The Invisible Cord

by Catherine Cookson

  Her mother wasn’t natural. She should have probed and gone for her. But her father was natural. His probing had gone deep, and when it was finished there had been tears in his eyes. But all he had said to her was, ‘My God lass! To wreck your life like that.’ Then he had added, ‘Well, it’s done and can’t be undone; and for what part I have in it I’ll see it’s done properly, you’ll have a weddin’.’

  Annie looked down onto the street. The houses on the opposite side, not more than thirty feet away, were misted, not only with the November dullness but with the Sunday dullness. Even in wartime Annie thought, Sunday had the power to blot out life; except the service canteens and the churches, the town died on a Sunday. It was fear that filled the churches, her da said. Perhaps he was right there, for she herself was always praying that she wouldn’t be hit by a bomb, and if she was, that she would be killed outright and not made blind. She had a fear of going blind because once she’d had her eyes bandaged for a fortnight after getting an infection in them.

  Her gaze became focused on three children playing on a doorstep. They were the Ratcliffes. Sunday made no difference to them, they were let out at any time. The two older ones belonged to Betty Ratcliffe, and she was married, but the three-year-old was Jane’s. She’d had him the first year of the war when she was sixteen and she had fought her mother to keep him. Her da had said that it was very commendable of Jane; her ma, as usual when faced with such matters, had just tightened her lips, neither condemning nor sympathising. But Jane had had to pay for her mistake for her name became mud in the street. They said she’d had two miscarriages since and that she was making a pile out of the army, navy and air force, she wasn’t choosey. Well, no matter what they said about her, she seemed to enjoy herself and was always well dressed in spite of clothing coupons. Nevertheless, she always wore a defiant look on her face and never spoke to any of the neighbours.

  When she knew she herself had fallen she wondered whether she, too, should brave it out like Jane, but she knew she couldn’t, she wouldn’t be able to stand the shame of it.

  Mona was saying now, ‘How you goin’ on for coupons?’

  She turned and leant her back against the window sill, saying flatly, ‘Me ma and da are givin’ me theirs.’

  ‘Are you going to make it yourself?’

  ‘No; I’d only make a hash of it. I’m going to ask Mrs Tyler to run it up.’

  There was silence between them now while they looked at each other across the small room; then Mona said, ‘Is there any chance of him being sent abroad?’

  ‘What do you mean, chance?’ Annie had left the support of the window sill; her back stiff, she repeated, ‘What do you mean, chance? You suggestin’ that he should be sent over so that he can be knocked off?’

  ‘No, no, I’m not. You know I’m not.’

  There was no conviction in the answer, but Annie’s attitude now gave the assumption that she had received an apology—for, her body slumping, she sat down in the wicker chair by the side of the bed…Any chance of him being sent overseas? That very question had been in her mind for days, filling her with guilt and remorse. Not that she would want him dead, but she wished he’d be taken out of the way until, as she put it, she could pull herself together.

  It wasn’t that she disliked Georgie, she didn’t, you couldn’t dislike him. On the other hand she was only too well aware that he was no cop, and she felt she deserved somebody better than him, somebody with a little more up top. She had always imagined marrying someone better off than herself, and decidedly she had never intended to marry anyone from these parts.

  After she left school she had lain in bed at nights and thought how wonderful it would be if she could click a lad who lived in Westoe, or somebody who worked in the town hall. But since the Americans had come her aspirations had grown, even beyond Westoe and the town hall. What if an American officer fell for her? Or a sergeant? Or even a corporal, because all Americans…well most of them, were rich.

  But here it was 1943 and she had never spoken to an American, not even a G.I. and she hadn’t caught the eye of even one English officer in the army, navy, or air force, nor yet that of a sergeant; what she had caught was a bellyful from a cook in the R.A.F.

  Her head moved in slight admonition at the vulgarity of the thought, for such everyday thinking that pervaded her environment had, until recently, been condemned by her as vulgar. She had ideas of bettering herself, if not by marriage, then by getting herself a better job as soon as this war was over. She had in mind to take up shorthand and typing and of becoming a secretary, the kind of secretary that a boss relied on, like you read about in the magazines, and the kind of boss who eventually married his secretary. But now all that nonsense was over and the sooner she faced up to facts the better. She was pregnant, she was going to marry Georgie McCabe, she would have one bairn after another until she finally put a stop to him. She’d live in a three-upstairs or two-downer and eventually consider herself lucky if she had two up and two down like this one. Eventually she’d lose her figure and people would forget that she had ever been bonny, and she herself would forget that she had ever wanted anything better …

  No by God! I won’t. She was standing on her feet, her head wagging at Mona, who moved her position on the bed and, staring up at her, enquired softly, ‘You’re not goin’ to marry him then?’

  ‘Aw you, Mona Broadbent!’ Annie was bending forward, her two hands flat in the middle of the bed. ‘Some friend you are, sneering about me being married in white, then wanting him dead, and now wishing that I’ll not marry him and leave the bairn like Jane Ratcliffe’s. Aye, some friend you are. Well, I am going to marry him, and the bairn will have a name, and what’s more I’ll make something out of him, Georgie, I mean. And I’ll not stay in Weldon Street; you can take that from me.’

  ‘All right I’ll take it, but don’t ram it down me throat.’

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

  ‘I liked him all right until he…well, got you into trouble. I used to think he was harmless, all right for a giggle. But he wasn’t so harmless, was he?’

  ‘Don’t keep on.’

  ‘You started it.’

  Annie straightened her back, walked to the box-seat set opposite a chest of drawers on which stood a little swing mirror, and leaning forward, she stretched her top lip downwards and pushed her nose to one side in search of elusive blackheads; then nodding at her friend through the mirror she said, ‘I’ll surprise you one of these days, you’ll see; I’ll make something of him if it kills me.’

  ‘It might that an’ all.’

  Slowly Annie turned on the seat and looked over the bed rail, along which Mona now had her forearms folded with her chin resting on them, and she said, ‘You rub it in, don’t you?’

  Shading her eyes Mona now looked down towards the floor as she answered, ‘It’s ’cos I’m concerned; and if the truth was told I’m a bit jealous.’ She raised her eyelids and grinned at Annie, and Annie asked softly, ‘You’re not, are you?’

  ‘Aye. Well, it’ll be different when you’re married.’

  ‘There’ll be nothing different; it’ll just be the same, we’ll always be friends.’ She felt better now since Mona had said she was a bit jealous. ‘Come on.’ She rose and pulled at Mona’s arm. ‘The tea’ll be ready, let’s go downstairs.’ But as she went to open the door she stopped and, turning and facing Mona, said quietly, ‘If you hear Katie Newton saying anything more will you deny it for me?’

  ‘Aye, of course.’

  ‘Ta…and when it comes I can say it was premature.’

  ‘Aye, you could.’

  ‘’Cos they do come afore time, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh, aye, they do.’

  They smiled at each other; then Annie said again, softly, ‘Ta, Mona.’

  Mona did not ask why she was being thanked again but when Annie opened the door she drooped her head and went out.

  As Annie followed her friend down the stairs she thought, Don
’t let’s kid meself. Jealous? She’s no more jealous of me than she is of Lottie Collins. And no-one in their right mind would be jealous of Lottie Collins, and her the street idiot who had to be taken everywhere by the hand.

  Two

  To say it rained was putting it mildly, bucketing was the expression that was being generally used. It had bucketed from the Friday morning all through the Friday night, and Dennis Cooper had assured his daughter that this was a good thing because there couldn’t be much more left up there, and it would dry up first thing. But at eleven o’clock on the Saturday morning he was forced to remark that it was a pity there was no rationing up there. He had seen rain of all kinds in his time, from smut-laden to sleet-laden but this lot he termed spite-laden. He kept up his tirade against the weather for so long that Annie was forced to cry at him, ‘Oh, Da, give over! It’s not helpin’ any you keepin’ on. Nobody can stop it, so give over, do.’

  Annie knew that her da was going on as he was doing for her sake because he thought the rain would spoil her wedding, her white wedding. Well, although she couldn’t stop the rain she could take its effect away by stopping the wedding. She had the power to do that, hadn’t she? There were three hours to go yet. She could get into her outdoor things, pack a bag, take the money she had saved, leaving the little Georgie had added in an envelope with a letter to him, then take a single ticket to somewhere. Where? Yes, that was the question, where?

  She had asked herself the same question last night as she had lain awake peering into the future, not into the years, but to the coming twenty-four hours when Georgie would be lying beside her in this bed.

  It was funny them spending their first night in this house; and funnier still that it was on her mother’s suggestion that they were doing it. No use spending money on hotels, she had said, when he was due to get the train at twelve o’clock on the Sunday. She herself had thought there was some slight indecency about the suggestion. Her da, too, might have been of the same mind for he had said neither yes nor nay to it.

  Her mother was a puzzle to her, she just couldn’t understand her; yet during the past few weeks she had come to realise that her ma didn’t want to lose her. ‘As long as the war’s on,’ she had said, ‘you can make this your home, ’cos he’ll be away most of the time and you’ll need someone to see to you.’ She hadn’t added, ‘When the bairn comes.’

  At times she wished her mother would put her arms around her and hug her and say, ‘There, there, hinny, don’t worry; you’ve got me and your da, we’ll see that you’re all right.’ In a way, she had said the words, but without the actions, and it was the actions, the actions of tenderness that she had needed very badly these past days.

  And now, here she was thinking again of taking a single ticket to somewhere. But you had to have somebody waiting for you in that somewhere, and the fact was she hadn’t a relative outside the town. Her mother and father were only children, and her mother’s parents were dead, while her grandma and granda Cooper lived just a mile away. You couldn’t get a single ticket to Laygate.

  She turned from her father who was peering out through the lace curtains into the backyard, and she hesitated a moment in the middle of the kitchen while looking towards the scullery, where her mother was wrapping a stack of sandwiches in a dampened tea towel, and going slowly towards her, she stood in the doorway and looked for a moment at the stubby hands folding over the points of the cloth before she said, ‘The table looks lovely, Ma.’

  ‘Well, I’ve done me best.’

  ‘I know you have.’

  ‘A body can’t do more.’

  ‘No…Ma.’

  It seemed as if it would take an effort for Mary Cooper to raise her hands from the packed sandwiches and look at her daughter, and when she did all she said was, ‘Aye.’

  Annie gulped on a mouthful of spittle, bit on her lip, then hung her head before she said, ‘I just want to say, th…thanks for all you’ve done, Ma.’

  She didn’t know which way to jump when Mary, flinging out her short arm, pulled the door closed, shutting them in the small well of the scullery, and now, looking into her daughter’s face, she said tersely, ‘I’m your mother, aren’t I, what did you expect from me? To throw you out on the street?’

  ‘No, Ma, no, I didn’t. But…but you’ve been kind.’

  ‘Haven’t I always been kind to you?’

  Annie’s eyes flickered to the side for a moment; then she was nodding her head. ‘Aye…aye, yes, you have; you’ve brought me up well. I’m not sayin’, but…but what I mean to say is that, well, under the circumstances you’ve been—’ her head drooped onto her breast and as her voice broke and she said, ‘Oh Ma!’ her body swayed forward and it seemed a long second before Mary’s arms came out and held her, held her tightly, even crushed her. They were both crying now, both muttering, Annie saying, ‘Oh Ma! Oh Ma!’ and Mary saying, ‘Lass, why had you to do it? Why? Why?’

  The sound of the front-door knocker being rapped hard and Dennis’s voice calling, ‘Mary, somebody here,’ brought them apart. Their heads turned from each other, their hands rubbing at their faces, and Mary, taking up the corner of her apron, blew her nose then pressed both hands down from the centre parting of her hair which, unlike Annie’s, was jet black. Then quickly turning, she pushed at her daughter, saying, ‘Get yourself upstairs and get ready.’ And on this Annie opened the door and went into the kitchen, to see her father coming in from the passage with Mrs McCabe behind him, and behind her the fourteen-year-old McCabe twins, Archie and Mike, one carrying a large bundle, the other an old kitbag.

  ‘Hello, hinny.’ Mollie McCabe edged her way past the sofa and the table and, her big slack-lipped mouth wide, she laughed towards Annie, saying, ‘I’ve brought some of his toggery along. He’s still dead to the world; the bugger was sodden last night but I’ll see he doesn’t get any till he leaves the church. Don’t you worry, lass.’ She thrust out her arm, her fist doubled, and punched Annie playfully in the chest as she went on, ‘Did you ever see a mornin’ like it? Aw well, we’ll all be as wet inside as we are out come this time the night. What do you say, Dennis?’ She turned now and poked her fingers towards Dennis. Then swinging her big flabby body around she exclaimed, ‘Where’s your mother? Oh, there you are, Mary.’ She looked towards the scullery door, and Mary, walking slowly into the kitchen, said, ‘Hello, Mrs McCabe.’

  ‘Aw!’ Mollie shook her head from side to side. ‘How many times have I had to ask you not to call me Mrs McCabe. Mollie’s me name. Everybody calls me Mollie, even them that hates me guts.’ She turned round now and nodded at Dennis. ‘Aye, an’ there’s a few of them I can tell you. Fetch them here, you two.’ She now waved at her sons, and they came from the doorway, each humping his bundle forward with one hand and a knee. Then pointing from the kitbag to the bundle, Mollie cried, ‘His odds and sods. I thought I’d bring them along an’ you can settle them in afore the dirty deed’s done, and at the same time say hello, and ta very much for seein’ to things.’ She turned now and nodded towards Mary.

  She waited for some response, and when none was forthcoming she grabbed the bundle and kitbag from her sons and, looking at Annie, said, ‘Come on, lass, I’ll take them up to your room.’ And no-one saying her nay, she went out into the passage towards the stairs, and Annie, after dividing a startled look between her mother and father, followed her.

  In the bedroom, Mollie McCabe dumped her son’s belongings into the corner between the chest of drawers and the wall, then she turned and looked at Annie. Her face, now without its wide splitting grin, looked flabby and old, and momentarily Annie contrasted her with her mother. Her mother looked like a young woman compared with her future mother-in-law. But then her mother wasn’t all that old, only thirty-six, whereas Mrs McCabe must be all of fifty. Anyway, she looked it.

  ‘Well, it’s nearly time, lass.’

  Annie blinked, then said, ‘Yes, Mrs McCabe.’

  ‘Now, now, lass, you at least’ll have to get used to callin
’ me Mollie, no matter how stiff-necked your ma remains. That’s if you don’t want to call me ma, or mam, or mother, or go the whole hog and call me mater, like they do on the pictures.’ Her face went into a grin again, but only for a second; and then she said, ‘There’s just one thing I want to say, an’ it’ll be different from what everybody else is sayin’, ’cos I know how the yappin’s gone. You’ve let yourself down a mile, they’re sayin’, takin’ up with our Georgie. He’s got nothin’ up top, they’re sayin’; like all the McCabes, they’re sayin’. Well, let me say one thing in our Georgie’s favour, lass. He’s kind; he’d give his shirt-tail away in the winter, he would that. And another thing. You could get a better lad, I won’t say you couldn’t with the looks of you, but there’s somethin’ that I don’t think you know, ’cos he’s short of words like. But it isn’t only the day or yesterda’ that he started caring for you, he’s watched you since you were a bit of a bairn. On his twenty-first birthday when we had a bit of a do he said to me on the side, “I wish that Cooper lass was a bit older, I would have asked her round.” An’ I remember laughin’ me head off and sayin’ to him, “What! you’d be brought up for baby snatchin’ and learnin’ her to drink.” But I understood how he felt, ’cos you looked over fourteen. You look much older than seventeen now, lass; you could be taken for twenty and that’s no offence, just the opposite. But what I want to get over to you is, he cares for you, and that bein’ so you’ll be able to handle him like putty. You mightn’t think it, me being like I am, likin’ me drop an’ all that, you mightn’t think that I worry about the bairns, but I do, and our Georgie most of all. I’ve wondered what kind of lass he’d finally end up with. Some dirty slut, I thought, who couldn’t keep her snotty-nosed bairns clean. Bad as I am they could never say that about me, that me bairns weren’t kept clean, and their bellies full. Well—’ she now hitched up her bust with her forearm—‘what I really want to say, lass, is, I’m kind of grateful to you for havin’ him. Mind—’ Her forearm, now depriving her bust of its support, shot out and, pointing her finger at Annie, she said, ‘Not that I don’t know that you were forced into it. Oh aye; you don’t jump over a cliff unless there’s a bull behind you. But as I said to his da last night, if anybody can thatch a roof with rotten straw it’s that lass. Mind—’ her finger was stabbing now—‘I’m not sayin’ that there’s anything rotten about our Georgie, but you get me meanin’, which is, if anybody can make anything of him it’ll be you. Well—’ she took one step backwards now—‘I’ve had me say, lass, so I’ll get meself downstairs, open me big mouth an’ laugh me bloomin’ head off, and your ma’ll say, polite like, “Goodbye, Mrs McCabe” while thinkin, “That woman! Common as clarts she is!”…Ta-rah, lass.’