Born to Trouble Read online

  A slight movement from his father brought Seth’s mind back to the present and his voice betrayed none of the anguish he was feeling as he said, ‘Nowt’s the matter. It’s just time things changed round here, that’s all. We’ – the jerk of his head indicated his brothers – ‘don’t work all hours for you to bolster the Boar’s Head coffers.’

  He could hear himself saying the words and part of him was as amazed as the rest of them; only two days ago he wouldn’t have imagined himself standing up to his da like this. But something had changed in the last twenty-four hours, something deep and fundamental. Perhaps that’s what killing a man did to you? Or perhaps it was that when the worst that could happen did happen, it set everything else in perspective. Whatever, the fear that had always paralysed him where his father was concerned was gone. Only hate remained.

  It was this same hate leaping out of his son’s face that checked Thomas from loosening his belt and whipping the boy into submission. His buckle had marked each one of his offspring for life at some time or other; even little Pearl had a deep scar on the back of one of her legs from her father’s belt. But now something told Thomas his control over Seth at least was gone – and with the realisation, bravado born of alarm rose up. ‘You’ll do as you’re told if you know what’s good for you, m’lad. You hear me?’

  ‘Oh, I hear you, Da. But let me tell you somethin’, all right? You don’t bring a penny into this house. It’s me an’ the lads that put food on the table an’ boots on our feet, an’ you’d be in a muck sweat if we walked. You know it, an’ I know it. But we’re not going to walk, not with Pearl an’ Mam and the new ’un round our necks – not unless you push us too far, that is. You’ll get your beer and baccy money, but I’ll deal with the rest of it an’ there’ll be no more of the brass pot. I’ll see to the rent man, same as everything else, an’ if you don’t like the new arrangement, you know what you can do.’

  The silence was absolute. But only for a moment. Thomas’s face contorted as he came out with a stream of obscenities, flecks of spittle gathering at the corners of his thin mouth as he yelled at his son. It was only the sudden appearance of the midwife at the kitchen door that stopped him, and her shouting, ‘Mr Croft, control yourself. Your wife has just given birth to a bonny baby boy and you’re behaving like this! What are you thinking of, man? Do you want her milk to dry up?’

  Thomas’s next words left the midwife in no doubt as to what his feelings were regarding his wife’s milk, and as the woman’s outraged, ‘How dare you swear at me, Mr Croft!’ echoed round the kitchen, he stomped out of the back door into the yard.

  ‘Well!’ The midwife’s glance took in all the children’s faces before coming to rest on Seth’s. ‘What was all that about?’

  Knowing that whatever he said would be all round the street in a matter of hours, Seth said shortly, ‘He’s a bit het up.’

  ‘Aye, I’d worked that out for meself.’ The midwife’s gaze gentled as it moved to fall on Pearl’s little white face. ‘Don’t cry, hinny,’ she said softly. ‘It’s just a storm in a teacup, that’s all. Give me a minute an’ then you can come up and see your new baby brother. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Aye, that’s right. Now, how about making a nice cup of tea for your mam, eh? There’s a good lassie.’

  Poor little mite. As Mrs Hopkins bustled out of the room she was mentally shaking her head. The mother was bad enough, if even half the tales concerning the family’s procession of male lodgers were true, but the father! Evil, he was. Downright evil. You could see it in his eyes. And the house! It was filthy even for this area. There were plenty of places she visited where the occupants were living hand to mouth but managed to keep up appearances; a bar of soap and a scrubbing brush didn’t cost much, now did they? And the bairns, all eyes they were, and each one carrying the stamp of that brute’s fists on them, she’d be bound.

  For a second Mrs Hopkins pictured her own house in her mind’s eye; her husband, back from the pit by now and sitting in his armchair in front of the fire with the cat on his lap, and the aroma of the sheep’s-head broth she’d left gently simmering flavouring the air. Counting her blessings, Mrs Hopkins hurried in to see to mother and child, suddenly anxious to be home.

  Downstairs, Seth lifted the big black kettle from the hob and filled the teapot before bringing it to the table. He didn’t like Pearl doing jobs which involved boiling water; only last month little Beth Ingram a few doors down had been scalded when she’d tipped boiling hot soup on herself, and Beth was a couple of years older than his sister. He glanced at Pearl, who was finishing the last of the washing-up. Her face was still smudged with tears as a result of the recent scene.

  His mam worked Pearl to death. He knew it, but until today had felt he was powerless to change the situation. But his da hadn’t gone for him. The knowledge was warming, like the tots of gin McArthur provided after a job had gone well. And he’d nailed his colours to the mast. Pearl would go to school, he’d make sure of it, and provide the necessary funds the penny Methodists asked for. At least she’d be out of the house for most of the day then.

  Pearl came to the table, drying her hands on her pinafore. ‘Shall I take Mam her tea now, Seth?’

  ‘Aye, you do that, lass.’ He glanced at Fred and Walter who were sitting waiting for him to resume their game of cards. It had been as much for them as anything that he’d done for the bloke yesterday; the thought of his brothers being taken away and locked up for stealing hadn’t been one he could live with. But could he live with what he’d done?

  He straightened, flexing his thin shoulders as though throwing something off. He would have to. There were too many people relying on him to do anything else.

  Chapter 2

  It was said that Sunderland’s East End was the devil’s playground, and nowhere was this more true than in the infamous dockside area where Low Street was situated. The parish was immersed in squalor and filth, the overcrowded back-to-back tenements breeding poverty and ill-health, with the consequent foul language, brawling, drunkenness and misery. Every other building was a public house, gambling and prostitution were rife, and the infant mortality rates were the highest in the country. But to Pearl it was home and she had known nothing else. Blessed with a naturally sunny disposition and an innocence which was fiercely protected by her three brothers, her lot was not an altogether unhappy one.

  From the first moment she had set eyes on the new baby she had loved him, and James was a placid child, content to lie in the old drawer which was his crib for hours as long as his stomach was full. As soon as she passed through the school gates, she would run all the way home, knowing that James had probably been left in the same nappy all day. Invariably she would have to change him and sort out fresh scraps of linen for his bedding, before getting started on the list of chores her mother had waiting for her, but she didn’t mind this. Nor did she object to the fact that she never had time to play like most of the other children. The only thing that saddened her was, however hard she tried, she never seemed to please her mother. And today she was going to be late home. The whole class had been kept in after school until everyone had been able to recite their two times table. She hadn’t thought this was fair – everyone knew Eliza Owen didn’t know her numbers – and Pearl had suffered agonies of frustration until eventually the other girl had stumbled her way through and the teacher had let them go.

  By the time she flew down the back lane and into the yard it was nearly half-past four and she was sticky and hot. The July day had been a scorcher. The foul smell from the privy which was shared by several houses nearly knocked her backwards as she passed it; the scavengers were due the next day with their cart and long shovels.

  Gulping and swallowing against the nausea which had risen up, Pearl opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen. The smell in here was nearly as bad as outside, and as she looked down at James in his drawer she saw the baby was covered in his own filth. He was eight weeks old now and immediately he saw her gave a wid
e toothless smile before stuffing his faeces-smeared fingers in his mouth.

  ‘No, don’t.’ Pearl’s protest was involuntary and brought her mother, who had been sitting slumped in her husband’s armchair fast asleep, sitting straighter.

  ‘Where’ve you bin?’ Kitty Croft brushed the hair out of her eyes as she spoke, knocking over the empty gin bottle which had been at the side of her. As it smashed onto the stone flags she cursed, her voice higher as she repeated, ‘Where’ve you bin? It’s an hour since you finished school.’

  ‘We were kept in.’ Pearl was already kneeling on the floor sorting through the old orange box in which James’s bits of rag for his nappies and few baby clothes were kept.

  ‘Don’t give me that. You’ve been off playin’ somewhere.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Miss Grant kept us in until we could all say our tables.’ Pearl rose quickly and walked across to the kettle placed on the steel shelf next to the range. It was half full of lukewarm water and she tipped some into the tin bowl they used for washing.

  ‘Leave that.’ Her mother’s voice was strident. ‘I’m talking to you, girl.’

  Finding the hard brown-veined soap they bought from the slaughterhouse, Pearl set the bowl on the floor after brushing away some mouse droppings with her hand. ‘James needs cleaning up, Mam.’

  ‘I said leave it, an’ look at me when I’m talkin’ to you.’

  Itching to get her brother sorted, Pearl straightened and stared at her mother.

  Kitty glared at the daughter who’d irritated her from the moment she was born. She had never analysed why this was so, and if anyone had told her that Pearl’s cornflower-blue eyes with their long thick lashes and her abundance of wavy dark-brown hair were part of the problem, she would have denied it. In truth, her daughter’s prettiness was a constant thorn in Kitty’s flesh. Orphaned before she could walk, Kitty had been placed in the workhouse at ten months old and had endured a wretched childhood. At fourteen she had been sent to a big house where she had worked as a kitchenmaid, and two years of mistreatment there by the cook had further embittered her. She had met Thomas on her half-day off a month when she was sixteen, and had seen to it that she was wed within a few months. She didn’t love her husband – Kitty Croft was not capable of loving anyone – but she did enjoy the intimate side of their union, and when Thomas’s interest in that department had begun to wane, she had made sure that her needs were met elsewhere.

  As Pearl fidgeted, Kitty said sharply, ‘Take that look off your face and don’t come the madam with me, girl, not unless you want to feel the back of my hand.’

  Pearl turned her eyes to the floor. She’d learned that silence was the only way to placate her mother when she was like this, and she needed to be able to see to James, who was smelling something awful. ‘Sorry, Mam.’

  ‘Aye, I should think so. Now I’ll ask again. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘I told you, we were kept in. We break up for the summer holidays at the end of the week and Miss Grant wants us all to know our two times table afore we go. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about it.’

  Her mother looked at her a moment longer before relaxing in the chair again. ‘Stupid dried-up old crone. What does she know about real life anyway? I could tell her a thing or two. Make her hair curl, I could.’ When Pearl continued to stand still, saying nothing, Kitty added, ‘Make me a cup of tea. I’m parched.’

  ‘I’ll just wash James—’

  ‘Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said make me a cup of tea, didn’t I?’

  Pearl made the tea. Not to do so would have meant a series of stinging slaps on the backs of her legs but worse, her mother was quite capable of refusing to let her clean up James for hours.

  The moment Kitty was drinking the first cup from the pot, Pearl set about washing and changing the baby. Once he was clean and dry she placed him in her desk bed before scrubbing out the drawer and putting it in front of the range to dry off. Next she cleared up the broken glass at her mother’s feet and in between all this she poured Kitty two more cups of tea.

  The house still reeked of excrement but it was no use opening the door and window, not with the smell in the yard enough to cause you to retch.

  When James began to grizzle, she brought him to her mother for his feed and then got on with peeling the potatoes which would be boiled and served up with the leek pudding her mother had prepared earlier and some cold mutton from the day before.

  For a little while silence reigned, the only sound an occasional gulp and slurp from the baby at his mother’s breast.

  She wished her mam liked James. Pearl’s bow-shaped mouth compressed at the thought. But she didn’t. When she had said the same to Seth a day or so ago, her brother had smiled and ruffled her hair and said their mam didn’t like any of them, and she wasn’t to worry. But she was worried. Pearl’s throat swelled and tears pricked at the back of her eyes. It was all right for her and the lads, but James was only a little baby and he was left with their mam all day. But when she had said this to Seth, adding that she didn’t want to go to school, he’d got cross with her. She had to go to school, he’d insisted. And then he’d said something which had puzzled her ever since. It was her ticket out of here and she mustn’t let it slip out of her fingers. But she didn’t have any ticket, so how could she lose it?

  She had tried to ask him but he’d gone on, saying she was brighter than the rest of them put together and the teachers would help her if she played her cards right. But she didn’t even know how to play cards. The lads did, they played nearly every night, but they’d never shown her how. Seth said ladies didn’t play cards, not the sort they did anyway.

  She finished the last of the tatties and dropped it in the pan with the others. It was too heavy for her to carry, but her mam would put it on the hob in a minute when James had had his fill.

  She wished she had a grandma and granda like most of the bairns in her class. A lot of them had two sets and she didn’t even have one. Seth had said it was because their mam’s mother had died when Kitty was a baby. When she had asked where their mam’s da was, he’d said, ‘Nowhere,’ in the funny tone he used when she wasn’t to ask questions. And her da’s parents had died of the fever in Scotland when her da was a lad, and he’d been brought to an aunt Sunderland way. She didn’t know what had happened to the aunt – she was never spoken of. Perhaps she didn’t like their da? No one did.

  Pearl contemplated this for a moment or two as she dried her cold red hands on her pinafore. The last time the minister had come to the school and given one of his ‘addresses’, as Miss Grant referred to the long talks, he’d said God expected you to be kind to people who were nasty. By doing that, you would win them over to a life of good deeds, the minister had explained, and God would change their hard hearts. When she’d put her hand up and said God couldn’t know her da if He thought that, she’d got ‘wrong’ from Miss Grant once the minister had gone, even though he’d just smiled and said there were exceptions to every rule.

  ‘Here, take him.’

  James’s eyelids were drooping, and as she lifted him from her mother’s lap his tiny hands clutched frantically at the air for a moment. Softly, she said, ‘It’s all right, I won’t drop you. Don’t worry.’

  When the baby was once again lying in the desk bed she stood looking down at him for a moment. His rose-flushed face and downy head reminded her of a dolly she had seen in one of the big shops in High Street West last Christmas when Seth had taken her to see the shop windows decorated with paper chains and bells and baubles. Only the dolly had been dressed in a bonny little dress and coat with bootees on its feet. She frowned to herself. It didn’t seem right that a dolly should be dressed better than a real live baby.

  ‘What are you standing there gawpin’ at? Take them things an’ swill ’em off in the wash-house, they’re stinkin’ the place out.’

  Her mother had stood up and placed the pan of potatoes on the hob, now she pointed to the nappy bucket by the back door in
to which Pearl had dropped James’s dirty clothes and bedlinen. This was another regular job of Pearl’s, but it took all the little girl’s strength to lug the heavy bucket to the wash-house in the yard which, like the privy, they shared with several other families. If one of their neighbours was possing or mangling or at the big stone sink, they would invariably stop what they were doing and help her, but today the wash-house was empty. Pearl didn’t mind this. Most of the other women were kind but she knew they felt sorry for her, and when she heard them muttering under their breath about her mother it made her feel funny.

  She stood catching her breath just inside the doorway. The boiler was in one corner and the big poss tub in another, and the table for scrubbing stood in the middle of the room next to the mangle. The deep stone sink was under the window, and it was to this she staggered, wringing the contents of the bucket out and dropping them into the sink before she fetched clean water and the bar of soap to scrub the worst of the stains from the nappies and linen. Some of their neighbours boiled their children’s nappies; Pearl often saw the white squares of towelling blowing on the lines across the back lanes. When she had suggested this to her mother shortly after James was born, she’d received a slap round her legs for her trouble.

  She had just finished putting the washing through the mangle, the big stiff rollers straining every muscle in her arms and shoulders, when she heard footsteps in the yard and then a man’s voice calling her mother’s name, accompanied by a hammering on their back door. Startled, she ran to see what was happening and as her mother opened the door she heard the man say, ‘Mrs Croft? I think you’d better come quick. There’s been a fight outside the Boar’s Head.’