Bridie pulled a frightening face. ‘I want to see what sort of monster produced such a kind and pretty daughter,’ she teased.
Catherine laughed and threw a cushion. ‘I suppose if it was just for a week . . .’
So in November money for a return ticket was sent, and Catherine relented and suggested a fortnight’s holiday. She half expected to hear nothing more, believing her mother would spend the money on Davie and drink. But a letter came the following week with Kate’s travel plans and arrival time.
Anxiety kept Catherine awake for days beforehand, and she found herself tired and short-tempered with those around her. Only Bridie understood why. Mrs Townsend was eager to meet her mother and insisted they must all come for Sunday lunch.
‘Why did you have to tell her Kate was coming?’ Catherine accused her friend.
‘Because if she found out afterwards, you’d never hear an end to the woman’s questions,’ Bridie declared. ‘Stop fretting, girl.’
By the time Kate arrived on the Saturday, Catherine was sick with nerves and unable to keep her breakfast down. She felt like a small girl again, brimming with unspoken anxieties. Bridie marched her down to the station, encouraging and bullying her every step.
‘Ever thought of joining the army?’ Catherine joked morosely. ‘You’d be the perfect sergeant.’
‘Quiet in the ranks,’ Bridie laughed.
Catherine stood shaking at the barrier, imagining Kate staggering off the London train inebriated and shabbily dressed. Or maybe she would not have managed the train changes and been picked up by the police instead.
‘Is that her?’ Bridie asked. ‘The woman in the cloche hat and the purple coat?’
Catherine squinted up the platform. ‘Where?’
‘You need glasses, girl. The one that’s waving at you.’ Bridie waved back. ‘Doesn’t look like a three-headed monster to me.’
For a moment, Catherine saw a neatly dressed middle-aged stranger, with a close-fitting hat, chatting to the porter who was taking her bag. Then she noticed Kate’s familiar ambling gait as she walked towards them.
‘She’s got a limp,’ Catherine told Bridie quickly. ‘It doesn’t mean she’s drunk.’
Bridie said nothing, just gave Catherine’s arm a squeeze of encouragement. She felt a surge of courage.
Kate came bustling through the barrier. This is my daughter, Kitty,’ she told the porter proudly. ‘She’s a manager, you know.’ Kate threw her arms around Catherine in a hug of excitement.
Catherine stiffened. Her mother was just showing off in front of the man.
‘This is Bridie,’ Catherine said, quickly pulling away.
For an instant, the two older women sized each other up, then Bridie held out a hand.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs McDermott,’ Bridie smiled charmingly. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this.’
‘Aye, me an’ all,’ Kate said, shaking her hand.
Catherine noticed she was wearing gloves. Kate must have borrowed them from Mary. There was no smell of alcohol; she was making a real effort. Catherine felt a sudden wave of relief that the visit might go well. Kate slipped an arm through Bridie’s as if they were old friends and began to chatter about the journey. Only Catherine seemed to notice the porter standing waiting for a tip.
‘Kate - your bag,’ she interrupted her mother.
Kate turned in a fluster. ‘Eeh, hinny, can you give the lad a penny? He’s been that helpful.’
Catherine produced a sixpence from her purse, paid the man and took the bag. She followed the other two, who were deep in conversation again, half relieved that they seemed instantly to like each other, half annoyed at being left to carry Kate’s cheap portmanteau.
They took the bus up the hill to Clifton Road and Catherine felt a rush of pride as Kate stood open-mouthed in admiration at her flat.
‘It’s that grand,’ her mother said in awe, as she moved about the main room, touching the furniture and feeling the curtains. When she turned, she had tears in her eyes. ‘I’m proud of you, lass.’
‘Didn’t I say your ma would love it?’ Bridie beamed, and rushed about making tea and fussing around them both. ‘Catherine has such good taste.’
‘Oh, Catherine is it?’ Kate teased. ‘What happened to my Kitty?’
‘Grew up and turned into a beautiful swan,’ Bridie joked.
After the evening meal, they sat by the fire and told stories, Kate gossiping about Jarrow neighbours and Bridie about Ireland.
‘So you’ve a daughter an’ all?’ Kate looked surprised.
‘A daughter and a man gone missing,’ Bridie said ruefully, ‘just like you.’
Kate flushed. ‘Kitty has let her tongue go.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Bridie reassured her with a quick hand on her arm, ‘I’d not tell a soul. I think you’re brave as a lion, keeping your daughter with no man to stand by you. I know how cruel people can be. You’re a woman after my own heart.’
Kate smiled in gratitude. ‘It can’t be easy for you, being separated from your Maisie.’
Bridie nodded. ‘What I wouldn’t give to have her here with me.’
The two women fell into a sympathetic silence.
Catherine rose, uncomfortable at their easy confiding. ‘I think we should get some sleep.’
Bridie was up at once. ‘Kate, you must share the bed with Catherine. I’ll sleep on the couch.’
It was years since Catherine had bedded down with her mother in the feather bed at home. Anxiety gripped, as Kate flopped down beside her. It was ridiculous that she should still feel this way; she was a grown woman, not a child frightened of the night. Yet she wondered if the old nightmares might return, and the ingrained fear of drunken adults.
She had strange half-memories of being woken in the night by rustling and the suppressed cries of Grandma Rose pleading in the next room for John to leave her alone. At other times a dark shadow hovered over them and Kate hissed at someone to leave her be. Not Grandda John this time. Could it be Uncle Jack or a long-forgotten lodger? Catherine fought to overcome such disturbing thoughts. She lay tensed in the dark.
Gradually, she was calmed by the firelight flickering on the ceiling and the sound of a sea wind in the chimney. She grew drowsy listening to Kate’s even breathing, the scent of lily of the valley and the warmth of her mother’s body strangely comforting.
‘Catherine, are you awake?’ Bridie whispered.
‘Yes,’ Catherine murmured.
‘It’s going to be all right - your mother being here. I know it will.’
Catherine smiled sleepily. ‘Umm, hope so.’
Within minutes she was asleep.
The next day they went to Mass at St Mary Star-of-the-Sea in the old town, followed by lunch at the Townsends’. There was one anxious moment when the master offered Kate a sherry, but her mother declined. She shot Catherine a triumphant look as she did so. Conversation rattled around the table and Mrs Townsend was so taken with Kate that she insisted on her paying a visit to the workhouse.
‘You’ll want to see what a fine job Catherine is making of the laundry.’
‘Aye, I would.’ Kate looked delighted. ‘I brought her up to be hardworking.’
‘And what a good job you did of it.’ Mrs Townsend was full of praise.
So the next day, Kate was shown around the institution. Catherine was taut with nerves about the visit, praying that her mother did nothing embarrassing or offended any of the staff with her plain speaking. But she need not have worried. Kate appeared on her best behaviour, making everyone laugh and delighting them with breathless compliments.
‘It’s so much better run than the one back home!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘More like a holiday camp, if you ask me. Bet you have them queuing round the block to get in.’
‘We don’t make it that easy for them,’ Mrs Townsend protested.
‘No, I was just pulling your leg,’ Kate said hastily. ‘Firm but fair, that’s what you are.’
Kate revelled in her new surroundings and was perfectly happy to find her way around town while Catherine and Bridie went to work. Catherine fretted all day that her mother would succumb to old habits and spend the wintry afternoons in a public house. But when they returned home, Kate always had the tea ready and was perfectly sober. The weekend came again and they took her on the bus to Brighton, bought her a new outfit and ate fish and chips near the pier.
Her mother was starry-eyed at the grandeur of the place and the wealth of goods in the shops.
‘No one dodging the tick-man round here,’ she laughed.
At the end of the fortnight, when her mother was due to go, Catherine felt unexpectedly sad. There had been no sign of the difficult, demanding Kate of old. Her mother had made a special effort to fit in and cause no upset. Most of all, she had got on well with Bridie and the evenings had been full of jokes and laughter. It would be so quiet again once she was gone. Catherine felt depressed at the thought of what her mother would be going back to: a dismal fireside with a morose Davie, if her casual comments were to be believed.
Bridie said, ‘Why don’t you stay another day or two?’
Kate shook her head. ‘Davie wouldn’t like it - think I’d run off with another man.’ She laughed at Catherine’s shocked expression. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
‘Things are all right between you and Davie, aren’t they?’ Catherine asked.
Kate pulled a face, then laughed. ‘Course they are. It’s just the thought of ganin’ home after such a canny time with you and Bridie.’
‘You can come again any time,’ Bridie said spontaneously, ‘can’t she, Catherine?’
Catherine felt irritated at Bridie’s rash offer, but the look of expectation on her mother’s face made her weaken.
‘Course you can,’ Catherine promised.
It made it easier saying goodbye to Kate at the station, for she felt guilty at sending her back to a bleak Jarrow and long days of idleness.
‘Come in the summer when the days are longer and I can take my holidays,’ Catherine suggested.
Kate hugged her tearfully. ‘I’ve had such a canny time. Take care of yoursel’, hinny.’
Catherine waved her away, confused by the mix of emotions the disappearing Kate evoked. Relief that it was over without incident, and tears from the rare gesture of her mother’s arms pressed around her, for no one’s benefit but her own.
Chapter 30
1932
When Kate came back in the summer, which was the next time Catherine saw her, having spent Christmas and Easter in Hastings, she stayed for over a month. Davie had finally found employment, working on a cargo ship plying the Baltic.
‘There’s nowt for me to go back to,’ Kate kept repeating, ‘just an empty house.’
Bridie went to Ireland to see Maisie. Catherine would have liked to have gone with her, but she had Kate to look after. Instead, she took a fortnight’s holiday and they went for picnics and trips along the coast. Kate was not one for walking for the sake of it: she preferred to sit on the beach, observing and making comments about other people.
‘Everyone here has a motor car,’ she said in wonder. ‘Look at them all! Where can they all be going?’
Catherine laughed. ‘The same as those who don’t have cars - work, home, on holiday.’
‘Do you know what?’ Kate said, gazing out over a calm azure sea. ‘This is me first summer holiday ever.’ She turned to look at her daughter. ‘And I’m having the best time of me life, Kitty.’
So when Catherine went back to work, she found it impossible to send her mother home.
‘I can get everything shipshape for you - have the dinner on when you come home,’ Kate bargained.
‘I get dinner at the laundry, remember.’
‘Well, the tea then,’ Kate said with a pleading look. ‘You’re that tired when you get in from work. I can look after this place for you. Let me be some use to you, hinny.’
Bridie came back, subdued and resentful at having to leave Maisie again, and was an instant ally of Kate’s.
‘Let her stay as long as she wants,’ Bridie said on a trip to the tennis club. ‘She’s not a bad cook and she keeps the place spotless.’
Catherine was uncertain. ‘But without us around, she’ll have too much time on her hands. There’ll be nothing to stop her waltzing off to the pub.’
‘Has she tried anything since I’ve been away?’
‘No,’ Catherine had to admit, ‘but. . .’
‘But, you’re just looking for problems where there aren’t any,’ Bridie cried. ‘You’re such a little worry-head. She’s desperate to please you; I think you’re being too hard on her.’
Catherine was stung. ‘I can see how she’s got round you. She can be sweetness and light when she wants to, but it won’t last.’
Bridie gave her a hooded look. ‘I’d give anything to be with my daughter - and Kate’s the same. Give her a week or two and see how it goes.’
For the rest of August, Kate played housekeeper, walking to the shops and buying food, which she had ready cooked when they got in from work. Never once did Catherine smell whisky on her breath and she felt guilty at having begrudged her mother the extended holiday.
It was a postcard from Davie that forced the issue of Kate’s return. He was back on Tyneside for a fortnight and wanting her home.
‘Don’t know why he can’t manage on his own,’ Kate complained. ‘I’ll no sooner be back and he’ll be off to sea again, leaving me all on me own.’
Catherine knew her mother wanted to stay, but she had had enough of sharing the flat. It felt cramped with the couch having to be used as a bed, Kate’s sewing cluttering up the table, extra washing strung over the fireplace on wet days. Kate had rearranged the furniture and was forever telling Catherine how things could be done better, ignoring her pleas not to oversalt the food or buy from passing hawkers. She longed for the tranquillity of evenings reading by the fire, just her and Bridie, without Kate’s constant chatter and interference. Bridie had been strangely distant with her since returning from Ireland and she wanted to recapture their old friendship.
‘You can’t stay here for ever,’ Catherine pointed out. ‘You have to go home sometime.’
They were sitting either side of the fireplace, while Bridie wrote a letter to Maisie at the table. Catherine wished her friend would say something to support her, but she kept quiet.
Kate gave her a mournful look. ‘But I feel more at home here than I do back in Jarrow.’
‘That’s ‘cos you’ve been on holiday,’ Catherine protested. ‘It’s not a picnic all year round. Besides, Davie’s your husband and Jarrow’s where you live.’
Kate began twisting her hands in her lap. The veins stood out like ropes. Old work-roughened hands. She said, ‘I don’t want to gan back. I hate living on me own - I’ve never lived on me own. Once Davie’s back at sea, I’m frightened of what I might do.’ She gave Catherine a beseeching look. ‘You know what I’m like when there’s no one there to keep the reins on.’
Catherine gulped. ‘There’s Aunt Mary and Uncle Alec - and all your friends. You wouldn’t be on your own. Not like here, where you don’t know people.’
‘I want to stay,’ Kate blurted out. ‘Please let me stay!’
Catherine felt panic rise. She stood up and poked the fire, keeping her back to Kate so she could not see the desperation in her mother’s eyes. She could not live with her again. Already they were irritating each other, Kate’s little jibes getting under her skin, making her feel like an angry child again. Yet, if she sent her back home and Kate started drinking, then i
t would be all her fault. That’s what Kate meant. It was an impossible choice.
‘Look at this place,’ Catherine said in agitation. ‘It’s just not big enough for the three of us. There isn’t room . . .’
Suddenly, Bridie spoke up. ‘We could rent a bigger flat.’
‘What?’ Catherine spun round to stare at her friend.
‘You’re on a good salary, Catherine, you could afford it.’
Why was Bridie encouraging Kate’s fantasy? Could she not see that her mother would ruin everything for them? Anger choked her. She loved her flat and did not want to move.
‘B-but what about Davie?’ Catherine fumbled for an excuse.
‘What sort of husband is he?’ Bridie snorted. ‘Away for months on end or moping around like a lost ghost when he’s home. That’s no way to live for someone as full of life as Kate. He doesn’t deserve her.’
Catherine gawped at them both. When had Kate been confiding all this in Bridie?
‘But you love Davie, don’t you?’ she demanded.
Kate sighed. ‘He’s canny enough - but these past couple of years haven’t been a bundle of laughs, I can tell you. Sometimes, he’s that drawn into his shell, he never speaks from the minute he gets up till the minute he gans to bed. I end up talking to the walls.’
‘But he’s still your husband,’ Catherine said desperately.
Bridie said fiercely, ‘Would you force your ma to go back to a loveless marriage just for appearance’s sake? I know all about unhappy marriage and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’ She challenged Catherine with her sharp blue eyes. ‘Jarrow has nothing for Kate - you said yourself it’s quiet as the grave. How can you send her back to scrimping and the means test?’
Catherine felt tears of frustration well in her eyes. She was not to blame for Jarrow’s plight or Kate’s stale marriage. She never wanted her mother to marry Davie in the first place! So why was she feeling so guilty? She could not bear Bridie looking at her with such contempt as if she hated her. Unexpectedly, she burst into tears.
Bridie rushed over at once. ‘Oh, poor girl, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ She hugged her tight. ‘Here, let me dry your eyes.’
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