‘My mother was bonny once,’ Kate answered. ‘But life’s been hard for her these past years. Likely you wouldn’t recognise her, even if she was the woman you met as a lad.’
‘Maybe one day I’ll drive you over to see her - give her a surprise.’
Kate felt alarm. She could not imagine taking Alexander to the squat little railway cottage above the cutting. Yet her mother kept it tidy and the front garden neat and he seemed to find something charming in the way working people lived: he was forever drawing them outside pit cottages or in the fields. Kate could not understand it. Perhaps it would be possible to take him there and show him off to her mother, she daydreamt. As long as she could be sure John McMullen would not be there to cause a scene or give offence.
She smiled and said nothing. It excited her that Alexander spoke about future meetings. Could it be possible he intended courting her? Kate dared not hope. He might enjoy spending the day with her once in a while, but he lived in a different world that she could not hope to enter. She would have to content herself with these delicious snatched moments together when they could play at being equals.
December came and Alexander grew bolder. He called at the inn and had meals there whenever business took him to Ravensworth or Newcastle. He made no secret of knowing Kate and kept her in conversation when she served him in the taproom. The landlord was wary at first, but seeing how it pleased his free-spending customer, did not scold her. Still, Kate could tell Bram Taylor was uneasy when Alexander stopped by at the inn on her next Sunday off.
‘I’m on my way to the castle,’ he said breezily. ‘Would you like a lift in my carriage, Kate? I know your aunt would be pleased to see you.’
Kate flushed at the brazenness, but, avoiding Mary’s scandalised look and the landlord’s frown, went with him.
Once down the lane, he turned to her and grinned. ‘A fine day for walking in the hills. You can visit your aunt another day, can’t you?’
She nodded and he set the pony to a brisk trot. Up on the moors they walked along an old wagon way in the sharp frost, knocking at an ale house he knew for a mug of warmed beer when the low afternoon sun began to dip.
They sat by the innkeeper’s fire, sharing the drink. Kate had never tasted beer before - the smell reminding her of her drunken stepfather - but sitting next to Alexander in the isolated cottage decorated with holly for Christmas, she found the drink warming and intoxicating. She felt so happy she started to sing, songs pouring out of her in a torrent. The family of the house stopped their chores to listen and join in.
‘She’s my nightingale,’ Alexander boasted in merriment.
The wife gave Kate a knowing look, which made her blush.
The woman thought she was Alexander’s fancy woman! Kate decided it was time to leave. She was uncertain when he suggested meeting her in a fortnight, frightened of the feelings he stirred in her.
‘It’s too near to Christmas. You’ll be busy at home, won’t you? Christmas dances and that, with your own kind?’ she tried to joke.
Alexander tipped her chin so she had to look into his face. His eyes blazed.
‘My kind? I don’t give two pennies for the dull gentry of the county, if that’s what you mean. It’s your company I want, Kate!’
Kate’s heart thudded. They were so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.
‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘I’m not good enough for you.’
He grabbed her hands and held on, his look fierce. ‘By God, you are! You’re the kindest, prettiest, most loving girl I’ve ever met, with the sweetest singing voice in the world. It’s me who isn’t good enough for you, Kate. Say you’ll see me again!’
She trembled at his touch and the passionate words he spoke just for her. Or were they just for her? an inner voice cautioned. Did he act like this with other girls, other women in different towns? She did not know. But the words made her heady and she wanted to believe them.
‘Don’t leave me broken-hearted,’ he protested. ‘You do want to see me again, don’t you, Kate?’
‘Aye, I do,’ she confessed, ‘more than anything.’
He gave her the warm smile that made her insides somersault. Then briefly he leant forward and kissed her on the cheek for the first time.
‘Till we meet again, sweet Kate,’ he said tenderly.
Chapter 20
Rose prepared excitedly for the girls coming home for Christmas, or to be exact, Boxing Day. With the luxury of Jack’s new wages from the docks, she had bought a leg of pork from a local farmer and a bagful of vegetables from Harry Burn. She had to be careful when she spoke to him, for ever since Mrs Burn had died the previous winter, John was suspicious of her conversing with the widower.
It amazed Rose that John could still be jealous over her. She had long ago stopped looking in the stained mirror that hung in the scullery where Mary used to preen every morning and apply her Ponds cold cream. At forty-six, Rose knew her looks and figure were gone. She had the slow painful gait of a much older woman and had long given up trying to mount the stairs to the loft.
Rose felt her stomach lurch in anticipation of the visit. It was over a year since the family had all been together. She had decorated the room with streamers of coloured paper and holly that Jack had helped her pick from along the railway cutting. She glanced at the clock yet again.
Sarah would be here first from Hebburn, with the mince pies that she had promised and to help her cook the festive dinner. Rose had not seen her eldest since she had turned twenty-four. Sarah was courting and happy; everyone knew except John.
‘When can I meet the lad?’ Rose had asked in the summer.
‘I’m not bringing him back here!’ Sarah had declared. ‘Father would kill me - or him.’
Rose had no answer. Sarah’s sweetheart was a miner and John thought them the lowest form of life. He was suspicious of men who chose to crawl underground for a living and never see daylight. He cursed them for their readiness to strike for better conditions, calling them lazy, whereas William would have blamed the pit owners. John only cared that the disruption in the coal supply could bring the mills and yards grinding to a standstill and make men like himself idle.
‘ ‘Tis the fault of the pitmen we have no work on the river,’ she had often heard him rail, whether there had been a strike or not. ‘They can’t be trusted with owt.’
Once she might also have disapproved of Sarah being courted by a miner, thinking the match too lowly. They were a breed apart, rough and dirty, and kept closely to themselves. Rose had grown up with such views. But Sarah’s stories of her pitman and his family were quite different. She spoke of kind, generous folk and a spotless kitchen despite the grime that the men tramped in. Besides, Rose had learnt from experience that you could not judge a man by his outward appearance. Her head had been turned by the sight of an army coat and a strong handsome face and look where it had got her. She did not object but worried for Sarah if John should find out.
Rose had to accept that she could not offer hospitality to Sarah’s young man. Anyway, the romance might come to nothing, so it was not worth riling John’s temper over the matter. For her husband’s ill humour had got no better over the three and a half years they had lived at Cleveland Place. His attempts at sobriety had not lasted long and when in work he would often get no further than the pubs on Learn Lane, a stone’s throw from the dock gates, forgetting about his long walk home. Many was the time she had had to send Jack searching for him late in the evening, for she was too lame and would not have suffered the indignity of entering a public house.
Jack, a tall, wiry youth, was often repaid with a ‘smack in the gob’ for his efforts in trying to prise his belligerent father from the cosiness of some bar.
Rose would try to comfort her son after such bouts of violence. ‘Your day will come,’ she promised him. ‘He’ll not be the stronger one for ever.’ The saints forgive her, but she almost willed the moment to come when Jack would stand up to his father an
d gave him a taste of his own medicine.
Sometimes Rose worried about Jack. He had become increasingly moody and withdrawn since his sisters had left home, especially Kate, who had always been openly affectionate with her half-brother. He had moped for months after she left, long after he had stopped asking when his sister was coming home. But faced with John’s constant criticism at his lack of hardness or teasing about girls, Jack kept to himself, disappearing on his own to trap rabbits or fish the streams.
He would shadow the local farmer when he went out to shoot crows, and once or twice the man had let Jack have a go with the gun. Jack seemed to gain more pleasure from this than any amount of socialising. The boy had a good aim and had once returned from a fair with four coconuts with which Rose had not known what to do.
Rose often wondered if she had been right to bring them out of the overcrowded town to their semi-rural retreat. She had been in despair at the evictions and flits forced on them by John’s boorish behaviour and frightened at the yellow fog of chemical fumes permeating their last home, which had been slowly suffocating young Jack. Perhaps now Jack needed more company; he was turning into a loner. But better that than a fighting, cussed drunk like his father. Not one day did Rose regret the move for her own sake. Even in the depths of winter, when she had to break the ice on the pail to get water for the kettle and struggle through the snow to search for tinder, she thanked the saints for her primitive cottage.
Like an animal in hibernation she had rested her bruised spirit, slowly reawakening to the world with a new inner strength. She delighted in spring rain, summer birdsong and autumn sun as if she was experiencing them for the first time. While she tended her garden, the earth seemed to nurture her in return. During these years when she had often been on her own for long hours at the cottage, Rose had rediscovered a sense of worth after years of degradation. She kept hens and grew giant rhubarb and strong onions. She exchanged these with her neighbours for jams, relish or firewood. She bartered produce with itinerant pedlars for buttons, hairpins, or Emerson’s Bromo Seltzer, which she forced on John when he complained of sore head, stomach or bowels.
Rose would take Jack with her blackberry picking along the railway line and gather elderflowers and wild mint for cordials. Her son would return from his wanderings with crab apples and nuts, the occasional rabbit or wood pigeon for the pot. On rare occasions, John would return early and in good mood, and they would eat together and walk out along the embankment to view the trains, and Rose wished life could always be that tranquil.
Certainly, it had been easier this last year without Mary in the house. Kate had saved the day by finding her work at the Ravensworth Arms. When Mary heard that this was no common hostelry but the hub of social life for the staff at the castle, she lost no time in boarding the train for Lamesley.
Rose glanced at the clock again. Kate and Mary might be at Lamesley station at this very moment, waiting for the train to take them to Gateshead and then on to South Shields. They would get off at Tyne Dock station and walk up the hill. Jack had gone down to meet them and carry their bags ...
It had been one of the best decisions of her life to send Kate to Lizzie’s, Rose felt sure of it. She noticed how Kate held herself with a new dignity and spoke with assurance in a voice that had subdued the rough edges of her speech. Rose was secretly proud of her daughter’s ability to improve herself, despite John’s teasing and Mary’s mimicry. Even though Kate no longer worked at the castle and was only a barmaid at the inn, Rose still felt a sense of triumph.
She had stubbornly resisted John’s decrees that Kate should come home and be of more help to her mother. Rose might be finding it harder to manage on her own, but she refused to let Kate be bullied back by her stepfather. She would rather struggle on uncomplaining, knowing that her daughters were happy in their new lives.
It was worth it on her rare days off to see Kate blooming and full of life, her hair loosely gathered on the nape of her neck and swept back from her forehead in the latest style. She had not been back since harvest time and Rose was impatient to see her again.
All was quiet in the house now as Rose waited for her family to gather. John had disappeared to buy a newspaper, which probably meant she would not see him until dinner was on the table. But by half-past ten, Sarah had arrived and was bustling around the dark kitchen, shoving the meat into the oven and heaving the chopped vegetables into a large pot to simmer on top of the range.
If Rose could have run, she would have done so when she heard Jack’s whistling and footsteps approaching up the garden path. She hobbled to the door and flung it open. Kate and Mary were there, pink-cheeked and chattering, their breath billowing in frozen clouds. Jack was behind them, almost hidden by a mound of Christmas parcels.
‘It’s Kate’s fault,’ Mary said, by way of a greeting, ‘she spent every penny of her Christmas wages at the village bazaar. You wouldn’t believe the rubbish she’s got.’
‘Happy Christmas, Mam!’ Kate cried, ambling towards her with her quick limp and nearly knocking her over in an exuberant hug. Rose was sometimes embarrassed by these shows of affection, but today she did not mind.
‘Haway inside, hinnies,’ she said. ‘Sarah’s got the dinner on. Jack, you open that bottle of ginger wine - I’ve been keeping it hid from your father. Take your coats off and let’s have a good look at you!’
She surveyed her daughters in their neat dresses and boots, their hair well groomed and Kate in a fetching blue hat. What a picture they looked! But she could not help fussing.
‘Mary, are they feedin’ you enough? I’ve seen better-fed scarecrows.’
‘I’m run off me feet all day long, that’s why,’ Mary complained.
‘They feed us plenty, Mam,’ Kate assured her.
‘Well, you look well enough on it, our Kate,’ Rose remarked. ‘Mind you, you’ve rings around your eyes. Are you gettin’ enough sleep? They don’t keep you up all hours, do they?’
‘I don’t mind the hours, Mam, I like me job,’ Kate smiled.
‘She’s lovesick, that’s what,’ Mary said drily.
Kate blushed. ‘Give over, our Mary!’
Rose eyed her more closely. ‘So that’s it. I could tell there was some’at. Who is he, then?’
‘Nobody!’
Sarah joined in. ‘Mr Nobody?’
‘Are you courting?’ Rose asked excitedly.
‘No.’
‘Yes you are,’ Mary contradicted. ‘He’s a gentleman an’ all. Our Kate’s quite turned his head.’
‘A gentleman!’ Rose gasped. ‘What sort of gentleman?’
Kate hid her face in her hands in consternation. ‘He’s just an acquaintance.’
‘Hark at her - “he’s just an acquaintance”,’ Mary mimicked.
‘He’s friendly, that’s all - it’s in his nature,’ Kate blustered. ‘He’s like that to all the staff.’
‘Just happens to call round on your day off,’ Mary smirked.
‘So you are courtin’!’ Sarah cried.
‘Not properly—’
‘But this lad - he’s special to you?’ Rose asked.
Kate looked at her with shining eyes and Rose knew that it was true without her having to speak. There was an expectation in her flushed expression, a quickening of the voice as she talked about him.
Before she could answer, they heard a shout on the path outside. John was back.
‘Quick, get the table set!’ Rose ordered. ‘Jack, more coal on the fire.’
Kate said in alarm, ‘Don’t say anything to Father, will you?’
‘I thought there was nowt to tell?’ Mary baited.
‘You say a word and I’ll pull your hair out!’ Kate threatened.
‘She’ll not,’ Rose warned. ‘We’ll not have today spoilt with silly tittle-tattle or give your father the excuse to lose his temper.’
But by the sound of John’s singing, she gauged he was in a good mood. He came banging through the door, clutching two bottles of bee
r, to find them all bustling round industriously.
‘Now isn’t that a grand sight!’ he crowed. ‘A family making ready for the master! Is me dinner ready, Rose Ann?’
‘We’ve all the presents to open first,’ Kate said, pointing at the pile on the hearth. She loved the present-giving more than anything. The more she gave the more it made up for those barren Christmases after Jack had been born when there had been no treats and no gifts.
‘We’ll eat first.’ John was firm. ‘Jack, pour me a beer, son.’
With a look from Rose, Kate did not argue further. They gathered around the oval table, John in his high-backed fireside chair, the others on an assortment of chairs and stools. Once it was all served up and John was digging into his food, Rose sat down with satisfaction. The table was laden with good things to eat and the smell of roast pork and steaming potatoes filled the warm kitchen. Her family tucked in eagerly, their faces flushed, their chatter light-hearted. She wished she could savour this moment for ever.
After the mince pies and custard, John pushed back his chair and eased his belt.
‘By, that was a good dinner, lass,’ he said with satisfaction, and Rose thought how that was praise indeed from her taciturn husband.
‘Please, Father, let’s open the presents now,’ Kate pleaded. She was almost bursting with the effort not to tear open the parcels at once.
John gave a grunt of agreement.’ What’ve you got us then?’
Kate scrabbled among the pile. “This is for you, Mam. It’s a hat so you don’t have to keep wearing that old bonnet.’
‘You’re not supposed to tell her till she’s opened it,’ Sarah laughed.
‘I like me old bonnet,’ Rose said, looking doubtfully at the brown paper package.
Jarrow Trilogy 02 - A Child of Jarrow Page 17