The Valley (24 page)

She stands up. Her body hurts, and her clothes are ripped and dirty. She finds her shoes and walks through the field barefoot. When she reaches the path he is gone.

Her dad and her two brothers want to try to find Roy straight away, but she begs them not to, and in the end they relent. In the morning she has a swollen, purple-yellow eye, but the beating feels like a terrible dream. When she thinks about it, she wonders what she said or did to provoke him.

On Monday morning at work the girls say, get shut, get rid, as soon as you can. Some of them say they know him and he has a bad reputation, but Margaret finds them tiresome. It has been only the once, she thinks, and the way people judge him only confirms what Roy says about how small-minded they are. She loves him and, just as important, she believes she can help him.

*

Roy stays away from the Whites until the following week when he finds Margaret as she walks home from work and begs her to listen to his explanation. He says he is sorry, and he seems to mean it. It’s just because he loves her so much. It sounds crazy, but he just can’t bear not having her all to himself, honest.

They begin going out together again and to Margaret it seems that Roy, in his good moods at least, is loving and committed. Her father tells her to keep away, but she ignores him; she is in love, she says, and they can’t understand a person like Roy.

Soon, however, it is her turn not to understand. Saying he has to go back to the Army, he stops calling for her, but the following week one of the girls at work sees him in Goldthorpe. Margaret calls at his mam’s house, but Winnie says he isn’t there and no one knows where he’s gone. Out the back door and down the backings most likely, thinks Margaret, but says nothing and catches the bus home.

In fact, after being seen in Goldthorpe, Roy does go away for two weeks’ training with the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, but he stays away from his parents’ house for weeks afterwards. One night while he is away, Harry arrives home from a late shift to find an unexpected visitor waiting at his gate. He sees that it is a young woman, standing pale and hunched in a thin coat. He recognises her as one of Roy’s girlfriends.

‘What’s up, love?’

‘I want your Roy,’ she says, trying to appear angry, but sounding desperate. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘I’ve been at work.’ He drops the end of the cigarette he has been smoking, and grinds it out with his toe. It is past eleven o’clock. He is getting fed up with Roy and his antics, coming home when he feels like it, borrowing money and never paying it back, but there isn’t going to be a row outside the house at this time of night.

‘I’ve not seen him.’

‘Are you sure he isn’t at your house?’

‘Not as I know of. Me and his mam never know where he is.’

‘When did you last see him?’

He looks at her: her mascara is streaked, her lips are swollen, and she is shivering. ‘Tha’s famished wi’ cold,’ he says. ‘Look, sit on t’ wall, and put this round thy shoulders.’ He takes off his blue cotton jacket and hands it to her. ‘Has tha asked his mam?’

‘I came before and asked her, but she says she hasn’t seen him.’

Next door, at an upstairs window, a face peeks through the curtains. ‘Here she comes,’ sighs Harry, and shouts up, ‘Get yoursen’ to bed, Nelly.’ The curtain closes. When he looks back at the young woman she is crying.

‘Has he said anything about me? I’m Margaret.’

‘Nay, I don’t know, love. Come on, don’t cry over him, he in’t any good for thee. Get thysen off home.’

‘I really love Roy, you know.’

‘Maybe tha does,’ says Harry. ‘But he’s not here. Does tha want me to drive thee home in t’ car?’

Margaret refuses the lift and in the end walks home alone, but she keeps coming back. When Roy returns they resume their courtship, and then, one Sunday in the late summer of 1955, she comes again, dressed in her best clothes, and bringing some news.

She had hoped to find Roy, but only Lynda and Winnie are at home. Winnie invites her in and sends Lynda out into the yard, and Margaret blurts it out: she is pregnant. She waits for Winnie to accuse her of trapping him but, after taking off her pinny to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, the older woman strokes Margaret’s arm and offers her a cup of Nescafé. Winnie is terse, but not hostile. She even says Roy should have been more careful. ‘You don’t have to marry him, Margaret,’ she says. ‘I don’t mind either road. But don’t let people make you feel you have to get married if you don’t want to.’

‘I bet you just don’t want him to marry me, though. I bet it’s not what he wants.’

This might have been true, but to Margaret, Winnie seems sincere. ‘I’m not saying it because I don’t want you to marry him,’ she says. ‘But I will tell you, as woman to woman, I don’t think you’ll have a good marriage with him. I’m telling you because I’ve seen enough to know that women don’t know their men. I didn’t, and I had to get married, and it’s been hard for me sometimes. Be careful.’

A double bluff to save her son? Margaret doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to be careful. She just wants to be Roy’s wife.

*

They marry at St Helen’s Church, Thurnscoe on a November morning in 1955. The gathering is thin, and Horace and Hilda White watch the ceremony in despair. Once he is wed, Roy goes to work driving earthmoving machines on the spoil heaps of Hatfield colliery near Doncaster, and he and Margaret move in with Mr and Mrs White.

After a few months, Margaret’s sister Alice persuades the owner of the car garage where she works to rent the couple a flat above the repair shop. The garage occupies a former ballroom built in the 1920s. The flat is small, with a dark, narrow staircase leading down to the front door between the workshop and showroom. It is clean but there is a permanent smell of engine oil, and in the mornings Margaret can hear men beating car panels. When Roy is out working late or drinking she lies awake, frightened, listening to the building creak and wondering where her husband might be. Sometimes he doesn’t come back until the morning, explaining away his absence with stories of breakdowns at work or promised lifts home that didn’t show up.

Her due date is in April 1956 and the months leading up to it are gloomy. Roy seems to be on early or late shifts most days, so he is either out or asleep in the bedroom. He doesn’t tell her what shifts he is working, so she never knows when he’ll come or go. When he is at home he goes on and on about the Army, almost as if he is still serving. He rants about Nasser and Suez, and says people don’t know what the Arabs are really like, or what it is like to live in Egypt. Sometimes he goes on about it when her mam comes to visit bringing bedding or bottles for the baby, and Margaret notices her mam observing Roy’s broad, strong body and looking nervous of him.

She goes into labour in the morning of Sunday 22 April. Roy is there and he looks after her, but by noon, Harry, Danny and some other Highgate friends call to pick him up for the Sunday lunchtime drink at the club. ‘I’ll be back at two for my dinner,’ he says as he clatters down the stairs. The contractions are not close together yet, so she tells herself not to worry, but Roy doesn’t come back at two. Shortly before three, Margaret goes to the callbox down the street and phones her mam, who calls the midwife and then comes to the flat. With her mam and the midwife there, the baby, a boy, is born at four that afternoon. At six, as she lies in bed with the newborn, she hears the key in the lock at the bottom of the long staircase, and then the heavy, irregular steps of her husband coming up. As he enters Margaret can smell the drink, and she feels a tension in the room. She knows her mother would like to ask him where he’s been, but both of them sense it might set him off.

‘Ayup,’ he says, leaning over Margaret and the tiny, pink baby. ‘Look at this! Now then, little nip .
.
.’

He makes a fuss of the child, holding him in his arms and talking to him. Then he gives him back to Margaret so he can go to make himself something to eat. As he walks into the kitchen he weaves slightly, and Margaret sees her mam looking, and feels embarrassed. She thinks about her mam and dad pleading with her not to marry him. Even outside the church her father had said, ‘I can turn this car around now if you’ll change your mind, love.’

Later, Roy goes out for another drink to wet the baby’s head. He doesn’t come back until Wednesday.

27 How Do You Get Away? Who Do You Have To Ask?

Highgate; Harlington; Thurnscoe, 1956–58

If you stand on the doorstep of 34 Highgate Lane and look across the road and over the fields you can see the railway line that runs from Sheffield through Highgate on its way north. At night, the long freight trains move the coal and steel, their steam spreading out behind them grey against the black sky, sparks flying from their wheels, the orange glow of the firebox lighting up the drivers and the firemen in their cabs. Pauline Hollingworth often comes to stand on the doorstep in the evening so that she can watch the engines and trucks passing by; they make her feel both moved and calm at the same time. She likes it best when she can see the men in the cab; she admires their skill and concentration, and imagines them at ease in each other's company. She watches each train right until the last wagon disappears into the cutting, and then when it has gone she tries to sniff out its lingering smokey, greasy tang in the night air until it too fades away.

Pauline is in her last year at school and the arts and humanities teachers have put her at the top of the class in their reports. The school does not offer academic qualifications, but at Easter the headmistress, Miss Garbutt, asks her what she plans to do after leaving. Pauline says that she would like to work with animals. Miss Garbutt says she may be able to get Pauline a place on an agricultural course at Brampton Ellis, the further education college a mile the other side of Manvers Main. She asks if Pauline would be interested and Pauline says she will have to ask her mam.

Her mam doesn't know if the course would be useful, and is wary of forgoing the money Pauline would bring in if she was out working. Having no one else to ask, Winnie walks across the road to seek the advice of Jane Seels, a young woman whose husband has that year bought the farm from Benny Slater. Jane is articulate and educated, so Winnie assumes she will know about further education courses, and believes her when she says Pauline should go. There could be no end of opportunities for a girl with qualifications, Jane says; she could work at a vet's, or in an office, maybe even as a secretary.

Winnie tells Pauline to tell Miss Garbutt to make her enquiries, and Pauline, having once thought the idea outlandish, feels excited. When Roy visits he says she does right to go to college, and he, Harry and Winnie make jokes about what she'll be like when she's in with the professors, and thinks herself too good to speak to them. Three days later, however, Miss Garbutt calls Pauline back at the end of a class to tell her the course is full. She says Pauline can always try again next year, but Pauline feels as if there is a brick wall collapsing inside her chest, and she knows the chance has passed. She looks bravely at Miss Garbutt, thanks her and says that she'll come for a reference before she finishes school.

Four weeks before the end of term Winnie is taken into hospital to be treated for what she will refer to only as ‘ladies' problems'. Annie comes to look after the family for a fortnight, and she and Winnie agree that Pauline must help too. As she is due to finish school soon anyway, they decide there will be no point in her going back, and so in the end, Pauline will not even collect Miss Garbutt's reference.

This decision taken on her behalf is like a hard, dull blow against the senses. Pauline can see that although opportunities in school and college are real, her mam and Muv don't take them seriously. In some ways, she thinks, they are glad to have her done with education; they do not quite trust the teachers, or at least they do not trust their own ability to take from the teachers anything of lasting value. Not of lasting value to a girl, at any rate.

*

From the start of her mam's stay in hospital, Pauline realises that her grandmother needs the extra assistance not because of her frailty, but for reasons that are rather the opposite. To the family's surprise Muv has on recent visits been energetically courted by Mr Edwards, a retired widower from Darfield, the next village along the Barnsley Road. Mr Edwards is smart and modestly cultured, and Winnie has accepted him as her mam's ‘friend', while knowing, as everyone knows, that there is a great deal more to the liaison than friendship. He and Annie, both young sixty-seven-year-olds, go on bus trips together, and he visits her at home in Elland and at Winnie's. The presence of Mr Edwards means that Annie's two weeks in Highgate become a romantic holiday for her. ‘I'll just catch a bus up to see Mr Edwards, and then come back to help you wi' t' cleaning,' she says to Pauline and Lynda after breakfast, before slipping out and returning home at teatime after a day of walks, half-pints of stout, and leisurely visits to the Darfield bookies.

Pauline cannot complain because, school-leaver or not, she is still regarded as a child. She spends her last school days looking after her recuperating mother and covering for a courting grandparent. Her last communication from her teachers is via her final report, which arrives through the post in July: she has two A grades and the rest are Bs, but no one in the house besides her looks at it.

Pauline doesn't know what she wants to do, other than work with animals. Some of the girls at school had talked about jobs in the mills or a factory with their sisters or cousins, and how much money you could make there, but her dad scotches that the first and only time she mentions it. ‘Tha needn't think tha's working in t' mills, cos tha's not.' Harry wants her to do something better, although he is unsure of what a better job might be, and even less sure of how you went about getting one.