Chrissie's Children

by Irene Carr

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

Set in the 1930s, this stand-alone sequel to MARY'S CHILD follows the fortunes of Chrissie Ballantyne and her family, which she is determined to hold together, despite her husband facing bankruptcy and the rapid approach of World War II.

Release date: October 11, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Summer 1923. Monkwearmouth in Sunderland.

Chrissie Ballantyne felt fear clutch at her heart. She stood in the shipyard, a slender young woman with her dark eyes narrowed against the morning sunlight, and was cold
inside. The din of the riveting hammers beat around her head. The part-built hull of the ship held in the web of staging towered black above her. She sniffed the familiar odours of hot metal, coal
smoke, oil and salt air. There was soot clinging already to her day dress of silk taffeta and the clothing of her children as they clustered around her legs. With one hand she held on to her little
cloche hat as the wind from the River Wear tried to snatch it from her head.

Her husband lifted his voice against the din, stooped his broad shoulders and bent his head with its shock of black hair so that he spoke into her ear: ‘In 1920 there were sixty-seven
ships built on this river. This year there’ll only be sixteen. That’s the way it has gone – and is going. On this stretch of the river alone there’s one yard,
Blumer’s, closed down. The rest – Thompson’s, Crown’s and us – are fighting to stay alive.’ Jack Ballantyne sounded grim, and well he might. This was
Ballantyne’s yard, he owned it and he was staring ruin in the face.

Chrissie reached out to squeeze his hand and forced a smile. ‘We’ve come through bad times before.’ They had, surviving what was called the Great War.

‘You’re right.’ Jack nodded grim agreement and then the fine lines crinkled at the corners of his light blue eyes, startling under the black thatch of hair. ‘We’re
not finished yet.’

Then a foreman up on the staging bawled down, ‘Mr Ballantyne!’

Jack clapped his old trilby hat on his head. He wore a boilersuit and the jacket of his suit hung in his office. He was dressed now for climbing about the yard and he started away, heading for
the foot of a ladder that would take him up to the foreman. He called back over his shoulder, ‘I’ll see you later!’

That would be at dinner in the evening. Chrissie had given her instructions to her cook and knew the dinner would be a good one. Now she watched him go, tall and long striding, her husband and
lover, father of two of her children. The three of them were waving, and Tom, the eldest, called, ‘’Bye, Daddy!’ His voice was lost in the din but Jack turned and waved before
setting foot on the ladder, so that was all right.

Tom, just four and a half and dark like Jack, was fascinated by the yard. He loved to be taken there, to stand with his mother as now, but preferably in his father’s arms. Jack would carry
him all over the skeleton of the ship and down into its darkest depths. Jack himself had grown up in the yard this way and Tom would follow him.

‘Go home!’ Matthew was just short of four but going to be tall like Jack. He clung to his mother and demanded again, ‘Go home!’ He hated the noise and smoke.

‘Baa, baa, black sheep,’ sang Sophie. The clamour and smoke did not affect her. At two and a half she held on to her mother’s skirt with plump little fingers, smiled and beamed
her blue eyes coquettishly at every workman who passed – and they, faces grimed and sweat streaked from the yard, found themselves grinning at the blonde toddler.

Chrissie led her children out of the yard, past the stacked lengths of timber and sheet steel, the sacks of rivets. The Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, bought by Jack’s late father in 1909,
stood gleaming outside the time office where the workmen clocked on. Benson, the chauffeur, opened the rear door and touched his cap. Then with Chrissie and her brood sitting in the back he drove
out of the gate.

Chrissie maintained her outward calm, smiling and talking to Sophie sitting on her knee, Matt and Tom either side of her, but the fear was still there. What if Ballantyne’s did not get
another order to build a ship and had to close? It would not be the first yard on this river to do so. That would be a terrible blow to Jack, the fourth generation of Ballantynes to build ships in
this yard. He would feel responsible in some way for the failure – and for failing the men. Closure would mean poverty and near starvation for the hundreds who worked at Ballantyne’s,
and their families.

Chrissie stared out of the window, seeing the people in the narrow, cobbled streets, long terraces of houses that crowded close outside the yard. The Rolls slid past the women as they stood
gossiping at their doors in their aprons, or scurried to and from the little corner shops. The children, some of the smaller ones naked in the sunshine except for a grubby vest, played on the
pavement. This was the summer holiday but they would spend it here. Chrissie knew these people and how they lived. She had grown up in these streets.

‘Gerroff, yer little bugger!’ the driver of the pole-wagon shouted at Peter Robinson, but he took no notice. He was five years old, with brown hair cropped short,
worn and patched shorts and shirt. He ran barefoot over the cobbles in pursuit of the wagon carrying steel plates from the railway station to the yard. They were called pole-wagons because of the
long pole, like a huge roof beam some six inches square. It ran from front to rear of the open, flatbed wagon, and extended for another ten feet or so behind it.

A quick and tough five-year-old could catch up with the wagon as the two horses in its team hauled it over the cobbles. Peter caught it, jumped up and got his arms over the swinging pole and
rode along on it, legs dangling. Until the driver turned and cracked his whip, when Peter dropped off and trotted away, laughing. He went back to the gate of the yard to wait for another wagon.

‘That’s the way, bonny lass, get them clean!’ Isabel Tennant called out from the washhouse. It was built in one quarter of the back yard. The lavatory and the
two coalhouses, one for each family, backed on to the street behind and filled another quarter. The surface of the rest of the yard was cemented and coated with dust except where the only tap
dripped into the sink by the back gate. Isabel’s daughter, Sarah, played in the grime and looked up and smiled at her mother’s call.

She was two and a half, her brown hair tied in two plaits with pieces of ribbon. Her dress was woollen and worn thin because it had been bought for the previous winter. So was her other one but
that was in the wash. Sarah was washing, like her mother. Isabel had given her a tin of warm water and some rags. Sarah soaked them and wrung them out – then washed them again, dabbling
happily in the water.

She was oblivious to the thumping of the wooden poss-stick as the panting Isabel banged it up and down on the clothes in the tub full of suds. The hot water came from a coal-fired copper in a
corner of the washhouse, filling the room with steam. When the clothes were washed and rinsed Isabel fed them through the wooden rollers of the mangle, heaving at the handle, wiping at her brow.
She would pause now and again to peer through the steam and across the yard to the terraced house which they shared with the Robsons: the Tennants lived in the two downstairs rooms, and the Robsons
upstairs.

Sarah did not notice, but Isabel was always aware of the coughing. Her husband was in bed in the room at the front of the house but she could still hear the coughing that racked him.

‘Daddy!’ Helen Diaz stepped from the passage into the yard in another street, but still a carbon copy of the Tennants’ house. She was also two and a half,
with glossy black hair and dark eyes like her mother. Her father was swarthy with a long moustache, lean and narrow faced.

‘No!’ he snapped at her impatiently. He picked her up and dumped her back in the passage, then snatched the doll from the floor and shoved it at her. ‘You stay in here.’
Helen’s smile slipped away but she continued to stand looking out into the yard, the doll clutched in her arms. It was a cloth doll, made by her mother.

Paco Diaz had once been a seaman but had left his ship when it came from Spain into the river. He had married Lizzie – full name Elizabeth but always called Lizzie – Helen’s
mother, soon afterwards and worked as a nightwatchman at one of the yards. So he was able to play football during the day with his six-year-old son, whom he called Juan, though he was christened
John. He was a handsome child, and Helen could not be called pretty. Helen watched them play together, laughing and talking in Spanish.

Monday was washday, and Lizzie Diaz looked out of the washhouse once, saw her little daughter standing alone and sighed helplessly.

The Rolls carried Chrissie and her children back to the big house in a quiet, tree-lined street in Ashbrooke on the outskirts of the town. It was as she always remembered her
first sight of it as a small girl: the tower at its centre lifting high against the sky and the wide front of the house with its ranked tall rectangles of windows ablaze with light. She had never
dreamed then that this would become her home, that she would marry Jack Ballantyne.

‘’Bye, my pets!’ She kissed all three of her children and handed them over to their red-cheeked, plump and cheerful nurse. They waved to their mother as she climbed back into
the Rolls, then Benson drove her down into the town to the Railway Hotel.

The sight of the hotel lifted her heart. It stood in the High Street in the middle of the town and across the road from the railway station, so its stonework was inevitably darkened by the soot
of years. However, its windows were clean and sparkled in the sun, the curtains were bright, crisp and fresh, the brasswork on the two swinging front doors glittered. And it was hers. Chrissie had
worked her way up from the back streets of the town to ownership of this hotel before she married Jack Ballantyne. So now she entered it with pride as Benson drove the Rolls away.

‘Good morning!’ she replied and smiled as she walked through the foyer and was greeted by the receptionist and other staff working there. Then she hung up her hat and sat at her
desk, the mail waiting her attention before her. Usually at this time her mind would be buzzing with the things she had to do but now she stared across the room at the fire laid in the grate but
not lit in the warmth of the summer.

She told herself that Ballantyne’s yard would not close, because that was unthinkable. But these were hard times and there were more ahead. Every day she saw men, dressed in the suits that
they usually wore only at weekends, trudging into the railway station, carrying cheap suitcases. They were going south to look for work because their yard had shut and they could not find a job in
the town. Their wives would come with them to wave them goodbye, then trudge home alone, to manage as best they could.

Could that happen to her? Chrissie silently vowed that she would hold her family together, come what may. For the sake of the children. And with that resolve she thrust her worries behind her
for a time and turned to her work.

The sudden silence tore Sarah Tennant from her play, as a sleeping seaman wakes when the engines of his ship cease turning. She realised her father’s coughing had stopped
and saw Isabel Tennant run across the yard and into the house. The silence dragged on for long seconds then Sarah heard her mother scream and was herself afraid.

Summer 1935

Sarah Tennant woke and her first thoughts were of Fannon. She was just fourteen years old and her fear of Joshua Fannon – squat, fat and leering – was always
lurking at the back of her mind. His presence seemed to hang over the house like one of the shipyard cranes that towered above the surrounding streets. Then she remembered that this was not the day
the landlord would call for his rent for the two dilapidated rooms in which Sarah and her mother lived.

She relaxed for a moment then remembered how important this day was. She slipped out of the bed she shared with her widowed mother and drew back the worn and faded curtains. The lace curtains
behind them were yellow and ragged with age. She stared through them, the cracked linoleum cold on her bare feet. A line of cranes lifted long arms high above the boundary wall of a shipyard, all
of them still. That yard had been closed for a year now.

The sky was clear and bright with dawn light. Sarah thought that it would be a fine day. The bairns were home from school – a holiday – and before noon the sun would have softened
the tarmacadam of the street. They would pick it out to roll between their palms and make marbles. Sarah smiled, forgetting she was little more than a child herself, small and slight with wide dark
eyes in a thin face.

She picked up her clothes from a chair and tiptoed out into the other room, the kitchen and living-room. There was no fire in the blackleaded grate and the coal bucket in the hearth was empty.
She washed in a bowl on the kitchen table then breakfasted on bread and margarine with a cup of tea brewed on a gas-ring standing in the hearth. She ate hungrily, despite her excitement and
nervousness.

‘Sarah?’ her mother called.

‘Coming, Mam!’ Sarah helped Isabel to wash and dress, then shuffle out, coughing and panting, to sit in her armchair by the empty fireplace. Dr Dickinson had said, ‘It’s
consumption. She has to rest,’ so Isabel spent her days a prisoner in the old armchair.

Sarah prepared the same breakfast for her mother. As Isabel was eating it Sarah cried, ‘Milkman!’ She had heard the iron wheels of the two-wheeled milk cart. She snatched up a jug
and ran out into the street. The horse stood patiently in the shafts as its driver ladled a half-pint of milk from the churn on the cart and poured it into Sarah’s jug. She paid with a penny
from the few in her mother’s purse.

Sarah washed up the cups and plates then changed into her best cotton dress, made from one that had been her mother’s. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and saw it was still
early, but that was all to the good. She said, ‘I’ll make a start now.’

Isabel Tennant agreed, ‘Aye, get there afore time. Tell the lass behind the desk that you want to see Mrs Ballantyne. When you get to see her, tell her who you are. I remember her when she
was Chrissie Carter and she’s not one to forget. I worked part time for her years ago, afore I went into the factory. I did that for more money when your dad died, but it was long hours and
heavy. If I’d stopped wi’ Chrissie I might ha’ been all right now.’ She stopped then as the coughing racked her again.

‘I’ll tell her.’ Sarah stroked her mother’s hair, kissed her cheek and left.

‘Coal! Tuppence a stone!’ the coalman bellowed, mouth pink in a black-dusted face as his horse-drawn cart turned into the street. Sarah did not pause. There was no money for coal in
her house and they could manage without as long as the weather did not turn cold.

She walked the two miles or so to save the tram fare. Once she passed a group of girls playing ball against a wall with the dexterity of professional jugglers and chanting, ‘Raspberry,
strawberry, marmalade and jam, tell me the name of my young man . . .’ Only weeks ago she had played like that. And she was a star pupil at her lessons. Her teacher had sighed when Sarah had
turned down the chance to go to grammar school.

Crossing the bridge – ‘ganning ower the watter’ – she looked up and down the river running in its steep-sided ravine. There were few ships lying alongside the quays and
being fitted out, fewer still lying building on the stocks. Sarah knew that this was part of the depression, one of the reasons for the poverty around her, the workmen standing idle at street
corners. However, the lack of work in the shipyards did not directly affect her – women were not allowed to work in the yards anyway.

She paused a moment outside the front doors of the Railway Hotel, smoothed down her dress and ran her hands over her hair. She had washed it in rainwater from the butt the night before so that
it shone. She took a deep breath and walked in, thin and nervous and straight in the back.

In the Ballantyne house an hour earlier Chrissie put down the letter from Elsie Massingham and swore silently yet again that she would hold this family of hers together. She
looked around the oval breakfast table, set in the window at one end of the huge dining-room that ran from front to back of the house. The other, long table that would seat more than a score of
people was set back against the wall, its polished surface gleaming and empty save for a bowl of flowers from the garden. Overhead hung the huge chandelier, sparkling with reflected sunlight. She
remembered dancing in this room with Jack, just the two of them, the night Matthew was conceived, and later when she and Jack were engaged.

A smile twitched her lips then, remembering. Jack caught that smile as he entered. He was tall and lean in a dark blue suit and white shirt with a starched collar. There were flecks of grey now
at the temples in his thick, black hair. He dropped a briefcase, bulging with work he had brought home the previous night, on a vacant chair and asked, ‘Penny for them?’ But Chrissie
pressed her lips together and shook her head, eyes laughing. As he passed behind her chair he touched her shoulder and she shivered and leaned back into his hand for a moment.

He moved over to the sideboard, greeting the boys as he went: ‘Morning, Tom, Matt. Where’s Sophie?’ though he guessed the answer to that.

Tom, a sixteen-year-old copy of his father with the same black hair and neat in a dark blue suit, but dark eyed, answered, ‘Morning, Dad. I think I heard her. I expect she’s busy
with something in her room, be down shortly,’ making an excuse for his sister, as usual.

Jack did not believe him and cocked a cynical eye at Chrissie, but accepted the explanation. ‘Hum.’ He picked up a hot plate from the sideboard and helped himself to eggs, bacon and
sausages from the dishes there. He said again, louder, ‘Good morning, Matt!’

His younger son was not quite sixteen, lanky in baggy grey flannel trousers and a white cricket shirt open at the neck. His sandy hair was unruly and growing down to his collar. He turned from
staring vacantly out of the window and blinked vague light blue eyes at his father. ‘Sorry. Good morning.’

‘Dreaming again,’ Jack said half affectionately, half irritated, then shook his head and sat down opposite his wife.

Betty Price, the maid, a rosy-cheeked country girl smart in black dress, white apron and cap, bustled in with fresh coffee and toast. She set them on the table then whisked up Chrissie’s
and the boys’ emptied plates and carried them out. Chrissie automatically watched to see it was done properly, as she supervised all the work of the house. She had done it all herself in her
time.

Now she handed the letter to Tom, asking him, ‘Pass that to your father, please.’

Tom obeyed and Jack took it, brows raised, then read as he ate. Chrissie followed the example of the boys and buttered toast, going over the contents of the letter in her mind. Elsie Massingham
had written from California that her husband Phillip had lost every penny he had in the Wall Street crash of 1929 and two years later was sacked from his job as a film director. Since then he had
failed to find work. Elsie wrote: ‘It seems he antagonised the studio bosses, refusing to abandon his principles and do as he was told.’ Now he had suffered a nervous breakdown and run
off. He had left a note saying that he would not be a burden and would rather live the life of a tramp.

Chrissie had invested her money in Phillip’s company, Massingham Films, when he was a near-penniless, crippled ex-officer. She was desperately sorry for him and his family now. ‘I
wish we could do something for him, Jack.’

He shook his head and sighed, ‘That isn’t possible because we don’t know where he is. Hollywood has closed its doors to him so he won’t be able to work in films. It will
be impossible for an Englishman to get any other kind of job. He’s one of eleven million unemployed in the States right now. Five thousand banks collapsed and nine million savings accounts
went down the drain. There are all kinds of men, lots of them professionals, tramping the streets or riding boxcars on the railways, all looking for work. Hoboes they call them. But –’
and he tapped the letter, ‘– we can send a cheque to his wife.’

Chrissie nodded, ‘We’ll do that.’ It was something, but she left the toast, not wanting it now.

Matt had eaten two slices with marmalade after a plateful of eggs and bacon. He now said, ‘You look like a bookie’s clerk in that suit, Tom.’

His brother only grinned at the intended insult. He wore the suit because this was the day he was starting work. He had wanted to work in the shipyards almost from the time he could walk.
Chrissie wondered, not for the first time, at the coincidence that Tom was the spitting image of Jack. Matt on the other hand had Jack’s pale blue eyes – or had they come from his
grandmother, Hilary? Matt would have Jack’s height when grown, and was tall as Tom now, but skinny as a beanpole.

Now Jack spread marmalade on toast and said, ‘Car, Matt.’

‘Right!’ For once Matt moved quickly, and was out of his chair and the room in a few long strides.

Minutes later Jack drained his coffee cup and stood up. Chrissie and Tom followed him out into the hall. Pearson, the young footman, waited there with Tom’s suitcase. All the other
servants, the two maids and the cook, were there to see off Tom. Only the part-time gardener was missing. There were no longer a butler and the dozen or so servants that had been in the house ten
years ago. The vacuum cleaner, electric cooker and central heating – its boiler stoked by Pearson – had replaced them.

‘’Bye, Tom!’ Sophie leaned over the banister at the head of the stairs, making nonsense of Tom’s excuse for her absence. She was still in pyjamas, blonde hair tousled.
She was just short of fifteen years old now and still a schoolgirl, but the body inside the pyjamas was that of a young woman.

Young Pearson stared woodenly to his front, embarrassed, and Chrissie snapped, scandalised, ‘Get dressed!’

Tom added, teasing, ‘Really, Sophie!’

She grinned at him, ‘Don’t you start!’ Normally she and her brothers gambolled and scrambled like three puppies. Now she called, ‘Good luck!’ and meant it, and blew
him a kiss. Then she slid a sideways glance at Pearson and Chrissie’s lips tightened. Sophie saw that and scurried away.

Outside on the drive sat the car, a black Ford V8 saloon – the Rolls was only used now for special occasions, just for show. Matt had driven the Ford round from the garage, the former
stables at the back of the house. Now he got down and Chrissie took his place, Jack at her side and Tom in the rear. Benson, the chauffeur, had retired years ago and had not been replaced, just one
of many economies. As Chrissie steered the car down the gravelled drive the house spread wide in the rear-view mirror, the tower lifting high at its centre.

She drove down into the town, stopped at the station and got down with Tom. Jack slid over behind the wheel as Tom hauled his suitcase from the car.

Jack held out a hand. ‘Be careful. And good luck.’

Tom shook it, smiling, excited. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Then he looked down at the folded pound note in his palm, laughed and said again, ‘Thanks!’

Jack drove away, smiling, but still felt a twinge of worry. Tom was a young man now, serious and responsible, but he was going out into the world and a shipyard could be a
dangerous place, hence the warning to him to be careful. Jack had drummed that into him over the years, but a reminder did no harm. And Tom would not be kept out of the yard, that had always been
clear. The same could not be said of Matt, unfortunately . . .

A frown creased Jack’s brow for an instant, but then he was turning the Ford in at the big, open gates of the Ballantyne yard and the frown faded as he felt the surge of pride that always
came over him as he entered. His great-grandfather had started the yard back in the 1850s. Jack was the fourth generation to build ships here. The frown returned as he wondered bleakly if he would
be the last.

‘You will be careful?’ Chrissie repeated the warning. She had been brought up alongside the yards and heard all the stories of men falling from staging, being
crushed, drowned or their skulls cracked by dropped tools.

Tom promised patiently, ‘Yes, mother.’

‘And send me a postcard tonight to let me know you’ve settled into your lodgings all right.’

Tom would not yet be working at Ballantyne’s. He had said, ‘I don’t want to start as the boss’s son,’ so Jack had found him an apprenticeship in a yard on the Tyne
and Tom would be living in lodgings close by. That, too, had been Tom’s idea, and he had said it was to be near his work, though he could have travelled there daily by train in little more
than a half-hour. But it was also to prove to himself that he could manage on his own. Chrissie had guessed that last and accepted it.

Now she was not finding it easy.

On the opposite platform stood a little group of men in their suits and carrying cases, their wives holding on to their arms. They were waiting for the southbound train to go looking for work
because their yards had shut down. Chrissie’s fears for Ballantyne’s returned, a spectre that had haunted her for twelve years.

She watched and waved as Tom’s train took him from her, he leaning out of the window and flapping a hand. Then she walked out of the station and across the road to the Railway Hotel.

She pushed through the swinging doors into the foyer and started across the deep-pile carpet with its scattering of leather armchairs and small, light oak tables. She caught the scent of the
flowers in the vases on the tables and glimpsed her reflection in the huge mirrors set in the panelled walls, a slender, long-legged woman in her early forties. Her dress was rayon and expensive
and her hair with a tinge of copper had been washed and waved by a hairdresser.

She checked in her stride as Susan Dobson, the receptionist, smiled and said, ‘Good morning, Mrs Ballantyne. There’s a young lady who would like to see you.’

The girl had been sitting by the desk, stiff and straight, her hands in her lap, feet tucked under the chair. Now she stood up quickly. The print of her cotton dress was faded and Chrissie
guessed it had been made from another; she had experience of that. She thought this slight girl was younger than her own daughter, and seemed frightened. Chrissie smiled and asked, ‘You are .
. .?’

‘Sarah Tennant, miss – Mrs Ballantyne.’ Spoken in little more than a whisper – and still remembering her school manners.

Chrissie thought she knew why the girl was there and sighed to herself, but she said, ‘Come along, then,’ and led the way into her office.

Chrissie’s office was comfortable with thick carpeting and a rug before the fireplace, which was covered by an attractive floral screen in this summer weather. A big
window let in sunlight which reflected from the polished desk. Behind the desk was a swivel chair and before it two armchairs. Two more stood on either side of the fireplace.

Chrissie sat behind her desk and gestured to Sarah to take a chair before it. Sarah complied but only perched on the edge of it. Chrissie asked, ‘So what did you want to see me
about?’

‘My mother thought you might give me a job. She worked for you years ago: Isabel Tennant?’ That ended as a question. Did Mrs Ballantyne remember?

Chrissie did. Isabel Tennant had been a good worker, and she had been a grown woman and familiar with the workings of a hotel. But Chrissie had no vacancy for her now, while this girl. . .