A Child of Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘It’d be just like him to come back early and catch us out -then we’d never hear the end of it,’ Rose said with a bitter laugh.

  Kate thought it was far more likely that her stepfather would stay out until closing time, then wake them all up with his noisy singing and banging about as he staggered drunkenly into the furniture in their cramped kitchen. Sometimes a madness would grip him when in drink and he would order them up out of bed and make them stand to attention, shivering in their nightclothes while he swung the fire poker over their heads and roared orders as if they were his soldiers.

  It was best to humour him and play along with his deluded games, where he thought himself the famous General Roberts, marching them through the hell of an Afghan war. It was only in drink that John’s tongue was loosened about his experiences as a foot soldier in India and their gruelling battles with Frontier tribesmen. When sober he would say nothing, except to spit in the fire and curse the British Army for its ingratitude to Irishmen like himself.

  As a small girl, Kate remembered him coming to court her mother dressed in a smart army jacket. She had gazed up in awe at his stern, handsome face and felt a mix of fear and admiration. For a while she had been desperate to gain the approval and love of this tall, godlike soldier who had come to save her mother from servitude in the puddling mills and them all from the workhouse. But nothing Kate ever did seemed to please him and she had given up trying.

  ‘Haway,’ Kate sighed, seeing her mother’s mind was made up, ‘we’ll get a good view of the bonfire from up the hill, Mary.’

  ‘I’m not going!’ Mary said stubbornly.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ Rose snapped, her face lined with fatigue. She had been too long standing on her swollen legs and yearned for the peace and threadbare comfort of their old cottage. Increasingly she disliked large crowds and the company of anyone outside close family. For too long she had had to put on a tough front, fending off rentmen, bailiffs and indignant neighbours that John had offended. Now she was weary of the world and wanted nothing more than to hibernate in her dilapidated railway cottage above the scruffy overgrown embankment and tend her small garden.

  Kate, quick to avoid a row in public, turned to her aunt. ‘Why doesn’t our Mary stay over with you the night, Aunt Maggie?’

  Maggie nodded with a cautious look at her older sister. ‘That’s no bother.’

  ‘Jack can help us up the road,’ Kate added. Her half-brother was tossing a stone and catching it, hovering on the fringe of the dispute, keeping out of the way. But his pennies were long spent and the military bands gone, and he was restless to be off.

  ‘Please, Mam?’ Mary said, her look suddenly sweetly pleading. ‘I’ll be back in the morning to help with the Sunday dinner, I promise.’

  ‘Very well,’ Rose acquiesced, quickly losing the appetite for confrontation.

  With the argument averted, Rose struggled to her feet and held out an arm to Kate and Jack. Together they made the steep haul out of Jarrow town, the River Tyne and its forest of cranes and chimney stacks to their backs. Kate heard her mother’s breath come more easily the further away they travelled from the smoky, dusty air of the town and the closer once more to ripening fields and the hazy distant hills of County Durham.

  As they approached the straggle of cottages at Cleveland Place, their neighbour, Harry Burn, hailed them. He was sitting outside his cottage on a low stool enjoying a bowl of tobacco.

  ‘A grand day, Mrs McMullen!’

  ‘Aye, grand.’ Rose paused to catch her breath.

  ‘Win any prizes, Jack?’

  Jack looked bashful as he held up a stuffed bird in a glass jar.

  ‘You’ll not get much feeding off that,’ Harry teased.

  ‘He won it for our Mary,’ Kate smiled, ‘but she made him carry it home.’

  ‘And what are you doing back so early, young miss?’ he winked. ‘No canny lad to walk you home yet? By, the young ‘uns today are slow ganin’ about things, aren’t they, Mrs McMullen? We were wed and knee-deep in bairns at their age, weren’t we?’

  Rose looked flustered but Kate stifled a giggle.

  ‘Plenty time for all that,’ her mother snorted.

  ‘Lads of Jarrow must be daft in the head for not courting this young lass. If I was ten years younger—’

  ‘Ten!’ Ena Burn brayed from the cottage door. ‘More like fifty.’

  Harry chuckled and nodded his head in agreement with his wife.

  Ena beckoned them to the door. ‘Come and have a glass of me home-made lemonade. You look all done in. Never mind my Harry’s nonsense. Here’s a stool, sit yourself down.’

  To Kate’s surprise, her mother plonked herself down on the upturned half-barrel by the doorstep.

  ‘Just for a minute then,’ she sighed. ‘I’m partial to your lemonade. Jack, run in the house and fetch a bottle of me ginger wine. We’ll share that out an’ all.’

  They all knew Rose hid her small store of home-made wines and cordials in the wash house where John would never deign to go. They were hardly alcoholic but when John returned home drunk and thirsty for more he would drink anything fermenting in a bottle.

  As the neighbours sat on in the warm evening sunshine, Kate hovered on the edge of the conversation, half wanting to sit with them and half yearning to chase Jack around the soot-covered elms at the end of the lane where he had gone off to play. Her restlessness got the better of her. Picking up her skirts she ran off after her young half-brother, her petticoat flapping around her ankles.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on our Jack,’ she called over her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t let him climb too high!’ Rose shouted.

  Kate ran with a quick loping stride. Since birth her left foot had been turned in awkwardly, but she was light on her feet and still able to catch Jack over a short distance. She ran up behind him where he was throwing sticks into the high branches and grabbed him round the waist.

  ‘First to touch the lovers’ tree!’ she challenged, spinning him round and setting off before him.

  Jack recovered from his surprise, dropped his fistful of sticks and chased after his sister into the small copse above the railway line. They arrived at the old oak simultaneously, Jack knocking into Kate and pushing her to the ground, so she couldn’t touch the tree first.

  ‘I won!’ he cried. They both lay on the ground, panting and laughing.

  ‘Cheat!’ Kate gave him a playful shove.

  ‘You had a head start.’

  ‘You don’t have to wear long skirts.’

  ‘You’re just a lass.’

  Kate rolled over at the provocation and began to tickle him until he giggled out loud and begged her to stop. This was how she loved him, exuberant and wiry as a young pup, not the subdued loner who avoided company and scowled under dark brows at his family. She knew that his father frightened him and that he was growing tired of his mother’s protective fussing, but she at least could make him smile. To Kate he was still the small boy who used to pad around after her like a shadow. She could remember him as a tiny sickly baby whom they all feared would die, and recalled a time when John had rocked Jack in strong arms and sang Irish songs, when he had stayed up all night keeping him alive. Kate knew John had loved his son deeply in those days and wished Jack could remember that too. But since the bad times when they had been forced on to the streets to beg, Jack had seen enough of his father’s violent temper and felt the sting of his thick leather belt too many times to believe he was loved.

  Jack sprang up and began swinging from a gnarled branch. Kate stood and shook the soil from her skirt. She began to hum as her fingers traced the weathered carving on the tree: two sets of initials set in a heart. W. F. and R. M. Who had they been? Kate enjoyed musing about the mysterious lovers who had left their mark. She liked to think it had been her parents, Will
iam Fawcett and Rose McConnell, but her mother had been dismissive.

  ‘I never came here with your father - and don’t you dare mention such a thing in front of your da or we’ll all be swinging from that tree.’

  But Kate still liked to guess. ‘Winifred Foster loves Ralph Marshall.’

  ‘Wilfred Frankenstein loves Ruth Maggots,’ Jack mocked.

  ‘Walter Fisher loves Rachael Manners,’ Kate smiled.

  ‘Bet they weren’t even friends; bet they’re dead now.’ Jack jumped down, tiring of the game already.

  Kate gave him a shove. ‘Course they were friends -sweethearts,’ she declared. ‘Bet they married and lived happily for years and years.’

  ‘You’re just soppy!’ Jack said in disgust, kicking savagely at an exposed root. ‘I’m never getting married. I’m going to join the army or run away to sea.’

  ‘Not if Mam catches you first,’ Kate laughed.

  ‘I’ll do what I like when I’m older. I’ll climb up to the top of the mast just like this; watch!’ Jack swung himself up by a low branch into the tree and grabbed a higher one.

  ‘Mam says you’re not to go too high,’ Kate warned.

  ‘You’re just scared ‘cos you can’t do it,’ Jack called down. ‘Lasses don’t climb trees.’

  Without a thought, Kate unlaced her boots and kicked them off. She hitched up her overskirt and tucked it into her belt.

  ‘Watch me!’ She hauled herself up after him. But straddling the second branch she looked down and felt suddenly dizzy. Jack laughed from high up, still visible in the ailing half-bald tree.

  ‘Coward!’

  ‘Jack, I’m stuck, come and help us.’

  After a pause she saw her brother descend. He guided her down backwards.

  ‘Don’t look down, just feel with your feet.’

  Kate slipped gratefully to the ground. ‘You’ll make a canny sailor. Or chimney sweep!’ she added with a broad smile.

  ‘Race you back!’ he grinned, picking up her boots and running off with them.

  She screamed after him out of the thin trees and down the rutted lane. Kate was so intent on sidestepping the nettles and potholes that she did not see Jack stop abruptly as he reached the corner of the outhouse, or notice her mother’s frantic waving over the wall.

  Too late she looked up and almost collided with the tall gaunt figure standing, hands on hips, by the broken garden gate. With a gasp of shock, Kate stared into the angry bloodshot eyes of John McMullen.

  Chapter 2

  John grabbed Kate by the arm and yanked her in front of him. His grip was vicious but his eyes seemed glazed and unfocused as he looked her over.

  ‘Look at you! Running around like a gypsy in bare feet and all that leg showing. What you been doing in them woods, eh?’

  Kate braced herself for a slap on the face. ‘Nowt, Father, honest. I’ve been keeping an eye on our Jack.’ She looked for her brother but he had slipped past them. She could sense Rose standing tensely beyond them on the brick path.

  John swung round unsteadily, still keeping his hold on her. ‘Jack, where are you?’ he growled. But the boy did not answer.

  ‘I’ve sent him to fill the hod,’ Rose answered in a calming voice. ‘Kate’s been a grand help today. Came back early, we did. Sarah left early for Hebburn an’ all.’

  ‘Where’s Mary?’

  ‘Stoppin’ with Maggie -just for the night.’

  John grunted and turned back to Kate. He leant forward so that the stink of his stale whisky breath overwhelmed her. It was always worse when he’d been on the whisky. Beer made him loud and occasionally hearty; whisky inflamed him or made him maudlin. She tried to hide the distaste she felt.

  ‘You don’t look like you’ve been looking after Jack,’ he said, his voice strangely low and threatening. ‘Looks like you’ve been rolling around on the ground like a bitch on heat.’

  There was spittle on his wiry moustache and his slack colourless lips. Kate could not imagine how her mother could bear to kiss such a man. There was something odd about the way he was looking at her that set Kate’s heart thumping.

  ‘Come away inside, John,’ Rose beckoned softly. ‘Haway and sit by the fire. You look tired.’

  John turned, momentarily distracted by her reasoning tone. ‘Eh? I’ll come when I’m ready. What sort of mother are you, letting the lass run around like a dirty little—’

  ‘John!’ Rose stopped him quickly. ‘She’s been playing with Jack, that’s all. Let’s all gan inside and Kate can fetch you a bite to eat.’

  Kate knew her mother was desperate to avoid a scene in front of the neighbours. Rose came forward and put a hand on John’s arm. He threw it off, but released his grip on Kate, pushing her ahead of him.

  ‘Get yourself inside before I change me mind and skelp ye for being so shameless.’ Kate hurried into the cottage. Behind her John shouted at Harry Burn, ‘And what you staring at? Don’t you look at my missus like that or I’ll knock you into next week! That scarecrow wife of yours not enough for you, eh?’

  ‘John!’ Rose hissed. ‘Come inside.’ She almost dragged him in the house, mortified at the abuse he hurled at their affronted neighbour.

  The happiness of the day dissolved as John’s moodiness settled on the low-ceilinged kitchen. He went to sit in his chair by the fire, which Jack was stoking up with coal, and Kate hurried into the pantry where her mother was hacking into a loaf of bread.

  ‘Pull your skirt down!’ Rose hissed. ‘And tidy your hair. You’re too old to be messing around with our Jack. I knew we should’ve come straight home - should never have stopped for that drink with the Burns. Lucky I saw him staggering up the hill and left sharp. What you have to get in such a mess for?’

  She turned and looked Kate over. Her thick brown hair was dishevelled, snaking down her neck and sticking to her glistening pink cheeks. Her large blue eyes were troubled under dark curving eyebrows, like limpid pools reflecting her mood. How beautiful she had looked hopping down the lane with slim legs showing, her full lips parted in laughter. Kate had the curved body of a woman but with a girl’s quick unselfconscious movement and lack of inhibition.

  ‘Sorry, Mam.’ Kate gave an anxious smile. ‘It was just a bit carry-on. Let me take that in for Father.’

  Rose was about to hand her the plate of bread and cheese, then changed her mind.

  ‘No, I’ll do it. You stay in here and start peeling the potatoes for the morrow.’

  Kate was baffled, but a little relieved. She scraped back her hair and pinned it up again, then rolled up her sleeves and went out to fetch potatoes from the sack in the outhouse. By the time she returned with an armful of potatoes she could hear John’s voice raised once more.

  ‘Is it too much to expect to have me family at home waiting for me? And a holiday at that! But no, they’re all gallivantin’ round the town, gettin’ up to mischief!’

  ‘They’re not in the town,’ Rose pointed out. ‘And me and Kate and Jack are here.’

  ‘Where’s the lass?’

  ‘Fetching tatties.’

  ‘I want her in here. It’s a bloody holiday! We should be singing and dancing - aye, and drinking.’ Kate heard him aim his boot at Jack, for her brother gave out a yelp. ‘Gan and fetch me a jug of beer from the Twenty-Seven - tell ‘em I’ll pay for it the morrow.’

  Kate’s heart sank at the mention of that terrible pub. Its real name was the Alexandria, but it was known locally as the Twenty-Seven because it served as the next stop after the twenty-six staithes along the docks, nestling among a row of mean, soot-blackened houses in Learn Lane. In the bad times, she and Sarah had hung around its doors, begging the scraps from the bait tins of men still earning enough to drink there. They had been grateful for the blasts of warm air from inside and the crusts handed out to t
hem like dogs. Kate forced the fearful memories from her mind.

  ‘Kate!’ John bawled. ‘Stop hiding out the back and get yourself in here!’

  She hurriedly dropped the potatoes into the stone sink and brushed the soil from her bodice. She saw Jack give Rose a questioning look and her answering nod, then the boy ran thankfully from the room. Kate could tell by her mother’s set expression that she had gauged John’s mood to be too volatile for argument. It was better to go along with his wild notions than risk riling his temper further. The more he drank the sooner he would pass out and the sooner they could all go peacefully to bed.

  ‘Come here and sing with me, lass!’ he ordered her over. ‘Sit at me feet. And you, woman,’ he glared at his wife, ‘sit yourself down and cheer up your miserable face. You’d crack a mirror with that look.’ He laughed. ‘Haway, lass, and sing.’

  Kate slipped cautiously to her knees by the hearth, wary of his sudden joviality. It could change back in an instant to aggression. He began to sing of sweet Molly Malone and she joined in the chorus, her voice rising clear above his deep tobacco-husky tone. Rose picked up some mending and settled in the chair opposite, while the two singers went through John’s Irish repertoire. By the time Jack returned with a half-jug of beer Kate was on to the local songs she had picked up as a child and her music-hall favourites. John grumbled about the small amount of beer, but drank it straight from the jug while Kate carried on singing.

  She loved to sing and felt her high spirits return with each song. Jack edged close to her but sat in the shadows just beyond the ring of firelight.

  ‘Sing “Thora”!’ John demanded between slurps, shaking her shoulder roughly. It was a sentimental song about a lost child, but Kate loved its haunting melody and its picture of a land of snow and magical starry skies. She imagined it was somewhere up on the moors above Ravensworth where Aunt Lizzie lived, those blue shimmering hills she could glimpse in the distance on rare clear days from this home at Simonside. .One day she wanted to reach them and explore beyond the mysterious hazy horizon.