by Irene Carr
Katy warned or pleaded, ‘I’ll tell your mother!’
But Ivor was bolder, or hungrier for her, than he had ever been before. He fumbled at the buttons of her blouse while her fingers strove to hold him off. He said hoarsely, ‘You can tell her what you like and she can do what she likes. She’ll play hell but she won’t throw me out. And she can’t expect me to sit on my hands with a prime piece like you here.’
Katy had sat with heart thumping, not wanting to face up to this threat and hoping to talk him out of it, as she had always done before. But now she fought, shoving back the chair so it rammed into his middle. He yelped and swore and stepped back a half-pace. It was enough for Katy to squirm out of the chair and make for the door but he caught her before she reached it, his hands clamping on her shoulders. Her stretching fingers managed to slide back the bolt but then he spun her around and slammed her back against the wall. He pinned her there with one hand at her throat while the other pawed at her clothes again. She tried to reach his face with clawed fingers but could not and kicked out at him instead. He yelped again but his grip did not relax. Then the door was flung open and a hand came between Ivor and Katy to cover his face. The hand yanked him backwards, tottering on his heels, and now Katy saw it belonged to the carpenter. Howard Ross was grinning as he gripped Ivor by the throat. He still grinned as he beat Ivor mercilessly.
Until Katy cried, ‘No! Please stop!’ She hated Ivor now but this was too much for her, certainly too much for Ivor. She sat down shakily, picked up her shawl from the back of the chair and used it to cover her torn blouse. She pushed at her hair that had fallen down under Ivor’s attack and wiped at her face with a scrap of handkerchief.
Howard, big and blond, looked round at her. ‘Stop? I saw what he was trying to do. He deserves a hiding.’ ‘That’s enough.’ Katy averted her eyes from Ivor.
Howard shrugged, ‘If you say so.’ He dragged Ivor out of the office and dropped him to sit on the ground with his back to the wall of the office. Katy saw from the window that Howard’s little trap, varnish gleaming, stood outside with his pony waiting patiently between the shafts. Howard re-entered the office and glanced at Katy: ‘You’d better go and tidy yourself.’
Katy realised her hair had come down and her blouse was torn. She was shaking.
She nodded and started towards the house, putting up her hair with trembling hands. Howard took his bag of tools from the trap and followed her round to the kitchen door. Cook and Rita were working in the kitchen and Katy explained to them, ‘It’s the carpenter.’ She contrived to conceal the tear in her blouse and kept her voice under control. But the two women were more interested in the man. Katy led Howard through to the hall then she paused to say, grateful but embarrassed, ‘Thank you.’ Because if he had not come along . . .
He dropped his toolbag and smiled at her, ‘Glad to be able to help you, miss.’
Katy climbed the back stairs to her bleak little room. After washing and changing she sat in her room, trying to put thoughts of her ordeal out of her mind. When she had regained her composure to some extent she went back to her desk, though not without first looking for Ivor, by or in the office, but he was not to be seen. She started work but worried at his absence. When Howard came out of the house and put his tools back in the trap she called to him, ‘I haven’t seen Ivor. I’m wondering if he is all right.’
Howard grinned at her, ‘Don’t worry about him. He came through the hall a while back, just a few minutes after us. He didn’t look at me and crawled up the stairs.’
‘Oh! Thank you,’ said Katy, relieved. She was grateful to him, thought he had a nice smile and was good-looking.
Howard lounged in the doorway of the office and asked, ‘When do you have an evening free?’
Katy was unprepared for the question and stumbled over her reply: ‘Well, any — well, it depends, sometimes I have to work . .’ ; That was when the men were paid; Katy worked out what was due to each man.
Howard prompted, ‘What about tomorrow? There’s some new pictures on at the Pavilion.’
Katy thought excitedly, Pictures! The Pavilion was the theatre in Sans Street which showed silent films. Katy had seen an advertisement in the Echo that said it was screening A Child’s Faith and other films plus a succession of comics. Seats were priced at twopence, threepence and fourpence. Katy, blushing and confused, breathed, ‘Yes, thank you.’ So it was arranged.
When Ivor appeared at dinner that evening his face was swollen and bruised. Vera demanded, ‘What happened to you?’
Ivor mumbled, ‘I got into a fight. I won but he was bigger than me and it took me all my time.’ He did not look at Katy then and she said nothing, but later he shot her a glance of hatred. And afterwards he managed to mutter to her, so no one else could hear, ‘I’ll pay you back one day.’
But Katy only put that down as his usual bluster. Besides, she was filled with excitement at this new love affair, because it was already that to her. She had been lonely too long and now she snatched at this chance of affection. She watched the moving pictures with Howard, stemmed tears at A Child’s Faith and laughed at the comics. Afterwards they went to a public house, a new experience for Katy and one she was unsure of, but she trusted Howard. They sat in the saloon bar and it was warm and cheerful. The people in there were shopkeepers or shipyard foremen and the like and they spent lavishly to Katy’s mind. She thought that Howard must make a lot more money than the usual carpenter. And at the end of the evening he asked, ‘Can I see you again?’
Katy answered, simply and happily, ‘Yes, please.’ Vera soon challenged Katy: ‘You’re going out a lot, Miss. What are you up to?’
‘Just walking, after sitting in that office all day. Or going to the pictures.’ Katy met Vera’s gaze defiantly. That was not the whole truth but it was not a lie, either.
‘It’s more likely you’re meeting some feller.’ And Vera warned, ‘I won’t stand for followers, remember.’
‘I remember, Mrs Spargo.’
Vera left it there. She did not want to catch Katy breaking her rules and have to sack her because the girl would be hard to replace — and expensive.
Katy cannily avoided trouble by always meeting Howard a block or two away from Spargo’s yard. He took her out several times before he kissed her and then she was agreeable. She was happy to stroll with her arm through his and on a fine weekend they would walk in Mowbray Park. One night they went to a music hall and there was a German band playing. During an interval Howard fell into conversation with two of the bandsmen, portly men in their fifties with big, upswept moustaches and frogged jackets. Afterwards Katy said, ‘You seemed to speak their language as well as they did.’
He laughed at her, ‘I do. My father is English but my mother is German. They haven’t lived together for twenty years. Mother went back to Bremen and brought me up there but I came here a lot for holidays with my father. I’m as English as they come.’
Katy asked, trying not to sound afraid, ‘Will you be going back to Germany soon?’
‘No,’ Howard shook his head definitely. ‘I came over about five years ago and haven’t been back since. I like it over here.’ And the police in Bremen were becoming too attentive, but he would not tell her that.
On another evening, when he was without Katy, he sat in a very different pub down by the river. The drinkers were shabby or ragged and unwashed, shifty-eyed, or coldly staring. Howard sat alone and unworried because he knew the place, and its customers knew him too well to cross him. Three times during the evening a girl came to sit beside him, a different one each time but all were flashily dressed and heavily made up. They all slipped money into his palm and he went back to his rooms, which were decidedly lavish for a carpenter, a richer man than he had left them. The girls went on to ply their trade, knowing they had his protection.
He had plans for Katy.
Chapter Nine
SUNDERLAND. MARCH 1910.
‘I don’t think that would be right.’ Katy blus
hed and lowered her gaze. Howard had courted her ardently over Christmas and into the New Year. Now, for the first time, he had invited her to his rooms.
He laughed at her, ‘You’re one of those old-fashioned girls!’ But then he squeezed her hand: ‘I love you for it.’
Katy loved him. It was three years since Charles Ashleigh had gone out of her life. Remembering him now brought no pain and there was only a faint residue of bitterness at the way she had been treated by his family.
A week or so later, as she and Howard sat over tea in a café on a Sunday afternoon, he proposed and Katy accepted him and the ring he gave her. As he walked her home towards Spargo’s yard she asked, her head full of dreams, ‘When shall we get married?’
‘Next year, I think,’ Howard answered. ‘I want to save some more money, enough to rent a decent house and furnish it. We don’t want to start our married life in furnished rooms. That’s all very well for a bachelor but not as a home for a married couple.’
A home — for a married couple. Katy shed tears of happiness as she lay in her little room that was cold and cheerless. Howard was content that his plans were coming to fruition.
The next time he invited her to his rooms she hesitated but agreed, because wasn’t she his fiancée now? She found he lived in a big house near West Park, renting a whole floor of it. He first took her in one evening after they had been to a matinee at the Empire theatre. The rooms were comfortably furnished and they settled down on a chesterfield before a good fire burning in the grate. It was then he seduced her. Katy was shy and reluctant at first but then yielded to him and to her passion, abandoned and trusting in him.
That was the only time. Alone in her own bed that night, away from temptation, she remembered her mother’s advice, that men would pursue her, and the warning: ‘Look out for yourself’. She wondered now if she had been reckless, had cheapened herself. She decided to be more careful in future, but that was not easy. When Howard demanded her body she soon ran out of excuses and was a poor liar anyway. She had to tell him, pleading, ‘I don’t want to, not until we’re married.’ He wheedled and cajoled but she would not go back to his rooms again. This had never happened to Howard before, so it took him some time to realise he had made a mistake and this
girl would go no further down the path he had planned for her. She would never sell herself for money and so was useless to him.
His attentions faded as spring came and then gave way to summer. Whereas he had taken her out two or three times a week, now it was only once, on a Saturday or Sunday. It was on such a sunny day in June, as they walked in the park, that she told him she was pregnant.
He stopped dead in his tracks and swore, ‘Aw, bloody hell!’ He glared at her. Katy’s arm had been through his but now he disengaged it. ‘Are you saying it’s mine?’
Katy flinched as if slapped, shocked by the implication. ‘There’s never been anyone but you.’
He saw the tears brimming in her eyes and noticed now that she was pale, her mouth drooping. Strollers were passing by all the time and he did not want a scene there. He took her arm again, walked her on and soothed her with his head close to hers, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry. Of course I’m the father.’
Katy said, ‘We’ll have to get married soon, now. So people won’t talk when the baby comes.’
‘I’ll get a ring next week and make the arrangements on Saturday.’ He escorted her back to a street corner out of sight of Spargo’s yard, where he repeated the assurance and promised, ‘I’ll meet you on the corner here.’ Then he kissed her and left her.
On the Saturday Katy waited for him in vain. She sought him at his rooms but only found his landlady, a sour spinster who eyed Katy with disapproval. ‘Mr Ross? I don’t know where he’s gone. He gave me notice and there was no rent owing because he was a very good payer. He didn’t leave an address, just packed up and went. That would be on Wednesday.’
Howard had boarded a train then and taken his girls with him.
Katy walked dazedly back to her little room in the Spargo house. Only now did she see how little she really knew about Howard. While he had told her about his background in general terms and she knew his mother lived in Bremen, she did not know where he had lived in England, apart from the rooms in Sunderland. She assumed he had been at home with his father, but where? On several occasions, when Katy had talked of her years in Newcastle, he had shown a familiar knowledge of the city and said that he hailed from there, but he had not been specific. Katy would not find him there without an address. The police would not help because he had broken no law. It seemed that, after all the time they had spent together and their lovemaking, she only knew his name. In truth, she did not know that either. He had taken the name Howard Ross from a newspaper.
Katy asked herself despairingly, what was she to do now? She was to have a child, unless— She had heard of abortions, carried out bloodily in backstreet rooms by boozy, dirty old women. She shrank from that. She would bear the child. Without a husband she would be regarded as a woman of loose morals, and her child would be labelled a bastard. She shuddered at the thought. She would not allow that to happen, would find a way round it, somehow.
But now she could think of nothing, save to go on and see what the morrow might bring. She sat in the darkness at the window of her room close under the roof, unable to sleep for thoughts of what might lie ahead for her.
Heartbroken, she knew she would never trust a man again.
*
It was on that same Saturday that Matt escorted Fleur Ecclestone to a summer ball. As they whirled around the floor in a waltz he was conscious that a number of male eyes followed Fleur. She wore a ball-gown with lace insertions so that it floated about her. Her gloves were long and white, she carried a fan and flashed a brilliant smile at Matt from behind it, ‘Are you enjoying yourself’
He responded gallantly, ‘Why shouldn’t I, with the prettiest girl in the room?’ He meant it, was not one to pay empty compliments.
‘Oh, really, Matt, you do say the nicest things,’ Fleur replied coyly. She was encouraging him as much as she could but in fact it was not needed, because Matt had made up his mind.
They were at the ball as a celebration. Only that week, Joe Docherty had called Matt into his office at the yard and told him, ‘I’m going to make you a partner. It seems to me to be only fair. You’re doing nearly all the outside work and there’s no sign of me getting well enough to help you.’ That was true; Joe was even thinner and spent more time in his bed than before. He said, ‘You’ll still draw your wage as usual, but after the end of the year you’ll share in the profits.’
Matt could hardly believe his good luck. To be a partner in a firm like this while still only in his twenties! ‘Thanks, Joe. That’s generous of you because I still don’t know much about this business.’ He pointed to the books on the desk.
Oh, that!’ Joe waved a careless hand. ‘Mebbe you don’t but you know plenty about running lorries. I’ll teach you the office side later on.’ Joe laughed, coughed and took a bottle and glasses from a cupboard as he was still coughing. ‘Let’s have a drink to celebrate.’
Matt grinned, ‘For your chest.’
Because that was what Joe said when he drank during the day: ‘It’s good for my chest.’
Now he coughed, laughed and coughed again, then wheezed, ‘Aye.’ They clinked glasses and he swallowed a mouthful of Scotch whisky. ‘That’s better, see?’
They grinned at each other, old friends.
Matt had told Fleur that he was now a partner and she had been delighted. She had also decided that it was time to secure her advantage with him and so she had set out to charm him. But she did not have to try hard or long. As they sat out one dance in the garden under Chinese lanterns, he proposed. After simulated surprise and confusion Fleur accepted him. As they drove home in a cab she teased, ‘I’ve never seen this yard of yours. It’s over the bridge, on the other side of the river, in Monkwearmouth, isn’t it?’
�
�I’ll take you to see it,’ Matt promised, and on the Sunday a week later he did so.
He fetched her in a cab and it rattled through the streets of terraced houses down to the river, with children running barefoot alongside. Fleur looked askance at the yard under the looming shipyard cranes as he unlocked the gates with their lettering: J. Docherty. Haulier. Fleur read the legend and asked, ‘Shouldn’t it be Ballard and Docherty?’
Matt shrugged, ‘There’s plenty of time to get that changed. It should be Docherty and Ballard, really. This was Joe’s business to start with.’
‘Ballard and Docherty sounds better.’ And Fleur decided that was what she would call the firm when she was asked: ‘My husband? He’s a partner in Ballard and Docherty.’
She looked at the yard and the office, dusty and untidy, then pointed to the stairs. ‘And what lies up there?’
‘An empty flat.’ Matt shrugged, ‘It hasn’t been used for years.’
It would not be used by Fleur, she was sure of that. She stared uncomprehendingly at the Dennis and said vaguely, ‘It looks nice and clean.’
Matt said with pride, ‘I wash her off and service her every week. She runs beautifully.’
Fleur smiled brightly, ‘I’m sure it does.’ And asked, ‘Why do you call it “she”? It sounds silly. It’s not a person, just a lorry.’
Matt shrugged, irritated. He could not tell her he was fond of the Dennis. Instead he said, ‘Just habit.’
Fleur had seen enough. She was sure this man was on his way up and she would marry him when it suited her.
But this place where he made his fortune could remain his domain; she wanted none of it. She said faintly, ‘I’ve got a headache. Do you think you could take me somewhere for tea?’