Rory's Fortune Read online

  ‘Upstairs with you,’ said Mr Cornwallis; ‘it’s your day for home. Have you forgotten?’

  Rory grinned as he answered, ‘No, Master; I couldn’t forget that no matter what else I did.’

  The two men in the shop laughed, and Peter Tollett called after him, ‘Don’t spend all your wage at one go, lad.’

  Rory did not answer, but went through the back shop and up the narrow stairs to the house above. ‘Don’t spend all your wage at one go.’ He knew a slight bitterness as he repeated the words to himself. He’d have been glad if his mother could have spared him tuppence, even a penny; he’d had nothing these past two months, and he would like a Sunday coat. By! Aye, he would like a Sunday coat.

  ‘Now, boy, there you are.’ He was confronted at the kitchen door by Mrs Cornwallis. ‘Have you washed those hands?’ As she picked up one of his hands and looked at the palm he said quickly, ‘Eeh! I’m sorry, missis.’

  ‘Away, down you go. It should be a habit with you now after all this time. Excited I suppose you are? Well now, hurry yourself.’ She turned him round and thrust him down the stairs again and he ran into the yard and to the pump, and there, after filling a pail of water, he washed not only his hands but also his face and neck and the front of his hair, telling himself it would save time after his dinner.

  Back upstairs again he looked at Mrs Cornwallis bustling between the trestle table that ran down the centre of the kitchen and the open stove on which a big black pan was boiling, and he said, ‘I’m spruced, Mrs Cornwallis.’

  Turning and looking him up and down she said, ‘Aye, that’s better. But as for being spruced, you won’t look spruce until you have a new coat and breeches.’

  Rory dropped his head slightly. It wasn’t like Mrs Cornwallis to point out his shabbiness. But then his chin jerked as she ended, ‘We’ll have to see about it, won’t we?’

  ‘You mean that, missis?’ His eyes were sparkling.

  ‘I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean, you should know that by now. Well, sit up. You’re wasting your time; sit up, the longer you stay here the less you’ll be able to spend with your family.’ She now picked up a large soup plate from the table and, going to the pan, she ladled into it stewed mutton and dumplings, and when she placed it before Rory he looked up at her and smiled his thanks.

  ‘Get it down you; it’ll stick to your ribs. And the time you’re eating I’ll go and see what bits and pieces I’ve got for your mother.’

  ‘Oh thanks, missis.’ He watched her bustling down the room towards the door that led into the corridor, from which opened the sitting room and the bedrooms and the stairway to the loft. She was small but he thought of her as a cuddly woman, and many was the time during the last year or so that he had felt inclined to hug her by way of thanks for her kindnesses.

  He had just finished his meal when she came back into the room and dropped two small sacks on the floor saying, ‘There now, them’s taties.’ She pointed to one sack. ‘Enough to fill their bellies for two days, three if they’re sparin’. And in there, there’s bread, and a dollop of drippin’ and a shive of belly pork.’

  He was on his feet standing near her, his face unsmiling as he looked at her and said, ‘Ta…thanks, Mrs Cornwallis. Thanks a lot. Me ma’ll be grateful.’ At odd times, such as now, he addressed her as Mrs Cornwallis; saying her name seemed to express his feelings more fully.

  ‘Well now, on the road with you,’ she said. ‘Give your mother my regards. And I hope you find your father better. There, now get yourself away. And put a stout rope sling atween those sacks so they won’t scrape your shoulders.’

  ‘I will, I will, missis. Ta, an’ thanks. An’ bye-bye.’

  ‘Bye-bye, lad. And don’t be late, mind; back here at seven. Don’t forget you’ve got to get up in the morning. Tomorrow will be a long day; Mr Cornwallis wants that oak put in the pit and sliced afore he takes his leave, and that’s only three days ahead.’

  ‘I know, missis, an’ I won’t be late; I’ll be up afore me clothes are on, you’ll see.’

  They nodded at each other and smiled, and he went down the stairs, carrying a sack in each hand. But before he made the rope sling for his shoulders, he ran to the storeroom, grabbed up a turnip and dashed out of the back door, which opened onto the common, and ran towards the goat that was tethered to a stake and gasped, ‘Think I’d forgotten you? Why, you know I wouldn’t do that. There, get that into you.’ He dropped the turnip on the ground, patted the goat, which bleated loudly, then dashed back to the yard.

  Five minutes later he left the wheelwright’s shop and walked down the main street of the village with the sacks hanging in front of his shoulders. He went past the Grey Hen public house, then, level with Mrs Beeney’s house-window-shop, he saw her face and one arm straining round the partition as she tried to place the tray of home-made toffee in front of the window. He paused for a second in his step and looked from the tray to her, then smiled, and her voice came to him, shouting, ‘Rory! Hold your hand a minute, you, Rory!’ and he stopped and waited for her coming. When she appeared at the house door she handed him a piece of paper on which lay scranchums from the bottom of a toffee tray, with three whole squares of toffee among them.

  ‘For me? Oh ta, Mrs Beeney.’

  ‘Do to chew on your way home, lad.’

  ‘Aye, Mrs Beeney. Bye, Mrs Beeney.’

  ‘Bye, lad.’

  She made a lovely taffy, did Mrs Beeney. By! People were kind. But as he turned a bend in the village street he glanced along the road, where at the far end stood a blacksmith’s shop. Mr Morley Cornwallis wasn’t kind. By, no! Far from it. How on earth he came to be related to his master, he couldn’t think. The relationship was a bit stretched, them being only second cousins, and there was no resemblance between them, no more than between chalk and cheese. Mrs Morley Cornwallis, too, was as mean as her husband, and their Bernie took after them both.

  As if his thoughts had conjured up Bernie out of thin air, a tall boy came from a passageway between two houses and stopped for a moment and surveyed him; then grinning at him, he shouted, ‘Goin’ hawkin’?’

  It was on the tip of Rory’s tongue to shout back, ‘Hawkin’! You watch yourself, else I’ll hawk you.’ But he stopped himself in time. There were two reasons for his restraint: first, the master had warned him against fighting with Bernie; and then there was Lily, Bernie’s sister. Lily always got upset when he and Bernie went for each other. He had lost count of the number of fights he’d had with Bernie over the last four years. But lately, Mr Cornwallis had said, ‘You’re too big for that now, lad. No more scrapping; you must learn to control your temper and use your head instead of your fists.’

  It was with this in mind that he now fought his instinct and asked a question as one craftsman might to another. ‘Plenty in?’ he said.

  ‘Plenty in!’ Bernie screwed up his face. ‘What’s it to you if we’ve plenty in or not?’

  Count ten, Mr Cornwallis had advised him, then say, God bless us and save us, three times. He counted ten and he had only said God bless us and save us twice, when Bernie shouted, ‘I asked you what it’s got to do with you what we’ve got in?’

  ‘Nowt. Nowt.’ Rory was barking back at him now. ‘I just thought I’d ask, that’s all…That’s all.’

  ‘Sneaking, more like.’

  ‘What need have I to sneak?’

  ‘So’s you can go and tell Uncle John what we’re doing.’

  ‘Aw, don’t be so daft, man.’ Rory glared up at the tall thin figure before him. ‘He’s only to come along the street and look in the forge an’ he’ll see for himself.’

  ‘Then why had you to put your neb in and ask? Playin’ the big fellow, eh, bossin’ it. Aw, we all know what you’re after; sneakin’ into Uncle John’s good books, toadying to him an’ Aunt Rosie. Aw, we all know about you, we do.’

  ‘If you don’t shut your big mouth, there’s something more you’ll know about me, for I’ll ram me fist into it.
’

  ‘Bernie!’

  They both turned and looked towards the opening of the blacksmith’s shop and to the leather-aproned man standing there. ‘Come in here!’ Morley Cornwallis jerked his head at his son; then as Rory walked into the road with the intention of crossing to the other side, Morley Cornwallis shouted at him. ‘That’s it, you keep your distance. Troublemaker you are; there’s never a voice raised at this end of the village until you appear on the scene.’

  Oh, the injustice of it. Rory gritted his teeth. He would have loved to call out, ‘If ten men in our shop were hammering in felloes they’d still be able to hear you carrying on.’ Quiet end of the village indeed!

  He was on the other side of the road when he passed the blacksmith’s open door and he kept his gaze straight ahead while he comforted himself by thinking, jealousy, that’s all it is. They were green because Mr Cornwallis had taken him on instead of Bernie. Mr Cornwallis had refused Bernie as an apprentice wheelwright for, as he said, his place was by his father’s side, learning his father’s trade. But Rory guessed that the real reason why Bernie hadn’t been taken on was that Mr Cornwallis didn’t like him; and also, his master, being no fool, knew that his half-cousin Morley wanted a sure footing, as it were, in both businesses in the village.

  Aw, well—he shrugged the halter rope between the two sacks into a more comfortable position—it was his time off and he wasn’t going to worry any more about Morley Cornwallis or Bernie. The sun was shining, there was a high wind blowing, there were four miles of open fell land stretching before him, and he was going home to see his people.

  ‘Rory! Rory!’

  He turned and looked at the girl running across a field path that led from the farm, and, smiling, he went to meet her. He rested his sacks on the top of the stone wall that edged the field and watched her skipping over the rough hummocks while she steadied the large can of milk.

  She almost fell against the other side of the wall, and after resting a moment she gasped, ‘Hello, Rory. You going home?’

  ‘Aye, Lily; it’s me time off.’

  ‘I thought it was near.’

  ‘Aye.’

  They looked at each other, then nodded; there seemed nothing more to say. But it wasn’t often he saw Lily, and he felt he should talk, say something, so he said, ‘I nearly had a do again with your Bernie.’

  ‘Oh no, Rory!’

  ‘Aye, well, he gives me the pip. I tried to be civil, I did, Lily, I did. I tried to talk to him, you know? I asked him had he any work in an’ you should have heard how he went for me, said I was sneakin’.’

  Lily made no comment on this but, moving the can onto a flat stone on top of the wall to the side of her, she drew her finger up and down its cool side as she said, ‘Me ma’s takin’ me into Shields the morrow; I’m to have a new frock.’

  ‘Oh aye! Oh, that’s grand.’

  ‘I don’t want a new frock.’

  ‘You don’t?’ His face was screwed up in surprise. He looked at the top of the dress she was wearing. It was a print, washed colourless with the times it had been in the poss-tub. ‘Why, I would have thought…’

  ‘Well I don’t, I don’t! I don’t want no new frock.’

  Her tone caused her face to drop into troubled lines. His eyes widened as he saw her lips tremble. ‘What is it, Lily? What’s up?’ he asked quietly.

  She was again stroking the side of the can with her finger, and now there was a sound of tears in her voice as she muttered. ‘Frank Jackson.’

  ‘Frank Jackson?’ Rory now screwed up his face, trying to associate what Frank Jackson had to do with a new frock and her being near to tears. The only thing he knew about Frank Jackson was that he was a carter and he had lost his wife last year and had three children.

  She was looking at him now and her eyes were bright with tears. ‘He’s comin’ a courtin’.’

  ‘WHAT!…JACKSON?’

  She moved her head once.

  ‘But you can’t. He can’t; he’s old, thirty or more, and he has bairns. Your mother wouldn’t’—he paused—‘she doesn’t want you to, does she?’

  She gave him the answer when, with head bent, she repeated, ‘She’s takin’ me into Shields to buy me a new frock. Me da gave her the money.’

  He stared at her, gaped at her. He couldn’t believe it. Frank Jackson courting her, Lily. Why, she wasn’t sixteen yet, not till next month, she was just his age. He said grimly, ‘You don’t want to, do you?’

  She shook her head and then wet her finger on the tip of her tongue and traced it round the bottom of the milk can before she said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, ‘Ma says I won’t have much choice being plain an’ that.’

  ‘Plain?’ His voice was deeply indignant. ‘Your ma said you were plain? She must be up the pole.’

  She brought her eyes to his; and again they stared at each other before she said, ‘Ta, Rory. But…but she’s right, I know I am. I’ll never be like Betty Howlett or Cissie Macintosh.’

  ‘And a good job an’ all. Trashy, Betty Howlett is, real trashy. As for Cissie Macintosh, why neither of them can even write their name, you can.’

  ‘Aye.’ She nodded at him, her face pink now with a certain pride and pleasure. ‘An’ I have you to thank for it, Rory. And I’ve been learnin’ me numbers on the quiet. Your da must have been a clever man to have learned you, it’s a pity he’s sick.’

  ‘Aye’—he nodded his head—‘it is. But look here. About Frank Jackson. They can’t make you, you know that, they can’t make you unless you want to. An’ he’s got three bairns already.’

  ‘He’s also got three carrier carts, an’ he’s opening up another line into Newcastle. Six horses and four carts he’ll have then, it means a lot to me da.’

  He leant towards her now, his face almost touching hers as he whispered hoarsely, ‘But if you stick out, Lily, they can’t make you.’

  ‘Do you want me to stick out?’

  There was a long pause before he said firmly, ‘Aye. Aye, I do. I don’t know how long for, I’ll not be out of me time for three years yet, and there’s them back home, but…but I still want you to stick out.’

  ‘I’ll stick out then, Rory.’

  He straightened up, reached out and pulled the sacks towards him; then putting the rope halter round his neck he looked at her again as he said, ‘Well, mind you don’t forget what you’ve just said. Is it a promise?’

  ‘It’s a promise, Rory.’

  They both nodded at each other unsmiling; then he turned away and walked over the fells.

  He felt bigger, tall, not a lad any more. He knew Lily would keep her promise. It might be a stiff fight; it would be, knowing her da.

  Another mile on he was climbing a hill, and when he reached the summit there, in the far distance, he could see the masts of the ships on the river Tyne. Away to the far right lay the outskirts of Shields, a great conglomeration of houses. How he wished they could have a house, a decent house, with a wooden floor. Aw, what was the good of wishing that? He hitched the halter farther up onto his shoulders and set off down the hill. Bypassing Jarrow, he forked to the left, walking along the banks of a stream; then all of a sudden, he was leaving the country and entering the outskirts of Hebburn.

  He took a short cut through a labyrinth of small cottages. These were whitewashed and bright-looking, they had a prosperous look. The men who lived in them were likely in work in the shipyard in Jarrow, or the pit; anyway, they’d be in work, with a wage coming in regular, as long as they kept their health.

  His chin jerked against his thoughts of envy, and he cut sharply across some wasteland to where, at the far side in a hollow, stood three cottages as different from those he had passed as could be imagined.

  Kelly’s Row hadn’t been fit for habitation for years but the cottages had never been empty. When one family moved out another was ready to jump in, so quickly it was said that they passed each other in the doorway.

  He was about twenty yards from the e
nd cottage when he saw the door pulled violently open and his brother Sammy come dashing out and fly down the road. He paused for a moment before calling, ‘Sammy! You, Sammy!’

  Sammy pulled up, looked towards him, and then came tearing over the ground, crying ‘Rory! Oh, our Rory!’

  ‘What is it? What’s up? What are you blubbing for?’

  Rubbing the tears from the end of his nose with the back of his thumb, the small boy spluttered, ‘Man…the man, he’s come again; he…he wants me for a sweep, five pounds he’s offerin’ now. ’Twas only three day afore yesterday. He keeps on at me ma; he’s told her I’ll be all right.’

  Rory didn’t listen to any more but started to run towards the house with the boy at his side. ‘What’s me ma up to?’ he cried. ‘Why hasn’t she put him out?’

  ‘She’s been flat for days, pains in her belly, she’s got the runs; she’s got to lie down. He…he grabbed me, Rory. He put the money on the table and he…’

  Rory burst through the door and into the room that was used for all the requirements of living; and on his entry his nose didn’t wrinkle, as it usually did from the smell, the smell of sickness and the water from the middens that continuously seeped under the stone floor and came up through the cracks, the smell of clothes never really washed and never really dried, the overall smell of dire poverty; and he glared at the man.

  His entrance had caused a sudden silence in the hubbub. His da was leaning on his elbows, his breath coming in tight, painful gasps as he tried to speak; his mother was sitting at the foot of the pallet bed, her arms around her stomach; his five-year-old sister Edna, and Mabel, who was three, were crouched one on each side of her, and the baby, Joseph, who was but three months old, lay almost inert in the basket to the side of the dying fire.

  ‘What you after?’ Rory let the sacks slip slowly from his shoulders down to the floor, but he held on to the halter as if he would swing them upwards again to the man’s head.

  The man, a stocky, stunted individual with an unusually long face and high forehead, which part of him did not seem to match his body, now asked with a sneer, ‘Who you when you’re out, youngster?’