Believing in tomorrow, p.5
Believing in Tomorrow, page 5
‘I dunno but I’m going to find out. One thing’s for sure, the bairn’s staying put for the time being. She’s not out of the woods yet, not by a long chalk. She’s skin an’ bone for one thing, and the whipping she took along with the fever and the bang on the head, it’s a wonder she’s pulled through.’
‘Aye, well, that’s down to your nursing, lass.’ Jed smiled at his wife. He’d been their Harry’s age – eighteen – when he’d first clapped eyes on her down on the quay one evening, he reflected. Enid’s people had been fisher folk from across the water in South Shields but after some bother at home she’d come with some pals to the north side to work in the pickling factory. Her mam had been widowed the year before and had just got wed again to a bloke Enid couldn’t stand. She’d only been fifteen but was already a woman, tall and well built with a ready smile and laughing eyes. He’d courted her and married her on her sixteenth birthday and it was the best day’s work he’d ever done. She was the best of women and had borne him five bairns, all of whom had survived unlike most babies round these parts. The eldest two girls had married local fishermen so there were just his lads at home, and already Harry was courting a lass who worked in the salt-pans. Life never stood still, that was for sure.
Glancing at the sleeping child, Jed said quietly, ‘I dare say we’ll get the full story soon enough, poor little mite.’ He’d nearly tripped over the bairn the night he’d come across her lying on the cobbles, a scrap of nothing. He had carried her back to their two-up, two-down terraced house in Beacon Street, fearing he’d be presenting Enid with a corpse by the time he reached home. Remembering this, he added, ‘She looks a darn sight better than she did, love. Thanks be to God.’
Enid nodded. What the child had said about her father and the mention of this Kitty had disturbed her greatly.
Seeing his wife’s expression, Jed put his hand over hers for a moment. ‘Don’t fret, we’ll sort it, all right? If we need to keep the bairn here for a while, that’s what we’ll do. Once she can be moved, Harry can go back in with Rory and Matt and the littl’un can have that room.’
Harry grimaced but said nothing. Before his sisters had left home they’d occupied the other bedroom that he was in now, and he’d enjoyed the luxury of his own room the last three years. His parents slept downstairs in the front room. Still, the pallet bed they’d made up in the kitchen close to the warmth of the range for the bairn had made the already overcrowded room more jam-packed, so he couldn’t very well object to topping and tailing with his brothers again.
‘Do you think she’ll pull through, Mam?’ It was Matthew, the youngest lad at thirteen, who spoke. Like Harry and Rory he was good-looking in a rough-hewn way and as yet the life of a fisherman hadn’t aged him prematurely. In their community boys went to sea when they were tall and big enough, not old enough, and like his brothers he had had little schooling. Not that this worried him. He had joined his father and siblings on their boat when he was ten years old and fishing was in his blood, like all the Mallard menfolk. He loved the sea as much as he feared it. The minute their craft left the protective banks of the Tyne and he felt the growing swell he seemed to come truly alive. The swell was an early warning that the boat was heading into one of the world’s harshest seas with very little between man and the elements. He knew they might fish all day and return with barely half a boxful, or that a lost or ripped net could wipe out more than a day’s hard labour and income, but on the good days, when the North Sea was kind and they returned to harbour with a hefty haul, the satisfaction was indescribable.
Their boat, the Seahorse, was a large coble ideal for the north-east coast. Clinker-built from larch on oak, the distinctive shape of the boat – flat-bottomed and high-bowed – meant it allowed launching from and landing upon shallow, sandy beaches, an advantage in an area where the wide bays and inlets provided little shelter from stormy weather. Powered by a lug sail and long oars, the Seahorse, like all cobles, needed an experienced skipper in choppy seas, but Jed, like his father and grandfather before him, felt more at home on the water than on land, as did his three sons. That wasn’t to say that the nasty boils caused by salt water finding its way inside boots and oilskins weren’t a trial, along with coping with a constant heavy swell and often driving rain.
Enid smiled at Matthew. If her life had depended on it she would never have admitted to having a favourite among her brood, but from the first her youngest had held her heart in a way the others hadn’t. There was something – a deep kindness and innate gentleness – about the lad, and her own father had been the same. That had made it all the more difficult after he had died, when her mother had replaced him with a man whom she had considered a bully and a drunkard. Now she said, ‘Do I think the bairn’ll get better? I hope so but it’ll be no thanks to the brute who flayed her to within an inch of her life.’
‘You wouldn’t take her back home? Back to him?’
Enid didn’t answer this directly. What she did say was, ‘We don’t know where her home is yet. Anyway, like your da said, we need to get the full story first. Don’t worry your head about it, son. All right?’
Matthew nodded but he wasn’t happy. He and his brothers had agreed that they’d like five minutes alone with the individual who’d inflicted such injuries on a bairn, and a little lassie at that. He knew fishermen had a reputation for being hard and rough, and they were, but no man he knew would flay a small child. A cuff round the ear or a smacked backside was one thing, but that . . .
‘It’s blowing itself out and not afore time.’ Jed inclined his head towards the window where the lashing rain had lessened in the last hour. ‘We’ll be out the morrer.’
The three lads nodded. They needed to get out on the water. No fishing meant no income and it had been three days now. Their mother was a dab hand at making a penny stretch to two but even she couldn’t work miracles. There had been the occasional dirty British coaster with salt-caked smoke stacks going by but none of the local fishermen had been able to venture out to sea. They had a small smokehouse next to the privy in the yard and the last of the split herrings Enid had hung there had been eaten. They needed to catch enough both to sell and to build up their reserves for winter. Fresh sprats and herrings were plentiful in the autumn, likewise the cod that their mother split, salted and hung outside on a line to dry. Fortunately they’d had a good summer and there was a full sack of potatoes and turnips stored in the front room at the end of their parents’ bed, along with another containing flour. They’d often be hand to mouth in the winter when the fiercest storms hit.
‘I’ll make another pot of tea.’
As Enid spoke, Harry stood up. ‘Not for me, Mam. I’m off to see Alice for an hour or two.’
‘In this weather?’
‘Like Da said, it’s blowing itself out.’
Enid shook her head but said nothing more. Harry had been courting strong for over eighteen months and she didn’t doubt he’d be asking Alice to marry him before long. And she didn’t mind the girl herself – Alice was a strong, sturdy lass with wide child-bearing hips – but her family were a different matter. They lived near Low Dock and Harry had told her the two-roomed dwelling was filthy. It was well known the lass’s mother had a liking for gin and her tribe of unwashed ragamuffins ran around with their backsides hanging out. To be fair, though, Alice was always clean and presentable and the lass wasn’t responsible for her family. The father was a sailor and gone for long periods at a time but she couldn’t blame him for that; why would he want to be at home? Especially if the rumours about Alice’s mother ‘obliging’ gentlemen callers were true.
As Harry left the house a minute or two later Enid sighed heavily, and Jed, reading her mind as he often did, said softly, ‘He’ll go his own road, lass.’
‘I know, I know.’ And it was only right, she supposed. She sighed again.
Jed glanced over at the sleeping form of the child in the alcove. It’d do Enid good to have a little lassie about the house, he thought. The bairn needed mothering, that much was obvious, and she’d be company for Enid when he and the lads were out at sea. And if Molly stayed, and it was only an if, she could help Enid with the household chores and gutting and cleaning the fish and other jobs when they had a catch. Harry had told him on the quiet that he intended to be married before too much longer, and he knew Enid would take it hard. She’d missed their daughters when they had got wed and no doubt the lads would go one by one over the next years. It was only natural. The bairn would cushion the blow and it was clear his wife had taken to her. But he was jumping the gun here, he cautioned himself in the next moment. First they were duty bound to find out the whys and wherefores of what had happened to the bairn. Littl’uns were great ones for embroidering the truth, although the marks on her body couldn’t lie, he told himself soberly.
Now it was Jed who sighed. He just hoped he hadn’t cast a spanner in the works bringing the child home to Enid like he had, because something told him his wife was already overly fond of the lass. Still, what will be, will be. His mam, God rest her soul, had been a great one for saying that but it was true, sure enough. Worrying and whittling couldn’t change anything.
He watched as Enid got up and checked the little girl, pulling the covers up further over the small figure and stroking strands of sandy-gold hair from her forehead. Matthew leaned across the table, speaking in a low voice as he murmured, ‘You wouldn’t send her back to them as did that, would you, Da? Mam don’t want to, I can tell.’
Like his wife had said, so Jed now repeated, ‘We don’t know where her home is, lad. Let’s just take it a day at a time for now, eh?’
And with that Matthew had to be content.
Chapter Five
It was some weeks later. Quite a lot had happened in the intervening period and Molly was now established in a bedroom of her own with the knowledge that she wasn’t going to be sent back to the hamlet. She’d told Enid and Jed the full story, including her suspicions about her sister’s demise, and the couple had agreed that Josiah McKenzie was an evil so-an’-so and the child was well rid of both her parents. Molly hadn’t been able to tell them the location of the hamlet. All she knew was that she had walked for days before she had reached North Shields and that her home was in the countryside. Due to the fever and her weakness most of the journey had become a blur and there was no way she could retrace her steps. Enid and Jed had been satisfied the child was telling the truth, and Enid in particular was relieved.
‘The decision of whether she stays or goes is out of our hands,’ she’d told Jed firmly. ‘Unless her da comes looking for her there’s no way we can return her to them.’
‘And what if he should turn up?’
‘There’s still no way she’s going back. A mention of her sister should be enough to put the wind up the beggar and send him packing. If not, then you and the lads might have to give him a taste of what he gave the bairn.’
Jed had stared at his wife in astonishment. He and the lads had been thinking along the same lines, but for his normally easy-going and law-abiding wife to suggest such a thing had shocked him. But then she loved the bairn like one of theirs, he had told himself in the next moment, and she could be a tigress where her children were concerned. And so Harry had joined his brothers in the lads’ bedroom and Molly had been told she was staying with them for good – if that was what she wanted? The expression on the little girl’s face had been answer enough. Even Jed, tough and cynical as he was, had had a lump in his throat at the child’s transparent joy.
As though to make up for its chary behaviour at the beginning of the month, the weather turned unusually mild and settled in the following weeks. Jed and his sons brought in several exceptional hauls of cod, mackerel and herring, and once Molly was well enough Enid began to initiate the child into the life of a fisherwoman.
Fishing was an all-male preserve, but that didn’t mean that wives and young lassies didn’t work just as hard as their menfolk. Besides the normal household tasks of cooking and washing and cleaning, they were expected to do a range of jobs: mending the nets with big wooden needles for heavy work down the side, and little bone needles for lighter work; gutting fish and washing the offal; selling what they could at the fish market and round the streets; collecting driftwood along with any coal or coke that had been washed up on the beaches for fuel for the range and smokehouse; and making excursions into the countryside to obtain oak leaves and twigs for the smokehouse, which gave the fish a nice taste. Any items found on the beach that could be sold for a few extra pennies were a bonus, and in the evenings Enid mended clothes, sewed calico jumpers for the menfolk, smeared oil on their boots to keep them waterproof or knitted thick boot stockings. Her hands, like those of all the women in their community, were never idle.
While Molly was still recovering, Enid made her a change of clothes and knitted some thick socks for the second-hand boots she’d obtained at the market. Although they weren’t new, they were a hundred per cent better than Molly’s old boots, which had been falling apart. Some of the fisherwomen made their underwear from bags that grocers kept rice or flour in and their children often didn’t wear underwear at all, but Enid had always made her own and her family’s from old clothing she bought cheap and cut down. For the first time in her life Molly found herself wearing a warm vest and knickers, and she had toasty feet in the cold weather thanks to the socks and boots without holes in. It made walking outside a pleasure.
She had surprised Enid and the others by taking to the work that was expected of her like a duck to water, unusual for someone who hadn’t been born into the harsh life. In truth, Molly found it no harder than the long, exhausting days in the fields in all weathers, but now she felt happy, which made all the difference. She was well fed too, and already, as October and November passed, had lost the white, pinched look that had been habitual to her.
December brought thick snow, ice and gales, and in the evenings, once the meal was over and the dishes had been washed, Molly would settle herself beside Enid, who taught her to knit and sew. She would work away at anything she was given while she listened to the family talk over the day. If the menfolk had been able to fish the atmosphere was always cheery and the lads would often tease her to see her blush, something lassies in their community weren’t prone to, being as rough and hardy as the lads. If the weather had prevented Jed and his boys getting out on the water the mood in the kitchen was more sombre, but even then Matthew would always smile and joke with her.
She liked Matthew the best of the brothers. He would sit with her sometimes and tell her stories of what went on in their community. Of the old fishwife who lived near Union Quay and sat on her doorstep summer and winter with a parrot on her shoulder who called out things that would make a sailor blush; of Mrs O’Leary at the end of the street who regularly chased her husband with her huge iron frying pan and beat him about the shoulders when he came home inebriated; of little Septimus Stamp, a wizened dwarf of a man who, nevertheless, at over ninety years of age still went out fishing in his coble, and many, many more stories about the characters among the fishing folk.
Molly felt like less of an outsider when Matthew related the goings-on in the area, and he made her laugh like no one else could. When the family retired at night she would climb the stairs to her own room, something that still created a feeling of wonder, and snuggle down under the heaped covers, her feet on the brick that Enid baked in the oven each evening to warm her bed, wrapped in an old towel.
The only fly in the ointment was the terror that surfaced in her dreams that this state of affairs was too good to be true, that it wouldn’t last. She woke sometimes after a nightmare that she was back in the hamlet, lying shaking for long minutes before she could relax into sleep. During the busy days she could push the fear to the back of her mind, but at night when her subconscious took over it manifested itself and there was nothing she could do about it. As the weeks passed, however, she began to dream less about the man who was worse than any fairy-tale monster, and by Christmas she could go for days without a nightmare.
The day before Christmas Eve, Molly and Enid walked into the countryside and brought home a large canvas bag full of holly they had cut, bright with red berries. They decorated the kitchen together as a surprise for the menfolk, and Molly’s almost ecstatic delight touched Enid deeply.
‘That little bairn’s never had a proper Christmas,’ Enid said later that night when she and Jed were in bed. ‘She’s never helped her mam stir a plum pudding or put up a stocking for Father Christmas. Poor as they obviously are, you can’t tell me they couldn’t have done something for their bairns. We only put an orange and apple and a few sweets in ours when they were little, and maybe an old picture book from the second-hand stall at the market or something I’d made for ’em, but she’s had less than nowt all her life, Jed, except harsh words and good hidings.’
‘I know, lass, I know.’ His wife had loved Christmas when their bairns were little nippers, and although they’d never had two pennies to rub together they’d made the day special. ‘Well, Molly can hang up a stocking this year, can’t she? She’s not too big for that. And when you pick up the turkey from the butchers tomorrow, you could have a look round the market and get her a couple of bits.’
‘Aye, yes, I’ll do that.’ Enid turned in to the bulk of him, putting her arm across his chest. Christmas was the only time they paid out for a turkey; the rest of the year if it wasn’t fish for their evening meal then it was scrag ends or rabbit and occasionally a piece of brisket. But Christmas Day was different. She’d do a cooked breakfast of bacon and eggs and black pudding, and later in the morning, when the public house on the corner opened its doors, one of the lads would take the big stone jar along and return with it full of beer so they all had a tipple. Last year Mary and Cissy had come round with their families in the afternoon and there hadn’t been room to swing a cat, but it had been nice. Bedlam, but nice.
