They passed the gatehouse to Backhouse Park and within a few minutes were looking through substantial wrought-iron gates set in a high stone wall at the house the neighbour had described. The house was not the largest in Ryhope Road, nor did it possess a great deal of land, but it stood aloof and proud in the bitter chill of the winter’s morning and it was very imposing. The short pebbled drive was immaculate, the large, gracious, horseshoe-shaped steps to the front door numbered six or seven, and there were ten windows along the front of the house alone. Moreover, it was surrounded by giant oaks at the back and sides which increased the air of grandeur.
‘Do you want me an’ Larry to wait here, Mam?’
Sadie hesitated. She didn’t know how this was going to go except that it would not be pleasant. She found herself wringing her hands and stopped abruptly, glancing down at the two children. The whole point of bringing them was for them to be seen, and what with this great wall and the gates they might not be noticed. ‘No.’ Sadie opened the gate as she answered. ‘You come with me an’ put your brother down now. He’s bin carried all the way here, he’s got to walk a bit sometimes.’
They walked along the drive with Larry between them swinging happily on their hands, and then Sadie went up the steps and pulled the bell before returning to stand with the children.
The door was answered by a pretty, plump woman wearing a black dress and an apron, and whatever she had been about to say never left her lips as her mouth fell open in a gape. She darted a glance behind her before pulling the door partly to and venturing down two of the steps. ‘What do you want? You must be mad coming here. Get yourself away now, go on.’
‘I’m –’
‘I know who you are, lass. There’s nothing that goes on in this family that I don’t know about, even if certain members of it would like to think differently. Aye, I know who you are all right. I nursed Jacob when he come out of the infirmary and he described you to a tee.’
The woman’s tone wasn’t hostile – flustered would have described it better – and Sadie stared at her for a moment before she said, ‘I . . . I have to see him – Jacob. I need to talk to him.
Please.
’
‘Lass, I’m telling you –’
Whatever she had been about to tell her Sadie never knew, because in the next instant the door was opened fully and another woman stood in the aperture, her voice sharp as she said, ‘Kitty? What on earth do you think you are doing skulking out there, and who are these people?’
This must be Jacob’s mother-in-law. This was her, Edith Stewart, the matriarch. Sadie’s heart was pounding and her legs felt weak as she looked at the small, smartly dressed woman in front of her. Edith Stewart’s plain, dark-claret brocade dress was deceptively simple, but the material which fell in deep folds to the top of her neatly shod feet was beautifully cut and the exquisite gold fob watch pinned to the ruched bodice of the dress was clearly expensive. Everything about the crisp, eagle-eyed woman spoke of wealth and authority. Her hair was still very black with merely a touch of grey, arranged high on her head in a loose bun, and her eyes – which were of the same gimlet hardness as her eldest son’s – were looking straight into Sadie’s terrified blue ones.
‘Well? State your business,’ the irritated voice continued coldly, ‘but if it’s a handout you’re looking for we have nothing to spare. I know you people, the word soon gets about, doesn’t it and –’ And then, like a steel trap snapping shut, the words were cut off and the ebony eyes opened wide for a moment. ‘
No
.’ It was a hiss. ‘No, it can’t be. You wouldn’t have the sheer affrontry.’
‘Mrs Stewart?’ Sadie’s voice was shaking even as she told herself she couldn’t afford to show any weakness in front of this woman. ‘I need to know . . . I have to see Jacob. I –’
‘You filthy, dirty trollop! You brazen huzzy, you. You think you can come here, here, to my home, with your ragamuffin brats and your whining! I’ll have you horsewhipped.’
‘Madam! Come back inside, please.’
As Sadie took a step backwards from the enraged woman Kitty actually caught hold of her employer’s arm, only to be shaken off so violently that a less heavy or well-endowed woman would have been thrown to the ground.
‘Did you know? Did you know it was her?’ Edith asked her housekeeper, white flecks of spittle gathering at the comers of her mouth. And then, without waiting for an answer, she swung back to Sadie who had both children clinging to her skirts, and bit out, ‘I’ll see you rot in hell before you get your hands on my daughter’s husband again. They’ve gone, do you hear? Gone far enough away so you and your flyblows will never find him, and I’ll make sure they never come back.’
Sadie was aware that Edith Stewart was showing her working class roots and that the genteel façade had been blown apart, but there was no victory in the realisation. The woman was dangerous – it was there in the narrowed eyes and snarling mouth – and she had no idea what she would do next.
Kitty must have been of the same opinion, because again she caught hold of Edith saying, ‘Please, Madam, please. Don’t do anything rash.’
‘Anything rash?’
As Edith jerked her arm free her voice rose still higher. ‘I’d like to string her up by her thumbs and display her as the loose piece she is. Scum! The lot of them, scum! And flaunting her guttersnipe brats in front of my face when she was the means preventing Mavis having any by her legal husband –’
‘That’s not true.’ Sadie spoke through trembling lips, her voice low but clear. ‘You know that’s not true. She wouldn’t sleep with him, she went hysterical if Jacob went near her.’
‘Lies! All lies!’
Larry was crying now, wailing into Sadie’s skirts, and as Kitty said, ‘Madam, I know you’re upset but when all’s said and done they are only bairns, this is not their fault, let’s leave it for now,’ Edith seemed as though she was going to have a fit.
‘Only bairns?
Bairns?
They are little animals born of a bitch on heat, that’s what they are, and Henry is dead because of that woman. Don’t forget that, Kitty.’ And then, as she advanced another step towards Sadie, ‘Did you know that, eh? Did you know you’ve got a man’s death on your conscience besides another being crippled? My husband was too decent a man to be able to stand your association with his daughter’s husband and it killed him.’
‘Mrs Stewart –’
‘You’re scum, girl.
Scum
. Not fit to draw the same air as decent folk –’ And then Edith’s words were cut off and her breath ejaculated as a small missile hit her stomach.
Connie hadn’t understood half of what was being said, but she knew the lady from the big house was being nasty, really nasty, to her mam, and she had stood it long enough. As her head hit Edith’s midriff her legs and arms were kicking and lashing out, and such was Edith’s utter shock and surprise that she was frozen for a good few seconds as the screaming child battered at her.
Sadie, impeded by Larry still clinging to her skirts, only succeeded in dragging her daughter off the staggering figure when the couture dress was ripped beyond redemption and the bun hanging in dishevelled disarray halfway down Edith’s back, and it took both her strength and that of Kitty to hold the child back.
They left in the midst of a tirade the like of which Ryhope Road had never heard before, and which was far more in-keeping with that of a fishwife down at the docks, and Sadie didn’t stop or let go of Connie until they had passed Barley Mow Cottage and then Ivy Cottage, and turned into the Cedars. She walked swiftly for some few yards down the tree-lined street, still hauling both Connie and Larry – the latter having lost his footing numerous times – violently by their arms, and then she stopped, letting go of Larry and hitting Connie a resounding slap across one ear followed by a second across the other ear that took Connie clean off her feet.
Connie couldn’t see or hear for a moment such was the swirling of her head, and then when the darkness receded and she saw her mother’s face and heard Larry’s crying, she managed, ‘Mam, oh, Mam. I’m sorry, Mam. I am, I’m sorry.’
And then she felt her mother’s arms about her and realised her mam was sitting in the mud alongside of her, the tears streaming down her face, as she murmured over and over again, ‘Oh me bairn, me bairn, me bairn. May God forgive me. Oh me bairn. I’m sorry, hinny. I’m sorry.’
How long they sat there in the sludge and dirt Connie didn’t know, it was enough that when they eventually rose to their feet her mam was kind with her again and her voice was soft when she said, ‘Come on, me wee brave bairn, let’s go an’ tell your granny she was right after all, eh? That should please her,’ and funnily enough it was at that moment that Connie wanted to cry.
Chapter Five
The sky was a transparent silver expanse and of such a brilliant hue that it hurt the eyes to look upwards, but Sadie wasn’t looking upwards as she stumbled along in the bitterly cold afternoon, picking her way through the bulging sacks, barrels, crates and miscellaneous bundles that were strewn all over the wharf. It had been a long shot, applying for work at the grain warehouse, and she knew her physical appearance had been against her. They wanted big strong females – on the limited occasions when jobs for women were available at all – and she was too thin and slight, too pale and fragile-looking after losing the baby, to inspire confidence in future employers.
Every day for the last week, ever since the visit to Ryhope Road, she had trudged the three miles into Bishopwearmouth, enquiring at all the warehouses, the shops, the factories, even the fish quay and the curing houses, but to no avail. She had sent Connie ‘on tick’ to the farm, and the bairn had managed to secure enough logs and food to tide them over to the present time, but now there was no fuel and no food on the table, and the farm would want payment before they obliged again.
She had even gone to see Father Hedley a couple of days ago, in desperation, but although the priest had been sympathetic he hadn’t been able to hide his condemnation of the circumstances that had brought her to this point, and the two or three jobs he had known about had been ones she had already been turned down for. What
was she going to do?
Of necessity they were all going to bed once darkness fell and rising with the dawn, there being no money for oil for the lamps, and the long nights seemed endless as she tossed and turned and racked her brains for a way out. But there wasn’t one – saving the workhouse. And that wasn’t a way out; she would rather see them dead than incarcerated in that soulless prison where the children were separated from their mothers and fathers on entry; and someone like Peggy would end her days in the infirm ward. It was her mother’s secret fear that she would be consigned to the workhouse in her twilight years, and she couldn’t let that happen.
Sadie pulled her worn felt hat – cleaned that morning with salt and flour – more securely over her golden hair as the fish-tainted air froze her ears, and turned into Long Bank away from the quays. The Bank joined Low Street and High Street, and she had just passed a kipper-curing house and stepped round a horde of children – most of whom were in dirty tattered clothes and with bare legs and feet, or old cracked boots that were falling off their feet – who were playing in and around a small fishing boat at one side of the road, when she heard her name being called.
‘Sadie! I thought it was you, lass.’
As she turned she recognised one of the female packers from her days of working at Henry Stewart & Co., a large, jolly, red-haired girl with whom she had struck up a friendship for a time. ‘Hallo, Phyllis.’ She didn’t really want to talk to anyone but she forced a smile.
‘What you doing round these parts then?’ the other girl asked as she reached her side. ‘It’s been ages since I’ve seen hide or hair of you, lass.’
Sadie hesitated a moment. Phyllis had been a convivial companion at the warehouse, but she remembered the red-head had also been somewhat ribald and suggestive on occasion, especially when there were men about. But there weren’t any men about now, she told herself in the next instant, and besides, after her affair with Jacob who was she to judge anyone? Nevertheless, her voice was strained when she answered, ‘I’m lookin’ for work. Do you know of anythin’, Phyllis?’
‘Nay, lass. There’s nowt goin’ I know of, but I’m a married woman now, expectin’ me first bairn end of May so me workin’ days are over.’
Sadie nodded slowly. She was feeling most peculiar, faint and sick, and it must have shown in her face because the other girl said, ‘You all right, lass? You look all done in. Look, I’m just off to get me an’ Frank’s mam’s dinner – we lodge with her ’cos he’s away on the boats most of the time – so why don’t you come an’ have a bite an’ a sit down for a while?’
‘I. . . I don’t have any money with me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry your head about that, lass,’ the other girl said breezily. ‘I can stand you to a meat pie or faggots an’ peas, whatever you like. Frank’s mam always has cow-heel an’ tripe, she’s a one for her tripe, she is.’
Sadie hadn’t had anything in her stomach except one slice of bread and dripping first thing and she knew there was nothing to eat when she got home; the temptation was too much. ‘Ta, thanks, Phyllis.’