THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘I’ll miss you more,’ Millie promised tearfully. They hugged each other fiercely and wept.

  That evening Millie went to say goodbye to Mr Peters and Major Hall at the Palace, where Elsie had taken over her part-time job.

  ‘Don’t spend all your wages on chocolates,’ Mr Peters teased.

  ‘She won’t have to.’ The major winked. ‘There’ll be too many young men queuing up to buy them for her.’

  Millie blushed and told them she would be back to see them soon, though she had no idea when she would return to Ashborough. Before her courage failed her, she hurried round to Tenter Terrace. It did not matter if she made a fool of herself now, she thought, because tomorrow she would be on the train to Newcastle, and then London. She found the house in darkness, with no welcoming glow from the kitchen window. Knocking brought no one to the door. Eventually Mrs Dickson peered out of the neighbouring back door.

  ‘There’ll be no one in, pet,’ she explained, picking her way carefully over the slippery yard. ‘Mr Nixon’s on night shift and the lads’ll be out. None of them stop in any more, not since dear Effie passed away.’

  Millie was seized by both relief and disappointment. ‘Out where, Mrs Dickson?’

  ‘Drinking,’ she sniffed in disapproval. ‘There’s no one to check those lads now. They’ve all taken their mother’s death that badly. Mind you, the biggest shock is Mr Nixon. He’s taken the pledge!’ the neighbour gossiped. ‘Effie was on at him for years to give up drinking, but it’s taken her death for him to do it. Isn’t that just the way? Hasn’t improved his temper, mind. Like a mad bull. You’d best keep out his way.’

  ‘That won’t be hard, I’m going to place,’ Millie told her. ‘I just came to say goodbye. I’m off to London the morrow.’

  ‘Fancy that!’ Mrs Dickson exclaimed. ‘I’ll miss you not coming around on wash day.’

  Millie was touched, but she was keen to get away before being questioned further. ‘Would you just tell Grant and Walter and – er – Dan that I came to say ta-ra?’

  ‘Aye, pet, I’ll do that. Take care of yourself.’

  ***

  Early next morning, in the half-dark, Teresa walked her across the iron bridge to the station platform for the southbound train. Millie was glad that Joseph and Ava were still in bed, or at least avoiding her, for she wanted these last moments alone with her mother. Teresa, enveloped in steam, bustled her into a carriage, not wanting to prolong the parting. They only had time for a peck on the cheek and a stilted exchange before the whistle blew and the train jolted into life.

  ‘Here.’ Her mother suddenly thrust a scrap of paper into her hand. ‘I forgot this. Ella came round last week with her address in London. I was in two minds whether to give it to you, after all the trouble she caused. But at least it’ll be someone you know.’

  ‘Ta, Mam!’ Millie blew a grateful kiss.

  She leaned out of the carriage to wave, unable to resist a last glance up the platform to see if anyone else had come to wish her well. But no one had. She waved furiously to hide her nerves and smiled as broadly as she could to the retreating figure in the steam and morning mist. Her mother had told her to be brave, and she would be. Millie watched the terraces of Ashborough trundle by until they abruptly petered out into low fields and straggling hedgerows. She tried to cheer herself with the thought that she was on her way to a new life. Dan Nixon had had his chance, she finally admitted.

  ***

  Teresa kept glancing at the clock throughout the day, trying to imagine where her daughter was. She could not believe how deeply she felt the girl’s going, how huge was the emptiness in her heart. She felt as she had done the morning the awful telegram had arrived to tell of Graham’s death. She was numb and yet full of pain at the same time. Why had she let her go? she wondered. Why had she not been able to stand up to the Moodys and insist that Millie stayed? But deep down she had feared for Millie. Ava was too vindictive and Joseph too unstable. She could put up with their moods and tantrums, but there was no reason why Millie should. Her daughter would be better off starting a new life elsewhere, no matter how much Teresa would miss her.

  Ava and Elsie had gone off to the pictures and Teresa was rinsing out the metal milk churn in the yard when steps approached in the dark. For a few seconds, the sound of heavy pit boots made her heart lurch and forced her mind back to her home in Craston. She straightened up in panic, only to see Dan behind her, dressed in dirty work clothes, his handsome face drawn and wolfish.

  ‘Evening, Mrs Mercer,’ he mumbled, his demeanour subdued. ‘I came to see Millie.’

  Teresa tensed. ‘You’ve left it too late,’ she answered. ‘She went off on the train this morning.’

  Dan’s face fell. ‘Why didn’t she come and tell me sooner? I never knew she was thinking of going away.’

  Teresa was instantly angry with him. It was he who had judged them harshly and caused her daughter so much pain. It was just as much this man’s fault that Millie was now gone. ‘She’s been trying to tell you for the past two weeks! It’s you that’s been avoiding her. Thinking yourself better than the rest of us!’ Teresa clasped her fists to her hips in fury. ‘You had no business to treat Millie like that – all over her one minute and not speaking to her the next. She had feelings for you. Even this morning she was still hoping you would call round for her. But I told her she was better off without you if you couldn’t care for her as she was. Those stories she told were just a young lass’s fanciful dreams – there was no harm in them. You can think what you like of me, I don’t give two hoots. But Millie deserves better. She’s worth a hundred of your kind!’

  Dan looked at her, stunned. He was unused to being spoken to so rudely by a woman. He was hurt and baffled, but under his annoyance he felt a wave of guilt. He had not wanted to be associated with Millie’s public humiliation on the steps of the Egyptian Ballroom and all too easily had allowed Walter to convince him to stay away. If his mother had not died the following day, would he still have avoided Millie, not wanting to be drawn into her messy life? That was what he always did, he mocked himself, run away from trouble. Yet in the days since his mother’s death, her words had kept coming back to haunt him, ordering him to take care of Millie. Keeping to himself since the funeral, he had found his thoughts straying con­tinually to the tall, dark-haired girl. He longed to see her and knew he had judged her too harshly. Mrs Dickson had forgotten to give him Millie’s message until that evening, and he had rushed straight round, still in his damp pit clothes. He felt suddenly desolate that he had missed Millie, but he was not going to be shown up by her censorious mother.

  ‘I came as soon as I heard,’ he replied defensively. ‘Why did she have to rush off like that?’

  ‘Because of narrow-minded folk like you and Ava,’ Teresa said stonily. ‘But Millie’s made up her own mind. She’s going to start a new life for herself where you lot can’t hurt her.’

  Dan was stung by her words. ‘Well, at least me mam didn’t live to see what you Mercers were really like. I’m glad of that!’

  Teresa advanced towards him. ‘Your mam?’ she glared, eyes glinting in the gas lamp. ‘She was the only one who did know! She covered up for us!’ Dan gaped at her. ‘Aye, she was a good woman, better than you Nixon men deserved. She met my drunken husband in this very yard – helped chase him away. Effie knew why I stopped here as Moody’s mistress – she saw the reason sprawled out like a dog in the gutter at her very feet!’

  Dan was astounded. ‘Mam knew all the time and never said anything?’

  Teresa nodded defiantly as they glared at each other. Suddenly the indignation went out of Dan. His shoulders sagged. How like his mother to befriend Millie without judgement. He felt even more ashamed of his own treatment of her, and now he had lost her for good.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’

  Teresa’s anger lessened at the sight of his forlorn face. ‘Aye, well, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have shouted at
you when you’ve just lost your mother.’

  Dan hunched his shoulders. ‘No, I should have come sooner. I’m sorry I never got to say goodbye to Millie. Will you tell her?’

  Teresa hesitated. She felt a stab of pity for the unhappy young man before her who so obviously grieved for his mother. Yet she was not sure about Dan Nixon. She had been charmed by him as Millie had been, but now she was wary. It would not do to rekindle false hope in her daughter. Deep down she did not trust the handsome Dan, who had turned up after years of not telling his mother where he was. She recognised a spendthrift drinker when she saw one.

  ‘It’s best she’s gone from here,’ Teresa said curtly, then relented as she rolled the churn towards the back door. ‘But aye, I’ll tell her.’

  They exchanged guarded looks.

  ‘Ta, Mrs Mercer,’ Dan said quietly, and walked away.

  Chapter Seven

  1924

  The job Millie enjoyed most was walking the Halletts’ dog around the elegant square in front of their London home. She would take Buster the spaniel for a brisk trot after brushing the hall carpets and cleaning the day nursery and setting it for the children’s breakfast. She had taken these early-morning walks right through the winter, sometimes in freezing fog or skating along icy pavements. But she relished those moments of calm, when the world was barely awake and the streets belonged only to early delivery vans and cheerful newspaper boys. She would breathe in the smell of newly lit coal fires and think of home. Walking in the early dawn, past shops that were prising open their shutters like sleepy eyes, she was reminded of Ashborough and felt comforted.

  In these quiet hours she thought about her brother, who had spent his final leave in London before going back to the Front. How had he spent his last days of freedom? she wondered. Had he walked around Hyde Park as she did, regretting that he had not come home? Why had he not come home? There were so many things she would have liked to ask him and now never could. And as she tried to imagine what Graham had been doing and thinking, she peered through the dawn light at the shadowy figures as if she could conjure him up. Only recently had she admitted to herself that she was also scouring the park and streets for signs of her father. Maybe he had come to London to find work? Even before the strike, work up north was becoming harder to come by. Away from her mother, she had felt increasingly guilty at the way they had turned their backs on Ellis, and deep down she longed to see him again. Each day she imagined the emotional reunion they would have and how proud he would be to see that she was making her way in the world.

  It was hard to believe that she had been working for the American Halletts for six months now. April had come and the squares blazed with spring flowers, their trees already bursting with green shoots. At first everything had seemed so bewildering in the bustling tall house, where the staff rushed about as if they had lived there all their lives. The cook complained of not being able to understand Millie’s accent, the head parlour maid that she was too noisy on the stairs and the nanny that she talked too much to the boisterous children. Millie was put straight to work cleaning the servants’ attic bedrooms, the nurseries, the pantry and sinks. She washed up endlessly. There were six flights of stairs between the nursery quarters and the kitchen in the basement and her arms and legs ached from the constant fetching and carrying between the two. Millie had thought that she would never last beyond Christmas. But the Halletts were pleasant people who liked to entertain and they made sure that their staff were well fed too.

  Mrs Gallagher, the stout, amiable cook, kept Millie and the other maids fuelled with large meals in the servants’ hall and thick slices of bread pudding with coffee in between times. Learning of Millie’s interest in cooking, Mrs Gallagher gradually allowed her to help with some of the food preparation. Christmas away from home had been made bearable by the Halletts giving them a party with gifts of nuts, oranges and money, and Cook had commandeered sherry from the butler’s pantry which had led to a sing-song and dance. But best of all, Millie had met up with Ella again. Her friend worked for a banker in Montagu Square and they spent their Saturday afternoons off together. Ella had long since apologised for inadvertently causing the rift between Millie and Dan. She had felt terrible for creating such a stir at the hotel too and seemed to try extra hard make it up to Millie. ‘At least it’s brought you to London,’ she had declared cheerfully. So she had shown Millie London, and they liked nothing better than to go to matinees and see the latest moving pictures. Once they had managed to get the same evening off and had gone to a dance and met two footmen from Eaton Square. Ella had continued to see hers throughout January, until he disappeared with a Cornish kitchen maid, but Millie had not been enthusiastic about hers.

  ‘You can’t pine over that Nixon lad for ever, Millie man,’ Ella had protested. ‘You make me feel terrible. You’ll just have to settle for second best.’

  ‘I don’t want to settle for anyone just yet,’ Millie had insisted.

  Ella had been baffled. ‘London’s full of canny lads. Have a bit of fun!’

  Millie had laughed. ‘I’m having fun with you.’

  Ella had rolled her eyes in despair and declared she would find Millie a man before the spring. But spring was here, Millie thought ruefully, as she hurried back to the house with Buster, and Ella had failed to find her a match among the city’s domestic servants, porters or clerks. Perhaps she would have been keener on Ella’s matchmaking if she had not received a letter before Christmas from her mother, explaining how Dan had come round to see her after she had gone. It was such a brief reference to him, among her other news about the hotel and how Ava was now helping out at the Nixons’ in her place. Yet Millie’s hopes had soared that Dan might still care for her, while she had fretted to think of Ava spending time at Tenter Terrace, wheedling her way into his affections.

  ‘It’s time I put Dan Nixon out of my mind,’ she whispered to Buster as she cleaned up his paws in the kitchen and hurried to take the children and nanny their large breakfast tray.

  Later, when she was in the pantry polishing the crystal and silverware for the evening dinner table, Ella called in on her way back from an errand. She knew Cook would be resting upstairs and the other maids bathing or changing into their afternoon uniforms in this quiet half-hour before the dining room was made ready. Millie suspected she had called round to flirt with the Halletts’ American footman, but she did not mind.

  ‘So what are you going to do for your birthday?’ Ella asked the question for the umpteenth time. ‘It’s next Saturday after all.’

  ‘Eighteen’s nowt special,’ Millie had said, rubbing hard on an elaborate candelabrum.

  ‘All birthdays are special,’ Ella insisted, tossing a fair curl out of her eyes. ‘We could go to a tea dance or something.’

  ‘Will Queen Mary let you out?’ Millie teased, knowing how Ella joked about her strict and imposing lady of the house, who made her stand on the stairs in the dark, ready to turn the light on for her coming down.

  ‘That slave-driver!’ Ella grimaced. ‘I don’t care, I’m going out whatever. Jobs are easy to come by in this city.’ She gave a cavalier wave.

  Millie put down her cloth and thought. ‘You know what I’d really like to do?’

  ‘Go on, say it!’ Ella urged.

  ‘I’d like to go to the new Empire Stadium.’

  ‘Wembley?’ Ella asked, puzzled.

  Millie grinned. ‘Aye. I’d like to gan and see Newcastle play Aston Villa in the Cup Final.’ She burst out laughing at the look of disbelief on her friend’s face.

  ‘Watch football on your birthday?’ Ella gasped.

  ‘It’d be grand,’ Millie enthused. ‘Half the north-east is coming down for a day out, the papers are full of it. There’s that steamer, The Bernicia, leaving from Newcastle. Our team will be here – training at Harrow on the Hill, the papers say. Just think of it, Ella! Heroes like Stan Seymour and Frank Hudspeth right here in London.’

  Ella wrinkled her button nose, amazed a
t how excited her friend could become over the game. ‘Well, you’ve got a point. I suppose there’ll be lots of lads to look at.’

  Millie threw the cloth at her. ‘That’s all you think about!’

  ‘Oh, aye! And the thought that Dan Nixon might be one of those lads has got nothing to do with you wanting to go?’ Ella teased.

  Millie flushed. ‘Even if he was, how would I ever find him in a crowd of thousands? I want to see the footie.’

  Ella snorted. ‘You were always daft that way, especially with your brother—’ She broke off quickly. There was a moment of awkward silence between them.

  ‘You are allowed to mention him, even if he is dead,’ Millie answered, with a pained look. ‘Graham. See, the kitchen ceiling didn’t fall in, did it?’

  Ella jumped up. ‘Sorry,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I thought talking about him might be hurtful.’

  ‘No,’ Millie said quietly, ‘it’s the not talking that hurts.’ She sighed. ‘He would have been twenty-seven last month. I wonder if me mam still remembers his birthday?’

  Ella came round and squeezed her shoulders. ‘Wembley it is then. I’ll get the tickets. It’ll be my treat.’

  ***

  Saturday dawned overcast and drizzly, but Millie was in high spirits and determined to get through her chores quickly. Mrs Gallagher gave her an extra portion of bacon for breakfast, and the other maids presented her with a bar of Lux soap and black and white ribbons to tie round her new cloche hat. There was much teasing about her proposed trip to Wembley. Sally, the kitchen maid, told her to go and get ready early as she would tidy the night nursery and the attic bedrooms for her. Millie rushed away to wash with her new soap and change into the pale-yellow spring dress that Ella had helped her choose the previous Saturday. Fixing on the new hat, which she had bought with money her mother had sent down for her birthday, she eyed herself in the mirror.