Christmas Fireside Stories

by Diane Allen, Rita Bradshaw, Margaret Dickinson, Annie Murray, Pam Weaver

  She hugged the parcel of washing to her, opening her eyes and straightening away from the wall before making herself continue on. There was no food in the house and barely half a bucket of slack and cinders for the range. She desperately needed the promised two shillings for the washing, and they had certainly been well earned, she thought bitterly. Some of the linen had been badly soiled and had taken hours of soaking and pummelling with the poss stick, and after she had dried everything there had still been the mountain of ironing to tackle.

  But it had been worth it. She nodded mentally at the thought. She could buy six penn’orth of scrag ends and vegetables on the way home, and a quarter-stone of flour – seconds, of course – and some yeast to make a batch of stottie cake. It would tide them over the next day or two. After that – she bit hard on her lower lip to quell the panic – after that, she didn’t know. The landlord had made it clear he wanted something off the back rent last week and she had nothing to give him. And tonight she would have to take a chance and leave the bairns tucked up in bed once they were asleep and go and rummage for cinders on the slag heap. She couldn’t take them with her, not with the weather so bad. If they woke up, then they woke up. She’d be as quick as she could be.

  She stopped again to catch her breath; the washing weighed a ton. The streets were devoid of the normal horde of bairns playing their games, but up ahead a group of older boys had made a slide on the icy ground, daring each other to scoot down it at breakneck speed and hooting with laughter when one of them fell. The lad who had ended up on his threadbare backside almost at her feet seemed none the worse for wear, however, scrambling up and grinning at her as he said, ‘Happy Christmas, Missus,’ before joining his motley bunch of pals.

  Happy Christmas. She walked on, passing the boys with a smile and a nod whilst fighting the tears. She hadn’t told Harry it was Christmas. What was the point? She had no presents for him, not a thing. Even in the workhouse, brutal as the regime had been, at Christmas each child had received a small stocking made of sacking, holding a bag of sweets, a tangerine and a sugar mouse – courtesy of the Guardians.

  She shuddered: not that she could let her precious babies be taken there. For twelve years, until she was old enough to leave school and take the position in service the workhouse authorities had arranged for her, she had suffered the harsh discipline and cruelty of the workhouse system. On the day she had left, it had been with the words of the matron ringing in her ears. ‘Now you are leaving us it is my duty to warn you against a weakness I fear may be in your blood,’ Matron Shawe had said, her hard eyes sweeping disapprovingly over Kate’s golden hair and lovely face. ‘You were found by a passer-by when you were just a few days old, still clutched in the arms of your dead mother who was lying huddled in a filthy alley. Clearly, you were conceived in sin and your mother paid the penalty for her wickedness. Do you understand me?’

  Trembling, she’d murmured, ‘You – you’re saying my mother wasn’t married when she had me.’

  ‘I’m saying bad blood runs through your veins and you have to guard yourself against it.’

  ‘But – but it may not have been my mother’s fault, and—’

  The matron had interrupted her icily. ‘It is always the woman’s fault. Your mother was bad. It is natural for men to want what they cannot have and it is up to women to refuse it.’

  Kate remembered now how she had looked into the grim, stony face with its hooked nose and little moustache and thought that it was unlikely the matron had had to do much refusing. Nevertheless, she had left the workhouse feeling tainted and ashamed, and for the next couple of years, whilst working as a kitchen maid at High Holmes – a big house on the outskirts of Bishopwearmouth overlooking Barnes Park – she hadn’t even dared to glance at a lad. Then, one Sunday afternoon, her half-day off, she and Betsy, the perky housemaid she’d shared an attic room with, had gone for a walk out Tunstall way and met a group of lads. Timothy was one of them and she had liked him; he was nice, but it had been one of his pals, a farmer’s son, who had sent her weak at the knees. Matthew Wood hadn’t been good-looking, not really: his rough-hewn face was too rugged for that, but he had been big and tall and possessed of a sense of humour that kept everyone laughing all the time. And the very fact that she had been so attracted to him had made her cool and stiff with him in particular, although to be fair she had kept all the lads at a distance. She feared they would see what the matron had seen when they looked at her – that she was tarnished and not like the other lasses.

  She and Betsy had walked that way each Sunday afternoon after that but she had left the flirting and carrying-on to her friend. Then, five years ago, just after war was declared as Britons returned from the August bank holiday, Matthew had come to the kitchen door at High Holmes and asked to see her. He was going away to fight, he’d said, but he hadn’t wanted to leave without saying goodbye. She had been flustered and painfully shy, and he hadn’t said much more. Not with the cook looking out of the kitchen window at them and her hardly daring to raise her head, but he’d asked her to write to him and she had promised she would. And then, just before he had walked away, he had kissed her.

  A quick kiss, feather-light, but it had been on the lips. And he had looked into her eyes and smiled his sweet, lopsided smile and she had known then that she loved him and would wait for him forever if he asked her to.

  But Matthew hadn’t asked her. He’d left, and she had gone indoors and received a stern telling-off from the cook, who’d told her that young men were not allowed to call at the house, war or no war. But she hadn’t minded that. Starry-eyed and head over heels in love, she had waited for his letter. A letter which had never come.

  It had been Timothy who had told her that Matthew had been killed shortly after the British Expeditionary Force had landed in France. She’d often wondered about that, wondered if Timothy had known how she felt about his friend. And when Timothy had begun to gently court her she had let him, needing the support of his comfort and love. But she hadn’t loved him back. Liked him, yes; respected him, but not loved – not in the way that Timothy loved her and she had loved Matthew.

  They had got wed eighteen months later, a few days after her sixteenth birthday, and sometime after that, in the autumn of 1916, Timothy had been called up. Before he’d left for France he’d told her, almost casually, that Matthew’s parents had received a telegram informing them that their son wasn’t dead after all but a prisoner of the Germans. Timothy didn’t tell her how long he’d known this, and she didn’t ask. It was too late: she was a married woman. She’d also been pregnant with Harry, though she hadn’t known this at the time. Timothy had come home once on leave before the end of the war, only for a week, but that was when she had fallen pregnant with Rebecca. It seemed the height of irony that the tough, virile man her husband had been had survived the war, only to contract the Spanish flu within days of returning home and to breathe his last within forty-eight hours.

  Matthew had come to Timothy’s funeral, along with one or two other friends who had lived through the war which had taken so many young men. It had been the first and last time she had seen him since the soft summer’s day he had stood at the kitchen door of High Holmes and kissed her. She’d found herself in turmoil, not least because of the way her heart had leapt when she’d first laid eyes on him standing at the edge of the group of mourners. Hating herself, ashamed and horrified that she could betray Timothy so utterly, she’d taken refuge when he’d expressed his condolences in an icy formality that would have frozen the very fires of Hades. It was only after he had left that another of Timothy’s friends had told her Matthew had buried his parents the week before, also victims of influenza. It had completed her disgust at herself.

  A snowflake landing on her nose brought her out of the dark morass of her thoughts. Putting out of her head everything but reaching Park Place West, she quickened her footsteps.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Mrs Finlay, but like I said, the master and mistress have t
aken the bairns to the pantomime and then on to Binns for afternoon tea so I’ve no idea when they’ll be back.’

  Kate stared at the housekeeper in despair. ‘But she knew I was bringing it today. Can’t – can’t you pay me?’

  The housekeeper drew herself up as though Kate had suggested something scandalous. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You know how the mistress likes to check everything herself.’

  Oh yes, she knew all right. Kate choked back hot words. She also knew Mrs Bell was as mean as muck, in spite of her fine house and her husband who was a lawyer. Any laundry would charge double, three times what she got paid, for half the amount of linen. ‘I need the money,’ she said, as calmly as she could.

  ‘You’ll have to come back this evening.’ The housekeeper nodded at the parcel. ‘Do you want to leave that with me or take it back with you?’

  Kate tried one last time. Swallowing the few drops of pride she had left, she looked at the housekeeper imploringly. ‘Could you lend me something, Mrs Todd? Sixpence would do, just so I can get the bairns a bite to eat on the way home. I’ll pay you straight back this evening once Mrs Bell gives me my money, I promise.’

  The housekeeper looked down her thin nose. ‘I was raised on the principle of “never a lender or borrower be”, and it has served me well. I’m sorry, Mrs Finlay, but you’ll have to wait until you see Mrs Bell later on.’

  Kate thrust the washing at the housekeeper and turned without another word. She would have to return later, there was nothing else for it.

  She kept her back straight as she walked away, but once she was clear of the house her shoulders slumped in defeat. And then her legs flew from beneath her as she slipped on a patch of ice the snow had covered. The pain that shot from her coccyx was so acute she couldn’t move for a moment or two, lying on the icy ground as she struggled to remain conscious. Eventually she managed to sit up, waves of nausea causing her to retch although there was nothing in her stomach to come up.

  How long she sat there waiting for the pain to subside she didn’t know, but she was soaked through by the time she pulled herself up, and shivering uncontrollably.

  This was the end. She couldn’t carry on. She couldn’t.

  Misery as deep as the sea swept over her, the hopelessness of her situation too vast for the relief of tears. But she couldn’t let Harry and Rebecca be taken into the workhouse. The thought of them suffering what she had endured was unthinkable. Better they paid a visit to the Wearmouth Bridge and all went together, than that. It would be quick; the water flowed deep and fast, and she could hold them close.

  Lifting up her face to the sky, which was full of fat feathery flakes of snow, she said bitterly, ‘I thought you are a God who loves the little children? Well, I don’t see much evidence of it. It’s your Son’s birthday tomorrow, isn’t it? A time of miracles, when He came to earth as a helpless baby. Then give me a miracle for my babies. Or is it true what Reverend Alridge preaches from the pulpit, that the sins of the parents are carried down to the third and fourth generations? Show me you’re not like man. Show me you care. Do something.’

  The thickly falling snow muffled the normal sounds of the streets and it was very quiet, her words seeming to hang in the air.

  She brushed the snow from her skirts, her teeth chattering, frozen inside and out. Had she lost her reason? What did she expect, for goodness’ sake? A voice coming out of the heavens, saying everything was going to be all right? Divine intervention didn’t happen in this cold, hard world, or if it did, God reserved it for people like the missionaries or good upright men of the cloth, not for nobodies like her with bad blood running through their veins.

  A sob caught in her throat before she said out loud, ‘No. No crying, that will get you nowhere.’ And Harry and Rebecca were waiting for her. She had to get home to her babies. The bottom of her back was sore and aching. She walked on.

  In spite of the driving snow in her face and the icy wind that cut into any exposed flesh like a razor, Kate was barely aware of her physical discomfort on the trek home, so dark were her thoughts.

  On reaching their little back yard, she stood for a moment outside the door bracing herself before opening it and stepping into the kitchen. When she and Timothy had first rented the downstairs of the two-up two-down terraced house after their marriage, she had been thrilled with the two rooms she could call home and grateful that the kitchen held a large range for warmth and cooking. The upstairs folk, an elderly couple, had to make do with a steel shelf over their fire, with a kettle and pots hanging from a bar that they could pull out over the flames.

  She had enjoyed making a penny stretch to two and cooking a good meal from cheap cuts of meat, determined to be a frugal housewife. Now the range seemed to mock her feeble attempts to keep them warm and fed.

  As Kate entered the house, several things registered at once. Instead of Ellie, it was Ellie’s mother, Mrs Kirby, who was sitting at the kitchen table with Harry and Rebecca. There was a bright fire burning in the range instead of the miserable cinders she had stoked up before she left that morning, the smell of pot roast cooking in the oven, and one end of the table was heaped with food. At the other end, where Mrs Kirby and the children sat, the tabletop was strewn with the paper chains the three of them were making.

  Kate stood there, unable to speak or move. Mrs Kirby had glanced up as she had entered and now smiled at her. ‘There you are, lass. I was just saying to his nibs here that you’d be home soon. Diabolical weather, an’ so is that woman, asking for the washing on Christmas Eve of all days. But that type don’t consider no one but themselves, do they? How did you get on, hinny? I don’t suppose that old trout gave you a bit extra, it being Christmas an’ all? Too much to hope for?’

  Numbly, Kate murmured, ‘She wasn’t in – although she knew I was coming, and she hadn’t left the money for me. The housekeeper said I’ve got to go back tonight.’

  Mrs Kirby gave one of her expressive sniffs, for which she was well known. ‘I hope the lady of the house gets the silver sixpence in her Christmas pudding and chokes on it.’

  ‘Mrs Kirby, what’s all this?’ Kate was still staring in bewilderment. ‘I mean, how . . . who . . .’

  ‘Me an’ a few of the neighbours got together and thought you might need a bit of cheering up, lass, that’s all. There’s a sack of coal over there from Mr and Mrs Hutton.’ She pointed to a bulging sack in the corner of the room. ‘He gets it cheap, bein’ a miner. And we all put together for a few bits an’ pieces for the table. My Mick’s bringing you a nice turkey tonight when he collects ours from the butcher’s, an’—’ Mrs Kirby lowered her voice and mouthed over the children’s heads – ‘Mrs Potts from three doors down has done a Christmas stocking each for the bairns.’ Resuming her normal tone, she added, ‘Mick’ll bring them with the turkey. An’ I did you a Christmas cake when I made mine.’

  Again she pointed, this time to the table where in the midst of the collection of food reposed a small fruit cake, iced and decorated with a sprig of holly. ‘Oh, an’ Mrs Irvin, her with the twins, has sent a bag of clothes for Harry that hers have grown out of.’

  Blindly, Kate reached out and sat down as her legs gave way. The hard lump in her chest, hidden deep within her heart – the lump that had been with her throughout her childhood in the workhouse but which had gathered weight after the last conversation with the matron – was beginning to melt, forcing its way upwards into her throat. Gasping at the strength of it, she tried to speak but failed, the tears raining from her eyes as she choked against the flood.

  ‘There, there, hinny, don’t take on so.’ Mrs Kirby had risen with Rebecca in her arms and come to pat her awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘We all know what a struggle you’ve had, an’ you such a good mam to them two bairns. It’s Christmas, lass, an’ if we can’t look out for each other then, it’s a poor do.’

  As Mrs Kirby had been speaking Harry had climbed off his chair and was now standing at his mother’s knee. Kate raised her head to look at
her son through her streaming eyes and saw his bottom lip trembling at the sight of her in tears. Reaching out, she pulled him to her and managed to murmur, ‘It’s all right, my precious. It’s all right. I’m crying ’cos I’m happy.’

  Harry stared at his mother and then up at Mrs Kirby, who had a tear trickling down her cheek. His small brow creased. ‘What do you do when you’re sad?’ he asked, a wealth of bewilderment in his voice.

  Matthew Wood had never considered himself an emotional type of individual – not until the first time he had set eyes on Kate, anyway. He remembered every detail of that afternoon – the fresh heady smell of spring sweetening the air, the vivid cornflower blue of the sky dotted with cotton-wool clouds, and Kate. Bonny, painfully shy Kate. The impact of her had been like a punch in the solar plexus, but whereas one could recover from a physical blow, this had been different. There had been no way to recover from the ache and pain of Kate not knowing he existed. Oh, she’d been civil enough; she’d even smiled at his jokes now and again, but no matter how outrageous his efforts to get her to notice him, he hadn’t been able to get past that aloof, distant air of hers. His only comfort had been that she treated every lad in their crowd the same.

  He took off his cap, which was covered in snow, banging it on his trouser leg before pulling it on again.

  Then had come the announcement of war and he’d known he had to let her know how he felt about her before he left for France. There had been no rhyme or reason to the compulsion, in view of her indifference; he’d just known that he couldn’t leave England’s shores without making himself plain. And so he’d gone to see her at her place of work, quaking in his boots. And she’d been unlike the Kate he knew – softer, somehow. It had given him the courage to ask her to write to him, but with the damn cook eyeing them from the window and Kate all of a dither, he hadn’t said the words burning on his tongue. That he loved her, that he would always love her till his dying day.