Our Kate Read online

  Scotty MaLotty,

  The King of the Jews,

  Sold his wife for a pair of shoes.

  When the shoes began to wear,

  Scotty MaLotty

  Began to swear.

  And this particular Scotty MaLotty did swear, and chase me in return.

  Although always afraid of being chased, or attacked, I would stand my ground. And this resulted in many a good pummelling. But it did not deter me. I was bent on showing them; showing the lot of them.

  Number 2 William Black Street was a complete house and I always considered the people who lived there a cut above the rest in the street, for to have an upstairs and down, seven rooms altogether, was really something in those days. So thought my Aunt Mary, for later she occupied this house for many years. But at the time of speaking there was a family called Christopher living there, a highly respectable Chapel-going family. He was something in the docks; he worked in the offices, I think, which automatically pushed him up the ladder. Lottie Christopher was the only daughter; there were sons but I didn’t know much about them – they were older than me and always kept themselves to themselves. One day I was waiting for our Kate coming off the tram; she had been to Birtley for a week to look after Sarah, who was having another baby. Me grandma was managing to get about at this time. Well, the tram was a long time in coming, but down the slope flanking the terraces came Lottie Christopher. She was skipping with a new skipping rope with handles on, not knots in the end. ‘Can I have a skip of your rope?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Aw,’ I said, ‘Just once.’

  ‘You’re not going to,’ she said. ‘I don’t play with you . . . I’m not kind with you.’

  I don’t know how long this conversation went on but I dragged the rope from her, and because she protested I brayed her with it, not being particular which part I aimed at. She was screaming blue murder when the tram came into sight and I threw the skipping rope at her and hopped and skipped to the tram, like a nice little lass who had been patiently waiting for her ma.

  Kate alighted from the tram. She looked nice, lovely; she was wearing a three-quarter-length coat. She had got it second-hand, and as me grandma said, it looked class. She was very pleased to see me and touched my face as she looked down on me, but the next minute she said ‘Pull your stockings up and get Charlie off your back.’ My stockings were always coming down, because my legs were like thin shanks, and Charlie was my round shoulders. But what did anything matter, our Kate looked bonny. I went proudly up the street carrying a brown-paper parcel while she carried the straw hamper.

  The straw hamper was of very little interest to me because I knew it would hold nothing more than vegetables and black pudding. My Aunt Sarah always sent vegetables from their allotment and black pudding, which she made herself. Looking back on the family she had to work for – my Uncle Mick stopped work through deafness only a few years after they were married – I wonder that she spared all the vegetables and black pudding that she did. Anyway, Kate was no sooner in the house and had taken her hat and coat off when there came a knock on the front door. And there stood Mrs Christopher.

  Mrs Christopher was a quiet spoken, very polite woman . . . a refined woman. Did Kate know what Katie had done to Lottie?

  No, Kate didn’t know.

  Well she had thrashed her with the skipping rope, her own skipping rope, and there were weals all over her.

  OH? OH? Kate was most contrite. She would deal with Katie, she would that. By, she would.

  As the door closed I made my escape and locked myself in the lavatory. After some long time, when I emerged and went tentatively up into the kitchen Kate took no notice of me. She was talking to me grandma, saying, ‘Well, I just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t scrub his back, and I told her so. And she started to cry and said, “Oh, she wished she was up; he wouldn’t be able to get himself clean if his back wasn’t scrubbed.” “Well,” I said, “he can remain mucky because I’m not scrubbing your Mick’s back, so there.” I watched her fling round and attack a pan on the stove, grinding it into the embers, saying as she did so, ‘I’m not scrubbing any man’s back, least of all Mick Lavelle’s.’

  My Uncle Mick at that time was a pitman; he was a very small man and had a very white body, of which he took great care, and like all pitmen in those days he washed himself in a tin tub on a mat before the fire. This too seemed to annoy our Kate, for she said, ‘As bad as ours are they go in the scullery and close the door.’

  It was odd the things I clutched at to make our family superior and I remember this as one of them: our men washed in the scullery and closed the door.

  Then breaking off in the middle of a sentence she turned and, looking at me, said, ‘Get into that bedroom there and you wait!’

  If she had slapped my backside straight away it wouldn’t have been so bad but often when she sent me into the bedroom for punishment I might have to wait for an hour or two, and this was real torture to me for my imagination would be working overtime, and an hour could take on the endlessness of a child-year. But I never looked upon this torture as the outcome of my determination to show them.

  My Aunt Sarah hated the fathar and justifiably. If in his later years his welfare had depended on either her or Mary he would, as he knew only too well, have ended his days in the workhouse. Once, when Sarah was about twenty, she was working in Newcastle. She had an aunt living near there and she went to visit her on the evening prior to her day off. The family were apparently going to a play and they took her with them. It was her first play, and she stayed the night at their house. The next morning when she came home – the family were living in Nelson Street, Tyne Dock, at the time – the fathar whipped her round the backyard with a horsewhip. She never forgave him for it and I don’t blame her. In those early days he must have been frightful. Narrow, bigoted, unable to read or write, he was a torment to himself and took it out on those around him. He had to master somebody. Although many times he threatened me with the buckle end of his belt his hands never got any further than unloosening it. Never once did he lay a hand on me. If he was really capable of loving anyone, it was me.

  This softness he had for me was certainly put to use, for many and many were the nights I have been woken out of a deep sleep by our Kate and me grandma standing over me and Kate whispering, ‘Katie, come on, get up, do you hear? Get up and go and get your granda to bed.’

  Half-blind with sleep I would stumble into the kitchen whinging, ‘Aw, Granda! Come on man . . . come on, get yourself to bed. Aw, man, come on! I’m tired, man.’

  He’d be sitting sprawled in his chair, alternately singing and swearing. The song that he sang most often was ‘The Seagull’. ‘Seagull, seagull, fly away over the sea.’ Another was ‘My Bonny Bluebell’. But he had to be in a very good mood to sing ‘My Bonny Bluebell’. Very often he would be holding Dennis in his hand. Dennis was a three foot long steel poker about an inch thick. He had had it specially made, and sometimes he poked the fire with it and sometimes he knocked the pictures off the wall or the legs off the chairs with it, and very often he whirled it on high, threatening to bring it down on the head of either me grandma or our Kate. But not very often against Jack, because as Jack grew older his father left him alone.

  Eventually I would get him to his feet and into the front room and would help him off with his trousers and put him to bed. He always slept in his long linings – disgusting, nauseating sight and smell. But the main thing was he was in bed, and after a while me grandma would have to take her place by his side. And then the house would settle down to one more night of uneasy rest. Had either me grandma or our Kate attempted to get him to bed when he was mortallious he would have surely gone for them with Dennis.

  But there were times when even I daren’t go near him, for instance, when he sang the Irish Comallya. This would come on him suddenly. Following a strange silence he would jump up from his high-backed chair with Dennis in his hand, and, his voice raising
the roof he would sing the Irish Comallya. At these times Kate would hold me fast in the bedroom and from there we would watch him through the partly open door. There he would stand, swaying on his feet brandishing Dennis over his head as he sang:

  Sing us an Irish Comallya,

  Sing us an Irish tune;

  For Patsy Burke has buggered his work

  All by the light of the moon.

  Sing us an Irish Comallya as we dance around so gay

  And bring back the days when we were lads

  In old Ireland far away.

  Following this there would be dead silence for a few seconds, when we would wait for the next part. It always came.

  In heart-rending tones he would now say: ‘Old Ireland far away . . . And begod, it’s far away, it is at this minute!’

  Then he would proceed to tell us how old Ireland had been moved far away across . . . the watter. From a small child I was under the impression that Ireland had once been the capital of England until it had been moved across the ‘watter’. And by whom? The dirty Protestants!

  At this stage Dennis would be brought into action, and he would attack the dirty Protestants who had moved old Ireland faraway by hitting at the pictures on the wall and as he did so naming the tyrants who had bespoiled Ireland – they all happened to be neighbours.

  The funny part about it was that from the time he left Ireland when he was twelve he had never returned to his native land. He was like many another Irishman before him and since, yelling about his homeland, patriotic to the point of murder, yet making no effort to return . . . across the ‘watter’.

  It was the same with his religion, for it was said he had been in church only twice in his life. There was even a doubt about the first time since nobody could prove that he had been christened in church, only me grandma could prove that he had been married in the church – she wouldn’t have had him else. But he was a staunch Catholic, he was a fighting defender of the faith, and I was a sort of liaison officer running between him and God, for every Sunday of my young life when I went to mass and Sunday School and in later years to Benediction also I thought I was going to church to save me granda’s soul. Every Sunday I prayed for his soul and that he would die a happy death; and he did die a happy death, if you can go by externals. He passed away peacefully, Kate attending him to the last and breaking her heart when he went, whereas no-one could have blamed her if she had celebrated with a brass band, for she’d had her bellyful of the fathar and no mistake.

  I still at times wake up at nights hearing a voice saying: ‘Away with ya to Mass now and pray for me soul, pray that I might die a happy death.’ Oh, me granda.

  But it was this ignorant man who first told me I was a writer. He didn’t exactly say I was a writer, not in so many words, what he actually said was, ‘It’s a stinking liar you are, Katie McMullen, a stinking liar.’

  I remember the day he said that to me. I was very small, and I can see myself running up the backyard and into the kitchen and going straight for him where he sat in his chair, crying, ‘Granda! You know that little man you tell me about, the one that sits on the wall in Ireland no bigger than your hand, you know him? With the green jacket and the red trousers and the buckles on his shoes, and the high-hat and a shillelagh as big as himself, you remember, Granda?’

  ‘Aye, what about him?’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen him, Granda.’

  ‘Ya have?’

  ‘Aye, Granda. He was round the top corner.’

  ‘He was, was he? And I suppose he spoke to you?’

  ‘Aye, Granda, he did.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Well, he said “Hello, Katie.”’

  ‘He said, “Hello, Katie”, did he? And what did you say?’

  ‘ . . . I said “Hello, Mister, me granda knows you.”’

  He wiped his ’tache with his hand while raising his white eyebrows, then he said, ‘You know what you are, Katie McMullen, don’t ya? You’re a stinking liar. But go on, go on, don’t stop, for begod, it will get you some place! . . . Either into clink or into the money.’

  I was the only one who ever dared to argue with him, but one day I had to run for it. I was about thirteen at this time and I was quite concerned because of the fate of my Protestant friends, for I had a lot of nice Protestant friends and the fact that they were all going to end up in Hell worried me. It had been hammered into me that there was no hope for the Protestants, simply because they were Protestants. If they were sensible and changed their coats then they could be assured of eternity in heaven; if not, it was the Devil and Hell for them. From an early age I developed the faculty of seeing two sides to everything and one night, after listening to a particularly bitter haranguing against the Protestants, my imagination running wild, I saw most of the neighbours in a state of undress being forced to sit on hot gridirons – because that is what happened to you in Hell – and my mind protested and said it wasn’t right. The following day was Sunday and on my return from the first session of praying for me granda’s soul I passed the Salvation Army standing outside the line of bars opposite the Dock gates, openly proclaiming their allegiance to God. I saw them as a courageous group of people and I knew that I wouldn’t have the pluck to stand in the open and acknowledge my God. This filled my mind all the way home and when I got indoors I answered the unintentional brainwashing of years by saying, without any preliminary lead-up, ‘I like the Salvation Army, they’ve got pluck.’

  I can see his face now. It seemed to stretch at all angles until it covered the whole fireplace and was as red as the blazing coals that were cooking the gigantic Sunday roast.

  ‘What did you say?’ His voice seemed to come up through the floorboards. I ignored the wild signalling of Kate from the scullery. She, I know, thought I had gone clean doolally-tap, but nothing could stop me.

  ‘The Hallelujahs aren’t afraid to praise God in the open.’ I went on, ‘And another thing, they don’t go to Church and then come out and get drunk.’ Of course the last bit didn’t apply to him because he got drunk without going to church.

  ‘GET OUT!’

  ‘You’ll not frighten me like you have everybody else, so you needn’t think . . . ’

  Kate saved me by dragging me by the scruff of the neck into the scullery, and from there pushing me into the backyard, the while hissing at me, ‘Have you gone stark starin’ mad? What’s come over you? Stay out for a minute.’

  As I stood at the bottom of the backyard I heard him yelling, ‘Salvation Army, now, is it? Did you hear her? Begod! We’ll have her comin’ down the street next knockin’ bloody hell out of the big drum, or sitting at the harmonium at the street corner leading the lot. You’ll see.’

  And you know, I think he was a bit afraid of what I might do if driven too far, so for a while, at any rate, there was no tirade against the Protestants.

  He had the power to put the fear of God into most people, even when he was sober. The women of the New Buildings, gossiping at their back door, would disperse when they saw him coming, for he rarely passed them but in an aside would make some blush-raising remark while keeping his gaze directed ahead. I remember an angry husband coming to the door one night because me granda had told his wife to get indoors and into the family way. Me granda looked at the man and said, ‘If they don’t want to hear such remarks tell them to get inside their houses and keep them clean instead of gossiping in the back lane. As for me mucky remarks, your wife and her pals raise the scalp from me head when they get goin’. Get yersel away, man. Get away, and don’t be so bloody soft.’

  He was right about the quality of the stories that some of the women indulged in. But only some; there were others who considered it beneath them to stand at their back doors and were never heard to even say Damn.

  Although our Kate had a great sense of humour and liked telling a story, even one that was slightly risky, she would have no smut or midden-chatter, as she called it. And I can hear her remark to me grandma, ‘I can’t get
out into the back lane to hang the clothes. There’s that lot around so and so’s backyard door, and by the laughin’ and squealin’ they’ve all got their beds with them.’

  Often at this stage she would lead off about the respectable married women. And once I can remember her ending, ‘And they look down on me because I take a glass of beer.’

  Four

  One night I went into the kitchen and said to our Kate, ‘What’s a bax . . . tard, Kate?’ She looked at me. ‘A bax . . . tard? What do you mean? A bax . . . tard?’

  ‘Somebody called me a bax . . . tard.’ I saw her eyelids droop and she cast a quick glance towards me granda. She was working at the side table cutting up the meat for a pie for the morrow when she would be out working, and I saw her drop the knife and I noticed that the blade touched the wood of the table. It is odd the things you notice which have no reference to the matter in hand, but I’d heard her say you could tell a good knife by the balance, the blade should never weigh heavier than the handle, and at that moment I thought, that isn’t a good knife. I watched her leaning over the board looking down on her floured hands. Me granda turned in his chair and said roughly, ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘It was Mrs Waller,’ I said, ‘We was playing knocky-door-neighbour. I was tyin’ a can to her front-door knocker, and had the string across the road into the cornfield, through the railing, you know, and she came round the bottom corner and caught me and that’s what she said, “You’re a bax’tard. Inside and out you’re a bax’tard,” she said.’

  On this me granda, scraping his chair back with his foot, made swiftly for the door, but Kate, thrusting out her hand, caught at his arm, saying quietly, ‘Don’t, we want no rows. And she’ll hear more than that afore she’s finished anyway.’