Table of Contents
The Catherine Cookson Story
Tilly Trotter Wed
Author’s Note
PART ONE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
PART TWO
One
Two
Three
PART THREE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
PART FOUR
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
The Catherine Cookson Story
In brief:
Her books have sold over 130 million copies in 26 languages throughout the world and still counting . . .
Catherine Cookson was born Katherine Ann McMullen on June 27th, 1906 in the bleak industrial heartland of Tyne Dock, South Shields (then part of County Durham) and later moved to East Jarrow which is now in Tyne and Wear.
She was the illegitimate daughter of Kate Fawcett, an alcoholic, whom she thought was her sister. She was raised by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. The poverty, exploitation and bigotry she experienced in her early years aroused deep emotions that stayed with her throughout her life and which became part of her stories. Catherine left school at 13 and after a period of domestic service, she took a job in a laundry at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, working all hours and saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house. She took in gentleman and lady lodgers to supplement her income and took up fencing as one of her hobbies. One of her lodgers was Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School and in June 1940 they married. They were devoted to each other throughout their lives together. But the early years of her marriage were beset by the tragic miscarriage of four pregnancies and her subsequent mental breakdown. This took her over a decade to recover from, which she did, often by standing in front of a mirror and giving herself a damn good swearing at!
Catherine took up writing as a form of therapy to deal with her depression and joined the Hastings Writers’ Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. In 1976, she returned to Northumberland with Tom and wen3t on to write 104 books in all. She became one of the most successful novelists of all time and was one of the first authors to have 3 or 4 titles in the Bestseller Lists at the same time.
She read widely: from Chaucer to the literature of the 1920s; to Plato’s Apologia on the trial and death of Socrates (she said that here was someone who stuck to his principles even unto death); to history of the nineteenth century and the Romantic poets; to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son and the books and booklets that abounded in her part of the country dealing with coal, iron, lead, glass, farming and the railways. She disliked it when her books were labeled as ‘romantic’. To her, they were ‘readable social history of the North East interwoven into the lives of the people’. For the millions of her readers, she brought ‘an understanding of themselves or perhaps of their dear ones. Her stories do not bring in a realism in which the worst is taken for granted, but a realism in which love, caring and compassion appear, and most certainly hope. ‘This type of realism does exist,’ Tom Cookson said of her writing. There is nothing sentimental about her writing; she is unrelenting in the strong images she invokes and the characters she portrays. They were born of her formative years and her personal struggles. Many of her novels have been transferred to stage, film and radio with her television adaptations on ITV lasting over a decade and achieving ratings of over 10 million viewers.
Besides writing, she was an innovative painter and she believed that her father’s genes fostered the strength to work hard but also, in rare moments of freedom, to strive to better herself. Catherine was famed for her care of money but had given much to charities, hospitals and medical research in areas close to her heart and to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne who set up a lectureship in hematology. The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust continues to donate generously to charitable causes. The University later conferred her the Honorary Degree of Master of Arts. She received the Freedom of the Borough of South Tyneside, today known as Catherine Cookson Country. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year and she was voted Personality of the North East. Other honours followed: an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986 and she was created Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1997.
Throughout her life but especially in the later years, she was plagued by a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers and stomach and resulted in anemia. As her health declined, she and her husband moved for a final time to Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne to be nearer medical facilities. For the last few years of her life, she was bed-ridden and Tom hardly ever left her bedside, looking after her needs, cooking for her and taking her on her emergency trips, often in the middle of the night, into Newcastle. Their lives were still made up of the seven day week and twelve or more hours each day, going over the fan mail, attending to charities and going over the latest dictated book, with Tom meticulously making corrections line by line, for Catherine’s eyesight had long faded in her 80’s.
This most remarkable woman passed away on June 11th 1998 at the age of 91. Tom, six years her junior, had earlier suffered a heart attack but survived long enough to be with her at her end. He passed away on 28th June, just 17 days after his beloved Catherine.
Catherine Cookson’s Books
NOVELS
Colour Blind
Maggie Rowan
Rooney
The Menagerie
Fanny McBride
Fenwick Houses
The Garment
The Blind Miller
The Wingless Bird
Hannah Massey
The Long Corridor
The Unbaited Trap
Slinky Jane
Katie Mulholland
The Round Tower
The Nice Bloke
The Glass Virgin
The Invitation
The Dwelling Place
Feathers in the Fire
Pure as the Lily
The Invisible Cord
The Gambling Man
The Tide of Life
The Girl
The Cinder Path
The Man Who Cried
The Whip
The Black Velvet Gown
A Dinner of Herbs
The Moth
The Parson’s Daughter
The Harrogate Secret
The Cultured Handmaiden
The Black Candle
The Gillyvors
My Beloved Son
The Rag Nymph
The House of Women
The Maltese Angel
The Golden Straw
The Year of the Virgins
The Tinker’s Girl
Justice is a Woman
A Ruthless Need
The Bonny Dawn
The Branded Man
The Lady on my Left
The Obsession
The Upstart
The Blind Years
Riley
The Solace of Sin
The Desert Crop
The Thursday Frie
nd
A House Divided
Rosie of the River
The Silent Lady
FEATURING KATE HANNIGAN
Kate Hannigan (her first published novel)
Kate Hannigan’s Girl (her hundredth published novel)
THE MARY ANN NOVELS
A Grand Man
The Lord and Mary Ann
The Devil and Mary Ann
Love and Mary Ann
Life and Mary Ann
Marriage and Mary Ann
Mary Ann’s Angels
Mary Ann and Bill
FEATURING BILL BAILEY
Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey’s Lot
Bill Bailey’s Daughter
The Bondage of Love
THE TILLY TROTTER TRILOGY
Tilly Trotter
Tilly Trotter Wed
Tilly Trotter Widowed
THE MALLEN TRILOGY
The Mallen Streak
The Mallen Girl
The Mallen Litter
FEATURING HAMILTON
Hamilton
Goodbye Hamilton
Harold
AS CATHERINE MARCHANT
Heritage of Folly
The Fen Tiger
House of Men
The Iron Façade
Miss Martha Mary Crawford
The Slow Awakening
CHILDREN’S
Matty Doolin
Joe and the Gladiator
The Nipper
Rory’s Fortune
Our John Willie
Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet
Go tell It To Mrs Golightly
Lanky Jones
Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Our Kate
Let Me Make Myself Plain
Plainer Still
Tilly Trotter Wed
Tilly Trotter has devotedly served Mark Sopwith at Highfield Manor for twelve years. She is his wife in all but name. Theirs is a scandalous yet happy arrangement. But when Mark dies, Tilly is left pregnant with his illegitimate child.
Cast out of the manor house by Mark’s spiteful grown-up daughter, Tilly is forced to face the prejudices of the local village. No stranger to hardship, she makes do as best she can, but when a villager’s vicious attack leaves her baby son, Willy, half blinded she knows that it is time to leave her native Tyneside.
A new love seems to offer an escape and so she follows her heart to America, sure that this will be the beginning of a better life. But new perils await Tilly across the ocean...
TILLY TROTTER WED
Catherine Cookson
Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1981
The right of Catherine Cookson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form.
ISBN 978-1-78036-099-7
Sketch by Harriet Anstruther
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described, all situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
Published by
Peach Publishing
Author’s Note
With regard to some of the details in the second part of this book, I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to T. R. Fehrenbach and Sue Flanagan.
Having read two histories of the USA, I was led to Lone Star (New York, Macmillan, 1968) and Comanches (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1975) and from then on became lost in admiration for Mr Fehrenbach’s knowledge of the Indians in the early history of Texas. But his scholarship made me pause and caused me to ask myself how I dare attempt to write about a place I had not even visited.
When I had the urge to move for once out of my milieu, I chose Texas. Why, I don’t know. And it wasn’t until I was advised to read the above books that the audaciousness of my effort opened up before me and I hesitated whether to continue with my story. Only the fact that I was in no way attempting to emulate, even as a faint shadow, the scholarship in these books but was merely imbibing the flavour for a background to a novel allowed me to go ahead.
Apart from the facts I have gained from these books, my personal interest in Texas has been aroused and my education certainly furthered.
From Sue Flanagan’s work I received great help too. The wonderful photographs in her book, Sam Houston’s Texas (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1964), and the information attached, I found invaluable.
Finally, I may say I have tried within my capacity to keep to facts, but like most authors of novels I may have resorted now and again to a little licence; so should this be noted by a Texan I beg his forbearance, for after all I am merely a teller of tales.
Catherine Cookson March 1980
PART ONE
BACK TO THE BEGINNING
One
‘She should leave the house, and now!’
‘You can’t turf her out just like that, Jessie Ann, she’s entitled to stay until after the funeral; and there’s every possibility, naturally, she’ll be mentioned in the will.’
‘Naturally, you say!’
‘Yes, naturally, because she’s acted as a wife to Father for years.’
‘She’s acted as the creature who’s kept us away from our birthright for years.’
‘Y . . . you, you . . . talk like a penny magazine, Jessie Ann.’
Mrs Jessie Ann Cartwright, one time Jessie Ann Sopwith, rounded on her nineteen-year-old brother, crying, ‘Don’t talk to me like that, John! I won’t be spoken to in that fashion.’
As the young man opened his mouth to stammer out a reply his elder brother sat down heavily on a chair, put his hands to his head and said, ‘God! I wish this was over. And I wish you, Jessie Ann, would stop bickering and acting like a matronly bitch.’
At this the young Mrs Cartwright swelled so much inside her black taffeta that the silk rustled, and her indignation was such that she found it impossible to speak. And now John, as always aiming to smooth matters, approached his sister, saying, ‘Luke didn’t mean that, we . . . we are all t . . . tensed up. And . . . and you know, Jessie Ann, y . . . you . . . you used to be as fond of Tro . . . Trotter as any of us, so what’s made you so b . . . bitter?’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Jessie Ann thrust out her hand towards him as if pushing him aside. ‘You know as well as I do we’d have all returned home four years ago when Mother died if it hadn’t been for her.’
‘Oh. Oh, be fair.’ Luke was on his feet now, pointing towards her. ‘We all had the chance to come back.’
‘Yes, on terms that we accept her status in the household, she who had been a maid, a nursery maid, and then assumed the position of mistress.’
‘Well, she was mistress, his mistress, and mistress of the house. And for my part I think she did it very well because what you seem to forget, Jessie Ann, is that after Father had the accident in the mine and lost his feet he became a different person altogether, and as the years went on a most trying individual, and if it hadn’t been for Trotter, God only knows what would have happened to him.’
As their sister stared at them the two young men returned her look, but not with her hostility; then John put in softly, ‘Sh . . . she had a lot to p . . . put up with, had Trotter, she was in a very difficult position and . . . and what you forget, Jessie Ann, is that sh . . . she didn’t marry him and she could have. He told Luke and me here, di . . . didn’t he Luke? that he had tried to per . . . persuade her, so I think that’s very much in her favour.’
‘She’s got you two besotted, like she had Father. Well, she didn’t have that effect on Matthew or me.’
‘I . . . I wouldn’t be too sure of that if I were you.’
She now jerked her plump chin towards Luke. ‘Well, I am sure of it. Matthew went to America when he
got the chance because he couldn’t stand the situation.’
‘No, he couldn’t stand the situation, but not for the reason that you imagine.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, partly I mean that he couldn’t stand the set-up in Scarborough any longer, and Mama’s whining and then Grandma’s domination after her going.’
‘Oh, how dare you, Luke!’
‘I dare, Jessie Ann, because it’s the truth. And when the invitation came from Uncle Alvero for Matthew to go and try his hand out there he jumped at it. And with Grandfather dying and leaving him pretty warm there was nothing to stop him, so there you have it.’
Jessie Ann’s taffeta rustled again and John, after walking towards the blazing fire whose flames were illuminating the room on this dark January afternoon, bent forward, holding out his hands to the warmth as he said, ‘Th . . . that’s always puzzled me about Matthew, no . . . not Grandfatherle . . . leaving him all that money but that he didn’t offer to help Father. He could have reopened the mine and go . . . got things working again.’
‘Flogging a dead horse.’
John turned his head and glanced at Luke. ‘You . . . you think so?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. In any case, I think he did offer but Father would have none of it.’
‘Did he tell you?’
‘No; you know Matthew, tight as a drum and off like a cannon if one probed too deeply. No, but it was something Father said.’
‘I think he should have made an effort to come for the funeral.’
Tilly Trotter Wed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Page 1