The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (20 page)

Bert, though, wouldn't let it drop. Yes, he was secretly disappointed in his granddaughter, and yes, he foresaw big problems ahead for her, but for now he fixed his attention on the one thing that Margie wasn't prepared to share with them. ‘The way I see it, the father, whoever he is, needs a good hiding for getting you into trouble. Who is it, Margie? Is it one of the lads in your neck of the woods?'

Like a child brought up before the headmaster in school and facing six of the best, Margie pursed her lips and stared at her hands, which she held tightly clasped and resting on the table, allowing Lily, Rhoda and Bert to run through a few names in their own minds – Ernie Durant, Billy Robertshaw, the dreaded Frank Summerskill, or perhaps someone at Kingsley's, such as the overseer, Sam Earby, or one of the workers under him in the spinning shed.

After a long, tense silence, Rhoda turned to her eldest daughter. ‘So, who do you say it is, Lily?'

Lily wriggled on the hook of her mother and grandfather's piercing stares but she stayed loyal to Margie. ‘It's not my place,' she insisted. ‘Margie will tell us when she's good and ready. In the meantime, I say we all rally round and help her get ready for this baby to be born.'

Margie drew a sharp breath and gave Lily a grateful glance. ‘Anyway, Granddad, I don't want you getting into trouble on my account. I'll fight my own battles if I have to, thank you very much.'

Touched by her bravado, the old man coughed to clear his throat then stood up and busied himself by picking up the coal bucket and throwing more lumps on the fire. ‘Well, the first thing we have to get straight, Margie Briggs, is that you stay put here in Ada Street. There's no need to think of shifting back to Albion Lane, not while your father carries on the way he is. Anyway, your mother's not well – she needs her rest, not to be worrying over you.'

Rhoda didn't argue with this, Lily and Margie noticed. In fact, she nodded and seemed happy to let her father make plans for Margie.

‘Lily, you can do some shopping for Margie every now and then,' Bert decided. ‘I'll give you the money. She'll need good food to build her up – meat and potatoes, plenty of eggs, milk, that sort of thing.'

‘I'm not poorly, I can go to Cliff Street and do my own shopping,' Margie protested.

‘But later on Lily can do it,' he insisted with a meaningful look at Rhoda.

‘And you're not hiding me away either,' Margie was adamant. Her grandfather sighed and drew her mother out into the front room to talk in more detail about the money and other necessities for Margie's upkeep. ‘By the way, it isn't Billy,' Margie confided in her sister. ‘I know that's what you were thinking but you're wrong.'

‘All right, I'll cross him off the list,' Lily conceded. ‘I've always had a soft spot for Billy so I'm glad that he's out of the picture, even if it leaves the mystery unsolved.' Mention of his name brought to mind the message she had to pass on. ‘By the way, he's not going to be there tonight – he asked me to tell you.'

If Margie was upset, she didn't let it show. Instead, she took it on the chin. ‘That Billy, you never can believe a word he says!'

‘It's probably for the best, if what you say is true – about him not being involved.'

‘The thing is, I've been doing my best to make him think he was,' Margie confessed with an air of having nothing left to lose.

Lily's eyebrows shot up. ‘Could he have been?' she demanded. ‘I mean, could Billy have …?'

‘Like I said, I was doing my best to turn it into a possibility.'

‘Oh, Margie!' Lily thought back to her embarrassing talk with Billy about Margie's behaviour outside Linton Park gates. ‘That was wrong of you. You were jumping straight out of the frying pan into the fire if that was your plan.'

Pressing her lips together, Margie nodded. ‘But I thought if he liked me, we could maybe make a go of it, Billy and me.'

‘Not by tricking him. Anyway, he'd have worked it out for himself eventually.'

‘Not if I waited and told him the baby had come a few weeks early. That happens, you know.'

‘Margie,' Lily groaned.

‘Don't “Margie” me like that, Lily. You don't know what you'd try if you were in my position. And if Dorothy Brumfitt hadn't jumped in and stolen Billy from under my nose, it could have worked out just fine.'

‘Well, she did and it didn't.' Lily set the seal on that situation. She knew they only had a few minutes left before their mother and grandfather would return. ‘You still have time to tell me who the real father is,' she whispered.

‘No, but what I will say, between you and me and these four walls, is that none of this was really my doing.' Still at the table, sitting opposite each other, Margie waited nervously for Lily's reaction.

‘So someone took advantage of you?' Lily gasped. ‘When? Where was this?'

Margie shook her head as if trying to rid herself of the memory of what had happened. ‘You won't squeeze a lot more out of me, but I want you to know this much – this person, the man responsible – he'd invited me into town to the City Varieties and afterwards he took me to the pub next door and he bought me a sherry or two – enough to make me giddy. And after that, that's when it happened.'

‘Where?' Lily repeated as Margie drew to a faltering conclusion.

Margie shuddered, and when she spoke again her voice was hesitant and her eyes brimming with tears. ‘It doesn't matter where. All I'm saying is, it came out of the blue. I wasn't ready for him and it was all over almost before I knew it was happening.' Her face pale and stricken at the memory and her hands trembling on the plain pine table, Margie had reached the end of her confession, leaving no time for Lily to say anything before Bert and Rhoda came back into the room. Rhoda was obviously ready to depart.

‘We've decided that I'll be the one to tell your father and Evie,' she announced to Margie who tried in vain to dry her tears. ‘It'll be best to keep Arthur in the dark for now, though.'

‘But, Lily, we'd be happy for you to drop by with the young'un whenever you feel like it,' Bert added. ‘My door's always open – you know that.'

Nodding, Lily reached out, took Margie's hands and held them tight. ‘Tomorrow afternoon,' she promised. ‘I'll bring Arthur up to see you. I'll bake a cake in the morning and we'll bring it with us. Victoria sponge – you always like a slice of that.'

Margie smiled through her tears.

‘We'll love you and leave you,' Rhoda said, turning for the door. ‘Goodbye, Father. Goodbye, Margie. Come along, Lily, we've got a tram to catch.'

It was a thoughtful Lily who got ready to go out dancing with Harry that night. She hardly concentrated on what to wear, taking a dress that was three years old from the hook on the back of the bedroom door – a navy blue one in heavy crêpe de Chine that was shorter and straighter than the styles that were currently in fashion and rather young for her now, Lily thought as she glanced in the small mirror over Margie's bed. ‘It needs a new lace trim around the neck and cuffs to bring it up to date,' she said to herself, putting on Sybil's silk stockings and her own black leather shoes then treading carefully over the floorboards so as not to disturb her mother who had taken to her bed as soon as she returned home after the expedition to Ada Street. Lily took her coat and hat from the bed and was halfway down the stairs when Evie flew up to meet her.

‘Harry's here!' she cried in a hoarse, excited whisper.

Lily paused, took a deep breath, then carried on along the landing and down into the kitchen where Harry stood on the fireside rug chatting to Arthur and smiling broadly. ‘What's it to be?' he asked her when she came into the room, which was already decorated with the chains of coloured paper made earlier in the day. ‘The flicks or dancing?'

‘Let's head off to the Assembly Rooms,' she said, feeling shy in front of their audience even though it was only Arthur and Evie. ‘Arthur, you've to go to bed when Evie tells you. And tomorrow, if you're a good boy, I'll help you to write your letter to Father Christmas in the morning then in the afternoon I'll take you to Granddad Preston's house to see Margie.'

Arthur couldn't have been happier with the plan and with Evie explaining to him that tomorrow would come all the sooner if he went to sleep nice and early, Lily and Harry closed the front door on the contented scene.

Outside, Lily was surprised to find that her grandfather's prediction about the rain turning to snow had come true. She frowned at the thought of what the covering of white on the pavements would do to her best shoes and quickly accepted Harry's arm as he led her down the steps.

‘Uh-oh, you'll ruin those shoes if you're not careful. Why don't I give you a piggyback ride?' he suggested with a pantomime wink.

‘Some other time,' she responded with a playful shove that sent him slipping and sliding across the pavement, almost taking her with him.

‘Anyway, it won't be more than an inch or two of snow,' he promised her, ‘not enough to spoil our evening.'

Still, it meant that the trams were delayed and they stood arm in arm at the stop waiting with three or four other couples for a full fifteen minutes before one came into sight. Then, just before it did appear, who should join the queue but Sybil and Billy, both in high spirits and ready to tease Lily and Harry for stepping out together a second time.

‘Brrr, it's freezing!' Sybil sang out from the back of the queue. ‘Harry, why not put your arm around Lily and keep her warm? Or better still, be a gentleman and let her borrow your coat. A little bird tells me that's what you do.'

‘Sybil Dacre, that's the last time I let you into my secrets!' Lily cried with a self-conscious grimace at Harry who put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. A glance at Billy had told her that he was feeling uncomfortable and rightly so, given that he'd unceremoniously ditched Margie by carrier pigeon, as it were.

Inside the crowded tram, Lily and Sybil found seats opposite Maureen and Flora while Harry and Billy hovered on the open platform at the back. Flora spent the short journey asking Lily searching questions about Margie's stay on Ada Street, which Lily fended off until Maureen jumped in with a question for her about the finer points involved in making a machine-sewn buttonhole, with Sybil putting in her halfpennyworth and so the talk went on until they'd travelled the mile and a half along Cliff Street to the Assembly Rooms where most of the younger passengers disembarked.

Harry, who had hopped off promptly, waited for Lily and offered her his hand. ‘See, the snow's easing off,' he commented, looking up at a starlit sky.

‘Harry Bainbridge, promise me one thing,' she said with a laugh.

‘Anything, your majesty,' he vowed. ‘What is it?'

‘If you really are to be my sweetheart, and I hope you are, you've got to promise me that you'll never mention the weather – never, ever again!'

‘Done!' Harry laughed. ‘Or who's playing centre forward for the Rovers. But on one condition.'

‘And what's that, Harry?' she asked, tilting her head and looking sideways at him as if butter wouldn't melt. She held tight to his arm as they crossed the snowy street.

‘That you promise I can stick to the waltz and you'll never try to teach me to do the foxtrot or the quickstep.'

‘Done!' she agreed.

Then they skipped up the steps of the Assembly Rooms into the light and warmth of the entrance, where strains of band music drifted through from the dance hall.

‘I like this tune,' Lily murmured into Harry's ear.

They'd danced non-stop for an hour or more and the band had struck up after an interval with their version of ‘Dancing in the Dark', a slow waltz whose melancholy words drifted into her head as Harry took her hand and led her back on to the dance floor.

The song lyrics spoke of a couple dancing at night until the tune ended, of waltzing and wondering why time hurried by until all too soon they were dancing together no more.

She shook her head clear of the sad lyrics and enjoyed the sensation of being whirled around in Harry's strong arms, her eyes half closed and her head spinning.

‘I'm not holding you too tight, am I?' he whispered, his head bent and his cheek resting against the top of her head.

‘No, I like it,' she replied. The feel of his hand in the small of her back drawing their warm bodies close together, his sinewy strength beneath the dark blue blazer.

‘That's all right then,' he said. And he drew her closer still.

But the tune ended too soon and the band livened things up with a quickstep, which left Harry floundering and apologizing to Lily as usual for having two left feet.

‘Never mind, I'll stick to my side of the bargain and let you sit this one out,' she said and grinned, waving at Sybil who was having a high old time teaching Billy the basic steps and rhythms off to one side of the floor, giggling at his mistakes and insisting that he take his lead from her.

‘Poor bugger,' Harry commiserated as they walked through the grand entrance hall for a breath of fresh air. ‘I'm glad you don't press gang me like that, Lil. I always thought Sybil had a bit of the sergeant major about her.'

‘Anyway, Billy deserves to be made to feel hot under the collar.'

‘Why, what's he done now?'

‘He's only stood Margie up and taken up with Sybil instead.'

Harry considered the information. ‘Margie's a bit young for Billy, don't you think? There's something not quite right there.'

‘Why, has he said something to you?' she asked quickly, fearing that Billy might have blabbed to Harry about the episode outside the park gates.

But Harry shook his head. ‘I'm just saying – she's a bit young. How's she doing up at your granddad's by the way?'