Tilly Trotter Widowed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Catherine Cookson Story

  Tilly Trotter Widowed

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  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 wen3t 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 3 or 4 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 bed-ridden 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 80’s.

  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

  Colour Blind

  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

  The Thursday Friend

  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

  Tilly Trotter Widowed

  Tilly was first a rich man’s mistress, then a frontier wife, and now a widow. With her two children, half-blind Willy and her adopted daughter, Josefina, Tilly returns to Highfield Manor, where she’d started her life working as a nursemaid all those years ago.

  But Tilly is now a rich woman with Highfield, the estate and mine all hers. At 35, she is white-haired, but as spirited and as magnetic to men as ever. Her reputation as a witch continues to grow among the villagers, ever hostile and suspicious, but she is supported by faithful friends and warm memories.

  There is still much in store for Tilly: old loves and enmities provide fresh challenges, and the final shaping of her destiny makes this novel a most absorbing and vividly dramatic story.

  TILLY TROTTER WIDOWED

  Catherine Cookson

  Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1982

  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 1998

  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 978-1-78036-100-0

  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

  PART ONE

  THE VENEER

  One

  Mrs Matilda Sopwith stood against the ship’s rail and watched the waters darken as the sun slipped behind the rim of the horizon. It had been an unusually calm day, in fact the weather had been clement for most of the journey, so different from that time almost three years ago when she had left Liverpool for America in this very same ship. Then, she and her small child and her friend, Katie Drew, had been tossed and tumbled about and made so sick that they had wished to die, and her small son had almost achieved this; yet the stormy sea and the plunging, rearing ship had not in any way affected her husband; he had seemed to revel in it, buoyed up by the fact that he was going back to the land he loved, the land, he had once said, in which he wished to die. And his wish had been granted him, but much, much sooner than he could have expected.

  She swung her mind away from her husband and sent it spinning fast into the future that would begin on the morrow when the boat docked. She’d be met by her brother-in-law, John Sopwith, and his wife, Anna, both young, little more than boy and girl, at least to her mind; and there was no doubt that they would shower her with affection because she knew they were truly fond of her, for hadn’t she been the means of bringing them together; two people who felt themselves scarred with defects over which they had no control, for what control had a young girl over hideous birthmarks? Perhaps in the man’s case there was some measure for control for his cross was merely a bad stammer.

  She could see them all taking the long journey back in the train; she could see the carriage meeting the train; she could see it bowling through the iron gates and up the drive to the manor house that lay on the far outskirts of South Shields; and she could already feel the welcome of Katie’s mother, Biddy, and also witness the keen disappointment of her face when she realised that her daughter had not returned from America. But above all the pictures in her mind there stood out in sharp relief the faces of the whole Drew family and of the other servants when she entered the house accompanied not only by her small son Willy but also by a smaller child whose features claimed the ancestry of a Mexican Indian.

  ‘This is my adopted daughter,’ she would say to them. But why, their amazed gaze would ask, had she to adopt one such as she, for everyone knew creatures like her weren’t really human beings, not like English human beings, and were merely born to be slaves.

  Could she then say to them . . . could she even ever say to Biddy Drew, Biddy who, like her daughter Katie, knew all about her and had been her friend and confidante for years, could she say to her, ‘I did not adopt her, Biddy, she is my husband’s bastard’? No, no; she could never put a slur on Matthew’s name, although in the ordinary sense a bastard was no slur on the man, simply on the woman who bore her, that is if the child was white; but to be dark-skinned with strange unblinking eyes, a skin that seemed to flow over the bone skeleton beneath it, a mouth whose lips lay with gentle firmness one on the other seeming to forbid the tongue to speak, and then the hair, black, straight, its sheen making it shine like a military boot, and all encased in a tiny body. There could be no acceptance whatever for such.

  Yet she wasn’t worried so much about Josefina’s acceptance into the house as she was worried about her effect on the villagers. It was unfortunate that the child, who was as far as she knew about four and a half years old, should have the stature of one hardly three, unfortunate because she knew what would be the outcome of the villagers’ diagnosis once they looked on the strange piece of humanity: Tilly Trotter had been up to her tricks again. She could even hear their concerted voices: ‘My God! To think of it, having the effrontery to bring back another of her bastards. Wasn’t it enough she had been the cause of the death of two men before disgracing herself by becoming the mistress of a man old enough to be her father? Then, when he was hardly cold in his grave, what did she do? She married his son and goes off to the Americas; and here she is come back as brazen as brass and showing off her latest effort.’

  As if she could hear the voices and see the faces, she turned sharply round from the ship’s rail and leant against it for a moment before walking quickly away up the deck. As she made to go down the companionway the captain stood aside at the bottom of the steps and waited for her, and bowing his head slightly towards her, he said, ‘Only another few hours, ma’am. You’ll be glad when the journey is over.’

  ‘Yes, I shall, captain; but I would like to thank you now, in case I don’t see you later, for the effort you have made to make us comfortable during the journey.’

  ‘No effort at all, ma’am, it was a pleasure. And yet I wish I hadn’t had the pleasure, that circumstances ha
d turned out differently for you, for you’ve been so tried in your short time away from the old country. I remember your husband well. Pardon me for speaking of him, ma’am, I don’t want to arouse any memories, but I’d just like to say we, my officers and the crew, thought he was a very fine gentleman.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Will I see you at dinner tonight?’

  ‘Would you excuse me, captain? I don’t like to leave the children for too long.’

  ‘I understand. Yes, yes, I understand; and I’ll have something substantial sent to your cabin.’

  ‘It is very kind of you and I thank you.’ She inclined her head towards him, and he, in return, bowed his, and she went down the steps, along the corridor and into her cabin.

  The cabin was the largest on the ship and one which the captain had allotted to her use much to the chagrin, she had discovered, of a Mr and Mrs Sillitt, a couple who were used apparently to making sea voyages and who had travelled on this particular ship a number of times.

  It was as much to avoid Mrs Sillitt as her need to be with the children that had caused her to refuse to join the captain in the last meal on board. Mrs Sillitt was partly of French extraction and, therefore, her loyalties were divided. Scarcely a meal had passed during the voyage without she touched on the subject of the recent Crimean war, at times delving into it as if she had actually witnessed the battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman. The lady hated the Russians with a fierce hatred, and some of her hatred seemed to have rubbed off onto the English for which her husband bore the brunt. It appeared at times as if she was accusing the poor man of having ordered the weather to freeze the soldiery to death, for everything that had gone wrong was attributed to the British, and was not her husband English, in fact Dorset English? And being apparently ineffectual inasmuch as he suffered in silence, he represented for her the inefficient British Command. The captain had at an early stage given up the fruitless argument, but not so the first officer who was a Scot. This man had confided in Tilly privately that he had little time for the English as a whole but God knew he had less time for the Frenchies whose main occupation seemed to be causing revolutions and making Napoleons. The latest one, who called himself Napoleon the Third, strutted around like a little bantam cock on a midden. No, the English, be what they may, were preferable to the Frenchies. And what’s more, he could name a dozen women from the Liverpool dock front whom he’d be pleased to eat with in preference to sitting down opposite to Mrs Sillitt.