The Valley (48 page)

‘Sorry for my mam, John,’ she has to say when she hears her mother has been bad-mouthing him in the Goldthorpe shops again.

‘Doesn’t matter, love. If she’s having a go at me, she’s leaving somebody else alone.’

By the autumn they are together more often than they are apart. They go to see rock ’n’ roll revival bands, and have parties with their old friends from school and the café. She helps him get a new job in Hickleton pit’s lamp room. Some nights they stay in at John’s mam’s house and play records by the recently deceased Elvis, including the ‘
Down by the Riverside
/
When the Saints Go Marching In’
EP.

Winnie and Harry remain set against John Burton until two events in the early months of 1979 check the swell of their resentment.

One night not long after New Year, with Harry out and Winnie in bed with a cold, John calls on Lynda at Barnsley Road. Walking home through the backings close to midnight, he notices a man lying face down, smooth leather soles of his brogues facing out, dull against the frosty tarmac.

‘Is tha all right, cock?’ He sees his face, and realises who it is.

‘Where am I?’ groans Harry.

‘Come on, lad. Let’s get thee up .
.
.’ John takes off his coat, and tucks it around Harry’s shoulders. He helps him to his feet, and laughs. ‘Harry, if tha knew .
.
.’

‘Knew what?’

‘Never mind.’

The next morning Harry sees the grazes on his face, and remembers what happened. ‘If you see John,’ he says to Lynda, ‘thank him for me. For helping me last night.’

She is tempted to ask if he would like to add an apology, but she hears the humility in the thanks and lets it pass. ‘Alright,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell him.’

After that night, Winnie and Harry do not yet welcome John, but they do afford him a stilted tolerance in their home. One evening he comes back with Lynda after a friend’s wedding and he and Winnie find themselves alone in the sitting room. She avoids eye contact and stares at the television.

‘Winnie,’ he says. ‘If you don’t want me here, will you just say? Because I’ll go if you like, no trouble or hard feelings. Just tell me.’

Her mouth tightens. She still does not meet his gaze. ‘We just don’t want her to get hurt again, John.’

‘She won’t. I want to look after her.’

Winnie thinks for a moment, then looks him in the eye. ‘Promise me, then.’

‘I promise you. I know you’re her mam, but you don’t understand. Lynda’s t’ love of my life, I know she is.’

Winnie makes small, slow, chastened nods. These are the sort of words she likes to hear men saying; it is unsettling and inconvenient to hear them from a man she considers unfit for her daughter, but she allows herself to be transported. ‘Alright,’ she says. ‘Well, make sure you do.’

*

In October, John, Lynda and Karl move into a council house ten doors down from Winnie and Harry on the Barnsley Road. Soon afterwards he asks her to marry him. Lynda says she isn’t sure, she can’t see the need; she’s been through it twice now, and in both cases getting married led to nothing but trouble.

‘But we should be married!’ says John. ‘Say no if tha likes, but I’m just going to keep asking.’

And he does. ‘Let’s get married!’ he says, placing drinks on a table in the Cora. ‘Come on, marry me, Lynda!’ he urges, getting up to change the television channel at home. ‘Has tha decided to marry me yet?’ he asks, putting down a plate of toast for her breakfast on a Saturday morning. Eventually, fifteen years after she first watched him singing on the steps of the beer-off, she accepts.

Their wedding takes place on a sunny day in May 1980 at St Mark’s Methodist chapel in Goldthorpe. Lynda and her mam get up early to prepare the buffet and Lynda ferries carloads of sandwiches and salads for the wedding reception at the Goldthorpe Hotel, a large miners’ pub on the Doncaster Road. She washes the crockery and lays out the tables, then goes home and changes into her wedding outfit. One of John’s cousins drives Lynda and Harry to the church in his new blue Ford Cortina. Even sitting in the back of the car and walking up the aisle, Lynda can sense her dad’s suspicious reluctance; it ought to trouble her, but it doesn’t. After a decade and a half – half her lifetime, she thinks – she is, for once, certain.

Winnie and Harry take Karl home in the evening and the party goes on into the small hours. When John and Lynda climb into their bed, they discover that friends and neighbours have tied a bell underneath. John undoes it and jangles it loudly against the wall, and the friends listening behind the wall laugh, and keep laughing until John and Lynda fall asleep and pale daylight edges the curtains of the bedroom.

50 My Arms Won't Go Fast Enough for This Modern Drumming

Goldthorpe and Highgate, 1980–81

The 11 September 1980 edition of the
South Yorkshire Times
carries, on the front page of its Rotherham Extra section, a half-page story illustrated by photographs of an elderly, contented-looking man with a high hairline and a saucy grin that reveals a wide, dark gap where his upper incisors ought to be. In one picture he sits at a drum kit, sticks in one hand, dressed smartly in a wool cardigan, white shirt and striped tie. In another he reclines on a deckchair in a garden, wearing the same cardigan, corduroy trousers and suede boots. His feet are up on a chair and he holds a cigarette between the cocked first two fingers of his right hand in the manner of a jazz-age Noël Coward posing for a portrait. ‘It's Umpteen Bars Rest Now For Drummer Harry,' says the headline.

 

At 70 years old and fifty years of rhythm, he says he's dead beat.

THE JUGGLER
is hanging up his drumsticks after half a century of rhythm
–
because he says he's dead beat! Harry Hollingworth, nicknamed after his juggling comedian grandfather, and Dearne's best-known drummer, is retiring at the age of 70.

Too old

Said Harry: ‘I'm getting too old. My arms won't go fast enough for this modern drumming. I've had enough.'

Harry first learned to drum when he was about 20. ‘He was learning when we were courting,' said his wife Winifred at their home in Barnsley Road, Highgate, Goldthorpe.

During the war Harry entertained the troops with ENSA and toured South Yorkshire with his best-known act, Mother Riley's Roadshow, which featured off-beat percussion instruments. ‘I used to wear a woman's dress, stuff pitman's Dudleys and dripping tins underneath it to pad myself out, then play them with drumsticks,' said Harry, an ex-Manvers and Goldthorpe collier.

Farewell

‘I'm sorry to have to give up. But when you can't do justice to the artists, that's it,' said Harry.

A testimonial concert for Harry Hollingworth is to be staged at the Unity Club in Goldthorpe.

 

At the testimonial are neighbours and friends from the collieries, glassworks, pubs, clubs and bands, including Barney from the troupe, and Sonny and May up from the south, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, all packed in like a crowd on New Year's Eve. The club is as it was almost a decade ago when Harry told Gary to get out before the kissing started, the bar running down one side and the crucifix still on the wall because no one has yet dared to remove it. The first part of the evening is mid-tempo: Juggler on drums and Albert Blessed from Bolton-upon-Dearne on the organ. During the first break the club steward and committee chairman step onto the stage to present a carriage clock and tankard to Harry, and a bouquet of flowers to Winnie, who stands on stage with her husband for the first time. The chairman gives a speech about Harry's career, recalling venues he has played and some of the acts he performed with. ‘Such as Lynne Perrie,' he says, ‘better known as Ivy Tilsley from
Coronation Street
. As some of you will know, Lynne was a singer before she broke into acting, and she always said that with Juggler backing her, she sang her very best. There was also Liz Dawn, who of course is the real Vera Duckworth. Juggler backed her many times, and Liz reckoned that he was the best drummer she'd worked with in her whole career!'

There is applause, and they take it, Harry feigning deafness and looking at his watch. When he steps forward to thank the committee, someone calls for the dress and the half-pint, and someone else for the Dudley and the dripping tins, and the noise begins to thicken and rise. The music recommences and the dancing starts. At the end of ‘
That Old Black Magic'
, John, to Lynda's alarm, climbs up onto one of the tables.

‘John,' says Lynda, snatching up her drink. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Paying tribute.' He turns to face the stage. ‘Albert! Let's have some Elvis!'

Lynda puts her head in her hands, and Albert and Harry peer over the dancers' heads into the audience.

‘Come on!' shouts John. ‘“
Don't Be Cruel
”.'

Harry shakes his head and grins his toothless grin: ‘We never used to have this at Carnegie Hall, Albert.' Albert picks out the song's
opening chords, and a few bars in Harry finds a beat. Then, in triumphs for both rock 'n' roll and sheer human persistence, John Burton, on his teetering table-stage, sings all four verses of
the Elvis classic to his father-in-law's accompaniment. On the final cymbal splash the whole crowd roars out its approval, and Harry salutes John with a friendly and forgiving drumstick.

Now they clamour for more songs. From the bar Sonny Parkin, the former drum-carrier, calls for ‘
Play a Simple Melody'
, and Winnie and Pauline recite the ad libs from Harry and Millie's old duet routine.
You're fifty years behind the times, we want something with a kick in it!
To more roars, cheers and whistles, Harry pushes back the stool, stands, and walks to the microphone. He chucks out a few Mother Riley lines, and then counts in Albert to an upbeat ‘
Dear Hearts and Gentle People'
. Sonny cries out, ‘Mighty fine!' and the old and young crowd onto the dancefloor.

Harry sings six more songs. He bows, and makes a show of dismissing the pleading and protests from the floor and shoots a look at Albert and begins his encore.

‘All of Me'
.
Winnie sips a port and lemon and joins in with the words.
Why not take all of me?
Can't you see .
.
. I'm no good without you?
And soon it seems everyone is singing – as if the whole valley is in the club, singing to itself. Lynda watches her mam sing along and wonders what her dad will do instead of this. What will happen to the part of him that comes fully alive only when he steps onstage? Winnie catches her glance, but if she is thinking the same thought she does not show it. They smile at each other, and Harry ends his song to loud, long applause.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' says the Juggler. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. Thank you and good night' – and then to the steward behind the bar, ‘Right, cock, close all t' doors and don't let anybody out. I'm coming round wi' t' cap.'

*

Four months later, on Saturday 14 February 1981, the family gathers again, this time at Highgate Working Men's Club for Harry and Winnie's golden wedding anniversary party. Everyone meets beforehand at 239 Barnsley Road, filling the kitchen and sitting room. The men, in suits, stand about discussing work, memories and local gossip. The women, smelling of lipstick and hairspray, and wearing new dresses and two-pieces, talk about their families, and tell their kids, running in and out of the rooms and sliding down the chair arms, to calm down. Winnie, immaculate in a cream floral dress, with her thick smoke-white hair freshly permed, sits by the table. When she offers to make tea for each new arrival, Lynda and Pauline tell her to sit down and let them do it, and she flashes a little shrugging, pursed-lip smile at the children.

Roy, who has come with Alwyn and Wendy, is witty and garrulous. He has not seen David for ten years, but when they meet in the room, Roy is casual and seemingly oblivious to his son's awkwardness. He compliments Marie, who is pregnant, and tells them to bring the baby to see him in the caravan.

They wait for Harry, who has been bathing and dressing for more than an hour.

‘These young men primping and preening!' says Roy. ‘Go and hurry him up, Gary.' But Gary demurs; he understands his grandad's vanity and his nerves, and calmly stands by the sitting-room door to prevent anyone from going up.

At last there are footsteps on the stairs. ‘Here he comes,' says Lynda.

‘T' Duke of Highgate,' says Winnie.

‘I can hear you talking about me.' Gary moves aside to let the door open. Harry, wearing an elegant brown check sports jacket, striped Rocola shirt, and silk tie, enters the room and stiffly thrusts a thick pale-pink envelope at Winnie.

Winnie takes it, and the women smile and ahhh. ‘I bet that's t' first card you've ever bought her!' says Lynda.

‘Get on wi' you,' he says. ‘We never used to send cards like you do. Anyway, we couldn't afford 'em.'