‘Get yourself inside before I change me mind and skelp ye for being so shameless.’ Kate hurried into the cottage. Behind her John shouted at Harry Burn, ‘And what you staring at? Don’t you look at my missus like that or I’ll knock you into next week! That scarecrow wife of yours not enough for you, eh?’
‘John!’ Rose hissed. ‘Come inside.’ She almost dragged him in the house, mortified at the abuse he hurled at their affronted neighbour.
The happiness of the day dissolved as John’s moodiness settled on the low-ceilinged kitchen. He went to sit in his chair by the fire, which Jack was stoking up with coal, and Kate hurried into the pantry where her mother was hacking into a loaf of bread.
‘Pull your skirt down!’ Rose hissed. ‘And tidy your hair. You’re too old to be messing around with our Jack. I knew we should’ve come straight home - should never have stopped for that drink with the Burns. Lucky I saw him staggering up the hill and left sharp. What you have to get in such a mess for?’
She turned and looked Kate over. Her thick brown hair was dishevelled, snaking down her neck and sticking to her glistening pink cheeks. Her large blue eyes were troubled under dark curving eyebrows, like limpid pools reflecting her mood. How beautiful she had looked hopping down the lane with slim legs showing, her full lips parted in laughter. Kate had the curved body of a woman but with a girl’s quick unselfconscious movement and lack of inhibition.
‘Sorry, Mam.’ Kate gave an anxious smile. ‘It was just a bit carry-on. Let me take that in for Father.’
Rose was about to hand her the plate of bread and cheese, then changed her mind.
‘No, I’ll do it. You stay in here and start peeling the potatoes for the morrow.’
Kate was baffled, but a little relieved. She scraped back her hair and pinned it up again, then rolled up her sleeves and went out to fetch potatoes from the sack in the outhouse. By the time she returned with an armful of potatoes she could hear John’s voice raised once more.
‘Is it too much to expect to have me family at home waiting for me? And a holiday at that! But no, they’re all gallivantin’ round the town, gettin’ up to mischief!’
‘They’re not in the town,’ Rose pointed out. ‘And me and Kate and Jack are here.’
‘Where’s the lass?’
‘Fetching tatties.’
‘I want her in here. It’s a bloody holiday! We should be singing and dancing - aye, and drinking.’ Kate heard him aim his boot at Jack, for her brother gave out a yelp. ‘Gan and fetch me a jug of beer from the Twenty-Seven - tell ‘em I’ll pay for it the morrow.’
Kate’s heart sank at the mention of that terrible pub. Its real name was the Alexandria, but it was known locally as the Twenty-Seven because it served as the next stop after the twenty-six staithes along the docks, nestling among a row of mean, soot-blackened houses in Leam Lane. In the bad times, she and Sarah had hung around its doors, begging the scraps from the bait tins of men still earning enough to drink there. They had been grateful for the blasts of warm air from inside and the crusts handed out to them like dogs. Kate forced the fearful memories from her mind.
‘Kate!’ John bawled. ‘Stop hiding out the back and get yourself in here!’
She hurriedly dropped the potatoes into the stone sink and brushed the soil from her bodice. She saw Jack give Rose a questioning look and her answering nod, then the boy ran thankfully from the room. Kate could tell by her mother’s set expression that she had gauged John’s mood to be too volatile for argument. It was better to go along with his wild notions than risk riling his temper further. The more he drank the sooner he would pass out and the sooner they could all go peacefully to bed.
‘Come here and sing with me, lass!’ he ordered her over. ‘Sit at me feet. And you, woman,’ he glared at his wife, ‘sit yourself down and cheer up your miserable face. You’d crack a mirror with that look.’ He laughed. ‘Haway, lass, and sing.’
Kate slipped cautiously to her knees by the hearth, wary of his sudden joviality. It could change back in an instant to aggression. He began to sing of sweet Molly Malone and she joined in the chorus, her voice rising clear above his deep tobacco-husky tone. Rose picked up some mending and settled in the chair opposite, while the two singers went through John’s Irish repertoire. By the time Jack returned with a half-jug of beer Kate was on to the local songs she had picked up as a child and her music-hall favourites. John grumbled about the small amount of beer, but drank it straight from the jug while Kate carried on singing.
She loved to sing and felt her high spirits return with each song. Jack edged close to her but sat in the shadows just beyond the ring of firelight.
‘Sing “Thora”!’ John demanded between slurps, shaking her shoulder roughly. It was a sentimental song about a lost child, but Kate loved its haunting melody and its picture of a land of snow and magical starry skies. She imagined it was somewhere up on the moors above Ravensworth where Aunt Lizzie lived, those blue shimmering hills she could glimpse in the distance on rare clear days from this home at Simonside. One day she wanted to reach them and explore beyond the mysterious hazy horizon.
She began to sing it softly, gazing into the blue-tinged flames of the fire that mesmerised. Rose put down her sewing to listen and even the restless Jack was stilled. Kate’s voice wrapped around them all, her hair glinting like bronze in the firelight.
When she finished, the room was bound in silence as if she had cast a spell. Then John put out a hand and ruffled her hair in a rare gesture of affection.
‘You’re a bonny singer,’ he murmured.
He took a large swig from the jug, sloshing the last of the dregs on to his moustache and down his stubbled chin. His fleshless cheekbones stood out in the firelight, his once-vivid blue eyes bleary with booze and fatigue.
Rose stirred. ‘Jack, Kate. Time the pair of you were off to bed.’
‘Bed? It’s hardly dark,’ John complained. ‘We’ll have more singing till the sun gans down. Haway, Kate, sing us some more.’
Kate had risen at her mother’s words, but now stood undecided. John grabbed at her skirt and held on.
‘Another song!’ he commanded. ‘And sit down the rest of you.’
When she saw her mother pick up her mending once more with a stifled sigh, Kate sang on. Jack squatted on the floor, yawning and fighting sleep. She sang until she was hoarse, repeating songs from earlier in the evening. Whenever she thought John had dozed off she tried to move away, but he kept a hold of her skirt and stirred at the movement.
Darkness fell and the fire died down, so that they could hardly see each other. Kate sang softly until she was sure her stepfather slept. But as she put out a hand to release her skirt from his grip, she felt it tighten. In an instant he pulled her on to his knee and in a befuddled voice said, ‘Rose, me bonny Rose.’
‘It’s me, Father,’ she whispered, trying to pull away. ‘Kate.’
‘Just sit for a minute,’ he mumbled.
Kate sat as still as could be, waiting for her mother to remonstrate. She held her breath but was only too aware of John’s hands on her. One lay heavy on her lap while the other he slipped around her waist. His callused fingers were stroking and probing, his thumb edging up the curve of her breast.
Kate’s heart thumped hard. She wanted to jump up and run from him, but she sat frozen on his knee, wondering what to do. She peered through the dark at Rose but could not see her face. Could her mother see her predicament or had she fallen asleep? Kate could just make out the sprawled figure of Jack beyond the hearth mat. She pushed out a foot to try to stir him but he slept on.
All the while John’s fingers fumbled over her body, his breathing coming hard on the back of her neck. His other hand squeezed her thigh.
‘Bonny lass,’ he whispered, ‘bonny as my Rose.’
Suddenly his hand moved round to grab her
inner thigh and at the same time he nipped her breast. Kate gave out a startled cry at the unexpected pain and leapt up.
‘Don’t, Father!’
‘What’s that?’ Rose said sharply. She had dozed off to Kate’s singing. Kate stumbled towards her in the dark, breathing fast.
‘Mam—’
‘Has he touched you?’
‘He thought I was you, Mam,’ Kate hissed.
‘Wha’s that? Wha’s all the fuss?’ John slurred. ‘I was asleep.’
Kate knew he was lying, or maybe he had been half asleep and dreaming of Rose. Either way, she would not let that happen again. She shuddered to think of the way his hands had been pawing her. She kissed Rose good night and fled up the ladder to the bedroom in the loft she shared with Mary.
Kate got under the blanket fully clothed, still shaking from the incident. A short while later she heard Jack climb the creaking ladder and fall on to the mattress in the curtained-off section that served as his room. She was thankful that her parents slept downstairs in a boxed-in bed in the kitchen alcove. Rose was no longer fit enough to climb ladders and John was too tall and often too inebriated to attempt such a feat.
Below she could hear Rose coaxing John to bed, and his lurching footsteps across the floor. She could not make out his mumbled grunts, but she heard the noise of their efforts to climb into the bed. There was a short exchange of words; John insistent, Rose wearily accepting. Then Kate heard the squeaking of the bed boards that Sarah had once told her was the sound of consummation. It was short, sharp and rhythmic as if someone was bouncing on the bed. Soon afterwards it stopped and she heard John’s snoring like the sound of bees swarming.
Kate huddled under the blanket to block out the sound. It made her feel nauseous to think of her mother doing intimate things with John’s whisky breath hot all over her and his rough hands kneading her flesh. Never would she choose such a man for a husband! She would marry a gentleman with good looks and charm, who would sing with her in harmony. A man more like her real father who could play the piano and be accomplished at a trade. She would never reduce her children to begging in the street or suffer the shame of a husband who broke rocks at the workhouse for a pittance as John had once had to do.
She lulled herself to sleep with romantic thoughts of this future man. Later, in the early hours of the morning, she woke, still cocooned in pleasant dreams. She flinched at the touch of a warm body next to her. Kate recoiled at the thought John might have climbed up to lie beside her. But in the grey pearly light through the skylight she saw Jack curled up like a mouse in the space where Mary usually lay.
Kate relaxed and snuggled back beside him. She felt comforted by his warm breath on her cheek and his smell of hay and earth.
‘My little soldier,’ she smiled to herself.
Slipping an arm over his body she drifted off to sleep again.
When she woke a second time, Jack was gone and motes of dust were dancing in the strong beam of sunlight flooding the room. Kate heard her mother moving around downstairs. She got up quickly and went down to help, noticing John’s bulking shape in the bed beyond, still snoring.
Rose said nothing as she handed Kate a cup of weak tea she had poured from the pot keeping warm on the stove. Her broad face looked pasty and creased with lack of sleep.
‘Do you want me to start on the dinner, Mam?’
They had got out of the habit of going to Mass since Rose had found the trek down to St Bede’s in Jarrow too much for her swollen legs. There had been periods during the bad times when lack of decent clothes or boots for their feet had kept them away from church.
‘In a minute,’ Rose said quietly, giving a brief glance to her sleeping husband. Then she nodded silently for Kate to follow her outside.
They went out through the pantry to the yard with the wash house, where Jack helped John keep a couple of mangy hens. One of them flapped up on to the wall at their sudden appearance. Rose led the way out into the lane. They stood sheltered from the railway embankment by overgrown nettles and hawthorn bushes.
‘I’ve been thinking about our Lizzie,’ Rose said abruptly. ‘She’ll be needing help.’
Kate watched her mother’s tight expression. ‘Aye, she will.’
‘I think you should gan and help your aunt - give a hand with George and Alfred.’
‘Me?’ Kate gawped at her. ‘But what about me job in Shields?’
Rose continued to look out over the embankment as she spoke. ‘You can sharp pick up another skivvying job. You’re hard-working and eager to please.’
Kate was foxed. ‘But what about me wages? How would you manage?’
Rose turned and faced her. Her eyes were dark-ringed but glinting.
‘It might just be for a couple of weeks - maybes a month -just while Lizzie gets back on her feet. We’ll manage.’ She put out a hand and touched Kate’s arm. ‘Take this chance. Ravensworth’s a big estate and there might be a place for you permanent.’ There was urgency in her voice. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d had such a chance instead of our Lizzie. But we each have a different lot to bear and mine hasn’t killed me yet.’
Rose gave her a brief wistful smile. ‘Your da wanted you to have the best start in life - and I don’t mean that old lump lying in his bed yonder,’ she said with a curt nod at the cottage. ‘I haven’t been able to give you much, but maybes now you can make some’at of yourself. You’ve got the best looks of all me bairns, alive or dead, and a nature to suit.’
Kate felt herself colouring at her mother’s words. She had never heard such praise from her lips.
‘Mam—’
Rose gripped her hand. ‘I want you away from here. Father will never let you near another man - least not the type who’ll make you happy.’
Kate swallowed. ‘Has he agreed to me going?’
‘Not yet, but leave him to me. I know how to get round him.’ Rose gave a short bitter laugh.
Kate thought of last night and the creakings from the box bed, and felt uneasy. Is there anything a mother wouldn’t do to protect her children? she wondered.
‘So will you go?’ Rose demanded.
Kate was filled with sudden excitement. Her dream of going to Ravensworth and the mysterious blue hills beyond was almost within her grasp.
‘Aye, willingly,’ she smiled.
Rose patted her arm in relief and turned quickly, so that Kate would not see the gleam of tears in her eyes. She had no idea how deeply she would be missed, how hollow her mother’s heart would be if she never came back. But Rose, who had lost two daughters for good a long time ago, was used to a heavy heart. Yet she would never have the words to describe such desolation, and it served no purpose to try.
‘Get the brisket on, lass,’ was all Rose said and Kate followed her back inside, her mind already racing ahead to the future.
Chapter 3
Kate heard later that the arguing started during Sunday dinner. But by then she had escaped to the house in South Shields where her employers were hosting a large lunch party. During the week she was general maid, laying fires, cleaning brasses, washing and ironing. She had been given the day off for the Coronation celebrations, but ordered to be back before luncheon on Sunday to help in the kitchen.
It was late in the evening when she made the two-mile walk back up the hill to Cleveland Place, and her limbs ached from heaving cast-iron pots of food and cauldrons of hot water around the kitchen and carrying tray-loads of food up and down stairs all afternoon. She approached the cottage warily, wondering what she would find.
All was quiet in the kitchen, with John’s chair empty and only Rose sitting close to the fire, trying to mend a tear in Jack’s shorts by the dim light.
‘The calm after the storm,’ Rose said drily.
‘Where is everyone?’ Kate discarded her jacket and loosened h
er chafing boots.
‘Father’s asleep - stomach playing up as it always does after a day on the whisky. Mary’s gone to bed - tired herself out with all her rantin’ and cryin’.’
‘About me ganin’ to Aunt Lizzie’s?’
‘Aye.’
‘But she didn’t want to gan. She hates the country.’ Kate flopped on to the horsehair chair she’d bought in a sale for her mother but which Rose found too uncomfortable.
‘Well, now she does. Our Mary’s as changeable as a weathercock.’
‘Only ‘cos you’ve chosen me to go. She can’t bear to think she’s being left out of some’at.’
‘Father told her to stop bawling like a bairn or he’d put her over his knee like a bairn. Said she was too young to be going so far from home and that it might do you good to have a bit of Lizzie’s firm hand - high time you stopped playing in trees like a boy.’
‘He’s agreed to me going then?’ Kate sat up in expectation.
‘As long as Lizzie and Peter cover the cost of your keep -and you send back your wages if you pick up work. So you can write a note for me and send it ahead to let them know you’re coming.’
Kate leapt up and gave Rose a hug. ‘That’s grand. Thanks, Mam!’
Rose shrugged her off. ‘Now go and call for our Jack -he’s been out since tea time.’
Kate went out into the chill night air. There was no sign of the boy in the back lane and she imagined he was lying low in one of his many dens along the embankment or in the copse. The moon was hidden by a blanket of cloud but there was still a lurid smudge of daylight on the far horizon that helped her pick her way among the potholes.
‘Jack? I’m back. Time to come in. Jack!’
No reply came. She edged further up the track towards the trees. It was cold without her jacket and she rubbed her arms.
‘Jack. Come home now. Mam wants you. You know how she frets. Haway, Jack, show yourself.’
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 44