The Jarrow Lass (33 page)

At the top were two bedrooms. Through one door she could see a rocking horse. She shouted again. A small croaking cry answered from the children's room. Rose dashed in. The beds were empty. She could see no sign of her daughter. Then she heard a painful coughing from a half-open door into the eaves of the roof. Rushing forward, she yanked back the small door and peered in. The girl lay on a mattress in a space no bigger than a cupboard. The air smelt fetid yet cold. Rose sank to her knees.

‘Oh, Mary, Mother of God! What's become of you?' She felt her forehead. It burnt like fire.

‘Mam?' Elizabeth croaked. ‘Is it you, Mam?'

‘Aye,' Rose gulped, hardly able to speak. As she lifted her up, she could see the angry rash of small red spots on her face. Her neck looked swollen. ‘I'm taking you home. Can you stand, hinny?'

Elizabeth winced at the light from the open doorway and tried to shade her eyes. She sank back heavily in her mother's arms.

‘Just try,' Rose pleaded. ‘Put your arms round me neck and I'll lift you.'

Struggling with all her effort, Rose managed to half drag her daughter out of the squalid roof space that passed for a room. But the girl had no energy. She knew she was too heavy for her to carry more than a few steps. Rose got her on to one of the children's beds. It made her blood boil to think how her lass had been abandoned to her fever in that hateful cupboard, while the pampered McQuarrie children had been removed.

‘How could they have left you like this?' she cried out loud.

Elizabeth squinted at her in confusion. ‘Mrs McQuarrie? You're back, miss. Is David better?'

Alarm leapt inside Rose. The girl was delirious with fever.

‘It's Mam,' she said gently. ‘I'll need to fetch your father to help me carry you home. You lie here, hinny, and rest. I'll not be long.'

‘This is David's bed.' Elizabeth smiled and closed her eyes. ‘He must be better now.'

Suddenly it hit Rose. One of the children must have been ill first. Anger igniting inside her, she stormed downstairs, nearly knocking into Mr McQuarrie in the gloom of the hall.

‘Was your lad sick with the measles an' all?' she demanded.

‘David, yes,' he said, startled by her question.

‘You should've had him isolated! But you had my lass living in that hole next to him. I bet you had her looking after him, didn't you?'

‘Don't blame me,' he defended. ‘The girl knew he had measles when she agreed to take the job. That's why my wife needed her. She couldn't risk nursing him in her condition.'

Rose nearly hit him in her fury. That was why Elizabeth had told her not to come on that first day. She might have discovered there were measles in the house.

‘If she was here I'd give her a piece of my mind! Using my lass like that - it's unforgivable!' She stood over him threateningly. ‘I'll be back to fetch her with me husband. You better let us in or he'll knock you into next week.'

She fled back across Jarrow, wheezing and panting with the exertion, praying that John would be home and not waylaid in some dockside bar. Mercifully he was back. No doubt he had come home promptly with the thought of going to fetch Elizabeth's wages. Rose breathlessly gabbled out her story as quickly as her racing pulse would allow.

John's anger was instant. ‘How dare they tret the lass like that?' He was off before she could regain her breath, marching into the dusk.

When Rose caught up with him at the house he was hammering on the door and shouting foul curses at the terrified McQuarrie.

‘Please, John, stop or he'll never let us in,' she urged. Finally she persuaded the clock repairer to unlock the door. Rose pulled John up the stairs while McQuarrie shut himself in the parlour.

John swore at the sight of Elizabeth's limp, feverish body. He picked her up gently, but she did not seem to recognise him. Rose swiped a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her. Downstairs again, John aimed a kick at the closed parlour door.

‘Come out, you bloody coward! You owe us two weeks' wages! If you don't pay up, you'll have the McMullen brothers meeting you down a dark lane.'

McQuarrie opened the door long enough to thrust two shillings into Rose's hand and then slam it shut again. ‘Now go away. If I see any of your kind round here again I'll call for the constable.'

John cursed him loudly and kicked over an umbrella stand on his way out for good measure.

It was pitch-dark by the time they got Elizabeth home and up to bed. Rose ordered the younger girls to stay away from their sister.

‘You can sleep in our bed the night,' she told them. ‘And see that Jack doesn't find his way in there either.'

That night, John did not go out drinking with Pat. He sat by the fire staring into its dying flames while Rose kept vigil by Elizabeth's bed. Once in a while she would come down for fresh water to bathe the girl's itching limbs and burning face. Neither of them spoke, but drew comfort from the watchful presence of the other, while Pat snored on the settle.

In the early hours before dawn, Rose reappeared. ‘She's sleeping more peacefully now.'

John nodded. He stood and stretched stiffly. ‘I had measles as a bairn - so did five of me brothers. We all survived.'

‘Aye,' Rose nodded. ‘So did Maggie.' But silently she worried at the delirium she had witnessed. Maggie had been unwell, but never that feverish. Not for the first time she wondered how long ago Elizabeth had contracted the disease. She was so weak and confused she could have been lying in that attic for days. Who had tended her? Had McQuarrie pushed in food and water as if she were a dog in a kennel? Rose felt ridden with guilt.

She flopped into the chair John had just vacated. It was warm from his body. She closed her eyes in utter exhaustion.

‘Please God, Jack doesn't catch it,' she whispered.

‘Aye,' he agreed, staring into the fire once more. ‘Rose,' he added in a low rumble, ‘I'll see to our Pat.'

She opened her eyes and looked at him questioningly.

‘He's stopped with us long enough,' he said awkwardly. ‘I'll ask Mam to take him back if you like.'

Rose's heart leapt. Finally he had come to his senses! If Elizabeth's illness had brought it about then maybe some good would come out of this terrible carry-on.

‘Aye, that would be grand,' Rose smiled at him for the first time in an age.

He smiled back bashfully. ‘Shall I tak the lass up a cup of water?' he offered.

‘Ta,' Rose nodded. She did not have the strength to move from her seat. She would try to doze for a few minutes.

She heard him fill the cup from the jug in the pantry and cross the room. Footsteps on the stairs. She was almost asleep . . .

A bellow like a bull made her sit bolt upright in fright. She was out of her chair in an instant. John was shouting her name like a mad thing. She hurried up the stairs, finding him roaring at the top like a man possessed.

‘She's gone! Rose Ann, help! I think she's gone!'

‘What do you mean, gone?' Rose demanded in incomprehension.

‘Dead, woman!' John cried.

Rose fell in the room, choking with panic. She knew it was true before she touched the cooling body on the bed. She recognised the smell of death all too well. But it did not stop her denying it, shaking Elizabeth hard as if she could bully her back to life.

‘She's not dead,' Rose screamed. ‘Wake up! You're not dead. I just left you for a few minutes, you little beggar!'

It was John who finally pulled her off the dead girl. ‘Don't, Rose Ann,' he pleaded. ‘She can't hear you. I'll gan and fetch the priest.'

She rounded on him in shock and bewilderment. ‘You and your bloody priests! What good are they to me now? My lass is dead! What can the priest say? Can he tell me why God keeps taking away me bairns - me husband - all that I ever cared for? Can he?' she raged at him.

John shrank away from her as if she whipped him with her words. ‘Don't blame me!' he protested.

The words stung her. She had heard them so recently from the cowardly McQuarrie. Men were all the same, forever shirking responsibility.

She lashed out. ‘I do blame you! You were the one forced my lass to gan into service. You let her go slaving for those terrible people. She should have stayed on at school and got her education. Look what you've done to her!' Rose yanked at the girl's lifeless arm.

John stumbled from the room with its guttering candlelight, fleeing from the raw smell of fear and grief. Alone, Rose collapsed sobbing on the bed, pulling Elizabeth to her for comfort. She did not think she could ever let go.

Chapter 36

To pay for Elizabeth's coffin and burial, Rose had to pawn her wedding ring from William. It had hung under her clothing, a warm nugget of metal next to her heart, the only material possession left to prove she had once been the wife of a skilled workman, a brethren of St Bede's, a respectable man. It had hung there like a talisman warding off evil, an insurance against destitution, a charm that would bring her good luck in time. It would only be sold, she had promised herself, for something special like a daughter's wedding.

She had not discussed it with John, for she knew he had no money to give her. It was the only thing that had spurred her to leave Elizabeth's room where she had shut herself away to mourn. The bed still smelt of her, the imprint of her head was still on the pillow. Neither Maggie nor John's mother had succeeded in getting her to come out. But worry over a decent burial made Rose emerge from the cold, dark bedroom, wrap herself in her cape and set off alone to Slater's. She spoke to no one save the pawnbroker.

After her outburst against John the night her daughter died, she had hardly spoken a word to anyone. Rose's speech had dried up like a parched stream. At first, shock had left her lost for words. Then it became easier to say nothing, almost a relief not to have to speak. All around her she heard idle chatter or softly spoken platitudes, each as meaningless and empty as the next. She listened, but it was as if she was not really there. She was walled in by silence, cocooned from the world by her refusal to communicate. Rose could understand why some nuns took a vow of silence. John could plead, coax, rant or rail at her and it made no difference. For the first time, she was immune to his sharp tongue and swearing.

So she did not tell him she was going to sell her wedding ring, the one John had hated to see kept close to her breast because it provoked his jealousy of her first husband. Instead she went straight round to a local joiner who also did a sideline in coffins and paid for one. Then she went home to prepare Elizabeth's body. It still lay where John had left it the day before, on a board over the china sink where the fluids dripped through.

‘We didn't like to touch her till you came,' Mrs McMullen murmured. From the smell of barley stew on the range, Rose realised her mother-in-law must have been left in charge.

She nodded at the bent old woman and together they bathed Elizabeth's body and wrapped her in a sheet ready to place in the coffin. She went about the other preparations for the funeral with the same methodical detachment, still hardly able to believe that she was burying yet another sweet daughter. Inside she felt as numb and cold as death itself.

A week after Elizabeth was buried, notices appeared around the town to say the infants' schools were opening again. The measles epidemic was over. Somehow Rose galvanised herself into starching clean pinafores for Sarah and Kate, and finding coats and boots to fit. For the last month they had taken it in turns to wear the same pair of boots, as Kate's own had become too small.

Without a word, Rose handed out Elizabeth's clothing. Sarah got her work dress, worsted jacket and shoes. The sleeves and hem had to be taken up three inches and the shoes lined with newspaper to make them fit. Kate got her dead sister's woollen stockings, chemise and hat. The Sunday dress was pawned to pay for the funeral meats and the girls returning to school. Rose resented her younger daughters' suppressed excitement at receiving the clothes and anticipation at going back to school. Yet she envied them the callousness of youth that accepted tragedy and recovered from it quickly. Life for them went on.

She knew they missed their sister, but she was also aware that they helped themselves to more at meal times, as if they expected there would now be a little bit more to go round. One extra portion to share. One less to clothe. More room in the bed. Rose saw it in their faces. This was how Elizabeth's death really affected them.

‘Don't cry, Mam,' Kate kept repeating, ‘our Lizzie's with Margaret and me da and the angels now. Father O'Brien said she couldn't be in a better place.'

But Rose would not be comforted. She found no solace in the priest's words or Kate's attempts to cheer her. Instead she found herself almost hating her daughter for being able to laugh with Sarah, for humming to herself when she helped around the kitchen, for the way she swung Jack on to her hip and tickled him like Elizabeth used to do.

Perversely, Rose fostered this resentment in her heart. It made it easier to bear the future. If she stopped loving her other children so much, then it would not hurt when they too were taken from her. For Rose was certain that they would be. That seemed the only certainty in life now - that her children would be taken away from her. One by one. Little by little. Until she was left like a barren husk with nothing to look forward to except her own oblivion.

The only consolation in those bleak spring days was that Pat moved out. Where before he had delighted in her angry words and arguments with him and John, now he could not bear her ghoulish silence. It unnerved him. Rose did not know if it was John who told him to go or whether he went of his own free will, but at long last she was rid of him.

‘That should give you some'at to smile about,' John grunted. But Rose said nothing. She did not think she could make the effort to smile about anything ever again.

John continued to pick up casual work at the docks and did his best to resist the temptation of a thirst-quenching beer at one of the numerous pubs along his route home. For a while he managed to stay clear of his brother Pat and those who would inveigle him in for a drink or a game of cards. Although he would never admit it, he knew that they could ill afford for him to spend half his meagre wages before he reached Jarrow and the safety of Albion Street.

John worried about Rose and her strange silent depression that hung over them all like a funeral pall. He could not accuse her of neglecting the other children, for they were always as cleanly and smartly turned out as they could afford. But she had taken Elizabeth's death very badly. Her expression was set in stone. He looked into her dark eyes and they were like deep empty pits. Her mouth was permanently drawn in a tight, bitter line as if her lips had been sewn together. Sarah and Kate were more subdued around her, but she did not seem to notice. It was as if she were not there at all.

At times it drove him mad. He shouted at her for petty misdemeanours such as not putting the dripping away in the pantry so that it melted in the growing summer heat. But it made no difference. She ignored his criticisms and bursts of temper as if he were of no more consequence than an annoying bluebottle buzzing around the kitchen. In the bedroom it was worse. Rose would not let him touch her. She lay with her back to him and if he tried to shake her awake, she would fling off his hold.

One night she cried, ‘Leave me be! How can you even think of it?'

The disdain in her voice made him shrink back. ‘You can't deny me for ever,' he complained. ‘It's your duty as me wife. The priest'll have some'at to say.' He knew that would rile her, but he preferred her to argue with him than the dreadful silence she imposed between them.

‘The priest can say what he likes,' she hissed. ‘But I'm bearing no more bairns for him to bury!'

‘I have needs,' John growled.

She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Needs? Oh, aye, I know all about your needs. Most of them lie at the bottom of the bottle.'

‘Don't laugh at me,' John warned, ‘or I'll gan back to the bottle sharp enough if that's the only place I'll find some comfort round here!'

‘Aye, you drink away the roof over our heads,' Rose mocked, ‘and the food out of the bairns' mouths. That's why Elizabeth had to gan out to work, wasn't it? Because you couldn't provide for us like a man. You preferred to gan drinking and meddling in politics with that good-for-nothing brother of yours.'

In fury, he hit her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I do provide for you, you ungrateful bitch! If it weren't for me you'd be dead from the puddling mill or thrown in the workhouse by now - you and all Fawcett's brats! No one else would have taken you on. So don't you blame me for the lass's death. You should've managed the housekeeping better. You were quick enough to spend her wages an' all. And you never bothered to gan with her and find out what sort of folk she was working for. Just because that precious teacher of yours had spoken up for her and got her a place, you didn't think to ask. Isn't that the truth of it, Rose? It wasn't my fault, it was yours.'

She crumpled into a protective ball, nursing the cheek that stung from his knuckles. Oh God, he was right! She did blame herself. She tortured herself every waking minute with the thought that she had not had the guts to confront the McQuarries earlier. Had she done so, Elizabeth might still be alive. But John was hateful to say such things! She despised him for his accusations and his cowardly punch. She was disgusted that while she mourned all he could think about was his own bodily satisfaction. Well, he would not get it from her! She'd fight him off with every last inch of her strength, for she swore her body would never again carry another life within it. That was one way at least in which she could stand up to him.

‘Aye, it's my fault,' she admitted in distress. ‘She's dead because of us both. But we'll not do any more damage, the pair of us. I'll burn in Hell rather than bear any more bairns, do you hear? No more babies, John, no more!'

John was horrified. He had never heard her so venomous. He did not know from where such hate came. How could she blame him for her daughter's death? He had not given Elizabeth the measles or mistreated her. But deep down he knew he had failed Rose. He had wanted to provide for her and the girls and yet he had not been able to give them what they wanted - constant security and meals on the table.

But then they were no worse off than half of Jarrow. People like them never did have the luxury of security. That was the preserve of the well-off, like the Fawcetts, who thought themselves above the rest. Well, Rose and her lasses had been ruined by her marriage to Fawcett, not to him! They had come to expect too much in life - a posh house, money for new clothes and fancy education for lasses. It was Fawcett who had let her down, not he!

John fuelled his hurt pride and indignation with such thoughts. It made him feel less guilty for the way he had struck out at her. He had not liked the glimpse of the man he was becoming under the goading influence of Pat, too ready with his fists and his temper against his wife. But Rose better not push him too far. He wanted things to be the same between them as they had been before Pat had moved in and spread his poison. John had seen too late that his brother had done so out of jealousy. Pat envied him for having a wife like Rose and pretty stepdaughters and a son to call after himself.

John knew he must make Rose respect him again before it was too late. If only he could find a way of filling the void that Elizabeth had left. He longed for Rose to smile on him again, to allow him back in her arms, to be close once more. Husband and wife.