The Devil and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  Slowly he turned his face so that he was looking into her eyes, and muttered, ‘I was to blame for her coming back like that.’

  ‘You?’ Lizzie pressed her head away from him to see him better, and again repeated, ‘You?’ as though she thought the fever was causing a slight delirium.

  Snuffling, he nodded. ‘I wrote and told her.’ His eyes dropped. ‘I wrote and told her that I thought—’ He paused again; then suddenly sitting up in bed and holding his knees tight and dropping his head onto them he ended, ‘I told her about Mrs Polinski.’

  ‘Oh, Michael!’ Lizzie was aghast. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. Oh, Michael.’

  She was about to add, ‘But how did you know?’ when she checked herself. How could he not know? How could anyone not know what went on in the house? They were all so closely knit together. She bent towards him and put her arm around him, saying, ‘You only did what you thought was right. You missed her, like all of us. And if she had been here there would never have been any mention of Mrs Polinski. And I must tell you now, Michael’ – she raised his head and looked into his eyes, demanding by her look that he believed her – ‘that was my fault, not your da’s. It was my imagining things. I was lonely for her an’ all. Look’ – she now put her hand under his chin and raised his face – ‘do something for me, will you? Go and tell your da what you’ve told me.’

  She felt him shrink from her, and she pleaded, ‘It’ll be all right. You see, things have been said. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have. It was all through the worry of this business – and I’ve upset him terribly. Do this for me, Michael. Tell him it was your fault . . . you wrote and told her about things that you shouldn’t have. He won’t blame her so much then.’

  She saw that he was making a great effort to conquer the fear of confessing to his father his share in the trouble.

  ‘But will he wallop me?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Lizzie hastily. ‘Of course he won’t wallop you. Anyway, I’ll see he doesn’t. He’ll be only too pleased to know that all the blame isn’t hers. Come on now, get up and go down to the farm.’

  Lizzie left him, and as he dressed he asked himself as he had done dozens of times since last night if he had really told her anything in his letters. Sometimes he thought he had and sometimes he defended himself flatly by saying, ‘I never said a thing about me da going with Mrs Polinski.’

  Michael’s bewilderment was caused by his failing to realise that he had the kind of sister who never read what was on the lines but the substance that lay between them . . .

  Mary Ann had wandered aimlessly about for hours. She was home, she was on the farm. There were the cows, the bull, the young calves, the hens, the ducks, the geese, everything that she had longed to see again, yet now they held no interest for her. She had looked into the cowshed and met the cold stare of Mr Jones. Mr Jones had looked at her as if he could have walloped her, and Mrs Jones, from the backyard, had not waved to her. Len had grinned at her and exclaimed, in awe-filled tones, ‘Eeh, by, you’re not half a star!’ Mrs Polinski had looked at her coldly. Mrs Polinski looked different, older than when she had last seen her, and she realised that she not only disliked Mrs Polinski, she hated her. Another time she would have felt the strong desire to stick her tongue out at Mrs Polinski, but today she just turned her head away and made for the barn.

  Then she saw her da was in the barn – she saw his back bending over the bales – but she did not go to him. There was something high and unscalable between her and her da and she knew that she could do nothing herself to surmount it, so slowly and sadly she turned away and walked up the hill towards Mr Lord’s house. But only because she knew that Mr Lord wasn’t in it. She had seen him depart for Newcastle in the car earlier on. Although Mr Lord was now living in the house and the men had been and put up fine curtains at the windows, the house itself looked raw and unfinished. All around lay mounds of bricks and mortar and builders’ refuse. Slowly, as if picking her way over new territory, she walked round to the back entrance, impressed, in spite of herself, by the grandeur she glimpsed through the long, low windows. She would have loved to go inside but she felt, in fact she knew at this moment, that she would never, never be asked inside Mr Lord’s house.

  As she reached what was to be a walled courtyard with a pool in the middle, the place as yet merely roughly dug out, she saw Ben come out of the glass kitchen door. Ben stopped when he saw her, and his grave and forbidding countenance, which had once frightened her to death, did not soften, nor even did it take on a sign of recognition. Ben was a reflection of his master, he was not seeing Mary Ann. Within a minute he had returned through the glass door, and Mary Ann hurried out of the yard and made her way down the hill again, her fingers now, one after the other in turn, being pressed into her mouth, and her mind crying at all these people in her own defence, ‘I wasn’t to blame all the time . . . I wasn’t. It was Mrs Polinski and our Michael and that Beatrice, and Sister Catherine . . . I wasn’t to blame, I wasn’t. I don’t care if nobody ever speaks to me, I don’t care. Me ma’s all right. Me ma’s not like them. I don’t care – I don’t.’

  As she reached the gate near the farm, she saw across the yard a car draw up at the main gates, and she thought, ‘Them men again.’ This description covered policemen and newspaper reporters, but when she saw stepping from the car not only one of ‘them men’ but also Mr and Mrs Wilson, she clapped both hands over her mouth. An urge bid her fly to her old friends but reason prevailed and she turned and dived behind the big barn, across an open space to the little barn, and dashed into its cool dimness and stood with her back to the wall, her whole body trembling. There would be a row, there was bound to be another row, and Mr Wilson would get wrong. Eeh!

  ‘And now what’s the matter?’

  She swung round, startled to see Tony. He was standing near a number of old, battered and belabelled trunks, and she went to him swiftly and said, ‘It’s Mr and Mrs Wilson, they’ve just come.’ She stared at him for a moment then added, ‘There’ll be a row.’

  ‘No, there won’t. It’ll be all right. Stop trembling now.’ He took her hand and bent his face to hers and smiled, an unusually wide smile that momentarily took all the brooding sombreness from it. ‘What’ll you bet that this time next week everybody’s forgotten about the whole affair?’

  She stared up at him. ‘They won’t forget, ’cos nobody’s speaking to me. But I don’t care . . . If only me—’

  She didn’t go on to say that she didn’t care if nobody spoke to her again if only her da would, but Tony seemed to be able already to read her mind, and to understand Mike, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, this time tomorrow you and your da’ll be like – that.’ He crossed his long, lean fingers and held them up for her inspection and comfort. And she stared at them trying to see herself and her da joined again like them, but she couldn’t and her head drooped and once again she started to cry.

  ‘Come along, don’t cry. Dry your eyes. You’ll be back at your old school next week. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

  Her tears stopped quite suddenly, cut off as it were by this small shock, and she jerked her head up towards him and repeated, ‘Old school?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you want to go back to your old school?’

  She looked away from him around the barn, stocked with things that she had not noticed in it before. Old rubbish, she thought, from Mr Lord’s other house – trunks and cases and boxes. School . . . her old school . . . Going back to her school in Jarrow, she found, did not bring her any comfort at all – it could be said she abhorred the thought. Sarah Flannagan and all them, jeering at her. For the first time she asked herself what she had done, and answered quite truthfully, ‘Eeh! I must have been daft,’ and the convent, from which up to a moment ago she was glad she had escaped, now appeared to her as something personal and valuable she had lost. And all through Mrs Polinski and their Michael, and that Beatrice and Sister Catherine. But what school would she go to if she did
n’t go to Jarrow? She knew that Mr Lord would send her to no other school. Mr Lord was finished with her good and proper, there would be no forgiveness forthcoming from Mr Lord. If he had been mad and stormed at her she would have had some hope, but no, Mr Lord’s silence was as final as death.

  She was startled by Tony’s next question. It was as if he had a looking-glass on her mind, for he said, musingly, ‘Do you like Mr Lord?’

  Her voice was very small and low, ‘I used to.’

  ‘He’s been very good to you, hasn’t he?’

  Her conscience was heavy, and it weighed her head down as she murmured, ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s not good to many people, is he?’

  She raised her eyes slantwise to him. ‘No, I don’t think so; he’s bad-tempered.’

  ‘And cold and hard as iron inside.’

  Now her eyes were wide and staring. Tony’s face had taken on not only his solemn expression, but a hard, bitter look that made him suddenly appear old, and not a little frightening to her. She saw that his eyes were blazing, and she watched him lift his foot and savagely kick at one of the trunks. Then her eyes widened as she heard him swear under his breath, using bad words, as bad as any she had heard her da use, like, ‘Damn him to blazes!’ ‘Who the hell!’ and ‘Blast him!’ The only difference was he said them swanky.

  Eeh! It was Mr Lord he was at. He didn’t like Mr Lord. Mr Lord had been at him, but to kick the boxes like that and to swear!

  As if remembering her presence, he turned to her, his face still dark but his voice normal, saying, ‘I’m sorry, Mary Ann. Don’t take any notice. I’m like you, I take the needle.’

  She slid off the box and, looking up at him, she asked as one sufferer to another, ‘Has he been getting at you?’

  A smile that had no movement in it came into his eyes, and she thought, ‘He looks nice – sad-like, but I like him.’ And when he nodded, she said, as if in comfort, ‘Never mind, he’s always getting at somebody.’ Yet as she said this she felt somehow that she was betraying a trust.

  ‘Yes, he’s always getting at somebody.’

  He turned away towards the door, and she fancied she heard him mutter, ‘He always has.’ And she thought, That’s funny. What’s he carrying on for? He hasn’t been here very long. She felt that she had known Mr Lord forever, not just one year, while Tony, although he was ‘nice’, was really a newcomer on the scene. She watched him walk away, then stop abruptly, grope in his pocket, then turn and come back to her.

  ‘There’s only three left. You like Buttered Brazils?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, ta. Oh, Buttered Brazils!’

  Buttered Brazils were far and away above her finances, and she said again, ‘Oh, ta.’ Then it struck her that she shouldn’t say ‘Ta’ to him, because he didn’t talk like she did, he talked like them back at the convent. She looked at him now with new interest in her eyes. And he was like them back at the convent. She had noticed something different about him at dinner time when she sat opposite him at the table. The way he sat, the way he ate, the way he talked to her ma. Yes, he was like them at the convent. She said now, ‘Thanks,’ in her politest tone, and he smiled down at her for a moment, before moving away. She thought again, He’s nice, and not because he had given her some sweets. Mrs Polinski gave her sweets, but she didn’t think Mrs Polinski was nice – but he was. She became very firm in her mind about this. She liked him – he was nice.

  Thinking it policy to do so, she stayed in the barn for what seemed hours, not making a move to go outside until she heard from the distance the sound of the car starting up. And then, in spite of her relief, she felt a tinge of disappointment that nobody had come in search of her and a touch of curiosity as to why they hadn’t.

  When the fading brr! on the road told her the car was safely speeding away she walked into the yard again, around the big barn, and towards the house. There was no sign of her da or her ma, the whole place looked deserted, as if everyone had gone away in the car. But as she neared the back door she heard her mother’s voice, and the words that came to her told her she wasn’t speaking to her da, and for a moment Mary Ann was riveted to the spot. Not her granny, not today, she couldn’t bear it if her granny was here today.

  ‘It wasn’t really her fault,’ Lizzie was saying; ‘she should have never been sent in the first place.’

  Mary Ann, with her hand pressed tight to her chest, waited, and when the thick North-Country twang came bouncing out to her, ‘Yer right there, Liz. Aa’ve said it all along, it was a mad thing to do, separating her from him,’ a feeling akin to a great laugh swept over her, and she raced through the scullery and into the kitchen, crying ‘Mrs McBride! Oh, Mrs McBride!’

  Mrs McBride’s ox-like arms opened, and Mary Ann flung herself against her billowing bust, and the old woman cried, ‘Ah, hinny, it’s good to see ye! Aw! It is, it is. Here, let me hev a look at ya. Stand away.’ She pushed Mary Ann to arm’s length; then nodding her head and without a word of reprimand on her tongue, she said, ‘You’re grown. You’re grown up in the last few months.’

  ‘Have I, Mrs McBride?’

  ‘Ya have that, hasn’t she, Liz?’ the old woman looked up at Lizzie, and Lizzie, smiling for the first time in days, said, ‘Yes, I think she has, a little bit.’

  ‘When did you come, Mrs McBride?

  ‘Just a minute ago, hinny.’

  ‘How?’ Mary Ann was eager for details.

  ‘By the bus, of course – me car isn’t ready yet. But it will be soon, it’s being made to measure!’ She punched Mary Ann playfully, and Mary Ann laughed and grabbed at her hand and said, ‘Oh, Mrs McBride!’

  There was so much feeling in Mary Ann’s tone as she spoke her old friend’s name that Lizzie turned away and went into the scullery to fill the kettle, and Mrs McBride said, with a tremor in her voice, ‘So you’re back, me bairn?’

  Mary Ann’s face sobered, and she nodded solemnly.

  The old woman touched her cheek and, shaking her head and with a smile spreading over her fat wrinkled face, she said, ‘Eeh! ye know what? it’s a good job there are not two in the world like you, or else we would be in a state, wouldn’t we?’

  At this, Mary Ann moved into the comfort of the old woman’s knees, and tracing her finger around Mrs McBride’s frayed and rusty coat sleeve, and with one eye cocked upwards that held just a trace of amusement in it, she said, ‘There was a nun like you in the convent, Mrs McBride.’

  The shout that filled the kitchen brought Lizzie to the door, and Mrs McBride, her hands in the air, bellowed to her, ‘Have you heard this ’un?’

  Lizzie shook her head.

  ‘There’s a nun like me! Can you see that, Liz?’

  Again Lizzie shook her head and her smile broadened, and Mary Ann, looking from one to the other of the women, for the first time in days, laughed freely. ‘But there was, Ma. It was Sister Alvis; she talked like Mrs McBride, and she looked like her.’

  The roar filled the kitchen again, and Fanny cried, ‘Well, I’ve been likened to many things, and everything on the farm from a heifer to a cow in—’ She rubbed her finger across her nose and did not finish her description, but cried, ‘And many more things I’ve been likened to. But a nun! Begod, I’m going up in the world. What do you say, Liz, eh? A nun. Eeh! Oh, hinny!’ She touched Mary Ann’s cheek tenderly. ‘That’s imagination for you. God help her, poor woman, if she was like me.’

  ‘She was, Mrs McBride, and I liked her.’

  ‘Bless you, bairn.’

  ‘Mrs McBride—’ Mary Ann started playing with the buttons on the old woman’s blouse as she said, ‘You know something? I can speak French and German.’

  ‘No! French and German?’

  ‘Yes, I learnt it at the convent.’

  ‘Go on, let’s hear you.’

  Mary Ann considered a moment, then said very slowly, as if each word was being dragged from as far away as the convent, ‘Nous avons – une grande maison – et – un beau jardin . . . Je vive – avec ma m
ère et mon père. That’s me ma and da, that last bit.’

  ‘Your ma and da in French? God in Heaven! D’ye hear that, Liz? That’s what education does for you. Makes you into a foreigner.’ She laughed. ‘Go on, tell us some more.’

  ‘German?’

  ‘Aye, German. Oh my, can you speak German an’ all?’

  Mary Ann, all woes forgotten for the moment, and in an accent that was more Geordie than German, was telling her friend that this was her brother Hans, and Mrs McBride’s eyes were stretching to a complimentary width when an alarmed exclamation of, ‘Oh, no!’ from Lizzie made them both look towards the window.

  Lizzie was carrying a tray full of tea things which she now held stiffly suspended, and her gaze was fixed on something outside. Again she exclaimed, ‘Oh, no!’ then quickly turning she looked across the room and said, ‘Your granny!’

  ‘Me granny?’ Mary Ann had pulled herself from Mrs McBride, and Mrs McBride exclaimed, ‘Oh, God in Heaven, not her! How did she get here? She wasn’t on the bus.’

  Lizzie wearily putting down the tray on the table said, ‘She’s sported a taxi, seemingly.’

  Mary Ann could say nothing. She looked from her mother to Mrs McBride then towards the door, but she did not attempt to make her usual escape. She was experiencing very much the same feeling as she had done when she had been confronted by Beatrice at the door of the recreation room. She felt tied to the room, to the spot. She turned towards a chair and sat down. She had no fight in her with which to combat what was surely coming from her granny, and all for her, exclusively for her.

  Within a minute, there came a sharp rat-tat on the front door, and walking heavily Lizzie went to open it, while Mrs McBride arranged herself as if ready for battle. She opened her coat, smoothed down her skirt, hitched up her enormous bust, then folded her arms under it, while Mary Ann, from her chair, kept her eyes on the door.