GO TELL IT TO MRS. GOLIGHTLY
Catherine Cookson
Table of Contents
The Catherine Cookson Story
Go Tell it to Mrs. Golightly
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
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
Go Tell it to Mrs. Golightly
‘The child was bright, the voice on the phone had said; and quite normal…’ Why had they said that? They were holding something back. He had felt it from the very first. Was she a cripple, he had asked? No, the voice had said, she wasn’t a cripple. It had something that sounded like a handicap, then it had ceased abruptly. This was the gist of the telephone conversation in which Joe Dodd agreed to take in a granddaughter he had never seen—just for the school holidays.
Nine-year-old Bella was blind and had had a hard life alone with a drunken father whom her grandfather had eventually refused to treat as his son. Now she was coming to her grandfather almost without warning—and he hated women—all women. She had to learn about her new surroundings and about her grandfather. She also had to get to know John Thompson, an older boy who had been asked to ‘help’ her. Bella did not want to be helped; she wanted to be accepted as herself, clever, forthright, brave and loving—a person, not an encumbrance.
In all her trials the thing that most sustained her was the memory of her friend, Mrs. Golightly, and the pungent wit for which that lady was renowned. Soon Bella was to need every scrap of help those memories could give, for out of the blue came real danger for her, for John and for a most important stranger.
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 978-1-78036-089-8
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
for Katie and Timothy Anderson
- two small bright sparks
Chapter One
‘The Newcastle train’s late, it’s four minutes past two.’
‘Aye, and at ten past two it’ll be ten minutes late.’
‘Don’t give me any of your old buck, Bill MacKay.’
‘And don’t think you can get one over on me with your high-handedness, Joe Dodd; this is my province, I’m stationmaster here.’
‘Huh! Stationmaster.’ The tall man with the grizzled beard sprouting from his thin cheeks and chin again repeated the single word ‘Huh!’ which seemingly had the effect of infuriating the stationmaster, for he began to march up and down the short platform of the junction, pulling at the hard peak of his cap until it almost covered his eyes; and all the while Joseph Dodd watched him, and every now and again he muttered to himself, ‘Stationmaster!’ And when his glance swept over the small booking hall and waiting room, then the beds of wallflowers just coming into bloom at each end of the platform, he added the word, ‘Dogsbody!’
It wasn’t until the signal indicated the approach of the two o’clock train at fifteen minutes past two that the stationmaster stopped his prancing and, casting a triumphant glance towards Mr Joseph Dodd, bobbed his head in one significant nod, as might a conjurer who had brought a rabbit out of a hat. He followed this by pushing the peak of his cap upwards and marching towards the man he had known for forty years and still didn’t like, and said boldly, ‘I pity any child, good, bad, or indifferent, who is unlucky enough to be put into your care, Joe Dodd.’
Joseph Dodd stared down at the stationmaster. A red blush spread up through his whiskers, over his brow, and into the white hair showing beneath his soft felt hat, and he demanded with a growl, ‘Who told you I was meeting any child?’
‘’Tis common knowledge. You think that because you hide yourself away in that hole in the hill the village doesn’t know your every move. You’re a fool, Joe Dodd, always have been, a stubborn, big-headed, pig-headed old fool. No wonder your son couldn’t abide you…Don’t you dare!’ The stationmaster took two quick steps backwards; then realising he was almost balancing over the edge of the platform he took another two steps sidewards and stood panting for a moment before turning and hurrying towards the end of the platform as if to greet the oncoming train.
Joseph Dodd, his arms hanging by his sides, slowly unclenched the fist of his right hand. Bill MacKay had been asking to be hit for years and one of these days he would do it. Yes, by God, he assured himself he would. Neither MacKay nor the villagers would have known anything about the child coming if it hadn’t been for that Lottie Cassidy in the post office, her with the only telephone for miles. They said they’d put a kiosk up after the war. Well it was 1954 now and there was still no sign of one.
The steam from the train blinded him, its noise seemed to burst his eardrums; and the two together intensified the agitation within him. Why had he agreed to this? It was madness. Just for a month, those in Newcastle had said; but there were thirty-one days in a month and thirty-one days was a long time. The child was bright, the voice on the phone had said; and quite normal, it said…Why had they said that? They were holding something back. He had felt it from the first. Was she a cripple, he had asked? No, the voice said, she wasn’t a cripple. It had said something that sounded like ‘handicap’, then had ceased abruptly.
There were a number of people emerging from the steam. One was a boy, but he knew who that was, Harry Thompson’s son, John, a fourteen year old, home from school. He hoped he found his father sober. And there was Parson Tempest’s wife, sour Susan, with her daughter Jane. There wasn’t much to choose between the looks of them. He glared at the mother and daughter. He hated women, all women, all females. And here were another two of them coming towards him out of the steam, a grown-up one and a young one. He didn’t recognise the grown-up one, she wasn’t the one who had come to see him after that phone call, for she had seemed to be as thick as a plank of wood and he could get nothing out of her. But the child this young woman was holding by the hand, he knew for a certainty, was his granddaughter, for if his son, David, had been born again and as a girl-child she would be walking towards him now.
‘Are you Mr Dodd?’
‘Yes, I’m Mr Dodd.’
He didn’t look at the young woman as he answered her for his eyes were now riveted on the child, whose face was turned up to his. The eyes were wide and dark brown, but the lids were unblinking.
As he continued to stare at the eyes he experienced a very odd sensation, he wanted to recoil from them, from her. He had the desire to turn and run,
to do anything to get away from those eyes, for he knew even before the young woman indicated to him by pointing to her own eyes that this child, his granddaughter, was blind.
‘Hello. You’re there.’ Bella Dodd put out her hand and her fingers at first lightly touched the bottom of the old man’s jacket. It was a rough jacket, thicker than the hessian she worked with at school, it had little nodules on it. Tweed. Yes, that’s what it was, tweed. She knew her grandfather was tall, Miss Talbot had told her so and that he had a beard. Miss Talbot had told her she had to be very polite to him, especially at first, and not chatter too much until she found her way around. She was good at finding her way around; in fact, Mrs Golightly said there was none better at finding their way around. Mrs Golightly said that she had eyes in her brains, and that was better than having them stuck in front of your face, because most people who had them there never saw anything…He hadn’t answered her. ‘Hello,’ she said again.
‘What is this?’
Bella knew her granda wasn’t talking to her but to Miss Braithwaite, and now she heard Miss Braithwaite say, ‘Perhaps, if you…you could take us straight to your home, I could explain.’
Did Miss Braithwaite sound frightened?
She knew that her granda hadn’t moved and she sensed that he was now staring at Miss Braithwaite. After he turned about, Miss Braithwaite tugged at her hand and she walked with her.
There was a nice smell all about them, flowers…wallflowers, just like they had in the school garden. She loved the smell of wallflowers, it filled her nose and she sucked it up right into her head and kept it there for a long time. She could keep things in her head, like smells, and the feel of cloth, and wood, and stone, and people’s skin. Oh yes, she could keep the feel of people’s skin in her head for a long, long time.
‘Get up!’ Her granda’s voice was very rough. She didn’t know if she was going to like it or not…like him or not…O…h! She gasped as she felt Miss Braithwaite’s hands under her oxters pushing her upwards, and she thrust out her own hands to grasp at something and found they were gripping the rough material of the coat again.
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