Millie struggled to free herself of her mother’s grip, but the older woman was the more resolute. ‘Stay where you are, do you hear? I’ll not let you throw away your life on a waster like that. He doesn’t deserve your pity.’
‘But he’s me dad!’ Millie tried to plead through her sobs. ‘We can’t just leave him . . .’
‘Get back in the house,’ Teresa ordered, shoving her up the steps with surprising strength. ‘If you disobey me now, I’ll tan your hide!’
It was Effie who stepped forward to help Ellis to his feet again. He swayed unsteadily. ‘Don’t hurt the lass,’ he cried. ‘I’ll go, I’ll go. Just don’t hurt her!’ Then he turned without a further look or word of goodbye, wove across the yard into the blackness and was gone.
They all stared after him, surprised by the sudden capitulation, Effie speechless at the scene she had just witnessed. After a few moments, Millie slipped her mother’s hold and ran down the steps and across the yard. A blustery squall hit her face with needles of rain and the smell of horse manure from the adjacent stables.
‘Dad? Dad!’ she shouted after him in vain. There was no sign of him in the unlit back lane and she knew he would not turn back even if he heard her. He had shown a flicker of his old pride in the way he had gone. And even as she stood calling after him, she knew she did not want to have to choose between her parents. Her mother had made the choice for her, and even as she hated her for what she had done, Millie knew that staying at Moody’s hotel was their only chance of security. Yet still she screamed his name into the dark: ‘Dad, Dad.’
Effie appeared at her side and put an arm about her in comfort.
‘Come back in, lass,’ she encouraged. ‘He’s gone now.’
Millie crumpled against her and wept, not needing to explain anything to this kind woman. As they walked back into the kitchen, Effie and Teresa glared at each other with hostility.
‘Don’t look at me like that! I’m doing this for Millie,’ Teresa said defensively. ‘That man would have had us in the workhouse. We were evicted for him being on strike. You’re a pitman’s wife, you know what that means. The only difference between you and me is that your man’s still in work; so don’t think you’re any better than me.’
Effie gave her a disdainful look, and her reply was quiet but contemptuous. ‘I don’t blame you for trying to protect the lass. The difference between us is that I wouldn’t give my favours to Joseph the way that you have. What sort of example is that for Millie?’
Millie thought her mother would strike the other woman. She trembled as she answered. ‘I’ll do whatever is necessary for us to stay together!’ She advanced on Effie with her finger jabbing the air in fury. ‘You’re a mother with plenty of sons. Well, I lost me only son in the war. He meant the world to me, that lad,’ she blazed. ‘But I’m not going to lose me only daughter an’ all. So if you go telling Joseph about this, it’ll be Millie who suffers most. Me, I don’t care any more what anyone does or says to me. But I’ll go to the ends of the earth before I see Millie suffer further!’
Millie had never heard her mother speak so openly about their tragedy, or so frankly about her family. She loosened herself from Effie’s protective hold and rushed to fling her arms around her mother. Teresa hugged her back, the way she had done so easily when Millie was a small child, and Millie saw rare tears in her mother’s eyes.
At that moment Moody came barging into the kitchen, red-faced and jovial.
‘Where have you all got to? They want you to play one more time, Teresa.’
It was the first time Millie had heard him speak to her mother in such a familiar way. Then he frowned, glancing at the gaping back door. ‘What’s been going on?’
Millie held her breath to see what Effie would do. She sensed how much she disliked Teresa; if she wanted to get rid of her, now was her chance.
Effie closed the outer door. ‘Just some tramp being a nuisance,’ she answered carefully. ‘Teresa helped me get rid of him. Millie’s just a bit upset by it.’
Millie saw a look flit between the women, the beginnings of a wary truce.
‘Well done.’ Moody beamed at Teresa in admiration. ‘Millie, you have a sit by the fire for a minute, then you can clear the tables. Come on, Teresa, got to keep everyone happy.’
Teresa went at once. Left alone with Effie, Millie felt suddenly awkward. She was shaken by the terrible scene with her father and thought Effie must now feel contempt for her. She had lied as much as her mother about their circumstances. What must the woman think of them both? But Effie steered her to the chair by the range.
‘Sit yourself down, you look terrible. I’ll warm you up some cocoa.’ Millie’s resolve to be brave melted at the kind words, and she felt the tears flooding down her cheeks. Effie laid a hand of comfort on her shoulder. ‘I’ll not say a word about the visit from your – from that man,’ she promised. ‘Not for your mother’s sake, but for yours, Millie. You’re a good lass and I’ll not see you turned out. You’ve been through enough already by all accounts.’
Millie smiled through her tears in gratitude. It frightened her that there was now no going back to Craston and their old life. But she knew that however precarious their security in Ashborough, she had a good friend in the quiet Effie Nixon. The thought helped ease the hurt inside her a fraction.
Effie spoke softly. ‘Your mother’s wrong if she thinks I don’t understand what it’s like to lose a son. My Mungo was lost at sea.’
Millie whispered, ‘I didn’t think she ever thought of Graham. She’s hardly mentioned him to anyone since he died. I thought I was the only one who missed me brother.’
Effie laid a gentle hand on Millie’s head. ‘She probably thinks of him every day. No matter how many children you have, it’s not something you get over. Not ever.’
Millie heard the bleakness in the woman’s voice and wondered if she had ever said that to anyone else. For a moment she felt special, as if a secret bond had been forged between them. Taking the warm drink that Effie offered, she put her cold hands around it and thought guiltily about her father, lost in the autumn night. She wished that he had been able to hear her mother’s outburst to Effie, then maybe he would have understood a little better why they had deserted him. Now he might never know, and Millie doubted she would ever see him again.
Chapter Three
1923
‘Coal wagon’s coming!’ a neighbour bellowed into Effie’s kitchen.
‘I’ll go,’ Millie said, rushing at once to the back door and across the yard. She thought that Effie looked more tired than usual, labouring over the ironing. Dashing into the back lane, she began to unpeg the flapping washing before the dirty wagon delivering the coal reached them. It gave her a brief, painful reminder of Craston, where her mother and neighbours had often defied the delivery men.
‘You’ll just have to wait till the washing’s dry,’ her mother used to shout. ‘Come any nearer and I’ll wrap it round you and tie you up!’ There would be ribald laughter from the other women, and the men would retreat, shaking fists and grumbling in defeat.
But that seemed in another lifetime, Millie thought, as she slipped around on the mud and leaves, gathering armfuls of men’s shirts. She found it difficult to recall the names of some of their old neighbours, let alone their faces. It was three long years since they had sought refuge in Ashborough, and since she had last seen her father. After that night when he had come looking for them at the hotel, he had never returned. Once she had bumped into her Aunt Hannah in an ironmonger’s, but her aunt had cut her dead, barging past her as if she did not exist. In agitation, Millie had rushed after her in the street and demanded to know how her father was.
Hannah had turned on her with her frostiest look and almost spat out the words. ‘How would I know? He left Craston the year that woman deserted him. I don’t know where he went. Heartbroken he was. If he’s dead it’ll be her fault. We all know the bad company your mother keeps – half the village knows. Living with th
at publican!’
‘It’s not like that.’ Millie had tried to defend her mother, wounded by her aunt’s harsh words.
‘Well, don’t think of coming back, because you’re not welcome,’ Hannah had interrupted. ‘You’ve a sinner for a mother and you look more like her than ever. You’ll bring no more shame on my family!’ With that, she had stalked off, leaving Millie speechless with anger and humiliation.
So she had never gone back to Craston. She had even lost touch with Ella, her one link with her old life. She had written to the London address where she thought Ella was working, but her lively friend had either moved on or decided not to reply, for her letters were never answered.
But Millie had made the best of her new life in Ashborough. Under her mother’s influence the hotel was prospering since the rowdy public bar had been turned into a tearoom. Many respectable societies used it for their functions, and it had become a popular lodging place for travelling salesmen. They had taken on another girl, Elsie, to help with general chores, but Millie still found herself doing twice as much as Ava. She and Elsie were up at five-thirty lighting fires and boiling up water to take to the guests, laying tables and cooking breakfast. Teresa would appear next to chat to the residents, and Ava would emerge last, yawning and uncommunicative until after she had drunk three cups of tea. An insomniac, Moody might appear at any time or pass them on the stairs, going to bed as they were about to start the day.
Teresa had persuaded him not only to close down the bar, but also to stop drinking. He would go for weeks without drink and the atmosphere would be light-hearted and industrious. But then some black mood would take hold of him and he would disappear on a drinking binge around the town or lock himself in his room with a crate of whisky. During such bouts, Teresa would warn the girls to stay away from him, and she too ignored his presence until he emerged haggard and contrite. Millie distrusted him, still haunted by the episode in the attic when she had been a frightened and insecure fourteen-year-old. She avoided being alone with him and could not understand Teresa’s friendship with such a man. While she was thankful that her mother coped with Moody and his moroseness, she could not help feeling disgust that she had left her father for someone so slovenly and ill-educated.
Millie and Ava had established a volatile, sisterly relationship that suited them both at times. They were rivals, quick to argue and fall out, but also company for each other, and would occasionally enjoy going out together to the cinema or socials at Ashborough Presbyterian Church, which Effie attended. This summer Millie had been allowed to go with Ava to the carnival at the Miners’ Hall, chaperoned by the Nixons, but there was little opportunity to dance. Ava had monopolised the compliant and bashful Walter Nixon, who was good at dancing, while Millie sat and watched. Burly Grant Nixon appeared to hate dancing, preferring to argue politics and football with his father, Mungo, over pints of beer until the music stopped.
Millie found Grant odd. He was ill-at-ease in company and she never saw him speak to other women. She could only get him to talk in the confines of his own home, and even then he would never look at her directly. She was forever tidying up his piles of books that cluttered up Effie’s kitchen; huge tomes on history and politics, lightened by the occasional earnest novel. Millie sometimes thought he would have got on well with her father, and allowed herself to imagine them together: two stubborn, bookish men who liked nothing better than to argue and debate into the night beside a glowing fire, sharing a pipe of tobacco.
Both Millie and Ava were a little envious of Elsie, who had been to the new Egyptian Ballroom on Fern Street. She was allowed to go with her older sister, Mary, who was housemaid to a coal merchant.
‘It’s got a proper sprung floor,’ Elsie had told them excitedly, ‘and it’s not just old waltzes – there’re new dances too. And they’ve got one of them American soda machines in the buffet!’
The more Millie heard about it the more she yearned to go. She badgered her mother to allow her to join the dance class there, but Teresa told her she would have to save up and pay for the lessons herself. Ava, on the other hand, had wangled the money out of her father during one of his brighter moods and was already learning the delights of the foxtrot and the tango, which she and Elsie demonstrated in the kitchen to howls of laughter.
‘But Uncle Joseph doesn’t give me enough money,’ Millie had protested to her mother.
‘Then you’ll have to find a job that does,’ Teresa had replied. ‘But you’ll still be expected to cook the breakfasts and the evening meals for the guests, do you hear?’
So that was why Millie spent her Mondays over at the Nixons’. Effie had agreed to pay her a little for helping out on wash days and for running to the shops on errands. The amounts she could afford were not enough to cover the lessons, so Millie also worked at the Palace cinema on Wednesdays and Saturdays, selling sweets, fruit and peanuts. The Palace had once seen better times as a concert hall for visiting music-hall acts and travelling players, but was now known locally as the ‘fleapit’. Still, Millie bore the ribald comments from the young pitmen she served, and laughed off Ava’s spiteful teasing at her lowly jobs, determined that by Christmas she would have enough money to pay for dancing lessons.
Thinking about entering the mysterious world of the Egyptian Ballroom cheered her now, with the wind biting into her reddened fingers and numbing them as she fumbled with the clothes pegs outside Effie’s back door. Soon she would dance all the dances there were to learn, and maybe one day she might become a dance teacher herself and work amid the grand surroundings of the Egyptian Ballroom.
Effie, glancing out of the steamy kitchen window, saw Millie wave and smile at the coal wagon as it trundled to their back gate and let go a cascade of glistening coal. She probably knew the driver from the Palace, or maybe from the hotel. It amazed her how quickly the girl had adapted to her strange new life in Ashborough, and how little she seemed to resent the drudgery. Effie still shuddered at the memory of the fight outside the Station Hotel with Millie’s father. She would never approve of Teresa’s desertion of her husband, but she silently admired the woman for her determination to make a new life for herself and Millie. And she had to admit that Teresa had succeeded in curbing Cousin Joseph’s excesses and brooding temper where she had failed for years.
Since discovering the secret of the Mercers’ past, Effie had felt a special bond with young Millie, and she had tried to protect the girl from her mother’s demands and the relentless hotel chores that were her daily lot. It was she who had persuaded Teresa to allow her to take Millie and Ava to the church whist drives and suppers, thinking how they deserved a bit of fun once in a while. Effie had half hoped that her son Walter might form an attachment to Millie, for he was kind and a bit of a dreamer and she thought they might make each other happy one day. But perhaps Ava sensed this too, for she made it her business to monopolise him. Ava, a troubled girl, alternately spoilt and neglected, Effie thought, brought nothing but discord.
Effie sighed and felt suddenly very tired. She heard Millie humming as she re-entered the kitchen, her arms full of washing. How much stronger she looked now, Effie thought. Her skinny body had filled out nicely in the past three years, and her dark hair shone in soft curls around her high forehead, framing her slim face and lively blue eyes. She doesn’t realise how pretty she is these days, Effie mused. Millie still walked with quick, restless steps like a child, and blushed shyly when whistled at by the coalman.
‘Sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ Millie insisted, plonking the half-dry washing on the one kitchen chair that was not piled with books or newspapers. ‘You look done in. I can come back tomorrow and finish the ironing.’
‘You don’t have to,’ Effie protested half-heartedly, but sank gladly onto her worn fireside chair. ‘I just seem to be short of breath these days. Must be the change in the weather.’
‘Aye.’ Millie nodded, glancing at her in concern. ‘Mustn’t let the cold get on your chest like last winter. Ha
ve you been rubbing that grease on like I told you? And you mustn’t sit in a draught; you should move your chair to the other side of the fire.’ She went and closed the kitchen door as she spoke.
Effie smiled, enjoying being made a fuss of by the girl.
‘I should have had a daughter like you,’ she wheezed. ‘I get no sympathy from all my men. Wouldn’t even notice if I ran stark naked down the back lane, let alone if I rub goose grease on my chest!’
‘If you were waving a copy of the football pink they might,’ Millie joked. The two women laughed out loud.
‘Oh, Millie, you do me good,’ Effie said, then her laughter turned to coughing. Millie rushed over and slapped her back, and Effie retched and spat phlegm into the fire. Dashing to the pantry, Millie returned with a cup of water from the metal jug.
‘Sip it slowly,’ she encouraged, and rubbed the woman’s back in comfort. It alarmed Millie when Effie had these bouts of coughing. Though the older woman insisted they were not frequent and were nothing to fuss about, she looked quite drained once the coughing died down.
Millie glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Grant and Walter would be home from the pit soon, expecting a hot meal and hot water for a bath in front of the fire. Later, Mr Nixon would be meandering back from the club also wanting food and a few hours in bed before going on night shift.
‘You go and lie down and I’ll get the tea on,’ Millie said. ‘I’ll make a thick gravy for the end of the brisket and boil up some potatoes.’
‘But you’ll be needed at the hotel . . .’ Effie answered weakly.
THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory Page 48
