Katie Mulholland

by Catherine Cookson

  It was around half-past six that the thing she feared came about. It began as a sort of distant confabulation, and when it died away she thought that Mrs Robson had gone down to consult with Meggie Proctor and Jinny Wilson as to what should be done about the awful noise up above. But then she could hardly have reached the ground floor when the knock came on the door. Katie paused before going to open it, and when she did she had her hand to her throat. It was an apprehensive gesture, but her expression of apprehension changed to complete bewilderment when she was confronted by two young women whom she had never seen in her life before. From the light of the lamp she could see their faces plainly and those of the two men standing behind them. One minute, as she stared at them, there was silence; the next, the room was filled with such a hullabaloo she wondered if she had gone crazy, because this wasn’t like a New Year’s call of any kind. Besides, they were utter strangers. The girls had pushed her aside and dashed into the room and were racing around yelling and shouting, and the men after them. It was as if the four had been released by the same spring, and as she stood, holding her head and yelling at them, screaming at them, there came a sound of quick, hard footsteps on the stairs, and in the doorway appeared two policemen, and Katie turned to them as if to rescuers and cried, ‘Get them out! Get them out!’ and the two policemen got them out. They pushed them on to the stairs, where one policeman remained with them and the other came back into the room and said to her, ‘Get your coat.’ He nodded towards the back of the half-open door.

  ‘What?’ She swallowed deeply, bringing her head forward with the effort. Then she put her fingers to the side of her mouth and after staring at him in stupefaction for a moment she said quietly, ‘But I needn’t go, I’ve done nothing. They forced themselves.’

  ‘Come along,’ he said, ‘I know all about it.’ As he put his hand out to touch her she sprang back and cried angrily. ‘What do you mean, you know all about it? You know about what? I’ve never seen those people in my life afore, not until a minute or so ago.’

  He moved a slow step towards her, saying, ‘Now look here, lass, I don’t want to handle you, but if I have to I will. I’m givin’ you a choice; get your coat or I’ll take as you as are.’ Again she was holding her head in her hands and, her voice almost a whimper, she said, ‘But you can’t, you can’t, I’ve done nothin’.’ She moved her hand in a low sweep towards the bedroom door. ‘Listen. That’s me sister. She’s sick, very sick, I can’t leave her.’

  ‘Somebody’ll see to her. Come on.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was again loud. Then she repeated, ‘No!’ But even as she yelled her defiance at him and told herself it was all a mistake, it would soon be cleared up, her whole body was swamped with fear.

  When he came at her, after whipping her cloak from the back of the door, she beat him off with her fists and struck at him until her arm was twisted behind her back and her body bent double, and like this she was thrust out of the door and down the stairs, and some part of her mind noticed that all the other doors in the house were closed.

  She stopped crying out when she reached the street, but when she came to the end of it she clutched at a lamp-post with one hand, and in a loud voice appealed to three men standing within the range of light. ‘I’ve done nothin’,’ she cried out. ‘I’ve done nothin’. Help me. Help me. I tell you I’ve done nothin’.’ Her arm was wrenched almost from its socket and she cried out again, but in agony from the pain this time. When they reached the police station in Chapter Row she was pushed into a room where the two young girls were sitting on a form. There was no sign of the men.

  Once the policeman had released his hold on her she staggered towards the girls and, bending over them, she beseeched them, ‘Tell them, will you tell them, I’ve done nothing? Tell them I don’t know you. Do I?’

  The eldest girl, who had a thin face capped by tattered fair hair, looked up at her coldly, and her answer was, ‘Shut thy gob.’

  Katie slowly straightened her body and stared down into the upraised faces, into the cold, narrowed eyes.

  Then she swung round to where the two policemen were talking to another one behind the counter, and the policeman who had handled her was saying, ‘We got the tip-off…procuring. That’ll be the charge, procuring. The fellows got away but the lasses will testify.’

  The policeman behind the counter put his head to one side and looked at Katie over the shoulder of the man who had been speaking. He looked her up and down and then he looked back at the policeman, and, bending forward, he whispered something in his ear, and to this the policeman said, ‘Oh no. It’s her all right. We’ve had our eye on her for some time. Starts by being kind to a family you know.’ He nodded, then cast his eyes back to Katie. ‘The old game. Saw her at it just this mornin’. Gave a shilling to a bairn. We talked to him after. She told him to go round every Satada mornin’. She had asked him how many there were in the family. Same old game.’

  The man behind the counter had continued to look at Katie all the time the policeman had been talking. Then, taking his eyes from her, he wrote something in a book before saying, ‘Well, we’re nearly full up here, and by mornin’ comes we’ll be pushing out at the seams; you’d better take her along to the Cross.’

  ‘What about the two lasses?’ asked the policeman who had brought them in. ‘There’s nothing really on them. They said she invited them to the house for a bite and then she produced these fellows.’

  ‘Have you got their names and addresses?’

  ‘Aye,’ said the policeman. ‘And I know them.’

  ‘Then let them go; we’ll get them when we want them. Here.’ He beckoned towards the two girls with a lift of his head, and when they stood at the counter he stared at them hard before saying, ‘Get yourselves off home, and let this be a lesson to you.’

  They nodded at him. Then, turning around, they went out without looking in Katie’s direction.

  ‘Please, please.’ Now she was at the counter gripping its edge and bending towards the man behind it, imploring him to listen to her. ‘Please, it’s all a mistake, I tell you. I’ve done nothing. It’s…it’s a put-up job, it is. Will you listen to me.’

  ‘Now! Now! You’d better be careful what you’re sayin’, put-up job.’ The man pushed out his chest and patted each side of it with a thick, short hand. ‘Put up by who? What would anybody go to that trouble for? You’ve been caught red-handed, so face up to it.’

  ‘I tell you, I tell you…’ She stopped suddenly and, her voice dropping, she looked wildly about her and muttered, ‘I must have help. I must have help.’

  ‘Have you any relations around?’

  ‘Only a brother in Jarrow.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Joseph Mulholland.’

  ‘Address?’

  She lowered her head; then shook it, saying, ‘I…I don’t rightly know. He lives with people called Hetherington, somewhere off Ormonde Street. It’s, it’s Mayhew Street, I think. Mayhew Street…Please…’ She put her hand out across the counter towards him.

  ‘He’ll be notified.’ He now looked at the other policeman and, jerking his head, said, ‘Get going.’ And they got going. They stood, one on each side of her, and like that they walked her out of the room and into the crowded street and through the crowded town towards the market place, which only that morning she had crossed on her way to the chemist’s. And they took her to the town hall where there were four, dark, damp cells, and in one they locked her up and she started to scream. She screamed for an hour until a woman came and slapped her hard across the mouth, and then she became quiet.

  Chapter Seven

  It was the third day of January 1866. The magistrate took his seat at ten o’clock in the morning and noted that the first case he had to deal with was of one Mrs Bunting, commonly known as Katie Mulholland. Her offence: procuring young females for improper purposes. He made a motion with his head to the clerk of the court, who made a motion with his head to the usher, and Katie Mulholla
nd was brought in.

  The magistrate glanced at the prisoner and his eyes were returning to the paper before him when they switched back to the woman in the box. Her face was beautiful, tragic, the eyes holding a wild stare. The clothes, although rumpled and dirty, were not of the usual quality and type associated with a…He looked down at the paper again…procuress. He looked at her long and hard, and he continued to look at her long and hard before he said, ‘You are charged, Catherine Bunting, with the offence of enticing two young females to your house, there to use them for improper purposes for your own gain. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Not guilty.’

  The magistrate continued to stare at the prisoner while he sat back in his chair and let the case take its course. He listened to the policeman’s evidence of how he had watched the house in No. 14 Crane Street for some time. It was frequented by foreigners, mostly from the ships.

  When the prisoner was asked, she admitted to being visited by a Swedish captain. When she was asked how often, she couldn’t give any definite reply. Then came the two girls, the main witnesses. The magistrate saw them as low, ignorant, slovenly types, who could be easily led into this sensual and shameful life. One of the girls said she had worked in the pipe factory since she was eight years old, the other worked in the whiting factory. She had been there since she was seven. They both said they earned enough money to keep them, and, as one said, she had no need to whore for it. She was strongly chastised for using this word in court and she begged the magistrate’s pardon. They both swore that they had never solicited men. One of the girls said she often went into Saint Hilda’s Church and that she was a good girl. This was the one who explained that they had met the prisoner that day in the market and she had invited them around to her house for a sup of something and a bite, it being New Year’s Eve; and they’d hardly set foot in the door when she brought the two men from the bedroom, and these men had set about them. When this particular girl had begun to describe what the men had tried to do the magistrate silenced them, saying that the court understood fully what the men had intended to do.

  And then the prisoner was standing before him again. She was crying and talking rapidly in a hysterical fashion, shouting about lies and the whole thing being planned. The magistrate found himself listening to her, and he knew that he would have discounted the evidence of the two girls if it hadn’t been for that of the policeman and the fact that the woman herself admitted to receiving foreign sailors into her house, although she had only admitted to one man.

  When the prisoner became silent and stood staring at him in a most disconcerting fashion, he leant over the bench and asked of the clerk if she had any relations, and when told she had a brother but he was not in court, nor had he been seen, the magistrate nodded his head. A man would not like to recognise a sister who had gone the way of this one.

  It was noteworthy that if the case had been the last one of the day the sentence passed on Catherine Bunting would have been twelve months; as it was, she got off lightly. ‘I sentence you to three months,’ said the magistrate, ‘in the house of correction, and during that time I hope you will come to see the error of your ways.’

  It was almost a fortnight later when Andrée came up the stairs and, turning the handle of the door and finding it locked, called, ‘Open up there, Kaa-tee. Open up.’

  When silence greeted him he took his fist and banged on a panel, and when there was still no reply he looked towards the little table on the landing where had always stood the wooden bucket and the washbasin. It was no longer there, not the washbasin or the wooden bucket or the table.

  ‘Kaa-tee! Kaa-tee!’ After banging on the door again he looked down the stairs, and there at the foot stood Mrs Robson, and with her head well back she called up to him, ‘It’s no use doing that, she’s not there any more.’ He left his bag where it was on the landing and slowly went down the stairs, and when he had almost reached the bottom he stopped and, hanging over her, said, ‘What did you say?’

  Mrs Robson was a thin, tight-faced little woman and her voice had a tight sound too, but there was a kindly note in it as she replied, ‘Just what I told you. She’s not there any more; they took her away.’

  Now he was standing in front of her, his hairy face close to hers, so close that she lent back to get away from it—she didn’t like hairy men. ‘Look…’ She cast her eyes down the next flight of stairs. ‘Come in a minute.’

  He followed her into the room, and the first thing his bewildered gaze alighted on, amidst a clutter of oddments on a dresser, was the glass lamp he had bought Katie at Christmas. His head down, his beard tight against his breast he stared at it; then, pointing a finger towards it, he turned to her and said, ‘How did you come by that?’

  ‘Well’—she closed her eyes while at the same time raising her eyebrows—‘if I hadn’t taken it the others would have nabbed it. I took as much as I could ’cos I knew you’d be back. I wasn’t pinching anythin’; I don’t want her stuff. You can have them any minute you like. I only hope you manage to get the rest back as easy. They’re down below; both of them had their whack.’

  ‘Look. Look.’ His voice came from deep within his body. ‘Tell me, where is she? Kaa-tee.’

  ‘She’s in prison, doing three months.’

  She watched him take off his hat and lift the hair from his brow before she said, ‘They said in the court that she was keeping a bad house.’

  ‘A bad house?’ His face was screwed up, his clear blue eyes lost behind his narrowed lids.

  ‘Aye, that’s what they said. You were mentioned—not by name, just as…well, as sort of her having foreign sailors.’

  ‘You me…an…’ He drew the words out, then repeated, ‘You me…an she has gone to prison because of me?’ He stuck one finger in the middle of his blue, cloth coat.

  ‘Well, no, not you alone…’ Mrs Robson folded her arms across her chest, and before she could go on he barked at her, ‘What do you mean, not me alone? You would say Kaa-tee…?’

  ‘Now don’t get all worked up, I’m not sayin’ nowt. I’m just tellin’ you what they said in court. But I can give you me opinion, if you want that.’

  ‘Your opinion?’ He was staring at her, but not seeing her; at the moment he seemed only capable of listening to her words, then repeating them. They had locked his Kaa-tee up for keeping a bad house, and he was part of that bad house. But his Kaa-tee keeping a bad house? God Almighty! His Kaa-tee with the white light all about her. He never looked at her but he saw her through a white light, the white light of pure love, something which few men experienced but which he had with Kaa-tee. He heard the woman say, ‘Now take your hands off me and don’t get rough, ’cos it won’t work.’

  He shook his head and loosened his grip on Mrs Robson’s shoulder; and, standing back from her, he said, ‘I’m sorry; I have been shocked…’ Then:

  ‘Lizzie. What about Lizzie?’

  ‘They took her to the workhouse. An’ the best place, I should say. Sit yourself down.’ She pointed to a wooden chair against the scrubbed white table. Then she sat down opposite to him and, leaning across the table, whispered, ‘If you want to know what I think, the whole thing was a frame-up.’

  He stared at her and repeated her words, but only in his mind now, and waited for her to go on. ‘You see, it was like this. I heard a bit of a kerfuffle on the stairs, an’ since that night when that Meggie brought her pals up here I’ve had me ears skinned; besides which I was out to catch them young brats that goes round the doors knockin’ at the rappers. Three months they can get if they’re caught. Not that the slops don’t want something better to do than go hounding bits of bairns for a bit of a game.’

  When he made an uneasy movement she said, ‘Aye, well, I’m comin’ to it; just give me a minute. I was just sayin’ about them rappin’. Well, there I was, standin’ behind the door ’cos I’d heard the creepin’ on the stairs, you see, a
nd then they stood on me landin’ there and started to jabber, low like, so I put me ear to the keyhole, but I couldn’t hear what they were sayin’, except for one thing. An’ I heard this twice. The same thing. It was, “Five minutes he give us.” That’s what I heard. An’ I heard it twice, as I said, an’ it didn’t make sense, not till after. Then I heard them go upstairs, quiet like at first, and then I heard her, Katie Mulholland, comin’ out of the bedroom where that lass had been wailin’ all the afternoon. Shockin’ it was; I was for goin’ up. If it hadn’t been New Year’s Eve an’ her on her own, like, I would have gone an’ played hell, but I didn’t. An’ I heard her comin’ across the floor, and then all hell was let loose. I’m tellin’ you you’d think somebody was bein’ murdered. Well, I was goin’ to open the door…well, I had it open, but I shut it right quick when I heard some more comin’ up the stairs. I didn’t know then they were the slops. Then I heard Katie scream. God, did she scream! The Lizzie one had nothin’ on her that night. She screamed blue murder. An’ then they all came downstairs, and she was screaming all the way…’

  He put his hand out and stopped her flow, and after a moment, during which his lips were drawn in and lost behind the mass of fair hair, he asked, ‘Did you know the people who went upstairs, the…the men?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see hilt nor hair of them, not even the day in court when she was brought up; but the lasses were there, an’ I can tell you for nowt they’re as much good as a six weeks’ unsmoked haddock.’