Jarrow Trilogy 02 - A Child of Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Ow! Get off us.’ Mary shook off her hold. They stared at each other as the enormity of what Kate had done sunk in.

  ‘You and him,’ she said, almost in awe. ‘You really went with him?’

  Kate flushed a deeper crimson. She knew she could not lie. ‘Please don’t tell Taylor - or I’ll be out on me ear.’

  ‘Taylor?’ Mary said in surprise. ‘I wasn’t thinking of him.’

  Kate’s pulse began to hammer, she felt hot and cold all at once. ‘What you mean?’

  ‘I was thinking what Father would do to you if he ever found out.’

  Chapter 25

  Kate felt strangely detached from the world in the weeks that followed Alexander’s departure. She went about her work mechanically, with only half a thought for what she did. Her mind dwelled too long on her absent lover. Whenever she stopped for water from the tap in the yard, her gaze would lift to the far tree-lined hills of Ravensworth. She would think of the lake and the boathouse and sigh with longing.

  The trees were copper-coloured now, the fields harvested and the days chill, but she clung to the memory of late summer and her one night of love with the man who held her heart. She was desolate without him, dreaming of him at night and sick with yearning for him during the day.

  She put up with ribald comments from some of the drinkers.

  ‘Lady Kate’s not looking well the day!’

  ‘Missing her knight in shining armour, aren’t you, pet?’

  ‘Don’t expect her to speak to the likes of ye! She likes them with fancy walking sticks and plums in their throats.’

  Kate ignored them, but Mary grew anxious.

  ‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ she scolded, alarmed by her sister’s pale preoccupied look. ‘You hardly touch your food.’

  ‘I’ve no appetite for eating,’ Kate replied.

  ‘You’ve got to keep your strength up,’ Mary said. ‘Taylor’s startin’ to complain about you shirkin’ the chores. Says you’re too off-hand with the customers an’ all. They’re laughing at you.’

  Kate sighed. ‘I can’t be bothered. Why should I sing for them, any road? I’m too tired.’

  ‘That’s ‘cos you’re not eatin’ proper,’ Mary said impatiently. ‘Forget about your fancy man - he’s gone. And if you ask my opinion, that’s the last you’ll see of him.’

  Kate was stung. ‘Well, I’m not askin’! He loves me and he says he’s corning back - before Christmas most likely.’

  Mary’s look was incredulous. ‘Don’t be daft! He’ll never marry the likes of you. Not in a month o’ Sundays. Can’t you see that?’ Mary looked at her with a mixture of pity and scorn. ‘You gave him what he wanted. He’s not ganin’ to turn his back on a rich marriage for a barmaid, is he?’

  Kate flinched at her brutal candidness.

  ‘You don’t know him like I do!’ she cried.

  ‘I know his type,’ Mary said with disdain. ‘Nothing but a lady’s man.’

  Kate turned her back, refusing to speak any more. But for a long time after, she pondered on what Mary had said. She wanted to dismiss their argument as jealousy on her sister’s part. Alexander had chosen her, not Mary. Mary resented the thought that Kate might better herself and, with Alexander, escape a life of low-paid work.

  Yet deep inside she harboured unspoken fears that Mary was right. Alexander was charming and impetuous, with no thought for the morrow. He had no real plan of how they might be together. She had given in to his flattery and soft caresses too easily. She would not be so hasty another time.

  As October waned, Kate determined to shake herself out of her lethargy. She would stop pining for him and get on with her job, put a stop to the half-whispered comments. And when Alexander returned at Christmas time, she would prove the gossips wrong.

  November came, but there was no word from Alexander. Even in the dark hours of the night when her doubts about him surfaced, she had clung to the belief he would get a message to her. Just a word that he was well, that he still loved her and intended to return, was all she craved.

  The last of the autumn leaves were ripped from the trees in a gale, and on clear, frosty days she could see the drab grey battlements of the castle jutting through the web of black branches. They seemed to mock her, aloof and unattainable, like her absent lover.

  Kate, who was never ill, caught a fever. She lay in the icy attic bed, shivering and hot with a streaming cold that made her head pound. At times she felt so nauseous, she retched rank-smelling sputum into a china basin Mary had left for her. She could not keep down the thin soup her sister brought; only dry biscuits quelled the retching and sickness.

  After three days, Mary said, ‘Taylor’s talking of gettin’ out the doctor.’

  Kate closed her eyes in fatigue. She had never felt so wretched. ‘Thinks I’m skiving, does he?’ she groaned.

  ‘No,’ said Mary shortly. ‘Doesn’t want us all coming down with fever, that’s all. He’ll take it off your wages, mind.’

  Kate felt too ill to care. ‘If he wants.’

  The following day, a stout, bewhiskered doctor came wheezing into the room behind Mary, out of breath from the steep climb to the attic. He plonked down his leather bag and sat on the bed regaining his breath, wrinkling his nose at the smell of sick in the low room. Mary hovered by the door.

  ‘Let’s take a look at you, young lady,’ he ordered. He placed a cold hand on her forehead and took her pulse. He stuck a glass tube under her tongue.

  ‘Well, your temperature’s normal,’ he declared.

  Kate felt light-headed as he bombarded her with questions. He kept looking at the basin and then back at her. Finally, he coughed and said he needed to examine her stomach. He prodded her vigorously as if kneading dough.

  ‘Any pain?’ Kate shook her head. ‘Any tenderness in the breasts?’

  She blushed and stammered, ‘N-no. Well, maybes a bit.’

  His look made her uncomfortable. He pulled the covers back over her and stood up.

  ‘It seems plain to me.’ He glared down at her as if her ailments were her fault. ‘I take it you’re not married?’

  Kate looked at him, baffled. ‘N-no.’

  ‘Well, you sharp better be,’ he grunted. ‘You’re with child. Two - three months gone, I’d say.’

  Kate gasped as a wave of nausea engulfed her. She lurched to the side of the bed and vomited into the basin. With child? Impossible! She retched again. Her head throbbed. Of course not impossible! She heard the doctor’s footsteps retreat, but was too ashamed to look up.

  Mary stopped him. ‘Please, sir, you don’t have to tell Mr Taylor, do you?’

  He snorted. ‘He’ll soon see for himself, girl.’ Then he left.

  Kate sat up, shaking from shock. Mary stood staring at her. Kate’s face crumpled like a small girl’s as she held out her arms. Mary rushed to her and put her arms around in comfort.

  ‘Oh, Mary!’ Kate sobbed. ‘What am I ganin’ to do?’

  Mary patted her back but for once was lost for words.

  They clung to each other in the chill gloomy room, each afraid to speak. She was carrying Alexander’s child. She was fallen, disgraced, outcast. Unless he came back to save her. But she had no idea where he was or whether he ever intended to return. His father would never allow them to marry now! She was shameful, a fornicator! Kate could hear the venomous words on John McMullen’s tongue already.

  Oh, dear God! What if her stepfather were to find out? Then she had a sudden image of her mother’s face smiling in expectation. Make me proud.

  Kate let out a moan of terror. ‘What’ll Mam say?’ she whispered.

  Mary squeezed her tighter in panic. ‘Maybes the doctor’s got it wrong,’ she tried to reassure. ‘You might not be expectin’ at all.’

  But the truth of it hit Kate with a cold clammy crawling of her skin.

  ‘I am,’ she said numbly. ‘I’ve had no bleedin’ since August. Isn’t it supposed to stop when you’re ...?’

  Mary d
rew back in alarm. ‘Oh, our Kate, you’ve done it now!’

  ***

  Fearful, the sisters tried to keep the news from Taylor, but within a couple of weeks rumours filtered back to the inn. A drinker from Kibblesworth had heard from a neighbour who’d heard it from a friend who’d bumped into someone from Lamesley who’d been told by the housemaid at the doctor’s. ‘You know that lass behind the bar who was courting the posh gentleman with the astrakhan coat and the silver walking cane ...’

  It was early December when Taylor confronted Kate about it. By then her bodice was tight across her breasts and the buttons at the waist of her skirt would not do up. She had tried to laugh off the smutty remarks, but her fair face was too quick to colour and her red-rimmed eyes betrayed her frequent tearfulness.

  ‘Aye, it’s true,’ she whispered in reply to the landlord’s curt question.

  ‘Oh, lass!’ he cried in disappointment. ‘I never would’ve expected this of you. How could you be so daft?’

  Kate hung her head in humiliation. ‘He’ll come back—’

  ‘Don’t talk so stupid!’ He grew angry. ‘The best you can do is gan home and face the music - hope your mam’ll take pity on you.’

  ‘Home?’ Kate gasped. ‘Please, Mr Taylor, don’t send me away.’

  ‘You cannot stop here, lass, not in your condition. You’ve been a canny worker, but you’re no use to me with a bairn on the way. Bad for business. I work hard to give this place a good reputation - somewhere decent for the business classes as well as ordinary folk. Not a rough bar for women of easy virtue.’

  Kate went crimson. One night of weakness and her reputation was in shreds.

  ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered. ‘Please let me stay on till Christmas. Me stepfather - he’ll kill us!’ Kate began to weep and shake in fear.

  Taylor relented. ‘Another couple of weeks then. But you swap duties with Mary and keep out of the way. I’ll not have you the laughing stock of my pub.’

  Kate’s one hope was that Alexander would return in December as promised and save her from this living hell. But the days dragged by, the frost killing off the last of the briars and turning the water to ice in the pails. She thought of her mother making ready for their return on Boxing Day and her courage failed. How happy and carefree she had been this time last year, how exciting the future.

  Now she carried her dread at the future around with her like a stone in the pit of her stomach. Alexander had forgotten her, or decided not to bother with her further. Mary had been right all along. He had taken what he wanted and now he had no more need. No doubt he would be horrified to discover her pregnant. Perhaps he would deny it was his. He had lain with her only once, after all. Kate despaired. She had to admit she did not really know Alexander at all. She had built him into a romantic hero like a character out of one of the novels Aunt Maggie read so avidly. He was a figment of her foolish imagination. And yet she loved him so much!

  In all her nights and days of torment, Kate hardly spared a thought for the child she carried in her womb. If she thought of it at all, it was with a sense of repulsion. It was an ever more visible sign of her plight and shame. She wished she could tear it out of her body with her own hands and be done with it! Then she shrank with guilt at such unchristian thoughts and believed herself evil.

  On the morning of their departure, Mary helped her pack up her few possessions. She had bought a few small gifts of soap and lavender water for her mother and Sarah, a penknife for Jack and a pouch of tobacco for John. Taylor gave them a lift in his cart to the station. Kate felt sick as they jostled in silence out of the gate and down the lane. She looked back at the inn and the small high window where Alexander had woken her from sleep with a fateful tap of a pebble. If only she had slept on and never got up to answer its call.

  She strained for one last look at the wooded hills and castle towers of Ravensworth, but a cold mist hid them from view. Even at this final hour she half expected, half hoped to see Alexander riding out of the gloom to meet her. But the road leading to the estate was deserted. Mary had agreed to tell Aunt Lizzie on her return, for Kate did not have the courage to face her aunt and uncle or say goodbye to her boisterous cousin Alfred. She could not bear the thought of his puzzled look and questions at her going.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ Taylor said with an awkward nod, and left them standing on the platform.

  ‘Ta, Mr Taylor.’ Kate smiled bravely. ‘Ta for everything you’ve done for me.’

  She looked deathly pale as she climbed on board the train, but she held herself erect and did not look back.

  Later, perhaps pricked by Kate’s quiet dignity and word of thanks, Taylor sat down and wrote a message to Davies. He told him of the girl’s departure and that she was with child. Perhaps it would spark some sympathy in the old man for the trouble his son had caused. Maybe it would prompt him to provide a bit of money to help Kate out in her need. Taylor wasn’t sure, but that was the reasoning behind his letter. He still felt guilty for intercepting Alexander’s letters and sending them to Davies, though he believed it was in Kate’s best interests to end the affair. His fear that it would end in disaster had been proved right. At least now, Davies would stop pestering him to spy on his wayward son.

  All the way back to Jarrow, Kate was in turmoil. How could she bring herself to tell her parents of what she had done? Perhaps she should get off at Gateshead and disappear. But where? She had no savings and no one would employ her now. The only possessions of any worth were her two brooches, one from Lady Ravensworth and one from Alexander. As the train picked up speed, she contemplated rushing to the door and throwing herself on to the tracks. Anything but face the wrath of John McMullen! She buried her face in her hands.

  Why had she ever believed the honeyed words of Pringle-Davies? What a fool she had been.

  As they approached the hazy outline of Tyneside and its mass of smoking chimneys, Kate’s dread increased. At Gateshead, they boarded the train for South Shields and the familiar landmarks rushed to encircle them - the spire of St Bede’s in Jarrow where they had gone as girls, the forest of cranes and chimney stacks and tenements piled up on the river bank, the sludge-grey water of Jarrow Slake where timber bobbed on the tide.

  She felt this old half-forgotten world close around her, hemming her in. The throb of the train was like the pounding of her heart. They surged through the cutting below the cottages of Cleveland Place, leaving the last patches of countryside, and down into the blackened clutter of buildings that was Tyne Dock.

  Chapter 26

  Only twice had Kate been home since her family had moved to the dingy flat in Learn Lane. It stank of the docks and shook each time a goods train thundered down to the staithes. As the sisters alighted on the smoky platform of Tyne Dock station, panic gripped Kate’s chest and squeezed the air in her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

  ‘I c-cannot...’ Kate gasped, frozen to the station platform. At the barrier she could see Jack and Sarah waiting to greet them. ‘... cannot... move ...’ She clutched Mary’s arm, feeling faint.

  ‘Haway,’ Mary chivvied, ‘there’s nowt you can do about it now.’

  ‘They’ll kill me,’ Kate whispered.

  ‘No they won’t. I’ll not let ‘em,’ Mary said with spirit. ‘Your family’s all you’ve got now, our Kate, so don’t be so soft.’

  Somehow she made it through the barrier and was enveloped in a generous hug from her older sister.

  ‘By, you’ve put on a bit o’ beef! Feedin’ you well, I see.’

  Kate promptly burst into tears.

  ‘I didn’t mean owt by it,’ Sarah said in consternation.

  Jack, hovering a few feet away, stared in embarrassment at the commotion. Through her tears, Kate noticed how he had thickened out and grown another few inches. There was a shadow of hair on his upper lip that had not been there before and she felt suddenly shy of him.

  ‘You might as well tell her,’ Mary hissed.

  ‘Not here,’ Kate so
bbed, glancing around in fear at being recognised. ‘Not in front of the lad.’

  Mary threw Jack a dismissive look. ‘He’s ganin’ to hear about it soon enough.’

  ‘Hear what?’ Sarah demanded. She held Kate away and scrutinised her. But Kate turned in embarrassment and began to hurry away from the hubbub at the station entrance.

  Mary was about to explain, but Kate swung round. ‘Don’t you dare say a thing! Not till Mam’s been told.’ Her stormy look was enough to silence Mary’s gossip.

  From somewhere deep inside, Kate found a steely courage. She was Rose Fawcett’s daughter and she would not cringe in fear from facing her parents. Her mother had lived through worse than this and survived. She had made a terrible mistake and no doubt would be made to pay for it. But she would walk down these streets with her head held high and brazen it out.

  Kate’s courage lasted until she stepped through the door of the downstairs dwelling and saw her mother’s flushed expectant face. Behind, her anxious siblings shuffled through the door.

  ‘Haway in, hinnies!’ Rose wheezed. ‘Why all the long faces? Not been scrappin’ already, have you?’

  ‘No, Mam,’ Kate said, squeezing past the wooden settle and throwing her arms about her in a desperate hug.

  ‘Kate’s got some’at to tell you,’ Mary said at once. Kate glared, prompting her sister to protest, ‘Haway and get it over with!’

  ‘Where’s Father?’ Kate asked nervously.

  Rose nodded next door with disapproval. ‘In the Twenty-Seven.’ She pushed Kate away, alerted by her look. ‘What’s wrong? You been sacked?’

  Kate swallowed and nodded.

  ‘Oh, lass! What you gone and done?’

  Kate started to shake. ‘I -I cannot tell you ...’

  Rose looked over at the others, but Sarah shrugged in bewilderment and Jack stared at the floor. Only Mary, fierce-eyed, seemed fit to burst with the news.

  ‘Spit it out, lass,’ Rose said grimly, ‘before you choke on it.’

  Kate’s knees buckled. She sat down abruptly on the hard settle that dominated the cramped room. The one piece of furniture that had survived countless flits and trips to the pawnshop; bought with Father’s army bounty and his pride and joy. Father! Fear engulfed her.