Kate Hannigan Read online

  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

  Simon & Schuster

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 1950 by Catherine Cookson

  Copyright restored (under section 104A of 17 U.S.C., as amended by the

  Uruguay Round Agreements Act, Pub. L. No. 103-465) by The Trustees

  of the Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust

  Originally published in 1950 in Great Britain by Macdonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks

  of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cookson, Catherine.

  Kate Hannigan: a novel / Catherine Cookson.

  p. cm.

  1. Tyneside (England)—Fiction. 2. Social classes—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6053.O525K375 2004

  823’.914—dc21 2003054265

  ISBN 978-1-4516-6013-5

  eISBN-13: 978-0-74325-375-8

  To MY MOTHER,

  who has found her expression

  through me

  Contents

  Chapter 1: The Birth

  Chapter 2: The Kitchen

  Chapter 3: The Drawing-Room

  Chapter 4: The Ride

  Chapter 5: Annie

  Chapter 6: The Path Is Mapped Out

  Chapter 7: The Belt

  Chapter 8: France

  Chapter 9: The Fieldcard

  Chapter 10: Always Flight

  Chapter 11: Waiting

  Chapter 12: The Return

  Author’s Note

  The characters in this book are entirely fictitious and have no relation to any living person.

  Although the setting is Tyneside and several actual place names have been used, ‘the fifteen streets’ are imaginary.

  Owing to difficulty in comprehension by the uninitiated, the Tyneside dialect has not been adhered to.

  1

  The Birth

  ‘I shall want more hot water, and those towels there will not be enough.’

  ‘Glory to God, Doctor, you have every towel there is in the house!’

  ‘Then bring sheets, old ones, and we can tear them.’

  ‘Old ones, and we can tear them,’ mimicked Dorrie Clarke to herself. ‘New brooms sweep clean. By God, if they don’t! Old Kelly would have more sense, drunk as he might have been. The way this one’s going on you would think sovereigns were as thick as fleas and there was a father downstairs to welcome the brat.’

  ‘There’s no more sheets, Doctor,’ she said, rolling her already tightly rolled sleeves further up her fat arms. Speak to her like that, would he! She’d been bringing bairns into the world when his arse was still being washed! For two hours now he had said: ‘Do this, do that,’ as if Kate Hannigan on the bed there was the Duchess of Connaught, instead of a trollop going to bring a bastard into the world; when it made up its mind to come, which wouldn’t be for another couple of hours. And here she’d been hanging around since tea-time; and it was Christmas Eve and all, and not a drop past her lips; an’ couldn’t get away for this young swine saying: ‘Lend me a hand here, Mrs Clarke,’ ‘Let her pull on you, Mrs Clarke,’ ‘Get that damn fire to burn, Mrs Clarke!’…Yes, he even damned her. Now Doctor Kelly, rest his soul, could be as drunk as hell, but he’d never swear at you; more likely to say, ‘Have a drop, Mrs Clarke; you need it.’ There was a gentleman for you. This one wouldn’t reign long; but he was reigning tonight, blast him! and get out for a wet she must, or die.

  Into Dorrie Clarke’s agile brain flashed an idea; she’d trade Sarah Hannigan a pair of sheets for the chiffonier downstairs; she’d always had her eye
s on that. Begod! she’d get the best of this bargain, and get out of this young upstart’s sight for five minutes.

  Her fat, well-red face rolled itself into a stiff, oily smile. ‘There’s not a rag in this house but what’s in the pawn, doctor; but I’ve a pair of sheets of me own that I’ll gladly go and get this minute, for I couldn’t see this poor thing want.’ She nodded pathetically down at the humped figure on the bed.

  The doctor didn’t raise himself from his stooping posture over the bed, he didn’t even raise his head, but he raised his eyes, and his eyebrows shot into the tumbled, thick black hair on his forehead. And his black eyes stared at Mrs Clarke for a second in such a way that she thought: ‘Begod! he looks like the divil himself. And he might be that, with his black eyes in that long face and that pointed beard; and him so young and handsome. Holy Mother of God, I must have a drink!’

  Whether it was she slipped, or it was the doctor’s remark that momentarily unbalanced her she couldn’t afterwards decide; for she was stamping down the narrow dark stairs, in a rage, when her feet…just left her, as she put it, and she found herself in a heap in the Hannigans’ kitchen, with Tim Hannigan sitting in his chair by the fireside, wearing his look of sullen anger, only more so, and not moving to give a body a hand up, and Sarah Hannigan, with her weary face bending above her, saying: ‘Oh, are you hurt, Dorrie?’ She picked herself up, grabbed her coat off the back of the kitchen door, pulled a shawl tightly around her head, and, with figure bent, passed out through the door Sarah Hannigan held ajar for her and into the driving snow, without uttering a word. She was too angry even to take much notice of the pain in her knee.

  She’d get even with the young sod…Begod! if it took her a lifetime, she’d get even with him.

  ‘Mrs Clarke,’ he had said, ‘I don’t allow intoxicated women to assist at births. And, if you bring the sheets, we won’t tear them. They will only be a loan, Mrs Clarke.’

  Dorrie Clarke suddenly shivered violently. And it wasn’t a shiver caused by the snow as it danced and swirled about her; it wasn’t a cold shiver at all. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! How did he know? He could have heard I take a drop, but he couldn’t have known about the sheets. My God! it’s what Father O’Malley said…The divil walks the earth, he has many guises…He’s the divil! Ah! but as Father O’Malley would say, he’s got to be fought, and, begod! I’ll fight him!’

  Back in the bedroom of 16 Whitley Street Doctor Rodney Prince stood with his elbows on the mantelpiece. He had to bend down a considerable way to do this as it was only four feet high and merely a narrow ledge above the bedroom fireplace. He kept pushing his hands through his hair with a rhythmic movement…God! but he was tired. Wasn’t it ever going to come? What a Christmas Eve, and Stella likely sitting in a blue stately fume, cramming herself with pity…the beautiful, talented, brutally treated (he gave a soundless laugh at the thought) and neglected wife of a slum doctor! Well, he had telephoned her and told her to go on to the Richards. And he had also telephoned the Richards and told them; but they had said, ‘Well, you know Mrs Prince! She won’t come without you.’ Clever Stella; playing the part of the dutiful wife, awaiting her husband’s return with coffee and sandwiches and a loving smile. Clever Stella…Oh, my God, where was it going to end? Four years of it now, and perhaps ten…fifteen…twenty more…Oh no! If only he didn’t love her so much…Christmas Day tomorrow; she would go to church and kneel like…one of God’s angels, somewhere where the choirboys could see her. Poor choirboys! He knew the feelings she would send through them. How could they think of the Trinity? sing their little responses? when the great God Nature, he who gave you concrete proof of his presence, was competing against the other God, who, as far as they understood, wasn’t introduced to them until they were dead…Oh, Stella! What was he thinking? He was so tired. If only he could go home after this was over and find her there, soft and yielding, wanting something from him…

  ‘Doctor! Doctor!’

  He turned swiftly towards the bed and gripped the hands outstretched to him. ‘There, there! Is it starting again? Try hard now.’

  ‘How much longer, Doctor?’

  ‘Not long,’ he lied; ‘any time now. Only don’t worry; you’ll be all right.’

  ‘I don’t mind…I don’t mind.’ The tousled head rolled to and fro on the pillow. ‘I want to die…I hope we both die…just go out quietly…’

  ‘Kate, here, don’t talk like that!’ He released one of his hands from hers and brought her face round to look at him, his palm against her cheek. ‘Now, we want none of that nonsense. Do you hear?’

  Her great blue eyes looked up at him, quietly and enquiringly, for a second. ‘What chance has it?’ she asked.

  He knew she wasn’t enquiring after the child’s chance of being born alive, although about that he was beginning to have his doubts, but of its chance to live in her world, handicapped as it would be. ‘As much as the next,’ he answered her. ‘And more,’ he added, ‘seeing it’ll be your child.’

  Now, what had made him say that? For, if it inherited her beauty and was brought up in these surroundings, it was doomed from birth. How the feelings of kindliness made one lie, made one tactful and insincere! Only when you hated someone did you tell the truth.

  He pulled up a rickety chair and sat down, letting Kate, in her spasms, pull on his arm…Where the deuce had that drunken sot got to?…The room was cold; the fire that had glowed for a little while had died down under its heap of coaldust…If that old hag didn’t come back he’d be in a nice fix; the mother downstairs was less than useless, scared to death of her man, and of this event, and of life in general…If that Clarke woman didn’t come back. But why was he harping on about her not coming back? She was a midwife…of sorts; it was her job. But he had had a little experience of her during these last few months, and he had come to recognise her as a fawning leech, picking her victims from among the poorer of her own kind.

  ‘Oh, Doc…tor! Oh, God!’

  Easing the bedclothes off the contorted figure he moved his hands quickly over her. Then he covered her up again and banged on the floor with his heel. In a few seconds the door was opened quietly, and the mother stood there, clutching her holland apron in both hands.

  ‘Has Mrs Clarke come back yet?’

  ‘No, Doctor.’

  ‘Then will you kindly get this fire to burn? Put wood on it.’

  ‘There’s no wood, Doctor; there’s only the slack.’

  ‘Can’t you break up something?’

  She looked at him helplessly; her lips twitched, and her tongue seemed to be moving at random in her mouth. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He thrust his hand into his pocket and handed her a sovereign. She looked at it, lying bright and yellow on her palm. Her tongue ran wild races between her teeth, but she made no sound.

  ‘Get what’s necessary,’ he said gruffly. ‘And perhaps a chicken; Kate will likely need it tomorrow.’

  She nodded slowly at him, while her tongue, darting from side to side, caught the drops as they ran down her cheeks.

  Kate was moaning; she could hear herself. The moans seemed to float around her, then rise up to the ceiling and stick on the mottled plaster. Most of them were right above her head, gathered together in the dark patch that formed the three-legged horse which had been her companion and secret confidant since childhood. He wouldn’t mind having her moans; he knew all about her, her sins, the secret things she thought and was ashamed of, even her feeling sometimes that there couldn’t be a God. It was, as she had once read, that people like Father O’Malley were only put there to stop people like her from thinking; for, if she once started thinking, she and her like wouldn’t put up with things as they were. Jimmy McManus had lent her that book, but she had understood hardly anything at all of it. Yet, it was after reading it that she had gone and got the place in Newcastle, in the best end…Shields wasn’t good enough for her. And it was after reading that very book that she had taken off all her clothes and had stood naked before the mirror
, swinging its mottled square back and forth so that she could see every part of herself; and glorying in it as she did it, and knowing that she was beautiful, that she was fit to marry anybody. It was only her talk that was all wrong…But she would learn; she was quick at picking things up…Of course, she had suffered for this. Her conscience had driven her to confession, and, in the dark box, with face ablaze, she had confessed the greatest sin of her life. The priest had told her she must guard against the sin of impurity by keeping a close watch on her thoughts; and he went on to explain how a great saint, when sorely tempted by the flesh, had thrown himself naked into a holly bush, or was it a bramble? she wasn’t sure now.

  The moans floated thick about her…Where was John now?…Did he know he was soon to be a father?…Had he ever been a father before?…He wasn’t a husband, she wasn’t a wife; yet she was having a baby…It was all her own fault, she couldn’t blame John; he had never mentioned marriage to her. Her inherent honesty had told her so a thousand times these past months.

  ‘John!’ she called out sharply as the doctor wiped the sweat from her face.

  ‘It’s all right, Kate, it’s all right; it won’t be long now.’

  It won’t be long now! It won’t be long now! the moans said. John’s baby, with his slant eyes and beautiful mouth…It was as near as yesterday when she had first seen him, seated in the Jacksons’ drawing-room. Since two of the maids had been sent into town, she had been told that she was to serve tea…wee cakes and china cups. Something had happened inside her when their eyes had first met. She had been glad to get out of the room and into the coolness of the hall. He had been there only three days when he slipped a note to her, asking her to meet him…Oh, the mad joy! the ecstasy of love before its fulfilment! Even when she had given herself to him, it had not compared with the strange delight of knowing she was wanted; and by him, a gentleman who had travelled the world. Twice he had taken her; only twice; and both times within a month, on her half-day. Right up Lanesby way they had gone; and he had told her she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, that he loved her as she’d never be loved again, and that she’d always be his…

  ‘Oh, Doctor! Doctor!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he assured her, as he went out of the room. ‘Mrs Hannigan!’ he shouted to the frightened face, framed in the shawl, already at the bottom of the dim stairs, ‘get me Mrs Clarke here at once!’