i f6c06dd9cf3fe221 by Unknown (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

she saying? She was going to take her up to Newcastle in the train this afternoon? And they would go to the big bazaar where Santa Claus lived!

She pressed herself against Kate, against the green coat and the tails of the fur. There was a faint smell, warm and lovely. Her mind could offer no name for it; it wasn't scent, for Connie Fawcett, who was Kate's cousin and had been hers up till today but had now become in some way disconnected with this new relationship, she used scent. When Connie came from High Jarrow to see her grandma, her grandma always waffed her apron around the kitchen after she had gone to get rid of the smell; but you wouldn't want to get rid of this smell.

"Come on, dreamer," said Kate softly, 'we're nearly there. "

Annie looked about her in surprise: yes, so they were. There was the first of the fifteen streets.

The tram stopped just before the first street.

"The stops've been altered," explained the conductor; 'we only stop at each end of the fifteen streets now. "

Kate made a wry face at Annie; the case was heavy and shed have to carry it past the breadth of eight streets before coming to her own.

Still, it wasn't like walking past the streets in the late afternoon or evening when each corner had its special clique of loafers.

As she rested at the corner of the second street she noticed a woman running from the far end towards her;

she carried her hat in her hand, from which a broken feather dangled, a coil of her hair was hanging on her shoulder, and Kate noticed, as she drew nearer, that the front of her coat was covered with soft filth, and that angry tears were running down her face.

"Why," exdaimed Kate, 'what on earth's the matter, Jessie? "

The woman stopped and leant against the wall, gasping: "It's them bitches, Kate. They did this to me," she said, holding out her hat with one hand and pointing to her coat with the other.

"I'll have the law on them, see if I don't. They won't get off with it, I'll make them pay, every one of them. Dirty swine!"

Kate looked at her pityingly as she made this idle threat. Poor Jessie! Had she really gone to school with this woman? Played with her? Knelt beside her at mass? It seemed impossible; she looked old and haggard now . spent. Could she be only two years older than herself?

T was only goin' to see me ma, Kate, that's all, it being' Christmas Eve an' all. Ooh hi I wish I was dead. " Her head dropped to her chest, and she moved it from side to side in a gesture of despair that wrung Kate's heart.

Kate knew what Jessie's life had been. After a youth spent working in a laundry, ten hours a day, and the rest of her waking life at street corners or in dark recesses of shop doors, Jessie had married one of the boys from the fifteen streets, who, in the neighbours' opinion was much too good for her; which must have been God's opinion also, said the God-fearing members of the community, when, just a year later, he was killed in the pit. Jessie had a friend who lived next door and who was very kind to her during her trouble, to the extent of allowing her husband to do odd jobs for her. It was later brought to the friend's notice by kind neighbours that it seemed funny that her husband and Jessie had to go up to Newcastle on the same day, and that as soon as she went out to do her shopping her man was in with Jessie when he was supposed to be getting his sleep ready for the night shift.

The result of this exposure had been a promise from the husband to have nothing further to do with Jessie. But he had counted without Jessie, for she had found someone at last who could satisfy her physically, and she could no more leave him alone than she could stop herself wanting him. However, she moved to Shields to make things easier, and nothing the wife could do about it could loosen Jessie's hold on her husband; until nature took a hand. Aided, no doubt, by the wife's feverish desire to keep her man, it presented her with a child after eight years of marriage.

The baby was an enemy against whom Jessie was powerless, and the visits of its father became less and less, until they ceased altogether.

Desperate, Jessie came to the fifteen streets, where she hadn't been for two years, supposedly to see her mother. This morning's visit was her third within a week, and some of the neighbours, seeing which way the wind was blowing, became self-constituted avengers, determined to protect the reformed husband against this shameless woman.

Most of this story was known to Kate, and the right or the wrong of it passed her by. She only knew that she felt a great pity for her one-time schoolmate.

"Why don't you get right away, Jessie? Go into service somewhere; you'll forget all about this. There are good places to be had ... look at me. Why don't you try it?" she urged.

Jessie began to sob helplessly: "You fell on your feet, Kate; there ain't many places like yours. And you've got your baim, I've got nothing.... Anyway, I only want him," she added, with finality.

A gasp at her side brought Kate's attention from Jessie to Annie; she was staring wide-eyed at Jessie, and the tears were raining down her cheeks. Kate was about to tell Annie to run home when they heard shouts coming from up the main road, and there, pouring from the street next to her