Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy Read online

  BILL AND THE MARY ANN SHAUGHNESSY

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  Cover

  Titlepage

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Books by Catherine Cookson

  Description

  Foreword

  Copyright

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART TWO Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  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 Ma
ry 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

  Bill and the Mary Ann Shaughnessy

  Setting off on holiday aboard a borrowed cabin cruiser, The Mary Ann Shaughnessy, the brothers Jonathan and Malcolm Crawford and their friend Joe argue in vain against taking the family’s battle-scarred and troublesome bull terrier with them. Bill, due in court soon over an unfortunate ‘misunderstanding’ with the postman, is sure to cause them problems.

  But the boys are very glad to have Bill on board when they sail right into an adventure—one in which their very lives are to depend on the plucky dog’s courage and spirit.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1991

  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 978-1-78036-091-1

  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

  To Bill

  Who, with me, wishes painful retribution

  to all those who train his breed to kill.

  Foreword

  We bought the boat in 1956 and christened her The Mary Ann Shaughnessy after the heroine of my Mary Ann stories; and over a period of ten years we spent many interesting hours on her. I say interesting, not happy: whereas my husband loved rivers and locks and was a good swimmer, Bill and I hated the locks and, what was more, neither of us could swim.

  All the incidents on the rivers I describe actually did happen to some extent, except meeting the baddies. Yet we did come up with a very fine yacht, and I rammed her, and her owner was anything but pleased.

  I wrote this story in 1960, and, as was many another, it was pushed into a cupboard. However, on coming across it recently, it revived our trips to the Cam; so, I hope you enjoy them more than I did.

  Catherine Cookson

  PART ONE

  One

  The three boys and the dog stood on the quay at Banham’s boatyard in Cambridge and looked again at the boat that was to be their home for the next two weeks, and the boys’ excitement held them speechless. The boat was named The Mary Ann Shaughnessy. She was a twenty-six foot cabin cruiser, white painted up to her superstructure which was a shining brown, except for her flat roof which was painted cream. She was front drive, the wheel very much like that of a car steering wheel, more so because it was at seat-level height. The cockpit was about six feet in length and held the engine encased in a box, and seats all round. The main cabin was eight feet long, with a double and a single berth, which formed a comfortable lounge in the daytime. There was a small sideboard at the head of one bunk, and a half wardrobe at the head of the other, and a rack for books and papers ran all around the cabin.

  The galley was only about five feet long and held a dinette with seats at either side. Opposite was a door which led to a lavatory and washbasin, and next to it there was a good-sized sink with a pump above it, and to the right, above the draining board, a calor gas ring and grill. One step led out of the galley into the back cockpit which was made up of lockers with only a small space in which to stand. From a flagpole attached to the middle of her transom flew the red ensign, and on each side of her high pointed bows she carried her name proudly on a varnished board.

  She was a smart little lady. And that’s what Mr Harrison, the storekeeper, said as he came up behind the boys, startling them for a moment. ‘Yes, she’s worth admiring. She may not be young any more but she’s a smart little lady, and I hope you treat her as such.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, sir.’ Jonathan Crawford moved his head deferentially to the man who had been so helpful to them since their arrival in the yard a few hours ago, and he said, ‘We’ll take care of her.’

  ‘You’d better, boy, else I wouldn’t like to be you when you face the owners…whether they are friends of your family or not. As I said a short time ago, it’s a surprise to me that Mr and Mrs Cookson have let you have her, nothing short of a miracle in fact.’

  Jonathan Crawford, looking at the storekeeper, endorsed his remark in his mind. It was indeed nothing short of a miracle that his Uncle Tom had lent his boat to them, and he still couldn’t quite take in the fact that they were about to take her up the Cambridge rivers. For the first time he was glad that their trip abroad had fallen through.

  If things had gone as planned the whole Crawford family would now have been in Norway, but his sister Lorna had to go and catch chickenpox on the second day of the holidays; and if this wasn’t bad enough she had to give them to young Jessica. After the wailing had died down somewhat his mother had almost caused a civil war by suggesting it would be a good thing for him and Malcolm to hobnob with the girls in the hope that they might catch it too, for, as she said, they would have to get it some time and far better make one big job of it.

  It might have been better from her point of view but not from theirs. The suggestion had driven him and Malcolm to camp out in the summer house. If they were to get chickenpox, all right, but to go asking for it, oh no. They were both loud in their protests. And so they had collected their meals from the kitchen and isolated themselves from the house. But not from Joe, Malcolm’s friend from next door, and certainly not from their dog, Bill; ‘that fellow’, as his father had said, could be acting as a carrier for he spent his time racing between the girls’ room and the summer house.

  It was when their spirits were very low and they were toying with the idea of going camping, even when the weather forecast said rain, that Uncle Tom had phoned. Would the boys like to take a holiday on The Mary Ann Shaughnessy?

  When the excitement had died down just the slightest, their father had almost put a spanner in the works by saying with loud finality, ‘Well, if you go you take “that fellow” with you, mind.’

  ‘That fellow’ was a brindle bull terrier, a battle-scarred bull terrier, and it was only through the tenacity of the boys and the pleading of the girls that Bill was alive at all. In fact, he was practically under sentence of death at this moment, for if the postman took the case up Mr Crawford said that would be the last straw.

  The trouble with Bill was that he loved people and liked to make their acquaintance, unless of course they happened to be carrying a stick and we
re unwise enough to wave it about. Only the members of his family were exempted from this peculiar aversion—he even allowed them to throw sticks for him to fetch. But whereas Bill loved humans he wholeheartedly hated the male members of his own species, no matter what breed, and when meeting up with them he would do his best to separate their bodies, long, tall, or short, from their heads. Over the years this weakness of Bill’s had not only taken Mr Crawford into court, had not only cost him quite a deal of money, had not only very often filled his days and nights with worry, when Bill was on the rampage, but had lost him and the whole family a number of friends and created for them a good many enemies…But no-one could ever accuse Bill of being discourteous to a lady dog.

  The boys protested vehemently that Bill would be unmanageable on a boat, but it got them nowhere. The ultimatum stood: they took ‘that fellow’ or they didn’t go.

  And then there was Joe from next door. The Taggarts came from the North and had been neighbours of the Crawfords for only six months. At first there had been Mr and Mrs Taggart and Grandma Taggart, then Mrs Taggart walked out one day and didn’t return. Being a salesman, Mr Taggart was away most of the time, and Joe was left to the mercy of his grandmother, whom he didn’t like. So Joe spent a great deal of his time in the Crawfords’ house with Malcolm, who had become his best friend.

  Malcolm Crawford was fourteen and short for his age, but he was thickset and sturdy, whereas Joe, who was of the same age and about the same height, was as thin as a rake, which made him look younger than Malcolm. But both of them looked years younger than Jonathan, because Jonathan who was fifteen was already five foot six. So it was that when the three of them were together it was Jonathan who took the lead, and he was addressed as the leader, as now by Mr Harrison.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve got your food aboard, you know where everything is…But mind what I told you about being careful with the calor gas. Always see it’s turned off at the drum every time you’ve finished with the stove. And be especially careful when lighting the gas in the cockpit. You’ve got two spare gallons of petrol underneath the tank there and if you should spill any when you’re filling her up again you just need a match to it and whoof! You’ll be keeping company with the swans.’