Katie Mulholland

by Catherine Cookson

  Besides all this, her mind was numbed with agony concerning her father, and to the pain was added the weight of her conscience, for was not his plight due entirely to her? If she had never married Bunting he wouldn’t be in jail at this moment. She was to blame for it all. But no, no, not all. The child was not her blame; she would never take that blame on herself. She looked towards it now lying on a blanket in a low wooden tub, and a separate part of her, untouched by the misery of the moment, seemed to leap towards it and enfold it. She had never imagined she would feel like this about the child. She had hated it all the time she was carrying it, but now her love for it seemed to swell her body every time she looked at it.

  But Sarah was now whimpering; she was hungry because Katie was hungry, she wasn’t making enough milk to feed it. There was no food in the house for any of them, and Joe would be coming in at six, and Joe must eat. If he was to work he must eat. And then there was her granda. As she now washed the old man’s face with a flannel and made him tidy and answered the thanks in his eyes by gently patting his cheek because his speech had gone, she thought that soon there’d be another funeral, but this one would be a workhouse one. Her poor granda; he had always dreaded the workhouse. But he wouldn’t know anything about it; he’d be dead before they took him there.

  As she went into the kitchen with the dish of water there came back to her the man’s query, ‘Have you any money for the funeral?’ and immediately following it three words flashed through her mind. They seemed to come out of nowhere; they had no real connection with anything she had been thinking. The words were…a hundred pounds, and what brought a tremor to her body was that it didn’t seem to be herself who was saying them, but…him. A hundred pounds. A hundred pounds. The sum went over and over again in her mind and she was hearing it said in Bunting’s voice. Vaguely, very vaguely, she remembered hearing him say this. But the more she groped in her mind to bring the memory to the fore the more vague it became. If he had said anything about a hundred pounds to her she would have remembered, as she did everything he had done to her up to the night of the beating. Things that she considered worse than the beating she remembered.

  It was as she threw the water on to the spare ground outside that a door opened in her mind and she heard his voice coming through it, clearer now, and accompanied by the swishing of the buckled belt, ‘A hundred pounds,’ it was saying. But now there were two more words added. ‘For you,’ the voice said. ‘A hundred pounds for you!’

  And so it went on all that day, the words kept coming and going in her mind, and that night as she lay awake thinking of her da shut away in prison, perhaps never to come out again, they broke through again, loud now, yelling, ‘A hundred pounds for you! A hundred pounds for you!’

  At one point she thought she was going mad, or funny like Lizzie, because she couldn’t stop the words from repeating and repeating themselves. And then as she lay wide-eyed and hungry she began to think about what the man had said about it being known that Bunting had money, and Mrs Morgan too had said he should have money. Everybody in the village knew he had money hoarded away, she said, and all out of his cheating the men…Well, if he had, where had he hoarded it? She had cleaned every inch of the house and she had never come across anything that looked like a hidey-hole. Yet if he had money he must have hidden it somewhere…

  It wasn’t until the next day when she climbed the six-foot ladder that gave entry to the roof space where Joe had his bed that light dawned on her.

  Every Saturday afternoon Bunting had sent her to Batley’s farm two miles away for half a dozen eggs and some vegetables. Immediately dinner was over he would hand her the money and tell her to get going; whether it was rain, hail or shine he would order her out. Even when she had to carry the baby all that way—she would never have left it with him. Why did he want her out of the way like that every week if not to have a space of time in which to hide his money? And what better place to hide it than in the roof? She had never thought of going up there because the hatch was eight feet above the landing…

  The following day was Sunday, and early in the morning she said to Joe, ‘I’m goin’ out for an hour or so. Will you see to them?’

  ‘Where you goin’?’ Joe whispered, and she whispered back, ‘I’m goin’ to the house to get some of me things.’

  ‘But you won’t be able to get in; it’ll be locked up.’

  ‘There’s a way. I know how to open the scullery window.’

  ‘Won’t you get wrong if you’re caught?’

  ‘I can’t see how. Me things are there; I’m goin’ for them.’

  When she was about to leave the house he came to the front with her, and, his voice very low, he said, ‘Why don’t you have a look round and see if there’s anything about. You know what I mean?’

  She nodded at him and they looked at each other in full understanding. And then he said, ‘But you’re not fit, you’re not up to that trek; you shouldn’t try.’ To which she answered, ‘The air’ll do me good.’

  But even before she left Jarrow she didn’t see how she was going to complete the journey. For the past week she had just moved slowly around the room, but now she was finding the movement of her muscles, particularly her back muscles, excruciating. Moreover, as she put it to herself, she felt bad right through.

  The morning was bright and warm; the larks were soaring like winged notes from their ground cover into the heavens. She had always loved the larks and was horrified at their destruction. But this morning she did not even look upwards, for out here in the open the enormity of the trouble that had come upon them seemed enlarged. It seemed to spread away from her on all sides, filling space, filling her life right down to the end; she could see no easing from the feeling that was in her now.

  When she saw the village away to her left she was surprised that she had got this far. She kept well clear of the village, for she didn’t want to meet any of them in case she would say, ‘Why don’t you get them to own up—the ones who did it, Mr Morgan’s sons and the rest?’ But the Morgans had been kind to her and she had no proof, only another jumbled memory of men talking in the Morgans’ kitchen, and later, after her da had gone to Bunting, of men and women, silent men and women, coming and looking at her back.

  As she approached the house a fear settled on her, a fear of entering it, of him still being there. It was no use telling herself he was dead and buried.

  She entered the back garden by sitting on the low stone wall and lifting her legs over, one after the other. Then she was standing outside the wash-house door. She stood quietly listening for a moment. Who knew but someone might be about; a house that had had a murder always attracted sightseers. She went into the wash-house and looked for the key. Perhaps it had been put back in its hiding place; but no, it wasn’t there.

  She sat down for a moment on an upturned tub; then, realising that it was the tub in which he had bathed, she sprang up and, pulling her skirts about her, leaned against the half-open door, looking at it. If contact with the tub frightened her, how would the inside of the house affect her? Before her thinking would drive her down the road again she went round to the scullery widow, and, lifting her skirt and taking from the pocket in her petticoat an old knife, she inserted the blade between the window and the latch.

  The process of climbing through the little window racked her body, and as there was no support on the other side she had to fall to the floor on her hands and pull her legs after her. When she was through she lay panting for a moment, looking round at the familiar scene. Then, rising slowly, she closed the window and made towards the kitchen door. It took a great effort of will to open the door, and having done so her body jerked and her eyes closed simultaneously before she looked into the room. It was no longer familiar. The settle was pushed against the wall and in front of it stood three broken chairs. On the delf rack, piled together as if someone had swept them up, was the crockery; all smashed, and the mantelpiece was stripped of its pewter mugs and brass candlesticks. But
they were nowhere to be seen; someone had likely taken them. As she looked at the devastation she whimpered, ‘Oh, Da! Da!’ Slowly she crossed the room to the stairs. But at the foot of them she remained standing; she couldn’t go up there, she couldn’t. The sweat was pouring down her face now, and she glanced behind her. She could feel him; he was still here. Only the thought of No. 3, The Row full of hungry bellies impelled her forward.

  When she stood on the landing she had to open the bedroom door to be able to see the hatch, and immediately she knew she could never reach it from a chair. The only thing to do was to bring the chest of drawers out of the little room and climb upon them.

  After taking out the three drawers from the chest she pulled it through the doorway; then with trembling limbs she mounted it and, putting both hands up, she pressed against the hatchway and, to her surprise, it moved easily. With her head through the aperture she looked around her. The roof space was lit by a tiny window, but little light came through because of the grime on it.

  It took something of an effort to pull herself up and on to the floor, and when she was standing upright she gazed about her. The floor was boarded and there was nothing on it except a wicker basket and a wooden box lying close to the sloping roof.

  When she pulled up the close-fitting lid of the basket she saw it held clothes, women’s clothes—his mother’s clothes likely. They were all tumbled together as if someone had already been sorting them. She forced herself to pull the garments out one after the other. They smelt musty and dirty, but there was no money lying among them. In the long wooden box there was a gun and two boxes of small shot, but no money.

  Where? Where? If he’d hidden it anywhere it would be up here; it must be up here. The chimney breast ran up through the floor, then through the roof. She examined every brick but couldn’t feel a loose one. That left only the floor. On her hands and knees now she tried each board to see if it was loose. But no; they were all firmly held by nails. Wearily she sat down on the long black box, her back bent because of the roof. She had looked everywhere, searched every corner; there was nothing more she could do. If he’d had money he had hidden it well, and it would lie hidden until in the far future the house would be pulled down, and then somebody would find it; somebody who didn’t need it like she did the day.

  When she got wearily to her feet she stood shaking her head, her eyes cast down, and like this there came over her a strange feeling, an excited feeling, a sort of nice feeling that had no connection with the horror she had experienced during the past weeks. She felt for a moment as if she was back, up there, in the house, going happily about her work, eating well, sleeping well, with the knowledge of the forthcoming pleasure of going home on her day off always looming before her. The feeling made her grab the iron handle of the box and drag it aside. Before she came to laugh at the existence of a God, she thought that He must have instructed one of His angels to reveal Bunting’s secret by way of repayment for what she had endured; but she never really could work out what made her suddenly heave the box aside.

  Now she was looking at a floorboard with a gap in it, just a little gap that wouldn’t have been noticed unless someone was looking for it. Inserting her little fingernail she lifted up the loose board, and there below her, on a piece of wood supported between the beams, lay four bags and a little black, leather-bound book.

  Like someone mesmerised, she picked up one of the bags and, undoing the loop of string that tied its neck, she looked down on to the gleaming gold coins, sovereigns. The same in the next bag, and the other two: all full of sovereigns. And the little black book. She opened it, but the writing was so small and the light so bad that she couldn’t read it.

  She stood up, her hands holding each side of her face. All that money, all that gold. She was overcome by a panic feeling. What if someone came? It would be no use saying she was just after her clothes if they saw the chest on the landing. Like lightning now she swooped up one bag after the other and, putting two in each side of her petticoat to balance her, together with the little book, she replaced the board, left the box as she had found it, then went to the hole and let herself down to the top of the chest, pulled the hatch into place, and dropped to the floor. Five minutes later, the chest back in the bedroom, she went stealthily down the stairs.

  Now, as if the devil was after her, and he could have been from the feeling that filled the house, she let herself out of the back door—there was no time to make the difficult journey through the narrow window. Running now, she got over the low wall, and not until she was well away from the house did she slow to a walk. And it was just as well, for, in the distance, around a rise in the fells she saw coming towards her, from the direction of the road, three girls. They were Haggie’s rope-work girls, from Wallsend. Haggie’s Angels they were called. You could always tell them by their clogs and thick serge skirts and woollen shawls. Their fearlessness of man or beast was personified by their coarse prattle. They were laughing and larking on as they walked, one of them pushing at another while she gripped her own waist to ease the ache of her mirth. Catching sight of Katie, they came in a straight line towards her, their faces still broad with their laughter, and when they were abreast one of them said, ‘Can we get to the hoose where the morder was done this way?’

  Katie stared at them. Her instinct was to fly from them, but that would make them think she was wrong in the head, perhaps even suspicious of her, and they might talk. One thing led to another; it always started that way. She made herself say as calmly as possible, ‘It’s about five minutes’ walk. That’s the straight way.’ She pointed back towards the road they had left, and, their faces still laughing, they said one after the other, ‘Ta.’ She could still hear them laughing when she was a good distance from them, and as she hurried on she thought, The dog’ll go for them…Roy. She stopped. She hadn’t thought of Roy. Poor Roy. One thing was sure: he hadn’t been there else he would have raised the place. Somebody must have taken him. It came to her that she must have been in a bad way altogether these past days not to have thought of the poor beast.

  When she entered the town again she forced herself not to scurry. With every step she took she was conscious of the bags knocking against her legs. It being Sunday, the town was quiet. The good God-fearing people were returning from church, the men in their broad cloth and tight-fitting trousers and shining boots, the women in their best dresses of grey, dark blue or black. You could almost tell which church they had been to from their dress. The women going to the Church of England nearly always were bonneted; the women who went to the Catholic church nearly always wore shawls. But then what could you expect, for the Catholics were mostly drunken Irish. In her own chapel just some of the women managed a bonnet, and then it was nothing as elaborate as those worn by the Church of England women. Her mother had pointed all this out to her, yet she had told her that farther away up in Newcastle, and farther still in the Midlands, the Methodists had fine chapels and the women nearly all wore bonnets.

  But there were those in this town who didn’t go near a church or a chapel. The men were now filling the public houses, and the women were making the Sunday dinner, and between times standing on their front steps talking to their neighbours while their children scampered in the muck and running filth of the road.

  It was among most of this latter type that she had to pass before she came to The Row, and there was many an eye turned on her and many a whisper that came to her ears, such as ‘You don’t get a hammerin’ for nowt, not if he doesn’t booze, you don’t. He must’ve twigged summat.’ When she pushed open the door and entered the dim room she was on the point of collapse.

  Catherine was sitting at the table. There was no sign of a dinner of any sort in preparation. Lizzie was sitting on the pallet that was Katie’s bed, and Joe was walking the narrow distance between the walls shaking the child up and down to try to stop its crying.

  They all looked towards her. Then Catherine, for the first time in days, showed interest in what was
going on around her. She got to her feet and asked dully, ‘Where’ve you been, lass? Why did you leave us?’

  Katie didn’t answer, but, going to Joe, she took the child from him and, sitting down, bared her breast to it. Then after drawing in a number of quick deep breaths she looked up at Joe, whose eyes were waiting full of enquiry, and she said softly, ‘Put the bolt in the door, will you, Joe, and pull the curtain.’

  She hitched the cracket on which she was sitting nearer the table, and, supporting the child with one arm, she pulled the four bags and the book from her petticoat and laid them in front of her. Then she said to Joe, ‘Open them.’

  Joe spilled a bag on to the table, then stood gaping at the sovereigns. And Catherine stood staring at them. Then, looking at her daughter, she whispered, ‘In the name of God, lass, what have you done now?’

  It was the word ‘now’ that pierced Katie, telling her that deep in her heart her mother held her responsible for all that had happened. She swallowed in her throat, then said, ‘He had money hidden up in the roof. I went and got it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, lass. It’s bad money, evil money. Any money he had would be evil money.’

  ‘But, Ma, listen. Listen.’ It was Joe now tugging at her arm, bringing her round to face him. ‘We need it, an’ Katie’s got a right to it. Who better after what she’s been through? Don’t be daft, Ma.’

  ‘No matter what way you look at it, it’s bad money.’

  ‘It’ll help me da, Ma.’ Katie was looking up at Catherine. ‘We…we can buy a man to speak for him like they do for the miners.’