The Buffer Girls (4 page)

‘Nobody – yet,’ Martha said,
‘but you’re going to change all that.’

Josh shook his head. ‘No – no, I’m not. I am staying here and—’

‘You are
not
. You are moving to Sheffield and one day you’re going to make even the likes of Arthur Trippet sit up and take notice.’

‘You can’t make me.’ Josh was showing stubbornness that none of them had ever seen in him before and whilst it frustrated Martha, it filled Emily with
pride and admiration.
She’d thought she was the only one who ever stood head to head and argued with their mother. Now she was a mere bystander as Josh remained adamant.

But Martha had a trump card up her sleeve and now she played it.

‘You’re not of age yet, Josh. You’re not even eighteen. You need my consent to get married before you’re twenty-one.’

Josh stared at her, dumbstruck
now in the face of her declaration, which he knew to be no idle threat.

‘You – you wouldn’t?’

Martha smiled as she said softly, ‘Oh yes, I would, Josh. It’s for your own good. I’m not letting you throw yourself away on the likes of Amy Clark when you can do so much
better for yourself. Do you think Arthur Trippet would let his son marry Emily? Of course he wouldn’t and I’m not going
to let you marry beneath you either.’

At her mother’s words, Emily’s heart constricted. It was like a physical pain in her chest. She’d never stopped to think for one moment that Trip’s family would be
against their friendship, but now her mother was voicing it.

‘I shouldn’t wonder if that’s not why he’s sent young Thomas away to work – and live – in the city. To get him away from the
village and prepare him for his
rightful place in the world.’

Emily felt her legs weak beneath her and she sank back down into the chair beside her father. To her surprise, Walter reached out a shaking hand and put it over hers. She turned to face him with
tears in her eyes and though he did not speak she could see his features working with emotion and the anguish in his eyes broke her
heart. She knew that he understood every word that was being
said, but was helpless to do anything about it. Though his hand trembled against hers, his touch and his obvious understanding comforted Emily, even though, in that moment, hope died within her.
Emily loved and respected her mother, but she had always idolized Walter. He had always been a kind and loving father, never too busy to mend
a broken toy, to join in a childish game or to bathe a
scraped knee. Martha had been the one to discipline their children, to teach them right from wrong and instil in them the right values and morals – a good code of life – but it had been
Walter who had brought fun into their lives. Sadly, now he could only sit and listen to the raging argument, unable to voice his point of view, at the mercy
of Martha’s sharp tongue.

Josh was still not ready to capitulate. ‘Dad would sign for me. I know he would.’

‘No doubt,’ Martha said tartly. ‘But, even if he could still sign his name properly, which I doubt, who is going to take the word of a broken man against mine?’

Now Josh had no answers left – and neither, sadly, had Emily.

‘Now, is everything on the van?’ Martha said, bustling around the empty house, leaving it neat and tidy for the next tenants. ‘Emily, take your father out. He
can sit by the driver. We can climb in the back.’

The candle shavings – the greaves – had been swept up and all Josh’s tools had been carefully packed into crates and stored in Mr Clark’s garden shed.

‘I’ve got to do
what Mam says, Mr Clark,’ Josh had told Amy’s father. ‘But I promise you – and Amy – I’ll be back when I’m twenty-one and
we’ll be married. You’ll keep all my tools safe for me, won’t you? I’ll be wanting them when I come back.’

‘I will, lad, but your business might have gone in three years’ time. How will you ever pick it up again?’

‘I don’t know, but if I can’t, then I’ll find something
else to do. But it’ll be here, not Sheffield, I promise.’

‘If your mother had said Amy could go with you, I’d’ve let her go, lad. I want you to know that.’

Josh shook his head. ‘Even if I could persuade her to let Amy come with us, Amy herself wouldn’t leave you. You know that.’

‘I do, but I don’t want to stand in the way of her happiness.’

‘She wouldn’t be happy leaving you or
living in the city. I doubt I’m going to be, but we’ll just have to be patient and wait three years and then I’ll be
back.’

‘I’d like to wish you happy birthday, Josh, but it isn’t, is it?’

With cruel irony, their moving date had fallen on the day of Josh’s eighteenth birthday.

‘No, it isn’t,’ Josh said shortly. The two men shook hands solemnly and as Bob Clark and his daughter stood
watching their neighbours depart, Amy with tears streaming down her
face, the older man doubted they would ever see Josh again. Oh, he believed the young man was sincere in his promise, but he recognized ruthless ambition when he saw it. And he saw it in Martha
Ryan. Robert Clark – Bob to his friends and neighbours – had not fought in the Great War, for which he was thankful. As he was the
village blacksmith, he had fully expected to be
conscripted for his skill with horses, of which a great many had been taken to the Front, but it seemed he was of more value at home looking after the local farmers’ horses. He’d still
had to run the gauntlet of the jibes of cowardice, but, a widower, he had been desperate that his young daughter, as she had been in 1914, should not be left an
orphan. Amy’s welfare had been
paramount to him, and it still was. If Martha Ryan had given the slightest hint that Amy could go with the family, then Bob would have given his consent. But the hard, selfish woman had only one
thing on her mind: Josh’s advancement, and Amy did not figure in her plans.

Emily came to them and held Amy’s hands tightly for a few moments. ‘I’ll see he comes
back to you, I promise,’ she whispered so that her mother would not overhear.

Amy could not speak but shook her head. She was small and slight, with fair hair and delicate features, and though she truly believed Josh loved her – the desperation was plainly written
on his face this morning for all to see – she had the same misgivings as her father. Three years was a long time in their young
lives. He might take to the city life. He might like the job
his mother was determined to find for him and, worse still, he might meet another girl who would capture his heart.

Josh hugged Amy one last time and turned away before she could see the tears in his eyes. His mother had always taught him that it wasn’t manly to cry and he wouldn’t let Amy or
anyone else see his weakness. Emily
was dry eyed. She was distraught at leaving the village, her friends, especially Amy, but she clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, she would see Trip more
often. It was one of the first things she intended to do when they arrived in the city; seek out young Mr Trippet.

‘Where exactly are we going, Mam?’ Emily asked as the removal van bumped and bounced over the uneven roads, chugged
up the steep hills and then down again into the city, which was
covered by a pall of grimy fog from the tall chimneys that belched smoke day and night. Emily was appalled. This would kill her poor father. His breathing was difficult even in the clear, country
air of Derbyshire. To bring him here to this was a death sentence.

‘We’re going to live in an area where all the little mesters
are, though I want Josh to find work in one of the big cutlery businesses. Viners, perhaps, but I thought living amongst
the folk who work in the industry we’d hear about any jobs going.’

Josh was silent. He asked no questions; he wasn’t interested. His mind and his heart were still back in Ashford.

‘Maybe I could find work there. At Viners, I mean.’ Emily said, but her mother only murmured
absently, ‘Perhaps.’

The van pulled up in a narrow street of terraced houses with courtyards behind them. A series of passageways ran between the houses, every so often opening up into courts. A warren of alleyways,
dark and dangerous, ran amongst the courts.

‘This is it, missus,’ the van driver, Mr Rivers, said. ‘This is t’address you gave me. Court Eight, Garden Street. What number’s
t’house?’

‘Number four,’ Martha said.

Emily jumped out the back of the van and stood looking about her. The air was thick and heavy with smoke and smuts. There were no children playing in the street and only a handful of women
scrubbing their front step or cleaning their windows and eyeing the new arrivals.

Mr Rivers climbed out of his cab. ‘’As tha got ’key?’

‘No. Someone called
Mrs Dugdale has got it for us. Emily, go and see if you can find her.’

‘Go through t’eight-foot, lass –’ Mr Rivers jerked his thumb towards one of the passageways – ‘an’ tha’ll see ’court.’ He glanced
around him. ‘Nice little street, this. Tha’s got a few shops and one or two little mesters, I can see. Tha’ll be orreight here, missus.’

‘What’s a “little mester”?’ Emily asked, intrigued,
before she turned away to do her mother’s bidding. It was the same phrase her mother had used and now
Emily wanted to know what it meant.

Mr Rivers wrinkled his forehead, lifted his cap and scratched his head. A Sheffielder himself, he knew exactly what they were, but he found it difficult to explain to outsiders.
‘They’re self-employed men, who work from their own little workshops. Outworkers,
I suppose you’d call ’em. And a lot of them are in this part of the city. Rather than
having a huge workforce, firms will farm out part of their work to these self-employed cutlers. Usually, the little mesters will carry out one step of production for a bigger factory. Mebbe
grinding or finishing and then pass the work on to another self-employed craftsmen for the next stage. Then you’ll
get the ones who assemble things.’ He gave a low chuckle. ‘I
allus have to laugh when I hear talk of a “scissors putter-togetherer”. Comical, in’t it? Sometimes little mesters work on their own account, an’ all – mebbe even
employing a few men themselves – mekin’ small items like knives or edge tools or pocket knives. Summat like that.’

‘I see,’ Emily murmured, but she didn’t really. Not
yet, but in the coming weeks she was sure she would find out.

‘Little businesses. Just like making candles,’ Josh muttered beside her. ‘We’ll be no better off here, Em.’

Emily didn’t answer – she had the horrible feeling he was right – but instead she went down the passageway that opened into a cobbled courtyard with buildings all around. Some,
she could see, were homes and one or two
three-storey ones looked as if they could be the workshops Mr Rivers had spoken about. But the courtyard was dingy and cold; it looked as if the sun never
had a chance to warm the cobbles. And the brickwork on some of the buildings was crumbling, the windows rotten, the glass dirty.

As Emily glanced about her, trying to guess which might be their new home, a large, round-faced woman in a
grubby apron appeared out of one of the houses, beaming a welcome.

‘You must be the Ryans? I’ve got ’key for you, though there’s no need for doors to be locked around here. Come on in, luv.’ The woman turned towards the corner
house, leading the way. ‘You’re younger than I imagined, but we’re all neighbourly in this court. My name’s Bess Dugdale, by the way.’

‘I’m Emily. My mother’ll
be here in a moment. She’s just helping my father out of the van.’

The woman looked back at her with startled eyes. ‘Oh, I see. I thought . . . Ah, well, ne’er mind what I thought. You come on in and have a look round. Me and my daughter, Lizzie,
have cleaned it through for you coming. Rough lot, they were, that’s just moved out. They’d left it in a right state, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Dugdale. Thank you.’

She saw the woman’s glance go beyond her to the entrance to the alleyway and turned to see her mother and Josh coming towards them supporting Walter between them. He walked with a
shambling gait, his head nodding, his hands shaking. Emily heard the woman’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Aw, poor feller,’ she murmured. ‘The war, was it?’

‘Yes,’ Emily said quietly.

‘Aye, well, all of us around here know what that’s caused. You’ll not be on your own, lass. Mrs Nicholson in t’house over there –’ Bess Dugdale nodded to the
house in the opposite corner to the one where the Ryans were to make their home – ‘lost her husband and two sons to the war. There’s only her youngest left now. Billy. He works at
Waterfall’s cutlery works.
So does she, as a matter of fact. She’s the buffer missus in charge of about twenty girls and my Lizzie’s one of ’em. And then there’s poor
Rosa Jacklin next door to her. She lost her hubby and she’s been left with two little kiddies. So, you don’t need to tell us about ’war, an’ if you want a bit of help
–’ she nodded towards the threesome making their way carefully across the cobbled yard
– ‘you only have to holler.’

From one of the taller buildings opposite came a rhythmic tapping sound.

‘What’s the noise?’ Emily asked.

Bess smiled. ‘You’ll get used to it. These courts and the streets all around here are a mixture of houses and little workshops. The noise you can hear is Mr Farrell. He’s a
file maker. I work alongside him.’ Now she laughed and shook her dirty apron.
‘I don’t allus look like this, luv. You wait till you see me in my best bib and tucker on a
Sunday.’

Emily turned to Martha as her mother joined them. ‘Mam, this is Mrs Dugdale. She lives next door and has the key for us, though,’ Emily added with a grin, ‘she says
there’s no need for locked doors around here.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that. Let’s get your father inside. Josh, go and
help Mr Rivers unload the van. Bring your father’s rocking chair off first. Emily, see if you can
light a fire and get the kettle going.’

‘No need, luv,’ Bess said. ‘I’ve already lit one. I knew you was coming today and I’ve the kettle on the hob. There’ll be a cuppa ready for you in two
shakes.’

Martha blinked and stared at the woman for a moment. Then, seeming to think quickly –
and Emily knew exactly what she was thinking – Martha smiled at her new neighbour. ‘Now,
that’s really kind of you, thank you. Sorry, if I was a bit sharp, but . . .’ She gestured towards her husband, who was leaning heavily against her and gasping for breath.