The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (26 page)

‘Where's Margie?' Arthur hovered by Lily at the sink and asked the question that had been bothering him all day. ‘Why couldn't she come?'

‘She's with Granddad,' Lily explained, suddenly pulled back to the here and now, away from the warm memory of being held in Harry's arms the night before in his cold, dark front room. Bert had sent a message that he wouldn't be with them for Christmas Day unless Margie was invited too. ‘They're having their Christmas together up on Ada Street.'

Arthur gave a puzzled frown, glancing at his dozing father and somehow making a connection between Walter and the fact that Margie was missing, perhaps remembering the last row before she'd disappeared to live with their grandfather. Nothing had been said directly to Arthur, leaving him to make his own small-boy's sense of the situation and it ended up with him not being far off the mark. ‘I wish she was here with us.' He sighed, suddenly losing interest in his present.

‘His little face was so sad it would have broken your hearts,' Lily told Annie and Sybil when they came round on New Year's Eve, once they'd spent a long time oohing and aahing over the silver heart locket from Harry, which Lily had worn non-stop since Christmas Eve.

‘How about Margie? How is she getting along, really and truly?' Sybil sat at the kitchen table, pinking shears in hand, hovering over a piece of ice-blue satin supplied by Maureen Godwin for the bridesmaid's dress that Lily had promised to make. A hard-pressed Lily had begged Sybil and Annie to lend a hand whenever they could find the time and today was the best opportunity for the three young women to get together and start work on the intricate pattern.

‘I dropped in on her and Granddad on Boxing Day,' Lily answered without looking up from the paper pattern, which she'd laid out alongside the fabric – smallish pieces for the bodice and sleeves, larger ones for the skirt. ‘She's keeping her chin up, considering.'

‘And what does your granddad think?' Standing by with pins at the ready, Annie didn't beat about the bush. ‘Does he say Margie's gone and chucked her life down the drain all in one go, that she's a scarlet woman and all?'

Lily shook her head. ‘Granddad never says much so you can't tell what he's thinking.'

‘No, but he's at least given Margie a roof over her head,' Sybil reminded them. Of the three women she was the one who spoke with most consideration and calmness – a trait she'd inherited from her own mother who had been an overseer in Calvert's spinning shed before the war. ‘Are any of those pieces cut on the bias?' she asked Lily, ready to refold the cloth.

‘Yes please – the ones for the skirt. It's gored so as to hang perfectly, fitted on the hips and swinging out at the hem.'

‘And have you seen Harry lately?' Forthright Annie carried on probing. ‘How's his poor face?'

‘Healing up nicely, thanks.' Lily had squeezed in a quick Boxing Day visit to Raglan Road on her return from Ada Street. This time Harry hadn't been slow to invite her into the front room where they'd snuggled close on the leather settee while his mother and Peggy made tea and scones in the kitchen, only breaking apart when the door handle turned and Betty had brought in the loaded tea tray.

‘Don't worry, he'll soon get back his film-star looks and you won't need to be ashamed to be seen on his arm,' Sybil chuckled as she folded and flattened the satin.

‘I'd never be ashamed of Harry,' Lily protested before breaking into a self-conscious smile.

‘Here, Annie, lay this sleeve piece on to the material and pin it on good and straight. Then, Sybil, you can start cutting whenever you like.'

‘Yes, Miss Briggs. No, Miss Briggs. Three bags full, Miss Briggs!' Sybil and Annie chorused.

‘I'm only saying – we need to get a move on if Maureen's to wear this dress at her sister's wedding in a month's time. Then there's that summer dress for Elsie, and your cousin wants us to make a woollen two-piece for her job at the Yorkshire Bank, doesn't she, Annie?'

Annie nodded and handed Sybil the pins. ‘At this rate we'll have a list as long as our arms to keep us busy and before we know it there'll be no need to keep on toiling away at Calvert's, at the mill with slaves – you'll see.'

‘Well, a girl can but dream!' Sybil laughed at Annie's snatched piece of remembered poetry – John Milton's blind old Samson Agonistes put to work on the treadmill – which they'd all learned by heart at school.

‘No.' Lily seized upon Annie's idea and carried on in a more serious tone. ‘What if Annie's right? Don't you think we could do it, the three of us together?'

Methodically Sybil began cutting around the paper pattern, bodice pieces first. ‘Do what, Lil?'

‘Set up shop,' she explained. ‘All we need to do is to keep the orders coming in.'

‘Which we could do right away by passing the word around,' Annie argued. ‘We could even put an advertisement in the
Yorkshire Post
– “Have your dresses made up by experienced seamstresses. Prices on application” – that sort of thing.'

Sybil stayed quiet as she continued to cut, taking care to follow the lines exactly because there was very little material to spare and one slip could ruin the whole thing.

‘Wouldn't that be grand?' Lily mused, drifting off on her favourite fantasy cloud. She placed a reel of pale blue cotton thread on to the treadle machine. First she looped the end of the thread around hooks and small metal cogs until finally she could insert it through the eye of the vertical needle, which she then lowered out of sight through a tiny hole in a metal plate until it connected with the thread wound around the spool hidden underneath. Another slow turn of the large wheel that drove the machine brought both threads back to the surface ready to begin. ‘Have you finished cutting out those bodice pieces yet?' she asked.

‘Yes, but hold your horses – I need to tack them together before you get to work with the machine.' A perfectionist as always, Sybil refused to be rushed. ‘Anyway, say we placed our advert and we got a rush of orders,' she surmised, ‘when would we find the time to make them up?'

‘That's exactly the point,' Annie said excitedly. ‘We wouldn't if we were still at Calvert's. We'd have to give up working there and launch out by ourselves!'

‘Whereabouts?' Sybil wanted to know, making large, even running stitches as she talked.

‘There's that little empty shop by Sykes' bakery on Chapel Street,' Lily said, quick as a flash. ‘It used to be Henshaw's Haberdashers.'

‘I know the one.' In Annie's mind she already had the shop window frame and door painted bright green with a sign above that read ‘Pearson, Dacre and Briggs – Professional Dressmakers' in fine gold lettering. Or better still, ‘Chapel Street Dressmakers' and underneath, in smaller writing, ‘High Quality – Low Cost. Why Not Give us a Try!'

‘Ah, but that's opposite the rag and bone yard,' Sybil objected. ‘There'd be filthy horses and carts trundling in and out all day long.'

‘No, Bradley's yard is further along towards the tram terminus.' Lily held to the notion that Henshaw's would be the right choice. ‘I'm talking about the top of Chapel Street, as you come to the first set of railings overlooking Linton Park.'

Pausing for a moment from their pinning, pinking and tacking, the three women exchanged excited glances before cold reality crept in.

‘Then again, we'd be taking a big risk to start paying rent on a shop without being certain we could keep the orders coming in,' Sybil pointed out.

‘Things being as they are,' Lily acknowledged, remembering the unpaid coal bill resting on the mantelpiece. ‘Not many people have the money to splash out on having dresses made, even if it is only one and sixpence once in a blue moon.'

‘Trust you two to put a dampener on things.' Annie's grumble was only half serious. Even her happy-go-lucky mood had taken a small dip as she thought through the practicalities of giving up her regular wage packet and having to fly by the seat of her pants.

‘Here.' Sybil passed the tacked pieces to Lily who sat down at the machine and began to treadle. A rhythmic whir and the rapid pounding of the needle through smooth fabric filled the quiet kitchen.

‘So if we're not leaving the mill and setting up as dressmakers off our own bat, what New Year's resolutions shall we make instead?' Annie wondered in an effort to lift the mood again.

‘Go ahead – you tell us yours first,' Sybil urged as she began to tidy away scraps of satin into a brown paper bag.

‘That's easy!' Annie declared with a wicked grin. ‘Mine is to get Robert's ring on the third finger of my left hand!'

‘Poor Robert!' Lily laughed at her friend's ambition. ‘He doesn't stand a chance.'

‘What do you mean, poor Robert? Don't you know Robert Drummond will be the luckiest man between here and Manchester if he manages to snap me up!'

‘Yes but does
he
know who'll be wearing the trousers if he ties the knot with you?' Sybil pretended to agree with Lily, just so they could enjoy Annie's reaction. ‘There'll be no more dropping in at the Cross or the King's Head on his way home from work once he's hitched to you, Annie Pearson, and no more making the girls swoon down at the Assembly Rooms.'

‘What do you mean? Who says we're going to give up dancing just because we've got spliced? That's not my plan. No, we'll still be first on the floor, Robert and me – one-two-three, one-two-three!' Annie held out her arms and whirled with an imaginary partner in the small gap between the table and the sink. ‘That ring will be sparkling and catching the light and you'll all be looking at me and thinking, If only I could find one like Robert Drummond in my Christmas stocking!'

Sybil and Lily laughed out loud at their high-spirited friend. ‘Not me,' Sybil vowed. ‘I won't be jealous of you, Annie, or of anyone who gets themselves tied down to one man, however handsome.'

‘Oh, so what about you and Billy?' Lily challenged as she finished the seam she was sewing and snipped the two threads. ‘Are you trying to tell us that he's not the marrying type?'

At the sound of the gardener's name, Sybil raised a disdainful eyebrow. ‘Who cares about Billy Robertshaw?' she asked. ‘Not me, for a start.'

‘Oh, listen to her!' Annie teased. ‘The last I heard, you and Billy were going strong.'

‘Not any more,' Sybil insisted. ‘Not since I found out just before Christmas that he was walking out with someone else behind my back.'

‘Never!' Annie cried. ‘Billy wouldn't dare.'

‘Shame on him!' was Lily's response. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Certain.'

‘Who was that someone?' Annie demanded.

‘Who cares? Not me – I didn't bother to find out.' Sybil flicked her hair back from her face and gave a little sniff. ‘I heard some girls from the weaving shed gossiping behind my back, just enough to know there was a rumour about Billy being seen outside Merton and Groves with a mystery woman. So I went straight round to his house after work, knocked on his door and asked if it was true. He didn't say a dicky bird but his face turned red as a beetroot and that was good enough for me.'

‘You mean, you didn't give him a chance to give a proper explanation?' Lily gasped.

Twisting the neck of the paper bag as if wringing Billy's neck, Sybil gave her no-nonsense reply. ‘No. That was it – you two know I'm not the sort to hang around waiting to be laughed at behind my back. I left him standing there bright red to the roots of his hair. And it was after that that I decided to give up men for good!'

Again Lily and Annie laughed. ‘Until the next time,' Lily said.

‘There'll be no next time.' Sybil stowed the bag of scrap material in the sewing-machine drawer. ‘That's my New Year's resolution for you: to make sure I stay single and happy – the end!'

‘What about you, Lily?' Annie asked when they'd recovered from their fit of giggles. ‘Be honest – wouldn't you like to make 1932 the year when Harry gets down on one knee?'

‘I haven't thought about it,' Lily said as she ducked her head and smiled.

‘No, not everyone goes about things the same way as you, Annie,' Sybil reminded her.

‘Like a bull in a china shop, you mean?' Annie's smile was broad and her good humour undented.

‘Yes. Lily's different.'

‘How – different?'

‘She doesn't charge at things, for a start. She takes everything more slowly.'

‘And, let me remind you, “she” is right here, listening to every word you say,' Lily cut in. Not that she minded the game Annie was playing – it conjured up the picture of her and Harry walking down the aisle together, her in a long white dress and veil, Harry smart as could be in a dark blue pinstriped suit, and for a few moments she was happy to dream.

Annie spotted the smile playing on Lily's lips. ‘See the look on her face!' she crowed. ‘I'm right, aren't I? Lily may not go in crash, bang, wallop the way I do, but it comes to the same thing in the end – her resolution is to have a ring on her finger before the year's out.'

‘No,' Lily objected as the dressmaking session came to an end and she placed the wooden hood over the sewing machine. She had to be sensible about her ambitions and look at the realities. ‘Do you really want to know what I'm thinking when I look ahead?'

‘Yes,' the others assured her. ‘Come on, Lily, out with it.'

Lily took a deep breath before she spoke and pulled herself back down to earth. ‘Well then,' she said, pained by the need to plant both feet firmly back on the ground, ‘my New Year's resolution, which I honestly and truly hope I can keep, is to carry on looking after Arthur, watch out for Evie at work and most of all, help Margie through this pregnancy as best I can.'