Mary Ann's Angels

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Tony…your father’s coming to see me tomorrow, Peter?’ Corny looked down the table towards the boy, and Peter, his head cocked on one side, said, ‘Yes, he said he was. He wants a new car, and you’re going to buy it for him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  All eyes were on Corny. This was a good bit of news, it meant business, yet the elders at the table knew that Corny wasn’t taking it like that. To get an order from Tony, who was the grandson of Mr Lord, Mr Lord who had for so long been Mary Ann’s mentor and who was still finding ways and means of handing out help to her, would not meet with Corny’s approval, even if it meant badly needed business.

  Mike’s voice broke the immediate silence at the table, saying, ‘You’ve spilt the beans, young fellow, haven’t you?’

  Peter looked towards the man, whom, in his own mind, he considered one of his family, and said, with something less than his usual exuberance, ‘Yes, Granpa Shan, I have…Father will be vexed.’ He now turned his gaze down the table towards Corny and said, ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Corny. I wasn’t supposed to know, I just overheard Father telling Mother…I’ll get it in the neck now, I suppose.’ The statement, said in such a polite tone, was too much even for Corny. He laughed, and the tension was broken as he said, ‘And you deserve to get it in the neck too, me lad.’

  ‘You won’t give me away to Father?’ Peter was leaning over his plate as he looked down towards Corny, and Corny, narrowing his eyes at the young culprit, said, ‘What’s it worth?’

  This remark brought Peter upright. He looked first towards Rose Mary’s bright face, then towards David’s penetrating stare, and, his agile mind working overtime, he returned his gaze to Corny and said, ‘Let’s say I’ll help to clean one of your cars for you during the holidays…that’s if I can stay to dinner.’

  They were all laughing and all talking at once, and Sarah, leaning across the corner of the table towards Mary Ann, said, ‘He’ll either grow up to be Foreign Minister, or a confidence trickster,’ whereupon they both laughed louder still.

  But behind her laughter a little nagging voice was saying to Mary Ann: If only David had said that; and he could have, he could be as cute as Peter any day, if only he could break through the skin that was covering his speech.

  If only. If only. If only there was some way…but not separating them as Corny wanted, and now her mother. No, not that way.

  Chapter Four

  It was half past ten in the morning and a beautiful day; cars were spinning thick and fast over all the roads in England, and the North had more than its share of traffic. There were people going on their holidays to the Lake District, to Scotland, to Wales. There were foreigners in cars who were discovering that the North of England had more to show than pits and docks. Yet Corny, who had been in the garage since half past six that morning, had sold exactly four gallons of petrol.

  It couldn’t go on, he had just told himself as he sat in his little office looking at his ledger. Last week he had cleared seventeen pounds, and he’d had Jimmy to pay out of that, and then there had been the building society repayments, insurance, and the usual sum to be put by for rates, and what did that leave for living? They had dipped into their savings so often, the money they had banked from Mr Lord’s generous wedding present to them both, until it was now very near the bottom of the barrel. Mary Ann worked miracles, but at times there was a fear in him that she would get tired of working miracles. She was young, they were both young, and they weren’t seeing much of life, only hard work and struggling. This was what both his parents and hers had had in their young days, but the young of today were supposed to be having it easy, making so much money in fact that they didn’t know what to do with it, or themselves. And it was a fact in some cases. There was his brother, Dan, twenty-four years old, not a thought in his head but beer and women, and yet he never picked up less than thirty quid from his lorry driving; forty-five quid some weeks he had told him, and just for dumping clay, not even stepping a foot out of his cab.

  Life at this moment appeared very unfair. Why, Corny asked himself, couldn’t he get a break? Nobody worked harder, tried harder. It was funny how your life could be altered by one man’s vote in a committee room. When he had bought the garage seven years ago, he had been sure that the council would widen the lane and make it into a main connecting road between Felling and Turnstile Point, but one man’s vote had potched the whole thing…But not quite. It was the ‘not quite’ that had kept him hanging on, for there had been rumours that the council had ideas for this little bottleneck. Some said they were going to buy the land near the old turnstile for a building estate. Another rumour was that they were going to build a comprehensive school just across the road in what was known as Weaver’s Field.

  During the first couple of years he had sustained himself on the rumours. He seemed to have been very young then, even gullible, now he knew he was no longer young inside, and certainly not gullible. No rumour affected him any more; yet at the same time he kept hanging on, and hoping.

  He rose from the stool and walked out into the bright sunshine. Everything looked neat and tidy. Nobody, he assured himself, had a prettier garage. The red flowers against the white stones, the cement drive-in all scrubbed clean, not a spot of oil to be seen—perhaps that was a bad sign, he should leave the oily patches, it would bear out the old saying: where there was dirt there was money. He turned and looked into the big garage. It, too, was too tidy, too bare. He hadn’t a thing in for repairs. The garage held nothing now but his old Rover and some cardboard adverts for tyres.

  As he stared down the long, empty space Jimmy came from out of the shadows with a broom in his hand, and, leaning on it and looking towards Corny, he said quizzically, ‘Well, that’s that. What next, boss?…There’s a bird’s nest in the chimney, I could go and tidy that up…’

  ‘Now I’m having none of that…an’ you mind.’ Corny’s voice came as a growl, and Jimmy, the smile sliding from his face, said, ‘I was only kiddin’, boss. I meant nowt, honest.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope you didn’t. I’ve told you afore, if you don’t like it here there’s plenty of other jobs you can get. I’m not stopping you. You knew the terms when you started.’

  ‘Aye. Aye, I know. An’ it’s all right with me. I like it here, I’ve told you, ’cos I’ve learned more with you than I would have done in a big garage, stuck on one job…It’s only, well…’ Jimmy didn’t go on to explain that he got bored when there were no jobs in but said, with a touch of excitement, ‘Look, what about me takin’ that monstrosity out there to bits and buryin’ it, eh?’

  He walked past Corny, and Corny slowly followed him to the edge of the garage, and they looked towards his piece of spare land that bordered the garden and where stood a car. Three nights ago someone had driven a car there and left it. The first indication Corny had of this was when he opened up the next morning, and the sight of the dumped car almost brought his temper to boiling point. They just wanted to start that; let that get round and before he knew where he was he’d be swamped. They had started that game up near the cemetery, and there were two graveyards up there now. He couldn’t understand how he’d slept through someone driving a car down the side of the building, because a car had only to pass down the road in the night and it would wake him, and he would say to himself, ‘It couldn’t come down in the daytime, could it.’

  He had been on the point of taking a hammer and doing what Jimmy suggested they should do now, break the thing up and bury it, but the twins had caused him to change his mind, at least temporarily, for Rose Mary had begged him to let them have it to play with, and strangely, Mary Ann had backed her up, saying, ‘It would give them something to do now that they were on holiday, and might stop her pestering to be taken to the sands at Whitley Bay or Shields.’ So Corny had been persuaded against his will to leave the car as it was. He had siphoned out what petrol there remained in the tank, cleared the water and oil out, and left the children with a gigantic toy, hoping that their interest migh
t lag within a few days and he would then dispose of it. But the few days had passed and their interest, far from waning, had increased.

  From where he stood he could see the pair of them, Rose Mary in the driving seat with David bobbing up and down beside her, driving to far-off places he had no doubt, places as far away as their Great-gran McBride’s in Jarrow. He smiled quietly to himself as he thought they were like him in that way, he had always wanted to go to his Granny McBride, for his granny’s cluttered untidy house had been more of home to him than his real home; and it had been her dominant, loud, yet wise personality that had kept him steady…Yes, undoubtedly, the pair of them would be off in the car to their Great-gran McBride’s.

  ‘No go, boss?’

  Corny gave a huh! of a laugh as he turned to Jimmy and said, ‘What do you think? Go down there and tell them you’re going to smash it up and there’ll be blue murder.’

  ‘Well, what’ll I do?’ Jimmy was looking straight up into Corny’s face, and Corny surveyed him for a full minute before answering, ‘Well now, what would you like to do?’

  On this question the corner of Jimmy’s mouth was drawn in, and he looked downwards at his feet as if considering. Then, his eyes flicking upwards again, he glanced at Corny and they both laughed.

  ‘Well, mind, just until the missis comes in. I’ll give you the tip when I see her coming up the road, for she’s threatened to leave me if she hears any more of your efforts.’

  Jimmy’s mouth split his face, and on a loud laugh, he said, ‘Aw! I can see her doing that, boss. But ta, I’ll stop the minute you give me the nod.’

  Less than a minute later the too-quiet air of the garage and the immediate vicinity was broken by the anguished, hesitant wails of the trombone.

  The sound had no effect on Corny one way or the other. He had practised his cornet so much as a lad that he now seemed immune to the awful wailing wind practice evoked. Although, when he stopped to think about it, the boy was learning, and fast, in spite of the quivering screeches and wrong notes.

  He was in the office again when he heard a car approaching the garage and almost instantly he was outside, rubbing his hands with a cloth as if he had just come off a grimy job. The car might pass, yet again it might stop. He had noticed before that the sight of someone about the place induced people to stop, but apparently this car needed no inducement, for it swirled onto the drive and braked almost at his feet.

  Jimmy’s American.

  Corny recognised the Chevrolet and the driver, inasmuch as the latter’s nationality was indicated by his dress, particularly his hat.

  ‘Hello, there.’ The man was getting out of the car.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  The man was tall, as tall as Corny himself, and broad with it. Like most Americans, he looked well dressed and, as Corny thought, finished off. He was a man who could have been forty, or fifty, there was no telling. He was clean-shaven, with deep brown eyes and a straight-lipped mouth. His face had an all-over pleasantness, and his manner was decidedly so. Without moving his feet he leaned his body back and looked up through the empty garage, and, his face slipping into a wide grin, he said, ‘The youngster’s at it again?’

  ‘Oh yes. He’s gone on the trombone. I let him have a go at it…’ He just stopped himself from adding ‘when we’re not busy’. Instead he said, ‘They’re forming a new group and he’s mad to learn.’

  ‘He’s not your boy?’

  ‘Oh no. No.’ Corny turned his head to one side, but his eyes still held those of the American. ‘Give us a chance.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ The American’s hand came out and pushed him familiarly in the shoulder. ‘You in your middle twenties I should say, and him nearing his twenties.’ His laugh was deep now. ‘You would have to have started early.’

  ‘You’re saying!’

  ‘Well now.’ He looked towards his car. ‘I want it filled, and do you think you could give her a wash?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  ‘Not very busy this morning?’

  ‘No, not yet; it’s early in the day. A lot of my customers work on a Saturday morning, you know, and they…they bring them in later.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  As Corny filled the tank with petrol the American walked to one end of the building, then to the other. He stood looking for a moment at the children climbing over the car. Then coming back, he walked into the empty garage, and when he came out again he stood at Corny’s side and said, ‘Happen you don’t have a car for hire, do you?’

  ‘No. No, sir. I’m sorry, I don’t run hire cars.’

  ‘It’s a pity. I wanted this one looked over, I’ve been running her hard for weeks and I’ve got the idea she’s blown a gasket. I’m staying in Newcastle, but I want a car to get me back and forwards until this one is put right…You’ve a car of your own, of course?’

  ‘Only the old Rover, sir.’

  ‘Oh, that one in there? She looks in spanking condition.’ He walked away from Corny again and into the garage, and Corny, getting the hose to wash the Chevrolet down, thought, ‘That’s what I want, a car for hire. I’ve said it afore. Look what I’m losing now, and it isn’t the first time.’

  ‘Do you mind if I try her?’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’ Corny went to the opening of the garage. The American had the Rover’s door open and was bending forward examining her inside, and, straightening up, he called again, ‘Do you mind if I try her?’

  ‘Not in the least, sir. But she’s an old car and everything will be different.’

  The American had his back bent again, and he swung his head round to Corny and his mouth twisted as he said, ‘I was in England during the war, and after, I bet I’ve driven her mother.’

  They exchanged smiles, and then the American seated himself behind the wheel. ‘Can I take her along the road?’

  ‘Do as you like, sir.’ Corny stood aside and looked at the man in the car as he handled the gear lever and moved his feet, getting the feel of her.

  ‘Okay?’ He nodded towards Corny, and Corny nodded back to him, saying, ‘Okay, sir,’ and the next minute Fanny, as Mary Ann had christened the car after Mrs McBride, moved quietly out of the garage, and Corny watched the back of her disappearing down the road.

  He would have to take her right to the end before he turned, he thought, but that bloke knew what he was doing, he was driving her as if along a white line. She looked good from the back, as she did from the front, dignified, solid. He wasn’t ashamed of Fanny, not for himself he wasn’t.

  Well, he’d better get on cleaning this one down. He was a nice chap was the American. No big talk. Well, not as yet, but you could usually tell from the start…Lord, this was a car…and look at the boot, nearly as big as a Mini.

  He had almost finished hosing the car down before the American returned. He brought the Rover onto the drive and, getting out, came towards Corny and said, ‘You wouldn’t think of letting her out for a day or two?’

  ‘The Rover? To you?’ Corny’s mouth was slightly agape.

  ‘Yes, she’s a fine old girl. You wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Mind? Why should I mind, when you are leaving this one?’ He thumbed towards the Chevrolet.

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean, but, you know, I consider that many a wreck of a Rover is a sight more reliable than some of the new models that are going about now.’

  ‘You’re right there, sir; you’re right there.’

  ‘Well then, if you would hire her to me you could go over this one.’ He pointed towards his car.

  ‘If it suits you, sir, it suits me.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’

  An extra loud wail from Jimmy’s trombone reverberated round the garage at this moment. It went high and shrill, then on a succession of stumbling notes fell away and left the American with his head back, his mouth wide open, and laughing heartily, very like, Corny thought, Mike laughed.

  ‘You know.’ He began to dry his eyes. ‘I’ve thought
a lot about that young fella since I saw him last, and I always couple his face with the trombone…No offence meant. It’s a kind of face that goes with a trombone, don’t you think, long an’ lugubrious.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, looking at it like that.’ Corny, too, was laughing.

  ‘Will you stop that noise, Jimmy!’

  The voice not only hit Jimmy, but startled the two men, and they turned and looked to where Mary Ann was standing at the far end of the garage. She had come in by the back door and the children were with her.

  ‘Coo, Mrs Boyle, I thought you was out.’

  ‘Which means I suppose that every time I leave the house you play that thing. Now I’m warning you, Jimmy, if I hear it again I’ll take it from you and I’ll put a hammer to it…Mind, I mean it.’

  ‘Aw, Mrs Boyle…’

  Mary Ann turned hastily away, taking the children with her, and Jimmy came slowly down the garage, the trombone dangling from his hand. The American began to chuckle. Then, looking at Corny, he said softly, ‘That was Mrs Boyle?’

  ‘You’re right; that was Mrs Boyle,’ said Corny, below his breath.

  The American shook his head. ‘She looks like a young girl, a young teenager, no more. But there’s one thing sure; no matter what she looks like, she acts like a woman.’

  ‘And you’re right there, too, sir.’ Corny jerked his head at the American. ‘She acts like a woman all right, and all the time.’

  The American laughed again; then said, ‘Well now, about you letting me have your old girl. Oh, make no mistake about it, I’m referring to the car.’ His head went back and again he was laughing, and Corny with him, while Jimmy stood looking at them both from inside the garage.

  ‘It’s up to you, sir.’

  ‘All right, it’s up to me, and I’ll settle for a charge when I pick up my car. You won’t be out of pocket, don’t you worry. You won’t know at this stage how long it’s going to take you to do her, but I’ll look in tomorrow, eh?’