The Bobbin Girls

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘Nay, I’d love to help, lass. But what with our Harry out of work, my wages are important, for all they’re little enough. You’ll have to find someone else.’

  This proved surprisingly difficult. Everyone had some reason why they couldn’t help. Few promised even to attend. They’d something else on, family visiting whom they hadn’t seen in an age, or else they had a cold, a headache, didn’t feel quite up to the mark. The more honest openly confessed, as Lizzie had done, that they daren’t take the risk. Even so Sandra was determined to go ahead with the meeting, as planned.

  Another supper kept warm in the oven, another night in alone for Dolly. She couldn’t even face eating so sat in misery by the burned out coals in the empty grate, all her merry plumpness falling away and she didn’t even care. Where was he tonight? Surely he wasn’t going to risk attending Sandra’s meeting, not after what had happened to Harry?

  Jack Turner at The Stag had told Maggie that young Tom rarely showed up there any more. He’d been seen on long walks, spotted in the woods, but whether alone or not, Dolly couldn’t say. Tom wouldn’t be with some other woman, would he? The thought made her feel all queasy and sick inside. He surely wouldn’t do that to her, he wouldn’t. Nevertheless jealousy was born in her. For the first time she began to wonder how he had felt when the rumours had gone around about her and Danny Fielding, though it had only been an innocent bit of fun.

  Reaching a decision, she tipped the dried remains of his meal into the bin, put on her coat and went looking for him. She’d give him a piece of her mind, that she would. But, as she’d feared, he wasn’t at The Golden Stag. Nobody had seen him all evening. Nor was he at Sandra’s meeting, as one glance into the village hall confirmed.

  Dolly walked the entire length of the lane right through the village as far as Hollin Bridge, but still hadn’t found him by the time she reached the end and turned, despondently, to head back home. Could he be in someone’s house? Whose? She knocked on a few doors only to see heads shake and hear their denials. No one knew where Tom was.

  Shivering with cold and emotion, Dolly decided to call it a day, and set out along the path through the woods that fringed Ellersgarth Hall. It would save at least half a mile. She thought nothing of the rustling in the undergrowth, or the crack of a twig, thinking it a deer or rabbit.

  Then she almost fell over him.

  He was lying in the shadows beneath a sycamore but she knew at once that it was Tom. She recognised the sound of his groans. And Dolly, being Dolly, assumed it to be a woman that caused him to gasp and moan in such a way. Hadn’t she heard the sound often enough before? Hot rage, fuelled by the bitter disappointment she felt in her marriage, flooded through her and she flew at him, hands flailing, ready to slap him about the ears for his betrayal. But they weren’t groans at all that she had heard, but sobs. Her husband lay on the damp grass with his arms wrapped about his head, crying his heart out.

  Alena had made a point of arriving first, so she could turn on the gas and set the big kettles to boil. It was cold in the village hall and she kept on her coat and hat while she did it.

  Sandra arrived five minutes later, dressed in a smart navy blue costume with a short belted jacket and calf-length skirt cut on the bias. She’d made it herself from a worn out jersey wool frock of Aunt Elsie’s and was reasonably pleased with the result. She’d pinned a large daisy just below the shoulder as a note of defiance, but felt far from brave as she spread the tablecloth and set out cups and saucers and plates of biscuits. The short speech she’d prepared lay upon the table, and, as the fingers of the village hall clock crept towards seven o’clock, her nervousness increased accordingly.

  ‘I must be crazy, taking on James Hollinthwaite. What am I thinking of?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Alena told her, a touch of asperity in her voice. ‘No one will come. They are all too afraid of him. There’ll be you, me, and Mrs Rigg’s biscuits. Will she give us a refund on the uneaten ones, do you reckon?’

  Sandra giggled. ‘Oh, Alena. How would I do without you?’

  ‘Very well, by the looks of you.’ And Alena hugged her friend. ‘I admire you. Your campaign has at least given you something else to think about besides Harry.’ And got you out of the clutches of dreadful Aunt Elsie, she thought, but wisely didn’t say as much.

  ‘Have you stopped thinking about Rob, or whether to marry Mickey?’ Seeing Alena’s face, Sandra hurried on. ‘But it isn’t just that I need something to do, I’m serious about this campaign. What if you’re right and only a few people do come, the old and the unemployed probably? What then?’

  ‘You’ll give your speech and I’ll move from chair to chair around the hall, applauding madly. Or you could do a rendition of ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World’, and hope you get paid for it like our Gracie.’ And they both fell to giggling again at this delightful notion.

  But for all their hilarity they were relieved when, at five to seven, the door opened and old Joe Pickhall walked in, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He hadn’t worked for James Hollinthwaite for years, so had nothing to lose by opposing him as he fiercely announced to the girls. They exchanged a speaking glance.

  ‘He’ll not rape our valley with them great giants if I can help it,’ the old man said with spirit.

  His arrival seemed to start a small rush. Three other old men followed him in and one woman, a Mrs Simpson, who had lived alone since her son and husband were both killed in the last war. She promptly sat down and got out her knitting.

  ‘She probably thinks she’s come to a parish council meeting.’ Alena whispered, and suddenly felt so nervous she had to bite her lip hard to stop an irresistible urge to giggle. Sandra looked almost ethereal, her thin face gaunt with worry. Then just as the clock started to strike seven, Harry walked in, and, nodding to them by way of greeting, sat on the end chair nearest the door on the back row, twisting his cap in his lap but not speaking to anyone.

  No one else came.

  Sandra gave her talk in a small high-pitched voice and when she had finished there was a brief flurry of applause. She’d hoped that Harry would come over and congratulate her, but he got up, hooked his cap back on over his thatch of blond hair and slid quietly out of the hall. She watched him go with raw agony in her eyes.

  Alena made a pot of tea, which the seven of them drank. Old Mrs Simpson said she’d really enjoyed herself and had got twenty-two rows done. The three old men had a good moan about trees, the lack of employment for the young, and the weather, not necessarily in that order. And Joe compared James Hollinthwaite’s high-handedness with Hitler.

  ‘That chap reckons he can decide who does what and when and with who. Stopped marriages between Germans and Jews he has. You should go and start a protest in Germany, lass. If we don’t stop him, we’ll have another war.’

  But none of them laughed. It suddenly wasn’t funny any more, and somehow put their own problems into perspective.

  ‘We have to talk.’ Dolly and Tom sat together in a heap of fallen leaves. Cocooned in the soft dusk and quiet rustlings of the forest, perhaps now at last they were free to speak of their pain.

  ‘I’ve missed one of me monthlies, Tom.’

  Silence.

  ‘What if I’ve fallen again after - after - you know? That would be summat, eh?’ Dolly realised her mistake almost the moment the words were out, for he turned his back on her with a snort of derision.

  ‘And how would I know it were mine?’ His voice was so hard and bitter, she couldn’t believe she’d heard right. ‘Of course it would be yours!’ Dolly was outraged by the accusation. But no matter how hard she tried to convince him that he was the only man she’d ever actually done it with, she could tell by the frozen stiffness of his back that he didn’t believe her. ‘Since we were wed anyroad,’ she acknowledged, wanting to be honest.

  ‘There you are then. You’re cheap, Dolly, that’s your problem. Anybody’s for a farthing. How do I even know if that bairn you lost were mine?’


  Her throat felt tight and swollen and she could hardly get the words out. ‘Oh, Tom, he was the spitting image of you. How can you say such a thing?’

  ‘Well, you didn’t seem to care much about him.’

  ‘Are you saying it were my fault that the baby died? I wanted him same as you did. I just wanted him to have a father. Fathers are important to a child.’

  ‘But not a husband to a wife, eh? You were back at work days after he died, without a care in the world. I was the only one of us to grieve.’ He was facing her now, punching himself in the breast with his fist, and Dolly was flapping a hand to quieten him, afraid he’d storm off and leave her before they’d made their peace.

  ‘That’s not true, it’s not true!’

  She could see his eyes glittering angrily in the darkness. It’s true all right. You tarted yourself up and went back to work as if naught had happened. You didn’t give a damn that our baby had died. Never have. While I grieved, you threw yourself at any pair of trousers that came within hailing distance. Now, apparently, you’ve decided to go for summat a bit older. Not to mention richer. Well, you’re welcome to him!’

  It was a shock to hear that Tom had grieved so much for the baby. He’d never said, keeping his feelings all bottled up, showing only anger. She’d thought he was annoyed with her for making her marry him, and he’d thought she hadn’t cared about their child. Now he believed she bothered with other men, and as a result no longer trusted her.

  Deep down Dolly knew his suspicions to be justified. She had flirted with and chatted up quite a few blokes in these last few years, usually in The Stag, and also under the bridge with Danny a time or two. More to flatter her own vanity than anything really serious. Though things might have got a bit out of hand, admittedly, if Tom hadn’t followed her to Ellersgarth Hall that night. She could feel her cheeks burning with shame in the darkness. Just as well he had, really. She’d been a right daft fool. The question was, could she explain all of this to Tom? Was it too late for her to save her marriage?

  On Monday morning, Alena was working in the drying room, just off the barrel house. She was sewing the tops of the sacks with a curved needle and string, using blanket stitch and finishing off with a pair of ‘pig’s lugs’, one at each corner. When the sack was ready she would use these lugs to lift it on to the bogey, and when they were all done, push it to the loading bay where she’d fling the heavy sacks of bobbins through the big doors on to the truck in the yard below.

  The men in the yard shouted up to her. ‘How did your meeting go? Have you saved the world yet?’

  Incensed, she shouted back. ‘At least we’re trying, which is more than can be said for some folk.’

  ‘We’ve more sense. Listening to you Townsens can get a bloke in trouble. Mind, there’s some forms of trouble I wouldn’t mind getting into with you, Alena, if you’d only say the word.’

  There followed the kind of ribald joking she could only deal with by closing her ears and pinning a smile to her face. But, still with a touch of the tomboy in her, she managed to fling down the sacks faster than they could catch them, and never quite where they expected, so that minutes later they were begging her to slow down and she was the one laughing.

  Mickey came to her during her dinner break to sit next to her at the trestle table to eat his sandwiches. ‘You’ll be giving up this campaign nonsense now, I take it?’ he said. ‘Now that it hasn’t worked and the meeting was a failure.’

  She looked at him aghast. ‘Who says it hasn’t worked? We’ve hardly started yet. Sandra’s really got the bit between her teeth. She’s planning more posters, letters to the newspapers, all kinds of things.’

  He snorted with laughter. ‘I suppose it’ll keep her mind off her troubles, but you have better things to occupy your time.’

  ‘Such as? Making bobbins for James Hollinthwaite?’

  ‘Planning our wedding. I don’t like my girl chatting up men in the yard.’ He sincerely hoped too that those men would never let on it had been he who had actively put them off attending the meeting, warning of likely reprisals from Hollinthwaite if they did. He might care deeply about the Lake District, and the coppicing industry in particular, but Alena was more important than anything else in his life. Mickey did not intend to lose her, or let her play fast and loose with his plans.

  ‘Chatting up?’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘If there was any chatting up being done, it was by them, not me. Don’t be so touchy, Mickey.’

  ‘I won’t be made a fool of. Time I put a ring on that pretty finger of yours, and let them see who you belong to.’

  ‘I don’t belong to anyone.’

  ‘Aye, you do,’ he said and, grabbing her to him, kissed her full on the mouth right there in the canteen in front of everyone. The girls giggled while the men roared with laughter, stamped their feet and cheered as the kiss went on and on. Alena couldn’t move since Mickey’s arms were tight about her, trapping her own to her sides. When he finally let her go she was all hot and flushed, and utterly speechless.

  ‘When’s the happy day then?’ a voice called out.

  ‘Soon,’ Mickey grinned. ‘And you’re all invited.’

  Not wishing to look even more foolish, Alena said nothing, just smiled at the ensuing saucy remarks. The mill canteen was not a place for over-sensitivity. But as the men got up to go back to work, she called out to them. ‘Not that any of you deserve an invitation since you’re all cowards, the lot of you. You’d run a mile rather than face up to Hollinthwaite, while he strangles your valley to death. Haven’t you considered that you and your sons could be out of work in a few years’ time? He’ll be making more money out of harvesting his spruce than he will out of bobbins by then.’

  There was a silence while this fact was digested. Even Lizzie paused in pouring out a cup of tea for a latecomer. The whole room seemed to hold its breath for a long moment, then one by one the men shuffled off back to work. It hadn’t escaped Alena’s notice that not one of them had argued with her.

  Lizzie raised her eyebrows, a twinkle in her grey eyes, before continuing with the pouring. Mickey looked less pleased and told Alena sharply that they’d get down to details about the wedding when he came round later that evening, and hadn’t she better get back to work?

  ‘I’m going,’ she airily remarked, and walked away with the kind of swaying athletic grace that made his mouth go all dry.

  When she reached home that evening Alena flung off her coat and flopped down at the kitchen table as if she carried the card of the world on her shoulders. In a way she felt as if she did. ‘Why do I feel so strange?’ she asked Lizzie. ‘I know Mickey wants to get married as soon as possible. He never stops going on about it, and I am fond of him, so why do I keep putting him off?’

  ‘Nay, don’t ask me. I’m only your mother.’ Lizzie folded freshly ironed shirts while she listened to her daughter search her heart.

  ‘I suppose I don’t feel ready.’

  ‘You’re young yet. But if you’ve any doubts, lass, you can postpone it, or even call it off. You don’t have to wed Mickey Roscoe.’ Lizzie’s eyes were soft. She longed to cradle this precious daughter in her arms while knowing it would not have been the right thing to do. Alena was a woman with a mind of her own who had to make decisions for herself. Sometimes such decisions were hard. Lizzie was beginning to think that full-grown children were more of a problem than when they were little. If there wasn’t one of them to worry over, it was another.

  ‘We get on well and he’s such fun,’ Alena was saying. If she found some pleasure in his kisses and didn’t mind him caressing her, must mean she was growing to love him? ‘It’s only that Mickey is the impatient sort, greedy for life. He wants everything to happen quickly, which is usually my problem so how can I blame him for it? I’m sure we’d be happy.’

  ‘It’s just cold feet then?’ Lizzie queried, and Alena agreed that it must be. She was certain that once they could truly afford to marry, she’d be more tha
n ready. ‘We haven’t even a home to call our own yet.’

  She was startled therefore when Mickey arrived later that evening in his best brown serge suit, and announced he’d been promoted to foreman. Arthur, it seemed, had been pensioned off, as he never did anything but ask for favours from the managers. ‘Mr Hollinthwaite says he was too much on the side of the workers, which isn’t the point of a foreman at all.’ He also told Alena he’d had a bit of luck and found them a good house, quite close by, and saw no reason, if Mrs Townsen were agreeable, why they shouldn’t get wed on the first day of spring.

  Much to Dolly’s disappointment her period arrived the following week. It caused her severe stomach cramps and when she went off to bed early, Tom brought her up a cup of tea. Since their long talk he hadn’t been out once to the pub, which gave her some cause for hope. She’d caught him looking at her once or twice in a thoughtful sort of way. Perhaps he was softening, which helped her remain resolute in her determination to make a go of things.

  ‘We’ve not struck lucky this time,’ she admitted with some shyness as he slid a hot water bottle in beside her. ‘But happen we could try again. If you wanted to?’ Although he said nothing, Dolly noticed how he went off downstairs with that thoughtful look on his face.

  The following day he came home with a cut lip and a black eye. ‘It’s all right, don’t panic. You should see the other bloke.’ And he grinned. ‘I’ve just given that Danny Fielding a piece of my mind. Told him not to interfere with my wife in future, if he knows what s good for him.’

  ‘Oh, Tom, you didn’t! But Danny Fielding and I never...