The Moth Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Moth

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  PART THREE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  PART FOUR

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  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 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 Moth

  In the brooding north country hills, a man and a woman fought for the passion they felt for each other that the world branded a disgrace…

  Agnes Thorman – the proud but forlorn mistress of a once-grand estate, whose society forbade her the man who was her equal in all but name…

  Robert Bradley – a gifted craftsman, as visionary and challenging as the dawning new age. He had yet to seize his dream, which could destroy the woman he loved…

  And Milicent Thorman – the strange, wise girl-child fated to play a part in the lovers’ unfolding destiny…

  The lives of these three are woven into a compelling story with the masterly touch of Catherine Cookson.

  THE MOTH

  Catherine Cookson

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1986

  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 978-1-78036-027-0

  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

  To my secretary

  Sarah Sables

  whose heart, like Robert’s,

  was touched by Millie

  The caterpillar on the leaf

  Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief.

  Kill not the moth nor butterfly,

  For the Last Judgement draweth nigh.

  William Blake

  PART ONE

  THE MOVE

  One

  Robert Bradley sat in the front room of 122, Upper Foxglove Road, Jarrow, which town is situated in the County of Durham, being bordered along the whole of its length by the river Tyne. It is as though the town had squeezed itself out of Tyne Dock, through East Jarrow, on past Saint Paul’s church and the old monastery which was the home of the Venerable Bede, up the Church Bank and into the main thoroughfare, along which run the tramlines. And if you follow them you will eventually arrive at Palmer’s shipyard at the end of Ellison Street. There are other yards along the river bank but it is Palmer’s that dominates the town and gives it, as it were, its lifeblood.

  Robert Bradley had worked in Palmer’s since he was fourteen years old. He had served his time for four years and one extra for improving. This brought him up to nineteen. Now at twenty-four he was a man and skilled in his work as his father had been before him.

  Six hours ago he had helped to carry his father out of this room where he had lain for five full days in a bought coffin. He regretted that. And he had made up his mind on one point for the future, and that was if he ever had a home of his own, not just two rooms and a scullery in which you couldn’t swing a cat, but a real home, a house where you went upstairs to sleep and had a shed . . . no, a brick building outside as a workshop . . . well, if that day should ever come about the first thing he would make in that workshop would be his coffin, because he was particular about wood, as his father had been. Oh yes, as his father had been. So why hadn’t his father thought about making his own coffin, even in the backyard? He’d had plenty time to think about it for he had been in his trade for forty years. But then he’d had a wife to please and she had wanted good solid furniture in the house. And this his father had made in what spare time he had. He himself had helped with quite a number of pieces. The chiffonier opposite, for instance, along which his uncle was now rubbing his hand.

  He looked at his uncle, scrutinising him through slightly lowered lids. He didn’t really know what to make of him. Well, who would know what to make of a man who had stopped speaking to his brother twenty-five years ago, and what’s more, had looked upon him only twice during that time? The first was three years ago when, as now, he had come to a funeral. On that occasion, however, he hadn’t come into the house, he had just stood in the churchyard and away from those gathered about the grave. But when he himself and his father had together turned away from the graveside his father had looked across the snow-clad cemetery at the solitary figure standing alone and had muttered, ‘God in heaven! Our John.’

  He had remained by his father’s side as he walked towards the stiff figure of the elderly man, and what the man said to his father on their approach was, ‘Well, you’ve lost her an’ all,’ to which his father had answered, ‘Aye, John, as you say, I’ve lost her an’ all. Now that should make you happy.’ And on this the man had turned and walked away.

  It was on that night his father had told him the reason for the split. It would appear that his mother had been going to marry the elder brother but had in the meanwhile fallen in love with the younger one. John Bradley was thirty-three at the time and settled in his ways. He had courted Annie Forrester for six years. She lived in the hamlet in a cottage a little way from the Bradleys’ carpenter’s shop and house, and everybody knew it would be a big step up for her when she became mistress of the house that was three times bigger than any other in the hamlet. More so, it had ten acres of freehold land, a big yard and a set of stone outbuildings that any craftsman could be proud of. But what did she do? She ran off with Bob Bradley who was seven years younger than his brother and nearer her own age.

  John Bradley lived alone for eight years before his bitterness softened somewhat; and then he married. No-one from the hamlet, but a woman from a Methodist family in Birtley, and she in her late thirties.

  Robert now turned his gaze on the woman. In his opinion she was what he would call a canny body. She must, at one time, he imagined, have been passably pretty; now her hair was greying and her face was lined, but she looked kindly. He wondered how she really got on with his uncle who was a rabid member of the Church of England, so he had been given to understand by his father.

  Then there was their daughter Carrie. Now she was something, was Carrie. She said she was fifteen, but if she had said seventeen he would have believed her because she was developed where a lass should be developed: her buttocks were already moulding her full skirt and her breasts pushing at the bodice of her dress. And she had a bright eye, had this Carrie. And he knew all about bright eyes. Oh aye, he did that. There was one in the kitchen there clearing up after the tea. What would she expect of him for that? You just had to smile at Polly and she took it as an advance towards marriage.

  He was getting worried about Polly Hinton and her ma . . . and her da; they had never been out of the house since his father had died. When he had said he could manage, Mrs Hinton had thrust him aside, saying, ‘Don’t be silly, lad. What are neighbours for at a time like this, if not to take over?’ And she had taken over, and in doing so had given him a glimpse of what it would be like to be married to Polly. He had no intention of marrying Polly, but you couldn’t get that into Polly’s head.

  Since last New Year’s Eve, when he had let himself go and had a bit of slap and tickle with her up the back lane, no more, no, no more than that, she had never been off his tail. His father used to laugh and say, ‘Look out, lad, or you’ll wake up one morning and find yourself in bed with Polly on one side of you and her ma on the other.’

  ‘This is a nice piece of mahogany. Did you make it?’