The Loom (18 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘
Y
ou’ve got two backs, Leah Hammond,’ Janey says to her sister, when she’s mad; or, ‘flat as a pancake’, or ‘like a steamroller’s run over you’. None of which is true. Leah is slender, whereas Janey has womanly curves even at fourteen.

This changed when Leah was seventeen. She suddenly began to sprout two very curvaceous breasts. She looked at herself in the still cracked mirror above the mantle in Glebe Street.

It was her full weekend off and, although she enjoyed coming home, she sighed with regret when she thought of the full-length mirror in her bedroom at Hyndburn. She steadied herself on the chair on which she was standing so that she’d have a better view. One day soon I’ll buy Mam a new mirror, she thought. She made a face at her reflection, or what she could see of it, because the crack made her look like half of her didn’t fit with the other. She turned sideways and made an exasperated sound: the new under girdle, now all the fashion had not had much effect on flattening her breasts. Just my luck, she thought as she breathed in to make them less obvious. Now I’ve got a bust, it’s not fashionable!

She looked over to where Janey was sitting on the couch, her nose in her usual film star magazine. Janey had a perfect figure for the new fashions. She was pencil thin and had remained that way after a severe bout of the flu, which had killed thousands just after the war. Janey had been one of the lucky ones, but was a wraith of her former self and had never regained her robust health.

Why do things always work against me, Leah though angrily? She reached under her dress in irritation, pulled off the restricting girdle and heaved a sigh of relief. She threw the girdle on a chair. She hated of those things! How women could wear them she’d never know. They almost cut you in half, but she still looked in annoyance at the offending breasts, which had bounced right back, where they belonged.

Leah jumped off the chair. Her short bob swung perkily. Janey looked up. ‘Are we still going to Annie Lamb’s tonight, for you know what.’

Leah looked in warning towards the kitchen where Emma could be heard washing the dishes. ‘Yes, we are, just for a couple of hours,’ she said loudly. ‘I want to see Annie about the dress I’m making for her.’

Janey nodded knowingly, her short shiny black hair fitting her beautifully shaped head like a cap.

Emma had been horrified when they returned from Blackburn, their hair cut off. ‘What the bloody hell have you two been up to,’ she said, horrified. Crowning glory was the way Emma always described her two girl’s hair, now almost non-existent.

‘
All your lovely hair. Ee, it’s a crime, that’s what it is, a crime.’ She’d refused to speak to them for full hour after and even now only grudgingly agreed that the style suited them. ‘But I still liked you with long hair better. What a waste of good hair and now it’ll probably be stuffed into somebody’s mattress. I don’t know what things are coming to, I don’t, and that’s a fact.’ She would mutter on to herself for a few minutes and Leah and Janey would listen in long suffering silence. Mam did carry on and all about a bit of hair!

There was a sudden loud knock on the door as Emma walked into the living room from the scullery, wiping her hands on a piece of cloth. ‘I wonder who that is,’ she said. ‘Stay there Leah, love,’ as Leah made for the door, ‘I’ll see who it is.’

Emma opened the front door to find May Wilkins, a friend of Leah’s, standing on the step. Her plain face under her wool hat looked pinched with the cold.

‘Ee, hello May,’ Emma said.

‘Hello Mrs. Hammond. Is your Leah in?’

‘Aye, she is. Come on in, you look frozen.’ Emma ushered May inside to the front room. ‘Get in front of the fire and warm yourself, love.’

‘Ta, Mrs. Hammond.’

Leah looked surprised to see May. ‘I thought you weren’t coming tonight, May.’

‘I changed me mind. It’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. I suppose you want me to measure you for that blouse?’ Leah winked. She wondered how many would be at Annie’s tonight. Not too many, she thought, or it’d be morning before she finished.

‘Aye, that’s it, that’s it.’ May said, flustered. Emma looked at her sharply. Leah shook her head at May in warning. Mam would twig that something was up and pester till she found out. May flushed and closed her mouth tightly as though something might come popping out she didn’t want.

Janey exchanged a knowing look with Leah. They’ll be queuing up to have it done, she thought. She smiled at May.

‘
How’s your Mam, May?’ she said.

‘
Aye, how is she, love?’ Emma said. ‘I’ve been meaning to get around to see her, but I saw your Dad and he said she was on the mend so I thought I’d leave it till next week. I’ve got a day off then.’

‘She’s a lot better, Mrs. Hammond but the doctor said it’ll be a while before she’s really fit again. But she worries about me Dad not being able to get a job.’

Emma nodded. ‘Aye, it’s getting worse, all this unemployment. It’s criminal what the men went through in the war and then to come home and not be able to earn a decent living. I’ve seen some of ‘em begging on corners. It’s not right. All them politicians making promises they’ve not kept. It’s not right.’ To Emma’s way of thinking there were a lot of NOT RIGHTS.

‘
I was just glad that Darkie didn’t have to go down the pit again because they’re laying them off left and right. No, it’s not right.’

‘Don’t get worked up, Mam,’ Leah said sharply. ‘It’s bad for you. But what Mam said
is
right, May. It’s so demoralizing for people, not just for men, for women, too. They’ve had to give up jobs for the men.’

May admired Leah – and that voice, it was right posh. Some people laughed at her, but May thought the new way of talking suited Leah. And she used such long words. Half the time she’d no idea what they meant but they did sound good. And just look at her hair. May felt a twinge of envy as she thought of her own thin, straight hair (straight as a pennorth of nails her mother would say in exasperation as she tried in vain to make it curl. How many times had she put it in rags, slept on them all night in agony, only to see the corkscrews unwind in less than ten minutes)?

‘
Doesn’t Leah’s hair look nice in a bob, Mrs. Hammond,’ she said to Emma, ‘and Janey’s, too.’

Emma nodded. ‘Aye, I’m getting more used to it. I liked it long, though.’ She looked at the clock on the mantle. ‘You’d better go now. I don’t want you home too late. And rug up, it’s cold tonight.’

Leah and Janey put coats, hats and gloves on. ‘We’ll see you then, Mam,’ Leah said. They hurried out of the room with May and banged the door behind them. They walked quickly up the street. May was shorter and had to take two strides to their one. ‘Slow up a bit, you two,’ she said, gasping for breath. ‘You’re like two trains.’

‘Sorry,’ Leah said, ‘But we haven’t a lot of time if I’m going to do everyone’s hair.’

‘Aye, all right, ee, I need a firecracker up me bum to keep up with you two.’ They laughed. The night was freezing and they clutched their coats tightly around them, their warm breaths condensing in the night air like small clouds.

They turned down St. Hubert’s Road, which was wider and longer than Glebe Street. At the bottom they could see the dark silhouette of St. Hubert’s Church spire, rising black and stark into the night sky. It was obliterated completely when the moon went behind a cloud.

‘
Come on,’ Leah said, starting to run. ‘I hate the dark.’

They could see the light in Annie’s living room as they turned down Princes Lane. Before they reached the front door it opened and Annie’s voice boomed out.

‘
Where’ve you been? It’s late and Mam and Dad’ll be back from the pictures before we’ve even started.’

‘Sorry Annie. I didn’t realize it was so late,’ Leah said.

They walked through into the back room. Kathryn McAuley was already sitting in front of the fire. She was not particularly good looking, her nose was too big for that, but she made up for this disadvantage by her immaculate presentation.

She was, as usual, dressed to kill (her father was a very well-off mill manager) in a green pure wool dress, her Musquash coat flung casually over a chair arm and a large diamond ring blazing on her beautifully manicured hand. Incongruously, in this dainty hand she held a large pint pot of tea, the tea as black as the ace of spades. Her voice didn’t match her appearance, either. It was decidedly dialect and the bane of her mother’s life. No amount of elocution lessons could alter Kathryn’s voice.

Leah had met Kathryn at the new dance place called Up Jazz, which was run by an American couple. It was very popular because everyone wanted to be in on the new jazz craze and learn The Black Bottom and The Charleston. Mrs. McAuley would have preferred Kathryn to stick to the Park Lane lot.

The new dance craze went with the new fashions. The bob was in, although there weren’t many in Harwood who had it yet; except, of course, Leah and Janey Hammond. But that was to be expected people said, especially with that Leah. She thinks she’s something that one does and her sister’s nearly as bad!

It was bobbed hair night for May, Annie and Kathryn!

‘
Where the hell have you lot been then?’ Kathryn said as they walked in. ‘I’ve been here an hour and me Dad’ll kill me if I’m late home again.’

‘All right, all right, keep your hair on,’ Leah said taking her coat, hat and gloves off. They all looked at each other and burst out laughing. That wasn’t right at all. Another of the
not rights
, Leah thought. Annie handed Leah a large pair of scissors.

‘
All right, get going,’ she said.

‘Do you think we should?’ May said, suddenly realizing what they were about to do. Leah brandished the scissors like an avenging Ghenghis Khan.

‘Don’t be so bloody soft,’ Kathryn said, jumping up and banging her pint pot loudly on the mantle. ‘Come on then, get on with it Leah. I’ll be the first. Yours looks all right so why shouldn’t mine.’

They stood and admired Leah’s hair for a moment, forgetting that Leah had beautiful hair and it would have looked good if it had been chewed off. It shone in thick waves, curling under at her chin.

Kathryn sat down on a chair. Annie quickly draped a towel around her shoulders and Kathryn shook her head as though to get rid of any lingering doubts. Her hair was even thicker and more luxurious than Leah’s and hung to her waist in a cascade of rippling chestnut waves. Leah looked at the beautiful hair in silence for a few seconds. It suddenly seemed a sin to cut it! Then she flourished the scissors and began to cut. The hair fell to the ground in a shining heap. Leah stood back when she’d finished, sounding more confident than she felt.

‘
There, that’s it then.’

Kathryn put her hand to her head. ‘Quick, take the bloody towel off and let me have a look.’ She rushed to the mirror above the mantle and stood looking at herself for a few moments, biting her lip and pushing back a few stray bits of hair. ‘I think it looks good,’ she said firmly and turned to the others as though daring them to disagree. They nodded, speechless at the enormity of what Leah had done.

‘
It does,’ Leah said. ‘It makes your face look softer.’ Thank goodness, she thought, one down two to go. ‘It’ll be all right when you wash it and titivate it up a bit.’ Kathryn was still staring at herself in the mirror so Leah picked the towel up and shook it.

‘Right May, you’re next.’

By this time May and Annie were not so sure. They looked at the heap of hair on the floor, but they couldn’t back out now. May sat on the chair with a thud.

‘All right do it,’ she said. This time Leah really got into the swing of it, snapping away with enthusiasm. When it was Annie’s turn she was feeling really confident, although Annie had been a bit put off when she’d seen May’s. ‘Go easy with them scissors, Leah. The way you’re going at it I’ll end up as bald as an egg.’

‘Don’t worry, Annie, I’m just getting used to the cutting and your cut should be the best.’

‘Aye, well, go easy, that’s all,’ Annie said, still not convinced. It was all right for Leah, she didn’t have a Dad to go mad at her, but if her Dad could see her now he’d kill her! Like May and Kathryn, Annie could hardly wait to rush to the mirror. She stood there for a few seconds and then began to wail. ‘Oh, oh, you’ve spoilt me hair. Oh me Mam’ll kill me when she sees it and me Dad as well.’

Leah stood with the scissors. I knew I shouldn’t have done this, she thought. She looked at Annie’s hair. It did look a bit of a mess. Annie had coarse hair ‘like a horse’ Leah thought as she cut. Now it sprutted fiercely out from her forehead, the ends were jagged and one side was longer than the other, like an uneven hedgehog. Leah stifled a giggle.

Annie stared in the mirror a few seconds longer, then burst into tears.

‘
Oh, I knew we shouldn’t have done it,’ she spluttered through her tears. ‘I look awful and me Dad’ll skin me alive when he sees it.’