The Quality Street Wedding
Page 18
Ruffian’s ears were the first to prick up. The tread on the cobbles out in the stable yard was a familiar one to him. Peter was approaching and he was doing it quickly.
‘Have you heard the news?’ Peter was a little breathless; he’d obviously hurried to find them. ‘The Sunlight Laundry on Hebble Lane’s been shut down. They’ve sent all the workers home to quarantine. They’ve had an outbreak of scarlatina.’
Bess’s face lit up at the name of the business, clearly not registering what this truly meant. ‘That’s where our mother works. She’s a laundress. Do you think she’ll be in the paper?’
Chapter Forty-Seven
Kathleen Calder had a particular liking for Sherbet Fountains. She didn’t like them for herself, but she liked the ease with which they could be sold in secret at her Sunday School, the last remaining opportunity she had to go out and see her friends. The Sherbet Fountain might have been made for illicit sale on ecclesiastical premises because unlike chocolate and toffees, it contained no fat so it wouldn’t melt in her pockets, or in her school satchel if she were forced to leave it beside the old Victorian heating pipes. It came wrapped in a card and paper tube so it didn’t rustle, and, best of all, it was one of the shop’s cheapest lines, so she was in a much better position to buy them in bulk from Mr Hebblewhite and sell them on at a tidy profit under the pews at All Saints Stump Cross. The other Sunday School scholars liked them too. They could get into terrible trouble if they were caught munching a sweet or a piece of chocolate bar during the sermon, but Sherbet Fountains were easy to conceal. One only had to take the liquorice strip out and loosen the collar of the paper sleeve, so that it was then an easy matter to discreetly put a hand into one’s pocket, get a dip of sherbet on an index finger, and then put it to one’s lips as though in a pose of thought on some great theological question which had just been raised by the vicar. The number of children who now appeared to be pondering deep eschatological conundrums in Stump Cross Sunday School was increasing every week, and so were Kathleen’s profits.
‘Can you get us some Mint Cracknel next week?’ a tough-looking lad asked Kathleen as he crossed her palm with three grubby farthings outside the Sunday School hall in exchange for his sherbet. ‘And a quarter of chocolate eclairs for me mam; she says she could do with something to pass the time when the curate’s preaching.’
‘No can do.’ Kathleen pocketed the money while casting a glance around her with the automatic caution of a practised fence. ‘Not allowed to work there right now, but in any event they’re too high value, too likely to melt, and too conspicuous in the packaging – those twist wraps don’t half rustle. Tell her she’ll have to come into the shop in the week once this fever is over and we’ll do her a good price.’
‘She can’t come in the week, she’s got work at Mack’s in the day and she’s taking in laundry on a night; Sunday’s the only day she could visit …’ The lad exchanged a look of knowing with Kathleen; they were both only too aware that the Sunday trading laws barred commercial premises from opening on a Sunday at all, and that shop owners caught operating then were regularly fined by the police. It still happened, though; you heard about some places selling things out the back door on the quiet. And after all, wasn’t that what Kathleen was already doing? Running a mobile shop from her pew in the back corner of the Sunday School hall? The rough-looking lad asked, ‘Do you have a set of keys to the shop, like?’
Kathleen had been considering this potential new business avenue for some time and it just so happened that the lad’s query coincided with her own musing on the subject. ‘You’re a Grimshaw, aren’t you? Back Ripon Street. What’s your mother’s name?’
‘Siobhan. She’s from Dublin, Irish Free State. She’ll not split on you to the English police, no fear. She just wants a quarter of a pound of chocolate eclairs and the same again of coffee caramels whenever you get them in.’
‘Dublin? What’s she doing in low Church of England? Shouldn’t you all be at St Eilfred’s with the papists?’
‘Aye, but me mam wants me to get a place at the grammar school like my sister, so she’s biting her tongue until we’ve all matriculated.’
This had a ring of truth for Kathleen; she knew that people would do a lot for sweets and school places. She would trust the Grimshaws, but she’d have to be careful.
The covert Sunday opening hours at Hebblewhite’s began as Kathleen intended to keep them: discreetly. Kathleen read the papers, she’d seen plenty of reports of police waiting outside shop premises ready to pounce on illegal traders, and she had no intention of being caught and marring her reputation – that would put back her plans for her elevation to the peerage. No, Kathleen was clever and she had already planned her lawful excuse for entering the shop premises on the Sabbath: history. She was recording the history of the old building and she was there to sketch some of the gargoyles while the shop was empty. She even had her sketchbook prepared with a selection of well-executed drawings which she had paid a lad to do for her in exchange for a half-pound bag of Toffee Pat. Kathleen was ready with her excuses if she was caught. The only difficulty would come if she were seen handing over goods at the back door, and for that she had made up a box marked ‘Lost Property’ in large black letters into which she would place any pre-ordered produce for a doubly concealed exchange.
Kathleen was enjoying the extra pocket money, but this was not why she did it: Kathleen was flushed with excitement by the idea that she was making a success of some real grown-up work. Old Mr Hebblewhite could never have done the things she had; he didn’t have her initiative, her astute judgement of character, her capability. Kathleen had always known that she would make a good businesswoman; even when she was very small and she’d play at being grown-ups with the other girls in the playground. They were always mothers with pretend babies, and she was always the shopkeeper they came to visit for make-believe toys. For Kathleen there was no innate appeal in playing at being mothers – why make-believe something that was going to take away all your playtime one day? – she idolised a different kind of existence. She daydreamed fabulous stories in which desperate businessmen met her in a Lyon’s Corner House and were so impressed by her very presence that they begged her to save their businesses. Kathleen planned to learn from Mackintosh’s and then beat them at their own game. She just had to wait until they weren’t in the midst of an epidemic, then she could really get to work.
Chapter Forty-Eight
‘I know it’s my fault.’ Siobhan Grimshaw was holding her head in her hands as she sat, slumped forwards on the bench in the factory changing rooms. ‘I gave her my Stuart’s uniforms to wash; they’d been in the hospital picking up God-knows what.’
‘You weren’t to know,’ Pearl reassured her, ‘they were just uniforms, you couldn’t have known the uniforms were dangerous in themselves.’
‘And who says it was the uniforms, anyway?’ Winnifred was putting on her own uniform ready to go back onto the Toffee Penny line and start up her twist-wrapping machine. ‘She could’ve picked it up anywhere, any of us could. She might have caught it on the bus or queueing at the gates. There is no telling where it was.’
‘But it was so soon after …’ Siobhan shook her head. ‘It was so soon after I gave her that basket to wash and I just can’t stop thinking about it. I feel awful.’
‘This will sound hard,’ Pearl said, ‘but feeling awful won’t help her. Working like stink to earn double piece-rates so we can all chip in for her doctor’s bills, that’ll help her. And working twice as hard to keep the line running so that it’s here for her to come back to will help her all the more.’
‘Is she under the doctor yet?’ Winnifred asked.
‘Yes,’ Pearl said. ‘She was sent home from the isolation hospital last night after her fever broke. They needed the bed in the hospital, apparently. Her husband’s not caught it so he’s nursing her while they all quarantine.’
‘You know she lost her sense of smell?’ Siobhan’s suspicions had firs
t been raised when she noticed that her friend didn’t recoil as they passed the tannery. ‘They say that’s the first thing to happen when you get scarlet fever; you can’t smell anything and you can’t taste anything. That’s when I should’ve known. I should’ve said something.’
‘You know Doreen has always loved the smell of the Mint Cracknel room – and myself, I’ve always thought it was very therapeutic.’ Winnifred produced a tattered toffee tin from the shelf above her coat hook. ‘Why don’t we fill up a tin with Mint Cracknel wrappers for her to smell when she’s better? I’m sure she’d like that.’
Pearl was not convinced. ‘Wouldn’t she be a bit disappointed not to be given the Cracknel to eat? I’d have thought the smell without the sweets themselves might be considered mean.’
‘Oh no, dear.’ Winnifred knew about these things. ‘She’s slimming. And it’s the thought that counts.’
Pearl shook her head. ‘I don’t think her whole family are slimming, so how about we collect them a tin of Mint Cracknel – not just the wrappers – and a tin of Quality Street fresh from the line? We can leave them on her doorstep and she can smell them or eat them, or share them as she likes.’
‘Are we allowed to leave things on her doorstep while they’re in quarantine?’ Siobhan asked.
‘Well, the milkman does it, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t if they don’t open the door.’
Siobhan thought for a moment. ‘Do you think I should leave her a note? You know, something to say that I’m sorry.’
‘No, love,’ Winnifred reassured her, ‘there’s nothing to be sorry about. She wanted to help you. She wanted to take some of the burden that your family were feeling; we all did. It’s a frightening time for everyone and we all wanted to find a way to do our bit to make it better for someone. Just send her a note to thank her and tell her she’s missed; she’d like that.’
Chapter Forty-Nine
Halifax had a reputation for manufacturing the most hardwearing workers clogs and Mary had always hated them. It was an odd thing to hate – a plain wooden sole with a leather upper affixed by metal rivets – but even the sound of them clattering over cobbled streets sent a chill down her spine. Hatred of clogs was a family trait bred into her by her mother who had told Mary, in her own blunt way, that clogs meant death. Years before Mary’s birth, when Mrs Norcliffe was just a child herself, her father had been killed in a mining accident. The mine had collapsed on several men and when their bodies were finally recovered they could only be identified by the clogs they wore. Mrs Norcliffe remembered being taken as a seven-year-old to a Sunday School hall somewhere where the bodies were laid out on trestle tables beneath sheets. Wooden-soled clogs weren’t like leather shoes, they were meant to last the owner a lifetime, and each set of clogs had been worn down in varying places by the owners varying idiosyncrasies of gait, or attack by over-friendly dogs, or accidents of the home; each set, too, had been mended over and over in ways the families of the dead men would have known even at a distance. Mary’s own grandfather had been identified by his wife and daughter through the patches he’d hammered over his heels.
Mary had not worn a pair of clogs for a long time and she would rather go barefoot than wear clogs again. She would need new shoes for her wedding day and the horrible thing was, in order to be married at the register office, she would need to pass the place where the clogs had always come from. Mary knew it was a ridiculous thing to fret over, but she couldn’t help herself; she just didn’t want to go alone.
Mary asked Reenie to go with her to the Register Office. It was only a preliminary visit to request an appointment, but it still put Mary on edge. At first Reenie had assumed her friend’s anxiety over the visit was the natural nervousness of a bride who was having to undertake arrangements which the groom – being a foreign national – was not well-placed to undertake, but there was something more, and Reenie could have kicked herself when she realised what it was.
The Halifax Register Office was not a familiar place to Reenie, but then she had never been in need of any of the additional services which Carlton Street offered.
The pair took early shifts in the factory so they could arrive at the place at four thirty. Mary had not needed to look up the address in the directory, or how to get there, and that should have raised Reenie’s suspicions immediately.
‘Should we ask directions when we get off the tram just in case it’s not where you think it is?’ Reenie asked as they shuffled their way towards the back of the moving vehicle which was approaching the stop.
‘No. I know where it is.’
‘But we’re cutting it very fine for time and if we go the wrong way for a bit we might not get there before they close. But if we take a quick half a minute to double check by asking someone the way—’
Mary cut Reenie off mid-flow in her torrent of helpfulness just as they were alighting from the tram. ‘I know exactly where it is; I used to go there often.’
‘Why did you go there often? You’re only just of age – you can’t have needed to go to the register office often.’
Mary looked around to see that they were not within clear earshot of any passersby and then hissed, ‘It’s the same address as the Relieving Office.’
This information silenced Reenie, who realised she had put her foot in it. She had always known that Mary’s father had died and that they lived in poor circumstances, but she had never thought about what it must have meant in practical terms. Reenie’s family had never been forced to seek help from the Relieving Officer, but her heart went out to Mary.
The Halifax Register Office was squatting in two old Georgian townhouses which had been knocked together to form a nest of civil servants and was located, for convenience, just a few doors from the police court and the big borough police station. One could register a death and then be tried for causing it, all within a few hundred yards.
Mary stood stock-still in the doorway, unwilling to cross the threshold. The place looked smaller than she remembered, but then she had grown since her last visit. The classical stone columns which formed a decorative portico looked a trifle ridiculous now that they had shrunk down to their true size and were not looming over her childish self like biblical totems. Seeing how reduced the old place was gave Mary a measure of solace.
‘Who have you come to see?’ a receptionist with a pinched look about her demanded of them barely before they’d stepped through the door.
‘We’re here about a wedding,’ Mary mumbled, trying to put from her mind the memories of being asked the same question in the same place, while she waited for the handouts from the relieving officers – parcels of clothes and two pairs of clogs made at the asylum. The relieving officers used to boast that they weren’t the old-fashioned clogs because the inmates at the asylum had started making them with modern Gibson soles. Gibson soles didn’t make them any better in Mary’s eyes.
‘You can’t see anyone for three weeks. We’ve got two of the registrars on quarantine for a fortnight, and then after that it’s a waiting list.’
Reenie blurted out, ‘But they can’t wait to be married three weeks! This is an emergency! They have to be married straight away!’
Mary blanched at the shame of this undignified situation and the anxiety of it all. The receptionist was not sympathetic:
‘Well, that’s your affair. You’ll not get a wedding here this side of May Day. We’re short-staffed and there’s a waiting list. If you want an appointment to register your intention to marry, then I can get you one appointment in three weeks’ time for one party, and …’ she turned through pages of an appointments diary, ‘and the second party could have an appointment to register their intent four and a half weeks hence—’
‘Why can’t they have an appointment together?’ Reenie burst in, thinking she’d seen a more efficient way of managing the matter. ‘They could save time by going in together.’
‘We don’t do that. You have to notify separately. It’s a legal requirement.’
Mary didn’t hear the rest of what her friend said. She was walking out through the front door into the dying light of the late afternoon. She was thinking about the clogs which she had burned as soon as she had got herself a job at Mackintosh’s.
The clogs had been made from elm – the wood which coffins were made from – and more than one disgusted neighbour had commented, on inspecting them, that they had probably been made from the scrap they used for coffins in the sawmill at the asylum. Ordinarily elm would be considered too hard a wood for clogs, but if all they had in the sawmill that day was coffin scraps, then it would make sense. Mary hated them for their hardness, and her mother’s hardness, and the hardness of her situation.
Chapter Fifty
It was the first day that the factory canteen was allowed to reopen after a drop in the number of scarlatinal infections. Dolly Dunkley had not been invited to join the girls for lunch in the factory dining hall, but she was so eager to boast about her news that she made herself an unwelcome guest all the same.
‘We’re going to get married in the bridge chantry,’ she announced.
‘What’s the bridge chantry?’ Bess asked.
‘She means the sweetshop under North Bridge – it’s old so it’s got a fancy name.’ Mary did not sound in a mood to pander to poshos like Dolly Dunkley.
‘Can you get married in a sweetshop?’ Bess looked genuinely intrigued as she put aside her glossy magazine to interrogate Dolly.
‘Well, it’s not a sweetshop, it’s just got a man in it who’s been selling sweets. It’s really a thirteenth-century chapel where travellers and monks used to pray; it’s really very unique.’