The Quality Street Girls

Diana waited for Mary on the street outside; her father’s thick old coat wrapped tightly around her, and the wide collar turned up against the autumnal night. ‘She’s definitely not with him this time,’ Mary said, leaning one hand on the door frame of her mother’s soot-blackened one-up-one-down terrace as she hurriedly pulled on a well-worn shoe with the other hand ‘she’s promised she won’t see him anymore.’

Diana didn’t respond; it was a waste of effort, and she was bone tired. She had spent all day at work in the factory, then had come home to find her stepbrother hadn’t paid the rent and had taken off with Mary’s sister Bess. Not that this came as a surprise; nothing came as a surprise to Diana any more. Mary’s sister was in thrall to her no good stepbrother, as only a silly sixteen-year-old can be. Diana had been a silly sixteen-year-old herself once, although it felt like a lifetime ago and not the mere ten years that separated her from that other person she had once been. Diana had been in thrall to someone equally unsuitable, and she knew that there was nothing to be done for Bess now.

‘She realises now that he’s no good for her.’ Mary was following behind Diana and kicking at her shoe to move back the loose insole that had shifted when she’d pulled on her winter shoes over bare feet. ‘I don’t know where she’s gone tonight, but I’m certain she’s not with him.’

Diana didn’t ask why Mary was following her if she believed all of her sister’s promises; she didn’t need to. Diana was the oldest girl on their production line, and younger ones like Mary fell into line with whatever she said.

‘I mean,’ Mary went on as they turned the corner of Mary’s street and past the midnight blue billboard that announced that Rowntree’s Cocoa would nourish them all, ‘how do you know that it was definitely them?’

Diana stopped suddenly. She disliked walking while talking; she disliked talking at all, and she thought that if she didn’t stop to say what she had to say then Mary would carry on kicking at her shoe rather than ask her to wait while she fixed it. Stopping killed two birds with one stone. ‘I saw someone who told me that your sister and my stepbrother were in The Old Cock and Oak in town and that if I didn’t hurry he’d have all my rent money spent.’

‘But could they have been mistaken? I mean, what were their exact words?’ Mary hopped on one foot as she tried to arrange her shoe without letting her bare foot touch the ice-cold cobbles of the dirty street.

Diana sighed ‘He said “You want to get down to The Old Cock and Oak, Diana, before that no-good stepbrother of yours spends all your money. ‘The Blade’ as he likes to call himself is in there with the Good Queen, and he’s buying everyone a drink.” There’s no mistake; your sister is there with him.’

‘What does he mean ‘Good Queen’? Who’s ‘Good Queen’ when she’s at home?’ Mary looked genuinely confused.

There was a long silence as Diana tried to decide whether or not to tell Mary what people called her; it might help her to do something about it, but then again it might not. Behind their backs Mary and Bess were known as the Tudor Queens; the porters on their production line had started calling Mary ‘Bad Queen Mary’ because she had a short fuse and no one had ever been able to get her to crack a smile. Her younger sister Bess was her polar opposite; she was cheerful to a fault. She had no concept of the consequences of her actions as she floated along in a happy bubble, and Diana had been forced to speak to her about it on the production line on a number of occasions, to no avail. Bess was all smiles and affection, and they called her ‘Good Queen Bess’.

It seemed odd to Diana that two people could look so different while looking so alike. They had the same large, upturned eyes, but where Bess’s looked pretty, Mary’s glasses made hers appear bug-like. They had the same porcelain-white skin, but where Bess’s looked delicate, Mary’s looked ghostly. They both had a strawberry mark on their left cheek, but where Bess’s looked like a cherubic kiss, Mary’s looked like she was crying tears of blood. They were their own worst enemies, Diana had told them so often enough; Mary had a short fuse because she tied herself up in knots with worry, while Bess was as useless as a chocolate teapot in the factory because she was too happy-go-lucky. Diana wondered if Bess would ever realise her job was to make toffees, not gaze dreamily into the middle distance. Diana could see why they’d ended up the way they had; Mary had to do the worrying for both of them, and Bess didn’t need to worry with a sister like Mary. If they could trade places for a day, it might do them the power of good.

‘Have you fixed that shoe yet?’ Diana didn’t want to wait in the road much longer, her stepbrother liked to flash money around when he had it, and he’d be on to another pub before closing time if she didn’t catch up with him first.

‘It keeps moving around.’ Mary huffed with annoyance and crouched down to unlace her shoe and fix it properly, fumbling as though she were worried that she was taking up too much of Diana’s valuable time.

Mary looked pitiful under the streetlamp. Her frizzy black hair was pulled tight back and twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. All the other girls at the factory had their hair curled like the girls in the magazines, but not Mary; there were dark circles around her eyes and in the winter of 1936, Mary didn’t even have a warm coat. Poor kid, Diana thought to herself, she needs someone to look after her for a change.

‘Alright, I’m ready.’ Mary stood up and shook her foot in her shoe one last time. ‘I still don’t think it’s him.’

‘My stepbrother could hardly be mistaken for anyone else. Apart from the fact that he’s the only person in Halifax to dress like some American mobster from the pictures, he also looks like a cross between a rat and a frog, so his face is hardly going to blend into a crowd, is it?’ Diana started walking again. The trouble with Mary Norcliffe, she thought to herself, was that she couldn’t just walk in silence.

Mary followed Diana with her arms folded around herself and her shoulders hunched forward; her eyes were on the tram rails that stretched out down the road ahead of them, but then she looked up to Diana and said, ‘Thank you for calling on me though.’ There was an anxious pause as though Mary feared that every sentence was saying too much or too little. ‘I know she’s a nuisance, but she has promised she’ll change. Honestly she has.’

Diana knew that Good Queen Bess would never be capable of seeing the consequences of her actions, and her sister Mary would always be looking after her. It was none of Diana’s business, and so she said nothing. She helped them in her own way, but she wasn’t going to try to change them. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’ Diana looked up see that Mary was already panicking. ‘I’ve arranged for you and your sister to work beside me on the new line. We move floors tomorrow.’

‘But, if we—’

Diana didn’t let her finish, ‘Everyone knows that you’ve been helping your sister to get her work done, but we can’t let the other girls cover up for you anymore. You’ll have to move up beside me where I’ll be the only person covering for you, and then if you’re caught helping Bess, the only people that will be in any trouble will be the three of us. No more risking the other girls’ positions, do you understand?’

Mary swallowed and nodded.

‘I know you’ll still have to help your sister for a while yet, but you do it in my section and no one else’s. If Mrs Roth catches you, it’s best I deal with her.’

Diana was eventually rewarded with her longed-for silence, but she couldn’t enjoy it because she knew that Mary was wrestling with all kinds of questions that she wanted to ask, but didn’t dare voice.

They turned the corner onto Market Street where the rainbow of shops had closed their shutters for the night, like spring blooms closing their petals each evening. The street was by no means sleeping, it was alive with factory workers who were out for a payday drink. It was hard to imagine what Diana had heard this morning about the men in Barnsley on their way down to Westminster on a hunger march. The people of Halifax had seen lean times, but on this Friday there was merriment.

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.’