Fanny McBride

by Catherine Cookson

  When almost in a matter of seconds she saw that they were whirling down Burton Street, she commented privately that anyway they had their uses for they couldn’t have got here quicker if they’d all had wings. But before the car had actually come to a stop, Fanny knew that there was something up in the house, for the light was streaming from the doorway down the steps, and she could make out the Laveys, both of them, and other figures standing silhouetted against the light.

  As Philip was easing her from the car a scream ripped out of the house and its impact brought Fanny to her feet with startling suddenness. She paused for a second and looked upwards, then made for the steps up which Philip was already bounding, with two policemen and the policewoman following him.

  In the hall Sam Lavey greeted Fanny with, ‘S…somethin’s g…goin’ on here, Fan. S…sounds as if one of them’s b…being mur…murdered.’

  Fanny did not stop to hear any more from Sam, but as another scream rang through the house she mounted the stairs, pulling herself up by violent tugs on the banisters.

  On the first landing Miss Harper, with her hands to her thin bosom, was exclaiming aloud, ‘It’s awful, awful! The way they’ve been goin’ on. On and off all day. Oh, Mrs McBride!’

  ‘Out of me way!’ With a thrust of her arm, Fanny pushed Miss Harper back and reached the attic stairs, and as with a final puff she pulled herself onto the crowded landing Ted Neilson was saying, ‘They’ve been at it tooth and nail, the old wife goin’ for the young one, and the bairns yellin’.’

  Philip was now shaking the door and calling, ‘Open the door! Open the door! Do you hear? Margaret, open the door!’

  They all remained quiet, waiting for an answer, but none came except the sound of muffled scuffling.

  ‘Get back there.’ Just as one of the policemen made a wide motion with his arm for clearing a space in which to ram himself against the door, Tony’s voice came to them, full of chilling fear, crying pleadingly, ‘Don’t! Oh, don’t! Leave go of her, Mother! Leave go of her! Margaret…Margaret.’

  Philip’s voice now filled the house as he shouted, ‘Open the door, Tony. It’s the police here.’

  Fanny pushing Ted Neilson aside and also elbowing the policewoman out of position, cried, ‘Look through the keyhole, can’t you, and see what’s up.’

  Before anyone could follow this suggestion Constable Bolton hurled himself against the door. Nothing happened. When the constable hurled himself at the door a second time Philip’s shoulder was with his. Yet except for a shudder the door remained firm. Again they hurled themselves against it and again they made no impression. On the fourth attempt the lock gave suddenly and the door swung open as if it had been pulled violently from inside and the two men catapulted into the room and measured their lengths on the floor.

  For a second Fanny’s eyes remained on them before taking in the room. There, almost within reach of Philip’s outflung hand, she saw the lass lying, and if blood was anything to go by, looking as though she might well be dead. As an expression of horror, taking the form of ‘Name of God!’ left her lips, there came a scream from the bedroom and when following it there was an echo from the street below the hairs on her head seemed to rise up.

  Almost as quick as the policewoman she was in the bedroom. The attic window which reached to the floor was open, and by it lay Tony clutching Marian to him, as if he were trying to press her into his thin body.

  Getting to her knees with difficulty, Fanny, side by side with the policewoman, peered down into the street and onto the dark form lying in the shadow outside the light cast by the street lamp. When she turned from the window the policewoman was gone, and putting her arms about the huddled pair of children, she said soothingly, ‘It’s all right, me bairns, it’s all right, me bairns. Come on now…quiet now, quiet, it’s all right.’

  When Tony tried to speak no sound came, and she pulled him to his feet, while his arms still held on to Marian, whose body was shaking with deep, shuddering sobs.

  ‘There, there, now.’ She engineered them towards the door. But there Tony stopped and whispered, ‘Margaret.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ said Fanny, shielding his sister from his gaze with her bulk. ‘Go on downstairs, straight into my house.’

  In a moment she passed them over to Amy Quigley, saying, ‘Take them downstairs, Amy, I’ll be there directly.’ Then she went to where Philip was kneeling with Margaret’s head in his lap.

  ‘How bad is she?’

  He shook his head and nipped on his bloodless lips before answering, ‘I don’t know, there’s a gash in her head. I think she must have hit the fender.’ He did not look up as he went on, ‘What’s happened in there?’

  ‘The bairns are all right. She’s…she’s jumped from the window,’ said Fanny quietly, as she stared down on the deathlike face of Margaret, commenting to herself that she didn’t like the looks of her and the quicker she was in a hospital the better.

  Voices from the stairs penetrated the room and she straightened her aching back, saying, ‘I’ll get the house cleared, otherwise they’ll never get up the stairs with a stretcher and that crowd about.’

  When Fanny reached the landing a babble of comments reached her.

  ‘She’s done it, and I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Why did she have to pick this night of all nights? Christmas Eve!’

  ‘She was a queer card, I could tell that from the first.’

  ‘Aye, she was, and I could see this coming off.’

  ‘Aye, you can always prophesy things after they’ve happened,’ commented Fanny dryly. ‘Now get downstairs with you out of the way.’

  ‘How many of you live here?’ The policeman’s voice came from the lower landing, and Fanny cried to him in muted tones, ‘I’ll tell you that.’ Then stabbing her finger down at three women and a man lining the stairs she exclaimed, ‘You, you…and you and you, get going to where you belong. My God! You couldn’t all have been quicker on the scene if it was a freegift day. Get out will you, and back to your own houses, and your own business. Anyway, I’d have thought you’d have found more interest in the street than up here.’

  ‘Has she murdered the lass, Fan?’

  ‘She has done no such thing. Now get going.’

  Fanny pushed the non-residents of Mulhattan’s Hall before her, making cryptic remarks with each push. Nor was Miss Harper spared. ‘And if you were to get indoors you’d be one less an’ all, for you’re obstructing the traffic standing there.’

  When at last the stairs and the hall were cleared, except for policemen who, Fanny commented, must be coming up through the drains, there were so many of them, four in all, she did not go into the street to see what was taking place there—she did not wish to see Mrs Leigh-Petty again, dead or alive—but she went into her own house and closed the door. She lifted Marian up into her arms and sat down heavily on her chair and rocked the sobbing child to and fro, exclaiming tenderly, ‘There, there, me bairn. There, there.’

  As she looked towards Tony, standing with his back to her and his hands pressed to his mouth, she said, ‘Don’t worry, lad, everything is going to be all right from now on.’ And when she saw his shoulders heaving, she added quickly, ‘Go on into the scullery and get it up.’

  A few seconds later as the sound of his retching came to her she nodded to herself; that would ease some part of him.

  Now she looked about the room, but could see nothing that she could not recognise. She hadn’t a doubt though that she wouldn’t have far to search. But there was time enough for that.

  A matter of seconds later, there came the sound of the ambulance in the street. They’d pick the old ’un up first. She wondered if she might be still alive. Very likely, and that was why they hadn’t attempted to bring her into the house. She had no desire to go and see what had really happened to the woman, for there was little pity in her for the creature now. It seemed only by the grace of God that she hadn’t done in at least two of the three; there was no doubt she had t
ried to finish off the girl, and by the looks of things had tried to take the young one with her when she jumped. It would be a long time before these bairns would forget this night.

  She heard the ambulance men go up the stairs, and after a very short while come down. And Philip’s step was with theirs.

  When the front door had closed on them there was a deathly stillness left on the house, for even Marian had stopped her sobbing. Then into the stillness came a sound that brought Fanny upright in her chair. So quickly did she jerk that Marian almost slipped from her knee. The sound was that of a carol…Come All Ye Faithful. As yet it was in the distance, which told her that the band had just entered the top end of the street. And which band would it be but the Salvation Army’s? God in heaven! After a day like she’d had and after what had just taken place in the house, and now this. Had God, like her son, forgotten her altogether that He could allow her to be inflicted with this last torment and shame? They would parade the street and likely stop outside this very door.

  ‘Come all ye faithful,

  Joyful and triumphant.’

  What if he had come with the band? No, God above, he wouldn’t do that! But she had insulted his wife and, like herself, he was capable of anything when in a temper. And yet she wouldn’t be able to find out if he was with them or not, not for herself she wouldn’t, for she wasn’t brave enough to go and see. But if he was there the neighbours would soon tell her. Aye, begod! Before Christ was eight hours old she would know.

  ‘O come ye, O co …ome ye to Be…ethlehem.’

  The music came nearer, louder, more clashing, more joyous. And then it was on her. It actually stopped outside the house.

  In small aggressive jerks she began to rock Marian. Begod! If she had a machine gun she’d stand behind the curtains and pick them off one by one, she would begod! This night, this Christmas Eve.

  Goodwill to men!

  God asked too much of human beings.

  Chapter Eleven

  It had been the strangest Christmas Fanny had experienced, as she said to herself, like something you’d read of in the paper. Newspaper men, police, hospital, questioning…oh, the questioning! The same things, over and over again. Had the one upstairs ever tried to sell her anything? ‘No,’ she had lied stoutly. Had she ever found in her flat before any articles that did not belong to her? How had the woman gained entry into her flat on the afternoon of Christmas Eve if she hadn’t a key? To which Fanny had replied, ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ Why hadn’t she handed over the two bags in The Ladies to the policewoman? Why should she? she had asked…to her they were ordinary shopping bags. Had she expected Mrs Leigh-Petty to jump over the wall? Why hadn’t she informed the policewoman that Mrs Leigh-Petty had jumped over the wall? ‘Name of God!’ she had cried, hadn’t they tried to run in her son for peeping into The Ladies at that very moment. Oh, the questions, the questions. You would think that she was the culprit instead of the old wife.

  Mrs Leigh-Petty’s past had been made public, everything, that is except that she had been in prison before. This would not come out until after her trial, so Phil said. Again that is, if there was one. She was still a very ill woman, with a broken hip-bone and ribs and other things and if she were to recover and, after being tried for stealing, attempted murder of the child, and suicide, be presented with the alternative of prison or going into a home as her doctor had already suggested, there was little doubt now but that she would do as she was told. One thing was final, she had severed herself from the family she had adopted.

  Margaret’s head injury had proved nothing more than a nasty scalp cut, caused by the end of the steel fender, and after some days in hospital she had returned to the house, white and drained-looking and much depleted. Yet the strained look had gone from her eyes, and when Philip had brought her into the kitchen she had cried in Fanny’s arms tears of weakness and relief.

  As for the repercussions of this whole affair on Philip, Fanny saw her son in a new guise, for he was already acting like the father of a family. This attitude of his had dated from Christmas Eve when the two single beds for the children had been brought downstairs and the boy’s placed in his bedroom and Marian’s in the kitchen at the foot of her own. During all this week when he wasn’t at the hospital, he had been busily burrowing into the affections of Tony and the child, who were from now on to be his responsibility.

  Aye, it had been a week and a half during which she had been kept very busy. Nearly too busy to think, but not quite, for the pain ever present in her heart was a sharp reminder that her lad had let her down. But only on Boxing Day had she indulged herself in reviling this son who must know that she would be waiting for his coming. For on that day Sam and Clara Lavey’s two sons, who with their families were visiting them for the Christmas, had looked in on her. Then there was the Quigleys’ lad, come all the way from South Wales; and there was Miss Harper’s niece and her family who had come to visit her on Boxing Day. They all had someone come from outside, while there was herself who had reared eleven out of twelve of them, and had only one with her. As she had sat alone by the fire, Philip having taken the children out, she had asked herself angrily, why, why were things like this for her? Hadn’t she given the lot of them her life? Hadn’t she always seen they had full bellies? True, she must admit it, her house had never been much cop. And who was to blame for that? Had she ever had a chance to have a fine house? Did any of them ever offer to stump up and buy her new furniture? No. When they started earning big, they started courting big. They had kept her nose to the grindstone. Her nose had always been on the grindstone. First with McBride, then with one after another of them, working, slaving for them. She had been a fool. This was nineteen fifty-eight, near fifty-nine. There were women going about today of her age and looking young, dressed up to the nines and painted…aye, painted. Off to the over-sixty clubs, pictures, whist-drives, aye, and even old-time dancing. Why hadn’t she started earlier and said, ‘To hell with the lot of you, I’m goin’ to enjoy meself.’ Why? And all the remainder of the week she had asked of the pantry shelf and the fire, and the puncher in The Ladies, Why? And only last night when she went to bed tired and weary did she give herself the answer. She wasn’t made that way. Her life was in this kitchen, and the strength of her life had drained through this bed, on which she had brought her family into the world. Her very heart’s core was in this untidy, shabby room. And she had really wanted nothing else as long as it held the one part of her body that had given her joy…Jack. And Jack was here no longer, Jack would not even come to see her, not even the glory and forgiveness of Christmas had softened his heart.

  Last night she had brushed her black coat and hat and squeezed her swelling feet back into her decent shoes and gone to confession. She’d had to wait a long time to get in to Father Owen, but she preferred that to going to Father Bailey. Father Owen always soothed her, and instead of making her feel guilty as Father Bailey did over her numerous sins, rather he left her the impression that she was a good woman. And last night he had brought a sting to her eyes as he talked to her after the absolution, talked to her as nobody else had done or could do, talked about their souls, not only her soul, but as if he was as bad as herself, and that he, too, had said things against God.

  ‘Fanny,’ he had said, ‘worry no more about such things, for if we didn’t get our back up at God He would think that we were dead perhaps and He hadn’t noticed.’ He’d made a small noise that could have been a laugh. ‘You’ve got to look on Him as a real father, and which one of us hasn’t thought at one time or other that they knew better than their father. If He has put burdens on you, Fanny, and you have resented them and not put a tooth in it about letting Him know, don’t worry, we all do it. I’ve done it meself. And when I’ve gone back to Him to say I was sorry and made Him a promise never to sin again, I’ve even heard Him chuckle and say “Until the next time”.’

  Aye, Father Owen had a way of putting the Almighty over that didn’t stick in your gullet. He
had touched her so much that she had even started her confession again, and against her better sense, she had said, ‘Nellie Flannagan, Father, she always makes me want to go hell for leather for her.’ And he had said, ‘It’s understandable, it’s understandable. But I would like to see you two friends, for she’s a good woman, a respectable woman, and she tries hard like all of us, God help her.’

  Before he had finished extolling Nellie Flannagan, Fanny wished sincerely that her conscience hadn’t gone mad and made her say that. Father Owen might speak well of Nellie Flannagan, but he never stayed long in her home when he came visiting, and she had seen him scurry past the door more than once. She’d always had a strong suspicion that when he talked well of Nellie it was just to tease her, to get her own goat. But just as she was leaving he had lain a balm on her soul as he said, ‘God bless you, Fanny. And for the next three nights I’ll say a special prayer that the desire of your heart may be granted.’

  When this morning she had dragged herself out of bed in the bleak, shivering dawn and made her way to church to receive communion, she prayed in her own inimitable way as she went along through the dark streets, ‘I’m offerin’ me communion, Holy Mother, so that he might come, and I promise you I won’t go for him when he turns up, or say a word against his wife, I won’t so help me, God.’ And as the Host was placed on her tongue she did not breathe, ‘Oh, God be merciful to me, a sinner,’ but ‘Bring him. Won’t you bring him?’

  The anger and resentment had now gone and the longing was back, and with it hope. What was Christmas anyway to a northerner, it was only for the bairns. New Year was the time. Of course it was, New Year’s Eve, this was the time for forgiving and forgetting…Should auld acquaintance be forgot…Should your own flesh and blood be forgot? No, this was the time for forgiving and forgetting, during the long, long day of New Year’s Eve.