A Child of Jarrow Read online

  She began to sing it softly, gazing into the blue-tinged flames of the fire that mesmerised. Rose put down her sewing to listen and even the restless Jack was stilled. Kate’s voice wrapped around them all, her hair glinting like bronze in the firelight.

  When she finished, the room was bound in silence as if she had cast a spell. Then John put out a hand and ruffled her hair in a rare gesture of affection.

  ‘You’re a bonny singer,’ he murmured.

  He took a large swig from the jug, sloshing the last of the dregs on to his moustache and down his stubbled chin. His fleshless cheekbones stood out in the firelight, his once-vivid blue eyes bleary with booze and fatigue.

  Rose stirred. ‘Jack, Kate. Time the pair of you were off to bed.’

  ‘Bed? It’s hardly dark,’ John complained. ‘We’ll have more singing till the sun gans down. Haway, Kate, sing us some more.’

  Kate had risen at her mother’s words, but now stood undecided. John grabbed at her skirt and held on.

  ‘Another song!’ he commanded. ‘And sit down the rest of you.’

  When she saw her mother pick up her mending once more with a stifled sigh, Kate sang on. Jack squatted on the floor, yawning and fighting sleep. She sang until she was hoarse, repeating songs from earlier in the evening. Whenever she thought John had dozed off she tried to move away, but he kept a hold of her skirt and stirred at the movement.

  Darkness fell and the fire died down, so that they could hardly see each other. Kate sang softly until she was sure her stepfather slept. But as she put out a hand to release her skirt from his grip, she felt it tighten. In an instant he pulled her on to his knee and in a befuddled voice said, ‘Rose, me bonny Rose.’

  ‘It’s me, Father,’ she whispered, trying to pull away. ‘Kate.’

  ‘Just sit for a minute,’ he mumbled.

  Kate sat as still as could be, waiting for her mother to remonstrate. She held her breath but was only too aware of John’s hands on her. One lay heavy on her lap while the other he slipped around her waist. His callused fingers were stroking and probing, his thumb edging up the curve of her breast.

  Kate’s heart thumped hard. She wanted to jump up and run from him, but she sat frozen on his knee, wondering what to do. She peered through the dark at Rose but could not see her face. Could her mother see her predicament or had she fallen asleep? Kate could just make out the sprawled figure of Jack beyond the hearth mat. She pushed out a foot to try to stir him but he slept on.

  All the while John’s fingers fumbled over her body, his breathing coming hard on the back of her neck. His other hand squeezed her thigh.

  ‘Bonny lass,’ he whispered, ‘bonny as my Rose.’

  Suddenly his hand moved round to grab her inner thigh and at the same time he nipped her breast. Kate gave out a startled cry at the unexpected pain and leapt up.

  ‘Don’t, Father!’

  ‘What’s that?’ Rose said sharply. She had dozed off to Kate’s singing. Kate stumbled towards her in the dark, breathing fast.

  ‘Mam—’

  ‘Has he touched you?’

  ‘He thought I was you, Mam,’ Kate hissed.

  ‘Wha’s that? Wha’s all the fuss?’ John slurred. ‘I was asleep.’

  Kate knew he was lying, or maybe he had been half asleep and dreaming of Rose. Either way, she would not let that happen again. She shuddered to think of the way his hands had been pawing her. She kissed Rose good night and fled up the ladder to the bedroom in the loft she shared with Mary.

  Kate got under the blanket fully clothed, still shaking from the incident. A short while later she heard Jack climb the creaking ladder and fall on to the mattress in the curtained-off section that served as his room. She was thankful that her parents slept downstairs in a boxed-in bed in the kitchen alcove. Rose was no longer fit enough to climb ladders and John was too tall and often too inebriated to attempt such a feat.

  Below she could hear Rose coaxing John to bed, and his lurching footsteps across the floor. She could not make out his mumbled grunts, but she heard the noise of their efforts to climb into the bed. There was a short exchange of words; John insistent, Rose wearily accepting. Then Kate heard the squeaking of the bed boards that Sarah had once told her was the sound of consummation. It was short, sharp and rhythmic as if someone was bouncing on the bed. Soon afterwards it stopped and she heard John’s snoring like the sound of bees swarming.

  Kate huddled under the blanket to block out the sound. It made her feel nauseous to think of her mother doing intimate things with John’s whisky breath hot all over her and his rough hands kneading her flesh. Never would she choose such a man for a husband! She would marry a gentleman with good looks and charm, who would sing with her in harmony. A man more like her real father who could play the piano and be accomplished at a trade. She would never reduce her children to begging in the street or suffer the shame of a husband who broke rocks at the workhouse for a pittance as John had once had to do.

  She lulled herself to sleep with romantic thoughts of this future man. Later, in the early hours of the morning, she woke, still cocooned in pleasant dreams. She flinched at the touch of a warm body next to her. Kate recoiled at the thought John might have climbed up to lie beside her. But in the grey pearly light through the skylight she saw Jack curled up like a mouse in the space where Mary usually lay.

  Kate relaxed and snuggled back beside him. She felt comforted by his warm breath on her cheek and his smell of hay and earth.

  ‘My little soldier,’ she smiled to herself.

  Slipping an arm over his body she drifted off to sleep again.

  When she woke a second time, Jack was gone and motes of dust were dancing in the strong beam of sunlight flooding the room. Kate heard her mother moving around downstairs. She got up quickly and went down to help, noticing John’s bulking shape in the bed beyond, still snoring.

  Rose said nothing as she handed Kate a cup of weak tea she had poured from the pot keeping warm on the stove. Her broad face looked pasty and creased with lack of sleep.

  ‘Do you want me to start on the dinner, Mam?’

  They had got out of the habit of going to Mass since Rose had found the trek down to St Bede’s in Jarrow too much for her swollen legs. There had been periods during the bad times when lack of decent clothes or boots for their feet had kept them away from church.

  ‘In a minute,’ Rose said quietly, giving a brief glance to her sleeping husband. Then she nodded silently for Kate to follow her outside.

  They went out through the pantry to the yard with the wash house, where Jack helped John keep a couple of mangy hens. One of them flapped up on to the wall at their sudden appearance. Rose led the way out into the lane. They stood sheltered from the railway embankment by overgrown nettles and hawthorn bushes.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about our Lizzie,’ Rose said abruptly. ‘She’ll be needing help.’

  Kate watched her mother’s tight expression. ‘Aye, she will.’

  ‘I think you should gan and help your aunt - give a hand with George and Alfred.’

  ‘Me?’ Kate gawped at her. ‘But what about me job in Shields?’

  Rose continued to look out over the embankment as she spoke. ‘You can sharp pick up another skivvying job. You’re hard-working and eager to please.’

  Kate was foxed. ‘But what about me wages? How would you manage?’

  Rose turned and faced her. Her eyes were dark-ringed but glinting.

  ‘It might just be for a couple of weeks - maybes a month -just while Lizzie gets back on her feet. We’ll manage.’ She put out a hand and touched Kate’s arm. ‘Take this chance. Ravensworth’s a big estate and there might be a place for you permanent.’ There was urgency in her voice. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d had such a chance instead of our Lizzie. But we each have a different lot to bear and
mine hasn’t killed me yet.’

  Rose gave her a brief wistful smile. ‘Your da wanted you to have the best start in life - and I don’t mean that old lump lying in his bed yonder,’ she said with a curt nod at the cottage. ‘I haven’t been able to give you much, but maybes now you can make some’at of yourself. You’ve got the best looks of all me bairns, alive or dead, and a nature to suit.’

  Kate felt herself colouring at her mother’s words. She had never heard such praise from her lips.

  ‘Mam—’

  Rose gripped her hand. ‘I want you away from here. Father will never let you near another man - least not the type who’ll make you happy.’

  Kate swallowed. ‘Has he agreed to me going?’

  ‘Not yet, but leave him to me. I know how to get round him.’ Rose gave a short bitter laugh.

  Kate thought of last night and the creakings from the box bed, and felt uneasy. Is there anything a mother wouldn’t do to protect her children? she wondered.

  ‘So will you go?’ Rose demanded.

  Kate was filled with sudden excitement. Her dream of going to Ravensworth and the mysterious blue hills beyond was almost within her grasp.

  ‘Aye, willingly,’ she smiled.

  Rose patted her arm in relief and turned quickly, so that Kate would not see the gleam of tears in her eyes. She had no idea how deeply she would be missed, how hollow her mother’s heart would be if she never came back. But Rose, who had lost two daughters for good a long time ago, was used to a heavy heart. Yet she would never have the words to describe such desolation, and it served no purpose to try.

  ‘Get the brisket on, lass,’ was all Rose said and Kate followed her back inside, her mind already racing ahead to the future.

  Chapter 3

  Kate heard later that the arguing started during Sunday dinner. But by then she had escaped to the house in South Shields where her employers were hosting a large lunch party. During the week she was general maid, laying fires, cleaning brasses, washing and ironing. She had been given the day off for the Coronation celebrations, but ordered to be back before luncheon on Sunday to help in the kitchen.

  It was late in the evening when she made the two-mile walk back up the hill to Cleveland Place, and her limbs ached from heaving cast-iron pots of food and cauldrons of hot water around the kitchen and carrying tray-loads of food up and down stairs all afternoon. She approached the cottage warily, wondering what she would find.

  All was quiet in the kitchen, with John’s chair empty and only Rose sitting close to the fire, trying to mend a tear in Jack’s shorts by the dim light.

  ‘The calm after the storm,’ Rose said drily.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Kate discarded her jacket and loosened her chafing boots.

  ‘Father’s asleep - stomach playing up as it always does after a day on the whisky. Mary’s gone to bed - tired herself out with all her rantin’ and cryin’.’

  ‘About me ganin’ to Aunt Lizzie’s?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But she didn’t want to gan. She hates the country.’ Kate flopped on to the horsehair chair she’d bought in a sale for her mother but which Rose found too uncomfortable.

  ‘Well, now she does. Our Mary’s as changeable as a weathercock.’

  ‘Only ‘cos you’ve chosen me to go. She can’t bear to think she’s being left out of some’at.’

  ‘Father told her to stop bawling like a bairn or he’d put her over his knee like a bairn. Said she was too young to be going so far from home and that it might do you good to have a bit of Lizzie’s firm hand - high time you stopped playing in trees like a boy.’

  ‘He’s agreed to me going then?’ Kate sat up in expectation.

  ‘As long as Lizzie and Peter cover the cost of your keep -and you send back your wages if you pick up work. So you can write a note for me and send it ahead to let them know you’re coming.’

  Kate leapt up and gave Rose a hug. ‘That’s grand. Thanks, Mam!’

  Rose shrugged her off. ‘Now go and call for our Jack -he’s been out since tea time.’

  Kate went out into the chill night air. There was no sign of the boy in the back lane and she imagined he was lying low in one of his many dens along the embankment or in the copse. The moon was hidden by a blanket of cloud but there was still a lurid smudge of daylight on the far horizon that helped her pick her way among the potholes.

  ‘Jack? I’m back. Time to come in. Jack!’

  No reply came. She edged further up the track towards the trees. It was cold without her jacket and she rubbed her arms.

  ‘Jack. Come home now. Mam wants you. You know how she frets. Haway, Jack, show yourself.’

  Still the boy did not answer and Kate wondered if he had gone off on one of his rambles, forgetting the time. He could disappear for hours, stalking the unkempt embankment for birds’ eggs and berries, or pestering the nearby farmer to let him help shoot the rooks.

  She turned to look back towards the railway cottages. In an instant, somebody jumped out of the long grass and grabbed her from behind, clamping a dirty hand over her face.

  Kate gave a muffled scream and tried to wriggle from his hold.

  ‘You’re captured!’ Jack cried in triumph, tightening his wiry grip.

  ‘Jack man, leave go. You’re hurting me!’

  Abruptly he let go and pushed her away.

  ‘You little beggar!’ Kate gasped. ‘I nearly died of fright.’

  ‘I’ll make a canny scout, won’t I?’ he crowed.

  Kate smoothed down her clothes as she eyed him. He had unexpected strength in his slim gawky body. He gave her one of his resentful looks from under puckered dark brows.

  ‘What’s wrong, kiddar?’

  He hunched his shoulders and began to walk away from her.

  ‘Tell us, Jack,’ Kate said, catching up.

  ‘What you have to gan away for?’ he accused.

  ‘To help Aunt Lizzie, of course.’ They carried on walking. ‘It’ll not be for long, maybes a month.’ She swung an arm round him but he shook her off.

  ‘You’ll not come back,’ he said.

  ‘Course I will.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No you won’t. You want to gan away -just like Sarah. Everyone wants to gan. You’re leaving ‘cos of me; Da said so. You’re not to play in the woods with me no more.’

  Kate took hold of him. If only she could tell him that it was John she couldn’t wait to get away from. She was running from his critical words, his smothering strictness and now that lustful look in his eye, the memory of his predatory hands. From these she had to escape and she suspected that was why her mother was so keen for her to be gone too.

  ‘Not because of you! You’re me little soldier and I’ll miss you, honest I will. But it’ll not be for ever, I promise. Bet I’ll be back by the time you finish school for the summer. We’ll gan picking wild raspberries together, eh?’

  But he just looked at her as if he did not believe in her promise. Then he turned away and ran home without her.

  Mary’s reaction was much more vocal. She tossed on the flock mattress they shared and dug sharp feet into Kate’s back.

  ‘It’s not fair! Why can’t I go? You’ve already got work in Shields. Why should you get to go?’

  ‘Cos Mam said,’ Kate sighed. ‘Any road, you’d hate being stuck in their tiny cottage, washing dirty gardener’s clothes -and you don’t even like George and Alfred.’

  ‘Only cos they put a worm down me back and blow their noses on their sleeves.’

  ‘See, you’d not be there five minutes before you’d be crying to come home.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t!’ Mary wriggled and poked her sister.

  Kate shifted in irritation. ‘Leave off and get some sleep. I’ve got to be up early,
even if you don’t.’

  But Mary wouldn’t be quiet. ‘Why should I be the one stuck out here in this mucky little hovel at Mam’s beck and call all day long? It’s just not fair.’

  ‘Cos she needs your help. She can’t be doing all the fetching and carrying with her bad chest and swollen legs. And there’s Jack to give a hand.’

  ‘Jack,’ Mary gave a petulant snort, ‘he’s never here. Might as well build himself a house in those trees and go and live there.’

  ‘Well, at least you get along with Father more than the rest of us. You know how to get round him when you want. You have an easy life of it here, if you ask me.’

  ‘I’m not asking. I hate it here, I never wanted to come. I wish we were still in the town.’

  ‘What? Choking to death next to the chemical works? If Mam hadn’t moved us up here where the air’s fresher, our Jack would be dead by now.’

  ‘Aye, it’s always Jack, Jack. Mam only cares for him - and you - Mam’s little pet. No one thinks about what I want. The only one who looks out for me is Aunt Maggie. I wish she were my mam.’

  Kate kept silent at the provocation, for maybe there was some truth in it. There had been hard times after their father died when Maggie had taken in baby Mary and brought her up as her own. She still remembered the day when the resentful young Mary was brought back to live with them, kicking and wailing and destroying the family harmony. Only John had any patience with her; for her sisters it meant less food on their plates and less room in the bed. She wondered if Mary would ever be happy. It was just in her nature to hanker after what she couldn’t have, or want to be somewhere other than where she was.

  Kate rolled to the edge of the mattress, thinking how good it would be to get away to Aunt Lizzie’s. She sank into an exhausted sleep long before Mary’s unhappy mutterings ceased.

  But when the day of departure came, Kate was suddenly tearful at leaving her family behind. She had given notice in Shields, the note to Lizzie had been sent and a small wicker basket of possessions packed. Jack was going to help her carry it down to the railway station in Shields before going on to school and Mary was coming for the outing.