The Bobbin Girls

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘I’m sure his father feels it is for the best,’ she said briskly. ‘Making friends among boys his own age will be good for Rob. Another scone?’ Alena shook her head. She hadn’t finished the one on her plate. Her bitter disappointment at finding Mrs Hollinthwaite was not to be the ally she had hoped for, had made it go all dry and lumpy in her mouth.

  ‘I think I’ll go now, if you don’t mind. Will you ask Rob to meet me tomorrow, as usual? He’ll know where.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll show you out.’

  ‘It’s all right, I know the way.’

  ‘No, I want to.’ At the door, Olivia put a hand upon the girl’s slender shoulder. ‘You are growing up fast, Alena. One day you will be a very beautiful young woman. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to grow up though, will you? Sometimes, life - adult life - isn’t all that it seems. People - people aren’t always as happy as you might imagine. Enjoy your youth. It is all too pitifully short.’

  Alena looked into the woman’s tired, if once pretty face. and dutifully nodded. On the way home she thought about these words, but could make no sense of them. Being fourteen wasn’t much fun either.

  Alena decided to announce, quite dramatically over supper, that she meant to leave school as soon as possible and take a job in the bobbin mill. She wanted to prove how desperately she needed Rob and how her life would be ruined without him. Her mother, she knew, would be disappointed by this news, as she echoed Olivia’s hopes for her only daughter.

  But as the family gathered for the evening meal it soon became apparent even to Alena that there was a strange atmosphere which had nothing at all to do with her own problems. There was none of the usual joking and hectoring. Her mother was banging supper dishes on to the table with uncharacteristic vigour, not even noticing that Alena was fidgeting with the salt, making little heaps of it all over the cloth. All four brothers were unusually well-behaved, Tom, in particular, sat tight-lipped and pale, with everyone glancing at him in a funny sort of way from time to time. Her father glowered more severely than ever, and worst of all, a deep, heavy silence persisted throughout the meal.

  Even so, Alena was determined to make her point. She glared accusingly at the Yorkshire pudding steaming on her plate. Filled with a rich onion gravy, it was usually one of her favourite meals. The very smell of it set her mouth watering but she merely stabbed at it with her fork, eating none of it. How could she? The food would choke her, and she was desperate for someone to understand the very real misery she felt.

  Why could no one see how important this friendship was to her? Rob was like another brother to her, wasn’t he? No, more than a brother. One day last summer they’d taken a picnic and as they lay together on the crisp grass of the Furness Fells, watching the buzzards fly, Alena had sworn, on her living soul, that she would be with Rob Hollinthwaite till her dying day. He had made the same vow. They’d written the promise out on a piece of paper. folded and sealed it with red sealing wax borrowed from James’s office and, having each made a fingerprint upon the seal, had later hidden it deep in the earth beneath their special oak. This simple act had symbolised their pact of friendship.

  Oh, yes, he needed her. Rob had made that clear in a thousand different ways.

  Like when his father tried to make him study serious books on politics, or to drum geography and mathematics into him till he grew confused and filled with a sense of failure. Rob was no scholar. But nor was he weak. He simply wasn’t the son James Hollinthwaite wanted him to be which, in Alena’s opinion, made him all the better for that. Rob’s skills lay in his hands. He could make anything out of nothing, but for some reason James thought this degrading.

  His father had once destroyed a drey that Rob had worked on for weeks. He’d fashioned it with his own hands, and nailed it high in a tree so that he could watch the red squirrels come and go as they set up home. It had broken his heart to see it torn down and be instructed to stop encouraging vermin. Alena had hugged him to her and let him cry as if he were a child. But she knew that he wasn’t a child, he was very nearly a man. And one day soon she would be a woman. They cared for each other in a very special way. Dare she call it love? To herself at least. A love that one day, she hoped, would blossom and develop into something wondrous and enduring.

  Now he was to be sent away, her dearest friend, and they would be separated whether they liked it or not. Alena thought that Mrs Hollinthwaite was wrong about not rushing to be grown-up, believing, as all children do, that adults could decide their own future without interference from anyone.

  She was gratified when her father at last noticed she wasn’t eating.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘Rob is to be sent away to school.’

  He stared at her in silence for a moment, as if she spoke a language he didn’t quite understand. Alena was nervous of her father. He was a thin wiry man with bloodshot eyes and an uncertain temper that erupted all too frequently from fists like sledgehammers. He claimed that with four sons to keep in order, these were the best tools for the job. To Alena he’d always seemed dark and forbidding, a distant figure who rarely had much time for her, being usually either working in the mill or out in the woods, poaching half the time she shouldn’t wonder. He had once been employed as gamekeeper in Mr Hollinthwaite’s woodlands but, for some reason unknown to Alena, had left.

  ‘I’m to lose him, d’you hear?’ she shouted, feeling the tears spurting afresh. ‘My very best friend.’ Everyone stared at her in horror for breaking this terrible silence.

  ‘For God’s sake, child, we’ve no patience with your little dramas this evening.’

  ‘But what will I do without him? I’ll have no one.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft. You’ve plenty of other friends.’

  ‘Not like Rob.’

  ‘Heaven help us, what’s the matter with this family? Have they all gone mad? Life is full of disappointments - some of them, believe it or not, far more important than losing a friend. I lost a good job I once had with the Hollinthwaites, didn’t I? You can’t trust that lot an inch.’

  ‘You can trust Rob. He’s different.’

  ‘Eat up your supper.’

  ‘I couldn’t . . .’

  Her father picked up her plate, making them all flinch as he leaped angrily from his seat. Then he opened the back door and threw it outside. They all heard the pottery smash as it hit the stone flags. ‘If you don’t want it, then the dogs can have it. Now go to your room. I’ve more than I can cope with already this evening.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Now.’

  Alena went.

  It was as if a second World War had broken out in the Townsen household. Over the next few days voices were constantly raised in anger. Lizzie went about her work stone-faced, the three elder boys were notable by their absence, and on one terrible occasion Tom and his father actually came to blows. Ray Townsen took the leather strap down from where it hung behind the back door and thrashed his son as if he were a boy still and not a grown man of nineteen, nearly twenty. Alena felt certain poor Tom might have been killed had not her mother finally managed to wrest the strap from her furious husband’s hand.

  After that came endless discussions. Much of the conversation took place with the kitchen door firmly closed, and Alena had very little idea what was being said within. But every now and then the odd phrase would break out from the tight confines of the room and reverberate throughout the house.

  ‘What were you thinking of?’

  ‘Have you no sense?’

  ‘She’s little more than a child.’

  ‘You’re a damn fool.’

  Alena crouched in misery in her room, as she always did when her father was on the rampage, feeling very sorry for herself. Her mother too was offhand, avoiding answering her questions even more than usual, as if having a curious mind was a sin. Besides which, Alena could hardly bear to see Tom so white and distraught.

  It soon became clear that her brother’s anguish was connected wi
th Dolly’s problem. He was the one responsible for the girl’s condition, and since she was far too young to marry, no one quite knew what to do about it.

  So engrossed was the family with the magnitude of this problem that even when Alena finally told Lizzie she’d made up her mind to leave school as soon as possible, her mother merely nodded, her sad grey eyes fixed upon the potato she was peeling.

  Won’t you be disappointed if I don’t become a teacher?’

  Lizzie, her mind on her beloved youngest son’s future happiness, forced to marry a girl he didn’t love because of sowing a few too many wild oats, could barely concentrate upon her daughter’s troubles which seemed childish by comparison. ‘Of course, love, but it’s your life. You must choose.’

  At which point Alena flounced out of the house in high dudgeon. She went at once to take out her grievance upon Dolly, and give her a piece of her mind for ruining her family’s, and in particular Tom’s, happiness. She found her buying pear drops in Mrs Rigg’s Village Shop. Alena didn’t even have a halfpenny to buy a stick of liquorice but she waited with strained patience until the treasured two ounces of sweets had been wrapped in a cone of paper and handed over. When the two girls got outside, she was to wonder how her life could go so wrong, so quickly. Far from having the upper hand, it was Dolly who turned upon her.

  ‘I don’t know who the hell you think you are, hoity-toity little madam, looking down your nose at me! Not only did you get me into trouble over those bloody dustbins, but you were seen swimming with Rob Hollinthwaite. In the buff, stark naked, so I’m told.’

  Alena stood open-mouthed with shock, hearing with growing alarm that it was James Hollinthwaite himself who had seen them swimming together.

  He had seen her naked body!

  The very thought made her want to die of humiliation. To think that while they’d been happily swimming in all innocence, that dreadful man had stood watching them without saying a word. Where? Why? How? From behind some tree or rock? What a despicable thing to do. She shuddered with revulsion.

  Word had apparently spread quickly as Mrs Milburn, cook general at Ellersgarth Hall, had overheard some private conversation. Listening at doors being one of her hobbies, according to Maggie Sutton, who was told the titillating tale while standing in the meat queue at the butcher’s. Dolly, sucking on a pear drop, and still smarting from the leathering Maggie had given her when she’d learned of her daughter’s predicament, took great pleasure in outlining all of this to Alena and seeing her discomfiture. She left the girl in no doubt that it would be all around the village in no time.

  Embarrassment overwhelmed Alena.

  How would she ever be able to face anyone again? How would Rob? It’d been her idea to swim in the tam, of course. He’d skin her alive for this. But was it her fault if adults always looked at things in the worst possible way?

  She saw now why the hasty decision to send him away had been made. Mr Hollinthwaite thought they were up to far more serious mischief than up-ending dustbins.

  Alena knew as soon as she looked into Rob’s face that she couldn’t tell him they were the subject of village gossip. He had more than enough on his plate already.

  The day in Yorkshire had been a failure. He did not like the school and no longer had any wish to go to it. It took no time at all for him to make that fact quite clear, and any exultation Alena might once have felt at this discovery, quickly evaporated as her heart filled with pity. The awfulness of their quarrel was forgotten as she saw that all the happiness and delight he had first shown at the news had leeched away, leaving him pale and drawn.

  They’d given him several tests, it seemed. Arithmetic, geometry and algebra, which Rob hated, and one comprised entirely of questions such as: If there are five people sitting at a table and John doesn’t want to sit next to Mary, Mary wants to sit next to Susie but not next to David, where would Jane sit? Miss Simpson hadn’t done those kind of silly tests. Where was the use? She’d spent most of her time telling wonderful stories from history, or about Greek heroes, such as how Horatio held a bridge against his enemies, or how Helen of Troy had caused a war because of her beautiful face.

  Consequently Rob had panicked, earning a stern reproof from the examining master who told him that he was in dire need of some proper education. He hadn’t liked the sound of that one bit.

  ‘And the school buildings are awful. Not a bit like I imagined. All faded and old, with the paint kicked off the doors and bare little rooms with hard beds. Freezing cold.’

  ‘What about the wonderful swimming pool?’

  ‘Like ice.’

  They walked deep into the woods, silent in their misery. They could hear woodsmen sawing and chopping and every now and then the sound of a tree crashing down. Autumn was always the time when undergrowth was cleared and the felling began. They reached their favourite oak and sat side by side between the embrace of its huge roots and Alena listened for more than an hour to his mournful tale. When he had done she said. ‘So tell your dad you won’t go.’

  He looked horrified. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’ But she knew he was right. Rob Hollinthwaite could no more stand up to his father than a lamb could lie down with a fox, even before what had taken place at High Birk Tarn. Not because he was a coward, but because he worshipped the man and wanted, desperately, to please him.

  ‘I don’t want to go, Ally.’ He hadn’t used her childhood name for years. It seemed to emphasise his vulnerability and filled her heart with new sympathy for him. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot since we - well, had that bit of a spat. I don’t want to leave Ellersgarth either.’

  Alena recognised these words as a code, meaning that it was really she whom he didn’t want to leave, though he was too proud or embarrassed to say so.

  ‘I asked Father if I could go to your school instead. I’ve never seen him so angry. He ranted on for hours about how I should make something of myself and not turn into a fool. All about how difficult it is to get a job these days. How I must buck up and get properly educated if I want to take over the farm and mill one day, and be able to manage his thousand acres of woodland. I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted to manage all of that. So he hit the roof again and said didn’t that prove how stupid I was? I daren’t ask him again, Ally. He even said you were a bad influence and it would be better if I didn’t see you at all!’ They gazed at each other in silence, aghast at such a prospect.

  She had to tell him then about his father seeing them swimming a the tarn. Better it come from her, she decided, than some nosy old gossip in the village street, or be faced with James Hollinthwaite’s scorn. As she did so, she watched a red flush creep over his face.

  ‘They make it sound so - so dirty!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And it wasn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They won’t believe that.’

  ‘But we can’t let them separate us.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’d die.’

  ‘Me too.’ Rob looked at her in silence, the anger burning in his eyes the only indication of his feelings.

  ‘There’s only one thing to be done then,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to run away.’

  Chapter Four

  They left before dawn on Sunday, each with a change of clothes in a bag and whatever food they’d been able to steal from their respective pantries.

  It was still dark, with a hint of rain in the air, as they traced by instinct the way through the woods. The smell of damp moss and earth was strong in their nostrils, their feet slipping on stones slimy with lichen. Hours from now when her heels were rubbed raw Alena would wish she’d put on an extra pair of socks, or worn her clogs, but for now she was glad of the Wellington boots, and certain they were doing the right thing.

  The sun came up all pink and red and gold, spearing the woodland with shafts of light in which dust motes danced and leaves floated like brilliant jewels, causing them to marvel at its beauty. Sunlight and shadow
ribbed the path they followed, rust brown from years of autumn leaves being crunched underfoot. As the morning wore on the path wound its way between long grasses for mile upon mile. At one point it divided, one fork breaking off to the left, the other climbing steeply uphill. They took the right-hand fork, not certain where it led but fearful the lower one might take them back home.

  The path narrowed and filled with a network of roots and stones, ready to trip tired feet. Thickly covered in moss, proving it was not often used, bilberry plants grew alongside and they ate a few berries as they plodded silently onward. They paused from time to time to drink water from a beck, nibble at bread or crunch the apples they had brought with them. Sometimes they even talked and laughed, as if they were on some jolly picnic.

  In the afternoon they slept for a good two hours. It gave them the strength to go on. The first flush of excitement had long since died and now each was wondering, in their different way, what the future might hold. Alena decided that since her family was so unfeeling, she didn’t care so long as she was with Rob, while he felt perfectly at home in the woods, in charge of his own life at last.

  They came to a tree stacked about with cut poles and Rob hurried her quickly away from it, in case people were working nearby. The late-afternoon sun was slanting golden rays among a lattice of hazel, rowan, slender oak and birch as they entered a part of the forest unknown to them. It seemed to stretch on and on over hills and valleys they’d never trodden. As they plodded onward their progress slowed as the woods seemed to grow thicker and the silence deepened. It grew colder and they hunched their chins into their warm scarves. From time to time they glanced back, anxious their fathers might even now be in hot pursuit. They stopped and looked about them for a moment, feeling quite alone in all the world, vulnerable and afraid. A rustle in the undergrowth set both their hearts racing. Then a pair of pheasants burst from under a blanket of bracken and galloped away, clacking noisily with fright. It made them both laugh, breaking the tension and shaming their nervousness.