Kate edged round the table and escaped to the scullery just as she heard her stepfather’s heavy tread at the front door. He was whistling ‘Sweet Molly Malone’. There was a flurry of activity as Sarah and Mary competed to busy themselves with a clatter of plates and steaming pots of vegetables.
‘That’s a grand sight!’ she heard John exclaim as he tramped into the room, stamping his boots from the cold. ‘Here, you useless beggar, get this beer poured - you can have one an’ all.’
Kate splashed icy water on to her face with shaking hands, as Jack appeared searching for an extra cup, an earthen jug in his hands. She caught a whiff of the hoppy liquid and felt queasy. She gave him a desperate look. A memory came back to her with sickening clarity of the way her stepfather had once taken the belt to Sarah for failing to return home from a day out in Newcastle. He had whipped her almost to death for being a few hours late - and she had not even been with a man!
‘Jack, I cannot face him,’ she whispered, shivering with terror.
Her half-brother carried on pouring as if he had not heard. But Kate saw from the flush creeping into his cheeks that he had. He was embarrassed and ashamed of her. Somehow she had disappointed him too. Kate took a deep breath. She was going to have to face this alone. She had no one to blame but herself. Why should Jack protect her when she was bringing dishonour to their family? As she made for the door to the kitchen, she was aware of him glancing at her sideways, but still he said nothing.
John McMullen was sitting in his high-backed chair in its chosen spot by the fire. The room felt oppressively stuffy and Kate’s head swam.
‘So there you are, lass! What you got for me, eh?’
Kate forced a smile. Around the table the others shot her nervous looks as they brought food to the table, fiddled and rearranged plates and cutlery.
‘It’s not much this year, Father,’ she said, avoiding his look and scrabbling for the parcel of tobacco. It seemed so meagre compared to last year’s ostentatious present of the picture of Lord Roberts, which now hung above the fireplace.
He sniffed it and tore off the wrapper like a child. ‘Baccy - that’s grand. What you got me, our Mary?’ He pocketed the tobacco swiftly.
‘That’s from both of us,’ she told him with a defiant look. ‘Mam, we got you some canny soap.’ She took over from Kate, seizing the basket and handing out the other small gifts, seeing how her sister was paralysed with fear.
‘Let’s eat before the dinner gets cold,’ Rose instructed. ‘Jack, you carve.’
The memory of John threatening them with a kitchen knife the night he discovered Sarah gone leapt into Kate’s mind. Perhaps her mother did not trust him with the carving knife. She sat down, feeling faint.
‘What’s wrong wi’ you?’ John snorted.
‘She’s a bit under the weather,’ Rose said quickly. ‘Food’ll help.’ She pushed a plate of pork and potatoes and cabbage across the table. Kate felt bile rise in her throat. ‘Eat,’ Rose told her.
‘How about a drop of beer?’ John chuckled. “That’ll perk you up.’
Kate shook her head.
‘You know she doesn’t touch it,’ Rose said primly.
‘She works in a pub, you silly bitch,’ John said with derision. ‘Bet she has it for breakfast. Fill it up again, Jack lad,’ he ordered, banging his empty glass on the table.
He intercepted a look between Rose and her son.
‘It’s a holiday, woman! And don’t you go all high and mighty on me, Rose Ann. I remember when you liked your fill o’ beer - working in them puddling mills—’
‘Stop it, John,’ she remonstrated. ‘That’s ancient history.’
‘Saved your mam from a fate worse than death, I did,’ he continued. ‘Not that she’s thanked me from that day to this.’
Rose sighed with impatience but bit back a retort.
‘By, she could sup with the best of us in those days.’
Kate felt the familiar dread at a row brewing. It always started with John needling Rose about some petty fault he saw in her or women in general. The more he belittled her, the more puffed out he became with his own importance. According to him, he had saved them from the gutter and made them respectable. Their descent into debt and poverty over the years was blamed on Rose’s bad housekeeping and slovenly ways, never his drinking or lack of work.
The family had all learnt it did not pay to answer back. Around the table they sat tensely, making half-hearted attempts to eat the food.
‘Your mam was two steps from the gutter when I made an honest woman out of her,’ he goaded.
Kate dropped her fork with a clatter. Rose glared at her in warning. The time was wrong. He was in one of his contrary moods - half joking, half vindictive.
Suddenly he was suspicious. ‘What’s ganin’ on?’
‘Nothing.’ Rose kept calm.
‘Some’at is,’ he growled. ‘All sitting there with red-hot pokers up your backsides.’
‘John ...’ Rose tutted.
‘Don’t John me, woman,’ he snarled. ‘Look at them - faces as long as bloody puritans. I want to know what’s been ganin’ on behind me back. Been bad-mouthing me, have you? Settin’ them against me as usual, eh?’
‘Course not,’ Rose protested. ‘Nothing to do with you.’
He slammed his fist down on the table, making them all jump.
‘Nothing to do with me? I’m the head of the house! I’ve a right to know what gans on here.’ He seized Mary by the arm.
‘Ah-ya!’
‘You tell me what they’ve been saying - you’ve always got ten words when one will do.’
‘Ow, Father, you’re hurting me,’ Mary whimpered.
‘Let her be, John,’ Rose pleaded. ‘Eat your meal. It’s gettin’ cold.’
John’s eyes narrowed in anger. ‘Don’t tell me what to do. What you keepin’ from me?’ He glared around the table. ‘No other bugger’s eating. It tastes of the midden!’ With his free hand he up-ended his plate, splattering the old sheet Rose used as a tablecloth with meat and gravy.
Kate could bear it no longer. A sick fury churned inside her. How dare he treat them like worse than muck? Other men did not. Uncle Peter, Bram Taylor - they were respectful and loving. Even Alexander, for all he had abandoned her now, had treated her as someone special. How had her mother put up with such a boor for so long?
She got to her feet. She might have sinned, but it was nothing to the hell this man subjected his wife and family to. She would never be as bad as him.
‘It’s me,’ she declared defiantly. ‘I’m the reason for the long faces, not me mam, so leave off her.’
John gawped at her in surprise, loosening his grip on Mary. She pulled her arm away, nursing the bruises. Kate ignored her mother’s look of alarm.
‘I’ve got myself into trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
‘I - I cannot gan back to Ravensworth. Lost me job.’
‘What you mean, lost your job?’
Kate swallowed hard. ‘I met this man - this gentleman -thought he was ganin’ to marry me. He’s not.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘But I’m carrying his bairn.’
For a moment it was so quiet that the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece sounded as loud as the thumping in her chest. Someone’s laughter in the lane came sharp and clear.
Then John barked, ‘A bairn?’
Kate nodded.
He staggered to his feet, roaring, ‘You’ve been whoring with a man? Who is he? I’ll beat the living daylights out o’ him! Out of you! Come here, you little bitch!’
Pushing the table aside and thrusting Mary out of the way, he grabbed at Kate. She dodged and he missed.
‘Leave her, John,’ Rose ordered to no avail.
Kate could see the blind fury i
n his bloodshot eyes. He lunged again. She was pushed up against the settle and could not escape. He seized a handful of her hair and pulled hard. Kate screamed. He yanked her out of the corner by her hair.
‘You slut!’ he thundered. ‘Filthy little slut. Who is he?’
‘A gentleman,’ Kate cried, ‘a businessman at the castle.’
‘Gentleman!’ He dragged her across the room. ‘What sort of fool do you take me for?’
‘He was, Father,’ Mary cut in. ‘Related to the Liddells.’
But this seemed to inflame him further. ‘You stupid bitch! Taken in by fancy talk, were you? Think yourself Lady Muck? Or do you open your legs for any bugger?’
He punched her breast. Kate yelled at the shooting pain.
‘John, stop it!’
‘I only went with him the once, I promise,’ she sobbed.
He laughed savagely. ‘Liar! You’re as bad as the rest of them. Pretend you’re like the Virgin Mary - but you’re all a pack of whores!’
He flung her to the floor. ‘I’ll teach you to shame me and the name of McMullen,’ he panted, and began to unbuckle his thick leather belt.
Kate threw her arms over her head to protect herself from the beating she knew was to come. Rose and Sarah were screaming at him now to stop.
‘You’ll harm the bairn,’ Rose wailed, ‘think of the bairn.’
‘The bastard in her belly!’ John shouted. ‘I’ll whip it out of her.’
He was drawing the worn leather strap from his trousers as he ranted, filling the stifling air with obscenities and speaking aloud foul thoughts. Wrapping it once round his large fist, he raised the belt above his head, the heavy buckle dangling.
‘You’ll never go with another man as long as I live!’ he cried.
At the point of whipping the weapon over his head, Jack leapt forward and caught the buckle.
‘Don’t touch her!’ he growled. They struggled over the belt.
‘Leave off,’ John roared, kicking his son on the shins. ‘It’s nowt to do with you, you little runt.’
Jack winced at the pain but held on. Kate looked up to see them tussling and punching each other over the belt. John thrashed about in fury, while Jack stood his ground, clinging on and jabbing back.
Swiftly, Rose came round and pulled Kate up.
‘Get out of here quick,’ she ordered.
Kate almost vomited from the pain in her chest and head. It felt as if half her hair had been ripped out. She hesitated.
‘I cannot leave the lad,’ she sobbed.
Rose shoved her towards the door. ‘Save yourself and the bairn.’
‘Where, Mam?’
‘Anywhere, just gan!’
Sarah grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the brawling men. ‘I’ll gan with you. Come on, Kate!’
She threw one last glance at Jack. His face was red with exertion, blood gushing from his mouth where his lip was split. But he was getting the better of his father. John was panting and swearing, his strength waning. The next moment Sarah was bundling Kate through the door into the dank lane. The sharp air stung her face and clamped on her chest so that she struggled for breath.
Sarah would not let her rest. She put a strong arm about her and hurried her down the street.
‘Good on the lad,’ Sarah said with savage triumph, ‘standing up to the old devil at last.’
‘Aye,’ Kate agreed, feeling both awe and relief at what Jack had done. She would be in his debt for this for a long time.
‘Wish he’d been old enough to stand up for me,’ Sarah added. ‘I’ve still got the scars on me back from that beatin’.’
‘Aye,’ Kate agreed, remembering how Jack had cowered and dirtied himself in fear at their father’s violence. ‘That lad’s seen too much already.’
As Sarah helped her hobble away, Kate felt a fresh wave of guilt at the trouble she was bringing on her family.
Chapter 27
At the moment of flight, the sisters had no thought of where they were going, just the urgency to be gone. They took shelter from the misty drizzle under the vast echoing arches of the dock staithes. But it chilled them to the bone to stand under the slimy dripping walls. Light was fading from the short day and it was eerily dark in the tunnel.
Kate shook uncontrollably. ‘What do you think’s happening to Jack? I’m that scared. I should’ve stayed to help him.’
‘The best help you can be is to stay out of Father’s way,’ Sarah declared, ‘if you want to live till the morra.’
‘But what about Mam and Mary?’
‘They can take care of themselves. Haway, we’ll catch our death stopping out here. Let’s gan to Aunt Maggie’s. She’ll take us in.’
Kate grabbed her arm. ‘But what’ll we tell her?’
Sarah sighed. ‘She’s ganin’ to hear soon enough; you cannot keep it from family.’ She saw Kate’s harrowed look. ‘We’ll just say there’s been fightin’. She’s taken us in before, remember; she knows what Father’s like.’
Kate did remember. As young girls, when Rose had been widowed, they had lived with Maggie and Danny at their smallholding up Simonside. And later, when their aunt and uncle had moved down to East Jarrow, they had taken shelter with their long-suffering aunt after John’s attack on Sarah. Kate nodded in agreement and they hurried out of the tunnel.
They had to pass the end of Leam Lane again, crossing over to the far side and hurrying past the blacksmith’s, heads down. Kate did not dare look across the street to the cluster of houses sandwiched between two shops and the notorious Twenty-Seven. The lane was deserted and no sounds came from Number Five, but they did not stop in their hurry up the bank towards Jarrow.
The road was potholed and muddy, and a raw wind hit them as they climbed above the river. Below lay the Slake, a stinking inlet of mud now the tide was going out. Rose had never let them play there as children, fearful of the ghost of the striking miner who had been hanged and gibbeted there long ago.
The isolated grid of streets known as the New Buildings hove into sight over the brow of the hill. Once, during a brief prosperous spell, they had lived there among this half-finished block of houses begun by a well-intentioned employer of a chemical works. They were solidly built workers’ houses, upwind of the sulphurous factory and surrounded by open wasteland.
Their young cousin Margaret came to the door. ‘It’s our Kate!’ she cried to her mother in delight. ‘And Sarah.’
Aunt Maggie appeared behind her and squinted short-sightedly. ‘Well, let them in, lass. This is a grand surprise. Our Mary not with you?’
‘No, there’s bother at home.’ Sarah was blunt. ‘Mam told us to make ourselves scarce.’
Maggie clucked in sympathy and bustled them into her cosy parlour. ‘Your uncle’s having a nap. Come by the fire and tell me how you’re getting on.’
She poured them hot cups of stewed tea from the pot on the range and Sarah talked about Hebburn. Kate wondered if she was still seeing her young miner from Birtley but did not have the heart to ask. It might lead to awkward questions about courting. Oh, Alexander! If only he could see the trouble he had caused. Why had he not come back for her?
‘And you, Kate? How’s our Lizzie and the lads?’
‘Haven’t seen them for a bit,’ Kate mumbled.
‘Well, I’ll send you back with a pair of Danny’s breeks I’ve cut down for Alfred.’
‘I’m not ganin’ back,’ she burst out, then, covering her face, succumbed to tears.
Sarah nodded at Margaret and Maggie swiftly sent the girl outside to play under the lamppost with her younger sister. In a hushed voice, Sarah explained Kate’s predicament.
‘Saint Teresa! This is terrible,’ Maggie cried. ‘My lasses mustn’t hear of such carry-on. Our Rose must be beside herself
. She had such high hopes for you, Kate. Oh, Mary Mother, what’ll the priest say?’
‘Never mind the priest,’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘It’s Father who’s ganin’ to give her a skelpin’!’
Maggie crossed herself and called to Our Lady again. ‘He’ll not set foot in this house,’ she promised stoutly. ‘You can sleep here the night. My Danny’s a match for old John any day.’
Soon after, Sarah left for Hebbum. The sisters gripped hands in parting.
‘Send word if you need me,’ Sarah urged. Kate nodded, trying to be brave, feeling bereft at her going.
Maggie told Danny that Kate had argued with her step-father and nothing more was said that night. She spent sleepless hours curled up with her cousin Margaret in a narrow bed, fretting about her family. With any luck, John would be down to the docks for work in the morning and she could sneak home. But what then?
Kate got up at dawn, stoked up the fire and made tea. Danny went off to the steel works after a breakfast of porridge, and the street came alive with the sounds of men going to work and children gathering to play. In the distance, the clang and din of the dockside told of the brief holiday over.
‘I’ll walk down with you,’ Maggie offered, asking a neighbour to keep an eye on her daughters.
As they descended the long downhill stretch into Tyne Dock, Kate found her steps dragging. Ahead she could see the curve of Leam Lane. People were going in and out of Lawson’s corner shop and the pounding of metal could be heard from the blacksmith’s opposite. A horse tram splashed mud at them as it passed.
Suddenly Kate seized her aunt’s arm in alarm.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll stay with you,’ Maggie reassured.
‘No,’ Kate gasped, ‘it’s not that.’ She felt the spasm again. ‘Some’at’s wrong with me.’ She clutched her belly in fear.
‘What’s it feel like?’
‘Like little hammers.’
A strange look came over her aunt’s face. ‘How far gone are you?’ she whispered.
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 64