Life and Mary Ann Read online

  LIFE AND MARY ANN

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Life and Mary Ann

  PART ONE One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  PART TWO Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  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

&n
bsp; 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

  Life and Mary Ann

  It is impossible to imagine Mary Ann Shaughnessy as anything but an enchanting, aggravating and utterly natural child, possessed of an outsized love for her father and with an inherent inclination to put right the lives of those near to her.

  Yet children must grow up. Mary Ann is now “going on” seventeen and life, as it really is, comes forcing itself on her attention. Mary Ann the teenager is much the same as the diminutive warrior when it comes to affairs of the heart. She is still in love with her childhood sweetheart Corny Boyle, but Corny takes the carrot dangled by Mr. Lord—the old devil—and deserts her to go to America.

  So the field is once again open to Mr. Lord’s grandson to court Mary Ann. But does she want him to? As is to be expected he proposes to Mary Ann…

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1962

  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 978-1-78036-079-9

  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

  GROWING PAINS

  One

  I wish I’d never clapped eyes on him. I wish he had left us alone.

  What! In Mulhattans’ Hall?

  Mary Ann hunched her shoulders as indication that she was ignoring the voice of gratitude that usually played no small part as a component of her character. Well, he made you sick, he did. Who did he think he was, anyway? Playing God. Directing all their lives. He certainly tried to live up to his name…Mr Lord, indeed! Well, he could think he was the Lord, and act like him, but he wasn’t going to get the better of her in this latest fight…But he had, he had already got the better of her, hadn’t he?

  Mary Ann unclenched her hands and rose slowly from the side of the bed and walked towards the window. There had been a black frost in the night, there would soon be snow. The cutting air came from the window pane and chilled her nose and lips. So cold was her mouth that she did not feel her teeth biting into the flesh. But she felt the trembling of her chin in its fight, not against the cold, but against the rising storm of tears.

  Although she was gazing across the farmyard towards the house on the hill, Mr Lord’s house, she was seeing none of these things. The width of the farmyard had taken on the shape of a face. The buildings at each side were cheeks, high-boned, prominent cheeks, and Mr Lord’s house on the hill was a deep brow, half covered with tumbled black hair. Somewhere, in the distance between the farm and the house on the hill, were the eyes of Corny. They were deep-set, dark. She couldn’t see if they were merry, or sad, or held that spark of fighting fire that made him stand up to people…Stand up to Mr Lord.

  For over three years Corny had stood up to Mr Lord. From the very day he had come to her thirteenth birthday party, a belated, awkward, aggressive, grotesquely dressed guest, he had stood up to him. His appearance on that day had thrown the whole party out of joint. But he had made an impression on Mr Lord, for the old man had recognised in the gangling fifteen year old a worthy opponent, worthy to fight, worthy of many things…in fact, of anything in the world, but herself. Corny, in a subtle, even cunning way, had stood firm against all Mr Lord’s tactics, and had got the better of him time and time again where she herself was concerned. And in the end he would have won. She knew this, she felt it. But what does he do? What does Corny do? Of a startling sudden, he gives in to Mr Lord. He accepts the offer that the old man has been dangling like a golden carrot under his nose for years.

  When she had gone for him last night, almost reaching five feet in her wild indignation, he had remained utterly calm. The only time he had raised his voice was when he said, ‘Look, I’m tellin’ you, he’s got nowt to do with it.’

  She knew that he had used nowt to vex her, because he could speak as well as anybody now, even as good as their Michael. Had she not coached him month after month from that thirteenth birthday when she had given him his first lesson in English? Northern English, for although her grammar was correct, the inflexion of the dialect was still thick on her. But so convincing had been his denial that Mr Lord had any hand in his decision to go to America, that she had asked, with pain-touched docility, ‘Is it because they are always ragging you about me being so little?’ He gave a scornful, hard laugh before saying quietly, ‘Don’t be daft.’ And then he had added, with a touch of the quiet, sly humour that she loved, ‘It’s just as well you’re no bigger, else you’d aim to wear the pants all the time. Not that you don’t have a go, even now.’

  She had not laughed for her mind was looking at the saying literally. The waist of his trousers would reach up to her bust, and her head came far below his thick shoulder. Over the last few years she had done everything possible to put on inches. During one period, she had measured herself every day for three months, until the disheartening result had begun to affect her. Her mother had said, ‘If you worry, it will stop you growing.’ Her da had said, comfortingly, ‘You’ll sprout all at once, you’ll see. One of these mornings you’ll wake up and find your feet sticking through the bed rails. Anyway,’ he had added, with his arm about her shoulder, ‘you’ve got more in your little finger than most people have got in their great boast bodies.’ But that comfort did not make up for such silly remarks as, ‘You two are like Mutt and Jeff,’ or, ‘Here comes the long and the short of it.’

  She had tried wearing very high heels. The first pair of stiletto shoes she had worn had caused her da and Corny to fall against each other with laughing. Somehow she didn’t suit high heels, and so she had been unable to take advantage of such helpful accessories. But what did it matter? High heels, the long and the short of it, Mutt and Jeff, that wasn’t the reason he was going. He was going because Mr Lord had won.

  At this point in her thinking the bedroom door clicked and her mother came in. At thirty-eight Elizabeth Shaughnessy appeared like a woman bordering on thirty. Her face was without lines, her long blonde hair resting in a bun on the nape of her neck still retained its natural sheen. Her bearing was dignified. During the last three years, with the lessening of worry, life had seemed to stand still for her. Only during these last years had she taken the comfort of the farmhouse and the security of Mike’s position as a natural sequence of events. Mike no longer drank—at least he no longer got drunk—and this fact alone would have
spelt security no matter where they had lived. But in the comparative opulence of the farmhouse—comparative when thinking of their early beginnings, in the slum in Burton Street known as Mulhattans’ Hall—the fact that he was steady had paid dividends far surpassing anything she had ever dreamed of. Not that she had been entirely free from worry over the last three years; she experienced the usual worries of a mother concerning her son and daughter. But, as from the very beginning, it was the daughter who gave her cause for most concern. Somehow, Michael’s life had always seemed cut and dried. Right from when he was a child, even before he ever saw a farm, he had wanted, like his father, to be a farmer. In times past she had thought this was the only thing father and son had in common. Now, all that was changed. But with Mary Ann it had been different. Perhaps it was the fact of Mr Lord coming into her life that had made Mary Ann more of a trial. And yet she knew she shouldn’t think of her daughter in that sense. Mary Ann had been the saviour of them all. But for Mary Ann they would be rotting in Mulhattans’ Hall at this moment. She had no illusion about the strength of her husband. Without this environment, brought about by his daughter’s strategy, Mike would still be fighting a losing battle with the drink and the shipyard.

  Lizzie knew that everything in life must be paid for, and Mary Ann was expected to pay Mr Lord in the kind of payment he most desired. By becoming the wife of his grandson she would be tied to him for life. He would then have claims on her far outreaching those of the present. And it was a glorious prospect, Lizzie knew, when looked at unemotionally: Mary Ann Shaughnessy, a child from the slums of Jarrow, lifted into the family, the elite family of the Lords, where money and power went hand in hand.

  Three years ago, when the old man’s plans had been made known to her, Lizzie’s first reaction had been one of shock and disgust. Mary Ann was only a child, a child of thirteen…not thirteen. And Mr Lord was actually voicing his plans to marry her to Tony his grandson. Tony was then twenty-four and seemed already a very adult man. But the shock and disgust had not lasted long, for when Lizzie thought about it calmly she became excited, even elated, almost overcome with the idea of this wonderful future for her child. That was until she realised that Mary Ann’s interest in Corny Boyle was no passing childish fancy. Her daughter, she knew, took strong likes and dislikes, and where she liked she almost always loved. She loved her father more than she did God. She loved, yes, she loved the old man, there was no doubt about that. She loved him, she stood up to him, she fought with him, but she loved him. And she also loved Corny Boyle. That was the trouble, that was the worry now in Lizzie’s life. Or it had been up till yesterday when Corny had sprung his decision on them all. He had walked into the kitchen unannounced, and with a coolness that set Lizzie wondering, he had told them he was going to America. She wondered if this big, raw-boned fellow was calculating the benefits to be derived from submitting to Mr Lord, or if he was being superhumanly unselfish and leaving the road clear for her daughter. Whichever way it was, she thanked God from the bottom of her heart that Corny Boyle had decided to go to America. But now before her lay the task of comforting Mary Ann.