A Grand Man (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘And,’ commented Mike to himself, ‘you’re another poor little devil.’ Anyone unfortunate enough to have to spend a lifetime with that upstart woman Flannagan had his sympathy. Mike chuckled inwardly. How often had he been threatened that he would suffer for his insolence at the hands of this little chap, and up to the present this was the nearest they had got to each other.

  He said quite pleasantly, ‘I’m trying to make for the door to get some air,’ and Mr Flannagan replied with equal pleasantness, ‘I’m heading that way meself.’

  They nodded at each other, a strange, comradely nod that said, ‘We may as well make it together then.’

  ‘London’s got nothing on this,’ said Mike, when at last the double doors were reached.

  ‘You’re right there, Mr Shaughnessy.’

  Oh, thought Mike, we’re getting our title the day – Mr Shaughnessy it is. And to think we’ve seen each other every day for two years with never a ‘Whatcher there!’

  ‘Harry!’ The astonished, strident voice brought Mr Flannagan swiftly round and he stood with his back to the door and faced his wife. ‘Where you off to?’

  Mr Flannagan did not answer for a moment, but his eyes flitted to Mike’s back where he stood struggling with the long iron bar of the door. Then he said briefly, ‘Outside.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mrs Flannagan. ‘What do you want to go outside for?’

  Mr Flannagan’s answer to this was drowned by Mike’s laugh. Perhaps he was laughing at himself being unable to get the door open. With a quick jerk the bar went upwards and the double doors shot apart, and as he turned to close them his eyes met the malevolent glare of Mrs Flannagan, and he laughed in her face and closed the door on her words, ‘Stay where you are till the air’s clearer.’

  Mike stood in the shelter of the porch for a moment and looked at the rain falling like a solid lead sheet across the opening, and Mrs Flannagan’s voice, muffled now but still audible, came to him. He could not distinguish what she was saying but her tone told him that the poor little devil was getting it hot and heavy. As the door behind him opened again he turned his collar up and stepped out into the rain. He found it was not amusing to hear the little fellow being slated; rather, he was embarrassed. When a woman made a man look small it touched all men.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ Mrs Flannagan’s voice followed him through the opened door. Then on a pitch of a scream it came down the empty street, crying, ‘Harry!’ and it told Mike that Mr Flannagan must be somewhere behind him. He did not turn round, but he thought with a glow of satisfaction, ‘So he stood his ground . . . good for him.’ And he slowed his pace until the little man came abreast. The odd thing was that Mr Flannagan made no effort to pass on, but suited his steps to Mike’s, having to lengthen his stride to do so. This must have conveyed the worst to Mrs Flannagan, for her voice crying, ‘Do you hear me, Harry Flannagan? Come back here this minute!’ seemed to hit the two men in the neck. Anyway, it sent them forward at a quicker pace until they rounded the corner of the street. There Mr Flannagan, his face running with rain, looked up at Mike and asked quite solemnly, ‘Would you mind me company, Mr Shaughnessy?’ and Mike, successfully keeping his eyebrows stationary, replied in his politest tone, ‘Not at all, Mr Flannagan, not at all.’

  Mary Ann saw her da leave the hall, and for a moment the brightness of this wonderful day vanished, until she told herself that he had only gone out for a mouthful of air and he would be back in a minute. But he didn’t come back in a minute.

  The tea over, the children were bidden to sit where they were to see the Punch and Judy Show. Mary Ann tried to catch her mother’s eye and her permission to attempt to leave the table, but Lizzie’s eyes seemed to rest everywhere but on her daughter. Mary Ann did not care for Punch and Judy – the sight of poor Judy being beaten unmercifully with a stick always made her close her eyes – so at this point in the entertainment she followed the ruse of so many other children who were bored with sitting in one spot for so long, she put up her hand. It seemed to her that almost immediately her mother was behind her, and with a warning injunction for quiet, she lifted her off the form and carried her with some difficulty through the press, but not towards the backyard of the hall, but to the main door. Once outside, she put her down, saying, ‘There are too many waiting, we’d better go home.’ She did not say, ‘You had better run home and then come back,’ and Mary Ann knew that her ma wanted to go and see if her da was home.

  It had stopped raining now and they hurried along hand in hand. Mulhattans’ Hall was quiet and had the air of a house that had been vacated in a hurry, especially in the hallway outside Mrs McBride’s door, for there reposed a welter of oddments, the possessions undoubtedly of Mrs McBride’s numerous grandchildren. Mary Ann ran ahead up the stairs and pushed open their door.

  She did not call down to her mother that her da wasn’t in, but her silence was telling enough for Lizzie, and when she entered the room she made no comment one way or the other but an anger rose in her against the man who was so weak and so selfish that he would not keep his promise to this child even for a day. The promise had not been given in words; but in a thousand and one ways Mary Ann had tried to impress on him the importance of Coronation Day and extract from him a laugh or the slow shaking of the head or a quick hoist in the air, and all these she took as signs that he would stay with them on that day and enter into the jollification.

  Her own heart had softened towards him as it hadn’t done for some time when she had seen him standing patiently with the crowd in the hall, for she knew how human contact in the mass could irritate him. But it had been too much for him. She had expected too much of him. Her anger made her silently vehement. He was weak, he was cowardly, he was rotten to the core. Let him hurt her, she could in a way stand up to it, but the look on the child’s face when yet once again he had let her down was heart-rending. She turned to Mary Ann who was standing near the table picking at her fingers and said, ‘I thought you wanted to leave the room?’

  ‘I did.’ Mary Ann turned and walked out and down the stairs, and Lizzie went into the scullery, and after staring down into the sink for some time she beat her fist three times in quick succession on the draining board, and when the sound of Mary Ann’s footsteps mounting the stairs again came to her she sighed heavily and went into the kitchen, and with an effort towards brightness she greeted her daughter, ‘Well, shall we go back?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it will be nearly over.’

  That was true. ‘But,’ said Lizzie, ‘now that it’s fair there’ll be the races in the street and you’ve been practising for long enough.’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Now listen,’ Lizzie spoke sharply. ‘You’re no more tired than I am,’ which, if this had been strictly true, would have made Mary Ann very weary indeed.

  ‘I am,’ persisted Mary Ann, sitting down.

  ‘What about the prizes you were after? The big box of chocolates Mr Funnell’s giving, and the doll to the best skipper?’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  Lizzie moved her head impatiently; then as a noise like a stampede of cattle came from the street she said, ‘There they are, all back.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘But we were going to see all the bonfires later on – what about that?’

  Mary Ann looked straight at her mother and the look said, ‘If he comes in roarin’ will we leave him and go and see the bonfires?’

  Lizzie turned and went to the fireplace, and with the raker pulled from the back of the grate a little more coal onto the low embers, then swinging round almost fiercely, she cried, ‘Well, you’ll go to bed mind, I’m not having you sitting there with a face like that.’

  Even this threat could not bring Mary Ann out of her misery, and when she said, ‘All right’, Lizzie gave her one helpless look before walking into the bedroom.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and rocked herself slowly, Oh, dear
God, dear God. Was this to be her life? There was no likelihood at all that he would return before he was well soaked, and he would say, ‘Well now, take you for a spoilsport. Isn’t it every creature that’s drinking the Queen’s health the night?’ His voice would be thick with the Irish brogue, a tongue she had come to detest, for the deeper his cup the thicker it came. Once he had tried to explain to her the reason why he spoke broad Irish when he was drunk. You’ve got to belong somewhere, he had said; there are two things a man must have, a mate and a country. When you grow up knowing that you belong to nowhere or to no-one and that no-one belongs to you, that your very name was given to you by a committee, and one name being as good as another, they let you be called after the man who had picked you up from the gate, when a thing like that is the kind of thought you live with from the time you start thinking you begin to make up places and people that do belong to you. It was natural I should pick on Ireland with a name like Mike Shaughnessy, and for people it was as natural as breathing that I should pick on you the moment I saw you, with your golden hair and your promise of another world.

  Oh, Mike, Mike. She leant her head on the bed rail and her pity was resurrected. Why had life to be like this? Why wasn’t she big enough to fill the loneliness that ate him up at times? He loved her, she was the only creature he wanted. He was capable of killing any man who would come between them, yet he could not kill or would not kill that which was a greater danger to their happiness than any man. Oh, Mike, Mike.

  He had been gone three hours now. It would be another two or three before he would be back. She was weary and tired of thinking, tired of counting time, tired of worrying, tired of anxiety, tired of living. She raised her head and looked towards the window, for the noise and shouting from the street had suddenly increased. Was it only the echo of her worry or had she heard Mike’s name called above the yelling and the shouting? She sat bolt upright, her ears trained. There it was again. Mike and Mr Shaughnessy. Mr Shaughnessy, the voice said.

  Darting to the window she stopped and peered down into the street. The twilight had not yet deepened into darkness but the street lamps were lit and in the half-light she could not at first make out one figure from another; then her eyes were drawn over the crowd to a clearing, in the middle of which a man was dancing with his hands above his head. He was dancing a weird imitation of a Scotch reel, accompanied by the clapping and stamping of the crowd. But it was not Mike – it was Mr Flannagan. She dropped onto her knees and lowered her head to the bottom of the window to confirm that she was seeing aright. It couldn’t really be Mr Flannagan, the solemn, miserable-looking little man, who rarely opened his mouth to anyone and was known never to have touched drink for years, not since he was converted to sobriety by the visiting mission. Without closer confirmation she knew that only if he had . . . ‘had some’ would he be dancing in the street. But Mike; they had been calling Mike. Where was he? Her eyes roamed wide over the crowd, peering through the distorted reflections of the lamps, only to come back to the cleared space. And then she saw him, and her amazement grew, for Mr Flannagan, who had stopped dancing, was pulling him by the arm in an effort to induce him to join the fray.

  That Mike should need inducement to join in a bit of jollification was a sure guarantee that he was sober. She was completely mystified by it all; everything was topsy-turvy, Mike sober and Mr Flannagan drunk. Slowly she raised her eyes from the street to the window below on the far side of the road, and seeing the outline of Mrs Flannagan’s face behind the curtain and being only human, she voicelessly said, ‘Now how do you like it, Mrs Flannagan?’ Then remembering the torture she herself had endured she added, ‘But I wouldn’t wish it on you, no matter what you’re like.’

  ‘Lizzie! Are you there, Lizzie?’

  Lizzie turned from the window as Mrs McBride’s voice came from the other room; and before she could reach the door it was thrust open, and Fanny, pulling and yelling, cried, ‘Was there ever such a crowning to a day as that? Have you seen him?’

  She carried Lizzie towards the window again with a sweep of her arm. ‘Look at him!’ She pointed into the street. Then looking across to Mrs Flannagan’s window, she voiced the same sentiments as Lizzie had restrained. ‘Ah, me fine madam. How d’you like it? This’ll knock some of the stinking brag out of you . . . Oh’ – she turned to Lizzie, her broad beaming smile making her face resemble nothing so much as a dented and rather discoloured bag of tripe – ‘oh, if I’ve lived to see nothing else, this’ – she indicated with a jerk of her thumb the again dancing figure of Mr Flannagan – ‘this would have been worth all me struggles. And if it doesn’t keep the Duchess of Dam’ All quiet for the rest of her life I’m a Hallelujah. Oh, isn’t Mike the boy that gets his own back! If he had tried for a thousand years he couldn’t have thought of anything better.’

  ‘Mike?’ Lizzie looked at the old woman. ‘What’s Mike got to do with it?’

  ‘He did it. Took him along and got him bottled up. Didn’t you see them leaving the hall together? Mary Prout said there was a do in the street with Lady Golightly.’

  Lizzie’s face hardened as she stared down onto the back of Mrs McBride’s head. The things these people said. Mike had his faults, God knew, but petty vindictiveness was not one of them. Yet what about Mr Flannagan trying to get him to dance? If they hadn’t been together would he have done that?

  ‘The street’s alive with it,’ went on Fanny, again cocking her head up to Lizzie. ‘Everybody knows the things she’s said about Mike. Aw, who says the devil doesn’t look after his own? Do you want to look down, hinny?’ She put her hand out to where Mary Ann was standing now near her mother. ‘Come and see your da. He’s down there as sober as a judge, and it’s Coronation Day an’ all.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Fanny.’

  The three of them turned abruptly to where Mike was filling the doorway. His face was not clearly discernible in the dimness of the room, but his voice, the inflection of which could tell Lizzie whether he had been on beer, whisky, or both, told her now that he’d had a few beers, but that was all.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Mike. How did you get away from him? You’ve got yourself a drinking pal from now on. But what in the name of God gave you the idea? If you’d spat clean in her eye you wouldn’t have hit her harder.’

  As Fanny threw her laughing remarks to him, Mary Ann darted across the room. She did not shout, ‘Da! Oh, Da!’ but just clung on to his arm, pressing her face against his sleeve in a passionate expression of relief.

  Mike fondled her head and asked of Fanny, ‘Who says it was my idea getting him drunk?’

  ‘Who says! . . . Ah, what d’you take me for, Mike?’ She pushed past him. ‘Who says? Why everybody in the street, and they’re all having a dam’ good laugh, knowing the way she’s held you up as a disgrace to the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Has she now?’

  ‘Has she now? Why are you playing so dumb all of a sudden? Has she now? Oh, you’ll kill me with your fun one of these days. Well, here I am now going to see what happens when old Flannagan knocks on his door for admittance. I’ll be seeing you, Lizzie . . . Has she now?’ She leered at Mike in farewell.

  Lizzie made no comment, and not until the outer door had banged did Mike speak. ‘I didn’t get him full,’ he said.

  ‘Who did then? He’s been with you, hasn’t he?’ Lizzie’s voice conveyed neither displeasure nor amusement.

  ‘Yes, he was along of me; I couldn’t shake him off. It was at his suggestion we had a pint together . . . And then—’ Suddenly Mike’s voice broke, and his head went up and back, and his rocketing laugh filled the room. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed his eyes and said between gasps, ‘Me. I had to put the brake on because of him. Can you see me putting the brake on because of Harry Flannagan? I kept saying, “No. I’ll just have a gill . . . No, no,” I said, “I never touch whisky.” And there he was with a double and a pint at his elbow. I tell you I had to get him out while he was still on his legs. If I’d waite
d any longer I’d have to’ve carried him back.’ His laughter eased to a gentle shaking, and he looked at Lizzie and said, quietly, ‘It’s funny, don’t you think, me having to keep steady to look after him? He wouldn’t leave me; I couldn’t shake him off.’

  It was funny; the anxiety, the worry, the pain and her recrimination of him were once again washed away with his elusive endearingness, the unfair endearingness that had the power to blot out all but the feelings of the moment. With one accord they moved swiftly to each other, and his laughter rolling out again, he caught her up and swung her about.

  Mary Ann’s laughter joined his, but it was a little too loud and a little too high to be natural, and it was too full of relief to stay as laughter. This was the first time since her da had won that money that she had seen him and her ma laughing together and with their arms about each other. It meant that everything was going to be all right, no matter what her granny did or how nice Mr Quinton was.

  Her laughter broke on a cry, and she fled from the room and through the kitchen into the scullery, and she leant her head on the sink and sobbed. But almost immediately she felt herself lifted up, and hiding her face, she buried it in her father’s neck. And when Lizzie, stroking her head, said, ‘Come, come, now we’re going to see the bonfires,’ her crying mounted, for it was the only way in which she could express her happiness at this moment.

  Chapter Six: Sunday

  The world was a beautiful place; there had never been any rain, or dullness, or darkness; there had never been any worry, fear or anxiety, for was not the sun shining brightly, and wasn’t she walking in the country? In the country, mind, where the big trees grew, hand in hand with her da!