Tyne Dock was deserted. It was Sunday and the hour when the long dusk was ending and the night beginning. Moreover, it was bitterly cold and the first flakes of snow were falling at spaced intervals, dropping to rest in their white purity on the greasy, coal-dust, spit-smeared flags.
The five arches leading from the dock gates towards the Jarrow Road showed streaks of dull green water running down from their domes. Beneath the arches the silence and desolation of the docks was intensified; they, too, seemed to be resting, drawing breath as it were, before taking again the weight of the wagons which, with the dawn, would rumble over four of them from the coal staithes that lay beyond the brick wall linking them together. Beyond the fifth arch the road divided, one section mounting to Simonside, the other leading to Jarrow.
The road to Jarrow was a grim road, a desolate road, and a stretch of it bordered the slakes at East Jarrow, the great open stretch of mud which in turn bordered the river Tyne.
There was nothing grim about the road to Simonside, for as soon as you mounted the bank Tyne Dock and East Jarrow were forgotten, and you were in the country. Up and up the hill you went and there to the left, lying back in their well-tended gardens, were large houses; past the farm, and now you were among green fields and open land as far as the eye could see. Of course, if you looked back you would glimpse the masts of the ships lying all along the river, but looking ahead even in the falling twilight you knew this was a pleasant place, a place different from Tyne Dock, or East Jarrow, or Jarrow itself; this was the country. The road, like any country road, was rough, and the farther you walked along it the narrower it became until finally petering out into a mere cart track running between fields.
Strangers were always surprised when, walking along this track, they came upon the cottages. There were three cottages, but they were approached by a single gate leading from the track and bordered on each side by an untidy tangled hedge of hawthorn and bramble.
The cottages lay in a slight hollow about twenty feet from the gate, and half this distance was covered by a brick path which then divided into three uneven parts, each leading to a cottage door. The cottages were numbered 1, 2 and 3 but were always called No. 1 The Cottages, No. 2 The Cottages, and No. 3 The Cottages.
In No. 1 lived the Waggetts, in No. 2 the Connors, and in No. 3 the Learys. But, as this was Sunday, all the Waggett family and three of the Learys were in the Connors’ cottage, and they were playing cards.
‘In the name of God, did you ever see the likes! He’s won again. How much is it I owe you this time?’
‘Twelve and fourpence.’
‘Twelve an’ fourpence! Will you have it now or will you wait till ye get it?’
‘I’ll wait till I get it.’
‘Ta, you’ve got a kind heart. Although you’re a rent man you’ve got a kind heart. I’ll say that for you, Rory.’
‘Ah, shut up Bill. Are you goin’ to have another game?’
‘No, begod! I’m not. I’ve only half a dozen monkey nuts left, an’ Janie there loves monkey nuts. Don’t you, lass?’
Bill Waggett turned round from the table and looked towards his only daughter, who was sitting with the women who were gathered to one side of the fire cutting clippings for a mat, and Janie laughed back at him, saying, ‘Aw, let him have the monkey nuts; ’cos if you don’t, he’ll have your shirt.’ She now exchanged a deep knowing look with Rory Connor, who had half turned from the table, and when he said, ‘Do you want me to come there and skelp your lug?’ she tossed her head and cried back at him, try it on, lad. Try it on.’ And all those about the fire laughed as if she had said something extremely witty.
Her grannie laughed, her wrinkled lips drawn back from her toothless gums, her mouth wide and her tongue flicking in and out with the action of the aged; she laughed as she said, ‘That’s it. That’s it. Start the way you mean to go on. Married sixty-five years me afore he went; never lifted a hand to me; didn’t get the chance.’ The cavity of her mouth became wider.
Ruth Connor laughed, but hers was a quiet, subdued sound that seemed to suit her small, thin body and her pointed face and black hair combed back from the middle parting over each side of her head.
Her daughter, Nellie, laughed. Nellie had been married for three years and her name now was Mrs Burke. Nellie, like her mother, was small and thin but her hair was fair. The word puny would describe her whole appearance.
And Lizzie O’Dowd laughed. Lizzie O’Dowd was of the Connor family. She was Paddy Connor’s half-cousin. She was now forty-one years old but had lived with them since she had come over from Ireland at the age of seventeen. Lizzie’s laugh was big, deep and hearty; her body was fat, her hair brown and thick; her eyes brown and round. Lizzie O’Dowd looked entirely different from the rest of the women seated near the fire, particularly the last, who was Kathleen Leary from No. 3 The Cottages. Kathleen’s laugh had a weary sound. Perhaps it was because after bearing sixteen children her body was tired. It was no consolation that seven were dead and the eldest three in America for she still had six at home and the youngest was but two years old.
It was now Paddy Connor, Rory’s father, who said, ‘You were talkin’ of another game, lad. Well then, come on, get on with it.’
Paddy was a steelworker in Palmer’s shipyard in Jarrow. For the past fifteen years he had worked in the blast furnaces, and every inch of skin on his face was red, a dull red, like overcooked beetroot. He had three children, Rory being the eldest was twenty-three.
Rory was taller than his father. He was thickset with a head that inclined to be square. He did not take after either his mother or his father in looks for his hair was a dark brown and his skin, although thick of texture, was fresh looking. His eyes, too, were brown but of a much deeper tone than his hair. His lips were not full as might have been expected to go with the shape of his face but were thin and wide. Even in his shirt sleeves he looked smart, and cleaner than the rest of the men seated around the table.
Jimmy, the younger son, had fair hair that sprang like fine silk from double crowns on his head. His face had the young look of a boy of fourteen yet he was nineteen years old. His skin was as fair as his hair and his grey eyes seemed over-big for his face. His body looked straight and well formed, until he stood up, and then you saw that his legs were badly bowed, so much so that he was known as Bandy Connor.
Paddy’s third child was Nellie, Mrs Burke, who was next in age to Rory.
Bill Waggett from No. 1 The Cottages, the son of Gran Waggett and the father of Janie, worked in the docks. He was fifty years old but could have been taken for sixty. His wife had died six years before, bearing her seventh child. Janie was the only one they had managed to rear and he adored her.
Bill’s love for her had been such that he did not demand that she stay at home to keep house for him when his wife died but had let her go into service as a nursemaid, even though this meant that once again he would be treated as a young nipper by his mother who was then in her seventy-ninth year. But he, like all those in the cottages, gave her respect if only for the fact that now at eighty-five she still did a full day’s work.
Collum Leary was a miner. He was now forty-eight but had been down the pit since he was seven years old. His initiation had been to sit twelve hours a day in total blackness. At eight he had graduated to crawling on his hands and knees with a chain between his legs, which was attached to a bogie load of coal, while his blood brother pushed it from behind. He could not remember his mother, only his father who had come from Ireland when he himself was a boy. The nearest Collum had ever got to Ireland was the Irish quarter in Jarrow and as he himself said, who would bother crossing the seas when almost every man-jack of them were on your doorstep?
Collum at forty-eight was a wizened, prematurely aged man who carried the trade-mark of his following on his skin, for his face and body were scarred as with pocks by blue marks left by the imprint of the coal. But Collum was happy. He went to confession once a twelve-month, and now and again he would follow it by Communion, and he did his duty by God as the priest dictated and saw to it that his wife gave birth every year, at least almost every year. Those years in which she failed to become pregnant were the times he took Communion.
‘How’s the shipbuilding goin’, Jimmy?’ Collum Leary now poked his head forward across the table.
‘Oh, grand, fine, Mr Leary.’
‘When are you goin’ to build your own boat?’
‘That’ll be the day, but I will sometime.’ Jimmy nodded now. Then catching Rory’s eye, he smiled widely. ‘I said I will, an’ I will, won’t I, Rory?’ The boy appealed to his older brother as to one in authority.
Rory, shuffling the cards, glanced sideways at Jimmy and there was a softness in his expression that wasn’t usual except when perhaps he looked at Janie.
‘You’ll soon be out of your time, won’t you, Jimmy?’
Jimmy now turned towards Bill Waggett, answering, ‘Aye, beginnin’ of the year, Mr Waggett. And that’s what I’m feared of. They turn you out, you know, once your time’s up.’
‘Aw, they won’t turn you out.’ Bill Waggett pursed his lips. You hear things around the docks you know; there’s more things come up on the tide than rotten cabbages. I hear tell you’re the best ‘prentice Baker’s ever had in his yard; a natural they say you are, Jimmy; mould a bit of wood with your hands, they say.’
‘Aw, go on with you.’ Jimmy turned his head to the side, his lips pressed tight but his whole face failing to suppress his pleasure at the compliment. Then looking at Bill Waggett again and his expression changing, he said, ‘But I’ll tell you somethin’, I wouldn’t be able to finish me time if old Baker saw what I was doin’ at this minute.’
‘You mean havin’ a game?’ Rory had stopped shuffling the pack and Jimmy nodded at him, saying, ‘Aye. Well, you know what some of them’s like. But now there’s a notice come out. Didn’t I tell you?’
‘No, you didn’t. A notice? What kind of a notice?’
‘Well it says that anybody that’s found playin’ cards on a Sunday’ll lose their jobs, an’ if you know about somebody having a game an’ don’t let on, why then you’ll lose your job an’ all.’
Rory slapped his hand of cards on to the table. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘Aye, Rory.’
‘My God!’ Rory now looked round at the rest of the men, and they stared back at him without speaking until his father said, ‘You don’t know you’re born, lad.’ There was a slight touch of resentment in the tone and the look they exchanged had no friendliness in it. Then Paddy, nodding towards Bill Waggett, said, ‘What did you tell me the other day about when you worked in the soda works, Bill?’
‘Oh that. Well’—Bill brought his eyes to rest on Rory— ‘couldn’t breathe there. If you were a few minutes late you were fined, and if it was a quarter of an hour, like it might be in winter when you couldn’t your way through the snow, why man, they stopped a quarter day’s pay. And if you dared to talk about your work outside you were fined ten bob the first time, then given the push if it happened twice. That’s a fact. It is, it is. An’ you might be sayin’ covered of any account. And if anybody covered up for you when you were late . . . oh my God! they were in it for it. You know what? They had to pay the fine, the same fine as you paid. You were treated like a lot of bairns: back-chat the foreman and it was half a dollar fine. My God! I had to get out of there. You see, Rory, as your da says, you don’t know you’re born being, a rent collector. Your da did something for you lettin’ you learn to read. By! aye, he did. It’s somethin’ when you can earn your livin’ without dirtyin’ your hands.’
Rory v was flicking the cards over the flowered oilcloth that covered the wooden table. His head was lowered and his lids were lowered, the expression in his eyes was hidden, but his lips were set straight.
Jimmy, as always sensing his brother’s mood, turned to Collum Leary and said, ‘It’s a pity our Rory isn’t in America along with your Michael and James and one of them boats that ply the river, like Michael said, where they can gamble in the open.’
‘Aye, it is that, Jimmy,’ Collum laughed at him. ‘He’d make his fortune.’ He turned and pushed Rory in the shoulder with his doubled fist, adding, ‘Why don’t you go to America, Rory, now why don’t you?’
‘I just might, I just might.’ Rory was now fanning out the cards in his hand. It would suit me that, down to the ground it would. A gamblin’ boat . . . .’
‘Gamblin’, cards, fortunes made in America, that’s all you hear.’ With the exception of Rory the men turned and looked towards Lizzie O’Dowd, where she had risen from her chair, and she nodded at them, continuing, ‘Nobody is ever satisfied. Take what God sends an’ be thankful.’ Then her tone changing, she laughed as she added, ‘He’s gona send you cold brisket this minute. Who wants pickled onions with it?’
There were gabbled answers and laughter from the table and when she turned away and walked down the room past the chiffonier, past the dess-bed that stood in an alcove, and into the scullery, Janie, too, turned and followed her into the cluttered cramped space and closed the door after her.
Hunching her shoulders upwards against the cold, Janie picked up a knife and began cutting thick slices off a large crusty loaf. She had almost finished cutting the bread before she spoke. Her head still bent, she said quietly, ‘Don’t worry, Lizzie, he won’t go to America.’
‘Aw, I know that, lass, I know that. It’s me temper gets the better of me.’ She turned from hacking lumps of meat from the brisket bone and, looking full at Janie, she said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, it’s funny, but you understand, lass, don’t you?’
‘Aye, I understand, Lizzie. Aw, don’t worry, he understands an’ all.’
‘I wish I could think so.’
‘He does, he does.’
Lizzie now put the knife down on the table and, bringing one plump hand up, she pressed it tightly across her chin as she remarked, ‘I’m not a bad woman, Janie, I never was.’
‘Aw, Lizzie, Lizzie.’ Janie, her arms outstretched now, put them around the fat warm body of Lizzie O’Dowd, whom she had known and loved since she was a child; even before her own mother had died she had loved Lizzie O’Dowd as if she were a second mother, or perhaps she had placed her first, she was never quite certain in her own mind; and now, their cheeks pressed close for a moment, she whispered, ‘It’ll all come right. It’ll all come right in the end, you’ll see.’
‘Aye, yes. Yes, you’re right, lass.’ Lizzie turned her away as she roughly swept the tears from her cheeks with the side of her finger. Then picking up the knife again and her head bowed once more, she muttered, ‘I think the world of Ruth an’ I always have. She’s the best of women . . . . Life isn’t easy, Janie’
‘I know it isn’t, Lizzie. And Ruth’s fond of you, you know she is. She couldn’t do without you. None of us could do without you.
‘Ah, lass.’ Lizzie was smiling now, a denigrating smile. ‘Everybody can be done without.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Have a walk around the cemetery the next time you’re out.’
‘Aw. Lizzie—’ Janie was leaning against her shoulder now laughing—’you’re the limit. You know, every time I feel down I think of you.’
‘Huh, that’s a left-handed compliment if ever heard one: When you’re down you think of me. You can’t get much lower than down, can you?’
‘You!’ Janie now pushed her. ‘You know what I mean. Look, is that enough bread?’
‘That! It wouldn’t fill a holey tooth; you’d better start on another loaf . . . How is that nice family of yours?
‘Oh, lovely as always, lovely, Eeh! you know I often wonder what would have become of me, I mean what kind of job I would’ve got in the end. I’d likely have landed up in some factory, like most others, if I hadn’t had that bit of luck. Life’s so different there, the furniture, the food, everything. The way they talk the master and mistress, I mean. Do you understand, Lizzie? You know I’m not bein’ an upstart but I like bein’ there. Mind you, that’s not to say I don’t like comin’ home; I love coming home, even when I know me grannie is goin’ to choke me with words and her bloomin’ old sayin’s. Eeh! the things that she remembers.’ They were laughing again. Then she ended, ‘But there’s different kinds of life . . . I mean livin’, Lizzie. You know what I mean?’
‘Aye, lass, I know what you mean, although I’ve never lived any other kind of life but this and I don’t want to, not for meself I don’t, but for you and . . . and others. Yes, yes, I know what you mean.’ She now placed portions of the meat on the slices of dry bread which she then stacked on a plate. Patting the last one, she exclaimed, ‘Well now, let’s go and feed the five thousand an’ find out if it’s tea they want or if they’re goin’ to get the cans on.’
In the kitchen once more, Lizzie slapped down the heaped plate of meat and bread in the middle of the table, saying, ‘Is it tea or are you gettin’ the cans on?’
The men glanced furtively from one to the other, their eyes asking a question. Then Paddy and Bill turned simultaneously and looked towards the women, and as usual it was Lizzie who answered them, crying loudly now, ‘There’s none of us goin’ trapesing down there the night an’ it fit to cut the lugs off you. If you want your beer there’s the cans.’ She thrust out her thick arm and pointed towards four assorted cans, their lids dangling by pieces of string from the handles.
The men made no answer but still continued to look towards the women, and then Ruth spoke. Quietly and in levelled tones, she said, ‘It’s Sunday.’
The men sighed and turned back to the table again, and Bill Waggett muttered under his breath, ‘An’ that’s that then. Bloody Sunday. You know’—he glanced up from the cards and, catching Jimmy’s attention, he nodded at him, saying softly, ‘I hate Sundays. I always have hated Sundays ever since I was a lad ’cos she kept me going harder on a Sunday than when I was at work.’ He had inclined his head backwards towards the fire-place and had hardly finished speaking when his mother, her dewlap chin wobbling, cried across the room, ‘Lazy bugger! you always were. Wouldn’t even kick when you were born; slid out like a dead fly on hot fat.’
As the roars of laughter filled the kitchen Bill Waggett turned towards his mother and yelled, ‘That’s a fine thing to say; you should be ashamed of yersel.’ He now looked towards Ruth as if apologizing, but she was being forced to smile, and Ruth rarely smiled or laughed at ribaldry.
‘Remember the day he was born.’ Old Mrs Waggett had got their attention now. ‘Me mother an’ me grannie pulled him out, an’ I remember me grannie’s very words. “Like a Saturday night rabbit he is,” she said. You know’—she turned towards Janie—’when the last of the rabbits are left in the market, all weary skin an’ bone? “You’ll never rear him,” she said; “he’ll go along with the other five.” But I never had no luck, he didn’t.’
She now glanced in impish affection towards her son, where he was sitting, his head bowed, moving it slowly from side to side. The movement had a despairing finality about it. His mother had started and it would take some kind of an event to stop her, especially when as now she had the ears of everyone in the room. He could never understand why people liked listening to her.
‘And it was me own mother who looked at him lying across her hands an’ said, “I don’t think you need worry about the press gang ever chasin’ him, Nancy.” An’ you know somethin’? The press gang nearly got me dad once. Around seventeen ninety it was. I’m not sure of the year, one, two or three, but I do know that all the lads of the Tyne, the sailors like, put their heads together; they were havin’ no more of it. They, ran the press gang out of the town, North Shields that is, not this side. Then in come the regiment. Barricaded the town, they did, an’ forced the lads on board the ships. But me dad managed to get over to this side of the water; he said himself he never knew how.’
‘He walked on it.’
There were loud guffaws of laughter now and Gran cried back at her son, ‘Aye, an’ he could have done that an’ all, for at one time you could walk across the river. Oh aye, they once made a bridge with boats, me mother said, and laid planks over ’em, and a whole regiment passed over. The river’s changed.’ She nodded from one to the other. ‘You know, me grannie once told me they caught so much salmon on the Tyne that it was sold at a farthin’ a pound. It was, it was. Can you believe that? A farthin’ a pound!’
‘Yes, yes, Gran.’ All except her son were nodding at her.
‘And I don’t need to go as far back as me grannie’s or even me mother’s time to remember the great shoals of fish that were caught in these waters. An’ there were nowt but keels and sailin’ ships takin’ the coal away then. None of your Palmer’s iron boats. What did you say, our Bill?’ She frowned towards her son. ‘ “Oh my God!” that’s what you said. Well, I’m glad you think of Him as yours.’
She joined in the titter that now went round the room. Then nodding her head from one to the other, she went on, ‘Talkin’ of coal. I can remember as far back as when Simon Temple opened his pit at Jarrow. I was only eight at the time but by! I remember that do. The militia was marching, the bands playing, an’ when he got to Shields market the lads pulled the horses from his carriage and drew him themselves. His sons were with him and his old dad. They pulled them all the way to the Don Bridge, where the gentlemen of Jarrow met him. And that was the day they laid the stone for the school for the bairns of his workmen. By! I remember it as if it was yesterday. Simon Temple.’ She shook her head and lapsed for a moment into the memory of one of the rare days of jollification in her childhood.
In the pause that followed Collum Leary put in, ‘Simon Temple. Aye, an’ all the bloody coal owners. Grand lads, grand fellows, great gentlemen. Oh aye, especially when they’re shedding crocodile tears over the dead. Ninety-nine men and lads lost in the Fellon pit and over twenty at Harrington . . . .’
‘That was a long time ago, Collum.’ Grannie Waggett thrust her chin out at the small man who had usurped her position of storyteller and he turned on her, no longer jocular as he cried, ‘Don’t be daft, Gran. It’s happenin’ almost every month in one pit or t’other. Don’t be daft, woman.’
‘Leave be. Leave be.’ It was the first time Kathleen Leary had spoken and her husband looked at her as he repeated, ‘Leave be, leave be, you say. Bloody coal owners!’
The mood of the kitchen had changed as it nearly always did when the subject of work was brought up, whether it was Paddy Connor talking of the steel works or Bill Waggett of the conditions in the docks, or Collum Leary of the soul destroying work in the mines; and nearly always it was on a Sunday when the atmosphere would become charged with bitterness because nearly always on a Sunday Grannie Waggett was present.
‘Come on, Gran.’ Janie had taken hold of her grandmother’s arm.
‘What! What you after? Leave me be.’
‘It’s time we were goin’ in.’ Janie nodded towards the wall. ‘An’ I’ll soon be making for the road.’
Grannie Waggett stared up into Janie’s face for a moment. Then her head nodding, she said, ‘Aye, aye, lass; I forgot you’ll soon be making for the road. Well—’ She pulled herself up out of the chair saying now, ‘Where’s me shawl?’
Janie brought the big black shawl from where it had been draped over the head of a three-seated wooden saddle standing against the far wall pressed between a battered chest of drawers and a surprisingly fine Dutch wardrobe.
The old woman now nodded, first to Ruth, then to Nellie, then to Lizzie, and finally to Kathleen Leary, and to each she said, ‘So long,’ and each answered her kindly, saying, ‘So long, Gran,’ and as she made for the door with Janie behind her, Lizzie called to her, ‘Put the oven shelf in the bed, you’ll need it the night.’
‘I will, I will. Oh my God! look at that,’ she cried, as she opened the door. ‘It’s comin’ down thicker than ever.’ She turned her head and looked into the room again. ‘We’re in for it, another window-sill winter. I can smell it.’
Janie had taken an old coat from the back of the door and as she hugged it around her she glanced back towards the table and Rory, and when she said, ‘Half an hour?’ he smiled and nodded at her.
‘Go on, Gran, go on; you’ll blow them all out.’ Janie went to press her grandmother on to the outer step, but the old lady resisted firmly, saying, ‘Stop a minute. Stop a minute. Look, there’s somebody coming in at the gate.’
Janie went to her side and peered into the darkness. Then again looking back into the room, she cried, ‘It’s John George.’
Rising slowly from the table and coming towards the door, Rory said, ‘He wasn’t coming the night; he mustn’t have been able to see her.’
‘Hello, John George.’
‘Hello there, Janie.’ John George Armstrong stood scraping his boots on the iron ring attached to the wall as he added, ‘Hello there, Gran.’
And Gran’s reply was, ‘Well, come on in if you’re comin’ an’ let us out, else I’ll be frozen stiffer than a corpse.’
Janie now pressed her grannie none too gently over the step and as she passed John George she said, ‘See you later, John George.’
‘Aye, see you later, Janie,’ he replied before entering the kitchen and closing the door behind him and replying to a barrage of greetings.
Having hung his coat and hard hat on the back of the door he took his place at the table, and Rory asked briefly, ‘What went wrong?’
‘Oh, the usual . . . . You playing cards?’ The obvious statement was a polite way of telling the company that he didn’t wish to discuss the reason for his unexpected presence among them tonight in and they accepted this.
‘Want to come in?’
‘What do you think?’
As John George and Rory exchanged a tight smile Bill Waggett said, ‘You’d better tighten your belt, lad, an’ hang on to your trousers ’cos he’s in form the night. Cleared me out of monkey nuts.’
‘No!’
‘Oh aye. We were sayin’ he should go to America and make his fortune on one of them boats.’
‘He needn’t go as far as that, Mr Waggett, there’s plenty of games goin’ on in Shields and across the water, and they tell me that fortunes are made up in Newcastle.’
‘Gamblin’! That’s all anybody hears in this house, gamblin’. Do you want a mug of tea?’ Lizzie was bending over John George, and he turned his long thin face up to her and smiled at her kindly as he answered, ‘It would be grand, Lizzie.’
‘Have you had anything to eat?’
‘I’ve had me tea.’
‘When was that?’
‘Oh. Oh, not so long ago.’
‘Have you a corner for a bite?’
‘I’ve always got a corner for a bite, Lizzie.’ Again he smiled kindly at her, and she pushed him roughly, saying, ‘Death warmed up, that’s what you look like. Good food’s lost on you. Where does it go? You haven’t a pick on your bones.’
‘Thoroughbreds are always lean, Lizzie.’
As she turned and walked away towards the scullery she said, ‘They should have put a brick on yer head when you were young to make you grow sideways instead of up.’
The game proceeded with its usual banter until the door opened again and Janie entered, fully dressed now for the road in a long brown cloth coat to which was attached a shoulder cape of the same material. It was an elegant coat and like all the clothes she now wore had been passed on to her from her mistress. Her hat, a brown velour, with a small flat brim, was perched high on the top of her head, and its colour merged with the shining coils of her hair. The hat was held in place by two velvet ribbons coming from beneath the brim and tied under her chin. She had fine woollen gloves on her hands. The only articles of her apparel which did not point to taste were her boots. These were heavy-looking and buttoned at the side. It was very unfortunate, Jane considered, that her feet should be two sizes bigger than her mistress’s, yet she always comforted herself with the thought that her skirt and coat covered most parts of her boots and there was ever only the toes showing, except when she was crossing the muddy roads and the wheels of the carts and carriages were spraying clarts all over the place.
‘Eeh! by! you look bonny.’ Lizzie came towards her, but before reaching her she turned to Rory, who was rising from the table, saying, ‘You going to keep her waiting all night? Get a move on.’
The quick jerk of Rory’s head, the flash of his eyes and the further straightening of his lips caused Janie to say quickly, ‘There’s plenty of time, there’s plenty of time. I’ve got a full hour afore I’m due in. Look, it’s only eight o’clock.’
It’ll take you all that to walk from here to Westoe an’ the streets covered.’
‘No, it won’t, Lizzie. When I get goin’ George Wilson, the Newcastle walker, or me grannie’s fusiliers aren’t in it.’ She now swung her arms and did a standing march and ended, ‘Grenadier Waggett, the woman walker from Wallsend!’ Then stopping abruptly amid the laughter, she looked to where John George was taking his coat from the back of the door, and she asked flatly, ‘You’re not comin’ surely? You haven’t been here five minutes.’
‘I’ve got to get back, Janie, me Uncle Willy’s not too good.’
‘Was he ever?’
The aside came from Lizzie and as Ruth went to admonish her with a quick shake of her head Rory turned on her a look that could only be described as rage, for it was contorting his features. He did not shout at her, but his low tone conveyed his feelings more than if he had bawled as he said, ‘Will you hold your tongue, woman, an’ mind your own business for once!’
Strangely Lizzie did not turn on him, but she looked at him levelly for a moment and countered his anger with almost a placid expression as she said, ‘I’ve spent me life mindin’ me own business, lad, an’ me own business is to take care of those I’m concerned for, and I’m concerned for John George there. That uncle and aunt of his live off him. And what I’m sayin’ now I’ve said afore to his face, haven’t I, John George?’
‘You have that, Lizzie. And I like you mindin’ me business, it’s a comforter.’
‘There you are.’ She nodded towards Rory, who now had his back to her as he made his way down the long narrow room towards the ladder at the end that led into the loft, which place was Jimmy’s and his bedroom and had been since they were children, one end of it at one time having been curtained off to accommodate Nellie.
With no further words, Lizzie now went into the scullery, and Janie began saying her good-byes. When she came to Nellie she bent over her and said below her breath, ‘You all right, Nellie?’
‘Aye. Aye, Janie, I’m all right.’
Janie stared down into the peaked face; she knew Nellie wasn’t all right, she had never been all right since she married. Nellie’s marriage frightened her. Charlie Burke had courted Nellie for four years and was never off the doorstep, and Sunday after Sunday they had laughed and larked on like bairns in this very room. But not any more, not since she had been married but a few months. It was something to do with—the bedroom. Neither her grannie nor Lizzie had spoken to her about it and, of course, it went without saying that Ruth wouldn’t mention any such thing. But from little bits that she had overheard between Lizzie and her grannie she knew Nellie’s trouble lay in—the bedroom, and the fact that she had not fallen with a bairn and her all of three years married. Charlie Burke rarely came up to the house any more on a Sunday. Of course he had an excuse; he worked on the coal boats and so could be called out at any time to take a load up the river.
Janie now went into the kitchen to say good-bye to Lizzie.
Lizzie was standing with her hands holding the rim of the tin dish that rested on a little table under the window, which sloped to the side as if following the line of the roof.
‘I’m off then Lizzie.’
Without turning and her voice thick and holding a slight tremor, Lizzie said in answer, ‘He’s a bloody upstart. Do you know that, Janie? He’s a bloody snot. I’m sorry to say this, lass, but he is.’
‘He’s not; you know he’s not, Lizzie.’ She shook her head at the older woman. ‘An’ you’re as much to blame as he is. Now yes you are.’ She bent sidewards and wagged her finger into the fat face, and Lizzie, her eyes blinking rapidly, put out her hand and touched the cream skin that glowed with health and youth and said, ‘Lass, you’re too good for him. And it isn’t the day or yesterday I’ve said it, now is it? He’s damned lucky.’
‘So am I, Lizzie.’
‘Aw, lass.’ Lizzie smiled wryly. ‘You’d say thank you if you were dished up with a meat puddin’ made of lights, you would that.’
‘Well, and why not? And it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve eaten lights.’
They pushed against each other with their hands; then Janie said, ‘Remember that starving Christmas? How old was I? Ten, eleven? No work, strikes, trouble. Eeh! we had lights all right then. Me grannie cooked them seven different ways every week.’ She paused and they looked at each other. ‘Bye-bye, Lizzie.’
Spontaneously now Janie put her arms around Lizzie and kissed her, and Lizzie hugged her to herself. It was an unusual demonstration of affection. People didn’t go kissing and clarting on in public, it wasn’t proper; everybody knew that, even among engaged couples kissing and clarting on was kept for the dark country lanes, or if you were from the town, and common, a back lane or shop doorway; the only proper place for kissing and darting on was a front room, if you had one; if not, well then you had to wait for the bedroom, as every respectable person knew. She was going to wait for the bedroom, by aye she was that, even although she wasn’t all that taken with what she understood happened in the bedroom.
She now disengaged herself and went hurriedly from the scullery, leaving Lizzie once more gripping each side of the tin dish.
Rory and John George were already dressed for outdoors and waiting for her, Rory, although not short by any means, being all of five foot ten, looking small against John George’s lean six foot.
John George wore a black overcoat that had definitely not been made for him. Although the length was correct, being well below his knees, the shoulders were too broad, and the sleeves too short, his hands and arms hanging so far out of them that they drew attention to their thin nakedness. There was a distinct crack above the toecap of one of his well-polished boots and a patch in a similar place on the other. His hard hat was well brushed but had a slight greeny tinge to it. His whole appearance gave the impression of clean seediness, yet his position as rent collector in the firm of Septimus Kean was superior to that of Rory, for whereas Rory had only worked for Mr Kean for four years John George had been with him for eight. Now, at twenty-two years of age and a year younger than Rory, he showed none of the other’s comparative opulence for Rory wore a dark grey overcoat over a blue suit, and he had a collar to his shirt, and he did not wear his scarf like a muffler but overlapping on his chest like a business gentleman would have worn it. And although he wore a cap—he only wore his hard hat for business—it wasn’t like a working man’s cap, perhaps it was only the angle at which he wore it that made it appear different.
Looking at him as always with a feeling of pride welling in her, Janie thought, He can get himself up as good as the master.
‘Well then, off you go.’ Ruth seemed to come to the fore for the first time. She escorted them all to the door and there she patted Janie on the back, saying, ‘Until next Sunday then, lass?’
‘Yes, Mrs Connor, until next Sunday. You’ll give a look in on her?’ She nodded towards the next cottage and Ruth said, ‘Of course, of course. Don’t worry about her. You know’—she smiled faintly—’I think she’ll still be here when we’re all pushing the daisies up.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder.’ Janie went out laughing, calling over her shoulder, ‘Ta-rah. Ta-rah everybody. Ta-rah.’
Out in the black darkness they had difficulty in picking their way in single file down the narrow rutted lane. When they reached the broader road they stopped for a moment and Rory, kicking the snow aside with his foot, said, ‘By! it’s thick. If it goes on like this we’ll have a happy day the morrow, eh?’
‘I’d rather have it than rain,’ John George replied; ‘at least it’s dry for a time. It’s the wet that gets me down, day after day, day after day.’
‘Here, hang on.’ Rory now pulled Janie close to him and linked her arm in his. It’s comin’ down thicker than ever. Can’t even see a light in the docks. Well find ourselves in the ditch if we’re not careful.’
Stumbling on, her side now pressed close to Rory’s, Janie began to giggle; then turning her head, she cried, ‘Where are you, John George?’
‘I’m here.’ The voice came from behind them and he answered, ‘Give me your hand. Come on.’
As she put her hand out gropingly and felt John George grip it, Rory said, ‘Let him fend for himself, he’s big enough. You keep your feet, else I’m tellin’ you well be in the ditch.’
It took them all of twenty minutes before they reached Tyne Dock, and there, taking shelter under the last arch, they stopped and drew their breath, and Janie, looking towards a street lamp opposite the dock gates, said, ‘Isn’t it nice to see a light?’
‘And you can just see it and that’s all. Come on, we’d better be goin’. It’s no use standin’, we soon won’t be able to get through.’
As Rory went to pull Janie forward she checked him, saying, ‘Look, wait a minute. It’s daft, you know, you walkin’ all the way to Westoe, you’ve only not to tramp all the way back. It isn’t so bad in the town ’cos there’s the lights, but from the bottom of the bank up to our place . . . well, we’ve just had some, haven’t we? An’ if it keeps on, as you say it’ll get worse underfoot, so what’s the sense of trapesing all the way there with me when John George’s place is only five minutes away?’
‘She’s right, Rory. It’s daft to tramp down all the way to Westoe for it’ll be another couple of hours afore you get back. And then with it coming down like this. Well, as Janie says . . .’
Rory peered from one to the other before he answered, ‘Imagine the reception I’d get if I told them back there I’d left you at the arches. They’d wipe the kitchen with me.’
‘But you’re not leavin’ me at the arches; John George’ll see me right to the door. Look.’ She turned and pushed John George away, saying, ‘Go on, walk on a bit, I’ll catch up with you in a minute at the Dock gates.’
When John George walked swiftly from the shelter of the arch Rory called, ‘Hold your hand a minute . . .’
‘Now just you look here.’ Janie pulled at the lapels of his coat. ‘Don’t be such a fathead; I’d rather know you were safely back home in the dry than have you set me to the door.’
‘But I won’t see you for another week.’
‘That didn’t seem to bother you all afternoon, ’cos you’ve done nowt but play cards.’
‘Well, what can you do back there? I ask you, what can you do? There’s no place to talk and I couldn’t ask you out in the freezing cold or they’d’ve been at me. And I wanted to talk to you, seriously like ’cos it’s . . . it’s time we thought about doin’ something. Don’t you think it is?’
She kept her head on the level, her eyes looking into his as she replied, ‘If you want a straight answer, Mr Connor, aye, I do.’
‘Aw, Janie!’ He pulled her roughly to him and pressed his mouth on hers and when she overbalanced and her back touched the curved wall of the arch she pulled herself from him, saying, ‘Eeh! me coat, it’ll get all muck.’
‘Blast your coat!’
Her voice soft now, she said, ‘Aye, blast me coat,’ then she put her mouth to his again and they stood, their arms gripped tight around each other, their faces merged.
When again she withdrew herself from him he was trembling and he gulped in his throat before saying, ‘Think about it this week, will you?’
‘It’s you that’s got to do the thinking, Rory. We’ve got to get a place an’ furniture ’cos there’s one thing I can tell you sure, I’m not livin’ in with me dad and grannie. I’m not startin’ that way up in the loft. I want a house that I can make nice with things an’ that . . .’
‘As if I would ask you. What do you take me for?’
‘I’m only tellin’ you, I want a decent place . . .’
‘I’m with you there all the way. I’m not for one room an’ a shakydown either, I can tell you that . . . I’ve got something in me napper.’
‘Gamblin’?’
‘Well, aye. And don’t say it like that; I haven’t done too badly out of it, have I now? But what I’m after is to get set on in a good school . . . A big school. And there’s plenty about. But you’ve got to be in the know.’
‘What! be in the know afore you can get into a gamblin’ school?’ Her voice was scornful. ‘Why, you’ve been up at Boldon Colliery where they have schools . . .’
‘Aye in the back yards an’ in the wash-houses. I know all about Boldon Colliery and the games there, hut they’re tin pot compared to what I’m after. The places I mean are where you start with a pound, not with a penny hoping to win a tanner. Oh, aye, I know, there’s times when there’s been ten pounds in a kitty, but them times are few and far between I’m telling you. No, what I’m after is getting set on in a real school, but it’s difficult because of the polis, they’re always on the look out—it’s a tricky business even for the back-laners. That’s funny,’ he laughed, ‘a tricky business, but it is. Remember what Jimmy said the night about notices in the works? They try everything to catch you out: spies, plain-clothes bobbies, touts. It’s odd, you know; they don’t run you in for drinking, but you touch a card or flick a coin and you’re for it . . . Anyway, as I said, I’ve got something in me napper, and if it works out . . .’
‘Be careful, Rory. I get worried about your gamin’. Even years ago when you used to play chucks and always won, I used to wonder how you did it. And it used to worry me; I mean ’cos you always won.’
‘I don’t always win now.’
‘You do pretty often, even if it’s only me da’s monkey nuts.’
They both made small audible sounds, then moved aside to let a couple of men pass. And now she said, ‘I’ll have to be goin’, John George’ll get soaking wet . . . Eeh! I always feel sorry for John George.’
‘Your pity’s wasted, he’s too soft to clag holes with, I’m always telling him. It’s right what she said’—he jerked his head—’those two old leeches suck him dry. He gets two shillings a week more than me and yet look at him, you’d think he got his togs from Paddy’s market. And he might as well for he picks them up from the second-hand stalls. And this lass he’s after . . . he would pick on a ranter, wouldn’t he?’
‘Well, he’s not a Catholic.’
‘No, I know he’s not. He’s not anything in that line, but he goes and takes up with one from the narrowest end of the Nonconformists, Baptist-cum- Methodist-cum . . .’
‘What’s she like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Doesn’t he talk about her at all?’
‘Oh, he never stops talkin’ about her. By the sound of it she should be a nun.’
‘Oh Rory!’
‘She should, she’s so bloomin’ good by all his accounts. She’s been unpaid housekeeper to a sick mother, her dad, two sisters and a brother since she was ten. And now she’s twenty, and she daresn’t move across the door for fear of her old man. He even escorts his other two lasses to work. They’re in a chemist’s shop and he’s there when it closes to fetch them home.’
‘What is he?’
‘He’s got a little tailor’s business, so I understand. But look, forget about John George for a minute. Come here.’ Once again they were close, and when finally they parted he said, ‘Remember what I said. Think on it and we’ll settle it next Sunday, eh?’
‘Yes, Rory.’ Her voice was soft. Tm ready anytime you are, I’ve been ready for a long time. Oh, a long time . . . I want a home of me own . . .’
He took her face gently between his hands and as gently kissed her, and she, after staring at him for a moment, turned swiftly and ran from under the arch and over the snow-covered flags until she came to John George, who was standing pressed tight against the dock wall. She did not speak to him and together they turned and hurried on, past a line of bars arrayed on the opposite side of the road, and so into Eldon Street.
Her throat was full. It was strange but she always wanted to cry when Rory was tender with her. Generally, there was a fierceness about his love-making that frightened her at times, it was when he was tender that she loved him best.
‘Daft of him wanting to come all this way.’
‘Yes, it was, John George.’
‘Of course I was just thinking that if I hadn’t have come along he would have taken you all the way, and that, after all, was what he wanted. I’m blind about some things some times.’
She was kind enough to say, ‘Not you, John George,’ for she had thought it a bit short-sighted of him to accompany them in the first place, and she added, ‘Don’t worry. And you know what? We’re goin’ to settle something next Sunday.’
‘You are? Oh, I’m glad, Janie. I’m glad. I’ve thought for a long time he should have a place of his own ’cos he doesn’t seem quite happy back there. And yet I can’t understand it for they’re a good family, all of them, and I like nothing better than being among them.’
‘Oh! What makes you think that? What makes you think he’s not happy at home, John George?’
‘Well, he’s surly like at times. And I get vexed inside when I hear the way he speaks to Lizzie ’cos she’s a nice body, isn’t she . . . Lizzie? I like her . . . motherly, comfortable. Yet . . . yet at times he treats her like dirt. And I can’t understand it, ’cos he’s not like that outside, I mean when he’s collecting; he’s civility’s own self, and all the women like him. You know that, don’t you? All the women like him, ’cos he’s got a way with him. But the way he speaks to Lizzie . . .’
Janie paused in her walk and, putting her hand on John George’s arm, she drew him to a stop. Then flicking the falling snow away from her eyes, she asked quietly, Don’t you know why he goes on at Lizzie like that?’
‘No.’
‘He’s never told you?’
‘No.’
‘You mean he’s never told you an’ you’ve been workin’ with him and coming up to the house for . . . how many years?’
‘Four and over.’
‘Eeh! I can’t believe it. I thought you knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Well, that . . . that Lizzie, she’s . . . she’s his mother.’
‘Lizzie?’ He bent his long length down to her. ‘Lizzie Rory’s mother? No! How does that come about? I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true. It’s true. Come on, don’t let us stand here, we’ll be soaked.’
‘What . . . what about Mrs Connor? I mean . . . his mother . . . I mean.’
‘It’s all very simple, John George, when you know the ins and outs of it. You see they were married, Mr and Mrs Connor for six years an’ there was no sign of any bairn. Then Mr Connor gets a letter from Ireland from a half-cousin he had never seen. Her name was Lizzie O’Dowd. Her ma and da had died— as far as I can gather from starvation. It was one of those times when the taties went bad, you know, and this lass was left with nobody, and she asked if she could come over here and would he find her a job. Everybody seemed to be comin’ to England, particularly to Jarrow. They were leaving Ireland in boatloads. So what does Mr Connor do but say come right over. By the way, she had got the priest to write ’cos she couldn’t write a scribe and Mr Connor went to a fellow in Jarrow who made a sort of livin’ it writing letters an’ sent her the answer. It was this by the way, Mr Connor having to go an’ get this letter written, that later made him see to it that Rory could read and write. Anyway, Lizzie O’Dowd arrives at the cottage. She’s seventeen an’ bonny, although you mightn’t think it by the look of her now. But I’m goin’ by what me grannie told me. And what’s more she was full of life and gay like. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she and Mr Connor . . . Well, I don’t need to tell you any more, do I? And so Rory came about. But this is the funny part about it. Almost a year later Ruth had her first bairn. That was Nellie. And then she has another. That was Jimmy. Would you believe it? After nothing for seven years! Eeh! it was odd. And, of course, we were all brought up as one family. You could say the three families in the row were all dragged up together.’
As she laughed John George said solemnly, ‘You surprise me, Janie. It’s quite a gliff.’
‘But you don’t think any the worse of Lizzie, do you?’
‘Me think any the worse of . . . ? Don’t be daft. Of course I don’t. But at the same time I’m back where I started for I understand less now than I did afore, Rory speaking to her like that and her his mother.’
‘But he didn’t always know that she was his mother. It was funny that.’ She was silent for a moment, before going on, There was us, all the squad of the Learys, me da, me ma, and me grannie. Well, you know me grannie, her tongue would clip clouts. But nobody, not one of us, ever hinted to him that Mrs Connor wasn’t his mother, it never struck us. I think we sort of thought that he knew, that somebody must have told him earlier on. But nobody had; not until six years ago when he was seventeen and it was Lizzie herself who let the cat out of the bag. You know, Lizzie is one of those women who can’t carry drink. Give her a couple of gins and she’s away; she’ll argue with her own fingernails after a couple of gins. And it was on a New Year’s Eve, and you know what it’s like on a New Year’s Eve. She got as full as a gun an’ started bubbling, and Rory, who up till that time had been very fond of her, even close to her, when she hadn’t got a drink on her, ’cos this is another funny thing about him, he can’t stand women in drink. Well, I don’t remember much about it ’cos I was only a lass at the time, but as I recall, we were all in the Connors’ kitchen. It was around three o’clock in the morning and I was nearly asleep when I hear Lizzie blurting out, “Don’t speak to me like that, you young . . . !” She called him a name. And then she yelled, “I’m your mother! Her there, Ruth there, never had it in her to give breath to a deaf mute till I went an’ had you.” And that was that. From then on he never has been able to stand her. An’ the pity of it is she loves him. He went missing for a week after that. Then he turned up one night half starved, frozen, and in the end he had the pneumonia. He had been sleeping rough, and in January mind. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill him. Now do you begin to understand?’
‘I’m flabbergasted, Janie. To think that I’ve known him all this time and he’s never let on. And we talk you know, we do; I thought we knew everything there was to know about each other. Me, I tell him everything.’ The tall length drooped forward. His head bent against the driving snow, he muttered now, ‘I’m that fond of Rory, Janie, ’cos, well, he’s all I’d like to be and never will.’
‘You’re all right as you are, John George; I wouldn’t have you changed.’ Her voice was loud and strong in his defence.
‘You wouldn’t, Janie?’ The question was almost eager, and she answered, ‘No, I wouldn’t, John George, because your heart’s in the right place. An’ that’s something to be proud of.’
They walked on some way in silence now before she said quietly, ‘I hope you don’t mind me askin’, but the lass you’re gone on, why don’t you bring her up to the kitchen?’
He didn’t answer immediately but took her arm and led her across the road and up the street towards the beginning of Westoe and the select section of the town, where the big houses were bordered by their white railings and the roads were broad enough to take two carriages passing, and he said now, ‘I wish I could, oh I wish I could ’cos she’s nice, Janie, and bonny. Not as bonny as you, but she’s bonny. And she’s had a life of it. Aye, one hell of a life. And still has. Her da’s got religion on the brain I think. Her mother’s bedridden, and, you know, they spend Sunday praying round her bed, taking turns. The only time she’s allowed out is on a Saturday afternoon when she’s sent to Gateshead to visit an aunt who’s dying and who seems to have a bit of money. Her da wants to make sure of who she’s leaving it to and as he can’t go up himself and the other two lasses are in jobs—there was a brother, Leonard, but he ran off to sea, and good luck to him I say—Anyway, Maggie is allowed to go to Gateshead on a Saturday afternoon. That’s how I met her first, on one of me Saturday train jaunts.’
‘You go on a train to Gateshead every Saturday? I didn’t know that. Eeh! on a train . . .’
‘Well’—he laughed self-consciously—’not every Saturday, only when funds allow. And then not to Gateshead, but Newcastle. I take the train up half-way, say to Pelaw, and walk the rest. I love Newcastle. Aw, lad, if I had the money I’d live there; I wouldn’t mind rent collecting around Newcastle.’
‘Aren’t there any slums up there then?’
‘Oh aye, Janie, plenty. But I don’t look at the slums, it’s the buildings I look at. There’s some beautiful places, Janie. Haven’t you ever been to Newcastle?’
‘No, I’ve been across the water to North Shields and Cullercoats, and once I went as far as Felling on this side, but no, I’ve never been to either Gateshead or Newcastle.’
‘Rory should take you up, he should take you to a theatre.’
‘There’s a good theatre here, I mean in Shields.’
‘Oh aye, it’s all right, but it isn’t like Newcastle.’
‘They get the same turns, only a little later.’
‘Oh, I’m not thinkin’ about the turns, nothing like that, it’s the buildings you know. I suppose it was a wrong thing to say that he should take you to a theatre, but I think he should take you up to Newcastle to see the lovely places there, the streets and buildings.’
‘I never knew you liked that kind of thing, John George?’
‘Oh aye, an’ have ever since I was a lad. It was me da who started it. On holiday week-ends we’d walk up there. Me mother never came, she couldn’t stand the distance and she wasn’t interested in buildings. It was because of me da’s interest in buildings and such that I was taught to read and write. He was standing looking up at a lovely front door once. They’re called Regency. It was off Westgate Hill; it was a bonny piece of work with a lovely fanlight and the windows above had iron balconies to them when a man came alongside of us and started crackin’. And it turned out he worked in an architect’s office and he seemed over the moon when he knew me da was interested in masonry and such and was leading me along the same lines. That was the first time I heard the name Grainger mentioned. He was the great builder of Newcastle. And John Dobson, he used to design for Grainger and others. I’d heard of the Grainger Market, and had been through it, but you don’t think of who built these places. And then there’s Grey Street. Eeh! there’s a street for you. The best time to see it is on a Sunday when there’s no carts or carriages packing it out and few people about. By! it’s a sight. As me da once said, that’s what one man’s imagination could do for a town.’
Janie now blew at the snow that was dusting her lips and turned her head towards him and blinked as she said, ‘You’re a surprise packet you are, John George. Do you ever talk to Rory about it?’
‘Aye, sometimes. But Rory’s not really interested in Newcastle or buildings and such.’
‘No, no, he’s not.’ Janie’s voice held a dull note now as she added, ‘Cards, that’s Rory’s interest, cards. Eeh! he seems to think of nothing else.’
‘He thinks of you.’
‘Aye, he does, I must admit.’ She was smiling at him through the falling snow and she added now, ‘You’ve got me interested in Newcastle. I’ll tell him . . . I’ll tell him he’s got to take me up.’
‘Do that, Janie. Aye, do that. Tell him you want to see Jesmond. By! Jesmond’s bonny. And the houses on the way . . . Eeh! lad, you see nothing like them here.’
‘I think I’d like to see the bridges. I heard me da say there’s some fine bridges. Funny me never ever havin’ seen Newcastle and it only seven miles off. And there’s me grannie. She worked there at one time, she was in service at a place overlooking the river. She used to keep talking about the boats laden down with coal going up to London. It was funny, she never liked Newcastle. She still speaks of the people there as if they were foreigners; she’s always sayin’ they kept the South Shields men down, wouldn’t let them have their own shipping rights or nothing until a few years back. It’s funny when you come to think of it, John George, we know more about the people from Ireland, like the Learys and Rory’s folks, than we do about them up in Newcastle. I’m beginning to see the sense of some of me grannie’s sayings; she always used to be saying, “You could be closer to a square head from Sweden than you could to a man with a barrow from Jarrow.”’
John George laughed now, saying, ‘I’ve never heard that one afore.’
‘Oh, I think it’s one of me grannie’s make-up ones. You know, half the things she says I think she makes up. If she had ever been able to read or write she would have been a story teller. I’ve said that to her. Oh—’ She sighed now and shook her gloved hands to bring the circulation back into her fingers as she said, ‘We’re nearly there.’ Then on a little giggle, she added, ‘If the missis was to see you she’d think I was leading a double life and she’d raise the riot act on me.’
As they stopped before a side gate that was picked out by the light from a street lamp she looked at John George, now blowing on his hands, and said with deep concern, ‘Oh, you must be frozen stiff, John George. And no gloves.’
‘Gloves!’ His voice was high. ‘You can see me wearin’ gloves, I’d be taken for a dandy.’
‘Don’t be silly. You need gloves, especially goin’ round in this weather, scribbling in rent books. At least you want mittens. I’ll knit you a pair.’
He stood looking down on her for a long moment before saying, ‘Well, if you knit me a pair of mittens, Janie, I’ll wear them.’
‘That’s a bargain?’
‘That’s a bargain.’
‘Thanks for comin’ all this way, John George.’
‘It’s been my pleasure, Janie.’
‘I . . . I hope you see your girl next week.’
‘I hope so an’ all. I . . . I’d like you to meet her. You’d like her, I know you’d like her, and what’s more, well, being you you’d bring her out, ’cos she’s quiet. You have that habit, you know, of bringing people out, making people talk. You got me talkin’ the night all right about Newcastle.’
Janie stood for a moment blinking up at him and slightly embarrassed and affected by the tenderness of this lanky, kindly young fellow. His simple talking was having the same effect on her as Rory’s gentle touch had done. She felt near tears, she had the silly desire to lean forward and kiss him on the cheek just like a sister might. But that was daft, there was no such thing as sisterly kisses. That was another thing her grannie had said and she believed her. There were mothers’ kisses and lovers’ kisses but no sisterly kisses, not between a man and woman who weren’t related anyway . . . Yet the master kissed his sister-in-law, she had seen him. Eeh! what was she standing here for? She said in a rush, ‘Good night, John George. And thanks again, I’ll see you next Sunday. Ta-rah.’
‘Ta-rah, Janie.’
She hurried up the side path, but before opening the kitchen door she glanced back towards the gate and saw the dim outline of his figure silhouetted against the lamplight, and she waved to it; and he waved back; then she went into the house . . .
Mrs Tyler, the cook, turned from her seat before the fire, looked at Janie, then looked at the clock above the mantelpiece before saying, ‘You’ve just made it.’
‘There’s three minutes to go yet.’ Her retort was perky.
She wasn’t very fond of Mrs Tyler. She had only been cook in the Buckhams’ household for eighteen months but from the first she had acted as if she had grown up with the family. And what was more, Janie knew she was jealous of her own standing with the master and mistress.
The cook never said anything outright to her but she would talk at her through Bessie Rice, the housemaid, making asides such as ‘Some people take advantage of good nature, they don’t know their place. Don’t you ever get like that, Bessie now. In Lady Beckett’s household, where I did my trainin’, the nursemaid might have her quarters up on the attic floor but below stairs she was considered bottom cellar steps. Of course, a governess was different. They were educated like. Why, in Lady Beckett’s the still-room maid sat well above the nursemaid.’
On the occasion when this particular remark was made, Janie had had more than enough of Lady Beckett for one day and so, walking out of the kitchen, she remarked to no one in particular, ‘Lady Betty’s backside !’
Of course she should never have said such a thing and she regretted it as soon as she was out of the door, and before she had reached the nursery she knew that the cook was knocking on the parlour door asking to speak to the mistress. Ten minutes later the mistress was up in the nursery looking terribly, terribly hurt as she said, ‘Janie, I’m surprised at what the cook has been telling me. You must not use such expressions, because they may become a habit. Now just imagine what would happen if you said something like that in front of the children.’ She had gulped and stood speechless before the young woman who had shown her nothing but kindness and when the mistress had gone she had laid her head in her arms on the table and cried her heart out until young Master David had started to cry with her, and then Margaret, and lastly the baby.
She looked back on that day as the most miserable in her life, and yet when she went to bed that night she had had to bury her head in the pillow to smother her laughter. Having earlier decided that feeling as she did she’d get no rest, she had gone downstairs to apologize to the mistress and to tell her that never again would she use such an expression in her house, and that she need not have any fear that the children’s minds would ever be sullied by one word that she would utter.
She had reached the main landing when she was stopped by the sound of smothered laughter coming from the mistress’s bedroom. The door was ajar and she could hear the master saying, ‘Stop it. Stop it, Alicia, I can’t hear you . . . what did she say?’
She had become still and stiff within an arm’s length of the door as her mistress’s voice came to her spluttering with laughter the while she made an effort to repeat slowly: ‘She . . . said . . . you . . . can . . . kiss . . . Lady . . . Beckett’s . . . backside.’
‘She didn’t!‘
The laughter was joined now, high, spluttering; it was the kind of laughter that one heard in the Connors’ kitchen when Lizzie said something funny.
‘Well done, Waggett!’
There was more laughter, then the master’s voice again saying, ‘I can’t stand Tyler. You want to get rid of her.’
‘Oh, she’s a good cook; I can’t do that, David. And Janie mustn’t be allowed to say things like that. But oh, I don’t know how I kept my face straight.’
She had backed slowly towards the stairs, and when she reached the nursery floor her face split into one wide amazed grin; yet her mind was saying indignantly, ‘I didn’t say that. It’s just like cook to stretch things. But eeh! the master, I’ve never heard him laugh like that afore. Nor the missis. They sounded like a young couple.’
It wasn’t until she was in bed that she thought to herself, Well, I suppose they are a young couple. Yet at the same time it was strange to her to realize that people of their class could laugh together, spluttering laughter; for they always acted so very correct in front of other folk, even when the sister came. But then the sister was married to a man who had a cousin with a title, a sir, or a lord, or something, and, of course, she wouldn’t expect them to act in any way but refinedly. But, anyway, they had laughed, and the mistress actually repeated what she herself had said, only, of course, with a bit added on by the cook.
And that night she had told herself yet once again that she liked her master and mistress, she did, she did, and she would do anything for them. And as she had recalled their laughter the bubbling had grown inside her, and to stop an hysterical outburst she had turned and pressed her face tightly into the pillow. And her last thought before going to sleep had been, ‘I’ll have them roaring in the kitchen next Sunday. And she had.
It was the Saturday before Christmas; the sky lay low over the town and the masts of the ships were lost in grey mist.
Rory shivered as he walked up the church bank and entered Jarrow. He passed the row of whitewashed cottages, then went on towards the main thoroughfare of Ellison Street. He hated this walk; he hated Saturday mornings; Saturday mornings meant Pilbey Street and Saltbank Row. Pilbey Street was bad enough but the Row was worse.
He had six calls in Pilbey Street and fifteen in the Row, and as always when he entered the street he steeled himself, put on a grim expression and squared his shoulders, while at the same time thinking, Old Kean and those other landlords he represents should be lynched for daring to ask rent for these places.
For four years now he had collected the rents in these two streets. In the ordinary way he should have collected them on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday because on these days he came this way collecting, and right on into Hebburn, but you couldn’t get a penny out of anybody in Pilbey Street or the Row on any other day but a Saturday morning. And you were lucky if you managed to get anything then; it was only fear of the bums that made them tip up.
He lifted the iron knocker and rapped on the paint-cracked knobless door. There was a noise of children either fighting or playing coming from behind it, and after a few minutes it was opened and three pairs of eyes from three filthy faces peered up at him. All had running noses, all had scabs around their mouths and styes on their eyes. The eldest, about five, said in the voice of an adult, ‘Aw, the rent man.’ Then scrambling away through the room with the others following him, he shouted, ‘The rent man, Ma! ’Tis the rent man, Ma!’
‘Tell the bugger I’m not in.’
The woman’s voice came clearly to Rory and when the child came back and, looking up at him, said, ‘She’s not in,’ Rory looked down on the child and as if addressing an adult said, Tell her the bugger wants the rent, and somethin’ off the back, nr else it’s the bums Monday.’
The child gazed at him for a moment longer before once more scrambling away through the room, and when his thin high voice came back to him, saying, ‘He says, the bugger wants the rent,’ Rory closed his eyes, bowed his head and pressed his hand over his mouth, knowing that it would be fatal to let a smile appear on his face with the two pairs of eyes surveying him. If he once cracked a smile in this street he’d never get a penny.
It was almost three minutes later when the woman stood before him. She had a black shawl crossed over her sagging breasts, the ends were tucked into a filthy ragged skirt, and in a whining tone and a smile widening her flat face she exclaimed, ‘Aw begod! it’s vou, Mr Connor. Is it the rent you’re after? Well now. Well now. You know it’s near Christmas it is, and you know what Christmas is for money. Chews it, it does, chews it. An’ look at the bairns. There’s not a stitch to their arses an’ himself been out of work these last three weeks.’
Without seeming to move a muscle of his face Rory said, ‘He’s in the rolling mills and never lost a day this six months, I’ve checked. You’re ten weeks in arrears not countin’ the day. Give me five shillings and I’ll say nothing more ’til next week when I want the same and every week after that until you get your book clear. If not, I go to Palmer’s and he’ll get the push.’
It was an idle threat, yet she half believed him because rent men had power, rent men were rich; rent men were a different species, not really human.
They stared at each other. Then the smile sliding from her face, she turned abruptly from him and went through the room, shouting, ‘You Willy! You Willy!’ And the eldest child followed her, to return a moment later with two half-crowns and the rent book.
Rory took the money, signed the book, marked it in his own hard-backed pocket ledger, then went on to the next house. Here he pushed open the bottom door and called up the dark well of the staircase, ‘Rent!’ and after a moment a man’s voice came back to him shouting, ‘Fetch it up.’
His nose wrinkled in distaste. If he had a penny for every time that worn-out quip had been thrown at him he considered he’d be able to buy a house of his own. After a moment of silence he again shouted, ‘Rent, or it’s the bums Monday.’
The moleskin-trousered bulky figure appeared on the stairhead and after throwing the rent book and a half-crown down the stairs he yelled, ‘You know what you and the bloody bums can do, don’t you?’ then as Rory picked up the money and the book and entered in the amount the man proceeded to elaborate on what he and the bums could do.
Without uttering a word now Rory threw the book on to the bottom stair, looked up at the man still standing on the landing, then turned about and went towards the end of the street.
There was no answer whatever from the next three doors he knocked on, but he had scarcely raised the knocker on the fourth when it was opened and Mrs Fawcett stood there, her rent book in one hand, the half-crown extended in the other, and without any greeting she began, ‘You won’t get any change out of them lot.’ She nodded to one side of her. ‘Nor to this one next door.’ Her head moved the other way. ‘Off to Shields they are, the lot of them, to the market and they won’t come back with a penny, not if I know them. Lazy Irish scum. And I’ll tell you somethin’.’ She leant her peevish face towards him. ‘Her, Flaherty, she’s got her front room packed with beds, and lettin’ them out by the shift; as one lot staggers out another lot drops in. Great Irish navvies with not a drop on their faces from Monday mornin’ till Saturda’ night, but Sunday, oh, that’s different, away to Mass they are, and straight out and into the bars. Disgrace!’
Rory closed her rent book, handed it to her, looked at her straight in the eye, then turned and walked away. He did not bother knocking at the door next to hers for he believed what she had said, they were all away on a spending spree. It was odd, she was the only good payer in the street; she’d always had a clear rent book; but of the lot of them, scum Irish they might be, he preferred any one of them to Mrs Fawcett.
Pilbey Street was bad but Saltbank Row was worse. Here it was the stench that got him. The dry middens at the back of the Row, dry being a mere courtesy title, seeped away under the stone floors of the two-roomed cottages, and the dirt in front of the cottages was always wet to the feet. In winter the stench was bad enough but in summer it was unbearable. Why the Town Corporation did not condemn the place he didn’t know. Vested interests he supposed; in any case anything was good enough for the Irish immigrants, and they didn’t seem to mind, for as it was well known they had been used to sleeping among the pigs and the chickens in their tiny hovel huts over in Ireland.
Yet there were Irish in the town among Palmer’s men whom he had heard were buying their own houses. That had come from old Kean himself, and the old boy didn’t like it.
His own father had worked in Palmer’s for years, but there was no sign of him being able to buy his own house. Likely because he didn’t want to; his father spent as he went, he ate well and drank as much as he could hold almost every day in the week, because his body was so dried up with the heat from the furnaces.
Drinking was one thing he didn’t blame his father for, but he did blame him for his carry-on with her . . . Lizzie. He supposed it was by way of compensation that he’d had him sent to the penny school but he didn’t thank him for that either, for he hadn’t attended long enough to take in much beyond reading, writing and reckoning up. When funds were low the last thing to be considered was the penny fee. And he wouldn’t go to school without it. Nor would his father have his name put down on the parish list so that he could send him free—not him.
Anyway, his reading and writing had enabled him finally to become a rent collector with a wage of fifteen shillings a week. He was told from all quarters that he was damned lucky to be in such a job. Fifteen shillings for neither bending his back nor soiling his hands. And his employer, more than others, emphasized this statement.
Mr Kean owned about half the cottages in Saltbank Row, and the rent of each was two shillings a week, but when he reached the end of the Row all he had in the back section of his leather bag was twenty-five shillings and sixpence.
It was just turned twelve o’clock when he reached the main street and joined the stream of men pouring out of Palmer’s and the various side streets which led to different yards on the river. They were like streams of black lava joining the main flow, faces grey, froth-specked with their sweat. He was carried along in the throng until he reached the church bank gain by which time the blackness had dwindled into idividual pockets of men.
He reckoned he should be back at the office by one o’clock. He never carried a watch, not on his rounds, because it could be nicked in the time he blinked an eyelid. A gang of lads supposedly playing Tiggy could rough you up. He had seen it done. But he told himself as he paused for a moment on the Don bridge and looked down at the narrow mud-walled banks of the river that there was no immediate hurry today, for old Kean was off on one of his duty trips to Hexham to see his old father. When this happened the day’s takings were locked up until Monday. Saturdays takings didn’t amount to very much, not on his part anyway. John George took more, for he did the Tyne Dock area and the better part of Stanhope Road.
He was getting a bit worried about John George. There was something on his mind; he supposed it was that damned ranter’s lass he had taken up with. Only last night he had told him to think hard about this business, for being her father’s daughter, she might turn out to be a chip off the old block and be ‘God-mad’ like the rest of them.
The whole of Shields was becoming ‘God-mad’; there were chapels springing up all over the place and the more of them there were the greater the outcry against drink and gambling. And them that made the fuss, what were they? Bloody hypocrites half of them. Oh, he knew a thing or two about some of them. That’s why he had warned John George.
As he walked on into Tyne Dock he forgot about John George and his troubles for his mind was taken up with the evening’s prospects. He had heard tell of a square-head, a Swede who lived down Corstorphine Town way. He was known as Fair Square; he did summer trips there and back to Norway and Sweden, but in the winter he stayed put somewhere along the waterfront and ran a school, so he understood, and not just an ordinary one, a big one, for captains and such. But as little Joe, the tout, had said, they didn’t often let foreigners in . . . That was funny that was, a Swede calling an Englishman a foreigner, and in his own town at that. Anyway, little Joe had promised to work him in somewhere.
He felt a stir of excitement in his stomach at the thought of getting set-in in a big school; none of your tanner pitch and tosses or find the lady, but banker with a kitty up to twenty pounds a go. By, that was talking. Twenty pounds a go. Once in there it wouldn’t be long afore he could set up house—he and Janie, setting up house. He wanted to get married, he ached for Janie. And that was the right word, ached. At night he would toss and turn until he would have to get up and put the soles of his feet on the ice-cold square of lino that stood between the beds.
He’d see her the morrow. Just to be with her lifted him out of the doldrums; just to look at her pulled at his heart, ’cos she was bonny, beautiful. And he wasn’t spending the whole afternoon the morrow playing cards for monkey nuts. Huh! He wondered why he let himself in for it Sunday after Sunday. No, hail, rain or shine they’d go out up the lanes, and he’d settle things in his own way. Aye he would.
‘Rory! Rory!’
He turned swiftly and looked up the dock bank to see John George pushing his way through a press of men towards him, and when he came up Rory stared at him saying, ‘You’re late, aren’t you? You’re generally done around twelve.’
‘I know, but there was an accident back there at the Boldon Lane toll-gate. I helped to sort the carts out. A young lad got crushed. Toll’s finished next year they say, an’ a good thing an’ all.’
‘Getting into a throng with money in your bag, you must be mad . . . And where did you get that?’
Rory was now looking John George over from head to foot. ‘You knock somebody down?’
Stroking the lapels of a thick brown overcoat that, although a little short, fitted his thin body, John George said, ‘I picked it up last Saturday in Newcastle, in the market.’
‘What did you give for it?’
‘Half a dollar.’
‘Well you weren’t robbed, it’s good material. You should have got yourself some boots while you were on.’ He glanced down at the cracked toecaps. ‘It’s a wonder the old fellow hasn’t spotted them and pulled you up. You know what he is for appearances.’
‘I’m going to see about a pair the day when I’m up there.’
‘You’re going to Newcastle again?’
‘Aye.’ John George now turned his head and smiled at Rory. ‘I’m meeting her on the three o’clock train an’ I’m going to show her round. Look’—he thrust his hand into the overcoat pocket, then brought out a small box wrapped in tissue paper—’I bought her this for Christmas. What do you think of it?’
When Rory took the lid off the box and looked at the heart-shaped locket and chain he stared at it for some seconds before turning to John George again and asking quietly, ‘What did you give for it?’
‘Not . . . not what it’s worth, it’s second-hand. It’s a good one.’
‘What did you give for it?’
‘Seven and six.’
‘Seven and six! Are you mad? How can you afford seven and six? You tell me that your Aunt Meg needs every penny to keep the house goin’ and three bob’s as much as you can keep back.’
‘Well, it’s . . . it’s true. But . . . but I worked out a system.’
‘You worked out a system, you!’ Rory screwed up his face. ‘You worked out a system! On what? Tell me on what?’
‘Aw, not now, man, not now. I’ll . . . I’ll tell you after . . . later on. I wanted to have a word with you about something else . . . You see I’m thinking of moving, trying to get a better job. I could never hope to get Maggie away on the wage I’ve got and having to see to them at home and . . .’
‘Where could you get a better job than what you’ve got?’
‘There’s places in Newcastle.’
‘Aye, I know there’s places in Newcastle, but them chaps don’t get even as much as we do. There’s no trade unions yelling for us. I’m not satisfied, but I know damn well that if I want more money I won’t get it at rent clerking. Look, are you in some kind of fix?’
‘No, no.’ John George shook his head too vigorously and Rory, eyeing him from the side, shook his head also. They walked on in silence, taking short cuts until they came to the market, then they wound their way between the conglomeration of stalls, turned down a narrow side lane known as Tangard Street, and past what appeared to be the window of an empty shop, except that the bottom half, which was painted black, had written across it: Septimus Kean, Estate Agent, Valuer, and Rent Collector. Next to the window was a heavy door with a brass knob that had never seen polish, and above it a keyhole.
As John George was about to insert his key into the lock the door was pulled open from inside and they were both confronted by Mr Kean himself.
‘Oh! . . . Oh! Mr Kean. We thought you were away.’
The small, heavy-jowled man looked at Rory and barked, ‘Evidently. Do you know what time it is?’ He pulled out a watch, snapped open the case and turned the face towards Rory. Ten minutes past one. When the cat’s away the mice can play.’
‘But we finish at one.’ Rory’s voice was harsh, the muscles of his neck were standing out and his face was flushed with sudden temper.
‘Be careful, Connor, be careful. Mind who you’re speaking to. You know what happens to cheeky individuals; there’s never an empty place that cannot be filled. I know that you’re finished at one, and damned lucky you are to be finished at one, but you should have been back here before one and your book settled, and then you could have been finished at one . . . And what’s the matter with you?’ He was now glaring at John George. ‘You sick or something?’
John George gulped, shook his head, and remained standing where he was on the threshold of the door.
And this caused Mr Kean to yell, ‘Well, come in, man! What’s come over you? Close the door before we’re all blown out. And let me have your books; I want to get away.’
With this, Mr Kean turned about and went through a door into another room. The door was half glass, but it was clear glass, clear in order that the master could look through it at any time and see that his two clerks weren’t idling at their desks.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Rory had taken hold of John George’s shoulder. ‘You look like death, what is it?’
John George gulped twice in his throat before he whispered, ‘Lend . . . lend me ten bob.’
‘Lend you ten bob?’
‘Aye. Look, just for now, I’ll have it for you Monday mornin’. Just . . . just lend it me. Aw, Rory, lend it me. For God’s sake, lend it me.’
Rory looked towards the glass door and as he put his hand into his pocket, he hissed, ‘You were paid last night.’
‘Aye, I know, but I’ll explain, I’ll explain in a minute or two.’ The hand he held out was trembling and when Rory put the gold half sovereign on to the palm John George’s fingers pressed over it tightly for a moment before swiftly dropping it into the leather bag which he still held in his hand.
‘Come on, come on.’
They exchanged glances before John George turned away and almost stumbled across the room and into his master’s office.
Rory remained gazing at the half open door . . . He was on the fiddle. The damn fool was on the fiddle. It was that lass. God, if he hadn’t been here and old Kean had found him ten shillings short!
Mr Kean’s voice came bawling out of the room again, saying, ‘What’s the matter with you, Armstrong? You look as if you’re going to throw up.’ Then John George’s voice, thin and trembling, ‘Bit of a chill, sir. Got a cold I think.’
There was a pause, then Mr Kean’s observation: ‘That coat’s new, isn’t it? You shouldn’t feel cold in that. About time you did smarten yourself up. Bad impression to go around the doors looking like a rag man.’ Another pause before his voice again rasped, ‘Mrs Arnold, she’s paid nothing off the back for four weeks. Why haven’t you seen to it?’
‘She’s been bad. She . . . she took to her bed a few weeks ago. But she says she’ll clear it up soon because her girl’s got set on across the water at Haggie’s . . . the Ropery you know.’
‘Yes, I know, I know the Ropery. And I know the type that works there. She’ll likely drink her pay before she gets back across the water. She’s got others working, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes. Yes, she’s got a lad down the pit. But . . . but he’s only a nipper, he’s not getting more than tenpence a day. She’s . . . she’s had hard times since her man went.’
‘That’s neither my business nor yours, I don’t want the family history, I only want the rent and the back rent. Now you see to it. You’re getting slack, Armstrong. I’ve noticed it of late.’
There followed another silence before John George returned to the outer office, his face looking bleak, his eyes wide and in their depth a misery that caused Rory to turn away, pick up his bag and go into the other room.
When he had placed the money from the bag on the table, Mr Kean separated each single coin with his forefinger, then after counting them he raised his eyes without lifting his head and said, ‘You mean to tell me this is the result of a morning’s work?’
‘It was Saltbank Row and Pilbey Street.’
‘I know damned well it was Saltbank Row and Pilbey Street, it’s always Saltbank Row and Pilbey Street on a Saturday, but what I’m saying to you is, do you mean to tell me that’s all you got out of them?’
Rory moved one lip over the other before replying, It’s always the same near Christmas.’
‘Look!’ The thick neck was thrust forward, then the head went back on the shoulders and Mr Kean directed an enraged stare on to Rory’s grim face as he cried, ‘One gives me family histories, the other festival dates as excuses. Now look, I’m telling you they’re not good enough, neither one nor the other, Christmas or no Christmas. If that sum’—he now dug his finger on to one coin after another—’if it isn’t doubled at the next collection then there’ll be a lot of barrows needed to shift their muck. You tell them that from me. And that’s final.’ Again he stabbed the coins. ‘Double that amount or it’s the bums for the lot of ’em.’
When Rory turned abruptly from the table Mr Kean barked at him, ‘Answer me when I’m speaking to you!’
Rory stopped, but it was a few seconds before he turned to face Mr Kean again, and then he said slowly, ‘Yes, sir.’
Seconds again passed before Mr Kean said, ‘There’s going to be changes here, Connor,’ and again Rory said, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Get yourself out.’
The buttons on Rory’s coat strained as he drew in a deep breath before turning round and leaving the room, closing the door after him.
John George was standing by his narrow, high desk. A little colour had returned to his face and he was about to speak when the outer door opened and they both looked towards it and at Miss Charlotte Kean.
Charlotte was Kean’s only child but she bore no resemblance to him, being tall, extremely tall for a woman, all of five foot eight and thin with it. Moreover, she had what was commonly called a neb on her. Her nose was large; her mouth, too, was large but in proportion to her face. Her eyes were a greeny grey and her hair was black. She was an ugly young woman yet in some strange way she had just missed being beautiful for each feature taken by itself was good even though, together, one cancelled another out. Her features gave the impression of strength, even of masculinity. It was understood in the office that she knew as much about the business as did her father, yet she rarely came here. Rory hadn’t seen her but half a dozen times in four years, and each appearance had given him material for jokes in the kitchen, especially at the Sunday gatherings.
He had from time to time openly teased John George about her. John George had said he felt sorry for her, because a young woman like her had little chance of being married. His words had proved true, for here she was at twenty-eight and still on the shelf.
But there was one thing his master’s daughter possessed that he couldn’t make game of, in fact it had the power to make him feel ill at ease, and that was her voice. There was no hint of the Tyneside twang about it. This he understood had come about by her being sent away to one of those posh schools when she was no more than ten, from which she hadn’t come back to Shields for good until she was turned seventeen.
She gave them no greeting—one didn’t greet clerks —but stared at Rory before demanding briefly, ‘My father in?’
‘Yes, miss.’ Rory inclined his head towards the door.
She stood for a moment longer looking from one to the other. Then her eyes resting once more on Rory, she surveyed him from head to toe, as he said bitterly afterwards, ‘Like some bloody buyer at a livestock show.’ But he wasn’t going to be intimidated by any look she could cast over him, and so he returned it. His eyes ranged from her fur-trimmed hat down over her grey velour coat with its brown fur collar, right to her feet encased in narrow-toed brown kid boots. He had noticed her feet before. They were so narrow he wondered how she balanced on them, how she got boots to fit them. But when you had money you could be fitted from top to toe and inside an’ all, but he’d like to bet with that face her habit shirts would be made of calico, unbleached at that, no lace camisoles for her. Anyway, she had nothing to push in them.
As she went towards the door he looked at her back. It was like a ramrod, she wasn’t like a woman at all. He beckoned to John George, who seemed to be glued to his desk, and as he opened the door he heard her say, ‘You’ll be late for the ferry, I came with the trap. Come along or you’ll never get there.’
The old man always went by ferry up to Newcastle; he didn’t like the trains although he had to take one from Newcastle to Hexham. When he went on his usual trips there he generally left early on a Saturday morning. What had stopped him this time? Anyway, whatever had stopped him had also nearly stopped John George’s breath.
They were crossing the market again before he said, ‘Well now, come on, spit it out.’
‘I’ll . . . I’ll give you it back, I . . . I can give you six bob of it now. I’ll get it from home and . . . and the rest on Monday.’
‘What were you up to?’
‘Aw’—John George wagged his head from side to side—’I . . . I wanted to give Maggie something and it had to be the day, it’s the only time I can see her. I mightn’t see her again until after the holiday and so, thinkin’ he wouldn’t be in till Monday, I . . . I took the loan of ten bob out of the . . .’
‘You bloody fool!’
‘Aye, I know, I know I am.’
‘But . . . but how did you expect to put it back by Monday if you haven’t got it now?’
‘Aw well, man’—again his head was wagging—’I . . . I usually put me good suit in and me watch and bits of things . . .’
‘You usually do? You mean you’ve done this afore?’
John George nodded his head slowly. ‘Aye. Aye, a few times. The times that he goes off at the weekends and doesn’t count up till Monday. I . . . I thought I’d drop down dead when I saw him standing there.’
‘You deserve to drop down dead, you bloody fool you. Do you know he could have you up? And he’s the one to do it an’ all; he’d have you along the line afore you could whistle. You must be up the pole, man.’
‘I think I’ll go up the pole soon if things don’t change.’
‘What you want to do is to pull yourself together, get things worked out straight. Leave your Uncle Willy and Aunt Meg, he’s able to work, he’s nothin’ but a scrounger, and take a place on your own.’
‘What!’ John George turned his face sharply towards him. ‘Take the furniture and leave them with three bare rooms or tell him to get out? What you don’t understand, Rory, is that there’s such a thing as gratitude. I don’t forget that they were both good to me mother after me da died, aye, and long afore that; and they helped to nurse him the two years he lay bedridden.’
‘Well, they’ve been damned well paid for it since, if you ask me . . . All right then, say you can’t do anything about them, an’ you want that lass . . . well then, ask her to marry you and bring her into the house.’
‘That’s easier said than done. If I took her away her father would likely go straight to old Kean and denounce me.’ He now put his hand to his brow, which, in spite of the raw cold, was running with sweat, and muttered, ‘But I’ll have to do something, and soon, ’cos . . . oh my God! I’m in a right pickle . . . Rory.’
‘Aye, I’m still here, what is it?’
‘There’s something else.’
‘Aw.’ Rory now closed his eyes and put his hand across his mouth, then grabbed at his hard hat to save it from being whipped by the wind from his head. ‘Well, go on.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Another time, another time; you’re not in the mood . . . Look—’ he pointed suddenly—’Isn’t that Jimmy?’
They were passing the road that led to the Mill Dam and the river front. Rory stopped and said, ‘Yes that’s our Jimmy . . . Jimmy!’ he shouted down the lane, and Jimmy who had been walking with his eyes cast down looked upwards, then came dashing up the slope at his wobbling gait.
‘Why, fancy seein’ you, I mean both of you. An’ I was just thinking of you, our Rory.’
‘You were? Why? You another one that wants a sub?’
‘No, man.’ Jimmy laughed. ‘But I was thinkin’ that when I got home I’d ask you to come down here again. Now wasn’t that funny.’
‘I can’t see much to laugh at in that, not yet anyway.’
‘Well, it was something I wanted to show you down on the front.’ He nodded towards the river. ‘Come on.’ He again indicated the river with his head, then added, ‘And you an’ all, John George.’
‘I can’t, Jimmy, I’m sorry. I’m . . . I’m on me way home.’
‘Aw, all right, John George, I understand, it’s your day for Newcastle.’ He laughed.
John George didn’t laugh with him, but he repeated, ‘Aye. Aye, Jimmy, it’s me day for Newcastle.’ Then nodding at him, he said, ‘Be seeing you. So long. And so long, Rory. Aw, I forgot. What about the other, I mean . . . ?’
‘Leave it till Monday. And mind, don’t do any more damn fool things until then.’
‘I’ll try not to. But what’s done’s done. Nevertheless thanks, thanks. You’ll have it on Monday. So long.’
‘So long.’
‘What’s up with him?’ Jimmy asked as they went down towards the road that bordered the river.
‘He’s been a damned fool, he’s mad.’
‘What’s he been and gone and done?’
‘Nothing . . . I’ll tell you some other time. What do you want me down here for?’
‘I want to show you something.’
‘A boat?’
‘Aye, a boat. An’ something more than that.’
Rory looked down into the young face. It was always hard for him to believe that Jimmy was nineteen years old, for he still looked upon him as a nipper. He was more than fond of Jimmy, half- brothers though they were; he liked him the best of the bunch.
‘Where we going?’
‘Just along the front, then down the Cut.’
‘There’s nothing but warehouses along there.’
‘Aye, I know. But past them, past Snowdon’s, on a it, youll see.’
After some walking they had turned from the road that bordered the warehouse and wharf-strewn river front and were clambering over what looked like a piece of spare ground except that it was dotted here and there with mounds of rusty chains, anchors and the keels and ribs of small decaying boats, when Jimmy, squeezing his way between a narrow aperture in a rough fence made up of oddments of thick lack timber, said, ‘Through here.’
Rory had some difficulty in squeezing himself between the planks, but when once through he looked about him on to what appeared to be a miniature boatyard. A half-finished skeleton of a small boat was lying aslant some rough stocks and around it lay pieces of wood of all shapes and sizes. A few feet beyond the boat was the beginning of a slipway bordered by a jetty and he walked towards the edge of it and leant over the rail and looked down into the water; then from there he turned and surveyed the building at the far end of the yard.
It wasn’t unlike any of the other warehouses cluttering the river bank except that it had three windows in the upper part of it, and they were big windows, one on each side of the door and one fitting into the apex of the roof. There was no name on the front of the structure like there was on the rest of the boatyards and warehouses, and Rory now turned and looked into Jimmy’s bright eyes and said, Well?’
‘It’s a little boatyard.’
‘I can see that but I wouldn’t say it was a prosperous one. You’re not going to leave Baker’s for here, are you?’
‘No, man, no. I’m not going to leave Baker’s at all. I wish I could. At the same time I’m terrified of being stood off. No, I just want you to see it.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, ’cos . . . it’s up for sale.’
‘Up for sale?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, what’s that got to do with us?’
‘Nowt . . . nowt, man.’
Rory watched the light slowly fade from Jimmy’s face. He watched him turn away and look at the river, then up at the house, and lastly at the boat on the stocks, and he said softly now, ‘I know what you’re thinkin’, but it’s like a dream, lad, that’s all, it can never come true.’
‘I know.’
‘Then what did you bring me here for?’
‘I just wanted you to see it, just to show you.’
‘What good is that going to do you or anybody else?’
‘Well, I just wanted to show you that a man could start on almost nowt an’ build up. They’ve done it all along the river. The Pittie Brothers, they started from nowt. A sculler among the three of them, and now they’ve got the run of the place, or they think they have. But there’s always room for another one or two. Some say the keelman’s day is over since they’ve widened the river and the boats can go farther up and pick up their coal straight from the staithes, but as Mr Kilpatrick used to say there’s other things to be carted besides coal. Anyway, I’d never aim to be a keelman ’cos it’s as tight to get in as a secret society, an’ they’re a tough lot, by aye! Nor do I want to build keels, with a cabin an’ hold, ’cos it takes all of three men to manage a keel. No; but I’ve got something in me mind’s eye; it’d be under thirty foot but with space for timber, packages and such, something I could manage meself or, at a push, just two of us. Mr Kilpatrick used to say he could design . . .’
‘Who’s Mr Kilpatrick?’
The old fellow who owned this place.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Aye, in a way. I used to pop in in me bait time. He’s always given me tips, things that you don’t come by only by experience. He used to take the wood from the river’—he pointed to the wood scattered around the boat—’and when he was finished with it, it was as good as new. He had a way with wood. He said I had an’ all.’
‘And he’s dead?’
‘Aye.’
‘Who’s sellin’ it then?’
‘His son. Well, he’s selling the goodwill.’
‘Goodwill!’ Rory gave a short laugh. ‘What goodwill is there here? The back end of a boat and wood you can pick up from the river.’
There’s a house up there and there’s some decent pieces of furniture in it. And then there’s his tools, And he’s got a bond on the place for the next ten years.’
‘You mean it’s just rented?’
‘Aye.’
‘How much is it a week?’
‘Three and a tanner.’
‘Huh!’ The sound was sarcastic. They’re not asking much, three and a tanner for this!’
‘But everything is included. And a permit to ferry stuff up and down the river.’
‘And what’s the son wanting for it?’
‘Thirty-five pounds.’
‘What!’ It was a shout. ‘You havin’ me on?’
‘No, I’m not, that’s cheap. There’s the boat, and all the wood. And you haven’t seen his tools. Then there’s the furniture. There’s three rooms up there, I’ve been in them. He used to give me a cup of tea now and again. He lived on his own. They’re big rooms. You don’t get much of an idea from here.’
‘But there’s no boat, he must have had a boat.’
‘Aye, his son took that.’
‘That son knows what he’s doing. Has he been pumping you?’
‘No. Why no, man, why would he pump me? Only that he knew I used to talk to his old man. He came here once or twice when I was in the yard and when he saw me t’other day he told me. He said—’ Now Jimmy turned away and walked up towards the house, his body seeming to rock more than his bowed legs and Rory called after him, ‘Well, go on, finish telling me what he said.’
‘It doesn’t matter; as you said, it’s a dream.’ And now he swung round and stabbed his finger towards Rory as he ended, ‘But some day, mark my words, I’ll make it come true. I don’t know how but I will. I’ll have a place of me own where I can build a boat an’ ply a trade. You’ll see. You’ll see.’
‘All right, all right.’ Rory walked towards him now. ‘No need to bawl your head off.’
‘You bawled first.’
‘Well, I had a right.’ He now passed Jimmy and walked up and into the end of the slipway, over which the building extended, and looked towards the ladder that was fixed to the wall and ended in a trap-door, and he called back over his shoulder in an amused tone, ‘Is this how you get in?’
‘No, of course, it isn’t,’ Jimmy said scornfully; ‘there’s steps up and a door, you saw them. But—’ And now his eyes were bright again as he went on, ‘I can show you inside, I know how to get in through the hatch.’
‘What we waitin’ for, then, if it’s going to cost us nothin’? So go on, get up.’
The desire was strong in him to please this brother of his and to keep his dream alive for a little longer. He watched him run up the vertical ladder with the agility of a monkey. He saw him put his flat hand in the middle of the trap-door, jerk it twice to the side, and then push it upwards. He stood at the foot of the ladder and watched him disappear through the hole. Then he was climbing upwards, but with no agility. He wasn’t used to crawling up walls he told himself.
When he emerged into the room he straightened up and looked about him but said nothing. Just as Jimmy had said, there were some good pieces of furniture here. He was amazed at the comfort of the room. The whole floor space was covered with rope mats fashioned in intricate patterns. There was a high-barred fireplace with an oven to the side of it and a hook above it for a spit or kettle. A good chest of drawers stood against one wall, and by it a black oak chest with brass bindings. There was a big oval table with a central leg in the middle of the room, and the top had been polished to show the grain. There were three straight-backed wooden chairs and a rocking chair, and all around the walls hung relics from ships: brass compasses, wheels, old charts. He walked slowly towards the door that led into the next room. It was a bedroom. There was a plank bed in one corner but slung between the walls was a hammock. And here was another seaman’s chest, not a common seaman’s chest but something that a man of captain’s rank might have used, and taking up most of the opposite end of the room was a tallboy.
‘It’s good stuff, isn’t it? Look at his tools.’ Jimmy heaved up the lid of the chest to show an array of shining tools hung meticulously in order around the sides of the chest.
‘Aye, it’s good stuff. He was no dock scum was your Mr Kilpatrick. Everything orderly and shipshape.’
‘Of course he wasn’t dock scum. He was a gentleman . . . well, I mean not gentry, but a gentleman. He had been to sea in his young days, ran off, so he told me. His people were comfortable. They took his son when his wife died, that’s why the son doesn’t want anything to do with the water front. He’s in business, drapery.’
‘What’s up above?’
‘It’s a long room, it runs over both of these. It’s full of all kinds of things, maps and papers and books and things. He could read. Oh, he was a great reader.’
Rory looked down on Jimmy. He looked at him for a long moment before he was able to say, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’ve you to be sorry for?’ Jimmy had turned away and walked towards the window where he stood looking out on to the river.
‘You know what I’m sorry for, I’m sorry you can’t have it. If I had the money I’d buy it for you this minute, I would.’
He watched his brother’s face slowly turn towards him. The expression was soft again, his tone warm. ‘I know you would. That’s why I wanted you to see it an’ to hear you say that, ’cos I know if you had it you would give it me, lend it me.’
Rory went and sat in the rocking chair and began to push himself slowly backwards and forwards. Thirty-five pounds. A few nights of good play somewhere and he could make that. He once made thirteen pounds at one sitting, but had lost it afore he left. But if he were to win again he’d smilingly take his leave. That’s if he wasn’t playing against sailors, for some of them would cut you up for tuppence.
Suddenly jumping up from the chair, he said, ‘Come on.’
‘Where?’
‘Never mind where. Just come on, let’s get out of here.’ But before dropping down through the trapdoor he looked about him once again as he thought, It’ll kill two birds with the one stone. Janie. Janie would love it here, she would be in her element. There was the room up there, that would do Jimmy. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He was getting as barmy as Jimmy . . . But there was nothing like trying.
When they were out of the yard and on the road again he stopped and, looking down at Jimmy, said, ‘Now I want you to go straight home. You can say that you saw me, and I was with a fellow. We . . . we were going to see the turns later on. Aye, that’s what to say, say we were going to the theatre later on.’
‘You’re goin’ in a game?’
‘Aye, if I can find a good one.’
‘Aw, Rory.’
‘Now, now, don’t get bright-eyed, nowt may come of it. But I’ll have a try. And if we could put something down to secure it—’ he punched Jimmy on the shoulder—’the fellow might wait, take it in bits like, eh? If he’s not short of a bob he could wait, couldn’t he? And it isn’t everybody that’s going to jump at a place like that. But . . . but as I said, don’t get too bright-eyed. Just tell them what I told you, and if I shouldn’t be back afore they go to bed, tell them . . . well, tell them not to wait up.’
‘Aye, Rory, aye, I’ll do that. And . . . and you be careful.’
‘What have I got to be careful of?’
‘You hear things, I mean along the front, about the schools an’ things. There are some rough customers about.’
‘I’m a bit of one meself.’
‘You’re all right.’
They looked at each other, the undersized bow-legged boy with the angelic face and his thick-set straight-backed, arrogantly attractive-looking half- brother, and each liked what he saw: Rory, the blind admiration in the boy’s face, and Jimmy, the strength, determination and apparent fearlessness in this man he loved above all others.
‘Go on with you, go on.’ Rory thrust out his hand, and Jimmy turned away. Again he was running, and not until he had disappeared from view into the main thoroughfare did Rory swing about and stride along the waterfront in the direction of the pier. But before he came to the high bank known as the Lawe, on which stood the superior houses with their view of the sea and the North and South piers, and which were occupied by ships’ captains and respectable merchants of the town, he turned off and into a street which, from its disreputable appearance, should never have been allowed to lie at the skirt of such a neighbourhood as the Lawe. There were only eight houses in this street and they all had walled back yards and all the doors were locked. It was on the third yard door that he knocked, a sharp knock, rat-tat a-tat, tat-tat, and after some minutes it was furtively opened by a man hardly bigger than a dwarf.
‘Hello, Joe.’
‘Oh. Oh, it’s you, Mr Connor?’
‘Aye, Joe. I wanted a word with you.’
‘Oh well, Mr Connor, I’m off on a message you see.’ He brought his two unusually long and fine-shaped hands in a sweeping movement down the front of his short coat, and Rory, nodding, smiled and said, ‘Aye, you’ve got your best toggery on, must be some special message.’
He had never before seen little Joe dressed like this. He had never imagined he had any other clothes but the greasy little moleskin trousers and the old broadcloth coat he usually wore. Not that he couldn’t afford to buy a new suit because he must do pretty well on the side; besides being a bookie’s runner, little Joe could be called upon to negotiate odd jobs, very odd jobs, along the waterfront. Last year it was said he almost went along the line when two lasses went missing. They couldn’t prove anything against him for he was a wily little beggar. But the case recalled the outcry of a few years earlier when some lasses were shipped off. Afterwards of course this line of business had of necessity quietened down for a time, but nature being what it is a demand for young lasses, especially young white lasses, was always there, and so was Joe.
He said to him now, ‘I want you to get me in some place the night, Joe, like you promised. But no back-yard dos.’
‘Aw, it’ll take time, Mr Connor, an’ I told you.’ He came out into the lane now and pulled the door closed, and as he walked away Rory suited his steps to the shorter ones.
‘Now you can if you like, Joe. You said . . .’
‘I told you, Mr Connor, it takes time that kind of thing. And they’re on to us . . . coppers; they’re hot all round the place.’
‘You have ways and means, you know you have, Joe. An’ I’d make it worth your while, you know that.’
‘Oh, I know that, Mr Connor. You’re not tight when it comes to payin’ up. Oh, I know that. And if I could, I would . . . There’s Riley’s.’
‘I don’t like that lot, I told you last time.’
‘Well, I’ll admit it, they’re a bit rough.’
‘And twisted.’
‘Aw well, you see, I don’t play meself, Mr Connor, so I wouldn’t know.’
‘There’s other places, Joe.’
‘But you’ve got to be known, Mr Connor, an’ . . . an’ it’s me livelihood you know.’
‘You could do it, Joe.’
And so the conversation went on, flattery pressing against caution; but by the time they parted caution had won.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Connor, but . . . but I’ll let you know. I’ll take a walk around your office as soon as I can manage anything for you. That’s a promise; it is.’
Rory nodded, and as he stood and watched the small shambling figure hurry away and disappear around the bottom of the street he repeated bitterly, ‘That’s a promise.’ Then he asked himself the question, ‘Where’s he off to, rigged out like that?’ He wouldn’t need to dress up to go round his usual haunts. He was going some place special?
As if he had been pushed from behind he sprang forward, but when he came out into the main street he slowed to a walk. Little Joe was well ahead, but he kept him in sight until he turned into Fowler Street.
There he was impeded in his walking by a number of people who had stepped hastily up on to the pavement from the road to allow a private coach and a dray-cart to pass each other. There were angry shouts and strong language among those who had their clothes bespattered with mud, and as he didn’t want his own mucked up, he kept as near as he could to the wall, and because of the press he was only just in time to see little Joe turn off into Ogle Terrace.
Ogle Terrace, apart from Westoe, was in the best end of the town. Who was he going to see up there? On the small figure hurried until at the top of Plynlimmon Way he disappeared from view.
Rory, now about to set off at a run towards the end of the terrace, was impeded for a second time by a party of ladies coming through an iron gateway and making for a carriage standing at the kerb.
When he eventually reached the top corner of Plynlimmon Way there was no sight of little Joe.
He stood breathing deeply, working things out. Joe wouldn’t have had access to a front door, not around here he wouldn’t, yet it was into one of these houses he had disappeared. So the place to wait was the back lane.
The back lane was cleaner than many front streets. It was servant territory this, at least two or three maids to a house, hired coaches from the livery stables for the owners and trips abroad in the fashionable months. And little Joe was in one of these houses delivering a message. He was on to something here.
When a back door opened and a man wearing a leather-fronted waistcoat swept some dust into the back lane, he did a brisk walk past the end of the lane and as briskly returned. The man was no longer in sight, all the back gates were closed. He moved up slowly now, past the first one, and the second, then stood between it and the third. It was as he paused that the third door opened and out stepped little Joe.
The small man stood perfectly still and gazed at Rory with a pained expression before he said, ‘You shouldn’ve, Mr Connor. Now you shouldn’ve. You don’t know what you’re at.’ He cast a glance back to the door he had just closed, then hurried on down the lane. And Rory hurried with him.
They were in the main street before the little man slowed his pace, and then Rory said, ‘Well now, Joe, what about it?’
And again Joe said, his tone surly now, ‘You don’t know what you’re at, you don’t.’
‘I know what I’m at, Joe.’ Rory’s voice was grim. ‘The buggers that live along there are like those in their mansions up Westoe, they run this town; they control the polis, the shippin’, they own the breweries, an’ have fingers in the glassworks, chemical works . . . Aye, the chemical works on the Jarrow road. There’s one in Ogle Terrace who’s on the board. You forget I’m a rent collector, Joe. There’s no rent collected in this area. No, they’re all owned. But I know about them. Who doesn’t? By the morrow I’ll find out who’s in that particular number and that’s all I’ll need to know because now I know he’s on the fiddle. What is it, Joe? Gamin’ or girls . . . lasses?’
‘Mr Connor, you’d better mind yourself, aye you’d better.’ Little Joe’s voice held a note of awe now. ‘You want to be careful what you say, he’s . . .’
‘Aye, aye, I’ve got the message, Joe, he’s powerful. Well now, let’s sort this thing out, eh? He’s one of two things: he’s a man who likes a game or he’s a man who runs a game. We’ll leave the lasses out of it for the time being, eh? Now havin’ the kind of mind I have, Joe, I would say he’s a man who runs a game, and likely in that house, ’cos if he wanted to go some place else for a game he wouldn’t need you as a runner. A man in his position would have a key to open any door, even the ones in Newcastle. And there’s some big games there, aren’t there, Joe? No pitch an’ toss, Joe, it’s Twenty-Ones, or Black Jack, whatever name they care to call it; isn’t it, Joe?’
He looked down on the little man, and although the twilight was bringing with it an icy blast Joe was sweating. He now said in some agitation, ‘Let’s get out of this crush.’
‘Anything you say, Joe. Where you makin’ for now?’
‘I’ve got to go up Mile End Road.’
‘Another message?’
‘No, no.’ The little man now turned on him and, his tone for the first time really nasty, he said, ‘An’ there’s one thing I’m gona tell you. Whatever comes of this you’d better not let on ’cos . . . an’ I’m not funnin’, Mr Connor, with what I’m about to say, but things could happen, aye, things could happen.’
‘I’ve no doubt of it, Joe.’
‘Don’t be funny, Mr Connor.’
‘I’m not being funny, Joe, believe you me. Things are happenin’ all the time along the waterfront an’ I should imagine in Plynlimmon Way an’ all. Now, you know me, Joe, I’m as good as me word. If I’ve owed you a couple of bob in the past you’ve got it, haven’t you, with a bit tacked on? And I’ve never had a win on a race but I’ve seen you all right, haven’t I? And I haven’t got a loose tongue either. So look, Joe.’ He stopped and bent down to the little man. ‘All I want from you is to get me set on in a decent school.’
‘They go in for big stakes, Mr Connor.’ The little fellow’s voice was quiet again.
‘That’s what I want, Joe.’
‘But you haven’t got that kind of ready. You couldn’t start in some of them under ten quid, an’ that’s so much hen grit.’
‘You say some of them, there must be a few who start on less. I’ll come to t’others later on. Aye, Joe, the big ones, I’ll come to them later on, but in the meantime . . .’
The little man blinked, gnawed at his lip, looked down to the cobbles on which they were standing, as if considering. Then his eyes narrowing, he squinted up into Rory’s face, saying conspiratorially, ‘There’s one in Corstorphine Town I might manage; it’s not all that cop but they can rise to five quid a night.’
‘It’ll do to start with, Joe.’
‘An’ you’ll say nowt about?’ He jerked his head backwards.
‘No, Joe, I’ll say nowt about . . .’ Now Rory imitated Joe’s gesture, then added, ‘Until you take me in there.’
‘That’ll be the day, Mr Connor.’
‘Aye, that’ll be the day, Joe. An’ it mightn’t be far ahead.’
‘You worry me, Mr Connor.’
‘I won’t get you into any trouble, Joe, don’t you worry.’ Rory’s tone was kindly now.
‘Oh, it isn’t that that worries me, it’s what’ll happen to you, if you take a wrong step. You don’t know this game, Mr Connor.’
‘I can play cards, Joe.’
‘Aye, I’ve heard tell you can. But there’s rules, Mr Connor, rules.’
‘I’ll stick to the rules, Joe.’
‘But what if you come up against those who don’t stick to them, Mr Connor?’
‘I’ll deal with them when I come to them, Joe. Now this place in Corstorphine Town.’
‘What time is it now?’ Joe looked up into the darkening sky, then stated, ‘On four I should say.’
‘Aye, on four, Joe.’
‘Well on seven, meet me at the dock gates.’
‘Seven, Joe, at the dock gates. Ill be there. And thanks.’ He bent down to him. ‘You won’t regret it. I’ll see to you, you won’t regret it.’
Once again Rory watched the little man hurry away, his feet, like those of a child, almost tripping over each other. Then almost on the point of a run himself he made for home.
When he entered the kitchen Jimmy stared at him, exclaiming almost on a stutter, ‘I told them—’ he indicated both his mother and Lizzie with a wave of his hand—’I told them you met a fellow an’ you were going to . . . to see the turns.’
‘So I am, but it was so bloomin’ cold walkin’ around waiting, he’s gone home for his tea. I was going to ask him up but thought the better of it. But I wouldn’t mind something.’ He looked towards Ruth. ‘I’m froze inside and out. I’m meeting him at seven again.’
‘Aw—’ Jimmy smiled broadly now—’you’re meeting him at seven? And you’re going to see the turns?’
‘Aye, we’re going to see the turns.’
As Lizzie, walking into the scullery, repeated as if to herself, ‘Going to see the turns,’ Rory cast a hard glance towards her. She knew what turns he was going to see; you couldn’t hoodwink her, blast her. But Ruth believed him. She came to him now, smiling and saying, ‘Give me your coat and come to the fire; I’ll have something on the table for you in a minute or so.’
He grinned at Ruth. He liked her, aye, you could say he loved her. Why couldn’t she have been his mother? Blast the other one. And blast his da. They were a couple of whoring nowts. Aw, what did it matter? He had got his foot in, and Jimmy would get his yard, and he and Janie would be married and they would live in that house overlooking the water. And Jimmy would build up a business and he would help him. Aye, with every spare minute he had he’d help him. He knew nowt about boats but he’d learn, he was quick to learn anything, and he’d have his game and he’d have Janie. Aye, he’d have Janie.
It did not occur to him that he had placed her after the game.
All the while she kept looking from one to the other of them, but they remained smilingly silent. Then she burst out, ‘But the money! You’ve got the money to buy this?’ Flinging both arms wide as with joy she gazed about the long room.
‘Well—’ Rory pursed his lips—’enough, enough to put down as a deposit.’
‘He didn’t get in till six this mornin’.’ Jimmy was nodding up at her, and she turned to Rory and said, ‘Gamin’?’
‘Yes. Yes, Miss Waggett, that’s what they call it, gamin’.’
‘And you won?’
‘I wouldn’t be here showing you this else.’
‘How much?’
‘Aw well’—he looked away to the side—’almost eleven pounds at the beginning, but’—he gnawed on his lip for a moment—’I couldn’t manage to get away then, I had to stay on and play. But I was six up anyway when I left.’
‘Six pounds?’
‘Aye, six pounds.’
‘And this place is costin’ thirty-five?’
‘Aye. But five pounds’ll act as a starter. Jimmy’s goin’ to get the address of the son and I’ll write to him the morrow.’
There was silence between them for a moment until Rory, looking at Janie’s profile, said, ‘What is it?’
‘The waterfront, it’s . . . it’s mostly scum down here.’
‘Not this end.’
She turned to Jimmy, ‘No?’
‘No, they’re respectable businesses. You know, woodyards, repair shops, an’ things like that. An’ there’s very few live above the shops. There’s nobody on yon side of us, an’ just that bit of rough land on the other. Eeh!’ he laughed, ‘I’m sayin’ us, as if we had it already . . .’
‘What do you think?’ Rory was gazing at her.
‘Eeh!’ She walked the length of the room, put her hand out and touched the chest of drawers, then the brass hinges on the oak chest, then the table, and lastly the rocking chair, and her eyes bright, she looked from one to the other and said, ‘Eeh! it’s amazing. You would never think from the outside it could be like this ’cos it looks ramshackle. But it’s lovely, homely.’
‘Look in t’other room.’
She went into the bedroom, then laughed and said, ‘That’ll come down for a start.’
She was pointing to the hammock, and Rory answered teasingly, ‘No. Why, no. Our Jimmy’s going to swing in that and we’ll lie underneath.’
‘Aw you!’ Jimmy pushed at the air with his flat hand, then said, ‘I’ll be upstairs, I’ll make that grand. Come on, come on up and have a look. Can you manage the ladder?’
Janie managed the ladder, and then she was standing under the sloping roof looking from one end of the attic to the other and she exclaimed again, ‘Eeh! my! did you ever see so many bits of paper and maps and books and things? There’s more books here than there are in the master’s cases in his study.’
‘Aye.’ Jimmy now walked up and down the room as if he were already in possession of the place, saying, ‘By the time I get this lot sorted out I’ll be able to read all right.’
‘Talkin’ of reading.’ Janie turned to Rory. The mistress is having a teacher come in for the children, sort of part time daily governess. She said I could sit in with them. What do you think of that?’
‘You won’t be sittin’ in with them long enough to learn the alphabet. And anyway, I’ll teach you all you want to know once I get you here, an’ you won’t have any spare time for reading.’
‘Rory!’ She glanced in mock indignation from him to Jimmy, and Jimmy, his head slightly bowed and his lids lowered, made for the ladder, muttering, ‘I’m goin’ to see if there’s any wood drifted up.’
Alone together, they looked at each other; then with a swift movement he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He kissed her long and hard and, her eyes closed tightly, she responded to him, that was until his hand slid to her buttocks, and then with an effort she slowly but firmly withdrew from him, and they stood, their faces red and hot, staring at each other.
‘I want you, Janie.’ His voice was thick. Her eyes were closed again and her head was nodding in small jerks and her fingers were moving round her lips wiping the moisture from them as she muttered softly through them, ‘I know, I know, but . . . but not until . . . no, no, not until. I’d . . . I’d be frightened.’
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. You know me, you’re the only one for me, always have been, an’ ever will be. There’s nothing to be frightened . . .’
‘I know, I know, Rory, but I can’t, I daren’t.’ She was flapping both hands at him now. ‘There’s me da, an’ me grannie, and all the others.’
He was making to hold her again. ‘Nothing’ll happen, just once.’
‘Aw—’ she now actually laughed in his face—’me grannie’s always told me, she fell the first night. An’ you can, you can . . . Eeh!’ She now pressed her fingers tightly across her mouth. ‘I shouldn’t be talkin’ like this. You shouldn’t make me talk like this. It isn’t proper, we’re . . . we’re not married.’
‘Don’t be daft, we’re as good as married. I tell you there’s only you, there’s only . . .’
‘No, Rory, no, not until it’s done.’ She thrust his hands away. ‘I mean proper like in the church, signed and sealed. No, no, I’m sorry. I love you, oh, I do love you, Rory, I’ve loved you all me life. I’ve never even thought of another lad an’ I’m twenty. I can’t tell you how I love you, it eats me up, but even so I want to start proper like so you won’t be able to throw anythin’ back at me after.’
‘What you talking about?’ He had her by the shoulders now actually shaking her. ‘Me throw anything back at you? Actually thinking I’d do a thing like that?’
‘You’re a man and they all do. Me grannie . . .’
‘Blast your grannie! Blast her to hell’s flames! She’s old. Things were different in her day.’
‘Not that. That wasn’t any different. Never will be. It’s the only thing a woman’s really looked down on for. Even if you were to steal you wouldn’t have a stamp put on you like you would have if . . . if you had a bairn.’
‘You won’t have . . .’
‘Rory, no. I tell you no. We’ve waited this long, what’s a few more months?’
‘I could be dead, you could be dead.’
‘We’ll have to take a chance on that.’
‘You know, Janie, you’re hard; there’s a hard streak in you, always has been about some things . . .’
‘I’m not.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘I’m not hard.’
‘Yes you are . . .’
‘I’m not. I’m not.’
‘All right, all right. Aw, don’t cry. I’m sorry, I am. Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not hard.’
‘No, you’re not, you’re lovely . . . It’s all right. Look, it’s all right; I just want to hold you.’
When his arms went about her she jerked herself from his hold once more and going to the window, stood stiffly looking down on to the river, and he stood as stiffly watching her. Only his jaw moved as his teeth ground against each other.
She drew in a deep breath now and, her head turning from one side to the other, she looked up and down the river. As far as her eyes could see both to the right and to the left the banks were lined with craft, ships of all types and sizes, from little scullers, wherries and tugs to great funnelled boats, and here and there a masted ship, its lines standing out separate and graceful from the great iron hulks alongside.
Rory now came slowly to the window and, putting his arm around her shoulders and his manner softened, he said, ‘Look. Look along there. You see that boat with a figurehead on it—there’s a fine lass for you . . . Look at her bust, I bet that’s one of Thomas Anderson’s pieces, and I’ll bet he enjoyed makin’ it.’
‘Rory!’
He hugged her to him now and laughed, then said, ‘There’s the ferry boat right along there going off to Newcastle . . . one of the pleasure trips likely. Think on that, eh? We could take a trip up to Newcastle on a Sunday, and in the week there’ll always be somethin’ for you to look at. The river’s alive during the week.’
She turned her head towards him now and said, ‘You said the rent’s three and six?’
‘Aye.’
‘You won’t get anything from Jimmy, not until he gets set-in.’
‘I know, I know that. But we’ll manage. I’ll still be workin’. I’ll keep on until we really do get set-in and make a business of it. I mightn’t be able to build a boat but I’ll be able to steer one, and I can shovel coal and hump bales with the rest of them. I didn’t always scribble in a rent book you know; I did me stint in the Jarrow chemical works, and in the bottle works afore that.’
‘I know, I know, but I was just thinkin’. Something the mistress said.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Well—’ she turned from him and walked down the length of the room—’she doesn’t want me to leave, I know that, she said as much.’ She swung round again. ‘Do you know she even said to me face that she’d miss me. Fancy her sayin’ that.’
‘Of course she’ll miss you, anybody would.’ He came close to her again and held her face between his hands. ‘I’d miss you. If I ever lost you I’d miss you. God, how I’d miss you! Oh, Janie.’
‘Don’t . . . not for a minute. Listen.’ She pushed his hands from under her oxters now and said, ‘Would you demand I be at home all day?’
‘I don’t know about demand, but I’d want you at home all day. Aye, of course I would. Who’s to do the cooking and the washing and the like? What are you gettin’ at?’
‘Well, it was something the mistress said. She said she had been thinking about raising me wage . . .’
‘Ah, that was just a feeler. Now look, she’s not going to put you off, is she?’
‘No, no, she’s not. She knows I’m goin’ to be married. Oh, she knows that, but what she said was, if . . . if I could come for a while, daily like, until the children got a bit bigger and used to somebody else, because well, as she said, they were fond of me, the bairns. And she would arrange for Bessie to have my room and sleep next to them at night and I needn’t be there until eight in the morning, and I could leave at half-six after I got them to bed.’
He swung away from her, his arms raised above his head, his hands flapping towards the low roof, and he flapped them until he reached the end of the room and turned about and once more was standing in front of her. And then, thrusting his head forward, he said, ‘Look, you’re going to be married, you’re going to start married life the way we mean to go on. You’ll be me wife, an’ I just don’t want you from half-past six or seven at night till eight in the morning, I want you here all the time. I want you here when I come in at dinner-time an’ at tea-time.’
‘She’ll give me three shillings a week. It’s not to be sneezed at, it would nearly pay the rent.’
‘Look. Look, we’ll manage. A few more games like last night, even if nothing bigger, and I can spit in the eye of old Kean . . . and your master and mistress.’
Don’t talk like that!’ She was indignant now. ‘Spittin’ in their eye! They’ve been good to me, better than anybody in me life. I’ve been lucky. Why, I must be the best-treated servant in this town, or in any other. She’s kept me in clothes. And don’t forget—’ she was now wagging her head at him— ‘when things were rough a few years ago with their damned strikes and such, she gave me a loaded basket every week-end. And your own belly would have been empty many a time if I hadn’t have brought it. Meat, flour, sugar . . .’
‘All right, all right; have you got to be grateful for a little kindness all your life? Anyway, it was nothing to them. The only time that kind of charity has any meaning is when the giver has to do without themselves. She likely throws as much in the midden every week.’
‘We haven’t got a midden, as you call it.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Both their voices were lowering now and in a broken tone she replied, ‘No, I don’t know what you mean. There’s things about you I don’t understand, never have.’
He didn’t move towards her but turned his head on his shoulder and looked sideways at her for some seconds before saying, ‘You said you loved me.’
‘Aye, aye, I did, but you can love somebody and not understand them. I might as well tell you I don’t understand how you’re always taken up so much with cards. It’s a mania with you, and I shouldn’t be surprised that when we’re married you’ll be like the rest of them; the others go out every night to the pubs but you’ll go out to your gamin’.’
‘I’ll only go gamin’ when I want money to get you things.’
‘That’ll be your excuse, you’ll go gamin’ because you can’t stop gamin’, it’s like something in your blood. Even as far back as when we went gathering rose hips you wanted to bet on how many you could hold in your fist.’
They were staring at each other now, and he said, ‘You don’t want to come here then?’
‘Aw yes, yes. Aw Rory.’ She went swiftly towards him and leant against him. Then after a moment she muttered, ‘I want to be where you are, but . . . but at the same time I feel I owe them something. You don’t see them as I do. But . . . but don’t worry, I’ll tell her.’
He looked at her softly now as he said, ‘It wouldn’t work. And anyway I want me wife to meself, I don’t want her to be like the scum, gutting fish, or going tatie pickin’ to make ends meet. I want to take care of you, I want a home of me own, with bairns and me wife at the fireside.’
She nodded at him, saying, ‘You’re right, Rory, you’re right,’ while at the same time the disconcerting mental picture of Kathleen Leary flashed across the screen of her mind. Mrs Leary had borne sixteen children and she was worn out, tired and worn out, and she knew that Rory was the kind of man who’d give her sixteen children if he could. Well, that was life, wasn’t it? Yes, but she wasn’t sure if she was going to like that kind of life. She drew herself gently from him now and made for the trap door, saying, ‘I’ll have to get started on some sewing, I haven’t got all that much in me chest.’
As he took her hand to help her down on to the first step she looked up at him and said, ‘The mistress is goin’ to give me me bed linen. I didn’t tell you, did I?’
‘No.’
‘Well, she is. And that’ll be something, won’t it?’
‘Aye, that’ll be something.’
As he looked down into her face he stopped himself from adding, ‘She can keep her bloody bed linen, I’ll make enough afore long to smother you in bed linen.’
Rory didn’t make enough money in a very short time to smother Janie in bed linen. By the third week of the New Year he had managed to acquire only a further eight pounds and this after four Saturday nights’ sittings. And the reason wasn’t because of his bad play or ill luck, it was because he was playing against fiddlers, cheats, a small gang who worked together and stood by each other like the close-knit members of a family.
Well, he was finished with the Corstorphine Town lot, and he had told little Joe either he got him into a good school or he himself would do a little investigating into No. 3 Plynlimmon Way. He could have told him he had already done some investigating and that the occupier, a Mr Nickle, was a shipowner. Even if not in an ostentatious way, nevertheless he was big enough to be a member of the shipowners’ association, known as the Coal Trade Committee, which had its club and meeting room in a house on the Lawe. Moreover, he was understood to have shares in a number of businesses in the town, including those which dealt not only with the victualling of ships with bread and beef but also in ships’ chandlery. And then there was the tallow factory, and many other smaller businesses. In his favour it could be said that he subscribed generously to such causes as distressed seamen and their families. And at times there were many of these; the bars along the waterfront were not always full, nor the long dance rooms attached to them in which the sailors jigged with the women they picked up.
Mr Nickle had also been a strong advocate for better sewerage, especially since the outbreak of cholera in ’66, and the smallpox outbreak in 1870. He had helped, too, to bring about the new Scavenging Department under the Borough Engineer. Before this the removal of the filth of the town had been left to contractors.
Oh, Mr Nickle was a good man, Rory wasn’t saying a thing against him, but Mr Nickle had a failing which was looked at askance by the temperance societies and the respectable members of the community.
And although Rory himself thought none the less of Mr Nickle, for if the crowned heads could gamble . . . and it was well known that Bertie, the Prince of Wales, was a lad at the game, why not Mr Nickle, and why not Rory Connor, or any working man for that matter? But it was the same injustice here, one law for the rich, another for the poor. Yet these sentiments did not deter him from harassing, or even threatening little Joe, nor did little Joe see any injustice in Mr Connor’s treatment of him. He had a rough-hewn philosophy: there were gents of all grades, there were the high gents, middle gents, and the lower gents. Mr Connor was of the lower gents, but his money was as good as anybody else’s and often he was more generous than the middle gents. The real toffs were open handed, and the waterfront gamblers were free with their money when they had it, but the middle gents were mean, and although Mr Nickle was prominent in the town and lived in one of the best ends he was, to little Joe, a middle gent, in the upper bracket of that section maybe, but still a middle gent. But he was a man who had power, as had those who worked for him, and they could be nasty at times.
Little Joe was worried for Mr Connor, but apparently Mr Connor wasn’t worried for himself. In a way Joe admired a fellow like Mr Connor; he admired his pluck because it was something he hadn’t much of himself.
So it was that little Joe spoke to Mr Nickle’s man. Mr Nickle’s man was a kind of valet-cum- butler-cum-doorman, and his wife was Mr Nickle’s housekeeper, and his two daughters were Mr Nickle’s parlour-maid and housemaid respectively. Altogether it was another close-knit family. There was no Mrs Nickle, she had died some years previously.
Little Joe did not lie about Mr Connor’s position, that is not exactly. What he said was, he was a gent in the property business. Also, that he played a good hand and was very discreet. He had known him for some years and had set him on in schools along the waterfront, and he had added that, as he understood that two of Mr Nickle’s friends had passed away recently, he had stressed the word friends, he wondered if Mr Nickle was looking for a little new blood. One thing he told Mr Nickle’s man he could assure his master of, and that was Mr Connor was no sponger.
Mr Nickle’s man said he would see what could be done. What he meant was he would look into Mr Connor’s mode of business. He did.
When next little Joe met Rory all he could say was, ‘I’ve got you set-in for a game in a place in Ocean Road, just near the Workhouse.’
‘Do you think you’ll make it the night, Rory?’ Jimmy asked under his breath as he stood near the door watching Rory pull on his overcoat.
‘I’ll have a damned good try, I can’t say better. It’s a new place; I’ll have to see how the land lies, won’t I?’
‘You’ll find yourself lying under the land if you’re not careful.’
Rory turned his dark gaze on to Lizzie where she sat at one side of a long mat frame jabbing a steel progger into the stretched hessian. He watched her thrust in a clipping of rag, pull it tightly down from underneath with her left hand, then jab the progger in again before he said, ‘You’d put the kibosh on God, you would.’
Ruth looked up from where she was sitting at the other side of the frame. In the lamplight her face appeared delicate and sad, and she shook her head at him, it was a gentle movement, before she said, ‘Just take care of yourself that’s all.’
‘I’ve always had to, haven’t I?’
‘Aw, there speaks the big fellow who brought himself up. Suckled yourself from your own breast you did.’
Rory now grabbed his hard hat which Jimmy was holding towards him, then wrenching open the door, he went out.
It was a fine night. The air was sharp, the black sky was high and star-filled. He could even make out the gate because of their brightness, and also with the help of the light from the Learys’ window. They never drew their blinds, the Learys.
He picked his way carefully down the narrow lane so that he shouldn’t splash his boots. He had also taken the precaution of bringing a piece of rag with him in order to wipe them before he should enter this new place because the houses in King Street and down Ocean Road were mostly decent places.
The rage that Lizzie always managed to evoke in him had subsided by the time he reached Leam Lane and entered the docks. And he decided that if there was a cab about he’d take a lift. But then it wasn’t very likely there’d be one around the docks, unless it was an empty one coming back from some place.
He didn’t find a cab, so he had to walk all the way down to Ocean Road, a good couple of miles.
Although the streets were full of people and the roads still packed with traffic, but mostly flat carts, drays and barrows now, he kept to the main thoroughfare because the bairns seemed to go mad on a Saturday night up the side streets, and in some parts lower down in the town one of their Saturday night games was to see which of them could knock your hat off with a handful of clarts. The devil’s own imps some of them were. Once he would have laughed at their antics, but not since the time he’d had a dead kitten slapped across his face.
The market place was like a beehive; the stalls illuminated with naphtha flares held every description of food, household goods, and clothing; the latter mostly second, third and fourth hand. The smells were mixed and pungent, and mostly strong, especially those emanating from the fish and meat stalls.
In King Street the gas lamps were ablaze. People stood under them in groups, while others gazed into the shop windows. Saturday night was a popular night for window-gazing and there was no hurry to buy even if you wanted to; the supplies never ran out and most of the shops were open until ten o’clock, some later.
He stopped within a few yards of his destination. He had come down here last night to make sure of the number. It was a corner house, not all that prosperous looking but not seedy. He stooped and rubbed his boots vigorously with the rag, then threw it into the gutter, after which he straightened his coat, tilted his hard hat slightly to the side, pulled at the false starched cuffs that were pinned to the ends of his blue-striped flannelette shirt sleeves, then, following little Joe’s directions, he went round the corner, down some area steps, and knocked on the door.
He was surprised when it was opened by a maid, a maid of all work by the look of her, but nevertheless a maid.
‘Aye?’ She peered up at him in the fluttering light from a naked gas jet attached to a bracket sticking out from the wall opposite the door, and in answer he said what Joe had told him to say. ‘Me name’s Connor. Little Joe sent me.’
‘Oh aye. Come in.’
He followed her into a room which by its appearance was a kitchen and, after closing the door, she said, ‘Stay a minute’; then left him. A few minutes later she returned, accompanied by a man. He was a middle-aged half-caste, an Arab one, he surmised. It was his hair and his nostrils which indicated his origin. He looked Rory up and down, then said in a thick Geordie accent that was at variance with his appearance, ‘Little Joe said you wanted a set-in. That right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’ve got the ready?’
‘Enough.’
‘Show us.’
Rory stared back into the dull eyes; then slowly he lifted up the tail of his coat, put his hand in his inside pocket and brought out a handful of coins, among which were a number of sovereigns and half- sovereigns. Without speaking he thrust his hand almost into the other man’s chest.
The man looked down on it, nodded and said briefly ‘Aye.’ Then turning about, he said, ‘Come on.’
As they passed from the kitchen into the narrow passage the man said over his shoulder, ‘You’ll be expected to stand your turn with the cans. Little Joe tell you?’
Little Joe hadn’t told him but he said, ‘I’ll stand me turn.’
The man now led the way into another room, and Rory saw at once that it was used as a storage place for some commodity that was packed in wooden boxes. A number of such were arrayed along one wall. The only window in the place was boarded up. There was an old-fashioned stove at one side of the room packed high with blazing coals, and the room was lit by two bracket gas lamps. There were six men in the room besides Rory’s companion and himself: four of them were in a game at the table, the other two were looking on. The players didn’t look up but the two spectators turned towards Rory and the half-caste with a jerk of his head said, ‘This’s who I was tellin’ you about. Connor—’ he turned to Rory—’What’s your first name?’
‘Rory.’
‘What!’
‘Ror-ry.’
‘Funny name. Haven’t heard that afore.’
The two spectators at the table nodded towards Rory and he nodded back at them. Then the man with arm outstretched named the players one after the other for Rory’s benefit.
Rory didn’t take much heed to the names until the word Pittie was repeated twice. Dan Pittie and Sam Pittie. The two brothers almost simultaneously glanced up at him, nodded, then turned their attention to the game again.
Rory, standing awkwardly to the side of the fireplace, looked from one to the other of the men, then brought his attention back to the two Pitties. They looked like twins. They were bullet-headed men, heavy-shouldered but short. These must be the fellows, together with a third one, whom Jimmy said had started the keel business from nothing. They looked a tough pair, different from their partners at the table, who didn’t look river-front types; the elder of the two could have been Mr Kean; he wasn’t unlike him, and was dressed in much the same fashion.
Well, he had certainly moved up one from Corstorphine Town, because, for a start, they were playing Twenty-Ones, but as yet he didn’t know whether he liked the promotion or not; he certainly didn’t like the half-caste. But he wasn’t here to like or dislike any of them, he was here to double the money in his pocket and then see that he got safely outside with it. On the last thought he looked from the half-caste to the Pittie brothers again and thought it would take him to keep his wits about him. Aye . . . aye, it would that.
‘You’re tellin’ me she’s in the family way?’
‘Don’t put it like that, man.’
‘How do you expect me to put it? You bloody fool you, how did you manage it? Where? On the ferry or in the train? . . . All right, all right.’ He thrust John George’s raised arm aside. ‘But I mean just what I say, for you’ve seen her for an hour or so a week, so you’ve told me, when you’ve taken her around Newcastle making a tour of ancient buildings. From the Central Station into Jesmond Dene, there doesn’t seem to be one you’ve missed, so that’s why I ask you . . . Aw, man . . .’
They were standing on a piece of open land. A building was being erected to one side of it while at the other old houses were being knocked down. There was a thin drizzle of rain falling, the whole scene was dismal and it matched John George’s dejected appearance. His thin shoulders were hunched, his head hung down, his gaze was directed towards the leather bag in his hand but without seeing it. He mumbled now, ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry, I’ll manage. I’m sorry I asked you; you’ll want everything you can lay hands on to get the yard, I know.’
‘It isn’t that. You can have the two pounds, but what good’s that going to do you in this fix, I ask you. It’s a drop in the ocean and what’ll happen when she tells her folks?’
John George raised his eyes and looked up into the grey sky. ‘God! . . I just don’t know. He’ll be for murdering her. He’s an awful man from what I can gather. I want to get her out of there afore he finds out.’
‘How far is she?’
‘Over . . . over three months.’
‘Well, it won’t be long then will it afore he twigs something?’
Rory shook his head, then put his hand into his back pocket, pulled out a small bag and extracted from it two sovereigns, and as he did so his teeth ground tightly together. This was putting him in a fix, he’d had just five pounds left to make a start the night, and it could be a big night, now he was left with only three.
He hadn’t won anything that first Saturday night down in the cellar but he hadn’t lost either, he had broken even. And the following week he had just managed to clear three pounds ten; the week after he was nine pounds up at one o’clock in the morning, but by the time he left it had been reduced to four pounds, and even then they hadn’t liked it. No, none of them had liked it, the Pittie brothers least of all.
Last week when he had cleared six he said he was calling it a day and, aiming to be jocular, had added, and a night. It was the elder of the Pittie brothers who had looked at him and said, ‘No, not yet, lad.’ But he had risen to his feet, gathered his winnings up and stared back at the other man as he replied, grimly, ‘Aye, right now, lad. Nobody’s going to tell me when I come or go. I’ll be along next week and you can have your own back then, but I’m off now.’
There had followed an odd silence in the room, it was a kind of rustling silence as one man after the other at the table moved in his seat. ‘So long,’ he had said, and not until he was up the steps and into the street did he breathe freely. For a moment he had thought they were going to do him. He had decided then that that was the last time he would go there.
Three times this week he had tried to find little Joe but with no success. He was keeping out of his way apparently, so there was nothing for it if he wanted a game but to show up in the cellar again the night.
He never went with less than five pounds on him and he’d had a job to scrape that up today because during the week he had, by putting twelve pounds ten down, cleared half the cost of the boat yard, and signed an agreement that the other seventeen pounds ten was to be paid within six weeks, and he knew, his luck holding out and as long as he didn’t get into a crooked game, he would clear that. One thing about them in the cellar, they played a straight game. Anyway, they had so far.
But if he went in with only three and lost that in a run, well then, the sparks would fly. He’d have to put his thinking cap on. Oh, this bloody fool of a fellow.
As he handed the two sovereigns to John George and received his muttered thanks he asked himself where he could lay his hands on a couple of quid. It was no good asking any of them back in the house. His dad usually blew half his wages before he got home; by the time he had cleared the slate for the drinks he had run up during the week Ruth was lucky if there was ten shillings left on the mantelpiece for her. There was Janie; she had a bit saved but he doubted if it would be as much as two pounds. Anyway, he wouldn’t be able to see her until the morrow and that would be too late. Oh, he’d like to take his hand and knock some damn sense into John George Armstrong.
They were walking on now, cutting through the side streets towards the market and the office, and they didn’t exchange a word. When they reached the office door they cast a glance at each other out of habit as if to say, Now for it once again, but when the door didn’t move under Rory’s push he shook it, then, looking at John George, said, That’s funny.’
‘Use your key. Aw, here’s mine.’
John George pushed the key into the lock and they went into the office and looked about them. The door to the far room was closed but on the front of the first desk was pinned a notice and they both bent down and read it. There was no heading, it just said, ‘Been called away, my father has died. Lock up takings. My daughter will collect on Monday.’ There was no signature.
They straightened up and looked at each other; then Rory jerked his head as he said, ‘Well, this’s one blessin’ in disguise, for I’ve had the worst morning in years. He’d have gone through the roof.’
‘Funny that,’ John George smiled weakly; ‘my takings are up the day, over four pounds. About fifteen of them paid something off the back and there wasn’t one closed door.’
‘That’s a record.’
‘Aye.’ John George now went towards the inner office, saying, ‘I hope he hasn’t forgot to leave the key for the box.’
Standing behind Mr Kean’s desk and, having opened the top drawer on the right-hand side, John George put his hand into the back of it and withdrew a key; then going to an iron box safe that was screwed down on to a bench table in the corner of the room he unlocked it. He now took out the money from his bag, put the sovereigns into piles of five and placed them in a neat row on the top shelf with the smaller change in front of them, and after placing his book to the side of the compartment he stepped back and let Rory put his takings on the bottom shelf.
As John George locked the door he remarked, ‘One day he’ll get a proper safe.’
‘It would be a waste of money, it’s never in there long enough for anybody to get at it.’
‘It’ll lie in there over the week-end, and has done afore.’
‘Well, that’s his look-out. Come on.’
John George now replaced the key in the back of the drawer; then they both left, locking the outer door behind them.
As they walked together towards Laygate, Rory said stiffly, ‘What you going to do about this other business, have you got anything in mind?’
‘Aye. Aye, I have. I’m going to ask her the day. I’m going to ask her to just walk out and come to our place. She can stay hidden up there until we can get married in the registry office.’
‘Registry office?’
‘Aye, registry office. It’s just as bindin’ as any place else.’
‘It isn’t the same.’
‘Well, it’ll have to do for us.’
‘Aw, man.’ Rory shook his head slowly. ‘You let people walk over you; you’re so bloomin’ soft.’
‘I’m as God made me, we can’t help being what we are.’
‘You can help being a bloody fool, you’re not a bairn.’
‘Well, what do you expect me to do, leave her?’
‘You needn’t shout unless you want the whole street to know.’
They walked on in silence until simultaneously they both stopped at the place where their roads divided.
‘See you Monday then.’ Rory’s tone was kindly now and John George, looking at him, said, ‘Aye, see you Monday. And thanks Rory. I’ll pay you back, I promise I’ll pay you back.’
‘I’m not afraid of that, you always have.’
‘Aw . . . I wish, I wish I was like you, Rory. You’re right, I’m too soft to clag holes with, no gumption. I can never say no.’
It was on the tip of Rory’s tongue to come back with the retort, ‘And neither can your lass apparently.’ Janie had said no, and she’d kept both feet on the ground when she said it an’ all. But what he said and generously was, ‘People like you for what you are. You’re a good bloke.’ He made a small movement with his fist. ‘I’ll tell you something. You’re better liked than me, especially up in our house. It’s John George this, an’ John George that.’
‘Aw, go on, man, stop pulling me leg. But it’s nice of you to say it nevertheless, and as I said—’ he patted his pocket—I won’t forget this.’
‘That’s all right, man. So long, and good luck.’
‘So long . . . so long, Rory. And thanks. Thanks again.’
They went their ways, neither dreaming he would never see the other again.
When Rory went into the cellar that same evening he had eight pounds in his pocket.
The Pittie brothers were already at the table, but the two men partnering them were unknown to Rory until he realized that one of them was the third Pittie brother. He was a man almost a head taller than the other two. His nose was flattened and looked boneless. This was the one who was good with his fists, so he had heard, but by the look of him he wasn’t all that good for his face looked like a battered pluck. The fourth man looked not much bigger than little Joe and he had a foxy look, but he was well put on. His suit, made of some kind of tweed, looked quite fancy, as did his pearl-buttoned waistcoat. During the course of conversation later in the evening he discovered that he was from across the water in North Shields and was manager of a blacking factory.
Rory kicked his heels for almost an hour before he got set-in at the table, for after the game they spent quite some time drinking beer and eating meat sandwiches. Although he always stood his share in buying the beer he drank little of it and tonight less than usual, for he wanted to keep his wits about him. Some part of him was worried at the presence of the third Pittie brother, it was creating a small niggling fear at the back of his mind.
The big Pittie was dealer. He shuffled the cards in a slow ponderous way until Rory wanted to say, ‘Get on with it’; then of a sudden he spoke. ‘You aimin’ to buy old Kilpatrick’s yard I hear?’
Rory was startled, and he must have shown it for the big fellow jerked his chin upwards as he said, ‘Oh, you can’t keep nowt secret on the waterfront; there’s more than scum comes in on the tide . . . Your young ’un works at Baker’s, don’t he?’
‘Aye. Yes, he works at Baker’s.’
‘What does he expect to do at Kilpatrick’s, build a bloody battleship?’
The three brothers now let out a combined bellow and the thin man in the fancy waistcoat laughed with them, although it was evident he didn’t know what all this was about.
Rory’s lower jaw moved from one side to the other before he said, ‘He’s going to build scullers and small keel-like boats.’
‘Keel-like boats. Huh!’ It was the youngest of the Pittie’s speaking now. ‘Where’s he gona put them?’
‘Where they belong, on the river.’
‘By God! he’ll be lucky, you can hardly get a plank atween the boats now. And what’s he gona do with the keel-like boats when he gets them on the water, eh?’
‘Same as you, work them, or sell them.’
As the three pairs of eyes became fixed on him he told himself to go steady, these fellows meant business, they weren’t here the night only for the game. He kept his gaze steady on them as he said, ‘Well now, since you know what I have in mind, are we going to play?’
The big fellow returned to his shuffling. Then he dealt. When Rory picked up his cards he thought, Bad start, good finish.
And so it would seem. He lost the first game, won the next two, lost the next one, then won three in a row. By one o’clock in the morning he had a small pile of sovereigns and a larger pile of silver to his hand. Between then and two o’clock the pile went down a little before starting again to increase steadily.
At the end of a game when the man in the fancy waistcoat had no money in front of him he said he must be going. He had, he said, lost enough for one night and what was more he’d have to find somebody to scull him across the river. And at this time of the morning whoever he found would certainly make him stump up, and what he had left, he thought, was just about enough to carry him over.
When Rory, too, also voiced that he must be on his way there were loud, even angry cries from the table.
‘Aw, no, no, lad,’ said the big fellow. ‘Fair’s fair. You’ve taken all our bloody money so give us a chance to get a bit of it back, eh? We’ve to get across the river an’ all.’ There was laughter at this, but it was without mirth.
And so another game started, and long before it finished the uneasy sickly feeling in the pit of Rory’s stomach had grown into what he hated to admit was actual fear.
Another hour passed and it was towards the end of a game when things were once again going in Rory’s favour that the youngest Pittie brother began speaking of Jimmy as if he were continuing the conversation that had centred around him earlier in the play.
‘Your young ’un’s bandy,’ he said. ‘Bandy Connor they call him along the front . . . Saw him from the boat t’other day. Drive a horse and cart through his legs you could.’ He now punched his brother in the side of the chest and the brother guffawed: ‘Aye, his mother must have had him astride a donkey.’
Any reference to the shape of Jimmy’s legs had always maddened Rory; he had fought more fights on Jimmy’s account than he had on his own. But now, although there was a rage rising in him that for the moment combated his fear, he warned himself to go steady, for they were up to something. They were like three bull terriers out to bait a bull. He was no bull, but they were bull terriers all right.
The stories of their past doings flicked across the surface of his mind and increased his rising apprehension, yet did not subdue his rage, even while the cautionary voice kept saying, ‘Careful, careful, let them get on with it. Get yourself outside, let them get on with it.’
When he made no reply to the taunt, one after another, the three brothers laid down their cards and looked at him, and he at them. Then slowly he placed his cards side by side on the table.
The three Pitties and the half-caste stared at his cards and they did not lift their eyes when his hand went out and drew the money from the centre of the table towards him. Not until he pushed his chair back and got to his feet did one of them speak. It was the youngest brother. ‘You goin’ then?’ he said.
‘Aye.’ Rory moved his head slowly downwards.
‘You’ve had a good night.’
‘You all had the same chance.’
‘I would argue about that.’
‘Would you?’
‘I think you had a trick or two up your sleeve.’
‘What! Then search me if you’ve got a mind.’
‘Aw, no need for that, I wasn’t meanin’ the actual cards. But you’re a bit of a clever bugger, aren’t you?’
‘I’m bucked that you think so.’ He stood buttoning his coat, and noted that the half-caste was no longer in the room. He picked up his hat from a side table and went towards the door, saying, ‘So long then.’
The brothers didn’t speak. When he pulled at the door it didn’t open. He tugged at it twice before turning and looking back into the room. The three men had risen from the table. He stared at them and now the fear swept over him like a huge wave and his stomach heaved.
‘What you standing there for? Can’t you get out?’ The big fellow was approaching him, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. But strangely it wasn’t the fellow’s arms or his face that Rory looked at, but his feet. He hadn’t noticed them before. They were enormous feet encased in thick hob-nailed boots. The boots had the dull sheen of tallow on them with which they had likely been greased.
When the arms sprang up and grabbed at his shoulders Rory struck out, right, then left; right, then left, but his blows were the wild desperate punches used in the back lanes or among the lads in a scrap, as often happened in a works yard.
He remembered hearing the big fellow laugh just before the great fist struck his jaw and seemed to snap his head from his body.
He was on the floor now and he screamed when the boot caught him in the groin. Then he was on his feet again, somebody holding him while another belted into him, the big fellow. They left it all to the big fellow. He was still struggling to hit out but like a child swapping flies when the blow came under his chin, and once more he was on his back. But this time he knew nothing about it. He didn’t feel them going through his pockets, nor when the three of them used their feet on him. He was quite unaware of being hoisted across the big fellow’s shoulder and being carried past the half-caste who was standing in the doorway now and up the area steps into the dark side street, then through the back alleyways towards the river.
That he didn’t reach the river was due to the appearance of two bulky figures coming through a cut between the warehouses. One was a dark-cloaked priest who had been to a ship to give the last rites to a dying sailor. The man accompanying him was the dead man’s friend who was seeing the priest safely back into the town. But to the three brothers their shapes indicated two burly sailors or night-watchmen, and both types could do some dirty fighting on their own, so with a heave they threw the limp body among a tangle of river refuse, broken spars, boxes, and decaying fruit and vegetable, and minutes later the priest and the sailor passed within six feet of it and went on their way.
They were all in the kitchen, Bill Waggett, Gran and Janie—Janie still had her outdoor things on; Collum Leary and Kathleen and with them now was their son Pat; Paddy Connor, Ruth, Jimmy; and lastly Lizzie; and it was Lizzie who, looking at young Pat Leary said, ‘Talk sense, lad. ’Tis three o’clock on Sunday afternoon an’ he left the house round six last night. Who would be playin’ cards all that time I ask you?’
‘It’s true, Lizzie. ’Tis true. I’ve heard of games goin’ on for twenty-four hours. They win an’ lose, win an’ lose.’
‘He would never stay all this time; something’s happened him.’
Nobody contradicted her now but they all turned and looked at Janie who, with fingers pressed tightly against her lower lip, said, ‘You should have gone down and told the polis.’
‘What should we tell the polis, lass?’ Paddy Connor now asked her quietly. That me son was out gamin’ last night an’ hasn’t come back? All right, they’ll say, let’s find him an’ push him along the line. Where was he gamin’? I don’t know, says I. Lass—’ his voice was still gentle—’we’ve thought of everything.’
Grannie Waggett, who was the only one seated, now turned in her chair and, her pale eyes sweeping the company, she said, ‘If you want my advice the lot of you, you’ll stop frashin’. It’s as Pat there says, he’s got into a game. He’s gamin’ mad, always has been. It affects some folks like that, like a poison in their blood. Some blokes take to drink, others to whorin’. . .’
‘Gran!‘
The old woman flashed a look on Janie. ‘Whorin’ I said, an’ whorin’ I mean, an’ for my part I’d rather have either of them than one that takes to gamin’, ’cos with them you’re sure of a roof over your head some time, but not with a gamer for he’d gamble the shift off your back an’ you inside it. There was this gentleman who used to come to the house when I was in service in Newcastle. Real gentleman, carriage an’ pair, fancy wife, mansion, he had. One day he had everything, next day nowt. I tell you, me girl—’ she turned and stabbed her finger towards Janie—’you want to put your foot down right from the start or get used to livin’ in the open, for I tell you, you won’t be sure of a roof . . .’
‘Be quiet, Ma.’
Grannie Waggett turned on her son. ‘Don’t you tell me to be quiet.’
‘Be quiet all of you, please.’ It was Ruth speaking gently. ‘What I think should be done is somebody should go down to the Infirmary, the new Infirmary. If anything had happened to him they’d take him there.’
‘And make a fool of themselves askin’.’
Ruth now looked at her husband. ‘I don’t mind lookin’ a fool, I’ll go.’
‘No, Ma.’ Jimmy who had not opened his mouth so far went towards the bottom of the ladder now, saying, ‘I’ll go, I’ll change me things an’ I’ll go.’
As he mounted upwards Collum said, ‘It’s odd it is that he made no mention of whereabouts he’d be, now isn’t it? But then again perhaps it isn’t; if he’d got set on in a big school the least said the soonest mended, for you can’t be too careful: the polis just need a whisper and it’s up their nose it goes like a sniff to a bloodhound.’
Up in the loft Jimmy went straight to a long wooden box and took out his Sunday coat and trousers, but he didn’t get into them immediately. For quite some minutes he stood with them gripped tight against his chest, his eyes closed, his lips moving as he muttered to himself, ‘Oh dear God! don’t let nowt happen our Rory. Please, please, don’t let nowt happen him.’
As he came down the ladder again, Janie said, ‘I’ll go with you.’ But he shook his head at her. ‘No, no, I’ll be better on me own. Well, what I mean is, I can get around the waterfront. If he’s not in the hospital I can get around and ask.’
‘Be careful.’
He turned to Lizzie and nodded, saying, ‘Aye; aye,’ and as he went to let himself out, Ruth followed him and, opening the door for him, said quietly, Don’t stay late, not in the dark, not around there.’
‘All right, Ma.’ He nodded at her, then went out.
He ran most of the way into Shields and wasn’t out of breath. He took no notice of the urchins who shouted after him:
At one time the rhyme used to hurt him but he was inured to it now. Nothing could hurt him, he told himself, except that something should happen to their Rory. He’d want to peg out himself if anything happened to their Rory. What was more, if it had already happened he would be to blame because if he hadn’t yarped on about the boatyard Rory wouldn’t have gone gambling . . . But, aye, he would, he would always gamble. But not at this new place, this big place he had gone to these past few Saturdays. He hadn’t let on where it was. He had asked him, but the laughing answer had been, ‘Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies . . .’
The porter at the Infirmary said, ‘No, lad, nobody the name of Connor’s been brought in the day. Then they don’t bring people in on a Sunday less it’s accidents like.’
‘Well, I was thinkin’ it could’ve been an accident.’
‘Well, there’s no Connor here, lad. Neither mister nor missis.’
‘Ta . . . thanks.’ He didn’t know whether he was disappointed or relieved.
He was going down the gravel drive when the porter’s voice hailed him, saying, ‘Just a minute! There’s a fella, but I hope it isn’t the one you’re lookin’ for. There was a bloke brought in round dinner-time, no name on him, nothing. He was found on the waterfront. Not a sailor. His clothes were respectable, what was left of them, but I expect by now he’s kicked the bucket.’
Jimmy walked slowly back towards the man, saying as he went, ‘What’s he like?’
‘Oh, lad, his own mother wouldn’t be able to recognize him, he’s been bashed about worse than anybody I’ve seen afore.’
‘Had he brown hair, thick, wavy . . . ?’
‘Whatever colour this fellow’s hair once was, lad, I couldn’t say, but the day it was dark red, caked with blood.’
Jimmy stood looking up at the man, his mouth slightly agape. Then closing it, the words came dredged through his lips as he said, ‘Could . . . could I see him, this . . . this fella?’
‘Well. Well, I’ll ask the sister. Come on back.’
‘Sit there a minute,’ he said a moment later, pointing to a polished wooden chair standing against the painted brick wall of the lobby.
Jimmy sat down, glad to get off his legs. He was feeling weak, faint, and frightened, very frightened.
The porter came back and beckoned to him. Then with his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, he pointed and said, ‘Go down there, lad, to the end of the corridor, turn left, an’ you’ll see the sister.’
The sister was tall and thin. She put him in mind of John George. He had to put his head back to look up at her. She said to him, ‘You’re looking for your brother?’
‘Aye, miss.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Twenty-three, comin’ up twenty-four next month.’
‘There’s a young man in there,’ she nodded towards the wall. ‘He’s in a very bad state, he’s been badly beaten. But . . . but you may be able to recognize him, if he is your brother.’
She turned away, and Jimmy followed her towards the figure lying on the bed. It was very still. The head was swathed in bandages, the face completely distorted with bruises. He found himself gasping for breath. He had once seen a man taken from the river. He was all blue, bluey black and bloated. He had been dead for days, they said. This man on the bed could be dead an’ all. He didn’t know if it was their Rory. The sister was whispering something in his ear and he turned and looked dazedly at her. Then he whispered back as he pointed to his thumb. ‘He had a wart atween his finger an’ thumb towards the front. He’d always had it.’
The sister gently picked up the limp hand from the counterpane and turned it over; then she looked at Jimmy as he stared down at the flat hard wart that Rory had for years picked and scraped at in an effort to rid himself of it.
The sister drew him backwards away from the bed, and when they were in the corridor again she still kept her hand on his shoulder as she endeavoured to soothe him, saying, ‘There now. There now.’
The tears were choking him. Although they were flooding down his face they were packing his gullet, he couldn’t breathe.
She took him into a room and said, ‘Where do you live?’
When he was unable to answer she asked, ‘In the town?’
He shook his head.
‘Tyne Dock?’
He brought out between gasps, ‘Up . . . up Simonside.’
‘Oh, that’s a long way.’
He dried his face now on his sleeve, then took a clean rag from his pocket and blew his nose. After some minutes he looked up at her and said, ‘I’ll bring me ma and da,’ then added, ‘Will he . . . ?’
She said kindly, ‘I don’t know, he’s very low. He could see the morning, but then again I don’t know.’
He nodded at her, then walked slowly from the room. But in the corridor he turned and looked back at her and said, ‘Ta,’ and she smiled faintly at him.
He didn’t run immediately, he walked from the gates to where the road turned into Westoe and as he looked down it he thought of Janie. Poor Janie. Poor all of them. In their different ways they’d all miss him, miss him like hell. He had been different from them, different from his da and Mr Waggett and Mr Leary, and all the women had looked up to him. He had become something, a rent collector. There were very few people from their walk of life who rose to rent collectors . . . And himself? He stopped in the street. If Rory went then his own life would come to an end. Not even boats would bring him any comfort. This feeling he had for Rory was not just admiration because he had got on in the world, it was love, because he was the only being he’d really be able to love. He had another love, but that was in a secret dream. He’d never have a lass of his own for no lass would look the side he was on; but that hadn’t mattered so very much because there’d always be Rory.
As if he were starting a race he sprang forward and ran. He ran until he thought his heart would burst, for it was uphill all the way after he left the docks, and when finally he staggered into the kitchen he dropped on to the floor and held his side against the painful stitch before he could speak to them all hanging over him. And when he did speak it was to Janie he addressed himself.
They walked quickly, almost on the point of a run, all the way back with him into Shields in the dark, Paddy, Ruth, Lizzie and Janie, and for hours they all waited in the little side room. It was against the rules, but the night sister had taken pity on them and brought them in out of the cold.
Janie left the Infirmary around eleven o’clock to slip back to her place, and the look on her face checked the upbraiding from the cook and her master and mistress. The master and mistress were deeply concerned over the incident and gave her leave to visit the hospital first thing in the morning.
Fortunately it was not more than five minutes’ walk from the house, they said, so she was to go upstairs and rest, as she would need all her strength to face the future.
It was a term that ordinary people used when a man had died and a woman was left to fend for herself and her family with no hope of help but the questionable charity of the Poor House. It was as if Rory were already gone. Well, the family expected he would go before dawn, didn’t they? Men in his condition usually went out about three in the morning.
She asked politely if she could go back now because she’d like to be with him when he went.
Her master and mistress held a short conference in the drawing-room and then they gave her their permission.
Rory passed the critical time of 3 a.m. He was still breathing at five o’clock in the morning, but the night sister informed them now that he might remain in a coma for days and that they should go home.
Ruth and Paddy nodded at her in obedience because they both knew that Paddy must get to work; and Ruth said to Janie, ‘You must get back an’ all, lass. Don’t take too much advantage an’ they’ll let you out again.’ And Janie, numb with agony, could only nod to this sound advice. But Lizzie refused to budge. Here she was, she said, and here she’d remain until she knew he was either going or staying. And Jimmy said he’d stay too, until it was time to go to work.
So Ruth and Paddy nodded a silent good-bye to Janie when their ways parted at Westoe and walked without exchanging a word through the dark streets that were already filling with men on their way to the shipyards, the docks, and farther into Jarrow to Palmer’s. But when they had passed through the arches and came to where the road divided Paddy said, ‘I’d better go straight on up else I’ll be late.’
‘You’ve got your good suit on.’
‘Bugger me good suit!’
Ruth peered at him through the darkness before she said quietly, ‘If he goes things’ll be tight, think on that. There’ll be less for beer and nowt for clothes. I depended on him.’
‘Aw, woman!’ He swung away from her now and made for the Simonside road, saying over his shoulder, ‘Then stop skittering behind, put a move on. If they dock me half an hour it’ll be less on the mantelpiece, so think on.’
Think on, he said. She had thought on for years. She had thought on the pain of life that you managed to work off during the daytime, but which pressed on you in the night and settled around your heart, causing wind, the relief of which brought no ease. She had loved him in the early years, but after Rory was born she hated him. Yet her hate hadn’t spread over Lizzie. Strange that, she had always liked Lizzie. Still did. She couldn’t imagine life without Lizzie. When Nellie was born a little wonder had entered her life, yet she had actually fought him against the conception. Every time he had tried to touch her she had fought him. Sometimes she conquered because he became weary of the struggle, but at other times after a hard day at the wash tub and baking and cleaning, because she’d had it all to do herself then as Lizzie went out daily doing for the people down the bank, she would surrender from sheer exhaustion. When Jimmy came life ran smoothly for a time. She felt happy she had a son; that he should have rickets didn’t matter so much. As he grew his legs would straighten. So she had thought at first. Then came the day when hate rose in her for Paddy again. It was when he tried once more to take Lizzie. She had come in from next door and found them struggling there in the open on the mat and the bairns locked in the scullery. There had been no need for Lizzie to protest ‘I want none of him, Ruth, I want none of him,’ the scratches on his face bore out her statement.
From then on the dess bed in the kitchen became a battleground. Finally he brought the priest to her; and she was forced to do her duty in the fear of everlasting hell and damnation.
She had never asked herself why Lizzie had stayed with them all these years because where would a single woman go with a bairn? Anyway, it was his responsibility to see that she was taken care of after giving her a child.
And now that child was lying back there battered and on his way to death. What would Lizzie do without him? He had scorned her since the day he learned she was his mother. But it hadn’t altered her love for him; the only thing it had done was put an edge to her tongue every time she spoke to him. Funny, but she envied Lizzie. Although she knew she had Rory’s affection, she envied her, for she was his mother.
Rory regained consciousness at eight o’clock on the Monday morning. Lizzie was by his side and he looked at her without recognition, and when his lips moved painfully she put her ear down to him and all she could make out was one word, which she repeated a number of times and in an anguished tone. ‘Aye. Aye, lad,’ she said, ‘it is a pity. It is a pity. Indeed it is a pity.’
He would rally, they said, so she must leave the ward but she could come back in the afternoon.
Without protest now she left the hospital. But she didn’t go straight home. She found her way to the Catholic church, which she had never been in before; on her yearly visits she patronized the Jarrow one. She waited until the Mass was finished, and then approaching the priest without showing the awe due to his station and infallibility, she told him that her son was dying in the Infirmary and would he see that he got the last rites. The priest asked her where she was from and other particulars. He showed her no sympathy, he didn’t like her manner, she was a brusque woman and she did not afford him the reverence that her kind usually bestowed on him, nor did she slip anything into his hand, but she did say that if her son went she would buy a mass for him.
He watched her leave the church without putting a halfpenny in the poor box.
The priest’s feelings for Lizzie were amply reciprocated. She told herself she didn’t like him, he wasn’t a patch on the Jarrow ones. But then she supposed it didn’t make much difference who sent you over to the other side as long as there was one of them to see that you were properly prepared for the journey.
It was around half-past one when Lizzie, about to pick up her shawl for the journey back to the hospital, glanced out of the cottage window, then stopped and said, ‘Here’s John George; he must have heard.’
By the time John George reached the door she had opened it and, looking at his white drawn face, said quietly, ‘Come in, lad. Come in.’
He came in. He stood in the middle of the room looking from one to the other; then as he was about to speak Ruth said softly, ‘You’ve heard then, John George?’ and he repeated ‘Heard?’
‘Aye, about Rory.’
‘Rory? I . . . I came up to find him.’
‘You don’t know then?’
He turned to Lizzie. ‘Know what, Lizzie? What . . . what’s happened him?’ He shook his head, then asked again. ‘What’s happened him?’
‘Oh lad!’ Lizzie now put her hand to her brow. ‘You mean to say you haven’t heard? Jimmy was going to tell Mr Kean at break time.’
‘Mr Kean?’
‘Aye, sit down, lad.’ Ruth now put her hand out and pressed John George into a chair, and he looked at her dumbly as he said, ‘Mr Kean’s not there. Miss Kean, she . . . she came for a while.’ He nodded his head slowly now, then asked stiffly, ‘Rory. Where is he?’
‘He’s down in the hospital, John George. He was beaten up, beaten unto death something terrible.’
When John George now slumped forward over the table and dropped his head into his hands both women came close to him and Lizzie murmured, ‘Aye, lad, aye, I know how you feel.’
After a while he raised his head and looked from one to the other and said dully, ‘He’s dead then?’
‘No.’ Lizzie shook her head from side to side. ‘But he’s as near to it as makes no matter. It’ll be one of God’s rare miracles if he ever recovers, an’ if he does only He knows what’ll be left of him . . . Was Mr Kean asking for him?’
It seemed now that he had difficulty in speaking for he gulped in his throat a number of times before repeating, ‘He wasn’t there, won’t be; won’t be back till the night, his father died.’
‘Ah, God rest his soul. Aye, you did say he wasn’t there. Well, you can tell him when you do see him that it’ll be some time afore Rory collects any more rents, that’s if ever. It’s God’s blessin’ he hadn’t any collection on him when they did him. Whatever they took from him, an’ that was every penny, it was his own.’
John George’s head was bent again and he now made a groaning sound.
‘Will you come in along of me and see him, I’m on me way? It’s the Infirmary.’
He rose to his feet, and stared at her, then like someone in a daze, he turned and made for the door.
‘Aren’t you stayin’ for a cup of tea, lad?’ It was Ruth speaking now.
He didn’t answer her except to make a slight movement with his head, then he went out leaving the door open behind him.
They both stood and watched him go down the path. And when he was out of sight they looked at each other in some amazement, and Lizzie said, ‘It’s broken him; he thought the world of Rory. It’s made him look like death itself.’
‘Get your shawl on and go after him.’ Ruth pointed to where the shawl was lying across the foot of Lizzies bed which was inset in the alcove. But Lizzie shook her head, saying, ‘He wants no company, something about him said he wants no company.’ She moved her head slowly now as she stared back at Ruth. ‘God knows, this has hit everyone of us but in some strange way him most of all. It’s strange, it is that. Did you see his face, the look on it? It was as if he himself was facing death. Me heart’s breakin’ at this minute over me own, yet there’s room for sorrow in me for that lad. Poor John George.’
Janie sat by the bed and gazed down on the face that she had always thought was the best looking of any lad in the town and she wondered if it would ever go back into shape again. Oh, she hoped it would, for, being Rory, he’d hate to be marked for life. And she couldn’t stand the thought either of him being disfigured; but as long as he was alive that’s all that really mattered. And he was alive, and fighting to keep alive.
He had opened his eyes once and looked at her and she thought that he had recognized her, but she wasn’t sure. His lips were moving continuously but all he kept saying was ‘Pity. Pity.’ There must be something on his mind that was making him think it was a pity, and she thought too that it was the greatest of pities that he had ever gone gaming because she had no doubt but that he had been followed from wherever he had played, and been robbed, and by somebody in the know; likely one of them he had played against. But as Jimmy said last night, they mustn’t breathe a word of it because if it got to Mr Kean’s ears that would be the finish of his rent collecting. You couldn’t be a gambler and a rent collector . . . And then there was this business of John George.
Eeh! she was glad to the heart that Rory didn’t know about that because that would really have been the finish of him. Of all the fools on this earth John George was the biggest. She couldn’t really believe it, and if the master hadn’t told her himself she wouldn’t have, but the master’s partner dealt with Mr Kean’s business. Odd, but she hadn’t known that afore. But still, she asked herself, why should she? Anyway, he had pricked his ears up when he heard that one of Mr Kean’s men had swindled him because, as he said, he knew that her intended worked for Mr Kean.
Rory’s head moved slightly on the pillow, his eyelids flickered, and she bent over him and said softly, ‘Rory, it’s Janie. How you feelin’, Rory?’
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Pity.’
The tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks and she whispered, ‘Oh, Rory, come back from wherever you are.’ Then she said softly, ‘I’ve got to go now, I’ve got to get back, but I’ll come again the night. The mistress says I can take an hour off in the afternoon and evening. It’s good of her.’ She spoke as if he could understand her, then she stood up, whispering softly, ‘Bye-bye, dear. Bye-bye.’
Five minutes later she was turning off the main road and into Westoe when she saw the two dark- clothed figures of Ruth and Lizzie approaching. She ran towards them, and immediately they asked together, ‘You’ve been?’
‘Aye, yes.’
‘Any change?’
She looked at Lizzie and shook her head, then said, ‘He opened his eyes but . . . but I don’t think he knew me, he just keeps sayin’ that word, pity, pity . . . Have . . . have you heard about John George?’
‘John George? Was he in?’
‘No, Mrs Connor—’ she always gave Ruth her full title—’he’s . . . he’s been taken.’
‘Taken?’ They both screwed up their faces while they looked back at her. ‘Yes, for stealin’.’
‘John George!’ Again they spoke simultaneously. She nodded her head slowly. ‘Five pounds ten, and . . . and he’s been at it for some time.’
They were speechless. Their mouths fell into a gape as they listened. ‘Mr Kean was away and Miss Kean came early on, earlier than usual to collect the money. She was on her way to some place or other an’ she just called in on the off-chance. She had her father’s key and she opened the box and . . . and there was five pounds ten short from what was in his book. Apparently he had been doin’ a fiddle.’
‘No! Not John George.’ Ruth was holding the brim of her black straw hat tightly in her fist.
‘Yes. Aye, I couldn’t believe it either. It made me sick. But the master, he heard it all in the office. The solicitors, you know. He . . . he said he was a stupid fellow. I . . . I put a word in for him I did. I said I’d always found him nice, a really nice fella, and he said, ‘He’s been crafty, Janie. He’s admitted to using this trick every time he was sure Mr Kean wasn’t goin’ to collect the Saturday takings.’ Apparently he would nip something out then put it back on the Monday mornin’ early, but this time he was too late. And then he said nobody but a stupid man would admit to doing this in the past, then try to deny that he had taken five pounds ten. He wanted to say it was only ten shillings, and he had that on him to put back . . . He had just been to the pawn. They found the ticket on him.’
‘Oh God Almighty! what’ll happen next? Rory and now John George, an’ all within three days. It isn’t possible. But this accounts for his face, the look on his face when he came up yesterday. Eeh! God above.’ Lizzie began rocking herself.
‘It’s this lass that he’s caught on to, Lizzie.’ Janie nodded slowly. ‘Rory said he was barmy about her. He bought her a locket an’ chain at Christmas and he takes her by the ferry or train to Newcastle every week, then round the buildings. He’s daft about buildings. I never knew that till he told me one night. Then last week he gave her tea in some place. Yes, he did, he took her out to tea. And not in no cheap cafe neither, a place off Grey Street. An’ Rory said Grey Street’s classy.’
‘Women can be the ruin of a man in more ways than one.’ Lizzie’s head was bobbing up and down now. ‘But no matter, I’m sorry for him, to the very heart of me I’m sorry for him ’cos I liked John George. He had somethin’ about him, a gentleness, not like a man usually has.’
Ruth asked quietly, ‘Do you know when he’ll be tried, Janie?’
‘No, but I mean to find out.’
‘Somebody should go down and see him, he’s got nobody I understand, only those two old ’un’s. And you know, it isn’t so much laziness with them—’ Ruth turned now and shook her head at Lizzie—’it isn’t, Lizzie, it’s the rheumatics. And this’ll put the finish to them, it’ll be the House for them. Dear, dear
‘Lord!’—Ruth never said God—’You’ve got to ask why these things happen.’
The three of them stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Janie said, ‘I’ve got to go now, but I’m gettin’ out the night an’ all. The mistress said I can have an hour in the afternoon and in the evenin’s. She’s good, isn’t she?’
They nodded at her, and Lizzie agreed. ‘Aye, she’s unusual in that way. Bye-bye then, lass.’
‘Bye-bye.’ She nodded from one to the other, then again said, ‘Bye-bye,’ before running across the road and almost into a horse that was pulling a fruit cart, and as Lizzie watched her she said, ‘It only needed her to get herself knocked down and that would have been three of them. Everythin’ happens in threes, so I wonder what’s next?’
Janie had never before been in a court. She sat on the bench nearest the wall. At the far end of the room, right opposite to her, was the magistrate; in front of him were a number of dark-clothed men. They kept moving from one to the other, they all had papers in their hands. At times they would bend over a table and point to the papers. The last prisoner had got a month for begging, and now they were calling out the name: ‘John George Armstrong! John George Armstrong!’
As if emerging out of a cellar John George appeared. The box in which he stood came only to his hips, but the upper part of him seemed to have shrunk, his shoulders were stooped, his head hung forward, his face was the colour of clay. One of the dark-suited men began to talk. Janie only half listened to him, for her eyes were riveted on John George, almost willing him to look at her, to let him know there was someone here who was concerned for him. Poor John George! Oh, poor John George!
. . . ‘He did on the twenty-fourth day of January steal from his employer, Septimus Kean, Esquire, of Birchingham House, Westoe, the sum of five pounds ten shillings . . .’
The next words were lost to Janie as she watched John George close his eyes and shake his head. It was as if he were saying, ‘No, no.’ Then the man on the floor was mentioning Miss Kean’s name . . . ‘She pointed out to the accused the discrepancy between his entries in the ledger and the amount of money in the safe.’
Rory had always said they hadn’t a safe, not a proper one. She looked towards Miss Kean. She could only see her profile but she gathered that she was thin and would likely be tall when she stood up. She wore a pill-box hat of green velvet perched on the top of her hair. She looked to have a lot of hair, dark, perhaps it was padded. Even the mistress padded her hair at the back, especially when she was going out to some function.
‘The accused argued with her that he was only ten shillings short and he had the amount in his pocket, and he had intended to replace it. He asked her to recount the money. This she did. He then admitted to having helped himself on various previous occasions to small sums but said he always replaced them. He insisted that there was only ten shillings missing. He then tried to persuade her to accept the ten shillings and not mention the matter to her father . . . When taken into custody he said . . .’
Oh John George! Why had he been so daft? Why? It was that girl. If she ever met her she’d give her the length of her tongue, she would that, and when Rory came to himself and heard this he’d go mad, he would that. But it would be some time before they could tell Rory anything.
The magistrate was talking now about trusting employers being taken advantage of, about men like the prisoner being made an example of; about some men being nothing more than sneak thieves and that the respectable citizens of this town had to be protected from them.
‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’
‘I . . . I didn’t take five pounds, sir.’
‘Answer the question. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’
‘I didn’t take five . . .’ John George’s voice trailed away. There was talk between the magistrate and one of the men on the floor, then Janie’s mouth opened wide when the magistrate said, ‘I sentence you to a total of twelve months . . . .’
She shot to her feet and actually put her hand up to try to attract John George’s attention, but he never raised his head.
A few minutes later she stood by the door of the Court House. The tears were running down her face. Her hour was nearly up and she wanted to call in at the hospital. That’s where she was supposed to be. She didn’t know what she would have done or said if the master had been in the court, but he wasn’t there. Oh, John George! Poor John George!
A policeman came through the door and looked at her. He had seen her in the court room, he had seen her lift her hand to the prisoner. He said, not unkindly, ‘He got off lightly. I’ve known him give three years, especially when they’ve been at it as long as he has. He always lays it on thick when he’s dealin’ with men who should know better. He had the responsibility of money you know an’ he should have known better. Anyway, what’s a year?’ He smiled down at her, and she said, ‘Would . . . could . . . do you ever allow anybody to see them for a minute?’
‘Well now. Aye, yes, it’s done.’ He stared at her, then said quickly, ‘Come on. Come this way. Hurry up; they’ll be movin’ them in next to no time. There’s more than a few for Durham the day and he’ll be among them I suppose.’
She followed him at a trot and when he came to an abrupt stop she almost bumped into his back. He opened a door and she glimpsed a number of men, definitely prisoners, for the stamp was on their faces, and three uniformed policemen.
Her guide must have been someone in authority, a sergeant or someone like that, she thought, for he nodded to the officers and said, ‘Armstrong for a minute, I’ll be with him.’
‘Armstrong!’ one of the policemen bawled, and John George turned about and faced the door. And when the policeman thumbed over his shoulder he walked through it and out into the corridor.
The sergeant now looked at him. Then, nodding towards Janie, said, ‘Two minutes, and mind, don’t try anything. Understand?’ He poked his face towards John George, and John George stared dumbly back at him for a moment before turning to Janie.
‘Hello, John George.’ It was a silly thing to say but she couldn’t think of anything else at the moment. ‘Hello, Janie.’
‘Oh!’ Now as the tears poured from her eyes her tongue became loosened and she gabbled, ‘I’m so sorry, John George. Why? Why? We’re all sorry. We’ll come an’ see you, we will. There’ll be visitin’ times. I’ll ask.’
‘Janie!’ His voice sounded calm, then again he said ‘Janie!’ and she said, ‘Yes, John George?’
‘Listen. Will you go and see Maggie? She won’t know, at least I don’t think so, not until she reads the papers. She’s . . . she’s going to have a bairn, Janie, she’ll need somebody.’
She put her hand tightly across her mouth and her eyes widened and she muttered, ‘Oh, John George.’
‘Time’s up. That’s enough.’
‘Janie! Janie! listen. Believe me; I never took the five pounds. Ten shillings aye, but never the five pounds. You tell that to Rory, will you? Tell that to Rory.’
‘Yes, yes, I will, John George. Yes I will. Good-bye. Good-bye, John George.’
She watched him going back into the room. She couldn’t see the policeman now but she inclined her head towards him and said, ‘Ta, thanks.’
He walked with her along the stone passage and to the door, and there he said, ‘Don’t worry. As I said, what’s a year? And you can visit him once a month.’ Then bending towards her he said, ‘What are you to him? I thought you were his wife, but I hope not after what I heard . . . You his sister?’
‘No, only . . . only a friend.’
He nodded at her, then said, ‘Well, he won’t need any friends for the next twelve months, but he will after.’
‘Ta-rah,’ she said.
‘Ta-rah, lass,’ he said, and as she walked away he watched her. He was puzzled by her relationship to the prisoner. Just a friend, she had said.
She walked so slowly from the Court House that she hadn’t time to call in at the hospital and when she arrived in the kitchen she was crying so much that the cook called the mistress, and the mistress said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Janie,’ and she answered her through her tears, ‘No, ’tisn’t . . . ’tisn’t that, he’s . . . he’s still as he was. It’s . . . it’s John George. I know I shouldn’t have but I went to the court, ma’am, and he got a year.’
Her mistress’s manner altered, her face stiffened. ‘You’re a very silly girl, Janie,’ she said. ‘The master will be very annoyed with you. Court rooms are no places for women, young women, girls. I, too, am very annoyed with you. I gave you the time off to visit your fiancé. That man’s a scamp, a thieving scamp. I’m surprised your fiancé didn’t find it out before . . . . What sentence did he get?’
‘A year, ma’am.’
‘That was nothing really, nothing. If he had been an ordinary labouring man, one could have understood him stealing, but he was in a position of trust, and when such men betray their trust they deserve heavy sentences. Dry your eyes now. Go upstairs and see to the children. I’m very displeased with you, Janie.’
Janie went upstairs and she was immediately surrounded by the children.
Why was she crying? Had their mama been cross with her?
She nodded her head while they clung to her and the girls began to cry with her. Yes, their mama had been cross with her, but strangely it wasn’t affecting her. Another time she would have been thrown into despair by just a sharp word from her mistress. At this moment she did not even think of Rory, for Rory had turned the corner, they said, and was on the mend, but her thoughts were entirely with John George. His face haunted her. The fact that he had told her that he had got a girl into trouble had shocked her, but what had shocked her even more was his mental condition, for she felt he must be going wrong in the head to admit that he took the ten shillings but not the five pounds. Poor John George! Poor John George! And Rory would go mad when he knew.
A fortnight later they brought Rory home in a cab actually paid for by Miss Kean. Miss Kean had visited the hospital three times. The last time Rory had been propped up in bed and had stared at her and listened silently as she gave him a message from her father.
He was not to worry, his post was there for him when he was ready to return. And what was more, her father was promoting him to Mr Armstrong’s place. Her father had taken on a new man, but he was oldish and couldn’t cover half the district. Nevertheless, he was honest and honest men were hard to come by. Her father had always known that but now it had been proved to him.
Miss Kean had then asked, ‘Have you any idea who attacked you?’ and all Rory did was to make one small movement with his head. He had stared fixedly at Miss Kean and she had smiled at him and said, ‘I hope you enjoy the grapes, Mr Connor, and will soon be well.’ Again he had made a small movement with his head. It was then she said, ‘When you are ready to return home a cab will be provided.’
His mind was now clear and working normally and it kept telling him there was this thing he had to face up to and it was no use trying to ignore it, or hoping it would slip back into the muzziness that he had lain in during the first days of his recovery when they had kept saying to him, all of them, the nurses, the doctor, Ruth, his dad, her, Janie, all of them, ‘Don’t worry, take it slowly. Every day you’ll improve. It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle.’
Although after the third day he had stopped saying the word ‘Pity’ aloud it was still filling the back of his mind. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw the big feet coming towards him; that’s all he remembered, the big feet. He couldn’t remember where they had hit him first, whether it was on the head or in the groin or in his ribs; they had broken his ribs. For days he had found it difficult to breathe, now it was easier. His body, although black and blue from head to foot, and with abrasions almost too numerous to count, was no longer a torment to him, just a big sore pile of flesh. He did not know what he looked like, only that his face seemed spread as wide as his shoulders.
He didn’t see his reflection until he reached home. When they helped him over the step he made straight for the mantelpiece. Although Ruth tried to check him he thrust her gently aside then leant forward and looked at his face in the oblong mottled mirror. His nose was still straight but his eyes looked as if they were lying in pockets of mouldy fat. Almost two inches of his hair had been shaved off close to the scalp above his left ear and a zig-zag scar ran down to just in front of the ear itself.
‘Your face’ll be all right, don’t worry.’
He turned and looked at Ruth but said nothing, and she went on, ‘The dess-bed’s ready for you, you can’t do the ladder yet. We’ll sleep upstairs.’
He said slowly now, like an old man might, ‘I’ll manage the ladder.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s all arranged. Don’t worry. Now come on, sit yourself down.’ She led him towards the high-backed wooden chair, and he found he was glad to sit down, for his legs were giving way beneath him.
He said again, ‘I’ll make the ladder,’ and as he spoke he watched Lizzie go into the scullery. It was as if she could read his mind; he didn’t want to lie in the same room with her, although she lay in the box bed behind the curtains. He couldn’t help his feelings towards her. He knew that she had been good to him over the past weeks, trudging down every day to the hospital, and he hadn’t given her a kind word, not even when he could speak he hadn’t given her a kind word. It was odd but he couldn’t forgive her for depriving him of the woman he thought to be his mother. But what odds, what odds where he slept; wherever he slept his mind would be with him, and his mind was giving him hell. They thought he wasn’t capable of thinking straight yet, and he wasn’t going to enlighten them because he would need to have some excuse for his future actions.
Nobody had mentioned John George to him, not one of them had spoken his name, but the fact that he had never been near him spoke for them. Something had happened to him and he had a good idea what it was; in fact, he was certain of what it was. And he also knew that he himself wasn’t going to do anything about it. He couldn’t. God! he just couldn’t.
‘Here, drink that up.’ Lizzie was handing him a cup of tea, which he took from her hand without looking at her and said, ‘Ta.’
It was good of old Kean,’ she said, ‘to send a cab for you. He can’t be as black as he’s painted. And his daughter comin’ to the hospital. God, but she’s plain that one, stylish but plain. Anyway, he must value you.’
‘Huh!’ Even the jerking of his head was a painful action, which caused him to put his hand on his neck and move his head from side to side, while Lizzie concluded, ‘Aye well, you know him better than me, but I would say deeds speak for themselves.’
When Lizzie took his empty cup from him and went to refill it, Ruth, poking the fire, said, ‘I’ll have to start a bakin’,’ and she turned and glanced towards him. ‘It’s good to have you home again, lad. We can get down to normal now.’
He nodded his head and smiled weakly at her but didn’t speak. It was odd. Over the past weeks he had longed to be home, away from the cold painted walls and clinical cleanliness of the hospital, but looking about him now, the kitchen, which had always appeared large, for it was made up of two rooms knocked into one, seemed small, cluttered and shabby. He hadn’t thought of it before as shabby, he hadn’t thought of a lot of things before. He hadn’t thought he was cowardly before. Afraid, aye, but not cowardly. But deep in his heart now he knew he was, both cowardly and afraid.
He had always been afraid of enclosed spaces. He supposed that was why he left doors open; and why he had jumped at the collecting job, because he’d be working outside most of the time in the open. He had always been terrified by being shut in. He could take his mind back to the incident that must have created the fear. The Learys lads next door were always full of devilment, and having dragged a coffin-like box they had found floating on the Jarrow slacks all the way down the East Jarrow road and up the Simonside bank, they had to find a use for it before breaking it up for the fire, so the older ones had chased the young ones, and it was himself they had caught, and they had put him in the box and nailed the lid on. At first he had screamed, then become so petrified that his voice had frozen inside him. When they shouted at him from the outside he had been incapable of answering; then, fearful of what they had done, they fumbled in their efforts to wrench the heavy lid off.
When eventually they tipped him from the box he was as stiff as a corpse itself, and not until he had vomited, after the grown-ups had thumped him on the back and rubbed him, did he start to cry. He’d had nightmares for years afterwards, and night after night had walked in his sleep, through the trap door and down the ladder. But having reached the kitchen door that led outside he would always wake up, then scamper back to bed where he would lie shivering until finally cold gave place to heat and he would fall into sweaty sleep.
But since starting collecting, he’d hardly had a nightmare and he hadn’t sleep-walked for years. But what now, and in the weeks ahead?
Jimmy came in at half-past six and stood just inside the door and stared towards the dess-bed where Rory was sitting propped up, and he grinned widely and said, ‘Aw, lad, it’s good to see you home again,’ then went slowly towards the bed. ‘How you feelin’?’
‘Oh, well, you know, a hundred per cent, less ninety.’
‘Aye, but you’re home and you’ll soon be on your feet again. And you know somethin’?’ He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ve seen him, Mr Kilpatrick. I told him how things stood, an’ you know what he said? He said the rest can be paid so much a month. If you could clear it off in a year he’d be satisfied.’
‘He said that?’
‘Aye.’
‘Oh well—’ Rory sighed—’that’s something. Yes—’ he nodded at Jimmy—’that’s something. We can go ahead now, can’t we?’
‘You know, he came to the yard for me ’cos he was down that way on business. And Mr Baker wanted to know what he was about ’cos I had to leave me work for five minutes, and so I told him.’ Jimmy pulled a face. ‘He wasn’t pleased. Well, I knew he wouldn’t be. You know what he said? He said he had intended keepin’ me on an givin’ me a rise . . . That for a tale. He asked what we were givin’ for it and when I told him he said we were being done, paying that for the goodwill when it was just a few sticks of furniture and half an old patched sculler. One of the lads told me that he had seen him round there himself lookin’, an’ what he bet was that the old fellow was after the place for himself. Anyway, we scotched him.’ He jerked his head and grinned widely, then added, ‘Eeh! man, I’m excited. I never thought, I never thought.’ He leant forward and put his hand on Rory’s. ‘And if it wasn’t for what happened you we’d be over the moon, wouldn’t we?’
‘Aye, well, we can still be over the moon now.’
‘Get off the side of that bed with your mucky clothes on!’
‘Aw, Lizzie.’ Jimmy rose to evade her hand and he laughed at her as he said, ‘You’re a grousy woman,’ and when she made to go for him he ran into the scullery, his body swaying and his laughter touched with glee.
Jimmy was happy, Ruth was happy, and, of course, Lizzie was happy; and Janie would be happy; everybody was happy . . . except himself . . . and John George. John George. God Almighty, John George!
Yes, Janie was happy at the news that they had got the yard, for this meant she could be married any time now. Yet her excitement seemed to have been stirred rather by the fact that she had been granted a full day’s leave next Thursday. She sat by the bed gazing at Rory as she gave him the news. He wasn’t actually in bed, just lying on the top of it fully dressed. His legs and ribs still ached, and so the bed was left down during the day so that he could rest upon it.
Janie glanced from him to the Sunday company, all assembled as usual, and she hunched her shoulders at them as she said, ‘I told a fib, well, only a little one. I told her, the missis, it would need time to clear up the place an’ put it to rights an’ suggested like if I could have a full day. But you know what I wanted the day for? I thought we’d go up to Durham and—’ She clapped her hand over her mouth, then stared at Rory before looking back at the others again and saying, ‘Eeh! I forgot.’ Again she was looking into Rory’s unblinking stare and, taking his hand, she said softly, ‘We . . . we didn’t tell you, ’cos you were so bad, and you wouldn’t have been able to take it in.’ She gave him an apologetic look now. ‘I mean, with your head bein’ knocked about an’ that. And we knew that if you had been all right you would have asked for him, you know. Now, Rory, don’t be upset.’ She gripped his hands tightly. ‘John George’s been a silly lad. It’s all through that lass. You know, you said he was daft. Well, he was, and . . . and he took some money. He meant to put it back. I don’t know whether you knew or not but he had been on the fiddle for a long time and so . . . and so he was caught and’—her head drooped to one side as she shook it—’he was sent along the line. He’s in Durh . . . Oh, Rory . . .’
They were all gathered round the bed now looking flown on him. The sweat was pouring from him and Lizzie cried at them, ‘Get back! the lot of you’s an’ give him air.’ She looked angrily across the bed at Janie. ‘You shouldn’t have given it him like that.’
‘I’m sorry. I know, but . . . well, he had to know some time, Lizzie.’
‘He’ll be all right. He’ll be all right.’ Ruth was wiping the sweat from his brow and the bald patch on his head. It’s just weakness. It’s like how he used to be after the nightmares. Go on—’ she motioned the men towards the table—’get on with your game.’
‘Bad that,’ said Grannie Waggett. ‘Bad. Don’t like it. Bad sign.’
‘Anybody can have sweats, Gran.’ Jimmy’s voice was small, his tone tentative, and she bent forward from her chair and wagged her bony finger at him, saying, ‘Nay, lad, not everybody, women but not men. Bad look out if all men had sweats. Always a sign of summit, a man havin’ sweats. I remember me grannie when she worked for those high-ups in Newcastle sayin’ how the son got sweats. Young he was an’ the heir. Lots of money, lots of money. He started havin’ sweats after the night he went out to see Newcastle lit up for the first time. Oil lamps they had. Eighteen and twelve was it, or eleven, or thirteen? I don’t know, but he got sweats. Caught a chill he did going from one to the other gazin’ at ’em, got the consumption . . .’
‘Gran!’
‘Aye, Ruth . . . Well, I was just savin’ about me grannie an’ the young fellow an’ the things she told me. Do you know what the bloody Duke of Northumberland did with a pile of money? Gave it to buildin’ a jail or court or summat, an’ poor folks . . .’
‘Look, come on in home.’ Bill Waggett was bending over his mother, tugging at her arm now, and she cried at him, ‘Leave be, you big galoot!’
‘You’re comin’ in home, Rory wants a bit of peace an’ quiet.’
‘Rory likes a bit of crack, an’ I’ve said nowt.’
‘Go on. Gran.’ Janie was at her side now pleading. Spluttering and upbraiding, the old woman allowed her son to lead her from the cottage. And this was the signal for the Learys, too, to take their leave, although it was but six o’clock in the evening, and a Sunday, the day of the week they all looked forward to for a game and a bit crack.
The house free from the visitors, as if at a given signal Jimmy went up the ladder into the loft, and his father followed him, while Lizzie and Ruth disappeared into the scullery, leaving Janie alone with Rory.
She had pulled her chair up towards the head of the bed, and, bending towards him, she asked tenderly, ‘You feeling better?’
He nodded at her.
‘I knew when it came it would be a shock, I’m sorry.’
He made no motion but continued to stare at her.
‘I . . . I thought we should go up and see him on Thursday. It’ll be the only chance we have, he’s allowed visitors once a month . . . All right, all right.’
She watched his head now moving backwards and forwards against the supporting pillows, and when he muttered something she put her face close to his and whispered, ‘What do you say?’
‘I . . . I can’t.’
‘We’d take the ferry up to Newcastle an’ then the train. It . . . it might do you good, I mean the Journey.’
‘I can’t; don’t keep on.’
She looked at him for a moment before she said, ‘You don’t want to see him?’
‘I . . . I can’t go there.’
‘But why, Rory? He’s . . . he’s your friend. And if you had seen him in the court that day, why . . .’
Again he was shaking his head. His eyes, screwed up tightly now, were lost in the discoloured puffed flesh.
She sat back and stared at him in deep sadness. She couldn’t understand it. She knew he wasn’t himself yet, but that he wouldn’t make an effort to go and see John George, and him shut up in that place . . . well, she just couldn’t understand it.
When he looked at her again and saw the expression on her face, he said through clenched teeth, ‘Don’t keep on, Janie. I’m sorry but . . . but I can’t. You know I’ve always had a horror of them places, You know how I can’t stand being shut in, the doors and things. I’d be feared of making a fool of meself. You know?’
The last two words were a plea and although in a small way she understood his fear of being shut in, she thought that he might have tried to overcome it for this once, just to see John George and ease his plight.
She said softly, ‘Somebody should go; he’s got nobody, nobody in the world.’
He muttered something now and she said, ‘What?’
‘You go.’
‘Me! On me own, all that way? I’ve never been in a train in me life, and never on the ferry alone, I haven’t.’
‘Take one of them with you.’ He motioned his head towards the scullery. And now she nodded at him and said, ‘Aye, yes, I could do that. I’ll ask them.’ She stared at him a full minute before she rose from the chair and went into the scullery.
Both Lizzie and Ruth turned towards her and waited for her to speak. She looked from one to the other and said, ‘He won’t, I mean he can’t come up to Durham with me to see John George, he doesn’t feel up to it . . . not yet. If it had been later. But . . . but it’s early days you know.’ She nodded at them, then added, ‘Would one of you?’
Ruth looked at her sadly and said, ‘I couldn’t, lass, I couldn’t leave the house an’ him an’ them all to see to. Now Lizzie here—’
‘What! me? God Almighty! Ruth, me go to Durham! I’ve never been as far as Shields Market in ten years. As for going on a train I wouldn’t trust me life in one of ’em. And another thing, lass.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I haven’t got the proper clothes for a journey.’
‘They’re all right, Lizzie, the ones you’ve got. There’s your good shawl. You could put it round your shoulders. An’ Ruth would lend you her bonnet, wouldn’t you, Ruth?’
‘Oh, she could have me bonnet, and me coat an’ all, but it wouldn’t fit her. But go on, it’ll do you good.’ She was nodding at Lizzie now. ‘You’ve hardly been across the doors except to the hospital—’ she paused but didn’t add, ‘since you came from over the water’ but said ‘in years. It’s an awful place to have to be goin’ to but the journey would be like a holiday for you.’
‘I’d like to see John George.’ Lizzie s voice was quiet now. ‘Poor lad. A fool to himself, always was. He used to slip me a copper on a Sunday even though I knew he hadn’t two pennies to rub against one another. And I didn’t want to take it, but if I didn’t he’d leave it there.’ She pointed to the corner of the little window-sill. ‘He’d drop it in the tin pot. The Sunday there wasn’t tuppence in there I knew that his funds were low indeed. Aye, lass, I’ll come along o’ you. I’ll likely look a sketch an’ put you to shame, but if you don’t mind, I don’t, lass.’
Janie now laughed as she put out her hand towards Lizzie and said, ‘I wouldn’t mind bein’ seen with you in your shift, Lizzie,’ and Ruth said, ‘Oh! Janie, Janie,’ and Lizzie said, ‘You’re a good lass, Janie. You’ve got what money can’t buy, a heart. Aye, you have that.’
It took some minutes before Janie could speak to John George. It was Lizzie who spoke first. ‘Hello there, lad,’ she said, and he answered, ‘Hello, Lizzie. Oh hello, Lizzie,’ in just such a tone as he would have used when holding out his hands towards her. But there was the grid between them.
‘Hello, Janie.’
There was a great hard lump in her throat. The tears were blinding her but through them the blurred outline of his haggard features tore at her heart. ‘How . . . how are you, John George?’
‘Well . . . well, you know, Janie, not too bad, not too bad. Rough with the smooth, Janie, you know. Rough with the smooth. How . . . how is everybody back there?’
‘All right. All right, John George. Rory, he . . . he couldn’t make it, John George, he’s still shaky on his legs after the knockin’ about, like they told you. Eeh! he was knocked about, we never thought he’d live. He would have been here else. He’ll come later, next time.’
John George made no reply to Janie’s mumbled discourse but he looked towards Lizzie and she, nodding at him, added, ‘Aye, he’ll come along later. He sent his regards.’
‘Did he?’ He was addressing Janie again.
‘Aye.’
‘What did he say, Janie?’
‘What was that, John George?’
He leant farther towards the grid. ‘I said what did Rory say?’
‘Oh, well.’ She sniffed, then wiped her eyes with her handkerchief before mumbling, ‘He said to keep your pecker up an’ . . . an’ everything would work out once you get back.’
‘He said that?’ He was holding her gaze and she didn’t reply immediately, so that when she did say ‘Aye,’ it carried no conviction to him.
‘We’ve brought you a fadge of new bread an’ odds an’ ends.’ Lizzie now pointed to the parcel and he said, ‘Oh, ta, Lizzie. It’s kind of you; you’re always kind.’
‘Ah, lad, talkin’ of being kind, that’s what’s put you here the day, being kind. Aw, lad.’
They both looked at the bent head now; then when it jerked up sharply they were startled by the vehemence of his next words. ‘I didn’t take five pounds, I didn’t! Believe me. Will you believe me?’ He was staring now at Janie. ‘I did take the ten bob. As I said, I’d done it afore but managed to put it back on the Monday morning, you know after going to the pawn.’ He glanced towards Lizzie now as if she would understand the latter bit. Then looking at Janie again, he said, ‘Tell him, will you? Say to him, John George said he didn’t take the five pounds. Will you, Janie?’
It was some seconds before she answered, ‘Aye. Yes, I will. Don’t upset yourself, John George. Yes, I will, an’ he’ll believe you. Rory’ll believe you.’
His eyes were staring into hers and his lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he brought out, ‘Did you go and see Maggie, Janie?’
Janie, flustered now, said, ‘Why, no; I couldn’t, John George, ’cos you didn’t tell me where she lived.’ Just as he put his doubled fist to his brow and bowed his head a bell rang, and as if he had been progged by something sharp he rose quickly to his feet, then gabbled, ‘Horsley Terrace . . . twenty-four. Go, will you Janie?’
‘Yes, John George. Yes, John George.’ They were both on their feet now.
‘Ta, thanks. Thank you both. I’ll never forget you. Will you come again? . . . Come again, will you?’
They watched him form into a line with the others before they turned away.
Outside the gates they didn’t look at each other or speak, and when Lizzie, after crossing the road, leaned against the wall of a cottage and buried her face in her hands Janie, crying again, put her arms about her and having turned her from the wall, led her along the street and into the town. And still neither of them spoke.