by Irene Carr
Katy listened, shocked into silence, as her sentence was pronounced. At thirteen years old she was going into service! A lot of girls went into the big houses of the wealthy to work as maids or in the kitchens. She did not want to do that anymore than she had wanted to serve the customers in Mrs Turnbull’s shop, but it seemed her fate was determined for her and there was nothing she could do. She saw Ursula grinning and her father’s air of ‘That’ll straighten you out, my lass!’ Katy would not give them any further satisfaction. She would not beg for reprieve. She kept her face expressionless and said calmly, ‘All right.’ She saw her father’s look of righteous confidence replaced by one of baffled anger and Ursula’s smirk slipped away. Katy could have wept but instead she made herself smile at them. She would not let them get any change out of her.
The next morning she saw her father and the two girls off to work then accompanied the boys as far as the school gates. Katy was fond of them, and they of her; she had taken the place of their mother. She blinked away tears as they moved away from her but then she turned around. Back in the family home, she packed a small case with all she owned. Then she searched for her mother’s brooch but could not find it. She hesitated a long time then, sitting by the fire, reluctant to take this awful step, but finally sighed and rose to her feet. Katy told herself there was nothing else for it. She left the house carrying her case and made her way through the streets lining the Tyne to the rooms a mile or so away. They were upstairs rooms in a terraced house like that she had left. She walked along the passage that had a strip of thin carpet running from front door to back, climbed the stairs and knocked on the kitchen door. Winnie Teasdale opened it, stared at her and asked, ‘What are you doing here? We’re not going shopping for your things until the weekend.’
Katy said, ‘I’ve left home.’ And burst into tears.
Winnie breathed, ‘Oh, my God! Come in.’ She put her arms around the girl and comforted her. After a time Katy dried her tears and Winnie said softly, not wanting to frighten her, but warning: ‘He’ll know where to look for you, and you know what his temper is like.’
‘I don’t care.’ Katy looked at Winnie, pleading. ‘Will you take me in? I’ll get a job and pay board.’
‘Aye, you can live here.’ Winnie had no need to remember the promise she had made to Ethel Merrick because she was fond of this girl, but also afraid for her. She thought, If Barney will let you stay. But she said, ‘You can have the little bedroom over the passage.’ That room had always been intended for her children but she had none.
Barney came that evening. Winnie answered his knock to find him standing on the landing outside the kitchen door. He was still in his work clothes of old suit and cap and unwashed. He craned his neck to look past her as Winnie said, ‘Hello, Barney.’ Behind her, Fred Teasdale, her husband, stood up from his seat at the table, scenting trouble.
Barney saw Katy sitting by the fire and beckoned her: ‘I want to see you, miss. Outside.’
Winnie answered, ‘She’s not going anywhere. You can talk to her here.’
But Katy was already on her feet. She would not have Winnie upset by a scene. ‘I’m coming.’ She walked past Winnie and followed her father down the stairs and along the passage to the front door. She halted on the step and he turned to face her. His pale blue eyes were like chips of ice flecked with the red of blood. She could see his mouth working with his suppressed rage and was frightened, but she had spent some hours anticipating this meeting and was ready for it.
Barney said tightly, ‘I got home to find there was no dinner for anybody and no sign o’ you. Not a note, nothing! I only guessed that you’d run off when I saw your clothes had gone. What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ He paused for breath but not an answer. ‘Get your things. You’re coming back wi’ me.’
Katy said, ‘No.’
‘What?’ He glared at her, disbelieving what he had heard. ‘What did you say?’ He was used to the gentle Ethel giving in at this point. But this was not Ethel.
‘I’m not going with you.’ Despite her fear, Katy made herself stand face to face with him, eye to eye because she stood on the step and he below it. She stated it as a fact. ‘I’m staying here with Winnie.’ And as he lifted his hand, ‘If you hit me I’ll scream loud enough to fetch the street out.’ He hesitated but saw she meant it. Instead of striking her he seized her ear and twisted it. ‘I could take you home like this!’
Her face twisted in pain, Katy still resisted: ‘I’d scream all the way and run off again tomorrow. I’ll keep on running away until you’re sick of it.’
Barney cursed her, gave one final twist to her ear then let it go. ‘To hell with you! I’m sick of you now! But one of these days you’ll come back to me, and I give you warning: I’m getting married again.’ Katy finally flinched at that. Now she realised why he had been so cheerful after her last row with him: he had proposed that night and been accepted. She also guessed that her mother’s brooch would be adorning another woman. Barney was going on, ‘So if you show your face in my house again, you watch your tongue.’ He waited again, watching for her reaction, for signs of weakening. But Katy turned her back on him and with one hand she slammed the door in his face.
She heard him bellow, ‘You’ll come crawling, one day!’ But she was running along the passage and up the stairs. She went straight to her little room and fell on the bed, her face in her pillow. Winnie tactfully left her in peace. Katy grieved for the loss of her mother and the parting from her siblings, no matter that they had fought among themselves. Her father was marrying again. Now she knew that there was no home for her. When she had turned her back on her father she had turned away from one life and was now embarking on another. She would never go back.
There she was wrong.
Chapter Four
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE. APRIL 1907.
Katy was sixteen when Charles Ashleigh came into her life and he meant her no harm — far from it.
Winnie Teasdale had found a job for her within a week of her moving in. Katy started work as an assistant to Annie Scanlon at Ashleigh’s, an import and export warehouse down by the river. Annie was a bookkeeper and clerk, a cheerful, buxom, ruddy-faced spinster in her fifties. She lived in Sunderland and travelled to work on the train every day. Annie taught Katy her job and also something of life, while Katy worked hard and was quick to learn. Annie was pleased with her and they became friends. Katy enjoyed her work and loved the warehouse with its mingled smells of manilla rope and soap, tobacco and molasses, paint and lamp oil. She sat on a high stool at a desk beside Annie and returned to Winnie’s house and her little room in the evening.
After two years Winnie’s husband, Fred, had been offered a job in the dockyard at Malta. It meant he would be there for the rest of his working life but also that he would be making a great deal more money. And then there would be a pension and a nest egg that would keep Winnie and himself in comfortable retirement. It was an opportunity he had to grasp at his age; he was well into his forties. Before she and her husband sailed, Winnie found lodgings for Katy in the house of Mrs Connelly, a widow without a pension who took in young girls as boarders. She was a righteous, sharp-featured, acid-tongued woman but her house was comfortable and Katy was happy enough for the next year. Winnie had insisted, ‘We must keep in touch. I’ll write and I want to know how you are, where you are and what you are doing.’ She was as good as her word and wrote every two or three weeks. Katy always replied.
In April 1907 Katy was just a few months past her sixteenth birthday. She and Annie sat on high stools at their desks on a blustery day left over from March, with the wind off the river driving the wheeling, squalling gulls inland and rattling the doors of the warehouse. Mr Tomlinson, the energetic young manager, emerged from his office to ask, ‘Can you spare Katy for an hour or so, Annie?’ That was a courtesy question that was tantamount to an order and Annie murmured her agreement. Tomlinson told Katy, ‘I just want you to take these papers up to Mr Ashleigh for his
signature. He telephoned to say he wouldn’t be in today. He’s got his son at home — he’s a sub-lieutenant in the Navy. His ship was in the Mediterranean Fleet and she’s just paid off at Chatham.’
So Katy put on her coat and hat and set off for the Ashleigh house in the suburbs of Newcastle. She knew her way because she had been sent on these errands many times since starting to work at Ashleigh’s. So she walked past the big wrought-iron gates and the wide drive which led up to the front of the house. Instead she turned in at the wooden gates marked ‘Tradesmen’ and followed the winding track round the side of the house to the kitchen door at the rear. A maid let her in and Katy explained, ‘Hello, Jane! I’ve got some papers for Mr Ashleigh to sign.’
Jane led her through the kitchen and the green-baize-covered door which separated the servants’ quarters and kitchen from the main house. In the hall running up to the front entrance Jane tapped at a door from behind which came a burst of male laughter. Then a voice called deeply, ‘Come in!’
Jane pushed the door wide and ushered in Katy: ‘Miss Merrick to see you, sir.’
The room was a study, office and library. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, a large desk stood in the bay window and two leather armchairs before the fire crackling in the grate. The men sat in the armchairs, heads turned towards her. Katy paused just inside the room to curtsy and explain, ‘Mr Tomlinson sent me with some papers for you to sign, please, sir.’
Vincent Ashleigh, tall, greying and urbane, levered himself out of his chair and smiled down at her. ‘Right you are. Let me have them, please.’ He took the papers and crossed to the desk, seated himself at it and scanned the first letter. As he was facing the window, his back was to the room. Katy waited. While she had addressed Vincent Ashleigh she had been aware of the younger man. He was possibly three or four years older than she. He had stood up in time with his father and proved to be as tall. His teeth showed white against a face burned brown by the sun under hair the colour of toffee. All this Katy saw only from the corner of her eye, not daring to face him. Nevertheless, she knew he was watching her and tried not to blush — but failed.
She started as Charles Ashleigh said, ‘I take it you’re working in the office.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Now Katy had to face him but kept her eyes cast down.
D’you like it?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Now she looked up at him and saw his smile waver then return. She realised she was returning that smile and tried to straighten her face lest she should appear forward, but could not.
Charles knew he had to say something. He could not simply stand gawking at the girl. ‘How long have you been there?’
‘Three years, sir.’
He thought vaguely that confirmed his first impression, that she was about eighteen. And they were still staring at each other.
‘There you are.’ Vincent Ashleigh got up from the desk and gave the papers to Katy. ‘Tell Mr Tomlinson I won’t be in tomorrow.’ He glanced across at his son and chuckled, ‘We’re going walking in the hills. But I’ll be there the day after.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Katy. She curtsied again and left the room. As she turned to close the door she saw Charles Ashleigh still watching her. She walked out of the house and back to the office in a dream. But when she handed the papers back to Mr Tomlinson in his office she had recovered her outward calm and was able to tell him, without blushing, ‘Mr Ashleigh said he’s going walking with his son tomorrow but he’ll be in the day after.’
‘Fine.’ Tomlinson grinned at her. ‘It looks like you’ll have another walk, then.’
‘I don’t mind.’ And Katy tried to sound as if she did not care either way. But supposing Charles Ashleigh did not go walking after all?
Next day she waited and worked at her desk, with Annie Scanlon, sniffing and watery-eyed with a cold, beside her. The morning passed but Tomlinson did not appear with a bunch of letters to sign. It wasn’t until the afternoon that he came out of his office, on his way into the warehouse, and mentioned in passing, ‘You won’t get wet today, Katy.’ He nodded at the windows where the rain beat at the glass and ran down in rivulets. ‘There’s nothing for the old man to sign.’
Katy smiled but her spirits sank, her mood changed to match the gloom of the day. But then she told herself not to be silly and bent to her work again.
Sub-Lieutenant Charles Ashleigh spent the day striding over the windswept hills of Northumberland revelling in the rain beating into his face and the occasional shaft of sunlight. He talked to his father, sometimes about the Navy but also enquiring about the warehouse and the family business. Vincent Ashleigh was delighted, because the firm would go to Charles one day, and he was quite ready to talk about all the staff, including Katy Merrick. At the end of the day they strode downhill by the side of a brawling stream to the inn where the chauffeur met them with the motor car, a Lanchester with a big, boxy cab which he steered with a tiller. Vincent Ashleigh had paid six hundred pounds for it. Many a working man toiled for ten years to earn that amount.
Charles said casually, ‘I might look in at the place tomorrow.’
‘Why not?’ Vincent encouraged him, ‘You’ll find it interesting.’
He hosted a dinner party that evening at which his son was guest of honour and where there were a number of young women selected by his wife, girls she thought suitable for her son. Charles was pleasant to all of them. That was easy because they were pretty, fashionably and expensively dressed, and intelligent. But all the while he was picturing someone else. He knew the girl from the office was outside his circle and his class, that he should not start an affair. He told himself he was being stupid but — where was the harm in seeing the girl, talking to her, maybe flirting a little?
He made some plans for the next day but in the event they were not needed. It was a fine spring morning when he walked into the office at Ashleigh’s. He found Katy sitting at her desk but she was alone. He had been prepared to find Annie Scanlon there and maybe Tomlinson as well. Katy had not expected to see Charles at all. They stared at each other again and then smiled together. Katy got down from her stool and Charles said awkwardly, remembering his lines, ‘I’ve come to look around. I thought I’d ask Mr Tomlinson to show me the ropes because I haven’t been in the place for over three years, since before I went to the Med.’
‘Mr Tomlinson is in with Mr Ashleigh,’ Katy explained, ‘but I’m sure it would be all right if you went in.’
‘No, I won’t disturb them.’ He wore a well-cut tweed suit with narrow trousers and carried his cap in his hand. Katy was in her working dress of black skirt and high-necked white blouse with puff sleeves. He thought she was much prettier than the girls of the previous evening. ‘Tell you what: you can show me around.’
‘Well . . ; Katy hesitated, caught off-balance by the request, uncertain what she should do. She glanced at the work on her desk.
Charles put in quickly, ‘I’ll make it right with Annie.’ Katy admitted, ‘Miss Scanlon hasn’t come in today. I think she’s poorly with a cold.’
Charles grinned at her, a conspirator: ‘Who’s to know, then? Come on. Please?’
Katy told herself she could not refuse her employer’s son. She conducted him around the warehouse and
Charles tried to take some notice of what he was shown, but most of his attention was on her. At the end he asked her, ‘Where do you go for lunch?’ He had not asked his father about the eating habits of his employees.
Katy blinked at the question. Go somewhere for lunch? She explained, ‘I bring a sandwich and eat it here.’
Charles realised he had almost made a mistake. If he asked this young girl to lunch with him in a restaurant she would take fright. He said, ‘What about a stroll afterwards? I’ll meet you outside at half past twelve.’ And then he was able to turn to Tomlinson as the manager returned to the office, saying, ‘Miss Merrick has just been showing me around. I asked her as you were closeted with Father.’ Then he went in to see Vincent Ashleigh, so K
aty wasn’t given the chance to refuse him as she knew she should — though she did not want to.
For the rest of the morning she worked with her thoughts elsewhere. She was nervous and a little bit frightened, very much out of her depth. She was young and while boys had made advances they had been of her own class and background. Charles Ashleigh came from a different world. His kind employed and ordered the workers and servants — and she was one of them. But she was excited, too. She could not get him out of her mind.
Charles, walking the busy streets, crowded with horse-drawn carriages and carts, hooting cars winding between them, was uncertain now. Since seeing her again that morning he was aware that this affair might not be as simple as just talking and flirting. He was sure it was not when he saw her again at twelve-forty. She ran out of the tall building with its legend of ‘Ashleigh’s’ above the gates and on a brass plate in the wall. Her face was flushed and she apologised, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m late because Mr Tomlinson asked me for some figures.’
All Charles could find to say, suddenly tongue-tied, was the truth: ‘All right. I’m just glad to see you.’
That was how it started, with a fifteen-minute stroll and shy conversation.
They agreed that it would be better not to meet at Ashleigh’s again. Both were uneasily aware that there could be trouble, and while they never discussed it, both preferred to put off the day of reckoning. They progressed to walking longer and in the evenings as the days lengthened, though in the beginning they still observed the niceties and strolled a foot apart. They ventured to Whitley Bay and wandered arm in arm by the seashore and by then it was ‘Charles’ and ‘Katy’. And sometimes he hired a cab pulled by a lackadaisical old horse that clip-clopped along slowly and they rode out in that, holding hands, and kissing when the darkness hid them. Their joy in each other was only increased by the clandestine nature of their love. Occasionally he remembered that he was on leave and at some point would be recalled, and he mentioned this in casual conversation. But that was somewhere in the future and it did not trouble them.
