THE MENAGERIE
Catherine Cookson
Contents
The Catherine Cookson Story
The Menagerie
Chapter One: Aunt Lot
Chapter Two: Larry
Chapter Three: Jessie
Chapter Four: Pam
Chapter Five: The Fiddler
Chapter Six: The Will of God
Chapter Seven: Emancipation
Chapter Eight: Decision
Chapter Nine: The Proposal
Chapter Ten: And the Things they Fear
Chapter Eleven: The Test
Chapter Twelve: The Pit
Chapter Thirteen: The Answer
Chapter Fourteen: The Menagerie
Chapter Fifteen: Rancour of Remorse
Chapter Sixteen: No Compromise
The Catherine Cookson Story
In brief:
Her books have sold over 130 million copies in 26 languages throughout the world and still counting…
Catherine Cookson was born Katherine Ann McMullen on June 27th, 1906 in the bleak industrial heartland of Tyne Dock, South Shields (then part of County Durham) and later moved to East Jarrow, which is now in Tyne and Wear.
She was the illegitimate daughter of Kate Fawcett, an alcoholic, whom she thought was her sister. She was raised by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. The poverty, exploitation, and bigotry she experienced in her early years aroused deep emotions that stayed with her throughout her life and which became part of her stories. Catherine left school at 13, and after a period of domestic service, she took a job in a laundry at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, working all hours and saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house. She took in gentleman and lady lodgers to supplement her income and took up fencing as one of her hobbies. One of her lodgers was Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School, and in June 1940, they married. They were devoted to each other throughout their lives together. But the early years of her marriage were beset by the tragic miscarriage of four pregnancies and her subsequent mental breakdown. This took her over a decade to recover from, which she did, often by standing in front of a mirror and giving herself a damn good swearing at!
Catherine took up writing as a form of therapy to deal with her depression and joined the Hastings Writers’ Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. In 1976, she returned to Northumberland with Tom and went on to write 104 books in all. She became one of the most successful novelists of all time and was one of the first authors to have three or four titles in the Bestseller Lists at the same time.
She read widely: from Chaucer to the literature of the 1920s; to Plato’s Apologia on the trial and death of Socrates (she said that here was someone who stuck to his principles even unto death); to history of the nineteenth century and the Romantic poets; to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son and the books and booklets that abounded in her part of the country dealing with coal, iron, lead, glass, farming and the railways. She disliked it when her books were labeled as ‘romantic.’ To her, they were ‘readable social history of the North East interwoven into the lives of the people.’ For the millions of her readers, she brought ‘an understanding of themselves’ or perhaps of their dear ones. Her stories do not bring in a realism in which the worst is taken for granted, but a realism in which love, caring, and compassion appear, and most certainly, hope. ‘This type of realism does exist,’ Tom Cookson said of her writing. There is nothing sentimental about her writing; she is unrelenting in the strong images she invokes and the characters she portrays. They were born of her formative years and her personal struggles. Many of her novels have been transferred to stage, film, and radio with her television adaptations on ITV, lasting over a decade and achieving ratings of over 10 million viewers.
Besides writing, she was an innovative painter, and she believed that her father’s genes fostered the strength to work hard, but also, in rare moments of freedom, to strive to better herself. Catherine was famed for her care of money but had given much to charities, hospitals, and medical research in areas close to her heart and to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who set up a lectureship in hematology. The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust continues to donate generously to charitable causes. The University later conferred her the Honorary Degree of Master of Arts. She received the Freedom of the Borough of South Tyneside, today known as Catherine Cookson Country. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year, and she was voted Personality of the North East. Other honours followed: an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, and she was created Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1997.
Throughout her life, but especially in the later years, she was plagued by a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers, and stomach, and resulted in anemia. As her health declined, she and her husband moved for a final time to Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne to be nearer medical facilities. For the last few years of her life, she was bedridden and Tom hardly ever left her bedside, looking after her needs, cooking for her, and taking her on her emergency trips, often in the middle of the night into Newcastle. Their lives were still made up of the seven-day week and twelve or more hours each day, going over the fan mail, attending to charities, and going over the latest dictated book, with Tom meticulously making corrections line by line, for Catherine’s eyesight had long faded in her 80s.
This most remarkable woman passed away on June 11th, 1998 at the age of 91. Tom, six years her junior, had earlier suffered a heart attack but survived long enough to be with her at her end. He passed away on 28th June, just 17 days after his beloved Catherine.
Catherine Cookson’s Books
NOVELS
Colour Blind
Maggie Rowan
Rooney
The Menagerie
Fanny McBride
Fenwick Houses
The Garment
The Blind Miller
The Wingless Bird
Hannah Massey
The Long Corridor
The Unbaited Trap
Slinky Jane
Katie Mulholland
The Round Tower
The Nice Bloke
The Glass Virgin
The Invitation
The Dwelling Place
Feathers in the Fire
Pure as the Lily
The Invisible Cord
The Gambling Man
The Tide of Life
The Girl
The Cinder Path
The Man Who Cried
The Whip
The Black Velvet Gown
A Dinner of Herbs
The Moth
The Parson’s Daughter
The Harrogate Secret
The Cultured Handmaiden
The Black Candle
The Gillyvors
My Beloved Son
The Rag Nymph
The House of Women
The Maltese Angel
The Golden Straw
The Year of the Virgins
The Tinker’s Girl
Justice is a Woman
A Ruthless Need
The Bonny Dawn
The Branded Man
The Lady on my Left
The Obsession
The Upstart
The Blind Years
Riley
The Solace of Sin
The Desert Crop
The Thursday Friend
A House Divided
Rosie of the River
The Silent Lady
FEATURING KATE HANNIGAN
Kate Hannigan (her first published novel)
K
ate Hannigan’s Girl (her hundredth published novel)
THE MARY ANN NOVELS
A Grand Man
The Lord and Mary Ann
The Devil and Mary Ann
Love and Mary Ann
Life and Mary Ann
Marriage and Mary Ann
Mary Ann’s Angels
Mary Ann and Bill
FEATURING BILL BAILEY
Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey’s Lot
Bill Bailey’s Daughter
The Bondage of Love
THE TILLY TROTTER TRILOGY
Tilly Trotter
Tilly Trotter Wed
Tilly Trotter Widowed
THE MALLEN TRILOGY
The Mallen Streak
The Mallen Girl
The Mallen Litter
FEATURING HAMILTON
Hamilton
Goodbye Hamilton
Harold
AS CATHERINE MARCHANT
Heritage of Folly
The Fen Tiger
House of Men
The Iron Façade
Miss Martha Mary Crawford
The Slow Awakening
CHILDREN’S
Matty Doolin
Joe and the Gladiator
The Nipper
Rory’s Fortune
Our John Willie
Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet
Go Tell It To Mrs Golightly
Lanky Jones
Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Our Kate
Let Me Make Myself Plain
Plainer Still
The Menagerie
The Broadhursts were a mining family and, to outsiders, they appeared to be happy, loyal and united. But it was Jinny—wife, mother, sister—who held them together. Her pride and her strength prevented their fears and hates from overwhelming them.
There was Jack, her younger son, trapped into marrying a shrew; and Lottie, her sister, who was not quite…normal. And there was Larry, the bright one and her favourite, the handsome one who was obsessed with the memory of the girl who had jilted him. She was married now, they said, and happily too. But now he was suffused with anger. He vowed she would not make a laughing-stock of him again. He would sacrifice anyone, family and friends alike, if he could only see Pam Turnbull again…
Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1958
The right of Catherine Cookson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form.
ISBN 978-1-78036-053-9
Sketch by Harriet Anstruther
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described, all situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
Published by
Peach Publishing
To my very dear husband
Chapter One: Aunt Lot
‘Hello, Aunt Lot.’
‘Oh! Hello, Stanley.’
‘How’s it going, Aunt Lot?’
‘Oh, fine, Stanley.’
‘That’s the ticket.’
The man, laughing to himself, moved on through the press in the High Street while the woman, adjusting with the air of a fine lady the moth-eaten cape on her shoulders, turned again to the shop window and gazed with loving intensity at the cheap and bright dresses displayed. Oh, they were lovely. If she saved up hard enough she could get the red one by the end of the summer. But that was a long time away…If she could only depend upon the generosity of the others as she could upon Larry’s five shillings every week, she could have it in a month or so; not that she expected anything from the others, for they were married and had families to look after.
‘Hello, Aunt Lot. Goin’ t’buy the shop?’
‘Oh, hello, Mrs Preston. Hello, Mr Preston. No, I’m just lookin’.’
‘Nothing could make you bonnier than you are, Lottie.’
‘Oh, Mr Preston!’
With gratified pleasure she watched the couple for a moment before they were covered by the crowd; then again turned to the window…People were nice, weren’t they? They said nice things. Perhaps she didn’t need the frock, her own was good enough. Hadn’t Mr Preston said she’d looked bonny? She knew he wasn’t referring to her face but to her attire. She moved and stood in front of a navy-blue dress in order to see her reflection the better, and to her eyes it looked bonny. The large biscuit straw hat, its brim layered with faded silk roses that had been made before the century began; the green-spotted artificial silk dress, quite modern but obviously suited to some young girl and in whom she saw herself perfectly; and the grey sandals with the high heels and straps displaying the distorted toe joints were smart; but overshadowing all was the refined elegance of the fur cape.
Once again she adjusted the cape and moved on, walking slowly in and out of the crowd, enjoying seeing and being seen and answering the frequent hails with her usual smile and cheery replies.
It would be true to say that no-one in all Fellburn was greeted so often as Aunt Lot—even those who didn’t greet her smiled in her direction. You could tell a stranger to the town if he were seen to stand and gape at the tall, skinny woman with the mop of fuzzy, fair hair, dressed in a conglomeration of clothes, the colours of which never ceased to yell at each other, but which, strangely enough, were carried with a definite semblance of dignity.
Fellburn on a Saturday morning was always crowded. It was as if the two pits, the Phoenix at one end of the town and the Venus at the other, had spewed their slaves into its centre; there allowing them to get rid of the money they had earned in order to ensure their return. It was the present prosperity of the pits that had created the extended shopping centre of good-class shops. No longer did the miner’s wife buy the cheap and tawdry, she was now as good as the next; the next, in Fellburn, meaning the ladies from Brampton Hill.
The ladies from the Hill shopped mostly by phone, but should they go into the town it would be no later than a Friday morning. For this social arrangement Aunt Lot was always sorry for she could never come out on a Friday—Jinny wouldn’t let her—and she so liked looking at the pots.
She was now standing outside Fenwick’s bookshop, always the last shop she looked into before returning home. She liked looking in the bookshop, not that she read books, she was incapable of reading, but because the sight of them always fascinated her. They created a feeling of excitement inside her and stirred some dormant desire to the point of awakening. She had never read a book in her life, but the feeling told her she knew all that was in them, for what are books made of but people? In a deep, and normal part of her make-up she knew people, and it was in the mixed-up, fuddled layers near the surface that this knowledge formed itself into an unquestioning love for them. She was incapable of analysing any of her feelings. To her, the reason she looked at the books was because one day Larry was going to write one—well, not one, but dozens. Larry was clever; he had once been at the Grammar School.
The thought of her nephew brought her mind to razor blades. Eeh, now, she had nearly forgot to get his razor blades again! It was as Jinny said, she couldn’t be trusted to remember a thing to the end of the back lane. She’d go to Johnson’s right away, this very minute. She turned from the window in a flurry and hurried as fast as the crowd allowed towards the chemist’s.
The girl behind the counter smiled broadly at her.
‘Hello, Aunt Lot,’ she said. ‘The same?’
‘Yes, please. Gillettes, mind.’
‘Oh yes, Aunt Lot, Gillettes. There you are.’ She put the packet on the counter. ‘And how’s that big Gregory Peck of yours?’ she said, laughing saucily into Aunt Lot’s face.
‘Eeh!’ Lottie laughed back, ‘you’ll get it, calling hi
m Gregory Peck, you will.’
‘Ask him does he want a nice quiet platonic friend. There’s your change. Now don’t forget, mind.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’ Lottie left the shop laughing, with the girl’s laugh following her, and again she thought, Aren’t folks nice.
Happiness was now whirling through her entire body. A kindly word or a joke had the power to inject joy into her veins, and to her mind she had so many things to make her happy. Was there not Jinny who cooked so nice and looked after them all? Jinny might go for her at times, but then it was because she had a lot to do. And who minded a sister going for you, anyway? And there was Frank. Where could there be a brother-in-law like Frank? Why, Frank was the best man alive, and he was good was Frank. Yes, deep down he was good. And there were her nieces, Florence and Gracey and their bairns, and her nephew Jack and his wife. On the thought of Lena, a tiny shadow flittered over the joy. Lena didn’t like her—no, that was silly, everybody liked her, it was just that Lena was newly married and was bad-tempered because she couldn’t have a house of her own. Lena liked her all right. And…then there was Larry. Her joy mounted and her step became tripping. Larry was all the children she had never had. He was the prince who was ever searching for her, he was the friend she could go to and who had the power to release a part of her which she thought of as strange, she did not class it as sensible; Larry was her lord, her master, her judge. Others of the family had the power to dim her sky by their censure, but one word from Larry and the sun would be blotted out. And finally in her world there was Jessie. Jessie wasn’t of the family but she should have been. She loved Jessie better than her sister Jinny or anybody except Larry—this thought was always accompanied by a feeling of guilt, which caused her to exclaim, Eeh, I shouldn’t think this way. Eeh, it’s bad! But there it was, she couldn’t help it, and she rarely thought of Larry without thinking of Jessie.
As she passed Duke’s Park she turned and smiled on the children playing there. A boy, racing over the grass, touched the low wall dividing the park from the street and flinging up his arm and crossing his fingers, yelled, ‘Jinx!’ to his pursuers. Then added breathlessly, ‘Hello, Aunt Lot.’
The Menagerie Page 1
