Rosie of the River Read online

  ROSIE OF THE RIVER

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Rosie of the River

  PART ONE Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  PART TWO Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter 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
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br />   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

  Rosie of the River

  When Fred Carpenter suggests to his wife Sally that they take a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads, she is filled with trepidation. Nevertheless she summons her courage and the couple and their bull-terrier Bill set off in their boat, the Dogfish Three.

  Sally’s misgivings are soon justified, as a series of disasters, human, nautical and canine, threaten to ruin their holiday. Then everything changes as they are befriended by the boating fraternity and encounter the remarkable fifteen-year-old Rosie, whose family history stirs their curiosity and sympathy. Fred and Sally decide to support Rosie’s efforts to better herself—and are rewarded when she finds love and happiness.

  This delightful story is something of a departure for Catherine Cookson with centre stage being claimed by the boating couple and later, Rosie. This time, the suffering that her heroines are usually forced to endure is underplayed in favour of a gentle narrative that keeps us inexorably turning the pages.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 2000

  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 978-1-78036-030-0

  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

  Early Days

  Chapter One

  It was on the twenty-eighth of August 1950 at eleven thirty p.m. that Fred Carpenter said to his wife Sally, ‘Darling, it’s a complete rest you need. You can’t go on burning the candle at both ends.’

  ‘It’s too late for a holiday,’ she said: ‘we haven’t booked one.’

  ‘Well’—he stretched his neck out of his collar—‘there’s always the Broads.’

  Sally looked sharply at him. ‘Don’t be silly, dear. You’ve got to book up months ahead there.’

  ‘There are such things as cancellations; we could always enquire. There’s no harm in that.’

  ‘But there’s only another fortnight before the school term begins.’

  ‘Well, we could have a week…Just imagine: weather like this, hot sunshine, no wind, and practically empty rivers. It’s nearing the end of the season; there can’t be many people there now.’

  ‘But you know nothing about boats, Fred.’

  His neck moved further out of his collar. ‘I know as much as the next. There are two old Broads books in the attic. We sent away for them last year. Don’t you remember? And I’m not a dimwit altogether.’

  ‘No, dear; you’re not; and if I remember we didn’t send for the books, you did.’

  His head subsided. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I did…Why didn’t we go then?’

  ‘Because I put my foot down for a change: I can’t swim and I don’t like boats.’

  ‘But you’ve learnt to swim since.’

  ‘I can do four breast strokes before I make for the bottom.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re getting along fine. And look’—his head began to ascend again—‘I’m going to put my foot down now. If I don’t, I can see I’ll soon be living on my own.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be living alone long; some other idiot would soon feel the urge for self-sacrifice.’

  ‘There’—he did a bit of strutting up and down the kitchen rug—‘you see what I mean? You’re all on edge. It’s this shop that’s wearing you down, working there morning, noon and night; you’ve only given yourself a break now because business is quiet.’

  ‘Morning, noon and…’ Sally was lost for words. ‘I still manage to do everything in the house, just as it always has been done. It’s my job that keeps me sane.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care what you say, you’re going to have a break, now that you’ve got these two weeks free. We’re going.’

  As there didn’t seem to be much more to be said, they went to bed.

  At nine the next morning, a Saturday, Sally stood at the kitchen door listening to him phoning Blake’s boatyard, and her heart sang when his doleful voice came to her, saying, ‘You’ve got nothing, nothing at all?’

  There followed a buzz, buzz, buzz, and then his voice again, a little on the defensive now, ‘Yes, I know it’s late, but we didn’t know we could make it…illness and one thing and another, you know.’

  His wife raised her eyebrows to the ceiling at this whopper.

  When he came into the kitchen he sat down without a word.

  ‘What did they say?’ she asked.

  ‘You heard. They’re full up to the end of the season.’

  His disappointment was so intense that she almost began to feel sorry for him.

  ‘Well, if you really want that kind of holiday we’ll book early next year,’ she said, knowing full well that from this day forth she would plan to spend whatever holiday they were to have on very dry land. But still feeling sorry, yet a bit of a hypocrite, she added, ‘You should have left them with our phone number in case anything should crop up.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sally made her way to the scullery and the dishes. Then by way of an enticement, she said, ‘If you got on with the painting and finished the house this holiday it would leave you clear next year and we could…’

  The chair scraped hard on the lino.

  ‘I suppose it would.’

  His exit was as curt as had been his reply. The door slammed, the ladder outside banged against the wall, scraped along one of the upper windows, making a screeching noise, and she just stopped herself from rushing out and crying, ‘For heaven’s sake! Be careful!’

  At half-past ten the phone rang, and she went to it quite gaily. It might be one of a number of friends; or it might be one of the dozens of local schoolboys who had forgotten he was on holiday and wanted a word with his favourite teacher ‘Mr Chips’. How she loathed that nickname for Fred.

  It was neither of these, it was the man from Blake’s office in London. A cancellation had just come in for a three-berth cruiser. Weren’t they lucky?

  Weakly she said there were only two of them…Whereupon the man said, ‘Well, madam, it’ll go like hot cakes.’

  She checked the appropriate retort.

  The phone was in the hall, and her husband had a phobia about it. Nothing would induce him to answer it, even if he was passing when it rang. Sh
e could be in the bath, and frequently had been, when he had yelled, ‘Phone!’ And she’d had to tear downstairs wet and shivering in her dressing gown and answer a boyish squeak enquiring for ‘Mr Chips’.

  Now, to get from the top of the ladder to her side he must have leaped down the fourteen rungs, and he arrived just at the moment when a great temptation was not only assailing her but had all but conquered her. The phone was snatched from her hand, and in his politest tones, he said, ‘Carpenter here. You’ve got one?’

  The voice from the other end replied, ‘It’s for three…twenty-nine pounds…Dogfish Three, that’s its name. Lovely little craft, at Oulton Broad.’

  ‘Good! Yes, by all means five pounds deposit. Yes…Yes, takeover four o’clock, Saturday. Fine. Thank you very much…Yes, we are very lucky…Goodbye. Goodbye.’

  Sally found herself swung round the hall, danced round the kitchen to ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’, and plumped into a chair. Gone was the curtness, gone was the wife-driven, house-painting husband. Here was the merry, jolly boy, and the merry, jolly boy took her face between his hands until her lips did prunes. Then he stuck his two index fingers into the sides of her mouth and pulled her face up into a smile.

  ‘Come on. Come on. It’s going to do you the world of good. Make a new woman of you.’

  ‘What about the concrete for the drive?’ was the reply. ‘We were to give up a holiday now to get that done.’

  ‘Oh, honey, the drive’ll be here when you’re not; you’re goin’ to have a holiday.’

  ‘We’ll not do it under forty pounds, and we can’t afford it. And the concrete an’ all…’

  ‘Damn the concrete! And we’ll do it on thirty-five…you’ll see.’

  ‘Bill!’ It was a cry from Sally’s heart, and she looked towards the corner of the kitchen where, in an outsize in dog baskets, was lying an outsize in bull terriers.

  ‘Bill?…Bill? My God, yes! Oh, Lord.’

  Bill was the love of their lives, all his sixty pounds; but he was also the worry of their lives. He was possessed by only two passions: one kind for people, another for dogs. The first was an endearing passion, the second was a tooth-and-gore emotion. Bill’s temper had been broken completely when, as a pup, his best friend, a big labrador, turned on him over the small matter of a bone, and left his face in ribbons. From that day every dog became suspect, and a great deal of the Carpenters’ life was spent keeping Bill in the garden and other dogs out.