The Jarrow Lass (36 page)

It wasn't right! Rose thought with disgust. But deep down she knew her resentment was fuelled by guilt that she had to rely on her thirteen-year-old to do the job that only an unlucky wife should endure: undressing a drunken husband and putting him to bed.

It wasn't long before Rose began to get complaints from the neighbours upstairs about the midnight ranting and banging about in their flat. The neighbours were a quiet couple who kept to themselves and never made a sound, except for the thud of boots on the stairs when the husband returned from working on the railways.

The woman was timid and would scuttle back across the yard they shared, with anxious looks towards Rose's back door. She had once been caught coming out of the toilet closet by John and he had made a bawdy remark about what she had been doing inside. Rose had overheard him and cringed with embarrassment. The woman had flushed puce and bolted for her back steps.

Now she would not speak when Rose bid her good morning. But eventually her husband spoke up.

‘You kept us awake again last night,' he complained to Rose one tea time. ‘The missus isn't well - she's bad with her nerves. And Mr McMullen's making her worse. We can't afford the doctor, you know.'

‘I'm sorry about your wife,' Rose said stiffly. ‘But it's only a bit of singing. Doesn't do any harm.'

‘Well, you might be able to put up with it, but we shouldn't have to. We had a decent family living down below before,' he muttered. ‘Your lot run wild.'

‘Don't you speak about my family like that,' Rose was indignant. ‘They're good bairns and me husband's allowed to let off steam a bit after a hard day's work.'

‘Hard day's drinking, more like,' he mumbled.

‘What did you say?' Rose demanded.

‘Nowt,' he said. ‘So are you going to keep the noise down or am I going to have to complain to the landlord?'

‘Complain to the Pope if you like!' Rose replied. ‘But don't come whining to me about your problems - I've enough of me own.'

He stomped up the stairs muttering about her, so she shouted after him, ‘And tell your missus to stick her head under the pillow next time! Nerves indeed. I'll swap my nerves for hers any day of the week.'

The trouble with the neighbours grumbled on for several months, but it was always Rose who bore the brunt. The railwayman never had the courage to confront John directly.

In some ways Rose was glad that her husband had a reputation as a hard man. It meant that people were wary of getting on the wrong side of the McMullens. It helped when the tick men came round for overdue payments for rent or gas or groceries. They gave Rose an extra week's leeway rather than run the risk of being booted down the street by her cantankerous husband. She saw it in their eyes: not just the fear of John but the glint of respect for her for being strong enough to put up with such a man. Not that she had any choice. So she hid her sensibilities behind a tough exterior and let people think her hard too.

Gone were the days when Rose would cross the street to avoid confrontation or a cross word. The shy McConnell girl was long gone. Even the respectable Rose Fawcett, who feared debt and the disapproval of neighbours, had vanished along the way. Rose McMullen faced the outside world with a stubborn jut of her chin and a bold look in her dark-ringed eyes. She challenged anyone to say they were better than her and usually nobody did.

But one day John came home from the pub to find her arguing in the dark hallway with the railwayman.

‘What's all this?' he demanded, suspicious at once.

‘Nothing, John,' Rose said quickly. She knew if he heard the complaints from their neighbour, he'd see red and go for the man.

‘Didn't look like nothing. You were rowing.' He lurched forward. ‘What you been doing with me wife?'

‘Don't be daft!' Rose laughed.

‘We've just been having words,' the neighbour admitted, retreating a step. But John lunged and grabbed his arm.

‘You've been carrying on with me missus behind me back, haven't you?'

‘No—'

‘You have, you dirty little bastard!' John yanked him off the stairs. The man tried to resist.

‘Get your hands off. There's no need—' he gabbled in fright.

‘You dare to touch her?' John bawled. With just one drink in his belly, he was livid.

‘He didn't.' Rose took hold of his arm, but John shook her off angrily and shoved her away.

‘No one touches my wife and makes a fool of me!' he thundered at the terrified neighbour. With one strong punch, the man was reeling backwards and crashing to the floor. John was on him, kicking him with his hobnailed boots and screaming oaths at him like a madman.

Rose had never seen him this angry with someone he hardly knew. She could not believe he would be so jealous over her and all because of a misunderstanding. She hovered anxiously, wondering what to do. Just then Mary ran in from the street with Jack at her heels. She froze in shock at the sight of her stepfather kicking and swearing at the writhing figure on the ground.

‘Get inside,' Rose commanded, seizing both children and pushing them to safety. ‘And stay there!' She slammed the door shut behind them.

Turning to John, she grabbed at him and tried to shove him away. ‘You'll kill him! That's enough, John! He's done nothing to me—'

‘Whore!' he shouted, glaring at her with wild eyes. Then, with the swiftness of lightning, he drew back his fist and punched her full in the face. Rose reeled back, stunned by pain. For a second she thought she had been blinded. She could see nothing. She covered her face as the agony spread.

The shouting stopped, but Rose could not look up. The bridge of her nose throbbed so bad, all she could do was clutch it and moan. She heard the railwayman groaning as he got to his feet and dragged himself back upstairs.

‘I never touched her,' he spat from the safety of his own door. ‘She's a foul-mouthed baggage - you deserve each other.'

Rose felt tears of humiliation sting her eyes. But she was damned if anyone was going to see her cry. Least of all this beast she was shackled to, who called her a whore and used his cowardly fists against her! And after she had defended John for months against their quarrelsome neighbours. How she despised him now!

‘Rose?' John stood over her. ‘Rose, are you all right?' He touched her on the shoulder, but she flinched away from him. ‘I'm sorry,' he whispered. ‘I don't know what came over me. That man - I just thought - I couldn't bear anyone touching you ...'

She looked at him coldly over her protective fingers. She could feel the warm blood from her nose trickling between them. She wanted to die of shame.

‘Leave me alone,' she said through clenched teeth.

He hesitated, then his tone changed. ‘Haway, let's get you inside,' he said, as if she were a child he had found fighting in the street. ‘You shouldn't have been arguing in the first place.'

Rose stumbled into the flat and made for the sink. She dowsed her face in water from a tin dish. It ran red in seconds.

‘What's wrong?' Mary asked.

Jack ran to her and pulled at her skirt. ‘Mammy? Let me see! Mammy's hurt.'

‘She's all right,' John snapped. ‘Stop fussin'. Mary, keep your brother away.' He steered Rose into the only chair they possessed and pulled the dirty cotton muffler from round his neck. ‘Here, hold this to your nose. It'll stop the bleedin'. Mary, make your mam a cup of tea.'

While Mary boiled some tea leaves in a pan and added some condensed milk and sugar, Jack climbed on to his mother's knee. She held him with her free hand, the other clamped over her pulsating nose. Just let John try to take the lad away from her! She could hardly bear to look at her husband. Mary came over with a cup of weak, sweet tea and stood beside her while she drank it.

Perhaps the sight of them huddled together around their mother, excluding him, was too much for John. Or maybe his thirst got the better of him. For moments later, he had straightened his cap again and was banging out the door before Rose's tea was finished.

When Kate came home, she was less easy to convince that Rose had merely slipped and hit her face on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. She noticed the tense look on her mother's face when her stepfather could be heard returning, and pondered at the silence that descended on them like hoarfrost.

Rose did not go out for two weeks. Her nose was broken and both eyes puffed up and blackened like a prizefighter's. She sent the girls out for any errands and answered the door to no one. She waited indoors, imprisoned by her shameful looks, as the swelling went down and the bruising turned from purple to yellowy-brown.

When she looked no more than jaundiced, she told the girls to pack up their belongings. She went out with Kate's last wages and paid a week's rent on a room in a tenement five streets away.

That evening she told John firmly, ‘I'm not stopping here after what happened. I'll not have them neighbours looking at me the way they do.'

He blustered for a while, telling her she was being foolish and not to mind the bloody neighbours. But during those two long weeks of hiding, Rose had had too much time to dwell on what people thought. Shatteringly, she had lost her confidence to brazen things out. When John had felled her so unexpectedly, her spirit had taken a blow too.

‘We'll start over - where folk don't know us,' she insisted quietly.

John shrugged and gave in. She knew he had no real choice in the matter if he wanted her to provide what meagre home comforts their stretched resources could manage. Rose's one trump card that she still held through all the agony of her humiliation was that John now needed her as much as she needed him.

She had daughters who could provide a little for her now, so he was no longer the sole breadwinner. But since his mother's death, she was his only home-maker. She and her children gave him the esteem of being a husband, a father, the head of a household; someone who could hold his head up in the street and look the priest in the eye. Well, Rose would choose where that household would be. It was a small triumph. But Rose still had the spirit to cling to small triumphs.

Chapter 41

1899

A time of wandering like tinkers . . .

How often had Rose thought of the gypsy's words over the past five years? They had moved house as many times in as many years. Sudden ‘flits' had become so routine that she had kept the household in a state of semi-preparation for flight. She kept pots and pans stored in a crate rather than put up shelves; their clothes were packed in boxes which saved on buying a wardrobe.

It was hard to remember the names of all the poky streets they had briefly inhabited. What was the point? They were like temporary camps before being evicted for non payment of rent. Or Rose would take it upon herself to move them when John's abuse of neighbours grew too much to bear.

But the last address she could recall: Frost Street in East Jarrow. Number 38. Because it was there that she heard of a flat for rent in the New Buildings. Rose had long hankered after a home in the New Buildings. They lay on the edge of East Jarrow like Naboth's Vineyard, a coveted group of tenements surrounded by open ground that could almost pass for countryside. Rose had watched them going up in the late 1880s as she toiled between Simonside and the puddling mill, and envied the chemical workers at St Bede's for whom they were being built.

They were clean, model homes amid fields that Charles Gidney's workers could return to, an easy half-mile walk away (and upwind from) his sulphurous-smelling factory. At some stage, the philanthropic owner had run out of money and the development had never been finished. But three rows of solid, large-roomed dwellings had been completed and it was now possible for other workers - dockers and railway hands - to rent them. Some were little short of grand. One terrace of self-contained houses had bay windows and flights of steps leading up to their front doors. Rose no longer dreamt of the impossible, but she secretly had her heart set on one of the more modest upstairs or downstairs ‘houses'.

She encouraged her daughters to work hard and please their employers so that they might be rewarded with better wages. Kate had stopped working for the butcher in Stanhope Road soon after the family's flight from Napier Street. The girl adapted wherever they went, grafting hard for a series of upper-working-class families. Then a year ago, her reputation for hard work and her willing, pleasant manner had landed her a job with the Pattersons, a well-to-do family in South Shields. Rose could see how happy her daughter was.

‘I'm to help look after the bairns during the holidays, an' all, Mam,' she told her mother eagerly. ‘He's a real gentleman, Mr Patterson. And the missus - you should see the clothes she wears. She gans all the way to Newcastle to shop!'

Rose was filled with gladness to hear Kate's excited chatter and to see her pretty face light up. For her middle daughter had just turned sixteen that summer and she was growing bonnier by the day. Somehow, despite the years of hunger and demanding physical labour, Kate had the soft, delicate skin and rounded figure of a lady. Her rich brown waves of hair framed her pale brow and oval face. Her blue eyes were startling under long brown lashes and arched eyebrows. Her full mouth was always animated in chatter or open wide with quick laughter.

Sarah was heftier and bigger-boned, but not unattractive with her wide-set eyes and easily blushing pink cheeks. At eighteen she was a good cook and a hard worker, and was employed as a cook's help in South Shields. Rose sometimes wondered if her daughters had ever begged at the houses in which they now worked. But they never said so. It was a time that they never ever talked about to her, nor she to them.

Work had picked up steadily in the shipyards while the McMullens had moved restlessly around the streets of Tyne Dock and East Jarrow. Palmer's were building ships again for the Navy: warships like Rainbow and Pegasus, and the battleships Resolution and Revenge. The docks seethed with activity and disputes. John grumbled at the number of stoppages over job demarcations and wages, for they were never on his behalf, an unskilled ageing labourer. But Rose was thankful he was working at all. On good days he made five shillings a shift. On good weeks he brought home twenty-five shillings, minus his beer money, and they would eat ham for tea on Saturday and brisket for Sunday dinner.

So when Mary turned twelve in the autumn of ‘99, Rose lost no time in finding her a job too. As luck would have it, a family who lived in one of the houses in Simonside Terrace, among the New Buildings, was in need of a general maid. They took one look at the slim, neatly dressed Mary and started her the next day. It was through Mary working at the Simpsons' that Rose got to hear about Number 6 William Black Street becoming vacant.

‘We can't afford it.' John was dismissive.

‘We can now that our Mary's working too,' Rose pointed out.

‘It's too far from the docks,' he objected.

‘You used to walk much further from Albion Street.'

‘I was younger and fitter then,' he snorted.

‘You're still a strong man,' she said, pandering to his vanity. ‘And it'll be grand for our Jack - get him away from the smoke and dust. You know how it lies on his chest.' What worried her more was that her son, only eight years old, was running around with rougher lads of twelve. There was no Mary now to keep him in check, and Kate and Sarah just indulged him when they were home. She was not going to have him grow up with the same wild ways as his father and uncles. But this she could not say to John.

‘You fuss too much about the lad,' her husband complained.

Rose hid her impatience. She was not going to lose this chance of a step up in society; she had scrimped and gone without for long enough.

‘Maybes I do,' she admitted. ‘But think how handy it would be for Mary, working just round the corner. She'd be back home to help all the sooner.' She slid John a look. He still liked to come home and have Mary run around him fetching things. Rose knew the girl only did so in the hope of some favour, but who could blame her? She saw him purse his lips, so she persisted. ‘Course, it may be too late - already spoken for, most likely. I know Maggie and Danny had their eye on it. It's a popular place to—'

‘Maggie wants it?' he interrupted. ‘And Danny Kennedy?'

‘Aye. They've been looking out for such a place since last winter.' Rose waited. One of John's many petty jealousies these days was of her sister and husband. He had always been far more envious of Mary's closeness to Maggie than she ever had. Rose did not mind when Mary chose to stay over at her aunt's house and play with her cousins. But John would berate Rose for allowing the girl to stay a night under someone else's roof.

‘We don't know what she gets up to when she's not here!'

More than that. Rose knew that John resented Danny for being more skilled than he and commanding a better wage. Besides, Danny had once been a good friend of William's, so he was no friend of John's.

‘Maybes we could look into it,' John conceded.

It was all the encouragement Rose needed. Within the month they had vacated Frost Street and moved into the three-roomed dwelling in William Black Street. Rose was content for the first time in years. They had their own dry closet which they did not have to share with strangers, and a water tap in the yard that dispensed with long trudges down muddy back lanes. There was a separate scullery in which they could wash in privacy, a bedroom for her four children and an alcove in the kitchen big enough to take a bed for her and John.

Mary was happy in her new job, keen to mimic the genteel airs of Mrs Simpson and study the ways of a more prosperous household. She took pleasure in dusting the china ornaments and polishing the brass door knobs and fingerplates. She liked to handle the cut-glass cruet set on the gleaming dining-room table and run her fingers over the smooth, cool marble mantelpiece. Best of all, on the pretext of laying the bedroom fires, Mary delighted in opening the cavernous mahogany wardrobe and breathing in the aromatic smell of mothballs. She wanted to touch the lace and brocades of Mrs Simpson's clothes and run her fingers through her fur stole, but never quite dared.

Within weeks, Jack's health had improved and Rose was happy to watch him through the dilapidated fence opposite their street, playing in the farmer's field and helping lift potatoes. As long as he kept away from the Slake, which lay below them, Rose did not worry.

Even John seemed less truculent, if not happier, than he had done for a long time. He ceased to complain about the tramp uphill from the docks, and even occupied his evenings raising chickens in the long back yard. He began to accumulate furniture again; large unfashionable pieces that he bought second- or third-hand in the town. Kate encouraged him. To Rose's dismay, her daughter had a similar weakness for ungainly, ostentatious furniture and would tell John if she heard of a house auction in Shields. They came back with solid, uncomfortable chairs and a table that was so big they had to saw the legs off to get it in the house. A dresser followed and a curious contraption that was a desk by day and pulled out into a bed at night.

‘Father says Lord Roberts most likely had one of these on his campaigns in India,' Kate announced as they demonstrated it with a flourish.

Rose looked at them as if they had gone mad. ‘What do we want with such a thing?'

Jack drew closer, intrigued. ‘Won't Lord Roberts be needing it in Africa?' The boy was developing a fascination for the far-away war against the Boers in South Africa that had flared up that autumn. He and John had named the chickens French and Buller after two of the generals.

‘It's not really his,' Kate laughed, and gave her brother an affectionate hug.

‘Leave the lad alone.' John looked annoyed and pulled his son away roughly. ‘You can sleep on this, our Jack. You're too old to be sharing a bed with your sisters.'

Jack cried, ‘Champion! I'll be like a soldier on me own camp bed.'

‘Good riddance, I say,' Mary declared. ‘It's like sleeping with an eel the way he wriggles in bed.'

Only Kate looked abashed. ‘He's no bother. Like a little warming pan, aren't you?' She hugged him again, but Jack saw his father's disapproving look and shook her off.

‘Gerroff, Kate man.'

Afterwards, Rose pondered the incident. Jack was coming up for nine and he was sprouting like a runner bean. John was right - he was no longer her baby. But why did her husband's remarks about Jack being too old to share a bed with his sisters trouble her? She thought he was making too much of a fuss as usual. The lad was, after all, still a young boy. There was nothing improper about him sleeping with his older sisters. Jack was far too young to be a nuisance to the girls in that respect. Yet John did not think so.

The more Rose thought about her husband's reaction, the more she realised that it was his attitude towards her daughters that gave her concern. She began to notice the way he looked at Sarah and Kate with knowing eyes that lingered too long on their maturing bodies. She caught him hovering at the back door when one of them was stripped to her underclothes, washing in the scullery.

John veered between telling them bawdy jokes and reprimanding them for coming in later than he thought they should from work or shopping.

‘Where've you been? Who've you been talking to? Have you been giving anyone the eye?'

He constantly questioned them as if he did not trust them. Or was it that he did not trust himself? Rose was filled with a new alarm. She had never seen John as a threat to her daughters in that respect. She had only been concerned with keeping his wandering hands off her at night. His brother Pat had worried her with his lascivious interest in Elizabeth when he had lived with them before, but John had always been circumspect. When in drink, he was quite capable of saying the most disgusting and lewd remarks about their neighbours and women in general, but it was all talk. He had never pestered the girls, and since their move to the New Buildings, John had managed to curb the worst of his drinking as well. Rose decided she was worrying about nothing.

Then, with the turn of the year and the advent of a new century, John grew morose and his drinking increased. It was an unsettling time - a time of change - yet no one was sure what form that change would take. The old queen was still on the throne, but the war with the Boers was going badly and the nation was gripped by the distant struggle. It seemed like a bad omen for the twentieth century.

On New Year's Eve, Rose took the family over to Maggie's, where some of the Kennedys were gathered, and had a small party. John got roaring drunk around the pubs of Tyne Dock and came home ranting about the end of the Empire. Rose's only consolation at his drunkenness was that he was too incapable of forcing himself on her in bed.

When news reached the country that Lord Roberts's only son had been killed in the conflict, John and Jack went around wearing black armbands. The hero of the Afghan campaigns was put in command. Larger numbers of militia and yeomanry were needed and young men flocked to the call.

‘I wish I could go,' Jack declared in frustration. John had taken him to watch the volunteers march through Shields on their way to the station and distant glory.

‘It's a dog's life.' John spat into the fire. ‘Half of them won't come back.'

‘But you were a soldier,' Jack said in admiration.