by Maggie Hope
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Maggie Hope
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Acknowledgements
Read on for an extract from The Coal Miner’s Daughter
Copyright
About the Book
Sadie Raine has a bad reputation…
When she runs off with a Canadian airman, her two young daughters are left behind to pick up the pieces.
But Cath Raine is determined to rise above the local gossips. Only, when she meets the upper-class Jack on the grounds of his father’s estate, she is tempted by the thought of an affair. Is she destined to follow in her mother’s scandalous footsteps after all…?
About the Author
Maggie Hope was born and raised in County Durham. She worked as a nurse for many years, before giving up her career to raise her family.
Also by Maggie Hope:
A Wartime Nurse
A Mother’s Gift
A Nurse’s Duty
A Daughter’s Gift
Molly’s War
The Servant Girl
A Daughter’s Duty
To Jonathan
Part One
Chapter One
‘Stay there and watch Annie.’
‘Yes, Mam,’ said Cath obediently, and held on tight to Annie’s hand as the four-year-old began to whimper and tried to get away to follow her mother. Cath was eleven and knew better than to disobey, but her heart thumped as she watched her mam walk across the grass with baby Timmy wrapped in a shawl in her arms. Even at eleven Cath knew what was happening, for it had happened before; even as she struggled with Annie, she was filled with dread and her large dark eyes were brimming with tears. She tried to control them, for her mam would be annoyed if she saw them and then she would be in a bad temper all day.
Sadie Raine strode across the grass in the Bishop’s park and slipped behind the ancient stone wall of the deer house in the distance. Cath waited anxiously with Annie, quiet now and sucking her thumb, standing beside her. The tiny girl was shivering and Cath cuddled her thin frame to her, trying to impart warmth from her own body.
‘Mammy coming back?’ asked Annie, looking up at her sister hopefully. There had been so many times when she had been left with Cath for hours. Once it had been morning before her mam came home. Now she had a terrible fear of being abandoned.
‘Yes, pet, she’ll come back,’ said Cath. She dragged Annie a few paces to one side from where she could see the path, which led away from the deer house on the opposite side. After a moment or two she saw a man carrying a bundle and hurrying away down the path, and then her mother appeared, walking over the grass towards the two little girls. Her head was down, for she was stuffing something into her worn imitation-leather handbag, so she wasn’t looking at them.
‘Mam!’ Annie succeeded in breaking free and ran to her mother, but Cath was frozen to stillness with her grief. She stared at her mother mutely.
Sadie grabbed hold of Annie and dragged her, running to keep up, after her. She stood before Cath and stared down at her angrily.
‘Aw, don’t look at me like that, you cheeky little monkey. And don’t start crying neither or I’ll give you something to cry about!’
‘You gave our Timmy away,’ said Cath. ‘You gave him away for money.’
‘No, I bloody did not,’ Sadie retorted. ‘I’ve just sent him to a nice house where he’ll be looked after till your dad gets back.’
In spite of herself, Cath couldn’t stop a sob escaping and Sadie raised her hand to her.
‘Don’t start that twisting, our Cath. I had to do it; any road, the money I get from your dad isn’t enough to keep three kids. He’s been away for two years now, leaving me on my own, and I have to manage as best I can.’ Sadie grabbed hold of Cath with her free hand and, with a small girl on either side, marched along the gravel drive that led from the park to the arched entrance. It was dusk, and on one side the bulk of the ancient castle loomed darkly while on the other the land sloped away to the trees and bushes shrouding the River Gaunless. Sadie paused outside the gates.
‘Howay then, we’ll have a nice cup of Oxo and a cracker in Rossi’s before we get the bus home. It’ll do for your supper. You’ll like that, won’t you?’
The three of them trailed up Newgate Street to the small café and Cath sat with Annie in one of the booths while Sadie went to the counter for the drinks. Cath had a great weight of misery pressing on her; she felt sick. She loved Timmy; he was only two months old and she had had the looking after of him most of the time. She fed him with National Dried Milk and changed his nappies for if she did not he got a sore bottom, for her mam didn’t like to change him. But she was only eleven and she knew she didn’t always do things right. Maybe Timmy would be better off with someone else but by, she missed him already.
She looked across to where her mother was leaning on the counter chatting with the girl who was serving. Then a man came in and stood beside Sadie, and even Cath could see how she perked up, her face brightening. The three cups of Oxo were ready on the counter but Sadie lingered as the man bent and spoke to her.
‘Mam!’ Annie began to cry, and Sadie looked across at her children and the smile left her face.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ she said grumpily, and the man turned away, losing interest.
Cath dipped the cracker in Annie’s Oxo and fed it to her sister before sipping her own drink. Across the table her mother lit a cigarette and fiddled with her cup handle.
‘Leave her be, she can feed herself,’ snapped Sadie, suddenly noticing what Cath was doing. ‘Hurry up an’ all, the bus goes in five minutes.’
Both children hurried to finish up the meagre meal. They were hungry and unlikely to get any more supper. Though there might be bread and dripping in the pantry at home, Cath thought hopefully. And she could make up some of the National Dried Milk that was left now Timmy had gone.
Timmy had gone, Timmy had gone. Cath thought about it all the way home on the bus and walking from the bus stop to Eden Hope Colliery village. She thought about it as she lay in bed beside Annie and waited for her mam to come back from the Black Boy pub in Winton. By, how she wished her dad would come back from the war.
The Middle East, that was where he was, with the Eighth Army. If her dad had been here, Mam would never have sold Timmy or the other baby, the one Mam hadn’t even given a name. A poor little thing he’d been who never cried. Did Mam not like boys, was that why? Cath didn’t understand, but then, nothing grown-ups did made sense to her. Why didn�
��t Daddy just come home? They needed him. She remembered how Mam had met her out of school and rushed her and Annie onto the bus for Auckland. Cath had thought they were going to have a treat. Marina’s mam sometimes met Marina out of school and took her to Auckland for a treat and Marina, who was her best friend, told her all about it next day at school. They went to the pictures or to the Store tearooms for tea, and it all sounded so exciting to Cath. Well, Mam had taken them to Rossi’s today … But what about Timmy? Cath dropped off to sleep abruptly, worn out with the happenings of the day.
‘Catherine Raine, you’re late again.’ Miss Robinson stood at the top of the steps leading into the school hall as the last of the lines of children marched in from the school yard. Miss Robinson wore half-glasses and she looked severely over them at Cath as she ran into the yard. ‘Why are you late this time?’ she asked.
‘Please miss, me mam slept in—’ Cath began.
‘Never mind your mother! Can you not get out of bed for yourself? A big girl like you?’
Cath had no answer to this, so the result was she started the first lesson of the morning excluded from class and had to walk round and round in the hall for fifteen minutes until Miss Robinson let her in.
‘Catherine can’t get out of bed herself in the mornings,’ the teacher said as Cath slid into her seat, her head down against the sniggers of her classmates. The truth was she did feel guilty anyway, for she had slept in and on top of that she had to dress Annie and give her a cup of milk and a piece of bread and jam before she could get herself ready for school. Mam had gone out yesterday evening. She had put on red lipstick and rouge and told Cath she wouldn’t be long, she was going out with Marina’s mam. But she hadn’t come back until what seemed to Cath to be the middle of the night. When Annie woke up screaming in the dark Cath had taken her into bed with her and in the end the little girl had gone back to sleep. But then, early in the morning Cath woke up and Annie was lying on top of her; she had wet the bed, and was crying again.
‘For God’s sake, see to the bairn, Cath,’ her mother’s voice came from the other room. ‘I’ve got a hell of a headache and she’s making it throb.’
Cath was exhausted by the time she was allowed to stop tramping round the school hall and slip into her seat. Her head kept drooping over the list of sums in the arithmetic lesson, and she was glad when it was playtime and the milk was handed out, for her stomach was rumbling. Some children didn’t like the lukewarm milk and pulled faces about it; Cath could only wonder at them.
Cath felt the morning would never end but of course it did and she walked home for her dinner. She walked on her own, for Marina was off school with the measles and she was the only one to make friends with her. The others were told to keep away because she had nits. In fact, hardly anyone in the rows talked to her mam either, but Cath didn’t know why that was.
The few tumbledown houses at the end of the rows were older than the rest and a little apart from them. Cath lived in the very end one. The gate was rickety, and there was a mark on the flags where it scraped on the stone and it wouldn’t open all the way. Cath got through it and trudged up the yard to the back door. To her surprise, the door opened and her mam stepped out.
‘Your dad’s home,’ she said, and then, in a sort of hiss, ‘if you say owt about our Timmy, anything at all, I’ll leather the hide off your backside, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Mam.’
In contrast to her quiet words, a wild excitement was flaring up in Cath. She looked past her mother into the kitchen but she couldn’t see him.
‘He’s away down the garden,’ said Sadie. ‘Go and tell him the dinner’s ready. Now mind what I told you, though.’
There was a smell of something cooking in the oven, and any other time Cath’s stomach would have been rumbling at this unusual happening, but now all she could think of was that her dad was home and hunger was forgotten. She pushed past her mother and through the house to the front door, which led directly into the long strip of garden. Alf Raine was standing by the gate at the far end, looking out over the old wagon way and pit heap, now overgrown with straggly patches of brown grass. He had little Annie in his arms and she had on a clean dress and even a cardigan.
‘Daddy!’ Cath cried as she raced down the stony path. But she slowed down as she got close to him, overcome with a sudden shyness. He was a stranger and not at all the daddy she had pictured in her mind for so long. He wasn’t big enough; why, he was no taller than any of the other men in the rows. But he held Annie with one arm and held out the other to Cath and grinned, and then she knew him and he took her up and held them both, one on each shoulder.
The khaki cloth of his uniform scratched against her bare legs but she didn’t care. She grinned back at him and touched his cheek.
‘You’re a funny colour, Daddy,’ she said, and he laughed, for he was tanned almost to a mahogany shade by the Tunisian sun, in sharp contrast to Cath’s white skin.
‘Man,’ said Annie, digging her finger in Alf’s chest as she tried to explain to Cath who he was. ‘Nice man.’
‘No, it’s not a man, it’s our daddy,’ said Cath, and Annie looked blankly from her sister to the man.
‘Man,’ she said firmly.
‘Howay, the dinner’s ready.’
Mam was standing at the front door with a big spoon in her hand and she was smiling all over her face in a way that Cath couldn’t ever remember her doing before.
‘Right then, run,’ said Alf, and he put the children down on the path. ‘I’m a A-rab and I’m going to get you, run!’
The girls ran, Cath holding on to Annie’s hand and practically dragging her along. Both of them squealed and shouted as they ran.
There was corned-beef stew for dinner and even chocolate after, for Alf had brought back food points and a ration card and a parcel of iron rations. The chocolate was in the parcel and there was cheese, hard American cheese, and biscuits. The chocolate was dark, hard and bitter too but Cath enjoyed it anyway. But in no time at all the dinner hour was over and it was time for Cath to go back to school.
The afternoon took for ever, but at last it was time to join the crocodile of children to walk to the main gates where, holding Annie by the hand, her daddy was, in his soldier’s uniform. Cath was so proud of him she thought she would burst.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Raine,’ said Miss Robinson, smiling broadly, she who never ever spoke to Cath’s mother, or Marina’s mother either, come to that. ‘On leave, are you? My, it’s a long time since you were home, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Alf tersely and tapped the side of his nose as though to say ‘Careless talk costs lives’, which was a notice on the window of the bus that went into Auckland from Eden Hope every hour. It always made Cath wonder what talk was careless: only some talk it must be because usually the women on the bus talked all the way to the town.
But her daddy had turned from Miss Robinson to her, and he walked away holding a girl with each hand and swinging his long legs so that Annie, in particular, had to run as fast as she could until he noticed and swung her up onto his shoulder and she squealed with delight. When they went in the back door, Sadie was getting dressed before the fire.
‘Have you been to bed, Mam?’ asked Cath anxiously. ‘Are you feeling bad, like?’ Her mam and dad looked at one another and laughed and laughed until Mam suddenly sobered.
‘I expect nowt comes of this, Alf Raine,’ she said. ‘I want no more babbies in here. You should have been more careful.’
‘Aw, stop worrying,’ he replied. ‘What do you expect a man to do when he comes home after all that time? I’m no monk, you know.’
Annie had been laughing with her mother, though she didn’t know what about; she was happy because the others were happy. But suddenly she said, ‘Timmy? Timmy baby.’
Sadie grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to her. ‘Shurrup!’ she said sharply, and Annie’s face crumpled. Cath moved from one foot to the other in agitation.
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p; ‘Don’t—’ she began in distress, looking from her mother to her father. He had taken little notice of what Annie said, but after seeing Sadie’s reaction his face darkened.
‘Timmy? Who the hell is Timmy?’
‘Nobody, take no notice,’ said Sadie. ‘Annie doesn’t know what she’s talking about, man.’ She gave Annie a shake, which was a mistake, for the little girl started to wail and try to get away and Cath, expecting her mam to smack Annie, began to cry.
‘Who the hell is Timmy?’
Her daddy sounded really angry and was shouting now, and Cath trembled, all the happiness of the day dissipated.
‘I told you, he’s nobody,’ Mam shouted back at him and he moved across the kitchen and towered over her. Mam shrank back and let go of Annie and Annie ran to Cath and clung to her. ‘He’s just a neighbour’s bairn, Alf,’ Mam cried.
Alf turned and took hold of Cath, holding her by each arm.
‘Who is Timmy?’ he asked her, and his grip on her arms was hard and hurt and Cath sobbed and Annie clung harder to her legs and screamed. Alf let go of Cath’s arms and she cuddled Annie to her.
‘Our baby!’ Cath shouted, desperate to stop him hitting her mam. Alf turned to her.
‘Our baby?’ he asked, and his voice was low and menacing.
‘It’s not,’ Sadie asserted. ‘I – I was just looking after it, that’s all.’
‘Mammy selled Timmy,’ said Annie, and Sadie shrank back again, away from Alf’s lifted hand. He turned suddenly and stalked to the back door.
‘I’ll get to the bottom of this,’ he muttered. ‘One way or another.’
