Love and Mary Ann Read online

  LOVE AND MARY ANN

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Love and Mary Ann

  Chapter One: A Rival

  Chapter Two: ‘Good Afternoon, Mrs Willoughby’

  Chapter Three: Corny

  Chapter Four: Mike Passes Himself

  Chapter Five: Mrs McMullen

  Chapter Six: Mr Lord Looks Ahead

  Chapter Seven: Diplomacy

  Chapter Eight: When Extremes Meet

  Chapter Nine: Getting Kind

  Chapter Ten: Never Judge a Man by the Fit of his Clothes

  Chapter Eleven: The Night Before the Party

  Chapter Twelve: The Party

  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 AN
N 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

  Love and Mary Ann

  Her expensive convent education hadn’t changed Mary Ann Shaughnessy one little bit. Sure, she could come over all refined when she had to, but who’d want to talk ever so nice on a farm?

  But in other respects she was growing up fast. As Mary Ann began to learn about the feelings of adults, so could she see that the more they loved someone, the more they could hurt and be hurt. And it wasn’t just grown-ups who felt this way either. With something of a start, she realised that—whenever she caught sight of Corny Boyle—she could recognise those same feeling swelling up inside herself…

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1961

  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 978-1-78036-078-2

  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

  Chapter One: A Rival

  He stands at the corner

  And whistles me out,

  With his hands in his pockets

  And his shirt hanging out.

  But still I love him—

  Can’t deny it—

  I’ll be with him

  Wherever he goes.

  Mary Ann hitched and skipped as she sang. It would seem that she was entertaining the field of sheep, but all except one, a weak-kneed lamb, appeared oblivious to her prancing. Coming to the end of her ditty, she began again as she had done at least ten times already, and she waved the empty feeding bottle high above her head as she continued her capering, and the lamb, thinking this was but a prelude to another feed from this two-legged mother of his, gambolled with her.

  She had reached the elevating line which ended, ‘And his shirt hanging out’, when she gave an extraordinarily high leap and swung round in mid-air as a voice bellowed above her, ‘Stop that!’

  When she reached the ground she stared wide-eyed for a second at the old man standing beyond the gate, and then she exclaimed in high glee, ‘Why, you’re back!’

  She scampered the few yards to the gate and climbed onto the bottom rung and looked up into the thin, wrinkled face of Mr Lord, and again she exclaimed, ‘Why, you’re back!’ And then she added, ‘They’re not expecting you afore next week. Me mother was going up to the house the night to see Ben about the spring-cleaning…’

  ‘TO…NIGHT.’

  She swallowed but kept her eyes unblinkingly on him as she repeated dutifully, ‘Tonight.’ Oh, Lordy, he wasn’t going to start already, was he?

  She smiled broadly at him now, a smile of welcome, for she was truly pleased to see him, and to take his mind off the obsession for good grammar she held up the empty feeding bottle and, thumbing down towards the lamb which was now nibbling at the wire netting covering the gate, she said, ‘I feed Penelope. He thinks I’m his ma…mother. His mother died and me da said if I fed him…I mean fed it…her—it’s a her—he would let me keep her and not send her away.’

  She continued to look up at him, waiting for him to make some comment. She knew that she had said da instead of father, but it was no use, she couldn’t call her da her father; she’d had that out with Mr Lord a long time ago.

  ‘What were you singing?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Eh!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I mean pardon.’ She dropped her eyes away from him now. Oh, he was ratty. And just come back from a month’s holiday. She had missed him, but she’d also missed his chastising.

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘I don’t know what it’s called really, I think it might be “Whistle an’ I’ll come to ye, me lad”, but it goes, “He stands at the corner and whistles me out…”’

  ‘I heard how it went. Do they teach you that at school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you hear it then?’

  Her head moved around as if she were casually observing the flock of sheep. She knew if she spoke the truth and said, ‘From Corny, Mrs McBride’s grandson’, he would know she had been going to Burton Street and Mulhattans’ Hall and he had told her mother that she shouldn’t be allowed to go there, that all those old associations should be dropped. Her mother had tactfully refrained from stating her opinion on this matter, but later on, when her da had found out, he had said, ‘She’s going to Fanny’s when she wants to’, to which her mother had replied, ‘He didn’t really mean Fanny in particular. I suppose he was thinking that if she went there she would meet up with Sarah Flannagan and there would be the usual fighting in the street. It was that he was likely thinking about.’ But her da had said flatly again, ‘She can go to Mulhattans’ Hall whenever the fancy takes her.’ And then he had added, ‘Don’t you start trying to alter her, Liz; there’s enough working along that line with the old boy; he’s an educational establishment in himself.’

  So, knowing the way the wind blew, Mary Ann was forced to fib. ‘I heard a comic on the wireless singing it.’ She turned her head to look at him to see if he believed her…he didn’t.

  ‘Come along.’

  She went to climb over the gate when his bark hit her again. ‘Mary Ann!’

  She got slowly down from the third bar of the gate, lifted the heavy latch, pushed the lamb away from following her, closed the gate again, then looked at him.

  ‘You’re a big girl now, you shouldn’t have to be told to walk through a gate instead of over it.’

  She continued to look at him. You didn’t know how to take the things he said. He had called her a big girl, when just before he went on his holidays he had said to her mother, ‘We must get her to do special exercises, she’s not growing as she should.’ She did not point out to him that she was always doing exercises to make herself taller, such as hanging from the lower boughs of trees and fixing her feet in the rails of the bed and trying from there to reach the window sill, which even at the nearest remained two feet away. One day she had been over the moon when the distance had cut itself in half, only to find after some observation that it was the bed that had moved. She knew s
he was little; she didn’t like being little, but she would rather be little than do any more exercises—Mr Lord’s kind of exercises, anyway, for they were sure to turn out to be some form of motion that she didn’t like. He usually made her do things that she didn’t like.

  ‘Where’s everybody?’

  They were walking along the road now towards the farm, and Mary Ann realised that this question at least was not out of order, for there was not a soul to be seen. She could see the farmhouse, which was their house, along the road to the left, and there was no sign of anyone near it. And still to the left, away up the hill, nearly at the top, opulent in its newness and dominating in its position, was Mr Lord’s house. And there wasn’t a soul to be seen near that either. The sloping garden was all ablaze with daffodils, tulips and the first azaleas, and presented a magnificent sight, and she drew his attention to it, saying, ‘Look, isn’t the garden bonny? They weren’t out when you left.’

  Mr Lord cast his eyes up the hill and he let them rest there for a moment before he said, ‘Where’s Tony?’

  The house and the garden had reminded him of his grandson, if he needed reminding, and she realised, if she hadn’t done so before, that he was in a paddy. He was always in a paddy when he spoke Tony’s name like that, sharp, as if Tony was committing a crime for not being within sight. It was just over three years ago that Mr Lord discovered he had a grandson at all, and her da had said then, and often since, that he wouldn’t be in Tony’s shoes for all the tea in China, for Tony now couldn’t call his soul his own, and it was as well for him that he was learning to run the managing side of the shipyard, for if he had remained on the farm, as he had really wanted to do, he wouldn’t have been able to get out of the old man’s sight to draw breath. That’s what her da said. She liked Tony…oh, she did. When she grew up she was going to marry him and have three boys and three girls. The boys were going to be called Peter, James and John like the Apostles, and the girls were going to be called Mary, Martha and Elizabeth like those in the Bible history, and they would all live in Mr Lord’s house on the hill, and they would have a television.

  There was no television on the farm at all. It was one of the few things that her da and Mr Lord seemed to agree about. Mr Lord said it was…What was that word? A long word…like mortal sin…demoralising. Yes, that was it—he thought it was demoralising. And her father wouldn’t hear of television in the house because of Michael and her having to do their homework. And he, too, did homework—well, sort of, for he was always reading up books about cows and bullocks and all the things they could catch. Her mother said that if she had known that animals could catch so many diseases she would never have eaten meat in the first place, but now she supposed it was too late to bother.