‘You mean he’s on the fiddle?’ Jessie turned from the teapot to stare straight at Annie. ‘Serious like?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, lass.’ Annie was clearly regretting saying anything at all, and she turned now, hitching up her ample bosom with her forearms before holding out her hands to the fire and saying, ‘I like a nice fire, makes all the difference, don’t it.’
This remark was addressed to Rosie, who nodded quickly. ‘Yes, it does.’ She had noticed her mother had used most of their remaining coal. So Shane was on the take? Well, that didn’t surprise her, Rosie acknowledged silently as she took the mug of tea her mother offered her with a nod of thanks. And from what Mrs McLinnie had said it was more than the odd bit of moonlighting that most of the men hereabouts indulged in, given half a chance. Sam had told her ages ago that Shane was drinking with some of the Wearmouth dockers and the sailors, along with the dredger crew, and everyone knew there was business done in the pubs along the quays most nights. Still, that was his affair. She took a gulp of the hot sweet tea, which was almost black, as her thoughts travelled on. As long as he left her alone she didn’t care what Shane McLinnie did. She had more important things to occupy her mind than
him
.
‘. . . pleased to see you?’
‘What?’ Rosie came out of her thoughts to the realization that Mrs McLinnie had been speaking to her and she hadn’t heard a word. And now her face was faintly flushed as she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs McLinnie.’
‘Nowt to be sorry for, lass. I dare say your head’s full of the new job, eh?’ Annie grinned at Rosie, her fat jowls wobbling, even as her mind was saying, The lass is too peaky-looking, bless her. But then, was it surprising? Rosie had taken on all of them and Jessie was more of a hindrance than a help, she’d be bound. ‘I was askin’ if you an’ your mam would be of a mind to come to our Robert’s shindig after the nuptials? Now, meself I wouldn’t have bothered, an’ our Robert’s none too keen, to tell you the truth, but her mam’ - Rosie took this to mean the future bride’s mother - ‘insists she wants a bit of jollification after, an’ bein’ as they run the Swan an’ Crown they’re havin’ a do in the back room, private like.’
Rosie had only met Robert’s intended once, but once had been enough, and now the memory of the fat, blowzy girl with fuzzy fair hair and hard gimlet eyes was at the forefront of her mind along with Shane when she said, her face and voice pleasant but firm, ‘That’s very nice of you, Mrs McLinnie, but I couldn’t leave Molly and Hannah,’ before turning to her mother and adding, ‘but you go if you want, Mam. A night out would do you good.’
‘Oh bring the bairns, lass, bring the bairns. Like I said, they’re holdin’ it in their back room, not the pub as such, an’ the bairns’ll be more than welcome. Connie’s lot have got bairns comin’ out of their ears - they breed like rabbits in that quarter an’ no mistake - so Molly and Hannah won’t be on their own.’
She would rather die than willingly put herself in a place where Shane McLinnie was drawing the same air. ‘No, really, Mrs McLinnie. My da had a thing about bairns being round a pub, hadn’t he, Mam? He would never let the lads anywhere near until they were working, when he said they were old enough to make up their own minds, and I know he would be dead against Molly and Hannah going into one.’ This last had the advantage of being the truth. ‘Isn’t that right, Mam?’ she added when Jessie remained silent.
‘Aye.’ Jessie’s voice was grudging. James had been a staunch teetotaller although he hadn’t minded her having a bit of the hard stuff or a drop of stout at Christmas and New Year, but it had always been a bone of contention between them that he wouldn’t indulge now and again. Jessie would have liked to have made a night of it at the local as quite a few of the neighbours did on a Saturday night, but no matter how she had sulked or argued James hadn’t budged. Of course him having his baccy was a different story, and he’d wasted a few bob on bets in his time, Jessie thought now with a touch of the old resentment.
‘So I wouldn’t feel right to take them now,’ Rosie said firmly. Hypocrite! The accusing little voice of conscience brought hot colour working up from her neck, but, she argued back, what else could she say? I don’t want to come to Robert’s do because your youngest son is a dirty beast of a man?
‘Father Bell will be there.’ Mrs McLinnie spoke as though the priest’s presence would turn the whole event into something holy, but then, when Rosie didn’t respond, she added, ‘But I understand, lass, aye, I do. Your da was a grand man an’ likely he’s right. There’ll be a few oilin’ their wigs I’ll be bound.’
‘The bairns could stay round your grannie’s.’
‘No.’ It was too abrupt, and Rosie’s colour intensified as she rose jerkily to her feet without any of her normal and natural grace. ‘No, Mam. I’ve told you, I don’t like the bairns staying there. Visiting for an hour or two with one of us maybe, but not staying by themselves.’
She had been through all this with her mother the weekend before. There was something about one of her grandmother’s latest lodgers - a relatively young man who would have been good-looking but for his large, loose-lipped, wet mouth - that had unnerved her the last couple of times she had seen him with Molly and Hannah. It was the way he looked at her sisters, especially Molly. There was an element in his gaze that reminded her of the way Shane McLinnie eyed her, and she wasn’t imagining it.
And Molly . . . Twice she had had to stop her sister from sitting on the man’s knee when he had come down to her grandmother’s kitchen, ostensibly to ask how they were all coping after the dreadful tragedy. Somehow Molly had always managed to sidle up close to his side. Of course, Molly was missing her father and her brothers, that was it. Rosie gave a mental nod to the voice in her head. She was just a little girl, an innocent bairn, and it was up to her mother and herself to protect the child. But therein lay part of the problem; her mother was so
unaware
these days.
Even when Molly had dropped the sixpence out of the pocket of her pinafore that same night when she was getting ready for bed, and, under Rosie’s dogged questioning, eventually admitted that ‘Uncle’ Ronnie had given it to her, her mother had seemed quite oblivious to any possible implications.
‘He said I could spend it on bullets or taffy for just me,’ Molly had argued aggressively. ‘An’ anyway, I don’t have to tell you everythin’.’
‘No, you don’t, Molly.’ Rosie had looked down at her sister, at the deep sea-green eyes edged with thick lashes that curled like smudges of silk on her creamy skin, at the delicately arched eyebrows and luxuriant mass of golden-brown hair, and she had been afraid. ‘But sixpence is a lot to give to a little girl.’
‘That’s why he said I hadn’t got to tell.’ Molly stared at her defiantly. ‘He said you’d bray me.’
‘I won’t smack you but . . .’ Rosie hesitated. This wasn’t going to go down very well. ‘I don’t want you to accept anything else from Mr Tiller, Molly. Do you understand?’
‘His name is Ronnie, Uncle Ronnie.’
‘I don’t want you to accept anything from Uncle Ronnie.’
‘Huh.’
Altogether the whole incident had left a nasty taste in Rosie’s mouth and it was back again now as she forced herself to smile at Mrs McLinnie and say, her tone as easy as she could make it, ‘I’ve just got to pop in and see Mr Price for a minute but I’ll be back before you go.’
‘No rush, lass, no rush. You know what me an’ your mam are like when we get jawin’. I’ll be here for a while yet.’
Once outside on the cold landing Rosie stood quite still, her chin up and her eyes shut as she breathed in and out deeply, and then she raised her eyelids slowly, glancing round the sombre brown walls. She wasn’t going to let anyone dampen her feelings this morning - not her mother, not Shane McLinnie, not her grannie’s lodger, not . . . anyone. It hurt even to acknowledge Davey’s name.
She had a job.
It would be a struggle to manage on fourteen shillings less stamp - Molly and Hannah both needed their boots mending already - but they would get by somehow. She had already asked her grannie to look out for a cheap secondhand coat for Molly, who’d grown a good three inches recently, from the old market in the East End, and Hannah would have to make do with Molly’s coat which was still quite good. Her mother had paid a tidy bit for it not twelve months ago; she could afford to then, with her da and the lads all being in full-time work. Her own coat would have to be replaced before too long, the sleeves were halfway up her arms and the buttons were straining across her bust, but for the time being she would have to manage.
Rosie’s shoulders slumped slightly at the thought of her threadbare coat, and then she straightened herself almost angrily. What was a coat anyway? There were others a darn sight worse off than her, and not so far from home either. Look at the wounded soldiers’ victory procession last July - she had sworn to herself she would never forget that. All those men, lads some of them, sitting in the line of horses and carts and some of them missing limbs or eyes or both. She hadn’t been the only one crying as the parade had gone by. She had her arms and legs and all her faculties, she was rich -
rich
- compared to them, poor things.
And then there was Zachariah. Her eyes looked downwards as though they could penetrate the floor and see into the room below. She had never once heard him whine or bewail his lot, although heaven alone knew he had cause. But it was funny . . . She had started to walk to the top of the stairs but now she paused, her chin coming down into her neck as her eyes narrowed. When you got to know him, when he started talking and making you laugh, you forgot all about his legs.
Funny that.
‘What do you mean, she’s not comin’?’
‘Just that, she’s not comin’.’
‘Because her
da
wouldn’t have liked it? That’s what you’re sayin’?’
Shane McLinnie had been feeling more than a little pleased with himself before he had entered the kitchen of ninety-five Forcer Road. He’d done a fair bit of business over the last few weeks, he always did when the Danes were over. They were hard to deal with at times, liked all the profit on their side and to hell with everyone else, but he was a match for them. Aye, he was that. He liked what he did, that was the main source of his strength. He enjoyed the excitement, the thrill of outwitting both the customs and excise and the foreigners he dealt with, for whom he had scant respect.
’Course there were some who were more dangerous than others, but he had been watching his back since he had first got drawn into the game as a bairn of twelve. And on the whole they liked him, the big, fair-haired, blue-eyed sailors from across the sea. They thought he was like them, that was the thing, and it was an image he had deliberately fostered over the years. They drank or gambled their profits away most trips, half killed each other outside the bars down in the docks some nights, and he drank enough, gambled enough and fought enough - just enough - to be counted as one of them. But he wasn’t one of them, he was canny. He used them all but they couldn’t see it, played them off one against the other and then sat back and watched the results. And all the time they thought they had the upper hand.
Aye, he was canny all right, and now another stack of notes had been added to the bulging tin box under the loose floorboard in the bedroom he shared with his brothers. He hated,
loathed
that room almost as much as he despised the other four inmates. He saw his brothers as big, stupid, blundering individuals without a grain of real intelligence between them, and the packed room, where every inch of space was taken up and the smell of human inhabitants was at times overpowering, disgusted him.
And to think he had once run himself ragged trying to get accepted as one of them. The thought slashed at him, bringing a hundred inexpressible, deeply buried emotions to the surface for a split second. Why had he always felt like a stranger looking in on this family?
Why?
It didn’t matter. He breathed deeply, mastering the resentment. The box under the floor was his get-out and a means to an end, and that end was Rosie. When he married her she was going to have her own home with its own privy and washhouse, and not one of the two-up, two-down hovels round this part either. No, he had the better part of Roker in mind for Rosie, perhaps even something in The Terrace overlooking the promenade.
He’d always fancied himself living in The Terrace ever since, as a lad of twelve new to the game of acting as a runner for one of the sea captains, he had delivered a package under cover of night to a house there, and been asked to wait in the hall by a uniformed maid while she fetched her master. By, it had been a revelation that night on how the other half lived. And after he had relinquished the booty, he had received a florin for his trip and been taken to the kitchen by the said maid and given a plateful of cold meat and potatoes and a glass of foaming beer, and the size of the room, as well as the gleaming brightness and warmth and general air of affluence, had set something in his heart. And Rosie would fit in fine at The Terrace; nothing was too good for her, nothing.
Annie had been standing looking at her son, and as always she found herself wondering what was going on in his mind. But now she shrugged nonchalantly, turning away from him as she said over her shoulder, ‘Whether it’s ’cos her da wouldn’t have liked it or not, the lass isn’t comin’, Shane, an’ that’s that. Let it alone.’