The Nipper

  THE NIPPER

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Nipper

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  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 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 Nipper

  ‘The Nipper’s been sold for a pit pony!’

  Losing both his job and his home when the small farm he lives on is sold, fifteen-year-old Sandy is horrified when his much-loved young pony, the Nipper, is sold as a pit pony, destined to spend the rest of his life hauling coal underground, unlikely ever to see daylight or have fresh grass again. Desperate to share his pony’s misfortunes, Sandy impulsively follows him down into the mines—into a world of back breaking labour amidst squalid conditions.

  But trouble is brewing and as the miners’ talk turns to str
ikes and violence threatens, Sandy finds himself caught up in a dangerous race against time—a race in which he is to need every ounce of the courage and strength that his gallant-hearted pony, The Nipper, can give…

  The Nipper is a gripping tale of loyalty and determination, set against the harsh background of life in a north-eastern mining area in the early 1800s.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1970

  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 978-1-78036-085-0

  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 Ross, to help him remember me when

  he is very old, around twenty or so

  Chapter One

  ‘Boy! Come away from that door and help me with the bundles.’

  When the boy didn’t move Norah Gillespie stuck her hands on her hips and stared at her son; then she let out a bellow, crying, ‘Sandy! Do you hear me?’ and he started and turned to her and said, ‘Yes, Ma. Yes, Ma.’

  She sighed now as he came towards her and when he stood in front of her, her manner changing and her voice soft, she said, ‘It’s no use, you can’t do anything about it, so it will be easier for you if you make up your mind.’

  Sandy Gillespie bowed his dark head and hunched his thick shoulders; and when his mother said, ‘And another thing you’ve got to realise: you’re no longer a child or even a boy going mad after ponies, you will be sixteen shortly; you’re a man, and what you’ve got to do now is to act like one.’

  Sandy’s head came slowly upwards, and now there was a look of hurt, of defiance on his face. He knew without being told that he was a man, with a man’s responsibilities; he had shouldered a man’s responsibilities for two years now. From the day his father had died of the cholera he had worked fourteen hours a day on the farm, not a moan out of him or a grumble; his half-yearly pay of two pounds ten he had tipped up and never asked for a penny back. Still, his mother had always been generous, giving him as much as half a crown at times, and with this he had been content, or nearly so, for there was an unrest in him that had nothing to do with money. But the unrest had quietened eighteen months ago when The Nipper had come into his life.

  It was on the day he had gone with Farmer Blyth to collect the trees that were needed for supports to bolster the floundering barn. It was in Sir William Stockwell’s forest six miles away and the journey itself had been exciting for he had never been more than four miles from the village in his life. When he had reached the forest he had stepped into further excitement for the tree fellers were having sport trying to catch a wild pig. One of them had a gun, which even Sandy knew was against the law, for the man wasn’t a keeper. And he was a poor shot into the bargain; instead of killing the pig he shot a young Galloway pony that, in the melee, had stampeded, and when they came up to it there it was lying on its side with blood pouring from its neck and a young foal pressed close to its belly and petrified with fear so much so that it couldn’t run.

  The tree fellers knew they would be in for trouble if the keepers found the pony, and so they hoisted it up onto a cart to sell later, perhaps to some pie maker in the lower part of Shields, or if not there up in the city of Newcastle. But what to do with the young foal? The head feller was for killing it, but Sandy had sprung forward and, taking the stricken animal in his arms, had gabbled, ‘Give it me. Give it me. Let me have it, I’ll see to him.’

  ‘Have sense, boy,’ Farmer Blyth roared at him; ‘ponies grow. Where do you think you’re going to keep it? How do you think it’s going to eat?’ And at this Sandy had said, ‘I’ll…I’ll pay for his keep, master; I’ll work an extra hour a day for it. And…and I’ll train it. You could use it for the trap, the little one that’s lying behind the barn. It would do for Miss Katie, it would do for her fine.’

  Staring at the boy, Farmer Blyth had seen the possibility; but he was a harassed and worried man and the story could have ended there. However, Sandy, the animal lying immobile in his arms, its heart hardly beating, had run some distance before, turning and facing the farmer and the four woodcutters, he cried defiantly, ‘I’m going to keep him; if I have to walk away now and scrounge, I’m going to keep him.’

  Farmer Blyth had glared at the boy. He was being defied, and what he would have liked to say was, ‘Get going then and see how far you get before you starve to death,’ but this boy was the only help he had on his farm and, although of no great size, he had stamina and did the work of a man, and longer hours than any farmhand would do these days without shouting about it. He’d have to pay a man nine shillings a week for the work this boy did, or put up with the scum and indifferent labour from the dole men that the town clerks sent out to the farms to work off their payment. What was more, if the boy left the mother would go too, and so he would lose help in the dairy, in the house, and in the fields. For a shilling a week and her food and her cottage free, Norah Gillespie did the work of two women.

  All Farmer Blyth could do now was to bluster, ‘I’ll have something to say to you when I get back, me boy. And so will your mother. She’ll skin your hide when you take that in.’ He dug a finger towards the now shivering foal, and Sandy let out a great sigh of relief and held the animal closer to him. He had won; it was his, this little nipper.

  And that’s how The Nipper had come into Sandy’s life. And now on this day, Saturday the twenty-seventh of June, eighteen hundred and thirty, his whole life seemed ended, for today he and The Nipper were to be parted.

  His mother’s voice broke into his agonised thoughts. ‘He’ll likely get a good home,’ she said softly.

  A good home! He looked back into her eyes, dark brown like his own, and he said, ‘In the market! And driven there by Billy Foggerty, who’ll put an extra long nail in the end of his goad ’cos he doesn’t like me.’

  ‘No, no, he won’t; not with the horses, they’re biddable.’

  ‘I’ve seen him. I’ve seen him.’ He screwed up his face at her as he gripped his jaw tightly with one hand.

  Now his mother was holding him by the shoulders, her voice harsh again, saying, ‘Look, you’ve got to stop this. He’s goin’, and nothin’ you can do, or I can do, or anybody else, will stop it. Anyway, when all’s said and done what is the loss of a pony against our home?’ She now thrust out her arm and indicated the homely looking room. ‘And the master losing his farm and going as a herdsman to somebody else after being his own man all his life. And how do you think the mistress feels having to live in a cottage no bigger than this?’ Again she thrust her arm out. ‘And Miss Katie, who’d been used to a room to herself all her life, now having to sleep in the kitchen in the place where they’re going. Two little rooms after a house full of big ones, with pantries, wash-house, dairies, the lot; how do you think they’re feeling? An’ you going nearly out of your mind ’cos of a dratted Galloway?’

  ‘He’s not JUST a Galloway.’

  ‘Don’t you raise your voice at me, boy. I say he’s a Galloway; he’s just one of dozens of the same like about the country.’

  When Mrs Gillespie talked of the country she did not envisage the beautiful upper reaches of the River Tyne but rather the land lying between the riverside villages and towns on the south bank and the inland coalfields, which land was dotted with farms, gentlemen’s estates and open fell. And she emphasised her limited horizon by saying now, ‘Our world is small, boy, but large enough to starve in, and that’s what we’ll do if you don’t pull yourself together. We’ve got to get all this ready for Bradshaw’s cart within the hour, and then we’ll be gone. And that’s what you’ve got to face up to…We’ll be gone; we’re going one road and The Nipper’s going another.’

  ‘Oh, Ma!’ There was an expression on Sandy’s face as if his mother had struck him and he turned about and dashed out of the door, across the mud-ridged farmyard, dry in patches, puddled in others, past the cowshed, the piggeries and the long barn, and he didn’t stop running until he came up against a long pole set in notches at each side of a gap in a low drystone wall. He leant over it for a moment, his head on his chest; then slowly raising it, he looked to the far end of the field and whistled softly.