‘What’s wrong?’ she asked in concern. Tears welled up in her mother’s eyes. ‘Do you have a stitch? Do you want to sit down?’
Kate shook her head but could not speak.
‘I can walk the rest on me own,’ Catherine assured her.
‘N-no,’ Kate gulped. ‘It was just the talk of peaches.’ She wiped her eyes fiercely with her sleeve.
‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine said in confusion. ‘I didn’t mean to gan on about them. I’ll bring you some back if I can.’
Kate gave a sad smile. ‘It’s not that, hinny. You just reminded me of some’at.’
‘What?’
‘I used to work in a big house once, with great big greenhouses. The smell of the peaches . . .’
Catherine held her breath. ‘You mean Ravensworth?’
Kate gave her a sharp look. ‘Who told you that?’
Catherine shrugged. ‘Maybes it was Grandma.’
Kate nodded. ‘Aye, I lived with your Great-Aunt Lizzie at Ravensworth when I was about your age - helped her out when she broke her leg. Her husband, Peter, was one of the gardeners - canny couple. I got a job at the castle for a bit as a kitchen maid.’
Catherine marvelled to think her mother had worked in such a place. Aunt Mary had mentioned the coaching inn, but not the castle. Perhaps she had been jealous of Kate’s job there. What stories her mother could tell about the gentry and their ways, if only she could get Kate to talk about it.
‘What was it like,’ Catherine asked breathlessly, ‘working for the Liddells?’
Kate’s look was instantly guarded. ‘What do you know about the Liddells? Has our Mary been letting her mouth go?’
Catherine did not answer. Kate abruptly picked up the bag that Catherine had set down on the pavement and began to march down the bank. Catherine sighed in frustration. Her mother would never talk to her about her past, let alone about Alexander Pringle-Davies. All Catherine knew was that fresh peaches reminded Kate of a past she was too ashamed or frightened to remember.
As the tram for Cleadon approached, Kate touched her daughter’s cheek with a roughened hand.
‘Take care of yourself, lass.’
‘I’ll be back before you know it.’ Catherine tried to make light of their parting. ‘I get every Saturday afternoon off when Mrs Halliday gans over Sunderland way to visit her sister.’
‘That’s grand,’ Kate smiled.
For a moment, Catherine saw a flash of beauty in her mother’s face. She leant forward and gave Kate a peck on the cheek. The next moment Kate was pushing her on to the tram with her bag and waving her away. By the time she’d found a seat and looked back, her mother was gone.
Catherine felt a momentary pang of loss. But the thought of the grand house that was soon to be her home rekindled her excitement. This was the start to a new life away from the shame and poverty that dogged her in East Jarrow, and she could not wait to get on with it.
Chapter 7
‘And the Blakes are coming for afternoon tea,’ Mrs Halliday called at Catherine’s retreating back. ‘They like egg and cress sandwiches and lemon sponge cake - but not too much lemon - you can be a bit heavy-handed at times, Louisa.’
Catherine gripped the door handle, swallowing a retort.
‘And you can serve it in the summerhouse. Unless it clouds over, then we’ll have it in the dining room - with the French windows open to the garden. Unless it’s too breezy, then you can shut them. Or maybe we should just take tea in here? What do you think, Louisa?’
That you’re a fussy, ridiculous old wife, who should get off your backside and do something useful for once! Catherine itched to say it out loud to her fidgeting, querulous employer, sitting next to the fire fanning herself in the stifling room. Only Mrs Halliday could insist on a fire in the middle of June, unable to make up her mind if it was going to stay fine or start to rain.
Catherine turned to face her. ‘I’ll serve tea in the dining room with the doors half open. Is that all, ma’am?’
‘Yes, yes, I think so, for the moment,’ Mrs Halliday panted. ‘And I hope you’re not going to be sharp with my visitors, Louisa. You’re becoming more brazen by the day.’
Catherine left the room, clenching her fists to stop herself screaming. She stomped into the kitchen where old Sam, the gardener, was slurping tea.
‘I’ll give her brazen! Some of us have been up since five this morning laying fires and heating water - though we’re in the middle of a hot spell. And now she’s got company for tea and expects me to go tappy-lappying all over the garden and house with tea trays, when I’ve got all the polishing to do and the beds to make up for her snobby sister and brother-in-law coming tomorra.’
‘Aye, well,’ Sam ruminated, ‘that’s what you’re paid for, Louisa.’
‘Not nearly enough,’ Catherine railed. ‘And don’t you gan calling me Louisa, do you hear? I’m Kitty, except to that daft Mrs Halliday and her friends.’ Catherine imitated her employer’s breathless voice. ‘”Oh, no, no, no! We can’t have a lady’s maid called Kitty, it’s too common, don’t you think? You shall be called Janet - no, Rachel. Or maybe Sarah. Something plain but dignified. Louisa. That’s it, Louisa.”’
Sam chuckled at the mimicry. ‘You should be on the stage, lass.’
‘I should be anywhere but here,’ Catherine sighed. ‘Lady’s companion, my foot. I’ve never worked so hard in me life. Me mam was right; I’m just a skivvy with a posh name. And the way they look at me, the missus and her snooty friends, as if they’re doing me a big favour letting me stand around serving them. I can’t believe I’ve stuck it for a whole year.’
‘Worse things happen at sea,’ Sam said amiably.
A bell jangled on the wall above them. Catherine gritted her teeth.
‘She’ll have changed her mind again. It’ll be cucumber sandwiches and currant loaf, served on the lawn and me dancing the tango with a rose between me teeth.’
Sam got up chuckling, while Catherine braced herself to return to the drawing room and the vacillating Mrs Halliday.
Later, as she sweated in the hot kitchen over a rhubarb tart, she wondered for the umpteenth time why she stayed. The dream of being a lady’s companion and a life of gentility in the countryside had evaporated after a few weeks. The day she was rechristened Louisa, Catherine knew her mother had been right and that she was to be a maid of all work in all but name. She had been tricked. Apart from Sam’s wife, who came in to help with the laundry, there was no domestic help at Oakside Manor but her.
‘But you’re so capable,’ Mrs Halliday had cried in astonishment when Catherine had suggested another pair of hands in the kitchen. ‘I wouldn’t want anyone else. Besides, there’s only me to look after. It’s not very hard work for a young girl like you.’
Catherine had to admit that the reason she had stayed was stubbornness and not wanting to admit to Kate that she had been right all along. She put up with her employer’s carping and indecision, only standing up to her about her days off. Mrs Halliday tried to wheedle out of the Saturday afternoon arrangement whenever she wasn’t visiting her sister, but Catherine had been quietly stubborn and made a point of leaving Cleadon every Saturday afternoon so that she could not be at the woman’s constant beck and call.
Her free hours slipped by too quickly, and there was time for little else than a couple of hours at home and attending benediction before returning to Oakside Manor. The one source of joy in her week was hearing the deep bass voice of the mysterious man who sat behind her in church. When he was there her spirits were lifted; when he was not, Catherine was gripped with disappointment. She had heard the priest call him Mr Rolland, but she could discover nothing more about him.
If Davie was at home, Catherine would brace herself to find her family already drinking from the ‘grey hen’ in the middle of the aft
ernoon, the kitchen door thrown open to catch the river breeze. After handing over most of her wages to Kate, she would retreat up the street to Aunt Mary’s orderly house.
‘Why don’t you call on Lily?’ Kate had suggested recently. ‘All you get from our Mary is her complaining. You need a bit of fun on your day off - a bit company your own age.’
‘Lily’s courtin’,’ Catherine sighed.
‘Well, what about Amelia?’ Kate persisted.
Catherine shrugged. She had not dared go back to the youth club in over a year, afraid of being cold-shouldered by her former friends. She had lost touch with them all.
Thinking about it now, as she shoved the rhubarb tart into the scorching oven, she was overwhelmed by loneliness. She was nearly nineteen, but her life was one of drudgery and isolation. She suddenly longed for the quick laughter and chatter of Lily, Tommy and the others.
The next Saturday, she plucked up the courage to seek out her old friend. Mrs Hearn answered her knocking.
‘No, pet, our Lily’s gone on the outing to Hexham - with the youth club. Did you not hear about it?’
Catherine swallowed. ‘I’ve been that busy with work.’
Lily’s mother nodded. ‘Eeh, it’s grand to see you. I’ve missed you comin’ round, Kitty. Hearing you lasses chattering and carrying on together.’
Suddenly Catherine’s eyes flooded with tears. ‘I miss it an’ all.’
A moment later she was openly crying on the Hearns’ doorstep. Quickly, Mrs Hearn had an arm about her and was bustling her into the kitchen. She produced a clean starched handkerchief, a cup of tea and a large wedge of currant loaf still warm from the oven. By the time Catherine had finished it, she felt ten times better.
‘If you’re that unhappy up Cleadon way,’ said Lily’s mother, ‘why don’t you come back home, find some’at round here?’
‘I don’t want to gan back to me family,’ Catherine confessed. ‘I don’t get on with them.’
Mrs Hearn sat and pondered this. Her face suddenly brightened. ‘Our Lily says they’re needin’ lasses at the laundry.’
Catherine tried to hide her lack of enthusiasm. Harton workhouse still invoked terror. It was never to be mentioned at home for fear of inciting her grandda’s temper. It conjured up a terrible time in Kate’s childhood when she had been sent out to beg round the streets and John had been reduced to hard labour at Harton in order to eat.
‘You could live in,’ Mrs Hearn suggested. ‘Why don’t you ask Father O’Neill to put in a word for you? A little word from the priest dropped in the right ear works wonders. And you and our Lily could be together again. She’d be that pleased.’
Catherine looked up in surprise. ‘Would she?’
‘Why, of course,’ Mrs Hearn smiled. ‘Whatever it was you two fell out about, wasn’t worth the bother. I know Lily misses you - she’s said as much.’
Catherine was not sure if the woman was just being kind, but the words gave her courage. She left the Hearns’ feeling a new surge of optimism. Even a job at the workhouse laundry would be better than her present situation - if Lily would be her friend again.
She plucked up courage to speak to Father O’Neill after the Saturday evening service. He glowered at her from under wiry grey eyebrows as she asked for his help, and she felt her familiar fear of him. How many times as a child had she woken screaming from a nightmare in which a black-robed priest loomed out of the dark of the confessional box from which she could never escape? In her childish mind she had always linked the nightmare with the censorious Father O’Neill.
Catherine braced herself for rejection, but he finally nodded.
‘I know the matron; I’ll go and speak to her.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ Catherine said quickly, and escaped.
The following week, there was a letter waiting for her at home.
‘Open it then,’ Kate said excitedly. ‘What does it say?’
Catherine glanced at old John, snoozing in his chair.
‘I’ve got an interview,’ Catherine whispered, ‘up at Harton.’
Kate gasped. ‘Not the workhouse?’
‘Aye, in the laundry,’ Catherine said defiantly.
Kate snorted in disbelief. ‘You’d not last five minutes in a laundry. Got to be strong as an ox - I should know, I’ve done it.’
‘Done what?’ John asked, rousing from sleep.
‘Nowt,’ Kate said nervously.
Catherine faced him boldly. ‘I’ve got an interview up at Harton laundry.’
John’s craggy face went puce. ‘Harton? You’re not ganin’ to work there!’
‘Why not?’
‘ ‘Cos I say so, you cheeky bitch!’
‘The pay’s better than what I get from Mrs High-and-Mighty-Halliday - I know that from what Lily’s said.’
‘And she’ll be able to come home more often,’ Kate tried to placate him. ‘You miss her being so far away, don’t you?’
‘I didn’t ask for your opinion.’ John kicked the fender in a temper. He rose and glared at Catherine. ‘Me and your grandmother saved you from that hellhole, you ungrateful lass. It killed your grandma having to bring you up - but we did it, to save your slut of a mother and you from the workhouse. And now you say you’re ganin’ to work there! It’s a disgrace on the name of McMullen to have one of mine gan in such a place!’
‘It’s honest graft, Grandda,’ Catherine stood her ground, ‘and I’ll be gettin’ paid, not ganin’ cap in hand for relief work—’
Kate gasped and Catherine realised too late what she had said. In an instant, John had seized the steel poker and was brandishing it at her.
‘You dare say that to me face,’ he roared. ‘I only went there so as I could feed your grandma and her brats. McMullens don’t gan cap in hand to anyone!’
As he raised the poker, Kate barged between them and pushed Catherine towards the door.
‘Go, Kitty!’ she ordered, shoving her stubborn daughter out of the room.
‘I’ll kill her!’ John bawled as Catherine escaped into the street. But Kate barred the doorway with her bulk.
‘See what you’ve done with your big mouth?’ she barked. ‘Make yoursel’ scarce and don’t come back in a hurry!’
Catherine wandered the streets of South Shields until the pounding in her heart eased. She was shaken by John’s outburst, but all the more determined to win the job. His opposition was based on prejudice and fear. Kate’s derision that she was not strong enough for such work rankled too.
Yet, when the time came, Catherine had to screw up all her courage to walk through the forbidding gates of the soot-blackened brick fortress. This was the paupers’ prison, the place of no hope for the destitute and outcast. The long corridors were stark and echoing, the windows too high to afford a view. In the distance, she heard doors clang and the occasional shout.
Matron Hatch walked her through the large, noisy laundry. It clanked and hissed with huge rollers and presses, the air suffocatingly hot and dusty. Rows of young women (the paid laundry workers in pale blue overalls and the inmates in brown), stood sweating over the machinery. Catherine’s heart sank. She looked about nervously for Lily but could not see her.
‘Father O’Neill thinks you are a bright girl and a good worker,’ Matron Hatch said, as they reached her office. Her features were sharp, her brow furrowed under a starched white cap, her uniform immaculate.
Catherine nodded, hiding her surprise.
‘Can you add up?’
‘Aye, ma’am, I can.’
‘Do you have a school certificate?’
Catherine flushed. ‘No, but I’ve run me own business.’
‘Is your writing neat? Write something here for me. Then add up these figures.’
Catherine did so, puzzled as to why pres
sing sheets all day would require such skills.
Matron Hatch scrutinised her work, sucked in thin lips and announced, ‘Good enough, I suppose. I’m going to try you out as a checker, but only because Father O’Neill says you’re up to it. So don’t let the pair of us down, do you hear?’
‘I’ll do me very best, ma’am,’ Catherine promised, wondering what a checker did.
‘Call me Matron from now on. Come and I’ll show you where you’ll work.’
She followed her back into the steamy laundry and was shown a cubicle in the corner.
‘It’s your job to count all the laundry,’ she shouted over the din, ‘and keep an eye on the inmates.’ She nodded towards the girls in brown.
Catherine’s heart gave a jolt to see these workhouse women. They were the incarcerated, women less fortunate than Kate, doing the most menial tasks.
Matron continued, ‘You’ll live in, with a full day off a fortnight. Every other weekend you have to help out on the vagrants’ ward. Is that agreed?’
Catherine gulped and nodded.
‘As you are one of the officers, you must live in. Will that be a problem with your father or mother?’
Catherine looked alarmed. ‘N-no,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m living away from home at the minute.’
‘Good. So how soon can you start?’ Matron asked.
‘I have to give a week’s notice.’ As she said the words, she felt a soaring of her spirits. No more tugging her forelock to Mrs Halliday and her like. She was going to be a clerk with responsibility over others.
***
Catherine wasted no time in telling her employer.
‘A laundry?’ Mrs Halliday cried in a fluster. ‘What do you want to work in a laundry for? Heavens above! You’ll be wasted in such a place.’
Catherine went calmly about her work, while Mrs Halliday blustered on. ‘No, no, Louisa. If it’s the half-days you’re worried about, I’ll make sure you have your Saturday afternoons off.’
‘Me mam wants me back in Shields,’ Catherine said, which was not a lie but not the whole truth.
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 90