by Irene Carr
Chapter Twenty-Five
NEWCASTLE, SUNDERLAND AND LONDON. FEBRUARY 1918.
Katy turned away, shaking. Matt helped her back into the house and put his arm around her. Policemen came crowding into the little bedroom, panting from their race up the stairs. Matt told them what had happened in a few words, then he and Katy descended through the house together. They found Formby in the hall with Meggie. Her tears had dried but she still twisted a pleat of her skirt in nervous fingers.
Formby addressed Matt severely, ‘We were halfway up the road before we noticed you two were missing. You were supposed to be following us. You’ve no business taking the law into your own hands.’
Katy answered him, pallid and weak but she would not allow Matt to be blamed: ‘We didn’t. All we did was find out where he was, and that was by accident. I went back to talk to Meggie because I thought she could tell me about
Louise. I didn’t know he was upstairs all the time, hidden in a room behind a big mirror.’
Matt exclaimed, ‘So that was where he was!’ He turned on Formby: ‘You can’t blame your men for not finding that place. I saw the mirror and never guessed.’
Formby grumbled, ‘Aye, but that doesn’t excuse what you did. That was against regulations. Anyway, now I want statements from all of you. So come along — and walk in front of me this time where I can keep an eye on you.’
Katy and Matt left the house with Meggie and Formby following behind. Outside they found Sergeant Bullock waiting with Louise holding his hand. Katy took her from the sergeant, putting her arm around Louise instead. She could hardly believe she had won back her daughter, kept wanting to touch Louise, wrap her arms around her, but she restrained herself.
Katy said, ‘I’m your mother, Louise. I suppose you don’t remember me. You were little when your father stole you away.’ Louise stared, bewildered, and Katy went on, ‘Never mind. I’ll explain it all to you later. The important thing is that you’re safe now and he won’t hurt you again — ever.’
Louise was still uncertain, nervous and frightened, cheeks smudged where the tears had run. Katy could have broken down again at sight of this pale waif of a daughter of hers but thought it better to smile and found it easier. It extracted a tremulous twitch of the lips from Louise and that wrung Katy’s heart. Louise would need a long time to get over this trauma.
Formby said with satisfaction, ‘Well, there’ll be no trial just an inquest.’ He jerked his head at the alley as they passed its mouth, where a policeman stood on guard. Involuntarily, Katy glanced that way, and saw in the shadow between the two houses, a still shape lying on the cobblestones. Someone had found a blanket and covered the body but there was no mistaking what it was. Katy looked away quickly and put a hand up so that Louise would not see.
Matt said grimly, ‘That could have been me, if you hadn’t grabbed me.’ Katy did not want to think about that and tried to close her mind against the pictures it conjured up. Now, by a macabre coincidence, the barrel organ was playing ‘Broken Doll.’ The jerky tinkle-tankle followed them up the street.
They drove back to the police station and made statements, gave details. It was late in the evening when Katy, Matt and Louise finally got down from a cab at Newcastle Central Station. Matt was leaving on the express bound for King’s Cross. Katy, holding Louise by the hand — she had refused to be parted from her since being reunited — went with him onto the platform to see him off. She asked anxiously, ‘What will they do to you?’
Matt grinned, ‘Put me on a charge, that’s a certainty. I’ll have been absent without leave for eight or ten hours, because when I get to London I’ll still have to go on to my regiment on Salisbury Plain. But don’t worry. I’ll get my knuckles rapped, might lose my rank, but that’s all. They won’t shoot me.’
Porters were slamming doors — most of them were women at that stage of the war, with so many men on active service — and the guard was standing ready with his flag, whistle in his mouth. Matt set his hands on Katy’s shoulders and smiled wryly down at her. ‘I’ve been a bloody fool for a long time, couldn’t see what was right under my nose. I love you, Katy. I can say it now.’
Katy slid an arm around his neck while still keeping her grip on Louise. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, then pushed him up into the carriage and stepped back as the whistle shrilled and the train started to move. She waved until it rounded a bend in the track and Matt was hidden from her; but before that happened the tears had misted her sight of him — but she was smiling.
Katy took Louise home on the local stopping train. They got off at Monkwearmouth and walked down Barclay Street, passed St Peter’s Church and so came to Annie Scanlon’s little house. Annie answered Katy’s knock, with Beatrice in her nightdress peering around Annie’s skirts. Katy said simply, ‘I’ve found Louise.’
‘Come in! Come in!’ Annie was overjoyed, reached out to take Louise but saw Katy’s warning shake of the head and planted a kiss on the child’s cheek instead. ‘Come and sit down by the fire with your mammy.’ So Katy was able to relax in the warmth and a comfortable old chair, with Louise in the crook of one arm, Beatrice in the other, while Annie made a pot of tea. She was eager to hear how Louise had been found, but when Katy avoided the subject, tactfully waited until the children had been put to bed. Then Katy told her the full story.
Annie shook her head, appalled, ‘You poor lass! You’ve had an awful time. Now, I hate to ask, but how long have you got?’
‘I’ve got a week.’
Annie nodded, ‘A week at home with me and the bairns will do you good, them as well.’ Then she asked, ‘And how long before you get out altogether?’
Katy hesitated, then ventured, ‘I suppose now I’ve found Louise I could make a good compassionate case for being demobilised now. But I want to keep on with my job down there. I think the Commandant will let me come home fairly often, and I feel I’m doing some good. The wounded men need us.’ And there was always the possibility that a train would draw in one day and Matt would be aboard, needing her.
Annie said, ‘And you want to know if I can look after Louise as well? Course I can!’ She beamed at Katy, ‘I’m looking forward to it!’
So that was settled. Katy spent a week that was alternately joyous and heartrending, a week of loving her daughter and seeing her come back to life and loving again. Beatrice welcomed Louise as a playmate in the house but inevitably was somewhat shy. At first Louise was shy with everyone and flinched at every sudden noise or movement, lifting a hand in pathetic defence. By the end of that week, however, she was a different child, chattering with Beatrice and Annie, putting her arms around Katy to say, ‘I love you.’
It was a wrench for Katy to leave, but as she set out for the station she looked back and saw Annie with her arms around Louise and Beatrice and both of them waving. Katy went on her way with her mind at rest. She knew she had a long way to go to completely heal Louise’s wounds and bring the child fully back to her, but she looked forward to that.
In London again, Katy wrote to Louise at least once a week. She spent a great deal of her spare time writing. Her Commandant offered to find her a post nearer home but a letter from Matt had told her that he had gone to Flanders the day after returning to his regiment. Suppose he came back on one of the hospital trains? So Katy politely refused the Commandant’s offer.
Matt had also written: ‘The colonel chewed me up but that was just for the look of things, to show that anyone late back from leave was in trouble. But he had a letter of commendation from that Inspector Formby in front of him — I’d had to tell Formby my Army Unit but he wrote of his own accord — so I kept my rank.’ For the rest, he poured out his heart. He wrote often, almost every day, sometimes a page or two, sometimes just a few lines scribbled in blunt pencil on an oil-stained sheet torn from a signal message pad. Katy kept the letters carefully and replied to each one as it came.
‘I understand I am now a free man.’ That letter came in July. Fleur had written to Matt th
at she had obtained a divorce in America and married Dawkins. They were going to St Louis where they would live with his parents. Besides that information Fleur had written two pages of abuse and sneers. Matt had commented, ‘But you won’t want to read all that. I don’t mind. I don’t hate her. I’m just sorry about the time I wasted on her.’
Katy agreed; hate was poisoning.
At that moment Fleur was listening to her father-in-law. Harry’s father ran a small restaurant staffed entirely by the family, all of whom worked hard at the business. Now he was demanding of Harry, ‘Where the hell were you two when we opened a half-hour ago? You didn’t wake up, you tell me? That’s a reason? Listen: you never helped around here, didn’t do a damn thing except blow on that clarinet all day long. When I threw you out you said you’d had enough of this place and you were going to England. Now you come back and you say the money was lousy and so was the food, you’re flat broke and you’ve got a fancy wife and you want to move back in! OK. Your ma wants it so you come home. But you work. You’re a waiter. You get here a half-hour before we open and see everything is ready on the tables. She helps your ma in the kitchen. But you both work. Everybody here works.’
Fleur listened miserably and went on washing the greasy dishes which her mother-in-law inspected with an eagle eye.
In October Katy had news of another of the men in her life. It came in a letter from a Newcastle solicitor. He said that Charles Ashleigh had been killed in action just a month before. Katy broke down at that. When she took up the letter again she read:
The bulk of the estate is inherited by his two sons, but he telephoned me before leaving on his last voyage to make an appointment to see me with a view to adding a codicil to his will. He mentioned your name and that you worked for the Ambulance Column and so I was able to find your address. While
he was not specific I nevertheless talked with the executors who agreed that it was obviously his intention to make some bequest. The cheque enclosed comes with their best wishes.
It was for two hundred pounds.
Katy whispered, ‘Those poor boys, to lose their father.’ She could have wept again for them.
She also thought that the lawyer and the executors probably thought she had been Charles’s mistress. Well, let them. They were wrong but she didn’t care. She would not write to correct them because that would be like denying Charles. He deserved far better than that.
The Armistice was signed in November and the guns fell silent. Katy celebrated with the rest of the country, but could not rid herself of the memories of the wounded, the dying and those who had died as she held their hands. Her feeling was not so much of joy as relief that the war was over. She was discharged from the Women’s Legion and the Ambulance Column early in December but she stayed on in the hostel for a few days while she conducted her business. The hostel was much cheaper than a hotel and she was intent on saving every penny she could. At the end of a week she had become the owner of a lorry, a three-ton Dennis Subsidy model sold off by the Army as surplus to requirements. A whole load of spares came with it. She drove it up the Great North Road, starting very early in the morning, stopped and slept in the cab for an hour in the early evening, then drove on. She finally braked it outside Annie Scanlon’s house just before midnight.
Katy climbed down wearily. The house, like all the others in the street, was dark and silent in the moonlight, the people abed. She did not want to wake Annie or the children but neither did she wish to leave the cargo of spares in the street only protected by a tarpaulin. So she used the key Annie had given her, opened the front door and tiptoed inside. The key to the yard was on the mantelpiece as usual and she picked it up and crept out as she had come in.
She drove the Dennis round to the yard, unlocked the gates and put the Dennis in the shed. The top half of the stable door was open and she went to shut it. In the moonlight she could see the collar and harness of the old horse, Sergeant O’Malley, hanging from a nail. That brought back bittersweet memories and a reminder that this was home. She paused a moment then. The yard lay before her with the square silhouette of the office and flat opposite. The sky was clear and that might have meant a frost later in the night but she was not cold. Still . . . Katy had intended to sleep in the cab again, wrapped in her greatcoat. But now the office beckoned and she walked over to it, carrying her small suitcase she had carried in the cab of the Dennis. She fumbled for the key in the crack between doorstep and door, and again, fingers scrabbling backwards and forwards. Then she stopped. The key was not there.
Someone had taken it, that was obvious. The wall around the yard, and the gate, were only meant to keep out the curious. A determined thief could easily climb into the yard, could be in the office now, watching her. Katy’s eyes flicked to the window but that was blank, only reflecting her own image in the bright moonlight. She was about to take a pace backward, then turn and retreat, when she thought of another possibility. Who else knew where to find the key? On the instant she was certain of the answer, opened the door of the office and stepped inside. She saw his pack standing on the counter, could just make out the length of him below it, that he was sleeping under the counter as he used to do.
Katy shut the door behind her but it creaked and rattled as it closed. Matt awoke and propped himself on one elbow. His bare shoulders gleamed as he growled, demanding, ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me, Katy.’ She answered low-voiced, though there was no one to wake. ‘How long have you been here?’
Matt said, ‘They’ve given me leave — two weeks to see me over Christmas and into the New Year. It was late when I got here and I didn’t want to wake Annie, so I threw my coat over the broken glass on top of the wall, shinned over and bedded down in here. What about you?’ He watched her, listening to the rustling.
Katy breathed, ‘The Women’s Legion released me. Matt, I’ve bought a lorry, a three-ton Dennis with a load of spares. It’s old but it runs well. I drove it up here.’
He said, ‘It’ll do for us to get started. You can run it till I come home for good in a month or so.’
Katy saw he was lying in a big sleeping bag. The rustling had stopped now and she stood before him silver-naked in the moonlight. She shivered in the night air then slid into the arms of her man.
If you enjoyed Katy’s Men by Irene Carr, you might be interested in Better Days to Comes by Jenny Telfer Chaplin, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Better Days to Come by Jenny Telfer Chaplin
ONE
Greenock, Friday April 7, 1820
As Etta Gorton made her way down the outer stairway, the rutted communal steps which served the myriad of closely-packed single-end homes, each filled to bursting point with bairns, she was aware of the usual sounds, smells, and ongoing human dramas of her Greenock tenement building. Six o’clock in the morning it may be, but with the everlasting pressures of trying to scratch a living, the limitations of their overcrowded rat-ridden hovels, and the vocal and insistent demands of hungry weans, nobody ever slept late in Mince Collop Close. Picking her booted way over the broken cobbles, Etta headed along the Vennel, past Herring Street, finally onto Ropework Street and past the Highland Mary Tavern.
A cursory glance at the portrait-bearing lamp which hung over the doorway of the drinking howff gave Etta a moment’s pause for reflection. With this romanticised visual portrayal of Mary Campbell, Rabbie Burns’s very own Hielan Mary, her beauty would last forever.
Even better, Etta thought with a bitter smile, Mary Campbell’s life with all its high drama is now safely over. She’s at rest. But for me, ma life’s struggles are still ... uch tae hell wi it all...
Shrugging off her dark thoughts Etta hitched up her skirts and with determined strides made her way into her workplace.
The Greenock Ropework Company had been started in 1796 in East Regent Street by Alexander Tough. Fourteen-year-old Etta and her fellow workers didn’t give a tuppenny dam for who had established the accursed place. Their so
le concern was that for their daily labour the Greenock Ropework Company provided the wherewithal to keep body and soul together. In Etta’s case to stave off hunger for herself, her work-shy, drunken father, and the tribe of now motherless younger brothers and sisters. Even so, as Etta slaved away at her own designated tasks she often had the bitter thought: The man who started up this damned Ropework was well named – it’s bloody tough work for weans like me, working our fingers tae the bone for a pittance o hauf-a-croon a week.
Another day’s work in the noise, heat, and frenetic activity of the Ropework over, Etta trudged her way homeward. Normally it was a case of head down and make for home as fast as her tired aching limbs could manage in eager anticipation of the welcome mug of tea which she had trained young Tina to have ready for her. However, her workmate Aggie over the noon break had whispered vague warnings about ‘troubles’ in the streets that day after work and Etta was much more alert than usual keeping a weather eye open for any sign that might be the signal for her to run tired though she was.
She gave a sigh of relief rounding the corner of Sugarhouse Lane.
“So much for Aggie’s gloomy rumours. Now for that mug of tea.”
Next morning, Etta more alert than usual, still mindful of Aggie’s warnings, thought the streets were, if anything, quieter than normal.
Funny, though, she thought, what people that are about at this hour all seem to be huddled into wee groups whispering. Ah wonder what about? Uch weel, nane o ma business – best get yersell tae the Ropeworks, ma girl, and damned quick aboot it.
