Katie Mulholland

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘No, Daniel! No! It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘You rushed her, flung her into this. You must have kept on and on at her. She was afraid to answer my letters because she knew that if we met just once again she would have to hurt you.’ He was on his feet now and his face was no longer distinguishable to her, for the tears were raining from her eyes; but even so she knew that the face before her now was not that of Bernard Rosier, it was the face of a nice young man, an upright young man, the face of her great-grandson whom she loved. She put out her hand and whimpered, ‘Oh, Daniel. Daniel.’ But he was no longer there. She bowed her head and the tears rained on to her hands, and when she heard the front door close she roughly dried her eyes and, leaning forward, peered through the window and saw him walking down the path. When he reached the pavement her vision was blurred again, and again she wiped her eyes and followed his slow step across the road to the far line of trees. And there she saw him stop almost in the same place where Tom used to wait for Catherine in years gone by.

  A few minutes later, when the car drew up to the door, she did not wave from the window down on her Bridget and her husband Peter. They had set her up near the window so that she could wave to them, but she did not even look in their direction, for her eyes were fixed on the figure standing under the trees across the road.

  For the first time in her life Katie felt guilt. So many things had happened to her, she had suffered so many injustices, yet none had pained her as the guilt of her own action was doing now. He had been right, Daniel had been right. She had made him suffer for something that had happened years ago, something that the other one had done; somewhere in the back of her mind had been the hard persistent thought that Rosier wasn’t going to get the better of her again, not at this stage in her life. She had had, during the past three weeks, the strange idea that she was fighting a Rosier with his own weapons, which were deceit and subterfuge, and that at last she was winning. Well, she had won, and the victory was like gall pervading her whole body.

  There came the sound of laughter from downstairs; the steps and the voices were mounting nearer to her, but she did not take her eyes from the window. The two cars down below moved away, and when they turned in the broad road she saw the tall figure look after them; then, his step still slow, she watched him walk into the distance.

  When Bridget and Peter came into the room, followed by Catherine and Tom, she turned a tear-drenched face towards them, and they stopped their forced chattering, and all became concerned because their Aunt Katie couldn’t stop crying.

  Later in the day they decided that it had been too much for her. Well, she was a ripe age now, wasn’t she? But her reactions had been somewhat disappointing because she had been so bright when they had left her to go to the church.

  Only Catherine knew why Aunt Katie cried and cried. A quick word from Nellie behind the kitchen door had put her in the picture, and she, too, felt she wanted to cry and cry. But that was a relief she knew she must at all costs postpone until she was in bed, and there Tom would comfort her, thinking she was crying because she had lost her daughter.

  BOOK SIX

  BRIDGET, 1944

  Chapter One

  ‘You know, dear, I used to love to go to the Theatre Royal. Andy used to take me to the Theatre Royal.’ The words came slowly, tired-sounding. ‘And Dick Thornton used to come here to dinner. Do you know that, Bridget? Dick Thornton used to come here to dinner. He started playing his fiddle to the holiday crowds up at Frenchman’s Bay. Oh, he could play the fiddle. From a lad he played the fiddle. And then he started the Empire. I saw Vesta Tilley and Little Tich there. Oh, I liked Little Tich. And Charlie Chaplin, he was on at the Empire. Now, would you believe that, Bridget? Charlie Chaplin was on at the Empire.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Katie.’

  ‘And the Queens, the poor Queens. They bombed the Queens. Is the fire out yet, Bridget?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Katie, it’s out.’ Bridget rose from her chair by the bed that was placed to the side of the fireplace in the drawing room, and she arranged the pillows behind Katie’s head, saying, ‘There now. Go to sleep. That’s a dear, go to sleep.’

  ‘Will they come back tonight, Bridget?’

  ‘I don’t think so, dear. Go to sleep.’

  ‘If they do, you and Catherine must go into the cellar.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Katie, we’ll go into the cellar. Don’t worry.’

  Bridget resumed her seat and took up her pen and continued to mark exercise books. After a while she raised her eyes and looked towards the bed. Aunt Katie was asleep. Her mind was wandering a lot these days. The Queens Theatre had been destroyed in an air raid in April 1941, it was now June 1944. She gazed at the shrunken face lying deep among the pillows. If Aunt Katie lived until October she’d be a hundred.

  Bridget rested her head on her hand and moved it slightly. She hoped she didn’t live to be a hundred. She felt tired and weary, old herself. She was thirty-four. The years were rolling on, and what had come out of them? She turned her gaze from the bed to the window. The long twilight was deepening and she would soon have to draw the blackouts; she hated the blackouts. She rose heavily to her feet and walked to the window and looked out into the garden. There were no roses in it now, no flower beds, no shrubs. One side of it, down to the privet hedge, was completely taken up with potatoes and cabbage; the other side showed a mixture of lettuce, radishes, carrot tops, parsnips and other vegetables. In the greenhouses beyond the hedge the tomatoes were ripening. But Bridget didn’t notice the garden. She was looking inwards, seeing Peter hooded against the cold of the night, standing near a gun, waiting. This was the fourth convoy he had sailed in, without so much as a scratch; many other boats had been sunk, but his had always got off scot-free. It seemed, he had said to her, that God was with him. She had not questioned this with the cynicism it deserved: God had apparently left the other boats to fend for themselves while protecting his. You couldn’t be cynical with a man like Peter, with a face and heart as kind as his. He had been gone two days now. She did not know his destination. He didn’t know it himself; he only guessed that it would be weeks before he returned.

  Her mother had said to her yesterday, ‘It’s a good job you didn’t have any children after all; you would have been worried to death. You worry enough about them at school.’ Her mother very rarely said stupid things like that, and she had wanted to round on her and say just that, ‘Don’t be stupid!’ The ache in her for a child was like a canker inside her stomach, growing with the years. Instead of something swelling her womb, this ache swelled her whole body. At times part of it erupted and pushed itself up through her chest and struggled out through her throat and brought the tears gushing from her eyes; it opened her pores and made her sweat; and part of it pressed up into her mind and yelled ‘Why? Why?’ and ‘If only’. When this happened she hated her mother and father…and her Aunt Katie. She hated Peter. Most of all, she hated Peter. And Peter was so kind, no-one should hate Peter. She was wicked, inside she was wicked. She didn’t go to confession any more because of the things she thought. At times she thought she wasn’t married, that she was still a virgin, an old maid even. This kind of thinking frightened her, but the fact was she didn’t feel married, she had never felt married.

  She turned from the window. Poor Peter out there on the sea. She hoped he’d get safely through. She wished her mother was in, but Catherine would be another two hours at the post, and her father would be on duty until nine-thirty or ten o’clock. She stood by the little table and looked down at the exercise books. She should finish them, but she couldn’t be bothered. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece. She looked tired. She smoothed her hair back and ran her fingers up through the short ends. She must go and have a trim tomorrow, she looked awful. But what did it matter? She’d make a hot drink while Aunt Katie was dozing, then put the blackouts up, and when her mother came back she would have a bath—she couldn’t risk having one when there was no-one downstairs
with Aunt Katie. And if the warning should go while she was in the bath? Well, it would be too bad; she might as well die in the bath as anywhere else.

  ‘Snap out of it!’ She spoke half aloud to herself as she crossed the hall towards the kitchen.

  There was no maid in the kitchen now. Nellie, at fifty-five, was working in munitions and married to a soldier. She made herself a cup of cocoa and carefully measured a small spoonful of sugar into it.

  It was as she was crossing the hall again towards the drawing room, the cup in her hand, that the front doorbell rang. She put the cup on a side table and walked to the door, and when she opened it there stood an airman, an American airman. He was leaning on a stick. He had a brown face and very dark eyes. He took off his cap and a strand of straight black hair fell down over his temple. ‘Why, hello, Bridget,’ he said.

  She stood staring at him, the door in one hand, the other, with fingers spread, placed flat on the bare flesh of her neck above the square-topped print dress.

  ‘I’m not a ghost and you are Bridget, aren’t you?’ The small movements of her head became wider, then the smile broke over her face, but when she said ‘Daniel!’ she couldn’t hear her own voice.

  ‘Daniel!’ It was louder now, and she pulled the door wide and watched him as he lifted a stiff leg over the step, then, with the aid of his stick, walked into the hall.

  ‘How are you, Bridget?’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I’m all right, Daniel.’ She was looking up into his face. ‘I…I just can’t get over it, the surprise. You are the last person on earth I expected to see.’

  They stood staring at each other. And then they laughed, and he turned to look for some place to put his cap.

  ‘Here, let me have it.’ She took it from him and placed it on a side table, then said, ‘Come along and sit down. No, not that way…’ She smiled again as she pointed across the hall towards the dining room. ‘The whole house is upside down. We brought Aunt Katie down into the drawing room; it’s safer there.’

  ‘She’s still alive?’ He had stopped, and she turned to him and said, ‘Yes, but…but she’s very frail and lives mostly in the past now.’

  The smile had gone from his face and he nodded his head, then followed with his limping gait into the dining room, and there he let himself down into a chair with a jerky sidewards movement and his left leg stuck out straight across the hearthrug.

  Bridget looked at the leg, then pulled a chair forward and sat on the edge of it with her hands clasped before her in an attitude very much like that of a nervous child. ‘You’ve been wounded?’ she said. Then, jerking her head upwards and closing her eyes for a second, she muttered, ‘That’s a silly question. I mean, where did it happen?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere in the North Sea.’

  She waited for more, but he didn’t go on, and again they were looking at each other. He was older, she thought—much more than eight years older. He wasn’t as thin as he used to be. He had put on weight, especially about the shoulders, and there were two deep lines on his face, running from his nose to the corner of his mouth; deep lines that hadn’t been there before. The one thing that hadn’t altered about him were his eyes. They were still black and shining as she remembered them.

  Daniel, looking at her, thought, She’s older. Then, Of course I knew she would be, but she’s different. And then he saw where the difference lay, and he was amazed that he hadn’t recognised it the moment he had set eyes on her; because of all the things that he remembered about her, her hair, coiled up on the back of her head, was the clearest. He said quickly, ‘You’ve had your hair off!’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She ran her fingers up from the back of her neck to the crown of her head. ‘It was too much trouble, and there wasn’t time to see to it. When the raids were bad I seemed to be always running down into the cellar, pinning my hair up as I went.’

  ‘It suits you.’ He could still lie convincingly.

  Again she pushed her hand up to the back of her head, saying, as a young girl might, ‘Oh, it’s an awful sight. I haven’t bothered with it; there doesn’t seem time.’

  ‘Are you still teaching?’

  ‘Yes, I went back when war broke out.’

  ‘How…how is Peter doing?’

  ‘Oh, he’s in the Merchant Navy. He’s away on convoy at present.’ She nodded her head and smiled as she spoke.

  ‘Merchant Navy.’ He pursed his lips, and the action was a compliment.

  ‘How are your mother and father?’

  ‘Oh, not too bad, considering. Mother’s on duty three nights a week…She’s on tonight and won’t be back until nine o’clock. And Dad’s a warden…But tell me.’ She unclasped her hands, then turned them over and clasped them the other way. ‘How have you come here? Are you stationed near?’

  ‘I’ve been in hospital near Newcastle for some time.’

  ‘For some time?’ She brought her head forward.

  ‘Well’—he slanted his eyes to the side—‘let me see. Three months.’

  ‘And you didn’t let us know you were here?’

  He stared at her without answering. Women were the limit. Lord, but they were the limit. When he did answer her he said, ‘Well, you know how it is.’

  The silence between them now screamed aloud and brought her to her feet, saying, ‘Can I get you something to drink? There’s a drop of whisky somewhere.’

  ‘No, no, thank you.’

  ‘Something hot then, Daniel? A cup of tea or cocoa? We haven’t any coffee.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’

  ‘All right, I won’t be a minute.’

  She was five minutes, and he sat staring straight ahead of him until she returned, and he noticed that she had combed her hair and put fresh lipstick on, and he didn’t smile to himself because she had done this. When she handed him a cup she said, ‘Is it still two lumps?’ and he laughed as he replied, ‘It’s one now. It’s my war effort.’

  When she had seated herself again, still on the edge of the chair, she stirred her tea vigorously before she said, ‘Tell me what’s happened to you all this long while.’

  ‘Oh, well now.’ His chin went up and he rested his head on the back of his shoulders and he seemed to consider. Then he said, ‘Well, I joined the Air Force.’

  ‘This is evident.’ She nodded at him.

  He brought his head forward and sipped at his tea before saying, ‘And I got married.’

  She stared unblinking at him, but he was looking down into his cup. ‘Have…have you been married long?’ The question sounded polite, ordinary.

  ‘Oh, since the beginning of thirty-seven.’

  Now they were looking at each other again.

  ‘Have you any children?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, we’re both in the same boat.’ His lips twisted slightly.

  ‘Your…your wife…is she doing war work?’ His brows went up and again he looked down into his cup before he said in a very quiet voice, ‘I wouldn’t know what she is doing, Bridget. I was divorced in thirty-nine.’

  ‘Divorced!’ The word came over on a high note.

  ‘Don’t sound so shocked.’ He was smiling.

  ‘Oh, no! No! No. I’m not shocked. I’m only sorry, Daniel.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need to waste any sympathy on us; it was mutual, a mutual agreement.’

  As another silence fell on them and they looked at each other she began to search madly in her mind for something with which to break it. ‘The house,’ she said. ‘Have…have you seen it lately?’

  ‘The house? Oh yes, yes. I’ve just come from there.’

  ‘You have? I thought it was taken over by the Army?’

  ‘Yes, it was; but one lot moved out and the other lot hasn’t moved in yet, and I don’t know when they will. Anyway, I have an arrangement whereby three rooms were set aside for the storing of the furniture, and I have access to them. Did you know that a bomb dropped quite near it a month ago?’
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br />   ‘No! No, I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘Most of the glass is shattered and the outhouses are a complete write-off. Two or three soldiers were killed in there, I understand. I thought at the time it was just as well it hadn’t been turned into a school after all. Although a lot of the children have been evacuated from around here, it being some way out from the town they might have used it to house a few—you never know.’

  ‘Oh, did you think of turning it into a school?’ Her head was tilted at an enquiring angle.

  He stared back at her, his eyes slightly narrowed now, and after a considerable pause he said, ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten, Bridget. I did mention it once to you.’

  ‘That…that you were going to turn the Manor into a school? No, Daniel. If you had ever mentioned that to me I would surely have remembered, because I have always thought how marvellous it would be to have a private school.’

  His face looked completely blank as he stared at her. It couldn’t be possible, could it, that she hadn’t got his letters? At times during the years he had wondered about this. The repeated ignoring of his letters and the subsequent final act of hers had, for some time, made him see her as someone self-righteous, bent on doing good and be damned. Bitterness had stamped out his first reaction, that she had acted under pressure, but then he would remember how she had responded when he held her in his arms—the pain on her face at the thought of their parting, the tears she had shed—and then he would be puzzled. But now, now, he was coming to something.

  He moved his right hip on the chair and his stiff leg jerked a few inches on the carpet. ‘I did talk about turning the house into a school, Bridget.’ His voice was low. ‘I particularly remember mentioning it in one of my letters to you.’