Free The Valley by Richard Benson

t’ kit on buses? . . . Olive, what sort of spirits does tha like, Winnie’s kind or my kind?’
    Olive thinks he is a hoot, and Annie thinks him marvellous, especially when he calls her ‘Nance’ instead of Annie. They sing songs and after a few with Millie, Harry sings a close harmony with Nance, sealing the relationship.
    Perhaps Winnie is caught up in this convenient foursome. Perhaps she is scared of being left behind by her younger sister. Perhaps she is jealous, or disappointed in Ernest, or desperate to marry to get away from her father. Maybe she is impressed by Harry’s rough declaration of love under the railway bridge. Whatever the reason, they are soon courting properly, and one evening Harry suggests they go for a walk (walk being code for sex). When Winnie tells this story to her daughters, and then her granddaughter, many years after, she does not go into detail, saying only that, ‘he did something he shouldn’t’.
    Later, Harry says that as she could now be pregnant they should get married. She seems to have been so unsure of the likelihood or otherwise of actually becoming pregnant, and so deprived of the vocabulary and language to talk about the situation, that she is agrees. She tells Annie, and then her father, that she is pregnant, and Harry comes to the house to discuss his and Winnie’s marriage. Walter rages, but his initial anger subsides into a desire to protect his daughter. However much she forgives her father, Winnie needs to be free of the house. On the other hand, she is fearful that Harry’s pleasure-seeking and carousing will overwhelm her. She likes to be the matronly carer and nurturer; it is the role life has allotted her and she is used to it, but she isn’t that with Harry.
    But still, a woman gets only a certain number of chances to escape. When she insists that she will undertake the marriage, Walter shakes his head. He knows men like Harry, he says; they represent the mud from which decent people like the Parkins have dragged themselves. He pleads with her. ‘Nay, Winnie. Not him, lass,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen it before. You think you know, but –’
    Winnie defies him. Quietly, but insistently she says, ‘I love him.’
    â€˜I’m telling you,’ says Walter, ‘you do as you like, but you’ll never be happy if you marry that man.’

8 Love and Marriage
    Goldthorpe, 1931
    Winnie Parkin and Harry Hollingworth marry at Doncaster Register Office on Saturday 14 February, 1931 – Valentine’s Day – chosen by Winnie for its portent of romance and accepted by her future husband with a good-natured shrug. Winnie wears a smart cream two-piece which she has made with jersey fabric bought from Barnsley market, and their betrothal is sealed with a wedding ring bought from the pawn shop in Goldthorpe for six shillings and eleven pence.
    Annie guides and helps her daughter with the wedding plans, but Walter is distant and aloof. He rues the marriage and his disappointment stews with worries about money and a resentment of his own painful, failing body. The winter cold aggravates his wounds and spinal injuries, so much so that on some mornings he can hardly move and has to stay all day in his bed. Even when he can walk there is scant chance of finding paid work, with the Dearne pits on three-day weeks and employing fewer men because of the trade slump. Often Walter will set off to Goldthorpe colliery and even before he gets there hear the buzzer sounding to tell the village that the pit will not open that day. At other times the only remaining jobs are too strenuous, but he takes them anyway and returns home exhausted, his scars stretched and sore and feeling as if they might burst. On those evenings he will try to go outside to walk off his discomfort, but after sitting he is unsteady on his feet, and will stand at the door swaying, and fumbling at the handle. If Winnie is there, she will get up