Hannah massey (14 page)

As she left the house, with Hannah bidding her a loud farewell from the top step, the third door to the right of them opened and a woman came out. She was wearing a cheap fur coat and a blue felt hat, and Hannah hailed her with, "Oh, there you are, Jessie. You haven't seen Rosie here since she was back. Are you away down the town? So's she.

You can go together. Where are you off to? "

The woman paused on her step, and looking over the railings, she

answered Hannah in a voice prim and tight-sounding by saying simply,

"Hello there, Rosie."

"Hello, Aunt Jessie."

"Where you off to?" Hannah called again. And Jessie MacFarlane replied in a tone edged now with superiority, "The ladies of the bazaar committee are having a coffee morning."

Hannah's natural retort to this should have been, "Are they, be god There'll be some throats cut there this mornin'," but what she said was, " Oh, that's nice, that's nice. Enjoy your MASSEY

self. " And now she turned her attention to Rosie again, saying, "

Away you go now, Rosie, an' have a grand day, an' have another look at that fur stole. You know. " She pointed her fingers down the steps at Rosie's back.

"The one you were admiring on Saturday. Go in and try it on."

Rosie did not bother to ask her mother "What stole?" but she went down the street towards the plump-faced woman, who was waiting for tier, and said, "Isn't it cold. Aunt Jessie?"

"Yes, it is," said Jessie MacFarlane. And with this they walked down the street side by side.

At the corner Jessie MacFarlane said in a tone she attempted to make light, "And how long are you here for this time, Rosie?"

"Oh, I don't know. Aunt Jessie," said Rosie; "I may get a post nearer home." As she said this she felt the woman pause in her walk, but she didn't look towards her and she added kindly, "But not too near; Fellbum seems to get smaller every time I see it. "

"Yes, yes, we're'rather a backwater." It was a statement without bitterness.

Again they walked on in silence, until Jessie MacFarlane could contain herself no longer and she began to talk rapidly under her breath.

"Ronnie's settled," she said.

"He's got a good wife, she's not my choice, but she's a good girl and she's going to have a child. Things are going smoothly. I... I would sooner have had you than anybody, Rosie, and I think you know it, but you saw it otherwise. My Ronnie was a man when he was going with you and he's still a man, although now when he's got responsibility he'll be different. Yet men are men, you know what I mean?" She was staring ahead, her lips scarcely moving as she spoke.

"What I'm trying to say, Rosie, is you... you'll not get in his way?"

When Rosie answered she, too, looked ahead.

"I can promise you. Aunt Jessie," she said quietly, "I'll not get in his way."

"Thank you, lass." The voice was no longer prim, it was ordinary and thick with the North Country inflection.

"When your mother rushed in on Friday night full of the news that you had come home it was as if she was pushing a knife in me, and she took the same pleasure in it.

Your mother's a queer woman, Rosie. I've said it to her face, so I'm sayin' nothing behind her back. You were hardly indoors but she had to come and tell me. It was the same when you came home last year.

And after knowing all the trouble that there was, and the lads fighting like maniacs in the lane after they had all been brought up together.

Ronnie could hold his own with any two of them, but with the four of them it's a wonder they didn't murder him. "

Rosie could have said at this stage, "It's a wonder he didn't murder me," but her Aunt Jessie, like all mothers, wouldn't think _along those lines. Again she said, "You needn't worry; if I get a job anywhere near, I won't live in the town, I'll live well away...." She turned quickly and looked at the older woman.

"But don't tell that last bit to me mother, she... she thinks I'll be living at home."

Jessie MacFarlane stopped; a thin smile spread over her features and she nodded at Rosie.

"Never fear, I won't. I've got to leave you here," she said; "the cafe's just down the road. You were always a good lass, Rosie. I wish things could have been different."

"Me too. Aunt Jessie."

"Good-bye, Rosie."

"Good-bye, Aunt Jessie."

The world seemed full of worried and troubled people. She wasn't the onjy one with things to hide. Her Aunt Jessie had always hid the fact that there was something raw and ravenom about Ronnie. She had hidden the fact that he had attacked a girl when he was fifteen, in much the same way as he had attacked her, in a blind fit of lust.

It had started to snow again when she reached the main road, and as she stood waiting for the bus she could see, between two rows of houses, the rising fells, snow spread, clean, beautiful, untouched by the slag heaps that decorated both sides of the town, where at one end stood the Phoenix pit and at the other the Venus pit. She hadn't been on the fells for years, not since that Sunday when the two men had pulled Ronnie from her and he had fallen on to the grass, crumpled and sobbing like a whipped child, while she had crawled and stumbled like some terrified animal up the dell, and then had run until she came to the first House, where the woman who had been working in the garden caught hold of her and took her indoors and covered her with a coat.

And she and her husband had taken her home in their car.

Then Ronnie, driven by his love for her, that was a thing apart from his desires, had come to say he was sorry and the

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lads had attacked him like a pack of wolves. It had happened in the back garden. If Ronnie had not been of the size and stamina he was, and if her father had not intervened with a pick shaft in his hand, there would have been murder done that day.

Her mother had really been glad that it was finished between her and Ronnie, for, as she had said comfortingly, she was worth something better than a miner. That was until she had heard she was leaving

home, and then she would have given her sanction to the dustman to come courting her daughter, if it meant keeping her within sight and sound.

When she reached the agent's in Newcastle it was to find that there were a number of typists required but all for junior positions, and these at a wage rate that made her raise her brows. Did she want to try for them? asked the clerk.

No, she said, she would wait. She had two years London experience

working in a big office. Her shorthand speed was one hundred and

twenty words a minute and her typing speed eighty words a minute, and she had been used to working with an electric typewriter.

The clerk's nostrils had dilated as he said, "Well, we've got electric typewriters here an' all. We're not still in the Dark Ages, you

know."

She had apologised and said she hadn't meant anything, but the facts were she had started in London at nine pounds a week and had risen to twelve, and she had been next to the head in 'her department. She

thought there was no need to explain that the' staff in her particular department numbered four.

"Well," said the clerk, "there might be something in your line in the new factory they're building yon side of Jesmond. It's a way out from the centre of the town though."

"I'll try it," she said.

It took her half an hour to get to the factory and another fifteen minutes walking around frozen humps of brick and machinery before she found an office with someone in it. The man was busy and abrupt. He said they were interviewing people for the clerical staff on Wednesday afternoon. She could come back if she liked. She thanked him and

returned to the town, outwardly freezing with the cold and inwardly feeling so lost, so alone, that she could have leant her head against the wall and cried.

Since yesterday morning when she had broken down in front o be crying inside all the time now and wanting to give vent to it. Her body and mind felt sore, so sore that she recoiled from human contact.

A man sat down beside her in the bus, and her body shrank inside her clothes and she was fearful that it would be evident and the man would look at her and say scornfully, "You needn't move away. Miss, I'm not lousy." He would have said something like this because he was wearing greasy working clothes; a mac that had once been fawn and was now

black, a cap that had lost its shape under grease and dirt.

Nevertheless, it was an enviable uniform, one that signified he was at work in some yard.

When she reached the city she was too late for lunch, so she went into a cafe and had a cup of tea and a sandwich. After wards she walked round the stores until the light faded. She had no desire to hurry home, at least not before the men came in;

she didn't want to be alone with her mother again. It was half past five when she entered the house, and the brightness and the smell of fresh baking brought its own com fort. Hannah greeted her with, "By lass, I thought you were never comin'. Everything all right?"

"Yes, Ma."

Hannah was placing plates, piled high with bread, on the table. Her father, Arthur and Shane were already in the room, and it was Shane who said, "Any luck, Rosie?"

"No, Shane; but there may be on Wednesday. They're taking on clerical staff at the new factory."

"Come and get yourself warm." Her father held out a crooked arm towards her, and when she went to him he pulled her into its circle and squeezed her waist.

"By, you're cold, you're froze. Just feel your hands." He took her hands in his and chafed them together, rubbing warmth into them.

"I've made your favourite," Hannah called over her shoulder as she went towards the kitchen, "apple puddin'. Did you have a nice iunch?"

"Not bad, Ma."

"Aw, you can't get a decent bite in them cafes and places. I've done you some plaice cooked in butter, 'would melt in your mouth."

"Begod!" Broderick bounced his head at Rosie in mock anger.

"Plaice done in butter, t'would melt in your mouth, and apple pudding, at tea time at that. She never puts herself out like that for us, does she?" He appealed to his sons, and they grinned at her and Arthur said, "Bread and scrape, that's us."

It would seem that they had all regained their good humour, that there was no issue about Brampton Hill, and that the incident at Sunday

dinner had never happened.

"Lucky if we get the bread sometimes from the old faggot." Shane spoke loudly so that his mother should hear, and he pulled his head into his shoulders and slanted his eyes towards the kitchen like a child waiting for a clout.

"I can hear you in there; I've got me ears cocked to your

slandcrin'."

Rosie looked at her father, and he smiled warmly back, and leaning his face in an endearing gesture against hers, he whispered the familiar phrase, "She's over the moon, over the moon to have you back to do for."

"Now if Jimmy and Bamy will put their noses in the door, we're all set." Hannah came marching into the kitchen carrying a great soup dish of stew, and as she placed it on the table the sound of the back door opening made her turn her head, and she cried, "Is that you?"

Barny's voice answered her, saying, "Aye."

"It's Bamy," she said; "Jimmy won't be far behind. Come on!" she called.

"The tea's ready."

Hannah was dishing out the stew when Bamy came into the room, and it was the way Arthur's face screwed up as he looked at his brother that made her turn towards her youngest son. In a glance, she took in

trouble. She placed the ladle in the dish and, facing him, said,

"What's up?"

He passed her without speaking, and he passed Broderick, with his arm still round Rosie's waist, and he went to the fire and held his hands out to the blaze before saying, "I've got the push, a week's notice."

The whole room was alerted, and there were exclamations from them all, except Rosie, but Hannah's was the most strident. Questioning and

commanding at the same time, she cried, "Turn yourself about and tell us what's happened. They didn't come here. Did they find anythin' on you?"

"No." Bamy was looking at her.

"What then?"

"Somebody must have croaked."

"So that's it!" Her jaws pressed themselves through her thick skin, and as she nodded her head Broderick asked Bamy,

"Do you know who?"

"It's one of five. Well, you could say four. Creeping Jesus wouldn't split. But he's been kept on with the other four."

"Twenty-five of you got it then?" It was Arthur asking the question, and Barny nodded.

"Aye, the whole shop's closed. They've been talkin' about reorganizing for months now, and they've taken this opportunity to do it."

"you can't be sure, man," said Broderick.

"They might be re-forming the shops at that."

"Aw, hell, Da." Barny shook his head impatiently.

"Every man-jack that got his cards was in on it."

"Did they find anythin' out?" asked Hannah.

"They searched two places. Old Riley's, him whose son-inlaw has the wireless store in the market."

"Did they find anythin'?"

"Plenty, but nothing that Riley couldn't prove he had bought as seconds."

"How was that? You made up and sold him sets yourself," said Hannah.

"Aye, but all that stuff is packed away in a little warehouse he's got down near the docks."

"It's as well for him." Broderick nodded slowly.

"Well, it hasn't saved him or any of us," said Bamy bitterly.

"What are the other's dom' about it?" asked Hannah now" Aren they standin' by you?"

"Huh! Don't make me laugh. The other shops have all become so bloody virtuous of a sudden they make you want to retch. Two years ago, even a year this time, an' they would have been out to the last man if one of us had got our cards, but now," he pulled his chin into his neck and finished scornfully, "they're so bloody scared of losin' their jobs, it's who can suck up the hardest and fastest."

"What about Fred Ward? He's your shop steward, isn't he?" asked Shane, and for answer Bamy turned round and spat into the heart of the fire.