Love and Mary Ann

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘And I don’t blame him.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what all this is about?’

  Lizzie looked from one to the other, and Mr Lord, after returning her inquiring glance, had the grace to bow his head and leave the telling to Mike.

  ‘It’s just like this, Liz.’ Mike paused, and his face was tight and his brows meeting as he went, ‘Mr Lord proposes that Tony doesn’t marry for the next five years, in fact until Mary Ann is seventeen. I leave the rest to your imagination.’

  Lizzie’s hand moved up from the front of her dress to her mouth. Mary Ann had inherited her squeamish stomach from her mother, and now Lizzie felt her whole inside heave. For the moment she saw the suggestion as something nasty…dirty…even obscene. Mary Ann was still a child. But no, Mary Ann had been thirteen on Wednesday, she was a young girl. Yet she was still only a child—of course she was a child—and there he was planning for her to marry a man nearly ten years older than herself. It was true…it was shocking…like the things you read about, like they did in foreign countries, marrying children in their cradles.

  The voice of sensibility again intruded into Lizzie’s mind, saying, Mary Ann is thirteen, and girls are mothers at sixteen and before.

  ‘You don’t take kindly to the idea, Mrs Shaughnessy?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t. I think…I think…’ Lizzie’s lips trembled and she couldn’t tell the old man what she thought. And when Mike put her thoughts into words for her she was more amazed still by the calmness of his manner.

  ‘She’s a bit shocked, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have that cup of coffee now, Mrs Shaughnessy, if I may.’

  Silently, Lizzie poured out the coffee and placed it at his elbow, and as she watched him drink she wondered, among other things, how he could swallow it so hot. When the cup was empty and not one of them had spoken for some moments, Mr Lord rose slowly to his feet and, looking from Mike to Lizzie, he said quietly, ‘You’re nice people. Others would have looked upon the proposition as a good thing, for if I don’t disinherit my grandson part of his assets should be around two hundred thousand pounds when I die. Thank you for the coffee, Mrs Shaughnessy.’

  ‘You’re welcome, sir.’ Lizzie’s voice was very small.

  Mr Lord took three steps towards the door before turning to them both again, saying, ‘I’d better tell you my other bit of news while I’m at it. I had a talk with Bristow and he tells me Johnson is determined to make quite a bit out of this affair. By the way, his ankle is fractured, which makes the case against you blacker. He can be off work from anything up to a month or more, you can never tell with a fracture. If he goes to the County Court and wins you might get off with a couple of hundred—anyway, he can’t get more than four hundred there—but if it goes to the Sessions there’s no knowing what you’ll be run in for…Now don’t say anything, Shaughnessy—’ Mr Lord lifted his hand in a gesture now as if he was tired, and Mike refrained from making any comment. ‘Bristow says the best thing to do will be to settle out of court, and I agree with him. I took it upon myself, Shaughnessy, to ask him to probe the matter and find out how much Johnson will settle for. And whatever it is I’ll see to it; the quicker this thing is done the better. Once a case like this starts to drag on there’s no knowing where it’ll end. Now please’—he again made a gesture—‘let me do this. I owe it to you, anyway. I would have paid much more than they are likely to ask to get that girl away from the place. Really it’s Mary Ann who should be paid a lump sum and a studded collar given to Neptune.’ He gave a weary smile. Then his head drooped forward and, in a voice that had a muttering quality, he said, ‘There’s one thing I would ask of you, and you’ll think I’m in my dotage after what I said previously this evening, but if you could talk to the boy and make him see sense I’d be obliged, Shaughnessy.’

  He remained for a moment longer, with his eyes downcast. Then, raising them to Lizzie, he said, ‘Goodnight, Mrs Shaughnessy.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  ‘It’s all right, Shaughnessy, I can see myself out.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll walk with you as far as the house. I’ve got to do the round in any case.’

  Again Mr Lord turned to Lizzie, and again he said, ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  Slowly Lizzie sat down by the side of the table. The mixture in the boat-shaped tins had gone flat and lost its rising quality. She stared at it, her fingers across her mouth. Was there ever such a strange man? Planning to marry Mary Ann to Tony. No wonder Tony had kept away from them…And Mike taking it all so calmly, she couldn’t understand that. And then the old man going to pay that sum of money, which, by the sound of it, wouldn’t be small. She couldn’t make him out, he did the most contrary things…But planning to marry Mary Ann off at her age…well, really!

  As she sat pondering over the matter the door leading from the hall opened and Michael came in, a stack of books in his arms.

  ‘Did I hear Mr Lord come in?’ he asked.

  Lizzie looked up at him, and then she smiled tenderly at her son as she said, ‘Yes, he’s been in, talking to your father.’ Michael did not ask what Mr Lord had wanted, nor had Michael been listening. Michael was not Mary Ann.

  He placed the books on the couch and, stretching his arms above his head, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, I’m tired.’

  ‘I’ll get you a drink. What would you like, cocoa or Horlicks?’

  Michael did not answer Lizzie’s question but bent over the couch again and sorted his books into a neat pile before saying quietly, ‘I saw Sarah Flannagan tonight, Ma.’

  ‘Did you? Where was she?’

  ‘On a pony along the road…Ma—’

  ‘Yes?’ Lizzie stood at the stove.

  ‘Can I bring her over to tea tomorrow?’

  ‘Michael!’ Lizzie had swung round as if she had been scalded.

  ‘All right. All right. I only asked.’

  There was his father speaking and Lizzie, looking at his bent, flushed face, said, ‘You know, Michael, I wouldn’t mind in the least, but just think how she’ll take on. And you know it’s her party.’

  ‘Has she always to have her own way?’

  ‘Oh, now, that’s unfair!’

  ‘It isn’t, Ma, and you know it. If she sets out to get her own way she gets it in the end, or there’s hell to pay.’

  ‘Michael! Now don’t you use words like that. Really!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma, but you see—’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Well, I want Sarah to come here. I want her to see you. I want her to see us all in this house.’ He spread his arms wide and kept them there during the moment of silence that followed. Then letting them flap to his sides he exclaimed, ‘And that’s not all…I…I like her, Ma.’

  Lizzie looked hard at her son. Michael had never bothered with girls. He was a sensible, level-headed boy, but she knew that if he said he liked Sarah Flannagan, then he liked her and he wouldn’t be put off her. Yet why had it to be Sarah Flannagan? Oh dear, oh dear, the emotional upsets in the family during these last two weeks were beyond belief. Hadn’t she enough to think about with this business of Mary Ann and Tony without Michael starting on about Sarah Flannagan? What was happening to everybody?

  Her mind swung back to Wednesday and the memory of Mary Ann coming back to Mrs McBride’s crying her eyes out. Well, at any rate that business of the clothes had been a blessing in disguise…she wouldn’t have to worry about Corny Boyle turning up with people like Mrs Willoughby rolling to the door in her car to deposit her daughter, and Mrs Schofield bringing her Janice, not to mention the other four…She said now to Michael, out of the blue, ‘Is she presentable?’

  ‘Presentable, Ma? She’s smashing. She’s the best-looking girl going.’

  ‘Sarah Flannagan?’

  ‘Yes, Ma, Sarah Flannagan. It’s years since you saw her. She’s different, with lovely black hair, and she’s nearly as tall as me.’

  ‘Well, all that isn’t goin
g to placate Mary Ann any. Whether you realise it or not, your sister’s touchy about her height, and if Miss Flannagan’—now Lizzie’s tone was slightly sarcastic—‘and if Miss Flannagan’s as tall as you, then Mary Ann is going to be at a still greater disadvantage, isn’t she?’

  ‘Look, Ma. Don’t take it like that, please.’ His voice sounded hurt.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, son, I’m tired. But I still don’t think it’ll be wise to bring Sarah tomorrow.’

  ‘If you think Mary Ann will be put to a disadvantage by Sarah, think again, Ma. Have you ever known her be at a disadvantage with anybody? If she is it only makes her show off the more.’

  ‘All right, all right, don’t keep on. Look, it’s late, get yourself off to bed, we’ll talk about it in the morning. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Ma.’ He kissed her gently and went out. Lizzie sat down again. She was tired. Oh, she was tired; she would just like to go upstairs this minute and go to bed. That batch of mixture was no good now. Well, there’d be piles of stuff for everybody; she had baked enough to serve at a wedding. She wished Mike would hurry up and come in.

  As if in answer to her wish she heard him coming in the back door, but she closed her eyes wearily when she realised that he wasn’t alone.

  ‘Hallo, Lizzie.’ Tony was standing just inside the kitchen door.

  ‘Hallo, Tony. Come and sit down.’ Lizzie blinked her tiredness away. ‘Will you have a cup of something? The coffee’s still hot…a cup of coffee?’

  ‘As you like.’ Tony’s voice was subdued.

  Mike was striding about the room now and she could not make out whether his annoyance was real or simulated when he said, ‘Sit yourself down there, you’re not moving out of here until we get things straight. Pour me one out, Liz, when you’re on. Make it black, I’ve got a lot of talking to do.’

  Lizzie poured out not only two cups of coffee but three. And having handed the two men theirs, she sat by the table listening, not to Tony, for he still hadn’t spoken, but to Mike, and she soon found that without the aid of the coffee she was wide awake, for Mike was talking as she had never heard him talk before, at least when he was discussing his daughter.

  ‘As I told the old man the other morning, Tony, if Mary Ann wants you she’ll have you, and if she doesn’t want you the devil in hell won’t make her take you, not if you were hung round with the two hundred thousand the old man says you’re likely to get.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Yes, and don’t go off the deep end again.’

  ‘Oh, but, Mike, it’s nothing but that all the time, holding out bait. Look, I would stay and gladly and I don’t need any bait. I hadn’t thought about leaving him, not until the other morning.’

  ‘Well, you can forget that,’ Mike put in quickly. ‘And I’m telling you something that the old man is blind to: he’s blind to the fact that all the grooming in the world, all the grammar learning, all the mixing with the right people’—Mike gave this particular word great stress—‘cannot change the blood in your veins. If Mary Ann lives to be eighty and she marries into the top drawer, let me tell you this, Tony: she will remain a child of the Tyne. I don’t know much about psychology and that sort of clatter, but I do know the first ten years of your life counts. I know that from experience. I know that from what I’ve seen in others. Have you ever thought of some of the pitmen and dockers from around these quarters who have risen and become Members of Parliament. Some of them come back and live on their old doorsteps. The others that don’t and live in their big houses, what do they talk about among their friends? They talk about the past, their boyhood in the pits or in the shipyard. I tell you, Tony, a man or a woman are their first ten years. Look at me. I’ve got a good job now, a wife second to none, a good home and two children that I’m proud of. My dreams should be pleasant. Yet I wake up in the night and I’m back in the bare, stone-walled dormitory in the workhouse. And mind, that memory goes back to well before I was five because I was in the Cottage Homes from I was five.’

  ‘Oh, Mike.’ Tony moved his head and, his voice filled with concern, he murmured, ‘I didn’t mean to make you talk…’

  ‘Look here, don’t get me wrong,’ Mike interrupted him. ‘I’m not plugging any sob line, I’m just trying to explain to you that Mary Ann is not going to be the product of the old boy. I realised this three years ago when she ran away from the convent, and it’s helped my peace of mind since. Why, lad, I can laugh at his schemings, and you’ve got to an’ all. The thing is you’ve got to play up to him. He’s an old autocrat of the first water; if you let him get you rattled you’re done. I know that from experience an’ all. But if you play him, things’ll run along slowly. So there, I’ve told you. And if you leave here don’t let it be on account of the child. If you stay, let the old man have his dream. Only remember, his awakening lies with Mary Ann.’

  ‘I wish I could see things your way, Mike.’ Tony sighed. ‘But the snag is I’m with him most of the time and he’ll keep on about it, alluding to it. I don’t think I could stand it. I might tell you I’ve never had such a shock in my life as when he blurted it out the other morning.’ He turned now and looked at Lizzie, then added by way of explanation, ‘It all started because he had seen me bringing the parcel down on Sunday, he wanted to know what was in it. By the way, did the things fit him?’

  It was Lizzie’s turn to drop her head. ‘He wouldn’t accept them, Tony.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It was nothing personal…’

  ‘That’s just what it was, Liz,’ Mike put in abruptly. ‘Don’t try to paint the situation. It was like this, Tony. The lad saw you and the old man as the boys with the money, and as I understand it the old man didn’t hide how he felt about him. It got under the lad’s skin, and I can understand that very well an’ all. So he wouldn’t accept your charity. Apparently he’s a lad who thinks for himself, and he thinks along the lines that whatever he’s going to wear it’s not coming off somebody else’s back. I don’t expect you to understand that, Tony.’

  ‘Oh, but I do, Mike, I do. And I like the boy all the more for it. Still, it’s a pity in a way, as it’ll be one less at her party.’ It was the first time he had alluded directly to Mary Ann, and he smiled now as he went on, ‘And I somehow think he would have been the guest of honour.’

  Mike laughed at this, but Lizzie’s face remained straight, and Tony, looking at her, said, ‘You’ve no idea how I’ve missed coming in.’ Then getting abruptly to his feet added, ‘Well, I must be off; he’ll be waiting up for me. That’s another thing that gets under my skin—he never goes to bed until I come in.’

  Lizzie now walked over to Tony and, standing in front of him, looked at him keenly as she said, ‘I don’t think you realise, Tony, just how much you mean to him. Since you came into his life it’s as if he had been born again. In fact he said as much to me in this very kitchen. I’m going to say this, Tony, and it mightn’t please you, but I don’t think you really understand him. You don’t try. You’re still carrying the handicap of being brought up by someone who didn’t like him.’ Lizzie’s voice dropped low at this stage as she added, ‘And in our own family we know the damage a grandmother can do. It would be a good thing if you would try to see his side of you.’

  ‘But I do, Lizzie, I do. Mike knows’—he turned his eyes towards Mike—‘he knows the things I put up with from him.’

  Lizzie shook her head impatiently. ‘Those are external things, his shouting, his bossing, all the things he uses as a cover-up for his real feelings. But you haven’t given him anything of yourself, Tony. Don’t ask me how I know this, but I do, and if you search your conscience you’ll admit I’m right. You are tolerant with him but you’ve never shown him any love, never. Now have you?’

  Tony’s eyes moved downwards and then across the darkening room to the window, and there was a long pause before he answered, ‘It’s difficult; he pushes you off.’

  ‘That’s just his manner, his armour, a protection he
has built about himself against people over the last forty years. He was hurt so badly that even at this late stage he’s terrified of it being repeated. Why do you think he’s planning for you and Mary Ann? It’s just to keep you near him in case you should marry somebody who will whisk you away. He knows something of Mary Ann and her love and loyalty, and he knows that he holds a share in that loyalty, and if for no other reason than that Mary Ann would keep you with him to the end…Try to understand.’

  Slowly Tony brought his eyes back to Lizzie, and after a moment of staring at her he turned away, saying quietly, ‘Goodnight, Lizzie.’ Then looking towards Mike, he said ‘Goodnight, Mike…and thanks.’

  As the door closed on him they looked at each other and almost at the same time they both sighed. Then Lizzie, watching Mike make for his chair, said with startling abruptness, ‘Don’t sit yourself down, for I’m not going to talk about her, or Tony, or the old man, or anything else tonight. I’m dropping on my feet. And I’ve all this place to clean up and tomorrow facing me, and I can tell you I’m not looking forward to it.’

  Answering not a word, Mike, with one hand, lifted the laden tray from the table and, balancing it expertly, carried it into the scullery. Could you get over women, or understand their reactions? Just a matter of minutes ago Liz had heard that the old man was planning to marry her daughter off to his heir, and she didn’t want to talk about it…she wanted to clear away. Could you beat it?

  Chapter Twelve: The Party

  The sun was shining, the house was shining, and the table now stretching across the farm kitchen was shining with its white cloth and best china laden with food. The sitting-room door was wide open, its windows were wide open, and there were flowers in the fireplace. Mary Ann had personally seen to this touch. Michael was wearing his best suit, and Lizzie was wearing a new dress which made Mike think to himself, as he was wont to do at times, ‘She’s beautiful, is Liz.’