The Urchin's Song (29 page)

‘So you are saying he puts a face on it? Makes the best of the tough end of the old mare?’

It was Gertie who spoke now, and at the same moment as the maid knocked and entered the room Oliver rose to his feet, his voice amused as he answered, ‘That sums it up very well, Gertie.’

They had proceeded through to the dining room for dinner then - another area of schooling; the first time Josie had dined with Oliver she thought she had never seen so many knives and forks and spoons for one place setting, not to mention glasses and crockery and so on. According to Oliver, however, favourites of the music hall were often invited to weekend house-parties to sing and entertain, and it was imperative she become familiar with the intricacies of such dining. These dinners often comprised at least ten or eleven courses, Oliver had informed her gravely, showing her the menu of a dinner given by a friend of his in honour of Lord Rosebery:

And, of course, it would be all to the good if Josie could become familiar with some of the French terms. Josie said she would try.

However, she discovered she wasn’t very fond of such dishes as pheasant stuffed with snipe or woodcock, with the latter in its turn stuffed with truffles, and the whole covered with some rich sauce. Nor could she understand how a house-party could consume what Oliver termed a ‘simple’ breakfast consisting of fruit, oatmeal porridge, kidney omelette, baked eggs, fried cod, grilled ham, potted game, veal cake, stewed prunes and cream, scones, rolls, toast, bread, butter, marmalade, jam and preserves, tea, coffee, cream, milk, and then be ready for a good lunch, followed by a hearty tea, then dinner and later, supper. ‘How on earth,’ she’d asked an amused Oliver, ‘do they find time to do anything other than eat and drink?’

‘Oh, they manage quite well,’ he had replied, and then, as his mind threw up recollections of some of the house-parties he had attended when Stella was present, and of the unashamed cuckoldry which was considered part and parcel of such events, he’d changed the subject.

By May, when the English papers were humming with the news of Lillie Langtry’s triumph in Washington - she had taken the American city by storm with her portrayal of a dissolute courtesan in
The Degenerates
- Oliver had decided Josie would have her first stage appearance in London at one of the better variety houses which were scattered all over the capital. As in most halls, he informed her, the shows were twice-nightly, which would mean she could still continue with her singing and elocution lessons during the day if she so wished.

Josie hadn’t needed to think about her reply. Claudette Belloc was an excellent teacher and already Josie had found that her range and technique had improved immensely; moreover, she liked the little Frenchwoman who was forthright and brusque and suffered fools badly. But developing and advancing her voice and polishing her pronunciation and articulation was not her only motive for tying up her daytime hours. Since she had come to London, and in spite of having Gertie with her, she had become increasingly homesick for Sunderland and worried about Hubert, and - probably due to the distance between them - hungry for any snippet of news about Barney in a way she had never been whilst still residing in the north-east. She needed to keep every minute of the day and night occupied, she admitted to herself. She mustn’t think, that was the answer; at least only about the present and what she was doing on a day-to-day level.

It didn’t help that Vera could barely read or write either; her friend’s letters were written in an enormous round childish hand and consisted, at the most, of four or five lines of painfully laborious script, holding nothing of the warm, vigorous woman she knew. She missed Vera more than she would have thought possible, and although there had been times in the past when she had been unable to get home for a month or more, she had always known she was within a carriage ride should the situation call for it. Now, in this alien world where no one spoke with a warm northern burr and where she’d felt enclosed in a strange, isolated bubble the last couple of months, she had secretly cried herself to sleep more than once. Which was stupid, daft, for a grown woman of seventeen years of age who had been charting her own destiny for five years or more, she chided herself vehemently. But she couldn’t help it. It would be better when she was working. She was longing,
aching
to throw herself into her work again. Nothing compared to stepping out on to a stage and singing and entertaining an appreciative crowd. She’d missed that too.

And so she prepared for her debut on the London stage with dedication and enthusiasm and very little nervousness. This was something she understood, something she was good at. The rest of it - the niceties of middle- and upper-class conduct, the formalities of social etiquette and the hundred and one pitfalls it contained for the unwary - was not so enjoyable. But necessary. Oliver said so. And he was an experienced and respected agent who had been in the business longer than she had been alive, as well as being a gentleman by birth, so he should know. She could trust Oliver . . . couldn’t she? But she wished, she did so wish Vera was here.

 

Vera herself, three hundred or so miles away in Sunderland, was in something of a quandary as she stared into her sister’s worried face. And when Betty said again, ‘What am I goin’ to do, lass? I can’t abandon her; Frank wouldn’t expect that,’ she had to restrain herself from saying harshly, ‘I’m not so sure about that. Didn’t you tell me he all but threw her out after the do with Josie?’ Instead she joined her hands together on the kitchen table, and leaning forward, said quietly, ‘You know very well that you can’t swing a cat in this place for bairns, an’ with the two rooms upstairs packed to overflowin’ and you sleeping downstairs as it is there’s not an inch of ground to put another bed. You’ve got enough on your plate bein’ mam an’ da to your own lot, Bett. An’ she’s a nasty bit of work, don’t forget that. Havin’ the accident, bad as it is an’ I don’t say the poor lass isn’t sufferin’, won’t change her basic nature.’

‘Aye, I know that. I’m expectin’ nowt in that line.’

‘An’ you say Barney can’t have her? I thought him and Prudence were all right again, and she’s good pals with Pearl.’

‘Oh aye, Barney and Prudence get on well enough, but since Pearl’s bin took bad with this disease of the blood or whatever, she can’t do nowt but lie in bed most days. Her mam’s round there every hour the good Lord sends accordin’ to Barney, worried sick Pearl’s mam an’ da are. It’s drivin’ Barney mad, especially ’cos he’s not sure how bad Pearl really is but that’s another story. Anyway, Prudence can’t go there.’

Vera nodded slowly. By, talk about it never rains but it pours. Years Barney’s sister had worked at that laundry and never so much as the whisper of an accident, and then the girl had to go and get her hands caught in a calender. According to Betty, Prudence had been trying to untangle a sheet that had got caught and instead she’d got her hands entwined and they were dragged on to the hot steel bed and crushed by the rollers. The hospital had been good but she couldn’t stay there for ever, and they’d made it clear she wouldn’t be able to do much at first when she came out and would need a bit of looking after.

‘What about the other brothers? Can’t one of them put her up for a time?’

Betty shook her head wearily. ‘Neville’s still off work with his legs an’ Reg’s not bin long gone back as you know. They’re all havin’ a right time of it an’ their wives are doin’ all sorts to try an’ make ends meet. An’ with Amos’s last bairn bein’ - well, not quite right . . .’ Here Betty’s voice dropped almost to a whisper; for the shame and shock of that happening was still reverberating round the family months later, and hadn’t been made any easier by Amos’s wife’s parents insisting there had never been anything
like that
on their side, and it must be down to Amos. ‘You can’t expect them to take Prudence on, can you? It wouldn’t be fair, lass.’

‘It’s fairer than expectin’ you to do it. When all’s said an’ done, you aren’t even related to Prudence, Bett. Not really. An’ she’s bin a thorn in your side ever since you met Frank.’

‘Aye, I know, but still . . .’ Betty’s voice trailed away as Vera stared at her anxiously. Her sister had been doing so well since Frank had gone but the woman was still heartsore and had lost much of her usual chirpiness. Prudence would be the proverbial nail in the coffin. ‘No one else will have her - none of ’em can stand her.’

Vera took a deep breath and prayed Horace would understand when she told him. ‘We’ll have her at our place, lass,’ she offered. ‘All right? There’s the spare room next to ours an’ she’ll be comfortable enough until she can go back to Newcastle again.’

‘Oh Vera, I couldn’t let you do that. She’d drive you round the bend, lass. Horace an’ all.’

‘Be that as it may.’

‘No, no, it’s not fair. You have the bairns afternoons as it is, lass, an’ I appreciate it more’n words could say.’

Vera straightened up, before stretching and settling back in her seat with a sigh. ‘You’ve said yourself the others can’t or won’t have her, an’ you’re not prepared to let her take her chance as best she can.’ Personally Vera was of the opinion that Prudence’s type never sunk; they remained above water even if it meant staying afloat on the shoulders of those they were drowning. ‘True she wouldn’t be me first choice for a lodger, Bett, but there it is. Have they said how long they think it’ll be afore she’s fit to work again?’

‘They’re not sure. Months at least,’ Betty said unhappily. ‘But this isn’t your problem.’

Vera stared across at her sister’s plump, worried face, and she said softly, ‘Aye, it is. Same as if the positions were reversed, it’d be yours.’ And she wouldn’t have minded having Prudence, in spite of the fact she’d got no time for Betty’s stepdaughter, except that it’d be bound to make things awkward with Josie if the lass came up for a visit. Still, she wasn’t about to do that for the time being, not with how things were in London, and however much she wanted to see her lass’s dear face she was glad Josie was out of harm’s way. With hindsight it was clear that it’d been a mistake for Josie to come back and play the halls in Sunderland. It had brought her to Patrick Duffy’s notice again and he wouldn’t have liked being thwarted a second time. By, there were some evil so-an’-sos in the world, but that man took the biscuit, he did straight.

And then she was brought back to the matter in question by her sister saying, a broken note in her voice, ‘I dunno what I’d do without you, lass, an’ that’s a fact.’

Neither of them was the demonstrative type but now Vera rose swiftly and walked round the heavy old kitchen table which took up most of the floorspace in the small room, and they put their arms round each other and remained quiet for a time, until Vera said, ‘That’s decided then. When she comes out I’ll have her - if she wants to come here, that is. She might want to stay in Newcastle with friends we don’t know about, of course.’

Betty had sat up straighter as her sister had moved back to her seat. ‘The chance of Prudence havin’ any friends other than Pearl is about as likely as the rent man sayin’ God bless you,’ she said stolidly, pulling the worn shawl crossed over her enormous sagging breasts more tightly in to her skirt, before she added, her head cocked to one side, ‘They’re a mite too quiet up there for my likin’, lass. I bet the little devils are diggin’ the plaster out of the walls again an’ eatin’ it.’ And she disappeared out of the room to check on her brood in the bedroom upstairs with a swiftness that belied her bulk.

Vera sat in the warmth of the cluttered, untidy kitchen, her mind only half concentrating on the hullabaloo above her head which indicated Betty had been right about the plaster and her bairns, who were supposed to be getting ready for bed. She glanced across at the youngest Robson - a little girl of six months old - lying in the battered crib to one side of the range, but without really seeing her tiny niece.

All this with Pearl; what was it about? Was the lass really ill or just making on? Certainly her collapse, two days after Josie had gone to London, had been genuine enough, and the resulting investigations in the infirmary had thrown up this blood problem which the doctors seemed able to do little about. Something to do with the blood not functioning properly, Barney had told Betty, but he couldn’t really be more specific because the doctors weren’t saying much beyond Pearl had to rest and eat nourishing food. But she’d seemed to get worse lately, not better. Barney was in two minds about it all, but then perhaps that wasn’t surprising with things being so bad between him and Pearl. She had played the invalid on and off since they’d been married to avoid her wifely duties, Barney had told Betty in a moment of bitter frustration. Supposedly ailing one moment, and the next gadding about shopping with her mother or whatever. Betty had said he’d spoken as though he was at the end of his tether.

The thought brought anxiety flooding into her chest in a sick wave. She remembered the afternoon they had heard about Frank’s death and she had seen the way Josie and Barney were looking at each other in her kitchen. No, no, she wouldn’t believe it. Her lass was a good girl. Josie would never . . . Vera shut her eyes tight for a moment. Thank God Josie was down in London and Barney was up here; likely their paths wouldn’t cross in years. She was working herself up over nowt. She had more than enough to cope with here; she didn’t need to go out looking for more trouble.