Catherine nodded, her nervousness mounting. She had pushed the thought of the wedding night to the back of her mind. That morning she had doubted she’d live long enough to see it. Then the soldiers on the train had occupied her thoughts, filling her with an unnamed dread. But now the moment had come: the consummation, sex. She had worried over it for years. But there was no need. She was married and nothing she did would be sordid or dirty. So why was she gripped by such overwhelming panic that she felt physically sick?
Hurriedly, she stripped off while Tom was out of the room and threw on her nightdress. She climbed between the sheets, which were chilly and damp-smelling despite it being June. Catherine turned off the light and plunged the blacked-out room into pitch darkness. Tom came back, fumbling and clattering into furniture.
‘Where are you?’ He banged into the bed.
Catherine would have laughed if she didn’t have her hand clamped over her mouth to stop the nausea. Tom clambered in and reached for her in the dark. She froze at his touch.
‘What’s wrong? Are you cold?’ He began to rub her shoulders. ‘I’ll soon have you warmed up.’
Catherine had a violent flash of memory. She was sitting on a man’s knee and he was jiggling her up and down, whispering in her ear. He was a friend of Kate’s. But her mother was not there. She was too small for her legs to reach the ground and they flapped out in front of her like a doll’s. They were alone. His words were strange and frightening and she wanted her mother to come back and stop the jiggling and the talking.
Catherine swallowed the bile in her throat at the memory. It was Tom whispering in her ear now, not the man from long ago who smelt of whisky and hair oil and stale sweat. Danny. That was the man’s name.
‘Kitty, you’re shaking. It’ll be all right, I promise. I won’t hurt you.’
Catherine’s stomach heaved. Tom’s words. Or were they Danny’s? Suddenly, she remembered how it ended. She was eight years old again and running into the backyard to get away from him. Danny came after her, telling her to be quiet and not to wake her grandda or grandma. He caught her halfway to the dry closet and wrapped big strong arms about her.
‘Kitty, you’re shaking. I’m not going to hurt you.’
He pushed her against the brick wall. Then he was caressing her trembling limbs with one hand, the other over her mouth so she could not cry out. A big, clammy hand that smelled of the docks.
‘I’ll get you ready for bed, eh? Help your mammy. It’s our own little game.’
He pulled at her knickers. She had never played this before, didn’t want to now. Wanted him to take his hands away more than anything in the world. He unbuttoned his trousers.
‘Look, Kitty.’
She didn’t want to look. She screwed her eyes shut. But she had seen the thing and still saw it even with her eyes closed. She whimpered in fear. Vomit rose in her throat. She gagged behind his foul hand. She would drown in her own sick. She hated this game. Kate and Grandma Rose would be cross if she puked down her newly starched pinafore.
Then someone was yanking Danny backwards and roaring like a bull. Pushed aside, she fell on to the cold cobbles and banged her hip. Grandda was screaming obscenities over them and beating Danny with the fire-poker like he was a lump of clinker. Screaming and beating and yelling...
Catherine lurched for the side of the bed in the tiny London boarding house and vomited on to the thin rug.
‘Kitty!’ Tom cried in concern, swiftly turning on a rickety side lamp. He stroked her head. ‘Darling, you should have said you weren’t feeling well. Perhaps it’s something you’ve eaten.’
Catherine retched and cried in misery. How could she possibly explain it was nothing to do with food? A twenty-six-year-old memory had reared up the moment he had tried to touch her intimately, and spoilt everything. Danny. Some lodger her mother had been allowed to court because he was Irish and Catholic and ‘kind to the bairn’.
‘Sit on his knee, Kitty. Why won’t you sit on his knee? Danny’s bought you a twist of sweets’
Kate’s horrible man. But Kate had not been there to protect her. She was probably out buying whisky in the ‘grey hen’ for her and Danny to drink. How was it that all her troubles led their way back to her mother?
‘I’m sorry,’ Catherine sobbed, as Tom wiped up the mess. ‘I’ve ruined our wedding night.’ She watched him roll up the rug and put it outside the door.
He came and sat on the edge of the bed, but did not try to touch her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said tiredly. ‘We’ve got a lifetime together. One night makes no difference. I’ve got you for ever; that’s what counts with me.’
Catherine put out her hand and grasped his tightly. ‘You’re such a kind man,’ she whispered.
The next day, they both put on a cheerful face and went out sightseeing. But the news sweeping the city was doom-laden. There was fierce fighting on French soil. Many of the ships sent to rescue the British Expeditionary Force were being sunk. Thousands were trapped with their backs to the sea. Paris was being bombed.
They went to a matinee and saw Gone with the Wind. For a couple of delicious hours, Catherine lost herself in the dramatic love story and cried when headstrong Scarlett O’Hara was abandoned by Rhett Butler. The actor Clark Gable was one of her heartthrobs. Afterwards, Tom took her for a meal, but the restaurant closed early and there was nothing for it but to return to the boarding house.
This time, Catherine steeled herself for the marriage bed, determined to get the deed over with. Again Tom changed in the bathroom, but came back to find her waiting with a side light on.
They kissed and held each other, then Tom whispered, ‘Do you want . . .?’
‘I’m ready,’ she agreed tensely.
He caressed her gently, hesitantly, as if it was all new to him too. Suddenly it dawned on Catherine.
‘You haven’t done this before either, have you?’ she blurted out.
Tom stopped. She saw him blush in the dim light. Catherine giggled. Somehow it made it easier. Neither had expectations of the other. She stroked his lean, sinewy back.
‘Haway then, let’s have a go,’ she smiled.
He bent and kissed her, a long tender kiss, while they touched and explored each other’s bodies. Catherine found it unexpectedly pleasant. She would have been quite happy if that had been it. But she knew there had to be something more. When the moment came, she tensed and cried out in pain. Tom faltered, so she stifled any noise and clung to his strong back. The bed creaked rhythmically, reminding her of the strange sounds she had sometimes heard coming from her grandparents’ room - after Rose’s protests had failed.
Tom gave a small grunt, sighed and relaxed back. Catherine lay, wondering if that was it. When he leant over to turn out the light, she realised it was over. They were properly husband and wife. She felt a surge of triumph. Lying in the dark, she could not help a smile of satisfaction. Though she was baffled as to why people made such a thing about sex. Books and films had led her to believe it was something special, something irresistible. Instead it was messy and uncomfortable and faintly comical. Perhaps it would improve.
She sought Tom’s hand in the dark and held it. She loved this man. She wanted him with her for ever.
She slept deeply, dreaming about Tom being one of the Dunkirk soldiers. He was on a train and she was trying to reach it, but the crowds on the station kept pushing her back. He beckoned frantically for her to follow, but the train left without her and she was alone, crying and waving.
She woke with a shudder, to find Tom with his arms around her, stroking her hair.
‘It was a bad dream, Kitty,’ he soothed. ‘Just a bad dream.’
Catherine allowed herself to be comforted. How could she tell him that often her bad dreams were premonitions of things to come?
Chapter
46
Catherine sat at the window of their small flat and gazed out at the September sunset, reluctant to turn on a light and draw the blinds. Ferocious bombing over London seemed the new tactic of the Luftwaffe rather than dog-fights with the RAF over the Channel. Not for the first time, she wondered at the decision to evacuate to St Albans. They were more likely to be attacked here. On still nights they could hear the explosions over London and see the far-away glow of a city on fire.
‘Come away from the window,’ Tom urged, pulling down the blackout.
She felt drained, unable to move from the chair. He put a hand on her forehead.
‘Are you feeling unwell again? You haven’t had another nosebleed?’ His look was anxious.
She shook her head. ‘No. I’m just tired. Though I don’t know why. I worked for hours on end in Hastings and never felt like this. It’s more tiring doing nothing,’ she laughed.
Tom gave her a wary look. It was the one thing they had argued over since their marriage in June: the lack of a job for Catherine. He thought she would welcome having a much smaller place to care for, after the back-breaking work at The Hurst. And there were social duties as a teacher’s wife to keep her occupied even in wartime. But once their small flat was unpacked and organised, Catherine balked at the long hours waiting for Tom to return. Queuing with a ration book at the grocer’s was the main event of her day. She longed for activity.
A lot of Tom’s colleagues these days were elderly bachelors, brought out of retirement to replace younger men already called up. Catherine held a couple of dinner parties, but felt overawed by their conversation and classical education. One in particular, an English teacher called Forbes, seemed to delight in putting her down. The only time he spoke to her directly was to ask for tips on how to get stains out of his shirts.
‘You worked in a laundry, didn’t you, my dear?’
Catherine wished she could think of a witty remark to put him in his place, but could only blush and mumble about the cleaning powers of vinegar. She yearned to be able to hold her own in conversation with such men. She had no confidante of her own - except for Tom. Catherine revelled in her husband’s company and had never been so happy. But the hours when he was not there were long and lonely.
At times, she missed the fug of The Hurst kitchen with Mrs Fairy and Rita bustling about, and guests wandering in for a biscuit or to borrow the scissors. Her old house had been requisitioned and occupied by army officers; Mrs Fairy was being kept on to make their breakfast and Rita was working in a factory. Farewells had been tearful, Catherine far more upset at leaving The Hurst than she ever would have predicted.
Although she would never dare say so to Tom, Catherine regretted the terrible falling out with Bridie. How she wished for the company of the Bridie she had first known, before she had grown jealous and manipulative and bullying.
A card from her former friend had followed them to St Albans via the school, wishing her a happy marriage and that one day they would be reunited in Hastings. Catherine had destroyed the card and not written back; to do so would have felt disloyal to Tom.
If only she had had Tuppence’s boisterous company to keep her occupied, but dogs were not allowed in their lodgings. It had been a terrible wrench giving the dog away to the Townsends.
Bored and guilty that she was doing nothing towards the war effort, Catherine had gone for a job in a munitions factory without telling Tom. He had been dismayed, but said nothing until she rapidly developed breathing problems and lethargy. She was brought home in an ambulance one day, bleeding profusely from her tongue and nose, and Tom had put a stop to the job.
The doctor had ordered bed rest. A further repercussion was their continued avoidance of sex. They had not made love since their short honeymoon in London. Their abstinence had not been deliberate. Tom had come down with a heavy bout of flu after their visit to his family in Essex. The packing up and moving to St Albans had left them both too tired. Her frequent bleeding and increasing nausea had so concerned Tom that he treated her like a china doll, not daring to touch her or press her into lovemaking. This suited Catherine, yet she felt guilty at their lack of intimacy for Tom’s sake. If only she could explain about her trauma as a child, he would see that the fault was not theirs. But she was too ashamed to speak of it.
Somewhere, far off, a siren wailed. Tom took her hand and led her to the fireside.
‘I’ll make us a pot of tea. You just sit there. Tomorrow,’ he gave her a stern look, ‘you’re going back to see the doctor.’
Catherine protested. ‘I don’t need a doctor - I need something to do.’
He studied her. ‘What about your writing? You’ve got some great stories - they just need a bit of polishing up.’
Catherine considered the suggestion. She had not felt the need to write since their marriage. Her pile of exercise books languished in the airing cupboard and only Tom had been allowed to read them.
‘Or education,’ he persisted. ‘Now’s your chance to read all the books you ever wanted. You can treat it like a job. There’s a library two streets away. Why don’t you join it?’
Catherine felt a quick flare of interest. To read for improvement and not mere enjoyment would give her a purpose. She would rekindle her old thirst for learning that had been smothered by years of overwork and coping with Kate and Bridie.
‘Yes,’ she agreed excitedly. ‘What a good idea.’ She imagined herself holding forth at table, with Mr Forbes nodding in admiration.
When Tom came back with the tea, she said, ‘You can draw up a list of books I should be reading. I want to be able to talk about books you’ve read. I’ve so much catching-up to do.’
He gave her a tender smile and poured the tea.
The next day Catherine came back from the library with a full quota of books. She set herself a target of a book a day, starting with Socrates and Chaucer. She would work her way through Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, Romantics and up to modern writers. Sitting at the upstairs window of their flat and opening a new book gave her a thrill of expectation, like a child opening a Christmas present. She could lose herself for hours in the pages of these books, only realising the time when Tom came tramping up the stairs for tea.
The evenings were spent questioning Tom about what she had read, demanding explanations of passages she had not understood. She was drawn to the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers that held great store by truth and love. How much easier to follow such teachings than the guilt-ridden, judgemental faith to which she was harnessed.
On their arrival in St Albans she had persuaded Tom to go with her to the Catholic church, secretly hoping it might encourage him to convert. But the visiting missionary priest had railed against those not in the true faith, promising them Hell and Damnation. Catherine had squirmed in her seat, ashamed and embarrassed, wondering if Tom would walk out. He hadn’t, but the next week went quietly to early communion at the local Anglican church.
Despite Catherine’s new absorption in books, her fragile health continued to worry Tom. She was too thin, too tired, too often sick, he fretted. Finally, to keep him happy she made an appointment at the local surgery. A young woman doctor examined her. She diagnosed anaemia.
‘And you’re also pregnant,’ she smiled.
Catherine stared at her. Pregnant? She shook her head in disbelief.
‘I-I can’t be. I’m not.’
‘You’ve missed your periods, you’re being sick every morning,’ the doctor said breezily. ‘You’re going to have a baby.’
‘But I haven’t. . .’ Catherine stopped, reddening in confusion. She could not tell this stranger that she had not made love with her husband for over three months - and then only the once.
The doctor gave her a keen look. ‘Is there a problem? You are married, aren’t you?’
Catherine jumped to her feet, offended
. ‘Of course I’m married,’ she glared. ‘But I’m not expecting.’
As she made for the door, the doctor said, ‘Come back next month and we’ll see which one of us is right.’
Catherine went home quite flustered. Tom coaxed out of her what the doctor had said.
‘But you might be, Kitty,’ he smiled shyly. ‘It is just possible.’
Catherine flushed. ‘She’s too young to be a doctor. I don’t trust her judgement. I’ll go and see someone else.’
Tom’s puzzled look made her feel ashamed. Why should it unnerve her so much to think she might be carrying a baby? Wasn’t it what all newly married couples wanted to hear? The priests would approve. Tom’s kindly mother and boisterous family would be pleased. Even Kate might fuss over a new baby.
Catherine could not name her fear. Perhaps it was because it proved to the world that she had had sex. Perhaps it was the dangers of labour and the horror of giving birth that frightened her most. Whichever, she was not ready to be a mother. She wanted to go on having Tom to herself, having time for her reading, being in charge of her own life, not that of some terrifying, squalling infant.
The second doctor she saw was a naval doctor newly out of retirement. Of course she wasn’t pregnant. She had bowel trouble, acute constipation. He gave her a strong emetic to flush through her problems.
‘French stuff, you know. Can’t get it now the war’s on. Clear you out in a jiffy.’
Catherine went home in relief and drank the medicine. For three days she suffered vomiting and diarrhoea, so severe that she could hardly crawl between the bed and the bathroom. Tom stayed off work to nurse her, beside himself with worry.
‘What on earth did that man give you?’ he demanded.
Catherine, too ill to care, thought she was dying. At the end of the week, when she was well enough again to sit up in bed and eat a little soup, the doctor reappeared. He examined her briefly and gruffly admitted, ‘Sorry, Mrs Cookson. We both got it wrong. You’re going to have a baby. I’d say you’re about four months into the pregnancy.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Don’t take any more of that medicine I gave you.’
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 122