In the years since Winnie’s death most members of the Hollingworth family still lived in the same places as they did at the time of the funeral. They are still friends and they still socialise together, although there have been no large-scale family gatherings at Highgate Club since the funeral in 2002. Some have died while others have new children and grandchildren, young people to whom coal is either unknown, or known chiefly as an element in school lessons about global warming.
Roy Hollingworth died in April 2003. When Alwyn told people at the funeral that he was too ill to travel, she was telling the truth. Living in the sheltered accommodation, the two of them had worked part-time at a local pub, but Roy’s alcoholism had run unchecked. In February 2003 he began to lose consciousness at unpredictable intervals, and was taken to hospital almost weekly – so often that when Wendy called Gary one night to say Roy was very ill and wanted to talk to him, Gary was not anxious, assuming that he would recover. Gary, who had not spoken to his father since their argument on the telephone, planned to visit him in two days’ time, but the following evening Alwyn rang to tell Gary that Roy had died. A blood clot on the lung, she said, although they both knew the real killer, and alcohol poisoning was recorded as the official cause of death.
Gary and Scott, and Lynda and John, attended the funeral, but Pauline and David did not. Waiting in Roy’s flat before the service, Gary felt that the rooms looked strange in a way he could not understand, and it was only as people left for the crematorium he realised why; in the entire home there was no object or decoration that was personal to Roy, not even a photograph. It was as if he had succeeded in leaving the minimum trace of himself as he passed through, elusive in death as he had been in life. When Gary looked for a keepsake to have in memory of his father, he couldn’t find anything.
Roy was cremated wearing his Royal Tank Regiment uniform, which was decorated with a General Service Medal and Canal Zone clasp. Alwyn died the following year. Wendy lives with her family in Burbage, near Hinckley, and runs a property business.
Margaret and Colin Greengrass lived happily together in Thurnscoe for the rest of their lives, moving to a bungalow in the village in 2000. Colin died in 2011, and Margaret in 2013.
My mother, Pauline Benson, still lives in the village in the East Riding. During the sale of the farm she and Gordon retained a plot of land on which they built a new house. Using an old shed they had kept, they then made a new yard and, with their youngest son Guy, they used the yard to run a straw merchant business. Their daughter Helen is a primary school teacher in Hull. Gordon, my father, died in 2009, while I was writing this book.
Lynda and John oversaw the sale of 239 Barnsley Road, and moved back to their first house down the street. In 2006, Lynda took a new job helping to organise colleges into a network that made it easier for people in Yorkshire to get access to education. The job was partly based at Hull University, and if John had a day off when Lynda was commuting to meetings he would accompany her, eating breakfast among the students in the cafeteria, then walking around the grounds until her meetings were ended. Lynda retired in 2009. Shortly afterwards she became the voluntary secretary for the Dearne Valley Big Local, a group, part of a national scheme, that works to restore the sense of community in the area. John still works at the Kostal components factory in Highgate and until 2008 he also worked as a volunteer at a local home for disabled people. Karl works as a process engineer at the IAC car components factory in Scunthorpe, and lives with his partner Nathalie in the Dearne village of Broomhill.
Dr Ravichandran never explained to Lynda how she had walked when her condition ought to have prevented it. Nor did any doctor comment on her theory that she had a kind of consciousness in her bones and muscles that could move her limbs. However, in 2011 scientists working with a paralysed man at the Frazier Rehab Institute in Louisville, USA, discovered that the human spinal cord could direct leg movement without input from the brain. The scientists and doctors used epidural electrical stimulation of the man’s lower spinal cord to mimic signals that his brain should have sent telling the legs to move; having received those signals, the cord’s own neural network took sensory input from the legs, and directed the leg movements needed to stand and take steps. With assistance, the man could make walking movements on a treadmill.
Gary Hollingworth became a senior social work practitioner, and moved to a new post in Wakefield in 2004. He is still married to Heather, and he still has dreams about working at the pit. Scott lives in Swinton, just south of the Dearne Valley, and works as a civil engineer. Claire lectures in animal care at Wakefield College, and lives in Grimethorpe.
David was made redundant from Rossington colliery when it closed in 2006, ending the Hollingworth family’s last connection to the coal industry. After a period of unemployment and retraining, he took a job at Kostal. He and Marie still live in Thurnscoe, and David still enjoys fishing. Lisa lives with her partner Kevin in Bolton-upon-Dearne, and is a receptionist at Kostal.
Coal production at the Selby complex ended in 2004. At the time of writing, there was one working deep mine in South Yorkshire, at Hatfield. In 1945 there were sixty-seven. Since the decline described in the latter parts of this book, regeneration work and the efforts of local people have restored much of the Dearne Valley’s economy, and its natural and built landscapes. It is increasingly popular both as a location for businesses and as a place to live. In July 2006 Goldthorpe’s Welfare Hall was refurbished and reopened as the New Dearne Playhouse. The Coronation Club, the Unity Club, the Union Jack Memorial, or ‘Comrades’ club, and Highgate Working Men’s Club all remain open.