Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Within an hour, one had come to her, so clear and complete that Catherine was shaken to the core. Had it come from deep within or was Our Lady still watching over her, despite her lapsed faith? She worked on it night and day. The following year, The Fifteen Streets was published; a year after that, Colour Blind. Exiled though she was from Tyneside, the place had never seemed more vivid and alive to her. She wrote about the Edwardian streets she remembered, but was happy to revisit them only in her mind.

  Strangely, Catherine was thinking about Kate when a letter came from Aunt Mary.

  She ran to meet Tom on his way home from school. ‘Kate’s ill,’ she told him in agitation. ‘Our Mary says she’s - she’s - dying.’

  ‘You must go and see her,’ Tom said at once. ‘If you don’t, you’ll never forgive yourself.’

  ‘But what will I say to her after all this time?’ Catherine asked helplessly.

  ‘You’ve never been stuck for words before,’ Tom said drily.

  She held his hand. ‘Please will you come with me?’

  A week later, they were travelling north along the same route as when Catherine had been carrying David. She tried not to think of it. When smoky Tyneside hove into view, Catherine felt her heart lurch. Was it nerves or something deeper? Walking from the station into the narrow streets of Tyne Dock to Kate’s flat, her eyes prickled at the familiar accents and the faded awnings over shops she knew. Feeling tearful, she gripped Tom’s arm for support.

  Aunt Mary let them in. When Catherine saw her mother lying in bed, her bloated face creasing into a smile at her appearance, she burst into tears.

  ‘Haway, hinny and stop your noise,’ Kate chided. ‘I’m not dead yet.’

  Catherine sat down before her knees buckled. Her mother looked so old and helpless, not a threat at all. The gloomy room smelled of decay. She should have brought flowers to brighten it. Why had she not thought to buy any?

  Tom, seeing his wife overcome with emotion, chatted to Kate about the journey. When he asked her about herself, Kate waved at him dismissively.

  ‘Doctor’s making too much of a fuss. Tell me about Kitty’s books.’

  Later, as Kate slept, Mary told them bluntly, ‘She’s got cancer. It’s in her liver. Dropsy and heart trouble too. Doctor says it’s likely she won’t last more than three months - maybes six.’

  Catherine swallowed. ‘Can’t they operate?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘Too far gone. She’s puffed up like a balloon. Doesn’t complain much, but you can tell she’s in pain.’

  ‘What can we do?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘Doctor says she should be somewhere more healthy - where the air’s cleaner. Nowt can cure her, but at least it would help her breathing. She gets that short of breath, can’t make it down the stairs any longer. And I’m too old to be running up here all day to see to her.’

  Catherine looked at Tom. His eyes were full of compassion, ‘She could come and stay with us,’ he said quietly.

  Catherine was filled with gratitude. Despite Kate’s past treatment of him, Tom was willing to forgive and take her in. Catherine knew in her heart that that was what they should do - offer the dying Kate a home - but she did not have the courage to do it without him.

  She touched his face gently. ‘Thank you.’

  Kate visibly revived at the news, but the doctor was dubious she could make the long journey. In the end, she was taken by ambulance to the station and put on a sleeper to London using the luggage hoist. When Mary cried, Kate told her not to be so soft.

  In London, she was hoisted into another ambulance across the city to the Hastings train, where a third ambulance awaited. After a gruelling night and day of travel, Catherine and Tom got Kate safely to The Hurst.

  They brought down a bed and put it in the cook’s sitting room.

  ‘You’ll get the warmth from the kitchen in here,’ Catherine told her, tucking her in. ‘Tom’s heating you up a bowl of soup.’

  Kate grabbed feebly at her arm. Her eyes glittered.

  ‘Ta for doing this, hinny,’ she croaked.

  Catherine shrugged awkwardly. ‘It’s Tom you should thank - it was his idea.’

  ‘Aye, but it’s your doing.’ Kate’s chin wobbled. ‘Oh lass, I’ve come home!’

  ***

  Kate did not die as soon as expected.

  ‘It’s your skill as a nurse has kept her alive,’ Tom said.

  ‘Her sheer bloody-mindedness,’ Catherine joked.

  After a year, Kate was able to take short walks around the garden and help with the cooking. She lost her bloated look and stayed sober, for there was no one to buy her drink. Yet keeping The Hurst running, looking after Kate and trying to write was proving too much for Catherine. Her own health was deteriorating again.

  Tom took the decision that they should move to somewhere more manageable. When they discovered a charming mock-Tudor villa with a sunny garden, Catherine found it easier to leave her old home than she had imagined.

  ‘It’s just bricks and mortar, nowt else,’ Kate said, excited about the move.

  She chose a room on the ground floor with a view onto the garden through French windows. Once they were settled in, Tom came home with a frisky terrier.

  ‘Been abandoned in the school yard - no one wants it.’

  Catherine patted it in sympathy. ‘How could no one want you, eh?’ She fell instantly and besottedly in love with the noisy, affectionate dog. He raced around the house like an irrepressible child, which was what he became in Catherine’s eyes. They called him Bill for no particular reason and even Kate spoilt him with titbits from the table.

  At times, Catherine balked at being so tied to her mother. She and Tom hardly ever went out alone, for Kate could not reach the bathroom without help and they feared she would fall if left unattended. Gradually she began to fade again, but rather than accept her restrictions she railed against them, growing more crotchety by the day. Catherine relented and allowed her mother a glass of beer at night to ease the pain.

  Some days, Kate would sit happily in a chair, slowly reading one of Catherine’s books, Bill lying in her lap. Maggie Rowan and A Grand Man had recently been published. On others she could not rise from bed, and snapped at Catherine about the food or being left for more than ten minutes.

  The doctor warned Catherine to prepare herself for her mother’s death.

  ‘I could arrange for nursing care - give you a break,’ he suggested.

  ‘No.’ Catherine was adamant. ‘I’ll nurse her myself. She’ll only give some poor nurse the run-around.’

  But her sense of obligation was not her only reason for wanting to nurse her mother. As Kate’s life ebbed away, so did the secrets of her past. If Catherine stayed close, the dying woman might let slip something about her father. Catherine still yearned to find out anything about this shadowy figure - fill in the pieces of herself that had been missing all her life. She wanted to hear the truth from Kate, not just second-hand gossip from Aunt Mary or Great-Aunt Lizzie.

  One late September day, when the garden was gleaming bronze in the sunlight, Catherine found her mother in bed, crying over her book Colour Blind.

  ‘How did you know?’ Kate whispered. ‘About our Jack.’

  ‘Know what?’ Catherine looked at her puzzled.

  ‘He was just like this man in the book - the way he tret me. But you were too young to know.’

  Catherine stared in shock. The character in her novel forced himself on his sister. Surely her Uncle Jack had not been like that? She remembered him as shy and timid with girls. But Kate’s face told a different story. The old memory resurfaced: waking in bed beside Kate, a figure looming over them with a waft of whisky, a struggle, whispered wrangling, Kate breaking free and fleeing to the safety of the privy. Uncle Jack. She must have known it all along, for
there it was in her book.

  ‘Why did you not say anything to Grandma or Grandda?’

  Kate’s laugh was bitter. ‘Who would’ve believed me? He was Rose’s blue-eyed boy. I was the one would’ve been blamed - Kate the slut - for leadin’ him astray.’

  Catherine sat on the bed, her heart heavy. ‘Tell me about those days,’ she asked gently, ‘and the time before I was born.’

  Kate brusquely brushed away tears. ‘You don’t want to hear about all that.’

  ‘I do,’ Catherine insisted. ‘Whatever you say won’t go beyond these four walls, I promise. Not even to Tom. But I need to know, Kate. I’d rather know my father was a bad’un than know nothing.’

  For long minutes they sat in silence and Catherine feared her mother would remain stubbornly mute. Then suddenly she began to speak, her voice reflective.

  ‘I first met him at Ravensworth - saw him with Lady Emma - then out riding. He stopped to pick up the raspberries I’d dropped - made me eat one.’ Her faded eyes shone, her tone almost girlish. ‘So handsome in his riding clothes - hair all chestnut waves like a lion’s mane and eyes that looked right inside me. Your eyes.’ Kate looked fondly.

  Catherine sat holding her breath while her mother spoke of the growing romance with Alexander, a coal agent’s adopted son who came often to the estate and courted her.

  ‘Am I like him in any other way?’ she dared ask. ‘Great-Aunt Lizzie said he was an artist.’

  Kate looked startled, then nodded. ‘He was, though he liked to draw people, not buildings. That’s what interested him - ordinary lads and lasses. Went all over the estate drawing them at work.’ She paused, her hands moving in agitation over the covers. ‘And some’at else. He used to have nosebleeds like yours - bad ones. But I could never tell Dr Dyer for the shame of it. Didn’t like to think he had owt to do with you -wouldn’t think about him - not after he’d turned his back on us and left me to face the music on me own.’

  ‘So you never saw him again? Perhaps if he’d seen you face to face - seen you carrying me - he might have done something for us.’ Catherine was desperate to believe the best of her absent father.

  Kate gave her a look of such pity that her stomach turned over.

  ‘He did come back to see me,’ she said sadly. ‘Thought he’d come to fetch us from Leam Lane, but he threw money at me and your grandma and waltzed off. Never saw him again. Was like living in a tomb in that terrible house - those weeks before you were born.’ Her face was harrowed. ‘Always hoped he’d change his mind, even afterwards. That’s why I put his name on your birth certificate and lied about being Mrs Davies. Could’ve gone to gaol, but it was all I could give you - a decent name.’

  Catherine swallowed. ‘So when you told me he was dead - when I was a bairn - you didn’t know about him dying in Sweden?’

  ‘No, that was to stop your questions. You always had a head too full of fancy notions and a gob full of questions. But I didn’t know till years later when Davie said he’d seen his gravestone.’ Her voice was flat. ‘It was only then I gave up on Alexander and married Davie.’

  ‘But he might just have said that to get you to marry him,’ Catherine said indignantly. ‘Have you ever thought of that?’

  Kate closed her eyes tight shut as if the pain was too great. ‘Aye,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what we were arguing about the night Davie went missin’. It was a terrible row. We’d both had one too many. I said I didn’t believe Alexander was really dead - that he’d only said it to make me forget him. I said some terrible things - that I never should’ve married him - that Alexander was the only man I’d ever loved.’

  Kate was almost whispering now and Catherine had to lean closer.

  ‘And - and then he told me. Not only had Alexander died all those years ago, but the gravestone was put there by his loving wife, Polly.’ A sob caught in her throat. ‘I knew then it was true. Your father had been engaged to some posh woman - one of the gentry - when he was still seeing me. I was daft enough to hope he might choose me over her -I was that in love with him and thought he was too. Well, Polly was the lass’s name. I could have waited all me life, but Alexander would never have come back even if he’d lived.’ Kate shuddered. ‘I told Davie to get out and never come back - even though I knew he was tellin’ the truth. But it hurt too much, hinny. Then poor Davie—’

  Catherine reached across quickly and squeezed her mother’s hand. She was filled with a sense of loss, not just for herself but for the young Kate who had been treated so callously.

  That afternoon, as the sun dipped behind the trees, Kate talked of the birth and how she had been banished by her parents to work in Chester-le-Street while they brought Catherine up as their own.

  ‘Was to save face, I had to give you up,’ Kate said bitterly. ‘My punishment was to work to keep you and not be allowed to be a mam. Was just a servant, nowt else, after you were born. Old John said I was lucky he hadn’t kicked me on to the street like the whore I was.’ Tears brimmed in her sunken eyes. ‘Wouldn’t even let me pick you up for a cuddle when I came home.’

  Tears filled Catherine’s throat. She thought of how she still yearned to hold her baby David after all this time. How cruel was Kate’s punishment - a mother’s love stifled at birth.

  On impulse, Catherine reached across the bed and gathered Kate into her arms. Wordlessly they held on to each other, while her mother cried into her hair.

  Eventually, Kate sobbed, ‘I’ve been a terrible mother - a wicked woman to you, Kitty!’

  Catherine thought of all the pain and hurt of their fraught relationship. At times she had hated her mother more than anything else in the world, but she knew there was nothing to be gained from speaking her anger. Kate must be allowed to die in peace. Catherine summoned up words of forgiveness.

  ‘No you haven’t,’ she gulped. ‘The only person you’ve really hurt all these years is you. It’s not your fault what happened, so stop blaming yourself.’

  Kate lay back quietly weeping. ‘Don’t leave me, Kitty.’

  Catherine stayed with her mother till she fell asleep. That night she went to bed drained and slept straight away. For the next couple of days, Kate slipped in and out of consciousness, always seeming to settle when Catherine came near. On the third morning, Catherine noticed a difference in Kate’s breathing. It was shallow and fast, like marbles in her throat.

  Her mother lay with her eyes closed, but when Catherine tried to leave the room, her hand moved in agitation and she tried to say something. Bending close, Catherine reassured her, ‘I’m here, don’t fret.’

  For a moment Kate’s eyes flickered open and gave a flash of recognition. Her hand groped out to hers. Catherine took it and held it. Kate’s fingers grasped hers weakly.

  ‘Forgive me, lass,’ Kate rasped, her breathing ragged.

  Catherine leant over and tenderly kissed her forehead.

  ‘God bless you, Kitty,’ she murmured and closed her eyes again.

  Catherine sat holding her mother’s hand as the clock ticked on towards midday. It was Bill pushing open the door, padding into the room and whimpering at the bed that alerted her to the sudden stillness. Kate was gone.

  For a moment Catherine was filled with a sudden sense of peace, of relief. Kate lay there looking so calm and untroubled, a much younger woman. Catherine felt a pang of loss. She wished she could have known that Kate - the one with whom Alexander had fallen in love. Rising, Catherine leant over her mother and kissed her cooling cheek.

  ‘It’s over,’ she whispered. ‘All your struggling’s over, Mam.’

  Tears flooded her eyes as she said the word - the name she had never been able to utter when Kate was alive, Mam. She went to the French windows and threw them open, letting the autumn breeze sweep into the room. With Bill at her heels, Catherine escaped into the garden to weep.

 
Chapter 52

  The time following Kate’s death was like a strange limbo for Catherine. She alternately rejoiced in her freedom from her overbearing mother and mourned her passing. Right at the very end, she had come closer to her mother than at any time in her life, only to lose her just as she was getting to understand her.

  Kate’s going seemed to sever her ties with Tyneside, cutting Catherine off from the source of her inspiration. She began to realise just how important Kate had been to her writing; she had been the life-blood to her stories, their stormy relationship the spur to her creativity.

  It was Tom who suggested she write about Kate directly.

  ‘Get her out of your system, Kitty,’ he encouraged. ‘Write about her if you can’t write about anything else.’

  Catherine tried. Over the next few years she attempted to make sense of her childhood and her seesawing emotions over Kate. At times it was too brutal, too unforgiving, and Catherine abandoned the project. It was too personal, stirring up raw feelings she had tried for years to bury. But having given up on the idea, she found a renewed creativity in her fiction.

  By the end of the decade, she was making a name for herself as a popular writer, a number of her novels being adapted into films. Some people found it strange that she could write so vividly about the North Country when she had lived away for more than half her life.

  She ventured back on occasional research trips, and even rarer visits to her few remaining relatives. Tom encouraged these and liked to go with her. But after a day or two she was always homesick for their house in Hastings and could not wait to get back.

  ‘Maybe we’ll end up living in the north,’ Tom once suggested, ‘when I retire.’

  Catherine had laughed at such an idea. ‘Like elephants going home to die, you mean?’ she snorted. ‘You can go, Tom, I’m staying here.’

  Then, one day, quite out of the blue, a visitor appeared on their doorstep.

  Catherine stared at the middle-aged woman in the neat coat and hat, clutching a handbag.

  ‘Hello, Kitty,’ she said nervously. ‘Or should I say, Mrs Catherine Cookson?’