Katie Mulholland

by Catherine Cookson

  Nils stared at his father. It seemed impossible to believe that he wasn’t aware of the true situation. But then would he, for his ego was still as big as his old body. Turned eighty, he still saw himself as attractive to her. Nils had the sudden desire, born of deep hidden resentment against this man who had left him fatherless at the time when he needed a father, to bend to him, fix him with his eye and say, ‘Listen to me, my big fellow, and let it sink in deep. I’m going to take her away. You’re going to be alone as you left my mother alone—and me. Yes, and me.’

  ‘What are you thinking of, Nils?’ Andrée looked up at his son whose eyes were on him, yet with his gaze turned inwards.

  ‘A woman,’ said Nils, turning away.

  ‘Ha! ha!’ laughed Andrée, punching his fist towards him. ‘Like father, like son all right.’

  Chapter Two

  Young Tom Mulholland was tall and sparsely made, with large eyes which he would have seen were like those of his Great-Aunt Katie if he had met her. His face was long and his nose straight; he had a clear complexion, and a thin unsmiling mouth; and at nineteen he was aware of two things he wanted of life. First, he wanted to get out of Palmer’s shipyard. What alternative work he would do he didn’t know, he just wanted to get away from the noise, dirt, and bustle. The other desire was clear-cut: he wanted to marry his cousin Catherine.

  His first desire, although it concerned his livelihood, was simple; the second was fraught with such complications, such obstacles, that he knew he should have strangled it at birth. Had he set his cap at one of the Palmer family, or one of the Redheads’ connections in this very village of Westoe, his objective would have been more easily accomplished, because Catherine was a Catholic and he was Church of England, and you might as well try to plait molten lead with water as to join a Catholic and a Protestant in Jarrow.

  As he saw the door of Loreto open he turned and walked slowly down by the row of trees; then he cut through a carriage entrance to the pavement along which Catherine was now walking, and when she came abreast of him he joined his step to hers and after a moment said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello!’ Turning her head and looking fully at him, she added quietly, ‘You shouldn’t have come all this way; you’ll wear your boots out.’

  ‘I can sole them again.’

  ‘I’m going back on the tram.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see you to it.’

  ‘You’ll not, Tom Mulholland, you’ll get on with me.’

  ‘I’ll do no such thing.’ Now his voice was harsh and hers equally so as she replied, ‘Oh, you are a pig-headed individual. For two pins I’d get on the tram and let you walk by yourself.’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  They stopped and stood staring at each other until, her face softening, she shrugged her shoulders and said with a definite air of resignation, ‘Oh, well, have it your own way. I’ll walk, but I’ll be dropping when I get there because of your pig-headedness, and likely get it in the neck too for being late.’

  He smiled at her now, and she smiled back at him before walking on again. Tom, she considered, was good looking. What was more, he was nice. She liked Tom. She checked her thoughts at this point. Tom was her cousin, but he was more like a brother to her. Yes, she liked Tom; next to her Aunt Katie she liked Tom. But now she turned to him, her voice aggressive again, saying, ‘Me Uncle Andrée says if you don’t come in he’s going to use his boot on you.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ The face was straight, the statement a question.

  ‘And he could, you know; he might be eighty-odd but he’s like a lintie.’

  ‘Well’—his mouth moved up at the corners—‘when he lifts his foot up I might cobble his boot for him an’ all.’

  They were both laughing now, and in their rocking they fell hard against each other, only to spring apart quickly as if they had been scorched, and they kept the distance between them all the way through Shields. And it wasn’t until they passed the docks and entered the Jarrow Road that their conversation ceased to be monosyllabic and they chattered freely again.

  They walked past the Jarrow Slacks and the buildings of East Jarrow and Bogey Hill, and they did not take the forbidden short cut up the tram lines and into Jarrow but went the longer way round by the Quay Corner; and when they reached the corner they paused for a while and sat on a timber and looked at the Don flowing between its black, slimy banks and out on to the mudflats where the great black posts rotted indiscernibly.

  ‘I hate Jarrow.’

  He turned his head sharply and stared at her for a moment before saying in a slightly defensive tone, ‘There could be worse places.’

  ‘Where?’

  He slanted his eyes towards her. ‘It’s funny, you know, I can’t really make it out myself, because I hate the muck and the dirt as much as you do, but I still like Jarrow. I wouldn’t want to live any place else. It is funny, isn’t it?’

  She nodded at him, her face solemn with understanding, but she said, ‘I loathe it, I loathe living in Jarrow.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind living in Shields though?’

  ‘No, I’d like to live in Shields; it’s quite different.’

  ‘But there are places in Shields that are even worse than those in Jarrow. You go along by Costorphine Town and the dock area.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t like to live there…’

  ‘No, you’d like to live in Westoe, wouldn’t you?’ Abruptly he got to his feet; and as he looked down at her she pulled herself upwards and, facing him aggressively, said, ‘And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting to live in Westoe?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. I was just pointing out to you that every house in Shields hasn’t got running water inside, and hot and cold, nor a bathroom and a flush lav. Because your Aunt Katie’s got such a place it doesn’t make Shields a model town.’

  ‘Who’s saying it does? And you needn’t stress “my aunt Katie” because she’s as much your Aunt Katie as she is mine, and if you once spoke to her you would…’

  ‘Don’t start that again. Come on.’ He gripped her arm and pulled her round; then he released his hold on her and thrust his hands into his pockets, and they walked in silence round by the old church of St Paul’s, where Bede had taught and which was the only claim Jarrow had on his history, yet no small claim. They passed the end of the children’s park, and cut across the salt grass where once the salt pans had flourished; then, leaving the wasteland, they entered the labyrinth of grey dull streets, not one house looking different from its neighbour, front door facing front door, back door facing back door. At the end of Hope Street they stopped and looked at each other, and nonchalantly he said, ‘You’re going down there again the morrow?’

  ‘I don’t know, I might.’

  ‘You should know. Are you going anywhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’ll be going down?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘Same time?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She nodded, and they continued to stare at each other for a moment longer before she turned away, saying, ‘Ta-ra, Tom.’ And he answered softly, ‘Ta-ra, Catherine.’

  Catherine hurried up the middle of the back lane, being careful to step over the patches of excrement the scavengers had let fall when cleaning out the middens. She turned right at the top, then right again and into her own back lane and then into her backyard, empty for once of any of her six brothers and sisters.

  Lucy Connolly was sitting in an old battered armchair in the kitchen. She looked hard at her daughter and said, ‘Well?’

  ‘She could only manage ten shillings.’ Catherine did not look at her mother as she gave her this news.

  ‘To hell! You didn’t ask her for more?’

  ‘I did, I did.’ Catherine was shouting back at Lucy now, and becoming aware of this she bit her lip, then put her fingers over her mouth, and Lucy, nodding her head at her, said, ‘Aye, Aa should think so an’ all. You forget your fancy manners when you’re home. Keep them for Aunt
Katie, don’t you? An’ I’m tellin’ you, if you’d asked her for the pound she’d have given it to you.’

  ‘She wouldn’t, because she knows where it would go.’

  Lucy looked up into her daughter’s tight face and she surveyed her for a full minute before saying menacingly, ‘One of these days, me lady, you’ll get a surprise—you’ll get what you’re askin’ for. You’ll come out of that convent as if you had a hot poker up your arse.’

  Catherine bowed her head and turned away. Her mother’s language could make her sick, actually sick. She sometimes retched after she had listened to her. It was hard to believe what her Aunt Bridget said, that her mother had at one time been nice and jolly and great company. She couldn’t really believe it.

  ‘What do you two talk about down there…? And come here.’ She waved Catherine towards her. ‘Don’t you go into that room and start sulking. I said, what do you two talk about when you get together? Sit yourself down and talk to me for a change.’ She snapped her finger towards a chair.

  Catherine sat down. And she looked at the small dark woman and she tried to stop the awful thought coming into her mind again, the awful thought that she wished she would die.

  ‘Well, I’m waitin’. I’m waitin’ to hear about your edifying conversation.’

  ‘We have no edifying conversation.’ Catherine’s lips hardly moved as she spoke. Her voice was a mutter and she kept her eyes averted from her mother’s face.

  ‘No edifying conversation? Well, you must talk about somethin’. Oh! Oh!’ She pulled herself up in the chair. ‘Don’t tell me she’s instructing you how to make money like she did. Oh, no!’ She wagged her finger now in front of her own face. ‘You mustn’t begin by setting up whore shops.’

  ‘Mother! Oh, Mother, how could you! You’re wicked. And Aunt Katie never did any such thing; you know she didn’t.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what your Aunt Katie did or didn’t do. An’ don’t believe a word I say; just you go down and enquire at the pollis station. Ask them if she wasn’t put away for keeping a bad house.’

  Catherine was on her feet bending towards her mother, towards the grinning, leering, half-washed face, as she said bitterly under her breath, ‘Then why do you take her dirty money? Why do you keep sending me down to borrow from her? Why have you let her support the lot of us for years? Because without her pound a week we would have been in Harton Workhouse long ago. Why? I’ll tell you why…because you’re no good. You blame me da, but he would have been all right if he’d had someone behind him, someone different from you, with your drink and your greed, and your jealousy and dirty tongue, and…’

  Catherine’s voice was cut off by a vicious slap across the mouth. Following this, she received two blows on her bent head, and lastly Lucy’s foot came into her back and sent her sprawling through the bedroom door. She came to rest full length on one of the four shakedowns in the small room, and as she covered her sobbing face in her arms Lucy bent over her and whispered fiercely, ‘An’ I’ll tell you somethin’ else while I’m on. You stop seein’ Tom Mulholland else yer da’s going to skin you alive. D’yer hear me? Cousin or no cousin, he’s comin’ too thick with yer for any good. Now those are your da’s words, and you remember them.’

  She took her foot again and pushed it against her daughter’s hip, and as she left the room, banging the door behind her, she muttered, ‘I’ll see he deals with you, me girl. By God, if I don’t!’

  Chapter Three

  Each day, be it rain, hail or fine, Andrée took his constitutional. He walked to the fountain at Westoe, took a tramcar to the bottom of Fowler Street, another to the end of Ocean Road, then walked the mile-long pier. This, he claimed, was what kept him fit and well. And undoubtedly it had done, until two months ago when he returned from his walk with a pain in his chest, which he admitted to having experienced before, and which he declared was indigestion due to cook’s heavy hand in the meat pudding.

  He bellowed when Katie said he must see a doctor, but he did not say no to her suggestion that she should accompany him on his walks.

  Katie found the afternoon excursions very tiring, and they disorganised the whole day. Her mornings were usually taken up with business; sometimes she was called upon to visit her solicitor twice a week. She thought of the man who saw to her legal business now as her solicitor. He was the successor to Mr Hewitt, who had retired ten years ago and was now living in Harrogate. Nor could she any longer call on the guidance and help from Mr Kenny, who after he had retired had worked for her until he died in 1901.

  At the end of the pier Katie watched Andrée, seemingly tireless, walking round the lighthouse. She watched him gaze up at the wheeling seagulls, and she felt that always when he reached this point of his walk he was again on the bridge of a ship.

  On the return journey he pointed to ‘the little fellows’, as he called the tugs, chugging in front of a liner as they led her towards the gap in the piers, and he said, ‘How many times have I paddled that road, Kaa-tee?’ And she replied, ‘Times without number, Andy.’ And he nodded and patted the hand that was resting on his arm, and, his eyes still looking across the water, he said, ‘It’s been a good life, Kaa-tee, a good life.’ Then, bringing his eyes round to her, he repeated, but in a different tone now, a quiet, deep, personal tone, ‘A good life, Kaa-tee; and the best of it has been spent with you.’

  ‘Oh, Andy.’ She squeezed his arm, and when he saw the tears in her eyes he said, ‘There now. There now. But it’s true.’ Then after a moment he added, ‘We’re sad today. I suppose that’s because tomorrow we lose Catherine…You know, Kaa-tee, she’s not only a daughter to you, but to me also.’

  ‘I know, dear, I know. But she’ll write often—at least twice a week, she says. And then’—she hugged his arm—‘you know that once she leaves college she’ll come to us.’

  ‘That’s two years ahead, Kaa-tee. I wonder if I won’t have gone out with the tide before then.’

  ‘Andy! Andy!’ She stopped in her stride.

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry, my dear, but I’m an old man, Kaa-tee. And lately it has come to me just how old. I…I think we should face it, because I worry. I worry about you.’

  ‘Well, you have no need to, and don’t.’

  ‘How can I help it, for at heart you are still the young girl with fear in her eyes.’

  She turned her head away from him as she said, ‘That’s nonsense. I’m not afraid of anything any more.’ She made her voice firm, convincing.

  Yet he wasn’t convinced, for he answered, ‘It’s no use telling me you are no longer afraid, for time and time again I have seen fear in your eyes, and I think to myself the past will never die for her.’

  What could she say to this?

  They walked in silence for a time, then his words checked her breath. ‘Has Nils ever said anything to you about a woman, Kaa-tee?’

  She gulped in her throat, took her hand from his arm and straightened her hat; then, looking into his eyes, which were merely asking a question and not probing anything deeper, she said, ‘No. A woman? What d’you mean?’

  ‘He’s got a woman on his mind.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘He told me.’

  Her head was turned from him again, and she was looking over the water to the great stretch of sands as she asked, ‘What did he say about her?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Only he had a woman on his mind. And it can’t be the one in Hartlepool.’

  ‘Hartlepool? He…he has someone there?’ Her voice ended on a high note.

  ‘He had. He doesn’t think I know. A chief engineer’s widow. My last mate, Anderson, told me; he knew her. Fine set-up woman, he said, with a house and a bit of money of her own. I thought perhaps Nils would have made a splice with her, but no, it petered out. He’s choosy, is Nils. But he’s certainly got someone else in his eye, and on his mind too.’ He laughed softly. ‘He’s thinking of his retirement. The years ahead, without water under their feet, frighten some men, Kaa-tee.
I never had that fear, for there was always you to come home to.’ He pulled her arm tight to his side, and they walked in silence again, until Andrée said, ‘I don’t think I’ll go to the reunion tonight.’

  ‘Why? You’ve never missed one in years.’

  ‘Oh, I’m getting past it. Retelling old yarns, laughing at ones you’ve heard a thousand times. Even the whisky is losing its taste.’

  ‘You’re going,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m quite old enough to be left alone for one evening. Anyway, I don’t want you storming up and down thinking about what you’re missing.’

  They were both laughing; Andrée, with his head back, saying, ‘Aw, you’re my Kaa-tee.’ Then, bringing his bushy face close to hers, he whispered, ‘Well, promise me you’ll hit me on the head with the warming-pan if I raise the roof when I get in.’

  Looking back at him solemnly, she said, ‘I promise.’ And again they were laughing.

  Katie entered the drawing room and walked to the fire and held her hands out to the blaze. She had felt so cold she’d had the fire lit early in the evening. She hoped she hadn’t caught a chill on the pier today; it had been anything but warm.

  She had just come downstairs from seeing Betty to bed. She had insisted on her going up early because her legs were so swollen they looked as if they would burst. Betty had the idea that the routine of the house would disintegrate if she were to leave the scene for a day or so.

  She glanced down at the almost empty brass coal scuttle, which condition pointed to it being Nellie’s night off—Jessie would never have thought of filling it before she left. She was glad that Jessie was just a daily worker, for it would, in a way, be easier to dismiss her. She had cheeked Betty today. Her hand went out towards the bell rope—perhaps she hadn’t gone yet. It was her late night on and she shouldn’t leave till eight, and it wasn’t quite eight yet. As she gripped the rope the front doorbell rang and she paused and listened. She heard the kitchen door open and muted footsteps cross the hall, then a voice saying, ‘Oh, Captain Nils,’ and ending on Jessie’s hic of a laugh.