Trapped In She Town : A Romantic Novella (The Jute Mills Series) (7 page)

Mary finds it hard to
believe that she has fallen so far. She cannot fathom why this has happened to
her. She moves around in a trance most of the time, as she tries to block out
the realities of this world she is living in. She picks at her food at
mealtimes and is so exhausted when turned into the streets each morning, that
she barely manages to walk to the local park and sink under a tree. She stays there
most of the day, if it’s not raining, watching mothers come with their children
to play.

About four weeks after
she arrived at the poorhouse, Mary shuffles out one Sunday afternoon, after the
midday dinner. It is a cold, misty and drizzly day and she starts to head down
Mains Loan, wondering where she can find to rest and keep dry for a couple of
hours. She hears her name being called and a familiar figure running down the
hill towards her. She puts her head down and tries to scurry away. It can’t be anyone
who knows me, she thinks.

 “Mary! Mary! Wait
up!” the voice calls.

It takes her a minute
to recognise him - it’s John, her friend from the big house.

“Goodness Mary, let me
help you.” John is shocked at the sight of Mary. Her lifeless eyes look away
from him and she is hunched over trying to keep warm.

“Let’s go and grab a
cup of tea down the road in Stobswell” he offers.

Mary follows him
dumbly, and John buys her a mug of strong tea and a chunk of bread. Mary sips
at the tea but doesn’t touch the bread. “Go on Mary. You look like you are
starving” he encourages her.

“I’m not hungry” she
said “I don’t need your charity. They do feed me up the road, you know.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to be pushy but you look like you haven’t eaten in a week, Mary. What
about the baby?” he asked.

“The baby’s fine” she
snapped back.

“Oh Mary! Tell me what
happened.” he pleaded.

 But she is too
embarrassed to explain the whole, sorry story to John.

“I could kill that
George bloke of yours. Why won’t he do the right thing and marry you?” he
asked. “Can’t be a very decent bloke to do that. “

Mary looked at John
quizzically. “What was he talking about – George” she thought to herself.

“They were all giving
me funny looks at the house too.” John continued.

“Have you seen George?”
Mary asked her face lighting up.

“No, of course I’ve
not” John snapped. “But he should bloody well be here and looking after you,
seeing as the mess he’s made. Not much of a gentleman leaving you in the lurch
like this. Why don’t you go back up to Aberdeen Mary?”

Mary couldn’t
understand what John was talking about.

“George is married to
my sister Beth, and I can hardly turn up at my parents in this state can I.”
she spluttered out.

Mary had not contacted
any of her family in Aberdeenshire since she had received the letter from her
mother with the news of George and Beth. She felt a huge sense of betrayal and
bitterness towards them all.

“What the hell is
going on Mary? George gets you pregnant and then marries your sister.” John
looks horrified.

“Oh John. George
didn’t get me pregnant. Edward did.” Mary retorted with a look of disgust on
her face.

“Edward! Edward Muir.
The master. Mary how could you have been so silly to sleep with him” he
demanded?

Mary was furious now.

“How could I have been
so silly” she spat out. All the hurts were coming together and she let rip at
John.

“How could I have been
so silly! Oh yes, so silly of me to be torn from my family to work in this hell
hole of a town. So silly of me to try to be a dutiful and faithful lady’s maid.
So silly of me to be accosted by a monster, who threatened to throw me out of
the house if I did not comply with his depraved demands.” she shouted taking a
deep breath and then letting it out again.

“Yes” she now
whispered, “so silly of me to worry that if I screamed and shouted rape –
nobody would believe me and the mistress would throw me out anyway”, as she
started to sob.

Then suddenly she
snarled again “Little did I know that I would be thrown out anyway” and she
jumped out of her seat and ran out of the bakery door.

She should have known
John would turn against her too.

She ran up the street
and could hear John calling her name behind her, but there was no point turning
around. Nobody understood anymore. As she hurried towards the park, she felt a
sharp, tearing pain in her abdomen, and she fell to her knees in the street
clutching her belly. Everything was swimming around her. As she lay down she
heard voices calling her but they were too far away.

When she came round,
she saw she was still lying in the street with her head on John’s lap. “Oh Mary
I thought I had lost you” He looked as if he had been crying. “We need to get
you to a doctor. “

At the surgery, the
doctor told Mary she needed to rest until the baby was born, which should be, by
his calculation, 4 weeks’ time. He told John that he needed to make sure his
wife was eating more. John just nodded dumbly as he paid and the doctor showed
them to the door.

“Mary, you can’t go
back to the poorhouse, you heard what the doctor said – bed rest for the next 4
weeks. They are obviously not giving you enough to eat there. Let me look after
you?” pleaded John. “I’m going to get a wee one room flat for you to live in
until the baby is born.”

Mary felt so weak that
she had no energy to argue, and so John found her a one roomed flat in Albert
Street.

One week later, Mary
gave birth to a small but healthy, baby boy on June 1st 1872, and on John’s
next afternoon off, he quietly married Mary at the local registry office, as
well as registering Patrick’s birth. They went straight back to the flat where
Mary made a meal of potatoes.

At six in the evening,
John left Mary and baby Patrick to head back to the big house in readiness for
the family’s return from Forfar. He would need to unhitch the horses from the carriage,
brush and feed them before stabling them for the night.

Mary stayed at the
flat looking after Patrick and John came rushing over at any opportunity he
could get away from the big house. He never stayed overnight as he had to be at
the house in case he was called to get the horses ready.

Mary always made a
fuss of him when he arrived, and made sure she had something to feed him, but
she wasn’t ready yet to let John touch her. He was very patient and always spent
plenty of time playing with Patrick.

They carried on like
this for 6 months, until one Tuesday morning in November. Mary had been up at
four with Patrick and had just got him down for a morning sleep around ten. She
was busy washing the dishes in the little kitchen when she heard a knock at the
door. She knew John would never arrive at this time of the day so she called
out warily “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Mary love.
Open the door” called back John. She flung the door open to see John standing
there with a small case at his feet. She gave him a peck on the cheek and moved
aside to let him in. “Is something the matter John? This is a funny time for
you to get away from the big house.”

“Och, put the kettle
on Mary my love and make us a cuppa. I’ve some news to tell you” he responded.

When the two of them
were seated, with a cup of tea each in front of them, and a slice of bread for
John, he started to explain. He had been called in by Giles first thing that
morning.

“You know Mary, that
when they asked you to leave, the rumour was that I was the father. When Giles
asked me, I denied it, for I didn’t know the full circumstance at that time.
Anyway, somehow they have found out we are now married and they’ve given me a
week’s wages and sent me on my way.”

And so began married
life proper, for John and Mary.

John, losing his job
at the big house, brought two major problems with him, that Mary could see.

The first was the
obvious money problem. Neither of them was earning and someone would have to
find a job soon, to ensure the food stayed on the table.

John had been asking
around the mills to see if they needed anyone to work with the horses but there
were no vacancies.

“Tess next door works
at the mill down the road” Mary said to John about a week later after he had
failed in his search for work. “Perhaps I could go down to the mill tomorrow
and see if I can get a job.”

“No, I will not have
you working there Mary” John cried.

But after another
week, with no money coming in and the bairn crying most days because of hunger,
Mary once again approached John.

“John, we can’t go on
like this. We will all be dead or back in the poorhouse within the week if we
don’t do something. Tomorrow morning I am going to the mill with Tess to see if
they will clock me on for a shift” Mary said firmly. “You know most of the
women go to work in the mill John, and the men stay home. It’s just the way it
is here.”

And John knew what she
said was true. Dundee was nicknamed “She-Town”, as the mills employed the women
and children so they could pay them a lower wage.

The next morning at
seven Mary was in the street moving along with hundreds of other women and
children, all heading towards the mills for their days work. The women
outnumbered the men by three to one, however what upset Mary the most was the
number of children entering the factory gates.

Tess showed Mary where
the office was, before she scurried off to start her shift, waving and shouting
to her friends.

Mary was immediately
offered work but the wages were extremely low. It would have to do she thought.
She needed to get some food inside her bairn. So Mary started her work life in
the jute mills. The work was nothing but drudgery and there was constant danger
from the machines. She was exhausted at the end of each shift. She would
shuffle out at the end of the day covered in dust. Her eyes, mouth and nostrils
clogged with the stour.

John looked after
Patrick and had a meal ready for Mary at the end of her shift. Usually all this
consisted of was potatoes or porridge, and bread meat – bread and boiling water
for Patrick. This was all that they could afford on the wages Mary was given.

The second major
problem caused by John leaving the big house was the question of intimacy.

Up to the point when
John arrived with his case at the front door, Mary and John had not consummated
the marriage. However now that they were living under the same roof as man and
wife things would need to change.

They lived in a one
room tenement flat, which consisted of a small room where they lived and slept,
with a small kitchen off this. So Mary quickly had to forget about modesty.
John loved Mary and treated her with care but it almost became unbearable for
him, sleeping in such close proximity to the woman of his dreams - who was also
his legal wife.

Mary wanted to please
John too. She did love him, but more in a brotherly way, not with her whole
heart yearning for him as she had done for George. However George had to be put
away as this was now a forbidden love.

Edward had obviously
traumatised her, and she now had the feeling that the whole sex act was dirty
and degrading.

As time passed, John
became slightly more insistent when the lights went out and Patrick was asleep
in his little bed, which was really just a pile of clothes on the floor. He put
his hand gently on Mary’s thigh, and when she didn’t push him away, he gently
began to stroke her. Mary stiffened and held her breath. She knew she had to
grin and bear it. She had agreed to marry John even if she did not have sexual
feelings for him. He had saved her and had taken on her child as his own. So
with a great strength of will she slowly shifted herself to face John. This was
all the encouragement John needed and Mary closed her eyes and drifted away to
a different place while John completed the act.

Once it was over, Mary
kissed John and turned over to go to sleep. John looked down on Mary. She was
so beautiful. Her chestnut hair spread out on the pillow and she looked so
peaceful in her sleep. But he knew that something had been missing from the
lovemaking. Something very important. There had been no passion and that made
John very sad.

Life carried on, with
Mary working in the mill and John looking after Patrick. Working life in the
mill was harsh and the workers made close knit communities together outside.
Mary and Tess who lived next door, had become very close friends and would
always help each other out with any household chores or looking after the
children. Tess’s oldest son, who was nine, had started working in the mill
alongside them.

One way to relieve the
drudgery of the jute workers’ lives, was to go out at night to the public house
and get drunk. Tess was always on at Mary to come out with her, and at last one
day after Mary had been at the mill for three months she agreed. As she was
getting dressed to go out however John was in a grumpy mood.