Free Mary's Child by Irene Carr Page A

hidden among them. The girl watched him with wide, dark eyes. He did not recognise her as the girl he had met one night a year ago, but there was an uneasy stirring of memory, a connection that eluded him, slippery as a fish.
    The liveried coachman on the box cracked his whip and George Ballantyne’s carriage jerked forward and rolled on, picking up speed. Jack still stared out of the window for a moment but did not see the carts and trams as they passed, only that pale face and wide eyes. Then he sat back in his seat and was quiet for the rest of the journey, saddened and upset though he did not know why.
    He came to life again when the carriage wheeled in between the open gates of Ballantyne’s yard in Monkwearmouth on the north bank of the river. It passed the timekeeper’s office and came to a halt outside the main building. The coachman yanked on the brake, tied the reins, jumped down and opened the door. He touched his cap as George Ballantyne got down and told him, ‘We’ll be here for the afternoon. Come back for us at five o’clock.’
    ‘Aye, Mr Ballantyne.’
    Jack stood to one side, pulling on the overcoat that, with his suit, had been made for him by the same tailor who served his father and grandfather. He followed eagerly as George led the way past the main office where Richard, Jack’s father, was at work. Richard ran the yard now he had come home for a while. Jack and the old man walked down the steep, cobbled bank towards the ship on the stocks. Men swarmed along their path, passing to and fro on their way from one task to the next. Hundreds more climbed on and around the ship. Now it towered above Jack and his grandfather. On the staging around it were the fires of the men heating the rivets for the riveters to pound into place with their hydraulic hammers.
    George Ballantyne bent to shout into Jack’s ear, ‘We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up!’ Jack nodded eagerly and followed him as he walked between the timber shores holding up the ship on the stocks. Then they stood under the flat bottom of the vessel where the din of the hammers was amplified through the iron hull as if they stood under a great drum. George looked down and saw the boy’s face alight with happiness now. This was where he loved to be, what he loved to do. One day he would build ships.
     
    In the cemetery there was still snow lying in thin drifts between the gravestones, soot and coaldust speckling its whiteness. Sleet and a fine rain drifted in from the river, bringing with them the smell of smoke. Gulls hung, mewing, on wide wings or swooped down out of sight as they went scavenging. The wind flapped the vicar’s gown behind him like a flag. He had to lift his voice to be heard above the rustle and clatter of the branches of the trees. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord  . . .’ He held the prayer book clumsily in gloved hands. His face was blue and stiffened by the wind that cut at it.
    Chrissie stood small and pale between Daniel and Bessie while the five boys were lined up on the other side of the grave. The branches of the trees waved above them, black and dripping with rain. Chrissie could smell the soaked and battered flowers as they were lifted from the coffins. She listened to the words of the vicar without taking any of them in, watched the coffins lowered into the grave then turned and walked away as Bessie led her by the hand.
     
    The Milburns’ house lay on the edge of the warren of narrow streets that was the old East End of the town. It was one of a long terrace, like all the others in the street, but it was bigger with a sizeable yard behind it. It needed to be bigger. Daniel and Bessie slept in the downstairs front room, the boys occupied one of the two rooms upstairs and the four lodgers shared the other.
    Chrissie’s room was little more than a cupboard over the stairwell and just as wide. It was given to her because it was not long enough for any of the boys to