The Telephone Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  Cynthia blushed again then managed an awkward smile. ‘I’ve got myself a new job,’ she explained. ‘It follows on from me learning bookkeeping and shorthand at the Workers’ Education Institute.’

  ‘Does it indeed?’ Millicent decided there was more to this little slip of a thing than met the eye. ‘What does your Uncle William have to say about that?’

  ‘He doesn’t know yet. I’m building up to telling him. Anyway, it just so happens that Bert is coming up to fourteen now.’ Cynthia let a silence develop – there was no need to say that the old man obviously saw advantages in the boy’s muscular strength and cocky air when set against Cynthia’s innocent appearance. ‘I’ll carry on living in and cleaning the house for him, though, even after I start my job.’

  ‘Which is what?’ Millicent asked quickly. She was running late now but Cynthia’s story interested her.

  ‘I answered an advert to train as a telephonist. Then I took the entry test.’

  The awkward reply amazed Millicent. ‘Whereabouts will you work – at George Street?’

  Cynthia nodded. ‘I reckon it’s a big step up for me.’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ From unpaid skivvy and reluctant rent collector to telephone girl in one mighty bound – Millicent was impressed. ‘And talk about coincidence – that’s where I work too.’

  ‘I know. I saw you there when the supervisor showed me round.’

  Ah yes, the supes. Millicent secretly wondered how Cynthia would cope with Ruth Ridley in particular and the relentless speech training that would go into rounding out the girl’s flat Yorkshire vowels and force her to put proper ‘t’s and ‘g’s on the ends of her words. Moreover, how would she cope with ‘Adolf’s’ military-style commands? ‘Take the lights. Come on, girls. Chop-chop!’ She pictured the supervisor marching up and down, ready to take aim and fire at the rookie operator’s smallest faults.

  ‘You were busy at your switchboard – you didn’t notice me,’ Cynthia added.

  ‘Well, you’ll see me again on Monday.’ Making an instant decision to take the new girl under her wing, Millicent gave her a broad smile. ‘Don’t worry – you won’t be let loose on our customers to start with. They’ll put you to work as a home and address clerk – bringing the list of subscribers up to date.’

  Cynthia seemed relieved. ‘Is that what they do with beginners?’

  ‘That and making the tea, being at everyone’s beck and call, running after the supes whenever they click their fingers.’

  ‘I’m used to that, at any rate.’ A wry smile flickered across Cynthia’s face.

  Another glance at her watch told Millicent that she was really cutting it fine. ‘As for Ruth Ridley, our senior supe – I hope you’ve got a thick hide.’

  Cynthia laughed uneasily. In fact, as an only child brought up by chapel-going older parents, she was unusually sensitive to criticism and had spent her school life and young adulthood working hard to avoid it.

  ‘In Ruth’s case, her bite is definitely as bad as her bark,’ Millicent quipped. Best for Cynthia to be prepared, she thought.

  Walter cackled from his doorstep. ‘She’s a card, is Millicent. Don’t you believe a word of what she says.’

  Nevertheless, a knot formed in Cynthia’s stomach at the prospect. ‘I’d better keep my head down, then.’

  ‘You’ll be all right. I’ll keep a weather eye out. So will Norma – Norma Haig. She was trained by the dragon a couple of years back, so she’ll be able to give you a few tips.’

  ‘Ta,’ Cynthia said with a weak smile that didn’t disguise an air of panic as she slipped Millicent’s rent money into the leather satchel slung from her shoulder.

  ‘And now I really do have to dash,’ Millicent said, disappearing indoors.

  Back on Albion Lane, Norma endured her sisters’ carping and her mother’s nagging for as long as she could.

  ‘How much do you pay for those so-called Health and Beauty classes of yours?’ Ethel wanted to know as Norma settled into a bout of mending at the kitchen table. At twenty-six Ethel was considered well and truly on the shelf – and all because she’d let herself go, according to Ivy, who was trimmer and smarter. Ethel had never cared about her appearance, preferring to wear her long, straight hair in an old-fashioned bun and eating whatever she fancied regardless of the inches slowly but surely being added to her waist and hips.

  ‘It’s sixpence a go,’ Norma told her. Her task tonight was to turn the collar on her mother’s white blouse, putting the frayed side out of sight. She unpicked the seam with care then turned it and reached for pins to fix it back in place.

  ‘And how many are there in the class?’ Ivy wanted to know. Trained as a bookkeeper, she prided herself on having a head for figures.

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘That’s one pound five shillings going straight into Ruth Ridley’s pocket,’ Ivy said with a low, envious whistle. Unlike Ethel, twenty-four-year-old Ivy was ambitious to better herself, though her current wage as a shorthand typist at the Yorkshire Bank wasn’t high enough to allow her to leave home just yet. She and Norma both took after their late father, Edward Haig, who had been small and upright, with a thick head of dark hair that had made him look young for his age.

  ‘No, that’s not right,’ Norma objected. ‘A lot of that money goes to the League. Then there’s the hire of the hall. I’d be surprised if Ruth gets more than five shillings out of it.’

  ‘Still,’ Ivy noted. Five shillings for an hour’s work was not bad.

  The three sisters went on sewing while their mother complained about her aching feet and her failure to get to Clifton Market in time to scoop up the end-of-the-day bargains. ‘I missed the cheap sausages from Maynard’s stall,’ she complained. ‘He’d shut up shop by the time I got there. That’s why we had to use up the leftover ham from yesterday for our tea.’

  I wish I’d stopped in at the Green Cross on my way home, Norma thought. The company here left a lot to be desired. She stopped sewing and glanced up, first at Ivy with her hair in curlers and wearing a flowery, cross-over apron over her dark green work dress of dull crêpe de chine, then at Ethel whose broad, homely features were done no favours by the horn-rimmed glasses she wore for close work. ‘Friday night, and aren’t we having fun,’ she said with a resentful sigh.

  Douglas was walking his beat and she was stuck at home listening to this. Others were out on the town, taking in a flick at the Victory or dancing the night away at one of the new jazz clubs. Take Millicent, for instance: this very minute she’d be dolling herself up for an evening out with Harold. Illicit thrills or not, that had to be a darned sight better than sitting here with needle and thread, blocking her ears to her mother’s grumbles with only the prospect of another busy day at the switchboard to cheer her up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Millicent liked the choosing-what-to-wear and getting-ready part of her regular assignations with Harold. She loved the perfumed smell of her powder compact as she flipped it open to dab her nose with the cool, flat puff then approve of the gleam of her jet-black hair in the small, round mirror.

  What she didn’t like was the hanging around on street corners – a different one each time – wondering whether or not Harold would show up. Standing in the shadows clutching her handbag in front of her for protection while various men eyed her up and down was a kind of self-inflicted torture. Would he keep his promise and turn up bearing a small gift of chocolates or nylons, or would something have happened at home to prevent him? His wife, Doris, might fancy going out for a change. There would be a babysitter already arranged and no getting out of it for Harold, who would play the dutiful husband and take Doris off to the pictures to see the latest Fred Astaire musical, or perhaps to the working men’s club on Westgate Road, where rules were occasionally relaxed and ladies were allowed to join their husbands for a drink.

  Which will it be tonight? she wondered as she hovered in the entrance to the corporation baths on Canal Road. After a few changes of mind, she’d
settled on the purple dress and matching pearl necklace and earrings, teamed up with a loose cream jacket, sling-back sandals and jaunty pill-box hat. This smart appearance drew favourable comments and wolf whistles from passers-by.

  ‘Hello, Millicent.’ Dusty Miller, her lanky neighbour from Heaton Yard, broke free from a group of friends on their way into town. ‘My, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’

  So much for the anonymity of meeting Harold close to the town centre, she thought. ‘Hello, Dusty.’ She gave a frosty smile then glanced up the road as if on the lookout for a tram.

  ‘You’re not going swimming in that get-up, are you?’ His quip drew guffaws and lewd comments from his gang.

  ‘The swimming baths are closed for the night, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ Her heart beat faster as she saw Harold alight from a bus across the street. He’d been able to come after all. But he’d better wait a while before he approached her, otherwise their secret would be out. Luckily he spotted Dusty and wisely hung back until Millicent’s neighbour left off teasing her and his down-at-heel pals dragged him away.

  ‘There you are!’ Millicent greeted Harold with a petulant pout.

  ‘What? I’m bang on time, aren’t I?’ He gave her a peck on the cheek. Smart as usual in blazer and twill trousers, with his dark brown hair parted down one side and slicked back with brilliantine, he pretended not to notice her bad mood, taking her by the elbow and steering her down the steps on to the pavement. ‘I thought we’d go for a drink in town – somewhere nice and quiet.’

  That goes without saying, Millicent thought, for some reason struggling to regain her usual happy-go-lucky air. ‘How about the King’s Head off City Square?’

  ‘Yes, that won’t be busy on a Friday night,’ he agreed. He too was on edge, his lean, clean-shaven face looking gaunt and drawn, his grey eyes avoiding contact with Millicent’s.

  The King’s Head was tucked away behind the new Woolworths building, down a side street, next to a Lyons’ Corner House. Thronged on weekday evenings with dispirited bank clerks and shopworkers, weekends saw the pub’s regulars drift off to watering holes on the outskirts of town, leaving only a smattering of customers at the cramped bar.

  Millicent and Harold walked side by side along Canal Road, talking about their weeks. Always the gentleman, which was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place, he stayed closest to the busy road, shielding her from the traffic. ‘Oldroyd has laid off twenty-five workers this week,’ he told her. ‘Mainly from the spinning shed. Everyone’s wondering who’s going to be next for the chop.’

  ‘Your head’s not on the line, is it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said through gritted teeth. As mill manager, he was Joseph Oldroyd’s right-hand man. The job came with an end-of-terrace house – three storeys, with a patch of garden that was tended by Oldroyd’s own gardener. The house overlooked a small park laid out by old Josiah Oldroyd in that patrician way that the Victorians had – mens sana in corpore sano – a space for recreation, with its bandstand and artificial pond for sailing toy boats. ‘They say things will be on the up if the country has to gear up for another war and the government comes to us for cloth for the extra uniforms.’

  ‘Don’t wish that upon us.’ In spite of the warm evening, Millicent shivered then grew determined to change the subject. They crossed City Square, past the bright entrance to the Odeon, then the imposing entrance to the Spiritualist church where a billboard at the foot of broad stone steps advertised a forthcoming talk by the famous medium Estelle Roberts. ‘How about getting us tickets for that?’ she suggested brightly. ‘Shouldn’t you like to know what the future holds for us?’

  ‘It’s not the future that lot are interested in,’ he pointed out with a sardonic wink. Now aged thirty-eight, Harold had caught the end of the Great War. He’d been enlisted into the army aged eighteen and sent out to Belgium in the winter of 1916 where he’d witnessed the aftermath of the bloodbath they called the Battle of the Somme. Thousands of young lives had been wasted in that sea of mud – and still, twenty years later, their mothers and sweethearts visited these mediums in their thousands in the desperate hope of contacting their poor, lost boys.

  But still, the future … Millicent lingered by the billboard, wondering what it would hold. Would she and Harold still be going on like this in five years’ time, say, or ten – meeting in secret each week, once in a while risking a weekend away if Doris took it into her head to scoop up the children and take them to her sister’s place in the seaside town of Saltburn? Might he actually keep his promise to leave his wife once the kids were grown up? That was looking a long way ahead, she knew. Meanwhile, they snatched their pleasure where they could.

  Harold paused at the entrance to the King’s Head. ‘A penny for them,’ he said when she joined him and they went in together.

  ‘They’re not worth it,’ she replied. The pub, unchanged for decades, was gaslit, with engraved mirrors lining the walls and a row of brass pump handles along the mahogany bar. Around the room were small, private booths where customers sat playing games of dominoes or chatting over pints of beer, their faces illuminated by the softly hissing, flickering mantels.

  ‘What’ll it be?’ Harold asked Millicent as they approached the bar.

  ‘Dubonnet and lemonade,’ she decided. She caught the back view of a slender, dark-haired girl she thought she recognized but for a few seconds she couldn’t place her. Then she noticed the good-looking man in a trilby hat sitting opposite her, who stared directly at Millicent and blatantly ignored whatever it was his earnest companion was telling him.

  The girl glanced round and Millicent saw it was Clare Bell. Their eyes met fleetingly to acknowledge a shared, guilty secret then Clare turned away.

  ‘Come on, let’s sit over there,’ Harold suggested as he handed Millicent her drink and led her towards a dimly lit corner. ‘Tell me more about your week. I’m all ears.’

  With the heavy satchel of rent money slung across her shoulder, Cynthia made her slow way home. She walked up the long hill out of town on to the moor road, leaning against a drystone wall on the summit and taking in the grand sight of Brimstone Rock in the far distance. There was no hurry, she told herself. Her Uncle William wouldn’t be back yet from his Friday-teatime billiards session at the Village Institute, which gave her this precious time to herself and a chance to enjoy the view.

  And what a view it was. Banks of heather rolled away on all sides, broken by outcrops of dark rock. Scattered sheep grazed on the windswept slopes, while speckled, long-beaked curlews rose into the air and soared, along with a clumsy pheasant that clattered its wings and rattled away at the sound of an approaching motorbike.

  The motorbike slowed and stopped. Cynthia recognized the flat-capped rider as Leonard Andrews, an out-of-work gamekeeper who was rumoured to have turned his hand to poaching a few rabbits and pheasants from the Oldroyd estate where he’d once worked. That, and taking up odd jobs as a gardener, plus scratting for coal during the winter months, now filled up most of his time.

  ‘Hop on,’ he invited Cynthia with an affable smile.

  She smiled back. ‘Why not?’ she said and took up position on the pillion seat.

  ‘Hold tight,’ he warned.

  So Cynthia wrapped her arms around Leonard’s waist and felt the bike begin to pick up speed. Soon they were swooping down into dips and rising again, the engine at full throttle, leaning into bends with the wind driving into their faces until at last they came to the village of Hadley with its straight main street backed by grey slag heaps and old mine workings, silent reminders of a once thriving community.

  On the outskirts of the village, Cynthia tapped Leonard on the shoulder. ‘You can drop me off here, thanks.’

  He nodded and stopped next to the cricket club with its green and white pavilion and manicured pitch, putting both feet on the ground to steady the bike.

  From here it was a short walk to a fork in the road and the house where she lived so sh
e slid nimbly to the ground. ‘Ta very much, Leonard. That saved me a long walk.’

  ‘Any time.’ He nodded, opened the throttle and chugged on down the street.

  Cynthia was exhilarated by the ride, but the spring in her step gradually faded as she drew closer to home – a detached Victorian villa named Moor View, set back from the road and shielded by iron railings atop a sturdy stone wall. The house itself had a central gabled porch with living rooms to either side, a kitchen to the back and three spacious bedrooms above, with an attic storey lit only by small skylights. This was Cynthia’s cramped refuge from her uncle’s seemingly endless demands. It was where she had until recently supposed that she would serve out her sentence until the point when the sickly old man, her mother’s brother, eventually passed away.

  She knew it was far from ideal – living in an attic and acting as a live-in maid without even the benefit of a proper wage. It was a lifestyle that most girls of her age had already rejected – the before-dawn cleaning of hearths and laying of new fires in kitchen and living rooms, followed by work with floor polish and duster (‘Plenty of elbow grease,’ the old man would bark), dustpan and brush (‘Now then, Missy, you missed that bit of fluff under my bed’) and back-breaking labour with washboard and mangle on a Monday (‘Put some oomph into it, for pity’s sake!’).

  Until January of that year it had seemed to Cynthia that she had no choice.

  ‘Your uncle has been good to us,’ her mother Beryl would remind Cynthia during visits home on her Sunday afternoons off. ‘We couldn’t have managed if William hadn’t stepped in when he did.’

  In his chair in the corner of the kitchen on Raglan Road, Cynthia’s father Ellis would grow evermore silent. His empty pipe now rested in the hearth next to a tub of pipe cleaners and wooden spills – he went without smoking these days due to the cost of tobacco and the fact that he was no longer entitled to the dole money of seventeen shillings per week.