Beyond the Veil of Tears (35 page)

Angeline was sitting with May on the sofa, Jack being in a chair opposite, and now she turned to her friend and said softly, ‘It’s happened?’

‘Aye, at last!’

‘Oh, May, I’m so pleased for you.’

‘I know you said it would, but with the past an’ all I was beginning to wonder.’

As the two women hugged each other, Jack said plaintively, ‘Have I missed something here?’

Laughing through happy tears, May said, ‘You’re going to be an uncle, lad. Uncle Jack. What about that?’

‘You’re in the family way?’

Jack was beaming, and it wrenched Angeline’s heart. He would make a lovely father one day, but oh, she couldn’t bear the thought of it. As if her friend had picked up on the thought,
May now said to him, ‘’Bout time you settled down and thought about family life, isn’t it? What happened to that last lass you were walking out with? Esther, wasn’t it? She
seemed nice enough.’

Jack shrugged. ‘It wasn’t serious.’

‘Not on your side mebbe, but she was fair gone on you – anyone could see that. Why do they never last for more than a few months with you, anyway?’

He shrugged again. ‘I’m not the marrying type. You’ve hit it lucky with your Howard, but there’s not many who could say the same. I’d rather be miserable on me own
than miserable tied to some lass or other.’

‘Oh, you!’ May flapped her hand at him before turning back to Angeline. ‘It’ll be born at the end of July, beginning of August, so a summer baby will be nice, won’t
it? We told Howard’s mam an’ da yesterday, an’ they’re tickled pink – first grandchild and all that. Howard’s mam has already started knitting, and his
da’s said they’ll turn that ramshackle cottage at the back of the mill round for us. Get it nice before the baby comes. Not that I’ve minded living with them, but it’ll be
grand to have our own place whilst still being near to Howard’s mam.’

Howard was the eldest of four boys and his mother had embraced May as the daughter she had always longed for. ‘You’re so lucky to have such nice in-laws, May.’

‘Don’t I know it! After me own mam an’ da, I thank God every day for Howard’s. Like I said to Howard . . . ’

As the two women chatted on, Jack sat quietly watching Angeline, his feet resting on the gleaming steel fender of the fireplace, and curls of smoke from his pipe wafting over his head. He had
been chary about lighting his pipe in her bright, clean house at first, but she had assured him that she loved the smell of pipe tobacco because it reminded her of her father. She hadn’t
elaborated on that and he hadn’t asked her to; he’d learned in the past that any questions about her previous life would be met with monosyllabic answers or evasion, or just cold
silence.

What would she say if he told her he lived for the few hours each Monday when he could be in her presence? But then why ask the road you know – she’d run a mile, and thereafter the
door to this house would be closed to him. Once he could admit it to himself – and it had taken a long time, he thought wryly, his mouth curling in its lopsided smile – he had known he
had fallen in love with Grace the moment she had stood on his landing asking for his help. It had been as quick and as deadly as that. He hadn’t been in love before that day, in fact he
hadn’t known if he believed in the forever-after kind of love between a man and a woman, not having seen much evidence of it in his life. Oh, there was the passionate, heady kind of love,
where all that mattered was bedding a lass and having your way with her, but he’d seen too many of his pals fall for that and live to regret it, once the first thrill faded and they were
stuck with a wife and a handful of bairns. And some marriages were plain hell – like his own mam an’ da’s. Of course there was the odd couple who seemed to get it right, like old
Mr and Mrs Benson who’d lived a few doors up from them when he was a bairn. Done everything together, they had, and he’d fair worshipped the ground she walked on and there’d been
no one like him for her. He remembered going into the two rooms that were their home when he was a bairn and wanting to stay there forever, such was the sense of peace and happiness there.

‘ . . . be nice to see them, don’t you think, Jack?’ He came out of his reverie to find both women looking at him and realized he hadn’t heard a word May was saying.

‘Sorry.’ He sat up straighter. ‘I was daydreaming.’

‘Still dozing off the effects of your shenanigans last night, more likely,’ said May with sisterly disapproval. ‘I was
saying
that they’ve got some more
fireworks tonight over at Castle Leazes, the football-ground end near St James’s Park. Me an’ Howard are going to see them when I meet him; why don’t you and Grace come, too?
Howard can give you a lift back to the bridge after, in the horse and cart, and you could walk Grace back here.’

Anything that meant more time with Grace was fine by him. Jack nodded. ‘I’m game.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Oh, come on, Grace. You missed the fireworks and fun last night, and it’s not every day a new century happens. By tomorrow everything will be the same again – it’s just
one night.’ May played her trump card. ‘It can be a celebration of the baby, how about that? They’ll have the travelling fair there, and the hot potato man and everything. Please
come, for me? Please?’

Against her better judgement, Angeline gave in. The evening would be bitter-sweet, as any time with Jack was, but the thought of being out with him, almost as a couple, was as thrilling as it
was scary. Scary, because she would die a thousand deaths if he ever guessed how she felt about him. Thrilling, because in the seven years she had known him she had never been out with him in this
way, even if it was as a foursome.

And then she checked the thought swiftly. It wasn’t a foursome, not in that sense. May was his sister, and she was May’s friend.
That was all.

Later, though, when she excused herself and went upstairs to get ready and looked at herself in the bedroom mirror, her eyes were bright and her heart was racing. Shutting her eyes tightly for a
moment, she murmured, ‘Stop it, calm down. You know he barely likes you; if you weren’t May’s friend, he wouldn’t give you the time of day; and even if he did like you,
it’s impossible. It was May who suggested this. It means nothing.’

Nevertheless, when her hand reached for her winter coat, it paused and then moved to the new coat she had recently treated herself to, but not worn yet. The colour was a little daring, being a
deep cherry-red, but it had suited her so well in the shop she hadn’t been able to resist it, and the fur-lined hood complemented the slim fit of the coat beautifully. She had bought a neat
little hat in the same colour, along with black leather gloves and stylish black boots, even though at the time she’d told herself it was an indulgence, as she had nowhere to go to show the
outfit off.

But now she had.
She looked at herself in the mirror, once she was dressed in the coat and hat. She looked different – more like Angeline than Grace – and for a moment she
almost took the coat off. Almost. But it suited her too well and something inside, a recklessness, wanted to make Jack notice her tonight as a woman, rather than as good old Grace, May’s
pal.

She felt ridiculously shy as she joined May and Jack who were waiting in the hall, brushing off May’s oohs and aahs as her friend enthused about the coat, and being deliberately brisk as
she marshalled them out of the front door into the bitterly cold street beyond. It had been snowing on and off for weeks, but with each fall had come a period of thawing before more snow had come
along, the severe weather that had been forecast for after Christmas holding off. Now it was snowing hard again, and as she stepped down into the street after locking the front door, Jack raised
her hood and dropped it over her head so that it framed her face. ‘That’s better,’ he said, very softly. ‘You look like the spirit of winter, like the rosehip berries. I
love to see those specks of scarlet shine in the barrenness of a desolate countryside, don’t you? They’re like a promise of what’s to come.’

May spoilt the moment by snorting derisively. ‘Poetic, aren’t we? You’ve definitely still got the effects of last night’s carousing in your system, our Jack.’

He smiled, tucking one of May’s hands and one of Angeline’s into the crook of his elbows. ‘Not at all. Do you know the month of January is named after Janus, the two-headed god
of vigil? It’s appropriate, because January looks back on the old year, yet at the same time advances towards spring.’

Another snort from May followed as they began to walk along the frozen pavement. ‘All I know is I’m in danger of ending up on my backside. These pavements are like glass.’

Jack chuckled. ‘You’ve no soul, lass. That’s your trouble. Haven’t you ever marvelled at the beauty in a frozen landscape? It intensifies every colour and shade, from the
wisps of silver in a winter sky to the purple and bronze of the bramble bushes. I’ve often wished I was a painter. I’d love to capture what I see and hold on to it.’

‘Huh, if you seriously think you could sell paintings of old bramble bushes, you’re dafter than I thought.’

‘May, May . . . Have you nothing of the artist in you?’

‘Since when did paintings of bramble bushes provide bread for the table? There’s more beauty in one of my Howard’s sacks of flour than all your silver skies and what-have-you,
my lad, so think on.’

Angeline listened to their good-natured bantering as they walked, but inside her Jack’s words had stirred the ever-present ache into an actual physical pain. How often had she seen what he
saw? Hundreds of times. And this other side of him, the side that saw beauty in such natural, everyday things – springtime primroses; wind-racked elms beyond a corn field shimmering in a
summer’s haze; a grey winter’s landscape grizzled with sleet and many other things he had talked about in the past and which she had held close to her heart – this hurt her more
than anything. It was the antithesis of the determined, even ruthless campaigner and reformer, the fierce individual who insisted that nothing less than radical social change was called for,
whatever the cost to the individual.

Not that she didn’t agree with him, for she did; but it was the militant, even aggressive side of things she baulked at. Unbeknown to anyone, she had investigated for herself the beliefs
and values of the Socialist Party that Verity had believed in, along with other political organizations, and not least the female suffrage movement. Gradually she had sorted out where she stood on
many issues, and with that had come a desire to do something. As her father would have said, she wanted to get her hands dirty, not attend this or that meeting or join one of the Socialist sects.
She wasn’t a political animal, that much was for sure, but exactly what she wanted to do wasn’t clear. Or even what she would be allowed to do, as a young, supposedly unmarried
woman.

‘You’re very quiet.’

Jack looked down at her, a smile on his face, and suddenly instead of the polite remark she had been about to make, she tilted her head at him and spoke in an accent as broad as May’s as
she said, ‘Aye, well mebbe that’s because I can’t get a word in edgeways, with you two jawing on, m’lad.’

Jack stopped dead, a look of absolute amazement on his face, and then threw back his head, as peal upon peal of unbridled laughter sounded in the icy-cold air, causing a group of young lads and
lassies in front of them to turn round and grin. Angeline felt the colour sweeping her face, but May and Jack were laughing so hard it was infectious. Soon the three of them were helpless, so much
so that when an elderly couple passed them and the woman said in a tone meant to reach their ears, ‘I don’t care if it
is
New Year’s Day, it’s disgraceful being
intoxicated at this time of the evening’, it made them worse, not better.

It was a while before they gained control, and Jack was the last to stop spluttering. He wiped his eyes, before again pulling the girls’ arms through his as he said, laughter still evident
in his voice, ‘Talk about a dark horse – where did that come from? Come on, let’s go and meet this husband of yours, May.’ And the three of them walked on, slipping and
sliding on the icy pavement with its thin layer of fresh snow.

Angeline was still glowing with the joy at having made Jack laugh, when they reached the inn not far from King Street where Howard was drinking with his pals. He downed his
pint on their arrival and came straight out, which Angeline was relieved about. She had never set foot inside a public house, although she knew May had done once or twice in the company of her
husband.

It had almost stopped snowing, with just the odd desultory flake or two floating in the cold air, and once Howard had brought the horse and cart round from the back of the inn, Angeline and May
squeezed up beside him on the narrow plank-like seat and Jack sat in the back of the cart on a pile of old sacks.

The other three kept up a steady stream of banter as the horse clip-clopped its way through streets that would normally have been fairly empty at this time of night on a winter’s evening,
but which, due to the holiday atmosphere pervading the town, were relatively busy. Angeline was content just to listen and to hug every moment of the evening to her, knowing it wouldn’t
–
couldn’t
– be repeated.

They heard the fair before they saw it, as the horse plodded along Newgate Street and then Gallowgate, and then they came into the bottom of the enormous area of land that was Castle Leazes.
This was one of the common pastures of the town, where certain citizens had the right to graze their cattle and where, some decades before, the first public park was opened – Leazes Park
– in the middle of the pastureland. It was a popular area with Newcastle folk, having bowling greens, tennis courts and a fine bandstand and fountain, with a football ground being situated at
the foot of the hundred-plus acres of ground, in a tiny park called St James’s Park. To the left of this the fair had set up, a spectacle of colour in the white world around it. The
tantalizing, comforting smells of baked potatoes and roasting chestnuts were thick in the air as they approached the fair, after Howard had tied the horse to one of the big posts at the edge of the
open space.