Jarrow Trilogy 03 - Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Tell your mam and Mary that I’m asking after them.’

  ‘And Grandda?’ Catherine prompted.

  Lizzie sucked her gums in disapproval. ‘Aye, if you must.’

  As they kissed goodbye, Lizzie’s face suddenly lit with a memory.

  ‘He was an artist,’ she announced.

  ‘Who was?’ Catherine queried.

  ‘Master Alex. I’ve been trying to remember since you were asking. Used to go about the place sketching folk in a little book. Did one of my Peter and the bairns. Kept it all these years in the back of the Bible.’

  ‘Can I see it?’ Catherine gasped.

  She hobbled across to the fireside and pointed to two large books jammed in a nook beside the range. ‘Lift them down, hinny. It’s in the Old Testament.’

  Catherine laid them carefully on the table. Lizzie pulled out a yellowed piece of paper with shaking hands.

  ‘There. It’s just the spit of my Peter,’ she said fondly.

  The charcoal drawing was smudged and faded, but the figures were neatly drawn: a man in a cap sitting up on a flat cart, two boys grinning over his shoulders. From her own drawing lessons Catherine knew how difficult it was to depict people.

  ‘I can tell it’s George,’ she said in delight, tracing the sketch with her finger. In the corner were the initials, APD. She felt a thrill at this tangible evidence of his existence.

  Lizzie nodded. ‘Like I said, he was an artist.’

  Catherine longed to take the picture with her, but knew how much it meant to her aunt and did not ask.

  Walking back down the hill, with the bells of Lamesley church ringing across the fields, she wondered if Alexander had ever sketched her mother. She was convinced that this man was her father, felt it deep inside. All she needed to do was discover where he had gone.

  Catherine circled the inn at Ravensworth for half an hour before plucking up the courage to approach. The front was locked up, so she went round to the back, past stables and outhouses where hens pecked in the dirt.

  ‘What you want?’ a large woman in a faded apron demanded, as she threw scraps to a dog at the door.

  ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ Catherine asked, feeling foolish.

  The woman jerked her head. ‘Come in.’ Catherine followed her into the gloomy kitchen and watched her splash water into a cup. ‘You’re not from round here. Lost your way, eh?’

  ‘Visiting an aunt,’ Catherine explained, sipping quickly. ‘Two of me family used to work here. Kate and Mary McMullen. Did you know them?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Must have been a while back. We’ve had the inn for ten years. Took over from old Bram Taylor.’

  ‘Is he still living round here?’ Catherine was hopeful. He of all people would remember Kate and her father, for it was here that they courted, according to Aunt Mary.

  The woman shook her head again. ‘Died in the war, heart gave out.’

  Catherine tried one last time. ‘Did you know a man called Pringle-Davies? Used to come to the castle on business.’

  The landlady frowned and repeated the name. ‘Sounds familiar.’ Then realisation broke across her face. ‘Aye, there was a man called Davies used to come now and again. We’d water and feed his horses while he went up to the castle.’

  Catherine’s heart leapt. ‘Well-dressed gentleman?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Do - do you know where he lives?’ She held her breath.

  ‘Oh no, lass, he’s dead. About the time the Liddells left Ravensworth, if I remember rightly.’

  Catherine felt punched. ‘Dead . . . are you sure?’

  ‘Aye. I remember types like that with money to spend on the best rooms.’

  ‘What did he die of?’ she forced herself to ask.

  The woman looked surprised. ‘Old age, I wouldn’t doubt.’

  ‘Old age? But wasn’t he quite young?’

  The landlady snorted. ‘He was eighty if he was a day. Anyway, what you so interested in him for?’

  Catherine felt light-headed. She must be talking about the wrong Davies. But at least that did not mean that Alexander was dead. She thanked the woman and departed swiftly, mumbling about a train to catch. The landlady stood at the door watching her go.

  She trailed back to the station, frustrated at the fruitless search. It had all happened over twenty years ago. Who was going to remember a maid from the town who left in a hurry or a casual guest at the inn with a well-cut coat and a silver-topped walking stick?

  Still wrapped in her thoughts on arriving back at the workhouse, Catherine was shocked by what awaited her. The women in the staff room turned to gawp as she sauntered in.

  ‘Where you been?’ Hettie demanded, breaking the stunned silence. ‘Matron wants to know.’

  ‘It’s me day off.’ Catherine was indignant. ‘I can do as I like.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Hettie said, with a gleam in her eye that was unnerving.

  ‘Been searching the town for you,’ Gert said excitedly. ‘Last night your mam came looking for you - said there’d been a row and she was worried you’d do something daft.’

  ‘She was very upset,’ Hettie declared, ‘so Matron said we had to help look for you. Went to that Catholic club of yours - even asked the priest but you hadn’t been at church.’

  ‘And Lily’s,’ Gert said, ‘but we couldn’t find you anywhere.’

  Then your mam started crying and said you might have gone to have it out with a man called Gerald Rolland,’ Hettie said, revelling in the telling.

  Catherine looked at her stunned. ‘You never. . .?’

  ‘But your mam doesn’t know where he lives, so Matron called out the police,’ said Gert.

  ‘The police!’ Catherine’s hands flew to her face. She felt faint.

  ‘Had to,’ Hettie said. ‘Thought you might be in real bother. It all came out about you being on holiday with this man. But you weren’t there and he swore blind he’d never seen you in a week.’

  Catherine’s knees buckled. She grabbed the back of a chair. What had Kate done now? Fear made her sick.

  ‘So where were you?’ Hettie demanded. ‘If you weren’t with that man Rolland, then where?’

  ‘Visiting me Great-Aunt Lizzie,’ Catherine croaked, gulping back tears. ‘You had no right to gan looking for me, you had no right.’

  Hettie snorted. ‘That’s not the way Matron sees it. What a carry-on. You’re for the high jump, that’s for sure.’

  One of the older women said anxiously, ‘Better get along to Matron, Kitty, and sort it out. Sooner the better.’

  Chapter 19

  Matron was livid. ‘You are a very selfish young woman,’ she scolded, ‘taking off like that without letting anyone know. Your mother was worried sick. And as for all that business with this man Rolland - I was obviously right to have my doubts about you when you picked up that strange rash.’

  Catherine was puce and sweating. ‘I’ve never done anything improper,’ she stuttered.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look good,’ Mrs Hatch snapped. ‘Gallivanting off on holiday without anyone to chaperone you - and with what sort of man? The type who has no intention of marrying you. You’ve brought disgrace to this institution. And you such a devout churchgoer. You’ve been very foolish, very foolish indeed.’

  Catherine swallowed her panic. Was she going to be sacked?

  ‘I’m sorry for causing all the bother. But it was me day off and I just decided at the last minute to gan and see me Great-Aunt Lizzie.’ She held her look. ‘I’m a grown woman; I didn’t think I needed anyone’s permission to visit family.’

  Matron regarded her coldly as if she did not believe her story. ‘Just on a whim, was it?’

  Catherine glanced down. She could hardly tell her she was searching for her father.

  Matron continued. ‘Your mother came here in a terrible state - we had to do something.’

  Catherine felt queasy. Had Kate been the worse for drink? What else had she
told them about their argument or let slip about their family?

  ‘You will go at once to the police station to report that you are no longer missing and then you will go and make your peace with your mother.’ Matron stood up. ‘You will be back here by four o’clock and help out on the vagrants’ ward. As punishment, you will not be allowed time off for a month.’

  Catherine opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘Think yourself lucky that I’m taking this no further,’ Matron warned. ‘The Board of Guardians might not be so sympathetic.’

  Catherine swallowed, nodded and hurried from the room.

  Suddenly she was angry. She had done nothing wrong. It was just the poisonous minds of the other staff who had got her into trouble. And her meddling mother. She seethed with anger against Kate. It was her garrulous tongue that had caused all this and exposed her affair with Gerald. Oh, Gerald! Catherine felt a wave of shame to think how he had been dragged into this too. How he would despise her now for bringing the police to his door.

  With each grim step her fury grew. It was fuelled by the indulgent laughter and mild rebukes from the police, so that by the time she paced up the bank to East Jarrow, she was fit to burst with the unfairness of it all. All the tenderness she had experienced at Ravensworth for the young Kate was gone. That Kate no longer existed. She had turned into a drunken, manipulating, vengeful old woman.

  Catherine burst into the kitchen, startling Kate out of her nap.

  ‘You’ve done it now!’ she blazed. ‘What do you think you were doing, coming to the workhouse and causing trouble?’

  ‘Kitty,’ she gasped, clutching her chest, ‘what a fright. Where’ve you been? I was that worried—’

  ‘No you weren’t. You’d just hoyed me out the house, remember? Must have put on a right act for Matron - pretending you cared - but it’s all a load of rubbish. You just wanted to get your own back, didn’t you? I never thought you’d sink so low - trying to get me the sack, were you?’

  Kate looked stricken. She struggled to her feet. ‘I wanted to say sorry, but you weren’t there. I got all panicked you might’ve gone to Rolland, you were that upset.’

  ‘Is that why you told them all about me and him on holiday?’ Catherine trembled as she spoke. ‘ ‘Cos they all think I’m worse than muck now. Think I’m a slut who runs around after men. Is that what you wanted them to think?’

  ‘No, never!’

  The bedroom door opened. ‘What’s all the noise?’ Davie stood in trousers and vest, his face creased from sleep. He caught sight of his stepdaughter. ‘Where’ve you been? Your mam was in a right state when I got in last night.’

  Catherine clenched her fists. She was sick of people asking her that question and she was not going to be lectured to by Kate’s husband.

  ‘I was visiting family, if you must know,’ Catherine challenged. ‘I spent the night at Ravensworth.’

  Kate gasped and sat back down. ‘Ravensworth?’ She looked bewildered.

  ‘With Great-Aunt Lizzie.’ Catherine watched her mother intently. ‘We talked of the old days when you lived there - when you worked at the castle. Cousin George told me things too.’

  ‘Things?’ Kate said, flustered.

  ‘Aye, we had a canny walk around the place - down to the lake.’

  Kate looked grey with shock. ‘Why?’

  ‘ ‘Cos I wanted to find out about me father. Alexander Pringle-Davies. Isn’t that who he is?’

  Kate let out an agonised moan.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Davie said, rushing to Kate’s side and putting a protective arm about her.

  ‘Who told you?’ Kate whispered, her eyes flooding with tears.

  ‘Aunt Mary,’ Catherine said, suddenly hating her mother’s distress. ‘I wanted to know about him,’ she tried to explain, ‘wanted to find him. I asked at the inn, but they didn’t know anything.’

  At this, Kate burst into tears. Davie hugged his wife to him and rocked her in his arms. Catherine felt miserable. She could not begin to explain how she only felt half a person, not knowing about her father. Finding him would make her whole; fill up the strange emptiness that was always there inside.

  ‘Can’t you tell me about him?’ Catherine pleaded. ‘Help me find him.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Kate sobbed. ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Catherine said, springing forward and seizing her mother’s hand. ‘Just tell me where he comes from—’

  ‘Kitty,’ Davie interrupted, ‘you don’t understand. Your father’s dead.’

  Catherine recoiled. ‘How would you know?’

  Davie gave her a pitying look. ‘I’ve seen his gravestone - in Sweden. It’s in a cemetery for foreigners.’

  Catherine stared in bewilderment. ‘Sweden?’

  He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘It was his, that’s all I know. Died years ago.’

  She looked at Kate for explanation, but her mother’s look was hard and desolate.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said in an empty voice. ‘Don’t ever ask me about him again.’

  Chapter 20

  Nothing was the same for Catherine at the workhouse after the furore of her disappearance. Matron watched her hawkishly and the others made ribald remarks that once she might have laughed off, but now were too hurtful. She kept apart and buried herself in work. She volunteered for any extra shifts, driving herself to exhaustion, until she could collapse into bed and a dreamless sleep. Sometimes, she drove herself so hard it brought on bleeding from her nose and tongue, and she hid away in embarrassment.

  In the privacy of her room, she read library books and wrote stories. She was gripped by a compulsion to write; it made her forget the dreary hours and where she was. Time and again, her tales of tragic love would be set in huge mansion houses, with terraces and lawns, and a mysterious lake surrounded by dense woods. Even a year after her visit to Ravensworth, the colours and smells of the countryside were still vivid. She poured out her loneliness in poetry and enrolled on a correspondence course to develop her literary style and technique.

  One autumn day in 1928 Lily found her crying in her room.

  ‘The course teachers - they think me writing’s rubbish,’ Catherine told her. ‘Said me grammar and spelling’s that bad I shouldn’t ever think of writing as a career.’

  Lily put an arm round her friend. ‘Never mind what they think. You can do owt you put your mind to.’

  ‘No I can’t.’ Catherine was forlorn. ‘I’m ganin’ to hoy it all away.’

  Lily watched as she tore up the notebook she had been writing in for months.

  ‘Kitty,’ Lily said firmly, ‘forget about writin’. You’re not ganin’ to sulk in here for the rest of your life. On Saturday we’ll tak off on wor bicycles - gan to the coast or some’at. Tak a picnic - the weather’s still warm enough. What do you say?’

  Catherine suddenly yearned for sea air. She flung her arms around the kind girl. ‘Thanks, Lily. Life wouldn’t be worth living without you as me friend.’

  That autumn, the two of them went on several bike rides into the countryside and Catherine returned feeling the pleasant tiredness of a day’s vigorous exercise and fresh air. She learnt to laugh again at trivial things, to share jokes and forget about life at Harton.

  Occasionally, when it was too wet to go out, she would visit Kate and old John, sit by the fire toasting stale bread on the fire iron. Davie was away most of that year at sea and Kate missed him. Catherine listened to her mother and grandfather snapping and snarling at each other and wondered how they had managed to live under the same roof for so long.

  Conversation with her mother was still strained; neither able to forgive the other for the hurt inflicted the previous year. Catherine had not seen Gerald since. He had disappeared from the congregation, perhaps moved away; she was too embarrassed to ask.

  Sometimes, a forgetful John would ask, ‘Are you courtin’, lass?’

  ‘No, Grandda.’

  ‘Brought me any baccy?’

&
nbsp; ‘I gave it you when I came in,’ Catherine said.

  ‘You’re smoking it, you daft old man,’ Kate reminded him.

  John scowled and pulled on his pipe for a few minutes, then asked again, ‘Well, lass, are you courtin’ yet?’

  ‘No I’m not!’ Catherine said impatiently.

  ‘ ‘Cos if you are, I want to see the bugger.’

  Catherine rolled her eyes. ‘Grandda, I’m not courtin’. I can’t be bothered with lads. So stop askin’.’

  John grunted and sank into his own thoughts behind a veil of smoke.

  ‘He’s ganin’ backwards in his mind,’ Kate said as Catherine made to leave. ‘Doesn’t remember what day it is half the time. But he perks up when you come in the house, Kitty. He lives for you, hinny.’

  Catherine sighed. She found these visits depressing, but the guilt she felt if she skipped them was the more overwhelming. It was this same sense of duty that drove her regularly to church and confession. At least there she was no longer troubled by Gerald’s presence. She went to pray for Kate and John, an insurance against them being sent to Hell, and she prayed for herself and the soul of her father, finding comfort in the familiar words and the echoing building. But her heart was sore to think she would never meet her father, or be rescued and swept off to another life, assuming Davie’s story had been true.

  Perhaps life would never be any better than this, Catherine pondered on her knees, rosary in hand. And what did she have to complain about? She earned a fair wage and her family had a home, when increasingly trade in the town was grinding to a halt and the iron mills had ceased production. She knew by the way the wards were filling up at the workhouse that the numbers of destitute were on the increase.

  Yet the docks still rang with ships unloading, and the town bustled with shoppers and Arab seamen just as before. She had a good friend in Lily, and could live without a man. Maybe she would dedicate her life to God, become a nun. At tranquil times of prayer, watching the sun stream through the stained-glass windows and throw coloured light on to the pews, she contemplated such a future.

  Then Frank bowled into her life. It was springtime and the position of head laundress had just become vacant. Catherine had put in for it, hopeful that the scandal of eighteen months ago was now well behind her. She was feeling light-hearted and singing snatches of’ Red Sails in the Sunset’, when a tenor voice in the storeroom startled her by joining in.