Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase Read Free Page B

It was a short courtship; her disapproving mother had proclaimed, ‘If you marry that … man … I shall never speak to you again.’
    Dorothy met him at a funeral in 1934. Her aunt Jane, an impressive eighty-two, had died during the summer. Dorothy had rarely met Aunt Jane, and not at all since childhood, knowing her only as her mother’s rebellious elder sister who had married beneath her and moved away from home, in Oxford, to the distant north which was Lincolnshire. Dorothy’s mother, on receiving the news of her sister’s death, had puckered her lips and frowned.
    ‘We must visit that fearful county. Please be sure to pack my fur, Dorothy. I do not intend catching my death in a Lincolnshire churchyard, for the sake of my sister or anybody else.’
    ‘Mother, it is August, and it is quite warm. Even in Lincolnshire.’
    Of course, Dorothy did pack the fur – along with many other items – and together they travelled by train, Dorothy gazing out of the window for much of the journey, trying to ignore her mother’s constant demands. The fields were golden, this glowing August, and she saw men working in them; she saw tractors and wagons and horses and harvesting. It looked like an enviable life, out in the open air, working on the land, in golden fields, in golden sun, with golden skin.
    When she met Albert Sinclair, handsome and bucolic, and he told her all about his life on the farm, she was an attentive listener. Why was he at the funeral?
    ‘My sister was Miss Jane’s charlady, and I did odd jobs for her, cleaning the gutters or raking leaves. Very nice lady, was Miss Jane. A gentlewoman. Not liked by her family, they say. But goodness knows why, because you couldn’t hope to find a nicer person.’
    ‘“Her family” was my mother and I.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t—’
    ‘Don’t be sorry. My mother did disown her. She disowns everybody sooner or later.’
    Two weeks later, back in Oxford, Ruth disowned her only daughter upon hearing that she was intending to marry this Albert – ‘
Bert?
’ – Sinclair. Dorothy was glad. And if it meant she would end up just like her Aunt Jane – that is to say, forsaken and forgotten – she was even gladder. She left Oxford by train, alone this time, with a carpet bag of ‘belongings’ and her mother’s final admonitions ringing in her ears: ‘You will regret this! It will come to nothing! He’s not good enough for you!’ In this way, Dorothy burst free of her extended and regretful childhood.
    Dorothy remained a virgin until her wedding night, on 12th November 1934. It was her thirty-fourth birthday. Albert, still very much a stranger to her, tried to be gentle and kind, but he was so very eager, and so virile, that he did hurt her a little. Dorothy tried not to show it, but he knew, because he wasn’t entirely stupid. He apologised. She accepted his apology. It got better, of course. He was a big man, strong and muscular and leathery-skinned, and Dorothy grew to love the feel of his arms around her, his warmth and strength. Pregnancy followed within four months of their wedding, but it was doomed to early failure.
    Then another, and yet another.
    Eventually, after nearly four years of marriage and five miscarriages, Dorothy gave up, her longing for a child replaced by impossible, unbearable dreams and a sad resignation. She became a farmhand’s wife, adept at baking and washing and sewing and tending a small vegetable patch, looking after a small brood of hens. She heard nothing from her mother, and after a few stilted letters in which Dorothy talked of her husband, her new life, her pregnancies, she gave up on the relationship. It may as well have been her mother, and not Aunt Jane, lying dead in the ground in Lodderston churchyard.
    In August 1938, Dorothy fell pregnant for the sixth time, and it was at this point that she began to write poetry ‘properly’. Falteringly, at first, unsure of how to put down any words that could mean something.