Authors: Irene Carr
WALLSEND-ON-TYNE. JUNE 1896.
‘
Katy! Are you looking after those bairns?’ Ethel Merrick shouted it from her front door, head turning as she scanned the children who swarmed, playing, in the street. There were makeshift swings, fashioned from a rope tied around a lamppost, little girls sitting in loops of the ropes and swinging as if around a maypole. Hoops raced and leapt, pursued and driven by boys with hooked sticks. Games of marbles were scattered among holes in the interstices of the kerbstones with boys getting their knees dirty. Girls bounced balls against walls chanting, ‘Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper . . .’ It was a fine morning with a blazing sun overhead and all the children too small for school were out on the cobbles between the houses. Some were smaller than others and these were ‘looked after’ by their bigger and older siblings.
‘
Aye, Mam!’ Katy called back to her mother, and now
Ethel
saw her, on the opposite side of the street. She was dressed like all the other girls in a white pinny over a dark dress that came down to her calves, black stockings and buttoned boots on her feet. Her mane of black hair was tied back with a ribbon — and there were those pale blue eyes. They were the same colour as those of Barney, but wide and innocent in her thin face. It was mock serious now. A half-dozen tots sat on a doorstep, supposedly ‘in school’, while Katy stood in front as teacher. She held a piece of chalk, and a board ‘borrowed’ from someone’s coalhouse made a grubby but effective blackboard.
Ethel
craned her neck, peering. There was Ted, sitting with the others, but — ‘Where’s Robbie?’ she demanded.
‘
Standing in the corner because he wouldn’t learn his numbers.’ Katy pointed to where the elder of her two brothers, four-year-old Robbie, stood in the doorway, grinning out at them all.
Ethel
warned, ‘Don’t go wandering off. We’re going to see your auntie today.’ She had kept Katy off school for that reason.
‘
No, Mam, I won’t.’
Satisfied,
Ethel turned back into the house. She had aged more than just the six years that had passed since Katy’s birth. Barney had got his wish with two sons, Robbie and Ted, but there had also been two miscarriages and Ethel had paid the price. At thirty she looked to be well into her forties. But today the prospect of an outing of sorts, albeit only to nearby Gosforth, cheered her and gave some colour to her cheeks.
When
Winnie Teasdale arrived, flushed and jolly,
Ethel
greeted her with a smile: ‘We’ve got a good day for it.
‘
A bit too warm, if you ask me,’ replied her old friend. She flapped a handkerchief before her face to cool it, but she also smiled, glad to see Ethel in such an unusually cheerful mood.
Ethel
went to the front door again and called across the street, ‘Come in, our Katy, and bring those bairns. You’ve got to get ready.’ Katy brought in the two boys; the two elder girls, Ursula and Lotte, were at school. Ethel and Winnie washed the children’s faces, hands and knees and dressed them in their best. Any visit to Ethel’s Aunt Augusta, also known as Katy’s aunt for convenience, was special.
Augusta
’s house was a small one but in a good part of Gosforth, its rooms dark behind velvet curtains drawn to almost cover the window, and lace curtains that did. A maid let them in, a pale young girl in black dress, white apron and cap. She led them into the kitchen at the back of the house because the parlour at the front was used only on Sunday. The kitchen was the living-room of the house with table and chairs, an armchair either side of the fireplace and a couch between them. Various small tables were dotted about, their surfaces crowded with sepia photographs and souvenirs of Torquay. Winnie, Ethel and her brood had to edge their way through to sit where Aunt Augusta pointed. Then she ordered, ‘Tea, please.’ The maid rustled out.
Augusta
Fleming was a straight-backed old lady whose formerly slender beauty was now skin and bone. Her skin was like paper where it stretched over her fine bones and it had a yellow tinge. Katy had seen her before but that had been a year ago and she found this a different woman. She heard her mother’s quick intake of breath, to be followed by her enquiry, ‘Are you keeping well, Aunt Augusta?’
‘
Don’t talk such rubbish!’ The reply came tartly. ‘You can see how I am. I only have to look in a mirror to see how I feel.’
‘
So Torquay didn’t suit you this year?’ Winnie put that in sympathetically. Augusta had spent the winter in a boarding house in Torquay as she always did. It was a totally alien lifestyle to that of the women and children sitting meekly opposite her now. They counted themselves lucky if they enjoyed an occasional day at the seaside in summer.
Augusta
knew this and replied drily, ‘There’s some things money can’t buy.’ She had come from their world but had fought her way out of it by way of the stage. She had started, as a child, singing and dancing for coppers in and around the pubs of Tyneside and ended up as a top-of-the-bill act in music halls. Now she finished, ‘And youth is one of them.’ She inspected the children, her eyes flicking over the two boys without interest, but they settled on Katy for some seconds. Then she nodded slowly. ‘Katy, isn’t it?’
Katy
had become uneasy under the stare from the old woman’s dark eyes, which had a glassy look to them now, like the marbles the boys played with in the street. But she felt her mother’s elbow in her ribs and answered, ‘Yes, Auntie Augusta.’
‘
I remember. I saw you last summer. This last year has made a change in both of us.’ The glassy stare shifted to Ethel: ‘This one’s going to be a beauty.’ And when Ethel smiled complacently: ‘It’s nothing to be pleased about. She’ll have plenty of trouble in her life if she isn’t careful. She’ll have to fight. The men will be her downfall if she doesn’t. I know. They’d ha’ been the finish of me if I’d let them have their way.’ She nodded several times in emphasis, but then dismissed Katy and the subject with a wave of her skinny hand.
The
maid brought the tea now and there was lemonade and biscuits for the children. They said ‘Thank you’ to the maid, who finally smiled wanly as she left. The adults drank their tea while Katy and the boys devoured their biscuits and gulped down the lemonade. After that the women talked of families and scandals, present and past. Katy sat at the table with the two boys, turning the pages of a book showing pictures of Queen Victoria and her family.
The
boys were becoming restive when Augusta said, ‘That maid only comes in each day but she’s been told she has to tell you when anything happens.’ She eyed Winnie but addressed Ethel: ‘You’re sure this lass can keep her mouth shut?’
The
two friends flushed in unison but Ethel confirmed firmly, Winnie won’t repeat anything she hears. I’ve told you that before.’
‘
Aye. I just wanted to be sure.’ Augusta cast that cold eye over the children: ‘The bairns are too young to understand. Except that one.’ The thin finger pointed at Katy.
Again
Ethel assured her: ‘She won’t tell anyone.’
The
old woman stared into Katy’s light blue eyes, open and honest, and nodded, satisfied. She turned to Ethel and asked, ‘You know where to look?’
Ethel
replied soothingly, ‘Yes, Aunt Augusta, but you mustn’t talk as if—’
‘
Don’t be damned silly!’ Augusta’s cup rattled in its saucer. ‘It’s not a matter of “if” but “when”!’ She laughed, a dry rattle. ‘I never gave you much money, only a few shillings now and then, partly because I wanted to be certain I’d have sufficient to see me out because I saw enough of poverty when I was young. I’ll make damned sure I won’t die a pauper. But on top of that I knew that if Barney found you had money he would drink it. He’ll drink whatever I leave you now if you let him get his hands on it. Not that there will be much. They say you bring nothing into this world and you can’t take anything out. True enough. But
I
made my money and
I’ve
spent it. As I said, it’ll see me out. You’ll get what’s left.’
She
lay back in the chair now, weary, and said, ‘Those bairns are getting restless. You’d better be getting away.’ So they made their farewells, the children kissing her dry cheek, then Winnie and last of all, Ethel. Augusta held her hand tightly for a moment. ‘Take care now. Remember what I’ve told you.’ And then with a nod of the head towards Katy, ‘And watch out for her.’
‘
I will,’ answered Ethel. Then the maid let them out. In the street Ethel opened her hand and saw a sovereign. She never mentioned it but closed her fingers again and they made their way home across Newcastle.
The
maid came some six months later, early on a bitterly cold winter’s morning. She wore a shawl wrapped over her head and around her shoulders to supplement her threadbare coat but her pale face was tinged with blue by the cold. Ethel opened the kitchen door to her knock and the girl standing in the passage outside held out the scrap of paper on which Aunt Augusta had written Ethel’s name and address. Shivering, she said, ‘Missus Fleming told me to tell you as soon as it happened. “Fetch the doctor and the undertaker,” she said, “and then tell Mrs Merrick.” Katy heard all of this, standing by her mother’s side, dressed and ready for school. The two elder girls had preceded her by a few minutes while the boys were still eating their breakfast and had not heard a word.
Katy
heard her mother’s quick intake of breath, then Ethel said, ‘Come in and get warm, lass.’ Ethel held the door wide to admit her. Then she turned to Katy and told her, ‘You can’t go to school today, pet. I want you to look after the two bairns for a bit. I have to go out — ’ she glanced at the boys and finished ‘ — shopping, but I’ll be back in an hour or so.’ She left shortly afterwards, accompanied by the maid, and Katy played with the two boys.
Ethel
returned before noon. She was flushed despite the cold, and breathless as if from running — or excitement. She took Katy aside and said, ‘Don’t say a word to your dad about that girl coming.’
‘
No, Mam.’
So
Katy listened in silence when Ethel told Barney that evening, ‘I had a message today that Aunt Augusta died last night.’
‘
Aye? Well, we’ll get over there and quick!’ Barney washed hastily and changed out of his dirty work clothes, then they all set off. The house in Gosforth was empty but Ethel had a key which she said the maid had brought her. The children sat in the chill, fireless kitchen, talking in whispers because of the body in the bedroom upstairs. Meanwhile Barney searched the house while Ethel followed in his wake. It proved fruitless.
Barney
gave up in anger and despair at last. ‘Nothing but her purse wi’ fifteen shilling in it! There’s a will, right enough, leaving all to you, including her bloody brooch, but this place was rented and there’s nothing but what the furniture will fetch!’ He glared up at the ceiling as if at the dead woman above. ‘The tight-fisted old hag!’ He cursed or maintained a brooding silence all the way home.
Ethel
kept quiet except to say once, ‘I’m glad she died in some comfort, not a workhouse bed.’
Barney
snarled in disappointment, ‘Aye, she blew it all on herself!’
Ethel
did not argue with that and said nothing more, not wanting him to transfer his anger to her. But now and again she smiled.
*
Matt Ballard ran home from school, partly to keep warm because he had no winter coat, only one old and ragged jersey pulled on over another. He was already tall and sturdy for his ten years, face red with exertion and the cold. He made little noise as he ran along the bare boards of the passage because he only wore plimsolls with his big toes poking out of them. He had no winter boots, either.
He
pushed open the door of the kitchen and saw his father sitting on a cracket by the small fire in the grate. Matt knew what that meant, and asked with a sinking heart, ‘No work today, Dad?’
‘
No, but I’ve got a job.’
‘
That’s great!’ Matt burst out excitedly. This news meant there would be enough to eat. Then he saw his father was not smiling, and his mother sat on the other side of the fire, her hands to her face and the big tears oozing out between her fingers. Matt’s father got up from the stool and went to put his arm around her. Matt asked, voice hushed, ‘What’s the matter with me mam?’
‘
I’ve signed on in the Durhams,’ Davy Ballard explained. ‘There’s never any regular work around here for a labourer like me. So I’ve joined the Army. At least you’ll all have a roof over your heads and full bellies.’
Matt
’s mother wiped at her eyes with a corner of her apron and tried to smile. ‘Your dad will have to live in barracks for a bit but later on we’ll all be in a married quarter, probably down south in Colchester.’ A battalion of the Durham Light Infantry was stationed there. It was a foreign country to her. Her man would go and she would be left on her own and later would be cast among strangers. But she hugged Matt and told him, ‘So we’ll all be fine now. And here’s the rest.’ The trampling in the passage signalled the arrival of Matt’s four brothers and sisters. His mother stood up. ‘I’ve got some bread and dripping for your teas.’ She started to lay out the meal as the other children charged in.