Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  Pure as the Lily In The Dell

  Catherine Cookson

  1972

  Synopsis:

  Alee Walton’s love or his daughter, Mary, was the mainstay of his life.

  Mary was his only comfort during the dark years of the Depression when unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife gnawed away at his self-respect.

  His one hope was that Mary would escape from the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums which had held him prisoner for so many years.

  But then something happened to Mary which shattered all his dreams for her future—something which was to split a family and dominate its members for generations to follow.

  Catherine Cookson was born in Eastjarrow and the place of her birth provides the background she so vividly creates in many of her novels.

  Although acclaimed as a regional writer her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 her readership spreads throughout the world. Her work has been translated into twelve languages and Corgi alone has over 20,000,000 copies of her novels in print, including those written under the name of Catherine Marchant.

  Mrs. Cookson was born the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. Catherine began work in service but eventually moved South to Hastings where she met and married a local grammar school master. At the age of forty she began writing with great success about the lives of the working class people of the North-East with whom she had grown up, including her intriguing autobiography, Our Kate. More recently The Cinder Path has established her position as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. Mrs. Cookson now lives in Northumberland, overlooking the Tyne.

  Contents

  Book One. Mary, Jarrow 1933

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Book Two. Jimmy, Jarrow 1943

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Book Three. The New Species, Jarrow 1972

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Author’s Note

  Street names and the actual times of air raids on Jarrow have not been strictly adhered to.

  Book One. Mary, Jarrow 1933

  Chapter One

  Da! Da! wait a minute. Hie-on! Da! Mary Walton came flying out of Biddle Street, turned up the narrow ash path between the low hedges and raced towards the man who had now stopped and was waiting for her.

  “Eeh! you must be getting’ deaf; I’ve been shoutin’ at you halfway down the street.”

  “Have you, lass? I never heard you, I must have been wool gatherin’.

  But what are you doing round here at this time, I thought you would be home? “

  “Oh, I had to stay on, she’s had one of her committee do’s. Ten there were there. And the clearing up!”

  “But why have you come this way?” Her father raised his brows at her.

  “Well, I was going to the allotment, I thought you’d be there. You’re late aren’t you, I mean going over?”

  “Aye.” He nodded while looking straight ahead.

  “I’ve been across at Wallsend all the mornin’.”

  “Nothin’ doing?” Her bright smile faded as she asked the question.

  “No, no, lass. As if there would be. I must have been barmy to go; a waste of good coppers on the ferry.” He turned to her and grinned.

  “I almost had to swim back.”

  When she pushed him with her elbow he laughed and went on, “It’s a fact. You know, they were like a pack of mad dogs.” The jocularity went out of his manner now and he shook his head from side to side, saying, “Eeh! how people change.

  “Where you from?” they asked us.

  There was about nine of us went over. It was said they’d be settin’ on a good few, so we thought we might stand a chance. Chance! Not a chance in hell. We were loopy. By! you wouldn’t believe it, lass. “

  Again he shook his head.

  “When we said we were from Jarrow, why man, you’d have thought we’d said we’d come over from Russia and were going to start another revolution. I’m not funnin’, lass.” His head moved in small jerks now. They were for bashin’ us. And Billy Teale was for havin’ a go at them; we had a job to get him away. An’ I can tell you we scampered for that ferry quicker than I’vemoved in weeks Mary looked at her father’s profile. The face was sharp and thin, and grey looking; his cap was pulled sideways over his brow and the peak was bent, giving his face a comic look. But her da wasn’t a comic; he didn’t take after her gran da Now her gran da was a comic.

  She was worried about her da. He was troubled in so many ways. It wasn’t only that he had been out of work for eight years; it wasn’t only that her ma kept on at him, although this she knew had a lot to do with how he felt, for there was that something indefinable that existed between him and her ma that she couldn’t put her finger on.

  Everything had its share in making him look as he did now, a man without pride, and it was this loss of pride that seemed to hurt him most.

  She was only eight years old when he was last in work but she could remember how he looked then. He seemed taller. And yet he had never been really tall, being only five foot six and a half and thin with it, but he had carried himself straight in those days, and held his head up and his chin out, and his cap had always been square on his head.

  The little bit of happiness she had literally hugged to herself all the way from Mrs. Turner’s, and which she was going to present him with now, seemed small, futile, inadequate against the diminishing man that the figure of her da presented to her but nevertheless she was still excited about it.

  They left the cinder path and walked into open country that bordered the town. In the far distance to the right of them was what looked like a miniature mountain but which was only the dead slag heap of Palmer’s shipyard. They walked over rough land, skirting puddles filled with January sleet and rain; then they rounded a hill that was just another camouflaged dump, covered now with tufts of grey grass, and so they came upon the allotments.

  Some wit had dubbed the allotments ‘the escape route from Sedgefield’, and the simile was a good one, for many a man had been saved from going to the asylum by being able to dig a patch of rough earth, and a little of his pride was salvaged when he was able to supplement with fresh vegetables the meagre menu provided by the dole or the means test.

  Before they entered the allotments proper Mary pulled her father to a halt and, bending towards him and smiling into his face, she said, “You’ll never guess what I’ve got for you.”

  For me? No; what is it, ninny? “

  She opened the bass bag that she was carrying and from between a pair of shoes and a soiled apron she drew out a little cone-shaped bag made of newspaper and, handing it to him said, “Look an’ see.”

  Alee Walton smiled at this beloved daughter of his before life unscrewed the twisted paper and gazed down at the heap of cigarette ends. Then, his eyes shining, he looked at her again, saying one word.

  Tabs. “

  She nodded at him, her round face alight. There’s twenty-six of them, and there not dumpers are they? Look! “ She moved
one aside with her

  finger nail. That’s three-quarters. And they’re gold flake, not woodbines.”

  “My!” He shook his head in awe. They must have had a beano. “

  “Aye. Yes, they did, they were smokin’ like chimneys. And that’s not all, look.” She opened the bag again and held it towards him.

  “That’s a bundle of sandwiches ... tongue.” And then, dipping her hand into the bag, she pulled up another twist of newspaper and, swinging it back and for ward, added, “Tea.”

  “She didn’t give you that?”

  “Well’—Mary tossed her head ‘would she? She gave me the usual two teaspoons but she left me in the dining-room for five minutes. And you know something, Da?” He shook his head.

  “I was drawn towards that caddy ... just like a magnet it pulled me.” She now leant on his arm, her brow against his shoulder, and they both shook with their laughter. When she straightened up she said with slight indignation, “Well, she’s so bloomin’ mean at times, doling out two tea—spoonsful!

  And I’m positive she measures what’s left in that caddy every day. And you know she gets more than her money’s worth out of me. “

  “Oh aye. Well, I’ve told you, lass, she tricks you out of two and a half hours every week. I’ve told you. Half-day! She’s got a nerve if you ask me. Nine till two, half-day!”

  Mary sighed now, and they walked on as she said, “But still I get half an hour for me dinner and, give her her due, it’s always a good meal.

  But sometimes I feel a bit peeved with her because, you know, I started on fourpence an hour. Da, and I’m still on it. “

  “Aye, and likely to be until you’re twenty. But God forbid you’re still there when you’re twenty. Eight shillings a week for all you do, washing and ironing, the lot. By! some of ‘em would take the eye out of your head and come back for the socket. It makes me wild to think you’re in place, you’re worth something better than Mrs. Turner’s lass. It’s you that should have gone to the secondary school, an’ our

  Jimmy sent out...,” “Aw now, no. Da, no. Be fair, that isn’t right; our Jimmy’s got brains.”

  “Brains!” He stopped and half turned his head towards her.

  “You’ve got more brains in your little finger, real brains, than our Jimmy’s got in his whole body. He’s mine, an’ he’s a canny lad, but the truth’s the truth, he’s been pushed into that school through fear an’ no favour. And I’ll say this again, if your mother hadn’t kept at him all these years....”

  “Aw, Da, be quiet, man. What she’s done she’s done for the best.”

  But had she? This thought had come to her more often of late: had her mother done everything for the best? She was afraid of the thoughts she had about her mother. There had been times, not so far back, when she wished she would die, and one of these times was when she had taken her from school and got her the job at Mrs. Turner’s. Another time was when Jimmy got into the secondary school, for then she had cut down on everything to get him clothes. It was around this time that there had been constant rows in the house, and she remembered her da yelling, “You’d go whoring to get him what he wants.” She thought her da was a bit jealous of Jimmy.

  It was about this time too that her ma had got the job working for Mr.

  Tollett in his shop at the corner of the street after his wife died, and since then things had been better; at least in one way they had, for there was more food in the house because Mr. Tollett always gave her ma a basket of groceries on a Friday night besides her pay. But she had the idea that her da didn’t like her ma working for Mr.

  Tollett. Her da called Mr. Tollett by his Christian name of Ben because they had been friendly when they were very young lads, before Mr. Tollett’s father had got on and got the three grocery shops.

  Alee now said, “Look there.” He pointed over the drab squares of vegetable stump-marked land, each dotted with a hut made of a conglomeration of old timber, boxes, and cormgated iron, to a particular one at the far side.

  “The door’s open;

  your gran da in. “

  “Oh aye.” Mary nodded. Then, turning to him, she said quickly, “Now don’t go and give him half those tabs because he’ll stick them in his pipe and they’ll be gone up in smoke in a minute.” She laughed. You know what he is. I’ve got threepence; I’ll give it to him to get some baccy. “

  “You’ll do nowt of the sort; it’s your night for the pictures. And anyway, if you were to give him the threepence you know what would happen, he’d toss up whether it was baccy or beer.”

  Again she fell against his arm and laughed as she giggled, “And it would come down plonk into a gill of burton.”

  “Aye, it would that.”

  “Eeh! me gran da

  She was still shaking her head and laughing as they entered the door of the hut, and there, on his hunkers and blowing heavily on a perforated tin of cinders, was Alec’s father.

  Peter Walton was sixty, but he looked seventy, until he spoke, and then his voice was so light and cheerful, had you not seen his face, you would have imagined it had issued from the mouth of a young man. A comic young man, too, for he laughed with practically every sentence he uttered, and if he didn’t manage to convey his humour in the substance of his words he did it with his inflexion, a mixture of Irish and Geordie.

  “Aw, there you are the pair of yous!” His small round eyes glinted from their wrinkled settings.

  “Hello, me baim.”

  “Hello, Granda. Can’t you get it to go?”

  Damn an’ set fire to it! That’s what I say. Oh be-god, look! “ He hooted like a young boy as a flame spiralled up from amid the damp cinders.

  “It did the trick. Damn and set Ere to it, I said. What d’you think of that?”

  “Granda, you’re making a smoke, you’ll choke us.” Mary coughed and flapped her hands, and Alee said, “It’s a waste of cinders, we won’t be

  stopping. By the way, did you go to the tip this mornin’ and get me mother any? She was nearly out.”

  “No, I didn’t go this morning I went last night. I got a bag of slack, she’s bakin’. That satisfy you?”

  Alee sniffed, then looking at the fire, he asked with evident irritation, What made you get it going anyway? Did you expect a tea party? “

  “Aye, just that. Look.” Peter screwed round on the dirt floor and pointed to a shelf behind him, on which was reposing a two-ounce packet of tea and a small tin of condensed milk.

  “Come into money?” Alee looked down at his father through narrowed eyes.

  “Not that you could say, lad.”

  “Well, where did you get that pair? I bet me mother never gave you them.”

  You’re right there, your mother never did. She’s a mean old scrub your mother, the meanest old scrub I’ve known in me life. “

  “Oh, Granda!” Mary was laughing, her mouth wide. Eeh! her gran da was a turn. To hear him talking you’d think he hated her grannie, whereas he thought the sun shone out of her.

  “Aye, a mean woman your grannie.” He nodded at her.

  “Why. I’ve known her put a piece of las tic on a penny an’ stretch it to a shilling.

  Eeh aye! that’s your grannie. “

  “It’s as well for you she’s been able to do that.” Alec’s nod towards his father was sober, sullen, and Mary wanted to turn to him and say, “Granda’s only funnin’, Da,” but her da was low the day, very low;

  that business over at Wallsend had hurt him. Oh, if only he could get work, work of any kind. All their problems would be solved, if only he could get work. Even her mother would be nice to him then. Oh, she was sure her mother would be nice to him if only he could get a job.

  “Did you lift these?” Alee was weighing the tea and milk in his hand, and his father, turning on him with stretched face, said, “What! me lift anything? Now would I? Ask yourself, would I?”

  “No need to ask me self did you?”

  “God’s holy honour!” Peter crossed
himself, a symbolic action which, in his case, was merely a relic from the days of his Catholic grandparents.

  “Aw’—Alee tossed his head to one side and repeated, “ God’s holy honour! “ Then nodding at his father he said, “ One of these days you’ll end up along the line, mark my words. “

  “Aye well you might be right, lad. The only thing I hope is that they put me on a fast train.” He now turned to Mary and, putting his head on one side and his arms akimbo, he took up the stance of a gossiping woman and, imitating a blatherer, he bent towards her saying, “You know hinny, I cannot bear slow trains. Fast women, an’ slow trains, I cannot abear them.”

  As Mary again doubled up. Alee said sternly, “That’s enough of your slaver, that’s enough. Stop actin’ the goat, man.”

  “I’ve got some sandwiches, Granda,” said Mary quietly now; ‘it’ll be like a picnic. “

  “Sandwiches, eh? Let’s see.” He looked down at the open parcel, at the curling edges of the dry bread and, lifting a slice he said, “By!

  tongue. My! has there been a banquet at the baronial hall? “

  “She had a meetin’.”

  “What for this time?”

  “Boots for hairns.”

  “Oh aye, boots for balms. When are they doing anythin’ for aald men?”

  “I’ll ask her the morrow “ You do that, an’ tell her I’m in need of some linings. And your grannie wants bloomers. “

  “Da! Give over, will you?”

  Chuckling, Peter gave over, and busied himself with blowing the fire

  until the water bubbled in the tin can; then he mashed the tea in a brown teapot with a broken spout, and when they were sitting on upturned boxes and a bucket drinking the hot sweet liquid and eating the sandwiches, he broke the silence by looking at his son and saying, You know where I’ve been the day? “

  No. “

  They stared at each other for a moment before Peter said, “Shields Gazette office.”

  “Shields Gazette office! All the way down there! You walked all the way to the Shields Gazette office? You must be mad, man.”