‘No,’ said Mary shortly. ‘Doesn’t want us all coming down with fever, that’s all. He’ll take it off your wages, mind.’
Kate felt too ill to care. ‘If he wants.’
The following day, a stout, bewhiskered doctor came wheezing into the room behind Mary, out of breath from the steep climb to the attic. He plonked down his leather bag and sat on the bed regaining his breath, wrinkling his nose at the smell of sick in the low room. Mary hovered by the door.
‘Let’s take a look at you, young lady,’ he ordered. He placed a cold hand on her forehead and took her pulse. He stuck a glass tube under her tongue.
‘Well, your temperature’s normal,’ he declared.
Kate felt light-headed as he bombarded her with questions. He kept looking at the basin and then back at her. Finally, he coughed and said he needed to examine her stomach. He prodded her vigorously as if kneading dough.
‘Any pain?’ Kate shook her head. ‘Any tenderness in the breasts?’
She blushed and stammered, ‘N-no. Well, maybes a bit.’
His look made her uncomfortable. He pulled the covers back over her and stood up.
‘It seems plain to me.’ He glared down at her as if her ailments were her fault. ‘I take it you’re not married?’
Kate looked at him, baffled. ‘N-no.’
‘Well, you sharp better be,’ he grunted. ‘You’re with child. Two - three months gone, I’d say.’
Kate gasped as a wave of nausea engulfed her. She lurched to the side of the bed and vomited into the basin. With child? Impossible! She retched again. Her head throbbed. Of course not impossible! She heard the doctor’s footsteps retreat, but was too ashamed to look up.
Mary stopped him. ‘Please, sir, you don’t have to tell Mr Taylor, do you?’
He snorted. ‘He’ll soon see for himself, girl.’ Then he left.
Kate sat up, shaking from shock. Mary stood staring at her. Kate’s face crumpled like a small girl’s as she held out her arms. Mary rushed to her and put her arms around in comfort.
‘Oh, Mary!’ Kate sobbed. ‘What am I ganin’ to do?’
Mary patted her back but for once was lost for words.
They clung to each other in the chill gloomy room, each afraid to speak. She was carrying Alexander’s child. She was fallen, disgraced, outcast. Unless he came back to save her. But she had no idea where he was or whether he ever intended to return. His father would never allow them to marry now! She was shameful, a fornicator! Kate could hear the venomous words on John McMullen’s tongue already.
Oh, dear God! What if her stepfather were to find out? Then she had a sudden image of her mother’s face smiling in expectation. Make me proud.
Kate let out a moan of terror. ‘What’ll Mam say?’ she whispered.
Mary squeezed her tighter in panic. ‘Maybes the doctor’s got it wrong,’ she tried to reassure. ‘You might not be expectin’ at all.’
But the truth of it hit Kate with a cold clammy crawling of her skin.
‘I am,’ she said numbly. ‘I’ve had no bleedin’ since August. Isn’t it supposed to stop when you’re ...?’
Mary drew back in alarm. ‘Oh, our Kate, you’ve done it now!’
***
Fearful, the sisters tried to keep the news from Taylor, but within a couple of weeks rumours filtered back to the inn. A drinker from Kibblesworth had heard from a neighbour who’d heard it from a friend who’d bumped into someone from Lamesley who’d been told by the housemaid at the doctor’s. ‘You know that lass behind the bar who was courting the posh gentleman with the astrakhan coat and the silver walking cane ...’
It was early December when Taylor confronted Kate about it. By then her bodice was tight across her breasts and the buttons at the waist of her skirt would not do up. She had tried to laugh off the smutty remarks, but her fair face was too quick to colour and her red-rimmed eyes betrayed her frequent tearfulness.
‘Aye, it’s true,’ she whispered in reply to the landlord’s curt question.
‘Oh, lass!’ he cried in disappointment. ‘I never would’ve expected this of you. How could you be so daft?’
Kate hung her head in humiliation. ‘He’ll come back—’
‘Don’t talk so stupid!’ He grew angry. ‘The best you can do is gan home and face the music - hope your mam’ll take pity on you.’
‘Home?’ Kate gasped. ‘Please, Mr Taylor, don’t send me away.’
‘You cannot stop here, lass, not in your condition. You’ve been a canny worker, but you’re no use to me with a bairn on the way. Bad for business. I work hard to give this place a good reputation - somewhere decent for the business classes as well as ordinary folk. Not a rough bar for women of easy virtue.’
Kate went crimson. One night of weakness and her reputation was in shreds.
‘I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered. ‘Please let me stay on till Christmas. Me stepfather - he’ll kill us!’ Kate began to weep and shake in fear.
Taylor relented. ‘Another couple of weeks then. But you swap duties with Mary and keep out of the way. I’ll not have you the laughing stock of my pub.’
Kate’s one hope was that Alexander would return in December as promised and save her from this living hell. But the days dragged by, the frost killing off the last of the briars and turning the water to ice in the pails. She thought of her mother making ready for their return on Boxing Day and her courage failed. How happy and carefree she had been this time last year, how exciting the future.
Now she carried her dread at the future around with her like a stone in the pit of her stomach. Alexander had forgotten her, or decided not to bother with her further. Mary had been right all along. He had taken what he wanted and now he had no more need. No doubt he would be horrified to discover her pregnant. Perhaps he would deny it was his. He had lain with her only once, after all. Kate despaired. She had to admit she did not really know Alexander at all. She had built him into a romantic hero like a character out of one of the novels Aunt Maggie read so avidly. He was a figment of her foolish imagination. And yet she loved him so much!
In all her nights and days of torment, Kate hardly spared a thought for the child she carried in her womb. If she thought of it at all, it was with a sense of repulsion. It was an ever more visible sign of her plight and shame. She wished she could tear it out of her body with her own hands and be done with it! Then she shrank with guilt at such unchristian thoughts and believed herself evil.
On the morning of their departure, Mary helped her pack up her few possessions. She had bought a few small gifts of soap and lavender water for her mother and Sarah, a penknife for Jack and a pouch of tobacco for John. Taylor gave them a lift in his cart to the station. Kate felt sick as they jostled in silence out of the gate and down the lane. She looked back at the inn and the small high window where Alexander had woken her from sleep with a fateful tap of a pebble. If only she had slept on and never got up to answer its call.
She strained for one last look at the wooded hills and castle towers of Ravensworth, but a cold mist hid them from view. Even at this final hour she half expected, half hoped to see Alexander riding out of the gloom to meet her. But the road leading to the estate was deserted. Mary had agreed to tell Aunt Lizzie on her return, for Kate did not have the courage to face her aunt and uncle or say goodbye to her boisterous cousin Alfred. She could not bear the thought of his puzzled look and questions at her going.
‘Look after yourself,’ Taylor said with an awkward nod, and left them standing on the platform.
‘Ta, Mr Taylor.’ Kate smiled bravely. ‘Ta for everything you’ve done for me.’
She looked deathly pale as she climbed on board the train, but she held herself erect and did not look back.
Later, perhaps pricked by Kate’s quiet dignity and word of thanks, Taylor sat down an
d wrote a message to Davies. He told him of the girl’s departure and that she was with child. Perhaps it would spark some sympathy in the old man for the trouble his son had caused. Maybe it would prompt him to provide a bit of money to help Kate out in her need. Taylor wasn’t sure, but that was the reasoning behind his letter. He still felt guilty for intercepting Alexander’s letters and sending them to Davies, though he believed it was in Kate’s best interests to end the affair. His fear that it would end in disaster had been proved right. At least now, Davies would stop pestering him to spy on his wayward son.
All the way back to Jarrow, Kate was in turmoil. How could she bring herself to tell her parents of what she had done? Perhaps she should get off at Gateshead and disappear. But where? She had no savings and no one would employ her now. The only possessions of any worth were her two brooches, one from Lady Ravensworth and one from Alexander. As the train picked up speed, she contemplated rushing to the door and throwing herself on to the tracks. Anything but face the wrath of John McMullen! She buried her face in her hands.
Why had she ever believed the honeyed words of Pringle-Davies? What a fool she had been.
As they approached the hazy outline of Tyneside and its mass of smoking chimneys, Kate’s dread increased. At Gateshead, they boarded the train for South Shields and the familiar landmarks rushed to encircle them - the spire of St Bede’s in Jarrow where they had gone as girls, the forest of cranes and chimney stacks and tenements piled up on the river bank, the sludge-grey water of Jarrow Slake where timber bobbed on the tide.
She felt this old half-forgotten world close around her, hemming her in. The throb of the train was like the pounding of her heart. They surged through the cutting below the cottages of Cleveland Place, leaving the last patches of countryside, and down into the blackened clutter of buildings that was Tyne Dock.
Chapter 26
Only twice had Kate been home since her family had moved to the dingy flat in Leam Lane. It stank of the docks and shook each time a goods train thundered down to the staithes. As the sisters alighted on the smoky platform of Tyne Dock station, panic gripped Kate’s chest and squeezed the air in her throat. She couldn’t breathe.
‘I c-cannot...’ Kate gasped, frozen to the station platform. At the barrier she could see Jack and Sarah waiting to greet them. ‘... cannot... move ...’ She clutched Mary’s arm, feeling faint.
‘Haway,’ Mary chivvied, ‘there’s nowt you can do about it now.’
‘They’ll kill me,’ Kate whispered.
‘No they won’t. I’ll not let ‘em,’ Mary said with spirit. ‘Your family’s all you’ve got now, our Kate, so don’t be so soft.’
Somehow she made it through the barrier and was enveloped in a generous hug from her older sister.
‘By, you’ve put on a bit o’ beef! Feedin’ you well, I see.’
Kate promptly burst into tears.
‘I didn’t mean owt by it,’ Sarah said in consternation.
Jack, hovering a few feet away, stared in embarrassment at the commotion. Through her tears, Kate noticed how he had thickened out and grown another few inches. There was a shadow of hair on his upper lip that had not been there before and she felt suddenly shy of him.
‘You might as well tell her,’ Mary hissed.
‘Not here,’ Kate sobbed, glancing around in fear at being recognised. ‘Not in front of the lad.’
Mary threw Jack a dismissive look. ‘He’s ganin’ to hear about it soon enough.’
‘Hear what?’ Sarah demanded. She held Kate away and scrutinised her. But Kate turned in embarrassment and began to hurry away from the hubbub at the station entrance.
Mary was about to explain, but Kate swung round. ‘Don’t you dare say a thing! Not till Mam’s been told.’ Her stormy look was enough to silence Mary’s gossip.
From somewhere deep inside, Kate found a steely courage. She was Rose Fawcett’s daughter and she would not cringe in fear from facing her parents. Her mother had lived through worse than this and survived. She had made a terrible mistake and no doubt would be made to pay for it. But she would walk down these streets with her head held high and brazen it out.
Kate’s courage lasted until she stepped through the door of the downstairs dwelling and saw her mother’s flushed expectant face. Behind, her anxious siblings shuffled through the door.
‘Haway in, hinnies!’ Rose wheezed. ‘Why all the long faces? Not been scrappin’ already, have you?’
‘No, Mam,’ Kate said, squeezing past the wooden settle and throwing her arms about her in a desperate hug.
‘Kate’s got some’at to tell you,’ Mary said at once. Kate glared, prompting her sister to protest, ‘Haway and get it over with!’
‘Where’s Father?’ Kate asked nervously.
Rose nodded next door with disapproval. ‘In the Twenty-Seven.’ She pushed Kate away, alerted by her look. ‘What’s wrong? You been sacked?’
Kate swallowed and nodded.
‘Oh, lass! What you gone and done?’
Kate started to shake. ‘I -I cannot tell you ...’
Rose looked over at the others, but Sarah shrugged in bewilderment and Jack stared at the floor. Only Mary, fierce-eyed, seemed fit to burst with the news.
‘Spit it out, lass,’ Rose said grimly, ‘before you choke on it.’
Kate’s knees buckled. She sat down abruptly on the hard settle that dominated the cramped room. The one piece of furniture that had survived countless flits and trips to the pawnshop; bought with Father’s army bounty and his pride and joy. Father! Fear engulfed her.
‘I’ve done a terrible thing,’ Kate whispered. ‘You’ll never forgive us.’
‘That’s for me to decide,’ Rose said. Then added more gently, ‘Haway, hinny, you can tell your mam.’ She squeezed her shoulder in encouragement.
Kate looked into her mother’s florid, square face, puckered in concern, deep lines of suffering scored into her brow and around her once full mouth. In that moment, she hated herself for the pain she was about to inflict, the shame she was visiting on her mother’s name and family. Kate gazed into Rose’s worried brown eyes. The compassion she saw there gave her the courage to speak.
‘That man I told you about,’ Kate gulped, ‘the one I was courtin’?’
Rose nodded.
‘He’s ... I... I’m carrying ... his ...’ Kate floundered.
‘ She’s expectin’!’ Mary burst out, unable to contain herself.
Rose looked nonplussed. She gazed between the two of them. Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a cry.
‘She’s having his bairn,’ Mary cried.
Rose whipped round suddenly. ‘I know what expectin’ means! Hold your tongue.’
She stared down at Kate in disbelief, her mouth creasing into a hard tight line. Kate’s stomach clenched at the look of raw hurt in her mother’s eyes.
‘Is it true?’ Rose demanded.
Kate nodded.
‘And is he ganin’ to stand by you - this gentleman of yours?’ She almost spat out the word.
Kate flinched. ‘He doesn’t know,’ she said hoarsely.
Mary butted in. ‘Hasn’t been back since September. And he’s ganin’ to marry some posh squire’s daughter, any road.’
Rose gave out a shudder. Her eyes glittered with anger as the enormity of Kate’s disgrace sank in. She raised a large roughened hand and slapped her daughter hard across the face.
Kate gasped and fell sideways from the force of the blow.
‘How could you?’ Rose yelled and, grabbing hold of her, yanked her upright. ‘How dare you?’
‘No, Mam!’ Sarah jumped forward and held on to Rose’s arm. ‘No more hittin’.’
‘I’ll box her bloody ears!’ Rose cried in fury.
But Sarah was stron
g and thrust herself between the women, then Mary waded in too. ‘Leave off her, Mam. Fightin’ doesn’t change owt. What’s done is done.’ Both daughters pulled their mother away.
Rose’s chest heaved as she panted, glaring at Kate all the while as if she were a serpent coiled on the seat. There was fear and contempt in that look that turned Kate’s blood cold.
‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ she choked, and began to weep.
Suddenly Rose was gulping for air, her breathing as noisy as bellows. The colour was draining from her swearing face.
‘Mam, you’re having a turn!’ Sarah cried, steering her into a chair. She pulled at the buttons of her high-necked blouse and loosened the constricting collar. ‘Take it steady, that’s it, get your breath back,’ she soothed.
As Rose wheezed and fought for breath, Kate rushed over in concern.
‘Mam, I’m sorry, I never meant—’
But Sarah gave her a warning look and she stood back, not knowing what to do, while Mary fetched water and Sarah fanned her mother’s face. Rose refused to look at her. Kate turned away, utterly wretched. It was then she remembered Jack. He was standing by the door as if on the point of flight, glowering at them all.
He flicked Kate a look from under his dark brows, his blue eyes sharp and appraising. For the first time it struck her how alike he looked to John - a handsome younger version of his father. They held each other’s look for a long moment, though Kate could read nothing of his thoughts from his set expression. Did he despise her too? Or was he too young to understand? No, there was something knowing in that look that told her otherwise. He was half man himself already. Yet there was still a young boy’s awkwardness in the way he hesitated by the doorway, alone and unsure.
All at once, his body stiffened and he whipped round like an animal sensing danger.
‘Me da’s comin’,’ he said in a low mumble.
‘Oh, Mary Mother!’ Kate moaned.
Rose pushed away her fussing daughters and, clutching the table, heaved herself to her feet.
‘Let me deal wi’ him,’ she ordered, breathing hard, but her face set in determination. ‘Lasses, get the food out the oven. No one breathe a word of this till I say, you an’ all, Mary,’ she warned. She gave Kate a contemptuous glance. ‘And you gan and wash your face. Don’t let him see you’ve been blubbin’.’
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 63