Mary's Child (46 page)

He stopped there and swallowed, then said, ‘I’m on my way to London – I have to transact some business there for the yard – and I decided to come in and make your acquaintance. I’m very glad I did.’

He left then, as quietly as he had come. Chrissie watched him cross to the station where a porter waited with his suitcase. He walked with the wide shoulders slumped and his pace was slow.

Arkley came to stand at her shoulder and said, ‘That’s old Ballantyne, isn’t it? By, he’s aged a lot. He took it hard when his son was killed but now the young lad has gone as well  . . .’ He shook his head and Chrissie turned away, hid in her office.

Old George sat in the corner of his first-class carriage, thinking of the girl he had just left. She gave him hope for the future. They would have made a fine pair, her and Jack. He snapped his newspaper open and spread it in front of him, hiding from the other two men who shared the carriage.

Early the next morning Chrissie told Arkley, ‘I’ll leave you to look after the place today. I expect I’ll be back around six this evening.’ She intended to fit new curtains throughout the hotel and there was a shop at Durham she thought might have what she wanted. She caught a train crammed with men and women on their way to work and spent the morning looking at materials, all of them excellent but none suitable for the Railway Hotel. She was restless and, for once, could not concentrate. She gave up and set out for home early and her train arrived back in the town station just before noon.

She found the world had gone mad.

Church bells rang, the hooters of factories and the yards blared, the sirens of the ships in the river
whoop!
whooped!
She stepped down on to the platform and into a crowd of men and women, singing and dancing. One man tried to pull her into the dance. She resisted, suspecting he was drunk, and demanded, ‘What’s going on?’

He shouted at her, laughing, ‘The war’s over! They’ve signed an armistice!’ The dancers whirled on past her. For a moment she could not believe it. Reports had filtered out of Germany of revolution and mutiny, and there were other reports that the Kaiser was seeking an armistice. But it was hard to accept that after four long and bloody years the war was over and the men would be coming home.

No, not all of them.

She forced her way through the crowds, out of the station and into the street. That, too, was crowded with noisy revellers. A tram had stopped, unable to make headway through them, and its woman driver had joined in. She stood on the platform, singing her heart out and beating time with her felt hat while the tears rolled down her cheeks. A motor car rolled slowly by with a dozen celebrators perched on or clinging to it. One of them was a soldier, cap on the back of his head and playing a trumpet.

It was followed by a jazz band, a score of men, women, boys and girls, sporting half a dozen different styles of dress, uniforms, blazers and dinner-jackets. They played ‘A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’. There was a procession of women and children, all waving flags. Gangs of boys scurried in and out between the walkers and dancers, hurling fireworks, and nobody cared.

Chrissie edged across the road towards the Railway Hotel, barged and jostled but not begrudging them their rejoicing, smiling herself now. As she stepped on to the pavement she fell up against a little group all dancing together and making an island in the crowd. She saw that one of them was, incredibly, Parsons, George Ballantyne’s ancient butler. Chrissie remembered him from her time at the Forthrops’; they had borrowed his services for occasional dinner parties. Now he jigged on stiff old legs, his arms around Mrs  Gubbins, the cook. Four maids whirled around in the arms of soldiers.

Parsons stopped when he collided with Chrissie, or because he had to. He gasped, ‘Miss—  ’ Then he crowed for breath.

Mrs Gubbins was younger and fitter. She shrieked, ‘Aye, aye, miss! Have a drink, bonny lass!’ The bottle of port she held out was half-empty.

Chrissie laughed but shook her head. ‘No, thanks. But you keep on celebrating.’

‘Aye, well, we’ve got good reason. What wi’ the war finishing and the boss coming home and giving us the day off. Chin-chin!’ And she upended the bottle to take a long swig.

Chrissie said, surprised, ‘He’s home early. He only went down to London yesterday morning.’

Parsons answered her before Mrs  Gubbins could lower the bottle. He puffed, ‘Not the auld man – young Jack. He walked in this morning just before we heard about the armistice. I said, “We thought you were deid.” And he said, “The bad penny always turns up.”’

Mrs Gubbins put in, ‘Aye, there he was, large as life. I’d niver seen him afore but I knew him from the photo the auld man keeps on the mantelpiece. Looks thinner about the face now, though. He sent us off and I said, “Aren’t you coming down,” and he said, “I’ll celebrate later.”’ She giggled. ‘He could celebrate wi’ me any time, that one!’ Then the crowd surged, she and her little band were carried away on the swell of it and Chrissie was left alone.

She walked on and into the hotel, oblivious to the uproar now. The foyer was empty and she found the receptionist and all the other staff working in the bars, trying to serve the customers who packed them to the doors. Arkley was in the public bar and shouted above the din, ‘That young Jack Ballantyne – he’s alive!’

Chrissie nodded. ‘I know.’ She was still trying to take it in.

Arkley shouted, ‘He came in earlier, looking for you! I told him you wouldn’t be back till tonight and he went off.’

Chrissie said, ‘That’s right.’

He blinked at her. ‘What?’

‘I will be back tonight.’

She left him staring and walked out of the hotel. She paused for a moment then, as always, her head turning to sweep the building with a practised eye, checking that the windows were clean, the curtains drawn back neatly, the brasswork on the front door glittered. But this time she saw it as hers. After nearly twenty-five years she had a place of her own as Mary Carter had urged on her. And a good job? Chrissie’s lips twitched. She thought that Mary Carter would have approved of the job, too – better than gutting herring on the quay.

She could not find a taxi and the tram service had ground to a halt, so she walked. It was more than a mile but she did not care. She remembered other times, ten years ago, when she had come this way with the horse and cart to sell fruit and vegetables to the big houses. She did not hurry but it seemed only minutes before she turned in at the gates and walked up the drive.

The tower rose monolithic above the roof of the house against the grey November sky. She remembered her first sight of it on a March evening nearly twenty years ago. Then all the tall windows had blazed with light. There were no lights in the tower nor the house below it this early, but the glow from a fire lit the long dining-room inside. She could see the great chandelier, its glass glinting redly from that glow amid the flickering shadows cast on the ceiling.

The front door was closed but Chrissie ignored that and walked on along the drive running down the side of the house to its rear, because this was the way she had always come. She did not knock at the kitchen door because she knew the cook and the others were not there to answer, but it opened at her touch. As she closed it behind her again she heard the music.

It came distantly but increased in volume as she moved slowly forward through the house. She recognised the music, ‘The Blue Danube’. It was the waltz she had listened to all those years ago, though she had been too young then to give it a name, as she and young Jack watched the dancers circling gracefully in the long room. Now it was not played by a string ensemble but came from a gramophone and the record was squeakily old. She did not care about that.

The door to the long room was open and she stepped inside and paused there. Jack Ballantyne stood tall and straight by the windows at the far end, his broad back turned to her. His jacket hung on the back of a chair and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows showing forearms thick with muscle. The gramophone with its horn atop stood in the middle of the gleaming table, along with a tray holding a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and several glasses. The record came to an end and Jack turned and saw her there.

He said, voice deep, ‘Hello.’

‘Hello, Jack.’ Her reply sounded as no more than a whisper in that big, high-ceilinged room.

He walked with long, slow strides to the gramophone and wound at its handle. ‘I was coming down to look for you later.’

‘Yes, I know. They told me.’ She started towards him, slowly and sure; there was no need to hurry now. ‘We were told you had been lost at sea.’

He looked down at her with the old, familiar grin. ‘Your Mr  Arkley told me about that rumour. In a way it was true, I was lost. The old ship was on her own, bound for Gibraltar, when she was torpedoed. That was the second time for me. It’s becoming a nasty habit but I’ll be able to give it up now. Anyway, she went down at night and two or three of us who were last to leave got separated from the others.’

Chrissie stopped with a yard between them. ‘And then?’

‘We saw a ship stop – just the lights of her – and presumably she picked up the rest of the crew. We hadn’t any flares or a light so we shouted like mad but nobody heard us. She didn’t hang around and I don’t blame her because that U-boat might still have been there. We saw her searching for a few minutes, but she came nowhere near us and then she steamed away. I suppose she put in at Gibraltar and I was reported lost then.’

He took a pace towards her, reached out to the bottle and poured into two glasses.

‘Anyway, we rowed about all night and come morning the only ship in sight was Spanish. She picked us up and I found she was bound for the Tyne! She berthed there this morning. She hadn’t any wireless and didn’t put in at any other port, so we couldn’t let anyone know we were alive.’

They stood only inches apart now. He lifted the glasses of the cold, dry champagne, gave her one and lifted his. ‘To us.’ And they drank it down. He released the catch on the old gramophone, lowered the arm on to the record and it began to play. He took her in his arms and they danced, circling around the room. They played and replayed the record again and again, drank and danced in the firelight until the bottle was empty and the music stopped.

Then he kissed her and carried her up the wide stairs to his bed.

Chapter 26

January 1919

The New Year came in bitterly cold. The yards were still working full blast but Jack Ballantyne had warned, ‘There’ll be a glut of shipping now and damned little work.’

Chrissie had answered, ‘There’ll always be ships built on the river.’ That was an article of faith in the town.

And Jack smiled, happy with her.

The messenger came to the Railway Hotel in the early dusk of a day when snow had spread a clean white sheet over the town. He was a boy of eight or nine, stunted and dirty faced, in just a patched jacket and short trousers. He had kicked off the worst of the snow before he came in but some of it still clung to his worn boots. He took off his cap, a man’s and too big for him, and stopped just inside the door, his face and knees blue with cold.

Chrissie, checking on bookings at reception, saw him and called, ‘What do you want, son?’

‘Message for Miss Carter, miss.’

‘I’m Miss Carter. What is it?’ And she walked round the desk towards him.

‘It’s from the doctor. He’s at Millie Taylor’s. He says can you go round ’cause she’s asking for you.’ He added solemnly, ‘I think she’s very bad, miss.’

Chrissie took him to her office, gave him some coppers and told him, ‘The kitchen’s through that door.’ She pointed. ‘Go in and tell the cook: “Miss Carter says will you feed me, please.”’

‘Ooh! Thank you, miss.’ He scurried off and Chrissie telephoned to Ballantyne’s yard, spoke briefly and urgently to Jack then grabbed her coat and ran. She caught a taxi outside the station just across the road from the hotel. It set her down at the front door of the house where Millie had her two rooms. The snow there was trodden into slush. Where it lay on roofs and window ledges it was speckled black with soot. The shipyards were close and their hammers were a throbbing background to life.

Inside Chrissie pushed through the usual swarm of children and a huddle of anxious women neighbours. She climbed the stairs and met the doctor on the landing. It was Michael Dickinson again. He knew her as the owner and manager of the Railway Hotel. She recognised him because he had lunched there occasionally.

Chrissie said, ‘You sent for me.’

‘Yes. But Millie asked for you.’ He glanced behind him to ensure the door to the bedroom was closed and lowered his voice. ‘It isn’t going well and she knows that.’

Chrissie started to take off her coat. ‘Can I see her? And would you like me to help?’ She added, ‘I’ve done it before.’ With Bessie, many a time.

Dickinson seized on the offer. ‘Go on in. I’d be grateful for your help.’

There was a fire in the bedroom that normally would not be heated. The coals banked in the grate glowed, hissed and cast leaping shadows in the gloom of that winter afternoon. The room was furnished simply. A chest of drawers stood in the window and one straight-backed chair by the bed. The floor was covered with cheap, bare linoleum. Millie lay small in the double bed. She smiled pallidly as Chrissie entered and took her hand. Millie’s was cold and damp with sweat. She said, ‘I told the doctor that me and Jimmy didn’t have any family and you’d promised if anything happened to me—’