The Thursday Friend Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Thursday Friend

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  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
r />   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 Thursday Friend

  Hannah and Humphrey Drayton were regarded by all who knew them as the perfect married couple. However, all was not as it appeared on the surface, and after years of tyranny and loneliness, Hannah could no longer bear this stuffy City broker. The only relief she had was from his absence on Thursday evenings, when he played bridge with a group of acquaintances, and at weekends, which he spent with an elderly couple who regarded him as the son they had never had.

  Hannah, in despair and in the face of her husband’s ridicule, took refuge in her writing, and it was the completion of a book for children that took her to the office of a publisher, a visit that was to change her life. There she was to meet David Graventon, an assistant to the publisher, and a man she was soon to think of as her Thursday Friend.

  Taking advantage of Humphrey’s absences, she and David would meet and talk, visit the theatre and the cinema – activities she had never enjoyed with her husband. He, of course, knew nothing of Hannah’s ‘other life’, being preoccupied with protecting what he imagined were his future interests. And even when he became aware that she was seeing someone his thoughts of revenge were hamstrung by a secret of his own.

  Then an event occurred that was to destroy all his prospects, causing him to plan a bitter retaliation for what he regarded as his wife’s betrayal. As for Hannah, her Thursday Friend was to become the saviour of her very existence – but would he manage to resolve his own not inconsiderable personal difficulties and offer Hannah the happiness she craved? With its deceptively simple theme, The Thursday Friend is a remarkable novel that explores the complexities of human relationships.

  THE THURSDAY FRIEND

  Catherine Cookson

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1999

  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 978-1-78036-016-4

  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

  Chapter One

  Hannah Drayton got off the bus near Ealing Broadway. Three minutes later she was walking through a good-class district which gave abruptly on to a council estate. Yet this estate was different from the usual type, in that the houses were mostly terraced.

  She turned into Buttermere Close, walked past a number of houses with well-kept gardens, then opened the gate of number 23, rang the bell and waited for the door to be opened.

  A tall woman greeted Hannah with: ‘Hello! What’s brought you at this time of the morning?’

  ‘Nothing, Janie. Nothing very much. Let me get in.’

  ‘Let you get in? You look as white as a sheet.’ Then, shaking her head, the tall woman led the way into the kitchen, saying, ‘Oh, Lord! I haven’t started to clear up yet. I was having ten minutes: Maggie’s taken the kids to the park. The only good thing to say about school holidays is that she looks after the young ’uns.’ Then, her voice changing as she half turned towards her sister, she said, ‘You in trouble of some sort, Hannah?’

  ‘Not . . . not what you would call trouble, Janie. Oh, may I have a cup of tea?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. And you’ve seen all this mess before, so what am I worrying about? Come and sit down while the kettle boils.’

  Five minutes later, when they were sitting opposite each other at the narrow, crockery-littered table, Janie Harper said, ‘Well, out with it.’

  She watched her sister bite hard down on her thumbnail, an action, she recalled, which always meant Hannah was in some kind of trouble. It was some time since she had last seen her do it. But then she did not see her quite so frequently as she had before Hannah had married that stuffed shirt. Thinking of the stuffed shirt, she said, ‘Is it to do with Humph?’

  Hannah Drayton closed her eyes for a moment. Humph. Oh, how that term annoyed Humphrey; it had been Eddie who first used it on him. But she answered, ‘Yes, in a way’; then, much louder, she said, ‘Oh . . . more than in a way, Janie. I just had to talk to someone about it, and there’s only you; but I know you don’t care for him, no more than does Eddie. But it isn’t his fault, I mean . . . but yes, it is in a way.’

  ‘Look!’ Janie’s hand came across the table and gripped her younger sister’s arm. ‘Start from the beginning.’

  At this Hannah’s head drooped, and she muttered, ‘It’s . . . it’s so personal, Janie.’

  ‘Well, I’m a married woman, aren’t I? and how! If there’s anything you want to know about bed, here’s your agony aunt looking at you.’

  At this, Hannah said, ‘I want to laugh at you as usual, Janie, but at this moment I can’t. Well, it . . . it’s like this.’ Her head drooping again and her voice low, she began to talk.

  She talked for fully five minutes before Janie burst out, ‘The unnatural bugger! How long is it, you say, since you’ve had separate rooms?’

  ‘About two and a half years.’

  ‘And you’ve been married only four years altogether? Look, I had my suspicions of him at the beginning. Is he . . . is he the other way?’

  ‘Oh, no! No, Janie.’ Hannah’s back was straight now, her voice loud in her husband’s defence. ‘Nothing like that. No! In fact, he’s against them. There’s a couple living further down the road, and I once said how nice they were, very pleasant and quite intelligent to talk to, and he actually went for me. I couldn’t understand it. I’d never seen him in such a temper. You see, Janie, he’s got such a kind nature.’

  ‘Kind nature be damned! He couldn’t keep you at arm’s length for the past two and a half years just
for an allergy. I never knew you were allergic to apricots. We used to have all kinds of fruit – Oh, didn’t we!’ – she laughed – ‘from Eddie’s stall! I don’t remember you coming out with anything, apricots or no apricots.’

  ‘We never had them, though, did we!’

  ‘Have you had the allergy since?’

  ‘Only once, and that was a few months ago. I ate some other fruit. I didn’t know what it was then, but I think it was the fruit.’

  ‘But you say he left you alone because you had the allergy?’

  ‘No, not really. I happened to be scratching in the middle of the night and I had to get up and put on some soothing lotion, and I disturbed him. The next night he said . . . well, we would both rest better for a time if he went into the spare room.’

  Janie put in quietly, ‘And he’s been there ever since?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve done nothing about it, not spoken to him about it?’

  ‘Oh, Janie, how could I? I’m not you, Janie, I can’t come out with things.’

  ‘More’s the pity. That’s what I say. How does he treat you otherwise, I mean at home?’

  ‘Oh’ – Hannah’s voice held a lightness now – ‘he’s very kind. He discusses business. Well, I don’t know anything about a broker’s business, only that they buy and sell shares, but he tells me funny things that happen in his department. Including Humphrey, there are four men: Mr Wainwright is above him, and I don’t think Humphrey likes him much; Hobbs, he says, is a quiet bachelor, but Brown is the butt of Wainwright. He calls him Windsor, you know, like the soup, Brown Windsor. And of course there’s the big man whom most people seem to know only by name. He’s called Manstein, or something like that. I don’t know whether he’s German or Russian, I only know that once a year they all go to different parts of the world for conferences and—’