I knew what had happened. Mrs X had forgotten to ask me . . . I knew it wasn’t girls who picked who were coming to their parties, it was their ma’s who said, ‘You can have that one, and that one, and that one.’ I knew I had only to attract Mrs X’s attention and I would be in at that party.
I could see the outline of figures moving backwards and forwards behind the lace curtains so I set about attracting the attention of one of them. I jumped up and down, I did a lot of Ooh, ooh, oohing! because I knew that if anyone saw me they would tell Mrs X and she would come to the window and say ‘Aw, there’s little Katie McMullen. Why, come on up, Katie. Fancy me forgetting about you. Come up, hinny.’
But my antics attracted no-one to the window. The back lane was empty. There was no-one in the whole wide world for me to speak to. There descended on me a feeling of desolation, of aloneness, it wasn’t to be borne. I ran across the back lane, pushed open the yard door, went up the stone steps to the staircase door and knocked.
At this point memory dims. I seem to see one figure after another coming to the top of the stairhead and looking down. Then the hostess herself came towards me. I can see her face now, round, flat-looking, full of self-importance. But she deigned to bend towards me as she whispered, ‘You can’t come up. Me ma says you can’t.’
Perhaps I was foolish enough to ask ‘Why?’ I don’t know but I do remember her next words.
‘Well, me ma says you haven’t got no da.’
Children need no preliminary lead-up to vital statements, they simply make them. I turned from her, closed the door quietly, went down the stone steps, out of the backyard, across the back lane and up our backyard. I was no longer alone in my aloneness, for with me now was a concrete thing, it was hard and painful and its name was rejection and it was to gather to itself as time went on, shame, anxiety, remorse and bitterness.
I had been aware for some time that I had no da, but with the protective mechanism of childhood I had imagined that there was only me and our Kate and the girls who had first enlightened me on this point in the secret. But in this moment I was aware that everybody knew, the whole world knew. The back lane was no longer empty and desolate, it was full of people; the New Buildings were full of people, and they all knew about me having no da.
When I stepped into the kitchen I remember being surprised at seeing Kate still standing in the middle of the mat. It seemed she hadn’t moved from that spot and yet I had been out of the kitchen for a long, long time, so much had happened since she had last spoken to me. Her face looked tight, her lips were pressed together and her chin looked knobbly and was moving in little jerks. Once again she spoke to me enigmatically, and now bitterly. ‘Never you mind, lass,’ she said, ‘you’ll see your day with them. By God, you will . . . ’
It was after this incident that my aggressive tactics came more into evidence. I had bossed before, following the choosing of a da, but this was different. If I was with my playmates and any one of them dared object to a suggestion I had made I would stare them out, creating a silence. I became very good at creating this silence. And should it not work and bring my opponent to my way of thinking, then I would say what became famous words in the New Buildings, at least for a period, ‘Aa feel like a fight.’ This often had the desired effect and I got my own way. But at times I miscalculated my opponent and a fight would ensue. This was usually followed by a rat-tat-tat on the back door and some woman saying, ‘Kate, ya’ll hey ta do somethin’ with her. Ya know what she’s been an’ gone and done? She’s gone an’ nearly wiped the lugs off wor Mary. Kate ya’ll hey to do somethin’ with her. Aa’m tellin’ ya.’
And Kate did something with me, if she could catch me. ‘Get into that bedroom there and wait!’
I remember the only man who came to the door, and he started by apologising. He said, ‘Noo, Kate, ya knaa me, Aa divn’t like trouble, an’ God knows Aa don’t want to bring ya any more than ya’ve got, for ya’ve got plenty on your plate. But Kate ya knaa what she’s gone and done? She’s nearly drooned wor Billy. Why, lass, she not only pushed him in the slacks but the little bugger held him under. Kate, lass, Aa’m tellin’ ya if it hadn’t been for a bloke sittin’ on top of the Jarrow tram where it was waitin’ at the crossin’ near Morgan’s Hall an’ he sees the whole thing and dashes doon the stairs. Why, Kate, wor Billy would be up the gut at this minute . . . Ya’ll hev to do somethin’ with her, Kate, ya just will.’
On this occasion Kate certainly would have done something with me but I locked myself in the lavatory and all the hammering on the door would not make me unbolt it.
Apart from wanting me out of the lavatory to give me the skelping of my life, Kate also wanted me out because I was causing a great deal of inconvenience. We had a number of lodgers at the time and it happened to be dinner time. At last me granda came down the yard, and there came a bang! bang! bang! on the door.
‘Do ye hear me in there?’
I heard him all right. He could have been heard in Howdon. When I didn’t reply he too became silent and nothing could be heard but his heavy breathing, until his voice, dropping into a coaxing wheedle, said, ‘Katie, d’ya hear me? Come on out, come on out and take your medicine, there’s a good lass. It’ll soon be over, like salt on a sore.’
I came out and took my medicine and it was like salt on a sore.
With regards to me granda’s reference to salt, whenever he had a cut, and sometimes he had very deep cuts on his hands, he packed them with salt. The agony must have been terrible but the cure was effective.
The end of my aggressive period came one day when I was playing at the bottom of the back lane with a number of the bigger girls. I must have been about twelve. I had proposed some game; I remember it was to do with a ball, and one of the girls didn’t see eye to eye with me. Her name was Olive Swinburne. I stared at Olive but without effect. Then I said the famous words, ‘Aa feel like a fight.’
And she came back with equally famous words. ‘So do I. And take that! You’ve been asking for that for a long time.’ Whereupon she gave me a terrific wallop on the ear and I landed on my back.
I can’t recollect whether I was hurt or I cried but I do recollect the feeling of surprise. Olive Swinburne had done the trick. I know that I never afterwards lifted my hand to anybody.
But it was after I stopped fighting, at least outwardly, that I became more aware of the feeling of aloneness. And over the years this feeling grew, and created a section of life entirely its own and at times I would be sucked into this life, much against my will, for when there I would be confronted by another being, to whom I would talk and reason, for this being had a kind of cold aloofness I couldn’t get at. It would not co-operate, it would not be comforted, it would not be drawn into the warmth of my real character for it was developing fast a life of its own, an all-knowing desolate life, a negative life that told me there was nothing of any value, nothing worth striving for. As the years went on it began to answer back, saying, ‘Why try to justify yourself? Where will education get you? Where will all your striving get you? In the end you’ll be alone, as you were in the beginning, only more so.’
In my teens when these moods would overtake me Kate would ask, ‘What’s the matter, hinny?’
‘Oh!’ I’d say, ‘I’ve got the blues.’
‘Aw, lass, I know what that feeling’s like, I’ve had me share. Come on, cheer up.’
Kate did not know what my particular feeling was like. Whatever she had had her share of, it wasn’t the shame of having no da.
Eight
Towards the end of the war beer and spirits were very scarce, but I could get a certain amount of beer if I queued, especially at the outdoor beer shop in Brinkburn Street, near Stanhope Road. But with spirits it was a different thing, you nearly always had to know somebody if you wanted to get any.
Kate was at this time working for a publican in Jarrow, somewhere near Palmer’s shipyard, and as women who were willing to work for three and sixpence a day were all too sc
arce, the publican and his wife were grateful and Kate would get her drop when she was there, and when she wasn’t and had enough money she would send me up to this particular public house. The sickly dread of these journeys remains with me to this moment. And I used to pray over and over again as I sat in the Jarrow tram, ‘Oh, Holy Mother, let them be run out. Dear Sacred Heart of Jesus, I implore the grace to love thee more and more . . . an’ will you not let there be any stuff for her. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, hear my prayer.’ On and on it would go, and when I reached the public house I would stand in the passage and make one final plea to the Holy family. ‘Blessed Mary, ever virgin, Saint Joseph and the Infant Child. Please, please let them be run out.’
On this particular day I was carrying a letter for the publican’s wife, and when I handed it over there was a bit of confab between her and her husband, then what must have been a half bottle of whisky was wrapped up. As I watched this I felt all the blood draining from my body, I wanted to be sick. I don’t know what followed next but I remember hearing myself imploring them not to give it to me, to say they were sold out. And I remember the man and woman sitting side by side in front of me, looking at me with the most strange expression on their faces, and the man taking my hand and saying, ‘Don’t worry any more. Your ma’ll never get another drop of whisky in this house. We promise you, God’s honour.’
The woman stroked my hair and kept saying, ‘Dear God, dear God.’ Then she wrote a note and gave it me and I went back home filled with a mixture of relief and fear. Would our Kate find out what I had done? I didn’t know, but I didn’t think so because I trusted that man and woman.
Kate couldn’t have found anything out for she didn’t go for me, not even the next week when I learned she had lost her job at this particular public house.
I knew that I was pitied and Kate must have felt this also and her protest took the form of a mad extravagance. She bought a piano. We were in debt with rent, we were in debt to the shop, we pawned every week, but she bought a piano – one-hundred-pound piano!
At this time you could get a second-hand piano for as little as a pound or two, but she was having no second-hand piano, she was having the best, and the best of the best at that. She was going to give me a chance that she had never had. She did not think that this mad gesture was merely to show the neighbours, and her sister in particular, that she was as good as any of them, better than most.
How she got the reference to get a hundred pounds worth of credit remains a mystery to me to this day. As also does the source of the five pounds she had to put down. I just don’t know where the five pounds could have come from. The only thing I am positive of is that it wasn’t through selling her virtue. So there we were, in Sunderland, buying of all the things on God’s earth a hundred-pound piano.
It was thing of beauty in rosewood, and it stood in the front room where the great big chest of drawers had been. These were now wedged in the corner. There was a stool with the piano and I could just squeeze onto this, for it was pressed, of necessity, against the back of the couch. The lino on the floor at this side of the room was worn away with scrubbing but you couldn’t see it very much because of the closely packed furniture, and yet mind, every piece of this furniture was moved once a week so that the floor could be scrubbed; that is, all except the piano.
It was Bob of the pawnshop of all people, whose daughter went to Mrs Dalton’s in Hudson Street for piano lessons, who recommended me also to go to her. What Bob must have thought of me taking piano lessons and still paying him my weekly, even twice weekly visits I don’t know. Perhaps Bob saw so much of the odd side of life that he wasn’t surprised at anything. I do indeed remember that man with affection.
As with everything else, except talking, I was slow at the piano, but when I look back I can see it was fear and fear alone that paralysed my learning. With the piano as in school, it was fear: fear of our Kate not being able to keep up the payments, and greater fear of her not being able to pay the twelve and sixpence a quarter for my music lessons to Mrs Dalton.
The first quarter was paid in two payments, the second quarter was paid in dribbles and drabs, the third quarter could not be met. I was in the fourth quarter and practising for my first examination when Mrs Dalton pressed home the need for payment. She was a big-boned woman was Mrs Dalton and also slightly terrifying to me at that time, but she was a fine teacher and harassed by the education of three sons. I was very conscious of the eldest son, and he was sometimes sent in to supervise lessons. To me he was a being apart for he went to college and was swanky. But even weighed down with awe of him I didn’t like him, and it was the thought of him knowing that my lessons weren’t paid for which further paralysed my fingers.
Then the shame was transferred into a burning, head-bowing misery, for our Kate decided to pay off the lessons in pies and peas, which we were selling at the time.
The Dalton boys came up the long road to East Jarrow with cans and took away with them the equivalent of a lesson. Sometimes they would pass me carrying the grey hen. The irony of it.
Under such conditions how could I practise? How could I learn? I exasperated Mrs Dalton beyond measure. The examination was looming up and one night she pushed me off my seat, out of the door, and threw my music at me.
She was in bed ill the day the examiner came and she kept me until the last and she talked to me until it was my turn. There were twelve of us, the others were all going in for the second year examination. I was the only one taking the preliminary.
It was my turn. I went in, looked at the man and liked him right away, and he liked me, for he patted me on the head and said, ‘You’re very small, the smallest of them all . . . begin.’
When he walked to the window I turned my head and asked, ‘Aren’t you coming to watch me?’
He looked at me over his shoulder and smiled as he said, ‘I’ll be watching you. Go on.’
I went on. The last bar of my main piece I played backwards. I knew I had done so and he knew I had done so. After I had finished he didn’t send me out of the room but talked to me; at least I talked to him. I found talking to people I liked very easy and I liked this man. I stayed in the room so long that when at last I went into Mrs Dalton’s bedroom she gasped out, ‘What on earth happened?’
I looked at her quietly, ‘I played the last bar backwards, Mrs Dalton.’
She closed her eyes and said, ‘That’s finished you.’
Some time later, on a Monday morning, there came a long envelope that aroused not the slightest interest in me although inside was a certificate to say I had passed the examination with honours. I had achieved a hundred and thirty one marks.
I was in the front room standing opposite the fireplace, the sun was shining through the window, streaming onto the rosewood piano, showing up its beauty and in stark comparison the drabness of the room and all it held. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything, I was taking no more lessons. The piano was going back.
It went back on the Wednesday afternoon. Kate had passed the word round that she was selling it. This I am sure deceived nobody. When I heard the van come I hurried down the yard and into the lavatory, and there I sat with my head bowed and my hands as usual pressed tightly between my knees, telling myself over and over again it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. Because now there would be no more worry about the payments, or Mrs Dalton’s twelve and sixpence a quarter, and Kate had said we would get a hornless gramophone, there was one going in Bob’s.
There was still nearly a pound owing to Mrs Dalton; this included the examination fee. And it was twenty-seven years later when, the breakdown spewing up the torments of the past, I remembered that debt and I settled the bill. It must have been one of the surprises of Mrs Dalton’s life.
I think it was after the loss of the piano I went in for words. I would get an idea from a word and this would lead to a story, and I would tell it to myself on my trips down to the docks with the grey hen, and making it up he
lped to pass the time away.
When did I start following the coal carts? I don’t know but I do know I was still following them when I was twelve or more. The carts used to come from the gasworks in Jarrow. They were high carts driven by horses and filled to the top with large lumps of coke.
Near Morgan’s Hall was a double stretch of tramlines and the down tram had always to wait there until the up tram passed. Then they both went their separate ways on the single lines, one into Jarrow and one into Tyne Dock. It was at places such as these where the cartwheels wobbled over the points that the loose pieces of coke rolled onto the road. And it was at the crossing at Morgan’s Hall that I first started picking up the coke in my pinny, and when I ran into the kitchen with it Kate, not knowing whether to be vexed at the condition of my pinny or pleased with the addition of some fuel, would say, ‘Oh, dear me! Is it worth it?’
But when I started to take a sack to gather the coke she did consider it worth it. But never once did she send me out to pick up coke. At first it was no disgrace just picking the coke from the road between the bottom of the street and Morgan’s Hall. It was the beachcomber instinct again working, and perhaps the feeling for the elemental need of life, warmth, that drove me to go further afield and follow the coke carts. The journeys behind the carts became longer with the years. I would meet them at Bogey Hill and follow them to Tyne Dock, but only once did I go past the Docks, for I became filled with as much shame as if I had been to the pawn.
Our Kate Page 14