The Bondage of Love Read online

  THE BONDAGE OF LOVE

  Catherine Cookson

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Bondage of Love

  PART ONE

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  PART THREE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  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 Hanni
gan’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

  The Bondage of Love

  Only after returning from his well-attended funeral did Fiona Bailey realise just how much she would miss Davey Love. Despite her initial doubts and prejudices about this rough-hewn Irishman, towards the end of his life she had discovered qualities about him she had previously overlooked. Above all, it was his inherent kindness that she had failed to discern when she and her husband had first met Davey and his wayward son Sammy.

  The Baileys, Bill and Fiona, lived in the Tyneside town of Fellburn where Bill was a successful building contractor. Years before he had met and married Fiona, a young widow with her own loving family, to which they had shortly added by adopting the orphaned Mamie. Then, when one of Fiona’s children, Willie, acquired a new friend, Sammy, it was he and his father Davey who, by one means or another, helped change the lives and fortunes of the Bailey family.

  Now, with Davey gone, there would be new challenges to face. It had been agreed that Sammy would live with them—but would this formidable lad with his colourful language fit in as a fully-fledged member of the Bailey family? As for Fiona, it was she who bore the brunt of the arguments and disagreements that were an inevitable part of life in the Bailey household. Whatever life had in store, however, she knew she could always rely on Bill, that rock of a man with a rough tongue and edges but with a heart of gold.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1997

  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 978-1-78036-050-8

  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

  Prologue

  It had begun between Katie Bailey and Sammy Love on the day Sammy’s father, Davey, was buried. It was then that Sammy, aiming to comfort Katie, told her that his father had asked him to talk to her.

  Having had a private weep in his bedroom, Sammy went across to Katie’s room and told her just that, that he had been bidden by his father to talk to her because she was lonely. And it was strange that Katie should be grateful to him, for, if not bitter enemies, they had been antagonists for some years, ever since Willie, Katie’s younger brother, became attached to Sammy Love, a common, loud-mouthed, swearing, brash nine-year-old. The association had disrupted the family, and upset Willie’s mother, Fiona.

  Fiona was of the middle class and, naturally, she did not wish any of her children to associate with such as Sammy Love, an urchin from Bog’s End, whose father had done time in Durham jail. But this wily youngster had proved himself of some worth when he saved Bill Bailey’s life, and thereafter had been welcomed into the family circle, as, in a way, his father had.

  Davey Love, a big, seemingly gormless Irishman who made everyone laugh each time he opened his mouth, had become so beloved of the family that he had been brought into their home to spend his last days. And during those days, everyone in this house had felt the better for his presence: from little Angela, Bill’s and Fiona’s Down’s syndrome daughter; up through Mamie, their adopted daughter, who is now nine years old; Willie who is twelve; Katie fourteen and Mark sixteen; and to Mrs Vidler, Fiona’s mother, who had been Bill’s deadly enemy up to a short while ago, when that lady’s character was definitely changed by a dramatic event; and last, but certainly not least, to Bert and Nell Ormesby. Nell, who, some years previously through her own tragedy, had become a helper and companion to Fiona, and Bert who was one of Bill’s workmen. These completed the close family, and there was not one of their lives but had been touched by the big, ungainly, loud-mouthed, but wise Irishman.

  On that particular day Katie definitely had needed comfort for she had been almost ostracised, at least by her stepfather Bill, for being the means of severing a close friendship between him and Rupert Meredith, a relative of Sir Charles Kingdom, the man who had helped to put Bill where he was today in the building world.

  Katie had been only thirteen at the time when, in a mad fit of jealousy after having found Rupert, for whom she had an almost adult love, naked in bed with his girlfriend in her cottage adjacent to the grounds of Bill’s house, she had almost brained her with a heavy wooden bowl. It had just missed the young woman’s eye. She had also left her mark on Rupert, as he had eventually turned on her by dragging her by her hair and throwing her outside onto the ash path.

  From that day, Rupert had naturally cut all connection with the house. But, as he still worked as manager of a garage Bill had, the two men continued to meet.

  Bill could not forgive Katie for what she had done: he had valued Rupert’s friendship, for it had stemmed from Sir Charles and Lady Kingdom, and had, in a way, become stronger after Sir Charles had died.

  But on the day of Davey Love’s funeral, among the throng of people outside the church, Rupert had spoken to Fiona for the first time since the event, and because Katie was standing by her side, after some hesitation, he had said, ‘Hello, Katie.’

  Staring back at him she had answered simply, ‘Hello,’ and at the same time she had wondered why she had been so silly all that time ago. What had been this feeling that had driven her almost mad with jealousy? What had it been all about? Next to loving Rupert, she had loved Bill, and so his subsequent ignoring of her had thrown her into deep misery, and she rarely spoke to anyone except in monosyllables.

  But on that day when they returned from the funeral, there stood Bill in the hallway of the splendid house of which he was justly proud. And he looked at her, the stepchild he had loved most of all in his adopted family, and she had looked at him and when she cried from the depths of her, ‘Oh, Dad! Oh, Dad! I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he swept her into his arms. And as Fiona and the rest of the family looked on, they all knew a great welcoming sense of relief. Life would return to normal.

  It was after Katie had dashed upstairs, also to end her spate of weeping, that Sammy Love had knocked on her door, and she had looked at him as if she had never seen him before. He was two
years younger than her, yet he had always seemed much older. He wasn’t as tall as her and he was very thin, wiry her dad called him. That was another thing that had made her dislike him and go for him at every possible opportunity, because her dad seemed to love him. In fact, she knew he considered him not only as one of the family, now that he was to live with them, but had always thought him someone very special, even when he cursed and used four-letter words.

  Then there was Willie. Willie had stuck to Sammy like a limpet all these years. He couldn’t breathe without Sammy. She recalled there had been rows in the house because of Willie’s determination to be friends with this boy. What was it about him that made people want to be friends with him? Perhaps it was the same quality that his father had possessed, only in a larger quantity. You couldn’t say he was good-looking. She had never noticed his eyes before, except whilst they were having a slanging match, when they had looked like round black marbles. For a boy, they were large eyes and longish lashes, but his nose was over-big, as was his mouth. He had what she supposed one would call a blunt face, from which his chin seemed at times to stick out.

  When she had felt his hand in hers she had experienced a queer sensation. It was as if she were younger than him: he being fourteen, coming fifteen, and she only twelve coming thirteen.

  On that day she knew that she would miss Mr Love. She had been able to talk to him and she had discovered he wasn’t thick as everybody imagined him to be. He was funny and said things back to front, and he made you laugh, and you always seemed better for having him near. Yet, as she had looked at his son, she had thought, the mind was a stupid thing: it made you love somebody to distraction, then dislike them for having humbled you; or, as in Sammy’s case, here she was beginning to like him when the only feeling she had had for him up till now had been disdain. When would one know where one was, if things like that could happen to you? But they were still holding hands as they went down the stairs. And when they both realised what the family might have to say about this apparent association, they quickly disengaged, and such was their understanding of one another now that they could openly laugh at it.