No Greater Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

untimely death at sea and a will leaving all his wealth to a mistress and son in London. ‘Still, I don’t have time to join the choir.’
    Maggie kept the thought to herself that Rose was much more socially assured than she was and that the ladies’ choir would probably be horror-struck if Maggie joined their soirées at Hebron House. Bright she might be, but the way she spoke and the clothes she wore labelled her as working class. Maggie knew that, for her, there was no escape from Newcastle’s gritty West End. But it did not stop her wondering what it might be like to see inside the blackened, decaying, Palladian mansion that stood in its modest grounds, surrounded now by working-class terraces, where the eccentric Alice Pearson continued to live. Her parents and the heir, Mr Herbert, had long since abandoned Hebron House and moved up the valley to their new home, a Gothic castle with acres of grouse moor.
    Through the dank drizzle that had begun to chill them, the women hurried on in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts, and reached the tram stop just as a tram clanked into view, blue sparks flying from its screeching wheels. It was crammed with passengers, wrapped in a warm fug of tobacco smoke, and Maggie and Rose had to stand. No one offered them a seat, which was usual when they wore their bold suffragette sashes for all to see.
    Maggie did not mind, content to let a comfortable drowsiness envelop her as they jolted along the tramline, the smoky terraces of Elswick slipping past the window. The tram stopped outside a parade of shops on Scotswood Road, their faded awnings giving shelter to late shoppers and inquisitive children. Rose alighted with a farewell wave. ‘Best wishes to Susan, ’ she called.
    Maggie waved back, knowing how little Rose thought of Susan. Maggie sighed as she thought of her fussing elder sister, already careworn and middle-aged at twenty-two. Rose had found her dull and unwilling to learn at school and had been constantly irritated by her truancy. But Maggie knew Susan’s uninterest in learning was less a mark of stupidity than a sign of her burning sense of duty to her mother and the family.
    Ever since their father had died, Susan had mothered her younger sisters and brother while Mabel went to work in the public laundry. With the help of Granny Beaton, Susan had brought them up, obsessive in her mission to turn them out clean, starched, fed and polite to the outside world. Many a time Maggie had sparred with her sister over a dirt-smeared pinafore or lateness for meals.
    ‘Girls don’t climb trees!’ Susan had once scolded.
    ‘God made trees for lasses as well as lads,’ Maggie had replied, unconcerned as she brushed at the offending stains.
    ‘You should be setting an example for our Helen and Jimmy,’ Susan’s nagging continued.
    ‘I’ll show them how to climb trees any time they want,’ Maggie had quipped, ‘though the day our Tich climbs anything more than the back steps they’ll hang flags from the High Level Bridge.’
    Criticism of their sickly brother Jimmy always riled Susan. A blazing argument ensued, only brought to an end by a slap from their forceful mother and the gentle intervention of Granny Beaton. Granny was the one family member who stuck up for Maggie no matter what trouble she landed in. Her wizened, becapped Scottish grandmother who attended the John Knox Presbyterian Kirk in Elswick every Sunday was Maggie’s quiet ally and the only one who did not criticise her involvement in women’s emancipation.
    Maggie’s musings lasted until her stop, in the shadow of the fortress gates to Pearson’s shipyard. She left the warm tram with reluctance and pulled her scarf tighter against the increasing rain as it bounced off the high roofs of the factory sheds. Clutching her purchases and dashing across the tramlines, Maggie was soaked by the splashing of a passing coal cart. Cursing the weather and looking down at her mud-spattered skirt, she thought how