The Urchin's Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘If it had been with anyone else but Stella Stratton, how would you have felt then?’ Gertie asked flatly.

  ‘Exactly the same.’ And then Josie corrected herself, saying, ‘Well, perhaps not exactly the same, but near enough to do what I am doing now.’

  She stared defiantly at her sister, who nodded abruptly. ‘Nothing more to be said then, is there?’

  ‘No, Gertie, there isn’t.’

  Fortunately Josie only had another two weeks of her current contract left at the Empire; Oliver had been in the process of negotiating an extension for another six weeks but as yet, nothing had been signed. This meant she could leave London with impunity, and once Bernard understood she wasn’t abandoning the Empire in favour of another London theatre - Drury Lane, the Gaiety and others were after her, as he knew full well - but was returning up north for a spell, he was more amenable to letting her have the Monday night off when Josie explained she had urgent personal business to attend to. He wanted to keep her sweet for when she returned to London anyway. She was a crowd puller, was Josie Burns, and unlike some of the performers he had to deal with she didn’t have an odd day off here and there due to the amber liquid. So he agreed she would be ‘sick’ come Monday night, and Monday morning saw Josie on the train to Sunderland - alone.

  Gertie did not offer to accompany her and Josie did not suggest it; in truth she was feeling more than slightly aggrieved at Gertie’s attitude since she had returned from Berkshire, and for the first time in their lives a rift had opened between the sisters. Gertie had barely said two words since they had arrived at Lily’s, and when her younger sister had gone with her to see Ada and Dora, and her two older sisters had mirrored Lily’s reaction to the turn of events, Gertie had become even more sulky.

  The newspapers were still full of the story of the tragic death of twenty-three people when one of the new electric trains in Liverpool crashed, and that, along with the Glamorgan pit disaster which took one hundred and twenty-four miners, and reports of a further outbreak of typhus in the East End of London made for depressing reading. Josie gave up the attempt after a while and slept most of the journey away, in between visiting the dining car for a very nice lunch which she only picked at. She was very tired; she and Gertie were sleeping on two shake-downs in Lily’s sitting room after Josie had flatly refused to let anyone give up their beds for Gertie and herself, and these were not conducive to a good night’s sleep. Not that she would have slept much anyway; her mind was constantly dissecting the scene with Oliver and Stella whether she was awake or asleep.

  The train chugged into Sunderland Central Station on a blazing hot afternoon, and when Josie stepped on to the platform and looked up at the arched roof, particles of dust floating idly in the sunlight and the sound of warm northern voices all around her, she felt like a small lass again for a moment or two.

  On leaving the station she checked into the Grand Hotel which was an imposing building of five storeys and ideally situated, being just a minute’s walk from the railway station, and after depositing her small portmanteau in her room she left immediately for Northumberland Place. She found it strange that nothing had changed since she’d been gone. She’d married Oliver, travelled a little, risen almost to the top of her profession and entered a privileged life which held no resemblance to the one she’d known before her marriage, and yet everything here was just the same. The same old trams creaking and grinding along, the same horses and carts piled with everything from fruit and potatoes and fresh meat to sacks of coal, the same shop awnings and, inevitably, the same raggedy, barefoot urchins darting about, the latter increasing in numbers the nearer Josie got to Northumberland Place and the East End. Likewise the smell of ripe fish from the quays fronting Sunderland Harbour. But it was home, it was home. She breathed in deeply of the warm air, thick with the odour of industrial smoke and fumes from the factories and workshops, roperies, ironworks, shipyards, limekilns and other industries clustered along the Wear, which, flavoured by the smell of fish, smelt like no other place on earth to Josie.

  What would all the folk scurrying about their daily business think if they knew she was actually relishing the smelly air? she asked herself with a touch of dark humour. But it didn’t matter what people thought. It wouldn’t have to, certainly in the immediate future. Folk would be scandalised when she divorced Oliver. She didn’t know anyone, apart from the odd one or two in the profession, who had ever had a divorce. But then, when she thought about it, and she had been thinking about it a lot since Saturday morning, that was because women put up with their men doing exactly as they pleased most of the time. And that seemed to be the case whether the woman in question was a working-class lass in the north or a Lady something-or-other in London.

  There’d been a piece in one of the London papers in May when the Suffrage Bill had failed, which had reported one of the MPs saying that ‘men and women differed in mental equipment with women having little sense of proportion’, and he’d gone on to say that giving women the vote would not be safe. And that summed up very aptly how most men saw things, Josie told herself darkly, as she turned off High Street East towards Northumberland Place. Well, her sense of proportion was working quite nicely, thank you very much, and from what she’d seen of life thus far, the mental equipment needed to juggle bringing up a family, paying the rent, putting food on the table and often working from home which was most women’s lot, was far in excess of the average man’s.

  There were a group of barefoot bairns sitting on the dusty pavement playing ‘Kitty Cat’ when Josie turned into Northumberland Place, and she stood for a moment watching them hit the pointed piece of wood with numbers scratched on it. Dirty and poor as they looked, they all seemed relatively well fed, and certainly a couple of them keeping the scores knew their numbers. They were some of the lucky ones, Josie thought soberly as she walked on. She couldn’t ever remember playing in the street when she was a bairn. Her da had seen to it that they were either out begging or working most of the time, and she’d had to fight him every inch of the way to get any schooling for herself and the others.

  Monday being washing day, there were lines of dangling clothes and linen strung up in the back lanes and between lamp-posts in the side streets, and now the faint smell of bleach hung in the still air.

  Josie took a long breath and then squared her shoulders before she knocked on the door in Northumberland Place. She knew the dropsy which had plagued Vera for years had meant her friend giving up work some months before, and she was hoping at this time of the day that Prudence would be at work. Barney’s sister would have to know about the state of her marriage eventually, of course, but just at the moment she only wanted to share the news with Vera and Horace. Once she had spoken to Vera she intended to approach a couple of the theatres in the town with a view to appearing here when she’d left London. Maybe the Avenue first; it was currently Sunderland’s most respected theatre and seated fifteen hundred people, and then perhaps the Palace or the Royal. She could do a couple of weeks at each, by which time she should be in a position to see the future a little more clearly.

  Vera’s squeal of delight on opening the door spread a little balm on Josie’s sore heart, and as she was pulled into the kitchen amid a deluge of questions that had her laughing in the end, she thought again, Nothing has changed, nothing.

  ‘Ee, lass, I can’t believe it!’ Vera beamed at her, shaking her head in wonderment. ‘Here was I, thinkin’ the only thing in front of me was the ironin’, an’ then you knock on me door. Talk about a sight for sore eyes. An’ don’t you look bonny an’ all; the tongues’ll be waggin’ in this street an’ no mistake. Everyone’s tickled pink that a lass from these parts has made good in the halls. Come on, lass, get your things off an’ have a sup.’

  ‘Oh, Vera.’ Josie took her friend’s hands as she said, ‘It’s so good to be back.’

  ‘Good to be back? You gone doolally, lass? With your lovely house an’ the goin’ on you’ve got?’ This was said witho
ut a trace of resentment, Vera’s face still split in a grin that went from ear to ear. ‘Now sit yourself down an’ take the weight off. I’ve got a nice bit of ham an’ egg pie that’s waitin’ to get on the other side of somebody, an’ a sly cake made not an hour since.’

  Vera pushed her down on a kitchen chair before she turned to the range and busied herself with the kettle, and it was in that moment, as Josie looked down at her friend’s grossly swollen legs and feet, that she thought, No, things are not the same. Vera was getting older and it showed.

  The kettle settled on the fire, Vera turned round, pulling out a chair from under the table and sitting down heavily before she said, ‘Well, if this isn’t a treat. You up for a day or two, hinny? An’ where’s that man of yours, an’ Gertie?’

  Josie had been worried she would burst into tears as soon as she caught sight of this woman who meant more to her than her own mother ever had, but strangely, now she was here, she didn’t feel like crying. In fact, if she had had to analyse her feelings, she would have admitted to exhausted relief being paramount. ‘I’ve got something to tell you but it’s just for your ears and Horace’s at the moment, Vera. It’s like this . . .’

  Vera had always been a good listener and she didn’t interrupt once, but as Josie finished her story the older woman breathed out noisily, before saying, ‘The blasted fool. I’ve met some stupid so-an’-sos in my time but he takes the biscuit, he does straight. An’ I thought more of him, lass, I did really, him bein’ a gentleman an’ all.’

  ‘Oh Vera, I could tell you stories about the so-called ladies and gentlemen of our country that would make your hair curl.’

  ‘That’d be a first, lass. Me mam used to corkscrew me hair so tight I’d be cryin’ half the night with me hair bein’ pulled out by the roots, but come mornin’ it’d be as flat as a pancake. That’s the only memory I’ve got of me poor mam, her tryin’ to scalp me alive.’

  Josie hadn’t expected to laugh that day, although Vera being Vera she should have, she reflected wryly, and it did her the world of good.

  ‘But jokin’ apart, hinny, I’m heart sorry,’ Vera said when they were sober again. ‘He might have bin a toff but I liked him for all that.’

  ‘So did I, Vera.’ Josie hesitated for a moment before she said, ‘And there’s something else, something I think is wonderful but which . . . Well, I don’t know how you’ll feel about it. I’ve found Ada and Dora.’

  ‘Found . . .’ For once Vera was rendered speechless.

  ‘Only this last week, just before the weekend, as it happens. And I suppose I didn’t so much find them as they found me.’ She related what had happened, and when she had finished Vera lay back in the chair and just stared at her for a full ten seconds without saying a word.

  By the time Josie left the house in Northumberland Place an hour later, she was in possession of a few facts which had surprised her nearly as much as she had surprised Vera; the main cause of her disconcertment being that Barney was working and living in Sunderland. Josie didn’t know how she felt about this development. Her life was complicated and awkward enough as it was, and whatever reason Barney had for leaving the theatre in London so abruptly, and whether he had a lady friend or not, it was going to make her living up here for a spell a hundred times more difficult. It shouldn’t, but it would. Just Barney being around in the town, where she might bump into him at any time, would have been bad enough, but now he was the manager of a Sunderland theatre . . .

  Another surprise had been the announcement by Vera that Prudence had a man friend. ‘He isn’t exactly the answer to every young maiden’s prayer,’ Vera had said with something of a grin, ‘an’ he’s as broad as he’s tall with a belly on him that’d do credit to any of the beer-swilling dockers down on the quays, but Georgie’s nice enough in his way, bless him, an’ he certainly keeps Prudence in line. The lass has been a different girl since she’s been courtin’ him an’ he seems to think a bit of her. Known him for donkey’s years, I have - his mam an’ da worked at the corn mill afore he did an’ were decent enough folk. He might be big an’ lumberin’ but he’s a gentle giant, you know? I think he felt sorry for Prudence to start with, what with her looks an’ her hands bein’ bad an’ all, but the pair of ’em are fair gone on each other now. An’ he’s a bright feller although he don’t look it.’

  Josie had answered quietly, ‘I’m glad for her, Vera.’ And she was, she reflected now as she hurried towards the Palace Theatre in High Street West; the Avenue in Gillbridge Avenue now being out of bounds with Barney being the manager there. She was really glad that Prudence had found someone to love and was loved in return, but she just couldn’t imagine the dour-faced girl she had known turning to sweetness and light.

  ‘Barney reckons Georgie’s all right, which is all to the good,’ Vera had told her. ‘The three of ’em get goin’ on somethin’ like politics or the unions an’ it’s like a debatin’ society in here, I tell you straight. Me an’ Horace sit here an’ we don’t know if we’re on foot or horseback half the time. Aye, Barney likes him.’

  Oh Barney, Barney. Josie stopped on the pavement outside the Palace, the big building with its three arches a good floor or two higher than the shops adjoining either side of it. But she should be thinking of Oliver right now, shouldn’t she? And she was really, he was always there in the back of her mind, and the hard ache in the middle of her chest which had first made itself known in the aftermath of seeing him sitting on Stella’s chaise-longue two days ago was still grinding her innards.

  She cut off the train of thought with ruthless determination. She knew from the last couple of days that it brought pictures into her mind, images of them together which made her want to curl into a little ball and hide away from the rest of the world. And she wouldn’t give Stella Stratton the satisfaction. But she missed him. Weak and impossible as he’d been, she missed him. She’d thought he loved her, and she hadn’t been able to help loving him back.

  Enough. Her chin rose in answer to the command inside. She was going to arrange a venue, two if possible, here in Sunderland and she was going to do it all by herself without help from anyone. She had started on her own and she would continue on her own, and this time she had the feeling that even Gertie wouldn’t be with her . . .

  The manager at the Palace almost bit her hand off, so quickly did he accept her offer to perform there for two weeks, and when she made a visit to the Royal Theatre in Bedford Street an hour later it was the same. Two weeks at the Palace followed by two weeks at the Royal. She nodded to herself as she stepped out of the building some time later. She would let it be known she was staying at the Grand, and then if Hubert did want to come and see her he could do so.

  She didn’t know if this was sensible or not, but the desire to make contact with her brothers which had swept over her that day in Ada’s house was stronger than ever after everything that had happened this weekend with Oliver. Her sisters and the lads, they were family. Her family. And she had thanked God more than once for the tradition within the halls which discouraged a female artiste from changing her stage-name once she was married. In the early days a couple of theatre managers had tried to persuade her to select a more flamboyant surname than Burns but she hadn’t felt comfortable with that, and now she was glad she had followed her instinct.

  Vera had insisted Josie join them at Northumberland Place for their evening meal. This would mean meeting Prudence again, and although Josie had concurred, she wasn’t looking forward to seeing Barney’s sister.

  She cut through the back lanes on her way home to Vera’s, the narrow roads baked hard with ridges of mud and thick with bairns playing their games, and housewives gossiping over the small brick walls of their back yards before their men arrived home and demanded they be waited upon. Through one open gate she saw a young mother sitting on her back step nursing a baby at her breast while a toddler banged on an old tin lid with a wooden spoon at her feet, and the sight caused the familiar yearning to jerk inside her. T
his feeling had caused her to press Oliver in recent months as to when, exactly, they would start their family, but he had always come back with his stock reply of, ‘When you are established enough to safely be able to take some time away from the halls.’

  Well, he needn’t worry about that now, need he, Josie thought bitterly as she turned into a small passageway in between some shops which linked one street to another. Oliver had never admitted it but Josie felt he was reluctant to have children interfering with his life, and that her career was just a convenient excuse to delay things. They had discussed buying a small house in preparation for starting a family too, and again he had found myriad reasons why this was not possible at any one time, without acknowledging that the main cause - that he would have to severely curtail his gambling - was the real reason for prevarication.

  Emerging into the hot, busy street Josie wrinkled her nose as she passed the open doorway of a decorative plasterer’s shop. It smelt like a glue factory, the heat causing the gelatine in the back of the shop to stink to high heaven. She paused outside the butcher’s a few doors on. The butcher’s boy was using the sausage-maker which resembled a little steam engine, and as she watched him winding the handle and the gears revolving the big wheel which pushed the meat through the nozzle, she remembered sausages were Horace’s favourite treat. She bought two pounds, along with a nice bit of salted bacon, a bag of pork scratchings and a hefty piece of best beef, and then moved on to the grocer’s and lastly the sweetshop.