The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

by Jenny Holmes

  For a moment she wasn’t sure it was Harry. The figure who stepped through the small doorway and shook hands with the uniformed guard seemed too slight, but then as soon as he put up his collar against the wind and turned to look in her direction, she knew him. ‘Here he is!’ she cried so sharply that she startled Ernie. ‘At long last!’

  ‘Watch out for the traffic!’ Ernie yelled after her as she jumped down on to the pavement and heedlessly ran across the street between cars and carts, bicycles and big delivery vans.

  Lily sped towards Harry, who didn’t move from the spot. What he saw was a beautiful woman running towards him, her dark hair flying free. He opened his arms and she flung herself into his embrace.

  He closed his arms around her. She laid her head against his shoulder and held him tight.

  On Raglan Road, the hastily arranged party for Harry spilled out of Betty Bainbridge’s house on to the pavement. While Peggy and Evie carried round trays of sandwiches for the neighbours who had gathered to welcome the freed man home, Harry’s mother poured tea.

  ‘It’s a pity Jennie and the others couldn’t be here,’ Sybil commented on the fact that Calvert’s looms stopped for no man. ‘There’s nothing Jennie likes better than a good get-together.’

  ‘I heard that Billy’s mother promised to pop in.’ Annie looked for Mabel Robertshaw amongst the crowd but didn’t see her there. ‘From what I hear, she always swore Harry was innocent.’

  Sybil nodded. ‘Well, it turns out she was right and Lily’s proved it, thank goodness. But I’m not surprised the poor thing’s stayed away – it’ll probably take a bit more time for the dust to settle.’

  Annie agreed. ‘I wonder how Lily’s feeling right this minute,’ she went on. ‘I’ll bet she had to pinch herself when that prison door opened and Harry walked out, large as life.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’ Looking at her watch, Sybil went outside to check for the arrival of Ernie’s van. ‘What’s holding them up?’ she wondered.

  Craning her neck to get a clear view of the corner on to Ghyll Road, Sybil was the first to spot Durant’s van turn on to Raglan Road. ‘Here he is!’ she cried, amidst a flurry of fresh excitement. The van chugged up the hill and pulled up outside the house.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ Ernie said as he pulled on the handbrake. There’d never been such a crowd in Raglan Road except at coronations and jubilees.

  Lily held Harry’s hand tight and together they got out of the van, braving the slaps on the back and the cries of ‘Welcome home!’ as they made their way up the steps into the front room where his mother and Peggy waited.

  ‘Harry’s here, Mother,’ Peggy whispered to Betty, who seemed to be in a daze.

  Harry’s mother had heard the news of Frank and Tommy’s arrest and her son’s release with stunned disbelief. She wouldn’t credit it, she said, not until Harry walked through the door and she saw him with her own eyes. And now here he was, thinner and paler, almost a ghost back from the dead.

  For a while neither mother nor son spoke a word and everyone who had gathered to welcome Harry fell silent and held their breaths. Lily squeezed Harry’s hand and gave him a nudge of encouragement. He took a reticent step forward, not knowing whether or not he should kiss his mother on the cheek.

  Betty saw the baby she’d given birth to who was so like his father, the boy she’d brought up single-handedly. Now he was a handsome, broad-shouldered man uncertain how to act on this, the homecoming to end all homecomings.

  Eventually, mastering the rush of tender emotions that threatened to overwhelm her, she was the one to break the silence. ‘What are we thinking? Let’s give the lad a cup of tea,’ she told Peggy as she rushed forward and grasped both of Harry’s hands.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ he murmured, leaning in to deliver the kiss he’d hesitated over and finding that her cheek was damp with tears. ‘It’s good to be back.’

  ‘It’s good to have you back, son. Now sit down and tell us all about it, every last little thing.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘It’s all settled. Sybil, Annie and me – we’re going to set up shop,’ Lily told Harry that evening, as they walked arm in arm along Overcliffe Road.

  Ernie had brought in supplies from the Cross and crates of beer had followed tea and sandwiches. By the time their pals working in the mills had clocked off and Evie, Margie and Arthur had joined them after a welcome-home tea for Arthur at number 5, the celebration had got into full swing. It had gone on until well after eight, when eventually well-wishers had started to drift away.

  Lily could recall them all now, the jovial voices of friends and family echoing down the street. She smiled at the thought of sensible Margie taking charge back at number 5 – seeing Arthur home to bed and into his pyjamas, straight to sleep without a story. School tomorrow.

  ‘What shop? Where?’ Harry wanted to know, as they walked past the Common.

  Her face lit up as she described their plans and how she, Sybil and Annie would achieve them. They ran the risk of it all falling about their ears, she knew – don’t think she didn’t. ‘But we’ll give it a go,’ she said, striding out under a pitch-black sky.

  Like a warrior queen was how Harry thought of her, though she’d never see it herself. A bobbin ligger turned burler and mender, and now a dressmaker with a shop of her own on Chapel Street, marching at the head of an army of brave, free-spirited women into a brighter future.

  ‘Ernie mentioned a job that’s going begging at Manby’s,’ he told her. ‘I’m thinking of going after it tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What would it involve?’

  ‘Driving their van, picking up furniture to go to auction, that type of thing. It’s not much but what do you think?’

  ‘Get down there first thing,’ Lily replied without hesitating. ‘Be sure to be at the head of the queue.’

  ‘Look down there,’ Harry said after they’d walked a little further, turning to take in their home town in the darkness. He pointed to a thousand glittering lights, to the network of gas-lit streets and the canal winding through. ‘What can you hear?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Only the wind that drove the clouds through the night sky.

  ‘This is what kept me going,’ he confessed. ‘The thought of you and me walking up here, free as birds.’

  ‘Together.’ Her mind opened to the magical silence of the moors, to Harry, the man she loved with all her heart.

  So they walked on arm in arm, two small figures against the vastness of the night sky.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Caroline Sheldon, literary agent without compare and, better still, a dear friend. And to Harriet Bourton whose welcome through the doors of Transworld made me feel immediately at home.

  About the Author

  Jenny Holmes has been writing fiction for children and adults since her early twenties, having had series of children’s books adapted for both the BBC and ITV.

  Jenny was born and brought up in Yorkshire. After living in the Midlands and travelling widely in America, she returned to Yorkshire and brought up her two daughters with a spectacular view of the moors and a sense of belonging to the special, still undiscovered corners of the Yorkshire Dales.

  One of three children brought up in Harrogate, Jenny’s links with Yorkshire stretch back through many generations via a mother who served in the Land Army during the Second World War and pharmacist and shop-worker aunts, back to a maternal grandfather who worked as a village blacksmith and pub landlord. Her great aunts worked in Edwardian times as seamstresses, milliners and upholsterers. All told stories of life lived with little material wealth but with great spirit and independence, where a sense of community and family loyalty were fierce – sometimes uncomfortable but never to be ignored. Theirs are the voices which echo down the years, and the author’s hope is that their strength is brought back to life in many of the characters represented in these pages.

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  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Corgi Books

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Jenny Oldfield 2015

  Jenny Holmes has asserted her right under the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473510982

  ISBN 9780552171496

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