The Bobbin Girls

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘He may stay at my sister’s, in Edinburgh. For the sake of his education, you know, since it is such a fine city. We haven’t quite decided.’

  ‘I see,’ Lizzie said again, and indeed she did, very plainly.

  ‘And your own family?’ James finally, and rather stiffly, enquired.

  ‘Very well, thank you, but I must go.’

  ‘Of course.’ James doffed his hat. ‘Mustn’t keep you. Give Ray my best regards.’ He turned and marched away, leaving Lizzie frowning after him.

  Hard-hearted old devil, she thought. Did no one give a tinker’s cuss for that poor lad, shifted from pillar to post? Why didn’t Olivia put her foot down? Lizzie tried to imagine what it must be like being married to James Hollinthwaite and failed completely, inwardly admitting that nobody should have to endure such torture. But why had he stopped for a chat? What had it all been about? James Hollinthwaite certainly wasn’t a man to waste time in conversation without trying to do some good to himself.

  James was not a happy man. Nothing in his life was going quite as it should. He’d thought that sending Rob away to school would solve everything, but so far it had proved to be a complete failure. The boy was upstairs even now licking his wounds, and where James would send him next he hadn’t the first idea.

  ‘Don’t unpack his trunk,’ he’d instructed Olivia, who had immediately started fussing round her son, hugging and kissing the lad as if he were a hero.

  ‘Can’t he have a short holiday? Aren’t you at least pleased to have him home for a while? Your own son,’ she’d asked, taunting him in that way which always set his blood pressure rising.

  ‘This isn’t the time for holidays. He’s in disgrace, and will do as he’s told.’

  It was all to do with some rag or other, which Robert didn’t cope with very well. James hadn’t been given the full details, nor had he asked for them. Couldn’t handle discipline, the headmaster had said, didn’t fit in. James would like to have denied it, dismissed the matter as a load of nonsense and argued that the boy hadn’t been given a proper chance to settle. Unfortunately, in his opinion, he’d been too long tied to his mother’s apron strings and it would take a major effort to put some real spunk into the lad. But, one way or another, he would do it.

  Nothing had gone quite right lately. James seemed to be carrying the can for everything that went wrong. Even talking to Lizzie Townsen in the street filled him with guilt. But then he hadn’t reckoned with that damned fight dragging open old wounds that he’d long since thought healed. Not that he considered himself responsible for Ray Townsen’s condition. That was the man’s own stupid fault. He’d started the fisticuffs in the first place, hadn’t he? Thankfully, Lizzie didn’t see anything untoward about their quarrel, so that was all right. Ray always did have an unreliable temper.

  Business too was far from satisfactory. What with unemployment the way it was, there was precious little spare money around for spending on fancy goods, or even on staples. And women’s clothes had gone so short, they barely needed any fabric in them at all. All quite shocking, in James’s opinion, from every point of view. Not least that such fashions badly affected the textile industry, which in turn meant they needed fewer bobbins. Add to that the rise of cotton imports from India, challenging their own home market, and the threat that Britain might soon come off the Gold Standard, and prospects were dire. It wouldn’t surprise him if there weren’t a General Election soon. Most certainly a financial crisis was in the offing, which meant interest rates, even taxes, might rise. He’d have to make sure his own interests were safeguarded. No doubt about that. No good standing by and letting things happen.

  Which brought his mind back full circle to his errant son. If the boy thought he could slip back into his old layabout ways with that young lass, he’d another think coming. James set aside his account books for once, and spent two long hours on the telephone. By the end of it, he had secured a place for Rob in a school that might not have quite the reputation of the first, but had the advantage of being firmer on discipline. Which, apparently, was exactly what the boy needed.

  When Alena got home from the mill that evening, Lizzie broke it to her as gently as she could that Rob was to move schools and it was unlikely that he would be home in the summer. Alena stared at her mother, stony-faced, for a long moment, then turning on her heel went to her room, where she remained with the door shut fast, not even coming down for supper.

  But whatever Alena suffered in those bleak hours would have been a thousand times worse had she known that Rob sat facing his family across the dining-room table in abject misery. He pushed his food about his plate uneaten, gazed from time to time through the window, wishing he was as free as the wind that shook the tree tops.

  Olivia kept her eyes on her plate, casting only occasional anxious glances at her husband and son.

  ‘Eat up, boy. It’s not the end of the world. There are other schools.’

  Rob looked at his father, obstinacy flaring in his hazel eyes. ‘I don’t want to go to another school. I want to stay here, in Ellersgarth.’

  James filled his mouth with partridge pie. ‘Rubbish,’ he said, spitting crumbs about the table. ‘You’re not fifteen yet. How many times must I say it - you’ll not get to university if you don’t have a proper education.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to university.’

  ‘Aye, you do. Every young chap does. Wish I’d had the opportunity. I had to start work when I was twelve, nay eleven, working in the boys’ home where I was brought up. How would you feel if I asked you to shovel cow muck from five in the morning, at eleven years of age? You don’t know you’re born, lad. You’re lucky to have a home, not to mention a caring family.’

  Caring? Rob thought. Don’t make me laugh. He’d heard these phrases repeated so often they made any impression. ‘I’d do it,’ he obstinately insisted, ‘If I could stay at home with my family.’ He glanced across at his mother as he said this. But they both knew he had no wish to farm, or learn to run the bobbin mill, so the mockery in his father’s eyes only diminished him further.

  ‘Eat your supper. We can’t afford to let good food go to waste because you’re having a bit of a tantrum.’

  ‘I’m not having a tantrum, I just want you to listen to my opinion.’ James’s face was growing red, eyes bulging as much as his full cheeks.

  ‘Your opinion? What sort of opinion can a boy like you have?’

  Rob knew that his expression must be one of utter misery and he struggled to sound calm and adult, to organise the carefully planned phrases which threatened to scatter like stray leaves beneath the onslaught of his father’s contempt. ‘I have a brain which you’re always telling me to use. Must you always reject me? Don’t you care what I want to do with my own life?’ He watched spellbound as a trickle of gravy ran from the corner of James’s mouth.

  ‘Don’t talk daft.’ The gravy splattered in tiny telling spots all over the damask tablecloth. ‘You’re too young to know what you want. You’ll do as you’re told and be grateful for it. Now let your food stop your insolent tongue. I’ve had enough of this.’

  ‘But I won’t...’He got no further as Olivia put out a hand to rest it gently on his, a look in her eyes that beseeched him to stop. Rob could take no more. He staggered to his feet, all the carefully worded explanations of how he wanted to serve an apprenticeship in the forest, then perhaps go on to college and qualify as a forester, dissolving like mist in his head. He watched his father stuff yet more pastry into his mouth and chew on it with the calm assurance that he was in complete control and there was nothing anybody, certainly not his own son, or wife, could say or do to alter that fact.

  Even so, Rob had one last valiant try. ‘You can’t make me do what you say,’ he cried. ‘Send me to a new school if you must, but you can’t make me learn, or obey your every command!’ And he ran from the room to hide the shame of his tears in the privacy of his room.

  Later, when the house was in darkness, despite the howl
of the wind in the eaves and the spatter of rain on the window panes, Rob crept from his warm bed still fully clothed and let himself quietly out of the kitchen door. It was a daunting walk through the eerie stillness of night, beneath the whispering blackness of the beech trees that lined the long drive, but his mind was made up. He didn’t trust his father, and knew he must grab this opportunity while he could.

  It took only a scattering of shingle against her window-pane to bring Alena from her bed. Rob saw the twitch of her curtains then in seconds she was beside him, her blue eyes glinting with excitement in the moonlight, the warmth of her body seeming to enfold him even though she did not touch him. Her hands thrust deep into her pockets and her voice quite matter-of-fact, she asked him how he was.

  Rob shrugged. All the explanations he’d planned to say to her had vanished from his head. They sat on the garden wall, kicking their heels and gazing at the moon sailing high above a bank of clouds as youth and embarrassment, and their shared misery, robbed them of speech. They could find no words to describe their feelings, or the difficulties in their new lives. Rob chewed on his lip while Alena was scarcely able to look him in the eye, let alone take part in her usual bold teasing.

  She shied away from talking about her father’s illness, knew better than to ask him questions about his own father, or the new school he was going to. And all the gossip she’d so often longed to tell him, about Tom and Dolly, Sandra and her crush on Harry, Jim getting married and Kit’s latest girlfriend whom he’d promised to take to Windermere and then forgotten and left standing in the rain, seemed suddenly small and insignificant. Not at all the sort of thing which would be of interest to this public schoolboy in smart grey trousers and blazer. He seemed more like a stranger to her and Alena could find no way to bridge the yawning gap between them. Only when he jumped down from the wall did the words burst from her.

  ‘You’ll come back for me one day, won’t you?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘You won’t forget?’

  ‘How could I forget? You make me who I am.’

  It was enough, and said everything that needed to be said between them. Which was just as well for the next morning, almost the instant dawn broke, Rob was called from his bed and taken by his father in the motor to the station at Lake Side where he was packed on to a north-bound train with his trunk, a five-pound note, and instructions to make it work this time.

  ‘I want no namby-pamby in this family,’ James coldly informed Rob as he slammed the carriage door shut. Then he walked from the platform without a backward glance, failing entirely to see the stark hatred in his son’s eyes, or the grim set of his young face.

  James’s fears were proved entirely correct and by August a coalition government had been formed. In September Britain was indeed forced off the Gold Standard, prices rose, a means test was introduced, and in October a hasty general election brought the Conservatives into power on a landslide. The only businesses that had more customers than they could cope with were the soup kitchens which sprang up the length and breadth of the land.

  There were, however, new industries coming, of which James was only too aware. The electric grid was spreading fast; cinema, motor cars, and domestic products of all kinds coming to the fore. But what good would they do him? He knew nothing of such things.

  He sat in his study for hours on end, reading his account books until he could have recited them like psalms. If the bobbin mill wasn’t going to make his fortune, there must be some other way. What other skills did he have? What else did he own? A farm, too small to make anyone rich. A patch of woodland, and some land. How could he best use his resources?

  It was exceedingly vexing to be disappointed in his business as well as in his son.

  Then he remembered George Tyson. George had done very nicely for himself. Made a fortune in shares, on top of the one he already had. Unfortunately, James had no liquid capital to speak of. George had also become a local councillor, and was canny enough to keep his ear to the ground for where the money was being made these days. With that fact in mind, it might be worth telling Olivia to invite the Tysons over for another of her famous dinners. Aye, that might be the very thing.

  Chapter Eight

  1933

  With her seventeenth birthday in sight, Alena decided that Hallowe’en mischief and climbing trees were no longer the kind of activities she should be interested in. She’d grown taller, her curves had filled out to a slender gracefulness, her face matured to a fine beauty, shedding some of its soft plumpness without losing any of its natural allure. Her eyes still glowed with a glorious brilliance, laughter never far away. And although she’d persuaded Lizzie to trim and bob her hair, it still reached to her shoulders and curled as haphazardly as ever. Alena liked the more grown-up style, and spent happy hours brushing and curling it.

  She’d worked at Low Birk Mill for nearly three years now, and though she still constantly thought of Rob and his promise to return, deep down she no longer believed it. She found that it simply hurt too much to devote time and emotion to longing for a lost friendship.

  Since that poignant moonlit night, Rob had never again returned to the valley. Even their correspondence had, if anything, grown more sparse and painfully polite. Sometimes Alena thought he only wrote to her out of duty, and he never said anything which remotely encouraged an exchange of confidences. He sent her cards on her birthday, of course, and at Christmas, but she had learned not to reveal quite so much of her feelings in her more frequent letters to him. What was the point, when it only left her weeping into a damp pillow all night?

  She’d tried not to blame him. Yet a part of her railed and raged at his quiet acceptance of his lot, telling herself that if he really loved her, he would stand up to his father and insist on coming home, at least for a visit.

  But in the end she’d been forced to accept that she must make a new life for herself, and in the years since their final parting, had found many friends amongst the girls in the mill.

  She’d also learned that aching legs and back from the hours of standing and carrying swill-loads of bobbins, not to mention cold feet and chilblains, were all part of the job. But not for a minute would she have changed places with anyone. The girls were a cheery bunch, always ready with a joke and a friendly smile. Alena was as happy as she could be, in the circumstances.

  Edith, who had been there the longest, would often be seen clutching her aching back and complaining, ‘Eeh, I’m that worn out, I wish I were in heaven wi’ t’door locked.’ No one took this declaration very seriously.

  Then there was Annie Cockcroft, giggly Deirdre Swainson, Mary Jane Linklater, who suffered from rheumatism and chills on her chest, moaning Minnie Hodgson and her group of stalwarts, quiet, pretty little Sandra, and Dolly. About a dozen girls altogether, including Alena herself. A small but merry band, as Edith was fond of saying.

  The men weren’t bad either; not that they ever offered to help the women lift a heavy swill, or to load a sack of finished bobbins into the wagon for them. Every man and woman for themself, that was the unvarying rule, and one that Alena approved of. She certainly never asked for help.

  ‘You’ve to pull your own weight here,’ they’d shout, if anyone dared to complain.

  ‘I’m not carrying you.’ Or, ‘Fetch it yourself, I’m not your donkey.’

  Only the foreman, Stan Renshaw, was a bit of a trial. If he took a dislike to a girl, he could make life very difficult by leaving her on the same machine for months on end.

  ‘He left me on the boring machine for nigh on two year,’ Edith told her. ‘And right boring it was too. When I asked for a change, he says, "All right, you can change with Annie sitting next to you."’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘So I spent another two year doing the same job, only on a different machine. Men!’

  ‘Time that one was put out to grass,’ Minnie agreed, and a few days later, to everyone’s astonishment, Stan Renshaw did indeed declare his intention to retire. The girls excitedly d
iscussed who would take his place.

  ‘I hope it isn’t Alex,’ Deirdre groaned.

  ‘Or that awful Arthur who’s always giving little homilies about the devil watching us while we work. Gives me the creeps!’

  ‘Happen it’ll be your Harry, Alena,’ Sandra suggested.

  ‘I very much doubt it.’ Somehow Alena instinctively knew that for all he had little to do with the day-to-day running of his mill, James Hollinthwaite would never favour a member of the Townsen family with promotion. Though after that fight with her father, he certainly owed them one. Yet Alena guessed it would not be forthcoming.

  Harry, however, could talk of little else that evening as the family sat down to eat supper around the big kitchen table. Since two of her brothers, Tom and Jim, were now married men, there was more space and less laughter at the kitchen table these days. Lizzie watched with pleasure as her eldest son talked of his dreams.

  ‘If I was made foreman, we’d be laughing. I’d get a good rise then, and Ma wouldn’t have to worry any more. And why not? I’ve worked in that mill for twelve years, since I was fourteen. I know what’s what.’

  Lizzie ladled steaming stew on to his plate that had as much mutton in it as her Christmas puddings had sixpences. ‘Who decides? James Hollinthwaite, or Bill Lindale, his manager?’

  ‘Both. Either. I don’t know. Does it matter?’

  Alena suggested that perhaps it might and was told, very firmly, that she knew nowt about owt, so would she keep her opinions to herself?

  Lizzie frowned at her son as she searched out a few extra pieces of precious meat for him. ‘Alena might have a point, things being the way they are between our two families. You’re happen best out of it. Anyroad, they’ll give it to one of the older men,’ she warned.

  ‘Who? Old Joe, who’s sat on the same machine for thirty years? He couldn’t organise a tea party, let alone a mill full of workers. Good relations between men and their employers is an important issue these days, Ma. And work is hard to come by so I mean to apply for the job, come what may.’