‘If only I could relive that week again,’ she wept. ‘I’d do anything for it to be a fortnight ago, for Edith to be alive – then I’d do everything differently! Everything.’
She crumpled into her mother’s arms and gave in to her grief.
***
Teresa took Millie north on the train and arrangements were made to have Edith’s body transported to Ashborough, Millie pawning all of the jewellery Dan had ever given her to cover the cost. She sent a telegram to Dan to confirm the date of the funeral, fearing that he would not come, but he was given leave to attend and arrived late the evening before. Dumping his bag he went straight out again, drinking with Kenny Manners until closing time and ending up sleeping on the kitchen floor.
On the morning of the funeral he looked old and grey-faced, his lack of colour accentuated by the black suit he wore. Millie’s features had shed their healthy plumpness and she too wore the same harrowed look. When she looked at Dan as they set out for the service in the Myrtle Terrace church where they had been married, she wanted to say something to comfort him but could not. She was too deeply hurt by his accusations to try and relieve his obvious suffering. She tried to recall their wedding day and the love she had felt for him, but could not. It all seemed a lifetime ago.
Somehow Millie got through the ordeal, given courage by the friends around them and the balm of words and hymns. She did not remember much of it afterwards, except Dan’s ghostly whiteness and eyes red-rimmed from crying or drink. There was a small solemn gathering back at the hotel for tea and cake, but Teresa put an exhausted Millie to bed, allowing her a liberal dose of whisky in a hot drink to help her sleep.
When she woke later on that October evening, the room was in darkness. She stumbled for the door and met her mother climbing the stairs breathlessly. It struck Millie for the first time that Teresa’s pregnancy was beginning to show. Things sounded quiet below.
‘Where is everyone?’ Millie asked. ‘Have I been asleep long?’
‘Yes,’ Teresa panted. ‘It’s past eight o’clock. They’ve all gone home.’
‘Where’s Dan?’ Millie asked, shivering in her underclothes.
Teresa’s look hardened. ‘He’s gone too. Took the afternoon train back to Newcastle, said he’d get a connection tonight or tomorrow.’
Millie felt unexpected disappointment grip her. ‘Did he say anything ... a message?’ she asked quietly.
Teresa shook her head. ‘He couldn’t get away quick enough; it’s clear he wants to forget the whole thing. But that’s men for you. Don’t expect them to be any help when you need them.’
Millie bowed her head, feeling panic engulf her at being left alone. She fought the urge to cry; she had cried herself dry in the past month. Steeling herself, she lifted her chin and faced her mother, quelling the fear inside her. This was what she had chosen, she reminded herself, to return to Ashborough and grieve; leaving Dan to cope in the only way he could – playing his football. Whether their marriage would ever recover from the wreckage of Edith’s death, it was too soon for her to say.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ Millie said, ‘then come and help you clear up.’
Her mother nodded in approval and retreated downstairs without another word.
Chapter Nineteen
Late 1929
Millie did not see Dan again that year. He stayed away in the Black Country and all Millie knew was that he had moved into digs with some of the other players. She imagined that he carried on his playing and drinking, for he did not return north or answer her letters, though he did send her a trickle of money. She followed the club results in the newspaper and saw that they were mediocre. Christmas passed painfully, with Millie plunging herself into work at the hotel, refusing to relax and trying not to recall the happy Christmases of their days on Tyneside. She saw few people apart from the lodgers, who came and went and did not ask questions. There were no tea dances since Major Hall had left the area with a travelling concert group, and the place was quiet, which suited Millie’s fragile spirit.
Occasionally Ella and Walter managed to entice her round for tea, but she kept the visits short, unable to bear Marjory’s puzzled questioning. By February, her trips to Edith’s grave were still almost daily, as spring flowers appeared in the muddy ditches and they prepared for the arrival of Teresa’s baby. Millie defended her mother against the gossip that blew around Ashborough like the March wind.
When Teresa’s pregnant state became increasingly difficult to conceal, Sarah the maid was let go and Millie was left running the hotel. Teresa retired to bed with swollen ankles and breathlessness, while Joseph remained a bed-ridden recluse in his room, ordering up newspapers and existing on pots of tea and toast. Millie questioned his sanity, doubting that he understood that Teresa was close to giving birth to his child. When she mentioned it on one occasion, he asked who Teresa was, and he absently called her Ava on several occasions. This prompted Millie to urge her mother, ‘You must get Joseph to make a will leaving the hotel to you. You have to think of the babe and its future as well as your own.’ So Teresa did just that shortly before the birth of her child.
On the day her mother went into labour, Millie received a letter from Dan saying he could not send her any money that month as he was short. She threw the brief note on to the fire in disgust and went to fetch Mrs Dickson, Effie’s old neighbour, who had agreed to come and help with Teresa’s confinement and whom Millie knew would be discreet.
The labour was long and painful and went on through the night. At one point, as she watched her mother’s sweating, twisting face glistening in the gaslight, Millie feared the exertion might kill her. Teresa cried out in agony and wept for relief, while Mrs Dickson sat knitting at the bottom of the bed, exhorting her to be calm. Occasionally she would come and lay a hand on Teresa’s womb and instruct Millie to wipe her brow.
‘This is taking too long,’ Millie fretted in the small dark hours of the night. ‘Shouldn’t I go for Dr Percy? He could do something to help the baby come.’
But Mrs Dickson shook her head. ‘You don’t want the expense of all that,’ she declared. ‘The babe will come when it’s ready.’
Finally the labour proper started shortly before dawn, by which time Teresa had hardly enough energy left to push.
Millie gripped her hand and encouraged her, while Mrs Dickson finished off the sock she was knitting and scrubbed her hands ready to receive the baby. When it came slithering on to the bed, Millie burst into tears at the reminder of Edith’s birth.
Yet when Mrs Dickson announced, ‘It’s a little lad,’ she felt a wave of relief. Somehow she could stand her mother giving birth to a boy, whereas a girl would have been unbearable. As she stared at the crinkled creature, Millie wondered suddenly if a boy would be a consolation to her mother, helping fill the void left long ago by Graham. Or did her mother never think of her firstborn son? Millie looked at the exhausted woman for signs of her delight, but Teresa had taken one look then collapsed back on the bolster, gasping with fatigue.
‘What are you going to call him, Mam?’ Millie asked gently.
Teresa groaned, without opening her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I was sure it would be a lass – to comfort me after Edith . . .’ Millie’s heart squeezed in pain at the regret in her voice. ‘I wanted a lass to give us something to smile about again,’ Teresa said, slow tears oozing from under her lids.
Mrs Dickson could not get Teresa to look at the baby again, so Millie bundled up the nameless boy and took him downstairs, leaving her mother to sleep.
‘She’s all done in,’ the neighbour said later as she drank tea in the kitchen with Millie. ‘You’ll have to keep an eye on her. Giving birth at her age – it’s enough to finish a woman off.’
Millie shuddered at her tactlessness. ‘Of course I’ll look after her,’ she replied stoutly, then glanced over at the baby, feeling less sure. ‘But what shall I do with the bairn in the mean time? Mam’s not strong enough to feed him.’
<
br /> ‘If you ask me,’ Mrs Dickson said between slurps, ‘you’d be best giving him up for adoption. What sort of life is he going to have here?’
Millie peered at the sleeping baby in the drawer where she had laid him in place of a cot. He looked long and skinny, like a rabbit, and quite defenceless. She had no great feelings towards him, but she felt this small scrap of humanity did not deserve the indifference that he provoked.
‘No, he’s me half-brother,’ she said stubbornly. ‘No one’s going to adopt him. We’ll just have to manage as best we can. I’ll not have him disowned.’ Tentatively she reached into the drawer and lifted the baby out, holding him against her. He snuffled and felt warm in her arms. Suddenly Millie experienced an unexpected rush of affection; the sort of emotion that she thought had died for ever with Edith. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she bent down, kissed his cap of soft black hair and whispered, ‘Welcome, little man.’
***
While Millie’s new half-brother thrived, Teresa did not recover her health. The exertions of the birth had left her almost crippled. Millie turned the travellers’ sitting room on the ground floor into a bedroom, getting Walter and Kenny to shift the bed, washstand and cumbersome wardrobe downstairs, so that she could answer Teresa’s calls without having to run up and downstairs all day long. Her mother was a far more demanding patient than the solitary Moody, who showed not the slightest bit of interest in his new son or comprehension about what was going on outside his hermit’s existence.
But Teresa shouted constant instructions about the hotel, or the feeding of her son, through the open door. She was not interested in dealing with the baby herself, except to cuddle him when the mood took her. Her one real pleasure appeared to be listening to records on Millie’s gramophone – the one possession of any value she still had left. Like Moody, Teresa showed no interest in venturing out into the world beyond the hotel, and Millie’s coaxing was only half-hearted, for local gossip about them was still rife. She steeled herself against the pitying looks and the half-finished conversations that dried up the minute she walked into a shop, guessing that they were discussing her own bereavement and estrangement from Dan as much as the scandal over her mother.
Millie, however, found a new strength and purpose in looking after the baby, whom her mother had finally named Robert after no one in particular. She determined that she would defy the gossips and not buckle under her grief. Her days were long and tiring, filled with running after others and seeing to their needs, preventing her from dwelling on the emptiness inside. It was the only way she could cope with Edith’s loss, and she fell into bed at the end of the day too tired to think or remember her dreams in the morning. She wrote to Dan and told him about Robert, hoping that it might bring him home for a visit, but she heard nothing. Neither did she receive any more money from him. She had to be frugal in her housekeeping and accepted second-hand clothes for the baby.
There was increasing hardship in the town as the pits went back on short time and a rash of small businesses folded. Some people were blaming the slump on the Americans and the stock-market crash in New York the previous year. But Millie did not like to think of the Americans suffering too, because it made her worry about Ava and Grant. She wondered how they were faring and if she would ever see them again. Travelling salesmen came, but not so frequently, yet Millie refused to fret. Strangely, since Edith’s death, such things as money and security did not preoccupy her as much as they had done in the past. She did not look beyond the end of the week when budgeting. Death had snatched away her most precious possession while she was not looking. There could be nothing more terrifying than that, Millie admitted, nothing that could possibly hurt as much again.
When the days lengthened into early summer, she would snatch the odd hour away from the hotel and wheel Robert round to Ella’s home. They would sit and drink tea and work on a hooky mat together while Marjory played out in the yard with a Dickson grandchild and Robert slept in the sunshine.
‘How’s your mam?’ Ella asked one day in early May.
Millie shrugged. ‘She’s like an old woman, lying in bed all day long. I sometimes wonder if she’ll ever get up again.’
‘You’re making life too easy for her,’ Ella chided. ‘She’ll not want to get up.’
Millie sighed. ‘I would never have believed it a few months ago, but she’s lost all her energy and interest in the outside world. She’s still one for dramatics – says she’s a melancholic since Edith died,’ Millie said, finding it easier to mention her daughter now she had Robert to care for. ‘Not that it’s affected her appetite. She eats more than the rest of us put together. Soon she’ll not be able to get out of bed even if she wanted to – she’s grown that stout!’
‘Just as well you put her on the ground floor then,’ Ella joked. ‘At least she won’t come through your ceiling!’
‘Aye,’ Millie laughed. ‘I think she’s just decided the leisurely life of a lady suits her after all those years grafting in the hotel for Moody.’
‘By, you should put signs out saying you’re running a home for invalids, Millie,’ Ella teased.
Millie enjoyed these times at Ella’s, for she was the one friend with whom she could discuss anything, even Dan.
‘How’s the vanishing man?’ Ella would ask her, and Millie would be able to laugh about her situation and not feel so alone. ‘Don’t worry; he’ll turn up when he’s ready to face you.’ Ella was certain. ‘Nixon men can’t survive on their own. Even old Mungo has a housekeeper these days.’
In the end it was Mungo’s sudden death from a heart attack in midsummer that brought Dan home. Millie sent a telegram to the club relaying the news, and another one to Grant in America, though she had no idea if he and Ava were still at the same address. Three days later Dan sauntered through the kitchen door, whistling, as if he had just left that morning. Millie was holding Robert, feeding him a bottle of milk. Dan stopped, taken aback by the sight, and the two stared at each other, speechless. Millie was aghast at the sight of his thin, drawn face with dark shadows beneath his eyes, his once stocky frame no longer filling his suit. He looked ten years older and she noticed how his hands shook as he reached for a battered packet of cigarettes and lit up quickly.
‘This your mam’s bairn?’ he asked, inhaling deeply, keeping his distance.
‘Aye,’ Millie answered, hating the trembling in her voice. ‘This is Robert.’ She bent her head over the contentedly sucking baby, heart hammering. So often she had wanted to see Dan walk in through that door, ready with a thousand questions to ask him, but now he was here she was dumbstruck, overcome with nerves.
Dan drew nearer, still cautious. ‘He looks a grand lad.’
Millie chided, ‘Don’t blow smoke in his face.’
Dan stepped back and threw his cigarette into the fire. ‘How’ve you been?’ he asked.
Millie looked up at him, overwhelmed by fierce emotions of anger, remorse, pity and indignation. ‘Why didn’t you answer me letters?’ she cried, ‘Just a word now and again to tell me you were all right! I’ve worried about you. And then when the money stopped, I didn’t know what to think.’
Dan gave a bitter little laugh. ‘So it was the money you missed?’
‘No!’ Millie was indignant. ‘It’s been a struggle, but I’ve got by on what I’ve earned keeping this place open.’
Dan’s look was stubborn. ‘I didn’t want you to struggle! I hoped once your mam’s bairn was born you would have come back to me. You’re still me wife, Millie.’
‘How could I have left?’ Millie demanded. ‘Me mam’s bedridden now as well as Moody – I told you that. Someone had to look after the baby and run the hotel. I couldn’t have left them on their own.’ Robert spluttered as she jostled him in agitation, breaking into a coughing fit.
Dan moved swiftly to help. ‘Here, give the bairn to me before you choke him.’ He held out his arms. ‘I’ll give him his bottle.’
Millie handed him over warily, watching Da
n carefully as he cradled the red-faced baby and spoke gently to him. She passed over the bottle, astonished at how quickly Robert calmed down and settled in Dan’s confident hold.
‘Tip it so he doesn’t fill with air,’ she instructed.
Dan glanced at her with a sad smile. ‘I know,’ he replied, ‘I remember.’
Suddenly Millie’s eyes flooded with tears. She could picture him feeding Edith her evening bottle so vividly that she could almost imagine that he held her now. She wiped the tears away with her hand. ‘Oh, Dan!’ she whispered. ‘Why did we quarrel so badly? We should have been helping each other instead of blaming!’
He came and sat beside her, lowering himself and the baby carefully on to the chair.
‘I’m sorry, Millie,’ he apologised, his eyes shining with tears. ‘I said some terrible things to you that I never meant.’
‘Me too,’ Millie admitted, putting a hand out to touch him for the first time. ‘I was hurting so much; I think I was mad with the pain. And I felt that guilty. Guilty about Edith dying . . .’
‘No,’ Dan stopped her, ‘don’t ever say that again. I’ll never forgive myself for blaming you. I only said such a thing because I couldn’t accept our Edith was dead. I still can’t. But it was never your fault, it just happened.’
Millie felt a great release at his words, and she leaned into his shoulder and wept. They sat in silence together as Robert guzzled happily. When the bottle was finished, Dan winded him. ‘That’s a good lad,’ he grinned. Millie took the baby and changed his nappy, then laid him in his pram. As she turned, Dan came and put his arms around her.
‘I’ve missed you, lass,’ he whispered, hugging her. She could feel how much thinner he was as she answered his embrace.
‘Oh, Dan, I’m glad you’re back!’ she said, kissing him. It felt so good to have comforting arms around her once more, and she realised how much she had missed him. The past months had been the loneliest of her life. ‘It’s been so terrible without Edith or you,’ she said sorrowfully.
THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory Page 68