My Beloved Son

by Catherine Cookson

  He was about to turn from the window when his attention was caught by a figure emerging from the back door of the garage. He recognised it instantly as that of his mother. He wasn’t surprised to know that she had been to the garage—perhaps she had been taking one last look at uncle’s car, knowing that she wouldn’t be driving it any more. He noticed that she was walking with her head and shoulders bent forward as if she were thrusting against the wind; but there had been no wind for two days, not since the frost had settled. He watched her stop now and straighten up, nip the hood of her coat under her chin, then lean with her back against the wall, as a person often did when out of breath. He pressed his face to the window pane and narrowed his eyes the better to see through the gloom. She was walking again, not as he would have expected, towards the back staircase, but was going down the grassy bank that led into the gardens. She was likely going to walk round them for the last time. He stood back from the window and shook his head. It was so cold out and soon it would be quite dark: should he go after her and walk with her to keep her company?

  ‘No.’ He said the word aloud and blinked rapidly at the sound of it. Then going to the wardrobe, he took down his greatcoat and a scarf, and having put them on he drew a chair up to the window and sat staring out into the coming night.

  She would likely return by the back staircase, and any minute now Mary would be lighting the lamp that was above the back door, because this also opened onto the passage which gave onto the kitchen, and so he would see his mother’s return, and when she was once more in her room he would go in and talk to her…well—his head jerked—he would say something, and he must think now what to say to bring her comfort.

  The light had been lit for some time and he was still sitting watching when he heard his name being called, and before he could reach the door Harry thrust it open, exclaiming loudly, ‘Why are you sitting there in the dark? We’ve been looking for you. Where’s your mother?’

  ‘I…I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, Father’s just off with Miss Southall. They’ve changed their plans; they’re going to a play in Newcastle and he’s spending the night with her people.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Harry stood looking down on the boy; then with a sigh as if at the end of a long run, he said quietly, ‘I suppose Aunt Ellen is keeping out of the way, but I think Father would have liked to explain to her the change in plan and to say goodbye for the present, because he won’t be here in the morning, will he?’

  ‘No.’ Joe walked past Harry now and into the corridor. For some unknown reason he had a great urge to find his mother. He could see himself leading her by the hand into the hall and presenting her to his uncle. Perhaps, he thought, he was remembering the song that his uncle would sing derisively when he’d drunk a lot of wine. It was apparently one that his own father used to sing when he was in some war or other: ‘A little child shall lead them, lead them gently on their way’. For a moment he thought of himself as the little child leading his mother to his uncle, but deep within himself he knew that this was just wishful thinking, for his uncle didn’t want his mother, at least not the way his mother wanted him.

  He was running now down the corridor shouting over his shoulder, ‘I’ll find her. I’ll find her.’

  As he ran across the gallery he could see heads bobbing down below in the hall: Martin, Mary Smith, his uncle. He couldn’t see Miss Southall, but amid the hubbub he recognised her laugh; he had heard it before and liked it. It was a young, gay laugh, a laugh like he used to laugh himself when he chased Carrie on the hills and caught her, or when Mick said something funny in the dry way he had, without laughing or even smiling himself.

  He was down at the bottom of the back stairs now, dragging open the door. The night wasn’t as black as he had expected; there were a lot of stars out but the cold air rushing up his nostrils made him want to sneeze.

  He told himself that it was no use running into the shrubbery; she wouldn’t have been sitting there—unless she had kept walking she would be frozen with the cold.

  Through the gap in the hedge and now in seemingly pitch blackness, he couldn’t see his hand before him, so he called softly, ‘Mother! Mother! Are you there?’

  He groped his way along by the hedge to where it opened into the rose garden. Here it was less dark, and again he called, ‘Mother! Mother!’ He was across the rose garden now and slithering down the slope towards the tennis court. He looked upwards. The heavens were dotted with stars. The sceptical side of his mind came to him for the moment and said, ‘They can’t be millions of miles away, it’s an impossibility. God would never have made stars and placed them so far away.’ He was learning about light years at school, but that didn’t explain things.

  ‘Mother! Mother! Are you there, Mother?’

  He drew in a breath, then let it out as he ran forward to meet the figure coming slowly towards him by the wire-netting of the tennis court. He seemed to fling himself at her and his voice was a gabble now as he said, ‘I…I’ve been looking all over for you. They’re going. They want to say goodbye. Come on. Come on.’ He took her hand and went to pull her, but she remained stiff as she asked, ‘Who’s going?’

  ‘Uncle and Miss Southall. Harry says they’ve changed their plans; they’re going to a play…Uncle, he won’t be here in the morning to say goodbye; he was looking for you.’

  ‘What!’ She was leaning over him now, her hands like claws digging into his shoulders. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Well’—he wriggled under her grasp—‘well, I’ve told you, they’re going to a play.’

  When she let loose of him he hunched his shoulders as he watched her hand go out and the fingers being thrust through the wire netting as though for support. The next minute she was running from him and he after her. It had seemed a great distance from the back door to the tennis court, but now they appeared to have covered it in seconds.

  She did not make for the back stairs, but went towards the kitchen, where she banged open the door, and was through the room without stopping, almost knocking Mary onto her back as she entered by the far door.

  ‘Oh! Ma’am…missis, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Where are they?’ She was now standing in the hall. Martin was about to enter the drawing room and Harry was halfway up the stairs and her voice was a yell as she cried again, ‘Where are they?’

  Both Harry and Martin turned quickly and hurried towards her, and it was Martin who said gently, ‘Father’s been looking for you, Aunt Ellen, for quite some time. What is it?’ He had hold of her by the arm and she gasped at him, ‘How long? How far?’

  He narrowed his eyes at her as he said, ‘Oh, three or four minutes ago, about that.’ He looked at Harry who nodded, saying, ‘Yes, about that. We saw them off and came in…Good Lord! Catch hold of her.’

  As she swayed away from him towards Harry, Martin thrust his arm around her shoulder; then her dead weight brought him bending over towards the floor.

  ‘She’s fainted. Let’s get her into the drawing room. Mary!’ He jerked his head to where Mary was hovering. ‘Get some water.’

  His mouth and eyes open, Joe followed them as they hurriedly carried his mother into the drawing room and laid her on the couch. She looked already dead: her body was limp, her face ashen. He watched Mary come running into the room with a jug of water, a glass in her hand, and it was Harry who said almost harshly to her, ‘She won’t be able to drink; it’s a wet cloth we wanted.’

  ‘Here!’ Martin pulled a folded white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat, and Mary, thrusting it into the jug, squeezed out the water and handed it back to him.

  Joe watched Martin dabbing his mother’s face, but she still looked dead.

  ‘Smelling salts.’

  ‘There’s some on her dressing table.’

  Martin glanced up at Mary; then looking towards Joe, he said, ‘Run and get them.’

  Joe ran, taking the stairs two at a time, and he almost dived into his mother’s bed
room and was half across it when he had to return to the door and switch the light on. He knew what kind of bottle he was looking for, but it wasn’t on the dressing table; it was on her bedside table. He grabbed it up and was running again. One hand on the bannister, he jumped the last three steps into the hall and when he entered the room there were only his cousins and his mother there; Mary had gone. Martin was saying, ‘This is the result of her feeling for him. Father should never have done it; it wasn’t fair.’

  Harry answered in a whisper, ‘But you said yourself it was the best thing.’

  ‘Yes, I did, for him to marry again, but not someone as young as Vanessa. It must have been an insult to her.’ He was nodding down to the white face as Joe handed him the bottle.

  Joe watched the smelling salts bring his mother back to life, but it was almost fifteen minutes later before she spoke and as he listened, he was made to realise that his mother was a very clever woman; in fact, that she was two distinct people, although the realisation was just a misty thought in the back of his mind, so misty that it was to fade later that evening, together with the memory of the incident that followed, and was not to be resurrected until he was a young man, for what his mother said was, in a quiet, even, ordinary voice as she put her hand on that of Martin’s, ‘I…I thought to say goodbye to him pri…privately. You understand?’

  And Martin inclined his head towards her as he answered softly, ‘Yes, Aunt, I understand, I understand perfectly.’

  The boys had suggested to Joe that his mother go to bed and rest, but she seemed reluctant to walk upstairs. He thought that, this being her last night in the house, perhaps she wanted to make the most of it because, after rising from the couch, she sat in the big chair quite close to the fire and kept holding her hands out to the warmth.

  Mary brought her a light meal on a tray but she couldn’t eat it; all she wanted was a warm drink, she said. When it came to eight o’clock and Harry showed concern for her still sitting there, she assured him that she was all right and insisted that he and Martin play their usual game of billiards.

  However, at nine o’clock, when they returned after their game, she at last rose from the seat, saying with a weak smile she now thought she’d be able to sleep and that they were not to worry, she could make the stairs by herself, that she wasn’t yet quite an old woman. Martin turned his head to the side and was about to make some gallant retort when the bell rang and startled them all, for the bell never rang after dark; if they were expecting friends the door was nearly always open; even in the winter there’d be someone waiting to welcome the visitor; as for the staff, they, of course, used the back way.

  Mary had already gone home.

  Martin and Harry exchanged glances and Joe looked at his mother. She had her hand to her throat and her head was making almost imperceivable movements backwards and forwards.

  ‘Who can this be?’ Martin was striding up the drawing room, Harry following him; Ellen didn’t move, neither did Joe.

  A few minutes later Martin and Harry re-entered the room, a uniformed man with them and another in plain clothes.

  Joe watched Martin stagger to a seat like someone drunk, and from there gaze at his mother.

  Joe turned towards Harry, who was crying. He now looked at the man in plain clothes. He was talking quietly like the doctor talked when you were ill and as he listened, Joe knew he was going to die himself, not only because of what the man was saying about them having to cut the car to bits to get both his uncle and Miss Southall out, and also the two dead men out of the lorry, but for something else that was so big, so enormous that it wasn’t to be borne, because in some strange way he was part of it.

  The only things that Joe was to remember of this night, until the door of his mind was thrust open again, was his mother having a sort of seizure, the result of which was to keep her in bed for two months, and of Mary’s gabbling through her tears that one man’s meat was another man’s poison. Years later, he was to know that that hadn’t really been applicable to the situation but that it was the only way Mary could explain the advantageous change in his mother’s position, for at the eleventh hour she had been saved from leaving the house.

  PART TWO

  1937

  One

  Joe and Harry stood on the platform side by side. There was now no difference in their height although Harry was twenty-one and Joe sixteen. Even in physique they were very much alike, both being thick in the shoulders and almost of the same colouring, except that Joe’s hair showed a black sheen whereas Harry’s was a dark brown, thick matt. It was only when you looked at their faces that you saw the difference in both age and expression: Harry’s face was round, his eyes merry, while Joe’s features inclined to length and his grey eyes, which at times seemed colourless, had in their depths a touch of melancholy that had deepened with the years.

  Joe started when Harry’s elbow caught him in the ribs as he said, ‘I wonder if my illustrious brother will be as insufferable as he was during the Christmas holidays?’

  ‘Martin’s never insufferable.’

  ‘Of course he is. All those fellows who get to Oxford become insufferable…It used to be “I’m doing my law moderations”’—he pursed his lips and wagged his head—‘but these last couple of years it’s been, “I’m reading for my finals”. Gosh! How sick-making.’

  ‘You’re only envious, and you know you were the most concerned when he had to lose almost a year to that fever. Anyway, you know you love him.’

  Harry had been about to make a jovial retort, as was his nature, but he stopped and, screwing up his face, he said, ‘Joe, the things you come out with. You don’t say you love people.’

  ‘Why not, when you do?’

  ‘Well, just because…’

  ‘That’s what Mick once said to me.’

  ‘Mick?’

  ‘Yes, years ago he told me you don’t say you love people. Yet when you don’t love many people I think you should tell those whom you do.’

  ‘Oh, lad.’ Harry stepped back from Joe now, but poked his head forward as, under his breath, he asked, ‘You don’t come out with things like that at school, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a damn good job you don’t, laddie, or I could see you being hauled up before the old man.’

  Harry now looked at his watch, saying, ‘It’s nearly fifteen minutes late; I bet it’s got diverted to London.’ He grinned. ‘Must be marvellous up there today.’ He looked upwards now at the bunting stretched across the girders of the platform, then said, ‘With a little imagination you know I could dismiss the Coronation and take it that this show of affection was all for my being twenty-one today. I’m twenty-one today, I’m twenty-one today.’ He began to whistle now, accompanying it with a little shuffle of his feet which brought a wide grin from Joe; then becoming serious for a moment, he said, ‘You know, I do appreciate Martin getting leave to come home for my twenty-first. He could easily have gone into London and enjoyed the jollifications. But there’ll be some jollification around the old homestead tonight and nobody likes tripping the light fantastic better than wor Martin.’ He had dropped into a thick Geordie twang and, after laughing, he looked up and down the platform now, saying, ‘We must be the only ones expecting a passenger.’

  ‘They’ll all be glued to their wireless sets, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘They say he’s going to speak tonight, the King. Amazing, isn’t it? Amazing.’ He moved his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Oh, here it comes at last.’ Harry again looked at his watch. ‘Almost twenty minutes late. I’m going to report this.’

  The train puffed to a stop; only five passengers alighted, and the only male among them a tall young man, his hair so fair that from a distance it appeared almost white, waved to them before turning back to the carriage and lifting out a case.

  Now they were all together, clapping each other on the arm, shaking hands, laughing; then Martin, gripping his bro
ther by the shoulders, said, ‘Happy days ahead, laddie.’

  ‘Thanks, Martin. Thanks.’ Harry’s answer was low, even serious sounding.

  They turned and made their way along the platform, through the small waiting room and so into the road to where the horse and trap waited.

  It was Martin who took the reins and as he cried, ‘Gee-up, you there, you flibbertigibbet!’ the horse, as if recognising the voice, tossed its head and went off at a spanking pace down the road, and as they laughed, Harry said, ‘Would you believe it! He never goes like that for me.’

  ‘Well, he knows you prefer stinking machines. By the way, how do you like it?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Martin tugged on the reins for a moment, then turned and looked at his brother, saying, ‘It hasn’t arrived?’

  ‘If I knew what had to arrive I would tell you.’

  ‘Good God! I’ll murder them; they promised.’

  ‘Promised what?’