The Year of the Virgins Read online

  THE YEAR OF THE VIRGINS

  Catherine Cookson

  Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  The Year of the Virgins

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART TWO Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  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
r />   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 Year of the Virgins

  It had never been the best of marriages and over recent years it had become effectively a marriage in name and outward appearance only. Yet, in the autumn of 1960, Winifred and Daniel Coulson presented an acceptable façade to the outside world, for Daniel had prospered sufficiently to allow them to live at Wearcill House, a mansion situated in the most favoured outskirt of the Tyneside town of Fellburn.

  Of their children, it was Donald on whom Winifred doted to the point of obsession, and now he was to be married. Winifred’s prime concern was whether Donald was entering wedlock with an unbesmirched purity of body and spirit, for amidst the strange workings of her mind, much earlier conceptions of morality and the teachings of the Church held sway.

  There was something potentially explosive just below the surface of life at Wearcill House, but when that explosion came it was totally unforeseeable and devastating, plunging the Coulsons into an excoriating series of crises out of which would emerge both good and evil, as well as the true significance of the year of the virgins.

  ‘The power and mastery are astonishing’—Elizabeth Buchan, Sunday Times

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1993

  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 978-1-78036-054-6

  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

  One

  ‘I just can’t believe my ears. I just can’t.’

  ‘It’s a simple question for a man to ask of his son.’

  ‘What?’

  Daniel Coulson bent over and looked at his wife’s reflection in the mirror, and he saw a round flat face, the skin of which was still as perfect as when he had married her thirty-one years ago. But that was all that remained of the girl who had got him to the altar when he was nineteen, for the fair hair piled high above the head was bleached and her once plump, attractive shape had spread to fat, which now looked as if it were trying to force its way out at various points of her taffeta gown, an evening gown with a neckline just below the nape of her neck; it would be indecent to expose the flesh leading to her breasts. But any ardour those breasts would or should have aroused had died in him long ago. His attention was now focused on her eyes: pale grey eyes which at most times appeared colourless, except as now when rage was boiling in her. And as he stared into them he ground his teeth before saying, ‘You expect me to collar him and ask him that?’

  ‘It’s what any ordinary father could ask of his son. But then you’ve never been an ordinary father.’

  ‘No, by God, I haven’t! I’ve fought you all the way, because you would have kept him in nappies until he left school. You had him at the breast until you were shamed out of it.’

  When her arm came out and her elbow caught him in the stomach, he stumbled away from her, the while thrusting out his hand, for she had gripped the lid of a heavy glass powder bowl and was holding it poised for aiming. ‘You let that out of your hand, missis,’ he growled, ‘and I’ll slap your face so hard you’ll have to make an excuse for not attending his wedding.’

  As he watched her hand slowly open and the lid drop back onto the dressing table he straightened his back as he said grimly, ‘You can’t bear to think you’re losing him, can you? Even to the daughter of your best friend. You tried to link her up with Joe, didn’t you? But she had grown out of her schoolgirl pash and wanted Don. And, let me tell you, I saw that she got what she wanted, and what Don wanted. Although if there was anyone she could have had apart from Don I would have picked Joe.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you would have picked Joe. You saddled me with a retarded son, then you inveigled me into adopting a child…’

  ‘My God!’ He put his hand to his head and turned from her and walked down the long, softly carpeted room towards the canopied four-poster bed, a bed he had not slept in for more than fifteen years, and he bumped his head against the twisted column of one of the posts. Then in the silence that had fallen on the room he turned slowly; but he did not move towards her, he simply stared at her for a long moment before he said, ‘Me inveigled you into adopting a child? It’s well seen it wasn’t my father who ended up in an asylum.’

  When he saw the muscles of her face begin to twitch he told himself to stop it, he had gone too far, it was cruel. But the cruelty wasn’t all on one side. No. By God! No. If she had been a wife, just an ordinary wife, instead of a religious maniac and an almost indecently possessive mother, then he wouldn’t now be carrying the shame of some of the things he’d had to do because of his needs; and all on the sly, because one mustn’t lose face in the community, the community of the church and the visiting priests and the nuns in the convent and the Children of Mary and the Catenians and all the paraphernalia that must be kept up…

  He must get out. He must have a drink. He drew in a long gasping breath. He’d better not; he’d better wait until the company came, because if he started early his tongue would run away with him.

  He was walking down the room towards the far door when her voice hit him almost at screaming pitch: ‘You’re a low, ill-bred, common swab, like your father was, and all your lot.’

  He didn’t pause but went out, pulling the door after him; only to stop on the wide landing and close his eyes. It was amazing, wasn’t it? Simply amazing, calling him common and a low, ill-bred swab, she who had come from the Bog’s End quarter of Fellburn! He could recall the day she came to the office looking for a job. She was fifteen, and Jane Broderick set her on. But after three months Jane had said, ‘She’s no good, she’ll never be able to type; the only thing she’s good for is putting on side. She’s got the makings of a good receptionist, but this is a scrap-iron yard.’ And it was his father who had said, ‘Give the lass a chance. You said she had a good writing hand so let her file the orders like that.’ And his father nearly killed himself laughing when it was discovered she was taking elocution lessons from a retired schoolteacher in town. It was fr
om then that he himself began to think there was something in her, that she was different. And my God, he had to learn just how different she was. But there was one thing he could say for her; her elocution lessons had been put to good use, for she could pass herself off in any company. Even so, she chose her company: no common working-class acquaintances for her. Look how she had chummed up with Janet Allison because, although the Allisons didn’t live in a blooming great mansion like this, they were middle class down to their shoelaces. Catholic middle class. Oh yes; Winnie could not have tolerated Protestants even if they had supported a title. She was faithful to one thing, at any rate, and that was her religion.

  He went slowly down the stairs and as he walked across the hall the far door opened and there stood his adopted son, Joe.

  Joe was as tall as himself, and they were very alike, only his hair was black, not just dark, and his eyes were a warm brown, not blue. Daniel had always felt proud that Joe resembled him, because he had thought of him as a son even more than he did of Stephen, or even of Don.

  As he approached him he glanced at the two books Joe had in his hand, saying, ‘What’s this? Starting to do a night shift?’

  ‘No; not quite; just something I wanted to look up.’ They stared at each other for a moment, then Joe said simply, ‘Trouble?’

  ‘What do you mean, trouble?’

  ‘Well, unless it slipped your mind, the bedroom is placed over the library. It’s a high ceiling in there,’ he jerked his head backwards, ‘but it’s not soundproof.’

  Daniel now pushed past him to go towards the library, saying over his shoulder, ‘You got a minute?’

  ‘Yes; as many as you want.’

  Joe closed the door after him, then followed Daniel up the room to where a deep-seated leather couch was placed at an angle facing a long window that looked onto the garden. But when the man whom he thought of as his father did not sit down but moved to the window and, raising one hand, supported himself against the frame, he walked to his side and said, ‘What is it now?’

  ‘You won’t believe this.’ Daniel turned to him. ‘You’ll never believe what she’s asked me to put to Don.’