The Telephone Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  It was a silly phrase and she disliked him for it, accompanied as it was by a sneering smile. Her irritation came to the fore and she had half a mind to push past him in the narrow hallway and slam the door after her.

  ‘I thought you had to do your homework – your routes and rates, or whatever it is you call it.’

  ‘Not tonight, Uncle William. It’s Saturday.’

  ‘Yes, and your mother’s visiting us tomorrow, don’t forget.’ He breathed heavily and refused to budge. ‘So I’d get your work done tonight if I were you.’

  ‘Mum won’t be here until the afternoon. I’ll have plenty of chance in the morning.’ Time was ticking by and her nerves were in shreds. ‘Please, may I go?’

  ‘Wait. You can do something for me while you’re at it.’ William delved into his pocket and produced a shilling piece. ‘Give this to Leonard Andrews, and tell him I want him here again, same time next week.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Plucking up the courage to squeeze past, Cynthia opened the door and stepped out.

  ‘Right there in front of your nose, sowing seeds in the veg patch.’

  Sure enough, Leonard was at work in a corner of the garden with his back turned to them, crouched down and showing his eleven-year-old son, also called Leonard, how to lay down radish seeds in narrow drills. ‘Cover them up carefully,’ he advised. ‘Not too deep, mind.’

  Cynthia hurried across the lawn, her cheeks aflame with exasperation.

  ‘My, don’t you look nice,’ the odd-job man commented with a friendly wink. He wiped his hands on his corduroy trousers then took the shilling. ‘I take it you’re off somewhere special?’

  ‘Just to the village dance,’ she said, almost running down the path and out of the gate and feeling more and more certain that agreeing to meet Wilf had been a big mistake. It would be all around the village for a start – Cynthia Ambler arriving at the Institute with Wilf Evans, the chap who worked as a conductor on the buses, who no one knew much about, other than that he and his mother had recently moved into North Park lodge on the Oldroyd estate. A lot would be read into Cynthia and Wilf walking in together, she was sure.

  I wish I’d said no, she thought to herself as she hurried towards the cricket pitch and the fork in the road. No to Wilf’s cheeky invitation, no to Millicent’s loan of the dress and shoes, no to everything.

  Yet the moment she caught sight of Wilf’s tall, long-limbed figure leaning against the signpost, hands in pockets and smiling as she approached, she had a sudden change of heart.

  ‘Hello, Cynthia!’ he said, launching himself free of the post and coming to meet her. His smile was warm and welcoming, his manner easy, as if they’d bumped into each other by chance and it was a pleasant surprise. He was smartly dressed in collar and striped blue and red tie, blazer and slacks, his chin freshly shaven and hair combed back with a neat side parting.

  ‘Hello.’ Here I am – I’ve done it! she thought, instantly feeling more at ease with the situation. She felt she did look ‘nice’, as Leonard had said – Millicent’s dress suited her and the heeled shoes brought a sway to her hips as she walked.

  Wilf looked her up and down then whistled admiringly, offering her his arm to cross the road and walk down the straight main street. The Institute was a quarter of a mile down the road, opposite the village pub and next to the church.

  ‘How was work?’ he asked, as if he’d known her a long time. ‘Were you run off your feet?’

  ‘No, I’m still learning the job,’ she answered honestly. ‘Miss Mercer taught me some of the basics today – accuracy, efficiency and courtesy, that’s what being a telephone girl is all about. Oh, and learning the right way of speaking. That’s the hard part.’

  ‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with the way you speak.’ Or the way you look, the way you walk, the way you smile – that’s what he thought but didn’t say. Normally he would have pitched right in, but something cautioned him not to go over the top with compliments as far as Cynthia was concerned. ‘And what about your dancing – how are you with that?’

  ‘I’m all right on the waltz and country dances like the Gay Gordons. We learned them at school. Not so good on the foxtrot, though.’

  ‘The foxtrot has you foxed, eh?’

  ‘Hah! Yes, but I can give it a go. How about you?’

  ‘You mean, do I have two left feet?’ Wilf pulled a face then laughed. ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

  They’d reached a row of terraced cottages backed by the rusty framework of old mine workings, including the tall steel tower topped by a giant wheel once used to crank the conveyor belt that brought coal up from deep underground. Beyond that lay grey slag heaps, ugly and bare of grass, which always reminded Cynthia of sleeping prehistoric beasts.

  ‘So, Miss Ambler, what else did you learn at school, besides the waltz and the Gay Gordons?’

  ‘Plenty,’ she said archly, intending to break free of the trap of being teased. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Not much,’ he laughed. ‘I was the bad lad at the back of the class, firing ink pellets at the teacher. They couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’

  Cynthia deftly turned the tables. ‘Then it must be a case of opposites attract, supposing of course …’

  He winked. ‘I asked you to walk out with me and you said yes. I reckon it’s an open and shut case,’ he said with a confident grin.

  By this time they’d reached the high iron railings of the Institute building and could hear strains of music drifting out through the open doors. They crossed the gravelled yard and went in to find a group of five musicians sitting on a small stage at the far end of a long hall. The room had seen better days – the old radiators were dusty and the greyish-green walls in need of a fresh coat of paint – but the band was smartly dressed in dark pinstripe suits and polished black shoes and they attacked a polka score with gusto, led by two violins and a tinkling upright piano. Only a smattering of couples were attempting the energetic dance, with everyone else lining the walls, either talking or watching warily in case one of the couples spun out of control. When Cynthia and Wilf walked in, all heads turned.

  Leonard’s wife, Mary, was the first to recognize Cynthia and recover from the surprise of seeing her teamed up with the new lad from North Park lodge. ‘Squeeze in over here,’ she mouthed, beckoning them across. ‘There’s room for two littl’uns.’

  ‘That was fast work,’ Dick Richards, a long-time Hadley resident, complained to his cousin, Ron Black. The two young men stood stolidly sipping beer and leaning against the radiator furthest from the door. ‘Wilf Evans hasn’t been in Hadley for five minutes and he lands the best-looking catch for miles around.’

  ‘You should have made your move sooner.’ Ron knew that Dick had been like a lovesick calf around Cynthia for months but had been too shy to act. She was too butter-wouldn’t-melt for Ron’s taste, but he could see she would have suited Dick down to the ground.

  ‘Mary, this is Wilf Evans.’ Across on the other side of the room and speaking as the polka came to an end, Cynthia made the introductions. ‘Wilf, this is Mary Andrews.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Mary’s smile carried a great deal of curiosity and she used the gap between dances to prise as much information as she could out of the newcomer. ‘How are you and your mother settling in at the lodge?’

  ‘We’re champion, ta.’ Wilf didn’t plan to pay much attention to the homely, dumpy woman with crimped hair and work-worn hands, but he underestimated her terrier-like tenacity.

  ‘Where was home before you came here?’

  ‘We lived in town – alongside the canal, on Bridge Street.’

  ‘And how long were you there?’

  ‘Four or five years.’

  ‘Just the two of you?’

  ‘Yes, just me and Mum.’ He wished the band would start playing again, to drown out any further questions, but the musicians were fiddling with their sheet music and there was a long lull between numbers.

  ‘Which end of Bri
dge Street?’

  ‘The far end, close to the gasworks.’

  ‘Then I’m not surprised your mother would jump at the chance to move out to North Park, where you can breathe the air, even if Mr Oldroyd does keep a tight rein on his domestic staff.’ Mary had known Cynthia ever since she came to live with her uncle and her motherly tendency was coming to the fore. She was looking Wilf up and down when the band at last struck up a new tune and she carried on watching him as he swept Cynthia on to the dance floor for a Viennese waltz. ‘There’s something about him,’ she muttered to Tilly Baker, who ran the branch library and had volunteered to do the interval tea and biscuits with her.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s just not my cup of tea.’

  Tilly, who was in her twenties and ever on the lookout for a suitable beau, disagreed. ‘I think he’s a good catch.’ She studied Wilf, who was handsome and smiling, a nifty mover on the floor, able to guide Cynthia between other couples and keep a smooth rhythm as he whirled her around.

  1-2-3, 1-2-3 – Cynthia felt light-headed. 1-2-3 into the furthest corner of the room then back across the polished floor, weaving in and out, twirling and tilting in unison. She felt her skirt flare and feared that others would catch a glimpse of her stocking tops if she wasn’t careful but she was enjoying herself too much to really mind, her left hand resting lightly on Wilf’s shoulder while he kept a firm hold of her waist.

  All too soon the waltz ended but he didn’t relax his hold. They waited in the middle of the room as other couples milled around them, breaking up and re-forming, chatting and laughing.

  ‘Let’s hope the band livens things up a bit with this next one.’ Without taking his eyes off Cynthia, Wilf tilted his head towards the stage. ‘I fancy a rumba or a cha-cha-cha.’

  ‘You’d have to teach me,’ she warned. The Latin American dances were too racy to have been taught at school, involving as they did a lot of motion with the hips.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said with a wink. He was disappointed at first to hear a number from I Live for Love, the latest Busby Berkeley musical, then quickly made the most of the romantic tune by drawing Cynthia in even closer for a slow waltz.

  Chest to chest, with his arm around her waist, she found that she had to tilt her head back to see his face – so close that it was out of focus, the grey eyes flecked with blue and green, his skin soft and unlined, smelling of shaving soap.

  ‘All right?’ he checked with her as the floor grew crowded and their movement more restricted. ‘Not too warm?’

  ‘No – just right,’ she whispered back, as if there was nobody else in the room, nobody looking, nobody judging – just her and Wilf in a world of their own.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the following day, Sunday, Douglas arrested a tramp for causing a nuisance on the steps of the corporation baths. After that he nabbed two fourteen-year-old lads for breaking the plate-glass window of George Green’s tripe shop on Ghyll Road, then a bicycle thief collared by the quick-thinking owner who had scattered a handy box of tacks on the road to puncture the front tyre and bring the bloke crashing down.

  ‘All in a day’s work,’ he explained to Hetty and Ethel at Albion Lane as he waited for Norma to get ready for a late-afternoon stroll. ‘It was the early shift, so there wasn’t a lot going on.’

  ‘Why the tripe shop?’ Ethel asked. Her Sunday had consisted of chapel in the morning, followed by a big roast dinner then a chit-chat with her friend, Bunty Knight, on a bench outside the Green Cross. Now, listening to Douglas’s account of his day at the police station, she picked up scraps of local gossip, ready for her next session with Bunty.

  ‘They had a grudge against the owner. George Green is known for finding any old excuse to sack his delivery boys without paying them. These lads thought it was time to teach the old skinflint a lesson, but it’s my job to show them you can’t go taking the law into your own hands.’ Douglas was uncomfortable in the stultifying atmosphere of the Haigs’ living room. Hetty never had the window open, even on sunny days, and the smell of roast beef hung in the still air. There were pots and pans left to dry on the draining board and Ethel’s out-of-shape shoes lying on the rug where she’d stepped out of them.

  ‘Tell Norma to get a move on,’ Hetty told Ethel. In her opinion, her youngest daughter spent far too long getting ready for these outings with Douglas, faffing over her lipstick and generally fiddle-faddling over what to wear. She was copying those photos of film stars she had pinned to the wall in her corner of the attic room she shared with Ethel and Ivy. They gave her ideas above her station and made her forget that she came from a family of mill workers and tinkers, stall holders and labourers.

  ‘Norma!’ Ethel yelled from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Mum says to hurry up.’

  With one last look in the mirror, Norma hurried down. She was wearing a short-sleeved, cream blouse with rosebuds embroidered into the collar and a gored jade-green skirt. ‘Do I need my coat?’ she asked Douglas, who came forward to greet her with a respectable peck on the cheek.

  ‘No, it’s still warm out there.’ There was always a moment whenever he saw Norma when he wanted to sweep her into his arms and carry her away like a knight on a white charger, to breathe her in and soak her up like a sunny day. ‘Ready?’

  She nodded and they escaped from the house, heading up the hill towards the Common.

  ‘Phew!’ Norma showed that she’d rushed her preparations for his sake and fanned her face with her hand.

  ‘Yes – phew.’ He was glad to be out, breathing the fresh air and taking in the vista at the top of the hill. The Common was a large area of unfenced grassland criss-crossed by cinder tracks and grazed by half a dozen dray horses from nearby Thornley’s Brewery. In the centre there was a pretty pavilion where bands played on special occasions such as the Whitsuntide Gala. Beyond it, open moorland stretched on towards the jagged horizon.

  Norma and Douglas headed for the pavilion. They sat there for a long time holding hands in contented silence, their backs to the town, facing the wide-open space and basking in the sun’s last rays. A swallow had made its nest under the canopy. They watched her fly in and out with food for the noisy chicks, swooping down from a great height and scarcely pausing at the nest before turning and soaring off again. In and out, in and out, with midges and daddy-long-legs in her beak – never enough food for the greedy chicks with their gaping yellow mouths.

  ‘Shall we walk on?’ Douglas asked. ‘We can get most of the way to Brimstone Rock and back before the sun sets.’

  Norma nodded. Beyond the pavilion, the cinder tracks turned to grassy paths with meadow flowers to either side – at this time of year a riot of buttercups, clover, pale milkmaids and low purple vetch. White clouds drifted overhead, moving from east to west towards the setting sun.

  ‘I must be the luckiest man in the world,’ Douglas declared as they left the town far behind. He almost strutted with pride to have Norma on his arm, nodding hello to fellow walkers and standing to one side for a passing cyclist. ‘Tell me – what did I do to deserve you, Norma Haig?’

  Her eyes shone with pleasure. ‘Stop, or you’ll make me even more big-headed than I already am.’

  ‘Who says you’re big-headed?’

  ‘Mum. “Don’t go getting ideas above your station” is what she says.’

  Norma’s accurate imitation of her mother’s narrow, world-weary voice made Douglas smile.

  ‘It started when I got my job at the exchange. Since then, she and Ethel have made it their mission to take me down a peg or two.’

  ‘Don’t listen to them.’ He gave her hand a comforting pat. ‘They’re only jealous.’

  ‘Maybe. But Mum doesn’t realize that times are changing. She’s well and truly stuck in the past.’

  ‘What age is she – sixty?’

  ‘Sixty-three and still slaving away at Kingsley’s four days a week. She and Dad had no savings – not even enough to pay for his funeral after he had a
heart attack and died. Ethel chipped in with what she could, but Ivy and I were too young to help. Since then we’ve started earning our own money but we still struggle to make ends meet – like everyone else, I suppose.’

  Douglas said nothing for a while. He looked ahead at the horizon, not down at the heather that encroached on the grass underfoot. It was high time he screwed his courage to the sticking point, he decided. He’d been thinking about it long enough. So, with a rapidly beating heart, he let go of Norma’s hand and dropped down on to one knee. Startled, she took a step back.

  ‘Douglas, what are you doing?’

  He spread his arms wide in a gesture that he’d pictured and planned for. Kneeling, spreading his arms – that’s how a man made a proposal to the woman he loved. ‘Norma Haig, will you marry me?’

  She gasped. He was doing what they did in books and on the silver screen – Rudolph Valentino in a military jacket and white trousers, with lovelorn expression and trim dark moustache. Except that Douglas was here in the flesh and her heart was racing. He was really doing it – he was asking her to marry him. ‘I … I don’t know,’ she answered in a whisper.

  Doubt flickered across his features. He caught hold of her hand. ‘Say yes!’

  Norma shook her head. Panic shot through her. Her words came out in a jumble. ‘I’m not saying “no”. I don’t want you to think …’

  The moment that should have changed their lives for ever had come and gone. Here he was, kneeling and looking up at her – making the grand gesture – but it had somehow gone wrong. Awkwardly he got to his feet and sought an answer in her flushed cheeks and downcast eyes. ‘I love you. I thought you loved me.’

  ‘I do,’ she murmured. ‘Honestly, I do. But—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting it.’ Swallows swept across the clear sky with dizzying speed. Her head reeled. Say yes, she told herself. Don’t make the poor man suffer.

  It had all gone wrong and his dreams had come crashing down – the wedding ring and the little rented house, the satisfaction of coming home and finding Norma there at the end of each working day. ‘I’m sorry – I rushed into it,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘I should have built up to it, chosen a better time.’