Katie Mulholland

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘I enjoyed every minute of it. Jarrow, Palmer’s an’ all. Goodbye, Bridget.’

  ‘Goodbye, Daniel.’

  Peter was shaking his hand through the taxi window, and then the car started and turned in the broad roadway and he looked round over his shoulder and waved, and the last he saw of them was Bridget standing in between her mother and Peter. Peter had his arm around her, as had Catherine, and they were all waving.

  As he settled in his seat he became enveloped by a deep sense of loneliness. In his mind he saw himself, his great-grandfather, and that stark mansion on one side of the picture; on the other there was that house, bright and beautiful, a home, and in it four closely knit people—and soon to join the unity was this new acquaintance, Peter. He made up his mind when he had first heard Peter’s name mentioned that he would dislike him, but now he felt it was impossible to dislike him. Yet somehow he wished he could. But what did it matter? He had no intention of returning at Christmas. Making the acquaintance of his great-grandmother and of her relations had been a pleasant interlude. He must look upon it as that; it was over.

  The only thing that would bring him north again would be the death of his great-grandfather, and he need not even come for that. Why should he? The purchase of the property and the transference of the best pieces of furniture and silver back home could be arranged by letter. And there were Willie and Maggie to see to things for as long as he cared to employ them.

  As he boarded the train at Newcastle he thought they were right at Cambridge, the North was a most depressing place. He couldn’t remember feeling so low for years. Well, this state of affairs was easily remedied. All he had to do was to keep away from it.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Easter? It’s a long time away, ‘ Katie said. ‘Why couldn’t they do it before Christmas?’

  ‘Well, first of all she wants to be married during Easter week,’ said Catherine; ‘and then Peter will feel better when he has a bit by him, and if this job lasts he’ll have a nice little bit saved by Easter. And then there’s his mother; she’s very poorly at present and in no fit state to think about weddings.’

  ‘It strikes me,’ said Katie tartly, ‘that Mrs Conway always has a turn when the wedding is in the offing.’ They both slanted their eyes towards each other, and Catherine laughed, saying, ‘Oh, Aunt Katie! You’ve got a bad mind.’

  ‘I know I have, and I maintain if she had her way Peter would never get married.’

  ‘Well, it’s all settled now and Easter it is, bad turns or no bad turns.’ Catherine nodded her head quickly at Katie, and Katie, with a twist to her lips, said, ‘What do you bet she doesn’t go and pop herself off the day before?’

  Now they were both laughing heartily, and Katie gripped her waist, saying, ‘Oh, don’t, don’t! It pains me when I laugh like that.’ She dried her streaming eyes; then, looking towards the window, she said, ‘It’s a frightful day; she’ll get drenched. She should take the car.’

  ‘Well, you know what she says about taking the car to school; it looks so pretentious.’

  ‘Oh, bunkum! Fiddlesticks!’

  Catherine smiled into her book, then glanced over the top of it to where Katie sat in her chair to the side of the roaring fire. She was in good form these days. She was now in her ninety-third year and didn’t need glasses, or a hearing aid, and could still do the stairs, slowly, but nevertheless she made them, and resented help. She was wonderful, wonderful. In all ways Aunt Katie was wonderful. And she wanted her to stay wonderful, her days untroubled, and that was why for the past three days she had been praying he wouldn’t come. When Bernard Rosier’s death appeared on the front page of Saturday’s paper she had said to Tom, ‘We won’t let her see it; there’s no need. It’ll only take her mind back again.’ But she knew she wasn’t so much afraid of Aunt Katie’s mind taking her back into the past as of it taking her into the future. Daniel’s appearance would set her worrying again.

  About ten minutes later, when the front doorbell rang, Catherine, looking up from her book, said, ‘She must have forgotten her key; but if she had she would go round the back.’ She put the book down, and said to Katie under her breath, ‘I do hope it isn’t visitors.’ Her heart was beating just a little faster now.

  ‘It’s likely someone selling things again.’

  ‘Not at the front door; not since Tom put the notice on the back gate.’ She laughed now as she added, ‘Bridget says we are betraying the Labour Party—“Tradesmen’s entrance. No Hawkers”.’

  Katie was smiling too, but rather sadly as, her head nodding, she said, ‘Don’t times change. No circulars, no hawkers…’ She was still talking when the door opened and Nellie announced, ‘Mr Rosier, ma’am.’

  Daniel came into the room. He had taken off his greatcoat and hat and he was stroking his black hair back with his hand. His face bright and smiling, he now held out his hands, one to Katie, and one to Catherine, and they took them, and their silence went unnoticed because he was talking rapidly, explaining his unexpected visit. ‘He died four days ago. I suppose you saw it in the papers. The funeral is tomorrow. I came down yesterday morning; I felt I must come and see you all.’

  As Catherine disengaged her hand from his, saying, ‘This is a surprise, Daniel,’ he bent over Katie, and for a second time during their acquaintance he put his lips to her face. Then standing back from her, he said, ‘I declare you look younger—ten years younger than the last time I saw you.’

  Katie looked up at him. He had said Bernard Rosier was dead. At last, at last he was dead. She had lived to see it…‘Oh yes, yes Daniel, I’m very well, and how are you?’ Her eyes were moving tenderly over his face. Then she looked at the hands that clasped hers. They were brown, thin, strong hands. If only she weren’t afraid they would clutch at her Bridget, as the other one’s hands had clutched at her. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ she said to him now, and when he was seated by her side she asked, ‘how long are you staying?’

  ‘My time’s my own until the middle of January. I’ve promised to spend at least a week with my friend in Kent, but during the rest of the time I’m here I want to get the business of the house settled…the renovations I mean. You did know I bought the manor?’

  ‘No! No, I didn’t.’ Katie shook her head slowly as her eyes widened…Bernard Rosier was dead, but this other Rosier had bought the house. It would go on.

  ‘You’ve bought Greenwall Manor, Daniel?’

  ‘Yes, Catherine. Why I don’t know, so don’t ask me.’ He was laughing, brightly, happily. ‘But I’m glad I have. And Father is too. He seems tickled with the idea of an English manor house. And mother…’ He flapped his hand at her. ‘Oh, she’s a frightful snob.’ He turned his face towards Katie now and found her eyes tight on him, and he continued, ‘She is, you know, Great-Grandmother, a frightful snob, but if I’d sent her your Crown Jewels she couldn’t have been more delighted than she had been with the furniture.’

  ‘You’ve sent the furniture from the house across to America?’ Catherine’s voice was high.

  ‘Only a few of the nice pieces.’

  Katie said nothing. A few of the nice pieces, he had said. She could see the nice pieces. She was peeping through the green baize door on the landing; she was peeping through the door that led into the hall. And she knew each piece of furniture in the drawing room and dining room, and the rest of the ground floor, because she could hear Fanny Croft and Daisy Studd describing them. And from Florrie Green and Mary Ann Hopkins she knew all about the bedroom furniture. It was strange, but she couldn’t picture anything she had seen on the one time she had crossed the hall and stood in the drawing room. And now the nice pieces were going to America. The Rosiers’ furniture would be in the house of her grandson, her own daughter’s son. Rosier furniture, the articles that had furnished that fairy palace of her brief childhood, was now in the possession of Katie Mulholland’s offspring. Katie Mulholland who for a time had been known by the name of Mrs Bunting, then Mrs Fraenkel. But those names, even th
at of Mrs Fraenkel, had not altered Katie Mulholland, the girl inside. Bernard Rosier’s raping, Bunting’s belt, Andrée’s love and kindness, they had really not touched Katie Mulholland.

  Katie Mulholland was a name that was known far and wide on the Tyne; it had been given notoriety by one man, and now he was dead. She was not elated by his death, not even relieved, it was too late for that; but what she did feel was surprise that his great-grandson, and her great-grandson, should be here at this moment looking handsome and happy, and talking, even gaily, when tomorrow he was to bury him.

  ‘Are you sorry he’s gone?’ The question surprised herself much more than it surprised him.

  ‘Sorry he’s dead? My great-grandfather Rosier? No! No! Not in the least. Nor am I going to pretend I’m sorry. It would have been better, don’t you think, for most people if he had died years ago?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ She was nodding her head in small movements.

  ‘It’s merely a matter of formality, me going to the funeral. There’ll only be Maggie and Willie Robson—they are the couple who’ve looked after the house and him for years, you know—and the solicitor, and he’ll only be there because of the legal business to be attended to afterwards.’

  Katie lay back in her chair. Only four people attending him, and these all apparently under compulsion. She had the weird idea that the going-out of this man, who had caused so much havoc in her life, should be attended by some big burst of ceremony, like fireworks and bonfires such as they had at the end of the war—something, anyway, to proclaim to the world that Bernard Rosier was no more; yet tomorrow he would go into his grave with only four people standing by.

  She was wondering in which part of hell they would accommodate him when her mind was brought back to the room and her great-grandson, for the door had opened and Bridget was standing just within it, and Daniel was going forward holding out his hand; and as Katie watched Bridget’s face light up, her eyes shine and her lips part widely as Daniel bent above her, she spoke sternly to her heart to stop its rapid beating. There must be no more fainting attacks. She must be calm, and think, and act; or, what was more to the point, get Peter to act, even if it meant telling him outright what he stood to lose. Some men needed prodding…Some men, but not men like her great-grandson, the descendant of Bernard Rosier; these men needed no prodding, they took what they wanted.

  Chapter Six

  Daniel discovered, over the Christmas holidays, that Peter Conway bored him. He was a good man, a kind man, yet with all that he lacked the mercurial spark that was needed to match Bridget. Daniel, sitting with Peter waiting to accompany Bridget to a party, wondered, not for the first time, how she bore with his rather heavy discourse.

  When the phone rang Catherine rose from the couch, where she had been sitting quietly listening to Peter, and it seemed to Daniel that she, too, was thankful for the intrusion. He watched her going into the hall, and a minute or so later he turned his attention away from Peter as she re-entered the room, saying, ‘It’s for you, Peter.’

  ‘Me?’ Peter got to his feet.

  ‘It’s Mrs Clay.’

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Peter screwed up his face and hurried into the hall, and Catherine walked to the fire, saying, ‘It’s his mother. She’s had a turn. That was the woman who comes in.’

  ‘No!’ said Tom, who had been silent for a long while. Most people were silent when Peter was talking.

  ‘It’s just like the thing, isn’t it?’ Catherine moved her head impatiently.

  ‘I’ll lay ten to one she does it on purpose.’ Tom nodded towards Daniel. ‘She won’t let him out of her sight if she can help it. Oh, some mothers have got a lot to answer for, Daniel.’

  Before Daniel could reply, Bridget came into the room. She was looking over her shoulder as she did so; then she said to Catherine, ‘What is it?’

  ‘His mother, dear; she’s had a turn.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bridget patted her knuckles against her closed lips and looked from Catherine to Tom; then to Daniel.

  Daniel was already looking at her. He had never seen her dressed like this. She was wearing a pale blue chiffon dress. It was three-quarter length and had a number of skirts that seemed to float around her slim legs, the motion being caused by the slight draught that came from the open door. The skin of her neck and breast looked the same as that of her face: her arms too; all her skin seemed of a piece, warm, creamy. And her hair, not plaited and twisted on to the back of her head but taken upwards in a soft pile like a crown, a silver crown. And then her eyes, the same colour as the dress, but not merry now, not laughing, as they had been earlier.

  They all turned towards the door as Peter entered the room. He had been talking practically non-stop for the last hour, but now he seemed to have to search for words. He looked at Bridget as he came slowly forward, and it was to her he spoke. ‘I’ll…I’ll have to go home,’ he said; ‘she’s asking for me. Mrs Clay says she’s sent for the doctor, so…so she must be bad.’

  No-one spoke when, with bowed head, he made great play of buttoning up his coat, until Bridget, going towards him, said flatly, ‘I’ll run you there.’

  ‘Oh no; no, you won’t.’ He wagged his head vigorously now. ‘It’s no use spoiling everybody else’s fun. No, Bridget. You go along with Daniel. It’ll likely be nothing, anyway. I’ll see what the doctor says, and if I can leave Mrs Clay with her I’ll do so and slip along.’

  ‘But I could drop you there.’

  ‘No, no, you’ll do no such thing. It’s right out of the way, and you’ll want the car to go to Ivy’s.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Bridget’s voice was firm. ‘Ivy’s is no distance. Now look, you take the car, and then if you can come on you’ll be with us all the sooner.’

  ‘She’s right, Peter.’ Tom spoke quietly. ‘You take the car. It isn’t fifteen minutes’ walk to Ivy’s, and it’s a dry night. Go on now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Again Peter was looking at and speaking only to Bridget, and she, looking back at him, her face soft and her eyes holding a tender light, said under her breath, ‘It’s all right, Peter. Don’t worry, it’s all right.’

  They left the room together, but Bridget wasn’t away for more than a few minutes, and when she returned Catherine went to the fire and poked it vigorously, and as she did so she said, ‘Why don’t you hang on a while. He might phone back.’

  Bridget looked at Catherine’s back as she replied flatly, ‘He’ll not be coming to the party, Mother. You know that as well as I do. Mrs Conway is the best timer in the world; she’s had a lot of practice by now.’

  As Catherine straightened up and looked towards Bridget, Tom said, ‘I shouldn’t say it, I know, but I hope it’s the real thing this time and she kicks the bucket.’

  ‘Oh, Tom! Fancy saying that.’ There was a strong reprimand in Catherine’s voice, and he replied, ‘I mean it, I mean every word of it. You know, Daniel’—he nodded towards Daniel—‘some women shouldn’t have sons; they should be taken away from them at birth, they should. I’m telling you. The way that some of them hang on to daughters is bad enough, but when it’s a son, God alive! It’s awful. That poor fellow, I’m sorry to the heart for him, always have been.’

  ‘We’ll go then,’ put in Bridget now, and Tom answered, ‘Yes, you go on, honey. And enjoy yourself. Show Daniel here what a North-country party is like. It’s a pity you’re not going to be here at the New Year, Daniel; you’d see something then. Wouldn’t he, girl? But go on now…The only thing is, mind’—he wagged his finger from one to the other—‘if you come back drunk take your shoes off outside, and keep quiet.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’ Daniel laughed, then turned and followed Bridget into the hall, and as he helped her into her coat and donned his own coat and picked up his hat Catherine stood within the framework of the door watching them. When he turned and said, ‘Be seeing you then, Catherine,’ she said, ‘Yes Daniel.’

  Bridget didn’t say goodbye t
o her mother, nor did Catherine give her any word; but this unusual procedure was overlooked because Tom was seeing them out, and Tom, as usual, was being amusing.

  Altogether Daniel was finding the whole proceedings childish in the extreme. If he had been invited to a party such as this when he was sixteen he would have termed it a wow. But now, just a few days off his twenty-fifth birthday, there was more than a touch of condescension in his attitude towards the whole affair, but he managed to conceal this effectively.

  He was not unaware that he was a popular figure with the young ladies present. Was he not American? As one had said, while exaggerating his slow drawl, she got quite a kick out of hearing him talk.

  There were twenty guests present, but the noise and commotion they made suggested there might be at least a hundred in the house. And he imagined that the hostess must have expected a hundred from the amount of food that was prepared.

  The house was a large, rambling one on three floors, with a warren of attics above. It was well and expensively furnished, but somewhat lacking in taste, he decided, as he moved from one room to another as the evening wore on. His entry into the rooms was in the course of the many games in which he took part; self-consciously at first, then, soon losing this feeling, with the kind of mad abandon that seemed to possess all those present, even to the parents of the hostess who ran up and down stairs in treasure hunts and joined in the game of murders.

  And now they were to play sardines. Lots were being drawn as to who was to be the first sardine in the game, and this questionable privilege fell to Bridget. There was laughter and shouted cries of ‘Put all the lights out!’