by Ruth Sutton
‘Now Lionel,’ said his wife. ‘These good people don’t want to hear about all that. They haven’t seen him, so we’ll leave them alone. So sorry to intrude so early, Agnes. Come along, Lionel. He’ll probably turn up sometime today with a perfectly reasonable explanation, and if we’re not at home we’ll miss him again.’
‘If you’re sure,’ said Agnes, ushering them out of the room. John heard the front door close and then the car doors, before the powerful engine sprang to life and they were gone.
John was standing quite still, looking at the frost on the garden when Agnes came back into the room.
‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait,’ she said. ‘It’s almost impossible to stop the vicar if he wants to speak. Not very good at taking turns,’ she laughed.
He turned towards her, ignoring her effort to lighten the mood. ‘Where is she?’ he asked. ‘I need to talk to her. Is she alright?’
Before Agnes could reply, the living room door was pushed open. Jessie limped slowly into the room, wearing the dressing-gown that Agnes had lent her. She caught sight of John and stopped short. They looked at each other. Jessie pulled her hair back from her face. John felt the flush on his neck. Agnes looked desperately from one to the other.
‘Here she is,’ she said. ‘Come and sit down, Jessie, take the weight off that ankle.’
John stood back, stumbling against the couch as he did so. Agnes fussed over Jessie, who still said nothing.
‘Now, John,’ said Agnes, leading him to a chair like a child. ‘You sit here and talk to Jessie while I get properly dressed like a Christian woman and then make us all some coffee. Put another log or two on the fire will you, dear? It feels quite cool in here all of a sudden.’
And she was gone. John chose one log, then another, with elaborate care, and put them on the fire. His mind was suddenly blank. Jessie watched him, but lowered her gaze as soon as he sat down.
‘Are you alright?’ he said, touching the side of his face where her bruise looked most livid. ‘And the ankle? Is it …?’
‘No, not broken. Just sprained. The doctor’s been, said I would be fine, apart from the ankle. I have to thank you and Agnes for finding me. I couldn’t move and it was very cold.’
‘Mrs Kitchin told us that you’d been there, so we knew …’
‘What did she say?’ Jessie looked up at him, her tone sharper than before.
‘Just that you’d walked back there with her and then set off to Newton. There was some other stuff but I couldn’t make sense of it. Nothing that mattered. She was bothered about her husband waking up.’
Jessie nodded. ‘Do you know Bill Kitchin?’ she asked.
‘I’ve heard a few things,’ said John, ‘some of them not very nice.’
Silence fell again, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the cawing of rooks in the bare trees outside. Jessie sat quite still. John took a deep breath. ‘There is something I want to ask you,’ he said. Jessie closed her eyes for a moment, before making herself look at him.
‘I need to tell you something first, though. It was something that happened in May, before I came here.’ He looked at Jessie: her expression gave nothing away. He would have to go on.
‘My mother … Enid Pharaoh, she was very ill. We were in our house in Ulverston. She mixed me up with someone, with her husband. She thought I was her husband and started talking to me as if …’ He dried, struggling to find the words, even though he’d rehearsed them the night before, lying in bed at Mill Cottage watching the gold crescent of the rising moon move slowly across his window.
Jessie waited, and John pressed on. ‘Well, never mind all that,’ he said. ‘What matters is, I found out I was adopted when I was just a few days old. My aunt, Enid’s sister, and my Uncle George, they encouraged me to search for my real mother. I went to Barrow, and then I found someone who knew.’
‘Who?’ said Jessie.
‘It was the choirmaster from St Luke’s. He lives in Grange now. I showed him this picture.’ John held the battered envelope in his hand, surprised how much his fingers were shaking. Jessie watched, unmoving, as he finally pulled out the photograph.
‘Look,’ he said, offering the photo to Jessie, who stretched to take it from him, then turned to find more light as she looked at it. After a moment she lowered her head and her hand, leaving the photo resting on her lap.
‘Mr Crane, the choirmaster, recognized the young woman in the picture who had got pregnant. He knew this woman’s mother, and her aunt …’
‘Barbara,’ said Jessie without looking up.
‘And he told me that her name was Jessie Thompson, and that she was at college.’
He stopped. Jessie turned away and covered her eyes with her hands. He saw her shoulders moving but she made no sound. After a few moments, she turned round, her eyes full of tears, and handed the picture back to him. Without a word she got up and hobbled painfully to the door. ‘Wait,’ she said to John, holding up her hand to stop him helping her as she opened the door and went out into the hall and up the stairs.
It was a few minutes by the clock but felt much longer before Jessie returned, carrying a small box in one hand while she used the other to steady herself. He got up, but again she waved him away. She sat down finally, put the box on the little table beside her and opened it.
‘I have a picture to show you,’ she said, and handed a small photo over to him. John found himself looking at someone almost identical to himself. He looked up.
‘His name was Clive Whelan,’ said Jessie quietly. ‘He was your father.’
‘And you are my mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’ said John, not knowing what else to say. He wanted her to talk, tell him things, anything.
‘We were going to be married,’ she said flatly. ‘But he was killed, just after … just before he knew that I was expecting a baby. No one knew. I had to tell my mother. She wanted … she and my Aunt Barbara sent me to a home.’
‘In Carnforth?’
‘Yes, in Carnforth.’
‘It’s not there any more. They pulled it down.’
‘Good. I never knew what they arranged, my mother and my aunt. All I knew was that someone came to take you. They carried you away.’
Jessie faltered. Her voice broke as a sob rose in her throat. Again she raised her hand to keep John at a distance. She swallowed.
‘I never knew where you were, or what had happened to you. I lied to get back into teachers’ college, then I moved up here, years ago. I had no idea, until that day –’
‘At the cottage, when you fainted?’
‘It was like Clive had come back. I couldn’t breathe.’
John looked again at the picture of his father.
‘Was he in the war?’
‘No, he was at Vickers,’ she said, looking past him out into the garden, ‘working on one of the airships when he fell, hit his head. No one knew about us. I read about it in the paper.’
Again she stopped and lowered her head. This time John leaned across to touch her hand, but she pulled it away.
‘When did you know?’ she said.
‘After I talked to Mr Crane I was sure, but I didn’t know what to do. I’d been ill, lost my job. I wanted to come straight down here, but I talked to Hannah and she said to wait a while.’
‘Hannah knows?’ Jessie looked up. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘What I’ve told you,’ he said, seeing the fear in her eyes. ‘I had to tell someone, there was no one else.’
‘Who else knows?’ she asked, dreading what he might say.
‘No one, I swear. They understand what this might mean, for you.’
‘What?’
‘About your job, at the school, what might happen if people knew.’
‘There would be no job, that’s what would happen,’ she said bitterly. ‘Lionel means well, but the church … So no one else knows?’
‘Just Hannah and Fred, and they understand, they do. If I
– if we ask them to keep it a secret to their graves, they will, I know they will.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Jessie leaned back in the big chair. John put a footstool at her feet and she raised her painful foot, lying back and closing her eyes. He looked at her. This was his mother. He’d been looking for her for months and here she was. It was not at all what he had expected. He’d imagined someone looking older, thinner. At the beginning, when he first started to search, he’d expected that she would cry when he announced himself, and say she was sorry and pull him towards her and hold him tightly. Talking to Hannah had helped to alter that expectation, but he was still unprepared for Jessie’s fear of him; it was fear that he had seen in her eyes. To her he was a threat, an avenger, a ghost. He spoke into the silence of the room.
‘Tell me about him, my father.’
Jessie opened her eyes and struggled to sit up.
‘He was a wonderful man,’ she said. ‘Tall, like you, with the same long face and dark hair. Long fingers,’ John held up his hands, and she smiled. ‘He was working on the airships because of his skill as a riveter. They wanted him to go down south. He had a great future. He asked me to go with him as his wife, and then … We were together for months but I lied so well to my mother that she never knew.’
‘It must have been a terrible shock for you,’ he said.
‘And for her, too, I suppose. It took me years to forgive what she did. I’m not sure that I have forgiven her, and she’s dead now, so it’s too late. But it was wartime, terrible things happened. I was lucky, managed to finish my training, get a job. I survived.’
‘And so did I,’ said John. ‘They did their best for me, but I always knew that something wasn’t right. I just wish they’d said, told me earlier.’
‘And now you know,’ she said. ‘What will you do?’
Before John could reply, the door opened a fraction and they heard Agnes’s voice.
‘Can I come in?’ she asked.
Jessie looked across at John, who nodded.
‘Yes, do. It’s your house, after all.’
Agnes was wearing one of her smartest outfits and Jessie smiled at her, recognizing the trouble she had gone to. ‘John and I have been talking,’ said Jessie. ‘Agnes, this is my son, mine and Clive’s, our son.’
John got up and Agnes reached to hold him close, while Jessie watched.
‘Oh my dears,’ said Agnes, wiping her eyes with a tiny handkerchief. ‘I’m so happy for you both.’ She bent to kiss Jessie, who patted her back but didn’t attempt to get up.
‘I’ve been hiding in the kitchen, waiting and wondering. And hoping too, I admit. Two such wonderful people, and now they’ve found each other.’ She smiled at them both.
John stood where he was, feeling numb. For weeks he had had concentrated on finding his mother and now that the goal was reached he was empty, drained. Jessie seemed distant, detached, and he didn’t know what else to say to her.
‘No more talking for a while,’ said Agnes. ‘It’s time to eat and I won’t accept any excuses. Come through to the dining room and we’ll have a good breakfast, late, but all the more welcome for that. John, can you help Jessie, please, if I lead the way?’
He bent to help her up out of the chair and she let him. They didn’t speak.
When they were settled at the table, Agnes brought through plates loaded with more food than they could ever hope to consume. They began to eat and Agnes hovered solicitously, desperate to hear what they had said to each other. In the more formal setting of the dining room, Jessie seemed to relax a little.
‘I heard the vicar earlier,’ she said. ‘Was Caroline with him? Just coming to check why we weren’t at church yesterday?’
‘Actually no, dear. They came to ask if we’d seen Andrew.’
Jessie dropped a knife that clattered onto the plate in front of her.
Agnes glanced at John before she went on, ‘They said he hadn’t come home for Christmas dinner and then he didn’t appear for the hunt either – most unlike him – and did we know where he is. I said no, and John hadn’t seen him for days. They weren’t too worried, more annoyed with him, I think.’
Jessie said no more, keeping her eyes down, and concentrated on her kippers.
A few moments later, when Agnes left the room to get more toast, Jessie pushed her plate away and touched her mouth with a large linen napkin. John looked up but she didn’t look at him.
‘I think I’ve had enough,’ she said, pushing herself upright. ‘I feel very tired all of a sudden. Will you excuse me?’ And as Agnes came back into the room, Jessie limped past her, without a word. Agnes and John listened, as she stumped slowly up the stairs.
‘What happened?’ said Agnes at last.
‘I don’t know,’ John replied. ‘We weren’t talking much, and then she said she’d had enough and she just left. She said she felt very tired.’
‘Well, of course, that will be true,’ said Agnes. ‘Both of you must be feeling the strain of it all. I do myself! Maybe we should just let her rest a while. Do you want to rest, dear? There’s that big couch that you slept on the other night. No more visitors today, I hope. No one to disturb you.’
‘Actually, I don’t feel tired,’ said John. ‘Confused, but not tired. Things aren’t working out the way I expected.’ He waited, buttering his toast idly as if thinking about something else, which he was.
‘I wasn’t sure what to say, or what would happen,’ John continued. ‘But I wasn’t expecting her to be afraid of me.’
‘Afraid?’ Agnes was shocked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No, of course I can’t be sure, but that’s how it feels. She’s been asking me who else knows about me, about us. I had to persuade her that Hannah and Fred wouldn’t tell anyone. We haven’t talked about what we’re going to do. I don’t know what she wants me to do.’
‘I wondered about that,’ said Agnes, ‘and about how you might be feeling. It must be very strange for you.’
‘I’ve been trying to find what I should do, Agnes. She thinks if everyone knows that I’m her son that she’ll lose her job.’
‘That could happen, I’m afraid,’ said Agnes. ‘Women teachers have lost their jobs recently just because they’re women. Some people think it should be the men who get first pick of the jobs when times are hard.’
‘But if we’re both living around here, won’t people see some likeness between us if they see us together? What do we do when folk ask questions, like they always do round here?’
‘That may be what’s bothering her,’ said Agnes.
John ate his toast in silence. ‘It’ll have to be me,’ he said finally, ‘the one that moves away. We can’t both stay here, not now.’
‘But you’ve just found each other,’ protested Agnes, as her vision of the happy family crumbled to nothing.
‘No, Agnes,’ he said. ‘I found Jessie, she didn’t find me. She didn’t want to find me, that’s what I think. She’s afraid that me being here will finish her.’
‘Oh John, that’s a terrible thing to say. She’s your mother.’
‘Aye, she is,’ said John, ‘but maybe she doesn’t want to be. She gave me away then, twenty years ago. She doesn’t want me now, either.’
He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. Agnes saw a single tear run down his face.
Upstairs in the narrow bed, Jessie shifted uncomfortably. The overwhelming tiredness she’d felt downstairs had abated. Now she listened to her heart thumping and wished that she could sleep. She’d known that this might happen some day, but it was still a shock. All these years she’d put her past behind her, lying to protect herself, staying in control. And now this boy, this ghost of Clive had tracked her down. All she saw in him was his father. She didn’t know him, had not seen him since he was a few days old, and although he was pleasant and polite she could find no strong feeling for him, no surge of maternal passion, just fear that his arrival could rob her of everything she had built for
herself. For a brief moment she wondered about him simply as a young man, not as her son, but it was too hard and she dismissed the thought. He wasn’t a child: she wasn’t responsible for him. Her life was going to change, that was unavoidable, but it was she who would decide when and how. No, she thought, she could not just wait for the axe to drop. She would hand in her notice, move north to the greater anonymity of Whitehaven, or Workington, or Carlisle even, and start afresh. She was still young, good at her job. Now that Andrew was gone she would never put herself at someone’s mercy, never again. Agnes was right: she must have been mad to take such a risk. She could trust no one but herself.
Jessie Whelan, strong, independent, and deeply lonely, turned her face to the wall and fell asleep.
Chapter 34
Whitehaven, January 1938
‘I’m going to leave Eskdale,’ said John, turning towards his mother. Behind him the gusting westerly scratched white lines on the grey and marbled sea. ‘There’s no job now to hold me. No quarry soon if the rumours are true, with Andrew gone the place is a mess. I’ve got some money, but I need to work. Plenty of pits and quarries up and down the coast.’ He hesitated, looking down at the Wellington pit chimney, unused but still rearing towards the racing clouds down by the harbour. ‘Couldn’t work underground, not if my life depended on it, but they all need people up top, keeping them organised, getting money in, paying money out. I’m good at that.’
Jessie listened in silence. She remembered the conversation with Clive, all those years ago, about his plans for the future, the pride in his skills. This was Clive’s child, after all. She wondered what John had inherited from her.
They were standing together on a hill above Whitehaven, the town further up the coast that had grown rich from slavery, rum and coal. It was early in the New Year. They hadn’t met since Boxing Day, and even now Jessie was too anxious about being seen with John for them to meet in Newton, or in the valley. They agreed to meet here, where she felt safer, more anonymous. They’d come north from Newton by train and walked up the hill towards the Haig pithead. John wanted to have a look at the houses that surrounded the pit, high above the smoke and smuts, closer to the sky. Inland he could see the line of the fells. He could live here: the view would keep him going. He asked her to come with him and she agreed: it felt safer to be with him if they were doing something, not just sitting looking at each other.
