For my family.
Infinitely precious . . .
Contents
PART ONE
Two Families, 1925
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
PART TWO
Along Came a Spider, 1928
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
PART THREE
Rising from the Ashes, 1928
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
PART FOUR
The Fishmonger’s Wife, 1929
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
PART FIVE
We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches, 1939
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
PART SIX
Greater Love Hath No Man . . ., June 1940
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
PART ONE
Two Families
1925
Chapter One
She wasn’t ready to die. It was too soon. Death should come when you were resigned to it, when the pull of earthly ties had loosened their hold on the heart. That was the right order of things, the natural progression, but she grew weaker every day. Sometimes she’d swear the Grim Reaper himself was at her elbow.
Raising herself a little in the narrow iron bed in which she was lying, Agnes Fallow waited a moment for the dizziness in her head that the movement had caused to subside before she said, ‘Put the kettle on, lass, and we’ll have a cup of tea before they’re back from school, shall we?’
Her daughter, who had just finished skimming the layer of froth from a scrag of mutton before adding the rice and mixed vegetables and putting the pan on the hob again, turned and smiled at her. ‘All right, Mam.’
It was a beautiful smile. Lucy was beautiful. Agnes sank back against the lumpy flock-filled pillows, closing her tired eyes. Every day she thanked God for her Lucy. It wasn’t just that her oldest daughter was the only one of her brood to take after her, with her mass of golden-brown curls and deep-blue eyes, but Lucy was as kind as she was bonny. Look how the bairn had taken herself off across the bridge into Bishopwearmouth and bought that roll of material from the Old Market a couple of months ago. She’d got the lads to fix it up as a curtain, which could be pulled across the corner of the kitchen to hide her bed when she needed to use the chamber pot. None of the others had thought of that when she’d finally been unable to get outside to the privy, only her Lucy.
Once the tea was mashed Lucy brought a cup to her mother, but seeing that she appeared to have fallen asleep, she stood looking down at her.
Her mam was thinner; her body barely made a mound under the blankets. As always when the fear came, Lucy told herself her mother would turn the corner soon. That’s what Dr Pearson had said the last time he’d called, and he should know. Rousing herself, she bent and gently touched her mother’s shoulder, saying softly, ‘Have a sup tea, Mam. It’ll do you good.’
‘What?’ Agnes’s eyes opened and stared for a moment before she blinked. ‘Oh aye. I must have dozed off for a minute.’
Without being asked, Lucy helped her mother sit up and positioned the pillow behind her. The worn winceyette nightdress did little to conceal the way Agnes’s bones protruded against the skin covering them, the emaciated frame so frail that sick dread rose again. ‘Can you eat something, Mam? A biscuit to dip in your tea?’
Agnes shook her head, the hair that had once been as rich and shiny as Lucy’s now wispy and brittle. Pulling tighter the shawl Lucy had placed round her shoulders, she took the cup her daughter was proffering and shakily raised it to her blue-tinged lips. It felt too heavy to hold.
‘I’ve put a spoonful of sugar in it. Sugar’s good for you.’ Lucy sat down on the edge of the bed with her own tea. Moments like this with her mam were rare and to be treasured. From six o’clock in the morning, when she dragged herself out of the bed she shared with her sisters – eight-year-old Ruby and the twins, Flora and Bess, who’d just turned two – she toiled without ceasing. After feeling her way downstairs in the dark she would light the oil lamp on the kitchen table and then persuade the fire in the range into a blaze, before setting the big pan of porridge, which she had left soaking overnight ready for breakfast, on the hob. It was always nice and warm in the kitchen, unlike the bedrooms, which were icy. After boiling the water in the heavy black kettle, she helped her mother wash her face and hands and tidy her hair. Then she made the first pot of tea of the day. Once it was mashed, she gave her mother a cup and took one through to her father, who slept in the big brass bed in the front room, which he’d shared with her mother until she had been taken sick eighteen months ago. Something to do with her heart, the doctor said. It had been then that they’d bought the narrow iron bed for the kitchen, where – in her mam’s own words – her mother could keep an eye on things till she felt better. But she never had felt better.
By the time her two older brothers, Ernie, who was eighteen, and Donald, two years younger, came downstairs and joined their father at the kitchen table, their breakfast was ready and their bait tins full. The menfolk left for Thompson’s shipyard at the end of the street as the buzzer started blowing at seven-thirty and were always through the gates before it stopped. It was something her father and the lads prided themselves on.
Then she would rouse five-year-old John from the bed he shared with his brothers and chivvy Ruby into helping her dress the twins. They wriggled like eels and more often than not earned themselves a slap or two from the impatient Ruby. Another round of breakfasts, followed by John and Ruby being packed off to school, and the day proper began; days of washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning like the ones before them, winter and summer the same.
And she didn’t mind that, or the fact she often fell into bed too tired to undress, and had virtually had no schooling since her mam was took bad – she didn’t mind any of it as long as her mam got well. On impulse, Lucy reached out her hand and touched her mother’s, an unusual show of affection in a family that was not demonstrative.
Agnes smiled. For a moment the warmth in Lucy’s deep-blue eyes banished the gnawing anxiety about how her family would cope once she was gone. If only there’d been grandparents or an aunt or uncle to lend a hand, but she and Walter had both been orphaned as babies. He’d been brought up in a workhouse Gateshead way, and she in the one near Bishopwearmouth Cemetery. It had been one of the things that had drawn them together when they’d met twenty-odd years ago one hot Sunday afternoon whilst taking a stroll in Mowbray Park, she with a girl friend and Walter with a group of lads he worked with. Sweet sixteen, she’d been.
Agnes turned her head and looked to the window as the bitter northeast wind drove icy chips of sleet rattling against the glass. It seemed so long ago now, another lifetime, but she had been bonny then and Walter had loved her. He still did love her, but a baby every year, only seven of whom had survived past their first birthday, had taken her looks and her health. She’d be thirty-seven years old in a few weeks, but she knew she looked double that. And now here was her beautiful Lucy already doing the work of a lass twice her age. She hadn’t wa
nted that for her bairn, to bear the responsibility of caring for the family when she was nowt but a child herself. And Ruby was no help. Little madam half the time, Ruby was.
Agnes sighed, her eyes closing. The familiar lethargy was taking over. Even the effort of drinking the tea was too much for her worn-out body.
Thank the good Lord they had neighbours like the Crawfords, she thought drowsily. Aaron and Enid Crawford had moved next door into one of the two-up, two-down houses in Zetland Street a week after she and Walter had tied the knot. She and Enid had hit it off right away, and when Enid’s Tom had been born seven months later, she’d stood by Enid and told any nosy parkers the baby had come early, although she’d known the truth. But it was funny, and whether it was the sins of the parents coming out in the children she didn’t know, but she’d never been able to take to Tom Crawford. Enid’s three other lads were nice enough, but her eldest had been different from the day he was born. Even as a little lad he’d had something about him which had made her flesh creep. She’d tried to discuss it once with Walter, but he’d looked at her as though she was barmy and she’d never mentioned it again. But she’d thought all the more. And now Tom was a man, a big, good-looking man, and he liked her Lucy. There’d been a day in the summer when the lass had been sitting on the back doorstep in the sun shelling peas, and Tom had stopped and talked to her over the wall. She had seen the look on his face, and her just a little bairn. But Lucy was growing up fast. Any day now she could start her monthlies.
A sense of urgency piercing the blanketing tiredness, Agnes sat up straighter. It was time to have the little chat she’d been putting off. She would have liked to have done it more gradually, a word here and there as the lass grew older, and then when Lucy got a steady lad she’d have given her an idea of what to expect on her wedding night, but she didn’t have the luxury of time. She cleared her throat. ‘Lucy, lass, I need to talk to you about – about the birds and the bees. You’re a big girl now and – and soon things will change. Do you understand what I’m saying, hinny?’
Her daughter’s blank stare was her answer.
There followed an exchange which was uncomfortable for both, but by the time the twins came hotching down the stairs on their bottoms, having woken from their afternoon nap, Lucy was better informed. And more than a little horrified at what went on after marriage. She’d known men and women were built differently of course, and she had changed John’s nappy often enough before he went into short pants to have become acquainted with male genitalia, but on the occasions when her da and the lads had their weekly bath in front of the range after bringing the old tin bath in from the scullery, she and her sisters were not allowed in the kitchen. She still didn’t quite understand how a lad’s willy went into a lass – her mam had said that happened naturally after marriage when a lass’s body became ready for it – but as it was the means of producing bairns, that must mean everyone did it. Even her own mam and da. And this monthly thing that was going to happen to her body, when she couldn’t bathe or wash her hair in case she got a chill, sounded horrible. Following her mother’s instructions she’d gone into the front room and delved into the trunk at the foot of the bed and found the wads of material that she had to pin into her drawers and wash through each day, but she’d felt like crying when she’d looked at them. Once it began, it would go on and on until she was old . . .
After changing the twins’ damp nappies and settling the little girls on the clippy mat in front of the range with their pap bottles and a couple of the oatmeal biscuits she’d made that morning, she started on the stack of ironing. Her mother was sleeping again, but this wasn’t out of the ordinary; she slept most of the time, and Dr Pearson said sleep was the best medicine. And gradually the everyday routine settled Lucy’s agitation. The kitchen was cosy and warm and outside the sleet had turned to snow, a deep November twilight enhancing the glow from the range and bringing a charm to the battered kitchen table and chairs and her father’s torn old leather armchair that they could never aspire to in the harsh light of day.
She had finished the ironing and was just adding dumplings to the mutton broth which had been slowly simmering on the hob when Ruby and John came bursting in, their cheeks and noses red. They were arguing, and as usual Ruby got in first with her side of things.
‘Tell him, our Lucy.’ Ruby stood, all melting snow and indignation, with her mittened hands on small, stocky hips. ‘He swore in front of Mrs Travis up the street, he did.’
‘Did not.’ John stuck his tongue out at his sister for good measure.
‘Ooh, you liar. Liar, liar, pants on fire.’
‘Enough!’ Lucy glanced over at the bed before drawing both children to her and sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘What did you say to Mrs Travis, John?’
Her brother, a true Fallow male with his dark straight hair and brown eyes, stared at her innocently. ‘I asked her if her cat was better. It had half its ear bitten off last week.’
‘You said’ – Ruby was incensed – ‘how was her damn cat.’
John’s gaze moved to the sister he considered the bane of his life. ‘Well, that’s what Mrs Travis calls him. That damn cat.’
Lucy tried not to smile. John was right. She had never heard their elderly neighbour of a few doors away refer to the cat which she loved to distraction, but which caused her constant and vocal grief, as anything else but ‘that damn cat’. The feline in question fought with every other moggy it came across, constantly vomited up the contents of its stomach in the house and was forever bringing half-dead mice and birds into the old woman’s bed.
Keeping her face straight with some effort, Lucy shook her head. ‘Ruby’s right. You mustn’t say “damn”, John.’
‘Why not?’ John stuck out his chin. ‘Mrs Travis does.’
‘Mrs Travis is a grown-up. It’s up to her what she says, but Mam and Da wouldn’t like you using that word.’
‘But I can when I’m grown-up?’
‘You’ll have to decide for yourself then.’
John considered this. ‘How old is grown-up?’
Lucy tweaked his snub nose. ‘You’ve got years and years to go yet, so don’t worry about it. Now the pair of you know you should leave your wet things in the scullery. Go and take off your hats and coats and leave your boots on the mat, and come and get warm in front of the fire. You can play with Flora and Bess while I get you a drink and a shive of bread and dripping, to tide you over till dinner time.’
‘I want to tell Mam I got a star in my writing book today.’ Ruby darted over to her mother’s bed before Lucy could stop her, only to turn and say, ‘Lucy? Mam’s bad.’
Lucy was at her mother’s side in a moment and she could see what had alarmed Ruby. Her mother’s eyes were open, but they seemed to have sunk into the back of her head and the deep pallor of her skin was frightening. A kind of a gurgle emerged from her throat, but when Lucy took her mother’s hand, the bony fingers held onto hers with surprising strength.
Without letting go of her mother’s hand, Lucy pushed her sister. ‘Go and get Mrs Crawford. Tell her Mam’s been took bad.’
Ruby didn’t need to be told twice.
Mrs Crawford must have been doing some baking because her hands were floury and she had her big pinny on when she hurried into the kitchen a minute or two later. Lucy had never been so glad to see someone in all her life. Standing by the bed, Enid Crawford said softly, ‘Oh, Agnes, lass. Now lie quiet and we’ll send for the quack. Don’t you fret none.’
‘Shall I go for Dr Pearson?’ whispered Lucy.
‘No, hinny, you stay with your mam. I’ll send our Jacob,’ Enid replied in like tone. A big hefty woman with a voice on her that could drop a bullock at ten paces when she was in a temper, her face was uncharacteristically tender as she stood staring down at her longtime friend. If she wasn’t mistaken, this was it, and in truth who would wish for Agnes to go on suffering? But she would miss her, and so would the little lass kneeling by the bed. The full w
eight of the family was going to fall on Lucy’s shoulders, and her only twelve, but then it had been that way for the past eighteen months or so.
Enid’s gaze rested on Lucy, taking in the gleaming golden-brown hair, tendrils of which had escaped the child’s single thick plait to curl round the small heart-shaped face.
Bonny as a summer’s day, this bairn was, and as bright as a button to boot. Lucy had always been top of her class and one night before the twins were born and Agnes had been took bad, her friend had come round bursting with pride because Lucy’s school report had said something about the child training to be a teacher when she was older. Of course that had been knocked on the head, not that it could have come to anything anyway. Whoever heard of a bairn from round these parts – especially a lass – training for something like that? Where did these teachers imagine the money was going to come from? It was all folk could do to keep body and soul together, and with the slump worsening, there were plenty who couldn’t even do that. Most of the shipyards were on short time now, and Thompson’s would be next. Everyone was just waiting for the axe to fall.
Gathering herself, Enid bent down to Agnes. ‘I’ll send our Jacob for the quack, lass, and your Lucy’ll stay with you. All right, pet? An’ I’ll take the others back with me an’ give ’em their tea.’ It was a stroke, by the look of it, and it had taken her left side; the corner of Agnes’s mouth was dragging and her left arm and hand lay still on top of the blankets.
Enid couldn’t bear to look at her friend’s agonized face another moment. Turning, she glanced to where Ruby and John, each with a twin in their small arms, were watching her, tears seeping from their eyes. ‘None of that,’ she said briskly, although for two pins she’d join them. ‘That won’t help no one. We’re going to leave your mam to have a little sleep till the doctor comes and you can help me make a round of singin’ hinnies, would you like that? An’ I’ve got a fresh pat of butter to go with ’em.’
Ruby and John’s countenances changed. If there was one thing they loved it was the little currant cakes that made a singing sound while cooking on the griddle and were delicious eaten hot, with butter on.
Dancing in the Moonlight Page 1