A Child of Jarrow Read Online Free PDF

near another man - least not the type who’ll make you happy.’
    Kate swallowed. ‘Has he agreed to me going?’
    â€˜Not yet, but leave him to me. I know how to get round him.’ Rose gave a short bitter laugh.
    Kate thought of last night and the creakings from the box bed, and felt uneasy. Is there anything a mother wouldn’t do to protect her children? she wondered.
    â€˜So will you go?’ Rose demanded.
    Kate was filled with sudden excitement. Her dream of going to Ravensworth and the mysterious blue hills beyond was almost within her grasp.
    â€˜Aye, willingly,’ she smiled.
    Rose patted her arm in relief and turned quickly, so that Kate would not see the gleam of tears in her eyes. She had no idea how deeply she would be missed, how hollow her mother’s heart would be if she never came back. But Rose, who had lost two daughters for good a long time ago, was used to a heavy heart. Yet she would never have the words to describe such desolation, and it served no purpose to try.
    â€˜Get the brisket on, lass,’ was all Rose said and Kate followed her back inside, her mind already racing ahead to the future.

Chapter 3
    Kate heard later that the arguing started during Sunday dinner. But by then she had escaped to the house in South Shields where her employers were hosting a large lunch party. During the week she was general maid, laying fires, cleaning brasses, washing and ironing. She had been given the day off for the Coronation celebrations, but ordered to be back before luncheon on Sunday to help in the kitchen.
    It was late in the evening when she made the two-mile walk back up the hill to Cleveland Place, and her limbs ached from heaving cast-iron pots of food and cauldrons of hot water around the kitchen and carrying tray-loads of food up and down stairs all afternoon. She approached the cottage warily, wondering what she would find.
    All was quiet in the kitchen, with John’s chair empty and only Rose sitting close to the fire, trying to mend a tear in Jack’s shorts by the dim light.
    â€˜The calm after the storm,’ Rose said drily.
    â€˜Where is everyone?’ Kate discarded her jacket and loosened her chafing boots.
    â€˜Father’s asleep - stomach playing up as it always does after a day on the whisky. Mary’s gone to bed - tired herself out with all her rantin’ and cryin’.’
    â€˜About me ganin’ to Aunt Lizzie’s?’
    â€˜Aye.’
    â€˜But she didn’t want to gan. She hates the country.’ Kate flopped on to the horsehair chair she’d bought in a sale for her mother but which Rose found too uncomfortable.
    â€˜Well, now she does. Our Mary’s as changeable as a weathercock.’
    â€˜Only ‘cos you’ve chosen me to go. She can’t bear to think she’s being left out of some’at.’
    â€˜Father told her to stop bawling like a bairn or he’d put her over his knee like a bairn. Said she was too young to be going so far from home and that it might do you good to have a bit of Lizzie’s firm hand - high time you stopped playing in trees like a boy.’
    â€˜He’s agreed to me going then?’ Kate sat up in expectation.
    â€˜As long as Lizzie and Peter cover the cost of your keep -and you send back your wages if you pick up work. So you can write a note for me and send it ahead to let them know you’re coming.’
    Kate leapt up and gave Rose a hug. ‘That’s grand. Thanks, Mam!’
    Rose shrugged her off. ‘Now go and call for our Jack -he’s been out since tea time.’
    Kate went out into the chill night air. There was no sign of the boy in the back lane and she imagined he was lying low in one of his many dens along the embankment or in the copse. The moon was hidden by a blanket of cloud but there was still a lurid smudge of daylight on the far horizon that helped her pick her way among the potholes.
    â€˜Jack? I’m