Fanny McBride

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Hallo, Gran.’

  Corny wiped the spittle from his chin with the back of his hand and grinned at his grannie, and Fanny, pitching her parcels onto the table, cried, ‘Shut up that dog,’ for Joe had not ceased his accompaniment.

  ‘He won’t stop, Gran. He only stops when you give him somethin’ to eat. What’ll I give him, Gran?’

  Joe was sitting comfortably on his haunches, his head well up, his mouth wide open, and contrary to all opinions on wailing dogs, enjoying himself. And when he released from his straining throat a crescendo wail, Fanny screamed, ‘Give him! I’ll give him poison or a hammer on the head. Go and get him some bits out of the pantry, anything, meat off the dish, anything. Shut up, will you!’

  With arm raised she made for Joe, and whether out of fright or compassion Joe’s wailing ceased abruptly and he suddenly flopped to the floor and rested his head on his outstretched paws.

  There settled on the room a blessed silence, and Fanny, breathing heavily, stood stock-still until Corny entered the kitchen again when she turned her attention to him. ‘For two pins I’d tan your backside until it was red raw, me lad.’

  Corny stopped, swallowed to get rid of the piece of meat he had confiscated, held out a hand with some scraps towards Joe, and enquired innocently, ‘What for, Gran? Me?…I’ve done nowt.’

  ‘You’ve had the neighbourhood raised, since three o’clock they say. Why didn’t you stop when they asked you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t you who me.’

  ‘But Gran, I’ve got to practise some place. I’ve got to learn it.’

  ‘Then learn in your own house, that’s the place. I told you you couldn’t learn here.’

  Corny’s head now drooped as he muttered in genuine dismay, ‘I can’t, Gran, me ma won’t let me have it inside the door. I’ve got to leave it in the hen cree. I hid it in the coal hoose and our Harry stuffed it full of coaldust. And in the hen cree I’ve got to stick it under the straw in a nest box, and I can only do that for this week ’cos it’s our Bob’s turn to clean it out next week and if he found it he’d swop it for a spare tyre, he said he would.’

  Fan, looking at the doleful musician, had difficulty in curbing a rising chuckle, but willing herself to keep a straight countenance she said, ‘Get your da to put his foot down then; he bought you it, didn’t he?’

  ‘He won’t do nowt. It was him who stopped me playing it inside…it was when Joe started to howl.’

  Slowly now into Corny’s eyes there crept a twinkle and he looked up at Fanny. ‘He howled for two hours, Gran. Nowt we did could stop him until we give him something to eat.’ There was pride in Corny’s voice for Joe’s accomplishment, and Fanny, well imagining the pandemonium that must have reigned, said, ‘Well, me lad, I don’t care where he howls but there’s one thing I’m certain sure of…it’s not goin’ to be here. You’ve had your first and last practice under this roof.’

  ‘Aw, Gran!’

  ‘Never mind “Aw, Gran”, that’s final.’

  ‘But Gran, couldn’t I just leave it here? I’ll practise outside, away over on the salt grass, or in the park, or by the quay corner.’

  ‘I’ve told you I don’t care where you practise, but if you as much as put your lips to that infernal instrument in this house once again that’ll be the end of it…and very likely you if you’re not quick on your pins. But enough now of you and your instrument, get the cups out and the teapot, I’m parched and me legs are droppin’ off.’

  ‘Will I mash the tea for you, Gran?’

  ‘Aye, and put five teaspoonfuls in, I want something to stiffen me…And by the way, when I’ve time to think of it, why are you here at this time of the day and you not broke up yet?’

  ‘Wor Ann’s got the measles.’

  ‘My God! The measles now, she gets everything that child. Go on, do the tea, but mind that kettle.’

  As Corny struggled to upend the huge kettle over the teapot, he remarked conversationally, ‘You know what, Gran, Tony’s mother asked me to go a message the day and I couldn’t say the thing she wanted.’

  ‘Tony’s mother?’ said Fanny, dropping her eyes to Corny while relieving herself of her hat. ‘Where did you see her?’

  ‘As I was comin’ along, she was near Baker’s, the chemist, and she said to me would I go in and get her sixpennyworth of’—he paused, then made a dash back to the fire with the kettle and when it was resting once more on the hob, he said—‘para-gumic. I had a job to remember the name, I couldn’t say it, and she kept saying it over and over.’

  ‘Paregoric, was that it?’

  ‘Aye, that’s it, Gran. You know it?’

  ‘Did they give it to you?’

  ‘Aye, and when I came out and give it to her she never even said ta or owt.’

  ‘Has she ever asked you to go a message afore?’

  ‘No, Gran.’

  ‘Well, if she does again, say that you haven’t got time.’

  Corny looked at Fanny understandingly. ‘OK, Gran.’ Then he added, ‘I saw her over our way last week, Gran. She was walkin’ up and down the High Street.’

  ‘Well, she’s got a right to, hasn’t she?’ Fanny dismissed Mrs Leigh-Petty with this sharp retort, but she thought to herself that the woman would walk from here to hell if the craze was on her. Tilly Concert used to tramp all the way to Sunderland for methylated spirits or laudanum, or whatever she could manage to get from the chemist and she would come back as full as a lord, not able to stand on her feet. Apparently this one wasn’t affected like that, the stuff seemed to go to her head rather than her legs.

  ‘Are those Christmas boxes, Gran?’ Corny eyed the table.

  And Fanny said, ‘Aye, and that’s your share of ’em, me lad.’

  Her tea drunk and wanting to sort her packages away from Corny’s curious eyes, she said, ‘Give me me purse there,’ and when Corny handed her the worn leather bag, she opened her purse and picked out threepence, saying, ‘Go on, get yersel’ some bullets, and take that one for his run and see he does something afore he comes back.’

  ‘Aye, Gran. Come on, Joe.’

  When they had gone Fanny did not immediately start sorting her parcels but she sat thinking about the woman upstairs, and Philip. God in heaven! But he was goin’ to have a job if he married that lass, for as like as not she would fall for a bairn straight away, and there he would be with a wife and child and three others to support. It would have been bad enough if the old ’un had in her the makings of a normal mother-in-law, but to be responsible for a drug-besotted creature like her was going to be a burden that no man but a blasted fool would take on.

  The thought agitated her, and she rose up and began sorting her parcels, pulling pieces of paper off the edges here and there to make them recognisable. But one package, a slim box of about a foot long, she did not untie, but held it in her hands looking at it. And the question came to her, Would he come for it? This was no ordinary present of a pair of socks, they were nylon at nine and eleven. What if he didn’t turn up at Christmas either? Oh, away! The small parcel seemed to leap from her fingers and dropped on top of the others on the table. It was still a fortnight until Christmas, and if he didn’t turn up before he would turn up then, he would never let Christmas go by without coming to see her, never. Of that at least she was sure. But it would mean something different altogether if he came before, for then it would be herself who was drawing him and not the sentimentality of the season.

  She picked the package up again and, taking it to the dresser, stuffed it in the back of the top drawer.

  The table cleared of her Christmas shopping, she was in the act of shaking the cloth over it preparatory to laying the tea, when her hands became still and she turned her face towards the window, for from just below it there came the raised, angry voice of Nellie Flannagan.

  With an agility that gave no evidence of her legs dropping off her now, she made for the door and pulled it open just as Corny with a headlong plunge was attem
pting to enter. Her voice stopped his rush, and with her hand on his collar she demanded, ‘What’s all this? Why the tearing hurry?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it, Gran.’

  ‘Couldn’t help what?’

  ‘You might well ask.’

  Fanny’s head jerked towards the hall door and to a really infuriated Mrs Flannagan. The sight of her enemy’s wrath already aroused gave Fanny a feeling of advantage, and she asked with a pained, insolent calmness, ‘What is it now?’

  ‘What is it now!’ cried Mrs Flannagan. ‘Just this, Mrs McBride. This is the end, I’ve stood enough from you and those connected with you. Mad…clean mad he is, running wild. And that dog should be locked up…put down…done away with. I’ll stand so much and no more.’

  Clearly Mrs Flannagan was beside herself.

  ‘Go on…Go on, I’m listening,’ said Fanny, aggravating the situation further.

  ‘Yes, I’ll go on,’ cried Nellie, now pointing at Corny. ‘That foul-mouthed ragamuffin should be in Borstal.’

  Mrs Flannagan was now almost foaming at the mouth, which sight caused Fanny to ignore the insult to her offspring once removed and to enquire with rage-evoking calmness, ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘What’s he done? What’s he done? All my beautiful clean washing trod in the back lane, my sheets and towels in the gutter!’

  Fanny saw it all now and she laughed. She threw back her great head and she laughed.

  ‘It’ll be the first time they’ve touched dirt in their existence then. Was it your new-drawer wash you had out? Your best sheets and towels that you hang out every week that God sends to show off to the neighbours?’

  ‘Oh, you wicked creature!’ Mrs Flannagan’s head was now flapping from side to side. ‘I’ll have you up for…for…’

  The poor woman could not go on, and Fanny asked, still quietly, ‘And what do you intend to have me up for? Go on, tell me. For isn’t it every soul from here to Shields Pier knows about your drawer-wash and Flannagan’s two shirts that you dip in the water and won’t let him wear but hang out for the eyes of the world to behold, while you dry his old rags on the oven door?’

  It now appeared that Mrs Flannagan’s thin body might snap, so far back did she endeavour to bend it as she cried, ‘I’ll have you up, I will! I’ve stood enough, I can’t stand any more. Years and years I’ve had of you.’ And presumably for sanity’s sake, she turned her attention from Fanny and addressed the face of Sam Lavey peering out of his door. ‘There I was, Mr Lavey, after a hard day’s wash, about to take me clothes in when that foul-mouthed ruffian and that wild animal dashed down the back lane, knocked me prop off, snapped me line and let me clothes trail in the dirt.’

  Fanny now turned to Corny, a subdued-looking Corny; then her eyes fell to Joe whom the boy was holding with unnecessary firmness. Joe, for once, was standing perfectly still, being weighed down it would seem by his wrongdoing. His tail tucked between his legs, his head drooping, he cast a mournful eye which pleaded for understanding up at Fanny.

  ‘What have you got to say?’ asked Fanny sternly of her grandson.

  ‘I couldn’t help it, Gran, we was only playin’ and runnin’.’

  ‘Playin’ and runnin’—like hooligans!’ cried Mrs Flannagan. ‘And why should you run in my back lane? There’s your own, or the street.’

  ‘Listen to her,’ cut in Fanny, all calmness gone now. ‘Her back lane! Note, forty-two houses on her side and it’s her back lane…not our back lane.’ She poked her head enquiringly towards her enemy. ‘Have you bought the lot up?’

  Mrs Flannagan, drawing herself to her full height, explained haughtily, ‘I want no cross-talk with you whatever, Fanny McBride, and it’s just like you not to stick to the point. I’m not going to demise myself by silliquising with you.’

  ‘Oh, begod! Here we go with the big words, I thought they were a long time in comin’. You just stay long enough, Sam,’ Fanny cried, ‘and it’s educated you’ll be, for as you know, there’s not a finer flinger of words than Nellie Flannagan. Like kerbstones they are, big enough to knock you out. Now…go on, Mrs Flannagan, I’m listening.’

  ‘Oh, you can sneer, Mrs McBride’—Mrs Flannagan’s first rage was dying, she was now falling back on her dignity—‘but I was privileged to be brought up properly, not dragged up. None of my family were brought up on vile language.’

  ‘And who of my family, may I ask you, Mrs Flannagan, has been using bad language in your refeened hearing?’

  ‘Your grandson there.’ Mrs Flannagan’s disdainful gaze fell on Corny, and Corny staring back at her unblinking, pulled with a grimy hand at his earlobe, endeavouring, it would seem, to banish it into his outsize earhole.

  ‘What have you been saying?’ Fanny turned on him. ‘Come on, out with it.’

  ‘Nowt, Gran.’

  ‘Now come on.’ Fanny’s voice brooked no shillyshallying, but Corny persisted, ‘Nowt, Gran.’

  ‘Oh! God forgive you, boy.’ Mrs Flannagan’s eyes caressed the ceiling.

  ‘All right, all right,’ cried Fanny at this point. ‘If I want any intercession for me family I’ll do it meself.’ Then turning to Corny again, she said, ‘Is it so bad you can’t repeat it?’

  Corny squinted up at her, the suspicion of a grin now on his face. ‘No, Gran, it was only what you say.’

  ‘What!’

  Now a pink hue spread over Fanny’s face. She couldn’t remember one quarter of the names she had called her neighbour over the years she had lived opposite her, but she could remember enough to pray that her grandson had picked on only one of her minor sayings. She did not press him further but waited, and as Corny looked back into his grandmother’s face his grin spread and he said, ‘When her line snapped and the things fell in the mud I said’—he paused and looked from one to the other; then his eyes settling on his grannie, he ended lamely—‘I said, “That’s put paid to old Nelly-jelly-belly’s odds and sods.”’

  With great difficulty Fanny checked the sound that rose in her throat, and a number of conflicting expressions passed quickly over her face, and with her eyes now riveted on her grandson, she said, ‘You say I said that? Now shut up!’ She snapped her finger and thumb at him like the bill of a duck. ‘Not another word out of you. Bejapers, she’s right for once, you do need someone to intercede for you. Away inside you get this minute afore I strike the hunger off you.’ She pointed to her door, and Corny, with a half-concealed laugh on his face, did as he was bidden. Then Fanny, hitching up her breasts, turned once more to Mrs Flannagan. And now her voice was airy. ‘You can’t hold me responsible for the sayings of twelve-year-old bairns, can you?’

  ‘Twelve-year-old bairns,’ said Mrs Flannagan, ‘must hear things to repeat them.’ What further remarks Mrs Flannagan would have added were cut short, for at this point she was pushed violently in the back by the door opening and she turned angrily towards it to be confronted by Mrs Leigh-Petty, a fortified Mrs Leigh-Petty very much on her high horse.

  Mrs Leigh-Petty’s heightened perceptibility must have informed her that there was a row going on, and recognising Mrs Flannagan as an intruder she turned on her immediately and in her most highfalutin’ tone demanded, ‘And what, may I ask, are you doing in my house?’

  This attitude took Mrs Flannagan completely by surprise, and before she had time to retort in like manner Mrs Leigh-Petty lifted an admonishing hand towards her and said, ‘I want to hear nothing further from you. Kindly get away to your own quarter…Go now, without further ado.’

  Fanny wanted to explode, she wanted to let out a roar at the sight of these combating birds of a feather.

  ‘You’re drunk!’ Mrs Flannagan, being a staunch teetotaller, was aghast.

  ‘How dare you! Get out!’ It looked as if Mrs Leigh-Petty was going to spring on Mrs Flannagan. And Mrs Flannagan, too, thought this, for she retreated swiftly.

  Fanny watched the strange creature from up above bang the door shut, then turn to the Laveys’ door which was being discreetly c
losed, then lastly direct her gaze on herself. And now it took all Fanny’s willpower not to take her mighty arm and knock the woman onto her back, for when passing her on her way towards the stairs Mrs Leigh-Petty exclaimed with cool hauteur, ‘She’s not so much to blame as you are, you’re the instigator of all the trouble in this house. You should be evicted.’

  In dead silence that dripped with her amazement, Fanny watched Mrs Leigh-Petty mount the stairs. Then she turned slowly into her own room, and to Corny’s surprise as she made her approach towards him she said not a word about the odds and sods, but puzzled him by looking right through him and muttering, ‘Our Phil can’t be let take on that, he can’t.’

  Chapter Eight

  It was Fanny’s weekend off from The Ladies. Part-timers got one weekend in four, and although she missed the chatter of Maggie and the busy busyness of her job, she was thankful for these two days, for on Friday night she had felt a bit off colour and had fainted.

  She had felt as bad many times before, she told herself, and no oration made about it. Perhaps she had passed out, she couldn’t remember, but there had been no need to run round like a scalded cat for the doctor as Phil had done. And she hadn’t thanked him for his thoughtfulness, for now she could no longer boast that she’d never had a doctor in her life except for the bairns; and there had been times when they had turned up too late for them, when the last big push had been achieved by the help of God and Mary Prout.

  All the doctor had said after examining her was that she must rest. Dear God! There’d be plenty of time to rest when she was dead. Then last night Philip had brought her in a drop. She hadn’t known where to put her face for she couldn’t thank him. It was the second time lately he had done the same thing, and it put her all on edge to have to accept anything from him that wasn’t her due.

  Today she had struggled out to First Mass, and on her return had busied herself with the dinner. Following dinner Phil had insisted on washing up before he went out, and even then only by pushing him with her tongue had she made him go. But once he had left the house she sat down thankfully and remained sitting on and on until the evening. And not a soul had called in, and the hours had seemed to stretch into days in endless time. It was her thinking, she knew, that made them so long.