Riley Read online

  RILEY

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Riley

  PROLOGUE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  AFTERWORD

  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

  Riley

  There were many who said that Riley appeared to be older than his years. He finished school at an early age, leaving a harsh childhood behind him, brimming with optimism and secure in the knowledge that his teacher, Fred Beardsley, had faith in him. Neither of them could have envisaged at the time how their lives would be intertwined. Riley, a gifted mimic, was offered a position as stage manager at The Little Palace Theatre and surprised Fred by forming a close friendship with the older leading lady, Nyrene Forbes-Mason, who was nurturing his burgeoning talent as an actor.

  What Riley hadn’t told him was that he had great hopes of the relationship developing into something more. Over the subsequent years, Fred followed Riley’s rise to fame and fortune and his relationship with Nyrene did indeed change, although not in the way that Riley had envisaged…

  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 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 978-1-78036-057-7

  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

  PROLOGUE

  One

  Miss Louise Barrington locked the last drawer of her desk, smoothed the clean sheet of blotting paper into the large pad, straightened the letter rack, placed the pencil holder across the corner of the desk, then sat back in the leather swivel chair and let out a long slow breath.

  She had come into this room in January as a temporary science teacher at Giles Mentor School. The only female teacher in the science block, she was responsible for the discipline of the girls, whereas Mr Beardsley, the senior science man, was responsible for the boys, both being answerable to the headmaster. Before dabbling in industry she had taught chemistry in an all-girls’ school, which secured her this position, although not without some comments from the permanent staff; and as such positions went it was an excellent one. Yet here she was contemplating another move because, as she kept telling herself, anything would be better than putting up with the type of child that now attended this school. Until the change to a comprehensive it had been a boys’ school, the children now attending being mostly from the lower end of the town. But then, she knew that her outlook was jaundiced.

  There was a strange quiet about the room, about the whole place now, for today they had broken up for the summer holidays. ‘Have a good holiday,’ she had been wished by an associate here and there, others adding ‘down south’ as though down south were as distant as Hong Kong.

  Well, she had now said all her goodbyes, except to Mr Beardsley. Oh…Mr Beardsley.

  She turned to look towards the open window for she could hear that man’s unmistakable voice.

  She rose and went to the side of the window and from her first-floor position looked down to where the iron railings guarded the cellar steps to the boilerhouse; and there she saw Mr Beardsley and the Riley boy. Their conversation floated up to her on the still afternoon air.

  ‘You’ve seen the Head, then?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Beardsley.’

  ‘Well, I trust you took in all his advice.’

  ‘No, Mr Beardsley. As you always say, it never gets far enough into one ear to come out the other.’

  ‘Watch it! Watch it, Riley; you’re not out of the gates yet! You know something, Riley? I’ve always wanted to say this to you: I’ve never come to terms with the fact that you’re not a Catholic. With a name like Riley and your dad and your ma as Irish as they come, you’re still not a Catholic. Oh, if only you had been you could have gone to St Joseph’s. But then, Riley, why should I have it in for the nuns? They’ve never done me any harm, and had you been there you would’ve had their habits off them in a flash. Ah, ah! Not the way you think, Riley. And get that grin off your face! But they would’ve given up their vocation just to be free of you. And yet, you know, I’ve heard they’re a tough lot. Anyway, Riley, this is the parting of the ways; and you know something? It’s a desire of my life, a really deep desire, that I never set eyes on you again, not in this world or the next. On the other hand, your mother seems to be a sensible and caring woman, at least so it seemed the day I took your pants down and scudded your arse.’

  Miss Louise Barrington winced.

  ‘You didn’t play any more tricks on me after that, did you? But you went home and cried to your dad, and he came, all five foot three inches of him, and said he meant to knock the bloody daylights out of me. Your mother followed, hard on his heels, and after practically beating him up with her tongue she thanked me…yes, she did, yes, she did, to take your pants down whenever I felt so inclined and to wallop you until you couldn’t sit.’

  ‘Me ma’s daft; she’s up the pole half the time.’

  ‘But she comes down to tend to you and your dad, doesn’t she? And the other three brats she’s trying to bring up. I don’t know why she does it. Myself, I’d wallop the lot of you.’

  ‘Well, she tries her hand at that at times. You know nowt about her, really. But you, you’re a funny man, Mr Beardsley.’

  ‘Funny, am I?’

  ‘Aye, me da says you could be Irish yourself and a Catholic.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t it a pity I’m not either? The things I could have done if I’d been Irish and a Catholic, whereas all I do now is try to teach you and your like to be civilised and not to beat up lads half your size.’

  ‘I don’t, I don’t pick ’em half me size.’

  ‘You did when you first came here.’

  ‘I did a lot of thing
s when I first came here, Mr Beardsley, that I didn’t do afore I came here; I learnt them here.’

  There was such a long pause that Miss Louise Barrington edged nearer the curtain and more to the side. Yes, they were still there but were now just staring at each other.

  ‘Ah! Now that was a straight answer. That was from the part that I know is there in your napper, and if you had any sense you would have taken advantage of it all these past years, because I know and you know that you’re no fool, Riley. Your main aim in life seems to be to make people laugh, not at your expense, but at theirs. Now I’m going to tell you something. You have the gift of a sense of humour, but with you it’s misdirected. You’ve become a practical joker; and you know the only one who gets any fun out of a practical joke is the practical joker. The receiver has to grin and bear it, has to laugh or smile because a practical joker demands an audience and there’s always an audience for him. Now, Riley, if you take my advice you could become something big in the funny business. Try turning that sense of humour on yourself. Try belittling yourself in describing an incident that might have happened to you, make it funny because it’s happening against you, not against the other fella. That will make them laugh. Think of the comedians who’ve risen to the top. They’re not the ones who blow their own horns; they always come onto the stage looking forlorn, asking for your pity because they’re simple or daft or things have happened to them that wouldn’t happen to those looking on. You can always enjoy somebody else’s pain, especially if it’s done through somebody making it funny, and it can be funny, pain, you know.’

  Miss Louise Barrington was now standing with her back to the curtain, not looking down but with her head cocked. He had that boy weighed up all right; he was indeed a practical joker, and there were children who were afraid of him. Her head jerked slightly again as she heard Mr Beardsley saying:

  ‘Think on it, Riley: it would be a better life being a comedian on the stage, wouldn’t it, than getting nicked for pinching cars or radios out of cars? How you got out of that last car business God alone knows, and He won’t split on you; and your dad wouldn’t split on you, nor his cronies, nor the patrons of the Bull and Spear, not even your mother would do so this time. But you did do it, you did it and the police know you did it: you were seen there and there were witnesses and the car went up in flames, but they couldn’t lay it on you, could they?’