Kate Hannigan's Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  Terence threw himself down on the grass. His ribs, where Brian’s foot had made contact, felt as if they were broken, his body ached, and his heart was like lead within him. He had fought with a blinding hate, which the sight of Brian’s inert body did not lessen. All he wanted to do was to kill Stannard, to kill him with his own hands…It was no satisfaction to know he was out if he hadn’t been the means of putting him out. Not even his father’s voice saying, ‘Don’t worry, lad, he’s finished; ye would have had him in any case,’ brought any comfort, for he was experiencing the primitive desire to kill his enemy, alone and unaided …

  Kate walked into the drawing-room like someone blind. She groped at a chair as she sat down. Rodney had forced her out of the bedroom. Now she would have to wait to know if what she willed had come to pass. For she had willed it. For months past she had tended to think, Far better she should go the way I did than shut herself up for life. She writhed in mental agony. Would this feeling of anguish and remorse ever lessen? Always she would know that she could have prevented Brian. She had seen the lust in his face; and, knowing, she had let him go in search of Annie. She should have killed him rather than let him get out of the room. He was lying in the clinic now. His scalp was cut open, but he was far from dead. She had the terrible urge to go and drive a knife into him. She had always loathed him, yet, for a space, she had been willing that he should take Annie …

  She suddenly gripped her hands together on her breast: Oh, God forgive me, she prayed. I was mad. Only let there be nothing wrong with her and I will reconcile myself to her going into the convent. Grant me this, and I will do anything, anything.

  The old bargaining she abhorred was in her prayer, but she was past scorning any means of intercession. She dropped on to her knees and beseeched God to hear her. All she wanted now was that Annie should be in a fit condition to enter the convent.

  Yet her prayers that something should happen had been granted! She beat her head with her closed fists. He could do anything, anything, only don’t let her have a baby by Brian, for it would seem there was a curse on the three generations.

  It was like this that Rodney found her. He lifted her to her feet, saying, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’

  She gazed at him, unable to believe what she heard. Her voice sounded cracked as she murmured, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  Slowly she began to cry, painful, heavy tears. She shook her head from side to side. ‘The mills…the mills of God are grinding for me.’

  He drew her tenderly to him. ‘Then if they are they’ll grind nothing but good.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know! You don’t know!’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve been willing something to happen…do you understand?…willing it! And I’ve been punished. At the bottom of me I’ve always been afraid I’ll be punished for deliberately going my own way. But that it should be taken out on her!…She’s done nothing.’

  ‘Now, now,’ he said firmly. ‘All that fear and superstition is behind you. Why, you’ve been free of it for years.’ But he knew, as he spoke, that the seeds of fear planted during her earlier life would periodically burst forth in this way, and she would imagine God was punishing her. It was no use appealing to her reason. She could use her reason better than anyone he knew, but this went deeper than reason. So he just held her and said soothingly, ‘It might be all for the best…somehow I think this is the turning-point.’

  18

  The thick, muzzy blanket was lifting. Annie clung on to it, pulling it around her, for once she let it go she would stand exposed in an immeasurable space, filled with fear and terror, with truth unvarnished. The space held a new self, a self she must wear if she were to live. She couldn’t face it. She tried to grip the intangible muzziness, but it evaded her, and, like driftwood, thoughts began to flow into her mind, a queer jumble of events which seemed to have happened in another life.

  Steve was again carrying her up the garden. She had the odd idea she was still the young girl he had carried up the same path years ago. The idea was strengthened by Kate’s voice murmuring over her, but it was abruptly shattered when Summy held her arm and the needle was thrust in. She became startlingly aware of why Rodney was doing this. She wanted to cry out, but she was beginning to float away ceilingwards. On the bed lay somebody who was like her, and tears were falling on to her face. She didn’t know whose tears they were, or who kept chanting, ‘Thank God. Thank God.’ She had her ear on the ceiling and was straining to listen, and although she couldn’t hear what was being said, she remembered experiencing a feeling of dizzy relief. Then the ceiling opened abruptly and she passed through into nothingness.

  It seemed but a minute until she was back again on the bed. She heard the clock striking one and Rodney’s voice saying, ‘Drink this, my dear.’

  She raised herself straight up and drank, then flopped back on the pillow again. His voice came, insistent, ‘Annie! Listen to me. You are quite all right…You are quite all right. Do you hear?’ He left her, there was another movement in the room, and Summy was leaning over her, saying, ‘You’re all right, hinny…you’re all right. Just have a good sleep.’

  She waited; there was someone else to come and tell her she was all right. Why didn’t Mam come and say, ‘You’re all right. You’re all right’? Because Mam knew that she wasn’t all right. Never again would she be all right.

  The protecting blanket was dragged from her mind. She opened her eyes and stared about the room. She was alone, and a night-light was burning on the side table. It was night…no, morning. Another day. It was tomorrow now, and she was standing in the great space and her thoughts, untrammelled by the sleeping-draught, were terrifying in their starkness. She remembered what Brian had tried to do, and was horrified by the fact that she felt no disgust. She was right out in the open now, but she was not alone. There was another being, who looked like her. She came quite close and began to talk, saying dreadful things, yet things she seemed to have heard before: ‘You wouldn’t have minded if it had been Terence, would you?’

  Her own mind screamed her denial.

  Then the other Annie’s voice came back, ‘Then why did you call for him?’ The figure was pointing at her, stabbing each word into her brain: ‘You called for him because you thought: If only this was Terence.’

  No, no, I didn’t.

  ‘Then why did you compare it with the night by the pool, and then again at the cave?’

  I didn’t compare it. You are mad!

  ‘Oh yes, you did. And why were you so horrified by what Cathleen told you? Ask yourself why.’

  No, no; I won’t. She stared at the girl with the fair hair, and shouted at her: ‘I am going into the convent. Do you hear? I am going into the convent!’ She held her head in her hands and rolled across the bed. Her head was going to burst, she was going mad.

  The girl began to laugh. ‘Escape? You won’t escape that way; you’ve got to take your mind into the convent with you. You’ve been longing for Terence to do something desperate to stop you going.’

  Be quiet! I haven’t, I haven’t!

  ‘Look at me. You can’t face the truth. You know you’ll never make a good nun…There’s plenty of time left to turn back.’

  I can’t. Oh, I couldn’t possibly say I wasn’t going in. There’d be nothing to live for.

  ‘Do you still love Terence?’

  I won’t answer you.

  ‘Well, whether you do or not, you can’t go into the convent…you can’t keep up a lie to God.’

  The space began to close in. It rolled in swiftly from the edges, becoming smaller and smaller. The other girl moved nearer until, with a rush, she entered her body. Annie flung herself on to her face, burying it into the pillow, crying, ‘I know I can’t go into the convent. I know, I know!…But I can’t tell them. I couldn’t face them all now…I can’t live…I won’t live!’

  Terence lay with his hands across his chest, staring into the darkness. He would try no more to court sleep, for it mu
st soon be dawn. He switched on a torch which was on the table by the side of his bed and looked at his watch. Only three o’clock! The night was endless.

  As he lay down again he felt his cheek tenderly; it was sore, like his hands and ribs. That swine! If only he had fought cleanly he could have finished him! At least there would have been some satisfaction in that…Was she asleep? Yes, she would have had a sleeping-draught. What would happen when she came round? What would she do? He turned impatiently on to his face. The same old circle, round and round.

  The pressure of the palms of his hands on his eyes made a black background, against which the picture of Annie as he last saw her showed up. If only he could have killed Stannard!

  Although he knew now that Brian hadn’t accomplished what he set out to do, the desire to tear him to shreds had not lessened, for he knew that had Brian achieved his end Annie would have married him. Even before she had proof of any necessity she would have made sure there would be no more Annie Hannigans.

  As it was, this would surely drive her into the convent with added momentum. He accused himself of having been the instigator in turning her thoughts in that direction in the first place…What a fool he had been! What an utter, utter fool! That one night with Cathleen had wrecked their lives. What would happen to him and Annie because of it? For himself, there would be work. And for her? What would there be behind those walls?…Oh God, why had he let Cathleen stay that night? Why did he become infected with her madness? And who would have thought she would have been so vicious as to speak of it! The remembrance remained a hot shame in his mind.

  He realised now that he had been clinging to some obscure hope that at the eleventh hour Annie would change her mind. But Stannard had put paid to that. He turned on his back and again looked at his watch. A quarter past three. If he wasn’t so stiff and sore he’d get up and go for a walk.

  As he moved his knuckles in an endeavour to lessen the stiffness, he heard a quick series of bangs on the front door. He didn’t stop to ask himself who it could be, but was out of bed, down the ladder and at the door within a few seconds. His father was calling, ‘What’s oop, lad?’ but he didn’t answer, for he was staring at Kate. The wildness of her appearance was intensified by the swinging hurricane lamp she held.

  ‘Terence! Terence!’ she cried. ‘Come and help find her, she’s gone!’

  Mr Macbane, arrayed in his vest and long drawers, came into the gleam of the lamp. ‘What’s that?’ he blinked down on Kate. ‘Come in, missis, what’s oop?’

  ‘She’s gone; we can’t find her anywhere.’

  Without a word Terence dashed up to his room again, and pulled on his trousers and coat over his pyjamas. He hunted madly for his shoes. And when he found them, he did not stop to fasten them until he reached the kitchen again. His mother had just lit the lamp, and his father was struggling into his clothes. Kate was leaning against the jamb of the door.

  She said, in answer to Mr Macbane’s question, ‘We’ve searched all the grounds and the pool.’

  ‘What about the stream?’ said Terence, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Rodney’s gone up there. And Paynter’s gone back into the woods.’

  ‘I’ll go downstream.’

  His mother said anxiously, ‘Be careful, lad, in the dark. It drops steeply down Butcher’s Gulley…Here, put this coat on.’ She forced him to take his overcoat. Then she turned to Kate. ‘Do come and sit down, you look dead beat. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Kate. ‘I must look for her.’

  ‘Stay here with my mother, Mrs Prince,’ said Terence. ‘Da, where are you going?’

  ‘Aa’ll go along the main road towards the cliffs,’ said Mr Macbane, putting on his mackintosh.

  As Terence went out, he said to Kate, ‘Don’t worry; we’ll find her.’

  The stark pain in Kate’s eyes took the assurance from his words, and, as he stumbled along the bank of the stream, flashing his torch over the water, he wondered in an agony of doubt just how they would find her.

  Before he had gone far, he tripped over a root and fell headlong. The torch flew from his hand, and he swore softly to himself. Picking himself up, he recovered the still-shining torch and stumbled on, cursing his stiffness.

  The ground became rougher and steeper as the stream narrowed and dropped towards the gulley. Terence stopped. Unless Annie had a torch she would never have got this far. And if she came out with the intention of…His mind would not form the word. Anyway, in the state of mind she must be in, would she have stopped to get a torch? The night was black now, but there had been a bit of a moon earlier on. It was more likely, if she was making for the cliffs, she would have gone by the main road, taking the cut by the farm. Had she gone over the cliffs?…God!…Well, if she had, there would be an end to the search, for they dropped sheer all along their line until they came to…Davy Jones!

  The words struck him with the force of a blow. He switched off the torch and stood in the darkness. The cave! Had she gone there? Why should he think she would go there? He remembered describing it to her as a death-trap. But surely she wouldn’t…Why not? If she had it in her mind to finish it, that would be as good a place as any.

  Throwing caution to the wind, he started to run. He’d need a rope; he’d have to see the time of the tide; he’d get his mother to send his father along, for if he had to go down the cliff and over the shelf he’d never get up again without help.

  The cottage door was open, but there was no sign of Kate, nor of his mother. Running out the back way, he shouted, but received no answer. He rushed back into the kitchen and searched feverishly for the previous evening’s paper. ‘High tide: 5.10 a.m.’ It was now twenty-five to four. Already the only way into the cave would be cut off.

  He ran out on to the road and yelled. No answering shout came back to him. For a moment he became panicky. If he got down the cliff and reached the cave by the sloping roof, how would he get her back? His usual level-headed coolness returned, and he told himself: Meet the obstacles when you come to them. He was strangely convinced now that she was in the cave. There was nothing for it but to go alone. He would soon find out if she were there by shouting down the fissure. That is, if she would answer him. And if she did, well …

  He ran to the shed and snatched up a coil of rope, then through the kitchen to the road again and down to the stream. By going this way he’d save time, but he’d have to jump the stream…the water was flowing almost to the top of the bank. He made his way to the narrowest part, but was handicapped in his jump, as there was no running distance on the bank because of the scrub. He missed the far bank by a fraction and, although he clutched at the grass to save himself, he was wet up to the thighs before he got out, and the weight of his sodden clothes impeded his running.

  About a quarter of a mile before he reached the cliff above the cave, he stopped and flashed his torch along the rough edge, searching for the ledge by which he had descended once before, when he first found the fissure in the rock. It was dangerous in the daytime, and he asked himself whether he was being foolhardy now in tackling it in the dark and without help. But the sea slapping against the rocks below gave him his answer.

  He found the place and, after tying the coil of rope round his waist, he cautiously lowered himself on to the narrow ledge that ran along the face of the cliff, and began the descent. Pressing his back against the rock, he focused the torch on his feet. The light showed him the black void below, and the sight was an added strain on his nerves. Step by step he edged himself along. Sometimes his toes would overhang the ledge where it narrowed, or a bulge in the rock would make him bend forward, almost precipitating him into the depths below. He chided himself for his slow rate of progress. The tide must already have reached the sand under the shelf. But he knew that one false step would be the end. So he kept his pace. It seemed an eternity before the ledge widened, telling him he was approaching the shelf. He flashed the torch sideways, and saw with relief the long, blac
k fissure running through the circle of light on the sloping rock. Now the ledge became part of the slope, and he was leaning back on it, his legs across the gap and his heels wedged against the further wall of the fissure.

  He lay for a moment, listening. The sea seemed distant from here; only the faint lapping of it could be heard on the beach below. The night was fine and there was no wind to cut through his wet clothes, for which he was thankful. He slid his body nearer the gap. Bringing his knees up and dropping his head between them, he listened. The crevice in the rock formed a kind of amplifier, but it brought no sound to him. His mouth was dry, and he wetted his lips and called, ‘Annie!’ Then he waited.

  The rocks re-echoed, ‘Annie! Annie!’ but there was no other answer. A startled seagull, which must have been roosting near at hand, flew close above his head, its wings making a wind about his ears.

  As he called again, ‘Annie!…Annie, are you there?’ a gasp like a giant’s breath came up between the walls, and he called louder, ‘Annie!…Annie!’ He waited, his breath held tight in his lungs, and again there came to him a broken moan and a gasp.

  He straightened up and took in great draughts of air. He felt a momentary faintness with relief. Then he smiled to himself in the darkness. He was right. Bending again, he called, ‘Don’t worry, I’m coming down.’

  He waited awhile, but there was no reply. He turned on his face and flashed the torch over the slope. It took him a matter of seconds to find a piece of jutting rock around which to tie the rope. It wasn’t what he would have chosen as ideal for a safe descent, much less for a safe return, but it was the only thing available. Divesting himself of his overcoat, he gripped the rope and started down the slope. He was amazed at the short time it took to reach the edge of the shelf and drop the twenty feet from there to the beach. Standing still a moment, he listened. There was no sound, only the rhythmic lapping of the waves. He flashed the torch towards them. The running rim of foam was no more than a foot from where he was standing. Turning swiftly, he ran up the beach towards the cave, calling softly, ‘Annie! Annie!’ He squeezed through the aperture and she came immediately into the full beam of the light.