For ten years Delia has had to fend for herself and her son, Jack, and as a young unmarried mother life has never been easy. Every new coat and pair of shoes was bought with what little money she could scrape together as a singer on the stage.
But when the theatre work dries up, Delia faces a dilemma: continue the search for employment with no knowing whether she’ll find the stability and security her son needs, or return to the place that should be home … where only spite and hatred await them.
Desperate now, a chance encounter suddenly presents a lifeline. But Delia is faced with an impossible, heart-wrenching choice. Can she bear to leave Jack behind, hoping another family will care for him? Will they ever be reunited?
What else can a mother do to give her son the life he deserves?
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Val Wood 2017
Photographs: figures © Jeff Cottenden; background © Getty Images
Design by Richard Ogle
Val Wood has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473542716
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For my family with love and Peter as always
Since winning the Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction for her first novel, The Hungry Tide, Val Wood has published twenty-two novels and become one of the most popular authors in the UK.
Born in the mining town of Castleford, Val came to East Yorkshire as a child and has lived in Hull and rural Holderness where many of her novels are set. She now lives in the market town of Beverley.
When she is not writing, Val is busy promoting libraries and supporting many charities. In 2017 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Hull for service and dedication to literature.
Find out more about Val Wood’s novels by visiting her website at www.valeriewood.co.uk
THE HUNGRY TIDE
ANNIE
CHILDREN OF THE TIDE
THE GYPSY GIRL
EMILY
GOING HOME
ROSA’S ISLAND
THE DOORSTEP GIRLS
FAR FROM HOME
THE KITCHEN MAID
THE SONGBIRD
NOBODY’S CHILD
FALLEN ANGELS
THE LONG WALK HOME
RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL
HOMECOMING GIRLS
THE HARBOUR GIRL
THE INNKEEPER’S DAUGHTER
HIS BROTHER’S WIFE
EVERY MOTHER’S SON
LITTLE GIRL LOST
NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN
For more information on Val Wood and her books,
see her website at www.valeriewood.co.uk
With grateful thanks to Dr Martin T. Craven B.Sc. for the generous gift of his book A New and Complete History of the Borough of Hedon, The Ridings Publishing Company, Driffield, 1972. At last I have a copy of my own!
The generous loan of books from Brian Dornan: Smuggling in Yorkshire 1700–1850 by Graham Smith, Country Side Books, 1994; and Paull Heritage Trail by Paul Cross, Highgate Print Ltd, 24 Wylies Road, Beverley.
As always, appreciative thanks are due to my ever supportive publishing team. You all know who you are. Thank you.
The boy, trailing behind his mother, kicked a pebble into the road. It seemed as if they had been travelling for ever. They had, he was sure of it; well, days anyway.
‘Come on, Jack!’ His mother’s voice was irritable. ‘Don’t dawdle.’
He wanted to ask where they were going, for she hadn’t yet told him, but he held back; he could tell when his mother was in the mood for conversation and she wasn’t now. She seemed … well, not exactly sad, but not very happy.
He had had his tenth birthday last Saturday, the eighth of November, and his mother had announced that they were going to do something special. He had thought that the special thing was the tea party they’d had in Brighton that afternoon with Mr Arthur Crawshaw, who was his best grown-up friend and his mother’s too.
His mother and Mr Crawshaw had both played at Bradshaw’s that evening and Jack had hung around the theatre until the show had finished. He and his mother had said goodbye to Mr Crawshaw and gone back to their lodgings, and the next day his mother had started to pack their belongings. She had said they were moving on, but she didn’t say where they were going.
They left Brighton on Monday morning and took the train to London; he’d asked her if she would be playing in London but she’d said she didn’t know until she’d seen her agent. Playing, he thought, kicking another stone. It wasn’t playing as he thought of playing. Playing was a game of cards or throwing dice. Playing was hopscotch, chalking squares on the ground and jumping in and out of them, making up your own rules and not caring if you cheated because it was your own game.
His mother’s playing was standing in the middle of a stage and singing to an audience, who sometimes clapped and sometimes didn’t. He liked London and hoped they would stay for a while, and whilst his mother was visiting her agent he walked by the Thames; the tide was out and he saw a group of children down on the muddy shore gathering up what he thought was rubbish and jumped down to join them.
They were not welcoming but he was used to that. They gathered round him, hostile and threatening, saying that this was their patch and everything on it was theirs for the keeping. He argued with them, telling them that they were wrong and that the very ground they were standing on as well as everything on it belonged to the Crown. He knew that for a fact, he said, for Mr Arthur Crawshaw had told him so and he knew everything about anything, but in any case he didn’t want any of their rubbish. He’d only come down to pass the time whilst he waited for his mother.
‘Who’s Mr Arfur Crawshaw?’ they mocked. ‘Never ’eard of ’im.’
‘What?’ he jeered back in his best imitation of Cockney. ‘You ain’t ’eard of ’im? He’s only the most celebrated Shakespearean actor of all time.’ He put his hands to his hips in a masterful pose and quoted, ‘I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it.’ The group of youngsters, three boys and two girls, stared open-mouthed and then as one they pounced and they all rolled in the mud, hitting but not hurting, until he heard his mother calling from above to get himself back up there right now.
‘Cheerio,’ he called, as he extricated himself from the fracas. ‘See you again.’
‘Not if we see you first,’ they shouted back and, grinning, went back to their rubbish collecting.
His mother wasn’t pleased to see the mud on his clothes and brushed him down with a heavy hand before softly cuffing his ear. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made, and there’s no time to wash your breeches!’
There was something in her voice that told him it wasn’t only his muddy clothes that had put her in a foul humour, but something else; he murmured sorrowfully, ‘Sorry. It was just a bit of fun.’
She nodded, but didn’t say anything more, and took his hand as they walked on. They caught a horse bus to King’s Cross station and she went in to enquire about trains. He sighed as he waited, and rubbed his cold hands together, blowing on them to make them warmer. So where to now? Another town? Not staying in London, anyway.
‘Did you get another gaff, Mother?’ he asked as they left the concourse. ‘Where are we going?’ He shivered. It was cold and starting to drizzle with icy rain. ‘Can’t we stay in London? Are you going to do pantomime?’
‘Don’t say gaff,’ she told him. ‘A booking, you mean. No, I didn’t and no we can’t, except for tonight, and no I’m not. We’ll try for lodgings at Mrs Andrews’ and then tomorrow – tomorrow!’ She took a sharp breath and he looked up at her. Her face was pinched and she looked unhappy. ‘Tomorrow we’ll catch a train and move on.’ She looked down at him, touched his cheek with a cold finger and then looked away. ‘We’ll move on to another life.’
‘Where to?’ he asked again.
‘Home,’ she said. ‘We’re going home.’
Except it wasn’t home to her any more, if in truth it ever had been, she sighed to herself as they climbed aboard another horse bus, and she hadn’t yet thought through the next plan. She’d left over ten years ago and had never been back. Every year, just before Christmas, she had sent studio photographs, bought with money she could ill afford to spend: one of her, though not in stage costume, and one of her son so that her parents could see him as he grew from an infant to a handsome boy of ten. She always sent a forwarding address but not once had they written back to her. It was as if she didn’t exist and they could be dead for all she knew, and she’d never find out because no one, not a single person, knew where she was.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is our stop.’ She lifted her skirt so that it didn’t trail in the mud, for this was not a wholesome area, although considered semi-respectable by stage performers who couldn’t afford to be choosy. ‘I just hope she’ll take us,’ she murmured.
‘If we’re going to Mrs Andrews’, she said last time that I couldn’t stay again,’ he reminded her.
‘I know,’ his mother answered. ‘But don’t take it personally. She doesn’t take any children, not just you.’
A brisk, severe-looking woman answered to her knock on the door of the terraced house. ‘Yes? Ah! Miss Delamour.’
His mother stared at her as if she had just remembered something. Delia Delamour. Her real name was Dorothy Deakin, but she never used it.
Mrs Andrews looked down at the boy. ‘I thought I said that you couldn’t bring the lad again. It’s not that I don’t like children but it’s not a suitable environment for them, unless of course they are performers themselves.’
‘I know you did, but could you make an exception just this once?’ She hated pleading with the old hag, but it had to be done. ‘It’s only for tonight. I’m taking him home, you see; we’re catching a train tomorrow morning and … just need a bed for tonight.’ Her voice fell away. She was desperate. What would they do if the woman refused?
Mrs Andrews drew herself upright. ‘It ain’t right for a boy to share a bed with his mother and I don’t have any spare singles.’
‘He’s only nine, Mrs Andrews,’ she pleaded, knocking a year off his age, ‘and as I say, I won’t bother you ever again. We’re heading north, you see.’
‘North!’ the landlady spluttered as if she had just heard of the last place on earth. ‘You’d better come in then.’
Jack bounced on the bed in the shabby but almost adequate bedroom. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘will there be icebergs?’
‘What? What are you talking about?’ She was wrapping a warm scarf round her neck. It was freezing in this top-floor room with the draught whistling in through the window.
‘You said we were going north.’ He threw both arms above him towards the ceiling and pronounced, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’
His mother sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, half laughing and yet wanting to cry. ‘Whatever am I going to do with you?’
The next morning they caught a train going north. His mother had told him there wouldn’t be any icebergs, even though it would be much colder than here in the south of England, and they would be near an estuary like the one at the end of the Thames. They were on their way to a town called Hull.
‘Kingston upon Hull, to give its proper name,’ she told him. ‘But all the locals call it Hull.’
‘And are we staying there? Have you got a booking?’
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘We’re not staying there; we’re going into ’country.’ She gave a silent laugh. How easily she had slipped into the local dialect.
‘Listen, Jack,’ she said. ‘Going back might be a bit difficult. We’re going to visit my parents; they live in a place called Paull. It’s a village near the estuary I told you about – the Humber estuary.’
He frowned. ‘Paul is a person’s name,’ he objected. ‘It’s not a place!’
‘It’s a different spelling. It’s double l. It was called Paghill in ’olden days.’
He grinned. ‘Double ’ell! Not a nice place to be, then?’
‘Be serious.’ She closed her eyes for a second, anxiety threatening to overwhelm her. ‘We might not be welcome.’
‘At your parents’ house, do you mean? Why not? And why are we going if we’re not welcome?’
‘We fell out. I can’t explain; it’s … complicated.’
‘Cos of me, you mean? Cos I haven’t got a father?’
‘You have got a father,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Everybody has a father. It’s just that … I can’t say. I’ll tell you one day.’
He sat back and contemplated, and then said, ‘Why did you call me Jack Robinson instead of Jack Delamour?’
‘It’s your name,’ she said abruptly, knowing that she was lying.
‘I don’t like it. Folks laugh and say Before you can say Jack Robinson if something or other is going to happen, as if it’s the first time it’s ever been said.’ He screwed up his mouth jeeringly. ‘It’s not funny. Not when you’ve heard it a thousand million times. And it’s always grown-ups who say it.’
‘It’s a common enough name.’ She shrugged. ‘Change it if you don’t like it.’
‘Romeo, doff thy name.’ The boy thought of Arthur Crawshaw. He’d miss him if they were going to stay in the north. He’d known him for ever. Mr Crawshaw had taught him to read before he went to school; he didn’t often go to school, only if his mother had a long run at a theatre and then he was dragged off to a local school where no one knew him or wanted to. He and the gypsy children who occasionally attended were unwelcome. They always stood apart and more often than not played truant.
Arthur Crawshaw wanted him to listen to his lines as he prepared for his performances of Shakespeare or Mr Dickens, and so that Jack could follow his script he had taught him to read, and write too, when he was little. He could also add up and count and occasionally at the smaller theatres he would help to tally the takings in the box office by stacking the coins. I’m a very useful boy, he thought. Everybody says so. He was allowed to paint the scenery and show people to their seats, and because he was so very useful nobody seemed to notice that he should have been at school.
Mmm, he mused. I might change my name. But to what? What name should I choose? A theatrical name maybe, or …? Deny your father and refuse your name – I don’t know if it’s my father’s name, but I don’t like it when it’s made into a joke. He closed his eyes. The swaying of the train made him sleepy. He hadn’t slept much. Mrs Andrews’ third best bed was very lumpy and narrow and his mother had tossed about; he thought that he’d heard her crying during the night but then she’d turned to him and put her arms around him, just as she used to when he was very little, and murmured something like ‘I’m sorry, Jack’, and then he’d fallen asleep.
She was shaking him by the shoulder as they steamed into the Hull station. ‘Come on. Wake up. We’ll have to rush to catch our connection. It’s the last train.’
She left the trunk containing her stage costumes in the left luggage office and only carried one bag, which he thought meant that they wouldn’t be staying long in this place called Paull. He wondered why they had come, particularly as she’d said they might not be welcome.
They dashed to another platform where a much smaller train was hissing up a head of steam. ‘Come on, missus,’ a porter called to them as they ran. ‘Driver wants to get home for his supper.’
‘This is the Hedon train, isn’t it?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Aye, that it is. Hull and Holderness line. Last train tonight. Sit where you like; there’s plenty o’ seats.’
They moved off almost immediately and Delia eased off her shoes, exchanging them for a pair of well-worn boots from her bag. ‘We’ve got a two-mile walk when we get off,’ she told him, and peered out of the train window. ‘It’s dark and cold but at least it’s not raining.’
‘I’m tired,’ he whined. ‘Can’t we get a cab, or an omnibus?’ She smiled whimsically and shook her head. ‘No cabriolets where we’re going, Jack, except maybe private ones, and no bus either. If we’re lucky we might get a ride on a wagon or a carrier cart, but more than likely it’ll be shanks’s pony.’
‘Aw! We’ve been travelling for ever!’
‘No we haven’t. It just feels like it.’
‘You said they might not let us stay.’ He looked out of the window into the darkness and saw the dim street lamps briefly shed light on roads and houses as the train rushed out of town. ‘Southcoates … Marfleet …’ he murmured after a while. ‘Nobody getting on.’
‘We’re ’next stop,’ she said eventually. ‘Then the train goes on to Patrington and Withernsea, where it stops. It’ll come back in the morning.’ She fished about in her bag again and consulted a timetable, then pressed her lips together and replaced it in the bag.
‘What’ll we do if they won’t let us stay?’
She didn’t answer at first and just shook her head, and then she muttered, ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t ask again.
‘Can you remember the way?’ They had left a deserted Hedon station and were walking towards the town down a long cobbled road. It was bitterly cold and quite dark with only a few street lamps and windows to light their way, but he saw small cottages on one side of the road and much grander ones on the other. A man leading a horse from the opposite direction touched his cap to his mother. ‘It’s a long time since you were last here, isn’t it, Mother? Or did we come when I was a baby and I don’t remember?’
‘I know the way,’ she said, and turned to tuck his woollen scarf into the neck of his jacket and pull his cap over his ears. ‘Nothing much changes round here.’
A grocery shop was open in the main square and they went inside and bought two currant buns, two scones and a bag of broken chocolate. The woman behind the counter reduced the price of the buns and scones as she said they had been baked early that morning and might be dry. ‘They’ll fill a corner,’ she said, smiling at Jack.
They continued on down the main street through the town, passing inns, butchers, haberdashers and a police station, and then crossed another road, leaving buildings and gas lights behind and continuing on a much longer, darker road. ‘It’s pitch black!’ he said. ‘Are you sure this is the right way? We won’t fall in the river, will we?’
‘No.’ His mother gave a brief laugh. ‘We won’t. We’re a long way off the river, though we’ll cross over a bridge that goes over the haven in a few minutes. Big ships used to come up the haven in the old days, but it’s silted up now and isn’t much more than a stream. Look further up on the right; can you see those lights through the trees? That’s the Hedon Arms. If we don’t get a welcome in Paull we’ll come back and spend the night here.’
He felt a rush of relief. ‘Perhaps we should book a room now, just in case?’
She took his hand again. ‘No, we’ll take a chance.’
‘We’re in proper country now, aren’t we?’ he asked after about another half hour’s walking. ‘I can see better now than I could before; and I can smell the sea.’
‘Your eyes have adjusted,’ she said, ‘and you might be able to smell the saltiness of the estuary as we’re not all that far away. Not much longer now. You’re doing very well.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Really well.’
They were passing fences and fields, thickly wooded copses and an occasional dark wooden building or barn; they crossed a bridge over water which his mother told him was the haven, and he thought that if she hadn’t been with him he might have been very frightened. A grey-white shape skimmed alongside them and he let out a startled gasp. His mother gave a small huff of amusement. ‘Only an owl,’ she said. ‘Hunting for his supper.’
He’d never been in such a quiet and lonely area and wasn’t sure if he would like to live in such a place as this, even though the idea of living by a river had at first seemed appealing. He looked up at the sky and it was filled with so many stars that he felt dizzy.
‘Mr Crawshaw told me that when there’s no street lighting you can see stars called the Plough. Do you know which they are?’
She stopped and pointed. ‘You see that line of seven stars that tips up like a tail? That’s the Plough. There are millions and millions of stars; too many to count. Navigators find their way by learning which is which and following them to get safely home.’
He didn’t answer. He’d seen a light ahead. He pointed into the darkness. ‘I saw a light. I think it was moving.’
‘Maybe atop a ship’s mast,’ she said. ‘We’d be able to see the estuary if it were daylight. We’re nearly there. My parents’ cottage is this side of the village.’
‘Oh, good,’ he breathed. ‘Are they farmers? Do they have cows and sheep and things?’
‘No, it’s a smallholding, not a farm. They’ve only got a few acres. They keep ducks and hens mostly, and goats. Or used to,’ she added.
He heard her wavering voice, and knowing she was nervous he squeezed her hand. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said softly.
‘Do you know why we’ve come, Jack?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘So they can get to know me? Cos you’ve not seen them in a long time?’
‘Something of the kind,’ she sighed. She was clutching at straws, she knew, but she had run out of choices of how to continue. Ahead of them he could see only a few lights and shapes of buildings which he thought could be houses or possibly farmsteads; after another quarter of an hour or so he saw a gleaming white tower which she said was a lighthouse but didn’t think was used as one any more, and in another ten minutes, when he could barely see his hand in front of him, she stopped by a field gate and looked over it. An unlit cottage or small house was at the end of a short track. ‘This is it,’ she murmured. ‘Nothing’s changed.’
They walked to a smaller gate and she lifted the iron ring and pushed it open; the gate screeched as she did so and she gave a half smile, half grimace. ‘It always did need oiling.’ A dog in its kennel began barking furiously as the gate grated on its hinges when she closed it behind them. ‘They don’t oil it so that they can hear if intruders come through. As if they had anything worth stealing,’ she muttered as if to herself. ‘Nor do they ever think that someone might vault the gate.’
A curtain was opened an inch and lamplight showed through. ‘Somebody’s home,’ Jack murmured; he was beginning to feel nervous.
There was no knocker on the unadorned plank door and his mother curled her fingers into a fist and knocked with her bare hand.
‘Who is it?’ a woman’s voice called out, and the dog continued barking.
Jack looked up and saw his mother’s hesitation. He nudged her.
‘Dorothy,’ she called back in a croaky voice.
Jack’s mouth opened. Dorothy? Not Delia then?
‘Dorothy who?’
‘Your daughter Dorothy. Remember me?’
‘We ’ave no daughter.’
‘Come on, Ma,’ Jack’s mother pleaded. ‘Open ’door, for pity’s sake. I’ve got the boy with me.’
There was no answer for a minute and then they heard the bolt being drawn back and the door was opened a crack. ‘You can’t come in. You know that.’
Jack came closer to his mother and peered through the opening. A heavy chain kept them out. Someone, an old woman, he thought, with a shawl over her head, was backlit by lamplight as she peered out into the darkness.
‘What do you want? Your father’s not in; he’ll be back soon and you’ll not want him to catch you here.’
‘He’ll be at the hostelry, I suppose. Some things don’t ever change.’ The boy heard the bitterness in his mother’s voice as she added, ‘Don’t you even want to meet your grandson?’
‘Why would I?’ the woman said.
‘I’d like him to meet his family.’
‘He has no family, not here at any rate. And it’s more’n my life’s worth to let you in, you know that.’ She began to close the door. ‘Try the other folk. Mebbe you’ll have better luck with them.’
The door shut and they heard the bolt being drawn across. A moment later the curtain was closed at the window and they were left in darkness.
‘Come on.’ Jack pulled on his mother’s sleeve. ‘Let’s go. We didn’t want to stay here anyway, did we?’
‘I should have known better,’ she muttered as they walked away. ‘Why did I expect anything different? But I want you to be settled. I want you to go to school every day like other children, and have other children to play with, instead of tagging along with a bunch of mismatched theatre performers.’
‘I can read and write,’ he said, as she fastened the gate behind them. ‘And I know poetry, and – and Shakespeare.’
‘It’s not enough.’ She led the way back towards Hedon. ‘It’s law that every child receives an education.’
‘Are we going to that inn?’ he asked, as he tramped behind her.
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘I’ve just enough money for one night. Then tomorrow I’ll have another think about what we can do next.’
The woman in the cottage leaned her back against the door and the heavy curtain hanging from it folded about her. She took a deep shuddering breath. She had thought she would never see her again; and she’d dared to bring the boy. She must be braver now than she’d once been. Half an hour earlier and he would have been at home and all hell would have broken loose. Her name had never been mentioned since the day she’d left and he never once asked about her or where she had gone. He never saw the photo postcards she sent every year, for she burned them as soon as she’d looked at them. There was no trace of her having ever lived there.
She shivered and went to sit by the fire, recalling the day when she had told Deakin about her own pregnancy; she had held off giving him the news for as long as possible so that he didn’t suspect anything, for she had discovered early in their marriage that he had a violent streak. He had slapped her face and told her that she was a fool and should get rid of it, but later he had relented and said she could keep it, but woe betide her if she became pregnant again.
I wasn’t brave enough to leave him. I don’t know where I would have gone. A stranger to these parts just as Deakin was, and a long way from our home in Brixham; I couldn’t understand then why he was in such a hurry to come away, for there was a good living to be made, and a prettier little town you never would find. But now I know why and I suppose he thought that no one would ever find him here.
She glanced down at the mat beneath her feet where the floorboard creaked. He’s the fool, she thought in satisfaction, and he’ll get his come-uppance one day.
It was late when they arrived at the hostelry and the landlord looked at them warily.
‘I need a room for tonight,’ Delia told him. ‘Just for the two of us; myself and my son.’
‘I’ve just one room with a truckle bed; it’s a busy time.’
It didn’t look busy, the boy thought as he glanced round the dimly lit bar, and then the landlord went on, ‘We’re getting ready for tomorrow, getting ’bar stocked up.’ He pointed to where barrels were stacked against a wall.
‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ Delia asked.
‘Hah! You’re not from round ’ere, I can tell. It’s ’iring fair tomorrow. We’re in Martinmas!’
‘Oh, of course! I’d forgotten,’ she said. ‘I used to love it when I was a bairn.’ She stopped abruptly, thinking she had said too much.
‘So you are from round ’ere, then?’
‘Erm, no. Over … York way. That’s where I was brought up. We’ve just come to see some friends in Hedon, but they’re away. I must have got the date wrong.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘But I remember them saying this was a hospitable place. You took some finding, though,’ she said after another tense hesitation.
‘Oh, aye, it can be if you don’t know ’way. Come on then. I’ll show you up.’
The room was far superior to the one they had shared at Mrs Andrews’. An iron-framed double bed with a flowered bedspread and two soft pillows stood in the middle, with a chamber pot tucked beneath it; there was a matching jug and basin on a marble washstand against one wall, a fireplace with the grate ready laid with twigs and coal in the other, with a narrow wardrobe next to it, and a truckle bed under the window. Jack eagerly asked if he might have that.
‘Too old to sleep wi’ your ma, are you?’ The landlord gave the barest of grins.
‘No,’ his mother replied for him, ‘but he’s a wriggler. We’ll both sleep better apart. Will it be extra?’
‘Nay.’ He shook his head. ‘And ’price includes breakfast. But you’ll have to be out by ten, so’s we can get ready for ’rush at dinner time. Will you be wanting to eat tonight?’
Jack saw his mother bite on her lip. He hoped she had enough money for supper. Then she nodded. ‘Something simple,’ she said, ‘so we’re not any trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said. ‘I’ll get ’girl to light you a fire,’ he added as he left them.
‘This is nice,’ Jack said, trying out the truckle bed. His mother stretched out on the double bed.
‘It is, isn’t it? I think when we’ve had our supper we’ll have an early night, so we can be up early in the morning.’
‘Then where will we go?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’ll show you the hiring fair in Hedon; there always used to be a lot going on when I was a girl.’ Then her animation disappeared and he saw her expression droop.
‘You told a fib, Mother,’ he chastised her. ‘Two fibs. You said you were from York, and—’
‘I know,’ she interrupted. ‘There was a good reason and I’ll explain it all to you one day, but I didn’t want to tell him where I was from or anything at all, really, because one thing leads to another, and besides, who I was or where I’m from is nothing to do with anybody else.’
‘Not even me?’ he said in a small voice.
‘One day,’ she said softly, ‘I’ll tell you everything.’
‘Will there be roundabouts and things at the fair, like in London and Brighton?’
‘There might be, though it’s not an entertainment fair. It’s where people come at the end of a farming year to find new employment or where farmers come to find new workers. Those who are looking for work dress up to show what they can do,’ she explained. ‘For instance, a dairy maid will carry milk pails on a yoke or bring a three-legged milking stool; stable lads wear a harness round their necks or some horsehair in their caps, and a cowman mebbe carries a piece of cow tail. And although it’s a day of fun for those who are not looking for a job of work, it’s not for those who are seeking one, cos they have to stand in line whilst employers look them over. Rather degrading, I came to think as I grew up.’ She gave a sudden laugh. ‘And young lads who are looking for their first job are called Tommy Owt and are at everybody’s beck and call. Come on. Let’s go down and eat.’
The bar was full of customers, but the landlord had set two places at a table for them and brought onion soup with thick slices of bread, and then plates of meat pie brimming with gravy and a dish of mashed potato, turnip and cabbage. They both refused apple pie for dessert, though Jack was tempted in spite of being full.
‘Best food I’ve ever tasted,’ he whispered to his mother and she agreed.
The fire was lit and the room warm when they went up, and both fell asleep almost as soon as they got into bed. Jack woke early and heard strange noises, and as a grey dawn began to lighten the sky he could hear birds whistling.
‘Mother,’ he whispered, ‘there are a lot of birds outside. Have they got an aviary, do you think? And I heard a dog barking during the night.’
‘It might have been a fox,’ she murmured sleepily. ‘You’re in the country now and the birds are waking up and singing in a new day. In spring and summer they start very early, about four o’clock or so – as soon as day breaks.’
‘I like it,’ he said, turning over to face her. ‘It’s better than hearing wagons and cabs trundling past.’
‘Oh, you can hear wagons here too, especially at harvest time; the wagoners begin very early.’
He sat up in bed and leaned on his elbow as he looked across at her. ‘Why did you leave home? Was it because you wanted to be a singer and your parents didn’t want you to?’
She tucked her hand beneath her cheek and gave a deep sigh, blinking her eyes awake. ‘That’s another thing I’ll tell you about one day,’ she said. ‘When you’re older.’
He rolled out of bed and went to the window. It was barely light and a frost had draped fine cobwebs over the branches. A small terrier wandered over the grass and cocked his leg against one of the trees. Terriers were yappy dogs; it wasn’t his bark he’d heard during the night. His mother must be right; he liked to think it was a fox he’d heard.
After a substantial breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausages and an enormous pot of tea, they collected their few belongings, paid the bill, thanked the landlord, and went on their way, but first of all they walked along the narrow trickle of a stream that was all that was left of the Hedon haven. Jack found it difficult to imagine that large ships used to sail up it from the Humber.
‘It was a long, long time ago,’ his mother told him. ‘Before my time, or even my parents’ time. It was when Hull became a successful port that Hedon’s shipping failed and the haven dried up.’
They walked on towards the town and into Market Place and already there was a buzz of conversation and shouts of laughter coming from a crowd of young people gathered there. As his mother had said, there were dairy maids carrying milking stools and servant girls wearing mob caps or carrying feather dusters, trying to impress sour-faced housekeepers dressed in black bombazine and carrying umbrellas and large leather bags. Some of the young girls were not staying in Market Place but heading for the town hall, and his mother said that perhaps the rules had changed about exchanging contracts with only a handshake.
Horse lads chewed on pieces of straw as they joked with their peers, and gentlemen in tweed jackets and sturdy well-polished boots were walking amongst them and asking questions, as were rough-skinned, red-faced farmers dressed in cord breeches and jackets who barked interrogations to determine the suitability of raw and tongue-tied working lads.
He watched as a young boy performed a clog dance, and a small girl tucked into a shop doorway sang sweetly to the accompaniment of her father’s concertina and nodded her thanks as people threw coins into a cap on the ground. I’d be able to quote Shakespeare, he thought, except that I don’t know the full verses but only parts of them. Arthur Crawshaw only ever asked him to read the first few lines of a speech so that he might prompt him to begin his recitation, as he said that once Jack had started he could remember the rest.
He suddenly missed Arthur; he thought of how he used to turn up, even if he wasn’t appearing in the same theatre as his mother, and shake him by the hand as if he were a properly grown-up person. I wish he would turn up now, Jack thought. Arthur would know what to do. He would be able to advise her.
‘Come on,’ his mother said. ‘I’ll take you to see the church; it’s a very important one.’ They walked out of the Market Place and turned a corner and there it was on a slight rise in front of them. ‘It’s very ancient,’ she told him. ‘It’s called the King of Holderness.’
He nodded. It was very fine, he thought, but really he wanted to go back to the busy Market Place and watch the local folk; the way they behaved and talked. He couldn’t understand all of what they were saying. They spoke quite differently from people in the south, especially those from London or Brighton. Those were the places he knew best, even though – he mentally counted where else he had been – he also knew Oxford, where they had stayed for a couple of seasons, and Manchester, where his mother had been booked for a season but left after a week, for it wasn’t a theatre at all but a tavern where customers chatted and drank whilst she sang … and then there was Glasgow. He had overheard her telling Arthur Crawshaw, when they returned to the south, that she would never in her life go to Scotland again, for the patrons were bawdy, rude and very suggestive.
What the patrons had suggested he never did find out, as his mother hadn’t said and Arthur Crawshaw had just shaken his head and tutted and said that it wasn’t fitting for a lady to visit such places. Now he wished that he had taken more notice, but then, he reminded himself, he had only been about six or seven years old at the time.
‘Would you like to go inside the church?’ his mother was asking.
‘No thank you,’ he answered. ‘Can we go back to the market and watch what’s happening?’
The town was getting busier and bartering was taking place; they saw some of the young lads who had been taken on strutting about, safe in the knowledge that they had a year’s work ahead of them with bed and board provided, and a shilling in their pockets now to spend on whatever they wished for. Most were heading towards one of the inns to dispose of it.
‘I’m getting hungry again,’ Jack said as an aroma of food from one of the market stalls wafted their way, and he saw a look of anxiety cross his mother’s face. ‘Well,’ he hedged. ‘A bit peckish.’
‘We haven’t much money,’ she said. ‘I’ll be honest with you. But we could afford a slice of bread and beef, how would that be?’
He nodded. ‘That would be all right. If you’re sure?’
‘Yes,’ she said, sounding positive. ‘We’ll go into the Sun Inn. It always had a good reputation and a warm fire if I remember right.’
The Sun Inn was a long narrow red-brick double-fronted building with bow windows and an arched entrance big enough for a coach and horses to drive through. Before they went inside, Jack noticed that at the other side of the entrance were stables and horse boxes. It was a bigger place than he had expected and he went off to explore some of the rooms whilst his mother ordered a portion of bread and beef from the bar, which had a large kitchen behind it. There were a lot of customers in there already, and there was a strong smell of tobacco. In another room was a glowing fire and big tables suitable for large families or groups of friends; just by the door was a small table with two chairs and he sat down on one of the seats and put his cap and scarf on the other to claim it. It was a perfect place to watch from, he decided as he settled himself comfortably.
‘There you are,’ his mother said over his shoulder. ‘Why have you come in here?’ She put down a tray holding a plate of beef, bread and a dollop of mustard, and moved his cap and scarf to sit down next to him.
‘Cos there are people,’ he said, observing those at the long table nearest the fire. A plump and comely woman who was either the mother or the grandmother of several children was divesting herself of numerous woollen scarves, though keeping on her bonnet which covered thick reddish hair; a younger woman with sharp features was chastising a slight, brown-haired girl; an older man with a short grey-streaked beard was looking towards a red-haired man who was ordering food and drink from a serving maid. Around them the children milled about and argued over who was sitting where and next to whom. At the table next to them were more people; both groups obviously all knew one another and even looked alike.
Jack turned to his mother to say something but her eyes were fixed on the man who was ordering food. She had shrunk back into the shadow of the wall as if she didn’t want to be seen.
‘Mother,’ he whispered.
‘What?’ She gave him a quick glance and then looked again in the direction of the family. She pushed the plate towards him and got up. ‘I’m going to the privy,’ she mumbled. ‘Eat up. Won’t be long.’
He put some of the beef between two slices of bread and took a bite. The little brown-haired girl who had been scolded had wandered off and now came towards him. ‘Hello,’ she said shyly. ‘Who are you? I don’t know you. I thought I knew all of ’bairns round here.’
‘Erm, no, we’ve just arrived.’ He swallowed a large piece of beef and gave a choking cough. ‘Come for the hiring fair, you know.’
She gazed at him, her lips apart. ‘Aren’t you too young? How old are you? I’m ten.’
‘I’m ten as well,’ he said. ‘When’s your birthday? Mine was last week.’
‘Mine was in October,’ she pronounced gleefully, ‘so I’m older ’n you.’
‘You don’t look older,’ he said defiantly. ‘You’re only a little girl.’
‘I know,’ she answered. ‘Are you on your own? Do you go to school here?’ and before he could reply, she added, ‘We’ve got ’day off school cos it’s Hiring Day.’ She giggled. ‘None of ’bairns would turn up anyway, so we all get ’day off. You can come to our table if you like. We’re having meat pie. There’ll be plenty. Da allus orders too much, and we can start ours straight away. Gran allus lets us when we’re here, so that it doesn’t get cold.’
He thought of the meat pie they’d had last night at the inn and was tempted; he left the beef and bread on the plate, left his cap and scarf on the chair and followed her across to the table where she was sitting, taking the end seat next to her. None of the grown-ups who were busy chatting or giving a child a telling-off seemed to notice him. A plate of meat pie was put in front of him and with only a fraction of hesitation, before the little girl nudged him as her food was served too, he began to eat.
Delia slipped back into the room and saw him sitting at another table talking to a little girl next to him. There was a hum of conversation as plates of food were handed round there and she licked her lips. Money no object, then. She cast her eyes to the sharp-faced young woman and saw that she was pregnant. Delia’s mouth trembled, and glancing towards the red-haired man she took a bitter breath and muttered an appropriate expletive for the one who had taken a young girl’s innocence without so much as a word of love. She turned up her coat collar and buried her face in her woollen shawl. A quick scan round the table saw a clutch of girls; the only boy was her own son. She gave a cynical smile.
But she was frightened. As frightened and desperate now as she had been ten years ago with a decision to make. Her heart hammered, and she felt a pulse drumming in her throat and ears. With trembling fingers she picked up the remains of the bread and beef, sandwiching them together and wrapping them in a serviette, and turned to leave the room. She turned again to look back from the doorway and saw her son tucking in to the hot dinner. Her eyes filled. How her boy loved his food. She put her hand to her mouth and breathed a silent kiss. Goodbye, Jack.
The older woman, Peggy Robinson, took off her coat and loosened the warm shawl at her neck. Their table was close enough to the fire to feel the heat on her back. She glanced about her; all the usual regulars were there, the farmers and the smallholders, and some of the estate managers, who didn’t sit at the tables like the rest of them but propped up the bar counter with a pint of mild or bitter in their hands. From her position she could see through the open doorway into the main bar, which was packed with customers. There were more people here for the hiring fair than there would be on a normal market day.
She saw people she knew and a few she didn’t, and one of those was the back of a young woman in a coat fit for town and not for country, with a flurry of scarves floating behind her and a felt hat on her dark hair, trying to push her way out through the throng. Peggy looked along her family’s table. Next to her, her husband Aaron was chatting over his shoulder to an acquaintance; Jack, their red-haired son, was standing at the end of the table, chewing the cud with a mate, his arms folded across his chest. Next to Aaron was their daughter-in-law Susan, with her usual scowl; was she ever happy, Peggy wondered? She persistently spoke with a sharp tongue and a rejoinder to cut anyone down to size; except for me, Peggy thought shrewdly. She had taught Jack’s wife a long time ago that she wouldn’t stand any nonsense from her.
At the table next to theirs were Peggy’s older brothers and