by Maggie Hope
The morning of Ada’s eighth birthday she was out of bed and had the screen put away and the bed back to a sideboard before Auntie Doris came down to the kitchen. When her aunt came in Ada smiled at her, waiting for her to say, ‘Happy birthday’. She’d been a good girl and got on with her work. Surely Auntie Doris would know what day it was? But Auntie Doris merely grunted and went to fill the kettle at the tap over the sink. Ada waited. Maybe when the breakfast was ready Auntie Doris would give her a little present, a bag of sweets or something to mark the day.
In the dining room, setting out the tables, Ada glanced out of the window at the sun shining on the pavement. Dust motes hung in the air as a sunbeam came in and brightened the room. Ada felt optimistic: surely now she was eight Auntie Doris would let her go to school? The lodgers began to filter in and take their places at the tables, most of them morose and taking little or no notice of her. Their minds were on the day ahead of them.
‘Hello, Ada.’ A softly whispered voice in her ear made her turn eagerly to Johnny with a wide, welcoming smile.
‘Hello, Johnny. Do you know what day it is today?’
Johnny paused on his way to his seat and looked at her vivid face. Her cheeks were rosy with excitement and her lovely eyes sparkled.
‘Er … May the twentieth?’
‘No, silly! Well, yes, it is, but it’s my birthday. I’m eight today.’
‘Are you, pet? Happy birthday, Ada!’ Johnny looked round the room at the older men. ‘Did you know it was Ada’s birthday today?’
They looked up. Seeing her shining face, most of them relaxed and wished her many happy returns. Two of them even reached into their pockets and brought out pennies for her. Ada was delighted.
‘Eeh, thank you,’ she breathed, clutching her pennies to her. It was such a long time since she’d had a penny of her own.
‘I’ll have a surprise for you tonight, Ada.’ Johnny winked at her. Just then they heard Auntie Doris calling from the kitchen.
‘Are you not finished in there, Ada? What the heck are you doing?’
Ada quickly slipped the pennies into her apron pocket and ran out of the dining room.
‘What’re you looking so pleased about?’ Auntie Doris looked up from the table where she was dishing up the plates of porridge.
‘It’s my birthday today, Auntie.’
‘Aye, well, I know that,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘What that has to do with anything I don’t know. Howay, give us a hand.’
Ada’s moment of happiness dimmed as she began to pile the plates onto trays and Auntie Doris took them through to the boarders. She was not going to let Auntie spoil it for her, she decided. Grannie had always made her birthday a special day and Auntie Doris was just being nasty the way she was sometimes. Anyway, she had Johnny’s surprise to look forward to that night.
Uncle Harry was sitting at the end of the table drinking a mug of tea, but as his wife went out of the door he got up and moved towards Ada. He caught hold of her arm and drew her towards him, bending his face close to hers so that she could see the bits of porridge sticking to his moustache, wet and shining.
‘Haven’t you got a birthday kiss for Uncle Harry, then?’
‘Let me go, Uncle Harry. I have to see to the bacon.’ Ada felt sick as his hands began to wander down her back.
‘Give me a kiss then.’
Ada closed her eyes and pecked him on the cheek. ‘I can hear Auntie Doris coming,’ she said. Uncle Harry released her and sat down at the table as his wife came back into the kitchen.
Ada carried on with her work. She soon recovered her spirits, looking forward to the evening when Johnny would come back from work with his surprise, and planning what to do with her pennies. She would buy a present for Johnny when it was his birthday, she decided. Meanwhile she would hide them in the chiffonier drawer.
‘When is it your birthday, Johnny?’
The evening had come at last and Johnny took advantage of the Parkers’ presence in the dining room to slip out to see Ada under the pretence of going to the lavatory in the yard. He sat down at the kitchen table with Ada, a pleased smile on his face. He had brought her a bunch of ribbons, blue, red and green, to tie in her hair, and she kept glancing down at the parcel in her lap, delighted with the bright colours. Her dinner was hardly touched, she was so excited. Bye, it was lovely! She had thought she wasn’t going to get any presents at all and here Johnny had picked the very things she loved. Though these, too, had better go in the chiffonier drawer.
‘Not for ages yet, not till November. Bonfire night,’ said Johnny. ‘Now, are you sure you like the ribbons? I can take them back –’
‘Eeh, don’t be barmy, Johnny Fenwick! I love them, I do. Thank you, Johnny, I’ve never had such bonny ribbons, I haven’t.’ There was the distant sound of the dining-room door opening into the passage and a shadow crossed her face. Quickly she slipped over to the chiffonier and stowed the lovely ribbons away before her aunt came in. When the kitchen door opened Johnny had disappeared down the yard and Ada was steadily eating her dinner.
‘Howay then, get a move on!’ Auntie Doris snapped. ‘We want the dishes cleared tonight, you know, not tomorrow.’
Ada said nothing; she wasn’t going to let anything spoil her pleasure in Johnny’s thoughtfulness. Bye, he was a lovely lad, he was!
‘Johnny, will you learn me to read? And maybe write my name?’ Ada asked timidly. Her hopes of going to school were growing dimmer as the weeks turned into months. Johnny might help her, she thought and looked anxiously at him, afraid he wouldn’t think much of her for not being able to read.
Johnny frowned. ‘Don’t you go to school, Ada? And it’s “teach”, not “learn”.’
Ada blushed painfully, not only because she had used the wrong word but also because she was ashamed of the reason Auntie Doris gave her whenever she asked about school. She bent her head over the fork she had been polishing with ash from the grate and didn’t speak until she had put down the fork and picked up a knife, rubbing hard on the blade.
‘I’ve seen you watching the others go down the street to school. Why don’t you?’ Johnny went on.
Ada kept her head bent, she was near to tears. Just then they heard Doris Parker coming and swiftly Johnny went out and down the yard. Ada would get into trouble for talking to him and it wouldn’t be the first time. For once, Ada was glad of the interruption; she rubbed harder and harder on the knife until it sparkled through the tears on her lashes.
‘You not finished those knives yet?’ Auntie Doris said sharply, glancing through the window at Johnny as he disappeared through the gate. ‘You’ve been talking to that lad again, haven’t you?’ As she passed Ada’s chair she brought her horny hand casually across the young girl’s head, making her ears ring. Ada now had an excuse for the tears in her eyes. She finished cleaning the cutlery and took it to the sink to wash with soap and water. Johnny hadn’t said he would teach her, she thought. She resolved to ask yet again about school.
‘Please, Auntie, can I go to school?’
The question seemed to hang in the air and Ada waited hopefully for Auntie Doris’s answer. Auntie Doris didn’t reply for a minute and Ada began to think she wasn’t going to.
‘Well, if I can’t go to school, can I go to Sunday school?’ Ada persisted. She had kept her star card showing her good record for attendance in Durham. She remembered that lovely day when she and Grannie went on the Sunday-school trip to Redcar. Bye, the sea was grand, and the sands and the Punch and Judy show. Her reminiscences were interrupted harshly by Auntie Doris.
‘Go to school? How many times do I have to tell you you’re not going to school? Nor Sunday school neither. I’ll not have you shaming me by letting everyone know I’ve a bastard niece on my hands. What do you think the Sunday-school teacher will think?’
Auntie Doris’s red face was glistening with sweat as she took the oven cloth from the brass rail over the range and opened the oven door. A great blast of hot air was let out in
to the kitchen and the smell of newly baked bread filled the room. She pulled a loaf tin out of the oven and expertly upended the loaf onto the cloth in her hand, tapping the bottom of it to see if it was ready. Satisfied, she brought out the rest of the batch and put them to cool on the table before turning back to Ada with her hands on her hips.
‘An’ I expect you don’t go telling any busybody who has the impittance to ask why you’re not at school that you live here. You’re only visiting while your mam’s away.’ Doris Parker wiped her forehead with the oven cloth and glared at the girl.
Ada said no more. She was humbled as she was reminded yet again of her origins; Auntie Doris was always doing that. She wondered why – Grannie hadn’t minded her going to school, not even Sunday school. I must be really bad, she thought and carried on washing the knives and forks, her dark head bent over her work. I must be very bad not to be able to go to school. But as far as not telling anyone, well, she didn’t see anyone very often, apart from the lodgers, that is. And Johnny was the only lodger who took much notice of her.
Summer slipped away and Ada stopped asking if she could go to school though she still hoped that some day she might. In the meantime Johnny brought her a slate and chalk and tried to teach her to write her name. The trouble was that they only had snatched moments together so Ada’s progress was slow.
Johnny’s birthday approached and Ada managed to slip out to the newsagent in Bondgate and buy him a tuppenny notebook. Carefully she wrapped it in the paper she had saved from the ribbons and early on the morning of his birthday she was in the dining room waiting for him. Johnny was always the first lodger down.
‘Happy birthday, Johnny.’ Ada felt suddenly shy as he came through the door. Hesitantly she handed over her present; maybe he had plenty of notebooks and didn’t need another.
‘Oh, Ada, you shouldn’t spend money on me,’ Johnny said helplessly, looking down at the cheap, paper-backed exercise book. ‘You shouldn’t really.’
‘Do you not like it, Johnny?’
Johnny looked at Ada’s crestfallen face. ‘Oh yes, I do, I do really. It’s just the thing. I can use it for making notes,’ he said hastily. ‘Thank you, Ada, it’s lovely.’
Ada’s face cleared and as the boarders filtered in she went happily back to the kitchen. The warm glow of satisfaction from giving Johnny a present he liked stayed with her all day.
Ada always woke up with a feeling of anticipation on Saturday mornings. On Saturdays, Auntie Doris and Uncle Harry always went for a ‘lie-down’ in the afternoons and Ada could look forward to being fairly free. Johnny would come into the kitchen, Ada would get out her slate and chalk and he would try to teach her a little. Sometimes they would just sit and talk, cosy beside the fire. Though Ada’s workload had grown heavier as time went on and Auntie Doris succumbed to the damp northeast weather and stiffened with ‘rheumatics’, Saturday afternoons were easier.
One Saturday afternoon, just after her tenth birthday, she and Johnny were sitting at the table, Ada bent over her slate.
‘Why don’t you tell the kiddy-catcher you want to go to school? You must have seen him about, he’s always out looking for truants.’
Ada looked up, biting her lip. It was true, even though she rarely got out without her aunt she had seen the truant officer employed by the Schools Board. He hunted among the mean streets of Town Head and walked down Newgate Street looking to left and right, in shop doorways and down the alleys. Auntie Doris always rushed her into the Store or some other shop, well to the back so they weren’t seen. Ada would hide behind Auntie Doris’s skirts as the small man in the black overcoat two sizes too big for him and clutching a large notebook peered round. The news that the kiddy-catcher was on the prowl spread like wildfire for he was usually preceded by a lookout, so few children were actually caught.
‘I can’t,’ she said at last and bent over her work.
‘I’ll tell him if you like, I often see him,’ Johnny offered, warming to the idea.
‘Eeh, no, don’t!’ Ada cried in alarm, halting her laborious penmanship, pencil poised in the air.
‘No, no, I won’t.’ Johnny hastened to calm her distress. ‘But why not?’
‘Just … I don’t want you to.’ Ada was ashamed to tell him of Auntie Doris’s threats or about her mam running off to London or that she had no father. She was ashamed of being a bastard, too, though she still wasn’t sure why it was her fault or even what it meant. The spectre of the workhouse or the orphanage down Escombe Road loomed large in her life. Auntie Doris would surely send her to one or the other if the kiddy-catcher came knocking at the door. She changed the subject.
‘Will you show me how to write Lorinda?’ She was hesitant, the forbidden name sounded strange on her tongue.
‘Lorinda? Why Lorinda?’
‘Oh, nothing, it’s just that I used to be called that. Auntie Doris didn’t like it.’
Johnny’s face darkened. ‘That woman!’ he said savagely. Ada looked at him. Johnny didn’t usually get angry. His green eyes were flashing sparks for a minute but he calmed down. I’ll call you Lorinda if you like, I mean, just when we’re alone.’
‘Well, I don’t know …’
‘Anyhow, I’ll write it down for you.’ Johnny took the slate and printed the name, watching Ada as she copied it laboriously. The tip of her tongue peeped out of her mouth and her black curls tumbled over the slate, having escaped the piece of tape she used to tie them back. The ribbons were still safely hidden in the chiffonier.
Suddenly he stood up and made for the back door. Ada hurriedly took the slate over to the drawer of the chiffonier.
‘Put the kettle on, lass,’ Auntie Doris said as she came into the kitchen, puffy-eyed with sleep. ‘Bye, I could do with a cup of tea.’
Chapter Three
‘You can go down to the market when you’ve had your tea and get the messages in.’
‘The market?’
‘Yes, the market! You’ve not gone deaf, have you, lass?’
Ada paused in surprise from her task of setting the table. Normally, the only way she got out to the market was to sneak out when Auntie Doris was busy elsewhere. She stared at her aunt now. The older woman was sitting with her elbows on the table, resting her head in her hands.
‘You can get cabbages and whatever else is cheap in the vegetables. They always bring down the prices before they pack up for the night.’ Auntie Doris peered out through the kitchen window at the darkening yard and shivered, despite the blazing fire in the grate.
‘I’m not looking forward to this winter, I can tell you,’ she said, her voice dismal. ‘Every year it gets worse.’ Shaking her head, she turned on her niece. ‘Where’s that tea then?’ she barked irritably. ‘A body can be fair clammed waiting for you!’
Ada got on with her job, her head bent submissively to hide the excitement in her eyes. A thrill of anticipation ran through her. She loved the market with its bustling crowds, the miners and their wives in from the pit villages dotted around the outskirts of the town, the flaring, hissing carbide lamps lighting up their happy holiday faces. She couldn’t help smiling in delight.
‘And mind, no hanging about! Just get the messages and get yourself back here!’ Auntie Doris had seen the smile and was frowning heavily, her voice sharp.
‘Eeh, yes, I will, I’ll be straight back. I’ll run all the way!’
Ada was anxious now, maybe her aunt would change her mind and go herself. She mashed the tea and drank hers quickly, burning her mouth a little. She slid off the chair and fairly ran over to the door, reaching up for the shawl which hung on a hook, taking it down and tying it securely around her slight frame. Folding the shopping bags and placing them in a large basket, she was ready to be off. Auntie Doris sighed as she picked up the purse from the table by her side, the heavy leather purse which went everywhere with her.
‘And mind, you be careful with the money!’ She handed over two half-crowns and Ada pushed them deep inside the pocket of her p
inafore. ‘We’ve plenty of onions, the onion-seller was round last week. I expect some change, think on, but we need enough to last next week.’ Auntie Doris pursed her lips and continued grudgingly, ‘You can buy a penn’orth o’ bullets for yourself, toffee maybe.’
Ada gasped with pleasure and her eyes sparkled. ‘Oh! Eeh, ta, Auntie!’ She danced over to the door. ‘I’ll get the best bargains I can, I will!’
Auntie Doris’s voice floated after her as she ran down the yard. ‘An’ no talking to lads! I’ll have no trouble in this house!’
Ada barely heard, though she nodded. Auntie Doris was always saying that and Ada hadn’t the least notion what she meant by it. How could there be trouble in the house if she talked to a lad? Ada put it out of her mind; there was the exciting prospect of the market to think about. Happily she threaded her way through the crowds thronging Bondgate, the narrow street that led to the marketplace. The wind blew chill and the dark November night was already drawing in fast. The high, old buildings on either side channelled the wind, which was bitterly cold, but the crowds didn’t seem to notice and neither did Ada. She herself was noticed, though; quite a number of people took a second look at the diminutive girl with the shopping basket almost as big as herself. The wind and excitement whipped up a rosy colour in her cheeks and her violet eyes shone as she came past the coaching inn into the marketplace.
Johnny, standing by the Town Hall, had seen her at once. He watched her for a while indulgently as she made her way round the stalls. He enjoyed her vivid expressions as she paused and looked all round her. There was something about the young girl that always tugged at him and he felt fiercely protective of her, bitterly resenting the life of drudgery she was forced to live. Now, seeing her happy and enjoying herself, he was happy too. Quickly he moved behind a plump stallholder as Ada turned in his direction, his tall, gangly figure ducking agilely. He wanted to watch her unawares for a while.
Bye! How she loved the crowds! Ada thought as she looked at the miners’ wives and daughters in their weekend finery, the young girls jostling and laughing with the flat-capped young miners in town for the afternoon and evening. The lights from the stalls reflected the tall windows of the Georgian terrace to her right and the arched gateway leading to the bishop’s castle loomed dark and heavy against the pools of light cast by the gas streetlamps.