The Bobbin Girls (3 page)

‘We’d best not touch Dolly’s house,’ Alena warned. ‘She’d half kill me.’ And think her such a child.

Rob raised an eyebrow at this sign of weakness. ‘I thought you weren’t scared of anyone?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Well then?’

‘I’m no fool neither, Robert Hollinthwaite. Dolly Sutton is bigger than me.’ And tough with it.

‘So you’d run a mile from her, all the way to Hollin Bridge?’ It was dark down there, and there was talk of a ghost; a pale lost maid who wandered that part of the woodland, weeping and wailing for her lost love. ‘It’s getting late. We’ll have to be getting back soon. I promised your mam.’

‘You’re scared.’

‘I am not.’

They stood on Ellersgarth Green with the lantern between them, and argued. It was always so. If one said one thing the other would say the opposite. But it made no difference to their closeness, only emphasised it, for they both knew that in the end they would do whatever Alena had decided.

The clock in the hall chimed eleven as James Hollinthwaite climbed the stairs later that evening. Following the revelations at the tarn he’d walked for miles, going over everything in his head. Had he made a mistake? He didn’t usually. Except in his marriage.

He entered his wife’s bedroom without knocking and looked down upon her with something very close to contempt, the whole arrogant stance of him silently protesting at having to be in the same room as her, if only for a moment.

She sat propped up in bed against embroidered pillow-cases and beneath starched linen sheets, swathed in a nightgown he knew reached from chin to toe, revealing not a glimpse of flesh between these two extremities. Even the rich sheen of her hair was denied him. It hung in a solid plait over one slender shoulder.

Never robust, years spent in trying to produce a healthy child, her naturally nervous disposition and a growing disillusionment with life in general and himself in particular, had all taken their toll. Olivia Hollinthwaite was no longer the woman she once was, now spending more hours than was healthy in contemplation of her lot. In James’s opinion this was a pity, but surely it was entirely her own fault if it resulted in depression. After two miscarriages and one stillborn boy, she’d finally performed what she considered to be her duty. But following that long and painful birth on a stormy night fourteen years ago, his wife had done everything she could to avoid this aspect of married life, even to insisting upon separate bedrooms. If only she didn’t appear so distant, so entirely unreachable, they might have been happy enough. Even now she was reading a book, as if she really didn’t care whether he were home or not.

‘You were not at dinner,’ she remarked, in tones that to James’s sensitive ear sounded cool and indifferent. ‘The Cowpers and the Tysons were rather put out.’

He’d forgotten about the dinner party. As a good Christian woman she would never have held such an event on Hallowe’en were it not her son’s birthday. It had always seemed an odd quirk of fate that the most momentous events of his life had taken place on this night.

‘My apologies.’ He was perfectly genuine. He shouldn’t have forgotten. It didn’t pay to offend people, even pompous fools like George Tyson. Who knew when they might prove useful?

Olivia lifted her gaze from the book and rested it upon the ceiling. Like a martyr, he thought. ‘I made excuses for you. Some pressing problem you’d been called to deal with at the mill.’

‘Thank you.’ Annoyed at finding himself in the wrong, he could barely keep the irritation from his voice. ‘Ask them again next week.’

‘Oh, that would be too soon. I couldn’t.’

‘Yes, you could.’ He had flustered her, which was rare, and he revelled in the sense of power it gave him.

When he had married her twenty-two years ago, Olivia Leck had been the handsomest, most elegant woman imaginable, for all she was three years older than he. Coming from a respected Lancashire family, she’d naturally brought money to the marriage, and a very useful parcel of woodland not too far from his own valley. But most of all, she had possessed that precious commodity - style. He’d admired that in her more than any other quality. Her dress, her grace, her manner, - all had indicated the impeccable training she had received at the hands of her own formidable mama.

She could decorate and lay a table in white and gold, and make it look as if it had just dropped from heaven. But that had been in another age, Edwardian and leisurely, before the war, and infinitely more elegant than this one. In those early days, she had made it seem as if her one desire was to please and pamper those fortunate enough to be invited to sit around her table, lifting her new husband and his humble farmhouse to the echelons of the middle classes, where by rights James considered he should be. Even now she could somehow manage to get all the right people to her dinner parties. Surely a great asset in any wife.

‘They are busy people and may not wish to risk the humiliation again.’

‘Ask them.’ For a moment he saw the familiar rebellion flicker across her beautiful face. He hated unpleasantness and rebellion of any sort, so said it again, in more forceful, commanding tones. ‘Do as I say, Olivia.’

She sighed with a tremulous sadness, as if he had wounded her. ‘As you wish.’

His exhilaration at winning this small victory quickly faded, leaving him feeling flat and faintly foolish. It was ever so. He resolved not to remain in her company a moment longer than necessary. But James liked to be seen to follow the conventions, even when in reality he flouted them at every turn. It seemed correct for a man to bid goodnight to his wife, so he did so. Now he turned to go, his eagerness to quit the suffocating sweetness of the room making him momentarily forget what had occupied his thoughts all evening, and been the cause of his neglect. Turning abruptly he saw her cringe away from him. Even now, after all these years, it had the power to infuriate.

Never, in all their married life together, had she welcomed him with anything approaching desire. He might have been willing to show more consideration towards her had she made the smallest effort to please him.

He could not deny that she carried out her wifely duties without protest, when called upon to do so. But he was a man who demanded passion, for God’s sake, not duty. Yet she had the effrontery to complain about his lack of sensitivity! Olivia should consider herself fortunate he preferred not to risk a scandal by taking a mistress, which would do neither of them any good. In his younger days he’d once had a fling of sorts, but it had caused as many problems as it had solved. But had he the time or inclination for dalliance, he could still have any woman he chose. He thought of himself as a well set-up sort of chap, not overweight, with a fine head of dark brown hair, good teeth, and rather splendid patrician features. Yet apparently he repelled his own wife.

But what did she have to complain of? She had money and status, a cook, a governess for her child, the use of a motor to take her to coffee mornings, charity functions and whatever committee she was currently serving upon. He made very sure that her diary was kept full. What more could she require? James liked an ordered life, and had always made certain that he attained one. If that meant supervising his wife and son more than they might wish, that was something they must both learn to tolerate. Which thought brought to mind the real purpose of his visit. ‘I saw that child this evening - Alena Townsen.’

‘Oh?’ Olivia closed her book and showed interest for the first time. ‘She is hardly a child, very nearly a young woman.’

‘So I noticed. She was with Robert. They were swimming together in the tarn. Naked.’

‘Oh, dear.’

He stared at her. ‘Is that all you have to say. "Oh, dear"?’

‘They are young, and very fond of each other. They’ve grown up together, so I don’t see a little nakedness as a sin.’

‘You’ve been too soft with both of them.’

‘A person needs love. It is an essential part of life.’ She looked him directly in the eye as she said this. How was it she could always twist every conversation to his disadvantage? If she was not openly criticising him for having offended yet another of their over-sensitive neighbours - as if it were possible to make money without treading on someone’s toes from time to time - she was regarding him in silent, condemnatory reproach. He was never sure which he hated most.

True, the folk who lived in this village were practical and hard-working with a natural feel for the woodlands and the wildlife that lived within it. But their country ways, superstitions and slow acceptance of change were constant sources of irritation to him. James Hollinthwaite prided himself on being a far-seeing man; one poised to exploit the future, if he didn’t have one foot

in it already. The last thing he needed was a difficult wife or disobedient son.

‘You’d best speak to the boy. We don’t want any - accidents.’
 

She gave a half-smile but said no more, and fury shot through him, hot and fierce. Drat the woman! Why must she always give the impression of being superior? As if she knew something he didn’t, or understood people better than he did, which couldn’t be the case. In point of fact, he was more in control than she could ever imagine. But then, he had always been willing to do what must be done.

‘It’s time we settled that boy’s future. Come to my study tomorrow at ten.’ Having issued his wife with this order, James strode from the room, certain he had finally succeeded in showing he was the one who made the decisions in this house.

Chapter Two

The next morning when the inhabitants of Applethorn Cottages were busily righting their dustbins, which they always had to do following Hallowe’en, Dolly Sutton had her head in the scullery sink.

She wasn’t sure whether this queasiness she felt was the result of eating too much supper or stemmed from a more sinister reason, one too frightening to contemplate. In case it was the latter, she had, over the last several days, jumped off every stair for as high up them as she could manage. She’d taken a dozen baths, whenever her mother was out, most of which had been stone cold because she’d used up all the hot water from the back boiler, but all the more painful for that. She had also taken more than the odd nip of her mother’s gin. But despite all her best efforts, there was no sign of her monthly visitor. What she longed for more than anything right now was that familiar dragging pain in her belly. Instead of which all she felt was a ball of breathless fear in her chest.

She remembered reading in some newspaper or other how even the Archbishop of Canterbury himself had given the go-ahead for contraception, so long as it wasn’t for selfish reasons, which seemed a bit contrary to Dolly. The only trouble was, the article didn’t explain how you went about it. And she’d never dared ask her mother.

She stared into the grubby medicine tin which bore a picture of Queen Victoria’s jubilee on the lid, no doubt indicating the age of its contents, in the hope of salvation. Fenning’s Fever Cure. Dolly shuddered. Kill or cure, more like. It would take the coating off her tongue, and even if she was prepared to suffer it, she doubted it would solve her problem. Vic’s Vapour Rub. Fat lot of good that would do. And a bottle of Indian Brandee, good for belly ache caused by a period. But would it bring one on?

She heard the back door open and her mother’s voice raised in argument. What was wrong now? That old nosy-parker from next door causing trouble again?

Dolly’s head ached abominably and she laid a cold flannel against it with tender care. Perhaps that third nip of gin had been one too many and that was why the top of her head felt as if it were being screwed off like the stopper from a stone ginger bottle.

Mrs Sutton’s voice rang out. ‘I wish I’d done it meself, you nasty old witch!’ Then the kitchen door slammed, reverberating throughout the small cottage and doing no kindness to Dolly’s headache.

If only she were older, she thought, after retching another thin stream of bile-like liquid into the sink. It wouldn’t have mattered so much then. She might even have been pleased, on the basis that Tom Townsen would have to marry her. But although he was near enough twenty, she was only sixteen, seventeen come February which was only four months away. Not that being seventeen would help in any way with this problem.

‘Are you all right?’ Mrs Sutton asked, as she watched her daughter peck at a slice of dry toast. Not known for being picky with her food, Dolly usually demolished two or three thick slices in five minutes flat. Her mother’s face cleared. ‘Ah, you’re on one of them new-fangled diets, is that it? To go with the shorter skirts.

Dolly looked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment since nothing could be further from the truth. Admittedly she was not a small girl: well-built some might say, plump certainly, voluptuous being the kinder term. Her face was pretty and she was pleased enough with that. Her hair was thick and brown and lustrous. She had good legs too, with dainty slim ankles, and was never short of admirers. So if the rest of her wasn’t quite what it might be, it certainly didn’t trouble Dolly.

But right now it seemed easier to agree with her mother that, yes, she was on a diet. Better than answering more probing questions about her pallor.

‘Got to rush, Mam. Been on the last minute a bit lately and the foreman is watching us like a hawk.’ She stood up and, taking a quick sip of tea, held the half-eaten slice of toast in her mouth as she shrugged on her coat. It was only as she went out of the back door that it occurred to her that such an admission would affect what was produced for her evening meal and every meal thereafter. Dolly groaned. If there was one thing she hated it was lettuce leaves, and that would be what she’d get from now on. The thought added to her depression, which worsened as she ran her gaze up and down the row.