Jarrow Trilogy 02 - A Child of Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  He frowned as he tried to remember. The name sounded familiar. There had been a William, a kind man with a handsome wife who had once taken him to the circus. When his beloved cousin Edward had fallen ill, Alexander had wanted to go to live with them rather than be sent away to strangers. Could it be possible that this was the same man’s daughter?

  ‘Perhaps I met him then,’ he smiled. ‘Visitors were always coming to the rectory. Kate Fawcett, I feel as if I know you!’

  She grinned back at him and they continued to walk.

  ‘I was very fond of my cousin Edward,’ he told her. ‘He was a father to me for a while - when my own father wanted nothing to do with me. My mother was a Liddell, you see - caused a scandal by eloping with a coachman and died before I got to know her. I’m a bit of a black sheep. Then along came Jeremiah Davies and adopted me - saved me from the house of correction.’

  His speech was flippant, but his tone was bitter. Kate was astonished he was telling her any of it. Perhaps he was drunk.

  ‘How unhappy you must’ve been,’ she murmured.

  Alexander gave her a sharp look, then realised it was true. He had been deeply unhappy and lonely as a boy, latching on desperately to anyone who showed him an ounce of affection. How strange that this ordinary girl from Jarrow should understand that so plainly when he had denied it for years. Except Kate Fawcett did not strike him as ordinary. She had more than surface prettiness. A simple dignity and inner grace shone through her that made him forget she was a mere housemaid.

  ‘It’s like a ship losing its anchor,’ Kate continued quietly, ‘when a bairn loses a mother or father. My father died when I was barely six years old.’

  Alexander felt a sudden closeness to her. He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘So that’s how you came on hard times?’

  Kate flinched at the touch as if she had been scalded. ‘Aye, we’ve had hard times,’ she flushed. ‘Mam lost two of her bairns an’ all. But she’s brought up another four and lived to tell the tale.’

  ‘She must be a remarkable woman. Just like her daughter.’ Alexander searched her face in the half-dark.

  Kate’s heart thumped. ‘You don’t know me, sir.’

  He leant closer. ‘I’d like to get to know you, Kate.’

  She dropped her gaze, suddenly unsure of the situation. Suky’s words of warning rang in her head. Watch out for that sort. Fancy silks and common serge don’t mix...

  ‘I must be gettin’ back, sir,’ she said hastily, stepping away, ‘else I’ll be locked out.’

  Alexander said sardonically, ‘I know where to climb in when the back door’s bolted - did it as a lad.’

  ‘Well, I’m no lad and I’ll be in a heap of bother from the housekeeper if I start climbing in windows!’

  They both looked at each other and laughed, the seriousness of moments before broken.

  ‘Come on then, Kate,’ he said, ushering her in front of him.

  They said little else on their brisk walk back, Kate keeping ahead of him. At the foot of the terrace, by the hothouses, they parted. Kate took the path round to the back of the castle and Alexander the steps leading up to the front.

  ‘Good night, Kate,’ he called with a wave of his walking cane.

  ‘Sir,’ she answered, picking up her skirt and running into the dark shadows.

  That fiery sunset marked the end of the spell of good weather and when Kate rose early the next day it was grey and wet. Gazing out at the rain drumming on the courtyard cobbles, she wondered if she had dreamt the previous evening. The head housemaid had been suspicious of her late return and started asking questions. Kate decided not to venture out that evening in the wet, though she longed to come across Alexander in the grounds again.

  Two days later she and Hannah were told to clean out the bedroom in the east tower. Rushing there, Kate found to her dismay that it was empty. All trace of Alexander was gone. She tried to hide her disappointment and helped Hannah strip the bed and bundle the linen into a basket. They swept out the room and carried away the ashes from the dead fire.

  What did she expect? she berated herself. For all his chequered childhood, he was a gentleman far out of her reach with business to take him elsewhere. He had more in common with Lady Ravensworth than he ever would with her. That night by the lake he had merely been kind in offering to see her safely home. It was just talk of Jarrow and the mention of the Liddells that had made her feel closer to him than she should have dared.

  She had given him the impression that she was from a social class not far removed from the rector’s. He had assumed she had fallen on hard times because her father had died, little guessing that being housemaid to Lord Ravensworth was a dream come true for a girl who had begged round the streets of Tyneside. She had kept from him that her mother had remarried a boorish drunk who could not even write his own name.

  He may have talked to her, but it had not meant the same for him. He was gone as he had before, without warning, and it might be months before she set eyes on him again. She must bury her foolish feelings for him.

  Chapter 13

  A week after returning home to Darlington, Alexander felt restless once more. There had been no excuse to stay on at Ravensworth, though he had promised Cousin Emma he would return for the summer ball in July. The fine weather had broken and he had left abruptly, desiring a taste of town life. But a few days of his father’s company and social calls were enough.

  He arranged to go to Newcastle to check on timber imports and visit their shipping agents, ignoring Davies’s complaints that it could be done by letter. He booked into a boarding house near the Central Station that he used before voyages, run by tight-lipped widow Timmins, who kept the narrow house spotless for her travellers.

  Alexander made a cursory call to the agents on the quayside and spent the rest of the week wandering the anonymous city with his notebook and pen. When the sun shone through the billowing chimney smoke that hung over the town he sat on walls and quaysides, drawing the life of the streets: dockers and draymen, pedlars and hawkers, children crouched over games of marbles in the dust. When it rained he retreated to a bar and sat in the corner nursing a pint of beer and sketching his fellow drinkers.

  He felt compelled to draw people, recreating the faces of his childhood as he listened to their sharp, lilting voices and quick laughter. But every time he caught sight of a young woman with a basket on her arm or a face shaded by a bonnet, his thoughts turned to Kate. She was in every sketch he made. He tried to draw what he saw, but the curve of her jaw or her slim waist, the line of her neat ankle or the edge of her smile came out on the paper.

  He could not rid his mind of her. What was it about her that made him unable to settle to anything but this frenzied drawing? She was pretty, but he had seen prettier young women in Gothenburg. She sang well, but with an untrained voice. As he drank his fill and became morose he realised it was something to do with her uncomplicated naturalness, her simplicity of speech, the way she had sympathised with him. He detected a generosity of spirit and a loving nature.

  And she came from Jarrow and her family had known his. It did not concern him that she was beneath him socially; such barriers had never held the importance that they did for others, people like Davies. After all, his mother had run off with a coachman. Barriers were there to be broken, in Alexander’s view.

  He could not work or sleep in this state of preoccupation. He must get back to Ravensworth. Alexander returned to his boarding house and penned a letter to the earl, inviting himself to stay.

  By return of post, a note came from Lady Ravensworth, telling him he must come at once. With the house still in mourning there was a dearth of visitors, so it was his duty to cheer them up. Two weeks after leaving the castle, Alexander was hurrying back.

  ***

  Kate and Hannah were sent to prepare the bedroom. Kate knew at once that Alexander must be returning, for no one else used the room. She found it hard to contain her excitement or from blurring out to the other maid
that she had met and walked with this gentleman in the woods.

  ‘Wonder why he always sleeps in this room?’ Hannah asked. ‘Bit poky, if you ask me.’

  ‘He used it when he was a boy, that’s why,’ Kate answered without thinking.

  ‘How would you know?’ Hannah looked at her sharply.

  Kate flushed. ‘So I’ve heard - from me Uncle Peter - he knew him as a lad.’ She turned and busied herself polishing the leather-topped table.

  ‘What would a gardener know?’ Hannah said sniffily.

  Kate said nothing, not wanting to get into an argument or be questioned further.

  Hannah continued, ‘I think he must be sweet on Her Ladyship, else why does he keep coming back?’

  ‘It’s only the second time this year,’ Kate said, annoyed by the suggestion.

  ‘Second time in a month,’ Hannah snorted. ‘Lily thinks so too. Overheard them talking ‘bout affairs of the heart and that.’

  ‘Lily just likes to gossip. Shouldn’t say such things about Her Ladyship.’

  ‘Oh, I was forgetting you were one of her strays brought in from Farnacre,’ Hannah teased. ‘I won’t say another word.’

  Kate threw her duster at Hannah and meowed like a cat, turning their argument into a joke.

  The following day Kate glimpsed Alexander in the distance, riding out in the early morning, and the day after that, climbing into an open carriage beside Lady Ravensworth. She began to suspect that Hannah’s gossip might be true. She could not understand why it should upset her so much, but it did. Better to smother her feelings for him now and to avoid setting eyes on Alexander at all.

  So when orders came to take hot water or an extra lamp or a cake of soap up to the east tower, she asked Hannah to go. A week went by and she did not see him. Then Hannah began to tire of traipsing up and down the many stairs and told Kate it was her turn.

  The following morning, as Kate was leaving a jug of steaming water outside Alexander’s room, she heard a groan from inside. She stopped and listened and heard it again. She hesitated, then heard his muffled voice calling for help.

  Kate knocked. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Another groan. Kate tried the door. It was unlocked, so in she went. The curtains were drawn back and Alexander was lying on the floor half dressed. There was blood all over his face and hair. He clutched a linen towel, which was blood-soaked too.

  ‘Sir!’ Kate cried and rushed to him. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  He stared at her with vacant eyes, then buried his face in the towel again. She reached forward and pulled it gently away from his face to see where the cut was. Perhaps he had fallen and hit his head. He moaned in pain. Blood poured from his nose. Quickly Kate seized a fresh towel from the stand and gave it to him.

  ‘Can you sit up, sir?’ she asked. ‘Here, put an arm round me shoulder.’

  Kate coaxed him with comforting words, though her heart hammered in fright at the sight of so much blood. She managed to haul him into a sitting position, propped against the bed.

  ‘Keep your head forward so you don’t choke on your blood. I’ll get help.’

  She bolted from the room and ran down the stairs, shouting for help. She ran into a footman in the gallery.

  ‘Mr Wadsworth, we need a doctor quickly! It’s Mr Pringle-Davies. I found him bleedin’ on the floor!’

  James told her to alert the housekeeper while he rang for the doctor. ‘Then go back and stay with him until someone comes,’ he ordered.

  Kate flew to the housekeeper’s room behind the kitchens and gabbled her story. The housekeeper sent her back upstairs while she broke the news to Lady Ravensworth. Kate returned with a pile of extra towels to the tower room and found Alexander still slumped against the bed. She poured water into a bowl and carried it over to the bedside.

  Dipping a fresh towel in the water, she tentatively pulled away the bloodied one.

  ‘Hold this,’ she said gently. Wringing out another one, she began to wash his brow, pushing the matted hair away from his temples and talking to him calmly.

  He watched her with glazed eyes that did not seem to recognise her, but she went on washing him and talking softly as if dealing with a frightened child, while inside, it was she who was terrified.

  Minutes later, James appeared to tell them the doctor was on his way. Between them, they managed to pull Alexander on to the bed.

  ‘What should I do now, Mr Wadsworth?’ she asked.

  ‘Better get back downstairs,’ he said.

  Alexander spoke for the first time. ‘No, let her stay,’ he mumbled. ‘Please.’

  The footman looked surprised, but nodded. ‘I’ll go and show the doctor the way,’ he said, and disappeared.

  Kate sat down on the bed and carried on bathing Alexander’s face. His look was glazed.

  ‘Thank you, Kate,’ he croaked.

  Her heart thumped. He had recognised her.

  ‘Don’t speak,’ she whispered. ‘Save your strength, sir.’

  He reached up and covered the hand that was wiping his brow, so that she had to stop. He pulled it to his lips and brushed her fingers with a kiss. She looked into his tawny eyes and began to shake. What did he mean by such a kiss?

  Moments later, she heard voices on the stairs beyond and the housekeeper swept in with Lady Ravensworth. Kate sprang up nervously and curtsied. Lady Ravensworth went straight to Alexander and kissed the top of his head.

  ‘My poor, dear Alexander! How dreadful!’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he answered weakly, ‘I just need to rest. It’ll pass - it always does.’ He lay back on the pillow, drained and exhausted by the loss of blood.

  ‘It’s happened before?’ Her Ladyship cried.

  Alexander nodded.

  ‘We must send word to your father at once.’

  ‘No,’ Alexander protested, ‘he just fusses.’

  ‘Well, I won’t hear of you going anywhere until you’re quite better. Dr Lawson is just the man to take care of you. Henry’s valet will stay with you too.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Alexander said. ‘Kate here can nurse me. She has a gentle touch.’

  Lady Emma looked at Kate with interest. ‘My singing maid,’ she smiled in recognition. ‘Very well.’

  Kate was astounded at the bold request and caught the look of disapproval on the housekeeper’s face. She did not want to be the cause of tongues wagging around the castle staff, however much she wanted to stay with Alexander. But the housekeeper made no protest and soon after Dr Lawson arrived and they were all sent out of the room.

  Complete bed rest was ordered and no more energetic trips on horseback. For the next few days Alexander slept for hours on end, often fretful in his sleep. Kate would steal in and watch him toss restlessly and cry out. At other times he lay pale and peaceful, his brow smoothed of worry like a small boy’s.

  On one occasion while he slept, she was drawn to the table in the window where pieces of paper spilt out of a leather folder. Making sure he still slept, Kate opened the folder and looked through the drawings. She was curious for some proof that Lady Ravensworth meant more to him than being a kind hostess and patron. But there were no more pictures of Lady Ravensworth. Instead there were dozens of drawings of ordinary people at work and rest. Kate gasped in shock. One of the sketches looked like her holding Alfred in her arms. But flicking quickly through the others, the same young woman appeared again and again in different poses and settings - places to which she had never been.

  Perhaps she was an artist’s model or his lover? With a stab of jealousy, she pushed the pictures quickly back into the folder. She should not have looked. Lady Ravensworth might not be the target for his affections, but some other woman clearly was.

  Kate tried to be more distant. After three days Alexander was taking an interest in the meals of liver and beer that she brought up for him to build up his strength. He would smile, thank her and try to engage her in conversation, but she would say little and withdraw quickly. />
  The next day the calm was shattered by the unexpected arrival of Jeremiah Davies to see his son. Having heard Alexander had left Newcastle the week before, he guessed where he had gone.

  ‘You should have told me sooner that you were ill,’ Davies scolded. ‘Lady Ravensworth’s letter arrived yesterday. Were you ever going to tell me yourself?’

  ‘Don’t fret, Papa,’ Alexander replied. ‘I didn’t want you worrying.’

  ‘Of course I’m worried! We must get you home at once. You shall see our own physician.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well looked after here. Dr Lawson has called every day - and I have Kate here to tend me.’

  Davie: looked round and noticed the maid for the first time. ‘Are you a nurse?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, sir,’ Kate admitted.

  Davies turned back to Alexander. ‘I will arrange a proper nurse to care for you until you are quite fit again. And you shall go to see a specialist - in London if needs be. These attacks are getting worse.’

  ‘No, Papa, I’m staying here. Lady Ravensworth’s orders. Can’t be disobeyed.’ He sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

  Kate tried not to laugh at his cheeky defiance or Davies’s blustering. She could see that the elderly white-haired man was concerned for his son, yet angry not to get his own way. She imagined the plain-talking coal agent was not used to being thwarted by people saying no to him. But short of hauling Alexander down the stairs himself, there was little he could do.

  Davies cried, ‘Have it your own way! But I want you home as soon as you can travel. I can’t imagine why His Lordship allows you to spend so much time here,’ he added peevishly.

  He threw a disparaging look at Kate on his way out. She showed him to the door and curtsied. When he had gone she heard Alexander call her back.

  ‘Did I look suitably near death’s door?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she smirked.

  ‘Good,’ he smiled, closing his eyes again. ‘It could be days before I’m able to travel, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybes weeks, sir,’ Kate agreed.