As the holiday season draws ever nearer, we look forward to spending time with those we hold closest – our family and friends. Newly released on our October Publication Day, Laura Thomas’ THE DOVECOTE is a rollercoaster novel, through thick and thin, that demonstrates the importance of love and family.
The synopsis to Laura’s book reads:
At the request of his employer and benefactor, Mason Dove has to uproot his family after being tasked with a new project - getting Fowler's pit, the new colliery, up and running, as well as turning a profit. Bethan Dove is the beating heart of the Dove family, and despite her resistance to the move, she will not settle until the cattle shed they have to live in becomes a welcoming home for her family of four sons and four daughters. Despite everyone's initial reluctance towards this new life, it becomes clear that perhaps all things happen for a reason.
Intrigued and hoping to snuggle down with a copy? Here are the book’s opening pages:
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As the matriarch and the beating heart of the family, Bethan Dove stood in the middle of the dark, low ceiling room, her eyes squinting to adjust to the meagre amount of light that the small window allowed through in slivers. Her hands were clamped firmly on her hips, as she looked around at the water sweating out of the cold stone walls of what was to be her new home. The damp, beaten floor of mud had been freshly swept and strewn with herbs which she had brought with her from her old garden. The sweet scent of lavender and rosemary waft up as her long skirts brushed against the freshly crushed flowers under her feet, the sweet scent rising to mix with the musty smell of damp earth. The cottage, if one could call it that, was a far cry from the spacious cottage that she had uprooted her family from at the insistence of her husband, Mason, as he embarked on a new project for his benefactor and employer, Mr John Edmunds.
Only two years previous, the sparsely populated area known to locals as Rhiw where they were now to live had been nothing more than open fields, large stagnant ponds filled by numerous springs and surrounded by large trees, with a solitary cattle shed and adjoining shepherds' hut. Like many men with money, hoping to get rich quick, Mr Edmunds had taken a gamble with the land that he was now renting from Richard Fowler and his brothers, a who were very wealthy and influential land owner landowners, originally from England. They had been the forerunners, using their money to buy up swathes of land in the South Wales Valleys, leasing it to prospectors in search of black gold. John Edmunds was one such prospector, and had sunk a shaft in the hope of finding this infamous black gold. Two years on, and with the first shaft now complete, Mason Dove had been given the challenge of making this new pit into a viable investment, and Bethan had the challenge of turning the cattle shed into a home for her family of four sons and four daughters.
Bethan was a short and very stout woman, dressed in traditional clothes made from home spun wool, her shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders, complete with a small black Welsh hat tied under her chin with ribbon. Bethan She rested her crossed arms on her very ample bosom as she looked around her, the corners of her mouth turned downwards into a sour frown, deciding where to begin. “Alys, Dafydd, Dylan, Gwen, Tomos, Mari, Erin, Aled,” she hollered after her children, who very quickly scrambled themselves and lined up in front of her in age order for her to inspect. Bethan was a very stern woman who ruled her children with an iron fist, fear being instilled in them from a very young age.
Outside, her husband Mason walked slowly down the dusty dirt track, taking in his surroundings, followed by a small pony pulling a cart laden with the last of the family’s worldly goods, and their pigs tied together followed behind. Mason wasn’t a particularly tall man, but had a mop of black curls that he liked to keep hidden under his hat, and the blackest of eyes that Bethan found mesmerising. He had successfully managed one of his benefactor’s other collieries in another valley, working his way up from an orphaned pit boy aged six. He was given schooling and an expensive education by Mr Edmunds, in return for working in the colliery each afternoon and into the evening, usually running errands until he came of age and was given the position of a clerk. Mason had worked hard to get to where he was now, and in return for his loyalty, he had but now he had been tasked with getting his new colliery up and running and turning a profit.
Fowler’s Pit seemed a particularly apt name for the new mine. Mr Edmunds had named it after the land owner Mr Fowler, either at the landlords request or as a tribute, but the surrounding landscape was nothing more than foul and stagnant wasteland with the workforce non-existent, but Mason was one who always enjoyed a challenge, and he wasn’t about to quit before he had even begun.
Bethan sent her oldest three boys, Dafydd, Dylan and Tomos out to set about unloading the cart of the family’s furniture, whilst her eldest daughter Alys cradled their youngest sibling, Aled, in her arms. Ten-year-old Gwen and six-year-old Mari had already been sent out to hunt for kindling and firewood so that Bethan could light the a fire in the small stove that her husband had made sure was installed ready for their arrival. She was keen to get some warmth into the place and get some water on to boil. “Must we really stay here in this hovel, Mama?” Alys asked, looking around at the squalid ramshackle hut that they would somehow have to turn into a home.
“It stinks like shit,” Tomos said as he carried a large crate into the house, unaware of his mam stood mother standing on the other side of the threshold.
Whack! Bethan swung at her son, clipping him on the side of his face. “Argh, Mama, by Christ, what was that for?” Dylan cried.
Whack! Bethan hit him again. “The first one was for swearing, and that one was for not minding your tongue. Now hisht before you earn yourself a good hiding. I don’t want to be here any more than you do, but Mr Edmund puts food in ya bellies and and clothes on your back, and this is where he wants us to be and what your father wants to do, so not another word out of any of you,” Bethan shouted, one hand on her hip, the other first shaking in the air and raising her voice for the children outside to hear. Mama had spoken and they all knew better than to speak out of turn again.
Before moving into the cottage, Mr Edmund had commissioned building work and renovations to make the old cattle shed and hut into a more comfortable cottage, a viable living space large enough to accommodate the ever-expanding Dove family. The building was split into three rooms downstairs and three rooms upstairs. The front room would be the best room, reserved for visitors and Sundays only, whilst the back room would be multifunctional for everyday use, taking on the role of parlour, kitchen and scullery all in one. The smallest room was to become a very cramped bedroom for the two oldest boys, Dafydd and Dylan. There was no room for a bed so they made do with squeezing their freshly stuffed straw mattresses into the small amount of floor space beneath the small rotten window. The wooden frame was rotten, but at least it had leaded glass to keep out animals and the elements.
The boys brought in the large wooden table and two benches that were stacked up outside and set them down in the middle of the small, very over crowded overcrowded room that was to be the kitchen. The table had been a wedding gift from Mason to his wife, her prized possession which he had hand crafted out of old discarded wooden boards which had been replaced down the mine where he was working. It had taken many hours of hard labour after his twelve-hour shift working in the mine, but he was determined that his wife would have at least one piece of furniture when they moved into their marital home on their wedding night, even if they did have to sleep on the floor in front of the fire, with nothing but blankets above them and below.
A great chair wooden chair with woven back and arms, clearly a masters chair, was bought in and placed next to the largest fireplace place where a the new stove had been fitted prior to the family’s arrival; an appeasing gift from Mason to his wife. Gwen and Mari built up the wood kindling in the fire, grate, just like they always did, and waited for their mother to light it with a flint. Bethan had only seen such stove’s stoves in grander homes, grander than what she would ever aspire to, and the clean black grate looked out of place in its dilapidated stone surround, but it had been one of her requests when her husband had proposed relocating the whole family, never actually thinking that her request would be granted.
At their previous home, the family had been afforded the luxury of their own well for their water, but here, there was nothing more than a small spring that ran out by the front of the cottage that they would have to make do with. In time a well would have to be sunk for a water pump to supply the mine and nearby cottages which were yet to be built, but for now, the spring would have to do. To escape the claustrophobia of the damp stale air and the odour of sweaty bodies inside of the busy cottage, Alys took three-year-old Erin, a bonnie little girl with fine black wispy curls, and baby Aled outside with pots to collect some water. Erin squealed with delight as the water began to flow into her small pot, filling it up to the brim, whilst Aled splashed about in the water until he and his sisters were soaked through to their skin.
Being built from stone, the inside of the house was cold compared to the heat of the beautiful summer’s day outside, the sun burning brightly in the cloudless sky. As the two small children played in the cool trickling water, giggling as they splashed each other, fifteen-year-old Alys sat down and leaned back on her arms, taking comfort in the sun’s warm rays upon the silky-smooth ivory skin of her face. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wonder wander back to their old home, the idyllic cottage set within beautiful gardens, with a small herb garden, a large vegetable patch and orchards with fruit trees and soft fruit bushes. And Morgan.
At the first thought of Morgan, Alys opened her eyes and very quickly brought herself back to the present. Having not long said goodbye to him, perhaps for the last time, despite his promises to find her, she couldn’t bring herself to remember all of the happy memories that they had shared with each other. She couldn’t afford to lose control of her senses and allow her emotions to betray her. For now, she needed to remain in control and stay composed, at least until she managed to find a way for her to be alone. Alys watched as her youngest siblings filled up their pots with water and toddled back and forth to their mama who was fussing about inside the cottage, arranging their few meagre possessions and trying to make it feel somewhat like a home. The house wasn’t particularly small by many people’s standards, but with only three rooms downstairs and three rooms upstairs, and ten occupants to cram inside, it was tiny compared to what they had been used to.
With a sufficient supply of wood in the kitchen and the fire in the grate roaring, Bethan sent her other daughters outside to gather and snap up twigs for kindling, bundling them together and tying them with string that they made from bark stripped from fresh twigs. before Once securely fastened, they carryiedng them to a small outbuilding that was too small to be used for anything other than storing wood. Dafydd set about choppinged up some fallen tree branches that Dylan and Tomos had scavenged, before stacking the logs in a neat pile outside of the back door. The smaller pieces the girls gathered together and added them to their pile. With all of his children busy with their jobs, Mason rested his weary body against the outside wall of their new home on a tree stump that had been left next to the back door, and lit up his cheap clay pipe. He stood surveying the land, known locally as Rhiw or the rock, on account of it being the side of a mountain. A landscape that he was tasked with the job to transform from a barren scrub and wasteland on the side of a mountain, close to the valley floor, into a thriving coal mine with a sustainable workforce. Staring into the distance across the valley, the haze from the heat of the sun obscured the boundary between land and air.
As the day slowly turned to dusk, and the nightingales began to sing happily in the trees. The Dove family gathered around the table which was illuminated with beams of light streaming in through the leaded glass windows and open door, just like they did every evening, and Alys helped her mother to serve up their meal of a salted ham, with cheese, bread and butter. The butter had been a gift from a lively gentleman who owned the dairy that we had passed part way up the hill. He who had been keen to introduce himself as Dai Milk, and investigate who would be keeping his cows’ company as they roamed around freely on the neighbouring countryside. Bethan, always the last to sit and the first to finish, liked to provide her family with a warm meal each evening, but tonight, with the upheaval of moving to their new home, this small platter would just have to do.
The meagre meal was devoured in no time at all, and whilst Bethan cleared away the wooden cutting boards and round wooden plates, Alys took the younger children up the tightly winding stone staircase to the space that had once been used as a hay loft store, but was now split into two bedrooms, one for the children and one for the master bedroom, and a small storage space. The children placed their straw and horse hair mattresses together to make one large bed along the wall. The light of the fading sun was streaming in through the panes of thinly cut rams horn in place of glass as Alys pulled closed the newly fitted wooden shutters. Alys She sat with the children, telling them stories that her Mama had told her when she was younger, and sang them sweet songs until the children were finally settled and asleep. Alys climbed through the small hatch that led into the old grain store above the front room of the house. The small room with its sloping ceiling was to be used as the family’s food store, but Alys had pulled her mattress onto the floor underneath the low window sill by the hatch, making it her own private space. The window was again panes of thinly sliced rams’ horn and the original rotten wooden shutter offereding at least some protection from the cool night air and the rats who were all too keen to access the ample food source.
Bethan had insisted that she and Mason have the largest room upstairs as their bed chamber, room, and had demanded that they bring her bed with them. She had become accustomed to her creature comforts and it was one of the few pieces of furniture that she had actually bought new, having saved up for years to afford it, and there was no way that she was going to revert back to a mattress on the floor. Bethan had also used the move as an excuse to pass the burden of baby Aled on to Alys as he was now old enough to sleep with the other children, squashed protectively between Mari and Gwen.
With Aled out of the way and their privacy intact, Mason was hoping that tonight, for the first time since shortly after Aled’s conception, he was going to get some conjugal action, but Bethan on the other hand had other ideas. At only thirty-two years old and ten pregnancies later, the last one being particularly traumatic, there was no way on earth that she was going to risk getting herself pregnant ever again, her baby making days were well and truly over.
