It was strange how silent the child became when his father was around, Rose thought, eating her own meal swiftly so she would be ready to dish up the semolina pudding when Silas had finished his main course. From a tiny baby Jake had seemed to sense his father had no time for him.This had developed into a wariness which kept him as quiet as a mouse in Silas’s presence.
‘That old biddy in New Bridge Avenue cough up for the washing this morning?’
She had been waiting for him to ask from the moment he’d walked through the door. It was always the same. It didn’t matter that oft times this kitchen was as steamy as a laundry with washing strung across the ceiling and the walls running with moisture, or that the mountains of ironing which ensued meant she worked to the early hours, her red hands cracked and swollen. At the heart of him Silas still considered he had a perfect right to her money, especially if he’d had a bad week with the gambling.
Without raising her eyes from her plate, Rose said quietly, ‘Aye, she did. That’s what I bought the mutton with and the flour for the bread. We were right out of everything. Mr Bell dropped round a sack of potatoes an’ all.’
‘A sack? You didn’t need to buy a sack.’
‘They were cheaper that way.’ Harsh experience had taught her to make it look as though every penny had been spent even if she’d hidden a bit away towards the rent. ‘We needed some dripping and marg an’ all, and some lamp oil—’
‘All right, all right, don’t go on.’ He wiped a chunk of bread round his plate to mop up the last of the gravy, stuffed it in his mouth and chewed.
She could feel his eyes on her and knew he was calculating the cost of the food and oil. Her mother’s two half-crowns and shilling safely tucked away, she told herself not to get rattled.When she got rattled she trembled, and when she trembled it brought the fiendish side of him to the fore with a vengeance. It was as though he fed off her fear . . .
She reached across for his empty plate and placed it on hers then took them out to the tiny scullery to be washed later, before taking the milk pudding out of the oven. Spooning half of it into a bowl, she added a good dollop of strawberry jam and put it down in front of Silas, then returned to the range. She still hadn’t looked at him.
‘So it’s all gone then?’
‘What?’ She feigned ignorance.
‘The money, it’s all gone? And stop what you’re doing, woman. I’m talking to you.’
Slowly she turned, Jake’s bowl in her hand. Meeting the eyes that were so dark brown as to be black, she said flatly, ‘Yes, it’s all gone. There was nothing in the house to eat.’
‘Don’t take that tone with me.’
She hadn’t taken any sort of tone and they both knew it. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You will be if I have any of your lip.’
After staring at her for another few seconds he began to shovel the pudding into his mouth. It was only then Rose went and sat in front of the high chair and fed Jake.
She hadn’t finished when Silas said, ‘Leave that and fill the bath, I’m off out in a while. And lay out me other shirt and trousers while you’re about it.’
As she rose to do as he bid, Jake, seeing his food about to disappear, cried out in protest.
‘Shut him up.’
‘He’s still hungry.’
‘I said shut him up. I don’t work all the hours under the sun to come home to him squawking his head off. If you can’t shut him up, I will.’
Hastily Rose pushed into Jake’s hand the half-eaten crust he had been gnawing at before she’d started to feed him the pudding. Her voice soft, she said, ‘Here, eat this, there’s a good lad. Mam’ll see to you in a minute.’ As the chubby fingers closed over the crust, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Once she had filled the tin bath in front of the range she would get Jake to bed and out of the way while Silas had his wash and got ready to go out. No doubt it was the Times Inn in Wear Street he was aiming for rather than the Colliery Tavern where most of the miners had a pint or two after a day’s work down the pit. Being a riverside pub, the Times drew in plenty of seamen, keel and dockside workers as well as men from the shipyards, men with more money in their pockets than miners, men who weren’t averse to gambling the shirts off their backs. Her da had always reckoned the pubs down by the river rivalled Sunderland’s East End with what went on in their murky depths.
Keeping her thoughts to herself, Rose fetched the tin bath from where it was propped against the scullery wall and partially filled it with boiling water from the kettle which she’d refilled and put back on the hob after mashing the tea. She added several buckets of cold water from the communal tap in the backyard until the water was tepid, the way Silas liked it, and placed a ha’penny piece of blue-veined soap on top of the rough sheet of towelling she’d brought through from the scullery.
‘It’s ready.’
Silas was sitting drinking his third cup of tea at the table as she spoke, and as he stood up she gathered Jake into her arms and carried him through to the bedroom.
By feel rather than sight she changed Jake’s nappy and got him into his nightclothes in the dark room. They only had one oil lamp and that was in the kitchen with Silas. Once the child was ready, she sat down on her bed and bared her breast for his last feed of the day. He was now almost completely weaned but she loved these few minutes with him at night, when she was all in all to him and he was held close to her heart.
Within just a short while the dark room and her gentle rocking as he’d fed had worked their spell and he was fast asleep, the small head with its dark loose curls lolling against her arm. She held him for a minute or two more, relishing the baby smell and feel of him and then stood up and carried him over to his cot in a curtained-off section of the room. As with the high chair, the cot had been hers when she was a baby. She tucked the blankets round him and straightened up but did not immediately turn and walk out into the main part of the bedroom to sort out Silas’s change of clothes. Instead she stood for a few moments more, gazing down at her sleeping child.
How often had her own mam done this, looked down into this very same cot at her sleeping baby? she asked herself silently. And with her mam it must have been a bitter-sweet experience knowing she couldn’t have more children. Something had gone very wrong at her birth and the resulting operation had meant further bairns were out of the question. But her mam and da had loved each other; still did. Her da worshipped the ground her mam walked on although he’d never admit it.
Biting her lip against the tears which were always hovering at the back of her eyes these days, Rose bent and stroked the small silky forehead before turning and closing the curtain behind her.
Apart from their brass double bed and Jake’s cot, the room held a narrow wardrobe with a rail one side and box-like shelves the other. Jake’s nappies and the items of clothing her mother had bought for her grandson filled the top two shelves; the rest of the wardrobe contained a change of clothes for herself and Silas, along with their Sunday best.
Quietly Rose sorted out Silas’s spare pair of trousers and shirt, and his Sunday coat and cap. He always left the house clean and tidy when he was going to the Times, and it wasn’t just the gambling that drew him there, she thought bitterly. She wasn’t daft. Several times she had smelt cheap cologne on his clothes when she had put them away the next morning, and no woman but the dockside dollies used that.
She took the clothes through to the kitchen and placed them on Silas’s chair in front of the range to take the chill off them, then laid the vest and long johns he’d discarded on top. His work shirt and trousers she carried into the backyard where she banged them against the wall for a minute or two, filling the icy air with a cloud of black dust. She left them folded in the scullery and she opened the kitchen door, hoping Silas would have finished his bath by now.
‘Come and wash my back.’ He looked up as she entered the room, his handsome face sullen. ‘You could have seen to me work clothes later.’
Yes, she could. Keeping all expression from her face, Rose took the piece of flannel he held out with the soap and walked behind him. Holding her revulsion in check, she attempted to work up a lather on the flannel - no mean feat with the soap the slaughterhouse sold as a sideline - and then bent and scrubbed at the narrow back. His skin was pitted in places with the blue-black indentations the coal left on human flesh, his knobbly knees callused and stained from working in some of the coal seams where the roof was too low to even crawl and men had to move snakelike on their stomachs.
The sight invoked no pity in Rose. Would a bird pity the hawk that had the ability and will to tear it limb from limb? It merely increased the feeling of uncleanness any contact with him, however slight, brought to her body.
Once she had finished washing his back she rinsed away the suds with bath water already coated with a film of black grime and then turned away, drying her hands on her apron. When Silas had left the house she would bucket the bath water away, scrub out the tub and return it to its place in the scullery, propped against the wall.
By the time Silas was ready to leave the house, Rose was sitting at the kitchen table darning a pair of socks. She heard the jingle of coins in his pocket and wondered how much he was going to lose that night. Dully, and without looking up, she said, ‘We’re six weeks behind with the rent.’
‘So?’
‘I was just saying. Fairley said he wants it this week and something off the back an’ all. He was threatening the bums last week.’
‘Fairley can threaten all he likes.’
‘He . . . he means it, Silas. Since he took over from Vickers he’s had more than one family put out on the streets. And,’ she paused, breathing hard, ‘and he said to tell you he’s checked with the colliery and knows you’ve been in work the past months.’
Silas made a sudden movement and Rose flinched, her voice a gabble when she said, ‘I’m only telling you what he said to say, that’s all.’
‘Aye.’ It was a low growl. ‘Well, you’ve told me now.’ He stood without moving, watching her, and Rose began to tremble in spite of herself, her fingers tightening on the sock until her knuckles shone white.When she couldn’t stand it a second more she raised her eyes to his. Without seeming to move a muscle of his face, he said, ‘I’ll deal with you when I get back.’
‘I didn’t mean anything, Silas, honest,’ she whispered pitifully.
He stared at her for another endless moment, then a slow smile spread across his face. His voice soft and thick now, he said, ‘When I get back, Rose,’ nodding his head to emphasise the quietly spoken threat.
Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her sick with dread.
Chapter 2
The next morning when Silas had gone to work and Jake was still fast asleep, huddled under his blankets in the icy bedroom like a baby animal in its burrow, Rose stood at the kitchen window staring out into the backyard they shared with four other houses. She watched one or two women come with their buckets to the tap. The first one went away again and returned with a piece of burning paper which she pushed up the spout to melt the ice so she could get a trickle of water going. Mrs Ducksworth from two doors up disappeared into the privy with her bucket of ashes and scrubbing brush, it being her turn to clean it, and emerged far too quickly to have done a proper job. Mind, the scavengers were due the day and the week’s accumulation of waste must be nearly up to the long wooden seat by now and stinking to high heaven.
These thoughts and many others moved around the perimeter of Rose’s mind but without really touching the core of it, the part that was numb with the agonies her body and spirit had suffered the night before. Once she had been sure Silas was finally asleep, she had crept into the kitchen and washed away the blood and stickiness with lukewarm water left in the kettle. Then she had gone into the scullery where the bucket full of ice-cold water was waiting for morning and had perched on that in an effort to numb the pain. All night long, as she had lain rigid and still at the side of him, she’d told herself she couldn’t go on. She would go to her mam’s, tell them everything. Her mam could look after Jake during the day and she could get a job so the pair of them weren’t a burden on her parents. Her old room was still vacant; many times her mam had talked of taking a lodger but her da hadn’t liked the idea.
How long she stood there before she heard Jake begin to stir she didn’t know. It could have been minutes or hours, such was the state of her mind. But when she walked into the bedroom and drew back the curtain from around the cot, her son was standing with his arms already lifted to her and it broke the trance-like stupor. She gathered him into her arms and held him so tightly he began to wriggle in protest.
‘Oh, Jake, Jake . . .’ Swaying back and forth and with tears streaming down her face, she nuzzled her chin into the dark-brown curls. She couldn’t leave Silas, and not just because she was terrified of what her da would do if he discovered what had been going on. Silas would come after her, he wouldn’t have her making him a laughing stock, which is how he would look at her going. And knowing him as she did, he would claim the child just to spite her if she didn’t go back to him. That, or worse. She wouldn’t put anything past him. And whereas it didn’t matter what he did to her, if he hurt Jake . . .
Taking the child through to the warmth of the kitchen, she placed him in his high chair with his pap bottle of milk while she divided the last of the porridge she’d made earlier for Silas into two bowls.
People had no idea what Silas was like. His mam and da and brothers had a reputation for being rough and ready and well known to the law, but she could have coped with that if he had been kind to her. And she didn’t mind his family, not really, even if they did swear and fight and carry on something awful. They weren’t like him. He was . . . inhuman, fiendish. Beneath that handsome face and the charm he could turn on and off like a tap, something was terribly wrong, but she knew no one would believe her if she said. No one except her mam and da, that was. Oh, what was she going to do?
It began to snow heavily mid-morning, the sky so low and heavy it seemed to rest on the rooftops. The daughter of one of the women Rose washed for had delivered two big bags of soiled laundry just after breakfast. When she had got the boiler going in the wash house in the yard it took some violent scrubbing and pummelling and plenty of work with the poss stick to get the stains out. Eventually the washing was hung from wall to wall in the kitchen and she sat down at the table for a cup of tea, her back breaking and her hands aching so much she found it difficult to hold the cup.
The weather worsened during the afternoon, a thin wind moaning against the window as it rattled the glass and drove the snow further and further up the pane until it was impossible to see out. Jake had developed a cough during the day, whether the result of the damp atmosphere due to the steaming washing she wasn’t sure, but her worry about him took her mind off her own physical condition. By the time Silas returned home, Jake was already in bed, having missed his afternoon nap due to his cough, and for this Rose was thankful. Silas had no patience with illness of any kind. She had already planned to bring the child into the kitchen if he woke during the night, lest his coughing should disturb and anger his father.
She was dreading Silas’s homecoming, but in the event it was something of an anti-climax. He demanded his bath immediately he walked in the door and left the house again within the hour in spite of the foul weather, having gobbled down his dinner in record time. She knew the signs. He had a special game on, something he wasn’t about to miss come hell or high water. He rarely won and if he did she never saw any of his winnings, although once or twice in the very early days of their marriage he had flung her enough money to clear any back rent.
Since Silas was out, she was able to get on with the ironing and fold the laundry away ready to deliver first thing the next morning. She’d just walked into the kitchen after putting the flat iron on the scullery shelf to cool when she heard Jake start coughing and soon he was crying
for her. She carried the baby through into the warmth of the kitchen, sitting him on her lap and soothing him by singing gently when he refused a drink. He quietened after a while although his cough was still bothering him and when she placed her hand on his little back she could feel the phlegm gurgling. She would buy a pot of goose grease to rub on in the morning, she promised herself, and perhaps a camphor block too. It would mean less money for Fairley when he called but she couldn’t help that. Hopefully she would still have sufficient to pay this week’s rent along with something off the back, maybe even a couple of weeks’ worth.
On impulse she stood up with Jake in her arms and walked over to her hidey-hole, mentally calculating the price of the goose grease and camphor as she removed the brick and felt inside for the pile of coins. And she was standing like that, Jake in the crook of one arm and her other hand fumbling for the money when the kitchen door swung open and Silas walked in.
Rose froze, petrified with fear. Perhaps if she had been able to think she might have salvaged something from the impending disaster. As it was, her terror at Silas’s sudden appearance robbed her of the ability to move or reason.
Above the Harvest Moon Page 2