The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Well?’ Rhoda demanded in a relentless tone, without for a moment taking her eyes off her middle daughter. Where was Margie’s blithe confidence now? Where was the devil-may-care spirit that had brought mother and daughter into so many conflicts, ever since Margie was old enough to walk, talk and stamp her tiny feet? ‘Don’t go crying and bemoaning your lot,’ Rhoda warned. ‘Tears don’t wash with me, Margie, and you know it.’

  Pulling herself upright, Margie took a deep breath. ‘I suppose I am – going to have the baby, I mean.’

  Rhoda gave an imperceptible nod and seemed to brace herself for further discussion. ‘And have you told anyone else besides Lily – your granddad, for a start? Because if you haven’t, he’s the next person you should talk to.’

  Margie closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the bed, feeling her head swim. ‘I’ll tell him when I’m good and ready,’ she argued.

  ‘No, it has to be today, before I leave. That’s only fair.’

  Margie’s shoulders slumped again with the weight of what she had to do. ‘And if I don’t tell him, you will?’

  ‘He’s giving you a roof over your head, isn’t he? He deserves to know.’

  ‘All right, Mother, don’t go on.’ An exasperated Margie admitted defeat. ‘I’ll tell Granddad everything then it’ll be his turn to put me out on the street, just like Father.’

  Rhoda winced then walked across the room to stare out of the window. ‘Don’t go blaming your father,’ she warned. ‘It was you who got yourself into this mess, Margie Briggs, no one else.’

  Now Margie’s desperation surfaced as anger. She stood up and paced the floor. ‘And don’t I know it! Yes, it was me and yes, I’m paying the price with no one to help me. It’s no more than I expected after Father turned me out!’

  ‘Who says there’s no one to help you?’ Rhoda asked in a softer tone, her gaze fixed on the yard below. ‘Why am I here now, pray tell?’

  Margie stopped pacing and came to the window. ‘To help me?’ she asked in a faltering voice, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.

  ‘That goes without saying,’ her mother murmured, for once letting go of all judgement and taking her daughter by the hand. ‘As long as I’m spared, Margie, I’ll be here when the time comes and that’s a promise.’

  ‘She doesn’t look well,’ Bert commented as he closed the kitchen door on Rhoda.

  ‘Who – Mother?’ Lily knew who he meant but she played for time until she was sure that Margie hadn’t blown her top the second their mother had entered the bedroom.

  ‘Yes. Has she seen the doctor?’

  ‘No, she says she doesn’t need to and anyway she hasn’t the money.’

  ‘What’s been the matter with her?’ Taking four cups from a cupboard over the sink, Bert set them out on the table and waited for the kettle to boil.

  ‘She was poorly last weekend – sickness and a headache. This is her first time out of the house.’

  ‘She chose a rotten day for it.’ Bert glanced out of the window at a heavy rain that had started to fall. ‘This lot could turn to snow in a bit.’

  ‘I’ll see she gets home all right,’ Lily promised, settling down now that she’d had time to ascertain that the voices from upstairs hadn’t turned to screaming and shouting, not yet at least. ‘How are you, Granddad? How are you and Margie rubbing along?’

  Hovering by the kettle, the old man sniffed. ‘I stay out of the road mostly. Margie does what she likes.’

  ‘And you don’t mind her staying here?’

  ‘No, I like a bit of company every now and then, especially at teatime before I head off to the New Inn for my usual pint.’ Listening to the noises from upstairs, Bert lowered his voice. ‘I hope your mother goes easy on the poor girl. She can be a bit harsh at times, can Rhoda.’ Sensing a hidden knowledge behind her grandfather’s words, Lily sat up with a jolt but said nothing.

  ‘What’s up – has the cat got your tongue?’ Bert’s gap-toothed smile had the effect of further silencing Lily. ‘You’re sitting there wondering if I know the truth behind why Margie hot-footed it up here to stay with me and yet you don’t want to say something you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Granddad, I—’

  ‘Well, love, I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s plain as the nose on my face that Margie’s scared to go back home because she’s in the family way. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  Lily felt a blaze of embarrassment burn up from deep inside and turn her cheeks bright red, quickly followed by a strong desire to defend Margie. ‘Don’t blame her, Granddad. Margie was too young to know what she was doing. She might not let on, but she’s having a hard time coming to terms with this.’

  ‘I can see that,’ the old man mumbled as he reached for a thick cloth to protect his hand as he lifted the steaming kettle from the hob. ‘And I’m thinking that Rhoda arriving on the doorstep isn’t going to help.’

  Lily glanced at the ceiling as she heard Margie’s quick, light steps pacing the floorboards. ‘I don’t know about that – we’ll have to wait and see.’ She sighed, crossing her fingers as her mother spoke and Margie replied.

  ‘You can stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ Rhoda told Margie, sitting beside her on the hard mattress in Bert’s spare room. ‘You’re not the first and you won’t be the last that this has happened to.’

  Margie’s throat constricted as she sniffed back the tears that threatened to engulf her. ‘But how can I help how I feel? This … well, it alters everything for me, doesn’t it?’

  Rhoda didn’t deny it. ‘A baby takes a lot of looking after,’ she agreed. ‘You might not be ready and if not there’s plenty of people who would be willing to step in.’

  ‘You mean, give it away to a stranger?’ Instinctively Margie shook her head and placed one arm across her stomach. She’d only just acknowledged that this was a real baby she was carrying so she was far from being ready to consider giving it up. In fact, the idea made her almost yelp with painful protest.

  ‘It could be for the best.’ Long experience told Rhoda that life as a young girl struggling to bring up a baby alone might be more than Margie could manage. ‘Where would you live, for a start? What would you use for money?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Margie bleated, her heart thudding in her chest as she battled with the reality of what was happening.

  ‘In any case, the main thing is to go down and tell your granddad, see if he’ll let you stay on here for a bit.’

  Margie nodded. ‘Give me a minute to pull myself together, will you?’

  Sitting beside her tearful daughter, Rhoda’s thoughts flew back to those early days when Margie woke at the crack of dawn and rattled the bars of her cot, yelling to be let out. Her baby hair had been gloriously dark and curly, her round face pretty as a picture. And it had been four-year-old Lily who’d kept the baby happy by sewing simple clothes for little wooden dolls and later playing with a bat and ball in the street, until Margie had joined up with a gang of boys and gone off to muck about all summer’s day long on the Common and there’d been neither sight nor sound of her until she’d shown up at teatime, her legs muddy and grazed, her face ruddy and the smell of fresh air clinging to her hair.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Rhoda recalled, ‘I was by myself when you were born because your father was away at the war. It wasn’t so very different after all.’

  ‘But you knew Father was coming back,’ Margie reminded her, intrigued in spite of her own weighty preoccupations.

  ‘No, I never knew for certain. So many men didn’t come home,’ Rhoda said quietly. ‘My brothers went away to the trenches and I never saw them again, not one of them. In that case, women were left to deal with things by themselves and by and large we got on all right.’ There was a silence as each pondered their own thoughts. ‘It was an odd time, though. Enlisted men lived life as if every day was their last. They got engaged in a big rush before they went off to France, and some girls didn’t even wait for a ring on their finger. No one thought the worse of
them for that.’

  The notion that this was a familiar situation to Rhoda and that it was not so shocking after all sank in and Margie risked a faint, brave smile.

  ‘We’ll manage between us, you’ll see,’ Rhoda insisted. ‘Lily will always be ready to offer a hand and so will Evie. But you mustn’t expect your father to come round to the idea straight away. It’ll take a bit more time for him to get used to it.’ There was another pause and a loud sigh. ‘I’m partly to blame, I know. I shouldn’t have left you to yourself so much. I should’ve kept a closer eye, only I hoped I’d brought you up right and you’d turn out sensible like your sisters. And you might have done if this hadn’t happened.’

  ‘Mother …’ Margie began a sentence but couldn’t finish it, stung by the comparison with Lily and Evie.

  ‘You never were like them, though.’ Sighing again, Rhoda stood up from the bed. ‘Now if you had half of Lily’s common sense and she had a little more of your get up and go—’

  ‘Mother!’ Margie said a second time. ‘You’d know that Lily has plenty of get up and go as you call it if you could see her at work or tripping the light fantastic down the Assembly Rooms with Sybil and Annie. It’s just that at home you put too much on her shoulders.’

  ‘Yes, I do – I take her for granted,’ Rhoda acknowledged, pulling her shawl tight across her chest and heading for the door. ‘Are you ready to face the music, Margie? Shall we go down and see what your granddad has to say?’

  ‘Well,’ Bert said when Margie had blurted out her news. Nothing else – just one terse word and a nod of his head in confirmation of what he’d already guessed.

  Margie’s heart was in her mouth. Why it was so much harder and more painful to risk losing her grandfather’s good opinion than it had been with Lily or her mother she couldn’t work out. She only knew that the undemonstrative old man’s disappointment in her would cut her to the quick.

  ‘She says she’ll go ahead and have the baby,’ Rhoda told Lily and Bert.

  ‘Aye, poor lass, that’s what I expected to hear.’ Bert stood with his back to the kitchen window, his work-worn face lit by a glow from the fire.

  ‘You’re not cross with me, Granddad?’ Margie struggled against a fresh bout of crying, picking up and clinging to the two words of sympathy in his short, non-committal sentence.

  ‘Of course he’s not cross.’ Relieved at the turn of events, Lily jumped in. ‘No one’s angry with you, Margie. Just the opposite – we all want to do our best to help.’

  ‘Let me speak for myself,’ Bert chided, thrusting his clenched fists deep in his trouser pockets. ‘It’s not you I’m down on, Margie. It’s the devil who took advantage of you – that’s who I’d like to get my hands on.’

  ‘Aye and she’s not saying anything on that score.’ Rhoda settled herself on a chair at the table, inviting Margie and Lily to do the same. ‘I think, Lily, you have an idea of your own about that, though.’

  Alarmed, Lily threw Margie a quick glance, which was returned by a glare of defiance. ‘What makes you say that?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘Because you do,’ Rhoda insisted. ‘And if Margie’s too pig headed to tell us, you’d better do it for her.’

  ‘Honestly, Margie hasn’t said a word to me. I’d only be guessing if I gave you a name, and that wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

  ‘A guess would do for a start,’ her granddad countered, coming to sit at the table. ‘If it turns out you’re wrong, Margie can set us straight.’

  ‘I’m not going to say anything!’ Margie herself assured them. They could do and say what they liked, she wasn’t about to give them the name of the father. She didn’t see clearly the reason why not, but the fact was, with everything else in her life unravelling and out of control, this was the one thing she could keep back and decide what to do about at a later date.

  Bert, though, wouldn’t let it drop. Yes, he was secretly disappointed in his granddaughter, and yes, he foresaw big problems ahead for her, but for now he fixed his attention on the one thing that Margie wasn’t prepared to share with them. ‘The way I see it, the father, whoever he is, needs a good hiding for getting you into trouble. Who is it, Margie? Is it one of the lads in your neck of the woods?’

  Like a child brought up before the headmaster in school and facing six of the best, Margie pursed her lips and stared at her hands, which she held tightly clasped and resting on the table, allowing Lily, Rhoda and Bert to run through a few names in their own minds – Ernie Durant, Billy Robertshaw, the dreaded Frank Summerskill, or perhaps someone at Kingsley’s, such as the overseer, Sam Earby, or one of the workers under him in the spinning shed.

  After a long, tense silence, Rhoda turned to her eldest daughter. ‘So, who do you say it is, Lily?’

  Lily wriggled on the hook of her mother and grandfather’s piercing stares but she stayed loyal to Margie. ‘It’s not my place,’ she insisted. ‘Margie will tell us when she’s good and ready. In the meantime, I say we all rally round and help her get ready for this baby to be born.’

  Margie drew a sharp breath and gave Lily a grateful glance. ‘Anyway, Granddad, I don’t want you getting into trouble on my account. I’ll fight my own battles if I have to, thank you very much.’

  Touched by her bravado, the old man coughed to clear his throat then stood up and busied himself by picking up the coal bucket and throwing more lumps on the fire. ‘Well, the first thing we have to get straight, Margie Briggs, is that you stay put here in Ada Street. There’s no need to think of shifting back to Albion Lane, not while your father carries on the way he is. Anyway, your mother’s not well – she needs her rest, not to be worrying over you.’

  Rhoda didn’t argue with this, Lily and Margie noticed. In fact, she nodded and seemed happy to let her father make plans for Margie.

  ‘Lily, you can do some shopping for Margie every now and then,’ Bert decided. ‘I’ll give you the money. She’ll need good food to build her up – meat and potatoes, plenty of eggs, milk, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m not poorly, I can go to Cliff Street and do my own shopping,’ Margie protested.

  ‘But later on Lily can do it,’ he insisted with a meaningful look at Rhoda.

  ‘And you’re not hiding me away either,’ Margie was adamant. Her grandfather sighed and drew her mother out into the front room to talk in more detail about the money and other necessities for Margie’s upkeep. ‘By the way, it isn’t Billy,’ Margie confided in her sister. ‘I know that’s what you were thinking but you’re wrong.’

  ‘All right, I’ll cross him off the list,’ Lily conceded. ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Billy so I’m glad that he’s out of the picture, even if it leaves the mystery unsolved.’ Mention of his name brought to mind the message she had to pass on. ‘By the way, he’s not going to be there tonight – he asked me to tell you.’

  If Margie was upset, she didn’t let it show. Instead, she took it on the chin. ‘That Billy, you never can believe a word he says!’

  ‘It’s probably for the best, if what you say is true – about him not being involved.’

  ‘The thing is, I’ve been doing my best to make him think he was,’ Margie confessed with an air of having nothing left to lose.

  Lily’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Could he have been?’ she demanded. ‘I mean, could Billy have …?’

  ‘Like I said, I was doing my best to turn it into a possibility.’

  ‘Oh, Margie!’ Lily thought back to her embarrassing talk with Billy about Margie’s behaviour outside Linton Park gates. ‘That was wrong of you. You were jumping straight out of the frying pan into the fire if that was your plan.’

  Pressing her lips together, Margie nodded. ‘But I thought if he liked me, we could maybe make a go of it, Billy and me.’

  ‘Not by tricking him. Anyway, he’d have worked it out for himself eventually.’

  ‘Not if I waited and told him the baby had come a few weeks early. That happens, you know.’

  ‘Margie
,’ Lily groaned.

  ‘Don’t “Margie” me like that, Lily. You don’t know what you’d try if you were in my position. And if Dorothy Brumfitt hadn’t jumped in and stolen Billy from under my nose, it could have worked out just fine.’

  ‘Well, she did and it didn’t.’ Lily set the seal on that situation. She knew they only had a few minutes left before their mother and grandfather would return. ‘You still have time to tell me who the real father is,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, but what I will say, between you and me and these four walls, is that none of this was really my doing.’ Still at the table, sitting opposite each other, Margie waited nervously for Lily’s reaction.

  ‘So someone took advantage of you?’ Lily gasped. ‘When? Where was this?’

  Margie shook her head as if trying to rid herself of the memory of what had happened. ‘You won’t squeeze a lot more out of me, but I want you to know this much – this person, the man responsible – he’d invited me into town to the City Varieties and afterwards he took me to the pub next door and he bought me a sherry or two – enough to make me giddy. And after that, that’s when it happened.’

  ‘Where?’ Lily repeated as Margie drew to a faltering conclusion.

  Margie shuddered, and when she spoke again her voice was hesitant and her eyes brimming with tears. ‘It doesn’t matter where. All I’m saying is, it came out of the blue. I wasn’t ready for him and it was all over almost before I knew it was happening.’ Her face pale and stricken at the memory and her hands trembling on the plain pine table, Margie had reached the end of her confession, leaving no time for Lily to say anything before Bert and Rhoda came back into the room. Rhoda was obviously ready to depart.

  ‘We’ve decided that I’ll be the one to tell your father and Evie,’ she announced to Margie who tried in vain to dry her tears. ‘It’ll be best to keep Arthur in the dark for now, though.’

  ‘But, Lily, we’d be happy for you to drop by with the young’un whenever you feel like it,’ Bert added. ‘My door’s always open – you know that.’