Joe and the Gladiator, page 1
JOE AND THE GLADIATOR
Catherine Cookson
Contents
The Catherine Cookson Story
Joe and the Gladiator
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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
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
Joe and the Gladiator
What with trouble at home between his parents, and trouble with a bully at the Tyneside shipyard where he works, life is pretty bleak for fifteen-year-old Joe Darling. Then an unlikely friendship with an old rag-and-bone man, Mr Prodhurst, leads him into the greatest challenge of his life. For Mr Prodhurst bequeaths his peculiar-looking horse, The Gladiator, to Joe—with only enough money for the first few weeks’ feed!
How can Joe possibly loo
Copyright © The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust 1968
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 978-1-78036-084-3
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
To all children who make animals their concern
I dedicate Joe and The Gladiator
Chapter One
Joe Darling rose from the table and put his topcoat and scarf on, then he went and stood near his mother for a moment and looked hard at her, and she put her hand on his shoulder and smiled at him as she said, ‘Don’t worry; it’ll pan out. Things usually do.’ He bit on his lip, before turning from her and going out into the chill dark morning.
Doors were opening and closing on both sides of the street and voices commenting on the weather came to him, muffled through the chilling gloom as he made his way out of Mabel Street, cut across Railway Street and into Templetown Road, which led to the shipyards.
At a point along this road Joe usually met up with his pal, Willie Styles, but this morning he had reached the end of the road and was almost at the yard gates and Willie hadn’t put in an appearance.
He stopped for a moment and looked back, thinking, Well, I’m not going to wait for him again; I’ll only be late and get it in the neck. I’ve told him afore. But even so he didn’t go towards the gates for some minutes, and it was just as he was about to continue on his way that the lanky form of Willie came racing through the lifting gloom towards him.
‘By! You’ve just made it by the skin of your teeth.’
Willie fell into step beside him, panting so hard for a moment that he couldn’t speak, and then on a laugh he stammered, ‘Y…you know somethin’? I wish I was back at school. I do, honest Injun.’
‘You must be daft.’
‘Aye, very likely, b…but I’d rather be daft and sleep until eight than be sa…sane and get up at seven.’
‘Well, the morrow you don’t have to stay till nine when we go to the Tech.’
‘Oh lor! That’s worse. You know, man, I wish I’d never gone in for it. I can’t see very much future in marine plumbing, not for me any road.’
‘You haven’t given it a chance yet, you’ve only been on it six weeks.’
‘It seems like six years.’
‘You mean to say you don’t like going to the Tech either? I thought you did.’
‘Aw, I did at first, but it gets on me wick.’
‘But you said you wished you were back at school.’
‘Aye, I did, but that’s different.’
‘Aye, it’s different,’ laughed Joe; ‘You’ve got to use your brains now.’
‘Brains!’ said Willie scornfully. ‘And what do we do with our brainwork when we get back on the job? Carry pipes from A to B, push the said pipes through hole D an’ don’t look surprised if it pops out in either X, Y or Z.’
For the moment Joe forgot the feeling that pervaded his home, he forgot that deep inside he was miserable, and as he burst out laughing he pushed his lanky companion and said, ‘You’ll come popping up through X, Y, Z one of these days and Mr Ripley’ll be waiting for you up top with a flannel hammer.’
Willie, his face one wide grin now, said, ‘I don’t care who hits me with a flannel hammer as long as it’s not Harry Farthing. Lor, I’m tellin’ you Joe, if he keeps on at me I’ll belt him one. See if I don’t.’
‘Don’t be daft. He’ll knock you into the middle of next week.’
‘Just let him try it on, that’s all.’
Joe wasn’t worried about what Willie might do to Harry Farthing. If Harry Farthing said, ‘Jump to it!’ Willie would jump to it. Willie was all talk. He always had been. All the time they had been at school together Willie had threatened what he was going to do to this one and that one, but when it came to the point Willie did nothing, because he was a coward.
There had been three of them at school, he and Willie and Matty Doolin. He wished Matty was still with them, but he was now working happily on a farm in the wilds of Northumberland. Funny how that had come about, all through them going camping. He often thought of Matty; Matty was a different kettle of fish altogether from Willie. Willie was fun, you could always get a laugh with Willie, but he doubted if Willie would stand by you in a tight corner, more likely to joke his way out of it and leave you to carry the can. Oh, he knew Willie, but still he couldn’t help liking him.
When they reached the ship they were working on, Willie went first, making great play of dashing up the ladder and nearly falling flat on his face when he reached the deck.
Six weeks ago Joe had been bewildered by the apparent chaos he found below decks, particularly in the section to which he had been allocated, and for the first two or three days he didn’t know whether he was coming or going, or whom to take orders from, until Mr Jack Ripley made it plain to both him and Willie, and also to the third apprentice, Roddy Canner, that he was the boss, and if they wanted to know anything they had to come to him.
There were about fifteen men working on the section and he got on well with all of them, except Harry Farthing. Harry Farthing, in a way, was an apprentice like themselves but he didn’t go to the Technical College, nor was he studying for exams. Why this was so Joe couldn’t fully understand, because he seemed to know his job, at least he talked as if he did, but then again only when Mr Ripley or the older men weren’t about. Harry Farthing was nineteen and already seemed a man to Joe because of his height and bulk. Joe wasn’t exactly frightened of Harry Farthing, but he wished that circumstances had been such that Farthing was working in some other part of the ship.
But Harry Farthing wasn’t working in some other part of the ship and he greeted the two boys with, ‘Ah! The college students. An’ strike me if they’re not wearing their college scarves.’
‘You’re kiddin’,’ said Willie. ‘This isn’t a college scarf, I’ve had it for years. But we can wear the college scarves, and the badges an’ all if we want. There’s a smasher, all g…gold…’
‘No kiddin’?’ Harry Farthing’s voice was awe-filled, and Willie said sheepishly, ‘No kiddin’, honest.’
‘Now what do you think of that?’ Harry Farthing broke off at this point to exclaim loudly. ‘Ah! And here comes our third student. Now the trio is complete.’
As he took off his coat Roddy Canner stared at Harry Farthing. Roddy was a plump boy who had had glandular trouble and for years had suffered the jest of being Fatty. Now, with the help of drugs, the glandular disturbance was being arrested.
Of the three, Roddy had the least to say, perhaps because in any retaliation he knew he would suffer most. Harry Farthing knew this too, so Roddy was his main target. He said now, ‘Coo! I bet you’ve been stuffing your kite over the weekend…What you put on, half a stone? It puzzles me, Canner, why you ever took on a job like this. You’ve got to be thin and wiry like our little darling here’—he nodded at Joe as he made a play with his name—‘because you never know but at any minute you’re goin’ to be pushed up a flue…What did YOU say?’ He swung round towards Joe, then walked menacingly towards him. ‘Go on, say it again.’
He now thrust his big face in front of Joe’s. ‘I dare you to say it again.’
Joe swallowed deeply; then jerking his chin, he said, ‘All right then. I said, somebody should push you up a flue.’
As he finished speaking Joe sprang backwards and, grabbing a piece of wood from a bench, he held it before him as he ground out, ‘You touch me, Harry Farthing, and I’ll give you this.’
Both Willie and Roddy were standing gaping, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as Joe confronted the man who was, without exaggeration, twice the size in height and breadth of Joe, and their expressions said plainly that they thought he had gone stark staring mad.
