‘All lies, you old soak,’ Bridie had scoffed, only riling Kate the more.
Catherine knew she had to get her mother away from town and out from under Bridie’s feet as soon as possible, if their household was to survive. Before the day was out, she rang the estate agent’s office and made an appointment to see The Hurst.
On the Saturday, she took Bridie with her to look around. Catherine was captivated by its sweep of daffodils up the drive and its mature trees that would make it secluded in summer.
‘Look, it’s got a tennis court,’ Bridie exclaimed. ‘Think of the tennis parties we could have!’
The agent led them through a series of grand rooms on the ground floor.
‘Smells a bit musty,’ Catherine said cautiously, peering into the gloom of the drawing room, with its gaping fireplace.
‘Just needs a bit of a spring-clean,’ Bridie declared.
‘Quite so,’ said the agent. ‘It’s been empty for over a year. This is the way to the billiard room.’
‘Billiard room?’ Bridie squealed. ‘More parties!’
‘How many rooms altogether?’ Catherine gulped, as they followed him back into the hall. Two large china urns depicting exotic birds still stood either side of the large central staircase.
‘Fifteen. It’s what you’d expect of a gentleman’s residence,’ the agent said, ushering them upstairs.
Catherine could imagine how grand it must once have been. It still smelt of faded cigar smoke and vinegar polish; of dried roses. She half expected to see one of the Indian servants dressed in a vivid turban, emerging with a silver tray and tea set. In mounting excitement, she followed the agent, clutching Bridie’s arm.
They lost count of the bedrooms. The kitchen was antiquated, with a huge old black range, but there was a separate butler’s pantry, a cook’s sitting room and a system of bells to call for service, which still worked.
‘We can ring for Kate to bring us up tea and toast in the morning,’ Bridie joked.
‘If you want it poured over your head, you mean,’ Catherine snorted.
‘Oh, Catherine, it’s a dream house, so it is. Maisie will love the gardens - and so will Tuppence. Say you’ll buy it!’
Catherine tried to quell her own excitement. There seemed so much work to be done. Panes of glass were missing or broken in half a dozen windows, and at least three of the rooms had pails and saucepans catching drips from the leaking roof.
‘And finally, the garden room.’ The agent led them into the glass-domed conservatory to the side of the house.
As they entered, a wall of warmth enveloped them and a pungent smell of plants. Some hothouse blooms had survived - someone must have come in to tend them - and they were already flowering in the early spring sunshine. The room led on to the small terrace and a lawn with a sagging tennis net. Beyond was a bank of rhododendrons and mature trees.
For a brief instant, Catherine was reminded of the view from Ravensworth Castle, the sweep of lawns and bushes rolling away from the aristocratic mansion. A Ravensworth in miniature. She blinked hard. A ridiculous comparison, of course, but how she longed to possess such a place! At that moment, she desired it more than anything she had ever wanted before. Kitty McMullen, owner of a gentleman’s residence. She would pay for a busload of her old neighbours and school friends to come from Jarrow just to see it! Then there would be no more scoffing and turning up their noses. How they would regret ever excluding her from their games . . .
‘Catherine?’ Bridie was shaking her arm. ‘The gentleman’s wanting your opinion.’
The agent was watching her with detached interest. He obviously thought she was wasting his time and could not afford it.
‘I want to buy it,’ she declared with a defiant look. ‘It’ll take a few days to get the money in place. Perhaps we could go back to your office to discuss the price?’
The man tried to hide his surprise and nodded quickly. Catherine’s heart was hammering at her recklessness. It would take every penny of her savings to put down the deposit and she would have to cash in the insurance policies Maurice had got her to buy. She might be paying off the mortgage with all her salary for evermore, but she would do it.
Bridie was spluttering with delight and gabbling plans all the way down the hill to town.
‘Once we’ve shifted the dirt and given it a splash of paint it’ll look like a palace. Everyone will want to stay at The Hurst - we’ll get quality folk, so we will. And Kate’s used to lodgers. She’ll love being the lady of the manor. No time for the drink. And we can get the groceries delivered, so there’s no excuse to be popping into town. Oh, girl, we’re going to have such a time!’
It took over a month for the finances to be put in place and the sale completed; weeks in which Catherine’s nerve almost failed her. She must be quite mad to be saddling herself with a run-down mansion, bargain though it was, wiping out her hard-earned savings that, over the years, she had put by, earning good interest, for ‘a rainy day’. She had always been so cautious with money, fearful of being reduced to the plight of those who had no option but to knock on the workhouse door. Now here she was gambling it all on a dream.
But then she thought of how this venture might be the saving of Kate and a new beginning for them all. It was only lowly Kitty of the New Buildings who was afraid of taking on such a place. Catherine McMullen, senior officer of Hastings Poor Law Institute and member of the tennis club, had no such qualms. The Hurst was a fitting home for such a professional woman.
So, just before she turned twenty-seven, Catherine became the sole owner of a home that could have housed half of William Black Street in Jarrow. The day they moved in and set to work scrubbing down walls and floors, Catherine thought of her friend Lily Hearn. So often in the past they’d had conversations about their future dreams, of marrying rich men and living in luxury. She was the only one Catherine had ever confided in about her yearning to discover her father and the privileged world that should have been hers.
As Catherine fell into bed that night, aching all over from the back-breaking cleaning, she knew Lily would have understood her obsession to possess The Hurst. It went beyond a craving for security. It was as if she were fulfilling the destiny that was snatched away from her even before she was born. She was a Pringle-Davies, an owner of property, a respectable middle-class woman. And she had done it all without the help of any man - father or husband.
Chapter 35
It was summer before The Hurst was in any state to open its doors to boarders. The boiler had to be replaced, and Catherine and Bridie scoured the auction rooms for second-hand furniture to furnish the bedrooms. For the first time in over two years Catherine had the luxury of her own bedroom - a beautiful room at the front of the house, with a view over the garden. She slept with the curtains open so that she woke gradually in the early light to the sound of birdsong and watched the dawn filter through the trees. It was the most tranquil part of the day, just her and the birds and sunshine on leaves. But at the end of each month Catherine had nothing left in the bank and she still had to pay the lease on the maisonette in Laurel Street. She sublet it and placed advertisements in the local newspapers for lodgers for The Hurst.
‘We can share a room again,’ Bridie suggested. ‘Then you can rent out that nice one at the front at a higher price.’
Catherine was reluctant to give up the room but Bridie was right. Within two days they had a retired major for the large front bedroom. He brought a battered old trunk and a wind-up gramophone.
‘Happy to share my record collection,’ said Major Holloway, plonking a box of records in the sitting room. Kate and Bridie rushed to look through them.
‘Never heard of half of these,’ Kate said in disappointment.
‘Opera, my dear lady,’ the major chuckled, putting one on the turntable and winding up the brass handle. Th
ey sat and listened.
‘What was all that about?’ Kate said at the end. ‘Didn’t catch a word of it.’
‘The tenor was singing in Italian, dear lady,’ said Major Holloway. ‘The language of love.’
Kate gave him a dubious look. ‘Give me a good north-country song any day,’ she sniffed, and went off to make tea.
Over the next few weeks the number of residents grew. A pale, willowy young woman called Dorothy was brought by her parents.
‘Needs to be by the sea for the air, doctor says,’ her mother explained in hushed tones. ‘The air in London’s making her ill.’ They left in a shiny black Ford, promising to visit every month. Dorothy stood forlornly looking down the drive until Catherine coaxed her back inside with the promise of cherry cake.
Two more came by July: a thin-faced piano tuner and a ventriloquist who talked to himself at mealtimes. They were joined by a retired merchant seaman, who liked to shave in the open-air, a retired cook from a boarding school and a reclusive poet who stayed in his room all day and prowled around the house at night, helping himself to food from the kitchen, to Kate’s alarm.
‘Scared me out of me wits,’ she complained, ‘sitting by the stove eating cold stew in the middle of the night.’
‘What were you doing up at that hour?’ Catherine asked suspiciously.
‘Couldn’t sleep, that’s what,’ Kate mumbled. ‘You’ll have to tell him he can’t gan creepin’ round like a ghost.’
‘I can hardly lock him in his room.’
Kate grumbled. ‘They’re a queer lot - not workin’ lads like we used to have lodging with us.’
Catherine snorted. ‘They were just as mixed a bag as these ones. And as long as they’re all paying and not harming anyone, doesn’t matter what they’re like.’
She felt sympathy for the solitary poet, who never seemed to get anything written, for wan Dorothy, whose parents did not visit as promised, and wheezing Mrs Fairy, the retired cook, who hung about the kitchen offering to help, not knowing what to do with retirement. She felt protective towards them and tried to shield them from Kate’s impatience and Bridie’s teasing.
But it worried Catherine to think Kate might not be able to cope. After all, it was ten years since she had last taken in lodgers. She was snappy and bad-tempered in the mornings when Catherine and Bridie were rushing to work, then full of petty complaints on their return in the evening. Tom, the piano tuner, had left his false teeth in the sink; Mrs Fairy had used up all the sugar in a chocolate cake for Maisie and made the girl sick. Ventriloquist Barny had upset Harold, the poet, by practising his noisy monkey routine all morning and Harold was demanding to sleep in the tower.
‘And I think that Dorothy’s got the consumption,’ Kate warned, ‘coughing all over the place. That’s why she’s been dumped here. We’ll all die of it if you let her stay. Me father and sister Margaret died like that. Terrible business. Lass should be in the sanatorium.’
Catherine, already exhausted by a long hot day at the laundry, had to roll up her sleeves and help with the evening meal, calming tempers and charming the guests and Kate back into good humour.
Only the cheerful major seemed oblivious to Kate’s grumbles or the tensions between the other residents. As long as he had music playing on his gramophone he was happy, and turned a deaf ear to those who did not appreciate opera as much as he. Sometimes, Catherine would enjoy sitting in the conservatory on a late summer’s evening with Major Holloway listening to Puccini or Verdi and watching the shadows steal across the lawn.
He would talk about his army days in South Africa and the Middle East, until Bridie would come and scold them for staying up late.
‘Look at you yawning - big enough to swallow us all. Up to bed this minute, my girl. Major, you can sleep till noon but Miss McMullen must be up with the lark.’
The major blustered with apologies and shut the lid of the gramophone. Catherine thought he was probably frightened of Bridie. Bridie certainly had as little time for him as Kate.
‘Shouldn’t let him keep you up to all hours,’ she fussed as they got into bed.
‘He doesn’t. I choose to sit in my own garden room and he happens to be there.’
‘Only when you are,’ Bridie sniffed. ‘He’s got his sights set on you - and this place, I wouldn’t wonder.’
Catherine laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. He’s much too old.’
‘And you’re much too soft-hearted,’ Bridie declared. ‘I know he’s sometimes late with his rent and what do you do? Not a thing.’
‘Only the once,’ Catherine protested.
‘It’ll cause bad feeling if the others get to hear of it.’
‘Well, they won’t, will they? Not unless you tell them.’ Catherine gave her a warning look. ‘And what people pay and when they pay it is my concern.’
‘Well, that’s gratitude for you!’ Bridie cried. ‘And after I’ve worked my hands to the bone helping get this place nice for you. I’m just an unpaid maid in your eyes!’
Catherine was quick to placate her. ‘Of course you’re not. You’re my best friend,’ she insisted. ‘This is your home as much as mine.’
Bridie was soon mollified, but after that, Catherine was careful to avoid being left alone with the major. For some reason Bridie seemed jealous of the genial man and Catherine did not want to upset her friend. But soon her worries over Kate overshadowed any arguments over the major.
Her mother’s behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic. Some days she was full of a manic energy, cleaning windows at six in the morning and singing at the top of her voice; on others she was listless and bad-tempered, and Catherine had to shake her awake.
‘They’re all waiting for their breakfast,’ Catherine cried.
‘You get it,’ Kate mumbled, and buried her head under the covers.
Catherine left in exasperation, knowing that she would have to serve breakfast and be late for work. Mrs Fairy came to the rescue.
‘Leave it to me,’ the old cook offered. ‘I can whip up some scrambled eggs and young Maisie can help me.’
Catherine gratefully accepted, even though she knew Kate would be indignant about it later in the day.
As she walked to work with Bridie, her friend abruptly said, ‘I’m sure Kate’s drinking again. The way she’s acting.’
Catherine was shocked by the suggestion. Yet Bridie was only voicing her own unspoken fear.
‘I haven’t seen her at it, have you?’ Catherine countered.
‘She’s sly - drinking after we’ve all gone to bed, I reckon. That’s why she’s like a bear with a sore head some mornings.’
‘But she can’t be,’ Catherine said wildly. ‘She doesn’t go out - I know that from Mrs Fairy. She hasn’t set foot in a pub since we moved. And I don’t give her any money.’
Bridie just shrugged.
Catherine’s heart sank. ‘Oh, Bridie, I hope you’re wrong. I don’t know what I’d do if she started all that again.’
Unexpectedly, while Catherine was trying to work out how to confront her mother, Davie turned up on leave. At first, she welcomed his arrival. Kate’s humour improved and Davie was eager to help out doing odd jobs around the house. There was so much to be done: rotten window frames to replace, roof tiles to fix, gutters to clean. But after a week, Kate grew impatient.
‘He’s not here to mend your palace,’ she complained, ‘he’s here to see me. Haway, Davie lad, I’m ganin’ to show you the sights of Hastings.’
Catherine felt leaden. She knew just what sights her mother had in mind. She tried to warn Davie.
‘She’s promised me she’s off the drink. Please don’t let her start again - don’t give her any money.’ But even as she pleaded with her stepfather, she knew he was not strong enough to keep Kate in check. By the way he looked at Kate, Catherine kn
ew Davie still idolised his wife and would do anything to keep her happy.
‘I’m only here another week,’ he said with an apologetic glance. ‘A week won’t make a difference.’
But by the end of Davie’s leave, Kate was in defiant mood. The day he left, Catherine found her openly swigging whisky from a teacup in the kitchen. Catherine seized it from her and dashed the dregs into the sink.
‘Where’s the rest of it?’ Catherine demanded angrily.
‘Drunk it,’ Kate slurred. ‘And why not? Me Davie’s gone; was drowning me sorrows. He’s the only one who cares.’
‘The only one who’ll buy you drink, you mean,’ Catherine said impatiently. ‘Well, the party’s over.’ She faced her mother. ‘There’s to be no more of it, do you hear?’
Suddenly Kate burst into tears. ‘I cannot bear it,’ she sobbed. ‘Me own daughter hates me. You just want a skivvy, that’s all.’
‘That’s not true,’ Catherine said, trying to keep her temper. ‘I’ve given you a home, haven’t I? This place is costing me a fortune, but I did it for you. You’re the one wanted a job to do, remember?’
‘They all hate me,’ Kate whimpered. ‘Look down their posh noses. And you’re just the same now.’ She got up, swaying. ‘I’ll gan back to Jarrow. I’ll gan now.’ She took a few unsteady steps towards the door, banging into the kitchen table. Kate clutched her hip in pain.
Catherine reached out. ‘Don’t talk daft. You’re going to bed to sleep it off.’
Kate tried to push her away, but Catherine was stronger and marched her to the door. Mrs Fairy was in the corridor and came to help.
‘Banged her hip on the table,’ Catherine said briskly. ‘She’s going to lie down for a bit.’
The stout cook asked no questions as she helped get Kate up the stairs and into her bedroom. Afterwards the woman said, ‘I’ll help with the Sunday tea. Let her sleep it off.’
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 111
