The Blind Years Read online

  THE BLIND YEARS

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  Cover

  Titlepage

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Books by Catherine Cookson

  Description

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  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 B
ill

  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 Blind Years

  Bridget Gether’s parents were killed in the wartime blitz so she had lived with the Overmeers at Balderstone, their sprawling property in the Northumbrian countryside, since she was a child. Unaware that she had been manipulated into agreeing to marry their son Laurence, an encounter with Bruce Dickenson, the son of a neighbouring farmer, opened her eyes to the possibility that she might be making a serious mistake.

  Although Bridget told herself she had loved Laurence for years, could she now trust him? Had he been seeing someone else all the time he had been courting her? She decided that there were sufficient grounds for doubt, so she called off the marriage.

  However, she had not reckoned with the formidable Overmeer family whose desperate financial straits compelled them to take steps to protect their interests. As for Laurence, he could not forgive Bridget for the humiliation of rejection, so he planned to punish her. But someone else was also planning revenge, the outcome of which would shake the very foundations of the Overmeer family.

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1998

  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 978-1-78036-040-9

  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

  Youth is likened unto a field of weeds and tares

  That harvests the blind years

  And not until they are scythed low

  Will new seed grow

  Catherine Cookson, 1998

  One

  ‘Do you know, Bridget Gether, that I have been sitting beside you for the past five minutes and you haven’t once looked at me?’

  ‘I know you’re there.’

  ‘Well, that’s something…Sometimes you aren’t aware of me, are you? You don’t even remember what I look like, especially when you have a brush in your hand. What are you doing now?’ He leant forward. ‘That hill looks brown to me. It is brown; why do you paint it purple and orange?’

  ‘Because that’s how I see it. And…and I do know what you look like, Laurence, even when I’m painting.’ The young girl lowered her face towards the palette, still not looking at the man, and her shoulder-length auburn hair fell forward, covering her cheeks like a cloak. Her eyes, following her hand, lifted to the canvas set on the low easel on the grass at her feet, and her wide sensitive lips moved slowly as she added, ‘I see you all the time…day, night, sunset, dawn.’ She shivered slightly now as she felt his fingertips moving through her hair to caress her neck.

  ‘How do you see me?’ Laurence Overmeer’s voice became a thick whisper.

  There was a pause before Bridget answered, with the trace of a laugh in her voice, ‘As the tallest, broadest, handsomest man in the county.’

  ‘What! Only in the county?’

  ‘Well, perhaps in Northumberland and Cumberland too.’

  ‘I should say so,’ he said with a deep laugh as he pulled her round quickly on the camp stool, bringing from her a startled cry as the paint smeared across the picture. But she laughed too as he held her face between his hands, whilst he shook his head as his eyes scanned her features. And although it was quite some time before he spoke again she remained quiet, and then he said, ‘What makes you so fascinating, Bridget? I’m always asking myself this, because you’re no beauty, you know. Heart-shaped faces are out of fashion, and your skin’s too brown to lay claim to the English rose type. Oh, yes, I grant you have a pair of eyes on you. Perhaps it is the eyes, as soft and grey as a doe’s belly. But you’re still no beauty, so what is it? Perhaps it’s your aloofness, your dreamy aloofness that puts you just out of reach, makes a man want to grab at you. Is it that, Bridget?’

  Bridget was no longer smiling. Her face looked almost sad as she said, ‘I don’t care what it is, Laurence, as long as it makes you love me.’

  ‘I love you all right, and in a fortnight’s time I’ll show you just how much.’

  Her head was drooping slowly forward when, with a jerk, she was pulled to her feet and lost within the circle of his strong arms, and when his lips pressed down on hers she responded hungrily for a moment, until with a sudden twist of her body she tried to withdraw from him.

  He still held her close but their faces were apart, and now his expression looked puzzled and showed a trace of annoyance as he said, ‘Why do you always do that, Bridget? Don’t you like me kissing you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do, Laurence.’

  ‘Then why?’ Abruptly he broke the circle and his arms dropped to his sides. Bridget, stepping slowly backwards, looked straight ahead, her eyes on a level with his shoulders as she murmured, ‘I don’t know, Laurence. I don’t want to.’

  Then lifting her gaze to his face, she added simply, ‘I do love you.’

  ‘But you’re afraid of me?’

  ‘No, no, I’m not, Laurence, I’m not afraid of you. Why should I be? I’ve known you as long as I’ve known anyone.’ She smiled. ‘My first memory is of seeing you standing beside Grandma’s chair and Grandma saying, “Stop stuffing yourself, Laurie. Hand over those sweets.”’

  ‘You’ve told me that before, but I don’t believe you remember any such thing. I don’t. And what’s more, I never stuffed sweets.’

  ‘Yes, you did. Grandma said you used to stuff until you were sick…you couldn’t resist anything you liked.’

  A stiff silence fell between them. The evening sun slanted their shadows, and so still were they that they merged with those of the trees that lay to the right of the small cedarwood house standing on a bank above the pool. The pool itself was merely a hollow in the rock plateau and was fed by a little burn that spluttered down the gully between the grey stone crags. The overflow from the pool tumbled over a long, partly wooded slope to the River Lune.

  In the ten acres of the Overmeers’ woods and gardens, the view from above the pool took pride of place. For beyond the sloping wood through which the burn flowed there lay the fells, with Mickle Fell rising like the father of them all, seemingly, from this distance, from the very bed of Lune Forest.

  However, at this moment Bridget was not conscious of the beauty before her, for once again she was being assailed by a perplexing feeling. It had been brought about by her recalling the incident in Laurence’s childhood; recalling it e
ven when she knew it would annoy him. Why had she done so? The only reason she could think of was that some part of her, some small part of her, was not, as the French would say, sympathique towards him. It had the same meaning as when old Nancy, while she busied herself in the realm of the kitchen up at the house, would say when requested to give Kate, the housemaid, an order, ‘You go an’ tell her yersel, Miss Bridget, for I’m not kind with her the day.’

  But why was this small part of her ‘not kind’ towards Laurence? for, as she said, she loved him. She had always loved him. But why was she asking the road she knew? She knew well enough why the small part of her was ‘not kind’.

  ‘Are you worrying about something, Bridget?’ Laurence did not move towards her as he spoke.

  ‘No. No, I have nothing to worry about.’ She turned and looked at him over her shoulder and their eyes held for a long moment before he said, ‘There’s no-one in my life now but you; d’you believe that?’

  She didn’t say, Yes, Laurence, for she was thinking, There’s no-one in my life now but you, he had said. It was as if the now was fork-pronged and had pierced her in several different places, for all of a sudden she was alive with pain. He had not, as usual, said, There is no-one in my life but you, but had said, There is no-one in my life now but you.

  ‘You do believe me?’ He had moved towards her, and she answered simply, ‘Yes, Laurence, I believe you.’

  ‘Well, then, why are we so gloomy? Come on, let’s get back: Mother has prepared one of her dinners supreme. You’d think I was going away for five years instead of five days. Will you miss me?’ His broad chest was again blocking her gaze, but she looked up at him and, with deep feeling, said, ‘Every minute you’re away.’

  ‘Kiss me, then.’

  Her eyes widened slightly as she looked at his arms, now hanging straight by his sides.

  ‘Put your arms around me and kiss me.’

  Her head swayed and her long dark lashes quivered over her eyes before she brought out, ‘But Laurence, I…I’ll never get my arms about you.’ But no part of his face answered the laughter that was now in her voice. His straight mouth was set, his nose, small for a man of his build, quivered slightly at its tip, and only a sliver of dark blue light penetrated from beneath his lowered lids.