The Bonny Dawn Read online

  THE BONNY DAWN

  Catherine Cookson

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Bonny Dawn

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  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<
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  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 Bonny Dawn

  For seventeen-year-old Brid Stevens, the day began with such promise. At four o’clock on a summer morning, her alarm clock roused her from a dream-filled sleep. She had an appointment to keep with Joe Lloyd whom she had met at the weekly dance. On the cliff-top at Stockwell Hill, overlooking the sea, they were to watch the sun come up.

  But upon her return home, where she lived with her parents and her brother, all hell was let loose. Harry Palmer was also there, fresh from telling his tale of the lovers’ tryst he said he had witnessed. Brid and Joe, he claimed, had spent the night together, there on the cliff-top. What was to occur after that would bring the day to a horrifying end, as family and friends of all concerned displayed their prejudices and made their own judgements.

  The events of this powerful novel, set on the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, take place over one day, a period during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting between two young people are far more significant than the event itself.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1996

  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 978-1-78036-035-5

  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

  Chapter One

  The alarm went off in the middle of her dream. She was dreaming she was dancing, not the twist or jiving—these were beginning to be considered old-fashioned at the club—but something more old-fashioned still: she was gliding to music that seemed to come out of the clouds, for there was no orchestra that she could see and no roof to the ballroom. She knew there was a clear glass floor and she could see her legs reflected in it, but not those of her partner. She knew she was dancing with a man and that she liked him, but when she looked at the floor she could see no partner. It was as a feeling of keen disappointment was penetrating her dream that the alarm went off. It brought her spiralling up from the glass floor, through the roofless room and onto the bed, where she clutched wildly at the pillow. Pushing her hands underneath it, she swiftly switched off the muffled tinkling, then turned on her back and lay gasping, her eyes wide, staring upwards into the darkness while her ears strained towards the wall which divided her room from that of her parents. She listened; but when no sound could be heard through the wall, slowly, like a deflating tyre, she let herself sink back again into the hollow her body had made in the bed.

  It was four o’clock. Eeh! Durst she do it? Durst she get up, creep out of the house at this hour? What if she wakened them? Lord, there’d be a set-to if that were to happen. And what would she say? Yes, what would she say? She could never tell them the truth; they would want to lock her in. A little giggle stirred inside her and mounted into a laugh, and she pressed her finger to her lips. Then sitting up she stared towards the glimmer of light at the window. She was surprised to find that she wasn’t tired, even though she had danced from eight till twenty to eleven. Had she been only a quarter of an hour alone with him? Had all this been arranged in a quarter of an hour? When they had left the club he hadn’t believed it when she said she had to be in by eleven. She had known he thought she was spinning a yarn and just wanted to walk with him a bit longer. He had not tried to kiss her or do any necking, and somehow it was a relief. It was nice not to have to fight when somebody was taking you home, to slap their hands from the front of your dress, to stop their fingers working in your palms. If her dad knew what went on there he would never let her go near the club; although it didn’t go on in the club, it was after. And in a way she was glad she had to be in by eleven for she knew she wasn’t up to coping with them, as Nancy Leary was with her parents, or Janet Castleton with hers. They could enjoy themselves and go as far as they wanted and hold their own, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to. She was always afraid of passing out and leaving herself at the mercy of one or other of them. When she used to go to church, that was before she left school, she would pass out on a Sunday morning, nearly always at the same time, and then her dad put his foot down and wouldn’t let her go any more. But that was years ago, years and years and years, when she was fifteen. She laughed to herself again for thinking it was years since she was at school. It was only two years ago.

  Well, if she was going to go she had better get up.

  Bridget Stevens stood on the bedside mat for a moment, biting at her lip, still undecided; and then with quick jerky movements she was dragging her clothes on, the same clothes that she had taken off last night when she came back from the dance. She hadn’t worn a dance frock; she had made that mistake only once, and had sat out all night and not one of the lads had asked her onto the floor. No, her dance dress consisted of a full skirt with a stiff buckram petticoat attached and a V-necked cotton jumper with half sleeves. Her coat lay where she had flung it over the bottom of the bed, and after putting it on she picked up, not the stiletto-heeled, long pointed-toed shoes in which she had danced, but a slipper-like pair that lay under the bed and, carrying these in her hand, she crept to the door.

  On the landing, she had to pass her parents’ door, and then their Willie’s door, which was across the little landing and next to that of the bathroom. When she reached the top of the stairs she opened her mouth wide and silently drew in a long gulp of air. Then cautiously, step by step, she crept down the stairs. She did not attempt to leave the house by the front door opposite, but turned down a narrow hallway into the kitchen, and here, standing by the table, she again opened her mouth wide and gulped air, but not so silently this time. Then, after unbolting the back door she opened it and closed it softly after her. She had forgotten her watch but she heard the clock on St Nicholas’ Church striking the quarter: a quarter past four. She would be back at a quarter past six and no-one would be any the wiser, for they would still be sleeping; they would sleep till nine o’clock this morning, because it was Sunday. She had never known her mother or father or their Willie rise before the paper boy came on a Sunday. At nine o’clock on any other morning of the week the house was empty, for they would all have gone to work, her mother included, but Sunday was a day of rest and they took this literally; until nine o’clock anyway.

  South Scardyke was the new part of the town and was covered with council houses. The Stevens’ had moved here three years ago from East Scardyke when they were pulling the houses down in that quarter. Brid Stevens liked living in South Scardyke, no matter how her dad went on about it, and he di
d go on about it, proclaiming that her mother had never had to go out to work when they lived at the east side. His money had been sufficient for them all then, but now, even though the four of them were working, it still wasn’t sufficient. Brid liked the cleanliness of Cornford Terrace, she liked the cleanliness of the house, she liked having a bathroom, especially when she could get it to herself for an hour or even more. She liked the view from the back bedroom window, their Willie’s window, for it looked right across the open ground to the hills, and she knew that if you could have sawn the top off Stockwell Hill you would have had a glimpse of the sea beyond. The sea, the beach and the cliffs were only two miles from South Scardyke, and she was on her way there now. Well, not actually to the sea but to gaze at it from the top of Stockwell Hill.

  There was a grass verge along the edge of the pavement, with young trees studding it here and there, and she kept to the verge to dull her steps, in case some light sleeper, hearing footsteps in the street, might look out from behind the curtains. You never could tell, for some people couldn’t sleep. She thought this was very strange although she knew it was true: she herself couldn’t get enough sleep, yet here she was at a quarter past four on a Sunday morning off to see the dawn and to see the sun rise over the sea from the top of Stockwell Hill. It was daft, wasn’t it? She laughed inside and her stomach contracted with excitement. When she reached the end of the street she cut through a gap between the railings of two houses, which brought her to the recreation ground. As she crossed this open space she felt a little fear: this was the place where men waylaid girls at night. But the night was past, the street lamps were out, and the dawn was coming. She felt the light beginning to creep around her.

  When she saw the grey outline of Coster Road School looming ahead, she knew she must hurry still more or she’d miss him. Her hurrying came to an abrupt stop when, without seeing anyone, she heard the monotonous tread of steps coming towards her along the road. That was a policeman. Quickly she turned up the side cut by the infants’ passage, skirted the railings around the playground, passed the old church of St Nicholas, and then abruptly she was in the country and walking between the high hedges, making for Stockwell Hill. And she became more excited and at the same time frightened than at any time since the alarm had wakened her.