More Sport for our Neighbours

by Ronald McGowan

  Our new friend had waxed quite eloquent in defence of his livelihood, and I could think of no more to say than,

  “You have quite convinced me, sir. I promise you that I shall never order any but Durham coal for the rest of my life.”

  “I am happy to hear it, sir. But mark my words, the coming thing is steam. The power of steam is something quite unprecedented in all history. The nation that masters it first will master the world. I tell you, sir, that in not too many years rail ways, pulled by steam winding engines, will cover the country. A man may board a ‘train’ at London and alight at Edinburgh the same day. We may not see it, but our children will, I am convinced. Think what a different world it will be.”

  “You get visionaries like young Geordie Stephenson down at Willington,” he continued, “talk about building a ‘locomotive engine’, a sort of steam driven horse to pull their trains instead of the fixed winding engines, but I cannot see it, myself. Any such engine would be so heavy that it would have difficulty moving itself, and the prodigious quantities of coal it would consume, let alone pulling a train. No cableways are the future, believe you me.”

  I could think of nothing further to say, so I merely bowed, and we both fell silent, contemplating the awesome prospect, until we came to a halt by the waterside, where a perfectly conventional, eight-oared boat lay waiting for us.

  “All aboard the Skylark!” cried Thompson. “We’ll have you at Newcastle in two shakes now.”

  So, with barely a moment to stretch our legs, we clambered into the trim little craft, and took our places on the seats, or ‘thwarts’, as I believe I should call them, while willing hands stowed our bags under the same seats.

  I could not help staring a little, for, although the craft’s means of propulsion was conventional enough, its shape was such as I had never seen before. It was almost a perfect little Viking ship in miniature, with high-curved, sharp-pointed prow and stern, and a broad paddle on the steerboard side.

  “I see you are admiring my coble,” said Thompson. “It is a common enough design around here, but I believe not seen anywhere else in the kingdom. The local builders have been turning them out since there was a king in Bamburgh, I believe, long before the Vikings came. I find it convenient enough for these sort of jaunts. But let us be off.”

  And, without another word, he nodded to the steersman, who shouted something unintelligible at the rowers, and we pulled away from the jetty.

  Very soon, the shore receded from view, and we found ourselves alone upon the misty waters, with not a thing in sight.

  Chapter Seventeen : the Water of Tyne

  “We had best make some noise in this murk, lest we be run down by some collier with a drunken watchman,” said Thompson. “Give us a song, Geordie.”

  “Reet willingly, boss,” replied the steersman, “ and with your leave, Aa’ll give you the obvious one, since your guests winnat have hord it.”

  And he lifted up his voice, a surprisingly rich, light tenor, and began.

  At first I merely relaxed and enjoyed the music, which was a haunting, lilting melody such as is found in only the very best folk songs. But, gradually, I found that I could make out the words, and I sat back, quite fascinated.

  “Aa cannot get ower tae see me hinney,

  The watter of Tyne lies atween hor and me,

  And here Aa must sit wi’ a tear in me e’e,

  A fretting and sighing my true love tae see.

  Oh, where is the boatman? I’ll give any money,

  And thoo for thi trouble rewarded shall be,

  Tae ferry me ower the Tyne tae me hinney,

  Or scull hor back ower that wide river tae me.”

  Such vowel sounds, especially the long ones! They might have come straight from Beowulf. Those As, so painfully pure, without a trace of the southern ey-ee sound. Those Us so broad, but never quite degenerating into oos. Those er sounds, further back in the mouth than any Oxford parson, and the Is likewise, with no trace of the diphthong. And those Os so round and broad, as far removed from the southern er-oo as anyone might imagine!

  I might have been listening to the minstrel in Hrothgar’s great meadhall, Heorot.

  “Surely this is a dialect especially adopted for singing folk songs?” I enquired of Thompson.

  “Not at all,” he replied, “everyone in these parts speaks like that, save those of us, like me, who have been painfully taught to adopt the southern argot. And I only use that when addressing Southrons from beyond the Tees.”

  There were several verses more, but the Tyne is not really all that wide a river, and before the singer had finished we were pulling in alongside the quay at Newcastle.

  Chapter Eighteen : All cities have their backwaters

  The northern metropolis presented no very imposing sight at this time of day, with the lamps just a-lighting and the crowds all gone home. I dare say no new place will present its true appearance to a stranger who views it first by lamplight. Either the lighting will obscure the beauties of the noble streets, hiding wonders that might otherwise excite unstinting admiration from the traveller, or else the opposite will occur, and the dim illumination will lend everything a romantic glow, concealing the dirt and shabbiness that would be all too evident in the light of day.

  This corner of the city, at any rate, did not impress, and it struck me to wonder whether our cicerone might not have landed us at some out of the way place for reasons of his own. Further thoughts on this subject, however, were both curtailed and confirmed by the approach of the gentleman himself, his task of supervising the unloading of our bags now being complete.

  “You will have no very great notion of the city so far,” he observed. “The quayside is not the most genteel of areas, and Denton’s Wharf is now largely silted up, and only useable by the smallest of craft. All cities have their backwaters, however, and I find this one suits my purposes.

  I must make my way onwards, now, but I can scarcely leave you to your own devices in a strange city. But, tell me, do you truly have no notion of where your relations are to be found?”

  “Not in the slightest, sir, other than in Newcastle. My daughter has never yet been induced to include her direction in her letters to us, although we enquire of it every time we write to her which we do care of the regiment.”

  “You can hardly wander the streets, knocking on doors in a city of nigh on thirty thousand souls, however. But let us see, your son-in-law is an officer in the Sixty-Eighth Regiment of Foot, is he not? Your best expedient would be to enquire there. But the barracks will be locked up by now, and any stranger who showed up there after dark would find but a cold welcome. I will engage you a hackney carriage for the attempt, if you wish to make it, but, if you will be guided by me, I would advise you to put up with one more night in an inn, before presenting yourselves to Colonel Lambton in the morning, all fresh and spruce such as appeals to these military men, when I am sure that you will have more success in your appeal for assistance.”

  “I thank you for your advice, sir, which is very grateful, coming, as it does, on top of all your invaluable assistance today and hesitate to ask for any more, but can you, perhaps, recommend a suitable inn?”

  “Why as to that, sir, I believe you will finder yonder Royal Oak as good as any hereabouts. They know me there, and will not cheat you, the beds are at least clean, and no more lumpy than most, and you need have no fear of your sleep being disturbed by crowds of roistering mariners all night, for the big ships all moor further upstream, where there is deep water, and the sort of booze-kens you would expect of such an area. We get none of that here, and, indeed, they would be glad of your custom.”

  Even as he spoke, I felt the unspeakable weariness that had been building up ever since we left Garthdale, and casting my eye over the ladies, I thought I could observe a similar feeling in their demeanour.

  The way they made no more than the most token resistance to the suggestion confirmed my conjecture, and, while Mr. Thompson stepped over to engage
a man to carry our bags, we followed more slowly, while Mrs. Bennet expounded on how much better it would be to meet dear Lydia again after a good night’s sleep, when we should be able to be of use to her, rather than a trouble and what a good thing it was that she had thought of it.

  And so it went. They seemed pathetically grateful for our patronage at the inn, and swore we should have the best rooms in the house, with beds freshly aired and warmed.

  Thompson and I exchanged cards, with many expressions of gratitude on my part and as many of deprecation on his, as etiquette demanded, and we crept up to bed, to dream of speeding downhill in a magic coach with no horses.

  I cannot say that the environs of our way station looked any more prepossessing in the light of day.

  The rooms, however, had proved every bit as clean and comfortable as promised, and the service at breakfast was attentive in the extreme.

  I had been intrigued by a strange tang in the air ever since I had first awoken. It was faintly familiar, but I could not put a name to it. I had put it down to some remaining trace of tar, or some other preservative in the beams, but opening the window only served to intensify the aroma.

  I enquired of its source from mine host, as he came in person to take our orders for breakfast.

  He rattled off his reply in the broadest of local dialect, musical and staccato at the same time, and full of those same Old English vowel-sounds that had so intrigued me yesterday. He soon saw from my face, however, that this would not do, and began again, speaking slowly and clearly, as to a village idiot.

  I was saved from taking offence at this by the obvious helpfulness of his demeanour, and the realization that, in his perception, we may not have been village idiots, but we were the next best thing, namely southerners.

  “Why, ‘tis the good coal fires, sir, that serve the whole city. It is a smell we scarcely notice, save by its absence when away from home. But have you not met with it in London, sir? It goes there by the shipload every day.”

  “You are right,” I replied. “I call it to mind now. But London is not the whole of the South, you know. I have only been there but twice or thrice in my life, and the last time does not bring back any happy recollections. But I had not expected to encounter such an abundance of coal fires on a bright, summer’s day.”

  “Bless, you, sir, what else would you have us use for cooking our provender? And a summer’s day in Newcastle is not a summer’s day in London. I have been to the South, and remember how hot it can be in those parts. I served a time as a lad on a fishing smack plying down to Yarmouth after the silver darlings, and you had to be quick with your nets and your gear down there to get them back ashore before the smell made them unsaleable. But, speaking of the silver darlings, what say you to a nice caller herring, fresh from Cullercoats this morning? Or we could do you a bonny pair of kippers, straight from Craster?”

  Strange though it may be to relate, not one of us felt like wrestling with a kipper, let alone a pair, but the fresh herrings were indeed more excellent than I could ever recall tasting. Living in an inland county as we do, we tend to discount the produce of the sea which surrounds our island, from want of opportunity of trying it while truly fresh.

  This was also our first encounter with that strange form of bread known as ‘stotty cake’. This is a flat, round slab, sometimes so thin as to appear unleavened, but the bubbles inside it reveal the influence of yeast. It is a true bread, not at all sweet, like the bun it can resemble, and it is what is produced in that region when one calls for bread unless one betrays one’s origin by demanding something different.

  What intrigued me most was its name, for which I could think of no explanation. The potman was no great help. All he would say was that “you have to stot it when you make it.”

  When I asked did he mean ‘knead it’, his reply was,

  “Noah, yer dinnat need ter knead it, ‘cos yer stot it. Ye knaa, ye stot it, like a bairn stots a ball.”

  There are some routes of enquiry which experience teaches the scholar will never be productive, and I abandoned the subject in favour of the whereabouts of the headquarters of the Sixty-eighth Regiment.

  “Aah thowt they wor sent off to Spain,” was the rather disconcerting answer I received, “but Aah’ll ask the Gaffer.”

  Very soon we were joined once again by the innkeeper, speaking in his ‘addressing children, cretins, and southerners’ voice.

  “You should have asked for Lambton’s Regiment,” he said, “they still mostly call it that round here. Or the Durham Regiment, or the Durham Light Infantry, as they call it now, I believe. They were at Tynemouth Barracks, twelve miles off, at the river mouth, but the First Battalion were sent off to Spain after they changed to Light Infantry. General Trigge went with them, of course, but the Second Battalion are forming under Colonel Lambton, naturally. They are at the Keep, for now, but it has always seemed unnatural that a Durham Regiment should be quartered north of the Tyne, and I believe there is a new fort building for them at Wearmouth.”

  “Then be so good as to call for a hackney coach to take us to the Colonel,” I replied, “ and you may present your bill as soon as you like.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, sir. For a friend of Mr. Thompson’s there’ll be no charge.”

  “I would not wish to impose upon you, sir, but we only met Mr. Thompson yesterday, and we are already much indebted to him for his kindness in enabling us to continue our journey.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you the way of it, sir. Those were Donald Thompson’s own rooms you slept in last night. He pays us regular to keep those rooms for him at a moment’s notice for whenever he might chose to use them. To tell you the truth, sir, without the regular income we should have closed down long since. You see what trade there is around here since the wharf silted up. I should not like to risk losing that by charging anyone who might be considered Mr. Thompson’s guest.

  It’s very good of him to keep us going at all. When he first mentioned it, it was an offer we could not refuse. I know he likes to keep his dealings in the family, but my Bessie - Mrs. Porteus, that is – is only second cousin to his sister’s husband, for all that Uncle Don stood Godfather to our Audrey.”

  I fear the sound of that fine, old English name set me off on my speculations again. I was to encounter many more such before long, names out of Bede or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, such as are never heard in the South. Yes, there is still a part of England where, even to this day, an Audrey may be encountered walking down the city streets, perhaps arm in arm with a Hilda, or escorted by a Cuthbert or a Wilfrid.

  But brown studies would not suffice today, and we awaited but the arrival of the hackney before setting off into the city, in search of the remains of that construction which gave it its name.

  Chapter Nineteen : The Old 68th

  The ‘New Castle upon the Tyne’ must once have been considerably more extensive than the present-day remains, which consist, chiefly, of the Keep and, confusingly separated by several modern streets, a gateway, with attendant towers, in the old curtain wall. This latter is known as ‘the Black Gate’, but both edifices are quite as black as any cat, evidence of what centuries of coal fires will do, even without the great, belching mill chimneys that adorn so many northern towns.

  Our driver deposited us outside the Keep, where, he said, we should find Colonel Lambton. Having engaged him to wait for us, we passed beneath the archway, only to find our way barred by an actual sentry, with the pleasingly traditional call of “Halt, who goes there? Friend or Foe?”

  I was tempted to answer “Foe” just to see his reaction, but it does not do to rely upon the sense of humour of a military man, especially among the lower ranks, so I began to explain the friendly nature of our visit, and our need to consult with the Colonel on the whereabouts of our relative, Mr. Wickham. I had not got very far, however, when I was interrupted.

  “That’s all right, sir, I can see as how you’re a gent, and you’re obviously not French, and seeing as yo
u know Mr. Wickham, an’ all. Ask at the Orderly Office, far right door across the yard, and they’ll see if the Colonel’s free.”

  We had not got very far on this errand, however, before we were interrupted by a stentorian bellow from behind us.

  “And just what, Private Millburn, you ‘orrible little man, you, do you think you are playing at, letting all and sundry wander about the place like that?”

  “Gent’s Mr. Wickham’s father-in-law, corporal, come to see Colonel Lambton.”

  “So you says. So he says. Could be Boney’s father-in-law, come to blow the place up, for all you know.”

  “Aw, come off it, corp. He’s obviously not a Frog, nor any other kind of foreigner. Talks like a proper gent. Besides, we’re Light Infantry now. We’re supposed to use our own initiative.”

  “So we are. So we are. But what that means is, if Johnny Crapaud is shooting at you, you don’t wait for the command to present and fire, you shoots back. If you’re not being shot at, what it means is, you come and ask me, and I’ll tell you what your own initiative is, and how you use it.”