Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Now it was time to take control of her own life for a change. And as she strode up the far hill towards Quarryhill, her spirits lifted at the thought of freedom. For an instant, as the sounds from the pit carried to her on the morning breeze, she wondered what the pig-headed Mick Todd would think of such rebellion. She could still remember his hard blue eyes on her last night. Mick Todd would probably think of it as another petulant, childish outburst from a spoilt Shannon. Or perhaps he wouldn’t think of her at all...

  Twenty minutes later, Carol was hitching on the road south. By half past six a lorry had stopped and she was on her way to London.

  Chapter Four

  1977

  By the New Year, the scandal over Carol Shannon’s disappearance had subsided and Brassbank returned to talking about football and VAT, the new craze in skateboarding and plans for celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

  ‘Had a card from London,’ Kelly told Val Bowman as they dressed the mannequin in the shop window one raw February morning. Kelly had taken Carol’s job at the boutique as soon as Val had received a postcard from her telling her she had gone to London. Val had gone straight to tell Carol’s parents so that they wouldn’t be worrying, but Nancy Shannon had burst into tears and Ben had sent her away with the impression it was all somehow her fault. ‘Didn’t like me knowing more about her than they did,’ Val had told Kelly when she’d asked her to work in the shop.

  ‘Still with her Auntie Jean?’ Val asked, arranging some Peruvian knitwear and thinking how Carol would have loved it. Sometimes she missed the lively Carol as much as Kelly did and the Shannon girl certainly had a better eye for clothes and fashion than her friend. The talkative Laws girl was good for custom, but bad for a fashionable image, Val thought wryly, glancing at Kelly’s tight yellow skirt which showed all her bulges.

  ‘Aye, she’s helping her on her market stall, selling jewellery made out of old bits of bicycle and stuff. Says she’s doing a course in arts and crafts. Sounds to me as if southerners will buy any sort of rubbish.’

  Val gave a deep chuckle. ‘Any word of her coming home?’

  Kelly shook her head. ‘Her dad’s still refusing to speak to her but her mam rings up Jean on the quiet to find out how things are. Not that she’ll speak to Carol - she wouldn’t dare in case old man Shannon found out.’

  ‘What a crying shame.’ Val shook her head of permed curls. ‘I’m not surprised she ran away, with parents like that. Never gave her a chance. Thought her working here for me wasn’t good enough for her. It never occurred to them that she might actually enjoy it.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to blame yourself for,’ Kelly assured her. ‘You did more for Carol than anyone around here.’

  Val’s pleasant, plump face looked pensive for a moment. ‘Maybe. Still, I can’t help thinking that my sister Lotty might have deliberately provoked her the night she ran off. I know some harsh words were said on both sides but Lotty was still sore at not being invited to the big wedding and she might have taken it out on Carol.’

  ‘Oh, what’s done is done - that was months ago,’ Kelly dismissed her doubts. ‘Carol probably would have taken off anyway. Once she’s made up her mind, there’s nowt can stop her.’ Kelly was not going to criticise Lotty Todd. She had spent the last six months trying to get Mick’s mother to like and approve of her and it was important now more than ever to gain the woman’s blessing. Lotty tolerated her because she was going out with Mick but Kelly knew that she was not happy with the arrangement. Lotty was very protective of her Todd men, Kelly thought with annoyance.

  Well, she’s going to have to accept me sooner or later, Kelly told herself that evening as she hurriedly prepared her father’s tea and draped a load of washing around the kitchen: she hadn’t had time to hang it out before work. All her life she had done this - looked after her father and the house and dreamed of something better. When other kids had gone out to play after tea, she had always had some chore to do, while her father went to the club and drank away the memory of the wife he missed so badly and whom Kelly could never hope to replace.

  ‘Now it’s my chance to get away,’ Kelly said aloud, as she applied her make-up in the mirror and doused herself in cheap perfume. She was half excited, half fearful at the evening ahead and how things would go with Mick. Tonight was Valentine’s night and he was taking her indoor bowling in Whittledene. He was borrowing his dad’s car because she said the bike was too cold at this time of year. Anyway, you could get up to more in an Escort than muffled to the eyeballs on a draughty motorbike, she thought with a red-lipped grin in the bathroom mirror.

  Not that she felt much like romance just now as the familiar feeling of nausea rose inside her and she hung her head swiftly over the toilet bowl. She retched. She would feel a whole lot better once she had told Mick that she was pregnant and they could start making plans together for the future, for marriage, for a new home with a new baby . . .

  Kelly was sick again. It left a metallic aftertaste in her mouth that she couldn’t get rid of. It matched the fear that she felt in her stomach at telling Mick her news, in case he was not as pleased as she was. It wasn’t that she wanted a baby straightaway; she would have preferred him to ask her to marry him first. But it had just happened this way and they wouldn’t be the first in the village to have a hasty wedding. Then she thought of Lotty Todd’s certain disapproval and the brave red-lipped smile she was practising in the mirror died. Kelly stared at herself for a long moment, wondering if the pale, full-faced girl staring at her would have the courage to tell Mick and his family what she had done.

  Mick escaped out of the back door from his father’s dire warnings about what would happen to him if he damaged the car and his mother fussing that he hadn’t eaten half his tea. Sometime soon he must move out of the house, Mick promised himself. He’d get a flat like Eddy’s and come round for meals at the weekend like his uncle did. He’d not move too far, certainly not out of Brassbank, but far enough to get some peace from his family when he wanted. The thought of taking off into the blue and heading for London like Carol Shannon had done was beyond his comprehension. Brassbank was home, his family, his job, his friends - his life - and he had no desire to leave it. But just occasion-ally he had a secret stab of admiration for the wild, outspoken, infuriating Carol for acting so rashly and defying them all by running off to London. Not for the first time, he wondered, as he started up the reluctant engine, whether he would ever set eyes on her again.

  He was strangely reluctant to see Kelly that evening. She had wanted to go out for a romantic evening for Valentine’s Day, but he’d managed to persuade her to go bowling instead. It unnerved him that it was a leap year and he half expected her to ask him to marry her or something daft. Mick liked Kelly, but he certainly wasn’t in love with her - he’d realised that as soon as they’d started to go out. And he was pretty sure she wasn’t in love with him, but he feared that she was in love with the idea of romantic marriage and settling down - getting out of that bleak house in Mafeking Terrace that passed for a home.

  Kelly was cheerful and generous and eager to please and at times Mick felt sorry for her having to put up with a morose father who was either away on long distance hauls for Proud’s Transport Company or laid up in bed with a hangover. On the few occasions that Kelly had dragged him into the house, he had found a blanket of gloom stifling the place. One Saturday, Kelly had planned a special tea and Ted Laws had been civil enough, but Mick had been unnerved by the tension between father and daughter. Kelly’s over-eagerness for the occasion to go well had led to her father snapping at her short-temperedly and storming out the house, the meal uneaten. It was the only time Mick had seen Kelly cry.

  ‘He can’t stand me trying to make things nice, make things homely, like a family should be,’ Kelly had sobbed. ‘He should’ve died instead of me mam if he hates it here with me so much!’

  ‘He doesn’t hate you,’ Mick had tried to comfort her. ‘Your old man’s just a bit of a loner. Perh
aps it’s me he doesn’t like.’

  But Kelly hadn’t smiled. ‘No, it’s not you, it’s me. You won’t stop coming here because of him, will you?’ she had pleaded.

  Mick had felt sorry for her and promised it didn’t bother him what her father thought. But after that he had made sure that Kelly got invited round for tea at his home and only went to Mafeking Terrace to pick her up or drop her off.

  Tonight, as he pulled up outside her house, he could see her face peering out behind the sitting-room curtain and he hooted his arrival. Half a minute later she was out of the darkened house and yanking open the car door, her breath warming the frozen air in ghostly clouds. She immediately turned on the car radio and fiddled around for Radio Luxembourg. It crackled and fizzed and some foreign voice came loud and clear.

  ‘It’s too early,’ Mick told her as he headed out of the network of terraces and on to the main street. Brassbank was quiet. The shops were closed, a solitary dog ran across the road on a silent mission and the pubs looked snug behind misted windows. ‘Would you like to go for a drink - local like?’

  Her face crumpled in disgust. ‘You’re kidding? It’s Valentine’s Day, Mick man! I don’t want to sit in the pub watching you play snooker and chatting to all the old men.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ Mick said, hiding his annoyance. ‘You could choose the pub, and I promise to talk to you all evening.’

  ‘Very big of you!’ Kelly pouted. ‘What happened to the promise about bowling?’

  Mike crunched the gears into third and accelerated up the deserted high street. ‘It was just a thought,’ he grunted.

  They sat in silence as they sped out of Brassbank and up the road to Brassy. Kelly gave in first.

  ‘That’s the house where Vic Proud and Fay Shannon live.’ She pointed out the mock Georgian mansion behind its wrought-iron gates. Mick glimpsed green lights lining the driveway and several cars parked outside the house. ‘Must be having company. I’d love to live in a house like that.’ Kelly sighed with envy. ‘Carol said it’s fantastic inside, like something out of a magazine.’

  Mick snorted. ‘If it was so fantastic, why did she run off to London? She could have had anything she wanted, from what you’ve said.’

  ‘Aye, her old man was always trying to give her things. But that never seemed enough for Carol. She never wanted the things the rest of us graft for. She once told me the thing she had of most value was her collection of shells that she and Simon had found on Brassbank beach. Daft, isn’t it?’ Kelly laughed.

  But Mick found this talk of Carol annoying. ‘Only because she had the security of wanting for nothing. She was probably just saying it to make you feel better - you not having nearly as much.’

  Kelly sparked. ‘Just because you don’t like Carol doesn’t give you the right to slag her off to me! We’ve been good mates for years, and not because she felt sorry for me having less than her. That would never enter Carol’s head. You’ve got a cheek saying she was only friends with me because she felt sorry for me!’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You as good as did!’

  ‘Look, why are we bothering to argue over Carol Shannon of all people?’ Mick said in exasperation.

  But Kelly appeared suddenly very upset. ‘I can’t believe you’d think that about me and Carol, that she was me friend out of some sort of charity.’

  ‘Drop it, Kelly,’ Mick sighed.

  ‘No, I won’t drop it,’ she seethed. ‘Is that why you go out with me, Mick Todd, because you’re sorry for me? Poor old Kelly with no mam or family, just a foul-mouthed father who prefers to gan out drinking than stay in with me? Well, I don’t need your pity. I only ever wanted your love!’

  Mick was flabbergasted by the outburst. He pulled the car into a lay-by but left the engine running for warmth. His first reaction was to deny her accusations and tell her that of course he loved her. But it struck him as he looked at her angry, upset face that he couldn’t say it. It would be a lie. And he saw in that instant that Kelly knew it too. She sank back in her seat with an anguished sob.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mick said, feeling helpless. ‘I like going out with you, Kelly, that’s all. Isn’t that enough for now? You can’t want anything more serious at eighteen, can you? You’ve always said you’re just interested in having a good time. Can’t we just carry on doing that?’

  He could not fathom the look she gave him. It was desolate, almost desperate, and it shocked him. He’d had no idea she cared for him that much.

  ‘No, we can’t carry on like that,’ Kelly answered in a low, bitter voice. ‘We can’t carry on at all. Not if you don’t love me!’ She looked up at him with fierce bright eyes that challenged him. He knew it was his last chance to make things better between them, to tell her that he did love her after all. But he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her just to make her feel better for that moment, to let himself off the hook by taking the easy way out.

  He shook his head sadly. ‘No, Kelly pet, I don’t love you. Not in the way you want me to.’

  He expected her to shout at him, call him names, anything but this wounded silence. She wasn’t even crying. Eventually he asked, ‘Should I just take you home?’

  Kelly rallied at this. ‘No you bloody won’t! You promised me a night at the bowling and you’re not getting out of that.’

  Mick laughed in relief at this sign of the old Kelly and they drove on to Whittledene while she fiddled with the radio channels. Mick enjoyed the evening more than he’d expected and was thankful there was no more heavy talk of love or hints at a more serious relationship. Kelly appeared cheerful again and he thought they would just carry on as before. But on the way home, she told him not to detour along the back lane to the allotments where they’d courted in the back of his father’s car throughout the winter. And when he dropped her off, Kelly said with a tight smile, ‘You’re right, I’m too young to start getting serious about lads. I just want to have a bit of fun for a few years.’

  ‘Aye, that’s what I thought,’ Mick smiled back.

  Then, unexpectedly, she added, ‘But not with you, Mick. I don’t want to go out with you ever again. I’ll go out with lads who want me, not pity me. Understand!’ With that she got out of the car and slammed shut the passenger door.

  Mick gawped at her as she let herself into the dark house, but she never looked back. For a moment he sat quite shamed. Somehow he had really upset her and handled the whole evening badly. Then he felt foolish. He didn’t like the feeling and so got annoyed. She had rebuffed him. He had spent the last few weeks wondering if he should end their relationship and suddenly she had finished with him in a few seconds flat. His pride was hurt and he drove off angrily to catch last orders at The Ship. After a pint with the genial Captain Lenin he calmed down and by the time he got home that night, Mick felt light-headed with relief that he was no longer courting.

  Kelly wandered numbly through the dark sitting room and into the glass partitioned dining area. The house was cold. In the kitchen, she almost made herself a cup of tea and then felt nauseous and abandoned the attempt. She pulled herself up the stairs without turning on any lights, a habit from childhood when she had grown used to them running out of money for the meter. How many nights had she climbed these stairs in the dark to her cold bedroom? she wondered in despair. The next minute she was crouched on her bed, head buried in her quilt, sobbing with unhappiness. She lay there an hour, knowing she could cry all she liked because her father was away for two days driving a group of pensioners to Edinburgh. And even if he hadn’t been, he would have pretended he hadn’t heard.

  She wished fervently that Carol was still around to turn to. Her friend would have come and comforted her even at this time of night. Carol had never been afraid to visit Mafeking Terrace or risk bumping into her father, like the other girls from school had. Carol had never once said a bad word against her dad, and knowing how outspoken her friend could be, Kelly had always been grateful for that.


  She crawled under the covers, not bothering to undress. But sleep wouldn’t come and she began to torment herself with the awful thought that Mick might have been right - perhaps Carol had only ever been kind to her out of pity. No, she couldn’t face that! Kelly shook off such a notion. She knew her friend far better than Mick Todd did and she knew she could always rely on Carol’s friendship. If only she wasn’t so far away.

  Kelly cried out loud, ‘I need you, Carol. Why don’t you come home? Please come home.’

  Yet, in the early hours of the morning, quite exhausted from crying and lack of sleep, Kelly realised she had to face this trial alone. She must get rid of the baby growing inside her. How could she possibly bring it into the loveless, unwelcoming world of Mafeking Terrace? Besides, she didn’t want babies! she told herself brutally. And she certainly didn’t want Mick Todd’s baby when he thought so little of her. It had been a stupid mistake and she would take more care next time not to get pregnant. She’d go to the doctor’s tomorrow and ask for an abortion. No, not the family doctor, Kelly blanched. She’d go to that clinic she’d read about in Newcastle and, if necessary, use the money she’d saved for a holiday to Spain. Yes, she’d go somewhere where no one knew her; arrange a couple of days off work when her father was working away. No one would need to know, not even Carol.

  Loneliness weighed on her like suffocating bedclothes. Fleetingly, she wondered if her long dead mother was aware of her torment. Was she looking down on her with a heavy heart, full of disapproval or, worse still, pity?

  ‘I’ll not let anyone feel sorry for me,’ she said, clenching her pillow. ‘Never again!’