by Maggie Hope
‘Give me your hand!’ someone shouted, and Rose saw there was a rowing boat beside them with someone leaning towards them, holding out an oar. Then somehow or other she was hauled into the punt and Marina after her and they were moving away from the scene of the battle, threading their way through overturned punts and pitlads swimming in their best suits, and the two girls were being helped out of the boat on to the grass of the race course and Marina’s mother was there, scolding and using the tablecloth she’d brought to have a picnic on the grass as a towel to dry Marina off.
‘By heck, our Marina, I sometimes think you’ll never grow up. Making a show of me in front of all me relations like that! Do you not know the Wear’s a lot deeper here than it is at Bishop? It would have served you right if you’d drowned – then you’d have been sorry! It was a good thing Charlie was there to save you. Now say thank you to him.’
Marina looked over her shoulder and there was the lad she had already bumped into once today. Charlie? She coughed and spluttered, trying to get rid of the foul taste of river water, and suddenly it came to her. It was Charlie Hutchinson of course, from Yorkshire, the one Mam’s cousin had practically adopted. This was twice in one day she had shown herself up before him and there he was, a superior sort of smile playing about his lips. Well, blow him, she thought and turned away, lifting her nose up in the air and pretending a great interest in Brian, who was standing to one side looking guilty.
‘Oh, Brian,’ she said, looking up into his face with exaggerated concern. ‘You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’
The only trouble was it was hard to get rid of him after that. Kate invited him to share their picnic and everyone pooled their sandwiches and sat around on the grass. The wind dried the wet patches on their clothes, leaving them only grubby, not half as bad as the lads who had had to swim for the bank in their thick suits. Charlie disappeared, probably gone off home disgusted with the behaviour of these common folk, Marina thought.
‘There you are, Rose,’ said a familiar voice. It was Alf Sharpe and Rose suddenly looked even more bedraggled and pale and sick to her stomach. No doubt she had swallowed some water, Marina thought, and then her friend was whisked away by her father without even being allowed time to say goodbye.
After Marina had spread her skirt and dried off a little bit it was time to wend their way up to the cathedral, following the three bands and banners which had been chosen for the service this year. They played ‘Gresford’, the miners’ hymn, willed to the Union by the composer, and Marina was struck dumb by the solemnity of it and the grandeur of the great church of St Cuthbert.
‘Cuthbert’s people, we are,’ asserted Dad, nodding his head. ‘Aye, we’re the real Cuddy’s people, never forget it, lass. Never mind these university folk, it’s the workers that count.’
Marina’s dad was a great labour man. He never forgot the hardships of the depression years, the hard times of the twenties and thirties, and was always talking about them. And the fact that many of the undergraduates of the universities had gone against the workers in the general strike of 1926, rushing to man the buses and such. Not that any had gone so far as to go down the pits, he would add with a grin.
But Marina only half listened to him. She’d heard it so many times before and the thirties were just history now, weren’t they?
Chapter Two
‘I feel real bad, lass,’ said Sarah Sharpe wearily. ‘I haven’t even been able to get up and give the bairns their dinner. And you know all the women were away, there was no one to see to them for me. They had to fend for themselves.’ She lay back on a pillow damp with sweat and sighed.
Rose gazed at her mother guiltily. She really shouldn’t have gone off to Durham, she knew that. But, oh, she had so wanted to have a break, a day out in Durham with everyone else. She glanced at the twins, Mary and Michael, standing together, thumbs stuck in their mouths, both with tear-streaked faces and runny noses, both with jam on their clothes where they had been digging into the jar. No longer crying now that Rose was home, they simply stared at their elder sister, waiting for her to make things better.
‘All right, Mam, I’ll see to them,’ she said. ‘I’ll make some eggy toast. You like eggy toast, don’t you, kids?’
The pair nodded. ‘Can I have two, Rose?’ asked Michael. ‘And Mary wants two, an’ all.’
‘All right. But go and play while I see to our mam and I’ll call you when supper is ready.’
The twins went out into the yard readily enough and Rose heated water and helped her mother to wash before changing her bed. She found a clean nightie for her, brushed her hair back from her forehead and wove it into a plait. Rose remembered it being as black and thick as her own but now it was streaked with grey and thinning rapidly. A wave of anxiety ran through her as she made her mother comfortable, turning her pillows and straightening out her sheets.
‘I’ll start on the supper now. At least I’ll have the bairns to bed before he comes home,’ she remarked. ‘Then they might get off to sleep.’
‘Eeh, Rose, don’t talk about him like that. He loves you really, you know,’ Sarah protested weakly. ‘He is your dad after all.’
‘I do know. The thing is, sometimes I wonder if he does,’ Rose said grimly, but in an undertone to herself as she got out the iron frying pan and put a knob of dripping in it before setting it on the hob. There were four eggs and she considered using them all but Sarah seemed to know what she was thinking.
‘Leave an egg for your dad, he’ll be hungry when he gets in.’
Regretfully, Rose put one egg back in the bowl, though in fact she thought it more likely that her father would be too drunk to eat by the time he finally left the Club and staggered up the road. Weekends were the worst by far, she mused. At least during the week when he had his work at the pit to go to he didn’t drink too much, though he still went down to the Club. But Saturday nights were hellish for her and her mam.
She beat the eggs with salt and pepper and dipped slices of bread in the mixture before frying them in the hot fat.
‘By, it smells nice, mind.’ Sarah’s comment came through from the ‘room’, where her bed had been set up since she found it hard to climb the stairs.
‘Yes, well, I hope you eat it, that’s all,’ Rose replied. She was encouraged, Mam didn’t often show any interest in food these days. She glanced through the connecting door which led from the kitchen. By, her mother looked so white and frail, apart from that lump on her neck. If that was a goitre, like the doctor said, then she was a Dutchman. The feeling of anxiety which had begun rising in her the moment she had turned into the gate was heavy on her now but she smiled at her mother. ‘I’ll call the bairns in,’ was all she said.
If she got them fed and washed and into bed she would be able to follow them upstairs herself before her dad came home, and all three of them would be out of the way of him and there would be no rows or anything else. It was the anything else which loomed before her, filling her with dread.
Lying in bed, tired out but unable to sleep, Rose couldn’t stop thinking about her dad. She remembered how it was before the twins were born. She’d idolised him then. Mam and Dad had been so different. He’d hardly ever gone down to the Club apart from a Friday with his mates and then only for a couple of pints. They’d played games together, she riding on his shoulders when the three of them had gone for a walk. Mam had always been small and slim, like a girl, and had acted like a girl too, playing games with her daughter. They would find a stick and play cricket with Rose’s painted rubber ball and Mam could run like a hare after it. And laughing … she’d always been laughing.
Had it been the twins that changed her? She was often lying about after that, putting on weight, looking bloated for a time. And then she’d gone thin, so thin. Rose turned on to her side restlessly, pushing the sheet back from her overheated body. What was the use of wondering what had gone wrong? Probably things had always been as they were now, she had just been too young to see it. She heard
unsteady footsteps coming up the yard, the back door opening, and turned again in the big double bed to put out a hand to her sister Mary, curled up in a ball beside her. There was a sort of comfort in touching the small body. In the tiny room opposite where Michael slept in a narrow bed which nevertheless took up most of the floor space, the boy coughed but didn’t wake up.
Rose waited, her muscles tense, listening to the noises from downstairs. After a while, the square of light which showed on the landing from the kitchen below went out, the middle door downstairs closed softly. Rose relaxed slowly, for tonight at any rate her dad had gone to bed.
‘I want to stay on at school,’ Marina said to her mother. ‘I want to go to university.’ It was a few weeks later and almost the end of the school holidays.
‘I had to leave school at fourteen and go away to a place in Lancashire,’ replied Kate. She was standing at the table rubbing fat into flour for the pastry crust of the meat pie she was making for dinner, which was at five o’clock today, Sam and Lance being on back shift.
Marina sighed. She’d heard all about how her mother had to go away to work when she was only fourteen but that had been in the bad days of the twenties, for goodness’ sake. She tried again.
‘Mam, you were as pleased as punch when I passed for the grammar school. You knew it meant I would have to stay on longer at school.’
‘You’re staying ’til you’re sixteen, aren’t you? Why, man, you should be able to get a good job in an office then. No scrubbing floors or washing clothes for a living for you.’
Marina tried a different tack. ‘I’d get a grant, you know, if I got into university.’
Kate picked up the jug of water and tipped a little into the pastry mixture. Marina stood by her side and watched as she mixed a while with a blunt knife then tipped more water into the bowl and mixed again. Eventually Kate reckoned she had the right consistency and put down the knife. She mixed and shaped the lump of pastry with her hands before flouring the board and picking up the rolling pin. Marina watched, diverted for a moment or two for when she tried to do it the dough was always too sticky or too dry. And when she asked her mother how much water, Kate never knew. ‘Just ’til it’s right,’ she said. Still, Marina reckoned her mother used about a quarter of a pint. She would remember that next time she tried.
Forgetting about the pastry, Marina returned to the issue of her schooling. ‘Grandma left school when she was nine and went out to work but she didn’t make you do the same, did she, Mam?’
‘Now, Marina, don’t try to argue with me. I’ve told you, you don’t have to leave on your birthday, you can stay on and try for your School Certificate. A lot of girls won’t even be let do that.’
With an air of having said the last word she was going to on the subject, Kate deftly lifted the crust and laid it over the steak and kidney. Marina knew it was a waste of time arguing after that. Feeling frustrated, she began to clear up the baking things and took them into the large pantry, where Dad had recently had a white enamel sink installed. Mam had been so pleased with the sink, she thought as she sluiced the baking board down with cold water. The tap had been moved over from its former place on the back wall and though there was only cold water, it was a tremendous improvement. Before that the washingup had had to be done in a dish on the kitchen table with an old tin tray for a draining board. The present draining board was just a piece of board put up by the plumber but at least it sloped into the sink.
Marina brought hot water from the boiler in the range and began the washing-up proper. By, she thought, it would be lovely to have a proper kitchen like the one in the pre-fab bungalow which Peggy up the street had been allocated by the council. The pre-fabs were from America and not only had proper kitchens and bathrooms but there was a refrigerator in the kitchen too. Oh, luxury! Peggy made ice cream with evaporated milk and had let Marina have a taste one time when she was baby-sitting little Clive, Peggy and Tony’s asthmatic baby, the reason why Peggy had been allocated a pre-fab in the first place. Marina’s tastebuds, starved by the long years of monotonous food in the war, had gone mad. She’d felt it was the nicest thing she had tasted in her life, for she couldn’t remember what things were like before the war, not really. Dad sometimes brought ice cream home from the pit canteen but he worked at Leasingthorne and that was miles away and the ice cream was all runny by the time he got home.
Marina’s sunny nature was restored by the time she had finished the washing-up and wiped down the board and sink. She rinsed out the cloth and hung it over the edge to dry, for though the day was cooler, heralding the coming of the autumn, it was still August and there were germs about, not least from the ash closet at the other end of the yard. She grimaced as she pictured in her mind’s eye the wriggling germs on the slides they had taken turns to look at in science class. And they hadn’t been anything special, either, just everyday germs which Miss Mather said were everywhere!
By, it must be grand to be able to study them in a real laboratory, not just the labs at school. To be able to spend all your days doing that and getting paid for it. Or learning to be a doctor maybe. She would love to be a doctor, though she had never breathed a word about that ambition to anyone, not even Rose. And now, since her friend was working, she seemed more grown up and distant somehow, passing Marina in the street-with only a word and not stopping for a chat as they had always done before. Big Meeting Day had been the exception, Rose had been her old self, then a few days later she’d answered her friend’s greeting with only a mumbled hallo and looked away.
‘How’s your mother?’ Marina had asked, determined to find out what was wrong.
‘A bit better, thanks,’ mumbled Rose, not looking at her. ‘I have to go now, there’s the twins …’ And she had hurried off.
Marina sighed and filled the bucket with water, gathering the slab of yellow soap and scrubbing brush and floorcloth. It was her job to scrub the lavatory seat at the end of the yard and since seeing what germs looked like she tried to find time to do it most days. There’d be just time before the dinner was ready.
Rose did have to pick up Mary and Michael that day, they had to go to the school dentist in Auckland. She had had to take the afternoon off work.
‘How often is this going to happen then?’ Mr Jones had asked grumpily. He was the foreman and always looked grumpy. ‘You know it’ll come off your wages? And who am I going to put on the band in your place?’
‘I’ll work through the dinner hour,’ she said. ‘Anyroad, you know I’m faster than anybody else. I’ll make it up, I promise. Only me mam’s bad, I told you, and somebody has to take the twins to the dentist. I had to put oil of cloves on our Michael’s tooth last night, the poor bairn was crying with it.’
Mr Jones shook his head, but still he let her go when the time came. He wasn’t so bad, the girls on the band agreed.
So here she was running into the infants’ school to pick up the kids and only five minutes to get to the bus to Bishop.
Sitting in the waiting room holding on to Mary so that she didn’t go running into the surgery after her brother, Rose felt she had been running for half the day and the other half she had been sewing furiously, side seam after side seam, so she could get ahead and not have so much to make up tomorrow. Well, at least Mary had stopped struggling now and she could relax. ‘Watch the trees, pet,’ said Rose. ‘Aren’t they bonny now?’
Mary nodded her head and leaned against Rose’s knee while they both watched the leaves, turning russet now, through the tall windows of the old mansion on the high ridge above Auckland. Ninefields, it was called, though it was surrounded by houses, but Rose supposed that when it was built by an ironmaster of long ago, it had been surrounded by fields. Marina had told her that Elgar had stayed there often, being a friend of the ironmaster, and by, she could almost hear his music in the rustle of those trees. She sat back in her chair and stroked Mary’s fine, dark hair, thinking of that long ago time.
A wail from the surgery shattered the m
oment. Mary started to cry. She wanted to go in and see what the nasty man was doing to her brother, but then she didn’t want to go in for the nurse came for her and it was her turn.
‘It’ll only be for a minute or two, Mary,’ Rose promised. ‘If you’re a brave girl I’ll buy you both a paper windmill on the way home. And we’ll go into Rossi’s and you can have lemonade and drink it through a straw.’
‘Michael an’ all?’ the girl stipulated and Rose agreed. And before long they were walking down the hill into the town, the twins short of a back tooth each, but they were milk teeth and would grow again. The dentist had promised Mary they would before she agreed to sit in his chair and let him look in her mouth.
Rossi’s, the coffee shop on the corner, was full of the grammar-school crowd and Rose was lucky to find a booth. But she did and sat in a corner while the twins sucked noisily at their straws, all thoughts of the dentist forgotten. She saw Marina come in with her friends, the girls in bottle-green tunics and the boys in dark red blazers.
Rose felt herself shrink back in the booth instinctively. She didn’t want to be seen in her old work coat for she hadn’t had time to change and knew her hair was in need of washing. She felt decidedly scruffy before the grammar-school crowd. Marina looked like a stranger to her somehow and years younger than she herself, just a bairn really, laughing and carrying on with her mates. Though she came over to them readily as soon as she saw them, beaming a welcome.
‘Hallo, Rose,’ she said. ‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’ she went on, turning to the twins. ‘The dentist isn’t so bad.’ And they looked at her with big eyes over the rims of their lemonade glasses and said nothing, taking their cue from Rose who couldn’t think of anything to say anyway. Which was silly, Marina had been her friend for years, hadn’t she? But now she seemed a world away. After an awkward minute, Marina rejoined her school friends. ‘Well, I’ll see you later, Rose,’ she said. ‘We’ll catch up on the gossip, ah?’