One Good Turn: A Novel

By Maggie Crinnion

The main character in the story is Joan who suddenly finds herself bereft of family. An industrial accident happens, taking her dad and brother at the same time, and then her mom passes shortly thereafter. Joan drifts into a relationship with the wrong guy, who is there at the right time. He talks her into taking part in a karaoke evening at the local pub, and her career starts to build from there. She makes contact along the way with an old friend of her moms who has incredible connections in the world of entertainment and who is willing to give all the help and advice he can, while filling in a lot of her family history that she has no knowledge of. There is also connection between this gentleman and her boyfriend, which is not of the best.

The title of the book comes from the North East of England vernacular where an entertainer is often referred to as a turn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524678500

Maggie Crinnion

Maggie is late to writing, now in her late 60’s, she has drawn on personal experience and a degree of imagination to produce this, her first novel. Mother of a daughter who now lives in Spain along with the 4 grand-children. She retired from work some years ago after a variety of jobs including working as an entertainer, working in the Funeral Service, and Tutoring teenagers who had been excluded from mainstream education. She now lives in a retirement bungalow, but still has a very active social life.

Book preview

One

Good Turn

A Novel

MAGGIE CRINNION

22596.png

AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2017 Maggie Crinnion. All rights reserved.

Credits to Donna Oakley for the author photo.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/23/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7849-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7850-0 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1    The Beginning of It All

Chapter 2    Where Do We Go From Here?

Chapter 3    It’s Time to Think Things Through

Chapter 4    The Missing Links

Chapter 5    The Follow Up Information

Chapter 6    I Love the Now

Chapter 7    What Comes Next

Chapter 8    Fill in the Gaps

Chapter 9    The Start of the Career

Chapter 10    A Whole New World

Chapter 11    The Following Day

Chapter 12    The Choice of Motor

Chapter 13    Pulling it All Together

Chapter 14    The First Blow is the Hardest

Chapter 1

The Beginning of It All

J oan Bell stood with her arms up to the elbows in the warm, soapy washing-up water. She looked out over the landscape to the back of the house and allowed her mind to wander.

She had been brought up in a typical North Eastern Coal mining family, Dad, Mam, Richard her elder brother, and herself. Richard was four years older than Joan. The family had moved several times during the late sixties as the coal communities had begun to shrink due to the closure of the mines. The supply of the coal was running out, and it had become uneconomical to mine. Their final move as a family took them to the Northumbrian coast where Richard had eventually followed Dad into the pit, which was forecast to remain in operation for at least the next fifty years.

There was a rich seam of coal here, which ran toward the coastline and far beyond for several miles under the North Sea, as deep underground workings. As in most pits where father and son worked, they both were rostered onto the same shift. No one knew quite what had happened, just that an explosion caused a roof to fall which crushed seventeen men, her Dad and Richard amongst them. Their bodies would remain buried under centuries of rock and sea, together with the cause of their demise. This of course meant that there could not be a traditional Funeral Service for the men, just a simple communal Service of Remembrance, which whilst it did indicate some finality, did little to help Mam through her grief.

Once the payment of the insurance was received, and the mortgage on their modest home was covered, things should have become easier, but Mam could just not settle. She knew few in the village really well, and though they were all kind, some of whom shared the tragedy, having lost men of their own, she still felt that she just had to get out of the area altogether. She and Joan would move back to her roots, the north Tyneside area of North Shields where her family had been in the fishing industry just one generation ago. Not that there were any of them left there now, the fishing industry claims lives too, and those left just want to make enough money to move away. She was convinced, however, that there still would be child-hood friends with whom she could re-establish contact, and at least she would be amongst her own kind as she put it.

They bought a neat semi-detached house, on the top road, as it was known. Not in great condition, but there were just the two of them. They could do it up, the decorating had always been Mam’s domain. Jobs, which Dad had done, bits of electrical work, plumbing etc, could be done by local tradesmen. Joan got herself a job in the local supermarket and tried to put down roots of her own for the first time. This was not easy, as she knew no one in the area. All the other girls at her work-place had gone to the same schools and youth clubs, or had just grown up together. She had, with the family moving about the country so much, attended several schools and so she had not done so well in the G.C.S.E.’s, hardly surprising given the circumstances. Joan was the outsider, the in-comer, and there is never a harder hurdle to overcome, in a tight knit community. Once you’ve been accepted there’s none closer, but getting in is another matter.

Mam too, was a problem. They had not been long in the area when the local authority plans to clear away the ranks of terraced houses, which had been the area of her child-hood, began to come to fruition. The community she remembered was being broken and scattered to new estates all over the north Tyneside area. In time, when the re-building was completed, some might return, but for the time being, all that was left was a scar of land from the back of their house almost down to the riverside. Here were the shipbuilding yards, now still. Each yard with its cranes stood stark against the skyline, no longer the previous hive of activity. The dry docks stood empty and the slipways unused. It was all a testament to a generation long gone. Working men and their families no longer needed by a society which seemed to want to forget them and their achievements.

Mam was devastated all over again. This time she did not get over it and some three months after the move she died with a sudden and massive heart attack. Joan had been lost, confused and grief-stricken all at one time. She was of course in deep shock. She thought now, with a slight smile, of the help she had received from Steven. He had been sent by the Gas Company to do some minor repair to the central heating system, and had been in the house on that fateful day when Mam had died. He had taken control when Joan fell apart. He gave immediate assistance; he carried out mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and C.P.R. until the Ambulance arrived. Joan went with Mam despite the Paramedic’s informing her that there was no hope and it would be just a case of having her Certified Dead on Arrival. Steven followed, having locked up the house, and was there to bring Joan home again, to make tea, and generally give support and sympathy.

Don’t you have a wife to go home to? she had asked, but he replied that there was no-one waiting for him, that he lived alone and there was no way he would leave her while she needed him. This had caused another rush of tears, as she now felt that here was a total stranger giving her the support she needed, simply because she had nobody else to call upon.

Eventually she calmed again and he gently suggested she should contact the Funeral Service and get things moving in that regard. He sat with her through the interview with Mr Harrison, the Director sent following her call to the Co-Op. An hour later all such matters were settled, pending a simple outcome of the Post Mortem examination. The Arrangements were very simple, Service and Cremation, locally, with the remains to be scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at the Crematorium. Since Dad and Richard had no proper grave to speak of, she felt she had made the wisest choice. There would also probably be none but herself, the Vicar, and the undertaker’s staff at the Service.

The next week passed in a blur. She had no firm memories of what she had done, or where she had gone. She only knew that wherever she needed to be, Steven was there to take her. To collect the Certificate from the Coroner’s office, to register the death at the Registrar’s Office, and then onto the Chapel of Rest to hand in the documentation they needed, and then back again to see Mam for one last time. That had been the hardest of all. Again, Steven was there, supporting, caring, and offering a tissue and the shoulder upon which she felt she had shed too many tears already.

On the day of the funeral she was surprised and comforted to note that although the chapel was not full, there was a number of people there she hadn’t expected. There was a representative from the Mineworkers Union. He said that although he hadn’t known Dad and Richard for long before their death, he had been impressed with the way Mrs Bell had conducted herself at that time, and he was here to show his respect and thanks to her. There was a lady or two from the local parish who told her that although they hadn’t met Joan before, her Mam had been to a service once or twice since she moved into the area, and they didn’t like the idea of there being no-one but Joan herself there. There was also the young lady from next-door, who said that despite not having spoken with Joan more than to nod hello as she came and went from work, she felt Joan may need someone nearer her own age to talk with. If there was anything she could do to help, just to call.

All these things together made her feel even more alone now. That wasn’t logical, but then this wasn’t the time for logic.

She held together that day with the help of Steven who was, by now, becoming an almost permanent fixture in the house. He hadn’t pushed himself at all, he had not wanted any more, than to be there for her, but she did. She needed the closeness of another person in the house. She needed someone to cling to in the wee small hours when some nightmare had woken her, someone to give her cause to continue with her own day to day existence. Steven was there.

Within four months they had become an item, their relationship moved from one of support and caring, to an exciting sexual adventure