Feathers in the Fire Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Feathers In The Fire

  BOOK ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  BOOK TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  BOOK THREE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  BOOK FOUR

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  BOOK FIVE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  In brief:

  Her books have sold over 130 million copies in 26 languages throughout the world and still counting . . .

  Catherine Cookson was born Katherine Ann McMullen on June 27th, 1906 in the bleak industrial heartland of Tyne Dock, South Shields (then part of County Durham) and later moved to East Jarrow which is now in Tyne and Wear.

  She was the illegitimate daughter of Kate Fawcett, an alcoholic, whom she thought was her sister. She was raised by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. The poverty, exploitation and bigotry she experienced in her early years aroused deep emotions that stayed with her throughout her life and which became part of her stories. Catherine left school at 13 and after a period of domestic service, she took a job in a laundry at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, working all hours and saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house. She took in gentleman and lady lodgers to supplement her income and took up fencing as one of her hobbies. One of her lodgers was Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School and in June 1940 they married. They were devoted to each other throughout their lives together. But the early years of her marriage were beset by the tragic miscarriage of four pregnancies and her subsequent mental breakdown. This took her over a decade to recover from, which she did, often by standing in front of a mirror and giving herself a damn good swearing at!

  Catherine took up writing as a form of therapy to deal with her depression and joined the Hastings Writers’ Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. In 1976, she returned to Northumberland with Tom and went on to write 104 books in all. She became one of the most successful novelists of all time and was one of the first authors to have 3 or 4 titles in the Bestseller Lists at the same time.

  She read widely: from Chaucer to the literature of the 1920s; to Plato’s Apologia on the trial and death of Socrates (she said that here was someone who stuck to his principles even unto death); to history of the nineteenth century and the Romantic poets; to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son and the books and booklets that abounded in her part of the country dealing with coal, iron, lead, glass, farming and the railways. She disliked it when her books were labeled as ‘romantic’. To her, they were ‘readable social history of the North East interwoven into the lives of the people’. For the millions of her readers, she brought ‘an understanding of themselves or perhaps of their dear ones. Her stories do not bring in a realism in which the worst is taken for granted, but a realism in which love, caring and compassion appear, and most certainly hope. ‘This type of realism does exist,’ Tom Cookson said of her writing. There is nothing sentimental about her writing; she is unrelenting in the strong images she invokes and the characters she portrays. They were born of her formative years and her personal struggles. Many of her novels have been transferred to stage, film and radio with her television adaptations on ITV lasting over a decade and achieving ratings of over 10 million viewers.

  Besides writing, she was an innovative painter and she believed that her father’s genes fostered the strength to work hard but also, in rare moments of freedom, to strive to better herself. Catherine was famed for her care of money but had given much to charities, hospitals and medical research in areas close to her heart and to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who set up a lectureship in hematology. The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust continues to donate generously to charitable causes. The University later conferred her the Honorary Degree of Master of Arts. She received the Freedom of the Borough of South Tyneside, today known as Catherine Cookson Country. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year and she was voted Personality of the North East. Other honours followed: an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986 and she was created Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1997.

  Throughout her life but especially in the later years, she was plagued by a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers and stomach and resulted in anemia. As her health declined, she and her husband moved for a final time to Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne to be nearer medical facilities. For the last few years of her life, she was bed-ridden and Tom hardly ever left her bedside, looking after her needs, cooking for her and taking her on her emergency trips, often in the middle of the night, into Newcastle. Their lives were still made up of the seven day week and twelve or more hours each day, going over the fan mail, attending to charities and going over the latest dictated book, with Tom meticulously making corrections line by line, for Catherine’s eyesight had long faded in her 80’s.

  This most remarkable woman passed away on June 11th 1998 at the age of 91. Tom, six years her junior, had earlier suffered a heart attack but survived long enough to be with her at her end. He passed away on 28th June, just 17 days after his beloved Catherine.

  Catherine Cookson’s Books

  NOVELS

  Colour Blind

  Maggie Rowan

  Rooney

  The Menagerie

  Fanny McBride

  Fenwick Houses

  The Garment

  The Blind Miller

  The Wingless Bird

  Hannah Massey

  The Long Corridor

  The Unbaited Trap

  Slinky Jane

  Katie Mulholland

  The Round Tower

  The Nice Bloke

  The Glass Virgin

  The Invitation

  The Dwelling Place

  Feathers in the Fire

  Pure as the Lily

  The Invisible Cord

  The Gambling Man

  The Tide of Life

  The Girl

  The Cinder Path

  The Man Who Cried

  The Whip

  The Black Velvet Gown

  A Dinner of Herbs

  The Moth

  The Parson’s Daughter

  The Harrogate Secret

  The Cultured Handmaiden

  The Black Candle

  The Gillyvors

  My Beloved Son

  The Rag Nymph

  The House of Women

  The Maltese Angel

  The Golden Straw

  The Year of the Virgins

  The Tinker’s Girl

  Justice is a Woman

  A Ruthless Need

  The Bonny Dawn

  The Branded Man

  The Lady on my Left

  The Obsession

  The Upstart

  The Blind Years

  Riley

  The Solace of Sin

  The D
esert Crop

  The Thursday Friend

  A House Divided

  Rosie of the River

  The Silent Lady

  FEATURING KATE HANNIGAN

  Kate Hannigan (her first published novel)

  Kate Hannigan’s Girl (her hundredth published novel)

  THE MARY ANN NOVELS

  A Grand Man

  The Lord and Mary Ann

  The Devil and Mary Ann

  Love and Mary Ann

  Life and Mary Ann

  Marriage and Mary Ann

  Mary Ann’s Angels

  Mary Ann and Bill

  FEATURING BILL BAILEY

  Bill Bailey

  Bill Bailey’s Lot

  Bill Bailey’s Daughter

  The Bondage of Love

  THE TILLY TROTTER TRILOGY

  Tilly Trotter

  Tilly Trotter Wed

  Tilly Trotter Widowed

  THE MALLEN TRILOGY

  The Mallen Streak

  The Mallen Girl

  The Mallen Litter

  FEATURING HAMILTON

  Hamilton

  Goodbye Hamilton

  Harold

  AS CATHERINE MARCHANT

  Heritage of Folly

  The Fen Tiger

  House of Men

  The Iron Façade

  Miss Martha Mary Crawford

  The Slow Awakening

  CHILDREN’S

  Matty Doolin

  Joe and the Gladiator

  The Nipper

  Rory’s Fortune

  Our John Willie

  Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet

  Go tell It To Mrs Golightly

  Lanky Jones

  Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  Our Kate

  Let Me Make Myself Plain

  Plainer Still

  Feathers In The Fire

  Davie Armstrong struggles hard for his place at Cock Shield Farm and finds himself at odds with the owner, a man of mordant temper and villainous pride. He watches as his master, Angus McBain, publicly thrashes young Molly Geary for refusing to name the man who made her pregnant. And yet, only an hour later, Davie sees the two of them alone in the malthouse, and learns that the child is McBain’s.

  But the master’s wife is also pregnant. And a few months later the birth of the McBain’s son, Amos, unleashes violence and tragedy at the farm. Born emotionally and physically crippled, Amos will learn to wield the power of frightening intensity over everyone around him…

  Feathers in the Fire is a dark tale of love, loss and redemption set on a tenant farm at the end of the nineteenth century.

  FEATHERS IN THE FIRE

  Catherine Cookson

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1971

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

  This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form.

  ISBN 978-1-78036-014-0

  Sketch by Harriet Anstruther

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described, all situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  Published by

  Peach Publishing

  BOOK ONE

  1881

  One

  ‘I tell you I know nothing about it. God in heaven! I’ve said it four times already, I didn’t give it her.’ Davie Armstrong turned on his father, crying, ‘An’ don’t say again it couldn’t get there on its own; bloody well I know it, it couldn’t get there on its own.’

  ‘All right, all right, lad.’ It was his grandfather speaking and he came towards him and patted his arm and, his voice soothing, said, ‘I believe you. We all believe you, lad.’ He glanced fiercely at his daughter and his son-in-law; then, looking at his grandson again, whom he loved better than he’d ever loved his one and only offspring, he added quietly, ‘But, you know, you’ll be given the blame, for you were courtin’ her.’

  ‘Courtin’!’ Davie glared at his grandfather now. ‘I might have been knockin’ on, but we weren’t courtin’; except for a dance in the barn and taking her to the fair and a nudge on the quiet, that’s all it’s been. I tell you, she ran off from me when we were at the fair, an’ I didn’t see hilt or hair of her till I got back here, eight o’clock. It must have happened then; but I wasn’t at t’other end of it, honest to God.’ He now looked at his mother, who was standing at the far side of the trestle table that was laid for a meal. She had her hands on the lid of a black cooking pot set on a square of wood; her fingers were beating an unconscious tattoo on the handle, while her eyes, unblinking, were riveted on her son; and now she said, ‘Come and sit up and have your meal, time is passin’.’

  ‘I want no meal.’

  Her hand lifted the lid and she banged it down on the table and, her voice harsh now, she said, ‘You’ll eat, we’ll all eat. We’ve got to work, so we’ll eat.’ And at this she began ladling out thick mutton broth on to four plates. When they were filled she cut large shives of crusty bread and stuck one in the middle of each plate, which she then placed at each side of the table.

  Ned Armstrong sat down, and old Sep sat down, but Davie still stood. He had his back pressed to the dresser, his square chin was thrust out and stiff with the tightness of his jawbones. His mother said to him quietly, ‘You know I won’t sit till you’re sat, so how long do you intend to keep me standin’?’

  His head drooped to his chest, his lips pushed against each other as he sucked them inwards; then, thrusting his body from its support, he came to the table and sat down, but not before banging the high rail-back wooden chair hard on the stone floor.

  Winnie Armstrong now sat down and picked up a spoon, and they all began to eat, and only the munching and the slopping of the stew filled the silence until old Sep, putting his spoon down on the bare table and placing his hands one each side of his plate, leant across towards his son-in-law and said, ‘You know summat, I smell a rat.’

  ‘How?’ asked Ned, gulping on a mouthful of food, his spoon held in mid-air.

  ‘Geary, that’s how, Geary.’ The old man’s voice was low and he jerked his head back and slanted his gaze in the direction of the fireplace and the wall to the side of it, the wall that divided their cottage from the Gearys’. Then, casting a glance, first at his daughter Winnie, and then at his grandson, he brought his attention back to Ned and said softly, ‘He finds their Molly has fallen an’ what does he do? He goes to the master and demands that she be chastised . . . flayed! There’s no woman been flayed on this farm since I was a lad sixty odd years gone, and then it was the master’s grandfather what did it, and then he had to be roaring drunk afore he could tackle it. You mind, I’ve told you ’bout Nellie Cassidy pinching the gold retriever watch, and he gave her the option of goin’ along the line or standin’ a flaying. She took the flaying. But Geary there’ – he again jerked his head back – ‘who’s got no feelin’ for either God, man, or beast, but he doesn’t lift a hand to her.’ He now turned and looked at Davie and said, ‘Lad, just think; imagine that house and Molly comin’ in and sayin’ she’s fallen; what do you think he’d do?’

  Davie looked at his grandfather, then answered slowly, ‘Knock hell out of her.’

  ‘Aye, you’ve said it, lad, knock hell out of her and take joy in doin’ it. But he doesn’t knock hell out of her, he goes to the master and asks him to do it for him . . . I tell you, I smell a rat.’

  The three men looked at each other; then they turned their gaze on Winnie and she stared back at them for
a moment before saying, ‘Well, you’ve added up two and one, not two and two, you haven’t reached four yet, so what do you make of it?’

  Her eyes came to rest on her son, and Davie answered her, ‘I don’t know, but I mean to find out.’

  ‘Do’ – she nodded her grey head slowly at him – ‘but go about things quietly. Remember, to all intents and purposes it’s you who are named; never was it so silently done, but never so clearly.’

  As she rose from the table she said to no-one in particular, ‘Now I must be goin’. Flood, storm, or tempest, the master will want to eat. But how I’m goin’ to put up with that one flitting about me in the kitchen I just don’t know. I’ve always said she was a flighty-cum-jaunting-Sunday. I told you’ – she nodded towards her husband – ‘didn’t I, I told you I caught her dancin’ in the sitting room to the musical box when the mistress was out. Dancin’, mind, in the mistress’ sitting room.’

  ‘Aw, Ma.’ Davie’s chair scraped back over the stone floor as he got to his feet and, confronting his mother across the table, he said, ‘Let’s get things straight. There’s no harm in a bit of dancing.’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ there is, but there’s a time and a place for everything. And it’s how you dance. There she was with her skirt held right above her knees like any quay trollop.’

  ‘Quay trollop!’ Sep looked up at his daughter and, his good humour returning, he slapped out at her thigh with his hand as he repeated, ‘Quay trollop? You wouldn’t know a quay trollop, me girl, if you saw one.’