Life and Mary Ann

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘It’s a pity someone hadn’t the guts to give you—’

  ‘Please, Mike, please!’ As Lizzie appealed to Mike she had her eyes closed, and looking up into her white face he obeyed her plea. But, pulling himself to his feet, he remarked, ‘Let me out of this. I’m in need of fresh air.’

  As Mike reached the sitting-room door, Mary Ann was behind him, and as they went into the hall Michael came on their heels.

  All three stood in the kitchen and looked at each other, and then Michael asked quietly, ‘Is it true, do you think, about…about Janice Schofield?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true enough, more’s the pity.’ Mike took in a deep breath.

  ‘And about…Tony?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. That part isn’t true. Mr Schofield hit Mrs Schofield yesterday, and Tony and I saw him. Tony was taking me to see Janice. That’s all there was to it.’ Mary Ann stopped gabbling and again they looked from one to the other, but not one of them said, ‘Why is he with her today though?’ Yet Mary Ann knew that both Michael and her father were asking themselves this same question. She sensed Michael’s bewilderment at the situation, but she more than sensed her father’s real reaction to this latest piece of news. He would welcome the idea of Tony having an affair…And she herself, how did she feel about it? If Corny had been here, perhaps she would have just shown a friendly interest, mixed with a little wonder that Tony should take out a woman so much older than himself, for Mrs Schofield must be nearly thirty-five…But Corny wasn’t here. And she was amazed at the feeling of resentment that had whirled up in her quite suddenly against Mrs Schofield. She liked Mrs Schofield. Yesterday, she had loved her. If pity is akin to love, then she had loved her. But this afternoon she was out with Tony!

  She turned her eyes from her father’s penetrating gaze and said aloud, with the fervour of the younger Mary Ann who had cared nothing about self-discipline, decorum and putting a face on things, ‘I could kill me granny! And you know, one of these days I feel sure I will, I won’t be able to help it.’

  Five

  Janice neither wrote nor phoned during the following week to say that she was coming, and Lizzie, her sympathy now ebbing, said testily, ‘She might have at least let us know. I suppose she doesn’t think there’s a room to be got ready, and other things.’ She had gone to some pains to make the spare room attractive, and she had added, ‘Only three weeks to Christmas and everything to do. People don’t seem to have any consideration at all these days.’

  Mary Ann did not in her usual way make any defensive retort. She understood how her mother felt. She was feeling slightly annoyed herself. Janice might have phoned. Moreover, she was curious to know what was happening. She had been tempted twice already this week to bring up the subject with Tony, but strangely enough she had found herself shy of broaching it! For Tony, from the time he had said, ‘Are you going to tell your mother?’ had, it would seem, dismissed the Schofields from his mind, for he had made no reference whatever to them. This would have seemed strange enough if Mary Ann had not known he had met Mrs Schofield since the incident at the house, but now that she knew he had taken Mrs Schofield out on the Sunday it was more than odd. His silence, she felt, put upon the situation a cloak of secrecy that wasn’t…nice. And it was this cloak that prevented her from inquiring about Janice.

  Yet when he called into the house he laughed and talked with her ma and da, and seemed in very good spirits. And she asked herself on these occasions, didn’t he himself think it was odd, knowing that she had told them about Mrs Schofield, that he shouldn’t mention the matter?

  Then there was her mother’s attitude towards this business. The fact that Lizzie hadn’t referred to her granny’s denouncement added another cloak of secrecy to the affair, and strengthened this feeling of the situation being beyond the pale of…nice.

  Her mother had said last night that everything happened around Christmas time and that she wished it was over. She knew that her mother was worried about Michael going to Switzerland with Sarah, for it was now settled that they would have their holiday together. And in bed last night she herself had felt a keen jealousy against the two of them. It did not last long and she went to sleep on the thought: ‘When Corny comes back I shall have my holiday with him. Me ma won’t be able to say anything, she can’t after this…’

  When yet another week had passed and still no word had come from Janice, Lizzie dismissed the subject with the emphatic statement, ‘That’s the last bottle I’m putting up in that bed.’

  It was a week before Christmas and on a Friday night that Mary Ann brought home news of Janice. Lizzie was in the kitchen and anxiously looking towards the clock—Mary Ann was half an hour late, which was unusual. Lizzie got worried when she was five minutes late—you heard of such dreadful things happening to girls these days.

  The sound of Mike scraping his boots on the scraper outside the scullery door brought her hurrying through the kitchen, and as he opened the door she said, ‘She’s not in yet.’

  ‘No! What’s keeping her, I wonder? She phoned or anything?’

  ‘No.’ Lizzie shook her head. ‘Would I be like this if she had? Hadn’t you better go down and meet the next bus?’

  ‘Aye. Yes, I’ll do that.’ He rebuttoned the top of his greatcoat, saying as he did so, ‘The buses will likely be late, the roads are icy.’ Then as he was about to turn from her he laughed as he cocked his head upwards. ‘Listen, that’s her running. All your worry for nothing again.’ He pushed past her and, taking off his coat, sat down on the cracket in the scullery. He was unlacing his boots when Mary Ann came in.

  ‘What’s kept you? Lizzie’s tone was sharp and indicative of her anxiety.

  ‘I missed my bus. I came on the one on the top road.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Mike lifted his head from its bent position, and his fingers came to a halt where they were entwined in his laces. Mary Ann stood looking down at him for a moment, and her voice shook just the slightest as she said, ‘Janice phoned just after I’d finished.’

  ‘Oh? Well…go into the kitchen, you look froze. Get something to eat before you go any further.’

  Mary Ann went into the kitchen, and she turned her white, peaked face towards her mother as she said, ‘I don’t want anything to eat, not yet, just a drink.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lizzie’s voice was now quiet.

  ‘It’s Janice. She’s married.’

  ‘Married? Oh.’ Mike, coming into the room, picked up her words. ‘Well, she could have let you know sooner, couldn’t she?’ He sat down in his chair, and Mary Ann looking from him to her mother, said, ‘No.’

  ‘You’re upset about something.’ Lizzie put her hand around her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Sit down and I’ll get you a cup of tea.’

  Mary Ann sat down, but immediately turned her face into her mother’s waist. It was an action that she had not indulged in for a long time. But at this moment she had a frightened feeling. Life could be terrible. Life, she knew, was hard and painful. She had been educated in that kind of life all during her early childhood, but there were other things in life, terrifying things. She drew her head from the shelter of her mother’s flesh and looked up at her as she whispered, ‘She tried to kill herself!’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Did she tell you this?’ Mike was leaning towards her now, his hand outstretched holding hers.

  ‘Yes, Da. I had just finished work and Miss Thompson told me I was wanted on the phone. It was Janice. She sounded just as if…well, as if she was drunk. She was laughing most of the time, except at the end. She kept talking and talking. She said she was married last Friday and her father was going to set Freddie up in business. He had bought them a car and a bungalow on the Fells Road. And then she stopped laughing and carrying on and said she was sorry about not letting me know she wasn’t coming, but she hadn’t expected to go anywhere for she had taken some stuff and locked herself in her room.’ Mary Ann’s lips began to tremble. ‘From what she said I think
she would have died but her mother climbed up the trellis and got in through the window—the house is covered with creeper—and after her doing that she…she said, Ma, Janice said that she hated her mother, that she should have left her alone…Poor Janice. She must have been in an awful state.’

  ‘Poor mother, I should say.’ Mike now hitched himself up to Mary Ann and, patting her hand, said, ‘Don’t be upset, lass. Madam Janice will come through all right, you’ll see. I wish I could say the same for her mother.’

  ‘Where was she married?’ asked Lizzie. ‘Newcastle or Shields?’

  ‘Newcastle, Ma. At the Registry Office.’

  ‘But he couldn’t…he’s a Catholic.’

  ‘Oh my God, Liz!’ Mike shook his head.

  ‘All right, all right. There’s no need to use that tone.’

  Mary Ann rose from her chair, saying now, ‘I’ll get washed, Ma.’

  ‘Will I set your tea on a tray and have it in the front room? Michael and Sarah are there.’

  ‘No, Ma. I’ll have it here.’

  Almost before she had closed the door behind her, she heard her da speak. It was the bitterness of his tone that made her pause for a second to listen, as he said, ‘If the old man gets his way, what about it then? Tony’s no Catholic and I’m damned sure you’ll not get him to turn. He’s as stubborn as they come, and no blame to him.’

  ‘I’ll meet that obstacle when it arises. And what’s the matter with you going for me like this?’

  ‘Because it makes me flaming mad, Liz, when you put a second-class label on people who aren’t Catholics.’

  ‘Oh! How can you say such a thing? What about us, eh?’

  ‘I’d be a better man in your eyes if I changed me coat.’

  ‘Oh, that’s unfair, Mike. That’s unfair. Oh, it is.’

  As her mother’s voice trailed away in sadness, Mary Ann went slowly up the stairs. Why was it that nothing was going right inside or outside of the house lately?

  Some minutes later when Mary Ann descended the stairs into the hall again, she approached the sitting-room door with a discreet cough. She would say Hello before she had her tea. But when she opened the door—without knocking, of course—such action would have slapped diplomacy in the face—she did not find Michael and Sarah sitting on the couch, but Michael sitting on his hunkers in front of Sarah, and he looked up quickly at Mary Ann, saying, ‘She’s off colour.’

  ‘Are you feeling bad?’ Mary Ann bent over the back of the couch.

  ‘No, not really bad. I just can’t explain it.’ Sarah dropped her head backwards and looked up into Mary Ann’s face. ‘A bit headachey, a bit sick…achey. Just like when you’re going to get the flu; but I don’t feel as if I’ve got a cold. Oh!’ She smiled up at Mary Ann. ‘I think the real truth is I’m after a few days in bed. As much as I love those horses, it’s been pretty stiff going in more ways than one these last few mornings. I had to break the ice on the trough with a hammer this morning.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Prince’s water was the same. Me da’s kept him inside for days, he doesn’t like the cold. And I haven’t ridden him for nearly three weeks.’

  ‘But look here,’ Michael drew Sarah’s attention to him again with a tug at her hand, ‘you don’t want to take this lightly. And don’t try to be brave and laugh it off. I think it’s as you said, you want a few days in bed, you’re under the weather.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sarah’s voice was demure, and she laughed now, and Michael, getting to his feet, his face straight, passed off his concern by saying, ‘Now look, don’t you go and get anything serious. After all the schemozzle there’s been about our holiday, you’re going to go on it if I have to take you in a box!’

  Twenty-four hours later, Michael, remembering these words, was to droop his head and press his chin into his neck with the horror of them. But he now looked at Mary Ann and said, ‘She hasn’t had a bite of anything to eat all day.’

  ‘Does me ma know?’

  ‘No, but I’m going to tell her. You stay there.’ He dug his fingers down towards Sarah, and added, ‘You’ll eat what I fetch in.’

  When the door had closed behind him, Sarah, looking at Mary Ann, who was sitting beside her on the couch now, said, ‘I won’t, you know, I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps your stomach is upset.’ Mary Ann nodded knowingly. ‘Whenever there is trouble of any kind it always goes to my stomach.’ She laughed. ‘Even if I get into a temper, I’m sick. Oh! Last Sunday night I felt like death after dear grandmam’s visit…Oh, Sarah, I do hate that woman.’

  Sarah, nodding sympathetically, said, ‘I’m not very fond of her myself. Never was.’

  ‘That needn’t worry you, for she’s no relation of yours, but she’s my granny, and the only one I’ve got. And oh, I hate the thought of her being my granny. Do you know, I felt so hateful on Sunday that I could have killed her. I could, I’m not just kidding, I could. I’ve always prayed, as far back as I can remember, that she would die. But on Sunday I actually felt that I could have killed her. It was a dreadful feeling, Sarah. I felt awful after and, as I said, I was sick.’

  ‘Talking of killing’—Sarah’s head fell back onto the couch again—‘it doesn’t seem so very long ago since I felt that way about you, and you about me, remember?’

  Mary Ann, her face straight now, nodded her head, and bit on her lip before she said, ‘Seems daft now, doesn’t it?’

  Sarah did not answer this, but staring up towards the ceiling, she said slowly and quietly, ‘I’ll die if anything separates me from Michael…I’ll die.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, don’t talk like that. Why are you talking like that? Don’t be silly, what can separate you from Michael?’ As Mary Ann looked at Sarah’s face, her eyes staring upwards, she was amazed to see two large tears roll down in the direction of her nose. Leaning swiftly forwards she touched Sarah’s cheek, saying under her breath, ‘What is it? What is it, Sarah?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Sarah lifted her head with a heavy movement from the back of the couch, and groping for her handkerchief, she remarked, ‘I feel altogether odd, I can’t remember ever feeling like this before, sort of depressed.’ Then after blowing her nose, she lifted her eyes to Mary Ann, saying, ‘I know how you feel about Corny, and I think you’ve been marvellous. I should have gone round looking like…well, as your da would say, a sick cow. Do you still miss him?’

  The conversation wasn’t keeping to pattern, but Mary Ann said, ‘Yes, awfully. I just seem to be passing the time towards the end of the year…not this year but what I think of as this year. I get terrified when I think he won’t come back.’

  ‘You could never like Tony?’

  ‘Not that way.’

  ‘He’d be a catch.’

  ‘Could you give up Michael for someone similar to Tony…a catch?’

  Sarah shook her head, and then clapped her hands swiftly over her mouth and muttered through her fingers, ‘I’m—I’m going to be sick.’

  Mary Ann, leading Sarah into the kitchen, exclaimed to her mother and Michael, ‘Sarah’s sick…she wants to be sick.’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’ Lizzie, taking up a position on the other side of Sarah, hurried her towards the scullery. And that was the first of a number of trips between the front room and the scullery during the next hour. At half past eight, Lizzie, standing in the kitchen looking at Mike, said, ‘She’s in no fit state to go home. We’ll have to get word to her mother in some way.’

  ‘I’ll phone the house and see if Tony’s in.’

  Tony was in, but on the point of going out, and when, a few minutes later, he came into the farm kitchen after a brief word with Sarah, who was now lying on the sitting-room couch, he looked from Lizzie to Mike and said, ‘I would get a doctor.’

  ‘What are you thinking it is?’ Mike narrowed his eyes towards Tony. And when Tony said what he thought might be the matter with Sarah, Lizzie cried out, ‘Oh no! No! Not that.’

  ‘I hope it isn’t. I may be wrong. But those s
ymptoms look pretty familiar, I’ve seen someone with them before. I’d phone the doctor if I were you, and I’ll slip into Jarrow and take a message to her mother.’

  The kitchen became very quiet, the house became very quiet, and the quietness was heavy with fear.

  Mike phoned the doctor. He came within half an hour, and within a few minutes of his arrival the life of the house changed.

  It was suspected that Sarah had polio.

  The waiting room was quiet. It had coloured pictures on the wall, and modern low tables and comfortable chairs. Michael, sitting on the edge of a chair, had his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them, and he kept his gaze fixed on his hands, except when the waiting-room door opened. It hadn’t opened for some time now. Mary Ann sat next to him. She kept going round the edge of her handkerchief with the finger and thumb of her right hand, while she smoothed the small piece of cambric material with the other. Opposite to them, across the low table, sat her mother and Mrs Flannagan. They had all ceased to talk. From time to time her da would push the waiting-room door open. Or Mr Flannagan, or Tony. And then they would go out again and sit in the car.

  At a quarter to twelve a grey-uniformed sister entered the waiting room, followed by a doctor. The sister remained silent as the doctor talked. He was very, very sorry, yes, the young girl had polio. How serious it was, was yet to be seen. He advised them to go home. They’d be kept informed. No, it wasn’t advisable for any of them to see her. Perhaps tomorrow. Everything that possibly could be done would be done, they could be sure of that.

  ‘I’m staying,’ said Michael.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said the doctor. ‘You can do no good. Come in first thing in the morning and see how things are going then.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ said Michael again.