I’m welcoming Dreadnought by Robin Bennett to the blog
This extract comes as the narrative is beginning to expand to include characters from the Second World War on the promontory of Dreadnought. Grandm’ma Violet being perhaps the most striking, and whose influence is most felt amongst the modern day Delaval family. A Mrs Haversham character who still haunts Albermarle House in her own, indignant way and who, in part, holds the key to the biggest secret on the island.
Violet
This house is my prison, and I am also its gaoler, thought Violet Delaval as she stared through the rain, at the blurred fringes of the coastline before her.
And suppressed the urge to rage.
She would have liked nothing better than to tear through the house and systematically smash every window with her bare hands, squeeze the shards until her sliced fingers daubed blood on the heavy, mannish furniture … and stab the first person she met. Preferably Cook – who had surpassed herself this morning with porridge that had all the consistency of the bottom inches of a sink after doing the dishes.
Violet took several deep breaths through a nose pinched with cold, turning the turmoil inward. This seemed to work: her fury was already finding a convenient home deep within her bones, whilst outwardly she was constructing the granite-like façade that would house what others only suspected lay semi-dormant at her core.
She had tried up here and, so far, failed to instil some of that sense of decorum. For everything in this place seemed intent on remaining wild. And she was – for the most part – quite alone with a son who already felt like nothing to do with her somehow and a smattering of unsatisfactory servants.
Only the Wrelton Girl showed any promise. To that end, she had been instructing her on the finer points of what it was to be a proper lady’s maid. It turned out she was not as rough … or stupid compared to the cook and the elderly man whose name she stoutly refused to remember who Quintus employed part time to look after the garden and see to the more manual aspects of looking after the house.
Quintus’ visits were about the only thing she could bring herself to admit she looked forward to. During her courtship of Edward, the brief engagement and even briefer marriage, she had not seen much of her brother-in-law and when she did, he was nearly always drunk. Or pretending to be. Observing him at closer quarters, she had reached the conclusion that there was a lot more to him than met the eye. Unlike Edward, who could have been read like an open book to all and sundry. She believed she knew why he had not been conscripted, although he would never say. She also believed there was more to his attachment to Dreadnought than mere whimsy.
Of course, he had tried to seduce her.
One evening, after dinner, he had chosen to join her in the Drawing Room, instead of making for his cigars and brandy in his Study. Cook was cleaning the kitchen noisily, with ill-humour and the Wrelton Girl had gone up.
Quintus had no patience for chess or Contract Bridge, but he was happy to play Blackjack, betting matchsticks. In between hands, he had casually slid a hand up her dress, past her stocking top, all the way up to her inner thigh – a sanctuary even Edward had never fully had the chance to explore. He left it there for several seconds, whilst she – for her part in the montage – stared at him in cold incomprehension: as if he’d just done something mildly inexplicable, like donned a hat or whistled a sea shanty.
By and by, looking embarrassed, even chastened, he removed his hand from the soft skin inside her thigh and they carried on with the game. Nothing was said, but she knew she had just beaten him at something more than cards.
Later, lying in her room, she had wondered how it would have felt if she’d opened her legs, the merest fraction, and let him explore further.
Albemarle never slept she decided. In the quiet of the early hours, it seemed to have quite another set of occupants – the Once Weres she had started to call them in the back of her mind. They were a shadowy lot, who paced the corridors, tried doors and pushed milky faces that might be mist against windows. As a consequence, her sleep was troubled, and she rose tired and slightly hysterical more often than not.
One day Cook had screamed the house down (she had a good set of lungs, Quintus would say – whilst obviously hinting at her impressively lofty bust). The cause for the racket, which brought everyone running, had been that a door had opened. This was whilst Cook had been in the Pantry depositing jars of pickle.
‘What door?’ Violet asked between pursed lips (the scream – more of a heifer’s bellow – had given her quite the jump).
‘The door.’ Cook replied between sobs. Violet searched her hazy recollection of the Pantry and remembered a small embrasure that fitted the bill.
‘What of it?’
‘It was open!’ Violet waited for more information, but none seemed to be coming.
‘Open?’ At that point the Wrelton Girl appeared with some tea, which Cook grabbed with two meaty hands and slurped.
‘An’ there was something in there, an’ it were watching me. Not too nicely, neither.’
‘Oh, yes, the tunnels.’ Quintus had replied breezily when asked. ‘Smugglers’ cut-throughs from when rum was popular but not so much paying the duty. Though I’ve heard some are far older. Thought they were blocked. Never taken much of an interest.’ Violet scrutinised him and decided he was – as usual – not telling her everything.
‘Not all blocked. Evidently.’
Yet, even with the door in the pantry now firmly barred, the sense of being watched (on this she was in silent agreement with Cook) never quite went away: doors did open, a low hum sometimes came from deep below the boards and, one night, a shadow flitted across the mirror in Violet’s room when she was preparing for bed.
But Violet was not to be daunted – the answer was that for every problem there was a solution, and this was usually best deployed by an Englishman (or woman) in Violet’s estimation. If the house was haunted, then they would need a priest to put a stop to it all. ‘Sounds a bit Catholic,’ murmured Quintus from the other side of the dining room table.
‘No,’ said Violet firmly, ‘an Anglican priest will be quite up to the job, I think.’
Here’s the blurb
A child sees things she’s sure don’t exist. The adults call it trauma. They’re both wrong.
On a remote Yorkshire headland known as Dreadnought, seven-year-old Cass Delaval begins to glimpse figures and fragments tied to a past that refuses to stay buried.
As the world edges toward conflict, Cass is drawn into a family mystery stretching back to the Second World War: a missing boy, a hidden weapon, and a family secret.
Because whatever has lain dormant on Dreadnought goes deep into our past … and it isn’t finished with us yet.
Dreadnought is a story of loyalty and hope, where the courage of one small girl may be our last defence.
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Meet the author
Robin Bennett is an author and entrepreneur who has written over twenty-five books for children. He has also written books on the swashbuckling world of business: How to Make a Good Living Running Your Own Business, Kicking the Property Ladder and Start up Smart, all published by Harriman House.
In 2024 Cracking was shortlisted for a Week Junior Book Award and Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year for Children. His YA novel ‘XII’ was shortlised for a British Book Award in 2023 and his very popular Monster Max Series is a Book Trust pick and won Coventry Inspiration Book Awards in 2022. Picus the Thief, won the Writer’s News Indie Published Book of the Year Award in 2012.
When Robin grew up he thought he wanted to be a cavalry officer until everyone else realised that putting him in charge of a tank was a very bad idea. He then became an assistant gravedigger in London. After that he had a career frantically starting businesses (everything from dog-sitting to cigars, tuition to translation)… until finally settling down to write improbable stories to keep his children from killing each other on long car journeys.
When not writing or starting companies, Robin plays most sports. Poorly.
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