Authors: Janet MacLeod Trotter
‘Hold me, please,’ she whispered, shivering on the bare floorboards. He reached for her and pulled her in beside him, exultant that she had chosen to lie with him again. They made love, buried deep below the blankets for warmth, and afterwards Maggie fell asleep, undisturbed by nightmares for the first time since returning from London.
When John woke in the early morning, Maggie had gone. If he had not smelt the scent of her on his sheets, he would have doubted she had ever been there, for at breakfast she seemed as remote and preoccupied as before.
Alice’s message came later that day - Christabel’s second birthday, Maggie thought with emotion. The plan had been changed. Alice would now bring the children to see her in Sandyford, Maggie read with relief, and suspected Alice was doing so to put her more at her ease.
Maggie ordered a special tea to be laid on, with cake and jelly and scones and jam and biscuits and fruit. She asked John to be present when they arrived and to be prepared to play the piano for them. She brought out the train set that they kept for Alfred and Beattie, along with two balls, a spinning top and a doll that was Bella’s favourite.
She lay sleepless and tossing the night before the visit and got up early. John found her in the drawing room laying the fire.
‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’ he protested.
‘I have to do something,’ she said, carrying on with the task. ‘It reminds me of the times I used to go and lay fires for the Samuels on their Sabbath. I often wonder if they settled in America.’
It made John nervous when she harped back to the times she lived with Gordon and the friends they had shared.
‘You don’t have to do menial tasks anymore,’ John reminded her sharply.
‘I’m not ashamed of getting me hands dirty,’ Maggie snapped. ‘Christabel will have to take me as I am.’ She bit her lip and looked up at her husband. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just I’m so nervous.’ She looked at him doubtfully. ‘What if she doesn’t like me?’
John crouched down beside her. ‘Just be yourself, Maggie. She has no reason not to like you; she’s just an infant of two.’
‘Aye,’ Maggie sighed, ‘but she’s being raised as a Pearson. What scares me most is that she might just look straight through me as if I was a piece of muck, the way the Pearsons do.’
‘Miss Alice doesn’t anymore,’ John commented. ‘Don’t judge the poor child before you’ve even met her.’
Maggie watched from the bay window for an hour before Alice arrived, her heart pounding relentlessly. By the time the gleaming car drew up outside the house and the passengers disembarked, she was shaking with more nerves than before any of her suffragette exploits. Neighbours came out to stare at the noisy motorcar and the well-dressed visitors outside the butcher’s house and speculated as to who they might be. Millie greeted them with an elaborate show of deference, enjoying the gasps of the onlookers. Taking the children’s coats and hats and fussing around them like an old hen, she showed them into the parlour.
Seeing that Maggie was quite tongue-tied, John greeted them and made the introductions. Henry shook hands politely, but the small, dark-eyed Georgina clung to Alice’s hand in mute suspicion of the strangers.
Alice told them to sit on the sofa while she exchanged trivial conversation with Maggie, trying to put the young woman at ease. All Maggie could do was gaze at her daughter who was now inspecting the room with inquisitive eyes. Soon the small girl slipped from her seat and went to investigate the miniature painted figures around the manger displayed in the bay window.
‘Georgina!’ Alice admonished her. ‘Don’t touch them.’
‘That’s all right,’ Maggie intervened swiftly and went to the child’s side. ‘Look, there’s the baby Jesus, Georgina.
’
‘Baby, Baby!’ the girl repeated and began to finger the statues.
Maggie picked up a shepherd and handed it over. Her insides fluttered as she touched the girl’s small warm hand. This is my Christabel, she thought, savouring the bitter-sweet moment and resisting the impulse to crush her to her breast. She was only too aware that the girl was quite oblivious of how she felt. To Christabel she was a stranger, a friend of her aunt’s and nothing more, Maggie thought, full of regret.
John watched his wife closely, guessing at her feelings, and thought to distract the boy.
‘Henry,’ he said jovially, ‘do you like trains?’
‘Yes, Mr Heslop,’ he replied earnestly.
‘Well, come and help me assemble the train set,’ he suggested. ‘We could lay it out on the dining-room floor. Would you like that?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Henry answered, his plump face solemnly polite.
They left the room and Maggie held her breath to see if Georgina would rush after her brother in a panic, but she did not. She had begun to rearrange the figures on the sofa, adding a china ornament and a small glass bowl that stood on a side table. Jesus was plonked in the bowl with the shepherd and his lamb, while Joseph was placed head first in the china vase.
Tiring of her game, Georgina began to roam around the room and found the rag doll that Bella played with when she visited. She eyed it critically, then deciding she liked it, clutched it in a fierce hug.
‘That doll’s called Bella,’ Maggie explained. ‘It belongs to a little girl I know with the same name. Perhaps you’d like to come and play with her one day.’ Maggie looked at Alice questioningly.
‘I suppose that could be arranged,’ she said tentatively. ‘The children are staying with me until after New Year. Their parents - Henry’s parents,’ Alice corrected quietly, ‘are having houseguests and are glad to have the children occupied elsewhere.’
‘Bella!’ Georgina suddenly cried, hugging the doll again and kissing its worn face.
Then it happened. The small girl looked across the room at Maggie and ran towards her, holding up her arms to be taken onto her knee. Maggie grabbed her gratefully and cuddled her on her lap, thrilled at the feeling of having Christabel in her arms once more. For, although she forced herself to use her daughter’s adopted name, she would always be Christabel in her mind.
She looked across at Alice in silent gratitude, tears stinging her eyes, then bent her head close to the girl’s dark ringlets and talked to her about Bella the doll and Bella her niece. Once she had started, Maggie found she could not stop talking, telling her daughter stories that came rushing into her head while they dressed and undressed the doll and made her visit the Nativity scene.
Probably Christabel understood little of what she said, Maggie thought, but the girl seemed content to sit on her knee and play and repeat words. She was a solemn child who did not appear to smile or laugh easily like Bella did and Maggie wondered what sort of lonely childhood she endured at Oxford Hall. Yet Maggie was convinced a bond was strengthening between them; the close, inexplicable bond of love and possessiveness that is there between a mother and child before birth. It had always been there and Maggie rejoiced at the chance of experiencing it again. But as they sat there in companionship, she knew it would never be enough; she would want to go on seeing more and more of Christabel like an addict dependent on morphine.
Millie called them through for tea in the dining room where John was crouched on the floor playing enthusiastically with Henry. They broke reluctantly to join the others, but the boy was soon tucking into the food before him, encouraged by a vocal Millie who stayed to have tea with them. Henry gazed at the brashly dressed woman and marvelled at her words, trying to understand her broad dialect.
‘Gan on, hinny, have your fill,’ Millie said, piling more food on his plate. ‘I divvn’t want it for breakfast.’
The children seemed particularly keen on bread and jam, to Maggie’s surprise, rather than the special cake that Cook had made from their precious supply of flour and sugar.
‘I’m glad we came here, Aunt Alice,’ Henry said at the end. ‘It’s such a jolly house.’
Alice smiled. ‘Would you like the Heslops to visit us at Hebron House in a day or two?’ she asked.
Henry’s face puckered and Maggie thought disappointedly that the boy was going to refuse.
‘I’d rather come here again,’ he answered bashfully. ‘It’s so small - like coming into a doll’s house. Couldn’t we come here instead, Aunt Alice?’
‘Of course you can, Henry,’ Maggie answered before Alice had time to refuse. ‘We like having company. And we could invite some children for you to play with an’ all. Would you like that?’
‘Yes, please!’ Henry cried.
The next visit was arranged for the 2nd of January. Maggie lifted Christabel up to say goodbye and could not resist a kiss on her cheek. The girl giggled and wiped her cheek, then grabbed her brother’s hand as he went out of the door.
Alice murmured, ‘I warn you, they’re not used to playing with other children. They might prove a bit of a handful next time.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Maggie grinned, ‘just bring them.’
***
The start of 1919 could not come quickly enough for Maggie and she set about organising games for the children to play on their next visit.
‘We’ll have “Pin the tail on the donkey” and “Blind Man’s Buff”,’ she told John excitedly.
‘Don’t you think they’re a little bit young for that?’ he dared to suggest.
‘Well, Henry’s not,’ she answered briskly, ‘and Alfred’ll soon cotton on.’
So they held a party for them, but as Alice had predicted, the second visit was not so easy. Quite unused to sharing, Henry argued with Alfred over the train set, calling the boy ‘common’, and stormed off to sit on the stairs in a huff. Bella was furious at the attention Georgina received from her favourite Aunt Maggie and hurled the rag doll behind the piano so no one could play with it.
The afternoon was saved by John gathering them round the piano and playing nursery rhymes. Soon they were all joining in, their rivalries forgotten, and after tea they attempted a chaotic Blind Man’s Buff that reduced them all to a giggling, struggling heap on the floor.
Susan glowed with pride to think of her children playing with young Pearsons and to Maggie’s amusement attempted an affected accent when speaking to Alice. Not long ago, Maggie thought wryly, she would have bristled at her sister’s behaviour, but she recognised what a special day it was for the careworn Susan as well as for herself.
Finally the children left, still wearing the paper hats that Maggie had made and shouting farewells to each other. Maggie returned to the empty parlour, suddenly deflated.
‘It went well in the end, my dear,’ John said, kissing her on the head.
Maggie sighed ‘Aye, but it’ll not be long before they’re old enough to know there’s a class gulf as wide as the Tyne between them. Young Henry knows it already - he was cruel to our Alfred. I saw the Pearson in him for the first time.’
‘He would have been jealous of any boy that hogged the train set,’ John pointed out. ‘He’s a lonely boy, craving friendship. Thanks to you, Henry’s discovered that there are grown-ups who want his company - even if we do live in a doll’s house!’
Maggie turned and regarded him. ‘No, it’s thanks to you, John,’ she replied quietly. ‘You’re the one he responds to. But I fear for Christabel. She’s a bright lass. How long before she’s full of airs and graces and won’t want to come visiting common people like me?’
John stroked her cheek gently. ‘If she’s allowed to keep coming here,’ he answered, ‘and seeing you, she’ll not grow up with any fancy airs and graces. She’ll be a girl of principle and passion like her mother.’
Maggie bent her head, embarrassed by his adoration. She felt guilty that she had leant on him so much for support in the past few days and yet had constantly been thinking of George and how he should have been there to see his own daughter. What would he think of his child being brought up by the Pearsons? Maggie shuddered. She knew that soon she would have to go and see him and relive the painful past in order for him to understand. She suspected that John thought of George too; he loomed between them like a spectre, neither daring to mention him. They could not continue in such uncertainty for much longer, Maggie knew, it was not fair on John. Sooner or later she must make some painful choices.
‘Thank you for your help, John,’ she said, turning from him. ‘I mustn’t keep you from the mission any longer.’
‘Maggie—’
‘We’ll talk later,’ she cut him off and hurried from the room.
***
A week into the New Year, Maggie left her work at the office early and made her way west across town. She realised she had never visited the Gordons’ home before and was not sure which of the squat miners’ cottages it was in the high part of Benwell around the pit. She searched the rows nervously and finally asked directions at a tiny shop carved out of the front room of someone’s house. The shopkeeper directed her up the dirt lane to the end house in the next row.
Outside Maggie saw a muddy vegetable plot where three scrawny chickens scavenged in the raw air. Behind loomed the pithead, like a giant watchtower planted at the end of the terraced streets, keeping a whirring eye on its workers.
Feeling faint from nervous anticipation at seeing George again after so long, Maggie forced herself up the cobbled lane and in at the battered gate of the Gordons’ cottage. At first no one answered her knocking, then a face peered out of the kitchen window and a moment later Irene came to the door. She stood in a voluminous apron, coal smuts on her face, and glowered at her neatly dressed visitor.
‘You’ll wake our Joshua with all that banging,’ Irene complained. ‘He’s trying to sleep before the night shift.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Maggie apologised, feeling at a disadvantage being kept on the muddy doorstep, aware that George’s sister had no intention of letting her inside. ‘I’ve come to see George.’
She gave a harsh laugh. ‘You’ve got a nerve, Mrs Heslop! Does your husband know you’re round here sniffing after my brother?’
Maggie’s anger lit. ‘I’ve better things to do with me time than shivering on your filthy doorstep and listening to your foul tongue, Irene Gordon. Is he in or isn’t he?’
Irene’s face coloured in indignation. ‘No he’s not, but you wouldn’t get past the door even if he was!’ She smiled maliciously. ‘He doesn’t want to see you, not now, not ever! He sees now you’re not worth bothering about, so don’t go pestering him.’