Our Kate

by Catherine Cookson

  It was on a Saturday night when it happened. The house was empty but for this man, Kate and myself. I imagine that me Uncle Jack had by this time joined up for he does not appear on the screen of my memory. However, we were in the kitchen and I can see Kate hurriedly putting on her coat. She took her purse from the mantelpiece, pushed it into the basket with the empty bottles, said she wouldn’t be long, and was gone. I can see this great man lifting me onto his knee – I was quite used to being on a man’s knee. I sat a lot on me granda’s knee, or me Uncle Jack’s knee. When I yelled at him he lifted me in his arms and carried me to the old leather chair where he set about kissing me in a terrible fashion. I was stiff and petrified with fear, which seemed to rise from me like steam for I was wet with sweat, and I can still hear myself screaming, ‘No! No! Don’t do bad things. Let me go. I’ll tell me da – I’ll tell our Kate.’

  How long it was after this that I opened the door to Kate I don’t know, but I do know that I told myself that I mustn’t tell her anything. Nor must I ever let me granda know because he would kill him. I knew with an absolute certainty that should I even hint at what this man had tried to do me granda would surely kill him. Yet what was it that caused the terrible row later, the worst row that had happened in the house? Did I in some way imply what had happened? In my own mind I feel sure that I said nothing, but in my memory there is another blank between the time Kate entered the house and the fight that took place when me granda and me grandma returned. Memory plunges me back to where I was kneeling on the floor in the midst of stamping, of screaming, bashing and yelling. I was crying and was trying to get me grandma to her feet. She had been knocked clean under the table.

  Whether this man was still in the house at the time I don’t know. Then in the silence of the next day – and the house was always strangely silent after one of these rows – I knew that our Kate was not going to marry this man.

  Somewhere in these years there was another incident along these lines. Like the seasons bringing forth the set games for children to play there would at certain times of the year spring up in the New Buildings house-shops. There was always this urge to do business, to make money. People started drapery shops, or sweetshops, or they made cakes and sold them, as we did years later. But at the time I am thinking about there was a sweetshop in Lancaster Street. It was in the front room, and had a real counter, and they sold Woodbines. When Cissie’s shop was closed at nine o’clock, sometimes ten on a Saturday, you could always get Woodbines at this particular house-shop. The man and woman who lived there rarely served in the shop. This job was taken over by the father of one of them, an old man, and I became terrified of this man. I used to dread our Jack saying at the last minute, ‘Go and get me a packet of tabs, Katie, before you go to bed, that’s a good lass.’ If I had the right money and could put it on the counter and grab up the Woodbines and run, it was all right. But if I had to wait for change this man would hold it in his hand and come round the counter, and would not give me the change until I had kissed him. Again I knew that I must not tell anybody in the house about this, because there would be murder done.

  My nightmares were frequent about this period and Kate said, ‘Something will have to be done about this, you read too much.’ And the reading too much brings me to our new neighbour upstairs.

  After the first Mrs Romanus died Mr Romanus was not long in taking another wife. She was in her thirties and as opposite to his first wife as could be imagined. She dressed in the brightest of colours, which was very unusual among the women in those days, and, what was really shocking, she painted her face. She was always full of surprising new enterprises, such as starting a fish and chip shop in the upstairs kitchen, or a sweet shop – I got a lot of sweets for nothing – or a baker’s shop with bought cakes. She wasted more money in this way than would have kept three large families going. Mr Romanus was a trimmer and made very good money, and unlike me granda, who was a casual dock worker, he was always in work.

  Mrs Romanus was not cut out to be a housewife. She was laughed at by many and talked about by all, while those who laughed took from her. She caused a lot of speculation did Mrs Romanus, and a great deal of scornful amusement from behind our lace curtains as Kate and me granda would watch her attempts at washing in the open yard. For some reason she would always wash in the yard in a small tub on a chair, and with a rubbing board.

  In those days you were considered lazy if you didn’t use a scrubbing brush and a poss-stick, and you were quite beyond the pale if you didn’t bake your own bread. Eva, as she was called, did none of these things. She attempted to eliminate hard work and, because of it, brought derision on herself. But if only Kate had had the sense to resort to the rubbing board her arms would not have ached so much. Many a night she was forced to get out of bed and burn them into numbness with raw liniment.

  But I am for ever and eternally grateful to Eva Romanus for it was she who bought me my first book. It must have been my birthday and she said, ‘What would you like, Katie?’

  ‘A book,’ I said.

  I can see her now smiling at me and saying, ‘You shall have a book, any one you like.’ And she took me into Shields and I picked Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the complete works. I think I loved her for buying me that book. I sometimes got an annual at Christmas but this was a real book.

  As the years went on and her family grew she was at times very harsh with the children and it was understandable. They were all boys and always around her feet. And perhaps like the first Mrs Romanus she longed for another way of life. But she was always kind to me, more than kind. I remember that when she got her pay she would often go out and have a spend-up – drink wasn’t her failing, just extravagance – and she never, or rarely came back from Shields without bringing me something, some fruit, or a cake; something.

  With Grimm’s Fairy Tales the wonder of a new world was unrolled before me. I read them dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and more and more frequently the saying could be heard in the house, ‘Will you get your nose out of that book and go this errand this minute! I know what I’ll do with that afore very long. It’ll end up in the fire, you see if it doesn’t.’

  In the community of the New Buildings, which consisted of about fifty houses all told, there were some families who managed to keep their lives surrounded by a close privacy, you knew very little about them, other than that they were comfortably off and went to Chapel. But in the main the private lives were public property. Yet, except for one or two exceptional occasions most families were left to work out their own problems. It would have been better if this had not always happened.

  There was a woman who split her child’s thumb with a flat iron. The child must have been sitting on the floor crying, its little hand in the hole of a cracket – this is a small stool – when a knock came on the door, which meant the tallyman had called for his money. The woman didn’t mean to answer the door and when the child would not stop crying she hit it on the hand with the flat iron.

  I can remember Kate saying, ‘I’ll go to the Cruelty Inspector,’ but she didn’t. Nor was anything done when this woman struck at a puppy as it ran round her legs when she was cutting the meat. The puppy’s tail was sliced almost off and ever after when it sat on it it would cry.

  Again Kate said, ‘I’ll write to the Inspector,’ but me granda said, ‘Mind your own business; you’ll have enough to do if you mind your own business.’

  There were other incidents of cruelty but they were never reported. People in general closed a blind eye. They might get angry, they might stop speaking to the woman, they might talk about her to the neighbours, but they rarely did anything. Except once and then it wasn’t for cruelty. It was because a woman was trying to take another woman’s husband. The moralists who, strangely enough, numbered the smut-talking women among their ranks almost ran this woman out of the New Buildings. I recall Kate remarking on this in the kitchen, saying, ‘It’s a good job for some folks that everything isn’t known else there’d be a n
umber of them leaving the buildings at a gallop at this minute. It’s a good cover-up to be a chaser, there’s less likelihood of being chased then.’

  Six

  I longed, as every child longs, for Christmas. Yet as it came near my feelings were always tinged with apprehension. In spite of this, however, I can still feel the excitement of rising in the middle of the night and going into the kitchen and just being able to make out in the dim light of the turned-down gas jet the sailor’s bag which was my stocking, hanging from the brass rod supported on brackets from beneath the mantelpiece. I always hung up a sailor’s bag and this bag was always full to the top. But halfway down the parcels would turn out to be turnips, or cabbages, or vegetables of some kind done up in paper.

  Although aeons of time had passed since the previous Christmas when I had undone the packages of vegetables in my stocking I always immediately recalled having done this before, and I would become both sad and irritated when I reached this stage in the proceedings; but I went on unwrapping, right to the bottom of the bag just in case I might be missing something nice.

  There was one Christmas when the vegetables started almost at the top of the bag and I stared wide-eyed at the cabbage I had just unwrapped. I couldn’t believe it. When I reached the bottom of the bag I was overcome by a colossal sense of disappointment and disgust. I recognised the feeling as disgust. Disgust that our Kate could have been so silly as to wrap up all these vegetables, the pot stuff that I had been sent for yesterday, which would be used for the dinner the day and the morrow.

  I sat at the table surrounded by paper and pot stuff, and there in the middle of them the little shop that was my sole present. I had looked forward to having books. I knew for certain I would get an annual, but there wasn’t an annual in my stocking that year. Funds must have been very low, perhaps no work. It often happened that the men could be out for weeks and at such times there was only the money Kate earned to keep things going, or the money from a lodger – if he was in work.

  There were other years when I did get annuals and lots of toys. Mary was usually kind to me at Christmas, always supplying something towards my stocking. But the Christmas of the ‘pot stuff’ as I think of it, she must have been hard up too, or she wasn’t on speaking terms, I can’t remember.

  But if I dreaded Christmas, New Year was a waking nightmare. Christmas was for the bairns, New Year was for the grown-ups, and everybody, no matter what their station, gave a party. To our party would come Mary and Alec, reluctantly I fear. As the bearer of our invitation, I can see Mary now, standing in her kitchen, her thin face tilted sideways, her eyes closed, and her head shaking just the slightest as she said, ‘A party! And they’ll be rotten with drink.’

  New Year’s Eve was a day of work and preparation. It is more true to say that New Year’s Eve was the end of the work and preparation, for you had likely been scrubbing and cleaning and baking for two or three days previously. Everything must be ready for twelve o’clock on New Year’s Eve, and after that you did not work for the next twelve hours, except what entailed eating and drinking.

  I am back in the kitchen now. The stove is newly blackleaded, the fire is roaring away. The tables, the saddle, the chest of drawers and the chairs have all been scrubbed or polished. We have a new clippy mat down, kept for this special occasion. It has taken Kate a year to finish it, doing it at odd moments of an evening, and the pattern is clear and bright. On the white scrubbed table there is a cloth and on it the bottles of beer and glasses – the whisky is kept out of sight until after twelve. On a big square centre table covered with another white cloth is a lump of cold brisket, ham, and a tongue, mince pies, sausage rolls, bacon and egg tarts, a rice loaf, and a Christmas cake.

  The jollification gets into swing at about ten or eleven o’clock when the bars have closed, but things never get really going until the first-footing starts. Whoever is going to be the first foot, usually a dark man, goes out of the back door with a bottle of whisky and a piece of coal. And he waits with all the other first-foots at the bottom corner near the main road until twelve o’clock, when the ships and the churches herald in the New Year. We are all in the front room looking towards the front door, and when the noise starts . . . ships’ hooters and sirens blowing, blowing, blowing, and the church bells ringing, you look at the faces around you and you know that a New Year is actually being born. You can see it in their eyes, the birth giving them renewed hope; even with them sometimes well gone in drink something of great momentum is happening to them. The old year and all it contained is dead and buried. The ships’ whistles are welcoming in this New Year, and that means work, and money, and prosperity; more food, more clothes, and of course more to drink. And then there comes the rat-tat-tat on the knocker and Kate, who was nearly always near the door – she couldn’t wait to have good luck touch her – lets in the first foot.

  Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Everybody shaking hands with everybody, everybody kissing everybody, everybody in the kitchen now all drinking, holding their glasses up to each other, and if they are very drunk crying, crying for somebody who had died and for whom they didn’t really care a damn. Then everybody eating and then the sing-song starts. One after the other, they stand up and sing.

  When our Kate sang I would put my hands between my knees and bow my head and lend my concentrated gaze towards the floor.

  The parties did not always end up with a row but they had one never failing result . . . they broke the bank.

  But there is one memory I hold dear, the one time when Kate sang with a difference. It was when there seemed to have been a lull in the anxiety that was ever gnawing at the centre of my breast. It was a dark winter afternoon and we were sitting with the mat frame stretched right across the two tables. Kate was sitting on one side and I on the other, both progging away. My back was towards the fire. She always let me sit at this side because I felt the cold so. The firelight was playing on her bent head, and as I looked at her I thought, our Kate’s bonny. And at this point she looked up at me and smiled, and as she did so my thought developed and said, She’s more than bonny, she’s beautiful, is our Kate. She bent her head again and began to hum, then shortly she was singing. She sang quietly and without strain, her favourite ‘Thora’.

  I stand in a land of roses,

  But I dream of a land of snow,

  Where you and I were happy

  In the years of long ago.

  Nightingales in the branches,

  Stars in the magic skies,

  But I only hear you singing,

  I only see your eyes.

  Come! Come! Come to me, Thora,

  Come once again and be

  Child of my dream, light of my life,

  Angel of love to me!

  I stand again in the North land,

  But in silence and in shame;

  Your grave is my only landmark,

  And men have forgotten my name.

  ’Tis a tale that is truer and older

  Than any the sages tell,

  I loved you in life too little,

  I love you in death too well!

  Speak! Speak! Speak to me, Thora

  Speak from your Heaven to me;

  Child of my dreams, love of my life,

  Hope of my world to be!

  Child of my dreams, love of my life. Hope of my world to be . . . Her face, the firelight, and her singing was too much. I choked and began to cry. She stopped in surprise, and putting her hand across the mat and stroking my head said, ‘Aw! Lass, don’t, don’t. Come on. What is it? Don’t.’ Then she added in a conspiratorial way, ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and a bit of cake afore they come in, eh?’

  On that day in the kitchen with the help of the firelight and her voice as we became close, we became one. At rare moments in our lives we touched like this. One other such moment was two days before she died when she held me in her arms and said, ‘Lass, I’ve been a wicked woman,’ and my tears washing away every hurt she had dealt me and the love th
at I had tried to bring back and supplement for the hate that I had borne her, gave me the power to say, ‘You have never done a bad thing in your life.’ And when I came to think about it she really hadn’t. It was my nature that revolted against her weakness. It was my nervous, sensitive temperament that couldn’t stand up against the rough background into which she bore me. Yet at birth she gave me some part of herself, without which I would never have survived. She passed on to me her sense of humour and, I like to think, a little of her humanity and kindness of heart, these last two virtues which were large in herself and of which she received sparingly from others.

  She wanted no praying at the end, she wanted no priest. Although I knew that in her own way she would have made her peace with God. As she said, ‘Let him judge me. He knows all the whys and the wherefores.’ And I knew she was right in this. If she was going to meet God, if there was one to meet, why send frantic prayers ahead? Wouldn’t it be better to speak face to face? Wiped away for her too were all the intermediaries of my childhood. Our Lady, the Holy Family, the innumerable saints that one had to pass before one could speak with Christ. At least that is how I saw it. And then of course there was purgatory. But on that day I knew that my mother would not go to purgatory. She would not have to answer the examiners as to whether she had conformed to the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church. If there was a God, and on that day the ‘if’ was loud in my head, if there was a God then she would have access to Him straight away – together with all the thousands who were dying at that particular moment? This last came as a question to me, not aggressively, but quietly.