Fanny McBride

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The old one was saying, “I’ll tell everybody, and your gentleman friend, and then what will you do? Will he want you then? Ask yourself.” That’s what she was sayin’. And more that I couldn’t get hold of, Fan, but it didn’t need two and two to be put together to know that she’d got something on that lass.’

  Fanny turned from Barry and stared out into the rain again. What could she have on her? If the child wasn’t hers, what other hold could the old ’un have on her? But there was something here that was twisted…she had suspected it all along. Yet the lass didn’t look the type to have anything in her past that would give that ’un a hand over her. But then again, you never could tell with the young ’uns today. They were a new kind of creature altogether to the lasses of her own day…Well then, if the lass had a past, what kind of a past would it be? A past usually meant a bairn or a man, the man coming first, of course. What other kind of past was there? Not thieving. No, no, the girl wouldn’t do that. Well, whatever it was, and say it was a fact, how would her gentleman son react to it?

  ‘There goes Lady Golightly.’ Barry was speaking under his breath, and Fanny’s eyes were drawn quickly to Mrs Flannagan emerging from her door wearing a white plastic mackintosh and a matching hat.

  ‘I wonder what’s driving her out in the rain?’ said Barry. ‘Perhaps she got a job after all.’

  Fanny turned sharp eyes on him. ‘Was she after a job for herself?’

  ‘Why, aye.’ Barry’s small eyes screwed up to pinpoints. ‘Didn’t you know? She was after yours…Mary’s.’

  ‘You mean? …’

  ‘Aye, the lav…The Ladies.’

  Fanny’s jaw dropped and her mind was jumping back to the morning she had gone to the priest for the reference, when Barry said, ‘Lizzie Croft, who does the rough in the priest’s house, heard Father Owen telling Miss Honeysett about you and her comin’ for references for the same job, but you happened to get in first.’

  ‘Well!’ Fanny’s bust rose with indignation. The great Mrs Flannagan condescending to go after a job in The Ladies, well, she’d be damned! And she made this statement aloud to Barry, and Barry said, ‘Oh, I thought you knew, Fan.’ Fanny shook her head. He knew fine well that she didn’t know. Oh, she knew Barry’s tactics, and now she wanted no more of them. She wanted to get by herself and think, think of that damned, sneaking bitch of an upstart going after her job…Mary Prout didn’t come into it now. So plunging into the rain she cried over her shoulder, ‘So long, I’ll be seeing you,’ and hurried as quickly as her swollen legs would carry her up the street to the bus …

  When she reached The Ladies she was dripping wet, but Maggie’s warm welcome as she divested her of her coat made up for all the discomfort.

  ‘By, you’re wet through, Fan.’

  ‘It stops when it gets to the skin.’

  Maggie laughed. ‘Eeh! You’ve got an answer for everything. Look, I’ll hang it over here, near the pipes. And there’s a cup of tea ready. There’s hardly been anybody in the day. Nobody out…who would in this weather? I hope it keeps slack, I want to get me jumper finished. Did you finish those socks?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fanny, ‘I finished them and started another pair.’

  ‘Eeh, the socks you knit. By the way, Fan, you know that lass that was outside the night I pushed the funny out, in the Salvation Army bonnet? Well, she came in this mornin’ again.’

  Fanny remained still, but said, ‘Well now, what’s that got to do with me, Maggie?’

  ‘Nowt, Fan, just that she was asking after you.’

  ‘And what would anybody in the Salvation Army be wanting with me? I’m a Catholic to the bone, you know that, Maggie.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Fan, but the lass was nice.’

  ‘There’s no nice Hallelujahs,’ said Fanny.

  ‘Aw, Fan.’

  ‘Never mind “Aw, Fan”, what did she say?’

  ‘She just said, politely like, “Is Mrs McBride not at work today?” And I said, “No, she doesn’t come in till the afternoon.”’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She asked how you were keeping.’

  ‘How I’m keeping?’ Fanny looked down on Maggie, and Maggie looked up at Fanny and nodded, ‘Aye, Fan, she was nice and polite.’

  ‘There’s no—’ Fanny was going to repeat her statement that there was no nice Hallelujah, but instead she said, ‘Pour me a cup of tea, Maggie, while I get me shoes off. They’re wet.’

  ‘Aye, Fan.’

  As Maggie poured the tea out, the door clicked open and she exclaimed, ‘Bust!’—then pushing her head out of the cubbyhole she remarked in a relieved tone, ‘Oh, it’s only Baggy Betty.’ Then she shouted, ‘D’you want a cup of tea, Betty?’ and a croaking voice replied, ‘I could do with one, Maggie, I could that.’

  Maggie put Fanny’s cup at her elbow, then took a mug to the derelict woman standing near the entrance. ‘Sit down until you hear anybody comin’, then make on you’re titivating up.’

  At another time the latter part of these directions would have set Fanny’s flesh wobbling—to think that the bundle of rags that covered Baggy Betty could be titivated, or that the titivating would delude anyone—but at present Fanny’s mind was too taken up with the Hallelujah. So that was the game, was it? She was coming to spy out the land, he hadn’t the nerve to come home. He thought he would break the ice through his wife…wife! Huh! In Fanny’s eyes the girl was no wife. Not having had the words of the priest over her, she was to all intents and purposes living with their Jack.

  ‘If Mrs Proctor comes and finds her here I’ll get it in the neck,’ said Maggie, coming back into the little room, ‘but I don’t care, I’m not frightened of her. I wouldn’t put a dog out, a day like this.’

  ‘Aye, true,’ said Fanny absentmindedly.

  And that was how Maggie found Fanny all afternoon. She was absentminded, but Maggie didn’t mind. She liked the warm comfort of Fanny’s presence, whether she made her laugh or was quiet, as she was the day. She didn’t care whether Mary Prout ever came back, for she liked this big, fat old woman. She’d never had so many laughs in her life. She had just to look at her bulk of flesh and something about it tickled her.

  The door clicked again, and on the sound Fanny left the cubbyhole and her knitting and went into the little glass office. Then, to Maggie’s amazement she heard Fanny’s voice raised high, like it had been the morning she started the singing, but now it wasn’t laughter-making and she was startled by it, for Fanny was yelling her name out as if she was at the bottom of the street. ‘Maggie! Maggie! Get your bucket and mop ready, you’ll need it!’

  Maggie rushed out into the corridor, but all she could see was Baggy Betty in the corner and one solitary woman in a white plastic mac, with an expression on her face that would have soured milk, making her way to one of the cubicles.

  When the door banged on the woman Maggie turned her perplexed, bird-like face to Fanny, and Fanny, from behind the partition, cried, ‘Check up on the rolls! You can never tell with the people you get in here, they’ll stick them down their stocking tops or in between their scraggy breasts. Oh, you can put nothin’ past ’em.’

  Maggie, scurrying into the cubicle, whispered, ‘What’s up? Who is it?’

  ‘Lady Golightly Flannagan, the one I told you about,’ hissed Fanny. ‘I just heard the day she was after this job. I just pipped it afore her. She would take the holy water from the dying, that ’un.’

  ‘That sour puss?’ said Maggie, nodding back to the cubicles.

  Fanny made a deep motion of her head, making her chins ripple. Then with her voice at pitch again she went on. ‘This is a very comfortable situation, but they’re very particular who they take in it, for there’s money concerned. Your character must be of the best afore you get a job like this. You can go to the priest for a reference, but the priest isn’t to be taken in. He’s not to be deluded by a plausible tongue that covers a black heart. Oh, no, the priests have the insight o
f God in them.’

  As she ended this tirade Fanny nodded down at the pop-eyed Maggie, and they stood waiting.

  There came the sound of rushing water, and as the cistern gurgled a door opened and banged shut again. Fanny did not try to compete against the noise, and when Mrs Flannagan stood opposite the glass partition it was she who got the first words in, not Fanny.

  ‘You are quite right, Mrs McBride, I did go for a reference to the priest. But I did not want the position for meself, it was for a poor, witless creature from Gunthorpe Road. She wasn’t capable of doing anything that needed either brains or sense, so I thought it would be a Christian action to get her such employment as this.’

  Fanny was now on her feet, with her head as far out of the let as she could get it. Her voice was not high now but menacingly low as she said, ‘You’re a blasted liar, Mrs Flannagan.’

  And Mrs Flannagan’s was as quiet but weighed with dignity as she replied, ‘And you’re an uncouth, dirty, fat, big-mouthed galoot, Mrs McBride.’

  As Fanny swung away from the partition in an effort to get round into the corridor and at her neighbour, Maggie grabbed her skirt entreating, ‘Eeh! no, don’t Fan, you’ll lose the job. Eeh, no, don’t, she’s not worth it anyway.’

  The small woman’s plea deterred Fanny, and she turned again to the glass partition, her breath coming deeply as she cried, ‘You’re right, Maggie, what’s the good of wasting your breath on scum. Jealous, begrudging scum at that, who’s never lifted a hand to do a good turn for anybody in their life.’

  Mrs Flannagan looked sneeringly down her nose before moving away, then at the door she turned her head and looked back at Fanny’s grim face and said, very softly and precisely, ‘You are wrong again, Mrs McBride, I do lend helping hands. I lent one last night to the poor girl who stands at the top of the street waiting for your son to marry her and give her child a name.’ With this last telling shot Mrs Flannagan inclined her head briefly before making a dignified departure.

  Fanny sat back slowly on the stool. The night before last Nellie Flannagan had been extolling the merits of their Philip, but now she was stamping him the father of that lass’s bairn, and what she was saying the night you could bet that everybody in the place would be saying the morrow.

  Maggie, looking up at Fanny and her curiosity very much alive, asked, ‘Eeh! Fan. Is it right what she says, has your lad got some lass into trouble?’

  ‘No!’

  Maggie jumped under the bark and blinked as she turned away saying, ‘All right, Fan, I was only askin’.’

  She could say no, Philip could say no, but would it do any good? What if that madam managed to pin the bairn on him? It would bust up his life, the job, the lass up stairs, the lot. Her flesh flounced on the seat. No, begod! She wasn’t going to sit by and see that happen, no, not even to Phil. He could be what he was, a bit above himself and maddening with his fancy ways, but he was her own flesh and blood after all, and no loose piece was goin’ to make a monkey out of him. No, begod, and she’d see they didn’t.

  What with the Hallelujah enquiring after her and the news Nellie Flannagan had made a special journey to The Ladies to throw in her face, Fanny reached home that evening in a very unsettled state of mind; and when she saw the light already on in the kitchen, she thought, ‘He’s home and what I’ve got to tell him will put him off his tea all right.’ But before she opened the door she knew that it wasn’t Philip who was in, but Corny, for Joe’s yelping came to her, and as soon as she entered the room the dog was all over her.

  ‘For God’s sake get the beast off me. Stop it, will you! Get off me coat, you’ll have me on the floor.’

  ‘Stop it! Joe. Quiet! Joe.’ Corny admonished his dog and Fanny said, ‘What for d’you bring him across the water every time you come? Look at the damage he did last time.’

  ‘But you laughed at it, Gran.’ The boy looked up at her, grinning.

  ‘Aye, I might have, but I’m in no mood for laughing the night, so stop it. What’s that?’ Fanny was pointing to a musical instrument lying on the table.

  ‘It’s a cornet, Gran.’ Now Corny left the dog to continue its scampering and grabbed up the cornet from the table. ‘It’s the one me da bought for me.’

  Fanny surveyed the cornet; then said, ‘Yer da also bought you Holy Joe. What’s the matter with your da these days? What did he give for it, three rabbits?’

  ‘No, he got it off a stall in the market, Gran.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he get you something sensible off the stalls?’

  ‘I wanted that, Gran. I want to learn it.’

  ‘Learn that thing! Where d’you think you’re goner practise?’

  There was silence, and Corny turned and put the instrument lovingly down on the table. Then his finger following the round curve of the mouthpiece, he spoke two words very quietly, ‘Here, Gran.’

  ‘Oh, no! Oh, no, begod you won’t! A trumpet here? Oh, no! I bet your ma wouldn’t have the noise in your own house and that’s why you brought it over here. Isn’t that it?’

  Corny’s head dropped a fraction and Fanny cried, ‘Aye, I knew it. Well, you’re not learnin’ the cornet here. Now you take that for final.’

  ‘Aw, Gran.’ He raised one pleading eye and eyebrow up to her.

  ‘Never mind, “Aw, Gran”, one toot out of that tin whistle and out that door you go.’

  ‘But you haven’t heard it, Gran.’

  ‘I’ve heard cornets afore in me time. I know what they’re like. Banshees aren’t in it.’

  Corny picked up the cornet, then catching Joe, fixed the lead to his collar and in an attitude that was meant to probe the hard core of his grannie’s heart moved disconsolately towards the door.

  ‘Where you off to?’

  ‘To find Tony.’

  ‘Well, when you find him don’t start blowin’ that thing, not in this neighbourhood. I’ve got enough trouble…d’you hear?’

  ‘Aye, Gran.’

  When the door closed on the boy, the dog and the cornet, Fanny stood for a moment looking towards it, and a twisted smile spread over her face. Corny was dear to her heart, very dear…but a cornet! Oh, no, begod! Not a cornet.

  It wasn’t until she went to put the kettle on the fire that she noticed the sheet of paper on the mantelpiece. Taking it down and holding it out at arm’s length from her she read, ‘Won’t be back until seven. Don’t make anything for me, I’ve had a cup of tea.’

  So he had been in, and gone. Well! Fanny crumpled the paper up and threw it behind the fire. Then stood for a moment thinking. And the result of this took her swiftly to his bedroom door. If she was going to tackle this madam who was trying to pang a bairn onto him she must know where she stood.

  And now she did what, despite her many faults, she had never stooped to before. She began to rummage carefully through his drawers for any letters that might give her an insight into what she thought of as ‘his case’. He had received letters from the girl, she knew that, for she had herself stuck them on the mantelpiece. But search as she might she could not find one of them. On a little table below the window stood his books and blotting pad.

  There were lots of papers on the pad. And she picked them up at random and looked at them. There was nothing in the nature of a letter. One piece of paper caught her attention, so much so that she read it three times, holding it further away from her eyes each time. But even after the third time she was no nearer to understand what it meant.

  ‘All life is lived within walls

  Of flesh, of brick, of wood, of wattle,

  Of wattle, or wood, or brick, or flesh;

  Only the soul escapes the entangling mesh

  And, above clouds of thought where time is the moment

  And nought can be bought or sold or swapped or borrowed

  or lent,

  Where life is forever and yet already spent,

  Draws from the laws of boundless space

  Substance to face Life encased within walls of flesh,


  or brick, or wood, or wattle.’

  In the name of God, what did that mean? Did he waste his time in here writing such stuff as that? Huh! With a disparaging gesture she threw the paper back onto the table. There was nothing in things like that that would get her anywhere. No wonder he got himself into trouble if his head was as mixed up as them lines.

  In the kitchen again, she took off her outer things and made herself an extra strong cup of tea, and had just seated herself at a corner of the table to enjoy her first sip when a knock came on the door. And when, after answering it with the usual, ‘Come in,’ nobody appeared, she got up and lumbered towards it. Pulling open the door and being confronted with a very smart, if heavily made-up, young woman, she had no need to enquire who she was.

  ‘Are you Mrs McBride?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me. Will you be wanting me?’

  The young woman hesitated, then, giving a little jerk of her head, she said, ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Can I come in?’

  Fanny did not add to this, ‘Yes, and you’re welcome,’ but stepped aside, then closed the door on the stylish piece and said, ‘Take a seat over there.’ She pointed.

  ‘I’m not staying.’

  ‘Oh, in that case you’ll be gone afore you come then.’ Fanny walked towards the table and seated herself again near her cup of tea and looked at the young woman. It was evident to her that the room didn’t find favour with her visitor, neither with her eyes nor her nose, for that delicate organ was twitching just the slightest.

  ‘Will you be tellin’ me then what you’re wantin’?’

  ‘I want to see Philip.’

  Fanny got up now and went to the hob and ground the kettle once more into the fire. ‘In that case I would sit yersel’ down for a while, it’ll be a good few hours afore he’s in.’

  Corny, putting his head round the door at this moment, gave her the opportunity to vent a little crudeness which she hoped would all go towards putting this madam off. ‘You get yersel’ out to play, and don’t bring that weak-bladdered animal in these doors again! Wetting all over me chairs. I’ve had enough.’