The Harbour Girl (43 page)

Jeannie’s spirits dropped like a stone. She thought that she seemed to stagger from one crisis to another.

‘So I’ve decided that I will,’ Mrs Herbert went on, ‘and what I thought was, when I flit, in ’New Year, then mebbe you could tek over me rent book. I’m not in arrears. What do you think?’

* * *

She didn’t know what to think and tossed and turned in her bed that night as she went over various possibilities. She couldn’t afford the rent for the whole house, that was certain. Perhaps if I found someone else to share with. Or perhaps I could let the upstairs rooms in the summer if they dry out. She had already explored the two bedrooms and found the walls running with water from broken guttering and loose roof tiles, and a strong smell of damp and decay. Mrs Herbert had told her that she’d reported it to the landlord’s agent but he had only shrugged and shaken his head at the impossibility of getting it put right.

I have to get a better job with more hours, she thought as she lay wide awake. But what about Jack?

Jack whimpered beside her and gave a little cough and a cry. She held him close, giving him the little warmth she had. His arms and legs were cold, but his forehead was burning hot. She reached for her shawl; it felt cold and damp so she wrapped it around herself to warm it before putting it over Jack. He fell into a light sleep and she tucked him tightly beneath the bedclothes, then got out of bed and padded through Mrs Herbert’s room into the scullery, which was freezing cold. Her toes curled on the bare floor. She picked up a jug of milk and a small saucepan and stole back to her room.

‘
Please
don’t let him be ill,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I’ll die if anything should happen to him.’ The fire was only just warm but she poured a little milk into the pan and placed it over the embers until steam rose.

She sat with the child on her knee, both of them wrapped in all the shawls and blankets she possessed, and holding him close to her body she spooned the warm milk into his mouth. He coughed again and she cringed at the husky rattling sound, but he opened his mouth for more milk.

‘That’s it, my precious boy,’ she murmured. ‘Drink it all up.’

He looked at her with his appealing moist brown eyes and his mouth trembled. She smiled down at him, reassuring him, touching his cheek with her finger. ‘Your ma will make it better.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE FOLLOWING DAY Jeannie huddled near the fire in Mrs Herbert’s room with Jack on her knee. When he wasn’t coughing, he lay lethargic and listless with his face pressed to her chest and she was distressed that her milk was gone and she wasn’t able to offer him even that comfort. But then she looked down at his pale face and saw his little mouth sucking on her blouse as if he was feeding and she undid her buttons and put him to her breast.

Mrs Herbert kept her supplied with weak tea and slices of stale bread and sat with her, not talking, for which Jeannie was grateful. She had nothing to say. All she wished for was that Jack would recover, and soon.

When he fell asleep, she placed him in her chair, covered him with a blanket and went outside to the privy. The yard was thick with crisp unmarked snow and she padded across it feeling the cold seeping through her shawl and boots. We could be snowed in, she thought. I wouldn’t be able to push the pram through this even if I dared take Jack out.

When she came back into the house she thought there wasn’t much difference in temperature between the outside and the scullery except that the wind outside was keener than that which found its way beneath the wooden back door and swirled around her feet. She heaved on the pump handle over the sink to draw water to wash her hands, but it only creaked and groaned and no water came out. As she stood there, wondering what to do, Mrs Herbert opened the door and came into the scullery. ‘Pump’s been frozen since this morning. It happens every winter, so I had ’forethought to fill a bucket last night. So if you want a cup o’ tea just ladle ’water into ’kettle.’

‘I wanted to wash my hands,’ Jeannie said. ‘Is there enough to do that?’

Mrs Herbert shook her head. ‘Can’t waste good water,’ she said. ‘This is onny for cooking or drinking. Scoop up some snow into a pan for washing; that’s what I usually do. Or sometimes I don’t bother,’ she added.

For three more days and nights Jeannie held Jack on her knee, letting him sleep if he could or when he was restless feeding him a drop of broth or sometimes warm water from a spoon. She thought he was worsening; his breathing was laboured, squeaks and gurgles coming from his chest, and she was frantic with worry.

‘I don’t know what to do, Mrs Herbert,’ she wept. Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘I wish my ma was here.’

Mrs Herbert pushed her shawl back from her forehead; beneath it she wore a woollen hat. ‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ she said. ‘I never had any bairns. If I could get out I could mebbe fetch a neighbour, but then what could they do?’ She shook her head. ‘But I’m afeared o’ falling.’

Jeannie sniffed away her tears. ‘No, you mustn’t go out. The snow’s over the doorstep, and I daren’t go out either.’ She dared not leave Jack in Mrs Herbert’s care; he might become worse whilst she was out, or fall out of the chair into the fire, or crawl into the cold scullery to look for her. Besides, whom would she ask for help? There was Mrs Norman, but what could she do that Jeannie couldn’t? It would take too long to walk to Dot and Sam’s house. No, she would have to manage as best she could, although already they were out of milk and bread, the water bucket was almost empty and they were rationing their tea. The only blessing was that there was still a little coal left and each day, when Jack had dropped asleep, Jeannie put on her work boots and warmest shawl and shovelled it from the coal house into a hod and brought it into the scullery.

‘Where’s ’babby’s father?’ Mrs Herbert asked at the end of the third day. ‘Why isn’t he here to look after you?’

Jeannie blinked. She had been so concerned about Jack that she hadn’t given Harry a single thought. Yes, she thought, where is Harry? He won’t have gone to sea yet. He said he was sailing in the New Year. Are we in the New Year? I don’t know what day it is. I haven’t heard the church bells or the sound of the ships’ horns. It seemed a lifetime since she had spent Christmas Day with Dot and her family.

‘He’s left me, Mrs Herbert,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t know where he is.’ Though I can guess, she thought. ‘Do you know what day it is?’ She felt light-headed, unable to think straight. ‘Are we in the New Year?’

‘Not yet, dear. It’s onny Sunday.’ Mrs Herbert nodded her head and smiled. ‘Somebody’ll come lookin’ for us now. I’ll have been missed at chapel and I dare say your family will come knocking to ask if you and ’bairn are all right. Where did you say your husband was? At sea, did you say? Funny time o’ year to be away. Never known anybody go to sea at Christmas.’

Jeannie nodded. Sometimes that was all the response that Mrs Herbert needed: not an answer, just an acknowledgement that she had been heard.

And she was right. The next morning just after daybreak there was a knocking at the front door. It was Minnie, dressed in a long warm coat and shawl, and a woollen hat around her ears and another shawl on top of that.

‘I couldn’t get round ’back,’ she said. ‘Snow’s halfway up ’gate.’

‘I know.’ Jeannie let her in and Minnie stood looking round the room.

‘Don’t you have a fire?’ she asked in a shocked voice. ‘How are you keeping warm?’

Jeannie led her into the middle room. ‘I’m staying with Mrs Herbert,’ she explained. ‘We’ve been sharing the coal and the food, what little there was. Jack’s been ill, and I haven’t been able to get out.’ She couldn’t help the catch in her voice. ‘I think he’s still weak, though he’s not as chesty as he has been.’

‘Poor bairn,’ Minnie said, and knelt on the floor to say hello to him where he lay propped up in the chair.

Jack turned his head away as if he didn’t know her and then looked up at Jeannie, his eyes brimming with tears. She softly caressed his cheek.

‘What are you giving him?’ Minnie asked.

Jeannie burst into tears. ‘Only warm water with a bit of sugar. We’ve nothing left – no milk, no bread, and the pump’s frozen so now there’s no more water.’

Minnie opened her mouth on a breath. ‘Right,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll go and do some shopping.’

Jeannie shook her head and burst into a fresh onslaught of crying. ‘I’ve no money. Nothing!’

Minnie jingled coins in her pocket. ‘Mrs Greenwood gave me some when she asked me to come,’ she said. ‘I’d have been here afore but everybody’s been badly; Mrs Greenwood, Mr Greenwood and Miss Rosie. I’m ’onny one that hasn’t gone down with owt. I’ve been dashing about like a scalded hen since Boxing Day, mekkin’ hot drinks and keeping ’fires going.’ She adjusted her shawl and turned up her collar. ‘You wouldn’t believe ’number of folks who are sick.’ She pursed her mouth and looked at Mrs Herbert. ‘And some old folk’ve succumbed to influenza. Parson’s going to be busy.’

Jeannie felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and Mrs Herbert heaved a great sigh as Minnie went out. ‘I was getting worried, I admit,’ the old lady said stoically. ‘I was onny thinking that I’d have to brave ’weather and go out and beg some bones from ’butcher to mek some soup.’

‘We’ve no water,’ Jeannie reminded her.

‘No,’ Mrs Herbert said. ‘But we’ve got plenty of snow; we’d have had to use that.’

Minnie came back with bread, milk and cheese, onions and carrots and a slice of tender beef steak which she seared in a pan on the fire. Jeannie could hear her grumbling when she went back into the scullery to chop up the onions and carrots. ‘Sweet Jesus, it’s freezing in here.’

She came back into the room a few minutes later with the pan of meat and vegetables and a dollop of snow and placed it on the fire; she brought bread and cheese on a plate for Jeannie and Mrs Herbert, and for Jack a bowl of pobs, bread soaked in warm milk and sweetened with sugar. She knelt down beside Jeannie and gently urged Jack to open his mouth, which he did, like a little bird.

‘Thank you.’ Jeannie felt the tears welling up again. ‘You’re so kind. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Minnie said, spooning another helping into Jack’s open mouth. ‘I’ll think o’ summat. Oh, and I’ve ordered a sack o’ coal,’ she added as a matter of fact. ‘Stew’ll tek for ever to cook on that fire. It’ll be here later this morning.’

Billy called that evening after work, bringing a handcart full of wood for the fire. He’d been to see Rosie, who was still recovering from her bout of illness, and Minnie had told him about Jeannie trapped in the house with a sick child. He built up the fire with wood and coal and then suggested he should make a fire in Jeannie’s room.

‘It doesn’t do to let ’room get too cold,’ he said. ‘It’ll get damp.’

‘It’s damp already,’ Jeannie told him. ‘That’s why Jack got ill.’ She watched him as he knelt by the hearth, screwing up paper in the grate and then placing sticks and coal over it. ‘Have you seen anything of Harry?’

‘Not since Christmas Day. I was about to ask you ’same thing,’ he said, concentrating on what he was doing. He lit a match and set fire to the paper. ‘You might as well forget about him, Jeannie.’ He didn’t look at her but kept his eyes on the flame as it curled and blackened the edges of the paper and singed the wood. ‘He was allus my best mate, even though I knew his faults, just as he knew mine.’ At last he turned to look up at her. ‘But I’m telling you now, he’ll not come back. If he hasn’t been to see if you and ’bairn are all right over Christmas, then he’ll not be coming.’

‘But he said – in front of everybody …’ Her voice faltered. Why was she fooling herself?

Billy shook his head. ‘He won’t come. Connie won’t let him.’

Billy told her that Harry had left the Humber Steam Company and signed on with a company called M and R. An old established company, he said, but not one that Jeannie had heard of.

‘It used to be Masterson and Rayner,’ he told her as he buttoned up his jacket. ‘They were big in whaling at one time, so I understand, but ’name was changed a few years back to M and R. I think there’s still a Rayner in ’company. They’ve got four or five ships.’

He changed the subject and told her that Dot wanted her to go and stay with them, but she quickly said she couldn’t take Jack out yet.

‘Not yet,’ he agreed. ‘But what about next Saturday? He should be a fair bit better by then – and you know what?’

Jeannie shook her head. Billy was always full of good ideas.

‘What if I make a sledge for ’pram? You could wrap him up in warm blankets, put him in ’pram and we’ll fit it on ’sledge and I’ll pull it. ’Snow’s deep in places but you could hold it steady by ’handle and we’d get there in no time.’

She laughed. Maybe it would work, but then she thought of leaving Mrs Herbert on her own and worried over that.

‘You could fetch her as well, Dot wouldn’t mind, but I doubt if ’old lass could walk that far,’ Billy said, and he was right as usual, for when Jeannie asked her she said she’d be quite content at home now that she had coal and food, and would wait for the thaw.

‘You forget, dear,’ she said to Jeannie later, ‘I’ve been through quite a few cold winters.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But I don’t recall another quite as cold as this one.’