The Jarrow Lass (40 page)

‘Drink this, hinny,' she urged. ‘It's a long way to walk if you're not used to it.'

The milk tasted warm and still had the faint earthy smell of the cow about it. Rose was transported back to her early days at Simonside and her mother standing over her watching in satisfaction as she drank the milk she had just squeezed from their cow. Rose felt a pang of longing for those simple far-off days when her mother had looked after them all. She nodded gratefully and listened to Kate chatting to the couple, telling them how they had once lived at Simonside.

It was only as they were going that the wife mentioned it.

‘Number One's empty since old Matty Moore passed on. It's in a bit of a state, mind you - birds nesting in the chimney and that - but it's sound enough. These houses were standing here long before the railway came – old wagon way afore that - and they'll be standing long after we're gone, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Will you show us?' Rose asked on impulse.

‘Happy to oblige,' the railwayman offered.

The house on the end had a large overgrown patch of garden. Brown brambles grew up the side of the pitted brick wall like stubble on a pock-marked face. Rose peered through the windows but they were so filthy she could not see in. They went in cautiously. The doors inside creaked and something scuttled across the stone floor at her feet. Mary screamed, but the old railwayman laughed.

‘Only a field mouse. Bet you get them twice as big down by the river.'

There was a stone sink in the corner and a dusty black range with a round oven.

‘Have to draw water from the well,' he told her. ‘But rent's cheap - be half what you're paying in the town.' He followed her gaze up the loft stairs. ‘Two rooms up there - cosy as a nest in winter - heat from the chimney warms ‘em, see.'

They emerged back into the sunlight. Kate watched her mother's severe expression. She could see that she thought it unsuitable. There was too much work to be done and it would be too far from the docks for Father. Yet strangely, Kate felt at home here, for all it was primitive and neglected. She loved the countryside and did not mind its strange noises, smells and muck like Mary did. And she had warmed to the kind signalman and his friendly wife. She braced herself for disappointment.

Rose turned to the railwayman. ‘When could we move in?'

He smiled as if he had expected such an answer from her all along. ‘I'll have a word with the foreman the morra. Soon as you want, I wouldn't wonder.'

Kate cried with delight. ‘Can we, Mam? I don't mind the walk up from Shields.'

‘Well, I do,' Mary protested. ‘It's a hovel.'

Rose stood and looked at the cottage. It was like coming home. It filled her with the same warmth and feeling of safety that Simonside once had. Jack would love it. John would hate it. Rose did not care. She would have it. She had had her fill of the town.

Rose turned to Kate and nodded. ‘Aye, we'll take it.' Kate linked arms and grinned. ‘Champion! Jack'll be like a pig in muck up here.'

‘It's horrible, it smells!' Mary grumbled, screwing up her face in disgust. But Rose took no notice.

Two weeks later, they had shaken the miasma of Straker Street from their clothing and hair and moved into Number 1, Cleveland Place.

Chapter 46

1904

Rose prepared excitedly for the girls coming home for Christmas, or to be exact, Boxing Day. With the luxury of Jack's new wages from the docks, she had bought a leg of pork from a local farmer and a bagful of vegetables from Harry Burn, the friendly railwayman at the end of the terrace. She had to be careful when she spoke to him, for ever since Mrs Burn had died the previous winter, John was suspicious of her conversing with the widower.

It amazed Rose that John could still be jealous over her. She had long ago stopped looking in the stained mirror that hung in the scullery where Mary used to preen every morning and apply her Pond's cold cream. At forty-six, Rose knew her looks and figure were gone. She had the slow painful gait of a much older woman and had given up trying to mount the stairs to the loft a year after they had moved in. The marital bed stood in the corner of the low-ceilinged kitchen and Jack had the run of the loft, except when his sisters came home on rare holidays.

Rose felt her stomach lurch in anticipation. It was over a year since they had all been together. She had decorated the room with streamers of coloured paper and holly that Jack had helped her pick from along the railway cutting. She glanced at the clock yet again.

Sarah would be here first from Hebburn with the mince pies that she had promised, and to help her mother cook the festive dinner. Rose had not seen her eldest since she had turned twenty-four. Sarah was courting and happy; everyone knew except John.

‘When can I meet the lad?' Rose had asked in the summer.

‘I'm not bringing him back here,' Sarah had declared. ‘Father would kill me - or him.'

Rose had no answer. Sarah's sweetheart was a miner and John thought them the lowest form of life. He was suspicious of men who chose to crawl underground for a living and never see daylight. He cursed them for their readiness to strike for better conditions, calling them lazy, whereas William would have blamed the pit owners. John only cared that the disruption in the coal supply could bring the mills and yards grinding to a standstill and make men like himself idle.

‘It's the fault of the pitmen we have no work on the river,' she had often heard him rail, whether there had been a strike or not. ‘They can't be trusted.'

Once she might also have disapproved of Sarah being courted by a miner, thinking the match too lowly. They were a breed apart, rough and dirty and kept closely to themselves. Rose had grown up with such views. But Sarah's stories of her pitman and his family were quite different. She spoke of kind, generous folk and a spotless kitchen despite the grime that the men tramped in. Besides, Rose had learnt from experience that you could not judge a man by his outward appearance. Her head had been turned by the sight of an army coat and a strong handsome face, and look where it had got her. She did not object but worried for Sarah if John should find out.

Rose had to accept that she could not offer hospitality to Sarah's young man. Anyway, the romance might come to nothing so it was not worth riling John's temper over the matter. For her husband's ill humour had got no better over the three and a half years they had lived at Cleveland Place. His attempts at sobriety had not lasted long, and when in work he would often get no further than the pubs on Learn Lane, a stone's throw from the dock gates, forgetting about his long walk home. Many were the times she had had to send Jack searching for him late in the evening, for she was too lame to go herself and would not have suffered the indignity of entering a public house.

Jack, a tall, wiry youth, was often repaid with a ‘smack in the gob' for his efforts in trying to prise his belligerent father from the cosiness of some bar. John's favourite haunt was the notorious Alexandria, known locally as The Twenty-Seven because it served as the next stop after the twenty-six staithes along the docks.

Rose would try to comfort her son after such bouts of violence. ‘Your day will come,' she promised him. ‘He'll not be the stronger one for ever.' The saints forgive her, but she almost willed the moment to come when Jack would stand up to his father and give him a taste of his own medicine.

Sometimes Rose worried about Jack. He had become increasingly moody and withdrawn since his sisters had left home, especially Kate, who had always been openly affectionate with her half-brother. But faced with John's constant criticism at his lack of hardness or teasing about girls, Jack kept to himself, disappearing on his own to trap rabbits or fish the streams. He would shadow the local farmer when he went out to shoot crows and once or twice the man had let Jack have a go with the gun. Jack seemed to gain more pleasure from this than any amount of socialising. The boy had a good aim and had once returned from a fair with four coconuts that Rose had not known what to do with. Rose often wondered if she had been right to bring the family out to their semi-rural retreat. Perhaps Jack needed more company; he was turning into a loner. But better that than a fighting, cussed drunk like his father. Not one day did Rose regret the move for her own sake. Even in the depths of winter when she had had to break the ice on the pail to get water for the kettle and struggle through the snow to search for tinder, she had thanked the saints for her primitive cottage.

Like an animal in hibernation she had rested her bruised spirit, slowly reawakening to the world with a new inner strength. She delighted in spring rain, summer birdsong and autumn sun as if she was experiencing them for the first time. While she tended her garden, the earth seemed to nurture her in return. During these solitary years when she had often been on her own for long hours at the cottage, Rose had rediscovered a sense of worth. She kept hens and grew giant rhubarb and strong onions. She exchanged these with her neighbours for jams, relish or firewood. She bartered produce with itinerant pedlars for buttons, hairpins and Emerson's Bromo Seltzer, which she forced on John when he complained of sore head, stomach or bowels.

Rose would take Jack with her blackberry picking along the railway line and gather elderflower and wild mint for cordials. Her son would return from his wanderings with crab apples, nuts and the occasional rabbit or wood pigeon for the pot. On rare occasions, John would come home early and in a good mood, and they would eat together and walk out along the embankment to view the trains, and Rose wished life could always be that tranquil.

Certainly, it had been easier this last year without Mary in the house. At sixteen she had grown as sharp and quick with her tongue as her stepfather. Gone were the days when John would indulge the girl and defend her from her mother's censure. He found her as difficult and volatile as Rose did. Mary was as prickly as a briar and not afraid to speak her mind. Her job with the Simpsons had not lasted. Rose had hoped that her youngest daughter would be content to stay at home and help her, as she was finding heavy chores increasingly difficult. But Mary chafed at her confinement in the remote cottage and resented doing the back-breaking washing and water carrying.

‘I've been trained as a lady's maid,' she declared grandly to her mother. ‘This'll ruin me hands.'

In desperation, Rose had begged her sisters and daughters to find employment for Mary as far away from home as possible. It was Kate who had saved the day. The inn at Ravensworth, close to where she was working, needed a chambermaid. When Mary heard that this was no common hostelry, but the hub of social life for the staff at the castle, she lost no time in boarding the train for Lamesley.

Rose glanced at the clock again. Kate and Mary might be at Lamesley station at this very moment, waiting for the train to take them to Gateshead and then on to South Shields. They would get off at Tyne Dock station and walk up the hill. Jack had gone down to meet them and carry their bags.

It had been one of the best decisions of her life to send Kate to Lizzie's. Rose felt sure of it. Shortly after their move to the cottage, Kate had said a tearful goodbye to them all and gone to live with her aunt. It was not long before she had been noticed around the estate and put to employment. At first Kate had gone to work at Farnacre Hall on the estate. There her easy nature and willingness for hard work had been spotted by Lady Ravensworth herself and soon she was working in the castle. It was more than Rose could have wished. Kate had told Rose that the old earl himself took a passing interest in her because she came from Jarrow.

‘He spoke to me, Mam!'

‘He never!'

‘Aye, said a cousin of his used to be rector here - Canon Liddell,' Kate told her on a visit home. ‘He spoke highly of him - says he worked himself into an early grave for the people of Jarrow.'

‘He's dead?' Rose asked in shock. ‘Canon Liddell's dead?'

‘That's what he said.' Kate gave her an enquiring look. ‘Did you know him, Mam?”

Rose felt a pang of sorrow. ‘Aye, I did,' she answered quietly. ‘Worked for him and Mrs Liddell a long time ago. He was a real gentleman, just like your da. They were two of a kind,' Rose said sadly.

‘Did me da know him an' all?' Kate asked eagerly.

Rose nodded.

‘That's grand!' Kate exclaimed. ‘A real gentleman, eh?' Her face was suffused with pride as if she had just discovered some aristocratic blood in her own ancestry.

Afterwards, Rose noticed, Kate held herself with a new dignity and spoke with assurance in a voice that had subdued the rough edges of her speech. Rose was secretly proud of her daughter's ability to improve herself, despite John's teasing and Mary's mimicry.

So it was a blow to Rose's ambitions when the old lord died in the summer of 1903 and his widow moved out of the castle. With the coming of the new earl and his wife, some of the dowager's staff had been dismissed, including Kate. As luck would have it, help was needed at the Ravensworth Arms, where Mary was now working, and Kate had been able to stay on in the area, serving as barmaid at the inn. She had stubbornly resisted John's decrees that she should come home and be of more help to her mother. Rose was finding it harder to manage on her own, but she refused to let Kate be bullied back by her stepfather. She would rather struggle on uncomplaining, knowing that her daughters were happy in their new lives.

It was worth it on the rare days off to see Kate blooming and full of life, her hair loosely gathered on the nape of her neck and swept back from her forehead in the latest style. Last March she had surprised Rose with tickets to the Theatre Royal in Jarrow to see a farce, The Cruise of the Saucy Sally, part of a grand naval and military night. She even persuaded John and Jack to go too.

‘Haway, when's the last time you had a night out?' Kate cajoled. Rose thought back to those distant days of early marriage when a more romantic John had treated her to an evening at the Albert Hall.

‘Your mother couldn't walk that far.' John was dismissive.

‘Aye, I could,' Rose said stoutly, not prepared to be denied.

‘I'll borrow the cart off Mr Burn,' Jack offered, keen to listen to the military bands. ‘He'll not mind.'

Between them they managed to win John round to the idea and they had all ridden in style in Harry Burn's vegetable cart, the kind neighbour driving them himself and picking them up afterwards. Rose's head had been full of the songs of the show for weeks afterwards and she had delighted in hearing the solemn Jack whistling them while he dug the garden for her.

All was quiet in the house now as Rose waited for her family to gather. John had disappeared to buy a newspaper which probably meant she would not see him until dinner was on the table. But by half-past ten, Sarah had arrived and was bustling around the dark kitchen, shoving the meat into the oven and heaving the chopped vegetables into a large pot to simmer on top of the range.

If Rose could have run, she would have done so when she heard Jack's whistling and footsteps approaching up the garden path. She hobbled to the door and flung it open. Kate and Mary were there, pink-cheeked and chattering, their breath billowing in frozen clouds. Jack was behind them almost hidden by a mound of Christmas parcels.

‘It's Kate's fault,' Mary said, by way of a greeting, ‘she spent every penny of her Christmas wages at the village bazaar. You wouldn't believe the rubbish she's got.'

‘Happy Christmas, Mam!' Kate cried, ambling towards her with her quick limp and nearly knocking her over in an exuberant hug. Rose was sometimes embarrassed by these shows of affection, but today she did not mind.

‘Haway inside, hinnies,' she said. ‘Sarah's got the dinner on. Jack, you open that bottle of ginger wine - I've been keeping it hid from your father. Take your coats off and let's have a good look at you!'

She surveyed her daughters in their neat dresses and boots, their hair well groomed. What a picture they looked! But she could not help fussing.

‘Mary, are they feedin' you enough? I've seen better-fed scarecrows.'

‘I'm run off me feet all day long, that's why,' Mary complained.

‘They feed us plenty, Mam,' Kate assured her.

‘Well, you look well enough on it, our Kate,' Rose remarked. ‘Mind you, you've rings around your eyes. Are you gettin' enough sleep? They don't keep you up all hours, do they?'

‘I don't mind the hours, Mam. I like me job,' Kate smiled.

‘She's lovesick, that's what,' Mary said drily.