Lovers Meeting (20 page)

Josie smiled at him. ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’ She went on her way, thankful that her letter to Geoffrey Urquhart, asking if he could find work for Harry Varley, had borne fruit. She looked down at Charlotte skipping by her side. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’

That night was different. Archie Ruddock, one of Josie’s boarders, banged on the kitchen door close on eleven. When Annie opened it to him he shoved it wide, throwing her back against the wall, and staggered in. He was a big man, normally placid and none too bright, with a deep laugh that came easily. Now he was tangle-haired and wild-eyed, unsteady on his feet. The smell of rum hung around him. He had been in a fight and there was blood on his hands and his face.

Josie was sitting by the fire but now she stood up. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘I’m not drunk!’ Ruddock shouted back at her. ‘Jusht had a drink or two! Don’t tell me I’m drunk, woman!’ Annie, frightened, shrank back against the wall with her hands to her face as he started across the kitchen. Josie, trembling inside but trying to keep her mouth steady, stepped into his path. Ruddock pulled up short, hovering over her unsteadily. ‘Gerrout o’ my way!’

Josie had faced men like this when she had worked as a barmaid and held her ground despite his breath in her face. She met his gaze determinedly, spoke clearly and somehow without a tremor: ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the inside of a prison before but you will if you lay a finger on me.’

Ruddock squinted at her and repeated foolishly, ‘Prison?’

‘That’s right, prison! Now, there’s the door—’ Josie pointed and Ruddock half turned to look where she indicated. She seized the opportunity and his arm and helped him around, urged him towards the door. ‘Out you go and come back when you’re sober.’ She kept him shambling forward until he was outside, then she shut the door behind him and shot the bolt.

Annie came out of the corner where she had sheltered and asked, ‘Are you all right?’

Josie stood with her back to the door and tried to still the shaking of her hands. She said worriedly, ‘I wonder if
he
will be all right.’

Dougie Bickerstaffe answered that. He tapped at the door leading from the kitchen into the hall and said, ‘Thought I heard a rumpus, missus. Has summat been happening?’

Josie told him, with highly coloured interjections from Annie. Dougie listened and at the end shook his head. He said respectfully, ‘Naw, you don’t need to worry your head about Archie, missus. He’s used to hard lying and he’ll come back like the lost sheep. But I’ll sleep down here in one o’ these chairs and let him in when he knocks.’

Josie said, ‘I’ll wait up for him, too.’ She was still worried.

Josie and Dougie sat by the fire and he did most of the talking. Josie led him into it, glad to be able to sit quietly herself. He rambled on about the countries he had visited and a life at sea. It seemed to Josie like a succession of short stays in ports that were all the same with long intervals spent uncomfortably at sea. Yet Dougie appeared to delight in it.

But then, after a long silence when he had run out of stories, and sat gazing into the fire, he said, ‘I miss Iris.’ And he explained, ‘That’s my young lady, Iris Taylor. I met her in London, a place called Wapping. But I can’t go down South to live. Y’see, her father and stepmother, they’ve got no use for me, won’t have me in the house. If I married Iris and we lived down there they’d be after us – Iris and me – all the time.’ He sighed. ‘If we lived up here we’d be out o’ their road, but Iris is scared o’ leaving home and coming all the way up North. The truth is, she doesn’t trust me.’ Then he admitted, ‘And from what I know o’ some sailors, I don’t blame her.’

‘Are they a well-to-do family?’ Josie asked, thinking that this might be some middle-class couple reluctant to bestow their daughter on a common sailorman.

‘No fear,’ Dougie said scornfully. ‘Her stepmother takes nearly all o’ Iris’s wages. That’s why they don’t want her marrying anybody, never mind a sailor. Iris works in a greengrocer’s shop. That’s how I met her. I stopped to look at what was in the shop because I was brought up in that trade. My folk were hawkers and I’ll probably go back to it when I’m done with the sea.’

But then Archie tapped at the window of the kitchen, an hour after he had left, and they let him in, a colder, more sober man. Josie sat him in a chair by the fire, then fetched a bowl of water and a cloth and cleaned his face. Interrogated by Dougie, Archie recalled that somebody had punched him on the nose and he had replied in kind. Josie sent him off to bed, humble and cleaner.

The next morning Archie came to see her in the kitchen with the others crowding behind him. ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry, missus. About last night, I mean. It won’t happen again.’

‘Very well.’ Josie eyed him severely. ‘You know my rules and you’ve got to stick to them.’

‘Aye, missus,’ Archie replied, and the others joined in.

Later Dougie Bickerstaffe confided to Josie, ‘I heard how you dressed him down when you threw him out. I was on my way down here. You got hold of him proper and stood no nonsense. I told ’em all: the missus’ll have you in a cell quick as you like if you cross her.’

Josie thought that this was not what she had said or meant, but decided that if it had made the right impression she would let it be.

But she had not had the last of her problems with drink.

It was just two weeks later, as she trudged home, that Josie heard the slurred and discordant singing: ‘The signal was made – For the Grand Fleet to an-chor …’ She had been to the market in the east end on the south side of the river and returned to Monkwearmouth by the ferry. Charlotte had been left in Annie’s care, so Josie had no worries on her account. But the day had been long, it was dark, raining and there was a cold wind coming in off the sea. Her shopping basket was heavy and she wanted to be home, toasting herself before a warm fire.

Josie had become increasingly aware that she still needed more help. Annie was willing and did a full day’s work but there were all manner of jobs that the two of them did not have time for. There was the loose shutter, washing out the back yard regularly, and tending the two walled gardens outside the sitting rooms.

‘… for the Grand Fleet to mo-or.’ The singer tried to hold a note, wavering. Josie shifted the basket from one arm to the other. Food for the eleven adults in the house – nine of them hungry sailors – made for a heavy burden. She wished, yearningly, hopelessly, for someone to relieve her of the load.

The singing went on, a woman’s wailing, hoarse and erratic. Josie had missed the middle of the chorus that had descended into a mumble, but now the words came stronger and clear again, if wavering still: ‘… On a bright sandy bot-tom, From Ushant to Scilly is—’ But then the singing was cut short with a yell and a splash. Josie stopped in her tracks, for a moment uncertain. Had the singing come from behind her or ahead? She decided it had been ahead of her and now started to run – but carefully. The gaslights were some distance apart on this stretch of the riverbank and she was running in darkness. She could make out the edge of the quay but the tide was high so that the surface of the river lay only five or six feet lower than the quay. It would be easy, in that treacherous gloom, to wander off into the black water.

She was listening for a cry for help but heard none. Then a flicker of movement caught her eye, a flash of phosphorescence close under the quay and just a few yards ahead. Josie halted when she came abreast of it and made out something just below the surface which thrashed wildly at the water above it. An arm? She realised she still carried the basket, set it down and shrieked, ‘Help!
Help
!’ She did not receive an answer and knelt on the edge of the quay, searching for the body she had seen. For a moment there was nothing, then it appeared again, a hand and arm and then a head. It coughed and gurgled then sank again. And now it had drifted on the current another two or three yards downstream.

Josie jumped to her feet and tried to anticipate the drift by running along the bank before she knelt again. She could swim but had not done so for years, nor had she ever tried to save someone from drowning. She knew she could not dive in to make a rescue, but between the massive vertical piles of the quay there were equally massive timber baulks stretching horizontally. One lay a yard below her with the river lapping on to it, coating it with a thin film of water. Josie let herself down on to it, watching where she put her hands and feet, but also for the body. She shouted again, ‘
Help
!’ Still there was no answer – but there came the body.

It had not drifted as far as she had expected. She reached out for it but it was still behind her – and further out. Josie shuffled desperately, precariously back along the timber as the hand and then the head appeared, coughing and gasping. She banged her knee on something painfully hard, then her hand was on it as she moved over it and she found it was a steel dog, like a staple, hammered into the timber for some reason. Mooring? But she did not care why it was there. She locked her fingers around its reassuring solidity and leaned out, far out, to seize the hand as it sank below the surface once more.

Josie hauled in and the body came easily. It bumped against the timber by her side and now the head lifted above the surface again. Josie saw long hair straggling wetly, but the face turned up to her was blank, the eyes closed and Josie knew she had to get the woman out of the river. She tried to lift her but could not. Holding her alongside was easy enough with the river supporting her, but lifting her out was another matter. Nor could she leave her to go for help. The pair of them were prisoners here, and Josie realised that as the tide went out and the level of the river fell, so the weight of the woman would increase. She would have to let her go.

Then she heard an irregular tread on the quay. She called, ‘Help! I’ve got a drowning woman here!’ The tread quickened, though still with a faltering rhythm, and a man appeared out of the night, trotting. He carried a pack slung over one shoulder, but now he shed this. He climbed down on to the timber to face Josie then reached out and grabbed the woman’s other arm. Josie said breathlessly, ‘If we lift her together!’

He replied, ‘Aye. One, two,
three
!’ He was strong. The woman came out of the river like a cork from a bottle, the man getting his other hand under her legs as she came out and hoisting her up and on to the quay. Then he lowered a hand to help Josie up off the timber to join him. As she caught her breath, he turned the woman face down, linked his hands around her middle and lifted. The woman retched and vomited water, coughed and gasped.

The man growled at her, ‘Now, Kitty, how’re ye feelin’?’

She coughed again, spat and moaned, ‘Give ower. Are ye trying to murder me?’

The man turned her and set her so she sat with her back against his leg. He looked at Josie. ‘We’ll have to get her home.’

Kitty mumbled, ‘I’m not goin’ back there. To hell with him.’

Josie whispered, ‘You know who she is? Where she lives?’ She was warm from her exertions but the woman was sitting in the cold wind in soaking-wet clothes.

‘Aye. It’s auld Kitty Duggan.’ He glanced down at her. ‘I don’t know where she lives, but it sounds as if she won’t go there, anyway.’

Kitty was old but she had sharp ears. ‘I’ve told ye: I’m not goin’ back there. He’s a bad bugger.’ Her teeth chattered and now she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

The man muttered, ‘She’ll have pneumonia if she stays out here.’

Josie pulled off her coat and wrapped it around the old woman. She looked over Kitty’s head to ask the man, ‘I don’t live far away. Will you help me get her there – Mr …?’

‘Dan Elkington. Aye, I’ll give you a lift with her.’ He turned and hoisted the pack he had laid down and slung it on to his shoulder again. Josie retrieved her basket and they lifted Kitty between them, her arms around their shoulders. With her legs under her she could stand, though unsteadily, and they half carried her back to the Langley house. The front door was nearer the river so Josie used her key to let them in and they took Kitty through the hall to the kitchen. Annie was working at the table, kneading dough for bread with Charlotte by her side.

‘Glory be to God!’ Annie gaped at them in shocked surprise. ‘What’s happened?’

Josie explained: ‘This is Kitty Duggan. She fell in the river.’ She lowered Kitty into a chair by the fire. The old woman looked to be in her seventies, with no flesh on her bones, a leathery skin and pale blue eyes that watered now. Her hair was grey and tangled, her hands when she held them out to the fire were blue with cold and on arms thin as sticks. Josie took the cold hands, chafed them and asked Annie, ‘Will you run upstairs and get a nightdress out of my drawer and bring it down with my dressing gown?’

Annie dusted flour from her hands and hurried off. Dan Elkington cleared his throat and said, ‘Well, missus, if you’re all right now, I’ll get away.’

Josie had not looked at him closely before. Now she did – and saw his eyes slide to the pans on the hob. He was in his thirties, not tall nor broad in the shoulder but deep-chested and, despite his limp because of one leg slightly bent, he stood ramrod straight. His clothes were old but neatly patched and he was clean shaven with a wide moustache. Josie said quickly, ‘Thank you very much, Mr Elkington. But we’ll be eating supper shortly. Will you stay and have a bite? Please,’ she urged, ‘I couldn’t have managed without you.’

‘Well, that’s good o’ you, missus, if you’re sure you can spare it …’

‘I’m sure.’ Josie crouched in front of Kitty Duggan as Annie returned. ‘Kitty, I’ve got some things for you to put on while we dry your clothes.’

Kitty snapped, ‘I’m all right as I am.’

Josie reasoned with her, ‘You’ll catch a chill if you don’t get those wet clothes off.’

‘Bugger that.’ Kitty sniffed. ‘All I need is a drink.’

‘Brandy?’ Josie asked.

‘Aye.’ Kitty’s answer came quickly. ‘That’ll do fine.’

‘When you’ve changed – in there,’ and Josie pointed to the scullery. She was not going to pour brandy down on to an empty stomach – and she had witnessed the emptying of Kitty’s.