‘Wait till I have a word with Mary,’ Rose determined. ‘Might be just the answer - get her out from under me feet.’
They stayed on to watch the children’s races and special tea laid on by the borough council. Later, Kate slipped away with Sarah and they wandered round the town, arm in arm.
‘I’ve met this lad,’ Sarah told her abruptly.
‘Lad?’ Kate asked, her blue eyes widening in surprise. She saw her sister’s plump fair face colour. ‘You’re never courtin’?’
‘Keep your voice down!’ Sarah hissed, looking around her anxiously.
Kate too glanced over her shoulder in familiar fear, as if their stepfather would suddenly burst out of a nearby pub and harangue them for being out alone on the street.
‘It’s all right, he’s drinking down Tyne Dock with Uncle Pat,’ Kate said, reading her sister’s thoughts. ‘So who is this lad? And where did you meet him? Why didn’t you tell me before? Eeh, fancy you courtin’!’
‘I didn’t say I was walking out with him - I’ve only just met him,’ Sarah said, flustered. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘Haway,’ Kate grinned. ‘You can’t keep secrets from me -I’ll not tell a soul.’
Sarah gave a self-conscious smile. ‘He comes into Hebburn on a Saturday to sell veg from his da’s allotment. I answered the door to him once and now he comes regular. Always stops for a bit chat.’
‘That’s canny,’ Kate encouraged. ‘Is he bonny-looking?’
‘Aye,’ Sarah said cautiously. ‘He’s smaller than me, mind, but he’s got a grand smile.’
‘So where does he live?’
‘Gateshead way.’ Sarah shrugged evasively.
‘What do they call him?’
Sarah shrugged again. She caught Kate’s sceptical look. ‘But he said he’s coming to Hebburn for the fireworks the night.’
‘The night?’ Kate exclaimed. ‘So what are you doing in Jarrow? Get yourself back to Hebburn before he finds another lass to share his cabbages with! You’ll never find a man round these parts with Father watching like a hawk. I just have to look at a lad and he’s calling me worse than muck.’
‘Do you think I should?’ Sarah asked, unsure.
‘Aye, course I’m sure!’ Kate insisted. ‘Gan back before it’s all over.’
Sarah still looked undecided. She took Kate’s arm. ‘Will you come with us? I can’t go looking for him on me own.’
Kate felt tempted. How she would love to go to Hebburn and watch the fireworks light up the night sky. Fireworks always reminded her of her real father and being carried in his arms as the heavens above them exploded with light. Rose had once told her the event had been for the old Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, but forbade her ever to mention it in front of her stepfather. Kate had learnt long ago that any mention of their past life as Fawcetts always enraged John McMullen.
The other thing that fuelled his jealous temper just as much was the thought of his step-daughters attracting the attentions of men. He was more possessive of their virtue than their own father ever could have been and was forever lecturing them on the dangers of lust. Even to glance at a man or exchange a casual word was a crime. John would accuse them of encouraging men and berate them in foul language. It mattered not how old or ugly the man. Even portly Harry Burn, their married neighbour, provoked John’s jealousy for calling by with a gift of vegetables and a cheery word.
‘You ever get into trouble with a man and I’ll skin the hide off you!’ their stepfather often threatened. Kate never doubted that he would. ‘No one disgraces the name of McMullen, do y’ hear?’
It was because of their father that she could not go with Sarah. Secretly she yearned for the chance to meet young men, just to chat with them and maybe have a dance or two. She was almost twenty and had never been courted. Her own mother had married at such an age, but Kate hadn’t even held a lad’s hand or walked out with a man on a summer’s evening. Tonight, in the warm evening breeze under a canopy of glittering fireworks, would be just the night for meeting a lad and falling in love. Kate burnt with frustration that such a time might never come for her.
‘It would be canny,’ Kate said with longing, ‘but it’d bring more trouble than it’s worth.’
Sarah nodded in understanding.
‘You can go with that lass who works next door,’ Kate suggested, quelling her own disappointment. ‘Bel, isn’t she called? She’s good company, from what you say. Gan and enjoy yourself.’
Sarah smiled, encouraged by Kate’s enthusiasm. ‘But what about Mam?’
‘She’ll not stand in your way. And me and Mary can see her back up the hill. Don’t you worry about Mam.’
Sarah needed no further persuasion. The sisters returned to the park and Sarah said a hasty goodbye, promising her mother that she would visit again within the month. The rest of the family lingered for another hour, enjoying the late afternoon sun, but as the heat went out of the day Rose began to fret.
‘Haway, it’s time we made for home - your father will likely be back wanting his tea.’
Mary protested at once. ‘I want to stay for the bonfire.’
‘He’ll not be back for hours yet, Mam,’ Kate added, reluctant to return too.
‘It’d be just like him to come back early and catch us out -then we’d never hear the end of it,’ Rose said with a bitter laugh.
Kate thought it was far more likely that her stepfather would stay out until closing time, then wake them all up with his noisy singing and banging about as he staggered drunkenly into the furniture in their cramped kitchen. Sometimes a madness would grip him when in drink and he would order them up out of bed and make them stand to attention, shivering in their nightclothes while he swung the fire poker over their heads and roared orders as if they were his soldiers.
It was best to humour him and play along with his deluded games, where he thought himself the famous General Roberts, marching them through the hell of an Afghan war. It was only in drink that John’s tongue was loosened about his experiences as a foot soldier in India and their gruelling battles with Frontier tribesmen. When sober he would say nothing, except to spit in the fire and curse the British Army for its ingratitude to Irishmen like himself.
As a small girl, Kate remembered him coming to court her mother dressed in a smart army jacket. She had gazed up in awe at his stern, handsome face and felt a mix of fear and admiration. For a while she had been desperate to gain the approval and love of this tall, godlike soldier who had come to save her mother from servitude in the puddling mills and them all from the workhouse. But nothing Kate ever did seemed to please him and she had given up trying.
‘Haway,’ Kate sighed, seeing her mother’s mind was made up, ‘we’ll get a good view of the bonfire from up the hill, Mary.’
‘I’m not going!’ Mary said stubbornly.
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ Rose snapped, her face lined with fatigue. She had been too long standing on her swollen legs and yearned for the peace and threadbare comfort of their old cottage. Increasingly she disliked large crowds and the company of anyone outside close family. For too long she had had to put on a tough front, fending off rentmen, bailiffs and indignant neighbours that John had offended. Now she was weary of the world and wanted nothing more than to hibernate in her dilapidated railway cottage above the scruffy overgrown embankment and tend her small garden.
Kate, quick to avoid a row in public, turned to her aunt. ‘Why doesn’t our Mary stay over with you the night, Aunt Maggie?’
Maggie nodded with a cautious look at her older sister. ‘That’s no bother.’
‘Jack can help us up the road,’ Kate added. Her half-brother was tossing a stone and catching it, hovering on the fringe of the dispute, keeping out of the way. But his pennies were long spent and the military bands gone, and he was restless t
o be off.
‘Please, Mam?’ Mary said, her look suddenly sweetly pleading. ‘I’ll be back in the morning to help with the Sunday dinner, I promise.’
‘Very well,’ Rose acquiesced, quickly losing the appetite for confrontation.
With the argument averted, Rose struggled to her feet and held out an arm to Kate and Jack. Together they made the steep haul out of Jarrow town, the River Tyne and its forest of cranes and chimney stacks to their backs. Kate heard her mother’s breath come more easily the further away they travelled from the smoky, dusty air of the town and the closer once more to ripening fields and the hazy distant hills of County Durham.
As they approached the straggle of cottages at Cleveland Place, their neighbour, Harry Burn, hailed them. He was sitting outside his cottage on a low stool enjoying a bowl of tobacco.
‘A grand day, Mrs McMullen!’
‘Aye, grand.’ Rose paused to catch her breath.
‘Win any prizes, Jack?’
Jack looked bashful as he held up a stuffed bird in a glass jar.
‘You’ll not get much feeding off that,’ Harry teased.
‘He won it for our Mary,’ Kate smiled, ‘but she made him carry it home.’
‘And what are you doing back so early, young miss?’ he winked. ‘No canny lad to walk you home yet? By, the young ‘uns today are slow ganin’ about things, aren’t they, Mrs McMullen? We were wed and knee-deep in bairns at their age, weren’t we?’
Rose looked flustered but Kate stifled a giggle.
‘Plenty time for all that,’ her mother snorted.
‘Lads of Jarrow must be daft in the head for not courting this young lass. If I was ten years younger—’
‘Ten!’ Ena Burn brayed from the cottage door. ‘More like fifty.’
Harry chuckled and nodded his head in agreement with his wife.
Ena beckoned them to the door. ‘Come and have a glass of me home-made lemonade. You look all done in. Never mind my Harry’s nonsense. Here’s a stool, sit yourself down.’
To Kate’s surprise, her mother plonked herself down on the upturned half-barrel by the doorstep.
‘Just for a minute then,’ she sighed. ‘I’m partial to your lemonade. Jack, run in the house and fetch a bottle of me ginger wine. We’ll share that out an’ all.’
They all knew Rose hid her small store of home-made wines and cordials in the wash house where John would never deign to go. They were hardly alcoholic but when John returned home drunk and thirsty for more he would drink anything fermenting in a bottle.
As the neighbours sat on in the warm evening sunshine, Kate hovered on the edge of the conversation, half wanting to sit with them and half yearning to chase Jack around the soot-covered elms at the end of the lane where he had gone off to play. Her restlessness got the better of her. Picking up her skirts she ran off after her young half-brother, her petticoat flapping around her ankles.
‘I’ll keep an eye on our Jack,’ she called over her shoulder.
‘Don’t let him climb too high!’ Rose shouted.
Kate ran with a quick loping stride. Since birth her left foot had been turned in awkwardly, but she was light on her feet and still able to catch Jack over a short distance. She ran up behind him where he was throwing sticks into the high branches and grabbed him round the waist.
‘First to touch the lovers’ tree!’ she challenged, spinning him round and setting off before him.
Jack recovered from his surprise, dropped his fistful of sticks and chased after his sister into the small copse above the railway line. They arrived at the old oak simultaneously, Jack knocking into Kate and pushing her to the ground, so she couldn’t touch the tree first.
‘I won!’ he cried. They both lay on the ground, panting and laughing.
‘Cheat!’ Kate gave him a playful shove.
‘You had a head start.’
‘You don’t have to wear long skirts.’
‘You’re just a lass.’
Kate rolled over at the provocation and began to tickle him until he giggled out loud and begged her to stop. This was how she loved him, exuberant and wiry as a young pup, not the subdued loner who avoided company and scowled under dark brows at his family. She knew that his father frightened him and that he was growing tired of his mother’s protective fussing, but she at least could make him smile. To Kate he was still the small boy who used to pad around after her like a shadow. She could remember him as a tiny sickly baby whom they all feared would die, and recalled a time when John had rocked Jack in strong arms and sang Irish songs, when he had stayed up all night keeping him alive. Kate knew John had loved his son deeply in those days and wished Jack could remember that too. But since the bad times when they had been forced on to the streets to beg, Jack had seen enough of his father’s violent temper and felt the sting of his thick leather belt too many times to believe he was loved.
Jack sprang up and began swinging from a gnarled branch. Kate stood and shook the soil from her skirt. She began to hum as her fingers traced the weathered carving on the tree: two sets of initials set in a heart. W. F. and R. M. Who had they been? Kate enjoyed musing about the mysterious lovers who had left their mark. She liked to think it had been her parents, William Fawcett and Rose McConnell, but her mother had been dismissive.
‘I never came here with your father - and don’t you dare mention such a thing in front of your da or we’ll all be swinging from that tree.’
But Kate still liked to guess. ‘Winifred Foster loves Ralph Marshall.’
‘Wilfred Frankenstein loves Ruth Maggots,’ Jack mocked.
‘Walter Fisher loves Rachael Manners,’ Kate smiled.
‘Bet they weren’t even friends; bet they’re dead now.’ Jack jumped down, tiring of the game already.
Kate gave him a shove. ‘Course they were friends -sweethearts,’ she declared. ‘Bet they married and lived happily for years and years.’
‘You’re just soppy!’ Jack said in disgust, kicking savagely at an exposed root. ‘I’m never getting married. I’m going to join the army or run away to sea.’
‘Not if Mam catches you first,’ Kate laughed.
‘I’ll do what I like when I’m older. I’ll climb up to the top of the mast just like this; watch!’ Jack swung himself up by a low branch into the tree and grabbed a higher one.
‘Mam says you’re not to go too high,’ Kate warned.
‘You’re just scared ‘cos you can’t do it,’ Jack called down. ‘Lasses don’t climb trees.’
Without a thought, Kate unlaced her boots and kicked them off. She hitched up her overskirt and tucked it into her belt.
‘Watch me!’ She hauled herself up after him. But straddling the second branch she looked down and felt suddenly dizzy. Jack laughed from high up, still visible in the ailing half-bald tree.
‘Coward!’
‘Jack, I’m stuck, come and help us.’
After a pause she saw her brother descend. He guided her down backwards.
‘Don’t look down, just feel with your feet.’
Kate slipped gratefully to the ground. ‘You’ll make a canny sailor. Or chimney sweep!’ she added with a broad smile.
‘Race you back!’ he grinned, picking up her boots and running off with them.
She screamed after him out of the thin trees and down the rutted lane. Kate was so intent on sidestepping the nettles and potholes that she did not see Jack stop abruptly as he reached the corner of the outhouse, or notice her mother’s frantic waving over the wall.
Too late she looked up and almost collided with the tall gaunt figure standing, hands on hips, by the broken garden gate. With a gasp of shock, Kate stared into the angry bloodshot eyes of John McMullen.
Chapter 2
John grabbed Kate by the arm and yanked h
er in front of him. His grip was vicious but his eyes seemed glazed and unfocused as he looked her over.
‘Look at you! Running around like a gypsy in bare feet and all that leg showing. What you been doing in them woods, eh?’
Kate braced herself for a slap on the face. ‘Nowt, Father, honest. I’ve been keeping an eye on our Jack.’ She looked for her brother but he had slipped past them. She could sense Rose standing tensely beyond them on the brick path.
John swung round unsteadily, still keeping his hold on her. ‘Jack, where are you?’ he growled. But the boy did not answer.
‘I’ve sent him to fill the hod,’ Rose answered in a calming voice. ‘Kate’s been a grand help today. Came back early, we did. Sarah left early for Hebburn an’ all.’
‘Where’s Mary?’
‘Stoppin’ with Maggie -just for the night.’
John grunted and turned back to Kate. He leant forward so that the stink of his stale whisky breath overwhelmed her. It was always worse when he’d been on the whisky. Beer made him loud and occasionally hearty; whisky inflamed him or made him maudlin. She tried to hide the distaste she felt.
‘You don’t look like you’ve been looking after Jack,’ he said, his voice strangely low and threatening. ‘Looks like you’ve been rolling around on the ground like a bitch on heat.’
There was spittle on his wiry moustache and his slack colourless lips. Kate could not imagine how her mother could bear to kiss such a man. There was something odd about the way he was looking at her that set Kate’s heart thumping.
‘Come away inside, John,’ Rose beckoned softly. ‘Haway and sit by the fire. You look tired.’
John turned, momentarily distracted by her reasoning tone. ‘Eh? I’ll come when I’m ready. What sort of mother are you, letting the lass run around like a dirty little—’
‘John!’ Rose stopped him quickly. ‘She’s been playing with Jack, that’s all. Let’s all gan inside and Kate can fetch you a bite to eat.’
Kate knew her mother was desperate to avoid a scene in front of the neighbours. Rose came forward and put a hand on John’s arm. He threw it off, but released his grip on Kate, pushing her ahead of him.
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 43