Kate Hannigan's Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  This remark of Kate’s uncovered a dread in Rosie’s mind; she knew the new life which was opening for her would separate her from her people, and the thought of leaving her father, in particular, was an actual pain. But the pain was intensified when she realised that the career before her would lift her out of Michael Davidson’s life even before he became aware that she was in it. She was twenty, and Michael was eighteen. The two years’ difference in their ages seemed a wide gulf now, but once he reached twenty it would narrow. She had found a strange contentment in waiting; he was always nice to her, and in spite of his youthful love for Annie, deep within herself she dared to hope that through her singing and his playing something would emerge. Neither by look nor sign had she indicated her real interest in him. At that party at Christmas she was tempted to sit near him all the time and to choose only him as a partner, but her native caution warned her that Cathleen’s caustic remarks, should she sense any bond of interest between them, would come raining down on them; she was wise enough to know that ridicule is like a black frost to budding love. No boy had ever asked to take her out; even the lads round the doors had passed her over. But it hadn’t mattered; there was always hope. But now, if she were to leave the north she would leave Michael. But perhaps before that time something might happen. Yes, something might happen.

  When Kate left them, Cathleen and Terence had stood for a while looking after her. Then Cathleen flounced round, the smile gone from her face and her lips moving over each other in an odd, rolling motion: ‘Who does she think she is? “How dare you! How dare you say such a thing!”’ she mimicked. ‘She’s got a nerve when you come to think of it. She maddens me with that virtuous front of hers. She must forget she had a kid when she was seventeen, and was the doctor’s fancy piece for years.’

  Terence closed his eyes for a second. It always astounded him, and grated on some finer sensibility, when this girl with her convent education took on the vernacular of some dock woman. She seemed to slip from one character to another so swiftly that he was at a loss to know which was her, and it especially grated that she should speak of Kate so. He was about to make a remark on the inadvisability of misusing rumour when Cathleen’s next words arrested him. ‘She’s as sly as a box of monkeys, and winds Uncle Rodney round her finger. Her latest move is, she has got Miss Annie an allowance. Since the Virgin has decided to go in for teaching, Rodney is allowing her two pounds a week…Two pounds a week, mind! But of course, she has the dreadful hardship of buying her own clothes out of it!’

  In the ramble of abuse, Terence’s thoughts hung round the phrase ‘Two pounds a week’. Good Lord, two pounds a week…and nothing to do with it! Sometimes he hadn’t as much as that to last him a term. He had to count each farthing; if he bought a book, he had to cut down on everything for weeks, even the twopenny packet of Woodbines, bought sheepishly from a little shop in a side street, became a luxury…And she had £2 a week!

  Cathleen’s next remark seemed to precede by a fraction his own train of thought. ‘Who do they expect her to marry?’ she asked. ‘Some wealthy lord? No ordinary fellow will be able to keep her in the way she’s being brought up, like some damned princess!’

  She was right, Terence thought. Yes, she was right. Cathleen had her feet on the earth; she made you see things in their right perspective. He would neither think nor worry any more about the change in Annie.

  Up till that evening at the party he had deliberately thought of her as a child—it was a protection against her—but the next day when they had met the change in her was evident. Her childishness had been replaced by a poise which was far beyond her years; she had not played snowballs with him. He went to the house, on Rodney’s invitation, to have a talk, and stayed to tea, wondering all the while at her coolness, which was so foreign to her.

  It was the expression on her face when Cathleen put in an unexpected appearance that gave him the explanation. His mind clicked back to the game, and the kisses in the bedroom, and he went hot under the collar at the realisation that somewhere in that room Annie must have been hiding. After spending some miserable days wondering how he could explain it to her, but knowing he couldn’t, he finally came to the conclusion that it was the very best thing that could have happened. It made him see what he had known all along, that she was the kind of girl who thought a kiss sealed one to her for life; and, as he had already told himself, he wasn’t starting anything …

  Yet he had started something with Cathleen, hadn’t he? Yes, but she was different—she didn’t take things seriously. And he didn’t mean to keep it up…But somehow he couldn’t get away. He often asked himself what he thought about Cathleen, but got no coherent answer. When she had kissed him in the bedroom that night she had released something that craved constant feeding. He kept himself from her embraces as long as he could, but once he allowed himself to kiss her a power suffused him and tore at him for expression, so that towards the end of the Christmas vac he felt he was becoming drunk with her. He wondered if the intensity of his feeling was due to his lack of association with other girls.

  Cathleen broke into his thoughts again: ‘Why should she worry about who she marries? She knows Rodney will back a husband, as he does one of his pet projects, like the clinic or Rosie Mullen.’ She cast a sidelong glance at him, and suddenly changed character again. ‘Come on, pet,’ she laughed. ‘Why should we care? Let’s go up Simonside, where it’s quiet. I was a fool to ask you to meet me in the town anyway, but I thought I knew exactly where my respected parents were and that it would be quite safe. I didn’t bank on meeting the Countess.’

  She tucked her arm in his, and danced along beside him, happy with herself again. She had managed to get quite a lot over. Her gaiety was momentarily chilled by the thought of Steve. He had looked furious. Well, let him. He was always telling her to get a young fellow—and he was right, too. She was becoming just a little bit tired of Steve; he no longer had to be coaxed to make love. Once she got Terence crazy about her, she would drop Steve altogether.

  Terence was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud: he never seemed to get past the kissing stage, he needed coaching. For no reason that was apparent to Terence she gave her deep, throaty laugh. Oh, it was going to be fun, especially since the Virgin was goggle-eyed about him…That night at the party, she had looked like a sick cow!

  They stood kissing behind a hedge in a deserted lane. But today there was a difference. The force of the wind was not stronger than Cathleen: she carried Terence to the brink of a gulf that promised peace to his torn nerves once he jumped. Time and again he said to himself, What odds! but always he hesitated, until at last he drew away, saying, ‘It’s getting on; I said I’d be home for tea.’

  There was a bleakness about Cathleen’s face, but she laughed and said, ‘All right, pet. We’ll go together. I was supposed to be going to look up Uncle Rodney, anyway.’

  As they walked back into the town a strange flatness descended on Terence. He was half filled with regret for not taking advantage of the opportunity that had been offered to him with such abandon, and at the same time there was a feeling of repulsion towards Cathleen.

  During the half-hour it took them to reach the station he hardly spoke. And she too was strangely silent. But her silence was heavy with power…her whole being was in revolt. She had been spurned! The fool! He was afraid. Well, she’d make him forget he was even civilised. With a sudden fierceness she tucked her arm in his and, gripping his hand, twined her fingers about it.

  It was like this that Annie came face to face with them in the narrow, walled incline that led to the station. She was coming down in a surge of workmen, faces begrimed with dirt and sweat under their greasy caps, bait tins swinging and clashing. It was in an endeavour to sidestep some people coming up that she found herself wedged for a moment face to face with Terence. Their faces a few inches from each other, their bodies touching, they stood in the surge, isolated. Their eyes, taken unawares, stared their thoughts for one brief second; then Cathleen’s
arm jerked them apart, and as they were moved on her voice cried back to Annie, ‘See you later, darling…going to look in on Uncle Rodney.’

  Annie walked to the dock gates. The Jarrow tram was in, but she went past it; she would walk to the fifteen streets, she must think. If a thing worries you it must not be buried, Rodney had said, it must be brought to the surface, right out into the open, and dissected; it was the only way to cure a worry. Oh, if she could only cure herself of this feeling. She thought she had, but now it was back, as bad as ever…worse, because of the arm that had been tucked in his. Oh God, forgive me. Oh sweet Lady, forgive me. Stop me from hating her…How did she know he was back? They must have been writing to each other. Oh Mother of God, take all jealousy from me. He must like her or he wouldn’t be with her, would he? she asked herself. No. And he could never have really liked me, because he’s always avoided me; he’s avoided me for years. But that night in the hall when he kissed my hand…he liked me then. I know he liked me then. And in the lane in the snow…Oh, I can’t bear it! I wish I were dead and at peace. There’s no peace anywhere …

  That wasn’t really true, it was peaceful at home and in the convent. But Sister Ann said peace must be born inside of one; there was no lasting peace to be got from outside. Annie felt that was only partly true, for she had only to enter the convent gates to feel a certain peace flow through her. She loved the convent and everyone in it. That kind of love brought peace. Not the kind of love she felt for Terence, or Brian felt for her. And that was another worry…Brian. She had come to be a little afraid of Brian since that night, some weeks ago, when he asked her if she would become engaged to him when she was nineteen. She had said hurriedly, ‘No! No! I don’t want to become engaged to anyone, now or ever.’ The facile good humour had left his face, and she saw what she had often suspected, a Brian strong in his own conceit, unable to accept defeat on his personal merits.

  ‘I won’t stop trying,’ he said. ‘You’ve been my girl for years, you know you have. One thing I do know: there’s no-one else going to have a look-in while I’m around.’

  He still visited the house whenever she was home on holiday. Although she had told him plainly that his visits must stop, he would laugh and joke, saying he hadn’t come to see her, that there were other members of her family. But under his laughing good humour there was an iron determination which frightened her.

  What would it be like, she thought, not to feel frightened, not to worry, and not to have this sickly pain filling her being whenever she thought of Terence Macbane? Would she ever again be the same person she was before Christmas?

  She lifted her eyes from the greyness of the road to the sky. There was turmoil even there. Dirty white clouds were scudding frantically across a grey expanse. Nothing but grey, below and above her. The cloud formation at one point seemed to boil, churning round and round. As she watched there came a break; a patch of delicate green showed. It grew bigger, changing tone, colour after colour added to it, now pink, now pearl, now blue…Our Lady’s blue, she thought. There was a sudden brightness overhead and around her. The greasy street shone; the grey walls became pink-toned and warm; the sun was out. She caught her breath. It seemed like an omen, as if God were telling her not to worry; and a picture of the convent loomed before her eyes. She stopped dead on the road and stared up into the sky. The peace within the convent walls, the gentleness there…Sister Ann. Could it be? Could it be that God was telling her what to do? That this was the way? She walked on again slowly, dazed with the thoughts that were crowding into her mind.

  Unseeing, she almost ran into a group of four little girls. They stood, shabby and dirty, clapping each other’s hands in turn and chanting:

  ‘Okey-pokey, wunfy-fum,

  Putty Bo-peep and Calabar-cum,

  Chingery-wongery, wingery-woe,

  King of the Cannibal Islands.’

  They grinned at her, chanting all the while, their noses tilted, one very dirty and ringed with a yellow crust. Annie paused for a while and smiled down on them…children. She was going to teach children. She would never have children of her own, but she would be among children always, in the convent. These were from the fifteen streets. They were playing on this very road where she once played. And she thought, with what she imagined was a revelation, that God knew on that far-gone day what he wanted of her. He had let her experience misery and fear; He had shown her wealth and comfort, and let her fall in love…For what? To prove to her that they were as nothing, that He wanted her for Himself, that in Him she would find that divine peace…once she became a nun.

  7

  During the Easter holidays the revelation of her true vocation, as Annie had come to think of it, was strengthened day by day. Cathleen’s almost nightly popping in, her gaiety, her constant reference to ‘my Terence’, turned Annie’s decision to enter the convent into an intense desire, more intense because her thoughts found no outlet. She must wait until the baby was born, though, before telling Kate. She dreaded her disclosure to Kate and Rodney, but particularly to Kate. She foresaw a struggle, and she wanted no struggle with Kate; she desired only to please her in all things.

  It was Saturday morning, and she had been down to the wood to gather primroses for the little altar in her room. She arranged them now in two low, rose-coloured bowls and set one before the statue of Our Lady and the other at the bare feet of the brown-habited St Anthony. In front of the crucifix in the centre of the altar, she laid a red rose from the green-house. She stood back and reviewed her handiwork. The altar looked beautiful: surely, surely, if she prayed hard enough, this burning jealousy of Cathleen would go, together with the ache that the very name of Terence Macbane brought up.

  Impulsively she knelt down on the little plush hassock and beseeched God to help her. She was afraid she didn’t keep all the good intentions she made; she could only keep them so long as she didn’t see Cathleen. But David’s voice brought her from her knees, shouting, ‘Ooh-ooh! Annie. Where are you?’ The bedroom door burst open, and he ran in, crying, ‘There’s someone downstairs to see you—a man.’

  ‘Oh, David! April Fool’s Day is passed…Look, darling.’ She crouched down on her heels, and faced him, holding his hands. ‘It ends, as I told you, at twelve o’clock on the first of April.’

  ‘I like April Fool’s Day, but there’s a man at the gate. I told him I’d tell you as Mammy and Daddy are at the clinic.’

  ‘Oh, you silly billy!’

  ‘I’m not a silly billy!’ He danced away from her and round to the other side of the bed: ‘I’m Hannigan Prince.’

  ‘Who?’ Annie laughed.

  ‘Hannigan Prince. That’s what the postman called me. I like that name…Hannigan Prince.’ He danced round the room.

  ‘It’s a silly name, the postman was just being funny.’

  ‘I like Hannigan Prince.’

  ‘You are David Prince!’

  ‘No. Hannigan. I want to be Hannigan, like you,’ David laughed gleefully. Then with a swift change of expression he walked solemnly to the altar and said, ‘Annie, why can’t I have an altar in my room? I want an altar.’

  She took his hand and led him out of the room, saying, ‘You have some nice pictures of the baby Jesus.’

  ‘But I want an altar.’ They were descending the stairs, and he added, ‘Look, there he is, the man at the front door. He’s not April Fool, see.’

  In the open doorway stood a young man Annie had not seen before. He was tall and well-made, but his face seemed to belie the masculinity of his body, for the delicate bone formation would have given beauty to a woman. He said, ‘Good-morning. I didn’t ring; the little boy said he would tell you…I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m lost.’ He smiled at her.

  Annie smiled back at him, thinking what a lovely voice he had. She asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Well, I’m looking for the house of a friend of mine, Terence Macbane. I’ve walked further along the lane, but all I could see were trees and the gleam of w
ater in the distance.’

  ‘That’s the stream,’ said Annie. ‘The Macbanes’ cottage is to the right, and their garden runs down to the stream.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He stood looking at her for a moment, then stepped back, saying, ‘It’s rather a lovely old house you have.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  ‘And a most delightful garden.’ He seemed reluctant to take his leave, and smiled at her again. ‘Well, I must get along. Goodbye, young sir.’ He laughed down on David and, raising his hat, he gave Annie a slight bow. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

  She watched him walk down the path, and when he reached the gate, he turned and gave her a wave. She raised her hand once in return and smiled a farewell, before turning into the house again. He’s nice, she thought, and he must be a friend of Terence’s, and—the tearing stab came again—Cathleen will get to know him and we’ll never hear the last of it. Oh, if only I didn’t have to listen to her …

  For the tenth time in an hour Mrs Macbane went down to the gate and looked along the lane. At last she was rewarded by the sight of her husband. With a backward glance at the cottage, she furtively ran to meet him; and, as in all the twenty-six years of their marriage this had never happened before, Mr Macbane stopped dead and awaited her coming, his first thought being, The lad! Summat’s happened to the lad. No, no, nowt must happen to the lad!

  But when she came close to him and whispered agitatedly, ‘It’s the lord…He’s come,’ he thought: God Almighty! She’s gone barmy. But anyway, that was better than anything happening to the lad. So he said, ‘Oh aye…Weel, there’s plenty of room fer him.’ He walked on, glancing at her sideways, and she said, ‘You don’t understand. You’ll have to slip in the back way and get a wash in the scullery.’

  ‘Aye…Aye,’ he said slowly. ‘Weel, yer know, missis, I’ve never washed in the scullery yet, and I’m not going to start now, not fer anyone, from the bloody Lord downwards.’ Nice kettle of fish. And at their time of life, too. But he should’ve expected it; they all went a bit queer at the change. It’d likely pass. ‘The lad in?’ he asked.