The Lord and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories) Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Lord and Mary Ann

  Chapter One: A Respectable Cow

  Chapter Two: Going Up in the World

  Chapter Three: Christmas

  Chapter Four: The Old Firm

  Chapter Five: A Child Is Born

  Chapter Six: A Matter Of Education

  Chapter Seven: The Lapse

  Chapter Eight: The Loft

  Chapter Nine: Absolution

  Chapter Ten: The Deal

  Chapter Eleven: The Last Word

  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
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br />   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 Lord and Mary Ann

  As has been said before, Mary Ann Shaughnessy is no ordinary child. She first won a place in the hearts of thousands of readers in A Grand Man, described by Alan Melville in a broadcast as “a quite enchanting novel, written by someone who obviously knows the mind of a child as well as she knows the mean back streets of Tyneside.”

  Mary Ann firmly believed that when her father took on the farm job she had largely contrived to find for him, he would be set for life. Away from the temptations of the town, doing the kind of work he was meant for, he must slowly but surely turn into the angelic being Mary Ann knew him to be. But Mary Ann did not count on the frailties of human nature nor the sheer contrariness of others, which destroyed all her well-laid plans…

  In this second novel of the Shaughnessy saga, Mary Ann returns in this delightful, warm-hearted and humorously observed story of life set in northern England.

  THE LORD AND MARY ANN

  Catherine Cookson

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1956

  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 1998

  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 978-1-78036-076-8

  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

  Chapter One: A Respectable Cow

  The cowshed was full. It was full of cows and activity, of pails clanging, of noises like jets of escaping steam, of deep lowings, of snuffles and swishes, of hooves meeting stone, of steaming flesh, and contentment. Mike Shaughnessy leaned his head against the warm, brown skin. His brow moved gently over a rib, and the cow, a dappled jersey, turned a deeply soft eye on him. Her jaws moved twice; she turned away again and let her milk run freely.

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Aye?’ He did not turn his head from the beast’s side, but screwed it round to look at the man who was addressing him.

  ‘It’s rainin’ again. What d’you bet he doesn’t send you out to the top field?’

  Mike lifted his head and looked full at the undersized man who, hose in hand, was directing a jet of water along the gutter flanking the byres.

  ‘Well, if he does, what of it?’

  The other man stared for a moment before saying, ‘Why, man, I can’t understand you. You’re a damn fool. What d’you put up with it for? When it’s wet you’re out, when it’s fine you’re in. He gives you all the muck. You’ll never get the tractor through that bog.’

  ‘I’ll try. And look, Jonesy’ – Mike stood up, and his height and breadth dwarfed the man still further – ‘it’s like this: if I don’t make a hullabaloo about it I don’t see any reason why you should. So don’t keep on.’

  ‘You needn’t take it like that. I’m not keeping on. But what I maintain is, if he does it to one he’s just as likely to do it to another . . . I’d like to see him try it on me. I was engaged for one job. I don’t even mind doin’ two or three, but I wouldn’t stand for what he dishes out to you. Aw, man,’ Jones leaned towards Mike, and continued quietly, ‘why don’t you tell him to go to hell? What can he do to you but give you the sack?’

  ‘Da.’

  Both men turned, and Jones, his manner jovial now, said, ‘Hallo there, Mary Ann.’

  ‘Hallo, Mr Jones.’

  Mary Ann looked at the farmhand. She wasn’t sure, even after having known Mr Jones for three months, whether she liked him or not. Sometimes he made her laugh . . . but not when he was talking to her da.

  She turned to Mike, saying, ‘Me ma says, are you comin’? Your breakfast’s been ready for ages.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ Mike lifted the brimming pail, and Jones said, ‘Give it here, I’ll see to it. You should be comin’ back now ’stead of goin’.’

  Mike handed over the pail and with no further words left the cowshed, Mary Ann walking somewhat soberly by his side.

  ‘Da, can we have a dog?’

  ‘What do you want a dog for? There’s two on the farm already, and you’ve got Tibby.’

  ‘I know, but a cat’s not a dog. And Mr Ratcliffe doesn’t like us to play with the farm dogs.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Mike.

  ‘Da—’ The inflexion Mary Ann now gave to the word told Mike that whatever was to follow was of grave importance.

  ‘Aye, what is it?’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t a heifer a bull?’

  One side of Mike’s mouth pulled up, but restraining his smile he said, ‘Hardly that.’

  ‘But it is, Da.’ Mary Ann paused in her walk to add emphasis to this statement.

  But when Mike continued to move steadily on she ran and caught him up and pulled at his hand. ‘But it is, Da. It must be.’

  ‘Well, if you say it is, it is.’

  They continued across the yard in silence, and out onto the road. Away over the fields the rain looked like a swaying sheet let down from the surrounding fells. Even the knowledge that the weather looked set and that in a very short time he would be out working in it did not affect Mike adversely. Each day was good, for his feet were on the ground. No longer did he have to listen to the banging and hammering of the shipyard; no longer climb the gantries and tremble at their height; no longer was he hemmed in by people, people as thickly packed as the bricks in the walls of their houses. He was in the open once again doing the job he was created for. He had no religious beliefs, had Mike, but of this he was sure: each man had been made for a specific purpose, and his was to tend animals and to work under the open sky. Time and again he had tried it, only to be driven back to the towns and the yards. But now he was settled – thanks to this mite.

  He put out his hand and grasped his daughter’s, and this to Mary Ann was the signal that her da didn’t want to be quiet any longer and that he wouldn’t mind if she chattered. So once again she pressed her point regarding the sex of a heifer.

  ‘It must be a bull, Da.’

  Mike’s head suddenly went back in its old carefree fashion and his laugh ran along the hedges like wind and sent the birds into a chirruping and a chittering. Mary Ann, too, was forced into laughter, and she pul
led on his hand, saying, ‘Oh Da, give over and tell me – come on. Aw!’

  ‘Look’ – Mike nodded along the road – ‘there’s your mother. I’m in for it.’

  Elizabeth Shaughnessy was standing by the cottage gate. She was a tall, blonde woman, as tall as her husband, and with a carriage that had something of defiance in its straightness. Mary Ann looked along the road towards her, and, as oft-times happened, she was so struck by the beauty of her mother’s face that all else was sent spinning from her mind. She had always considered her ma bonny, even when they were living in the attics in Mulhattans’ Hall and her da had got sick at times and didn’t come home with his pay, when her ma’s face would become drawn and her voice sharp. Even then she had remained bonny. But since they’d come to the farm the word bonny no longer fitted her, for now she was beautiful, and she laughed with her da and they larked on in the kitchen at nights. Even their Michael was happy and all swanky now that he was at the Grammar School.

  The wonder of life shot through Mary Ann, and she leapt clean off the road and with a shout dashed to the gate and to Elizabeth.

  ‘Now look, stop it! What’s come over you? Don’t go mad. Go on, start your breakfast or you’ll miss the bus.’ Lizzie pushed Mary Ann up the path, then turned to greet her husband: ‘You get later . . . anything wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? What could be wrong?’ He paused a moment and looked into her eyes, which were on a level with his own. ‘Why can’t you stop worrying?’

  She sighed and smiled quietly. ‘Come on, have your breakfast.’