Jarrow Trilogy 03 - Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Catherine sighed. ‘Then maybe it’s the Church at fault, not letting you think your own thoughts. You can do any amount of sinning and be forgiven with a couple of Hail Marys, but you’re not allowed to question. Why can’t we talk directly to God like the Protestants do, instead of through the priests? It’s like we can’t be trusted.’

  ‘You must be more humble,’ Sister Teresa said gently. ‘The priests are there to help us - and the Pope is God’s holy representative on Earth.’

  ‘The Pope’s just another man,’ Catherine snorted.

  If this shocked the serene nun, she did not show it and Catherine continued to visit her throughout the following year. She felt guilty at her lack of war work. As a married woman without children she had received call-up papers early in 1942, but had promptly failed the medical. Catherine was suffering regular nosebleeds that left her weak and anaemic.

  ‘Tom doesn’t want me to do factory work either - says I’m not fit enough,’ she confided in Sister Teresa. ‘But I feel so useless when everyone else around me is being busy. Like here at the convent,’ she waved her hands at the garden, ‘you’ve dug up every spare inch to grow food.’ She looked despairingly at her friend. ‘If I’m never to be a mother, what am I supposed to do?’

  The nun stood for a moment, gazing into the distance. Catherine envied her poise and stillness.

  ‘You have a beautiful spirit, Catherine,’ she said quietly. ‘You will give beauty back to the world, whatever it is you finally choose to do.’ She smiled, slipping an arm through hers. ‘And goodness knows, we need it in this world of make-do-and-mend! Maybe it’s time to take up your drawing again.’

  Encouraged, Catherine found a renewed interest in art. She went around Hereford sketching its old buildings. Remembering Mr Forbes’s advice, she took her pictures to a local printer and got costings for putting them on cards. Impressed, the printer helped her sell them in shops around the town and she made a small profit. Word spread and Catherine was asked to do some small commercial jobs, scaling up illustrations for a magazine and copying photographs for postcards. The head of the art school got to see her work and offered her an exhibition. Here she met a Dutch painter and his wife who invited her to watch him at his studio whenever she wanted.

  While Tom was away at the camp from half-six in the morning until six at night, Catherine found refuge in the attic studio of the van der Meershes, with its smell of oil paints and turpentine. In its peaceful surroundings she watched intently as he painted vivid colours on to a large canvas. Before long she had bought some brushes and paints of her own and began to experiment at their bedroom window, while her landlady’s daughter plonked away on the piano downstairs.

  One day, feeling lonely without Tom, Catherine slipped into the sitting room and lifted the lid on the piano. She played a few tentative notes. Finding a book of music on the stand, she flicked through it and found an old familiar song, ‘The Waters of Tyne’. Stumbling over the keys, she worked through the tune.

  It conjured up a time long ago, when the McMullens had gathered around someone’s piano and sang. It was probably a neighbour’s, and it may have been Christmas. All she recalled was sitting between Grandma Rose’s knees, enjoying the music and someone’s sweet voice. Her big sister Kate. Or so she had thought at the time.

  She felt a brief flutter of happiness to think she could remember a time of simple pleasure and innocence, before life was poisoned by illegitimacy and Kate’s slide into alcoholism. Catherine held on to that feeling in the months that followed. She took piano lessons and sat for exams, thinking defiantly how her mother was not there to call her ungrateful or hurl hobnailed boots at her head.

  When 1944 came, and the surprise D-Day landings with the Allies pushing back into France, Tom was restless.

  ‘I wish I was part of the action,’ he said enviously, ‘doing something to make a difference.’

  ‘I thought you liked teaching?’ Catherine was surprised.

  ‘Not this job. It’s so tedious - the same lessons over and over again. And the young lads are here one minute and gone the next - never a chance to get to know them.’

  It worried Catherine that he thought life with her too dull. One night she woke to find the bed beside her empty and cold. She found him sitting in the small garden under a bright moon, his eyes closed and face drawn.

  ‘Tom, what is it?’

  ‘A headache that’s all - couldn’t sleep. Didn’t mean to wake you.’

  She sat on the bench beside him, shivering in her dressing gown.

  ‘What sort of headache? Can I get you something?’

  He shook his head and winced with pain. ‘Please go back to bed, Kitty. No point both of us losing sleep.’

  She went, but lay for the rest of the night wide awake and fretful. What if he were really ill? A headache one day, dead the next. Or maybe it was just an excuse, and he didn’t want her company. What if he was bored with his life and decided to up and leave her? If this invasion of France was the beginning of the end of war, perhaps Tom was looking beyond it to a new life without her. Their marriage must be such a disappointment to him: their mediocre lovemaking and still no family to show for it, her sickly health and panic attacks about losing her faith. Catherine scrambled out of bed, sank to her knees and prayed that Tom would not leave her.

  Shortly afterwards, she was pregnant again and Tom’s strange mood lifted. Her prayers had been answered. She had been right to go back to church for now her faithfulness was rewarded. Only one event checked her soaring spirits that autumn: her friend van der Meersh died unexpectedly. Not only did she miss his quiet encouragement and example, but also the warm haven of his attic studio.

  She tried to recreate its tranquillity in their cramped bedroom, but could not. The smell of paints brought on Tom’s headaches and the landlady complained at the mess. Besides, Catherine hated being confined to the one room for hours on end. Going to the studio had been a welcome escape from its confines and somewhere to fill in the endless hours of Tom’s absence.

  Instead, Catherine haunted the tea rooms of Hereford, making a cup last an hour, as well as the library where she sat and worked on her drawings. She had more cards printed, which sold well in the local shops that Christmas, making up for the wartime shortage of traditional cards.

  With the approach of Christmas she was feeling more settled. Tom had agreed, after much persuasion, to go with her to Mass. They were busily wrapping up presents for each other in reused paper kept from the previous year, when Catherine grabbed at the table.

  ‘I feel faint—’ she said, standing up. A moment later she was doubled up on the floor, clutching her stomach.

  This time the haemorrhaging was massive and swift. Tom fled to the telephone downstairs and summoned an ambulance. Catherine was carried, half conscious, from the house, and hurried to hospital. She bled so profusely and was left so weakened that the doctor took aside a stunned Tom.

  ‘If you hadn’t acted quickly we might have lost her,’ he told him. ‘Your wife’s health is very delicate. She shouldn’t attempt any more pregnancies.’

  In the New Year, when Catherine was back home and lying recuperating in bed, Tom raised the subject.

  ‘They said you weren’t to have any more babies, Kitty.’

  She looked at him with lifeless, dark-ringed eyes, her face drained of all colour. She nodded. ‘They told me too,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He took her hand quickly. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘But I know how much you want children,’ she said in a flat, defeated voice. ‘And now I can’t give you any.’

  He saw the glint of fresh tears. ‘I love you, Kitty Cookson. We’ve still got each other,’ he insisted. ‘That’s what I want most of all. And it doesn’t mean we can’t - ‘ he struggled to find a delicate way of putting it - ‘I mean, we can take precautions, can’t we?’

  She looked at him uncomprehendingly. He blushed furiously.

  ‘Not yet, of course.
When you’re fit enough. The doctor can advise us on what kind of contraception—’

  ‘Contraception?’ Catherine gasped.

  ‘We can still be husband and wife,’ he mumbled.

  ‘But I c-can’t,’ she stuttered, suddenly agitated. ‘It’s forbidden. Stopping babies like that is a sin.’

  Tom dropped her hand in dismay. ‘After all you’ve been through, you’re still more afraid of that wretched priest than protecting your own life.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ she said, stung by the truth. ‘And if you cared about me, you’d leave me alone rather than thinking about your own satisfaction!’

  Tom stood up abruptly. ‘If that’s what you want, then I won’t touch you.’ At the door he glanced back. ‘I just want to comfort you, Kitty, that’s all.’

  He left for work and Catherine lay, head spinning. The walls seemed to be moving, shapes conjuring themselves out of the patterned wallpaper, faces coming to leer at her, chattering voices filling her head. She was useless, a failure, a bastard inside and out. Sinful. She’d go to Hell for marrying a Protestant. It was Tom’s fault. Her babies were screaming in Purgatory because of him, because of her. Kate’s face stared at her from the ceiling, Kate’s raucous laughter filled the room. She was bad seed of a bad woman. Blood will out. Her babies stood no chance coming from her infected womb. She wasn’t really married - not a proper marriage - so her babies were doomed. Better to die in the womb than to suffer the same shame that she had suffered . . .

  Catherine pressed her hands over her ears and screamed for the voices to stop. But they grew louder, began to curse and swear. They were like her own voice, once again thick with dialect, peppered with foul language like Grandda John’s. She buried her head under the covers, praying for them to stop.

  Eventually, after a supreme effort of will, she staggered from the bed and got dressed. Unsteady and light-headed, she wrapped herself in coat, hat and scarf and went in search of Father Logan. In the dark of the confessional she poured out her torment about her dead babies and how she must not have any more.

  ‘But I’m still a wife,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I still have a duty, don’t I? How can I without - without using contraception? That would be a greater sin, wouldn’t it?’

  She waited, dry-mouthed for the voice behind the grille to answer.

  ‘Your husband is Protestant, isn’t he?’

  Catherine braced herself for another lecture on the wrongfulness of mixed marriage. ‘Yes,’ she swallowed.

  ‘Then let him do the sinning,’ Father Logan advised.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If he takes the precautions, then the sin is not yours and you have not put your mortal soul at risk.’

  Catherine was flabbergasted. What hypocrisy! She was beset with a huge moral dilemma, drowning in doubts, and he was reducing it to a child’s game of who to blame. She was too upset and angry to speak. Leaving the church, she wandered around the town in a daze, outraged at what the priest had suggested. It was all nonsense. God didn’t exist. She was seized by a wild aggression, like a caged animal. God, the Church, the priests had all betrayed her. It was as shattering as the moment she had discovered as a seven-year-old that Rose and John had lied about being her parents.

  Catherine collided with a woman who was turning into a chemist’s shop.

  ‘Sorry,’ Catherine said, only half aware of what she was doing.

  The woman put the brake on her pram and left it in the doorway. Catherine stared into it. A swaddled baby lay under a mound of blankets, his tiny features just visible under a knitted bonnet. A button nose, rosebud lips, closed eyelids so new and fragile that the veins showed. A beautiful sleeping newborn.

  Catherine put out a hand and touched the blanket. He was hers for the taking. All she had to do was reach out and pull him to her. She yearned to hold him with every fibre of her being. She deserved him. There was nothing else in her life to fill the gaping black hole inside. God would not punish her because God wasn’t there.

  Catherine glanced into the shop. The woman had her back to her. She probably had half a dozen other children at school, at home. She did not need this one like Catherine did - would thank her for taking him off her hands. Her heart began to palpitate. Do it now, a voice said. Now. Her arms ached at the thought of holding him. Her fingers flexed over the blanket.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the woman spoke behind her.

  Catherine looked round startled. The mother gave her a wary look and took hold of the pram’s handle possessively.

  ‘I was - just - looking . . .’ Catherine mumbled, snatching back her hands and bunching them at her sides.

  The woman nodded and pushed her baby briskly up the street, glancing back once with a curious look. Catherine stood gasping for breath, horrified at what she had nearly done. Would she have run away with the baby? Would she have smothered it to death? She felt she was capable of anything. There was nothing to stop her, no beliefs to hold her back. She wanted to run to the sanctuary of the church and throw herself at the feet of the statue of the Virgin Mary and plead for help. But if there was no God there was no Holy Family, no Our Lady to offer forgiveness and comfort.

  Nausea engulfed her. Catherine staggered into an alleyway and vomited into the gutter.

  She did not tell Tom about her urge to snatch the baby, only about her anger at Father Logan.

  ‘I’ve lost all faith,’ she declared. Yet when Tom reached for her at night in bed, she shrank away. She could not bear for him to touch her. Abstinence was the only way to gain peace of mind.

  Tom searched for a way to stop her withdrawing into a twilight world of accusing voices and hallucinations.

  ‘I’ve been to see the priest,’ he told her one spring day.

  ‘Why?’ she asked in suspicion.

  ‘To ask for instruction,’ he said diffidently. ‘I’m thinking of converting to Catholicism.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ Catherine asked, appalled.

  ‘So we can go to church together,’ he said, looking suddenly unsure. ‘I want to help you through this, Kitty.’

  She blazed at him, ‘Help me? You stupid man! You’ve waited all this time - till I’ve lost all belief - and now you think converting will make the slightest bit of difference? Well it won’t, so don’t even bother!’

  He flinched as if she’d hit him.

  ‘I’m trying to help,’ he said losing patience, ‘I’m doing it because I love you.’

  ‘Do you?’ she challenged. ‘Is that why you stay away at the camp till late at night? Maybe you’ve got a fancy woman up there - one who’ll sleep with you and give you brats. Then you can leave me for good.’

  He stared at her as if she were a stranger. But that’s how she felt. She did not know from where such hateful words came. They bubbled up from some deep cesspool inside her, poisoning her sickly marriage.

  Tom said, ‘If you won’t let me help you, then someone else must. I want you to go back to the doctor. You’re not well, Kitty.’

  ‘Not well?’ she laughed harshly. ‘That’s the understatement of the bloody year. Of course I’m not well. I’m in Hell! I hate living here - I hate this room -I hate being here with you! I don’t love you any more, Tom!’

  He left. That evening he didn’t return. She stayed up all night waiting and worrying, her rage turning to panic. By the time he came home the following evening, she was in a sweat of anxiety.

  ‘I slept up at the camp - thought I’d be doing you a favour,’ he said, tired out.

  Catherine threw her arms round him. ‘I was so worried. I thought you were dead. I didn’t mean any of those things I said. Don’t leave me, Tom. Promise me!’

  He pulled away, unable to hide his irritation.

  ‘I’m not going to leave you.’ His voice was dull, resigned.

  As news came of the Nazi surrender in Europe and the country erupted in celebration, Catherine forced herself to join in. She put on a desperate show of being happy and threw a party for some of Tom
’s workmates. His friends teased Tom for keeping his vivacious wife hidden away.

  ‘No wonder you never wanted to live at the camp,’ one joked.

  Catherine laughed and joked with them, and that night encouraged Tom to make love.

  But when the morning came and he was gone to work, Catherine’s depression descended more heavily than ever. She was seized anew by a host of fears. Fear of dying, fear of Tom leaving, fear of Kate, fear of having no father, fear of drunkards, fear of God, fear of no God, fear of the black-robed priest who haunted her dreams, fear of hands that smelled of the docks, fear of going mad, fear of getting out of bed.

  She stared at the room and once again it was filling with faces and voices that swore and screamed at her to get out of bed. She tried and could not move. Her legs were as heavy and useless as iron weights.

  She cried out for Tom, even though she knew he was far away in camp. She wept and whimpered like a child, calling out for her mother. Eventually Mrs Bright, the landlady, came, scolding her for making such a racket.

  ‘It’s all that partying till late at night,’ she said in disapproval.

  ‘I can’t move,’ Catherine said helplessly.

  The woman gave her a sceptical look. ‘Sleep it off, I say. I’ll bring you a cup of tea. But no more noise. Mr Blight’s trying to sleep before his nightshift.’

  Catherine lay all day, tortured by the voices. Memories from her childhood flashed in front of her eyes like a flickering film. She was climbing the steps to Bella’s house, dressed in a fresh pinafore and new hair ribbons. She’s knocking at the door but nobody hears. After a long time, Bella comes to the door with all their other friends crowding about, laughing and pointing.

  ‘ You can’t come in – you’ve got no da . . .’

  The words rang around her head like the Angelus bell.

  Then Catherine saw herself down at Jarrow Slake, bobbing from timber to timber on the oily tide, playing a game of dare.

  ‘Dare you to jump to that one, Billy,’ she taunts a smaller boy.