Sporting pursuits were catered for by a riding school, a racquet court in College Street and a number of tennis courts and bowling greens. There was also a swimming pool, but the young ladies of Miss Bainbridge’s Academy were not allowed to partake of anything so vulgar; however, they were encouraged to walk in the parks the town contained, two-by-two, in a long line, with a teacher at either end of the crocodile. Leazes Park and Brandling Park were nice enough, but it was Exhibition Park – formerly known as Bull Park because bulls had once been kept on this part of the town moor – that Sophy liked the best. An exhibition had been held there for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee nine years before, and at this time the reservoir had been turned into an ornamental lake, with a bridge over it. According to Miss Bainbridge, who always relayed the history of everywhere they visited, no matter how many times they had been before, the bridge was a reproduction of the Old Bridge which had spanned the River Tyne at Newcastle for upwards of five centuries. Sophy didn’t care so much about that, she just enjoyed watching the wildlife on the lake and the families with small children playing by the edge or sitting having picnics on the grass.
She would find it hard to settle in the small confines of Southwick after the bigness of Newcastle, she thought, as the coach trundled its way southwards through the mucky streets made slushy by the wheels of carriages, carts and horse trams. She had never felt overwhelmed by the size of the town; on the contrary, she had embraced it wholeheartedly, feeling as though she belonged somehow. Of course, she had never visited the areas such as Sandhill or Pipewellgate, slums which held such grotesque squalor there had been talk of clearing them for years. One of the housemaids Miss Bainbridge employed lived in Pipewellgate, and although Gracie was always as neat as a new pin, she lived in a house which contained eight other families and was right next door to one of the slaughterhouses. Charlotte, who inevitably returned to school after the weekends with a generous amount of chocolate and sweets from her doting parents, always made sure Gracie went home with most of the confectionery.
It began to snow again when they reached Gateshead, thick starry flakes falling from a sky which had turned from mother-of-pearl to an ominous pale grey. One or two of her fellow travellers expressed anxiety about getting home safely, but Sophy wished the journey could continue for ever. She wouldn’t mind if they got stuck somewhere. Anything was better than the vicarage and her aunt. And the kitchen was no refuge now. Bridget and her parents had been replaced by a cook, Mrs Hogarth, who was as thin and disapproving as her aunt, and a maid called Molly who seemed a bit simple and wouldn’t say boo to a goose. A man from the village came once or twice a week to see to the garden and any odd jobs, which had meant Patrick’s mushroom house and his lovely greenhouse were sadly neglected, although the vegetable patch still produced vegetables for the household and the fruit trees yielded a good crop each year.
Fortunately, just after she and Patience had gone away to school, John had started work in the office of the Wearmouth Colliery and had now risen to the position of Under-manager. Matthew had been studying at law college but had left in the summer and was now training to be a solicitor with a very respectable establishment in Bishopwearmouth.
When Sophy was home from school she was expected to work for her keep, although she now ate with the family in the dining room rather than taking her meals in the kitchen with the servants. Her sleeping arrangements had changed too. She occupied a corner of Patience’s bedroom, a narrow single bed having been moved in there once she was well enough to leave the guest room.
All this left her in no-man’s-land inside the vicarage, emphasising, as it did, that she belonged neither in the servants’ camp, nor wholly within the family circle. If it wasn’t for John, Matthew and David, and – to be fair – Patience, too, these days, her life would have been unbearable, because her aunt never lost an opportunity to belittle her and make her feel the poor relation. Not that she minded working hard at any number of household jobs, she didn’t, but she did mind that her aunt talked to her as though she was less than the dirt under her shoes. She was sure the writer of the manual in her valise, had she been asked to comment on the situation, would have advised displaying a sweet and submissive spirit to her aunt as befitted a well-brought-up young lady, and that was probably right and proper. She just didn’t think she could do it – even to keep the peace. She didn’t want to do it. She wanted— oh, all sorts of things, but mainly to escape the confines of the vicarage and that of the village also.
The coach stopped at an inn in Washington, a large colliery village west of Sunderland. The travellers were told it would be the last stop before they moved across country to Sunderland, which was the most tedious and difficult part of the journey due to the fact they would be using country lanes and narrow by-roads. The coachman advised everyone who was continuing with him to partake of a hot toddy to keep out the cold. The journey from Newcastle to Washington had already taken an extra half-an-hour longer than usual, due to the worsening weather, and he couldn’t guarantee that the next leg wouldn’t be worse.
Everyone trooped obediently into the inn parlour where Sophy tasted the first drop of alcohol of her life in the form of the innkeeper’s rum toddy. She didn’t like it but she sipped it slowly and found it warming, and she was glad of it once they began the journey once more. The snow was coming down thicker than ever and the poor horses, their heads down, plodded laboriously through what was fast becoming a full-blown blizzard.