Spring Comes to Emmerdale

Book 0: Emmerdale

by Pamela Bell

Genres: Family Life; Sagas; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Spring Comes to Emmerdale is a must for fans of ITV's Emmerdale, and readers who love heartwarming and heartbreaking stories set during wartime, alike.

World War I wages on, and the families of Emmerdale are trying their best to move on from tragedy, while the effects of war still resonate throughout the village of Beckindale. Though grief and loss permeate, Maggie Sugden, Annie King and the other inhabitants of the village are finding independence, the chance to make their own happiness - and even opening themselves up to find love. Featuring firm fan favourites like the Dingles, The Woolpack pub and Emmerdale Farm itself, this will be a delight for any Emmerdale fan.

Following on from the first in the series, Christmas At Emmerdale, the second novel picks up where the first left-off, exploring the lives of Emmerdale's much-loved families during the Great War and beyond, and how the nation's favourite village copes with the loves and lives lost.

(p) Orion Publishing Group 2019

Release date: March 7, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 288

Sample

Dot climbed down from the cart and nodded her thanks to young Fred Airey when he handed her down her bag. She had been lucky to see him at the station in Ilkley. She’d grown so used to trams and trolleybuses in Bradford that she’d forgotten that the only way to get to Beckindale was to hitch a ride on a cart. Or to walk, of course, and Dot hadn’t fancied that.

It had been strange coming back along the narrow country lanes. Swaying on the wagon seat next to Fred, Dot had stared at the fells as if she had never seen them before. Had the hillsides always been that vibrant a green? The limestone tops that bleached? Cow parsley and buttercups frothed along the roadside and the blackthorn blossom still lay like a thick milky white tablecloth over the hedgerows. Dot remembered wandering along the lanes with her brother, Olly, in spring and eating the sweet new blackthorn leaves. Bread and butter, they had used to call them.

Olly had been reported missing, presumed dead, a year ago. They had no idea what had happened to him. He was just … gone. He had been nineteen.

Dot stood for a moment, her bag at her feet and her hands pressed to the small of her back, while the silence hummed in her ears. It was so quiet. Had Beckindale always been this still? How had she stood it? Used now to the clattering and drilling and hammering and hubbub of the munitions factory, Dot had forgotten what the countryside was like.

As her ears tuned in, she realised it wasn’t entirely silent; she could hear hammering from the wheelwright’s. A baby was crying somewhere. A dog barked and a voice was raised to shush it. From a distance came the faint bleating of sheep on the fells and a woodpigeon burbled from a rooftop.

She was a long way from Bradford. The air there was dirty and dark, the streets were crowded and noisy with the rattle of motor vehicles, but Dot loved it. Working as a munitionette might be dangerous but the other girls were always up for a laugh, and when they had finished their long, back-breaking days, they went to the pub and bought their own drinks and smoked their own cigarettes. The men didn’t like it, of course, but Dot and her friends were doing their bit for the war effort and why shouldn’t they enjoy their free time?

Dot hoped the war would end soon, of course, but sometimes she wondered what life would be like afterwards. The men would all want their jobs back, and she had no intention of going back to being a servant. She’d worked at Emmerdale Farm before the war, and although Maggie Sugden wasn’t as bad as she had thought at first, Dot didn’t want to go back to that. Cooking and cleaning and washing and ironing, and nothing to do in the evening but go to bed and then get up the next day and do it all over again. And all for a pittance. No, thank you. Dot wanted more than that.

But first there was the war to be won.

As if they didn’t all have enough to deal with, now the flu was running out of control. The trickle of cases had turned into a flood and now the sound of a cough made everyone uneasy. Agatha Tucker had gone home one night and the next day they’d heard that she had died, just like that, and she wasn’t the only one. Dot had heard rumours that the factories would close to stop the flu spreading any further, but that was ridiculous. They had to keep producing ammunition for the troops, didn’t they? A few people had taken to wearing masks, and some of the girls were refusing to go to the pub after work, but as Dot said to her friend Ellen, there were so many ways to die at the moment, they might as well die happy.

Now the flu had even reached Beckindale. Her mother had sent a frantic message to say that her father was seriously ill and when Dot had asked the factory manager for leave, he had nodded. ‘You might as well go to the country while all this flu’s going round,’ he’d said. ‘Breathe some fresh air, eh?’

Well, it was certainly fresh, Dot thought. The fresh smell of cut grass and warm earth laced with a strong smell of manure. She had forgotten that, along with the quietness.

Bending to pick up her bag, Dot set off down the familiar street towards the cottage where she had grown up, but when she came to the Woolpack, she stopped and stared at the blackened ruin until the sound of her own name made her turn.

‘Dot? Dot Colton? Is that you?’

Janet Airey and Betty Porter were coming out of the village shop and waving to attract her attention. Janet was tall and angular while Betty was short and round. They were both carrying baskets and both were, in Dot’s opinion, the biggest gossips in Beckindale. The news of her return would be round the village in no time.

‘Janet, Betty.’ She nodded at them. ‘How do?’

‘Mustn’t grumble,’ said Janet. ‘The summer’s good for my joints, that’s something. She eyed Dot critically. ‘You’ve changed.’

‘Have I?’

‘You’ve cut your hair.’ Janet’s voice was almost accusing.

‘We have to be careful of our hair in the munitions factory and cover it with caps,’ Dot explained, touching the ends of her bob. ‘It’s much easier to manage like this.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Janet, shaking her head. ‘You young girls will do anything nowadays. Cutting your hair, wearing trousers, shortening your skirts,’ she added with a pointed look at Dot’s ankles, ‘and who knows what else.’

‘And smoking and drinking,’ Betty put in. ‘Where’s it all going to end, that’s what I want to know.’

‘It’d be nice to think it would end with us getting the vote,’ said Dot, but Janet and Betty looked at her as if she had sprouted an extra head so she changed the subject quickly. ‘What happened to t’Woolpack?’

‘Didn’t your ma tell you? It burned down, it did, and Ava Bainbridge in it. Terrible shock, it was. When was that, Betty?’

‘Winter 1915, it were,’ said Betty. ‘I remember because that was the year we lost Alfred.’

‘And nobody’s done it up?’ Dot’s eyes went back to the pub. The stone walls were blackened but still standing, while the roof timbers had caved in and through the empty windows and doorway she could see a charred mess where the bar had once been. It was so different from the jolly pubs she had known in Bradford, which were always packed with people talking and laughing and doing their level best to forget about the war for an hour or two.

‘Who’s going to take it on with this wretched war on?’ said Betty. ‘Percy Bainbridge moved away with his children after the fire. Didn’t have the heart for it any more, I suppose. He used to lease it from old Jack Micklethwaite over Ilkley way. That right, Janet?’

‘Aye, but Jack doesn’t care about the Woolpack now either. He had four sons and every single one of them ’as died in France now.’ Janet shook her head. ‘Nobody’s got the heart to think about it, specially not with this flu on top of everything else.’

‘It looks sad,’ said Dot.

‘Aye, well, my Dick misses it that’s for sure,’ said Janet. ‘But we don’t have anyone with the energy to rebuild it, even if they could afford to buy it off Jack.’ She gestured at the pub. ‘It’s a crying shame about the Woolpack. The place is a mess, but there’s nowt to be done about it. All we’ve got in the village now are old men, young boys and invalids.’

‘And women,’ said Dot.

There was a disapproving silence. Betty and Janet exchanged glances. ‘Women can’t run pubs,’ said Betty after a moment.

‘Why not? We’re doing all sorts of jobs that only men did before.’

‘Not in Beckindale,’ said Janet firmly.

And that was why she would be heading back to the city the first chance she had, thought Dot as she said a wry goodbye to Janet and Betty and walked on.

‘Oh, Dot, thank goodness you’re home!’ Agnes Colton almost fell on Dot when she opened the door to her.

Dot was shocked to see the change in her mother. Agnes had once been a brisk, practical woman, sturdily built, but now she was thin and tearful and trembling with fatigue.

‘Your poor pa,’ she kept saying. ‘Your poor, poor pa. I don’t know what to do.’

Dot could hear him coughing upstairs. ‘I’ll go and look at him,’ she said, though she didn’t know what she could do either. What did she know of nursing? She could pack a shell with explosives but that was no use to her now.

If she had been shocked by the state of her mother, she was aghast at how ill her father looked. He lay grey-faced and sweating in bed, racked by a terrible gurgling cough. As Dot watched in horror, he leant over the side of the bed and retched into a bowl that held bloody sputum.

‘Pa … oh, Pa …’ She went over to hold the bowl for him and as the coughing fit eased, she helped him back onto his pillows.

He opened red-rimmed eyes to focus on her face with an effort. ‘Bess?’

Dot swallowed. Her older sister had always been his favourite. She had died of pleurisy seven years earlier.

‘It’s Dot,’ she said. Alarmed by his struggles to say more, she put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t try to talk, Pa,’ she said, but he was determined to get the words out.

‘Your ma … must … look after … her, Bess,’ he managed.

She didn’t bother to correct him this time. ‘I will.’

‘Promise …’ he gasped.

‘I promise,’ she said, shaken.

Downstairs, she found her mother sitting numbly at the kitchen table, wringing her hands. Somehow the sight of her sturdy, brisk mother so undone was worse than seeing her father so sick.

‘Have you called the doctor?’ she asked and Agnes looked at her with dull eyes.

‘We can’t afford the doctor.’

‘I’ve got some money, Ma. Let me send for him.’

But the doctor, when he came, shook his head. ‘There’s nothing I can do for him. I’m sorry.’

That was nonsense, Dot decided instantly. Of course there was something to be done. This was her father. She couldn’t let him die like this. Scowling ferociously, she took on the flu as a personal enemy and refused to admit defeat. All night, she ran up and down the stairs, refreshing bowls of water and wringing out cloths as she tried to wipe the sweat from her father’s face and cool his fever as his body arched in pain and delirium.

It was easier to do that than to remember the woody smell that clung to his clothes, the pipe that had always been clenched between his teeth. A cooper, Bill Colton had been a quiet, undemonstrative man, but Dot would never forget the time he had lifted her onto his shoulders and carried her out through the deep snow to show her the moon rising over the fells like a bright silver penny. Once, when she had fallen and badly grazed her knees, he had carved her a little wooden mouse and her delight in the unexpected toy had quite eclipsed the stinging in her legs.

Dot pushed the memories aside and concentrated on saving her father. She held his head over the bowl as he coughed and coughed and coughed, and she wiped the blood from his mouth. She sponged his body and tried to spoon broth into him to give him strength, only for him to be sick all over her. Grimly she cleared up the bloody mess, and went back to trying to make him comfortable while he tossed and thrashed and cried out in pain and desperation as his lungs filled in spite of everything, and he drowned in his own blood.

And in the end, the doctor was right. There was nothing Dot could do for her father. He died that night, his distraught wife weeping by his side and when she heard those awful, gurgling breaths stop at last, Dot let the cloth slip bleakly back into the bowl, too exhausted to comfort her mother.

The Coltons weren’t a family much given to gestures of affection but their life had always been a decent one. The cottage in the heart of Beckindale had three bedrooms, a kitchen and a parlour and, behind the house, a vegetable plot with rows of cabbages and leeks and her father’s prize-winning marrows.

This was the home Dot had left to go and work in Bradford. In the morning, when Bill Colton had been laid out in the parlour, and Agnes had been persuaded to lie down for a while, Dot sat at the kitchen table and looked guiltily around her.

She should have come home earlier, she thought. Her parents had always been such no-nonsense people, she had assumed they would deal with the reports that their son was missing as stoically as they had dealt with their elder daughter’s death. She hadn’t realised how the loss of Olly would devastate them, but she could see it now in the neglected cottage, once kept pin clean by her mother, and the overgrown vegetable garden which had been her father’s pride and joy. It was as if they had both had stopped caring when that telegram had arrived.

When would it all end? Dot wondered bleakly. Her parents were the last people she would have expected to give up, but after four years of war, the flu epidemic was crushing the last flickers of spirit out of everyone and it was all too easy to give in to despair.

It was left to Dot to arrange a funeral for her father. Mr Haywood, the vicar, spoke in sonorous terms about God’s purpose, but Dot wasn’t really listening. Her mother had started coughing that morning, and Dot had stripped the sheets and made up the bed so Agnes could lie where her husband had just died. Mary Ann Teale had offered to sit with her mother while Dot was at church to see her father buried.

Maggie Sugden came to the funeral. ‘It’s good to see you again, Dot,’ she said after the service. ‘I wish it hadn’t been under these circumstances.’

Maggie was looking pale and tired. ‘You don’t look so good,’ Dot told her, and Maggie smiled faintly.

‘Blunt as ever!’

‘Sorry,’ muttered Dot. She had always been one for plain speaking and she forgot sometimes that honesty wasn’t always the best policy.

‘It’s all right,’ said Maggie. ‘You’re right, I’m not looking my best. We’ve had flu at Emmerdale Farm too. One of our land girls had to go home she was so ill, and I caught it too, though not so badly. And then Jacob nearly died. It was a difficult time.’

‘Jacob?’

‘My little boy.’ Maggie shook her head. ‘It must be a good three years since you left, Dot. A lot has changed since then.’

‘I’d like to hear your news, but I need to get back. Ma’s not well.’

‘Of course.’ Maggie touched Dot’s arm. ‘Come and see me before you go back, Dot. I’ve missed you.’

Agnes Colton was in bed for a week. She was not nearly as ill as her husband had been and she was soon out of danger, but the illness left her even weaker and more lethargic than before, and her once bright eyes now swam with tears.

‘How will I manage without your pa?’ she asked Dot constantly.

Dot was coaxing her to drink some broth she had made. ‘I’ll look after you,’ she said, but Agnes wasn’t reassured. Her eyes filled. ‘But for how long?’

Dot suppressed a sigh, remembering the promise she had made to her father. ‘As long as you need me,’ she said.

Mary Ann Teale popped in most days from next door. ‘I’ll make a brew, will I?’ she always said as she bustled around the kitchen, putting the kettle on the range, as at home here as in her own house.

Dot sat wearily at table one morning and looked around the kitchen. Once, it had been spotless, but now everything seemed faintly grubby and there were crumbs on the floor that she hadn’t had time to sweep up. ‘Mary Ann,’ she asked, ‘how long has Ma been … like this?’

Mary Ann didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘Since she heard about Olly. It broke her heart it did.’ She sighed. ‘There’s a lot of hearts been broken since the war started.’

Dot felt guilty that her own heart wasn’t broken. Oh, she had grieved when she had heard about her brother, of course she had, but she had kept living, just like everyone else had to do. Was that wrong?

‘You’re looking peaky, Dot,’ Mary Ann told her. ‘You’ve been shut in here too long. You go and get some air, and I’ll sit with your ma.’

Too tired to argue, Dot obeyed. Her mother had been so ill that Dot had barely been outside all week, and now she blinked at the sunlight as she stepped outside. It was a beautiful summer day, and it felt good to get out – but where was there to go? The village didn’t even have a pub now – not that she would have ever been allowed to go there. Dot thought wistfully of life in Bradford. It was tough, yes, but they were never short of somewhere to go or something to do. Sometimes she and her friends went to a music hall or to the picture palace. Dot had seen Charlie Chaplin in A Dog’s Life – what a hoot that had been! – and had been thrilled by Tarzan of the Apes. And there was always the pub.

In Beckindale there was … nothing.

Well, there was no use moaning, Dot told herself briskly. She would just have to get on with it.

She did feel better for being out, and she wandered a while before realising that her feet were taking her to the bridge, the way she had walked so often when she worked for Maggie Sugden. She would go to Emmerdale Farm.

Maggie was collecting eggs in her apron when Dot arrived. The collie at her side – surely that couldn’t be timid Fly? – barked once, sharply, to warn of Dot’s approach and Maggie looked up with a smile. ‘I’m so glad you came,’ she said. ‘I was sorry not to have a chance to talk to you properly at your father’s funeral. Let me just get rid of these and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

Following Maggie inside, Dot saw a pretty young girl with at the range where Dot herself had so often stood. ‘Do you remember Molly Pickles?’ Maggie asked as she put the eggs in a bowl. ‘Frank’s sister.’

Dot wouldn’t have recognised little Molly, but she remembered Frank all right. He’d been the farm lad when she had worked at Emmerdale Farm, a big, slow boy, a bit daft but harmless.

‘Is Frank …?’

Maggie shook her head and Dot sighed. How many more had died in this wretched war? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Molly, who nodded and ducked her head.

‘Shall I put t’kettle on, Mrs Sugden?’

‘Yes, please, Molly. It’s such a nice day, we’ll have it outside.’ Maggie turned to Dot. ‘I’m afraid there are a lot of changes since you were last in Beckindale.’

Dot nodded. ‘I heard George bought it too.’

‘That’s right. But there are some nice changes too.’ Maggie rested her hand on the head of a small child who was staring suspiciously at Dot, his finger in his mouth.

‘This is Jacob.’

Dot eyed him warily. She never had much to do with children and didn’t know what to say to them. ‘How do, Jacob?’ she tried, and his look of suspicion deepened. ‘How old are you?’

‘He’s two and a half,’ Maggie answered for him. She gestured behind Dot. ‘And you remember Joe, of course,’ she added in an even voice.

‘Joe?’ Dot echoed in surprise and turned.

The sunlight through the open kitchen door threw a bright patch on the flagstones, but the light at the end of the room was mercifully dim. Still it was enough for Dot to catch her breath in shock at the sight of the man sitting by the fireplace, where a small fire burned in spite of the warmth of the day.

She remembered Maggie’s husband as a vicious bully, a square, stocky man she had avoided as much as possible. It had been a relief to all when he had gone to war.

Joe was unrecognisable now. Half his face had been blown off and the reconstructed skin was puckered and shiny and pulled hideously out of shape. His left eye was sunken to little more than a slit and what was left of his nose had been squashed into a grotesque lump.

Swallowing down her instinctive grimace, Dot managed an unsteady smile. ‘Hello, Joe.’

Joe didn’t respond. Apparently oblivious to the presence of a stranger, he was sitting in his chair, rocking a little, clenching and unclenching his hands, as he stared blankly at the empty chair on the other side of the fire.

Maggie had seen her shock. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pouring tea out of the pot into two cups. ‘I thought someone would have told you.’

‘No.’ Dot was more shaken than she would have expected. Not that she cared for Joe, but nobody deserved that. She had seen plenty of soldiers with terrible injuries in Bradford, but nothing like Joe’s. ‘I haven’t really had a chance to catch up on the news.’

‘Come and sit in the sun.’ Maggie gave her a cup and saucer and Dot was glad to follow her outside to sit on the bench by the kitchen door. Even then, her hand wasn’t quite steady as she drank her tea.

‘What happened to him?’

‘He was blown up by a shell,’ Maggie said. ‘When I got the telegram, I thought it would say that he was dead. I hoped for it, to be honest. You remember what he was like?’

Dot nodded as she set her cup carefully back on its saucer. ‘Aye, I do.’

‘But the message was just that he’d been injured and that he was being sent to a hospital in Sheffield. I didn’t know how bad it was until he was transferred to Miffield Hall. It’s a hospital now.’

‘Yes, I’d heard that.’ Dot hesitated. ‘It must have been a shock when you saw him.’

‘It was.’ Holding her cup and saucer in her lap with one hand, Maggie stroked the collie who rested its head against her knee. ‘I wasn’t even sure that it was Joe, but they told me there was no mistake. After a few weeks, the doctors said there was nothing more that they could do, so they sent him home, and how could I refuse? I’m his wife, this is his farm.’

‘How do manage when he’s … like that?’

‘It’s easier than when he was Joe.’ Maggie smiled faintly. ‘He’s very quiet. He just sits there like that. Sometimes he gets distressed, and he doesn’t like sudden or loud noises, but when he starts to whimper, I just soothe him the way I would Jacob. It’s like having another child.’

‘Does he know who you are?’

‘I don’t think so. He understands what I’m saying. He responds to simple instructions: get dressed, come to the table, drink this, be careful, it’s hot … that kind of thing.’

Dot made a face. ‘What about, I don’t know, going to the privy?’

‘He can do that by himself, thank goodness, and he sleeps in the cupboard bed under the stairs. He can even dress himself although I have to help him with buttons and laces.’ For the first time, revulsion crossed Maggie’s face. ‘I hate it, but what can I do? I’m torn between disgust and pity and remembering how much I loathed him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Dot after a moment. ‘It must be difficult. And what about the little lad?’ She nodded down at Jacob who was squatting in the dust with a puppy that was still at the stage of tripping over its own feet. ‘It must be scary for him, in’t it?’

‘He’s too young to have known Joe any other way. He just takes Joe’s deformities for granted. He calls him Pa and crawls over him sometimes, and Joe just sits there. Jacob thinks that’s normal,’ said Maggie. ‘Perhaps it’s better that way. He’s like Laddie here.’ She nudged the puppy with her foot and smiled as it pounced on her shoe with mock growls. ‘Laddie likes Joe, but Fly won’t go near. . .