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

  Suddenly his voice broke and his hand dropped to his side. He bent his head and Millie heard him try to bury a sob deep in his throat. She stood, shocked, as he broke down weeping. Never in all her life would she ever have imagined seeing tough Grant Nixon weep. Swiftly she stepped around the pram and put a tentative arm round him. She felt him stiffen and try to control his sobbing, but she did not drop her arm.

  ‘Not worthless,’ she said gently, feeling tears trickle down her own cheeks. He was the only person apart from Ella who had ever spoken to her so frankly about Edith, and yet he was the last person she would have expected to do so. This unapproachable, disillusioned, unhappy man, bruised by countless rejections, had touched her in a way no one else had. She and Dan could never talk about Edith; it was too painful a subject and there would always hang between them the memory of their bitter accusations of each other at the time of her death. But Grant felt no such difficulty. Beneath his exterior of blunt defensiveness lay a kind, tender nature she had not appreciated. It struck her suddenly how Edith must have sensed it, and in that moment she felt a strong bond of closeness forming to Dan’s eldest brother.

  ‘Thank you,’ she smiled through her tears, ‘thank you for saying that. You don’t know how much you’ve comforted me.’

  Grant looked at her in surprise, his eyes red. ‘Me comfort you?’ he whispered, puzzled.

  ‘I know it’s been hard for you, not finding work, having to be kept by others,’ Millie said gently, ‘but you mustn’t let it break you. I saw what it did to me dad – he lost everything. I’d hate to see the same happen to you.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You could help around the hotel more – it’s work of a kind. Or you could protest more, like you used to – go on marches like other Communists – anything but sit around getting melancholic.’ Grant shot her a look and saw the teasing smile on her thin face. He nodded, with the ghost of a smile. ‘Come back with me,’ Millie encouraged. ‘I need your help. We’ll face Ava together, eh?’

  ‘Oh, Ava,’ Grant said with a deep sigh. ‘I’ve been nowt but a disappointment to her.’ He pulled away, taking deep breaths to calm himself.

  ‘I doubt there’s a man in the world can make that one happy,’ Millie sympathised. Grant gave her a strange look and then bowed his head in resignation and followed Millie out of the cemetery without another word.

  Later, while Grant was raking out the neglected fire and Millie was making pease pudding, Ava and Robert returned. The boy threw himself enthusiastically at Millie and she hugged him back, surprised at how much she had missed him. He was so full of excitement about the cartoons he had just seen that she did not have the heart to scold Ava for spending money.

  ‘He was Popeye! And he was big and strong. Popeye the sailor man!’ Robert rushed around the table, knocking into Albert’s high chair and nearly toppling it to the floor while Albert giggled.

  ‘Careful!’ Millie warned.

  ‘No!’ Robert defied her and rushed to Ava, pulling on her spotted dress. ‘Auntie Ava, you’re my best auntie. You be my mammy!’

  Ava flicked Millie a look of triumph. ‘Ah, isn’t he sweet?’ she said, giving him an indulgent pat on the head. ‘It seems to me that no one gives him enough attention. That’s what I’ve been trying to do these past few days. I thought you’d be grateful, Millie.’

  Millie was stung by the remark but said nothing. She was not going to allow Ava to provoke a slanging match in front of the boys. From Grant’s silence she knew he was in agreement. ‘Come on, Robert, it’s time for your tea. Tell me more about the film,’ Millie said, trying to sound calm.

  Ava looked suspiciously from Millie to Grant, noticing how her husband had given himself a shave and was wearing a clean shirt, having not cared about what he wore for months.

  ‘How was Dan?’ she persisted in a needling voice. She’d lit up a cigarette, knowing how this would annoy Grant, who did not approve of her smoking.

  ‘Grand,’ Millie answered evenly.

  ‘So are you going to live down there after all?’ she asked.

  Millie held her look. ‘No, we’re not.’

  Ava gave a smile of derision. ‘No, I didn’t think you would be. Some women would put up more of a fight for a man like Dan. But then if you’re happy living this way, who am I to say. . .’

  Millie felt her indignation rise, but before she could answer back, Grant rose to his feet, clutching the fire poker.

  ‘Aye, Ava, who are you to say anything to Millie?’ he growled. ‘You’ve said quite enough already. So hold your tongue!’

  Ava gaped at her husband. He had seldom defended Millie like that before, or rebuked his wife so roundly in front of someone else. She threw them both a hateful look, ground out her cigarette on the kitchen floor and marched to the door.

  ‘I’m going out,’ she announced, with a look that defied Grant to stop her. He watched her go, and Millie pretended not to see his look of humiliation. Robert ran after her, crying out to be taken, but she slammed the door before he got to her and left him howling on the other side.

  Millie rushed to rescue him, but the boy struggled and kicked and bit her hand, screaming, ‘Gerroff me! I hate you! I want Auntie Ava!’

  Millie let go in surprise, gasping with shock at the unexpected attack. As she sucked her sore hand, she wondered in distress how much more heartache and disruption Moody’s spiteful daughter was going to inflict on her family, and how much more of it she could take.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  That summer, Dan delayed his return, writing to say he had found employment in a bicycle factory. Millie was disappointed, but mollified by the wages he continued to send. He appeared briefly for Albert’s second birthday, but it was a tense few days. Dan grew irritated by the amount of time his son spent sitting beside Grant looking through picture books, and argued with Millie that she was being too soft with him.

  ‘He’ll never learn to play footie if you don’t let him out with the other bairns,’ he chided. ‘At his age I was scoring goals down the back lanes as often as older lads.’

  ‘He’s only two. Give the lad time,’ Millie chided. ‘And if you were around more often he might learn faster.’ Dan took offence at this remark and shortly afterwards returned to Yorkshire.

  Millie resigned herself to the hard work of making the hotel pay and running the household. Her mother was making attempts to walk again, which Millie encouraged, even though it meant greater friction with Ava once Teresa was giving orders from her chair in the kitchen.

  But Grant had become a quiet help and ally amidst all the warring. He now helped lay fires and stoked the boiler without being asked, and under Millie’s guidance was learning to cook, despite Ava’s ridiculing. He would go over to Walter’s during summer evenings and help him work the narrow strip of ground in front of his house that passed for a garden, often taking Robert with him to dig his own small corner. Grant was endlessly patient with the boys, reading them stories and carving figures out of wood. Now that Dan was gone, only he seemed able to cope with the boisterous and demanding Robert. It saddened Millie that Teresa, his real mother, showed little interest in the boy at all, while Ava ignored or spoilt him on a whim.

  Just before Christmas, Dan came home unexpectedly and in jovial mood once more. The boys enjoyed the sudden playful attention, but his attempts to get Albert out kicking a football ended in an attack of wheezing.

  ‘Don’t do that again!’ Millie scolded in fright. ‘The bairn’s chest’s not strong enough.’

  Dan stormed out and did not come back until after the pubs had closed, reeking of beer and maudlin in his drunkenness, waking Millie to tell her he was sorry. They had a special dinner on Christmas Eve, the day he had to leave, which Grant helped Millie cook, taking Dan’s teasing in good humour. Against Teresa’s wishes, Dan fetched a jug of beer from the Farrier’s Arms, and Walter and Ella joined them.

  ‘Haven’t you heard, Mrs Mercer? Prohibition’s just ended!’ Dan teased his mother-in-law.

&nb
sp; Afterwards Millie brought out the long-neglected banjos, which she and Walter strummed, while Grant fetched his father’s old set of border pipes. He gave a passable attempt at a tune, working the bag and bellows in haphazard harmony and reducing the boys and Marjory to fits of giggles. All too quickly it was time for Dan’s train, and the children clung on to him, begging him to stay. Albert burst into tears when he realised that they were not going on the train with his father, and Millie was left holding the screaming boy while Dan waved at them and blew her a kiss. She watched his handsome face recede into the distance and wondered when she would see him again.

  Suddenly she felt weighed down by her responsibilities, by the people who depended on her, by the daily grind of the hotel. For a moment she was swamped by the desire to leave it all behind, wishing herself on that train with Dan, remembering how they had gone together to Tyneside all those years ago with hopes and expectations so high. She envied him his freedom and his appetite to still chase dreams. It struck her that Dan was just the same as he had been when she had first met him, still as full of hopes and desires, still as single-minded and pleasure-seeking. It was she who had changed, she realised. Sometime in the past nine years of their marriage she had grown up, or grown old or maybe just grown to accept that life was more about survival than dreams. Either way, it dawned on her in painful realisation that she and Dan were growing away from each other as relentlessly as the disappearing train. Her eyes flooded with tears as she clutched the sobbing Albert, not knowing how she could bridge the chasm between them.

  ***

  The following year, 1934, was a grim one. Dan’s team only just survived relegation and he was unceremoniously transferred to a Third Division club in East Anglia. He came home for the summer, but spent much of his time back on Tyneside. He had contacted the Fairishes after many years of absence, and Bob, now the prosperous owner of two hairdressers’s, had secured him a job at the Waterloo. Millie imagined him holding court behind the bar with tales of his travels, embellishing his footballing career and drinking more than he should of the profits to forget his humiliating demotion.

  He would appear for snatched days, which he spent taking Albert and Robert to the park or along the river with a makeshift fishing net. Outwardly he was cheerful, but Millie noticed in unguarded moments that his face was drawn and his look sallow from too many hours in the bar. She sensed his fear of the future, his creeping sense of failure and having to admit that he would never now become a footballing legend like his boyhood heroes. She day-dreamed of him finding a job at Davidson’s Emporium, or even back at the pit when work picked up again. No longer did she waste her hopes on an unattainable life beyond Ashborough like Dan did. She now realised that she would be quite happy for him to have an ordinary job like Walter, so long as they could all be together as a family, living in the security of the hotel. If only he would come home, she could help him adapt to a new life in Ashborough. But when she tried to suggest this, Dan was indignant.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he accused her just before departing for the south. ‘You think I’m past it. But I’m only thirty-four. Players can go on for years in their thirties. Look at Hampson playing for Newcastle until he was forty-four!’

  They argued over his drinking and parted in discord, so that Millie was unable to tell him why she was so anxious. Teresa found her in the kitchen late one night.

  ‘Why can’t you sleep?’ her mother asked.

  ‘I’ve never been a deep sleeper,’ Millie answered, mixing them both an Ovaltine, ‘not since having the bairns.’ She glanced at her mother.

  ‘You worry too much,’ Teresa answered, taking the cup she offered. ‘You always have done.’

  ‘Aye, well, there’s something else to worry about now,’ Millie said, sipping at the hot drink. ‘I’m expecting again.’

  Her mother shot her a look of surprise. ‘Does Dan know?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Millie sighed. ‘I wasn’t sure when he went away.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I don’t know if he’ll be pleased or not.’

  Teresa put a hand briefly over Millie’s. ‘He will. That lad of yours may be many things, but he’s bairn-daft, that’s for sure. Maybe it’ll help mend things between the pair of you.’

  Millie could no longer put on a brave face; she crumpled into tears at her mother’s words. Teresa put down their cups and pulled Millie into her hold, as she had not done for years.

  ‘How will we manage with another mouth to feed?’ Millie sobbed. ‘How can I keep this place going if I’m nursing another baby?’

  Teresa hushed her. ‘We’ll manage. I know I’ve been nothing but a burden to you since Robert was born, but I’ll try harder. I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Millie, all these years.’ They hugged tightly, comforted by their support of each other.

  ‘We’ve helped each other, Mam,’ Millie answered softly. ‘That’s what families are for.’

  The following day she wrote to Dan about being pregnant, and was heartened by a tender letter in return. But the pregnancy was long and tiring. Sapped of energy to cope with the boys, Millie vowed this baby would be the last.

  ***

  In early April of 1935, Millie went into labour in the middle of the night and Teresa sent Grant racing for Mrs Dickson. An hour later, Millie gave birth to another boy. Secretly she had wished for a daughter, but she cuddled the long-limbed baby in relief that he had come swiftly and safely. The next morning Teresa sent a telegram to Dan and he appeared just in time for the christening with flowers, a small teddy bear and bags of sweets for Albert and Robert.

  The placid baby was named John Graham, but was soon known simply as Jack. Dan stayed around for the Silver Jubilee celebrations of King George and Queen Mary in May and helped string out bunting across the back lane and around the hotel entrance. There were flags all over Ashborough, and Dan took the older boys with him to march through the streets behind the colliery band and mingle with the large crowds. Afterwards there was a big tea laid on at the hotel and the women were rushed off their feet trying to meet the demand. Teresa stood propped at the kitchen sink with the aid of a stick and washed up endless tea plates, cups and saucers, while Millie, Ava, Ella and Sarah served teas and cleared tables.

  At the end Millie collapsed into a chair, unable to move. Dan was all for going to the dance at the Egyptian Ballroom, but Millie was too exhausted.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ Ava volunteered at once. ‘I can’t remember the last time I went dancing. Grant’s got two left feet.’

  Millie was past protesting that Ava got out far more than she did. She would be glad of the peace, for Ava had been resentful all through her pregnancy, taking up keep-fit and showing off her trim body in front of Millie, chanting, ‘Use your vigour to keep your figure!’ Just now, Millie relished a quiet evening without Ava and her exercising more than going dancing with Dan.

  Only afterwards, when Grant returned from clearing up at the Comrades Club, where they had held races for the children, did Millie realise that no one had even thought to ask if he wanted to go dancing. Instead he read stories to the boys and Marjory, while Millie went away to feed Jack. She fell asleep on the large double bed in the nursery that had once been Moody’s room and woke much later to find the children sleeping all around her. Too tired to contemplate dragging herself back to her own bed, she spent the rest of the night there; feeding Jack each time he woke.

  Her mother was of the opinion that she should bottle-feed her baby and be done with the tying role of breast feeding. ‘It’s not seemly having you feeding him all over the hotel,’ she had complained. But Millie enjoyed the closeness and the comforting suckling with her baby and would not give it up, no matter how tiring.

  There was also another side to her desire to keep Jack with her. She had quite lost her appetite for sex. She feigned sleep when Dan rolled in after a drinking session with Kenny, or escaped down to the nursery to feed Jack and did not return. She felt overwhelmed with tiredness just thinking a
bout having to make love. It surprised and dismayed her that she should feel this way, for she did not want to upset Dan. But after a couple of attempts at lovemaking, he gave up and left her alone. Millie wondered if this was what happened to all couples after eleven years of marriage, but she could not bring herself to ask either her mother or Ella. So she kept her feelings of guilt to herself.

  Dan left soon after for Tyneside and another spell as barman at the Waterloo, only appearing at the beginning of August for the Bank Holiday to whisk them on a trip to the seaside. He came with the Fairishes and three other couples in a hired charabanc. They piled in with children and picnics, sending word round to Walter and Ella. Ava and Grant came too, and Dan even persuaded Teresa, carrying her like a child into a front seat and wrapping a rug around her knees.

  The weather was glorious and the children scampered about on the beach with buckets and spades bought by Bob and Dinah, while the adults hired deck chairs and sat in the sweltering sun with too many clothes on.

  ‘Remember the times we used to go in the sea?’ Dinah reminded Millie. ‘Weren’t we brave!’

  Millie laughed. ‘I’d never get into a bathing costume now – not since having Jack!’ He was a plump baby, a demanding feeder, and she felt the need to fuel herself with stodgy food in order to keep up with his voracious appetite. Her trim waist had not returned after the birth and she felt dumpy and uncomfortable in the heat. Worse still, she had lost some bodily control, and to her great embarrassment a sudden sneeze was liable to make her wet herself. In contrast, the talkative Dinah had changed little in ten years. She was still attractive, fun-loving, childless and well dressed. Then Dinah said something that spoilt Millie’s enjoyment.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about that tramp who turned up looking for you after you’d left Newcastle?’