Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  The mother of the baby came past crying, and she put out a comforting arm, steering her out of the hall.

  ‘You’ll see her again soon,’ Catherine encouraged.

  As the bus trundled back to town, Hettie reprimanded her. ‘You don’t touch the inmates like that.’

  ‘But it’s all right to hit them and shove them around?’ Catherine snapped.

  Hettie stared at her. ‘What you getting all upset about? They’re just a pack of loose women and their brats - scum of the earth.’

  ‘They’re just bairns,’ Catherine said, choking back tears. ‘It’s not their fault.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re crying over the little bastards.’

  That word was like a kick to the stomach. Catherine felt her insides heave.

  ‘Stop the bus,’ she gasped, jumping from her seat.

  The bus lurched to a halt. Catherine jumped out, bent over the verge and vomited into the ditch. The memory of that terrible hour in the comfortless hall made her retch until her stomach was empty and aching.

  She turned in humiliation to see the women peering at her from the open door. Catherine scrabbled for a handkerchief and wiped her mouth.

  Climbing back on, she muttered, ‘It’s the travel - always makes me sick.’

  Hettie eyed her. ‘Well, well, what a fuss.’

  Catherine felt an anxious flutter at her curious look. If the woman ever discovered Catherine’s own shameful origins, she knew her life would not be worth living.

  Chapter 9

  After her defiance, Jenny McManners was transferred from the laundry and put to work with the vagrants and tramps. Occasionally, Catherine saw her scrubbing floors when she did Saturday duties on the vagrants’ ward. But the worst punishment was being forbidden the monthly trips to the cottages.

  At harvest time, when a special service and tea was laid on at the orphanage, Catherine spoke to Hettie.

  ‘Couldn’t McManners be allowed to go? She’s done her punishment.’

  ‘She broke the rules - nearly caused a riot,’ Hettie said severely.

  ‘She’ll not do it again, I’m sure.’

  Hettie’s look was sharp. ‘It’s no concern of yours.’

  Catherine said no more, fearful that the vindictive woman might start poking into her own background. All she could do was slip sweets to Jenny’s boy and say they were from his mother. He never said a word, just looked at her with sad, angry eyes. How she recognised that look: the same confused feelings of resentment and shame about being born with no da.

  Catherine came to realise the best way to cover up her own past was self-improvement. She had left school without qualifications, but she would teach herself.

  One free Saturday, she plucked up the courage to enter the public library. Heart hammering, she pushed open the heavy doors and went in. Never had she imagined that a place could hold so many books. As a child, she had sometimes sneaked a look at novels belonging to their lodgers, or those at her Great-Aunt Maggie’s, further up the street, but Kate had always scolded her for touching what did not belong to her. The McMullens possessed no books, apart from Uncle Jack’s well-thumbed history of the Boer War, and a copy of A Christmas Carol given by their upstairs neighbour. Catherine had often saved up her tram fare to school to buy comics and had once borrowed an annual from a girl at school and never returned it. She had read it until it fell to bits and was too ashamed to hand it back. The memory made her hot with guilt.

  As Catherine stood gazing around her, wondering where to start, a librarian came to her rescue.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she whispered.

  Knowledge, learning, a new life.

  ‘Er - Shakespeare - and, em, poetry,’ Catherine floundered.

  Instead of ridiculing her as she feared, the woman nodded and led her over to a vast bookcase and indicated the works of Shakespeare.

  ‘Poetry is over there. When you’ve chosen what you want, come to the desk and be registered.’

  Catherine, almost losing her nerve in the vast hushed library, grabbed a book randomly and hurried to the desk. Outside, she hid the book in her jacket and rushed back to her quarters. With Hettie out, she spent the afternoon immersed in Romeo and Juliet. Even though there were words she did not understand, she revelled in the sound of the language, speaking out loud to the empty room.

  The next week she went back and borrowed more. That winter, she worked her way through two more plays, three novels by Dickens, poetry by Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, and Tess of the D ‘Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. She especially identified with the tragic Tess, noble-blooded but born into poverty.

  Catherine bought an exercise book and began scribbling her own short stories about luckless heroines and grand houses, trying to imitate what she had read. Her Uncle Jack had once given her a jotter and she had written a rambling tale of an Irish girl. But Kate must have used it on the fire or thrown it out during a spring-clean, because she had not seen it for years. And she still blushed to think how the local newspaper had returned her one attempt at publishing a story, after she had paid precious pennies to Amelia to type it up. No one would see these stories, especially not Hettie, so she hid them under her mattress. They were just for her - a way of losing herself in another world where she could make anything happen - for a few snatched, magical minutes.

  But one book more than any other spurred on Catherine’s ambition to better herself in the eyes of the world. Someone in the queue at the desk was returning Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son. Something about the title, or perhaps the author’s aristocratic name, excited her interest and she asked to borrow it next.

  That evening, by lamplight in her room while Hettie played cards in the staffroom, Catherine discovered the key to her ambition. The letters were addressed to Chesterfield’s illegitimate son and laid down how he should behave in order to get on in the world. Manners and appearance were everything. She lay awake long into the night, pondering the advice, and all that following week spent every free moment reading more. When she got to the end, she started again, underlining and making notes in the margin in faint pencil as if it were a textbook. Month after month, she renewed the library book, until the pages became loosened from their binding.

  With it, she strove to transform herself into someone new, refining her speech and table manners and saving up part of her wages to spend on better clothes. She was very cautious with money, putting aside some of the two pounds and ten shillings a month into insurance for Kate’s life and her grandda’s funeral. She feared either of them dying penniless and suffering a pauper’s funeral. So while she prayed every week for their sins to be forgiven and Hell be avoided, she also insured against a shameful death.

  Catherine took up French and drawing lessons as accomplishments fit for a lady. She put up with Hettie’s ridicule by ignoring her, which only goaded the woman further.

  ‘Look, here comes bloody Saint Catherine,’ she jibed in the staff hall.

  ‘You shouldn’t swear, Hettie,’ Catherine said, offended.

  ‘Ooh, hark at her! Thinks she’s better than us, doesn’t she? But we all know she’s just a common lass from East Jarrow with a mam who drinks in public houses, don’t we?’

  Catherine went puce. Who had been spreading tales about her? Not Lily, surely? But she knew how easily scandal travelled in a close-knit town. If Hettie had determined to make Catherine’s family her business, there were plenty of gossips around the New Buildings happy to talk. The thought made her panic.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Catherine retaliated. ‘I come from a good Catholic family. We McMullens work hard and keep our noses clean.’

  Hettie guffawed. ‘Keep your noses six feet in the air, more like.’

  Hettie’s friend, Gert, gave her a sly look. �
�You’re related to old John McMullen, aren’t you?’

  Catherine nodded cautiously.

  The woman grunted. ‘Used to fight his way round the town, me mam said. McMullens lived near us when I was a bairn - Leam Lane. I remember him chasing us lasses with a fire poker, just for lookin’ his way.’

  At the mention of Leam Lane, Catherine’s heart began to pound. That was where she was born and had lived for six years, until neighbours had grown suspicious of Grandma Rose’s attempts to pass Catherine off as her own child. Kate had once drunkenly told her they had moved to the New Buildings to try to escape the rumours.

  ‘Me life’s a misery ‘cos of you,’ Kate had accused. ‘Worked me socks off to keep you, then you all did a flit to the New Buildings without even tellin’ me! But nobody believed that rubbish about you being Mam’s bairn - I knew they wouldn’t. You’re the millstone round me bloody neck!’

  ‘Must be a different McMullen,’ Catherine said, sweating at the memory of Kate’s bitter drunken words. ‘Jarrow and Shields are full of them.’

  ‘Well, this John was a fightin’ sort - and a foul-mouthed drinker,’ Gert continued.

  Hettie laughed. ‘I bet our holy Kitty here doesn’t stand for that.’

  ‘Aye,’ Gert joined in, ‘and his daughter Kate’s just as bad, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘Kate?’ Hettie needled. ‘Isn’t that your mam’s name, Kitty?’

  Catherine stood up, her meal half-untouched. She walked from the hall with as much dignity as her shaking legs could muster. She thought of rushing to her room to cry, but Hettie might pursue her there with her hateful insinuations. How much did she already know about her past? She doubted if Gert had ever lived in Leam Lane for she did not remember her. She was probably just repeating tittle-tattle. Catherine could not bear to stay a moment longer.

  Fighting back tears, she stumbled into the spring evening chill and found herself making towards the sanctuary of Lily’s. How often had she gone to the Hearns’ house for comfort and found refuge in its ordered nearness and warmth?

  ‘Kitty!’ Lily exclaimed. They stood awkwardly for a moment, then her friend pulled her in. ‘Thought you’d grown too grand to visit us,’ she teased.

  Catherine tried to smile, then burst into tears.

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ Lily said in consternation, putting an arm around her. Catherine sobbed into her shoulder, unable to speak. ‘Is it that bitch Hettie Brown again?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Told you she was trouble. Haway in me bedroom and spit it out.’

  They sat on Lily’s bed in the dying light while Catherine poured out her troubles.

  ‘She makes me life a misery - puts things under me pillow to make me scream. She and Gert made the sheets so I couldn’t get into bed - and I know she messes it up for inspection to get me in trouble with Matron. Last week she stuck these pictures up on me wall of these muscle men - and I only got them down in the nick of time before Matron came round.’

  ‘Ooh, have you kept them?’ Lily joked.

  ‘Lily man, I’m serious. She’s trying to get me the sack, I know she is. Why does she hate me so much?’

  Lily gave her a hug.’ ‘Cos you’re young - and you’re trying to make some’at of yoursel’. Folk like Hettie cannot stand that. Listen, why don’t you ask to move rooms?’

  ‘But what would I say? Matron will want to have a good reason.’

  ‘Say you need your own room to pray in.’

  Catherine winced. ‘Don’t you start.’

  Lily laughed. ‘Well, you must admit, you can be a holy Mary at times.’

  How could she explain that telling her worries to Our Lady gave her comfort? She could not expect Lily to understand that she had to keep praying for her family, else all the guilt and fear that had lurked inside her since she was a child would rise up and swamp her. She was born in sin and would be thrown into the flames of Hell if she stopped praying or asking forgiveness for one minute - the priest had said as much. Her grandda and Kate would end up there too, with all their drinking and cursing, so it was up to her to save them as well.

  When she said nothing, Lily tried to cajole her. ‘Show them your funny side, Kitty. You’re good company when you let your hair down. And you should get out more. Why don’t you come on the Easter outing to Morpeth?’

  Catherine brightened. ‘I’d like that. Can I go with you - or - are you - will you be sitting with Tommy?’

  Lily gave a dismissive laugh. ‘Tommy? I’m not courtin’ him no more.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. He got drunk at Christmas and gambled away his wages - couldn’t afford to buy me a present. Don’t want to end up with a lad like that, do I?’

  ‘No,’ Catherine said ruefully.

  ‘We’ll gan on the outing and forget about lads,’ Lily declared, jumping up. ‘Do you fancy a bit of Mam’s currant loaf?’

  ‘Please,’ Catherine smiled gratefully.

  By the time she left to go back to Harton, she was filled with a new determination not to let Hettie and the gossips hound her out of her job. She would take Lily’s advice and win them over by playing the clown and laughing at herself, however hurt she felt inside. She would show them Kitty McMullen the performer, just as she had as a girl. By playing the fool, she had made friends again with those children who had turned on her for having no da. Make them laugh, Catherine determined. People forgot to be cruel if you made them laugh.

  Catherine went on the trip to Morpeth with Lily and enjoyed picnicking in the park and taking a boat on the river. Over the summer they became firm friends again, cycling the countryside on days off, visiting the picture houses and local fairs. Catherine worked hard at pleasing the staff at the workhouse and wrote a play for them to perform at the summer fete, giving Hettie the leading role.

  The woman preened with self-importance and, although she forgot half her words, believed it a great success. Hettie was so pleased, she agreed to Catherine’s request to allow Jenny McManners to visit her son again. Catherine had seen Jenny’s anger fizzle into moroseness as she accepted defeat. The unhappy mother had only been allowed on the trip to the orphanage at Christmas time because Matron was in charge and Hettie did not dare prevent Jenny.

  Catherine was secretly triumphant at Hettie’s change of heart.

  Shortly afterwards, Matron summoned her into her office.

  ‘You’ve worked hard, Miss McMullen,’ Mrs Hatch acknowledged. ‘And I’m glad to see you’re getting on better with Miss Brown and the others. I did fear that your opinion of yourself was a little high when you first came.’

  Catherine bit back a retort that high opinions were Hettie’s problem, not hers. She simply nodded.

  ‘So I’m going to promote you to assistant head laundress.’

  Catherine gaped at her.

  ‘Do you not want the promotion?’ Matron asked sharply.

  ‘Y-yes, of course I do,’ Catherine said quickly. ‘Thank you, Matron.’

  ‘It means you can have a room of your own.’

  Catherine broke into a grin of relief. ‘Thank you.’

  The news was greeted with grumbles by some of the staff, who thought twenty was far too young for such a position.

  ‘You should have got it, Gert,’ Hettie said loudly to her friend.

  Catherine’s insides churned at the jealous look on Hettie’s face. Shortly after she moved into her own room, the rumours about her started with renewed venom.

  Chapter 10

  Autumn 1926

  ‘Where do you think she gets her fancy clothes from?’ Hettie said in the hushed tone of the gossip. ‘I mean that winter coat with the fur collar - she couldn’t afford that on her wages.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true,’ another warder agreed.


  ‘She’s got a fancy man, that’s what,’ Hettie declared. ‘And we all know what men like that expect in return.’

  Catherine froze in the doorway of the staffroom, hidden behind the half-closed door.

  Gert joined in. ‘She got that bunch of flowers last week, an’ all. Delivered to the door, brazen as can be.’

  Catherine flushed to think of Tommy Gallon’s impulsive gesture. He had won a game of pitch-and-toss, and had come round with an armful of chrysanthemums. He had meant nothing by it. They were just youth club friends and Tommy had given up trying to court her or Lily a long time ago.

  ‘No, that was from a pitman friend, she said so.’

  ‘And them on strike and supposed to be hard up? Shows they’ve more money than sense.’

  ‘Who is it then, this fancy man?’ another woman asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hettie snorted. ‘She’s too high-and-mighty to speak to the likes of us any more. But there must be someone.’

  ‘Bet it’s a man she’s met at those Catholic dances she goes to,’ Gert speculated.

  ‘Aye,’ Hettie agreed. ‘She puts on this act of being all holy - but underneath she’s free and easy with her favours.’

  They all began to join in.

  ‘And tries to sound all posh—’

  ‘As if she’s better than us.’

  ‘But she’s not - she’s common as they come.’

  ‘East Jarrow.’

  ‘With a drunk for a grandfather—’

  ‘And a mam who drinks.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’

  ‘Well, the da’s away at sea most of the time, isn’t he, Gert?’

  ‘I’ve heard that’s just her stepda.’

  ‘What do you mean?’