Katy's Men (12 page)

Katy
could agree with that, but only said, ‘You won’t need to worry about my husband.’ She produced her rapidly manufactured story, shyly, ‘I’m not long married, and he’s at sea, on a ship gone to China and he won’t be back for nearly a year. We had some bigger rooms but with him away and me having to be careful with money because of the little one to come, and I don’t get on with his mother . .’ She let the explanation trail off so Mrs Gates could fill in the gaps for herself, of the young bride left to manage alone, with a child on the way and a dragon of a mother-in-law.

Mrs
Gates did that, noting the mention of the ‘little one’, and became solicitous: ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll do all I can to make you comfortable.’

So
Katy settled in, ate plain but nourishing meals cooked by Mrs Gates and went for walks. She saw a doctor and prepared for her child to be born, relying on what she remembered of her mother’s pregnancies and the hazier recollections of Mrs Gates. Once a month she drew from the savings bank just enough to pay her way. At these times she told Mrs Gates she had been to the shipping office in Tatham Street to collect the wages from her sailor husband’s employers. Sometimes she brought back letters supposed to have been written by him and read them out to Mrs Gates.

Katy
did not like practising this deception but was forced to it. Nor was she happy. Added to the slowly subsiding pain of Howard’s betrayal was her fear of the future, for her and the child. She could not stay where she was forever because some day the mythical sailor would be expected to return, nor could she confess the truth to Mrs Gates. Where would she go? How would she earn her living?

Who
would help her now?

*

Charles Ashleigh had come home from the China station in July. In Newcastle Mrs Connelly, sour-faced and in rustling funereal black from head to toe, opened to his knock on her front door and peered at the young man standing outside. He was dressed in well-cut tweeds from Gieves with polished brogues and doffed his cap on sight of her. That showed his butter-coloured hair which contrasted with his bronzed features. His teeth showed even and white when he smiled and asked, ‘Mrs Connelly?’

Katy
’s erstwhile landlady eyed him with suspicion, distrusting all toffs, and asked in her turn, ‘Who wants to know?’

He
introduced himself: ‘Charles Ashleigh. I have a card here, somewhere.’ He produced one from a leather card case, a rectangle of pasteboard which stated he was Lieutenant Charles Ashleigh, RN.

Mrs
Connelly scanned it and handed it back, unimpressed; sailors were the worst. But the name of Ashleigh was familiar to her and she admitted, ‘I’m Mrs Connelly,

but
if you’re looking for digs you’re wasting your time. I only take young ladies.’

Charles
said hastily, ‘No! I’m not seeking lodgings. But I am looking for a young lady.’ He saw her brows come together and hurried on: ‘A young lady who boarded with you about three years ago, a friend of mine. Her name is Katy Merrick. I wrote to her several times but haven’t had a reply. Is she still with you? Or do you know where she is?’

Mrs
Connelly’s scowl had become fixed at the mention of Katy Merrick: ‘No.’

Charles
probed patiently, ‘She’s not here?’ And when she shook her head, ‘But didn’t she leave a forwarding address?’

‘
No.’ Flatly, again.

The
door was closing and Charles pressed desperately, ‘But you do remember her.’

He
received only the reiterated, ‘No.’ The door slammed shut in his face. Inside the house Mrs Connelly rustled into that holy of holies, the front parlour, sacred to Sunday. Through the lace curtains she watched the young man slowly turn from the front door and walk away. She muttered, ‘Good riddance, to him and her. She deserves all that’s coming to her, little hussy.’

Charles
only retired as far as the corner of the street, where he would not be seen from the house. He waited there for an hour or more, until the shipyard hooters warned of the end of the working day, waited still until the girls came back to Mrs Connelly’s house from the shops and offices where they were employed. He cherished a faint hope that Katy might be one of them, but they all returned in the space of a half-hour, six of them, and Katy was not among them.

When
he was sure there could be no more girls to come, and that Katy was not going to walk around the corner into his arms, only then did he give up his vigil and go back to the Ashleigh house to eat a late dinner with his parents. He told them, morosely, ‘Katy wasn’t there. Her landlady denies all knowledge of her but she’s lying, of course.’

Eleanor
Ashleigh’s judgment was brusque and sure: ‘That girl was a fortune hunter. Once you had gone she left her lodgings and her place at Ashleigh’s to seek it elsewhere.?

Charles
was equally sure: ‘You’re wrong, Mother. Katy was not like that. I can’t understand why she left Ashleigh’s. She always said she liked the work.’

His
mother started, ‘I told you—’

Charles
broke in, ‘Yes, Mother, I know you did and I answered you.’ He was silent a moment, brooding, then finished, closing the conversation as far as he was concerned, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’

Eleanor
opened her mouth to remonstrate but caught her husband’s eye on her, warning — or pleading? She held her tongue but later, when they were alone, she protested, ‘Why do you let him pursue this ridiculous affair?’

Vincent
pointed out, ‘We can’t stop him.’ And then, uneasily, ‘I wonder if we were right to act as we did? If he ever finds out how I got him the draft to China . . .’ He shook his head unhappily.

Eleanor
brushed his worries aside: ‘He won’t find out, unless he meets that girl again, and then it would only be her word against ours. And we acted in his best interests. He was very young. The girl was quite unsuitable and he will be far happier with one of his own kind. I’ll do something about it tomorrow.’

Charles
was at his post at the end of the street when Mrs Connelly’s girls left the house, one at a time, next day. He let the first two go by because he judged them to be too young, would still have been at school when he sailed for China. He stepped into the path of the third, a tall, dark girl in her early twenties, and lifted his cap. ‘Good morning. I’m Charles Ashleigh. I wonder if you could help me? I’m trying to find a young lady called Katy Merrick. She boarded with Mrs Connelly about three years ago. Were you here then?’

The
girl had been trying to sidle nervously around him but now she paused. ‘Katy Merrick? Dark lass, pretty, must have been about seventeen or eighteen then?’

Charles
answered eagerly, ‘That’s right!’

The
girl nodded, ‘I remember her. She left years ago. There was a rumour she’d been carrying on wi’ some young toff—’ She broke off there, realising who she was talking to, then apologised hurriedly, ‘Beg your pardon, sir, but that’s how it was told to me and that’s how it got to Ma Connelly and she threw Katy out.’

Charles
asked tensely, ‘Do you know where she went? Have you an address?’

That
brought a shake of the head and: ‘No. She said she was going to Scotland but that’s all; there was no address. She went off with her case and that was the last we saw of her.’ The girl waited now, no longer in any hurry to go to her work.

But
Charles only said heavily, ‘Thank you.’ He turned and walked away. The girl watched him go and sighed.

Charles
returned home despondently. Over the next few weeks he placed advertisements in newspapers in the north-east of England and Scotland but without result. Then his mother announced brightly, ‘Your father has taken a house in Town for the Season! We’ll all have a marvellous time!’ And, she thought, Charles could meet some girls of his own class and put this affair behind him.

They
travelled down to London on the express, with a mountain of luggage, a few days later.

*

Louise was born at the beginning of December, on Katy’s own birthday. On that one day Katy was wholly, supremely happy, filled with joy and confidence. Only later did her fears return.

And
on that day Matt Ballard witnessed death and stared ruin in the face.

Chapter Ten

SUNDERLAND. DECEMBER 1910.

Matt
Ballard sat at Joe Docherty’s bedside and watched him die. The doctor had already given his verdict: ‘There’s nothing I can do for him now. The root of the problem is his heart. It’s enlarged and feeble, struggling to do its job and failing. On top of that he’s been drinking very heavily when he should not have been drinking at all. And now that pneumonia has set in . . .’ He had shaken his head and gone away.

Joe
slept, or was unconscious, most of the time, but late that night he roused and saw Matt sitting haggardly watching him. ‘Matt? I feel bad.’ His breath rasped.

Matt
murmured softly, ‘Just try to rest.’

But
Joe could not: ‘I made you a partner because I knew this was coming and I wanted you to have something, but I think you’re going to find I’ve let it all go to hell. I just couldn’t cope without a drink, and then not for long.’ Matt gripped the thin, bony hand with his big one: ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘
I’m sorry, really sorry, Matt.’ Joe was silent for a minute or two, just the sound of his laboured breathing filling the room, his eyes closed. Matt wondered if he was sleeping again but then Joe’s eyes opened once more and he wheezed, ‘We had some good times together, didn’t we, Matt?’

‘
Great times.’ Matt remembered wryly that a lot of the time when they were in the Army they were cold, hungry or frightened — or all three. But he added with sincerity, ‘I wouldn’t have missed them for a fortune.’ Because the older man had been like a father to him.

‘
Matt,’ said Joe, ‘will you promise me one thing, do me a last favour.’

‘
Don’t talk like that, Joe.’

‘
I’ve got to.’ His hand trembled in Matt’s. ‘Will you look after Bea for me? She’s all I’ve got and I’ve let her down as well. There’s nobody else who can take her because I’ve no relatives. Will you?’

‘
I’ll do that, Joe,’ Matt assured him. ‘Put your mind at rest.’

‘
Thanks.’ Joe sighed and lay quiet then, and after a time the hand lying in Matt’s stopped shaking. Joe slept. He woke twice more but said little, just a few murmured memories of old times, his young days. Mostly he lay fighting to draw breath, and in the night he died.

Matt
arranged the funeral. He found an insurance policy in Joe’s papers that just covered the cost but that was the only good news. He found books not kept up to date and bills unpaid for months. All bore the names Docherty and Ballard. There was also evidence of Joe’s drinking in the form of empty bottles — a lot of them. Matt drew up a rough balance sheet that showed the profit from the business had been eaten up by Joe’s living expenses, the house, the nurse — and the drinking.

Matt
gave up the house he had rented some months before and sold the furniture. Fleur was furious and reviewed her position. Had she made a mistake and should she cut loose from Matt? But then she remembered that the business was now all his — such as it was. She decided it would be wise not to act hastily. She wanted to wait and see if he recovered.

Matt
also sold most of the furniture left in Joe’s house, keeping just enough to furnish the flat above the office. He paid off the nurse and Alice left weeping. Last of all, he sold off the lorry to a man out on the Newcastle road. Most of the bills were paid but a pile remained outstanding. Matt promised those creditors, ‘You’ll get your money, every penny of it.’ He was left almost penniless with five-year-old little Beatrice, and only the horse and cart to earn a living for them.

He
sat in the swivel chair in the office on the night they moved into the yard, his rough statement of account on the desk before him. Matt stared into the future and found it bleak. The child was fractious, blonde and blue-eyed and spoiled by Joe and Alice. She complained, ‘I want to go home. I don’t like it here. It smells.’

Matt
explained wearily, ‘That’s only petrol and oil —and the horse — that you can smell. They won’t hurt you.

And
we’ll be living upstairs, not down here. It’s nice, you’ll see.’

‘
I don’t care!’ Beatrice stamped her foot, ‘Take me home!’

‘
You can’t go back there because we’ve given up that house.’

The
child stared at him a moment, taking this in but refusing to believe him. ‘Why?’

‘
Because we haven’t any money to pay for it.’

Beatrice
did not understand this either. Her daddy had always had money when she wanted it. She fell back on the tactic which had served her so well in the past and screamed in rage and frustration.

Matt
lifted her and carried her up the stairs to bed, shrieking all the way. He wondered how the hell could he cope with this?

*

As soon as Katy was well enough to go out she took Louise in her arms and looked for work. She knew it would be hard because employers were unused to a mother taking her child into the office, but she hoped she could persuade them that Louise would not interfere with her work. She tramped the winter streets in the bitter cold and biting wind coming off the river. In the beginning she went to employment agencies but it was soon made clear to her that there was no work for a young woman accompanied by a child. Katy was advised, ‘Leave her somewhere.’ But she could not bring herself to do that.

In
casual conversation, long before Louise was born,

Mrs
Gates had said, ‘I’m not one for looking after other people’s bairns. If they have them, then they should look after them.’ But anyway, Mrs Gates was too old and infirm to care for a child all day. And Katy could not hand her child over to a stranger. Besides, she was grimly certain that whatever work she obtained she would not earn enough to pay some respectable person to care for Louise and not some boozy crone seeking money for drink. But the advice was repeated more than once when she cast her net wider and carried Louise from one office to the next and then to a succession of factories: ‘You can’t bring the bairn with you. Get somebody to look after her.’

Her
sight of the shipyards lining both banks of the Wear, and the vessels moored in the river and discharging their cargoes, gave her hope; here she would find work which she knew from her time at Ashleigh’s on the Tyne. But the work in the shipyards was for men only, and in the warehouses she received the same reply as she had in the town: ‘We’ll want a reference . . . it’s work for a single lass, not with a bairn. Can’t you leave her wi’ your granny?’ That lack of a reference from the Spargos often resulted in her being turned away before the question of Louise was discussed.

There
came a day when Mrs Gates, becoming suspicious, asked when Katy’s sailor husband would be coming home. Katy had spent another week in her fruitless search — and her savings were running out. So in desperation she crossed the bridge over the River Wear into Monkwearmouth and began to search there. On that day of rain she walked the length and breadth of Monkwearmouth with

Louise
in her arms and her cold feet squelching in her buttoned boots, but she failed to find work. Katy faced the fact: there were plenty of girls as well qualified as herself and without the encumbrance of a child to put off potential employers.

Katy
was frightened now. She turned for home in the early dusk because the yards had shut down for the night and the warehouses closed their doors. She did so reluctantly because she had to pay her rent the next day and did not have the money. All she had now was the ring her mother had given her and she could not sell or pawn that. It would have shamed her before the world, a woman with a child and no ring on her finger. That was her badge of respectability. She needed work and a sub — an advance of pay — this day, or she would have to throw herself on the mercy of Mrs Gates, admit her shame and that she had lied and invented a sailor husband. But that would be only a brief period of succour because the old woman could not afford to keep her for nothing. And after that — the workhouse?

Katy
shuddered, and only partly because of the cold and the rain that were chilling her to the bone. Louise was wrapped warmly in a thick woollen shawl, Katy’s arms shielding her from the dampness, as they walked along a terraced street close under the towering cranes of the shipyards. It was then she came to the gates that stood open. The legend on them was broken between the two leaves but she read it by the light of a street gaslight to be: Docherty and Ballard. Hauliers. Inside the gates was a yard and an office with a square of light that was a window.

Katy
paused in the gateway. She told herself that she knew the work in the haulage business. But she remembered the name Docherty and how Ivor had cheated the young man from that firm. She could picture him now, standing in the doorway of the office and announcing, ‘I’m Matt Ballard.’ Suppose he was in the office? And would Docherty’s be any different from the other employers with whom she had pleaded for work? Then she reasoned that none of this mattered because she had to try. She had to put a roof over her child’s head and care for her,
had
to. So she walked across the muddy yard and tapped at the door of the office.

‘
Somebody
knocking
! A startled Katy heard the high voice of a child come from inside the office, then the swift patter of flying feet. The door was opened by a small girl, blue-eyed with blonde hair hanging down her back. She stared, thumb in mouth, at Katy.

Another
voice, deep and male, demanded, ‘Who is it?’ The thumb came out of the mouth and the child called, ‘It’s a lady.’

‘
Stand aside and let her in, then.’

The
little girl obeyed, eyes still curious, and she said as Katy entered, ‘You’re all wet.’

‘
Yes. Thank you.’ Katy was well aware of how she looked, knew the rain had soaked through her hat and her hair clung wetly to her neck, could feel the cold dampness inside her buttoned boots, her skirts sticking to her legs. She found a smile for the girl then confronted the young man who had risen from an ancient swivel chair behind a desk. With a sinking heart she recognised him. He had stormed into Spargo’s office in search of Ivor and frightened her: Matt Ballard. Did he remember her?

For
a time he did not. Matt, hoping for business, asked, ‘Do you want something moving, ma’am?’ He had spent the day shifting light furniture between several houses in Monkwearmouth, time taking, poorly paid work as the owners only used him because they could not carry it on a hand barrow. Beatrice had gone with him and he had rigged the small tarpaulin shelter on the cart to keep her — and the furniture — dry. She had grizzled and whined because she wanted to play at home, repeatedly thrown her toys out of the cart and finally was rude to some of the customers. They told Matt, ‘That bairn wants her backside warmed.’ Beatrice had pulled a face and thrust out her tongue. Matt, patience exhausted, smacked her and drove back to the yard, with Beatrice in sullen silence and Matt grimly aware that he had barely made a profit on the day.

Now
he looked at the girl holding the baby and thought there might be a removal job to be done. But then Katy asked, ‘Are you needing any help, please? I’ve done a lot of this sort of work.’

Matt
shook his head, ‘Sorry, but I don’t.’

Katy
pressed him, ‘I’ve three years experience of keeping books, pricing jobs, invoicing .Her voice trailed away then because Matt now looked at her sharply.

The
mention of her experience had triggered a memory and now he accused her, ‘You’re one of the Spargos. You were there that day I was looking for Ivor and you

shielded
him.’ Worry and anger gave a harsh edge to his voice.

Katy
winced but defended herself: ‘I’m not a Spargo. I worked for them, that’s all. And I didn’t shield Ivor, he just hid behind me. The Spargos sacked me because I had a row with them.’ She felt a pressure against her leg, looked down and saw the small girl craning her neck to peer at Louise. Katy whispered, ‘Do you want to see the baby?’ When Beatrice nodded, Katy lifted the shawl so Louise’s face showed and stooped so the child could see it.

Matt
’s anger ebbed and he shrugged off the past, but he said, ‘Anyway, I can’t take anybody on.’

Katy
persisted, ‘Is Mr Docherty about?’ She thought that, possibly, this young man had no authority to engage staff, so she would appeal to the senior partner.

Matt
sighed, ‘Mr Docherty died a couple of weeks back. I run the business now and I can’t take you on.’

Katy
felt a tug at her skirt and Beatrice asked, ‘Can I hold her?’

Katy
prompted automatically, ‘Please.’

‘
Please.’

The
baby was transferred to the arms of Beatrice but Katy maintained a steadying hand. She smiled down at the two children then up at Matt: ‘Your little girl is quite taken by my daughter.’

‘
She’s not my little girl,’ Matt disclaimed. ‘That’s Joe Docherty’s Beatrice. I promised him I’d look after her.’ And he had found it trying.