Ivy was about to hurry away when she caught a glimpse of Hassan’s handsome face trapped in the middle. He looked angry but resolute. It all happened so quickly. One moment there was shouting and jostling; the next the stall was overturned and men were being pummelled to the ground.
Ivy dropped her shopping and screamed, ‘Stop! Please stop it!’
Someone tried to steer her away, but she stood transfixed with horror, watching the men’s boots swinging against their victims with muffled thuds. Suddenly there was the blast of a policeman’s whistle and the attackers scattered into the crowd. Ivy crept towards the groaning men sprawled on the cobbles. Hassan was almost unrecognisable, his face cut and bloodied, his jacket torn. She reached down to touch him and saw the anger in his dark eyes.
‘Careful, lass,’ the policeman said. ‘Stand away from him.’ Ivy watched him roughly drag Hassan and his friend to their feet. ‘Did anyone see what happened?’ he asked, as if the men did not exist. But people just glanced away and got on with their business. ‘Right then, you two can simmer down in the cells,’ the constable said gruffly.
Ivy stepped forward, finding her voice at last. ‘I saw what happened,’ she gulped. ‘They weren’t fighting each other, they were attacked. They weren’t doing any harm − just buying fruit. Some men came over and started hitting them for no reason.’
‘What men?’ the policeman demanded. ‘I don’t see anyone else.’
Ivy pointed towards the pub. ‘They were hanging around over there; the landlord might know them. Scarpered when they heard your whistle. You must’ve noticed them running off.’
He gave her a sullen look. ‘Don’t tell me what I saw or didn’t see,’ he scowled. Then he looked at Hassan. ‘Is she telling the truth?’ he shouted, as if the Yemeni were deaf or stupid.
‘Yeth,’ he lisped through swollen lips.
‘Well, I’ll not catch them now,’ grunted the constable. ‘Be off with you and don’t let me catch you around here again making trouble. Do you hear?’ He strolled off, and Ivy and Hassan stood a moment looking at each other awkwardly. Then she stepped towards him.
‘You should see to those cuts,’ she said. ‘Come back to the house and I’ll wash them. Your friend too.’
‘Your mother?’ Hassan was hesitant.
‘She’s gone to the fish quay,’ Ivy replied. ‘She needn’t find out.’
They both knew that that was unlikely, for the neighbours would notice, but Ivy did not care. She took Hassan and his friend Abdullah home and sat them in the kitchen, pulling back their shirts and bathing their wounds. Her heart beat faster to touch Hassan’s skin and rub salve on his cuts. Afterwards she made them tea and fetched clean shirts that had belonged to her father which her mother intended to sell. She stitched up the torn seams of Hassan’s jacket.
‘Where are you living now?’ she asked. ‘I’ve not seen you anywhere.’
‘You’ve looked?’ Hassan asked in surprise.
Ivy nodded and blushed. ‘Everywhere.’ she whispered.
He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘Marry me, Ivy,’ he said, trying to smile.
Ivy gasped in astonishment, glancing at Abdullah to see if he was as taken aback as she was. But he was grinning too. She did not stop to question why or when or how.
‘Aye, I will!’ she cried in delight.
She knew that she had to leave with him there and then, before her mother returned and forbade her to see him again. She hurried to pack a small bag of clothes and wrapped up the precious carving of the sailing ship and a photograph of her father, then she marched out of the gloomy house, linking her arm in Hassan’s possessively, not caring who saw her.
Hassan found her a room in Holborn, and two months later they were married in a Moslem ceremony. Sarah was furious at the elopement. When Ivy went back to see her she would not let her over the doorstep. ‘You’re not of age! You need my permission to marry and I’ll never give it for that heathen! You’re not married in the eyes of God or the law of the land, you shameless lass!’
‘Well, I’m married in my eyes,’ Ivy defended herself, ‘and Allah’s. I’m Mrs Mohammed now, whether you like it or not.’
‘You’re a disgrace! Don’t ever come here again,’ Sarah was vitriolic. ‘I wash me hands of you, do you hear?’
Ivy hurried away, humiliated by her mother’s scorn and the hostile abuse from the watching neighbours. After that she kept to the Arab district and did not venture into the town unless she had to. Theirs was a precarious livelihood, sharing with other foreign seamen a house owned by a Yemeni, for no one would rent them a flat of their own. Often the landlord would give his lodgers credit to tide them over until they got work. But at night, lying beside Hassan, listening to the plaintive singing of a homesick sailor, Ivy would dream of better times to come, while Hassan would whisper stories of foreign lands of sun-soaked villages and warm, star-filled nights. ‘You can pick your own oranges from the trees and eat as many cakes as you want,’ he would laugh, knowing her fondness for sweet foods.
‘Will you take me there one day?’ Ivy pleaded, thinking how romantic it sounded compared to Shields with its raw east winds and rank smells from the river.
‘One day,’ Hassan smiled, and kissed her.
***
That summer of 1930, Ivy grew to know others of their close community and made friends with Kathy, who had married Abdullah. Occasionally the young couples would escape the dockside and the relentless search for work and borrow bicycles, heading into the countryside or Newcastle. They would go to fairs and ride the carousels, the girls teaching their men to sing traditional songs.
Yet Ivy was aware of a growing tension in the town and an anxiety in Hassan’s expression when he came home. ‘They try to introduce a rota for coloured seamen,’ he told her finally. ‘Only few jobs for us.’
‘That’s not fair!’ Ivy cried. ‘It doesn’t sound legal, saying who can and who can’t work.’
‘We know what they try and do, Ivy,’ he said with an angry look. ‘They want to sunder us from the white sailors, use us as − what you say? − scabs.’
‘But won’t the Seamen’s Union stand up for you?’ Ivy asked.
Hassan shook his head bitterly. ‘They are corrupt. It is the Union who bring in this rota for us. Why do they hate us like this?’ he asked perplexed. ‘We help make the Empire for them. We die in the Great War − many stokers and firemen. But where are our names on the memorials?’
Ivy could not answer his questions. She did not know where the hatred came from, only that the poverty in the town seemed to feed it. Then he saw her distress and took her hands. ‘But we join the Minority Movement. We will have meeting here soon to stop the rota,’ he said with a determined look.
‘Aren’t they the Communists?’ Ivy asked anxiously. She did not want her beloved Hassan caught up in revolution.
‘Yes, but they are the only friends. They want all seadogs to stand together - black and white,’ he insisted. ‘Our friend, Ali Said, is a wise man. He is telling us say no to the Union and the rota.’
August came and there was a huge meeting at the Mill Dam to oppose the new scheme. A Communist Party leader called Ferguson spoke to the crowd, and other leaders of the Minority Movement called on white seamen to join the Arab protest. Hassan and his shipmates had refused to sign on.
‘Comrades!’ they were exhorted. ‘Support our coloured brothers. Refuse to sail! You have your own grievances against your corrupt Union. Strike now!’
Ivy watched from a distance, fearing trouble. But the speakers seemed to be swaying the crowds and the ships remained idle at the dock. Hassan came home encouraged. ‘They are supporting us,’ he said excitedly. ‘It is God’s will.’
But the next day, blacklegs were brought down to the quay and one called Hamilton goaded the striking Arabs. Insulting them, he strode forward and signed on. There was a scuffle around him and then in an instant the police appeared on all sides and charged with batons. Ivy watched in stu
nned horror the violent clash between the police and the black sailors. The other strikers stood back, not intervening, while the Minority Movement leaders ran around trying to stem the attacks.
In the confusion, Ivy lost sight of Hassan. The men were driven back into the Holborn area but Ivy could not find her husband. Much later she learned that he had been arrested along with fourteen other Arabs and several of the local Minority Movement leaders. She went along to the police station to try and see him but was refused. There was a menacing crowd outside and Kathy persuaded her to stay away.
In a matter of days they were tried in court and convicted of incitement to riot. Ivy watched numbly from the gallery. Hassan stood in the dock, dignified and impassive, accepting his fate. The constable who had threatened him after the market fight gave testimony against him. ‘He’s a known troublemaker − and living with a white woman.’ Ivy shook with fear and indignation, sensing the antagonism against them.
Judge Roche passed sentence. The Arabs would all be deported.
Ivy broke down and wept. The next day she was given a few final minutes with Hassan. She could do little but cry. He was not allowed to comfort her.
‘Everything comes from God,’ he said quietly. ‘We must accept our parting.’
‘I don’t accept it!’ she sobbed. ‘What use are you to me halfway across the world?’
His dark eyes looked hurt. ‘I will come back for you,’ he promised.
But Ivy shook her head. ‘They’ll never let you! And how will you ever find the money to come back if you cannot work on British ships?’ They looked at each other in helpless misery.
At the last moment, they touched hands briefly, and then he was being abruptly led away. She never saw the men being deported and did not know whether they went by ship from Shields or were bundled on a train for the south. Ivy went into a twilight world of grieving as if he had died. For that was how it felt. She had lost him as swiftly and as cruelly as if he had been killed in action or succumbed to a fatal disease. Yet she could not mourn in the usual way, for somewhere, far away out of her reach, Hassan lived.
***
Kathy noticed it first. Ivy’s pallid look and sudden aversion to spicy food. By September, Ivy knew that she was carrying Hassan’s child. Her friends had supported her as best they could, but the Yemeni landlord was bankrupt from lending all his money and the unemployed seamen were pawning all they had left. The Public Assistance Committee refused them relief and more men were deported as ‘destitute aliens’.
Ivy, fearful for her unborn child, her only precious link with Hassan, knew she would have to beg for the mercy of her estranged mother. Sarah was horrified at her condition.
‘We’ll send you to Aunt Lydia across the river until it’s born,’ she said with a look of distaste. ‘Then when you’re rid of it, you can come back here and start again.’
Ivy was appalled. ‘But I want to keep the bairn,’ she said in distress. ‘I love it already. It’s Hassan’s child too.’
‘That heathen’s left you to fend for yourself,’ her mother snapped. ‘You can’t bring up a half-caste bastard child on your own and certainly not in my house!’
Ivy flinched from her harsh words. ‘It’s no bastard!’ she cried.
‘Well, it will be in the eyes of people round here,’ her mother warned. ‘You’ll be an outcast and then how are you going to live? They lock unwed mothers away in the workhouse, you know.’
Ivy was cowed by the spectre of incarceration and of her baby being taken from her. She agreed to go and stay with her father’s younger sister in Wallsend, but silently determined that no one was going to take her baby away. Aunt Lydia was brusque in manner, yet kinder than Ivy had expected, given her circumstances. She was a seamstress, and introduced Ivy to one of her customers, Thomas Duggan, a quiet Scots riveter. He was a bachelor and looking for a wife. Ivy suspected that by ‘wife’, the middle-aged Thomas meant housekeeper, for he had saved enough to buy his own home.
Aunt Lydia saw that he had a liking for Ivy and encouraged his interest.
‘The Lord has sent him to you,’ Lydia told Ivy, ‘to give you another chance.’
‘But I’m married to Hassan,’ Ivy insisted.
‘Not by our laws.’ Lydia was blunt.
‘But I’m having his baby!’ Ivy said.
Lydia said more kindly, ‘If you really want to keep the child, getting another man to take you both on is your only hope. Can’t you see that? It’s no good hoping that foreign sailor’s going to appear by magic and save you. Put him from your mind and think of the baby.’
Ivy knew deep down that her aunt’s practical words were true. She was never going to see Hassan again and there was nothing he could do to help her even if he knew about her condition. Her days of dreaming and romance were over.
‘But what happens if the baby’s born the colour of Hassan?’ Ivy whispered.
Lydia shrugged. ‘You’ll be married by then.’
Thomas and Ivy were married swiftly in October at Lydia’s church, and afterwards she laid on a small tea party for them. Sarah was the only guest from South Shields, and she kept quiet about Ivy’s pregnant state, only too relieved that her daughter was respectably married and off her hands.
Ivy determined to make the most of her new situation and did her best to turn their terraced house in Nile Street into a welcoming home. To her relief, Thomas did not seem interested in the obligations of the marital bed and they consummated their marriage only twice. After Hassan, she could not bear the thought of being touched by any other man. Luckily for Ivy, her womb did not swell noticeably until late into the pregnancy.
Finally she summoned up the courage to tell her husband that she was expecting. To her surprise, Thomas was delighted.
‘I never thought I’d be a father,’ he glowed, and made such a fuss of her that Ivy felt ashamed of her deceit. As the time for her confinement drew nearer, her fear mounted at her past being discovered. She had begun to enjoy being accepted as normal by her new neighbours and not the constant source of gossip or abuse she had been in Shields. She had buried her yearning for Hassan and now craved acceptance and an ordinary life. Above all she wanted to love and protect her unborn baby.
When she went into labour, Thomas was taken aback.
‘But we’ve only been man and wife for six months,’ he puzzled.
‘It’s decided to come early,’ Ivy told him firmly, and sent him rushing for the local midwife.
At the end of a long night of labour, her son was born at breakfast time. She could have screamed with relief when she saw that his skin was only a shade darker than her own, and his eyes when they opened were blue. He had a mop of dark hair and slim, delicate hands like Hassan’s.
‘He looks like me, doesn’t he?’ Thomas crowed, and she did not contradict him.
They called him Thomas Mathias, in memory of her dear father, but he soon became known simply as Matty. As he grew into a healthy, robust infant, her son reminded her more of Sarah in looks, with his dark wavy hair and round blue eyes. Perhaps because they both spoilt him so much and gave him everything he wanted, Ivy had to admit that Matty soon had her mother’s stubborn will and short temper if he did not get his way.
There were no further children to compete for attention with young Matty, and Ivy sometimes wondered if Thomas pondered over his son’s swift arrival in the world. Even if he had guessed, he never mentioned it or caused her embarrassment. She knew that for a man who did not seek intimacy with a woman, he was pleased to have a son at all. And in the main he was a good husband to her, working hard to provide for them and avoiding the temptation of the pubs after the hooters went at the end of the day.
To the outside world, the Duggans were an ordinary working-class family, and Ivy was a cheerful and helpful neighbour. If she had any vice it was to spend longer chatting at the front door than was necessary, telling yarns.
Her boisterous son was both a deep consolation to her and a terrible disappointment. Ma
tty did not enjoy being taken to pantomimes or the seaside vaudeville that Ivy loved, for he could not sit still long enough. Neither would he snuggle on to her knee to be read fairy tales when she wanted. Sometimes she would look at his round, petulant face and watch his restless rushing about and wonder where he had come from. For, apart from his long, slender fingers, Ivy could see nothing of Hassan in her son at all.
Chapter Eighteen
For a long time after Ivy had confessed her story, Jo sat staring at the photograph of the young Hassan that Ivy had fetched from her bedroom. It was set in a small double frame next to one of the seafaring Mathias. The image had faded with the years and gave only an impression of a slight, handsome man in a suit. But Jo saw instantly the likeness to Mark in the dark eyes and the slim face.
‘It was taken at a fair,’ Ivy said softly. ‘I got rid of ones of us together in case Thomas came across them. That’s all I’ve got to remember him by.’
Jo’s throat constricted with tears. ‘You’ve got Mark,’ she said hoarsely. ‘He looks so like his grandfather.’
Ivy put her hands to her mouth and Jo knew she was going to cry again. The old woman had broken down several times in the telling of her story. Jo leaned over and gave her another hug.
‘It must’ve been terrible keeping this secret for so long,’ she sympathised. Ivy nodded and wiped her eyes with a sodden handkerchief. ‘Did you never feel you could tell Matty about his real father?’ Jo asked.
Ivy let out a trembling sigh. ‘Not while Thomas was alive. It didn’t seem fair. And then Matty was a grown man with a wife of his own. I couldn’t tell him then. He has such fixed ideas about coloured people an’ all,’ Ivy answered sadly. ‘I’ve always been too afraid to tell him. I told myself it was all in the past and he didn’t need to know. At times I wondered if I’d dreamt the whole thing − I could hardly remember what Hassan looked like.’
THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory Page 105