The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘What does Dr Moss say?’ Margie asked. ‘Is there some medicine he can give you that would help?’

  ‘No, love, there’s not. Dr Moss does his best but his best’s not good enough, not with a tumour like mine.’

  With her hand still enclosed inside her mother’s, Margie’s lips quivered and tears came to her eyes.

  ‘There’s a lot for me to think about, lying here,’ Rhoda confessed. ‘There’s Arthur for a start. Yes, Lily and Evie can organize things so he gets to school and has his meals and so on – they can look after him very nicely so far as that goes. But …’

  ‘But what, Mother?’

  ‘But I’ve come round to thinking that this house is not where a little lad should be stopping, with me being so poorly and not able to do anything for him. I’ve decided it’s better for you and your granddad to have him up on Ada Street.’ It cost Rhoda dear to come out with the idea that had been preying on her mind over Christmas but she continued regardless. ‘He should be away from here, up near the moors where there’s plenty of fresh air. And you, Margie, you have the time to look after him and take him to school. It’ll do you both good.’

  Margie looked at her mother with fresh alarm. ‘Are you sure about this? Have you mentioned it to Lily?’

  ‘Not yet, but I will.’ Now that Rhoda had got this part off her chest, she felt she could go on. ‘And you, love – I want to be sure that you’re looking after yourself properly and not moping around thinking that what’s happened to you means it’s the end of the world. It’s not, you know.’

  Nodding miserably, Margie felt the first tears trickle down her cheeks.

  ‘You might think so now but you’ll change your mind once the baby’s born,’ Rhoda promised. ‘One look at him will be all it takes, you mark my words.’

  ‘“He” might be a “she”,’ Margie pointed out.

  ‘Yes. Which would you rather – a little boy or a little girl? Or twins – one of each, eh?’

  ‘Mother, don’t!’

  ‘Why not? It happens, you know.’

  ‘It’ll take me all my time to look after one, never mind two,’ Margie protested with a self-deprecating shrug. ‘Two sets of nappies to wash, two mouths to feed – how does anyone manage that?’

  ‘Ah, but they do,’ Rhoda said with a smile. ‘I’ve seen plenty of women cope very nicely with twins in my time. Anyway, you’ll know what to do when the time comes, what with Lily standing by to lend you a hand, even if I’m not able to.’

  As Rhoda said this, Margie felt a jolt of fear run through her body and she stood up and began to pace the floor.

  ‘Hush, you’ll wake Arthur up,’ Rhoda remonstrated. She was growing tired and she wanted to make the most of what precious time she had with Margie. ‘We’ve not always seen eye to eye, you and me,’ she went on, beckoning her to sit back down. ‘Perhaps I’ve not played my part the way I should have.’

  ‘No, Mother. What’s happened to me isn’t your fault.’

  ‘That’s what it feels like.’ Rhoda sighed. ‘Right from the start I was too busy delivering other people’s babies to spend enough time with my own – I realize that now. It’s funny when you think about it, isn’t it? Then when you were up on your feet and toddling, I handed you over to Lily to look after and she was a good little mother to you, and that was a blessing. Then Evie came along and last but not least there was Arthur, and I went on letting you get away with a lot, Margie, because there never seemed to be time for me to explain what you should and shouldn’t do and I left you to find out for yourself. Now that comes back to haunt me – the fact that I never made time to talk to you about the important things—’

  ‘Mother!’ Unable to bear the sorrow and regret on Rhoda’s face, Margie leaned in to comfort her with a hug then sat back and placed her hand over her stomach. ‘This has nothing to do with me not knowing the difference between right and wrong. I knew that as well as Lily or anyone else. And when he … When it happened, I did say no because I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I said it loud and clear.’

  ‘But he took no notice?’ Rhoda asked, her gaze penetrating Margie’s weakened defences. Miserably Margie nodded and looked down at her hands.

  ‘This man – who is he?’ her mother asked gently. ‘Tell me all about it, love. The man’s name – everything.’

  ‘You don’t know him, Mother.’

  ‘But tell me in any case.’

  Moved by the soft tone, Margie looked up into her mother’s eyes. And it was then that her resistance finally melted away and she haltingly shared with Rhoda every last detail of what had passed on the terrifying night that had changed her life for ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Lest auld acquaintance, eh?’ Annie nudged Evie and Sybil as they stood in line to clock on at half past seven on the following Monday. She nodded towards Fred Lee standing beside the clocking-on machine, flat cap, motorcycle gauntlets and goggles under one arm, the wide bottoms of his Windsor-check trousers tucked firmly into the tops of his socks, timing the arrival of each and every worker in the weaving shed.

  ‘Yes, some things never change.’ Sybil sighed.

  ‘Worse luck, eh, Evie?’ As they approached the machine, Annie put herself in between Evie and the overlooker, whose fleshy face seemed to have grown waxier and his waistline thicker over Christmas and New Year. ‘Now then, Fred. Somebody ate too much Christmas pudding, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes and somebody had better mind her p’s and q’s if she wants to stay on the right side of me,’ Lee retorted huffily.

  Annie nudged Evie towards the machine and taunted Fred for his feeble put-down. ‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ she said cheerily.

  ‘Yes, if I could be bothered,’ he snapped back. ‘Evie Briggs, how long does it take you to get your card stamped and put in the right slot? Come along, Miss Slowcoach, get a move on!’

  Blushing, Evie hurried to clock on and get started on her first task of the day. Soon hundreds of bobbins turned, shuttles flew and the workplace was going full tilt all around her.

  Half an hour later, as Evie crawled out from under the metal warp beam of Flora’s loom carrying the last handfuls of gathered dust and broken threads, she found a pair of sturdy legs encased in wide checked trousers blocking her way. Her heart sank as she glanced up and saw the overlooker frowning down at her.

  Lee gestured with his thumb for Evie to stand up and follow him out of the weaving shed, which she did, still clutching the debris from under Flora’s loom. Once in the corridor and with the door closed behind them, the overlooker turned to her and bestowed on her the typical lewd scrutiny that made her tremble from head to toe.

  ‘You’re not so full of yourself now that your loudmouthed friends aren’t here to stick up for you, are you?’ he leered as Evie stuffed the rescued threads and wool dust into her apron pocket. Her hair was coated with the stuff, her hands smeared with black engine oil and her heart was pounding as she wondered what Lee was up to now.

  ‘Wait here,’ he barked, leaving her standing in the empty corridor while he walked its length before disappearing into Derek Wilson’s office.

  Evie waited. Out of the window she saw a green van deliver what looked like brass engine parts, then Harry drove Calvert’s Bentley into the yard, stopping to let the boss’s daughter step out. Winifred herself soon appeared at the far end of the corridor in her brown coat and bright orange hat and, with a quick glance in Evie’s direction, she disappeared into Wilson’s office. Ten minutes went by while Evie’s heart raced and her head whirled. What had she done wrong? she wondered. Had she not worked fast enough to clean Flora’s loom and get it back into production? Was that what Lee was complaining to the mill manager about and if so, what would be her punishment?

  At last Fred emerged from the office, jerking his thumb once again for Evie to join him. Without speaking he tilted his head in a gesture that meant she should step past him.

  Evie winced as she sidled through the doorway, f
eeling the heat from Lee’s body and breathing in the sour-sweat, stale-tobacco smell emanating from him. In front of her was a large, leather-topped desk. Derek Wilson sat behind it and Winifred stood at a metal filing cabinet to one side. Even though it was growing daylight outside, the black window blind was lowered and an electric lamp on the manager’s desk was switched on. The cast-iron radiator against one wall seemed not to give off any heat.

  ‘This is the girl you mean?’ Derek Wilson said to the overseer. He peered over the rim of his glasses at Evie, pen poised over a sheet of paper torn from a spiral notepad.

  ‘Evie Briggs,’ Fred confirmed, coming into the room and closing the door, the glass panel of which was also covered by a thick blind.

  Carefully the mill manager placed his Parker pen diagonally on the paper then rested his elbows on the desk and made a tented shape with his bony fingers. ‘Mr Lee says you’re a slacker,’ he told Evie without preliminaries. ‘He tells me, try as he might, he can’t get a decent day’s work out of you.’

  Evie shook her head but in that moment she was too taken aback to defend herself.

  ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ Wilson demanded, taking up the paper and causing the fountain pen to roll towards the front edge of his desk. Winifred darted to save it from falling on to the floor then stepped back out of Evie’s line of vision while the manager ploughed steadily on. ‘Well, here’s Mr Lee’s list of complaints about your work, and considering you only started here at Calvert’s a few weeks back, it’s blinking long.’

  ‘I’m sorry if my work hasn’t been satisfactory, Mr Wilson,’ Evie managed at last. ‘I’ve been doing my best.’

  ‘Hmm. It says here you can’t get here on time in the morning.’

  ‘But that’s not true. I’ve clocked on before half past seven every single day—’

  ‘And that you often take more than an hour to fetch dinner orders from the local shops – a job that should take no more than thirty minutes.’

  ‘That’s because Mr Lee often asks me to fetch his newspaper and his cigarettes.’ Realizing that her job depended on her defending herself, Evie spoke out clearly now. ‘I have to go out of my way to pick them up from Newby’s because he buys them there on tick. I call in roughly every other day – you can ask Mr Newby.’

  Derek Wilson twitched his nose then drew his hand along his short moustache. ‘Be that as it may, there’s another complaint here that you don’t bring the right things for the girls to eat.’

  Again Evie shook her head and launched into an earnest defence of her actions. ‘No, that’s not right either, Mr Wilson. There was one time when Jennie Shaw changed her mind. She swore blind she’d asked for chops but I’d written down tripe and I know I was right.’

  The manager let Evie finish then glanced across at Fred Lee. ‘So the worm turns, eh, Fred?’ he said with a wink.

  ‘Yes, but she’s a sly one. You can’t believe a word she says,’ the overlooker replied in a conspiratorial tone. ‘You know what these girls are like.’

  ‘I know she doesn’t look like you can get a good day’s work out of her,’ Wilson agreed as he looked Evie up and down. ‘You’re sure you don’t want to keep her?’ he asked Fred Lee.

  ‘Quite sure.’ There was no doubt in Fred’s mind that he was winning the argument so he stood complacently by the door, hands behind his back. Getting rid of Evie Briggs would put other girls such as Sybil Dacre and Annie Pearson on notice that they had to toe the line if they wished to hang on to their jobs. This rearguard action meant he would have them where he wanted them – back under his thumb.

  It was then that Winifred spoke up. ‘Mr Wilson, would you like me to check Evie’s clocking-on card?’ she enquired, catching the manager’s eye with a confident smile.

  Irritated by the interruption, he cleared his throat then twisted off the top of his pen to write himself a note. He didn’t look Evie in the eye as he delivered the coup de grâce. ‘No, that won’t be necessary, Miss Calvert. I’ve heard all I need to hear.’

  With a small shrug of regret in Evie’s direction, Winifred accepted the overrule while Evie stood with hands clasped, listening to Wilson’s thin, clipped voice.

  ‘You understand what’s happening?’ the manager asked, worried by her pale face and stunned silence, anxious to get her off the premises before she fell down in a heap and had to be rushed off to the sick bay. ‘You’ve been given the sack – there’s no longer a job for you here at Calvert’s Mill.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wilson. Thank you,’ Evie whispered nonsensically, her head spinning as she turned and, without even returning to the weaving shed to retrieve her shawl, walked for the last time out of his office, under the main archway and slowly along Ghyll Road.

  There was no use hiding the latest bad news from their mother, Lily decided, even though Evie had tried.

  ‘I had to pretend I was poorly,’ she’d explained over their tea of scrambled eggs on toast. ‘I told her that was why I came home early.’

  Now Lily was carefully packing Arthur’s shirts, plimsolls and a spare pair of grey flannel shorts, ready to take him up to Ada Street, as arranged by Rhoda during Margie’s surprise visit on New Year’s Eve. She’d asked him to choose his favourite toys and a teddy bear to take with him and he was presently upstairs showing Rhoda what he’d decided on.

  ‘No, there’s no getting away from it – we have to tell her and Father the truth.’ Lily sighed. ‘We’ll wait till I get back from Granddad’s. And don’t worry – I’ll make it clear it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No, I’ll tell them myself.’ Evie decided to shoulder the responsibility. ‘I’ll speak to Mother and Father while you’re out, just as soon as he comes back from the Cross.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Lily nodded her approval.

  ‘Anyway, who knows? Perhaps it was partly my fault.’ Tormented by thoughts of how she could have avoided the sack, Evie settled on her own shortcomings as the cause – her shyness and unworldliness, her inability to stick up for herself faced by the likes of Fred Lee.

  For a moment Lily looked up from her task. ‘No, you mustn’t think that. Fred is a nasty piece of work, that’s the beginning and the end of it. But he’ll get his come-uppance sooner or later, don’t you worry. In the meantime, we’ll think of something else for you to do to bring in a few shillings each week. There’s a chance of helping out at Newby’s for a start.’

  ‘In the shop?’ Evie asked with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  Lily nodded. ‘Alice Newby isn’t so well these days, according to Ethel. Harold isn’t as young as he was either.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t pay much, would it?’ Evie realized. ‘And we don’t even know if they want someone.’

  ‘No, it’s just a thought.’ Hearing Arthur clatter back downstairs with his armful of toys, Lily went back to packing his things into a hessian shopping bag while Evie cut and wrapped some Christmas cake in greaseproof paper for him to take with him.

  He bounded into the kitchen, his face alive with the adventure of going to stay with Margie and Granddad Preston for a while.

  Lily put on her coat and picked up the bag from the table. ‘Have you said your goodbyes?’ she asked, hardly able to contain the sadness clawing at her heart.

  ‘Bye, Mam!’ Arthur yelled from the bottom of the stairs as he threw his school mackintosh around his shoulders and fastened the top button without sliding his arms into the sleeves, wearing it like a cape. ‘We’re off now!’

  ‘Bye, love,’ came the faint reply.

  Then he and Lily were out of the house and running up the hill to catch the next tram while Rhoda lay in bed listening to their footsteps fade on the stone-flagged pavement of Albion Lane.

  The curtains were open and the gas lamp outside cast its harsh light on to the bed where Rhoda lay. Her eyes were open and she stared at the ceiling as she tried to overcome the pain of her parting from Arthur. She’d been drifting in and out of sleep since he left, but still the hurt was fresh.
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br />   He would be better off at Ada Street, she told herself, and looking after him would give Margie something useful to do. Besides, Arthur always loved being at his granddad’s house. But letting go of him was harder than anything Rhoda had ever had to do – far worse than coping by herself when Walter had been called up into the army to serve on the Western Front, and worse even than the dawning realization that she was just as alone after her shell-shocked husband had returned from the war, damaged and without direction, reliving through recurring nightmares his time in the trenches.

  It was Arthur’s shining face that stuck in her mind now, unmarked by life, with a light in his hazel eyes undimmed by experience, and his voice shouting ‘Bye, Mam!’ up the stairs before the front door slammed shut after him. He was happy, bless him. He was happy and after she was gone, Lily, Margie and Evie would step in and look after him.

  Evie. Rhoda’s thoughts shifted seamlessly in the gas-lit silence to what her youngest daughter had just told her.

  ‘I’ve lost my job,’ Evie had confessed to her mother and father not long after Walter had come in from the pub and made his way upstairs to see how his wife was. ‘First thing this morning – they laid me off.’

  Walter had stamped about, demanding to know the whys and wherefores, had blamed Evie at first then Fred Lee, then the state the world found itself in. ‘But you should’ve kept your head down,’ he’d told Evie in the end. ‘No one else got the sack besides you, did they? So you must’ve done something to make them think twice about keeping you on.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she’d said as she held back the tears. ‘I’ll go out tomorrow first thing and try for a job at Kingsley’s, see if they’ll take me on there.’

  ‘Try not to be too hard on her,’ Rhoda had said. ‘I’m sure she did her best.’

  Walter’s anger had died down as quickly as it had flared and he’d soon grumbled his way downstairs and had stayed in the kitchen just long enough to eat his supper before Rhoda had heard the front door open and close and footsteps going down the hill towards the irresistible comforts of the Green Cross.