Our Kate Page 6

  As I can recall the gipsies when I smell water on hot ash. The gipsies came at least once a year and camped in the field behind Lancaster Street, the field that was part of the open space belonging to the Barium Chemical Works. The field adjoined the grounds of Morgan’s Hall, a large grey stone hall which had originally been built to serve as a workman’s club for the men who worked in the Barium, but for some reason or another it had never been put to this use. It was named Morgan’s Hall because of the policeman who lived there in the caretaker’s rooms.

  The gipsies placed their camp in part of this wasteland near the railings of Morgan’s Hall, and a thrill of excitement ran through the buildings when they arrived. I think that they were the real old type of gipsy, and all of one family. I do know that they were ruled by an old man; he was a tall fine-looking man and I remember him and his wife clearly, because they too brought fear into my life.

  I must have been seven at this time and I can see myself sitting outside their tent and opposite the fire on which a pot was boiling. It spilled over and there was the pungent smell that rises from hot wet ash. Next I can see myself sitting in the tent between the old couple; the old man had hold of my hand and he was saying, ‘How would you like to live with us?’ It was then the cold fear attacked me. I had a compelling urge to get into our kitchen, to see me granda, and grandma and our Kate. I would be safe once I got into the kitchen.

  When I was in the kitchen Kate said to me, ‘Why aren’t you over with the gipsies, they’re going the morrow?’ For answer I gave my usual evasive reply, I was tired.

  The next morning, coming back on an errand from Tyne Dock, I saw the old man walking down past the Sawmill, and I ran across the road and turned my face to the wall and walked sideways until I was past him, and I knew he was standing still watching me. It is strange but the gipsies never returned to the New Buildings. I wonder if I had anything to do with this, or was it because one of the younger families left owing Cissie Affleck a tidy bill? They had left before owing bills but had always paid up on their return. But they never came back to the New Buildings.

  I remember me grandma saying, ‘The gipsies don’t come any more, I wonder why. The old couple were very fond of you.’ She touched my face.

  I must have started going for the beer when I was seven. I had gone round the back lane to Twenty-seven, with two empty bottles in a bag, and as I opened the backyard door a great beast sprang at me and caught me by the arm. I screamed and screamed, and was lying by the rain barrel with the dog still hanging on to me when the barman rushed out. The next thing I remember I was walking back home by the slack bank carrying two full bottles of beer in the bag and hugging my left arm to me. When I got in and showed them my arm there was great concern. Me grandma was lying on the couch in the front room again, and Kate said, ‘I’ll have to get her to the chemist.’ So she took me all the way to Stanhope Road, where there was a herbalist who had a shop on the corner, and I recall him saying to me, ‘Oh, you’re not going to cry, you’re a big girl,’ while he cauterised the arm just as I sat there. Then he put it in a sling.

  Back home again, I sat near the head of the couch cradled in me grandma’s arms, and I can see Kate bending over me and hissing in a warning tone, ‘Now let him get his tea afore you say anything.’

  Me granda came in at half past five and his tea, a heavy cooked meal, was always waiting ready for him. Someone had to stand on the cracket to enable them to see above the cornfield railing and some distance down the main road, and as soon as he came in sight the meal was dished up so that it could be on the table when he entered the house.

  It seemed a long time this night before he finished and I so wanted to tell him about my arm, and when I did there were ructions. What had happened to the dog? he wanted to know.

  Oh, that had been put down.

  It was a big Dalmatian dog, and the barman had promised to have it destroyed, but it was strangely resurrected some time later. I have its teeth marks on the inside of my left arm yet.

  So this day registers the age when I first went for the beer as being about seven, for me grandma was still alive and she died when I was eight. This day registers other things too. It recalls to my mind that our Kate looked after her mother with great care, and also on this day I became aware of me granda’s love for me.

  Me granda’s tea might consist of a big plate of finny haddy and mashed potatoes, or a piece of steak and eggs and chips, but whatever he had he nearly always started with a boiled egg, and I had to have the top off his egg. The top of his egg usually went two-thirds of the way down the egg and he had to turn it quickly to stop the yoke running out. I would stand by his side with a slice of bread and marge and he would ladle out the egg, spoon by spoon, onto the bread until I’d had it nearly all. I often wondered why they couldn’t give me an egg to myself. But no, I had to have the top of his egg. I remember this went on for a long time, right until during the war, the first war when eggs could be sold for sixpence each. Then we had very few on the table. He kept hens in the backyard for years, hens, ducks and rabbits, but he kept the hen crees cleaner than some people kept their houses. But to get back to going for the beer.

  From when I was about eight there was scarcely a day of the week that I didn’t go down to Hudson Street or even as far as Brinkburn Street in Stanhope Road for the beer. During the war it was scarce and of an evening I would have to stand in queues. By this time I was carrying the grey hen. The grey hen was a large narrow necked stone jar; it was heavy when empty, much heavier full. I carried it on my left hip. True I was given my tram fare back, but I would often walk the whole distance from Tyne Dock to East Jarrow carrying the great jar to save the ha’pennies.

  There was a great deal of comment in the New Buildings about my being sent for the beer. It was looked on in some quarters as a disgrace; in the less refined quarters it was termed openly ‘A bloody shame, sendin’ that bairn for the beer with that great jar.’ I think I was the only child in the New Buildings who was sent on such an errand.

  As the years went on I became filled with shame at having to carry the grey hen. Yet for a time it had its monetary compensation. There was an outdoor beer shop in Hudson Street and the woman who kept it was getting on and her arithmetic wasn’t as good as mine. Pound notes and ten-shilling notes were in then and it sometimes happened she gave me the change of a pound note when I’d only given her a ten-shilling note. Once I told her about this and gave her the money back and she gave me some sweets. But when it happened again I kept the surplus, but was terrified to go back into the shop in case she remembered. But when I was forced to, and she didn’t remember, the woman’s poor arithmetic became a source of revenue to me, until the fine point of stealing by finding, or stealing by being given too much change, was forced home to me as I prepared for confession one night. After this it was a battle between my conscience and my need as to whether I kept or tipped up the money to the woman.

  Although, as I’ve said, I didn’t like going for beer I recognised also that it had its good side, for when I was sent for the beer funds were low in the house. If funds were high Kate would have gone herself, and when Kate went out it usually meant that she would bring back a drop. The drop would perhaps be in a medicine bottle or a flat quarter whisky bottle and would be hidden here or there behind utensils in the cupboard. I remember finding one one day and pouring some out and filling it up with water. I only did this once, for the fear of her finding out what I had done was, in a way, worse than the fear of her drinking the stuff.

  It is impossible for me to describe the sick terror that filled me when Kate took whisky. If she had been able to carry it like my Aunt Sarah then I suppose I wouldn’t have been so affected. But she became another being, the colour of her eyes seemed to change, her mouth did actually take on a different shape and she developed a little sniff. This last seemed to me in some way to be a form of cover-up, and yet it gave away the very thing she was trying to hide. When she had had just one or two glasses of
whisky she always wanted to placate me in some way, and when I wouldn’t be placated she would get angry. In drink she also wanted company and gaiety. In this state she would talk to people whom she would have ignored when sober, considering them beneath her. There were quite a number of people even in our station of life who were considered beneath us. I could always tell by the look on Kate’s face whether she’d had just beer, or was on the hard stuff, and I could tell whether she’d had two, three, or four glasses.

  One day when she had a load on I stood in the corner of the kitchen and stared at her, and she rounded on me, seeming to sober up completely, as she said, ‘Don’t stand there looking at me with his eyes. Don’t look at me like that, I’m telling you. Haven’t I enough to put up with?’ I must have known to whom she was referring, for it was from then that I treasured the fact that I was like my father. It is the only time I can remember her alluding to him, until a few years before she died.

  It seems strange looking back but quite often they’d have a party. These parties too filled me with sick dread for they nearly always ended up in a fight. If my Uncle Alec was at the party he would sing ‘The Spaniard who blighted my life’. Standing with his eyes half closed and his head back he would sing verse after verse. I liked to hear my Uncle Alec sing. If Jimmy Hines was at the party – he was my Great-Aunt Maggie’s son – he would sing ‘I am but a poor blind boy’. This used to make me want to laugh and I knew I mustn’t. Then Kate would be called upon to sing and I would bow my head and the shame would descend upon me. Our Kate had a nice voice, a good voice, but she rarely used it unless she’d had a drop: then she’d sing ‘Thora’ or ‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls’, and she’d strain at the high notes and move her head from side to side. Sometimes me granda would interrupt with a laugh and say something nasty, and then a row would start.

  It was after such a night that I stood with my back hard against the old sewing machine that we had under the window in the bedroom. She was bending down to me and the hateful smell of whisky wafted from her as she said, ‘Give us a kiss.’ My stomach turned over. I wished she was dead. I pushed her face away with the flat of my hand and hissed at her, ‘I hate you. I do. I do. I hate you, our Kate.’ Never have I seen such a look on anyone’s face before or since. It held a mixture of anger, humiliation, bitterness and sadness, such sadness. And I felt the sadness most of all and couldn’t understand why when I hated her I could be so sad for her.

  But most of the time I felt protective towards her, going out of my way to defend her, just as mothers do when defending the black sheep of the family.

  The painful times would seem to dominate the memories of my childhood. But there were other times. Nearly every night after tea, and when I had been for the beer, I went out to play for a while. Winter or summer we would play round the street lamps, or outside Cissie Affleck’s shop. There were certain parts of the New Buildings we selected for play at certain times of the year, as also we did our games. In the winter, towards Christmas, it was usual to gather around the shop, for then Cissie would be putting the Christmas decorations in her window, and if you were in the Christmas Club you could stand for hours pointing out what you were going to get. A shop with real scales, and bottles, and a counter; a doll . . . a black doll perhaps, or boxes of chocolates, or a long gauze stocking filled with an assortment of useless things. And in between gazing and planning we would skip or play tiggy, or Jack, Jack, shine your light.

  In the summer, we would usually gather on the open space before the terrace, or on the slack bank and the timbers. The big timbers were tied together with sleepers to which ropes were attached allowing each timber some leeway. When the tide was high and the timbers were floating you ran over each one, pressing it down into the water and jumping onto the next before your feet got wet. This was called playing the piano. Or we’d make tents and play houses, or gather round Richardson’s top corner and into the chimney piece and play shops, or bays on the pavement, what others call hopscotch. And then there was diabolo, and scooters, and rounders, and hot rice, and . . . knocky-door-neighbour. Some nights we would get dressed up and go singing in procession round the five streets.

  We were only following our elders in this, for like a spring fever, there would come at certain times of the year among certain women of the buildings, among whom were Kate and Mary, a madness, a jolly madness, that would force them to dress up in any old clothes, and singing and beating tin cans, parade around the five streets. I’ve seen Mary leave her washing and Kate her baking and, getting into the men’s clothes, go dancing round the doors, and she solid and sober. There was a primitive weirdness about this which I recall whenever I hear the Kerry Piper’s song.

  Sundays were a sort of respite to me, but boring to everybody else in the house, because, not having best clothes, they couldn’t go out. I connected Sundays with big dinners, everybody going to bed in the afternoon – and Cissie Affleck, because nearly always I watched Cissie and her young man taking their weekly walk after Church on a Sunday afternoon.

  You could almost tell the time from Cissie and Mr Maitcham passing along the slack bank opposite the end of our street on a Sunday afternoon after chapel Sunday School. I can see them now. He was a tall, well-dressed, superior looking man. You couldn’t put the prefix lad or boy to Mr Maitcham. I think he must have been about thirty at the time and Cissie in her early twenties. There they would walk, keeping a specified distance apart; sedately, even regally they would pass by the New Buildings. I cannot ever remember Cissie casting her eyes across the road to where, at the corner of Philipson Street, was her shop. No, this was Sunday. A day for Church and courting, a prim kind of courting. You didn’t wear your heart on your sleeve in those days. Couples didn’t fling their arms about each other in public, even go as far as kissing in public, that was left to the darkness of a back lane, or better still some place up the country, and courting in the front room was only sanctioned by the, morally speaking, broad parents, and this, as was well-known, led to a quick wedding and evoked the remark ‘Well, what d’ya expect. It was askin’ for it.’

  But I could never connect the front room or a quiet spot up the country with Cissie and Mr Maitcham, and as for the back lane, never.

  I next see Kate standing on the steps of Simonside School talking to the Headmistress. I was standing against the grey granite wall, my hands on my buttocks. I was pressing them tightly against the roughness because of something Kate was saying. She was saying, ‘She’s a Catholic and has to go to the Catholic School.’ And then comes a memory of disjointed words all about names. ‘McMullen isn’t her name,’ Kate said. ‘It’s Fawcett.’

  It was this name sticking in my mind that caused me such distress in later years. Fawcett was Kate’s maiden name but I didn’t know it wasn’t the name on my birth certificate; it should have been, but my birth certificate held my father’s name, at least the name he had given her. The certificate also gave him a fictitious occupation. She had forged both his name and occupation, for at the registry office she had been too ashamed to write the truth. Also on that birth certificate it didn’t say the 20th June, 1906, but the 27th June, 1906. She had left my registration until the last minute, and then she was too ill to go down to Shields and she didn’t want anyone else to do the registering because she wanted to fix it for me. When she did get to the office she stated I was born on the 27th in case she would get wrong for not having registered me earlier.

  It seems strange now but in that generation poor people had an inordinate fear of the law, yet would go to outrageous lengths, such as forgery, to cover up some simple misdemeanour. But if only she had told me about the name on the certificate I wouldn’t have had to say so often ‘I haven’t got a birth certificate,’ or ‘I cannot get my birth certificate.’ The truth being I didn’t want to get it because of what it would show. When at last I did get it, it showed me the name of a supposedly legitimate father and his occupation.

  It was me granda who was the instigator of me chang
ing schools. He was the dominating factor in all the happenings of the house. He was a Catholic who never stepped inside a church door, but who would strike a blow for the Pope, yet at the same time scorning and decrying the Richardsons and the McArthurs, close neighbours, who were strong practising Catholics. Pulling them to shreds almost daily, he would hold them up as a sample of everything that was bad. He despised them as he despised all churchgoers, yet it was he who insisted that I was to go to a Catholic School. And with this change of school God came into my life, and with him came the Devil, and Miss Corfield, the schoolmistress of St Peter & Paul’s, Tyne Dock, and with her came mental and physical torture. The physical she accomplished with the help of the cane, the mental by sarcasm. And with God came priests, and the confessional, and nightmares, purgatory and repentance – and fear.

  From this time the fight started within me and it had to have expression outwardly. I bossed, bullied and slapped out. In any game in which I played I had to lead or I wouldn’t be in it. It was I who had to do the counting for ‘deady one’, shouting as I stabbed a finger into each small chest:

  Eeny, meeny, miny mo,

  Set a baby on a po.

  When it’s done

  Wipe its bum,

  Eeny, meeny, miny mo.

  It was I who would run after Willie Weir, one of a large Scots family who lived above my Great-Aunt Maggie, me grandma’s sister, in number twenty-six. I must tell you about my Aunt Maggie, as I called her, later. But there I would be, shouting, bawling after one of this tribe: