The Urchin's Song (15 page)

Only partially reassured, Josie told her mother about Haggie Brothers, mentioning Betty’s objection in a low undertone. Her mother raised worldly eyebrows. ‘Well, lass, all I can say is that I’ve heard what you call bad language an’ it’s bin like “God bless you” at heart, an’ other times them as wouldn’t soil their lips with a “damnation” can make your flesh creep with a “good mornin’ ”.’

Josie nodded. She knew exactly what her mother meant. Prudence was mealy-mouthed in the extreme.

It was a full hour later when Josie, focused on taking Freda to the privy before the little girl wet herself for the umpteenth time that day, bumped into Prudence just as she stepped into the pub yard. The moon was high, its white light gleaming on the frost-covered cobbles, and over the gabled windows of the pub translucent icicles had formed, tapering to sharp frozen points. It was a bitterly cold night, but as Josie looked into Prudence’s narrowed gaze, the temperature dropped even further.

Josie was conscious of the muted din from within the pub, Freda hopping from foot to foot at the side of her and the sound of a tram clanking along outside the yard somewhere on Barrack Road, but for now she was taken up with the resentment staring out of the muddy green eyes in front of her. Prudence made a small inarticulate sound low in her throat before she hissed, ‘You! Acting as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth all day!’

Josie’s eyes grew larger for a second as she gazed back into the angry face, and then she pulled herself together and said crisply, ‘Freda needs the privy. Excuse me.’ For a moment she thought Prudence was going to continue to block her way, but then the older girl moved aside, her eyes not leaving Josie’s face for a moment, and Josie hurried the squirming Freda into the dark dank little box across the yard.

She wasn’t surprised to see Prudence waiting for her when she and Freda emerged, and after urging the little girl to go and find her mother she opened the back door for her before turning to face Prudence again. ‘What do you want?’ she asked calmly and steadily.

Josie could tell her manner had both astonished and disconcerted the young woman in front of her. Barney’s sister had probably expected her to shy away from any confrontation, but now Prudence no longer dwelt at the house in Spring Garden Lane and Josie had finished with the laundry for good, she saw no reason to try to humour the other girl.

For her part Prudence was experiencing acute irritation at the sound of Josie’s voice. She’d noticed this before, Josie’s ability to control and modulate her voice, and it had never rankled so much as now. This was just a young lass of twelve or thirteen and from what she’d heard, Josie had never had the benefit of much of an education. How
dared
she act as though she was somebody?

The two girls stared at each other for a moment, and then Prudence’s voice was bitter when she said, ‘You think you’ve got them all in the palm of your hand, don’t you? All that fuss because your da came to take you home which is where you should be in the first place. If you’d just agreed to go quietly back with him that would’ve been an end to the matter but no, not you. Madam Burns has to go and upset everybody. And now Barney’s fallen out with me and it’s all your fault.’

Josie looked into the plain fat face and wondered if Prudence was really so deluded that she didn’t know what she had done. But then what did Prudence know of the likes of Patrick Duffy and his kind? She’d been brought up in a decent family surrounded by good honest folk. Prudence might spout on about social reform and all the other things she had a bee in her bonnet about but really, Josie reflected, she’d lived in clover all her life compared to some of the poor wretches in Sunderland’s East End.

‘My da didn’t come to take me home, Prudence,’ Josie said coolly, her voice holding the barest quiver. ‘Don’t you even understand that? He’s not like your da, he doesn’t care about me or any of us. He would have done the same to Gertie as he did to my other sisters, and he’s angry with me because I stopped him. His only intention in coming to Newcastle and bringing that other man with him was to harm us.’

‘Huh!’ Prudence glared into the beautiful face in front of her, her thin nostrils flaring. ‘So says you. Well, I don’t believe you, see? You might have got Aunt Vera to swallow your story along with the rest of them, but not me. No da would do what you said yours had done to his own bairns. If your sisters went down that road they likely decided to do it themselves.’

‘That’s not true.’ Josie knew Betty had told her stepchildren the full facts relating to Josie and Gertie’s sudden arrival on their doorstep. Prudence was seeing only what she wanted to see, likely as much to assuage her secret guilt at how things had turned out as anything. And she must be missing Barney more than a little.

And then any faint stirrings of sympathy went flying out of the window when Prudence took a step towards her and hissed, ‘It
is
true! Your sisters are scum, you’re scum, the whole lot of you. And your mam is an’ all. Sponging off Aunt Vera now, isn’t she?’

Josie fought to gain control of herself. She wanted to smack the other girl’s face and shout at her that her mam was the best person in the world, but somehow she knew that was exactly what Prudence expected her to do. And then Barney’s sister would have won. Well, she wouldn’t give Prudence the satisfaction of seeing how much her spiteful words had hurt her. ‘What a truly stupid person you are, Prudence,’ she said shakily, and then - quite unwittingly and only because she’d been searching for something to say so Prudence wouldn’t have the last word - Josie hit upon the secret fear which had been eating away at the other girl for months. ‘My mam is staying with Vera because Vera wants her,’ she said emphatically. ‘They’re friends, real friends - but you can’t understand that, can you? The only people who have ever bothered with you are Barney and Pearl, and now they’re married they won’t want you tagging along any more.’

She had turned on her heel and opened the door to the pub before Prudence could respond, banging it behind her as she marched through into the small narrow hall which led to the supper room.

Prudence stood quite still where Josie had left her, the angry colour in her cheeks draining away and leaving her sallow skin an even more unattractive colour. She didn’t know she was twisting her hands together, over and over, until the rubbing of her skin became painful, and then she forced herself to stop, staring up into the breathtakingly cold sky for a full minute without moving. And then she turned, very deliberately, and looked towards the pub door. She had everything, Josie Burns. There wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t want her when she was a bit older; even now they were drawn to her like bees round a honey pot. Look at her da, fussing over her like an old woman, and Barney was the same. She had thought Barney was her friend as well as her brother, but since that little chit had come into the house he had changed. The hot thoughts bit into her mind like drops of acid but she fought the inclination to cry, drawing great draughts of the icy air deep into her lungs as she listened to the sounds of merriment from within the building.

What would that chit say, what would any of them say, if they knew that the only thing she had ever wanted from when she’d been a small bairn was to be married and have bairns of her own? Laugh their heads off, most likely. The only little lass among four lads, you’d have thought her da would have made something of her, wouldn’t you? But he never had. No, he never had. In fact, he had always acted as though he didn’t like her, even before Betty came on the scene. But she’d known by then she was as plain as a pikestaff. Bairns were cruel and school could be a lonely, frightening place when no one wanted to be your partner for the walk round the playground before prayers in the morning. Porker Prudence, one of the more imaginative wits had called her in her first week of school, and the rest of them had taken it up immediately, thinking it a great joke, and she’d been Porker until the day she left.

Her eyes were burningly dry now, the subtle torture of those far-off days very real again. Pearl had come to the school six months after she’d first started when her mam and da had bought the pub at the end of their street, and perhaps because everyone else had got their own particular pal by then, Pearl hadn’t rebuffed Prudence’s tentative overtures of friendship. And of course the lads had always made much of Pearl; she’d been a pretty little lassie even at five years of age. And so she had had her friend at last; someone to whisper and giggle and play with, and with Barney to talk to, she shouldn’t have had to continue to fight against the loneliness which constantly assailed her, should she? But she had. All her life she had. And now the only two people to show her friendship were married, which made everything different. Josie’s parting shot burned in her mind and it was another minute or two before Prudence went into the house.

 

If Prudence had but known it, the confrontation had upset Josie as much as herself. Once Josie was back inside the warmth of the pub she realised she needed a few minutes to compose herself before she returned to her seat with the others.

Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. Josie glanced around the room at the flushed faces and wondered why she was feeling so low. It wasn’t because of the altercation with Prudence, nasty though that had been. She had been feeling like this all day. It had started as a gradual thing, when she’d first woken up, and then intensified as the day had progressed. Strange, really, how another person’s excitement and joy could make you feel just the opposite, but that’s how it had been since she had first seen Barney at breakfast that morning.

He had been sitting in old but clean clothes - his wedding suit and polished boots hanging in splendid isolation in the scullery with a starched darned sheet draped over them - and he had smiled at her as she’d come into the kitchen. ‘Last meal of freedom.’ His smile had widened as he’d spoken.

‘You don’t seem as if you mind,’ she’d answered lightly.

‘Too late now if he does.’ Betty had bustled her way from the oven with a steaming dish of baked buttered herrings and a round of stottie cake cooked fresh that morning, and to the twins’ oohs of delight she’d said, ‘Special weddin’ meal in honour of your brother, all right? I don’t expect we’ll be eatin’ very early what with the service an’ all.’

Barney had hummed his way through his breakfast and, having risen to go upstairs, had ruffled Josie’s hair as he’d passed, saying, ‘Now don’t forget, you’re not to be a stranger to our door, you an’ Gertie.’ Josie had smiled but said nothing, and he’d continued on his way humming ‘Blaydon Races’, which coincidentally was the song the fiddlers were playing at the moment. One of Barney’s friends was singing very loudly and rather tunelessly in the middle of the room, finishing to a round of enthusiastic clapping. Thus encouraged he went on to perform ‘Champagne Charlie’ with an imaginary cane and eyeglass, and then ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’, before making way for a small child with golden ringlets. After she had finished reciting a short but heartrending poem about a sailor lost at sea and his last thoughts of his wife and family before he sank under the waves, again concluding to a round of loud applause, the cry went up for more turns.

‘Come on now, don’t be shy!’ As fresh jugs of foaming beer were brought in, Stanley’s voice was hearty. ‘It’s a grand night for a bit carry on, eh, Marj?’ He accompanied the last words with a nod and a wink at his spouse, and the icy look his good lady wife sent his way sobered him up quicker than a bucketful of cold water, much to the amusement of most of the men present.

Whether it was the fact that something of an awkward pause in the merriment had occurred, or because Josie was still smarting from the exchange with Prudence, or because she wanted to sing for her mother and bring a smile to her face, or simply that she had missed her singing more than she’d realised up to that moment, Josie wasn’t sure. But somehow she found herself squeezing past one of the tables into the middle of the room and looking shyly at Barney’s new father-in-law as she said, ‘I can sing a song, Mr Harper.’

‘Is that so, lass?’ Stanley Harper recognised the slim lassie in front of him as the one who had supposedly caused all the trouble at Prudence’s house, but she looked a bonny little thing to him. And he didn’t want the evening to finish like a damp squib. ‘Well, you just go straight ahead then, eh? What are you goin’ to sing?’

Josie turned to the fiddlers who were taking the opportunity to drain their tankards. ‘Do you know “Masks and Faces”?’ she asked. The song about a virtuous maiden which Jenny Hill had made popular years before was one of her favourites and had always gone down well in Sunderland. Josie was quite unaware that part of the appeal was her own fresh innocence and beauty which made the song all the more poignant.

As the fiddlers struck up the first few bars, Prudence’s caustic words about her mother were burning in Josie’s head. Calling her mam a sponger and saying that they were all scum! Josie’s small chin raised itself higher. Well, they might not have a lot of money but she would make sure she paid Vera and Betty every single penny due to them, oh aye, she would. And she’d show Prudence the night! She’d sing like she’d never sung before. Her da might be no better than he should be, but that wasn’t her fault or her mam’s, and her mam couldn’t help being poorly all the time either. Prudence was horrible, she was.

Her head was so full that she missed her cue to sing, and as the fiddlers began again and Josie’s cheeks reddened, she happened to catch sight of Prudence who was now standing leaning against the wall on the far side of the room. The other girl was smirking nastily, and nothing could have sent the adrenalin pumping more. She’d show her, she would.

And she did.

 

Barney was sitting with his new wife on one side and his in-laws on the other when Josie began to sing, and as the room went quiet - much the same as it had that night five years ago in the Mariners’ Arms on Custom House Quay - he found he was holding his breath. He couldn’t believe that the voice pouring forth out of the small frame was from the young lass he’d got to know so well lately. In one of their late-night talks she’d mentioned she’d sung in a few of the pubs in Sunderland, but this . . . This wasn’t just singing, this was . . . His mind struggled to find words to match his emotion and failed. He glanced dazedly about the room for a second and saw the same wonder on other faces. She’d captured them all and was holding them entranced.
What a voice!
‘By, lad.’ His father-in-law leaned across, his voice reflecting his surprise. ‘She’s a show-stopper, all right. You know she’d got a voice on her?’