Our Kate by Catherine Cookson

Author:Catherine Cookson [Cookson, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: women's non-fiction, Cookson, autobiography, social history
Publisher: Peach Publishing
Published: 2011-03-23T13:00:00+00:00

It was my turn. I went in, looked at the man and liked him right away, and he liked me, for he patted me on the head and said, ‘You’re very small, the smallest of them all . . . begin.’

When he walked to the window I turned my head and asked, ‘Aren’t you coming to watch me?’

He looked at me over his shoulder and smiled as he said, ‘I’ll be watching you. Go on.’

I went on. The last bar of my main piece I played backwards. I knew I had done so and he knew I had done so. After I had finished he didn’t send me out of the room but talked to me; at least I talked to him. I found talking to people I liked very easy and I liked this man. I stayed in the room so long that when at last I went into Mrs Dalton’s bedroom she gasped out, ‘What on earth happened?’

I looked at her quietly, ‘I played the last bar backwards, Mrs Dalton.’

She closed her eyes and said, ‘That’s finished you.’

Some time later, on a Monday morning, there came a long envelope that aroused not the slightest interest in me although inside was a certificate to say I had passed the examination with honours. I had achieved a hundred and thirty one marks.

I was in the front room standing opposite the fireplace, the sun was shining through the window, streaming onto the rosewood piano, showing up its beauty and in stark comparison the drabness of the room and all it held. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything, I was taking no more lessons. The piano was going back.

It went back on the Wednesday afternoon. Kate had passed the word round that she was selling it. This I am sure deceived nobody. When I heard the van come I hurried down the yard and into the lavatory, and there I sat with my head bowed and my hands as usual pressed tightly between my knees, telling myself over and over again it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. Because now there would be no more worry about the payments, or Mrs Dalton’s twelve and sixpence a quarter, and Kate had said we would get a hornless gramophone, there was one going in Bob’s.

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