Born to Trouble (6 page)

‘Hey, get off, you,’ she began, only to stop and peer at him. ‘Seamus?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Kitty?’ Seamus had had more than a few. ‘The fair Kitty? Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’ He belched a gust of beer fumes into her face. ‘Your lads around, are they?’

She knew what he was asking. And the idea that had begun to take shape from the day Seth and the others were arrested, crystallised. ‘No, they’re not around. They’ll not be around for many a long day.’ Swiftly she explained what had happened, adding, ‘So things’ll be a bit different from now on, lad. I’ve bairns to feed, so I can’t give it away for fun no more, if you get my drift.’

Seamus got her drift and it didn’t bother him an iota. He had paid for his pleasure since taking to the sea as a youth, leaving his seed in accommodating bellies in every port he’d docked at. Smiling, he said, ‘Suits me, lass. An’ I take it I can stay the night for the right price, being as we’re old friends, as it were?’

Kitty smiled back. Seamus was a good sort, he’d always brought a couple of bottles of gin with him in the past, and she had other ‘friends’ she knew would be as reasonable. ‘Don’t see why not. It’s up to me now, isn’t it?’

He put his arm round her waist, drawing her against him. ‘How about we get some gin on the way back, eh? An’ how are you off for grub? I could eat a horse.’

Kitty hesitated. The bit of money Seth had put by for what he’d called a rainy day was fast disappearing, and if Seamus was prepared to fork out . . .

Seamus took the hint. ‘Come on, lass, we’ll call and get a few victuals, how about that? I sail the morrer but I’ll see you all right afore I go. Can’t say fairer than that.’

The fog had drawn in an early twilight and Pearl had already lit the oil lamp in the kitchen when Kitty walked in. The relief at seeing her mother swamped everything for a moment and she didn’t realise Kitty wasn’t alone.

‘Oh, Mam, what happened?’ She had been like a cat on a hot tin roof all day, but since her mother had left earlier, her anxiety had known no bounds. After shouting at James for no other reason than that the toddler wanted some attention, she’d tried to pull herself together. Settling James on the clippy mat in front of the fire with a saucepan lid and a wooden spoon, she’d let him bang away to his heart’s content while she’d seen to Patrick, propping the baby up in the desk bed with a crust to chew on. He was teething hard and miserable with it. Once her baby brothers were occupied she had made the pastry for the cow-heel pie they were having for dinner, using the leftover pieces for a few jam tarts, but when it had begun to get dark and her mother still hadn’t returned, each minute had seemed like an hour.

As Seamus followed Kitty into the kitchen, Kitty said, ‘This is a friend of mine an’ he’s stayin’ the night,’ without answering Pearl’s question.

As Seamus plonked a sack holding items of food on the table, Pearl’s eyes went to it and then the bottles of gin in her mother’s hands. She had seen this man before. He was one of her mother’s visitors. When he smiled at her, saying, ‘Hello there,’ in a friendly voice, she stared at him for a moment before again saying to her mother, ‘What happened?’

‘What do you think happened?’ Kitty began to unpack the groceries as Seamus sat down in the armchair that had been Seth’s since Thomas’s demise, ruffling James’s curls as the child looked up at him. ‘They’ve bin sent down.’

‘How – how long for?’

‘Eight years.’ Kitty reached for one of the bottles of gin and after pouring a good measure into a cup, she passed it to Seamus before doing the same for herself. Without looking at her daughter, she said, ‘Now go an’ light a fire in the front room. It’ll be as cold as the grave in there.’

‘The
front
room?’

Pearl’s voice had been high, and now in one swift movement Kitty took hold of her arm and pulled her out into the hall, shutting the kitchen door behind her. ‘Take that look off your face an’ do as you’re told,’ she hissed. ‘Seamus is a good pal of mine an’ he’s already set us up with enough grub for the week, so you mind your manners.’

Pearl jerked herself free. ‘How can you have him here and let him sit in Seth’s chair when the lads—’

A ringing slap across the side of her face cut off her words and then she felt her head bouncing on her shoulders as her mother shook her. ‘Don’t you come the madam with me. Who do you think is going to pay the rent an’ put food on the table now? Not your precious Seth, m’girl. We’re on our own now, an’ things are going to change. When I say do somethin’ you’ll do it, no questions asked. Now get in there an’ light the fire, an’ then see to putting a hot-water bottle in the bed. An’ you be polite to Seamus unless you want more of the same.’

Pearl could hear Patrick beginning to grizzle; the baby would be wanting his tea. That, more than her mother’s threats, made her do as she was told. Once the fire was blazing in the front room and the hot-water bottle was in the bed, Kitty picked up the half-full gin bottle and inclined her head at Seamus before glancing at Pearl who was feeding Patrick a bowl of thick rabbit broth. ‘You can dish up our dinner an’ put it to warm – we’ll have it later,’ she said, and left the room without waiting for a reply.

Pearl continued feeding Patrick whilst keeping an eye on James who was sitting in his highchair eating small chunks of bread soaked in the broth. Since he had begun to feed himself after recovering from the flu it had been a great help, although occasionally he stuffed too much in his mouth and ended up choking.

What would Seth and Fred and Walter be eating tonight in that terrible place? And Pearl knew it was a terrible place – she’d heard stories about what went on in gaols from Humphrey Fraser at school. Half of Humphrey’s family were in some gaol or other, and he was inordinately proud of it. And her mam, letting that man sit in Seth’s chair and then taking him into the front room! She wasn’t too clear about what went on in the front room, but she knew it was all to do with the big bed the lodgers had slept in, and her mother allowing liberties. That’s what she had heard Seth say to Kitty just after their father had died: ‘There’ll be no more liberties taken by the scum of the earth with you, in this house, not while I’ve breath in my body.’

But whatever it was that went on, her mother didn’t intend to do it secretly any more, not now Seth had gone.

To stop her tears falling, she applied herself to washing Patrick’s face – a procedure to which he heartily objected – and then got both of her brothers ready for bed.

She could hear her mother laughing in the front room and the deep sound of Seamus’s voice, along with the bedsprings twanging. It made her stomach twist and tighten. How could her mam laugh like that on the day Seth and Fred and Walter were locked away? Eight years.
Eight years
. She would be eighteen years old by the time they were free, and that was old.

Carrying Patrick in her arms, she stood behind James each step as the toddler clambered up the stairs on his hands and knees. Once in the bedroom she lifted both little boys into the cot and then sat on her mother’s bed as they snuggled deeper under their blankets. There was ice on the inside of the window and her breath was a white cloud in front of her when she breathed out, but although James and Patrick were already half asleep she continued to sit and watch the mound of their bodies by the light of the streetlamp directly outside their window.

Her mam was doing bad things in the front room with the sailorman. She had been doing the same for years, but this was different somehow. Pearl didn’t put the word ‘brazen’ to it, just ‘different’.

She rocked herself back and forth with her arms crossed over her stomach, making no sound so as not to disturb her brothers, in spite of the tears coursing down her face.
And she didn’t know what to do. She was frightened, so frightened, and she didn’t know what to do
. And then Seth’s words came back to her. ‘I need you to look after James and Pat for me. Till I’m home.’

Slowly she took control of herself. She had promised Seth, and a promise was a promise. Drying her eyes on her pinny, she brushed a few damp tendrils of hair from her cheeks. James and Patrick were now her responsibility, and she would do all she could to keep them safe and warm and fed. School didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except her promise to Seth.

She slid off the bed, a thin little figure in the shadowed room, and made her way downstairs to get the dinner ready for her mother and the sailorman.

July 1901

The pavements and buildings were radiating heat, and the evening sun was still hot as Pearl pushed the creaking perambulator through the dusty streets in the direction of home. The country was in the grip of a heatwave, and when Pearl had risen very early that morning, it had promised to be another baking July day. Her mother and a woman named Cissy Hartley, a new and seemingly bosom pal of Kitty’s, had been ‘entertaining’ in the front room for most of the night, and when the men and Cissy had left just before dawn, her mother had come upstairs to tell her she expected the boys to be kept quiet all day so she could sleep. James and Patrick had been irritable and tetchy with the heat for the last week, and so Pearl had determined to take them out for the day, Tunstall Hills way.

After packing a basket with some food and a bottle of water, she’d lifted three-year-old James and two-year-old Patrick into the rusty old perambulator they’d bought from a neighbour for a shilling or two the year before, and off they had set.

They’d had a wonderful day. Pearl smiled to herself as she looked at the two little boys, rosy cheeked and fast asleep in the depths of the pram. The long walk to the outskirts of Bishopwearmouth had been worth it. Once they had left the noise and dirt of the town behind, the essence of summer had been everywhere. The still air had been heavy on the hills with the perfume of eglantine, the wild briar; the bright sunshine warming the foxgloves and brightening the dog roses and daisies, clover and forget-me-nots which had painted the banks and meadows. The boys had rolled and tumbled and frolicked like two excited puppies when she had found a spot to settle at, loving the freedom and softness of their surroundings after the grim streets and stinking back lanes.

When they had worn themselves out she had let them sleep before lunch under the shade of an oak tree in the scented grass; sitting with her arms wrapped round her knees, she’d gazed into a shimmering heat-haze before falling asleep herself.

They had picked armfuls of wild flowers in the afternoon to take home, sweetly scented in both leaf and bloom and glowing with colour. These were now lying at one end of the perambulator by the boys’ heads, and although they were beginning to wilt, they were still lovely.

She would do this again. Pearl mentally nodded to the thought as the smells and squalor of the East End began to make themselves felt. She rarely went to school now. Most days she took care of the boys and saw to the house and meals, sometimes while her mother slept and sometimes because Kitty hadn’t come home the night before. On those occasions her mother would return at some time during the morning smelling of drink and smoke and demanding a hot meal before falling into bed after drinking more gin. Pearl had learned to take the money for rent and food out of her mother’s purse while she slept, because once she was awake there were always arguments. Funnily enough though, her mother never challenged her on this practice.

The nearer they got to Low Street, the more the stink of festering privies and brooding decay impinged on the lingering beauty the day had produced in her mind. The smell of the docks hung in the air, a composite of stale fish, filth and polluted water, and for a moment Pearl was seized with the wild notion of turning the perambulator round and wheeling it as fast as she could away from the East End, away from her mother, for ever. But there was nowhere she could go. And so she walked on.

Kitty was slumped at the kitchen table when Pearl entered the house with the boys after leaving the perambulator by the back door. She looked dirty and unkempt, and her features had coarsened over the last couple of years. She was fanning herself with one of the penny magazines she loved to read, her blouse half undone and her breasts hanging slack.

‘Where the hell’ve you bin?’ She reached for the glass of gin at the side of her, knocking it back in one gulp. ‘There’s the dinner to see to.’

‘You said you wanted the bairns out of the way so I took them out.’ Both boys were holding a bunch of flowers, and as they offered them to their mother, Pearl said, ‘Look – they picked them for you.’

‘What do I want with flowers?’ Kitty flapped her hand at the children. ‘Put ’em on the table.’

‘I’m taking them straight up, they’re tired out. I’ll see to the dinner when I come down. It’s cold meat and potatoes. I didn’t think you’d want anything warm with the weather being like this.’

When her mother made no reply to this but poured herself another tot of gin, Pearl took her brothers upstairs. She and the boys shared their older brothers’ room now, all sleeping together in the double bed the room held. James and Patrick were barely awake when she undressed them, and fell asleep as soon as their heads touched the pillow. She stood looking down at them for a moment before kissing each small brow. They were growing so fast, they wouldn’t be babies much longer, she thought with a pang. She wished they could remain babies for ever, ignorant of anything outside their small world of eating, sleeping and playing.

Turning abruptly, she made her way downstairs and brought out the smoked bacon and potatoes which had been left over in the pantry on the cold slab from the previous day’s dinner, adding a loaf of bread and pat of butter to the table.

It was as they were finishing their meal that Kitty said nonchalantly, ‘Mr F is comin’ by shortly, so make sure the front room’s clean an’ tidy. He likes things proper, Mr F.’