She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that?’ she asked, amazement in every word.
He stared into her face for some moments before he said softly, ‘Can’t you guess?’
No, she couldn’t guess. How on earth could she guess? With anyone else she might have suspected it was some sort of cruel joke, but not David. David didn’t have a cruel bone in the whole of his body. Carrie stared into the face of the lad she had always thought of primarily as Alec’s brother. A nice lad, friendly, kind and quite good-looking in a rough sort of way, and again she wanted to cry. She bit the inside of her bottom lip hard, focusing on the pain to stop herself breaking down. She’d cried enough for one morning. But he hadn’t drawn away from her in spite of what she’d revealed and she was so grateful to him for that, knowing there were plenty more who wouldn’t be so generous.
For the first time since Alec had raped her, Carrie voluntarily reached out and touched a man other than her father, patting David’s arm once as she said, ‘Thank you for not hating me.’
‘Hating you? Oh, lass, I could never hate you.’ He stared at her, suddenly tongue-tied. The falling snow had coated her felt hat and the shoulders of her coat, framing her in a circle of white, and she had never looked so bonny. But she was carrying a bairn, another man’s bairn, and a bairn conceived in blind lust, from the little she’d said. But he couldn’t think of that now. If he dwelled on it he knew the feeling rising up in him, a feeling which urged him to force the name out of her so he could go and do murder, would take over. And that would ruin everything. It had happened. That was the crux of the matter. And although he wouldn’t have wished it this way in a million years, it had presented him with his one and only chance of ever meaning anything to her. He would have liked to do it properly. To start courting her, taking her out on his arm to the music hall or the cinema, showing her off to all his pals. Then, once they were engaged, there’d be kissing and clarting on somewhere secluded and private, up near the old quarries like as not where most of the courting couples went after dark. But he’d have waited for marriage and the bedroom before he’d have asked for more than kissing. For Carrie he would. But it was too late for all that. And the folk round here, the old wives and the not so old lasses who had always been a mite jealous of her looks and all would crucify her with their gossip and spite and cold-shouldering. Her life wouldn’t be worth living.
‘Marry me,’ he said again. ‘As soon as possible. That way no one can be sure that the bairn didn’t just come early when it’s born.’
Her hand had fallen to her side and again she was staring at him with great blue eyes. ‘David, that’s impossible, you know it is,’ she said haltingly. He must be feeling sorry for her.
‘No, it’s not. I . . . I think a bit of you, I always have.’
It was Carrie’s turn to flush now. He liked her? In that way? But he’d never said. She spoke the last thought out loud. ‘If that’s true why haven’t you ever asked me out?’
‘Because I knew I didn’t have a chance, I suppose.’
‘But . . .’ She paused, unable to fully take in what he had proposed. And it was a proposal, she told herself shakily. He’d asked her to marry him, even knowing about the bairn. For a second hope soared, for one blinding moment she saw a way out of it all. And then reality kicked in. How could she expect anyone to take her as she was now? He might think he liked her enough but lads always wanted to be the first, didn’t they? With the lass they married? And there was the bairn.
‘But what?’ he asked quietly. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘That you could have any lass you wanted.’
‘Maybe I don’t want any lass.’
‘But the bairn? It would always remind you of how we started.’
Aye, it would. ‘No it wouldn’t.’
‘It would, you know it would.’
She started walking again and he fell into step beside her. He wanted her, and if he had to stomach the bairn to have her, then so be it. Having Carrie as his lass had been a dream before this moment, a far horizon he’d always known deep down he couldn’t reach but which he couldn’t let go of. He played his trump card. ‘What are you going to do if you don’t marry me?’
‘I don’t know.’ They had reached the far end of the Green and again she stopped, pulling her coat collar up round her neck. There followed a silence during which their eyes met and held, and after a little while she said again, ‘It’s impossible,’ her voice trembling. ‘I . . . I don’t want to be anyone’s wife.’ And then, as his face changed, she said quickly, ‘It’s not because it’s you, David, really.’
And she meant that. She had never really looked at him before this day, not in the light of a lad anyway, but now she saw he was rather handsome. Well, not handsome. There was something too strong and rugged about his face for it to be called handsome, but his eyes were lovely. Deep brown and almost velvety; kind eyes.
‘Is it because of . . .’ he found he didn’t know quite how to put it, and finished lamely, ‘making on?’
Her face was on fire now but she nodded.
‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ he said flatly, hot colour flooding his own face. ‘With the bairn and all I wouldn’t expect--’ He stopped. ‘What I mean is, after it’s born it’d be up to you. If you didn’t want to I’d wait till you were willing.’
Her voice was very small when she said, ‘What if I was never willing?’
How did he answer that? He stared stupidly at her, knowing he couldn’t express what he wanted to say. If he’d been one of those educated types who had a way with words he might have been able to convince her. As it was . . . He’d like to be able to tell her he loved her, that he’d always loved her for as long as he could remember. Aye, he burned for her but that was natural, wasn’t it? That was how it should be if a lad loved a lass, but that wasn’t all of it. She was terrified, scared out of her wits at the thought of being married, and who could blame her after what had happened? But in the weeks and months ahead - if she took him - he’d be able to let her see she needn’t be frightened of him. But if he tried to say all that, it would only come out wrong. Besides, a lad didn’t talk of love - not in broad daylight on a Sunday morning, leastways.
The silence was lengthening and he knew he had to break it before he lost any chance he might have. He swallowed hard. ‘I said I’d wait till you were willing and I mean it.’
‘But it would all be so unfair on you--’
He cut short her protest. ‘It’s what I want, all right?’
She shook her head, murmuring, ‘I don’t know what to say,’ but in that moment he knew it was done.
They were married in the same week the government announced it was to give two million pounds for the development of Kent coalfields, thereby whipping the unrest in the beleaguered north-east to fever pitch, but for once this latest tactic by the ‘enemy’ left Sandy McDarmount unmoved.
Since the Sunday afternoon following Carrie’s sixteenth birthday, when she and David had confronted her parents with the reason why their marriage should be immediate, her father seemed to have aged twenty years. After his initial shock Sandy had leaped at David, and it had only been the younger man’s quick reflexes that had saved him from the knock-out blow Sandy had attempted. Carrie had flung herself between them, but even with her mother and brother hanging on to her father’s arms, it had taken some minutes before he’d calmed down.
‘Don’t blame David, Da, please. It wasn’t like that.’ Carrie had been beside herself, even though David had been adamant that no matter how things went with Sandy they must stick to the story that the child was his. It was the one and only condition he’d inflicted on her, that she should never reveal to a living soul that he wasn’t the father.
David had told her it was for the child’s sake; that if anyone knew the truth there was a risk that at some point in the future a careless word might reveal it to the child. This way it was tidy, he insisted. The child had le
gitimacy, her father would have no need to press her for a name she felt she couldn’t give, and once they were married she had the protection of respectability. Wild horses wouldn’t drag the real reason he had claimed parentage from him. It was one thing to jump the gun with a lass and get caught out; quite another to be held up as a laughing stock because you’d been fool enough to take on someone else’s flyblow. And that’s how folk would see it, he told himself. Oh aye, he knew full well what would be said if word got out. ‘That young ’un, Ned’s lad, hasn’t got the sense he was born with. She made a cuckold of him even before he got her to the altar, silly daft so-an’-so.’ Oh aye, he knew his own and the sort of gossip which would race round the backyards like fire in a corn field.
But if Carrie’s father took it hard, David’s mother became almost demented at the thought of another son marrying a McDarmount.
David had refused to let Carrie be present when he faced the furore he knew would erupt at home, and he was doubly glad of this when, in the resulting fracas - and due in part to his father speaking up for Carrie, for whom he had always had a soft spot - the bitter enmity between his parents reached new heights.
Alec, of course, had put in his two penn’orth when he’d arrived home from the Reeds’ house in the middle of the row, his sneering gibe as to whether David could support Carrie in the manner to which she was accustomed causing his brother to tighten his hands into fists at his side.
David had refused to give a reason for the need for haste, merely saying it was what they both wanted and was nothing to do with anyone else, which had further inflamed his mother. When Olive had lost her temper completely and accused him of planning events purely to put a spoke in Alec’s wheel with the Reeds, he had walked out of the door and spent the night on a friend’s sofa.
But now the short service at Holy Trinity was over. Both families had been briefly united in their endeavour to put a face on things and had attended the espousal - all except Alec, who had been unable to take another Saturday afternoon away from the shop so soon after Walter’s wedding, or so he said.
No one commented on the abruptness of the vicar, who had clearly made up his own mind about the need for haste and had let it be known, albeit silently and with clerical dignity, that he was most unhappy.
Joan McDarmount could not understand Carrie’s flat refusal to wear the blue brocade dress again for the wedding, emphasising several times that the beautiful garment at least gave some suggestion that this wedding was not a hole-in-the-wall affair. When Carrie returned the dress to the stallholder, exchanging it for an inferior article in nut-brown linen, Joan had found it difficult to speak to her daughter for a day or two.
It had been Renee who, although more than a little hurt by her sister’s stoical refusal to discuss the reason behind the sudden nuptials, had bought a wide-brimmed cream hat and matching ankle-strap shoes for the bride, trimming the hat with a bevy of fresh flowers and using the remainder for a small posy for Carrie to hold.
This act of kindness, along with Renee’s fierce warning to all and sundry at the firework factory not to make disparaging comments about the unexpected wedding, had upheld Carrie in her worst moments.
Lillian was clearly bewildered and disturbed by events but she had been tact itself, although Carrie had detected a slight withdrawal on the part of her friend. She told herself this was only to be expected in the circumstances. They had been used to doing everything together from when they were bairns, sharing confidences and hopes and dreams, and now everything had changed.
From her position at David’s side, Carrie looked across her mother’s living room to where Renee and Lillian were laughing with Mrs Symcox from two doors down. Ann Symcox, besides being a neighbour and recently widowed, was her mother’s lifelong friend, and the only person to be invited to the ceremony other than the two immediate families. Carrie didn’t know if her mother had divulged anything, but Mrs Symcox’s attitude to her had been just as warm and pleasant as always.
Another gust of laughter from the three made Carrie lower her eyes. Would she ever feel like laughing again? she asked herself desperately. She couldn’t imagine so at this moment. Every time she met her father’s eyes the sorrow there smote her like a fist, and although her da still spoke to David for appearance’s sake and to keep alive the façade of this being a normal wedding, his bitterness towards David was palpable.
A small untouched piece of wedding cake reposed on the plate in her hand, and she stared at it. The eight-inch cake, along with ham sandwiches and a cup of tea, had made up the sum total of the wedding breakfast. Everyone had been very careful not to compare it with the feast before Christmas, everyone except Olive Sutton, that was. David’s mother had enjoyed putting the knife in more than once, and had done nothing but glare her rage all day.
‘Chin up, lass.’
David’s voice was low, and when he took her arm, linking it in his, Carrie forced herself not to flinch away. She had tried, she’d really tried to rid herself of the churning sensation she experienced every time he touched her, but still it remained. Even a pat on the hand from a male other than her da made her flesh creep. She was going doolally. She made herself look up and meet David’s eyes, smiling at him. At this rate she’d be fit for nothing but the company of the other loonies up at the asylum.
‘Another half an hour or so and we can go, then you can put your feet up. How are you feeling now?’ he asked softly.
‘All right.’ It was a lie. The nausea which now often claimed her every waking moment hadn’t let up all day, and she hadn’t dared to try and eat anything. Far from gaining weight she had lost a couple of pounds every week since the middle of January, but the effort of trying to hide how she felt from everyone outside the house was the worst thing. She had been counting the hours to this day for the last week, deeply thankful for the unwritten rule which said a married woman should not work outside the home. That Renee had guessed how she felt and the reason for it was apparent in the fact that her sister had not tried to dissuade her from giving in her notice at work, even though since her marriage Renee was becoming more fervent by the day in support of equality for women both at work and at home.
It was another hour before Carrie left the house she had called home for the last sixteen years. She was feeling so ill and tired that the walk through the icy streets, banked high with frozen snow and lethal beneath the feet, would have been beyond her but for David’s arm round her waist.
By the time they had walked the length of Southwick Road and turned into Black Road, which was near the pit head, she was light-headed, and David was cursing the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything. They were renting a room in Brooke Street, one of the roads in the area known locally as ‘Back of the Pit’, which indeed it was, as the thick black grime clinging to every building testified.
After passing colliery square, a collection of miners’ cottages on the east side of the road, they crossed over Wreath Quay Road where the wind blew enough to cut you in half, and into Hay Street before turning into Brooke Street some moments later. The Back of the Pit was a community within a community, cut off from the rest of Monkwearmouth by the train station and North Bridge Street. It consisted of some of the most smoke-blackened dwellings in Sunderland, along with many small factories that all added their quota of stench to the sooty air.
Their new home was one room on the ground floor of a two-up, two-down terrace in the middle of the dreary street. Several of the houses shared a backyard which contained two dry privies, one washhouse with a coal-fired boiler and the communal tap. This supplied all the water for the households and the many families they contained. It was a world away from James Armitage Street.
In the days since they had settled on their lodgings, Carrie had been doggedly repeating to herself that they were lucky to have found somewhere with a downstairs room vacant. It would save having to lug buckets of water from the yard up the stairs, and the small range in the room had been an added bonus. The two rooms they
had viewed before this one had both been on the first floor of each house, and both had had only a small fireplace with a bar across it for resting one pan on.
They entered the dark narrow hall and Carrie watched David open their door with the key their landlady - a large, plump, bustling type who lived in the other downstairs room with her three cats - had given them, and for a moment, having stepped inside, despair overwhelmed her.
The room was clean - they had been round the last two evenings and scrubbed it from top to bottom - but that was all that could be said for it. There were no curtains at the narrow sash window, just a faded paper blind which the last occupant had left. The meagre scraps of furniture were their own. These consisted of Carrie’s bed from home which her mother had let them have with the proviso that if they got another one she wanted it back for Billy, along with its old lumpy mattress, grey blankets and two flock pillows. They had placed the bed under the window, and although it was only a three-quarter size it seemed to fill the room. Next to the range was a small, worm-eaten table holding a few pots and pans, items of cutlery, a sharp bread knife, two plates and mugs and a washing-up bowl - all courtesy of the local pawn shop, along with the big black kettle sitting on the hob. On the other side of the range a battered tin bath was propped against the wall. Mrs Symcox had given them this, having recently acquired a new one.
The Most Precious Thing Page 8
