THE WHIP
Catherine Cookson
Contents
The Catherine Cookson Story
The Whip
PART ONE One
Two
Three
Four
Five
PART TWO One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
PART THREE One
Two
Three
Four
Five
PART FOUR One
Two
Three
Four
Five
PART FIVE One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
EPILOGUE
The Catherine Cookson Story
In brief:
Her books have sold over 130 million copies in 26 languages throughout the world and still counting…
Catherine Cookson was born Katherine Ann McMullen on June 27th, 1906 in the bleak industrial heartland of Tyne Dock, South Shields (then part of County Durham) and later moved to East Jarrow, which is now in Tyne and Wear.
She was the illegitimate daughter of Kate Fawcett, an alcoholic, whom she thought was her sister. She was raised by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. The poverty, exploitation, and bigotry she experienced in her early years aroused deep emotions that stayed with her throughout her life and which became part of her stories. Catherine left school at 13, and after a period of domestic service, she took a job in a laundry at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, working all hours and saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house. She took in gentleman and lady lodgers to supplement her income and took up fencing as one of her hobbies. One of her lodgers was Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School, and in June 1940, they married. They were devoted to each other throughout their lives together. But the early years of her marriage were beset by the tragic miscarriage of four pregnancies and her subsequent mental breakdown. This took her over a decade to recover from, which she did, often by standing in front of a mirror and giving herself a damn good swearing at!
Catherine took up writing as a form of therapy to deal with her depression and joined the Hastings Writers’ Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. In 1976, she returned to Northumberland with Tom and went on to write 104 books in all. She became one of the most successful novelists of all time and was one of the first authors to have three or four titles in the Bestseller Lists at the same time.
She read widely: from Chaucer to the literature of the 1920s; to Plato’s Apologia on the trial and death of Socrates (she said that here was someone who stuck to his principles even unto death); to history of the nineteenth century and the Romantic poets; to Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son and the books and booklets that abounded in her part of the country dealing with coal, iron, lead, glass, farming and the railways. She disliked it when her books were labeled as ‘romantic.’ To her, they were ‘readable social history of the North East interwoven into the lives of the people.’ For the millions of her readers, she brought ‘an understanding of themselves’ or perhaps of their dear ones. Her stories do not bring in a realism in which the worst is taken for granted, but a realism in which love, caring, and compassion appear, and most certainly, hope. ‘This type of realism does exist,’ Tom Cookson said of her writing. There is nothing sentimental about her writing; she is unrelenting in the strong images she invokes and the characters she portrays. They were born of her formative years and her personal struggles. Many of her novels have been transferred to stage, film, and radio with her television adaptations on ITV, lasting over a decade and achieving ratings of over 10 million viewers.
Besides writing, she was an innovative painter, and she believed that her father’s genes fostered the strength to work hard, but also, in rare moments of freedom, to strive to better herself. Catherine was famed for her care of money but had given much to charities, hospitals, and medical research in areas close to her heart and to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who set up a lectureship in hematology. The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust continues to donate generously to charitable causes. The University later conferred her the Honorary Degree of Master of Arts. She received the Freedom of the Borough of South Tyneside, today known as Catherine Cookson Country. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year, and she was voted Personality of the North East. Other honours followed: an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, and she was created Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1997.
Throughout her life, but especially in the later years, she was plagued by a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers, and stomach, and resulted in anemia. As her health declined, she and her husband moved for a final time to Jesmond in Newcastle upon Tyne to be nearer medical facilities. For the last few years of her life, she was bedridden and Tom hardly ever left her bedside, looking after her needs, cooking for her, and taking her on her emergency trips, often in the middle of the night into Newcastle. Their lives were still made up of the seven-day week and twelve or more hours each day, going over the fan mail, attending to charities, and going over the latest dictated book, with Tom meticulously making corrections line by line, for Catherine’s eyesight had long faded in her 80s.
This most remarkable woman passed away on June 11th, 1998 at the age of 91. Tom, six years her junior, had earlier suffered a heart attack but survived long enough to be with her at her end. He passed away on 28th June, just 17 days after his beloved Catherine.
Catherine Cookson’s Books
NOVELS
Maggie Rowan
Rooney
The Menagerie
Fanny McBride
Fenwick Houses
The Garment
The Blind Miller
The Wingless Bird
Hannah Massey
The Long Corridor
The Unbaited Trap
Slinky Jane
Katie Mulholland
The Round Tower
The Nice Bloke
The Glass Virgin
The Invitation
The Dwelling Place
Feathers in the Fire
Pure as the Lily
The Invisible Cord
The Gambling Man
The Tide of Life
The Girl
The Cinder Path
The Man Who Cried
The Whip
The Black Velvet Gown
A Dinner of Herbs
The Moth
The Parson’s Daughter
The Harrogate Secret
The Cultured Handmaiden
The Black Candle
The Gillyvors
My Beloved Son
The Rag Nymph
The House of Women
The Maltese Angel
The Golden Straw
The Year of the Virgins
The Tinker’s Girl
Justice is a Woman
A Ruthless Need
The Bonny Dawn
The Branded Man
The Lady on my Left
The Obsession
The Upstart
The Blind Years
Riley
The Solace of Sin
The Desert Crop
A House Divided
Rosie of the River
The Silent Lady
FEATURING KATE HANNIGAN
Kate Hannigan (her first published novel)
Kate Hannigan’s Girl (her hundredth published novel)
THE MARY ANN NOVELS
A Grand Man
The Lord and Mary Ann
The Devil and Mary Ann
Love and Mary Ann
Life and Mary Ann
Marriage and Mary Ann
Mary Ann’s Angels
Mary Ann and Bill
FEATURING BILL BAILEY
Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey’s Lot
Bill Bailey’s Daughter
The Bondage of Love
THE TILLY TROTTER TRILOGY
Tilly Trotter
Tilly Trotter Wed
Tilly Trotter Widowed
THE MALLEN TRILOGY
The Mallen Streak
The Mallen Girl
The Mallen Litter
FEATURING HAMILTON
Hamilton
Goodbye Hamilton
Harold
AS CATHERINE MARCHANT
Heritage of Folly
The Fen Tiger
House of Men
The Iron Façade
Miss Martha Mary Crawford
The Slow Awakening
CHILDREN’S
Matty Doolin
Joe and the Gladiator
The Nipper
Rory’s Fortune
Our John Willie
Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet
Go Tell It To Mrs Golightly
Lanky Jones
Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Our Kate
Let Me Make Myself Plain
Plainer Still
The Whip
Someone had once told Emma Molinero, the daughter of an itinerant carnival performer, that she was made for trouble, and certainly it had dogged her steps from childhood onwards.
Her earliest memories were of life with one of the many travelling shows—part fair and part circus—that toured the shires at the dawn of the Victorian era. But at the age of seven she found herself an orphan who, in accordance with her Spanish father’s dying wishes, must now leave the warm and friendly community to live with an unknown English grandmother far to the north in County Durham. With her she took the whips and knives used with such dexterity by her father for his act and for which she had an inherited skill: a strange legacy that would make her a figure of mysterious but commanding fascination to the villagers and ultimately play a significant part in shaping Emma’s destiny.
Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1983
The right of Catherine Cookson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form.
ISBN 978-1-78036-066-9
Sketch by Harriet Anstruther
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described, all situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
Published by
Peach Publishing
For Lisa Mallen
whose youth was short but joyful
PART ONE
THE CHILD
One
‘Will the new medicine make Dada well?’
The enormously fat woman moved her head and her triple chins wobbled over the collar of her bright red voluminous cotton gown. ‘Oh, sure, sure,’ she said.
‘The apothecary here is good, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, yes; he’s very good.’ The chins wobbled again.
‘Not like the one in Dewsbury.’
‘Oh, he was a good apothecary too.’
‘He didn’t make Mama better, did he?’
‘Oh, look down there.’ The fat woman pointed to where the carriages were drawing up before the Mansion House in the long beautiful street and she said, ‘Come let’s go and see the justices; they’ll be trying the culprits this Monday mornin’ again.’
When they reached the Mansion House there were only a few people on the pavement and they were able to see the Mayor, the Town Clerk and the three justices ceremoniously entering the building.
‘Will they send everybody to the House of Correction?’
‘No, no.’ The fat lady shook the small hand reassuringly, adding as she began to walk on, ‘Just the bad hats. They’re very good justices here; folks get a fair crack of the whip.’
She opened wide her mouth which was small for such a large face, but the laughter that issued from it had a deep sound, like one would expect from a man, and looking down on the child, she said, ‘That was funny, eh? Fair crack of the whip. You can give a fair crack of the whip, can’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, I can. Dada’s gona make me a full-size one when he gets up. I ripped the peg out yesterday with mine.’
‘Did you now? Did you now? Well, as I’ve always said to Mr Travers, you have the makin’ of a show lady, every inch of you.’
‘Dada says I’ll be as good as him one day. But nobody could be as good as Dada with the whip, could they, Mrs Travers?’
The question was solemn and the fat lady answered in a similar tone, ‘No, no-one could be as good as your dada with the whip.’ And then she added by way of good measure, ‘Or with the knives. Ah!’ She brought the child to a stop at the bottled-glass window of the apothecary’s shop, exclaiming, ‘Here we are, and I’m going in to get this wonderful bottle of medicine for your dada. In the meantime, you go down to the pastry shop and get a sugar dolly. Here!’ She thrust a halfpenny into the small hand, and the child, looking up at the enormous bulk of flesh, said on a high note, ‘Oh ta, Mrs Travers. Oh ta.’ And on this she turned and scampered down the long street.
When, a few minutes later, she returned with the pastry untouched and held triumphantly in her hand, Frances Travers was waiting for her on the pavement, and looking down on her she said, ‘You’ve got it then.’
‘Yes. Ta.’
‘Well, aren’t you going to eat it? It’s for eating, isn’t it?’
The child now broke off a leg from the pastry and, handing it towards the bulbous stomach, said, ‘There’s one leg for you and I’ll keep one leg for Dada.’
As the fat fingers closed round the tiny leg the woman said, ‘It’s a good child you are, Emma, a good child. Come, we’ll take a dander down to the market before going back, eh?’
‘Oh yes.’ Then looking up wistfully, the child said, ‘We never see the market when it’s goin’, do we? ’cos it’s on a Saturday. But do you think we’ll see the big fair?’
‘Huh! haven’t we got a fair of our own? Doesn’t that satisfy you?’
‘Yes.’ The child laughed now. ‘But…but it isn’t like the big fair, is it?’
‘Big enough. Don’t start turning up your nose at our fair, Emma Molinero.’
Emma knew that the fat lady was teasing her and she did a little skip along the edge of the pavement and the cobbled road; then returning to her companion’s side, she put her head well back as she looked up at her and asked, ‘Will we be here for the St Leger?’
‘Ah now, now, that’s a point. That’s not until well into September, and here we are still in August and been here two weeks already. There’s a saying, you can get too much of a good thing you know, and so we’ve always made it a policy to keep movin’. Two to three weeks, three at the most.’
‘But Dada is sick.’
The fat lady made no answer to this, and it was some seconds before Emma broke the silence between them by saying, ‘I like it here, I like Doncaster. It’s a lovely place, nice and clean, not muddy.’ She looked down at the pavement. ‘And the people are
nice; even the rich ones, like Mr Casson. He lets us have the two fields, doesn’t he? And the horses can gallop. Some people don’t like you to let the horses gallop, do they?’
‘No; you’re right there, Emma, they don’t.’
‘Do you think Dada will let me go on the full show tonight, Mrs Travers?’
‘Well, well now, I couldn’t say about that. He’s not for you going on the full show. You might as well know he’s not even for you doing your bit before the tent, so I shouldn’t set your heart on him being talked round. He’s got his own ideas, an’ rightly I suppose, but,’ she ended, muttering to herself now, ‘can’t see the harm in it. It’s got to come.’
They had walked almost the mile length of the main Doncaster street and were now on the towpath by the river and in sight of the first field where stood a jumble of tents, one large and four smaller ones, together with three caravans and two flat carts, their shafts resting on the ground. In a further field five horses were grazing.
A number of people, seven in all, could be seen moving between the tents in the first field. And these made up Travers Travelling Show, not counting the man who lay dying in the first of the two caravans, or the fat lady and the child.
The fat lady was panting visibly and audibly as she entered the field, and almost immediately her husband, a tall thin man, approaching her, greeted her with the words, ‘Good for business that is, with a stone of grease running down you. Why couldn’t you let Charlie go?’
‘Because,’ retorted his wife curtly, ‘he needs to keep in shape more than I do.’ Her stumpy arm, seeming to shoot out, pointed to where a youngish man was pummelling at a bag of sand strung between two poles.
Septimus Travers, looking from his wife to the child, said, ‘Flogging a dead horse.’ Then turning abruptly, he walked away, and the fat woman and the child went towards where a middle-aged woman was talking to four dogs. The animals were of indiscriminate breeds and size: they were lying on the ground, front paws straight out before them, and on each one’s back sat a tabby cat.