The Fifteen Streets

by Catherine Cookson

  They pulled long faces at each other, and Mary said, ‘I suppose she’s right.’

  ‘Can I carry some of your parcels to the tram?’ John asked.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going home yet. But it would be a help if you’d relieve me of some of them for a time; I have a little more shopping to do.’

  He took the boxes from her and stacked them under his arm. Then they turned towards the market again, John walking slightly ahead of her to make a way.

  Laughing gaily, she left him outside while she went into a linen shop, and he stood gazing into the window, seeing nothing. He knew that this night was different. There was magic about it; in the cold and the snow, in people’s faces, and in meeting her. Strange, up till a few months ago, he had never set eyes on her. But since that night he had been to see her they had run into each other a number of times, mostly when he was coming from work; yet she didn’t seem to mind his working clothes. The first time they met, it was she who stopped and talked, just as if he were all got up instead of being covered from head to foot with splatters of wet clay. He had been working on a boat from Sweden, and the ore was embedded in lumps of clay, which made the digging and picking heavy and dirty.

  After these meetings, he never allowed himself to think, using his mother’s formula . . . thinking got you nowhere. She was interested in Katie, and through Katie, kind to him. That was that. But this meeting, like everything else on this Christmas Eve, was different. She had asked him to carry her parcels, and he was standing waiting for her as if he was her . . .

  ‘I won’t ask you to carry this one.’ She was standing by his side, and he stared at her, not speaking; her face, under her fur-trimmed hat, shone at him like a star. For one brief second, the street and the hurrying crowds vanished, and she was alone in a vast emptiness, shining, and for him.

  His face was unsmiling and his voice deep in his throat as he asked, ‘Have you time . . . would you care to go to a variety show or the pantomime?’

  He waited, tense and unthinking as her smile faded. The expression in her eyes changed a number of times in as many seconds, but not once did they portray annoyance or amusement.

  ‘I should love to.’ She turned away from him, and he fell into step by her side, thinking now, as he had never thought before: Had he gone mad? What of the Mr Culbert? It was Christmas Eve and perhaps she was expected at home for a party or something. What in the name of God had made him ask her! And what about money? He had five shillings of his own . . . would that do? . . . Yes. Somehow, he knew she wouldn’t expect too much. But again, what in the name of God had made him do it! It was the last thing on earth he would have thought of doing . . . Or was it? Hadn’t he often wondered what it would be like to take someone of her stamp out? Yes, but just as one dreamt dreams, never for one moment expecting them to happen. The funny thing was she hadn’t refused. She hadn’t been merely polite, either; she seemed quite sincere when she said, ‘I’d love to.’ Well, now he must put his thinking cap on. They would have to go in the very best seats, and she’d have to have some bullets. Bullets! he repeated scornfully . . . chocolates. Get a little box . . . A box! No need to go mad altogether. She wouldn’t expect it anyway. He pushed his shoulders back. Expected or not, he’d get a box.

  ‘Do you think there’s time for me to make a telephone call?’

  They were standing outside the Empire, and for a moment she drifted from him into the class that made telephone calls.

  ‘Where do you have to go? The post office?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes; I won’t be more than five minutes.’

  ‘Of course. Come on.’ He shouldered his way through the crowd. Class or no class, she was going out with him, this once anyway. And he’d do the thing properly; it would be something to remember.

  In spite of her fur coat and rinking boots, Mary shivered as she waited in the telephone box. It had happened as she hoped it might. But where would it lead? . . . There was time enough to ask that later, she told herself. What she had to do now was to smooth things over with those at home.

  She gave a gentle sigh when she heard her father’s voice say, ‘Yes. Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, Mary.’

  ‘Mary? Why, where are you? What’s up? You should be home by now; we’re nearly ready.’

  ‘Look, dear. I won’t be home . . . not until . . . quite late.’

  ‘But where are you? You know you can’t do that, Mary; we’re going to Gilbert’s! Look lass’—he cut her short as she was about to speak—‘it’s Christmas, and we want things to go peaceable like. Where are you, anyway?’

  ‘Shields Post Office.’

  ‘What’s made you change your mind?’

  ‘I . . . Well, I met a friend.’

  ‘But it isn’t right. You know what a state this will put your mother in.’

  ‘I never wanted to go. I’ve told her so all along. She shouldn’t have accepted for me . . . Look, Father, can’t you see what Mother is trying to do?’

  ‘Yes. I know, I know.’

  ‘Well then, why should you want me to go? And anyway, it isn’t fair to Gilbert. She’s giving him the idea that I can be coaxed round, and I can’t.’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Oh, you . . . you don’t know him.’

  ‘It’s a man then?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a man.’

  ‘Well, this is going to be a lovely evening for me.’

  Mary laughed softly. ‘It’s yourself you’re thinking about.’

  ‘Well partly.’ There was a chuckle. ‘You’ll be for it tomorrow, mind. And somehow I did think this was going to be a peaceful Christmas.’

  ‘It’s the loveliest Christmas I’ve ever known. Goodbye, dear.’

  ‘Here! Mary . . . look, who’s this fellow?’

  ‘We may talk about him later.’

  ‘Mary . . . you’ll go to Midnight Mass? For God’s sake don’t miss that, or there’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘We’ll see. Goodbye. Wait. Do you want to know something?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I like you, Mr Llewellyn.’

  Laughing, she hung up the phone, and almost ran to join John.

  Mary Ellen yawned. She wished John was in, and then she’d go to bed. She leaned back and glanced up at the clock . . . ten-past eleven. Had he managed to get a duck?

  She sat with her chair drawn up close to the fire, her feet on the fender, her skirt tucked up on to her lap, exposing her short legs to the dying ashes. The house was quiet, only Shane’s and Dominic’s snores alternating with each other’s from the rooms. Behind her, the girls lay curled up under the thin brown blankets and a heap of coats; and, at each end of the mantelpiece hung their packed stockings, together with one for Mick.

  As she yawned again, she heard the muffled pad of footsteps on the yard, and, pulling down her skirt, she got up to open the scullery door as John quietly lifted the latch of the back door.

  Stupefied, Mary Ellen gazed at him; then, in a whispered exclamation, said, ‘In the name of God! have you bought the market?’

  John laughed softly as he lowered a great parcel on to the table, followed by a stone brown paper bag and a square box. ‘You’ll never guess what it is . . . it’s a turkey! And this is a bag of fruit. And there’s bullets in that box.’ He spoke softly and rapidly.

  ‘A turkey! But where’d you get the money, lad?’ Mary Ellen looked closely at him. If she didn’t know differently she’d have thought he’d had a drop—his eyes were shining, like coals . . . Perhaps it was the frost.

  ‘We . . . I waited till the last thing, and I got him for four bob.’

  ‘But what’s all this other?’

  ‘Fruit.’

  ‘A stone bag of it!’ Mary Ellen looked amazed. ‘Are they specked?’

  ‘No, I should say not.’

  John did not look at her. He had taken off his cap and was combing his hair. ‘Miss Llewellyn sent them for the bairns.’

  Mary Ellen stared silently
at his profile. Miss Llewellyn.

  John turned to her, putting on his cap again. ‘I’m going to Midnight Mass at Jarrow. I’m getting the last tram up.’

  Miss Llewellyn and Midnight Mass. Her lad going to Midnight Mass with Miss Llewellyn! It was funny but she’d been thinking about Midnight Mass earlier on this evening, feeling the need to give thanks for all her good fortune at this Christmas time. It was years since she had been to Midnight Mass, and in spite of her tiredness, she’d thought: For two pins I’d go to Midnight Mass if John was in. She would have worn her new coat, although it wouldn’t have mattered about going in her shawl; there’d be mostly shawls and mufflers there anyway. And she’d imagined herself kneeling as she used to do in the aisle, or even on the altar steps, wrapped about in the thick, incensed air, full of hushed rustle, so full would the church be. And for a brief hour she would really feel the Child was being born and be one with Mary in her travail.

  But John was going to Midnight Mass, and he was going with Miss Llewellyn. She knew now the reason for the light in his eyes.

  John tried not to show undue haste, but there was only a few minutes before the tram would pass the bottom of the street, and she would be on it. Already it was late, and perhaps they’d not get in the church. He did not want this to happen, for he had the desire to kneel at Mass with her, not only because it would mean being with her another hour or more, but because to go to Mass with a lass had a subtle meaning, which neither needed nor could be defined by words.

  The four hours they had been together seemed to spread back down his lifetime. There seemed no moment when he had not watched the expressions dancing over her face like shadows in a garden, nor a moment when he had not been carrying her parcels or buying her chocolates, or when he was not sitting with her in the dark and laughing with her at a pantomime; or when there was a second in his life when she did not urge him to remain quiet while the stallholder, in desperation, brought his final and unmovable price of eight shillings a turkey down to four shillings! or when had he not watched her taking her choice of fruit, bananas, pomegranates, oranges, apples, pears and nuts. And now they were going to Midnight Mass, and there would be no tram back. They would have to walk all the way from Dee Street, in the centre of Jarrow, to the heart of Simonside. It would be a long way for her, and difficult walking, for the pavements were sheets of knobbly grey ice; and it would be a long way to walk without touching each other. She might have to take his arm—he thought of it as ‘link’—Miss Llewellyn and him linking!

  A surge of feeling that demanded some form of expression swept through him, and, stooping, he kissed Mary Ellen swiftly on the side of the brow. Without a word, he was gone. And Mary Ellen stood fingering the place his lips had brushed . . . Her lad had kissed her . . . for the first time since he was a tiny bairn. And because he was in love.

  She had been worried lately, thinking he was struck on her next door, and had wondered where it would lead, for she doubted, if he took her, there’d be much happiness for him; not that she had anything really against the lass, only that terrifying religion of hers. God knew there was no happiness came out of a mixed marriage. With a Church of England one it would be bad enough, but with a Spiritualist! . . . And yet, as awful as that possibility seemed, he would have had a little show of happiness in a way, whereas now there was none for him that she could see. For what was the obstacle of religion compared with the obstacle of class? Had he gone mad? And that Llewellyn lass, too? Where did they think it would lead? Her da was a boatbuilder; and a docker, even a gaffer, would be so much midden muck to him. They had a fancy house, with even a lavatory inside, so Katie said, and kept a parlourmaid and a cook. Was the lass mad? There was no-one better than her lad, no-one in the wide world, but he was a docker and from the fifteen streets. And that lass must know nothing could come of it . . . She was struck by his size and his ways, and she would shelve him when the novelty wore off. And what would it do to him? She thought of his eyes when he had come in, and slowly she sat down by the fire again and stared into its rose-grey embers.

  8

  New Year’s Eve

  It was a good thing New Year’s Eve fell on a Saturday, John thought, for it meant one day less holiday. They would start work on Tuesday, the ones, anyway, who were sober enough. He wanted work, and more work. If he had his own way he’d carry on, night and day, for three parts of the week; he’d make them throw the stuff out of those holds as it had never been thrown out before. He wanted money. God, how he wanted money.

  He sat before the fire, dressed in his working clothes, tense with thinking. Shane sat opposite him, sober and sullen; he’d been drunk only once during the holidays. This was a record. Was he turning over a new leaf? John wondered, or was it because he was forced to realise that the more he drank the more he twitched? But twitching or not, tonight he’d likely have a skinful. What would she say to this house and the lot of them? Would she take them as she took him? That was too much to ask. Whereas last Saturday night he thought he’d never known a moment in his life without her, now, across the vast space of time since he last saw her, he could not even recall her face clearly. Again and again he tried to visualise her; but always her face ran into a blur. Even when he attempted to recapture the wonder and the ecstatic feeling of achievement as, with her on his arm, he walked past the fifteen streets, huddled and sleeping under the star-carpeted sky, the feeling would slither away. It was strange, too, but he could not actually remember how he left her. What did they say to each other? Nothing much. They were quiet on the journey back; all the laughter and fun had been left in Shields market. As they walked up Simonside Bank, he had asked if she were tired, and she had replied that she’d never felt less tired. Yet she sounded sort of sleepy when she said it . . . But there must have been more than that said. One thing he knew he hadn’t said: ‘Can I see you again?’

  Why hadn’t he, when it was foremost in his mind during those last few minutes with her? But foremost, too, had been the thought of money. He couldn’t really ask her out unless he intended taking her somewhere. Well, he could have taken her out tonight.

  All this morning he was hoping he would run into her as he came home from work. And when he didn’t, he told himself it was the best thing that could have happened; there were many things he could do with those extra few shillings—his mother would know what to do with them. So perhaps it was all for the best—he moved impatiently in his chair. Perhaps . . . there was no perhaps about it. What was he aiming at, anyway? Was his brain softening, just because of that one night? If he were to see her again, what would it lead to? So intense was the urgency of the question that he almost spoke aloud. You are going stark, staring mad! Look around, and ask yourself what you and she can ever be to each other . . . even if she does like you . . . He was on his feet, staring down into the fire; she likes me all right, I know it. She more than likes me . . . she feels the same as I do.

  Mary Ellen could remain silent no longer; John’s drawn, twisted face was wringing her heart. Shane was dozing now, and she whispered, ‘What’s up, lad?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m going to have a wash.’

  He went quickly into the scullery, and as he washed himself Mary Ellen gazed sadly at his back. She knew this would happen—she knew there’d be no happiness in it for him. She wanted to go to him and in some way comfort him; but her mind was lifted from him to Molly.

  Molly’s screeching voice came from the back lane, and Mary Ellen knew she was fighting again, for she was hurling rhymes at someone’s head:

  Annie Kelly’s got a big fat belly,

  And her belly wobbles like jelly.

  My God! that lass nearly fourteen and yelling things out like that. Mary Ellen pushed past John and opened the back door.

  ‘You, Molly! come in here!’

  Molly was having her last word: ‘You wouldn’t do much for God if the divil was dead, Annie Kelly. You’re mean, so you are. Poor Nancy!’

  ‘Come in here!’ Mary Ellen hauled M
olly over the step. ‘You can thank your lucky stars your da’s dozing,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘or I’d bray you!’

  ‘Well, I was only sticking up for Nancy,’ Molly snivelled. ‘She’s been sent back from her place, Mrs Fitzsimmons won’t have her. And Annie wouldn’t let her play with us; she punched her.’

  ‘Sent back from her place,’ Mary Ellen repeated to John. ‘That means the do’s off.’

  ‘Damn good thing, too,’ John answered shortly. ‘They’ll be yelling out for the money before the new year’s in a week.’

  ‘It’ll likely be spent now, lad, in any case.’

  The door opened again, and Katie rushed in breathless.

  Mary Ellen hushed her: ‘Be quiet, hinny! And close that door, the cold’s enough to cut you in two.’

  ‘Ma, can I go with Christine? And Molly too? There’s a big stretch frozen hard, past Cleveland Place, and everybody’s going there to slide . . . proper sliding. Christine’s got proper sliding skates with knives on the bottom. And there’s a man there with a fire selling roast taties . . . Oh, Ma, can we go?’

  ‘Go on, Ma, let’s.’ Molly joined her plea to Katie’s.

  ‘What about it cracking?’ Mary Ellen asked John. ‘Will it be deep?’

  ‘It won’t crack in this frost.’

  He was drying himself, and asked Katie, ‘How does Christine know there’s skating? Has she been?’ He hadn’t seen Christine since Christmas Day, and then only to wish her a happy Christmas and to thank her rather sheepishly for the tie. He knew now why he hadn’t kissed Christine, and the knowledge made him strangely embarrassed in her presence.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Katie. ‘She was there yesterday, her and David. She says they’re going to have a big fire on the bank the night to light the ice up.’

  ‘How far past Cleveland Place is it?’

  ‘It’s in Roper’s Field.’

  ‘You’d better give it a miss,’ said Mary Ellen; ‘you’ll slide the boots off your feet.’