by Maggie Hope
Sadie was white and frail-looking with dark smudges under her eyes but she managed a small smile. Cath couldn’t speak; she felt so shaken and tearful now she knew that at least her mother was not going to die. She kissed her gently on the cheek and moved back to allow Henry to get near enough to hold her good hand.
‘I’ll get you a private room,’ he said to Sadie. ‘It’s too public in here, too noisy.’ Though in fact it was quite quiet. ‘I’ll catch him, my love, I will. Don’t worry about that. He’ll rue the day, oh yes indeed.’
Sadie said nothing. She looked past caring about anything.
It was Sunday morning by the time the police had finished questioning Cath. Sadie had confirmed that it was Eric Bowron who had attacked her but when the police tried to pick him up he had disappeared.
‘Don’t worry, we will find him,’ the inspector said. ‘He can’t have gone far.’
The news of the attack was on the radio and the television. There were pictures of Half Hidden Cottage and the desecrated snowdrops, for the snow had melted from the withered grass. There was a picture of Winton Colliery village and also Eden Hope on the television news. The reporter had resurrected the story about Annie and the slow-witted boy in Winterton, Ronnie Robson.
‘It will all be the fault of that woman,’ the former neighbour of Granny Robson, Florrie Dowson, told the reporter. ‘She’s been at the bottom of all the trouble in this place. Her and her daughters should have been chased out years ago.’ It was the talk of the place, even eclipsing the story of little Carol being murdered.
Cath went back to work on Monday. She was aware that many of the other girls were giving her funny looks, but she ignored them. It would soon blow over, especially if the police caught Eric. In the dinner hour, she went out with her sandwiches and found a sheltered spot on the banks of the Wear to sit and eat them. It was very cold but the bank behind her, rising to the castle and cathedral, offered some protection. In any case, she needed to get away from the office.
She sat gazing at the river, which was in spate, brown and peaty-looking from the fells of Weardale and with twigs and even small logs rushing down to the sea, as though they wanted to get away from wherever they came from. Just as she felt at present.
‘What have you got there?’
Mark was sitting down beside her. He too had a packet of sandwiches. ‘I’ve got chicken,’ he said. ‘Swap you for one of yours?’
Chapter Thirty-one
Mark had seen Cath walk over Elvet Bridge and up the hill to the marketplace, then down the other side to the river and had followed her. She looked as though she was hardly aware of her surroundings so he knew it was unlikely that she would notice him.
He still wanted her. Oh, he knew it wasn’t possible but he couldn’t help the yearning. He had heard about the attack on Sadie, of course, everyone had. He didn’t care, not for her. She deserved it, he reckoned. Whoever heard of a mother selling her children just because they were the wrong sex? But he knew Cath cared desperately and he cared about Cath, he couldn’t help himself.
‘What about it?’ he asked now. ‘A chicken sandwich for an egg and tomato one seems fair.’
‘Oh, go away and leave me alone, Mark,’ said Cath. She couldn’t even be bothered to get angry with him now.
‘I’m your brother, aren’t I? I just want to help you,’ he replied.
‘Yes, of course. That’s why you stole my letter from Jack, why you told him lies.’
‘Well, it was different then, wasn’t it? I wanted you for myself then. All’s fair in love and war, as they say.’ He tried to keep his tone light, but it was an effort.
Cath put her sandwich back in the packet and the packet in her bag. She got to her feet and started to walk away from him.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Back to work,’ she replied. It would be better to face the others than stay and listen to him.
‘No, please don’t go,’ he cried. ‘Come with me and we’ll have a cup of coffee or something. It’s very cold and look, it’s beginning to snow again. I’m sorry for what I did, I really am, but it would be good if we were friends.’ He walked beside her all the way to the steps by Elvet Bridge. Snow was indeed already beginning to show, driving up against the stone walls.
‘Please, Cath. I’ve been hurt in this too, you know.’
Cath stopped. She might as well go with him. He would pester her until she heard him out. Besides, there was only fifteen minutes left of her dinner hour and she might as well be in the warm.
‘Ten minutes is all you have,’ she said and went with him into the little café above the bridge.
Mark ordered coffee and they sat down at a table near a heater. ‘Can’t we be friends?’ he asked after the coffees were placed before them.
Cath stared at him. She couldn’t forget that they were brother and sister and that they could have made love. It made her feel a little sick.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that we kissed? It wasn’t love, it couldn’t have been love,’ she said.
‘We didn’t know,’ said Mark. ‘If you don’t know, well then—’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Cath. She put her fingers round the cup and the heat from the coffee seeped into them. ‘I think we should keep away from each other as far as we can.’
‘Cath, I still want—’
‘No, don’t say it,’ she replied quickly. Rising to her feet she went on, ‘I must go now. Don’t get up, you stay and finish your coffee.’
The following Saturday she went up to Newcastle to see Jack. Henry did not go with her; he stayed at home with Sadie, whom he had insisted should go to the Hall when she was discharged from hospital.
‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go back to the cottage,’ Sadie had argued, but she didn’t put up much resistance. Her spirits were very subdued by what had happened to her. At the big house she had company; Henry had recently engaged a new couple, Mr and Mrs Thompson, for housekeeping and to help with the estate. The great advantage, from Sadie’s point of view, was that they were strangers from over Workington way.
‘We’ll be married as soon as Jack is allowed home,’ Henry told her. ‘Then I can look after you properly.’
Cath went up to Newcastle by train from Durham station. Feeling very extravagant, she took a taxi to the hospital from the station.
Her heart turned over when she saw Jack, propped up on a backrest and pillows in a side room. His face was almost as white as the bandages that swathed one side of it. He was watching the door anxiously when she came in; his usual self-confidence had deserted him.
Cath stood for a moment at the door, unsure of herself too. Then she walked over to the bed and leaned over him.
‘Am I allowed to kiss you?’ she asked.
His arm came around her and he pulled her to him. In spite of his injuries his kiss was passionate and filled with the frustrations and pain of their time apart. Cath was filled with joy.
‘I thought you had left me for Mark,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I love you, Catherine.’
Cath tensed. The mention of Mark had brought her down to earth. Would Jack still want her when she told him the truth about her family; that Mark was her half-brother, that Sadie was the sort of woman who would sell her own children? She dreaded the answer to those questions. Sensing her slight withdrawal, Jack released his hold on her and she sat down in the chair by the bed; she was so unsure now. He took her hand and his fingers curled round hers.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked. ‘I mean, does your face hurt much?’
‘Not now.’ He gazed at her but she bent her head and studied their intertwined hands. His fingers were long and the nails well shaped; they were capable hands, able to deal with most things.
Jack frowned. Was she avoiding looking at his face, even though the scar was covered up with the bandage? He had to know.
‘Look at me, Catherine,’ he said softly, and she looked up at him. ‘Are you worried I won’t look the same?
That my face is deformed? Tell me now if you are.’
‘No! Don’t think that, I don’t care about that at all!’
‘Then what is it? Something is bothering you, I can tell.’
‘It’s nothing.’ Now it had come to it, Cath couldn’t bear to tell him about Mark, not now, not while he lay in a hospital bed. Later she would. Later, when he came home. Instead, she told him about her mother and how she had been attacked and how the police were looking for Eric Bowron.
‘How is your mother?’ he asked, and she said that Sadie was at the Hall where Henry could keep an eye on her. She remembered the things he had said about her and her mother in the past, but surely they were best forgotten? She looked searchingly into his eyes to see if he was angry with Sadie and his father’s plans to marry.
‘It’s for the best,’ he said. ‘Half Hidden Cottage is too lonely for a woman when there is someone like that on the loose.’ He bit his lip. ‘I’m not angry with your mother now, Catherine. I’m sorry for what I said. I suppose it was because I had lost my own mother and I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone taking her place.’
It wasn’t really true, Jack was aware of that. He had changed a lot after his experiences in Korea, after the humiliations that had been piled on the prisoners even during the short time he had been one. And there had been the longing for Catherine. But there was something wrong; he could sense it.
The visiting hour was over almost before it had begun for Cath. In the end she went away thinking she would tell him about Mark tomorrow; she would come back tomorrow.
After she had gone, Jack had a nurse unwind his bandage. Covering up was unnecessary now the skin was healed. On Monday Jack was having his last operation. It was cosmetic and meant to improve the look of the deep scar that ran down one side of his cheek and under his chin.
‘It doesn’t look too bad,’ the nurse said. But then, she would say that, Jack thought. She was used to looking at all sorts of scars and other hideous sights. Jack was sure Cath would be appalled when she saw his skin and be unable to hide her revulsion. He didn’t think he could bear seeing her face if that happened.
There was no news of Eric Bowron – he had simply disappeared. Henry was furious and had a word with the chief constable about it.
‘We are doing our best,’ the officer said. ‘But you must remember that there is the case of the little girl who was raped and murdered. Most of our available resources are engaged on that particular case.’
‘I don’t know what this corner of Durham is coming to,’ Henry snorted. ‘Time was when the worst that happened was a fight between drunken miners on a Friday night.’
‘It’s the Welfare State,’ said the chief constable gloomily. ‘I knew it would happen.’
Eric Bowron had indeed disappeared. He didn’t go to work at the colliery, and his house in Winton Colliery village was empty for his mother had died while he was away doing his National Service. Now he lived there on his own. So people reckoned there must have been something to the story that it was Eric who had attacked Sadie Raine in that cottage that belonged to her fancy man.
No one thought much about it. ‘Sadie likely deserved all she got,’ Mrs Musgrave said to her neighbour as they stood in the queue at the Co-operative store. ‘What I’d like to see is the police find the sod that murdered little Carol White. Now I could cheerfully cut off his bollocks myself.’
‘Oh aye, I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Prescott. ‘But I reckon they’ll take men off that case to look for the lad that battered Sadie Raine, won’t they? I mean, Henry Vaughan still has a lot of clout round here. Do you think it really was Eric Bowron who did it?’
‘Might have been,’ Mrs Musgrave conceded, nodding her head. ‘He always was a bit of a bully, wasn’t he? Still, he came back from Korea or mebbe it was Malaya, quiet like.’
‘I’m not standing here for the good of me health,’ said the girl behind the counter who was waiting for Mrs Musgrave’s order.
‘Cheeky thing, talking like that to folks old enough to be your mother,’ the woman replied, banging her basket on the counter to make her point. ‘I’ll have half a pound of best butter, if you can be bothered serving.’
Cath went back to work in the Powers-Samas accounting machine room in Durham. The weekend after her visit to Jack, she had gone to see Annie in Shildon, for Annie was back living with her Aunt Patsy and Uncle Jim.
Annie was quietly sitting by the fire in the new council house, knitting dolls for the chapel sale of work. ‘Look, Cath,’ she said, ‘they’re good, aren’t they? Do you think they will sell well? How much do you think I can ask for them?’
‘They’re lovely,’ Cath agreed. ‘Oh, I don’t know, do you think they would fetch 5s. each?’
‘They should, they cost nearly that much for the wool,’ Patsy said caustically. Then she motioned to Cath. ‘Come out to the kitchen with me while I put the kettle on,’ she said.
In the kitchen she turned to Cath. ‘How do you think she is?’
‘Fine. Loads better,’ said Cath.
‘Aye. Of course she’s still on the tablets, but the doctor’s reduced the dose so she’s not so sleepy. I thought this carry-on about our Sadie might have tipped her over the edge again but we’ve managed to keep it from her, so don’t mention it.’
‘No, of course not. Only I’m worried Eric might get to her.’
‘He won’t. I never leave her for a minute unless Jim is here. An’ I wouldn’t let the police talk to her. She’s not fit, I told them. Then we don’t go out much except to chapel and I don’t think that one would go there. Annie lives for the chapel now.’
Cath came away fairly happy that Annie was being looked after. But she couldn’t help feeling some heartache at the remembrance of how her little sister had been when they were small. Oh, Annie had always been frightened of everything and everybody, but they had loved each other and looked out for one another.
As she caught the Eden bus to Spennymoor and the United from Spennymoor to Durham she felt a little less worried about her young sister. She began to daydream about Jack and their future together.
If all went well, Jack would be coming home from hospital by the following weekend. He was fine, he said on the telephone when he rang home from the call box in the corridor of the Royal Victoria Infirmary.
‘I can’t wait to see you, darling,’ he said to her, and the note in his voice sent shivers down her spine. ‘The surgeon says the scar on my face will be hardly noticeable in a few months.’
‘I don’t care about the scar,’ said Cath.
‘Is that Jack?’ asked Henry, coming out of the dining room at the Hall. ‘Here, let me speak to him.’ He took the receiver from Cath without waiting for her to say goodbye and began to talk to Jack about the estate. He had decided he was going to take Sadie to the south of France to recuperate as soon as she was well enough. Jack was to take over his work on the estate.
Chapter Thirty-two
Jack drove home from the hospital on a fine day in March, which heralded spring. He wanted to feel the sharp air on his face after all this time with it swathed in bandages, so he had got Henry to drive the MG up to Newcastle and now he was driving his father home again.
‘It’s too cold with the top down,’ Henry grumbled. ‘For goodness sake, I’ll catch my death and it won’t do you any good either. You are just out of hospital, remember.’
Jack sighed and put up the hood of the sports car. ‘You win, Father,’ he said.
‘Are you absolutely sure you want to marry Catherine Raine?’ Henry asked as Jack slowed for the traffic lights at Neville’s Cross.
Jack glanced sideways at his father. ‘Are you sure you want to marry her mother?’ he countered.
Henry sighed. ‘I know, I know. Neither match is what your mother would have wanted. But she would have wanted us to be happy, so there you are.’
‘Exactly.’
Jack pulled away from the lights and drove on past the Duke of Wellington pub
and into open country. He remembered how angry he had been with his father when he moved Sadie into Half Hidden Cottage; even angrier when he realised that Catherine was Sadie’s daughter. How he had driven off in a fury that time he had brought Catherine home and found out it was to Half Hidden Cottage! He had felt as though both he and his father were betraying his mother. Now, he thought, he was older and wiser.
Jack put a hand up to his face and felt the outline of the scar that furrowed his cheek. His face was not the only thing that had changed during his stay in Korea. His whole attitude to life had matured. He couldn’t understand why Catherine still wanted him after the way he had behaved in the past.
They were turning through the gates of the Hall when Jack’s uncertainty about Cath’s reaction to his scar surfaced. As the two men got out of the car and started to walk towards the front door, it opened and Cath came out, running down the steps to him in welcome.
‘Jack!’ she breathed, ‘I’m so happy you’ve come home.’ She lifted her face for his kiss. Henry coughed and picked up Jack’s bag and took it into the house.
Jack held her tight, revelling in the feel of her against him, then gently he held her from him.
‘Well?’
The question sounded harsh and she looked up at him in surprise. She had been awake all night and on tenterhooks all day waiting for him. She had thought she had heard the car a dozen times in the last hour and now at last he had come home and he was holding her away from him.
‘What?’ Cath asked.
‘My face,’ Jack said carefully. ‘I have to know if you hate it. It would be better to tell me now if you do.’
Cath put up a hand and traced the furrow across his cheek and down, curving into his chin. Then she put her head on one side. ‘It gives you an air of distinction,’ she murmured, considering. ‘Now kiss me again or I will think you don’t want to.’
‘Are you two coming inside? You’ll freeze to death out there,’ Henry had opened the door again and poked his head out as he called to them. ‘I’ve opened a bottle to celebrate and I’m dying for a drink.’
