Lovers Meeting (19 page)

Charlotte shrieked, ‘That’s Uncle Tom!’

Josie nodded. ‘Yes.’

Then the ship was past, she could not see Tom any longer and the
Highgrange
ploughed on out to sea.

On their way home they passed Langley’s yard, now silent and empty. Josie wondered for how long. She thought of Harry Varley, the manager, with a wife and three young children. Then there were all the others … And she could do little or nothing.

Josie filled a hot bath for Charlotte and afterwards tucked her up in bed. Then she went downstairs to the office and sat at the desk. She remembered Tom Collingwood sitting there, then shook herself out of her introspection and wrote to Geoffrey Urquhart, her former employer; the Urquharts might have returned from the Continent now and she knew he was grateful for her saving his grandchildren, so she would ask him a favour. When the letter was done she left it on the small table in the hall, with Tom’s letter to the bank, to post the following day. She looked in on the kitchen to bank up the fire for the night. On the way out she saw that the door to the cellar was an inch or two ajar. She stopped to close it and fasten it with its catch. She told herself she was being silly but the cellar had frightened her as a child and old fears die hard.

Josie paused in the hall and the tall clock ticked slowly. She had found the body of old William Langley behind the closed door on her right. Tom had gone from the office, was at sea now, and she and Charlotte were alone in this big, empty house. He had said, ‘Will you be all right on your own?’ And she had replied, ‘I think we will do very well.’ Now she wondered if she would.

Josie lay awake in bed for a long time, with only the red glow from the nursery fire for company. She wondered what the morrow would hold for her. He had said he could be gone for weeks, months or a year. Dear God!

14

October 1908

Josie had come to the back door to look out at the night and breathe the night air. She had spent the day washing and ironing, was about to go to bed and stood in the doorway, savouring the quiet after the noise of the day. She thought that the hours of toil confirmed that the house was too big for any woman to keep up on her own, and maybe that was why Rhoda had given up trying. Also, there were jobs that needed to be done that were better left to a man, like mending the latch on the back gate – she could see it standing ajar now – and the shutter hanging askew on an upstairs window. Then there was the broken pane that someone, possibly Rhoda, had plugged with a piece of wood and some rag.

Josie thought she heard a noise in one corner of the yard and cocked her head, listening. The washhouse stood in that corner of the yard, and a faint glow showed beneath its door. It came from the dying embers of the fire under the boiler inside. Josie had laboured in there with poss-stick and mangle. She sighed, remembering, then held her breath. And she heard, very faintly, the sobbing. She hesitated, but then armed herself with a poker from the kitchen, shoved open the washhouse door and challenged: ‘Who’s there?’

The sobbing had stopped. Josie could just make out in the gloom that someone sat on the floor, curled up against the boiler. Josie called, ‘Come on out!’ The figure moved, rose to its feet. As it approached the door, Josie cautiously retreated before it, until it stepped into the rectangle of light falling out of the kitchen door. Then she saw it was a girl, and she halted and lowered the poker. She demanded, ‘What were you doing?’

‘I was going to sleep there.’ The girl’s reply was scarcely above a whisper. She kept her head cast down, the shawl pulled tight around her as if it would armour her against the world. Now Josie could see that she was young, respectably if shabbily dressed; she could see a neat patch in the sleeve of the girl’s coat but it looked passably clean.

Josie put two and two together and asked, ‘Why have you left home?’

‘That’s none of your business.’ The girl’s head came up and she started to turn away. ‘I haven’t done you any harm and I won’t bother you again.’

Josie stopped her. ‘Come inside for a bit, get warm and have a cup of tea.’ An idea was taking shape in her mind but it was early yet. Wait and see … ‘Come on,’ she urged, and reached out to take the girl’s arm. For a moment there was resistance, but the girl’s eyes were on the open door, its light and promise of warmth beckoning her. She yielded and allowed herself to be led in.

Josie sat her down by the fire, gave her a cup of tea and a sandwich of cold roast beef, then said, ‘I’m Mrs Miller, Josie Miller. And you?’

The girl swallowed. ‘Annie Yates.’ She was about twenty, blonde, blue-eyed and frightened.

‘From?’ Josie prompted.

But Annie wasn’t giving that away too soon. ‘I’m not going back!’

‘I’m not going to send you back, but I might be able to help. Was there some trouble?’

It took a long time and some gentle coaxing, but Josie finally heard the whole story, of love, betrayal and fear of brutality. Eddie, the man she had loved so much and so recklessly, had deserted her. When Annie told him about the child he had signed on aboard a tramp steamer bound for Australia and he would not come home. The child was due in April but her own father would find out long before that. She could not, would not, suffer another beating at his hands.

Annie worked as a kitchen-maid in a businessman’s house but lived at home, a terraced house in South Shields. She had waited until her mother had gone to the communal washhouse then left her work, hurried home and packed all she had in a pillowcase. She had set out to find work and a place to live where her father would not find her. But after a few days her money had run out and she faced a night on the streets without shelter or supper. Then she saw the gate of the yard standing ajar.

Annie finished, ‘So I went into your washhouse to sleep.’

‘You wouldn’t be warm in there for long. That fire was nearly out.’

Annie said simply, ‘I had nowhere else to go.’

Nor had she now. But there was some colour in her cheeks since she had eaten and warmed through. Josie considered her, wondering if she could take the risk of involving this girl, this ‘fallen woman’, in her plans. But then she told herself, Use your common sense. You can’t turn her away. She said, ‘You were a kitchen-maid. So can you cook and clean?’

Annie replied, ‘Oh, aye,’ in a tone that meant ‘Of course’. She added bitterly, ‘But have you ever walked the streets looking for a job?’

Josie had and she winced at the memory. But then she grinned at Annie. ‘I’ll give you a job. Seven-and-six a week and live in. Start now.’

Annie burst into tears.

Next morning, Josie called, ‘Come on, Annie! Time to fit you out!’ She and Annie, with Charlotte between them, walked down Strand Street and crossed the Wear by the ferry. Then they climbed the long hill of High Street East to the big shops, where Josie bought some clothes and aprons for Annie because she had pathetically little in the pillowcase holding her belongings.

At one point they passed the Palace Hotel and Josie returned home thoughtful.

‘Eeh! Isn’t it grand!’ That afternoon Annie stared round-eyed, brush in one hand, duster in the other, when Josie unlocked the doors to the other wing that Hector Langley had built for William.

‘It will be when we’ve cleaned it,’ replied Josie cheerfully. She and Annie dusted, swept, washed and polished. They took down the curtains, washed them and found them falling to pieces. So they crossed the river again, bought material and made new curtains for the newly washed windows. Before the week was out they were a happily working team. Charlotte grew wet, dusty and healthily tired. At the end of each day she wallowed in a hot bath and slept the night through.

Josie did not. When the new wing was clean as a new pin she wondered what she was to do with it. In the first blaze of enthusiasm – the idea sparked by sight of the Palace – she had thought to open a small hotel. Now she saw that was impossible. The house might be clean but it needed a lot of work – and money – to make it into a hotel. Again, it was situated in a working-class neighbourhood of poor streets, grimy from the nearby shipyards. The idea was abandoned.

Josie stared into the darkness and wondered if she had wasted her time. Had she been stupidly, unreasonably optimistic to think that she, just a servant after all, could help to restore the Langley fortunes?

She finally slept uneasily and woke in fear with the giant standing black in the doorway and laughing at her.

But a new day brought Dougie Bickerstaffe. He knocked at the back door of the kitchen on a cold, windy morning. Josie opened the door and confronted the expanse of blue-jerseyed chest and the wide grin above it. The young man was in his mid-twenties, stocky and broad. He wore a tarpaulin jacket open over the jersey and carried a kitbag on his shoulder. He touched a finger to his cap and asked, ‘’Scuse me, missus, but can you point the way to the Seamen’s Mission, please?’

Josie covertly inspected him and found him clean if somewhat hard worn. She asked, ‘Are you looking for a bed?’

‘That’s right,’ and he grinned frankly. ‘Lost me money on the horses, y’see. Paid off yesterday after three months at sea and broke today. So it’s a bed for tonight and another ship tomorrow if I’m lucky.’

In the last weeks Josie had learned about ships paying off their crews at the end of a voyage. And this sailor wanted a bed … The phrase stirred a memory: ‘Everybody’s got to sleep somewhere.’ Josie wondered who had said that, then remembered it had been Albert Harvey. When he left the Urquhart house to start his first little hotel he had said he would make a living because ‘Everybody has to sleep somewhere, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor’. Josie’s thoughts raced on, then a cough brought her back to the present and she realised she was staring vacantly at the puzzled sailor.

Josie apologised. ‘I’m sorry. I just remembered something.’ And she thought, Living in the Mission and on what it provided while he waited for a ship. She asked, ‘What about your shipmates?’

‘They’ll lend me a bob or two,’ he said comfortably. ‘I’ll look ’em up later, soon as I’ve left my kit at the Mission. What way is it?’ He waited expectantly.

Josie persevered, ‘I meant, have your shipmates got somewhere to stay? Lodgings?’

‘Not yet. They’re still living aboard but they’ll be looking for somewhere today, same as I am. They’ll be told to sling their hooks and come ashore.’

Josie stepped back and opened the door wide. ‘We’re just about to have a cup of tea. Won’t you join us, Mr …?’

‘Dougie Bickerstaffe. And thank ye, ma’am, I will.’ He entered willingly, glad to be out of the wind for a while, but awkward, as if not used to houses, certainly not a house of this size. He sat by the fire and Charlotte rested her arms on his knee and questioned him about his life at sea. He told her some tall stories while Josie and Annie busied themselves about the kitchen. This did not get in the way of him drinking the mug of tea Josie gave him, and he ate the thick sandwich of cold beef that came with it – then sniffed appreciatively at the smell from the oven.

Josie let him eat and relax, but when he had finished she sat down opposite him and got down to business. ‘I’m opening a boarding house here …’ Some fifteen minutes later Dougie went on his way. He left his kitbag in a corner of the kitchen and promised, still sniffing the aroma from the oven, to be back by noon. He also promised to bring some of his shipmates before the day was out.

He returned in time to eat a good lunch and his mates turned up an hour later. There were eight of them in jerseys and canvas trousers and each humped his big kitbag. They were wary and smelt of salt water and tar, paint and coal smoke. Meanwhile Josie had hastily crossed the bridge into the town and found a ship’s chandler. There she bought blankets, ten mattresses stuffed with horsehair and bunk beds to lay them on. Dougie helped to get them off the cart that brought them and set them up in the bedrooms of the house next door. Josie turned the room at the back of the house into a dining room and common room, with two trestle tables and a dozen chairs from a second-hand shop. She fed her new guests in there that night.

‘Well, that’s one day over.’ Josie sank down into a chair before the kitchen fire and grinned across at Annie. She had set out her rules after her nine guests had eaten: ‘I lock the door at eleven. If you aren’t in by then – or you turn up the worse for drink – you sleep outside.’ They had all nodded solemnly. Now they were all abed.

But Annie said darkly, ‘All right so far. But we’ll have to wait and see. There’s bound to be trouble.’

Josie asked, ‘Has Dougie or any of them pestered you?’

‘No!’ Annie shook her head.

‘Then – what sort of trouble?’

‘Drink,’ Annie replied. ‘Eddie used to say: “Drink is the curse o’ sailormen.”’

Josie thought the departed Eddie had little right to make moral judgments, but she had a nasty feeling that Annie might be right. Still, she refused to be depressed. ‘We’ll have to deal with that when …
if
it happens.’ And she went to bed content. She had already done her sums and was sure she would make some money out of this venture. Not enough to reopen the yard, that was an impossible dream, but probably enough to keep Annie, part of the help Josie needed, Charlotte and herself.

She had some good news of the Langley shipyard the next day, chancing to meet Harry Varley, the former manager, as she walked up to the Dundas Street shops with Charlotte. He was no longer the slumped, defeated man she had seen when he heard the news of the closure of the yard. Now he strode along briskly, his head up, and greeted her with a smile. ‘’Morning, Mrs Miller!’

‘Good morning, Mr Varley. How are you?’

‘Fine!’ He halted and told her exuberantly, ‘I’ve got another position. I still can’t believe it. Just a few days ago I had a letter – right out o’ the blue – from a chap called Geoffrey Urquhart, saying he might have a post that would suit me and would I go up to Glasgow to see him. I went like a shot and got the job! O’ course, I’m not manager, just an assistant, and neither me nor the wife are keen on leaving Sunderland, but it’s a good job and we’re on top o’ the world again.’