The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (42 page)

‘They were lying low in Frank's brother's house on Westmoreland Street at the back of the Pavilion. We got a tip-off from a neighbour.'

‘And have they confessed?' Lily's one lingering worry was that her sneaky cousin and his sidekick would be allowed to weasel their way out, leaving Harry where he was in Armley.

‘I can't tell you more than what I've already said,' the young officer replied with almost comical formality that suddenly collapsed when he remembered another piece of vital information. ‘Oh, except that Sergeant Magson went up to Moor House to talk to Mrs Calvert but there was no one in.'

‘The house was empty?' Lily wanted him to be clear about this.

‘Locked up back and front, no sign of life. So the sergeant telephoned the mill and heard there was talk of Mr and Mrs Calvert decamping to Scarborough for a while. The daughter, too.'

‘Did they give a reason?'

Replacing his helmet on his head and giving it a firm tap, the policeman indicated that he'd done his duty and was ready to leave. ‘Not according to the manager. He said they just upped sticks and left. But, don't worry – it won't stop us from talking to Mrs Calvert about her part in Billy Robertshaw's murder when we do eventually track her down.'

‘Thank you,' Lily said in a voice not much above a murmur before closing the door. ‘I can't help feeling sorry—' she started to say to her father, seated by the fire, cigarette in hand.

‘Don't,' he interrupted.

‘Not for Mrs Calvert. For Winifred.'

‘Spare me the violins,' Walter warned. ‘If you feel sorry for anybody, let it be Billy's mother, his sister and everyone else who's been dragged in.'

‘I do, Father,' she agreed, picking up Arthur's aired pyjamas from the fender and handing them to him. ‘Believe me, I do.'

‘Margie's a law unto herself,' Bert Preston complained when, on the longed-for day of Harry's release, he delivered Margie and her suitcase to Albion Lane. ‘All of a sudden she's got it into her head that this is her home and she won't stay away a day longer, not for love nor money.'

Walter stood on the top step and glared down at his father-in-law then at Margie. Her chin was up, her brown eyes defiant, daring him to slam the door in her face.

‘Well, are you going to let her in or not?' Bert asked, setting the suitcase down.

Lily, who been up long before dawn, waited with Arthur in the kitchen. A glimpse of Margie on the doorstep boldly meeting Walter's hostile gaze made her heart flutter, yet she knew better than to step in. It was up to her father to decide.

Walter had been silent so long Margie was beginning to think that this visit was a waste of time. A lot of things had changed lately, but he hadn't – when it came to forgiveness, it seemed he was still his unfeeling, unbending self. ‘Ah well,' she said, ready to turn and flounce away, ‘if you're that ashamed of me, I can always carry on living with Granddad like you said.'

‘Don't say I didn't warn you,' Bert reminded her as he stooped to pick up the suitcase.

They left and were a few yards up the street, returning the way they'd come when Walter finally spoke. ‘That Kenneth Hetton …'

Margie's heart was jolted by the abrupt and painful reminder and when she looked over her shoulder, her face was pale under her green velour hat. ‘What about him? He's out of the picture now.'

‘Where's he buggered off to?'

‘To Liverpool, the last I heard.'

Walter frowned. ‘That's not the ends of the earth. We can still track him down.'

‘He'll be in clink there.' Margie couldn't see where this was leading or why her father should be raking it up now. She and her grandfather retraced their steps to find that Lily had joined Walter on the step.

‘In clink for doing what?' he asked. ‘Not for what he did to you?'

Margie shook her head. ‘No, for thieving from his bosses. Anyway, you tell him, Lily, you know why I've decided to let that lie.'

‘She has, Father, and with good reason. I agree with her and Mother – what Margie has to do now is move on from what happened and concentrate on getting ready for the baby.'

Walter thought a while longer. ‘And you promise you'll do as you're told from now on?' he asked Margie. ‘You won't get up to your old tricks?'

‘Such as?' Margie demanded, forgetting for a second that she was in no position to bargain.

‘Such as giving me cheek and looking down your nose at me.'

Staring up at him, Margie saw an old man with a wheezy chest, lined face and untidy grey moustache. Everything about him seemed tired and worn out – his veined hands and blunt nails, the nicotine stains on his fingers, the loose skin of his neck and jutting brows. Her father. ‘Cross my heart,' she murmured gently.

‘Then come on in out of the cold,' he told her, holding open the door as he stood to one side.

Harry's footsteps rang out along the metal landing for the last time. He stared straight ahead, following the warder down the steps, out across the perimeter walkway and through the small exit set into the double oak doors.

‘Good luck to you, son,' the warder said sincerely as he shook his hand.

Harry turned up his collar and looked for Ernie's van. There it was, parked across the road, with Ernie sitting in it and beside him, in the passenger seat, was Lily.

For a moment she wasn't sure it was Harry. The figure who stepped through the small doorway and shook hands with the uniformed guard seemed too slight, but then as soon as he put up his collar against the wind and turned to look in her direction, she knew him. ‘Here he is!' she cried so sharply that she startled Ernie. ‘At long last!'

‘Watch out for the traffic!' Ernie yelled after her as she jumped down on to the pavement and heedlessly ran across the street between cars and carts, bicycles and big delivery vans.

Lily sped towards Harry, who didn't move from the spot. What he saw was a beautiful woman running towards him, her dark hair flying free. He opened his arms and she flung herself into his embrace.

He closed his arms around her. She laid her head against his shoulder and held him tight.

On Raglan Road, the hastily arranged party for Harry spilled out of Betty Bainbridge's house on to the pavement. While Peggy and Evie carried round trays of sandwiches for the neighbours who had gathered to welcome the freed man home, Harry's mother poured tea.

‘It's a pity Jennie and the others couldn't be here,' Sybil commented on the fact that Calvert's looms stopped for no man. ‘There's nothing Jennie likes better than a good get-together.'

‘I heard that Billy's mother promised to pop in.' Annie looked for Mabel Robertshaw amongst the crowd but didn't see her there. ‘From what I hear, she always swore Harry was innocent.'

Sybil nodded. ‘Well, it turns out she was right and Lily's proved it, thank goodness. But I'm not surprised the poor thing's stayed away – it'll probably take a bit more time for the dust to settle.'

Annie agreed. ‘I wonder how Lily's feeling right this minute,' she went on. ‘I'll bet she had to pinch herself when that prison door opened and Harry walked out, large as life.'

‘We'll soon find out.' Looking at her watch, Sybil went outside to check for the arrival of Ernie's van. ‘What's holding them up?' she wondered.

Craning her neck to get a clear view of the corner on to Ghyll Road, Sybil was the first to spot Durant's van turn on to Raglan Road. ‘Here he is!' she cried, amidst a flurry of fresh excitement. The van chugged up the hill and pulled up outside the house.

‘Well, I'll be blowed!' Ernie said as he pulled on the handbrake. There'd never been such a crowd in Raglan Road except at coronations and jubilees.

Lily held Harry's hand tight and together they got out of the van, braving the slaps on the back and the cries of ‘Welcome home!' as they made their way up the steps into the front room where his mother and Peggy waited.

‘Harry's here, Mother,' Peggy whispered to Betty, who seemed to be in a daze.

Harry's mother had heard the news of Frank and Tommy's arrest and her son's release with stunned disbelief. She wouldn't credit it, she said, not until Harry walked through the door and she saw him with her own eyes. And now here he was, thinner and paler, almost a ghost back from the dead.

For a while neither mother nor son spoke a word and everyone who had gathered to welcome Harry fell silent and held their breaths. Lily squeezed Harry's hand and gave him a nudge of encouragement. He took a reticent step forward, not knowing whether or not he should kiss his mother on the cheek.

Betty saw the baby she'd given birth to who was so like his father, the boy she'd brought up single-handedly. Now he was a handsome, broad-shouldered man uncertain how to act on this, the homecoming to end all homecomings.

Eventually, mastering the rush of tender emotions that threatened to overwhelm her, she was the one to break the silence. ‘What are we thinking? Let's give the lad a cup of tea,' she told Peggy as she rushed forward and grasped both of Harry's hands.

‘Hello, Mother,' he murmured, leaning in to deliver the kiss he'd hesitated over and finding that her cheek was damp with tears. ‘It's good to be back.'

‘It's good to have you back, son. Now sit down and tell us all about it, every last little thing.'

‘It's all settled. Sybil, Annie and me – we're going to set up shop,' Lily told Harry that evening, as they walked arm in arm along Overcliffe Road.

Ernie had brought in supplies from the Cross and crates of beer had followed tea and sandwiches. By the time their pals working in the mills had clocked off and Evie, Margie and Arthur had joined them after a welcome-home tea for Arthur at number 5, the celebration had got into full swing. It had gone on until well after eight, when eventually well-wishers had started to drift away.

Lily could recall them all now, the jovial voices of friends and family echoing down the street. She smiled at the thought of sensible Margie taking charge back at number 5 – seeing Arthur home to bed and into his pyjamas, straight to sleep without a story. School tomorrow.

‘What shop? Where?' Harry wanted to know, as they walked past the Common.

Her face lit up as she described their plans and how she, Sybil and Annie would achieve them. They ran the risk of it all falling about their ears, she knew – don't think she didn't. ‘But we'll give it a go,' she said, striding out under a pitch-black sky.

Like a warrior queen was how Harry thought of her, though she'd never see it herself. A bobbin ligger turned burler and mender, and now a dressmaker with a shop of her own on Chapel Street, marching at the head of an army of brave, free-spirited women into a brighter future.

‘Ernie mentioned a job that's going begging at Manby's,' he told her. ‘I'm thinking of going after it tomorrow morning.'

‘What would it involve?'

‘Driving their van, picking up furniture to go to auction, that type of thing. It's not much but what do you think?'

‘Get down there first thing,' Lily replied without hesitating. ‘Be sure to be at the head of the queue.'

‘Look down there,' Harry said after they'd walked a little further, turning to take in their home town in the darkness. He pointed to a thousand glittering lights, to the network of gas-lit streets and the canal winding through. ‘What can you hear?'

‘Nothing.' Only the wind that drove the clouds through the night sky.

‘This is what kept me going,' he confessed. ‘The thought of you and me walking up here, free as birds.'

‘Together.' Her mind opened to the magical silence of the moors, to Harry, the man she loved with all her heart.

So they walked on arm in arm, two small figures against the vastness of the night sky.

Thanks to Caroline Sheldon, literary agent without compare and, better still, a dear friend. And to Harriet Bourton whose welcome through the doors of Transworld made me feel immediately at home.

Jenny Holmes
has been writing fiction for children and adults since her early twenties, having had series of children's books adapted for both the BBC and ITV.

Jenny was born and brought up in Yorkshire. After living in the Midlands and travelling widely in America, she returned to Yorkshire and brought up her two daughters with a spectacular view of the moors and a sense of belonging to the special, still undiscovered corners of the Yorkshire Dales.

One of three children brought up in Harrogate, Jenny's links with Yorkshire stretch back through many generations via a mother who served in the Land Army during the Second World War and pharmacist and shop-worker aunts, back to a maternal grandfather who worked as a village blacksmith and pub landlord. Her great aunts worked in Edwardian times as seamstresses, milliners and upholsterers. All told stories of life lived with little material wealth but with great spirit and independence, where a sense of community and family loyalty were fierce – sometimes uncomfortable but never to be ignored. Theirs are the voices which echo down the years, and the author's hope is that their strength is brought back to life in many of the characters represented in these pages.

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