Mary's Child

by Irene Carr

  A dozen of them had sat down to dinner. Both Forthrop’s partners, Ezra Arkenstall and Henry Halliwell, were there with their wives, and two major clients with their spouses.

  George Ballantyne, a widower, had brought his grandson, on vacation from his public school. One was a young mirror image of the other. Both, as always, had been dressed expensively by the same tailor. Jack was a tall youth for his age, seventeen now, standing eye to eye with his grandfather and still with growing to do. His cheeks were smooth now from shaving, his unruly black hair well cut by his grandfather’s barber. He was not a handsome young man – there was too much strength in his face for that, with its wide mouth and firm jaw – but he cut a toughly good-looking figure, a man in the making, in his dinner suit and white shirt-front, and the women found him attractive.

  He was at ease in these surroundings, not over-awed, because he had accompanied his grandfather on more than one similar occasion. He was able to enjoy his meal, eating heartily and sitting quiet, keeping his ears and his mind open, speaking when spoken to – which was often. During dinner the talk was of books and the theatre and he was able to answer intelligently when questioned, but he was looking forward to later.

  At one point Ezra Arkenstall commented, ‘What about this chap Blériot flying across the Channel? We’re not so much of an island now.’

  Halliwell gave a derisive snort of laughter. ‘That’s all very well. I take my hat off to him, but we can still put our trust in the Navy. Anybody who wants to try to invade in those flying machines – one at a time – is welcome to try.’

  There was laughter and Ezra said, ‘My boy Luke wants to go down south to some place called Weybridge to try it – flying, I mean.’ He glanced across the table. ‘How about you?’

  Jack grinned at him. ‘I know Luke is keen. I’d like to try a flight, too, but I think I’ll stick to building ships for a living.’

  More laughter.

  Chrissie did not look up from serving vegetables but she had overheard the exchange. She had been amazed at the news of Blériot’s flight, also by a postcard from Ronnie Milburn and postmarked Weybridge. He wrote occasionally, as he had promised. On the card he said excitedly that he was no longer working on motor cars but had got a job at a place called Brooklands, helping to build aeroplanes. Chrissie wished him well but doubted if he would have much of a future there.

  George Ballantyne kept an eye on his grandson but still had time to note that the elder of the two maids who served them, a buxom young woman, slid sideways glances at young Jack when she thought she was unobserved. George smiled to himself. The other girl, much younger but deft and quick, concentrated all her attention on the work in hand. Her sideways glances were reserved for Worthington, watchful for any instruction, any hand signal he might make. She was small for her age, had to be fourteen to be at work but looked younger. She was small boned though filling out now, thin faced and big eyed. He thought that she might be a pretty girl one day. She reminded him of someone . . .

  Jack was aware of Ruby’s speculative stares, and of the younger girl. He remembered her, how she had come to his rescue when he was attacked by the three louts. He wondered if she would recognise him, but she never lifted her gaze from her work, not noticing this well-dressed young man.

  Ruby giggled as both of them laboured back to the kitchen under trays loaded high with plates and dishes. She said, ‘I bet he’d be a handful if he got a girl on her own!’

  Chrissie panted, ‘Who?’

  ‘The young feller, o’ course! Here! I saw him watching you a minute back!’

  ‘He wasn’t.’ Chrissie denied it, but uncertainly, looking behind in case Worthington was following them. Then she remembered that he would be circulating with the wine.

  ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ Ruby shouldered through the door into the kitchen then held it open with one foot.

  Chrissie slid through the gap. ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s the Ballantyne boy. And that’s his grandfather with him, that owns the Ballantyne yard. It’ll all come to that young feller one day. You could do worse.’

  Mrs Garrity, sweating in the heat of the kitchen, caught that last and demanded, ‘Worse than what?’

  ‘Worse than taking up with that lad Jack Ballantyne.’ Ruby banged down the tray and started emptying it with a clash and clatter of china.

  Mrs Garrity glared at her. ‘Don’t go putting daft ideas in the girl’s head.’ The glare shifted to Chrissie and she warned, ‘You keep clear of him and his kind. When they’ve had what they want they’ll get rid of you!’

  Ruby laughed. ‘Mebbe. But take your fun where you find it, I say. There’s not all that much to be had.’

  Chrissie was embarrassed by Mrs Garrity thinking she was setting her cap at the young Ballantyne, also because she knew where and how Ruby took her ‘fun’. She protested, ‘I wasn’t—’

  But then Worthington hurried into the kitchen and snapped, ‘Dessert! Where is it?’

  Chrissie followed him and Ruby back to the dining-room, leaning back under the weight of another heavy tray. The warning from Mrs Garrity had echoed the words of Mary Carter burnt into her mind: ‘. . . have nothing to do wi’ that sort. They use you, then toss you away.’

  Now she was conscious of the tall youth, never looking at him directly but always aware of him. So at the end of the meal as she collected empty plates she felt as much as saw his blue eyes on her. She felt the heat of the blood rising to colour her cheeks and was glad to hurry out of the room with her work there done.

  And now she recalled his face. He had been the boy attacked by the three roughs, taller and older now by two years. His face had been muddied and bloodied then; no wonder that she had not recognised him now. He was also the small boy who sat with her in the tree to watch the dancing. She had never known his name, only that he came from the Ballantyne house, but now she did.

  Jack Ballantyne.

  She remembered when she had taken the whip to the thugs who attacked him, how afterwards he said he had not needed her help. Well, she didn’t want anything to do with him, either.

  Jack had seen her quick flush and looked away. He thought that he had embarrassed the girl and was sorry. She had changed little, was still small and thin . . . but growing bigger. He grinned to himself at that. And he remembered her seeming to stand tall on the cart as she came to his rescue with that curling, cracking whip. A real little spitfire.

  Now the meal was over and he stood with the rest of the men as the ladies retired to the drawing-room. He sat again with his grandfather and the others, gathered at one end of the table as Worthington served the port and brought round the box of cigars. This was the time he had waited for, when his elders talked business. Most of it concerned ships and shipping because the town lived by them.

  Dry-as-dust Henry Halliwell, just returned from a working trip to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, put in: ‘While I was in London I visited a music hall one evening. One of our local girls was appearing there: Vesta Nightingale. Quite a performer. She’s going great guns, coming top of the bill or near it, wherever she appears.’

  Jack saw his grandfather’s easy smile turn to a glare that hardened his eyes and set his mouth tight as a steel trap. Then it was gone and the smile was back. No one else had noticed and Jack tore his gaze away, stared down at the table lest his grandfather saw that he had caught that swift change of expression. What had caused it? The talk was of music halls and a Vesta Nightingale. Jack could see no reason for his reaction.

  Max Forthrop clipped the end from a cigar. ‘She must be making a lot of money.’

  Halliwell answered drily, ‘And spending it. I saw her at a supper party afterwards. I was in the same restaurant but not with her group, thank God! I wouldn’t have liked to pick up the bill for that shindig!’

  Forthrop shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose she did.’

  Halliwell agreed, ‘No, some young titled chap was coughing up. But she’s spending her own money like water: rents a ho
use in Mayfair, runs a motor car and a chauffeur – and a French maid.’

  Forthrop was keenly aware that his wife’s money to a large extent funded his business, and that he was the poor man at this, his own table. George Ballantyne was the prime example for comparison, drawing a salary of two thousand pounds a year out of the yard, to say nothing of the income from his huge invested capital. Max Forthrop rankled under what he saw as an injustice and he planned to correct it. Now he spat out, ‘Earned as much by her body as her singing!’

  Halliwell chuckled. ‘Envious, Max?’

  Forthrop hid his anger behind a guffaw. ‘But you can’t help feeling the money would be spent better in other hands.’

  George Ballantyne said grimly, ‘Like those of some of the men in this town at present.’ And when they all looked at him, he explained, ‘The men in the yards earn two pounds a week or more – better than they’d make working on the Clyde or anywhere else building ships in this country. But that’s when they have a job. Three years ago there were thirteen thousand men working in the yards along this river; last year there were barely four thousand. That meant nine thousand of them walking the streets looking for work.’

  Ezra Arkenstall asked sombrely, ‘How is it now? And what of the future?’

  George answered, ‘We’re crawling out of a pit of depression. There’s a ship still on the stocks but she’ll be launched in a month or so. After that I’ll try to keep all the men on while she’s fitted out but when that’s done—’ He shook his head. ‘At present we have no order to build another ship. Richard is racing about the Continent now, trying to remedy that.’ He smiled wryly at Jack. ‘That’ll be your job one of these days.’

  Ezra Arkenstall said, ‘It’s a black picture.’

  But George shook his head again. ‘No. It’s a serious business but not without hope. We’re caught up in a cycle of supply and demand, boom when ships are needed, slump when they are not. But we have the finest workforce in the world. We have been building forty thousand tons a year at Ballantyne’s and we will again. But we have to work at it.’

  The others were listening, interested, but Jack hung on every word, committing it to memory, as always.

  As the carriage took them home, George Ballantyne said, ‘You’re very quiet.’

  Jack smiled at him, teeth showing white in the dim, lamplit gloom of the carriage. ‘I was just thinking over the evening. The yard is a tremendous responsibility, isn’t it?’

  George nodded, but added, ‘For your father and myself. Not you, not yet. Learn all you can but leave the worrying to us. You’ll have enough of it in time. And by then you’ll have the money and the pride to make up for it.’

  Then it was his turn to sit in silence. He broke it to say, ‘That little girl who helped serve us tonight . . .’

  Jack looked across at him. ‘You mean the maid?’

  ‘Yes. She reminds me of someone.’

  Jack prompted, ‘You’ve probably seen her when she’s delivered fruit and vegetables to the house. She comes from a family of hawkers. I’ve seen her.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ The old man was sure of that. ‘I said she reminds me of someone, but I can’t think who and I don’t know why.’

  Nor did he make any connection between the Vesta Nightingale they had talked of and the girl who had served his dinner. The matter slipped from his mind as he talked ships and shipbuilding with his grandson for the rest of the drive.

  ‘Don’t be late back, mind.’ Mrs Garrity gave the warning as she always did. A month had passed since the dinner party and now winter was closing in again. As Chrissie opened the kitchen door to the outside world it showed a rectangle of darkness and a cold wind swirled in around her ankles. Mrs Garrity added, ‘And don’t let the missus see you.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Chrissie did not argue. To her mind, as she had simply exchanged a duty with Ruby there was no reason why Sylvia Forthrop should complain about Chrissie going out. But she also conceded that the old cook had a point when she had once explained, ‘What the eye doesn’t see the heart won’t grieve over.’ Because if the mistress found out Chrissie was attending night school she might well forbid it, for no other reason than that it was a divergence from the norm. Maids did not spend their few free hours at lessons.

  So Chrissie stole down the side of the drive in the cover cast by the shadows of the trees. Out in the road she turned to walk down towards the town. Two shadows detached themselves from that of a tree and took on substance. One of them was Frank Ward, who always escorted her to her evening class. The other was his brother, Ted.

  Frank greeted her, ‘Aye, aye, Chrissie!’

  ‘Hello, Frank! Hello, Ted! I’ve got a proper guard on me tonight.’

  Frank wore the secondhand suit bought from the pawnbroker but Ted, now a boy soldier in the Durham Light Infantry, was in red coat with a pillbox cap cocked on the side of his head and held in place by a thin strap under his chin.

  He lifted one hand to the cap in salute and said shyly, ‘Hello, Chrissie.’ There was a difference in his greeting. Both boys had been Chrissie’s friends and Frank still was, but she sensed she was much more important to Ted now. He was a year older than Frank and half a head taller, but while Frank chatted easily as they walked down into the town, Ted was usually tongue-tied, only answering questions she put to him with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This awkwardness had come on him only a month or two ago. And it affected Chrissie, too.

  She had hotly denied that Ronnie Milburn was a ‘follower’, but she knew she had one now and the realisation made her blush. She was glad the darkness left her face in shadow.

  The brothers went with her to the Technical College, and when they stood outside the red-brick building with the young students swarming past them, Chrissie said, ‘Goodnight, Ted. Mind you don’t miss your train and get into trouble.’ He had to be back in barracks at Newcastle before ‘lights out’.

  ‘Cheerio.’ Ted saluted again as he turned away.

  He left reluctantly. Chrissie knew that she had only to ask and he would have waited to see her home again, and taken the consequences. She was not sure how she felt about this, and about Ted.

  Frank met her when she came out of the College and walked with her back to the Forthrops’ house. One or two boys called after Chrissie, ‘Fancy a walk in the park?’ intending no more than that, but Frank swaggered alongside her and glared at them and they let her alone.

  A tram clanged and clattered by and he shouted above its noise, ‘Do you like it in there?’

  She nodded, ‘I like the figures, making them come out right at the end.’ And her teacher, greying and disillusioned, was favourably impressed, though Chrissie did not know it. He had told the Head of the College, ‘She really is an outstanding student, quite the best of her class and the best I’ve had for as far back as I can remember.’

  Now they passed a pub and a crowd of men burst from its doors, singing and shouting. Chrissie swerved away from them and tucked herself in closer to Frank’s side. He moved her firmly so that his body was between her and the crowd, hurried her along out of any danger.

  When they were past she asked him, ‘How are things at home with you?’

  ‘No different.’ He went on bitterly, ‘The old man takes my wages now and gives me just a shilling. A shilling! He says he gives the rest to me mam to keep me, but he boozes most of it. Or thinks he does.’ He laughed.

  Chrissie glanced at him uneasily, not liking the sound of that laugh. ‘What do you mean: “He thinks he does”?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘He thinks it all goes on drink. But I go through his pockets every night and take a few bob. That way there’s never enough gone that he’ll notice – he’s blind drunk when he comes home, anyway. Then I pass it on to me mam.’

  Chrissie bit her lip. ‘What if he finds out?’

  ‘He won’t.’ Then Frank added, ‘He won’t have much time now, anyway.’ And when he saw her stare he explained, ‘I’m old enough for the Navy now. I’ll be
off soon.’

  Chrissie warned, ‘He’ll have to give his permission, though. What if he won’t?’

  ‘He will.’ Frank was confident. ‘Ted got him to sign the papers for him to go into the Army by shoving them in front of the old man one night when he was drunk. I’ll do the same. He’ll let me go to get rid of me. I let him take my wages because I don’t want a fight – that would upset me mam – and I get them back from him, anyway. But the last time he bashed her I told him I’d swing for him if he did it again, and I meant it. He’ll let me go.’

  They walked on in silence until they came to the Forthrop house. There he said, ‘Goodnight.’ Chrissie stood on her toes and kissed him then ran up the drive and around to the kitchen door. That night she worried for him.

  And the next night for Ruby.

  Chapter 12

  September 1909

  Chrissie worked Ruby’s Thursday afternoon duty of answering calls and mending household linen while Ruby herself dressed and walked down into the town. She returned in time to help serve the dinner, but was silent, abstracted and spent a lot of the time staring into space with her mouth turned down, and Chrissie did most of the work.

  Chrissie washed up after dinner, shared a pot of tea with the other two in the kitchen then set off for her bed. She was surprised when Ruby said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ The elder girl usually stayed up for a while, talking with the cook. When they reached the servants’ landing, Ruby asked, ‘Mind if I come in for a minute?’

  ‘’Course not.’ Chrissie pulled forward the single straight-backed chair. She herself sat on the edge of her bed.

  Ruby sank down on to the chair and burst into tears. Chrissie got up to put her arm around the girl and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

  The confession took some time but finally Ruby gulped, ‘I’m expecting.’