The Quality Street Girls. Penny Thorpe
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.
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