The Man Who Cried Read online

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  CATHERINE COOKSON

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  Life and Mary Ann Marriage and Mary Ann Mary Ann’s Angels Bill and Mary Ann FOR CHILDREN

  Matty Doolin Joe and the Gladiator The Nipper Blue Baccy Our John Willie

  Mrs Flannagan’s Trumpet

  Go Tell It To Mrs Golightly

  Our Kate

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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  The Man Who Cried

  a novel by CATHERINE COOKSON

  HEINEMANN : LONDON

  BIBLiniwrnnr PHHI innr ne r>ATr OAIMT i nr

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  William Heinemann Ltd

  15 Queen Street, London WiX 8BE

  LONDON MELBOURNE TORONTO

  JOHANNESBURG AUCKLAND

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  ^ First published 1979 © Catherine Cookson 1979 Reprinted 1979

  SEN 434 14268 9

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd

  Bungay, Suffolk

  03.044

  Contents

  PART ONE

  The Journey 1931

  PART TWO

  The Miracle

  PART THREE

  The First Incident 1938

  PART FOUR

  The Second Incident 1941

  PART FIVE

  The Payment

  BIBLIOTHÈQUE PUBLIQUE DE ( ;’E SAINT-LUC CÔTE SAINT-LUC PUBLIC LIBRARY

  The man who cried

  9”

  I stood and watched the man who cried,

  His face awash, his mouth wide,

  His head beating against the tree,

  His shoulders heaving like hills set free

  From the body of the earth;

  And I felt his anguish take birth in my being,

  And there I knew it would abide

  And eat into my days

  And guide my ways

  And be the judge of my mortal sins.

  My father’s tears were a key

  Which opened the world to me,

  Its ecstasy, and its misery.

  C.C.

  iBLIOTHEQUE PUBLIQUE DE

  COTE SAINT-LUC

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  PART ONE

  The journey 1951

  ”If you go to that funeral you won’t live long to dwell on your sorrow, I promise you that. They haven’t got wind as to the man yet, but by God! they will do if you show your face at that funeral. And when those men of Hastings Old Town finish with you, you won’t have much face left to speak of, I know that.”

  Across the small space of the cottage kitchen, Abel Mason stared at his wife. The tanned skin of his face looked taut as if it had been set in glue ; the wide, thin lips lay one on top of the other, not pressed tight, just resting together as if under the influence of gentle sleep. It was only the eyes that showed any sign of awareness and their expression made up in full for the immobility of the face. But what that expression was it was hard to define, no one emotion could describe it, for in the brown depths of his eyes burnt not only loathing, but the contradictory emotion of pity.

  It was this last that came through to his wife, and it now brought her screaming, ”You dirty, whoring sod you!” and on the last word she picked up a jug of milk from the table and threw it at him.

  The contact of the jug against his forehead and the milk spraying over his mop of fair hair, down his face, and under the collarless shirt on to his chest, brought him springing forward, his fist upraised, only to bring it down on to the corner of the table with a bang as a falsetto voice cried from the corner of the room, ”Dad! Oh Dad!”

  His fist still tight on the table, he bent his body over it, and the milk that dropped on to it now was tinted pink.

  It was some seconds before he straightened his back; but with his head still bent he made for the stairs at the far end of the room which rose steeply, almost like a ladder, to the floor above.

  His wife watched him until his legs disappeared from view; 3

  then, her face working as if with a tic, she went into the scullery and returned with a dish-cloth, and with great wide sweeps of her arm she dragged the cloth from one end of the wooden table to the other. When she came to the corner where the milk was stained with blood she went at it madly as if by obliterating the stain she would wipe out the source from where it came.

  Thrusting her hand towards her seven-year-old son, she ordered, ”Pick those bits up!” and the boy, after a moment’s hesitation, bent down and gathered up the pieces of broken crockery, and as he left the room with them and went through the scullery towards the back door, his mother came behind him and her fingers prodded his shoulder giving emphasis to each word as she said,

  ”If he thinks he’s gettin’ out of this house the day he’s got another think comin’ to him.” Then gripping the boy’s collar and swinging him round towards her, she bent down until her face was on a level with his and, her eyes like circles of grey steel, she glared at him as she said, ”Look, boy; you tell me what you know ’cos if you don’t I’ll make it worse for him. He’s got you on his side, he’s turned you agen me, but afore you’re much older you’ll know which side your bread’s buttered. Where did he meet her ? Tell me that. Tell me!” She now shook him and when the pieces of broken jug fell from his hands her own hand came out and caught him in a resounding slap across the ear; and now she cried at him, ”Tell him I hit you again. Aye, go on, when he comes down, tell him I hit you again.”

  As he ran for the door, his hand pressed tight over his ear, he moaned aloud because of the pain which was like a needle going through the centre of his head into the back of his nose and down into his throat, making it impossible for him to swallow.

  Outside he ran through the hens that were scratching in the yard and round by the little pond where the two families of ducks were busy washing themselves, and so down to the copse that led on into the woods. Here, sitting on the ground, he rocked himself as he held his head.

  When the pain subsided he leant back against the bole of a sapling and he muttered half aloud,

  ”I’m glad me dad didn’t see her do it,” and there was that element of pity for her in his thinking too.

  His dad had warned her if she just once again boxed his ears he would do the same to her, and he had. It was the first time he had

  lifted his hand to her, and he had knocked her flying into the corner where she had lain holding her head very like he himself did every time she hit him, which was always after there had been a row.

  Inside he felt sad. The feeling went to such a depth that he imagined it must encompass the whole world, his known world where it stretched from Rye, which lay along the coast to the left beyond Winchelsea, to the right to Fairlight and the coves and glens, right to Hastings.

  It was to the coves and the glens that his mind turned now and he doubted if his father would ever take him that way again.

  When had he first take
n him into Fairlight Glen ? Oh, it was a long, long time ago. Had he been four or five ? He didn’t know, only that it was a long time ago. But he could remember the day distinctly when he first met Mrs Alice in Ecclesbourne Glen.

  He always thought of her as Mrs Alice, not Mrs Lovina, because his father called her Alice. Of course, he couldn’t, and so he called her Mrs Alice. She used to laugh when he said Mrs Alice.

  She had a lovely laugh ; it made you smile, then spread your mouth and laugh with her.

  It was on a Sunday his father first spoke to her. There were lots of other people walking about the glen that day because it was fine and the sun was warm. People were picnicking and children were jumping among the rocks leading to the sea. His father had told him to take his shoes and socks off and to go and play with the other children. And he had done so. But every now and again he had stopped and looked up towards where his father sat on a dry rock talking to ... the lady. Yet he had known from the first that she wasn’t a real lady, not like the ones who lived in Winchelsea, particularly the one who had a long drive to her house and for whom his father had worked since coming back from the war. . . . Well, not really the war. . . . There was a pocket of his mind that held something shameful concerning his father and the war.

  No, Mrs Alice wasn’t a lady, in fact she was like his mother in that she talked like her, using the same words, except that her voice wasn’t harsh and bawling. When was it he had begun to wish that Mrs Alice was his mother ? That was a long, long time ago too, weeks, months.

  The following Sunday, too, they had gone to the glen, even though the weather had changed and there was drizzly rain. And

  5

  Mrs Alice was there. But on that day they all three sat under the cliffs and his father broke a bar of Fry’s chocolate, and they all had a piece; he had always associated Fry’s chocolate with the glen after that.

  It was winter before he again accompanied his father to the glen. On that particular day his mother had demanded to know where his father was going and when he said, ”For a walk,” she had wanted to know why he had taken to going alone and not taking him along. On that day his father had said, ”Get your coat on; wrap up well.”

  They had been gone from the house more than five minutes when his father whispered, ”Don’t look back, your mother’s behind. Don’t look back.” And on that day his father took a different direction and they came out on the road that led to Fairlight church, where his father, having hoisted him up on top of a high wall, had himself leant against the wall and lit a cigarette, which he puffed at slowly, not looking to right or left. They seemed to have stayed there for an eternity, until quite suddenly his father lifted him from the wall, saying, ”Come on,” and he had run him through fields, over stiles and, for some distance, right along the cliff top.

  When at last, panting and puffing, they came to the glen it was raining heavily and a wind was blowing. But there was Mrs Alice waiting in the shelter of some trees, and before they reached her his father let go of his hand and ran towards her, then put his arms about her. It seemed on that day his father forgot all about him.

  After a while his father had taken his hand again and the three of them walked on, up through the trees to a jutting rock, and his father, pushing him round into the shelter of one side, said, ”Sit there a minute, Dickie, just a minute. I’ll . . . I’ll be around the corner here.”

  What was a minute ? Was it a short time or a long time ? He had felt very alone, quite lost sitting there waiting a minute. He became frightened thinking his father had gone off and left him as he often threatened to do to his mother when there were rows in the house, and so he had run out of the shelter and into the wind and as he rounded the rock he stopped suddenly. His father was kneeling on the ground; and Mrs Alice was kneeling too; and his father was holding Mrs Alice’s face between his hands and he was saying

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  to her, ”Don’t say that. Don’t say that. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in my life.

  You’re the only good thing I’ve ever known. Look; bring Florrie, and I’ll bring Dickie, and we’ll go off away from this cursed place, because for all its beauty the whole area has always been a cursed place to me. Will you? Will you, Alice?”

  He watched Mrs Alice stare into his father’s face and he was always to remember the tone of her voice as she said, ”Oh, Abel! Abel! if only I could. ... Oh, Abel, if only I could.”

  ”But you can,” his father said; ”you’ve only got to make up your mind. Just walk out.”

  ”You don’t know Florrie. She’s twelve, and all she thinks about, all she talks about, is her dad.

  And he, well, as he said, if I ever left him or brought shame on him in any way he would do for me. If it took him his lifetime, he’d do for me.”

  ”That’s just talk, big talk. Sailors always come out with the same jargon. We could be across the country before he gets home. And then I’ve been thinking, there’s Canada. The . . . the world is open to us, Alice. . . . Oh, Alice, say you will. We’ve both had enough of hell to deserve a glimpse of heaven. Say you will. . . . Say you will.”

  ”The boy !” She had turned her head to the side, and his father put out his hand and beckoned him forward, and he never moved from his knees when he put his arm around his shoulders and said, ”The boy’s for us. He’s been through it too, he’s been made older than his years. His life’s a misery. He’s Tom between the two of us, but yet he’s for me, aren’t you?” His father pressed him tight against his side and he looked up at him and moved his head once and his father said,

  ”There. There now, Alice.”

  He watched Mrs Alice’s face. She was gulping in her throat, the rain dripping down from the brim of her hat on to their joined hands, and it seemed another eternity before she said, ”Yes, yes, Abel, I’ll do it ”

  When had that happened? It seemed another long, long time ago, and yet it was only two weeks or perhaps three. He couldn’t pin-point the time but he remembered his father saying, ”We’ll make it next Sunday. I’ll walk out, him with me, just as if it was our usual stroll; and you do the same. Oh, Alice! Alice! ...”

  He started, his back springing from the tree as he heard his mother’s voice yelling again. At the same time there came to him

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  deep thuds as if someone was battering a door down, and htfîtose quickly to his feet and threaded his way through the copse until he came in sight of the cottage; and there was his mother standing in the open yard that gave on to the field, and she was crying, ”I said you’re not goin’, and you’re not goin’. She’ll be where she should have been this long while, well under the clay, afore I let you out of there.”

  When the thuds came again he knew it was his father’s boot kicking at the lock.

  Of a sudden the thudding stopped and there came a silence all around him. He could hear the birds singing, a wood pigeon coocooed above his head; a cheeky rabbit scurried across the opening between the copse and the duck-pond. He heard in the distance -, the clear sound of a train whistle, which clearness his father always said forecast bad weather. He pictured the train choo . . . chooing from Hastings, through Ore on to Doleham Halt, and all the way to Rye.

  His mind was jerked from thoughts of the train by the sound of breaking glass. There was a great crash at first, then tinkling sounds like notes being struck on a piano.

  When he saw his father come head first through the kitchen window and drop on to his hands on the flags that surrounded the cottage he wondered why he hadn’t just opened the window instead of smashing it. Then he remembered the tapping sound he had heard earlier on like a woodpecker on a tree bole. His mother must have nailed up the window.

  He held his breath as he watched his father dusting himself down, with his mother standing like a ramrod not three yards from him. He saw his father turn his back on her and reach back through the broken pane. When he withdrew his hand he was holding his trilby in it.

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p; He watched him bang it twice against his coat sleeve, then press the dent further into the crown, put it on and pull the peak down over his brow before slowly walking away. But he hadn’t reached the bridle path before his mother was screaming again.

  ”You’re not a man, you’re spineless! A conchie! A conchie! Objectin’ ’cos of your principles?

  Bloody liar! Objectin’ ’cos you were a stinkin’ coward. Decent lads bein’ killed, slaughtered while you hoed taties. You spineless, spunkless nowt you!”

  Dick put his hands tightly over his ears, but his eyes remained

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  fixed on his father as he watched him getting smaller and smaller the further he went along the path, until he looked minute as he jumped the stile; and then he was gone.

  And now the world was empty, terrifyingly empty. What if he never came back ? What if he went to Mrs Alice’s funeral and then kept walking on right back to that far place called the North

  ? The place that he was always talking about, the place where he had been born, the place where people were kind and open-handed and didn’t fight all the livelong day! . . . But his mother was from there too and she fought all the livelong day.

  He would die if his dad didn’t come back. . . . No, he wouldn’t; he would set out and look for him, and he’d walk and walk until he found him. . . .

  He sat down where he was on the dried leaves and from the distance he watched his mother sweep up the broken glass, then trim the broken remnants from the window sash. She did this with the hammer, bashing at the framework as if she’d knock it out. Every now and again she would stop and look about her and say something out loud.

  When he first started school he used to grumble to himself about the long walk over the fields to the main road where he caught the bus, but whenever his mother yelled he was glad that they lived so far away from everybody for otherwise he knew the boys at school would have taunted him, as they did Jackie Benton because his father was in prison for stealing.