Kate Hannigan's Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  Rosie started to chuckle. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. And I’m glad, Annie…When is it going to be…?’

  ‘Oh, Rosie, don’t be silly. We were only together one day; he had to leave on Tuesday…But it will be some day,’ she added naïvely. ‘He…well…Oh, I can’t talk here. Look, I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  Laughing at a remark of Rosie’s, she rang off, and turned to see Kate standing behind her. Kate was smiling, but her tone was serious when she said, ‘Cathleen rang Rodney up first thing this morning; she’ll be up later. I won’t see her unless it’s impossible not to, and if you see her I shouldn’t say anything to her about Terence.’

  Annie said, ‘No, no. Of course not.’ In her heart, though, she wanted Cathleen to know it was her whom Terence loved.

  She found the place where he had lain. It was a small piece of grassland enclosed on three sides by low bushes. Its open side faced the stream, and the spot was only a few yards away from the pool. There remained quite clearly the impression of his body in the long grass, but not a sign of the book. The little alcove was narrow, and there was no place for it to lie hidden. She switched the long grass near the foot of the bushes, but there was no sign of it. Disappointed, she sat down on the bank of the stream.

  It must be very precious for him to be so concerned about it…Had he written anything about her on his last night here? His mother had said ‘poetry and things’; she couldn’t imagine Terence writing poetry. She realised there were many things about him she didn’t know; there had scarcely been time to talk, just a day together. All the time that had gone before seemed such a waste; every minute that wasn’t spent with him seemed a waste. How had she lived before? What had filled her days? She couldn’t think. And now they would never be really parted; nothing could come between them now, nothing.

  On this vehement assertion, the thought of Cathleen rose like a black spectre. Cathleen’s name had not been mentioned by her, nor by Terence. Was that odd? It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of Cathleen during the time she was with Terence; she had quite often, but she had been afraid to mention her. She had been afraid of hearing Terence mentioning Cathleen’s name, which was silly, but there remained with her still a lingering fear of Cathleen, in spite of the knowledge of Terence’s love. How, Annie asked herself, would she be able to hide her joy from Cathleen’s sharp eyes when they met?

  Cathleen’s spectre faded as Annie watched a family of moorhens dart, one after the other, from a clump of reeds on the opposite bank and paddle away in formation up the stream, their little black bodies sending arrows of waves. The last ripple came almost to her feet as they dangled above the water. With the severe drought, the stream was only half its normal depth. In the winter it usually flowed to within a few inches of the bank top, but now the incurved banks were baked dry. It was her eyes following the path of the ripple which caused her to bend over, and there she saw the book; it was lying practically behind her legs, caught end-up in the thin root of a tree protruding from the bank. It must have dropped when he lowered himself into the stream. She had only to put down her hand to pick it up.

  She laughed softly to herself. Oh, she was glad she had found it! She began to examine it, turning it over and over in her hands. She had never before seen a book bound like this. It was beautiful; no wonder he didn’t want to lose it. How did he come by such a beautiful thing? She knew he could never have bought it. The covers were pieces of fine black leather, on which weird figures were embossed in delicate golds, greens and blues, while the back itself was a panel of exquisitely painted enamel with tiny rings down each side linking the leather covers and the pages together. Across the front were three clasps, in the same enamel as the back.

  She went to undo the clasps, then hesitated. Would he mind her reading his poetry? No, of course not. But it was private, it was his own. Yes, but she was different; he would want her to know all he thought. What did Kate say about reading other people’s letters? But this wasn’t a letter, it was just a book of poems. His mother must have read it to be able to say they were poems. Well, if his mother had read it…She found that the two end clasps sprang back at a touch, but the middle one did not move. It couldn’t be locked, she reasoned, for there was no keyhole. But, do all she might, it would not open to her fingering. There must be a secret spring somewhere. She began systematically to press the back and the rings, which availed her nothing. After a time she laid it down in exasperation.

  But her curiosity began to eat into her, and again she picked it up and searched for a means of releasing the clasp. Finally, when she was admiting defeat, she snapped the two end clasps home together, and to her delight saw the middle one fly open. How simple, yet how ingenious! You could close one clasp after another, and nothing happened, but close them sharply simultaneously and there you had the secret.

  On the flyleaf was the inscription: From a Chinaman to an Englishman, with his deepest respect. Larry. She paused before reading further; there was already a sense of privacy about those words. She fingered the paper. It was fine, like rice paper, but strong, and crackled like parchment.

  On the next page Terence’s writing met her eye, firm, rounded letters forming plain, intelligible words:

  To the gods that be:

  Should I be born again of your bounty,

  Create me a Chinaman.

  How funny, she thought. Before turning another page she paused: Should I? of course; he won’t mind…it isn’t as if it were a letter.

  She turned a page, and read:

  To an old woman of Wherry Street, who had geraniums in her window:

  The windows are clean which she looks through

  To gold-crowned trees dusting skies of blue,

  And birds like arrows before her sight

  Dart into immensity of light;

  Fragile and wax-like the roses must seem,

  Untouchable, like beauty in a dream,

  Icy the chrysanthemums’ frosty elegance,

  Against whose beauty she has no defence;

  She sees them all through her windows bright,

  She sees them there by day and by night.

  Don’t say she looks on a back yard small

  And sees nothing but a gaunt blank wall.

  How quaint! And how nice of him to think of the old woman like that…Oh, her Terence was wonderful.

  She turned another page and read:

  Larry and I listened to two kids arguing with the pointlessness of all youthful argument. We were lying soaking up sun after a swim in Parsons’ Pleasure. I scribbled the following, which tickled him; he translated it into Chinese to send to his sister:

  He said it was a…bluebottle,

  I said it was a…fly.

  He said it was a…bluebottle,

  And then I asked him why.

  Just ’cos…he said,

  Just ’cos…that’s all.

  Wasn’t any answer,

  Was it,

  At all?

  Simple things please Larry. Is this why he’s so happy, I wonder?

  As Annie read on, a sense of guilt began to steal over her. Some of the writing was not poetry, but little pen sketches of different people. And some of the writing disturbed her, as did the piece on ‘Beauty’. She could not really understand it; it seemed rather far-fetched, and had very little connection with the mind she imagined to be Terence’s. She read again:

  Take from me the beauty I have craved; it is past my power to bear; only by pain can I live. How I have longed, cried and striven, pleaded night and day…Oh, give me the power to feel, to be conscious of beauty. Let the springs of my soul fling back its doors, and let me experience the ecstasy of beauty. It is here within me; once released it will flood each aching pore. But how to seek? Where to seek? By what road?

  Unbidden of the moment it came to me, unthought of, unsought, in that second it floated out on the frosty air…A boy’s voice, pealing high and clear, flying away through the stained-glass window…up, up from the muted o
rgan, swinging me with it from the earth as it soared to the very feet of God Himself. And now I knew the power of beauty: no soothing balm this, but a burning, tearing, unbearable emotion; no vein left out, no sense forgotten, each torn apart and sent shivering away into realms unknown: I cried as I was flung into the world I had craved.

  No! no! I am not big enough to bear it. I will take pain, localised and named; earthiness and squalor I will embrace; these I can bear, but beauty…no more.

  Really, it was quite odd, and so intense! she shook her head. Not a bit like Terence!

  She turned to the next writing, and this brought the blood to her cheeks. She read the words again; they were alive and molten, as if they were spilt from some overfull cauldron, and were headed ‘The Sage of Youth’:

  For what do I clamour? you ask…Not the surge of youth that springs and lashes the flesh to its task, conjuring bright pictures in the night of beauty masked in fleshy desire, over which your blood sings and wings to flight; nor the desire to barter all life for the touch of a body, and to work all my days to sustain it, maintain it, in strife, and watch the wrinkles slowly creep, and weep inside, and lash out in the end, crying, ‘Why must I abide?’

  After this tirade I look at myself and laugh, and say, ‘But this do I ask: Age and peace, and fulfilment within.’

  But how can I complete a life without the things I spurn and the experience of sin? If I would reach this mellowness then I must fly, wasting not a day; I must seek me a woman right away.

  Annie stared at the words, not believing what she read. She could see no satire, no subtle humour, no working of a mind fearful of yet grasping at life. I should never have opened the book, she thought; it’s my own fault. But she did not close it. She turned another page as if the paper were burning her:

  I watched an old Cullercoats fisherman gazing out to sea today. He was old, very old, and his eyes were colourless and had almost ceased to see the things of this world.

  What does he see as he gazes afar?

  The texture of the wind?

  The material of a star?

  The soul of a ship resting in the hull?

  The spirit of Time’s flight in the wing of a gull?

  He only feels, and knows, across the bar

  Gone for ever will be the need to gaze afar.

  She made no comment on this one, except to say to herself, The metre’s wrong!

  She turned the pages hastily, scanning the writing, until she came to words that, she told herself, she had known she would find: words about Cathleen, words that made her sick and angry by turns, words that dimmed the sunshine, that took the sparkle from the stream and the wonder from a rising lark in the meadow beyond, words that blotted out the Terence she thought she knew and conjured in his place someone quite different. And she brought the final sentence down on him, the convent’s and confessional’s description of the dark and clamorous products of the mind: ‘They are bad thoughts!’

  She remained quiet; the moorhens came back to their nest; the shadow of a tree touched her and imperceptibly began to move across her. With a great intake of breath she at last moved, and turned and buried her face in the grass. Oh, how could he! How could he think such things? Even if he thought them, to put them into words was infinitely worse. And about Cathleen! He had wanted Cathleen in that way…He said plainly in the writing that he wanted her. Then had they…?

  She suddenly raised herself from the grass and, grasping the book as if she would tear it asunder, she read more:

  I lie near you in the night,

  Pressed close against the earth

  Beneath a tree,

  Breast to breast

  And knee to knee,

  And bless the myriad gods who gave you birth!

  Your breath, your sighs, your senseless chatter,

  Your perfume, your sweat,

  Your endless repetition of ‘my pet’

  Are thickly varnished with the wonder of my body’s flight.

  They do not matter.

  A seabird calls and wings into the night;

  Your voice squeaks, twitters, raised in mock alarm,

  Begging my brave protection from all harm.

  Great warrior. I give it with my might.

  Tomorrow when the sun shines fair

  I shall face myself and find me there,

  Disgusted, horrified that I lusted.

  But that is tomorrow, and this is night!

  Dark earth, soft grass, and you,

  Who would not dare?

  Cathleen Davidson…I hate you, I loathe you! With each word she twisted clumps of dry grass around her hands and tore them up by the roots. My pet!…It’s you who have done this, you who have made him like this! You have also made me like this: capable of hating. I have never hated anyone before, but I hate you! I wish you were dead! I’ve always wished that. ‘Yes, I have!’ she cried aloud, defiantly looking heavenwards.

  Even in her rage she was aware of a feeling of surprise that she had not immediately begged God’s pardon for her sin of hate and defiance. She didn’t cry, which surprised her too. This cold, deadly feeling of hate scorned tears; she found strength in it, it bore her on through her bitterness and recrimination. Cathleen had always tried to spoil everything for her. Since the early days at the convent she had set out to take from Annie every friendship she made, to spoil anything she enjoyed …

  Her mind completed the circle, and returned to Terence. These were his thoughts, not Cathleen’s! It was he who said…What did he say? She looked at the book again, her eyes seeming to lift each word from the page. Bless the myriad gods who gave you birth!…Varnished with the wonder of my body’s flight … Oh, it was horrible! How could he?

  A question sprang from the detached part of her mind which stored her honesty: Had he written all that about you, would you have thought it horrible?

  She gave a flick of her head, making no answer but asking herself: What has he written about me? Has he written anything about me?…There, on the last page he had used, she saw:

  Derision of the Moon

  Your strongest light is but a glimmer

  To the reflection from her hair;

  I see you flaunting it in envy

  Of the pale beauty you see there,

  Borrowing white clouds to enhance your beam

  And hiding your face when she runs,

  Her glinting hair like wind-blown water,

  Her body a silver stream

  In the eerie greenness of a dream.

  You scarred crater,

  A myth of light,

  Torn from the sun

  To light the night,

  What can you know of pale gold hair,

  The torments and laughter hidden there?

  Just about her hair! No words of passion about her…She pulled herself up. Did she want words of passion? No! No, of course not!

  But the small voice came again: You lay like that with him…‘I didn’t! I didn’t!’ she flung back. ‘It wasn’t meant like that.’ She bent her head on to her knees and rocked herself to and fro. And the sense of disappointment which she felt the night Terence pulled her abruptly to her feet when they were lying near the pool returned…And also the next night, on the sands, he had done the same…He clearly didn’t want her as he had wanted Cathleen…He didn’t love her like that; he thought her a child…Well! she didn’t want him to love her like that. Didn’t she know that sort of love was wicked! Hadn’t she suffered all her life because of that kind of wickedness? She had been born of it!

  She thrust the book into her pocket, got hastily to her feet, and walked up through the wood, conflicting emotions tearing at her. She asked herself what she would say about the book…Should she tell him she had read it? Oh, why had she read it? What could she do about it?

  As she neared the bottom of the garden, David ran to meet her with outstretched arms, expecting to find her own arms flung wide to whirl him off his feet. She said, ‘I can’t; it’s too warm.’

 
He stood away from her, his brown eyes full of surprise and enquiry. ‘Have you got a pain in your stomach?’ Since a secret orgy of apples the previous week had resulted in severe pain in his stomach, he was apt to attribute any change in the disposition of those around him to this cause.

  Annie shook her head; she could not even smile at him.

  Taking her hand and walking by her side, he asked, ‘Have you got a pain somewhere else, then?’

  His sympathy was cutting away the feeling of bitterness. She turned her head from his childish gaze. Oh, if only one could stay like David, never, never to grow up and feel the hurts dealt by those you loved! But then, Terence didn’t think she was grown-up, did he? He had said, ‘You are so young.’

  The pain in her heart seemed unbearable; all this beautiful new life to be spoilt by a little book! Why oh why had he to write stupid poetry? Why did people feel the necessity to expose their inmost thoughts? There seemed something odd about people who wrote poetry. Look at Rodney’s first wife. She had written books of it, and got herself killed in the end. Cathleen once brought one of the books to the house—she said she had picked it up in a second-hand shop—and asked Annie if she would like to read it, adding slyly that perhaps Kate might like to see it. She remembered her feeling of panic when she thought Cathleen might show the book to Kate, and begged her not to. Cathleen had played with her like a cat with a mouse for hours. It was a long time ago, and now she knew that Kate wouldn’t have minded seeing the book.

  Cathleen! Always Cathleen. She was like a great black star in her sky, and nothing would blot her out. ‘You have got a pain,’ David said; ‘I know you have. Mammy’ll send you to bed …’

  ‘No, no!’ Annie caught him as he made to run off. Whatever happened Kate mustn’t know how she was feeling; her sympathy might ferret out the cause, and nobody must know about Terence and Cathleen.

  He was a fallen god; for years, in her mind, she had kept him high on a pedestal. He had slipped off at Christmas, but she had gradually forced him back. And now he was once more on the earth, and as her hand touched the book in her pocket it was as if he were saying: ‘This is my foundation. Don’t try to lift me from it again. Remember what I said in my letter? I’m an ordinary chap.’