Mary was happy in her new job, keen to mimic the genteel airs of Mrs Simpson and study the ways of a more prosperous household. She took pleasure in dusting the china ornaments and polishing the brass door knobs and fingerplates. She liked to handle the cut-glass cruet set on the gleaming dining-room table and run her fingers over the smooth, cool marble mantelpiece. Best of all, on the pretext of laying the bedroom fires, Mary delighted in opening the cavernous mahogany wardrobe and breathing in the aromatic smell of mothballs. She wanted to touch the lace and brocades of Mrs Simpson’s clothes and run her fingers through her fur stole, but never quite dared.
Within weeks, Jack’s health had improved and Rose was happy to watch him through the dilapidated fence opposite their street, playing in the farmer’s field and helping lift potatoes. As long as he kept away from the Slake, which lay below them, Rose did not worry.
Even John seemed less truculent, if not happier, than he had done for a long time. He ceased to complain about the tramp uphill from the docks, and even occupied his evenings raising chickens in the long back yard. He began to accumulate furniture again; large unfashionable pieces that he bought second- or third-hand in the town. Kate encouraged him. To Rose’s dismay, her daughter had a similar weakness for ungainly, ostentatious furniture and would tell John if she heard of a house auction in Shields. They came back with solid, uncomfortable chairs and a table that was so big they had to saw the legs off to get it in the house. A dresser followed and a curious contraption that was a desk by day and pulled out into a bed at night.
‘Father says Lord Roberts most likely had one of these on his campaigns in India,’ Kate announced as they demonstrated it with a flourish.
Rose looked at them as if they had gone mad. ‘What do we want with such a thing?’
Jack drew closer, intrigued. ‘Won’t Lord Roberts be needing it in Africa?’ The boy was developing a fascination for the far-away war against the Boers in South Africa that had flared up that autumn. He and John had named the chickens French and Buller after two of the generals.
‘It’s not really his,’ Kate laughed, and gave her brother an affectionate hug.
‘Leave the lad alone.’ John looked annoyed and pulled his son away roughly. ‘You can sleep on this, our Jack. You’re too old to be sharing a bed with your sisters.’
Jack cried, ‘Champion! I’ll be like a soldier on me own camp bed.’
‘Good riddance, I say,’ Mary declared. ‘It’s like sleeping with an eel the way he wriggles in bed.’
Only Kate looked abashed. ‘He’s no bother. Like a little warming pan, aren’t you?’ She hugged him again, but Jack saw his father’s disapproving look and shook her off.
‘Gerroff, Kate man.’
Afterwards, Rose pondered the incident. Jack was coming up for nine and he was sprouting like a runner bean. John was right - he was no longer her baby. But why did her husband’s remarks about Jack being too old to share a bed with his sisters trouble her? She thought he was making too much of a fuss as usual. The lad was, after all, still a young boy. There was nothing improper about him sleeping with his older sisters. Jack was far too young to be a nuisance to the girls in that respect. Yet John did not think so.
The more Rose thought about her husband’s reaction, the more she realised that it was his attitude towards her daughters that gave her concern. She began to notice the way he looked at Sarah and Kate with knowing eyes that lingered too long on their maturing bodies. She caught him hovering at the back door when one of them was stripped to her underclothes, washing in the scullery.
John veered between telling them bawdy jokes and reprimanding them for coming in later than he thought they should from work or shopping.
‘Where’ve you been? Who’ve you been talking to? Have you been giving anyone the eye?’
He constantly questioned them as if he did not trust them. Or was it that he did not trust himself? Rose was filled with a new alarm. She had never seen John as a threat to her daughters in that respect. She had only been concerned with keeping his wandering hands off her at night. His brother Pat had worried her with his lascivious interest in Elizabeth when he had lived with them before, but John had always been circumspect. When in drink, he was quite capable of saying the most disgusting and lewd remarks about their neighbours and women in general, but it was all talk. He had never pestered the girls, and since their move to the New Buildings, John had managed to curb the worst of his drinking as well. Rose decided she was worrying about nothing.
Then, with the turn of the year and the advent of a new century, John grew morose and his drinking increased. It was an unsettling time - a time of change - yet no one was sure what form that change would take. The old queen was still on the throne, but the war with the Boers was going badly and the nation was gripped by the distant struggle. It seemed like a bad omen for the twentieth century.
On New Year’s Eve, Rose took the family over to Maggie’s, where some of the Kennedys were gathered, and had a small party. John got roaring drunk around the pubs of Tyne Dock and came home ranting about the end of the Empire. Rose’s only consolation at his drunkenness was that he was too incapable of forcing himself on her in bed.
When news reached the country that Lord Roberts’s only son had been killed in the conflict, John and Jack went around wearing black armbands. The hero of the Afghan campaigns was put in command. Larger numbers of militia and yeomanry were needed and young men flocked to the call.
‘I wish I could go,’ Jack declared in frustration. John had taken him to watch the volunteers march through Shields on their way to the station and distant glory.
‘It’s a dog’s life.’ John spat into the fire. ‘Half of them won’t come back.’
‘But you were a soldier,’ Jack said in admiration.
John shot Rose a resentful look. ‘Aye, well, I was a fool. I should’ve stopped at home.’
Rose knew that he blamed her for his going away, just as she was to blame for all his trials in life. She retaliated. ‘If it was such a mistake, then why fill the lad’s head full of nonsense about joining up?’
‘I didn’t,’ he snapped. ‘Just took him to see the daft buggers who do.’
But she suspected John was secretly envious of the young men who could march away to the beat of the drum and leave behind their drab lives in an instant.
‘Well, I thank the saints he’s too young to gan to war,’ Rose sighed.
‘I’m not glad,’ Jack said grumpily. ‘I hope the war gans on long enough so I can join the army and fight the Boer.’
John gave a harsh laugh of satisfaction. ‘Listen to the little runt! I’ll make a fighter out of him yet, Rose Ann.’
A chill went through her at the thought and she was reminded once again of the gypsy’s curse.
May the son that sleeps in your wife’s belly be the one to stand up to you. May he bring you not a minute’s peace till the day he dies.
She would not let Jack become a soldier and risk dying young, or let John turn him into a bullying McMullen.
As 1900 progressed, John’s obsession with the war continued. When the country went wild with celebration at the news of the relief of Ladysmith in late February, he sulked and lost his temper, as if good news did not fit his mood of doom.
‘You’re just like your brother Pat and them Nationalists,’ Rose accused, ‘only cheering when the Boers are winning.’
‘No he’s not.’ Jack came to his father’s defence. ‘You’re right pleased with General Buller for getting back Ladysmith, aren’t you, Father? You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mam. You’re just a silly woman.’
Rose was pained to hear John’s words trip off her son’s tongue.
‘Aye, you tell your mother,’ John said, taking delight in Jack’s derision of Rose. It was time he had an ally in this house of women who thought they
could do what they wanted without his say.
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Rose said smartly and threw John an angry look.
Rose was hurt by Jack’s increasing rebelliousness against her and siding with his father, but at least it disproved the gypsy’s threat that Jack would be a constant trouble to John. More worrying was John’s growing jealousy over the girls. He was becoming stiflingly protective, until they could hardly glance at a man in the street without provoking his wrath. If he caught them outside chatting with anyone older than Jack, he would shout at them to get in the house, then turn on the astonished neighbours and give them an earful of abuse about the laxness of their morals.
There was little Rose could do about his fretfulness, except humour or ignore him.
Just before Easter, Kate came home bursting with excitement.
‘The Pattersons have asked me to gan on holiday with them!’
‘They haven’t!’ Rose exclaimed.
‘Where?’ demanded Mary.
‘The Lake District,’ Kate squealed. ‘They want me to look after the bairns. We’ll be staying in a hotel. Can you imagine!’
‘Bet you’ll be put in the attic and have to eat with the kitchen staff and won’t get any time off to see anything,’ Mary pouted.
‘I don’t care,’ Kate said, dismissing her sister’s envious outburst. ‘The bairns are canny. I don’t mind stopping with them if the Pattersons want to gan out.’
Rose smiled. ‘That’s grand, hinny.’
‘They like walking, Mam,’ Kate continued, ‘and Mrs Patterson says there’s a steamer on the lake we can go on.’
‘I hate ferries,’ Mary said, ‘they make me sick.’
‘You’ve never been on one,’ Kate laughed.
‘Have so! Aunt Maggie took me on the ferry to North Shields once. And they make me sick.’
‘It’s a good job you’re not ganin’ to the Lake District then,’ Rose said drily.
‘I wouldn’t want to,’ Mary declared.
But she lost no time in telling her stepfather when he came in. ‘Kate’s boasting about ganin’ with her posh people on holiday. And we can’t even afford a day trip to the seaside. Tell her to stop ganin’ on about it, Father.’
Rose watched in irritation as John began to work himself up.
‘What holiday? No one thinks to ask my permission whether you can gan so far away. Who do these people think they are, taking a young lass away from her family like that?’
‘They’re respectable people, that’s who,’ Rose answered.
‘She’ll be staying in a hotel an’ all.’ Mary needled his anxiety. ‘Full of strangers - and what about the stable lads and the porters?’
‘Hotel?’ John cried. ‘No, I’ll not have you ganin’ to any fancy hotel!’
‘John,’ Rose tried to calm him, ‘it’s not going to cost us anything.’
‘Oh, it’ll cost us. She’ll come back with ideas above herself and there’s no knowing where that will end.’
‘I won’t, Father,’ Kate protested.
‘She already does think she’s better than us,’ Mary said maliciously, ‘just ‘cos she works in a big house in Shields.’
‘I don’t!’
‘You’re not going,’ John barked.
‘Mam?’ Kate appealed to her mother.
‘Don’t you gan crying to your mother. She’ll keep her big trap shut! I’m the one who says what can happen in this family, do you hear?’ John thrust his puce face at his stepdaughter.
Damn her for looking so pretty! Defying him with those large blue Fawcett eyes. He would show her who was master. He would show them all! John scowled at Rose. She was to blame. They took their lead from her and she showed him nothing but contempt these days. He saw it in the dull resentment of her faded brown eyes, the downturn of disapproval in her bloodless lips. Was it possible that she had once smiled on him and kissed him with a willing, fulsome mouth? He tried to remember what it was about Rose that had attracted him all those years ago. He wanted to conjure up those dark good looks that had plagued him half his life, but could not.
She was forty-one or two, but looked much older. John saw only a lumpen woman in a shapeless apron whose grey face was creased with fatigue and disappointment. Well, it was not his fault! He had saved her from a worse fate; Rose would’ve been dead by now if it hadn’t been for him. And what had he gained by it? A millstone around his neck. A wife who did not want him in bed and a houseful of daughters who drained him of every penny he ever made and tempted him to distraction with their plump figures and soft skin.
‘You can’t stop me,’ Kate cried, ‘I’m ganin’ whatever you say! The Pattersons have asked me and I’m not going to let them down.’
Instantly, John slapped her hard across the cheek. ‘Don’t you speak to me like that!’ he thundered. ‘You’ll do as I say, you little bitch!’
Rose moved to intervene but he raised his hand in threat and she faltered. She knew the cruel power of that fist and she hated him for it.
‘You’ll do as I say an’ all, woman,’ he shouted. Rose glared at him but said nothing, too frightened of his violence.
John stormed out of the house and went off to find Pat or another drinking friend with whom he could fulminate about the lack of respect of young women and the godlessness of the age. He came back late that night, fired up with whisky and indignation, dragged Kate out of bed and beat her for daring to defy him - this time with his belt.
After he had fallen asleep, Rose slipped out of bed and went through to the other room to comfort Kate. They were all awake, shaken and subdued by the abruptness and savagery of the outburst. Sarah had her arm around her sobbing sister. Jack stared with anxious eyes over his blanket from the desk-bed. Even Mary was looking sheepish at her part in stirring up trouble. Rose held up a candle to see if John had marked Kate. Luckily his aim had been impaired by drink and the lashes from his belt had landed as much on the bed as the girl. She dabbed a weal on her bare shoulder with a damp rag. Kate winced and whimpered.
‘He’s a bastard,’ Sarah hissed.
‘Don’t speak about your father like that,’ Rose chided half-heartedly.
‘He’s not me father,’ she answered. ‘I remember me real one - Da would never have laid a hand on us like that.’
‘Your father doesn’t know any better,’ Rose tried to explain. ‘He was brought up hard among lads. He thinks he’s doing it for the best.’
‘He stares at us an’ all,’ Sarah complained, ‘when we’re dressin’.’
Rose felt uncomfortable. ‘He wouldn’t—’ she began, then stopped herself. She did not know what he would not do in one of his drunken rages. She could no longer ignore John’s unhealthy fixation with her maturing daughters. Somehow she had to protect them from his increasing violence and latent lust before he did any real damage.
‘I want to go with the Pattersons, Mam,’ Kate whispered, still defiant.
Rose felt the bile in her throat rise at the thought of what John had just done to her. ‘You will, hinny,’ she promised. ‘I’ll see that you do.’
Chapter 42
Rose waited a few days and then instructed Kate to come home with a letter from the Pattersons asking John for permission to take her away with them. It was written in flourishing handwriting on thick notepaper and sealed in an envelope with a wax seal. Rose watched John open it, preening with self-importance.
‘So, what’s it say?’ he asked Kate suspiciously.
Kate read out the formal request asking for her to accompany their children on the holiday. It was polite and deferential to him as the head of the family and as Rose had hoped, it worked. He gave his permission. But he spent the days before Kate went warning her of the dire consequences of speaking or looking at young men, so that right up until the moment Kate we
nt, Rose feared he would suddenly change his mind.
That Easter, with Kate away, Rose steeled herself for a more onerous task. She had decided the only way to keep John’s interest from straying to her daughters was to give in to his pestering at night. She had put up with his whispered demands and his filthy words when she rebuffed him. He could no longer threaten her with the priest, for Rose had long ceased to care if the Catholic Church thought her a bad wife. She had stopped going regularly to Mass when she no longer had decent clothes to wear. She had seen to it that Jack received instruction from the priests at school and that they had all had their first communion. Beyond that she would not be reproached by the Church and least of all John, who never darkened a church door, for all his sermonising.
So the next time her inebriated husband fumbled for her in bed, Rose did not push him off. She allowed him to paw her breasts and pull up her nightgown. She turned her face away from his sour, whisky-fumed breath and prayed it would all be over swiftly. Perhaps because John was so surprised by the easy capitulation, he was quick to satisfy himself. Within minutes he was asleep, half slumped across her, snoring heavily.
Rose lay, not daring to push him away, fighting down the revulsion she felt. She told herself it was worth it if it kept his attentions away from her daughters. No matter how bitter she felt at the hardships she’d endured these past years and the changes for the worse in John, her children were what kept her going. For them she would submit to the indignities to which John subjected her. For them she would go to Hell and back. And one day they would escape their stepfather and poverty and make her proud.
Kate came back from her holiday in the Lake District bubbling over with the experience. She regaled them with stories of the children and eccentric characters at the hotel and places she had seen. It had quite opened her eyes to a world she had not imagined existed.
The Jarrow Lass Page 37
