The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (30 page)

‘Drat,' he laughed, pulling back to check that Lily hadn't minded his advances.

She smiled then sank back against her seat, eyes closed.

‘I've been thinking …' he said.

‘What, Harry?'

‘Nothing. Never mind.' He frowned and got ready to turn the ignition key.

‘No – what?' Slowly she opened her eyes and turned her head.

There wouldn't be a better chance, Harry thought. The two of them were alone together in a car in the dead of night, surrounded by a swirling mist that made it feel as though there was no one else in the world besides him and Lily, who was gazing at him with half-closed eyes, lips parted as if ready to drink in whatever he had to tell her. Oh, how he loved this girl!

‘What?' she said again.

‘I've been wondering how to say this, going over it in my mind until I don't know if I'm coming or going.'

Lily shook herself out of her daze, for a moment falling into her habit of fearing something bad. Could it be that Harry was building up to telling her that it was all over between them? No, surely not. He'd kissed her and told her it was his lucky night and she ought to believe in him and in herself, not straight away go thinking the worst. ‘Spit it out,' she implored. ‘What is it you want to say?'

He tapped the steering wheel and took a deep breath. ‘Righty-ho.' But this was another false start followed by silence.

‘Harry!'

Blimey, this was harder than he'd reckoned and he'd known it wouldn't be a piece of cake. He blew air through his lips, tapped the wheel again and tried to grab hold of the words that were whirling through his brain. ‘I know we've not been walking out together that long,' he began.

‘That's true,' Lily agreed. She felt she had to speak up, to hear her own voice or else she would have to pinch herself to prove she was really sitting here with Harry, in this little world, still with his kiss on her lips.

‘But it's been long enough,' he stammered.

‘For what?'

‘For me to know that you're the one.' He was on the brink of saying the three precious little words that songsters wrote about and film stars whispered on the silver screen – he just needed a little extra push.

Lily shook her head in wonderment.

Why was she shaking her head like that? Was she saying she didn't feel the same? Did she want him to stop now before it was too late? Why didn't he understand?

Lily stared at him, longing for him to carry on.

‘Here goes. You're my sweetheart, Lily, and I love you. There!'

Her mouth fell open and a tingle ran through her whole body. The declaration had come out of the blue and she struggled to find words that would express how she felt.

Harry too was carried along on an unexpected surge of emotion, like a dam being breached and water pouring through. In too deep and being swept along, words tumbling out, things that couldn't be held back. ‘I do, I love you. I'm head over heels. I never thought I would feel this way about anyone and I suppose that's it – love comes along and bowls you over when you're least expecting it. That's what's happened to me, at any rate. I think about you all the time, Lil. I can't get you out of my head, however hard I try. And anyway, I don't want to. I like thinking about you every minute of the day – the way you look, the sound of your voice, the things you do. It's like a magic spell that I don't want to break.'

Still Lily stared, still she shook her head and she thought her heart would burst with joy.

He paused then came out with the other vital words he'd pictured himself saying. ‘I want you to be my wife, if you'll have me. Will you marry me, Lily?'

‘I can't, Harry,' was her reply. The answer sprang out of her mouth and could never be taken back. ‘I can't marry you – not now.'

His face took on a stricken look as the words quickly sank in, then he turned the key in the ignition to cover up the explosion of hurt feelings that struck at his heart. The engine whined and spluttered then finally coughed into life. He stared straight ahead as the car set off from the kerb and crawled on through the fog.

‘I'm sorry,' she gasped, lost in an agony of her own. ‘I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't ready.'

‘Forget it,' he mumbled, gripping the wheel. What kind of a bloody fool does this make me? he wondered. He'd been ninety-nine per cent sure that Lily loved him back but it turned out he'd been mistaken all along, a blithering idiot.

‘No, you don't understand,' she protested.

‘It's plain enough,' he argued. ‘No means no, however you hedge around it with excuses.'

‘I didn't say no. I said not now.'

‘Same thing,' he muttered as he turned off the main road into Albion Lane. ‘I'm a right chump, aren't I?'

‘No, you're not.' Everything she wanted to say stuck in her throat – not now because Mother is poorly, Margie is expecting, Evie has lost her job. It's a bad time, can't you see? I should have said yes, she thought. Why didn't I go where my heart led me and say yes, I will? I love you too, Harry. Of course I will! Misery and confusion overwhelmed her and trapped the explanations inside her head.

‘So let's say this never happened,' he said, his face sullen and shut against her as he pulled up outside her house. He waited for her to open her door then spoke again. ‘And we won't mention it to anyone else, if that's all right with you.'

‘Harry, I'm sorry,' she began, her voice still failing her, her hand trembling on the door handle.

‘No, no, forget it,' he insisted. Why didn't she just get out of the car and walk away, end his misery?

He was angry, pushing her away, not giving her a chance to explain. ‘Mother will be expecting me – I'd better go.' Still the right words escaped her and out came the wrong ones, sending her careering off down the track she least wanted to go.

Harry gave a slight nod, nothing else.

Lost in a storm of conflicting emotions, Lily was defeated by his sullen silence. She opened the car door and stepped out on to the cobbles. ‘Ta for the lift,' she said, helplessly adrift.

‘Any time,' he replied through gritted teeth, hands still gripping the wheel, gaze fixed straight ahead.

She was still reaching for the right thing to say when Harry pressed the accelerator pedal and the engine raced.

Quickly Lily clicked the door shut and stepped back. He left her standing in the middle of the street, cloaked by foggy silence, her heart burdened by a weight that almost made her sink on to the cold ground.

Harry knew it was too late in the evening to consider dropping in at the pub. Besides, it was Monday and there'd be no one there. Instead, he drove aimlessly around the back streets and eventually found himself on Canal Road, idling past the empty mills, public baths and picture house at ten miles per hour and trying to make sense of what had just happened.

For a man used to easing through life with a joke and a ready smile, he found Lily's rejection unfathomable. After all, people didn't say no to easy-going, popular Harry Bainbridge. His pals laughed with him and slapped him on the back, drew him into the middle of their group, bought him a drink and shared football stories, admired his boss's car. They winked at him and told him he could have the pick of the crop as far as girls were concerned, if only he would remember to polish his shoes before he went out, get a decent short, back and sides and steer his partner around the dance floor without revealing that he had two left feet.

He'd been out with plenty of girls, of course. Most recently, in early November, he'd hitched up with Vera Wilkinson, Lily's fellow worker in the mending department. They'd been to the pictures a couple of times but it had soon fizzled out, and before that he'd spent a few evenings in the Cross with Annie's friend Flora Johnson, but she'd proved too much of a handful, so he'd backed off from her and returned to his footloose, fancy-free ways.

So when he'd asked Lily to dance that night at the Assembly Rooms and the band had played ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart' and she'd counted him into the waltz, he'd expected it to be pleasant enough but not something that would knock him for six the way it did. He'd got one arm around her waist and she was looking up at him and smiling and for some reason he'd suddenly felt drunk, dizzy, intoxicated. They'd woven in between other couples and he'd breathed her in – her in her lilac dress, with the deepest brown eyes and warm, full-lipped smile that he'd known all his life but taken no notice of until that moment, her hair and skin giving off a scent of fresh flowers from the soap she must use. Later that night, once they'd parted ways, all Harry could think of was the soft feel of Lily's lilac dress, the warmth of her skin beneath and the smile that lit up her lips and eyes.

After that he'd jumped right in and not looked back. For him it was Lily-this and Lily-that every time he opened his trap until Billy had laughed at him one night at the Cross. ‘Whoa!' he'd said, as if Harry was a runaway horse. ‘You'll scare the life out of the girl if you carry on like that.' So Harry had tried his best not to come on too strong, only giving Lily a small wave if he'd spotted her and her pals on their way to work and not hanging around at the end of her street on the off-chance of running into her the way he wanted to. Nice and easy did it – and slowly he'd felt a growing confidence that he wasn't the only one who felt the way he did.

And now this. Bringing the flow of warm memories to an abrupt halt, he pulled over to the kerb outside Napier's, grasped the wheel and let his head drop forward, thinking it through to the bitter end.

After a while, he let out a long, loud sigh, pulled himself together and sat bolt upright. Well, you won't catch me doing that again in a hurry, he resolved, staring up at the dim yellow halo of light cast by the street lamp outside the scrap yard. Lily Briggs has missed her chance with me and that's that.

They called it a broken heart, as if love was the glue that held the various working parts together and when love fled, the pieces shattered into tiny fragments, leaving you desperately searching on hands and knees for what scraps you could salvage.

In bed that night, with Evie sound asleep under the eaves of their attic bedroom, Lily scrabbled to save herself.

Harry's proposal had thrown her completely. He called me his sweetheart, she remembered, then waited in agony for the fresh wave of regret to pass. When he spoke his face had been clear and honest and more handsome than ever, his eyes bright with expectation. The words had poured out of him, shiny and new though they'd been spoken a thousand times before, up and down the land and through the centuries, and a million other lovers had sworn their love and sealed it with a kiss.

But not her, not Lily Briggs.

Harry thought about her all the time. He couldn't get her out of his head. She cast a magic spell. That's what he'd said. And part of her had soared and sung like a bird in a bright blue sky, but another part was earth-bound, tied down and clogged by heavy responsibility, reminding her she was the good girl of the family, the eldest daughter who looked after others and put them first. The songbird had flown up and up until it was a dark speck, smaller and smaller and finally vanishing, leaving only the solid, dutiful part of her on the ground below.

Yes, Harry
, she should have said.
Yes, I love you, yes, I'll marry you!
And she would have been the happiest girl in the world after that. Obstacles would have fallen away. Her mother would have been informed and would have given them her blessing, her father's rant against it would have soon faded to a grumble and he would have taken longer but in the end, what was there to be said against Harry Bainbridge, the lad earning a decent wage as a chauffeur and who lived on the next street? Before she knew it, she, Annie and Sybil would have been sewing a white satin dress for a summer wedding.

That's all very well in a fairy tale, Lily reflected as she lay in the icy silence on her flock mattress, tears rolling down her cheeks on to her pillow. But look again at the facts, consider how much her mother relied on her to take over where she left off once and for all. Lily knew her mother would never be strong again, not well enough to cook and mend, clean and bake, chivvy and knock Arthur into shape each morning ready for school. And think about Father – he'd never allow the wedding to go ahead, not the way things were. He wouldn't let Lily's wage go out of the house, for a start, not now it was the only money coming in.

The more she thought about the family failing to make ends meet, the more misery descended over Lily like a cold shroud. Love didn't put bread on the table, she realized – it didn't fill empty stomachs. And even when – in fact, not ‘when' but ‘if' –
if
Miss Valentine eventually gave the go-ahead and Lily reached her full burler and mender's wage of thirty shillings, that amount by itself wouldn't pay the coalman, together with the milkman, the greengrocer and the butcher and she would still have to earn extra money by bits of dressmaking here and there, which would use up every spare minute of her day, with nowhere for her and Harry to fit in unless … unless she threw it all to one side and ran round this minute to Raglan Road to knock on his door in the middle of the night and tell him she did love him after all. Yes, she could do that, but then what? Then they got married and set up home together, her and Harry, leaving Margie, her new baby, Evie and Arthur to cope on their own without a penny coming in.

See! she told herself. You were right to keep your feet on the ground, Lily Briggs – it's plain as the nose on your face that you can't marry Harry Bainbridge.

But she lay awake all night, as though on her hands and knees in the dark, searching in vain for the lost fragments of her broken heart.

When Lily went to work at Calvert's as usual next morning, Evie took herself off to Kingsley's mill around the corner. Ignoring the curious glances of workers like Hilda Crabtree who were clocking on, she scanned the ‘situations vacant' noticeboard at the grimy entrance: they needed rovers, combers and twisters in the spinning shed – none of which she was qualified to do, she realized. A piecer was needed in the weaving shed to join together threads that were broken whilst the machines were in motion – another job that required experience so that was no good either. But right at the bottom of the list she noticed that Kingsley's needed a scavenger, an unskilled job for a school-leaver, which was right up her street. So she screwed up her courage and went with the flow of the jostling crowd down a corridor until she came to a door marked Manager's Office, where she drew a deep breath and knocked. There was no answer.