The Quality Street Girls, page 20
Chapter Seventeen
Bess pretended that she had a headache that evening, and while her sister was at the chemists buying her aspirin, had slipped on her silvery, Louis-heeled, t-strap shoes and slipped out of the house to meet Tommo.
Tommo had promised her a spree that night and when he’d picked her up from their pre-arranged meeting place she had not been disappointed. Tommo had the use of a Hillman Minx Magnificent for the night, and his friend Stewart was driving. Automobiles were Bess’s favourite thing, and she was all giggles and wide-eyes.
‘This seat is bigger than my bed!’ Bess squealed as she ran a delicate hand over the smooth leather interior and luxuriated in the expansive upholstery. ‘I wish my sister could see me in this!’
‘I tell you what,’ Tommo said, leaning over the back of the passenger seat to squeeze her silk-stockinged thigh. ‘we’ll drive down your road and shout her name as we pass the door, how’s that sound?’
Bess thought it sounded super, and they decided to make a night of it, drinking stolen champagne and gin alternately from bottles that they passed between each other, and driving past the doors of people they knew hooting their names through the car windows with less and less coherence the drunker they became.
‘I want to go to Mack’s! I want to go to Mack’s!’ Bess cried out with enthusiasm.
‘What do you want to go there for?’ Tommo had hoped that Bess would suggest some friend of hers that they could pick up for Stewart, he didn’t want to take her to her workplace.
‘I want to shout “Lady Mackintosh is a strumpet!” Haha.’ Bess hiccupped and looked so pretty for a gin sozzled tart, Tommo decided that he wanted to climb into the back seat with her.
‘You heard her Stewart, we’re going to Mackintosh’s to shout “Lady Mack is a strumpet!” And then we’re going past my place to get Diana for you. Time she got down off her high horse.’
‘Right you are!’ Stewart pulled the car sharply round the bend to change direction and head for Mackintosh’s factory. He’d been mixing drinks, and he was not only drunk but bitterly angry. He sped round corners at break-neck speed, and Bess bleated with excitement and called, ‘Faster, faster!’
They were turning onto the steep hill of Horton Street when Tommo began attempting to climb out of the passenger seat beside Stewart, and into the back seat of the Minx with Bess. There was a tangle of limbs and lips, and Bess slid down onto her back lying long ways across the back seat, as Tommo tumbled awkwardly on top of her, running a hand up her thigh, but then sliding sideways into the foot well, and taking Bess with him. Stewart turned in the driver’s seat to tell his friend jokingly to pack it in, but as he did so he lost control of the car, and it swerved dangerously.
Stewie laughed and cried ‘Whoa!’ as though the car were a horse and brought it back under control again, which sent Bess into uncontrollable fits of giggles and made it impossible for her to pull herself together and help Tommo to get them both upright again.
Tommo was still lying on top of Bess in the deep foot well of the spacious car, but he pushed himself up to see where they were; there, at the bottom of Horton Hill, was the white chimney of Mackintosh’s. ‘I can see your factory Bess, get ready to holler!’ He tried to catch a quick kiss down behind the driver’s seat, knowing that once they’d passed Mackintosh’s they’d be going to get Diana and she’d be a spoilsport.
Stewart sped down the hill dangerously fast, planning to turn at the last moment to show off. The snow had melted in places, and re-frozen again in others. He didn’t see the black ice at the bottom of the hill until the car’s wheels hit it. What happened next seemed to Stewart to be happening in graceful slow-motion. The brakes of the Minx Magnificent locked and the car was carried forward at a speed that took his breath away. There was nothing that he could do to stop it from the moment the car hit the ice, and that was the last thing he ever knew.
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning, and Reenie and Peter were finally leaving the factory for the night. The late shift had finished at half-past midnight, and the pair of them had dawdled over the machines long after everyone had left the Toffee Penny line. Peter had endless questions for Reenie, except the one that he was trying to pluck up the courage to ask. He had been offering to walk Reenie home ever since he’d met her, but she always brushed the offer away as unnecessary because she could walk herself, not seeing the intention behind the offer. Tonight, Peter promised himself; he would make his intentions perfectly clear: he would ask her to the pictures.
Reenie was chatting away as they descended the narrow back stairs to the Time Office, and every moment Peter was hoping that Reenie would pause long enough to give him the chance he needed. But she was lost in her enthusiasm for a new sweet that she wanted them to make, and her cheery Yorkshire intonation echoed up the shining cream-coloured tiles of the stairwell walls.
‘Reenie!’ one of the old commissionaires poked his head out of the Time Office service hatch as he heard her passing. ‘Are you comin’ in for a sup?’ The warm glow of a stove and the smell of milky cocoa brewing in a pot was inviting on a cold night, and Reenie couldn’t resist.
The three old commissionaires treated Reenie as though the Time Office were her second home, and it was clear to Peter that Reenie stopped there for cocoa frequently. When they finally left the Time Office to head out into the night, it was after one o’clock in the morning.
Peter wondered if there was anywhere that Reenie hadn’t made friends. Even though he thought it was funny, and a virtue, he knew that Mrs Roth didn’t like it one bit. He wished Reenie would try to be a little bit more reserved at work for her own self-preservation.
‘Are you sure you want to go all the way back home tonight? You’ll catch your death walking back in this weather. I bet they’d let you sleep at The Old Cock and Oak until morning.’
‘I won’t be cold; I’ve got Ruffian. He bellows out heat, he does.’
Peter was confused. ‘Have you brought your horse?’
‘A’ course I have. How else do you think I get to work? Not everyone can afford a fancy bicycle you know.’
‘But where do you keep him? He’s not in the bike sheds.’
‘Don’t be daft, what would he be in the bike sheds for? He’s in the stables out by the coal houses.’
‘Have we got stables here?’
‘A’ course we’ve got stables; where do you think we keep all the Mackintosh’s horses you see pulling wagons round the factory? We’ve got everything here, my lad.’
‘Am I your lad?’ Peter was nervous, but he thought he’d finally plucked up the courage to ask her. He kept telling himself that the worst she could say was no and that it wouldn’t be so bad really, but his heart beat in his chest so hard that he could feel it in his throat as he tried to form the words to ask Reenie Calder to walk out with him on Sunday. The moon was full and bright, and as they stood in the yard below the railway line, even the stars seemed to be urging Peter on.
It was at that moment that Reenie turned to look up at the railway line. She heard it first; a sort of whistle. There was no screech of brakes, no skid of tyres on the steep road that led down to the junction just opposite, just a whistle through the air and the distant rumble of a car’s exhaust.
The main railway line was on the edge of a tall, brick bank. It was a strange, precarious place for a train; and any passengers who passed through could see into the windows of the toffee factory that sat in the old canal basin below the bank. The fifth floor of the Mackintosh’s toffee factory was so close to the railway line, teetering on the bank, that the girls who worked on the line could easily blow kisses at the window to the Station Master, if they wanted to make him blush.
The railway line was sandwiched between the danger of the sheer drop down the side of the bank, and the danger of the road that it ran parallel to. The railway line ran along the road that formed a T-junction with Horton Hill and for a car that failed to stop at the junction the only place for it to go was into the railway line, side on.
From where they were standing, among the bike sheds at the bottom of the old canal basin, Peter and Reenie could see the empty platform if they craned their necks upwards toward the top of the brick bank, but they couldn’t see the road on steep Horton Hill that the car was hurtling down. Nor could they see the black ice that it skidded on but they heard the car smash through the flimsy wooden fence that separated the railway line from the road. Then they both ducked instinctively as the heavy Minx Magnificent flew over their heads, jumping the gap between the top of the bank and the side of the factory, dipping its nose as it fell through the air and smashed into the windows of the fourth floor of the Albion Mills building.
The car was swallowed by windows and brickwork, and only a gaping hole remained as the car went on further inside the building to come to a halt as it hit the wall on the building’s opposite side. A look passed between Reenie and Peter, a look that mingled shock and horror and fear.
‘We have to get them out.’ Peter was quicker on the draw because he was already full of adrenaline from the worry of the question he had been about to ask.
‘There won’t be anyone on the fourth floor tonight. Their shift is—’
‘No, Reenie, the driver!’
‘Oh, God! Some poor person—’ Reenie didn’t finish her sentence. Instead they both began running at the same time, sprinting towards the nearest doors of the factory. Reenie had never run so fast in her life, but everything seemed to be happening around her in slow motion; they passed the uniformed commissionaires who had heard the car hit the building and were running outside to see where the sound was coming from. They were panic-stricken and in their haste had left their hats behind. ‘Fourth floor! The fourth floor!’ was all Reenie could shout, and they followed her at a run.
Peter was taking the stairs two at a time, easily outpacing the others. He was the first on the scene, and silently thanked God that their lighting in this hall was all electric and not gas. That car, he thought, had the look of one that was going to blow, and gas would kill them all for certain. The fourth floor was a storage floor, where finished goods were wrapped on pallets and then taken away on bogies. The floor was dark and deserted, but the brake lights of the Minx cast an eerie red gleam over the smashed pallets that had slowed its powerful trajectory. The car had finally come to a stop when it had hit the wall on the other side of the packing hall; its crumpled nose hung out into the night air, with one of its front wheels caught on the smashed window frame.
The engine was still running, and Peter covered his mouth with his handkerchief as he darted towards the passenger side to pull open the door. There were two people in the car, that he could see. The driver’s seat had disappeared beneath the bonnet of the car, and it didn’t occur to Peter to try to prise it apart. It wouldn’t have been possible if he’d tried.
Crushed into the foot well of the car, behind the driver and passenger seats were two injured people, moving slowly, confused by what had taken place.
When Peter began pulling on the doors of the car they seemed to come to and try to get out. ‘The frame is buckled!’ Peter shouted, but the passengers didn’t seem to be listening. ‘The doors won’t open! You have to climb out through the windows! Wind down your windows!’
Tommo Cartwright looked up, and his broken nose streamed with blood. Bess Norcliffe was in the back with him in a crumpled heap behind the front seats; she had been lying across the back in a drunken haze when the force of the impact had thrown her forward and lodged her in the foot wells with Tommo, saving her life but crushing her ribs.
Reenie arrived in time to see Tommo pulling his skinny legs out from under the buckled driver’s seat, ignoring Bess entirely.
Tommo had pulled at the door handle, but when it wouldn’t open he began kicking at it impotently from the inside with both feet.
‘It’s no good!’ Peter was shouting to him. ‘You have to use the window! Hurry! The petrol tank has punctured! You don’t have time for this!’
The commissionaires took a look around and seemed to allocate jobs to each other without even speaking. One ran back down the stairs after nodding to the others, and Reenie felt she knew that he was going to get the fire brigade and the police. The remaining two ripped the flimsy plywood cover off a cabinet that held an emergency fire axe. The younger of the two strode forward to Peter and grabbed a fist full of sweat-dampened cloth at the back of his jacket and pulled him away from the car. The oldest of the commissionaires, the man who Reenie had always felt rather sorry for working so far past his retirement, swung the axe powerfully and expertly into the passenger side window, then stepped back a pace. He spun the axe in his right hand so that he was holding the handle closest to the blade, and then ran the handle around the inside of the car’s window frame knocking away all the remaining shards of glass which fell as splinters on Tommo’s face. The old man grabbed the lad by the throat and pulled him out through the window. ‘It’s time to get out!’
Peter and Reenie pulled Bess out through the window and supported her under either arm.
The older commissionaire had thrown the axe to his mate while he wrapped Tommo in a half-Nelson and pushed him towards the door. ‘Get thi’ down them stairs!’
Peter looked around at the car and then lifted Bess quickly over one shoulder and steered Reenie’s elbow towards the commissionaire who hurried her away down two flights of concrete stairs before they were thrown down onto their knees. The explosion shook the whole building and knocked the wind out of all of them. As the commissionaires were thrown forwards, Tommo was able to pull himself free. It took him a few seconds to recover himself enough to turn, pull Bess up onto her feet, and half carrying her, make a run for it, stumbling on ahead of them all.
Peter turned to look back at the commissionaires a few yards away, the ringing in his ears making his head spin. The commissionaires were waving at him to go on and to get out. It didn’t matter now if Tommo got away, their priority was to get out of the building. Reenie was on her feet and ready to run; she was pulling Peter’s elbow this time, and the commissionaires had caught up with them and were practically pushing them down the stairs.
They all tumbled out through the doors, into the clear air of the night. There was a moment to look up and see the blaze lighting up the fourth-floor windows before the fire brigade arrived and were occupied with other things.
Peter staggered over to the water trough at the bottom of the bank and slumped down beside it. He expected Reenie to follow, but she was gone. He looked around in panic and saw her a few hundred yards off, running towards the stables.
Chapter Eighteen
In the dark and confusion, it was difficult for them to tell where they were bleeding from, but Tommo assumed that they were both bleeding. He was still standing, though, and Bess could still walk. He thought he might have a broken rib, but he’d been lucky, and he knew it. Tommo hadn’t seen any sign of Stewart when he’d scrambled from the buckled car and he had assumed his friend had got out first and made his escape ahead of them. Tommo was wrong.
There was only one place for him to go now, and that was to his mother’s house, that, he thought, was where Stewart would be waiting for them. Shock and adrenaline kept them moving, and when Bess fell on a steep pavement he pulled her up again roughly. ‘Keep up, can’t you? We’ve got to get away before all hell breaks loose.’
‘Oh, but Tommo, I can’t walk; I need a doctor, Tommo.’
‘Move yourself; we don’t have time for this. The police could be round this corner any minute.’
‘Let them take us,’ Bess sighed melodramatically. ‘I love you Tommo and I don’t care what happens to me now so long as we’re together.’
‘Well I bloody care; I’m not lettin’ you get me locked up just because you’ve had a knock on the ‘ead. And who said anythin’ about love? If you keep dawdlin’, I swear I’ll knock you sideways.’
‘But you love me; I know you love me. That’s why you rescued me and brought me with you when you escaped.’ Bess clutched at her side with one arm and wiped a trickle of blood from her brow with the back of her other wrist.
‘Let’s get one thing straight: I am only takin’ you wi’ me because if I leave you behind you’ll blab to the coppers. You’re comin’ wi’ me so’s I can make sure you keep your mouth shut, then after that, I don’t care what happens to yer.’
‘But Tommo, what about our baby and our weddin’?’
‘Shut up and walk faster, I don’t want to hear another peep out o’ you.’
‘I can’t, I can’t.’ Bess bleated as she sat herself down on the damp grassy bank and looked at the blood that had spoiled her dress.
‘Fine. You stop here. If the coppers find you, don’t say a thing. If Stewart comes by this way tell him I’ve gone to me mother’s. Tell him after that I’m going on to Leeds.’
Bess gave Tommo a strange look, but he didn’t have time for her nonsense, so he left her by the side of the road and went on towards Gibbet Street and home.
Reenie ran breathlessly to the Mackintosh’s stables. She knew exactly which direction Bess had gone, and if they were on foot then Reenie was confident that she could get there ahead of them with Ruffian. She was worried about Peter too, but he had got out safely, and there were plenty of people arriving at the scene who would take care of him. Bess, on the other hand, was possibly bleeding and was with a cad.
Bess rounded the corner near the bike sheds and ran headlong into the stables. They were dark, but for a storm lantern turned down low beside the door. The horses were usually peaceful at this time of night, but the noise of the explosion had spooked them all, and this scene raised a new wave of panic in Reenie.
Ruffian’s eyes flared with fear, and he pulled on his bridle, kicking up the straw and whinnying. Reenie tried to soothe him, but the sight of her grazed, and smoke-stained face must have unsettled him even more. ‘Steady, now; steady old thing.’ She smoothed the greying hair around his muzzle and pressed her nose to his nose. ‘I need you now old fella’. Bess needs you. We need you to be strong for us.’ She pressed her nose and brow against the soft fur of that blaze of white that streaked up his face from his muzzle to his ears.
