The Unbaited Trap Read online

  THE UNBAITED TRAP

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Unbaited Trap

  PART ONE One: The Roof

  Two: The Family

  Three: Mother and Son

  Four: A Little Perfume

  Five: The Joke

  Six: Pat

  PART TWO One: The Impossible

  Two: The Reason

  Three: Father And Son

  Four: Mr Bolton

  Five: Val

  Six: Mr Bolton Remembers

  PART THREE One: The Proposal

  Two: The Search

  Three: The Farm

  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

&n
bsp; 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 Unbaited Trap

  John Emmerson was a lonely man. He had a wife, a son, friends, but he was isolated from all the people and events about him by the tragedy of his past. Then he met Cissie, and for the first time his loneliness eased a little.

  Cissie was everything that his wife Ann was not. She was warm, compassionate and generous. And she was quick to sense the needs of a desolate unhappy man.

  But Cissie was also a young widow: poor, and with a young son to support. And John Emmerson was one of the town’s leading solicitors—a man of importance whose every move was watched by the local dignitaries…

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1966

  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 978-1-78036-064-5

  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

  PART ONE

  DINNER AT EIGHT

  One: The Roof

  John Emmerson brought his speed down to twenty as he neared the bottom of the Avenue. Although it was only six o’clock on the November evening, there was already a tendency to frost, and he knew from experience the road would be wet near Handley’s Place. There was a spring somewhere up on one of his fields and nothing could be done about it. Twice last year he had skidded on the same spot, and around this time of the year, and he didn’t want this to happen tonight, not with his new acquisition only a week old. He’d had a Rover car for years, changing it every so often, but this last change had brought with it a thrill, and he had long since felt that thrills were things that happened to other men, and youths. Yes, thrills were the prerogative of youth. But the Rover 2000 had stirred something in him. It was a small stir, but nevertheless, because such emotional happenings were rare, it loomed as something large. The effect of the car on him was, he imagined, like that caused by a few pep pills.

  As he turned into Lime Avenue his headlights picked up the line of trees. Stiff and stark, they marched into the distance, their blackness shades darker than the night sky.

  A short way up the road a headlight crossed his own and he swerved to the right, and as he did so he tooted his horn twice, and received the same reply from the other car. Later tonight the driver of that car would be coming to dinner, and this time next year his only daughter would be his own daughter-in-law.

  His house was on the opposite side of the road, number 74, ‘The Gables’, and was quite a way from number 7, ‘Syracuse’, since each house stood in about quarter of an acre of land.

  He had lived in Lime Avenue ten years, moving here when he became senior partner of the firm. It was in a way the insignia of his success; and no little success, he having bought out Ratcliff, Arnold & Baker. Now to all intents and purposes he was Ratcliff, Arnold & Baker, the leading solicitors of the town. And that state would continue, he supposed, until Arnold Ransome bought him out. The junior partner, Boyd, did not come into it at this stage—junior partners had long, long roads to travel.

  He turned into his drive, made the S-bend, and came to his front door. Ann had forgotten to put the light on. She was careful about lights, economical about silly little things, and wildly extravagant about things that cost a great deal of money. But in just under two hours’ time she would have the house ablaze to greet the Family Wilcox. Her dear friend, May, her future daughter-in-law Valerie, and the scion of the local Bench, James; dinner-at-eight, the same old routine, the same old crowd.

  He went under the glass-covered porch and inserted his latchkey in the heavy oak front door, and before he turned to close it he switched on the lobby lights, when he passed into the hall he again switched on the lights. The burnt orange shades of the wall lights warmed the white walls. He could stand the white walls at night, but in the daytime their starkness chilled him. About two years ago Ann had taken this craze for the stripped look; the lounge had become white, the dining room a pale French grey; the staircase and landing white; her bedroom pale lilac and white. He had checked the attack on his own room, but he had done it gently, as he did everything when dealing with Ann, or anyone else for that matter, but particularly when dealing with his wife. And so his room was left to its overall greenness, and it was the only place in his home that didn’t cause his eyes to blink and water.

  He went into the cloakroom and hung up his coat and hat, and having washed his hands he bent his tall, heavy body towards the mirror, and, moistening a finger, rubbed it over the hair at each side of his ears. Then he stared at himself, as was his habit. The blue eyes that looked back at him looked slightly washed out and weary. He now drew his finger and thumb down his long nose, then nipped its point before dropping his index finger to the bristle on his upper lip, which he daily prevented from becoming a moustache. But the movement of his finger was like that of a man stroking his moustache These were private actions, almost unconscious, indulged in daily over the years until now he neither saw nor felt himself doing them any more. The only way he would have become aware of this habit would have been if he had found himself being observed. It was as if some compassionate part of him looked kindly at the whole, like a mother giving praise to the runt of her litter. Last of all, he stroked his hair back. It was very thick and grizzled and was the only strong-looking thing about him.

  He now tugged at his waistcoat and went into the hall again, and he was making for the stairs when he heard his wife’s voice coming from the kitchen. After a moment’s hesitation he went towards the door and pushed it gently open.

  His wife was standing at the table. Her hair was done up in a pale blue chiffon scarf, and she was enveloped in a long overall. On his entry she looked up and gave him a thin smile as she said, ‘Hello, dear. You’re early.’

  ‘Yes, yes. The case was finished much sooner than we expected. I came straight on from Newcastle. My, my! aren’t we busy.’ He joined his hands together in front of his chest as if he was greeting himself, and smiled his tight smile as he turned towards the woman standing at the stove. ‘Well, Mrs Stringer, something smells good. What are you
hashing up for us tonight, eh?’

  He was always hearty when in the kitchen and speaking to Mrs Stringer. He felt it was expected of him, a form of appreciation for services rendered; and it pleased Ann, for she was always saying she didn’t know what she would do without Mrs Stringer. Yet he always felt something of a fool whilst adopting this pose.

  Mrs Stringer’s conversation always took a staccato form. ‘Oh, sir, going to town tonight,’ she said. ‘Aw, yes. But it’s not me. I haven’t concocted nothing; all praise to the mistress here. Dead beat she’ll be afore eight o’clock. What she should do is have a bath and lie down…Yes an’ I told her.’

  ‘There now. Sensible advice. What about it?’ He looked towards his wife, and when she made no rejoinder he stood awkwardly staring at her. She could do this, could Ann, refuse to make comment. She could carry on with what she was doing in a silence that screamed, and it didn’t seem to affect her. That was wrong; it affected her all right. He could almost hear her nerves jangling in her body. As he continued to stare at her, he thought she was still good-looking; in spite of everything she had kept her looks…and poise. The latter perhaps owed a lot to her tall thinness, that thinness that had always been able to carry clothes like a fashion plate. And her face, too, had hardly altered since he first met her, except for her mouth, which drooped noticeably at the corners now. But her complexion was still as clear as a young girl’s, and she forty-five this year. Poor Ann. He jerked his head on this last thought and the compassion that the words released in him.

  As he turned away, being unable to find any more small talk with which to fill the void, she said suddenly in her crisp way, ‘Just a minute; I’m coming.’ As she pulled off her overall Mrs Stringer took it from her hand, saying comfortingly, ‘That’s it, Ma’am. That’s it.’

  He stood aside and held the door open for her, then followed her across the hall into the lounge.

  A log fire was burning on the new hearth that stood two feet from the ground, its funnel-like chimney protruding into the room like some accoutrement in a farmyard—a corn shute he always likened it to. He supposed this was one of the smartest lounges in the town. It should be, too, for the alterations and furnishings had cost him a staggering sum. The new teak floor glowed reddishly along all its thirty-five feet, which took in the dining room as well. The dividing doors were open and the long dining table was gleaming with glass and silver. Beyond the table, dull gold velvet curtains shrouded one wall completely, and in the lounge itself the curtains broke the white expanse of wall in three places. If there was an emotion in him strong enough to be called hatred, then he could say he hated this room.