A Child of Jarrow (6 page)

***

Alexander stood at the open mullioned window of his bedroom, high in the east tower, and gazed out at the blackness. The night was warm and muggy, with few stars glinting above the solid mass of trees. He heard the haunting cry of foxes from far off and saw an owl flap out of the woods and swoop out of sight. It was too stuffy in this small high room to sleep. He had a mad notion to rush to the stables, saddle up and ride out on to the moors where the air would be cooler. But he curbed the desire. He must not cause his cousin Henry any embarrassment.

Alexander flushed to think of how close he had come to losing his head and kissing Lady Ravensworth by the tranquil lake. She was old enough to be his mother, yet she dazzled him with her looks and wit and experience. He felt restless, the taste of sweet peach still on his lips. Leaning his head on the cool glass pane, he tried to rid himself of thoughts of her.

That was when the memory of the silent young woman in the hothouse came back to him. She had been chatting and laughing before their arrival, then fallen into the shadows at their approach. He had the impression of rounded pink cheeks, soft as peaches, and tumbling hair, but nothing more.

Quickly, he turned and strode across the room to the table by his bedside and pulled a piece of paper under the pool of lamplight. He sketched swiftly, a girl's oval face bending over a small boy's. Something about the drawing, the curve of the cheek, reminded him of something else. Suddenly it came back to him. A young woman with a large straw hat stepping down from a cart. It had been Peter holding the pony. And the small boy had rushed from the cottage in greeting. A visitor, not his mother or sister then, Alexander mused. He wished he had taken a closer look at the girl this evening. He tried to conjure up her face but it eluded him.

He turned over the paper and started again. A half-hidden face under a rim of hat, the hint of a smile. A boy running towards a cart. And a black woollen stocking showing beneath a hitched skirt, a shapely ankle. Underneath he gave it the title The Mystery Girl.

He smiled and lay down on the bed. Tomorrow he would go sketching, capturing the folk of Ravensworth going about their work. The place where he felt most at ease, among the people with whom he felt most at home.

Chapter 6

At the beginning of August, Kate was taken on at Farnacre Hall, the dower house on the estate, as a laundry maid. With Kate's help around the house and fussing attention, Aunt Lizzie was recovering swiftly and was now able to sit in the doorway of the cottage, mending clothes or peeling vegetables. Peter had made his wife a pair of walking sticks to help her move around, and she was no longer so dependent on Kate to nurse her or tend to the household chores.

But none of the family wanted the lively girl to return home to Jarrow so soon. Lizzie enjoyed her company, Alfred doted on his cousin and even George now answered her teasing questions with bashful mumbles. It was he who came home with the news that the housekeeper at Farnacre Hall was looking for extra help in the laundry. The earl's ancient mother, Horatia, Lady Ravensworth, who lived there, was increasingly frail and recently bed-bound. The chores in the laundry were increasing.

‘Two lasses have up and left for the town,' George said. ‘Say the pay's better.'

‘Aye, and the dirt's thicker,' Lizzie snorted. ‘Good luck to them. I wouldn't gan back for all the tea in China.'

‘Have they taken on anyone else yet?' Kate asked eagerly. ‘I'm used to that sort of work. Mam had me scrubbing butcher's aprons when I was still too small to see over the side of the poss tub.'

‘You get yourself down there the morrow, hinny,' her aunt encouraged.

Kate went and had little trouble persuading the housekeeper of her willingness to work hard. Miss Peters, who had worked for the dowager all her life, was herself old and deaf and at a loss as to how to keep her young staff. Kate held herself erect and told her she had worked for the best in South Shields. She gave her name as Fawcett, her father's name, rather than her stepfather's Irish name of McMullen. Kate determined to start a new life here, well away from John McMullen's influence. Pleased with the look of her, Miss Peters started the Tyneside girl the next day at the rambling, ivy-covered manor house that nestled in a hollow in the woods, halfway up the castle drive.

The laundry room was cramped and hot. It was little bigger than the wash houses she'd worked in back in South Shields, and had none of the labour-saving devices that they used in the castle, Suky, the other laundry maid, was quick to tell her.

‘Up at the big house they've got all these mangles and rollers all in one,' the young girl said as she and Kate hand-wrung a linen sheet between them over a stone trough. ‘Me cousin Olive works there - head housemaid's a real dragon, but the place is spotless.'

They carried the sheets out to the moss-covered courtyard and threw them on to the washing lines.

‘And they've got all these drying rooms - big wooden racks to put all the clothes on - warm as toast.' Suky pulled her black hair away from her damp forehead and blew out her cheeks.

Kate soon learnt that nothing at Farnacre Hall could compare with the standards at the castle. Every chore they did, Suky told her how much worse off they were working at the old manor house.

‘None of this fiddling about with hot coals in these old box irons,' she grumbled. ‘Always burning me fingers, I am. No, Olive says there's this great big iron stove they keep hot all the time - with eight irons on it all ready and waiting. And you know what they're talking of getting? Electric ones!'

Kate looked up over her mound of ironing. ‘Electric irons? How do they work?'

‘I don't know exactly, but Olive says they won't even need to stoke the stove. You stick a bit rope in the wall and they heat up, just like magic.'

Kate was dubious. ‘Well, it's not going to happen here. Her Ladyship likes her oil lamps and her coal fires - she's not going to try anything fancy like electric.' She held up a piece of lace and grinned with satisfaction at the way she had mastered the crimping iron.

‘Aye, we're lucky to have water in the house,' Suky grumbled, then mimicked the querulous voice of their ancient employer. ‘In my day, young gels were happy to walk miles to draw water from the well.'

Kate snorted with laughter as Suky hobbled around the laundry room wagging her finger.

The cook, Mrs Benson, bellowed through the door from the kitchen, ‘Stop larking on or we'll have Miss Peters down here causing a riot!'

The girls stifled their sniggering. ‘Aye,' Kate whispered, ‘she'll give us a blast of her ear trumpet.'

‘Boer War could break out down here and Miss P wouldn't hear it,' Suky muttered, and Kate burst out laughing again.

‘Kate Fawcett, stop that noise!' Cook bellowed to no avail. She was a kind woman and Kate knew her reprimands were half-hearted. Besides, Kate was a hard worker and finished her jobs quicker than any of the other girls. Sometimes Cook would set her to small tasks in the kitchen, which she carried out willingly. The older woman quickly came to accept that Kate could not work in silence. If she wasn't chatting and laughing, she was singing songs. With sighs of resignation, Cook let her be.

Kate was happy. The work at Farnacre was hard and physical, but she felt full of energy since coming to Ravensworth, and relished her new life. She enjoyed Suky's droll company and Cook's fussing kindness, and she returned home to a friendly welcome at the gardener's cottage where she regaled them with the tales of the day.

Best of all, in the evening, she liked to walk around the vast gardens with Uncle Peter and the boys, helping him with fruit picking and watering, making the most of the dying daylight. Her uncle was only one of five gardeners, but he had a natural touch with fruit and salads, and his special concern was the orchards and hothouses. Kate touched and tasted fruits she had never seen before: redcurrants, gooseberries and apricots. The first crop of pears were ready, growing up the side of sheltered brick walls kept warm by coal stoves.

Peter showed her the dark heated forcing houses where chicory, asparagus and new potatoes were brought on quickly. Kate loved the warm earthy smell of the sheds and marvelled at the huge endless trenches of food: lettuce, radishes and fennel, rhubarb, sweet parsley and artichokes, exotic names and bitter-sweet tastes that made her tongue tingle.

Best of all she liked to breathe in the hot, honeyed air of the glasshouses where the peaches and melons grew. For it was here that she had first seen the mysterious gentleman friend of Lady Ravensworth biting into the flesh of a peach, juice running down his strong jaw. His long hair had glinted in the lantern light and his deep voice had made her insides flutter. He reminded her of a lion, a picture in a scripture book from school that had fascinated her as a child.

She longed for another sight of the man that her uncle had called Master Alex and this was the unspoken reason for her keenness to help in the gardens each evening. But she had not seen him in his evening finery since that night. Once, when carrying a basket of cherries to Cook at the hall, she had glimpsed a man in the distance with a similar stance. He was watching some field workers bending to their task and recording something in a book. Kate had strained to see if it could be the same man, but decided it could not. What would a relation of the Liddells be doing showing such interest in the work of common labourers?

It was a disappointment not to see the man again; it had become almost like a game to go out in the evening hoping to spy him. Most likely he had long gone from the castle, important business having taken him elsewhere. She laughed at her own fanciful notion that he would even notice her should she happen upon him again.

***

Alexander tossed another fretful letter from his father on to the unlit fire in his garret room and strode to the door. It was the usual plea to finish his business at Ravensworth and set sail for Scandinavia. But this time Jeremiah Davies was threatening to come himself to the castle and prise him out. Making for the stables, Alexander knew his time here was running out. While Lord and Lady Ravensworth were happy to indulge him, his cousin would pack him off quickly if he thought the young man's continued presence was causing harm to his business interests. The earl seemed not to notice his cousin's adoration of Lady Ravensworth or if so, tolerated it as a young man's calf love.

Alexander took the saddled horse that the yawning stable boy had made ready for his usual early morning ride, almost curt in his annoyance. That was the best he could ever expect; to be tolerated by his elders and betters. He could never lay claim to the riches of Ravensworth, which he felt deeply should be his. Not that he wanted the trappings of wealth - he could live as simply as any man - but he yearned to belong. He felt a part of its wooded hills, its dark earth and seams of coal. He felt the pull of generations of north-countrymen who had tilled its soil and defended the ancient fortress whose medieval towers still stood behind the grand Victorian facade.

Alexander urged his horse into a trot. Outside the high protective walls he quickly left the road and made for the moors above the sheltering trees and swathes of mist. In the hazy Tyne valley, the early morning light bounced off the steel ribbon of river and the far away clusters of dockland and smoking chimney stacks.

As he cantered past small farms and pit villages clinging to the edge of the escarpment, he thought once more of his early days in this rugged land that had shaped the man he was. For a short, happy time he had lived with his cousin Edward, the rector of Jarrow, and his kind Scots wife, Christina. How he had adored his Uncle Edward! He had dogged his heels around the grimy streets of the riverside town, absorbing the smells of the docks and gasworks, in awe of the becapped gangs of dockers who streamed past the rector's cocoa stall at break of day.

His cousin Edward had been a highborn Liddell but had chosen to dedicate himself to improving conditions for the poorest in Jarrow. Alexander appreciated now the enormous sacrifice of the young couple, who could have taken an easy living in the south of England instead. Yet at the time Alexander thought nothing out of the ordinary about living in a blackened rectory beside foul-smelling effluent, and visiting houses without running water where children played barefoot in the dusty lanes.

‘Oh, Uncle Edward!' Alexander cried aloud to the pearly sky. ‘You were a fool!'

Alexander kicked his horse into a gallop across the heathery tracks. His cousin's task of making life better for the poor had been an impossible one. His health had broken down and they had all had to leave. With Edward no longer able to support him, Alexander had been passed on to yet another distant relation who had made it plain what a burden he was, so he had run away from the boarding school in which he had been dumped.

He had tried to find his way back north, to search for his beloved Uncle Edward, but in vain. Edward and Christina had gone abroad to seek a healthier climate, never to return to Jarrow. Their hinted promise of offering him a permanent home had been destroyed along with their health. Childless themselves, they would have been the perfect parents. Instead they left him with nothing, except an abiding memory of being taken to Ravensworth on a hot summer's day. That, and a strong sense of belonging among the people here.

Alexander rode until he was exhausted and had rid his head of angry thoughts about his rootless childhood. He imagined what Jeremiah would have to say about such reckless riding. ‘Careful, young man, or you'll bring on one of those nosebleeds! God gave you a brain for commerce, not a constitution for the saddle.'

Alexander laughed off such concerns and turned for home. He would grasp life and live it to the full. The day after tomorrow was the ball for King Edward VII ‘s delayed coronation. He would stay for that and then travel on.

Down in the woods again, the early morning mist still hung damp among the lush leaves as he rode up the back drive. He slowed to a trot, breathing in the sweet clear air, his chest heaving hard from the exertion. Round the bend the first shaft of strong sunlight was breaking through the trees, dazzling the dew-soaked track ahead.

In the sudden glare, he did not see the girl on the path till the last moment. He saw a flash of pale blue skirt and a startled face as she jumped clear. A basket flew from her hands and raspberries splattered around them, blood-red. Alexander reined in his horse at once, wheeling it round.

Below him, a young woman stared up in astonishment. Her eyes looked huge and the same startling blue as her dress. Her thick brown hair was tied back but uncovered, her cheeks flushed and mouth open wide as if she would give him a piece of her mind. But she said nothing, just dropped to her knees and attempted to scrape the fallen berries back into her basket.

Alexander dismounted and went to help.

‘I'm sorry,' he gasped, touching her shoulder. She looked up in alarm.

‘No, sir, it was me,' she answered in a strong voice that belied her slight frame.

‘Let me help.'

‘No, you mustn't.'

But he ignored her and began scooping handfuls of raspberries back into the basket. Unable to resist, he popped one into his mouth.

‘My favourite fruit. They grow the best raspberries at Ravensworth, don't you think?'

She glanced up and eyed him from under thick dark lashes. Was there a hint of merriment in that intent blue gaze? he wondered.

‘So me Uncle Peter says. Not tried them meself - not straight from the bush. Me aunt says too much raw fruit can bring on summer fever. They're grand baked in a pie, mind.' She suddenly blushed as if she'd said too much.