The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Hush!’ Lily unhooked her arm to put both hands to her ears. ‘Don’t tell me the whole story and spoil it for me.’

  Harry grinned, grabbed her hand back then steered her towards the wide, brightly lit entrance of the modern picture house where there was a giant poster showing the star of the film, Gracie Fields. ‘She’s not bad-looking but she’s not a patch on you,’ he told Lily.

  ‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ she protested to hide the fact that she was flustered. Why did this keep on happening with Harry – the tremulous quickening of her heartbeat over some silly remark or the special way he looked at her? And hadn’t she better keep her feet on the ground for now until she was sure of where she stood with him?

  He squeezed her hand then kept his fingers curled around hers. ‘All right. I expect Gracie can beat you hands down in the singing stakes, unless you’ve got hidden talents, Lil.’

  ‘No, I can’t sing a note,’ she confessed as they joined the queue.

  Buoyed up by the lights and the glamorous, brightly coloured posters inside the foyer, Lily could hardly wait to get inside the cinema and when they took their seats amongst a crowd of other young people with smiling faces, ready to watch the newsreel that came on before the main picture, she felt as if she’d entered a fairy-tale world. Gone from her mind were the sooty streets and bleak moors and taking their place was a plush warmth and dimmed lights, the hum of expectation drowned now by the notes of the organ positioned just under the giant screen. The organist played a romantic waltz to get people in the mood for the night’s entertainment. As the notes swelled to the ceiling and filled the auditorium, Harry made a bold move and slid his arm along the back of Lily’s seat and left it there, his fingers resting on her shoulder. ‘This is a bit of all right,’ he said with a smile.

  She smiled back at him and thought of nothing when the curtain went up and the newsreel played, only of Harry sitting close beside her, his hand lightly touching her shoulder.

  Then the film came on, with Gracie Fields – a Lancashire lass who could make you laugh and cry in a second, who sang like a bird, her voice pure and high, soaring higher still. The words brought to mind blue skies and a girl called Sally’s smiling face. Sally with a heart of gold, soldiering on alone after the war.

  Of course Lily cried when the wounded soldier returned, even though she thought he looked old and staid and not at all her idea of a romantic hero. She was still crying and drying her eyes when the film ended (in an embrace, of course) and the lights went up.

  Harry stood and let his hinged seat fold sharply upwards, offering Lily his hand. He turned, and keeping tight hold of her, led the way along the row of seats, up the steps towards the exit.

  And then they were through the foyer and out on the cold, dark street. A tram rattled by, followed by a Ford car and two men on bikes.

  ‘Hey up, you two!’ Ernie called as he wobbled to a halt outside the entrance to the baths. The grin on his face was the widest Lily had ever seen. ‘I was wondering when you’d get round to asking Lily out,’ he told Harry. ‘In fact, I bet Billy a tanner you’d never pluck up the courage. It looks like I’m out of pocket.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Lily shot back, her eyes twinkling. ‘You can tell Billy Robertshaw it was the other way around – it was me who asked Harry to come to the pictures with me.’

  ‘Never!’ a flabbergasted Ernie cried.

  ‘No, she’s kidding.’ Harry put him right straight away while Lily laughed at the look on Ernie’s face. ‘I’ll tell Billy you owe him a tanner next time I see him.’

  ‘Which might be sooner than you think, worse luck.’ Ernie gestured behind him at the small, noisy group of people still lingering outside the Victory. ‘Billy’s back there with your Margie.’

  It was Lily’s turn to be astonished. ‘Margie’s been to the pictures with Billy?’ she asked. ‘You mean, we were sitting there in the cinema without knowing they were there?’

  ‘It looks like it,’ Ernie said, checking his cycling clips were firmly in place before getting ready to set off again. Then he put on a tragic face and bemoaned his fate. ‘Margie’s ruined her chances with me good and proper this time.’

  ‘Never mind, Ernie, there are plenty more fish in the sea,’ Harry sympathized. ‘There’s Hilda Crabtree for a start.’

  ‘Stop right there,’ Ernie ordered. ‘I’ll choose my own girl if you don’t mind.’

  And so Harry and Ernie joked along while Lily tried to catch sight of Margie outside the cinema. The group was dispersing and eventually Lily spotted her sister in her green coat and matching hat, jauntily crossing the road hand in hand with Billy in his Saturday-night-out tweed jacket and best cap. She ran a few steps towards them and called Margie’s name. Margie glanced round and though she heard and saw Lily, she kept on walking.

  ‘Margie, Billy – wait a sec!’ Lily cried. She had to let a tram trundle by then run again to catch up with them.

  Billy greeted her with an open, cheery grin. ‘Well, if it isn’t Lily Briggs! Fancy seeing you here.’ He looked across the street to spot Harry saying goodbye to Ernie and following Lily across the road. ‘It looks like I’ve won myself a tanner,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘I never knew you were coming into town,’ Lily said to Margie, who had stopped reluctantly.

  She narrowed her eyes as if warning Lily not to overstep the mark by plunging into the all-important but forbidden topic of conversation. Lily was offended that Margie felt it necessary to drop the hint. ‘Anyway, how’s Granddad?’ she asked coolly.

  ‘The same as ever,’ Margie said with a frown. ‘He goes out every morning, and comes back in at teatime. He doesn’t bother much with me.’

  ‘That’s all right then. But Mother’s in bed poorly,’ Lily told her, sharing family news while Billy and Harry carried on with the joke about the sixpence. ‘She’s not been herself lately and I’m worried about her. I’m going to tell Father to call Dr Moss if she’s not better by Monday.’

  Margie raised her eyebrows. ‘You think you can get him to pay for that?’

  Lily nodded. ‘He’s worried too, I can tell. Of course, Mother won’t hear of it – you know what she’s like. We’ll have to go behind her back.’

  ‘You hear that, Margie?’ Billy broke in. ‘Harry thinks I should take you to see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein next week.’

  Glad of a change of subject, Margie put on a bright, flirtatious smile. ‘Why’s that, Harry?’

  ‘Boris will frighten the life out of you,’ Harry promised. ‘You’ll be glued to your seat, hanging on to Billy for dear life.’

  Margie tilted her head back and grinned. ‘Horror films don’t bother me so there’ll be no hanging on to anyone.’

  As Margie played along, Lily saw that she was using it as a way of keeping her distance. And of course Lily was bursting with questions. Billy must have taken himself off to Ada Street after their conversation earlier, but had Margie been pleased to see him? Might Margie have confessed everything to Billy about the baby? Because in Lily’s mind Billy was by far and away the most likely candidate to be the baby’s father.

  Lily’s fertile imagination ran through the possibilities then came to a sudden halt when Billy dragged her back into the conversation. ‘You’ll go to see Frankenstein with Harry, won’t you, Lil? We can all four go together – you and Harry, me and Margie.’

  It struck her then with the force of a blow to her chest – Billy wasn’t a man troubled by the sudden prospect of unwanted fatherhood. He was himself – carefree and joking, handsome and pleasant enough but not someone you took seriously or who had hidden depths. No, Billy was still Billy, never thinking beyond his daily routine of getting himself off to work, doing his gardening job for Stanley Calvert, taking his pay at the end of the week and getting out on a weekend to have a high old time.

  So Margie hadn’t told Billy anything, Lily decided, and she was glaring at her again, demanding that she kept her secret and of course Lily couldn’t do anythi
ng else, even though it seemed wrong for Margie to take up with Billy again as if nothing was the matter. After all, how long could it go on before she had to confess and then what would happen? Lily had to stop herself from shuddering when she imagined that moment.

  ‘I don’t know about Boris Karloff,’ was all she said in reply to Billy’s question, casting her eyes down at the pavement to avoid Margie’s hard stare.

  ‘Maybe we’ll go dancing instead,’ Harry suggested as he picked up the tension in the air and began to steer Lily away. He turned to Billy. ‘Are you two taking the tram up to Overcliffe, or are you walking home with us?’

  ‘Tram,’ Margie said, leaving Billy no option but to carry on to the stop with her. ‘Cheerio, Harry. Ta-ta, Lily,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’

  They were off in the opposite direction, leaving Harry to walk Lily home along the increasingly deserted streets.

  ‘We’ll only go dancing if you’d like to,’ Harry acknowledged gently. ‘I hope you don’t think I was jumping the gun.’

  ‘No – I mean, yes I would like to.’ She sighed, her mind still taken up with Margie.

  ‘You can tell me if you’ve got something else on,’ he insisted, walking without taking her hand and trying to judge her mood. He’d felt happier and more confident when they were in the cinema, when he’d stolen glances at the light reflected from the big screen flickering on to Lily’s face and watched her surreptitiously wiping a tear from her eye. ‘We’re coming up to Christmas – there’s always plenty going on.’

  They’d reached the corner on to Ghyll Road and could see the entrance to Calvert’s ahead of them and the tall, square memorial tower rising into the dark sky. ‘No, Harry, I mean it. I’d like us to go out again.’

  Lily’s straightforward admission was music to Harry’s ears and he moved in to slide his arm around her waist. ‘It’s funny,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She leaned her head against his shoulder and liked how this time he matched his stride to hers.

  ‘Funny how you can live on the next street to someone for donkey’s years and never think twice about how you feel about the other person.’

  Lily hoped that Harry’s comment was leading in the right direction but she wasn’t sure so she fell back on a flippant remark. ‘Now don’t you go hurting my feelings, taking me for granted already.’

  ‘No, I’m serious.’ He’d built himself up to make a long speech and went ahead with it regardless, his face unusually solemn. ‘We come and go – day in, day out. We have our pals and everything’s jogging along nicely as usual. You’ve got Sybil and Annie. I’ve got Ernie and Billy and everyone down at the Cross. Then all of a sudden something clicks.’

  ‘Between us?’

  ‘That’s right. I wasn’t expecting it but when it happened it hit me like a ton of bricks.’

  ‘Ta very much!’ His way of putting things made her smile. ‘Donkey’s years’, ‘ton of bricks’ – you wouldn’t find those phrases in a love poem, but they were Harry Bainbridge to a ‘T’.

  ‘It was when you were dancing with me at the Assembly Rooms. I tapped you on the shoulder and you said yes and you didn’t mind me having two left feet and we were getting along fine – one-two-three, one-two-three.’ They were outside Newby’s sweet shop, and Harry suddenly seized Lily in his arms and waltzed her round the corner on to Albion Lane. ‘“Goodnight, Sweetheart” – that was when it hit me.’

  She laughed and let him hold her close and wrap his coat around her like a warm cocoon. She looked up at him and knew that she wanted to kiss him, only Harry wouldn’t stop speaking until he’d got everything off his chest. ‘What hit you?’ she whispered.

  ‘That you weren’t just the girl next door, the one everyone relies on, the girl I could have a laugh and a joke with whenever our paths crossed on a Saturday night out. You were much more to me than that.’

  ‘Stop, before all this goes to my head.’ She spoke words that she didn’t mean. Don’t stop, Harry, she should have said. Tell me everything that’s in your heart.

  ‘You’re beautiful, Lily,’ he whispered, stroking her hair. ‘I don’t know why, but I must have been going around all these years with my eyes closed.’

  ‘Harry …’

  ‘Hush,’ he murmured, his breath warm on her cold face, his lips pressing against hers.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  For most of Sunday Lily was on cloud nine. Her feet didn’t touch the ground, her heart beat faster, her head was in a spin … She smiled to herself as all the clichés and well-worn words of American love songs she’d heard on the wireless rolled together inside her head and made her float on air.

  She sewed and looked out on to Albion Lane, crooning softly to the tune of ‘I’ll Be Loving You, Always’.

  ‘What are you making?’ Arthur pestered from his perch on the window sill. It had rained all morning and was still coming down so hard that the gutters and drains overflowed and water streamed down the pavement outside the house.

  ‘I’m making a blouse for Vera at work.’ As Lily’s foot pressed the treadle and her fingers steered the soft blue fabric under the rapidly pounding needle, she tried not to let Arthur distract her from thoughts of Harry, but as always she’d underestimated her little brother’s clamour for attention.

  ‘When it stops raining, will you come up to the Common with me and play football?’

  Lily had come to the tricky bit of gathering a sleeve at the shoulder end then pinning it carefully into the arm hole before she tacked then sewed it in place. ‘No, Arthur, it’ll be too muddy.’

  ‘We could play marbles in the alley,’ he suggested.

  ‘It’ll be all nasty and wet.’ She adjusted the gathers until she was satisfied they were even then turned the half-finished garment the right side out to check that the sleeve had been set in right. ‘Why not look at a book?’

  ‘No, I want to play out,’ he whined, craning his neck to see who was coming up the street.

  ‘We can’t always have what we want,’ Lily counselled. Deciding that she was unhappy with the evenness of the gathers, she unpinned the sleeve, drew out the thread and began again.

  ‘Harry’s here!’ Arthur announced as he leaped down from the sill and ran to the door.

  At the mention of Harry’s name Lily started and pricked her finger. She sucked it as Arthur let Harry in, buttoned up against the rain with his cap pulled well down as usual.

  ‘I won’t stop,’ Harry began, taking care not to step off the doormat for fear of dripping everywhere. ‘I happened to be passing and spotted Arthur at the window. I was wondering – shall I take him off your hands for a bit?’

  ‘To do what?’ Lily asked, her finger to her mouth. Harry’s unexpected arrival had made her forget her manners, had thrown her out of the happy daydream about him into that painful and real state of uncertainty about what last night’s kiss might mean and where it might lead, although this time she was at least sure that it hadn’t been an accident.

  Now that he’d followed his impulse to knock on the door, Harry too seemed unsure. ‘I don’t know – I haven’t thought that far ahead. But I could see he was at a loose end.’

  ‘You’re right about that. Arthur can’t sit still for five minutes. Anyone would think he’s got ants in his pants.’

  ‘No, I haven’t!’ Arthur protested with a pained look.

  Harry smiled and came up with an idea. ‘It’s about this time in the afternoon that the horses down at the brewery are getting fed. Would you like me to take you to see Duke and Prince and the others, Arthur?’

  ‘Aren’t they up on the Common?’ Lily checked.

  ‘Not in this rain. And anyway there’s no goodness in the grass at this time of year. So how about it, Arthur, do you want to come with me?’

  Arthur’s answer was to run for his school coat and hat and in less than a minute he was buttoned, belted up and standing with an excited grin beside Harry at the door.

 
‘They say the rain will ease up by teatime,’ Harry told Lily, kicking himself for not being able to think of something more interesting to say. He didn’t know what had got into him lately – weather was as bad as football as a topic of conversation and it felt to him as if the magic of the night before might have melted into the puddles on the pavement outside.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ she murmured, smiling and nodding them on their way. She waved at them through the window then went back to her sewing, rethreading the needle and trying to concentrate but thinking only of how clear and grey Harry’s eyes were when he glanced up from under the peak of his cap, and how those eyes were full of questions that she’d wanted to answer but hadn’t been able to, not sitting here at the sewing machine, with Arthur hopping from one foot to the other and eager to be off.

  At the end of the afternoon, as the rain eased and dusk fell, Rhoda managed to get out of bed. She came slowly and silently downstairs, grasping the banister and appearing in the kitchen as Lily was putting the finishing touches to Vera’s blouse. There was no one else in the house – Walter had taken himself off straight after dinner to the Working Men’s Club on Market Row for a change and Evie was cosily ensconced with Peggy on Raglan Road. The blouse was a pretty forget-me-not blue and would suit Vera well, Lily decided, glancing up only to be taken aback by her mother’s appearance. Though Rhoda had made the effort to get up and dressed into her grey skirt and navy blue blouse, she looked washed out and was stooping forward with one arm crossed over her thin body, the other hand still grasping the banister at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Don’t start.’ Rhoda knew that Lily was about to fuss so she cut her off short.