Mary Ann's Angels

by Catherine Cookson

‘The missis all right?’ Jimmy glanced up at the house window as he spoke, and Corny, after a moment, said, ‘Yes. Yes, she’s all right.’

  ‘Busy, is she?’

  ‘No.’ Corny screwed up his eyes in enquiry. ‘She’s got a headache; she’s lying down. Do you want something?’

  ‘No, no, boss. I was just wondering, after all the excitement of the day, how she was farin’. And we was just passing like I said. Well, fellas,’ he turned towards the four, ‘let’s get crackin’.’

  The four boys piled back into the car. Not one of them had spoken, but Jimmy, now taking his seat beside the driver, put his hand out of the window and passed it over the rust-encrusted chrome framing the door and, smiling broadly, said, ‘She goes.’

  ‘You’re lucky.’ Corny nodded to him but did not grin, as he would have done at another time when making a scathing remark, even if it was justified, and Jimmy’s long face lengthened even further, his mouth dropped, and his eyebrows twitched. He sensed there was something not quite right. The boss was offhand, summat was up. ‘Be seeing you the mornin’,’ he said.

  For answer, Corny merely nodded his head, and as the car swung out of the driveway he went into the office.

  Again he was sitting with his head in his hands when the phone rang. He stared at it for a moment. He knew who it would be…Mike. Slowly he reached out and, lifting up the receiver, said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Corny.’

  He had been wrong; it wasn’t her da, it was her ma.

  Lizzie’s voice sounded very low, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. ‘I’m sorry about this, Corny.’

  He didn’t speak. What was there to say?

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Mam.’

  ‘I want you to know that I’m with you in this.’

  He widened his eyes at the phone.

  ‘I’ve always said if they were separated, even for a short time, it would give him a chance. I’ve told her I think you’re right. But…but, on the other hand, she’s been worried nearly out of her mind and it mightn’t have been the right time to have done it.’

  ‘What other chance would I have had? You tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know, but, as I said, I’m with you. I can’t tell her that, you understand, not at present. She’s in an awful state, Corny…What are you going to do?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. Who else?’

  ‘I’m going to do nothing, Mam. She walked out on me, she didn’t even come and see the boy. I ran down the road after her, yelling me head off, but she wouldn’t stop. I wouldn’t even have known she had gone, it was just by chance I saw her. So what am I going to do? I’m going to do nothing.’

  ‘Oh dear. Corny. Corny. You know what she is; she’s as stubborn as a mule.’

  ‘Well, there’s more than one mule.’

  ‘That’s going to get neither of you anywhere. And you’ve got to think of the children.’

  ‘It strikes me you can think of the children too much. In one way I mean. The children shouldn’t come before each other. Whatever has got to be done with the children should be a combined effort.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t make it much of a combined effort from what I hear, Corny. You told that man that Rose Mary could stay until tomorrow morning, and didn’t give her the chance to say a word.’

  ‘Well, what harm was there in it? Just a few more hours. And if she had been unhappy then I would have whisked her back like a shot; I would have gone out there for her myself; but by the sound of her she was having the time of her life. And at this end David wasn’t worrying. That is what really upset madam, David wasn’t really worrying. What was more, he was talking.’

  ‘He’ll worry if she doesn’t come back soon…I mean Mary Ann, not Rose Mary.’

  ‘I think he’s worrying already, he’s trying not to cry.’ Corny’s voice was flat now.

  ‘Would Mike come over and get him?’

  ‘No, Mam, no, thank you.’ His voice was no longer flat. ‘The boy stays with me. If she wants him she’s got to come back home…Home I said, Mam. This is her home, Mam.’

  ‘I know that, I know that well enough, Corny. And don’t shout.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s gone down to the bottom field to see Mike.’

  There followed a short silence. And then Lizzie spoke again, saying, ‘It seems terrible for this to happen, and on a day when you’ve got such wonderful news.’

  ‘Oh, she told you that, did she?’

  ‘Yes, she told me. I’m so glad, Corny, I’m delighted for you. If only this business was cleared up.’

  ‘Well, there’s a way to end it. She knows what to do. She walked down the road, she can walk up it again.’

  ‘Don’t be so stubborn, Corny. Get in the car and come over.’

  ‘Not on your life.’

  ‘Very well, there’s no use talking any more, is there?’ Lizzie’s voice was cut off abruptly, and Corny, taking the phone from his ear, stared at it for a moment before putting it on the stand.

  Go over there. Beg her to come back. Say he was sorry. For what? For acting rationally, sensibly?

  He marched upstairs and into the kitchen. David had put his mug and plate on the tray but was now standing looking out of the window. He turned an eager face to Corny on his entry, then looked towards the table and the tray, and Corny said, ‘By, that’s clever of you! Are you hungry?’

  David nodded his head; then before Corny had time to prompt him, he said, ‘Yes, Da-ad.’

  ‘You’d like some cheese, wouldn’t you?’

  David now grinned at him and nodded as he said, ‘Yes, Da-ad, cheese.’ He thrust his lips out on the word and Corny was forced to smile. Cheese upset his stomach; it brought him out in a rash; but that was before he could say cheese. He would see what effect it had on him now.

  He was cutting a thin slice of cheese from the three-cornered piece when he heard the distant tinkle of the phone ringing again. ‘You eat that,’ he said quickly, placing the cheese on a piece of bread. Then he patted David on the head and hurried out.

  This time it was Mike on the phone, and without any preamble he began, ‘Now what in the name of God is all this about? What do you think the pair of you are up to?’

  Corny, staring out of the little office window, passed his teeth tightly over each other before saying, with forced calmness, ‘Well, I’m glad you said the pair of us and didn’t just put the lot on me.’

  ‘That’s as it may be.’ Mike’s voice was rough. ‘But this I’m going to say to you, and you alone. What the hell were you at to let her come away?’

  ‘Now look you here, Mike. I don’t happen to have sentries posted at each corner of the house to let me know her movements; I didn’t even know she was going until I saw the back of her going down the road…’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you bring her back?’

  ‘Look, I shouted and shouted to her, and the harder I shouted the quicker she walked.’

  ‘You had legs, hadn’t you? You could have run after her.’

  There was a long pause following this. Then Corny, his voice low, very low now, said, ‘Yes, I had legs, and I could have run. And I could have picked her up bodily and carried her back. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Well, now, you put yourself in my position, Mike. Liz walks out on you; you run after her; you call to her, and she takes not a damned bit of notice of you. What would you have done? She’s got a case in her hand; she’s leaving you and your son…and, this is the point, Mike, she’s going home.’

  ‘Oh, I get your point all right. But what do you mean, home? That’s her home.’

  ‘Aye, it should be, but she’s never looked on this as home; she’s always looked on your place, the farm, as home. And there she was, case in hand…going home. Think a minute. What would you have done, eh?’

  ‘Well.’ Mike’s voice faltered now. ‘Most girls look upon their parents’ place as home. Look at Michael here. Never away, even when he�
��s finished work. That’s nothing.’

  ‘It mightn’t be nothing to you, but it’s something to me. She knew what she was taking on when she married me. This was the only home I could give her until I could get a better, and now, when the prospects of doing just that are looking large, this happens.’

  ‘You’re a pair of hot-headed fools.’ Mike’s voice was calmer now. ‘Look, get into the car and come over.’

  ‘No, not on your life, Mike. If there’s any coming over she’s going to do it. She can get cool in the stew she got hot in.’

  ‘Man!’ Mike’s voice was rising again. ‘She’s upset. More than upset, she looks awful. You know for a fact yourself she just lives for those bairns.’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Corny now. ‘I know for a fact she just lives for those bairns. She’s lived for them so much she’s almost forgotten that I’ve got a share in them. If she’d done what I’d asked months ago and let you have David for a few days this would never have happened. But no. No, she couldn’t bear either of them out of her sight. She made on it was because she didn’t want them separated, they mustn’t be separated, but the real truth of the matter is that she couldn’t bear to let one of them go, not even for a night. All this could have been avoided if she had acted sensibly.’

  ‘It’s all right saying if…if…the thing’s done. But you can’t stick all the blame for what’s happened today on her. The one to blame is that blasted old she-devil. If she hadn’t come along Rose Mary would have been home this minute and nothing like this would have happened. The trouble that old bitch causes stuns me when I think about it.’

  There was silence again between them. Then Mike’s voice, coming very low, with a plea in it, said. ‘When you shut up the garage come on over. Come on, man. Drop in as if nothing had happened.’

  Slowly Corny put the receiver back onto its stand. Then looking at it, he muttered, ‘Aw, no, Mike. Aw, no. You don’t get me going crawling, not in this way, you don’t. I’ve just to start that and I’m finished.’

  Chapter Ten

  Mary Ann stood at the window of the room that had been hers from a child. She had never thought she would spend a night here again, at least not alone, unless something had happened to Corny. Well, something had happened to Corny.

  She stood with her arms crossed over her breast, her hands on her shoulders, hugging herself in her misery. There was a moon shining somewhere. The light was picking out the farm buildings; the whole landscape looked peaceful, and beautiful, but she did not feel the peace, nor see the beauty. She was looking back to the eternity that she had lived through, from the minute she had come back home yesterday.

  She had never for a moment thought that he would let her go. Although she had been flaming with temper against him, the sensible, reasonable part of her was waiting for him to convince her that he was right. When she heard his voice calling to her along the road she had felt a wave of relief pass over her; she wouldn’t have to go through with it. He would come dashing up and grip her by the shoulders and shake her, and go for her hell for leather. He would say, ‘Did you mean what you said about hating me?’ And after a time she would say, ‘How could I? How could I ever hate you, whatever you did?’

  All this had been going on in the reasonable, sensible part of her, but on the surface she was still seething, still going to show him. After he had called her name for a second time and she heard his footsteps pounding along the road behind her she quickened her stride and told herself she wasn’t going to make this easy for him. Then she was near the bend and his footsteps stopped, and his voice came to her again, saying, ‘If you go, you go. Only remember this, you come back on your own, I’ll not fetch you.’ That forced her pride up and she couldn’t stop walking, not even when she was round the bend, although her step was much slower.

  When she was on the bus she just couldn’t believe that she was doing this thing, that she was walking out on him, walking out on David. But David wasn’t hers any more, he was his. He had claimed David as something apart from Rose Mary.

  Her temper had disappeared and she was almost in a state of collapse when she reached the farm. The shock of Rose Mary’s disappearance was telling in full force and it had been some time before she had given her mother a coherent picture of what had happened. And then, later, she was further bemused and hurt when Lizzie, of all people, took Corny’s side in the matter, because her mother had always had reservations about Corny, but in this case she seemed wholeheartedly for him.

  It was only her da’s reactions that had soothed her. He didn’t blame her, he understood. After talking to Corny on the phone he had put his arm about her and said, ‘Don’t you worry, he’ll be along later,’ and she hadn’t answered, ‘I don’t want him to come along later. I don’t care if I never see him again,’ which would have been the expected reaction to a quarrel such as theirs. She had said nothing, she had just waited. She had waited, and waited, and when ten o’clock came, her mother had said, ‘Go to bed; things will clear themselves tomorrow.’

  The clock on the landing struck three. She wondered if he was asleep, or was he, too, looking out into the night. She remembered their pact, never to go to sleep on a quarrel. She had the urge to get dressed and fly across the fields, cutting the main roads, bypassing Felling, and running up the lane to the house and hammering on the door. But no, no, if she did that, that would be the end of her, he’d be top dog for life.

  By eleven o’clock the following morning the bitterness was high in Mary Ann again. Her da, Michael and her mother were in the kitchen. It was coffee time, and their Michael, forgetting that she was no longer an impulsive child but the mother of two six-year-old children, was leading off at her, ‘You know yourself you were always ram-stam, pell-mell, you never stopped to think. Now I know Corny as well as anybody, and if you’re going to sit here waiting till he comes crawling back you’re going to have corns on your backside.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, our Michael. What do you know about it?’

  ‘I know this much. I think Corny’s right. I also know that you haven’t changed very much over the years. Oppose you in anything and whoof! The balloon goes up.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Mike said sharply, his hand raised. He looked towards Michael as he spoke and made a warning motion with his head.

  During the heated conversation Lizzie had said nothing; she just sat sipping her coffee. And so it was she who first heard the car draw up in the roadway. This was nothing unusual, but the next moment a faint and high-pitched cry of ‘Mam! Mam!’ brought her eyes wide, and her head turned to the others, and she cried to Mike, who was now consoling Mary Ann with the theory that Corny was waiting for Rose Mary to arrive and then he’d bring them both across, ‘Quiet a minute! Listen!’ And as they listened there came the call again, nearer now, and the next minute the back door burst open and Rose Mary came flying through the scullery and into the kitchen, and as she threw herself at Mary Ann, Mike cried, ‘Well, what did I tell you? It was as I said.’ His face was beaming. Then breaking in on his granddaughter’s babbling, he cried, ‘Where’s your dad? Has he gone on the farm?’

  ‘Me dad?’ Rose Mary turned her face over her shoulder. ‘No, Grandad; me dad’s back home. Mr Blenkinsop brought me. He’s looking in the cow byres, waitin’.’

  Mary Ann rose to her feet, and, looking down at Rose Mary, she said quietly, ‘Mr Blenkinsop? Why did he bring you here, not home?’

  ‘Me dad asked him, Mam. He did take me home, and me dad said would he drop me over.’ Rose Mary now glanced about her quickly, and added, ‘Where’s David? Where is he, Mam?’

  ‘David?’ There was a quick exchange of glances among the elders, and then Mary Ann said, ‘Didn’t you see David when you went home?’

  Rose Mary screwed up her face as she looked up at her mother, and her voice dropped to a low pitch when she said, ‘No, Mam. David wasn’t there. I just got out of the car and me dad said hello and…and kissed me; then he asked Mr Blenkinsop to bring me over ’cos you were h
ere, and I thought David was with you…Isn’t he, Mam?’

  Mary Ann stood with her head back for a moment, looking over the heads of the others. Her fists were pressed between her breasts, trying to stop this new pain from going deep into the core of her. He had split them up, deliberately split them up, giving her Rose Mary and keeping David; he had not only split the twins, he had split her and him apart, he had rent the family in two. Oh God! She drooped her head slowly now as she heard Mike say, ‘I’d better go and see this man.’

  ‘No…No, leave this to me.’ She walked stiffly towards the door, and when Rose Mary made to accompany her she said, ‘Stay with your granny, I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  She found the American, as she thought of him, talking to Jonesy in the middle of the yard. When she came up to them Jonesy moved away and she said, ‘Mr Blenkinsop?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Well.’ He moved his head from side to side. ‘I don’t know how to start my apologies. You must have been worried stiff yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, yes I was, Mr Blenkinsop.’

  ‘Well, she’s back safe and sound and she’s had the time of her life. She floored them all, they went overboard for her, hook, line and sinker…’ His voice trailed away as he stared down at this pocket-sized young woman. There was something here he couldn’t get straight. He was quick to sum people up; he had summed her husband up and found him an honest, straightforward young fellow, and also a man who had, you could say, taken to him, but she was a different kettle of fish. She wasn’t for him in some ways. The antipathy came to him even though her voice was polite. And there was something else he couldn’t get straightened out; the young fellow’s attitude had been very strained this morning, he hadn’t greeted his daughter with the reception due to her, in fact he had been slightly offhand. He bent his long length towards Mary Ann and asked her quietly, ‘Did you mind me keeping the child overnight?’

  Mary Ann took a long breath. This man was to be a benefactor, he could make Corny or leave him standing where he was. She should be careful how she answered him about this. But no, she would tell him the truth. ‘Yes, I did mind, Mr Blenkinsop. I was nearly demented when Rose Mary was lost and…and naturally I wanted her back, but…but my husband saw it otherwise. You see, my son hasn’t been able to talk, and it’s been my husband’s theory that he would talk if he was separated from his sister. I’ve always been against it. Well…’ She swallowed again. ‘My husband saw your invitation as a means of keeping them separated for a longer period to…to give the boy a chance, as he said. I didn’t see it that way. I…I was very upset.’