The following day every movement on the stairs brought her to a quivering standstill. She rose early before the house was astir, and, making three journeys to the backyard in the dark, brought up a good supply of water. She had got this task over early because she didn’t want to come face to face with Meggie.
The day passed and no-one knocked on her door, and when at last she allowed herself to go to bed the main thought in her mind was, Whatever he’s going to do he’s not going to bring the pollis. But this thought didn’t lessen her apprehension, and the following morning it was increased if anything.
When in the afternoon she had to go out to get in some food, she found herself tiptoeing down the stairs, and she almost ran there and back to the shop; so that, on reaching the landing, there was a stitch in her side and her breath was coming quickly. As she unlocked the door she gazed around the room amazed that she should find her furniture still intact. Dropping the bass bag on to the table, she now hurried across the room and looked in on Lizzie, where she sat with the doll on her stomach, her eyes fixed on it, and she leant against the stanchion of the door, opening her mouth wide and taking in great gulps of air.
Going back into the kitchen, she sat down before unpacking the groceries. She’d have to pull herself together; she couldn’t go on like this. If only she had someone to talk to, someone to tell her fears to. If only Joe was here. She could have told Joe the whole story, whereas she’d only be able to tell Andy part of it. But there, if Joe had been here Meggie would never have brought her friends upstairs. The whole thing would never have happened. What was coming upon her? Was it the Bible retribution because, as Joe had said, she was bad…No! No! Whatever came upon her wouldn’t be because she was bad, because she wasn’t bad. If living with Andy was bad, then there was nothing good in the world. She wasn’t bad. She wasn’t. She wasn’t like them downstairs. Yet because she lived in this house, and this quarter, and had Andy, she had their stamp on her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t…‘Stop it!’ She had spoken aloud, and still aloud she said, ‘Pull yourself together, woman.’
She got up and unpacked the groceries, but in the middle of doing this she turned and looked towards the door. She hadn’t bolted it. Moving swiftly towards it she shot the bolt in, then stood for a moment biting her lip before she returned to the table to finish her unpacking.
Chapter Six
It was five o’clock on Christmas Eve and Andy hadn’t come, and he wouldn’t come now because the tide was going down.
Last week she had bought one or two baubles in the market to hang around the chimney piece. There was a fancy paper doll in red and blue, there was a coloured paper chain and a paper clown dangling from a spring, but she did not hang them up. What was the use? There was no joy in her, nothing she did seemed able to move the fear that weighed on her. She had sat before the fire until it lost its heat, and she was preparing for bed when she heard the quick heavy tread on the stairs. Her hands cupping her face, she stood gazing towards the door, and when the handle turned and the voice came to her, saying ‘Kaa-tee, there. Kaa-tee’, she stumbled towards it, and after fumbling at the bolt opened it and fell into his arms, and to his astonishment she burst into tears.
‘Kaa-tee! Kaa-tee! Oh, my Kaa-tee, what is it? Wait. Wait, wait a moment.’ He pressed her from him. Then, stepping back on to the landing, he pulled in his bag and lifted another tall package gently into the room, and, hastily closing the door, went to her where she was standing now, her back to the table, her face bowed in her hands, and again she was in his arms and he was saying, ‘Kaa-tee, tell me what is the matter. Why are you like this?’
She tried to speak, but her crying choked her words and he stood bewildered, stroking her hair, looking round the room the while as if searching for an answer to her distress. And then his eyes came to rest on the bedroom door and he thought he had found it, and the pressure of his arms increased as he said, ‘Lizzie?’ Then again, ‘Lizzie?’ But when her head moved against his neck he again looked about him; then, pressing her from him, he demanded sternly, ‘Tell me. Listen to me, Kaa-tee. Tell me what has happened to cause this…Them?’ He now thumbed the floor, and again she shook her head.
‘What then? Come, you must tell me. Your brother?’
‘No, no.’ She forced the words out. ‘I’m…I’m sorry, Andy. It…it was like this.’ She put out her hand and, gripping his, moved towards the fireplace and the high-backed wooden chair, and when he had sat down he took her on his knee and she put her arms about him and laid her head against his neck and told him what had happened. And when she finished speaking and he made no comment she raised her face and looked at him, but he was staring into the fire and it was a second or so before he brought his gaze to hers, and then he said, ‘This man’s name. You have told me everything but his name.’
‘I can’t, Andy. No, no, I can’t. I’m…I’m frightened. I don’t want any more trouble; I’ve had enough, Andy, I’ve had enough.’
‘But can’t you see, Kaa-tee.’ He now gripped her shoulder. ‘You’re having trouble all the time, and you’re living in fear of more trouble. Let me put a stop to it. Tell me who it is.’
‘No, Andy.’ She pulled herself away from him and to her feet. ‘I’ll never do that, never.’
He was sitting on the edge of the chair now with his beard thrust out to her. ‘I can find out; there are ways and means. I can go to the house where it all started and work back from there.’
‘It won’t help you. Please, Andy, please.’ She turned to him, her hands joined on her breast. ‘Just let it go now. But I had to tell you because…because I’ve been so worried, I thought he would send the pollis.’
‘God Almighty!’ He sprang to his feet. ‘I can’t go away and leave you and think of you worrying like this waiting for a pollis man to come through the door every minute.’
She smiled. ‘Oh, Andy, you’re not in the house yet and talkin’ of going away. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
Her arms were around his neck again. ‘I should have kept it to myself. Come on, nothing matters now, nothing, nothing, nothing.’ She made her smile wider. ‘How long have you got?’
He didn’t answer for some seconds, just gazed at her face; and then he said, ‘Three or four days—perhaps more, because they won’t load on the holiday.’
‘Oh, good. Good. So let’s forget it. Let’s forget about everything.’
‘Yes, let’s forget it, as you say, Kaa-tee, let’s forget it.’ He kissed her hard now, after which he cried, ‘See what I’ve brought you,’ and going across the room he picked up the large package that was standing against the wall and brought it to the table, on which he put it down gently and said, ‘Guess what I have here!’
She stood close to his side and looked at the tall parcel, and she smiled as she shook her head. ‘I can’t. I haven’t an idea.’
‘Wait, wait.’ Rapidly now he pulled off the string and the paper and lifted into the middle of the table a glass lamp. Then he looked at her face, at the light and pleasure spreading over the tear-stains.
‘Oh, Andy, Andy, how beautiful.’ She put out her hand and stroked the pale, pink-tinted oil bowl of the tall lamp, then traced her fingers down the slender blue stem to the scalloped base. ‘Where …where did you get it?’
‘Here’—his big blond head was bouncing up and down—‘in Shields.’
‘Here?’ She sounded incredulous.
‘You should have had it two trips ago. Candles! What do people want candles for these days when there are oil lamps and gas coming in? So when I saw Orm’s little lamp—Orm, he is my bo’sun—it was so tiny, like so…He measured about two inches between his finger and thumb. ‘Like this one in every detail. It was swinging from the end of his bunk.’ He wagged his forefinger. ‘Swing, swing, swing. “Where did you get that?” I said to Orm. “In Shields, sir,” he said. “I know a family there who all work in the glassworks. The father is very clever.” “Do you think he could make a big one like yours?” I asked him,
and he said “Ja”, he was sure, but I would have to wait for it; just at spare times his master let him create something for himself…And there it is.’
‘Oh, thank you, darlin’, thank you, thank you.’ She was enfolding him again, and when he saw the tears in her eyes once more he cried, ‘But she’s no good without oil and there is only a little in her. Come, we’ll go out shopping. But first my bag.’
Now, bringing his sailor’s bag on to the mat before the fire, he pulled out his gifts and handed them to her: coffee, butter, tea. He held the tea aloft, saying, ‘You have tasted nothing like this. China…A-ah!’ He smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and they both laughed as he ended, ‘It’s nearly as good as gin. And mocha…Coffee; oh, it’s good, first thing in the morning after much drink.’ Again they were laughing. Then he handed her up a ham, a whole ham, and candies, three boxes of them, and last, from the bottom of the bag, he tumbled a length of woollen material, and as he pushed it into her hands his face stretched into a wide grin as he said, ‘For bloomers, warm bloomers.’
‘Oh, Andy! Andy.’ She was on her knees, half laughing, half crying as she hugged the piece of material to her breast and rocked herself back and forward, and as she gazed at him she kept repeating his name.
Lastly he put his hand into the inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a small, hard, black case and, handing it to her, said, ‘Yuletide gift to my Kaa-tee.’
When she opened the box she saw lying on a bed of red velvet a fine gold chain with a heart-shaped locket on the end. She raised her mist-filled eyes towards him, unable for the moment to say anything. Then she opened the locket, and there, gazing back at her, was a miniature portrait of himself. The other side of the locket was blank and, pointing to it, he said, ‘Your likeness—that is for your likeness, I will have you painted.’
The locket cupped in her two hands, she stared at him. Then her body crumpled up against him and again she was sobbing unrestrainedly, and this time it seemed as if she would never stop.
Andrée sailed the day before New Year’s Eve. He went on the morning tide. It was bitterly cold and there was a light breeze blowing, and after seeing to Lizzie she had hurried along the river bank, and there in the early light she had seen his ship, guided by a little tugboat, making downriver for the opening in the piers. Long after it had passed from her sight she had stood until, the cold penetrating to her bones, she turned slowly about.
She did not make her way straight home but went towards King Street, cutting through the market place, which was thronged, even at this early hour, with shoppers storing in food for the New Year festivities. She noticed that beyond the town hall the windmill rearing high up above the houses in the corner of the square stood out starkly against the low grey sky. This was a sure sign of bad weather, and she prayed that it would hold off until Andy got well out into deep water. She made her way between a herd of sheep and horse-drawn carts laden with everything from potatoes to squealing pigs, past the women who sold their vegetables from deep wicker baskets, past the rows of stalls, taking care to avoid the women hawkers with their wares slung on their backs who almost pushed you over to make you buy, and so she came to King Street and the chemist’s.
She had seen in the Shields Gazette last Saturday an advertisement which said that the chemist had a cure for dropsy, and that’s what Andy said was wrong with Lizzie, she was swelling with water. When he was home the trip before last they had gone across to North Shields to a chemist there. This journey had been the result of another advertisement in the Gazette, but the medicine for which Andy had paid two shillings a bottle had no effect on Lizzie, except to make her sleep.
The chemist in King Street only charged her ninepence for the medicine and told her it might take up to three months’ treatment before she saw any noticeable change in the patient.
On her return journey she skirted the market place and took a short cut home, and when she came down the steep hill of Thames Street into Lower Thames Street, which ran parallel to the river, she collided with two children, a boy of about six and a little girl of about four years old. The boy was holding the child’s hand, and neither had a coat on. The child was wearing a dirty serge frock and her feet, like her brother’s, were bare, and on the small heels of both children and on the backs of their hands were smears of blood from the keens and chaps that were splitting the skin.
That was one thing she’d never had to suffer from, bare feet. Joe for a time had gone barefooted, but her granda had seen that that had never happened to her, for he’d had a knack of making a rough kind of shoe out of old boot tops. He would sit and knead the leather between his tallow-coated hands for hours at a time, until it was pliable.
‘Wait,’ she said to the boy as they went to pass her, and opening her purse she brought out a shilling. ‘You’ve got a ma?’ she asked.
‘Aye, missus.’ The boy moved his head slowly.
‘Your da, is he working?’
‘Aye, missus; he’s at sea.’
She knew what that meant; she had learned from Andy that it wasn’t only miners, and shipyard men, and the farm labourers who worked for a mere pittance; the sailor’s wage was not only desperately low but his food and the conditions under which he worked were horrifying. She said now, ‘Have you any brothers and sisters?’
‘We’ve got nine, missus. We had ten, but Jimmy he got buried last week. He was older than Bess here…next to me.’
She bent right down now until her face was on a level with his. She wanted to take her handkerchief and wipe his running nose. His hair was black, but white-streaked with nits. There, too, she had been lucky, for her mother had fought a constant war against body lice, bugs, and dickies in their heads. As she gazed pitifully at the children she realised that in an odd way her early years had been good. She said, ‘I live at No. 14, Crane Street. Do you know where Crane Street is?’
‘Aye, missus; along there opposite the river.’
‘Well, do you think you could come every Saturday morning and I’ll see what I’ve got for you.’
He looked at the shilling in his hand, then looked up into her face and said solemnly, ‘Aye, missus. Aye, I will.’
‘Take that to your mother now.’
‘Aye, missus. Ta, missus.’
They moved on, their feet making no sound on the filth-strewn road.
Once in the house she slowly took off her things, looked into the room to see that Lizzie was all right, then, coming to the fire, she poked it and drew her chair close to it; and she sat for a long time staring into the flames, thinking of Andrée, wishing him clear of the sandbars. After a while she began to think of the two children and the blood running out of their hands and feet, and from thoughts of them her mind went to Sarah. It was the first time for many a long day that she had allowed herself to dwell on her child. She would be five years old now. Was she bonny? Oh yes, she would be bonny. She’d be talking too, talking differently from what she herself did, talking like Miss Ann and Miss Rose…like Miss Theresa. Through the years there had been, deep down, a bitterness in her and a feeling of resentment against her mother and Joe for persuading her to part with her child, but mostly against her mother; but since she had known Andrée the feeling had lessened. She would always regret having given up her child, yet in a way she was glad she had given her a chance of a new way of life. Here her lot would have been that of a child of the riverside; perhaps not like those two children she had seen a short while ago, for she would have kept her child clean, spotlessly clean, but she could not have done anything about her environment, because Lizzie would have dictated their environment. She heard a voice saying in her head, ‘I would like to see her. Just for a moment, and hear her speak.’ The voice brought her to her feet. No! No! She must never do that; she must never try to see her, because once she saw her she would never know peace again.
What she must do was to have another child. She was surprised that she hadn’t fallen before now. She would love to have a child by A
ndy…Oh, and the company it would be when he was away. And not only one: two, three, as many as time would allow.
She couldn’t have too much of anything that was Andy’s. She didn’t question that she had no claim on him to keep them; as long as Andy lived he would see to her and all that was hers, of this she felt sure.
On New Year’s Eve it snowed heavily and the whiteness turned the drab, smoke-blackened view from her window into a pretty picture. Everything outside looked bright and lighter, but inside the house, inside her heart everything was dull and heavy. She felt more lonely today than she had done since Joe left the house. She had hoped that, it being New Year’s Eve, the first New Year’s Eve they had been separated since they were children, he would let bygones be bygones and pop in.
There was preparation and bustle for the New Year all about her. The house was noisy. She had heard Meggie’s voice from down below shouting, and calling, a number of times. She had not seen Meggie since that awful night, nor did she want to. There had been two fights in the street today so far; she had watched one of them from the little window in Joe’s room that faced the street. It was between two women. Women fighting were always more ferocious than men, she thought. Men struck out with their closed fists, but women tore with their clawed hands, kicked and bit. Before it was over she had returned to the kitchen. She heard the yelling of the second fight, but she did not go across the landing and into the room to see what it was all about. Fighting sickened her.
Then, in the early evening, she had no time to think of her loneliness because Lizzie had one of her wailing fits, and she could do nothing to quieten her.
Lizzie sat, as upright as she could, making this wailing noise, and after some time Katie became apprehensive of the effect on Mrs Robson. She kept listening for her neighbour’s step on the stairs. Mrs Robson had spoken kindly to her after the business with Meggie that night, but she hadn’t seen her since. She was a woman who kept herself to herself, but on New Year’s Eve she wasn’t likely to put up with Lizzie’s wailing without making some protest. In desperation she put her arms about Lizzie and rocked her, saying, ‘There, there. Give over, Lizzie. Give over.’ But Lizzie, her loose mouth wide open, took no heed of Katie’s plea and continued to emit this weird, penetrating, animal-sounding wail.
Katie Mulholland Page 26