Our Kate Read online

  I don’t know whether it was this particular Christmas concert or another when I was the Fairy Queen, but I remember Kate making a wand for me out of a broom shank. She made a star for the top and covered the whole with silver paper. She also made me a white silk dress and a crown. On the days when the dress and the accessories were being made I lived on an ascending cloud of amazement and wonder.

  The actual night of the concert was a very proud one for our Kate and me grandma because I was the Fairy Queen and, as they said, my part was the biggest and the best, and I was the prettiest bairn of the lot. They talked about the concert, saying, ‘Did you hear that one on about their Joan? She was in the chorus, you know the little one at the end, in the washing-day scene. She wasn’t the size of two penn’orth of copper and didn’t know her piece, an’ her mother goin’ on like that. Why, her ladyship could have knocked her into a cocked hat.’ I don’t know when I first came by the title of ‘Her Ladyship’ but between the members of the family, except during rows or when I was being called from outside when it would be, ‘You, Katie!’ I was addressed by, and accepted the title of ‘Her’ or ‘Your Ladyship’. I cannot remember all they said but I know I nursed their pride for long afterwards.

  I can still recall some of the items of that particular concert. The washing-day scene was put over by a set of little tubs standing on three-legged stools, and busily rubbing at the clothes were four little girls, singing:

  Oh the washing day!

  The weary, weary washing day.

  Oh, the washing day!

  That comes but once a week.

  We rub, rub, rub, on each washing day;

  We scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, all our strength away.

  I also remember the scene of the duck-seller. This showed a busy housewife of about eight years old, opening the cardboard door to a man of the same age selling ducks. The man was wearing long trousers, cut-me-downs, and a cap much too large for him. He carried a basket in which reposed two stuffed ducks, their elongated necks hanging almost to his feet, and the piece could not be heard for the laughter filling the schoolroom.

  Housewife: How much are your ducks a pair?

  Duck Man: Five shillings, ma’am. And very fine ducks they are.

  Housewife: Five shillings! I wonder you’re not afraid to ask it.

  Pray put your fine ducks back into the basket, it’s a thorough im-po-sition.

  I was to remember the word imposition when I heard it for a second time years later. Kate had spent the best part of a very wet week washing, drying and ironing a big wash for one of the Smiths across the back lane – there were lots of Smiths in the New Buildings, but this one we called Swanky Smith. ‘Ask four shillings,’ Kate said to me. The usual charge was three. ‘What! Four shillings?’ said Mrs Smith, ‘it’s a thorough imposition.’

  Although I cannot now remember the other scenes in the concert I do remember that I used to re-enact the whole show for them at home. I can see our Kate rolling back the big mat in the kitchen and pushing me granda’s chair right close to the chest of drawers. Then they would seat themselves round by the table, me grandma and granda, our Kate, me Uncle Jack, and once or twice my Aunt Mary and Uncle Alec, and I would dance for them, and sing, and do pieces.

  These were wonderful nights, nights when there wasn’t any money knocking about, when everybody was sober, when they looked to me for entertainment, and I never disappointed them. I always wanted to make them happy when they were sober.

  The morning we broke up for the Christmas holidays, Miss Nesbitt announced there was a prize for the best boy and girl in the concert. I sat unthinking, unheeding. I never got prizes.

  I’ve had only three real surprises in my life, and that day I received the first one when she called me out and presented me with a little negro’s head made of china and full of chocolates. It’s the only prize I ever received.

  I walked down the long Simonside Bank and up the road to East Jarrow. I can feel the pressure of the day all round me yet. It was one of those dull, cold days that you get in the North when the sky seems to be lying on top of the ships’ masts and the whole world is grey. The long wall from the blacksmith’s shop up to the Sawmill Bridge was grey. The water lapping against the slack bank just a few feet from the footpath was grey. The houses of the New Buildings in the distance were grey. Those people walking between East Jarrow and the Docks, they were very grey. But I was carrying a negro’s head full of chocolates. I was in a palpitating daze; my world had suddenly become an amazing place where you got surprises, nice surprises. Everything was bright, dazzling, until I reached the kitchen, for there the greyness from outside had seeped in and engulfed our Kate. She was busying between the stove and the table but her movements were slow; she looked depressed and sounded in a bad temper. I can’t remember what she said when I showed her the wonderful prize, but her reaction brought a funny heavy feeling into my chest.

  Me grandma was lying on the couch in the front room. This was one of the days when her legs were so swollen she couldn’t walk. She was pleased and said, ‘Oh, you’re a clever lass.’ But somehow it wasn’t the same. There was something up. Our Kate had the pip. But she hadn’t been at it, because there was no money. Perhaps this was the reason, being so near Christmas and no money. Anyway, the greyness in the kitchen weighed on me. I looked at the negro’s head. It amazed me no longer. In fact I didn’t like it. I said to Kate ‘Do you want any messages?’ And the sadness deepened in me when she said. ‘No.’ Things were wrong, all G. Y. when she didn’t want me to go a message of some sort.

  The walk up the country road of Simonside Bank holds blocks of memory. There was the day I walked up it to school with my mouth full of mustard. I had toothache and I don’t know whether I was crying from the pain of the tooth or from the pain of the blisters. After three days of crying, it was decided that I had better go to the dentist, but as this would cost two shillings there was no great hurry to get me there. Oil of cloves was tried instead and this did the trick. There you are, and two shillings could have been wasted – a whole grey hen full of beer.

  Often when I walked up Simonside Bank I would see Mr Sheriff. He lived in one of the big houses and he would stop me and pat my head and say, ‘When are you going to give me one of those ringlets?’ I liked Mr Sheriff. But one day, it was after school, I was coming home when, to my surprise, just below Mr Sheriff’s big gate I saw our Kate and me grandma. They were looking into the ditch, and when I came up to them they did not turn but me grandma said, as if she knew I had been there all the time, ‘Help to get your granda out.’ I looked down on the long, thin, mud-covered, paralytic body. I felt no shame about me granda being drunk. There was only one person who could bring shame to me in that way, and when I said, ‘Will I go and get somebody? Mr Sheriff or somebody?’ our Kate answered angrily, ‘Stay where you are. Get out of the road.’ Then me grandma put in tartly, ‘Leave her be. Let her help. He’ll come for her.’

  I can’t remember how we got him home, but I recall thinking, our Kate didn’t want Mr Sheriff to know.

  It was very rarely me granda had to be brought home, his legs usually carried him to the door even if they gave way on the step. And it was after this incident also that I first registered the word mortallious. ‘Aye,’ they would say, ‘Old John was mortallious again the day.’ And some would click their tongues and move their heads slowly. More slowly if they were saying, ‘Young Jack was mortallious the day.’

  And when me grandma sang, it’s no wonder her songs were sad and told their own tales. A favourite with her was ‘Love, it is teasing’:

  Love, it is teasing

  Love, it is pleasing,

  Love is a pleasure

  When it is new;

  But as it grows older

  And days grow colder

  It fades away like the

  Morning dew.

  I have heard a different version on television, but those are the words she sang as she combed my hair or nursed me on her knee.
And how clearly they spoke of the disillusionment of life. In some way, too, they seemed to be connected with the times I’d be sleeping in the front room in the desk bed and where me granda and her slept in the brass bed in the alcove, and I would sit up and cry, ‘Leave her be, Granda!’ This would be after hearing me grandma whispering harshly, ‘Leave me alone, will you?’ Yet I know now I wasn’t actually aware of the reason for her protest, I only knew that he was ‘bothering her’.

  Three

  Me Uncle Jack was a handsome man, in his way. More than six foot tall, broad, dark, almost swarthy like a gypsy. All his short life he worked in the docks and wore heel plates on his boots, and if they were loose they jingled like money in the pocket. And I would hang on to his arm as he went down the street saying, ‘Aw, our Jack. Aw, come on, giv’ us a ha’penny. Aw, man, giv’ us a ha’penny.’ He never spoke to girls, but would joke about them, saying, ‘Aa’ve got a lass to meet at the Tivoli corner’. The ‘Tivoli’ was a picture house in Leygate, and meeting her at the ‘Tivoli corner’ somehow meant that that was as far as he intended to take her. It was one of those jokes without either humour or wit, but which had an underlying meaning, and invariably drew forth laughter. He looked a real he-man but was really afraid of women. Yet he wanted my mother, his half-sister, and in trying to get his way with her caused her untold agony of mind.

  One night, shortly after she came home to take over the household, she was lying in the bedroom with me by her side when she was woken out of a deep sleep with his hands on her. He was whispering, ‘Kate . . . Kate.’ She thought there was something wrong with me grandma and when she went to sit up his hands kept her down, and his voice, thick with pleading again, said, ‘Kate . . . Kate.’ Silently she fought him, and, managing to get out of the bed, rushed through the kitchen and went down the backyard and locked herself in the lavatory until dawn. And this without any shoes on and clad only in a thin nightgown. I did not know of this until I wrote Colour Blind. She was paying me a visit at the time the proofs arrived, and after finishing the book she said to me, ‘You’ve put it over amazingly well, lass.’

  ‘The colour question?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not the colour question. That’s got nothing to do with us. About the brother and sister.’ When she noticed my perplexity she said, ‘Well, him . . . our Jack wanting me. You must have taken it all in as a child.’

  Yes, I must have taken it all in as a child.

  What I had written I imagined to be a figment of my imagination. I knew that these things happened; I wanted to make a strong story. I was absolutely amazed and so sad for her when she told me the truth. And I realised then that all I had written in the previous four years – not just some of it – came from my childhood, and were things I had buried deep in my mind. Here was a page from my subconscious, a page that had written itself down as it happened.

  I asked her that day why she hadn’t exposed Jack, why she hadn’t told her parents, for it was not only the once he tried this on but many times. Her answer was, ‘Aw, lass, if I had brought this thing into the open who would have got the blame? Not Jack. Jack hadn’t sinned, Jack was a good fellow. He had his one fault, he drank, but that was all. Jack didn’t like women, everybody knew that. It would have been me, as usual. Jack would never have dreamed of anything like that on his own, they would have said. Not unless he was enticed. If I had showed him up life would have really been unbearable. You see I couldn’t leave me mother and her with dropsy, nor the fathar at that time for he had his bad leg. And where could Jack himself have gone? He never knew when he was going to get a full week in. And anyway, he considered it his house, I was only there on sufferance. No, lass. I had to keep my mouth shut and sleep light, but God, it was wearing. At times I became weary of it all . . . weary. Still it’s over and I’ve got a lot to thank God for.’

  I look back to the confusion in my mind and not being able to understand why our Jack should sometimes raise his fist to our Kate when there wasn’t a real row on. I can see her kneeling at the hearth taking the ashes out. It was a Good Friday and Jack was bending over her, his fist shaking in her face, then turning he dashed into the bedroom. She said to me wearily, ‘Take that ginger-beer bottle and go down to Twenty-seven, will you?’ She made it a request, for it was Good Friday and I hadn’t any new clothes. Everybody wore new clothes on Good Friday and went to church and got an orange – if they were Catholics. If they were church or chapel they had the added glory of marching with a band to the market place. Good Friday was a great day, when you had coloured paste eggs. Kate used to wrap the eggs in wallpaper and boil them and all the children that came to the house would get one, as on Carlin Sunday, the Sunday prior to Palm Sunday, when she had a great dish of soaked carlins – little brown peas. These too she would dish out to all comers. But this particular Easter was different, there weren’t even any paste eggs; but I was more sorry for Kate than I was for myself, so I took the sixpence, all she had, and the ginger-beer bottle and went down to Twenty-seven.

  It says something for the attitude of me grandma and granda towards Kate that on this particular day they had taken a trip to Birtley to my Aunt Sarah’s and they couldn’t have done that without money. Yet all Kate had was sixpence. Me grandma never gave her a penny, but all she earned had to go towards the house. No wonder she became crafty with the years, withholding sixpence here, a shilling there in order to get a drop of hard.

  I was about six, I think, when our Jack first brought a few fellows from off a boat up to the house to have a meal, and a drink. Jack, like his father, worked mostly on the iron-ore boats, but this week they were unloading a long voyage boat. The men on it had just finished a two-year trip; they were from Maryport. One of them was called Jack Stoddard and another David McDermott. David McDermott was married to Jack Stoddard’s sister. He was a pleasant-faced, thickset man with a quiet manner, and he used to bounce me on his knee. They were clean spoken, jolly men, and always remained so. Yet as the years went on the thought of them was like a nightmare always hovering in the background. And when they docked the nightmare would spring on me, for they had money and they spent it freely. There was a big eat-up, and a big drink-up, not usually followed by a big bust-up, except once. For the strange thing was that these men never quarrelled; they sang and they drank but they never quarrelled. After these visits the dray cart always came for the empties. This was something to brag about. ‘Twelve dozen bottles besides draught!’ they would say. ‘And whisky and rum bottles actually counted by the dozen an’ all. And all got through in four days. By, those were the days! And not a wrong word, mind, not a wrong word.’

  Jack Stoddard took a fancy to our Kate, but as she told me years later she could never go out with him, so what was there to do but just sit in the house and drink. The fathar would have raised hell and her life would have been made more unbearable than it was if she had gone out for an evening with a man. I don’t think she was out of an evening, in fact I know she wasn’t, for ten years, with the exception of going down to Twenty-seven or up to the Alkali to get the drink.

  Sometimes she would say to me, ‘Come on; put your coat on and come down the road.’ If it was dark I didn’t mind because nobody would see me standing outside the bar waiting for her, but I hated going with her in the daylight. When she was just going for beer it didn’t matter so much. Beer was nothing, the beer hadn’t been brewed that could make her drunk, it was spirits I was afraid of, petrified of, because spirits turned her into a different being. But there’s one night I remember. We had been down to Twenty-seven and there were only two bottles of draught in the bass bag. The moon was riding high over the Sawmill and the Afflecks’ house. It was showing up the cornfield and the first of the two seats that were placed outside the cornfield railings for those who were tired by the long walk between Tyne Dock and East Jarrow. It was reflecting off the slate roofs of the houses in the New Buildings. It was shining on the high tide that was licking the slack bank showing the frothy edge broken with cabbages,
pieces of wood, boxes and all the interesting jetsam from the boats in the river. The wind was whirling the ends of my hair and threatening to take Kate’s hat off. She looked down at me and laughed, and clutching not so far back to the spirit of her childhood she grabbed my hand, crying, ‘Come on, let’s race the moon.’ And together we ran along the slack bank, the bottles rattling in the bag, her hat hanging on by one pin, my long ringlets bobbing, and my thin sticks of legs taking gazelle leaps over the cement slabs of the path. Just before we reached the New Buildings we stopped and I leant against her thigh and she put her arm about me and we stood panting and laughing. ‘Eeh! Aren’t we daft?’ she said. ‘If Morgan’ – the policeman – ‘saw us we’d get locked up.’ We laughed again until we nearly choked. Then all of a sudden she stopped and straightened her hat and we walked on sedately. And as I walked I realised that if she had entered the New Buildings ‘carrying on’ they would say she had had some. But the fact was that Kate could ‘carry-on’ more without drink than she could with it, but I don’t think that she herself ever fully realised this. On a moonlight night when the wind is high I can bring back the feeling of that night when, like two children, we joyed together.