Like Mother, Like Daughter

by Maggie Hope

  They came out into the marketplace and looked for the bus that went to Shildon. They were to pick up Cath’s new school tunic from Aunty Patsy’s before they went home.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here!’

  Cath had been looking at the apples on the fruit and vegetable stall by the bus stop. They were the only fruit on the stall; it was a long time since she had seen oranges or bananas; in fact, she could barely remember them. But the apples looked lovely, green with a red blush on one side. There was a queue, though. Mam would never stand in a queue, not for apples.

  Now Cath looked up at her mother’s exclamation. The Canadian airman stood before them, dressed in mufti. Even in a suit he stood out among the people around him. They were shabby even in their best clothes compared to Keith in his tweed suit.

  For Cath, it was as though a cloud had suddenly covered the sun. She scowled at him even as he held out two apples he must have bought on the stall.

  ‘Go on, take it,’ Mam commanded her. She pushed Cath in the shoulder and Cath took the apple. She gazed down at it. She didn’t want it now.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Aw, don’t be daft, our Cath. ’Course you are. Go on, get on the bus, I’m coming in a minute.’

  Cath helped Annie climb on to the bus and up the stairs to the top deck. Annie wasn’t eating her apple either. She was staring out of the window at her mother and Keith with an anxious expression.

  ‘Mammy come?’ she asked Cath fearfully, but at that moment the driver started his engine and Sadie stepped on with Keith behind her. They clattered up the stairs and Sadie sank on to the seat behind the children, slightly out of breath.

  ‘You OK, honey?’ Keith inquired as he sat down beside her.

  ‘I am now. Though why you had to come up those dratted stairs I don’t know, our Cath,’ Sadie scolded. Satisfied, Annie began to eat her apple, looking out of the window as she bit into it. Cath sat staring at the one in her hand. Behind her she could hear her mother and Keith whispering together, her mother giggling sometimes, Keith giving a low chuckle.

  ‘Tickets please.’ The conductor came up the stairs, puffing a little and limping. He must have a bad leg like her dad, Cath thought dimly. That would be why he wasn’t in the army an’ all.

  ‘Two to Darlington and a half to Shildon,’ said Keith.

  ‘What?’ asked Cath, turning round in shock rather than surprise.

  ‘You can take our Annie to Aunty Patsy’s, can’t you?’ Her mother’s eyes were challenging. ‘Get your tunic then walk down the bank and over to Eden Hope. It’s a lovely day for a walk.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t argue with me, our Cath, do as you’re told. Your dad’s out but the door will be open. I’ll be back later. I won’t be long. And there’s no need to say anything to anybody, is there?’ Sadie nodded her head up and down meaningfully. She glanced out of the window. ‘Go on now, this is the stop. Watch the bairn going down those steps. I told you you should have stayed downstairs.’

  Cath got down from the seat and Annie began to cry, a frightened and bewildered sound. A woman in front turned round and stared. ‘Why don’t you come?’ Cath asked.

  ‘Aw go on, I have something to do. Go on, take the bairn, the bus is stopping now, you’ll miss the stop.’

  As Cath dragged Annie down the winding steps of the bus she could hear her mother telling the woman to keep her nose out of it, her kids were fine. The children reached the bus platform at last and the conductor lifted Annie off onto the pavement.

  ‘Are you all right now, pet?’ he asked Cath and she nodded.

  ‘We’re going to Aunty Patsy’s’, she told him. As they walked along the pavement she looked up at the bus window. Her mother was looking out and she smiled and waved. From a few seats in front of her mother the woman was also staring out at them.

  ‘Where’s Mammy gone?’ Annie asked. She had stopped crying but her eyes were red and snot was running down her upper lip. Cath found a clean rag in her pocket and wiped it.

  ‘She’s coming back,’ she said. ‘Come on, Aunty Patsy will have made our dinners. You’re hungry, aren’t you?’

  It wasn’t a long walk to her aunt’s house but it was uphill and round a side alley. There was a sort of tunnel running through to Bell’s Building that opened out on to a short street of little houses with privies at the end.

  ‘I want a wee,’ Annie suddenly wailed and Cath ran with her, but of course they were too late and Annie had wet her pants.

  ‘Oh Annie, I’ve no clean knickers with me,’ said Cath as they went into the house. Patsy peered round the children.

  ‘Where’s your mam?’

  ‘She had to go to Darlington,’ Cath replied.

  ‘Darlington? What the heck for?’

  ‘She went with the man,’ said Annie. ‘I wee’d my knickers, Aunty Patsy.’

  ‘A big girl like you, how old are you?’ Patsy demanded. ‘Four, is it? Well, never mind. Howay here and I’ll rinse them out and dry them.’ She took off Annie’s knickers and rinsed them in a bucket under the cold-water tap by the back door, then hung them on the short line outside. All the time she was grumbling about her sister.

  ‘Just like her, the little slut!’ she said. ‘Who’s she gone off with now? Is it that Canadian, our Cath? By, that lass doesn’t deserve kids. I bet Alf knows nowt about it. He wants to bat her over the ear a few times, bring her to her senses.’

  Patsy had no children of her own. Her husband, Jim, worked at the munitions factory at Aycliffe. He was much older than Patsy, but nice, Cath thought.

  By the time Annie’s knickers were dry they had eaten their dinner, corned-beef stew and sandwiches filled with golden syrup because Patsy had no butter or margarine to spare from the rations. But the bread was lovely, fresh and home-made, and the sandwiches tasted good.

  ‘You’d best go home now,’ said Patsy. ‘You’ll have to walk because the bus doesn’t go for another two hours and it will be getting dark by then. You’ll be all right, won’t you?’ She bit her lip as she looked at Cath. By, our Sadie, she thought. The poor kid had had to grow up fast with that one for a mother. But she had to be in for Jim coming home from the factory and then she had to go to work herself. Patsy was an usherette at the Majestic pictures.

  Cath and Annie walked down the black path that had been part of the old Stockton and Darlington railway before they built Shildon Tunnel. It was very quiet, and Annie tailed behind, tired and out of sorts, so that by the time they finally got to Eden Hope Colliery Cath was carrying her as well as the bag with her tunic. As she went up the back yard it was already dusk. No light showed inside, but then the blackout curtains were supposed to stop that anyway. But inside there was no light on to block and the fire was just a pile of grey ash in the grate.

  Chapter Seven

  June 1944

  Cath stood in the bus queue with the other girls, all dressed in bottle-green Burberry coats with pockets bulging where hats had been stuffed into them as soon as the girls came out of the gates. All except Cath’s, that is: she had forgotten all about hers; she had forgotten she even had a hat on. She was off in a world of her own.

  The United bus came in and the girls pushed and shoved their way on with boys in maroon blazers joining in. These were the boys from King James, laughing and boisterous and showing off to the girls. One of them snatched the hat from her head and threw it over the fence, so she had to run round and through the gate to get it. When she got back the queue was gone and everyone was on the buses except the boy who had snatched her hat.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Hurry up and get on, I waited for you.’

  Cath favoured him with a frozen stare and they got on, crammed together like sardines.

  ‘I said I was sorry,’ said the boy. It was Brian Musgrave and he lived in Winton. She looked up at him, having to lift her face they were so close. He was blushing, she saw, and had a funny look in his eyes. Brian was older and taller than she was; his fathe
r had come home from Tunisia with only one arm but he held down the job of manger at the Co-operative store.

  ‘You’re just stupid,’ said Cath as they were pushed even closer together at the stop at South Church when some people squeezed past to get off the bus. Brian’s face went an even deeper red, contrasting with his fair hair and blue eyes.

  ‘Will you go for a walk with me after tea?’ he blurted out.

  Cath stared at him in amazement then put her nose in the air. ‘I will not,’ she said.

  ‘I could call for you.’

  ‘No. And move away from me, there’s plenty of room now they’ve got off.’

  Cath gazed determinedly away from him until he got off the bus at Winton. She found an empty seat and glanced out of the window and there he was, staring at her.

  ‘Brian’s soft on you,’ Enid Brown, who was sitting beside her, said and giggled.

  ‘It’s you that’s soft,’ Cath replied and stood up ready to alight at Shildon.

  It was her mother’s birthday, she thought as she walked up Auckland Road to the opening to Bell’s Buildings. Her mother’s birthday, and she couldn’t even send her a card because she didn’t have her address. The afternoon sun shone warm along the road but Cath hardly noticed the weather. She wished with all her heart she was going up the rows to her mam and dad, but she wasn’t: she was going to Bell’s Buildings and Aunty Patsy and Uncle Jim. And Annie, of course.

  Everything had changed when Mam ran off with Keith Armstrong. She remembered that night when she had taken Annie home to the dark house. Her mam hadn’t come back like she had promised. She had gone away to the south; there had been a letter on the high mantelshelf. Dad had found it when he came in. He had groped for his brass lighter, made from a bullet case and there it was. Keith was being moved to the south coast, and she was going with him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us she was going?’ he had shouted at Cath. ‘You knew didn’t you, you little—’

  ‘I didn’t, I didn’t!’ Cath cried as he towered over her. She thought he was going to hit her. But then he had sort of crumpled, that was the only way she could think of it. He sat down on a hard kitchen chair and crumpled. He fingered the cigarette between his lips and tried to light it but his hand was trembling so much he couldn’t and Cath had to do it for him.

  Upstairs, Annie cried out and then was quiet. She must be having a bad dream, Cath thought dully. Like this one, but this one was real.

  ‘It was all for nowt,’ he said. ‘All for nowt.’ He kept on repeating it and then, ‘What about the babby?’

  Cath thought of the other babby, Timmy, and she felt as though she was weeping inside but there were no tears. And there were no answers to her dad’s question.

  Alf stood up suddenly and pulled on his jacket and cap. ‘Get yourself to bed, our Cath. If I stay in here much longer I’ll go mad. I’m going down the club for a pint. If they have any left, that is.’ He laughed mirthlessly.

  Cath didn’t bother to wash or clean her teeth. She went upstairs and pulled off her clothes and put on her nightie and climbed into bed beside Annie.

  Now, as she opened the door of Aunty Patsy’s house and went in, dropping her schoolbag in the tiny vestibule, her aunt’s voice greeted her. It sounded so much like her mother’s.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? Daydreaming, I suppose, dawdling along like there was no tomorrow. As you usually do. Did you get the taties from the store like I asked you? No, you bloody well didn’t, I can see you didn’t. Well, you can just go back for them and be quick about it, Jim will be in for his tea in half an hour.’ She aimed a slap across the top of Cath’s head but Cath saw it coming and ducked, which enraged Patsy even further. ‘Go on!’ she yelled.

  ‘Can I go?’

  Annie was sitting by the fire, which was lit despite the heat. A saucepan simmered on the bar.

  ‘You stop here, pet, with your Aunty Patsy.’ Patsy’s tone had changed completely but then it always did when she spoke to Annie. She adored Annie.

  Cath went back out into the sunshine and down the road and up the hill to the Co-operative store at the top. She bought the half-stone of potatoes and lugged them out and down the hill again. By the time she got back to the house her arm felt as though it had been pulled out of its socket.

  ‘Hurry up and get some peeled then,’ her aunt greeted her, glaring resentfully; why, she had no idea. Except that she wasn’t welcome here. Aunty Patsy had changed since they came to live with her and Uncle Jim. Not towards Annie, though. Annie was her favourite but that was all right. ‘By, you’re about as much use as a man off, our Cath,’ said Patsy. It was a frequent complaint of hers. ‘If you don’t buck your ideas up I’ll put you in the orphanage, I will, I’m telling you.’

  Cath was only half listening. She had learned to close off her mind to Aunty Patsy’s tirades. She didn’t mean them anyway. Cath was too good a worker. She peeled the potatoes in an enamel dish on the table then cut them up and put them in a saucepan and set it to boil beside the other one. She set the table for the meal and filled the coal bucket ready for the night. When Uncle Jim came in they ate, and afterwards Cath cleared the table and washed up. At last she was free to do her homework. She usually did this in the bedroom, away from the noise of the wireless. Uncle Jim listened to the news on the Home Service and then whatever was on the Forces Network. He was a bit deaf and the volume would be turned up so that she could still hear it through the bare floorboards, but not so much.

  Cath finished her French for Naggie Aggie, the French mistress, and her algebra. Then Annie came up to bed and that was that. She would have to get up early in the morning to do her English essay. She might as well go to bed now, though it was still light with double summertime.

  She lay beside Annie and allowed her thoughts to go back to that awful time after Mam went off with Keith.

  ‘I can’t bear to be parted from him,’ her mam had written in the letter that her dad had thrust at her.

  ‘Read that,’ he had said in a dead sort of voice. ‘Go on, read it. See what a whore your mother is, our Cath. Running after that bloody pilot like the slut she is.’

  Cath didn’t know what a whore was except that it must be something bad and to do with going with men.

  ‘The baby isn’t yours, it’s Keith’s,’ her mam had written. ‘You can get a divorce if you like, I don’t care. I couldn’t bear letting him go to Kent without me.’

  Careless words cost lives, thought Cath dully. There were posters on the buses warning about them. A Fifth Columnist could have got hold of the letter and then they would know where the Canadian airmen had gone. But what was going to happen now, with Mam gone?

  Alf had started drinking, beer when he could get it and rum or anything else when he could get that. He’d been sent home from the pit for being drunk and then one day, near Christmas it was, he disappeared. Cath had come home from school and Annie was at Betty Lowe’s house.

  ‘Your dad’s gone after your mam,’ said Betty. Cath looked stricken, Betty thought pityingly, her eyes too big and showing her every feeling in her white face. That blooming Sadie Raine should be strung up from a lamp post, she reckoned. But something had to be done about the bairns.

  ‘You’d best go to your aunty in Shildon with little Annie,’ she advised. ‘I’ll give you the bus fare.’ So they had gone back to Shildon after Cath wrote a note for her dad.

  Cath turned over in bed as Annie stirred and whimpered. She put an arm around the little girl and murmured soothingly. At least Annie had stopped wetting the bed.

  ‘Please, Jesus,’ Cath prayed, closing her eyes tight. ‘Please bring Mam and Dad back. Annie misses them too much and so do I.’

  Overhead there was a droning of planes and Cath tensed. It was a long while since she had heard an enemy plane but still, you never knew. But no, they were British planes, she could tell by the sound they made. A lot of them too, going down south, she thought. Maybe they were going to invade France; everyone knew they
would soon.

  Next day the headmistress called a general assembly in the afternoon and they all sat cross-legged in the hall, which had parallel bars at the side and thick ropes hanging from the ceiling, for it deputised as a gym.

  ‘Today our troops landed on French beaches,’ said Dr Agnew. ‘It is a day that will do down in history. His Majesty the King has asked for general prayers to be said for the success of our gallant forces and fine weather to aid them.’

  Cath sat between Joan and Enid with her hands together as the headmistress prayed, but she couldn’t help thinking of her dad. Was he in France too? Or was he in Kent with her mam and Keith? No, Keith wouldn’t be there, he was probably in France.

  Her dad had sent her a letter saying he was going to join up again. He said his foot was all right now, he hardly limped at all. If he could work down the pit he could fight. But the man from the Ministry of Labour had said that he should not have left the pit: every experienced miner was needed. Coal was necessary to help the war effort.

  Today the man from the Ministry of Labour had come to the house even before she set off for school. He was like a kiddy catcher but for grown-ups. He said her dad had been seen in Salisbury. He asked if Alf had been in touch – it would be an offence not to give the ministry his address. But of course they didn’t have it anyway. Her dad had just disappeared, like a lot of fathers of girls she knew. ‘Missing, believed killed’. Well, maybe not exactly like them, but similar.

  The other girls were scrambling to their feet. Dr Agnew had finished praying. They filed out to their different form rooms to collect their schoolbags ready for home.

  Brian came to stand beside her in the queue for the bus. Cath tried to ignore him, turning away and staring over the boy’s football field at the distant trees. Enid giggled and nudged Joan.

  ‘I’ve made you something,’ Brian said and held out a ring made from aeroplane glass. It had obviously started as a small square but he had rubbed off the sharp edges and smoothed it with sandpaper. The hole for her finger was almost a perfect circle and he had carved a fancy C on the top of it.