Rose glared back at his stormy face, maddened by his obstinacy. It was obvious the boy was dying, so why was he torturing them all by denying what was happening? She wanted peace and quiet, to hold her little son close and give him comfort in his last hours. All John’s ranting wouldn’t alter a thing, only make the final night more difficult to bear. Well, she would make him see how futile his blustering words were.
Struggling to stand up, Rose thrust Jack at him. ‘Here, you take him then!’ she hissed. ‘You think you’re God and can stop bairns dying. You save him!’ He staggered backwards, clutching the small bundle in astonishment. She pushed past him. ‘I’m off for the priest. My lad’s ganin’ to Heaven with a blessing on his head!’
Rose fled for the back door and rushed out into the blustery dark. At once she was caught in a squall of rain. It whipped at her face and uncovered hair, but she did not care. At the top of the street she heard footsteps coming after her.
‘Mam! Wait, Mam,’ Elizabeth panted behind. ‘You shouldn’t be out in this without your coat and bonnet. You’ll catch your de—’ The girl broke off suddenly.
Rose turned to see her daughter anxiously holding out her black cape and bonnet. Her heart melted to hear the familiar scolding that she was constantly giving her younger girls. Swiftly, Elizabeth put the cloak around her shoulders and helped her tie on the hat as if she were a helpless child. Rose could not trust herself to speak for fear she would start to cry and never stop.
‘I’ll come with you, Mam,’ Elizabeth said, slipping her arm through her mother’s.
‘Ta, hinny,’ Rose managed to whisper, and together they bent into the wind and rain and headed for the priest’s house.
Father O’Brien left his half-eaten supper and came with them at once. They were all drenched by the time they reached Albion Street. John was still pacing the room with Jack in his arms and Rose felt a pang of remorse for the angry words she had flung at him. His face was haggard and pinched with worry and he flinched at the sight of the priest at the door.
To Rose’s relief, he made no protest as Father O’Brien took the baby from him and began to pray. They stood about tensely, Rose gripping the hands of her other children, who were crying softly at the sudden solemnity of the final rites. She felt bitter bile rise in her throat at the thought of what was to come. Another child to bury, the fleeting happiness of a son in their midst gone like the moon disappearing behind black clouds. Why her? Why them? Why wouldn’t the Virgin preserve her little lad? Jesus lived to be a grown man, why couldn’t her son? she demanded angrily. What had she done to deserve this?
As the words of the priest tolled like sombre bells, Rose recalled the prophecy of the gypsy that she would bear a son but that storms would follow. Then the Irish woman had cursed John, willing that his son would stand up to him and give him not a minute’s peace till the day he died. Till the day the boy died. She had thought it odd at the time, but she was sure that was what the woman had said. Had she predicted that their son would die before John? But then Jack had not lived long enough to stand up to anyone, poor little scrap. Rose bent her head, ashamed that she should have put so much store on the fey words of a tinker. Nevertheless, she would take what storms lay ahead, if only they would let her son live! Please save my child! she pleaded wordlessly as Father O’Brien handed Jack back to her.
The priest went out into the night, leaving Rose and John staring at each other across the fireside. His gaunt face looked as expressionless as if it had been cut from stone. Wearily, Rose turned and settled the baby in his drawer that served as his cradle and placed it on the hearth. While her back was turned she heard the outer door slam and John’s heavy boots ring across the yard.
He’s off to drown his sorrows in drink, she thought dully. No doubt this is how things will be from now on.
‘Kiss your brother good night,’ she told the girls quietly.
‘But what if he gets me cough?’ Kate asked uncertainly.
‘It won’t matter,’ Rose murmured.
‘Will he be dead in the morning?’ she asked.
‘Maybes.’
All at once, Kate burst into tears. ‘I don’t want him to!’ she sobbed.
Rose put her arms around her. ‘I know, hinny. Maybe he’ll be spared. Either way it’s out of our hands.’ She bent forward and kissed Jack tenderly on his pale lips, then ushered the girls swiftly upstairs. The three sisters huddled together in bed for warmth.
‘Mam?’ Kate asked across the dark room. ‘If Jack dies, can Mary come and live with us instead?’
Rose felt her stomach twist at the sudden mention of the neglected Mary. She hardly gave her a thought these days, especially with so much worrying over Jack.
‘We’ll see,’ she gulped, and closed the door quickly before Kate could ask any more awkward questions.
As she descended to the kitchen again, she heard the back door bang and found John already back, a jar of whisky in his hand.
‘If you’re ganin’ to drink yourself daft, you might as well stay down the pub,’ Rose said tartly.
He hardly looked at her as he placed the jug on the hearth and blew on his hands to warm them. Then he bent forward and lifted Jack out of the drawer. The baby did not stir as John sat back in his fireside chair. Rose looked on appalled. She could not bear to stay and watch him make a fool of himself, slugging back whisky and singing mawkish songs about Ireland and crying over their dying baby. Without another word, she went back upstairs to the girls’ bedroom, creeping in beside them for comfort and wrapping her arms around Kate’s warm body. Below she could hear John beginning to sing. She buried her head under the blanket and tried to stifle the sobs that choked her throat.
Alone, John held the listless baby on his knee and talked and sang to him about Ireland.
‘One day you’ll be proud to be a McMullen. Maybes you’ll wear the uniform like your father and march under the Colours. You may be the runt of the litter now, little lad, but one day you’ll stand your ground and fight with the best of them. I’ll teach you to talk with your fists if anyone insults the name of Ireland or McMullen or the Pope!’
Every so often, John bent to the jar warming on the hearth, dipped in a finger and moistened the baby’s lips with whisky. Then he lifted the jar to his own lips and took a swig. As the fire died down and the room darkened and chilled, he wrapped Jack in his jacket and walked up and down the kitchen, cradling his son tightly in his arms to keep him warm.
Through the small hours of that dark February night, John continued to pace the floor, singing, talking and feeding Jack tiny sips of whisky. As long as he kept moving and talking, John could keep at bay the frightening spectre of the black-robed priest coming to bury his son, of his wailing mother and Rose’s grief-stricken empty face. He remembered how despair over Margaret’s death had so maddened his wife she had thrown herself into the Slake. It filled him with terror to think that she might give up all hope in life if Jack were to die. He knew how painful it would be to lose his son - he had been astonished at the strength of his love for this tiny child - and fear of losing him had churned up his smothered grief for the loss of his daughter, Ruth.
But to lose Rose would be to lose everything. With her he felt important, needed, the head of the household, the provider. With her he was a husband and father, with a home of their own. Rose was well liked, respected, still handsome despite the rigours of the puddling mills, and he still could not believe his luck that she had finally married him. To see her smile at him warmed his very guts. The sound of her laughter was the sweetest sound in the world, better than a hundred sentimental songs.
She had no idea how much she meant to him, he was sure of that. He would never have the words to express what he felt deep down and would die of shame rather than admit them to her. But when she looked at him with contempt, as she had done that evening, it filled him with a bleak sh
ame and rage.
‘I’ll show your mam, bonny lad,’ he croaked. ‘I’ll not let you die. By heck, you’ll live, you little bugger!’
Finally, John sank with exhaustion and drink into the chair once more. He hardly had the voice to sing or the strength to keep his eyes open. He stuck his little finger into the baby’s mouth one more time and felt a faint flutter in response. It was the last comforting gesture he remembered before falling asleep.
Rose woke to the sound of John shouting her name in alarm. It was still dark, but from the sounds outside of early deliveries and the scrape of men’s boots, morning had come.
‘Rose! Rose!’ he bellowed. ‘Rose, help me!’
She heard him take to the stairs. Her heart hammered in dread now the moment had arrived. She had prayed half the night that this morning would never come, railing at the Virgin Mary for taking her son away so soon.
‘I’m here!’ Rose called out, the girls beginning to stir around her.
John burst through the door, a bundle of blankets and his jacket in his arms. His face was grey and creased with lack of sleep.
‘Rose - the bairn,’ He almost threw the bundle at her.
She looked down and gasped. Jack’s tiny face was tinged with pink and puckering as if on the point of crying. His mouth opened and made a sucking motion, then he gave out a bleating cry of protest.
Rose shrieked, ‘He’s still alive!’
John nodded vigorously. ‘I woke up and he was suckin’ on me finger! The lad wants feedin’!’
Rose’s eyes flooded with tears as she looked between John and the baby. ‘Aye, he does!’ she exclaimed. ‘I never thought I’d see him open his eyes again.’ She gulped down a throatful of tears. ‘What did you do?’
John grinned proudly. ‘Gave him a taste of McMullen medicine.’
‘The whisky?’ Rose asked, shocked.
‘Aye,’ John grunted. ‘Last night was no time for signing the pledge.’
Rose shook her head and laughed in disbelief. As the girls woke up around her and cried with excitement that their baby brother had been spared another day, Rose tentatively began to feed him. Jack snuffled and latched on to her breast. For the first time in days, he took her milk. She felt dizzy with relief.
Glancing up from the bed, she caught John’s look. It was dazed, triumphant and, she thought, suffused with love for her. Then he gave her a quick bashful smile, cleared his throat and said gruffly, ‘Haway, lasses. Gan downstairs and give your mam some peace.’
As he turned to the door, Rose said softly, ‘Thank you, John.’
He hesitated, nodded without looking round and walked out of the room. She knew he was too full of emotion to say anything and she let him go. But she was filled with warmth towards him, knowing that more than Jack’s life had been saved that night. Their marriage had held firm. Rose was thankful. Her prayers had been answered and she would light candles and rejoice.
Yet she had bargained with Our Lady. In return she had promised to weather whatever future storms were thrown at her, Rose remembered with a touch of unease. She looked down tenderly at her suckling baby and hoped fervently that the price of saving him would not be too high.
Chapter 33
By March, Jack was putting on weight and thriving at last. He soon grew out of his small drawer and Rose felt confident enough to let him sleep in Mary’s old cot close to the side of her bed. With the stirrings of spring, she felt her spirits lift and a new surge of energy. She organised her daughters into helping her spring-clean the house, scrubbing the walls and floors and polishing the windows to rid them of the winter grime. Rose offered to do the same for her neighbours, who in return paid for whitewash for her kitchen walls and dark green paint for the windowsills.
They washed the curtains and blankets and hung them out to dry in the lane, until Kate rushed in screaming, ‘Mam, the sheep are eating the washing!’
‘Sheep?’ Rose said incredulous, pausing in her sweeping of the linoleum floor. ‘Is this one of your fancy tales?’
‘No, Mam,’ Kate insisted, grabbing her mother’s hand and heaving her towards the door. ‘There’s a pack of sheep out the back!’
‘Flock of sheep,’ Elizabeth corrected, running in behind her. ‘She’s telling the truth, Mam.’
Rose dashed out still clutching the broom. A drover, who did not know the town, had got lost on the way to the docks and his flock of sheep had scattered in fright at the sound of a whinnying dray horse. Some of them had taken refuge down the back of Albion Street and were nibbling at the mossy bricks and Rose’s moth-eaten patchwork quilt.
‘Get away! Shoo, you little beggars!’ She ran at them yelling and waving her arms. ‘I’ll have you for me tea if you don’t scarper!’
The neighbours and local children came out to watch the spectacle of Rose and her daughters whooping like Red Indians and chasing the bemused sheep down the lane with the long-handled broom.
John heard about it before he reached home when he stopped for a glass of beer at The Railway. He came back chuckling, ‘I hear it’s mutton for tea the night, eh? Must have sheep stealers in your blood, Rose Ann!’
‘I didn’t steal any,’ she protested, ‘just threatened to boil them.’
‘Mam was the only one knew what to do,’ Kate said proudly.
‘Aye, the neighbours might laugh, but nobody came out to help.’ Rose was indignant. ‘And will you look at this!’ She held up the corner of the blanket she had patched with a scrap from his old army trousers. ‘Ate right through it.’
‘Should’ve kept the beast in compensation,’ John snorted. ‘Wish I’d been here to see you.’ He grabbed her round the waist and gave her a squeeze. ‘Me Little Bo Peep!’
‘Give over!’ she said, struggling free. ‘You’re worse than the bairns down the lane - they’ve been making sheep noises at the back door all afternoon.’
John laughed and began to whistle ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’. Soon Kate and Sarah were joining in with raucous singing. Elizabeth tried not to laugh, glancing at her mother’s cross face.
‘You did look funny, Mam,’ she said with a half-smile, ‘chasing that sheep with the brush. That farmer lad looked scared for his life, an’ all.’
Rose suddenly saw the funny side and laughed. ‘Aye, he did, didn’t he? I think I had a touch of spring fever!’
‘Poor lad,’ John teased. ‘He’ll gan home telling them Jarrow’s full of mad women.’
Rose covered her face with embarrassment and laughed into her hands. Tea time was punctuated with jokes and laughter about the incident, with John comparing her to a wild cowgirl or shepherdess.
‘Your mother always was a country lass at heart,’ he smirked with the girls. ‘Gans mad at the sight of animals.’
Not only did Rose have to endure the cheeky noises of the neighbouring children pretending to be sheep whenever she went out the following week, but even Father O’Brien teased her about it when he called.
‘It’s a grand job to be the finder of lost sheep, Rose,’ he smiled. ‘You’re a lesson to us all.’
But Rose took the teasing in good heart, for it made her happy to see her family in such high spirits.
The air of excitement was maintained when Kate and Sarah rushed in from school one day gabbling about a circus setting up on the pit heap.
‘It’s huge, Mam,’ Kate gasped. ‘Can we go?’
‘It’s American,’ Sarah reported. ‘Cowboys and Indians - we’ve seen the horses. Please, Mam, can we go?’
‘You’ll have to ask your father,’ Rose said cautiously.
Every meal time for the following week, they badgered John to let them go to the circus and Rose watched with interest. He was not one for buying treats for the girls, not since the days of their courtship when he had tried to win their approval with small twis
ts of sweets. Not that they ever had much to spare for such things, but she knew that he kept back enough each week for his own tobacco, newspaper and a drink or two on a Friday night.
At first he resisted. ‘What you want to see them Americans for? They’re a strange lot. And them Indians are half naked - shouldn’t be seen by young lasses. No, I’m not wasting money on them.’
Rose tried to intervene. ‘Why not let them go, John? It’s not as if they’ve ever been. Only Margaret went when she was a bairn. We took—’ She broke off abruptly, realising by his scowling that she had said the wrong thing. After that she kept quiet, keeping the happy memory of that long-ago trip to herself. But the girls were more persistent.
Each evening they came back from reading the posters with more information.
‘Mexican Joe’s the ringmaster,’ Kate said. ‘He wears this great big hat like a lampshade.’
‘I like the look of Mustang Jim - he rides a white horse,’ Sarah sighed.
‘I want to be Violet, the Dashing Rider of the Prairies!’ Kate cried. ‘She’s really bonny.’
But John grew impatient with their constant pleading. ‘I haven’t got the money,’ he snapped, and disappeared behind his newspaper. They all knew by now he could not read it, but anyone who disturbed him snoozing under his paper got a sharp slap of his large hand.
Then, as the end of March neared, two incidents happened to change John’s mind. One windy night a fire broke out in Ormonde Street, gutting a house where two families lived and leaving them with only the clothes in which they escaped. John’s local newspaper reported that Colonel Joe Shelley of the American Circus had offered the bereft families a free show as well as having a whip-round and raising them nearly seven pounds.
‘That’s generous of them, isn’t it?’ Rose said pointedly, eyeing her husband. ‘They must be kind folk.’ John merely grunted.
The following day, the girls came home late and got a telling off from Rose for worrying her.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she demanded.
The Jarrow Lass Page 29
