Mary Ann's Angels

by Catherine Cookson

  As she stumped past her mother on her way across the room to the hall, Lizzie said quietly, ‘Don’t be such a fool, girl. The trouble with you is that you have done the manoeuvring and fixing all your life, so much so, until you’ve come to think that things have to be done your way or not at all.’

  ‘Oh, Ma!’ Mary Ann turned an accusing face on Lizzie.

  ‘You can say “Oh, Ma!” like that, but it’s true. Now you’ve come up against something you can’t have fixed on your terms. Corny’s a man; he’s not your da, or Mr Lord, or Tony, he’s your husband; and he has his rights, and I’m warning you. You try to make him crawl and you’ll regret it all your days.’

  Mary Ann banged the door after her. Her ma had said practically the same words as Mr Lord. What was the matter with everybody? They were treating her like someone who had committed a crime. She had rights too. Or hadn’t she any right to rights? The equality of the sexes. That made you laugh…Bunkum! It was all right on paper, but when it was put into action, look what happened. Everybody took the man’s side, even her mother…She couldn’t get over that. She could understand her da in a way, him being a man, but her mother! She was for him, up to the neck and beyond. Everybody was for him and against her.

  Then the next morning Fanny came.

  Mike ushered her in, unexpectedly, through the back door, crying, ‘Liz! Liz! Look at this stupid, fat old bitch walking all the way up from the bus. Hadn’t the sense to let us know she was coming, and we could have picked her up…Get in there with you.’

  Mary Ann was entering the kitchen from the hall, and she saw her mother rush down the long room and greet Fanny at the scullery door, saying, ‘Oh, hello there, Fan. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘Now, why would I, Lizzie? I’ve a pair of pins on me yet; and when the doctor said it would do me good to lose some of me fat, do a bit more walking, I said to him, “Now where the hell do you think I’m going to walk…round and round the block?” “No,” he said; “get yourself out for a day or so. Take a dander into the country, a bus ride, and then a wee stroll.” I thought to meself at the time, that’s Mike and Liz getting at him…did you get at him?’

  Lizzie and Mike were laughing loudly, and they both shook their heads, and Mike said, ‘No, we didn’t get at him. But we wish we had thought of it, if it would have brought you out more often. There, sit yourself down.’

  He helped her to lower her great fat body into a chair while saying to Rose Mary, ‘Let her be now. Let her get her puff.’

  Rose Mary, moving aside, looked towards her mother and cried, ‘Me Great-gran!’

  Fanny turned her eyes and looked across the room now towards Mary Ann and said, ‘That’s just in case you can’t see me, Mary Ann, just in case.’

  Mary Ann smiled and came forward and, standing by her friend’s side, she said simply, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, hinny.’ Fanny patted her hand; then asked, ‘How are you keepin’?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Fanny nodded her head.

  Her questions and attitude as yet gave Mary Ann no indication that she knew anything about…the trouble, yet it took an event of importance to get Fanny away from the fortress of her home in Mulhattans’ Hall, that almost derelict, smelly dark house, divided into flats, one consisting of two rooms in which Fanny had lived since she was married, in which she had brought into the world twelve children, all of whom had gone from her now, some not to return, although they were still living. Jarrow Council had not got down yet to demolishing Burton Street and Mulhattans’ Hall, but they would surely come to it before they finished the new Jarrow, and Mary Ann often hoped that Fanny would die before that day, for surely if she didn’t she would go when Mulhattans’ Hall went.

  ‘Here,’ said Lizzie; ‘drink that up.’

  ‘And what’s this?’

  ‘Don’t ask the road you know, get it down you,’ said Lizzie, speaking brusquely to this old friend of hers; and Fanny, sniffing at the glass, smiled and, looking sideways at Lizzie, said, ‘Brandy, I’m glad I came.’ Then, putting the glass to her lips, she threw off the drink at one go, gave a slight shudder, then placed the glass back in Lizzie’s hand, saying, ‘Thanks, lass.’

  ‘Look,’ put in Mike. ‘Now that you’ve got this far and we’re in this lovely weather why don’t you stay for a day or two?’

  ‘Mike, I’m getting the four o’clock bus back. I’ve said it and that’s what I’m going to do. But thanks all the same for the invitation.’

  ‘You’re a cantankerous old bitch still.’ He pushed her head none too gently with the flat of his hand, and she retaliated by bringing her hand across his thigh with a resounding wallop. ‘There,’ she said. ‘An’ there’s more where that comes from. Now get yourself away about your business with your female family, go on.’

  All except Mary Ann were laughing now, and as Mike made for the door he replied, ‘Me family’s not all females; there’s a definite male element in it, and I’m expecting two results of his efforts at any minute now.’

  ‘Aw, the poor animals, they don’t get away with much, like ourselves. What do you say, Lizzie?’

  Lizzie smiled gently as she said, ‘I’d say, give me your hat and coat now that you’ve got your breath and get yourself settled in the big chair there.’ She pointed to Mike’s leather chair at the side of the fireplace. ‘Then you’ll have a cup of tea and a bite that’ll put you over till dinner time.’

  If Mary Ann at first had wondered what had brought her friend to the farm, half an hour later she was in no doubt whatever, because, of all the topics touched upon, Corny’s name or that of David had not been mentioned, and when her mother, holding her hand out towards Rose Mary, said, ‘I’m going to the dairy, I want some cream. Come along with me,’ Mary Ann knew that Mrs McBride was being given the opportunity to voice the real reason for her visit.

  Mary Ann was standing at the long kitchen table in the centre of the room preparing a salad, and Fanny was looking at her from out of the depths of the leather chair, and for a full minute after being left alone neither of them spoke, until Fanny said abruptly, ‘I don’t blame you, lass. Don’t think that.’

  Mary Ann turned her head swiftly over her shoulder and looked at this fat, kindly, wise, bigoted, obstinate and sometimes harsh old woman, and after a pause she asked, ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Oh, bad news has the speed of light. I read that somewhere, and it’s true. It was last night, comin’ out of confession, I met Jimmy’s mother. She’s got a mouth on her like a whale. She didn’t know the real rights of the case, she said, but she said you were gone to your mother’s because she was ill, and you had taken the girl with you, leavin’ the boy behind you. She thought it was a funny thing to do as Jimmy had said you couldn’t separate the two with a pair of pliers. What did I think of it, she said. Was it all right between them; they weren’t splitting up or anything? I said to her, when I heard that the Holy Family was splitting up then I’d know for sure that my grandson and his wife were following suit…But I was worried sick, lass, sick to the soul of me. I knew that something must have happened for you to separate the children, an’ so I went along this mornin’.’

  Mary Ann was standing with her buttocks pressed against the back of the table. She moved her head in small jerks before she said, ‘You’ve been home already today?’

  ‘Aye, I got there around half past nine, and, when I got to the bottom of things, let him take what I gave him.’

  Mary Ann stared at Mrs McBride, her lower lip hanging loose. Corny was the pride and joy of this old woman’s heart. In Mrs McBride’s eyes Corny was all that a man should be, physically, mentally and morally. Her standards might not be those of Olympus but they were high, and she knew what went to make a good man, and she had always considered that her grandson, Corny, had all the ingredients for the pattern in her mind. Yet here she was, against Corny, and the first one to be so.

  Everybody had been against her. They had said: You’re a f
ool. It’s your temper. It’s your stubbornness. You can’t have everything your own way, and you’ve got to realise that. But nobody, up till now, had said that Corny was at fault. Yet here was his granny shouting him down.

  ‘I told him he was a big, empty-headed nowt, and he didn’t know which side his bread was buttered, and that if you never went back to him he was only gettin’ what he deserved.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs McBride!’ It was a mere whisper, and Mary Ann’s head drooped as she spoke.

  ‘Well!’ Fanny was sitting upright now, as upright as her fat would allow. ‘When he told me what it was all about I nearly went straight through the roof. A man! I said. You call yourself a man, and you take the pip at a thing like that. Just because she expresses her opinion you go off the deep end?’

  Mary Ann raised her head slightly. ‘I…I said things I shouldn’t have, Mrs McBride; he’s…he’s not altogether to blame. I…I said I hated him.’

  ‘Aw!’ Mrs McBride pushed her fat round in the chair until she was half-turned away from Mary Ann, and, looking into the empty fireplace, she thrust her arm out and flapped her hand towards Mary Ann as she cried, ‘Aw, if a man is going to let his wife walk out on him because she says she hates him, then every other house in the land would be empty. I’ve never heard anything so childish in me life. Hate him! I’d like a penny for every time I’ve said I hated McBride. And mind…’ She twisted herself round again in Mary Ann’s direction, and, her arm again extended and her fingers wagging, she said, ‘I always accompanied me words with something concrete, the frying pan, the flat iron, a bottle, anything that came to hand. You know me big black broth pan, the one I can hardly lift off the hob when it’s full? I can just about manage it when it’s empty. Well, I remember the day as if it was yesterday that I hurled it at his head, and I used those very words to give it God speed: I hate you. And I didn’t say them plain and unadorned, if you get what I mean; I always made me remarks to McBride a bit flowery. Begod!’ She moved her triple chins from one shoulder to the other. ‘If that pan had found its target that particular day it would have been goodbye to McBride twenty years earlier. Aw! Me aim was poor that time. An’ it was likely because I was carryin’. I gave birth to me twins three days later. One of them died, the other one is Georgie, you know.’

  Mary Ann wanted to smile; she wanted to laugh; she wanted to cry; oh, how she wanted to cry.

  ‘Come here,’ said Fanny gently. ‘Come here.’ And Mary Ann went to her, and Fanny put her arms round her waist and said, ‘I’m upset to me very soul. He’s as near to me as the blood pumping out of me heart, but at the same time I’m not for him. No, begod! The way I see it, he was given a pot of gold and he’s acted as if it was a holey bucket picked up off a midden. He let you walk away…just like that.’ She made a slow gliding movement with her hand.

  ‘B…b…but, Mrs McBride…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t blame you for walkin’ out, I don’t blame you, not a jot, lass. You’ve got to make a stand with them or your life’s simply hell. Even when you do make a stand it isn’t easy, but if you let them walk over you you might as well go straight to the priest and arrange for a requiem to be said, because your time’s short. You can bank on that.’

  Mary Ann stood quietly now, fondling the creased and not over-clean hand as she asked, ‘How was he? And David?’

  ‘Oh, a bit peakish-looking about the gills. They all get very sorry for themselves. He’d been having his work cut out getting the breakfast ready; the place was strewn with dishes. Hell’s cure to you, I said. You’re just gettin’ what you deserve. But David, he was sprightly. He speaks now. I got the gliff of me life.’

  Mary Ann’s hands stopped moving over Mrs McBride. ‘It was about that that all the trouble started.’

  ‘About David talkin’, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, Corny had said that if they were separated David would talk…Well he’s been proved right, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense. It was the scare he got when Rose Mary was lost that made him talk, not the separation.’

  ‘Yes. I know. But Corny thought that if they came together too quickly that David wouldn’t make any more effort. And I can see his point, I can, Mrs McBride, but—’

  ‘Now don’t you go soft, girl. No matter what points you see, don’t you go soft, because you’ll have to pay for it in the end. He’s a big, ignorant, empty-headed nowt, as I told him, an’ I should know because he’s inherited a lot of meself.’ She nodded at Mary Ann, and Mary Ann was forced to smile just the slightest.

  It was funny about people. They never acted as you expected them to. She had really been afraid of Mrs McBride finding out and going for her, and yet here she was taking her part. She bent down swiftly and kissed the flabby, wrinkled face, and Fanny held her and said, ‘There now. There now. Now, don’t cry, he’s not worth it. Although it’s meself that’s sayin’ it, he’s not worth it.’

  At the same time, deep in her heart, Fanny was praying, ‘God forgive me. God forgive me for every word I’ve uttered against him in these last few minutes.’

  It was the evening of the same day, when Mary Ann was in the bathroom bathing Rose Mary, when she heard the car stop in the lane outside the front door. Rose Mary, too, heard it, and she looked up at her mother and said, ‘There’s a car, Mam.’

  Mary Ann’s heart began to pound and she had trouble in controlling her voice as she said, ‘Come on, get out and get dried.’

  ‘Mam.’ Rose Mary hugged the towel around her. ‘Do you think it’ll be me…?’

  ‘Get dried and put your nightie on. Here, sit on the cracket and give me your feet.’ She rubbed Rose Mary’s feet vigorously; she rubbed her back, and her chest. She had put her nightdress on and combed her hair when the bathroom door was pushed open and Lizzie stood there, saying, ‘You’d better come down; there’s an assortment down there wanting to see you.’

  Mary Ann’s eyes widened. ‘An assortment? Who? What?’

  ‘Well, come and see for yourself. Five of them, headed by that Jimmy from the garage.’

  A cold wave of disappointment swept through her, making her shiver.

  ‘What do they want?’ she said.

  ‘You, apparently.’

  ‘Me! What do they want with me?’

  ‘You’d better come down and see.’

  ‘Can I come, Mam?’

  ‘No, stay where you are. Go and get into bed.’

  ‘But, Mam.’

  ‘Get into bed, Rose Mary.’

  She turned from her daughter and passed her mother; then ran down the stairs and to the front door. And it was as Lizzie had said, it was an assortment that stood on the front lawn, facing her.

  She knew for certain that Jimmy was a boy, but she had first of all to guess at the sex of the other four. True they were wearing trousers, but there ended any indication of their maleness, for they were also wearing an assortment of blouses, one with a ruffle at the neck; their hair was long and ranged from startling blond to tow colour, from dead brown to a horrible ginger. There wasn’t a hair to be seen on their faces, nor yet on what skin was showing of their arms. The sight of them repulsed Mary Ann and made her stomach heave. She turned her attention pointedly to Jimmy, and noticed in this moment that although his hair, too, was longish, his maleness stood out from that of his pals like a sore finger.

  Jimmy grinned at her. ‘Hello, Mrs Boyle,’ he said.

  ‘What do you want, Jimmy?’ Mary Ann’s tone was curt.

  ‘Aw, I just thought I’d pop along and see you. You know, about…about the lines you did. You know.’

  ‘Oh!’ Mary Ann closed her eyes for a moment and wet her lips. She had forgotten about the lines. She wanted to say, ‘Look, I’m not interested any more,’ but Jimmy’s bright expression prevented her from flattening him with such a remark.

  ‘These are me pals…the Group. This is Duke.’ He thumbed towards the repulsive, red-haired individual. ‘He runs us and he’s good at tunes. I was tellin’ you.’ He nodded twi
ce, then thumbed towards the next boy. ‘This is Barney. He’s on the drums.’ Barney was the tow-haired one. He was also the one with the ruffle. He opened his mouth wide and smiled at Mary Ann. She had never seen such a big mouth on a boy before, it seemed to split his face in two. She turned her eyes to the next boy as Jimmy said, ‘This is Poodle Patter. We call him that ’cos he’s good at ad lib, small talk you know, keeping things goin’. Aren’t you, Poodle?’

  Poodle jerked his head at Mary Ann, and a ripple passed over his face. It was an expression of self-satisfaction and had no connection whatever with a pleased-to-meet-you expression.

  Mary Ann stared at Poodle, at his startlingly blond hair, and she had to stop her nose from wrinkling in this case.

  ‘And he’s Dave.’ Jimmy thumbed towards the back of the group, where stood the brown-haired individual. He had small merry eyes and a thin mouth, and he nodded to Mary Ann and said, ‘Wat-cher!’

  ‘Dave plays the guitar, and he can do the mouth organ.’

  Jimmy jerked his head towards Dave, and Dave jerked his head back at him, and they exchanged grins.

  Mary Ann was tired; she was weary with worry; she was sick at this moment with disappointment; she had thought, oh, she had thought that Corny had come for her; and now she was sick in another way as she looked at these four boys. Jimmy didn’t make her sick, he only irritated her. She said to him, ‘Look, Jimmy, I’m very busy. What do you want?’

  Jimmy’s long face lengthened; his eyebrows went up and his lower lip went down, and he said, ‘Well, like I said, about your lyrics. Duke’s put a tune to them.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Haven’t you, Duke?’

  Duke now stepped forward. He had an insolent walk; he had an insolent look; and he spread his look all over Mary Ann before he said, ‘It was ropey in parts.’

  ‘What was?’