The Mill Girls of Albion Lane (21 page)

‘Tickety-boo,' Lily said unconvincingly then steered the talk away from Margie. ‘I was chatting with Maureen on the tram and she asked me to make her bridesmaid's dress for her sister's wedding. That's on top of promising to sew a summer dress for Elsie at work as soon as we get Christmas over and done with. At this rate, I don't know how I shall find the time.'

‘You will,' Harry assured her. ‘That's one of the things I like about you, Lily Briggs – you always find time for other people.'

‘Do I?' she wondered.

‘For young Arthur for a start. That little lad really loves you and I don't blame him.' It was a bold statement and Harry held his breath as his words settled.

‘Well yes, I'd do anything for Arthur,' Lily agreed, giving way to a shiver and awkwardly side-stepping the second half of Harry's sentence.

Harry put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Did you hear me? I said I don't blame him for loving his big sister the way he does. What little lad could help clinging on to every soft word and loving look from you, Lil?'

‘You don't know the half of it,' she warned. ‘Have you seen Arthur when I try to get him to go to bed early? He's not so keen on me then.'

The word ‘bed' sprang out at Harry and he instantly tried to shake off the tempting but unworthy image that flashed into his mind. He was a bad lad, he told himself, thinking of Lily in that way, but the idea of him and Lily in bed together wasn't easily got rid of. ‘Are you ready to go back inside?' he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Why don't I fetch my coat and we can take our time walking home?'

‘You don't want to dance any more?'

‘No, I'd rather walk.' Was this a step too far? she wondered. Would Harry think her forward for suggesting a long, romantic stroll in the dark?

His answer came in a ready smile and an eagerness to take her cloakroom ticket from her to retrieve her coat and hat. Before long they were walking hand in hand along an almost deserted Overcliffe Road.

They talked about this and that and matched each other stride for stride. They slid and skidded on the snowy pavements, laughed and steadied each other, stopped to kiss by a lamp post, the cold of their lips sending more icy shivers down Lily's spine. They didn't notice trams trundling by and though the dark moor to their left seemed empty and endless, they were happy in their own little world. Eventually they came to the lighted shop window of Pennington's and Harry walked Lily down Raglan Road through the alleyway on to Albion Lane.

When they emerged, they found Walter Briggs standing on the top step of number 5, staring up the hill towards the Common so that at first he didn't notice Harry and Lily. He was so still and preoccupied that he seemed made of stone.

‘Father's back early,' Lily murmured, moving out of Harry's reach and quickening her pace. Walter must have heard her because he turned to look, his face in shadow, only illuminated by the small glow from the cigarette hanging from his lips.

Harry held back and watched Lily reach the steps to her house.

‘Doctor's here,' Walter told her in a weary voice drained of expression. ‘Your mother's had a bad turn. Best come in and hear what he has to say.'

Dr James Moss was a tall, deep-voiced man with a florid complexion, built on such a large scale that he seemed out of place in the kitchen of the tiny terraced house – likely to walk into things and wondering quite where to put his big, soft hands which he consequently thrust deep into his jacket pockets. Jutting out his full underlip, he stared for a long time at the black Gladstone bag that he'd placed on the table.

‘You might want to take the little lad upstairs while I have a word with your dad and sister,' he told Evie, who hurried off with Arthur.

Lily swallowed hard and tried to contain a rising panic while Walter shook his head and backed into the corner by the sink, pulling out another cigarette and putting it to his lips without lighting it.

‘I've found the reason for Rhoda not being herself lately,' Dr Moss began slowly, constrained by the size of the room as well as by the grave news he had to deliver. ‘I'm afraid it must have been building up for quite a while. I expect you've seen that for yourselves, haven't you?'

‘She's not been well,' Lily acknowledged. ‘But Mother said she didn't want to make a fuss – you know what she's like.'

‘Until tonight, when she took a turn for the worse,' the doctor continued. ‘Walter, I gather that she sent Evie down to the Green Cross to ask you to come home?'

Walter nodded. ‘I got here fast as I could, Doctor, and it was just in time. Then I sent Evie to call on you.'

‘She was trying to get out of bed when your father arrived, but she fainted away,' Moss explained to Lily.

‘How is Mother now?' Lily wanted to know. ‘Has she come round?'

Dr Moss nodded then suggested that she and Walter sit down at the table. ‘You'll need to steady yourselves,' he warned.

A sense of dread descended on Lily as she followed the doctor's advice, noticing only dimly that her father had chosen to stay in the shadows in the corner of the room. She looked up at Dr Moss's florid face and tried to concentrate on what he said next.

‘I gave Rhoda something to help her revive and then she agreed to let me examine her. I found she has a tumour pressing against her stomach – quite a large one, I'm afraid – big enough to stop her from eating normally, at least. That's why she's grown so thin and tired.'

‘Can you take the tumour away?' Lily whispered.

‘I'm not sure. Your mother would need to go to the hospital to find out about that.'

‘But they could try?'

‘Yes, but if Rhoda has had this tumour for a while, then small parts may have broken away and got lodged somewhere else – in the lungs, for instance. Then the situation would be very bad, I'm afraid.'

The implications behind the doctor's cautious, carefully considered words sent Lily into a downward spiral of fear for her mother. ‘Why didn't she say something?' she cried.
Why didn't I pay more attention?
was the unspoken question that quickly followed.

‘I expect she soldiered on, hoping that it would go away,' Dr Moss said. ‘But now she knows it won't.' He turned to Walter and addressed him simply. ‘You understand about the tumour, don't you? You're prepared for what might happen?'

‘I know Rhoda hasn't been herself,' he murmured abjectly. ‘We have to get her to the hospital, let them sort her out.'

A frown formed between the doctor's brows as he realized he could take things no further for the time being. He picked up his bag and prepared to leave the family to it. ‘Your mother's comfortable for the moment,' he told Lily. ‘Let her rest as much as possible, give her some warm milk with sugar or honey to keep up her strength and I'll get in touch with the hospital on Monday to see if we can find a bed for her.'

After this, he saw himself out and left Lily alone with Walter.

‘I did the right thing, calling for the doctor?' Walter asked after a long silence when all that was heard in the dimly lit kitchen was the familiar settling of the last coals in the grate.

‘Yes, Father,' Lily answered in a dazed voice. She wasn't sure how much of Dr Moss's news he had taken in and she didn't have the heart to elaborate, not now.

‘This is a right to-do.' He sighed, removing the unlit cigarette and sliding it into his waistcoat pocket.

‘Yes. I wish we'd sent for the doctor before now.'

‘Ah, but she wouldn't have it.'

‘Shall I go up and see her, or shall you?' Lily wondered.

‘You do it,' Walter said, one hand to his temples, the other resting for support on the edge of the sink. ‘Make her go to the hospital, will you, Lil? Tell her not to mind about the money.'

‘I'll try.'

‘They can do wonders there, tell her – I shouldn't be surprised if they don't get her back on her feet in no time.'

‘Yes, Father, I'll tell her.' Lily sighed, her head spinning as she stood up and slowly climbed the stairs.

‘Don't worry, I knew it was coming.' Rhoda sat in bed, propped up by a rolled-up blanket and a thin pillow. Her pallor was deathly white, her manner resigned.

‘I wish you'd told me sooner,' Lily said, feeling a tight band around her chest as she tried not to cry.

‘You've enough on your plate.' Rhoda's hands rested on the fawn knitted bed cover, palms down, one on top of the other. Her hair was pushed clear of her face. ‘To tell you the truth, Lily, I was hoping I'd see Margie through the nine months but now it doesn't seem likely, not after what Dr Moss told me.'

Lily found herself clutching at straws. ‘You might if you let them give you an operation? That's what Father would like.'

‘No, I don't think so.'

For a moment exasperation at Rhoda's blunt stubbornness flared in Lily. ‘What do you mean, you don't think so?'

‘Where would we find the money for me to go into hospital for a start? And anyway what would be the point? No, I'm quite happy for Dr Moss to carry on looking after me here at home.'

‘Mother!' Feeling the force of Rhoda's steely resistance on this matter of life and death, Lily let her head drop forward.

‘Don't cry, Lil.'

‘I'm not.' Lily was aware that the staccato exchange hid a depth of underlying emotion that she couldn't even begin to fathom. With a great effort she took her lead from Rhoda, fought back the tears and looked up at her mother's wan face.

‘It'll be up to you to look after Margie when the time comes,' Rhoda told her steadily. ‘And in the meantime there's Evie and Arthur to think of, not to mention your father.'

‘He'll want you to go into the King Edward's,' Lily warned her again.

‘Yes, but you and I can see that's cloud-cuckoo-land.' Rhoda's lifelong pragmatism didn't fail her now. ‘We both know that it's not going to get any better, whatever the doctors try.'

There was nothing that Lily could say to this so she sat and stared sadly at her mother, wondering how best to pass on the news to Margie, Evie and Arthur.

‘Don't look at me like that,' Rhoda objected, wearily turning her head away. ‘Send your father up to me, there's a good girl. Then go upstairs and talk to Evie for me.'

Lily's heart was heavy as she stood up to carry out her tasks. She paused, one hand on the door knob, then offered the only mite of reassurance she could scrape up from the very bottom of her heart. ‘Don't worry, Mother, we'll manage.'

Rhoda nodded. ‘I know you will, Lily.' She sighed. ‘That's what it's all about when it comes down to it. I've brought you up not to let anyone down and now's your chance to show everyone that I didn't do too bad a job.'

When Walter took Lily's place at Rhoda's bedside he thought at first that his wife had fallen asleep. He felt as helpless as a bird with a broken wing, prey to all the nightmarish visions that years of mind-numbing drinking at the Green Cross had kept at bay.

Now, though, he came face to face with those terrors that had first come over him in the front line trenches. He smelled again the stench of mud and rotting flesh, heard the whistle and thud of shells, the ack-ack of gunfire. He could see his pals going over the top into a hail of bullets, sliding back down into the mire with half their faces missing, limbs blown off or with gaping wounds in their chests. He remembered them now – Joe Taylor and Dick Waterhouse, Brian Lawson and William Todd – in all the gory detail of their dying, their hands clutching at him while their last breaths escaped in long sighs and groans.

It might have been him, Walter Briggs, rotting there with the rest, and once it almost was when a shell had exploded nearby and a piece of shrapnel had torn into him, the rest of it showering him with mud, blood and much worse until he'd lost consciousness. He'd woken up in the field hospital, thinking of Rhoda and Lily and the new baby that was scarcely walking when he'd last set eyes on her.

‘Walter?'

His wife's faint voice brought him back to the present.

‘You know it's no good thinking about the hospital?' She reached out her hand and he took it, his own shaking uncontrollably.

‘But it's worth a try,' he objected.

‘No, Walter, it's not.'

He held her hand between his as if he were a condemned man, face to face with what in the end no one could avoid. And as his eyes met hers, he brought charges against himself: the endless counts of neglect and petty cruelty of his married years, his manifold failures as a husband and father. ‘Don't leave me,' he pleaded with his sick wife. ‘Not yet.'

‘I have to, Walter,' she whispered back, fixing him with her steady gaze, though her courage almost failed her. ‘I'm ready to go. Honestly, I am.'

Sunday brought Harry knocking on the door of number 5 with the offer of a trip over to Ada Street in the car he'd borrowed from Wilf Fullerton down at the brewery.

‘It's Harry,' Evie told Lily, who was inserting a layer of jam into the middle of a sponge cake, the scent filling the room.

Arthur perched on the window sill showing none of his usual lively enthusiasm for the arrival of a visitor. Instead, he concentrated on his game of cat's cradle, looping and twisting a knotted piece of string around his fingers to make the outline of a see-saw, a mattress then a cradle.

‘Now then, Arthur,' Harry said as he stepped inside. ‘What's that you're up to?'

‘Nothing.' Arthur pulled the string loose from his fingers and chucked it down on the sill. ‘Mam's poorly. I have to keep quiet.'

‘Then it's a good job I've brought the car to give you and your sisters a spin out for a change. I thought we might drop in on Margie at Ada Street.' Glancing apprehensively at Lily as he picked up the grim atmosphere, Harry tried to judge how bad Dr Moss's verdict on Rhoda had been. He thought now that the notion of a jaunt out to Overcliffe might not be one of his brighter ideas.