Life and Mary Ann

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Come on downstairs, lass, you’re froze up here.’

  Mary Ann remained gazing out of the window. And her voice was flat-sounding as she replied, ‘I’m all right. I’m not cold.’ Her mother had called her ‘lass’. She only called her that when she was deeply touched. She usually called her Mary Ann or ‘My dear’, and she had insisted some time ago that she be called ‘Mother’ and not ‘Ma’. Mary Ann’s lips moved tightly over one another. That was Mr Lord again. She could hear his voice now, saying to her mother, ‘You must make her drop this “Ma” way of addressing you, Mrs Shaughnessy. Make her adopt Mother. It is a much nicer term, don’t you think?’ When her da had found out about this—and he had found out, because her mother kept insisting that she did not call her ‘Ma’—he had cried indignantly, ‘To hell! If you are Ma to her, then you are Ma to her…And let me tell you this. You’ll lose something by being more Mother than Ma. I’m tellin’ you! As for the old boy. If he approaches me with the idea of turning me into Father, I’ll spit in his eye. So help me God, I will.’

  Her mother had had to do a lot of talking to calm her father down that time.

  ‘Come on down.’ Lizzie’s voice was soft and coaxing. ‘The tea’s all set, and Michael and Sarah will be here any minute. Come on.’

  Mary Ann turned and looked at her mother, and her voice held no bitterness as she said, ‘You’re glad he’s going, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not. What makes you say that? Oh no, I’m not.’ Lizzie’s reply was too quick. There was too much emphasis on her words. Mary Ann lowered her lids, covering her great brown eyes from her mother’s gaze. Her mother couldn’t lie very well. She turned her head away and looked out of the window again before saying, ‘Why is it you don’t mind our Michael going with Sarah, but you have always minded me and Corny?’

  Lizzie could find no words, no false words with which to answer this statement. If she had spoken the truth she would have said, ‘It’s a man’s position that matters. Michael’s future is set. At the end of this year, when he finishes his probation on the farm, he will go to the Agricultural College. His future is mapped out. He’ll be a farmer. If there wasn’t a job waiting for him here, he could get set on anywhere. Perhaps I would have liked someone better than Sarah Flannagan for him, because, as you know, none of us can stand her mother. But I must admit that Sarah’s turned out to be a nice lass. And moreover she’s Michael’s choice.’ Perhaps her son had one more thing in common with his father. There’d only ever be one woman for him. There were men like that. They were few and far between, God knew, but there were still some left; and she had the feeling in her heart that Sarah Flannagan was the only one for Michael and he for her, strange as it seemed, for only a few years ago Sarah hated the sight of Mary Ann, and Michael into the bargain. But then, like a child, she was taking the pattern from her mother.

  Mary Ann said into the silence, ‘You’re supposed to like Mrs McBride, and she’s his grandmother.’

  ‘Of course, I like Fanny. I could almost say I love her. But there’s a great difference between a woman and her grandson. Not that I don’t like Corny. I’ve told you, I do like Corny. Why do you keep on?’

  Mary Ann nodded to the icy window pane. ‘But you don’t like him for me, because there’s Tony, isn’t there? And Mr Lord. Mr Lord’s little plan. Oh, I know all about it. But listen to me, Mother.’ She pulled herself away from Lizzie’s side. She even stepped back a pace to widen the distance between them, before saying, ‘I’ll never marry Tony. Not to please you, or him, or anybody else.’

  ‘Who’s talking about Tony?’

  ‘You are. You’re thinking about him all the time. That’s why you’ve never been able to take to Corny. Corny hadn’t a big house. He hadn’t a splendid job. He hadn’t a grandfather rolling in the money. But let me tell you, Mother, Corny will make his name with either one thing or the other. With either cars or his cornet. Oh, yes. That’s been a laugh in the house for a long time now. Corny, with his cars and his cornet. The three Cs. Well! You wait and see…’

  As Mary Ann’s head drooped forward and the tears began to roll down her cheeks, Lizzie cried, ‘Aw, lass, lass! Aw! Don’t cry like that.’ And she enfolded her daughter in her arms and rocked her gently back and forwards as if she were still the little elfin-faced child. The endearing, maddening, precocious, beguiling child. And she was still a child. She would always remain a child to Lizzie. And she wanted her child to be looked after; and like every mother, she felt that half the battle would be won if there was money at hand to help with the looking after.

  Saturday tea was still a function, a time when Lizzie had her family all around her. It was usually a meal of leisure with no-one dashing to catch a bus to the secretarial school in Newcastle—that was Mary Ann; or golloping the meal to attend to this, that, or the other on the farm—that was Mike; or, if not following his father’s pattern and dashing outside, reading, reading, reading—that was Michael, always reading, and not eating. There were more books in the house concerning the diseases that animals were prone to than in the Public Library, so Lizzie thought. But Saturday was different.

  All Saturday morning Lizzie baked for the tea. Besides the old standbys, bacon-and-egg pie, fruit tarts and scones, there was always something new. She liked to try a new recipe each week. On Tuesday she would look forward to the coming of her magazine. Not for the stories, but for the recipes, and each Saturday they would tease her, ‘What’s it, the day, another stomach binder? By! I’ll sue that paper afore long.’ Mike would generally start in this way, and the others would follow suit. However, they nearly always ate the last crumb of her new recipe. But today things hadn’t gone according to plan. Mike made no reference whatever to the table. His large, heavy, handsome face looked dark as he took his seat at the head, and immediately he gave signs of his inward mood by running his hands through his thick red hair, and this after combing it only a few minutes earlier.

  Lizzie felt a rising irritation in her as she gauged her husband’s mood. He wasn’t going to start and take up the cudgels again. Talk about like father, like son. It had never been like that in this family, it had always been like father, like daughter. Mike was also, she knew, blaming Mr Lord for Corny’s decision. Although the boy had stated flatly that no-one had influenced him, Mike was as furious at this moment against the old man as Mary Ann herself. It was quite some time now since any major issue had occurred to make Mike take sides against Mr Lord. As Lizzie looked sharply between her husband and her daughter, she thought she could almost feel the emotions flowing between them, as if they were linked by actual blood vessels. Talk about Siamese twins. As was her wont when worried, she muttered a little prayer to herself. It was, as usual, in the nature of a demanding plea, and in this particular case she asked that Mike might not lose his temper with the old man. ‘Let him go for anyone else, but not for Mr Lord, dear God.’

  Trying to bring normality into the proceedings, Lizzie now addressed herself to Sarah. ‘How’s business been this week, Sarah?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘Oh, not too good at all. The roads have been so slippery. It’s been hard enough to exercise them. And nobody seems inclined to ride. I don’t blame them. I nearly stuck to the saddle yesterday morning.’

  ‘I don’t know how you do it. I think you’re wonderful.’

  Sarah Flannagan remained smiling across the table at Lizzie. But she made no answer. She would have been glad had this woman thought she was wonderful, but she felt it was merely a phase. She knew there was tension in the house and that Elizabeth Shaughnessy was trying to smooth things over. Some day she hoped, and from the depth of her being, that this woman would be her mother-in-law, and yet she was a little afraid of her. Yes, the truth was, she was a little afraid of her. She thought she wasn’t quite good enough for Michael. All mothers felt like that about daughters-in-law, so she understood, and so she felt sure that Elizabeth Shaughnessy would finally accept her into the family, whereas she would never reconcile h
erself to accept Corny Boyle. This thought brought her eyes flicking towards Mary Ann. It was hard at this moment to think that Mary Ann and herself had been bitter enemies from the day they first met until just a short while ago. She did not delude herself that the first day she came to this house, when she led the dapple, Mary Ann’s thirteenth birthday present from Mr Lord, up the road, and was asked to stay to tea, that it was from that day that she and Mary Ann had become friends. No, on that day Mary Ann had tolerated her because her mind was taken up with other important things. Corny Boyle, for instance, and her pony, and her posh friends from Newcastle, to mention a few. Even in the days that followed Mary Ann’s acceptance was touched with condescension, although she gave her back with good measure everything she dealt out…In a way, they had still been at war. It was only in the last few months Mary Ann had been different. But then she herself had been different. They both seemed to have grown up overnight, and recognising this they had come together and talked. They had talked about Michael and they had talked about Corny. So now at this moment she could understand what Mary Ann was going through. She also knew that because his daughter was unhappy Mr Shaughnessy was in a tearing rage. She had never seen him look so thundery. She could remember back to the times when he used to come home roaring drunk to Mulhattans’ Hall. She could remember the day he had danced and sung in the road; and Mary Ann had come and taken him home and she had jibed at her: ‘Your da is a no-good drunk,’ she had shouted. And mimicked Mary Ann’s oft-repeated phrase, ‘Me da’s a grand man.’ And yet now there was nothing more she wanted in life than to be a member of this family, and to call Mike Shaughnessy ‘Da’. In a way, although she loved her own father, there was something greatly attractive, greatly endearing about Mike Shaughnessy, and it would be an added happiness the day he became her father-in-law.

  ‘What are you dreaming about?’ The gentle dig in the ribs from Michael turned her face towards him, and she laughed and said, ‘Horses.’

  Michael let his eyes rest on her. He loved to look at her. He knew she hadn’t been thinking of horses; he had come to know all the flowing movement and expression of her vivacious dark face. Sarah was beautiful, she was more than beautiful. To him she was everything a fellow could dream of. She had a lot of sense in her, which was strange when he thought of her father and mother, though he must say he liked Mr Flannagan; he liked him much better than he liked her mother. But Sarah was like neither of them. She had a sort of deep wisdom about her. If he was going off the deep end about this, that, or the other, she would come out with something that astounded him with its profundity. He who had attended the Grammar School up to a year ago could not think to the depth that Sarah’s mind took her. He wondered how his mother would take it if he wanted to get married before he started college. Likely she would go mad.

  ‘Michael, you’re not eating anything.’ Lizzie brought his eyes from Sarah, and he said, ‘Well, what do you expect after all that dinner?’

  ‘I’ve never known your dinner stop you eating your Saturday tea.’ Lizzie now turned to Mary Ann and said, quietly, ‘Shall I fill your cup again?’

  ‘No, Mother, no, thanks. I’ve had enough.’ As she turned her glance from her mother, she met the full penetrating force of Mike’s eyes on her. They were looking into her, probing the hurt, and feeling it almost as much as herself. In his eyes was a reflection of her own anger, and she thought in the idiom that no convent-school training, no English mistress who had selected her for personal torture while dealing with clauses had been able to erase: ‘Eeh! There’ll be ructions if I don’t stop him. But he’s not to go for Mr Lord. I’ll tell him what I think, meself.’ She knew she could tell Mr Lord what she thought, she knew that she could show her temper to him, answer his own arrogant manner with what her mother would term ‘cheek’ and get away with it, but not so her da. Mr Lord liked her da. She felt that although she in the first place had to point out to Mr Lord, and emphatically, the qualities that made up her father, he had come to respect and like him from his own judgment. But that wasn’t saying that he would stand her father accusing him of sending Corny off to America, and that is what Mike would do if she didn’t stop him. She was thankful that Mr Lord wouldn’t be back on the farm until Tuesday. In the meantime she must get at her da. But she knew she wouldn’t have much weight with him unless she could prove to him that she wasn’t all that much affected. This would be nigh impossible if she continued to go around looking as if the end of the world had come. But it had for her. Her world seemed to have been sliced in two, so that she was faced with a gulf over which she must either jump or remain in a state of pain forever. She made an attempt at the jump by looking at Sarah and asking in a voice which she strove with great effort to make ordinary, ‘What are you wearing for the wedding?’

  Sarah, looking back at her with the threaded intuition of youth, immediately played up by raising a laugh. ‘If this weather keeps up, black stockings, woollen undies and a windcheater.’

  Lizzie laughed, louder than she would have done on another occasion. Michael laughed, his head back in the same attitude that his father used when his laughter was running free. Mike only allowed a quirk to appear at the corner of his mouth, but he nodded towards Sarah as he said, ‘Sensible idea.’

  ‘Fancy having a white wedding at this time of the year. And those two, with a nuptial mass!’ Michael bowed his head and shook it from side to side as he chuckled to himself, and then added, ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised if Len had said he was going up to the altar in tails.’

  Mary Ann too wanted to laugh at the thought of Len, the cowman, going up to the altar in tails. Len was dim—they all knew that Len was dim—and Cissie, his girl, was even lower down in the mental grade. She was round and placid, and ever smiling; and she had a stock phrase, with which she punctuated every question and answer. She could hear her now, ‘Well now, Mrs Shaughnessy, I’ve always wanted a white weddin’.’ ‘And well now, with Mr Lord showing his appreciation of Len so, standing the spread for us, and givin’ Len a rise and all that, well now, I thought we should do things fittin’ like.’ Part of Mary Ann felt sorry for Cissie but she didn’t really know why. Sometimes she thought it was because, as she said to herself, Cissie had never had a chance, there had never been a Mr Lord in Cissie’s life. Yet at the same time she recognised that all the Mr Lords in the world couldn’t have made much difference to Cissie. Cissie, like Len, was dim. But that didn’t say they shouldn’t have a nuptial mass …

  This point was as good as any other on which to start an argument with Michael. She knew she had to do something, and quickly, to switch her thoughts from weddings in general to a wedding in particular, which of late had been finding a prominent place in her thinking. So, as she had done from as far back as she could remember, she attacked Michael in her usual way. ‘What’s funny about a nuptial mass, about their having a nuptial mass? They’ve as much right to have a nuptial mass as you or anybody else!’

  ‘Oh! Here we go again!’ Michael rolled his eyes towards the ceiling before bringing his head down and bouncing it towards Mary Ann, emphasising each word as he said, ‘I didn’t say they hadn’t the right to have a nuptial mass. But those two won’t have a clue what it’s all about. They’ll sit through the service without a clue. Do you think they will be affected by the spirituality of the whole thing? Can you imagine Len thinking?’

  ‘How do you know if they’ll be affected spiritually or not? Because Len has never been to a grammar school it doesn’t say that his spiritual awareness isn’t as alive as yours!’

  ‘Aw…Bulls, heifers, cows and calves!’ Michael always managed to impregnate this saying with the same quality that another would give to strident blasphemy and it affected Lizzie in this way; she often thought she would rather hear Michael swear than say that. It wasn’t the words themselves but the stringing of them together, and the inflexion of his voice as he said them. ‘Now, that’s enough, Michael. And you too, Mary Ann! The pair of you stop it.’

&n
bsp; ‘Well, Mother, I ask you.’ Michael knew he was being pulled up, and why. But he smiled at Lizzie and said pityingly, ‘Well, I ask you. Len and Cissie in a nuptial mass! If one of them had been a little different, a bit bright, it mightn’t have appeared so bad, but they are a pair…’

  ‘Yes, you’ve said it there, they’re a pair.’ Mike was speaking now and they all looked towards him. But he was looking at Michael only. ‘And they’re paired properly. What do you think Len’s life would be like if he was marrying a more intelligent girl?…Hell, that’s what it would be. There’s something in nature, if let alone, that helps us with our picking. We’re not always aware of it at the time, sometimes not for years. Len’s marriage won’t break up, because he’s picked according to the level of his mind. He doesn’t know it, he never will, and he’ll be all the more content. It sometimes comes about that you don’t get the one to fit both your mind and your body, then things happen…Take it on a lower plane, so to speak. Take it in the breeding of stock…’