The Quality Street Girls. Penny Thorpe
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