The Devil and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  He was standing staring into space, as if he were riveted to the spot on the hearthrug, and the silence in the kitchen, apart from Mary Ann’s sobs, was terrible. As always Lizzie’s mind went out like that of a mother to him, and she asked herself over and over again, ‘What has she done to him? What has she done?’ But not only the child was to blame, oh no, she must be fair, she herself had done a lot of damage tonight. Never in a thousand years would she have told him the truth, at least she had thought not, but the events of the night had rent tact and diplomacy from her, and deprived her of all wisdom, and although the relief of having her child back safely was now relieving the tension of her body, once again, as always, she was worrying, worrying about Mike and what would happen next.

  Mary Ann’s spluttering through her sobs, ‘I – I – I’m sorry, Ma, I’m sorry,’ told Lizzie that what she should do now was go for the child, spank her, and send her to bed, but she knew that Mary Ann’s entire world had dropped apart. Mike had thrust her off; Mr Lord would have none of her; they weren’t even interested in how she had got here – even she herself had forgotten to demand how she had come home, for from the first sight of her she knew that however she had come she was unharmed. She said gently to her, ‘How did you get here?’

  Gulping and sobbing, Mary Ann said, ‘With Mr Wilson.’

  ‘Mr Wilson?’ Lizzie’s face screwed up.

  ‘Yes. You know, the man me da met in the train and told to look after me.’ She cast her eyes hesitantly towards Mike’s averted face. ‘They were coming back home, and I got into trouble at school and I got your letter, and—’ Again her eyes flickered towards Mike, and she said, ‘I thought – I thought something was wrong. There were marks on it – I thought you were sick.’

  Puzzled, Lizzie muttered, ‘Marks on it?’ Then rising angrily and almost upsetting Mary Ann off her feet, she exclaimed, ‘It’s him that’s at fault! He should be locked up for bringing you. He’d no right.’

  ‘He didn’t want to, Ma, and Mrs Wilson neither. She was frightened of the police.’

  Lizzie, her face set now, demanded, ‘How did you get here then?’

  ‘He got my ticket, and we got off at Durham. Mrs Wilson wouldn’t come through in the train, and we got the workman’s night bus from Durham. They put me off at the corner.’

  Just as simple as that. Mr Wilson got her ticket; they got off at Durham; took the night bus and put her off at the corner, and in a few minutes here she was; and the agonies, the passions, the crucifixions of each of them were explained away in those few words . . . But Mike?

  Over Lizzie flooded an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Now she had another situation to cope with – Mike. Before, the situations concerning him had been mostly one-sided. She’d known their substance; Mary Ann had known their substance; and they both, as it were, had worked together for his good, leaving Mike happy in his male fantasy. But now the covers had been ripped off – Mike would be gulled no more, always he would be on his guard. His rejection of the child showed her the depth to which his hurt had gone. She didn’t lay it all down to false pride, she knew that he himself had thought the worst had happened to her this night, and his relief in part had taken this form of rejection. And so, thinking that if he were left alone with the child it might help, she turned to Mary Ann and said, ‘Go on to the fire, I’ll go up and get your bed ready.’

  When her mother had left the room, Mary Ann stood, her fingers in her mouth, looking towards the door through which Lizzie had disappeared. She did not turn to Mike; he still seemed frozen and unable to move, only the movement of his eyes showed his brain was working rapidly.

  Mary Ann, never being able to bear silences at any time, was finding this one almost excruciating in its loudness. Her fingers still in her mouth, she turned slowly round and looked at her da’s profile. Her da had hit her – and hard. Her hand hurt, her arm hurt. Some part of her told her that she deserved all she had got, and more, but she still could not get over the surprise that he had lifted his hand to her, for she had expected wide-open arms ready to greet her, she had imagined herself flinging herself against him, hanging on to his hair, kissing his face and watching his eyes moving over her features in the way she loved. Now, in spite of herself and the fear of another repulse, she moved towards him, and when she was at his side, with her first finger and thumb tentatively extended, she gently nipped the sleeve of his coat, and in a very, very, small voice, she muttered, ‘Da, I’m sorry.’ And then, as with her old apologies, she added, ‘I won’t do it again.’

  The implied probability of a recurrence of this particular incident seemed to rouse Mike, and he moved his feet in a grating gesture. Her downcast eyes became fixed on them. She dare not look up into his face, but she waited for his hand to come on her head. And after a while, when it didn’t, she slowly raised her eyes upwards. He was still mad, very mad, but it was a different kind from any she had ever witnessed before. He didn’t look the same as she’d remembered him and, a trembling, terror-riddled feeling told her, he wasn’t the same. This feeling urged her to cry out, and now she flung herself against his legs, with her arms round his thighs, crying, ‘Da! Oh, Da!’

  He did not push her away, but he did not fondle her. What he might have done within the next minute cannot be known, for at that moment Tony entered the room. On the sound of footsteps, Mike turned his head, and across the room his eyes met the young man’s.

  Tony’s entry seemed now an excuse that he turn from her, and without a word he left the kitchen and went out into the night.

  Tony stood looking across the table at the bowed head of Mary Ann. In the short time that he had been on the farm he had learned of this child’s influence. He had only known her for a few hours, and thought her a taking – a fetching little mite. He liked these people – especially did he like Mike – and over the last few weeks it had hurt him to see the tenseness between him and his wife. Furthermore, since six o’clock last night their suffering had torn at his own heart, for, although he hadn’t shown it, he, too, had thought only the worst could happen. And now apparently, from Mike’s attitude, nothing of a very serious nature had happened, at least to her.

  He had learned that she was a little devil for her escapades; he had taken it that she was an individualist of the first order; and now he had no doubt whatever about it, for after all the upset, here she was unscathed. Yet something about her touched him, she looked so forlorn, so very small, and however she had gone about the business of coming home, she had got here and that was an achievement for anyone of her size and age. So he went to her, and putting his hand on her head, he said, ‘There now, don’t cry.’

  Snuffling she looked up at him, ‘Me da’s mad at me.’

  He smiled a little smile. ‘Well, do you expect him to be anything else? You’ve had everybody very, very worried . . . Do you know they were broadcasting on the wireless about you?’

  Did a little bit of excitement flicker across her sorrow-laden face? Something very like it came over in her voice as she exclaimed quickly, ‘The wireless? Me?’

  ‘Yes, the whole country’s been looking for you.’

  Again she exclaimed, ‘Me?’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘They thought you might have come to some harm.’ Not wishing to explain what he meant by harm he added, ‘It’s a long way.’

  Blinking, sniffing and gulping, she looked away from him towards the fireplace, and said flatly, ‘I wouldn’t come to no harm, I had a St Christopher medal in me pocket.’

  This simple statement of faith caused his eyebrows to rise . . . She would come to no harm because she was carrying on her person a piece of tin, depicting the saint who was supposedly a protector of travellers! The simplicity, the profundity of this small child’s faith amazed him and caused the feeling of bitterness which he was rarely without, to rise and swamp him again in something like envy now, for never could he remember even as a child having faith.

  When a fresh spasm of sobbing began to shake her and her head d
ropped once more, and she slipped her small hands between her knees and pressed them together, he bent swiftly down and lifted her up and placed her on his knee, saying, ‘Ssh! Be quiet. There now. There now.’

  Desperately, she turned her face into his chest, as she had hoped to do in Mike’s, but without any of the feeling of comfort she would have experienced from contact with her da. It was all so different from what she had expected; her da would have nothing to do with her; nor their Michael; and Mr Lord was finished with her, even her ma, knowing she was feeling bad, had left her to go upstairs . . . The fact that of all people in the house only this boy had stayed with her added to her bottomless sadness, for, as she thought of it, he didn’t belong to them. She liked him all right, she had liked him on that first day, but he wasn’t her da, her ma, their Michael, or Mr Lord.

  Her crying mounting, she pressed her mouth hard against his shirt, and with his arms about her he sat stroking her head, until Lizzie, like someone sleepwalking, returned to the kitchen and, showing no surprise at finding Mike gone, carried her upstairs.

  Chapter Eight

  Twenty hours precisely had elapsed since Mary Ann’s dramatic return, and they had been filled with everything contrary to what she had expected. She had talked to more policemen than ever she thought had existed. And not policemen as she knew them, but just in their ordinary clothes. And even men from newspapers. These men wouldn’t believe that she didn’t know Mr Wilson’s address. Had she known it and was trying to protect him she would surely have failed under their battery of questions. Mr Wilson was going to get wrong, and she didn’t want Mr Wilson to get wrong. Mr Wilson was nice, so was Mrs Wilson, but it was Mr Wilson, and he alone who had brought her home. The day had been filled with talk, but no-one had spoken to her personally, no-one had spoken to her as if she was Mary Ann Shaughnessy. Her mother had said, ‘Eat your dinner,’ ‘Eat your tea’; their Michael had avoided her eyes; her da had not spoken at all; she hadn’t seen Mr Lord. Only Tony had talked to her, or let her remain with him, but as yet in her mind he wasn’t in the circle of the family, he was just ‘the hand’.

  And now she was lying in bed, wide awake, her eyes staring and blinking at the sloping ceiling, listening to her ma and da fighting, fighting quietly in the kitchen.

  Like the wind at night, their voices rose and fell at intervals. From time to time she had strained to hear what they were saying, but couldn’t; now, when her da’s voice rose high for an instant and she heard him crying plainly, ‘I’ll do what I bloody well like,’ she found herself out of bed and on the landing at the top of the stairs, listening, as was her old habit, feeling that she must know the torments of her parents and seeing their every move in her mind’s eye.

  Down in the kitchen, Lizzie sat by the table, automatically pushing her plate an inch first one way and then another, her eyes following its course as if it were something of deep interest. When Mike had yelled at her she hadn’t answered, and now he was standing, his foot on the fender, his arm on the mantelpiece, his fingers beating a tattoo that seemed to fill the room with their angry, rebellious thumping.

  Addressing her plate, she said quietly, ‘Whether you believe it or not, you’ve always done what you like.’

  ‘Aye, you’ve let me think I was doing what I like. You were very clever, Liz, but now all that’s finished. I thought I was a man with a mind of me own and knew where I was going, but all the time you’ve been leading me – leading me through her. Well, that’s over, I’m giving up. There are other jobs besides this, thank God, and I’ll get one, but I’ll get it on me own. Do you hear?’ He turned round to her, his voice rising again, ‘I’ll get it on me own, under me own steam. Under me own steam, d’you hear? Propelled by no woman or bairn.’ He paused, glaring at her downcast head. Then he flung out his hand at her, ‘Don’t you realise – don’t you see I’ve got to do things on me own?’

  He watched her head sink lower towards the plate and his voice sank, too, as he said, ‘You used to understand – you knew me at one time better than I did meself. Perhaps that’s what you did this for, manoeuvred her to manoeuvre me. You might have done it for the best, but . . . ’

  Lizzie lifted her head. ‘I’ve never manoeuvred her. Whether you like to believe it or not the manoeuvring’s been between the two of you. I couldn’t come between you, not even if I’d wanted to. And now you’re thrusting her off, not because of what she’s done, but because of your own vanity. You always want to be the big fellow, don’t you? Well, when you’re thrusting her off you’re thrusting yourself off because you’re afraid to see yourself, because she’s you, every bit of her. All her fighting, all her unthinking actions, the idea that she’s only got to make her case plain and everything will be all right – that’s you, you all over. And I’m telling you this, if you don’t relent you’ll be sorry. You always say you are like the elephant, well, so is she – she doesn’t forget. She’s likely to get over this if you drop it now, but if you keep it up, this silence, this putting her away, you’ll live to regret it. I’m telling you, you’ll live to regret it, for there are others, and I don’t need to mention any names, who will be only too willing, even after what she’s done, to step into your shoes.’

  Mike was in the act of turning away, and now he flung himself round at her and the words ‘Nobody can take her from me, the old boy nor nobody else’ spurted into his mouth, but he didn’t say them, he simply stared his anger at her. Since he had seen the child enter the door last night he had pulled down an iron shutter on his feelings for her and was refusing, even at this distance of hours, to recognise that they were beating for release against the barricade. But now the insinuation of the old man into the battle again brought his love bashing and crashing out of himself. He knew the agony of last night would leave an indelible stain on his mind, in fact it would alter the course of his life from now on; because of what had come to light through it he would be suspicious of every action of both Lizzie’s and the child’s for his welfare; he would fight to go his own road, fight for his right to support them all on his own merits, fight for the right to feel himself a man, his kind of man, his idea of a man, be what it may.

  Instead of the words that were filling his mouth, he said, ‘And you think the old fellow will still have an interest in her after this, after all his highfalutin plans for her are brought low? Old Ma Flannagan said that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and she’s right. And you think the old fellow would be interested in the sow’s ear? No, not if I know him. He had a prodigy in her, someone he thought he could mould, but he picked the wrong clay, she’ll never be moulded by him or anybody else . . . All right – if you like, she’s like me. She’ll remain herself, and to hell with the old man and his power, and his money, and his dictating, and that’s what I’ll tell him when I see him tomorrow.’

  Lizzie’s head jerked up and her eyes became startled, and seeing her fear he now became cruel and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry; you won’t starve, I’ll get a job that will support you. I suppose you know Polinski’s going? He’s going as far as Dorset. Foreman he’s going as. Told me only the day. And they’re wanting a manager on that farm an’ all.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘How would it be if I put in for it? I wouldn’t be separated from her then, would I?’ He paused. ‘That’s another thing we’ve got to get straight, isn’t it?’

  Lizzie’s eyes were stretched, very like Mary Ann’s when surprised by pain, but she made no retort at all, she merely rose and with her hand pressed to her mouth went towards the door. She didn’t reach it, however, for in a couple of strides Mike had her by the shoulders and had swung her round, and his arm pinning her to him, he was talking into her hair, crying, ‘Liz! Oh Liz! My God! What’s come over us? Listen, Liz. Listen. Forget about the child. I’ll deal with that. I’ll deal with the old boy an’ all – nothing can alter what I’m going to do. But about the Polinskis. My God! Liz, believe me on this; I would much sooner have thought of starting something with Old Ma Jones than I would wi
th that young, dirty piece. And I mean what I say, dirty in all ways . . . lazy, a lazy good-for-nowt. But Liz, she was the wife of one of the men, and I liked Polinski and was sorry for him. And, aye God! I was sorry for her. I knew what was the matter with her, Polinski didn’t suit her. She wanted a man, any man who hadn’t his whole mind as Polinski had on the farm and getting on. I laughed with her, ’cos I knew her game, and I laughed at her, that’s all, Liz. Liz, where’s your conceit – her against you? Oh no!’ His arm tightened still further around her, and helplessly now she began to sob, and the sobs filled the house.

  Mary Ann was leaning against the banister, all her fingers in her mouth. The tears slipping softly from her lashes were missing the wells of her eyes to drop onto her cheekbones and roll heavily to her chin. They were kind, they were kind to each other again. That’s all that mattered, nothing else mattered, not the policemen, or the men from the newspapers, or which school she was going to, or her da leaving the farm and getting another job. They were kind, nothing mattered. She stumbled into the bedroom and into bed, and lying down she stuck the corner of the sheet into her mouth, and in a short while she fell asleep.

  The following morning Michael couldn’t go to school, he had a fever. His body was hot, his hands were hot, and he wanted nothing to eat. Lizzie sat on the side of his bed and pushed his wet hair back from his brow. She knew that something was worrying him – she knew her son better than she did her daughter – and she said, ‘What is it? Tell me, what is it?’

  She had asked this a number of times during the past few hours, but he had tossed his head. And now he did it again. Then, when she did not persist in her inquiries, he swung himself round and burying his face in the pillow muttered something brokenly, and she bent her head to hear, and said, ‘Yes? Go on, tell me what’s happened.’