Lovers Meeting (2 page)

‘Thank God you came!’ James Langley was tall for his near-fourteen years, not so dark as his brother and having the soft brown hair and eyes of his dead mother. He wore grimy overalls and there was a smudge of oil on his forehead. He gripped the hand David held out to him and smiled with pleasure. Then the smile faded. ‘A chap came into the yard a day or so back and said he’d heard you were going to America.’

David nodded. ‘That’s right.’

James asked, ‘Did you try to make it up with Dad?’

David nodded again, but said, ‘No luck.’

‘I thought so.’ James sighed. ‘I know his mind is set. I’ve tried to take your side, tried to put in a word for you, but he won’t listen.’ Young James loved his father and respected him so now he said unhappily, ‘And I know he is wrong.’ With that he reached out a hand to touch Peggy’s sleeve. Then he turned on David and said wistfully, ‘I wish I was going with you.’

‘No!’ David set his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘Someone has to stay here with Father and as he doesn’t want me then it must be you. Bagley is a good enough man but he can’t manage the yard without Father telling him what to do. And Father will be fifty this year. You’ll have to take over Bagley’s job in another ten years – and one day the Langley shipyard will be yours. You mustn’t – can’t – throw that away.’ David let his hands fall then. ‘We’ve got to catch a train. You get back to work.’

‘Aye. I will.’ James’s voice was husky now; he was close to tears. He turned and started back down the slope, then paused to turn his head on his shoulder and shout above the din of the hammers, ‘Write to me with your address when you get there and I’ll come and see you in America one day.’

‘I’ll write to you, never fear.’ David watched until his brother disappeared from sight beyond the hull on the stocks, then he cleared his throat and said gruffly, ‘Come on, then.’ He turned and walked back up the yard. Josie found that instead of being frightened she was sad and crying. When she looked she saw tears on her mother’s cheeks.

Josie asked, ‘Are you sad as well, Mam?’

Her mother managed to smile and shook her head. ‘I think it’s just this cold wind making my eyes water.’

Josie agreed. ‘I suppose that’s what it is.’

They came out of the yard, climbed the steep road up from the river then crossed North Bridge Street, hurrying between horse-drawn trams. So they came to Monkwearmouth station, its frontage like a Greek temple with its tall columns. Inside the station they collected the luggage they had left there earlier. All they had was in one big portmanteau. The platform was crowded and so was the train but they found seats crammed into a nearly full compartment with Josie wedged between her parents. As her damp clothes began to steam in the heat she felt her feet come alive again inside her buttoned boots swinging above the floor. When the train hissed, shuddered, clanked and then began to move, Josie peered past her father and out through a cleared patch in the mist on the glass. She saw only darkness and pinpoints of light. Her eyes closed.

Her mother said softly, ‘She’s worn out with all that’s been going on.’

Her father agreed in a murmur, ‘Aye.’

Josie was too tired to argue, but not asleep. She heard her mother say above her head, low-voiced so only her husband would hear, but harshly bitter, ‘I suppose we should have expected your father would think I set out to trap you for your money.’

David Langley laughed grimly. ‘If you had you’d have made a mistake, because I won’t get it now.’

Peggy sighed. ‘But you know what I mean: I was a servant lass wi’ no family or money. He owns a shipyard and it would ha’ gone to you in time. I don’t blame him for not accepting me, but I didn’t want him to turn against you.’

David said softly, ‘I wouldn’t change anything.’

Josie felt the warmth of that love, like the physical warmth that wrapped around her now. She sighed and relaxed.

Only a few hours ago they had left the house in which Josie had been born and raised. It was south of the River Wear which ran through the town. Josie had crossed to the north side often before this day, with her parents, to visit the Langley house – but that was when her grandfather was away on business. She had come to know it and love it. Now she hoped she would never cross its threshold again.

But she would – and regret it.

Tom Collingwood’s journey through life had begun four years before, when his grandfather had saved him from the institution. Tom was eight years old now, in ragged jacket and trousers, barefoot save for a pair of old boots with more holes to them than leather. He stood on the station at Newcastle, long-legged and grubby, his thick, black hair hand-combed, and watched the Sunderland train come in. He saw the man and the woman, her carrying a child, but just as faces in the long blur of faces. He held out his hand and asked, ‘Give us a ha’penny, mister. I’m hungry. Give us a ha’penny, missus. Give us …’ He got a halfpenny from the man as he passed; the woman had her hands full with the sleeping child. Tom went on reciting the plea monotonously. He had stopped crying over an hour ago.

His grandfather had spoken his last words an hour before that: ‘Christ! I could do wi’ a drink.’ He had mumbled them sitting on the pavement with his back against the wall outside the station. Before that he had called hoarsely through chattering teeth: ‘Wounded in the Crimea! Spare a copper for an old soljer!’ He was wounded in the Crimean War, that was true. But the crutch lying across his knees supported him only in the towns. He had carried it over his shoulder the length and breadth of Scotland and down into the north of England. He was bearded and brown, ragged and gaunt now. During his long life he had been a soldier and a fisherman, a seaman and a poacher – and something of a rogue all the time.

He was the only family Tom had ever known. His first memory was of his grandfather coming to the house where Tom’s parents waited for burial. The tall old man, burly and strong then, had scooped him up into the fold of one arm and told him, ‘I’ll not let them put you in the orphanage.’ Tom had been with him ever since.

But that was all over now, though Tom did not realise this for some time. He was uneasy and fearful when his grandfather, after a long silence, let out a deep sigh and then ceased his laboured breathing. The worried small boy could not wake the old man. Tom suspected the worst when the two policemen came slow-striding and one said, ‘I don’t like the look o’ this one.’ Tom did not like the look of them, either, had always been taught to steer clear of the ‘pollis’. So he sidled away – but he heard: ‘Th’ould feller’s deid.’

He had been taught to seek shelter in crowds so he slunk into the station. He had begged there out of habit and there his loss came home to him and he shed tears for the rough, hard-bitten old man who had cared for him after his fashion. Now he realised that there was no one to tell him where to go, what to do. No one to find him a bed – of some sort – for the night. He was alone.

When the police came into the station he guessed they were looking for him. His grandfather had told him how he had been saved from the orphanage and Tom was determined not to go there now. The train was filling up again to return to Sunderland. He sneaked aboard it by hiding among a little group of passengers, workmen smelling of drink and shouldering through the gate. He found a seat beside them and as the train rattled along from station to station he learned that they were all getting off at a place called Monkwearmouth.

He got out of that station as he had entered the train at Newcastle. The ticket collector at the gate spotted him worming through among the workmen, all of them singing now, but Tom ducked under his clutching hand and ran away into the night. He walked around some of the streets of Monkwearmouth, row upon row of soot-stained houses with windows lit yellow. A fine, cold drizzle came in from the sea. He begged as he went but got nothing from the few people hurrying home.

When the streets emptied, and the lights in the windows went out one by one, he found a tenement where the front door had not been bolted. In the passage was a dark corner where he could not see his dirty hand before his dirty face. He had a few halfpennies in his pocket with a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese. He ate the food and slept on some old sacking with the mice skittering around him. All this was done as if his grandfather was still with him; he was clutching at normality. This was the only life he had known and he had been happy enough.

But now he was miserable – and lonely.

2

Liverpool, January 1888

Josie had no sense of foreboding when she and her family boarded the emigrant ship, lying in the Albert Dock, in the late afternoon. The wind whipping in off the Mersey was cold but excitement kept her warm. The side of the SS
Blackhill
stood above the landing stage, black-painted and massive to Josie’s eyes. Smoke trailed from the ship’s two funnels as her sweating stokers laboured below, hurling shovelfuls of coal into the furnaces to raise steam for her to sail. Josie held her mother’s hand, following her father as he carried their portmanteau on his shoulder. They climbed the gangway to the deck of the ship along with other passengers sailing to a new life in America. Some had portmanteaux but most made do with a cheap suitcase or an old kitbag. A few carried all their belongings tied up in an old shawl or blanket.

David Langley set the portmanteau down and straightened his back, worked his shoulders after ridding himself of the weight. He set an arm about his wife’s shoulders and smiled at her. ‘We’ll be sailing in a few hours.’

Josie asked, ‘Will we get to America tomorrow?’

Her father laughed. ‘Not as soon as that! But not too long. It will give you time to enjoy the cruise.’ That was said to reassure his wife as much as his daughter. Privately he doubted if a winter passage of the North Atlantic would be pleasant. But he told himself they would all survive a little bad weather and seasickness and be none the worse.

He lifted the portmanteau again. ‘Time to go below.’ He led the way to the poop and a door opening on to steep stairs leading down into the steerage where the emigrants would live during the crossing.

Josie stood at the head of the ladder, looking down into the dark bowels of the ship. It reminded her of the stairs down into the cellar in her grandfather’s house. And it was then she felt the first queasiness, the first shiver shaking her, She wailed, ‘I don’t want to go down there!’

Her father joked with her, ‘Well, you can’t sleep on deck. What if it rains?’

Josie’s mother picked her up, held her close and soothed her: ‘It’s warm and dry down below. It will be just like going downstairs in our old house.’

Josie clung tightly to her and so they went below.

Later that evening, Peggy Langley looked up into her husband’s face and said anxiously, ‘She’s burning up! Oh, David, I’m frightened!’ She held Josie in her arms – the little girl was flushed, her hair damp with perspiration.

David laid his hand on her brow, felt the heat of it and bit his lip. He looked around him. The steerage accommodation for the emigrants was down below the waterline and crowded, bunks stacked one above the other like huge chests of drawers. David had been to sea more than once. He knew what it would be like to be battened down in this dark hold for hours or days in bad weather, and he had learned from one of the ship’s officers that the barometer showed they would get it. And in the North Atlantic? How would this child of his fare during such a crossing, three thousand-odd miles and lasting two weeks or more? And what lay at the end of it?

He ran his hand through his dark hair worriedly and looked down again at Josie’s flushed face, saw the way she twisted restlessly in her mother’s arms. And she cried out in fear, ‘The giant!’

Peggy whispered, ‘She keeps on about some giant, a bad dream she’s having. She’s not in her right mind, David.’

He nodded. ‘She’s delirious.’ He made his decision. ‘Come on, we’re going ashore.’ He hurried the partially relieved Peggy up the succession of ladders to the deck. She would not be fully relieved so long as Josie was ill, but she was glad to be able to deal with that illness on dry land where there were doctors.

They were only just in time; the gangway was about to be swung up and inboard by a team of seamen working a derrick. David and Peggy trotted precariously down the gangway’s tilted length, and they had scarcely set foot on shore when it was lifted into the air by the derrick and a clattering winch. When they reached the gateway to the dock, David looked back and saw the
Blackhill
already clear of the landing stage and easing out into the stream, pushed by a fussing tug. The
Blackhill
’s siren blared farewell and emigrants lined her rails, waving handkerchiefs and hats. David bade his own farewell to her in silence and turned away. He told himself his dream of a new life was postponed, that was all. And he had no regrets. His daughter came first, and he smiled down at her. He told Peggy, ‘We’ll have to find a room for the night and then I’ll fetch a doctor to her.’

They found the room in a boarding house run by a Mrs Entwistle. David brought a doctor to see to Josie and he diagnosed a fever and administered some medicine. He smelt of whisky and oozed confidence: ‘She’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’ But he was right. When Josie awoke the next morning the fever was gone and she was full of life and questions: ‘Aren’t we going to America? When are we going? Will we go on a big ship like the other one?’ And: ‘Can I go out to play?’ Because she could see through the window the children playing hopscotch in the street.

Her delighted parents answered all her questions laughingly but refused the request in that last. Peggy said, ‘I think she ought to stay in today. If she is still all right tomorrow we can take her for a walk.’

David agreed and picked up his cap. ‘I’ll take a walk myself. I want to see about booking another passage.’ He would also try to regain the money paid for the passage on the
Blackhill
but doubted if he would get it. And the longer they stayed in the boarding house the more the rent of their room would eat into his small savings, so he wanted a passage sooner rather than later. As he left the house he met Herbert Entwistle, husband of the proprietress, a skinny, obsequious man. He occasionally worked as a clerk but usually lived off his wife whom he beat regularly. Now he smirked and stood aside deferentially. David, who had disliked him on sight, nodded stiffly and went on his way. Entwistle sneered at his back.