Kate Hannigan

by Catherine Cookson

  But you must have a da; Jesus had given everybody das; you couldn’t be borned unless you had a da…And if Kate was her ma…But her mind switched away from Kate; Kate was mixed up with something so painful that it hurt…Where was her da?…She remembered Alec. No, he wasn’t her da. He had been going to marry Kate, and she was glad he hadn’t. No, he couldn’t be her da…Well, who was?

  She began to pray: ‘Oh, please Jesus, tell me who my da is.’ Raising her head, she looked up as if the answer would be found in the air above her, and she licked her tears, savouring their saltiness as she waited. But no answer came…It must be right, then, what they’d said, she wasn’t like other girls. What could she do? Nothing! Nothing!

  In fresh despair she turned to the wall and buried her face in her hands. Through long practice, she cried quietly, and when, eventually, she stopped, she sat on the edge of the lavatory seat wondering what she could do about this dreadful shame which had come upon her; for she had no doubt but that it was a shame. Then the solution came; like a streak of dazzling light it flashed into her mind, bringing with it the remedy. Although it would be only ‘making on’ it would be wonderful, for she’d have a da. Though her choice was already made she felt she must arrive at it by a process of elimination…She was going to ‘pick’ a da for herself! None of the other girls could do that, could they? Now, who did she know? There was Mr Mullen, next door; he was kind and nice…but he swore awful. No, he wouldn’t do; and besides he was a da eight times already. Then there was Mr Todd, the coalman; he always heaped her buckets so full she could scarcely carry them into the yard…but he spat, didn’t he? Of course, it was with sitting in the middle of the coal-cart all day that made him do it…but still he spat! Then there was Patrick Delahunty, the big Irishman who had come to lodge up the street; he always stopped and spoke to her, and he sometimes gave her and Rosie a penny. Yes, he was nice, but…!

  Then there was the doctor! She shivered, and joining her hands together, pressed them between her knees. She turned her head and gazed at the wall, a hot feeling of shyness sweeping over her because of the tremendous thing she was about to do. She sat lost in contemplation of the wonder of this new existence wherein the doctor was to be her da; so lost that had she heard Tim’s heavy boots coming down the yard they had ceased to be a warning to her for flight. Only when he tried to open the door and, finding it locked, shook it with such violence as to nearly wrench it off its hinges did she start up, withdraw the bolt and, pushing open the door, sidle out.

  A muttered curse and a quick movement from Tim lent wings to her legs. She was out of the yard and into the back lane in a flash. She looked about her like a startled hare…Had he been going to hit her? He put his hand to his belt…the leather belt with the big steel buckle which was part of her regular nightmare. Sometimes the buckle became a face, the face of her granda…She blinked her eyes and shook her head, as if this would dismiss it from her mind. It did; and she thought again of the beautiful, new ‘make-on’ game…And it wasn’t all ‘make-on’, was it? she asked herself, for the doctor was a real person, the reallest person on earth and she loved him…better than God! Eeh! what had she said? Well, she did love him, as much as God. Wasn’t it lovely to feel like this, all shivery and jumpy inside, because he was her da? And it was her secret, just hers; she wouldn’t tell anyone. But what about Rosie? Surely she could tell Rosie.

  While walking slowly down the back lane and into the next street she debated in her mind whether Rosie should be let into this secret. She couldn’t quite understand why she was hesitating about telling Rosie, for Rosie was her friend, and she told her everything. But, somehow, she had the same feeling about it as she had with her grandma when they didn’t talk about the things granda did.

  The sight of Rosie leaving the pram to chase Cissy Luck and thump her in the back decided her. Rosie was shouting: ‘Take that, you cheeky bitch…and that! You’re as soft as clarts…and your ma’s soft as clarts, and your da’s soft as clarts!’

  Annie dashed up to her and, taking her face between her hands, a gesture which always warmed Rosie, whispered, bending a little so that their noses nearly touched, ‘I have got a da!’

  Rosie drew back: ‘What! Who?’

  Annie pulled her forward again, ‘The doctor!’

  ‘The doctor?’

  ‘Mm-m.’

  Rosie again withdrew herself to a short distance from where she could look steadily at Annie…Annie didn’t tell lies, but, the doctor her da! Well, of course…yes, that explained everything - the rides in his car, the sweets and fruit, right in the middle of the week, and then those great big presents at Christmas…Of course; he must be her da. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?…But then, he wasn’t married to Kate. Well, that was a thing she couldn’t understand, but definitely he was Annie’s da…only das brought you things.

  ‘It’s a “make-on” secret,’ again whispered Annie.

  But Rosie didn’t hear this last confidence, or else she was conveniently deaf, not meaning her next course of action to be restricted.

  Turning from Annie, she advanced halfway across the road again and addressed the now snivelling Cissy and her comforter, Peggy, on the opposite pavement: ‘Think yer clever, doncher?’ she yelled. ‘Well, she has got a da, see! And a better one than yours. Her da’s the doctor, if you want to know…there!’ she said, jerking her head violently in their direction. Then, turning her back, she lifted up her clothes and thrust out her bottom at them, and, leaving them with this final insult, she grabbed the handle of the pram at one end, assigning the other to Annie, and led a triumphant march at a smart pace down the street.

  It was just on ten-thirty, and Annie waited near the police-house, as she called the small dock police office that stood at the side of the big dock gates. She watched the men pass in and out of the docks with great interest. The policeman on duty had spoken to her, saying, ‘You waiting for your ma again?’ She remembered now he had called Kate her ma before today…so he had known. Everybody had known, except her…She nodded at him, shyly.

  The tram from Westoe came rolling down the ‘dock bank’, and, when it stopped, Kate alighted and the conductor lifted her suitcase onto the pavement.

  Annie paused a moment before running to her, savouring a feeling akin to that experienced earlier in the morning…this was her ma; and Annie realised for the first time that she was different from everyone around her…none of the women wore a beautiful green coat and a big green hat and a fur with a lot of tails…the fur must be new, she hadn’t seen it before…and none of them stood like Kate did, or walked like her; she stood very straight and, when she walked, her skirts danced. The women she saw every day wore dark, drab clothes, and stood hunched up, like the group which was waiting for the Jarrow tram now and had turned their eyes, like the eyes of a wolf pack, on her.

  As Kate looked about her, Annie ran forward, and, as she heard herself say ‘Hello, Kate,’ as Kate bent to kiss her, she knew, with great certainty, that she’d never be able to call her anything else; it would always be ‘Kate’, never ‘ma’.

  Kate looked her over quickly, tenderly. She touched her cheek with the back of her hand before picking up the suitcase and crossing the road to the tram terminus. ‘Have you been waiting long, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Annie; ‘and I’ve been talking to the policeman.’

  ‘Grandma all right?’ asked Kate.

  Annie hesitated, thinking of the rolled-down sleeves. ‘Ye…s. Yes, I think so. She’s going to bake, she’s making me a yule doo.’

  Kate glanced down at her, swiftly, and sighed.

  Annie thought it was because the case was so heavy: ‘Let me help, I’ll take one side,’ she suggested.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Kate. ‘Here we are, anyway, and there’s the tram coming.’

  They stood for a few minutes while the tram disgorged its passengers, some giving Kate a brief nod of acknowledgement and a long stare, others calling cheerily, ‘Hallo there,
Kate! Happy Christmas.’ Annie noted it was the men who were nicer.

  Kate pulled Annie’s arm through hers as they sat together on the long wooden seat, while opposite sat a row of women. All the women seemed to have sat on the opposite side of the tram, Annie noticed; perhaps they wanted to look at Kate’s fur; yes, that was it, for they were all staring at Kate; but Kate didn’t seem to notice, for she was talking about Christmas and…What was she saying?…She was going to take her up to Newcastle in the train this afternoon? And they would go to the big bazaar where Santa Claus lived!

  She pressed herself against Kate, against the green coat and the tails of the fur. There was a faint smell, warm and lovely. Her mind could offer no name for it; it wasn’t scent, for Connie Fawcett, who was Kate’s cousin and had been hers up till today but had now become in some way disconnected with this new relationship, she used scent. When Connie came from High Jarrow to see her grandma, her grandma always waffed her apron around the kitchen after she had gone to get rid of the smell; but you wouldn’t want to get rid of this smell.

  ‘Come on, dreamer,’ said Kate softly, ‘we’re nearly there.’

  Annie looked about her in surprise: yes, so they were. There was the first of the fifteen streets.

  The tram stopped just before the first street. ‘The stops’ve been altered,’ explained the conductor; ‘we only stop at each end of the fifteen streets now.’

  Kate made a wry face at Annie; the case was heavy and she’d have to carry it past the breadth of eight streets before coming to her own…Still, it wasn’t like walking past the streets in the late afternoon or evening when each corner had its special clique of loafers.

  As she rested at the corner of the second street she noticed a woman running from the far end towards her; she carried her hat in her hand, from which a broken feather dangled, a coil of her hair was hanging on her shoulder, and Kate noticed, as she drew nearer, that the front of her coat was covered with soft filth, and that angry tears were running down her face.

  ‘Why,’ exclaimed Kate, ‘what on earth’s the matter, Jessie?’

  The woman stopped and leant against the wall, gasping: ‘It’s them bitches, Kate. They did this to me,’ she said, holding out her hat with one hand and pointing to her coat with the other. ‘I’ll have the law on them, see if I don’t. They won’t get off with it, I’ll make them pay, every one of them. Dirty swine!’

  Kate looked at her pityingly as she made this idle threat…Poor Jessie!…Had she really gone to school with this woman? Played with her? Knelt beside her at mass? It seemed impossible; she looked old and haggard now…spent. Could she be only two years older than herself?

  ‘I was only goin’ to see me ma, Kate, that’s all, it bein’ Christmas Eve an’ all. Ooh…h! I wish I was dead.’ Her head dropped to her chest, and she moved it from side to side in a gesture of despair that wrung Kate’s heart.

  Kate knew what Jessie’s life had been. After a youth spent working in a laundry, ten hours a day, and the rest of her waking life at street corners or in dark recesses of shop doors, Jessie had married one of the boys from the fifteen streets, who, in the neighbours’ opinion was much too good for her; which must have been God’s opinion also, said the God-fearing members of the community, when, just a year later, he was killed in the pit. Jessie had a friend who lived next door and who was very kind to her during her trouble, to the extent of allowing her husband to do odd jobs for her. It was later brought to the friend’s notice by kind neighbours that it seemed funny that her husband and Jessie had to go up to Newcastle on the same day, and that as soon as she went out to do her shopping her man was in with Jessie when he was supposed to be getting his sleep ready for the night shift. The result of this exposure had been a promise from the husband to have nothing further to do with Jessie. But he had counted without Jessie, for she had found someone at last who could satisfy her physically, and she could no more leave him alone than she could stop herself wanting him. However, she moved to Shields to make things easier, and nothing the wife could do about it could loosen Jessie’s hold on her husband; until nature took a hand. Aided, no doubt, by the wife’s feverish desire to keep her man, it presented her with a child after eight years of marriage.

  The baby was an enemy against whom Jessie was powerless, and the visits of its father became less and less, until they ceased altogether. Desperate, Jessie came to the fifteen streets, where she hadn’t been for two years, supposedly to see her mother. This morning’s visit was her third within a week, and some of the neighbours, seeing which way the wind was blowing, became self-constituted avengers, determined to protect the reformed husband against this shameless woman.

  Most of this story was known to Kate, and the right or the wrong of it passed her by. She only knew that she felt a great pity for her one-time schoolmate. ‘Why don’t you get right away, Jessie? Go into service somewhere; you’ll forget all about this. There are good places to be had…look at me. Why don’t you try it?’ she urged.

  Jessie began to sob helplessly: ‘You fell on your feet, Kate; there ain’t many places like yours. And you’ve got your bairn, I’ve got nothing…Anyway, I only want him,’ she added, with finality.

  A gasp at her side brought Kate’s attention from Jessie to Annie; she was staring wide-eyed at Jessie, and the tears were raining down her cheeks. Kate was about to tell Annie to run home when they heard shouts coming from up the main road, and there, pouring from the street next to her own, was a group of women, who were gesticulating and pointing towards them. There was no doubt in Kate’s mind that they were bent on further destruction. ‘Get away, Jessie, as quickly as you can! Look, there’s a tram coming; you’ll just get it!’

  ‘I can’t go on the tram like this, Kate,’ gasped Jessie, desperately; ‘I’ll walk.’

  ‘You must get the tram,’ said Kate. ‘The way they are feeling, some of them would likely follow you to the docks. Surely you know them by now.’

  A stone hurtled past them, and Kate pulled Annie close to her. It decided Jessie. Sobbing afresh, she took to her heels and ran, boarding the tram just as the women came up with Kate, frustration and hate predominant in all their faces. They paused a moment, breathless, watching the tram roll away.

  ‘Yer wanter give that’un a wide berth,’ said one of them, turning to Kate, ‘she’s a real wrong ‘un.’

  ‘I’m surprised you speak to her, filthy bitch that she is,’ said another, hitching up her enormous breasts with her forearms. ‘She’s shameless, bloody well shameless. If I’d got me hands into her hair instead of grabbing that hat I’d have let her see, the—!’

  Kate looked at the last speaker coldly, an anger that was only stirred by injustice rising in her…How dare this woman whom she had known from childhood, and who had always shocked her with her obscenities, in spite of having been brought up under the specialised language of Tim! How dare she, who delighted in exchanging the filth of her mind with any man so interested, appoint herself judge of another woman! She was feared, and consequently fawned upon by most of her associates; she was Kate’s idea of corruption; there was no tempering of judgement here. Mrs Luck was bad! Her mind was a sewer; she could defile by a look. She had eleven children alive, which made Kate shudder at the productive power of evil…

  Kate’s distaste and anger showed clearly in her face as she looked at the little crowd before her, and it wasn’t lost on them. There was a moment of hostile silence as they stared back at her and the child, pressed close to her side. A moment ago they had felt protective towards her, warning against the contamination of Jessie…but now, with her looking at them like that, and her dressed up to the knocker like a goddam queen or somesuch…their attitude changed…and if all the tales were true she was a damn sight as bad as that whore just gone.

  ‘I don’t think it’s for you to judge Jessie Daley, it behoves us all to mind our own business,’ said Kate scornfully.

  They gasped, speechless with surprise at her daring, and listened, fascinated
by her tone, for Kate was unconsciously speaking to them much as Miss Tolmache would have done. ‘You’ll never right wrongs by the methods you are using. Can’t you see you’ll only make matters worse? A little kindness from one of you would have had much more effect than all your horseplay…but then, of course,’ Kate’s eyes swept them with disdain, ‘you wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.’

  As she stooped to pick up her case there was a murmur of, ‘By damn, who the hell does she think she is?…We’re coming to something now, ain’t we?’ but nothing really audible until she had passed through the midst of them, with Annie clinging to her hand.

  She had walked a few yards ahead when the first voice reached her, which she recognised as Dorrie Clarke’s: ‘Birds of a feather, lasses!’ Dorrie yelled. ‘Only this one picks on professional blokes; they can pay more; look at her clothes. What did I tell you?’

  Kate jerked to a halt as if a bullet had struck her in the back. She had no time to think before Mrs Luck screamed words that seemed to freeze her blood; all the hard-won beauty in her life was darkened from this moment, never to fully return to its previous brightness; her real misfortunes seemed to date from the moment Mrs Luck shouted: ‘It’s coming to something…by God it is! Who jer think yer talking to…brazen hussy! No wonder yer bairn brags in the street that the doctor is her da. She gets her barefacedness from the right one, you bloody upstart, you!’