The Menagerie by Catherine Cookson

Author:Catherine Cookson [Cookson, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780360539
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘You swear on it?’

‘Talk sense, Ma. Could I have bought her all that stuff for sixty pounds?’

‘No, you couldn’t. But you’ve had five pounds clear a week for yourself since you were demobbed, and that’s nearly nine years ago. And you don’t bet all that away, and there’s hardly a week passes but you have a win of some kind. I know’—she pressed her hand out towards him—‘I get me share, but you can’t spend all you’ve got left.’

Can’t I? thought Willie, turning and looking down at the table once more. That’s all you know. He had never dared tell her what he put on horses, dogs, and pools during the course of a week.

‘And you swear you haven’t bought her those things?’

‘Yes. I’ve told you.’ His placid features were screwed up in annoyance.

‘Then’—Mrs Macintyre brought her hands together, and held them tightly against her waistline—‘it’s as Emily King says.’

Willie waited, but when his mother did not immediately divulge what Mrs King had said, he turned to her, saying, ‘Well, come on, out with it. What does Ma King say now?’

‘Well, you’d better know sooner than later—somebody’s sure to tell you. That new parson fellow, Mr Ramsey from the chapel, he’s been in there twice every week since her mother died.’

Willie stared for some moments at his mother in dumbfounded surprise, then he cried, ‘My God! Trust women! Why, Mr Dobson was never off the doorstep and nobody accused him of keeping Mrs Honeysett.’

‘This one’s not like Mr Dobson. Old Dobson was like a professional beggar—he went where he could get a free meal, or a backhander. This one’s got money, they say, and he’s all la-di-da. He’s making arrangements to send the bairns from six Bog’s End families to Shields for a week in the summer holidays, and standing all the expenses. But in spite of that he’s finding he can’t buy the members. Some of them are getting their backs up…Mrs King for one. She says it’s like listening to blasphemy to hear him preaching. And tell me this: why, when Jessie’s never been inside the chapel door for years, should she be going now, all in her fine toggery? Tell me that. No, lad, there’s something fishy, and you’d better find it out now.’ As she turned away from the sight of his troubled face, she left one final weight on his mind: ‘If it isn’t you, it’s him, and you know best which it is.’

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