The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘No – why?’ As Evie gave her answer she was forced to step aside by Fred Lee in flat cap and goggles, riding his motorbike out from under the archway, weaving his way through the departing crowd and leaving a whiff of exhaust fumes in his wake.

  ‘He’s supposed to be here, working on the manager’s garden,’ Harry explained. ‘I’m meant to pass on a message from Mr Calvert.’

  ‘Oh well, you’re in luck. There he is.’ Evie pointed out the figure of Calvert’s gardener wheeling a barrow along the path by the side of Derek Wilson’s house at the far end of the mill building. Spotting Harry in their boss’s car, he left off work and strolled towards them.

  ‘Chatting with the girls as usual, eh, Harry?’ Billy began. He was in his shirtsleeves and without a scarf despite the November chill, his corduroy trousers held up by both belt and braces. Lean and wiry, with an outdoor complexion and a naturally cheerful expression, he seemed to bring a breath of fresh air wherever he went.

  ‘Since when did the pot start calling the kettle black?’ Harry replied with unshakeable good humour.

  ‘Is this gentleman bothering you, girls?’ Billy said with a wink. ‘Would you like me to move him on for you?’

  ‘You and whose army, Billy?’ Harry laughed.

  ‘No – we want Harry to give us a ride home in his car,’ Lily joked. She and Evie knew Billy almost as well as they knew Harry, having grown up together since the Robertshaws had moved into a house at the bottom end of Albion Lane when Lily was six. The two lads were firm friends and it was Harry who had tipped Billy the wink when the gardening job at Moor House fell vacant a year earlier, allowing Billy to move on from a lowly street-cleaning job with the town council. ‘We want a taste of luxury after the hard week we’ve had,’ Lily insisted.

  ‘And pigs might fly,’ a voice said.

  Lily turned to see that Margie had sneaked up on them on her way home from Kingsley’s and she greeted her sister with a sympathetic smile. ‘You look done in,’ she said.

  ‘I am,’ Margie admitted, shoulders sagging, her new haircut the worse for wear after a hot, grimy morning in the spinning shed. Then she noticed Billy standing behind the car and she stiffened.

  ‘Well, ta-ta, I must be getting along,’ she told Lily and Evie, turning on her heel.

  ‘Wait for us,’ Evie called after her.

  ‘Was it something I said?’ Billy quipped, leaning against the car and lighting up a cigarette, watching Margie closely as she ignored Evie’s appeal and hurried off.

  ‘Anyway, Billy – I’ve got a message for you from Mr Calvert.’ Harry got around to his reason for being there. ‘He wants you up at the big house this afternoon, working on the borders.’

  ‘But it’s Saturday.’ Billy frowned. ‘I’m ready to knock off.’

  ‘Ours is not to reason why,’ Harry commiserated.

  Billy looked and sounded seriously put out. ‘Why can’t his bloody borders wait until Monday?’

  ‘Because they can’t.’ Turning on the ignition, Harry listened proudly to the purr of the car’s engine. ‘Hear that? Sweet as a nut.’

  Lily took the hint. ‘Better let you go then, Harry.’

  ‘We’ll still see you later?’ Harry checked with Billy. ‘Six o’clock at the Cross?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Billy confirmed, puffing moodily on his cigarette.

  ‘How about you, Lily?’ Harry wanted to know. ‘What are you girls up to tonight?’

  ‘We’re going to the flicks,’ she said a touch too quickly, feeling herself blush under Harry’s questioning gaze.

  Pushing his advantage, he teased her a little more. ‘Not teaching me to quickstep to “Goodnight, Sweetheart”?’

  ‘“Goodnight, Sweetheart” is a waltz,’ Lily reminded him. ‘Anyway, Harry, I’m sorry but not tonight.’

  ‘Ah well, there’s always next week.’ He grinned. Then he wound up his window and eased away from the kerb, glancing at Lily in his overhead mirror as he left.

  ‘And pigs might fly,’ Billy repeated Margie’s mocking phrase. ‘Harry Bainbridge doing the quickstep – now that I’d like to see!’

  A long week, but satisfactory. Lily thought in school report terms as she and Evie walked home together. She was still buoyed up by her recent promotion and willing to learn from her mistakes, and although she only carried in her pocket what was left of her wages after deductions for the scissors and burling iron, et cetera, she knew that at the end of next week she would receive the full twenty shillings, rising as she’d told her mother to thirty when she’d learned her new trade.

  She was less confident that Evie had settled into her role in the weaving shed, though there’d been no complaints so far as she knew from the over-looker, and Sybil and Annie had kept their promise of keeping an eye out for her. ‘Evie’s doing all right,’ they had assured Lily at the end of each day. ‘We make sure she stays out of harm’s way.’

  ‘You’re not saying much,’ Lily mentioned to her youngest sister as they turned off Ghyll Road on to Albion Lane and called into Newby’s for Arthur’s sweets. ‘What’s the matter – cat got your tongue?’

  ‘I’m just tired.’ Evie sighed, waiting inside the shop door. ‘My fingers are sore, my back aches, sometimes I think I’m going to drop to the floor I’m so hot and bothered.’

  Lily was alarmed. ‘It’s not too much for you? You can manage the work?’

  Evie nodded. ‘I have to manage it, don’t I? What else is there?’

  Lily took her change from Alice Newby, an older version of her daughter Ethel with the same polite, smiling manner. She put the sweets in her pocket then walked on with Evie until they came to a stop by the alley connecting them to Raglan Road. Then haltingly she took up the conversation again. ‘You’re right – there is nothing else.’ It seemed harsh, but it was true – there was no other work for girls like them.

  Ten or twelve years earlier, soon after the Great War had ended, some school leavers in the area might have dreamed of office work or going into a bank, even of getting their own small grocery shop or working as a milliner, but not in these hard times. ‘We have to grin and bear it, hang on to what we’ve got.’

  ‘I do realize that. Only I didn’t know it would be so hard.’

  Lily took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You’ll get used to it and then it’ll seem easier.’

  Evie’s eyes welled up with tears, which she quickly wiped away. ‘You won’t tell Mother I was upset? She has enough on her plate.’

  Lily knew what she meant – despite her efforts to talk her middle sister out of her bad moods, this past week had included more cheek and sullenness from Margie, which had built up on the Wednesday night to an open argument between mother and daughter and Rhoda’s deadly serious threat to make Margie pack her bag and leave. Only Lily’s calming influence had stopped this from happening. ‘I won’t say a word,’ she promised Evie as they climbed the hill to number 5 where they found Arthur sitting on the top step clutching a tin full of marbles. He looked hunched and miserable until he spotted his sisters then he jumped up and ran to meet them, marbles rattling inside the tin.

  ‘Where’s my sweets?’ he demanded, dodging in between Lily and Evie, patting Lily’s pockets until he felt the paper bag then dipping in his hand to retrieve it.

  ‘You mean, “Lily, please may I have my sweets?”’ she teased. She wondered how long he’d been sitting on the cold step. ‘Were you waiting for someone to have a game of marbles with?’

  ‘Not really,’ Arthur said through teeth stuck together by a half-chewed lump of toffee. ‘I don’t care – I like playing by myself.’

  Evie smiled and ruffled his hair. ‘Who’s in the house? Is Mother in?’

  ‘No, just Dad and now Margie. Oh, and Uncle George and Tommy.’

  ‘That means they’re headed for the Green Cross,’ Evie predicted as, just then, their front door opened and their father came out followed by his brother. So far there was no sign of cousin Tommy.

  The two Br
iggs brothers didn’t look alike. Whereas Walter’s appearance seemed threadbare and stuck in a bygone era, George had managed to keep up with the times. He was clean shaven and upright, always to be seen in a collar and tie, with a waistcoat neatly buttoned under a tweed jacket. The two men were of a similar height, though, and had the same suspicious sideways tilt of the head, as if they thought the world meant to do them harm.

  When Walter spied Lily, he gave George a nudge with his elbow then limped towards her. ‘You’ll lend me a shilling,’ he said – not a request but an order.

  ‘Father, I don’t have one to spare,’ she began. ‘Mother needs—’

  ‘I don’t care what your mother says she needs. I need a shilling,’ he insisted. ‘And I don’t want you showing me up in the street neither.’

  She shook her head and glanced at her uncle, a sick feeling of humiliation churning in her stomach. This was rotten timing and she saw that she would have to give in.

  ‘Be nice, Lil,’ George advised. ‘Let the man enjoy a pint of beer down his local.’

  So Lily had no option but to take the money from her pocket and hand it over while Evie took Arthur’s hand and told him she would walk him up to the Common to see the shire horses.

  ‘Be thankful it’s only a bob,’ George smirked. ‘If you was my girl, I’d take the lot.’

  ‘And I’m glad I’m not your girl,’ Lily retorted, aware that Tommy and Margie had appeared on the steps, both in an ugly mood by the look of it.

  ‘What’s got into you, Margie Briggs?’ Tommy grumbled over his shoulder, taking the three steps in one jump. ‘You can’t stand a joke these days, can you?’

  Margie slammed the door shut.

  ‘Best not to ask ’cos you don’t want to know,’ Tommy warned Lily. Dressed like his father in his weekend best, with his dark hair slicked back, he was eager to be off, but not without a final upsetting jibe. ‘Tell your mother thanks for the dinner. It was a tasty Lancashire hotpot, ta very much.’

  ‘You didn’t!’ Lily was suddenly furious at the loss of the precious family meal. ‘Not all of it?’

  ‘Very tasty,’ Tommy repeated. ‘Come on, we’re wasting good drinking time.’ And he overtook the two older men to strut his way down the street.

  ‘Good riddance!’ Lily called after them. Then she stormed up the steps to tackle Margie over why she’d let the men eat them out of house and home.

  ‘That’ll be two Saturday nights on the trot that you’ve stayed in,’ Lily pointed out to Margie after the two sisters had settled their differences and retreated to their bedroom. It was then that Margie had announced that she wouldn’t bother to go down to the kitchen and wash her hair since she wouldn’t be going out that evening. The afternoon was grey and the light was dim. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’

  ‘Ha-ha, very funny, I’m sure.’ Margie, who was still in her work clothes, had her head stuck in a fashion magazine. She squinted to make out the print, gave up then threw it down in disgust.

  ‘No, I’m not joking,’ Lily insisted. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Why should anything be wrong? I just want to stay in and put my feet up for a change.’

  Lily sat down on the bed beside her. ‘It’s not still this silly row with Dorothy Brumfitt, is it?’

  Margie shook her head. ‘Dorothy can take a running jump for all I care.’

  ‘So it is her.’ Lily sighed, ready to let the subject drop until she remembered her promise to their mother. ‘Is there a boy in the case? You don’t need to tell me the details if you don’t want to, but is there?’

  Lily’s persistence caused Margie’s sullen resistance to crumble. ‘What if there is? And what if there’s nothing I can do about it and I just have to let Dorothy get on with it? I’m not going to sit there and watch it happen, am I?’

  ‘Sit where?’

  ‘With the other wallflowers at the Assembly Rooms, watching her steal him from under my nose.’

  ‘Steal who?’ Lily wanted to know.

  ‘What’s it matter who? You’ve wormed enough out of me already.’ Flinging herself down on the bed, Margie lay with her back to Lily.

  Lily stood up. What could she do to help Margie snap out of this? she wondered. She quickly decided flattery was her best tactic. ‘So this young man, whoever he is, either he needs a good pair of glasses or he should have his head examined.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because you’re worth two of Dorothy Brumfitt any day.’

  ‘You’re only saying that because you’re my sister.’ Up came the blanket over Margie’s head, making her voice sound muffled.

  ‘I’m saying it because it’s true. And the best thing you can do is stop sulking, get dolled up and get yourself down to the dance hall to prove it once and for all.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Margie said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’

  Swift footsteps on the stairs told Lily that Evie was on her way up. ‘And that’s all it is?’ she checked with Margie, whose gloom seemed settled and deep. ‘Just a silly fight over a boy?’

  ‘Father’s back with Uncle George and Tommy,’ Evie warned, bursting into the room with Arthur in tow.

  Meanwhile, there was only silence from Margie.

  Sensing a confrontation, Evie and Arthur made themselves scarce while Lily went downstairs to find Rhoda back home and doggedly preparing a meal from the leftover hotpot, adding potatoes and onions to what remained of the stew. She kept her back turned as Walter took off his jacket at the cellar head and invited his brother and nephew to sit at the table. The small room seemed full of their beery, sneering presence.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Walter asked Rhoda accusingly.

  She flinched but managed not to retaliate. ‘To Myra Lister’s, to help with the new baby. Then over on to Raglan Road to Doris Fuller to treat her bronchitis. I sat with her while her boy William went off for mustard plasters.’

  Lily came downstairs in time to hear her father’s churlish retort.

  ‘Aye and trust you to put everybody else’s family before your own as per usual.’ He held on to the back of a chair for balance and his words were slow and slurred. ‘You got paid for your trouble, did you?’

  ‘Not yet. They’ll pay me as soon as they find the money.’

  Walter turned to his brother. ‘You see what I have to put up with – a missis who’s never here when you need her. You’re better off without one, George, that’s all I can say.’

  Rhoda finished adding the vegetables, put the lid on the heavy pot then tried to lift it from the table into the oven. Lily saw her wince at its weight and rushed to help.

  ‘Let me,’ she offered, heartily wishing to see the back of George and Tommy. With them here, her father always seemed twice as bad, if that were possible. ‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’ she muttered to her cousin. It was a barbed question since Lily knew full well that her cousin, despite his Brylcreemed hair and smart Harris Tweed jacket, still lived with his father in a damp, cramped basement on Canal Road.

  ‘No, Miss Hoity Toity, nor a job to go to, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Tommy jeered.

  ‘Oh aye,’ George remarked, settling himself in the fireside chair and stretching out his legs. ‘I forgot – Lily turns her nose up at us ever since she went up into the mending room. But not for long, I reckon, not the way Calvert’s Mill is going.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that, pray tell?’ Rhoda rose at last to Lily’s defence, rounding on her brother-in-law and demanding an explanation.

  ‘Oh come on, Rhoda – everyone knows that times have changed for the worse and Stanley Calvert is struggling just like all the other mill owners around here, for all their grand houses, shiny motor cars and people to drive them around.’

  Rhoda went to the cutlery drawer and began rattling knives and forks down on to the table. ‘But he’s not one of the ones who’s laying people off so far as I know.’

  ‘Not yet, not “s
o far as you know”,’ Tommy mocked, while Lily gave him a look that could kill.

  ‘You think Calvert would tell you his plans, Rhoda?’ Walter broke in. ‘Not a chance. No, he’s got a man studying his order books right this minute, working out how many people he can afford to keep on and how many they must lay off. They do the sums and one fine morning, perhaps this coming Monday, he gets Harry Bainbridge to drive him down to Ghyll Road. He strides into the weaving shed, cock of the walk, and gives two loom tuners and three weft men their cards without even looking them in the eye. Then upstairs to the mending room and he struts in and says, “Last in, first out,” and that’s Lily being given her marching orders and Calvert doesn’t think twice.’

  ‘That’s just how it works,’ Tommy agreed.

  Walter’s long speech silenced Rhoda and filled Lily with dread. Neither could deny it – sackings were in the sooty, fog-filled air.

  ‘And you haven’t heard the best of it.’ Seeing Margie appear at the foot of the stairs, Tommy seemed to enjoy the women’s discomfort. ‘Have they, Margie? I take it you haven’t given them the full story yet?’

  Margie gasped then froze. She seemed to know what was coming but was incapable of uttering a word.

  ‘It was all the talk down at the Green Cross,’ Tommy went on, all the while grinning and staring at Margie. ‘People came up to me and said, “Whatever was your madcap cousin Margie thinking – acting like that, getting into a scrap with the girl on the gilling machine next to her and putting her job on the line? Doesn’t she know that Kingsley is laying people off left, right and centre?”’

  Rhoda stood silent at the far side of the room, her face in shadow. It was Lily who made a move to put an end to Tommy’s callous crowing.

  ‘Who got laid off?’ she demanded. ‘Who do you mean?’

  Tommy cocked his head to one side. ‘Shall I tell them, Margie, or shall you?’

  ‘Me. I will.’ Gathering her final shred of dignity, Margie spoke at last – quietly and as if the words cost her everything she had. ‘I got the sack, Mother. Sam Earby handed me my cards at dinner time today. So you see, I’ve no job to go to at Kingsley’s on Monday morning.’