A Grand Man

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘I was standing there, but he didn’t send me, and I couldn’t hear all you said—I heard some, and I knew you had a job going that would have just suited me da and I went home and prayed to the Holy Family…’

  ‘Father Owen told you to do that?’

  ‘Yes…no…No, I always pray to them on me own.’

  ‘The scheming old rascal!’ Mary Ann heard the muttered words and her own troubles were forgotten for the moment as she came to the defence of her beloved priest.

  ‘He’s not a rascal; he’s a fine man, as fine as me da, and don’t you say a word against him. And anyway you’ll burn in Hell for daring to call a priest a rascal. Maggie Simmond’s Aunt Nellie spilled a big panful of boiling fat over herself and she died, and that was just after she’d had words with the priest, so there…look out.’

  ‘Here, here, don’t be cheeky. And come along. You’ve told enough lies and trash.’

  The old servant once again bore down on Mary Ann, and this time she turned on him like a wild cat. ‘I’m not telling lies, I’m telling the truth. After I had the dream I kept awake and I got up when the blind got a bit light on it and I come all this way to talk to the Lord about me da. And Father Owen’s a lovely priest. D’you hear? And he put me in the May Procession, right at the head.’ She seemed to be watching her voice as she sent it yelling up at the old bent figure. Then for a moment her face showed comical surprise as she heard it change. It began to wobble and crack, and her mouth began to quiver. She knew what was about to happen, and she fought against it with all her might, shouting even louder. ‘There’s a pair of you, so there is. You don’t believe anything. You’re like Sarah Flannagan, that’s what you are. You wouldn’t do much for God if the divil was dead.’ And now, feeling that her case was hopeless and that her plea had failed, she turned on Mr Lord, crying in deep earnest, ‘You can keep your job and your old horses, and the cottage; me da’ll get a job on a farm. They’ll jump at him, for he’s a fine, steady man—he can work ever so hard. And me ma’ll go back to him when he gets a job with a cottage. You’ll see. So there.’ She nodded her head up at him in short, sharp nods; then turning blindly to what she thought was the front door, she stumbled into the dining room.

  The manservant, about to haul her out, was checked by Mr Lord, who thrust his arm across the doorway, and after a moment of watching Mary Ann walking bewilderedly about the room, he said, ‘Bring my breakfast.’

  ‘But sir, she—’

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  One old man looked at the other. Then the servant, who gave off his displeasure like the skunk does its smell, walked reluctantly away kitchenwards; and Mr Lord went into the room and sat down at the table.

  He did not look at Mary Ann who was standing now before the great empty fireplace staring down onto the dusty hearth, her back turned purposely to him, but he moved the crockery which was set on a none-too-clean cloth on the corner of the long massive dining table first one way and then another. Then abruptly he commanded, ‘Come here!’

  Mary Ann did not at once turn towards him; she sniffed a number of times and moved her shoulders. Thus having expressed her independence, she turned slowly about and walked to the table, her eyes cast down.

  ‘Your name is Shaughnessy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a very small voice.

  ‘Does your father know you’ve come here?’

  ‘Oh no. He said it was no use coming.’

  ‘So he did know you were coming?’

  ‘No. No; he didn’t. He said that the Sunday we went to the farm up Pelaw way. The job was gone there, but the farmer told him about you.’

  ‘And he said it was no use coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How right he was.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t want your job. You can keep…’

  ‘All right. All right.’ He hastily lifted his hand to check her swiftly rising voice.

  ‘He’s a grand man.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘He is. He is.’ Twice her chin was jerked up at him.

  ‘Very well…Ah, there you are.’ It was with evident relief that he hailed the servant entering the room with a tray. And when the man, placing a dish before him, lifted the cover, the audible sniff from Mary Ann caused him to look at her with a swift searching glance.

  She had been unable to prevent the sniff and she bowed her head in shame. She was hungry, but she’d rather starve to death than take even a bit of fried bread from the nasty old devil.

  ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes, half raised, were just on a level with the plate on which lay two pieces of fried bread, two rashers of bacon, an egg and two halves of a tomato.

  ‘That’ll do.’ Mr Lord, making to attack his breakfast, gave the curt order. But on this occasion, the old man was apparently deaf.

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You heard me.’

  Ben walked slowly to the door and passed into the hall, where Mr Lord’s voice, which nearly lifted Mary Ann from the ground, halted him.

  ‘Ben!’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ Ben’s disapproving body appeared in the doorway again.

  ‘Close that door and don’t come back till I ring.’

  Ben closed the door, and his master, in much the same curt tone, said to Mary Ann, ‘Sit down!’

  Slowly she eased the big chair from under the table and wriggled herself onto its seat, only to find that even when she perched on its edge she was too far away from the table; so she got down again, pushed the chair further in and squeezed herself between it and the table and onto its seat again. But now, not a little to her consternation, she found she was much nearer…the Lord. She watched him place half a tomato on a slice of bacon which was already reposing on a piece of fried bread. This he had put on his side plate, and when he pushed it towards her she wanted to say in a very civil voice, ‘No, thank you, I’m not hungry’; but what she did was to take the knife he handed her and cut the bread and bacon by holding it firmly with one hand, since there was no fork available, and dispatching it without further quibble or hesitation.

  ‘What do you drink? Tea or milk?’

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘Then get a cup. You’ll find one in there.’ He pointed to a china cabinet, and she struggled off the chair again and went to the cabinet, and opening the doors took out a cup. It was thin and felt so light in her hand that for a moment she stood staring at it before returning to the table with it.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Mulhattans’ Hall.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘In Burton Street. Off Walter Street.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Gone eight.’

  ‘Are you the only child?’

  ‘No. There’s our Michael…He’s going to the Grammar School; he passed an exam.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘He’s going to be a great scholar and earn a lot of money.’ She offered this information in an ordinary conversational tone; but this soon changed when she heard him say, ‘That’s impossible, he can’t do both.’ The words were muttered more to himself, but immediately she took them up.

  ‘He will! His teacher says he will. You don’t believe anything.’

  The cessation of hostilities was forgotten; the fact that she had just partaken of a miracle in the form of half his breakfast was neither appreciated nor understood.

  ‘You’re just the spit of Sarah Flannagan!’ she finished.

  ‘Who, may I ask, is Sarah Flannagan? Do you want a piece of bread and marmalade?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t…I mean, no, thank you. She’s a girl opposite us. She goes to our school, and she’s a big liar, and she never believes anything.’

  ‘And I’m like her?’ He helped himself to marmalade, while Mary Ann paused to reconsider her verdict, blinking at him the while.

  ‘Well, you don’t believe anything, do you? You don’t believe about me da, an
d that’s like her. It’s a wonder she’s not struck down dead the things she’s said about me da.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Well.’ Mary Ann paused as if there was need to recollect. ‘Well, she said me da drinks. Now would you believe that?’ She leant a little towards him; and he leaned back in his chair and surveyed her.

  ‘And you say she’s lying?’

  ‘Yes. She’s a bigger liar than Tom Pepper.’

  ‘You did say your name was Shaughnessy, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary Ann was quite emphatic about this.

  ‘And your father is called…Mike. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he’s a big man, with red hair?’ He waved his hand round his own white head as he spoke.

  ‘Yes, that’s him. Do you know me da?’

  He ignored her question and said, ‘And you say he doesn’t drink?’

  She stared at him, unblinking. Then she said quietly, ‘Yes.’

  As his head moved down towards her, her body began to stiffen but she continued to look him defiantly in the eye.

  ‘Do you mean to sit there and tell me that your father doesn’t drink at all?’

  She moved her bottom quickly back and forward on the seat until the leather began to squeak. Then she brought out, ‘I do. And,’ she continued, slipping off the seat, ‘I don’t want any more of your tea or your breakfast, for you’re as like as two pins with her. You can ask Father Owen about me da. He’ll tell you what a right fine man he is.’ She bounced her head once at him with finality. Then turning on her heel she marched towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘I’m going home.’ She threw this over her shoulder.

  ‘Come here.’

  Mary Ann found that she was forced to turn at the command, and when once again she was standing by the side of the chair she had just left, he said again, ‘You say your father doesn’t drink?’

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘And still you say your father doesn’t drink? Be careful now.’

  Mary Ann stared at him, and her answer did not come immediately. But when it did it was still quite firm. ‘I do.’

  ‘Would you swear on it?’ Now he seemed to be towering over her, and there was an odd look on his lined face. It had shed its stiff, hard mask and had taken on an expression that could only be called excitement; it sat strangely upon him, and he looked like a man who was watching a race.

  Mary Ann’s eyes widened, stretching across her face until they seemed almost to encompass it. It was one thing to fight the whole world for something that you wanted to believe, but to be made to swear on it…that was another thing entirely; and to be reminded that she was a Catholic into the bargain made things a thousand times worse. The Holy Family, with hurt expressions, were on one side of her, purgatory, Hell and damnation gaped widely on the other; but in front of her, blotting out them all, even the face of this terrifying old man, stood her da, looking as she saw him last night before she went to bed, a drawn, changed, different da. Her lips began to tremble and her nose to twitch, but her eyes met Mr Lord’s without flinching. ‘I would swear on it,’ she said.

  There was a taut silence in the room; then it was split by a laugh, the strangest laugh that Mary Ann had ever heard. She watched Mr Lord lean back in his chair, and his thin body seemed to crack each time a staccato sound escaped his lips. The sounds mounted, and when he pressed his hands to his side Mary Ann’s concern for him brought her to his knee.

  ‘Have you got a stitch?’

  Her attitude and concern only aggravated the stitch, for his laughter mounted. Neither of them noticed Ben come into the room and it was not until he spoke, asking in an awed voice, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ that Mr Lord, with a noticeable effort, took hold of himself. His laughter weakened and became spasmodic, but Ben’s concern grew when his master, looking at him with streaming eyes, said, ‘The greatest of these is loyalty.’

  The old man looked at Mary Ann and there was fear in his eyes, and when he turned to his master once again Mr Lord waved him away. ‘Go on—go on,’ he said; but as the old servant went again reluctantly out of the room his master’s eyes followed him.

  Mr Lord had never considered before that he had been the recipient of loyalty for over forty years. He had taken Ben for granted. He had growled at and abused him, first because no other servant would live with him, then because of the state of the house, then just because it had become a habit. He had sacked him countless times; he had even stopped his money to make him go, but it had made no difference. For years he had seen Ben as an old nuisance who hung on because he wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere else. Ben was twenty-eight when he first came to work for him, and he knew everything there was to know about him. He had witnessed the madness of his marriage; he had seen its end; and as isolation had become his defence he had clung closer to him. Yet, it was strange, he had never before this morning looked upon Ben’s service as loyalty. It had taken this child, who could lie with the innocence of an angel and the purpose of a priest, to show him just how much of loyalty had he himself been receiving all these years.

  Mr Lord wiped his eyes. But why should he have laughed? It was many a long year since his body had shaken with such laughter as this child had inspired. He looked at her through his swimming eyes. Her face was like a film flickering the thoughts of her mind across its surface; she imagined that she had only to stick to her guns and he would see her father as she saw him. If he hadn’t known Mike Shaughnessy he would have, without doubt, believed every word she said. She did not look a bit like Red Mike, yet there was something of him there. Perhaps it was her tenacity—given an idea she would hang on to it until she died—that was him. If only he had the right ideas. But apparently, to him, they were right for he was willing to lose his job for them—yes, and to cause strikes through them. No, he must be fair to the man—he would have caused no strike in his yard; he was too much of an individualist; he could sway neither side completely for he pointed too blatantly to the rottenness of both. It was because his own conscience had been pricked by the man that he was so mad at him. Yet it was strange that all this big red-headed hulk wanted was to work on the land and have his family near him.

  ‘Are you all right now?’

  He nodded to her. ‘Yes, yes, I’m all right.’

  ‘I get like that when I go to the pictures and I see a comic, the stitch gets me in the side and I want to cry when I’m laughing…it’s awful. Will I pour you out another cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes—can you?’

  ‘Oh yes, I often do the tea at home. There.’ She pushed a cup towards him, and he lifted it and drank while he continued to look down at her.

  ‘What are you going to do when you go back home this morning?’ he asked.

  Her eyes dropped from his, and she replied dully, ‘Nothing.’

  He handed the cup back to her and with the side of his finger he smoothed down his white moustache; then hesitantly, almost as if he wanted to find favour with her, he said, ‘Will you have time then to take a little ride with me to…to the farm?’

  They looked at each other. The significance of the request took on a tangible form; it shone between them, blinding Mary Ann with its promise; it formed a fairy-like castle on a high mountain; and she was choked with its wonder. She could bear no more. She flung herself at his feet, her arms about his legs, and when he, making strange tut-tutting sounds, attempted to quieten her noisy sobs, her crying only increased. With gruff tenderness he coaxed her up, and when she leant against him it seemed the natural sequence that he should then lift her onto his knee.

  He had in his time been kissed both passionately and falsely by women, but never had he been kissed by a child, never had he felt that ecstatic grip of thin arms about his neck. In this moment he would willingly have changed places with Mike Shaughnessy.

 
Chapter Ten: The Truth, and Nothing But…

  It had been a grand morning, a lovely morning. Mary Ann wanted it to go on forever, but there was her ma and da and the letter. Lovingly she touched the pocket in which the letter reposed and edging herself further towards the front of the car seat, she smiled up at Mr Lord. ‘Will you take me round by our school?’

  ‘Where’s that?’ ===

  ‘Not far from the church, you know. Round Dee Street.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you think we might be able to have a dog and a cat?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Have you a dog?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have, in a big house like that, because it could scare burglars.’

  ‘Yes…yes, you’re quite right.’

  ‘Haven’t you anyone to tidy up for you besides him?’

  A spasm passed over Mr Lord’s face, moving the wrinkled skin like small lapping waves on a ridge of sand, but he answered quite seriously, ‘No, only him.’

  Mary Ann shook her head. ‘Me ma’s the right one for tidying up.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yes. Our house is like a new pin. Look…there’s our school. You see that second window along the top? That’s our class.’

  Mr Lord bent his head and looked up at the window, saying, ‘Yes. Ah yes, I see.’ Then he added, ‘Can I put you down here? Can you find your way home?’

  ‘Yes. Why yes,’ she laughed up at him.

  He was funny. Find her way home indeed…she could find her way all over Jarrow by herself.

  It was at this point when Mr Lord was about to apply his brakes that Mary Ann, peering through the windscreen, saw in the distance a group of children, five in number, and all well known to her. One head in particular was so familiar that she almost choked with excitement and actually nudged him. ‘Look…along there. See those girls? Can I get off there? Will you ride me along there?’

  Mary Ann, thinking she detected a slight hesitancy in Mr Lord’s manner, added urgently, ‘The long one, that’s Sarah Flannagan.’