The Branded Man

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘You weren’t married to him?’

  ‘No, no; I wasn’t married to him, but I put him on his feet. Yes; I did. I made him so he could earn a living. It might have been of sorts, but nevertheless it was a living instead of his playing for drinks and coppers in the bars, as he had been doing. But you see’—she nodded up at Sarah—‘I knew a bit about music. Me mother played the piano and me dad the fiddle and I had been to concerts in me younger days, lots of them, but I’d never heard anybody play like he did. Oh, not all the time, no; only when the place was almost empty and there was nobody to listen to real good stuff; not “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey” and “Down at The Old Bull and Bush” and such. No. And I’ve met a lot of fake music teachers, and so I felt I knew what he could do if he had a home and was looked after properly. And that’s what I did six years ago: I took him in hand, and this is what I’ve got for it.’

  Her voice suddenly sank to a mere whisper and again she said, ‘But I wouldn’t have minded about the last if only he had stayed. You see, he was a genius. Oh yes, he was a natural genius. He told me, from the time he started to work in a big house in Spain when he was eight years old, he had spent every minute he could dinging away on an old spinet they had moved into the servants’ quarters. Then later, when the family would go away for months on end and the place was looked after by the caretaker, he would let him play on the piano in the big hall. Apparently he was fourteen when the master of the house first heard him play, and he sent him to music lessons, which was fine until the man died, when the place was sold and everyone was scattered. He had risen from a boot-boy, he told me, to the equivalent, I should imagine, of a footman in England, but he couldn’t get another place. It was a bad time there for everybody. And for some reason he decided to come to England. But he found things worse here. That’s when I met him. It took me to point out to him that there were thousands of fake music teachers and language teachers and all kinds of blooming teachers making a living on their little bits of talent. He did get a job for a time in a big house, but he couldn’t stand the ways of the staff.’

  She now pulled herself to her feet, straightened her hat, buttoned the collar of her quite smart velour coat and ended, ‘But even if he didn’t earn a penny he knew he was all right with me, because I’m not without a bit and that’s my own house, bought and paid for. I’ve been in the clothes business for years and made a bit.’

  Sarah had opened the front door for her, and as the woman went to step out she turned and had the last word, saying, and bitterly now, ‘I could kill that young bitch, I could that.’ …

  Back in the bedroom, Martha Culmill seemed to have recovered somewhat for her words came in the form of an attack: ‘You…you knew about this!’

  ‘Not until a day or so ago, ma’am, and I was for breaking it to you then, but didn’t know quite how.’

  Sarah watched her mistress thumping her breast with her doubled fist as she repeated, ‘Didn’t know quite how!’ Then she started again: ‘She can’t stay here, no matter what Veronica says. Bring the writing pad. No; wait. How far has this—’ she had to gulp before she could force herself to mention the matter in any form, then she said, ‘this…this business gone?’

  ‘You mean, ma’am, how far is she with the child? I would say near on, as far as I can guess, three months.’

  ‘Three!’ she choked, ‘And…and you tell me you didn’t know?’

  ‘Well,’ Sarah’s voice sounded quite casual now as she replied, ‘Well, you didn’t notice yourself, ma’am, did you?’

  ‘I don’t have dealings with her as much as you have. Surely she…she showed some distress.’

  There was a quick glance between Clara and Sarah; then Sarah lied in her usual fashion: ‘Not so you’d notice, ma’am. A bit down in the mouth perhaps, but then she nearly always is, for she would like to be at home.’

  ‘Home! Yes, home; and that’s where she’s going. Definitely, she’s going home, for I’m not having this. No; not in my house.’ She now looked at Clara and ordered, ‘Get yourself away about your work, girl.’

  Clara went swiftly from the room and made straight for the kitchen, where Marie Anne was waiting. She was sitting by the side of the table, the fingers of one hand moving as if over the piano keys, and Clara said immediately, ‘She nearly passed out. I had to keep wafting the salts. But she’s come round now, because she went for Sarah, and she’s having to write a letter. And that woman, I heard her say she wasn’t his wife. Well, from what she said that’s how I took it. What happened when she came downstairs?’

  Marie Anne made no answer, but Cook said, ‘Enough for me to hear, and anyone in the front street, I would say, the way she went on. It was an eye-opener and I think to Miss Sarah an’ all.’ Then addressing Marie Anne pointedly she said, ‘Was it to you, miss?’

  Marie Anne stopped her drumming fingers, and her voice was very low as she answered, ‘Yes, Cook. Yes, it was.’

  A few minutes later Sarah came bustling into the kitchen. She had a letter in her hand and she spoke straight away to Marie Anne: ‘She’s for sending you home right away. I’ve got to go to the main office with this.’

  Marie Anne was on her feet. ‘I’m not going! I’m not going home! I…I couldn’t.’

  ‘Girl. Girl. We’ve got to talk about this. Look; put on your hat and coat, wrap up and come along with me; the walk’ll do you good.’

  It wasn’t until they were in the street that Marie Anne spoke again, when she said, ‘I’m not going home, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Yes, I see all right; but where d’you think you’re going, me dear, if you don’t go home, ’cos she won’t have you back there, that’s certain, not if your mother were to offer her a mint. So we’ve got to talk this over, girl.’

  They continued to talk it over until late in the night, although it was merely a repetition from both sides. Sarah could see no other way out but that Marie Anne should go home; and Marie Anne was determined that no matter what happened she couldn’t go home. Not even to the wonderful grandfather would she hear of presenting herself in her present condition, for she kept saying, ‘I would die, and he would too, at the sight of me. I’m not going home.’

  One strange thing on that day of revelation was that Martha CuImill had not demanded to see her …

  It was late in the afternoon of the following day that a telegram arrived at the house. Sarah took it upstairs, and when she went to hand it to her mistress that woman barked at her, ‘Open it and read it, woman!’

  The message, being a wire, was brief, and so she read:

  ON NO ACCOUNT MUST SHE RETURN STOP

  DEFINITE STOP LETTER AND ADDITIONAL

  SUPPORT FOLLOWING.

  Martha Culmill would have welcomed the extra support to put up with her half-sister’s daughter, but not with her sinful daughter. Never! Never! And she said those last two words of her thoughts aloud; in fact, she yelled them at Sarah, ‘Never! Never!’ and then she added, ‘Never will I tolerate that girl in my home a moment longer than can be helped. She must be found a place somewhere else. If her mother won’t have her I certainly shouldn’t be expected to take on the responsibility. Dear Lord! No. Not that kind of responsibility. Wickedness, unclean. Never, never will I tolerate such. She must go.

  ‘Foggerty!’ She called Sarah from the other side of the room, where she was attending to the fire.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘Go this minute to the Chapel House and tell the Reverend Trackman that I wish to see him as soon as possible. Stress that, will you? As soon as possible. Tell him the matter is very urgent and important.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Well! Don’t just stand there, woman!’

  Sarah Foggerty did not hurry from the room; she left quietly. As she passed through the kitchen on the way to Cook’s bedroom, where she had left Marie Anne a short while before, Cook spoke one word: ‘Bad?’

  And Sarah answered with another, ‘Worse.’
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  In the bedroom, Marie Anne was sitting in an old basket chair. She was wearing her winter coat. It wasn’t buttoned, but one side was pulled over the other and her arms were about it as if she were hugging herself.

  ‘Why didn’t you light the gas?’ Sarah asked her. ‘Sitting in the dark’s not going to help.’ She put a match to the gas bracket on the wall, and the shabby room became softly illuminated and cosy-looking, even though there was no mantle. Neither was there one in her own bedroom, nor in Clara’s; in fact, there hadn’t been one in Cook’s room until she herself had seen to it. Sarah then pulled the curtains across the window before sitting down on the foot of the bed, and pointing at Marie Anne, she said, ‘Now listen to me. Things are bad; they couldn’t be worse. Your mother has sent a telegram. I’ll give it to you plain: on no account is she having you back there. She’s even sending your aunt more money so as to keep you here. But even the thought of more money is not going to soften that one’s feelings towards you. She’s going to have you out of this house and as soon as possible. I’m on my way now, at least so she thinks, but it’ll have to be pretty soon, to the Reverend James Trackman. Well, you know what he’s like, but most of all you know what his dear wife Delia sounds and looks like. There’s not a penny to choose between her and that one upstairs. Now that is the situation facing you. You’ve got to get out of here, and soon. Likely they’ll put you in some home.’

  ‘Oh no! They won’t. Oh no! They won’t.’

  ‘Then if you don’t propose going back to your people, and you said you wouldn’t, where do you think you can go?’

  Marie Anne was on her feet now but her voice was a whimper as she said, ‘I don’t know, Sarah. I don’t know. But I’m not going into any home to be locked in at night, like Clara said.’

  ‘Clara says more than her prayers and she whistles them: there’s homes and homes, and you’re in a pregnant state, you’re going to have a child. It’ll be some place likely where you’ll be taken care of.’

  ‘But you won’t be with me.’

  ‘No, I won’t be with you. You’ve got to get that into your head an’ all, I won’t be with you. How can I be? Oh, me dear.’ She now flung her arms about Marie Anne’s shivering body and pulled her close, saying, ‘I only wish I could be. There’s nobody I’d like to serve better than yourself, and if I had a place to go to I would take you with me; I would this minute. There’s me sister’s, of course, but with her tribe, you couldn’t exist there, not in that quarter anyway…Yet there’s worse. Oh aye, there’s worse; and she does her best, I’ll give her her due. But for choice, I wouldn’t be found dead in the place. So I say to you, me dear, I’m stuck here and you’re for a home of some kind, unless, that is, unless you swallow your pride and walk in on that grandpa of yours.’

  Marie Anne pulled herself away from Sarah’s hold and, shaking her head, she said, ‘I…I could more readily face my mother than I could him as I am now, because he thinks so much of me and I fear the shock would kill him.’

  ‘It takes a lot of shocks to kill men, old or young; and that brother of yours, the one with the bad back, he sounds a decent enough sort. Couldn’t you write to him?’

  ‘Oh no. Oh no. He is the same as my grandpa. But whatever I have to do or wherever I go, I will write to them first.’

  ‘You’ll write to them and tell them about it?’

  ‘Oh no, no!’ Marie Anne tossed her body from side to side. ‘No; how could I? I will just say that I can’t live with my aunt any longer and that I’m going into lodgings or some such. I’ll think of something; I’ll have to. Anyway, if I was going to go into The Little Manor it would all come out about what my mother has done, and my grandfather would dislike her more than he does already.’

  Sarah Foggerty sighed deeply; then she said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to think over what you intend to do, because I’m past thinking; but I’ll have to go to this damn parson now. I won’t sin me soul away by entering his chapel, though: if he’s in there, he’ll have to come into the street to talk to me because, as you know, that’s one thing I’ve stuck out about here. I’m a Catholic, maybe a wooden one, but so I’ll remain. Well, do as I said, do some thinking. I’m off now.’

  Within an hour of delivering her message to the chapel house the Reverend James Trackman and his wife Delia were at the house. Clara showed them up to her mistress’ room and, as she said to Cook on her return downstairs, they were like two black spiders.

  Sarah was in the room when the visitors entered, but before her mistress spoke to either of them she was ordered out.

  Downstairs again, Sarah went into the kitchen, where Marie Anne was now slowly finishing a meal, and Cook greeted her with a short laugh as she pointed to Clara, saying, ‘That one says they’re like two spiders, and she’s not far wrong, is she? I’ve often wondered where I could place them meself, but she, as usual, has put her finger on it.’

  Marie Anne had now stopped eating and was looking at Sarah, who said to her, ‘I was ordered out. Before she said a word to them she ordered me out.’

  ‘Sarah, I am not going with them. I’ve told you.’

  ‘Me dear, I don’t suppose you’ll be asked to go with them: if that one up there is going to throw you out they’re not the kind that are going to catch you with open arms. Anyway, while they’re plotting, let me have a bite because I’m sick of this day; in fact, I’m sick of life in this house, I really am.’

  Cook went to the oven and took out a covered plate, saying. ‘It’ll be dried up now.’

  ‘No matter; at the moment I could eat a horse between two mats,’ at which Clara let out a giggle of a laugh as she said, ‘With or without mustard?’

  Sarah smiled at her. ‘There’s one thing I know, Clara,’ she said, ‘life will never smack you in the face, for you won’t give it a chance. If your people gave you nothing else to get you through life but a sense of humour, then they made you rich.’

  This unusual compliment caused Clara to lower her head and give way to a blush, and Marie Anne, looking at her from across the table, knew a feeling of envy rising in her for the little maid-of-all-work, for she was aware there was respect for the girl in Sarah’s compliment, whereas she now had none for her, no more than she had for herself.

  Of a sudden she sprang to her feet and her voice was a cry of anguish as she said, ‘I won’t be put in a home, Sarah. I’ve told you I won’t be put in a home, no matter what she said or what that parson does. I won’t, I won’t. I know what I’m going to do; I’ve made up my mind. I still have my Christmas money left from what Grandpa…and Pat sent me. I’ll get a room and I’ll write or I’ll draw. You’ve seen my sketches. You said they were funny. I’ll…I’ll take them to a newspaper. They’ll buy them. Punch and such.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, girl!’ Sarah got up from the table and went to Marie Anne and, placing her hands on her shoulders, she said, ‘Sit yourself down, calm yourself.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I won’t, Sarah. The time has passed for telling me what I must do.’

  ‘Yes, all right, all right,’ said Sarah soothingly now. ‘I’ll not tell you any more, or give you any more advice. Once you know what she intends to do,’ she jerked her hand upwards, ‘you can make your own way. Nobody’s going to stop you.’

  When the bell rang three times Sarah hastened out and up to the bedroom, there to be told to see the visitors out …

  It was as the minister pulled on his black felt hat that he looked down on Sarah saying, ‘You will bring the girl tomorrow; your mistress will give you the details. It could be the saving of her; God is good.’

  It was Sarah Foggerty, the whole woman, who retorted and loudly, ‘And the Devil is not bad to his own.’

  ‘What did you say?’ asked the minister’s wife.

  ‘You heard me, missis. I said, And the Devil’s not bad to his own. And I know which side I’m on in this business.’

  The man peered at her as he said, ‘You are a Catholic?’

  ‘Yes, that I am.�
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  ‘Dear, dear! Dear, dear! Come.’

  He now almost lifted his wife through the open doorway as if from contamination with evil, but she’d hardly put her foot on the pavement before the door was slammed hard.

  God is good! She was stumping up the stairs now: Priests, popes, parsons, and ministers, they’re all alike at bottom.

  As soon as she entered the bedroom she was greeted with, ‘You will tell that girl to have her things packed ready for tomorrow morning; it has been arranged that she goes into a home. She’s very lucky to get there. The minister’s wife has influence or she wouldn’t have got a place otherwise.’

  ‘May I ask where the home is and what it’s called?’

  ‘Yes you may ask, because you’re the one who will take her there. It is Mary Ping’s Home for Distressed Women.’

  ‘For the what?’

  ‘You heard what I said, Foggerty, distressed women, and that girl is in a distressed state, isn’t she?’

  ‘What if she decides not to go into your home for the distressed; what about that, then?’

  ‘She has no other option. Her mother on no account will tolerate her return, you know that. Haven’t you taken in what you have read to me?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, very much have I taken in what I have read to you; and I’ll tell you this much, I wouldn’t wipe me feet on a woman like her mother.’

  ‘Be quiet! and don’t give me any of your Irish slang in this room please. Now go and inform her of what is in store for her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to tell her yourself?’

  Martha Culmill began to breathe heavily and she put her hand to her throat before she said, ‘I will see her before she goes, and that is all the contact I need to have with her.’

  The mistress and her maid exchanged a long glance, before Sarah turned and went out, closing the door none too gently behind her.