Lovers Meeting

by Alan Stoker Esq, Irene Carr

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

Josie has survived poverty and disgrace - but how will she cope when she returns home to a new job and some old secrets?

Release date: October 11, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 272

Sample

1

Monkwearmouth in Sunderland, January 1888

Josie’s memory of the giant came back to haunt her all through her childhood and on into her adult years. On that awful night when he came raging through the big old house down by the river, four-year-old Josie trembled in the huge kitchen with its broad black stove and its smell of baking bread. Her mother, Peggy Langley, blonde, gentle and pretty in her long, dark blue dress with its high collar, had insisted they enter by the kitchen door. Josie’s father, David, dark and handsome in his best suit with its high lapels and narrow trousers, had bristled. ‘What! Go into the house I grew up in by the back door?’ But he had given in to his wife’s fears that old William Langley would slam the front door in her face.

Peggy had pleaded, ‘I just want you to make your peace with him before we go.’

Josie did not understand any of that. Her father had gone on into the house to seek his own father, William. Josie, her thin face framed by the bonnet that let a few strands of shining, coppery hair escape, watched him go out of wide grey eyes. She waited in the kitchen with her mother and she heard the bellowing, at first distant but rapidly approaching.

That first memory was burned into her brain by the threatened violence and her terror. The snow that had turned to hail drummed on the windows as the wind drove it. Darkness had come early on this winter day, so the windows were black glass that reflected the picture of her small face. The kitchen was lit yellow by the hissing gas lamp. A door in one corner stood open and showed the head of a flight of stairs leading down into a dark cavern of a cellar. Josie saw it as just a black hole that could hide monsters. But the monster came in through the other door that led into the house.

Her father came first, tight-lipped with anger. Behind him came the giant. Josie stood at her mother’s knee and clutched Peggy’s skirts, her eyes big with fright as she peered up at the black-bearded figure filling the doorway. He went on bellowing, ‘Make it up? Be damned to that! Because you’re going to America? You can go where the hell you like – but you won’t stay in this house.’ He glared at Peggy. ‘I thought you would be behind this.’

David Langley, a slighter, shorter, clean-shaven copy of his father, stepped in front of William. Josie could see his fists clenched at his sides. He said, ‘Father, I just wanted to—’

William did not let him finish: ‘I thought you’d be wanting something, but don’t call me Father! You lost the right to do that, along with a lot more, when you defied me five years ago. You married that woman and I turned you out. Or have you got her with a bairn again? Is that the reason you’ve come crawling back?’

‘I’m not crawling! I want nothing from you!’ Now David was shouting. Josie pressed one small fist against her mouth, her lips quivering. David went on, ‘Aye! It was Peggy’s idea to come here. She said, “Don’t go across the sea without making it up with your father. And he’ll want to see Josie.”’

The giant’s glare shifted to rest briefly on the small girl and she stepped back behind her mother to hide from those black eyes that bored into her. But then the glare shifted again, back to rest on her father, and William growled, ‘You’ll not get around me by using the bairn. I told you five years ago, that woman got you into her bed and with that child to wangle your ring on to her finger and her hands on to your money.’

‘That’s enough!’ David Langley stepped forward and now he raised his clenched fists.

But Peggy seized his arm and held him back. ‘No, David, please! Now come away. I want no more trouble.’

David retreated a pace at her urging, but reluctantly, and he said, ‘I haven’t seen James.’

His father said, ‘Your brother’s working at the yard. I sacked Elisha Garbutt a year back—’

David broke in, ‘So I heard. After him being your manager for all of ten years, you walked into the yard one morning and told him he was finished. That’s no way to treat a man who served you—’

But now his father cut short the reproach: ‘Aye! And he was swindling me for most of those ten years!’

David protested, ‘He had a wife and children. How are they living?’

William was unbending: ‘Damned if I know because they left the town, but he had a lot of my money. They’ll not starve and I’ll not lose any sleep. I have proof of how he robbed me and he’s lucky I didn’t have him sent to jail. He knows it. I gave his job to Alfred Bagley and your brother is helping him.’

David was concerned. ‘Don’t push him too hard. James isn’t fourteen yet.’

‘He will be in a couple of months and I’m keeping my eye on the pair of them. He’ll be ready to do the manager’s job himself when he’s a grown man and Bagley retires. James is a good boy.’ And he warned, ‘You stay away from him.’

David brushed that warning aside with a contemptuous wave of one hand. ‘You don’t frighten me. I’ll not make trouble for James. I wish him all the best in life.’

He turned his back on his father and ushered his wife and child out of the house. Little Josie hurriedly led the way. The hail had turned to snow again, flying in their faces on the wind driving in from the sea. Josie felt the cold nipping at her nose and ears. Holding the hand of her mother, she walked away from the big house, separated from the terraced streets that surrounded it only by a high wall. But first they crossed the yard to the back gate. The surrounding walls, and the washhouse in one corner of the yard, stood black in the night, but the snow outlined the tops of the walls and painted the roofs white.

Josie looked back once as she came to the back gate and caught one last glimpse of her grandfather. The giant stood in the doorway, etched black against the light of the kitchen, menacing. Then Josie passed through the gate into the lane beyond and he was lost to sight. But he still loomed in her mind, terrifying.

‘He frightened me, Mam.’ Josie, eager to talk now, looked up at her mother.

But Peggy Langley whispered, ‘Ssh!’ Her eyes were on her husband. David Langley strode with face set and brows in a thick, dark line. His mouth was drawn down at the corners, bitter.

They came to the road that ran up from the river and James turned to walk down it. Peggy asked, ‘Aren’t we going to the station?’

David answered, ‘No. I’m going to look in at the yard and have a word with James.’

‘Your father said—’

‘He can say what he likes. I’m not leaving without seeing James.’ Then he added, ‘I’m sorry you had to listen to him back there. He’s a good man really but this time he’s wrong and I can’t get him to see it.’

Peggy squeezed his hand. ‘I don’t care. I want nothing from him. It’s just – I know it hurts you.’

David smiled wryly. ‘I’ll get over it.’

Josie did not understand any of this but was simply glad to be free of the giant and his baleful glare.

They came to the gates of the shipyard, the name painted in bold letters: William Langley and Sons. David nodded at it grimly. ‘He’ll soon be changing that. I’m surprised he didn’t do it long ago.’ They passed the timekeeper’s office and then they were walking down the yard. Ahead of them the hull of the ship being built rose like a steel cliff. Tall cranes towered above it and workmen swarmed over it. The din of the riveting hammers set Josie’s hands to her ears. More workmen, grimy and with their faces sweat-streaked, hurried back and forth across their path. Then one turned towards them as David called, ‘Sammy!’

The man he hailed was in his forties, broad, stocky, and he walked with a sailor’s roll. His shirt-sleeves were rolled to the elbows showing tattooed forearms. He grinned at Josie but addressed David. ‘Now then, Mr Langley.’

David introduced him: ‘This is my wife, Peggy. Sammy Allnutt taught me a lot when I was a boy just new in the yard.’ Then to Sammy: ‘I’m looking for our James. I hear he works with Bagley, the manager here now.’

‘Aye, and he’s coming on fine.’ Sammy nodded approvingly. ‘He’s just down the yard.’ He gave a jerk of his thumb as indication.

David asked, ‘How do you like Bagley?’

‘All reet. He only has to do what your father tells him, but he’s a canny feller. Not like that Garbutt. He was a wrong ’un. It was a good day’s work when your father sacked him. And his boy, Reuben, was just fifteen years old when I last saw him and he looked set to be a sight worse. He used to walk round this yard wi’ his father and looking down his nose at the rest of us like we were dirt. And he had an evil look to him.’

Peggy said disbelievingly, ‘At only fifteen?’

‘Aye, Mrs Langley,’ Sammy insisted. ‘I’ve seen a few bad ’uns in my time and fifteen or fifty, that’s the word for him: evil.’ Then he pointed. ‘There’s James coming up now.’

Sammy stepped aside and went on his way, with a nod to David and a muttered ‘All the best to you.’

A youth came running up the slope from the river and the ship on the stocks. The frown cleared from David’s face and he was smiling when his brother came panting up to them. Josie liked the look of this boy and did not hide this time.

‘Thank God you came!’ James Langley was tall for his near-fourteen years, not so dark as his brother and having the soft brown hair and eyes of his dead mother. He wore grimy overalls and there was a smudge of oil on his forehead. He gripped the hand David held out to him and smiled with pleasure. Then the smile faded. ‘A chap came into the yard a day or so back and said he’d heard you were going to America.’

David nodded. ‘That’s right.’

James asked, ‘Did you try to make it up with Dad?’

David nodded again, but said, ‘No luck.’

‘I thought so.’ James sighed. ‘I know his mind is set. I’ve tried to take your side, tried to put in a word for you, but he won’t listen.’ Young James loved his father and respected him so now he said unhappily, ‘And I know he is wrong.’ With that he reached out a hand to touch Peggy’s sleeve. Then he turned on David and said wistfully, ‘I wish I was going with you.’

‘No!’ David set his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘Someone has to stay here with Father and as he doesn’t want me then it must be you. Bagley is a good enough man but he can’t manage the yard without Father telling him what to do. And Father will be fifty this year. You’ll have to take over Bagley’s job in another ten years – and one day the Langley shipyard will be yours. You mustn’t – can’t – throw that away.’ David let his hands fall then. ‘We’ve got to catch a train. You get back to work.’

‘Aye. I will.’ James’s voice was husky now; he was close to tears. He turned and started back down the slope, then paused to turn his head on his shoulder and shout above the din of the hammers, ‘Write to me with your address when you get there and I’ll come and see you in America one day.’

‘I’ll write to you, never fear.’ David watched until his brother disappeared from sight beyond the hull on the stocks, then he cleared his throat and said gruffly, ‘Come on, then.’ He turned and walked back up the yard. Josie found that instead of being frightened she was sad and crying. When she looked she saw tears on her mother’s cheeks.

Josie asked, ‘Are you sad as well, Mam?’

Her mother managed to smile and shook her head. ‘I think it’s just this cold wind making my eyes water.’

Josie agreed. ‘I suppose that’s what it is.’

They came out of the yard, climbed the steep road up from the river then crossed North Bridge Street, hurrying between horse-drawn trams. So they came to Monkwearmouth station, its frontage like a Greek temple with its tall columns. Inside the station they collected the luggage they had left there earlier. All they had was in one big portmanteau. The platform was crowded and so was the train but they found seats crammed into a nearly full compartment with Josie wedged between her parents. As her damp clothes began to steam in the heat she felt her feet come alive again inside her buttoned boots swinging above the floor. When the train hissed, shuddered, clanked and then began to move, Josie peered past her father and out through a cleared patch in the mist on the glass. She saw only darkness and pinpoints of light. Her eyes closed.

Her mother said softly, ‘She’s worn out with all that’s been going on.’

Her father agreed in a murmur, ‘Aye.’

Josie was too tired to argue, but not asleep. She heard her mother say above her head, low-voiced so only her husband would hear, but harshly bitter, ‘I suppose we should have expected your father would think I set out to trap you for your money.’

David Langley laughed grimly. ‘If you had you’d have made a mistake, because I won’t get it now.’

Peggy sighed. ‘But you know what I mean: I was a servant lass wi’ no family or money. He owns a shipyard and it would ha’ gone to you in time. I don’t blame him for not accepting me, but I didn’t want him to turn against you.’

David said softly, ‘I wouldn’t change anything.’

Josie felt the warmth of that love, like the physical warmth that wrapped around her now. She sighed and relaxed.

Only a few hours ago they had left the house in which Josie had been born and raised. It was south of the River Wear which ran through the town. Josie had crossed to the north side often before this day, with her parents, to visit the Langley house – but that was when her grandfather was away on business. She had come to know it and love it. Now she hoped she would never cross its threshold again.

But she would – and regret it.

Tom Collingwood’s journey through life had begun four years before, when his grandfather had saved him from the institution. Tom was eight years old now, in ragged jacket and trousers, barefoot save for a pair of old boots with more holes to them than leather. He stood on the station at Newcastle, long-legged and grubby, his thick, black hair hand-combed, and watched the Sunderland train come in. He saw the man and the woman, her carrying a child, but just as faces in the long blur of faces. He held out his hand and asked, ‘Give us a ha’penny, mister. I’m hungry. Give us a ha’penny, missus. Give us …’ He got a halfpenny from the man as he passed; the woman had her hands full with the sleeping child. Tom went on reciting the plea monotonously. He had stopped crying over an hour ago.

His grandfather had spoken his last words an hour before that: ‘Christ! I could do wi’ a drink.’ He had mumbled them sitting on the pavement with his back against the wall outside the station. Before that he had called hoarsely through chattering teeth: ‘Wounded in the Crimea! Spare a copper for an old soljer!’ He was wounded in the Crimean War, that was true. But the crutch lying across his knees supported him only in the towns. He had carried it over his shoulder the length and breadth of Scotland and down into the north of England. He was bearded and brown, ragged and gaunt now. During his long life he had been a soldier and a fisherman, a seaman and a poacher – and something of a rogue all the time.

He was the only family Tom had ever known. His first memory was of his grandfather coming to the house where Tom’s parents waited for burial. The tall old man, burly and strong then, had scooped him up into the fold of one arm and told him, ‘I’ll not let them put you in the orphanage.’ Tom had been with him ever since.

But that was all over now, though Tom did not realise this for some time. He was uneasy and fearful when his grandfather, after a long silence, let out a deep sigh and then ceased his laboured breathing. The worried small boy could not wake the old man. Tom suspected the worst when the two policemen came slow-striding and one said, ‘I don’t like the look o’ this one.’ Tom did not like the look of them, either, had always been taught to steer clear of the ‘pollis’. So he sidled away – but he heard: ‘Th’ould feller’s deid.’

He had been taught to seek shelter in crowds so he slunk into the station. He had begged there out of habit and there his loss came home to him and he shed tears for the rough, hard-bitten old man who had cared for him after his fashion. Now he realised that there was no one to tell him where to go, what to do. No one to find him a bed – of some sort – for the night. He was alone.

When the police came into the station he guessed they were looking for him. His grandfather had told him how he had been saved from the orphanage and Tom was determined not to go there now. The train was filling up again to return to Sunderland. He sneaked aboard it by hiding among a little group of passengers, workmen smelling of drink and shouldering through the gate. He found a seat beside them and as the train rattled along from station to station he learned that they were all getting off at a place called Monkwearmouth.

He got out of that station as he had entered the train at Newcastle. The ticket collector at the gate spotted him worming through among the workmen, all of them singing now, but Tom ducked under his clutching hand and ran away into the night. He walked around some of the streets of Monkwearmouth, row upon row of soot-stained houses with windows lit yellow. A fine, cold drizzle came in from the sea. He begged as he went but got nothing from the few people hurrying home.

When the streets emptied, and the lights in the windows went out one by one, he found a tenement where the front door had not been bolted. In the passage was a dark corner where he could not see his dirty hand before his dirty face. He had a few halfpennies in his pocket with a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese. He ate the food and slept on some old sacking with the mice skittering around him. All this was done as if his grandfather was still with him; he was clutching at normality. This was the only life he had known and he had been happy enough.

But now he was miserable – and lonely.

2

Liverpool, January 1888

Josie had no sense of foreboding when she and her family boarded the emigrant ship, lying in the Albert Dock, in the late afternoon. The wind whipping in off the Mersey was cold but excitement kept her warm. The side of the SS Blackhill stood above the landing stage, black-painted and massive to Josie’s eyes. Smoke trailed from the ship’s two funnels as her sweating stokers laboured below, hurling shovelfuls of coal into the furnaces to raise steam for her to sail. Josie held her mother’s hand, following her father as he carried their portmanteau on his shoulder. They climbed the gangway to the deck of the ship along with other passengers sailing to a new life in America. Some had portmanteaux but most made do with a cheap suitcase or an old kitbag. A few carried all their belongings tied up in an old shawl or blanket.

David Langley set the portmanteau down and straightened his back, worked his shoulders after ridding himself of the weight. He set an arm about his wife’s shoulders and smiled at her. ‘We’ll be sailing in a few hours.’

Josie asked, ‘Will we get to America tomorrow?’

Her father laughed. ‘Not as soon as that! But not too long. It will give you time to enjoy the cruise.’ That was said to reassure his wife as much as his daughter. Privately he doubted if a winter passage of the North Atlantic would be pleasant. But he told himself they would all survive a little bad weather and seasickness and be none the worse.

He lifted the portmanteau again. ‘Time to go below.’ He led the way to the poop and a door opening on to steep stairs leading down into the steerage where the emigrants would live during the crossing.

Josie stood at the head of the ladder, looking down into the dark bowels of the ship. It reminded her of the stairs down into the cellar in her grandfather’s house. And it was then she felt the first queasiness, the first shiver shaking her, She wailed, ‘I don’t want to go down there!’

Her father joked with her, ‘Well, you can’t sleep on deck. What if it rains?’

Josie’s mother picked her up, held her close and soothed her: ‘It’s warm and dry down below. It will be just like going downstairs in our old house.’

Josie clung tightly to her and so they went below.

Later that evening, Peggy Langley looked up into her husband’s face and said anxiously, ‘She’s burning up! Oh, David, I’m frightened!’ She held Josie in her arms – the little girl was flushed, her hair damp with perspiration.

David laid his hand on her brow, felt the heat of it and bit his lip. He looked around him. The steerage accommodation for the emigrants was down below the waterline and crowded, bunks stacked one above the other like huge chests of drawers. David had been to sea more than once. He knew what it would be like to be battened down in this dark hold for hours or days in bad weather, and he had learned from one of the ship’s officers that the barometer showed they would get it. And in the North Atlantic? How would this child of his fare during such a crossing, three thousand-odd miles and lasting two weeks or more? And what lay at the end of it?

He ran his hand through his dark hair worriedly and looked down again at Josie’s flushed face, saw the way she twisted restlessly in her mother’s arms. And she cried out in fear, ‘The giant!’

Peggy whispered, ‘She keeps on about some giant, a bad dream she’s having. She’s not in her right mind, David.’

He nodded. ‘She’s delirious.’ He made his decision. ‘Come on, we’re going ashore.’ He hurried the partially relieved Peggy up the succession of ladders to the deck. She would not be fully relieved so long as Josie was ill, but she was glad to be able to deal with that illness on dry land where there were doctors.

They were only just in time; the gangway was about to be swung up and inboard by a team of seamen working a derrick. David and Peggy trotted precariously down the gangway’s tilted length, and they had scarcely set foot on shore when it was lifted into the air by the derrick and a clattering winch. When they reached the gateway to the dock, David looked back and saw the Blackhill already clear of the landing stage and easing out into the stream, pushed by a fussing tug. The Blackhill’s siren blared farewell and emigrants lined her rails, waving handkerchiefs and hats. David bade his own farewell to her in silence and turned away. He told himself his dream of a new life was postponed, that was all. And he had no regrets. His daughter came first, and he smiled down at her. He told Peggy, ‘We’ll have to find a room for the night and then I’ll fetch a doctor to her.’

They found the room in a boarding house run by a Mrs Entwistle. David brought a doctor to see to Josie and he diagnosed a fever and administered some medicine. He smelt of whisky and oozed confidence: ‘She’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’ But he was right. When Josie awoke the next morning the fever was gone and she was full of life and questions: ‘Aren’t we going to America? When are we going? Will we go on a big ship like the other one?’ And: ‘Can I go out to play?’ Because she could see through the window the children playing hopscotch in the street.

Her delighted parents answered all her questions laughingly but refused the request in that last. Peggy said, ‘I think she ought to stay in today. If she is still all right tomorrow we can take her for a walk.’

David agreed and picked up his cap. ‘I’ll take a walk myself. I want to see about booking another passage.’ He would also try to regain the money paid for the passage on the Blackhill but doubted if he would get it. And the longer they stayed in the boarding house the more the rent of their room would eat into his small savings, so he wanted a passage sooner rather than later. As he left the house he met Herbert Entwistle, husband of the proprietress, a skinny, obsequious man. He occasionally worked as a clerk but usually lived off his wife whom he beat regularly. Now he smirked and stood aside deferentially. David, who had disliked him on sight, nodded stiffly and went on his way. Entwistle sneered at his back.

Reuben Garbutt might easily have seen the Langleys when they entered the Albert Dock or left it because he plied his trade hanging around the dock gates, but he had missed them. Reuben was the only son of Elisha Garbutt, who had been sacked by William Langley for theft. When David and Peggy carried Josie off the Blackhill, Reuben and his gang were following a sailor.

The young Garbutt was sixteen years old while most of his gang were a year or two older, but he led by strength of personality, example – and fear. They wore ragged jackets and trousers, greasy caps or battered bowler hats. Some smoked stubby clay pipes. The sailor was dressed in an old blue reefer jacket and canvas trousers. He had been paid and he was drunk.

Reuben was tall for his age, broad and muscular with dark, piercing eyes. In the past year the precocious boy had grown into a young adult. He had learned that he was attractive to some women and was learning how to use that charm. But not today. He strolled close behind the sailor as he staggered through the streets, the six members of the gang spaced out over a score of yards following their leader. He waited with the confidence of experience for his opportunity and seized it when it came. The sailor turned into a street narrower than the rest – and empty. Reuben took two long strides to bring him up on the heels of his prey and with a flick of one booted foot he tapped the sailor’s ankles so that he tripped and fell. Reuben was on the man’s back before he sprawled his length, shoving his face down into the dirt of the street. The rest of the gang came running up as the sailor tried to fight and yell. Reuben cut off the cry with a hand around the man’s throat and the others helped to pin him down. They went through his pockets, found his money and a watch, and one of them tied his ankles with a length of rope. Then they were up and running as a woman appeared at her door and shouted, ‘’Ere! What are you lot doin’?’

‘A’right! This’ll do!’ Reuben snarled the command and halted his band after running for a minute and rounding half a dozen corners. They stood in a dark alley and Reuben took off his cap, held it out and demanded, ‘Cough up!’ They all tossed into the cap what they had stolen from the hapless sailor. Reuben counted the coins in the cap and remained with his head bent, staring down into it for some seconds. Then he looked up and said softly, ‘I saw him change a sovereign in the pub. I could tell you to a penny what he had in his pocket. Somebody’s holding back.’ His gaze, dark eyes staring, travelled around the circle of faces, looking into the eyes of each of them in turn. He stopped at one, a skinny youth with a spotted face. Reuben said, ‘You’re a cheating rat, Sepp.’ He did not raise his voice but its tone and his glare were sufficient. Sepp hurriedly dug into his pocket, pulled out more coins and threw them into the cap.

Reuben dismissed him with a jerk of the head towards the mouth of the alley. Sepp whined, ‘What about my cut?’

‘You’ll ge. . .