The Lord and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘No? Why is he going to build his house here?’

  ‘Oh!’ She leant back from him. ‘Mike, that’s madness. He’s fond of her, I know, but he’s got no need to build a house here to see her. He can come in the car as often as he likes . . . Oh, that’s a silly idea, if ever there was one.’

  ‘I don’t know so much.’

  ‘It is. You know what he said. He’s retiring from an active part in his yard, and now feels he must have something to fill his time. It’s only reasonable he wants to build a house on his own land and be near his farm.’

  ‘Why did he have to come and explain it to us? It’s none of our business, is it? I’m only a hand here.’

  ‘He’s lonely,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Can’t you see? For all his money he’s lonely, and he doesn’t get on with people – he’s kept away from them too long.’

  ‘All I can see is he wants to run her life and mine. Well, I’ll give him a good working day, but from then on me life’s me own . . . and hers is mine an’ all, until she can look after herself.’

  He jerked himself from her hands and, taking up his cap, went out, whilst Lizzie, after staring at the closed door for moment, braced herself before going up the stairs.

  Mary Ann was sitting on the side of the bed, her eyes fixed wide in her drawn face.

  ‘You see what you’ve done? You’ve got your da into trouble with Mr Lord. Are you satisfied?’

  Mary Ann’s face became even whiter, and her eyelids drooped as if she were about to faint. Her silence was more telling than any verbal defence.

  The tenseness went out of Lizzie’s body, and moving her head in bewilderment she went to the bed and, sitting down, slowly drew her daughter into her arms.

  Like a small avalanche Mary Ann’s pent-up emotion was released. Sobbing and crying, she clung to her mother, while Lizzie rocked her, saying, ‘There now, there now, it’s all over. It’s all right, it’s all right. Stop that crying, it’s all right.’ But as she was saying it she wondered in her own mind whether it was all right. Mary Ann would forget most of the happenings of today; only the funny parts would remain, and tomorrow the whole family would likely be laughing at the recollection of Mr Jones tearing from the house. Yes . . . even Mike, for it bore out Mr Jones’ oft-used prophecy that he would rise in the world. But would the deep implications that the event had brought to the surface be forgotten? There had always seemed to be a state of undeclared war existing between Mike and Mr Lord, but this incident had brought about an open declaration. There could be only one victor in such a war – Mike. And what would the victory entail?

  Suddenly Lizzie felt very weary.

  Chapter Three: Christmas

  The kitchen was rich with the smells of cooking. There was the pastry smell, a mince smell, a herb smell, the smell of boiling bacon, and the warm sweet smell of cocoa.

  Mary Ann let the steam from her mug waft about her face; then she stuck her tongue down into the froth on the surface of the cocoa and licked at it.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ said Lizzie, turning from the baking board.

  ‘Well, it’s hot, Ma. Ma . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Lena says that Mr Lord’s goin’ t’give her a great big present.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Do you think he will?’

  ‘Lena must think so, else she wouldn’t have said so.’

  ‘I think she’s a liar.’

  ‘Don’t use that word!’

  ‘Well,’ Mary Ann took a sip of her cocoa, ‘Sarah Flannagan calls me that, and’ – she glanced covertly at Lizzie – ‘others do an’ all.’

  Lizzie suppressed her smile while redoubling her efforts with the rolling pin.

  ‘Look, there’s me da.’ Mary Ann jumped from her chair and made for the window, spilling her cocoa as she did so. And Lizzie cried, ‘Look what you’re doing!’

  She, too, looked through the window across the yard to where Mike was striding towards the cottage. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and not the usual time for him to come in; he had his break at ten. But his brows weren’t drawn, and he looked cheery . . . and handsome, she thought, like he did when they were first married. The winter sun was shining on his mop of red hair and lightening still further the new clearness of his skin. He was looking ten years younger than he did when they lived in Jarrow. But what was bringing him here at this time?

  ‘Da, d’you want some cocoa?’ asked Mary Ann.

  ‘Yes. And anything else that’s going . . . something smells good.’ He came and stood near Lizzie, and dipping his finger into the flour he rubbed it onto her cheek.

  Mary Ann gurgled. It always gave her a feeling of joy to see her ma and da larking on.

  ‘Give over.’ Lizzie pushed him with her elbow. ‘What are you here for, anyway?’

  Mike, hitching up his trousers, said with slow, exaggerated airiness, ‘His lordship’s asked me to accompany him into Newcastle. Me, Mike Shaughnessy, as ever was.’

  ‘Mr Lord?’

  ‘Mr Lord . . . his honour . . . his worship.’

  ‘Oh, Da, can I come?’

  ‘You cannot . . . Bejapers! Not even a queen would I allow to accompany me the day.’

  Mike was amused, he was happy; and although he scoffed and put on the Irish twang, Lizzie could see he was pleased.

  ‘What are you going in for?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t a notion, me darlin’.’

  Mary Ann laughed out loud, and Mike, looking at Lizzie, made a tiny movement with his eyes towards her. And after a pause Lizzie said, ‘It’s time you were going to meet your granny. Go on, get your coat on.’

  Mary Ann’s face suddenly fell. She knew she was being got rid of. ‘Aw! . . . it’s ten minutes afore the bus comes; and it’d freeze you out.’

  ‘Get your coat on,’ said Lizzie callously, ‘and freeze. You haven’t frozen, I notice, during the last two hours you’ve been out . . . And mind,’ she warned her daughter, ‘of what I told you last night.’

  Mary Ann got into her coat, hat, scarf and gloves at a snail’s pace, and saying to anyone it might concern, ‘I never get taken nowhere,’ she went out.

  Mike and Lizzie looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘Why is he taking you?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘I’m not exactly sure,’ said Mike, ‘but I think it’s to buy me Lady Jane something.’ He nodded in the direction of the window, through which Mary Ann could be seen slowly crossing the yard. ‘But I know this much,’ he added, ‘I’ll have to pay for me jaunt. Ratcliffe’s furious; in fact, he tried to stop me going. He told him I was needed to load beet, and the old boy said why not put one of the others outside, it’d do them good. He keeps his eyes open, I’ll grant him that. But Ratcliffe’ll swear I’ve been mewing to him.’

  ‘Let him swear what he likes,’ said Lizzie. She was happy to think Mr Lord held no feeling of animosity towards Mike, for she had been worried sick since the firework episode. ‘Do you think someone’s told him about Ratcliffe giving you all the tough jobs?’ she asked.

  ‘Not on your life. Which of them would concern himself about me?’ said Mike scornfully. ‘Jonesy might tell me what to say, but he’d never say it for me. And Stan and Joe are forever sucking up to Ratcliffe . . . No, the old fellow’s not blind. He engaged me as cowman afore Ratcliffe came, and what does he see when he comes around . . . ? I’m anywhere but in the byres.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he say something to Ratcliffe?’

  ‘Well, I suppose fair’s fair. You put a man in as manager, you’ve got to let him manage.’

  Lizzie, turning to the board, cut a spray of leaves from out of the pastry and placed them on top of a pie. Then she said quietly, ‘I don’t like him, Mike . . . I don’t trust him. Nor her. I’d be careful if I was you.’

  He came close to her side again, but did not immediately answer her. Instead he stood looking at the gold coils of her hair lying low down on her neck, and his finger traced the curve of the twined b
raids before he said softly, ‘Don’t you worry, I know what’s at stake. It’ll take more than Ratcliffe to get me on the wrong foot. The old fellow can do it more easily than him.’

  ‘Oh Mike, be careful.’ Lizzie turned her face to his and her eyes added a plea to her voice. ‘Don’t say anything to him you’ll be sorry for. Don’t, Mike.’

  ‘Now look,’ he pulled her round, gathering her floured hands into his great fists. ‘Haven’t I behaved meself and kept me tongue quiet . . . and haven’t I done what I said about the other business? I’ve never touched a drop. And it hasn’t been easy, mind.’

  ‘Oh Mike, I know, I know. Only I get frightened.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  She leant her face towards him and rested her cheek against his. His lips touched her ear, and she stayed still for a moment. Then, suddenly pulling herself from him, she exclaimed in indignant tones, ‘Eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning and tomorrow Christmas Eve! And I suppose Mr Lord’s waiting patiently for you?’ Her face was flushed and her eyes happy and he brought his hand with a resounding whack upon her buttocks, saying, ‘Big Liz.’

  ‘Oh Mike, that hurts!’ She held the affected parts.

  ‘You asked for it,’ said Mike, putting on his cap. ‘Turning a man’s head. I’m off now and I don’t know what time I’ll be back . . . that’s if I come back at all. If I should see a nice little piece in Newcastle, something on the lines of Nellie Flannagan . . . ’

  He was gone, leaving Lizzie laughing and happy. But still in the midst of it she turned her eyes to the corner of the room where hung a passepartout framed picture of the Virgin, the work of Mary Ann, and voicelessly she prayed, ‘Let it last.’

  Mary Ann stood at the crossroads, the wind chafing the only exposed part of her, which was her face. She did not turn her back to it but faced it squarely and told herself she would freeze to death and it would serve them right. There followed in her mind a distinct picture of her deathbed scene. She was lying in bed dressed all in white. Her ma was begging her not to die, her da was crying like anything and so was their Michael, and Father Owen was there, and Mr Lord and Mrs McBride . . . and Lena Ratcliffe and Sarah Flannagan. She had, with the beneficence always attached to the dying, sent for these two to bestow on them her forgiveness. She had reached the scene where she was telling Sarah, in a very weak voice of course, that if she would swear that she had never heard her, Mary Ann, tell a lie in her life she’d speak to the Holy Family for her when she got up to Heaven, when the loud honk-honk of a motor horn made her swing round, and there was her da and Mr Lord waving. Frantically she waved back, but she doubted if they saw her, or if they cared for that matter. Fancy them not stopping. This affront wiped out even her mother’s callousness. And yet as the car disappeared into the distance the wonder of what she had just witnessed dawned on her . . . Mr Lord was taking her da to Newcastle. Mr Lord must like her da very much. Suddenly her body became alive with activity. She jumped, she skipped, she took giant strides along the grass verge to a field gate and back again. She flung her arms about the signpost and endeavoured to climb it. After numerous failures she was halfway up it when the bus stopped on the other side of the road and her granny alighted.

  Mary Ann, lost in her present joy and forgetting why she was at the crossroads at all, did not see Mrs McMullen trotting across the road. She was not aware of her presence until she spoke.

  ‘You get your clothes cheap.’

  Mary Ann, gripping the pole, was now on eye level with her granny, and that small, dark, energetic lady, who carried her sixty-seven years with a lightness that chilled the hope of those who relied upon years alone to carry her off, drew in her mouth before opening it to command, ‘Get down out of that! Are you stuck there for life?’

  Mary Ann’s convulsive grasp on the pole slackened, and she sped the short distance to the ground so quickly that she lost her balance and fell down in a heap onto the road.

  ‘That’s right,’ cried Mrs McMullen, ‘roll in the mud! You get worse. You were bad enough afore. Look at the sight of you.’

  Mary Ann did not follow her granny’s pointing finger and look at her coat. She continued to stare glumly at her granny, and some private section of her mind, kept solely to deal with her hated relative and kept closed these past months, opened and addressed itself to whoever was responsible for her granny’s presence on this globe at all. Why had you to go and let her come, it said, after I asked you to keep her away? You could’ve done something to her, given her rheumatics or something. But, she ended with truth, nothing ever happens to me granny.

  ‘Well, come on. Are you going to stand here and freeze us? How far is it? Why didn’t your mother come?’

  ‘It’s not far, just along the road and down the lane. Me ma’s baking.’

  They walked away with at least four feet separating them, Mrs McMullen looking about her with critical eyes. Bare trees, wet brown fields and not a house to be seen; you couldn’t even see the top of the gantries in the shipyards only a couple of miles away. Her eyes fell or seemed to be dragged down to her granddaughter, and she noticed with disapproval that there was colour in her cheeks. But it wouldn’t last long, she comforted herself. The child was small and puny by nature and she wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t TB there somewhere, brought over from the Shaughnessy family. Even her embittered mind could not actually pin the consumption on the great brawny Mike.

  ‘It’s a godforsaken place you’ve come to. Your ma didn’t get out much afore, she’ll get out less here.’

  ‘She does get out. Me da takes her on a Saturda’ night, and us an’ all, me and our Michael. We go to the pictures. Sometimes we go to Newcastle.’

  Mrs McMullen’s eyes and head jerked upwards, and her hat, perched high on top of her abundant hair, looked in danger of toppling off. ‘Another brilliant start,’ she said, backing up her words with a significant cough.

  Mary Ann’s eyes, screwed up like gimlets, fixed themselves on her granny’s profile. She was starting again. Why had she to come, anyway? No-one had asked her. She had written asking to come, and her ma had said last night, ‘Well, she’s got to come some time. And it’s Christmas; we must bury the hatchet.’

  Mary Ann wished with swift urgency that somebody would spring out of the hedge and hit her granny with a hatchet . . . and run away again, for she wouldn’t want anyone to get wrong for hitting her granny.

  ‘What’s the people like?’

  ‘Who . . . who d’you mean?’

  ‘The farm men and the manager, of course.’ Mrs McMullen looked at her granddaughter as if she was a halfwit, for Mary Ann was weighing her answer. If she were to say what she thought, it would be, ‘Mr Ratcliffe’s awful, and Mrs Ratcliffe’s snooty, like Lena, and I don’t like Mr Jones, but Stan and Joe are all right,’ but being wise to the fact that her granny would immediately take sides with those she disliked and connect the reason for her dislike with her da, she said, ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘That’s a change.’

  This caustic remark demanded no reply, and in silence they continued down the lane. The silence was enforced on the old woman for she had to keep her feet clear of the potholes. But at last she exclaimed, ‘Never seen anything like it . . . you could break your neck on a dark night.’

  Maybe this statement gave rise to the hope in her mind that this would happen to her son-in-law, for she followed it immediately with, ‘How often has your da been drunk since he’s been here?’

  Mary Ann stopped dead and watched her granny step over a puddle near the grass verge. She had an almost overwhelming desire to take a running jump at the old woman and push her into the ditch.

  The word ‘drunk’ when connected with her da always had the power to make her feel sick. The word was a weapon so powerful that it overshadowed not only her own life but also that of the entire family. What it had almost done in the past it could do again. It had almost parted her ma and da and it had made their Michael gas himself. And there was the
other thing it had nearly done, vague in her mind now but still recognised as a bad thing, and made more bad still because her granny came into it. In fact her granny seemed to be the master of this particular evil. Her granny could do again what she had done at Mulhattans’ Hall, talk and talk to her ma in the scullery about her da drinking, then end up by mentioning Mr Quinton and his fine car – she always ended up with Mr Quinton.

  ‘What you looking like that for? Don’t you start any of your tantrums afore I get me foot inside the door. And answer me question.’

  ‘Me da doesn’t drink, he’s a grand—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. He’s a grand man, and for God’s sake don’t start that again.’

  ‘Well, he is.’

  ‘All right, have it your own way. And don’t you bawl at me or I’ll take the side of your ear off you.’

  ‘I’m not bawling . . . me da doesn’t drink. He doesn’t even go in the village bar, so there. He’s fine and respected and everybody likes him. Mr Lord’s taken him in his own car right into Newcastle, and he was sitting aside Mr Lord and . . . ’

  ‘Oh my God! That’s enough.’ Mrs McMullen flapped her hand in the air. ‘He’ll be the Archangel Gabriel next and covered with down. How much further have we got to go along this godforsaken road?’

  Mary Ann gave her no answer, but her indignation carried her some distance ahead of the old woman until they reached the gate, then she ran up the path and round to the back and into the kitchen.

  ‘Where’s your granny?’ Lizzie turned from the oven.

  Mary Ann tore off her hat. ‘She’s comin’.’

  Lizzie, looking keenly at her daughter, said, ‘Now mind, I’m having no trouble. Keep that tongue of yours quiet.’

  ‘She’s—’

  ‘That’s enough. Where did you leave her?’

  ‘At the gate.’

  A hammering on the front door told Lizzie that her mother was no longer at the gate. Forcing a smile to her lips and stiffening her shoulders as if she were going into battle, she went to open the door, saying over her shoulder, ‘You stay out to play. Go over to the byres, it’s warm there.’