by Maggie Hope
‘You can’t imagine it, the whole place is in ruins. It’s just like a giant builder’s tip,’ he said as they sat round the table eating the corned beef pies hot from the oven and chips made from potatoes from Matt’s garden. Richard, replete after his feed, slept soundly on the sofa.
‘Aye, well,’ growled Chuck, ‘they bombed British towns first. What about Coventry, eh?’
‘Sunderland has some big holes in it, too,’ Theda said. She thought about the streets with uneven gaps in them and rosebay, willow-herb and nettles growing amongst the rubbish.
‘You can’t help feeling a bit sorry for them, though,’ said Joss. ‘They have nothing left – nothing.’
‘Only right—’ Chuck began, but was interrupted by his mother.
‘Eeh, Chuck, think about the bairns, man,’ she exclaimed.
The argument went on but Theda hardly listened; she was going over and over her troubles in her own mind. How could she live here for five years without working? Oh, of course she could claim National Assistance and would probably get it and that would give her some independence from her family, but it wouldn’t be enough. In any case, she needed to get on with her career. She couldn’t afford to waste five years, not if she was to reach her goal.
‘I’ll borrow Renee’s old pram and we’ll take the baby for a walk after we’ve washed up,’ suggested Bea. ‘Fresh air’s good for him.’
‘Aye, you do that,’ said Matt approvingly. ‘On Saturday you mebbe can go into Bishop and get him a pram of his own. It’ll be our Christmas present – what do you think of that?’
‘Oh, Da, you can’t afford to lay out such sums,’ Theda protested.
‘Aye, I can an’ all, I’m earning good money now. Things is different around here, you know. And when the pits are nationalised and there are no owners taking fat profits out, we won’t know we’re born. The good times are coming at last, an’ not afore time neither.’
‘There never were such times,’ murmured Bea, looking sceptical.
‘You’ll see, lass, you’ll see,’ he asserted.
‘Well, good times or not, I’m not going back down the pit when I’m demobbed,’ said Joss, and shook his head emphatically. ‘No, there’s plenty of jobs going elsewhere. Why go down the pit and flog your guts out for a pittance?’
‘But I’m telling you, it’s going to be—’
‘Eeh, Joss, do you mean you won’t be coming home to live?’
His parents gaped at him. Both of them seemed shaken by the thought that Joss was thinking of working away from home.
‘You’ve been away all these years, I was looking forward to having you back,’ wailed his mother.
‘Well, I might be back, depends what work is on offer,’ said Joss. ‘Don’t fret yourself, Mam. I’ll still be coming home to plague you. You’ll be sick of the sight of me, I’m telling you.’
Bea said no more but her agitation showed in her jerky, nervous movements as she got to her feet and began siding the table ready to wash up.
Later, as she and Theda walked the baby in the battered old pram they had borrowed from Renee, she seemed to recover some of her good humour, but not for long. It was a dark, overcast afternoon threatening rain and there were few people about, but those that were stopped to admire the baby and ask Theda where she was living now and was she well and all the usual small talk.
‘She’s coming back home to live,’ Bea told them. ‘In fact, she’s back for good now.’ Theda looked sideways at her mother but didn’t contradict her.
‘Oh, dear, I am sorry. Was your man killed in the war, then?’ asked one woman, tilting her head to one side and folding her arms across her chest. ‘Eeh, so many families being brought up without fathers these days, it’s dreadful, Mrs Wearmouth, it is an’ all.’ She sounded sympathetic but her eyes were thoughtful.
Bea moved on suddenly, walking rapidly on to Winton Village.
‘Come on, Theda, we want to get to the Co-op while they still have something left,’ she called over her shoulder. The woman was left gazing after them.
‘You might as well have told her the truth, Mam,’ said Theda, almost running in her efforts to keep up with her mother. ‘She’ll find out anyway, it’ll be all over the rows by tonight.’
‘Aye. Well, let her find out, I’m not going to help her,’ snapped Bea.
‘I know it’s hard for you, Mam,’ said Theda. ‘I’m sorry I’ve brought you this trouble home, I am. That’s why I was going to stay away.’
‘This isn’t the worst trouble Winton has seen,’ said Bea stubbornly. ‘Just you remember Sally Cornish, and that murdering man of hers, and the lad, Ralph. It all passes, lass. If Tucker Cornish has the face to stay in the place, so have we.’
How could her mother class her with that old scandal? Theda was shaken to the core. She took hold of the pram handle, practically wrenching it from her mother.
‘Hey, our Theda!’ Bea protested.
‘I’m sorry, Mam, but I think I’ll just be getting back to West Row. It’s a bit cold for Richard to be out. After all, he’s barely two months old and I think there’s going to be a bad frost tonight.’
‘Well, I just want a few bits of messages at the Co-op— ’ Bea began, but was talking to Theda’s rapidly receding back.
It was difficult telling her family that she was going back to Sunderland. ‘I have to find a place of my own, you see, but I’ll stay until tomorrow. Then I will have to pack, I have a new job to think about.’
‘You’re not going, our Theda!’ Matt, who had been called early from his bed to add his argument to Bea’s, tried laying down the law.
‘I am, Da, I’m sorry.’
‘But what will you do? You haven’t even got a place in that home now you’ve walked out.’ Bea was red in the face, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘Don’t be so daft, Theda, you never used to care what folk thought about you anyroad.’
‘It’s not that.’ Though partly it was, of course, thought Theda. Not what they thought about her but how it affected her family. They would be upset at first, but it was better for them in the long run. And Chuck and Norma would probably be pleased if she went.
‘I have a job to go to, Da, and I’ll get a room. I might even get a little house. I’m all right, I’ve got my nursing. I want to go on with my career.’
‘An’ never mind Richard!’ shouted Bea. ‘The poor little babby comes a bad second to what you want to do. You’re selfish, Theda!’
‘Aw, come on, that’s a bit strong. Leave her alone to do what she wants to do – she’s a grown woman. Mam? Da?’ Joss appealed to them, but it was as if they couldn’t even hear him.
Matt jumped to his feet. ‘I’m telling you, our Theda, if you’re going to leave this house you needn’t wait until tomorrow – you can get yourself away now. But mind, if you do, don’t come crying to me for help! Now, what are you going to do?’
‘Eeh, Matt—’ Bea began, eyes widening in shock.
‘No, I mean it, Bea. If your daughter wants to go, then let her go. She’s no daughter of mine. All this time we’ve been worrying about her, and what was she doing? Having a bairn out of wedlock! An’ we forgive her and take her back, an’ is she grateful? There’s not an ounce of feeling in her, she’s grateful for nowt!’
Theda listened to him ranting on, her head bowed. Never had she heard in him such a rage, never in her life. How could this be her da? It was a different man altogether. She trembled with shock, her mind numb, unbelieving.
‘Well, Theda Wearmouth, what’s it to be?’
From a distance she heard his voice and had to pull herself together. She looked at the baby sleeping through all the uproar in the borrowed pram. In the sudden silence there came a knocking at the back of the fire grate: Mrs Coulson alarmed at the raised voices. The wall between the houses was only one brick thick. She must have heard most of the argument, and probably Renee too. Still enraged, Matt took hold of the poker and knocked sharply back, bringing down a small shower of soot.
Theda looked at it. It spattered out on to the clean tidy betty and enamel hearth plate and even reached the steel fender. It would have to be cleaned up, she thought dimly.
‘Well?’ he barked, making her jump.
‘Da, if she goes, I’ll go with her,’ said Joss, and Matt looked at him as though he was a deserter from the front line. ‘Have some sense, man,’ Joss went on. ‘She can’t travel back to Sunderland on a winter’s night with nowhere to go when she gets there. Where’s your common charity?’
‘You must do what you must do,’ said Matt. He turned to the fire and, putting a hand up to the rail, leaned forward until his head rested against the mantelpiece and stared into the fire. Bea sank down into her chair, looking stunned.
‘Don’t you worry, Joss. The home will take me in until I find somewhere. If you will just ring for a taxi . . . but you’ll have to go up to Winton Village to the telephone box.’ The baby whimpered and Theda went over to the pram and rocked it gently until he settled down again.
‘I’ll do that,’ said Joss, and without another glance at his father, put on his greatcoat.
‘Have you twopence for the call?’ asked Bea, her voice small. Shocked as she was, she was still practical.
‘I have, Mother.’ He went out into the yard and on down the row. As he went he was making his own plans. He only had a few weeks left in the army; owing to his long service he was going to be one of the first to be demobbed. He had planned to leave the north-east but now he had to adjust his ideas. He could drive. He had driven in the army before he volunteered for the parachute regiment. He could drive a bus. He would apply to Sunderland Corporation for a job driving a double-decker. Then he could keep an eye on his stubborn little sister.
A taxi to Sunderland was going to be expensive as the distance was all of thirty miles. If he could only borrow a car, he thought. The idea was put into his head as he saw the Austin Ruby parked outside the manager’s house. Joss looked longingly at it. It would have done the job nicely. But then, he didn’t know Tucker Cornish well enough to ask them for a loan of a car. They were past commodities as no new ones had been made since before the war.
He walked around the vehicle. It was just the sort of runabout he would like to buy for himself when he got out of the army. Joss sighed and set off down the short cut and into the telephone box, which was at the entrance to old Winton Village.
Inside Tucker’s study, Ken Collins stretched his feet out to the fire. ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay until tomorrow,’ he said as his uncle handed him a glass of the brandy, which he had brought back from Germany only that morning. ‘I have an interview at Sunderland tomorrow. But if you want the Austin, I’ll drop it off on my way back from the farm on Sunday. What do you think?’
‘Well, yes, of course I want it. A good car’s harder to get hold of than a hen’s tooth. Thanks very much for thinking of me, Ken.’
‘Well, it belonged to a friend of mine from Darlington who’s lost a leg. It’s been laid up for most of the war but it’s been well looked after. When I got the chance of it, I jumped at it.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll run you to Darlington for the train on Sunday. It all works out very well.’
Ken sipped his brandy, a good one, he thought, smooth as butter on the tongue. But somehow he was restless. Maybe it was being back in Winton.
‘Have you seen anything of that nurse? You know, her father works at the colliery?’ Ken hadn’t meant to ask but he did. But he was deliberately vague, though he remembered full well Theda’s name, remembered a lot about her. How strands of her hair hung black and curling at the nape of her neck where it had escaped from her cap. Why hadn’t she answered his letter? He could only suppose she didn’t want to see him again. Maybe she was ashamed of the way she had thrown him over when the Yank had come on the scene. Ken sipped his brandy and looked out of the window, disturbed by the bleak feeling rising in him.
Tucker moved uncomfortably, recrossing his legs. He took his time lighting his pipe before he answered. ‘Theda Wearmouth, do you mean? No, she went away to work, I believe. Newcastle or maybe it was York. You’re not interested in her, are you, Ken? I mean, you weren’t really keen on her?’ He thought of the green scarf Mrs Parkin had found. It was still in the glove box of the hallstand. He could give it back to her family but it would be a little awkward. Best to leave it.
‘No, not at all. I went out with her once or twice, that’s all. Idle curiosity, I suppose.’
He’d taken her to Marsden. He remembered that day well. Her face had been alight with interest as he’d shown her round the farm and afterwards, on the edge of the cliff, watching the seabirds swoop around and the children let out of school, running and laughing around them. He remembered all right. But she must have forgotten all about him as soon as he left.
Ken shook his head to rid it of memories. Best be on his way. He said his goodbyes to his uncle and set out on the road to Sunderland.
Joss and Theda with baby Richard took a taxi to Spennymoor. It was well on their way and they could catch a bus there. They ran half-hourly. It was much cheaper that way. Joss studied the bus timetable, which was pinned up by the bus stop.
‘Ten minutes to wait,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long.’
‘You could go back home from here, I can manage fine now,’ said Theda. He looked down at her white face and strained expression. ‘No, I said I was coming with you and I will. I can easily get a bed for the night, even if it’s the Salvation Army.’
‘I don’t want you to fall out with Mam and Da, not over me,’ said Theda. She looked down at the baby in her arms. Sleeping, his lashes fanned out on his cheeks – such long lashes for a little baby boy. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she quarrelled with her son when he was grown but she couldn’t.
The bus finally came and they were climbing on to it when a car pulled up behind, an Austin Ruby. Joss glanced curiously at the driver, a man in officer’s uniform. He looked familiar and so did the car. But the lorry coming the other way, which had caused the car to stop, had gone by now and the Ruby was off, pulling round the bus and zooming down the road.
‘That car looked like the one that was parked outside the gaffer’s house,’ he remarked to Theda, who had just sunk into a vacant seat with a sigh of relief. She looked up, alert suddenly.
‘Where?’
‘Oh, it’s gone now,’ said Joss.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thank God for Joss, thought Theda as she turned into the gate of 22 Laburnum Road – a grandoise name for a prefab in a sprawling estate of prefabricated houses, which they had shipped in from America at the end of the war. It was Joss who had insisted on their putting their names down on the waiting list, and his priority points as an essential worker, added to her own as a nurse, had secured them the two-bedroomed bungalow.
She remembered the small room in the home, which she had shared with Richard when Joss had only a bed in a scruffy boarding house down by the quay. It had been a few months – she preferred not to remember really. Inserting her key in the lock, she opened the door and held it open while she pushed the pram with the sleeping baby inside. And felt the familiar twinge of guilt that it was way past his bedtime and he ought to have been in his bed.
‘Now then, our Theda,’ said Joss, waving a large spoon at her as she put her head round the kitchen door. He was still in his bus driver’s trousers worn with striped braces and shirt sleeves rolled up over his elbows. He had a tea towel fastened round his waist, already bespattered with fat and batter. ‘I’m doing toad-in-the-hole with carrots and mash. I got a whole pound of sausages at the butcher’s on my way home – I saw them being delivered on my way back to the depot. It’ll be ready in half an hour or so if only you’ll give me a hand with this batter. I don’t seem to have got the hang of it . . . it looks a bit strange.’
‘I have Richard to get to bed first,’ she said.
‘I’ll see to the nipper. You’re late anyroad – where’ve you been?’
‘Nay, man, don’t cross your bridges afore you come to them. He might not. Here, give him here. I’ll put him to bed while you take the lumps out of that disgusting mess.’
Theda beat away at the mixture until it was smooth then poured it over the sausages and put the lot in the oven. Thank God for the prefab, she thought again, with its light, bright kitchen such as she’d never seen before and its electric oven and that luxury of the rich, a refrigerator.
Richard had woken up and instead of whingeing as he was inclined to do, was laughing and splashing in the bath as Joss played with him. A satisfying smell was coming from the oven and the potatoes and carrots were bubbling on the stove. The kitchen was warm and bright and Theda began to relax.
Afterwards, with Richard in bed at the end of the hallway, they ate the meal at the kitchen table.
‘I had a letter from the parents this morning,’ Joss volunteered, putting his knife and fork on his empty plate and pushing it away. He poured himself a fresh cup of tea and lit a Woodbine cigarette with the lighter he had carried throughout the war. It was made from a brass .303 bullet case and the casing shone from the constant handling it received. Theda looked at his fingers playing with it, turning it round and round, flicking the light on and off.
‘They all right, are they?’ she asked.
‘Fine. Mam says to give you her love and she’ll be coming up to see you at the weekend.’
‘And Da?’
‘No, not Da.’
Well, she hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t seen him since the day she left Winton. But she missed him, missed them both. He’s a stubborn old man, she thought, trying to channel her feelings into anger. At least that was better than the lost feeling inside her when she remembered how he had turned her out of his life.