The Harrogate Secret (aka The Secret)

by Catherine Cookson

  He stopped here, and they looked at each other for some seconds before she said quietly, ‘You fishing?’

  ‘Fishing? What would I hope to catch?’

  ‘Well, talking of catching, I’m going to ask you again, what are you going to do about May Harper? Now, now! Don’t get up, and don’t evade the question.’ Her hand was wagging towards him. ‘You know how I feel about May, always have done, but you should do the right thing, either marry her or give her up. It’s five years now you’ve been dangling with her, and a little bird tells me she gets very nasty at times.’

  ‘Your little bird wants its beak slapped, if not glued up.’

  ‘You can’t stop people talking, Freddie.’ Her voice was quiet now. ‘I said when you became engaged to her, such as it is without a ring, she wasn’t for you; you’ve moved out of her world; you’ve risen and you’re going on rising. Now, there is a vacancy coming up in the Tynemouth Council shortly, but can you imagine her acting as the wife of a councillor?’

  He was on his feet now looking down at her, his face grim. ‘Maggie, this is one thing I’ll make me own mind up about. She’s a good lass; she has her faults, haven’t we all, but she’s no more dying for marriage than I am.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk so bloody soft!’ She had sprung out of the chair, almost upsetting the little table on which was the tray and the empty glass. ‘She’s been ready for marriage since she was fourteen, that one, when she was skitting up the alleys after you. She took up with two or three others, as you know, to try to draw you on and got a name for herself, so much so that nobody would touch her, not for a wife, that is. Then, God knows why, because I don’t, you take up with her when you could have had the pick of most of the town.’

  His voice was unusually calm as he said, ‘Pick of most of the town? Don’t talk rubbish, Maggie! It’s only over the last few years that even you have been considered fit to sail through the brass-studded doors of the—huh!—so-called gentry up the bank. As for me, all your training and polishing couldn’t get me in. It was only as my sister’s escort when she was singing at one of their soirées that I got past the door.’

  ‘All right, all right, that may be so’—her voice too was quiet now—‘but things have changed over the last three years, and they’ll go on changing rapidly from now on, and it’s up to you to take advantage of it. You’ve got a head on your shoulders, you’re well read. I’ll say you’re better read than any other man in this town, or up the river to Newcastle. And who knows more than you of what actually goes on in Parliament today. Half of them don’t know the name of the Prime Minister. Palmerston, they’ll say, who’s he? Even those who are paying taxes through Gladstone wouldn’t know he’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So now I’m coming out in the open, Freddie, and I’ll say this once and for all, you marry May and you might as well go back to the time you were a runner. I hate to put it so bluntly, but there it is. What is more she doesn’t like me and I don’t like her; we both know where we stand, and you’re in the middle.’ As she turned and went towards the door he said quietly, ‘Maggie, I’m sorry; but I can’t see a way out.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry too, lad.’ She had the door handle in her hand when she paused and looked over her shoulder at him and said, ‘By the way, don’t hurry back here the night, I’m all right on me own.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.

  ‘Please yourself.’

  He turned now and put his two hands on the mantelshelf and looked into the mirror above it. The light from the lamp behind him made his grey eyes look dark and his thick fair hair that fell below his ears take on a brown reddish tint. His full large mouth was set tight and his chin appeared knobbled with the thoughts passing through his mind.

  She had said he might as well go back to being a runner. Had he ever been a little runner, a tiny mite of a thing? His mother said he was still a mite at fourteen. But after he had got up after that long spell in bed with fever, he had seemed to sprout like a beanpole and remain as thin as a beanpole. He couldn’t recall when he had stopped growing. But there was a time, he remembered, when he feared he would grow too tall. It wouldn’t have mattered so much, he had told himself, if he had grown broad with it, but his growing had come to a halt when he was just about six foot tall.

  It wasn’t until he was twenty that he realised that clerking all day and learning most nights didn’t give a man strength to combat the quay prowlers, or even to row up to Newcastle in a sculler, so he had done something about it. When he started to run the hills first thing in the morning Maggie said he would kill himself by getting another fever. And when he took up Swedish drill exercises she said he was mad. But that was nothing to the opinion she expressed when he joined a boxing club, but not in the town or across the water in South Shields, no, in Newcastle. And what a waste she had said, and still said, because it hadn’t put an ounce of flesh on him, muscles, yes, here and there, but you couldn’t really notice them.

  He stepped back from the fireplace and stood gazing down into the fire for a moment before turning about and going upstairs and into his own room…his own room because for years now he had spent more time in it than he had done in his own home. Which fact caused his mother to show her spleen at times, although she had everything to thank Maggie for, such as a better house. It had three rooms and a separate kitchen, besides which it had a patch of garden with a workshop at the bottom of it in which his father spent most of his days. There was only Nancy at home now, for John had been married these six years. He was the father of twin boys and had a position as an under-gardener in an estate outside Westoe village across the water. Jessie, now twenty-three, had been in service in Durham since she was fifteen. She was with a good family and they were kind to her. She had though, at least so he felt, cut away from her own family for there were times when she didn’t come home on her leave days.

  Lily had died at four years old, another victim of the fever.

  The move from the row to Bing Cottage had taken place only a matter of weeks following his mother’s position of part-time housekeeper to Miss Hewitt, and it had caused a bit of a sensation. As his mother said, she’d have to live it down because no longer did she go to the centre of the town to the main tap to get her water, for there was a tap laid on near the house. She really did miss her daily trot with the bucket and her conflab with the women of the town, but because apparently she had gone up in the world she had lost a lot of her old friends. The bitterest against them had been their neighbours, the Harper family, that was until Freddie took up with May and then everybody seemed to be happy, for a short time at least.

  Freddie now got into a Melton cloth greatcoat, then took from a cupboard a high-topped hat and a pair of calfskin gloves, and went downstairs.

  When he opened the front door, he did not immediately go out but, donning his hat and stuffing the gloves into his pocket, he took up a taper from the jar that stood beside the oil lamp on a marble-topped table to the side of the door. And he lit it, shielded the flame with his hand, went out onto the step, lit first the wall lamp, then, bending down, he set flame to the wick of the glass-covered lantern standing on the side of the step. This done, he blew out the taper, returned it to the jar, put on his gloves, went out and closed the door and, picking up the lantern, he walked down the path, out of the gate and onto the road. It was necessary to have a lantern for this end of the town because it was not yet, as was the main thoroughfare, lit by gas.

  It was a routine he had followed literally hundreds of times over the past winters and he looked upon it as all part of his life with Maggie. Since that day she had sent him to school, except for the time he spent in bed with the fever, he had been with her every day of the year, Sundays included; and he had slept in her house until now it was his home, more so than Bing Cottage. Oh, yes, much more so, although he would never dare to voice it.

  He did not, as once had been his custom when he reached the end of the narrow road, drop down over the cinder bank and make his way past th
e Low Lights along the quays, then up the steps to home. Instead, he turned abruptly left, went up another bank and crossed the old coach road that led to Newcastle and on to an open piece of countryside on which were scattered a number of houses now distinguishable by the diffused light from behind curtained windows.

  Within minutes he was going up a short garden; but before he reached the door it opened and there silhouetted against the light stood Nancy.

  ‘Where you off to?’ he said.

  For answer she said, ‘Oh, hello there, Freddie. You’re late. I’ve been waiting for you. I’m going along to see the Twaites.’

  ‘The Twaites, is it?’ he said. ‘And what about Rob?’

  ‘Oh, Freddie, don’t be silly.’

  ‘All right, I’m silly. You’re going to see the Twaites but give Rob my regards; he’ll likely be on the lookout for you.’

  ‘What’s kept you? I’ve wanted to talk to you about tomorrow. You know we’ll have to leave here at six o’clock sharp. You’ll bring Belle?’

  ‘That’s if she wants to come.’

  ‘Of course she’ll want to come. Stuck in a girls’ school all this time, she’ll be like a bird let out of a cage.’

  He made no answer to this, but he thought, Yes. Yes, perhaps you’re right, Nancy. She will act like a bird let out of a cage. And she’ll be more than frustrated, having been kept at that school for another year when she had hoped Maggie would let her leave when she was sixteen.

  ‘Come in or stay out, but close the door; the wind’s raisin’ your mother’s skirts.’ They both laughed at their father’s voice; then he said, ‘Don’t worry; I’ll be here at half past five. Go on; but mind how you go.’

  Her voice sinking to a whisper, she said, ‘It’s you who had better take that warnin’, our Freddie. May’s been round an’ she didn’t sound pleasant. She expected you to be here an hour ago. I told her you were likely staying on with Miss Hewitt because she wasn’t very well. But then I think I said the wrong thing there. Anyway, I wouldn’t dither in the house too long. Bye.’

  ‘Bye, Nancy.’

  He stepped straight into the living room and closed the door behind him. His father was sitting in a low hide-padded chair to the side of a roaring fire. He looked comfortable but old. His mother too was waiting beside the fire, but further back from it, and she was busily turning the heel of a sock. Glancing up at her tall son, she said, ‘You’ve got here then?’

  ‘Now don’t you start. Let me get in, and my coat off.’ He had already taken his hat off.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you, lad.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Da?’

  ‘May’s not long gone.’

  ‘So I understand. Nancy told me. But why all the fuss; I never keep to time, not strictly speaking.’

  ‘Well, apparently you should. An’ you know you disappointed her on Sunday.’

  ‘Well, what did you expect me to do, Da? Leave Maggie on her own and her almost coughing her guts out?’

  ‘She should see about that chest of hers.’

  ‘Well, she’s like you, Da, she’s mutton-headed and stubborn and she doesn’t like doctors. So you’ve got that much in common.’

  ‘How was she when you left her?’

  He turned to his mother now. ‘Not too bad, except her temper was a little frayed.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh, this and that and the other. You know her.’

  ‘Is she looking forward to tomorrow and having Miss Belle on her hands from now on?’

  ‘Well, she’s looking forward to having her home. But what d’you mean by on her hands? I would say there’s what is known as an inference in your tone.’

  ‘You can leave your book learnin’ outside the door, lad; you know what I mean. That lass is goin’ to prove a handful. And Miss Maggie is goin’ to find herself gettin’ tired with her about the place day after day. It was all right when she came home for holidays. She got everybody tuned up, as our Nancy would say, and hit the high notes, but you can’t go on livin’ on the top of high notes. And have you thought about her future an’ what’s gona happen if she wants to get married or such?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, Ma. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with me.’

  His tone was more than testy; and his mother now brought the three needles of the heel into line, stuck the fourth needle through the leg, then placed the sock on her lap before saying, ‘Got nothin’ to do with you, you say? You turning stupid all of a sudden? Why, in my eyes you could have almost fathered her. All right, all right, I said almost. That’s a funny thing to say but that’s how I see it: from what went on she wouldn’t have survived very much longer if you hadn’t lifted her that night. I can still see the sight her poor little body was in. And what you seem to forget, lad—’ and now, lowering her voice and inclining her head deeply towards him, she said, ‘You’re the only one who knows the true facts of her beginning. What Miss Maggie an’ me knows was just hearsay but you were there from the time she was born. And you might have forgotten some things but it’s my bet that one day, an’ not too far into the future either, you’ll likely be called on to remember because you’ll be the only one who can. Those three servants have disappeared as if from the face of the earth. You said the daughter came and had a word with you; well, that’s over fourteen years gone, to my reckoning. I also reckon that because they were makin’ for Scotland they had greased their palms afore they left the house an’ God knows to what extent. They said Scotland, but likely enough to take them across the water out of the country to Canada or the Americas. So when you stand there, lad, an’ say her life has nothin’ to do with you, I say think again.’

  ‘You finished, Ma?’

  ‘Yes, for the present.’

  ‘Ta…thanks, and looking back over the last hour or so I seem to have run the gauntlet in one way or another; and so now I think I’ll go and find a little solace in the Harper family.’

  A smothered laugh from his father brought him around to ask, ‘You find that funny, Da?’

  ‘Aye, lad; aye, I find it funny after the way May went out of that door a while ago. Aye, I do, I find it funny.’

  ‘Ah well, forewarned is forearmed, Da, so here I go.’ He now picked up his hat, bent over his mother and flicked his thumb against her cheekbone, then said, ‘I’ll give you all the news of the battle in the mornin’, Ma; that’s if you arrive on time because I’ll be setting off for Newcastle shortly after eight.’

  She made no reply, just slanted her glance sideways at him, but his father, still laughing, said, ‘Goodnight, lad. Mind how you go. Swing your lantern well ’cos someone was attacked by a footpad the night afore last up your way. Time they had lights up there.’

  ‘All right, Da, I’ll swing it, and I’ll swing it off their heads if the opportunity arises.’

  Going out the door he called loudly, ‘Goodnight to you, Mrs Musgrave,’ and his father’s high laughter followed him.

  But once on the road again he didn’t bother swinging his lantern wide but walked slowly and steadily towards Jimmy Harper’s house.

  The Harpers too had moved from the row but not into such a salubrious part of the town as his parents. In fact it was a house merely higher up the same hill, still with two rooms but with an attic and a wash-house. Jimmy Harper was still a keelman and his son Mick, now a tough loud-mouthed stubby built man, was his partner. Mick had been married these past ten years and had added to his family each year, and all had miraculously survived in a two-roomed shanty lower down the hill. So there remained at home only May.

  May had started work at eight years old as a part-time maid and washerwoman, but at sixteen she had graduated to shop assistant in Dixon’s the fruiterers in Union Street. This elevation had naturally caused her to have ideas above her station in life. At the time she considered herself on an equal footing with Freddie Musgrave, because what was he after all but a little tin clerk in Maggie Hewitt’s office on the quay?

  It took some years an
d some thinking before it was forced home to her that if Freddie Musgrave didn’t think he had become too good for her, Miss Maggie Hewitt did and that she had stuffed him with education to point out the difference.

  Freddie was well aware of all this and in a way he was sorry for May: she had waited for him when he didn’t want her to wait. In those far gone early days he had avoided her. He had laughed at his father’s chipping: ‘May’ll net you yet, lad, you’ll see.’ And always his answer had been, ‘Not if I’ve got me eyes open, Da, and me fins flapping.’

  How had he become entangled with her? How had the word marriage been approached? Oh, he knew how he had become entangled with her. It was that night when the sap was rising in him. No; it had been rising in him for some long time and she was there ready and willing, and by Harry, she had been willing! He had felt scared for weeks afterwards in case she should come to him and say, ‘I’m goin’ to have a bairn.’ And that was something very odd, she had never fallen with a bairn. Of course, he hadn’t given her much chance this past year or so.

  When he had thought about it, he could say to himself he had been lucky. Many a fella being as free as he had been and her as willing would have been tied for life…What was he thinking about? He was goin’ to be tied for life to her; he was goin’ to marry her, wasn’t he?

  Oh God, no! The thought brought him to a dead stop. He was standing at the foot of the steps leading up the hill, the lantern hanging still but slack in his hand. His teeth ground together, his chest became tight within. In the light from the lantern he could see the steam from his breath dispersing like a silver spray into the blackness now.