Kate gave her such a look of angry despair that Catherine turned away.
Kate came after her. ‘I’ll not be spoken to like that by me own flesh and blood as if I’m worth nowt.’ She grabbed her arm. ‘I’ve brought you up as best I can, but do I get any thanks for it? Not a word!’ She shook her. ‘So don’t blame me for your troubles with this man - they’re all of your own making. I warned you about him, but you always know best.’
Catherine threw off her mother’s hold. ‘Leave me alone!’
‘Gladly.’ Kate trembled with fury. ‘Gan stew in your own misery. Get out!’
Catherine fled into the muddy lane, not caring if the neighbours stared from their rain-splashed doorsteps. No one would be surprised at shouting coming from the McMullens’ house.
She slipped and slid down the bank, shaking and sobbing with shock. Gerald had deserted her, Kate thrown her out and the women at Harton despised her. Where could she go to escape? Catherine stumbled aimlessly through the town, distressed and fearful. But she knew she had to keep moving, for if she stopped for one moment, the demons that chased her would catch her up.
Chapter 18
Catherine found herself at Tyne Dock station. It was just after three in the afternoon. Not knowing quite why, she bought a ticket to Lamesley. As she sat on the train and watched the dockyards and terraced housing of Jarrow and Hebburn slip by, she felt her panic and misery begin to ease.
It was obvious she did not belong here. She would never be accepted by its people as long as the disgrace of illegitimacy was known. It bound her up like a shroud, defined who she was in the eyes of neighbours and workmates. To them she was common Kitty McMullen, daughter of a fallen woman, tainted with sin. No matter how hard she tried to improve herself, how devout she was, she would never achieve respectability round the streets of Jarrow or Shields. She was saddled with Kate’s mistake.
Kate! she thought resentfully. Her mother had blighted her life, not only with her weakness with men, but her drinking and volatile moods. She had seesawed between possessiveness and rejection, smothering love and sudden beatings. When she thought of her childhood, the humiliations outnumbered the kindnesses: the weekly trek to the pawnshop, queuing for whisky beside grown men, the savage name-calling of the neighbours’ children.
Catherine squeezed her eyes shut to try to rid herself of the memories. She and Kate would never get on: they were chalk and cheese. But she was only half Kate’s daughter - the lesser half - the argumentative, coarser half. Somewhere she had a father whom she took after, an impulsive romantic, a refined gentleman. It was from him she must have inherited her taste for fine things, the drive to better herself.
The desire to discover who he was burnt within her more than ever. She felt reckless in her search for him, no longer caring what people would think of her questions. If she could only find him, she felt sure he would rescue her. She had been living the wrong life in the wrong place, whereas she was more suited to this other life of beauty and learning that had eluded her.
Catherine stood on the platform at Lamesley, gazing at the cornfields. In the near distance, the woods of the Ravensworth estate were tinged with russet and gold, while beyond, a pit village puffed smoke like a train pulling up the far hills.
Now she was here, she had no idea where to go first. But the air was clear and sweet after recent rain, and she was content to walk along the lane, breathing in its freshness. She stopped by the squat, grey church and put her hand to the cold stone wall. Was this where Grandma Rose had sat and watched a Ravensworth bride as a very small girl? She had loved to hear her grandmother’s stories of visits to the countryside and its tales passed down by Rose’s own grandmother. Stories from a woman who had been alive a hundred years ago, of the gentry riding by flaming torchlight and women in crinolines. She shivered to think she might be standing on the same spot as someone who had seen the Duke of Wellington.
Suddenly, Catherine thought of Great-Aunt Lizzie. The last they had heard was that she was widowed but still living somewhere on the estate with her son, George. They had not set eyes on each other for years. Perhaps her great-aunt had known who her father was.
It took half an hour of asking around the village before she was directed up the hill to a row of cottages in the woods. She passed under an old gateway with a deserted and boarded-up lodge. The tunnel of trees rustled above, showering her with the first autumn leaves. The driveway was mossy and overgrown, and Catherine felt the ghosts of the past watching her as she walked.
Catherine did not recognise the stooped, grey-haired woman who hobbled to the door after much knocking. She squinted at her with a wrinkled, weather-beaten face.
‘It’s Kitty, your grand-niece,’ Catherine repeated more loudly, ‘from Jarrow.’
Lizzie’s face broke into a grin of recognition. ‘Little Kitty? Well, I never! Haway in, it’s grand to see you. You don’t mind cats? Sit yourself down. I’ve just made a pot of tea. What brings you here? Is your mam all right?’ She swung round in concern.
‘Yes,’ Catherine said hastily, ‘everyone’s canny.’
‘A grand lass, your mam,’ Lizzie wheezed. ‘Happy times we had when she lived here. Our George and Alfred thought the world of her. Good with bairns is Kate.’
Catherine felt uncomfortable. If only her aunt knew the half of it.
‘Let me pour the tea,’ she insisted, and jumped up to help. A ginger cat stalked up to her and rubbed against her legs.
They chatted for a few minutes, Catherine shouting loudly into Lizzie’s ear trumpet, giving news of the family. But it was not difficult to steer her back to talk of the olden days when Kate had been at Ravensworth. The old woman’s face lit up at mention of the past.
‘Came to help out when I’d had a fall,’ she explained. ‘Bonny lass - such a clear skin for someone brought up in the town. She was a real favourite round here, always quick to lend a hand - and singing, always singing like a bird. Went to work at Farnacre for the old dowager.’
‘Farnacre?’
‘The old dower house yonder,’ Lizzie said, with a jerk of her thumb. ‘Then Lady Ravensworth noticed her and the next minute she’s a maid at the castle. Such a willing worker, you see. And Lady Emma - well, she was a bright spark - liked to have lively young’uns around her all the time.’
Lizzie went off on a long ramble about the former Lady Ravensworth and a scandal concerning a footman, until Catherine steered her back.
‘So why did me mam end up working at the inn?’
‘For the reason I told you,’ Lizzie said impatiently. ‘The earl died and Lady Emma took Kate to Farnacre, then Lady Emma ran off with the footman and the next earl died an’ all, so there was no job at the dower house, so she went to the inn.’
Catherine was still puzzled, but the real question still burnt on the tip of her tongue. She screwed up her courage.
‘Aunt Lizzie, did she meet me father when she worked at the castle?’
The old woman was suddenly flustered. ‘Your father? Well, I don’t rightly know.’
‘But it’s possible?’
Lizzie sucked on her gums in thought. ‘Kate would never talk about it. She never told me who he was. I always thought. . .’
‘What?’ Catherine pressed.
‘A lad who worked in the gardens was sweet on her - Robert. Aye, he spent all his spare time down at the inn, according to my Peter. And he got wed soon after Kate left, so perhaps he never knew about her carrying his bairn.’
Catherine was disbelieving. Kate would not have risked disgrace for a mere gardener.
‘Aunt Mary said me father was a real gentleman - had connections with the Liddells.’
Lizzie nodded. ‘Well, Robert had the manners of a gentleman - and he worked for the Liddells until they left the castle. He went with them to their country estate in Northumberl
and.’
‘Aunt Mary said he was called Alexander Pringle-Davies. Do you know that name?’
Lizzie stared at her, then abruptly laughed. ‘Master Alexander? Don’t be daft! Our Mary’s full of tales and nonsense.’
‘So you knew him?’
‘Not exactly. He used to stay at the castle on business - handsome as they come. He was some sort of relation of the old earl - and a friend of Lady Emma’s. Now there was gossip about him and Lady Ravensworth ... but him and Kate? No, that’s our Mary being fanciful.’
Catherine was hurt by her aunt’s dismissal of such an idea, as if it was impossible she could have had such a father. But instead of discouraging her, it made her all the more convinced that this gentleman must have been Kate’s lover. If it had been Robert the gardener, there could have been a hurried wedding. But Kate must have aimed too high in her expectations of love, and fallen for a man so beyond her social class that marriage would have been out of the question.
‘So he was related to the earl, you say?’ Catherine was desperate to glean anything about him.
Lizzie frowned. ‘I think so - it’s so long since I’ve thought about him. Used to see him out riding.’ She sighed. ‘No, I don’t remember the story. My Peter could have told you - he knew Master Alexander when he was a lad. Bright as a button and a whole lot of mischief.’
Catherine’s insides twisted in frustration. If only her great-uncle was still alive to unlock the secrets Kate refused to tell.
‘Where is Mr Pringle-Davies now?’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. There haven’t been Liddells at Ravensworth since the end of the war. It’s a girls’ school now, did you know? My Peter’s bonny lawns turned into hockey pitches. The gardens gone to rack and ruin - though my George tries his best - and they’re building villas where the glasshouses used to be.’ She tutted and sucked hard on her gums.
The light was fading from the low-ceilinged cottage and Catherine got up to leave. She would get no more from her aunt and her fading memory.
‘Why don’t you stop the night?’ Lizzie suggested. ‘It’s getting late and you’ll not be home before dark. George’ll be in shortly - he could show you around the old gardens.’
Catherine brightened, having no desire to return to the town. ‘I’d like that.’
She helped her aunt peel some potatoes and carrots for the pot, until her cousin appeared. George stooped to enter the kitchen taking off his cap and scratching his thin reddish hair, awkward at finding a visitor.
But Catherine put him at his ease by showing interest in the models he made out of corn stalks. After a tea of rabbit stew and baked apples, he was gruffly willing to show her around the estate before nightfall. George was employed by the private school as its gardener.
‘Don’t have time to keep it like it should be,’ he said in apology, as they approached the shadowy castellated mansion and skirted the old stables. A clock above the archway chimed seven and someone practising piano scales could be heard from an open window. A strong, sickly smell of overblown roses wafted at them as they rounded the corner on to a terrace. The flagstones were uneven and cracked, the flowerbeds choked with wild grasses, but the lawns that swept away towards the woods were neatly trimmed. One was marked out as a tennis court.
Her cousin pointed out two newly built houses on the fringe of the woods. ‘Used to grow peaches and melons over there. We still grow vegetables, but nothing fancy. The sheds are used to storing trunks. Used to grow the sweetest asparagus - and chicory - and the best runner beans.’
Behind, the castle stood dark and brooding in the twilight.
‘Why are there so few lights on?’ Catherine asked.
‘They don’t use that half,’ George explained. ‘It’s not safe. Floors caving in. Old mine workings underneath.’
‘Is that why the Liddells left?’
George nodded. ‘Made their castle from coal - and lost it to coal. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
Catherine glanced at her cousin. There was more to him than his taciturn shyness.
‘Do you remember a man called Pringle-Davies?’ she asked as they walked on. ‘Used to visit here years ago when you were a boy.’
George removed his cap, scratched his head and replaced the cap in a swift movement. He shook his head.
‘Maybe you knew him as Master Alexander?’ Catherine pressed.
He kept walking as if he had not heard. They rounded a corner of overgrown rhododendrons and were suddenly standing before a lake. It was half silted up with pale reeds that rustled and moaned in the evening breeze. The water glittered in the dying light and rippled where small fish nipped the surface.
‘How beautiful!’ Catherine gasped. At the far end, a boathouse stood abandoned, its roof half gone.
‘The pupils aren’t allowed down here, but I sometimes bring me rod and catch a fish or two,’ George confessed.
Catherine stood entranced. Here, more than at the run-down castle, she could imagine the former glory of this mighty estate. She pictured the gentry being rowed on the lake, or picnicking in the shade of the overhanging trees. For all its forlorn, overgrown state, it was still a place of faded romance; a lake created for no other reason than aesthetic pleasure. She breathed in the pungent smells of ripe fruit and weed-choked water.
Suddenly George said, ‘Aye, I do recall him. Master Alexander.’
Catherine stared at him, her heart tripping.
‘He gave me a shillin’ once.’
‘Why?’
‘For carrying a lantern - so he and Lady Ravensworth could see their way home. Came into the hothouse to try the peaches. We were closing them up for the night - Father and me.’
Catherine felt a wave of disappointment. So it was true that Pringle-Davies was more likely to have been Lady Ravensworth’s lover than Kate’s.
‘Your mam was there an’ all,’ George said. ‘She was carryin’ Alfred, ‘cos he was tired out.’
Catherine’s stomach lurched. ‘Are you sure? Kate met him too?’
Her cousin nodded. ‘Now I come to think of it, they were on speaking terms.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, once I was down by the lake fishing. Shouldn’t have been there,’ he said, blushing. ‘Saw them across the other side.’
Together?’
‘Aye, walking and talking. Heard him laughing. Must’ve bumped into her. Kate often took that way back to the castle when she’d been to see us. He would talk to anyone, would Master Alex.’
Catherine trembled in the chilly breeze. She looked across the lake and could almost see Kate with Alexander. A young, pretty Kate with a slim face and lustrous brown hair, laughing with the tall, handsome cousin of the Liddells.
‘When’s the last time you saw him?’ she asked in a hushed voice, as if any noise would shatter her vision.
‘Years ago,’ George said, leading them back along the path. ‘Don’t remember seeing him much after the old earl died. Was a lot of chopping and changing in them days - three men inheriting the estate in as many years. Maybe he fell out of favour. Was a canny man, though Father said he was a wild’un.’
Catherine felt her frustration mount. She had a strong sense of Alexander’s presence, yet he eluded her.
‘Who would know what had happened to him?’
George turned and gave her a wary look. ‘Why do you want to know? What you asking about him for, any road?’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘Just wanting to know more about what life was like when me mam worked here, that’s all.’ She slipped her arm through his. ‘Ta for showing us round. I’ve enjoyed it - and I won’t tell on you for fishing where you shouldn’t if you don’t tell on me for being nosy.’
But all that night, as the wind picked up and whistled down the chimney, Cathe
rine lay awake imagining Kate’s secret assignations beside the secluded lake. How easy it would be to fall in love in such a place. For the first time she had a glimpse of Kate’s point of view: a naive, gregarious girl, flattered by the attentions of sweet-talking, reckless Alexander.
She tossed on the hard truckle bed, disturbing the ginger cat. Yet what had happened to Alexander? He had vanished without trace in the upheaval of dying earls and disruption of business. Since then the gentry had been decimated by the war in Europe, the castle was subsiding into old mine workings and the Liddells were long gone.
In the morning, Catherine rose early and made porridge for her aunt and cousin. After breakfast she said her farewells.
‘Think I’ll take a walk around the village before I get the train,’ she explained. ‘Thank you, Aunt Lizzie, for everything.’
‘Tell your mam and Mary that I’m asking after them.’
‘And Grandda?’ Catherine prompted.
Lizzie sucked her gums in disapproval. ‘Aye, if you must.’
As they kissed goodbye, Lizzie’s face suddenly lit with a memory.
‘He was an artist,’ she announced.
‘Who was?’ Catherine queried.
‘Master Alex. I’ve been trying to remember since you were asking. Used to go about the place sketching folk in a little book. Did one of my Peter and the bairns. Kept it all these years in the back of the Bible.’
‘Can I see it?’ Catherine gasped.
She hobbled across to the fireside and pointed to two large books jammed in a nook beside the range. ‘Lift them down, hinny. It’s in the Old Testament.’
Catherine laid them carefully on the table. Lizzie pulled out a yellowed piece of paper with shaking hands.
‘There. It’s just the spit of my Peter,’ she said fondly.
The charcoal drawing was smudged and faded, but the figures were neatly drawn: a man in a cap sitting up on a flat cart, two boys grinning over his shoulders. From her own drawing lessons Catherine knew how difficult it was to depict people.
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 98