The Jarrow Lass (24 page)

Within seconds, he was asleep and snoring gently like the drone of a bee.

Rose lay staring in the darkness, wide awake. It felt strange to have the weight of a man's head on her chest and the heat from his body next to hers. She had grown used to Kate's restless movements in bed beside her and Elizabeth's troubled sleep-talking.

But now she was Mrs McMullen, a married woman again. It had to be better than the lowly, vulnerable status of widow. For she had a house to call her own once more; she had escaped the servitude of the puddling mill and had a man to provide for her children. She put a tentative hand on John's head and stroked his thick wiry hair. What kind of a man had she married? Rose wondered. She had yet to discover.

But the feel of his strong body lying contentedly next to hers was not unpleasant. She was no longer battling in the world alone. Her guardian angel, whom she had come to doubt, was looking after her still. With that comforting thought, Rose closed her eyes and allowed herself to sleep.

Chapter 27

That summer Rose was happier than she had been for an age. The long period of uncertainty since William's death seemed at an end, the raw grief for her former husband and eldest child had subsided to the bearable. To her surprise, she realised that this was partly owing to John's regard for her.

Her new husband could not do enough for her. If she liked the look of a piece of second-hand china or a tablecloth in a shop window, he would buy it. When a poster advertising a touring troupe at the Albert Hall caught her eye, he took her to see them. Even though they sat far up in the highest tier of the theatre, Rose enjoyed the music hall acts and John sang snatches of the songs for days afterwards.

He filled their small house with singing. On warm evenings when the kitchen door was thrown open to let out the stifling heat from the range, his lusty voice would carry down the back lane where the children played and Rose sat peeling potatoes.

‘I love a lassie, a bonny, bonny lassie, She's as sweet as the lily in the dell!'

Rose would blush and laugh and throw a potato at him where he stood washing in the scullery basin, stripped to the waist, showing his taut chest and thick muscled arms. She was silently proud that this good-looking man was hers and that her fears at his waywardness had been unfounded. She had seen no evidence of his reputation for being drunken or boorish since their marriage and she quietly congratulated herself for bringing a calm, sober influence to bear. It had just been a matter of keeping his brothers at bay and John occupied with domestic concerns.

He was not in regular work but there seemed to be plenty of money from his army pension. Some weeks he would pick up a labouring job but mostly he was content to do small jobs around the house such as making a cupboard for the girls' clothes and painting the ceilings. He was not as skilful as William had been, but he was workmanlike and once set to a task would carry on until it was finished. To Rose's delight, John was gruffly affectionate with the girls. He played the army officer and marshalled them into helping him with chores: stirring paint, polishing boots and filling the tin tub for the weekly bath. There was much giggling and splashing on a Friday night in front of the kitchen fire. John teased Elizabeth the most because, at nearly eleven, she had grown painfully modest and refused to bath with her sisters.

When her turn came, she erected a defensive wall of shirts and blankets over the clotheshorse so that no one could see her naked. The house echoed with screams of protest and shrieks of laughter from her sisters if John peered over the screen.

‘Tell ‘im to stop peekin', Mam!' Elizabeth squealed.

‘John,' Rose would scold half-heartedly. ‘Let the lass alone.'

But Kate and Sarah egged him on. ‘Gan on, Father. Make our Lizzie scream again!'

Rose liked it best when they all gathered around the hearth after tea, she with a piece of mending and John with the last cup from the teapot. He would hand his newspaper to Elizabeth and instruct her to read it to him, saying the print was too small for his eyesight. Rose knew that he could not read a word of it, had even less learning than she, but would never have wounded his pride by saying such a thing.

Kate would sidle up to her stepfather and rest an elbow on his fireside chair, hoping he would pull her on to his knee as William had used to do. But John rarely touched the girls, apart from the occasional bashful ruffle of the hair or pinch of the cheek. At times Rose saw again in him the awkward, callow youth of her girlhood, the John to whom girls were a mystery.

So Kate and Sarah would have to content themselves with squatting on the wooden fender and listening to his tales of Irish heroes and legends. As daylight dimmed and the flickering firelight cast eerie shadows across his gaunt face, the girls would listen entranced to his stories.

‘Tell us the one about the leprechaun,' Kate urged one evening when Rose tried to send them to bed. ‘Please! Just one more.'

John winked at Rose. ‘It's only right they should learn about dear old Ireland - it's in their blood.'

She relented and let him tell his stories one more time, remembering how as a girl she had revelled in her grandmother's ancient tales. There was something comforting in the sound of the rhythmic rise and fall of John's words over the hiss and pop of the fire.

Only when Kate demanded stories about his time in India did Rose see a flash of John's temper.

‘There's nowt to tell - not for a bairn's ears, any road,' he snapped. ‘What happened there's best forgotten.'

Rose shooed her daughters upstairs with a hissed warning. ‘Your father doesn't like speakin' about his army days. It still gives him nightmares. Don't you go bothering him with your questions, Kate, do you hear?'

She did not know why he was so sensitive about India, but sensed in him a deep hurt of which he could not speak. Perhaps she would learn in time.

Soon afterwards, John followed them upstairs and waited impatiently for Rose to join him in bed. His appetite for intimacy seemed never to be satisfied. Sometimes he would wake her in the middle of the night, aroused and eager. He made love with quick urgency, with hardly a word spoken and then sank back to sleep just as swiftly as he had awoken. It was as if he were releasing the pent-up desire of years. Rose did not look on these brief, passionate episodes with the same enthusiasm, yet she was flattered that his want for her was so great.

Only in one matter did they disagree and it caused the single cloud that hung over those contented summer months. That was the question of what to do with Mary. When Rose went back to Simonside to fetch her youngest daughter, the stubborn infant stamped her feet, threw herself on the ground and screamed so loud the rooks in the chimney flew away in panic.

‘Me stoppin' here!' she wailed. ‘Me stoppin' with me mam!'

Rose looked on in dismay. At first she tried to coax the child. ‘Haway, hinny, come to Mammy. We've got a canny new house to live in - I want to show it to you. Your cot's already there and your father's got you a new rag dolly all of your own.'

But when Rose tried to pick her up, Mary turned puce-faced and screamed all the louder. She kicked against her mother, then bit her on the arm. Rose gasped in shock and let go. Maggie tried to intervene.

‘You naughty lass,' she scolded. ‘You mustn't hurt your mam. You have to gan with her, Mary.'

The hysterical girl clung to Maggie as she lifted her towards Rose and refused to look at her mother. ‘You're me mam!' she sobbed into Maggie's breast. ‘Won't gan wi'
her
.'

Rose's upset turned to anger. ‘I'm your mam whether you like it or not. You'll stop that noise at once and come with me, you little devil! You're not going to spoil things for the rest of us.'

She grabbed Mary roughly and wrested her from Maggie's arms. The girl kicked and screamed and squirmed to be free, but Rose hung on to her, astonished at the strength in the wiry little body.

Maggie followed them anxiously to the door. ‘You could leave her a day or two more,' she offered.

Rose clenched her teeth. She could not bear the thought of having to go through such a battle again. ‘No,' she snapped. ‘John wants to give her a home. She'll come with me now or not at all.'

The sisters exchanged helpless looks, then Rose was hauling the resisting child down the rutted path and out of the gate. All the way down the bank, Mary's shrieks of protest and sobbing rang in Rose's ears. Ashamed and furious, Rose hurried on, not daring to glance about her at the people who stopped to stare at the spectacle. She prayed that she did not run into the priest or a teacher from the girls' school and would have to explain why Mary was in such a state. At that moment she hated her daughter for loving Maggie more than her and for making her feel such a bad mother.

She said terrible things to her youngest that day, hurtful words that later she felt sick at heart for having uttered.

‘Your father'll lock you in the cupboard when he hears how bad you've been,' she threatened. ‘And you can stay there for ever, for all I care! Your Aunt Maggie's spoilt you rotten. Well, you'll not get any favours from us, you little brat. And if you carry on screaming like this I'll give you away to the gypsies the next time they come selling round the doors.'

By the time they reached Albion Street, both of them were shaking with temper and exhaustion. She pushed Mary through the door and banged it shut on the gawping neighbours. Mary hammered on the door to be let out, but could not reach the handle. Rose was thankful that the girls were at school and that John was out on some errand of his own. She went to the scullery, poured out a cup of water and threw it over the distraught child. Mary froze in shock. She turned and stared at her mother with red, swollen eyes, her cries subsiding. Rose stood wheezing, the storm of anger that had raged in her dying at the sight of her daughter's fearful face. She was seized with remorse.

‘I'm sorry,' she whispered, holding out her arms to the child.

But Mary just stood petrified and whimpered, ‘Mammy, Mammy, Mammy.'

By the time John returned, Mary was curled up on the hearth asleep, her thumb half in her mouth. Rose was in the yard grimly pounding washing in the poss tub.

‘It's not washday, is it?' he smiled in surprise.

‘No,' Rose answered curtly, bashing the poss stick with all her might.

‘Where's the lass?' he asked cautiously.

Rose nodded towards the kitchen.

‘Rose,' John said quietly, ‘what's the matter?'

Abruptly Rose stopped and bent her head. She felt her shoulders begin to heave as a deep sob rose up from the pit of her stomach. ‘She hates me,' she sobbed. ‘Me own flesh and blood! Not even three years old and she hates me guts.'

Instantly John was putting his arms about her and pulling her to him. ‘Don't talk daft,' he chided.

She cried into his shoulder. ‘It's true - our Mary's never loved me. It's Maggie she wants to stop with, not us.'

‘Well, it's us she's got,' John said firmly. ‘I said I'd tak on all your bairns and that's what I'm ganin' to do. She's too young to know her own mind, she'll settle given time.'

Rose leaned against him, praying fervently that John was right. Her fondness for him grew. He wanted to care for them all, was more prepared than she was to take on the wilful Mary. But deep down she worried that it was already too late to win Mary's trust and love. The small, unhappy girl seemed to know her own mind only too well.

For a short time, Mary seemed to calm down and accept her new surroundings, particularly when her sisters were there to make a fuss of her. But when Rose was left alone with her, she would become moody and sullen or fly into a tantrum over the smallest upset and cry for an hour at a time. When the weather was fine, Rose tried to tempt her with trips to the park, but these would always end in a tearful scene and Mary being dragged home in disgrace. Eventually, Rose gave up taking her out and dreaded going anywhere with her in public. The girl responded to neither punishment nor treats.

John began to tire of her temper and stubbornness too. She refused to play with the rag doll he had bought her and tore up the paper windmill he made. Mary wandered around clutching her worn and grubby peg doll that Maggie had made for her one Christmas and gazed at them with dark reproachful eyes.

Once, John grew so impatient with her for not doing as she was told, that he seized her peg doll, strode to the back door and hurled it down the back lane. Mary threw herself at the door, screaming like a banshee. Her sisters looked on in alarm, but Rose hushed Kate when she tried to protest.

‘She has to learn to behave herself,' she told her daughters, though silently wished John had not been so hasty.

But her husband could not bear the noise and stormed out of the house and did not come back until dusk. To Rose's dismay he was smelling of drink. By this time Mary was asleep in her cot and Rose was not going to tell John that Kate had spent the evening scouring the lane till she found Peggy the peg doll.

‘Maybes we should send her back to Maggie's?' Rose suggested as they lay in bed.

‘No,' John was adamant. ‘I'm not ganin' to let the little bugger beat me! She's my responsibility now. She'll not get her own way so easy with me as she has done with you and your sister.'

‘Aye, but it's me who has to put up with her ways, while you're out and about spending money,' Rose complained.

‘That's my business, not yours,' John replied sharply. ‘I give you plenty for housekeeping.'

‘Some weeks,' Rose muttered.

‘Every week,' John protested. ‘You should spend it with more care.'

‘You're one to talk!' she snorted.

‘Don't you go telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing, woman!'

Rose turned away in annoyance. For a while they lay not speaking, each resentful of the other. Then she felt John reaching for her, his breath warm on her neck.

‘Haway,' he said, relenting, ‘let's not fall out over the bairn. Listen, it's the Hoppings next week. We'll all gan together - make a day of it. What do you say?'