The Jarrow Lass (29 page)

Alone, John held the listless baby on his knee and talked and sang to him about Ireland.

‘One day you'll be proud to be a McMullen. Maybes you'll wear the uniform like your father and march under the Colours. You may be the runt of the litter now, little lad, but one day you'll stand your ground and fight with the best of them. I'll teach you to talk with your fists if anyone insults the name of Ireland or McMullen or the Pope!'

Every so often, John bent to the jar warming on the hearth, dipped in a finger and moistened the baby's lips with whisky. Then he lifted the jar to his own lips and took a swig. As the fire died down and the room darkened and chilled, he wrapped Jack in his jacket and walked up and down the kitchen, cradling his son tightly in his arms to keep him warm.

Through the small hours of that dark February night, John continued to pace the floor, singing, talking and feeding Jack tiny sips of whisky. As long as he kept moving and talking, John could keep at bay the frightening spectre of the black-robed priest coming to bury his son, of his wailing mother and Rose's grief-stricken empty face. He remembered how despair over Margaret's death had so maddened his wife she had thrown herself into the Slake. It filled him with terror to think that she might give up all hope in life if Jack were to die. He knew how painful it would be to lose his son - he had been astonished at the strength of his love for this tiny child - and fear of losing him had churned up his smothered grief for the loss of his daughter, Ruth.

But to lose Rose would be to lose everything. With her he felt important, needed, the head of the household, the provider. With her he was a husband and father, with a home of their own. Rose was well liked, respected, still handsome despite the rigours of the puddling mills, and he still could not believe his luck that she had finally married him. To see her smile at him warmed his very guts. The sound of her laughter was the sweetest sound in the world, better than a hundred sentimental songs.

She had no idea how much she meant to him, he was sure of that. He would never have the words to express what he felt deep down and would die of shame rather than admit them to her. But when she looked at him with contempt, as she had done that evening, it filled him with a bleak shame and rage.

‘I'll show your mam, bonny lad,' he croaked. ‘I'll not let you die. By heck, you'll live, you little bugger!'

Finally, John sank with exhaustion and drink into the chair once more. He hardly had the voice to sing or the strength to keep his eyes open. He stuck his little finger into the baby's mouth one more time and felt a faint flutter in response. It was the last comforting gesture he remembered before falling asleep.

Rose woke to the sound of John shouting her name in alarm. It was still dark, but from the sounds outside of early deliveries and the scrape of men's boots, morning had come.

‘Rose! Rose!' he bellowed. ‘Rose, help me!'

She heard him take to the stairs. Her heart hammered in dread now the moment had arrived. She had prayed half the night that this morning would never come, railing at the Virgin Mary for taking her son away so soon.

‘I'm here!' Rose called out, the girls beginning to stir around her.

John burst through the door, a bundle of blankets and his jacket in his arms. His face was grey and creased with lack of sleep.

‘Rose - the bairn,' He almost threw the bundle at her.

She looked down and gasped. Jack's tiny face was tinged with pink and puckering as if on the point of crying. His mouth opened and made a sucking motion, then he gave out a bleating cry of protest.

Rose shrieked, ‘He's still alive!'

John nodded vigorously. ‘I woke up and he was suckin' on me finger! The lad wants feedin'!'

Rose's eyes flooded with tears as she looked between John and the baby. ‘Aye, he does!' she exclaimed. ‘I never thought I'd see him open his eyes again.' She gulped down a throatful of tears. ‘What did you do?'

John grinned proudly. ‘Gave him a taste of McMullen medicine.'

‘The whisky?' Rose asked, shocked.

‘Aye,' John grunted. ‘Last night was no time for signing the pledge.'

Rose shook her head and laughed in disbelief. As the girls woke up around her and cried with excitement that their baby brother had been spared another day, Rose tentatively began to feed him. Jack snuffled and latched on to her breast. For the first time in days, he took her milk. She felt dizzy with relief.

Glancing up from the bed, she caught John's look. It was dazed, triumphant and, she thought, suffused with love for her. Then he gave her a quick bashful smile, cleared his throat and said gruffly, ‘Haway, lasses. Gan downstairs and give your mam some peace.'

As he turned to the door, Rose said softly, ‘Thank you, John.'

He hesitated, nodded without looking round and walked out of the room. She knew he was too full of emotion to say anything and she let him go. But she was filled with warmth towards him, knowing that more than Jack's life had been saved that night. Their marriage had held firm. Rose was thankful. Her prayers had been answered and she would light candles and rejoice.

Yet she had bargained with Our Lady. In return she had promised to weather whatever future storms were thrown at her, Rose remembered with a touch of unease. She looked down tenderly at her suckling baby and hoped fervently that the price of saving him would not be too high.

Chapter 33

By March, Jack was putting on weight and thriving at last. He soon grew out of his small drawer and Rose felt confident enough to let him sleep in Mary's old cot close to the side of her bed. With the stirrings of spring, she felt her spirits lift and a new surge of energy. She organised her daughters into helping her spring-clean the house, scrubbing the walls and floors and polishing the windows to rid them of the winter grime. Rose offered to do the same for her neighbours, who in return paid for whitewash for her kitchen walls and dark green paint for the windowsills.

They washed the curtains and blankets and hung them out to dry in the lane, until Kate rushed in screaming, ‘Mam, the sheep are eating the washing!'

‘Sheep?' Rose said incredulous, pausing in her sweeping of the linoleum floor. ‘Is this one of your fancy tales?'

‘No, Mam,' Kate insisted, grabbing her mother's hand and heaving her towards the door. ‘There's a pack of sheep out the back!'

‘Flock of sheep,' Elizabeth corrected, running in behind her. ‘She's telling the truth, Mam.'

Rose dashed out still clutching the broom. A drover, who did not know the town, had got lost on the way to the docks and his flock of sheep had scattered in fright at the sound of a whinnying dray horse. Some of them had taken refuge down the back of Albion Street and were nibbling at the mossy bricks and Rose's moth-eaten patchwork quilt.

‘Get away! Shoo, you little beggars!' She ran at them yelling and waving her arms. ‘I'll have you for me tea if you don't scarper!'

The neighbours and local children came out to watch the spectacle of Rose and her daughters whooping like Red Indians and chasing the bemused sheep down the lane with the long-handled broom.

John heard about it before he reached home when he stopped for a glass of beer at The Railway. He came back chuckling, ‘I hear it's mutton for tea the night, eh? Must have sheep stealers in your blood, Rose Ann!'

‘I didn't steal any,' she protested, ‘just threatened to boil them.'

‘Mam was the only one knew what to do,' Kate said proudly.

‘Aye, the neighbours might laugh, but nobody came out to help.' Rose was indignant. ‘And will you look at this!' She held up the corner of the blanket she had patched with a scrap from his old army trousers. ‘Ate right through it.'

‘Should've kept the beast in compensation,' John snorted. ‘Wish I'd been here to see you.' He grabbed her round the waist and gave her a squeeze. ‘Me Little Bo Peep!'

‘Give over!' she said, struggling free. ‘You're worse than the bairns down the lane - they've been making sheep noises at the back door all afternoon.'

John laughed and began to whistle ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep'. Soon Kate and Sarah were joining in with raucous singing. Elizabeth tried not to laugh, glancing at her mother's cross face.

‘You did look funny, Mam,' she said with a half-smile, ‘chasing that sheep with the brush. That farmer lad looked scared for his life, an' all.'

Rose suddenly saw the funny side and laughed. ‘Aye, he did, didn't he? I think I had a touch of spring fever!'

‘Poor lad,' John teased. ‘He'll gan home telling them Jarrow's full of mad women.'

Rose covered her face with embarrassment and laughed into her hands. Tea time was punctuated with jokes and laughter about the incident, with John comparing her to a wild cowgirl or shepherdess.

‘Your mother always was a country lass at heart,' he smirked with the girls. ‘Gans mad at the sight of animals.'

Not only did Rose have to endure the cheeky noises of the neighbouring children pretending to be sheep whenever she went out the following week, but even Father O'Brien teased her about it when he called.

‘It's a grand job to be the finder of lost sheep, Rose,' he smiled. ‘You're a lesson to us all.'

But Rose took the teasing in good heart, for it made her happy to see her family in such high spirits.

The air of excitement was maintained when Kate and Sarah rushed in from school one day gabbling about a circus setting up on the pit heap.

‘It's huge, Mam,' Kate gasped. ‘Can we go?'

‘It's American,' Sarah reported. ‘Cowboys and Indians - we've seen the horses. Please, Mam, can we go?'

‘You'll have to ask your father,' Rose said cautiously.

Every meal time for the following week, they badgered John to let them go to the circus and Rose watched with interest. He was not one for buying treats for the girls, not since the days of their courtship when he had tried to win their approval with small twists of sweets. Not that they ever had much to spare for such things, but she knew that he kept back enough each week for his own tobacco, newspaper and a drink or two on a Friday night.

At first he resisted. ‘What you want to see them Americans for? They're a strange lot. And them Indians are half naked - shouldn't be seen by young lasses. No, I'm not wasting money on them.'

Rose tried to intervene. ‘Why not let them go, John? It's not as if they've ever been. Only Margaret went when she was a bairn. We took—' She broke off abruptly, realising by his scowling that she had said the wrong thing. After that she kept quiet, keeping the happy memory of that long-ago trip to herself. But the girls were more persistent.

Each evening they came back from reading the posters with more information.

‘Mexican Joe's the ringmaster,' Kate said. ‘He wears this great big hat like a lampshade.'

‘I like the look of Mustang Jim - he rides a white horse,' Sarah sighed.

‘I want to be Violet, the Dashing Rider of the Prairies!' Kate cried. ‘She's really bonny.'

But John grew impatient with their constant pleading. ‘I haven't got the money,' he snapped, and disappeared behind his newspaper. They all knew by now he could not read it, but anyone who disturbed him snoozing under his paper got a sharp slap of his large hand.

Then, as the end of March neared, two incidents happened to change John's mind. One windy night a fire broke out in Ormonde Street, gutting a house where two families lived and leaving them with only the clothes in which they escaped. John's local newspaper reported that Colonel Joe Shelley of the American Circus had offered the bereft families a free show as well as having a whip-round and raising them nearly seven pounds.

‘That's generous of them, isn't it?' Rose said pointedly, eyeing her husband. ‘They must be kind folk.' John merely grunted.

The following day, the girls came home late and got a telling off from Rose for worrying her.

‘Where've you been?' she demanded.

‘Watching the funeral,' Kate sniffed.

‘What funeral?'

‘Mustang Jim and Violet's daughter,' Sarah explained. ‘Died a few days ago - just a young lass. The whole circus was there.'

‘That's right, Mam,' Elizabeth said breathlessly. ‘I've never seen such a sight. They were all on horses - Indians and cowboys and army lads - all following the hearse.'

‘Apache Indians,' Kate added, her eyes wide and glistening. ‘And all for a young lass!'

‘Mustang Jim was crying.' Sarah trembled as if she would cry too.

‘Poor man,' Rose sighed, her anger dissipated at the thought of the circus couple losing their daughter. Then unease stirred. ‘What did the lass die of?' She was ever alert to the scare of some epidemic breaking out.

Elizabeth shrugged. The next day the newspaper had a picture of the strange funeral procession and revealed that the young girl had been killed in a riding accident.

‘To think they had just lost their lass, yet they still bothered about the families in the fire,' Rose said in admiration. ‘What canny folk.'

John said little about it and Rose wondered at his callousness in the face of such tragedy. But the next day he returned home with a brusque command, ‘Haway, we're all ganin' to the circus.'

The girls yelped with delight and rushed to wash their faces and comb their hair. Rose smiled at her husband quizzically.

‘It's like you said - canny folk,' he mumbled. ‘They looked after strangers, didn't they? Us ganin' is like paying our respects to them and their lass.'

Rose was moved by his words. So often when she felt angry with him or thought the worst of this mercurial man, he would surprise her with some kindness, some spontaneous generous gesture that gladdened her heart. Stepping forward, she put a hand up to his cheek in affection. ‘Aye, it is. You're a good man, John.'

He grunted impatiently and moved away, but she knew by the way he blushed that he was pleased.

‘It's a wonder they can perform so soon after losing their bairn,' Rose reflected.

‘They've a living to make,' John said bluntly, ‘just like the rest of us.'

That evening they walked through the gaslit town, arm in arm, while Elizabeth carried the sleeping Jack, and Sarah and Kate skipped ahead in excitement. In the large torchlit tent, Rose sat close to John as the noise of gunfire crackled around them, horses thundered over the cinder-covered ground and Indians whooped their war cries.

‘Sounds like your mam rounding up the sheep,' John joked with the girls.

All the way home, Kate never stopped chattering about the magical experience until finally, coaxed into bed, her sisters ordered her to be quiet. Rose had pushed from her mind that trip to the circus long ago with William and Margaret and the talkative Alexander. But hearing Kate's bubbling enthusiasm reminded her of the small boy and she felt a pang of regret for that far-off time. What had become of the Liddells' restless small cousin? She would probably never know. She did not even know where the kind Liddells were any more, let alone the hapless boy, passed from relative to relative.

As she settled Jack in his cot, she pondered whether her dark-haired son might turn out as inquisitive and lively as Alexander. How well he and William had got on together! But she smothered such thoughts; it was dangerous to make comparisons or try to conjure up the past. It was John who waited for her now. She glanced at her husband watching her in the flickering candlelight and knew the look on his face well. For the past month, since John had saved Jack's life, they had resumed lovemaking. Rose got into bed, blew out the candle and waited for him to reach for her, guiltily praying that she would not fall pregnant again.

One day in April, Rose heard a strange piece of news from Maggie. Her sister had brought Mary down to the town for one of her infrequent visits to see her mother and the women were sitting at the open kitchen door, stitching scraps of cloth into a new clippy mat for the hearth. Mary was playing with the old wooden cage and lion that Rose had managed to keep when everything else she and William had once possessed had been pawned several times over. Beside her, on the old clippy mat, Jack kicked and gurgled contentedly. Out in the yard, one-year-old Margaret was sleeping in the bogie that Danny had made into a pram for his daughter.

‘Have you heard old Jobling's widow died at last?' Maggie asked as she prodded a hole in the hessian with a metal spike.

Rose looked up nonplussed. ‘Jobling's widow?'

‘Aye,' Maggie said, pausing in her work. ‘Jobling that got hung on the gibbet down the Slacks for murdering that magistrate—'

‘I know who Jobling is,' Rose said impatiently. He had haunted her life with his grisly image ever since her granny had filled her head full of tales of his ghost. But the gibbeting had been long before she was born, in the days when her grandmother had been young and before Queen Victoria had come to the throne. ‘Do you mean to say his missus has been alive all this time?'

Maggie nodded. ‘Aye. Seemingly she's been in the workhouse at Shields for years. Ninety-six she was - that's a grand age, isn't it?'

Rose shuddered. ‘A long time to be widowed. Must've been nearly sixty years fending for hersel'.' It made her couple of years of widowhood seem insignificant in comparison, gruelling though they were. She recalled her granny telling her how Jobling's widow had lived so close to the Slake that every day she could not avoid seeing the horrific spectre of her husband's tarred corpse swinging in the breeze. It must have sent her half crazed! She remembered uneasily how thoughts of Jobling had unhinged her after Margaret's death and led her to throw herself into the treacherous Slake.

Maggie looked thoughtful. ‘Aye, and to end up in the workhouse with no one else to look after her. .. She must've had a hard life, poor woman. But then that place is full of widows—' She broke off abruptly, looking awkwardly at her sister.

Rose put out her hand in reassurance. ‘You're right - and I'd have been one of them if it hadn't been for you and Danny. I'll never forget what you did for me and the bairns - what you're still doing.'

She looked uneasily at Mary. The child had grown a good inch since she had last seen her. She was skinny and lithe with straight brown hair, a thin stubborn mouth and a guarded look in her nut-brown eyes. She still clung to the grubby peg doll that Maggie had made her and was busy giving it rides in the lion's cage while the lion was discarded in the coal scuttle.