The Lady on my Left (The Mists of Memory) Read online

  THE LADY ON MY LEFT

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Lady on my Left

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  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 Lady on my Left

  Alison Read, orphaned when she was two years old, had for some years lived and worked with Paul Aylmer, her appointed guardian. Paul, an experienced antique dealer whose business thrived in the south-coast town of Sealock, had come to rely on Alison, who had quickly learned the trade.

  But when he asked her to value the contents of Beacon Ride, a chain of events was set off that led to the exposure of a secret he had managed to conceal. Now Alison’s relationship with Paul for many years came under threat, and she realised that only by confronting the situation head-on would she restore the happiness she once had and achieve the ambitions she sought.

  This is one of Catherine Cookson’s more unusual novels: part-mystery, part-love story, with fascinating glimpses of the world of antiques in the 1960s.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1997

  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 978-1-78036-033-1

  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 auctioneer pulled in his chin, peered over his spectacles, pushed his trilby hat up from his brow and said, ‘What am I bid for this set of two-arm and four single Chippendale-design mahogany chairs? Splat backs, cabriole legs, claw and ball feet, they’ve got everything. Come along. Ten? All right, then, give me a start. Five…five it is…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…twelve. Did I hear fourteen?’

  Alison Read pressed her long pencil to her lips and waited until the bidding reached £30 and then she joined in. At £34 there was only James Holbolt from High Bank left in against her and when, moving the pencil like a pendulum of a clock, she bid £38, Holbolt shook his head, which caused the auctioneer, with a machiavellian expression, to glance at Alison and say, ‘A lady’s bid. Thirty-eight pounds. A lady’s bid.’ This reference to ‘a lady’ was an auctioneer’s trick to spur on an egotistical male from among the private buyers, but it didn’t work on this occasion. The egotistical males grouped behind the chests of drawers and the oddments in the corner were all dealers and they knew Alison, knew for whom she was deputising.

  ‘Going to the lady on my left. Any more? Any more, gentlemen?’ The eyes roamed around the hall. Then the ivory hammer tapped gently on the desk. The auctioneer, glancing at his catalogues, then said simply, ‘Aylmer.’

  The clerk next to him went on writing, and then the next lot number was called, while Alison added £38 to her list of figures. She was glad she had got those chairs, having missed the Georgian set. They had been splendid—inlaid brass on turned legs—and Paul would have liked them. But still, she had got the French eight-day timepiece with the Sèvres plaques, and also the Georgian octagonal wine cooler. That was a really nice piece, with its mask-head handles and tapered legs. Unobtrusively, she edged out of her chair and crept around the back of the grouped bidders. As she passed the dealers, one whispered, ‘How is Paul?’

  Alison, also whispering, replied, ‘Much better. I left him up and looking through catalogues.’ They exchanged knowing smiles before she moved on, threading her way through the crowd to the outside door. Here she paused and pulled up the collar of her coat. The earlier snow had turned to sleet and at four o’clock on a late January afternoon it was almost dark. Because the roads were so treacherous, she hadn’t brought the car; and as it was too cold to wait for a bus, she crossed the market square and took short cuts through familiar narrow side streets and passages until, after ten minutes of brisk walking, she began to climb the short, steep hill of Tally’s Rise, or as one wag had named the street, populated as it was almost entirely with antique shops, The Hill of Gold. And in many ways it was a hill of gold. Of the twenty-seven shops that lined each side of the street, fourteen sold old china and glass, or books, or antique furniture, and others a little of each. But this was not a street of junk shops. No knowledgeable person in the town went up Tally’s Rise looking for junk. If they were able to buy a heavy decanter for 7s 6d, they could be sure it wouldn’t be Georgian cut glass. But if they were looking for a pair of Georgian goblets with trumpet bowls and had a mind to pay in the region of £340 for them, then they had made a good buy. And they could find any amount of reproduction furniture in Tally’s Rise, too, but not at what might be called bargain prices, for there was little shoddy stuff sold there. In the centre of the town you could buy a new oak chest of drawers for £10 and it would look grand. But for a chest not half as smart you would pay in the region of £50 in Tally’s Rise—but then part of it might be Jacobean and it might have brass pear-drop handles. But even for that price you wouldn’t get the real thing. The original, if you could find one, would cost anything from £300 to £500. Yes, it was a very interesting street, was Tally’s Rise.

  Aylmer’s was the last shop at the top of the Rise. There was nothing beyond but a wall of rock. In fact, the rock—or the cliff-end, as it was—formed one wall of the basement shop and its doorway was the only access to the floors above.

  Alison always said that as soon as she opened the shop door her world changed. Once through that door she found security, warmth and love, and never had her world been so welcome as it was on this bleak afternoon. She closed the door behind her and wiped her feet well on the doormat before stepping onto the drugget that made a straight pathway over the polished floor. On each side of her, set in skilful array, were pieces of furniture, all patina dark. Before she reached the end of the drugget, a man came through the doorway at the end of the long shop. He was an old man, with a patch over one eye, and shoulders so stooped as almost to form a hunch. But his smile was wide and his voice was cheery as he greeted Alison, ‘By, you look frozen! Had they any heat on today?’

  ‘About as usual, Nelson; I’m glad to get in.’

  ‘Aa bet you are. Well, did you get anything? Did you get the mezzotints?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Nelson, they went for a mint. But I got the clock with the plaques, you know, and also the chairs.’

  ‘The Georgian lot?’

  ‘No, I had to let them go. They made seventy-two pounds.’

  ‘Whew! That was a price.’

  ‘Have you done anything this afternoon?’

  ‘No, Miss Alison.’ He laughed. ‘Not on a day like this.’

  ‘No, of course not. They wouldn’t
get up this far, and I don’t blame them. Have you had your tea?’

  ‘No, not yet. Sweet Angeline will be bringing it any time now.’

  Alison turned with a laugh from the old man, and opening a door on the right-hand side of the room, she stepped immediately into a thickly carpeted passage at the end of which a flight of stairs rose to the first floor. Here, on either side of a small landing, were two rooms, one her bedroom, the other Paul’s. Another flight of thickly carpeted stairs brought her to a larger hallway and here she took off her coat and outdoor shoes. As she did so, a voice from the kitchen called, ‘That you, Miss Alison? I bet you’re glad to get in. What a day!’ and a woman appeared in the hallway carrying a tray. She was short and stout, her face was covered with tiny wrinkles and her hair was black; although a questionable black. Her face assumed an expression of resentment as she said, ‘I should make him come up for it.’

  Alison said nothing, merely raised her eyes as she took her slippers out of the hall wardrobe. The feud that raged between Mrs Dickenson and Nelson was a source of amusement to Paul and herself. Nelson was from the North of England. Nellie Dickenson was a product of this small coast town, conservative and set in her ways, as she herself admitted, and Nelson’s ready tongue and free manner irked her.

  Edging her way onto the stairs, and balancing the tray on her hand, she said, ‘It’s all ready.’

  ‘Thanks, Nellie.’ Alison walked towards a door at the far end of the hall. Entering the drawing room, she saw that it was indeed ready.

  As usual, the tea table was drawn up to the side of the huge fireplace, and sitting propped up on a couch before the fire, his large head resting on the back, was Paul Aylmer. Even sunk into the cushions as he was, he looked to be a big man. You could say at first glance that he was a Norwegian, with his thick fair hair streaked with grey at the sides. His face was big-boned, his eyes were wide apart but not deep-set, and they were topped by heavy brows. When his face was in repose the corners of his mouth were directed in an upward slant, giving his expression the appearance of amusement. Even when his eyes burned with deep anger the lips still kept their upward tilt, which was confusing to the onlooker. Altogether, it was a secret face, a quietly secret face, giving nothing away, and even when it did, it was likely to put you on the wrong track. But it was a face that represented Alison’s world.