THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Then just a word,’ he insisted. ‘You could bring me another whisky.’

  She nodded and went to pour the drink. Mary shot her a suspicious look.

  ‘How does he know you?’ she hissed.

  ‘From the castle,’ Kate whispered. ‘I used to clean his room.’

  ‘Fancy him remembering that,’ she said in surprise.

  ‘Aye,’ Kate said, and hurried back. As she put the glass on the table, Alexander stopped her with a hand on hers. She jolted.

  ‘I’m sorry that I never got the chance to see you again,’ he said softly. He watched her intently. ‘Everything changed when Lord Ravensworth died.’

  She nodded.

  ‘How have you been, Kate? I thought you’d returned to Jarrow.’

  She eyed him. Had he asked about her? ‘I thought I’d have to when Lady Ravensworth left, but I found work here with Mary - she’s me sister.’ Kate nodded towards Mary, who was watching them with interest.

  ‘Two pretty Fawcett daughters - no wonder the inn is so popular.’

  She smiled, unable to resist his charm. ‘It’s more to do with the snow than a couple of lasses.’

  Taylor called over as he bustled Mary from the room. ‘Kate, don’t be bothering Mr Davies. You’re needed in the back.’

  Alexander’s grip tightened for an instant. ‘I want to see you again - talk to you.’

  ‘It’s not possible here,’ she said, looking around nervously.

  ‘When is your next day off?’

  ‘Sunday week.’

  ‘I’ll come back then. Meet me, Kate,’ he urged.

  She nodded quickly and pulled her hand free. Hurrying from the room, she did not dare look back for fear he would see the longing in her face.

  ***

  The next day, the men left early after bowls of porridge in their room, which Mary took up to them. Kate wondered if she had dreamt the previous night’s conversation and was sure Alexander would not return on her day off. Still, as the day drew near her hopes and nervousness grew. If he came at all, would he call boldly at the inn and ask for her? Should she walk into the village and look out for him?

  Mary, who was working that Sunday, was suspicious of her evasiveness.

  ‘Are you ganin’ to meet Robert?’

  ‘No, but I might walk up to Ravensworth and call on Aunt Lizzie.’ Kate avoided her sister’s look. She did not dare tell her in case it came to nothing. Mary would ridicule her for being a romantic fool with ideas far above herself.

  The afternoon came, bright and blustery, and Kate set out, unable to contain her restlessness any longer. Even if he never came, she could not be confined to the inn. She would walk all afternoon until it grew dark and her yearning was spent.

  As she picked her way along the muddy verge, where lumps of snow still lingered under hedges, she heard the hooting of a train as it pulled into Lamesley station. It was coming from Newcastle on its way south and Kate thought nothing of it. She knew if Alexander came it would be from the other direction.

  She stopped under the sheltering wall of St Andrew’s church. Her mother had once described sitting on the church wall as a small girl, long, long ago, watching a Liddell wedding. As beautiful as an angel, she said of the young bride, in a voice of rare softness. Kate looked up at the stone wall and tried to imagine Rose as an excited child perched up there, clutching the hand of her old grandmother, who had been a servant at Ravensworth.

  How different life would have been for them all if Rose’s mother had not left the village to marry an Irishman on Tyneside. Kate touched the cold stone and felt a strange bond with the place, deep roots that went back through the generations. She was connected to these ancient stone walls, dun-coloured fields and rounded Durham hills that seemed changeless under the cold open sky. They were her inheritance as much as anybody else’s.

  Footsteps approaching made her glance round, her mind still half in the past. The familiar figure striding towards her with a glint of silver-topped cane made her heart jump. He had come as promised!

  Alexander grinned in delight to see her waiting at the church gate for him. It quelled his nervousness at the thought she might have gone out for the day, not believing his words. But here she was, looking pink-cheeked and dreamy under the last copper leaves of autumn.

  He stopped short, curbing his urge to reach out and seize her hands.

  ‘You came to meet me!’

  ‘Sir,’ she blushed, ‘I was on me way up to see me aunt. I wasn’t sure ...’

  ‘That I’d keep my promise? I don’t blame you, Kate, after the last time. I intended to meet you, but I couldn’t get away. There was no way of letting you know. I thought you would understand.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And I tried to find you at the lake - but you never came.’ His voice was reproachful.

  ‘I did go!’ she protested. ‘Twice that following week. But you weren’t there.’ She stopped, going hot under his gaze.

  He smiled in delight. ‘So you did think of me! I’ve thought of you often, Kate.’ He stepped towards her. ‘You still appear in my drawings. Even in South America you haunted me.’

  ‘South America!’ she gasped.

  ‘That’s where I went after Lord Ravensworth died. Then I came back to find Her Ladyship married to James, the next earl dead, and a new baron installed at Ravensworth - and my wood sprite vanished from the estate.’ His look was teasing.

  ‘Do you see Her Ladyship?’ she asked warily.

  ‘Yes. That’s where I’ve come from today; Newcastle.’

  ‘Is she well?’

  Alexander nodded. ‘She seems very happy.’

  ‘The marriage caused a right fuss round here.’

  This made him laugh. ‘I’m sure it did. But good luck to them, I say. And let the killjoys go to the Devil!’

  She looked shocked, then burst out laughing too.

  ‘Who would have thought? James Wadsworth!’

  Alexander held out his arm. ‘Come, Kate, it’s too cold to linger. I want to hear of everything that’s happened to you this last year and more.’

  She took his arm and smiled. ‘I’d sooner hear about South America.’

  ‘Then you shall. It might take until dusk. Can you walk that long?’

  ‘Till the cows come home,’ she grinned.

  He squeezed her arm and led her out of the village and down the valley, skirting the wooded estate. Neither said so, but both thought it better to avoid coming across people they might know.

  Kate would have carried on for ever, walking and listening to his tales of foreign travel.

  ‘There’s something about going to sea, Kate,’ he said eagerly, ‘the adventure, the freedom - that empty horizon beckoning. There’s no feeling like it.’

  ‘I prefer me feet on dry land,’ she mused. As they walked on she made him laugh with her pithy comments on life at the inn. But the short afternoon sped by too quickly and the light was already fading as they turned back for Lamesley.

  ‘Can we do this again?’ he asked as they approached the inn. ‘On your next day off.’

  ‘I’d like that, sir.’

  He took her hands in his gloved ones. They were numb with cold but she did not mind.

  ‘Please call me Alex,’ he insisted. ‘When we’re together like this, it doesn’t seem like master and servant - not to me. Is that how you still see me?’

  ‘No, Alex,’ she murmured, her pulse hammering at their daring.

  ‘Good!’ he cried, pressing her fingers to his warm lips and kissing them. ‘I’ll call for you in two Sundays’ time. Meet me by the church again.’

  ‘I will.’ She smiled broadly, reluctantly pulling her hands away. She hurried towards the lights of the inn, thrilled at the thought of their next
meeting. Two weeks seemed an eternity to wait!

  Turning at the gate, she could still make out his tall figure, a shadow in the dark, watching her. She waved and he raised his stick in farewell. Kate rushed inside, unable to keep the grin of happiness from her face. She had to tell someone about this afternoon. Even Mary would do. She could not keep such a secret to herself or she would burst with the excitement and joy that bubbled inside her.

  ‘Mary!’ she gabbled to her sister, finding her in their attic room. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ***

  Alexander strode back to the station, warmed by the thought of Kate’s eagerness to see him again. What rashness had seized him? He felt light-headed, as if his actions weren’t his own, but those of a bolder man. His father would take a fit if he knew of the association. But what harm did it do? He enjoyed Kate’s company and she his. There was nothing more to it than that. He would choose his own friends.

  Yet as he waited for the train in the frosty dark, he felt a pang of misgiving. In all the long conversations this afternoon, he had made no mention of Polly De Winton or the promise he had made to Jeremiah that he would propose to Polly come the New Year. It had just been to keep him from the constant nagging about settling his future.

  Alexander had been happy to court Polly that autumn; she was pleasant company. But to him, their marriage would be little more than a business arrangement to please his father and hers. It was nothing to do with love. And he needed love. He would take it where he found it.

  Only after he had climbed on board and was passing the lights of the Ravensworth Arms did it strike Alexander. The sweet pain in his chest that he felt when he thought of Kate, the longing inside; it was love. He was in love with the blue-eyed maid from Ravensworth.

  Chapter 19

  The next time they met, Alexander drove a small pony and trap. ‘I’m taking you into Gateshead,’ he declared. ‘We’ll walk around Saltwell Park and take tea. I want to treat you.’

  Kate grinned with delight as he helped her up and was glad she had put on her best dress; one that Suky had given her in a flush of generosity after becoming pregnant and too big to button it up. It was deep blue and matched a hat Kate had bought at a village bazaar that had belonged to the stylish Mrs Fairish, wife of a master baker.

  She felt like a lady, riding into town beside her handsome companion. They walked around the public gardens, arm in arm, stopping to listen to a brass band playing Christmas carols under the gilded bandstand. Afterwards, they warmed themselves by a roaring fire in a nearby tea room and ate hungrily through a plate of currant bread and cherry cake.

  ‘My favourite cake,’ Kate mused. ‘Reminds me of being happy as a bairn - before my father died.’

  ‘I like to think your father was the William I remember - the kind man who took me to the circus with his pretty wife.’

  ‘So do I,’ Kate smiled wistfully. ‘I’m sure he must’ve been to a circus, ‘cos he made a lion and cage out of old wood for my older sisters. It’s the only toy that didn’t get sold—’ She stopped herself quickly. ‘I mean, it’s the only toy I remember my mam keeping. Our Jack used to play with it.’

  ‘Is your mother pretty, Kate? With daughters like you and Mary, she must be,’ he flattered.

  Kate thought of her mother’s tired, dark-ringed eyes and sallow square face, her once full mouth permanently set in a thin grim line. She hobbled and wheezed like an old woman. Only the treasured faded photograph of Kate’s parents and their young family showed that her mother had once been beautiful. She kept the photograph wrapped in brown paper and hidden under her mattress, for fear of inciting Mary’s jealousy. It had been taken on a rare trip to the seaside, before her youngest sister had been born. It depicted a happy family of which she had never had the chance to be a part.

  ‘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, Kat
e?’

  ‘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.