‘Yes, go. Just remember what I said.’
Leah went swiftly from the room, keeping her head down so that she couldn’t see Mr. de Lacey. What her mind did register, a quite inconsequential and trivial thing but which strangely she remembered after, was a piece of cigarette ash, still in its intact round form, on the floor.
She closed the library door quietly behind her and stood for a few minutes. She was trembling and her teeth chattered like a couple of castanets. She couldn’t believe what she’d heard. Mrs. Townsend and her brother! It was terrible, shocking and poor Raymond. She thought he was going to have a heart attack at one stage. They shouldn’t have stayed hidden! They should have made their presence known straight away because, as her mother always said, no good ever came of eavesdropping. She should listen to her mother more and her sayings because they were all true: a bird in the hand, pride comes before a fall, a stitch in time and so on and so on. All true, especially that one about eavesdropping. How she wished she hadn’t heard a word. Leah walked slowly towards the staircase. She’d left her sewing basket in the library but she’d get it later. Just now she had to go somewhere and try to calm down.
********
Janey swept disinterestedly under her looms. Another burst of steam filled the air with a thick haze, adding to the humidity. She stood up and wiped the sweat off her face with a cloth, then stared more closely at the straps turning the loom. Was it her imagination or was her loom slowing down. She turned to look at her other loom. Yes, that was doing the same. She blinked. It couldn’t be. She’d never heard of the looms being turned off before finishing time, and here it was, only a bit after eleven. They were though and she blinked again as they stopped completely.
By this time everyone had stopped to watch as all the looms gradually came to a standstill. The weavers automatically knocked the shuttles off, the silence uncanny after the roar of the machinery.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Why have the looms stopped?’
‘What’s going on?’
Dora came over to Janey and they stood for a few minutes uncertainly, watching the other weavers. Then there was a loud shout from a man standing at the other end of the weaving shed. He had just come in from the Tatler’s room waving a paper.
‘The war’s over! The war’s over!’
As if on cue hundreds of pairs of clogs began a thunderous clatter as the weavers swarmed out of the weaving shed. The iron runners on their clogs were
almost as deafening as the running looms had been.
Dora and Janey were swept along with the crowd. When they reached the yard there were hundreds of people yelling and screaming, laughing and crying.
It was over!
The two girls followed the excited throng out of the mill yard and down the street. People began to sing the war song of Tipparary, quietly at first and then the music swelled into a crescendo and people marched in unison to the Square. The noise was deafening. Janey covered her ears. It was bad enough in the mill. Besides, she hated crowds, especially when they were carrying on like this.
She hadn’t forgotten when she went to a cricket match in Manchester. She had gone with Leah and they’d clung together as the crowd pushed them towards the gates. Instead of going through they were pushed behind and had to wait until thousands of people left the stadium.
She had the same feeling now. Suffocated. She had to get home. Dora had disappeared in the crowd. She struggled to get to the side so that she could duck down a side street. She heaved a sigh of relief as she finally made her way home, away from the crowds. They’d all be making for the Town Square. Well, she wasn’t going. Her mother wouldn’t because she couldn’t abide crowds either. Janey ran the rest of the way. It was not even twelve o’clock and she was on her way home!
Her mother was there before her, having a cup of tea usual. She looked at Janey in surprise.
‘I thought you’d be on the Square.’
Janey shook her head. ‘You know I’m like you, Mam, I hate crowds.’
‘Aye, I’d forgotten; cup of tea, love?’
‘Ta, I will, Mam. Are there any of them oatmeal biscuits left?
‘Aye, I think so.’ Emma reached up for a tin on the shelf over the range. She took a biscuit out and gave it to Janey, ‘One or two?’
‘Two please.’ Janey took a bite and looked at her mother.
‘When do you think he’ll come home, Mam?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea, love. All I know is that I won’t be able to sleep proper until he does, or celebrate either. I haven’t heard anything for months, although he never was a good letter writer. Ee, I hope he’s all right.’
‘He’ll be home in no time now, Mam, so stop worrying. You’re always worrying about something or other and it doesn’t help. It only makes things worse if you ask me.’
Emma nodded and sat down in her favourite chair. It squeaked alarmingly every time she sat in it and if any more stuffing came out it would be completely flat.
‘You’re right there our Janey, but I can’t help it. It’s just the way I’m made. Some people are born worriers and, most of ‘em are mothers. I can’t believe it. After all this time it’s over. Well, let’s hope it’s the last one.’
Janey finished her tea and biscuits and then stood up.
‘I’m going to the petty, Mam.’ She picked up a newspaper and went out of the room.
Emma watched her from her chair as she went into the lavatory at the end of the yard. When Janey came back she’d make her cut some newspaper up for the toilet instead of having to take some with her every time she went. She had been talking to Mrs. Martin down the street, who told her she always did her’s nice and neat and hung them on a nail. Thinks she posh, Emma thought with a smile, silly bugger. But it was a good idea!
She was off on a lovely day-dream about Darkie coming home when a sudden shout from the lavatory almost made her fall off the chair. She jumped up as Janey came tearing out of the toilet pulling up her knickers.
‘What’s wrong,’ Emma called in panic. Janey’s eyes were two vivid green slits.
‘Somebody’s taken John Gilbert off the wall and I’ll bet I know who did it. Oo, I’ll kill our Leah, I will that. She’s always doing it, taking my pictures off the petty because she can’t be bothered to take newspaper with her. And now she’s wiped her bum on John Gilbert.’
‘Now, now Janey,’ Emma’s fear turned to anger with relief. ‘There’s no need to carry on like that. You nearly gave me a heart attack, shouting at the top of your voice, and all over a flaming picture.’
‘Not just any picture. John Gilbert! That was me best picture of him as well. I’ll kill our Leah, I will.’
Janey flounced back down to the lavatory, her knickers showing because she’d got her skirt caught in the elastic. Emma looked after her in irritation. Ee, she did carry on did Janey and all over a picture!
Emma went back into the kitchen, shaking her head. Well, she’d enjoy this extra time off, anyway. I wonder how long it’ll be before we hear from Darkie, she thought. Wouldn’t it be terrible if something happened to him now, right at the end? She was wrong in her head to be worrying like this, though. Janey was right, worrying got you nowhere, except a big headache. She should be laughing instead because the war was over and now everything would be different!
1. PART THREE
2.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘You’ve got two backs, Leah Hammond,’ Janey says to her sister, when she’s mad; or, ‘flat as a pancake’, or ‘like a steamroller’s run over you’. None of which is true. Leah is slender, whereas Janey has womanly curves even at fourteen.
This changed when Leah was seventeen. She suddenly began to sprout two very curvaceous breasts. She looked at herself in the still cracked mirror above the mantle in Glebe Street.
It was her full weekend off and, although she enjoyed coming home, she sighed with regret when she thought of the full-length mirror in her bedroom at Hyndburn. She steadi
ed herself on the chair on which she was standing so that she’d have a better view. One day soon I’ll buy Mam a new mirror, she thought. She made a face at her reflection, or what she could see of it, because the crack made her look like half of her didn’t fit with the other. She turned sideways and made an exasperated sound: the new under girdle, now all the fashion had not had much effect on flattening her breasts. Just my luck, she thought as she breathed in to make them less obvious. Now I’ve got a bust, it’s not fashionable!
She looked over to where Janey was sitting on the couch, her nose in her usual film star magazine. Janey had a perfect figure for the new fashions. She was pencil thin and had remained that way after a severe bout of the flu, which had killed thousands just after the war. Janey had been one of the lucky ones, but was a wraith of her former self and had never regained her robust health.
Why do things always work against me, Leah though angrily? She reached under her dress in irritation, pulled off the restricting girdle and heaved a sigh of relief. She threw the girdle on a chair. She hated of those things! How women could wear them she’d never know. They almost cut you in half, but she still looked in annoyance at the offending breasts, which had bounced right back, where they belonged.
Leah jumped off the chair. Her short bob swung perkily. Janey looked up. ‘Are we still going to Annie Lamb’s tonight, for you know what.’
Leah looked in warning towards the kitchen where Emma could be heard washing the dishes. ‘Yes, we are, just for a couple of hours,’ she said loudly. ‘I want to see Annie about the dress I’m making for her.’
Janey nodded knowingly, her short shiny black hair fitting her beautifully shaped head like a cap.
Emma had been horrified when they returned from Blackburn, their hair cut off. ‘What the bloody hell have you two been up to,’ she said, horrified. Crowning glory was the way Emma always described her two girl’s hair, now almost non-existent.
‘All your lovely hair. Ee, it’s a crime, that’s what it is, a crime.’ She’d refused to speak to them for full hour after and even now only grudgingly agreed that the style suited them. ‘But I still liked you with long hair better. What a waste of good hair and now it’ll probably be stuffed into somebody’s mattress. I don’t know what things are coming to, I don’t, and that’s a fact.’ She would mutter on to herself for a few minutes and Leah and Janey would listen in long suffering silence. Mam did carry on and all about a bit of hair!
There was a sudden loud knock on the door as Emma walked into the living room from the scullery, wiping her hands on a piece of cloth. ‘I wonder who that is,’ she said. ‘Stay there Leah, love,’ as Leah made for the door, ‘I’ll see who it is.’
Emma opened the front door to find May Wilkins, a friend of Leah’s, standing on the step. Her plain face under her wool hat looked pinched with the cold.
‘Ee, hello May,’ Emma said.
‘Hello Mrs. Hammond. Is your Leah in?’
‘Aye, she is. Come on in, you look frozen.’ Emma ushered May inside to the front room. ‘Get in front of the fire and warm yourself, love.’
‘Ta, Mrs. Hammond.’
Leah looked surprised to see May. ‘I thought you weren’t coming tonight, May.’
‘I changed me mind. It’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. I suppose you want me to measure you for that blouse?’ Leah winked. She wondered how many would be at Annie’s tonight. Not too many, she thought, or it’d be morning before she finished.
‘Aye, that’s it, that’s it.’ May said, flustered. Emma looked at her sharply. Leah shook her head at May in warning. Mam would twig that something was up and pester till she found out. May flushed and closed her mouth tightly as though something might come popping out she didn’t want.
Janey exchanged a knowing look with Leah. They’ll be queuing up to have it done, she thought. She smiled at May.
‘How’s your Mam, May?’ she said.
‘Aye, how is she, love?’ Emma said. ‘I’ve been meaning to get around to see her, but I saw your Dad and he said she was on the mend so I thought I’d leave it till next week. I’ve got a day off then.’
‘She’s a lot better, Mrs. Hammond but the doctor said it’ll be a while before she’s really fit again. But she worries about me Dad not being able to get a job.’
Emma nodded. ‘Aye, it’s getting worse, all this unemployment. It’s criminal what the men went through in the war and then to come home and not be able to earn a decent living. I’ve seen some of ‘em begging on corners. It’s not right. All them politicians making promises they’ve not kept. It’s not right.’ To Emma’s way of thinking there were a lot of NOT RIGHTS.
‘I was just glad that Darkie didn’t have to go down the pit again because they’re laying them off left and right. No, it’s not right.’
‘Don’t get worked up, Mam,’ Leah said sharply. ‘It’s bad for you. But what Mam said is right, May. It’s so demoralizing for people, not just for men, for women, too. They’ve had to give up jobs for the men.’
May admired Leah – and that voice, it was right posh. Some people laughed at her, but May thought the new way of talking suited Leah. And she used such long words. Half the time she’d no idea what they meant but they did sound good. And just look at her hair. May felt a twinge of envy as she thought of her own thin, straight hair (straight as a pennorth of nails her mother would say in exasperation as she tried in vain to make it curl. How many times had she put it in rags, slept on them all night in agony, only to see the corkscrews unwind in less than ten minutes)?
‘Doesn’t Leah’s hair look nice in a bob, Mrs. Hammond,’ she said to Emma, ‘and Janey’s, too.’
Emma nodded. ‘Aye, I’m getting more used to it. I liked it long, though.’ She looked at the clock on the mantle. ‘You’d better go now. I don’t want you home too late. And rug up, it’s cold tonight.’
Leah and Janey put coats, hats and gloves on. ‘We’ll see you then, Mam,’ Leah said. They hurried out of the room with May and banged the door behind them. They walked quickly up the street. May was shorter and had to take two strides to their one. ‘Slow up a bit, you two,’ she said, gasping for breath. ‘You’re like two trains.’
‘Sorry,’ Leah said, ‘But we haven’t a lot of time if I’m going to do everyone’s hair.’
‘Aye, all right, ee, I need a firecracker up me bum to keep up with you two.’ They laughed. The night was freezing and they clutched their coats tightly around them, their warm breaths condensing in the night air like small clouds.
They turned down St. Hubert’s Road, which was wider and longer than Glebe Street. At the bottom they could see the dark silhouette of St. Hubert’s Church spire, rising black and stark into the night sky. It was obliterated completely when the moon went behind a cloud.
‘Come on,’ Leah said, starting to run. ‘I hate the dark.’
They could see the light in Annie’s living room as they turned down Princes Lane. Before they reached the front door it opened and Annie’s voice boomed out.
‘Where’ve you been? It’s late and Mam and Dad’ll be back from the pictures before we’ve even started.’
‘Sorry Annie. I didn’t realize it was so late,’ Leah said.
They walked through into the back room. Kathryn McAuley was already sitting in front of the fire. She was not particularly good looking, her nose was too big for that, but she made up for this disadvantage by her immaculate presentation.
She was, as usual, dressed to kill (her father was a very well-off mill manager) in a green pure wool dress, her Musquash coat flung casually over a chair arm and a large diamond ring blazing on her beautifully manicured hand. Incongruously, in this dainty hand she held a large pint pot of tea, the tea as black as the ace of spades. Her voice didn’t match her appearance, either. It was decidedly dialect and the bane of her mother’s life. No amount of elocution lessons could alter Kathryn’s voice.
Leah had met Kathryn at the new dance place ca
lled Up Jazz, which was run by an American couple. It was very popular because everyone wanted to be in on the new jazz craze and learn The Black Bottom and The Charleston. Mrs. McAuley would have preferred Kathryn to stick to the Park Lane lot.
The new dance craze went with the new fashions. The bob was in, although there weren’t many in Harwood who had it yet; except, of course, Leah and Janey Hammond. But that was to be expected people said, especially with that Leah. She thinks she’s something that one does and her sister’s nearly as bad!
It was bobbed hair night for May, Annie and Kathryn!
‘Where the hell have you lot been then?’ Kathryn said as they walked in. ‘I’ve been here an hour and me Dad’ll kill me if I’m late home again.’
‘All right, all right, keep your hair on,’ Leah said taking her coat, hat and gloves off. They all looked at each other and burst out laughing. That wasn’t right at all. Another of the not rights, Leah thought. Annie handed Leah a large pair of scissors.
‘All right, get going,’ she said.
‘Do you think we should?’ May said, suddenly realizing what they were about to do. Leah brandished the scissors like an avenging Ghenghis Khan.
‘Don’t be so bloody soft,’ Kathryn said, jumping up and banging her pint pot loudly on the mantle. ‘Come on then, get on with it Leah. I’ll be the first. Yours looks all right so why shouldn’t mine.’
They stood and admired Leah’s hair for a moment, forgetting that Leah had beautiful hair and it would have looked good if it had been chewed off. It shone in thick waves, curling under at her chin.
Kathryn sat down on a chair. Annie quickly draped a towel around her shoulders and Kathryn shook her head as though to get rid of any lingering doubts. Her hair was even thicker and more luxurious than Leah’s and hung to her waist in a cascade of rippling chestnut waves. Leah looked at the beautiful hair in silence for a few seconds. It suddenly seemed a sin to cut it! Then she flourished the scissors and began to cut. The hair fell to the ground in a shining heap. Leah stood back when she’d finished, sounding more confident than she felt.
The Loom Page 13
