The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  CHAPTER SIX

  Margie’s dismissal from her job was nothing short of a disaster. It sent Walter off into a rant that could be heard out in the street where Arthur played another of his solitary games, scaring the little boy so badly that he took himself off on to the Common, where he stayed until dark. Inside the house there was an atmosphere of dread.

  ‘I won’t stand for it!’ Walter swore at Margie, standing up from the table and banging it with his fist. ‘No one gets bed and board in this house without paying their way.’

  Margie swallowed hard, sickened by her father’s ridiculous hypocrisy but not bold enough to point it out. ‘Don’t worry, as soon as I can find a place to live, you won’t see me for dust,’ she said, her face drained of colour. She didn’t expect any mercy from her mother – or from Lily, for that matter – so she ignored their stricken faces, choosing instead to cast a defiant look at Tommy and George.

  ‘Well, that’s set the cat among the pigeons,’ Tommy declared, jauntily taking up his cap and heading for the door. ‘Come on, Dad, let’s leave ’em to it.’

  George soon joined his son on the top step. ‘Well, Walter, maybe next time you’ll stay alert to what’s going on around you,’ was his parting shot.

  Walter leaned heavily on the table, his chest heaving and his breathing coming in short, laboured bursts. ‘Sacked from a job and for what?’ he raged. ‘For brawling and acting the bloody fool.’

  ‘Father,’ Lily pleaded as he launched himself towards Margie.

  He was so unsteady that he had to clutch the back of a chair, which scraped across the stone floor under his weight. Lily stepped in to help him back on his feet.

  ‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ he snarled, pushing her to one side and making a second lunge in Margie’s direction.

  Margie tried to stand her ground but she was so pale it looked as though she might faint and she couldn’t think of any words with which to defend herself against the onslaught.

  ‘You’re not staying in my house a day longer, do you hear? I don’t care where you go or how you live, just so long as I don’t have to look at your nasty face.’

  ‘Mother!’ Horrified, Lily appealed to Rhoda, who had scarcely moved since Margie dropped her bombshell.

  Rhoda’s eyelids flickered and she shook her head.

  ‘Please, Mother, tell Father not to be so hasty. Let Margie go down to Kingsley’s and plead for her job back. You never know, Sam Earby might give her another chance.’

  Again Rhoda shook her head.

  ‘You see that? Not even your own mother will stick up for you and I don’t blame her!’ Walter yelled, his face inches from Margie’s. ‘We’ve watched you grow too big for your boots, don’t think we haven’t.’

  ‘I’ll go right this minute,’ Margie declared. ‘I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Good bloody riddance,’ Walter muttered, running out of steam at last and getting caught up in a bout of coughing. He stepped away from Margie and watched her head for the stairs.

  ‘Go where?’ Lily demanded, running after her and catching her up on the first-floor landing. She found her dry eyed and determined. ‘Think about it, Margie. You’ve got no money and no job. Where will you go?’

  ‘I’ll work something out, don’t you worry.’

  ‘But why not just lie low and wait until things have calmed down? You know how Father is when he gets back from the Cross. But he’ll sleep it off and by this time tomorrow it’ll all have blown over.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Margie said with an anguished shake of her head. ‘That’s not the point and you know it.’

  ‘Then what is the point?’

  ‘The point is me, Lily. Not Father – me!’ Margie went on up to the attic, hardly caring whether or not Lily followed. When she got there, she opened the low door into the loft space and dragged out a dusty suitcase with the initials AWP stamped on the lid. ‘The point is that I won’t stay here. I won’t, I can’t!’

  ‘But this is your home,’ Lily wailed, watching Margie open a drawer and throw items of clothing – under-things then her cream blouse and dark skirt; a patterned, long-sleeved dress; her dancing shoes and a silk handkerchief printed with dainty bluebirds, which she’d got from Lily on her sixteenth birthday – into the brown case then slamming down the lid. Everything was moving so fast, like a train without brakes heading for a collision.

  ‘Not any more,’ Margie insisted. Looking around the room and seeing nothing else that belonged to her, she picked up the suitcase and held it like a shield in front of her as if to ward off the remnants of Lily’s arguments.

  ‘This is where you’ve lived all your life, you were born here. How can you say it’s not your home?’

  ‘It’s a poor kind of home where a father steals money from his daughter’s purse and a mother looks down on you and calls you common,’ Margie said bitterly.

  ‘She didn’t mean it,’ Lily protested. ‘She worries about you, that’s all. And when did Father steal your money?’

  ‘Not my money,’ Margie countered, ‘because I have enough sense to hide it from him and keep it safe. It’s your money he takes and you’re soft enough to let him have it, even though he uses it to get drunk and turn on poor Arthur. You ought not to give it to him, Lily. You really ought not.’

  ‘Hush! There’s a lot of things we ought not to do,’ Lily replied, almost overwhelmed by her sister’s passionate speech.

  ‘Like picking a fight with Dorothy and getting the sack?’ a sullen Margie challenged. ‘Come on, out with it, Lily, say what you mean.’

  ‘So Tommy wasn’t lying – it really was Dorothy who was behind it. What did she say to you that was so bad?’

  ‘It’s not what she said so much as what she did.’ For a moment Margie faltered and almost let down her defences then she changed her mind. ‘In any case, Sam Earby saw that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other so Dorothy Brumfitt got her marching orders as well as me, if you must know.’

  Lily shook her head to rid herself of the undignified image of the two girls battling it out on Kingsley’s spinning-shed floor. Then she pressed on. ‘So what did she do?’

  ‘You shan’t worm it out of me however hard you try,’ Margie retorted. ‘What went on between me and Dorothy is my business.’

  ‘All right, have it your own way. But ask yourself – is she really worth walking out of your job and your home over?’ A frantic Lily would have done anything to stop Margie leaving but she knew she was running out of reasons to make her stay.

  ‘I don’t give tuppence for my rotten job.’ Margie swung the suitcase down to the floor and reached for her green coat hanging on the hook behind the door. ‘As for my home – if I’m not wanted here, why should I stay?’

  ‘But you are wanted,’ Lily cried, feeling the argument slip beyond her. She made one last desperate appeal. ‘I want you to stay. Evie wants you to stay and Arthur does too.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Margie said as she buttoned her coat up to the chin, picked up her case and carried it down the stairs.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At least I walked out with my head held high, Margie told herself uncertainly as she sat on the number 12 tram with the battered suitcase on the rack above her head. She was trembling and fighting back tears as she remembered her father’s cruel words and her mother’s indifference.

  The conductor came and took her fare, gave her a ticket then studied her unhappy face. ‘Are you all right, miss?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes thanks, I’m tickety-boo,’ she replied, chin up but bottom lip trembling. She stared out at the flattened, yellowish grass of the Common and at the escarpment of black rock beyond, noticing rooks circling over bare trees. I’m glad I walked out, she thought defiantly. And I’m glad I didn’t tell Lily everything that’s been going on lately. What good would it have done to go into details?

  ‘If you call this tickety-boo, I’d hate to see you when you were miserable,’ the middle-aged conductor commented
as he went down the aisle to take fares from an elderly couple at the front of the tram.

  The trouble was that the mysterious ‘details’ that Margie had kept from Lily wouldn’t leave her alone. They kept biting at her heels like a bad-tempered terrier, dragging her back to the first silly argument with Dorothy.

  ‘Hey-up, here she comes, the Queen of Sheba!’ Dorothy had mocked as Margie had stepped off the tram in the centre of town exactly a week earlier. She’d been standing under the lamp post where Margie had arranged to meet up with Billy Robertshaw, her blonde hair artificially waved, her eyebrows tweezered, her cupid-lips painted crimson.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Margie had challenged, wanting a clear run at Billy when he showed up, not to be bothering with Dorothy, who should’ve been down at the Assembly Rooms with Hilda and the rest of the girls, not here at the tram stop, making trouble.

  ‘Oh, look – Her Royal Highness doesn’t want me getting in her road, spoiling her night out! Well, this is a free country and I can go where I like. Anyhow, I could ask you the same question – what are you doing here?’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ Margie had flung back at her. She had her new hairdo, she’d dressed up nicely and though she felt nervous about the meeting with Billy, she wouldn’t let Dorothy see this.

  ‘That’s as may be, but I know you’re here to meet Calvert’s gardener and I’m here to tell you you’ll have a long wait,’ Dorothy crowed, enjoying the sensation of cutting Margie’s legs from under her. ‘Billy said for me to let you know he couldn’t make it after all.’

  With a small shake of her head to disguise the shock, Margie started to walk away. Then she turned back. ‘That’s a big fib,’ she challenged.

  Dorothy had shrugged. ‘Please yourself. He wanted me to pass on the message to save you waiting in the cold. I’ve done my job, so ta-ta, Margie.’

  ‘Wait. Did he say why he couldn’t make it?’

  Dorothy had raised what was left of her eyebrows while she considered her answer. ‘From what I know about Billy, you must have scared him off. Aye, I reckon that would be it.’

  Her smugness had rattled Margie at last. ‘Not as much as your ugly mug would scare him,’ she’d retorted.

  At this Dorothy’s temper had snapped and she’d sprung at Margie, would have slapped her cheek if Margie hadn’t dodged out of the way. Dorothy had overbalanced and fallen against the lamp post, but Margie hadn’t followed up her advantage. Instead, she’d curled her lip and stalked off towards the next stop. ‘Billy is all yours,’ she’d called over her shoulder, holding back her tears until the next tram had come along.

  The worst of it was – she truly hadn’t been sure if Billy’s message was genuine or if Dorothy had made the whole thing up to spite her. And afterwards she’d been too proud to find out.

  Or no, that wasn’t actually the worst of it. The really, really bad part Margie had kept to herself and had refused even to think about. Even now, sitting on the tram to Overcliffe, she blocked it from her mind.

  ‘Ada Street!’

  The conductor’s voice shook her back into the present and she quickly stood up to retrieve her case from the overhead rack, hurrying to the platform at the back of the tram and stepping off into the late-afternoon air. She stood for a moment, gathering her courage as she stared out over the vast, empty moorland beyond Linton Park – again there were rooks sailing on wind currents against dark grey clouds, and a line of elm trees on the near horizon. A man with two thin greyhounds crossed the street and passed between the park gates without looking at her.

  Margie turned and set off down Ada Street. When she came to number 10, she rat-tat-tatted on the familiar green door with its lion-head knocker. She heard footsteps in the tiled corridor and waited for Bert Preston to open it – just far enough for him to peer out.

  The old man looked at her through the narrow opening, head to one side. ‘Where’s Arthur?’ he asked, as if this could be the only reason for a Saturday-evening visit from Margie.

  With a supreme effort she managed to keep her voice steady. ‘He’s at home, Granddad. I’m by myself.’

  Bert took one look at the suitcase – the one with his initials, AWP – Albert William Preston – which Rhoda had used to cart her meagre belongings down to Canal Road all those years earlier.

  ‘What happened – did your father chuck you out?’

  She nodded and shivered. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Aye, come in,’ he said curtly.

  He opened the door to let her step inside. He would ask no questions, would offer no opinion or sympathy over what might have taken place on Albion Lane. The simple fact was that Margie was his granddaughter and he would give her a roof over her head, just as he would if it was Lily, Evie or Arthur who had come knocking. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he said. ‘You sit yourself down and make yourself at home.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As Margie took the tram to Overcliffe, Lily stood at the kitchen window fretting and planning how to protect Arthur from the aftershock of their sister’s departure. Grateful that she’d heard nothing from their father since he’d taken himself off to his room and glad that Rhoda had been called back to Doris Fuller’s house, Lily spotted Arthur’s small figure returning from the Common as daylight faded, dragging his feet and looking apprehensive as he came up the steps.

  He opened the door and peered in, relieved to find only Lily in the room.

  ‘Where’s everyone?’ he asked.

  ‘You must be frozen!’ she exclaimed without answering. She rushed to take his cap and draw him close to the fire.

  ‘Is Father in bed?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lily sat him in the fireside chair then took his cold hands between hers and chafed them. ‘And Mother had to go out.’

  Gradually Arthur stopped shivering and looked nervously around the room. ‘Where’s Margie?’

  Lily kept her voice steady and she managed to look him in the eye as she answered his latest question. ‘Well, you see, Arthur, she’s gone away for a day or two.’

  ‘Lucky thing,’ Arthur said, brightening suddenly because he knew that days away meant a Sunday School trip to Filey, with donkey rides on the beach and if you were very good, money for an ice cream before piling into the charabanc for the journey home. The idea helped him to put aside the memory of his father’s raised voice that had sent him scuttling off to the Common. ‘If she’s at the seaside, will she bring me back a stick of rock?’

  His naivety tugged at Lily’s heart strings. She hugged him and wished all the world’s problems could be solved by a stick of Blackpool rock. She took him up to the girls’ attic bedroom, snuggled him under the woollen blankets and told him to have a nap until she called him down for tea.

  She tiptoed back downstairs in time to find Evie and her best friend, Peggy Bainbridge, coming into the house.

  ‘Hush!’ Lily warned, afraid that the girls’ voices would disturb Walter. ‘Peggy, will you do me a favour and run up to Annie’s house? Tell her we’ve had the usual do with Father and I can’t come out tonight.’

  Harry’s younger sister, who was thirteen and still at school, was a quiet, gentle girl dressed in a long grey sweater and black skirt, her thick, dark brown hair loosely tied back by a tartan ribbon. She readily agreed to Lily’s request and hurried off.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Evie wanted to know.

  Lily had been relieved that her youngest sister had been spared the sight of their father unleashing his anger on Margie, for Evie was a sensitive soul and would dissolve into tears whenever voices were raised. ‘Hush,’ she said again, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling and struggling to find words to explain what had gone on.

  ‘Is Father …? Well, has he been down the Cross?’ Evie interpreted Lily’s signals correctly.

  ‘Yes but, as I said, he’s sleeping it off. And Arthur’s taking a nap in our room.’

  Evie frowned. She guessed there was more to come and that it must be bad. The moment she’d
set foot in the house, she’d picked up the Saturday-afternoon, treading-on-eggshells atmosphere and she could see that Lily was struggling to stay calm. ‘And what else, Lily? Have Mother and Margie had another row?’

  ‘No, this time it was Father and Margie.’

  ‘Was it very bad?’ was Evie’s hurried, anxious reaction.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it was.’ Though Lily could justify keeping Arthur in the dark, she decided it wasn’t fair to beat about the bush any longer with Evie. ‘I have to tell you something and you’re not going to like it,’ she began quietly as she drew the curtains, lit the gas mantle and sat her down at the table.

  Evie pulled her long plait forward over one shoulder and began to loosen it from its ribbon, a frown creasing her smooth brow.

  ‘Margie’s lost her job at Kingsley’s,’ Lily went on.

  Evie’s frown deepened. ‘But she’ll soon find another?’ she ventured.

  If only it were that easy, Lily thought. ‘She’ll have to start looking on Monday but with things being the way they are it might take a while,’ she cautioned. ‘Meanwhile, Mother will have to rely on two wages coming into the house instead of three. We’ll have to tighten our belts for a while.’

  Evie shook her hair loose then nodded eagerly. ‘I’ve already told Peggy I won’t be going out tonight, so that’s a start.’

  ‘That seems a shame.’ Lily felt sad that Evie couldn’t enjoy splashing out a little of her first week’s wages on a night out.

  ‘It doesn’t bother me. I feel fit to drop.’ Evie sighed. ‘And now I’m glad I won’t be wasting the money.’

  Sitting across the table from her, Lily leaned over and squeezed her sister’s hand. ‘But remember that things are bound to get better, with or without Margie’s wage. My money is set to go up just as soon as I’ve passed muster in the mending department.’

  Hearing noises from the room above, the sisters stopped talking while their father coughed and then fell silent.