Lovers Meeting Read online

  Also by Irene Carr

  Mary’s Child

  Chrissie’s Children

  Love Child

  Katy’s Men

  Emily

  Fancy Woman

  Liza

  Rachel

  Jailbird’s Daughter

  Lovers Meeting

  Irene Carr

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 1998 by Irene Carr

  The right of Irene Carr to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 444 76526 7

  Paperback ISBN 978 0 340 84093 1

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Irene Carr

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Praise for LOVERS MEETING

  ‘It’s tough, it’s gutsy, brimming with emotion and a cracking yarn – all that a good North East saga should be’

  Sunderland Echo

  Praise for CHRISSIE’S CHILDREN

  ‘Catherine Cookson-readalike … a delight’

  Colchester Evening Gazette

  ‘This novel has the clear ring of authenticity … the depth of the setting gives it its richness’

  Northern Echo

  Praise for MARY’S CHILD

  ‘Cookson fans will lap up this enthralling turn-of-the-century saga’

  Hartlepool Mail

  ‘Colourful … authentic … in the bestselling tradition of Catherine Cookson’

  Middlesbrough Evening Gazette

  About the author

  IRENE CARR was born and brought up on the river in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, in the 1930s. Her father and brother worked in shipyards in County Durham and her mother was a Sunderland barmaid. Her previous novels, Mary’s Child, and its standalone sequel, Chrissie’s Children, are both available as Coronet paperbacks.

  ‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’

  Twelfth Night

  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.’<
br />
  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.