Mary's Child

by Irene Carr

  Chrissie peered around Ronnie’s shoulder. The street was busy late on this autumn evening. The gas lamps flared and children played their games of rounders or ran races, rolled hoops. The women sat or stood on the doorsteps, braving the cold wind coming up from the river for the chance to talk together. The men clustered on the corners, hands in pockets.

  Charlie Trembath walked along the pavement opposite Daniel Milburn who called out harshly, voice lifted, ‘Where d’you think you’re going, Charlie?’

  Trembath paused and grinned at Daniel. He was younger, taller and running to fat. He wore a shiny old serge suit with a watch-chain looped across the front of the waistcoat. He answered, ‘I’m on my way home.’

  Daniel said flatly, ‘Not this way.’

  Charlie blinked as he saw the children scattering out of the way, the women retreating to peer from behind their front doors, so that the street lay empty between Daniel and himself. He said uneasily, ‘I’ve got a right to walk along the street—’

  Daniel cut him off there. ‘Not this bloody street, you haven’t.’

  Charlie protested, ‘Aw, come on. I’ll be late for me tea.’ He took another pace.

  Daniel never used the whip on a horse and said proudly that he never needed to. He carried it to give signals when he was driving a cart and as a mark of his trade. But he could use it. The lash snaked out now and cracked bare inches in front of Charlie’s nose.

  He jerked back a pace and yelped, ‘For Christ’s sake!’

  Daniel pointed the whip at him. ‘You cheated me. So any time you come near my door, or cross my path, I’ll flay the flamin’ ‘ide off ye! Any time you want to poke your nose outa your door you’d better be sure I’m not waiting for you, because I’ll ‘ave you.’

  Charlie threatened, ‘I’ll tell the pollis!’

  Daniel showed his teeth in a grin. ‘The pollis won’t put you back together again, Humpty Dumpty.’ The people crowded at their doors laughed.

  Charlie argued, ‘There was nowt wrong wi’ that horse.’

  ‘There bloody well was! And is!’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know.’

  ‘That’s not what I heard, not what’s been heard in the Ship.’

  Charlie looked around him then, possibly hoping for sympathy or support, but found none. No one was going to stand in the way of rough justice. He grumbled, ‘I’ll give you your money back and fetch the horse tomorrow.’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘You’ll give me half my money and I’ll keep the horse. That’s what he’s worth and I’m not giving him back to you to badly use him again.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  Daniel flicked the whip again and it cracked by Charlie’s ear. He yelled and shrank from it. Daniel said, ‘It’s a lot fairer than you were going to get a minute ago. Now, what about it?’

  Charlie fished in a waistcoat pocket and pulled out some crumpled and dirty banknotes, handed a few to Daniel. ‘There y’are.’

  Daniel fanned them between finger and thumb, counting, then jammed them in his trousers pocket. He issued one last warning. ‘Don’t come near me or mine again. I want nowt to do wi’ you.’ Then he turned and stalked back into the house.

  Charlie Trembath went on his way, grumbling and complaining but all of it falling on deaf ears. The children went back to their games, the women to their chat. The men on the corner ignored him, save for one who told him curtly, ‘Serves you bloody well right!’

  Daniel pushed past Ronnie and Chrissie, walked back along the passage into the kitchen and slumped down in his armchair. He dropped the whip on the floor and wheezeed, ‘That’s left me out o’ breath.’ Then he coughed for some seconds.

  Chrissie followed him, breathless from the threat of violence out in the street. She picked up the whip, stood it out in the passage and said, “‘A place for everything . . .”’

  Bessie smiled, recognising that Chrissie was quoting her. She said, ‘You two are off to night-school, then.’

  Chrissie slipped into her coat and picked up her books. ‘Just now, Aunt Bessie. See you later.’ She waved, then she and Ronnie were gone.

  Daniel growled, ‘Night schools! I don’t hold wi’ them for lasses. You shouldn’t ha’ let Ronnie talk her into going.’

  ‘I shouldn’t?’ Bessie banged the iron down on the fire and reached for another shirt. ‘Why didn’t you say something? Anyway, it was more like her talking him into taking her. And she was good at school, good enough to finish at thirteen instead of staying on till she was fourteen. I’m not surprised. I tell you this, she only has to be shown a thing once and she’s got it.’

  She lifted the iron off the fire, spat on it delicately to test its heat and started ironing again. ‘But bookkeeping? Typewriting? What does she want to learn them things for? A waste of time if you ask me. She says she wants a good job, but a bonny lass that can cook, clean and run a house like she can will be snapped up by some lucky feller.’

  She eyed Daniel and told him, ‘Chrissie did most o’ this ironing, and she’s cooked the dinner every night this week.’

  Daniel’s brows lifted. ‘Aye?’

  ‘Aye. She could manage this place without me, nine o’ you men an’ all.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not as quick as I was. I seem to get that tired these days.’

  There were just nine men in the house these days because the two eldest boys had married and moved out into rooms of their own. Now the upstairs front room was shared by Ronnie and the other two boys still at home, with another lodger, Mickey Barker. He was a friend of Ronnie’s who worked with him at Ballantyne’s.

  Ronnie was talking of him now as he walked with Chrissie towards the Technical College. ‘Mickey says he’s going to move down south after the winter and try his luck wi’ the motor cars.’

  Chrissie glanced at him, startled. ‘Motor cars! What for?’

  ‘He says the money can be just as good or better. And you don’t get laid off like you do around here sometimes.’

  ‘How does he know he’ll get a job?’

  ‘He says there are plenty of little workshops, either making motor cars or mending them. There’s always work for a good engineer.’

  Chrissie argued, casting back to what she had learnt at Mary Carter’s knee, ‘But there’ll always be ships. They’ll always want ships. It stands to reason. So they’ll always want somebody to build them.’ She finished wistfully, ‘I wish I could work in the yards building ships.’

  ‘You!’ Ronnie burst out laughing. ‘A lass working in the yards? You wouldn’t last five minutes! And the men wouldn’t stand for it, neither would the masters. That’s a daft idea, our Chrissie.’

  She pouted. ‘I don’t see why. I manage to take out a cart just as well as you or any of the lads.’ She frequently accompanied one of them, selling fruit or vegetables, and sometimes went out on her own. ‘And there are mostly lads in my bookkeeping class and I’m better than all of them.’

  ‘I daresay,’ Ronnie conceded, ‘but that’s not the same as working in the yards. That’s a man’s job, always was and always will be.’

  Chrissie did not answer that, knowing it to be true.

  They walked in silence as they passed the open doors of a public house. A barrel organ jangled just outside its door, a walrus-moustached little man turning its handle. The crowd in the pub bellowed along with the music, ‘Hark! I hear the bugle calling! Goodbye, Dolly Gray!’

  Then as the din faded behind them and the Technical College came in sight, Ronnie added, ‘I think I might go with him.’

  Chrissie stared up into his face, disbelieving. ‘What? Give up your job at Ballantyne’s? Leave your mam and dad? You wouldn’t!’

  ‘Don’t say a word to them! And I only said I might. But I am thinking of going. Look, Chrissie, as far as I can see the best I can hope for here is a foreman’s job, and that won’t be till somebody dies. I don’t want to spend my life like that, any more than I wanted to spend it sitting on a cart behind a horse.’ He looked down at her and asked
, ‘Would you?’ And then before she could answer that question, posed another. ‘What do you want?’

  Mary Carter spoke through Chrissie again: ‘A place of my own. A good job.’

  ‘But you haven’t tried to get a job at all since you finished school.’

  ‘Aunt Bessie said I should wait another year or two. She said she needed my help about the place.’

  Ronnie said unhappily, ‘I don’t think Mam is being fair about that.’

  But Chrissie defended her: ‘She’s been a bit off-colour lately.’

  Daniel stayed in his bed the next morning, with a hacking cough and a temperature. Wilf took his cart out instead, pulled by Daniel’s regular horse, Bobby. Wilf was the eldest boy still living at home, physically a copy of his father, Daniel, but serious and sober. He returned at midday, furious and breathing hard. He stormed into the kitchen and sat down at the table, complaining, ‘That Bobby! No wonder me dad’s always late back!’

  Chrissie set his full plate before him. ‘There you are. What’s the matter now?’ She turned away to get out the plates of bread pudding for the other boys and the lodgers. They had finished their dinners; only Wilf was late.

  He said, ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter. I’d only gone a couple of streets away when Bobby stopped and wouldn’t move. I shouted at him, shoved him—’ He glanced around at the door of the front room. Daniel lay behind it in his bed and Bessie had just taken his bread pudding in to him. Wilf lowered his voice and went on, ‘I even poked him wi’ the whip. No use. But we were stopped outside the George. As I’m trying all these things, Arnold Ridley, him that has the pub, he was watching out o’ the window and laughing his head off. At the finish he walks out and says, “You’ll not get him to shift unless you come in for a drink.” I said, “I’m teetotal.” He says, “Well, you’ll have to come in for a bit so he thinks you’re having one. Your da always stops for one, takes out a couple o’ crackers for the horse when he’s finished – and the horse knows it.”’

  Chrissie had known it, too, but did not say so now and asked straight faced, ‘So you went in?’

  Wilf glared. ‘Oh, aye! I went in for a minute, came out wi’ the crackers and away we went – no bother.’

  Chrissie passed out plates of pudding. ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’

  ‘All right? All right?’ Wilf waved his knife like a baton as he ticked them off: ‘We stopped at the Palatine, the Borough, the Londonderry – I spent more time standing in pubs than I did sitting on the bloody cart!’

  ‘Language!’ Bessie came out of the front room. ‘I’ll not have that sort of talk in the house.’

  Wilf muttered, ‘Well . . . Anyway, I’m not taking Bobby out tomorrow.’

  ‘Your dad can’t,’ warned Bessie. ‘He’s still poorly.’

  Wilf muttered, ‘Somebody else will have to, then. I’ve had enough. The cart’s still half-full. I’ve not had chance to sell it all.’

  ‘Your dad always manages.’

  ‘God knows how. I don’t.’

  Chrissie did. And offered, ‘I’ll take Bobby out tomorrow.’

  Bessie asked doubtfully, ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to manage?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I’ve been out with Uncle Dan many a time. I know his round and his customers. I can do it.’

  Bessie put her arm around the girl and gave her a squeeze. ‘I bet you can an’ all.’

  When she told Daniel he objected. ‘She’s too young and too small to go out with Bobby on her own. I’ll take him.’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll stay in bed,’ Bessie told him. ‘And if you’re no better after this weekend, then it’ll be the doctor for you on Monday.’

  He couldn’t argue because he started coughing again and had to give way to her.

  So the next day, Saturday, Chrissie took out Bobby and Dan’s cart. She loaded it herself, lugging the heavy sacks and trays of potatoes and apples expertly. She loaded it not as Wilf had, stacked full, but as Dan did, with the goods set out on display. She started out with only half as much aboard but all of it could be seen.

  She perched on the shaft of the cart, just behind the horse’s broad brown rump and swishing tail, reins in one hand, whip gripped in the other. ‘Yup, Bobby!’ And she drove him out of the yard.

  Bessie had watched all of this from the house. She shook her head and laughed, sighed happily, fondly. Then she turned away, worried again, and went to see how Daniel was.

  Chrissie returned for the midday meal and set out again in the afternoon. As she wheeled Bobby out of the yard the two Ward boys appeared. ‘Whoa, Bobby!’ And she eased back on the reins. Bobby halted and she asked, ‘What are you two doing here?’ Though she knew full well.

  ‘Come to see you,’ Frank answered and Ted nodded. They were adolescents now, Ted the taller, fair and quiet, Frank dark and talkative. Both wore cheap, secondhand suits, woollen scarves knotted at their throats, caps on their heads. They touched the caps to her, grinning.

  Chrissie avoided Ted’s gaze, shyly. ‘I’m just starting my round. Will you walk along wi’ me for a bit?’

  Frank said, ‘Aye, we’ll keep you company. We’re on our way into the town. I’ve got to get another pair o’ boots. The ones I wear for work are finished.’ They swung into step beside her as she shook the reins and Bobby moved ahead at a walk.

  Chrissie asked, ‘You’re still at Ballantyne’s?’

  ‘For a bit longer,’ said Frank. ‘Me, anyway. Just sweeping up and jobs like that.’

  ‘What d’you mean, ‘for a bit longer’?’ Chrissie looked from Frank to the shy and silent Ted.

  Ted spoke now: ‘I’m going into the Durhams.’

  ‘To be a soldier?’ The Durham Light Infantry was the county regiment. Chrissie stared. Soldiers were poorly paid, even worse than shipyard labourers, and they got killed more often than shipyard labourers – the Boer War in South Africa was still fresh in everyone’s memory.

  Ted walked taller. ‘I’m old enough; gone fifteen now.’ The army would enlist him as a boy soldier. ‘And I’m not stopping at home any longer than I have to.’

  Chrissie could understand that. ‘Your dad’s not acting any better, then?’

  Frank laughed shortly, bitterly. ‘We still get the back of his hand every time he comes home drunk. And that’s about every night. He’s an angle iron smith and making good money, nearly four pounds a week. But he boozes most of it and lives off us – and what me mother makes going out to work.’

  Ted agreed, ‘And we have to fight to keep enough money to buy our clothes, like the new boots Frank needs. The old man tries to take every penny off us on a pay day.’ He was silent a while, brooding, then explained, ‘I don’t want to leave me mam, but she says I should go for me own good. I’ll still be coming back every now and again. I expect to start with I’ll be no further away than the Regimental Depot at Newcastle. I’ll still come and see her – and you.’ He reddened now and looked down at his feet.

  Chrissie could feel the blood rising in her cheeks. Frank looked from one to the other, grinning, and she cuffed his ear. He jumped clear and complained, ‘What was that for?’

  ‘For nothing.’ And she warned him, ‘Just be careful what you say.’

  He still grinned but stepped in close and said, ‘Do it again.’

  She tried but his head wasn’t there. It bobbed up and she tried again, and again. He just ducked and weaved so her swipes landed on air. Then finally he reached out to tap her hot cheeks playfully with the flat of his hands, and grabbed hers. He held on to her for a moment with all three of them laughing and Ted explained, ‘He’s in a boxing club now.’

  Frank let her go and stepped back. Chrissie leaned forward and examined him. He asked, ‘What’re you looking at?’

  ‘I’m looking for a broken nose or a cauliflower ear.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not me. Barney Woods – he’s the chap who runs the club – he says I’ve got a natural talent.’

  Now she reached out to touch him. ‘W
ell, don’t get yourself hurt.’

  ‘I’ll watch out that I don’t.’

  Bobby stopped outside the George and Chrissie got down from the cart. ‘I’m going in to get a cracker or two.’ She explained why.

  They all laughed again and Frank said, ‘We’d better be going, anyway. I still have to get these boots and then we’re going to the match.’ The streets were already starting to fill with men on their way to the football ground. ‘We’ll be ower to see you again, Chrissie.’

  ‘Look after yourselves now.’ She watched them go, Ted turning at the corner for one last, shy look. Then she pushed in through the polished, brass-handled door of the George to fetch Bobby’s crackers. She used the side door to the snug, of course, the little room where unaccompanied women were served. No woman would dare show her face on the public side of the bar.

  Some of Chrissie’s last calls, made while she still had a good selection of provender, were to some of the bigger houses in Ashbrooke on the outskirts of the town. A lot of those households had their provisions delivered by local merchants but some cooks preferred to buy their fruit and vegetables fresh from the cart. One of these was Mrs Tyndall, the cook at the Ballantyne house with the tower rising at its centre.

  Chrissie stood outside the kitchen door as one of the kitchen maids carried in from the cart the produce selected by Mrs Tyndall. From the glimpse she had through the open door the kitchen was just as it had been seven years before. She looked along the back of the house and saw the tree. She had sat in its branches with the Ballantyne boy and peered through a gap in the curtains. She remembered the long room and the waltz music, the circling, sweeping couples, the lights shining on glittering silks and jewels. She would never forget that.

  ‘There you are, lass, and summat for yourself.’ The cook counted silver and coppers into Chrissie’s palm, bringing her back to the present.

  ‘Thank you, missus.’ Chrissie vaulted up on to the shaft of the cart again and shook the reins. Bobby placidly walked on.