Every Mother's Son (3 page)

Fletcher opened the gate to the recently cut hayfield, and closed it behind them before they walked down towards the bottom end to let the sheep in.

‘Erm, no, not really. It’s quite complicated to explain,’ he said. ‘But your ma and me were onny saying last night that we should talk to you about it again, cos you’ve probably forgotten what we told you when you were a bairn.’

‘I have,’ Daniel said. ‘And I’d like to know. Is it why Maria and Dolly and Lenny and Joseph have all got fair hair and I haven’t?’ He frowned again. ‘A lad at school once said that I was a foreigner.’

‘So what did you say?’

‘I didn’t say owt,’ Daniel replied. ‘I just put my fists up and told him to say it again.’ He gave a sudden grin and Fletcher thought what a handsome lad he was. Large dark-brown eyes with thick long lashes that any girl would envy and olive skin that browned in the summer sun. ‘And he ran off,’ he added triumphantly.

On the following Sunday Fletcher decided that he wouldn’t visit his mother after all, but would invite Granny Rosie to come for Sunday dinner with them instead. She came often, having moved to Elloughton Dale from her home in Brough to be closer to the family; she loved her charming cottage and enjoyed the walk up the dale to help Harriet with the children.

Harriet had first met Rosie when she was seeking out Noah’s birth family and Daniel’s forebears. She often reflected that Rosie was almost her surrogate mother, Harriet’s own mother having died shortly after she had met Noah. Rosie, a widow, living alone, was delighted to be included as part of the family.

Fletcher and Daniel went in the trap to fetch her and save her the walk.

‘Granny Rosie,’ Daniel blurted out. ‘We’re going to discuss our family.’

Rosie turned to Fletcher, who raised his eyebrows. ‘Are we?’ She chewed on her bottom lip. ‘What sort of discussion?’

‘Nowt too daunting, Rosie,’ Fletcher answered before Daniel could reply. ‘Daniel wants to know about Noah. He’s forgotten most of what we told him.’

Rosie looked anxious. ‘But you know that I was – well, you know about my circumstances, Fletcher?’

He patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Harriet will explain only as much as is necessary.’

‘Oh,’ Daniel leaned forward, ‘but I want to know everything. I’m old enough.’

Fletcher nodded. ‘Of course.’ He cast a pacifying glance at Rosie. ‘But some of it will keep.’

When they arrived back Daniel and Fletcher took themselves off somewhere and Lenny ran out to join them after shouting a quick hello to Rosie, and she reflected that for a farmer there was always a job to be done, even on a Sunday. In the kitchen, where Harriet and the two girls were busy, there was a good smell of roast pork; Dolly was beating up a Yorkshire pudding and splashing the batter all over her apron, and Maria was rolling pastry for the apple pie.

‘What a hive of activity,’ Rosie said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Yes, you can sit in a chair with a cup of tea and give Joseph some milk, if you will,’ Harriet said. ‘Then mebbe he’ll settle down a bit.’

Rosie picked up the child and kissed his round and rosy cheek. ‘He’s as plump as a chicken,’ she smiled, thrilled to be given such a task. She sat in a fireside chair with Joseph on her knee, and took the milk from Harriet, whispering to her as she did so, so that the two girls wouldn’t hear, ‘Daniel said we’re going to have a discussion about the family. You won’t tell him everything, will you, Harriet? About me, I mean. I don’t want him to despise me if he finds out what a terrible person I was.’

‘You were not a terrible person, Rosie,’ Harriet said gently. ‘You were a victim of circumstances, and you were young,’ she added, ‘and not in control of your life.’

Rosie gazed at her, this woman who had become the daughter she had never had. A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I was young,’ she agreed huskily, ‘but I should never have tekken ’step that I did. How different life might have been.’ She took a deep breath and peeped at Joseph, who was looking back at her from his blue eyes. He giggled at her and wriggled on her lap.

‘How did I come to do it?’ she whispered. ‘What kind of woman would give a child away as I did?’

CHAPTER THREE

Rosie saw that Joseph’s eyes were beginning to close. It wasn’t wholly my fault, she thought. She put her head back on the chair and closed her own eyes. It was a life-changing occurrence. She felt Harriet take the cup from her limp hand as if she thought that Rosie and Joseph were both asleep.

I’m not asleep, Rosie thought. I’m just thinking of how it was.

There was just me and Ma and my father. I was fourteen and had started work a month before in a fabric shop in Whitefriargate, which was just round ’corner from where we lived in Hull. Da worked on the New Dock clearing out the ships when they came in from abroad and Ma worked in one of ’flour mills. We were not rich, but we had a nice little terrace house with clean curtains and a well-scrubbed doorstep and we allus had food on ’table and paid our rent regularly.

I remember that day so well. Ma was already in and cooking a meal when I got home at about seven. Da got in about an hour later, dead beat because he’d been working all day in ’bilges of a military ship. The soldiers had been put off at the garrison and the ship had been directed round to ’New Dock as there was a berth available.

‘Oh, God, what a stink down there,’ Da said. ‘You just wouldn’t believe it. I had to put a scarf over my mouth or I’d have thrown up.’

‘We don’t want to know about that,’ my mother said. ‘Go and wash your hands afore you sit down at ’table.’ She was fussy like that, was my ma.

I could smell ’stink on his clothes, though, and moved away from him. ‘Da,’ I said, ‘you’re going to have to change your clothes, they stink horrible.’ So he got up from ’table and took his jacket and shirt off and sat in his trousers and vest and I noticed that he scratched a lot as if he had lice.

We blamed that ship when he got ill a few days later, and Ma spoke to one of ’neighbours who told her that her son had travelled on the same ship and was taken off sick and put in quarantine. I didn’t know what quarantine meant until someone at ’shop told me. And then Ma got sick too and couldn’t go to work so I had to stay at home and look after them both.

I went to ’dock office to tell them why my father was off work. ‘He’s picked something up off that ship,’ I told the clerk. ‘He’ll be back as soon as he can, and can I have his wages up to date, please.’

He said he’d have to ask a superior and would I wait, which I did, and another man came out to talk to me, but he stood well back and asked what Da’s symptoms were and why did we think he’d picked up a disease from the ship.

‘Cos he was working in ’bilges, and he said that they stank,’ I said, very bold I was, ‘so it stands to reason that it was ’stink that’s made him sick. And,’ I added so that he would think I knew what I was talking about, ‘we know that a soldier off ’same ship has gone down wi’ summat and is in
quarantine
.’

‘It’s called ship fever,’ he said. ‘Or sometimes workhouse fever. Are you well fed and clean?’ He looked me up and down and said, ‘You look as if you’re healthy.’

I was very put out when he said that, as it seemed to imply that I might not have been, but ’next day a doctor knocked on our door and he had a black bag with him and said that he’d heard from the ship authorities that someone was probably carrying an infectious fever.

He looked at my father, who by now was in a very poor state and quite delirious, and then at my mother lying next to him. ‘Who else lives here?’ he asked. ‘Do you have any other family?’

I told him that we hadn’t, that there was onny me, and he said that Ma and Da would have to be moved to ’Infirmary where there was a special room for patients like them, and that I would have to move out of the house because it would have to be fumigated. And then ’worst blow of all was that my father probably wouldn’t last ’night out.

When I recovered my senses, I asked him what disease had they got and he said he couldn’t be totally sure but probably typhus, which was deadlier than typhoid. And he said that it was endemic in Hull and I didn’t know what that meant either but it didn’t sound very nice.

Rosie’s eyes flickered and she saw Harriet still busy at the stone sink and Maria putting something into the oven. She felt the warmth of Joseph on her knee and remembered how it had felt when Noah had been a small boy.

I had to leave home after Da and then Ma died. I couldn’t afford ’rent on my wages. When I explained that to Harriet she said she understood as she’d been through ’same thing after her mother died. I had an aunt who lived in Brough so I decided to sell up everything we owned and get a lift wi’ carrier and ask Aunt Bess if I could stop with her for a bit until I got another job. But I hadn’t reckoned on nobody wanting to buy any of ’furniture because of us having an infectious disease in ’house, so I onny just scraped enough money together to buy some food and pay ’carrier’s charge.

I had Aunt Bess’s last known address but when I got there and knocked on the door, the woman who answered said there was nobody of that name living there.

I didn’t know what to do and I wandered around ’town asking various folk if they knew my aunt but nobody did. I hadn’t enough money for lodgings so I sat on a garden wall just to think what would be ’best thing to do.

And then a woman came out of ’house and asked what was I doing. I told her and started to cry, and she asked if I’d like to go in for a cup of tea. What an angel she seemed. She said her name was Miriam Stone and I didn’t know then what her occupation was, which was just as well as I’d never have dared to go inside otherwise. As I didn’t know, I went in, and my life changed from then on.

I’d heard of brothels; there were a few in Hull, some quite well known ones in Leadenhall Square, for instance, where the respectable neighbourhood wanted ’houses pulling down; my ma had always told me to keep well clear of that area.

Rosie shifted a bit in the chair and Joseph sleepily protested. I was innocent then, she thought, but not for much longer. Mrs Stone was very kind to me and made me comfortable, gave me supper and offered me a bed for ’night, and she had a lovely home. It was when some of her girls started to arrive that I became suspicious, but it was getting dark by then and I’d no means of getting back to Hull that night or even ’following morning, so I stayed and then ’next day she put the proposition to me.

Rosie breathed deeply. I sometimes think it all happened to somebody else, but I can’t deny it, it was me, and I stayed with her for a couple of years and it was there that I met Marco and fell in love with him and had his child, which foolishly I thought I could keep. But of course I couldn’t; Mrs Stone wouldn’t allow it. She said it wasn’t a suitable place to bring up a child, and it wasn’t, but I thought that one day Marco would come back for me, as he said he would. But he didn’t.

Nathaniel Tuke had been a regular visitor to the house. Poor man, we felt sorry for him, although some of the meaner girls used to laugh at him. But I didn’t. I felt sorry that his wife Ellen kept him from her bed and he had to visit such a place as ours. But unbeknown to me, he’d asked Mrs Stone if one of us would give him a child, a son. He told her it was what he wanted, and that he was willing to pay and ’child would be well looked after and given a good home, so after I’d had Noah Mrs Stone suggested that we say Noah was his, even though I knew very well he wasn’t. I didn’t want to part with him, I wept over him but Mrs Stone said that he couldn’t stay, and I’d have to leave if I didn’t agree.

Rosie stirred herself and opened her eyes; the dinner smelled good. She sighed again. It was difficult reliving the past, and it would be even more difficult explaining to her grandson Daniel, the son of Noah who hadn’t lived long enough to know him, just what had happened. And I can’t tell all, she thought, it wouldn’t be right; it’s not ’sort of discussion for such a young lad. That would have to come when he was grown up and able to understand.

But some good has come out of it after all, for me at any rate. Noah married Harriet and she gave birth to Daniel, but ’saddest thing was that Ellen Tuke hadn’t treated Noah as her own as I thought she would, and he was never told that he didn’t belong to them, or that Fletcher wasn’t his brother, not until it was too late, and so he never knew he’d been born to someone who had really loved him.

‘We’re about ready to eat, Rosie.’ Harriet bent over her and picked up a sleepy Joseph. ‘You’ve had a nice nap, haven’t you?’

‘No, I wasn’t asleep. Just dozing, you know, and thinking.’

‘What were you thinking about?’ Harriet smiled down at her.

‘Well, about what I was going to tell Daniel about his father – about Noah. I don’t want him to think ’worst of me,’ she added in a whisper.

‘He won’t do that,’ Harriet said gently. ‘Not my boy. And besides, we won’t tell him everything.’

They all sat down at the big wooden table, which was covered in a large white cloth: Fletcher and Harriet, Rosie and the four older children, and Tom Bolton, who often had Sunday dinner with them. Elizabeth sat in a high wooden chair and banged the tray with a wooden spoon.

The pork was tender and the crackling crisp and succulent. Dolly had done well with the Yorkshire pudding and apple sauce, and Rosie commented that Harriet had taught her daughters well.

Harriet nodded. ‘It’s so important,’ she said. ‘My ma never had enough money to buy food for cooking or baking and we didn’t have an oven anyway. We ate ready-made bread and pies, which were ’onny things we could afford.’

Maria and Dolly gasped at the thought and Daniel too raised his eyebrows.

‘Were you very poor as well, Gran?’ he asked. ‘As poor as Ma, I mean.’

‘Not when I lived with my ma and da,’ she said. ‘But after they died I was. It wasn’t until I married Mr Gilbank that I had a house of my own and a bit of money to spend.’

Rosie could see that Daniel was chewing this over as well as the pork, and waited for the inevitable question.

‘So how is it that Noah’s got Morley, Orsini and Tuke on his gravestone?’ he asked after a moment. ‘But not Gilbank? Was it because there wasn’t enough room for another name?’