The Long Corridor Read online

  THE LONG CORRIDOR

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Long Corridor

  PART ONE One

  PART TWO One

  PART THREE One

  Two

  PART FOUR One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  PART FIVE One

  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 Long Corridor

  To outsiders, Dr Paul Higgin’s life appeared to be happy and contented. Everyone had a good word for him and his home life appeared to be ideal. At thirty-six, Bett Higgins could still pass for a much younger woman, not just in looks but in the way she loved the company of people half her age. A grand couple, some might say.

  But once the surgery was closed and the curtains drawn, the façade that Paul and Bett Higgins presented to the world concealed a welter of hate and ill-conceived bitterness that had grown worse with the passing years. Between them stood the barrier of the past—of secrets that each had long kept close. Unable to forgive each other, they led their separate lives—until Bett decided to allow her spite and resentment to culminate in revenge on the husband she did not love…

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1965

  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 978-1-78036-024-9

  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

  THE FAMILY

  One

  ‘Aw, Doctor, I’m as fit as a fiddle. Go on now and sign me off.’

  ‘Not for another week at least, Annie; you’re in no fit state to go cleaning and scrubbing.’

  ‘There’s no scrubbing these days, Doctor; you’re behind the times. I only wield one of them polishers. Magic, they are.’

  ‘Well, be that as it may. To wield one of them polishers you have to get out of bed before six, haven’t you? And that chest of yours doesn’t take to the early morning fogs.’

  ‘Doctor.’ Annie Mullen’s jocular face became straight, and her glance equally so as she looked across the broad mahogany table towards the doctor for a second or so before she said flatly, ‘I can’t stand another week in the house, Doctor. She wants me out of it, an’ I want to be out of it. It’s been sheer hell this last three weeks. Nothin’ said directly to me you know. Oh, no, she’s too clever for that. She talks at you. You know the kind. All day she goes at it until my Harry comes home at night, and then butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It makes me sick, Doctor, so do me this favour, will you, and sign me off. I’ll take a lot of killin’, really I will, but when me time comes I hope it’s short and sharp.’ Leaning further across the table now, and her voice dropping to a whisper, she added, ‘You promised me once that when I was goin’ I would have no pain. Do you still mean that?’

  ‘I do, Annie.’ His voice was as low as hers. ‘Never you worry about that, you’ve got my word for it.’

  After a single nod the old woman straightened up and, the smile returning to her face, she said, ‘That’s good enough for me.’

  She watched him writing swiftly, and when he handed her the certificate she rose to her feet, and as she buttoned her coat she glanced sideways at him, as he also rose, and said, ‘My old man used to say that your father, God rest him, looked tough, and talked tough, but there wasn’t a better stitcher in the land, nor a kinder heart…aw, an’ you know what? Mrs Mullen now laid the flat of her hand on the doctor’s chest. ‘He’s passed everything he had on to his son. Goodnight to you now.’ She turned abruptly away and made for the door.

  The doctor did not call after her, ‘Aw, I’ve heard your blarney before, Annie’; he accepted her good opinion of him quietly, saying, ‘Goodnight to you, Annie.’ Then passing his hand over his chin he resumed his seat and pressed a button. And the door opened again and a man entered.

  The doctor did not raise his eyes to the newcomer but consulted the card on his desk. Harold Gray, thirty-four years old. His eyes skimmed down the dates during which he had been treating the man over the last twelve months. Three weeks, five weeks, now four weeks. He looked up. ‘Well, how are you?’

  ‘Oh, you know, Doctor, not too bright.’

  ‘Back better since you started taking those new tablets?’

  ‘Well…well a bit, Doctor, but…’

  ‘Ah, that’s good, I thought they would do the trick.’

  ‘But it’s like this, Doctor…’

  ‘Well now, I suppose you’re ready to go back to work.’

  ‘But, Doctor…’

  ‘I gave you an extension last week that should have put you on your feet.’ The doctor pulled a form towards him and began once again to write rapidly, and when he handed the certificate across the table to the man, Mr Gray, wearing a resigned and solemn expression, got up from the chair and looking down at the doctor, said, ‘It’ll only go again.’

  ‘You’ll have to chance that. But try to remember that the last time it went you had an X-ray and it showed nothing wrong with your back. And the time before that, when it went you had an X-ray and nothing wrong could be found…’ He paused before ending, ‘…with your back. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Doctor.’

  The salutation sounded like a threat, and Mr Gray closed the door none too gently after him.

  The doctor now gathered a number of cards from his desk, patted them together and sat looking at them. They represented people, all sorts of people; among them old Annie, with cancer eating her stomach and he was treating her for bronchitis, and she wanting to work until she dropped, which would be the best way for her to end, and they both knew it. Then there was Gray. He wanted to spit. On the thought of this man he wanted to spit. He went out of the surgery, across a wide low waiting room, pushed open a door marked ‘Enquiries’ and, throwing the cards on to a table at which sat a middle-aged woman, said, ‘Anything else in?’

  ‘No, nothing, not since Mrs Ratcliffe’s call.’

  ‘I’ve a damned good mind to make her wait until the morning…Neurotic individual.’

  ‘We mustn’t forget that the neurotic individuals pay on the dot, Doctor; and as you’ve said yourself, P.P.s are so few and far between these days we should pamper the ones we’ve got.’

  A quizzical smile passed over the doctor’s face and, leaning his hands on the table, he bent towards his receptionist, saying, ‘Your caustic memory will get you somewhere one of these days, Elsie; it’s odd how you manage to remember all the wrong things I say.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call them wrong, Doctor.’ Her smile was as quizzical as his own. ‘Anyway, if I can’t remember
all you say now after fifteen years I never will.’

  ‘Fifteen years is it?’ He straightened up and looked away from her back into the hall, with its big round table patterned with a criss-cross of magazines. ‘Fifteen years you’ve been here? It makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t start and reminisce now if I were you. You haven’t had anything to eat since one o’clock, so you’d better have something before you go to Mrs Ratcliffe. Then there’s Mrs Ogilby. She’s near her time; she might last till tomorrow, then again she might not.’

  The doctor, still looking across the waiting room, said submissively, ‘As you say, Elsie, as you say.’ Then over his shoulder he added on a sharper note, ‘Leave that lot for tonight and get yourself home. If you ordered your own life as you do mine you wouldn’t be so skinny.’

  Elsie Ryan looked up at him and smiled her tight smile. ‘Goodnight,’ she said.

  ‘Goodnight, Elsie.’

  He walked across the waiting room again in the direction now of a door marked ‘Private’. Then almost as he was about to open it he turned slowly away, went past his surgery and out through another door into a courtyard. Here he stopped for a moment to look up into the star-studded sky. The moon was full and lit up the frost-coated tiles of the outhouses surrounding the yard. He filled his lungs with the sharp cold air, then sauntered over the wide square blocks of granite that paved the yard towards the open gates, and stood looking out into the square. It was utterly deserted at the moment, which was unusual, for nearly always there were figures going in and out of the Technical College across the road. He turned his eyes towards the right, where the block forming the top of the square was taken up by the refrigeration plant. It was funny how things grew. Pearson had started with a little butcher’s shop in the heart of Bog’s End—the vicinity alone would tell you what quality meat he sold—and now he had the biggest cold storage plant for miles. It was said he was a millionaire, a millionaire who couldn’t write his own name. Old Pearson had been a patient of his father’s for years, and of his too, until Mrs Pearson decided that they now needed a better setting for their wealth and had taken her coarse-mouthed, illiterate husband to the softer climes of the South. Still looking to the right his eyes passed over the Salvation Army barracks adjoining his own property. They, too, were quiet. No calling on God to come and jazz it up tonight. His lips moved into a tolerant smile. Did it matter how they called, as long as they had the desire to call, and the belief that they were being heard? Some folks looked on the Salvation Army with scorn and pity, but they weren’t to be pitied. It was those who had thought themselves into the conviction that such simple souls were shouting to a deaf mute, it was these, he knew, who should be pitied. And he was one of them.