Our Kate
Page 28
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Do you bleed from the stomach?’
‘No.’
‘Were there any bleeders in the family?’
‘Not that I know.’
‘Think. Did you ever know anyone on your mother’s side to have this trouble?’
‘No.’ I could say this for a certainty.
‘What about your father’s side?’ He stared at me and I stared at him, and the students stood waiting for my answer. Should I say no, or, I didn’t know? Should I fumble and lie out of this awkward situation? I looked back at the big, broad figure of the man sitting opposite to me, waiting, he represented the entire world. He was the children in the back lane saying, ‘You haven’t no da.’ He was the girl who wouldn’t let me into her party. He was the people of the New Buildings who had pitied little Katie. He was some of the girls in Harton; the one who would have taken from me my good character, and especially the one who had thought she had spotted syphilis. He was the man who had turned me down.
‘I am illegitimate.’
There, I had said it, aloud and in public, this frightening word, this word that had bred fear, that had brought shame into my life, this word that had started all the trouble. Not bastard, or fly-blow, or side-shoot, but the dictionary word, illegitimate, which meant ‘Not authorised by law, improper, not born in lawful wedlock – bastard wrongly inferred, abnormal.’
‘Yes, yes, er . . . yes.’ The thick lids blinked twice before the head turned away. The students left; we talked a little more and then I went out.
It was a bitterly cold day but I was sweating. It was running freely between my breasts and down my legs. Fear was once more in command. I had a blood disease, an inherited blood disease. My God, this too. After all I’d gone through I had to have an inherited blood disease.
‘Come off it!’
The woman who had reasoned and fought for ten years was speaking for the first time as a mature adult. She said, and with chilling saneness, ‘If you’ve got an inherited blood disease you’ve had it since you were born. You are now fifty. You haven’t died with it so far, so why the panic. And we’ll waste no more sympathy because of what you’ve gone through either, as child, or woman. Katie may have been entitled to sympathy but she never wanted it. And don’t forget, a minute ago back in there you shot your bolt, you admitted the shame publicly . . . it’s done; you’ll never feel it in the same way again.
‘And now you can write it all down.’
I have written my tale in the room where Kate died. The roses are tapping on the window again and her presence is strong about me. I look towards the corner where her bed stood and she is smiling at me.
‘You’ll feel better now, lass.’
‘You think so?’
‘Sure of it.’
‘I’ve tried to be fair.’
‘You were always fair, lass, always. And you haven’t put down half that happened, you never need worry about not being fair. But because you’ve learned to forgive things will settle in you now.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve still a long way to go . . . and, well there’s my religion. I want a religion, something that I can believe in, not a denomination, a religion.’
‘It’ll come, lass, never doubt. Remember that piece of poetry you read to me once by somebody with a name like, like ammonia.’
‘You mean Aumonier.’
‘Yes, that’s him. Well, say it now, and say it every day and it’ll come true. Believe me lass, it’ll come true.’
I will seek Beauty all my days
Within the dark chaos of a troubled world I will
seek and find some Beauteous Thing.
From eyes grown dim with weeping will shine a Light
to guide me, and in Sorrow’s Hour I
shall behold a great High Courage.
I shall find the wonder of an infinite Patience,
and a quiet Faith in coming Joy and Peace.
And Love will I seek in the midst of Discord, and
find swift eager hands outstretched in welcome.
I will seek Beauty all my days, and in my quest
I shall not be dismayed.
I SHALL FIND GOD
Goodbye, Kate, and thank you for giving me life.
Catherine Cookson
‘Loreto’
Hastings
December 1968
The End