The Quality Street Girls

‘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 (#ua99d1feb-5903-5249-a8ee-8159066b0299)

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.