The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (12 page)

‘I'll tell you another thing – I used to be sure that pounds, shillings and pence were the root of all problems but now I look at the likes of the Calverts and I see that it's not true. It turns out that mill owners and their families squabble amongst themselves just as much as the man in the street, and over daft little things too.'

Trying to match his long stride, Lily nodded. ‘I suppose the more money you have, the more you have to lose,' she pointed out.

‘That's true. Anyway, by all accounts the Calverts don't have as much as they used to have, not by a long chalk.'

‘Yes, but they're not on the breadline. They still have you driving them around for a start. And they have Billy to do their garden and someone to cook for them and clean up after them, I'd bet my week's wages.'

‘You're right about that.' Looking over his shoulder and waiting for a motorbike and sidecar to pass, Harry got ready to wheel his bike across the road.

Lily hadn't realized that they'd walked so far so quickly. They'd already reached Pennington's at the top of Albion Lane and she would soon have to say goodbye to Harry so she skipped ahead of him over puddles then stopped on the far pavement, ready to hand over his raincoat.

‘No, keep it on for a bit,' he insisted, reaching out to readjust it on her shoulders. It brought them close together, looking into each other's eyes. ‘Lily, you would tell me if something was worrying you?' he said without lowering his gaze. ‘I could be a shoulder to cry on if need be.'

‘I know, Harry.' She felt the weight of his hand on her back and sensed an unusual intensity behind his words.

‘Because we're good pals,' he reminded her, brushing raindrops from the coat then tilting her chin up with his wet fingertips. ‘And I don't like to see you sad.'

In that moment of gentle concern, all the pain of Lily's conversation with Margie came surging up in the shape of tears, which she tried in vain to brush away.

‘I mean it, Lily. What's up? Talk to me.'

‘Nothing. I can't tell you, Harry. I'm sorry.'

‘No, it's me who should be saying sorry – I've upset you and that's the last thing I wanted to do.' Wheeling his bike with one hand and keeping an arm around Lily's shoulder, he walked her on down the hill in silence until they came to her house. ‘You'll be all right now?' he checked.

‘I'll be fine, thanks.' Lily kept her face turned towards him as she swung his coat from her shoulders but she wasn't expecting the kiss when it came.

Harry pushed back his cap and tilted his head to one side, leaning in and brushing her lips with his before taking the coat and slinging it over one shoulder. Then, as if nothing had happened, he walked on up the alley on to Raglan Road.

Surrounded by the day's washing and with her head in a spin, Lily held the hot iron poised above Arthur's school shirt and told herself that she must have imagined it, perhaps even dreamed it – the moment when Harry's lips had touched hers. After all, it had lasted just a second and maybe if it had really happened, it had been a mistake – the accidental result of Harry leaning in to rescue his coat from her shoulders. Yes, that would be it, she told herself, preparing to press the iron down on to the shirt. As far as Harry was concerned, she, Lily, was just the girl next door – they'd lived in the same set of back-to-backs since they were small so how could it possibly be otherwise?

And yet, his grey eyes had looked at her in a certain way that she'd never seen before and he'd been gentle and kind and told her that he didn't like to see her sad.

This memory offered Lily another solution to the conundrum of the kiss – Harry Bainbridge had felt sorry for her, sorry in a way that he would feel if he found an injured kitten or a rabbit in a trap. That was all it was – a moment of sympathy that had quickly passed. Lily nodded and thumped the iron down on to the starched cotton fabric. It was time to forget that doorstep moment with Harry and concentrate on the important thing: Margie.

Meanwhile, Evie left off playing on the hearthrug with Arthur and his miniature army of tin soldiers to drag the zinc washing tub down into the cellar then take washed and ironed items of laundry upstairs to the attic bedroom.

‘High time to put away those toys, pull down the bed and get into your night things,' Lily told Arthur when she caught him yawning. She took clean pyjamas from the pile and handed them to him.

‘I'm not tired,' he complained, contrary to all the evidence. ‘I want to wait until Mam gets back.'

‘Mam won't be home till late,' Lily told him, having learned from Evie that Rhoda had been called to Grace Smith down on Westgate Street. Another baby was on the way, this time to a newlywed, who had caused a scandal by being a good six months gone when she married. Of course at that moment Lily's mind had flown to Margie and her new situation and she'd had to resist a strong temptation to share the problem with Evie, which she'd managed to do. Now, almost at the end of her pile of ironing, Lily licked her fingertips and lightly tapped the smooth underside of the heavy iron to check its heat then insisted to Arthur that it was time for bed.

‘O-o-h, why can't I wait?' he whined.

‘Arthur!' Lily was tired out and her voice was severe. ‘Bedtime.'

Luckily Evie came down and rescued the situation by offering to read him a story while Lily left the iron to cool in the hearth and carried the rest of the sweet-smelling laundry upstairs. By the time she'd finished folding and putting things away, Arthur's bed was in place and he was lying with his single thin blanket pulled half over his face, fast asleep.

‘You look done in,' Evie told Lily. ‘Are you ready to come upstairs?'

‘I am,' Lily conceded and together the sisters climbed the stairs for the last time that day and got ready for bed in the room with the faded, rose-patterned wallpaper and sloping ceilings. Evie was the first into bed – a narrow one pushed deep under the eaves – and while Lily was brushing her hair she asked the question that had been on her lips ever since Lily had come home. ‘I didn't like to mention it while Arthur was around, but how was Margie?'

Lily put down the brush and turned down the gas light, taking her time to frame a neutral answer as she put on her nightdress then climbed into the double bed she usually shared with Margie. ‘She was her normal self.'

‘Has she been out looking for work?'

‘Not yet,' Lily replied, which was true so far as it went.

‘Perhaps tomorrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘You don't seem certain,' Evie remarked. ‘But you know, Lily, Margie has to pull her socks up and try for a job, even if it means going back to square one in the scouring shed or working as a scavenger.'

‘I can't see Margie scouring raw wool and preparing the slivers, can you?'

‘No, but beggars can't be choosers.'

Lily realized that Evie's prim assessment would have been comical in the mouth of an inexperienced fourteen-year-old if circumstances had been different. ‘No, they can't,' she agreed, wearily turning over to face the wall. ‘Now go to sleep, Evie, there's a good girl.'

All through that week, Lily carried the heavy burden of Margie's secret and got on with her daily routine, glad in a way that she scarcely had time to think about either Margie on the one hand or Harry on the other, what with getting Arthur ready for school each morning in order to allow her mother an extra hour in bed then making herself neat and tidy for the walk with Evie down to the mill. They always clocked on at half past seven on the dot and were ready to work as the overseers arrived.

‘How's little Miss Briggs?' Fred Lee would call out as he patrolled the central aisle and the great machines began to clank and whir. ‘Pretty as a picture as usual, eh, Sybil? Annie, don't you agree that Evie Briggs looks good enough to eat?'

Evie would blush and do her best to ignore him, while the older girls took him on.

‘Now, now, Fred, don't be getting any ideas about Evie,' Annie warned as she settled down to her loom. ‘Or else you'll have my young man to deal with.'

‘And who would your young man be?' Fred scoffed, slicking back his hair as he glanced at his reflection in the nearest window.

‘It's only Robert Drummond,' Sybil sang out above the cranking engines. ‘You know him, Fred. He's the one who mends your BSA motorbike up at Baines's. He's a local boxing champion, by the way.'

‘Righty-ho, then I'm on my best behaviour from now on,' Fred vowed. He kidded along with Sybil and Annie until the machines drowned out their voices and Evie began to go up and down the weaving shed taking individual orders for dinner, getting each worker to write their request on a scrap of blue sugar paper.

Upstairs in the mending room, Lily's skill with the burling iron improved each day so that now she would lightly and expertly run her fingertips over the cloth and pick up the smallest fault, which she would mark then work on with her small metal hook, loosening the knot and straightening out and snipping the threads ready for mending.

‘Very good, Lily.' Iris Valentine believed in giving praise where it was due but not before, so she waited until Friday, the end of Lily's second week, to stop by her table and study her way of working. ‘I have high hopes that we'll make a mender of you yet.'

Lily smiled and blushed. ‘Thank you, Miss Valentine.'

‘You hear that, Vera?' As soon as the little manageress had bustled on into her office, Jennie Shaw made a point of walking past Lily's fellow learner with a piece of finished work ready for flipping. ‘Lily's hot on your heels. If you don't look out she'll soon be overtaking you.'

Luckily, Lily's young neighbour was used to Jennie's sly digs and she took no notice. She mentioned instead that there was a rumour going around that Mr Calvert himself was due to drop by later that afternoon.

On her way back from the flipping machine, Jennie overheard the remark. ‘Let's hope he's not coming in to lay people off,' she grumbled in her careless way. ‘A fine Christmas present that would be.'

Working nearby, Ethel Newby shook her head. ‘The word is he's bringing Winifred in to show her the office routine. They say she's to be put to work there.'

‘Never!' For once Jennie was rendered practically speechless.

‘It's true,' Ethel insisted.

‘Well, I never did,' a flabbergasted Jennie tried to make sense of what she'd heard. ‘It just goes to show how hard times have got.'

Vera disagreed. ‘You wouldn't be saying that if it was a son we were talking about. Sons always had to learn the business, ready to take over, didn't they?'

‘Yes and I suppose this is the twentieth century.' Lily acknowledged that in the absence of a son there was no reason why a girl shouldn't be given the same opportunities as a boy.

‘It's about time young Winifred was made to earn her keep,' Mary commented. As one of the older workers at Calvert's she remembered Winifred Calvert as a spoiled child with a whining voice, dressed in a navy blue frock with a white sailor's collar and straw boater, who would be left sitting in the car at the main entrance while her father dealt with mill business. This would be on a Saturday morning and often involved one of the junior girls from the weaving shed being sent out to entertain her, which really meant sitting beside her on the shiny back seat and being subjected to Winifred's demands for sweets and toys. The round-faced, pretty girl had grown up to be tall and slender, fashionably dressed and with a mass of glossy, dark curls about which she was openly vain.

‘I bet it's caused ructions at home,' Vera observed. ‘I can't see Mrs Calvert being in favour of her precious daughter getting her hands dirty.'

‘No, and whatever you think about a girl being worth as much as a boy, Lily, I say it's a sign of the times that these days everyone has to muck in,' was Jennie's conclusion, moving on when Iris Valentine caught her eye.

After this, work went on uninterrupted until dinner time, when Lily joined Sybil, Annie and Evie in the steamy, noisy canteen.

‘Here, Lily, we've bagged you a place!' Sybil called from a bench close to a window overlooking the unloading area where wagons delivered raw wool. Shouts from the wagon drivers were combined with the clatter of wooden wheels over cobbles and the droning of vast machines in the engine shed at the back of the mill. The smells that came up from the yard included the sour reek of untreated wool, hot oil from the engines and smoke from the chimneys.

‘Brrr, shut that window!' Annie complained as she settled down to a dinner of tripe and onions, specially brought by Evie from George Green's shop on Ghyll Road.

As Lily leaned over to close the window, she glimpsed something that made her heart skip a beat – the sight of Stanley Calvert's gleaming car gliding along Canal Road.

‘Lily, stop standing there like a goldfish with your mouth open and hurry up and shut that window!' Jumping up to do it herself, Annie soon saw what had caught Lily's attention. ‘Oh, look who it isn't!' she cried. ‘It's only love's young dream.'

‘Who?' Sybil wanted to know.

‘I'll give you one guess,' Annie teased while Lily blushed furiously. ‘Who do you think would make Lily turn beetroot red?'

‘Harry,' Sybil said without a moment's hesitation, though Lily hadn't breathed a word about Monday night's kiss. She spoke as if a romance between Lily and Harry were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Right first time.' Annie stood with Lily to watch the mill owner's car travel the length of the building then disappear through the main entrance. ‘I have to admit, the sight of Harry Bainbridge in his uniform is hard to beat.' She sighed.

‘Lily's got good taste, bless her,' Sybil agreed while Evie was quietly embarrassed for her sister's sake.