Return to Jarrow

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Tom. . .?’ She gripped the basin. There was no one there. She stared at herself in the mirror. Who was that emaciated woman with the lacklustre hair that stared back? She looked fifty or more. Yet the eyes were those of a perplexed little girl. How could Tom possibly love such a pathetic creature?

  ‘I love you. We’ve still got each other, that s what I want most of all:

  Catherine felt her legs go weak. Her dry eyes stung with tears. She looked down at the handful of tablets ready to take her to oblivion or the Devil. What was she doing? How could she let Tom walk in and find her rotting on the bathroom floor, a scrawled note on the dressing table explaining nothing?

  Tom of the warm brown eyes and the shy smile; her studious, conscientious, loyal friend. Her diffident lover. Maybe he would choose to leave her anyway. But she knew in that split second that she did not want to lose him. Abruptly, Catherine scooped up the pills and threw them into the toilet bowl. She yanked on the chain and watched them swirl away. With it came the first choking sob and tears.

  Howling, she stumbled out of the bathroom, down the stairs and out of the house. It had started to rain. She rushed into the garden, making for the sanctuary of the oak tree. Cold rain whipped at her face as she fell into the wet leaves around the tree trunk. She wept out her misery, amazed that she could still cry. Even as the pain consumed her, she knew it was proof that she was alive, still alive.

  Catherine sat shaking and frozen without the first idea how she was going to get through the rest of the day, let alone the next day and the day after that. However she managed she would have to do it herself, without the help of her husband or the numbing relief of drugs. She pressed into the tree, doubting if she had enough courage.

  ‘Work it out, lass.’

  The words went through her like an electric shock. Kate’s words. Her mother’s recipe for overcoming grief or hardship. Of course it was the answer. But Catherine had tried that, brought herself to a standstill and probably miscarried because of the gruelling housework she had made herself do. That’s what Kate meant by work.

  Yet Catherine had her own cure for a sore heart. Writing. If she could only bring herself to begin writing again . . .

  She scrambled onto numb feet and hobbled back indoors. That night she could not face it. She banked up the fire in the kitchen and lay down on the hearth rug with a blanket and slept fitfully.

  In the early morning, Catherine brewed a pot of tea and went in search of paper. Tearing out some blank pages from old cookbooks of Mrs Fairy’s she took them to the kitchen table. Hands trembling, she picked up a pencil used for shopping lists. She felt nauseous. Holding it reminded her of being pregnant with David. Catherine rushed to the sink and threw up.

  For the rest of the day she gave up and walked and walked around the garden, tiring herself out. For a second night she slept on the kitchen floor. In the morning, she tried again. Just write anything - no one’s going to read it. This time the advice seemed to be her own.

  She sat staring at her idle hands, listening to rain spatter down the chimney and hiss on to the fire. Just like in 10 William Black Street. If she closed her eyes she could hear the rustle of Grandda’s newspaper, the slam of the oven door, Kate humming as she pounded pastry with a rolling pin. She could smell the cinders, the rising dough.

  Catherine picked up the pencil and began to write. At the end of two hours she had filled six pages and was amazed to find it was already midday. She made more tea, ate two biscuits and went back to her writing. That night, she ventured up to her bedroom and read over her scrawled pages. It was a near perfect recreation of the kitchen in East Jarrow. She could see it, smell it, taste it.

  Over the next few days, Catherine thought about places and people in her childhood that she had tried to forget for years. Eccentric lodgers, bad-tempered shopkeepers, the kind pawnbroker who sensed her shame at having to bring in her family’s belongings. Picking over dross along the railway track, running through the scary dripping arches by the docks, gasping in wonder at a sea of red poppies in a field above Shields. Someone grasping her hand and pulling her off her feet as they flew along, chasing the moon. Kate’s hand.

  She pushed the uncomfortable thought from her mind. She had come too far, spent too much energy trying to rid herself of Kate’s influence to think kindly of her now. She was Catherine Cookson, wife of an Oxford graduate. There was no going back.

  Catherine put away her descriptions of Tyneside. They were too vivid and disturbing. But they had given her a taste for writing again and she set herself the gruelling task of writing ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day.

  Tom was demobbed early in 1946 and took up his post as maths teacher at the grammar school once more. They settled into a quiet routine: teaching, scouts and cricket coaching for him; writing, housework and gardening for her. Tom was full of admiration for the way Catherine battled her bouts of depression with a rigorous regime at her desk, often sitting up into the early hours, filling pages of script.

  She tried plays but they were wooden and lifeless. She tried poems but they were sentimental and gushing. Joining a writers’ circle, she tentatively tested out her short stories and came home bruised and oversensitive at their criticisms. Tom tried to help with her grammar, but they argued and fell out about it.

  ‘I can’t write like that,’ Catherine protested. ‘It knocks all the stuffing out of my characters.’

  ‘You can’t send them to magazines with that many spelling mistakes,’ Tom said impatiently. ‘And half the sentences aren’t proper sentences.’

  Catherine stopped showing him her work; she would do it her own way or not at all. Determined to prove to Tom she could succeed, she sent off a short story every week. After a year, they had all been returned. She carried on sending them out. Each time a large brown envelope was sent back, she would march into the garden and vigorously attack the weeds, battling her sense of failure.

  She and Tom existed under the same roof, yet were distant. It was like having a lodger in the house again, Catherine thought bleakly. Too scared of pregnancy, they had stopped making love. They shared the same bed, but often Catherine stayed up half the night writing or she would wake in the early hours to find Tom sitting upright on a chair, nursing a migraine.

  Outwardly, they put on a happy front. He was dedicated to his teaching and his pupils. Catherine forced herself to attend school functions to support him and invited boys back for tea after matches. She made a fuss of them and understood why Tom was so attached to the lively youngsters. Yet she could not help resenting the attention he lavished on them and the long hours he spent away from The Hurst. If only they had had their own family. . .

  One summer afternoon, Catherine set out to join Tom at a school cricket match. He would be umpiring and she would have to sit and make light conversation with the other wives. She did not feel at all sociable. A short story had been returned that morning. Maybe she should give up and go back to her painting, be a lady of leisure, the type of wife that would suit Tom.

  As she walked into town in a new summer dress, her resentment grew. Why did a wife always have to bend her life to her husband’s? Why did Tom have the luck of a proper education and not her? She knew she could be a writer, if only she had some guidance. But Tom was a man of numbers and facts; he did not understand the compulsion within her to write.

  By the time she had reached the town centre, Catherine was seething with aggression. Walking past some workmen mending a wall, she felt an overwhelming urge to pick up one of the loose bricks and hurl it through the shop window opposite. She stopped and stared at a brick. Her fists clenched as she fought down the desire to throw it and break something.

  ‘Want to take the brick home, love?’ one of the builders teased.

  Catherine blushed and turned in confusion. She rushed home, appalled to think how her anger had so nearly overtaken her. Sh
e wasn’t safe to be out on the streets. Back at The Hurst, she stripped off her fine clothes and pulled on her gardening trousers and shirt. Halfway through digging up a bucketful of carrots, she heard footsteps coming up the drive. Turning, she gasped in surprise.

  ‘Bridie?’

  The red-haired woman strode towards her and gave her a hug. ‘Catherine, you’re so thin. Thought you were a scarecrow standing there! That husband of yours not looking after you?’

  Catherine grimaced, but said nothing. It was so strange seeing Bridie after all this time. She had long stopped feeling angry towards her. If she felt anything it was probably pity.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to offer me a cup of tea or do I have to make my own?’ Bridie teased.

  Catherine nodded and led the way inside. While she fumbled with the tea caddy and warmed the pot, Bridie told her about her years in the army.

  ‘I’ve been back running the boarding house for the past two years.’ She watched Catherine over the rim of her cup. ‘I’m sorry you can’t have children.’

  Catherine jolted. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I get the odd letter from Kate. She told me you’ve had a hard time - I know about the mental hospital.’

  Catherine snapped. ‘I was in a nursing home for my nerves, that’s all.’

  Bridie gave her a disbelieving look. ‘I’m sorry all the same. If I’d known I would have come to see you - tried to help. Obviously that husband of yours is next to useless.’

  Catherine knew she should defend Tom, but suddenly her lips were trembling. She put down her cup and burst into tears. Bridie was round the table in an instant, hugging her in comfort.

  ‘Have a good cry, girl,’ she crooned. ‘Bridie will take care of you. I can see how unhappy you are. I knew that man would bring you nothing but heartache.’

  Catherine was sobbing so hard she could not speak.

  ‘Listen,’ Bridie said softly, ‘I came to tell you I’m selling up the business and going back to Ireland. Why don’t you come with me? We’ll have enough to start our own place over there. You, me and Maisie, just like old times. I’m the only one who’s ever really understood you, Catherine, loved you for who you are. You’ll never be happy as a schoolmaster’s wife, always taking second place. You’re better than that, much better. Come away with me, girl!’

  Catherine’s head spun at the idea. To run away from the drabness of post-war Hastings, from the loneliness of endless solitary hours at The Hurst, from the guilt of failing Tom as a wife - all this was suddenly possible. Bridie was offering escape.

  Before Catherine could answer, the front door banged shut and steps came hurrying down the corridor. Tom burst into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said breathless. ‘You didn’t come—’

  Bridie stood up but kept her hands on Catherine’s shoulders.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Your wife’s at the end of her tether,’ Bridie said, her look contemptuous. ‘Look what you’ve done to her.’

  ‘Kitty,’ Tom rushed forward, ‘what’s wrong?’

  ‘You’re what’s wrong,’ Bridie answered at once. ‘She’s sick and tired of you. I’ve asked her to go to Ireland with me. She needs someone to take proper care of her.’

  Tom gazed at Catherine, stupefied.

  ‘Is it true?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me you wouldn’t go with that woman.’

  ‘If she’s any sense she will,’ Bridie cried. ‘At least I know how to love her.’

  ‘Love her?’ Tom shouted. ‘You nearly drove her mad.’

  ‘No, that’s what you did!’ Bridie accused.

  Catherine jumped to her feet. ‘Stop it, both of you! I can speak for myself.’ She glared at them. ‘I don’t know what I want to do; I just know I’m not happy. Stop fighting over me like I’m some possession. Neither of you knows the real me.’ She faced Tom. ‘Bridie wants me to be like Maisie - a helpless little girl she can take care of - and you want a middle-class wife who can entertain and not show you up in front of your educated friends. But I’m neither of those things. I’m Kitty McMullen - Kate’s bastard daughter. I feel emotions that no refined lady should feel - anger and passion and hatred. I learnt them on the streets of Jarrow. I understand badness ‘cos I’ve seen and heard it - lived it. I’m not a fit wife for you, Tom,’ she cried. ‘I’ve spent half my life trying to be someone I’m not - and it’s nearly destroyed me!’

  Catherine rushed past him and fled outside. She walked for ages, her direction aimless. What a destructive person she was! She destroyed those who loved her. Yet, with each step she grew more certain that what she had shouted at Tom was the truth. Catherine Cookson, the well-spoken wife of the school teacher, was a myth. Her painfully learnt speech and manners and lofty attempts to improve herself were a veneer. Strip them away and she was still the same wild and frightened child she had always been.

  Evening came before Catherine made her weary way home. To her relief Bridie had gone. She saw a light on in the bedroom and went up to face Tom. He was sitting on the bed, a packed suitcase beside him. On seeing her, he got up and closed the lid.

  ‘I was waiting for you to come back before I left,’ he said, his voice cold.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Catherine stared in alarm.

  ‘Leaving you, Kitty. It’s what you want, isn’t it? You and Bridie.’

  ‘Me and Bridie? Don’t be daft. I was never going to go with her.’

  He turned and fixed her with angry eyes. ‘That’s not what she thinks. You’ve made it perfectly plain you don’t love me. And now I know you loved that woman all the time. How often have you seen her behind my back? What a fool I’ve been to think I could make you happy.’ He yanked the case off the bed.

  ‘Stop it, Tom. You’re frightening me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Today’s the first time I’ve set eyes on Bridie since we got married.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he glared. ‘Bridie said you’ve never stopped loving each other.’

  Catherine cried, ‘And you’d rather believe her than me, would you?’

  Tom pulled a bundle from his jacket pocket. His voice shook with anger. ‘I believe these!’ He thrust them at Catherine. A pile of letters; her letters to Bridie. A grenade lobbed into their midst by a departing Bridie, to blow their marriage to smithereens. Did Bridie think by destroying Tom’s love, she would have no other option but to go running to her? If I can’t have you - he never will - I’ll make sure of that.

  Catherine grabbed Tom’s arm as he pushed past. ‘These don’t mean what you think they mean,’ she gabbled. ‘They were written years ago. I was lonely—’

  ‘And in love with her,’ Tom said savagely.

  ‘No! I don’t know. More star-struck than in love - like a girl’s crush on someone older. She gave me love and encouragement that I had never had from Kate, and at a time I really needed it.’ Catherine’s look was pleading. ‘But I stopped loving her years ago. It’s you I love, Tom, you. ‘

  He looked at her bewildered. ‘Then what was all that about not wanting to be my wife?’

  ‘I do. But not the way it is now.’

  ‘Then how?’ he shouted. ‘What is it you want, Kitty?’

  ‘I need to be my own person, Tom, not just your wife. But I’m frightened that’s not the woman you want to be married to.’

  He dropped the suitcase, his look desolate. ‘All I’ve ever wanted was you, Kitty. Not a posh Mrs Cookson. I’m not ashamed of who you are or where you come from. I love you for it. Can’t you see that? I love Kitty McMullen from Jarrow. I love Kate’s daughter.’

  Catherine’s throat choked with tears. She reached out and their arms went around each other. Warmth flooded her like a benediction.

  ‘That’s the best thing anyone’s ever s
aid to me,’ she whispered. ‘I love you, Tom. I love you so much it hurts. Please forgive me?’

  His answering hug told her he did.

  Chapter 51

  After the crisis over Bridie, Tom and Catherine grew closer. They talked and read together in the evenings, they gardened side by side. After an operation to remove half Catherine’s womb, they resumed lovemaking. Most of all, Tom encouraged her to write about what she knew. He discovered her descriptions of her grandparents’ kitchen and the places of her childhood.

  ‘You’ve got something here,’ he said excitedly. ‘Write about Jarrow and Shields, Kitty.’

  So Catherine wrote. Every day of the year she wrote. Eventually the scores of pages took the shape of a novel. A story about a beautiful woman nearly ruined by having an illegitimate daughter came pouring out. Except her heroine, Kate Hannigan, was saved by marriage to an honourable man. Through a speaker at the writers’ circle, Catherine secured an agent and shortly afterwards, to her amazed delight, it was accepted for publication.

  She resisted the desire to run into the streets and scream out the news. Once in print, a proud Tom mentioned it to anyone who would listen - from his colleagues to the local butcher. Some people, having read it, looked at her askance.

  ‘ “A bit too brutal for a romance, don’t you think?” ‘ Catherine mimicked a member of the writers’ group to Tom. She laughed shortly. ‘I’m not writing romance - I’m writing about real people, warts and all.’

  Catherine wrote on. Her follow-up novel was rejected and she sank into depression, questioning if she should continue with such gritty subject matter. Tom wouldn’t hear of her changing course.

  ‘You’re right and the publishers are wrong,’ he insisted. ‘Keep at it.’

  At times, the old depression took hold and she wandered around the empty house bereft of ideas. One day, alone at The Hurst, she cried out angrily, ‘If there’s anything there, give me a story!’