A Grand Man (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Well! . . . That child!’ To Mrs Flannagan’s feelings was added indignation. ‘It’s one thing to weave tales as I know you do, but it’s another thing to tell downright lies. I’ll say no more, Mrs Shaughnessy. But I thought I’d come and tell you . . . one must make a stand. And I’m not a person to cause trouble, especially to those who are heavily burdened already.’

  Mary Ann saw her mother’s shoulders lift and heard her voice take on that note that made her different. ‘You came to tell me about Mary Ann putting her tongue out. You have told me, Mrs Flannagan. I shall chastise Mary Ann. Is there anything more you want to say to me?’

  There followed a short silence while the two women regarded each other. Then the older woman burst out, ‘Don’t come your hoity-toity with me, Mrs Shaughnessy; it won’t wash. I pity you, I do, but I’ll only stand so much.’

  ‘Your pity is entirely wasted, Mrs Flannagan . . . ’

  ‘It is that. It is that.’ The deep rocketing voice came from the stairs, and Mary Ann sprang forward, only to be stopped by her mother’s hip. She watched her father come into view, but he didn’t look to where she was or at her mother, but straight at Mrs Flannagan.

  ‘Good evening to you, Mrs Flannagan.’ He doffed his black, grease-laden cap, and standing over the now wide-eyed Mrs Flannagan, he held it to his chest and moved it round between his hands in mock obsequiousness, and his voice took on a matching whine. ‘Your pity’s wasted on me wife, Mrs Flannagan. But now me, it’s the very thing I’m needing. I’m needing pity so badly that you could bath me in it; you could hold me down in a bath full of it and I wouldn’t drown. It has the same effect on me as beer, you know. Now, now, what’s your hurry?’ he obstructed her means of escape by standing at the head of the stairs. ‘Don’t go away, Mrs Flannagan, without sprinkling on me shamed head a few drops of your pity. It’d be about as effective as your holy water.’

  ‘Mike!’

  Mike took not the slightest notice of his wife’s sharp demand, but advanced one step further towards the now retreating woman saying, ‘Come now. Come now. You must make a stand. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s your slogan . . . you must make a stand.’

  ‘I’ll call me husband, mind.’

  Mike Shaughnessy’s head went hack and he bellowed forth a laugh. ‘You’ve got a sense of humour, I’ll grant you that.’ Then of a sudden he dropped his posing and his voice lost its bantering tone, and he stood to one side, and, pointing to the stairs, said, ‘Get down there, and don’t come up here again unless you’re asked, for if I find you at this door again I’ll put me toe in your backside. That’s if I’m sober. God knows what I’ll do to you if I’m drunk.’ He watched her scurrying down the stairs; then he turned to his own doorway, which was now empty, and entered the room.

  Lizzie was at the table and did not look towards him, nor he to her, but he threw his cap to Mary Ann and she caught it deftly. Then she took his greasy mackintosh and dived into the inner pocket where his bait tin was, and opening it, discovered there one sausage. She smiled at him, and taking it out sniffed its smoky, stale flavour, then began to eat it hurriedly before her ma should remember it was Friday and stop her.

  Mike divested himself of his coat, and, rolling up his sleeves, went towards the scullery, saying, ‘What brought her here?’

  Mary Ann and Lizzie exchanged glances. Then Mary Ann said, ‘I put me tongue out at her; I thought she was Sarah behind the curtains.’

  His head went up again, and he laughed ‘Good for you.’

  Mary Ann lifted the kettle from the hob and followed him into the scullery. She poured the water into a dish and stood waiting at his side with the towel while he washed himself. He did this with a lot of puffing and blowing, interspersed with remarks about Mrs Flannagan.

  ‘You know the saying: “Put a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride to Hell”? Well, it was started by just such another as her. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, Da.’

  ‘Well, it was. She means to rise, that ’un, or die in the attempt. It’s a good job the poor are kept down.’ He blew into the towel. Then peering over the top of it his brown eyes twinkled down at her. ‘You remember the time she sent the note to your school saying Sarah had an illustrated throat?’

  Mary Ann laughed up at him. She remembered it well. The note had been passed among the teachers and they had not been discreet about the cause of their laughter.

  ‘And there was the time she asked in Funnell’s for the liquidated milk. Do you mind that?’

  Mary Ann nodded and chuckled, saying, ‘If she couldn’t have said evaporated she should have said unsweetened, shouldn’t she?’

  ‘She should that.’ He buttoned up his shirt neck. ‘Take my tip, Mary Ann. Anyone who tries to use long words in an aim to get above themselves, they’re not much good. You can say all you want to say with your own kind of language.’

  ‘But if you could get to the Grammar School you’d learn big words then properly, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, you would then.’

  ‘If Michael goes, he’ll learn big words.’

  Mike stopped in the act of rolling down his shirtsleeves and stared at her; but she did not flinch from the look in his eyes.

  She might fight with Michael because he called this man names – Michael sometimes lay on the floor and beat his fists on the mat, grinding out from between his teeth such words as ‘Big, rotten, drunken beast!’ At such times she hated Michael and would think nothing of kicking out at him. Yet she knew why Michael said these things. He loved their mother and he was hurt when she was hurt, and he was ashamed of their da. He was going in for an exam for the Grammar School and he couldn’t see himself holding a place there when his father’s name was becoming a byword wherever drunks were mentioned – but her eyes were now telling Mike Shaughnessy that no matter how she fought with Michael she wanted him to go to the Grammar School, not so as she could brag about him, but because it would make her ma happy.

  Suddenly Mike took her small face between his great hands and pressed it gently, and she pressed her hands over his before turning swiftly and running into the kitchen.

  ‘Where’s the kettle?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Oh!’ She turned about again and collided with her father, and they both laughed.

  Mike went to the table and looked significantly down onto the empty plates set there, and Lizzie, still not looking at him said, ‘I didn’t get anything ready.’

  Mike gazed at his wife in silence for a moment before saying, ‘You didn’t believe me then?’

  Lizzie moved towards the fire, and his eyes followed her.

  ‘I swore to you.’

  ‘You’ve sworn before.’

  ‘But I thought it was a fresh start?’

  Lizzie stood looking down into the fire, and he came and stood behind her, his red head topping her silver one. ‘Liz’ – his arms went about her – ‘help me; I am trying hard.’

  She did not answer but made a choking sound, and he swung her round to him and held her pressed tightly against his chest.

  Mary Ann stood at the door of the scullery, her eyes bright, watching them. It caused her no embarrassment to see her parents loving; rather, it filled her with bubbling joy. She listened now to her da’s voice deep in his throat, and soft.

  ‘Darlin’, darlin’. I swear before God I’ll make a go of it this time. Liz, oh Liz. I should be hung for the things I’ve done to you.’ His voice became lower. ‘Never leave me, Liz. Promise you’ll never leave me.’

  No answer came from her mother, only the sound of her sobs. They were too much for Mary Ann and she turned into the scullery and, leaning against the wall, began to cry. Oh it was going to be a lovely weekend. Oh, her da was wonderful.

  There was no connection between the man in there saying such words as darlin’, beloved and precious, and the man who, just a week tonight, had rolled up the stairs at eleven o’clock singing at the top of his voice and proclaiming to all who would listen to
him that at this time tomorrow he’d be a rich man, for hadn’t he put three pounds on a sure winner, and the Sporting Pink would be red with his success.

  There was no sound now from the kitchen, and after drying her eyes Mary Ann went in. Her mother was standing by the table opening her da’s pay packet. She watched her shake out the contents. It was all happening as she had heard him saying last night it would.

  Lizzie counted the notes, then moved the silver about with her finger. There was thirteen shillings, and she looked up at her husband and said, ‘Will that do?’

  He stared at it for a moment; then smiled with the corner of his mouth drawn in. ‘Make it a quid. That’ll do for me baccy an’ all.’

  She handed him the pound, and taking another four from the bundle of seven she stuck them in a jug on the mantelpiece, saying, ‘That’ll clear the rent.’

  ‘Ah, Liz-a-beth. Must you do it all at once?’

  His tone was joking, but Mary Ann knew that he didn’t like what her ma had done.

  ‘Look’ – he caught hold of Lizzie’s arm – ‘pay two weeks. You can clear it next week. You’ll have more next week. I’m telling you, you will. What do you think? Look at me now’ – he drew himself up a mock attitude – ‘and listen to what I am saying. Mike Shaughnessy is working the morrer – overtime till five.’

  Lizzie and Mary Ann stared at him but said nothing, and he dived across the kitchen and, lifting a chair, brought it to Lizzie, saying, ‘Hold on to that, for you’ll need it.’ He put her hands on the back of it, then stood away from her and proclaimed in an awful voice, ‘Sunday an’ all!’

  Now Lizzie did show her surprise, and her expression gave him great delight; and Mary Ann stared up at her father, her eyes like pools of gladness. He was going to do overtime; he was going to work on a Sunday; he must have forgotten clean about the things he called theories, for they usually stopped him doing overtime. He often had these theories when he was having a period of . . . sickness, and then he would talk a lot about them. She had come to understand that if all the men did overtime there soon wouldn’t be enough work for them in the middle of the week, and they would be standing at the street corners again. She couldn’t imagine the men standing at the street corners in the middle of the week, except Willie James, and he’d neither work nor want. Sometimes her da’s theories took a different turn, as they had done last weekend when he talked all the time about the men stopping work on account of Harry Bancroft being sacked. He said Harry Bancroft had asked for it for he’d never done a decent day’s work in his life; then he got bitter and said nobody had wanted to strike when he’d got the push, yet he did more work in a day than some of them did in a week, for he wasn’t a gaffer watcher; and if every man pulled his weight there’d be no need for overtime. And he knew why he had got the sack. It was because he’d made his mouth go against the Union.

  And now he was going to do overtime, and they’d have a lot of money next week and her ma would be happy and not listen to her granny.

  She ran to him, and throwing her arms round his leg clutched it to her. Mike laid his hand upon his daughter’s head, and still looking at his wife, said, ‘See? You see? I have me public.’ Then hoisting Mary Ann into his arms, he kissed her and asked, ‘Do you know what your da’s going to do the morrer night?’ And she, holding his beloved face gently between her hands as if it were something delicate and precious, said, ‘Take us into Shields.’

  He sniffed loudly. ‘Shields! Newcastle it is the morrer night, and we’re going to do a show; and in style.’

  ‘Don’t buoy her up.’ Lizzie spoke quietly. ‘I’m paying all the rent and you’ll want your pound for baccy and for fares. And there’s a bill to pay to Funnell’s.’

  ‘But I tell you I’ll make a flyer over the weekend – you can pay it off next week.’ He put Mary Ann down and moved towards his wife, saying, ‘Ah Liz, be reasonable.’

  But Lizzie moved away from him and went to the mantelpiece, and, taking the four pounds out of the jug, she turned to Mary Ann saying, ‘Straighten your hair and put your hat and coat on.’

  ‘What you going to do?’ Mike’s voice was stiff now.

  ‘Send it to him.’ Lizzie sat down at the table, and having written a note, put it with the money in an envelope, and when Mary Ann stood by her side, she said, ‘Now you know where to go, don’t you? Along Grange Road and turn to the right.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mary Ann. Her voice, too, was flat and had a touch of impatience in it. Oh, if only her ma hadn’t got to do it. But she had; and there was her da looking at them, his face all hard again.

  Her mother pinned the envelope inside the breast pocket of her school frock. ‘Go on now, and don’t speak to anyone; and keep to the main roads.’

  As she moved towards the door no-one spoke, and when she went out, closing the door after her, and stood on the landing, still no sound came from the room to her. An urgent, turbulent feeling filled her stomach. It had a voice of its own which cried loudly in her ears. ‘Make them speak. Oh, make them speak. It’ll soon be all right if they’ll only speak.’ She waited, her head bent towards the door; she couldn’t go all the way down Western Road and Ormond Street across Dee Street to Grange Road to the rent man’s house knowing they were not speaking.

  ‘You’re not taking any chances on me, are you?’

  In spite of her relief, the tone of her father’s voice hurt her; and her mother’s added to the pain as she said, ‘I’ve been taken in before; you wouldn’t have rested until you’d had that rent.’

  ‘My God! After all I said last night. All I was asking was that you paid two weeks and cleared it next. I wanted to give you a treat . . . take you away out of here for a while.’

  ‘I’d rather get out of here permanently.’

  ‘You shall, Liz – you shall, but I can’t do it all at once.’

  Her father’s voice was so convincing; how could anyone not believe him. And it went on, ‘Do you know it’s hell now – this minute my innards are burning for a drink.’

  ‘Mike. Oh, Mike!’

  There was a scrambling sound, and she knew her mother had flown to her da and that her arms were about him and that she was soothing and mothering him like she did Michael and herself when they were bad. Filled now with a sad happiness, she was about to turn from the door when a voice hissing between the banisters caused her to jump.

  ‘You sneaking little pig. Just you wait – I’ll tell me ma. Listening at the keyhole again.’

  ‘Aw, you!’ she hissed back at her brother. ‘I wasn’t listening.’

  When Michael reached the landing he towered above her, his indignation making him seem even taller. In looks at least he took after his father; and he already looked more than his eleven years, whereas Mary Ann looked less than her eight; but in repartee and temper they were equally matched.

  ‘I’d like to box your ears.’

  ‘I know.’ She pursed up her lips and wagged her head at him. ‘But you’ll have to grow a bit more, Michael Shaughnessy; and if you raise a hand to me I’ll bite a lump out of you – see?’ She edged round him and made her way down a number of stairs before turning and looking up into his angry countenance, and calling softly, ‘Ginger! You’re barmy.’

  She did not stop to find out whether or not he was after her but took the stairs at a dangerous speed, almost taking Miss Harper’s dustbin with her. But once she had gained the hall and found that she wasn’t being pursued, her bearing suddenly changed and took on a graveness, as befitted anyone with a fortune pinned on her chest.

  Chapter Three: Saturday

  It was a funny Saturday, Mary Ann reflected, her da being at work in the afternoon; and it was pouring from the heavens and she couldn’t go out; and it was cold, too. She was sitting on the fender near the oven where she was both warm and lapped around with the appetising aroma of baking. The bread was out and arranged on the rack above her head, and inside the oven a bacon and egg pie was cooking. Her da liked bacon and egg pie. And her
mother looked happier today and nearly young again – twice she had laughed at her when she’d had to push her along the fender to get to the oven.

  Michael was sitting at the corner of the table writing on scraps of paper. He was doing sums. He hadn’t passed the exam last year, and she wasn’t a bit surprised, getting sums like he had to do. His teacher said he should have passed on his head. The teacher had come and talked to her ma and said Michael was worried and highly strung and nervous. She was glad she wasn’t going in for any exam. She didn’t hate Michael today, she was sorry for him, yet last night she had stamped hard on his bare foot and pretended it was an accident. She had done that because he wouldn’t answer their da nicely when he talked to him. Her da wasn’t sick, even a little bit, because he had never been out, and he had asked Michael about the exam, and Michael had been surly and said, ‘Oh, what’s the use?’ And he had gone out of the room and she had followed him and stamped on his bare toe. But today he too seemed happier, and he had been working at his sums all afternoon, except when he talked to their ma. Sometimes he talked quietly so that she wouldn’t hear. She wasn’t in the least annoyed at this because she liked to talk to her da in that way. Michael was talking quietly now, and she was pretending to read her comic while straining her ears to hear what he was saying. He was talking about clothes.

  ‘I’d need a sweater and sports things; it wouldn’t matter about a topcoat, I never feel the cold.’

  ‘Don’t worry about anything.’ His mother’s voice was as low as his. ‘You’ll get all the things you need; you must keep all you earn from now on to help buy what’s necessary.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I will just this week.’

  Why, Mary Ann wondered, should he want to keep his money just this week? And then with a start she remembered April the twenty-third was her mother’s birthday, and today . . . What was today? Yesterday at school had been the fifteenth; then this was the sixteenth. A week today! And she had nothing saved up. Well, only threepence. Still, she had to get her pay from her da yet. But that would only be sixpence at the most. She looked towards her mother’s back. The skirt and jumper she was wearing both had a washed-out look. Oh, if only she had a lot of money and could go and buy her a dress. If she had a pound she’d buy her a lovely dress. There was a shop down Ormond Street that had lovely dresses. She had touched one once. There was a rack just inside the door and she had seen a woman pushing the dresses back and forward, and she had slipped in and stood behind the rack and fingered the dresses until the shop-woman had found her and chased her. Now, if she could buy her mother one of those dresses. If she could make a lot of money . . . oh, if only she knew the way to make some money. She was no good at knitting and selling things, or making kettle holders. Perhaps if she asked the Holy Family they’d show her the way. Yes, that was it. Bowing her head farther over her comic and, pretending to read, she began supplicating conversation with the Holy Family.