26 By the Light of the Silvery Moon

Thurnscoe, 1955–56

The summer he meets Margaret White, Roy Hollingworth stays in the Dearne for four months, living at his mam and dad’s, working at the pit and taking the lovestruck Margaret out in Harry’s car. In the autumn he goes off to train with the Army – so he says – returning the following January when he calls for Margaret and takes up their courtship where he left off. There follows a period when he comes and goes with little warning, staying in Highgate for two or three weeks at a time and making a fuss over Margaret when he is there. They go dancing, they go to the pictures, they go drinking, and everywhere Roy seems popular and charming. He seems to know lots of people, and he makes everyone laugh with his stories and jokes. He may not call for her for weeks on end, and he may never say exactly where he’s been, but she likes him very much, and because her questions often irritate him she doesn’t like to ask why when he says he just can’t be tied down to one place at the moment.

One night in the spring of 1955, when Roy is back after ‘seeing a man about a good job down south’, he and Margaret go out with another Highgate couple that he knows. The four of them go to the Halfway Hotel and stay until last orders. Harry has taken the car to drive to a pub he is performing at, so Roy and Margaret set off to walk back to Thurnscoe, past the school and the dog track and then into open fields.

Roy has a brooding silence on him.

‘You’re quiet,’ says Margaret.

He snaps, like a man who has been waiting for the opportunity. ‘I should think I am.’

‘Why, what’s up?’ She takes his arm in hers, but he is unresponsive.

‘What were you talking to Stanley for all t’ time? You’ve hardly said a word to me all night!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t bloody come that.’ With sudden violence he shrugs her off, and she stumbles into the dew-wet grass beside the path.

‘Come what?’

He says nothing.

‘Roy?’

‘Awww –’ He slaps out and up with his right hand, and hits the side of her face. Margaret reels into the grass, stops, holds her burning cheek. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You made me look like a damn fool tonight.’

‘I don’t know what you mean . . .’

He hits her again, grabs her arm, and pulls her away from the road. As she falls he drags her up again.

She sees he is drunk. They are near to a gate in the hedge, and he pulls her through and into the field, right in so she cannot see the road. She pleads with him to let her go, but instead he starts hitting her, face, neck, ears, torso, arms. He swears and calls her a bitch. She hits the ground and covers her face. He bends over her and slaps at her head. Then, staggering, cursing and panting, he reels away back towards the gate. Across the earth, level with her ear, she hears his rough steps receding.

She stands up. Her body hurts, and her clothes are ripped and dirty. She finds her shoes and walks through the field barefoot. When she reaches the path he is gone.

Her dad and her two brothers want to try to find Roy straight away, but she begs them not to, and in the end they relent. In the morning she has a swollen, purple-yellow eye, but the beating feels like a terrible dream. When she thinks about it, she wonders what she said or did to provoke him.

On Monday morning at work the girls say, get shut, get rid, as soon as you can. Some of them say they know him and he has a bad reputation, but Margaret finds them tiresome. It has been only the once, she thinks, and the way people judge him only confirms what Roy says about how small-minded they are. She loves him and, just as important, she believes she can help him.

*

Roy stays away from the Whites until the following week when he finds Margaret as she walks home from work and begs her to listen to his explanation. He says he is sorry, and he seems to mean it. It’s just because he loves her so much. It sounds crazy, but he just can’t bear not having her all to himself, honest.

They begin going out together again and to Margaret it seems that Roy, in his good moods at least, is loving and committed. Her father tells her to keep away, but she ignores him; she is in love, she says, and they can’t understand a person like Roy.

Soon, however, it is her turn not to understand. Saying he has to go back to the Army, he stops calling for her, but the following week one of the girls at work sees him in Goldthorpe. Margaret calls at his mam’s house, but Winnie says he isn’t there and no one knows where he’s gone. Out the back door and down the backings most likely, thinks Margaret, but says nothing and catches the bus home.

In fact, after being seen in Goldthorpe, Roy does go away for two weeks’ training with the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, but he stays away from his parents’ house for weeks afterwards. One night while he is away, Harry arrives home from a late shift to find an unexpected visitor waiting at his gate. He sees that it is a young woman, standing pale and hunched in a thin coat. He recognises her as one of Roy’s girlfriends.

‘What’s up, love?’

‘I want your Roy,’ she says, trying to appear angry, but sounding desperate. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘I’ve been at work.’ He drops the end of the cigarette he has been smoking, and grinds it out with his toe. It is past eleven o’clock. He is getting fed up with Roy and his antics, coming home when he feels like it, borrowing money and never paying it back, but there isn’t going to be a row outside the house at this time of night.

‘I’ve not seen him.’

‘Are you sure he isn’t at your house?’

‘Not as I know of. Me and his mam never know where he is.’

‘When did you last see him?’

He looks at her: her mascara is streaked, her lips are swollen, and she is shivering. ‘Tha’s famished wi’ cold,’ he says. ‘Look, sit on t’ wall, and put this round thy shoulders.’ He takes off his blue cotton jacket and hands it to her. ‘Has tha asked his mam?’

‘I came before and asked her, but she says she hasn’t seen him.’

Next door, at an upstairs window, a face peeks through the curtains. ‘Here she comes,’ sighs Harry, and shouts up, ‘Get yoursen’ to bed, Nelly.’ The curtain closes. When he looks back at the young woman she is crying.

‘Has he said anything about me? I’m Margaret.’

‘Nay, I don’t know, love. Come on, don’t cry over him, he in’t any good for thee. Get thysen off home.’

‘I really love Roy, you know.’

‘Maybe tha does,’ says Harry. ‘But he’s not here. Does tha want me to drive thee home in t’ car?’

Margaret refuses the lift and in the end walks home alone, but she keeps coming back. When Roy returns they resume their courtship, and then, one Sunday in the late summer of 1955, she comes again, dressed in her best clothes, and bringing some news.

She had hoped to find Roy, but only Lynda and Winnie are at home. Winnie invites her in and sends Lynda out into the yard, and Margaret blurts it out: she is pregnant. She waits for Winnie to accuse her of trapping him but, after taking off her pinny to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, the older woman strokes Margaret’s arm and offers her a cup of Nescafé. Winnie is terse, but not hostile. She even says Roy should have been more careful. ‘You don’t have to marry him, Margaret,’ she says. ‘I don’t mind either road. But don’t let people make you feel you have to get married if you don’t want to.’

‘I bet you just don’t want him to marry me, though. I bet it’s not what he wants.’

This might have been true, but to Margaret, Winnie seems sincere. ‘I’m not saying it because I don’t want you to marry him,’ she says. ‘But I will tell you, as woman to woman, I don’t think you’ll have a good marriage with him. I’m telling you because I’ve seen enough to know that women don’t know their men. I didn’t, and I had to get married, and it’s been hard for me sometimes. Be careful.’

A double bluff to save her son? Margaret doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to be careful. She just wants to be Roy’s wife.

*

They marry at St Helen’s Church, Thurnscoe on a November morning in 1955. The gathering is thin, and Horace and Hilda White watch the ceremony in despair. Once he is wed, Roy goes to work driving earthmoving machines on the spoil heaps of Hatfield colliery near Doncaster, and he and Margaret move in with Mr and Mrs White.

After a few months, Margaret’s sister Alice persuades the owner of the car garage where she works to rent the couple a flat above the repair shop. The garage occupies a former ballroom built in the 1920s. The flat is small, with a dark, narrow staircase leading down to the front door between the workshop and showroom. It is clean but there is a permanent smell of engine oil, and in the mornings Margaret can hear men beating car panels. When Roy is out working late or drinking she lies awake, frightened, listening to the building creak and wondering where her husband might be. Sometimes he doesn’t come back until the morning, explaining away his absence with stories of breakdowns at work or promised lifts home that didn’t show up.

Her due date is in April 1956 and the months leading up to it are gloomy. Roy seems to be on early or late shifts most days, so he is either out or asleep in the bedroom. He doesn’t tell her what shifts he is working, so she never knows when he’ll come or go. When he is at home he goes on and on about the Army, almost as if he is still serving. He rants about Nasser and Suez, and says people don’t know what the Arabs are really like, or what it is like to live in Egypt. Sometimes he goes on about it when her mam comes to visit bringing bedding or bottles for the baby, and Margaret notices her mam observing Roy’s broad, strong body and looking nervous of him.

She goes into labour in the morning of Sunday 22 April. Roy is there and he looks after her, but by noon, Harry, Danny and some other Highgate friends call to pick him up for the Sunday lunchtime drink at the club. ‘I’ll be back at two for my dinner,’ he says as he clatters down the stairs. The contractions are not close together yet, so she tells herself not to worry, but Roy doesn’t come back at two. Shortly before three, Margaret goes to the callbox down the street and phones her mam, who calls the midwife and then comes to the flat. With her mam and the midwife there, the baby, a boy, is born at four that afternoon. At six, as she lies in bed with the newborn, she hears the key in the lock at the bottom of the long staircase, and then the heavy, irregular steps of her husband coming up. As he enters Margaret can smell the drink, and she feels a tension in the room. She knows her mother would like to ask him where he’s been, but both of them sense it might set him off.

‘Ayup,’ he says, leaning over Margaret and the tiny, pink baby. ‘Look at this! Now then, little nip . . .’

He makes a fuss of the child, holding him in his arms and talking to him. Then he gives him back to Margaret so he can go to make himself something to eat. As he walks into the kitchen he weaves slightly, and Margaret sees her mam looking, and feels embarrassed. She thinks about her mam and dad pleading with her not to marry him. Even outside the church her father had said, ‘I can turn this car around now if you’ll change your mind, love.’

Later, Roy goes out for another drink to wet the baby’s head. He doesn’t come back until Wednesday.