The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (3 page)

Despite long practice on Evie and Arthur, Lily wasn't confident of her hairdressing abilities when it came to creating a fashionable effect. Her hand shook as she took the scissors from Margie. ‘I don't know about the fringe.'

‘Yes, make it like the film stars wear, smooth and glossy like Louise Brooks.' For some reason Margie was prepared to trust Lily with her new style. ‘I think I'll look very nice with it.'

So Lily took the plunge, combing and cutting, feeling locks of Margie's clipped hair tickle her legs as they fell to the floor. When Arthur and Evie returned to the house, she pointed to the food on the table and told them to dip in and help themselves. ‘And no sweets until after dinner,' she warned Arthur.

Too late – she saw that he'd gorged on chocolate on his way home from Newby's and his lips were coated with the sticky remains.

‘Oh Arthur, you've only gone and ruined your appetite,' she grumbled, putting down her scissors to dole out a decent helping of the stew.

She should have known better. Chocolate or not, his stomach was a bottomless pit and he gobbled up the meat and potatoes and was soon asking for a second helping.

‘Leave enough for Father,' Lily warned as she returned to the window to snip carefully at Margie's new fringe.

‘And for Mother,' Evie added.

Then there was silence in the living room at 5 Albion Lane except for the snip of scissors, the settling of coals in the grate and the scrape of knives and forks on cracked, willow-pattern plates.

Dinner was cleared away, the pots washed and Lily had sat down at the sewing machine in the alcove close to the window when Rhoda Briggs got back at last from delivering Myra Lister's latest baby, her sixth in nine years. It was two thirty in the afternoon.

‘Another boy,' she told Lily with an exhausted sigh. ‘It wasn't easy either – in the end we had to call for Dr Moss and he'll be to pay on top of what they eventually give me.'

Lily looked up from her sewing. ‘But baby's all right?'

‘I can't say for sure. Myra will be wondering about that herself, probably for the rest of her life. The cord caught around his neck and he was slow to breathe, that was the problem.'

‘Poor little mite,' Lily murmured. ‘You must be done in.' Putting aside the work on Evie's pinafore, she got up to make a pot of tea. She noticed how old her mother looked – only just past forty yet already worn out, her hands red raw from cold, her face pinched and shadowy under her brown felt hat.

‘Where are the others?' Rhoda asked, taking off her coat but absent-mindedly leaving on the hat.

‘Up in the attic. Evie's keeping Arthur amused and I suppose Margie's busy dolling herself up for a night out.'

‘No she's not, she's here!' Having heard the thud of the front door closing, Margie had rushed down two flights of stairs. Now she twirled on the spot to show off her new hairstyle. ‘Lily did it for me. What do you think, Mother?'

‘I think it makes you look common,' was the blunt reply.

The insult hit Margie hard. Her eager, pretty face fell then she quickly set her mouth in a firm line of defiance. ‘Anyway, I like it,' she said as she flounced back upstairs.

‘Sixteen years old and not a scrap of common sense,' Rhoda muttered with a shake of the head. She had no energy to follow her middle daughter up the stairs to remonstrate, and anyway what good would it do? Hair wouldn't regrow overnight and what was done was done.

‘Here's your tea, Mother,' Lily said quietly.

Rhoda took it without thanks and sat at the table, staring vacantly at the grain of the pale wood.

‘Something happened at work this morning,' Lily began cautiously as she sat down opposite.

‘Not another accident?' was the gloomy response.

‘No, not an accident.'

‘I remember there were always girls getting their hair caught up in the machines when I was there, little boys having fingers torn off, and they never stopped the production, not once that I can remember, however badly they were hurt. That went on a lot before the war.'

‘Not any more,' Lily assured her. ‘They have proper guards on the machines now and big safety notices everywhere you look. Anyway, this is good news. Fred Lee took me into the main office after work today to see Miss Valentine.'

‘Iris Valentine – yes.' The name took Rhoda back to the days when the two young women had worked the looms together. That was before her marriage to Walter, before the war, before everything. ‘There was nothing of her in those days, she was light as a feather. What's she like now?'

‘Still tiny.'

‘Never married?'

‘No, Mother, she's not got married.'

‘She always was a sensible sort,' Rhoda said. ‘Cleverer than me, at any rate. And pray tell, why did “Miss” Valentine need to see you in the office?'

Lily smiled. ‘Pray tell' was one of her mother's old-fashioned idiosyncrasies, said with pursed lips and a sceptical look. ‘Only to offer me work in the mending room!'

‘You don't say.'

‘But I do – it's true. I've been offered a better job, more money and everything.' Smile, please, Lily thought. Just take one look at me and give me a pleasant look, a word of praise – that's all I ask.

‘My, my,' Rhoda said, staring down at her work-worn hands.

‘Starting Monday,' Lily added.

‘Which reminds me, Evie will need that pinafore.'

Lily sighed and got up from the table. ‘Don't worry – it's half done. I just have the pocket and hem to finish.'

‘And I wish you hadn't cut Margie's hair that way.'

‘I know. It's what she wanted, though. I didn't have a say.'

‘She's sixteen – you're twenty, going on twenty-one. You should have had a say. Now look at her – anyone would think she's one of those girls you see hanging around outside the Victory Picture House – you know the type I mean.'

‘Not our Margie,' Lily assured her. ‘She's a good girl. But Mother, just think – I'll be bringing home twenty shillings each week, rising to thirty. How about that?'

‘Very good,' Rhoda said, softening and meeting her daughter's gaze at last. ‘Well done, Lily. I always knew you had it in you to get on in the world.'

‘I told you it would be all about the money,' Margie said. ‘I bet she still didn't crack a smile, though.'

She and Lily were getting ready to go out in the attic bedroom they shared with Evie. Arthur slept in an alcove in the kitchen on a pull-down bed.

‘But I could tell she was pleased.' After dabbing rouge on to her cheeks, Lily ran a wet comb through her wavy hair, hoping in vain that the dampness would smooth it down. ‘That's the main thing.'

Margie finished buttoning up her soft cream blouse, the one that had a row of small bows down the front and clung to her curves. She checked her hair in the mirror one last time. ‘How do I look?'

‘Like a film star, like Louise Brooks, just the way you wanted.'

‘Good – that's me! Now I'm off to meet the girls.' Margie left in high spirits, picking up her green coat, painstakingly sewn by Lily on the Singer machine in the kitchen, and clattering down the stairs, out of the front door without stopping to say goodbye.

Ten minutes later, Lily was dressed in her best crêpe de Chine dress in a shade of lilac that she knew suited her dark complexion. It set off her almost jet-black hair and wide, heavily lashed brown eyes and for once she felt a small glow of satisfaction as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror above Margie's bed, turning this way and that to check different angles. Then she flung on her slim-fitting grey coat and pushed her hair up under a matching velour hat.

Her plan was to knock on Annie's door and from there the two of them would go on to Sybil's house on Overcliffe Road, taking in a trawl around the market before heading on to the Victory or to the dance at the Assembly Rooms on the edge of town – she didn't know which. Before she left the house, she made the mistake of popping her head around the living-room door.

The first person she saw was Arthur perched on the window sill – his lookout or his refuge, depending on the circumstances. The second was her father, much the worse for drink and slumped in his shirtsleeves over the table, his head resting on his arms. Third was her mother angrily stabbing the poker into the dying fire. When Rhoda turned and spotted Lily, she let the poker drop with a clatter on to the hearth then marched across the room and took Arthur by the arm, yanking him down from the sill. ‘Take him to Granddad Preston's for the night,' she instructed Lily. ‘He needs a good night's sleep and he sure as eggs won't get it here, not when his father wakes up.'

‘Mam!' Arthur wriggled and twisted to escape her grip but Rhoda wouldn't let go.

‘Stay with him,' she said. ‘Take him to Sunday School at Overcliffe if you like. Don't bring him back until tomorrow teatime.'

‘Mam!' he said again. His face was white and there were tears in his eyes.

‘Do as you're told,' she insisted.

Lily got the picture – the usual thing had happened whereby her father had staggered back from the Green Cross and started picking on Arthur, snarling at him for nothing, thrusting his moustached face up against the boy and prodding him with his finger. From past experience, Lily guessed that Rhoda probably hadn't even tried to stop her husband. She'd just let him wear himself out then fall asleep at the table and knew now it would be better to get Arthur out of his father's way before he roused himself from his drunken stupor. Since Evie had left the house before her sisters in order to stay over with a friend, Lily was the only one left for Rhoda to turn to.

Lily's spirits sank as she saw her evening out vanish in a puff of smoke but she bore it as well as she could. ‘Come on, Arthur, cheer up. You like it at Granddad Preston's house. You get a bedroom all to yourself.'

Cowed, he put on his jacket and hat with Lily's help and before long they were out of the house, walking hand in hand up Albion Lane.

‘We can ride the tram if you like,' she told him to cheer him up.

Free of the dark, tense atmosphere of the house, Arthur's face brightened and he played a favourite game of avoiding cracks in the pavement. Tread on a crack and an angry bear would be sure to leap out from behind a wall. He ran ahead of Lily, concentrating so hard on the stone flags that he ran full tilt into a gang of young men gathered under the gas lamp at the top of the hill.

‘Watch out, littl'un!' Billy Robertshaw cried as Arthur cannoned into him and landed flat on his back. ‘You want to watch where you're going.'

Lily ran to pick him up and dust him down and she was busy doing this when Harry Bainbridge spoke up.

‘Hello, Lily. Where are you off to all dolled up?'

‘Oh, Harry, hello.' Distracted by Arthur's accident, she didn't pay much attention to Harry, who was hanging around street corners with his pals in the lull between attending his regular Saturday-afternoon football match and the start of his evening out. ‘Arthur, you've got to look where you're going.'

‘My arm hurts,' he whimpered.

‘Here, I'll give it a rub.'

‘Let's start again, shall we?' Harry teased, quickly taking on his own role and that of Lily by facing first one way then jumping round to face the other, clearing his throat and projecting his words like an actor in the theatre. In fact, with his fair hair and clean-cut good looks, and especially in the uniform he wore as Stanley Calvert's chauffeur, Harry did have something of the matinée idol about him – an impression that Lily had noted before and might have appreciated again now if she hadn't been so busy looking after Arthur. At any rate, Harry was set on claiming her attention. ‘I say, “Hello, Lily. Where are you off to all dolled up?” Then you say, “Hello, Harry. Thanks for asking. I'm going out on the town with Annie and Sybil. You boys can join us later if you like.”'

Lily blushed. ‘Sorry, but as it happens Arthur and me are off to Overcliffe, to Granddad Preston's house.'

‘And you needed to wear your best bib and tucker for that?'

‘Don't ask.' She sighed. She would gladly have stopped for a longer chat with Harry, except that a tram was due any minute and she still had to drop by at Annie's house to let her know her night out had been called off at the last minute.

‘We saw your Margie dashing off into town not long back,' Ernie Durant commented. Ernie stood between Billy and Harry, who were both tall. The butcher's son only came up to their shoulders and, with his fresh face, freckles and boyish expression looked the youngest of the three, though Ernie was twenty-four and Harry and Billy twenty-two. ‘She hopped on the number twelve quick as a shot. Blink and she was gone.'

‘Ernie was put out because it looked like she was off to meet someone special,' Harry commented with a meaningful wink.

‘Don't listen to him,' Ernie blustered. ‘Margie's a free agent. She can do what she likes.' But it was true that he had a soft spot for the middle Briggs girl, even though she was eight years younger than him and, as Harry and Billy kept telling him, well out of his league as regards looks and style.

‘No need to fret, Ernie. Margie's out tonight with the usual gang of girls from Kingsley's,' Lily told him. ‘Anyway, I'm sorry, boys, but I have to go.'

‘Everyone's in a rush tonight,' Harry said, his face shadowed by the peak of his tweed cap, which didn't, however, hide the twinkle in his grey eyes.

‘Well, I'll be seeing you, I expect,' she told him, intent on hiding her blushes as she hurried off, this time keeping firm hold of Arthur's hand. ‘By the way, good news – I've got myself a new job,' she called over her shoulder.

It was Harry who broke away from the group, jogged after her and caught her up at the junction with Overcliffe Road. ‘Will you be moving from Calvert's?' he wanted to know.