Herring Girl Read online

  I’ve not told Flo yet, for she was back late. And there’s a part of me wants to keep it secret – and not just because of Da – for it feels a private thing. I’m keeping private too about that other night, when Tom tried to kiss me, for I’m sure it means nowt – except that he’s a lad not to trust. But it would pain Flo if she knew, and she’d maybe think I’d led him on. Which means that’s two things I’m not telling, which is the first time ever I’ve had a thing on my mind and not blurted it soon as she’s in earshot.

  She’s been private with me, too, mind. For she must have come on now, she must have, yet I’ve never seen her rinsing her rags. So maybes she’s using the scullery, or taking water into the nettie. Which makes me sad to think of her sneaking round and too embarrassed to say.

  It’s a day or three later, after tea, and I’ve come down our stairs with Flo to linger a bit on the quayside. I’ve never seen Sam since Sunday, for he lives further upriver, and can’t easy get away, for he says his mam can’t spare him this time of the day. He’s never said, but I think she frets and leans heavy on him.

  I’ve asked to visit, but his face was such a picture at the thought, I set it aside – though I don’t care what she’s like, for she’s his mam so I must love her, however trying.

  Now here’s Tom clomping down as usual with his oilies, so I’m slipping away quick as I can and Flo’s giving me a puzzled look. But what else can I do? I’m that scared he’ll say something that’ll make Flo catch on – even though there’s nowt to catch on to.

  So off I go, hurrying along Clive Street, when I get a yen to look for Sam’s house, or where I think it might be. He stays on them Scarp Landings, Jimmy says, where the houses are built over the river itself, and made of wood instead of brick, and every one has a shed or cree tacked on, and fast as they rot and sink into the mud, so there’s another wherry of warped wood unloaded onto another tottering jetty and another mean leaning thing built.

  I’ve seen the place from a distance, for the river curves upstream and shows it: all ladders and sagging timbers, and weans squatting over holes between the planks – folk say there’s not ten netties in the whole neighbourhood.

  Turning into the first alley, I can see why Sam’s so chary of bringing me here, for half the weans have no clothes and the rest are bare from the waist down, and their mams – or sisters, maybes, for some are that young – are not much more decent, though you can tell it’s not for want of trying. And I feel ashamed to be staring, for these poor folk have no choice but to be looked in on, for they’ve no windows and their only light is through an open door. And I’m thinking, what if I should find myself peering into some dingy room and find my Sam peering back – would he ever forgive me?

  So I turn around and hurry back to Clive Street, vowing next time I venture into that place will be on the arm of my lad.

  It’s good I’m home, though, for there’s a deal of work still to do before bedtime, and Mam looks to be ailing again – and won’t be properly well, I think, till the baby’s born. She’s hanging nets to dry up the stairs, and they’re that heavy from the rain she’s glad of the help, for she’s pale and gasping with the effort, which isn’t like her.

  When we’re done, I put the kettle on and get her to sit a spell – and she does too, which is even more not like her. So I think to help a bit by threading up some needles, like when I was wee – with the weans off at Nana’s, she’s been doing them herself, and it cuts into her rhythm to be forever stopping for more yarn. This time of year, the nets need constant tending – it can be just a few spronks, or a great rent if a pack of dogfish has been at the catch.

  So here I am threading away and Mam’s sitting with her tea and a custard biscuit, and the Scots lasses are out back swilling splatters off their oilies in the rain – for they’ve been working late tonight, and every night this week. And the fire’s hissing and the kettle bumbling away on the hob, and I’m thinking of Sam setting off on the boat with Da and our Jimmy, and praying to God to keep them safe.

  Then out of the blue Mam’s asking why I’m so quiet, is something bothering me? And I’m saying, no, just thinking about the lads out in the rain. And she’s asking is there any lad in particular I’m thinking of? And when I look up she’s laughing at me, for all that she’s shattered, and asking who was it I was walking out with last Sunday. I should have guessed she’d catch on, for Mam’s as careful of her bairns as Da is of his fishing, and there’s not much she doesn’t notice.

  So now I’m spilling all about Sam, and about him being chary of asking Da’s permission. Then saying please, Mam, don’t let on, because I couldn’t bear it if Da makes me stop at home. And she’s asking is he that lad off the Wellesley, and if he is then she’s heard good things about him – them’s her very words! – that he’s carrying a deal on his shoulders, what with his da drowned. Which is more than he’s told me, and stirs up that buzzing I was telling about, till I’m tumbling out all this daft blether about Sam’s pale eyes and wild hair, and how strange it is that he likes me instead of Flo. And now Mam’s laughing again and asking have I looked in a mirror lately? ‘You’re a beauty, Annie,’ she says – and them’s her very words too.

  And by and by, when Ellie and them have had their tea, and Flo’s back, and we’re having a last brew, Mam fetches out the carved knitting box from the old kist in the front room, and gives it me, along with a skein of gansey wool and a full set of needles. And gives me a squeeze on the arm, for I’ve been on at her since I was a bairn about that knitting box, asking can I have it, and why not, and when can I then. For it was Nana Milburn’s, which she’s been keeping for me, and I think I know now why she’s kept it back so long. For it’s the knitting box of a grown lass who knows the worth of a good thing – not a flibberty-jibbet just learning her stitches.

  So now the Scots lasses are crowding round, going ooh and ahh at the dovetailing on the compartments and the good leather straps. Then by and by they fall to teasing me about all the ganseys I’ll be knitting now for all my sweethearts, and Mam’s giving me that laughing look again. And it’s like the day Mrs Gibson told me I was out of my ’prentice time at the smokehouse, like Mam’s telling me I’m ready for something, and it’s something only a full woman knows, and now’s my time to know it.

  It’s the next evening and I’ve just picked up the knitting box, and it’s warm! Like Nana Milburn’s ghost’s had it in her lap, which is a comforting thing that has me sitting quiet in the corner with Jimmy’s old gansey, copying the pattern for the back.

  Mam’s showed it me a hundred times, our family pattern, but it’s not till you try it with your own needles that you catch on properly. See, every family, we each have our own way of knitting a gansey. For there’s cables and chains, herringbones and bobbles, and you can pattern them a thousand different ways. You need about eight needles on the go at times to manage all the complications. Flo’s a dab hand, of course, being how she is, but I’ve never had the patience, or maybe the womanliness, to give it the attention.

  Now, though, I’m clicking away like a proper Scots quine, and the back’s growing, though I’d to unpick it twice at the start. I’m saying it’s for our Jimmy, for everyone knows he’s a slow starter, so it will be a while before he’s a sweetheart knitting for him. It’ll be a bold lass that gets our Jimmy for a husband, for she’ll have to do all the asking.

  Flo’s on to the arms of hers, which have no cabling so she can knit without looking, so I’ve the lamp by me. And Da’s on the other side of it, with his paper, and Mam’s melting leaf lard for the lasses’ supper, so we’re settled in ready for our beds – when here’s a kafuffle and clatter at the door and in comes Ellie and them, fairly spitting about how the coopers have refused them more lamps.

  What with the drizzle the light’s fading by seven, they’ve needed them lit early. But the coopers are making them wait till eight to save oil, and only set them up at the end of each farlane, so them in the middle are gipping in the gloaming. The lasses tri
ed taking turns, because being in the gloaming was eating into their speed. But that puts everyone in danger, for going from a light place to a dark one’s even worse than stopping in the dark place all along.

  ‘You should go on strike like them match girls,’ says I. ‘A heap of rotting herring will soon make the coopers see sense.’ At which Da turns on me, very fierce, and says I should remember what butters the bread in this house, and to think what a strike would mean for the boat.

  So now Ellie’s arguing that the boats ought to back up the gippers, because it’s their living too that’s at risk. And Da’s jabbing at her with his pipe stem, asking why the boats should favour a gaggle of gippers over the dealers and coopers they sell their fish to.

  And I say, I’m a gipper too, Da. Aren’t I worth favouring? Though I’d never normally talk back to my da – but it’s got me all fired up, after what’s happened to fat Sally, to think of all them devilish knives gipping away in the dark. So now Da turns on me again, even fiercer, and says to mind my tongue, for he knows coopers that wouldn’t think twice about getting some ruffian to bundle a mouthy gipper in a tatie sack and hoy her in the river.

  But now here’s Mam come in and put a quieting hand on my shoulder, for she can’t stand a barny. And she’s asking if folk are wanting cocoa – which is her way of trying to sweeten the air, for we only ever have cocoa on a Sunday.

  I simmer down a bit then, but Ellie’s not to be sweetened. So now she’s asking Mam what a beatster gets paid, for they’re as crucial to the boats as the gippers.

  Mam laughs and looks at Da. ‘I beat for the love of it, don’t I, pet?’ she says, which makes Ellie roll her eyes.

  ‘You wouldn’t be laughing if your man was a drinker,’ she grumbles, ‘and your only money was what you got with your own hands.’

  ‘Lucky for me, then, that he stays home of a night,’ says Mam – and somehow her saying them few salving things has taken Da’s edge off, so now he’s chuckling and knocking out his pipe and telling Ellie that he stays home because he likes Mam’s company better than ‘an inn full of stotting Scotsmen’.

  ‘Well, take care you don’t wear her out,’ says Ellie, and spreads her bread with the hot dripping, and sucks at her cocoa, and leaves off barnying. By, but she looks shattered, all them lasses do – hands just lying in their laps between mouthfuls, cheeks splattered with fish innards, for they’re too tired even to wash their faces, and would have nodded off right there at the table if Mam hadn’t chivvied them away up the stairs.

  The next night they’re back late again and all in a lather about some lass that’s been taken off to the workhouse hospital on Preston Road. It seems she was shoved onto her knife when another lass slipped on a tangle of fish offal. ‘It’s a wonder it’s never happened before now,’ Ellie says, ‘for the coopers have had the ’prentices gipping all week, instead of sweeping, to keep up with the catches, so the ground’s all a-swill with oily innards.’

  ‘Is she bad?’ Mam asks, and Ellie says, grim like, ‘About as bad as could be, and a lass still be breathing.’

  I don’t see Sam again till the Sunday, after dinner. Mam’s sent me on an errand – to give me an excuse, bless her – and we’re walking along the front to Cullercoats and on to Whitley, though it’s not much of a day for walking, for the wind’s that fierce and is chucking spits of sharp rain at us – not enough to need shelter, mind, which is as well, for every café and fish shop we pass is packed to the gunnels with trippers, and there’s queues right along the pavements of folk waiting for a table or take-out.

  Sam asks do I want chips, but I can’t abide a queue, so we decide to keep walking till things quiet a bit down, if they ever do. But I don’t mind one way or the other, for there’s nowt I want more than to keep walking with my arm tucked into his, matching my pace to his, and the wind whipping both our faces.

  I feel I could walk all the way to Blyth if I had to, and beyond, to Berwick and St Andrews. So I say as much, and Sam says let’s wait till the season’s over, then we can walk wherever we like. And I say, let’s follow the herring to Yarmouth, and he says, daft lass, that’s the other way up the coast; and I say I don’t care what way it is as long as he’s with me.

  I know, I know – a lass shouldn’t say such things so soon on a walking out, but we’ve so little time together, just this wee slice of a Sunday, and so much to cram into it.

  So now I’m asking about his father and he’s walking slower and putting my hand in his jacket pocket to warm it, and telling how his da was a mate on a trawler that was caught in a blizzard off Orkney when Sam was a bairn. It seems ice built up on the rigging too fast for the deckies to chip off, and the weight tipped the boat over. It was discovered next day lying on its side with its sails furled and solid with ice and only gulls on board.

  Sam shivers, like it’s him that’s drowned in that freezing sea, and I want to hug him close and give him my heat, but there’s folk about, so I just squeeze his hand. ‘When they towed the boat back to Shields, they gave Mam his ditty box, but she couldn’t even look at it. So I kept it, and got it open, and his things were dry and good as new – his bakkie tin and pipe, his shut-knife, all his photos. She would never even speak his name after he’d drowned.’

  It seems that’s how Sam came to be on the Wellesley. For his mam had the weans to look after, and another due any minute – so the church folk thought it best young Sam learnt a trade soon as possible to support them.

  How did his mam manage, I’m asking. And he’s not looking at me, and there’s a tightness round his eyes. For it seems his mam and the weans were taken to the workhouse straight after he went on the Wellesley, and the baby was born there, and died there, too, a week later. So now Sam’s on about how it was his fault – though how can it be, when he was naught but a bairn himself? ‘I should have stayed with them,’ he’s saying, ‘and kept us together somehow. Even if it meant thieving, it would have been better than letting them go to that place.’

  Soon as he could, he got them out. ‘I found a cook’s job on a trawler and slept on board to save on lodgings. So I kept all my settlings, and when I’d enough I rented the cheapest room I could find and fetched them home.’

  ‘How’s your mam now?’ I’m asking, for I’m mindful of what Mam’s said about her being a heavy load. And he says she’s nervy, and I say I’m not surprised. And he says no, she’s always been nervy, and it was his da that kept her steady; so when he drowned she’d no hand on her tiller.

  ‘Folk try to take advantage if there’s a woman on her own,’ he says, and his soft mouth is pressed into a hard line.

  ‘What kind of advantage?’ I ask, and he doesn’t answer straight away – though I can guess well enough, for his mam takes in nets, and that’s one step away from taking in washing. At least with washing it’s women you’re working for, but with nets – if it’s not a proper loft business – it’s the ransackers you’ve to deal with, and Mam says they’re worst of all for taking advantage.

  ‘There was this one ransacker, a few years back,’ says Sam. ‘Folk were talking, but Mam wouldn’t be told. “Oh, he’s a decent lad,” she says, “doesn’t mean any harm”.’ And he looks at me, a helpless look. ‘I tried to stand up to him once. I’d been drinking to get my courage up, see? I was only fourteen and he was a great big lad. I even got my knife out – but he just laughed at me.’

  By and by, without us noticing, we’ve reach Whitley, which is a fair walk, and we’ve found a chip shop just closing and a bench to sit on, so now we’re hunching together with the wind on our backs and digging in to our bag of soggy chips. And I’m watching his fingers burrow in, the grease on them, and it’s the most creature thing I ever saw, that makes me blush right down inside my cami, least that’s what it feels like.

  Now he’s noticed me not eating – for what with the looking and the blushing, I’ve stopped digging in – and chooses a good brown chip and feeds it me, and touches my lips with his fingers, so I must lick them a bit, I can’t
help it, even though it seems a thing only a brassy lass would do. And this soft noise escapes him, like a groan – so soft I’m not sure I’ve even heard it, except now we’re looking at each other, and there’s a question in his eyes, though he’s never said a word, and I know there’s an answer in mine.

  I can’t remember the walk back, just the feel of his hand in his pocket gripping mine, so hard it hurts, that tells me better than words where we’re headed. So now we’re back in Shields, walking the alleys and stairs, and he’s still never said a word, but I know fine we can’t go to the trysting hill, for the wyn will be dripping and the grass sodden, and we’ve no parlour to go to, for our folk haven’t been told.

  I feel like a tramp, searching for a dark corner to rest in. But all the dark corners are full, in spite of the drizzle – and some of the lighter ones too, with folk that don’t care if they can be seen. So I start to feel ashamed, and to hang back, and Sam stops straight away and says sorry, and I say sorry too. And he says he just wants to kiss me, and I say that’s what I want too, but the alleys are full of folk that make kissing seem shameful.

  Then from out of the shadows behind us comes a lad tugging a lass by the hand, and he’s buttoning his jacket and she’s smoothing her skirt, and he’s winking at Sam and saying, ‘All yours, lad.’

  ‘We don’t have to,’ says Sam, looking down at me. And it’s that hesitating look that convinces me, where a smile might turn me away. So I take his hand again, and pull him into the shadows, and find a wall that’s dry, under a staircase to a loft, and old leaves crackling underfoot. And lean back against the wall, and untie my shawl, and open his jacket, and worm my hands inside and around his hard body, and hear that soft groan again, that’s almost a sad sound, except here’s the mouth that’s made it, laughing against mine in the dark, then not laughing, then kissing.