A HANDFUL OF STARS An enthralling story of poverty, passion and survival: one of the Tyneside Sagas

by Trotter, Janet MacLeod

  Patience came over and sat beside her. Sarah, exhausted from crying, had abruptly fallen asleep sucking on her grandmother’s little finger. Patience laid the baby on the bed and turned to Clara. ‘All new mothers feel like this at times,’ she said gently, stroking Clara’s hair.

  Clara looked up. ‘Were you like this with me?’

  Patience stared off into the distance. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I took a little while to get used to you. But once I did — I loved you more than anything in the whole wide world — even Harry.’

  Clara leaned up and threw her arms about her mother’s neck. ‘Help me, Mam,’ she sobbed, ‘help me to love Sarah.’

  Patience kissed her wet cheek and disengaged her hold. ‘Are things all right between you and Vinnie?’ she asked.

  Clara glanced away and shrugged. ‘Canny enough,’ she answered.

  She wanted to ask her mother if it was normal for a husband and wife not to make love for weeks after giving birth. In fact, she and Vinnie had not had sexual relations since his spring visit to Germany. Although Clara was constantly tired, she longed for intimacy with Vinnie. She wanted things to be as good between them as they had been before she fell pregnant. Yet Vinnie still treated her as if she were recovering from some illness and could not be touched.

  ‘Things will get back to normal soon enough,’ Patience assured her, as if she guessed her daughter’s fears.

  A strange noise from behind made them both turn round together. Sarah was coughing, her eyes staring ahead. Suddenly her body went rigid and she began to jerk.

  ‘What’s wrong with her, Mam?’ Clara cried, seizing her daughter. Sarah’s face went red, and her eyes rolled upwards. She shook violently in Clara’s hands, choking and spluttering. ‘Mam, do something!’ Clara screamed.

  Patience snatched the baby from Clara and dashed for the door. She ran downstairs shouting for help, Clara following in a frenzy of panic. It took a few moments for Patience’s urgent shouting to be noticed over the merry chatter and laughter of the party. Vinnie came rushing over, demanding to know what was wrong.

  ‘She’s having a fit,’ Patience gasped. ‘Get her to hospital!’

  Vinnie commandeered Clarkie to drive them and the two women sat in the back, Patience clutching Sarah, who was still having convulsions in her arms. Vinnie sat in the front barking directions at Clarkie and shouting at him to speed up.

  Halfway there, Sarah went limp. Clara screamed, ‘Vinnie! I think she’s stopped breathing!’

  When they pulled up outside the hospital, someone at the party had had the presence of mind to ring ahead and a nurse was awaiting their arrival. Patience ran, holding the baby out. ‘Help us! I don’t think she’s—’

  The nurse grabbed Sarah and hurried inside. They ran after her, but she disappeared down the corridor and through swing doors. Another nurse ushered them into a small waiting room. Clara went to Vinnie and they hugged in distress.

  ‘If she dies, I’ll never forgive myself,’ Clara sobbed.

  Vinnie gripped her tightly to him. ‘She’s not going to die! She’s a Craven; she won’t give up that easy.’

  They sat numbly in the waiting room, the minutes dragging.

  ‘It’s taking too long,’ Clara fretted. ‘Why won’t they tell us what’s happening?’

  Vinnie paced in and out, trying to get information from passing staff.

  ‘Doctor will come and speak to you as soon as he can,’ one said sympathetically.

  Patience smoked a cigarette. Clara sat shaking, feeling sick with shock.

  Finally, a doctor came and found them. His smile made Clara’s heart leap.

  ‘Is she alive?’ Vinnie demanded.

  The doctor nodded. ‘She had stopped breathing — you did well to come so quickly. Another few minutes. . .’

  Vinnie let out a groan of relief. Clara held his hand tightly. ‘Can we see her now?’

  The doctor gave them a direct look. ‘Before you do, I need to ask a few questions.’

  Clara’s heart lurched. Patience’s face mirrored her anxiety.

  ‘What?’ Vinnie asked impatiently. ‘We want to take her home.’

  ‘Your daughter was born prematurely?’ They nodded in agreement. ‘How has she been since you’ve had her at home?’

  Vinnie said at once, ‘She’s been like any new bairn — sleeps, eats and cries.’

  Clara swallowed. ‘No, she hasn’t,’ she contradicted. ‘She doesn’t eat properly.’

  ‘Does she respond to your voice? Your movements?’ the doctor asked.

  Clara hesitated. It had not struck her before, but she saw now that Sarah seemed to show no particular signs of recognition when she came near. She shook her head. Vinnie withdrew his hand.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he cried. ‘You’re her mam — of course she knows you.’

  ‘It makes no difference who picks her up,’ Clara told the doctor. ‘She doesn’t seem to respond any differently.’

  The doctor persisted. ‘And you had a difficult birth?’

  ‘Yes,’ Clara whispered, avoiding Vinnie’s look. ‘They told me I had very high blood pressure.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘I’m afraid it’s had an effect on your baby.’

  Vinnie said angrily, ‘What are you saying? What sort of effect?’

  ‘We think your baby suffered brain damage at birth,’ he answered with a pitying look. ‘The seizure is a symptom. It may happen again.’

  ‘Brain damage?’ Clara whispered in distress.

  Vinnie looked appalled. ‘You calling my bairn mentally retarded?’

  Clara flinched at the disgust in his voice.

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ the doctor answered. ‘But she may not develop like a normal child.’

  Vinnie stood up and stabbed the air savagely with his finger. ‘My lass isn’t backward — she’s as normal as they come. What the hell do you know?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Craven—’

  ‘Come on, Clara,’ Vinnie ordered, striding to the door. ‘We’re taking our lass home now.’

  Clara hurried after him, still in shock, with Patience following.

  Chapter 29

  Vinnie refused to believe the doctor’s diagnosis and forbade Clara or Patience to mention a word of it to Dolly or anyone else. But Sarah took further fits and had to be hospitalised twice more. The nursing staff showed Clara what to do at the onset of a seizure to ensure the baby did not swallow her tongue. By the autumn Clara was worn down with worry and exhaustion from the constant vigilance. Vinnie, who was out long hours, did not understand how jaded she felt. He expected her to resume her former role of supporting him at social events and had begun lovemaking again. To Clara’s concern, she had lost the appetite for either. As Vinnie’s passion rekindled, hers was petering out.

  At her mother’s insistence, she attempted to regain some social life and took Sarah with her to visit Patience, Willa and Mabel. But she knew that rumours about her daughter’s problems had spread among their friends and they never fussed over Sarah the way they would over a healthy baby.

  Clara saw the way they looked warily at her daughter and never volunteered to pick her up for a cuddle. Sarah lay passively in her carrycot, dribbling and staring ahead, unresponsive to the sounds about her, or else started a high-pitched screaming that only Clara could pacify. When Clara picked her up, her head lolled as if it were too heavy for her skinny body. She showed no signs of sitting up on her own.

  Her friends began to make excuses that they were busy when she rang to invite them over for lunch. She took Sarah to a meeting of the Women’s Section, but the baby did not settle and screamed until she was puce-faced.

  Cissie made it quite plain that this was unacceptable. ‘Better to leave the baby at home with Ella next time,’ she told Clara firmly. ‘We really can’t have such interruptions and we’re not a crèche.’

  But Clara was too anxious to let Sarah out of her sight. She gave up going to the women’s meetings instead.

  ‘I
t’s not as if they do anything,’ she confided in Patience. ‘They bicker about who should lay on tea for the men’s meetings. Not that the men even care — most of them think the women are just meddling in their business. Last week George Templeton had a blazing row with Cissie in front of everyone about whether our section should be allowed to speak at meetings. He said only unnatural women got mixed up in politics. Cissie nearly punched him. And Vinnie was fuming. It’s taken him months to get George back to meetings since the May rally. He still won’t let Willa join.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you’re best out of it,’ Patience commented, joggling Sarah in her lap.

  ‘So then Vinnie and Cissie had a spat,’ Clara went on, ‘and Cissie showed him up in front of the others. Said women were the backbone of the movement — our symbol of purity — and he’d better start appreciating us or else.’

  ‘He wouldn’t like that,’ Patience snorted.

  ‘No,’ Clara said ruefully. ‘I got the backlash, of course. Vinnie said he didn’t want me going to the Women’s Section meetings if all they were going to do was cause trouble in the local branch. And to be honest, I don’t have the energy.’

  ‘You’ve enough to cope with at the minute,’ Patience said. She lifted Sarah up and kissed her, pulling silly faces. ‘Isn’t that right?’ she said to the baby. ‘Mammy’s got her hands full with you. Look, she’s smiling, Clara. That was definitely a smile.’

  Clara went quickly to look, but to her Sarah looked the same as always. She felt a flood of warmth towards her mother. She was the only one who treated her daughter with love. Dolly always made excuses not to be left minding her.

  ‘It’s so long since I handled a bairn,’ she would say. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do if she had one of her turns.’

  Even Vinnie shrank from picking her up these days. Clara had never seen him so short-tempered as after the public row with Cissie. He fretted that the local party was fragmenting into rival cliques. The most recent meetings had not been well attended and he blamed this directly on the well-organised and vocal anti-fascists who disrupted them at every opportunity. In Byfell they were led by the Lewises.

  ‘Those damn friends of yours,’ Vinnie fumed, after a meeting at Craven Hall had been broken up by the police because of fighting outside. ‘They need teaching a lesson.’

  ‘I’m not friends with them anymore,’ Clara protested. ‘Quite the opposite. It’s Benny Lewis caused all that trouble in May. We know he was one of the ringleaders. If it hadn’t got so nasty I would never have been stuck in that place and Sarah would never have been—’ She broke off, tears flooding her throat at the terrifying memory.

  It would haunt her for ever, that terrible day. She tortured herself daily with the question, what if. . . ? It was easier to shift the blame on to the men of violence like Benny, who had forced her to take refuge for her life in Clayton Street, than to dwell on her own responsibility for Sarah’s traumatic birth. Yet deep down, she was plagued with guilt about it and knew that it ate at Vinnie’s heart too.

  Every day she prayed that by some miracle Sarah would develop normally and prove the doctors wrong.

  Vinnie gave her a long, considering look, but said nothing more. A week later, he told her he was taking the Bell-Carrs out to dinner after a boxing match at Craven Hall, as a peace offering to Cissie.

  ‘I want you to be there,’ Vinnie said, ‘and looking your best.’

  Clara felt tired just thinking of the effort it would take. ‘But what about Sarah?’

  ‘Mam can hold the fort,’ he answered. ‘Or ask Ella to stay and watch her.’

  ‘Ella’s got her own family and she doesn’t like staying late.’ Clara made excuses. ‘I can’t leave Sarah for that long. Could we not invite them here for dinner?’

  ‘No.’ Vinnie turned on her in exasperation. ‘Why can’t you think of anyone else but the bairn? I need you too, Clara! You should be at my side supporting me. Is that too much to ask?’

  Clara was taken aback. ‘One minute you’re telling me that being a mother to Sarah is the most important thing in the world — now you’re saying I have to be a social butterfly. Which is it, Vinnie?’

  ‘Both,’ he snapped. ‘Cissie pulls it off, so you can too.’

  Clara was stung. ‘Cissie has a household of servants,’ she retorted, ‘and her son’s at boarding school.’

  Just then, Sarah began to wail in the adjoining room. Clara stalked out to see to her. As she was pacifying the baby, rocking her on her shoulder, which Sarah seemed to like best, Vinnie came to the nursery door. They eyed each other frostily.

  ‘This is really important to me,’ he said, his voice quietly determined. ‘We need Alastair’s backing if the party is to survive locally. He has the right connections — the influence we need. He’s a credible figurehead.’

  Clara regarded him. ‘Seems to me it’s Cissie’s feathers you’ve ruffled, not the brigadier’s.’

  ‘That’s why I need you there to help me,’ Vinnie replied. ‘We can’t afford to get on the wrong side of Cissie.’ He gave a sudden disarming smile. ‘And she’s always had a soft spot for you.’

  ‘She’s hardly spoken to me since Sarah was born.’ Clara was unconvinced. ‘Still in a huff over the May rally.’

  Vinnie shook his head. ‘Cissie admires you cos you speak your mind — and you don’t lick the boots of your social betters. She hates snobbery more than anything. That’s why we can both win her round. Please, Clara, do this for me.’

  Clara’s resistance crumbled at his appeal. He was right: she was in danger of becoming a recluse at The Cedars, totally absorbed in Sarah’s needs. She had to regain a life beyond the nursery.

  ‘I’ll ask Mam to come and stop over,’ she suggested.

  The dinner was such a success that it ended with Cissie’s inviting them for a weekend to Hoxton Hall. Vinnie was cock-a-hoop. But as the time approached, Clara began to fret about Sarah. The baby sensed when she was in strange surroundings and became distressed easily. She would be a real handful at draughty, musty-smelling Hoxton Hall. Then Vinnie came back from work and told her that they would not be taking Sarah.

  ‘I’ve asked Patience to have her for the weekend,’ he announced. ‘She’s more than happy.’

  Clara was aghast at leaving her daughter for so long. ‘But what if something happens to her?’

  ‘It won’t.’ Vinnie was adamant. ‘She hasn’t had a fit in two months — and your mam’s a natural with bairns. Look at the way you and Jimmy turned out.’ He grabbed her round the waist and kissed her with more enthusiasm than he had done in months. ‘Just think of it,’ he said, grinning, ‘a whole weekend away with no worries —just the two of us.’

  ‘And the Bell-Carrs and all their other house guests,’ Clara said dryly. But despite her fear of leaving Sarah, she felt a flare of excitement. They had not been to Hoxton Hall since before her pregnancy and it would be a chance for her to relax, even to reignite her lost passion for her husband.

  The weekend was bitterly cold and a mist hung over the treetops and shrouded the moors around the Hall, so shooting and riding were called off. They ventured out on a short walk, and then hurried back for afternoon tea. Cissie organised her guests into parlour games in the drawing room beside a blazing log fire. At six o’clock they retired upstairs to bathe and get ready for dinner.

  ‘It’s going well, don’t you think?’ Vinnie said eagerly, half undressed. ‘We’re back in favour. And this must be one of the main bedrooms, with a coal fire.’

  Clara was wrapped in a faded silk dressing gown provided for guests, ready for a bath. She was trying to imagine what would be happening at her mother’s house. Was Sarah feeding all right without her? Had Patience tried some mashed carrots as she had suggested? What if she was having one of her screaming fits and the neighbours complained?

  ‘Come here, Mrs Craven,’ Vinnie said, spinning her round and pulling her towards him. ‘What you looking so glum about?’

  ‘I was just th
inking—’ She stopped herself. ‘Nothing.’

  Vinnie kissed her hard on the mouth. ‘Good. Just think about the two of us,’ he murmured, covering her face and neck with kisses. He untied the sash of her dressing gown and slipped it off her shoulders. He looked her over in the firelight, running his hands over her breasts and belly.

  ‘You’re too thin,’ he said. ‘You should start eating more.’

  Clara felt exposed and tried to shrug back into the dressing gown. Vinnie stopped her.

  ‘I still want you, lass,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll always want you.’ He pulled her down on to the hearth rug and began kissing her urgently. Clara glanced anxiously towards the door.

  ‘What if someone comes in?’

  ‘What if they do?’ Vinnie laughed. ‘We’re man and wife — we’ve every right.’

  He swiftly discarded the rest of his clothes and straddled her. He loomed above, muscular and roused.

  ‘Not so quickly,’ Clara whispered, pressing her hands to his torso.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Vinnie hissed, kissing her impatiently and grasping her hair.

  Moments later he was entering her. Clara gasped in pain as he writhed on top, shuddering with pleasure. Then it was over and he was drawing back.

  ‘Oh, lass, that was grand,’ he groaned, rolling off. He lay regaining his breath, a hand resting possessively on her thigh.

  Clara said nothing, shocked by the speed at which he had relieved his arousal. She could feel a burn mark on her lower back from where he had pinned her to the rug. She was sore inside. She felt indignant. There had been none of the gentle, erotic foreplay on which Vinnie prided himself and which used to make her desire him to distraction. But this was quite the opposite. It was almost as if he were angry with her for something.

  The next minute, he was standing up. ‘Haway, go and have your bath,’ he ordered. ‘We mustn’t be late for dinner.’

  Clara scrambled up, pulled on the dressing gown and hurried from the bedroom. In the steamy, chilly bathroom she sat hunched in the bath and scrubbed herself vigorously. The savage lovemaking left her feeling unclean; she wanted to wash it away. By the time she returned to the bedroom, she had convinced herself that there was nothing malicious in Vinnie’s action. He was exuberant about the weekend, over-excited, and it had made him too hasty in their intercourse.