The Jarrow Lass (32 page)

Chapter 35

After John's callous attack nothing was quite the same. Rose suspected his outbursts were to satisfy his older brother, yet she was wary of his temper now. They desperately needed money and she saw no end to John and Pat's spendthrift drinking. Yet she still resisted John's attempts to have Elizabeth sent into service.

‘She's not yet twelve,' Rose pointed out; ‘it wouldn't be legal. We'd have the priest on our backs for truancy.' Usually mention of the priest would stop John's badgering.

Over the summer she sent the girls up to Maggie's to help in the field and sell vegetables around the town. They learned how to use the McConnells' old sewing machine and made a few pennies mending and altering clothes for customers too. Sarah and Kate got jobs scrubbing doorsteps for the more well-off in the surrounding streets and Rose made elder-flower juice and sold it from their kitchen window.

But much of this extra income evaporated when the girls went back to school at the end of the summer. They continued to scrub doorsteps in the chill early morning before lessons, but with autumn came the need for more fuel and candles, and Rose's debts began to mount. Yet still she stubbornly resisted pressure from the men to have Elizabeth sent out to work. She clung to the ambition that her eldest would make something of herself. The thought kept her going when she trailed to the pawnshop each Monday morning or chivvied her inebriated husband to bed late at night. Besides, Rose had grown to depend on her eldest for company as well as help around the house. She had taken the place of Margaret in her affections.

While she welcomed Elizabeth's growing maturity, the signs of her womanhood were a cause for concern. Her daughter was tall for her age and bashfully pretty with her fair hair and soft skin. Increasingly she noticed Pat's lascivious looks and the way he tried to touch her as she served him at table. Elizabeth had taken to carrying water up to the bedroom to wash rather than risk Pat surprising her as she bathed in front of the fire.

Rose wanted to talk to John about his brother's unhealthy interest, but she dared not provoke another row over Elizabeth. It might only add fuel to his argument of sending the girl away rather than Pat. So all Rose could do was keep a watchful eye on her brother-in-law and protect her daughters from his groping hands and ribald remarks. How she longed for the day when they could be rid of him!

Then nature conspired against Rose and all her plans began to unravel. Fever broke out all over Jarrow that autumn. In particular, measles spread quickly around the infants' schools in the town and by November every one of them had closed. Children roamed the streets, shivering in shop doorways like packs of skinny dogs, some barefoot, wondering what to do with their freedom.

Rose put her girls to work doing the washing and ironing, baking bread and minding Jack, but still she found they were always under her feet. She prayed for the epidemic to wane and the schools to open up again, but by Christmas they were still closed. They had little to spare for the celebrations, but managed to give the girls oranges and a penny each to spend on sweets. To Rose's relief, Pat stayed round at his mother's over the festivities and they enjoyed a quiet Christmas together.

John made an effort to stay sober and they walked up to Simonside in the glistening frost and roasted chestnuts with Maggie and Danny. Lizzie was visiting with her husband, Peter, and even old McConnell perked up at the company and began to sing. They swapped news and everyone clapped when Jack took his first tottering steps across the room. Rose enjoyed the day and felt a surge of hope that things would improve come the New Year. If only she could get rid of Pat's malign influence, she felt sure John would become his old self again.

But once home, drudgery and arguments over money weighed them down as before. John's bad temper returned with his long, relentless days at the docks and the tramp uphill to Jarrow at the end of them. Sometimes he was turned away with no work at all and his black moods would deepen. Worse still, Pat was back and the schools remained firmly closed. Scores of children were still laid low with measles.

With Pat goading him, John began rowing again over sending Elizabeth out to work. It was Elizabeth who finally took the decision out of Rose's hands, unable to bear the warring between the adults any longer. She came back one grey January day to say she had found a place with a clock repairer's family, recommended by her teacher.

‘McQuarrie they call them. The missus needs someone to mind the bairns while she's in the shop and he's out calling on the big houses. I'm to do the washing and cleaning, an' all.'

‘How much will they pay you?' John asked at once.

‘Two shillings a week - and me bed and board.'

‘Better than nowt,' he grunted.

Rose was stunned. ‘You'll be living in then?'

Elizabeth nodded. ‘One day off a fortnight.' She saw the look on her mother's face and added, ‘Maybes I could bring the bairns round to see you some days - when the spring weather comes. They look canny - the lad's six and his sister's four. The missus is expecting again soon.'

Rose turned and busied herself at the kitchen table, trying to hide the desolation she felt at her daughter having to go ‘to place' after all. After all these years of striving to give her an education, her dreams of Elizabeth becoming a pupil teacher had come to nothing. She was to skivvy for others instead. How William would have hated it!

When the day came for Elizabeth to go she refused to let her mother accompany her across town.

‘I'm old enough to go on me own,' she insisted, as Rose fussed with her hair. Rose was hurt to think her daughter might be ashamed to introduce her to her more well-to-do employers. But as her only decent clothes were constantly in and out of the pawnshop, she supposed she did look shabby.

So Rose was brusque, belying what she felt inside. ‘We'll see you in a fortnight. Keep yourself tidy and remember to say your prayers.' She wiped a smut from the girl's face with a wet finger.

Suddenly Elizabeth flung her arms around her mother's neck, tears flooding her eyes. ‘Will you be all right, Mam?'

Rose steeled herself against the emotion that threatened to choke her. ‘Course I will. No crying now, hinny.' Briefly she pressed her daughter to her breast and then let go. Sarah and Kate hovered nearby, unusually subdued. ‘Say goodbye to your sisters.'

The girls mumbled self-conscious farewells, then Elizabeth picked up Jack, kissed him and tickled him under his chin to make him giggle. Handing him over to Rose, she turned swiftly for the door. They followed her silently into the lane, but Kate could not contain herself. She ran after her older sister, shouting, ‘I'll see you to the end, our Lizzie!'

Rose watched them go arm in arm down the muddy lane, Kate keeping up with her sister's leggy strides with her strange limping skip. There would never be enough money for an operation on her foot, Rose realised with a pang. At the end, Elizabeth slipped free, turned, waved one last time and disappeared round the corner. Kate stood in the raw wind, her dark hair blowing wildly, waving to a figure that Rose could no longer see.

Unable to bear the sight, Rose said to Sarah, ‘Gan and fetch your sister back, hinny.' Then she turned and went inside with a heavy heart.

The two weeks until Elizabeth's first day off dragged like a month. Rose was largely cooped up at home with the younger children. It seemed to rain incessantly so that the kitchen was festooned with damp washing for days on end. Rose and the girls had to tidy it away in the evening, dumping it in a wet pile in the corner, so that Pat would not complain about it hanging over his bed or John pull it down in annoyance.

‘If that school ever opens again you'll have forgotten all your lessons,' she grumbled to the fractious girls. With breaks in the wet weather, Sarah and Kate ventured out to find firewood or nuggets of coal along the railway line, anything to get out of the house.

The day of Elizabeth's holiday arrived at last and Rose had a tray of scones baked for the occasion. But by mid-afternoon on the Sunday there was no sign of her. An hour later it was dark and Rose knew she would not come so late. Pat was the only one who had an appetite for the special tea which he tucked into, then slumped in John's chair by the fire and fell asleep.

Overwhelmed with disappointment, Rose cried at John, ‘They've no right to keep her there on her day off!'

But he shrugged fatalistically. He had been round to collect his stepdaughter's wages from the McQuarries the day before and they had all feasted on herring and potatoes as a result.

‘She's settling in canny. Maybes she's taken a walk up to see Maggie instead.'

Rose was indignant. ‘She wouldn't do that! Not on her first day off.' She could not stop fretting and started questioning John all over again. ‘How did she look? Are they treting her well?'

‘I told you before,' John answered impatiently, ‘she was canny. Mrs McQuarrie said she's gettin' on grand with the bairns and she couldn't manage without her.'

Something struck Rose about his answer that had not the previous day. ‘Mrs McQuarrie said? But I thought you'd seen Elizabeth herself?'

John frowned hard in concentration over the game of patience he was playing with Kate's birthday cards. He did not look up. ‘Well, not in person. She was busy upstairs.'

Rose looked at him in disbelief. ‘You came back without even a word to the lass? I thought you'd seen her. You told me she was looking grand. I knew I should've gone mesel'!'

‘Stop your fussin',' John snapped. ‘She's a sensible lass. She'll be all right.'

‘How do you know if you never saw her?' Rose accused. ‘I'm ganin' over there first thing tomorra to see for mesel'.'

‘Don't you go interferin' and causing bother with the McQuarries,' John was quick to dissuade her. ‘It's her first job and the lass has only been there a fortnight. Give her time to settle in, Rose Ann. You'll only make it awkward for her, turnin up unexpected.'

Reluctantly Rose agreed. She did not want to be the cause of trouble between Elizabeth and her new employers. If Mrs McQuarrie had said she was doing well, she must take the woman's word for it.

But she could not help crossing town the following week to try to catch a glimpse of her daughter. She stood in the rain for half an hour at the end of the street watching the house, but no one came or went. She thought this strange for a house with a workshop. Still, she was reassured by the look of the place with its polished door knob and clean windows. At least Elizabeth was working in a respectable, quietly prosperous neighbourhood, the kind that foremen and small shopkeepers could afford. It reminded her of Raglan Street where she had lived with William.

The McQuarries' workshop must be at the back, for the only indication that a clock mender lived there was from a discreet sign in the window. Rose stood in a frenzy of indecision, wondering if she should call in pretending to have something to repair. But her courage failed her and she trailed back home in frustration.

Nevertheless, she was not going to allow John to fetch the wages the next week. It was high time she met these McQuarries. On the Friday before Elizabeth's next day off was due, she dressed carefully in her Sunday dress and cape, which she had reclaimed from the pawnshop with a pair of brass candlesticks and the fire poker. Leaving Jack with his sisters, she set off for the McQuarries'.

She hammered on the front door three times before it was answered. Rose hoped it would be Elizabeth, but instead a small man with spectacles peered out.

‘Mr McQuarrie?'

‘Yes, what do you want?'

‘I'm Mrs McMullen. I've come for Elizabeth's wages - and to see the lass.' She looked squarely into his narrow-set eyes.

She noticed his slight agitation, the way he pulled at his waistcoat and cleared his throat. Rose tried to see past him into the dark interior. There was no sound of children or anyone else.

‘I'll not be paying a full two weeks,' he muttered. ‘She's not worked them.'

Rose was perplexed. ‘What d'you mean? She's not been home. She must've worked them.'

He cleared his throat again noisily. ‘Been in bed, sick. Mrs McQuarrie's had to take the children to her sister's. It's not been convenient - not with her preparing for her confinement—'

‘Sick?' Rose cut him off. ‘What's wrong with her?'

‘Caught the measles.'

Rose's heart thumped in alarm. ‘Measles! Why didn't you send her home?'

‘It's nothing to do with me,' he said indignantly. ‘She told the missus she didn't want to go home and risk passing it on to her family. My wife was very considerate, letting her stay and putting up with the inconvenience of moving in with her sister.'

‘Where is she? I want to see me lass!' Rose pushed past him easily.

‘You can't barge in here.'

‘I'm taking her home. Tell me where she's lying,' Rose demanded.

‘She's in the attic,' he answered testily. ‘We'll not have her back after this.'

Rose ignored him and hurried up the narrow stairs in front of her. ‘Elizabeth! Hinny, where are you?'