Herring Girl Read online

  So this evening, here’s Da sat at the table, and since I last seen him he’s been out all night and had his bit sleep, and now he’s getting ready to set off again. But just now his hands are trembling that much from fatigue that Mam’s insisting on giving him his shave, which is serious, for he normally likes to do it himself, even though it’s cheap enough to go to the barber. But Da complains the barbers never make the water hot enough, and the soap’s wrong, and the cloths minging – though I can’t see a barber staying in business long with minging cloths.

  But that’s Da all over. If a thing’s worth doing, he says, it’s worth doing right. So he’s got his own strop and razor, and good lathering soap, and gives himself a proper shave – like a prayer, almost – last thing before he goes to sea.

  Though this evening it’s Mam doing it, and he’s growling like a tetchy dog, but sitting obedient even so, and tipping his head back so she can lather his throat. And I’m thinking this must be the lovingest thing I ever did see: my soft mam standing her ground, and my hard da offering his throat to her.

  For Da can be that fierce when he’s crossed, so there’s many that fear him – though respect and fear are close cousins round these parts, as they must be when a lad’s life can depend on him minding his skipper.

  Most evenings after tea, Mam gives Flo and me a dish of something to take over to Nana’s, to help out with our Jimmy and the bairns, for she’s six Scots lasses lodging at hers, and that’s a deal to be cooking for.

  And every day, for the fun of it, we take a different way home: now up along the top bank, past the New High Light and the mansions in Dockwray Square; now down the Low Town, along Union Street and Bell Street; or wandering along all the little quays, watching the tugs chugging at anchor, coaling up, and smacks taking on ice for another trip to the cod grounds – for this town’s that jumping we can’t take to our beds without tasting a bit of that jumpingness first.

  Tonight Flo’s wanting to linger at the bottom of our stairs, waiting on Tom on his way to the boat. But soon as I spy him a-lolloping down, with his crotchboots and oilies under his arm, I slip away because I’m chary of him looking at me again in that bold way, and Flo seeing him looking and taking it amiss.

  It must be nineish now and the lamplighter’s making his way along the street with his taper; and on the boats, too, lights are winking on all along the little quays, with the dusky water rocking and winking back.

  Then here he is, that curly-haired lad from last Sunday, quiet as a cat at my elbow, saying, ‘Good evening, Miss Anne’, and making me jump out of my skin. Which puts me in a fluster, so he’s saying sorry for surprising me, and I’m saying sorry for squealing, then blurting out about how the lights blinking on in the gloaming make the river a magical place. And he’s smiling down at me, still with that noticing look, and telling how this is the best time of day for a fisherman, because you’re fresh from your bit sleep, and there’s that buzzing always, about what you’ll haul, how much and how soon, and whether you’ll catch a fair wind.

  And I see he’s carrying his oilies and boots, too, and ask what boat he’s on. Why, the Osprey, says he, which is Da’s boat. And it turns out that’s why he came visiting – though Da’s never said – for he’s been hoping for a place in Da’s crew for more than half a year, after he went out as a nightman on the long lines before Christmas when Tom was took bad with his chest. And he liked the way the boat worked, and the craik, and our Jimmy’s cooking. But mostly, he says, it’s Da he wants to work under. For Da’s what they call a ‘don’ skipper, which means he can fairly smell the shoals and read the sea bed, and always brings the boat in safe with a canny catch.

  And before you know it, I’m telling about how Da is with his razor, because that’s the same strictness he brings to his fishing. Then the lad’s saying his name, which is Sam, and I’m saying pleased to meet you, like we’re being introduced for the first time, which we are, I suppose, except for my feeling that I’ve known this lad Sam for as long as I’ve lived, and longer yet than that. And that this talk is but a continuing of a talk we left off long ago.

  Does he feel the same? I can’t tell, for he’s stopped talking now, though he’s never left neither, but has set down his oilies and is standing beside me – just standing quiet, as if this were his rightful place – looking out over the river, to where the tugs are tying on the tow warps to pull the luggers out to sea. Then after a bit, he turns and looks at me again, then hoists up his gear and he’s gone.

  Next time we meet is on the Saturday, on the monkey run – that’s the strolling young folk do at the week’s end, when we’ve sluiced down our oilies and had our baths, and put on our good clothes. It’s a time for the lads to look at the lasses, and for the lasses to look back, and for the old folk to make sure all our dealings stay decent – but if two sweethearts meet, who’s to say where they might sneak off to?

  So here’s Flo and me in our summer blouses, and the sun’s dipping low towards Newcastle so the light’s spilling like honey on the cobbles and stairs. And we’re that giddy, the two of us, for she’s promised to meet her Tom, and I’m hoping to meet my Sam – though I can’t really think he’s mine, for nowt binding’s been said, and I’ve never even seen him this past week, for all my lingering where we stood that one time.

  I tell you, there’s a feeling you can get in your chest, a sort of burstingness, like a mattie herring, full of roe and oil, who’s as ripe and sleek as she’ll ever be. So I find I’m squeezing Flo’s arm as we’re strolling along, and she’s squeezing back, and we’re thinking we must be the bonniest two lasses in Shields. And here’s the strangest thing, for though I’m linked in with Flo, and her cheeks are pink as ever, and her hair glinting just as yellow under her scarf, here’s lads’ eyes roving over the two of us and resting on me for a change.

  Can love turn a lass into a woman? Or is it being a woman that calls out to love? I can’t tell, but I’m fairly bubbling with something, like the tickle of ginger beer on your nose.

  And now, like a spell’s been cast, here he is! Standing alone, outside Fraser’s Cocoa House, with a proper jacket and shined shoes, and his hair still damp under his cap. And we’re stopping, Flo and me, for he’s stepped forwards and raised his cap, and’s wishing us good evening, like it were the simplest thing in the world.

  Which it is, of course, except my cheeks are blazing and my heart thudding, so I fear he must hear it. And there’s another fear, for this is the first time he’s seen Flo close up, and I’m waiting for his noticing look to fall on her, and wondering how I’ll manage if it does.

  But she could be a duff pudden for all the noticing he’s giving her, though he’s civil enough when she greets him. Which fills me with that much joy, I can’t stop from laughing, so now he’s asking why, but I can’t make a sensible answer. But it doesn’t matter one ticky-bit, for Flo’s taken herself off to give us our privacy, and he’s asking me to walk out with him tomorrow after dinner, along to St Edward’s Bay for an ice cream at Watt’s Refreshment Rooms.

  And I suppose I’m saying yes – though I’m that flummoxed I can’t tell – for then he’s asking would I take it bad if he doesn’t ask Da for his permission just at the minute, on account of him being new on the boat and not wanting Da to think he’s taking advantage. Leastways I think that’s what he’s saying, for to tell the truth, it’s all I can do not to kiss him right there in the street, for he has the kissingest mouth I ever saw, and I find I’m watching for his tongue as he’s speaking, and wondering about it, then blushing again at the wondering.

  Once it’s settled where we’re meeting, it’s just as it was that other evening, and a calm comes over the two of us, like the sigh of an old nana easing down on to a chair, and my heart quietens a mite, so I can look around and see that Flo’s calling out to Tom and our Jimmy, and they’re grinning and striding over.

  But now something’s awry, for Tom’s seen Sam, and come up short, like a dog when it spies another dog in the distance
. ‘So, Wellesley lad,’ he says with a smile, ‘what you doing with one of my lasses?’

  It’s a joke, of course, and we’re all of us laughing, but there’s something sharp there too – like I said before about Tom – that reminds me how quick he can be with his fists.

  A minute later Sam’s gone and Tom’s staring after him and asking if we’re walking out. So I say, no, we’re just blethering, for I’m wary of Da hearing about it before Sam makes his proper visit. And Tom says, good, because he doesn’t want any of his lasses going with a Wellesley boy. Which has us laughing again, Flo and me, and protesting that one lass should be enough for any lad, and him declaring he’s not ‘any lad’, with a swagger that’s half a joke and half serious.

  Then he’s linking in with Flo and they’re off down the street, and I’m looking round for our Jimmy to walk us home, but he’s disappeared off God knows where. So I wander along the quayside instead, gazing out at the lofty lamps on the Wellesley, which is a towering great ship – big as the Grand Hotel almost – anchored in the middle of the river. And I’m wondering was Sam really a bairn on that ship? For the Wellesley’s a floating prison for the roughest lads in Shields, where they teach them seamanship and try to set them on the right path.

  And what with the gazing and the wondering, I suppose I’ve been lingering nigh on an hour, when I should have been hitching my skirts and hastening up the stairs home. Because there’s rowdy lads gathering outside all the pubs already, so I’ve to edge past them and pretend I don’t notice them looking or hear what they’re saying; and loose lasses are gathering too, with their blouses unbuttoned, so I wrap my shawl tighter over my chest and duck my head and walk faster, and chide myself for forgetting the time, and vow this is the very very last time I’ll be out on my own after sunset.

  Now all at once here’s a strong hand grabbing my arm and swinging me round, and I’m just about to kick out when I see that it’s Tom, appeared out of nowhere. At which I’m that relieved, almost to tears, so I’m thanking him and wiping my eyes, while he links in and starts walking me home.

  ‘When you never came back, I was worried that Wellesley lad might be bothering you,’ he says. So I say, no no, I just forgot the time. And what with the relief of being saved, and them stotting lads in the lanes, I’m not minding that he’s pressing closer as we start up the stairs. It seems a caring, protecting sort of thing, for a lad to lean in to a lass when she’s upset. So I’m paying no heed, neither, when he’s pulling me into a doorway to let some rowdies pass by. But now he’s facing me, looking down in the darkness, and his hands are on my shoulders, and his face is bending towards me. There’s a smell of beer and tabs and red herring on his breath, and too late I understand that he’s – he’s about to—

  ‌Chapter Fourteen

  2007

  The boy’s asleep now, curled foetus-fashion on the red sofa, beneath the rug Mary wrapped around him last time, the one she wore as a poncho in India all those years ago, that’s been on her bed, or whichever horizontal surface has been serving as her bed, ever since.

  She stands in the doorway, fingering the Bic lighter in her skirt pocket, its warm blue plastic cylinder, its little ridged trigger. His eyelids seem translucent: delicately veined, flickering, chasing some occipital image. His cheeks are streaked with tears.

  Usually the children are so easy – embarrassingly so, given the size of her fee – slipping effortlessly into their trances like seagulls launching from a cliff face, then soaring weightlessly for fifty minutes, before alighting gently again at the end of each session with the burden of their symptoms lightened. But with Ben, almost every time, there’s been a crash landing, and he’s lurched back into consciousness with staring eyes and flailing arms, gulping down ragged lungfuls of air.

  This last time, she’d held him. Though it goes against every tenet of her professional code, what else could she do? Though God knows she wasn’t much good at it: hardly knew where to put her arms, they were so rusty from disuse. She was all elbows, whereas what was required, she suspects, was a wide lap and a decent bosom, and one of those floral talcs the National Trust used to sell.

  The boy was as bad. He’s not used to this cuddling lark either, so it was rather akin to comforting an armful of twigs. They managed though, the pair of them, easing their awkward bones under and over somehow, finding a way to hold and be held, and mop tears with her perennial clean hanky, and rock back against the cushions until his sobbing abated and he started to drowse and Mary, too, closed her eyes and felt his meagre warmth – his skinny shoulder, his hair that smells of apples – seep into her for a few minutes before she settled him down under her Indian rug.

  Does he have friends, she wonders? She’s heard his mobile phone burping on occasion, and seen him seen him tapping away at the buttons; but with so much to conceal, she guesses he’d probably steer clear of close friendships. He’d tend to gravitate towards the girls anyway, but would need to keep a safe distance for fear of a ragging from the boys – though Mary doubts that’s the correct term for it these days. Being good at sports would help avert suspicion, however, and get them ‘off his case’ as he might put it. Still, it must be lonely living in Ben’s skin, with that unreconstructed father and a grandmother who seems adequate at best. No wonder he’s round at Laura’s all the time.

  Pulling the door closed, she moves outside, absently lighting a Gitanes and exhaling on a sigh as she lowers herself onto her bench. It’s chilly today: grey and windy with a touch of drizzle in the air. Hunching her shoulders, she pulls her cardie across her chest and squints through smoke at that seagull on its nest on the chimney of the fish and chip shop down on the Fish Quay. It’s been sitting for months, but there’s been no sign of a chick.

  Mary flicks ash and scuffs it away with her foot. One advantage of turning fifty is that people stop asking questions about one’s private life; they assume that one’s situation is a fait accompli.

  Mary doesn’t mourn the lack of what her mother would have referred to as ‘the physical side’. From her perspective, it’s simply the logical consequence of events that took place long ago: at Oxford, in India, in that grim mental hospital on the outskirts of London – Shenley, that was it. And before that, of course, of events in Mary’s most recent past life – Peggy the washerwoman, Peggy the whore – and other past lives she has yet to revisit.

  Peggy never could stand being touched – and who could blame her? She said her body was her work, and when she stopped working she put her tools away. She had a clever way with words, that woman, and a sharp brain when it wasn’t addled with cheap whisky. It was hard on her little boy, though, when she’d slap him away like a stray dog.

  The truth was, the boy irritated Peggy intensely. She considered him her ‘mistake’, conceived before she knew how babies were made, let alone prevented, when girls grew up being told about the midwife’s ‘magic golden scissors’ – for God’s sake! – that were reputedly used to deliver babies without scar from their mothers’ bellies. Hard to credit such ignorance existed, given the cheek-by-jowl conditions in which Peggy and her ilk lived. But she’d been right about one thing: it was the disgrace of that boy’s birth that set her on the inexorable road to the Push and Pull Inn, and that squalid single room where she lived and conducted her business, and eventually died.

  Peggy would have adored Mary’s house: all this space to roam about in, and a double bed, blessedly all to herself. Mary had felt much the same herself when she bought the place, pacing from room to room, with the sun blazing in through the front windows. But as she grows older, and her flesh starts to shrink back from her bones, she can’t help thinking about her double bed, the only stick of new furniture she has ever purchased, and wondering whether she is fated to sleep alone for the rest of her life.

  It’s the following day and, against her better judgement, Mary’s on her way to the library in North Shields to meet Laura and Ben. It’s one of those ghastly concrete and glass blocks they were so fond of bui
lding in the sixties that seem perpetually shrouded in scaffolding to address some basic design fault in the roof. Inside, typically for July, the central heating’s on and it’s sweltering. The heat intensifies as she trudges up stairs splodged with chewing gum to the local history section, where all the windows are open – at least they can open – and desk fans are whirring, lifting the edges of every paper not anchored by a hand or pile of books.

  Laura’s sitting before a desk in a garish peasant skirt, legs crossed sideways, secretarial style, chatting up a surprisingly grizzled male librarian. Ben’s perched on the edge of a chair beside her; even from this distance Mary can sense his excitement.

  He jumps up when he sees her. ‘They’ve got a list of who lived in every house in Shields, going right back to 1841!’ he exclaims. ‘And everyone who got married. And when they were born and when they died. You just need a password to get on the website.’

  Laura turns round, beaming. ‘Fantabulosa, n’est ce pas? And Pete says we can check for murders and missing persons and that in the Shields Daily News. It’s all on microfilm, isn’t it, Pete? In that cabinet over there, right back to the year dot.’

  Mary suppresses a sigh. She’d hoped to conduct this investigation in a rather more systematic manner. ‘I’ve brought three notebooks, one for each of us,’ she begins, ‘so I suggest—’

  ‘Why don’t you and Ben go on the computers to see if you can find Annie,’ interrupts Laura, ‘and I’ll start going through the Daily News to see if there’s anything about how she died.’

  ‘But we don’t know when she died,’ Mary objects. ‘We don’t even know for sure that she did die when we think. There could be any number of explanations for why Ben’s memories appear to stop where they do.’