The Valley (34 page)

Later she will tell Lynda that she could equally well be Harry’s daughter, but now she touches her daughter’s temple and says softly, ‘I know you’re our Alf’s. Your hair grows like his, the way it kinks at the side there. It’s the same.’ She is silent for a moment. ‘Will you promise me never to tell your dad that you know?’ Lynda knows she means Harry. ‘He’s been good about it, and he’s always treated you like his own. He’d die if he thought you knew what happened.’

Lynda promises. It is an easy promise to make, because her feelings about her dad are unchanged. That night, lying awake in bed, she thinks she ought to be upset, but actually she doesn’t feel any new emotions about herself or her family at all. Her mind is mainly occupied by the discovery that her feelings of love and loyalty are determined more by someone’s actions than by their biology. That may not be true for everyone, but it is true for her, and the realisation is liberating: rather than weakening her love for Harry, it strengthens it.

Since she was a little girl, Lynda had listened for her dad walking past her bedroom door at night on his way to bed. If she is still awake when he comes in, she calls out to wish him goodnight and he calls back.

That night she lies awake, listening, until he comes, creaking the floorboards of the steep stairs and then the landing.

‘Goodnight, Dad,’ she shouts as he passes.

‘Goodnight, love.’

Stronger, not weaker, she thinks. Not less, but more, somehow.

36 A Little Less Conversation

Goldthorpe, 1967

After her discovery Lynda breaks off with Kevin Gould and spends more time with John Burton at the youth club and the café. She tells her mother she is going out with other friends, and if Gary and David stay she takes them to the park as a pretext when she is meeting John there. But even when Winnie is tipped off by friends, her opposition to John is less fierce than it was. Her confession of the affair with Alf has subtly altered her relationship with Lynda, and working at the sewing factory has given Lynda more independence. With Winnie’s power over her daughter diminished, her hope and fear are exposed. Her hope is of nurturing Lynda both for her own sake and, perhaps, as a proxy for Winnie’s memory of Alf: her fear is of being publicly tainted by an association with John. She attempts to dissuade Lynda from seeing him, but Lynda steadily pays less attention. When they do split up in the summer of 1967, it is because of John’s actions rather than the doom-laden hectorings of Lynda’s mother.

It begins with a youth club trip to Malgrat de Mar on the Costa Brava. Excited by the prospects of travelling abroad and going on holiday with John, Lynda encourages him to come, but he refuses. He says he would need to borrow money from his mam, who cannot afford it, and anyway he is not interested in Spanish tourist resorts. Lynda knows these are excuses, but drops the subject and goes on the trip anyway. She sends John postcards so he can see where he would have been staying and then, thinking that he might regret not having gone and be in need of cheering up, she finds a record shop so she can buy him a Spanish-issue Elvis record that no one else in Goldthorpe will have. She finds an EP which is perfect: four songs including a ‘
Down by the Riverside’
and ‘
When the Saints Go Marching In’
medley, and a sleeve with a picture of Elvis looking cool in an orange shirt.

On the day she arrives home she puts on light-coloured clothes to show off her tan, and walks through Highgate, past Rocky Wall’s café and up the main street to the Burtons’. John’s mam shows her into the front room where he is sitting on the settee. He does not stand up when she comes in.

‘
Buenas dias, amigo
!
’ says Lynda.

‘Ayup.’ He looks at her only briefly, and does not smile. His manner is that of a wronged man in an aggressive, unforgiving mood.

‘I’m back.’

‘Aye, I can see.’

‘I’ve bought you this.’ She holds out the Elvis EP in its pink-and-white striped paper. John takes it, slips it from the bag, looks at the sleeve and lays it on the settee beside him.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Silence.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says.

‘Nowt.’

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Shall I go then?’

She stands wondering what she has done wrong. One day John will explain that the fault was not hers: he loved Lynda above anything else but knew that her family disapproved of him. That and the idea of being in the discomforting setting of a foreign country with her had eaten away at his self-assurance. Confronted by her and her perfect gift, he just wanted the complicated emotions to go away. Aged eighteen, he can’t tell her this, and, still sitting on the green vinyl settee, he shrugs and says, ‘If you like.’

Silence again.

‘I’ll go now then, shall I?’

Lynda walks out, expecting him to follow. She closes the door and stands outside the house waiting; she walks down the street listening for his footsteps, but he doesn’t come. All the way home she goes back and forth over the conversations they had before she left, the messages she sent on the postcards, and the choice of record, but she can think of no good reason for his rejection of her. After a few days she decides that he probably just wants some freedom to go out with the lads, but the mystery will play on her mind at intervals for the next ten years. One person, however, sees the good in it.

‘You don’t love him, you just think you do, love,’ says Winnie as Lynda sobs in the sitting room. ‘You want to get on with your life now, and not bother with him. He’s not good enough for you.’

Winnie had preferred Kevin Gould all along. He was a nice, sens­ible, mature boy, and he didn’t have fits.

37 The Two Wives of Roy Fox Hollingworth

Bradbury, County Durham; Redcar, North Riding of Yorkshire; Bridlington, 1965–66

In the summer of 1965, Roy calls to see Margaret and asks her if she and the lads will come with him to County Durham, where he is employed by a construction company with a contract to upgrade part of the A1 to a motorway. He has been working on the new roads, living in Flamborough, Bridlington and Redcar, keeping his head down and sorting himself out, he says. His wages are now more than enough to support her, Gary and David and, if she’ll come, they can stay in his caravan while they look for a flat.

Lonely, poor, and, despite everything, still in love with her husband, Margaret agrees. Roy drives them to a village called Bradbury, just outside Sedgefield in County Durham, and they park in a steeply sloping field beside a farmyard overlooking the A1. Margaret had imagined a large mobile home on a campsite, but the solitary caravan in the field is small: when Roy shows them in, their suitcases take up half the floor space, and she sees they will have to rearrange the foam cushions on the settees to make beds. There is a chemical toilet and no running water. ‘We’ll not be here long,’ says Roy, seeing the expression on her face. ‘We can all just muck in for a bit.’

In the morning Roy goes to work on the road, leaving neither money nor information. Margaret goes to the farmhouse to ask where she can buy food, and the farmer’s wife gives her bread, tea, milk and eggs so they can have breakfast. As they eat inside the cold caravan Margaret listens to the cars on the A1 contraflow, the earthmoving machines in the distance, and the occasional bellowing of livestock. It starts to rain, and the rain sounds loud on the roof, like stones falling. Margaret offers up a small prayer of thanks that the caravan does not leak.

The next day is rawer and dourer than the first, and a mood of embattlement seems to be spreading out from the roadworks. They are in the County Durham coalfield, and because the earth is sinking into the disused mine workings there are problems with the road construction. The motorway is behind schedule, and for the first few weeks Roy eats in a canteen on site and has to work a lot of nightshifts, sometimes around the clock. Margaret and the boys go days without even seeing him, though his road runs along the bottom of their field.

After a month he finds them a family-sized caravan on a park overlooking the beach at Coatham Bay. A few miles from the work site, Coatham Bay is on the edge of Redcar, and across the River Tees from Middlesbrough. The caravan park is exposed to the North Sea, and if its residents look northwards they see Teesside’s steelworks looming, but there are shops close by and the caravans have running water. Roy says he will find a flat for them nearby, and Margaret asks people on the site about schools for the boys to go to in September, and begins to feel optimistic about their future.

And then one Saturday morning, Roy brings visitors. He has been away all night – working, he says – but he returns to the caravan with a dark-haired woman of roughly Margaret’s age, and a little girl who looks a few years younger than David. Something about the way the woman stands in relation to Roy makes Margaret think she has a territorial stake on him.

‘This is Alwyn,’ he says. ‘And this’ – gesturing at the girl – ‘is Wendy.’

‘Hello,’ says Alwyn.

‘Who’s she?’ Margaret asks Roy while looking at the woman.

‘A friend of mine,’ says Roy, and Alwyn smiles.

‘Why is she here with you now?’ asks Margaret. ‘Is something going on?’

‘No! I just wanted to bring her and Wendy to meet you and t’ lads.’

Alwyn smiles again.

‘I don’t .
.
.’ Margaret addresses Alwyn directly. ‘Will you go, please?’

Alwyn looks at Roy. Margaret feels a rush of adrenaline. ‘I want you to go,’ she orders. ‘Get out. Go!’

Alwyn takes Wendy’s hand and hurries out of the caravan and across the park. Margaret darts to the door to shout after her, slightly surprised at herself but enjoying the feeling. ‘Don’t come back or I’ll flaming kill you.’

Roy is laughing.

‘Is that your fancy woman?’ asks Margaret.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ says Roy. ‘When would I have time to see a fancy woman? Come here.’ He hugs her. ‘She’s just a friend, sometimes cooks for t’ men in t’ caravan. I just said I’d bring her to see you and t’ lads, but I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known we were going to have that carry-on.’

‘But .
.
.’ Margaret is unsure. She does not trust the woman, but knows there is a caravan that serves as a canteen on the works site where women come to cook for the men, so that part could be true. ‘Alright,’ she says, and sits down. ‘I just want to have a normal life, Roy. That’s all.’

He stands and fills the kettle at the tap. ‘I know, and we will. Come on, let’s have a cup of tea.’

They do not have a normal life, and Roy does not find them a flat. He spends more nights away from the caravan, and gives Margaret little money for food and clothes. Once in a while he comes back drunk and threatens to hit her. Margaret feeds the boys on cheap tinned food and white bread, eating as little as she can so as to be able to fill their plates. Her weight goes down to six and a half stone.

One day when she has only a few coins left for food, and Roy has been absent for three days, Margaret goes to the council offices to ask the woman on reception if anyone there can help her. The woman eyes Margaret and the boys warily as if they might steal something, and directs them to some nearby offices where she says someone will talk to them about National Assistance. The offices are dingy, with unwashed windows and an unwelcoming atmosphere. One of the staff, an officious but personable man of about forty, takes down her details, and those of Roy, and listens when she says her husband doesn’t give her any money. ‘He says he can’t afford it,’ she says. ‘But I need to feed my children, and I wondered if you could help me?’

The man fetches registers and files, checks some of their pages and then looks at Margaret with curiosity.

‘You’re Mr Roy Hollingworth’s wife?’

‘Yes, I’m Margaret Hollingworth. These are his two sons.’

The man glances at Gary and David. ‘Could there be any confusion about that?’

‘No! I’m his
wife
! And these are his two lads.’

‘And where do you live?’

Margaret curtly gives the address of the caravan. He looks sceptical. ‘It’s temporary,’ she says. ‘He works building motorways.’

‘I have no record of a Mr Hollingworth at that address. We have a Roy Fox Hollingworth in Middlesbrough. We have him down because his wife’s in receipt of National Assistance.’

‘But that can’t be him because I don’t get National Assistance! That’s the problem!’

‘Yes, but that’s the only Roy Hollingworth we have. And your name .
.
.?’

‘Margaret.’

‘Yes, Margaret .
.
. but you see his wife is a Mrs Alwyn Hollingworth.’

‘Alwyn? She’s not his wife –’

The man looks at her with pity.

‘I think you need to have a word with him, and come back to me,’ says the man. He knows she is looking at the register and he lets her keep looking long enough to remember the address.

*

She and the boys catch a bus into Middlesbrough, and then find the address on foot, asking directions as they go. There is no reply at the house, so she stands and waits for a couple of hours until she sees Alwyn coming down the road with Wendy. Alwyn lets them all into the house. Margaret notices a pair of Roy’s shoes near the door.