I would go out of the front door with the parcel and nearly always there’d be somebody in the street doing their step or their windows, and they’d know where I was going. But this was nothing; the real agony started when I reached the bottom of the dock bank, for the dock bank was always lined with men, waiting to be signed on for work. They would all be standing against the dock offices and the railings that led up to the little photographic shop where the road divided, the right-hand section leading up to Stanhope Road, the left going to the station and The Crown.
But opposite to where the men stood the streets went off at right angles, Dock Street, Bede Street, Hudson Street. Gompertz the pawnshop, known as Bob’s, was situated in Bede Street. To get to it I had to pass the gauntlet of men. They all knew who I was. I wasn’t known as Kate’s daughter, but old John’s grand-bairn. Nearly always opposite Bede Street, among the men, would be standing Black Charlie. He was a negro and, I understand, an interpreter. Yet he lived in Bede Street with his black wife and black children. They were a happy and good family and the children went to Tyne Dock School.
How do you assess the agonies of childhood? How do you go about putting them over? There is no way to measure these agonies. As an adult you can translate pain into description; you can describe the effects of some particular hurt whether mental or physical. But as a child you have as yet acquired no words to fit the pain. Even if you had you wouldn’t be capable of applying them to your particular torments. All you can do as a child is feel and protest through tears. Should you struggle to translate your feelings all you can convey is that you are frightened, or that you’ve got a pain, or that you don’t like this or that, and you can cry as you say this, or bash out, but nothing you can do at that age had the power to convey the feeling of being buried under a tremendous weight of fear, or humiliation and shame.
But I was going up Hudson Street to the pawn. To avoid the eyes of the waiting men I would often hang on to a ha’penny in order to take the tram from the Dock Gates to the station, just two stops up. This was the Shields tram. I wasn’t known to anyone on this tram. I imagined when the men saw me getting on to the tram they wouldn’t think I was going to the pawn. I would get off at the station, go up the slope and down the steps and past The Crown, to which I joyfully escaped on a Saturday afternoon, and make my way down Bede Street back lane. I would go in the backyard of Bob’s shop, then through the passage where the pawning cubicles were. But I never went in these, that would have been the last straw. No, I went out now into the front street, turning my back on the men standing facing the bottom of it. Then I would look in Bob’s shop windows. In one side he had an assortment of watches and jewellery. In the other was a show of clothes, mostly moleskin trousers, blue-striped shirts, so stiff they would stand up by themselves, and great sailors’ boots. When I had let myself be observed long enough to prove to all concerned that I was going in to buy something, I would open the door and step down into the dark well of Bob’s shop. Sometimes, even when in the shop, I carried the pretence still further. To the right-hand side was a bench on which was a conglomeration of garments from unredeemed pledges. Among these I would sort as if looking for something to buy. The pretence would be rent apart when Bob would say, ‘Well, what is it, hinny?’
With my voice very humble I would answer, ‘Kate says can she have five shillings on these?’
He would open the parcel and sort out the things, making comments perhaps on a garment, saying, ‘Well, this has seen its last days, hinny, hasn’t it and that’s not worth tuppence. I’m sorry, lass, but the most I can give you is half a crown.’
I would just stare at him and he would repeat ‘I’m sorry.’ Then he would walk away into the back shop and there would follow a period of waiting, for I was well underage and according to law a person under fourteen could not put in a pledge.
Sometimes I hadn’t to wait long and a woman would come into a cubicle and he would say to her ‘I’ve got a bairn here, will you put it in for her?’
He was a kind man was Bob, an understanding man. I look back upon him with affection, for he must have realised how I felt about this business. He knew all my tricks but never alluded to them, and he always did the asking for me. If the woman was in the shop when he asked her I wouldn’t look at her. Yet if I got over five shillings I would hand her tuppence for signing the ticket. If I got under five shillings I would give her a penny.
All the times I went to Bob’s I never saw a child of my age there, nor yet a man, other than Bob himself.
I had been going to the pawn for some years and was about eleven I think when I asked myself, ‘Why can’t our Kate go herself?’ and it came to me that she was as ashamed as I was to be seen going to the pawn. She didn’t want to run the gauntlet of eyes either. And this was the reason why, when I couldn’t be kept off school to go to Bob’s – perhaps the board-man had paid one of his frequent visits only a day or so before – I was sent on almost equally painful borrowing excursions. Anything to save her having to run the gauntlet.
But these weren’t the only bad mornings. There were mornings when I had to go across to Mrs Flanagan’s in Philipson Street and ask for the loan of a suit.
Mrs Flanagan was a good friend to Kate and Kate in her turn repaid her with hard work, but she did things for Kate that others would not have done, like lending her Mr Flanagan’s suit to pawn. Mrs Flanagan was a nice small timid-looking little woman, always ailing, and I felt sorry for her, except when I had to go and ask her if she would lend Kate Mr Flanagan’s suit to take to the pawn. In these moments I hated her, I hated her for existing, I hated her for having a man who had a suit that was pawnable. But Mr Flanagan had not only one suit, he had a number of suits. He was a man who saw to number one. The Flanagans had a nice house and a lodger, and were comfortable. Sometimes on a Saturday I would go over and scrub the scullery out and the long bare back stairs and she would give me sixpence. I would return from my labours feeling very tired and Kate would say, ‘What is it?’
Sitting limp in a chair I would answer, ‘I feel tired.’
‘Well, you only scrubbed the stairs down, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s all, but I’m tired, funny tired.’
She would look at me and shake her head. I think it troubled her at times that I should feel funny tired. She was afraid I would get consumption. She would say rather hopelessly, ‘Well, you should eat your cabbage at dinner time. Cabbage is good for you.’ It might be, but I didn’t like cabbage.
There was one thing from which I never suffered in my childhood, and that was boredom. There was never time to do all the things I wanted to do, because most of the time was taken up with the things Kate wanted me to do, like going to Jarrow for the washing.
Kate washed for a woman who lived somewhere near Croft Terrace and I was the means of transport. I brought the washing in a clothes basket so wide that when I stooped over it I had to stretch my arms to their fullest extent in order to reach the handles, and when I lifted it up I would wedge the rim above the line of my stomach and propel the whole forward with a minor knees-up-Mother-Brown movement. I would take the tram from the bottom of our street to Dee Street then walk to this particular house. This was a very quiet part of Jarrow, a swanky part, because there were no public houses at all to be seen. It was a section of the town which at that time was restricted from having even an outdoor beer shop within a certain radius.
I used to put the basket of washing under the stairs at the back of the tram and sit next to the door to make sure that people wouldn’t knock it as they went in and out. Then from Dee Street, my arms spread to breaking point, I would carry the basket for ten steps before stopping and dropping it with a flop on the pavement. Ten steps were the most I could do at one time. I cannot remember anybody offering to take the other handle for me.
I arrived at the house with the washing one day just as the lady was coming out with a friend. She gave me three shillings and then walked down the street with me. I remember
the two women coming to a stop and laughing down at me, for I was showing how tough I was, how I could bash and fight anybody in the New Buildings, slap their faces, box their ears, the lot. The friend put her fingers under my chin and said, ‘You’re too pretty to do any of those things, you’re just making game, aren’t you?’ I wanted to say I wasn’t making game, but she had said I was pretty. So for the remainder of the journey I tried to act pretty.
About this time Kate’s temper was very short, and can you wonder at it? Cooking and cleaning and washing in that house besides looking after an invalid mother, and me granda, our Jack and lodgers. The lodgers at this time slept on the feather bed in the bedroom with me Uncle Jack. Me granda slept in the brass bed in the front room. Me granny remained on her couch opposite him. Kate and I slept on the saddle in the kitchen. This was convenient for she had to get up before six o’clock. Her first chores were raking out the two fires and setting them. If possible she would clean the fireplace – no small job with all the fire-irons and the steel fender. And if she was due to go out to do a half-day’s or a day’s work she would have to get the kitchen cleaned up before she went and the dinner left ready on the hob. Very often she had to dash from where she was at dinner time and see to the meal. If it was a full day’s work, and she didn’t return until teatime, there was me grandma to be seen to again, all the dishes to wash, the bedroom and the front room to put to rights and the meals prepared for the following day.
When she did washing at home it was even harder for her. Sometimes I would turn the mangle, and the big old-fashioned rollers screeching on contact with a button would set my teeth on edge and shudders would discover all the veins in my body. Or I would try to do the possing. I was never much good at possing, I couldn’t lift the poss-stick very high. The wash-house was next to the upstairs staircase, the end wall of it being opposite the lavatory door and forming a little alleyway. The boiler was in the corner, the table for scrubbing ran from this to the wall, there was space for the mangle and the poss-tub, and the floor was always running with water. You put the lines out in the back lane and you would be very lucky if you hadn’t to take the clothes down to let a coal cart up the lane.
For days on end the kitchen would be hung with damp washing. Week in, week out, year in, year out, it was the same. Even to this day I hate the sight of lines full of washing.
With such a life can you wonder that Kate was bad tempered; and I am merely relating the work she had to do. Intersperse this with the tyranny of me granda towards her. And also give place to the unwanted affections of her half-brother, and the ever-present knowledge that her life was ‘running out fast through a dark alleyway’, as she said. Yet she could laugh and be jolly; she had a great sense of fun and was kind to those less fortunate than herself, such as the Kanes. Mary Ellen would come to the back door stammering ‘K . . . K . . . Kate. Would you l . . . l . . . lend me y . . . your boots to po . . . pop into Jarrow?’ Kate lent her the boots so often that at last she told her to keep them. I can remember her being vexed at times by Mary Ellen’s constant borrowing. Sometimes a coat, sometimes coal, sometimes bread, but most times the boots. I can also remember her saying, ‘God help her, what a life!’
Referring to the phrase life running out through a dark alleyway, reminds me that Kate had a feeling for words too. She wanted to talk properly and in her endeavour she made many bloomers.
In her later years she read a great deal, as many as half-a-dozen books in a week, but she still used the form of pronunciation she had used when I was a child. When she got going, Mrs Malaprop had nothing on her.
She would often use the statement: ‘They would blind you with science.’ What did this mean? It sounded silly, and I would think . . . Oh, our Kate, she’s trying to be clever. I didn’t like Kate trying to be clever. I suppose it was because it was mostly when she had had a drop that she went out of her way to show her superiority with words and sayings.
Many years later when the fight was over and her days were indeed running out, she said, ‘Aw, lass, if I’d only had half a chance I would have made something of meself. But there, I’ve harmed nobody in me life but meself and you. But what I longed for and lost, you’ve got. All I want, all I’ve really ever wanted deep down is for you to be happy . . . Can you believe that?’
I could . . . Poor Kate.
But our life wasn’t all work and misery. Sometimes I did have nice clothes like the lovely white silk dress I had when I walked in my first procession at Tyne Dock Church. It was Our Lady’s Procession on the first Sunday in May, and besides my beautiful dress I wore white shoes and socks and a long veil with a wreath of blue forget-me-nots on the top. I did look bonny. There was nobody belonging to me at Benediction to tell me but I felt I looked bonny. I walked behind the bier supporting the statue of Our Lady which was carried by four boys. All shapes and sizes of white-robed, veiled and crowned children walked round the church singing, ‘Hail Queen of Heaven’, then we filed into pews, where we knelt in heavenly bliss. I felt so good, so holy. I asked Our Lady to stop our Kate drinking and she said she would. I felt more good, more holy . . . more bonny, and this must have shown because I was escorted home by two boys from my class, who had never before looked at me.
Still in my white dress, white shoes, and socks, but carrying my wreath and veil in a paper bag I came through the arches with my escort. Then we arrived at the slacks. I forgot I was dressed in white and I had been walking behind Our Lady in the procession. I forgot I was good and holy and might one day be a saint, so I invited my companions to come and play the piano on the timbers. I led the way, and to show them how clever I was I did not use one foot at a time but jumped with two feet onto each timber. This was more difficult because you had to jump off quickly again if you didn’t want to be caught in the water that was flooding over the partly submerged timbers. There must have been a gap covered with refuse that did not show the gleam of the water, for using my two feet I jumped on it and went straight to the bottom. The tide was high and as it hemmed in by the Sawmill wall, the side gut, and the steepness of the slack bank there was always a swirl of water at this point and it took me under the timbers where I must have remained until the tide turned had not two great arms dragged me clear.
When I was brought out gasping and choking and covered from head to foot in the residue of the river my companions had fled. And had not this man – whose name I can’t remember – been passing at the time then I would surely have gone out with the tide.
The road and the New Buildings were always quiet on a Sunday night and the man and I met no-one until we came to our front door. I can see Kate’s face as she looked down on me in bitter amazement and can hear the man talking. Next I was in the kitchen as she whipped the clothes off me. Besides bits of cabbage, seaweed and sticks, I was covered with a veneer of scum, and she didn’t open her mouth until after I was stripped and put in the tin dish and scrubbed red, then she said, ‘Get into that room there and you wait!’
That was the only time I walked in a May procession.
I was ten years old when I first accompanied Kate on a brake trip. Her intention was to give me a holiday. A brake trip was often the only holiday that two-thirds of the population of the New Buildings ever had, and in my case I would willingly have forgone it.
Somebody would get up ‘a trip’, usually one of the Powers. Old Mrs Power who lived across the road in Philipson Street ran most of the trips and money clubs. You paid a shilling to join a club, and I was sent to draw the lots. Sometimes Kate had two lots, hoping to get an early number so she could pay off this debt or that debt. Old Mrs Power kept hens and the backyard gave evidence of this. And their kitchen wasn’t like our kitchen, but dark and gloomy. I only went in on club days and was always glad to get out. When the lots were drawn you handed over your shilling or two shillings as the case may be, and then, when subsequently you drew your pound club you were always expected to give a little backhander in return for the privilege of someone keeping your money f
or you.
Every week when you paid your club you put sixpence or so towards the brake trip, then one day in the summer – with the sun shining if you were lucky – you clambered in with your neighbours and sat on the hard seats that lined the wagon-like structure. Then the man climbed up behind the horses, cracked his whip and amid a throng of running and yelling children you were off for the holiday of the year.
‘Hoy a ha’penny oot!’ The children would be screaming and yelling as they ran after the brake, and there were ha’pennies and pennies thrown at them, and some of the gay spirits in the brake would sing out:
We’ll not be back till mornin’,
We’ll not be back till mornin’,
We’ll not be back till mornin’,
A hip, a hip-hooray.
More and more as the years went on I looked towards brake-trip time with apprehension and that awful sickly fear, for the trip was always an opportunity for Kate to get bottled up.
Once, our destination was deep in the heart of the country and after a meal everybody walked through a wood which skirted the side of a stream. I can see the pattern of the sunlight flickering over the grass and the sunlight as always emphasised my sadness, and on this particular day my shame. For our Kate was acting the goat. She’d got a load on early in the trip and now she was having fun, laughing and singing and being boisterous, and drawing to herself looks of disdain; especially from my Aunt Mary. I felt this disdain; it pierced me in every part of my body. I hated our Kate for being the cause of it and I hated those who dared to look down on her, for I knew inside myself that when our Kate was all right there wasn’t one of them fit to wipe her boots.
Our Kate Page 10