The Quality Street Girls

As they passed The Boar, the girls were met with catcalls from the drinkers who had spilled out into the street outside the various pubs that filled the centre of town. Diana supposed the catcalls were not unfriendly, but they irked her none the less. There had been a time when Diana had painted the town red; when she’d been bright-eyed and infamous in Halifax. Back then she’d been the queen of all she surveyed; and then six years ago all that had changed. Her carefree day in the sun had ended, and she would never go back to being that Diana.

‘Ignore them.’ Diana was saying it as much to herself as Mary, and they walked on. Six years was a long time, but no one could forget Diana. She might be wrapped up in her late father’s old black coat, her shoes might be down at heel, but she still looked like she’d stepped down from a Hollywood movie poster.

‘Look at the state of that!’ A buck-toothed drinker in the doorway of The Boar called out. Diana cast a glance in his direction and realised that he was pointing at Mary, who was taking the abuse quietly, as though she thought she deserved it.

‘What did you say?’ Diana mouthed the words at him almost inaudibly, barely a whisper. She didn’t need to raise her voice; when she spoke the scattering of flat-capped drinkers who had spilled out of the pub fell silent. The old light was back in her eyes, and her iron-ringed irises were locked on the insolent young man.

He laughed awkwardly, looking around to his friends for them to join in. It was near closing time, and the lamp-lit street was busier with friends and acquaintances than it had been an hour ago. The young man had assumed that they would all make fun of the plain-faced girl that followed the beautiful one, but he was mistaken. His friends quietly shuffled backwards; some could sense what was coming, and others knew from experience that to cross Diana Moore was a mistake you only made once.

‘What,’ Diana remarked as she stalked toward the young man like a predator slowly closing in on its prey ‘did you say?’

‘Well …’ he laughed nervously, throwing his arm up to indicate Mary but with less conviction now. ‘Have you seen the state of her?’

‘What about her?’ Diana was close to him now, and without so much as a wrinkle of her celestial nose, she conveyed a menace more potent than this young man was ever likely to encounter again.

He faltered and then said, ‘Well … she doesn’t have a coat, does she?’ He’d have said more; he’d have said that she was plain or ugly, or skinny, or that her skin was sallow and her hair unattractive, but he felt a cold fear at the beautiful and unmoving face that was so close to his.

Diana leant forward slowly; with the elegance and poise of a dancer, her lips were so close to his that for a heart-stopping moment he thought that she was going to kiss him. He lifted his chin a little in hope, but her mouth moved past his without touching it, and then her mouth was at his ear, her breath warming his skin with a tingle, and in a whisper that was all at the same time tender as a lover, and unforgiving as death she said, ‘Then give her yours.’

In the silence that had fallen over the drinkers, everyone heard her words.

Diana gently stepped back and the young man looked around helplessly at his friends, his mouth falling open in hesitation, confusion, and fear. He didn’t know how to respond, so he laughed nervously again and waited for his friends to join in. All he wished was for the moment to pass so they could all continue with their Friday night drinking in peace. But his friends didn’t come to his rescue; they didn’t do any of the things that he expected them to do, they looked at him in silence and nodded in the direction of the girl he’d been mocking; they nodded as though to tell him to hand over his coat.

When they arrived at The Old Cock and Oak Diana appeared to be in a slightly better mood as she had shocked Mary into another brief silence.

‘I can’t keep this.’ Mary was wearing the coat that Diana had thrown around her shoulders as she’d led her away from The Boar, and she looked worried; she always looked worried. ‘I can’t take his coat off him.’

‘So leave it at the pub tomorrow, and they can give it back to him.’ Diana pushed open the door of The Old Cock and Oak, holding it open for Mary to follow her into the tap room, ‘But I forbid you to give it back to him tonight. He doesn’t deserve it.’

The crowded saloon, and higgledy-piggledy layout of the pub made it difficult to see all the drinkers. A thick fug of tobacco smoke caught Mary square in the chest as they entered and she began coughing uncontrollably; Diana was used to it and immediately began looking for her stepbrother. She briefly looked around the corner into the Savile room, but realised that her stepbrother wouldn’t be there; that part of the pub was mostly occupied by older folks who still smoked their tobacco in clay pipes to save money on cigarette papers and Tommo wouldn’t deign to be seen with the likes of them.

Diana ducked her head under the minstrel gallery that spanned one side of the pub. It was a strange old place, like something from a fairy story. It was all carved oak mermaids and crazy staircases; Tommo tended to frequent billiard halls, or places where he could be a big fish in a small pond, this was not his sort of place at all, which meant that he was up to something. The pub was full, but the clientele were divided evenly into two groups: the first were the Worshipful Company of Ale Tasters who had come in for their annual ale tasting evening in the private room on the next floor up. The second group of drinkers were the relatively sober regulars who had stopped by for a small glass of bitter after a day at work and were trying to suppress their amusement at the ale tasters who were all stumbling down the 16th-century staircase in an attempt to make their various ways home. Diana overheard the barman telling another drinker that they’d had an incorrectly labelled ale submitted for their tasting that year and it was rather stronger than they had anticipated. She suspected there would be a lot of sore heads in the morning and was glad that she wasn’t one of them.

Over in the snug, she found Bess with a group of engineers that she recognised from the factory. Bess was under five feet tall, so when she saw her sister coming to get her she had no trouble darting behind one of the engineers to hide. Bess seemed to think it was all a game because she was giggling happily; the look of desperate exhaustion on her sister Mary’s face didn’t seem to register with her.

Diana approached the group, ‘Bess, your sister’s been worried sick.’

‘Don’t worry about her,’ Bess whispered conspiratorially, evidently still thinking that if she stayed out of the way her elder sister might not find her to make her go home. ‘Mary’s always angry about summut’, it won’t be ‘owt serious, let her go and cool off.’

It was too late, Mary had caught sight of her sister in their midst and had come round to forcefully grasp hold of her wrist and drag her out of the bar, calling out, ‘Landlady! My sister is under-age to drink, don’t serve her in future!’

Mrs Parish the landlady came out from behind the bar, ‘And when the bloody hell did you sneak in, young lady?’ She looked at Bess with a mixture of annoyance, amazement and confusion; Mrs Parish was a third generation licensee, and you had to get up very early in the morning to catch her out. If anyone got into her pub without her knowing it would have to be by some witchcraft.

Bess giggled, ‘I was hiding inside my friend’s coat when we all came in, and then I ran round into the snug. Didn’t you see us? We looked like a pantomime horse. Everyone laughed!’

The landlady’s shoulders sagged in exasperation. ‘I’ll remember your face, young lady. You’re barred.’ Mrs Parish narrowed her eyes at Mary. ‘And how old are you?’

Mary appeared to be mildly affronted by the question. ‘I only came in to get her. I’m going now. I wouldn’t come into a pub unless I had a good reason.’ Mary hustled her sister from the premises.

‘Oh, Mary,’ Bess’s contented, innocent expression hadn’t changed even though she was being hauled out of the pub, her bouncing, honey-blonde curls falling over her eyes prettily, ‘I was only coming out for a bit o’ fun with the engineers, there’s no harm in it. You should come out sometimes too; now you’re old enough.’

‘You’ll be fit for nothing at work tomorrow, and then where will we be?’

Diana followed the bickering sisters out into the courtyard, ‘Bess, have you seen my stepbrother? I need to know where he’s gone.’

‘Have you tried at home?’ Bess meant well, but it obviously didn’t occur to her that Diana would already have looked there; common sense was not Bess’s strong point.

‘He’s not at his mother’s house. Where did he say he would be? Where did you last see him this evening?’

‘I didn’t see him tonight. But maybe you could see him at the factory tomorrow? He wants to come and look round the factory in the morning.’ Bess said it as though she were imparting a nice piece of news that would please her sister and their colleague Diana.

‘What does he want to do that for?’ Diana was suspicious.

‘Well,’ Bess looked around and then leant forward conspiratorially, ‘I think he wants to get a job at the factory. I think he wants to get settled somewhere nice.’ She smiled; she genuinely believed the best of the young man who called himself Tommo ‘The Blade’ Cartwright.

‘Trust me, Bess, my brother is not trying to get a job in the factory. If he asks you to get him inside the gates you tell me about it straight away, you understand?’

‘Do you think we could get him an overlooker’s job on our line?’ Bess’s voice squeaked with cheerful optimism.

Mary and Diana sighed with exasperation. This was the last thing they needed.

Reenie rode home through the heather, and by the light of the moon. When there was moon enough she’d allow herself this luxury of travelling back over Shibden Mill fields instead of the road. There was good solid ground underfoot for Ruffian, and if the night was clear enough she could see out across the rooftops of half of Halifax (if she didn’t mind being unladylike and sitting backwards in her saddle and letting Ruffian take them both home).

Her father was no trouble as he slept, helpless as a babe, over the front of their horse. She realised, to her delight, that she could eat that tinned tongue sandwich in her pocket. Her father wouldn’t remember in the morning if she’d had it; she took the waxed paper package from her pocket, pulled away the twine and took a bite of the soft, fluffy bread. It was heavenly, and Ruffian plodded on while she tucked in. Reenie was just near enough to the lane that bordered her part of the field that she could make out the silhouette of a lone policeman on a bicycle, effortlessly freewheeling down the hill.

Reenie was in such good spirits that she decided to ride nearer to the fence and wish him a good evening.

With a mouth full of tinned tongue sandwich she called out, ‘Nah then! ‘Ow’s thi’ doin’?’

The officer pulled on his brakes and skidded the bicycle into a sideways halt just yards away from Ruffian. He didn’t speak immediately, but narrowed his eyes and assessed the teenaged girl who grinned at him naively in the moonlight; the almost-lifeless bundle of clothes that appeared to be a man; and the knock-kneed, run-down old horse that couldn’t have more than a year or two of life left in him. Finally, he asked, ‘Is this yours?’

‘What, the horse or the old man? The sandwich is mine, but you can have some if you’ve not had any tea.’

‘No, the land; is that your land?’ Sergeant Metcalfe became frustrated when he saw that the girl who was trespassing still didn’t understand. ‘You’re on private land, lass. Look at the signs and the fences. Can you not read the signs?’

‘Can you not go on it if you’re just using it to go home?’

‘No, you cannot trespass if you’re trespassing to go home. Trespassing’s a crime; you could be up before the magistrate.’

Reenie smiled amiably. ‘But I always go home this way.’

The policeman pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, ‘Do you know what it means when someone says that you’re not doing yourself any favours?’

‘I don’t understand; am I in trouble? Is it because I haven’t got him on a saddle? Because he’s never had a saddle. We just use him for turning over the field and fetching dad and the like.’

The policeman sighed in frustration and thought about how late he’d have to stay at the station if he arrested a minor, and all the extra trouble of taking an unconscious man and an unsaddled horse into custody. Sergeant Metcalfe looked up into the happy, well-meaning face of Reenie Calder and decided that this was a battle he’d never win. ‘You know what,’ the policeman took a deep, exasperated breath, ‘No one died so just go home and don’t tell anyone I saw you or I’ll get it in the neck for not doing ‘owt about it. Don’t kick up the grass, don’t wander about, don’t let anyone else catch you, and don’t do it again.’

Reenie looked earnest, as though she was doing her best to help him, ‘Don’t do what again, exactly? Is it the horse, or is it me dad?’

Metcalfe threw up his hands. ‘Right, that’s it, I’m going home. You win. You will be the death of someone one day, but not me and not tonight. Get thi’ to bed and don’t let me see you here again.’ He knocked the kickstand back up off his bicycle ready to wend his way to the station to sign off duty for the night as quickly as he possibly could, but he stopped, thought, and asked: ‘You’re not Reenie Calder, are you?’

Reenie Calder looked him innocently in the eye. ‘No. Why?’

He held her gaze, debating once again whether or not to risk the ridicule of the station by taking in a girl, a drunk, and their horse into custody … No, it wasn’t worth the risk; and quietly, he went on his way.

‘Oh, well have a nice night, won’t you.’ Reenie shrugged to no one but herself. Reenie loved a bit of trespassing. She wasn’t sure if it was because she liked the thrill of naughtiness from this minor infringement of the land laws, or whether she liked the idea that she was taking a stand against all them rich folks that would seek to prevent a Yorkshireman from being taken home the quickest route in his own county. ‘Well Ruffian, it’s just me and thee. It’s a nice night for it. Now would you look at that sky?’

Reenie drank in the night air, the beauty of the stars, the joy of being on her way home with Ruffian, and the delight of having made a monkey of two adults in one night; and dismounted from her horse. She knew Ruffian only too well, and she knew that although he would put on a brave face, he was too old now to carry two people home. He was becoming more and more useless as a workhorse, and more and more precious as a friend. As she walked alongside him, wishing he could live for ever, her heart broke a little.

Chapter Two

Bess sauntered along behind her sister Mary who was moving at a quick pace, eager to get home to bed. Mary walked awkwardly in the stranger’s grey wool coat; she was glad of the warmth, but not the circumstances in which she’d acquired it, and the almost inaudible rustling of the fabric lining felt deafeningly loud to her.

Bess didn’t seem to notice the cold, she lost her balance every so often in her silver, t-strap Louis heels, but then with a click against the cobbles, she’d right herself again, scattering some of the ha’penny bag of chip shop scraps in her wake. Chip shop scraps were all they seemed to eat for their tea these days, and on this occasion, Bess was lucky that they’d been passing a chippy that was still open so that Mary could get her something hot on their way home.

Bess offered some to her sister as she trotted faster to try to keep with her. ‘Don’t you want any? They’re lovely and tasty; I love the smell of hot vinegar when it gets into the paper and goes all tangy.’

‘You eat them. Mother’s not got us anything in for breakfast so that’ll have to do you until dinner time at work.’

‘I don’t mind. I don’t get hungry in the morning.’

Mary’s wandering mind was interrupted by a call from the house opposite to their own:

‘You found her then?’

‘Yes, thank you Mrs Grimshaw.’ Mary tried to shove her sister unceremoniously through the soot-blackened front door. Leaping at the chance to start a cheery conversation with the neighbour, Bess called over Mary’s shoulder:

‘Goodnight, Mrs Grimshaw! Thank you for the lovely bread you left—’

‘Don’t start that, just get inside.’ Mary whispered to her sister, ‘You’ll wake the whole street.’

‘You’re alright.’ The neighbour sucked casually on her old white clay pipe as she stood on her doorstep, placidly waiting for Mary knew-not-what.

She always did that, Mary thought to herself, she was always standing on her front step in her slippers and housecoat smoking on a pipe waiting for nothing in particular when they got back late. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Mrs Grimshaw always seemed to go out for a pipe when Bess was out late, and Mary had gone to fetch her. What must the woman think of the pair of us? Then Mary realised that if Mrs Grimshaw thought her younger sister was a dirty stop out, then she was, in fact, correct. However, Mary preferred to think that her sister was somehow a special case and that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Then she remembered what Bess had told her the preceding week and realised that it was worse.

‘I don’t know why you won’t let me pass the time of day with Mrs Grimshaw.’ Bess tottered into the front parlour that opened straight onto the street. She clattered over the bare boards on silver high heeled shoes as silly as herself while her sister lit a slim, farthing candle from the table beside the front door.

‘Take your shoes off; you’ll wake Mother.’ Mary didn’t need to look over to the corner of the parlour to know that their mother was asleep under grandad’s old army coat in her chair beside the dying embers of the range. As far as Mary could remember their mother had never stayed awake to see that they came home safely because, like Bess, her mother took it for granted that they always would. The reason she slept in the parlour was no late-night vigil for her only children, but the practical solution to the problem of space; since their father died they had been forced to make do with a one-up-one-down. Mary and Bess shared a bed upstairs in the only bedroom. At a squeeze, Mrs Norcliffe might have been able to fit into it with her daughters, but she had moved down to the parlour years ago.

Bess unfastened the dainty t-straps of her shoes and carried them with her up the creaking stairs to their bedroom. She didn’t lower her voice because her mother was deaf as a post and wouldn’t hear them, but they were both careful to tread softly, and in stockinged feet, to avoid shaking the floor and waking her that way.

‘I like her ever so much.’ Bess dropped the shoes onto the floor beside the dresser and hung up her coat on the open door of their wardrobe. ‘I think she wishes you’d talk to her more because I know that she’s very fond of you.’

‘Mrs Grimshaw does not like me.’ Mary said it as though it were a fact that she had come to terms with long ago and only shared in passing as she folded the stranger’s coat neatly and laid it in the corner furthest away from her as though it were a dangerous animal that might attack.

‘Oh, but she does!’ Bess’s large, blue baby-doll eyes were wide with concern and love, and she reached out to rub her sister’s shoulder reassuringly, ‘You worry too much, and if you’d just talk to people and let them get to know you—’

‘You’re too trusting.’ Unlike her sister, Mary didn’t have to remove cheap costume jewellery and climbed into their lumpy, old, but nonetheless welcome bed. ‘You’re used to everyone liking you, so you don’t see when you’re getting yourself into trouble.’

Bess had pulled on her nightdress and thrown her silk stockings carelessly over the top of her messily heaped shoes. ‘Your trouble,’ she threw her arms around her sister’s neck to give her a goodnight hug, ‘is that you’re too hard on yourself!’ Bess giggled, kissed her sister on the cheek and then wriggled down beneath the coverlet to sleep.

Mary was sitting up in bed, about to lean over and blow out the candle beside her, but in her exhaustion her mind caught up with what she had seen. Her sister had just taken off a pair of fancy-looking stockings, so Mary picked the candle up to cast the weak light a little higher. ‘Bess?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Are those silk stockings?’

‘Mmm.’ Bess hummed the affirmative contentedly into her pillow ‘They’re lovely.’

‘Where did you get them from?’

‘Tommo, he gave them to me as a present at lunchtime when I saw him at the factory gates.’

Mary turned to look down at her younger sister who had already closed her pretty, long-lashed eyes, and put her head on her faded-grey pillow. The candle wax melted down Mary’s knuckles but she ignored it. ‘I cannot believe you sometimes! I thought I told you that you weren’t to see him anymore. If he thinks that he can just—’

Bess pulled herself up in bed for a moment, leant over, and blew out her sister’s candle, plunging them both into darkness. Mary could feel Bess plonking her head back on her pillow and settling down to sleep. She sat up for a moment longer, debating whether or not to waste a match re-lighting it and trying to pursue the subject, but she knew better than to try. Her sister would never see reason, Mary would have to take matters into her own hands.

Diana could hear a church clock striking four o’clock in the morning somewhere down near Queen’s Road. She was standing in the dark, galley kitchen waiting for Tommo to return; she had waited all night. To pass the time Diana had attempted to clean up some of the usual detritus that littered her stepmother’s kitchen. An empty Oxo tin was lying on the flagstones, the crumbs trodden into the floor along with innumerable other ills. Diana had cleaned what she could without waking little Gracie and her stepmother. She had swept up crumbling shards of plaster that had fallen from the damp, mould-blackened walls; she had reset the rusted mouse trap and returned it to its place under the stove that badly needed blacking, and she had folded up the dirty sheets of newspaper that her stepmother had laid out on the kitchen table. None of them ever read much of the pages from the papers these days; the sheets were there to eat their bread and dripping off instead of crockery, and they were always a few days out of date.

As she had folded up the dirty sheets of the West Yorkshire Gazette, she’d cast her eye over stories about Italy, Spain, and Germany and fascists. The stories all seemed to weave into one another; the Spanish were fighting their fascist leader, the Germans were bombing the Spanish to stop them fighting the fascists, the Italians were with the Germans, and Londoners in the East End rioted. They’d shouted, ‘They shall not pass’ in Spanish when the British Union of Fascists had tried to march through Whitechapel. Fascism was spreading across Europe like the plague, and carefully constructed treaties were toppling all over the world like a flimsy house of cards.

A photograph in one of the newspapers caught Diana’s eye; it showed a razor-necked Oswald Mosley in his black, military-style uniform. He wore a black peaked cap like a police sergeant but his was emblazoned with the lightning bolt of the BUF, and the shiny peak was tilted rakishly over his right eye to disguise a slight squint. His uniform had echoes of Great War army officers, and an official status that he clearly longed for, but did not possess. Diana spat on his face before screwing up the damp-softened news sheets and cramming them into the empty grate of the stove. She didn’t like leaving anything about Mosley and his lot lying around if she could help it. Her stepbrother had a weakness for joining with the biggest bullies he could find, and she worried that it was only a matter of time before he realised there were even bigger fish than the criminals in Leeds that he so idolised.