The Solace of Sin Read online

  THE SOLACE OF SIN

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Solace of Sin

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART TWO Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  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 three or four 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 bedridden 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 80s.

  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 nov
el)

  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 Solace of Sin

  From the first moment she saw the house on the moors north of Hexham, Constance Stapleton knew she could live there, despite its isolation, its lack of basic facilities and despite her fear of loneliness. With her marriage on the brink of disintegration, she had already decided to sell the large flat she and her husband Jim shared and she saw the move as a means of initiating the separation she knew was necessary. Their son, Peter, would soon be off to university and there was, she decided, no reason to delay the inevitable. Even if the winters at Shekinah, as the house was called, were as severe as her family had warned, she told herself she could always buy a flat in nearby Hexham.

  To buy the house, Connie was told that she must negotiate with the nearby O’Connors, one of whom, Vincent, appeared to be their spokesman. However, she was somewhat surprised by his abruptness and by his insistence that the deal be closed forthwith; and further taken aback when he asked her if she would be able to sign the papers on the following day.

  Afterwards, when the house was hers and she had settled in, Connie was to discover that mystery was a way of life with Vincent O’Connor. Even so, she was beginning to rely on him more and more as she settled into the new routine of days and nights at Shekinah. But then, out of the blue, revelations about the man with whom she had shared a life for many years came to light and put her new life at Shekinah under threat…

  Set in the 1970s, The Solace of Sin is the story of a strong and independent woman whose life is transformed by new surroundings and new acquaintances. It is a compelling and richly satisfying novel.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1998

  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 978-1-78036-069-0

  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

  PART ONE

  One

  Constance Stapleton glanced from the red face of her son to the bed behind him where, spread on the coverlet, lay a number of pictures of nude women in contorted poses. Her eyes remained fixed on them until the boy spluttered, ‘You shouldn’t have burst in like that.’

  She now looked into his eyes, so like her own, the deep brown slashed with the afterglow of his blushing. She had never before knocked on his door, but today he was eighteen: he was no longer a boy, he was a man; young in manly years yet, but already clawing at the baser urges of the man. But then she was glad he was taking an interest in such things. However, if she were to tell him so he wouldn’t believe her. They understood each other very well; they were closer than most mothers and sons: close in the places of the heart that needed no voice; close in tastes; and definitely close in resemblance, both nut brown, tall and thin with similar tentative expressions always hovering on their faces, as if something inside of them was striving to escape but found it impossible to push through the surface, though he would not have believed her if she had told him she was glad he was looking at such pictures. Her eyes still on him, she said softly, ‘It’s all right.’

  When he swung round from her and leant over the bed, his fists digging into the glossy photographs, sending bare legs and thrusting breasts into further contortions, she looked at his narrow shoulders and wanted to pull him to her, to grip him fiercely to her and lay her head against his neck and cry. She imagined, for a moment, how upset he would be if he saw her cry. He had never seen a tear in her eyes in his life, and she had never known him cry since he was four and a half years old, on the night she found out about Yvonne and Jim.

  Yvonne should have been in the nursery seeing to her charge, but her master had sought her services.

  She herself had returned home unexpectedly early from a day in town, and the sight of her husband in their room with a slip of a girl, almost unrecognisable without her clothes, had stripped her bare of the benefit of her convent education and brought her voice tearing and rasping from her throat. It had filled the house and startled the maids. It had scared the pert French nursemaid. It had angered James Stapleton and it had brought Peter running across the landing into the bedroom, there to see his mother, his warm brown beautiful mother pouring out strange words as she stood over Nanny, who was pulling frilly knickers onto her legs and had her chest all bare.

  It wasn’t until her son had begun to cry that she had come to herself. Grabbing him up into her arms, she had taken him back to the nursery, and there, still in her outdoor clothes, she had sat rocking him until he fell into an exhausted sleep. But she herself had not cried.

  The very last time she had cried was on her nineteenth birthday, when Peter was only two months old. She had cried all that day and all the following night, and she felt she would be crying now if the doctor hadn’t given her a sedative. Three days later, when she became fully conscious, she realised that in those twenty-four hours she had cried all the tears she should have shed in her lifetime.

  ‘Put them away into a drawer,’ she said, again looking down onto the bed.

  ‘I’ll…burn them.’ His head was still bent.

  ‘No, don’t burn them,’ she said, her large mouth falling into a smile, ‘you’ll only go and buy some more.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ He turned his head for his chin to rest on his shoulder, his eyes tightly closed now.

  ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s merely a matter of curiosity.’ Constance walked to his dressing table and picked up the silver-backed hairbrush, one of a set she had bought him for his seventeenth birthday, and she ran her fingers lightly over the bristles as she said, ‘Don’t let this worry you, Peter, please. Think nothing more of it; it’s just a form of growing up…When you find the right girl this phase will pass.’

  When he made no answer she knew a sense of relief, for what he could have said was, The right girl? Don’t make me laugh. After living with you and Father all these years in this set-up you would advocate me getting married? That’s what he could have said, but he didn’t. And she w
as grateful, thankful to God that his knowledge of the inner working of their lives had not coloured too darkly the picture of his future, at least where girls were concerned.

  When she turned back, the pictures had gone from the bed, and he was standing now looking out of the window, his head and shoulders bent slightly forward. She did not go to him and touch him as she wanted to but left the room, saying, ‘I’d get ready; it won’t be long before they’re here.’

  As she crossed the hall and passed the four shallow steps which led up to her husband’s study and the roof garden, she paused a moment, her head to one side, listening, and when no sound of typewriter keys being hammered came to her she raised her eyebrows slightly, before making her way to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was as modern as one could expect in a seven thousand-pound flat. From its position on the sixth floor, the window faced in the direction of Newcastle Town Moor. You could see part of the moor over the roofs of the houses and the dark blur of the city beyond. Constance liked Newcastle; she liked this controversial north-east and its people. Although her accent, and even her manner, stamped her as a southerner, a foreigner almost, she felt they accepted her. At least, her tentative nature cautioned, she thought they did. But who, after all, did she know here except Jim’s relations and the Thompsons on the next floor, with whom they occasionally played bridge? She based her judgement mainly on the attitude of the shopkeepers, the men on the buses, the porters on the stations. She always remembered her first visit to Shields. It was stamped on her mind by a small incident, but to this day the memory brought her warmth. She had peered out of the station onto a bare dull street, and remarked to the porter in some bewilderment, ‘Aren’t there any taxis?’ And he had answered, ‘Aw, lass, you want ower the bridge. Here, come on,’ and he had grabbed her elbow and led her over the bridge to the other platform as if she were a child travelling under the care of the guard. And she must have appeared in need of guidance because, as he took her up to the solitary taxi standing in the front yard of the station, he said, ‘There now, lass, you’re not lost after all.’ Just a little warm incident. Yet it was strange that her husband, who had been born and bred in Newcastle and who had insisted last year on coming back here to live, had scarcely a good word for any northerner.