Jarrow Trilogy 01 - The Jarrow Lass, page 35
He came home singing his head off and waking up the children in the dead of night.
‘Up! Gerrup the lot of you and face old Ireland across the sea!’
If they ignored him, he would throw orange boxes around the kitchen and smash them against the walls. Mary would scream and Jack would wet himself as he clung to Rose and whimpered as quietly as possible.
‘I’ll teach you to respect me, you little buggers! Gerrup and sing!’
‘John, leave us alone, it’s the middle of the night,’ Rose would hiss, rising from the mattress they shared with Jack. ‘Come to bed, John.’
But sometimes she could not pacify him and they had to stand to attention beside him. On one occasion he terrified Rose with his strange words and threatening gestures. He seemed to think he was General Roberts himself, waving the fire poker over their heads like a sword.
‘I’m the bloody general and you’ll march till I tell you to drop! You’re all on half-rations till we get to Kandahar. Now sing to keep your spirits up!’
Rose clutched Jack tightly as he stared in sleepy-eyed confusion at his father. The small boy could not tell if this was some game of soldiers or the start of a fit of violence that would end with his mother’s pictures of the Virgin Mary and St Hilda being dashed from the wall. They marched on the spot, Mary and Kate shivering with cold in their petticoats while John shouted incoherently and sang snatches of army songs.
Then abruptly, with spittle still on his chin from singing, his expression switched from belligerence to terror. He grabbed Mary by the arm.
‘They’re coming for us, can’t you see them?’ John peered fearfully into the shadows.
‘Who?’ Mary asked in alarm.
‘John, don’t be daft, there’s no one there,’ Rose protested, frightened by his staring look.
‘There! Behind there - waitin’ to cut our throats!’
Rose was still not sure if he was play-acting and deliberately trying to scare them. Or was he quite mad? She felt helpless at the thought that her husband was losing his sanity.
‘Quick! Retreat,’ he gasped, pushing Mary towards the back door.
They would all have been out in the cold if Kate had not intervened.
‘It’s all right, Father. They’ve gone now.’ Swiftly she took a stick of newspaper and lit it from the fire. She held it aloft. Briefly light flared, illuminating the dark corner beyond the range. It was empty. ‘Look, see?’
Rose hardly dared breathe, let alone move. She feared Kate’s action might provoke him to violence, he was so unpredictable. But it broke the spell that seemed to have bewitched John.
‘I knew there was no one there,’ he growled. ‘D’you take me for a fool?’
‘No, Father,’ Kate said earnestly. ‘You were right to be careful.’
He stared at her suspiciously, as if trying to weigh up if he was being mocked. Perhaps he could not remember what he had been doing this past half-hour, Rose wondered. But Kate’s words seemed to mollify him.
‘Aye, I was, wasn’t I?’ He let go of Mary and she escaped back to the mattress in the front room.
By degrees, they persuaded him to go to bed. Finally he gave in. John stumbled through the open door and fell heavily on to the mattress. Within minutes he was uncon-scious. The girls helped Rose undress him, giggling now at his bizarre behaviour, dizzy with relief that the menacing moment was over.
After that, it was Kate that Rose relied on to handle John when drunken madness took him over. Only Kate seemed able to calm him and coax him to lie down. She sang along with him, humouring his drunken delusions and stroking his head. During these night-time ordeals, Rose felt a rush of contempt for her husband. How could he behave like this in front of his stepdaughters? And what kind of example was he setting their only son? Jack was a sensitive lad, for all his foul-mouthed mimicking. He took things to heart and cried easily at Mary’s casual teasing or John’s ridicule.
‘You’ll turn him into a pansy-boy!’ his father would sneer if he caught Rose cuddling Jack and drying the boy’s tears. He would not let her pick him up if he fell and scraped his knees.
‘Leave him! He needs toughening up. A bit of blood and pain will make a man of him.’
Sometimes Rose would defy him and go to Jack’s aid. ‘He’s still a baby,’ she would protest. But John only took it out on Jack the more, goading him for being a mammy’s pet.
‘Why don’t you put him in dresses? We’ve nowt but lasses in this house!’
Rose wondered what had become of the man who had doted on their baby son and walked the floor with him cradled in his arms? She looked at John’s hard, unforgiving face and saw a stranger.
Whatever affection the girls had once had for him Rose knew was wearing thin. Now and again, Mary would try to wheedle a halfpenny out of him for sweets, if she gauged her stepfather was in a good mood. She was the only one who could manage it, for he still seemed roughly affectionate towards her in sober spells.
Sarah rarely came home, except to give her mother money, fearing her stepfather’s interrogation. By Christmas of that year, she had turned fifteen and had suddenly grown full breasts and hips. John appeared obsessed with her moral behaviour, threatening her with a beating and eternal damnation if she ‘got herself into trouble’.
‘She’s a good lass,’ Rose answered indignantly. ‘Our Sarah’s been brought up respectable, even when we had nowt to our name. She’ll not do anything daft.’
‘We don’t know the half of it,’ John said, eyeing the girl suspiciously, ‘living in Jarrow. We don’t know who she sees or what she does.’
Sarah rolled her eyes with impatience. ‘Chance would be a fine thing! I get no time off to meet anybody. And when I do, I come here, don’t I?’
‘Well, you keep it that way,’ John scowled. ‘I’ll have none of you lasses bringing shame on the McMullen name. You’ll be out on the street if you do.’
Rose gave Sarah a warning glance that told her not to answer him back. It did no good. To argue only made him carry on longer with whatever petty obsession was worrying him.
Often it was Kate who attracted John’s critical attention. Rose could not understand why as she was the most patient with him. He teased her about her crooked foot.
‘You’ll not get a husband if you can’t walk straight up the aisle.’
At first Kate would laugh off his remarks, but this only encouraged him. He continued to bait her until he provoked her into anger or tears.
‘Still it’ll come in handy having a cripple if we have to beg on the streets again, won’t it, Kate?’
This always brought a response. ‘Tell him to stop it, Mam!’
Rose saw the girl’s eyes swimming with tears. Kate hated any allusion to her having begged on the streets. Rose knew the experience had scarred the girl deeply.
‘John, that’s enough,’ Rose remonstrated.
John laughed at them. ‘Bloody women! Can’t take a little joke. Look at your long faces.’
Rose’s defence was to ignore him until he tired of his name-calling, but Kate could not. Bafflingly, she attempted to win him round. Of all her children, it was Kate who continually tried to gain his approval. She was the one who sang songs or told jokes she had learned from the butcher’s sons to try to entertain John and make him laugh. If he gave her a grudging smile or a rare word of praise, her pretty face would beam with delight. Rose did not know why she bothered. Perhaps Kate, more than the others, missed having the father who was taken from her so abruptly. John was a poor substitute, but he was better than nothing.
Whatever the reason, Kate’s willingness to please her stepfather became an irritation to Rose. Why should he receive such favour when he did nothing to deserve it? She was the one who looked after them all! Even when she turned to Kate during John’s drunken outbursts, she resented the way her daughter could cope when she could not. She knew that John never remembered what he had said or done, or that Kate had been the one to help him. But Rose watched them and saw flickers of tenderness in John’s bloodshot eyes when he babbled nonsense to Kate that he no longer showed her.
It wasn’t right! Rose thought with disgust. But deep down she knew her resentment was fuelled by guilt that she had to rely on her thirteen-year-old to do the job that only an unlucky wife should endure: undressing a drunken husband and putting him to bed.
It wasn’t long before Rose began to get complaints from the neighbours upstairs about the midnight ranting and banging about in their flat. The neighbours were a quiet couple who kept to themselves and never made a sound, except for the thud of boots on the stairs when the husband returned from working on the railways.
The woman was timid and would scuttle back across the yard they shared, with anxious looks towards Rose’s back door. She had once been caught coming out of the toilet closet by John and he had made a bawdy remark about what she had been doing inside. Rose had overheard him and cringed with embarrassment. The woman had flushed puce and bolted for her back steps.
Now she would not speak when Rose bid her good morning. But eventually her husband spoke up.
‘You kept us awake again last night,’ he complained to Rose one tea time. ‘The missus isn’t well - she’s bad with her nerves. And Mr McMullen’s making her worse. We can’t afford the doctor, you know.’
‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ Rose said stiffly. ‘But it’s only a bit of singing. Doesn’t do any harm.’
‘Well, you might be able to put up with it, but we shouldn’t have to. We had a decent family living down below before,’ he muttered. ‘Your lot run wild.’
‘Don’t you speak about my family like that,’ Rose was indignant. ‘They’re good bairns and me husband’s allowed to let off steam a bit after a hard day’s work.’
‘Hard day’s drinking, more like,’ he mumbled.
‘What did you say?’ Rose demanded.
‘Nowt,’ he said. ‘So are you going to keep the noise down or am I going to have to complain to the landlord?’
‘Complain to the Pope if you like!’ Rose replied. ‘But don’t come whining to me about your problems - I’ve enough of me own.’
He stomped up the stairs muttering about her, so she shouted after him, ‘And tell your missus to stick her head under the pillow next time! Nerves indeed. I’ll swap my nerves for hers any day of the week.’
The trouble with the neighbours grumbled on for several months, but it was always Rose who bore the brunt. The railwayman never had the courage to confront John directly.
In some ways Rose was glad that her husband had a reputation as a hard man. It meant that people were wary of getting on the wrong side of the McMullens. It helped when the tick men came round for overdue payments for rent or gas or groceries. They gave Rose an extra week’s leeway rather than run the risk of being booted down the street by her cantankerous husband. She saw it in their eyes: not just the fear of John but the glint of respect for her for being strong enough to put up with such a man. Not that she had any choice. So she hid her sensibilities behind a tough exterior and let people think her hard too.
Gone were the days when Rose would cross the street to avoid confrontation or a cross word. The shy McConnell girl was long gone. Even the respectable Rose Fawcett, who feared debt and the disapproval of neighbours, had vanished along the way. Rose McMullen faced the outside world with a stubborn jut of her chin and a bold look in her dark-ringed eyes. She challenged anyone to say they were better than her and usually nobody did.
But one day John came home from the pub to find her arguing in the dark hallway with the railwayman.
‘What’s all this?’ he demanded, suspicious at once.
‘Nothing, John,’ Rose said quickly. She knew if he heard the complaints from their neighbour, he’d see red and go for the man.
‘Didn’t look like nothing. You were rowing.’ He lurched forward. ‘What you been doing with me wife?’
‘Don’t be daft!’ Rose laughed.
‘We’ve just been having words,’ the neighbour admitted, retreating a step. But John lunged and grabbed his arm.
‘You’ve been carrying on with me missus behind me back, haven’t you?’
‘No—’
‘You have, you dirty little bastard!’ John yanked him off the stairs. The man tried to resist.
‘Get your hands off. There’s no need—’ he gabbled in fright.
‘You dare to touch her?’ John bawled. With just one drink in his belly, he was livid.
‘He didn’t.’ Rose took hold of his arm, but John shook her off angrily and shoved her away.
‘No one touches my wife and makes a fool of me!’ he thundered at the terrified neighbour. With one strong punch, the man was reeling backwards and crashing to the floor. John was on him, kicking him with his hobnailed boots and screaming oaths at him like a madman.
Rose had never seen him this angry with someone he hardly knew. She could not believe he would be so jealous over her and all because of a misunderstanding. She hovered anxiously, wondering what to do. Just then Mary ran in from the street with Jack at her heels. She froze in shock at the sight of her stepfather kicking and swearing at the writhing figure on the ground.
‘Get inside,’ Rose commanded, seizing both children and pushing them to safety. ‘And stay there!’ She slammed the door shut behind them.
Turning to John, she grabbed at him and tried to shove him away. ‘You’ll kill him! That’s enough, John! He’s done nothing to me—’
‘Whore!’ he shouted, glaring at her with wild eyes. Then, with the swiftness of lightning, he drew back his fist and punched her full in the face. Rose reeled back, stunned by pain. For a second she thought she had been blinded. She could see nothing. She covered her face as the agony spread.
The shouting stopped, but Rose could not look up. The bridge of her nose throbbed so bad, all she could do was clutch it and moan. She heard the railwayman groaning as he got to his feet and dragged himself back upstairs.
‘I never touched her,’ he spat from the safety of his own door. ‘She’s a foul-mouthed baggage - you deserve each other.’
Rose felt tears of humiliation sting her eyes. But she was damned if anyone was going to see her cry. Least of all this beast she was shackled to, who called her a whore and used his cowardly fists against her! And after she had defended John for months against their quarrelsome neighbours. How she despised him now!
‘Rose?’ John stood over her. ‘Rose, are you all right?’ He touched her on the shoulder, but she flinched away from him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know what came over me. That man - I just thought - I couldn’t bear anyone touching you ...’
She looked at him coldly over her protective fingers. She could feel the warm blood from her nose trickling between them. She wanted to die of shame.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said through clenched teeth.
He hesitated, then his tone changed. ‘Haway, let’s get you inside,’ he said, as if she were a child he had found fighting in the street. ‘You shouldn’t have been arguing in the first place.’
Rose stumbled into the flat and made for the sink. She dowsed her face in water from a tin dish. It ran red in seconds.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mary asked.
Jack ran to her and pulled at her skirt. ‘Mammy? Let me see! Mammy’s hurt.’
‘She’s all right,’ John snapped. ‘Stop fussin’. Mary, keep your brother away.’ He steered Rose into the only chair they possessed and pulled the dirty cotton muffler from round his neck. ‘Here, hold this to your nose. It’ll stop the bleedin’. Mary, make your mam a cup of tea.’
While Mary boiled some tea leaves in a pan and added some condensed milk and sugar, Jack climbed on to his mother’s knee. She held him with her free hand, the other clamped over her pulsating nose. Just let John try to take the lad away from her! She could hardly bear to look at her husband. Mary came over with a cup of weak, sweet tea and stood beside her while she drank it.
Perhaps the sight of them huddled together around their mother, excluding him, was too much for John. Or maybe his thirst got the better of him. For moments later, he had straightened his cap again and was banging out the door before Rose’s tea was finished.
When Kate came home, she was less easy to convince that Rose had merely slipped and hit her face on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. She noticed the tense look on her mother’s face when her stepfather could be heard returning, and pondered at the silence that descended on them like hoarfrost.
Rose did not go out for two weeks. Her nose was broken and both eyes puffed up and blackened like a prizefighter’s. She sent the girls out for any errands and answered the door to no one. She waited indoors, imprisoned by her shameful looks, as the swelling went down and the bruising turned from purple to yellowy-brown.
When she looked no more than jaundiced, she told the girls to pack up their belongings. She went out with Kate’s last wages and paid a week’s rent on a room in a tenement five streets away.
That evening she told John firmly, ‘I’m not stopping here after what happened. I’ll not have them neighbours looking at me the way they do.’
He blustered for a while, telling her she was being foolish and not to mind the bloody neighbours. But during those two long weeks of hiding, Rose had had too much time to dwell on what people thought. Shatteringly, she had lost her confidence to brazen things out. When John had felled her so unexpectedly, her spirit had taken a blow too.
‘We’ll start over - where folk don’t know us,’ she insisted quietly.
John shrugged and gave in. She knew he had no real choice in the matter if he wanted her to provide what meagre home comforts their stretched resources could manage. Rose’s one trump card that she still held through all the agony of her humiliation was that John now needed her as much as she needed him.
She had daughters who could provide a little for her now, so he was no longer the sole breadwinner. But since his mother’s death, she was his only home-maker. She and her children gave him the esteem of being a husband, a father, the head of a household; someone who could hold his head up in the street and look the priest in the eye. Well, Rose would choose where that household would be. It was a small triumph. But Rose still had the spirit to cling to small triumphs.
