‘He . . . he’s been horrible lately, you’ve no idea, but I kept making excuses for him in me mind. And he still wanted, you know,
that
, so I thought he still loved me and that whatever was wrong it’d blow over. Oh Abby, what am I going to do? I love him, I’ve never felt like this about a bloke in the whole of me life. He said at the beginning that he loved me and we’d be married one day and that I’d make the perfect farmer’s wife. How can that have changed?’
Rowena’s response to this contained words that Abby had had no idea her genteel friend knew. For herself she couldn’t remember feeling so angry before, not even with her mother when she was at her worst. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, don’t agitate yourself. Look, he’d been drinking before we left tonight and you know his mam’s homemade beer is enough to knock your socks off. Perhaps it was just the drink talking, eh?’ She stroked Winnie’s hair back from her damp face. ‘How about I go and see what’s what while you wait here with Rowena? I won’t be long.’
Rowena scrambled out of the lorry with her, closing the door before she said, ‘What are you going to say to him?’
‘I don’t know but he at least needs to come and talk to her and apologise, if nothing else. To treat her like that! And I’m sure he’s been manhandling her recently, Rowena.’
‘What? Striking her, you mean?’ Rowena stared at her, aghast.
‘Aye. All those bruises and walking into doors! I recognise the signs. There’s enough women round the streets where I live who regularly walk into doors every Friday night when their husbands get paid and get mortalious.’
‘But
Winnie
?’ Careless of her coat, Rowena was leaning against the dirty lorry. ‘She wouldn’t put up with that sort of treatment, not Winnie.’
‘I’d have thought that once,’ said Abby flatly, ‘but from the first she fell for Vincent like a ton of bricks, you know she did.’ And he had always been offhand with Winnie, that was the funny thing, but it seemed to make her friend keener, if anything. In fact his whole attitude had been similar to how Mr Todd treated his daughter, if she thought about it. Was that something to do with why Winnie had been determined to get Vincent’s attention and keep it? Because her father hadn’t bothered with her?
‘I’ve never understood the attraction. Vincent’s good-looking admittedly and he can be quite amusing in a rather crude way, but that other side of him, the nasty side, is all too near the surface. But
striking
a woman . . .’ Rowena’s voice trailed away.
‘Get back in the lorry with Winnie and don’t let her follow me, whatever you do,’ Abby said. ‘I’m going to have a word with Vincent and see what he has to say for himself. After all these months of them having an understanding and Winnie worshipping the ground he walks on, he could have let her down more lightly if he really intends it to be over. She deserves that at least.’
‘Be careful, Abby.’ Rowena tottered forward as Abby made to walk off, grabbing her arm. ‘I ought to come with you.’
‘No, stay with Winnie. He might be double my size but he won’t get physical with half the town watching. I’m just going to ask him to come and sort it out properly with her, that’s all.’
She stepped forward and opened the lorry door as she spoke, shoving Rowena up next to Winnie before she made her way back into the building.
Couples were still dancing but now the hit of the season, ‘White Christmas’, was playing on the gramophone on the stage, the band obviously having decided to take a break. Abby scanned the dance floor but Vincent and the woman weren’t among the remaining dancers, and then she saw them at the back of the room. They were sitting at a table for two, the blonde nestled into the side of him in such a way that one ample breast was pushed against his chest and he was playing with her hair or stroking her neck, Abby couldn’t determine which.
As she made her way across to them, she realised Vincent had been aware of her entrance into the room although he hadn’t looked straight at her. When he raised his eyes as she reached them, she saw a small smile was playing round his mouth, and it took all of her will not to snap. This man would be the worst possible husband for her friend, even if he still wanted her which he obviously didn’t. Winnie was well rid of him. James had always made her feel that she was beautiful and desirable and, more than that, lady-like. Because he had treated her like a lady she had always felt that way and it had been nice. More than nice. But Vincent was the other end of the pendulum.
It was the blonde who spoke first and the suddenness and aggressiveness took Abby aback. ‘What do you think you’re looking at?’ she said, her voice nasal.
‘I want a word with Vincent.’
The woman stared at her for a moment and then made a gesture with one hand as though flapping something aside. ‘Get out of it, you and your friends with you. Coming here thinking you can lord it over the rest of us.’
Vincent’s smile widened and he murmured, ‘You tell ’em, Shirl.’
Loathsome man. Ignoring the blonde, Abby stared the farmer’s son in the eye. ‘There was no need to say what you did to Winnie, certainly not after leading her on the way you have. She thought she was going to marry you but I have to say I’m very pleased you’ve shown your true colours. And you,’ she turned her gaze on the woman who was now sitting very upright, ‘you’re welcome to him. I’ve a feeling you’ve both got exactly what you deserve.’
‘Why, you little—She’s chased him from the minute she come to the farm, you know that, don’t you? And all he’s done is brought the lot of you to the dances and suchlike as a friend. He wouldn’t touch the likes of her with a bargepole.’
‘Oh yes? And you’re at the farm every day like we are, I suppose. He’s been seeing Winnie all right, and if you don’t believe me, ask his mam. She knows. And I’ll tell you something else.’ Abby bent over the enraged woman, her face just as furious. ‘What he’s done once he’ll do again, so think on.’
Vincent’s head was forward now in a bull-like attitude but he had clearly decided not to stand up and make things worse. Several people close by were blatantly listening. His voice a low growl, he said, ‘I’ll sort you out when we get back to the farm.’
‘Like you “sort out” Winnie when she does or says something you don’t like? Just you try it. I warn you, you’ll regret it.’
‘What’s she been saying? I’ve never laid a finger on her.’
‘I don’t remember mentioning you had.’
Realising he had given himself away, Vincent glared at her, and the blonde, evidently realising there had been more going on than he had admitted, twisted in her seat, her voice shrill as she said, ‘What’s she on about? If you’ve been carrying on with that little huzzy I’ll brain you, Vin, so help me.’
Abby left them to it, marching out of the room without looking back. It was only when she climbed into the lorry that she realised she was shaking.
‘What happened? What did he say?’
She could only see Winnie and Rowena’s faces dimly in the blackness but even as she thought frantically for a way to let Winnie down more lightly, her friend continued, ‘He’s staying in there with her, isn’t he? She must be nearly twice as old as him an’ all.’
‘She certainly looks it,’ said Rowena. ‘And she must be sleeping with half the American army to get access to the amount of make-up she’s got slapped on her face.’
‘But she’s got a good body,’ Winnie said dully.
‘She’s awful, Winnie, like one of the dock dollies back home. You know she is. He must be mad.’ Abby leaned across Rowena and caught Winnie’s hands. ‘I know it’s easy to say but he’s not worth crying about, lass. He’s a wrong ’un, and like I said to her in there, what he’s done once he’ll do again and again and again.’
‘Did you? Did you say that?’ For a moment there was a spark of animation in Winnie’s voice. ‘Perhaps she’ll finish with him then. She must know she’s too old for him and it can’t last, and she didn’t look the sort of woman who would make a farmer’s wife to me.’
Oh Winnie.
‘Don’t tell me you’d have him back!’ Rowena exclaimed. ‘Not after tonight? Your life would be a misery, you must know that.’
‘He can be nice. Lovely.’
‘And when he’s not being nice and lovely, what then?’ When Winnie didn’t answer, Rowena unceremoniously scrambled over her and started the engine of the lorry.
‘What are you doing?’ Winnie was beside herself.
‘Driving us home.’
‘You can’t. Rowena, you can’t. What about Vincent?’
‘Funnily enough, I couldn’t care less about Vincent.’
‘He’ll go crazy.’
‘With me, maybe, but I’m more than a match for him. He knows you can’t drive, or Abby, so there’ll only be one person to blame.’
‘Don’t, please don’t.’ Winnie actually clutched hold of the steering wheel.
‘Let’s put it this way.’ Rowena turned and now her voice was flinty. ‘You can either get out of this lorry and wait for him and find your own way back, and given the mood he’ll be in when he knows it’s gone I wouldn’t recommend that, or come back with us in the warm and dry and try and get some sleep. After how he’s behaved tonight he’s getting off lightly in my opinion.’
‘But you don’t know what he can be like, he’ll go—’
‘Crazy. Yes, you said. But he doesn’t frighten me.’
‘Abby,
tell
her,’ Winnie appealed to Abby as Rowena began to pull out into the road, the windscreen wipers working furiously to fight the thick fat snowflakes falling out of a laden sky. ‘It’s not our lorry.’
‘It’s not his either, it’s his da’s,’ Abby pointed out softly. The idea of driving away and leaving Vincent hadn’t occurred to her but now Rowena was doing it, it felt wonderful. It was extreme and probably illegal, and with the snowstorm gathering force and rapidly becoming a blizzard it might be dangerous as well, but the thought of Vincent’s face when he came out of the dance to find the lorry gone put all other considerations into the shade. ‘And I agree with Rowena, he’s getting off lightly.’
‘But what will his mam and da say?’
‘I’ve no idea but I do know Farmer Tollett needs us more than we need him.’
‘A darn sight more,’ Rowena put in grimly, peering out of the windscreen as the lorry rumbled its way along in the blackness.
‘He’ll be so mad.’ Winnie slumped back in her seat.
‘Winnie,’ Abby said gently, ‘you’re frightened of him, aren’t you? That’s the truth of it.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Her friend’s voice held no conviction.
‘You are.’ The darkness helped Abby to say what had been on her mind for months. ‘You might have loved him at the beginning, you might still for all I know, but you’re definitely scared of him too. He’s a bully, can’t you see that? And controlling and manipulative. He’s made you think you can’t manage without him when in fact you’re ten times stronger and more capable than he is. You know as well as I do he’s always had a chip on his shoulder about being the younger son, his mam’s insinuated that to all of us more than once when he’s been stroppy about something. ’
Winnie was silent for some moments and her voice was very small when she repeated the words she’d said to Rowena, ‘He can be lovely.’
‘Has he ever,’ Abby didn’t know how to say it and then decided to just come straight out with it in view of the night’s happenings, ‘hit you?’
There was an infinitesimal pause before Winnie answered, ‘No, how could you think such a thing?’ and both Abby and Rowena knew their friend was lying. But Abby couldn’t say anything more tonight, Winnie was at the end of her tether. Abby reached out and took her hand, and when she didn’t snatch it away, instead closing her fingers round Abby’s, Abby swallowed at the lump which rose in her throat. Poor Winnie. Who would ever have thought it?
She stared ahead into the whirling whiteness, conscious her arms were aching from clearing out ditches all day, and for a moment the longing for home rose hot and strong. She wanted to see her da, to confide in him and ask his advice about this. He might not be well read and know everything about anything, but he was wise, her da, and unshockable. But he was in Sunderland and she was in Yorkshire and so she’d just have to try and support Winnie the best she could, however all this turned out.
Chapter Eleven