The Dwelling Place, page 35
It was two hours later when the cart pulled into the mill yard and even before it had come to a stop Joe, Jimmy and William had jumped off and were calling to the girls to get down, but when the girls did alight they stood quiet and slightly subdued now, awed by the wonder of their new home.
When Matthew lifted Cissie down from the seat, he held her for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary; then, taking her arm, he led her across the yard and as he went he called to William and Joe, saying, ‘See to them; give them their feed and a bit rub-down, then come along in.’ And they scampered away, crying, ‘Right-ho, Matthew. Right-ho.’
When the rest of the children made to run forward into the inner yard Cissie cautioned them gently, ‘Behave now. Behave.’ And they became quiet and curbed their excitement. Then Matthew was leading her over the threshold into her new home.
The kitchen smelled and looked the same as it had years ago. The copper and brass were shining, the fire was burning brightly, and today the long table was set for a meal; it all looked so cheerful and inviting, but her heart began to beat as if she were being threatened by an invisible presence.
She’d had her dream last night about the white house, and this one somehow didn’t fit into it, but the other one would have, the one on the deed she carried in the envelope in her petticoat pocket.
There was a woman standing to the side of the table. She was a round, pleasant-faced creature, and Matthew said, ‘This is Peggy. She’s a good help,’ and Cissie said, ‘Hello, Peggy.’ Peggy hesitated. She had never bowed her knee to his first wife. But then, she had been a rough piece. And he had brought the talk of the whole place about him for marrying this one, and the other one not three months dead in her grave. It was said this had been his fancy piece for years. But she was a different kettle of fish altogether from the other. And she was surprised by the look of her—she was slim and straight and had a sort of dignity about her. Her knee bent and she bobbed.
He now turned to Jimmy and said, ‘Take them to the rooms I showed you. Go on.’ And Jimmy, laughing and running across the kitchen, cried, ‘Come on with youse!’ And, their excitement getting the better of them again, they scampered after him, which made Matthew turn to the woman and say, ‘They’re not always like this, they’ll calm down.’
She replied, ‘Bairns are bairns.’ And on this he led Cissie from the kitchen and into the parlour; and there he took her cape from her shoulders and untied the ribbon of her bonnet. Then, standing still, he gazed at her and said, ‘Well, here we are then. It’s been a long time.’
She nodded her head slowly and replied, ‘Yes, Matthew. It’s been a long time.’
‘I never thought it would come, not really…Did you?’ He sounded nervous, not ill at ease, but not quite sure of himself at this moment.
‘No.’
‘If…if things hadn’t happened as they have, would you have married anybody else?’
She could look at him and say truthfully, ‘No, I never would have, Matthew.’
At this he caught her in his arms and pressed her tightly to him, whispering into her hair, ‘Aw Cissie, Cissie, I love you. Aw, how I love you! And I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it. It’ll be days…and nights afore I can take it in.’
He was looking at her again, and when he gathered her hands between his and brought them upwards towards his mouth he felt her whole body jerk and her fingers stiffen against his, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he peered at her. This is what she had done in the illness, tried to prevent him from touching her hands, not wanting them washed. She wasn’t really well yet; her face still looked peaky. That’s one of the reasons he had pushed things to get her here, to build her up…and…and to love her. She was starved of love, as he was.
He asked gently, ‘Do you love me, Cissie?’
‘Yes. Yes, Matthew, I love you.’ She could answer truthfully to this too, and when he said very softly, ‘You’ll be happy, I’ll see you’ll be happy,’ she thought, yes, she’d be happy; during the time she didn’t think of the child…and its father, she’d be happy.
BOOK FIVE
1853: FULL CIRCLE
One
The miller of Brockdale died on Christmas Day, 1851, aged forty-four years, and just when people said he was about to do big things.
It was around 1842 when the name of Miller Turnbull first began to be associated with causes, and not only in Shields and Jarrow and the smaller towns, but in the city of Newcastle. The miller, it was said, was a forward-looking man, quiet, stubborn and not afraid to speak his mind. Through him, lesser men came to know the name of Lord Ashley Cooper, one of the gentry who strongly supported the Ten Hours Act, the man who in 1824 got through the Bill forbidding the employment of women and children underground in the mines, the man who was all for education, even of the poor.
With regards to education, it was said that the miller’s brothers and sisters-in-law made up the best-educated family in that quarter of the countryside; it was also said that he had not only taught his wife, that is his second wife, to read and write, but had made her so damned learned she’d have no truck with ordinary folks.
Those who had visited the mill said the house was more like a mechanic’s library than an ordinary home, with books in every room, and the younger girls talking of Goldsmith, Blake, Coleridge and Shelley as if they were ladies bred, instead of one-time fell scum.
There was no doubt about it, the miller did a lot of good; but it was also said he could have done more if he had kept his wife’s family on an even keel and not allowed them to get highfalutin ideas about themselves. It was this fact that made the miller suspect in the very quarter in which he should have been trusted, that of the agricultural worker.
The farm worker in the North was better off than his brother in the South and the West Country at the time, because in the North, the living-in system still prevailed; labourers were bonded for the year and paid partly in kind with milk, meat, barley, peas and bread, and in some cases butter, cheese and vegetables, as well as bacon at the killings, and they had all the slack coal they wanted for a few coppers, if they could carry it from the pit. Whereas in the South the wage of a man on the land still did not reach ten shillings a week, and coal was a luxury even in the depth of winter, and since the famous Tolpuddle business of ’34 it would seem that gags had been put in the mouth of every man who worked on the land. In some places where a man dared to spit the gag out, the squire or the parson saw that that man was penalised. It was the fear of injustice and deportation that kept the farm labourer mute and stamped agricultural workers on the whole as a dull, half-witted lot of men.
But in the North and in the South one thing the farm workers still shared was their living conditions, and these were appalling.
It was against these conditions that Matthew worked. In 1844 he set an example by building two cottages for his workmen, with two rooms up and two down, and a fine larder and a wash-house off, and at the bottom of a good square of garden an erection of his own designing, a water closet composed of a cement hole over which stood a wooden framework, and the hole narrowed to a pipe that led to the burn. He also erected a pump that drew its water from the burn, and from which it was easy to carry sluicing water to the water closets. Matthew was very proud of this invention, and considered it very hygienic, for, as he pointed out, the burn was in constant flow.
In 1846, when William married an apothecary’s daughter from Shields, Matthew built him a fine house, standing in a half-acre of land within a quarter of a mile of the mill itself. It had a large kitchen and a parlour, three bedrooms and a garret, and besides the wash-house, coalhouse, and stable there was, of course, the new sanitary arrangement—even better this one, for the effluent didn’t flow back into the river as it was too far away to pipe it, but into a huge cesspool; nor was their fresh water supply drawn from the river but from a well that Matthew had caused to be sunk at the bottom of the garden.
It was around this time that Matthew became really conscious of the danger of the river water, for it was into this that the effluent flowed, that cattle paddled and went to drink, that cats and dogs were thrown, and it was from this also that most of the hamlets and the villages drew their water supplies.
The fact that the river was fast running in parts failed now to convince him of its purity, for all along its length it was being used as a dump for filth.
It was in 1844, when typhoid was sweeping both sides of the river from South Shields to Gateshead and from North Shields to Newcastle, that Matthew’s mother and granny were taken, and also Nellie. Nellie had been thirteen and bonny and bursting with health, but she had been snuffed out like a tallow-candle in the wind, whereas Annie, who had always been weakly and who, too, had lain with the fever, survived. There was no accounting, they said, for the workings of God. All man could do was to bow before his will. Matthew had let this pass, and concentrated on the river.
But in 1849 when his only daughter, the one child that Cissie had given him, died of the cholera at the age of eleven, he did not let it pass, but cursed God. He cursed Him in private and in public; he cursed Him to the face of his great friend, Parson Hedley…And he cursed Him to the damnation of his own soul, so said the righteous when, two years later almost to the day, after rising up from the laden Christmas table, he died.
He had left the table and staggered to the settle because of a violent pain in his chest, which he said wasn’t like wind for he had hardly commenced to eat. An hour later, still sitting on the settle, strangely enough where the miller before him had drawn his last breath, he died, and more strangely still, of the same complaint…
Matthew’s death left Cissie a rich woman, for like Miller Watson, Matthew had speculated in property. It also left her with an eight-roomed house, not counting the attics, and only Annie and her to occupy it. Annie was to have been married in the spring of ’52 but because of the time of mourning the ceremony had been put off till the autumn.
What, Cissie asked herself time and time again during the months which followed Matthew’s going, was she going to do when Annie was gone? Could she stay alone in this house? Why not? William was at hand, as were his six children, three of whom were triplets. And there was Jimmy and Ada and their four children in the wheelwright’s house. Jimmy would never let her be lonely. There was Mary coming over from North Shields every Sunday, happy and contented with her shipwright husband and her three fine children. There was Joe, still working under William and married to Kitty, a fat, happy-go-lucky individual who, as yet, hadn’t given him any children. They were established in a cottage a short distance away which was to have been only temporary until Matthew found a suitable piece of land on which to build them a house; but he hadn’t found it before Victoria died, and from the time she went he lost interest in doing anything for anyone.
Then there were the three girls, Bella, Sarah and Charlotte. Sarah and Charlotte were well away. Years earlier, Matthew had set them up in a little milliner’s business in a side street in Newcastle. Within three years they had gravitated to Collingwood Street with a fine display-windowed shop. And now the ‘Band Box’ was a must for any lady of fashion. Oh yes, Sarah and Charlotte were well away, with fourteen girls in the workroom and their own apartments above the shop and a maid to look after them.
This left only Bella. As was to be expected, so was the general opinion of the family, Bella ran true to form. She was barely seventeen when she ran off and married an Irish labourer from Jarrow by the name of Shane Docherty. Shane was big, handsome, and gormless, and, as Jimmy said, that made the pair of them. Every year Bella brought a child into the world. The number had now reached nine; they were all healthy, bonny and wild, but if it hadn’t been for Cissie they would have been starving and barefoot.
So, with twenty-two children visiting her, and their parents, add to this seeing to the accounts of the mill and the property—Matthew had taught her to do this in the early days—surely her time would still be fully occupied.
Part of the answer to the problem, and the answer troubled her, was that none of these things held any interest for her now. She still loved her family, but they were all set: for good or bad they had their own lives to lead. The other part of the answer was that she couldn’t bear the thought of staying alone in this house.
Living in the mill had been bearable while Matthew was alive. The foreboding feeling that she had experienced when she had come into the kitchen on her wedding day had mostly, over the years, kept to the shadows; but now the shadows were lifting, and at times, especially at night, she felt there was a presence about the place, and it wasn’t Matthew’s presence.
Now she was alone and free…This last word filled her with guilt and made her turn on herself whenever it entered her mind and ask herself how she could ever think in such a way as to consider herself free from Matthew—Matthew who had been so good, so kind, so loving. But she knew, in the private recess of her being, a recess of which Matthew had been aware but had never entered, that it wasn’t his goodness, his kindness, or his loving from which she was free but from his possessiveness.
If at sixteen she had experienced his possessiveness she would have sunk into it gladly, but she was a woman through hardship, although only twenty-one, when it enfolded her, and its tangents were many and subtle.
Matthew had never denied her anything in the way of clothes. Every year he had bought her two outfits, a heavy winter cloak and dress with bonnet to match, and in the summer a linen or a print; but always he chose the colours and the material, and never did he pick anything more gay than a light fawn. Once she had ventured to say, ‘I think I would like something pink, the colour of the fringe on the shawl,’ and to this he had said, ‘It wouldn’t become you.’ It took her some little time to realise that he didn’t want her to be enhanced in any way; to the outside world he wanted her to appear neutral, not standing out from the crowd of wives of respectable citizens. It was small comfort to her that it was becoming the fashion among ladies of the time to wear subdued colours and to pad their bodies out of shape with as many as six to eight petticoats. Decorum seeping down from the palace in London had no meaning for her.
In his arms at night, Matthew would tell her she was beautiful; he would become an ardent lover and cover her body with his lips, but in the daytime he was the miller and she his wife, and he wished her appearance and manner to be such that she would claim respect from all. But as the years went on and the respect began to flow in to him and his wife in the form of invitations from his business associates, he politely refused them. Nor, she knew, did he like her around the yard when men were bringing their grain in, whether they be farmer, justice, or squire.
Twice a year he took her to the theatre in Newcastle; he took them all to the theatre in Newcastle; and these were great events in their lives, but he never took her to church on Sunday, not even to please Parson Hedley.
His gifts to her were many, mostly in the form of books; but in the second year of their marriage he bought her a spinet and with delight she learned to play. He only bought her two pieces of jewellery: a plain brooch and a gold chain on which hung a pendant; neither of them was an exciting piece.
They had one serious quarrel in the first twelve years of their marriage; during the following two years they had many. The first was when they had been married but ten months. Matthew had come into the bedroom unexpectedly one afternoon and found her sitting reading the parchments.
He had thought she had returned the papers to His Lordship on their wedding morning when the valet had called, but when he found that she had kept them hidden from him and was now perusing them in secret his anger flared out at her. So this was why she had paid so much attention to her reading lessons, never failing each evening to get out the books, no matter how tired he was.
When he had made to snatch the deeds from her she had sprung away from him and put them behind her back, and the spirit that had brought her and them all through the years in the dwelling place came rising up, and she cried at him, ‘Don’t touch them, Matthew. I’m tellin’ you, don’t touch them. I didn’t want to keep them but His Lordship would have none of them, he said they belonged to me. I didn’t want to upset you, that’s why I never let on. I don’t intend to use them, but I intend to keep them. They’re mine. It isn’t the value of them but it’s all I have for the bairn.’ And at this he had cried at her, ‘That’s all you think about, the bairn. That’s why you’re not with mine. Ten months now of loving and not a sign of one. An’ why? ’Cos I haven’t all of you. Oh, I know, I know. I know what I know. Clive! Clive! Clive! You never ceased from calling his name all the time you were bad. God! An’ after all he did. An’ you know what he did, don’t you? Not only rape, but murder. Aye, murder.’
‘You never called it that afore,’ she cried. ‘An’ you know it was either her or me.’
‘Give them over here.’ He held out his hand and it was trembling, but still she defied him, saying, ‘No! No, I won’t. If they’re to be destroyed I’ll see to it.’ And when he advanced on her she yelled at him, ‘I’m warning you, Matthew; if you take these from me I’ll never think of you the same again, nothing will be the same again.’
After a space of time during which they had looked at each other in pain, he had flung out of the room and she had collapsed into a chair where she sat staring before her. Then, going to the empty fireplace, she had placed the deeds in it; but when the match was alight she couldn’t put it to the papers. She would never claim the house or the money, there was no need to. She had all she wanted, so why couldn’t she burn the deeds? She didn’t really know except that these two pieces of paper seemed to hold a desire for forgiveness; they spelled reparation for a wrong, not that she held the wrong against him any more. She couldn’t burn them, she couldn’t.
