The Jarrow Lass (17 page)

‘Three cheers for our queen!' someone shouted. The crowd erupted in spontaneous cheering. This was followed by, ‘Three cheers for the Mayor!'

Soon after, the ranks of children broke up and they ran off to prepare for the races and sports. Their energy seemed boundless that day, the girls keeping going until long into the evening. Kate was as determined as the rest of them to compete, and came away with a prize of sweets for a sack race. She could jump as enthusiastically as any of the children her age. Her sisters' pride turned to a touch of jealousy when she also won a prize in a singing competition.

Rose and William tried to take them home, but they begged to be allowed to stay up for the fireworks and bonfire. William relented. ‘Well, they'll not see the likes of this again in their lifetime,' he reasoned.

As darkness descended the sky was peppered with flashes of light and colour that made the crowd gasp and Kate scream, half in wonder, half in fright. At half-past ten, they watched for the lighting of the bonfire on the Bede Burn slag heap. Wagonloads of timber and barrels of tar had been amassing on the spoil heap for weeks and the police had been vigilant in keeping scavengers at bay.

‘There it gans!' William called out, lifting Sarah and Kate for a better look, as flames leapt into the air. The night was lit up with lurid orange light as the fire took hold and roared away. Further up river, they could see another bonfire burning on a ballast hill at Hebburn and, across the river, the high ground was studded with distant fires.

‘Jarrow's is the best,' William declared. ‘It'll be burning till mornin'.'

‘Will it be burning the morra?' asked Kate.

‘Aye, and the day after,' he joked.

‘And the day after that?' Kate smiled.

‘All week!' he chuckled. She laid her head on his shoulder and yawned widely.

‘And the week after...' she murmured. By the time they reached the gates of the park, she had fallen asleep and had to be carried all the way home.

Chapter 15

In the autumn, Maggie was wed to Danny Kennedy and the celebrations went on at Simonside for two days. There was much drinking and dancing and telling of stories. When the fiddler tired of playing, Rose's father and old McMullen would recount ancient legends of Irish heroes and drink to their old homeland. Rose was heavy with her unborn child and had to sit out the dancing, but she enjoyed the gathering of family and friends. She was pleased that Danny would now be living at Simonside and helping with the running of the smallholding, for her father suffered from rheumatism and was increasingly frail. Maggie had found it difficult to manage these past two years.

‘Why aren't you dancing?' Rose teased William.

‘I only like dancing with you,' he smiled, and sat down beside her. He looked tired, his eyes shadowed.

‘It's time we took the bairns home,' Rose decided. ‘It's been a long day for us all. This lot'll not go home till the beer runs out.'

Maybe it was due to the exertions of the day and the long walk home, but Rose went into labour that night. She could not rouse William from a deep exhausted sleep, so got up and went downstairs, preparing a bowl of hot water with which to wash herself and laying out brown paper on top of sheets on the truckle bed. In the flickering firelight she clung on to the back of a kitchen chair while contractions seized her, and tried not to cry out in the night.

But Margaret must have heard something, for the girl appeared in her nightdress out of the dark.

‘What's wrong, Mam?' she asked anxiously.

‘The baby's coming,' Rose gasped.

Her daughter looked around, puzzled. ‘Who's bringing it?'

Rose smiled despite the searing pain. ‘I am.'

‘But Francie at school says babies get delivered,' Margaret insisted, ‘like coal.'

Rose grimaced. ‘The bairn's coming out of me, hinny, and it's in a canny hurry. Will you gan down the street and fetch Bella? She'll help with the delivery.' She buckled over as another contraction gripped her. ‘Quick, hinny!'

Margaret rushed to the back door, pulling on her boots but not bothering to lace them up and throwing on Elizabeth's coat, which was nearest to hand. She was out the house in seconds and Rose could hear her running off down the lane in the still frosty night. By the time she returned with Bella, who had often helped out with chores since Kate's birth, Rose was crouched on the bed and panting in the throes of labour.

Bella dispatched Margaret quickly upstairs and told her to keep the other girls from coming down should they wake.

‘But I want to stay and help,' Margaret protested.

‘Plenty time for you to help your mam once the baby's here,' Bella replied, and bustled her through the door.

Half an hour later, as the mantelpiece clock struck five, Rose gave birth to her fifth child. It let out a petulant whimper.

‘Let me see him,' she gasped, raising herself with the last ounce of strength left in her aching body. Bella said nothing as she wrapped the baby in a cotton sheet and put it into Rose's arms.

Rose gazed at the pink crinkled face and damp dark hair and felt a surge of triumph. He looked just like Kate had done. A boy who would grow up with handsome chestnut curls but with his father's blue eyes.

At that moment a sleepy-eyed William appeared in the doorway, blinking in confusion to see Bella standing in the gaslight. He looked at Rose clutching their baby and gave an astonished cry.

‘I wondered where you were - you should have woken me, Rose! Can I see . . . ?'

She smiled at him wearily. ‘Come and look at him.'

‘A lad?' he gasped in delight. Rose nodded, not noticing the look on Bella's face. Even when the young woman shook her head and stuttered, ‘No, Mr Fawcett,' Rose did not realise her mistake.

William was leaning over the baby and touching it gingerly with one finger when Bella shattered Rose's dream. ‘It's not a lad, Mrs Fawcett. It's another lass.'

‘A lass?' Rose whispered in confusion. ‘But you said it was a lad.'

‘I never. You just had it fixed in your head,' Bella protested. ‘I didn't like to say owt.'

Rose pulled away the swaddling sheet and stared at the skinny body beneath. Disappointment engulfed her as she saw that Bella's words were true. William said nothing. Rose screwed up her eyes, feeling overwhelmed by failure. She had been so sure this one would be a boy to carry on the Fawcett name! She did not think she could ever go through another pregnancy and birth. She felt as old and as worn out as an old nag. Rose bent her head and began to cry, long racking sobs that came from deep within and would not stop.

‘It doesn't matter,' William said quietly, but she could hear the regret in his voice. ‘She's bonny - and there'll be others.'

‘No there won't!' Rose said savagely and turned her face to the wall. ‘I don't want any more.' Someone lifted the unwanted baby from the bed, but she did not see who and did not care. No one spoke to her.

‘I'll stay and see to the bairns if you like,' Bella offered.

‘Ta,' William replied, then left the kitchen, his footsteps thudding heavily as he retreated back upstairs.

Chapter 16

The baby was christened Mary Ellen, but Rose could not find it in her heart to love her. She felt tired and morose for weeks after the birth and the baby could do nothing to please her. Every cry and whimper irritated her frayed nerves; every suck of the breast seemed to sap her of what little energy she had left. She would leave the baby to lie for long hours, ignoring her fretful cries, while she tried to get on with all the other chores that did not cease.

Life was one relentless round of washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking and feeding. Bella stayed on to help until Christmas, but there no longer seemed time to take the girls up to Simonside to see her father and Maggie, and it was too cold or too wet for the park.

William was kind but distant towards her, leaving her alone at bedtime as if he had taken to heart her bitter words about wanting no more babies. She was thankful that he did not bother her, but she missed the comfort of lying in his arms and falling to sleep wrapped in his warmth. She was so bound up with her own cares that she did not notice at first how his cough had returned. But one night in early January, she woke to find the bed soaked in his sweat and William bent over the side, wheezing and gasping for breath.

She got up, boiled the kettle and gave him a steam infusion in the china wash bowl, his head smothered in a linen towel. But this just made him cough all the harder. When Rose removed the towel, she stared in horror at the steaming water. It was flecked with mucus and blood. A cold terror seized her, but she would not allow herself to question what it might mean. Hastily she got him back to bed and bathed his face and body, which now felt as hot as a furnace. The baby woke and began to cry, but Rose ignored her. William was shaking as if with cold and winced when she touched him.

‘See to the bairn,' he rasped, and began another bout of coughing.

Rose fled from the room with the crying baby and sat in the kitchen, attempting to feed her while she listened to William's painful coughing above. The night sweats and fever went on for a week and anything he ate turned to liquid in his bowels. The bedroom stank and she was constantly nagging the younger children to stay out of the way while she cleaned up with Margaret's help. Kate would sit on the stairs, shouting to be let in to see her father or throw a tantrum if she was denied. Only Elizabeth seemed able to calm her down and distract her by playing with Margaret's old doll's house or bashing on the keys of William's piano. But their father grew so weak that Rose finally went against his wishes and sent for Dr Forbes.

‘He's aching all over,' she told him in concern, ‘and he can't keep anything down. He won't even let Margaret feed him.'

She waited downstairs with the children, worrying over what the doctor might find. When he returned, his face was sombre. He sat at the kitchen table and told her quietly, ‘William is not at all well. His lungs are diseased - that's why he's coughing up blood.'

Rose went numb. ‘His lungs?'

‘I'm sorry, but your husband has tuberculosis.'

Rose refused to believe it. ‘It's just a fever! It'll pass. He's been ill like this before.'

The doctor gave her a pitying look. ‘He needs to be kept isolated from the children. You have some sickness insurance through his union, don't you? I could arrange for him to be sent to the hospital.'

Rose put protective arms about Elizabeth, who had crept near at the sound of fear in her voice. ‘The isolation hut?' she gulped. Most people who went in there never came out alive, she thought in horror. ‘I'd rather look after him meself than have him gan in there.'

The doctor sighed. ‘He needs fresh air and rest - cleanliness and good food. It might take months of convalescence before he's back on his feet again,' he added with hushed urgency. ‘How can you manage that with all the children and him not working? You might need to find work yourself, Rose,' he pointed out.

Her eyes stung with tears. ‘Will I be allowed to visit him if he gans in the hospital?' she asked, her look pleading.

‘I'll do my best to arrange it,' Dr Forbes promised, ‘but not with the children.'

Rose swallowed hard, trying to stem the panic rising in her throat. She met the doctor's look and nodded in agreement.

Two days later, an ambulance pulled up outside the house and William was carried downstairs. He gazed at her with large feverish eyes, his face the colour of clay. He tried to speak, but his breath was ragged and all she could hear was his chest heaving like bellows. She put out a hand and touched his cheek.

‘Don't worry about me and the bairns,' she said. ‘You just do as the doctor says.' She wanted to kiss him but felt inhibited in front of the neighbours who had come cautiously to their doors to watch. She saw the fear in their faces at the sight of a man with consumption, as if by coming too near they might be touched by his disease. ‘I'll visit soon,' she promised, trying to smile.

William said nothing, but he did not take his look from her until he was lifted into the back of the ambulance. The children pressed around, clinging to her arms and skirts.

‘Where's he going, Mam?' Sarah asked. Rose could not answer for the dread that pressed on her chest like a ton weight.

‘To the hospital,' Margaret answered, ‘so they can make him better.'

The ambulance door clanged shut. Kate let out a howl. ‘I want to gan with me da!' And she dashed forward into the road.

‘Stop!' Rose sprang after her, pulling her back just before an iron-bound wheel rolled over her feet. She gripped the five-year-old with one hand and slapped her with the other in fright. ‘Don't you go doing that again, do you hear?'

‘I want Da-da!' Kate wailed. ‘I want me da!'

At this, Sarah burst into tears and Elizabeth began to whimper quietly. Only Margaret stood white-faced and silent, as if turned to stone. Rose began to shake uncontrollably as she watched the horse-drawn vehicle pull away and lumber off down the street, the girls gathered around her tearful and perplexed. She bundled them inside quickly, out of the inquisitive gaze of the neighbours, and slammed the door.

As the winter dragged on, Rose determined to keep her household going in William's absence. She strove hard to have the girls tidy and well turned out, the house clean and food on the table. The modest sickness insurance paid for William's treatment and covered the rent, but there was not enough for household bills, let alone for clothing or boots. Maggie and Danny helped out with winter vegetables and Rose sent word to Florrie that her brother was sick. She knew she would get no assistance from her estranged mother-in-law. Albert called one Saturday afternoon with a loan of five pounds until William should get back on his feet.

‘Florrie would have come,' he said awkwardly, ‘but she's busy with the boys and old Mrs Fawcett.'

Rose nodded, hiding her disappointment, and wondered if Florrie stayed away because of fear of contamination.

She took the girls to Mass, and prayed every day for William's recovery under the picture of the Virgin Mary that hung on the parlour wall. Once a week she got Bella to mind the children and trekked over to the hospital for a few brief minutes with her husband. He lay in a draughty room with three others, the windows open to the fierce February gales, shivering under a thin blanket. He was skeletal, his eyes huge and dark-ringed in their sockets. He resembled one of the medieval martyrs whose picture hung in the church, his face beautiful yet tortured.

William smiled at the sight of her and her heart squeezed with pain to see his pitiful condition.

‘I've brought you pea soup - your favourite,' she said brightly, hiding her dismay at his frail appearance.

‘Ta,' he mouthed, his chest rattling like marbles. ‘The lasses?'

Rose fumbled under the folds of her cloak and took out a brown-paper package.

‘Margaret and Elizabeth made you this.' She held up a small piece of hessian embroidered with their names and a pattern of flowers. He smiled again and took it in shaking hands. ‘And this is from Kate.' Rose showed him a peg doll that the child had made with Elizabeth's help. They had stitched a face on to a cotton rag and tied it around the wooden clothes peg. ‘It's supposed to be you,' Rose said with a short laugh, putting it into his hand.

He looked at it a moment, then slow tears began to slip down his hollowed cheeks. Rose looked at him in consternation. ‘Don't upset yoursel',' she hissed, glancing round at the other patients.

She talked quickly of Albert's visit, of Maggie's help, of things the girls had done or said; anything to cover the sound of his gentle weeping. His fragility was more frightening than the rattling in his lungs. At the end of visiting, they briefly held hands then she left the icy room with its leaky roof and flimsy wooden walls that smelt of lime and sickness.

In March, the snows returned with a ferocity that they had not seen since the storms of two years ago and Rose was marooned at home for a week. She emerged, her pantry empty and no money for the gas. She steeled herself to enter Slater's pawnshop with her blue and white china tea cups wrapped in a linen tablecloth, both given as wedding presents. The children stood silently at the door, Margaret holding on to Mary's pram. With the pawnbroker's money, Rose bought bread, dripping, tea, jam and candles.

She asked Bella to put the word about that she was taking in mending and would decorate or paint people's houses now spring was starting. When she was given the job of painting the kitchen and scullery of a locksmith from church, she packed Kate off to school with her sisters and took baby Mary with her. But the locksmith's wife complained that the baby cried too much, so the next day Rose kept Margaret off school to mind Mary while she completed the job. Margaret resented this, and after she had been absent on several occasions, her teacher complained to the priest, who came round to visit.

‘I can see how difficult it is for you, Rose,' said Father O'Brien. ‘Is there no one else who can help out? Your sister Maggie, maybe? She has no children of her own to care for yet.'

Rose took his advice and put the suggestion to her sister. ‘Father O'Brien's had words with me about keeping Margaret off school. He thought you'd be the best person to care for Mary for a bit. It won't be for long - just while William's in hospital and I get a bit money put by. Will you, Maggie?' she pleaded.

‘Of course I'll help you out,' Maggie agreed quickly, giving her a hug. Rose left Mary there that day, handing the querulous baby into her sister's care and praying to the Virgin for forgiveness for the relief she felt at leaving her youngest behind.

At Easter, she visited William and took him a posy of flowers from the children and a painted hard-boiled egg that they had all decorated. She kept from him how difficult it had been cooped up all winter with the fractious, quarrelling girls - especially Kate, who was unusually wilful and demanding. She, of all of them, missed her father the most, crying out for him at night and wetting the bed. Rose had allowed her to creep into bed beside her, as much for her own comfort as her unhappy daughter's. Neither did she tell William that Maggie had been looking after Mary for over a month and that she had hardly seen the baby except on Sundays when they all went to church together.

Her life was a relentless round of getting the children ready for school and then spending every waking hour doing chores for other people for money. She took in washing and scrubbed doorsteps until her hands were raw and chapped, then sewed by dim firelight into the night until her eyes ached and black shadows distorted her vision. But she would do anything, however menial, to keep her home in Raglan Street, to cling on to the security and respectability that William had given her. She was not too proud to forget that she had once hawked vegetables around the town in a pair of her father's old boots, so she held her head high when she walked past her more fortunate neighbours and ignored their murmured comments or embarrassed silence.

But today she was cheered by the Easter celebrations at St Bede's and the sight of her daughters' faces enjoying egg-rolling and games in the park. Above all, she was encouraged by the sight of William sitting up in bed. He had been wheeled outside under an open porch. He was pale and thin, but when he opened his eyes and saw her dressed in her best green frock and bonnet, his face lit up as if the spring sun had touched him. They smiled at each other and she perched on the iron frame and let him take her hands.

‘You're looking bonny as can be,' he croaked, his chest wheezing quietly.

‘And you're lookin' better an' all,' she smiled, her spirits lifting.

‘But your hands are all rough,' William noticed with concern. Rose pulled them away.

‘It's just from washing the bairns' clothes,' she said quickly. ‘The wind's been that cold. Here, smell these.' She thrust the posy of flowers at him. ‘Lasses picked them for you up Simonside.'

She saw the longing in his face. ‘I wish I could see them,' he whispered, ‘just for a minute.'

‘Maybes next time I could bring them to the gate,' she suggested. ‘If you're outdoors, you could see them from here, couldn't you?'

William brightened at her words. ‘Aye, I could,' he smiled. ‘Just the tonic I need.' He took a few breaths then asked, ‘Tell me about them.'