Hannah Massey

by Catherine Cookson

  Hannah, ignoring the by-play, seated herself at the corner of the table opposite Rosie and heaving in a great breath she squared her lips as she said, ‘Begod! I could cover with spit the amount I make out of you lot.’ She nodded towards Rosie now. ‘Rump steaks, fresh cream on their puddin’s, suits at fifteen to twenty guineas a piece. And take their shirts now. Two pound twelve and six apiece I’ve to pay so’s the sweat won’t show at the oxters. Wouldn’t you say now there’s a fat lot left out of a pay packet when the bills are cleared?’

  The four men, following a signal, now walked solemnly towards each other, and putting their heads together began to sing, ‘Tell us the old, old story.’

  The satirical chorus was broken up by Hannah remarking caustically, ‘Aw, you’re all flat, there’s not a note right atween you. The only time you lot can sing together is when you’re three sheets in the wind…Now’—her voice held a note that Rosie knew from experience could put a damper on the lads’ rough humour—‘you’ve done your piece so get yourselves along with you. I want to talk to me girl here.’ She winked at Rosie.

  ‘Aw, there’s no hurry, Ma. Me da should be in any minute now.’ Jimmy looked at his wristwatch. ‘I want to see his face when he spots her.’ He smiled towards her and Rosie, with an effort, smiled back.

  ‘Aye, me too,’ said Barny. ‘He’ll be over the moon. Aye, we’ll all wait; so settle yoursel’, old woman.’ He flapped his hand at his mother, which caused her to shake her head widely as she lowered it to her chest like a bull about to charge. Then before she could make any further remark there came the sound of the back door opening; and Shane, darting to Rosie, pulled her to her feet and whispered, ‘Get behind the door, go on.’

  ‘Yes, yes, go on.’ Hannah, her face alight once more, signalled to her as she pulled herself up from the chair.

  ‘Hannah!’ The voice came loudly from the kitchen, and she called back to it, ‘Aye, I can hear you.’

  ‘Where’s them blasted slippers?’

  ‘Coo! Mrs Massey.’ Barny was whispering as he poked his head towards his mother. ‘Listen to him, Mrs Massey; he’s swearin’. He said blasted, Mrs Massey.’

  ‘You wait, me lad, I’ll give you blasted afore you get out of the house the night…Ssh!’ She silenced them all. ‘Move round, don’t look so guilty like, push yourselves about.’ She pressed the door back, hiding Rosie, then called, ‘Have you found them?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, an’ I’m not lookin’ for them.’ The heavy padded footsteps came towards the living room, and Broderick Massey entered, growling, ‘If you want me to wear blasted slippers then have them out for me.’

  Hannah had her back to him and she busied herself at the long table in the middle of the room. She took a glass bottle from out of a large cruet and, shaking it, held it up to the light, ascertaining the amount of pepper in it, as she said, ‘If I had three wishes in the world, do you know what I’d wish for?’

  Broderick stopped dead on his way to the fireplace. He looked around his sons, all self-consciously doing nothing, then towards his wife’s bent back and her great expanse of buttocks pressing her skirt up into a point above her thick calves. A sly twinkle came into his eye and a smile slithered over the grey dusty grime of his face, and he cast his glance towards Jimmy and winked. Then making his way to the chair by the side of the hearth, he sat down, saying, ‘Begod now, let me think. The last time I heard that sayin’ it pushed us all back over a hundred quid for the suite. You remember, boys?’ He rolled his head backwards on his shoulders, taking in the amused glances of his sons. ‘An’ the time afore that it was a spin-dryer, remember?’ He jerked his chin upwards and his Adam’s apple danced under the loose skin of his neck. ‘And the time afore that, the time afore that was an electric mixer. An electric mixer, begod! You remember the schemozzle about the electric mixer? She couldn’t mix another spoonful, rheumatics she had in the wrist, you remember?’

  The men were all laughing now; and Hannah, from the table, her back still towards her husband, said calmly, ‘If I had three wishes, Broderick Massey, the first one would be to see my daughter in this very room…And the second one would be…’ She straightened up and took a large knife and sawed off a thick slice of bread before continuing. ‘The second one would be to see me daughter in this very room this very night. And…’

  Before she reached the third wish Broderick was on his feet, and now he looked at her as she swung round, her face one large beam, crying, ‘And the third wish would be to see me daughter…’

  ‘Stop it, woman! Tell me.’ He was walking toward her. ‘She’s comin’? Rosie’s comin’ home?’

  The men were laughing out aloud now like lads at the climax of a joke they had prepared.

  ‘She could be at that. Aye, she could be at that; she could be on her way.’ She looked at him, at his thin, wiry body which looked puny against her breadth. She lifted her hand to his shoulder and turned him round to face the open door, and then silently she pointed.

  He flashed his glance wide now towards her, then slowly he padded to the door and pulling it forward he looked at his daughter; and then they were in each other’s arms.

  After holding her for a moment in silence, words tumbled out of him. ‘Aw, Rosie. Begod, Rosie. Aye, three wishes, three thousand wishes and every one that Rosie would be in the kitchen the night. Aw, lass. Aw, lass. He held her from him and looked at her for a moment, then turning to Hannah who was standing to the side of him he said in awed tones, ‘She’s as thin as a lath.’

  ‘She’s had flu.’

  ‘Flu, begod!’

  ‘Aye, it’s pulled her down.’ They were talking as if she was a child, a child who could not speak for herself. They murmured over her as they walked back to the middle of the room, and when Broderick sat down in his chair he still had hold of her hand and cried, ‘Come and sit down on me knee, come on.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Da.’ Rosie shook her head. She was smiling more easily now but not laughing.

  ‘Come here.’ He pulled her onto his knee, and after holding her tight for a moment he pushed her upwards and looked at Hannah, saying, ‘She’s not the weight of a feather; you’ll have to do some fattenin’ up here, missis.’

  ‘Who wants to be fat?’ Rosie touched his rough cheek, tenderly, lovingly, and he caught her hand and held it, his face crumpling almost as if he was going to cry, but he shouted, ‘Who wants to be fat? Better than lookin’ like death on wheels; you haven’t a pick on you.’ He felt round her ribs. ‘Not a pick. Aw, we’ll soon alter this. How long are you here for?’ He squeezed her tightly now.

  ‘A week or so.’

  ‘Make it…or so, eh?’ He was about to go on when his attention was drawn to where Hannah, once again at the table, was now speaking to Arthur, but harshly, saying, ‘You goin’ to the club?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Arthur, ‘of course I am.’

  ‘Well then, wait for the others.’

  ‘Aw, Ma.’

  ‘Never mind aw Ma-ing me. I told you what I’d do; and I mean it, mind.’

  ‘God in Heaven!’ Arthur turned away and dashed out of the room, leaving the atmosphere changed.

  As Jimmy and Shane exchanged glances, Hannah said to them, ‘You keep an eye on him, ’cos mind, I’m tellin’ you as I told him, if I see him with her once again I’ll go to her place an’ pull her out and rub her nose in the gutter. I will, so help me God. If anybody’s going to bring disrespect on me family it’ll be meself, an’ that’s the way I’ll do it. But I’ll take good care as long as I’ve got breath in me body none of me own blood’s goin’ to show me up.’

  ‘If you’d let up, Ma, it would likely peter out.’

  Hannah turned on Barny. ‘Peter out, you say? It’s been going on for nearly a year now, and if her man comes back from sea we’ll have him at this door wantin’ to beat his wife’s fancy man’s brains out.’

  ‘He’s left her, Arthur’s told you.’ Barny’s voice was low. ‘He won’t come back.’

 
‘Aye, he’s told me an’ I don’t believe a word of it. He’ll be back when his ship’s in. Women like that are as bad as drugs to a man; they should be horsewhipped, her kind.’

  ‘Now, now, now! No more of this.’ Broderick looked towards his wife. ‘Let the child get acclimatised again afore you start…Eh, Rosie?’

  Rosie made no answer, but, pulling herself from her father’s arms, got to her feet, saying, ‘I’ll go up and have a wash, Da.’

  ‘You didn’t finish your tea.’ Hannah came quickly towards her now, her face once again smiling. ‘Look, I’ll get some more hot; there’s piles of fish pie.’

  ‘It’s all right, Ma; I’ll have something later. I’d rather have a wash and tidy up. I feel filthy.’

  ‘All right then, lass, all right.’ Hannah stroked her arm, then pushed her towards the door.

  ‘I’ll take your case up.’ Barny followed her into the hall, and Rosie said, ‘It’s all right, Barny; it’s quite light.’

  ‘When did you carry a case upstairs?’ Barny smiled at her over his shoulder.

  ‘Aye when!’ Hannah exclaimed from the doorway now. ‘An’ put on something nice,’ she added. ‘That rig-out you have on isn’t you at all.’ She wrinkled her nose, then smiled.

  ‘Which room am I in?’ Rosie turned from the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Oh, aye, begod, yes. Well, look.’ Hannah pointed. ‘Jimmy’s on the landing now but I’ll throw his things back into the attic in two shakes when I get your da settled.’

  ‘No.’ Rosie stepped down into the hall again. ‘No, please leave Jimmy where he is, Ma; I’d rather be up in the attic. You know I always liked the attic; it’s big, and, well, I’d rather be there.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’d rather be up there.’

  ‘Aw well then, for the night. I’ll make the bed up later. And, Barny, you take up an oil stove now an’ we’ll fix everything good an’ proper the morrow.’

  Rosie followed Barny up the stairs and onto the first landing. It was a big landing with four doors going off it and another flight of stairs leading from the far end. They went up these and onto another landing with three doors, and before they mounted the attic stairs Barny stopped, and after switching on a light, said in a whisper, ‘Notice anything?’

  Rosie looked around her, then down to the carpet on the landing. And glancing up at Barny, she smiled slightly as she said, ‘A new carpet up here.’

  He jerked his head. ‘Oh, you don’t know the half. All the bedrooms have fitted cord carpet now; no lino, not a bit of lino anywhere in the house except the living room. She said she would do it, and she has.’ His head jerked again. ‘By, she’s the limit, isn’t she?’ He laughed.

  In the attic, Barny put the case on the floor, then stood looking at Rosie. ‘It’s nice to have you back, Rosie.’

  ‘Thanks, Barny.’ She turned towards him but didn’t look at him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked quietly. ‘Nothing wrong?’

  She lifted her eyes quickly to him. ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Well, you don’t look yourself, you know, nor sound yourself. I noticed it when you first come in. But the flu does pull people down. One of the fellows in our shop had it; he came back as weak as a kitten. He could hardly handle his machine.’

  When she did not answer he strained his neck out of his collar, adjusted his tie, and said, ‘They’re over the moon down there, the pair of them. There’ll be no holding her for days. You’d better put on your best bib and tucker to give her something to brag about. Jessie MacFarlane will know you’re here within the next hour. And the Parkmans and the Watsons’—he nodded his head first to one side of the room and then to the other—‘will be advised’—he was now mimicking his mother’s manner—‘of your arrival in very refined tones tomorrow morning.’ He pushed her gently as he laughed, then added, ‘But I don’t know about the Watsons; she’s had a do with them ’cos they rapped through about the noise we made last Friday night. You should have heard her. Oh, she’s a great lass.’ He laughed again. ‘Bye-bye then. See you later, Rosie…Oh, I must get the stove.’

  A few minutes later he came up with an oil stove, and when he had lit it for her she said, ‘Thanks, Barny.’

  ‘That’s all right. Anything to oblige me beautiful sister.’ He punched her playfully, then ran down the stairs whistling.

  She was home. She sat down on the side of the single bed, the bed she had slept in in this room that had been hers from the time they had moved into the house when she was fifteen. They had come to it the same week that she had left school, and the grandeur of forty-nine Grosvenor Road had taken away some of the humiliating sting of not having got to the High School. She had failed her eleven-plus, and again the examination when she was twelve, and then at thirteen. Apart from her own disappointment about this, it was the blow to her mother that had affected her most. Only she and Barny had had the opportunity to try for the High School, but in Barny’s case he didn’t bother, for he was wise enough to know that he was destined for the pit the minute he left school. Dennis was the only one of the boys who had achieved scholastic distinction. Dennis was now a schoolteacher, but he had achieved this on his own and with the help of the Army. Her mother, Rosie had always maintained secretly to herself, had been hard on the lads, but she couldn’t say she had been hard on her…never, for it had been the open desire of her life to see her only daughter get to the High School…and she hadn’t. Yet this failure of her own to achieve success had not daunted her mother for long. She had not dragged her young family from a three-bedroomed bug-ridden hovel in Bog’s End at the bottom of Fellburn, to a four-roomed cottage, then to a five-roomed house, from which she had jumped a great social gulf and landed them all triumphantly in Grosvenor Road, to be daunted by such a small thing as the failure of her daughter to pass an examination.

  Rosie remembered the morning when Hannah had suddenly got into her hat and coat and said, ‘Get your things on, I’m taking you to the Secretarial School. That’s what you’ll do; take a course and become a private secretary, and likely you’ll end up running the firm; secretaries do.’ She had smiled a conquering smile which effectively dissolved all protest. So they had gone to the Principal, and within a fortnight of leaving school Rosie found herself at school again, but with a difference. Instead now of wavering near the bottom of the class she was soon pushing towards the top; she knew she was…cut out for this. When at the end of the three-year course she came out top of her class both in typewriting and shorthand her mother had been borne skywards with pride. For days she floated, enveloped in a cloud of sagacity which had had its birth—so she told her family in her own words—the day it was revealed to her what her daughter was to be. And when the great moment of prizegiving came and Rosie was presented not only with certificates but with a medal, Hannah, sitting in the front row of the audience, made no outward or coarse show of her pleasure, but passed herself like a lady, born to see honours bestowed on her family. As she said cryptically later, ‘When the thunder is rolling you don’t get to your feet and shout, “What’s that noise?”’ The world knew that her daughter, besides being beautiful and with a figure that had none its equal in Fellburn, or any other town for that matter, was also a brilliant scholar.

  And so said the papers the following morning. Fellburn Weekly had shown a photograph of Rosie being handed her medal by no less a person than the mayor. Hannah had bought half a dozen copies of the paper, and immediately despatched one to her eldest son Patrick who was in Australia, one to her next son, Colin, who was in Canada, and one to Michael, who lived in Cornwall, which could have been as far away as Australia or Canada for all she saw of him or his family. And she had thrust one at her schoolteacher son, Dennis, when he had paid her one of his infrequent visits just to let him see he wasn’t the only member of her family with brains. And she had told him to show the paper to his godless lady wife.

  As the not-so-distant past came back to Rosie she twisted round and dropp
ed her head on the pillow. It was all so ordinary, her past, at least the past that held its place in Fellburn. Nothing had really happened to her here; she had just been part of a large family, of which her mother was ruler and pivot.

  Even the business of Ronnie MacFarlane seemed of little account now, although at the time she had thought it the worst thing in the world that could happen to anyone. For a man to go mad and tear the clothes off your back when you were just sitting with him holding hands on the fells on a Sunday night was shocking…and him a Catholic. That had made it worse. It had seemed the most horrifying thing at the time, that a Catholic could be so full of lust as to lose control. How simple she had been. How naive. And she knew now that if she had cared anything for Ronnie MacFarlane he wouldn’t have had to pull the clothes off her. But you live and learn. The awful part of it was that you had to live before you could learn. And she had made Ronnie the excuse to leave home and find out about living. And she had done just that. The thought brought her teeth clamping into the pillow, and when the tears forced themselves from between her closed lids she pulled herself up straight and rubbed her hand over her face, saying to herself, ‘Don’t start now. Later…later. Take things quietly; it’ll all work out. Go and get a wash and put on the suit.’ Oh, the suit. Would it fit her? It would have to.

  She went down the two flights of stairs again and into the bathroom. It was cluttered with cups, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hair cream, aftershave lotion and towels. It was a man’s bathroom. But it was warm and it was…it was home. She had the silly feeling that she wanted to embrace it and ask it to forgive her, ask the whole house to forgive her. After she had washed herself her face looked whiter than ever. She had no cream, no powder or make-up, not even a lipstick, nothing. She smoothed her skin with her hand, she looked awful, then she stared at herself in the mirror as she thought there would be plenty in Karen’s room. But no, she couldn’t use her things without asking her.