No Greater Love (5 page)

How different their lives might have been if their father had not died in Pearson’s shipyard and their mother had not half killed herself working in the laundry and then clawing a living for them all by setting up her own clothes stall. By determination, persistence, wiles and lies, Mabel Beaton had persuaded the genteel ladies of the town to part with their unwanted clothes in return for spurious fortune-telling and tea-leaf reading that flattered her bored patrons.

If fate had been kinder to them, would she have been able to stay on at school and become a pupil teacher? Maggie wondered, and would Susan now be married and in her own home as she yearned to be? There would have been money for their vain sister Helen to dress in new clothes instead of trawling through rich ladies’ cast-offs. And there would have been money for medicine and holidays by the sea for Tich, so that he would have grown into a healthy lad instead of a skinny scrap of a boy with a gaunt, cheeky face and a cough that kept him indoors most of each winter and grated on all their nerves.

If only ... Maggie allowed herself a rare moment of self-pity.

Suddenly a door to a public house banged open just behind her and noise erupted into the street. Maggie turned to see a man being ejected from the brightly lit interior.

‘Take these and bugger off!’ said the portly aproned barman, flinging a handful of leaflets after the sprawling man. ‘I don’t want to see you in here again, do you hear?’

One of the leaflets fluttered to Maggie’s feet and she picked it up. It advertised a union meeting to discuss pay increases and was advocating strike action at Pearson’s shipyard.

‘You’ll be the one losing out when men can’t afford your piss-weak beer!’ the young agitator shouted back as he picked himself up off the ground. He was tall and brawny with a bushy black moustache and short-cropped hair. Something about him seemed familiar to Maggie as she watched him rescue his cap from a puddle. His suit was well cut though shabby and his white collar was stiffly starched.

As the door to the bar slammed shut, the young man caught Maggie eyeing him with curiosity.

‘What you staring at?’ he asked aggressively, embarrassed that she had witnessed his ejection from the Hammer and Anvil.

‘Nothing, I just thought. . .’ Maggie blushed and handed him the leaflet. The other bills were turning to a sodden pulp on the rain-soaked pavement.

Ta,’ he grunted, still cautious.

Realisation dawned on Maggie. ‘You’re George Gordon, aren’t you?’ The Gordon boys had been at her elementary school when she had lived up the hill. They were miner’s sons from Benwell and well known for being loud and boisterous and rough with their schoolmates. George was the eldest and had stood aloof while the younger ones had plagued her for being studious and goaded her into carrying out dares when she beat them at running. George had left school shortly before her father died and she had barely seen him since. ‘Still picking fights, I see.’

‘How do you know me?’ George asked, squinting through the rain at the slight woman before him. Her neat appearance and the WSPU sash made him uneasy. Her face was shadowed by her wide-brimmed hat and scarf. ‘I don’t know any of your kind.’

‘I’m Maggie Beaton. I was at school with your brothers - the twins,’ Maggie reminded him.

‘Our Billy and Joshua?’

‘Aye. Are they still causing trouble?’

George grunted. ‘They haven’t the time; they’re both down the pit.’

He stepped closer to get a better look and Maggie felt suddenly awkward. She should never have stopped to speak to this man who was almost a stranger, only the leaflet had aroused her interest in him. She turned to go.

‘Wait, I remember now. The Beatons who lived in Sarah Crescent.’ He had a hazy recollection of a restless, talkative girl who was always trying to interfere in their games. ‘Were you the clever one?’

‘Maybe,’ Maggie shrugged, pleased with the comment.

‘Aye, the Beatons.’ George gave a sudden laugh. ‘Your mam was always chasing us away with a rolling pin or worse.’

Maggie smiled. ‘Sounds like Mam.’

‘Which way are you walking?’ he asked her, relaxing. Maggie was at once nervous and stepped away from him. ‘I don’t go your way.’

He gave her a quizzical look. ‘Just to the end of the street then.’ They walked in silence until he said, ‘So why are you dressed up like them suffragettes? You’re too bonny to be one of them.’

Maggie bristled. ‘I’m a supporter of women’s suffrage,’ she said proudly. ‘It’s not a carnival parade.’

‘Oh, aye?’ George smirked. ‘You’re a right little hell-raiser, I bet.’

Maggie was riled. ‘Don’t scoff at me, George Gordon. We women know what we want, so why should men in Parliament make laws for us?’

George stopped and considered her, pulling on his moustache. She made him feel suddenly defensive. ‘The suffragettes want to give the vote to a load of posh middle-class women who’ll vote the bosses in for evermore,’ George scoffed. ‘You’ll still get the ruling classes making the laws for the likes of you and me.’

‘No! I’m fighting for justice for all women,’ Maggie replied stoutly.

George laughed in derision. ‘The only way working-class women will get better conditions is if working-class men are given the vote. Then you’ll get better housing and healthy bairns and be able to stop at home and look after them like you’re supposed to.’

Maggie was furious. ‘Don’t tell me what women are supposed to do!’ she glared. ‘We want equality with men under the law and equal wages for the work we do.’

He gawped at her. He had never heard such nonsense; none of the women he knew spoke to him in such a forthright way.

‘You’ll never get that,’ he told her sternly. ‘It’s lasses like you who are keeping men’s wages down, taking our jobs, because the bosses treat you like the cheap labour that you are.’ He brandished the soggy leaflet at her in his annoyance. ‘Men are the rightful wage-earners. But how can they take enough home to their families when lasses are undercutting them?’

‘We have families to support too! Me mam’s struggled on a slave’s wage for ten years since me dad died. We deserve better pay and we’ll get it,’ Maggie said resolutely, standing her ground, ‘and the vote. Folk will come to see that it’s not right for men to make laws that affect women’s work. We pay taxes but we have no say in how they’re spent.’

George could hardly believe he was bothering to argue politics in the rain with a mere woman. He was still smarting that she should have witnessed his ignominious exit from the pub. So, unable to beat her in argument, he resorted to abuse.

‘I might have known you’d turn into a gobby lass with too high an opinion of yourself,’ he said angrily. ‘You Beatons always did think you were better than the rest of us, but from what I heard you were taken down a peg or two.’

Maggie flushed. Angrily she turned on him. ‘We were "taken down a peg or two", as you call it, because me father had the misfortune to get himself killed and no one cares tuppence-halfpenny about widows like me mam or their bairns. But then I wouldn’t expect a pig-ignorant Gordon like you to understand that!’ Her eyes were blazing as she berated him. ‘Well, I’ll never be beholden to any man like Mam was, never! I’ll make me own way in the world. So you can put that in your pipe and choke on it, George Gordon!’

With that she turned and stalked off down the hill, her back stiff with anger. Men were all the same, she raged inwardly, whether they were rich Pearsons ready to exploit women clerks at half a man’s wage or working men like George Gordon who would make them drudges at home. She had long known that women had to look after themselves. Well, George Gordon could go to the devil!

George stared after her speechless, wondering how she had riled him so quickly. In frustration at his fruitless afternoon and the way she had had the last word, he screwed up the leaflet and hurled it under the hooves of a passing horse. Crossing the road, with collar turned up against the rain, he hoped he would never run into Maggie Beaton again.

‘How do I look, Mam?’ Susan Beaton asked her mother timidly as she studied her reflection in front of the mirror in their small parlour.

‘Turn around, hinny,’ Mabel instructed her eldest daughter, eyeing the pink and white dress critically.

It was the best dress she could find, made of soft muslin and patterned with small roses in deep pink. She had mended the tear in the sleeve and shortened the length so that it didn’t trail along the floor too much, but its flowing line only highlighted Susan’s tendency towards dumpiness. She’ll be as stout as I am in five years’ time, Mabel thought wearily; already the girlish pink-cheeked bloom that had made Susan almost pretty was fading.

‘You look pretty as a picture,’ Mabel assured her and kissed her flushed forehead.

‘The gown was Mrs Cochrane’s from Heaton,’ Helen piped up. ‘Of course, blouses that flop over the waist aren’t in fashion nowadays and it’s much too wide in the skirt. The tighter at the ankle the better, this season,’ she pronounced.

Mabel glared at her youngest daughter as she helped Susan arrange her long fair hair, the one striking feature that was a legacy from her father. She knew Helen yearned for the dress and was being deliberately spiteful.

‘Don’t listen to a word of it,’ Mabel told Susan, seeing the dashed expression on her face. ‘She only wants it for herself.’

‘Wouldn’t catch me in an old maid’s dress like that,’ Helen pouted, shaking her fair ringlets and looking at her mother with resentful blue eyes.

‘I’m not an old maid!’ Susan protested, her round face going puce. ‘I’ve just turned twenty-two.’

‘Of course you’re not, hinny,’ Mabel soothed, hairpins gripped between her teeth.

‘Well, the lads aren’t exactly queuing up to take you out, are they?’ Helen sneered.

‘When have I had the chance to start courting?’ Susan protested, rising to Helen’s baiting. ‘I spend every hour of the day looking after the house and all of you.
^’

‘Susan, don’t listen to her,’ Mabel said, losing patience. She turned to Helen and added sharply, ‘Go and find our Tich and tell him to wash before Uncle Barny arrives.’ Helen’s pretty face was mutinous. ‘Or you’ll feel the sting of me hand. Go on!’

Still Helen did nothing. ‘So who’s this Richard Turvey, Aunt Violet’s been going on about?’ she asked, picking at the crust of a pork pie on the table.

Susan took a swipe at her hand. ‘Leave the food, will you!’

‘Richard’s a nephew of Aunt Violet’s, and I don’t want you being saucy to him tonight,’ Mabel answered shortly. ‘Now be off and find your brother.’

‘He’s manager at one of the new cinema halls,’ Susan could not resist saying, betraying her eagerness to meet their mystery guest. ‘Aunt Violet said he’s worked in variety, travelled all over the country.’

Helen’s sleek eyes lit with interest. She was addicted to the pictures and spent any spare pennies she could scrounge or steal from her mother on going to the films at the old mission hall in Glass Street. Or if they had a really good day at Paddy’s Market, she could usually persuade her mother to pay for an evening at the Queen’s Hall or the Olympia in town.

‘Why haven’t we met him before?’ Helen asked, pushing in front of Susan to glance at herself in the tarnished mirror over the dresser.

‘You know Aunt Violet’s kin are mainly in London,
^’
Mabel was terse as she rearranged the food where Helen had disturbed it. ‘Mr Turvey’s not been in Newcastle long. Now stop fussing over your hair and go and find Jimmy.’

‘I think ringlets make me look too babyish, Mam,’ Helen said, continuing to ignore her mother’s orders. ‘Can I tie my hair up like our Susan’s?’

Mabel advanced on her with a serving spoon, her patience at an end. ‘I’ll be tying up more than just your hair if you don’t do as you’re told!’ she said with a swipe at Helen’s hand.

Helen squealed in protest. ‘That hurt!’ Tears sprang instantly to her bright blue eyes.

‘Oh, I’ll go and fetch Tich,’ Susan huffed, not wanting her birthday spoilt by a familiar family row. She was across the room, through the kitchen and out onto the landing before her mother could stop her. The stairway snaked off into the gloom and she could just make out the door to the downstairs flat where she knew Tich would be ensconced. They had lived there themselves when they had first come to Gun Street but had eventually managed to move to the larger flat upstairs once Maggie had started earning a wage at Pearson’s. It was a small but important step out of poverty in Susan’s eyes; one day they would leave Gun Street for good and move back up the hill to a respectable house and respectable neighbours.

Descending the stairs, Susan steeled herself to knock on the Smiths’ door. Mrs Smith was friendly enough but she was always avoiding the tickman and Susan constantly had to lie about where the Smiths were while her mother hid Mrs Smith upstairs. She disapproved of Mrs Smith because she was for ever tempting her mother to drink beer with her, catching her weary and footsore on her way upstairs in the evening.

‘Fancy a cup of tea, Mabel?’ Mary Smith would bob out of her doorway like a furtive mouse. More often than not, her mother would succumb and return an hour later, that stale yeasty smell about her that came from dark mild beer and not tea.

Tich was another one who liked to haunt the Smiths’ grubby, cockroach-infested flat because his best mate was Tommy, the Smiths’ only surviving child. Mrs Smith had told them tearfully that she had lost three babies since Tommy; Susan could not help feeling that it must be Mary Smith’s own fault. She had heard it said that infants died when their mothers were feckless or drank too much or were too lazy to keep their houses clean or went out to work. Well, Mary Smith was guilty on all counts, as far as Susan could see.

She knocked. The door opened and a fug of stale air greeted her with a smiling Mrs Smith.

‘Come in, Susan hinny. I hear it’s your birthday, the day. Aye, Jimmy’s here - not a scrap of bother he’s been. I’ve just been baking. You’ll have a slice of me currant loaf, won’t you?’

‘I can’t stop, thanks all the same, Mrs Smith,’ Susan said hurriedly. ‘I’ve just come for Tich. We’ve got company for tea.’