The Jarrow Lass (34 page)

Chapter 37

That summer, old McConnell died. As Maggie said, he had left them in spirit long before. Many years ago, his mind had passed back across the water to Ireland where he lived among the ghosts of his past. Many of the Irish community came to the smallholding at Simonside to pay their respects and take a swig of whisky.

John drank long and deep, for there had been precious little to break the monotony of dock work and a drab, penny-pinching existence these past months. He had a wife who hardly spoke to him and stepdaughters who were growing up with too many fancy ideas and opinions in their heads. They were far too quick to answer him back rather than do as he ordered, and their mother never checked them. Even young Jack paid him little attention when he came in from work. He was tied to his mother's apron strings and fussed to death by his sisters. As John tossed back yet another dram, he determined that Jack would not be turned into a sissy. He would teach him to fight and stand up for himself like a McMullen, by God he would!

Rose watched her husband getting drunk with the men. Soon he would be singing. At least her father would have approved, she thought drily. She looked around the low-ceilinged room, with its smoke-blackened walls and dowdy furniture, and was reminded of happier days. She could imagine her mother sitting by the fading light of the small window, weaving a basket out of twigs for her to carry vegetables in. Her sisters were sprawled by the hearth, their fingers entwined with string in some game of their own making. The acrid smell of her father's pipe would mingle with the reek of fire smoke. And what was she doing? Rose saw herself sitting by the open door looking at an orange ball of sun setting in the west, the smell of honeysuckle and hay on the stiffening evening breeze. She was gouging the black grit from under her nails with a paring knife to try to make them pretty for Sunday when she might see William ...

‘Rose?' It was Maggie who broke into this reverie. ‘Fancy a walk outside?'

Rose nodded and followed. It was a cold dank August night, not like the summer of her imaginings. She could hear Kate's loud voice over by the hazel tree where she and Sarah were trying to show Jack how to swing. Margaret was gazing up in delight, but Mary was protesting tearfully that it was her tree and her go. The older girls were ignoring her.

‘Careful with him,' Rose called out. ‘Don't drop—'

Jack slipped from Kate's arms and landed on top of Mary. Both of them howled in protest. Both women began to hurry over, but before they were halfway across the field, Maggie stopped Rose.

‘They're all right,' she panted. ‘See how the lasses take care of them.'

Rose watched, undecided, as Kate swiftly picked up Jack and cuddled him. Sarah was doing the same with Mary, raising her up in brawny arms and pacifying the wailing child. As they stood, Lizzie came waddling out behind them, heavy with her first unborn, to see where they had got to.

‘That's a bonny sight,' she greeted her sisters. ‘They look a right little family together, don't they? No one would know by looking that Jack's just a half-brother.'

Rose gazed and saw that it was true. Her three remaining daughters had her darker colouring, with their thick brown hair. Gone were the two fair-haired girls who had taken after their father. The dark-haired Jack had a look of his half-sisters, the same small nose and oval curve of his jaw.

‘Mam would have liked to see the grandbairns playing under the tree,' Lizzie mused, slipping her arms through her sisters'.

‘Aye, but Da would've been chasing them off for trampling across the cabbages,' Maggie laughed.

‘What'll happen to the place now?' Rose asked quietly. She had overheard Danny talking about moving down into the town.

Maggie sighed. ‘Landlord wants us out. We can't make a living here any more. Danny's never been much of a gardener - I'm that glad he kept on his job at the steel mill. And it's hard work on me own, since Da's been housebound.'

Rose was dismayed. ‘You should've said. Me and the lasses could come up here more and help out.'

Lizzie nudged Maggie. ‘Have you told our Rose?'

‘Told me what?'

Maggie hesitated.

‘Haway, Maggie,' Lizzie urged. ‘You might as well tell her all in one go.' Lizzie did not give her sister time to hesitate and blurted out, ‘She's expectin' again. Danny doesn't want her slaving up here through the winter over a few tatties and turnips. They're looking for somewhere in the town. It'll mean you'll have to take Mary back.'

Maggie slid Rose a cautious look. ‘We can move in with Danny's sister for a bit - but there won't be much room. And you did say you'd take her back when she started school. It's just with another bairn on the way—'

Rose's heart was leaden. They were hardly managing as it was. Try as she might, she could only look on Mary as an extra burden. But she hid her disappointment at the news.

‘Of course I'll take her back,' she assured. ‘I should've done so long before now. You've been that good to our Mary.'

‘See!' Lizzie exclaimed. ‘I told you she'd not mind. And if you're living nearer each other you can still see plenty of the bairn. Can't she, Rose?'

‘Aye,' Rose agreed. ‘I'll probably have to tie her up like a goat to stop her trotting off to see her Aunt Maggie all the time.'

It was said in jest, but she knew it would be difficult for the girl to settle with them after all this time. She wondered, with a feeling of dread, what John would make of the new arrangement. He had grown so surly and bad-tempered with the girls recently, ordering them around like servants and shouting at them if they stopped to play with Jack.

But surprisingly, he made no objection. Rose put it down to the amount of whisky he had consumed. As they wended their way back downhill, he was almost enthusiastic about Mary coming to live with them.

‘Bout time, Rose Ann. She's your lass, not Maggie's. It'll do her good to get away from your sister. Spoils her rotten. Got a temper like a mule, that one. We'll knock some manners into her soon enough.'

He rambled on about the child all the way home. Rose did not contradict him or answer back. She thought that by morning he would have forgotten every word he had said. But to her amazement, when she returned from church the next day, there was Mary, sitting swinging her legs and glowering at her across the rough kitchen table.

‘Went to fetch her mesel',' John crowed. ‘Wasn't going to have Maggie making a song and dance about leaving her here. Just walked in, took her under me arm and said I was off.'

Rose gawped at them both. ‘What did Maggie say?'

‘Didn't have time to say much,' John laughed, pleased with himself. ‘Just like a raid on the Afghans!'

Rose regarded her youngest daughter nervously. At least she was not screaming at them - yet. ‘Well, hinny,' she said, ‘are you hungry?' Mary said nothing, so Rose carried on. ‘We've a broth on for dinner. No meat this week. But there's rhubarb pie and custard for pudding - the rhubarb's from Aunt Maggie's allotment. You come over here and help me.'

Mary did not move. John stood over the girl and Rose tensed, sure he was about to lose his temper.

‘Haway,' he cajoled. ‘Your mam's made a canny dinner. You be a good lass and do as she tells you.' He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘And if you are she might give you a taste of it before the others.'

Rose was sure she saw him wink at the child. Dumbfounded, she watched Mary slip off her chair and sidle round the table towards the range.

‘Good lass!' John cried, leaning over and rubbing the top of her head.

Rose gave Mary a long-handled spoon and told her to stir the pot. Moments later, the older girls rushed in with Jack swinging between them. They stared at Mary solemnly standing on tiptoe, stirring the soup.

‘Where's Aunt Maggie?' Kate asked eagerly.

‘She's not here,' John answered. ‘Your sister's stoppin' with us from now on.'

Kate shrugged philosophically and turned back to fussing over Jack. Sarah was more enthusiastic.

‘That's grand,' she smiled, and went over to tweak Mary's button nose.

John, pleased with his morning's work, relaxed into his chair and continued to drink the jug of beer Danny had sent him away with. He had done the right thing. There was Rose talking more than he had heard in months, directing Mary at the range, a mother and daughter reunited. And all thanks to him! Rose looked content, her face less drawn and tense than usual. She was still a handsome woman. Mary would be the saving of her. She would fill Elizabeth's place and make Rose care about her family again - about him. How could she not take to the pretty pouting Mary? That lass had spark! Yet he would make sure Mary did not waste too much time at her lessons like the others had. What she needed to learn she could pick up from her mother during the week and from the priest on Sunday.

It filled John with a sense of wellbeing to have the room full of children for whom he was responsible, busying themselves getting ready for Sunday dinner. The room smelt pleasantly of cooking barley and beans. He was mellow with beer. Today was a day of rest with no nagging that he should be out jostling at the dock gates for work. Sunday dinner was the crowning moment of the week. He was head of his household and the world beyond the kitchen fug mattered nothing for a few hours.

Chapter 38

Rose wondered at her husband's ability to surprise her. She would never have guessed he could have doted so much on her moody, wilful youngest daughter. At barely five years old, Mary was as obstinate and temperamental as John could be. Small and skinny as she was, the girl had the power of a steam engine. She drove all opposition before her. She pushed Jack over if he got in her way, whined at her sisters until they gave in to her and refused to do what Rose told her unless she wanted to do it.

But, perhaps because their temperaments were so similar, Mary got on best with John. Whereas the older girls were wary of their stepfather and kept out of his way, Mary ran to the door when she heard his footsteps tramping through the yard and followed him while he struggled out of his boots and filthy jacket and washed himself in the scullery.

He trained her to fill his clay pipe with tobacco (on days when there was any) and allowed her to shuffle his playing cards before he settled down to a game of patience. If either Kate or Sarah heard him bark their name, they scarpered down the lane to avoid some chore or being sent on some errand. But when he called for Mary, she came trotting to his side, holding on to his jacket if they walked outside or leaning between his knees while he played cards indoors.

If Mary stamped her feet in a fit of petulance or screamed at her mother, John would be the one to calm her down.

‘Leave the lass be,' he would chide Rose. ‘You're too hard on her. She's tired out after all that learnin'.'

Rose would sigh with frustration. What use was it battling with the child if he came along and took her side every time? It annoyed Rose that he could be so hard on the other girls while favouring Mary. But guilt at having neglected her youngest daughter for so long made her bite her tongue and try to be more patient. At the very least, Mary's coming had shaken her out of the silent gloom that had oppressed her for the past months. It was impossible to keep quiet when Mary was a constant source of vexation.

Rose knew that Kate shared this irritation. Kate could not fathom why Mary should want to pinch and nip her and try to get her into trouble. She would retaliate by chanting, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary!' over and over, until Mary ran at her screaming or John grabbed and slapped her.

Rose thought twice about intervening. Kate would have to learn to put up with her difficult sister and John was her stepfather and had a right to chastise her. But she guessed that Kate was hurt by this new rival in the household. Before, she had been the one to make John laugh. Before Elizabeth died, it was Kate who would slip on to his knee when she sensed he was in a good mood and ask him to tell her stories of Ireland or occasionally his time in the army.

‘Tell us about marching with General Roberts,' she used to urge. ‘Did you really have to eat the soles of your boots to stay alive?'

‘Aye,' John would grunt, ‘and we drank water as green and poisonous as the Slake - but none of us died of it.'

‘He must've been a magician,' Kate would cry. ‘Tell us more, Father, tell us!'

She was the only one who dared ask him about his past life. The only other time he mentioned his service in India and Afghanistan was when he was drunk. Then he would brandish the poker and shout and swear like a heathen. But Kate's place had been usurped by Mary and she gave up trying to please her stepfather. She took Sarah's lead and kept out of his way, or answered him back if she dared.

As for Mary, she refused for a long time to call Rose her mam. At first Rose was hurt, but then it ceased to bother her. That was the way Mary was, and there were far more pressing worries by the autumn.

Trade, which had been sluggish all year, slackened further. The rumour-mongers passed on dire predictions that this winter would be worse than the last. All along the river, factories and docks began to close their gates. Large groups of men stood around stamping numb feet, hunched in threadbare jackets in the slim hope they might be offered a half-day's work. John walked miles each day along the Tyne to try to find a few hours of carrying or shovelling. Rose watched in sickening alarm as his boots wore out and the fierce look in his eyes dimmed to despair at his idleness.

Rose tried to stave off their financial ruin, making trips almost daily to the pawnshop. She would take in bedding in the morning to reclaim boots for the girls to go to school. When they came home, she sent Sarah down with the younger girls' boots to get back the bedding. The bread knife would be exchanged for the paraffin lamp (they could no longer afford to pay for gas lighting) and the washboard would be swapped for the kettle.

Gone was John's best suit, the girls' starched pinafores and Rose's Sunday dress and cape. Kate wore through Elizabeth's old stockings and Rose had nothing with which to darn them. She could no longer take the children to Mass, for they looked like street urchins in their bare feet, and she had nothing respectable to wear. Jack was still wearing baby dresses because she could not afford to put him in breeches.

The children had constantly runny noses and racking coughs in the icy house that they could no longer afford to keep warm. She watched them anxiously for signs of fever, for rumour was spreading of an outbreak of typhoid in the town. Finally, they were threatened with eviction.

‘We can't afford to stop here any longer,' she told John on a raw November day that never grew light under the gunmetal-grey sky. ‘The rentman's coming back at the end of the week with the bailiffs if we don't pay up.' She saw the muscles in his gaunt face tense and thought he would resist with fighting words.

But John spat into the cooling grate where they had just burnt the clothes prop and nodded. ‘We'll move in with me mother till I find us somewhere else.'

Rose was glad he did not look at her, for she thought she might burst into tears. To think she was reduced to sharing that flea-ridden, stinking cottage with the McMullens. It had filled her with revulsion as a girl selling vegetables around those old sunken cottages where the filth oozed through the walls from the earth middens. No landlord had attempted to improve them over the years for their Irish tenants, Rose thought bitterly. Even the town council had resisted improving the sanitation, for the rate-paying councillors saw it as a waste of their money. Now Rose and her children were to be among the very poorest, who counted for nothing in the eyes of the respectable. She was engulfed in humiliation.

But she could suggest no other course of action. Simonside was no longer a refuge. Maggie, who was about to give birth any day, was still living with Danny's sister. Lizzie lived in a tied cottage and was too far away to help. Contact with the Fawcetts had been severed and she would die of shame if they ever got to hear of her fallen circumstances.

That night she lay awake in their bedroom that no longer had curtains or mats on the floor. She watched the yellow glow of a streetlamp illuminate the icy patterns of frost on the inside of the window and wondered if she would ever have a bedroom to call her own again. Jack lay bedded between them for warmth, snuffling in his sleep through his blocked nose. This was the room in which he had been born. It was from upstairs that she had lain listening to John pacing the kitchen below, saving their son's life with sips of whisky.

For a brief time, this had been a house of noisy laughter, chatter about Wild West circus people and runaway sheep. She could still hear Elizabeth's soft voice reading out articles from John's newspaper and Kate standing on the fender singing songs she had learnt at school. But these happier days had been eclipsed by the tragedy of Elizabeth's death, the coarsening of John's behaviour when Pat became their lodger and these relentless days of making ends meet.

Still, Rose thought as she closed her eyes and reached for the comfort of Jack's warm body, this had been home. Albion Street. Tomorrow or the next day, she would be back under someone else's roof, at the beck and call of others. She prayed that it would not be for long.