Our Kate

by Catherine Cookson

  So the building society took my Sun Life of Canada policies and I took the house in Hoads Wood Road, the general idea at that time being to make it into a guest house, but at the back of my mind I wanted to run it as a home for epileptics and mental defectives. And if Kate suspected that one of my reasons for taking the house was that it was a long walk to the first bar, she said nothing, for she too was enamoured of the place and worked wholeheartedly to get it into shape, for it had been empty two years and badly neglected before that.

  There was one snag about leaving the flat. I had signed an agreement for three years and unless I could sublet it I would have to pay the rent of twenty-five shillings a week. I couldn’t let it, and the twenty-five shillings was a dreadful drain on my small resources. But it seemed it had to be this way, for eighteen months later Kate returned to the flat.

  What led up to this is better left undisturbed, sufficient to say that I had not only to fight the drink at this time but a dominant woman who felt that because of the house I could not do without her. I was in a cleft-stick; I had to put up with the drink – which was now delivered – or find myself with this great place on my hands, so she thought.

  The picture on the wall had turned sour on me. I would have willingly lived in a garret full of orange boxes to be rid of the mental torture.

  There were fights, reconciliations, promises. Fights, reconciliations, promises over and over. But she would not leave me until one black day, almost dead black for me, it was forced home to her that but for the intervention of Annie she would have had a corpse on her hands.

  Annie was no longer living with us. Quite a while previously Kate had laid the blame for taking to the bottle again on the effect that Annie’s daughter had on her. Annie had brought her seven-year-old daughter from Ireland. The child was not normal, but she was an innocent clinging thing wanting love. Kate had never had anything to do with mentals of any kind so the child got on her nerves. The result was Annie left, taking Maisie with her, and that’s what Kate wanted for she had been jealous of her. I was very upset about this for in spite of Annie’s constant blarney and the difference in our natures and approach to life I liked her very much because she had come into my life when I was lonely and had been kind to me.

  After Kate had gone I had a very denuded house for I had refurnished the six rooms of the flat to enable her to take guests right away and I had to start from scratch again and build up. But the torment was less, although it was still in the background.

  When the lease ran out on the flat and she was now called upon to pay the rent she made a move, and to a large house. She had got the taste for big houses in The Hurst. She was now going to show me what she could do. She was going to run a guest house, a select guest house.

  Her first boarder was a master from the Hastings Grammar School. When this young man left he was replaced by a Mr Cookson.

  Her letter telling me this reached me in Paris. I was at this time taking foreign guests and I became friendly with a family who insisted that I go and visit them at least for a weekend. That weekend was my second trip to Paris, the only times I was ever abroad; and with the exception of a fortnight in Gilsland and week in Belfast, the only holidays I’d had up till then. I returned from Paris feeling very ill, physically because of the journey, I am no traveller; mentally because of Kate. She was living not half a mile from me now and was rarely, if ever, quite sober. So painful was it to me when I went to visit her that I would stop going for periods until concern for her would bring me to her again, sometimes to find her crying with loneliness, sometimes to meet the force of her tongue.

  I called this night and could see she had a small load on, and when she asked me to go into the front room to meet the new guest I refused. Yet as she preceded me through the passage to let me out she pushed open the sitting-room door and exclaimed, in a tone which held deep pride, ‘Mr Cookson, this is my daughter.’

  A fair young man rose from behind a table. He had beautiful hair and a kind face and a quiet voice.

  It was done. In that first second of meeting fate was fixed for both of us. It happened as quickly as that.

  My greeting was, ‘Do you fence?’ – this was said out of sheer nervousness. No, he didn’t fence. Apparently we had nothing in common. Fencing was my only recreation. The lessons at the Bathing Pool were cheap and with a foil in my hand I struck out at life.

  It was on the Wednesday evening that Kate made the introduction. On the Friday evening Tom Cookson called on me. For a timid young man, and he was timid in those days, he showed a great deal of courage, for I wasn’t an easy person to approach. He wondered if I would like to see the evening paper? Also he wondered if I would care to go to the pictures? I did care. It had begun.

  My mother was pleased, Annie was pleased, but both only for a very short time. They couldn’t either of them imagine that there could be anything serious between this young schoolmaster and me. It was ludicrous! If I had liked, couldn’t I have married this one, or that one, or the other one, great big strapping men? From experience I knew all about big strapping men. Right from my teens I had known great big strapping men and, mostly, I had found them – boast inside – a very explanatory north-country phrase for empty.

  Now began a war, a siege. If I had made light of the matter nothing would have happened, but I did not feel this thing lightly. I was really in love for the first time in my life. In temperament and character, at least outwardly, Thomas Henry Cookson and I were at opposite poles, yet beneath the surface of flesh and bone, in the channels where the intangible but real life runs, we were one and we recognised this. I had what he needed – strength. Besides the physical attraction I had strength of purpose. He had what I needed, kindliness, a loving nature, a high sense of moral values, and above all he had what I needed most – a mind.

  I had always wanted a man who could speak my language, not my verbal language but the one which I felt. I had known for a long time the reason why I hadn’t married any of the men I had met, the eligible men; it was because mentally I felt they were inferior and I had the wisdom to know it is not a good thing for a woman to feel mentally superior to a man.

  The fight I had to put up for Tom against my mother and Annie would fill a book of another kind.

  It was not until two years later, when they had managed to separate us, that Kate decided that if I would pay her debts – for she was now surrounded by real debts, and in a dreadful state of health through incessant whisky drinking – she would go back to the North, back to the New Buildings. This decision was a great blow to her pride for she knew people would say, ‘I told you so.’

  I had not seen her for some weeks for I had told her I was finally finished. This was after I heard she was maligning me. The only thing I really valued, my good character, she was aiming to destroy.

  In all her stages of drinking I think this was her lowest.

  We parted on Hastings station one Saturday morning at nine o’clock. She was crying so much she couldn’t see me. She was sober and sad. She was the Kate I loved. How could I let her go back to the New Buildings and humiliation. She was my mother. I had a duty to her because she was ill. What did it matter what she had done to me, perhaps God meant that I should suffer in this way . . . ‘DON’T BE SUCH A BLOODY FOOL!’ The voice seemed to spurt up from the depth of my misery-filled bowels and explode in a screech which filled the station. I was startled by the train letting off steam.

  There was no word of goodbye. We held hands. The train moved away and I groped blindly towards a seat and sat down. Sadness, pity and guilt were playing their usual havoc with me. Poor Kate. Poor Kate; but thank God. Oh thank God, it was over. I was free again. And I must never, never, never, let her live with, or be near me ever again in my life. But of course I wouldn’t, I wasn’t mad altogether. Or was I? A few minutes ago I had nearly said ‘Stay.’

  I made my way to church. I had not been to church for some time, for my mind, in spite of the fear this engendered, would probe and que
stion the dogma of my faith. But this morning I wanted to thank God. I did so, and finished humbly, ‘Help her, oh Lord, for I can’t. And forgive me, for I know that never as long as I live will I be able to stand her near me for any length of time.’

  ‘Never is a long time,’ said God.

  Before Kate left Hastings she asked me would I take Tom as a boarder. He was on his summer vacation and was abroad. She hadn’t told him she was leaving, and she didn’t want to put him to the trouble of searching for new digs. She suggested this only because she felt absolutely sure it was well and truly over between us. He now had other interests, and wasn’t someone interested in me, a big man? What did it matter if he was married?

  I had, at this time, in The Hurst two epileptics, two TB convalescent patients and a retired Army Captain whose pension was swallowed by a maintenance order which left him with about twenty-five shillings a week on which to run a car – a Captain must have a car – breed dogs, and pay for full board and lodgings. But he had great charm, and it worked – and not only with Annie.

  Annie was now running the house for me, as only an indolent Irishwoman can. She was helped by a cook-general who was deaf, vile-tempered and incompetent, and as neither of them had any idea of time, or organisation, or, least of all, the staggering rapidity with which bills mounted, I had, on the side so to speak, another daily source of worry.

  So to join the household came Tom, with Annie’s approval, for she too was backing the big fellow.

  As soon as Tom entered the door and we looked at each other, it was done again. It had never been undone, there had only been a forced separation.

  Now began open warfare; Annie, like Kate, thought she had me in a cleft-stick. How would I manage if she walked out? I had to keep on my job. Since it was the only sure source of income – guests came and went, except Army Captains who knew when they were onto a good thing. For nearly two years this particular battle raged. I was tired and weary.

  Why didn’t I throw the lot of them out? Incompetent cooks, possessive friends, sponging Army Captains, patients, whose people had money to burn but who would beat you down to the last penny – I would never argue about money and always let myself be touched by a sob story. But I couldn’t make a clean sweep because anyone who does me a good turn has me for life. I always want to repay a good turn tenfold. Annie had been good to me when I was lonely, and although it was pointed out that she had been repaid a thousandfold, with my friendship, that didn’t matter. I don’t forget easily; moreover, she wasn’t well. As for Mrs Webster, the cook, she was handicapped by deafness. She was alone in the world. Where would she go if I put her out? To the Salvation Army home in London. And then the patients themselves. They seemed to like living at The Hurst, and the timetable didn’t bother them. But it bothered the summer guests, and me.

  I was tied now by different loyalties.

  By 1939 I had been working at the Institution for ten years. I had actually been doing an average of a sixteen hour day over those ten years, for when I returned at half past five in the evening to The Hurst, there was always planning, arranging and worrying and work of another sort. And not a little section of this was the pampering and nursing of this decaying, tender house, and I mean tender, because that is how I felt towards The Hurst.

  Every penny I had left after paying the bills went into patching up the house; the floors, the stairs which fell through, the roof, which leaked every time it rained. The Heath Robinson water system which gave us, one Christmas Eve, a total of twenty-six bursts at one go and practically left us afloat. The garden, in which I turned navvy and made tons of concrete in the construction of a pond and crazy paving. I had a little help with this at first but funds wouldn’t allow for continuous paid labour, so for two years I struggled with my pond and paths, and this I took as a form of recreation.

  But in the beginning of 1938 there came a showdown. Things could not carry on as they were for I was near breaking point. So, as a solution, I mortgaged The Hurst and bought another house for thirteen hundred pounds so that Annie could start up in business on her own. She borrowed £100 which went towards the purchase. Within a week part of the adjoining land was sold for more than £600, with half of which I paid off the house, the remainder going to Annie. I must have been barmy, for I hadn’t a penny myself at the time. When, after the war, and amid bitterness, I transferred the house to her as a deed of gift – my return for this was £250 – she sold it for a substantial sum – as a result of that deal Annie was to become the owner of many houses, and to make a great deal of money, only to lose it all, together with her friends. We didn’t meet for some years and when we did her first words to me were, ‘You always said you couldn’t buy friendship.’

  So once again Annie is back in my life; but a different Annie now, one who almost adores the man she hated, for his kindness in her need reduced her to shame.

  But with Annie leaving The Hurst I was at the mercy of Mrs Webster. Temper and bad cooking were the least of my worries. I knew that I would have to make a go of The Hurst, for so much more depended on it, so I decided to run it entirely as a home for mental defectives and epileptics, and so began planning to leave the Institution.

  For some months after Kate went North I knew a feeling of release, and then Davie died. Drowned one night when he was returning to his ship. They had been having a night out, as was usual when his boat made its weekly docking, and in the dark he fell into the river, and the bottles in his pocket helped to weigh him down.

  Her sorrow at this time was terrible. Davie had not only loved her, he had adored her. To him she could do no wrong, and she had known the only real happiness she’d had in her life through him, and now he was gone.

  The only thing that would ease the pain was whisky.

  She was living in a flat in Larkin’s house, the big house on the terrace in the New Buildings. I stayed with her for a fortnight and it was a continuous nightmare. When sober, her anguish tore at me until I was even glad when it was hushed with the drink.

  She hadn’t a penny coming in and I put in some work to get her a sum of money from the company Davie had worked for. They weren’t obliged to give her anything, but they allowed her something over two hundred pounds. I asked if they would give it to her at the rate of two pounds a week and this was arranged.

  I think it was in the May when she received her first payment, but by the first week in August there was nothing left. Annie came to me to say she had been sending her money for the past fortnight – Annie was always good like this – apparently Kate had gone to the company with a tale of setting up a business, and they had given her the lot, and she had spent every farthing. She couldn’t have drunk all that amount herself in that short time and still lived, but you can always get friends when you have money. She could never keep money. Perhaps that’s why she survived until she was seventy-three.

  I left the Institution in the August 1939 and was glad to do so for they had not been happy years. I always seemed to be at war with someone, from the Matron downwards. She, too, wanted to dominate my life, and pick my friends, and so we would quarrel and make it up, and quarrel again. The strain of running the laundry at my standard was wearing and I thought my staff would be glad to see me go; so it was heartening when, meeting one of them later, she said, ‘Oh we wish you were back. We thought you were the very devil at first but we all grew to respect and like you. You see, we knew exactly how far we could go and where we stood with you.’

  Even the Sister Tutor asked me if I wouldn’t consider going back, that is if I wasn’t married. They all thought I’d been married on the quiet, for who would be mad enough in 1939 to give up a job with three pounds a week plus dinners and a pension unless to pick up a bigger pay packet.

  For weeks afterwards I too wondered if I wasn’t a little mad for I had only two patients, but I thought, let my private wars settle a bit and then Tom and I would get married quietly.

  A few weeks later war started, and I was turned into one of the m
inute cogs in its wheel.

  As I had fifteen rooms in The Hurst I was told that I had to fill them either with children or blind people. Children were out of the question, with mental defectives, so I took the blind, and for a year, with the help of Gladys – the antithesis of Mrs Webster who was now managing Annie’s house under my supervision, for Annie herself was in the Army – and Tom, after school, I coped with twelve blind men from the East End of London. I received a pound a head for each man, out of which he had to be fed, nursed – some were bedridden – shaved, hair cut and entertained. Like the wireless, I had a Monday-night-at-eight during which they had a sing-song and dance, and beer and extras. All out of a pound a week.

  I was always a very good manager but even so I couldn’t make that pound cover the cost. But what was money anyway, I thought; just take a day at a time, we might all be dead tomorrow. So I went on cooking, cleaning, nursing and washing. Whereas I had never wet my hands in the laundry, I now wet not only my hands, but my feet, because some of the men’s underwear would be so filthy I wouldn’t handle it but tramped it out in the bath.

  A year of being on duty for twenty-four hours a day, together with the previous ten years of hard work and anxiety was now beginning to tell. I was under the doctor for what he termed nervous debility, and I was bleeding from the nose every day. This he looked upon as a safety valve.