37 The Two Wives of Roy Fox Hollingworth

Bradbury, County Durham; Redcar, North Riding of Yorkshire; Bridlington, 1965–66

In the summer of 1965, Roy calls to see Margaret and asks her if she and the lads will come with him to County Durham, where he is employed by a construction company with a contract to upgrade part of the A1 to a motorway. He has been working on the new roads, living in Flamborough, Bridlington and Redcar, keeping his head down and sorting himself out, he says. His wages are now more than enough to support her, Gary and David and, if she’ll come, they can stay in his caravan while they look for a flat.

Lonely, poor, and, despite everything, still in love with her husband, Margaret agrees. Roy drives them to a village called Bradbury, just outside Sedgefield in County Durham, and they park in a steeply sloping field beside a farmyard overlooking the A1. Margaret had imagined a large mobile home on a campsite, but the solitary caravan in the field is small: when Roy shows them in, their suitcases take up half the floor space, and she sees they will have to rearrange the foam cushions on the settees to make beds. There is a chemical toilet and no running water. ‘We’ll not be here long,’ says Roy, seeing the expression on her face. ‘We can all just muck in for a bit.’

In the morning Roy goes to work on the road, leaving neither money nor information. Margaret goes to the farmhouse to ask where she can buy food, and the farmer’s wife gives her bread, tea, milk and eggs so they can have breakfast. As they eat inside the cold caravan Margaret listens to the cars on the A1 contraflow, the earthmoving machines in the distance, and the occasional bellowing of livestock. It starts to rain, and the rain sounds loud on the roof, like stones falling. Margaret offers up a small prayer of thanks that the caravan does not leak.

The next day is rawer and dourer than the first, and a mood of embattlement seems to be spreading out from the roadworks. They are in the County Durham coalfield, and because the earth is sinking into the disused mine workings there are problems with the road construction. The motorway is behind schedule, and for the first few weeks Roy eats in a canteen on site and has to work a lot of nightshifts, sometimes around the clock. Margaret and the boys go days without even seeing him, though his road runs along the bottom of their field.

After a month he finds them a family-sized caravan on a park overlooking the beach at Coatham Bay. A few miles from the work site, Coatham Bay is on the edge of Redcar, and across the River Tees from Middlesbrough. The caravan park is exposed to the North Sea, and if its residents look northwards they see Teesside’s steelworks looming, but there are shops close by and the caravans have running water. Roy says he will find a flat for them nearby, and Margaret asks people on the site about schools for the boys to go to in September, and begins to feel optimistic about their future.

And then one Saturday morning, Roy brings visitors. He has been away all night – working, he says – but he returns to the caravan with a dark-haired woman of roughly Margaret’s age, and a little girl who looks a few years younger than David. Something about the way the woman stands in relation to Roy makes Margaret think she has a territorial stake on him.

‘This is Alwyn,’ he says. ‘And this’ – gesturing at the girl – ‘is Wendy.’

‘Hello,’ says Alwyn.

‘Who’s she?’ Margaret asks Roy while looking at the woman.

‘A friend of mine,’ says Roy, and Alwyn smiles.

‘Why is she here with you now?’ asks Margaret. ‘Is something going on?’

‘No! I just wanted to bring her and Wendy to meet you and t’ lads.’

Alwyn smiles again.

‘I don’t . . .’ Margaret addresses Alwyn directly. ‘Will you go, please?’

Alwyn looks at Roy. Margaret feels a rush of adrenaline. ‘I want you to go,’ she orders. ‘Get out. Go!’

Alwyn takes Wendy’s hand and hurries out of the caravan and across the park. Margaret darts to the door to shout after her, slightly surprised at herself but enjoying the feeling. ‘Don’t come back or I’ll flaming kill you.’

Roy is laughing.

‘Is that your fancy woman?’ asks Margaret.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ says Roy. ‘When would I have time to see a fancy woman? Come here.’ He hugs her. ‘She’s just a friend, sometimes cooks for t’ men in t’ caravan. I just said I’d bring her to see you and t’ lads, but I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known we were going to have that carry-on.’

‘But . . .’ Margaret is unsure. She does not trust the woman, but knows there is a caravan that serves as a canteen on the works site where women come to cook for the men, so that part could be true. ‘Alright,’ she says, and sits down. ‘I just want to have a normal life, Roy. That’s all.’

He stands and fills the kettle at the tap. ‘I know, and we will. Come on, let’s have a cup of tea.’

They do not have a normal life, and Roy does not find them a flat. He spends more nights away from the caravan, and gives Margaret little money for food and clothes. Once in a while he comes back drunk and threatens to hit her. Margaret feeds the boys on cheap tinned food and white bread, eating as little as she can so as to be able to fill their plates. Her weight goes down to six and a half stone.

One day when she has only a few coins left for food, and Roy has been absent for three days, Margaret goes to the council offices to ask the woman on reception if anyone there can help her. The woman eyes Margaret and the boys warily as if they might steal something, and directs them to some nearby offices where she says someone will talk to them about National Assistance. The offices are dingy, with unwashed windows and an unwelcoming atmosphere. One of the staff, an officious but personable man of about forty, takes down her details, and those of Roy, and listens when she says her husband doesn’t give her any money. ‘He says he can’t afford it,’ she says. ‘But I need to feed my children, and I wondered if you could help me?’

The man fetches registers and files, checks some of their pages and then looks at Margaret with curiosity.

‘You’re Mr Roy Hollingworth’s wife?’

‘Yes, I’m Margaret Hollingworth. These are his two sons.’

The man glances at Gary and David. ‘Could there be any confusion about that?’

‘No! I’m his wife! And these are his two lads.’

‘And where do you live?’

Margaret curtly gives the address of the caravan. He looks sceptical. ‘It’s temporary,’ she says. ‘He works building motorways.’

‘I have no record of a Mr Hollingworth at that address. We have a Roy Fox Hollingworth in Middlesbrough. We have him down because his wife’s in receipt of National Assistance.’

‘But that can’t be him because I don’t get National Assistance! That’s the problem!’

‘Yes, but that’s the only Roy Hollingworth we have. And your name . . .?’

‘Margaret.’

‘Yes, Margaret . . . but you see his wife is a Mrs Alwyn Hollingworth.’

‘Alwyn? She’s not his wife –’

The man looks at her with pity.

‘I think you need to have a word with him, and come back to me,’ says the man. He knows she is looking at the register and he lets her keep looking long enough to remember the address.

*

She and the boys catch a bus into Middlesbrough, and then find the address on foot, asking directions as they go. There is no reply at the house, so she stands and waits for a couple of hours until she sees Alwyn coming down the road with Wendy. Alwyn lets them all into the house. Margaret notices a pair of Roy’s shoes near the door.

‘What’s going off, Alwyn?’

‘What do you mean?’ Cool as a cucumber. She says yes, Roy might come round sometimes, but they’re just good friends. She says no, she has no idea what he’s told the National Assistance.

Margaret thinks that Alwyn has a very good idea what he’s told them, and the two women argue, the three children casting their eyes downwards and stealing looks at one another. Alwyn refuses to yield, and Margaret realises that Roy might have kept the details of the National Assistance money from her too. It is him that she needs to question. She takes the boys and walks back to the bus stop.

By the time he comes home her anger has subsided into despair. He says she’s got the wrong idea and that there has been a mistake. The council people are idiots: Alwyn is a friend, he calls to see her now and again, but that’s all. She was engaged to a soldier who died, you see, and talking to Roy helps because he understands, having been in the Army himself. Why does Margaret always have to be so jealous and mean-spirited about everything? Surely he can help somebody who’s pining like that? ‘Anyway let’s not fall out,’ he says. ‘Let’s have a fresh start and move out of this van and into somewhere proper.’

He keeps promising a flat, but moves them to a bed and breakfast in Redcar, to another caravan park along the coast, and then back to Coatham Bay. Margaret suspects that he is dodging rent. She cannot find out if there really is a flat for them because most of the time he isn’t around to ask, and when he is, he is in no mood to discuss it. She believes that some of the time when he is away he is with Alwyn, though of course when she says so he shouts and says she’s talking rubbish.

By October the park is emptying of families and fewer and fewer of the caravans are occupied. One night when Roy returns home from a night drinking, and the boys are in bed, Margaret demands to know when they will move into the flat. He tells her to stop nagging. She says she needs to know so she can send the boys to school. ‘It’s not the lads you care about,’ he says, ‘it’s yourself.’ He lurches at her with his hands raised. She staggers backwards and the table flips up and over, and he is shouting, and punching his fists into her. He is wilder than he has been before. She begs him to stop and tries to get away, but he is above her and in control. She expects him to reach down to yank her up, but no, he is kicking her in her back, up and down her spine, his shoe toe in her bones. She screams. Gary and David are peeping round their bedroom door. Roy kicks until he is tired, then stops and walks out into the night.

In the morning she feels sick and wobbles when she stands. There are bruises and welts all over her face and body. When Roy comes back she shows him what he has done, and he seems embarrassed and ashamed and then tells her she needs to go to see a doctor, almost as if it was someone else that had caused the injuries. She is worried. She wonders how thin and damaged you have to be before you die. ‘Can you take me to t’ station to get a train back to Thurnscoe, Roy?’

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Leave t’ lads here, and you go and get sorted out. I’ll get packed up here and we’ll come down. We’ll have a new start, I promise. Don’t take notice of that Alwyn, it’s nowt. It’s you that I love.’

She travels back to the Dearne alone by train. It has been the worst beating he has ever given her, but at least seeing the damage he has done seems to have changed Roy, she thinks. Once he’s back with her in the place they belong, things will be different.

*

Margaret moves back with her mam and dad, and goes to see a doctor in Thurnscoe. The doctor knows what has caused her injuries, and tries to advise her. ‘There’s no need for you to put up with it, Mrs Hollingworth,’ he counsels, with the tone of a man who has found himself in this situation before. ‘If he doesn’t stop it, you must leave him.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘But he’s coming back, and we’re going to make a fresh start.’

At the end of two weeks, Roy is not there and has not contacted her. Margaret’s mam and dad tell her to put in for a divorce. She applies for National Assistance and at some point in the course of telling the clerk that she is separated from her husband, and that her husband does not give her any money, she acknowledges the truth: her husband has another woman, and he isn’t coming back. Worse, he has the boys.

At first, the realisation that Roy does not intend to bring Gary and David home makes her feel as if she is in a dream. Each morning she wakes and instinctively listens out for them, to see if they are up or not, and then she remembers they are with Roy, and lapses into numb listlessness. If she thinks of trying to retrieve them, she is seized by terror and nausea. As she recovers her strength she investigates ways in which she might get them back, but no one seems willing to help her: Social Services say they can’t get involved, and the police in Goldthorpe say the same. Harry and Winnie deny knowledge of Roy’s whereabouts, though Margaret thinks that they are covering for him because they prefer their grandsons to be with Roy.

*

Meanwhile, Gary and David adjust to life on the salt-wind whipped caravan park. David, now eight, feels anxious and frightened, and Gary tries to looks after him, even though he is scared himself.

Roy goes out in the mornings and sometimes he doesn’t get home until eleven or twelve at night. Most days he leaves the boys locked in the caravan with a tin of beans for their lunch. On Saturdays, Alwyn and Wendy come, and Wendy plays with the boys while Alwyn bakes, and makes them platefuls of sausages and chips, and scolds Roy for neglecting his children. Alwyn washes their hair in paraffin to kill the nits, and then they go out together to the amusements, or to the beach. But then Alwyn has a row with Roy, and she and Wendy stop coming, without explanation. The boys are lonely and, as summer draws to an end, they spend much of their time just looking out of the window at the other caravans. One day Gary starts to get dinner for himself and David, and finds just a half tin of baked beans and a bag of flour, a vestige of Alwyn’s baking visits. They eat the beans but two hours later David says, ‘I’m starving, Gary.’

‘Aye, I am an’ all.’ Gary sees his little brother’s face and tries to think what he can do. ‘Let’s see if we can find something.’

But they can’t. David looks mournful. Gary remembers Alwyn making pancakes on the stovetop; he can’t remember all the ingredients, but he knows one of them was flour. He takes the flour bag from the cupboard, shakes the contents into a jug and mixes the flour with water. Then he pops on the gas. ‘Just a minute, our kid,’ he says. ‘We’ll have some pancakes.’

With shaky hands he pours some of the white liquid into the pan and attempts to scrape it into a pancake shape and flip it over, but it looks a mess. He scrapes the mess onto two plates and they try to eat it, forcing down mouthfuls until they catch each other’s eye.

‘It’s not right, is it?’ says David.

‘No,’ says Gary, and takes both their plates to scrape them into the waste bin.

Another day they are looking out of the window when they see workmen gathered around one of the empty caravans on the far side of the field. The men back up a truck to it, attach the towbar, and drive it away. In the afternoon they come back for another. The next day, and every day after, more workmen come, moving the caravans one by one. The holiday season is over. Eventually there is only the boys’ caravan and one other. To Gary and David it is as if everyone is being taken away and dropped into the sea.

On a Saturday morning, when there are just the two caravans left, Roy tells Gary and David to come with him to the gates of the caravan park because he has a surprise for them. They stand in the cold wind, shivering, until a bus comes to the gates, and Alwyn and Wendy get off. Alwyn runs to David and Gary, and puts her arms around them and cries into their thin little bodies. ‘These two want something to eat, Roy.’ She makes Roy take them all to a café where she tells the boys they are all going to live together.

The next day they pack up the caravan and move into a flat in Redcar. Soon after that, they move into another caravan park in Bridlington, and Alwyn sends Gary, David and Wendy to a school in the town. For a while the two brothers feel safe and part of a family again. There are teas eaten in cafés, balls booted about on beaches and comics featuring soldiers and superheroes, bought from newsagents. On evenings when he isn’t at work, or in the pub with Alwyn, there is their dad, sitting on the caravan settee under the big window, telling them about what he did in the Army, and about Montgomery, and the Duke of Marlborough, and other great men who, like soldiers such as himself, had fought to make the country what it was, to create Great Britain and the Empire, to defend the race of heroes.

Outside the sea wind blows and the white lights on Bridlington promenade sway. ‘Tell us another one, Dad,’ says Gary. ‘Go on, tell us another story about t’ war.’