THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  He told voters - the prosperous, property-owning skilled men who could swing the result - that earnings among most trades had not improved in fifteen years and were not likely to if a Pearson became their MP.

  To Alice’s bitter indignation, the local WSPU threw its weight behind the Labour candidate as he had made vague promises about women’s suffrage. She redoubled her efforts to court and win the middle-class vote for her brother, speaking on Herbert’s behalf at open meetings and dining businessmen and local politicians at Hebron House. Felicity stayed away until the day of the election and Alice had a free rein in the Elswick mansion.

  Right up until the votes were counted at the Town Hall on election night, no one was quite sure of the outcome. Herbert stood anxious and perspiring amidst the hubbub of the count, while Felicity sat cool and aloof, hardly concealing her boredom with the whole affair.

  Alice, on the other hand, found the experience electrifying. She had worked tirelessly for three weeks, entertaining, lobbying and organising on Herbert’s behalf, and paced around all evening, fully enjoying the suspense and anticipation. She smelt the scent of victory before the announcement and when Herbert was finally declared the new MP, her elation was intoxicating. For a split second she daydreamed that it was she who had won the honour of representing the west of Newcastle in Parliament, then she set her mind on enjoying Herbert’s victory. She began to invite supporters back for a late supper at Hebron House.

  ***

  George Gordon and Bob Stanners, standing on the steps of the Town Hall, learned with disappointment that their candidate had missed an historic victory by fewer than a thousand votes. It seemed the dominance of the Pearsons in West Newcastle could not be shaken, economically or politically.

  The friends retired to a nearby pub to drown their frustration.

  ‘Here’s to the working man!’ Bob grunted and drank.

  ‘Here’s to revolution!’ George muttered.

  ‘Bugger revolution,’ Bob spat. ‘Just give me a better wage, a rich lass and a few more o’ these.’ He raised his glass again.

  ‘It’ll happen,’ George predicted, spreading his hands wide. ‘International socialism - across Europe. Brothers together.’

  ‘What about sisters?’ Bob teased.

  George knew it was a dig about Maggie. He flushed, feeling a pang of anxiety.

  They drank silently for a minute.

  ‘If we had solidarity with other workers abroad,’ George continued his theme, burying his worries about Maggie, ‘we could have change tomorrow. They couldn’t stop us, we’d be too many. The Pearsons of this world would have to graft like honest men, aye, and throw their mansions open to families who can’t afford a roof over their heads.’

  ‘Like a posh workhouse, you mean?’ Bob grinned.

  ‘There’d be no need for workhouses anymore,’ George enthused. ‘Everyone would have a right to a job and a share in the profits. The workers would run the industries, the mines, transport - just think of it!’

  ‘Aye, that’s all very well, but what about these foreigners?’ Bob sniffed. ‘I don’t like the sound of fraternising with foreigners.’

  ‘Not foreigners,’ George replied stoutly, ‘just French brothers and German brothers. We’ve all got the same needs and concerns underneath,’ he insisted. ‘They just talk different.’

  ‘French brothers!’ Bob ridiculed ‘You’re full o’ daft ideas, George man!’ his friend laughed.

  ‘Not daft at all,’ George said and slurped his pint. ‘Workers unite! Aye, and do it before some halfwit emperor picks a fight with another and drags us into a war.’

  ‘Now you’re really talking daft,’ Bob laughed. ‘The King’s related to them all, he’s not going to allow a scrap.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of families scrapping?’ George grunted ‘They’ve been at it in the Balkans again and the race is on with the Germans to build ships - that’s obvious at Pearson’s. That Kaiser’s itching for a fight.’

  ‘Shut your gob, George, and buy us a beer,’ Bob groaned. ‘You’re like a prophet of doom and I’ve had enough of that the night. Haway and gan to the bar.’

  ***

  In Durham prison, Maggie held out for ten weeks before hunger striking and force-feeding broke her. This time she was prepared for the struggles and torture and hostility of the prison authorities, knowing how weak and listless she would become. But she was not prepared for the overwhelming blackness that engulfed her with the news of her mother’s death.

  She was filled with grief and guilt. If she had not visited and brought the police to Gun Street, perhaps her mother would still be alive, she accused herself. Had the strain of their emotional reunion and the shock of her flight and arrest killed her mother? Over and over, in the dreary grey cell, she replayed that visit in her mind and imagined her mother’s death.

  Heslop had said she had died at Aunt Violet’s. What had she been doing there? Reprimanding Susan for not coming to see her? Accusing Violet of betraying her? And who was it who had tipped off the police about her secret visit? Maggie wondered day after day, with nothing else to occupy her thoughts. Helen? Violet? Susan? Mary Smith? But none of it made sense.

  Maggie tried to visualise Gun Street without her mother, but could not. And she wept at the thought that her mother would never achieve her dream of returning to Sarah Crescent and living out her old age in dignified comfort as she had wished.

  Then, lying in pain on the narrow bed, her throat and mouth and tongue swollen from the force-feeding, thoughts of George and the flat in Arthur’s Hill came to haunt Maggie. Had she really lived there with him for those brief happy weeks or had it just been a dream? Her memories swum like elusive fish in her head. She missed him desperately, but did George think about her now with any affection? He had not written to say so.

  At the beginning of May and quite unexpectedly, John Heslop came to visit.

  He could not hide his shock at what he found; a grey-faced, emaciated woman who looked nearer fifty than her twenty-one years.

  ‘They’re going to release you again on licence,’ he told her, ‘and I’ve come to make arrangements for your transfer.’

  ‘How kind,’ Maggie managed to say in a voice as dry as parchment. ‘No need.’

  ‘Dear Maggie,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I’m afraid there is a need. You see,’ he cleared his throat awkwardly, ‘you can’t go back to Gun Street. They won’t - there’s no room for you. The Gosforth nursing home can’t take you in because,’ he hesitated, again sounding awkward, ‘well, it’s a matter of funding. And I can’t provide for you at the mission. Sadly, Millie Dobson has returned to the streets - all that business over Annie’s arrest turned her back to drink so there’s no one there to nurse you. And you simply must have someone to look after you. Can you think of anyone you can go to to convalesce?’ He held his breath, wondering if she would think of him as someone to whom she could turn.

  But Maggie’s mind felt dense like putrid water. Her family would not have her back was the only thought in her head.

  ‘Perhaps the Johnstones?’ John Heslop suggested hesitantly.

  Maggie shook her head slowly. ‘Rose and I fell out after that fire business,’ she croaked.

  ‘Would you like me to make enquiries among the congregation?’ Heslop tried again. ‘I could help you ...’

  Maggie’s eyes filled with tears at his show of concern.

  ‘You’re very kind, Mr Heslop,’ she said weepily.

  ‘I’m more than willing,’ he assured her, ‘and I want to help.’

  Maggie searched his face, wondering how much she could ask of this man, who for some unfathomable reason kept wanting to befriend her.

  ‘Will you do something for me?’ Maggie asked, her large, shadowed eyes pleading.

  ‘Of course, anything,’ he promised.

  Silence hung between them like a web while Maggie hesitated. Shadows flickered across the cell floor as the spring sunlight tried to penetrate through the narrow
window high up in the wall. Her mother had loved the spring. But her mother was dead, Maggie thought in desolation. She realised suddenly that she did not want to return to Gun Street anyway; it could never be home again without her mother there. The thought spurred her on to release the words trapped inside.

  ‘Please go and ask George Gordon if I can come home to him,’ she whispered. ‘He’s the only one I’ve got.’

  John Heslop turned from her to hide his disappointment. He would have taken her in if she had asked, even if it had provoked the censure of his fellow chapel-goers. But she saw him only as a family friend showing her kindness, a messenger, nothing more.

  Chapter 20

  Against his better judgment, John Heslop carried out Maggie’s request and sought out George Gordon. He finally tracked him down through the rowing club to a cottage beyond Scotswood, on the edge of Hibbs’ Farm. Delivering Maggie’s message without enthusiasm, he was unprepared for the young man’s arrogant delight. Of course he would take her in, she was his lass.

  Heslop pointed out that he could not possibly nurse her and would have to engage help. George insisted he would care for her himself.

  Heslop left in a turmoil of doubt that he had done the right thing. Since Mabel’s death, he felt doubly responsible for Maggie, especially since the rest of her family wanted nothing to do with her. Yet he was delivering her back into a sinful existence with the atheist blacksmith.

  On a mild day in early May, with the young green foliage bursting on the trees around the prison, he collected Maggie Beaton in his van. She lay in the back on a makeshift bed of mattress and blankets while they jostled their way to Newcastle under police escort. Not that the prone, silent woman was in any condition to escape. Her eyes were dull and lacklustre, her hair thin and limp, her limbs like twigs. She found it difficult to speak and seemed to have lost her appetite for words as well as food.

  George was aghast at her deterioration. She seemed bewildered by her surroundings as they helped her into the cottage and laid her on a bed in the corner of the room, next to a lit fire. Although it was May, there was still a chill in the air and the thick-walled cottage had not yet dried out from the spring squalls.

  ‘She needs coaxing to eat,’ Heslop said severely. ‘Simple things like milk and soup.’

  ‘I get milk from the farm,’ George told him, ‘and there’re plenty vegetables in the plot to make broth.’

  ‘I still think you should employ someone,’ Heslop fretted. ‘I could help pay–’

  ‘I can manage on me own,’ George replied stubbornly. ‘I’ve fended for mesel’ since I was little more than a nipper. Maggie’s all right wi’ me.’

  Maggie watched them dumbly as they discussed her as if she were not there. But then that was how she felt; detached. She was drained to her very core, clinging on to life and sanity by her broken fingernails. She had no interest in her surroundings, only that she was out of that miserable cell and that George was with her. Yet the blackness of the past weeks was wrapped as firmly round her as ever, stifling her thoughts and actions. She was too weary to speak, too weak to cry. All she wanted to do was sleep and sleep …

  Heslop left and the police withdrew, satisfied that their charge was in no state to attempt an escape. George went over to the bed and gazed at Maggie. She was sleeping, her body so frail it hardly made an impression under the covers. He stroked the dark hair away from her gaunt face and kissed her softly on the forehead. Her ragged breathing altered a fraction, but the strained set of her features remained.

  If he had believed in a God, he would have given thanks for this second chance to care for Maggie, to make her whole again, for that was the task he set himself. But he did not believe, so he strode back outside and busied himself in the allotment.

  ***

  Maggie’s recovery was uneven. After two weeks she was sitting up in bed drinking watery soup. At the end of the month she could sit in a chair in the doorway, sheltered from the wind that whipped around the hill, and watch George tending the garden after work. She had progressed to bread soaked in milk and mashed vegetables and stewed apples like a small child learning to eat. But there were still days when she took to her bed and lay paralysed by the blanket of blackness that lay over her, unseen but smothering.

  George had again given up his rowing to look after her and she was amazed at his patience and resourcefulness. He cooked and washed up and took their clothes to the laundry, as well as tending the fire, feeding the hens that pecked around the house and harvesting the early rhubarb and runner beans. At haymaking, he lent a hand after work on Hibbs’ Farm and was paid in milk and cheese and butter.

  And in the evenings, as the sun lay down below the western hills, he would settle Maggie by the fire and read to her by flickering candlelight. He did not seem to mind if she did not listen, or curled up on the bed in the grip of a black mood and cried at nothing. He neither chided not rebuked her; he did not storm off as he had once done, and his gentleness was a revelation.

  Slowly, like one of his tenderly nurtured plants, Maggie emerged from the dark soil of her depression and stretched into the light. She was overwhelmed with gratitude for his loving care as she became aware of her surroundings and began to take an interest in life again.

  June arrived and she delighted in the small dilapidated cottage that he had discovered on the lip of the farm, with its plum trees and ragged garden, burgeoning with George’s vegetables and the trespassing hens. From here she could see right down to the River Tyne and its cranes and factory chimneys and ranks of terraces, stacked up on its banks like dolls’ houses.

  To the west she could gaze upriver to the rich green valley of the upper Tyne, beyond the grazing animals and peaceful fields of Farmer Hibbs. Late one tranquil summer evening, she sat contentedly in the garden and watched the sunset wavering like a banner in the sky while George read and talked and listened to the sounds of dusk.

  ‘Arcadia,’ Maggie nicknamed their new home.

  ‘Just wait till winter,’ George teased, ‘and see how much you like it then.’

  ‘I can wait,’ Maggie laughed.

  And she revelled in the thought, because winter seemed an age away and it made her content to think they had all this time stretching ahead together. She tried to banish from her mind that her licence ran out at the end of July and that she must deliver herself back to prison by then and was only reminded of this by occasional visits from the police, checking on her whereabouts. This time she was not going to be forced into hiding.

  So they kept up the pretence that they could make plans into the winter, each unable to contemplate what another stint in prison might do to Maggie’s health.

  That evening, Maggie stood in the doorway as the half-dark crept over the garden, reluctant to go inside. She kept glancing beyond the gate and down the hill, her mind alert to something as yet unidentified. After months of malnutrition in prison she thought her ‘feelings’ about things had been numbed, cauterised by the trauma. But tonight they tingled down her spine and made her uneasy.

  ‘Come in, pet,’ George beckoned from inside their cottage.

  Maggie sighed and shrugged to herself. Perhaps the ghost of her mother was passing? Then she saw it: a dark, darting shadow on the path below, skirting the hedgerow.

  ‘George,’ she called, ‘someone’s coming.’

  He came to stand by her as the figure drew nearer, anxious to protect Maggie and constantly watchful that she should not be taken before her time expired.

  ‘He’s alone, whoever he is,’ Maggie murmured.

  By now they could hear his panting as he ran the last stretch up the hill towards the cottage. A gangling figure appeared in the gloom by the garden gate. Maggie peered. She began to walk towards him.

  ‘Maggie!’ George cautioned, but she was quickening her pace.

  ‘Jimmy, is it you?’ she cried.

  He burst through the gate and flung his arms round his sister in answer.

  ‘Will you tak’
us in?’ he gasped. ‘Please, Maggie, will you have me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Maggie answered without hesitation. ‘But what in the world brings you up here?’

  ‘Heslop told me where you were,’ Jimmy panted, still clinging to her. ‘I had to get away. It’s terrible at home. I cannot gan back. Never!’

  ‘You don’t have to gan back,’ Maggie assured him, deeply troubled. ‘Come inside.’

  She glanced at George as she steered her brother round and her lover nodded his silent assent.

  In the candlelight they saw the blood on his cheek and the swelling around his left eye.

  ‘Who the devil’s done this to you?’ Maggie demanded angrily, sitting him down on a chair.

  ‘Turvey,’ Jimmy spat out the name.

  ‘Richard?’ Maggie asked in astonishment. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Aye, he did,’ Jimmy said, wincing at her probing fingers. ‘And I’m not the only one he’s raised his fists to an’ all. I could kill ’im for what he’s done to our family!’

  Maggie and George exchanged worried looks.

  Later that night, after hearing Jimmy’s disturbing story, they put the exhausted boy to bed on a mattress of hay in the loft. Then they went to bed, too troubled to talk of what they had learned, and held each other close. Maggie knew now that she would have to be strong for others as well as herself; her time of recuperation was over.

  And so is Arcadia, Maggie thought with regret, as she burrowed further into George’s comforting arms.

  ***

  Susan ducked as a shoe came flying at her head.

  ‘Do you call these polished?’ Richard shouted.

  ‘I did polish them,’ Susan answered fearfully.

  ‘Well do ’em again, you stupid cow!’ Richard hurled the other one at his wife.

  Shaking, she bent down to pick them up, feeling a flutter inside. The baby, she told herself, I must protect the baby. For there was no doubt now that she was pregnant; her swelling womb was beginning to show and her breasts had enlarged, so that all the new dresses that Richard had bought her no longer fitted. But instead of being happy about becoming a father, he seemed to be annoyed that she no longer looked elegant and did not have the energy to accompany him to tea dances and theatres. Instead, he took Helen, dressing her up in Susan’s old clothes and flaunting her around the town. It had been the cause of a fearful row with her sister which had resulted in Richard punching Susan for accusing him of adultery with Helen.