The Telephone Girls

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘In any case,’ Norma said, stopping beside the tall cenotaph – the soot-stained memorial to those who fell in the Great War, ‘I will ask Douglas what he knows about Mr Sidney Hall.’

  ‘When will you next see him?’ Millicent tilted her umbrella to shield herself from a strong gust of rain-drenched wind.

  ‘On Wednesday after work,’ Norma told her. ‘I don’t know Clare as well as you do, but it’s nattering me. I get the feeling that she isn’t very good at looking out for herself, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I do.’ Millicent nodded, struggling again with her umbrella as the wind suddenly changed direction. ‘For all her advantages – her looks, her figure, and so on – I’ve always thought of her as a babe in the woods.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ Norma decided, watching the wind turn Millicent’s umbrella inside out.

  ‘Drat this weather!’ Millicent fought to straighten the spokes the right way out. ‘If this is summer, I’ll eat my hat.’

  ‘Dear Harold,’ Millicent wrote. ‘I’ve been thinking it through and have decided not to meet you on Friday after all.’

  She paused and looked at her neat, forward-sloping handwriting, at the royal blue ink still wet on the page and at her trembling hand.

  ‘I’ll try to explain,’ she went on, bending over the kitchen table and shutting out the sounds of dustbin lids being lifted then clattered shut and Chalky White on his top step calling out to Walter at number 4. ‘Going on as we are is no good for either of us. On your side, you have too much to lose if ever we were to be found out. For my part, even though I do love you and believe you when you say you love me, I can see in my heart of hearts that we’re going nowhere.’

  Pausing again, she thought with a sharp pang of envy of Douglas proposing marriage to Norma. She frowned then shook her head and wrote on.

  ‘It’s not right and we both know it. I can say this in a letter in a way I never can do when we’re face to face because something makes me break my resolution each time I try. I mean it when I say it’s over between us. I’m sending this letter to your office address and hope you won’t be too upset. Goodbye, Harold. I won’t forget our time together. Love from Millicent.’

  Carefully she blotted the paper and folded it. She reached for an envelope, ready to write the address, but instead she opened up the letter and read it through one last time. ‘Goodbye, Harold. I won’t forget our time together. Love from Millicent.’

  She glanced up and out of the window to see Chalky heading off for his evening shift at the Green Cross and old Walter leaning against his doorpost. She sighed as she took up the letter and tore it in half then into quarters and threw the scraps into the empty grate. She took a match and struck it, set light to the torn pieces and watched them flare orange and yellow then curl and turn to grey ash.

  ‘Fares, please!’

  Sitting on the lower deck of the bus into town two mornings later, Cynthia heard the familiar voice with a shiver of anticipation.

  Wilf came down the spiral metal staircase and spotted her sitting near to the front. ‘Look who it isn’t!’ he said with the broadest of smiles as he made his way down the aisle, his peaked hat tilted back and collector’s satchel and ticket machine slung casually from one shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Wilf.’ She aimed for a demure smile in front of the other passengers but couldn’t hide her pleasure at seeing him. She was glad that the day was warm enough for her to have left off her drab raincoat and to have dressed instead in her blue, flowered dress and white cardigan with little pearl buttons and that she’d chosen a pretty blue Alice band to take her hair back from her face. She looked up at him with wide grey eyes. ‘A ticket to George Street, please.’

  He adjusted a dial on his machine then pressed a lever to produce the ticket. As he handed it to her, he brushed her palm with his fingertips. ‘How’s work going?’

  ‘Very well, ta. I’m gradually getting to grips with the jacks and cords on the switchboards. How’s your mother?’ she added, just to keep him talking.

  ‘Settling in nicely at the lodge, ta.’ His smile told her that he too wanted to go on chatting, even though other passengers were giving them knowing looks. ‘She says it’s miles better than the house we lived in on Bridge Street, what with the view of the moors from her kitchen window.’

  The bus stopped at the top of the steep hill down into town and more passengers got on. It set off again with a sudden lurch that made Wilf grab hold of the strap hanging above Cynthia’s head. He ducked down and spoke in a lower voice. ‘Are we still on for the flicks on Friday?’

  Cynthia nodded and smiled up at his boyish, eager face.

  ‘Champion!’ he said with a wink as he turned away. ‘Any more fares?’ he called. ‘Fares, please. Any more fares?’

  At work that day, the switchboard at the far end of the room remained vacant. Agnes was on duty, refusing to answer questions about Molly’s fate.

  ‘There’s no point asking – Miss Mouse won’t give anything away,’ Millicent surmised. She was quieter than usual during a dinner break that she shared with Norma and Brenda, still thinking about the ashes of the unsent letter lying in her grate in Heaton Yard.

  ‘No, but she and Ruth are thick as thieves,’ Brenda pointed out, shoes off and her feet resting on the low table in the middle of the restroom. A thin spiral of blue smoke drifted up from the cigarette she held between her slim fingers. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting that Ruth went straight round to Agnes’s house on Monday and told her everything, word for word.’

  ‘Did you manage to see Molly yesterday?’ Norma asked.

  Brenda shook her head as she leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I tried, but there was no one in when I called. It seems she’s gone to ground.’

  ‘What’ll happen if she loses her job?’ Norma knew that Molly lived with her widowed mother in a smart new semi-detached council house on the outskirts of town and that it was Molly’s wage that kept things ticking over.

  ‘Lord knows.’ Brenda slipped her feet back into her shoes then patted her hair into place, ready to start her afternoon stint. ‘I suppose she should have thought of that before she listened in to a caller’s private conversation.’

  Her lack of sympathy made Norma and Millicent frown. ‘Don’t worry,’ Norma murmured, letting Brenda go ahead of them. ‘I haven’t forgotten about talking to Douglas later on, to see if he can cast any light on Sidney Hall.’

  ‘It’s a long shot and it might not help Molly, even if he turns out to be a rum sort,’ Millicent pointed out.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet.’

  ‘No, I’m just saying …’

  ‘We can but try,’ Norma said firmly, taking the lead and leaving the door swinging behind her.

  ‘Lights, girls!’ Agnes’s voice rang out as the dinner-time changeover took place. ‘Look lively, Brenda. Norma, you have two callers backed up on your board. Take them quickly, please.’

  Miss Mouse she may have been, with early grey showing at the temples of her mid-brown hair, wearing a pin-tucked blouse and a grey skirt that reached her calves. But like Ruth, she was a stickler for the rules and made sure that the girls took the lights promptly and were accurate, efficient and courteous at all times.

  ‘Slave driver!’ Millicent said under her breath as she pushed cords into sockets. ‘Hello, Liverpool. How can I help? Calling Manchester – I have a new ticket on Liverpool 3201.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder why I carry on doing that job,’ Norma complained to Douglas as they cycled on the Common after work.

  He’d met her as promised and they’d decided to make the most of a beautiful evening by spending it outdoors. A quick stop-off at his lodgings to collect the tandem saw them free of the town by half past six, planning to buy a fish and chip supper from Pennington’s once they’d had their fill of fresh air.

  Douglas lent a sympathetic ear. ‘Why, what’s up?’

  ‘I’ve been run off my feet – well, not run exactly
, because I’m sitting down all day. But you know what I mean. Anyway, we were one short today and I never stopped.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Determined not to press Norma over the question of getting engaged, the moment he saw her emerging from the exchange he’d felt his resolution waver. Marry me, he wanted to say over and over until she gave in and said yes. Marry me. Marry me!

  ‘Molly Scaife has been suspended and Agnes wasn’t prepared to put Cynthia at her switchboard until she’s finished her training.’ Norma pedalled off her frustration and by the time they reached the pavilion she was in full flow. ‘I know Cynthia was disappointed, but Agnes does everything by the book. She won’t let anyone near the switchboards until they’ve passed their Full Efficiency Test. Now then, Douglas, humour me. I need to ask you a question in confidence and I want a proper answer.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘It’s to do with your work. Does the name Sidney Hall mean anything to you?’

  Immediately he grew more alert. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘The girls and I have come across him a few times lately and Molly overheard something over the phone that we didn’t like the sound of.’

  ‘What kind of something?’ He looked over his shoulder with a slight frown, waiting for Norma’s reply.

  ‘He was forcing a girl we know to do something that she didn’t want to do.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘To attend what he called a soirée, but beyond that we’re not sure. According to Molly, he was making her cry and we’d already decided we don’t like the look of the chap – Millicent especially.’

  Douglas put on the brakes and stopped the bike on the brow of the hill. ‘I must admit, she’s spot on in this case.’

  ‘So you do know him?’

  ‘Sidney Hall is the son of Sir Edmund Hall – of Kenworth and Hall’s Steel Manufacturing Company. Sir Edmund’s Sheffield factory has made him a millionaire twice over, according to what you read in the papers.’

  This fitted with Sidney’s expensively tailored clothes and man-about-town air, but Norma still couldn’t work out how he’d ended up in this narrow neck of the woods. ‘So how do you know the son?’

  ‘He fell out with the old man a few years back and has been drifting ever since, mixing with the wrong sort of company, always with a girl on his arm – a different one every few weeks or so. Lately he’s drifted in our direction, so to speak.’

  ‘And does he have a job?’

  Looking out towards the Crag, a jutting silhouette against the setting sun, Douglas hesitated over how to put things in a way that wouldn’t shock Norma. ‘Not one that’s above board, shall we say.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Appetite whetted, she got off the bike then tugged at him to follow suit.

  He laid the bike by the side of the path. ‘Some of it is common knowledge.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Is an educated guess,’ he admitted. ‘We get reports about what Sidney gets up to from time to time, usually involving one of these girls he’s seen with, but there’s never any proof.’

  Norma took a few tentative steps off the track into the heather, glimpsing a dark, decadent world she knew little about. The word ‘soirée’ rattled around her head, conjuring up images of cut-glass decanters and smoke-filled rooms, slim women in white satin and chiffon gowns, bedecked with ostrich feathers and gardenias, fat men in dark dinner jackets with cigars clenched between their teeth. ‘These girls,’ she began in a faint voice, ‘what happens to them?’

  ‘Some of them – not all – eventually end up in the station.’

  ‘The police station? What for? No – there’s no need to spell it out. I understand.’ Satin and chiffon gowns soon wore out, flowers faded and such girls, reputations ruined, were reduced to walking the streets.

  ‘As often as not Sidney Hall is named as the person who first set them on the rocky road. It’s a racket where there’s always money to be made – finding the right girl and introducing her to, shall we say, rich acquaintances.’

  ‘Stop,’ she said and let out a long sigh, hands to her cheeks, her heart fluttering.

  Douglas put an arm around her shoulder and gently guided her back towards the bike. ‘I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t asked.’

  ‘No,’ she countered quickly. ‘I’m glad I did. But listen, Douglas – would this phone conversation I’ve told you about act as evidence against Sidney Hall?’

  He considered the question then quickly dismissed it. ‘Not by itself, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Not unless there’s been mention of money changing hands for a start. And we’d need to know exactly what’s been going on.’

  ‘From Clare Bell?’

  ‘If that’s the girl you’re worried about – yes.’

  ‘Then I’ll find out,’ Norma decided, ready to do battle again as she picked up the bike and sat astride it, waiting for Douglas to join her.

  They turned the bike around and set off back the way they’d come, stomachs rumbling and ready for supper. ‘Don’t let the others – Millicent et cetera – lead you into any trouble over this,’ he warned as he steered around the pavilion and they were treated to a panoramic view of the town below – a patchwork of terraced streets, the snaking canal bordered by tall mill chimneys.

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised.

  ‘I know what you girls are like once you get a bee in your bonnet.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be careful.’ Just wait until I tell Millicent, Norma thought, sheltering behind Douglas’s broad back to stop her hair from blowing into her eyes. She was right about Sidney Hall all along.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning as she hurried across City Square, Millicent caught sight of Cynthia alighting from the Hadley bus. The conductor lent her a gallant hand to step down from the platform and the way he did it made Millicent take a closer look. It was Wilf Evans, no less.

  ‘I saw that!’ she cried as Cynthia joined her on the steps into the exchange.

  ‘What?’ A flustered Cynthia avoided her gaze.

  ‘You and Wilf.’ Millicent cocked her head to one side. ‘My, you’re a sly one and no mistake.’

  ‘I’m … we’re not …!’ Cynthia’s feeble protests fell on deaf ears.

  ‘Yes, you are. There’s no use huffing and puffing, you went along to that dance together and the two of you have clicked in spite of what I said.’

  Cynthia felt her cheeks burn as she tried to defend herself against Millicent’s teasing. ‘He was very nice to me, as a matter of fact.’

  Millicent’s mouth twitched at the corners. ‘Quite the gentleman, eh?’

  ‘Yes, if you must know.’

  ‘“Softly, softly, catchee monkey!”’ Millicent winked then whisked Cynthia through the door. ‘Or perhaps the leopard has changed his spots – who knows?’

  There was no time for any more jungle metaphors because Norma was hurrying towards them across the foyer to share all that she’d learned from Douglas the night before. Her colour was high and she grew breathless as she delivered the newly gleaned details about Sidney Hall.

  ‘Oh no, that’s too bad!’ Cynthia’s shock ran deep and she could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  ‘As bad as can be,’ Millicent agreed. ‘He struck me as too big for his boots the first time I clapped eyes on him in the King’s Head. And again, when we saw him with Mrs Parr – too friendly by half.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Norma demanded. ‘Now we definitely have to step in and help Clare before it’s too late.’

  ‘If it isn’t already.’ Millicent was distracted by the unexpected sight of Molly emerging from the cloakroom with Brenda and she raised her eyebrows in a questioning look.

  Norma once more supplied the explanation. ‘Molly did join the union to find out about her rights. It’s in the rule book – there was no written warning so the powers that be have had to let her come back to work.’

  ‘Th
at’ll put Ruth’s nose out of joint, and no mistake. But never mind that – what about Clare?’ Millicent jumped from one subject to another, keeping an eye on the clock and aware that time was running short. She, Norma and Cynthia were due at their switchboards in under a minute. ‘How are we going to get her out of Hall’s clutches? That’s if she even wants us to.’

  ‘Of course she will!’ Norma couldn’t see how anyone would willingly enter into the seamy world of the so-called soirées, and Cynthia nodded her head in agreement. ‘Millicent, you know Clare better than we do. You ought to be the one to tell her what we’ve found out.’

  ‘We’ve got those appointments at the salon the day after tomorrow,’ Cynthia reminded them.

  ‘That’s true,’ Millicent realized. ‘One of us could collar Clare while the other two get their hair done.’

  ‘But can we afford to wait that long?’ Norma wondered.

  ‘It’s not ideal, but there’s no point us bursting in unannounced, especially if Mrs Parr is there.’ With fellow switchboard operators criss-crossing the marble floor of the foyer and people running upstairs to the general office with folders and files, Millicent cut the discussion short. ‘At least it gives us a bit of time to work out what we’re going to say.’

  ‘I’m worried about her, though,’ Norma said as they made their way to the switchboards. She sat in her swivel chair and put on her headset, took the lights and prepared to begin work, but she found it hard to shut her mind to the danger that Clare was in. She remembered with a shiver some lurid recent headlines in the News of the World about the so-called Jack the Strangler, who, it seemed, had murdered three Soho prostitutes within the space of six months, the latest just last month. Then there was the white slavery that she’d read about in the Express – where pimps brought in girls from France and Holland and earned hundreds of pounds a month. So, despite Douglas’s concerns for her unsullied mind, Norma had all too clear a picture of how a defenceless girl like Clare might be preyed upon and used by dozens of men before being thrown into the gutter and left to fend for herself in whatever way she could.