Herring Girl Read online

  On the Death Registry part of the BMD website, they find the unfortunate Dorothy almost immediately. It seems she died on 24 September 1898, aged thirty-four. Cause of death: Post-partum haemorrhage. Scrolling down the list for the name ‘Milburn’, Mary finds another entry. ‘Oh dear,’ she says quietly. ‘I think this must be the baby she was carrying. Samuel Henry Milburn, aged thirty days.’

  There’s no sign of Annie on the death register, at least not under her maiden name. But they find her younger brother Richard there, too, six months after his mother died.

  ‘One of the little bairns,’ says Ben, sounding shaken. ‘So that’s Annie disappeared, her mam and brother dead, and the baby – what’s happened to them all?’

  It seems the only way to find out is to track down their death certificates at the Registry Office. To Mary’s relief, this is just down the road, in the elegant old Stag Line building overlooking the river. She’d no idea what went on inside until now, but it explains the windswept brides and bridesmaids she’s vaguely noticed outside on summer afternoons having their photographs taken.

  Inside, a portly man in a bow tie charges her £7 each for copies of the three death certificates, then disappears through a heavy door to retrieve them from some invisible archive. Mary takes the photocopies outside and she and Ben sit down to read the swirly copperplate writing.

  ‘What’s a post-partum – that thing?’ Ben asks, examining Dorothy Milburn’s death certificate.

  ‘Post-partum haemorrhage,’ says Mary. ‘That’s when the mother bleeds to death after giving birth – usually because the placenta doesn’t separate properly from the womb and keeps leaking blood until the mother dies.’

  ‘Phew,’ says Ben, blenching a little. ‘What did the baby die of?’

  ‘Gastrointestinal disease – diarrhoea to you and me. How awful. The poor little mite died just a month after his mother. Inevitable really, if you think about it. Mother dead, big sister missing, father and brothers off at sea most of the time. They’d have had to leave the baby with the grandmother, probably, or a neighbour, who’d have fed him something unsanitary from a bottle.’

  ‘I feel a bit sick,’ says Ben, looking green.

  ‘Put your head between your knees. That’s right. Good. Breathe slowly.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, his voice muffled. ‘It’s when you said about Annie’s mam bleeding to death. It was like hearing my own mam had died.’

  ‘Oh, Ben. I am sorry. I didn’t think.’

  ‘They were really close, her and Annie,’ he says shakily, straightening up, ‘what with doing all the cooking and that together. And she was really nice, sort of quiet and welcoming, like she always had a pot of tea on the go and some old biddy in the corner by the fire, nattering on and ponging a bit, but that was fine by Mam because she always—’

  He breaks off and starts to cry softly. Mary ferrets in her pocket for a hanky and lays it on his thigh. She’d hoped this more objective method of research might have spared him some of the trauma of these recollections. But how could she have predicted this?

  ‘Do you miss your own mother?’ she asks, intuiting that the death might be resonating with events in the boy’s current life.

  ‘She keeps saying she’ll have me over for a holiday, but she never does anything about it. I think she’s really stressed out with the two little ones, so she can’t face it.’ He raises a tearful face. ‘But I could help her with them, couldn’t I? I’m quite good at that stuff. Cooking and that. But it’s like she’s frozen me in time as a whingey five-year-old.’

  Mary smiles. ‘I’m sure you were never whingey.’

  He blows his nose and holds out the wadded hanky, then smiles with embarrassment and shoves it into his jeans pocket. ‘I’m all right now,’ he says, squaring his narrow shoulders. ‘What did Ricky die of?’

  Mary leafs through to the older boy’s certificate. ‘Tabes mesenterica,’ she says. ‘Whatever that is.’

  Back in the library, Ben taps it in to Google and tracks down a website with a big table listing all the main causes of death in England and Wales over the years. ‘Look at this,’ says Mary. ‘Over 100,000 under-fives died of measles between 1891 and 1900. Right, here it is: tabes mesenterica: 52,948 deaths. It seems to be a kind of tuberculosis, because it’s listed with phthisis, which is the old name for TB of the lung. Poor little mite probably just wasted away. Fascinating. I’d no idea TB was so common among children.’

  Ben scrolls further down the table. ‘I can’t find post-partum haemorrhage anywhere,’ he says.

  ‘That’ll be included in the women who died in childbirth,’ Mary says, pointing. ‘Twenty-five thousand of them. That’s outrageous – worse than the Third World today. And look at this: a further twenty thousand women died of puerperal fever.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to know? It’s not very pleasant. I don’t want you keeling over again.’

  He grins at her. ‘Go on. That was just the shock of Annie’s mam dying. I’m fine now.’

  ‘Well, it’s a kind of septicaemia of the reproductive organs that sets in after a woman’s given birth, sometimes combined with gangrene, and accompanied by foul-smelling discharges.’

  ‘Yeuch,’ Ben comments with relish.

  ‘It was spread by doctors not washing their hands, so it was limited almost entirely to women giving birth in hospital.’

  Laura sashays over, flouncing her peasant skirt. ‘Hospitals? Tell me about it. I’ve just been reading about the Boer War. It’s amazing following history, day by day, as it was happening. Anyway, this report said that men were dying in their hundreds from the thigh wounds they got from the shell casings sort of pinging backwards from their guns. The wounds would get infected and without antibiotics they’d end up dying of gangrene.’ She shudders melodramatically. ‘What a way to go, eh?’

  ‘If they didn’t have antibiotics, what did they do?’ Ben asks.

  ‘Amputation was usually the only option,’ Mary says. ‘Followed, you’ll be interested to hear, by cauterization with hot tar.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Ben pulls a face, clearly both appalled and delighted.

  ‘I thought you’d like that,’ Mary grins. Then, addressing Laura: ‘We’ve found Annie on the census, so we know she was nine in 1891. If she was sixteen or seventeen when she disappeared, that would narrow your search down to 1897, 98, 99, around then.’

  ‘Now she tells me! I’ve just started on 1900. Some local worthy’s just stumped up for a millennium knees-up at the Tynemouth Poor House. Bless.’

  ‘I thought you were going to focus on the summer months?’ Mary chides, not in the least bit surprised. ‘That’s when Ben’s recollections appear to stop.’

  ‘I know, but this stuff is just so fascinating. Ben, you’d love the fashion column. Hilarious discussions about how “unbecoming” the new flounced skirt shape is for “ladies of wider girth”.’

  ‘I’m going outside for a cigarette,’ says Mary firmly. ‘Then I’m planning to embark on something rather painstaking, time-consuming and boring, which none the less appeals to the obsessional side of my personality and will, I hope, prove invaluable to our investigation.’

  Laura rolls her eyes at Ben. ‘Which is?’ she prompts.

  ‘Well, I’ve made a list of all the people Annie’s ever mentioned, and I want to see if I can find out their surnames and work out where they all lived and who they were related to. Who knows, I might even find out where Annie moved to – if indeed she did move. I plan to start with Flo, the best friend, and Sam, the boyfriend, and that other boy, Tom. Hopefully they’ll all live within a few streets of one another.’

  She turns to Ben. ‘Do you want to help? Or would you rather look at the Police Court reports with Laura for those years I mentioned? See if anything jogs your memory – someone’s name, maybe, or a particular incident.’

  Intercepting a conspiratorial look passing between them, Mary sighs. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that yo
u might delay your tour of fashion history until after the research is done?’ she asks.

  ‌Chapter Sixteen

  2007

  The little research team has convened at Mary’s house to compare notes. They’re sitting on the bench, leaning back against the wall in the last of the afternoon sunshine: Laura and Ben are drinking tea and dunking shortbread fingers; Mary’s sipping a double espresso.

  Mr Skipper has already disposed of his ferocious bottom-of-the-pot-with-three-sugars concoction and is hunkered down on his Coca Cola crate, breaking the filter off one of Mary’s Gitanes and peeling away the paper, prior to dividing the tobacco into three equal heaps on his thigh and rerolling it into a trio of emaciated bidis.

  Mary lights up her own intact cigarette and exhales vertically, to avoid blowing smoke into Laura’s eyes. ‘I had rather a successful afternoon,’ she reports. ‘I found Flo and Sam – though the predatory Tom eludes me for the time being.’ She feels energized; all this factual confirmation is like a shot in the arm. There’s no way a schoolboy like Ben could possibly have picked up this kind of detail; some kind of transfer of memories would appear to be the only logical explanation.

  ‘Hey, that’s brilliant!’ applauds Ben. ‘We were total crap, weren’t we, Laura? We went through the Police Court reports for the years you said but there wasn’t anything about Annie.’

  ‘That’s because they only report cases where there’s a prosecution,’ Laura chimes in. ‘Or if a body’s found. Anyone going AWOL wouldn’t be mentioned unless they’d kicked someone’s head in first.’

  ‘We found five suicides, though,’ Ben says. ‘People used to slit their throats instead of their wrists in them days. How gross is that?’

  ‘Imagine how sharp the knife would have to be for that,’ Mary comments with a little shudder.

  ‘Pete reckons it was to avoid going into the workhouse,’ adds Laura.

  ‘We found loads of men lost at sea – mostly when a boat went down in a collision, but there was one young lad who got caught up in a trawl winch and another who just vanished overboard in the middle of the night.’

  ‘So how did you find Flo and Sam?’ Laura asks.

  ‘Flo was quite straightforward, actually,’ says Mary. ‘There was only one Florence of the appropriate age in the vicinity without brothers and sisters. Her surname’s Sheraton, by the way, and the family lived halfway up Tulley’s Bank. Tom was much harder to identify, because we know less about his family situation and it was such a common name. The redoubtable Pete explained that it was traditional for parents to name children after their grandparents, so names were recycled over and over. I came across twenty Thomases in five streets before I gave up. Maybe I’ll have more luck with that boat registry he mentioned.’

  ‘What about Sam?’ Ben interrupts.

  ‘He was a challenge too, but assuming he was a year or two older than Annie, he’d have been eighteen or nineteen in 1898, which would make him about eleven in 1891 when he was on the Wellesley training ship, or borstal as we would have called it.’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘I think so. There were five Samuels on the Wellesley at the time of the census, but only one of the right age – a Samuel Heron. Does that surname ring a bell?’ Ben shrugs, so Mary continues: ‘Anyway, the majority were in the twelve to fourteen age-range, so our Sam would have been one of the youngest aboard. Which might account for his rather reticent and resilient personality when we meet him.’

  ‘Because of being bullied?’ asks Ben. ‘Is that what you mean?’

  ‘I’d have thought that was rather likely, wouldn’t you? Unless he was particularly burly or pugnacious – neither of which he appears to have been.’

  The sun sinks lower and Mary shivers and stubs out her cigarette. From where she’s sitting, she can see the place on the river where the Wellesley was moored over a century ago, and fancies she can still hear the voices of the boys incarcerated there, echoing across the water.

  ‘I keep thinking about Sam on that ship,’ says Ben quietly, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Locked in with all them big rough lads.’

  ‘It wasn’t for long,’ Mary tries to reassure him. ‘I read some of the reports in the Wellesley file. The boys were only there for a year or two and the majority went straight into jobs in the fishing industry or on the collier ships. The Board of Trustees implied they were rather sought after once they’d had their corners knocked off.’

  ‘Where was he living after Annie disappeared?’ he asks. ‘Did you find him on the 1901 census?’

  ‘There was no Samuel Heron living in North Shields on that date, though I didn’t search any further afield.’

  ‘So Sam disappeared too,’ says Ben.

  ‘However, I did find his mother living at, let me see—’ Mary consults her notebook – ‘number 8 Dipper’s Landing,’ she announces with a flourish. ‘What a fascinating process this is.’ She beams around at them. ‘I’d identified her earlier, you see, from the 1881 census. I found an Elizabeth Heron living with a toddler called Samuel of the right age and married to yet another Thomas – Thomas Heron.’

  ‘Maybe Sam went off to look for Annie,’ Ben suggests.

  ‘He probably just hopped on another boat,’ says Laura, examining a chipped cerise fingernail. ‘There were ships from all over docking at Shields back then. Cargo ships, steam packets, trawlers, tugs, you name it. It would have been a doddle for a skilled lad to find a job.’

  The phone rings inside the house.

  ‘I suppose I should get that,’ Mary says, closing her eyes and enjoying the warm sun’s rays on her eyelids.

  ‘Go on then.’ Laura gives her a little shove.

  ‘If it’s important they’ll ring back.’

  ‘You should get an answerphone.’

  ‘You gave me your old answerphone, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Then you should switch it on.’

  ‘It’ll just be some telesales person in Calcutta.’

  The phone continues to ring. ‘Shall I get it for you?’ Ben asks.

  ‘No, no.’ Mary gets up with a sigh. ‘Let’s see what the idiot wants.’ She walks inside. ‘Dr Charlton speaking,’ she says.

  ‘So you are there!’ exclaims a male voice. ‘I was about to give up, then I remembered how you always hated the phone.’

  ‘Who is this?’ But she knows straight away.

  ‘Och, now you’ve hurt my feelings.’ Those brusque Scottish vowels; the teasing intonation.

  ‘Hello, Ian,’ she says. So he’s turned up – again. Every time she moves house, she thinks she’s put him behind her. But every time she eventually discovers she’s wrong.

  ‘I’m checking into the Grand in Tynemouth tomorrow afternoon,’ he’s saying. ‘So I was thinking I’d pop over for a cuppa once I’ve settled in.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ she says. ‘You’re bringing the children for a bout of buckets and spades on the Long Sands.’

  ‘Ha, ha. For your information, I’m here on a spot of business.’

  ‘How many are there now?’

  ‘Six, to my shame. All doing their bit for global warming. Four with Polly, and the lovely Christina’s just pupped a second.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a lovely Christina.’ Mary’s annoyed to discover that she feels piqued. She’d filed him away under ‘Settled’ and ‘Unobtainable’, whereas it would appear that to the lovely Christina he’d been obtainable after all. Now she’ll have to re-file him. But under what heading? Adulterous? Incorrigible? Obtainable?

  ‘Then we’ve obviously got a lot of catching up to do. Look, I’ve got to dash now, but I’ll see you tomorrow, OK? About three o’clock. I’ll bring the Hobnobs.’

  Mary hooks the receiver back on the wall and stares at it. Damn.

  She hurries up the three flights of stairs to her bedroom; she wants to gather her thoughts before Laura starts interrogating her. Sitting on the bed, she takes out her Gitanes then puts them back in her pocket. Damn.


  Ian Campbell: the only man she’s ever slept with. She thinks she preferred it when he was ‘Unobtainable’. While he was safely ensconced in Primrose Hill, with his alarming job and the super-fertile Polly from PR, she didn’t have to ask herself how she felt about him or whether she’d made the right decision – anything physical was out of the question.

  Standing up again, she tugs her old student rucksack down from the top of the wardrobe and slaps the dust off it. Then she starts piling items of clothing on the bed: a clean pair of jim-jams; three – no, four, five – pairs of plain white cotton knickers; three pairs of ordinary socks and two of thick walking socks; walking boots, dubbin and cloth; two pairs of jeans and an Arran jumper; a spare skirt and cardie; an assortment of T-shirts and gloves; a foldaway cagoule.

  As she starts packing it all systematically into the rucksack, she realizes – with a slight snort of amusement – that she appears to be preparing for a hiking trip, the first she’s taken in years. Excellent, she thinks. Fresh air and solitude. By this time tomorrow she’ll be in the middle of the Northumbrian National Park and he’ll have to hire a sniffer dog to track her down.

  As she moves to her dressing-table to pick up her hairbrush and a small stack of white handkerchiefs, she hears the front gate creak open and glances out of the window. There, manoeuvring some kind of mountain bike down her front path, is a short athletic-looking man in khaki Bermudas wearing a denim baseball cap back-to-front, like one of those elastic-limbed Black rapper types.

  Damn, damn, damn. It’s him.

  Mary shrinks back from the window and considers her options. She could rush out pretending to be in a hurry to catch a train, or nip out through the back yard and call Laura’s mobile to explain – absurdly neurotic options, both of them, as she’s only too aware. But then Ian always did make her feel slightly panicky and surreal. His infuriating Hibernian confidence, all that disquieting sexual energy apparently aimed in her direction.

  She can hear him through the window asking if he’s come to the right address, and Laura launching into her Café Laura routine, offering him a seat and something to drink. Three storeys above, Mary sits before her dressing table mirror and conducts an irritated audit of her appearance. Her hair’s done that annoying wispy thing it does when newly washed, sliding out of its plait and coiling around her face. And she’s too thin, of course, but then she always was: scrawny wrists, breasts like fried eggs on a plate. At least this skirt’s fairly new.