‘But . . . but if doing it makes babies,’ Carrie had asked, bewildered, ‘what if you have a bairn, Renee?’
‘Don’t you worry your head about that. There’s ways and means.’ Renee had nodded her head mysteriously, leaving her sister more confused than ever.
No baby had materialised, and now it was Renee’s wedding day, a day that had had their mother fretting for months. With a strike every other week at Wearmouth colliery - or so it seemed to the womenfolk - and shifts being cut, and their da and Billy and the other miners being locked out at the drop of a hat, Carrie knew her mother relied on every penny her daughters brought home from their work at the firework factory across the river. When Renee had first got Carrie and her friend Lillian set on alongside her the year before when the girls had left school, Carrie had given her mother all her weekly wage of seven shillings and fourpence, only accepting the return of one shilling and fourpence when her mother had absolutely insisted.
Now Renee’s contribution to the family pot, already halved since her engagement as she began her bottom drawer and saved towards furniture, would stop altogether. Her mother’s housekeeping had been stretched to the limit the last months as she’d endeavoured to put the odd penny or two by for the wedding feast.
Renee rose to her feet, fluffing out her short veil. ‘I have to say I shan’t be sorry to leave this house. You’d have thought it was a funeral we were getting ready for rather than a wedding, and Mam’s begrudged every stick of furniture we’ve bought for our place.’
‘She hasn’t begrudged you it, Renee. She’s pleased you’ve got a few things together, she told me so. It’s just that she’s at her wits’ end half the time trying to manage on what comes in.’
Renee shrugged meaty shoulders. ‘Aye, well, be that as it may, we all have to look out for number one in this life. I tell you, lass, I don’t intend to end up like Mam. Walk into any pit house round these parts come evening and what d’you find? A blazing hot fire, heavy, damp, stinking clothes hanging all over the place and a tired woman who looks double her age. Walter might be a miner but he already knows I’m not the sort to drop a bairn every year and worship the ground he walks on. We’ve an understanding, me and Walter, and whatever his mam says, or ours for that matter, I’m not giving up me job just because I’ve a ring on me finger. I want to enjoy being married and have a bit of a life, and you can’t do that if you’re stuck with a bellyful on a miner’s wage. Look at Gran and Granda, both gone well before their time thanks to the pit.’
Carrie nodded. She’d heard it all before and she wasn’t about to argue with Renee, not on her wedding day. Besides, she agreed with Renee in part. Their da had been an orphan and was brought up in the workhouse, but their mam’s parents, Gran and Grandad Cain, had lived only a few doors away till three years ago. Then Granda had died in an accident at the pit and within three months Gran had succumbed to a heart attack, brought on by years of overwork and the many miscarriages she’d endured after their mam, Gran’s only child, had been born in the first year of marriage.
Carrie smiled into the plump, attractive face in front of her and said briskly, ‘Come on then, lass. You ready?’
‘Aye, I’m ready.’ But then Renee caught hold of her sister, her voice thick as she said, ‘We’ve had some right good cracks in our time, haven’t we, lass? Pillows over our faces often as not so’s not to wake the lads. That’s the only trouble with Walter, he hasn’t got much of a sense of humour.’
‘You two will be fine.’ Carrie hugged her again. ‘Now come on, Da’s waiting and Mam and the lads have been left ages. I’ll have to be nippy to get there before you at this rate. And no arguing with Da once I’m gone, mind. This is one time I’m trusting you to be all sweetness and light, our Renee.’
‘Huh!’ They were both laughing. ‘That’ll be the day.’ Renee hitched up her ample bosom with her forearms, smoothed her dress and exhaled loudly. ‘I just hope Norman Finnigan has managed to borrow his uncle’s horse and trap like he said. Walter’s slipped him a few bob but you never know with Norman.’
‘I’ll go and see if he’s here yet.’ Carrie left the bedroom and Renee followed just behind her, both hands holding her long skirt clear of the bare floorboards.
As the girls entered the kitchen the man sitting in a decrepit rocking chair in front of the warm range turned his head towards them.
‘Here she is, Da, and doesn’t she look bonny? I reckon Walter will burst a blood vessel when he sees her.’ Carrie’s voice was bright and still holding a thread of laughter but her eyes were pleading with her father, and Sandy McDarmount was well aware what his youngest daughter was asking. Be kind, say something nice. Don’t mention the cost of the new finery again or how Renee’s time would have been better spent putting the money into something for the house she and Walter were renting.
His eyes lingered on this favourite child, the light of his life as he privately put it, and not for the first time he asked himself what he would do when Carrie made her choice and began courting. No one would be good enough for his bairn, he admitted ruefully, no one from round these parts any road. It wasn’t just that she was blossoming into a real beauty, skin like peaches and cream and eyes of such a deep blue they almost appeared black at times, it was the tenderness of her, the warm-heartedness to all and sundry. There were plenty who preached about going the extra mile but few who would walk it when push came to shove, but his Carrie possessed a generosity of spirit that made him fear for her at times. She even brought out the best in Renee, and that was saying something.
He forced himself to smile at his eldest daughter and his voice was jocular as he said, ‘Burst a blood vessel? Probably half a dozen, I’d say. You look pretty as a picture, lass.’
Renee stared at her father. She couldn’t remember a time when everything about the small, walrus-moustached man in front of her hadn’t irritated her to screaming pitch, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Don’t overdo it, Da,’ but instead, mindful of the day, she smiled back and pretended to curtsey, making the three of them laugh.
Carrie darted across the living room, opened the front door and peered up and down the street before giving a little squeal. ‘He’s coming! Norman’s coming, Renee. You’ll have to make him wait a few minutes to give me time to get to the church. Oh, where’s my coat? I left it on the chair by the door.’
‘Here, lass.’ Sandy reached out to a small cracket tucked by the side of the range and handed the coat to her. ‘It got moved when old Mrs Duncan brought in a plate of somethin’. Can’t go more than a step or two without havin’ to sit down now, poor old gal, but she makes a canny seed cake.’
‘Aye.’ Carrie paused in the act of pulling on her coat, a coat which had fitted her perfectly three years before but which now was at least six inches too short and had her arms sticking out of the sleeves in a way she knew looked ludicrous. She turned to survey the square kitchen table, resplendent in its Sunday cloth and groaning under a load of food the likes of which it hadn’t borne in years. ‘Aren’t people kind? Everyone’s brought something.’
‘Everyone from this end of the street,’ Renee put in flatly. She caught her father’s eye as she spoke, and for once the two were of like mind.
To those who didn’t live there, James Armitage Street might look like a street of identical, small, single-storey terraced houses with three rooms and a scullery but its inhabitants knew that the top end was considered vastly superior to the bottom end. The top end led out into Fulwell Road and the cricket ground and then a sprawling farm or two, while the bottom bordered Cornhill Terrace and eastwards the grid of mean streets stretching north from Wearmouth colliery. Those at the top end would tell anyone that this area was almost lower middle class - didn’t a policeman live just a few doors away? And there was a professional family or two in Hawthorn Street and Clarendon Street, which were only separated from James Armitage Street by Fulwell Road. And how many bairns from the bottom end passed to go to Houghton Secondary or, if they did pass, could be spared by a family eager for another wage-earner? Not many. Oh no, not many. And Walter’s family lived within spitting distance of Fulwell Road.
This last fact had been at the forefront of the minds of all the women who had popped in that morning with ‘just a little something for the table, lass’. Them at the top end might think they were God’s gift and gold-wrapped with it, but they’d soon see the bottom end knew how to put on a good spread and look after their own.
‘You’ll wait a while so I can get to the church before you?’ Carrie asked again. She grinned her thanks as Renee nodded and then she dived out of the door into the frosty December air. It had snowed heavily on and off all through November and the first week of December, thawing slightly, freezing, then snowing again, until the ground resembled a skating rink and Sunderland infirmary’s trade in broken limbs trebled. Olive Sutton, Walter’s mother, had been like a dog with two tails, according to Renee, taking every opportunity to remind all and sundry that she had said a December wedding was a mistake and that it would have been better to wait until the spring. Renee had become tight-lipped and snappy, especially when she returned home after an evening at Walter’s.
And then, thank goodness, Carrie thought as she hurried along in the bitterly cold morning, a persistent thaw ten days ago followed by fresh dry winds and weak winter sunshine had taken care of every last flake of snow. Suddenly Renee had been all smiles again and an uneasy excitement had taken hold of the house. It was a shame that in the last twenty-four hours the weather had turned raw once more, with the sky so low you could reach up and touch it, but it wasn’t snowing yet, that was the thing, and Renee could have her horse and trap and turn up at the church in style.
Carrie smiled to herself and blew hard on hands already turning a mottled shade of blue. She’d set her heart on that, had Renee, and it would be one in the eye for Walter’s mam. As was often the case when her mind touched on Renee’s future mother-in-law, Carrie’s next thought was, with all she’s got, a lovely family and a nice home and all, why does she have to be so crabby all the time? Mr Sutton wasn’t nasty or bad-tempered, salt of the earth she’d heard her da describe Walter’s da more than once, but
her
. And like her mam said, Olive Sutton had nothing to be uppity about. Wasn’t her man a miner born and bred, and hadn’t the bairns all played together and gone to the same schools, and didn’t their Lillian spend more time at the McDarmount household than she ever did in her own?
‘Yoohoo! Carrie!’
It was as though the thought of her best friend had conjured her up. Lillian was beyond the end of Cornhill Terrace on the old village green straight ahead. She was jumping from one foot to the other, not so much to get Carrie’s attention as to keep warm, and now she came running across, firing a barrage of questions as she did so.
‘Where on earth have you been? I thought you were going to be late! Do you know there’s only five minutes to go? Where’s your Renee? Is anything wrong? Didn’t Norman turn up?’
Carrie didn’t interrupt the flow. When Lillian reached her she smiled, her voice warm as she said, ‘Thanks for waiting for me, lass. Everything’s fine. Renee just wanted to talk a bit after I’d helped her get ready.’
‘She’s goin’ to turn up, isn’t she?’
‘Course she’s going to turn up, don’t be so daft.’
They grinned at each other and then hurried on the way Lillian had just come, past the chapel and the Green. Not until they came to the end of Town Street and the Holy Trinity Church was in front of them did their pace slacken.
‘Our Walter and your Renee getting married.’ There was a lilt in Lillian’s voice and her plain, good-natured face was alight. ‘That means our families are linked, you thought of that? We’ll both be aunty to their bairns.’
‘Give ’em a chance, they aren’t even married yet.’ They were giggling as they reached the church door and had to wait a moment or two to compose their faces before they entered Holy Trinity.
Carrie loved the feeling the inside of the church always gave her; its familiarity never failed to cheer her. She had been coming with her parents and the rest of the family on Sunday mornings for as long as she could remember. Church in the morning, Sunday School in the afternoon in the old National School at the bottom of Stoney Lane, and then there was the Boys’ Brigade, the Girl Guides, the Girls’ Friendly Society and the church choir at various times during the week. All her friends were in the same groups and she had never questioned this, or why it was that the bairns who went to St Hilda’s, the Catholic church, were barely known to her, in spite of there being plenty up and down the street. Sunday School treats, Christmas parties, concerts held in the Mission Hall at Low Southwick, whist drives, fêtes, parish teas were all tied up with belonging to Holy Trinity, and going along to the Church Institute - again held in the old National School - to play table tennis and other games had been part and parcel of her childhood.