The Rag Nymph (aka The Forester Girl) Read online

  THE RAG NYMPH

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Rag Nymph

  PART ONE One

  Two

  PART TWO One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  PART THREE One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Twelve

  Eleven

  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)
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br />   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 Rag Nymph

  In the heat of a late June afternoon in 1854, abandoned by a panic-stricken mother in an all-too-obvious flight from the law, Millie Forester bursts into Aggie Winkowski’s life like a bolt from the blue. Aggie, who was known locally as ‘Raggie Aggie’ for her long-established business of trading in rags and old clothes, knew well enough the dangers waiting for such a strikingly pretty girl left alone in this rough and vice-ridden quarter. She could see no alternative other than to take her in.

  But what began as compassionate expediency led to a new relationship that would grow and deepen, moulding Millie’s destiny and giving new meaning to the life of Aggie Winkowski.

  Millie Forester’s advance through the coming years to the threshold of womanhood is the core of The Rag Nymph, as gripping and socially concerned an historical novel as Catherine Cookson has ever written. Her superb skills of narrative and characterization provide a spectrum of the good and evil of the Victorian era, frankly confronting the terrible menace of child corruption, which remains a constant issue in our time now as it was then.

  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 1998

  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 978-1-78036-031-7

  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

  The Child

  One

  The road was narrow. It could be measured by the width of a coach with a man walking at each side, but even so it was wider than the streets and alleys leading off from both sides of it.

  It was the last Wednesday in June, 1854. The day had been hot; in fact, the previous week had been very hot and so the roads and streets were paved with ridged flags of mud, hard baked, but not so hard as to prevent their surfaces being skimmed off into dust which, in some streets of the town, seemed to be floating waist high like a mist rising from water.

  But Felix Road wasn’t in the main town, nor yet on the outskirts; it was situated to the north of the city and gave its name to the acres of housing that was home to the poor, the destitute and the dregs of humanity. It also housed countless bars and gin shops, as well as a number of churches, chapels and temperance halls, the latter set up, as it were, in opposition to as many brothels.

  The members of the various denominations fought hard against the evils and wickedness of drink and immorality, and in this they were aided by the Constabulary. However, the law, it would seem, was not so much concerned with those who drank as with those who sold their bodies for gain.

  It was five-thirty in the evening, and there were still very few people to be seen on Felix Road. It would be different at six o’clock when the surrounding mills spewed out their weary and gin-thirsty humanity. But now, along the middle of it came an old woman pushing a handcart on which was a pile of rags. She and the cart were half covered by the shadow of the buildings on her left; but further back up the road, walking deep in the shadow, was a young woman holding a child by the hand. Yet so striking was the colour of the child’s hair and of that which showed beneath the flat straw hat of the woman as to appear like distorted jogging lights in the dimness.

  Then an odd thing happened. At the sight of a man approaching from a distance the woman seemed about to thrust the child against the wall but, changing her mind, she walked forward again, and she spoke to the man.

  From the way he gesticulated the man was apparently upbraiding her, and when he lifted his arm and signalled to someone behind her she gripped the child by the hand and ran.

  The rag woman was turning her handcart into a narrow alley when the child was almost flung against it, the young woman crying, ‘Go home! Go home!’ even as she continued to run.

  Agnes Winkowski turned from the frightened child clinging on to the side of her handcart and looked back to watch two men of the law speeding after the woman. The sight was not an unusual one. Hardly a day went by but she saw some lass or other picked up by them snots. However, what she couldn’t understand was why any lass on the make would be lugging a child around with her.

  She now looked at the child, saying, ‘Was that your ma?’

  The little girl made a movement with her head but did not speak.

  ‘D’you know your way home?’

  Again the same movement, but now the voice came out in squeaks, saying, ‘But Mama has the key.’

  Mama, she called her mother. Not Ma, but Mama…‘Where d’you live?’

  ‘Nelson Close…the bottom.’

  Nelson Close? Well, there were worse places than Nelson Close. But still, it was on the fringe of The Courts, with only the railway line separating it from Salford.

  She took up the handles of the handcart and began to push it, and now there was room only for the child to walk by the side of it. And this she did, holding on for support to the iron rail that rimmed the wooden edge of the cart and which helped to keep the rags in place.

  The alley opened out into a large square courtyard from which, on all sides, reared five-storey buildings, all in a state of dilapidation, and outside of each was a mound of filth and rubbish, some giving off a stench which left nothing to the imagination as to from what it was derived.

  As the old woman pushed the handcart across the yard a number of children scampered from various heaps to gather around her, gabbling. But the gabble was such that the child couldn’t distinguish what it was they wanted, until the old woman cried, ‘No candy rock today! ’Tis all gone, all gone,’ at which, one after the other, the children, as if at a signal, stopped gabbling and took up the chant: ‘Raggie Aggie! Raggie Aggie! Baggie Aggie! Baggie Aggie! Lousy Loppy Aggie! Narrow old bugger Aggie!’

  The old woman seemed not to hear the children, yet on leaving The Courts to pass through another narrow alleyway, she bitterly emitted one word: ‘Scum!’ Then as they emerged into a street she looked down at the child, and nodding backwards, she said, ‘It saves ten minutes of pushing that way
.’

  She now pulled the handcart to a halt and, looking at the child, said, ‘Well, what you gonna do, love?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The child’s voice had a tremor in it.

  ‘Got any neighbours…I mean, that you could go to?’

  ‘No. Mama doesn’t have neighbours, not there. It…it was in the cellar.’

  ‘What was in the cellar?’

  ‘Where…where we lived. It’s…it’s down the steps.’

  Aggie looked closely at the child. Her hair was hanging almost to her small waist and it was of a colour she had never seen before, not around these quarters anyway. Fair-headed little ’uns, but none like this one. Then there were the child’s eyes, grey, clear, large and at this moment expressing fear, if she had ever seen it. The rest of the face matched the eyes and the cream blush-tinted skin. She was a bonny young ’un, right enough, and from a bonny mother, from what she had glimpsed of that lass as she skidded down the road with the pollis after her. She must be on the game, all right. But why take the child with her? That would put any bloke off, surely. Or did she use her an’ all? Oh, no, no; she wouldn’t want to think that. And yet, look at all the old buggers that would sell their souls for a little bit of humanity like this one. Kit’s brothel down there was noted for it; and the dirty old customers, and not so old, some of them, came in their carriages, but after dark, of course. Why didn’t the bloody pollis get on to him and clear his place out? They had cleared Paper Meg’s out last week. But then, that was nothing; they all knew she would start up some place else. But the churchmen had to be satisfied; hoodwinked would be a better word…

  ‘Please…’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Come with me?’ Aggie looked from the child to the heap of rags, then down at the mountain of clothes covering her own body. She smelt; the contents of the cart smelt; the cart itself was impregnated with stench; and here was this gleaming child, yes, aye, that was a word to describe her, she gleamed, and she was asking to come along with her. Well, if she said no, what would happen to her? Oh, she had a pretty good idea: she only needed to go back to Felix Road or even Nelson Close, where she said she lived, to find out. Poor little bugger.