The Jarrow Lass

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Wait!’ John shouted behind her. ‘What do you think you’re doing, you daft lass?’

  ‘Don’t you come near me,’ Rose wailed.

  But John was already on the raft behind her. ‘Stay still!’ he commanded. ‘Unless you want to bloody drown.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Rose sobbed. ‘It’s better than being left here with you!’

  In an instant he was reaching across and gripping her arm hard, pulling her back towards him. She thought in terror that he was probably going to kill her. He yanked at her arm, nearly pulling it out of its socket, and the next minute they were both toppling off the timbers into the icy Slake.

  Rose tried to scream but the breath was frozen in her chest. How long does it take to drown? she wondered, paralysed with fear that the water would engulf her at any moment. But John was still hanging on to her and trying to drag her through the water. She was as heavy as a sack of coal, her thick woollen skirts drenched in water, but somehow he managed to heave her to the bank and push her to safety.

  For a moment Rose struggled for breath, then she rolled on to her side and retched.

  ‘You mad bitch!’ John panted. ‘You nearly had us both drowned!’

  Rose gasped and spluttered. ‘Me?’ she croaked. ‘You pushed us both in!’

  ‘No, I never!’ he argued. ‘You were the one who led us out there. What you want to run away for?’

  ‘You, pretending to be Jobling’s ghost...!’ Rose began, and then burst into tears.

  John said nothing. He stared at her nonplussed, breathing hard. ‘It was just a bit of carry-on. Not my fault if a lass can’t take a joke.’

  Rose cried louder, part in relief at still being alive. ‘It wasn’t funny,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought you were going to—’

  ‘What?’ John demanded.

  ‘Hurt me,’ Rose accused.

  He reached out and she flinched away. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt you,’ he said in a sullen voice, but his look was almost bashful. They sat in the dark, regaining their breath, each wondering what to make of the other. Rose could tell he was not used to girls. But for all his uncouth manners, she thought he was trying to say sorry by his awkward words.

  ‘I’ll take that as an apology then,’ Rose sniffed, and hauled herself up before he could argue. She was cold, aching, smelly and very tired.

  ‘I’ll walk you up the top road,’ John said quietly, reaching for the bag of cinders and the shawl he had thrown down before leaping after her.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Rose scowled.

  ‘Please,’ John said with a softness of tone that surprised her. She regarded him suspiciously for a moment and then nodded, taking the muddied shawl he held out to her.

  It was only when they were halfway up the slope, walking apart and in silence that Rose suddenly remembered. ‘I’ve lost me baskets in the Slacks,’ she gasped. ‘Ma will kill us!’

  John put a steadying hand on her shoulder for a second, then let it drop. ‘I’ll fetch you over another creel. Tell her it was my fault for acting daft about the ghost,’ he said, then added with a grunt, ‘she’ll believe that. Doesn’t think much of us McMullens, does she, your mam?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Rose mumbled, avoiding his look. John just snorted and carried on walking.

  They did not say much as they walked back to the McConnells’ smallholding that evening, just enough for Rose to discover that he worked as a puddler’s helper in the foundry and that he missed the fresh air of Ireland, even though he had not been there since he was a small boy.

  ‘It smells of the grass and the earth,’ he enthused. ‘And the rain - it tastes good enough to drink. Not like the dirty black stuff you get here.’

  ‘If Ireland’s so grand,’ Rose couldn’t resist teasing, ‘why do you stop in Jarrow?’

  ‘To help me family, of course,’ John replied defensively. ‘There’s no work back home.’

  ‘I’ve never been further than Lamesley,’ Rose mused, ‘and that was like a world away. I can’t imagine going anywhere as far as Ireland.’

  ‘Well, I’m going back one day,’ John determined. ‘I’m Irish and proud of it,’ he told her with a stubborn jut of his chin. ‘And I’ll knock the brains out of any lad who speaks against Ireland or the Pope!’

  Rose did not doubt it. ‘Aye, well, you Irish lads are too keen by half on fighting,’ she dared to voice her opinion. She thought this might rile him, but rather he seemed to sink into his own thoughts again.

  Then, as they reached the gate of the McConnells’ squat cottage, he suddenly asked, ‘Don’t you think of yourself as Irish?’

  Rose hesitated, looking back at the sprawl of Jarrow town below them, dimly lit by gas lamplight. From here, she could see right along to Shields, where the River Tyne merged into the sea. At night, the poverty was unseen and the blackened buildings disappeared into a galaxy of soft lights from shops and pubs. The clamour of the day subsided into the comforting night noises of a train’s whistle or a distant ship’s bell.

  She turned to John. ‘No, I don’t feel Irish,’ she answered. ‘I’m a Jarrow lass and this is me home.’

  At that moment the strong wind tore a hole in the blanket of cloud overhead. Fleetingly, the moon peered through, illuminating the rough ground around them. Rose caught the look in John’s fierce green eyes and knew that she had disappointed him. For a moment she was sorry; then she remembered how much he had frightened her. The unease she had felt with him earlier returned. Why should she want to please this tall, brawny bully of a lad? She did not care what John McMullen thought of her.

  ‘I’ll face Ma and Da on me own,’ she told him abruptly. ‘Ta for the cinders.’

  He leant towards her as if he would say something, but she drew away and he thought the better of it. Dumping down the sack, he muttered, ‘Suit yourself.’

  Without another glance he turned and strode off down the hill, his ill-fitting boots kicking up loose stones as he went. Rose felt relief at his going and yet he perplexed her. He seemed so angry with everything - everyone. Yet for a brief while, as they’d trudged up the bank together, he had shed his taciturn nature and spoken of his homeland with a simple passion that had impressed her. He had seemed almost gentle. But the impression had vanished as swiftly as the night clouds had smothered the elusive moon.

  Rose sighed, picking up the sack of cinders. She was far too weary to care what it was that ate into John McMullen’s soul. All she wanted was dry clothes, a hot drink and to fall into a warm bed beside her sisters. Let those troublesome McMullens look after themselves, Rose decided.

  Chapter 3

  Rose was roundly scolded for losing the creel and spent the next fortnight selling vegetables from an old wooden box that was much more cumbersome to carry. She waited for John McMullen to turn up with a new basket for her, but he never came. Instead, like a malign spirit, he would intrude on her thoughts and disturb her humdrum life. She would lie awake at night, troubled yet excited by the memory of his stormy-eyed look and his passionate words about Ireland.

  When she hawked her wares around the pit cottages, Rose sometimes glimpsed a tall figure with a restless stride and for a moment her heart would miss a beat. Then the man would turn and, with a mixture of disappointment and relief, she would see the face of a stranger. She wondered why she thought of him at all. She disliked John - was even frightened of him - but at the same time felt drawn to him with the same dangerous fascination as the treacherous tide in Jarrow Slake.

  But he was never at the McMullens’ when she called with offerings from her father, and Rose became increasingly annoyed at the thought of him and his broken promise about replacing her basket. After a month, she made excuses not to go.

  ‘It’s getting too dangerous down them streets,’ she protested to her father. ‘There’s always fighting - and it’s as li
kely to be the lasses. The men just stand around and watch like it’s a dog fight.’

  Her mother backed her up. ‘It’s true. I’ve seen them draw blood like wildcats. It’s the drink, of course.’

  ‘And now with the strike,’ Rose pressed, ‘I’m not getting paid regular - I’m just giving it away.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mrs McConnell agreed. ‘We’re not the Parish. Can’t afford to give charity.’

  Rose’s father muttered at them ill-temperedly, but relented. ‘I’ll take a bag of tatties to McMullens’, you can try and sell round the town where there’s still work. And we can all pray to the saints that this carry-on is sorted out before we’re all queuing up at the workhouse gates.’

  Rose felt a chill at her father’s words. Her grandmother had told her about the ‘visitations’ of fever - cholera brought from Europe by sailors - that had swept the area when her mother was a baby. They had left so many destitute that hard-pressed parishes had set up Poor Law unions to cope with the numbers. As a small child, Rose had been sent to Granny’s for safekeeping to escape an epidemic of scarlet fever, but other families had not been so lucky. These visitations often seemed to strike when there was a trade slump on the river or a lock-out at the works. Rose had seen skilled men reduced to the humiliation of stone-breaking and clawing at the ground with their bare hands in order to feed their families. But those without breadwinners were even worse off. She had seen families pawn every last possession and stitch of extra clothing and then disappear into the workhouse, never to be seen again.

  How right her father was to tell them to pray they never had to enter such a place! It was the nearest thing to Hell that Rose could imagine - families split up and doomed to lives of humiliating incarceration and servitude. Father Boyle had told her that plagues and misfortune were a result of the sinfulness of the people and that she must confess her sins or suffer the flames of Hell. When she saw the belching smoke from the workhouse chimneys, Rose knew how close by Hell lurked.

  That summer she spent a lot of time praying in church for herself and her family and those of the strikers who were jeopardising their immortal souls. The Protestants and Dissenters were past saving anyway, but there were good Catholic families who were also caught up in the strike for a shorter working day. The Fawcetts for instance.

  Mr Fawcett was a steelman from the Midlands and his family were regular attenders among the large congregation at St Bede’s. Mr Fawcett had been active in the lock-out seven years ago when the employers had tried to reduce wages and extend hours. He was a burly, straight-talking man, who had taught himself to read and spent what little spare time he had in the library at the Mechanics’ Institute.

  Rose was friendly with their daughter, Florrie, ever since they had paddled together on the sands at South Shields on an Easter outing. She admired Florrie for being able to read and write and add up figures, which was why her friend had a job in a haberdashery shop on Ormonde Street. Florrie was always smartly dressed and knew about fashion, and Rose was grateful for any small trimmings of ribbon or spare buttons that Florrie could give her. Living on the isolated smallholding and having to work from an early age, Rose had had little opportunity for making friends and largely relied on her younger sisters for company. She suspected that the friendship was more important to her than it was to Florrie, but accepted that she had less to offer. Rose’s mother approved of the Fawcetts, who lived near Croft Avenue, the sought-after part of Jarrow, and encouraged the friendship, despite her father’s grumbling about them being union agitators.

  ‘They’re a good family,’ Mrs McConnell reproved her husband gently, ‘never miss Mass on Sundays.’

  ‘Look down their long noses at the likes of us,’ McConnell muttered.

  But Rose admired their long noses, especially that of Florrie’s brother, William, who was an apprentice at the rolling mill. She did not like to admit that her devout attendance over the summer might have something to do with William. But she loved to kneel in the quiet of the large church, smelling of candles and incense, and watch the light glinting on the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. While outside there was grey drabness and dirt, inside was richness and colour and cleanliness.

  William was fair-haired and red-cheeked, with a lusty singing voice that Rose could have listened to for hours. They had hardly exchanged more than a dozen words in the past year, but until the strike, he had worked punishing hours at the steel mill. Florrie told her that sometimes he would work from six in the morning until midnight, instead of the ten-hour shift he was supposed to.

  But when the rash of strikes for a nine-hour day broke out in May, William was often to be seen around St Bede’s church, doing small repair jobs. Rose did not know why she should suddenly have become interested in boys, but they occupied her thoughts more and more. At the same time, she could feel her body changing, her hips and breasts swelling. Last year, she had alarmed her sisters by bleeding in the bed, and their screams had brought their mother rushing in panic. But her mother had declared she was not dying and should expect the same every month.

  ‘It’s the lot of womenfolk,’ was all the explanation Rose was given. ‘And I can see we’ll have to widen that bodice,’ her mother had added, giving her an appraising look. At times Rose felt dizzy and sick at the pace she was changing, and soon she was wearing old dresses of her mother’s that she tried to make less drab with Florrie’s cast-off ribbon.

  As the summer wore on with no sign of the dispute with the Tyneside bosses being resolved, Rose offered to help out in the soup kitchen set up by the youthful, more liberal-minded Father O’Brien, to help the hard-up striking families.

  One day William caught her staring at him. Rose had detoured through the church to fetch water in the hopes of seeing him. To her delight he was there, busily occupied as usual, content in his own company. His fair head and strong upper body were bathed in muted sunlight as he bent to the task of mending a chair. He looked like an angel. William sensed her presence and looked up, his large blue eyes focusing on her in the shadows. Rose’s heart thumped like a drum and she had to stop herself crying out at the shock of his beauty.

  He blushed, then gave her a quick bashful smile before carrying on with his work. It was scant encouragement and the moment was over in seconds, but Rose felt a thrill of excitement surge through her that lifted her step and made her smile at everyone she met for the rest of the day.

  But the next day when she hurried to the church after selling her basket of vegetables, there was no sign of William. She struggled to hide her disappointment. It was not until Mass on Sunday that she caught a glimpse of him again, by which time she felt sick with anticipation. Rose gazed at his handsome face. He seemed so lively and animated when singing, she found it hard to believe he was normally so shy and tongue-tied. Florrie said her brother was very devout and had once wanted to train for the priesthood.

  As the summer wore on, Rose measured the time in William days. On ones that she saw him, she felt full of energy and a lightness of heart. But on days when she caught no glimpse of his boyish good looks, she was irritable and sullen and snapped at her sisters. After a few weeks, he would nod to her as they passed and give her one of his quick smiles that made her skittish as a kitten.

  The numbers using the soup kitchen were growing daily. The millers and bakers in the town were refusing to give the strikers credit and children were falling sick with summer fevers in larger numbers than usual.

  Rose felt detached from the tension at home, her parents worrying over business. Neither did the increasing hardship around the town dampen her spirits. Whenever she felt fear for the future, one passing look or smile from William was enough to fill her with giddy optimism that soon all would be well. She ignored her father’s criticism that she was spending too much time at St Bede’s and not enough looking for custom.

  ‘You’ve turned holy all of a sudden, Rose Ann,’ her fa
ther grumbled, throwing her a suspicious glance. ‘Are you thinking of becoming a nun?’

  Rose’s sisters giggled at the idea, but her mother defended her.

  ‘You and Father Boyle should be happy with that,’ she snorted. ‘Our Rose is a good lass.’ Yet she eyed her eldest daughter’s reddening cheeks and pondered on the reason.

  Rose did not care if her mother guessed her motive for spending so much time at St Bede’s. It was as if she were smitten with a summer fever over which she had no control. Her body was transforming into a woman’s before her very eyes and with it came womanly feelings - thoughts of William that plagued her and left her restless.

  She would wake in a sweat on hot June nights next to her sleeping sisters and throw off the covers, her nightgown damp against her body. If she dreamt of him, she would hug herself in the warm afterglow of her dream and try to recapture it. On other occasions she would wake, gasping in alarm for air, wondering why she should feel such panic. Then she would remember that it was John McMullen’s surly, brooding face and piercing green eyes that had forced their way into her dreams. Her hammering heart would calm down as the relief of being awake engulfed her.

  She had no idea why she should be dreaming of John, or even thinking of him at all. Rose had not set eyes on him for months. It was distasteful to think of him in the same way as William. He was everything that the good-natured, quiet, diligent William was not. Rose pushed uncomfortable thoughts of John from her mind and concentrated on trying to get William to notice her more. She wondered whether she should confide in Florrie and ask for her help. But Florrie was working long hours in the shop to supplement the Fawcetts’ meagre strike pay and she was never alone when they met at church.

  Then one day at St Bede’s, her hair tousled from the steam of cooking and her apron full of vegetable peelings, Rose was confounded by William saying, ‘You’re doing a grand job.’ By the time she realised he must be speaking to her and not to the statue of the Virgin Mary behind, he had passed on and the moment to reply was lost. Rose was nearly in a frenzy of frustration at the missed opportunity. She had daydreamed for weeks of what she would say if he ever stopped to speak to her, and now it had happened she had stood and stared at him like a simpleton. That’s probably what the Fawcetts thought of her anyway. Rose had never felt her lack of education or social graces so keenly as at that moment. She wished she had had an ounce of the schooling Florrie had been given.