The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Harry’s a good boy.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘He would never run Billy over in cold blood.’

  ‘That’s right, he wouldn’t.’ Listening to Rhoda as she sat with her in the fading light, Lily’s trust in Harry gathered strength.

  ‘So you’ll tell him that?’ Rhoda urged. ‘You’ll go to see him in prison and say we’re behind him every step of the way? He’ll want to hear that from you, Lily, and the sooner the better.’

  Lily sighed. ‘You’re right. I know you are.’

  ‘Then what’s stopping you?’

  ‘For a start, Harry might not want me to visit him.’

  ‘Don’t be daft – of course he will.’

  ‘But, Mother, even thinking about the prison makes me shudder. I don’t know if I could do any good and if I broke down in tears in front of Harry, I’d only make things worse for him.’

  ‘You won’t, Lily. You’re stronger than you think.’ Dispelling her daughter’s doubts in her no-nonsense way, Rhoda made firm plans for the visit. ‘You can catch the bus to Leeds – that’s quicker than the train. Take Harry something nice – a block of soap, a couple of new handkerchiefs. Tell him you’ll stand by him.’

  ‘I already have,’ Lily confessed. ‘Before they arrested him – I went round to Raglan Road and promised I’d go on loving him, no matter what.’

  ‘Then say it again.’ Rhoda’s voice began to fade and she sighed. A while later she asked, ‘You can tell me to mind my own business, Lily, but I’d like to know – has Harry asked you to marry him?’

  Lily’s heart lurched and she avoided looking at Rhoda. ‘He has,’ she replied, staring down at her hands.

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said I couldn’t, not now.’

  Rhoda gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘And that was you, bottling things up and putting others before yourself as usual, was it?’

  The sharp question drew Lily’s attention back to her mother’s face. ‘Surely you of all people can see why not.’

  ‘That’s you all over, Lily – holding back and not saying what you really feel. And it’s true there was a time when I would have said, “That’s my girl. I’m proud of you for doing your duty.” But not any more, not when all’s said and done.’

  ‘Was I wrong to turn him down, then?’ The idea, coming from her mother, astonished Lily and she paused to turn things over in her mind. ‘What about Arthur? What about Margie? How can they manage without me?’

  ‘They won’t be without you,’ Rhoda pointed out with another frustrated sigh. ‘You can still lend a helping hand, married or not, especially if you and Harry find a house on Albion Lane or Raglan Road and Arthur can come and go as he pleases.’

  Rhoda’s surprising opinions came like a bolt from the blue and Lily stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ the dying woman said with her old sharpness. ‘I’m only trying to knock some sense into you. And do I need to remind you what I did when I was in your shoes, when Walter went down on one knee at Ada Street and I had my three brothers and your granddad to look after at the time? It didn’t stop me from saying yes, did it?’

  ‘No,’ Lily said slowly, with ever-increasing wonder.

  ‘I upped and got married, packed my bag and moved out, not without thinking long and hard before I did it, though. I asked myself over and over, was I doing wrong by putting myself first? What would the neighbours say if I left my father and three brothers to cope? But in the end, it was my heart that ruled my head.’

  ‘And you married Father.’ The tormented, earthbound birds in Lily’s mind’s eye flew up into the sky and soared like skylarks. Tears of gratitude filled her eyes.

  ‘You love Harry, you say?’ Rhoda insisted. ‘Well, now’s the time to show him how much. This is your chance of happiness and I’m saying you should take it, Lily – take it with both hands – never mind what other people say. You’re the only ones that matter – you and Harry.’

  ‘Mother, are you sure?’ Lily managed to ask in a faltering voice. The birds soared and sang high in a cloudless sky.

  ‘Certain. If Harry’s the one for you, don’t turn your back on him when he needs you. Give him something to cling on to there in Armley.’ Rhoda held Lily’s attention with all the passion that remained within her weak frame. ‘Do that one thing and let the rest fall into place. And it will – you can rely on that.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Visitor for prisoner number 327!’ a clerk called out in the small, airless waiting room at the prison gate. Lily checked her slip of paper with Harry’s number printed on, got up and nervously followed a warder down the steps and across a cobbled walkway into the remand wing. Up a narrow stone staircase they went and along an echoing metal landing with cells to either side. Each cell door had a small, barred window with a metal plate that could be drawn across at night from the outside but during the day it was left open, allowing prisoners to press their faces to the bars and call out as visitors passed by. Stiff with fright and refusing to glance to either left or right, Lily ignored the crude catcalls, tightly gripping the bag containing soap, flannel and comb that she’d brought for Harry.

  At the end of the landing, the warder led her into a draughty room containing twenty or so remand prisoners and their visitors. He sat her down at a rough deal table by a window covered by an iron grille where she waited with nerves stretched taut for Harry to be fetched. After what felt like an age, he came into the visiting room dressed in grey prison overalls and accompanied by a different uniformed warder who led him to the table where Lily sat.

  He sat down opposite her, feeling a mixture of disbelief and relief that she’d finally come to see him after two endless weeks of incarceration. He did his best to assume his old jovial manner. ‘What’s that you’ve brought me?’ he asked, pointing to the brown paper bag Lily had carried in. ‘Is it a cream bun from Sykes’ – something I can have for my tea?’

  ‘It’s soap,’ she replied, studying his face closely, recognizing his attempts to lighten the mood. He looked the same as usual, only paler, she thought, but how he felt inside she couldn’t begin to guess.

  ‘What – do I pong that bad?’

  ‘It was Mother’s idea. I have to go back home and give her a blow-by-blow account of how you’re bearing up.’

  ‘Tell her from me it’s cushy in here,’ Harry told Lily, still forcing a chipper tone. ‘I get all my meals regular as clockwork and a good night’s kip. What more can you ask?’

  ‘Harry,’ Lily interrupted. She didn’t know what she wanted to say, she only knew he didn’t have to go on pretending for her sake.

  ‘What?’

  Pushing the crumpled bag aside, she leaned forward and spoke earnestly. ‘It’s me, Lily, you’re talking to.’

  Her loving look and soft words broke through the barriers but he didn’t trust himself to speak until he’d got control of his emotions. He reached across the table and placed his hands over hers, gazing at her and drinking in every detail of her beautiful, troubled face.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about you, Harry – what you must be thinking locked away in here, if you’re eating and sleeping properly, how you manage to pass the time – everything.’

  Glancing across the room at the nearest warden as if expecting a reprimand for continuing to clasp Lily’s hands between his, Harry at last let his defences come down. ‘The powers that be say that they’re going to let me work in the library,’ he told her softly. ‘Sorting out books and putting them back on the shelves, and the like. It’ll be better than being locked up in my cell day in, day out.’

  ‘That’s something,’ she breathed, her heart squeezed by his ongoing attempt at optimism under the shadow of the hangman’s noose. ‘It’s not just Mother who wants to hear how you are – we’re all behind you,’ she assured him. ‘No one thinks for a second that you did it, Harry.’

  He nodded and gripped her hands more tightly.
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br />   ‘And I’ve lain awake at night wondering what I can do to help, but I end up going round and round in circles. I mean to say, why don’t the police believe you when you tell them that the accident wasn’t anything to do with you?’

  Lily’s naive belief in him touched Harry deeply but he knew he had to remind her plainly how things stood so that she didn’t go away with false hopes. ‘The coppers don’t think it was an accident. They say Billy was run over deliberately – that’s how I ended up here.’

  ‘But you’ve told them where you were and what you were doing when it happened?’

  Harry nodded. ‘I was inside the main house, waiting for a list from Mrs Calvert. She’d gone off to ask the cook what they needed from Durant’s for their tea and she was going to send me to the shops on my afternoon off as per usual.’

  ‘And the car was in the drive?’

  ‘Yes. I was only inside for five minutes. I even left the engine ticking over.’

  ‘And there was no scuffle between you and Billy?’ she checked. ‘Because that’s what people are saying – that you two had a fight out on the front lawn.’

  ‘That’s a load of old codswallop for a start,’ he muttered, unnerved by the power of unfounded rumour. ‘How could I have a scrap with Billy if I was inside the house, twiddling my thumbs waiting for her ladyship?’

  ‘So that’s good.’ As Harry explained events, Lily’s head began to clear. ‘All it needs is for Mrs Calvert to tell the police the facts and you’re off the hook. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Except that Mrs Calvert left me alone when she went to get the shopping list for me. I could have been up to all sorts while she was gone.’

  Lily let out a sigh. Noticing how Harry’s hands trembled, she had to overcome a desire to hold him close and tell him that everything would be all right. ‘Isn’t there anyone else who can vouch for you – Winifred or Mr Calvert, for a start?’

  ‘Winifred did pop her head around the door, but only for a second. Then I heard her go upstairs, but the police are saying she told them she was in her room the whole time. And that’s not all. It gets worse.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lily steeled herself for the next blow, winding her fingers around Harry’s and waited for him to go on.

  ‘Right, brace yourself – once the coppers started digging a bit more, they managed to turn up a couple of witnesses who told them other things that can be held against me.’

  ‘What witnesses?’

  ‘Fred Lee for a start. You can bet your life that he wasn’t slow to come forward and tell them about our fight in the yard at Calvert’s. He said I was a hothead, known for not being able to keep my temper. Then the coppers got Chalky White to explain how I got my black eye in the Cross during the build-up to Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, Harry.’ Knowing that he’d fallen deeper into trouble because of the way he’d stuck up for Evie and Margie hit Lily like a sledgehammer. It took the wind out of her and she fell silent.

  ‘Did you go to the funeral?’ he asked after a long time had passed.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. We were let off work. Don’t worry, Billy was given a good send-off.’

  ‘I can’t get it out of my mind – the sight of Billy lying bleeding in that garden store,’ Harry said in a faltering voice.

  ‘Go ahead, Harry – I’m listening and it’ll do you good to get it off your chest.’ Lily grasped his hands more tightly.

  ‘I came out of the house with Mrs Calvert’s shopping list and saw that the car wasn’t where it should have been – someone had moved it. That set alarm bells ringing. Then I spotted it round the side of the house and saw the smashed headlight and all the rest of it. Not that I thought anything was up with Billy, not at first, because up till then I didn’t even realize he was there. I just knew something wasn’t right.’

  Movement at nearby tables – women standing up and embracing their husbands, children clinging to their mothers’ skirts and crying – told Lily that visiting time was coming to an end and she felt the familiar panic rise within her. ‘Stick to the facts,’ she urged. ‘Sooner or later they’re bound to believe you. And anyway, Harry, I promise we’ll keep on digging away to get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘You and whose army?’ he said, clearing his throat and withdrawing his hands from hers as the warden approached.

  ‘Me and the girls – Sybil and Annie. We’ll get you out of here.’

  Harry allowed himself a small smile. ‘I’m glad to have you on my side, Lily Briggs. You’re my Boudicca.’

  ‘And what’s more I’ll marry you,’ she announced with defiant suddenness, chin up as he stood and the warder put handcuffs around his wrists, an astonished grin breaking out on Harry’s face. ‘Are you listening to me, Harry Bainbridge? You’ll get out of here and we’ll walk down that aisle just as soon as ever you like.’

  Back at Albion Lane, Margie sat at her sleeping mother’s bedside. She took knitting needles and white wool from her canvas bag and began to knit a baby’s matinée jacket, casting on stitches for the back section of the tiny garment and working on with difficulty in the fading light. When it grew too dark to continue, she put the work aside and went to the window to look out at the two lamp lighters coming up the street with ladders and tapers to light the street lamps. Inside her belly she felt an unfamiliar sensation – a twisting or a tumbling that it took her a while to understand. Then, when she placed her hand across her stomach, she knew it must be the baby’s first small movements and she felt a surge of joy. ‘Mother!’ she gasped and turned towards the bed.

  Rhoda’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow.

  The baby moved again and Margie went and took her mother’s hand, stroked her hair back from her cool forehead, leaned in to listen to her shallow intake of breath, ever slower and more uncertain.

  Time passed. Perhaps, though her eyes were closed, Rhoda heard the faint click of Margie’s knitting needles as she sat back down and resumed her knitting until the bedroom door opened and Lily slipped quietly in.

  ‘How is she?’ Lily whispered.

  ‘Peaceful.’ Margie laid aside her needles for a second time. ‘How was Harry?’

  ‘He’s managing all right, considering. I told him we could get married as soon as they let him out.’

  Rhoda stirred, and though it might have been Lily’s imagination, she fancied their mother had taken in what she’d said.

  ‘Good for you, Lil.’ A smile flickered across Margie’s face. ‘That’s the ticket.’

  Then the sisters lapsed into a long silence, holding hands and clinging to every laboured breath as their mother’s grip on life slackened, while outside in the street the lamp burned steadily.

  ‘Is there anything we should do?’ Margie whispered during a great pause between breaths.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lily replied. ‘All we can do is to be here.’

  On and on into the night it went until at last the breathing stopped.

  ‘Mother?’ Lily murmured, holding tight to Margie’s hand.

  Light from the street lamp filled the room. There was no response.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  My dearest love,

  I write to you with the sad news that Mother has died. It happened at home on the day of my prison visit while Margie and I sat with her. The end was peaceful and we’re glad of that. Father and Arthur have taken it badly, which was to be expected. Arthur is still with Margie at Granddad’s house, where he can be kept separate from the business of funeral arrangements. The rest of us – myself, Margie and Evie – are dealing with the undertakers and the minister at Mother’s old chapel on Ada Street and bear up as best we can.

  Harry, love, these are dark days here at Albion Lane but you mustn’t suppose that I have forgotten you. The fact is, Mother believed in you as much as I do and it is for both your sakes that I’ll move Heaven and earth to prove that they’ve arrested the wrong man for Billy’s murder. I love you, Harry – ‘Cross my heart and hope to die’, as we used to say
in those carefree days when we were children playing hide-and-seek together on Overcliffe Common, back when we had no notion of the troubles life heaps on us.

  I love you, sweetheart. I say it again, knowing that I’ll never give you cause to doubt it and trusting that this letter finds you well in spite of everything.

  I’ll come to visit you as soon as Mother’s funeral is over. Until then, I’ll seal this note with loving kisses.

  Always true to you, now and forever – your Lily xxxxx

  The letter was carefully written, sealed and posted with a heavy heart. Lily pictured it being taken from the red pillar box at the bottom of Albion Lane and sent to the sorting office, arriving at the prison where it would be torn open by the stubby fingers of an unfeeling clerk who would check through it before it was delivered to Harry in his cell. He felt far away from her and unreachable in this the most difficult time of their lives.

  On the day of Rhoda’s funeral at the end of January, in the deepest, darkest part of a seemingly endless winter, news broke that Harry Bainbridge had been formally charged with the murder of Billy Robertshaw. He would be remanded in custody until he came to trial, making an already sad time unbearably worse for Lily.

  The funeral itself was short and simple with three hymns and a brief sermon about Rhoda’s upright character, long service to the women of the neighbourhood and the esteem in which she was held by all who knew her.

  From the front pew Lily gazed at the plain coffin. She was dressed in her grey hat and coat, spruced up with a purple silk scarf on loan from Ethel Newby. Margie sat on her left, little Arthur to her right then next to him Evie. At the far end by the window sat her bare-headed grandfather and last of all her father, who hung his head throughout the service with no word of song or prayer escaping his lips. In the pew across the aisle, George and Tommy looked stranded and ill at ease, making it plain that it was duty alone that had brought them here and they couldn’t wait to be gone.