Rooney Read online

  ROONEY

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Rooney

  Chapter One: The MP

  Chapter Two: Ma

  Chapter Three: The Beads

  Chapter Four: The Worm With The Elephant’s Hoof

  Chapter Five: The Bashing Feeling

  Chapter Six: And Whatsoever Things Are Pure

  Chapter Seven: The Letters

  Chapter Eight: The Effects of Love

  Chapter Nine: The Champion

  Chapter Ten: As You Were

  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

  Rooney

  His full name is Joseph Rooney Smith and he works for the corporation of one of the Tyneside towns as an ‘M.P.’. This has nothing to do with the Houses of Parliament, but is short for ‘Muck Pusher’: Rooney is a dustman.

  A shy man, Rooney has one aim in life—a comfortable home, but with a difference—he did not want a wife. As a result, Rooney spends his time dodging women; his canniness becomes the envy of his mates and the despair of predatory widows and single women.

  Yet this resolute bachelor’s way of thinking is changed in spite of himself, when he moves his treasured bits of furniture and meets Nellie. She seems shy too, but when she uncharacteristically ‘breaks out’, not only does she throw the gentle Rooney into utter confusion, she awakens in him feelings he never knew he possessed.

  Rooney, one of Catherine Cookson’s most endearing characters, is an ordinary bloke with a dustbin on his shoulder, romance in his soul and Sir Galahad lurking just below skin level. The story of how Rooney finally pushes through to the surface is warm, amusing and thoroughly enjoyable.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1957

  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 978-1-78036-021-8

  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: The MP

  Being Friday night The Anchor was busy, saloon, bottle-and-jug, and bar. In the MPs’ corner, away from the piano and the dartboard, sat four men. Let us come into the open here; MP in Shields did not stand for Member of Parliament, but Muck Pusher. In The Anchor, any man who lifted a dustbin or pushed a broom, went under the pseudonym of an MP, and the title often followed him up certain back lanes of the town.

  Joseph Rooney Smith had been an MP for the Corporation for fifteen of his thirty-five years, and as time went on he had been more and more thankful that he was employed by such a body. The Corporation was no jumped-up business that could be affected by supply and demand, by slumps or wars; the Corporation went steadily on, and in Rooney’s opinion gave a stamp of security to its employees.

  But all of Rooney’s fellow workers were certainly not in agreement on this point, and the terms ‘daft’, ‘dim’, and ‘loopy’ had been attached to him when from time to time, in the face of strong opposition and demands of rights, Rooney had put forth temperate arguments, made up of short sentences such as ‘Let’s be satisfied, man.’ ‘Just compare us the day with afore the war.’ ‘If you get it in one way, man, they’ll just take it off you in another.’ One answer that was nearly always thrown back at him was, ‘If you had a wife and bairns you’d be singing a different tune.’

  Rooney happened to be the only unmarried member of his particular gang, and although he was not aware of it, the envy of three of them. Fred Hewitt, Bill Stubbly, and Albert Morton were apt to say, ‘You don’t know you’re born, Rooney.’ But Danny Macallistair, their ganger, never said this, for Danny was happily married.

  At one time Rooney’s pals had added, ‘Wait till you get hooked, man.’ But it was some years now since they had said that, for they were all agreed on one point concerning Rooney, he was too cute to be caught. With skill and surprising determination in so meek a young fellow they had seen him evade four widows and two spinsters during the past ten years.

  But being untrammelled with the cares of matrimony did not mean that Rooney was without his troubles. Escaping the blessed state seemed to complicate his life to such an extent that at times like tonight he was weary of it.

  Fred, nudging Bill, winked and said, ‘She after your blood again, Rooney?’

  Rooney pushed his coarse, fair hair back from his forehead and under his cap, and took a drink from his pint mug before answering, ‘She’s a proper tartar. I can’t get in or out for her, man. All I want is peace and quiet and some place to sit of an evening. And can I get it? Why won’t they let me have a house on me own?’

  ‘You’re hoping some,’ put in Bill. ‘And eight of us in three rooms! Don’t be daft, man.’

  ‘But I’ve had me name down for years, Bill.’

  ‘Aye, you might have. So’ve I, an’ hundreds of others. Just thank your stars all you’ve got to worry about is escaping women. The time to worry is when you can’t escape…Which reminds me, as if I wanted reminding’—Bill finished his beer in one gulp and then his sentence—‘she’ll be waitin’…in a hell of a sweat. I’d better be making a move.’

  ‘Where you goin’ the night?’ asked Fred.

  ‘The usual, the Palace…her mother’s comin’ in to see the bairns. So long…’ Bill rose, buttoned up his coat, adjusted his cap, then patted Rooney’s shoulder, saying, ‘Cheer up, man. Go and get bottled up and give her a hammering. That’ll scare her off.’

  Rooney smiled but made no comment. And Fred, rising and going to the counter, said, ‘Just one more for me, an’ then I’m off an’ all. What about you, Albert? Comin’ yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Albert dully, ‘not yet.’

  Fred did not return to the corner but, drinking up a quick half-pint, waved his hand towards them and followed Bill.

  Rooney and Albert sat on, not speaking. Rooney’s eyes moved over the room, past the line of men standing at the counter to the group around the dartboard, along the table under the window, and back to Albert again. Albert was in a mess. He was the youngest member of their gang, being only twenty-nine. He had been married a year and his wife was already playing fast and loose with him. Albert would stay on till closing time; he wouldn’t go home because there’d be nobody there. And if you asked him where his missus was the night he’d say, as he invariably did, ‘At her mother’s.’

  It was funny, Rooney thought, the things that kept people in the same place. There was Albert sitting here rather than go home and sit alone, whereas all he himself wanted was to go back to his room, have his meal, put his feet up, and have a bit of a read, all alone.

  Whenever possible, Rooney worked his life to a pattern. Each dinner hour he brought his bait to The Anchor, in preference to going to the canteen, and, accompanied by a pint of beer, he ate his dinner. Monday night he called in and had two
pints before going to the pictures. During the winter he generally spent the other evenings in his room, with the exception of Saturday night, when after having been to the match in the afternoon he might take a walk up to Horsely Hill and the dogs; afterwards calling in at The Anchor and adding to his usual two pints a double whisky, no more, no less. During the summer he had a leaning towards fishing. This was the pattern of his days when no-one interfered. But when a landlady wanted to…get thick, everything went wrong. If only he could bring himself to go into lodgings until he could come by a house of some sort, life, he knew, would become much simpler. But he couldn’t…because of his bits and pieces.

  Rooney’s furniture had a meaning for him which he found impossible to translate into thought, much less into words. It was part of his security, as was his job on the Corporation. His furniture was home, some place that belonged to him, no matter what its surrounds might be. The deep meaning that the furniture held for him went back into his past, to his early youth, in fact to the day his mother died. It was from that day of release that furniture began to have a meaning, for when his mother was carried from the house his father began to live again. The perpetual look of worry left his face, his rounded shoulders squared themselves, for no longer would he come home to find his wife sleeping off her drink, or be warned by a sympathetic policeman to collect her from outside some bar or other to save her from being taken into custody yet again.

  They had been living in Hebburn at the time, and his father had sold the few remaining pieces of furniture that his mother had been unable to dispose of to supply her drink, and had moved to Shields. And there, in a furnished room, he had started, almost with the eagerness of a lad himself, to gather together a home for them both.

  Rooney never looked back to those years spent with his father without pain for the happiness they had held, and in moments of deep loneliness he would ask himself why they had been brought to such an abrupt close. If there had been an illness leading up to it he could, in a way, have accepted it; but there had been nothing. One night, after having been for a walk, his father had sat down in his armchair, put his hand to his waistcoat, gave a little gasp, and died…Heart failure, they said it was. And it left Rooney without a relative in the world. He had nothing, only his job and his furniture.