Hannah Massey

by Catherine Cookson

  He did not make any remark for a moment, but when he did his words weren’t put as a question but as a direct statement.

  ‘You’re in trouble, Rosie, aren’t you?’ he said.

  There was no denial from her, only a downward movement of her head.

  ‘Can you tell me?’

  Now her head shook slowly from side to side.

  ‘Well, you should tell somebody, it would ease it. Why don’t you go to Dennis?’

  Again she shook her head. Then raising it, she gulped for breath a number of times before looking at him and saying, ‘If…if I could tell any…anybody, it would be you, but I can’t.’

  ‘You’re frightened about something, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not any more,’ she said.

  ‘Isn’t it anything you could tell your…your mother?’ She made a sound that was something between a groan and a whimper. ‘My mother…? I’d sooner jump in the river, Hughie. My mother? I’d sooner die than she knew. She’d want to kill me in any case. You know it’s frightening when somebody lays so much stock on you as she does on me. You can’t live up to it. But she’d never understand that. She frightens me with her feeling, she’s so…so…’ She searched for a word, moving her head the while, and he put in, ‘Irrational?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the word…irrational. And in everything, in everything. I thought of them going to Mass this morning after the business of Friday night and yesterday morning.’

  ‘What happened yesterday morning?’

  She sniffed. ‘You didn’t hear…? The priest came with a wireless to be mended.’

  Hughie’s face slowly stretched. ‘The one Barny made for him?’

  ‘Yes. He came bounding in, all chatter like he always does. When she opened the door to him she really thought it was them coming to search, you know.’

  Hughie bit on his lip, trying to suppress a smile, as he asked, ‘And what happened?’

  ‘He went for her because he said she had involved him. Then she threw in his face about keeping him supplied with bacon and butter and shirts and things during the war…’

  At this Hughie put his hand over his mouth, bowed his head and began to laugh. It was a silent laugh at first, evident only in the shaking of his body; then unable to control it any longer he gave vent to it, and as Rosie watched him her face trembled into a smile, then stretched, and the next moment she, too, was laughing, but with more than a touch of hysteria.

  How they came to grasp each other’s hands neither of them knew, but as their laughter subsided their hands were joined breast high between them and their heads were almost touching.

  It was Hughie who sobered first. He released her hands, and, getting up, reached out and picked up a towel from a rail to the side of the desk and rubbed his face vigorously with it.

  Rosie had a bout of the hiccups now, and between them she said, ‘Oh, Hughie, hic…I…never thought I would…hic…laugh in me life again. Oh thanks, Hughie, thanks; you’ve done me the world of good.’

  ‘Well, if you didn’t see the funny side of some things you would commit murder. It isn’t often I get a real laugh. No, it isn’t often.’

  And that’s true, she thought. She hadn’t, as far as she could remember, heard him laugh heartily before. His laughter had always been controlled, just a shaking of the body.

  She rose to her feet, saying, ‘Can I wash me face, Hughie? It’ll be a mess.’

  ‘Of course.’ He pointed to the sink.

  As she washed her face and took a lipstick out of her new bag and made up her lips, he got into his coat, and put on a scarf, and picked up his hat and stood waiting for her, all without looking at her. It was as if he was embarrassed now by her personal acts.

  As he locked the shop door behind them, Rosie said, ‘What are you going to do with it? I mean the shop, goodwill, and stock and that?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m passing it on to a fellow called Lance Briggs. He’s handicapped in the legs and works in Tullet’s factory. He’s delighted about it. He’s a shy bloke…not unlike meself’—he laughed—‘and having a quiet place of his own will make all the difference to him. He’ll do all right an’ all because he was apprenticed to the boot-mending until he was twenty. I’m glad he’s having it.’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘We’ll have to put a move on, we’re late as it is.’

  Once, when she almost slipped on the frosted pavement, he put out his hand to steady her, but before he touched her she had righted herself.

  After this they covered most of the distance home without speaking. The intimacy that the room behind the shop had created with its snug smallness was gone, and they walked apart, intent on picking their way over the humped frozen snow that covered the pavements.

  It was as they rounded the corner of the school that they came face to face with Ronnie MacFarlane.

  MacFarlane was a tall man, six foot two and broad with it. He was handsome in a rough-hewn way, with strong Celtic features, large blue eyes and a full-lipped mouth above a heavy jaw. He stood one foot on the kerb and one in the gutter, his right shoulder in line with that of Rosie’s. His skin looked ruddy and warm as if he was blushing. ‘Hello, Rosie,’ he said.

  She paused only for a second before answering, ‘Hello, Ronnie.’

  ‘Hello,’ put in Hughie. This brought Ronnie’s eyes flicking reluctantly from Rosie as he answered, ‘Hello there, Hughie.’

  ‘Awful weather.’ He was looking at Rosie again.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded her head.

  ‘Are you home for long?’

  ‘No, no, not long.’

  ‘I’ll be seeing you then?’

  ‘Yes,’ she hesitated. ‘Be seeing you.’ As she moved sideways to pass him, he stepped back into the gutter and watched her.

  ‘So long, Rosie.’ Her name came soft to his mouth.

  ‘So long, Ronnie,’ she answered.

  ‘So long,’ said Hughie. And for reply Ronnie nodded to him, but his eyes were still on Rosie.

  She didn’t speak until they had turned the next corner, and the trembling of her body came over in her voice. ‘He…he must have been hanging about. You see, it’s as I said, I won’t be able to stay; not in the town anyway.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Hughie was walking close to her now. ‘He can’t do anything. Perhaps he just wanted to have a word with you.’

  ‘A word? Huh! I know what he wants.’ She put her fingers to her lips. ‘I’m sorry, Hughie.’

  ‘Why be sorry for saying what you think, and the truth?’

  ‘It sounds so awful, but…’ She turned and looked squarely at him. ‘You know something, Hughie? There’s worse than Ronnie.’

  ‘Yes, I believe that, and by a long chalk; but I’m sorry you’ve found it out.’

  She was looking ahead as she said, ‘So am I.’

  Again there was silence between them. Yet now it wasn’t so strained. But the same thought was in both their minds as they neared the house. Should they go in together?

  Rosie knew she should say, ‘You’d better go round the back way, Hughie.’ But she couldn’t. It would be an insult to say that to him. She would rather brave her mother’s wrath than hurt him. She said, ‘We’ll go in the front way, it’s nearer.’

  He made no protest, but stood with her on the step as she rang the bell.

  The door was opened by Hannah herself, and as soon as she saw them together her face darkened. But it was to Rosie she addressed herself, saying, ‘Where’ve you been in all this? The dinner’s been on the table this last twenty minutes. The Mass was over at twelve and it’s now nearly half past one. Where’ve you been?’

  As short a time ago as yesterday Rosie wouldn’t even have thought of making a reply like ‘Do I have to account for every minute to you?’ but now she almost voiced it, yet as she took off her coat and hat and hung them on a peg of the hallstand without answering, she reminded herself of how kind her mother had been to her, and that she owed her for every stitch of clothing she was now w
earing.

  ‘You heard what I said.’ Hannah was close behind her.

  ‘I…I went for a walk, Ma.’

  ‘You went for a…!’ Hannah glanced to where Hughie at the far end of the hall was disappearing into the kitchen, there to hang up his coat and hat on the back door, the place allotted to him, and coming close to Rosie now, she hissed, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been walkin’ with him!’

  Rosie shook her head; then turning and facing her mother, she said, ‘I went down by the river.’

  ‘In this weather?’ Hannah brought her brows together. ‘An’ answer me, was he along of you?’

  ‘I met him in the street, Ma.’ Rosie closed her eyes for a moment. She only hoped that Hughie was listening and had not gone straight through the kitchen and into the living room so he would know what to say if he was questioned.

  Hannah, after giving her one long look, said, ‘Well, come an’ have your dinner, what’s left of it.’

  The men had nearly finished their meal when Rosie sat down at the table, and their greeting of her was not boisterous, as it had been on her arrival, for they were still shuddering from the impact of their mother’s new venture, which the Sunday beer hadn’t been able to show up in a more favourable light.

  When Hannah put the dinner plate in front of her with the remark ‘It’s kizzened up to cork, so it is,’ her father put in placatingly, ‘Aw, she’ll get it down, won’t you, lass? This weather would make a mare eat its foal.’ She smiled at him. She liked her da. Her da always wanted peace. Somehow he was like Hughie, or Hughie was like him. As she glanced at Hughie sitting now at the farther end of the table, his head bowed, she thought that, although they did not look alike, they were like enough in nature to be father and son, more so than the other four men at the table.

  Karen, too, was at the table, seated next to her grandfather. She hadn’t spoken to Rosie, she hadn’t even looked at her, that is until Shane asked, ‘Did you come out early from eleven o’clock? I hung about waitin’ for you, but I didn’t see you?’

  ‘What?’ Rosie fluffed the question as one taken off her guard, then said, ‘Oh, yes…I came out early. I was at the back. It was stuffy. I came out just before the end.’ It was now that Karen looked at her and spoke. She said, ‘I was at the back an’ all; I didn’t see you. And it wasn’t stuffy; the heating had gone wrong, it was freezing.’

  The men all looked from Karen to Rosie, and for the first time since she had come home they saw colour in her face. She was red to the ears.

  ‘You weren’t there, were you?’

  Rosie thrust the chair back as she rose hastily to her feet, and looking down at Karen, she said, ‘No, I wasn’t there, Miss Mischief-maker. Now are you satisfied?’

  ‘You didn’t go to Mass? Then why did you say you did?’ Hannah was standing with her arms held stiffly some distance from her sides. It was an attitude of surprise, which made her look ludicrously like a cowboy waiting to draw.

  Rosie turned to her mother, and the restraint sounded in her tone as she answered, ‘Because I thought it would save being asked a number of questions. I am tired of being peppered with questions.’

  ‘Who in the name of God is peppering you with questions? What has come over you, girl? What I want now is just a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. Why didn’t you go to Mass?’

  ‘I can’t give you a straightforward answer, Ma, it would be too involved.’ There was that word again, involved. It would seem that everything was involved with something else; you couldn’t speak or move unless you involved someone.

  ‘Involved?’

  ‘Oh, be quiet. Be quiet.’ Broderick thrust out his hand and pulled at Hannah’s skirt. ‘Leave the lass be. She didn’t want to go to Mass and that’s that.’

  Hannah tore her skirt from her husband’s grasp and, turning on him, she cried, ‘There’s no child of mine goin’ to miss Mass unless I know the reason why.’

  ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ said Jimmy, rising to his feet. ‘Where’s the papers?’

  ‘And me along o’ you,’ put in Shane.

  As their chairs scraped back from the table Hannah swept her glance over her entire family, and cried at them, ‘What’s this house comin’ to anyway, that me wishes are flaunted by every damn member of it? I work me brain, body and guts out from Monday mornin’ till Sunday night tryin’ to further the lot of you, and what’s me thanks? Hair raised because I want to move you to decent quarters, and now lies thrust at me when I ask an ordinary question.’ She flicked her eyes reproachfully at Rosie, and, her voice dropping suddenly to almost a pathetic whimper, she ended, ‘I didn’t deserve it, lass, I didn’t deserve it.’

  Rosie, putting her hand tightly across her mouth, lowered her head and hurried from the room, and Hannah stood looking towards the open door for a moment before her voice, no longer holding the pathetic note, bawled at them, ‘There’s something radically wrong in this house. Radically wrong, I say.’

  ‘There always is when she’s home.’ Karen’s thin voice had hardly finished this statement when Hannah was upon her. With one hand gripping her shoulder, she pulled her from the chair as if she was an empty paper bag, and swinging her round she brought her other hand with a ringing slap across the girl’s face.

  ‘Here! Here!’

  ‘My God, Ma!’

  ‘Let up, Ma. Hell! What’s come over you?’

  ‘There was no call for that.’

  All except Broderick and Hughie, one after the other, the men reproached her, but Broderick looked at his wife, a look that brought her to her senses quicker than all reasonable talk could have done. He drew Karen towards him and, putting his arms about her stiff body, said, ‘There, there, your granny didn’t mean it.’ He had no need to say, ‘Don’t cry,’ because Karen wasn’t crying.

  Hannah now, looking from her husband into the accusing faces of her sons, swept her eyes over them as if they were of no account, and her gaze came to rest on Hughie, where seemingly unperturbed he was still eating, and as she moved up the table towards him, pushing Shane aside from her path, she addressed his bent head, crying, ‘And you! Why don’t you do somethin’? Why don’t you protest in some way and tell me what a wicked woman I am an’ to keep me hands to meself? No, no, you couldn’t could you, you gutless sod, you!’

  Slowly Hughie rose to his feet. His face very white and strained, he looked at Hannah. All the eyes in the room were upon him, and the men without exception were wondering how he would react to this last insult. He had stood something, had Hughie. Then all of them saw his reaction. It was silent yet yelled aloud. They saw his lip moving upwards leaving his teeth bare; it was as if he were looking upon something repulsive.

  No-one moved as he turned from her and walked out of the room, but he was hardly through the door when she lifted up the plate which still held most of his pudding and hurled it after him. It went right through the open door and hit the far wall of the hall. The impact was the only sound in the house before Hannah rent the place with her screaming.

  Monday

  On Monday morning, the house to themselves again, Hannah, standing before Rosie, said ‘I’m sorry,’ and the humility in her voice was real, at least momentarily, she believed, but there was something almost obscene about it, something that caused the stomach to tense, the lids to droop, the head to bow. She couldn’t look at her, but she said, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ Then quickly she added, ‘I’m going to Newcastle to see about a job, there’s an agency there. And…and I’ll pay you back when…’

  ‘Aw, don’t say that, don’t keep on about the money, lass, it’ll only make me think you’re still mad at me. I don’t want no payin’ back; you know I’d give you the shirt off me back. All I want you to do is to do well for yourself and not take up with riff-raff, not even to walk the length of the street with them. You look a lady, you are a lady, all I live for is to see you in your right settin’ and actin’ like one.’

  ‘Oh, Ma, be quiet.’r />
  ‘I needn’t be quiet on this point, lass.’ Hannah’s voice was moderate. ‘I can talk as long as I like this way because it’s true, and it’s from me heart. All I live for is to see you marry well, with a position you can be proud of. It…it was that lass’—she put her fingers out tentatively towards Rosie’s hand—‘it was that that made me go off me head yesterday, thinking of you walkin’ in the same step along of him.’

  ‘Hughie?’ Rosie thrust her head up and to the side as she asked the question.

  ‘Aye…Hughie.’

  ‘But, Ma, I was brought up with Hughie; what have you against him?’

  ‘Aw, you’ll know some day, I suppose. But in the meantime it angers me to see you drawin’ in the same air. Keep away from him, that’s all I ask you.’

  ‘But what has he done, Ma, that you should go on at him like this? I’ve never known Hughie say a wrong word, I’ve never heard him even swear.’

  ‘You don’t have to swear, me lass, to be bad.’

  ‘But Hughie’s not bad, Ma.’

  Because of the defence in Rosie’s voice Hannah was unable to control her natural aggressiveness, and she cried now, ‘You know nothing about it. And another thing, don’t keep defending him or I can’t be responsible for me tongue. Aw, lass’—her voice dropped—‘all I want is your well-being and to be proud of you. Is it too much to ask?’

  Rosie shook her head helplessly; then turning away said, ‘I’ll be going, Ma. I’ll get lunch in the town.’

  ‘All right, lass, all right.’ Hannah patted her arm affectionately. ‘I’ll have something tasty made for you when you come back. About what time will you be in?’

  ‘Oh…I don’t know. If there’s anything on the books I’ll go after it.’

  ‘Now don’t take the first thing they offer you, mind. With your qualifications you can pick and choose, you can that.’

  ‘Jobs are not so easy to get here, Ma.’