Jarrow Trilogy 03 - Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  RETURN TO JARROW

  The deeply moving and uplifting final novel in the Jarrow Trilogy

  Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Copyright © Janet MacLeod Trotter, 2004

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by MacLeod Trotter Books

  First Kindle edition: 2011

  ISBN 978-1-908359-04-9

  www.janetmacleodtrotter.com

  In memory of Mum - always with me.

  To Dad - for laughter and encouragement

  - with love and thanks.

  ***

  Janet MacLeod Trotter was brought up in the North East of England with her four brothers, by Scottish parents. She is a best-selling author of 15 novels, including the hugely popular Jarrow Trilogy, and a childhood memoir, BEATLES & CHIEFS, which was featured on BBC Radio Four. Her novel, THE HUNGRY HILLS, gained her a place on the shortlist of The Sunday Times’ Young Writers’ Award, and the TEA PLANTER’S LASS was longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel Award. A graduate of Edinburgh University, she has been editor of the Clan MacLeod Magazine, a columnist on the Newcastle Journal and has had numerous short stories published in women’s magazines. She lives in the North of England with her husband, daughter and son. Find out more about Janet and her other popular novels at: www.janetmacleodtrotter.com

  Also by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Historical:

  The Beltane Fires

  The Hungry Hills

  The Darkening Skies

  The Suffragette

  Never Stand Alone

  Chasing the Dream

  For Love & Glory

  The Jarrow Lass

  A Child of Jarrow

  A Crimson Dawn

  A Handful of Stars

  The Tea Planter’s Lass

  Mystery:

  The Vanishing of Ruth

  Teenage:

  Love Games

  Non Fiction:

  Beatles & Chiefs

  Praise for RETURN TO JARROW:

  ‘Her finest yet - a wonderfully moving, deeply emotional tale’ The Daily Record

  ‘If anyone can claim to be the new Catherine Cookson then it must surely be Janet MacLeod Trotter. Her new powerful saga of a restless, rebellious working-class girl is inspired by Cookson’s early life. And her writing, like Cookson’s, can inspire laughter and bring a tear. This is a story to burn itself into your mind.’ Northern Echo

  ‘Penmanship of the highest quality ... This is a story of warmth and despair, based on facts and places and with excellent characterisation. It is a delicate yet strongly-woven book of biography and imagination. Rich in narrative, which twists and turns on every page. It touches many raw nerves of human experience. It should satisfy both the Cookson addict and those lovers of a good story.’ The Newcastle Journal

  ‘It is powerfully and skilfully written, and keeps you interested until the end.’ Sunderland Echo

  Chapter 1

  1923 – Jarrow

  Catherine stood in the stark ante-room of the registry office, seething with anger. Her mother was about to get married. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to stop herself from shouting out, Don’t do it! Don’t do it! How can you marry Davie McDermott? He’s just a common stoker who spends all his wages on drink. He can hardly string a sentence together. And now he’s going to be family. And where am I supposed to sleep once he’s moved into your bed?

  She glared across at her mother - the woman she could never bring herself to call Mam. Kate smiled back, as if there was nothing the matter, as if they had not had one of their blazing rows just that morning.

  ‘You’ll not spoil me wedding day with your twisty face,’ Kate had snapped, half stripped in the scullery, washing herself. ‘I’ve waited for this long enough.’

  ‘Why can’t you get married by the priest in church?’ Catherine had protested for the umpteenth time. ‘It won’t be a proper marriage.’

  ‘It’s all the marriage I need. Davie doesn’t want any fuss and neither do I.’

  Catherine glanced away from her mother’s thick muscly arms and large breasts. It made her think about what Kate and Davie would be doing in the large feather bed by nightfall, the bed that she had shared with her mother for years. Tonight there would be no protective arm slung carelessly over her body, no sound of her mother’s heavy breathing next to hers. For too long she had resented the snoring and reek of whisky on Kate’s breath, but now, for the first time, Catherine was afraid of not having her there. Not that she could tell her mother in a million years.

  ‘And where am I supposed to sleep, the night?’ she asked. ‘I’m not ganin’ in the parlour with Grandda. It wouldn’t be right - and he snores worse than you do.’

  ‘You can kip on the settle - it’ll be snug in the kitchen. Don’t you remember how we used to sleep there when the house was full of lodgers - before the war when Uncle Jack was alive?’

  Kate stopped and Catherine tensed. Any mention of Jack usually reduced her mother to tears. It was nearly five years since Kate’s young half-brother had been killed in the war, but her mother still cried about it, especially when she’d had a drink or two.

  ‘I’ll stop over at Lily’s,’ Catherine declared, handing her mother a threadbare towel from a nail on the back of the door. ‘At least I’m welcome there.’

  Kate rolled her eyes. ‘It’ll not be for long,’ she promised. ‘Davie’ll be joining his ship in a week, then things’ll be the same as before.’

  ‘No they won’t, they’ll never be the same! You’ll be Mrs McDermott, and I’ll still be Kitty McMullen.’ Your bastard daughter. Catherine felt sick anger at the thought.

  ‘There’s nothing to stop you taking his name an’ all,’ Kate pointed out.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Why not? You should be grateful that I’m giving you a da at last. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not a da like him.’

  Kate took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Don’t you stick your nose in the air at the likes of Davie McDermott. He’s a good man and you’re lucky he wants to take us on. I’ve waited years to have a ring on me finger - made respectable - to hold me head up high round here. By the saints, I have, and you’re not ganin’ to spoil it!’

  ‘Well, I’ll not bother coming if you don’t want me there,’ Catherine pouted.

  Kate immediately changed tack. ‘Hinny, don’t be daft, course I want you there. We both do. Now haway and get dressed, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  That was so typical of her mother, Catherine thought with resentment: one minute scolding her like a child, the next brushing aside her concerns as if they were of no importance. But she was a child no longer; she was seventeen, with a young woman’s body and feelings.

  She watched Kate now, her face flushed under a large hat that Aunt Mary had lent her, her blue eyes lively. At forty-one, she often looked ten years older, but today her mother looked pretty in a lilac dress, her mood skittish as a girl’s.

  They had already had a drink at the house before leaving; Kate, Grandda John, Davie and cousin Maisie. There would be plenty more drinking afterwards at the Penny Whistle where Kate sometimes worked. How many times had she been sent there as a child, to fill up that hateful jug with whisky for her mother and grandfather? Catherine shuddered at the memory.

  ‘Just fill the “grey hen” for me, Kitty.’ Kate would slip her the money. ‘I’ll make it worth your while - a twist of sweets from Aflecks. I’ve had a hard day, hinny, don’t give me that look.’

 
And she would go, in the slim hope that it would sweeten tempers in the warring household at Number Ten, William Black Street. More often, it fuelled her grandfather’s violent drunkenness and Kate’s morose self-pity. A jug of whisky meant smashed crockery and Grandda chasing Kate with filthy words and the fire poker. It meant black eyes and pictures off the walls. And later it meant Grandda wetting himself and Catherine being woken by Kate to placate him and coax him to bed, the smell of urine making her retch.

  Well, she would not be setting foot inside any pub today, Catherine determined. As soon as the dismal little ceremony was over, she was going to get out of this dress and escape to Lily’s for the rest of the weekend.

  The next moment, the clerk called them.

  ‘But our Mary’s not here yet,’ Kate said, suddenly flustered, staring past the outer door for her younger sister.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ John McMullen grunted. ‘She’ll want to make a grand entry and keep everyone waiting.’

  ‘Well, we can’t wait,’ Kate said in annoyance.

  Catherine was not going to be the one to tell her mother that Mary had no intention of coming. She thought nothing of Davie McDermott either. Aunt Mary saw the marriage as further proof of Kate’s poor judgement.

  ‘If she thinks I’m going to wish her well, she can think again. I’ve better things to do than watch the pair of them getting drunk and making a spectacle of themselves. And I’ll never forgive her for calling my Alec a conchie and a yellow-belly, just ‘cos he failed his medical during the war. Well, he’s twice the man that David McDermott will ever be.’

  ‘Come on Kate,’ Davie chivvied, ‘we don’t need your sister. Maisie and Kitty can be our witnesses.’

  He helped old John to his feet and into the inner room where the registrar was eager to get on with the proceedings.

  As Catherine listened to the short address, the curt questions and hasty answers, she felt a stab of guilt. Davie was not a bad man. He was gruff and shy, and had never been unkind towards her. He was one of the first lodgers she could remember, swaggering through the door of their home with her Uncle Jack and another seaman, Jock Stoddart, noisy with drink and laughter, the smell of the sea on their kitbags. She had preferred Stoddie, but he had married someone else, and Kate had been left with the choice of Davie or endless years at the beck and call of her boorish stepfather, John McMullen.

  Why shouldn’t her mother marry Davie? Didn’t she deserve a bit of happiness after all the years of being bullied and vilified for her one mistake, bearing a child out of wedlock?

  A familiar wave of shame engulfed Catherine. She was that mistake. Her mother’s life had been ruined because of her. Kate was the laughing stock of the New Buildings in East Jarrow where they lived. Kate the drinker, Kate the slut. ‘Thought she could pull the wool over our eyes and pass that bairn off as her little sister. As if old Rose could still be bearing babies at her age! Mark my words, the lass will go the way of her mother, see if she doesn’t. Blood will out. She’s too big for her boots already, that Kitty McMullen.’

  How often she had overheard the gossips’ hurtful words about the two of them. They were seared into her soul as if from a branding iron. Better if she’d never been born.

  Catherine’s eyes smarted with tears. Her feelings were so confused. She was wicked and bad to wish ill of her mother’s marriage to Davie.

  After the brief ceremony, she kissed her mother and Davie.

  ‘Good luck,’ she smiled, forcing an act of being pleased. ‘I’m glad for you.’

  ‘Thanks, hinny,’ Kate beamed tearfully. ‘This is the happiest day of me life.’

  Catherine’s heart twisted. What about the day you met my real father? What about the day you fell in love with him? The day you gave birth to me and first held me in your arms? There was so much she yearned to know but could never ask.

  ‘Haway, let’s get on with the celebratin’!’ John stamped his stick with impatience. ‘Give me your arm, Kitty.’

  Catherine helped him round to the pub, then said, ‘I’m not stoppin’, Grandda.’

  ‘It’s your mam’s weddin’ day, lass. Let your hair down! You cannot gan to confession with nowt to confess.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Catherine teased.

  ‘Don’t give me your lip,’ he growled. But she knew he would not take offence. For all the trouble her illegitimacy had caused the family, her grandfather had always been fair to her. He and Grandma Rose had brought her up as their own daughter until the truth had leaked out, and he had shown her a rough love and protection that she had never seen him give his stepdaughters, Kate and Aunt Mary, or Aunt Sarah in Birtley.

  ‘I promised to see Lily.’

  ‘Keep out of trouble, the pair of ye,’ he grunted.

  ‘Father O’Neill’s youth club is all the trouble we’ll see.’ She pecked him on the cheek. ‘Tell Kate I’ll be back the morra after Mass.’

  ‘Away you gan, Saint Catherine, and save us from a sermon!’

  She hurried away before her mother reappeared and dragged her inside. Within half an hour, she was changed into a skirt and jumper, and riding her bicycle down the hill from East Jarrow, under the dank railway arches of Tyne Dock and into South Shields.

  Catherine knew its streets well. Ever since she could walk, she had wandered far from home, exploring its shops and gazing at the street sellers: organ-grinders with monkeys, medicine men with potions, strolling players, rag-and-bone men, carpet sellers and fishwives. This river town meant the excitement of the noisy, stuffy picture houses on Saturdays, as well as the humiliation of carrying a heavy bundle to the pawnshops on Mondays. She loved and hated it.

  Lily lived on a terraced street, similar to hers on the outside, but a world apart inside. Lily’s mother filled the neat kitchen with flowers from her husband’s allotment, which added to the comforting smell of furniture polish and starched linen. Kate’s kitchen smelt of other people’s wet washing, stale beer and the soot of an unswept chimney.

  Lily’s home was flooded with light from sparkling windows, while Catherine’s was dingy from the grime that blew from the docks and ironworks. Not that she and Kate did not try hard to keep the place clean. But with John around all day long, demanding attention, and Kate too tired after working odd jobs and taking in washing, the housework never quite got finished.

  Lily’s father worked on the trams, polished all the shoes and never took a drink. Her mother made the best stottie cake and scones on Tyneside. Good food, flowers and sunshine, that’s what Lily Hearn’s parents offered, and Catherine longed for all of these on this strange day.

  Lily was waiting with a parcel of sandwiches in her saddlebag and a bottle of lemonade.

  ‘Wasn’t sure if you’d come,’ she smiled cautiously. ‘Everything gan all right?’

  Catherine nodded. ‘Let’s cycle out to Cleadon - it’s too hot in the town.’

  Lily agreed and they were soon on their way, the breeze off the river pushing them up hill and out of Shields. They stopped in a cornfield above the solid mansions of Cleadon. In the distance, a hazy smoke lay over the docks and factories of Tyneside and beyond that, the pearly shimmer of the North Sea.

  Catherine lay back among the green wheat and closed her eyes in the warm sun.

  ‘Is it all right if I stay at yours the night?’

  ‘Aye,’ Lily agreed with a nudge. ‘Giving the bride and groom a bit time to themselves, eh?’

  Catherine sat up. ‘It’s not like that. Kate’s just gettin’ wed so she can call herself Mrs McDermott, nothing more. It’s not as if they’re in love - they’re too old for all that.’

  Lily arched her eyebrows. ‘Your mam’s not so old. You could have a baby brother or sister by this time next year. That’d be canny, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘No! It’d be terrible. Don’t say that, Lily. I don’t even like to think of them - you know - doing it.’

  Lily giggled. ‘Do you ever think of what it must be like?’

  ‘What?’


  ‘Going with a lad.’

  Catherine gasped. ‘Course not! I mean, not until after I’m wed.’

  Lily gave her a shove. ‘Eeh, your face - what a picture!’

  Catherine abruptly laughed. ‘We shouldn’t be talking of such things. Imagine what the priest would say if he heard us.’

  ‘It’s only natural to be curious,’ Lily said, playing with tendrils of her dark hair.

  Catherine watched her friend running slim fingers through her springy fringe.

  ‘Doesn’t it frighten you - the thought of having a bairn?’ Catherine asked quietly.

  Lily pursed her lips. ‘Not really. Mam says giving birth is like going three rounds with the poss tub. It leaves you all done in - but the results are worth it.’

  The two friends burst out laughing.

  ‘I could never talk about such things with Kate,’ Catherine said in admiration. ‘I wish I had your mam and dad.’

  ‘Well, at least you’ve got a da now.’

  Catherine felt quick resentment. ‘Kate has a husband,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s not the same as me having a da.’

  Lily shrugged. ‘You’ll get used to him in time.’

  ‘I don’t want to get used to him,’ Catherine said with passion. ‘I want. . .’

  Lily regarded her with puzzled dark eyes. ‘What do you want, Kitty?’

  Catherine felt gripped by a deep longing. Lily was the only one in the world she could possibly tell.

  ‘I want me real da. I feel like only half a person, not knowing him. He must’ve been someone really special for Kate to take such a risk.’ Her green eyes shone with intense yearning. ‘I want to see what he looks like, hear how he speaks - know everything about him. I feel like a square peg in a round hole - always have done. I don’t feel like Kate’s daughter. I feel like his daughter, whoever he is.’

  Lily frowned. ‘Didn’t know it meant that much to you, Kitty.’

  ‘It does! Ever since Kate said she was going to wed Davie, I’ve thought of me real da more and more. I can’t think of owt else.’ Catherine seized her friend by the hand. ‘Will you help me look for him?’