The Devil and Mary Ann

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Nothing, Mike, nothing. Honest. You don’t understand.’

  Tony had called her da Mike, not Sir. Mary Ann stared at his white, strained face.

  ‘Don’t I! I understand you’ve opened this trunk, an’ I want to know why…Out of the way!’ With a thrust of his arm, Mike pushed Tony violently towards the wall of the barn, almost knocking him off his feet. Then he lifted the lid and looked down on the jumbled contents of the trunk, and the first things that met his eye were the photographs. But his mind and his hand passed over these as not worthy of stealing. He was stirring up the contents as if he had his hand in a bran tub when Mary Ann let out a squeal. It was only a small squeal for it was strangled in her throat by the sight of Mr Lord standing in the barn doorway. Only the Devil himself could have appeared so silently, and her turbulent, panic-stricken thoughts suggested that it was that very gentleman who was standing there, for never had she seen Mr Lord look as he was doing now. He looked terrible, like, like— Her mind boggled for a description, and when the voice thundered, ‘Yes! And what may I ask, are you doing, Shaughnessy?’ the whole barn seemed to become full of devils. She watched her da swing about with his eyes blazing and his jaw thrust out, and she saw on Tony’s face, from where he stood in the shadow of the barn wall, the same look that had frightened her earlier. They all looked like devils.

  ‘Well?’

  The word seemed to splash into Mike’s face, spurring him to retaliation. His head jerked upwards and he blinked once before saying, thickly, ‘It was knocked over, the catch broke. I was…putting things straight.’

  If his pursed lips and slowly blinking eyes had not betrayed him, his voice would have done, and Mary Ann, in a sweat of fear, saw Mr Lord’s mouth become a thin grim line, and his eyes draw out into steely slits. Then whatever he might have said to her da was checked by Tony’s voice crying, ‘I opened it.’ Her eyes sprang towards him as he moved quickly from the wall to the side of the trunk, one hand held behind him.

  Mr Lord’s eyes swivelled slowly, as if reluctant to move away from Mike, and came to rest on the young man.

  ‘It was me who opened it, do you hear—me!’

  Mary Ann’s blood and ash-smeared hand went to her mouth as she saw Tony take a step towards Mr Lord, and a voice, loud within her, cried out to him, ‘Eeh! Don’t—don’t you be cheeky or you’ll get the sack an’ all.’ Then the expression on Tony’s face froze even her thinking. He looked as if he loathed Mr Lord, as if he would hit him. She saw her da reach out and catch his arm. It was the arm that Tony was holding behind him, and when his hand was dragged forward he had in it one of the silver-framed photographs.

  It was the sight of the picture that seemed to change Mr Lord. From being like a dark, furious devil, ageless in his wrath, his entire body appeared to shrink; he became old, very old. For a moment his face moved into wrinkles of perplexity, then flushed into impotent rage, and he spluttered as he cried, ‘Wh-what are you doing with that! Stealing?…stealing? Who—who are you, anyway?’

  Although Tony was still held in Mike’s grip he leaned forward and strained his face towards Mr Lord’s, and with his eyes on the twitching mouth, and his words coming slow and bitter, he said, ‘Who am I? I’ve news for you, I’ll tell you…I’m your grandson.’

  There was silence in the barn; the whole farm was silent, no mooing of cows, no cackling of birds, no barking from the dogs; no footsteps, no voices, not even the soft scrambling of one of the many cats disturbed the dreadful silence. Then Mr Lord, in a voice, high, almost like a scream, cried, ‘You’re a liar! A liar! I had no son. Never had a son…never had a child…never…never.’ His voice stopped abruptly. He had the look of someone just awakening from sleep. His eyes became wide, his mouth stretched and his jaw hung slack, as if it wanted to fall off.

  Distressed beyond measure, Mary Ann watched it, and her own mouth widened and dropped into a gape, for she was seeing what Mr Lord was seeing, in fact what she had unconsciously noticed the first day this man and the boy had met, they were alike. She watched Mr Lord’s hands go first to his head and then to his throat, and he made a gurgling sound like the cows did when the grass went down the wrong way. Then she heard herself screaming as he fell. He went sideways, and although her da lumbered quickly forward, he couldn’t save him.

  The screaming was filling her head as on the day her da got his hand in the machine. Then it was silenced by a blow. Her da had hit her again, boxed her ears.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it, d’you hear!’ It was her da yelling at her and his voice was no longer fuddled. ‘Go and get your ma—tell her to go up to the house.’

  ‘Oh, Da! Da! Oh—oh! He’s…’

  ‘Go on—do as I tell you. Go and get your ma.’

  She dragged her eyes from the crumpled form up to Tony, then muttering, ‘Yes. Yes, Da, yes,’ she ran out of the barn, carrying with her not so much the impression of the prostrate figure of the old man but of Tony standing stiff and white and frightened.

  ‘Ma! Ma!’ She went screaming across the yard, ‘Ma! Ma!’ out into the road and to the gate, through it and up the path. ‘Ma! Ma! Oh, Ma!’

  Before she reached the door Lizzie was there, fear on her face. ‘What is it?’ She stopped Mary Ann’s mad-long rush.

  ‘Oh, Ma, it’s, it’s—’

  ‘Calm yourself. Is it your da?’

  Mary Ann could have said yes to this, but she shook her head and gasped, ‘Mr Lord. He fell—he’s bad—in the barn. Come on. Me da says come on.’

  Lizzie was now running down the path, Mary Ann beside her, and when they entered the farmyard it was to see Mike crossing it, carrying Mr Lord in his arms. And supporting the old man’s head to stop it from dangling was Tony.

  As Lizzie came up, Mike said briefly, ‘Go and warn Ben. Phone a doctor.’

  Without comment Lizzie ran on ahead, but Mary Ann did not run with her, she stayed where she was. She did not even attempt to follow the trio up to the house. She was feeling sick, Mr Lord was dying. She was experiencing a great depthless sense of loss; if only they had been kind. If he died and they weren’t kind what would she do? Love for the old man blotted out everything at this moment, it even smothered the worry over her da and the latest trouble—his lapse.

  She stood tearless, her head bowed on her chest, thinking. She had a theory that you could never ask God for two important things at the same time. Five minutes ago she had wanted only one thing in the world—the wellbeing of her da—and, as on other occasions she had bargained with God to bring this about, now she was willing that if only one request could be asked of Him, it should be for Mr Lord’s life, and if it could only be paid for by neglect of her da, and such neglect she imagined would mean his complete fall, then let it be so.

  She turned slowly and went towards the little barn again, and kneeling down by the open trunk, for somehow she felt close to him here, she began to entreat the Holy Family for Mr Lord’s life, offering them, in exchange, her own blameless and lieless life in the future.

  Chapter Ten

  Mary Ann lay on the kitchen couch with her face turned to the wall. Her hands were smarting, her knees were smarting, and her heart was sad. Moreover, the place was alive with excitement, and she was shut out of it—or, to be more correct, shut in from it.

  After she had said her prayers in the barn she had intended going to the house, for then Mr Lord would be in bed and looking, if her prayers had been answered, all right again, but she had hardly finished blessing herself when their Michael had come running to say their ma said she hadn’t to go near the house but was to go indoors and stay there. She had protested, as was only natural, even going so far as to emphasise her protests with a number of pushes, but Michael was adamant and she found herself hauled to the kitchen where he none too gently washed the grazes on her hands and knees, then applied Dettol—raw. When she bawled loudly at this torture he liberally applied more, whereupon he received just payment by a good hard kick on the shins.

  Following on this,
her plans to slip out when he was gone did not materialise, for he didn’t go out but settled himself down to his homework. His lack of feeling and refusal to be drawn into a discussion as to what was happening nearly drove her frantic, until at last she flung herself onto the couch and suffered agonies of frustration when she heard, at intervals, the sound of cars coming into the yard. By this time she wasn’t speaking to their Michael, and as Michael had the only view of the yard from the window and she wouldn’t demean herself to go near him, she had to remain in ignorance as to the identity of the visitors.

  It seemed years later when the kitchen door opened and her da appeared and brought her from the point of sleep. She swung her legs dazedly off the couch, but had to sit for a moment to collect herself, and in that moment she saw that her da was in no talking mood, for his face was tense, his expression closed, and he was now quite sober.

  ‘Your mother wants you. Go on up to the house.’ He was looking and speaking to Michael, and Mary Ann thought, ‘It isn’t fair, it should be me, and I want to know how he is.’ She looked up at Mike, but couldn’t say, ‘Is he better?’ in case he wasn’t. She felt sick, her head was aching, her hands and knees hurting, but it was the pain in her chest which centred around Mr Lord that felt the worst.

  Michael, after one hard look at his father, went out, and Mary Ann rose from the couch and went towards Mike.

  ‘Da.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Da—is he…?’

  ‘He’s all right.’ Mike turned his back on her and stared down into the fire. ‘Go on up to bed.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to bed, Da.’

  ‘Then go on the couch.’

  Mary Ann looked up the broad expanse of Mike’s back, then turned slowly about and went back to the couch. Her da wanted to be quiet, she knew the signs, he would only get mad if she kept on. She lay down, her eyes on him for a time until the sound of his knuckles beating on the mantelpiece made her throw herself round and face the wall again.

  Her da was worried—upset…perhaps Mr Lord was dying. Eeh, no, he mustn’t die. If he died Tony would be to blame. What had Tony said? Eeh, yes, that Mr Lord was his granda. Eeh!…Well, she had said the same thing herself. But she had only been making on; Tony hadn’t been making on, he had meant it. And she had a feeling that he didn’t like it…didn’t like Mr Lord being his granda.

  Her mind puzzled itself about this new problem, and when some time later she awoke to the sound of Tony’s voice she couldn’t believe she had been asleep and wondered how he had come in without her hearing him. He was talking softly to her da, and she couldn’t make out what he was saying, for she was lying on one ear. When she did move her head her da was speaking.

  ‘Why didn’t you come openly and tell him? This was no way to do the thing, sneaking about.’

  It was some time before Tony’s voice came to her, and then she could only just hear it. ‘I had no intention of telling him at all. I was paying him out because of my grandmother’s life…’

  ‘She did her own paying, I would think, to go off like that and not let on she was having his child. I don’t hold much to her.’

  ‘You didn’t know her.’

  ‘I know the old fellow, and I know this much, if he’d had a child, son or daughter, he’d have been a different man. He’s the loneliest creature on God’s earth, that’s why he tried to take her.’

  Mary Ann felt their eyes on her back, but she didn’t move, for if her da knew she was awake they would stop talking.

  ‘You don’t know what a life my grandmother had.’

  ‘By the accounts I’ve heard of it, it was a pretty gay one. It nearly broke him, anyway.’

  ‘A woman will spend money if she can’t get anything else. He had no more feeling than an iceberg, and he was old enough to be her father.’

  ‘She knew that in the first place. What happened to the fellow she went off with?’

  ‘He left her when my mother was six.’

  There was silence now in the kitchen, and Mary Ann waited, trying not to turn round to see what they were doing, and just when her curiosity was about to get the better of her, Mike’s voice said, ‘Well, she’s not the first woman that’s had to work to bring up a child, and she won’t be the last.’

  ‘But it was different for her, she had never worked in her life, she was made for pleasant things.’ Tony’s voice held sorrow.

  ‘Aren’t we all!’ Mike’s tone was mocking.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand all right. I understand you’ve been brought up by a woman who had the knack of making you see things and people exactly as she wanted you to see them. It’s my idea that your grandmother knew that she had wronged the old man and that made her keep talking about him—her conscience was at work. Were you brought up with her all the time?’

  ‘Yes, my mother and father had to travel about, they were in rep. I was only ten when they died. They both went together…they were trapped in a fire in an old theatre.’

  Again there was silence, and now Mary Ann was saying to herself, ‘Eeh, poor things!’

  ‘If your grandmother was hard up why didn’t she write to him?’

  ‘Write to him? You say that when you know him! Wouldn’t it have given him a kick to know she was begging!’

  ‘I wonder…I wonder. Anyway, I think she did him a great wrong. If he’d known he had a child…My God! When you come to think of it, it was wicked, damn well wicked. I could say evil…It’s no use your rearing up like that, Tony. You’re a young lad, you’ve got all your life afore you. Just imagine someone withholding the fact that you had a child. But you’ve never been married, you don’t know how it’d feel…you don’t understand.’

  Mary Ann heard her da pacing the mat, and then his steps stopped and his voice demanded, ‘If she had such a struggle to bring you up how did you manage the money to go to college?’

  ‘I didn’t have to have much money, I passed for the Grammar School. Left when I was sixteen and got a grant to agricultural college. The little money that I did need had to be borrowed. I’ve still got to pay that back.’ His voice was bitter.

  ‘What’s happened to your grandmother?’

  Mary Ann waited for quite a while before she heard Tony mutter, ‘She died, a year ago.’

  ‘Damn good job, I should say.’

  Mike’s words had been quick, and Tony’s response was even quicker. ‘Shut up! Don’t you dare say that. I’ll have none of it. As I’ve said, you didn’t know her.’

  Mary Ann held her breath in the silence that followed. Her body was nerve-stiff, they were nearly fighting.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.’ It was Mike speaking.

  Then after a moment Tony said, as if struggling with his emotion, ‘You didn’t know my grandmother, I repeat that, she was a wonderful person, but you know him, and yet you’re taking his part.’

  ‘Aye, I am in this. I know he’s a hard man, and I know if he sets his heart on anything he doesn’t care who he tramples on while getting it. But there’s another side to him, and I’ve had to admit this, as much as it’s irked me. Up to a point he’s just, and sometimes beyond the point. And you must remember this, lad, a man isn’t born hard—something makes him hard. Anyway, what I’d like to know is, why, if you hated him so much, did you seek him out?’

  ‘I didn’t seek him out. I came this way looking for a job. Oh, I know it looks like it. Perhaps I really did come this way to see him, I can’t tell exactly what my feelings were, but at the time I was looking for a job and was given three farms to go to. I didn’t know he had a farm. It was the name, Lord, that first suggested that this one might be his. Even the day I walked along the road I still didn’t know if I was on the right track, but as soon as I saw him in the yard, then I knew.’

  ‘If he dies, what about it then? Will you claim?’

  Mary Ann stiffened—they thought he was going to die.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  �
��You’ll have some job proving your case. Your grandmother gone, your parents gone. Anyway, if he survives what’s to stop the old boy saying that you’re a fraud? How can you prove your mother was his daughter, couldn’t she have been the other fellow’s?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Mary Ann could feel them looking at each other.

  ‘I think you’re his grandson all right. Something puzzled me about you from the first. I couldn’t quite place it. It was your temper, your manner when vexed—it’s just like his.’ Mike gave a soft, consoling sort of laugh, and then he said, ‘Well, whichever way things go there’s going to be an upheaval.’

  ‘Do you think I had better go?’

  ‘Go? What in the hell are you talking about! How can you go now?’ Mike’s voice was harsh. ‘Don’t you realise that it’s the fact that the old boy recognised you as his that brought the attack on? What’s going to happen if he comes round and you’re not here? You wait a minute’—Mary Ann could see her da in her mind’s eye, holding up his hand—‘let me have me say. You’ve got to face him. And what’s more, and I say this, you’ve got to hear his side of the affair. You needn’t go black in the face. Anyway, you knew there’d got to be a showdown some day. I feel that’s what you came here for.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ The protest was vehement.

  ‘Well, why the hell were you messing about with that trunk?’

  ‘Because my grandmother used to talk about when she was first married, and how, in her lonely hours, she would wander about that great house waiting for him coming home, and likely as not, end up in the attics. She happened to mention the old black trunks with the quaint brass bands, and it was because I thought I might find something of hers that I looked in them.’