The Harbour Girl (13 page)

He turned his head to look at her. ‘I’m not angry,’ he said, but she knew that he was for his voice was bitter. ‘I’m – I’m – devastated. Hurt,’ he added, ‘and – I want to kick something – or myself, for not telling you before how I felt, rather than thinking that you always knew.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Her voice broke as she spoke, for she didn’t like to see him like this, so sad and unhappy. ‘But even if I had …’ She stopped, knowing it was unfair to tell him how she had felt about Harry.

‘You still wouldn’t have wanted me, not after you met
him
, with his sweet talking and persuasive ways!’

And as if he had guessed after all and in a totally uncharacteristic manner, he grabbed at her shawl, revealing her swelling belly. His mouth turned down and his eyes were moist, whether with tears or anger she couldn’t tell.

‘You’re pregnant,’ he said accusingly. ‘Did you go with him willingly or were you forced?’

‘I wasn’t forced, Ethan.’

He turned on his heel and walked away, down towards the boatyard, and lost himself among the crowd of boatmen, fishermen and net braiders.

She cried then; cried for the loss of a friend, for the life she was leaving behind and with anxiety over the one that was to come.

She hadn’t much to take with her, only a few clothes, two shawls and her spare pair of boots, but her mother had found the money from somewhere – she wouldn’t say how or where – to buy her a blue striped skirt and matching bodice with long sleeves. Jeannie used her final week’s money to buy a blue bonnet trimmed with white lace.

‘I might never wear these again, Ma,’ she said guiltily. ‘I’m being reckless.’

‘Never mind about that,’ her mother said, her voice choking. ‘We want it to be a day to remember and I don’t want anyone to think we can’t afford a wedding dress for my only daughter.’

Jeannie put her arms round her mother and hugged her. ‘Tom’s hardly spoken to me since you told him,’ she said. ‘Do you think he’ll come?’

‘He’ll come,’ Mary said. ‘He’s embarrassed, that’s all. You’re his baby sister, don’t forget.’

Jeannie had never thought of Tom in that way. She had always felt that she was a nuisance to him when they were younger. She was always sent to fetch him back from wherever he was, interrupting his games when he was wanted at home.

On the day, the three of them caught the early train to Hull. Tom had been allowed a day off work and wore his only suit with a clean white shirt which his mother had starched so much that the high collar cut into his neck and he had to turn it over. He carried a bowler hat that had been his father’s and his mother had kept. Mary wore her best skirt and fitted jacket with a paisley shawl, and a straw hat trimmed with a herring gull feather which she had dipped into squeezed blackberry juice so that it had become a rich vibrant purple.

A young man, who Jeannie thought looked vaguely familiar, met them as they came off the platform.

‘Are you Jeannie?’ he said. ‘I’m Harry’s mate, Billy Norman. I’m his best man.’

Jeannie recalled then that she had seen him at Scarborough station the first time she had met Harry. She nodded and gave a nervous smile.

‘This is my mother and my brother Tom,’ she said, and was glad that Tom was there, so tall now and broad.

‘I’m to look after you till ’wedding,’ he said. ‘Harry’s nan said it were bad luck for ’groom to see ’bride afore ’wedding.’

‘What nonsense,’ Jeannie heard her mother say beneath her breath. But Mary added in a louder voice, ‘So what are we to do until eleven o’clock? We can’t stand here all morning.’

‘There’s a pub near St Barnabas’s church. We can wait there,’ Billy said. ‘That’s where we’re going after. They’re putting on some victuals for us.’

‘We’re not going to wait in any pub,’ Mary said decisively. ‘My daughter isn’t in the habit of frequenting alehouses. How far is it to the church?’

‘Not that far.’ Billy Norman’s face dropped, and they all guessed that he had been looking forward to a pre-nuptial drink. ‘Twenty minutes, mebbe.’

‘Then we’ll walk slowly,’ Mary said. ‘It’s a nice day and you can tell us about Hull and the fishing and the church where they’re to be married.’

Billy Norman gazed at her in astonishment. Beneath his hat his hair was greased for the occasion and he was wearing what looked like his Sunday suit; beneath his jacket he sported a bright waistcoat.

‘It’s ’fishermen’s church,’ he said. ‘St Barnabas. That’s where all ’fisher folk get married or go when they die.’

‘Good,’ said Mary positively. ‘Well chosen, seeing as we’re all fisher folk.’

‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘It’ll be Nan Carr that’s chosen it, I reckon. She’s ’one who says what’s to be done in that household.’

Jeannie glanced at her mother. Tom and Billy were walking in front of them and they could hear Tom asking about the ships in Hull. They heard Billy reply that many of them were built in Beverley and Hessle.

‘Don’t be browbeaten by anybody,’ Mary told Jeannie. ‘Stand up for what you believe in. Be your own self.’

‘I will, Ma.’ Jeannie’s eyes gleamed. The sun was shining and it was a warm pleasant autumn day and she suddenly felt a lurch of happiness. She was going to marry Harry and she was going to have his child. She’d be patient with his grandmother and try to be accommodating towards her. It was her house, after all, and she was inviting a stranger to come and live with her.

Granny Marshall had only been told that Jeannie was to be married to a fisherman from Hull and was going to live in that town, and she had replied that the girl was going back to her family roots. Fiona had written with her good wishes and sent her a fine grey wool shawl which she was wearing now, draped over her bodice.

It was going to be all right. Her only regret was Ethan’s misery, for Tom had told her that he’d said he would never look at another woman. But I can’t help him, she thought. There’s nothing I can do. I’m going to marry Harry, who loves me as much as I love him. I know it’s so, because he told me and Ethan never did. Not until it was too late.

They walked slowly up Hessle Road and saw that some of the houses were in a dilapidated state of repair; they gazed at the long rows of shops: butchers, bakers, fishmongers, cobblers and a post office. There were several churches and many public houses and alehouses. Horse trams trundled along picking people up and dropping them off, which was a good thing, Jeannie thought, as it was a very long road.

It was just striking eleven o’clock as they arrived at the church of St Barnabas which was situated at the junction of a wide avenue. Waiting at the door were several people, including Harry’s grandmother and Harry himself. Jeannie took a deep breath. Here then, like it or not, for better or for worse, was the start of her new life.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE CEREMONY WAS short and soon over, but as Jeannie repeated her vows she lifted her eyes to see the sun shining through the stained-glass windows of the chancel, filling the church with rainbow colours.

‘Happy the bride the sun shines on,’ her mother had whispered to her before she took Tom’s arm to walk down the aisle, and as she stood by Harry’s side she did feel very happy.

But the rain began as they left the Wassand Arms after their wedding breakfast. Nan Carr had arranged a good spread of beef and chicken and roast potatoes, with apple pie to follow and copious jugs of tea, and ale for the men, to wash it all down, but when they emerged from the public house they all had to run their respective ways to avoid getting soaked. Mary and Tom took a horse cab to the railway station, while Jeannie, Harry – whose best man had kept him well supplied with ale – Nan, and two young women, one of whom turned out to be Harry’s sister, went back to Nan’s house.

Mary had hugged Jeannie before they left and Tom had pecked her cheek and whispered, ‘Let me know if there’s any sort of trouble,’ but her mother had said, ‘I think it’ll be all right, Jeannie, and you’ll have a ready-made friend in your sister-in-law.’

Jeannie had doubted that, although she didn’t say so, for Harry’s sister Rosie had eyed her up and down on meeting her and then murmured something to her friend, who had lowered her eyes and pressed her lips together in a smile.

Rosie would have been pretty, Jeannie reflected, with her fair hair and blue eyes, if it were not for her sulky mouth, but as for her friend Connie Turnby, Jeannie had never seen such a plain girl, with her bony face and sharp protruding chin above a long thin neck. Her only redeeming features were her large brown eyes and long lashes.

Nan Carr was dressed in black and Jeannie wondered if it was because she considered the marriage a cause for mourning rather than celebration, but then she checked herself as she thought that the old lady was probably wearing her best and didn’t feel the need or couldn’t afford to buy something new.

Harry offered Jeannie his arm as they walked back and gave her a sideways glance. He was well oiled, she realized as he turned to the friends who had been present at the wedding. ‘Are you coming back?’ he slurred. ‘We’ll get some jugs in.’

‘No you won’t,’ Nan called sharply. She was walking in front, striding out in her black boots, umbrella held high. ‘Party’s over,’ she added. ‘They’ve had their fill at my expense.’

‘Aw, Nan!’ Harry said. ‘It’s my wedding day!’ He turned to Jeannie and gave her a wet kiss. He had aimed for her mouth, but she moved her head to receive it on the cheek.

‘Aye, well, happen it is,’ Nan said brusquely. ‘But now we get back to normal and we need to talk and I’m not doing that wi’ your drunken pals listening in.’

Jeannie doubted whether even if his friends listened to the conversation they would remember much of it the next day. They accepted what Nan said, however, and all of them, with the exception of Billy, turned about at the top of Walcott Street and staggered back in the direction of the pub. Billy would have gone with them but for Harry’s grabbing his arm to stop him. Harry tapped the side of his nose and said in a loud whisper, ‘You’ll be all right, Billy. She don’t mind you.’

They walked in procession back to the terrace and Harry responded with a wave as people called out, ‘Good luck, Harry.’ Some of them came over to meet Jeannie, or rather, she thought, to take a look at her.

‘Thish is my wife.’ Harry grinned. ‘Ain’t she a bonny lass?’

And they nodded and looked her up and down and agreed that she was.

When they arrived back at the house and crowded into the small kitchen Nan immediately swung the kettle over the fire.

‘Can’t we have a fire in ’front room, Nan?’ Rosie moaned. ‘There’s too many of us for in here.’

‘Aye, if you fetch a bucket o’ coal and mek it,’ Nan snapped. ‘I’m not made o’ brass, you know!’

‘It’s supposed to be a special day,’ Rosie retaliated, and then, glancing at Jeannie, said, ‘Have you got money for coal, Harry?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ He pulled out his empty trouser pockets. ‘Nowt.’

Rosie ran her tongue over her teeth and looked again at Jeannie. ‘Nobody else got any?’

Jeannie said nothing. She had a little money, which her mother had given her, but she would use that for necessities and not for warming the toes of someone she didn’t know who had been barely civil to her.

‘Do you live here?’ she asked Rosie. She was conscious that she knew nothing about Harry’s relations, for he had never mentioned them.

Rosie stared at her. ‘No. I live wi’ me Auntie Dot. Didn’t you see her at ’church?’

Jeannie shrugged. ‘I might have done, but I wouldn’t have known who she was.’

‘She’s me daughter, Harry’s da’s sister,’ Nan broke in as she took cups and saucers out of a wall cupboard. ‘She took Rosie in and I took Harry when their ma left ’em an’ jiggered off wi’ a foreigner when Harry was ten. She took ’two youngest bairns wi’ her.’

‘Oh!’ Jeannie said. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Did you tell her nowt?’ Nan asked Harry, who had taken the easy chair and lay sprawled in front of the fire.

He shook his head. ‘Not much.’ He grinned. ‘There weren’t any time for history. I had a train to catch.’

Jeannie blushed to her hair roots and felt that everyone was looking at her. Billy, who was standing by the window, snorted a laugh which he turned into a cough.

‘Get ’milk jug out of ’scullery,’ Nan said to Rosie. ‘Don’t stand there doing nowt. And there’s some sweet biscuits in ’cupboard. Fetch ’em out – and put ’em on a plate,’ she bellowed after her. ‘Don’t want folk thinking we’ve no manners,’ she muttered, and Jeannie realized that, in spite of everything, Nan Carr was trying to do her best in a situation not of her choosing.

‘Can I do anything?’ she offered. ‘Shall I make the tea?’

‘Aye, you can. ’Kettle’s steaming.’

‘Where do you keep the tea?’ she asked, and picked up a teapot from the side of the range.

‘Don’t use that,’ Nan said. ‘Use ’bigger one that’s in ’scullery. Rosie’ll show you. Tea’s in yon caddy.’ She nodded towards the shelf over the range. ‘Be sparin’ wi’ it.’

The tea leaves were like dust, Jeannie thought. It was the cheapest tea possible, and she surmised that life and money were probably a struggle for the old lady.

‘I don’t want tea,’ Harry said. ‘Fetch us a jug o’ ale, Rosie.’ He crossed his legs, taking up all the space in front of the fire.