Mrs Flannagan's Trumpet
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MRS. FLANNAGAN’S TRUMPET
Catherine Cookson
Contents
The Catherine Cookson Story
Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
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 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
Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet
There were plenty of shocks in store for young Eddie Morley when he and his sister went to stay at Old Granny Flannagan’s. He is very quickly caught up in some very strange happenings indeed. When Eddie’s grandfather suddenly disappears, not only does he and Granny Flannagan learn to understand each other much better, but he is plunged headfirst into an exciting adventure and a desperate attempt to halt an evil trade…
This is an adventure rich with the tangy flavour of life filled with racy, believable characters and set in a recognisable world of hard work, danger, bravado and cool courage.
Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1977
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 978-1-78036-088-1
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
Chapter One
‘Look, Ma, I can see to meself and our Penny.’
Lilian Morley placed one hand over her mouth and the other on her chest as she coughed a number of times; then looked up into her son’s stiff face, at his ruffled black hair and round dark brown eyes, and she drew in a deep painful breath before she acknowledged, ‘I haven’t the slightest doubt that you could take care of yourself, Eddie; but you can’t take care of Penny at the same time.’ She now pointed to her daughter, who was sitting by the side of the open grate, her head turned towards the fire. ‘You won’t be here when she comes home from school.’
‘Good gracious, Ma, she’s not a bairn; and we’re not living in the dark ages, it’s 1890, remember; she can take the key and turn it in the lock, can’t she?’ he demanded, thrusting his hand out towards the door.
‘And what about when you go to the Institute in the evening for your engineering class? Were you thinking of giving that up?’ His mother’s voice now had an unusually harsh note in it, and his head drooped for a moment before it jerked upwards again and he cried, ‘Yes, I can, I can give it up. You’re only goin’ to be away three months, I can soon catch up, I can work here at home. Mr Leonard will give me the books.’
The mother and son stared hard at each other now. Then Mrs Morley, turning towards her daughter, said, ‘Take sixpence out of the jug, Penny, and go and get a loaf and three sugar buns.’
The young girl rose slowly from the chair and, keeping her face averted from them, went to the end of the fireplace, reached up, and lifted the jug from the mantelpiece. She took from it a sixpence; then still with face averted, she went from the room and out of the door which led straight into the front street.
Hardly had the door closed on her before Eddie, bending towards his mother and whispering now as if he might be overheard, said, ‘She’s bubbling, not just because you’re going away, Ma, it’s because she doesn’t want to go to Gran-Flan’s.’
Mrs Morley closed her eyes for a moment, then she said quietly, ‘Sit down, Eddie.’
It seemed as if Eddie were reluctant to obey his mother’s command, but after hesitating he swung a plain wooden chair round from under the table and, sitting down, folded his arms across his chest and stared at his mother.
‘Have you ever thought how pretty your sister is?’ Mrs Morley said softly now.
Eddie screwed up his eyes as he asked, ‘What’s that to do with it, Ma?’
‘Everything, Eddie. You know what kind of quarter we live in, don’t you, and round the corner is Thornton Avenue? And as you know it’s full of lodging houses, mostly occupied by foreign sailors. And just a bit further on is the docks proper with all those bars facing it. A decent body isn’t able to pass along there at night without almost tripping over sprawling, drunken men. And you know I have never let Penny play on the streets after dark like the other children round the doors.
‘Now, Eddie’—she slowly shook her head—‘I’m asking you to imagine what would happen if she was on her own. Even inside this house she wouldn’t be safe, because things get about. People know I’ve been ill and that I’m going away. Anyone with bad intentions could knock at that door, and she would open it…You see what I mean?’
Eddie’s head slowly drooped. ‘Yes.’ He could see now what his mother meant. He hadn’t worked in the docks for the past eighteen months with his ears closed. Men talked about things, they laughed about things, yes, he could see his mother’s point of view. Yet he didn’t want to go and live at his Granny Flannagan’s, not even for three months; three months was a lifetime.
‘I’ll go mad staying in that house, Ma. It’s right off the beaten track, and you can even hear the sea beating against the rocks when you’re in the house. But the worst thing of all is havin’ to put up with Gran-Flan and her bloomin’ ear trumpet. It’s worse than being in the shipyards, the noise you’ve got to make to get yourself understood.’
His mother smiled weakly and said quietly, ‘You’ve never understood your granny. And I wish you wouldn’t call her Gran-Flan.’
‘I’ll call her what I like,’ Eddie said, rising to his feet and thrusting the chair aside. ‘As for understanding her, did she understand me da?’ Turning towards his mother again and his voice a shout, he demanded, ‘And did she understand you when you married him? No, she threw you out.’
‘She didn’t throw me out.’
‘Well, it was as good as; you couldn’t take me da back to the house. And why? Because he was a common man, a docker.’
‘He wasn’t a common man to me; and he was a gaffer in the docks. Remember that.’
‘Aw, Ma!’ Impatiently now, Eddie shook his head from side to side. ‘He rose to be a gaffer later, but when you married him he was an iron ore man. And he was never ashamed of it. Aw, don’t cry, Ma. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Look, you’ll bring on an attack.’
As his mother’s breathing became agitated with the asthma, he went hastily to her and put his arm about her shoulders, and as he patted her, he said, in a conciliatory tone now, ‘I’m…I’m proud of me da. He was well respected, well liked. The men still talk about him. Wouldn’t do a man out of a farthing, they say; and he never docked their time. He knew how they felt and thought ’cos he’d had to go through the same thing, workin’ ten hours in the holds, wet up to the thighs when they had to dig out the ore from the wet clay, and all for three and sixpence a shift.
He understood them.’ He paused; then, his voice falling away, he added, ‘He understood everybody.’
He straightened up and walked to the fireplace, and reaching out to the brass rod that ran underneath the mantelshelf, he pushed the towels aside that were hanging there and gripped the rod. Then bending his head, he looked down into the fire and said, ‘I’ll never like me granny, not until the day I die, for she never gave him a hearing. She could never see the man he was, she could only see the dirty job he had to do.’
There followed a silence in the kitchen, broken only by the sound of a cart and horse on the cobbled street outside, until he swung round and, his voice now so loud it startled his mother, he cried, ‘All right, I’ll go. Without further ado, I’ll go. But I bet by the end of three months she’ll be more glad to see the back of me than I shall of her. And that’s a promise, Ma.’
‘Come here.’ She held out her hand to him. And it was with seeming reluctance that he went towards her again, and when she gripped his hand between her own two, she looked up into his face for some seconds before saying, ‘There’s one thing I’m happy about, your father will never be dead as long as you’re alive,’ and gripping his hand tightly now, she added, ‘I won’t know a minute’s peace if you’re not settled in before I go.’
‘How do you know I’ll stay there, Ma? How do you know I won’t do a flit and come back here once you’re out of the way?’
‘You’ll stay there. Didn’t I say you’re like your father? You said you’d go and you’ll go, and you’ll see it through.’
As she nodded confirmation of her words he withdrew his hand from hers and went towards the door that led into the only other room of the house; but as he lifted the latch, he turned and, looking at her over his shoulder, he said, ‘Has it struck you, Ma, that I’ll have to walk almost three miles each way to work?’
‘Yes, it has, Eddie. But then I didn’t give much attention to that part of it seeing that it’s your favourite boast you can do ten to fifteen miles on a Sunday without a blister.’
Eddie drew in a long breath, pushed open the door, then shut it none too gently behind him before crossing to the window.