The Telephone Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  About the Book

  1936, West Yorkshire. George Street houses a gleaming, brand-new telephone exchange where a group of capable girls work the complicated electrical switchboards. Among them are Cynthia, Norma and Millicent, who relish the busy, efficient atmosphere and the independence and friendship their jobs have given them.

  But when Millicent connects a telephone call for an old friend, and listens in to the conversation – breaking one of the telephonists’ main rules – she, and then Norma and Cynthia too, become caught up in a story of scandal, corruption and murder.

  Soon, the jobs of all three girls are on the line. Norma’s romance is in ruins. And Millicent has entered a world of vice…

  In tough times, the telephone girls will need to call on their friends more than ever.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  About the Author

  Also by Jenny Holmes

  Copyright

  THE TELEPHONE GIRLS

  Jenny Holmes

  For Kate and Eve

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘And stretch, and twist, and relax!’ Ruth Ridley ended her Friday-evening exercise class with a sing-song flourish. She clapped her hands to release fifty members of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty from an hour of choreographed kicking, bending, flexing and twirling under her firm command.

  The women broke ranks and split into small groups.

  ‘Phew!’ Norma Haig rested a bare, warm arm along the shoulder of her friend, Millicent Jones. ‘I’m all in.’

  ‘Yes. You’d think we’d have had enough of mein Führer during work hours without having her bark at us in our leisure time as well!’ Millicent took a step back and slyly mimicked a Heil Hitler salute. Looking statuesque in her black satin knickers and sleeveless white blouse, she took hold of Norma’s hand and dragged her towards the cloakroom of Overcliffe Assembly Rooms where they began to get changed into their day clothes along with the other members of their class.

  ‘League of Health and blooming Beauty.’ Norma laid it on thick. She was smaller and slighter than Millicent and felt the pace of the exercise class more keenly. ‘All this leaping out of bed at six in the morning, plunging your face in cold water and exercising for half an hour each day on top of coming to this keep-fit class once a week – it can’t be good for you.’

  Millicent took off her blouse and slipped a lace-edged satin petticoat over her head. Then she discreetly slid the elasticated waistband of her over-knickers over her hips, letting them fall around her ankles before neatly stepping out of them. ‘You know what they say: “Movement is Life”!’ She quoted the League’s motto with an arched eyebrow.

  ‘Along with shaving your armpits and stuffing a clean hankie up your left knicker leg,’ Norma muttered. She was new to this lark and wasn’t sure she liked it – especially getting changed in public, where all and sundry caught sight of the frayed straps of her brassiere and the worn elastic of her suspender belt. She got changed shyly and quickly, aware that the striking, dark-haired girl on her right had subsided on to the bench and was dabbing her eyes with her regulation handkerchief.

  ‘Cheer up, Clare,’ Millicent advised their unhappy neighbour as she deftly pulled her printed cotton dress over her head then did up the buttons. ‘The way we’re going, we’ll all turn into strapping Nordic specimens like the sainted Prunella Stack, leader of this great movement we’ve signed up to.’

  ‘Not me. I’m not built like that, no matter how many contortions Miss Ridley puts us through.’ Norma stepped in with a comment that acknowledged her own limitations. She was slender and supple – just how her young man Douglas Greenwood said he liked her. ‘What’s up?’ she asked the crying girl.

  ‘Nothing. Don’t mind me.’ Clare Bell blew her nose and sat up straight.

  ‘That’s right. Don’t let Ruth Ridley upset you – she’s not worth it.’

  Millicent was ready to leave but she dropped a few crumbs of comfort into her old school friend’s lap. ‘Anyhow, she only picks on you ’cos she’s jealous of the way you look – the crabby old thing.’

  Norma agreed. Clare was one of those shimmeringly beautiful girls, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and creamy skin, plus a glossy cap of dark hair and a puckered, cupid’s-bow mouth that looked as if it was permanently waiting to be kissed. On top of which, she could have given Prunella Stack a run for her money as ‘the most physically perfect girl in the world’. ‘You managed to kick your leg higher than me by a long way,’ she reassured her. ‘And you’re a dab hand at twirling those silk ribbons in time to the music.’

  Clare took a deep breath then rallied enough to get dressed, taking off her blouse and putting on a peach-coloured dress of clinging jersey knit. ‘Ta. I reckon I’ll keep the pledge a bit longer, then.’

  Millicent gave a satisfied nod. ‘That’s the ticket – you come along next week for another dose. Norma and me, we’re walking back to town over the Common. Shall we wait for you?’

  ‘No, you go ahead.’ Clare perched a cream beret on the back of her head and slipped her hands into a pair of matching lace gloves. ‘I have to meet— That’s to say … someone is waiting outside for me.’

  ‘Ooh, a mystery man! Who can it be?’ Millicent was about to plunge into a pool of delicious speculation when she noticed that Clare had coloured up and seemed on the verge of tears once more. So she brought herself up short, said goodbye and hurried Norma out of the building while Clare lingered in front of the mirror with her powder compact and puff.

  ‘Married!’ was Millicent’s one-word verdict as she scanned the pavement for Clare’s secret beau.

  Norma laughed and held on to her straw hat in the stiff breeze that blew across the open Common. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s a racing certainty. Why else would Clare be afraid to name him?’

  Norma was well aware that her worldly friend had more experience in these matters. After all, Millicent was currently ‘carrying on’ with Harold Buckley, a married father of two. Still, she put up an argument in Clare’s defence. ‘There could be a dozen reasons. We don’t even know that it’s a man. And if it is, it could easily be her brother or her father.’

  Narrowing her eyes, Millicent shook her head and fixed her attention on a black Morris Cowley saloon – the latest model – parked on the far side of the road. The setting sun glinted on the windscreen, obscuring the driver behind the wheel, but when Clare emerged from the hall and hurriedly crossed the road, he leaned over to open the passenger door for her and Millicent and Norma caught sight of a man wearing a brown trilby hat and tan leather driving gloves. ‘See!’ Millicent gloated.

  The door clicked shut and the car pulled away smoothly from the kerb, giving them a glimpse of the driver’s handsome profile.

  ‘Well, good luck to her,’ Norma murmured with a twinge of envy. She and Douglas could hardly afford an old tandem bike to carry them from A to B, let alone a
gleaming new motor car. ‘Come on – let’s get a move on.’

  She and Millicent set off across the Common that overlooked the sloping rows of terraced houses and cramped courtyards of their grimy mill town. The identical dwellings clung to steep hillsides and formed narrow streets uninterrupted by trees or greenery of any kind. The roofs were grey slate, the walls built of millstone grit, and all were dominated by a small forest of mill chimneys that lined the canal snaking through the valley bottom. Oldroyd’s, Kingsley’s and Calvert’s amongst others – the three-storey woollen mills stood as testament to the glory days of the British Empire when looms rattled and clacked continuously, bobbins turned and overlookers ruled over the lives of weavers, weft men and burlers with a rod of iron.

  Now, in these slack years following the great slump of the 1920s, the workers in the mills were on three days a week if they were lucky – the warpers and twisters, the reaching-in people, the perchers and packers, all taking home wages that barely kept their families clothed and fed. Everyone was now forced to make ends meet, while the once smartly painted houses grew shabby and the cobbled courtyards grew weed-strewn, cluttered with broken prams, rotting planks, rusty bicycle frames and stinking, overflowing dustbins.

  ‘Will I see you at work tomorrow?’ Norma asked Millicent as they came to the top of Albion Lane where she lived with her mother and two sisters, Ethel and Ivy. Millicent had further to go to her lodgings in Heaton Yard off Ada Street.

  ‘Yes, I’m on the early shift. I’ll be at my switchboard at eight o’clock sharp.’ Millicent looked at her watch and saw that she had an hour to get home and changed for her usual Friday-night rendezvous with Harold. ‘I have to dash,’ she added hastily. ‘Cheerio, Norma, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Norma paused at the corner to watch her friend hurry on. There were lots of things about Millicent that she admired – the fact that she was confident and unfailingly cheerful, ready to laugh at herself for being an ‘old maid’ at the age of twenty-five; her tall, curvaceous figure, which made her stand out, and her unruly raven hair and rich, hazel-brown eyes. But Norma’s strait-laced upbringing led her to take a dim view of Millicent’s illicit liaison with Harold.

  Maybe it’s me, she said to herself as she turned down Albion Lane and felt her feet start to drag. Tonight Douglas was on duty at the police station on Canal Road so she would have an uneventful evening ahead of her, darning and mending alongside Ivy and Ethel. Maybe I’m too narrow-minded and set in my ways.

  She was just twenty-one, the youngest of three sisters, all still living at home, whereas Millicent had branched out and led a seemingly fearless, adventurous life. On the bright side, I do my best to keep up with fashions and so on, and I love my job – I can’t deny it.

  For six days a week Norma took a tram or a bus into town, alighting eagerly in City Square and making her way through the crowds, past Marks & Spencer and Timothy White’s to George Street and the brand-new telephone exchange built in the style of an Egyptian temple – all smooth lines and zig-zag decoration on the stone façade. Revolving glass doors gave access to a marble entrance hall complete with cloakroom off to the right, and from there she entered directly into the long, narrow workroom with its banks of switchboards. These high black panels featured rows of sockets and winking lights with a table in front of each operator that had columns and keys, lamps and pairs of cords, front and rear for each circuit.

  ‘Come on, girls – take the lights,’ supervisors like Ruth Ridley would chide as they patrolled the central aisle – martinets in tweed skirts and prim, high-collared blouses with pork-pie frills. It was two years since Norma had passed her entry test with flying colours and come to work as a junior in the George Street exchange. She’d worked up to her Full Efficiency Test in record time and was now able to handle route and rate queries with aplomb before flicking the switch to connect the caller to their requested recipient.

  I know I’m good at what I do, she told herself as she walked down Albion Lane and heard the raucous sounds drifting through the open door of the Green Cross pub. There was piano music and laughter, the chink of glasses and the sound of men greeting each other in the doorway. I work hard and I toe the line. Isn’t that good enough?

  No, she thought with a sigh as she went up three stone steps and opened the door to number 7. Not when I set myself alongside Millicent.

  Inside the house, the wireless in the alcove next to the chimney breast was turned on and big-band music played softly in the background – an up-to-the-minute contrast with the airless, overstuffed atmosphere of the room. The black, cast-iron range was decorated with a row of polished horse brasses, the mantelpiece lined with three china shepherdesses and a lacquered tea caddy. A wall clock ticked next to a WI calendar showing Yorkshire Dales scenery – blossom trees for this month of May 1936, against a sunny background – and next to that was a small shelf stacked with dog-eared books.

  ‘Here she comes – the body beautiful!’ Sitting at the kitchen table, Ivy Haig glanced up from her darning and winked at Ethel.

  Across the table, Ethel didn’t bother to look up from the newspaper headlines. ‘Wallis Simpson is visiting Windsor Great Park again,’ she reported with a disapproving frown. ‘Honestly, that woman – she’s nothing but a common adventuress, painting her fingernails and drinking cocktails the way she does. Why can’t the king see that?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’ their mother Hetty said from her fireside chair, arms folded and taking it easy after another long day working as a weaver at Oldroyd’s. She took no notice of Norma, who put down her bag and removed her straw hat.

  ‘He will soon,’ Ivy opined, needle poised.

  ‘Knock on wood.’ Ethel rapped her knuckles against her forehead.

  ‘He won’t.’ In a flat, world-weary tone Hetty struck the last contradictory note. A lifetime of observing human failings had turned Norma’s mother into a thoroughgoing cynic. ‘You mark my words – Wally has pulled the wool over poor King Edward’s eyes good and proper.’

  On her solitary way home Millicent thought through what she would wear for her tryst with Harold. She would definitely change out of her cotton frock into something that accentuated her curves – perhaps the purple satin dress with the daring halter neckline, teamed with a cultured-pearl necklace and earrings. Though tempted to add a glittering marcasite brooch in the shape of a bouquet of flowers that Harold had given her for her twenty-first birthday, she decided that this would be gilding the lily.

  She came to Ada Street – a road that swept downhill even more steeply than the rest, with houses that were a cut above the basic terraced cottages of Albion Lane and Raglan Road. Here, each house sported an individually carved lintel above its doorway and there were iron railings to either side of the stone steps. Inside, there was a sitting room as well as a kitchen and two first-floor bedrooms instead of one. Still, there was neglect in the air even here. Paint peeled from doors and grass grew through cracks in the pavement. Then, when you turned off the street down a narrow alley – the locals called them ginnels – the situation became quite dire. Black slime clung to the alley walls even in summer and moss coated the paving slabs, while in Heaton Yard itself there was hardly a house without cracked or missing window panes. Doors hung off their hinges and ragged washing was draped limply from lines that criss-crossed the yard.

  ‘Now then – how’s my little ray of sunshine?’ Walter Blackburn called from his top step. His stooped, ancient figure was a fixture here, come rain or shine, and he insisted on using the hackneyed nicknames for his neighbours – ‘Chalky’ White the Green Cross barman at number 2, ‘Dusty’ Miller the unemployed joiner at number 8 and telephone girl Millicent, his ‘little ray of sunshine’, at number 10.

  ‘I’m tickety-boo, thanks, Walter.’ She hurried on past the dustbins and the outbuilding that housed a privy shared by the twenty-odd inhabitants of the yard. She forgot her rule of not breathing in as she passed its open door and got the full stench in her nostrils.

/>   ‘What’s the rush?’ the old man called after her. A worn tweed jacket hung off his scarecrow frame and baggy grey trousers concealed rickety legs. ‘Don’t tell me. Who’s the lucky man, I’d like to know?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you just?’ Millicent threw him a smile and was about to disappear through her door when she heard her name being called and she turned to see Cynthia Ambler emerge from the ginnel. Her heart sank.

  ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ a breathless Cynthia began as she approached. Though nineteen years old, her wavy fair hair and slight figure made her look younger, as did the girlish belted mac and dark beret that she wore, whatever the weather. Her voice was light and her movements conveyed schoolgirl apprehension. ‘I’m afraid it’s that time of the week again.’

  ‘Rent day,’ Millicent groaned. Grudgingly she fished in her purse for the three shillings and sixpence that Cynthia wanted. ‘Did you ever see a less likely-looking rent collector?’ she remarked to Walter as she handed over the money. ‘It’s as if a Girl Guide has come bob-a-jobbing and puts her hand out for payment after she’s cleaned your windows for you.’

  ‘Aye, and I’ve already told her she’ll have a long wait to get her pound of flesh out of me,’ Walter growled. ‘I’m not paying another penny until William Brooks stumps up the cash to mend my leaking downpipe. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a hundred times.’

  ‘Uncle William is poorly.’ Cynthia explained away their landlord’s failings, her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘Ta, Millicent. Anyway, Mr Blackburn, my cousin Bert will be taking over from me, starting at the beginning of next week. I’ll get him to pass on the message about your leak.’

  Millicent was intrigued by this piece of news. It was common knowledge that their miserly landlord had taken in his niece straight after she left school – when was that, about five years ago now? An only child, Cynthia had left home and gone over to Hadley to work without pay as live-in housemaid to the ailing skinflint. Soon after she’d moved in, he’d landed the job of rent collecting on her unlikely shoulders – again without financial reward. ‘Is old man Brooks finally letting you off the hook?’