The Glass Virgin Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Glass Virgin

  BOOK ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  BOOK TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  BOOK THREE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  BOOK FOUR

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  BOOK FIVE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  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 wen3t 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 Desert 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

  The Glass Virgin

  Annabella LaGrange was the only child of a wealthy family, owners of a glassworks in the North-East of England. When Annabella was seven, she thought the world a delightful place to live in, and only occasionally wondered why her parents never took her beyond the gates of their magnificent country estate. When she was ten she decided that the seclusion didn’t really matter because when she grew up she would marry her handsome cousin Stephen and never be lonely again.

  But when she is seventeen, Annabella learns something so shocking about her past that she flees her childhood home and is forced to embark upon a new existence with an invented past. Suddenly she must unlearn everything she has been taught about class and love.

  THE GLASS VIRGIN

  Catherine Cookson

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1970

  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 978-1-78036-018-8

  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

  MY DARLING DAUGHTER

  One

  On the eve of her seventh birthday Annabella Lagrange learned that it was wrong for men to ask for a penny a day more for twelve hours’ work down a coal mine, and also that because of such wrongdoing they were deprived of food and shelter. But she also learned on that day that it was right for her father to take all the clothes off a strange lady, bathe her, then feed her with strawberries.

  Redford Hall was situated in the County of Durham, six miles from Newcastle and five miles from South Shields or Jarrow, depending on which path you took at the crossroads. Its grounds extended to sixty acres, ten of which were given over to pleasure gardens, the remainder to the home farm.

  The Hall itself was comprised of two separate houses, the Old Hall and the House. The Old Hall had been built in 1640 of blocks of quarried stone and contained only twelve rooms. The House was built in 1780 of red brick and timber. It had twenty-six rooms spread over three floors. A long, broad gallery connected the two buildings, its west wall being made up of six arched windows set in deep bays. These overlooked the west drive and gave a panoramic view of the gardens beyond. Below the gallery was a small chapel that had primarily been attached to the Hall.

  On wet or cold days Annabella was allowed to play in the gallery. Her favourite game was to run the length of it from the door which led out of the House to that which led into the Old Hall. When she reached this door she would throw herself against its black oak face, her arms spread wide as if in an embrace, and like that she would listen for as long as she dare, for she was never alone in the gallery; Watford or old Alice were always present. Sometimes she heard her father’s voice calling loudly to Constantine. Sometimes she heard him laughing. She loved to hear him laughing. Once she had fallen on her back when the door had been pulled open and the half-caste valet, with his Negroid features set on pale skin, had come through balancing a great silver tray laden with breakfast dishes.

  Never, not once, had she been past that door. In her prayers at night she sometimes asked God to perform a kind of miracle that would transport her to the other side of the oak door. Of late she had begun to imagine what she would find on the other side, and her visions had always been of brightness, colour and gaiety.

  It was a source of questionable comfort to her that she was not the only one who never passed through the black oak door, for her mama never went into the Old Hall, nor any of the servants from the House except Reeves, the first footman, and the second footman, Faill. She did not consider that Constantine belonged to the House because he lived in the Old Hall; he did not even eat in the kitchen with the others.

  Her papa spent a lot of time in the Hall. He slept and ate there, except when they had company in the House like Uncle James and Aunt Emma; but then they only came to dinner and never stayed overnight. It was only her papa’s friends who stayed overnight. Her papa laughed a lot and was very happy when he had his friends staying with him, but at those times her mama did not even smile. She couldn’t say herself that she liked it when her papa had his friends around him because at those times he drank a lot and raced the horses over the fells, and they came back sweating. Last time one poor horse hurt its leg and they shot it in the yard, and she had seen them do it. It was on a day when her mama had gone across the park to visit Grandma.

  Watford had taken her up into the attics and into her room, and Watford’s window overlooked the yard, and that was how she had seen the horse. She had screamed.

  Mrs Page, the housekeeper, had beaten Watford over the head and she herself had cried all the more because of that. Mrs Page had then said to her, ‘Now we won’t upset your mama by telling her about that horse, will we?’

  She had replied obediently, ‘No, Mrs Page,’ knowing all the while that the housekeeper was not so concerned that her mama should learn about the horse, but that Watford had taken her into her room during the time she should have been resting in the nursery.

  Things were never the same in the house when her mama was out; the servants acted differently. They walked much slower and they laughed when they passed each other on the stairs. And it was a sure sign that her mama was out when Ada Rawlings put her head round the nursery door, for then she and Watford would whisper together; and sometimes they would put their heads on each other’s shoulders and giggle.

  No-one giggled or laughed when her mama was about. Yet her mama never raised her voice, she never shouted like Papa did. But then ladies never shoute
d, only men and servants raised their voices. She loved her mama, and her mama loved her. Even when her mama’s love wasn’t demonstrated by a quick tight embrace or a kiss in secret she knew she was enveloped in her love. Yet her mama wasn’t happy. Even when they walked hand-in-hand along the criss-cross path in the big wood she knew she wasn’t happy and this hurt her. When she lay awake at nights thinking her strange and wonderful thoughts she tried to devise ways which would make her mama happy.

  The house was different today because her mama had ridden out very early, accompanied by old Alice. She had gone to Durham to visit Uncle James and Aunt Emma. The visit was in some way connected with Papa because she had witnessed the unusual sight of her parents walking down the main staircase together at the early hour of 8.30. Her papa had not been downstairs for over a week because his hip was hurting after a fall from a horse, but with the aid of a stick he was descending the stairs. She stood still until they crossed the wide hall and disappeared into the porch, then she flew along the landing, down a corridor and burst into the gallery, and from the last window, where she pressed her face to the glass, she was just in time to see her papa handing her mama up into the coach.

  When she returned to the nursery Watford wasn’t there, but this she didn’t mind in the least because being left entirely alone was the one compensation her mama’s absence afforded.

  The last time her mama had been away for a day she had been alone for a full half-hour; it was a wonderful experience, so much so she had imagined she was someone else; she had just sat and thought her thoughts with no-one to say, ‘Miss Annabella. Miss Annabella. Miss Annabella.’