotten that he had thrown it there. Now she moved slowly across the room and picked it up, and when mechanically she toppled its contents on to the table she saw a hand of smoked bacon and a ring of black pudding.
Odd, the things that happened, and when they happened. She had a cupboard full of food now and here was a hand of smoked bacon and a black pudding, and if Joe had brought them three days ago she would never have met Andy…A hand of smoked bacon and a black pudding.
At twelve o’clock the next day Joe walked down the stairs and into the street. He looked white and was shaking inwardly. He had got his answer from Katie. As he walked to Tyne Dock and through it, and up the long road past East Jarrow, he told himself over and over that he just couldn’t believe it. He was hurt and shaken to the core, but his most intense feeling was that of being slighted. He kept muttering to himself, ‘She’s mucky, filthy, putrid. She is. She is.’
He went up the bank that led into Jarrow, along past the rows of whitewashed cottages with the women sitting on the steps and the men standing idly at the corners. The whole town was dead; it looked as if everybody was waiting for a hearse to pass. Some of the shops were closed, and those that were open looked empty; only the pubs had customers, and these were from the factories that cluttered round the feet of Palmer’s and managed to thrive independently.
But he wasn’t bothered about the strike at this minute; he had nobody to care for but himself now and he felt lost, thrown off, tossed aside. Aye, that’s what she had done, tossed him aside. And he’d worked for years to keep the house going, giving up every penny to her. He couldn’t have done more. And just because she was hungry she had gone and done that. But what staggered him most of all was that she was brazen with it, for she said she wouldn’t give him up. She couldn’t see she was making a mug of herself; these kinds of chaps didn’t wait to be given up, they just went and never came back. Well, it would be no use her coming crawling to him when her eyes were opened. No, by God! He would give her his answer, that he would.
He felt the urge to cry, and he cut down a side street where they were building houses. The builders were still working; the houses were popping up as quick as corks from bottles on New Year’s Eve, because the contractors knew that Palmer’s would flourish again; whoever sank, Palmer’s would swim.
He passed a patch of open ground where a gang of men were playing quoits, and another were surrounding a couple of cocks; then into a district that looked clean and superior compared to the part of the town through which he had just passed. He went up a back lane where every few feet of yard wall had two wooden hatches let in; one denoting a coalhouse beyond, the other indicating the new innovation of the dry midden. When he came to the eighth door he lifted the latch and walked up the narrow yard and knocked on the kitchen door.
Mrs Hetherington answered his knock and said cheerily, ‘Oh, there you are, Joe. You’ve got back.’
‘Yes, Mrs Hetherington.’
‘Come in; come in, lad.’
Joe went into the kitchen, and there looked at Mr Hetherington where he sat cobbling a pair of boots on an iron last which he held between his knees.
‘Hello, lad,’ said Mr Hetherington. ‘How did it go? You made it up?’
Joe stood rubbing his hand hard across his mouth. Then, looking from the dumpy little woman to her tall, thin husband, he bowed his head and said, ‘It wasn’t quite right what I told you about me an’ her just havin’ words, Mr Hetherington. It’s worse than that. I…I can’t go back ’cos she’s gone on the streets.’
Chapter Four
Almost a month to the day Andrée returned to the Tyne. Katie knew of his coming before he docked; she heard of it through Meggie. Meggie had come knocking at the door late last night and woken her up. She said that a friend who was on one of Palmer’s colliers plying between Peterhead and Sunderland had sighted the Orn when they were about thirty miles offshore from Aberdeen. She was making good headway and had the wind with her, and if she was lucky she should come in on the tide, which was around five in the morning. But if she couldn’t make it owing to the weather, she should surely be in later in the day. Then Meggie had added, ‘Do you think he’ll turn up?’
Katie had swallowed and said, ‘I think so, Meggie. ‘ And when she was alone she stood with her back to the door, her hands pressed against it. She would as soon have doubted the dawn breaking as him not turning up.
And now it was morning. Half-past seven and she was ready and waiting. She had made the fire up high and it was burning brightly, the table was set, and she had on her new dress—at least new to her. And as she looked down at it she thought that if Miss Theresa knew to what use her last gift was being put she would burst into flames. The thought had the power to make her laugh inside. She had never laughed outright since Andrée had gone.
During the first terrible week of loneliness she had cried most of the time. At one period she nearly went looking for Joe; she knew she would find him with the Hetheringtons. She hadn’t intended to ask him to come and live in the house again, only to come and see her now and then, not to cut himself right off from her; but remembering Joe’s face when they had parted she knew it would be useless, because Joe had a great deal of her da in him; he might not go to church but he was still a church man inside.
The second week she had taken to talking to Lizzie, talking as if she was getting answers. But she had stopped that; you could lose your mind that way…
She had to make the fire up three times more before Andrée arrived, and when she heard his tread mounting to the landing she could not leave the centre of the room and go to the door.
He did not knock but turned the handle and pushed the door wide and stood there. He had a big canvas bag hanging from one hand and he dropped it to the floor, then moved forward slowly, like she had seen him moving towards her in her dreams. His eyes spraying their blue light over her, he came now, and she couldn’t move a muscle to welcome him until she was in his arms.
Not only her mouth but the whole of her body became lost in his, and when the first moment of swaying, rough, painful ecstasy was over he pressed her from him and looked at her and whispered, ‘Ah, Kaa-tee, Kaa-tee.’ Then, moving his head slowly, he said, ‘I didn’t dream it, but my memory wasn’t vivid enough. You are more beautiful than I remember.’ She fell against him again, crying, ‘Oh, Andy, Andy. Oh, I’ve missed you. Oh, how I’ve missed you. I’ve worried every day. And when the wind was high last night I was terrified lest it took you on to the Black Middens.’
He stroked her hair gently and leant his cheek on it and said quietly, ‘Never be afraid of the wind. As long as it blows it’ll blow me to you…’
It was an hour later and they had loved and talked and loved again, and now, dishevelled but still unable to lose contact with each other, they were standing close at the table and Andrée was undoing the canvas bag.
She had never seen so many beautiful things all at once in her life—at least things that were beautiful to her—and not least of them was a seven-pound jar of strawberry jam. Food to her came under the heading of beauty; anything as necessary as food was beautiful. He spilled on to the table now a whole ham, a pickled tongue, a box of ginger encased in lumps of sugar, another box filled with strange-looking candy. Then there was the cloth. Two rolls of cloth, one of fine green gaberdine and the other of cream silk. She held a length of this latter in her hand and the rough skin of her fingers caught at its fineness. She gazed up at him and said, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful, Andy. Beautiful, real silk.’
‘For your nightgown and shift.’
Her eyes stretched wide and her mouth gaped open before she said, ‘Use this for a nightgown and shift?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s too good.’
‘Too good for you?’ He pulled her to him. ‘Spun gold wouldn’t be too good for your nightgown and shift.’
‘Aw, Andy…’
Two hours farther on, when they were sitting on the mattress that was now spread before the fire, she said, ‘How long this time?’
‘Two days, perhaps three.’
‘Oh, no. Only two days. Oh, Andy.’ She lowered her head slowly on to his shoulder and he asked, ‘Are you very lonely by yourself with just…?’ He motioned his head towards the bedroom door, and she said, ‘I’m lonely all the time you’re not here.’
‘I’ve got a plan.’ He put his finger beneath her chin and tilted her face towards him. ‘I’m thinking about leaving my company…This—this Palmer company in Jarrow, they have steam boiler ships that don’t have to wait for wind and weather; they just fly ahead. They can do the crossing in half the time. This company get a lot of their ore from Bilbao in Spain. It is a long way off, but it will be quicker in their steamships although the distance is twice as far. I have been talking to a friend of mine. He knows the owner, this Mr Palmer, and he is going to place a word for me.’
‘Oh, Andy.’ She smiled softly at him. ‘That would mean you always docking here; you wouldn’t have to go back to Sweden every time.’
He traced his finger around every feature of her face before he said softly, ‘There is something I have to tell you, but it will keep.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Don’t look worried; there’s nothing to worry about. I just want to tell you about my home. It isn’t in Sweden, it’s in Norway. Although I’m Swedish by birth, I’ve always lived in Norway.’
‘Tell me now—please, Andy, tell me now.’ Her request was urgent, fear traced, and she held his hand to her breast.
During the weeks that had separated them she had thought about his home and dreaded the ties she imagined were there, a mother and father, a wife and family? No! No! He mustn’t have a wife and family. Sisters and brothers, mother and father, but not a wife and family. ‘Tell me, Andy,’ she said again.
Andrée now turned from her and, pulling his knees up, he leaned his elbows on them, and his forearms and joined hands made a bridge between his legs, and over this he bent his broad chest and stared into the fire. And he remained silent for so long that Katie, putting out a tentative finger, touched his shoulder and said softly, ‘I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it matters.’ He turned to her again. ‘It matters, Kaa-tee, and I think perhaps now is the time to tell it…but I’ll do it in my own way, it’ll make it easier.’ He gave her cheek a gentle tap, then said, ‘Look. My coat, hand it,’ and she turned from him and, getting to her knees, reached towards the back of the chair and, lifting his coat down, gave it to him.
Andrée now proceeded to empty the inside of three pockets. Out of one he took a bulky wallet; from another a fine leather case; and from the third a small book with a brass lock on it. Taking a key from the same pocket, he undid the lock and opened the book and, tapping it with his finger, he said, ‘Diary.’
‘Diary?’
‘Yes, what I write personal in.’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’
He smiled now and patted her cheek again, saying, ‘I forget. I forget you know these things, that you can read.’
She moved her head slightly as she smiled softly at him. She noticed something about him at this moment that she had encountered once before; his English became more precise, more stilted when he was upset or agitated. That time with Joe he had talked clipped like he was doing now. The thought that what he was about to tell her was agitating him strengthened the apprehension in her and the smile slid from her face, and she waited.
‘Look first.’ He was pointing to a small map in the back of the book. ‘Can you see? The print is very faint, but there, that tiny dot there, it is called Karlstad. There I was born. My father was Norwegian and my mother was Swedish. Sweden and Norway, you see, are close like your Scotland and England, you understand?’ She nodded, and he went on, ‘My father’s father was English, my mother’s father was Norwegian. My English grandfather lived in Norway from he was a young man, and from the age of seven I lived with him. That’s why I speak English so well.’ He stated this seriously. Then he went on, ‘You see, we are a large family, eleven—eleven brothers and sisters—so my parents let my brother Jon and me go and live with my grandparents, and life was wonderful.’ He smiled broadly now and pulled at his beard. ‘They lived in a little house between Bergen and the top end of Hardanger Fjord, and all around us was water. Water, water everywhere you looked. And great mountains of rock with their feet in the water; and in the spring, blossom. Water, rock and blossom…Ahh!’ He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘I went to sea when I was fourteen. I sailed out of Bergen on a spring night with the moon and the wind filling the sails, and that was my first marriage. That night the sea and I were joined for life.’
First marriage. A chill came on her, and not even the hard pressure of his fingers could warm her now.
‘Seven years later I was first mate on that same ship, and there came the day when we returned to Bergen and almost the whole town was on the quay, for we had been away for two years. We had been right across the North Atlantic Ocean, south to the West Indies, then right round to Montevideo in Uruguay. And here we were, safely back. We hadn’t lost a man and we had a rich cargo. There was a ball given that night in the Radhus…town hall, you know.’ He nodded at her, and she nodded back. ‘And there I met a young lady. I had never seen a woman for many months, and this young lady had a fair skin and pretty hair and she seemed to like to dance with me. I did not know then who she was, she was only a pretty girl, but next day I found out when my brother Jon, who also went to sea, and whose boat happened to be in, teased me for being the choice of Miss Petersen at the ball.
‘My grandparents were all oohs and ahs and laughter, for was not Petersen Papa one big hell of a man, as you say. Why, he owned great slabs of the town. Well, that, thought I, was the last I would see of Miss Petersen. But no, I was invited to her home and—well…’ He lifted his big shoulders and spread his hands before Katie. ‘I was young, I was very flattered, and yes, yes, I was in love…In love. It is a strange thing to be in love. You don’t love when you are in love. You can’t because you are in a state of madness. Youth and those two long years at sea, and flattery, and the man-urges that were burning me up, took me to the church as if I had all my sails trimmed to a following wind.’
He now stopped and brought his face close to hers and, tracing his fingers under her eyes, said softly, ‘Don’t look like that, Kaa-tee. There is nothing to worry about, I tell you, nothing.’
He straightened up again, and, his voice taking on a louder note, he went on, ‘Within months I was a captain and had my own ship. Oh, Kaa-tee, it was a very good thing to be married to the daughter of an influential man.’ He nodded his head slowly at her. ‘I was at sea when my first child was born; it was a girl-child, and I did not see her until she was seven months old. I was at home for five weeks with her, and, of course, she did not know me. She cried when I lifted her up…screamed. I was always a big hairy thing. I was at sea when my second child was born; I saw her when she was a month old. My first child still screamed when I lifted her up. When I had been married for four years I became master of a bigger vessel—oh, a fine vessel. My father-in-law had a large thumb in the shipping pie, you understand.’ She nodded again, her eyes fixed, unblinking, on him. ‘On my first trip in the new ship I was gone for two years. When I returned I had a sixteen-month-old son, and my eldest child still screamed at the sight of me.’ He smiled widely now. ‘I think it was this, my child not knowing me, that made me express the wish to change ships yet again, to trade back and forward to England say, in order to be home more often and get to know my children. Strangely, my wish met with opposition, and mostly from my wife. She, it appeared, was perfectly satisfied with the situation as it was. She…she lived for her children, whom she spoil
t, and her house, which her father had bought her.’ Again he shrugged. ‘A master’s money is not small, but it is not big—not big enough to provide for ten rooms and a family. Yet, as big as this house was, it was no place for a great clumsy sailor who walked on the floors with his feet.’ He thumbed towards his waggling toes, then laughed, and said, ‘I mean with his boots on. Well, away I went again, but this time I returned two days before my fourth child was born. It was another girl. When I held her in my arms I caused a great upheaval in the family because I said I was finished with the big sail. I was going to get a ship that didn’t like to wander so far. At least this last child would know me from the beginning.
‘After a long fight I got my ship, but in a company in which my father-in-law had no thumb because he would not countenance this great drop in social prestige. But now I was home for nearly half the year when the sea was frozen. Not that I didn’t work. Oh, I worked; there was plenty to do. But very soon I wished I wasn’t at home at all, for my wife, at the age of thirty, decided she was going to have no more children. She developed a malaise; it was so bad that her mother must come and look after her. Then it was decided that this arrangement could not go on, and so it was just a matter of time before my wife takes up residence in her old home, and of course, the family go too.’ Again he spread his hands. ‘I am very welcome. I have two rooms set apart for me all to myself. There is a side door to them so my big feet won’t dirty the hall floors which are polished every day. I talk with my children, who are always very polite to me—even my eldest, who is now nearly sixteen and thinks I am a very funny man, I make her laugh. Look, here is a picture of her.’ He undid the leather case and took out a number of small thin square boards and, passing one to Katie, he said, ‘That is she.’
Katie Mulholland Page 24