The Urchin's Song (7 page)

She had never regretted the decision, not once. Her quiet, orderly house, with Horace for companionship and her job at the corn mill during the day had met all her needs, but then a thin little waif with velvet-brown eyes and the voice of an angel had come into her life, and all her hitherto non-existent maternal feelings had flooded in with a vengeance. She had had no real interest in renewing her acquaintance with Shirley beyond the fact that her old friend was Josie’s mother, but in the event she had found the two of them had got on as well as ever. She always made sure her visits coincided with a time she knew Bart would be out, which wasn’t difficult as he was rarely in.

Josie had brought a dimension to her life that Vera would have found impossible to put into words, but which, having once experienced it, she couldn’t do without. Shirley’s child was the daughter she would never have and had never desired, and Vera loved her with a deep, compelling love that was as pure and sacrificial as that of the noblest of natural mothers.

‘Ee, you’re dead on your feet, lass.’ Vera stood up, her voice brisk now. ‘You get yourself to bed an’ in the mornin’ I’ll ask Ruby to tell ’em at the mill I’m middlin’. She’s a good lass, she won’t let on. The sooner you’re both away to our Bett’s, the sooner me mind’ll be at peace. Even if your da gets wind of where you’ve gone it’ll be like lookin’ for a needle in a haystack in Newcastle.’

‘Newcastle?’ Stupid, but she’d forgotten Vera’s sister had married one of the miners from Gallowgate Pit. ‘But we can’t go to Newcastle, Vera.’

‘Why not?’

Josie didn’t answer for a moment but swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry. Newcastle was a place she’d heard talk of but which was miles and miles away, another world. She’d never even passed over Wearmouth Bridge into Monkwearmouth; how on earth could she take Gertie as far away as Newcastle? What about their mam? ‘There’s Gertie,’ she said slowly. ‘She’s always ailing, and Mam. When would we be able to see Mam?’

‘Our Bett’d look after Gertie when you were workin’.’ Vera hesitated, and then said frankly, ‘Look, you’ve got to get used to the idea you won’t be seein’ your mam for a time, hinny, not if you want to watch over that little lassie upstairs. Your mam’d be the first to understand that.’

Suddenly, and with a speed that was making Josie’s head spin, everything had changed.

‘It’s for the best, lass.’ Vera patted the girl’s arm awkwardly. ‘An’ Newcastle isn’t so far away - just twelve miles or thereabouts, with a few stops on the way. When me an’ Horace go to see our Bett we get the early train at five to five an’ we’re in Newcastle Central by quarter to six. Course, any one of me brothers’d have the pair of you if I asked ’em, but they’re all local an’ you don’t want that. No, Bett’s is safer. Mind, we won’t catch the four fifty-five. Bit early for man an’ beast that, eh?’ She made a little moue with her mouth.

Josie gave no answering smile in return. ‘How much will it cost on the train?’ she asked quietly.

‘Ee, now don’t you go worryin’ your head about that.’

‘How much, Vera?’

‘Just a bob, lass, that’s all, third class, unless you fancy goin’ first class an’ swankin’ a bit?’

Josie looked into the rough plump face in front of her, and her voice was soft when she said, ‘That’s two shillings with me and Gertie, and I’ll pay you back, Vera, I promise. And I’ll pay Betty if she can put us up for a bit. Make sure she understands that, won’t you? I intend to pay our way.’

‘Now look you here, lass.’ All the laughter gone from her face, Vera reached out and gripped Josie’s hands across the table. ‘Me an’ Horace do all right with just ourselves to look after, an’ with rentin’ the room out upstairs an’ all. We don’t want for nothin’, thank God, but if we was down to our last penny it’d still be a privilege to give it to you. I don’t want no more talk about payin’ us back. Am I right, Horace?’

She turned and looked over her shoulder at her husband, who nodded, before winking at Josie as he said, ‘Be more than me life’s worth to disagree, eh, Josie lass? It takes a brave man to disagree with Vera.’

‘Oh you.’ Vera leaned back in her chair, flapping her hand but smiling. ‘Daft as a brush without its bristles, as me old da used to say.’

The lighter mood continued until Vera and Horace went to bed, but after Josie had settled herself - fully dressed apart from her stockings and garters - on the settle, she lay thinking about what she was going to do as the banked-down fire in the range cast a soft comforting glow into the darkness.

She could see the sense in going to Newcastle, oh aye, she could, and if she thought about it now she’d always known, deep inside herself but barely acknowledged, that one day it would come to this, her leaving home and probably taking Gertie with her. The lads would be all right; Jimmy was so like their da already she knew he’d always land on his feet, and it was as if Hubert was connected to Jimmy by a piece of string, so close were they. And if there was one person Jimmy was fond of it was his brother; it’d always been that way. No, it was just her mam she was worried about, but with things as they were she had to put Gertie first.

She twisted on the hard flock cushions but her discomfort was from within rather than without, and despite the late hour she was wide awake. She sat up eventually, clasping her knees over the coarse thick blankets and staring into the faintly flickering shadows.

And now she found herself feeling a slight thread of excitement. She shouldn’t be looking forward to tomorrow and she wasn’t, not really, at least not about leaving her mam, but - and here she put her hand to her heart as it began to thump in her chest - this was her chance to make something happen for
herself
. Perhaps her only chance.

Twice she’d been approached in the last year, and a couple of times before that too, by touts who’d assured her they could get her a slot in one of the local music halls. One had been really persistent, coming back night after night and claiming he knew the proprietor of the Wear Music Hall and saying that she was just the sort of new act he was looking for. But Josie knew that to get anywhere in the halls you had to be prepared to travel and move around. You needed nice clothes and fancy costumes too, and all her money went the minute she had it in her hand, what with paying the rent and feeding and clothing them all. And she couldn’t have left Gertie at the mercy of their father, not the way he knocked her about. That had always been at the back of her mind too. But now . . .

She hugged her knees hard. She’d find some work in the day; she didn’t care what it was. A laundry, a factory, a shop, anything, and then at night she’d sing. She could ask around a bit, find out the best places for someone to notice her. Perhaps Vera’s sister would know? She slid down under the blankets again, willing her mind to stop its racing. She had to go to sleep; tomorrow was going to be a full day.

She must have fallen asleep eventually because early in the morning she awoke to the double chime of a tugboat sounding on the still frozen air outside. The sound was a familiar one; many a time in the kitchen at home she and Gertie had fallen asleep listening to the tugboats on the river and, on a very quiet night, the rhythmic churning of the big paddles.

For a moment she remained still, the events of the previous day crowding into her mind, and then she roused herself, throwing back the blankets and reaching for her stockings and garters. Once her boots were on she busied herself stoking up the fire in the range and putting some more coal on, after which she lifted the kettle - already full with water - on to boil. The kettle, like everything else in Vera’s kitchen, was beautifully clean, and unlike their range at home which had one oven with a circular door, this one had two ovens, one for baking and one for roasting. It was a canny kitchen. She glanced round the room which was still in deep shadows, the small patch of sky outside the narrow window charcoal grey with only the hint of daybreak.

She would have a kitchen like this one day, and her own house with an upstairs and a downstairs that she shared with no one but her family. And a garden. Not a back yard, not even one like Vera’s that boasted its own privy and washhouse, but a real garden with grass and trees and high walls so no one could see inside. One of the girls she had gone to school with had got set on as a kitchen maid at one of the big houses near Mowbray Park, and she’d been full of what she had seen when she’d had her interview with the housekeeper. But of all Miriam had said - and she had said plenty - it was her description of the Havelocks’ garden that had captured Josie’s imagination. She would have a garden like that one day. Somewhere where the air was filled with the soft scent of flowers and where she could hear the birds sing. She loved birds. One of the best compliments she’d ever been given was when a woman in one of the pubs had said she thought she sang as sweetly as a bird.

‘Ee, lass! You’re up bright an’ early, an’ I see you’ve got the kettle on for a brew. I could do with keepin’ you on; always fancied meself with a parlour maid.’

Vera’s voice was overbright and Josie knew why. Vera was worried her da was going to arrive on the doorstep before they could get away, or that he’d got the lads watching the house. And he might, he might. But something strange had happened when she had brought that poker down on the arm of the man she had hated and feared all her life. It hadn’t just broken the bones in his arm; it had broken something in her, something that had been afraid and cowed under the threat of the physical pain he inflicted with so little conscience. She meant what she had said to Jimmy the night before: she would use the poker again if she had to. Not on her brother, not that, but if her da tried to stop Gertie leaving . . . The poker was going to accompany them to Newcastle anyway. She glanced at it, propped against the range. It was better than a big burly docker for protection, her poker.

‘What?’ She must have smiled because Vera’s voice was surprised and curious, and when she told the older woman the nature of her thoughts, Vera laughed out loud. ‘Well, it don’t eat so much, that’s for sure, an’ I dare say it’s cleaner in its habits an’ all, lass.’

 

Once Horace and Ruby had departed for work, Josie and Vera took stock. The fact that the two girls had escaped the house the night before with just the clothes they stood up in presented an immediate problem, and one which Vera was determined to assist with, despite Josie’s protestations that they would manage until she could get work and buy more. It was only when Vera put her hand on Josie’s arm and said, her voice soft, ‘Please, lass. Please let me help you in this,’ that the girl became silent. ‘We’ll call in the Old Market an’ pick up a few things. Stamp’s stall is a good one, he don’t have so much rubbish as some, an’ once you’ve washed ’em through at our Bett’s they’ll come up as good as new.’

Josie glanced at Gertie, whose eyes were bright with anticipation at the thought of new clothes. Never mind they were second- even probably third-hand; they weren’t her big sister’s outgrown things and were therefore possessed of their own magic. ‘Thank you, Vera.’ She spoke with deep gratitude as she pressed the hand on her arm, knowing she would miss Vera’s solid presence in her life more than any other apart from her mam.

Josie always thought the Old Market had a smell unlike anything else. It came from the second-hand clothes stalls, the bacon and meat stalls, the fruit, confectionery, fish, tripe, grocery, and numerous other stalls jostling together under the high roof. There was no one particular odour which was predominant, but as she stepped through the entrance in Coronation Street the smell assailed her nostrils - neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just the unmistakable aura of the market.

The building was a beacon to many folk looking to make a subsistence income stretch a little further, and it wasn’t unusual to see harassed pitmen’s wives wheeling pillow cases or sacks containing two or three stones of flour from the market, along with bundles of second-hand clothes and all manner of goods. These would be transported to the station, or to a horse and cart waiting in a side street, and taken back to the pit villages. It was safe to say that there was nothing you couldn’t buy from some stall or other within the Aladdin’s cave that was the Old Market.

Vera now made her way to Stamp’s stall down the aisle left clear in the middle of the stone-flagged floor, nodding to Joe the Bacon Man - as he was generally known - who had the reputation of being something of a character among folk who were all characters in their own way. Stamp was another one. ‘’Tis the fair Vera.’ Cyril Stamp was a little roly-poly figure of a man, his shape made the more incongruous by the ancient swallow-tail coat and pork-pie hat he wore on all occasions. ‘Never mind the bitter chill of an unkind winter outside, it is summer in me heart now I’ve set eyes on the fair Vera.’

‘Oh, stop your blatherin’.’ Vera sniffed loudly, but Josie knew her friend was trying to keep a straight face. ‘I’m lookin’ for a few things for these two.’ She indicated Josie and a wide-eyed Gertie. ‘An’ none of your rubbish mind, I want decent stuff.’

‘Vera, Vera, Vera.’ The little man put his hand to his heart, his expression pained. ‘You cut me to the quick, lass. Aye, you do. Have you ever known me sell rubbish in me life?’

‘Aye, I have, to them as are daft enough,’ Vera returned smartly as she began to rootle amongst the heaped clothing after motioning with her hand for Josie to do the same.

‘Do good to them as despitefully use you, as the Good Book says.’ Cyril wasn’t about to let Vera have the last word, winking at Gertie as he spoke and making the child giggle. ‘Here, cast your lovely eyes, eyes that would make a man leave hearth an’ home for sure, on this little lot.’ From beneath the stall he drew out an orange box. ‘Come from a nice place near West Park, an’ if I remember rightly, the bonny wife had a couple of bairns about these ones’ ages.’

He did remember rightly, and Josie had to stifle a gasp of delight as numerous items of underwear - all seemingly as new - and several plain but good frocks were revealed, along with a thick coat in a dove-grey tweedy material that looked to be her size and was just beautiful.