She had a cup of tea but would eat nothing, and then it was time to go, and she felt she’d hardly got in. She kissed and hugged her granda to her; she kissed and held Lizzie; and when she was at the door she mentioned Joe for the first time. ‘Where is he, Ma?’ she said. ‘Our Joe.’
‘Oh!’ Catherine smiled weakly. ‘Didn’t I tell you? He’s been set on; he’s in the boiler shop. And the way he describes it, it’s marvellous. And he’s tickled to death working in the daylight. He’ll never go down below again, never. He’s a runner to one of the men with hot rivets and things, you know. Oh, he likes it. So you see, lass’—she spread her hands—‘we’re all right if only we could get out of this.
‘Will you come again, lass?’ Catherine asked tentatively now, and Katie nodded her head. Then she put her arms around her mother and they kissed and held tight for a moment; but when it was over she didn’t immediately walk away, for there was a question she wanted to ask. She looked down as she said, ‘How’s me da?’
‘Not bad, lass. He was upset, but he’s getting over it. I know one thing; he’s dying to see you. You…you couldn’t come one night?’
Katie turned her eyes towards the bank again and said, ‘No, Ma, I couldn’t come at night.’
‘He’d walk you nearly all the way back.’
‘I couldn’t, Ma.’
‘All right, lass.’ Catherine patted her arm, and again she kissed her; then she watched her mount the slimy bank. And when she turned at the end of the street she waved to her.
It wasn’t four o’clock yet the winter twilight was already beginning, and the effect of night coming fast was helped by the smoke belching from the great chimneys of the steelworks. When Katie reached the main road she found it blocked with stationary traffic. Men sat high on their carts or stood at their horses’ heads and shouted to each other. She walked quickly up the uneven pavement, past a row of shops all showing, to her mind, wonderful things: food, clothes, boots, butcher’s meats, pig meat. She would have liked to stand and gaze in one window after the other, but she knew she mustn’t waste a minute. Further along the pavement she came to the reason for the blockade. Two drunken women were sprawled in the middle of the road, fighting. Their hair was hanging down their backs, their clothes were rent and muddy, and as they tore at each other they were encouraged by a large group of onlookers, while a policeman tried to disentangle them, getting no assistance from any bystanders.
The sight of the fighting disgusted her—not that she hadn’t seen drunken women before. But her mother never touched beer or gin, nor did her father. Her granda did, but only when there was a copper to spare.
The whole town seemed crowded with people, and it was not four o’clock. What it would be like when the shipyard and the chemical works let the men out she couldn’t imagine.
When she reached the outskirts of the town and the open land stretched for miles before her, with the river winding through it, she breathed deeply and told herself she would die if she had to live in Jarrow and that hovel; she needed fresh country air.
The thought brought her to a stop and she clutched the neck of her cloak; she didn’t need fresh country air. Given the choice she would run back to that evil-smelling room this minute.
As she skirted the village she was confronted on the narrow trail by a number of men coming off the second shift. She knew most of them; they all knew her. Some of their glances were scornful, some pitying, but no man spoke to her.
It was dark when she reached the house. She had run most of the last part of the journey. She was still running when she reached the wash-house, but when her hand went to pick up the key her fingers remained stiff and bent; it was gone. Her eyes moved wildly about. If he were in the candle would be lit. She went slowly towards the house door and turned the handle, and when she entered the room she saw him in the light from the fire, sitting on the settle just as he had come from the pit. His eyes were waiting for her, and the look in them caused her whole body to go cold. She walked slowly forward, taking off her cape as she did so, and she passed him and was pulling off her hat and going towards the scullery to bring in the wooden tub for him to bathe in when he barked at her, saying, ‘You did it then?’
She turned and peered at him outlined against the firelight, and she gulped twice before she dared to protest, ‘I had to go; they’re my folks.’
‘Are they, begod!’ He was on his feet now, coming towards her. ‘Well, I’ll tell you something which you seem to have forgotten, Mrs Bunting.’ He stressed his name. ‘You happen to be a married woman now.’ He put four stiff fingers out and pushed her in the chest, causing her to stumble backwards. ‘You think because he’s got work away from the pit you can take a high hand now, don’t you? Well, let me tell you, Mr Rosier’s arm is long and it’s linked with Palmer’s and a word from me and your da’ll be out in the gutter again. Now remember that, the next time you want to take a walk…Get goin’; I’m waiting for the water. I’ve been waiting for the last half-hour.’
While she scurried back and forward filling the bath, first with cold water, then adding the boiling water from the kail pot, he stripped himself of his clothes. He stripped himself naked as he had done since the first day she got the bath ready for him, not leaving his small clothes on as her father did, and other miners, when there were women and bairns about. While he washed she always kept her eyes lowered from him. She couldn’t understand this attitude of his any more than she could understand him letting her sleep alone. She would have understood it better if he hadn’t let her sleep alone.
When he sat down in the bath, his knees level with his chin and the water barely covering his thighs, she went forward and, stooping low, picked up the flannel out of the water, keeping her gaze fixed tightly on it the while; then, going behind him, she washed his back. Following this, she scooped some hot water from the pot into the wooden bucket; then going to the back door, where stood a barrel that caught the rainwater from the roof, she half filled another bucket, returned to the kitchen, and with it she cooled the hot water in the other bucket. Then, lifting it up, she stood waiting.
And Mark Bunting kept her waiting. His movements were slower now, leisurely. After a time he got to his knees and, bending forward slightly, held on to the sides of the tub while Katie poured the warm water over him. It was a refinement to his toilette that he had thought of only recently.
He always changed his clothes after the bath, and Katie now took his pit suit and underwear into the yard and banged them against the wall, getting rid of as much dust as possible. When she returned to the kitchen he was almost dressed and he barked at her again, ‘You could have left that till after, couldn’t you? Where’s the meal?’
The small protesting voice within her was quite silent now, and, scurrying still, she set the table. It was cold meat left over from dinner time. He measured out for her three slices of bread, a small two-inch square of meat, a dob of dripping, and a mug of tea. He put no sugar in her tea but some in his own.
When the meal was over and she had washed the dishes she took her seat by the fireside and began to sew. She was turning in the frayed ends of his working trousers. She could hardly see what she was doing, for there was only one candle alight, and if she moved nearer to it it would mean moving nearer to him.
Mark Bunting now lit a spill from the candle and applied it to his wooden pipe—he did not smoke a clay pipe as the ordinary men did—and when the pipe was going well he lay back in his chair, his stockinged feet resting on the raised stone hearth, and surveyed his wife.
If Bunting had been other than he was, this scene could have held happiness for him, even having married Katie for a price, as he had done. She would have repaid the smallest kindnesses shown to her a thousandfold if he could have found it in his heart to be kind. If he had been kind she would have liked him, because he wasn’t an unattractive-looking man. Being Katie, with a bountiful amount of sympathy and affection in her nature, she would have stood up for him in spite of what was said
about him, if he had only been kind. And who knew but that the kindness would have grown into love, for kindness, like witchcraft, caused things to happen.
But there was a strong unnatural twist in Mark Bunting’s make-up. How else could he have stood for years the scorn of his fellow men and found pleasure in their suffering, especially when the suffering was instigated by himself? With workmen, however, he knew exactly where he stood, what the result of his actions towards them would be, but in the present situation his position wasn’t at all clear and he was in a quandary. He pulled hard on his pipe now as he looked at Katie: at the mass of gleaming hair, the tendrils hanging across her pale face; at her big eyes—the eyes that told him all her feelings—lowered over the sewing; at the small swelling bulge of her stomach; and he wondered where he stood. He didn’t know but that young Rosier wasn’t finished with her; he had been vague the night he called here, asking simply if he wanted to earn a hundred pounds. When he had replied with a laugh, ‘Show me the man who doesn’t, sir,’ he had been told, ‘If you’ll marry the Mulholland girl there’ll be fifty when you ask her and fifty when it’s done…she’s to have a child.’ He had stared into the lean, handsome face which he hated more than that of any other man in the mine, and he had considered the proposal for a full moment, during which his thinking hadn’t been concerned with the Mulholland girl but with the fact that this business could mean an assured income for years ahead. And even when he had given his answer he had not allowed himself to appear eager, but had said, slowly, ‘All right, sir; it’s a deal,’ and all Rosier had said after that was, ‘Go to the Reverend Pinkerton. Tell him you want a special licence. Explain the situation, without my name of course; make it urgent. I’ll see to the cost.’
And that was all. It might be that when the child was born he would see to its upbringing if it was a boy. As for her—well, if you fancied women she was a one to fancy. Rosier likely wasn’t done with her. He had only seen him once since his marriage into the Talford family and then he had looked straight through him. But that was part of the game; he didn’t mind being treated like scum as long as he was paid for it; he was treated like scum most of the time and not paid for it.
As he stared at her he wondered why he had no desire to take her to bed. She was his wife, he could, and Rosier couldn’t do much about it, could he? It would be like eating your cake and having it. He had often thought if he had a woman in the house he would feel different, but he didn’t. The thought of having her in bed stirred him not at all, but there were other ways in which she could afford him satisfaction, only he’d have to hold his hand about them until the child came and he knew Master Rosier’s reactions. It wouldn’t do to get on the wrong side of him; because it wasn’t only the source of revenue for years ahead that could be jeopardised, there was also his job, and this house, of which he was very proud, that went with it. He would hold his hand. There was no hurry; he was a patient man.
He startled her by saying, ‘Have you seen about a midwife?’
Her eyes wide, she said, ‘No.’
‘Then you’d better, hadn’t you? They get full up. A very busy time the spring is…for babies. Mrs Morgan in the village, she’s one, isn’t she?’
She dropped her head before saying, ‘She wouldn’t come.’
He was sitting bolt upright in his chair now. ‘Who said she wouldn’t come? You’ve asked her?’
‘No…but a village woman wouldn’t come to the house; you know she wouldn’t.’ She felt a certain strength flow into her after having dared to say that to him, and something of this seemed to get across to him, for he got to his feet and, standing over her and digging his thick finger into the hollow of her shoulder, he said, ‘Go the morrow and ask her. She’ll come. If she’s sensible she’ll come.’
Again, in spite of his prodding finger, she forced herself to speak what was in her mind. Although her voice was little more than a whisper, she said, ‘I’d rather have me Ma.’
She was nearly knocked from the chair with the flat of his hand on the back of her head. ‘You’re not havin’ your mother here. I’m not having any of your scum inside these four walls, get that! At no time. Do you hear me?’
She snapped off the thread from the trousers with trembling fingers; then she folded them up and laid them by the side of the fireplace where he always left his clothes so that they would be warm to put on. Following this, she proceeded to set the table for his supper, and when this was done she stood between the kitchen and the scullery door and said, ‘I’m going to bed, I’m tired.’
‘Like hell you are! If you go on walks that make you tired that’s your look-out. Sit yourself down there.’ He pointed to a chair. ‘You’ll go when I’m ready and not afore.’
So she sat until nearly ten o’clock, and only the thought of having to light one more candle drew him up the stairs, and she followed him, thinking all the while that tonight he would push her into his room. But he didn’t.
Chapter Nine
Katie’s baby was born towards the end of April, in the first minutes of a Thursday morning, and it was a girl.
She lay exhausted after the long fifteen hours of labour while Mrs Morgan cleaned her up and washed her and saw to the child. Then the midwife, sitting on a chair by the bedside, dozed until the dawn should break and she could see her way home.
The sun was shining in through the little window when she stood, her shawl over her head, ready to go. She looked down on Katie with the child in her arms and said, ‘You can be proud of your bairn; she’s a beauty, lass. What you goner call it?’
‘Sarah,’ said Katie.
Hearing the door bang downstairs, Mrs Morgan went and looked out of the window and, coming back, she said, ‘He’s gone.’ Then after a pause, during which her head drooped to one side, she asked, ‘Why in the name of God did you marry that one?’
Looking all eyes, Katie said quietly, ‘Because of them, Mrs Morgan, me ma an’ da and them. I couldn’t stand to see them freezing to death out there. And he said he’d get me da set on straightaway and give them a house.’
‘And then your da went and got set on in Jarrow. Aw, lass, all for nowt… . Is it hisen?’
‘Oh no, Mrs Morgan, no.’
‘Well, you can say thank God for that, an’ all.’
‘Mrs Morgan.’ Katie eased herself upwards on the straw pillow. ‘Could…could you get word to me ma and tell her I’ve had it, and tell her not to come afore Tuesday. That’s the best day. It’s No. 3, The Row…’
‘Oh, I know where she lives, lass, an’ I’ll get our Micky to go as soon as I get back…But don’t you think she’d better come up and see you ordinary like?’
‘No, Mrs Morgan. It’s no use asking, an’ I’m afraid for me da’s new job.’
‘Aw, to hell’s flames with him, he can’t do anything in Palmer’s; he’s got no say there. Did he say he could get your da the push if your ma came?’
Katie closed her eyes, then said, ‘As much.’
‘The stinking bugger! Somebody’ll do for him one of these days, an’ I hope it’ll be soon. And you won’t be the only one that’s relieved, lass. But there you are; don’t worry your head at the moment.’ She patted her kindly. ‘I’ll be back in a little while; you’re all right for the time being.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Morgan, thanks.’ She put out her hand and touched the thick rough hand of the old woman, but she withheld her tears until Mrs Morgan had gone down the stairs. Then they flowed so fast that they dropped on to the child’s face and rolled down its cheeks like dewdrops.
The child was nearly a month old before Mark Bunting got the chance of a private word with its father.
Bernard Rosier wasn’t seen so much at the mine now, and for two reasons. First, because he was living in Newcastle, in a house that had been a wedding present to his bride from her father; the second was because his interests had apparently widened. It was said that his father-in-law had a slice in Palmer’s Shipyard and Mr Bernard was moving in that direction to ta
ke a bite.
On this particular morning Bunting saw him going into the works office apparently looking for Brown, the under-manager. The office was separate from the one where the clerks were housed, and Bunting, knowing that Brown was below ground, saw this as a good opportunity to speak of the matter that was foremost in his mind.
Bernard Rosier turned, on his entry, and stared at him; then when Bunting took off his cap but made no effort to speak he said in a cutting tone, ‘Well?’
Bunting moistened his thin lips and, his hands remaining stationary on the rim of his cap, muttered in an undertone, ‘I was thinking, sir, perhaps you’d like to know, the baby came nearly four week ago. It’s a girl. I—I just thought as you’d like to know.’
As Bunting watched the blood flood up into Bernard Rosier’s face he knew immediately he was on the wrong track. His eyes were unblinking as Rosier came and stood close to him and he watched him sift the words through his teeth as he said, ‘Now look here, my man; you were paid for what you did, and well paid, and that’s the end as far as I’m concerned. If you think you’re going to bleed me over this matter you’d better stop and consider…Get it into your head you’ve had all you’re going to get…And don’t say that you can talk; you can do all the damn well talking you like and who’ll believe you? And even if they did, it’s no longer of any importance.’ He paused here for a number of seconds before adding, ‘If you want to find another job just bring up this subject again. Do you understand me?’ His head moved just the slightest bit towards the keeker, and after a moment of silence he picked his hat up from the desk, then gave Bunting one last long, hard look and walked out.
Katie Mulholland Page 13
