Katie looked down at the delicate watercolour portrait of a young girl, but, strangely, she stared at it without pain. There was pain in her, but it was for him she felt the pain. She had always had an acute awareness of loneliness in people. Look how she had felt for Miss Theresa, and even for…Mark Bunting, but she had never sensed it in Andy until this moment. And now she saw that the loneliness in him was a big, wide, deep thing, eating at him. She looked at the portraits of the children one after the other, at the boy’s face the longest; then, raising her eyes, she said, ‘He looks like you.’
‘Yes, he does. And I called him after me, Nils.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Nils? But I thought your name was Andrée.’
He laughed now. ‘Andrée Fraenkel are what you call surnames and I was always called by the first one, Andrée, so I let it go. I do not like Nils anyway.’
She smiled a little and shook her head, saying, ‘That’s funny. It’s like calling somebody here Smith or Brown or’—her smile widened a little—‘Mulholland.’
‘Mulholland.’ He brought her hand to his face and rubbed it down his beard. ‘It is a mouthful, Mulholland.’ Then, picking up a square of board, he said, ‘These are my grandparents.’
‘Oh, they look nice.’
‘Yes, they are nice; they are good people.’
He had not shown her a portrait of his wife, nor did she ask about her, but after he had returned the squares to the leather case he looked towards the fire and said, ‘Well, Kaa-tee, what do you think of me now? I have a wife and four children in Norway, and I love you. And I say I cannot live without you. What do you think of me now?’
She did not pause for a second but, thrusting out her arm, she pulled him to her as she said, ‘The same as I did afore, only more so, more so. It’s funny, but’—she rocked herself a little in his arms—‘I’ve…I’ve imagined that if you told me what you just have I would be jealous, burnt up, but I’m not. It’s strange, I’m not.’
‘Oh, Kaa-tee, Kaa-tee.’ He went to kiss her, then stopped and, turning round and grabbing at his wallet, said, ‘This thing must be settled once and for all. For days and days I have thought. I am responsible for you now; more so because it is through me your brother went. My pay on the little bucket is not as big as I used to get on the great ships—fourteen pounds a month—but I make it up with what I carry on the side.’ He gave her a knowing little smile. ‘From men to monkeys. But what I made hasn’t really mattered up to now because my wife expects nothing from me. Because she refused to take money from me her conscience is eased, and I leave it like that, so what I am going to do is to arrange that you have a half-pay note.’
‘No, no, Andy. No.’
‘Yes, yes, Kaa-tee. Yes.’
‘But you won’t be able to leave me anything; me not being your…’
‘These things can be arranged; I’ll see to it before I sail again.’
She gazed at him. It was as if in some magic way he had made her secure for the rest of her days. The nagging feeling of want that was never far from her mind slid away. His half-pay note, something coming in regularly. Oh, oh, she didn’t deserve him, she didn’t. She fell against him and they remained still, their cheeks together, their bodies joined, staring into the fire. Then, quite suddenly and for no reason that she could explain, she asked, ‘Is it a beautiful house you have in Norway?’ It was quite some time before he answered, ‘Yes. Yes, it’s a beautiful house, Kaa-tee,’ and his answer saddened her.
Chapter Five
The six months that followed was a period of fulfilment and was perhaps the happiest in Katie’s life. Except for a nagging guilty feeling concerning Joe, and the feeling of panic she would get if Andrée’s boat was late, she was at peace, and happy. Her bust developed, her hips lost their flatness, and her mind was groping and opening to knowledge as it never had done before, not even from the books Theresa had lent her, for she was seeing different places, going jaunts, as Andrée called them. She did not think it odd that it was a stranger to this land that had to show her the city of Newcastle for the first time. She saw Newcastle as a place of excitement, bustle and grandeur, with its Assembly Rooms and, of all things, a row of baths where people could go and wash. But, above all, what attracted her most in Newcastle was the wonderful theatre, and she had actually been and seen a play there. They were building a theatre in Shields but it wasn’t finished yet.
All she had known about Newcastle before this visit was that it was the city that kept the rest of the towns on the Tyne poor, taxing them for the use of their own river, refusing them independence, and after her visit she could, in a way, understand the attitude of the city to the towns that crowded the river, because she saw them as servants to a master. But one servant, Shields, spat when the name of Newcastle was mentioned, for had not the vessels bound for the mouth of the Tyne to go all the way up to Newcastle to check in at the quayside so that the Newcastle Corporation could have its toll. The Shields men hated the Newcastle men. But part of that particular strife had ended in August when Shields, after a long, bitter fight, had been created a separate port, and Andrée said it was a fine step forward.
Andrée’s life was linked closely with the Tyne now, for at the beginning of the winter he had left the Norwegian company and signed on, not with Palmer’s who hadn’t a vacancy yet, but with a firm who were running boats to Harwich and London, but by sail, which made his comings and goings still subject to wind and weather.
When next his boat docked for any considerable time he was going to take her all the way to see Alnwick Castle, and they might have to put up for the night in an inn. He loved showing her strange places. He had even said that one day he would take her to France. Oh, he was wonderful, wonderful. The thought of his kindness brought tears welling into her eyes, especially his kindness towards Lizzie. Not even her mother or father had treated Lizzie like he did. He had brought her a doll, of all things, from one of his trips. It was a clouty doll, dressed in scarlet and green. He had said he thought Lizzie would like it, but she had thought, poor Lizzie won’t know it’s there. But a strange thing had happened. After the doll had lain near her stomach for a day Lizzie had picked it up, and now she nursed it continuously. And another thing he had done concerning Lizzie; he had insisted that someone should be brought in to see to her when they went out. He said he didn’t like the thought of her being tied up; he said he understood it was necessary sometimes but not for long stretches. Once he’d had to chain a man in the bilges because he had gone mad, and seeing Lizzie tied up reminded him of it. And so she got Meggie Proctor to come and give an eye to Lizzie, and he had made it worth her while. There had been one time when he had put off their jaunt because Meggie was bottled and incapable of even climbing the stairs.
But this period of harmony for Katie came to an end the night Meggie Proctor had visitors.
Meggie had got into the habit of popping up to the top floor whenever she was hungry, or short of a copper, and this would happen when there were few boats in the docks—at least boats with white crews, for, as Meggie openly said, she wouldn’t let an Arab or a nigger within a mile of her.
At first Katie had resented Meggie’s visits, and for obvious reasons, but you couldn’t resent a person like Meggie for long, and now at times she even welcomed her, for Meggie was a bit of company, and she could make you laugh. Also, Meggie was tactful in her way, because she never came near the top floor when the captain was home.
The regular visits of the captain had placed Katie in a class apart, not only in the estimation of the other occupants of the house but of the whole of Crane Street, for, as they all agreed, it was a set thing, the Swede was standing by her, not here the day and gone the morrow, leaving the belly big and the heart with sorrow, like the majority of them did.
Katie was unaware in what esteem her neighbours held her; she only knew that they spoke civil to her and gave her the time of day, and no-one had poured the slops out of the window on her, as they had done on Meggie Proctor and Jinny Wi
lson in the street opposite, which backed on to this one. Most of the women in that street were respectably married, with the men coming home each night from the docks; it was these and their like who never missed a chance of drenching a whore. She would have died, she told herself, if this had happened to her, for it would have put the label on her; which was why, although she welcomed Meggie into her kitchen, she would never, if she could help it, walk down the street with her.
She was, this particular evening, sitting sewing and she was being extravagant. She had two candles lit because she didn’t want to strain her eyes too much and make them red. She had discovered a little shop that dealt in good-class ladies’ second-hand dresses, and yesterday she had bought one and was now altering it.
She stopped sewing for a moment and lifted her moccasined feet up on to the fender and, dropping her head back, she looked at the clock, which was another present from Andrée. It was wonderful to have a clock in the house and not have to rely solely on the sun or the one o’clock time gun going off from the ballast hill across the water in North Shields. She wondered now where Andrée was, if he had reached Harwich. If the weather had held for him he would have done it in four days; that could mean he would be in at the beginning of the week, and home for Christmas. Their first Christmas together. She did not wonder if he would regret this first Christmas away from his family; she knew whom he wanted to spend his time with; there was not the smallest shred of doubt in her mind with regard to it. She only hoped he docked at Shields this trip. The last twice there hadn’t been much time to see to anything, for his ship hadn’t docked in the Tyne at all. It being rough weather, he had docked in Sunderland the first time, then at Hartlepool, the water being deeper in both places and not so much chance of the ship going on the Black Middens, or the hard sands, outside of Shields harbour. She was afraid even of hearing any mention of the Black Middens, for it was only a few years ago that thirty-three sailing vessels sheltering from a storm had been dashed to pieces on these sands.
But Andrée said that, with the new innovation of the dredging to clear the channels and the new piers of the North and South Towns forming a safe harbour at the mouth of the river, Shields would soon be a first-rate port. She didn’t know about it becoming a first-rate port; the only thing that concerned her was that Andrée’s ship should go safely in and out, and not have to go to Sunderland or Hartlepool, because that meant he could spend less time with her.
She folded up the dress and put the kettle on the fire, which was low now, and she decided not to make it up again but to go to bed. What was there to sit up for? Besides which, she never wasted coal…or food. Although she loved food and always had done, she kept her fare very meagre except when Andrée was home, and this had enabled her to save a few shillings each week out of the pound that she was allotted.
She took some hot thin gruel in to Lizzie and made her comfortable. Lizzie’s condition was changing and puzzling Katie; she was not eating so much but her body was expanding noticeably. She wondered if she should get a doctor, but asked herself what could a doctor do? Only physic her. Anyway, she decided to leave the matter until Andrée came back. He always seemed to know the right way to tackle anything…
It was half an hour later, as she lay in bed on the point of sleep, that there came to her the sound of muffled laughter and footsteps on the stairs. The laughter roused her, and as she recognised Meggie’s voice she thought to herself, ‘She’s got a load on by the sound of her. I hope she’s not coming here.’ But a few minutes later it was evident that Meggie was coming to visit her, as there came a knock on the door and Meggie called softly, ‘Katie, Katie. Open up a minute. Katie. Come on, open up: I want a word with ye.’
This was not the first time that Meggie had paid her a visit when she was drunk, and from experience she knew it would be no use telling her to go away. She shook the sleep from her, pulled herself up out of the bed and, groping her way towards the table, picked up the candlestick, took the candle out and lit it in the dying embers of the fire; then, sticking it back into the socket, she went towards the door.
As she undid the bolt the door was pushed quickly forward, almost overbalancing her, and Meggie stumbled into the room. She was, Katie saw, very drunk, and Meggie could be very nasty when in drink, so she said to her quietly, ‘Aw, Meggie, I was…’
Before she could say ‘abed’ Meggie had thrown her arm backwards and cried, ‘Come on. Come on in.’ Then, turning to Katie, she said, ‘I’ve brought me friends. You’re not the only bugger who’s got friends with money, Katie Mulholland, you’re not the only bugger. Come in. Come on in.’ She now waved to the two dim figures on the landing, and one of them came forward and into the light cast by the candle which Katie still held in her hand. He was a town man, she saw instantly, by his dress; also that he was of the class. He was a man in his middle years, portly, with a red face and a little beard under his chin.
As the man’s eyes swept over her she bent sideways and made a grab at her skirt lying with her clothes across a chair, and as she held it in front of her she lifted the candle higher and cried to the man, ‘Get out! Get out, I tell you!’
‘Now look here, Katie Mulholland, divn’t get on your high horse; ye’re no better than ye should be, so don’t put on airs. We’re all lasses together in this hoose…Come on you in.’ She again waved towards the landing, and a man came out of the darkness and through the doorway, and when he stepped forward the light from the candle fell on to his face.
The very last time Katie had seen this man it had been in the light of a candle. In the five years that had elapsed Bernard Rosier had changed; he had become fatter, and his face redder, but there was no mistaking him. As their eyes met in recognition Katie felt the blood draining from her body. One minute, such was the shock she felt she would collapse under it; the next minute there was tearing through her a wave of rage and she heard herself screaming, ‘You! You, get out! Get out of my house!’
His eyes were narrowed, his face was smiling, one corner of his clean-shaven mouth was lifted upward, but nothing of him moved except his head, and that slowly began to lower itself while his eyes still remained on her. Under his smiling gaze her rage seemed to lift her from the ground. One second she was still holding the candlestick, the next it was hurtling through the air. At some point, the candle leaving it made an arch of light, and before it fell to the ground she saw that she had not missed in her aim. There was a loud cry and the dark room became full of curses, mingled with Meggie’s screeching.
When a match was struck and held aloft she saw Bernard Rosier leaning against the doorway, his face covered with blood that was running from a gash above his eye. There was another voice from the landing now which Katie dimly recognised as Mrs Robson’s. She had a candle in her hand and she held it high above the three figures crowded in the doorway.
‘What’s all this?’ she was saying. ‘What’s all this? It sounds like murder. What are you about? I’ll get the pollis.’
‘It’s her! It’s her!’ Meggie was screaming now. ‘She hit him with the candlestick. He’s my friend. We just come up to see her. She’s mad.’
‘Trollops, the lot of you. Get down, out of here. Get down to your own place, Meggie Proctor, or I’ll have the pollis called in, I’m tellin’ you. Decent people can’t sleep in their beds.’
‘Look at his face. Look at his face. It wasn’t us, it was her. My God! Look what she’s done to his face.’ Meggie was now pointing to Bernard Rosier, and he, with his blood-covered hand pressed against the cut over his eye, was staring across the room to where Katie, her back to the table, held in her hand the other brass candlestick, and in a position from where it could come flying at him at any moment.
‘Come on, B. Come on, let’s get out of here.’ The older man had to pull Bernard Rosier from the room, and on the landing he said, ‘Let me have that candle,’ and Mrs Robson answered, ‘Get out! Find your way down as you found your way up.’ The man swore at her; then, pressing Bernard Ros
ier before him, they groped their way after Meggie, who was still screaming virulently.
Mrs Robson now stepped into the room and, coming to Katie, she took the candlestick from her hand, picked up the candle from the floor and lit it from her own, and placing it on the table she said, grimly, ‘I don’t blame you for this, so I won’t do anything about it. I heard her bringin’ them up an’ yappin’ on my landin’. But if I thought you had asked them up I’d tell your Swede, ’cos I like fair do’s. I don’t like to see a man made a monkey out of.’
On this, the woman who had always complained about Lizzie’s crying turned abruptly and went out and closed the door behind her.
Katie, groping towards a chair, sat down. One hand was still holding the skirt over her breast. The feeling of rage was gone, and in its place was fear. It was the same kind of fear that she had experienced that night in his room. On that night he hadn’t opened his mouth, nor had he tonight; and as on that occasion his silence had spoken louder than any words, so had his visit tonight. As she remembered the look in his eyes when the other man had pulled him around and through the doorway she began to whimper, very like Lizzie did, and then to say over and over again, ‘Oh, Andy, Andy.’ She said his name louder and louder, as if the incantation would ward off some evil, some evil that she knew was about to befall her.
It was three hours later when she went to bed and she was still telling herself that she was no longer a child, she was twenty-one years old; she was a woman, and she had Andrée behind her now. But it was of little use. The feeling of evil Rosier had left in the room was filling the air and she was breathing it in.
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