Day Three: The Drowning of Dendale
Day Four: Songs for Dead Children
BETSY ALLGOOD [PA/WW/4.6.88]
TRANSCRIPT 1
No 2 of 2 copies
The day they drowned Dendale I were seven years old.
I’d been three when government said they could do it, and four when Enquiry came out in favour of Water Board, so I remember nowt of that.
I do remember something that can’t have been long after, but. I remember climbing up ladder to our barn loft and my dad catching me there.
‘What’re you doing up here?’ he said. ‘Tha knows it’s no place for thee.’
I said I were looking for Bonnie, which were a mistake. Dad had no time for animals that didn’t earn their keep. Cat’s job was keeping rats and mice down, and all that Bonnie ever caught was a few spiders.
‘Yon useless object should’ve been drowned with rest,’ he said. ‘You come up here again after it and I’ll get shut of it, nine lives or not.’
Before I could start mizzling, sound of a machine starting up came through the morning air, not a farm machine but something a lot bigger down at Dale End. I knew there were men working down there, but I didn’t understand yet what they were doing.
Dad went to the open hay door and looked out. Low Beulah, our farm, were built on far side of Dender Mere from the village and from up in our loft you got a good view right over our fields to Dale End. All on a sudden, Dad picked me up and swung me on to his shoulders.
‘Tek a good look at that land, Betsy,’ he said. ‘Don’t matter a toss now that tha’s only a lass. Soon there’ll be nowt here for any bugger to work at, save only the fishes.’
I’d no idea what he meant, but it were grand for him to be taking notice of me for a change, and I recall how his bony shoulder dug into my bare legs, and how his coarse springy hair felt in my little fists and how he smelt of sheep and earth and hay.
I think he forgot I were up there till I got a bit uncomfortable and moved. Then he gave a little start and said, ‘Things to do still. Nowt stops till all stops.’ And he dropped me to the floor with a thump and slid down the ladder. That were typical. Telling me off for being up there one minute then forgetting my existence the next.
I stayed up a long while till Mam started shouting for me. She caught me clambering down the ladder and gave me a clout on my leg and yelled at me for being up there. But I said nowt about Dad ’cos it wouldn’t have eased my pain and it would just have got him in bother too.
Time went on. A year maybe. Hard to say. That age a month can seem a minute and a minute a month if you’re in trouble. I know I got started at the village school. That’s where most of my definite memories start too. But funny enough, I still didn’t have any real idea what them men were doing down at Dale End. I think I just got used to them. It seemed like they’d been there almost as long as I had. Then some time in my second year at school, I heard some of the older kids talking about us all moving to St Michael’s Primary in Danby. We hated St Michael’s.
We just had two teachers, Mrs Winter and Miss Lavery, but they had six