The Harrogate Secret (aka The Secret)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Not a word of greeting; we mightn’t be here.’

  He turned and looked at his grandmother, then said, ‘Hello, Granny.’

  ‘Oh, he’s seen me and he’s just asked how I am an’ how I managed to get across that flaming river; and would I like some of those herrin’ he’s holdin’ to take back home with me, and one of the oranges an’ all.’

  As he handed the fish to his mother, he said, ‘Mr Johnson gave me these, Ma, and’—he glanced now at his father sitting against the wall—‘he said he’d be along later to see you, Da.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. That’s nice.’

  ‘You haven’t been to the shop then?’ His mother spoke directly to him for the first time, and he shook his head and said, ‘No, Ma. I…I wasn’t feelin’ like it.’

  ‘My God in heaven! Did you ever hear anythin’ like that?’

  All eyes were on his grandmother now. She, like her daughter, was a tall woman, but that, apparently, was the only resemblance between them. She was wearing a black skirt and a blue-striped blouse. He could see it through her open knee-length bead cape that matched her bonnet. Besides her voice, her presence seemed to fill the room. His mother was now saying to her, ‘Will you have a drop of broth, Ma?’

  ‘Broth it is. Well, I could have got that at home, but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  He looked at his mother and she looked at him and he smiled inwardly at the thought that she wasn’t bringing out the ham shank, nor the butter and cheese and white bread. ‘Who gave you the oranges?’ she said, and held her hand out for the fruit that was lying along the crook of his arm.

  ‘A fella on a boat,’ but he didn’t offer them to her; instead he said, ‘I’m keepin’ these for the bairns, Ma.’

  ‘Oh, aye, aye.’ As his mother nodded to him her mother, addressing her granddaughter, said, ‘Did y’hear that? He’s keepin’ the fruit for the bairns; no, can he, Ma? or, we’ll share, Ma.’ The old woman now looked towards her son-in-law, saying, ‘Who’s boss in this house anyway?’

  And his father infuriated her more when he answered, ‘Oh, he is, has been this long while.’

  ‘It’s no joke, but would seem so,’ she said.

  His father winked at him and the look in his eyes said, Come on, laugh at her; but he couldn’t laugh at his granny; her joking was always pointed and hurtful for somebody. And he turned and walked from the room now and into the bedroom, and there, lifting the lid of a wooden trunk that held their clothes and was set between the girls’ beds, he put the two whole oranges in the corner. Then closing the lid again he laid the squashed one on the top and sat down beside it.

  He hadn’t been sitting long before his mother came into the room and, closing the door quietly after her, she went to the small window and pulled the curtain a little to the side to let more light in. Then coming to him, she bent over him, saying, ‘You all right now?’

  ‘Aye, Ma.’

  ‘Really? Better than you were?’

  ‘Aye, Ma.’

  She now put her hand on his shoulder and in a conspiratorial voice murmured, ‘I’m not fetchin’ out that food while they are here no matter how long they stay. What d’you say?’

  He smiled back at her, saying, ‘You’re right, Ma.’

  ‘We’ll have a do when they’re gone, eh? By the way, she’s just lost her husband…Lizzie. She’s come to live with your granny, and the bairn’s only six weeks. It won’t last if you ask me; ’cos there’s trussin’ and trussin’ an’ bindin’ an’ bindin’. I wouldn’t like to give a guess when she last changed it. She looks a lazy little bitch to me. Anyway, come on and be pleasant. It was nice of Mr Johnson to give you the fish. And you say he’s comin’?’

  ‘Aye, Ma.’

  ‘And there wasn’t a run last night?’

  ‘No, Ma.’

  ‘Well, he must have something. It’ll please your da. Come on now.’

  ‘I will in a minute, Ma.’

  She straightened up, then stood looking down on him for a moment before going out. And he sat on, thinking. He thought about Miss Hewitt—he no longer said Maggie in his mind—and her house and the way she talked. His thinking seemed concerned only with the way she talked and what she talked about. She was clever was Miss Hewitt. By, yes, he would say she was clever…and different, different from them out there.

  He didn’t question whether he was including his mother and father in ‘them out there’.

  Three

  Three weeks later Miss Hewitt came to the house. She came because she hadn’t seen Freddie on the quay for more than a week.

  Jinny had been about to leave the house; she had got set on at the rope works half-day, one o’clock till seven; but when the knock came on the door and she opened it and was confronted by a slight-figured, neatly, even smartly, dressed, woman whom she and everybody in the town knew as Maggie Hewitt, sometimes prefixed with Miss, her jaw dropped.

  ‘Mrs Musgrave?’

  ‘Aye, that’s me.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  Jinny glanced back into the room where Robert was sitting on the floor, a bundle of shavings to his side as he whittled away at the leg of a chair. He’d had a stroke of luck. Buckhams, who had the shop in Saddle Street, had given him an order for three chairs. It was the first time for years it had happened. Lily was sitting on the mat playing with her clouty doll, and Freddie was in bed in the other room. But what did this one want?

  She soon said what she wanted once she had stepped into the room: ‘I…I haven’t seen your son for some days. Has…has he gone away?’

  ‘No. No, ma’am; he’s…he’s been sick.’

  ‘Sick? Ill? What has been wrong?’

  ‘It was his stomach, ma’am. But he’s on the mend now.’ She nodded towards the bedroom. ‘He’ll be up and about in a day or two.’

  The two women stared at each other for a moment: Jinny trying to weigh up this woman who spent her time on the waterfront doing business with men and who spoke like a lady and almost dressed as one, except that her clothes were plain, no frills or laces. But what did she want with her lad? She had never heard Freddie mention the woman’s name. She saw her looking now towards Robert, and Robert was saying, ‘Good day to you, ma’am.’

  ‘Good day, Mr Musgrave. I see you know how to carve.’

  ‘I’m a carpenter, ma’am. ’Twas my trade; still is.’

  ‘Did you make this furniture?’ Miss Hewitt looked around the room at the table, the chairs, the small sideboard, the carved wooden mantelpiece upon which were four brass candlesticks and all shining, and apparently not used for the purpose for which they were made, for there was a tin candle holder at each end of the shelf. There was no sign of a lamp in the room; they must still depend on candles.

  ‘Will you take a seat?’ Jinny pulled the chair from under the table, and as she did so Lily rose from the mat and stumbled towards her, only to be checked by her mother, saying, ‘Play with your doll, Lily; that’s a good lass.’ And obediently the child returned to the mat.

  ‘I meant to come and see you before this, at least after I’d found out if your son was agreeable to my proposition.’

  After I’d found out if your son was agreeable to my proposition. Jinny threaded the words through her mind. Whatever it was this woman was proposing she was going to talk to Freddie about it first. But she listened to her as she went on: ‘You see, I need a gardener and someone who can do odd jobs,’ she was saying. ‘I have two acres of land on the outskirts of the town and it is very badly overgrown. It hasn’t been seen to for more than a year. The man who attended to it died and I’ve never bothered engaging anyone since. But I understood your son was looking for new employment and I wondered if you would be agreeable to his taking on the position?’

  ‘Gardener?’ It was Robert speaking. ‘He knows nowt about gardenin’, miss. Doubt if he’s ever been in one; not many gardens round here.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, Mr Musgrave. But there are gardens round about, and th
ere’s only one gardener in the town; that is Mr Blyton of Union Street, and he is fully occupied.’

  ‘I don’t know whether he’d take to it, ma’am.’ Jinny’s voice was stiff. ‘He’s been used to the shore and the quay front all his life. Boats are more in his line.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps. But if he was willing, would you agree to his taking on the position? I can offer him at the beginning three shillings a week together with his food. The hours would be eight till six in the summer and nine till four in the winter. And, as I’ve indicated, his wage will rise according to his capacity for the work.’

  According to his capacity for the work. What was surprising Jinny as much as anything was the way this one talked. She had heard she could swear like a trooper and handle men no matter what their class or size. But what was she saying? Three shillings a week and his food and a rise if he was worth it. And he’d be worth it because he’d put his heart into any job he was doing, even the butchery. That’s why they wanted him round there. And that’s why that pig of a man had given him that lump of meat; he was never the one to give lumps of meat away. And it had been rotten. She knew when she was cooking it, it was rotten. They’d all had diarrhoea for days, but it had hit Freddie worst of all. Eeh, dear God! She thought she had lost him, yes she did. That morning around three o’clock she thought she had lost him, and if he had gone the spark would have gone out of her life. She had weathered Robert and his useless legs; she had weathered Mary, Joe and Harry going; and she had just about weathered Billy dying, after getting him up to eight years old, too; but if Freddie had gone, oh no, she couldn’t have stood that. And here was this woman offering him a position as a gardener. Funny that, to think of Freddie being a gardener when his main object in life was to be a cobbler. No; not a cobbler, a shoemaker.

  ‘Do you think I could see him for a moment?’

  Jinny paused, then said, ‘Well, yes. And he’s not ’fectious.’

  ‘Oh, that wouldn’t trouble me if he were infectious; I’ve got a leather hide that germs can’t penetrate.’ She smiled from one to the other; and Robert smiled back at her, but Jinny didn’t smile, she led the way into the bedroom, saying, ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

  Freddie was lying propped up against two bare pillow ticks, and at the sight of Miss Hewitt he pulled himself up straight for a moment from the pillows before sinking back, and he looked from the visitor to his mother who was saying to Miss Hewitt, ‘I’ll bring you a chair.’

  He continued to stare at the woman standing at the foot of the shakey-down. She looked tall from this angle, and it was as if she had gone back into one of the dreams he had been having about her, the latest only last night when she had been captain of that big sailing ship. He had watched her take it up the river. He had stood to her side as she turned the wheel, and the sails had billowed, and the shantyman had sung as they rounded the sandbanks. But there she was, and his mother was placing a chair for her, saying, ‘I meself have got to leave, ma’am; I’m due at me work.’

  ‘Oh, are you working?’

  ‘Yes, at the ropery.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Well, undoubtedly we’ll be seeing more of each other in the future, Mrs Musgrave, at least I hope so.’

  There she was smiling again, but his mother gave her no return smile or answer but turned about and went out; and they were left together, and Miss Hewitt did her best not to wrinkle her nose against the smell in the room. It wasn’t the stench as in some houses she had been in, but it certainly reeked of humanity in all its processes.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had been ill.’

  ‘It wasn’t the plague or anythin’.’

  ‘No, so I understand. What caused it, do you know?’

  ‘Aye, rotten meat.’

  She clicked her tongue, then said, ‘I’ve been looking out for you.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I want to offer you a position.’

  ‘Me? Runnin’ for you?’

  ‘No, not running for me. I don’t need that kind of a runner. Anyway, once what they call the Free Trade Bill gets passed that’ll put a stop to your running. There’ll be no need for it. Yet’—she shook her head—‘there are those who do it for the excitement, like Peter Morley. You remember him?’

  Yes; he remembered Peter Morley. They caught him ’cos he had been too cocksure liftin’ a cask from the river in the early dawn. A daft thing to do. He’d been manacled by the neck in the cellar of the customs house. They kept him there for a week before they took him to Newcastle. He was in the House of Correction now, and lucky to be there some said; a year or so back and it could have been Australia.

  She was saying, ‘How would you like to be my gardener, and see to my glasshouse and maintenance about the house itself?’

  He jerked in the bed. ‘Me? Gardener? I couldn’t be a gardener, I know nowt about plants and things.’

  ‘I suppose you can use a shovel and dig?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, that would be your first job, clearing the vegetable garden that is all overrun and the brushwood from the grounds. And by the time you have finished that you will have learned that the first stages in gardening are digging, weeding and sweating; knowledge will follow…three shillings a week, your food and moderate hours. What about it?’

  As he stared at her the butcher’s shop receded into the past, but the boot shop did not follow immediately. He saw the plate glass window: just such a one as he had seen in Newcastle, the only time he had been there. And behind were rows and rows of beautiful shoes and boots and gaiters, and leggings, and the colours rose from black to all shades of brown. There was even a pair of white doeskin slippers, at the very front, made to fit a bairn.

  She could see his mind working, weighing up the pros and cons of the proffered situation.

  ‘I can’t start till next week,’ he said; ‘me legs are rocky.’

  She looked at him for almost thirty seconds before she said, ‘That’ll be all right. Leave it longer if you must. The weeds have stopped growing anyway, and so you can work in the conservatory to begin with.’

  ‘In the what?’

  ‘The glasshouse. Didn’t you notice it? It begins at the side of the house and runs its full length and has doors into the sitting room and dining room. Oh, of course’—she nodded now and her smile widened—‘you came on business that day, business only.’

  This caused him to look towards the door and he wagged his hand at her, whispering now, ‘They don’t know I went along to you.’

  Her voice was as low as his. ‘They don’t?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  She drew in a short breath before saying, ‘Of course you’re right. I’m very dim about some things. You couldn’t tell them.’

  She wasn’t dim, she could never be dim, but she had thought he must have mentioned her in some way to his ma and da.

  ‘You wouldn’t have a job for two of us, would you?’

  The look on her face expressed surprise and slight indignation. ‘What!’ she said. ‘Two of you? What do you mean?’

  ‘Me brother John. He works down the pit, I told you, but he’d give one eye and a thumb to be out of it. He rarely sees daylight he says, ’cept Sundays, and then he’s so tired he sleeps half the time.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I can do nothing for your brother’—she paused—‘as yet.’ Now she gave a sort of chuckle and, leaning forward, she said mischievously, ‘You’re sure there’s no other member of the family you want to put into business?’

  Although he knew she was joking he answered her seriously, saying, ‘No. Our Nell’s married and set, and Nancy’s goin’ on the concerts again, singin’. She got two shillings last time and she’s singin’ in the Methodist Chapel come Sunday. She won’t get paid for that though.’

  ‘No, I’m sure she won’t get paid for that. She’s the blind one, isn’t she?’

  ‘Aye. And Jessie’s only four, but works for her ke
ep; she hauls more wood up than many twice her size.’

  He saw her body shaking and when she said, ‘As yet the baby is unemployed?’ his face went into a wide grin as he said, ‘Aye, you could say that.’

  She stood up now, saying, ‘Well, that’s settled. You can start on Monday if you’re able; if you’re not I shall understand.’ She put a hand out as if to touch his head, then drew it back; and she had reached the door when he stopped her by saying, ‘I…I can still do me runnin’ at night.’ It was both a statement and a question, and she looked at him across the dim room for a moment, her face straight now as she said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘I want to. I…I mus…’

  She’d had the latch in her hand but she didn’t open the door, she kept it pressed closed as she said softly, ‘You were going to say, you must. Does that mean someone’s got something on you? You’ve done something?’

  ‘No, no; I haven’t.’ There was a hiss in his voice. ‘I didn’t mean nowt; I just meant I want to do it.’

  She looked away towards the small window where the piece of curtain obscured most of the light and she said slowly, ‘Well, if you want to do it, you must do it, but not in my time.’ And on this she went out.

  If he wanted to do it he must do it. He didn’t want to do it, not any more. It had somehow been fun up till a few weeks ago. And from what his da said there had been no run since then, well, not from this side, at least round about. But then nobody knew what went on across at South Shields or up the river. They said the Newcastle lot were well organised; and of course they would be ’cos all the boats had to dock there first. But what had she meant about this free trade?