Mary Ann's Angels

by Catherine Cookson

‘Well, that stuff that you did. The title’s all right, and the punchline, “She acts like a woman”, but the bit about not wantin’ diamonds and mink, well, that isn’t with it, not the day. They don’t expect them things. A drink, aye, but not the other jollop.’

  ‘No?’ The syllable sounded aggressive, even to Mary Ann herself.

  ‘No! Not the teenagers don’t. Who’s going to buy them furs an’ rings and things, eh? Unless a fellow hits the jackpot he can just scramble by by hisself.’ Duke now wrinkled his nose as if from a bad smell. ‘Aw, it’s old fashioned. Ten years, even twenty behind the times. But I’ve left in about the rings. But they don’t talk like you wrote it any more; still the way I’ve worked it, it’ll come over.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The pleasure’s mine.’

  Mary Ann’s jaws tightened. They don’t talk like you wrote it any more. How old did he think she was, forty?

  ‘Well, how do they talk?’ The aggressive note was still there.

  ‘Huh!’ Duke laughed, then slanted his eyes around his mates, and they all joined in, with the exception of Jimmy, for Jimmy was looking at the bad weather signs coming from Mrs Boyle. He knew Mrs Boyle’s bad weather signs.

  ‘Want me to tell you?’

  Before Mary Ann could answer Jimmy put in, ‘Aw, give over, Duke. You know you like it; you said it had it, especially that line.’

  ‘Oh aye, I’ve just said, that’s a punchline: “She acts like a woman.” But the rest…aw, it’s old men’s stuff…Bob Hope, Bing Crosby.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing more to be said, is there?’ Mary Ann had a great desire to reach out and slap his face. She turned quickly away. But as she did so Jimmy put his hand out towards her, saying, ‘Aw, Mrs Boyle, that’s just him. Don’t take any notice; he’s always like this. But he likes it, he does.’ He turned his head over his shoulder and said to Duke, ‘Come off it, Duke, an’ tell her you think it’s good. We all think it’s good.’ He swung his gaze over the rest of them, and the other three boys nodded and spoke together, and the gist was that they thought the lyrics fine and with it, just a word had needed altering here and there.

  ‘You see.’ Jimmy nodded at Mary Ann. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘No, Jimmy.’ Mary Ann’s tone was modified now, and she added swiftly, ‘I’m…I’m busy.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Mrs Boyle; that’s what we’ve come out for, to let you hear it. And then if you think it’s all right we was goin’ to try it out at The Well on Saturday night. An’ you never know, there’s always scouts hanging round an’ they might pick it up.’

  Mary Ann looked from Jimmy to Duke, and back to Jimmy, and she said, stiffly now, ‘That wasn’t my idea; I thought it could be sent away to—’

  ‘You do what you like, missis,’ Duke put in, shaking his head vigorously, ‘but if you send it away that’s the last you’ll hear of it, until you recognise snatches of the tune on the telly and hear your words all mixed up. You send it away if you like, but it’s as Jimmy says, there are scouts kickin’ around, on the lookout for punchlines, an’ you’ve got one here, “She acts like a woman”. It’s got a twofold attraction; it’ll appeal to the old dames over twenty, and make the young ’uns think they’re grown up. See what I mean?’ Duke was speaking ordinarily now, and Mary Ann nodded and said, flatly, ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’ But she wished they would get themselves away. She was still feeling sick with disappointment. She wanted to be alone and cry. Oh, how she wanted to cry at this minute. What was she standing here for anyway? As long as she remained they wouldn’t budge. She was turning round when Jimmy pleaded, ‘Will you listen to it, then?’ His face was one big appeal, and before Mary Ann could answer, and without taking his eyes off her, he said, ‘Get the kit out.’

  The four boys stared at Mary Ann for a minute, then turned nonchalantly about and went towards the car, and Mary Ann, looking helplessly at Jimmy, said, ‘Where are they going to do it?’

  ‘Why, here.’ Jimmy spread his hands. ‘We can play anywhere.’

  Mary Ann cast a glance over her shoulder. There was only her mother in the house; her da and their Michael were still on the farm; they were having a bit of trouble getting a cow to calve. If they had been indoors she would have said a firm no to any demonstration, but now she just stood and looked at Jimmy, then from him to where the boys were hauling their instruments out of the car.

  Jimmy brought his attention back to her when he said, softly, ‘I miss you back at the house, Mrs Boyle.’

  She looked at his straight face and it was all she could do not to burst into tears right there.

  ‘It isn’t the same.’

  ‘Be quiet, Jimmy.’

  It was no use trying to hoodwink Jimmy by telling him she was staying with her mother because she was sick, or some such tale, for behind Jimmy’s comic expression Mary Ann now felt, as Corny had always pointed out, there was a serious side, a knowing side. Jimmy wasn’t as soppy as he made himself out to be. Even a few minutes ago, when he had pointed to Duke as the leader of the group, she felt that whatever brains were needed to guide this odd assortment it was he who supplied them.

  The boys came back up the path, and one of them handed a guitar to Jimmy; then, grouping themselves, they faced her and, seemingly picking up an invisible sign, they all started together. There followed a blast of sound, a combination of instruments and voices that was deafening.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN

  Mary Ann screwed up her face against the noise. She watched the fair-haired boy, Poodle Patter as Jimmy had called him, his head back, wobbling on the last word: WOOMA…AN. This was followed by a number of chords, and then they all started again.

  MAN, I’M TELLING YOU.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN.

  SHE PELTED ME WITH THINGS,

  AND THEN SHE TORE HER HAIR.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN.

  I’VE GIVEN HER MY LOT,

  NOW I WAS FINISHED, BROKE,

  AND THEN SHE SPOKE OF LOVE.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN.

  ME, SHE SAID, SHE WANTED,

  NOT RINGS OR THINGS.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN.

  MAN, I JUST SPREAD MY HANDS.

  WHAT WAS I TO DO?

  YOU TELL ME,

  WHAT WAS I TO DO?

  EARLY MORNING THERE SHE STOOD,

  NO MAKE-UP, FACE LIKE MUD,

  BIG EYES RAINING TEARS AND FEARS.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOMAN.

  THEN MAN, SOMETHING MOVED IN HERE,

  LIKE DAYLIGHT,

  AND I COULD SEE SHE ONLY WANTED M-EE.

  SHE ACTS LIKE A WOOO-MA-AN.

  As the voices trailed off the last word and all the hands crashed out the last note, Mary Ann gaped at the five boys, and they stood in silence waiting. For a brief second she forgot her misery. It had sounded grand, excellent, as good as anything that was on the pops. He was clever. She looked directly at Duke and said what she thought.

  ‘I think you’ve made a splendid job of it, the way you’ve arranged the words and brought out that line. I think it’s grand.’

  All the faces before her were expanding now into wide, pleased grins. Even Duke’s cockiness was lost under the outward sign of his pleasure, when, at that moment, round the corner of the house, came Mike. He came like a bolt of thunder.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re up to! What’s this?’

  After the words had crashed about them they all turned and looked at the big fellow who was coming towards them, his step slower now, his face showing an expression of sheer incredulity. They stood silent as he eyed them from head to toe, one after the other. Then, his voice exploding again, he cried, ‘What the hell are you lot doing here? Who’s dug you up?’

  ‘Da…Da, this is Jimmy. You know Jimmy.’

  Mike turned his eyes towards Jimmy; then returned them slowly back to the other four as Mary Ann went on hastily, ‘They are Jimmy’s Group; they’ve…’ She paused.
How to say they had set some of her words to music; this wasn’t the time. ‘They had a tune they thought I…I would like to hear.’

  ‘THEY…HAD…A…TUNE they thought you’d like to hear? Have you gone barmy, girl? You call that noise a tune? It’s nearly put the finishing touches to Freda.’

  ‘Then Freda isn’t with it, is she, Mister?’ This was Duke speaking. His tone was insolent and brought Mike swinging round to him. ‘Freda’s more with it than you, young fellow, if that is what you are, which I doubt very much. Freda’s only a cow, a sick cow at the present moment, but I wouldn’t swap her for the lot of you.’

  The four boys stared back at Mike, their faces expressionless. It was a tense moment, until the fair-haired boy, Poodle Patter, asked quietly, ‘What she sick with, Mister?’

  ‘She’s trying to calve, but you lot wouldn’t understand anything about that, being neither one thing nor the other.’

  Again there was a silence, during which Mary Ann’s hand went out towards Mike. But she didn’t touch him; she was afraid she might explode something here, for she could see him tearing his one arm from her grasp and knocking them down like ninepins.

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ This calm rejoinder came from Duke. ‘As me dad says, ministers wear frocks but they still manage to be fathers.’

  Mike and Duke surveyed each other for a moment. Then Mike, his lips hardly moving, said, ‘Get yourselves out! An’ quick.’

  For answer, Duke lifted one shoulder and turned about, and the others followed suit, Jimmy coming up in the rear. As they neared the gate Poodle stopped, swung round, and, his face wearing a most innocent expression, addressed Mike, calling up the path to him, ‘Can you tell me, Mister, if the caps are put on the milk bottles after the cows lay them, or do they all come through sealed up?’

  Mary Ann’s two hands now flashed out and caught Mike’s sleeve, and she begged softly under her breath, ‘Da! Da! Don’t, please.’

  Outside the gate and standing near the car, Duke turned again and looked up towards Mike, and he called, in a loud voice now, ‘If you’d started anything, old ’un, you’d have come off second best, an’ if you hadn’t been a cripple with only one hand I wouldn’t have let you get away with half what you did. But don’t try it on again.’

  Mary Ann leant back and hung on to Mike now, and as she did so Lizzie and Michael appeared at the other side of him, and Lizzie said, tersely, ‘Let them go. Let them go. Come on, get yourself inside.’ They pulled him around and almost dragged him indoors.

  Neither of them had said a word to Mary Ann, and she stood leaning against the stanchion of the door, looking at the car, waiting for it to go, and as she watched she saw Jimmy spring out and come up to the path again. And this brought her agitatedly from the doorway and hastily towards him, crying under her breath, ‘Get yourself away; get them out of this.’

  ‘All right, all right, Mrs Boyle; they’ll do nothin’. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all this, but you see I didn’t only come about the tune, there…there was something else. It was…well, I won’t be seeing you again, I don’t suppose. That’s what I meant to say first of all.’

  Mary Ann shook her head, and the boy went on, ‘You see, I’m leavin’.’

  Mary Ann forced herself to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and was about to add yet again, ‘Get yourself and that crowd away,’ when Jimmy put in, ‘So am I, but with the boss s…sellin’ up…’

  ‘What! What did you say?’ She put her hand out towards him as if she was going to grab the lapel of his coat. Then she closed her fist and pressed it into her other hand and almost whimpered, ‘Selling up. What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, that’s what I came about. You see, I think the boss is gonna sell out to Mr Blenkinsop. He wouldn’t sell out to Riley, ’cos he doesn’t like Mr Riley, does he? But…but I think he’ll sell out to the American. And I wouldn’t want to stay if the boss wasn’t there, so I’m lookin’ out for another job…’

  ‘Who…who told you this?’

  ‘Oh. Well, you know me; I keep me ears open, Mrs Boyle.’ He stared at her, his long face unsmiling. ‘It’s awful back there without you. An’ I don’t think the boss can stick it, that’s why he’s goin’ I suppose.’

  There was a loud concerted call from the car now, and Jimmy said, ‘I’ll have to be off, but…but that’s really what I came about. Bye, Mrs Boyle.’

  She nodded at him and then said under her breath, ‘Goodbye, Jimmy.’

  She watched the car move away in a cloud of black smoke from the exhaust, and when it was out of sight she still stood where Jimmy had left her. It was many, many years since she had experienced the feeling of utter despair, and then it had been her da who had evoked that feeling in her. Yet she could recall that her despair in the past had always been threaded with hope, hope that something nice would happen to her da. And nice things had happened to her da. Bad things had also happened to him, but in the main they were nice things that had happened. He stood where he was today because of the nice things she had wished and prayed would happen to him. She had always worked at her wishing and her praying—she had never let God get on with it alone—and so her da had made good.

  But now she had reached a point in her existence where the main issue was not somebody else’s life but her own; she could see her life disintegrating, crumbling away before her eyes. How had it started? How had this situation come about? How did all such situations come about but by little things piling on little things. One stick, one straw, one piece of wood, all entwined; another stick, another straw, another piece of wood, and soon you had a little dam; and a little dam grew with every layer until it stretched across the river of your life and you were cut off, cut off from the other part of you, that part of you that held your heart, and, in her case, cut off from her own flesh and blood, from her son. But the son, in this moment, was a secondary loss; it was the father she was thinking about; Corny was going to sell up. He had stood fast from the beginning; he had bought the garage in the face of opposition. Everybody had said he had been done. Four thousand for a place like that! He must have been bonkers, was the general opinion. Oh yes, it would be a good thing if the road went through, but would it go through? Corny had held on, held on to the threadbare hope of the road going through. And the road hadn’t gone through, yet still he had held on. Something would turn up, something; he knew it would. She could feel him stroking her hair in the darkness of the night, talking faith into himself, recharging himself for another day. ‘You’ll see, Mary Ann, you’ll see. Something ’ll turn up, and then I’ll make it all up to you. I’ll buy you the biggest car you ever saw. I’ll have the house rebuilt; you’ll have so many new clothes that Lettice will think she’s a rag-woman.’ Corny, in the dark of the night, talking faith into himself and her. And now he was going to sell up. He couldn’t, he couldn’t.

  ‘What’s come over you?’

  Mary Ann turned and looked up the path to where Michael was standing in the doorway, so like his father that he could be his younger brother. She did not answer him but walked towards him, her face grim with the defiance his tone had evoked in her.

  ‘How in the name of God have you got yourself mixed up with that lot?’

  ‘I’m not mixed up with that lot; I’ve never seen them in my life before, except Jimmy.’

  She glared at him as she passed him, and she was going across the hall when his voice came to her, softly now, saying, ‘You take my advice and get yourself off home this very minute. Don’t be such a blasted little fool.’

  ‘You mind your own business, our Michael. You’re so blooming smug you make me sick.’

  ‘And you’re so blooming pig-headed you’re messing up your life. Corny is right in the stand he’s taking. Everybody is with him.’

  She was at the foot of the stairs now, and she turned to face him, crying, ‘I don’t care if the whole world is with him. I don’t need your sympathy or anybody else’s. I stand on my own feet. And you mind your own business and gather all your f
orces to run your own life. You’re not dead yet; you may have a long way to go, so don’t crow.’

  She was at the top of the stairs when Michael’s voice came from the foot, crying at her, ‘Who’s crowing? Be your age, and stop acting like little Mary Ann Shaughnessy.’

  As Mary Ann burst into her room she heard her mother’s voice crying, ‘Michael!’ and his voice trailing away, saying, ‘Aw, well, somebody’s got to…’

  And then she was brought to a stop by the sight of Rose Mary standing near the window. She was looking straight at her, her face tear-stained and her lips trembling. ‘I saw Jimmy, Mam,’ she said.

  ‘Get into bed. I told you to get into bed.’

  ‘I want to go back home, Mam.’

  ‘Get into bed, Rose Mary.’

  ‘I want our David, Mam, and me dad. I miss them. I miss our David, Mam.’

  ‘Rose Mary, what did I say?’

  ‘Could I just go over the morrow and—?’

  Mary Ann’s hand came none too gently across Rose Mary’s buttocks, and Rose Mary let out a loud cry, and when the hand came again she let out another. A minute later the door burst open and there stood Lizzie.

  ‘You’ve got no need to take it out of the child. Michael was right; you’ve got to come to your senses. And don’t you smack her again; she’s done nothing. The only thing she wants is to go home to her father and her brother.’

  ‘She happens to be my child, Mother.’ Mary Ann always addressed Lizzie as mother in times of stress. ‘And I’ll do what I like with her, as you did with me.’

  ‘Well, you smack her again if you dare!’ Lizzie’s face was dark with temper, and Mary Ann’s equally so as she snapped back, ‘I’ll smack her when I like. She happens to be mine, and I’ll thank you not to interfere. And I’d better inform you now that this is the last night you’ll have to give me shelter; I’m going to find a place for us both tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re mad, girl, that’s what you are, mad. It’s a pity Corny didn’t use his hands on you and beat sense into you. He’s slipped up somewhere.’