The Fifteen Streets

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Not any sooner than with sliding in the streets,’ said John.

  ‘But it’s them falling through I’m afraid of.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said; ‘I’ll take a walk up and have a look.’

  He went into the bedroom and started to change hastily. Roper’s Field . . . off the Simonside Road. There was just a chance she might be there.

  In the kitchen of Cumberland Villa, the two maids were standing near the partly open door, straining their ears.

  ‘Hear anything?’ asked the cook.

  ‘Not a word,’ replied Phyllis. ‘And the way the missis looked I thought she was going to explode. I bet you anything you like though she’d heard about that fellow.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe a word of it,’ said Cook. ‘And I’d be careful what I was saying if I was you. Miss Mary walking out with one of the O’Briens! Huh! I’ll believe that when I see it.’

  ‘I tell you our Doris saw them in the market, and our Doris knows them both as well as I know you. She was standing behind them, and she said they were laughing and talking together like . . . well, like a couple who was walking out . . . Sh! Listen.’

  Phyllis’s elbow stopped the cook’s retort. ‘There!’ she hissed. ‘Get an earful of that. Have you ever heard the missis go off like that before? What did I tell you?’

  In the drawing-room, James Llewellyn was appealing to his wife: ‘Look, Beatrice, leave this to me.’ He spoke gently and soothingly; the jocular brusqueness, which was his usual defence against her, was gone from his tone.

  ‘Too much has been left to you, and look at the result!’ She turned from him, and again addressed her daughter, with quiet tenseness now. ‘No wonder you wouldn’t tell me who you were with on Christmas Eve! It is to your credit that you were ashamed.’

  Mary stood with her elbow resting on the mantelpiece; her face was half turned from her mother, and she stared unseeing into the fire, her attitude belying the anger that was filling her body.

  ‘You must have lost every spark of decency. You never, at any time, had a proper sense of what is correct. But this! Have you any idea how I felt when Florence Dudley told me they saw you in the Empire with a . . . docker?’ Beatrice Llewellyn spat out the last word, her thin nose and delicately chiselled mouth almost meeting over it. Her large pale blue eyes showed depths of purple, and her expression was weighed with actual hate as she looked at this girl whom she had come to think of as being by her but not of her. This last disgusting episode proved only too conclusively from which side she had inherited her qualities. ‘Will Dudley says he comes from the fifteen streets and the family are notorious,’ she ended.

  Mary faced her mother, and her tone was infuriatingly quiet when she said, ‘Of course they are. Anyone within a three-miles radius of the fifteen streets knows that. If you didn’t shut out every unpleasantness from your life you would have heard it before . . . One of the main things for which they are notorious is hunger. Dwell upon that the next time you’re preparing for the Dudleys coming to dinner.’

  Beatrice Llewellyn stood aghast—never before had Mary dared to address her so. ‘They are poor because they drink and gamble. And you! You are a slut! You were out with that man until three o’clock in the morning. Do you think it won’t be all round Jarrow and Shields by now?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Mary’s stillness seemed to lift the tension to breaking point. Her father cried, ‘Here, lass! Here, that’s enough!’ and Beatrice Llewellyn perpetrated what was to her mind unforgivable . . . she screamed. ‘You low creature!’ The words seemed to emerge from the top of her head. ‘You’re utterly debased. I shall have Father O’Malley to you. Yes. Yes. I shall . . . Leave me alone!’—she tore her arm from her husband’s soothing hand, and flung like a small tornado out of the room.

  During their twenty-six years of married life, James Llewellyn had never seen his wife lose control; this was the first show of sincere passion he had witnessed, and it left him, not only shaken, but worried. Usually she tried gentle tears and studied silences, alternated with the persistent reiteration of her point. But for Beatrice to lose her dignity meant this affair had indeed struck home.

  ‘You’ve done it this time.’ He came to the fireplace and knocked out his pipe against the bars. ‘You know, lass, it was a bit of a shock.’

  ‘To you too?’ Mary asked sharply.

  ‘Aye . . . yes. It’s no good saying one thing and thinking another. But when Will Dudley got on about seeing you with one of the Big O’Briens I could have punched him in the face. Although he put it very nicely, I could tell it had afforded them a good topic of conversation all the week, and that was why Florence Dudley was so anxious for us to drop in this morning. When your mother came downstairs with her I thought she’d collapse . . . How long has it been going on, lass?’

  ‘It hasn’t been going on, as you call it; that was the only time.’

  ‘Oh . . . Well’—there was a measure of relief in her father’s voice—‘and are you . . . Well, is it finished?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know! What do you mean, lass?’

  ‘I mean that if it rests with me it won’t be finished.’ Mary turned towards him, nervously rubbing the palms of her hands together. ‘I haven’t seen him since, because he never asked me.’

  James Llewellyn stared at his daughter. His lass, who was the best-looking lass for miles, and who could have her pick, was in love. Even had she not practically put it unashamedly into words, he could see it in her eyes. She was in love with this dock worker, John O’Brien; and not in the light-hearted way that lassies fell in love, but in an earnest, stubborn, painful way, a way that would leave a mark on her, however things went. Well, he wasn’t going to stand by and see her make a hash of her life, and say nothing. This was one time her mother was right. ‘Now see here’—he planted his feet firmly apart and pointed his finger at her—‘you know which side I’ve always been on, don’t you? You know that life would have been much easier for me if I’d taken your mother’s part all along.’

  As his fingers wagged at her, Mary thought: he’s nearly as big as John, and he has the same clumsy movements, a sort of endearing gaucheness. All the money in the world won’t polish him. Anyway, he was once a dock worker himself, so why can’t he understand about this?

  ‘But I want you to understand, lass,’ James Llewellyn went on, ‘that I’m with your mother in this.’

  ‘You’d rather see me married to Gilbert then?’

  ‘I don’t want you to marry anyone you don’t fancy . . . But yes’—he thrust out his head—‘yes, I’d rather see you married to Gilbert than carrying on with this business. At least you wouldn’t starve . . . Oh, Mary’—his large leathery face crumpled—‘stop while there’s time. You don’t know what you’re running yourself into. Lass, I hate to say it, but I’ve seen those O’Briens rolling from one side of the arches to the other. I even remember the mother, years ago, a little body, standing outside the bars with the bairns clinging round her, trying to get a few shillings out of her man before he blued the lot. I tell you, lass, they’re noted.’

  ‘He doesn’t drink.’

  ‘That’s what he says.’

  ‘He doesn’t, Father.’ There was a fierce ring in her voice. ‘And he’s not just a docker either; he’s been made a gaffer.’

  ‘What! Did he tell you that? How old is he?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’ Her head was thrust up in defiance, daring him to say, ‘So he’s younger than you.’

  But what he said was, ‘He’s a damned liar! There’s no fellow could be made a gaffer at twenty-two. Thirty-two would be more like it. He’s stuffing you, lass. Can’t you see?’ He was angry for her.

  ‘No, he’s not. Anyway, it should be easy for you to find out.’

  ‘Yes. Quite easy. But even so, if he is a gaffer, what’s that?’

  Mary did not reply but stood looking at him, her eyes wide and sad, for she too, was asking herself the same
question . . . He was worth something better than that.

  To James Llewellyn, she looked at this moment pathetic, and he could never remember his joyous, laughter-loving daughter looking this way. Taking her by the hand, he said, ‘Hinny’—using the endearing word that was banned in the house because of its commonness—‘I only want your happiness. What do you think I’ve worked for all these years? To leave you comfortable. Look, my dear, tell me you’ll drop this.’

  The tears gathering in her eyes obscured her vision. Why, oh why, did they think money could buy off or replace a feeling that was made of intangible stuff? Money and love were on two different planes . . . Yet were they so divided? Love needed money for its existence. Without it, more often than not it died, as the body, wherein it was housed, fought and struggled for life. Yet if the chance were given her, would she risk the survival of this love that seemed to be eating her away? Oh yes, yes. The tears spilled on to her face. ‘I can’t. If he asks me out again, I’ll go.’

  She watched her father leave the room and close the door after him with painful slowness . . .

  Mary was sitting in her own room, crouched over the fire, when the dinner bell rang. She made no move to carry out its summons. Nor, as the time went on, did anyone come to enquire why. Never before had she felt so unhappy, and she couldn’t see the unhappiness lifting; it stretched on and on into the future, for the only person capable of dispelling it was as class-conscious as her mother. She felt now that Christmas Eve had been merely a lapse of John’s, and that during the quiet walk back from Jarrow he was already regretting it; he had left her with scarcely a word. Every dinner-time and teatime of this past week she had fought with herself not to stroll casually down through the arches, presumably on her way to Shields, in the hope of encountering him. But some hard core of pride said no . . . she wouldn’t scheme to trap him into asking her out; if he wanted to see her he would find a way; and there was always the post.

  What a New Year’s Eve! She got up and wandered about the room. If only she could see him for a moment, run into him accidentally, as she had done last Saturday night . . . But wouldn’t it have been better had they not met at all—not last Saturday, but in the first instance. He attracted her that first night he sat in this room, and she had been unable to get him out of her mind since.

  The memory of that meeting brought back the niggling envy of Christine . . . Was that girl something to him? Was she the reason why he hadn’t asked her to repeat the evening? She didn’t know . . .

  She went upstairs and put on her outdoor things, for she felt that were she to stay indoors any longer she would scream, as her mother had done this morning. Remembering her mother’s voice and look, she realised that whether she pursued this business to its height or it merely fizzled out, the last supports of the barrier that had been erecting itself for years between them were hammered home today, and their combined lifetimes would not be long enough to break it down.

  Standing on the bank at the edge of the field, John looked down in amazement on the scene. He had witnessed nothing like it before. The field, which dipped into a shallow valley, had every appearance of a lake, and there was scarcely a yard of its surface which had not its moving figure. Very few had skates; the main sport seemed to be concentrated on the long single and double slides. On the double slides young men and girls crossed hands, skimming away with enviable balance towards the centre of the ice. Children had their slides nearer the edge, and were watched by spectators, who outnumbered the skaters. Some of the young lads were already getting the bonfire going. The air was filled with laughter and shouting, the smell of burning wood, and the thick, comforting smell of roasting potatoes. The faces of the crowd seemed alight with a newborn joy.

  The feeling of mass gaiety puzzled John. It was this whiteness; it had gone to their heads and caused a madness. The drabness of life was lost under the spell of its gleaming sparkle, and the people seemed to be deluded into thinking this clean, white world would remain—their house roofs were white, their window sills, their doorsteps. The docks and the ships, too, lay buried under the clean illusion—even on the top of the highest mast there was a virgin white cap of snow, fast and secure and promising to remain for ever. There would be no tomorrow, or the next day, when the gutters would be choked with brown slush, the roads become rivers, and the houses grey again, and they themselves grey and blue, feet wet, bodies shivering. It was cold now; but this was a dry cold, which quickened the blood, freed the perception and brought all the instincts to the surface, giving to each person an awareness of his existence, which demanded of the body that it be used, now, at this very time.

  As he stood there John began to feel something of this mass joy. The whole scene, which seemed to have been dropped from another world, where only light laughter existed, bewildered him, and part of him realised that it was out of place in the realistic grimness of this area.

  He watched Christine gliding gracefully in small circles near where Katie, Molly and David were sliding with other children. She looked little more than a child herself, a dark, elfin, slip of a child.

  Christine caught sight of him, and waved and beckoned him on to the ice; but he shook his head and waved his hand in refusal. And after a while, she glided to where he stood on the bank.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful! Come on . . . I’ll pull you.’

  ‘Not on your life,’ he laughed.

  He was relieved that there was no stiffness in her manner, for it must have been evident to her that he had avoided seeing her during this past week. She looked very fetching, standing below him with a red tam-o’-shanter on the back of her head, and for a fleeting second he felt a regret that it was not she who was filling his mind and body at this moment, for then things would have been plain sailing.

  ‘A big thing like you afraid of the ice!’ she called up to him, teasingly.

  ‘You’d be more afraid if you got me on there and I fell on you.’

  ‘I’ll risk it. Come on. Come on, John’—the pleading was in her eyes and voice.

  He shook his head: ‘I’ve a number of other ways of making a fool of myself besides that.’

  Christine saw that it was no use trying to coax him; nevertheless, she stood for a time gazing up at him. Then, without further words, she turned and skimmed away again.

  John continued to watch her and the children, but between times his eyes would search the field. Although the light was fading he could still see the further bank, and he thought it would have to be very dark to prevent him from picking her out from the crowd. He noticed Katie leave the long line of sliders and walk quickly towards him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Are you tired, or after a hot tatie?’

  ‘Our Dominic’s along there, John. He’s watching Christine.’

  John remained silent, and did not turn to the spot Katie indicated but looked to where Christine was still whirling unconcerned. ‘Is he all right?’ he asked; which meant, was he sober.

  ‘Yes, he looks it . . . and . . . and he’s got a collar and tie on too.’ Katie’s eyes fell to John’s collar and tie, then to his new coat; and she added, with awe in her voice, ‘He’s got a new coat an’ all, John.’ Her eyes were round in amazement—the advent of any new clothes in the house was something to dwell upon, for in most cases their approach was awaited for weeks. As late as last night Dominic had no new clothes, yet here he was, all dressed up.

  John’s mouth moved into a twisted grin. Dominic wasn’t to be outdone then. The buying of new clothes would be all to the good if it kept him off the drink; but John knew only too well that someone would have to whistle for the money for the coat. He glanced casually now in Dominic’s direction. Yes, there he was, practically head and shoulders above the crowd, and even from this distance and the little John could see of him, the difference in his appearance was noticeable.

  Momentarily John’s attitude towards his brother softened, and he wondered if Dominic’s feeling for Christine was anything like his
own for Mary. But his wondering was definitely only momentary . . . He would have gone about it in a different way if it was . . . and he still paid visits to ‘Lady Pansy’. Moreover, his love for Christine, if it could be called such, had instilled her with nothing but fear.

  He bent down to Katie: ‘Don’t forget what I told you about keeping with Christine.’

  ‘No, John, I won’t.’

  ‘No matter what he says on the way home, don’t you leave her, mind.’

  ‘No, John.’

  ‘Go on then, on your slide; I’ll be here for some time yet.’

  Groups of lads and lassies on the banks had started singing. ‘Keep your feet still, Geordie, hinny’ vied with ‘Cushy Butterfield’, and ‘Bleydon Races’ with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. But now the careless mad pleasure of the scene was dispelled for John, for Dominic was there. His presence acted like a pressure forcing out the ease from his body and the quietness from his mind, and replacing it with antipathy, which was the only true bond between them.

  As the daylight of the last day of the year faded, the twilight seemed to urge on the gaiety. The bonfire was well alight now, sending up showers of sparks through the grey dusk into the far-reaching blue beyond. John found that after looking towards the fire for a time the skaters on the ice appeared like dark, scribbled lines on a white canvas. He closed his eyes and pressed his eyeballs with his fingers. And when he opened them, there she was, standing not a yard from him.

  When he was a child, his mother, if she had a piece of toffee for him, would say, ‘Shut your eyes and open your mouth and see what God will send you.’ He had shut his eyes, and look what God had sent him.

  He took a slow step towards her—Dominic and all he stood for was gone, and the magic and madness of the scene was upon him fully now. No subterfuge need be used on a night like this; truth was easy, and desirable.

  ‘I wondered if you would be here.’

  At his words, her face, which had been set and strained, fell into a smile; not her usual, light-flashing smile, but one holding a tinge of sadness.