Our Kate Page 3

  As the years went on I think that of the two, me grandma was harder on Kate than the fathar, because, when coming home from place on her rare days off, if she’d attempt to take me in her arms me grandma would grab me from her, rearrange my clothes and almost dust me down as if Kate’s hands had contaminated me in some way.

  At the time she met my father she was working in an inn in Lamesley. She was working in the bar, and had been for two or three years. Her sister, Mary, who was three years younger, was a housemaid, and a very haughty, hot-tempered housemaid at that. I am not quite sure of the name of the owners of the inn at that time but I do know that the daughter was Miss Jenny. Kate often spoke of her. Also of the pitmen who used to take the long trek past the inn to the mine, and on pay day, which was once a fortnight, have a blow up in the bar and a pay up for the odd pints that had gone on the slate. She must have been a favourite with them, for she was an attractive woman in those days, gay, warm, large-hearted.

  My father, I understand, first set eyes on her when she served him in the saloon.

  Kate never told me anything about him until six years before she died. It was my Aunt Mary who, when I was sixteen, gave me the sketchy outline of my beginnings and set up in my mind an inordinate pride, a sense of false superiority and a burning desire to meet this wonderful creature who had shocked me into being. This man. This gentleman. Oh, yes, he was a gentleman. My Aunt Mary stated this with emphasis. She had no love for her sister, Kate. Later in life when Kate became the object of her scorn, she still remained jealous of her, for people liked Kate, loved her in spite of everything. Mary did not have a nature that one could love, and when she imparted this news to me it was to hurt Kate, make me more ashamed of her. Yet deep in me I knew that my Aunt Mary wasn’t a patch on ‘Our Kate’. But Mary was often kind to me, it was only her scorn of Kate that made me dislike her. Anyway, Mary said this gentleman went head over heels as soon as he saw Kate.

  What did this gentleman do for a living?

  Nobody has ever been able to tell me.

  How did Mary know he was a gentleman?

  Well, he wore a black coat with an astrakhan collar. He had a high hat and carried a silver mounted walking stick and black kid gloves, like ‘The Silver King’, she said. ‘And he spoke different . . . lovely.’

  For two years the gentleman courted Kate. He did not come regularly but when he did he took her out, arranging his visits to her day off. She looked at no-one else in the way she did at him. She was deeply in love. What did she expect from this association? She never said. But, knowing her level-headedness, I feel that she knew from the beginning that it was hopeless and therefore she kept him in his place, except for once; and once was enough. It seems pitiable to me at this distance that it wasn’t until she was twenty-three that she first went with a man. I say first; it was the one and only time she had this kind of association with my father, and it’s more pitiable still that she never had this association with anyone else until over sixteen years later when she married David McDermott, because she was of a loving nature. I can feel myself getting angry when I think that she was branded as a fallen woman – and you needed to make a mistake only once and give evidence of it in order to acquire this prefix in those days – while today girls still at school indulge in intimacy for kicks. If I hadn’t stopped believing in God this injustice would surely have acted as a springboard against believing in a benevolent father, a controller of destinies, someone who has our welfare at heart, for such a deity must surely have had his favourites, and Kate wasn’t one of them. Her taking to drink, her servitude to her mother and stepfather in a house hardly ever without lodgers, the persecution, through love, or lust, of her half-brother, the indignities and slights she had to put up with, the undermining and ruining of her moral fibre, can all be laid at the door of one ecstatic moment.

  My bitterness on this point is not for myself because I realise now that in being part of ‘the gentleman’ – and I have my tongue in my cheek even as I write the word – I have a great deal to be thankful for, for he provided the norm at which I aimed. It was him in me that pushed and pulled me out of the drabness of my early existence. It was from him that I got the power to convey awareness, this painful sensitivity, without which what I sensed in others would have remained an untranscribable mass of feelings. Yet should I be thankful? Wouldn’t it have been much easier for me if, having been born sixteen years later, I had inherited David McDermott’s utter placidity? With this trait, and a touch of my mother’s sense of humour, life would have been a straight-line track, no sharp bends, no uphill pulls and . . . no summit.

  I don’t know when it was that the gasometer caught fire, but I do know that I was perched high on me Uncle Jack’s knee. He was lying on his back on the saddle, giving me a shuggy, and I can remember the song he was singing. It was one I think he made up himself. It went like this:

  Father Chitmas soon will come

  Laden with all treasure.

  I would like a boat to sail,

  A rocky horse with a bushy tail,

  A doggy

  And a spade and pail.

  Katie wants a big

  BLACK PUD-DING.

  He was singing this in an imitation of my clipped childish voice, hence Chitmas for Christmas. He could have been a grand fellow could me Uncle Jack. Even Kate said this. But there I was this night perched high on his knee, and I can hear myself shouting and pointing to ‘the bonny fire’. The next thing I knew I was in me granda’s arms and we were at the Sawmill Bridge, halfway up the road to East Jarrow; a good quarter of a mile distant.

  The veering of the wind that night turned the flames away, and this, it was said, saved part of the town from destruction. My husband tells me now it wouldn’t have blown up at all.

  It would perhaps be untrue and very unkind if I thought that me granda ran all that way to save his own skin taking me as a cover, but he certainly left me grandma behind.

  When I look back on incidents such as these I always see an ulterior motive. Perhaps I am wrong – I hope so.

  I started at Simonside Protestant School before I was five years old. The teachers used to pass the door on their way up the hill to the school and they would take me with them. How I loved those teachers. Miss Curl and Miss Nesbitt; beloved Miss Nesbitt, but shattering Miss Nesbitt. She it was who first showed me up as a liar.

  I must have been between five and six years old when we moved from Leam Lane to East Jarrow. We made the move on a flat cart. It would likely be Jackie Halliday’s, for he was the coalman and the only one we knew who had a cart. And I remember I sat on the back, under the big arch of the mangle, swinging my legs.

  East Jarrow lies between Tyne Dock and Jarrow. It is only about three-quarters of a mile from the dock gates and half a mile from Leam Lane.

  The New Buildings, as the two terraces and the three streets were called – and weren’t new at all – faced the Jarrow Slakes, a huge timber seasoning pond into which the River Tyne came and went on its rise and fall. From the bottom of William Black Street, the street in which we went to live, you could look across the road – the same road with the single line tram track that connected Tyne Dock with Jarrow – across the Slakes, to the ships in the river, and beyond them to Howdon on the other side of the water.

  Compared with Jarrow and Tyne Dock, East Jarrow was a paradise. As you went up William Black Street you were flanked on the left by black timbered palings behind which was a field of corn. Some years the field held potatoes or beet, according to the planning of the farmer, but most years it seemed to be corn. The farmhouse and main farm were opposite my school at Simonside and at the top of the street was an open space that took in the end of Philipson Street too. Beyond this was a railed-in field and a small market garden. The back doors of William Black Street and Philipson Street faced each other across a cobbled back lane, but whereas there were two families to a backyard in William Black Street, every house in Philipson Street had its own backyard, walled high o
n all sides. Opposite Philipson Street front was another open space and beyond that a short street called Lancaster Street. At the end of these three streets ran the two terraces. The five streets formed a letter E – the two terraces being the upright, divided in the middle and facing the main road, while William Black Street was the bottom line, Philipson Street the middle, and Lancaster Street the foreshortened top. And it was in this small community, in this chequered world, that I lived until I was twenty-two, in it, but not of it, accepted, yet rejected. Yet I did not reap my environment so much from the community as from the kitchen in 10 William Black Street. The kitchen is the heart of the matter, for the kitchen was the axis about which revolved the lives of those nearest to me – my people, be they what they may . . .

  Two

  I have already prefixed those near to me by ‘me’ or ‘our’ for they seem more my kin in this way, and I shall continue to do so, but I will write ‘my Aunt Mary’ or ‘my Uncle Alec’ or ‘my Aunt Sarah’, for when I spoke of them I never used ‘me’ but ‘my’. It was a strange differentiation, but they were outside the house. They did not belong to me in as much as I felt no responsibility for their actions; I only felt responsible for the people in our kitchen.

  In those days the New Buildings held a very mixed assortment. In some cases the contrast was striking, as with the once rich Larkins, who had owned the Barium Chemical Works further up the road, and who still occupied the two large houses that took up most of the first terrace, and the Kanes who lived at the top of William Black Street – not sixty feet away – and who were so destitute that the daughter not only borrowed our Kate’s boots but the mother used to borrow the gully – a bread knife.

  Then there were, as in any community, the social climbers. These managed to employ a daily, or send their washing out, or have somebody in to do the washing and the housework. Perhaps I am wrong in calling them social climbers. Perhaps these were just outward signs of their respectability. Then there were the strivers, those who neither drank nor smoked, and whose one aim was to keep their heads above water; water in this case being debt. Then last and by no means least came the hard cases. And there weren’t so very many of these cases in the New Buildings in those days. But among them were families dominated by drink, as ours was.

  And there were the Afflecks. The Afflecks lived in a little red cottage down the road near the Sawmill Bridge, in the direction of Tyne Dock. There were three daughters – the eldest kept the only shop in the New Buildings – and they were all ladies. They were ladies during my childhood, they still remained ladies when I saw them through the eyes of my late teens, and when I met May and Maude some few years ago, I had no need to change my opinion.

  We did not live in number 10 when we first went to the New Buildings but in an upstairs house further up the street; but we did not live there long. Number 10 was a downstairs house and had three rooms. The front room, into which you stepped from a tiny hallway that allowed only for the opening of the door, held a green plush suite – two stiff-backed armchairs, four single ones and a long couch – an oval table standing on a centre leg and a double brass bed. The bed lay in an alcove and you walked down the side of it to get to the door which led into the kitchen.

  How a room the size of our kitchen could hold so much I don’t know, for in its centre stood a large kitchen table of the better kind, with a leather covered top. Under the window that looked into the backyard stood another table, an oblong one, which was used for cooking. The fireplace was the old-fashioned open black range and on the left of it for many years stood a great ugly unused gas stove. In front of the range was a massive steel fender, four feet long, and a conglomeration of steel fire-irons, none standing less than two feet high. On the floor, along the length of the fender was a clippy mat, a great heavy affair that I couldn’t lift even when I was fourteen. On this mat stood a high-backed wooden chair, ‘the fathar’s’ chair, on which no-one dared to sit but himself. Standing against the wall opposite the door that led out of the kitchen into the scullery was a chest of drawers. A six foot long wooden saddle – like a settee or couch – was set against the wall opposite the fireplace, but to get on to it you had to pull the table out or scramble over the head. Above it hung a picture of Lord Roberts sitting on a horse with a black man standing at his side. For years I believed the rider to be me granda when he was in India, and when he levelled abuse at the picture, which he often did, I thought he was speaking to the black man.

  What we called the scullery held two shelves and a backless chair, on which stood the tin dish used for all purposes that required water. Beyond was the pantry, a narrow slit with one long shelf. The tap was at the bottom of the yard, where also were the two lavatories. In this latter we were fortunate, there being a lavatory to each house. The back door leading to the upstairs house was on the left of our kitchen window, and opposite, running the complete length of the wall from our bedroom window to the coalhouse doors, were hen crees, always full of hens and ducks.

  You reached the door of the bedroom by edging between the oblong table, the kitchen table and the head of the saddle, the bedroom in which I slept with my mother on a flea-ridden feather mattress, against which, with my conscripted assistance, she waged a fruitless war for years. Why didn’t we get rid of the mattress? What! Get rid of a mattress that had supported countless births and a number of agonising deaths all because of a few fleas? And what would we have to lie on? There wasn’t enough money for beer, let alone new mattresses.

  Above us, in those early days, lived a family called Romanus. He was a trimmer in the docks, a big burly man with little to say. She was a woman of better class who was slowly drinking herself to death. Eventually she achieved this end. It was the only thing in her life at which she succeeded. I remember the day she died. There had been the usual fight the day before. The Romanuses fought in a funny way, I thought, because you could only hear thuds on our kitchen ceiling and Mrs Romanus saying, in a very refined voice, ‘That’s it, Jim.’ There was no yelling. I think now that it was these words that drew the blows. Mr Romanus beat his wife because she drank. She was a secret drinker, and she drank because she was unhappy. She had known a different life at one time from that of Jim Romanus and William Black Street. The day she died we heard the thud but we knew that he was on day shift. Me grandma went upstairs and found Mrs Romanus had had a stroke, and in a few hours she was dead. I remember everybody seemed to blame Mr Romanus, yet nobody had ever said anything to him or tried to stop him knocking his wife about. There were certain things that were none of your business.

  At the time we moved to the New Buildings our Kate and my Aunt Sarah and Aunt Mary were in place, and strangely enough they had not been informed of the move. I first became aware of our Kate one night as I played under the lamp near the top end of the street. I had a rope tied to the lamp-post and was dizzying round on the end of it singing ‘When I was going to Strawberry Fair singing, singing buttercups and daisies, I met a lady taking the air for a day. Her eyes were blue, she had gold in her hair and she was going to Strawberry Fair, singing, singing buttercups and daisies, singing, singing tral-la-la-la-la,’ when out of the shadow beyond the rim of light emerged our Kate. I stopped dizzying and stared at her, while the rope went limp in my hand. To me she looked beautiful – tall, dressed in a grey costume, with beautiful hair on which was perched a big hat. She took hold of my arm and shook me from my daze, saying, ‘Where are they?’ She had arrived at the old house in Leam Lane to find it empty and had become very distressed, for, as poor as the house was, it was a focal point. She feared the disintegration of the home then as she was to fear it until the Fathar died. I think she feared it for him more than for herself, for John McMullen had a deep secret terror, he was afraid of ever being homeless and having to end his days in the workhouse. Vaguely I remember her going upstairs into the new house, and there going for me grandma while the tears ran down her face. Me grandma said, ‘Well, I just couldn’t get down to writing. And besides, there wa
s the writing paper and envelope to buy and the stamp, and I hadn’t got it.’

  I remember liking our Kate to come home, for she always brought parcels of food with her. At this time she was working in a baker’s shop in Chester-le-Street, baking the bread and cakes, and her money, as ever, was booked weeks ahead. She took most of it in the form of groceries and what was over she tipped up on her visits home. Mary and Sarah were not called upon to do this, but then they had not committed a sin, a sin which had to be fed and clothed. When they were young girls they had had to ‘stump up’ their money, but as the years went on they did this less and less. Me grandma was a foolishly generous woman and a bad housekeeper and Kate used to be infuriated, she told me, when they lived in Tyne Dock – not in Leam Lane but in Nelson Street I think it was, and she would come home from her half a crown or three shillings a week place to find sponging neighbours being feasted with broth, and brisket, and beer, when perhaps only two days before, following a distracted appeal, she had sent home another subbed-week’s wages. This never happened at the New Buildings, but there were a thousand and one other ways me grandma could squander senselessly the little money that came into the house. Yet she herself didn’t drink much.

  From this particular night when Kate came consciously onto my horizon she was never to leave it.