Mill Town Girl Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Audrey Reimann

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Caroline Shrigley runs the Temperance Hotel alone, bringing up her younger sister Jane after the tragic death of their parents. The only man she ever loved was killed in the Great War, and Carrie is beginning to think her life will be nothing but work, chapel, and giving Jane all the advantages she never had.

  Then Patrick Kennedy, a wild, handsome and passionate Irishman, turns her world upside down, and the life she’s dreamed of is finally within Carrie’s reach – until a devastating betrayal threatens to take it all away. Can there ever be happiness for a mill town girl…?

  About the Author

  Audrey Reimann was brought up in Macclesfield where she was educated at the Macclesfield Grammar School for Girls. She and her husband now live in East Lothian.

  Audrey has three children and is the proud grandmother of ten, and has been variously a bank clerk, a nurse, a teacher, and a foster mother to twenty-five. But, above all, Audrey is a storyteller. On Anne Robinson’s BBC Two programme My Life in Books, comedian Sarah Millican named Audrey’s novel Flora’s War as one of her favourite books, saying: ‘This is a book that will make you laugh and make you cry.’

  Also by Audrey Reimann

  Flora’s War

  The Runaway

  Author’s Note

  For the purpose of storytelling, in The Runaway I altered the name of the town from Macclesfield to Middlefield, changed the names and even the direction of some of the main streets, missed out Jordangate completely and took far too many liberties with a lovely medieval town. But Macclesfield was in my mind when I wrote The Runaway and Mill Town Girl. This much will be evident to anyone brought up in that dear place of mills and markets and steep, cobbled streets down which a barrel of treacle once rolled; where once there dwelt a court jester called Maggoty Johnson; and a Saxon named Macca tilled his field.

  In Mill Town Girl I have reverted to the real name of my hometown but all the locations and the characters in my story are imaginary.

  Audrey Reimann

  Chapter One

  1919

  Caroline Aurora Shrigley, known to everyone in Macclesfield as Miss Shrigley and to her young sister Jane only as Carrie, sat in her attic bedroom watching everything that went on in the market square. Had anyone asked, she would have described herself as being twenty-eight years old, unlovely and unloved and the owner and sole proprietor of the Temperance Hotel in the ancient Cheshire town.

  It was five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in July and the sun was beating down, heating the smooth brown cobblestones under her window where ragged children from Churchwallgate, the steep hill that joined the top market to Waters Green and the cattle market below, were chalking pictures. At the other end of the square two courting couples were walking. They were circumspect, knowing full well that twenty or so pairs of eyes were following their progress, watching for anything, as Carrie herself was.

  If Walter Stubbs hadn’t been killed at the battle of the Dardanelles, Carrie thought, she might have been walking out herself. Not that he’d said anything, but he always used to keep a nice bit of beef for her lodgers and on his last leave he’d sat beside her in chapel.

  Young Annie Baker and Philip Gallimore had come into the square up the Hundred and Eight steps from the cattle market and bold as brass were linking arms and laughing. Mrs Gallimore would have trouble on her hands with that pair, in Carrie’s opinion. But it was Sunday and she should not harbour uncharitable thoughts. In another hour she’d be in chapel again. Still, she could not stop thinking about yesterday. Jane, her thirteen-year-old sister whom she’d brought up single-handed since their father died, had made a proper exhibition of herself.

  The Sunday school’s anniversary treat had been the occasion. The chapel members always went to Jack Cooper’s farm at Rainow, in the foothills of the Pennines, for their annual picnic. The picnic was followed, in the evening, with a concert in the chapel’s meeting hall.

  What had got into Jane, Carrie didn’t know. Normally, Jane hardly passed an opinion of her own that didn’t accord with Carrie’s, though Jane could be stubborn.

  Jane’s pretty, heart-shaped face had a determined look about it. ‘Carrie,’ she’d said, on the charabanc, ‘I’m not going to recite at the concert.’

  Carrie looked down at her. ‘You are,’ she said with quiet firmness. ‘You always recite.’ Then she quietly added, after looking round to see no one was listening. ‘I’ve spent good money on elocution lessons for you. You’ll do a poem. Like you always do.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Don’t answer back,’ Carrie ordered in a whisper. ‘There’s half the chapel here, watching.’

  Jane said no more until they had climbed down and were seated by a dry-stone wall at Rainow, in a small hay meadow. The food was being carried from the charabanc by the chapel elders and their wives and there was a lot of merriment as the old wives, the bossy ones, tried to control the little children who were bouncing around and squealing with excitement. Other women were spreading white cloths over the trestle tables, bustling; trying to pretend that they were in charge when all of them knew that Mrs Gregson, the opinionated wife of a solicitor, was. You could hear Mrs Gregson barking out her orders five miles away, Carrie thought. Carrie let them get on with it. She didn’t believe in joining in and Mrs Gregson knew better than to ask her. She kept herself to herself; always had.

  She turned to Jane. ‘What were you thinking of doing?’ she asked, brushing a fly from the navy skirt of her summer suit. ‘If you aren’t doing the recitation? Play the piano? You’re not as good on the piano as you are at reciting.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ Jane said. ‘Not this year.’

  ‘Why? What’s up? Has someone been disp-dis– whatever it is about you?’

  ‘No, Carrie. No one’s been disparaging about me.’ Jane took off her straw hat and laid it on the grass beside her. ‘But the others of my age don’t have to do it any more – reciting and playing the piano,’ she said in a resolute voice.

  Carrie’s voice went high when she was annoyed. ‘What do you mean? The others of your age don’t do it? What others?’ she asked. ‘Have they been callin’ you? They want a good tellin’ off, that’s what they want.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Carrie, that you don’t say “callin’ you” when you mean people are talking about you behind your back. It’s not proper grammar. That’s what they teach us at the elocution lessons,’ Jane answered.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Carrie cut in. The elocution lessons were worth paying for. Jane knew a lot. But she knew that Jane was trying not to answer her question. ‘What do they say then? What do they do to upset you?’

  ‘They laugh at me,’ Jane answered. ‘The boys – they tease me.’


  ‘Well, they’ve no right to. And you must take no notice. Have no truck with them.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Jane started to say

  Carrie was losing patience. ‘I sing,’ she said. ‘I sing at every concert. Father used to give the address and the epilogue. They expect it.’

  ‘Why should they expect it?’

  ‘We’re looked up to, Jane. We are what’s called pillars. Pillars of the chapel. Our great-grandfather Josiah Shrigley built the chapel.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any difference. I’m not reciting.’

  There was no shade in the field and with her red hair and pale skin Carrie felt the heat more than most. She stood up and rummaged in her handbag for her glasses. She hated wearing them in public but she needed to see if the grass had stained her cream kid shoes. And she wanted to see Jane’s expression. She put them on carefully; the wire arms, though she’d wrapped lambswool around them, were inclined to rub the skin behind her ears, irritating and reddening it.

  Jane looked defiant. ‘You can’t force me to recite, Carrie.’

  Carrie made a great effort to control herself. There had been times lately when she felt she could strike Jane. She’d only done it once, years ago, and been sorry afterwards. Now she drew in her breath sharply. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘Later. Come on. Let’s get our tea.’

  Jane had been perfectly well behaved at the picnic and on the ‘chara’ going back, though Carrie would not have noticed if Jane had been peeved. Carrie did not profess to have what some women claimed to have; a sixth sense or any such rubbish. She was a sensible, down-to-earth woman and didn’t go in for any of that. No, she kept herself to herself, kept Jane right and they were held in esteem by the Macclesfield people, as their father had been. It was simply a matter of putting your duty first. Father had impressed it upon her. He’d told her that if you want to rise in the world, be respected, be an important person in the town – and she did – you never give any cause for gossip, especially in a town that’s rife with it.

  It had been too hot in the field and she’d been glad to be driven back to town when the sun went down. She looked forward to the concert.

  The meeting hall was cool and she and Jane sat at the back at the end of a row of rush-seated chairs. The door behind them was open on to the street and a light draught of air played across her shoulders and ankles, like a caress, she thought. Jane had fidgeted a lot.

  ‘Keep still, Jane,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll make me miss my turn.’

  ‘What are you singing, Carrie?’ Jane asked in a loud whisper.

  ‘“The Last Rose of Summer”,’ she replied, putting her finger to her lips, ‘in the first half, then “Behold Me Standing at the Door”. What are you reciting? “The Charge of the Light Brigade”?’

  To Carrie’s embarrassment and annoyance and in defiance of all she’d been taught, Jane pushed back her chair and ran from the hall. Everyone stared at them. What could she have said? She’d never know how she kept her composure or how she lied to the chapel elders, saying Jane had been overcome with the heat. She’d never know how she’d got through her own songs, apologised for Jane and left the concert hall, only to find her sister, all smiles and contrition, waiting up for her with a peace offering of a nice pot of Mazawattee tea and some Osborne biscuits.

  She’d said no more about it at the time. Maybe it had been the heat. Anyway it was quite uncharacteristic of Jane.

  But that was yesterday. It was just as hot today, here at her window overlooking the square.

  Carrie let her eyes go over the heads of Annie Baker and Philip Gallimore to the town hall, a fine sandstone building with Palladian columns. Walter’s name was on the big roll of honour in there. Two polished oak roll-of-honour boards nearly filled one wall of the assembly room, bearing the names of those who fell; all in gold letters, all in alphabetical order; so many names. Nearly all the young men in the town had gone.

  Those who had returned were changed by the horrors they’d lived through. A lot had been gassed; they could only walk a few steps before they had to stop, cough and spit. There were men with arms and legs gone and most of these men, with no jobs to go to, were bitter. One or two had been shell-shocked and they were, in a way, the worst, carrying their wounds inside their heads.

  Carrie understood that. She felt for the shell-shocked. She’d seen nothing of life outside the narrow world she inhabited but she’d seen her mother and father die. She’d been left to bring up her young sister and to struggle to make a living for them from the lodging house. She was already an old maid. There were plenty of old maids too, after a war, she knew. But there were times when she wondered if she also was becoming bitter, for inside, she felt herself to be young with moods that swung from the wild and fanciful to the hopeless.

  She had to conceal these moods; she had to pretend to a control she knew she lacked. Her father had said, many times, that she lacked moderation. She wished with all her heart to be a worthy successor to him; wished that she could be like the few who had returned from the war unscathed. But even they, the ones who came through it without any outward sign, seemed to be determined to forget; filling every spare minute with activity, wanting it all; wanting it now, like her two Irish lodgers.

  All at once she heard a commotion and turned her head to see the Kennedy brothers crossing over the market square from the Swan, carrying cases.

  ‘When Irish eyes are smiling . . .’ the big one was singing.

  Carrie – and probably everyone in the square – could hear them as they came to a noisy halt, looking up at her window. ‘All the world seems bright and gay . . .’ He was out of tune an’ all and his brother was holding on to his arm, encouraging him.

  What sort of hotel would the neighbours think she ran? Carrie put her head out of the open window. ‘If you two have been drinking . . . If Douglas McGregor’s been giving you drink, you can take your bags right back,’ she called.

  ‘Oh, we’ve not been drinking. Indeed we’ve not!’ Patrick Kennedy was looking up at her with eyes full of laughter. He flourished his cap in the air. ‘We’ve been collecting our luggage. Haven’t we, Danny me lad?’ Danny, smaller and younger, tugged his brother’s sleeve in warning but she saw that he was on the brink of laughter as well.

  ‘You’ve been here for two weeks. Why have you still got stuff over at the Swan?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t stand there with everyone listening. Come in quietly. It’s Sunday.’

  She returned to her seat. Sunday didn’t matter to them; they were Roman Catholics. They went to mass on Sunday mornings and that was it. They might have been drinking, round the back at the Swan. She wouldn’t put it past them. Roman Catholics could get away with anything as long as they went and confessed. Then they could start all over again, sinning afresh.

  Douglas McGregor, who kept the Swan, was a Catholic an’ all. He and his wife had come to Macclesfield last December, just after the Armistice. He’d been followed, soon after, by the Kennedy brothers. He’d been in the navy with the older one, Patrick Kennedy.

  Apart from the McGregors being Roman Catholics she had nothing against them. And her father used to say, ‘There’s good and bad in everyone. Even Roman Catholics.’ The McGregors were respectable like herself. Douglas McGregor had joined the Macclesfield Choral Society. He was a serious singer. And the best tenor they’d got. It was a pity he’d sent the Irishmen over to her, that was all.

  She should be getting ready for chapel but she stayed a little longer at the window. She liked to sit in her attic bedroom. It was the nicest room in the house and she had the best view of the square from here, on the short side.

  The Temperance Hotel was at the corner where Churchwallgate drops steeply down round the church wall, behind the ancient church of St Michael and All Angels, to the cattle market below. The main roads of Macclesfield all begin in the market square. Mill Street, the steep hill at the other corner of the block from the Temperance Hotel, slopes downwards towards the river B
ollin. Cotton and silk mills line the riverbanks all the way along to the cattle market and beyond.

  The other main street, Chestergate, came into the square past the Swan. She couldn’t see the Pennine hills from here; the church tower was in the way.

  Sunday afternoon was the only time the square was quiet. She wondered if Jane was home yet. She hadn’t seen her come in. Her sister’s bedroom was along the top landing from hers and Jane generally popped her head round the door when she came upstairs.

  At chapel this morning the text had been, ‘The pomp and vanities of this wicked world and all the sinful lusts of the flesh’. Pride and vanity were sins. Everyone knew that. The minister said that drinking was a sinful lust. And it was, or why should her father have opened the Temperance Hotel? Her father had taught her all about sin.

  Did enjoying food count as a lust of the flesh? She was fussy about food and could only eat what she had cooked or had supervised in its preparation. She had a good appetite but it had dropped off lately, since the Kennedy brothers arrived. She’d never have taken them in, only business was bad and Douglas McGregor said they were fine men.

  He’d told her they were looking for cheaper rooms than they had at the Swan. But they never seemed to stick to their own rooms. They were always under her feet when they came in from their work – always around her, especially the older one who kept coming into the kitchen when she was cooking and putting her off her food.

  It didn’t matter. She’d been putting a bit of weight on before and was glad it had gone. It was the first time she’d been able to feel her ribs. Carrie put her hand under her blouse, feeling the dampness where it gathered beneath her full breasts. Oh, it was hot. She wore nothing under the blouse and she took hold of the edge and flapped it gently to cool herself. She liked the feel of silk next to her skin. She wouldn’t change her things for chapel and it was far too hot to wear stays or a bust bodice. Nobody would see the outline of her when she had her coat on.