Kate Hannigan's Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘No. About twenty minutes’ walk.’

  But as they went across the fields and he helped her over fences, the journey was continually being interrupted, and she cried, ‘The twenty minutes is up, where’s this cave of yours?’

  Again laughing and running, he led her along narrow tracks through the scrubland, until they emerged abruptly on the cliff-top. And Annie exclaimed in surprise, ‘Why, I never thought it was possible to reach the cliffs this way. I’ve always gone by the main road!’

  ‘Ah! but this is the prowler’s route,’ he said.

  ‘But, Terence, we can’t get down to the beach here; these cliffs drop straight, and…and they’re dangerous!’

  ‘In parts they are, yes. But there is a way down…Don’t be afraid. Look.’ He took her to the very edge of the cliff and pointed.

  She stepped quickly back, saying, ‘Oh, Terence, I’ll never get down there! I’ll be terrified…I’m a coward about heights.’

  ‘You’re no coward; come on, I’ve got you. Do you think I’d ask you to come this way if there were any danger? Now do you? Give me your hand.’

  She put her hand in his and they began the descent and, as he had said, she found that it was much easier-going than it looked. But when they reached the bottom she could not hide her disappointment that this part of the beach did not merit the difficulty of reaching it, for it was strewn with great boulders, some like miniature cliffs themselves.

  Seeing her expression, he said, ‘Wait, wait!’ and led her to the water’s edge. Mystified, she looked at him when he pointed to a massive rock jutting out into the sea. ‘See that? In another half-hour we’ll be able to walk round it, but if you take off your shoes and stockings we can do it now.’

  Still looking mystified, she allowed him to take off her shoes, which he slung about his neck with his own by their laces. She turned from him as she undid her stockings. This was daylight and there was, she imagined, something immodest about the undoing of a suspender.

  ‘Don’t be afraid for your feet,’ he said as he led her into the water; ‘you won’t find any rocks, there’s smooth sand all the way now.’

  Bewildered, she followed him until they came to the very point of the jutting rock. Here his grip on her hand tightened, and as they rounded the point he watched her expression, and it made him laugh. ‘Was it worth it?’

  ‘It’s wonderful! It’s like a fairy-tale picture.’ She stood still in her amazement, unable to take in the scene.

  For about thirty yards there showed a narrow stretch of sandy beach, rippled by the tide into lines of almost mathematical precision. It lay between huge boulders. And overhanging it like a roof was a sloping shelf of rock, perhaps twenty feet in height at its point nearest the water. From where they stood it looked like a gigantic wedge, attached at its base to the main cliff. The beach and the under-surface of the wedge rose and fell to meet each other far back in the shadows. And out of the shadows came glints of gold and red and brown where the sun caught the wet sheen of the seaweed hanging from the underside of the rock.

  ‘Terence, it’s wonderful!’

  ‘Ah, but wait. There’s still more.’ He was as excited as a boy.

  They left the water, and in a few steps were beneath the roof of rock. Soon it was impossible to walk upright, and as she bent double and walked further into the gloom the seaweed trailed over her hair, and she shivered. ‘Why are we going further, Terence?’

  He said nothing, but went on, almost on his knees now, and she saw him disappear through a black vertical slit in the wall of rock ahead. As she neared it, his arm came through and guided her in.

  She straightened and gazed around her. They were in a tiny cave. It was lit by a strange light, which came from the top of the cave about a foot above her head and which was reflected in gleams of pink and pearl from the shells studding the cave walls.

  ‘It’s unbelievable! How did you find it?’

  ‘By accident. I was climbing down the cliff on the other side to where we came down, and it was this gulley in the rock I found first. Look.’ He pointed to the roof, to where a gap about a foot wide showed along its entire length. ‘It’s a fissure, and it goes straight up through the wedge of rock.’

  She looked up through the crevice, and miles and miles away, it seemed to her, was the sky.

  ‘The sloping shelf was too smooth to venture down,’ went on Terence, ‘and I had no means of knowing how far I should have to drop to the beach if I did slide down, nor how I should get back again. But I made a note of the position of those rocks out there in the sea, and I worked my way round to them from the shore. But it was an awful journey. Then I found the way we came down today…I don’t think anyone else could ever have been here. You see, it’s all so hidden and camouflaged…I call it Davy Jones’s locker.’

  ‘Oh, what an awful name for it! It’s so lovely.’

  ‘Yes, it is lovely’—his tone changed—‘but it could be dangerous too. Deadly, I should say, on certain occasions. Come and see what I mean.’

  Outside the cave again, they made their way under the roof of the rock and into the sunshine, and Terence pointed seawards: ‘You see that? Nothing can get into this bay, and nothing can get out.’

  She looked to where the tide was dancing and surging about the points of a continuous half-circle of rocks. Each end of the half-circle touched the gigantic rocks bordering the bay, and Annie saw that the rock round which they had paddled was really one end of the half-circle, and the only place showing a gap.

  Terence, following her gaze, said, ‘At high tide the water swirls over those rocks like mad and dashes up this beach and fills the cave. I’ve been on top at the opening of the fissure and heard it roaring like millions of demons…So you see why I call it Davy Jones.’

  Annie shuddered. ‘I don’t think I like it so much now…Do you often come here?’

  ‘Yes, when I want to escape.’

  ‘Oh, I’d be terrified if I knew you were here alone…You might fall asleep, or anything, and get cut off.’

  ‘Well then, you must see I never come alone.’

  Their eyes met and held; and they laughed and fell into each other’s arms, and kissed, hot, hard kisses.

  After a while they found a patch of sand where the sun had dried the surface, and they lay close together, face downwards, resting on their elbows and looking out to sea. A warm thoughtful silence fell between them for a time, until Annie said, ‘Terence, why must you go tomorrow morning when school doesn’t start for nearly a week?’

  He rubbed his chin over his linked knuckles: ‘I’ve got to cycle, and it will take me three days at least …’

  ‘But must you cycle? You could get there in a day by train.’

  He looked at her steadily for a moment, then turned his gaze seawards again and started to aim pebbles at an imaginary object. Stopping abruptly, he laughed and said slowly: ‘Miss Hannigan, I think I’d better put my cards on the table and see how you react to the shock.’ As he spoke they turned on their sides and faced one another. ‘First of all, I cycle from necessity, not from pleasure; I haven’t the money for the train fare—’

  ‘But Terence …’

  ‘Now, now, don’t say it. I know you could give me the money, but don’t…don’t offer it, please.’ There was a grim firmness about his voice that silenced her; he was suddenly the other Terence of long ago. He went on, ‘It seems early days yet to speak of ways and means, but I think I’d better let you know what you’re in for, so you’ll know whether you want to go on or not.’ The tone of his voice and the expression of his eyes were at variance. ‘You see, it’s like this: I’ve always had a sort of inferiority complex about you and your money.’

  ‘But I haven’t got any!’ she burst out. ‘Only my allowance.’

  ‘Only your allowance,’ he said quietly. ‘And anything else you may want. But that allowance’, he went on, remembering the amount Cathleen had mentioned, ‘is likely very near to what
I’d expect you to keep house on.’

  The sand seemed to withdraw its support from her body; there was the sea before them, with its trap of rocks; there were the towering cliffs behind them; but her heart took flight at his words and soared away over and beyond them all. And the clear, blue sky did not seem high enough for its soaring. He hadn’t said, ‘Will you marry me?’ He had passed all that, and said, ‘Your allowance is very near to what I’d expect you to keep house on’…Oh Terence! Terence!

  ‘You mightn’t believe it, but my salary will be four pounds ten shillings a week. And that after five years at a university! If I’d left school when I was fourteen I’d likely have been making as much now, besides having been earning all the time since. But here I am, lucky to get this temporary post at four pounds ten, out of which I’ll pay my digs and send something home. This last is very important, Annie: I owe my parents so much.’ He looked at her steadily whilst saying this.

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ she murmured slowly, while her thoughts were clamouring: I’d live with him anywhere…back in the fifteen streets…I’d go out to work…anything, anything…What does money matter? The crowded mass of poverty she had seen the previous morning was entirely forgotten.

  ‘Posts are hard to get,’ Terence was saying. ‘There are dozens after every one. If it hadn’t been for a friend of mine, John Dane Dee, I shouldn’t have got this. He happened to know the headmaster. Incidentally, it’s him, John, I’m to meet in three days’ time. I’m staying overnight at his place, it’s only a few miles from the school. He wants me to live there, but I couldn’t do that. I intend to get digs of some kind, which is why I’m going early, so that I can have a look round. So you see, Annie, how matters stand. It will be months before I’m even straight, for I’ve borrowed money to live on for the next few weeks; you don’t get paid until the end of the month.’

  ‘Terence…Oh, my dear.’ Love, pity and tenderness filled her. She knelt up and bent over him, as a mother over a child. ‘But Terence, there is no need. Why, Rodney would—’

  In a flash he was up on his knees and facing her. She was utterly taken aback by the sudden hardness of his eyes and mouth, so grim and tight that the words were released only with an effort: ‘That’s what I was afraid of…I don’t want any help from Rodney. That’s what you must understand. I don’t want it now, or ever…I like him, I like him very much, but I’m not going to become the recipient of his philanthropy through you. If I’m to have you, then I’m going to keep you. But it will have to be my way…I’ll work, I’ll get on. At least, I hope I shall. But you’ll have to take that chance. You’ve also got to know this: even if I do get on, I’ll never be rich; there’s no fortune to be made from teaching. You’ll never be able to dress as you do now, or have half the comforts. Why, we’d be lucky if we could set up in a two-roomed flat.’ He stopped abruptly, knelt back on his heels and passed his hand over his brow: ‘What am I talking about? Why am I yammering on?’ His voice lost its cutting edge and became weary. ‘I’ve never even asked you…You never even said…God, what a fool I am to get all worked up!’ He looked at her and murmured, ‘Oh, my dear, don’t cry. I’m a beast. What possessed me to go diving into the future like that? Don’t, oh don’t, Annie.’

  She was crying silently, as she had done that day in the wood.

  He pulled her to him: ‘Annie…Annie, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Don’t. Don’t cry like that. Only I had to tell you, and I warned you I’m a bad-tempered beast. Here am I dictating and bullying you when I don’t even know if you will marry me. All I want is to love you…always to love you.’

  He kissed her so fiercely they lost their balance and fell over. They lay where they fell, and she murmured, ‘I’d live with you anywhere. Anywhere. I’d do anything for you, anything in the world you want. I don’t care where we live, I only want you.’

  They lay as one, silent, not moving. The tide went out and the sun went down. And he thought: This must not happen. It mustn’t! But he lay on, pressed close to her.

  12

  Terence had been gone three days, days in which Annie flitted about the house and the garden like one possessed of the very essence of the joy of living. Kate, Rodney and David, and even the baby, seemed to be caught up in the reflection of her happiness. On the morning of the fourth day Terence’s letter came, a pencilled note written at dawn after his first night of camping. She flew up to her room with it, and read the beginning with dismay:

  Dear Miss Hannigan,

  This is just to inform you there are times when I earnestly wish I had never set eyes on you. Apart from interfering with my sleep, you are also interfering with my sense of direction. Twice I have taken the wrong road, an unusual occurrence with me, a map expert. Also I’ve had the strange urge to sing, with embarrassing results, for I am tone-deaf.

  Annie fell across the bed, laughing and clutching the letter to her. This was another side of him…a funny side. She lay on her back and continued to read:

  … So you see what you’ve done to me. Oh Annie, Annie, Annie. Now I’m away from you I really can’t believe it…Do you love me? Do you—this long, lanky, plain individual? I have a colossal nerve to expect it. But I do expect it, remember that…I expect you to love me, Miss Hannigan.

  Oh, Annie, I keep repeating your name; the pedals of my bike beat it out as they take me further and further away from you. And to think I won’t see you till Christmas! Annie, I love you. I couldn’t put into words all I thought of you when we were together. I don’t think I ever shall be able to. You’re made up of all my dreams from a boy; you’re so wonderful. Yes, you are the wonderful one—not me, Annie. Try not to class me in that category…it frightens me. I’m just a very ordinary chap, but a very lucky one, the luckiest one alive…Do you realise how beautiful you are?

  At this point Annie turned on her face and lay still, the letter crushed beneath her. It was too big to take in; that Terence should care for her like this, as much as she did for him…Who was it said two people couldn’t love each other equally, that one must love more than the other?

  The bell rang for breakfast, and she hastily read the rest of the letter, then went to the dressing-table to tidy her hair. And as she passed the window she caught sight of Mrs Macbane standing uncertainly in the drive below. Eagerly she hung out of the window and called, ‘Good-morning, Mrs Macbane!’

  Mrs Macbane looked up, relieved, and said, ‘Oh, good-morning, Miss Annie. Could…could I speak to you a minute?’

  Annie was out of the room and down the stairs and on the drive so quickly that Mrs Macbane exclaimed, ‘Why, Miss Annie, you’d think you flew!’ She gave her a happy, warm smile. ‘It was just this, Miss Annie,’ she went on: ‘Terence has a little book that he writes things in—you know, bits of poetry and things—and he’s gone and lost it. He posted a card in Newcastle on Tuesday morning, just after he left, to say he must have left it behind in his room and would I send it on to him. Then this morning I get another letter to say he hadn’t left it in his room, he remembered writing in it in …’ Mrs Macbane hesitated. ‘Eeh, Miss Annie, I don’t know how to tell you this, ’cos the doctor’d likely be vexed if he knew, but Terence sleeps out most nights when it’s fine, and on his last night home he slept in your grounds. He said he lay in a little copse near the pool, and he remembered writing in his book there. And he’s asked me to go up the stream and look for it. But, Miss Annie, I couldn’t plodge up the stream, now could I? And anyway, I wouldn’t go into your place without asking…So I thought, if you wouldn’t mind, Miss Annie …’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Macbane! Of course, of course I’ll get it. And, Mrs Macbane, call me Annie…Terence and I are…we’re friends.’

  Mrs Macbane nodded slowly: ‘Aye, I’m right glad, Miss Annie…I’ll get out of it, lass, through time,’ she laughed. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘I am glad; I’ve known there was summat wrong with him for a long time, and…it was you. He’s a lucky lad.’ She smiled her kindly smile. ‘But he’s a good lad,’ she added
, ‘such a good lad. Eeh! now I must get on or I’ll miss me tram. And you’ll look for the book?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Macbane, I’ll get it. And I’ll bring it along to you tonight. Or shall I send it on to him?’

  ‘You could, lass. Yes, you could…You know where to send it? To Mr Dane Dee’s house.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  Annie’s liking for Mrs Macbane was added to by the simple omission of the ‘Lord’ when speaking of Dane Dee; so few could have resisted that temptation, she thought.

  As she ran back to the house, she wondered whether Terence had written about her in his little book.

  Kate was at the telephone in the hall, and she held up her hand to Annie in a warning to be still and to wait. She was saying, ‘I’m very sorry, Rosie. I’ll come up later, but I can’t see what I can do. You see, we’ve never spoken for years, and I’m sure the Jarrow relations will not let me do anything for the child.’

  Annie heard Rosie say, ‘My mother feels Pat will go off his head if anything happens to her. He’s been looking after her; the granny from Jarrow’s there, but she’s so old, and partly stupid.’

  ‘All right, Rosie,’ said Kate; ‘I’ll come up later…Here’s Annie.’

  As Annie took the phone Kate whispered, ‘Connie Fawcett’s dying.’

  Annie said, ‘Oh, poor thing,’ but she could feel no sorrow. Connie Fawcett remained in her memory as a mountain of drunken fat, and as a woman who had shamed her in the street. She said, ‘Hello, Rosie,’ and for a moment listened to her friend talking.

  Then, turning round to see if the hall was clear, she whispered, ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Terence and I, you know, Terence Macbane …’

  She stopped, and Rosie said, ‘Ah, yes.’

  Annie went on, ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’