Katy's Men

by Irene Carr

  Annie lived in a neat terraced house in the next street from Ballard’s yard. She settled Louise in one armchair and Katy in another, made tea then listened as Katy told her of her life after leaving Ashleigh’s. She told the truth to Annie, that she had been seduced and abandoned by Louise’s father, Howard Ross. ‘But I’ve told other people, Mrs Gates and Matt, that my husband is a sailor at sea.’

  Annie could understand that, and said, ‘I don’t blame you. Folks can be cruel to a lass that’s been let down like you were. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.’

  Katy went on with her story and when she finished, Annie said softly, ‘You’ve had a hard time, lass. And now you’re working for this Matt Ballard. I’ve seen him about, a big, dark lad, driving the lorry him and Joe Docherty had, and nowadays with the horse and cart.’ Her face turned a little redder as she asked, ‘Don’t be angry, but just so I know and don’t put my foot in it — are you and him . .

  Katy shook her head firmly, ‘No. It’s strictly a business arrangement. I don’t feel anything for him except gratitude because he took in me and Louise. He didn’t want to do it because he had enough trouble already, but he did. And he’s engaged to a girl who lives over the bridge in the town and he’s off there whenever he has some spare time —though that’s not often. And after my experiences . . She stopped there, not wanting to list them, to probe the wounds: Barney, Charles Ashleigh — though it had not been his fault but his mother’s — Howard, Ivor Spargo. She finished, ‘Never again.’

  Annie sighed. ‘Nobody could blame you. Well, I hope the pair of you get on and have better luck.’ Then Annie added drily, ‘Mind, my old granny had a saying I found was true: “You spend your life in a bottle. You climb up as far as the cork then slide down again.” Still,’ and here she looked around her at the cosy room, ‘I can’t complain. Ashleigh’s paid me a fair wage and they’ve given me a pension which keeps me comfortable.’ Then she realised she had brought up the name of the Ashleighs again, and apologised, ‘I’m sorry, lass. I didn’t want to bring back unhappy memories.’

  Katy shook her head, smiling. ‘It’s all forgotten now. I’m well over it.’ She was sure of that now.

  They talked for an hour or more and only stopped when Katy glanced up at the clock on Annie’s sideboard and jumped to her feet: ‘I have to get back; Bea will be in for something to eat.’ Because all the pupils at the National School walked home for lunch every day.

  Annie said with regret, ‘I’m sorry you have to go. It’s been lovely talking to you. Will you pop in again?’

  Katy planted a kiss on her cheek. Of course I will. And you must come round to the yard and see us.’

  So their friendship was revived. It was not long before Annie offered hopefully, ‘I’ll look after those two little lasses you’ve got if ever you’re busy.’

  And Katy took her up on that, though warning, ‘You’re not to spoil them, mind,’ but guessing correctly that Annie would do just that. The two girls loved her.

  Katy and Annie met and talked often — and later it did not stop at talk. Annie was a member of a dancing club. She told Katy, grinning, ‘It’s one way I can get my hands on a man.’

  Katy asked, ‘Is there one in particular?’

  ‘Nor Annie laughed at that. ‘I’m not sure whether they’re after me or my pension. I think I’ll stay single.’

  So at the weekends, while Matt pursued Fleur, Annie taught Katy all the latest steps she had learned at the club: jazz, ragtime, foxtrot . . . They practised in the office where there was more floor space, to the squeaky rhythm of Annie’s wind-up gramophone with its big horn. She had bought it at Palmer’s store for thirty-five shillings — in cash, because Annie said, ‘I don’t hold wi’ this hire purchase.’ She and Katy usually wound up convulsed with laughter, though Annie said approvingly, ‘You’re a natural dancer.’

  Meanwhile, when Katy visited the shops in Dundas Street, she gently persuaded one or two to display her handbills. Eventually she had an advertisement for Matt’s services in most of the shops. And it was as she left the last, the baker, that a voice said harshly, ‘So that’s where you are now.’

  Katy turned and saw a horse and cart at the kerb and Ivor Spargo seated on the front of it. He was reading the handbill being put up in the window of the baker’s shop. His gaze slid round to Katy and he jumped down from the cart and taunted her, ‘I saw you passing that over and I wondered what you were up to now. You’re dafter than I thought, working for Ballard. A one-man firm will get nowhere. Twenty years from now he’ll still be working all hours, or scratching about looking for jobs with his horse and cart.’

  Katy said nothing, but her gaze went from Ivor to dwell on his horse and cart. He saw the unspoken comment and flared, ‘You needn’t look like that! I’m only driving this for a few small jobs that we get. Most o’ the time I’m in the office or out on one o’ the lorries.’

  Katy said coolly, ‘Helping the driver.’

  That stung because Katy had guessed correctly. Ivor blustered, ‘I’ll be driving meself before long! You’ll see! And don’t you answer me back! Any more of your lip and I’ll tell Ballard and the people around here what sort you are!’

  Katy returned him look for look: ‘Two can play at that game. How long would you last here, or across the river in Sunderland, if I opened my mouth about you?’

  Ivor glared his fury. He spat in frustration but said nothing, climbed back onto the cart and lashed the horse into a frightened canter. The cart careered off down the street and Katy drew a shuddering breath of relief. But the memory of the confrontation stayed with her and she lay wakeful that night, recalling not the happy times with Annie Scanlon but the meeting with Ivor. When she finally slept she threshed restlessly with bad dreams where she frantically climbed the inside of a glass bottle held by a jeering Ivor Spargo.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MONKWEARMOUTH. JUNE 1911.

  ‘Oh, my God’ A woman screamed. People passing by on both sides of the road scattered with shouts of: ‘Look out! He’s down!’ The horse had skidded and now fell, hooves flailing, whinnying in panic.

  Matt leapt down from his seat on the cart, instinctively certain that disaster had struck, not in the ice and snow of winter when such accidents to horses were commonplace, but in high summer. Not on a night of fog and rain but in the bright light of mid-morning. The sun was hot on his back and his shirtsleeves were rolled up above the elbows. He ran to the horse’s head and knelt by him, stroking his neck, looking into his frightened eyes and speaking softly as if to a hurt child. ‘There now, Sergeant. Good boy. You’ll be all right.’ But Matt knew Sergeant O’Malley would not be all right.

  He was aware of the ring of curious but sympathetic spectators gathered around the cart and the fallen horse. He heard the murmurs of: ‘What a shame.’ And: ‘Poor thing.’ There was one face in the crowd which was familiar, one face which was smiling, gloating. Matt recognised Ivor Spargo.

  Katy ran from the office to meet Matt as he strode up the yard from the gate. ‘Matt! What’s wrong?’ The dust of summer rose up about his boots and he carried the Sergeant’s collar and harness over his shoulder. He stepped past her into the office, threw his burden onto the counter then slumped down in the swivel chair. He looked up at her and said heavily, ‘He’s dead.’ And when she put a hand to her mouth he added, ‘He fell. We were coming off the bridge and down Charles Street when he slipped. We’ve been up and down there hundreds of times without any trouble. We’ve done it in the winter with the ice like a skating rink, but today his legs went from under him and he — I heard it break. I had to have him put down.’

  Oh, Matt!’ Katy laid a hand on his shoulder, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She felt the tears on her face and wiped them away with the back of her hand. ‘Poor old Sergeant O’Malley.’

  They mourned him all that day, as a friend or one of the family. Beatrice was grief-stricken with big tears rolling down her pink cheeks. A coal merchant, eyes and mouth white and pink
in his black face, brought back the cart, drawn by one of his horses. He refused payment: ‘No, hinny, not after your bad luck.’

  Katy helped Matt as he carefully cleaned the harness and hung it, gleaming, on a nail in the stable. They never mentioned the fear lurking at the backs of their minds.

  It was the next morning when Matt put it into words: ‘If I can’t get another horse somehow, I’m done for.’

  Katy corrected him: ‘We’re done for.’ Because this was her home now. Where would she go if Matt failed?

  He nodded acceptance of that: ‘True. I’m sorry. I expect that’s what Spargo was thinking, that we were finished.’

  Spargo?’ Katy questioned.

  Matt nodded, ‘Aye. He was there and enjoying it, laughing. He would have laughed on the other side of his face if I hadn’t been busy with the Sergeant.’ He grimaced, then turned it into a grin, ‘But we’re not finished yet. I’m going to go out and get a job, try to save enough to buy another horse.’

  Katy smiled at him but knew it would not be easy. She remembered Annie’s talk of living in a bottle. Matt had wanted to make a success of this business. Then she admitted to herself, So do I.

  Matt pulled on his coat and started out. Katy sent Beatrice off to school and then set off for the shops with Louise in her pram. As she walked out between the gates Ivor Spargo said, ‘There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.’ Katy jerked around, startled, and saw his cart pulled up to one side of the gateway so it was out of sight of the office. Ivor sat on the front, smirking at her. She turned away and set off along the pavement, heading for Dundas Street. A moment later the horse walked past her, then Ivor, sitting on the cart on her side, so that he looked down on her set face.

  He jeered, ‘Off out to look for another job?’ And when Katy did not answer: ‘You’ll be wanting one. Ballard’s horse broke a leg yesterday.’ Katy walked faster but he flipped the reins and the horse quickened its pace. A second or two later Ivor was abreast of her again. He boasted, ‘I’ll be driving a lorry before long. Me dad says he’ll let me have one. I’ll look you up any time I’ve got a job around here. You just remember, us Spargos have two yards, one here and another in Yorkshire and they’ll both come to me one day. So when Ballard goes broke and gives you the sack, I might offer you something.’ He laughed coarsely.

  Katy let go of the pram with one hand and whacked the horse across its broad rump, yelling, Yarrh! It lunged forward and broke into a wild gallop. Ivor, caught unprepared, fell back over the seat into the cart, his legs in the air. Horse and cart careered down the road until he managed to get to his knees, haul on the reins and halt the equipage.

  He was fifty yards away as Katy turned into Dundas Street, but he shook his fist and shouted, ‘You’ll be sorry for that!’

  Ivor drove back to the Spargo yard, nursing his humiliation and raging. The idea came to him as he crossed the bridge and saw the train to Newcastle thundering across the railway bridge running parallel to that which carried the road. He found Arthur Spargo at the yard and demanded of him, ‘That feller Barney Merrick, Katy’s father, have you still got the letter he wrote to us?’

  Arthur asked, ‘What d’ye want with that?’

  ‘His address.’

  Arthur asked, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ And when Ivor told him, agreed, ‘Aye, it’ll serve the bitch right.’

  Katy had gone on her way, trembling with reaction, trying to soothe Louise, who had been frightened by her shout that had sent the horse galloping: ‘There now, bonny lass. There, there. All over now.’ But she did not think it was. She was sure Ivor would return, again and again. Thoughts of him haunted her through the ensuing days. She did not tell Matt of the encounter because she knew he would seek out Ivor as he had done before and this time Katy would not be there to come between them. That might mean trouble with the police. She did not want that for Matt, nor did she want him to fight her battles.

  He had found a job, working for a builder as a labourer, but he was paid by the day and could be sacked at any time without notice. Jobs were hard to get because the shipyards were in depression and many of their workers were unemployed. Katy worried about Matt. Each day, when her shopping and housework were done, she would sit in the swivel chair in the office to sew or knit. It was as if, by being there, she was keeping some semblance of life in the business, though it was only a gesture of defiance. Her daughter crawled uncertainly about the office floor, a newly learned skill. Katy always talked to the babe, telling her all the problems of her days, large and small. One day, twisting her mother’s ring on her finger, she said softly, ‘I suppose I could sell this bonny lass.’ She had been down this road before, when she had been driven to appeal to Matt for shelter. She was reluctant to part with the ring for several reasons. It was all she had of her mother — and she wanted it for Louise. In a way she regarded the ring as being held in trust for her daughter. ‘I wonder — if I pawned it? I could reclaim it later on.’

  Louise gazed up at her from solemn blue eyes and chewed at one of Beatrice’s dolls. Katy worried, ‘But suppose I never got the money to claim it back? And I’m living here as a married woman, a sort of housekeeper or nursemaid like Alice that Matt told me about, the one who worked for Joe Docherty. That’s respectable. But I have a bairn of my own so I’ve got to have a ring, otherwise I’m — what? I don’t want folks saying bad things about your mammy — and you. Besides, talk about Uncle Matt having that sort of woman in here — that would wreck his business.’ And then, the clinching argument: ‘Anyway, whatever I got for the ring, it wouldn’t pay for another horse.’ Katy sighed, ‘So it looks like I’ll just have to think of something else — and pray.’ She scooped up Louise and held her tightly. She was very frightened that she and her child would be cast out into the streets again. The old fears of being arrested for vagrancy, or being sent to the workhouse, returned.

  Matt strode into the yard at noon. Katy was watching for him and had the mid-day meal ready. He was not alone, being flanked on one side by Beatrice, holding his hand. The postman trudged on the other side, bag slung over his shoulder. Katy ran down the stairs to meet them at the office door. Matt said, ‘I was passing the school and thought I might as well wait for Bea so we could walk home together.’

  Beatrice announced, ‘Miss Williams came out to see us.’ Katy had met Miss Williams when she took Beatrice to school on her first day at the National. She had thought the teacher might be flighty out of school. Now Beatrice added, ‘She was all tee-hee.’ She simpered. ‘And saying “Yes, Mr Ballard,” and “No, Mr Ballard.” I couldn’t see anything funny about him, can you, Katy?’

  Katy glanced at Matt who looked back at her blankly and said, ‘I couldn’t see what she was giggling about. I didn’t say anything funny.’ Katy replied straight-faced, ‘No, I don’t know what she was laughing at.’ Miss Williams had obviously been taken by Matt. ‘Now run upstairs, Bea. Your dinner will be on the table in a minute.’

  The postman said, ‘Will you sign for this, please, missus? It’s a registered letter, all the way from Malta.’

  Katy took it and felt the thickness of the linen envelope and its contents. She sat down at the desk, signed the postman’s book and he went away, whistling as he crossed the yard. She knew the sender of the letter would be Winnie Teasdale, living in Malta. She had kept up her correspondence with Winnie Teasdale, though sometimes there had been gaps of several weeks, and had written to Winnie just a few weeks ago. But why registered?

  Matt said, ‘From your husband?’

  Katy jerked out of her reverie and shook her head. ‘No, it’s from an old friend in Malta — Winnie Teasdale.’

  Matt was still curious: ‘Does he write at all? I don’t remember you having a letter all the time you’ve been here.’

  ‘He writes, but I don’t see that it’s any of your business.’ Katy reacted defensively, rapidly recalling the story she had manufactured. ‘He’s always written care of the General Post Office because of the way I m
oved around and now it’s just a habit. I look in there every few days to see if there’s a letter waiting for me.’

  Matt’s brows came together in anger. He said curtly, ‘I wasn’t idly poking my nose in. I wondered if there was any trouble, if he’d thrown you over. But you’re right, it’s your business, not mine.’

  He started to turn away but Katy said quickly, ‘Matt, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I’m still a bit upset over the Sergeant.’

  Matt sighed and agreed, ‘I can understand that. I miss him. I used to talk to the old feller. I sometimes think I’d rather not buy another horse, but it’s the only way to get started again. Now if I could borrow the money to buy a lorry — but the banks would want security for that.’

  Katy said tentatively. ‘There’s been a big drop in the number of licences taken out for horse-drawn vehicles over the past year. That sounds as though people are changing to lorries instead.’

  Matt stared at her in surprise. ‘How do you know that?’

  Katy admitted, ‘I read it in your magazine — Motor Traction — the other day.’

  Matt said, ‘Well, I’m damned!’

  But then Beatrice called plaintively from above, ‘Katy? Is dinner ready now, please?’

  Katy laughed at Matt, ‘I think somebody is hungry.’ They climbed the stairs to their meal and Katy set the registered letter aside to read later — when she was alone.

  When Beatrice had gone back to school, and Matt returned to his work, Katy cleared up after the meal and then sat down in the office to read the letter. It was then she found the linen envelope was addressed in a big, sprawling hand that was not Winnie’s. She ripped it open and found it contained one sheet of paper in that same large hand and several covered with Winnie’s careful copperplate, but shaky now. There was also a deposit book issued by the Grainger Building Society in Newcastle. Katy spread the sheets on her knee and read the top one: