Fanny McBride

by Catherine Cookson

  FANNY MCBRIDE

  Catherine Cookson

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Fanny McBride

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  In brief:

  Her books have sold over 130 million copies in 26 languages throughout the world and still counting…

  Catherine Cookson was born Katherine Ann McMullen on June 27th, 1906 in the bleak industrial heartland of Tyne Dock, South Shields (then part of County Durham) and later moved to East Jarrow, which is now in Tyne and Wear.

  She was the illegitimate daughter of Kate Fawcett, an alcoholic, whom she thought was her sister. She was raised by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. The poverty, exploitation, and bigotry she experienced in her early years aroused deep emotions that stayed with her throughout her life and which became part of her stories. Catherine left school at 13, and after a period of domestic service, she took a job in a laundry at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, working all hours and saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house. She took in gentleman and lady lodgers to supplement her income and took up fencing as one of her hobbies. One of her lodgers was Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School, and in June 1940, they married. They were devoted to each other throughout their lives together. But the early years of her marriage were beset by the tragic miscarriage of four pregnancies and her subsequent mental breakdown. This took her over a decade to recover from, which she did, often by standing in front of a mirror and giving herself a damn good swearing at!

  Catherine took up writing as a form of therapy to deal with her depression and joined the Hastings Writers’ Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. In 1976, she returned to Northumberland with Tom and went on to write 104 books in all. She became one of the most successful novelists of all time and was one of the first authors to have three or four titles in the Bestseller Lists at the same time.

  She read widely: from Chaucer to the literature of the 1920s; to Plato’s Apologia on the trial and death of Socrates (she said that here was someone who stuck to his principles even unto death); to history of the nineteenth century and the Romantic poets; to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son and the books and booklets that abounded in her part of the country dealing with coal, iron, lead, glass, farming and the railways. She disliked it when her books were labeled as ‘romantic.’ To her, they were ‘readable social history of the North East interwoven into the lives of the people.’ For the millions of her readers, she brought ‘an understanding of themselves’ or perhaps of their dear ones. Her stories do not bring in a realism in which the worst is taken for granted, but a realism in which love, caring, and compassion appear, and most certainly, hope. ‘This type of realism does exist,’ Tom Cookson said of her writing. There is nothing sentimental about her writing; she is unrelenting in the strong images she invokes and the characters she portrays. They were born of her formative years and her personal struggles. Many of her novels have been transferred to stage, film, and radio with her television adaptations on ITV, lasting over a decade and achieving ratings of over 10 million viewers.

  Besides writing, she was an innovative painter, and she believed that her father’s genes fostered the strength to work hard, but also, in rare moments of freedom, to strive to better herself. Catherine was famed for her care of money but had given much to charities, hospitals, and medical research in areas close to her heart and to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who set up a lectureship in hematology. The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust continues to donate generously to charitable causes. The University later conferred her the Honorary Degree of Master of Arts. She received the Freedom of the Borough of South Tyneside, today known as Catherine Cookson Country. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year, and she was voted Personality of the North East. Other honours followed: an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, and she was created Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1997.

  Throughout her life, but especially in the later years, she was plagued by a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers, and stomach, and resulted in anemia. As her health declined, she and her husband moved for a final time to Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne to be nearer medical facilities. For the last few years of her life, she was bedridden and Tom hardly ever left her bedside, looking after her needs, cooking for her, and taking her on her emergency trips, often in the middle of the night into Newcastle. Their lives were still made up of the seven-day week and twelve or more hours each day, going over the fan mail, attending to charities, and going over the latest dictated book, with Tom meticulously making corrections line by line, for Catherine’s eyesight had long faded in her 80s.

  This most remarkable woman passed away on June 11th, 1998 at the age of 91. Tom, six years her junior, had earlier suffered a heart attack but survived long enough to be with her at her end. He passed away on 28th June, just 17 days after his beloved Catherine.

  Catherine Cookson’s Books

  NOVELS

  Colour Blind

  Maggie Rowan

  Rooney

  The Menagerie

  Fanny McBride

  Fenwick Houses

  The Garment

  The Blind Miller

  The Wingless Bird

  Hannah Massey

  The Long Corridor

  The Unbaited Trap

  Slinky Jane

  Katie Mulholland

  The Round Tower

  The Nice Bloke

  The Glass Virgin

  The Invitation

  The Dwelling Place

  Feathers in the Fire

  Pure as the Lily

  The Invisible Cord

  The Gambling Man

  The Tide of Life

  The Girl

  The Cinder Path

  The Man Who Cried

  The Whip

  The Black Velvet Gown

  A Dinner of Herbs

  The Moth

  The Parson’s Daughter

  The Harrogate Secret

  The Cultured Handmaiden

  The Black Candle

  The Gillyvors

  My Beloved Son

  The Rag Nymph

  The House of Women

  The Maltese Angel

  The Golden Straw

  The Year of the Virgins

  The Tinker’s Girl

  Justice is a Woman

  A Ruthless Need

  The Bonny Dawn

  The Branded Man

  The Lady on my Left

  The Obsession

  The Upstart

  The Blind Years

  Riley

  The Solace of Sin

  The Desert Crop

  The Thursday Friend

  A House Divided

  Rosie of the River

  The Silent Lady

  FEATURING KATE HANNIGAN

  Kate Hannigan (her first published novel)

  Kate Hannigan’s Girl (her hundredth published novel)

  THE MARY ANN NOVELS

  A Grand Man

  The Lord and Mary Ann

  The Devil and Mary Ann

  Love and Mary Ann

  Life and Mary Ann

  Marriage and Mary Ann

  Mary Ann’s Angels


  Mary Ann and Bill

  FEATURING BILL BAILEY

  Bill Bailey

  Bill Bailey’s Lot

  Bill Bailey’s Daughter

  The Bondage of Love

  THE TILLY TROTTER TRILOGY

  Tilly Trotter

  Tilly Trotter Wed

  Tilly Trotter Widowed

  THE MALLEN TRILOGY

  The Mallen Streak

  The Mallen Girl

  The Mallen Litter

  FEATURING HAMILTON

  Hamilton

  Goodbye Hamilton

  Harold

  AS CATHERINE MARCHANT

  Heritage of Folly

  The Fen Tiger

  House of Men

  The Iron Façade

  Miss Martha Mary Crawford

  The Slow Awakening

  CHILDREN’S

  Matty Doolin

  Joe and the Gladiator

  The Nipper

  Rory’s Fortune

  Our John Willie

  Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet

  Go Tell It To Mrs Golightly

  Lanky Jones

  Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  Our Kate

  Let Me Make Myself Plain

  Plainer Still

  Fanny McBride

  Now that her brood had left the nest, Fanny McBride, a large, cheerful and indomitable Tyneside widow, had time to sit by her window and watch the goings-on outside. There was plenty to keep her occupied: the mystery of the new woman at Mulhattan’s Hall, the tenement block (here a fortnight already and not so much as a hello); the long-standing feud with Mrs Flannagan over the street; after-school visits from her grandson Corny, cheeky as a sparrow with an appetite like a gannet.

  Not that Fanny had any intention of ending her days in lonely isolation, however. And so when her friend Mary fell sick and had to give up work for a few weeks, it was Fanny who took her place. It tickled her to think how her son Phil would react. After all, he was the clever one, a clean collar every day for his job in the Borough Treasurer’s office. She could just picture his face when she told him she’d got a job in town—looking after the ladies’ lavatories…

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1959

  The right of Catherine Cookson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form.

  ISBN 978-1-78036-061-4

  Sketch by Harriet Anstruther

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described, all situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  Published by Peach Publishing

  Chapter One

  Fanny McBride rolled over onto her back and lay staring at a discoloured patch a foot wide on the ceiling. In a few minutes, she calculated, the sun would light on the side of the window blind and hit the edge of the patch nearest to the door, and that would mean it was a quarter to seven or thereabouts.

  For years she had told the time by the light hitting or approaching that patch, for whitewash the ceiling as she would the stain came through. It had been there when she had come into the house as a young bride fifty-two years ago, and she had been scared out of her wits by a ghoulish neighbour across the passage telling her with relish that it was blood that had seeped through after one of the Mulhattans had murdered his wife on the floor above some years before. But the primary cause of this stain had long since faded from Fanny’s mind; the stain itself was her sundial and as necessary to the routine of her day as had been the calling of her sons.

  Years ago when nine children at one time had swarmed like ants about these two rooms, and their voices yelling their wants had coached her own voice to a pitch that their combined efforts could not drown, she had longed with an intense longing for the time to come when she could lie in bed until seven o’clock in the morning or—miracle of miracles—eight o’clock.

  When she was first married she had risen at half-past four, and there was no going back to bed; for after having got McBride off to work she cleaned the rooms, then made him a meal for eight o’clock. For Palmer’s shipyard was just up the road and he was never the man to take bait if he could get a hot meal. And when he would leave the house for the second time in the morning she would go with him and away to yon side of Jarrow, near the cemetery, to do the washing for the ladies who lived in their five-roomed houses…then back again to make dinner; then out again in the afternoon. And this had been an easy life, a pleasant sort of life. But it lasted for only eight months; for she went down…bang…literally while standing over a poss-tub in Croft Terrace, and Donald, her first, was born within three hours.

  After Donald, they had come thick and fast, an average of one every year for nine years. The tenth had died, and for no reason that she could fathom, except that the Virgin had at last paid a little overdue attention to her, she hadn’t seen the sight of another child for seven years. And then Phil came.

  It was funny, but right from the start she hadn’t known what to do with Phil, and up to this very minute she still didn’t know. And then, when Don and the rest were courting strongly and she was nearing the time when all fear of another should have gone, she had to go and have Jack. Oh, the shame of those nine months. And yet, of all her brood, there had been no-one like Jack. Not one of them had teased her, checked her, talked to her, and laughed long and loud with her as he had…and none of them had broken her heart as he had.

  Fanny turned over in the narrow bed, and the coat covering her feet on top of the patchwork quilt sidled to the floor. It was weeks now since Jack had left her. She had only to turn her eyes towards the battered, square, white-topped table taking up the middle of the floor to see him standing there, flinging his things into the suitcase, and shouting as loudly as herself, ‘I’d marry her if I hated her guts…I’d marry her to spite you.’ Yes, he had said that. Any of the others could have said it and it wouldn’t have mattered a damn, for they had all gone their own road anyway. But not Jack. Jack was hers, and he had always been a good lad, a God-fearing lad. And that’s where the mystery and bepuzzlement of it all came in. He may not have gone to his duties every week, but he had gone to his Mass on a Sunday—at least up to two years ago. She had got at him when he had first stopped going, but then left him alone. Would she though have left him alone had she known the reason for him staying away? No, by God, she wouldn’t! And when she had got to know, it had been thrust on her like a bolt from the blue.

  All the neighbourhood had been laughing up their sleeves at what was going on, and not one of them daring to tell her. And they were wise, for she would have laid out anyone who dared to come and say that her lad, her Jack, was courting a Hallelujah on the sly; for whoever heard of a Catholic taking up with a Salvation Army piece? No-one…until her own flesh had to do it. And there he was, married to her now and living in the far end of the town, so she’d heard. But even so she daren’t for the life of her put her nose outside the door after she had come from first Mass on Sunday in case she should see him heading the Salvation Army band down the street and knocking hell out of the big drum. He was capable of anything, she knew, and since he was now in the Salvation family’s toils, God alone knew what they’d egg him on to.

  Oh, the pains of life! The humiliation!

  She lay here now doing what she had always longed to do, lie in. Her body was tired and wanting to rest but her mind was more active than it had been in her life, for now it had time to think and things to think about. It urged her to her feet, and she sat on the side of the bed and scratched the moist flesh under her great wobbling breasts. Her desire for rest had been fulfilled, but now it lay heavy on her heart and filled her with longing for the days when desires were a
ll she’d had and their fulfilment a mirage.

  The tin clock on the mantelpiece struck seven. There was another half-hour before she need call Phil. She glanced towards the bedroom door, and it occurred to her yet once again that being alone in the house with Phil was like being with a stranger, or at best a lodger…an exact and finicky lodger, who made you feel that he was staying with you only as long as was absolutely necessary. The thought had the power to frighten her, and she rose from the bed and shambled into the scullery.

  Having put the kettle on the gas stove, she came back into the kitchen and thrust her knickers and petticoat into the old black-leaded oven to warm, then lit the kitchen fire before taking the ashes out. This done, she dressed herself and washed round her face.

  She did all this with the blind down; but when finally she had made herself a pot of strong black tea and had drunk three large cups from it, she went to the window and, pulling up the paper blind, looked out into the street.

  It was a pleasant morning, she reflected, with a nip of autumn in the air. She’d go out and wash the steps down, for if she left them to the Laveys, the Quigleys, or to Miss Harper, they’d never be done. They were supposed to take their turn, but damn a drop of water they put on them from one year’s end to another—the doing of the steps in the tenement had always been left to her and Liz Shaughnessy. But the Shaughnessys were gone. And didn’t she know it, for she missed them in more ways than one; the family in the attics now was about as pally as a Jerusalem Jew to an Arab.

  She went to the scullery again, returning with a bucket of water; but as she passed the window she halted abruptly and her wrinkled lips pressed themselves together as she squinted between the narrow aperture of her curtains to the far side of the street. Then putting down the bucket none too quietly, she exclaimed aloud, ‘Begod! If I went to do ’em at half-past two in the mornin’, Lady Flannagan would be there.’

  She stood staring at the woman across the road, who with quick, precise movements was washing her buff-painted window sill. She watched her take the cloth and wipe the painted bricks surrounding the door. And as this was finished, Fanny nodded to the window and exclaimed below her breath, ‘Now polish your brass knob and stick some furniture polish on your green front door, and make your steps bloody with red ochre. Then go in and titivate your curtains and stand behind ’em and wait for somebody to come by and admire your handiwork so’s you can do a bit more bragging…And God help anyone so ignorant of the chastity of your front as to put a foot on your step…Aw!…’ With an infuriated movement she turned from the window. There wasn’t a woman on God’s earth who could get her goat like Nellie Flannagan.