The Jarrow Lass (16 page)

By the fourth day, when they had run out of supplies, the winds dropped and he dug his way out of the back door, emerging into a Siberian landscape of deep snowdrifts and sparkling icicles. He came home with a bag of coal, some stale bread and tinned fruit, which was all he could find at the grocer's. Rose quickly got the fire going again, seeing he was frozen through from standing in line for food.

‘There's nowt moving in the streets,' he said between chattering teeth. ‘Some of the snow's the height of a man. It'll take days to clear.'

The children clamoured to be out in it, but Rose would not let them for fear they disappeared under the suffocating blanket of snow. She worried about her father and Maggie marooned up the hill.

‘Don't worry,' William reassured, ‘they always have a store of food for the bad weather. I'll go up and see them tomorrow if you like.'

But the next day he was shaking and feverish, and Rose put him to bed. He lay listless, as if all the energy had been drained out of him in his battle against the snow. Rose tried to get him to eat, but he had no appetite and when she spoon-fed him like a child, he coughed the thin broth back up again.

Rose kept the children out of the bedroom to give him rest, listening to his persistent cough from down below. After two days she found him struggling into his clothes, looking thin and wasted. A caller had been round shouting that the mill was open again.

‘What do you think you're doing?' she demanded.

‘I'm ganin' to work,' he panted.

‘You haven't the strength to walk across the room, let alone gan to work,' Rose remonstrated. ‘Get back into bed!'

‘I need to work,' he gasped, setting off a bout of coughing. ‘And I haven't been round to Mam's for a week - they might need some'at.'

‘Your father can take care of your mother for once,' Rose retorted. ‘Your first duty is to us, William. You get yourself fit for work - you're no use to me as an invalid.'

When she saw his unhappy look, she was sorry for speaking to him so sharply, but seeing him in such a weak state made her frightened. If he was off work much longer, she would have to think about going out and finding work herself. Then who would look after the girls? she fretted.

‘I'll go round and make sure your parents are managing,' she relented, ‘if you promise to stay in bed and keep warm.'

Later in the day, she popped the younger two daughters into bed with William and, wrapping up the older girls in as many warm clothes as she could find, set off for James Terrace. It took them over half an hour to wade through the blackened snow drifts and icy slush piled up at the side of the road. Delivery horses slithered around on the treacherous cobbles and Rose had to keep hauling the girls out of the snow when they took refuge from passing carts and horse-drawn trams.

When they finally reached the Fawcetts' house, Rose was exhausted and the children soaked and numb from the melted ice in their boots. There was no reply. Rose hammered harder, annoyed that she had trekked all the way over only to find them out. Why hadn't they thought to come over and see if their precious William and his family were all right? she thought angrily. Mrs Fawcett had never forgiven her for persuading William to stand up to his mother and move out of the family home. She could expect no help from her petty, spiteful mother-in-law.

Margaret began to shout for her grandmother and stamp her feet in frustration.

‘It's no good, we'll have to go home,' Rose sighed. ‘They're not in.'

But Elizabeth clambered on to the top step and poked her runny nose through the small brass letterbox. ‘Grandma! Grandpa Fawcett! It's me and Margaret. Let us in, please!'

‘Haway, hinny.' Rose pulled at her hand.

‘They're in there, Mammy,' Elizabeth insisted, stubbornly refusing to move.

Margaret barged her sister out of the way, for a better look. ‘There's someone coming,' she announced.

Just then the door opened a fraction and Mrs Fawcett peered out. Rose was struck by how old and forlorn she looked. ‘Who is it?' she asked querulously.

‘It's us, Grandma!' the girls chorused.

Rose saw the expression of confusion on the woman's face. ‘Mrs Fawcett, it's me - Rose. We've come to see if there's anything you need fetchin'.'

‘No, not today, thank you,' she replied as if speaking to a tradesman. Rose was perplexed.

‘Can we come in for a minute? The lasses are cold and we've walked all the way in the snow.'

As Mrs Fawcett struggled to reply, the girls dashed in under her skirts. ‘Where's Grandpa? Is he at work?' Margaret asked. ‘Da's not at work - he's sick in bed.'

‘Look!' cried Elizabeth. ‘He's in the parlour. Grandpa!' The children clattered into the cold parlour where their grandfather sat in his chair.

As Rose followed them in, Mrs Fawcett said in a frightened voice, ‘He's resting. You're not to disturb him.'

Halfway into the parlour Rose stopped in her tracks. She gasped in horror at what she saw. Mr Fawcett was colourless like marble, his mouth drooping open as if frozen in surprise, his eyes half open. She knew death when she saw it.

‘He's cold, Grandma,' Elizabeth said in concern, reaching him first. Margaret stopped still, sensing something was wrong.

‘Come over here, lasses,' Rose called to them sharply. ‘Leave your grandfather alone.' She turned to Mrs Fawcett and saw the confused childlike bewilderment in her expression. ‘How long has he been like this?' she whispered.

‘He's been sitting all day,' she said, trembling. ‘I can't wake him up.'

Rose stepped towards her and said gently, ‘He's gone, Mrs Fawcett. You know that, don't you?'

Her mother-in-law met Rose's look for the first time and let out a terrified sob. ‘I didn't know what to do!'

At once Rose put arms round her and held on while she wept in distress and disbelief. The girls crowded about their grandmother. Rose pulled them into her hold.

‘Grandpa's gone to be with baby Jesus and the saints,' she told them, and turned their faces away from the dead man in the high-backed chair.

Chapter 14

The funeral had to be delayed until the iron-hard ground had thawed out enough for burial. By that time William had recovered sufficiently to work again, though Rose worried at his emaciated look and the cough that he could not shake off. His mother buckled under the shock of losing her husband so swiftly. In her widow's weeds she looked an old woman and it was decided that she should move across the river to live with Florrie and Albert.

The house in James Street was packed up, some furniture sold and the rest transported by cart and ferry to Wallsend. Rose promised to bring the children to see her and for a while they visited once a month. But Florrie was finally pregnant with her first child and Rose could see what an increasing burden it was to feed and entertain their large family. When she suggested that they visit Jarrow instead, Mrs Fawcett refused to travel.

‘She hardly goes out any more,' Florrie complained, ‘and she never lifts a finger to help me around the house. Just sits there brooding by the fire, talking to herself.'

William was saddened by how little interest his mother took in her granddaughters. When they clambered around her she grew irritated and snapped, ‘Why can't they behave themselves?'

Even the favoured Margaret could not please her. The child's attempts to entertain her grandmother with recitations of poems she had learned drew the response, ‘What d'you need to learn all them words for? You're just a girl. Don't bother me with silly rhymes. They make my head ache.'

Eventually when they called they would find she had retreated to bed.

‘There's nothing wrong with her,' Florrie remarked in annoyance. ‘She just likes playing the invalid. Wants the attention, now Father's not here to give it to her. Well, I won't be able to run up and downstairs all day long once the baby's arrived.'

One time Rose went in to speak to her alone. It distressed her to see William so upset at his mother's withdrawal and she determined to put aside her dislike of the woman for his sake.

‘Mrs Fawcett, why don't you come and stay with us for a bit when Florrie's baby comes? The lasses would be pleased to see their grandma.'

William's mother fixed her with chilly blue eyes. ‘Stay with you?' she asked querulously.

‘Aye, for a week or two,' Rose encouraged.

Mrs Fawcett pursed her thin lips. ‘Never!' she hissed. ‘I wouldn't stay under your roof if it was the last one standing on Tyneside. You'll always be a common Irish labourer's daughter to me, no matter how much you dress yourself up.'

Rose flinched under the look of pure hatred. She was so taken aback, she could not speak.

But Mrs Fawcett went on. ‘I'll never forgive you for taking my William away from me and I'll never understand what he saw in you. So take your brats and be gone. I can't be bothered with them any more.'

She turned back to staring into the small bedroom fire and didn't look up again.

Rose stumbled from the room, stung by the venomous words. She had not realised how deeply the woman had resented and despised her. She felt utterly humiliated and hurt at the way her children had been dismissed. She refused to tell William what had been said, but he could see how upset she was and they swiftly left.

Soon after, Florrie and Albert were surprised and delighted by the arrival of boy twins, David and Peter. Absorbed in their busy lives, contact between the two families grew more infrequent. A year after Mr Fawcett's death, William's mother refused to come out of deep mourning. She would venture forth once a week to Mass and then retire to her room. On rare visits to Wallsend, the girls would hover at the door listening to her talking out loud to the saints, afraid to go in.

William, who had been subdued and fatigued for months after his father's death, sighed one day, ‘What's the point us visiting when she won't come out her room? I don't think she even knows who we are any more. She won't speak to the lasses. We'll not come again,' he decided. ‘Florrie and Albert can bring the bairns to see us in future.'

Rose could hardly suppress the feeling of triumph she felt that William had finally shaken off his mother's hold. For nearly ten years, she had put up with the older woman's critical interference in her marriage and in the way she brought up her children. Now they were free to live their own lives with their growing family. They did not need her or her petty bullying, did not have to put up with her reproachful comments ever again. It was over. Let the old woman stew in her own bitterness!

Sarah had joined her sisters at school, delayed by a year because of the slump. But now there was plenty of work along the river and there were grand plans afoot to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee later that year. William seemed full of renewed energy, with no repeat of the worrying fever and persistent cough of the winter before. Rose's optimism for the future soared when she recognised tell-tale changes in her body. She was growing plump again and her breasts were swollen and itchy against the constrictions of her tightening dress.

In the early summer she told William, ‘I'm expectin' again. This time I'm ganin' to give you a lad.'

He hugged her round the waist in delight. ‘A lad to carry on the Fawcett name!' he declared. Rose knew that since the death of his father, this seemed to matter more to William than before. ‘And what a lucky lad he'll be to have such canny sisters to take care of him,' he grinned, seizing Kate - who had rushed in from outside - and chucking her up in the air.

Kate, who was now nearly five, screamed in delight as her father caught her.

‘When's the baby coming?' she demanded.

‘Eeh, you shouldn't have been listening!' Rose said in embarrassment.

‘Will he be here in time for tea?' Kate persisted.

William laughed. ‘Not this tea time.'

‘The morra? Will he be here for tea the morra?' she persisted.

‘You and your questions!' Rose cried. ‘You'll plague the life out of those poor teachers when you gan to school.'

‘He'll be here in the autumn,' William winked, ‘in time for blackberry pickin'.'

‘Do babies eat blackberries?' Kate asked doubtfully.

William pinched her cheek. ‘No, so you and your sisters can eat more, can't you?'

‘Will you come pickin' an' all, Da-da?' Kate asked excitedly.

‘Course I will, little nightingale,' he promised with a kiss on her wavy dark ringlets.

Rose watched them both with affection. Kate never stopped talking from the moment she woke up to the time she bedded down with her sisters. She was turning into the loudest and most boisterous of them all; even Margaret found it hard to get a word in edgeways. She was clumsier than the rest, ever eager to keep up with them despite her limp, but often tripping and dropping things. When Rose grew irritated and tried to curb her youngest's exuberance, William would defend her.

‘Let the lass be. She's high-spirited like her mam, that's all,' he teased.

But now as she saw Kate sitting on William's knee, chatting about babies and blackberries, she felt a surge of love towards her. Kate was full of William's loving nature. She followed him like a devoted puppy, hating to let him out of her sight. Kate would wave her father away, running down the back lane in that strange half-skipping way of moving she had developed to disguise her crippled foot. She would watch for him coming home, playing out in the street for hours until she recognised his lean shape and ambling walk turning the corner. She would rush forward to greet him, arms outstretched, and jump into his hold, and they would race the last few yards hand in hand till they reached home. He would take her for walks down to the ruined monastery and tell her the story of St Bede and the early Christians. Then he would point out the Slake and recount the grisly tale of Jobling on the gibbet and how the friends of the tragic pitman had risked death by rescuing his body.

‘The working man always has to fight for whatever he wants,' William told his small daughter. ‘No boss is ever going to hand it to him on a plate.'

Rose would chide him, ‘The lass is too young for such talk.'

‘It's never too early to learn about the saints - or the rights of the working classes,' William answered stoutly.

‘Well, don't go filling her head full of dreams - or tales that'll stop her sleepin' at night,' Rose warned.

But neither of them took any notice of her words. Kate was not frightened by talk of Jobling's ghost as Rose had once been. Her oval eyes opened with interest and she squealed in delighted terror. Kate continued to demand stories and William supplied them. Some nights, a childish enthusiasm would grip him and he'd seize his daughters by the hand and pull them out into the dark street.

‘There's a full moon the night!' he whispered eagerly.

‘How can you tell?' Margaret demanded. ‘It's too dark and cloudy to see.'

‘But it's there,' William insisted. ‘Haway, hold Elizabeth's hand.' He grabbed Sarah and Kate tightly by their hands and they all started to run.

‘Race the moon!' they cried as they ran laughing up the street, startling passers-by returning home.

Rose just shook her head, remembering the early days of their courtship when William had done the same with her. She felt she had aged with the bearing of babies and the responsibilities of keeping their household running through some difficult times. But William appeared as young at heart as when she had first met him. Paler and thinner maybe, but still with the spirit of a young boy.

Summer came and everything stopped on 21 June for Queen Victoria's Jubilee Day. The night before, Rose bound up the girls' hair in strips of rags so they would have bonny ringlets for the celebrations. In the morning she dressed them in their smartest frocks, pinafores and stockings, and nagged them to keep clean and not to play in the street. Rose's father and Maggie, who was finally engaged to Danny Kennedy, came down to visit.

‘Lizzie's had to stop and work at the castle,' Maggie told a disappointed Rose. ‘They've got dozens of visitors and a grand banquet the night. She'll maybes get a day off next month.'

By the time the afternoon came and they marched the girls down to the school, they were bursting with excitement. There were thousands of children converging on the town schools and the streets were already packed with crowds of onlookers.

For once, all social distinctions between the people of Jarrow were put aside as the whole nation was gripped in a frenzy of patriotism and wellbeing towards their queen and each other. Rose noticed that well-to-do managers and their wives had volunteered to wait on the children along with the schoolmasters and -mistresses. To the children's amazed delight, they served out a special meal of buns and spice loaf, milk and tea. Then every child was presented with a jubilee mug.

‘Look, Mam!' cried Margaret. ‘It's got pictures of the Queen on. My very own cup!'

‘Aye.' Rose beamed to see her so happy. ‘There's Queen Victoria when she came to the throne - and look on the other side - that's what she looks like now.'

‘She looks like Grandma Fawcett,' Elizabeth observed. ‘Do you think Grandma would like my mug? Stop her feeling sad all the time?'

Rose touched her daughter's head in affection. It was so typical of Elizabeth to think of giving her prized possession away without a thought for herself.

‘Grandma's got plenty china,' Rose told her. ‘You keep this mug to show your children and grandchildren what a great queen we had.'

‘What's that say?' Kate asked, waving her mug precariously in the air.

Margaret pointed to the letters as she read out the inscription: ‘Jub-i-lee, Eighteen eighty-seven, Jarrow-on-Tyne. That's where we live,' Margaret said importantly.

Rose thrilled at the sound of her eldest reading out loud. It made her so proud to think she had a daughter who was getting an education. One day Margaret would secure a good job in a shop or an office and maybe she would better herself enough to marry a man of business or one with a profession. Oh, that one of her daughters should marry a gentleman!

Soon after, there was a scramble to get outside and follow the Temperance Band through the streets. At the junction with Ormonde Street, they converged with another huge procession headed by Henderson's Brass Band and jostled together towards the Recreation Ground. Rose clung on to Margaret and Elizabeth, while Sarah rode on Danny Kennedy's shoulders and Kate on William's. Maggie took her father's arm to steady him in the crowd.

‘Look how grand it is,' Maggie cried as they made their way under the archway to the park, gaudily decorated in bunting and flags. There at the entrance, waiting to greet them, was the Mayor, wearing his chain of office and flanked by aldermen, councillors, clergy and the gentry of the town.

‘For once in our life, we're the important ones,' William said gleefully, as he passed the dignitaries waving to the crowds. ‘You're a lady, Rose Fawcett!'

Smiling, Rose led the older girls over to where they were to line up with the other school children. Margaret took her younger sisters by the hand and pushed them into position. Rose knew they had been practising all week. She stood back with the others and her heart swelled with pride to hear her girls among the vast choir singing the Jubilee Anthem. Then everyone burst into a loud rendition of the National Anthem.