Born to Trouble (2 page)

They had just finished eating when Mrs Hopkins, the midwife, came clattering down the stairs, poking her head round the door to say briefly, ‘She’s about to have it. I’ll need some hot water and towels bringing up,’ before disappearing again.

Pearl knew Mrs Hopkins didn’t like their da. She had heard her talking quietly to their mam when she was last at the house twelve months ago. That baby hadn’t breathed when it was born, and Walter had told her that another one had been the same some years before that. She hoped this one lived. Pearl wiped the last of her bread round her bowl. She’d felt so sorry for the other one when she’d caught sight of it for a moment when she had peeped round the bedroom door. It had been tiny and scrawny and still, lying in the old drawer that should have been its crib on a piece of stained linen. And then the midwife had seen her and quickly shooed her away, shutting the door.

Once the hot water and towels had been taken upstairs, the three brothers filled the big black kettle and two buckets from the tap in the yard they shared with several other families. When the water in the kettle was hot enough, Fred tipped it into the tin bowl which stood on a small table under the window, at the side of which were piled pans and dirty dishes. Pearl began the washing-up without a word. She knew she would be at it for a good little while, but she was used to it; every night was the same. From the moment her mother woke her in the morning and she tumbled out of the desk bed in a corner of the kitchen, her life was one of unending toil. Her parents slept in one bedroom upstairs, her brothers in the other. The front room was kept for lodgers. The family had had a series of these, mostly seamen and often ne’er-do-wells, but the last had been sent packing some months before. Pearl didn’t know the reason for this, only that her father had come home unexpectedly and gone into the front room when the lodger and her mother were in there. Since then, the front room had remained unoccupied.

It was another twenty minutes before Pearl heard the sound that made her lift her head and glance at her father, who had moved his chair to its customary place in front of the range. The lads were playing cards at the table and it was Seth who said, ‘Aren’t you going to go up?’ to Thomas as the baby’s cry echoed again.

‘Aye, I’m goin’, I’m goin’.’ Thomas lumbered to his feet. ‘You got the midwife’s money handy?’

‘It’s in the pot with the rent money.’ Seth indicated the little brass pot with bowed legs that stood on the mantelpiece over the range with a flick of his hand.

‘I needed that earlier.’

There was what seemed to Pearl an endless silence before Seth spoke, and the expression on his face as he stared at his father again made Pearl wonder what had got into her brother. ‘You had your beer and baccy money a couple of days ago.’

‘Aye, an’ I needed some more.’

Seth stood up slowly. For the first time it struck Pearl that her brother was now taller than their da. ‘You’re tellin’ me it’s all gone up against the wall in the Boar’s Head yard, is that it?’

Thomas stretched his neck, his eyes narrowing. He was not an intelligent man, but very early on in life he had discovered that fear was a powerful tool and he had used it to great effect, especially with his family. Although small in stature, there was an innate viciousness in his make-up and this, combined with an animal-like cunning, had served to make most people slightly afraid of him. ‘Have you forgotten who you’re talkin’ to, lad, ’cause I’ll be about remindin’ you if so.’

‘You could try.’

Fred and Walter were squirming on their bench and Pearl had her fist to her mouth, biting on her knuckles, but Seth stood as straight as a die. His voice had been quiet and flat, but so cold that Pearl had given an involuntary shiver. Her eyes went back and forth between her brother and father, and to her amazement it was Thomas who dropped his gaze, his voice holding a fawning note when he said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

Seth stared at the man he hated, the man who had sold him and Fred and Walter into the brutal care of McArthur with as little feeling as he’d use to swat a fly. He wondered what his father’s response would be if he told him what the matter really was. That on the last job, he’d been forced to use the knife McArthur insisted he carry and had left a man lying on the ground with his lifeblood pumping out of the hole in his chest. He’d brought up the contents of his stomach once he and his brothers were clear of the scene, the bag of booty McArthur had sent them in to steal splattered with his vomit.

The house was supposed to have been empty. McArthur had
told
them the owner was abroad. For the hundredth time since the incident the day before, Seth found himself silently crying out in his head. And now he was hooked into McArthur even more surely than ever, all the dreams he’d had of breaking away and getting a respectable job smashed for good. But the terrible thing, the thing that had kept him awake ever since, was that he had ended someone’s life.
He, Seth Croft
.

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.

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 wide 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.