Jarrow Trilogy 02 - A Child of Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Kate’s stomach churned. ‘They said that to you at school, an’ all?’

  ‘Aye. What’s it mean?’

  Kate set her jaw. ‘Means nowt. You get off to bed. I’ll bring in your cocoa.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, Kitty!’ Kate ordered. She watched her daughter retreat into the back room, puzzled and subdued. Kate gripped the table to stop herself shaking. When the girl was gone, the argument erupted again.

  ‘I’ll not have her bad-mouthed by a bunch of dirty Protestants!’ John railed. ‘Told you she should never have gone there. Should be at a good Catholic school, learning the Faith. Teachers would sharp beat the bad words out the little buggers.’

  Tears stung Kate’s eyes. Why did they ever think they could cover up such a scandal? Their old neighbours in Tyne Dock must have known; now the rumours had followed them here. The poison of people’s gossip was leaking out around them like dirty water through fingers. She was powerless to stem it.

  ‘I’m off to have it out with that bitch in Phillipson Street,’ John shouted, pulling on his cap.

  ‘No, please.’ Kate stood in his way. ‘It’ll just make it worse.’

  ‘I’ll not have her saying owt bad about the McMullens. Get out me way.’

  But Kate stood her ground. ‘The lass’ll hear far worse before she’s through.’ She looked at him steadily. ‘I’ll tak her out of Simonside and send her to the Catholics, if you don’t go bothering that missus.’

  John’s bleary eyes narrowed at her suspiciously. ‘You will?’

  ‘Aye. But not to Father O’Neill. She can gan to St Bede’s in Jarrow,’ Kate said quickly. ‘They’ll not know her there. She can start with a clean slate.’

  She watched him working it through in his mind. Finally he nodded and sat back down in his chair.

  ‘Pour us a beer then, lass,’ he said with a look of satisfaction. ‘We’ll drink to Kitty gettin’ a proper education.’

  Kate did as he asked, relieved that a scene had been averted. Yet her heart was sore that she should have to take Catherine away from the respectable parish school where she seemed happy until now. She could only hope that the move to Jarrow would keep the rumours of illegitimacy at bay - that dark cloud of shame that hung over them constantly, threatening its merciless rain.

  Chapter 38

  Kate took Catherine away from Simonside School the following week. For the rest of the summer term she had to go to a local school in East Jarrow until there was room for her at St Bede’s Infant School in the September. Catherine appeared to take this sudden upheaval in her stride and spent the long holidays roaming the lanes and fields that bordered East Jarrow with her friends.

  Kate tried to keep her occupied with jobs close to home: pounding the washing in the poss tub, carrying basketloads of other people’s washing back to their houses, running to the shops for soap or flour or matches. But even at seven years old, the girl was fiercely independent, disappearing on adventures and returning triumphantly with nuggets of coal from the cinder tracks or pieces of driftwood for the fire.

  ‘Look what I’ve got you, Kate,’ she reappeared one day, dragging in a huge plank of wood and dropping it like a cat its prey.

  ‘You’ve not been down the Slacks, have you?’ Kate fretted.

  ‘No,’ Catherine said, her pretty hazel eyes all innocence, crossing her fingers behind her back.

  ‘You have,’ Kate accused. ‘How many times have I told you it’s dangerous to play down there? You could fall in and drown and we’d not find you - just like Jobling’s body disappearin’ into thin air. It’s a bad place - you stay away.’

  Catherine’s look turned sullen. She kicked the plank. ‘I was just trying to help.’

  Kate felt a flash of remorse. ‘Aye, well, we’ll say no more about it. Tak it out in the yard and I’ll chop it up later.’

  When Catherine came back in, Kate went to the tin on the mantelpiece and took out a halfpenny. She thrust it at the child.

  ‘Here, gan to the shop and get a twist of sweets.’

  Her round face brightened. ‘Ta, our Kate.’

  ‘Be quick about it, mind. I need you to help me fold the sheets.’

  Kate was not surprised when Catherine skipped back in clutching a comic instead of black bullets, and squatted down on the fender at Rose’s feet. The girl had begun to read anything she could get her hands on. Mrs Romanus from upstairs had lent her a fat book by Charles Dickens that Kate had thought would give her a headache with all its words. But Catherine followed the words with her finger in deep concentration. Catherine would pester Aunt Maggie to look at her books too.

  Best of all, the girl seemed to like comics and annuals with pictures. To Kate’s annoyance she could sit by the fire for hours lost in a story world, oblivious to her pleas for help and blocking the way to the oven. Maybe old John was right and the Catholic teachers would knock some discipline into her dreamy head.

  Once Catherine started at the Jarrow school, Kate’s limited budget was stretched even further. The girl needed money for tram fares and, as it was too far to come home for dinner, she had to take food with her. As the autumn wore on, the family began to slip into debt.

  Kate tried to make ends meet with odd jobs: cleaning, mending window frames, taking in washing. But it was not enough. Her hands and arms were red raw from the scrubbing and possing and wringing of heavy linen through the wooden mangle. Her shoes were rotten and feet sodden and itchy from standing in rivers of filthy water in the wash house. At nights she could not sleep for the burning in her arms unless it was dulled by drink.

  This was the only help she got from her stepfather, money towards ajar of beer or whisky, when he had not spent his pay in the pubs on the route home. Jack was little better, for he was drinking hard after his shifts unloading from the ships, and did not see the housekeeping as his problem. At home he was lazy and Kate resented the way Rose always made excuses for her son.

  ‘He grafts hard all day; he deserves a bit beer money. He’ll pull his weight when he’s got a wife and bairns to feed.’

  ‘He’s taking his time about it,’ Kate muttered.

  ‘That’s his business, not yours,’ Rose snapped. ‘You’re the one with responsibilities, so it’s up to you to keep a roof over our heads. Me and your father have done it for long enough.’

  At times Kate felt overwhelmed with the burden of providing for them all. She avoided the rent man for weeks on end and began regular trips to the pawnshop in Tyne Dock. She dreaded these trips down to Bede Street and having to pass all the neighbours with her bundles on a Monday morning. It brought back memory of the shame of begging in the streets as a child, the hostile or pitying stares of the better off. She, who had been courted by a gentleman and worked at Ravensworth, was now reduced to trading the clothes off her back at the ‘in and out’.

  But there was no one else to go. Rose was an invalid, the men would have thumped her had she suggested such indignity and Catherine was too young. Desperate women did send their children, but they had to pester an adult to put goods in for them as by law they should be fourteen. She would save her daughter that humiliation.

  As the days darkened early and Kate saw no end to the drudgery in her life, she deadened her pain with the searing golden liquid in the earthenware jar she brought home from the Penny Whistle. Fortified with whisky, she forgot the aching in her limbs and the worries over money. When John lashed her with his tongue or struck out with his fist, she answered back. Many was the time she woke in the morning with a sore head and tender bruises on her body and struggled to remember how she had got them. Then vague memories of late-night drinking degenerating into violent rows would flash through her mind.

  Each morning Kate dragged herself out of the warm bed she shared with Catherine and steeled herself to face another day. Sometimes Jack would be impossible to wake and he would miss his chance of work for the day. Her parents blamed it on Kate rather than his heavy drinking.

  They all saw K
ate as their skivvy, even Catherine, who turned to Rose for a cuddle and night-time story by the fireside while Kate washed up and kneaded bread by the dim gaslight.

  Only when her sister Sarah made rare visits from Birtley with her young children did Kate feel a glimmer of self-worth. Her niece Minnie was a year younger than Catherine and never hid her delight at seeing her aunt. She would throw herself at Kate’s skirts and Kate would lift her up and twirl her round.

  ‘My, look at the size of you! And your bonny hair. Come with me - I’ve made you a gingerbread man.’

  That summer, Kate had even managed a trip to the new playing fields in Jarrow with Sarah and the children.

  ‘You look knackered,’ Sarah had said bluntly.

  Kate dropped her cheerful front. ‘I am. It’s that hard at home. They treat me like dirt. I cannot see an end to it, our Sarah.’ She looked at her sister in despair and whispered, ‘I see me life running away down a dark hole - like water down the drain.’

  Sarah had put an arm around her in comfort. ‘Find a man,’ she counselled. ‘Get yoursel’ away from there - from that old bastard. As long as he’s alive, you’ll never be free.’

  Kate stared in misery. ‘How can I when Father doesn’t even let me speak to lads? And who would have me anyhow? I’m over thirty and worth nowt.’

  Sarah had shaken her roughly. ‘That’s what they want you to think! But you are. You’ve a loving nature and you work like a slave. Course some lad’ll want you. You just have to find him!’

  So partly from need and partly from Sarah’s urgings, Kate decided by the autumn that they should take in lodgers. They were desperate for the money and maybe one of them might be fool enough to want to marry her and be a father to her child. She told Jack to put the word out around the docks. He seemed disgruntled at the idea of sharing, for Kate told him he would have to sleep with the men. But when she promised there would be more food and drink if he did, he soon found workers in need of a bed.

  Kate and Catherine gave up their bed for Jack and two men working on the grain ships. The girl went into the parlour with Rose and John, while Kate slept on the settle. It was often late into the night before the men tired of drinking and playing cards around the kitchen table and Kate dozed off on the settle, too exhausted to care.

  One night she fell asleep and dreamt that Alexander came back. It was a sweet dream from which she did not want to wake. She saw again vividly the piercing look in his handsome eyes and felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek as he kissed her. She felt the touch of his hands caressing her and the strength in his arms as he lifted her and carried her around the side of the lake.

  ‘My beautiful nightingale, why didn’t you come back to find me?’ he asked. ‘I waited for you, but you never came.’

  And then he disappeared and Kate awoke with tears streaming down her face, engulfed in a terrible sense of loss. The following nights she tried to recapture the dream and the feeling of being loved, but could not. She struggled even to remember her lover’s face clearly. It seemed so very long ago.

  A week later, lying on the settle, she woke with a start. There was someone leaning over her in the dark, breathing hard. Hands pulled at her shoulder.

  ‘Alexander?’ she murmured in confusion.

  ‘Kate,’ the man slurred. His breath was warm and sour. He shook her more urgently.

  Kate came fully awake. ‘Jack?’

  ‘Can I lie with you, Kate?’ her brother mumbled.

  ‘Jack, man, gan to bed!’ she answered impatiently.

  He plonked down heavily beside her.

  ‘Do you remember when we used to climb that tree?’

  ‘Aye,’ Kate sighed, ‘what of it?’

  ‘Canniest time of me life - ‘fore you went off to Ravensworth. Carved your name in the tree, I did.’

  ‘You never!’

  “Why d’you have to leave and spoil it all?’ he said morosely. ‘I could’ve looked after you, Kate. Not like that fancy man who caused you nowt but bother. I love you, our Kate. Do you love me?’

  Kate sat up in astonishment. ‘Course I love you.’

  His head slumped forward. ‘No one else does - no other lasses look twice at me,’ he mumbled, ‘only you, Kate.’ Then, to her consternation, he burst into tears. Jack, who prided himself on being as hard as his father, was blubbering like a child. Kate reached out and hugged him to her. He shook and sobbed in her arms, clinging on to her.

  ‘Here, lie down,’ she comforted him, ‘just for a bit.’

  He curled up beside her under the blanket, as he had often done as a boy. ‘You won’t leave again, will you?’ he sniffed.

  ‘Not much chance of that,’ Kate sighed, stroking his head.

  ‘Good,’ Jack whispered, then leaned towards her and kissed her on the lips. Kate was taken aback. There was something unsettling about such a kiss. She swivelled away. Jack was drunk and would probably be embarrassed by such a show of affection come the morning. She would not remind him of it.

  Chapter 39

  In the morning she rose early and left Jack sleeping. When he woke he was as grumpy as usual and hardly looked at her. But over the following days she caught him watching her, then he would glance away awkwardly, as if he remembered.

  A week later, he rolled home senseless with drink and shook her awake again.

  ‘Give us a kiss,’ he pleaded.

  Kate pushed him away. ‘Leave us be!’ she whispered.

  ‘Haway, Kate,’ he wheedled, fumbling at her, ‘I just want a cuddle, nowt more.’

  ‘No, Jack, it’s not right,’ Kate told him firmly. ‘Gan to your own bed.’

  He sloped off and did not bother her again, but Kate could not sleep. She lay awake worrying over Jack’s sudden interest, wondering where it might lead. She knew that deep down he would not wish to hurt her, but he was also John McMullen’s son. For too long he had seen his father treat her with lecherous contempt; she could not bear for Jack to go that way too. She wondered if she should tell her mother of her concern. But what would she say? There had only been that one kiss on the mouth and some drunken fumbling. Rose would never believe Jack capable of any impropriety; Kate would be blamed for leading him on. She decided to do nothing.

  But a few nights later on his way back from the privy, Jack pestered her again. This time she did not bother reasoning with him, but scrambled out of his reach and escaped to the outhouse.

  The next day, worn out with lack of sleep, she made a decision. She would save Jack from making a fool of himself, and herself from sleepless nights. She asked around the Penny Whistle. Yes, there were men putting in new boilers at the timber yard who needed cheap bed and board. Kate went home and told her mother.

  ‘We’ve three more lodgers the night. They can share the bedroom with the others. Jack can have the settle.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll gan up to Mary’s. She’s plenty room.’

  Rose snorted. ‘You’ll not last long there.’

  ‘I’ll tak the bairn with us,’ Kate declared. ‘Mary’ll curb her tongue in front of the lass.’

  ‘As long as you’re back sharp in the morning to feed the men,’ her mother grudgingly agreed to her plan.

  Catherine seemed quite happy to stay at Mary’s. She fussed over baby Alec and padded around after Mary, touching and marvelling at the beautifully polished furniture and china ornaments. By the time Kate came in late at night, having seen to the evening meal and cleared up, Catherine was tucked up peacefully in the spare feather bed and asleep.

  Alec was reading the evening paper. ‘Sit yourself down, lass. Mary’ll get you a cup of tea,’ he smiled.

  ‘She can get it herself,’ Mary pouted. ‘I’m off to bed. And you should be too.’ She gave her husband a warning glare. Alec shuffled his paper in embarrassment and stood up.

  ‘We’ll see you in the morning, then.’

  ‘No we won’t,’ Mary contradicted. ‘She’ll be down the road to see to them lodgers, won’t
you? You can’t expect me to feed you as well as give you a bed,’ she sniffed. ‘I’ve enough to see to with my own bairn.’

  ‘Aye,’ Kate said, too weary to argue. Her sister’s carping was a small price to pay for keeping away from Number Ten at night-times.

  But Mary quickly resented the attention Alec paid Kate, and after a fortnight had tired of showing off her house to the inquisitive Catherine. She caught her going through her dressing table one day. Kate came in to find her daughter tearful and subdued. Mary had beaten her with a hairbrush for handling her things.

  ‘I want to gan back home,’ Catherine whined. ‘I miss me mam.’

  ‘And I’m tired of having you round here,’ Mary snapped. ‘Me and Alec want the place to ourselves.’

  ‘Why you have to gan and spoil things?’ Kate accused. ‘Let us stay a bit longer,’ she pleaded to her sister.

  ‘Why should I?’ Mary demanded. ‘Those boilermen have left.’

  ‘I’m taking in more,’ Kate said quickly. ‘You’ve got room, we haven’t.’

  ‘Aye, that’s typical of you. Jealous of me and what I’ve got. Just ‘cos I’ve got a good man and canny things. But I’ve saved up—’

  ‘And I don’t have owt to save up!’ Kate said, losing her temper. ‘Never will have as long as I’ve always got to put a roof over the bairn’s head. Do I have to be punished for that for ever?’ She stopped, glancing warily at Catherine. But the girl was staring at her, perplexed by the shouting. She did not understand Kate’s anger.

  Kate snatched the child’s arm. ‘Haway, we’re not wanted here. We’ll gan back to your precious mam!’ She stormed into the bedroom and grabbed their nightclothes. Pushing Catherine ahead of her down the stairs, they almost collided with Alec at the bottom.

  ‘Missed your tram?’ he joked.

  ‘We’re not stoppin’ where we’re not wanted,’ she said brusquely. They left him standing open-mouthed. Halfway down the street, Kate regretted her harsh words and hot-tempered departure. Alec was a kind man who did not deserve her sharp tongue. Damn her family for making her act this way!