Our Kate

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Why?’ said the priest.

  ‘Because I ain’t got no da,’ said the little girl.

  The priest, a kind understanding man, made her, in defiance of the schoolmistress, head of the May Procession and dressed as Our Lady.

  I gave it the title of ‘She Had No Da’.

  About this time I forced myself to join the Hastings Writers’ Circle. I wrote other stories about other children, and read them to the members, and they were quite well received.

  Then one very bad Friday, it was not only Friday, but the thirteenth, I dared to make a stand against superstition, against fear, against God. I had, on this day, unthinkingly taken up a pair of scissors and stood cutting my nails. Then, as on that far Friday in the kitchen, the scissors went hurtling from me. Hadn’t I had enough without asking for more? What was I thinking about? Yes, what was I thinking about. Slowly I felt welling up in me what I can only describe as a great anger, an anger directed against fear, against the cause of it, and I dived for the scissors and chopped off my nails. Then going to the window, and looking upwards over the top of the trees and into the sky, I sent tearing heavenwards words that made me tremble with fear even as I forced them out. But I was saying them, saying them aloud and defiantly. I was answering back my fears for the first time. What the hell does it matter! To blazes and bloody damnation with it all! . . . God, dogma, the Catholic Church, the Devil, Hell, people, opinions, laws, illegitimacy . . . and fear. Bugger them all. I was crying out aloud to the sky, ‘I’ll fear no more! Do you hear? I’m telling you I’ll fear no more, I’m vomiting for the last time. Do what you like. Everlasting torment! Ha! I’ve had it.’

  It was a brave show, that much could be said for it. It would be nice to say, too, that at that point a miracle happened and I feared no more.

  This was three years after my breakdown, and had I known that another ten years would have to pass before I could go a full week without fear of some kind, I might not have felt so confident.

  Later, on that particular Friday, as I sorted among my stories to find something to take to the Writers’ Circle, a section of my mind seemed to open onto the past, but in a different way. All the past had held for me during the previous three years was fear, and mixed-up, intangible, terrifying thoughts, but now, out of this same past stepped a child. She seemed to take shape before me. She was the little girl I had put in ‘She Had No Da’. She had long nut-brown ringlets, a heart-shaped face, round blinking eyes, a pert mouth and an uptilted nose with a little cut on the left side. And she stood looking at me, and I at her. And I realised that a great deal of my mental trouble was that I had been over sorry for this child. I had forever compared her with those in a more favourable position and I had bestowed on her what I hated to receive from other people, pity. Yet the pity for her was embedded in my system and I couldn’t eradicate it by just willing it so, it would have to be worked out.

  Later that evening, at the Writers’ Circle, I read this short story. I read it while seated; I had rheumatism in my legs. No-one would have believed me if I’d had the courage to tell them that I couldn’t stand on my feet and talk, or read, for any length of time because of nerves. The reception that this little story received astounded me. It was clapped and clapped, and one or two members at the back of the room even stood up while clapping. I cried on my way home. I knew now that the way to get rid of the pity for this child was to write her out of my system, and so began the ‘Mary Ann’ stories, although they didn’t take shape in book form until almost eight years later.

  I had read extensively for years, starting with Chaucer, in the original – I knew no better. I didn’t know there was a translation, and the original read very much like Geordie language, anyway – Erasmus, Donne, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, and had even struggled with Finnegans Wake.

  I never read for pleasure, only instruction, and I could talk of books; but here again, I found the same stumbling block that I had met with in Harton Institution. One was suspect if one showed off one’s knowledge. Hadn’t she worked in a laundry? When I sensed this attitude it was hopeless to try and discuss anything; in fact, it stripped me of what learning I had acquired and reduced me at times to shades of Kate, and Mrs Malaprop.

  Up to a point I was well-read; and so, being well-read and knowing that I was a natural writer, what more did I need? Nothing; nothing at all. And this is where Tom’s criticism came in and was very hurtful to me.

  What I did need apparently, what was essential to good writing, was good grammar. I knew that a noun was the name of anything; I knew what an adjective was, but did I know anything about clauses? Did I know anything about prepositions or conjunctions? Did I know anything about direct or indirect objects of the verb? Did I know anything about subordinating a clause?

  No, I knew nothing about the intricate depths of grammar, and it was a known fact that few writers did.

  So I said to Tom there was no need for me to learn that kind of grammar, I wanted to write natural dialogue.

  But he said I couldn’t fill my books with natural dialogue, I must use some prose. So I must learn grammar.

  All right, I would learn grammar.

  Tom thought I was being very sensible. Often his criticism was harsh and reduced me to painful tears. This kind and thoughtful man, who was known never to say a rough word to anyone, would slay me with a sabre-edged sentence. North-country people might think like that, and talk like that, but I had to put it over grammatically, so he said.

  From this time on, each day, he set me a lesson. I learned slowly, with the result that in my second year of writing I was writing slowly, and thoughtfully, and correctly, about north-country people who spoke grammatical dialogue – and it lacked guts.

  After many months Tom was forced to realise that if I was going on with my writing it had to be in my way of thinking, and not academically. Not for me the chewing over of the perfection of a sentence, but getting down the sense of it as I saw it through the character.

  But Tom’s help was invaluable; I was born to write, I knew that now, and that I would have reached my goal I also know, but I was fortunate in having in my husband a harsh critic, and a kind man. At this time, too, I had to face another fact and this was that I wouldn’t write a word that anyone would really want to read until I threw off the pseudo-lady and accepted my early environment, me granda, the pawn, the beer carrying, the cinder picking, Kate’s drinking, and of course my birth, for it was these things that had gone to make me. Also, to own up to being a Northerner and all this implied.

  It was this cathartic outlook that set the pattern for my first novel.

  I was in the middle of writing the novel when Major Christopher Bush gave a lecture on ‘How to write a novel’ in the Hastings Library. It was a bitter winter’s night and everyone with sense was indoors. There were only about a dozen people at the lecture, and when the Major, talking to his all-female audience, told them that any woman who could write a laundry list could write a novel, I dared, when after the lecture the questions were being put to him, to disagree with him on this point. Then, feeling that my attack had been a little out of place, I spoke to him alone just before I left the room. I found him most kind and interested in the fact that I was writing a novel. He gave me his agent’s address and told me to send the first chapters to him.

  In a high state of excitement I followed Major Bush’s advice, and within a short time had a reply from John Smith, of Christy & Moore, to say I must let him have the finished work as soon as possible.

  Kate Hannigan was accepted by the first publisher Mr Smith sent it to. I was on my way.

  I knew that I was going to make money out of this book, thousands and thousands. You read in the papers about the money authors made, look at Somerset Maugham. Why not Catherine Cookson?

  My agent had told me in a letter that he would get me what he could, no stated sum, just what he could. Being a member of the Writers’ Group I should have had some vague idea what one got for a first novel, but I cann
ot remember a novel being discussed. The readings and discussions all concerned short stories, articles and poems. I think most of us at that time came under the heading of Art for Art’s sake. So my ignorance on the money question can be understood.

  Anyway, I knew I would receive a substantial amount. I’d even thought in the region of a gardener, a car and a fur coat – my hands were like a navvy’s with working both inside and outside the house. To keep fifteen rooms shining took some doing, besides all my other commitments.

  I had made myself into a working machine. Apart from wanting to fill my every moment and keep my mind occupied, we hadn’t the money to employ anyone for even a short length of time. During our years in The Hurst Tom learned to be an efficient plumber, decorator and convertor, but he still could not cope adequately in his limited time with this large decaying house.

  So we needed money badly, especially for the roof.

  Then I received a letter from Mr Smith, or John as he soon became. In it, he said that the publishers were offering a hundred pounds advance against royalties on Kate Hannigan.

  a hundred pounds! Ten pounds to the typist, the agent’s fees. A year’s solid writing. a hundred pounds. Bang went the idea of outside help, the dream of a car and a fur coat.

  I did not realise then that a hundred pounds was a generous offer to a nonentity, because that’s what you are, as a writer of a first novel. You are a horse who hasn’t run.

  It was Tom who said wait until they get into the shop and start to sell. We did not know then, the most a bookseller will take of most first authors is three copies, sale or return.

  I survived the disappointment and leaned more heavily on the glory of being in print, of being a novelist. There is a certain particular and special madness attached to having a novel published, a first novel.

  The madness was strong on me the day I received a letter, through my agent, asking if I would go to London and have lunch with my publisher. He was no longer the publisher, he was my publisher. It was a wonderful feeling to have a publisher. Funds were very low at the time; Tom, a Grammar School master, with a good honours degree, was earning the vast sum of forty pounds a month. But I must have some new clothes to go and meet my publisher. I had made do and mended for so long that I had nothing presentable in which to descend upon London, so, taking a little from the rate box, the coal box, the electric box – all our commitments had a box to themselves – I got rigged out and was prepared for the great adventure.

  I took the Parker Road bus into the town. This bus I used two or three times a week when I went shopping, and early in the morning it was full of women on the same bent, or going to work, many of them looking weary. This morning I sat among them, but I was not of them, I was Catherine Cookson going to London to have lunch with her publisher. I had the greatest desire to nudge the woman sitting next to me and say, in very refeened tones, ‘I’m going to London to have lunch with my publisher; I have written a novel.’ Had I done this, she would, without a doubt, have turned to me and said ‘So what!’

  I remember I sat in the corner of a compartment all the way to London opposite an old man who sniffed. Any other time I would not have been able to bear this. Apart from anything else I hated travelling in company, but this morning I not only sat opposite this old sniffer but we talked nearly all the way to London, for was I not a novelist going to town to have lunch with her publisher? The oil of success was flowing over me like warm butter. I discovered that morning that you can always be charming when you feel successful.

  I think I was a little taken aback when I arrived at Victoria not to be met by the Mayor and Corporation. But still, there was the taxi driver. I had a long talk with the taxi driver. This is not quite accurate – it would be more correct to say that the taxi driver had a long talk with me, and during our conversation I acquired a lot of new words. I thought I had heard them all in the docks, but no, this London taxi driver taught me many more during the course of our conversation. It took place on the edge of the kerb, while two cars, a bus and a lorry untwined themselves. No damage had been done, not really, just a little concertinaing together. Of course, what that taxi driver didn’t know was that I was a novelist, and up in London to have lunch with my publisher, and, unlike the mass of ordinary individuals. That was why I had walked in front of his cab on a corner.

  After escaping from the taxi driver I went up a side street and composed myself; eventually, I arrived at the offices of my publisher and was shown up to the top floor, sanctum sanctorum, and there I met a very surprised man. I had come on the wrong day.

  Dear John had made a mistake in the date.

  I went out to lunch with the secretary, a charming woman, and the person, incidentally, who was the first to spot ability in my novel and point it out to Mr Murray Thompson. But, she wasn’t my publisher; the glory of the day had vanished.

  I was on my way but I was, mentally, still very much in the breakdown. Although the chart was showing now more dots above the middle line than below, I still had frequent bouts of retching, and trembling. These were always the result of fear. And the fear was at its height when Kate paid her first visit to The Hurst after many years. She wanted to see me, and in a way I wanted to see her. I wanted to see what effect she would have on me. It was disastrous.

  In my waking hours I could control my thoughts and what they prompted me to do, but what I was afraid of was that the force of my dreaming would compel me to walk in my sleep, for never a night had passed since I started the breakdown but I dreamt of her, and the dreams all followed the same pattern. She was in a state of drink, and I was beating her with my fists, or choking the life out of her. Always I was struggling with her. From these dreams I would wake up trembling, sweating and exhausted. The night before she arrived, I made up my mind to ask Tom to tie me to the bed, so that, should I try to rise while still asleep, I would wake up. But then I told myself not to suffer this humiliation.

  Kate came. She was shocked by the sight of me. I was very thin. I wasn’t shocked by the sight of her, she was as I had expected her to be. Yet during the fortnight she was with us not once did she have a drink. The days in her company were like me granda’s salt in a raw wound, and the nights were nightmares, when all I wanted to do was go across the landing and kill her.

  The following year she came for a month, and I knew she was happy to be with me. During this visit she said to me it was a wonder I hadn’t had a breakdown much earlier, for if a child was affected by the condition of the mother during pregnancy then it wouldn’t have surprised her had I been born mental. I’m sure she was absolutely blind to the fact that it was her continuous drinking, and its power to change her character, which largely contributed to my breakdown.

  Fourteen

  If it wasn’t for the terrible torment endured through a breakdown it would be good for everyone to experience it, for no state is so self-revealing.

  All during this time of trial Tom had been wonderful with me. I wanted sympathy from no-one else but him, and this was bad, and we both knew it, but it seemed that I had only him in the whole wide world. So, feeling like this, I don’t know from where I dragged the courage to tell him not to sympathise with me; and when he took me at my word, being a woman, I blamed him. I felt, once again, lost and completely alone. But now he had hurt my pride, and this acted as a spur to make me fight all the harder against my condition. To be beholden to no-one, to do it on my own.

  I knew by this time, too, that I was not alone in my mental agony, the war was beginning to take its toll on nerves, and so I wrote my second broadcast, calling it, ‘Putting nerves in their place’. My first broadcast had been called ‘Learning to draw at thirty’.

  It was strange how I first managed to get on the wireless; it all happened because I was annoyed. A lady made a remark, in public, half in fun and whole in earnest, about the carrying quality of my voice. And as I was going home the thought came to me: I’ll get on the wireless; I’ll show her where my voice can carry me. And that i
s how it started. Each morning for three months, when Tom had gone to school, I took the script that I had written, about learning to draw, into the study, and, sitting opposite the electric light switch, I waited for it to turn red, because I understood that’s what happened in a broadcasting studio. When I thought I could read the script well enough for the BBC I sent it up, and to my surprise was asked to go for an audition. And I was on.

  And now, I thought, I’m going to kill two birds with one stone. I’m going to get rid of the fear of anyone knowing I’ve had a breakdown by speaking of it, and in doing it I will help others, because I realised that many people were suffering as much from the fact that anyone should know that they had had a breakdown as from the trouble itself. But even knowing this, the result of the broadcast was astounding. I had letters from all kinds of people, all suffering. Moreover, many people came to see me, people who couldn’t believe that I was in the same state as themselves. They imagined that I could, at one time, have felt as terrible as they did, but they could not believe that I was still feeling like this, for a good part of the time anyway.

  So, on the days when I hit bottom again and felt I just couldn’t go on, I would remember certain people to whom my apparently peaceful mental condition was as a lodestar, and they, in their turn, would help me to go on with the fight.

  I was helped, too, at this time very much by the writings of Leslie Weatherhead. So much did he help me that I wrote him a letter of thanks and was amazed to get a reply by return of post, thanking me in turn for giving him a bright start on a dull Monday morning. I was puzzled by this until I learned through his further writings that he too knew all there was to know about breakdowns.