A Child of Jarrow (34 page)

John just shook his head and laughed.

Kate tried to reassure her. ‘We'll see nowt different round here. The war's a world away - ‘cross the English Channel.'

But the long hot days of August did bring changes around the town. Troops marched into Tyne Dock one day and arrested the hapless crew of a ship, the Albert Clement, that had sailed in from the White Sea with timber. Each Saturday, bands played through the town and posters were slapped to baking brick walls, encouraging men to join up. The sight of men in uniform became common as every workplace, sporting club and social group scrambled to form a company of volunteers.

A wave of patriotism swept Tyneside and the mood was optimistic.

‘We'll have ‘em beat by Christmas,' Jack crowed.

John shook his head. ‘Na. It'll gan on a lot longer. It's never over quick - I know all about war.'

‘Aye, war in the Dark Ages,' Jack scoffed. ‘But we've got the best fleet in the world and modern guns and that.'

John snorted, ‘And the same old generals that don't know their arse from their elbows.'

The arguments erupted every evening like summer storms. As well as John's pessimism over the war, he became fixated about German spies.

‘That butcher down Tyne Dock, he's one,' he declared.

Kate laughed. ‘Gebhart? He sounds Geordie to me when he opens his gob.'

‘That's ‘cos he's a spy,' John replied with conviction. ‘They're clever like that.'

Rose was dismissive. ‘He's been there as long as I can remember. Don't think he's even been to Germany.'

‘What would you know?' John snapped. He grabbed hold of Kate's arm. ‘I don't want you buying owt from that foreigner, you hear?'

Kate threw off his hold. ‘Chance would be a fine thing! Can't even afford the scraps off the floor.'

‘Well, I'm tellin' ye,' he growled.

Later, when Kate was helping Rose to bed, they laughed about his suspicions. ‘Daft bugger,' Rose whispered, ‘doesn't even trust his own shadow.'

But when the shock news of defeat and retreat from Mons filtered back, there were outbreaks of violence against businesses and people who sounded German. Windows were smashed and shops set on fire by roaming mobs. Men like Gebhart, who had lived in the town for years, were rounded up and taken away, no one knew quite where. But it pleased John.

By September, there was no more talk of the war being over by Christmas, only an increase in recruitment posters. Everyone would have recognised Lord Kitchener had they passed him in the street. Scores of men were volunteering daily; so many that local councils were giving over schools and public buildings for barracks to house the flood of eager recruits. Rose grew increasingly anxious Jack would do something foolhardy, while John took pleasure in baiting his son.

‘He's not got the stomach for real fightin'. Anyone can scrap on a Saturday night round Jarrow.'

Then, unexpectedly, Stoddie strolled in one day dressed in the uniform of the Tyneside Scottish.

‘What you doing here?' Kate cried in delight. ‘And look at you! You suit a uniform.' She blushed as he pinched her cheek.

‘About to board ship when I ran into a couple of the boys. Had a few bevvies and the next thing we're doon the recruiting office.'

A place was quickly set for him at the tea table.

‘So why aren't you in barracks?' Jack asked, his look envious.

‘They're overcrowded,' Stoddie grinned. ‘Giving us two shilling a day extra for bed and board. So thought I'd stay here a week or two.'

‘Course you can,' Kate said quickly.

Within two days of Stoddie's appearance, Jack plucked up courage to defy his mother and join up. He had been roaring drunk at the time, according to Stoddie, who was on the same drinking binge. So drunk was Jack that he gave his place of birth as Tyne Dock instead of Jarrow. But he joined the Durham Light Infantry, his father's old regiment, which provoked unaccustomed praise.

‘Good on you, lad! You've got some of your father's Irish spirit after all. It'll make a man of ye!'

Rose was only mollified by the thought that he had to live at home for the time being until proper training camps were found. Jack took a new delight in polishing his own boots and strutting around the streets in his new uniform, attracting admiring glances from neighbours who had teased or ignored him for years.

Kate was secretly pleased at the development, for some day soon Jack would have to leave home. In the meantime she enjoyed the mellow late summer days with Stoddie returning from drill and walking her to the end of the lane and back, with the excuse of looking for firewood. Usually Jack tagged along too, like an unwanted stray. Only on Stoddie's last night did he slip out of the pub early and come back to see Kate.

They stood at the end of the street gazing down on the mass of shipping on the river. The yards were working to capacity and there was talk of bringing in men from the south to fill the jobs left by the thousands who had already joined up.

‘What time do you leave the morrow?' Kate asked quietly.

‘Train goes at ten.'

‘Are you going to France?'

‘Aye.'

‘I'll miss you,' Kate murmured.

‘I'll miss you too.' He took hold of her hand. ‘Kate, will you be my lassie?'

Kate held her breath. Was he proposing to her? She did not dare speak, for fear she was assuming more than he meant. She waited.

‘Can I write to you, Kate?'

‘Aye, I'd like that,' she smiled cautiously. ‘But it might be best if you sent any letters to Mary's at Number Thirty. It's just Father - and you being Presbyterian. Mary'll pass them on to me.'

‘If you want,' Stoddie agreed amiably. ‘And you'll write back?'

‘Of course,' she said quickly.

‘That's grand,' he grinned. He put an arm around her shoulders and plonked a beery kiss on her cheek. And that was how it was left, with Kate hoping more than knowing that Stoddie was her intended.

Chapter 41

1915

When King George visited Jarrow in May to view Palmer's works, and the streets were choked with crowds come to gaze on their distant monarch, Kate stood in a queue for flour all morning and missed it.

Catherine came tearing in after school. ‘They let us go and watch. We got union flags to wave. I think I saw him riding in this big black motorcar, though maybes it was the mayor. Any road, I waved and he waved back - right at me,' she smiled, glowing with pride.

‘What you want to see him for?' John ridiculed.

‘He's the King,' Catherine answered reprovingly. ‘I wish I could see his palace and ride in that big motorcar,' she added wistfully.

John spat into the fire. ‘Down with kings and freedom for the Irish, say I!'

Kate gave the girl a look as if to say, don't bother what he thinks. ‘Here, hinny,' she said out loud, ‘I got a bit ginger powder from Afleck's the day, you can help me make gingerbread men. We'll give one a crown and call him George, eh?'

Catherine smiled and rolled up her sleeves.

As the evening sun glowed a furnace orange over the opposite row, Catherine sat on the fender munching their baking while Rose darned a stocking and Kate read aloud from the Shields Gazette to John. It was one of those rare moments of peace that settled on the household when bellies were full and tempers calm. Jack had at last moved into barracks - a converted school - and came home more seldom. He was on coastal watch from Shields down to Whitburn, a more dangerous job since surprise attacks along the east coast had shaken them all. Hartlepool had been bombed from the sea. The war was no longer far away but lapping at their door. Still, arguments were rarer without him there and he seemed happier than he had been for years on occasional visits home.

The continuing war in Flanders had also given John a new interest outside the confines of William Black Street and he was avid for any scraps of news.

‘It says here they're wanting lasses at the shell factory,' Kate said casually. ‘Short of workers. Listen to this. “The Government has issued an urgent appeal to the women of Britain to serve their country by signing on for war work. The aim is to get as many women as possible doing vital jobs so that men can be freed for fighting.” ‘ Kate slid her stepfather a cautious look.

‘You're not ganin' to work in a factory.' John was adamant.

‘Why not?' Kate protested. ‘They pay canny wages - much better than I can get cleaning.'

‘They don't mean lasses like you.' John was disparaging. ‘They want young ‘uns. Ones that don't have a bairn to look after.' He gave her a sour look.

‘I could work while the bairn's at school,' Kate reasoned.

‘They'll want you at all hours of the night and day. And who's ganin' to get your mother up in the night? Or make the dinner?' John shook his head. ‘No, no. You're not ganin' to work in no factory. Full of foremen from the south takin' all the best jobs and tryin' to steal our lasses an' all.'

Kate clenched the newspaper in anger. All he thought about was his own comfort and keeping her away from other men. He did not care if it meant she could manage the housekeeping more easily, or that she might have some money of her own to spend how she wanted. On a little bit of drink. How she craved a drink now. But even John's compensation was running out and the only time she tasted liquor was when Jack came back and slipped her a few pennies.

She choked back words of protest, knowing it would only make him the more intransigent. Kate's look fell on Catherine's auburn ringlets. They glinted with copper lights just like Alexander's. The girl was writing in an exercise book that Jack had pinched for her from the school where he was billeted. It reminded her abruptly of Alexander, head bent over his sketch book, totally absorbed. It was too painful.

‘Kitty, off to bed!' she said sharply.

Catherine looked up, startled.

‘What you writing all them daft words for?' Kate cried, venting her anger. ‘You'll give yoursel' a headache. And no one's ganin' to read them!'

Her daughter's expression tightened, but she said nothing. She rose, tucking the book under her arm, and stalked off to the bedroom without a word of good night.

Kate felt wretched for her harsh words, but the resentment curdled inside her. Catherine was like an ache in her side, forever reminding her of her shameful mistake and her deeply buried yearning for the man she had loved. She loved and hated the child as keenly as she did Alexander. Where was he now? Despite the passing years she still wondered about him and what might have been. Did he have other children? Had he enlisted? Was he still alive? So many of the officer class had already been slaughtered on the battlefields of Flanders, according to the long lists of casualties in the newspapers. But she had never spotted his name.

Kate busied herself banking up the fire and tidying the room for the night. Only tiring activity kept such tortured thoughts at bay. She berated herself for even thinking of Alexander. The evenings were long now, but they still had to pull the new blackout blinds against the threat of Zeppelin raids. As John sat and watched her helping her mother to bed, Kate determined that her only chance of escape was with Stoddie.

He had written twice from France; short, cheerful, precious letters that Mary had brought round. She had written back, scrounging the postage from Mary, but heard nothing from him since Easter. Still, he was her hope. By the time Kate had settled Rose comfortably, Catherine was already asleep in the bed they shared. The exercise book was tucked under her pillow. Kate pulled it out and flicked it open. In the dim candlelight she could see pages of uneven, scrawly writing, most of which she could not decipher. Only the title was clear: ‘The Wild Irish Girl'.

Kate sighed and smiled wryly. She had been listening to too many of John's fanciful yarns about Ireland. She was a strange, fey child, yet with a stubbornness to match the McMullens when she wanted. Kate felt suddenly fearful for her daughter. It didn't do around here to be different. Everyone was waiting for Catherine to show signs of going the way of her mother, of getting above herself. All this scribbling in notebooks would just give them another chance to tease and point their fingers.

Kate hesitated. Should she simply throw it on the fire now and stem this strangeness? She gazed at the child's soft face, purged in sleep of her troubled frown. How beautiful and innocent she looked. Kate was gripped by a fierce protective pride. Gently she pushed the book back under Catherine's pillow.

***

In June, war struck at the heart of Jarrow. On a moonlit night the quiet was shattered by sirens wailing and the eerie drone of airships. Then the ground shook as bombs exploded over Palmer's shipyards. Catherine came screaming awake. Without thinking, Kate ran out into the yard to see what was happening. Perhaps they were being invaded. The whole sky was streaked with flames, and acrid smoke fanned uphill on the night breeze.

‘Is it the Fritzes?' Catherine wailed from the door.

‘I cannot see. Get back inside and hide under the bed!'

The clang of a fire engine's bell sounded below, near the river.

Kate ran back inside and slammed the door. She bolted into the parlour, expecting to find John up and ready to defend them. Both her parents lay sleeping, oblivious to the noises outside. Typical! Kate thought. She'd lost count of the nights he'd dragged them out of bed, brandishing the fire poker and made them stand shivering to attention in their nightclothes.

Yet their sleeping unconcern was comforting and she closed the door so as not to wake them. Crouching down, she joined Catherine under the bed. She sang songs to calm them both, still half expecting the front door to splinter open and German soldiers to march in. But none came. Eventually the lurid light in the sky died and the dawn came early. They crept back to bed and slept.

The news was all over Jarrow before the evening newspapers told the stark facts. A Zeppelin attack on Palmer's had hit the machine and engine shops. Twelve men on nightshift had been killed. Five others died in the ensuing fire. The town was stunned.

Funeral processions and sombre bands dominated the following week. Foreigners had their shops attacked once more. Gebhart's family put a sign in their window, ‘God Save the King', but had their windows smashed anyway.

‘They're trying to poison us,' John declared. ‘Don't you buy owt from that Boche shop.'

Kate ignored him; they could not afford to anyway.

Playing fields and parks were ploughed up and planted with crops as the queues outside grocers lengthened and supplies on shelves dwindled. Occasionally the newspapers alluded to German U-boats causing losses to shipping and disruption to imports. Catherine went out to watch a huge pontoon dock being towed into the Slake for the repair and refit of battleships and cruisers. The river had never looked more crowded.

Then, at the height of summer, Mary came round with a letter written on wafer-thin paper. Kate sat down with the shock.

‘Stoddie,' she gasped. ‘He's a prisoner.'

Catherine looked up wide-eyed from the table where she was writing.

‘Stoddie's captured?'

Kate nodded, too flustered to mind that John could hear.

‘What's he writing to you for?' he demanded.

‘ ‘Cos he's courting our Kate,' Mary answered before Kate could. ‘Didn't you know?'

Kate flashed her an angry look.

‘No, I didn't,' John scowled.

But Catherine butted in. ‘Poor Stoddie. How's he managed to send a letter from prison? Is he not chained up?'

‘It's been sent by a German chaplain - through the Red Cross. That's what it says.' Kate's eyes smarted. ‘He wrote it months ago. He and some other lads were taken at Ypres in April. No wonder I hadn't heard ...'

‘Can I write to him?' Catherine asked. ‘I think it's terrible, him being in prison. I heard they give them babies to eat.'

Kate felt sick. ‘Don't talk daft.'

‘It's true, isn't it, Da? The Fritzes are cannibals.'

Kate glared at her stepfather. Trust him to be filling the child's head full of nonsense.

‘Aye, you can write to Stoddie,' she said, daring John to defy her, ‘keep his spirits up.'

‘I don't think that's proper for the lass,' Mary sniffed, ‘writing to a man that's not her kin.'

‘It's none of your business,' Kate snapped, ‘so keep your big nose out of mine.'

‘Well, it's not as if you're engaged,' Mary continued to needle. ‘From what Jack says, that man's got sweethearts from here to Shanghai.'

Kate was riled. ‘He asked me to be his lass before he went.'

‘You never said owt to me about it!' John exclaimed.

‘No, she's too sly,' Mary said waspishly. ‘Asked him to write to my house so you wouldn't know what she's up to.'

‘Mary!' Rose warned.

But Mary could see from Kate's thunderous face that she had got the better of her. She could not resist adding, ‘You know what she's like with lads.'

‘You little slut!' John cried, seizing hold of the poker. ‘And with that Scotchman.'

Kate rounded on her sister. ‘You can't bear the thought of me having a bit of happiness, can you? Any chance of finding a lad and you'd spoil it! At least my Stoddie's brave enough to join up and fight for his country. I'd rather have him a prisoner of war than have a yella-bellied conchie for a husband!'

Mary went scarlet. ‘My Alec's no conchie,' she shouted. ‘He tried to join up but his health was bad.'

‘Jack was right,' Kate was contemptuous, ‘he never tried hard enough. And you wouldn't have let him, ‘cos it would mean a bit of hardship. And Alec won't say boo to a goose. People like you just let every other bugger do the dirty work while you stay safe at home.'

Mary flew at Kate, shrieking, ‘You bitch!'

They tore at each other's hair and clothes, screaming their hatred.

‘White feather! White feather!'

‘Dirty cow! I hate you!'

Rose cried at them to stop but to no avail. Catherine jumped back from the table as they crashed into it, scratching at each other's faces.

‘Stop it, stop it,' she cried in agitation.

Only John seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, stabbing the poker in the fire and laughing. ‘Couple of wild cats you've raised there, Rose Ann.'

The fight only ended when Alec appeared unexpectedly, looking for his wife. He pulled Mary away and she fell into his arms bawling at Kate's savagery.

Kate stood panting and staring at the man she had just maligned so unfairly. She wanted to say sorry, but could not bring herself to be humble in front of Mary. Her sister had started it, deliberately stirring up trouble.

Alec led his wife away, with Mary shouting, ‘I'll never speak to you again! Don't think you or your brat can stay under my roof. I'll not lend you a penny neither. You'd only drink it, you drunken slag. Stay away, do you hear?'