‘Four months,’ Kate flushed.
Maggie gave a pitying look. ‘It’s the bairn, hinny. He’s started kickin’.’
Kate gaped at her in shock. ‘The bairn?’
Maggie nodded. Kate put a tentative hand where the gentle drumming had been. All at once she was overwhelmed with a confusion of dread and wonder. It was real. She was carrying Alexander’s child. Through all the sickness, tiredness and anxiety, she had never thought of the weight inside her as anything but a curse and a source of shame. But now she felt the stirrings of another human being, a small life growing within her, her own child.
Her eyes stung with tears. Standing there in the drab lane by the blacksmith’s with the scorched smell of hot metal on hoofs filling the raw air, she knew she could not give up her baby, whatever her stepfather might say. Her fight would not just be for herself, but for her unborn son or daughter. Illegitimate or not, it was hers.
Linking arms with her aunt, she walked the last few yards with a new determination. She would not go running away to save her own skin again.
They found the house deserted, but for Rose struggling in from the back lane with a full pail of water.
‘Let me, Mam.’ Kate was quick to relieve her.
‘Mary left early,’ Rose told them. ‘Father and Jack are down the dock.’
‘How’s Jack?’
‘Got an eye like a football, but he wouldn’t stay off. John’s got bruises to show for it an’ all,’ she added with a glint of satisfaction. ‘You’d best stay up at Maggie’s for a day or two.’
‘I’m stopping here with you.’ Kate was defiant. ‘I’ll not have others doing me fightin’ for me.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ Rose snapped.
‘This is me home,’ Kate said stubbornly.
‘She’s felt the bairn moving,’ Maggie interjected. ‘You cannot let John throw her out - it’d be a sin.’
‘She’s the one done the sinning!’ Rose cried, jabbing a finger at her daughter. She felt so angry at Kate for what she had done. Yet as she glared into her soft pale face and large sorrowful eyes, she felt a stab of protectiveness. Had she not encouraged her daughter to be courted by this gentleman? Instead of warning her to be cautious, she had fed Kate’s vanity about their connection with the Liddells and allowed her to get above herself. She was as much to blame, Rose admitted bitterly.
All at once the fight went out of her and Rose sank on to a chair. Up till now, she had thought only of the disgrace to herself and John. Now, she feared for her daughter. She knew how harshly Kate would be judged by the priests, how cruel would be the wagging tongues of neighbours. The censure would be universal and relentless.
‘Oh, lass, what’s to become of you?’
They looked at each other in despair, not knowing the answer. Kate dashed forward and sank to her mother’s feet, throwing her arms about her waist and burying her face in her lap.
‘I’m sorry, Mam. I’ll do anything you ask - just let me stay.’
In reply, Rose placed a callused hand on her daughter’s silky hair and stroked it in reassurance.
It was dark when the men came banging in the door. Jack started to see Kate standing by the range, stirring a pot of broth. Even in the dim light she could see his left eye was half closed with bruising and his bottom lip badly swollen. He said nothing but gave a half-smile of encouragement. Behind came her stepfather. Her stomach jolted at the look of loathing he gave her.
‘What’s the harlot doing here?’ John snarled at Rose.
‘It’s her home, John,’ Rose said evenly. ‘Get the broth served, lass.’
Jack went straight to the scullery to wash, but John stood glaring at Kate.
‘This isn’t your home,’ he spat. ‘You belong in the pigsty with that fancy man with the fancy name, Pringle-Davies.’
Kate flinched to hear his name spoken. How much had Mary told them about Alexander?
‘You know she can’t gan to him,’ Rose said quietly. ‘Now come and eat.’
‘Well, I’ll not have her in my house.’ John was adamant. He strode towards Kate. ‘You’ve brought shame on it. You’re a bloody disgrace. Go on, get out!’
‘Please, Father, let me stay,’ Kate said, holding her ground. ‘I’ve nowhere else to gan.’
‘Should’ve thought of that before you opened your legs for your fancy man,’ he said savagely, thrusting his face into hers.
Kate felt nauseous at his foul breath. ‘Just till the bairn’s born,’ she whispered.
‘And what do we tell the neighbours when your belly gets big with that man’s bastard?’ he taunted. ‘What do we tell the priest?’
‘When have you ever cared what the neighbours or the priest think of us?’ Rose retorted.
‘Shut your gob, woman.’ He turned on her.
Rose put her hands on her hips. ‘No I won’t. She’s already feeling the bairn, John. I’ll not have her put out on the street like a dog.’
‘That’s what the slut deserves!’
‘No it’s not. She was daft enough to be taken in by some fancy-talking man - but she’s not the first and she’ll not be the last. If you hoy her out she’ll have nowhere to gan but the workhouse. I can’t believe you would ever want that to happen to any of yours, John McMullen. Don’t you remember that terrible place?’ she challenged.
‘Aye, of course I do,’ he said in agitation. ‘Don’t you lecture me about it - I was the one went breaking rocks for you and your pack of brats!’
‘Then you know what they do to lasses like Kate.’ Rose advanced on him. ‘They hoy them in with the loonies and thems with filthy diseases. And they’ll tak the bairn off her and she’ll never see it again and they’ll keep her locked up like a criminal for years. Is that what you want? ‘Cos the John McMullen I married never would have!’
John looked stunned. ‘Maybes I don’t!’ he cried. Turning from them, he smashed his fist into the wall, sending a shower of plaster to the floor.
Rose motioned for Kate to keep quiet. Jack came quietly out of the scullery, poised in the doorway ready to defend his sister again.
John spun round and stared at them all. ‘And what are we to do with her, eh? Come on, Missus Big Gob, the one with all the answers.’
‘Let her stay here and have the baby,’ Rose reasoned. ‘When it’s born, the lass can gan back to work to pay for its keep.’
Kate felt a wave of gratitude. Not only was her mother standing by her, she was prepared to keep the child too.
‘You mean have it livin’ here? Someone else’s bastard?’ John railed.
‘I’ve brought up plenty bairns,’ Rose said with resignation. ‘What’s the harm in one more?’
‘Mam!’ Kate cried in relief and moved towards her. ‘Thank you.’
But Rose held herself away. ‘There’s one condition,’ she said, her look suddenly severe.
‘Aye, anything,’ Kate agreed.
‘We bring the bairn up as our own - me and John.’
Kate was nonplussed. ‘As yours? But - but what about me?’ she gasped.
‘You gan back to work like it didn’t happen. As far as the neighbours are concerned, the bairn is ours. That way we can all hold our heads up round these streets.’
‘And me baby?’ Kate whispered, a strange pain sweeping through her.
‘She’s not to know. You’ll be her big sister, that’s all. We’ll bring her up strict like I should’ve done with you - knowing what’s right and wrong. You won’t have to bother yourself with being a mam. You’ll work hard and keep your nose clean.’
‘Aye,’ John joined in, warming to the idea of being a father again, ‘we’ll not spare the rod with this one. You’ll have nowt to do with it - no spoiling like you got. And if I catch you looking at another man again,’ he thr
eatened, ‘I’ll kill ye.’
Kate swallowed the tearful angry words she wanted to shout. She had no intention of looking at any other man but Alexander. He was the only man she could love - still loved! And they would not stop her loving his child. She looked to her mother for a softening of her stepfather’s words, but Rose’s face was closed.
‘If you do anything more to shame us, you’re out. I’ll not stand up for you a second time,’ Rose warned. Her words turned Kate’s insides to ice.
Chapter 28
As the dreary weeks of January and February dragged on, Kate existed in a strange limbo. To the prying world beyond the doorstep, she was home to help Rose, who was having a bad spell with her legs and chest. To her family she was an embarrassment, the source of which was never referred to. Her mother was distant, Jack was wary. As her belly grew, he would sneak her bashful sidelong glances, half fascinated, half appalled. Any lingering playfulness between them had vanished in the shock of her pregnancy and its aftermath. Where once he had looked up to Kate and followed her around like a loyal puppy, she now turned to him for protection.
At fifteen he was tall and brawny, already hardened by a year grafting on the dockside, and he had shown he could stand up to his father’s bullying. He had not done so since, but this did not stop John punching him and ridiculing him for defending his ‘fallen’ sister. Jack would stand his ground and fend off John’s fists, which only infuriated his father more.
But most of John’s drunken goading was aimed at Kate. After a couple of hours in the pub, he would stagger in, filthy and sodden from labouring waist-deep in river water unloading iron ore, and begin his taunting.
‘Fetch me some’at to eat, slut. Tak off me wet boots and troosers - should be used to that,’ he would laugh crudely. ‘Did that for yer gentleman, did you?’ When she ignored him, he would jab her belly and curse her for her shamelessness.
The foul-mouthed ridicule and threats to tell Father O’Neill, the local firebrand priest, were unremitting. Occasionally, Jack, fuelled with swigs from his father’s jug of whisky, would spark back.
‘Father O’Neill wouldn’t know you if he passed you in the street,’ he muttered on one occasion.
‘What’s that?’ John demanded, not hearing the jibe.
‘Nowt.’
‘I’ll give you nowt!’ John bawled, slapping him round the head, and the fighting would start again.
Later Rose would scold Kate for these attacks. ‘Look at the trouble you cause our Jack.’ But Kate could do nothing to stop their sparring, or John’s relentless criticism.
Ahead stretched a bleak future for Kate at Leam Lane, forever at the beck and call of her ageing parents, forever in their debt. In the quiet of the night, miserable and angry, trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden settle that had become her bed, she gave in to tears.
At twenty-three, her life was in ruins. Nothing could save her now, except Alexander. Alternately, she agonised about what might have happened to him and railed at his abandonment of her. What if something terrible had happened? He had been taken ill again, had bled to death? He had gone down at sea in a storm? But there had been no rumours of a tragedy circulating at the inn. Never in all these months had she had one word from him.
It pained her to remember, but the only reason he had returned to see her at the end of the summer was to say goodbye and tell her of his impending marriage. Passion had overcome his better judgement for a brief moment, nothing more. His promises were empty, his words as profligate and reckless as his actions. She would never see him again.
She shrank back from the flickering firelight and covered her womb with anxious hands. ‘You’ll burn in the flames of hell for what you’ve done!’ John had preached.
Stifling her sobs so no one in the next room would hear, she hissed to her unborn child, ‘Hell can’t be any worse than this!’
Chapter 29
The forests around Ravensworth were bursting with the vibrant green of late spring, when Alexander took the train north to Newcastle. He had not travelled through these parts since returning hurriedly in November. So much had happened these past months; it seemed another life he had led here. News had reached him in Cologne that his father was dangerously ill and it had taken an anxious week to get home and discover Jeremiah had almost died from septicaemia.
He had stayed with his father all through December and Polly had come to keep him company and help nurse her future father-in-law, despite being in mourning for her own father. De Winton had died in the October.
‘I know the anguish you’re feeling,’ Polly had said sadly, and Alexander had felt guilty for not returning sooner, even though news of the squire’s death had reached him only after the funeral.
All his carefully rehearsed speeches breaking off their engagement dried on his lips in the face of her kindness and grief. They played endless games of chess and she talked with tearful fondness of her father and bashfully of how he had looked forward to seeing them married. She was now a wealthy heiress and Alexander could not pretend the thought of being independent from his father did not excite him. Yet for all this, he did not love Polly.
While his father lay weak and feverish, darker thoughts occupied Alexander’s mind. If Jeremiah died now, he would be free to marry whom he wished and have the financial independence to do so. He hated himself for wishing his father dead, but could not banish the thought. It meant he and Kate could be together.
Yet why had Kate never answered any of his letters? He had left a poste restante address in Germany and that of Mrs Timmins’s lodging house in Newcastle. Just a brief word to tell him she still loved him would have helped to give him the courage to defy his father. But nothing awaited him on his return.
Still, he promised himself he would go to Ravensworth as soon as his father was out of danger and discover how Kate really felt. Perhaps the silence meant she had doubts about his foolhardy plan for them to run away together. Did she not believe him? Worse still, had she found another suitor - that hard-working gardener’s son who could not hide his love for her? Someone more suited to her station, who could provide for her without causing a scandal and upsetting her family?
Such thoughts had plagued him while he waited to see if his father recovered. And all the time Polly had been a constant and thoughtful visitor, and he had been riddled with guilt at the humiliation he would bring her by breaking off their betrothal. Was he mad even to contemplate such a headstrong course of action? Yes, he admitted, mad with an obsessive passion for Kate.
His father began to recover before Christmas and they spent the festival quietly together. Jeremiah had been delighted at Polly’s attentiveness.
‘Nothing will bring me greater pleasure than to see you two married this coming year,’ he told her as she departed home to her mother on Christmas Eve. ‘I thank God I have been spared to see such happiness.’
He pressed Alexander to set the date as soon as possible and did not take kindly to his prevarication.
‘There’s no hurry.’ He tried to laugh it off.
‘There’s every reason to hurry,’ Jeremiah said querulously. ‘I’m not long for this world - and I will see you married, Alexander.’
‘But Polly is still in mourning, Papa. We cannot in all decency marry before the summer now.’
‘May at the latest,’ Jeremiah ordered. ‘You’ve had your fun, now you will face up to your responsibilities.’ Then his father had stunned him with a seemingly casual remark. ‘By the way, I heard that the chambermaid you were seeing at Ravensworth has left.’
Alexander spun round. ‘Left? How could you possibly know?’
His father gave him a satisfied look. ‘I make it my business to know. You’ll not find her there, so don’t bother looking. Taylor says she’s gone home to whatever slum it is she came from.’
Alexander w
ent crimson. ‘She’s no slum girl! Her parents were friends of Uncle Edward’s.’
‘Well, be that as it may, she’s returned to her own kind. And from what I gather, she should be married by now.’
The words came like a blow to the head. Married! His worst fears were confirmed. He had left it too long. Why should she wait for him all this time, when he had made promises to her before that he had not kept? He looked at his father in fury. No doubt he would say anything to get him married off to the wealthy Polly.
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Don’t be such a fool, boy. Do you think I would let you throw away your future for the likes of a serving maid? She has shown more sense than you - gone back where she belongs. Now you can put her from your mind once and for all.’
His father’s face was pale and drawn, but his words were iron hard. ‘Don’t defy me on this, Alexander. If you don’t marry Polly, I’ll cut you off without a penny. I’ve changed the terms of my will. If I die before you marry, my business and wealth will pass to my second cousin in Durham. I will not see you make a fool of either of us.’
Alexander was dumbstruck. To think his father would go to such lengths to keep him apart from Kate. It would not surprise him to learn Jeremiah had paid the landlord to get rid of her. He was furious that his father should treat him with such distrust, and slammed out of the room. Later, a morose calm settled over him and he admitted that the old man was right to be suspicious. For had he not been harbouring plans to defy his father and elope with Kate? He had not really thought beyond the thrill of escape, but assumed his father would come round to the idea in time - once he had got to know how genteel Kate was.
But he was in no doubt now that his father would carry out his threat. If he did not marry Polly, Alexander would be condemned to an uncertain, itinerant life living on his wits and his mediocre painting. At least with Polly he would have comfort and ease and a secure life of pleasure. Was he not a fool to throw it back in his father’s face, all for the sake of a simple maid? Besides, his love had not been returned. Kate had gone without a word, disappeared back to Jarrow to marry someone else, if his father was to be believed.
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 65