Above the Harvest Moon (2 page)
Silas hadn’t lifted a finger to provide so much as a teaspoon. Rose’s soft mouth tightened.That should have told her something about the nature of the man she was marrying. But of course it had been too late by then. She’d been in the family way and had been grateful he was marrying her at all.
Shaking her head at the foolish young girl she had been in those days, Rose bit down hard on her bottom lip. She’d counted herself fortunate when a friend of her mother’s had tipped them off about these rooms becoming vacant due to the previous tenants doing a moonlight flit. The family who lived on the top floor in the two-up two-down terrace had to lug buckets of water up a steep flight of stairs every day from the outside tap shared among four houses. At least she’d been spared that.
But there were worse things than carrying heavy buckets of water upstairs. Rose crossed her arms over her middle and her hands gripped the sides of her apron. She swayed back and forth, her eyes shut. She had been near to blurting out to her mam that it wasn’t only Silas’s drinking and gambling she had to put up with and she mustn’t do that. Her da loathed Silas as it was; the two of them had come near to blows at the colliery because of her father’s attitude to her husband - Silas had told her so. What her da would do if he knew about the indignities Silas heaped upon her when the mood took him she didn’t dare imagine. Sober, Silas could be violent and unpredictable. Drunk, his brutality took on an altogether more unnatural and depraved twist. And if it came to a confrontation with his son-in-law, her da wouldn’t stand a chance. The Fletchers’ reputation for dirty fighting was well known throughout Monkwearmouth.
Why had she got mixed up with Silas in the first place? she asked herself for the hundredth time. His bad-boy reputation had fascinated her, that was the thing, along with his dark good looks and glib tongue. But she had paid for the clandestine assignations.
She had only met Silas twice before he had got her drunk in the old quarries off Cemetery Road Southwick way, one baking hot summer’s afternoon. He’d had his way with her right there in the open. She had been but fifteen years old to his twenty-six, and she had never tasted strong liquor before. Afterwards she had prayed and prayed there would be no result of their union but after three months she had been unable to fool herself any longer. She was expecting a bairn, Silas Fletcher’s bairn. That same month she had turned sixteen. And now, two years on, she had a son who was the light of her life and a husband she hated and feared.
The sound of the back door opening brought her springing to the range. When her husband entered the kitchen from the tiny scullery moments later Rose continued stirring the broth. Her voice flat, she said, ‘There’s a fresh loaf on the table and I’m about to dish up if you want to sit down.’
She knew he’d sat because she heard the scraping of the bench on the flags as he’d pulled it out. She made sure his plate held three good-sized dumplings along with most of the scrag end of mutton and some vegetables, and then she ladled more broth over the whole. This left little meat for herself and Jake but it was preferable to Silas throwing his plate against the wall as he’d done once or twice when they were first married, yelling that a plate of slops wasn’t a fit meal for a man after a hard day’s work down the pit. When she had protested she couldn’t manage on the housekeeping he gave her, a night of such torment had followed that she had never answered him back again. That had been the start of her taking in the washing and ironing to make ends meet, although they never did.
She placed Silas’s plate in front of him, her gaze on the table. She could smell the coal dust thick in the air. When her father had come home from the pit he had always stripped off in the scullery and sluiced himself down before pulling on his other set of clothes. Her mother would take his work clothes out into the yard and bang the dust out of them as much as she could before hanging them over the chair in the scullery ready for morning. She had imagined everyone did this before Silas had disabused her of the notion.
He wanted his dinner on the table when he walked in, he had growled at her, and he would change when he damn well wanted to. It was her job to clean up after him and she’d better get used to it. She had got used to it. She’d had no other option.
After blowing on Jake’s bowl of broth to cool it down, she fed the child his dinner and then gave him another crust to eat while she ate her own meal. Not a word was spoken, the only sound besides the odd spit and crackle from the fire that of Silas slurping at his food like a pig at a trough.
It was strange how silent the child became when his father was around, Rose thought, eating her own meal swiftly so she would be ready to dish up the semolina pudding when Silas had finished his main course. From a tiny baby Jake had seemed to sense his father had no time for him.This had developed into a wariness which kept him as quiet as a mouse in Silas’s presence.
‘That old biddy in New Bridge Avenue cough up for the washing this morning?’
She had been waiting for him to ask from the moment he’d walked through the door. It was always the same. It didn’t matter that oft times this kitchen was as steamy as a laundry with washing strung across the ceiling and the walls running with moisture, or that the mountains of ironing which ensued meant she worked to the early hours, her red hands cracked and swollen. At the heart of him Silas still considered he had a perfect right to her money, especially if he’d had a bad week with the gambling.
Without raising her eyes from her plate, Rose said quietly, ‘Aye, she did. That’s what I bought the mutton with and the flour for the bread. We were right out of everything. Mr Bell dropped round a sack of potatoes an’ all.’
‘A sack? You didn’t need to buy a sack.’
‘They were cheaper that way.’ Harsh experience had taught her to make it look as though every penny had been spent even if she’d hidden a bit away towards the rent. ‘We needed some dripping and marg an’ all, and some lamp oil—’
‘All right, all right, don’t go on.’ He wiped a chunk of bread round his plate to mop up the last of the gravy, stuffed it in his mouth and chewed.
She could feel his eyes on her and knew he was calculating the cost of the food and oil. Her mother’s two half-crowns and shilling safely tucked away, she told herself not to get rattled.When she got rattled she trembled, and when she trembled it brought the fiendish side of him to the fore with a vengeance. It was as though he fed off her fear . . .
She reached across for his empty plate and placed it on hers then took them out to the tiny scullery to be washed later, before taking the milk pudding out of the oven. Spooning half of it into a bowl, she added a good dollop of strawberry jam and put it down in front of Silas, then returned to the range. She still hadn’t looked at him.
‘So it’s all gone then?’
‘What?’ She feigned ignorance.
‘The money, it’s all gone? And stop what you’re doing, woman. I’m talking to you.’
Slowly she turned, Jake’s bowl in her hand. Meeting the eyes that were so dark brown as to be black, she said flatly, ‘Yes, it’s all gone. There was nothing in the house to eat.’
‘Don’t take that tone with me.’
She hadn’t taken any sort of tone and they both knew it. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You will be if I have any of your lip.’
After staring at her for another few seconds he began to shovel the pudding into his mouth. It was only then Rose went and sat in front of the high chair and fed Jake.
She hadn’t finished when Silas said, ‘Leave that and fill the bath, I’m off out in a while. And lay out me other shirt and trousers while you’re about it.’
As she rose to do as he bid, Jake, seeing his food about to disappear, cried out in protest.
‘Shut him up.’
‘He’s still hungry.’
‘I said shut him up. I don’t work all the hours under the sun to come home to him squawking his head off. If you can’t shut him up, I will.’
Hastily Rose pushed into Jake’s hand the half-eaten crust he had been gnawing at before she’d started to feed him the pudding. Her voice soft, she said, ‘Here, eat this, there’s a good lad. Mam’ll see to you in a minute.’ As the chubby fingers closed over the crust, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Once she had filled the tin bath in front of the range she would get Jake to bed and out of the way while Silas had his wash and got ready to go out. No doubt it was the Times Inn in Wear Street he was aiming for rather than the Colliery Tavern where most of the miners had a pint or two after a day’s work down the pit. Being a riverside pub, the Times drew in plenty of seamen, keel and dockside workers as well as men from the shipyards, men with more money in their pockets than miners, men who weren’t averse to gambling the shirts off their backs. Her da had always reckoned the pubs down by the river rivalled Sunderland’s East End with what went on in their murky depths.
Keeping her thoughts to herself, Rose fetched the tin bath from where it was propped against the scullery wall and partially filled it with boiling water from the kettle which she’d refilled and put back on the hob after mashing the tea. She added several buckets of cold water from the communal tap in the backyard until the water was tepid, the way Silas liked it, and placed a ha’penny piece of blue-veined soap on top of the rough sheet of towelling she’d brought through from the scullery.
‘It’s ready.’
Silas was sitting drinking his third cup of tea at the table as she spoke, and as he stood up she gathered Jake into her arms and carried him through to the bedroom.
By feel rather than sight she changed Jake’s nappy and got him into his nightclothes in the dark room. They only had one oil lamp and that was in the kitchen with Silas. Once the child was ready, she sat down on her bed and bared her breast for his last feed of the day. He was now almost completely weaned but she loved these few minutes with him at night, when she was all in all to him and he was held close to her heart.
Within just a short while the dark room and her gentle rocking as he’d fed had worked their spell and he was fast asleep, the small head with its dark loose curls lolling against her arm. She held him for a minute or two more, relishing the baby smell and feel of him and then stood up and carried him over to his cot in a curtained-off section of the room. As with the high chair, the cot had been hers when she was a baby. She tucked the blankets round him and straightened up but did not immediately turn and walk out into the main part of the bedroom to sort out Silas’s change of clothes. Instead she stood for a few moments more, gazing down at her sleeping child.
How often had her own mam done this, looked down into this very same cot at her sleeping baby? she asked herself silently. And with her mam it must have been a bitter-sweet experience knowing she couldn’t have more children. Something had gone very wrong at her birth and the resulting operation had meant further bairns were out of the question. But her mam and da had loved each other; still did. Her da worshipped the ground her mam walked on although he’d never admit it.
Biting her lip against the tears which were always hovering at the back of her eyes these days, Rose bent and stroked the small silky forehead before turning and closing the curtain behind her.
Apart from their brass double bed and Jake’s cot, the room held a narrow wardrobe with a rail one side and box-like shelves the other. Jake’s nappies and the items of clothing her mother had bought for her grandson filled the top two shelves; the rest of the wardrobe contained a change of clothes for herself and Silas, along with their Sunday best.
Quietly Rose sorted out Silas’s spare pair of trousers and shirt, and his Sunday coat and cap. He always left the house clean and tidy when he was going to the Times, and it wasn’t just the gambling that drew him there, she thought bitterly. She wasn’t daft. Several times she had smelt cheap cologne on his clothes when she had put them away the next morning, and no woman but the dockside dollies used that.
She took the clothes through to the kitchen and placed them on Silas’s chair in front of the range to take the chill off them, then laid the vest and long johns he’d discarded on top. His work shirt and trousers she carried into the backyard where she banged them against the wall for a minute or two, filling the icy air with a cloud of black dust. She left them folded in the scullery and she opened the kitchen door, hoping Silas would have finished his bath by now.
‘Come and wash my back.’ He looked up as she entered the room, his handsome face sullen. ‘You could have seen to me work clothes later.’
Yes, she could. Keeping all expression from her face, Rose took the piece of flannel he held out with the soap and walked behind him. Holding her revulsion in check, she attempted to work up a lather on the flannel - no mean feat with the soap the slaughterhouse sold as a sideline - and then bent and scrubbed at the narrow back. His skin was pitted in places with the blue-black indentations the coal left on human flesh, his knobbly knees callused and stained from working in some of the coal seams where the roof was too low to even crawl and men had to move snakelike on their stomachs.
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