The Golden Straw Read online

  THE GOLDEN STRAW

  Catherine Cookson

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Golden Straw

  BOOK ONE

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  BOOK TWO

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  BOOK THREE

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  EPILOGUE

  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 Golden Straw

  It all began with a straw hat—a large, broad-brimmed hat, dyed in an elusive mixture of colours to produce a distinctive shade of pale gold. It was presented to Emily Pearson by her long-time friend and employer Mabel Arkwright, a milliner with a little store in the West End of London. And Emily owed Mrs. Arkwright more than just The Golden Straw—eventually the business itself, because her friend had come to rely on Emily more and more as time went by.

  After Mabel Arkwright’s death, Emily was exhausted by the extra work that had fallen upon her shoulders and exasperated by Dr. Steve Montane, her late employer’s young and plain-spoken physician. She took herself off to the South of France to stay at a hotel that had been warmly recommended by Mabel before she passed away. It was now 1880, and many fashionable guests were staying at the hotel in Nice, among them Paul Anderson Steerman. It was from the balcony of his room that he first noticed The Golden Straw, worn by Emily as she arrived from England. But although it was the hat that first held his attention , his admiring gaze quickly turned to Emily herself, and throughout the time of his stay he paid her unceasing attention.

  But Paul Anderson Steerman was not all he seemed to be, and he was to bring nothing but disgrace and tragedy to Emily. The traumatic months following her return to England were but a prelude to a series of events that would influence the destiny not only of her children but her grandchildren too. As the new century dawned, the First World War came and went, and Emily could now reflect on all that had resulted from the gift of the hat.

  Catherine Cookson has never written a more ambitiously plotted or richly satisfying historical novel. Conceived on a panoramic scale, it brilliantly portrays a whole rich vein of English life from the heyday of the Victorian era to the stormy middle years of the twentieth century. The Golden Straw is absorbing from the first to last page and represents yet another triumph for this great storyteller.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1993

  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 978-1-78036-093-5

  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

  BOOK ONE

  BEGINNINGS

  PART ONE

  1879

  One

  Emily Pearson cast her eyes around the bare room from which the last piece of furniture had just been taken out to the horse-driven removal van, and she asked herself how they had ever been able to move about in that room or, for that matter, in the bedroom, or in the kitchen, for the contents of the small house had filled the van. From where she was standing she could see through the uncurtained window into the road, where the driver of the van was urging his horse into motion with the flick of his whip.

  Thinking, That’s that, she now took a key from her bag and walked towards the door; but there she stopped and turned, and again she gazed around the room. Was she sorry to leave this house? No. No. Yet she had been born here, and she had lived happily here until she was sixteen, when her mother had died. She could say, too, that she had lived somewhat contentedly during the following two years. Then she had married Jimmy Pearson and had spent the first night of her married life in that bedroom over there.

  Marriage had startled her, frightened her. It wasn’t as she expected it would be, full of tender loving, and evenings sitting by the fire, he describing his day at Parker’s warehouse, and she responding by telling him about some of the customers at Madam Arkwright’s, the milliners. But it didn’t turn out like that. He was dry, he would say, after a day in the warehouse, too dry for talking without something with which to oil his throat. True, he had invited her to go to the pub with him. But what did that mean? Sitting in the snug with women to whom she couldn’t talk. It was as if they spoke a foreign language. After the second visit she had put her foot down, saying she had something better to do than sit with a lot of blowsy women, while he golloped beer next door in the men-only bar.

  The following morning she had arrived at The Bandbox for the first time with a discoloured cheek. It was on that morning, too, that Mrs Arkwright had stopped being Madam and had behaved more like a mother, for she had upbraided her for her silliness in being taken in by such a common individual as that warehouse man. Hadn’t she warned her she was out of his class? Her mother had brought her up respectable and she herself had aimed to instil some style into her; but now here she was being treated like any waterfront slut.

  She could recall the scene now: Mrs Arkwright, who never seemed to lose her composure, gripping her by the shoulders and saying, ‘The next time he raises his hand to you pick up something, anything, and hit him with it, or throw it at him. At first they try it on, but it quickly develops into a habit. If you don’t do as I say, by the end of the year you won’t be able to see out of either eye. I know the type.’

  And she had been right. In the middle of the following week, when she had refused to give him five shillings out of her savings for him to back another sure winner, he had lifted his hand to her. But she had been prepared, and she had whipped up a brass candlestick from the low mantelpiece and as his fist was about to come in contact with her face he felt the weight of the brass across his knuckles. So fiercely had she aimed the blow that he cried out, then stood away fr
om her, his pain not unmixed with amazement. The quiet, docile young girl who, as he had bragged to his mates, would do what he said, or else, was now confronting him and telling him what she would do if he dared to raise his hand again to her; and, what was more, that he wasn’t getting any of her pay, but that she wanted some of his to keep the house …

  Emily now leaned back against the door, closed her eyes, and bit on her lip as she savoured her recall of the scene. It had been the most satisfactory moment of their marriage, and in a way it had brought her out of her girlhood into womanhood, much more so than the marriage bed had done.

  But then, following this incident, life had become almost unbearable. There came the period when he did not return home at night. But she had been glad of this: it was the respite from which no brass candlestick could have protected her. Then came the day when he said to her, ‘You’re on your own from now on. I’m not coming back.’ And when an expected reply was not forthcoming from her he had blustered, ‘Who d’you think you are, anyway? Your old man was nothing but a stoker on an old tramp steamer.’ But to this she did reply, yelling at him, ‘My father was second mate on a cargo boat and he was a gentleman.’

  She had always thought of her father as a gentleman. He had been drowned when she was five years old. Apparently she had seen him only twice, on each occasion after his return from a long voyage, and she had cried both times when the strange man held her.

  It had been her mother who had imbued her with this feeling about her father: ‘In all ways your dad was a gentleman,’ she would continually say to her, creating the picture in her mind of him as a gentle sailor man, and more so as she later realised that it had been her father’s half-pay notes which, added to her mother’s earnings, had helped to buy this house.

  It was on that night of parting from her husband that he brought up the ownership of the house by saying, ‘And you try to sell this place, mind, and I’m having my share, if not the lot. What’s the wife’s is the husband’s. In fact I could sell it over your head. And I will if you try me too far and interfere with me life.’