The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘We’re quite the little hive of industry,’ Annie said with satisfaction as they each took up a task.

  Patterns were laid out, spools loaded on to the sewing machine, boxes of pins, needles and threads placed at the ready. They were too busy to take much notice of Walter when he came downstairs and went out into the foggy air but glad to stop for five minutes when Evie came back from delivering Sunday papers and offered to put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

  ‘It’s about time we had a breather!’ Sybil announced, taking care not to set down her tea anywhere near the floral fabric. Her face was flushed from the fire, the sleeves of her dark red blouse rolled up above her elbows.

  ‘And who’s this?’ Annie wondered when she heard footsteps stop outside the house. She twitched back the net curtain to see the sturdy figure of Jennie Shaw waiting on the doorstep. ‘Do you want me to let her in?’ she said to Lily.

  There was no time for an answer because Jennie gave a sharp knock then entered without waiting to be asked, saying, ‘Well I never – cups of tea all round. I couldn’t have timed it better if I’d tried.’

  ‘Come in, Jennie, why don’t you?’ Sybil’s exaggerated politeness bounced off the visitor’s well-upholstered bosom.

  ‘Yes, come in and sit yourself down.’ Lily cleared pieces of paper pattern from the fireside chair. ‘Have you come to talk to us about Billy?’

  The question changed the mood in the busy kitchen. ‘What about Billy?’ Annie wanted to know, while Sybil leaned on the mantelpiece and waited with a serious expression to hear what Jennie had to say.

  ‘I was trying to talk to Lily about him before Stanley Calvert dropped his bombshell,’ Jennie explained. ‘Afterwards I didn’t get the chance so when I found I had ten minutes to spare, I thought I’d nip round here and pass on what I meant to tell you yesterday.’

  ‘That’s good of you,’ Lily told her as calmly as she could.

  ‘But we’re still waiting,’ Annie pointed out. ‘Come on, Jennie, no need to make a meal of it.’

  ‘Right – Billy.’ Once she’d eased herself into the chair, rested her hands in her broad lap and accepted a cup of tea from Evie, Jennie was ready to continue. ‘You asked me, Lily, if he had any enemies but if I were you I’d be asking myself a different question.’

  ‘Good Lord above, woman!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘Shall I nip around the block for a breath of fresh air and come back when you’re ready to spill the beans?’

  ‘What should we be asking?’ Sybil met Jennie’s challenge steadily.

  ‘It’s this: was Billy walking out with someone in the weeks before he got run over?’

  ‘And was he?’ Lily and Annie chorused.

  ‘We know he was,’ Sybil reminded them. ‘The two of them were seen in town together, remember? That’s why I decided to drop him double-quick.’

  A knowing look and a nod from Jennie told them that they were in for an especially juicy piece of gossip, still to be delivered in her own good time. ‘They probably hoped no one noticed their little, lovey-dovey assignation but you know what it’s like round here – word soon got around. And here’s something else for you to chew over. What if that someone he was walking out with belonged to a family who thought their daughter could do better for herself? Wouldn’t that be the best way for Billy to stir up trouble?’

  ‘This is all very well,’ Sybil interrupted crossly, ‘but you’re not naming names.’

  ‘Yes and if this turns out to be silly tittle-tattle, you’ll get the sharp end of my tongue for wasting our time,’ Annie added.

  But Lily, who was standing by the window, shook her head. ‘Jennie doesn’t need to name names. We can work it out for ourselves.’

  In fact, the answer, when it came to her, was clear as day. Who never came back to work after Billy died? Who walked behind his hearse with a face as white as a sheet behind her lace veil and was later seen weeping at the cemetery gate?

  ‘There, I always knew you were a clever girl,’ Jennie said as she saw the truth dawn on Lily.

  ‘Billy was walking out with Winifred Calvert behind her parents’ backs,’ Lily said with deep certainty. ‘She was the reason he nipped up to Moor House on the day he died.’

  Suddenly everything made sense. Winifred had been Billy’s sweetheart – a romantic pairing that had to be hidden from sight to avoid Mr and Mrs Calvert’s wrath.

  ‘Never!’ Annie gasped, turning open-mouthed to Sybil then to Jennie for confirmation.

  Satisfied that her mission was accomplished, Jennie nodded and handed her empty cup to Evie. ‘I’ll say cheerio,’ were her parting words. ‘Now it’s up to you girls to make what you can of Winifred’s little secret.’

  ‘But did Mr and Mrs Calvert know anything about it?’ Annie wondered as soon as their visitor had left. ‘Winifred and Billy would do their best to keep it from them, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘If they had any sense, they would,’ Sybil agreed.

  ‘It’s Winifred we need to talk to again,’ Lily decided, eager to take the lead in their new mission to wrestle the truth out of the boss’s daughter, whether she liked it or not. She quickly began to tidy away her sewing things, thinking all the while how this might be achieved.

  ‘But it’s Billy I feel for,’ Evie decided. ‘He must have loved her more than anything to risk the Calverts finding out. They’d have sacked him on the spot for a start.’

  ‘Yes, it’s not easy to work up any sympathy for Winifred,’ Sybil agreed as she folded fabric and put the top on her tin of sewing pins. ‘There’s only you, Lily, who has a soft spot for Miss Snooty.’

  ‘No,’ soft-hearted Evie argued. ‘There’s me too. I feel for them both.’ She couldn’t help thinking of how badly it had ended and what Winifred Calvert must have suffered since.

  ‘We’re all agreed on one thing,’ Lily reminded them as they reached for their coats. ‘What we have to do now is find Winifred, pin her down and get to the bottom of it. If we hurry, we’ll be in time to meet her and Mr and Mrs Calvert coming out of St Luke’s.’

  It was a quarter to eleven. The Sunday service finished on the hour and it was assumed that the respectable Calverts would be following their routine of attending church like the good Anglicans they were. Now was the time to find out the truth.

  Anyone watching from a distance would have seen four determined young women almost running up the steep hill on to Overcliffe Road through a lingering fog that dampened their hair and prevented them from seeing more than twenty yards ahead. Lily led the way, her coat hanging open and with no hat on her head, all thoughts fixed on squeezing the truth out of Winifred Calvert. Had she arranged a tryst with Billy in the garden of Moor House? Had someone found them out and, if so, what exactly had happened next?

  They arrived at St Luke’s in the nick of time, just as the bells chimed the hour. The verger threw open the big oak doors of the splendid church built with wealthy mill owners’ money some fifty years earlier, its fine stonework blackened by soot from factory chimneys and now struggling to attract a congregation large enough to fill its cavernous interior. The first worshippers filtered out into the porch, stopping to shake hands with the vicar and to exchange a few pleasantries with each other. Lily’s heart, already racing from running uphill, quickened further as she searched for any sign of the Calverts.

  ‘They’re not here after all,’ a disappointed Evie said as the church disgorged its worshippers and the vicar stepped inside while the verger prepared to close the doors.

  ‘No – wait!’ Sybil saw more figures emerging. As they’d approached the church, she’d made out the mill owner’s Bentley parked in the entrance to the cemetery adjacent to the church so was certain they were present. ‘Here they come.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Evie wondered. ‘There’s no point us marching up to them and demanding to know about Billy outright.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Annie told them, noticing that Stanley and Eleanor Calvert had emerged on to the wide steps before their daug
hter who had stayed back to talk to the vicar. ‘I’ll draw them down the steps and out of the way while you lot nip in and nab Winifred.’

  ‘How do you propose to do that?’ Sybil demanded.

  ‘I’ll let on there’s something wrong with their precious car,’ Annie decided on the spur of the moment. ‘I know – I’ll say they’ve got a flat tyre. That’ll put the wind up them.’

  No sooner said than she sped up the steps and talked in an animated fashion to the Calverts, pointing towards the place where their car was parked and persuading them to hurry towards it without waiting for their daughter. Immediately, Lily and the others ran to waylay Winifred before she had a chance to follow.

  Finding herself surrounded by Evie, Sybil and Lily, Winifred’s first reaction was to seek help from the vicar, only to find that he’d already taken off his surplice and was disappearing into the vestry. ‘What’s the matter now?’ she asked, frowning and backing up against the stone wall.

  ‘It’s Billy,’ Lily answered. Now that the moment of truth had arrived she felt strangely calm so she came straight to the point. ‘You two were sweethearts, weren’t you?’

  ‘Why won’t you leave me alone, Lily Briggs?’ Winifred protested weakly. ‘I’m sick and tired of being pestered.’

  ‘But you don’t deny it.’ With fingers crossed, Sybil went on to take a calculated risk. ‘Anyway, you and Billy were seen together. It got my goat because I was walking out with him myself at the time.’

  Evie and Lily waited with bated breath as Sybil made the leap of logic. Had it really been Winifred standing with Billy outside the department store?

  Winifred shook her head then started to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks. Lily offered her a handkerchief then led her gently inside and sat her down on the nearest pew in order to give her time to pull herself together. ‘Wait there a while,’ she told the others.

  ‘Be quick then,’ Sybil advised as she peered anxiously out of the door. ‘We don’t have long before Mr and Mrs Calvert come looking for her.’

  Lily nodded then sat down next to Winifred. There was a rich scent of pine resin and polish, combined with a musty smell emanating from the worn tapestry kneelers at their feet. ‘I know you’re upset,’ she began. ‘But I have to know the truth, for Harry’s sake. Did you talk to Billy in the garden just before he died?’

  Miserably drying her tears, Winifred shook her head.

  ‘But he had come to see you, hadn’t he? That’s what you’d arranged. He hoped to slip in without being noticed but the plan went wrong somehow.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Winifred sighed, her resistance crumbling. ‘It’s true. I loved Billy and he loved me and now my heart is broken. There, is that enough?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lily breathed, genuinely moved by Winifred’s pain. ‘What was the reason you couldn’t go out to meet him?’

  Winifred wrung the handkerchief between her hands and constantly shook her head as she spoke.

  ‘Mother had found us out on the day before. She came across me writing a billet-doux for Billy, which I meant to give to Harry to deliver. She read the letter out loud from start to finish, mocking me before she tore it into pieces. Then she said I was letting her and Father down and couldn’t be trusted to go out of the house without a chaperone from now on – on and on she went.’

  Billet-doux? The phrase betrayed a school-girl shallowness in Winifred and Lily felt a flash of anger. ‘And Harry was to be your go-between?’

  ‘Yes. Until then I’d made sure Harry knew nothing about me and Billy – we thought nobody did. It was only because Mother had arranged for me to go to tea at Mabel Kingsley’s house the next day straight from work and I had to write and tell Billy not to come to the house because I wouldn’t be there.’

  ‘But your mother tore up the note so Harry couldn’t deliver the message and Billy didn’t know about the change of plan. But then you didn’t go to tea?’

  ‘No. The next day, I said I wasn’t feeling well so I asked Harry to drive me home and he pulled up outside the front door. He went straight into the house but I made sure to take my time getting out of the car.’

  ‘Because you still needed to find Billy and warn him?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Exactly. My plan was to sneak round the side of the house, only Mother came out and was angry with me for coming home. She dragged me inside and made me cry until Father came out of his study and then he began to argue with Mother and that almost gave me the chance to give Harry the message for Billy, except that Mother spotted me again and sent me upstairs.’

  Lily pictured the scene – a battle royal between the imperious Eleanor and the beleaguered Stanley Calvert, going at it hammer and tongs within the confines of their grand mansion, with Winifred cowering in the background. ‘And then what?’ she wanted to know, sensing by the continued nervous wringing of Winifred’s hands that there was more to come.

  ‘Then I ran to my bedroom window, the one at the side of the house, and looked down on to the yard to see if I could spot Billy. I saw his bike resting against an outhouse door then I saw him with … with—’

  ‘He wasn’t alone?’ Lily interrupted.

  ‘No. He was arguing with two men.’

  Lily heard this with clenched jaw and fists. She must stay calm – for Harry’s sake she needed to glean every scrap of new information from the distraught Winifred. ‘Do you know who they were?’

  ‘I only saw their backs. Billy was facing me but he didn’t look up. They seemed to be angry.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t see their faces?’ Time was against Lily – the church door had been flung open and she could hear footsteps approaching.

  ‘No, hand on heart,’ Winifred sobbed. ‘They were wearing caps so their faces were hidden even when they turned around. One was big and strong, a real brute. He threw a punch at Billy and the other one tried to kick him. Billy ducked out of their way and started to run round to the front of the house. That was the last time I saw him.’

  ‘And the men chased him?’

  ‘Yes. And the next thing I knew he’d been knocked over and killed. He’s dead and now I shall never see him again!’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  On Albion Lane, in the bedroom she shared with Evie, Lily’s mind raced through what she’d learned in St Luke’s, trying to come to terms with the one fact that stared her in the face – Billy had got into a fight and been run over all because of Winifred Calvert. She pictured him cheerily cycling up to Moor House, whistling maybe and looking forward to the thrill of a secret tryst with the boss’s daughter. Typical, devil-may-care Billy to risk something like that, she thought. Did he really love Winifred, though? Or had he died for the sake of a cheap, celluloid romance, for a girl he would soon have thrown aside like he had so many others?

  In any case, the two shadowy figures who had entered the picture were what Lily needed to focus on now, before she, Sybil and Annie were ready to go to the police with as many new pieces of information as they could muster. Who were they and how had they got there? she wondered over and over. Who were these two men wearing caps, one big and strong, the other using his feet to hurt their victim, the rough type who you would commonly see scrapping on street corners or outside the Green Cross? Whoever they were, they held the answers to Billy’s death – of that Lily was sure.

  She got up next morning before the knocker-up came down Albion Lane, rattling windows with his long pole, and was already dressed and in the kitchen when Evie came down. It was only then that she remembered to delay her departure to fit in with the new clocking-on time of nine o’clock so she kept herself busy with dusting and polishing before leaving the house with fifteen minutes to spare, joining the steady flow of workers down the hill towards the mills on Ghyll Road and beyond. When she arrived at Calvert’s, she saw Sybil and Annie waiting under the archway with Fred Lee.

  ‘Fred says we’ve to go to the office with him,’ Annie told Lily with a worried frown. ‘He won’t say what it’s a
bout.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon find out.’ Enjoying the three women’s unease, the smirking overlooker led the way. ‘Some people don’t know when they’re well off,’ he remarked over his shoulder.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Sybil wanted to know, trying to conceal the nervous knot that was forming in her stomach.

  ‘Having a regular job to come to, for a start. I’d have thought that was well worth toeing the line for.’

  ‘What makes you think we haven’t?’ Annie asked, similarly alarmed. Something had put Fred into a good mood this morning, but she couldn’t tell what.

  ‘In you go.’ He winked, using his foot to hold open Derek Wilson’s door for them and all but rubbing his hands with glee.

  ‘That’s all, thank you, Fred,’ the manager told him. As the overlooker let the door swing to, Wilson gazed without expression at Sybil, Annie and Lily, hands resting on his desk with his fingers interlaced. ‘Jean.’ He motioned to his secretary, who stood by with three envelopes at the ready.

  Hastily Jean Carson came forward and placed the envelopes on the desk.

  ‘That’ll be all, thank you, Jean.’

  The secretary hurried out with downcast eyes, unable to meet anyone’s gaze due to the rising tension in the room.

  ‘I expect you know what these are,’ the manager went on drily.

  ‘They’re our cards,’ Sybil guessed, her heart thudding.

  ‘Correct. I’ve been instructed to hand them to you as soon as you got here, no ifs or buts.’

  At first Lily stood dumbfounded, unable to let the words sink in. This couldn’t be happening. How could they be sacked without at least being given a reason?

  ‘But you can’t do that,’ Annie objected. ‘It was only on Saturday that Mr Calvert told us that no one was to be laid off.’

  ‘That was true at the time but now circumstances have changed. Lily, this one is for you.’ Wilson pushed the first envelope towards her.

  She reached forward and took it from the desk with trembling fingers, staring at the envelope as if it might bite.