Life and Mary Ann

by Catherine Cookson

  But she couldn’t go to sleep and forget it. It must have been around four o’clock in the morning that her fitful dozing overbalanced into sleep. Then it seemed as if she was only in this beautiful oblivion for a matter of seconds when a hand dragged her upwards out of it. She woke to her father’s voice, saying, ‘Mary Ann!’ and his hand gently rocking her shoulder.

  ‘Yes, Da?’ She was sitting straight up blinking at him.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, it’s all right. There’s nothing wrong.’ He bent towards her. ‘I had to get up a short while ago, I heard Prudence bellowing her head off. She got her horns fixed in between those boards again, and when I was out I saw the light on up in the house, downstairs, and I was just wondering what was wrong when I caught sight of the old man walking up the hill. I could see him plainly…the moon’s full.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘About twenty past five now, but this was before five, I’ve just had a word with Michael. He’s had a sleepless night it appears, too much excitement over Sarah I think in that quarter, but he tells me that the old man rang about one o’clock. Tony wasn’t in then, and it looks as if he’s still not in. I’ve got a feeling that I should go up and have a word with him. What do you think?’

  ‘You mean tell him about Tony and—and Mrs Schofield?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Mary Ann looked down at the rumpled bedclothes, and she pulled her legs up under her and shook her head before answering, ‘I don’t know. When Tony does come in there’ll be a dreadful row, because now, having to explain…well, he’ll likely blurt it out.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I was thinking. I was thinking an’ all it wouldn’t be a bad idea if it was to come from you.’

  ‘Me, Da! Me tell him about them?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think the shock would be half as great. You see, Tony will lose his temper, but you won’t, not on this occasion.’ He smiled at her. ‘And although the old man will be worked up he won’t be aggravated, and by the time Tony does get in he’ll likely have got the matter settled in his own mind. He won’t be less furious. I’m not looking forward to seeing him when he hears the news from either you or Tony but I think it’s likely to have less of a bad effect if you tell him.’

  Mary Ann looked towards the window as she said, ‘When, Da?’

  ‘Well, what about now? Do you feel like getting up?’

  ‘Yes, Da. I’ll be down in five minutes.’

  ‘Don’t make a noise. I don’t want your mother disturbed. She won’t take this matter much lighter than the old man, you know.’

  ‘I know, Da.’

  Bending swiftly, Mike kissed Mary Ann on the side of the cheek. It was an unusual gesture. Their deep love and understanding for each other did not show itself in demonstration, other than the clasping of hands. And when the door had closed on her father, Mary Ann had a desire to start to cry all over again, even more heartbrokenly than she had done last night, but instead she grabbed angrily at each garment as she got into her clothes …

  Ben let them in, it was as if he had been waiting for them. ‘He’s in the drawing room,’ he said.

  If the business of coming to the house at this hour wasn’t odd enough, Mr Lord too seemed to be expecting them, for he showed not the least surprise when Mike, gently pushing Mary Ann before him, went past Ben, who was holding open the door, and into the room.

  Mary Ann looked towards Mr Lord sitting in a chair to the side of the big open fireplace, with the fire roaring away up the chimney. And for all the heat of the room, she felt as cold as Mr Lord looked.

  ‘Sit down, Shaughnessy.’

  Mr Lord did not appear to notice Mary Ann as he addressed himself to Mike. ‘Do you happen to know where my grandson spent the night? Don’t tell me, please.’ The old man lifted up a tired-looking hand. ‘Don’t tell me that you think he has been to a party, or a dance. He is no dancer, and not given to all-night parties. I happen to know the friends he has do not go in for all-night parties.’

  ‘It’s a pity, sir. Perhaps it would have been better if he had picked friends who did go in for all-night parties.’ Mike did not end as he was thinking, ‘You’ve made a rod for your own back.’

  ‘What are you telling me, Shaughnessy? That he has gone off the rails and that it is my fault?…And I think it would have been better had you come alone.’ Mr Lord was still ignoring Mary Ann’s presence even as he spoke of her.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. Mary Ann, we all seem to forget, is no longer a little girl, and this business concerns her more than any of us. Next to you, she, I should imagine, is the most concerned.’ Mike knew he wasn’t actually speaking the truth here. Next to the old man it would be Lizzie who would be most concerned about the failure of the plans for Mary Ann’s future. And he ended, ‘And as she’s known what has been going on while all the rest of us were in the dark, I think it had better come from her.’

  For the first time since she came into the room, Mr Lord looked at Mary Ann. He looked so frail, so tired, that pity for him mounting in her obliterated all other feeling at the moment. Only his eyes indicated the vitality still in him.

  ‘Well! What have you to tell me, Mary Ann?’

  She did not know how to start. There seemed no way to lead up to this business. Even as she searched frantically in her mind, none came to her.

  Mike gave her arm a gentle squeeze, saying, ‘Go on, tell it in your own way.’

  Someone began to talk. Mary Ann didn’t feel it was her voice. It had a cracked sound, yet was unhesitant, and she heard it say, ‘You like Mrs Schofield, Mr Lord?’

  ‘Mrs Schofield? Yes. Yes, I like Mrs Schofield. What about her?’

  ‘Only that Tony and Mrs Schofield have been seeing a lot of each other this past year.’

  Mr Lord’s face seemed to close. It had looked tight and drawn before, but now the wrinkled flesh converged towards the point of his nose and became white. The whiteness spread over the nostrils and around the blue-lipped mouth.

  The voice that still didn’t sound like her own, went on: ‘It was one Saturday when I went to see Janice…Janice Schofield, and as we knocked on the door there was shouting, and we saw through the window Mr Schofield hitting Mrs Schofield…It was from then.’

  She watched the tremor pass over the old man’s body, right from the lips, over his shoulders, down the legs right into the handmade shoes. But whatever emotion Mr Lord was feeling he was going to great lengths at this moment to control it. Now his lower jaw began to move slowly back and forward, and she could hear the sound of his dentures grinding against each other in passing. Her father’s voice broke in quietly, ‘These things happen, sir, unavoidably…Unaccountably…for no reason whatever. People don’t want them to happen, but they happen…Mrs Schofield’s a nice woman.’

  ‘Mrs Schofield is a married woman.’

  The words came from Mr Lord’s closed lips as if they were indented on a thin strip of steel.

  ‘She got her divorce a few weeks ago, sir.’

  ‘She is still a married woman.’

  My God! Mike closed his eyes for a moment. The old man wasn’t speaking from any religious bias. He had no God, not to Mike’s knowledge anyway, yet in this day and age he could be narrow enough still to discredit divorce.

  ‘Moreover she is a woman years his senior.’

  ‘She doesn’t look it, sir.’

  ‘He won’t marry her, I’ll see to that.’ With what seemed a great effort the old man pulled himself up in the chair until his spine was pressed tightly against the back.

  ‘You can’t stop him.’ It was Mary Ann speaking now. ‘He loves her. He loves her very much.’

  ‘What are you talking about, child? What do you know about love?’

  ‘I know that Tony loves Mrs Schofield.’ Mary Ann had stepped a small step away from Mike and towards Mr Lord as she spoke. She could recognise her own voice now. She felt that the worst was over, he wasn’t going to have a heart attack, not yet anyway. ‘Mrs
Schofield’s a nice woman. She’ll be better for him than I would have been. Tony never loved me and I didn’t love him, not in that way.’

  ‘She’s a silly, feather-brained woman.’

  ‘Now, sir.’ Mike was smiling. ‘You know that isn’t true. You know yourself you found a depth in her that couldn’t be hidden by that airy-fairy manner. If I might suggest, sir, it would be a good thing if you would accept the situa—’

  ‘Be quiet, Shaughnessy! I will accept no such situation.’ Now Mr Lord did look as if he could be on the point of a heart attack. His turkey-like neck was stretching out of his collar and his head was wagging with such speed that it looked as if it could spiral itself up and off. ‘Accept the situation! I will tell you this much. He will come into this house just once more, and that to get the little that belongs to him, and that will be the end. I want to see him, or hear of him, no more…Accept the situation! What do you think I am? He has been out all night…’ Mr Lord flicked his eyes towards Mary Ann then back to Mike, ‘I want to speak to you alone for a few minutes.’

  Mary Ann looked at her da, and when he gave a nod of his head she went slowly from the room and into the hall, there to see Ben standing.

  ‘He’s all right? He’s not bad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t have an attack of any sort?’

  ‘Only temper, Ben.’ Mary Ann touched Ben’s sleeve. ‘Don’t worry, he’s all right. At least until Tony comes. What will happen then…’ She shook her head.

  ‘Is it true what you said in there about Master Tony and Mrs Schofield?’

  ‘Yes, Ben.’

  ‘God above! I knew there was something on. I felt once or twice that he wanted to speak to me but was afraid to in case I told the Master. He needn’t have worried…I wouldn’t be the one to kill him off.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t killed him off, Ben. We can be thankful for that.’

  ‘Yes, but as you said, not yet. Wait until the young one comes in…I’ll make some strong coffee and lace it.’

  He turned like a busy old woman and shambled towards the kitchen, and Mary Ann went towards the long window that looked onto the garden. The curtains had not been drawn and she looked up into the still dark, deep, frost-laden sky. Well, part of it was over. She knew why Mr Lord wanted her out of the room, he wanted to talk about Tony, and where he had been all night. He needn’t have worried about shocking her. She knew Tony had been with Mrs Schofield. Married or not, they had been together. As she turned from the window and walked across the hall towards the kitchen she felt old, very old. She seemed in this moment to know all about life, and it wasn’t a nice feeling. She had thought that no matter what happened to her in her life, whatever sadness came into it, she would still have the desire to go on breathing…living. And oddly enough it wasn’t the fact that she had lost Corny…and Tony, that made her for a moment lose this desire but the cause of her having been sent out of the room. This was what momentarily dampened the desire for existence. This thing that wasn’t nice. This thing that you read about in the papers. This thing that the girls at the Typing School nattered over, and giggled over. This thing that made you turn on yourself at times and say, ‘Be your age. Remember Janice Schofield had to get married because she was going to have a baby. And there are girls at the school who don’t go home until four o’clock in the morning. And another is going with a man nearly fifty; and people think nothing of it.’

  In the kitchen Ben was pouring a glass of brandy into a cup of black coffee. It was as he picked the cup up that they heard the car come into the courtyard, and at the moment Tony entered the kitchen Mike came in from the hallway.

  Tony stood with the door in his hand looking from one to the other. Then in a voice that sounded remarkably like Mr Lord’s when about to mount his high horse, he said, ‘He’s back then?’

  This wasn’t a question, it was a statement, but Mike answered, ‘Yes, last night, early evening.’

  ‘Trust him…And now I’m to be chastised like a naughty little boy for being out all night. Is that it, eh?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit more than that, Tony.’ Mike’s voice was low. ‘Mary Ann, on my advice I might say, broke the news to him. I thought it would come easier on him from her than from you.’

  Now there was a strong resemblance to Mr Lord as Tony looked at Mike and said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Mike, that was my business.’

  ‘Aye, it might have been, but I know what the pair of you are like when you get going. I didn’t want you to have anything more on your conscience.’ Mike’s voice too had taken on a cold note. ‘If he had collapsed on you I doubt whether you would have felt so determined to go through with this business of yours.’

  ‘Nothing would have stopped me going through with…this business of mine, as you call it. And it’s because it happens to be my own business that I prefer to look after it.’

  Mary Ann’s eyes, dark and large, were flicking now between her father and Tony. Things were taking a tangent she had never imagined possible. Her da and Tony were on the verge of a row. Her da liked Tony, and Tony liked her da, but there was a bitterness between them now, she could feel it. Her da might subdue himself to Mr Lord out of respect for the old man’s age and because, deep down, he was grateful to him, but she was sure he did not have the same feeling towards Tony. Tony had come to the farm as a boy, student, out to learn. That he was Mr Lord’s grandson made no difference, he was still an ordinary young fellow in her da’s eyes. There were very few people whom her da would knuckle under to, and Tony was taking the wrong tack if he was going to try to put her da in his place. To deflect their attention from each other, she said sharply, ‘I had made up my mind, Tony, to tell him in any case, because, what you seem to forget at the moment is that I am concerned in this affair. Not that I want to be. And I don’t think I was minding anyone else’s business but my own when I explained to him that his plans hadn’t worked out. What’s more, I didn’t want to see him drop down dead when you blurted this—’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mary Ann.’ The voice came from the half-closed door in front of which Mike was standing, and they all swung round as Mr Lord came through into the kitchen.

  ‘…don’t worry, I’ve no intention of dropping down dead.’

  Mary Ann looked at the tight face. The skin had that awful bluish hue, right from the white hairline to where his neck disappeared into his collar.

  The old man turned his gaze now from Mary Ann, and although his eyes were directed towards his grandson they did not look at him, but at some point above the top of his head, as he said, ‘I’m not expecting any explanation from you, nor have I any intention of listening to one. I would be obliged if you would make your departure as quick as possible.’

  Tony’s chin was up and out, but nevertheless it was trembling. ‘You needn’t worry, this is one time I’ll be pleased to obey you. But whether you want any explanation or not, I’m going to tell you that I haven’t spent the night with Mrs Schofield. She happens to be in London. You can confirm that if you like.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your activities, nor in the people you choose to share them with.’ Mr Lord’s eyes came down from the space above Tony’s head, and looking at Ben he said, ‘As soon as our visitors have gone you might lock up. I think we need a little rest.’

  As his thin body turned stiffly towards the hall door again, his glance came to rest on Mike. His expression did not alter, nor yet his tone, as he said, ‘Thank you, Shaughnessy.’ He did not look at Mary Ann.

  When the door had closed on him, Mary Ann, Mike and Ben turned towards Tony. Whereas Mr Lord’s face had been of a blue hue, Tony’s was scarlet. He was shaking, and this was evident to them all when he turned to Mary Ann and there was deep bitterness in his voice as he said, ‘You see, it’ll take a lot to make him drop down dead. He’s tough, and he glories in it. You have to live with him just to know how tough he is. He’s—’

  Ben’s quivering lips were open to make a protest whe
n Mike put in sharply, ‘Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for later, Tony, because then you’ll remember he’s always been good to you…I would say more than good. You can’t blame him for wanting his own way. We all do. You particularly. And you’ve gone your way, so don’t blame him.’

  ‘You definitely know which side you’re on, don’t you?’ Tony’s voice was as furious as his glance.

  Mike’s tone threatened fire too, with the retort, ‘Look here! I’m only being fair. You know my feeling about the old fellow, and I damn well toady to no-one, so be careful. But if you want my opinion—and you don’t—I’ll say you’ve got off pretty lightly with this business. What did you expect him to do? Greet you and her with open arms?’

  For a moment longer Tony returned Mike’s glare, then with a swift movement his head drooped sideways and, his teeth digging into his lower lip, he stared at the floor. Then with a muttered, ‘Oh, hell!’ he thrust himself out of the room.

  Mike walked to where Mary Ann stood near the table, and turning her about, he led her to the door, saying grimly, ‘So long, Ben.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Shaughnessy.’

  Mary Ann did not speak. She did not speak as they went down the hill and across the farmyard. Nor did she speak when she entered the kitchen, but she flung herself into a chair and, burying her face in her arms, burst into a storm of weeping.

  As the sound of Tony’s car breaknecking down the lane onto the main road came to them, Lizzie pushed open the kitchen door, her eyes blinking with sleep, as she exclaimed, ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ said Mike. ‘But I think we’d all better have a strong cup of tea first.’ On this, he lifted up the kettle from the hob and went into the scullery. And Lizzie, bending over Mary Ann, said, ‘Stop it, stop that crying and tell me what’s the matter now, and at this time in the morning. What is it?’