The Devil and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  The latch of the door clicked, and she flung up her head, her eyes clutching at Mike’s face. But when his eyes moved quickly away from hers she turned round and joined her hands together and pressed them into her chest.

  Mike moved slowly across the stone floor, his steps ringing with the weight of his body, the weight that seemed to have increased in the past few hours. He was heavy all over, his head, his limbs, his mind. He was old; he, like Lizzie, knew he was old. Never again, he felt, would he find an urge towards life. The latest news was that she had been noticed leaving a Hastings train on Charing Cross Station. She had been in the company of an old man, he had had her by the hand. Her being with an old man had been confirmed earlier by the two women in the train who had rung up after the nine o’clock news.

  He stood looking in the fire, his thumbs in his belt. He could see himself standing that way. He seemed to be outside of himself, and he saw himself possessed by an odd quietness, part of a terrifying quietness, a quietness full of calculated premeditation, and this part was talking to Mr Lord. It was saying, ‘You’re to blame for this, you and you only. You wanted to take her away from me, didn’t you? Well, now you’re going to pay for it.’ And as he watched this side of himself, he knew that if she was not found by the morning he would make the old man pay, and pay thoroughly.

  Then there was the other side. He both saw and felt this side – a tearing, raging, cursing side – wanting to run, to fly hither and thither; to search and kill; to turn men round in the street and stare in their faces and demand, ‘Have you seen her? Have you seen her? Have you seen her?’ He saw himself taking a man by the throat and bearing him to the ground and stamping on his face until there was nothing left . . .

  The latch moved again, and now both swung round towards the door as Mr Lord entered, accompanied by Michael. With a pitiable frailty the old man came into the room. Gone was his brusqueness and supercilious manner; he looked like any old man who had lost all he possessed, and when he spoke, even his voice sounded frail. He addressed himself to Mike, as he said haltingly, ‘I’ve just heard – there may be a chance she’s on the northbound train.’

  ‘What? Who? How did you hear?’ Lizzie stood before him, standing close and peering into his face.

  He put out his hand and patted her arm. ‘They phoned. I’m going to Newcastle now.’ He turned towards Mike, who said nothing but picked up his cap from the table and went out.

  Mr Lord now spoke to Michael, but without looking at him, as he made for the door. ‘Don’t you come, you stay with your mother.’

  Michael stood watching him until he went out, and when the door was closed he turned and looked at his mother. Then throwing himself into a chair, he flung his arms across the table and, dropping his head on them, began to sob.

  Lizzie, going swiftly to him, put her arms about him, and drew his head to her breast, saying, ‘There, there! She’ll be all right. Very likely she’ll be on the train. Yes, that’s it. She wanted to come home.’ For a moment she tried to make herself believe this, until Michael, raising his head from her chest, muttered between gulps, ‘How – how could she?’ Then again, ‘How could she? She couldn’t come by herself.’ His head dropped, and Lizzie, her hands still on his hair and hope gone, murmured, ‘No, she couldn’t come by herself.’

  It must have been three-quarters of an hour later when Lizzie, with her arms still around Michael but now sitting beside the fire in a form of stupor, heard the car come back. The sound seemed to inject them both with life again, and they sprang up and reached the door together, then stopped dead, peering into the night. The farm looked as if lit up for a gala. There were lights on outside the byres, there were lights in Mr Lord’s new house on the hill, which meant that Ben was also keeping vigil; the Jones’s light was on too, but not the Polinskis’. The voice of Mr Jones came to them from the farmyard. It was loud as if he was crying across a distance, and it asked, ‘You got her?’

  When there was no answering voice, no scampering of feet, Lizzie’s hand tightened on Michael’s shoulder and they both turned slowly back into the house, leaving the door open.

  Within a few minutes Mike came in. He looked wild, half mad, his hair was matted with sweat and falling into corkscrews about his brow. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, and he seemed to have lost his height. Lizzie looked at him across the table, and Michael looked at him, and he returned their glances with a wild stare.

  Lizzie’s voice sounded like a whimper when she said, ‘You heard nothing?’

  ‘No.’ He beat his clenched fist on the corner of the table; then striding to the fireplace he leant his head against the mantelpiece.

  Lizzie stared at his back. She could give him no relief – for a moment she was barren of everything but fear – it was left to Michael to offer a crumb of comfort.

  ‘Tony’s been in, Da. He’s got the idea she’ll make her way home somehow. He’s gone back to Pelaw Station to the phone. He says—’

  Mike swung round from the fire. ‘Make her way home! With an old man?’ He was speaking to Michael now as one man to another, and Michael’s eyes dropped before the knowledge his father was imparting to him.

  ‘Oh, God in Heaven!’ Now Mike’s voice was high and rough, and he was shouting as Lizzie had been shouting, and using almost the same words. ‘She should never have left this house. But who’s to blame for her going? Him! Him!’ He was still addressing Michael, but he was really speaking to Lizzie. ‘The old boy – the old boy who must be placated. Well, this is the end, I’ve had enough. I’m finished, but before I’m done I’ll put paid to him. He wanted her away from me – I know, oh, I know, I wasn’t blind – and now she’s away – away! Away! And he’ll go away an’ all. My God, he will!’

  Into Lizzie’s misery came a terrible fear. The look on Mike’s face was not sane, and his jealousy of the old man because of his love for Mary Ann was turning into something grim and gigantic. It was like a madness developing before her eyes, and what it would lead to she could see as plainly as if it was happening. By this time tomorrow tragedy could have been heaped upon tragedy.

  She attempted to swing his thoughts away from his mad intent by saying angrily, ‘Yes, go on! Blame someone else, put the blame on anybody but yourself. Mr Lord, what’s he got to do with her going away? It was for you, you, she went away!’

  ‘Me?’ The demand filled the room.

  ‘Yes, you – you who were never capable of doing anything on your own – you who had to be sustained by her. Why did she go away? Why? I’ll tell you.’ In her effort to turn his mind from Mr Lord she knew she was going too far, she was going to tell him things that in a saner moment, she would have cut out her tongue rather than voice, she was going to make him plain to himself. ‘She was giving you security, she was buying you a job. Yes!’ She screamed at him now, ‘Raise your eyebrows, open your mouth – she was buying you a job. She sold herself, if you like, to get you this job. Did the old man send her to school? Yes, but she only went because she knew that you owed him a debt and she was paying it. She was paying for your job, do you hear?’

  Before her eyes Mike seemed to swell, and then up from the depths of his being, he dragged his voice, deep and terrible. ‘You’re a bloody liar! Tell me you’re a bloody liar!’ He went a step nearer to her, just one, and he looked like a mountain shifting itself heavily. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth.’ Now Lizzie’s voice was screaming, and her hands were pressed against each cheek, holding her face as if to give herself support for she had gone too far, she knew she had gone too far, but she could not stop herself and she went on yelling, ‘She’s always borne your burdens, she’s always directed your cause – you, the big fellow. And as soon as she was out of your sight what did you have to do? Laugh and lark on with a lazy, dirty young—’

  It was Michael’s voice now, high-pitched, yelling, ‘Stop it! Stop it, Ma!’ that checked hers. So hysterical was it that immediately it had a calming effect on them both, and when they
turned from each other and looked at him he jumped with both feet from the ground, he jumped and stamped on the stone floor and yelled again, ‘Stop it! Stop it! Both of you.’ Then before they could react in any way he made a wild dash for the open door, and Lizzie, remembering another occasion when their fighting and the hopelessness of their lives had got the upper hand of him, rushed after him and caught him just on the threshold. But what words she would have said to him were checked, for there, coming up the path, was Mr Lord.

  Stepping back into the room and pulling the struggling boy with her, she made way for the old man to enter. When he had done so, he stood looking from one to the other. Nothing escaped him. Unasked and uninvited, he walked towards the table and slowly turning a chair round he sat down and, addressing Mike without looking at him, he said, ‘Sit down.’

  Mike did not move, and Mr Lord, in a voice utterly unlike his own because of the touch of humility in it, said, ‘All right, I know how you feel, and I’m going to tell you now that I’m taking all responsibility. It was my fault the child went away.’ He raised his eyes to Mike’s red-rimmed, staring gaze. ‘I wanted her to be different, I wanted to give her a chance that you hadn’t it in your power to give her. I know I was wrong.’

  When Mike spoke, his own voice sounded calm, even normal: ‘Did you give me this job on condition that she went away to school?’

  There was a long pause during which Lizzie’s eyes were on Mr Lord and Michael’s were fixed on his father. Then Mr Lord, his eyes dropping to his hands, said slowly, ‘Yes . . . It was her idea in the first place. She came to me and told me you could manage this farm. I hadn’t thought about it, it was the last thing that would have entered my mind, but I grant you that once it had entered I saw the possibility of it – of it being a good thing. And you’ve proved that, there is no doubt about it.’

  ‘Huh!’ There was a smile on Mike’s face, but a terrible smile, a smile devoid of pride, devoid of all the things that gave a man self-respect, and of all the qualities that any man needed Mike needed self-respect.

  Lizzie had wanted to lift the blame from Mr Lord’s shoulders and put it on Mike’s, and she had succeeded, but with an agony filling her she saw that the weight was too heavy for him. She need not now fear for what he might do to Mr Lord, but she need fear, and fear terribly, what he might do to himself.

  She moved towards him, until she was standing at his side, and she looked up into his face, all her love and tenderness returning, and just as she was about to put her hand on his sleeve it was arrested. Not only was her hand, but her whole body was stiffened into a state of immobility. And not only hers, but Mr Lord’s and Michael’s. Only Mike moved. His head jerked upwards on the sound of running steps, light, tripping, running steps. They all heard the gate bang; and the flying steps came up the path, accompanied now by short, sharp gasps of breath, and before their unbelieving gaze there stood the child, hat in hand, in the doorway, and it was evident in this moment that in spite of her audible breathing not one of them thought her to be real.

  She stood, as it were, transfixed in the frame of the door, held there by their eyes. All the way from the crossroads her mind had gabbled what she would say. ‘Oh, Ma!’ she’d say, ‘I’m sorry, but I had to come. Oh, Da!’ she’d say, ‘I missed you, I had to come. Oh, I did miss you! Oh, Ma!’ she’d say, ‘it was awful . . . And Beatrice and Sister Catherine . . . and I can’t go back. I don’t care, I can’t go back; I want to stay home.’ But now all that was pressed down by their eyes, and what she said was, ‘Hallo.’ Just a small whisper, ‘Hallo.’ The one word went to each of them, saying, ‘Hallo.’ It made them all tremble in their combined relief at the memory of their fears of the past hours. It was Lizzie who spoke first.

  ‘Child!’ she said, ‘Child!’ She flew towards the doorway, and Mary Ann, with a bound now, sprang towards her and flung her arms about her waist. And Lizzie, gazing stupidly down at her head, her hand smoothing her hair, repeated, ‘Child, child!’ She did not ask, ‘How have you come? Where have you come from? Who have you been with?’ but just kept saying, ‘Child! Child! Child!’

  Mr Lord was standing now by the table. He looked even older than he had done a moment ago, if that were possible. His wrinkled skin was moving in little tremors all over his face and his eyes were blinking as if he had just woken from sleep. Quite suddenly he sat down again. Nor did Michael rush to greet her, but groping behind him he felt for a chair, and he too sat down. This left only Mike.

  Across the room Mike looked at Mary Ann, pressed hard against her mother and a terrible feeling overcame him, a sort of hatred for this flesh of his flesh, this power embodied in the smallness of her, this power, without which, even his wife had said, he was lost. A wife was there to bolster a man, but when she told him the truth it was the truth, as he only too well knew now. He was nothing without his daughter. She had got him a job, a job as a manager of a farm, a job beyond his wildest hopes and imaginings. He had imagined he had achieved this all by himself – him, the big, red-headed, burly, one-handed Mike Shaughnessy had secured a grand job with his own ability. But no, he had been given the job because of his child’s power. She held the power to take hold of a heart – an old man’s heart. And now, because of her, his whole life had been rent; he had been stripped naked, split open and presented to himself; it was as if he was gazing at his bowels and he cold not bear the sight of them . . . and all because of her, because she had run away from school. He could see it now. She may have been with a man, but she had come to no harm, she had come in through the door just as if she had returned from school in Jarrow. Just as easy as that. But during the time she had left the convent and arrived in this room, his whole life had altered and he had become old. The first thing the news of her flight had done to him was to press the weight of years onto him. Never again, he felt, would he know what it was to feel young and virile; never would he be able to laugh, to bellow from his belly great sounds of mirth. And then the knowledge that she had bought him the job had stripped him even of his remaining manhood – he was nothing, only something that a child could buy. Inwardly, he had always resented the fact that it was because of her that Mr Lord had first employed him, but his work on the farm, he felt, had proved his capabilities and carved his own niche. Now he knew that that was only a wishful thought in his mind – he had carved nothing. The old man had said, ‘Make your da a manager! Well, all right, I’ll do it if you go away to school.’ He had carved nothing.

  Mary Ann raised her wet face from her mother’s body and looked through blurred vision across the room. There was her da, big as she remembered him. She could only see the outline of him, but now she rushed to him, muttering, ‘Da! Oh, Da!’ Her hands were outstretched and her body seemed to leap over the distance, but when she clutched at the remembered flesh something happened – she was thrust roughly back. She stood blinking up at him. Her vision cleared and she saw his face, and her mind told her that he was mad, flaming mad. He was vexed with her for running away, that was understandable, but nothing told her that she couldn’t get round this. She thrust out her hand to grab his sleeve, and when the blow hit her, her thinking stopped and she became frozen inside. Her stunned mind did not even say, ‘Me da’s hit me!’ This was too big for even thought.

  As Mike had raised his hand and struck at the fingers clutching at him, Lizzie had gasped and sprung forward. Michael too had gasped, only Mr Lord remained still. And when Mary Ann, the tears flooding silently down her face, turned for an explanation and looked from one to the other, she saw that all eyes were not on her, but on her da. But no-one spoke, no-one said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  Mr Lord raised himself slowly from the chair. Not now did he say, ‘There’s no need for that,’ not now, as he once had done, did he check Mike from threatening to smack her bottom; instead he appeared indifferent to what might happen to her. His eyes looked at her but did not seem to see her; they rested on her as if he was making a conscious effort to blot her out of his min
d, and when he turned from her, she found that for a moment the feeling of horror at the blow her father had given her was lost in a new feeling that made her want to rush to the old man and cry, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it, but I wanted to come home. I’ll tell you all about it and then you’ll see.’ But she said none of these things. She knew Mr Lord only too well, and her mind told her that he was finished with her, and this thought brought a pain into her body, surprising in its effect, because it was equal to that pain which her da had caused.

  As Mr Lord disappeared through the door Lizzie sank onto a chair. She, too, had felt something of what the old man was experiencing. She did not pay any attention for the moment to her daughter. Only Michael now turned his attention to her, and after staring at her for a moment his face screwed up, trying as it were to associate this small sister with the trouble and agony that had come upon the house, and finding it an impossibility. He turned from her and rushed upstairs, and when his door banged overhead, Mary Ann, shaking with sobs, walked slowly to her mother and put her hand tentatively on her knee, as if to question her welcome to this quarter, too. Lizzie’s arm came out, slowly, but steadily, and pulled the child once again into her embrace. And across her head she looked at Mike.

  For the first time in his life Mike found he had nothing to say, good or bad, to his daughter. He had threatened to bray her often enough because of her escapades, because of her constant fighting with Sarah Flannagan; now, he hadn’t brayed her as a child, but hit her a blow that he would have dealt to a grown-up.