The brake would come rattling back at eight or nine o’clock at night, it all depended on the time of the year and the light, and the children would be waiting for it with their cry again of ‘Hoy a ha’penny oot!’ But now most of the pockets were empty and the cries went unheeded, although everybody would be singing:
We’re back to canny awd Jarrar,
We’re back to canny awd Jarrar,
We’re back to canny awd J-ar-rar,
A hip, a hip-hooray.
Following such a trip Kate would be quiet. The next day would find her perhaps in a bad temper; perhaps she wouldn’t move out of the house for two or three days unless she had to. The shame that had been in me would be in her now, tormenting her, and drawing from me a pity that would bring me to her side to say, ‘Do you want any messages, our Kate, or anything?’ Sometimes she would look at me and say quietly, ‘You wouldn’t go to Bob’s for me, would you?’
Oh, the payment of pity!
Nearly every night in the summer after I had come from school, after I had run the messages, after I carried the grey hen to Tyne Dock and back, I would go on the slacks, not to play, but to gather wood. Coal had to be bought. We had no-one in the pits and could not often come by a pit-load, so mostly we had to buy the coal from Jackie Halliday. But if you had plenty of wood you could do a baking of bread on that alone; it was quick heating, and if it had tar on it it blazed nicely. There was hardly a day passed but I took my sack onto the timbers.
The slacks was an open space starting from the Sawmill wall, and finishing at the wall of the Barium Chemical Works. Altogether I think about one thousand feet of open frontage. I’m not very good at measuring distances. I imagine that Howdon, across the river, was about three-quarters of a mile away. But much nearer to us, say four hundred feet from the actual road, lay the gut. And the space between the gut and the slack bank which bordered the road was used as the timber storing pond. The whole of the slacks emptied when the tide went down.
In the centre of this area, on a permanent floating raft, was a substantial hut. This was the headquarters of Mr Tulip, the man in charge of the timbers. Son followed father in this job and they lived in a nice house on the terrace right opposite the slacks. One of old Mr Tulip’s unofficial duties was to keep the children clear of the timbers. He never chased me, but always said, ‘Be careful, hinny, don’t go over to the gut.’
Meeting him one day in my teens he looked at me and shook his head as he said. ‘You know, hinny, you shouldn’t be alive, you should have been drowned seven times a week. Somebody must have been looking after you or you wouldn’t be here the day.’
I wondered too how I had escaped drowning.
I have always been afraid of water, yet I used to walk along a single rotten plank very much like a man on a tightrope, my feet splayed to get a grip. The pond was cut into a cross and this cross was formed by single timbers tied to posts at regular intervals. I would cling on to one post, take a breath, then make a steady dive for the next post. Most of the timbers that were beyond Mr Tulip’s hut were rotten, green and slimy, and those bordering the actual gut were death traps. I very rarely got as far as the gut for I was terrified of the black creeping mud in it. It was in this gut, some years later, that one of our neighbours was drowned. He was a nice lad, Matty Kilbride. He had just recently married and had taken a boat along the gut to look at a ship lying in the main river over on the Howdon side. The tide turned and caught him in a whirlpool. His wife, if she had been looking, could, from her window, have seen him drown.
The gut was a treacherous place. Yet with my sack on my back I went within yards of it to retrieve some piece of wood. Sometimes I would find myself clinging on to a post terrified to return the way I had come, then having reached Mr Tulip’s cabin at last I would tell myself I would never go past it again, but I did.
Great-Aunt Maggie lived up the street next door to my Aunt Mary in number twenty-six, downstairs. She was near-sighted, yet she read avidly until she was eighty, and often by the light of the street lamp that shone outside her window. It was years later when I really came to know her and like her, even love her. She had a wonderful sense of fun. But this day she was on the slacks gathering sticks.
Among the floating pieces of debris I noticed a sleeper. Sleepers were pieces of wood about three feet long and six inches wide that were used to hold the timbers together. This one had a staple in the middle which led a length of rope. I pulled it out of the water and laid it on one side with the intention of coming back after I had got my bag full of little bits. But when I returned my Aunt Maggie was humping the sleeper up the bank. ‘That’s mine,’ I said.
‘What’s yours?’
‘That sleeper.’
‘The whole slack’s yours!’ She looked down on me with her round piercing eyes.
I didn’t dispute this but said, ‘It is mine. I pulled it out an’ just left it, I was comin’ back for it.’
There followed a verbal battle which I must have won, for with the sack over my shoulder and pulling the sleeper by the piece of rope I went home, and me granda, seeing it was a nice piece of wood, used it to renew a post of the hen cree, without bothering to take the staple out.
Morgan, the policeman who lived in the Hall, wasn’t exactly loved by the people in the New Buildings and he was hated by me granda. One day we had a visit from him. He was looking for sleepers; a number of them had been cut away from the timbers, and this was serious as the timbers drifted apart and took some getting together again. And there facing him, with the staple for proof, was a sleeper.
Eventually there was a summons and me granda had to appear in Court. It was a dreadful state of affairs. It was the first time me granda had been in Court in his life, which was surely a miscarriage of justice, and on this occasion, being innocent and indignant, he absolutely refused to plead guilty and they were for sending the case to the Assizes, for as the Magistrate said, ‘How could a child of eight years carry such a piece of wood as this?’ The sleeper was no longer in the hen cree but now reposed on the bench before him.
To this me granda had replied, ‘You don’t know me granddaughter, Sir.’
The Magistrate, apparently seeing that me granda was determined to go to the Assizes, decided to disappoint him, he fined him; me granda said flatly he wouldn’t pay, he was an innocent man, but Kate paid and got them out of the Court, as she said, at a run.
The report of the case duly appeared in the papers and I felt very important for a while. Me granda was an honest man. Everybody knew that me granda was an honest man.
I still continued to gather wood from the slacks; and there was the joy at night of watching it, piled high in the grate, making blue and orange flames. Sometimes I would catch me granda’s eye as he too turned from the mesmerism of the fire, and he would say to me with a deep sigh, ‘Aye, hinny, that’s all a man wants, food and flame.’ If this had been true it would have been a wonderful life.
Five
It was just before I was eight that me granda got the compensation for the hurt to his leg. The dock company, the North-Eastern, as it was called, gave him one hundred pounds for the injury, but also stated that he would never be allowed to work in the docks again. As he was around sixty at this time that didn’t matter much.
The hundred pounds was considered a fortune. Me grandma took charge of it. She locked it in the drawer of the box sewing machine. I was going to get a bike. Me granda was going to be rigged out, as was me grandma. Me Uncle Jack was going to have his share, and we were going to have new furniture in the house.
But what was our Kate going to get?
Nothing.
Me grandma would dole out the money for beer or spirits and Kate would go for them. But they never gave her a farthing in actual money. What she received for a lifetime of service was a second-hand pair of rinking boots. She was understandably bitter over this.
I didn’t get my bike. I can’t remember either that me granda got any new clothes nor yet me grandma
. What was bought was a lot of timber to rail round a piece of land we were leasing from a man who had a smallholding. Me Uncle Jack and me granda were actually putting the railings up, with great excitement because it was a wonderful thing to have a piece of land, when the man came and said he had been told he wasn’t allowed to sublet.
This was a great blow, and to the blow was added anger when, just a few months later my Aunt Mary and Uncle Alec took over this very plot. It caused a rift between the two houses for many a long day.
But what we did get out of the hundred pounds was some pieces of furniture. There was a family called Regan who lived up in Bogey Hill. The wife died and the husband sold the furniture, and the children were distributed among neighbours. But from this sale me grandma bought a huge Scotch chest of drawers about seven feet tall and five wide – a big ugly piece of furniture but well veneered. For years it stood in the front room and I was very proud of it; it wasn’t everybody who had a big chest of drawers. But it was very rarely full of anything but useless oddments, such as a Maltese cross, a padded monstrosity with a love poem worked in the middle – Jack Stoddard had brought it home for Kate after a voyage. The little chest in the kitchen held all the linen we had and the clothes were hung on some pegs behind the front-room door and also in the cupboard that ran off the bedroom and under the stairs of the house above. We also bought a picture of all the Popes from Peter, every one of them was there, packed tightly in rows. If because of the little you could see you doubted this, their names were at the bottom to prove you wrong. Everybody in the house knew this picture was of great value. It was even suggested it might have supernatural powers. Nobody knew that I didn’t like it except Father O’Keefe, because it was a grave sin to think Popes looked awful. My penance was three Hail Marys.
The main part of the money was dribbled and drabbled away, as was all money that came into the house. But almost the last five pounds was stolen from me granda, and our Kate’s reaction to this was ‘Devil’s cure to it’, the meaning of which I cannot interpret except that it meant, ‘Serve him right.’
We had staying with us at that time the elder brother of the bereaved Mr Regan. He was a dour, taciturn man. He worked in the Chemical Works and was a firm Catholic, and it was he who hinted he would like his nephew with him. There was a great deal of sympathy for the poor homeless children. I think there were six of them, so Kate decided to take one of the boys. His name was David and he stayed three weeks with us and nearly drove Kate mad. He was six years old but looked nine or ten. He slept on a makeshift bed in the bedroom and every night without fail he not only wet his bed but did his business in it too.
Kate could not stand this. She had enough in life without this, so David had to go – up to my Aunt Maggie’s. Poor Aunt Maggie. She tried to train him, and because he was always stealing stuff from the pantry – he could eat like two horses – she would lock him outside, and she tried to have her meal before letting him in. David, knowing this, would hang on to the sill of the front window, and pressing his nose against the pane would keep up a flow of running abuse, ‘Ya greedy old bugger, ya! I hope it chokes ya. Luk-ara. Luk-ara stuffin’ her kite.’
David was eventually taken away. Just in time, my Aunt Maggie said, to stop her being sent to Sedgefield.
The advent of new lodgers invariably meant that the beds would be turned round, me granda and me grandma sometimes having the feather bed in the bedroom, and four lodgers sharing the two beds in the front room. For one short period I remember Kate and I slept at Mary’s, while the saddle in the kitchen was taken up by Jack. At another period there were five men sleeping in the front room, one on a shakedown. But these particular lodgers were different. They came from away, to install a new kind of boiler in the works opposite the Sawmill, and they were ever remembered by Kate as nice men.
I remember them too as nice men. I remember Kate was happy during their sojourn with us. I can see one of them scooping a handful of froth from the poss-tub and throwing it at her and I can see her coming out of the wash-house and turning the hose on him and the laughter filling the yard.
They were jolly men, and strangely enough they didn’t drink, or so little that it made no difference. This must have been an enlightening period for me, Uncle Jack too, for he went out with them on a number of times of a Saturday night to a show and returned solid and sober and happy. During this period his suit never went to the pawn.
Over the years the lodgers came and went, and not a few of them wanted to marry our Kate. One of these was a docker called Billy Potts. He was a rough, coarse man, and very ignorant, but nevertheless had a kindly disposition, and he was very much in love with Kate. He would go to great lengths to get into her good books. When he was unloading the grain boats he would tie his yorks tight – yorks are strings which are tied around the trousers below the knees – then pour the grain down the top of his trousers. This form of transportation must have been very uncomfortable, as was to be seen from his laboured walk, and I don’t suppose it hoodwinked the dock police one jot.
From time to time he would pester her with, ‘What aboot it, Kate lass, eh? What aboot you and me hooking up, eh?’ And although she never took him seriously, she felt bound at last to tell him to go, and try as he might she never allowed him back in the house. Billy was always kind to me, but even at an early age I shuddered at the thought of him being me da. Years later when I was working in the Institution I would pass him often standing on the dock bank, and when he was out of work I would slip him a sixpence, or a shilling, to get ‘set on’ in the pub, which meant having just enough to buy a drink and who knew but someone would stand you another once you were inside. He took to waiting for me on pay day. ‘How ya keepin’, Katie? By, ya’a bonny lass.’ Another tanner gone.
There was also the lodger who had a row of books standing on the chest in the bedroom, they were all by that fellow Shakespeare. Kate said to me, ‘Leave them alone. They’re not for you. You wouldn’t understand them, they are like a foreign language.’ I read the end of one where it said Sonnets and in a way I did understand them enough to think ‘Eeh, fancy saying things like that in a book’.
Then there was a man from Hexham, Dick Gartner. He was young, athletic and good-looking. He lodged with us during one of the many slump periods. I can see him standing in the kitchen with his back to the fire leading off to me granda and Jack while Kate busied herself with the chores, and I can hear him saying, ‘I will find work! I will demand work, it is my right! And who is there to stop me if I am in the right?’ He had a nice voice and spoke differently from us.
She wouldn’t marry Dick or give him a promise that when he got the job he desired she would be his wife, and so he went away. The only thing I remember about him afterwards is that he sent us a great box of mushrooms and with the mushrooms a bottle of black stuff. When I had the house to myself I always made for the cupboard, it was the only place of interest for there would be cocoa and condensed milk, and a spoonful of each mixed together made stuff that tasted like chocolate. The black bottle intrigued me. I smelt it then took a long drink. When Kate returned home it was to find me terribly sick; concentrated essence of mushroom is not to be swallowed in mouthfuls.
Then there was the sea captain from Shields – I’ve forgotten his name but I’ve never forgotten him. Was it the height of him? Or the breadth of him? Or his beard? Or his blue eyes? Or his teeth, strong and aggressive in their overlapping? Was it the smell of the shore suit, a mixture of mothballs and brine? Or the way he filled every crevice of it? Was it the way he rolled in his walk when he was sober? Or the way he rolled when he was drunk? Was it his laugh, deep and easy flowing, born of the seabed? Or was it his stopping whenever he saw me and exclaiming in a very good imitation of awe, ‘Yes, you are! You are bonnier than you were a month ago.’
I think it was this, this telling me I was bonny, that has made me remember him.
The captain was not a good husband, and I’ve heard he was an indifferent father; but what co
uld you expect, he loved so many women that any one person could only have a portion of his affection.
Once, walking with him along his zigzagging course, he said to me, ‘Have one aim in life . . . happiness! If you are happy, you’ll make at least half the people you know happy. Don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, it’s only imagination. Everything’s imagination . . . even the sea and the sky.’
I remember him stopping at this and exclaiming, ‘My God! Am I imagining I’m drunk?’ His head went up and his laugh rang out, in which I joined.
He went down with his little ship in 1917. I was eleven at the time, and I cried when I heard of it; and I remember thinking, He’ll know now if there’s a Heaven or Hell.
Incidents in my childhood keep moving in a circle round and round. When I focus on one and hold it I think it might have happened when I was seven and then I find it could only have happened when I was nine. But somewhere in the circle between seven and nine the following incident took place which terrified me, and bred in me a deep distrust and, for a long time, almost a hatred of Irishmen.
Although me granda was Irish he did not speak the brogue; he mostly showed his Irish trait in his bigotry, superstition and intolerance. But the man who came to lodge next door was a brogue slurring Irishman. He was tall, very tall and handsome; he had a great smiling face and a thick laughing voice. But he did not come to my notice any more than did the other men of the New Buildings until I learned that our Kate was going to marry him. How long she had known him I did not know and so delicate was the situation ever afterwards that I never asked outright.
Our Kate Page 11