‘By, you’re an ’eart stealer an’ no mistake. Well, I’ll keep me word to you, lass, by ’ook or by crook, but I’m sayin’ again, don’t get your ’opes up. I’ve seen life in the raw for too long to believe in miracles an’ there’s not much I don’t know about folk. Your Molly is where she wants to be, lass, an’ she’s made up her mind ’er old life is a closed book. You won’t be seein’ ’er again.’
It was a long cold journey back to Roker.
Chapter Nineteen
The bright expectation and hope that a New Year engenders had evaporated like the dew on a warm summer’s morning by the end of January 1926 for most northerners. Strikes, counter-strikes, flooding in parts of the country after continuous rain for eighteen days in February, and an escalation of the miners’ dispute in March all continued the steady decline of the nation’s morale. The Royal Commission’s recommendations that the general level of wages must be cut and the 1924 minimum wage agreement abolished was the last straw for Sunderland’s - and the rest of the country’s - struggling miners, and their slogan of ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’ was fighting talk. However, by the middle of April, when 20,000 members of the Women’s Guild of the Empire demonstrated in London for an end to strikes and lockouts, Zachariah barely noticed. Rosie’s baby was due in another week, and since Shane’s poisonous barb had brought all his own hitherto unmentioned fears to the surface he had been suffering the torments of the damned.
Rosie had reassured him in every way she knew how, striving with all her might to keep his mind off the awful foreboding Shane’s maliciousness had caused. Whether it was because she needed to be strong for Zachariah, or simply because she knew in her heart she would love their baby whatever it was like, even if Dr Meadows was proved wrong, Rosie managed not to let Shane’s venom overwhelm her, but at times it was hard. Her anger helped. She was furious that one man’s viciousness should rob her husband of what should have been the happiest time in his life, but she comforted herself with the thought that for future babies - and she intended to have more - the ogre of the unknown would have been dealt with.
She had told Zachariah about her visit to the house in Newcastle immediately on her return home, and perhaps understandably it had resulted in their first real argument, as his concern for her welfare and what might have happened made him angry. But they had kissed and made up, and Zachariah had agreed to keep Robert’s name out of it when Rosie told her mother the bare facts and that Molly was alive and well.
Flora had returned to the house in Fulwell early in the new year, and after a visit to the family solicitor she had discovered it was now hers, or would be when all the legal niceties were completed, along with some two hundred pounds in the bank. She had spent four weeks in the house, during which time Rosie had helped her make a thorough inventory of all its contents, and then Flora had walked out of the door and into lodgings close to Mrs Riley’s. The solicitors had finished dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s the last day of March, and that very afternoon Flora had put the house on the market. She had given a list to J. Brickwell & Sons of Monkwearmouth of items to be disposed of, and another to her solicitors detailing keepsakes and gifts to her relatives in Wales. She herself had kept nothing but her mother’s photo album, her mother’s jewellery and her mother’s sewing box. She had cut every photograph of her father from the album and she endeavoured, every day, to cut him from her memories, and this was something that would continue for the rest of her life.
She had seen Davey almost every evening since she had been in lodgings and she made no excuse to herself for her determined pursuit of him. That he regarded her merely as a friend she was well aware, but she also knew his warm regard was heavily laced with pity and a desire to help her since her parents’ untimely deaths.
Slowly, very slowly, he was beginning to see her as an attractive woman too, though, and she could wait. As long as it took, she could wait. There was no one else in all the world like Davey. She didn’t ask herself if he still loved Rosie, or Rosie him, she already knew the answer - she had seen it in both their faces on New Year’s Eve. But in spite of that she knew this was her one chance to attain what had been impossible years before and she wanted to take it. It was that simple.
On April 21st, 1926, the Duchess of York gave birth to her first baby, a daughter, who was to become Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And on that same day, at half past six in the evening in the master bedroom of number seventeen The Terrace, Roker, Rosie presented Zachariah with a son.
The labour had been long and difficult, lasting two days and nights, and at the end of it a distraught Zachariah had overruled the family doctor and midwife who were still insisting all was well, and ordered the doctor to send for one of his colleagues, a Dr Jeffrey of Newcastle, an eminent and highly respected gynaecologist, with the message that his immediate attendance meant he could name his own price for the consultation.
Dr Jeffrey had arrived at the house at six o’clock, and by a quarter past preparations were underway for an emergency Caesarean. Dr Jeffrey was just about to administer the chloroform to relieve his patient’s intense suffering, when the tempo of the excruciating pains changed, and before anyone was aware of what was happening a huge baby boy was there between Rosie’s legs, yelling for all he was worth.
Zachariah heard the sound from outside the bedroom where a concerned Dr Jeffrey had ordered him, but it held no wonder for him. All his thoughts were with his wife and he was frightened, more frightened than he would ever have thought possible. He couldn’t bear to lose her; whatever else, he couldn’t bear to lose his Rosie.
And so when Jessie opened the bedroom door some minutes later and beckoned to him, the tears still streaming down her face, he found he couldn’t move. He stared at his mother-in-law, his face grey, and even when she said, ‘It’s all right, she didn’t have the operation after all, she did it herself, lad,’ he saw Jessie’s lips move, but the actual words didn’t register through the turmoil for another ten seconds.
Rosie was lying quite still in the clean, remade bed, her eyes fixed on the door as Zachariah entered. He didn’t even see the two doctors and the midwife, who had been standing just inside the room, slip out of the door, and he wasn’t conscious of Jessie standing by the window, nor yet of the small squirming shape in the crib at the side of the bed. His whole being was centred on Rosie, and when he reached her side and saw she was too exhausted to do more than smile and lift her hand to him, he fell down on his knees by the bed and took her hand, holding it against his lips as he murmured, ‘Never again, lass, never again.’ ‘It should be me saying that.’ Her voice, with its gurgle of laughter, reassured him somewhat, and then she said, ‘Don’t you want to see your son?’ ‘My son? It’s a boy?’
Rosie nodded, her velvet-brown eyes soft as his gaze turned from her to the crib which was now emitting a wah of a cry.
He wanted to ask her. He wanted to, but he didn’t dare. In all their conversations Rosie had emphasized that once they saw their child, whether it be boy or girl, perfect or imperfect, they would love it, but now the moment was here and he was terrified that he would let both Rosie and this new innocent life down.
As Jessie slipped from the room he rose slowly to his feet and walked round to the other side of the bed where the child lay in its nest of white downy covers. Its eyes were open and he saw they were a deep grey-blue with surprisingly long lashes, and the wisps of hair on the baby head were white blond and curly. The child’s tiny fingers were grasping at the air as the small fists opened and shut, and as the miaow of a cry came again Zachariah stood looking down at this flesh of his flesh before he carefully put out a hand and drew back the fluffy blanket. And as he did so the baby kicked. It kicked with all the strength of its two beautiful, strong, perfectly formed legs.
‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ Rosie’s voice was soft with the trace of tears. ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful sight in all the world?’
Zachariah
couldn’t answer for a moment. He reached down and gently slid his hands beneath the small body, supporting the little head as he lifted the baby into his arms. And then he held his son close to his heart for a full minute, his throat full and his heart bursting, before he turned to Rosie, who was waiting for his look, her eyes luminous, and said, ‘The second most beautiful, Rosie lass, the second. I’m lookin’ at the most beautiful right now.’
‘Well, I’d best be makin’ me way, lass, else the day’ll be half over afore I get there. Zachariah didn’t know if he was on foot or horseback last night, bless him.’
Jessie was on tenterhooks as she sat in Annie’s kitchen and she had been right from the moment, some twenty minutes before, when she’d knocked on the back door. It was the morning after little Erik James had been born - so named after his two grandfathers - and she was on her way to Roker. Dr Jeffrey had made it clear the night before that he wouldn’t contemplate his patient leaving her bed for at least two weeks, and although Jessie had already arranged to have the last week in April and the first week of May off, when the baby had been due, Joseph was insisting on the extra few days. ‘No good having the clout unless you use it occasionally,’ was the way he had put it, ‘and by my reckoning the lass needs you a sight more than the Store does.’ Oh, he was good, he was, and marvellous with Hannah. Her youngest daughter loved him. The word brought a smile to her lips. She had never thought she’d fall in love again, not at her age, but the good Lord had surprised her with what He’d planned in the way of Joseph Green.
‘I appreciate you comin’, lass.’ Annie’s voice was low, in fact all their conversation had been conducted in little more than whispers owing to the fact that Shane hadn’t yet left for his day shift at the steelworks.
The sky had still been shadowed with the last remnants of night when Jessie had boarded the early tram that morning, and it had been then that the impulse to call in on Annie before she made her way on to Rosie and Zachariah had hit her. She had struggled with it for a few moments - the furore on New Year’s Eve had both shocked and sickened her and there was no way she wanted to run into Shane McLinnie - but she knew it’d put Annie’s mind at rest to hear that all was well with the bairn. Well? She’d grinned to herself. It was ruddy marvellous, and one in the eye for Shane McLinnie. And why shouldn’t she go and see Annie - her oldest and dearest friend - with the best news in the world? she asked herself as the tram trundled off. Annie was like a sister to her; the two of them had seen good days and bad and survived a war, aye, and all the heartache that’d gone with it.
Jessie had sucked in her lips and narrowed her eyes as she had contemplated the grey streets beyond the relative warmth of the tram. Shane McLinnie wasn’t fit to draw the same air as decent folk. By, she’d never forgive him for what he’d said to her lass and Zachariah, but didn’t she, of all people, understand that you couldn’t always predict how your bairns were going to turn out? She’d never thought to see the day when she’d thank the good Lord He’d taken her man and her lads, but if they had been alive the day there would have been murder done over their Molly. It would have destroyed James. Even with them keeping it quiet like they had, it would have eaten away at him until it’d destroyed him.
Jessie finished the last dregs of her tea in one gulp and had actually walked to the back door with Annie and was standing with one foot on the step, when the door to the hall opened and Shane stepped through into the kitchen.
He was surprised to see Jessie in his mother’s kitchen and his face reflected this, but along with the surprise there was a wariness - as well there might be, thought Jessie self-righteously. Her face was cold as she looked across the kitchen at Annie’s youngest, and he, sensing the maternal wrath, straightened and returned the look, before turning to his mother and saying, ‘You on strike or somethin’? Where’s me breakfast?’
‘It’s comin’.’ Annie’s voice was agitated and the look she bestowed on Jessie in the next second was a pleading one. She’d been feeling bad since the New Year, right bad, and her usual medicine that she’d been taking on and off for years wasn’t helping much. And Dr Meadows was no help, fancy him saying he wanted her to take it easy and then suggesting she go to the hospital for tests! She wasn’t setting foot in that place!
Take it easy indeed. Would taking it easy get Arthur’s and the lads’ suits to the pawn every Monday morning so they could eat, and collect them of a Saturday once Shane and any of the others who’d got work during the week paid their bit? Or would it help her to scour the shops at closing for any stale loaves and scrag ends going cheap, or hang about near the market looking for bruised fruit and the like? And what about working all hours with the washing she took in, and then going round to Mrs Brent’s on Higham Hill, and scrubbing her massive house from top to bottom twice a week? Take it easy! She’d paid out good money for him to tell her she’d got to take it easy, that was the top and bottom of it, and she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
‘I’ll be seein’ you, Annie.’
Jessie didn’t look at Shane again as she said her goodbyes but as she stepped fully into the yard he appeared at the door alongside his mother, his tone confrontational as he said, ‘What you doin’ round these parts first thing in the mornin’?’
‘She came to see me, there’s nowt wrong with that is there?’
Jessie heard Annie’s voice, and she knew her friend didn’t want her to voice the real reason for her presence, but no power on earth could have stopped Jessie from throwing her satisfaction in Shane McLinnie’s face as she said, her voice cold and very even, ‘I came to tell your mam that Rosie had a bouncin’ ten-pounder last night, a boy, as bonny a bairn as ever I’ve seen.’
Shane stared at her. He didn’t say a word, he just stared at her, and such was the power in his gaze that Jessie took a step backwards as she thought, He’s evil. He might be Annie’s son, and certainly our Molly is no better than she should be, but this is something different.
She was aware of Annie’s white face as she turned away, and also that Shane was watching her as she walked to the end of the yard and opened the gate into the mucky back lane, but she didn’t look back, and it was only when she emerged into the street at the end of the lane and began walking towards the tram stop that she found she was shaking.
By, she could see why her Rosie had steered clear of that one right enough, aye, she could. And to think that she used to think him a nice lad, well set up in fact and a good catch for some lass. There had even been a time when she’d imagined him and Rosie . . . She shivered, but it was less to do with the chilly April morning that carried the odd drop of icy rain in its raw wind than the realization of her own lack of discernment. Her James always used to say she couldn’t see the wood for the trees, and he was right, God rest his soul. He’d been right about a lot of things, her James, like her being her own worst enemy for one. She had been a silly woman the last few years, a very silly woman, but she had Joseph now and he’d already asked her twice to marry him. And she’d say yes, but in her own time. Maybe in a few months or so. But for now there was Erik. ‘We’ve a grandson, James.’ She breathed it out, her eyes misty with the joy and thankfulness that had been bubbling inside her since the evening before. ‘A bonny little lad an’ he’ll never have to set foot inside a mine. That gladdens your heart, don’t it, like it does mine.’
Once Rosie was on her feet again and the bitterly cold winds and snow and sleet of April and May had given way to a serene June and blazing July, number seventeen The Terrace was subject to a steady stream of visitors. Both Flora and Sally were quite smitten with little Erik, and their shared adoration of the tiny infant made for some merry tea parties on sunny summer afternoons.
Flora was still living close to Davey’s lodgings, and he had accompanied her several times on her visits to Rosie and Zachariah and taken a great interest in the child. Likewise Peter Baxter, who also escorted Flora on occasion and who seemed quite reconciled to Flora’s friendship with Davey. Seemed. But Ro
sie suspected differently. Peter was a gentleman and a quiet and unassuming individual, but Rosie recognized a tenacity in the mild-mannered man that was at odds with the placid exterior. He said little but observed greatly, and on the one or two occasions when he and Zachariah had been left alone they had apparently got on like a house on fire, despite their vastly differing political affiliations and the fact that Peter was third-generation ‘money’.
Peter continued to employ Davey on a regular basis at his father’s shipyard, and certainly on the one or two occasions Rosie had seen the two men together she had been unable to detect any noticeable ill feeling or rancour, but still . . . The old saying ‘still waters run deep’ was always at the back of her mind when she contemplated Peter Baxter, and Rosie was sure he had by no means given up his pursuit of her friend. It had merely gone under cover.
Little Erik James flourished under all the tender care and love which was lavished on him, and no one was more besotted than the infant’s father. Zachariah was the epitome of the doting parent and he didn’t care who knew it. The baby had been a good size at birth and had never had the fragility of a newborn child, and right from day one Zachariah had horrified the attending midwife, along with Jessie and a few others, by insisting he was involved in the daily care of his son. Rosie wasn’t surprised; Zachariah was the only man she had ever come across who took it upon himself to share the housework and mundane chores as a matter of course. But to the other women, steeped in the age-old traditions of the north where ‘men twer men’ and even the lowest scavenger - the common nickname for the corporation soil men who cleaned out the dry closets or ‘netties’ with their long shovels - considered ‘women’s’ work beneath their dignity, Zachariah’s practical involvement with his son was nothing short of scandalous.
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