The Urchin's Song Part 4

'Ee, our Vera, as I live an' die.' A small and enormously fat woman appeared at the end of the hall, wiping her hands on the none-too-clean ap.r.o.n straining across her vast stomach. 'What's brought you, the day? Nowt wrong with Horace, is there?'

'No, no, la.s.s, nothin' like that.' Vera turned sideways in the narrow pa.s.sageway, nodding towards her two charges as she said, 'I've brought these two la.s.sies, Bett. They're in trouble an' it's bad. I was wonderin' if you could put 'em up for a while?'

'Here?' And then as a small child clothed only in a grubby top and with a bare backside crawled round her feet, the little woman said, 'Come here, you; where do you think you're goin'? Need eyes in the back of your head with this one. Come away in, the lot of you, an' have a sup tea.'

Josie and Gertie followed Vera into a kitchen which was as far removed from Vera's bright s.h.i.+ning room as it was possible to be, but which nevertheless exuded warmth from the huge fire blazing in the range. Besides the toddler who was now sitting on a thick clippy mat there were two more small children in the room, along with a baby in a rough wooden crib to one side of the tall cupboards that flanked the fireplace. The two children, a boy and a girl, were eating a slice of bread and jam, their faces smeared with a mixture of dirt and jam and their feet bare, but they looked plump and happy, as did Betty herself.

'Here, la.s.s, sit yourself down.' Betty stretched out a hand and cleared the seat of a large wooden settle by the simple expedient of pus.h.i.+ng all its contents on to the stone-flagged floor. 'You too, hinnies. We'll have a nice sup tea an' I've some sly cake just cooked an' coolin'. You like sly cake, hinny?' she asked Gertie who was half hiding behind Josie, overcome with shyness.

An hour later, Betty having been fully acquainted with the reason for their hasty departure from Sunderland, and her visitors stuffed full of tea and sly cake, the atmosphere in the kitchen was relaxed and even merry. Betty's children were sitting in a huddle in front of the fire finis.h.i.+ng off the remains of the pastry crammed with currants, sugar and b.u.t.ter, which they were picking off the old, thick dinner plates it had been cooked on, and Betty's youngest was at one of her enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, feeding l.u.s.tily.

Josie had learned that besides these four younger children Betty had two more who were presently at school, along with five stepchildren from her husband's first marriage, his wife having died in childbirth. Apparently only the two youngest of these - a boy and a girl - lived with Betty and Frank now, the others having married, and of these two the boy was due to be married within weeks.

'Barney goin'll make more room but there's plenty anyway.' Betty paused for a moment to bawl a warning at the three on the clippy mat who were arguing over a nice morsel, the baby at her breast continuing to feed serenely in spite of the sudden thunder above its downy head. 'Me an' Frank sleep yonder,' she flapped her hand towards the front room, 'an' the la.s.sies have one room upstairs an' the lads t'other. We were thinkin' about takin' in a lodger once Barney goes an' there'll only be Frank an' Prudence's wages comin' in, but it'd have meant the lads sleepin' down here an' gettin' a desk-bed or summat. No, it'd work out fine you comin', la.s.s.'

She smiled at Josie who smiled back. There was something immensely comforting about Betty.

'An' Prudence might be able to get you in at the laundry off New Bridge Street where she works an' all. I'll put it to her, la.s.s. But if not that, then you'll pick up summat.'

'Thanks, Bett.' It was Vera who spoke. 'It'll put me mind at rest, knowin' they're with you. He's a nasty bit of work, Bart Burns.'

'Aye.' Betty nodded. 'I know the type all right. All wind an' water but a big man with his fists when it comes to bit bairns an' women. My Frank don't hold with nowt like that; he'd knock him into next weekend an' the week after, given half a chance. Mind, I'd have a go at him meself if it come to it. Aye, I would. I might look as if a breath of wind 'ud blow me away, but I can pack a wallop, la.s.s.'

She roared with laughter at her little joke, and the others grinned. Betty had the sort of meaty forearms a ten-ton wrestler would be proud of. It would be a brave soul, be they male or female, who would dare to take her on.

It was gone four o'clock by the time Vera made a move to leave, and Betty's two oldest children, twin boys, had been home from school for half an hour or more. By now Josie had the strangest feeling that she had been part of this family all her life, but nevertheless, she found she had a lump in her throat as she, along with Betty, stood on the doorstep and watched Vera pick her way carefully down the icy street. The recent fall of snow had coated the already lethal black ice covering the pavements with an innocent veil of white, and it was treacherous underfoot.

'She should've gone earlier.' Betty's gaze lifted from the bulky figure of her sister to the swiftly darkening sky as she spoke. 'There's more snow comin', you can smell it in the wind. By, it's goin' to be a bad winter, this one. Still, we won't let it bother us, eh, me bairn? Snug as bugs in a rug, we'll be.'

Vera having paused they both waved their goodbye, and then she had disappeared round the corner and Betty was saying, 'Come away in, la.s.s. It's enough to cut you in two out here.'

The warm confines of the kitchen were redolent with the smell of the pot pie which had been steaming away for the last two hours, and as Josie and Gertie left the womb-like cavern a minute or two later, armed with a tallow candle and a bundle of bedding to make up the spare pallet in the la.s.sies' bedroom, the icy chill hit them like a physical blow. The bed was organised in double-quick time and they scuttled downstairs again. Two minutes later, Betty's husband Frank arrived home. He'd stayed after his s.h.i.+ft on union business, according to Betty, who now busied herself filling the tin bath in the tiny scullery off the kitchen with hot water for her husband's stripdown wash to remove the black grime of the pit.

Frank's greeting was cursory initially, but once he'd had his bath and was dressed in the clean clothes which Betty had taken through to the scullery before beating his pit clothes free of dust in the tiny back yard, he came and sat in the big, flock-stuffed leather armchair to one side of the range. He was as short and thickset as his dumpy wife, with a voice that could shatter a crate of milk, but by the way his three youngest children immediately clambered up on to his lap Josie a.s.sumed, rightly, that the gruff exterior harboured a heart of gold.

She looked into the heavily jowled face, topped by short grey hair that had a little tuft sticking straight out from his forehead like a compa.s.s pointer, as Frank said, his voice loud but kind, 'So, la.s.s, you an' the little 'un are goin' to lodge with us for the time bein' then?'

'If that's all right, Mr Robson?'

'Oh aye, la.s.s, it is. It is that. An" - and now he leaned forward, almost dislodging the youngest of the three on his lap - 'if you catch sight of hide or hair of your da, you tell me, eh? Aye, you tell me.' He puffed ferociously at his clay pipe, tamping dark brown rough tobacco with the juice still in it, before he repeated, 'Aye, you tell me an' we'll see what's what, right enough.'

At a few minutes to six the kitchen table was set, the settle having been pulled close to it one side with six straight-backed chairs on the other. Barney and Prudence were due home any moment. Apparently Barney was employed at the concrete works in the centre of the town, a short walk from the laundry where Prudence worked, and the two normally walked home together.

'He's a good lad, is Barney.' Betty was bustling about, lifting the sizzling dish of sliced potatoes, onions and turnips, the accompaniment to the pot pie, out of the cavernous oven as she spoke, and it wasn't until much later that Josie registered that she hadn't mentioned Prudence in the acclamation.

'Not a miner mind, like his da an' three brothers, but he's followed his own road an' that's no bad thing. Couldn't handle bein' underground, you see. He was all right when he was doin' the screens, the conveyor belts up top where the coal gets sorted, but once he went down . . .' Betty shook her head, making her thick bun of coa.r.s.e brown hair wobble. 'It's not for everyone, workin' in the bowels of the earth, an' I don't hold with the idea you're born to it meself.'

She cast a sidelong glance at her husband as she finished speaking, and Frank stared stolidly back at her as he puffed on his pipe. Although nothing had been said directly, Josie got the feeling this was something which had been discussed between husband and wife before, and moreover that they saw it quite differently.

Josie had ushered the children through to the scullery to wash their hands before the meal - a suggestion which had been greeted with some surprise when she had first voiced it - when Barney and Prudence arrived home. The twins, Martin and Kenneth, having sidled back into the kitchen as soon as they could, she and Gertie were occupied in dealing with the three youngest children, Robert who was four, Freda aged three and little Clara, and therefore they heard Betty's two stepchildren before they saw them.

There had been a high voice and a deep one at first, then silence except for Betty as she had given the bare bones of an explanation, and then the high voice had said, 'Here? Stay here, you mean?' and it was expressing disapproval.

Josie hotched Clara further up in her arms as she glanced at Gertie over the child's head, but there was no time to speak before a small, darkly clothed figure appeared in the doorway. It was the same female voice which said, but flatly now, 'So you are Aunt Vera's waifs and strays; Josie and Gertie, isn't it? Which is which?'

Josie found herself staring, and it was a moment or two before she responded, saying in as flat a tone as the young woman had used, 'I'm Josie, and this is Gertie.' Clara was wriggling in her arms, and in reaching for the rough piece of towelling to one side of the tin bowl, Josie broke the hold of the green eyes looking at her with such hostility, occupying herself with drying the infant's small, dimpled hands.

It would be kind to say Prudence Robson was plain; the truth of the matter was that she was ugly, and no one was more aware of this than Prudence herself. Her face was long and thin, her nose and mouth equally so, which made her small squat body all the more incongruous, but it was the overall colourless quality of her eyes, skin and hair which emphasised her severe features. Her eyes were green but a muddy, indistinct shade, and this same dingy, turbid trait was reflected in her skin and the mousey brown of her hair. In comparison, her four brothers had all taken after their mother who had been a good-looking woman, and there was barely a day that went by that Prudence didn't reflect on the unfairness of this.

She knew she was an impa.s.sioned person, the feelings which racked her made all the more intense because they could have no outlet. Pretty girls were allowed to be frivolous and bright and sparkling, even catty or inconstant on occasion, but an ugly one had to be quiet and self-effacing, never putting herself forward or a.s.suming anything, and it was a pose Prudence Robson had adopted from infancy when she was outside the home, even though she knew she was ten times more intelligent than those about her.

There were only two people she liked in all the world - her youngest brother, Barney, and the girl he was soon to marry. Pearl had been her friend since childhood - her only friend - and Prudence rarely allowed herself to dwell on what she secretly knew to be true, that the other girl's friends.h.i.+p had been motivated by the fact that Prudence had four handsome older brothers, and that Pearl was well aware she appeared all the more comely and appealing beside the ugly duckling. Prudence needed the support and security of Pearl's friends.h.i.+p too much to delve into things better left buried.

By the time Josie raised her head there was a tall man standing just behind the unfriendly young woman. His shock of dark brown hair, liberally coated with a dusting of white powder, first drew her eyes, and then, as she lowered them to the smiling face, also smeared with concrete dust, she met a pair of the most startlingly green eyes she had ever seen.

'You've got your work cut out trying to clean up this crew.' His smile widened and Josie smiled back shyly, even as she was thinking, So this is Barney, Betty's youngest stepson. But I never expected him to be so . . . so . . . But she couldn't find words to describe the way she was feeling because she had never felt like it in her life before.

Chapter Four.

As November turned into December, the severe snow storms sweeping the North of England were making life harder than ever for poor families like the Robsons. Despite the recent development of an electricity supply on Tyneside, the powers that be had not yet converted the horse-drawn tramway system to electric traction and, in any case, half of the workers in Newcastle's mines and factories often walked miles in freezing conditions to save the cost of the fare. Despite the steadily increasing prosperity of the area as world demand grew for its products - s.h.i.+ps, engineering, coal, chemicals - workers like Frank did not feel the benefit.

There was many a heated discussion in Betty's kitchen between Frank on the one hand, and Barney and Prudence on the other, as to how far the unions - who were just tentatively beginning to flex their muscles - should go.

'Aa've said it afore an' Aa'll say it agen - you have to tread careful, man. There's always some so-an'-so ready to step into your boots given half a chance.' Frank was a great one for eying his two irate children over the top of his pipe as he delivered such statements.

'It's just that sort of sentiment that the owners and managers promote.' Barney and Prudence would always be beside themselves by the end of the discussion whereas their father would still be sitting puffing away contentedly. 'Don't you realise the wealth of industry that exists here, has existed here for the last century? Look what Richard Heslop wrote fifty years ago, and nothing's changed, Da: 'There's chemicals, copper, coal, clarts, c.o.ke an' stone Iron s.h.i.+ps, wooden tugs, salt, an' sawdust, an' bone Manure, an' steam ingins, bar iron, an' vitrol, Grunstans, an' puddlers (Aa like to be litt'ral).'

This last quote and others like it would invariably come from Prudence, who spent any spare money she had on books and was always popping into the free library near the laundry.

'What're you sayin', la.s.s?'

Josie suspected Frank's manner with his daughter was distinctly tongue in cheek most of the time, but with the mental and physical torture Prudence put her through at the laundry, Josie couldn't help deriving a certain measure of satisfaction as she watched the older girl being wound up by her father until she was ready to explode.

'I'm saying working men and women have got the upper hand if only they had the sense to realise it! There's thousands of us and a few of them, and if we all stood together - which is what the unions advocate, after all - things would change.'

'Aa dunno aboot that, la.s.s.'

Josie also noticed that Frank's northern accent was particularly predominant at such times, and when he smiled and winked at her and Gertie after Prudence had flounced out of the room - a common occurrence - she'd smile back. It was about the only time she did smile these days, she thought sombrely one evening in the first week of December when she was sitting on the settle in the kitchen, too tired to move. Nothing had gone the way she'd dreamed that day on the train when she had left Sunderland. She didn't regret leaving - she'd do the same thing again, she rea.s.sured herself firmly, but nevertheless . . .

She flexed her toes in her hard black boots, every muscle and joint aching, and then picked up the s.h.i.+rt she had offered to darn. There was always a stack of mending to do in Betty's household, and Prudence would come up with every excuse under the sun before she would help. It had taken Josie no time at all to realise there was little love lost between Betty and her stepdaughter. In fact, there was little love lost between Prudence and anyone else in the household - other than Barney - if she thought about it.

In her capacity of a.s.sistant head laundress at the laundry in Higham Place off New Bridge Street, Prudence had secured an interview for Josie the very next day after she had arrived in Newcastle, with the result that the young girl had started work immediately.

The post was described as laundry checker and sorter, and it was at the very bottom of the ladder. Checking in the dirty was.h.i.+ng and entering each receipt of an article into a ledger was the worst bit. Josie hated handling the soiled linen, and somehow it seemed as if the vilest items came her way when Prudence was around. Invariably the other girl on duty with Josie would be given the task of checking and booking out the clean laundry. The heaviest baskets, the most disgusting and smelliest clothes and bedding were piled high at her station of work, and always - always - Prudence would be constantly deriding her for being too slow, too stupid, and a hundred other things besides.

The baskets which transported the linen to the was.h.i.+ng bays ran on little wheels, and oft times the ones which Prudence put Josie's way were so heavy it took every ounce of her strength to even move them a few yards. Every evening she walked home with Prudence and Barney in an exhausted daze, and it was only Barney drawing her out that broke through the stupor.

Josie was well aware that the attention she received from Prudence's brother during these walks was another nail in her coffin as far as the other girl was concerned. The next day, Prudence would make her pay dearly for every smile, every thought she shared with Barney, but Josie didn't care. It was worth it. Prudence's veiled glares made it clear she bitterly resented Barney bothering to talk to her at all, and the fact that they got on extremely well into the bargain was salt in Prudence's wound.

But Barney was so nice. And funny. Definitely funny. Sometimes Josie thought he must have made up some of the stories he told about the happenings of his day - just to make them laugh - but whether he did or not she always entered the house in Spring Garden Lane feeling as though the world was a good place. And she liked to listen to him too, when he talked about the unions and politics and things like that. She even liked to listen to Prudence because Barney's sister was interesting in her own way, besides which Josie found herself silently agreeing with Prudence's sentiments regarding the downtrodden working cla.s.s and a whole host of things. She had tried to tell Prudence this more than once, but had always got her head bitten off for her efforts. All in all, Josie enjoyed the walk home at nights, even if she was so tired at times she wondered how she was managing to put one foot in front of the other.

Once in the house though, after she had had a couple of cups of the strong black tea Betty seemed to drink all day, she found what her mam would have termed her 'second wind'. She usually helped Betty dish up the evening meal and would feed the youngest Robsons their portion before she ate her own, but she rarely managed more than an hour or so of darning and mending before she collapsed into the hard pallet bed she and Gertie shared in the room where Prudence also slept, comfortable in a single bed with a thick mattress, and little Freda and Clara, who shared a bed identical to the one Josie and Gertie slept in.

Gertie, too, had her share of problems. Unlike the teacher at the Board school in Sunderland's East End, the one in the school in Douglas Terrace just a short walk away was a stern disciplinarian.

Gertie was not a bright child and was easily reduced to tears, and besides the cane applied at frequent intervals she'd had to endure sitting in a corner with her face to the wall and a paper hat on her head. One day she had arrived home hysterical after the teacher had shackled her to the desk all afternoon until she could repeat a verse of scripture to the woman's satisfaction. When Josie had got in from the laundry over two hours later, Gertie's thin little wrist had been chafed raw from the harsh rope used to secure her.

The fact that such practices seemed quite normal and acceptable to Betty and Frank had not rea.s.sured Josie in the least, and she had made her feelings known. Prudence had laughed at them both and sneered at Josie's concern for her sister down her long nose, and Betty and Frank, kind though they were, had been quite unable to understand her concern. It was only Barney who had taken Josie's distress and Gertie's terror seriously.

'Do you want me to go and have a word with Mrs McArthur?' he'd asked Josie quietly the next morning on the way to work.

'Have a word?' Prudence had snorted on Barney's other side. 'What good would that do? You and I have both survived under Mrs McArthur and are none the worse for it. The girl needs to toughen up, that's all. Besides, you know what Mrs McArthur's like. If you go and see her she could well take it out on Gertie. She's like that. Spiteful.'

The pot calling the kettle black.

Josie's thoughts must have been written all over her face because Prudence had glared at her in the next instant, and that morning the baskets had been so heavy and so disgusting Josie had been quite unable to stomach any lunch. However, after she'd considered Barney's offer in her mind Josie had to admit she thought Prudence was probably right. Barney complaining would not endear Gertie to the teacher, and with the absolute power the woman had over her pupils she could make Gertie's life even more miserable. But it had been grand of him to offer. The thought warmed Josie for the rest of the day. When she thanked him that night on the way home for his suggestion and explained her reasons for refusing, he took her hand in his for a brief moment, squeezed it and told her she must tell him if she changed her mind, and she felt a warm glow right down to her toes.

However, Gertie continued to weigh heavily on her mind. The child had complained of stomach-ache for the last few days and stayed off school - encouraged by Betty who made good use of her - but a visit by the School board man the day before, followed by a stern admonition that he expected her to attend school for the next nine months until she was eleven, had put paid to that ruse.

Josie thought it ironic that in all the time they had lived in Sunderland, and with her brothers attending school just an odd day here and there more often than not, they had never once had a visit by the School board man. But things were different in Newcastle. As she was finding out more and more.

'Well, la.s.s, how do I look? Good enough to pa.s.s with Lord an' Lady Muck?' Betty stood in front of her, clad in her Sunday best.

Betty had long since christened Barney's prospective in-laws with the t.i.tle, something which made Prudence tight-lipped but only made Barney laugh. Pearl Harper was an only child and her parents ran a substantial inn at the end of Pitt Street; they had made it quite clear in the past that they considered their daughter a mite above a miner's son. Nevertheless, in much the same way they had conceded to Pearl's friends.h.i.+p with Prudence, they allowed their headstrong daughter her way with regard to Barney. Betty had often longed to point out that it was Pearl who had done all the running. 'Set her cap at him from when she was nowt but a bairn,' Betty had confided in Josie one night when Gertie and the children were in bed and the others were out; she and Josie were sitting in front of the fire with a basket of mending between them. 'Shameless at times, she was, but he couldn't see it. Men can be right fools when it comes to a certain type of la.s.s. Still, it's done now.'

Josie was reminded of this conversation in the next moment when Frank ambled through from the front room attired in his Sunday suit, his neck straining awkwardly out of his stiff white collar and his face as black as thunder. His wife glanced at him before saying, 'It's no use lookin' like that. The weddin's only two weeks away an' there's things to be sorted, you know that as well as I do, an' I'm not havin' them lookin' down their noses at us. We can show 'em we're just as well set up as them, leastways.'

'Don't talk daft, woman.'

'Well, we can offer to pay a bit towards the jollifications, can't we, an' I can do a bit of bakin'.'

'An' I had to be wearin' me suit for you to say that?'

'Aye, you did.' It was sharp and pointed. 'An' don't you have more than a pint or two, should they offer.' Betty now turned to Josie, and her tone was warm and soft when she said, 'You'll be all right, hinny? There's a pap bottle on the side should you need it, but she'll likely sleep till I'm back after screamin' all day, poor little blighter.'

Barney and Prudence had already left for Barney's future in-laws', and Josie was in charge of the house and the children, including three-month-old Millie, who had been suffering from a bout of diarrhoea. 'I'll be fine.' Josie smiled at Betty but didn't add, as would be customary in the circ.u.mstances, 'Enjoy yourself,' because she knew that was the last thing Betty was concerned with. She hadn't been looking forward to this evening and had approached it like a necessary military procedure, instructing Frank on what he could and couldn't say until the two had finished up having the mother and father of a row the night before.

Josie followed Frank and Betty to the front door, waving them down the street before reseating herself on the settle. She didn't take the more comfortable armchair that was Frank's in spite of the fact she was now effectively alone downstairs, apart from little Millie asleep in her crib. No one in the household, not even Prudence, would have dreamed of sitting in the large, high-backed seat which dominated the kitchen and was set at an angle to the range.

Josie gathered up Frank's spare working s.h.i.+rt again and commenced her task of attempting to draw the frayed pieces of cloth together. The s.h.i.+rt had been washed and darned so many times it was threadbare. The monotony of the job allowed her mind to wander to thoughts of her mother, something it did frequently. Although Vera had called the weekend before and told the two girls that their mother was fine, worry was an ever-present spectre sitting on Josie's shoulder, restricting her appet.i.te and causing her to imagine all sorts of things. After a while her fingers became slower, the warmth of the fire and the steady ticking from the wooden clock on the mantelpiece above the range bathing her in exhaustion. Within moments she was fast asleep.

Prudence sat watching her father and his fat waddling piece of lard - as she termed Betty in her mind - attempting to make small talk with Pearl's parents, and it was all she could do not to let her contempt show on her face. Ignorant halfwits, the pair of them. Him, with his narrow bigoted way of looking at things, and Betty laughing her way through life like an idiot. How they irritated her! They all irritated her - her brothers, and her half-brothers and half-sisters. All except Barney, of course. He was different from the others, you could hold an intelligent conversation with him, and he was the only one of her brothers with the gumption not to blindly follow their da down the pit.

Prudence became aware of Pearl looking at her, her friend's finely arched brows raised in amused understanding. Pearl was well acquainted with Prudence's views on her family; moreover she shared them with regard to Betty and Frank although she'd always been very careful not to express her disdain in front of Barney.

Prudence straightened her scowling face quickly; there'd been a warning in Pearl's eyes too. Don't rock the boat, it had said. Keep everything sweet and hunky-dory tonight. They might be senseless clods but we know what we're doing, you and I. And what they were doing was removing Barney from her da's and Betty's influence. Pearl would make something of Barney; she'd always wanted him and had played him like a violin for years. This thought carried mixed emotions. Reluctant admiration that her friend could keep up the pretence of being all sweetness and light when Prudence was well aware there was another side to Pearl, and faint guilt regarding her brother. But Pearl would make sure Barney got on, Prudence comforted herself quickly. He'd soon be living in the smart little house in St James Street which overlooked the park, and which Pearl's mam and da had insisted on doing up and furnis.h.i.+ng throughout as their wedding present. And that was just the first step as far as Pearl was concerned. She wouldn't rest until Barney left the concrete works and joined her uncle who managed Ginnett's Amphitheatre in Northumberland Road. Big business, the halls.

'So, Frank . . .' Prudence was brought back to the conversation in front of her by Pearl's father's heavy patronising tones. 'We will have a little do back here then after the church, and provide a bite and such. Can't have folk saying me only daughter had a dry wedding, now can we?' He gave a hearty smile. 'But me and Marjorie'll stand it - you and Betty have got enough to do with your brood.' He made it sound as though they were animals in a farmyard.

'Me an' Frank'd like to do our bit, Stan.' This was from Betty and her voice was politely aggressive. 'I've already iced the weddin' cake like I've told Marj an' I've a mind for plenty more bakin'.'

'You don't have to, Betty. Really.' Marjorie Harper was a small, neatly dressed woman who always spoke in what she fondly imagined was a refined voice but in reality was merely annoyingly quiet and stilted. 'We can lay on whatever is necessary. Pearl is our only one, after all.'

'Mouldy bun? What's a mouldy bun got to do with anythin'?' Frank was somewhat deaf due to a fire-damp explosion at the pit in his youth which had taken his best friend and three brothers, and consequently found what he termed 'that blasted woman's whisperin" intensely aggravating. 'We're discussin' a weddin' here, aren't we?'

Prudence closed her eyes for a moment as her face flamed with embarra.s.sment. Her da! She wished - oh, how she wished - it was her leaving the menagerie in Spring Garden Lane in a few days' time. How would she stand it after Barney was married? Still, Pearl had consoled her by telling her she'd be welcome to call at any time, and she'd do just that. Anything to escape home. And one day she would escape for good. That was what all the careful saving of the last years was looking towards.

Seven years she had been working at the laundry, ever since she'd left school, and she'd had three rises since then but she still paid Betty the same as when she'd first started. Even when her da had been laid off for eight weeks a couple of winters ago, she had offered no more and waited to see what Betty would do. But she was as soft as clarts, Betty. After her stepmother had mentioned she'd be grateful for a bit more to tide them over the bad spell, she hadn't mentioned the matter again. And why should she stump up extra to feed and clothe the brats Betty turned out like clockwork?

Prudence opened her eyes, remembering how Barney had doubled his board to Betty. She'd warned her brother he was stupid and that he'd be expected to keep it up once their da was in work again, but that was Barney all over. Governed by his heart and not his head, and always a sucker for a sob story. You got nowhere in life like that.

She glanced round the expensively furnished private sitting room, frowning slightly. It might take years but one day she'd buy her very own place. You had to make things happen in this life and the end always justified the means - and there was one thing she meant to bring about in the very near future. She didn't intend to share her room any longer with that little baggage her Aunt Vera had foisted on them.

Prudence didn't include Gertie in the thought; the younger child's presence had barely impinged on her consciousness, but from the second she had set eyes on Josie's fresh glowing face, framed by its ma.s.s of wavy golden-brown hair, she'd felt immediate antipathy.

But for Vera's interference Betty would have been looking to offer the lads' room to a lodger once Barney was gone; that had been the original plan, Prudence told herself bitterly. The twins and Robert would have managed perfectly well on a desk-bed in the kitchen, and apart from Freda and Clara on their little pallet, she would have had the room to herself. As it was, you couldn't move for bodies at night. It wasn't to be borne.

Prudence moved irritably on the stiff horsehair sofa she was sharing with her brother, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her fleshy b.u.t.tocks into the seat, and in doing so caught Pearl's eye once more. Her friend's pretty, slightly babyish face again signalled caution, but this time the emotion it brought forth from Prudence was one of testiness.

With her pale blue eyes and curly chestnut-brown hair, Pearl had been spoilt by her doting parents from the day she was born. What did Pearl know of being forced to share a bedroom with virtual strangers, or existing day after day in a household of morons? Prudence became aware her hands were clasped together so tightly her knuckles were s.h.i.+ning white, and forced herself to relax her fingers one by one until they were loose in her lap. She felt she would go mad at times, stark staring mad, and since that mealy-mouthed little madam of Vera's had arrived, the feeling had increased tenfold. Wheedling her way in with Betty, offering to do this and that, and simpering at her da until she'd got him eating out of her hand. She thought she was so clever, Josie Burns, but she'd got a shock coming.

Prudence now sat very still as she allowed herself to reflect on the journey she had taken the previous weekend, and the satisfactory outcome which had ensued. It had been sweet, very sweet to find out she had been right all along - that what she'd suspected from the first day the baggage had arrived was true.

Her Aunt Vera was a fool, they all were - even Barney because he wouldn't hear a word against Josie - but she had seen straight through the little strumpet. All that talk about her da and Gertie, what did Josie take them for? Well, the others might not have the sense they were born with, but she was on to Josie's little game. The chit had got tired of looking after her mam and running the household in Sunderland. She'd decided to get away and, knowing Vera had a sister in Newcastle, had told a pack of lies and duped them all. All except herself, Prudence Robson. Her lips formed in a mirthless smile. Young Josie was going to find out very soon that Prudence Robson wasn't as daft as she looked . . .

At first Josie thought it was the dream she had been having which had woken her. It wasn't the first time she had had it; it had been the same for years now. Sometimes whole months would go by and she would think it had finally gone, and then night after night, sometimes for a week at a time, she'd awake hot and desperate and gasping for air.

It had begun not long after she had met Vera, and the night after her mam had been ill all the previous day. Her mam had been crying and moaning on and off with the belly-ache for hours, and Maud from upstairs had been sitting with her for a long time before she'd shooed them all into the kitchen. Hubert had only been a little baby then; she remembered that because he'd only just learned to sit up and he'd been screaming all day, even when she'd tried to feed him his pap bottle.

After a while her mam had stopped making a noise and then Maud had come out with the chamber pot which she'd been going to take out into the backyard. Then Gertie had fallen over and cracked her head on the fender and Maud had put the pot down quickly just outside the kitchen in the hall, by the back door. Gertie had been bleeding everywhere, and Jimmy had been bawling and Hubert had made himself sick and then filled his napkin, and in the ensuing pandemonium Maud had forgotten about the chamber pot. And then she, Josie, had been going out into the yard to swill Hubert's bit of rag through, and she had seen - she had seen what was in it. It had been tiny, the babby, so tiny, but with little arms and legs, and she had wanted to reach down and lift it out of the chamber pot which her da used most nights when he'd been drinking. She hadn't wanted it to be in there.

And then in the midst of it all her da had come home. There was a gap in her memory here because the next thing she could recollect was her and her da in the yard, and she'd been hanging on his arm because she knew what he was going to do. But she hadn't been able to stop him and he had leathered her after with his belt; she still had the scars from his buckle on her back. But she hadn't cared about that, not even when the blood had caused all her clothes to stick to her for days afterwards and her skin had felt as though it was on fire. All she'd been able to think about was the minute baby lying amongst all the filth and excrement in the privy and being sc.r.a.ped out by the scavengers' long shovels and tossed in their stinking cart.

It was from that day she had really hated her father and that night that the nightmare had come. It was always the same. It would be all right at first. All of them, her mam and her three sisters and Jimmy and Hubert would be sitting in a boat on the sea, but a funny sea - black and dark. And then the dreadful fear would fill her and a sense of horror that was paralysing. The sea would begin to lap over the side of the boat but it was thick, like mud, and her da was suddenly there, shouting they were all too heavy. One by one he would push the others out, and she could see their desperate eyes and hear their screams but she was unable to move, held down by some invisible force. And the black sea would suck them under but slowly, horribly slowly, and then she would know it was her turn . . . But she always woke up in the moment that her father's hands reached out for her.

Why had she dreamed the dream now? It hadn't come once since she had been in Newcastle and - foolishly perhaps, she acknowledged as she rubbed her damp palms on her skirt - she had told herself the break from Sunderland had set her free from it.

And then the knock came at the door again, and she realised someone was outside. Whether it was the inexplicable feeling of dread the dream always left in its wake, or a primeval sixth sense, or just the fact that Josie suddenly became very aware she was all alone in the house apart from the baby, and Gertie and the children upstairs, she didn't know, but the hairs on the back of her neck were p.r.i.c.king. In the warmth emanating from the range she s.h.i.+vered.

'Don't be so daft.' She spoke out loud as she rose from the settle, dropping the s.h.i.+rt on to the dingy cus.h.i.+ons and reaching for the oil lamp in the middle of the kitchen table. Someone was outside, a friend of Betty and Frank's maybe, or perhaps one of Frank's pit cronies. It wouldn't be any of Frank's married children or their wives, they would have come straight in without due ceremony.