Catherine laughed. ‘And you look at me through rose-tinted spectacles.’
‘Maybe after the war you could have a proper training,’ he enthused. ‘You must keep it up, Kitty.’
Tom was quick to boast of Catherine’s new-found ability to his colleagues and made her show her sketches when they came to the house. Even Mr Forbes was impressed.
‘You could have these printed up as Christmas cards,’ he suggested, ‘sell them round the town.’
Catherine was entranced by the idea and heady from the English teacher’s approval. Recklessly, she asked him to take a look at some of her short stories too.
‘I’d be grateful if you’d read some of them - see if they’re fit for publication. I was thinking of illustrating one or two.’
Mr Forbes showed surprise but agreed to take them away to read over the summer holidays.
Then Tom received his call-up papers and Catherine was thrown into panic. He was to enlist with the RAF. Several tense days followed with Catherine imagining him being sent abroad to train. She’d heard of men going to South Africa or Canada. How could she possibly cope here on her own? And flying was the most dangerous of occupations.
Tom came home despondent. ‘I failed the medical. I’ll get a desk job.’
Catherine flung her arms around him in relief. ‘Thank the saints!’
‘It’s hardly heroic,’ he said glumly, unhooking her arms.
‘Maybe not - but you’ll still be needed, whatever it is. And I’m coming with you, even if it’s John O’Groats.’
They spent the school holiday going on walks and picnics, visiting the Cooksons and packing up their flat. Tom was appointed an instructor and left for his first post in Leicester. Catherine was to follow and find lodgings once his initial training was over. Just before she left, a parcel arrived returning her notebooks.
Eagerly, she unfolded the enclosed letter from Mr Forbes. It was brief and brutal in its advice. The stories were so badly written, so ungrammatical that they were virtually unreadable. It would be most unwise to send them to a publisher. Art was another matter. She might certainly have a future there - and one that could fit in with her husband’s vocation. He wished them both the best of luck.
Catherine crumpled up the letter in disgust. How dare he pour such scorn on her work! Tom thought her stories were good. But then Tom was hopelessly biased and would say anything to keep her happy. Perhaps her stories were unpublishable. She looked accusingly at the pile of dog-eared exercise books. They would only take up room in her suitcase and be shoved in another cupboard to lie unread.
Tight-lipped, Catherine began tearing up the books and throwing them into the empty fire grate. She lit a match and put a taper to the mass of paper. Grimly, she watched several years of work disappear in a roar of flame and turn quickly to hot ashes. Why did she need to escape into a fantastical world of lords and ladies? She had Tom and her art. She would have to be content with the real world and the adventure of starting again in a new place.
It was not long before Tom was posted to Lincolnshire. Catherine packed up their belongings once more and followed. All she could find was a tiny bedsitting room at the back of a terraced house in Sleaford. The landlady was mean, cutting off the electricity at nine in the evening through the winter and rationing the toilet paper. To Catherine’s embarrassment, she had to walk through the kitchen where the family congregated to get to the lavatory. They always stopped talking and stared at her when she went, so she would wait until she was desperate.
But her urge to go grew more frequent and she soon suspected why. With long winter nights in a darkened room, she and Tom had resumed lovemaking. The more practice they had, the more pleasurable she found it.
The spring and early summer brought fresh bombing raids over London and the South-East, and a new campaign was launched to get women out of their homes and into factories to help with the war effort.
‘It can’t be me this year,’ she told Tom bashfully in June. ‘I think I’m expecting again.’
He hugged her in joy.
‘I was hoping!’ he admitted, and kissed her tenderly.
Cautiously, they began to make plans about moving to bigger lodgings once the baby came. By the end of the summer, Catherine allowed herself to hope that this time all would go well. She started writing children’s stories again and short verse.
As the days began to shorten, Tom came home to say he was being posted to Hereford, on the other side of the country.
‘It’s near Wales,’ he said, ‘supposed to be a lovely cathedral town. The camp is a few miles out - but I can cycle. Be a nice place to bring up a family.’
Catherine put on a show of being pleased, but was secretly dismayed at yet another move. She felt tired just thinking of it, packing up and having to find new accommodation. She hated the thought of being without Tom, even for a short time.
There was no time to dwell on it, for Tom had to catch a train four days later. Catherine waved him away at the station and walked home feeling bereft and ill at ease.
The next day she woke to find the bed sheets soaked in blood. In the first moments of disbelief she thought she must have cut herself, but there was no pain. In a panic, she rushed for the landlady, who was preparing to go on holiday.
‘Will you ring for the doctor,’ Catherine pleaded, feeling faint. She saw the woman’s reluctance. ‘I’ll pay you back.’
The doctor was called. ‘You’re probably miscarrying. All you can do is stay in bed and lie still. Nature will work its course.’
Catherine stared at him numbly. ‘You mean I’ll lose the baby?’
He shrugged. ‘It looks likely. Is there anyone I can contact for you?’
Catherine’s ears rang as if she was hearing his words in a dream. A terrible, nightmarish dream.
‘My husband,’ she whispered. ‘He’s gone to RAF Madley. I don’t know how to reach him.’
‘Maybe best to see what happens first,’ the doctor suggested. ‘I’ll call round in the morning.’
She sank back, consumed with fear, listening to the doctor telling the landlady.
‘I can’t nurse her,’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m going on holiday tomorrow.’
Catherine closed her eyes and wept as quietly as she could. The night was interminable. She hardly dared move, but even lying still she could feel herself haemorrhaging. In the dark hours, stabbing pains increased as her hopes died. The next day, the doctor confirmed her worst fears. She had miscarried.
‘But I still feel like it’s there,’ Catherine sobbed. ‘I’m still in pain.’
He examined her again. ‘You’ll need to go to hospital for an operation. Not all of the placenta has come away. I’ll arrange an ambulance.’
Catherine was ferried to Grantham hospital and put into blissful oblivion by a general anaesthetic. She woke to the sound of babies crying and for one disorientating moment could remember nothing of what had happened. Then it came flooding back in an all-consuming wave of pain. Their second baby was gone.
A nurse came to tell her that they had tried to contact her husband, but had not been able to get through.
‘Good,’ Catherine said miserably. She didn’t want him to see her like this, didn’t want him to get the news down a crackly telephone line, hurrying between classes. ‘I’ll tell him myself.’
Weak and grief-stricken though she was, Catherine could not bear to stay in the busy hospital within earshot of the maternity ward. She discharged herself against the wishes of the doctors. All that drove her on was the thought of getting to Hereford as quickly as possible and joining Tom.
The moment he saw her face at the station, he knew. She fell into his arms and wept. Tom struggled to find words of comfort, but could hardly speak. It was too cruel for it to happen all over again.
They foun
d rooms in the market town, and for Tom’s sake, Catherine tried to rally her broken spirits. But she spent long lonely hours once more questioning why such a tragedy should have befallen them. She went back to the Catholic Church. Why, she asked the local priest, had she lost two babies?
‘Have you ever thought it’s God’s punishment for marrying out of the faith?’ he asked her sternly.
Catherine was deeply wounded by the accusation and could not rid her mind of it.
‘What sort of God would do that?’ she cried at Tom. ‘Not a loving God!’
‘It’s irrational,’ Tom said impatiently, furious at the priest for his wife’s distress. ‘What nonsense to think God would kill our babies out of spite. You’re not to take any notice of such superstitious dogma.’
Catherine knew he was right, yet part of her responded in fear to the priest’s censure. If she was good from now on, went to confession and attended church regularly, she might earn forgiveness. She might win the chance of another child. She struggled to reconcile these two warring parts of her. At home with Tom, she was questioning and critical of many aspects of Catholicism. On Sundays she went to Mass and found her senses stirred by the beauty and mystery of the service, at home with its unchanging familiarity.
She made friends with Sister Teresa from the local convent. They would walk in the enclosed garden under the bare trees and talk.
‘ “Come to me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”,’ the nun quoted. ‘Now they’re not the words of a cruel God, are they?’
Catherine sighed. ‘Then maybe it’s the Church at fault, not letting you think your own thoughts. You can do any amount of sinning and be forgiven with a couple of Hail Marys, but you’re not allowed to question. Why can’t we talk directly to God like the Protestants do, instead of through the priests? It’s like we can’t be trusted.’
‘You must be more humble,’ Sister Teresa said gently. ‘The priests are there to help us - and the Pope is God’s holy representative on Earth.’
‘The Pope’s just another man,’ Catherine snorted.
If this shocked the serene nun, she did not show it and Catherine continued to visit her throughout the following year. She felt guilty at her lack of war work. As a married woman without children she had received call-up papers early in 1942, but had promptly failed the medical. Catherine was suffering regular nosebleeds that left her weak and anaemic.
‘Tom doesn’t want me to do factory work either - says I’m not fit enough,’ she confided in Sister Teresa. ‘But I feel so useless when everyone else around me is being busy. Like here at the convent,’ she waved her hands at the garden, ‘you’ve dug up every spare inch to grow food.’ She looked despairingly at her friend. ‘If I’m never to be a mother, what am I supposed to do?’
The nun stood for a moment, gazing into the distance. Catherine envied her poise and stillness.
‘You have a beautiful spirit, Catherine,’ she said quietly. ‘You will give beauty back to the world, whatever it is you finally choose to do.’ She smiled, slipping an arm through hers. ‘And goodness knows, we need it in this world of make-do-and-mend! Maybe it’s time to take up your drawing again.’
Encouraged, Catherine found a renewed interest in art. She went around Hereford sketching its old buildings. Remembering Mr Forbes’s advice, she took her pictures to a local printer and got costings for putting them on cards. Impressed, the printer helped her sell them in shops around the town and she made a small profit. Word spread and Catherine was asked to do some small commercial jobs, scaling up illustrations for a magazine and copying photographs for postcards. The head of the art school got to see her work and offered her an exhibition. Here she met a Dutch painter and his wife who invited her to watch him at his studio whenever she wanted.
While Tom was away at the camp from half-six in the morning until six at night, Catherine found refuge in the attic studio of the van der Meershes, with its smell of oil paints and turpentine. In its peaceful surroundings she watched intently as he painted vivid colours on to a large canvas. Before long she had bought some brushes and paints of her own and began to experiment at their bedroom window, while her landlady’s daughter plonked away on the piano downstairs.
One day, feeling lonely without Tom, Catherine slipped into the sitting room and lifted the lid on the piano. She played a few tentative notes. Finding a book of music on the stand, she flicked through it and found an old familiar song, ‘The Waters of Tyne’. Stumbling over the keys, she worked through the tune.
It conjured up a time long ago, when the McMullens had gathered around someone’s piano and sang. It was probably a neighbour’s, and it may have been Christmas. All she recalled was sitting between Grandma Rose’s knees, enjoying the music and someone’s sweet voice. Her big sister Kate. Or so she had thought at the time.
She felt a brief flutter of happiness to think she could remember a time of simple pleasure and innocence, before life was poisoned by illegitimacy and Kate’s slide into alcoholism. Catherine held on to that feeling in the months that followed. She took piano lessons and sat for exams, thinking defiantly how her mother was not there to call her ungrateful or hurl hobnailed boots at her head.
When 1944 came, and the surprise D-Day landings with the Allies pushing back into France, Tom was restless.
‘I wish I was part of the action,’ he said enviously, ‘doing something to make a difference.’
‘I thought you liked teaching?’ Catherine was surprised.
‘Not this job. It’s so tedious - the same lessons over and over again. And the young lads are here one minute and gone the next - never a chance to get to know them.’
It worried Catherine that he thought life with her too dull. One night she woke to find the bed beside her empty and cold. She found him sitting in the small garden under a bright moon, his eyes closed and face drawn.
‘Tom, what is it?’
‘A headache that’s all - couldn’t sleep. Didn’t mean to wake you.’
She sat on the bench beside him, shivering in her dressing gown.
‘What sort of headache? Can I get you something?’
He shook his head and winced with pain. ‘Please go back to bed, Kitty. No point both of us losing sleep.’
She went, but lay for the rest of the night wide awake and fretful. What if he were really ill? A headache one day, dead the next. Or maybe it was just an excuse, and he didn’t want her company. What if he was bored with his life and decided to up and leave her? If this invasion of France was the beginning of the end of war, perhaps Tom was looking beyond it to a new life without her. Their marriage must be such a disappointment to him: their mediocre lovemaking and still no family to show for it, her sickly health and panic attacks about losing her faith. Catherine scrambled out of bed, sank to her knees and prayed that Tom would not leave her.
Shortly afterwards, she was pregnant again and Tom’s strange mood lifted. Her prayers had been answered. She had been right to go back to church for now her faithfulness was rewarded. Only one event checked her soaring spirits that autumn: her friend van der Meersh died unexpectedly. Not only did she miss his quiet encouragement and example, but also the warm haven of his attic studio.
She tried to recreate its tranquillity in their cramped bedroom, but could not. The smell of paints brought on Tom’s headaches and the landlady complained at the mess. Besides, Catherine hated being confined to the one room for hours on end. Going to the studio had been a welcome escape from its confines and somewhere to fill in the endless hours of Tom’s absence.
Instead, Catherine haunted the tea rooms of Hereford, making a cup last an hour, as well as the library where she sat and worked on her drawings. She had more cards printed, which sold well in the local shops that Christmas, making up for the wartime shortage of traditional cards.
With the approach of Christmas she
was feeling more settled. Tom had agreed, after much persuasion, to go with her to Mass. They were busily wrapping up presents for each other in reused paper kept from the previous year, when Catherine grabbed at the table.
‘I feel faint—’ she said, standing up. A moment later she was doubled up on the floor, clutching her stomach.
This time the haemorrhaging was massive and swift. Tom fled to the telephone downstairs and summoned an ambulance. Catherine was carried, half conscious, from the house, and hurried to hospital. She bled so profusely and was left so weakened that the doctor took aside a stunned Tom.
‘If you hadn’t acted quickly we might have lost her,’ he told him. ‘Your wife’s health is very delicate. She shouldn’t attempt any more pregnancies.’
In the New Year, when Catherine was back home and lying recuperating in bed, Tom raised the subject.
‘They said you weren’t to have any more babies, Kitty.’
She looked at him with lifeless, dark-ringed eyes, her face drained of all colour. She nodded. ‘They told me too,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He took her hand quickly. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘But I know how much you want children,’ she said in a flat, defeated voice. ‘And now I can’t give you any.’
He saw the glint of fresh tears. ‘I love you, Kitty Cookson. We’ve still got each other,’ he insisted. ‘That’s what I want most of all. And it doesn’t mean we can’t - ‘ he struggled to find a delicate way of putting it - ‘I mean, we can take precautions, can’t we?’
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. He blushed furiously.
‘Not yet, of course. When you’re fit enough. The doctor can advise us on what kind of contraception—’
‘Contraception?’ Catherine gasped.
‘We can still be husband and wife,’ he mumbled.
‘But I c-can’t,’ she stuttered, suddenly agitated. ‘It’s forbidden. Stopping babies like that is a sin.’
THE JARROW TRILOGY: all 3 enthralling sagas in 1 volume; The Jarrow Lass, A Child of Jarrow & Return to Jarrow Page 125