although it felt like a lifetime ago and not the mere ten years that separated her from that other person she had once been. Diana had been in thrall to someone equally unsuitable, and she knew that there was nothing to be done for Bess now.
‘She realises now that he’s no good for her.’ Mary was following behind Diana and kicking at her shoe to move back the loose insole that had shifted when she’d pulled on her winter shoes over bare feet. ‘I don’t know where she’s gone tonight, but I’m certain she’s not with him.’
Diana didn’t ask why Mary was following her if she believed all of her sister’s promises; she didn’t need to. Diana was the oldest girl on their production line, and younger ones like Mary fell into line with whatever she said.
‘I mean,’ Mary went on as they turned the corner of Mary’s street and past the midnight blue billboard that announced that Rowntree’s Cocoa would nourish them all, ‘how do you know that it was definitely them?’
Diana stopped suddenly. She disliked walking while talking; she disliked talking at all, and she thought that if she didn’t stop to say what she had to say then Mary would carry on kicking at her shoe rather than ask her to wait while she fixed it. Stopping killed two birds with one stone. ‘I saw someone who told me that your sister and my stepbrother were in The Old Cock and Oak in town and that if I didn’t hurry he’d have all my rent money spent.’
‘But could they have been mistaken? I mean, what were their exact words?’ Mary hopped on one foot as she tried to arrange her shoe without letting her bare foot touch the ice-cold cobbles of the dirty street.
Diana sighed ‘He said “You want to get down to The Old Cock and Oak, Diana, before that no-good stepbrother of yours spends all your money. ‘The Blade’ as he likes to call himself is in there with the Good Queen, and he’s buying everyone a drink.” There’s no mistake; your sister is there with him.’
‘What does he mean ‘Good Queen’? Who’s ‘Good Queen’ when she’s at home?’ Mary looked genuinely confused.
There was a long silence as Diana tried to decide whether or not to tell Mary what people called her; it might help her to do something about it, but then again it might not. Behind their backs Mary and Bess were known as the Tudor Queens; the porters on their production line had started calling Mary ‘Bad Queen Mary’ because she had a short fuse and no one had ever been able to get her to crack a smile. Her younger sister Bess was her polar opposite; she was cheerful to a fault. She had no concept of the consequences of her actions as she floated along in a happy bubble, and Diana had been forced to speak to her about it on the production line on a number of occasions, to no avail. Bess was all smiles and affection, and they called her ‘Good Queen Bess’.
It seemed odd to Diana that two people could look so different while looking so alike. They had the same large, upturned eyes, but where Bess’s looked pretty, Mary’s glasses made hers appear bug-like. They had the same porcelain-white skin, but where Bess’s looked delicate, Mary’s looked ghostly. They both had a strawberry mark on their left cheek, but where Bess’s looked like a cherubic kiss, Mary’s looked like she was crying tears of blood. They were their own worst enemies, Diana had told them so often enough; Mary had a short fuse because she tied herself up in knots with worry, while Bess was as useless as a chocolate teapot in the factory because she was too happy-go-lucky. Diana wondered if Bess would ever realise her job was to make toffees, not gaze dreamily into the middle distance. Diana could see why they’d ended up the way they had; Mary had to do the worrying for both of them, and Bess didn’t need to worry with a sister like Mary. If they could trade places for a day, it might do them the power of good.
‘Have you fixed that shoe yet?’ Diana didn’t want to wait in the road much longer, her stepbrother liked to flash money around when he had it, and he’d be on to another pub before closing time if she didn’t catch up with him first.
‘It keeps moving around.’ Mary huffed with annoyance and crouched down to unlace her shoe and fix it properly, fumbling as though she were worried that she was taking up too much of Diana’s valuable time.
Mary looked pitiful under the streetlamp. Her frizzy black hair was pulled tight back and twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. All the other girls at the factory had their hair curled like the girls in the magazines, but not Mary; there were dark circles around her eyes and in the winter of 1936, Mary didn’t even have a warm coat. Poor kid, Diana thought to herself, she needs someone to look after her for a change.
‘Alright, I’m ready.’ Mary stood up and shook her foot in her shoe one last time. ‘I still don’t think it’s him.’
‘My stepbrother could hardly be mistaken for anyone else. Apart from the fact that he’s the only person in Halifax to dress like some American mobster from the pictures, he also looks like a cross between a rat and a frog, so his face is hardly going to blend into a crowd, is it?’ Diana started walking again. The trouble with Mary Norcliffe, she thought to herself, was that she couldn’t just walk in silence.
Mary followed Diana with her arms folded around herself and her shoulders hunched forward; her eyes were on the tram rails that stretched out down the road ahead of them, but then she looked up to Diana and said, ‘Thank you for calling on me though.’ There was an anxious pause as though Mary feared that every sentence was saying too much or too little. ‘I know she’s a nuisance, but she has promised she’ll change. Honestly she has.’
Diana knew that Good Queen Bess would never be capable of seeing the consequences of her actions, and her sister Mary would always be looking after her. It was none of Diana’s business, and so she said nothing. She helped them in her own way, but she wasn’t going to try to change them. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’ Diana looked up see that Mary was already panicking. ‘I’ve arranged for you and your sister to work beside me on the new line. We move floors tomorrow.’
‘But, if we—’
Diana didn’t let her finish, ‘Everyone knows that you’ve been helping your sister to get her work done, but we can’t let the other girls cover up for you anymore. You’ll have to move up beside me where I’ll be the only person covering for you, and then if you’re caught helping Bess, the only people that will be in any trouble will be the three of us. No more risking the other girls’ positions, do you understand?’
Mary swallowed and nodded.
‘I know you’ll still have to help your sister for a while yet, but you do it in my section and no one else’s. If Mrs Roth catches you, it’s best I deal with her.’
Diana was eventually rewarded with her longed-for silence, but she couldn’t enjoy it because she knew that Mary was wrestling with all kinds of questions that she wanted to ask, but didn’t dare voice.
They turned the corner onto Market Street where the rainbow of shops had closed their shutters for the night, like spring blooms closing their petals each evening. The street was by no means sleeping, it was alive with factory workers who were out for a payday drink. It was hard to imagine what Diana had heard this morning about the men in Barnsley on their way down to Westminster on a hunger march. The people of Halifax had seen lean times, but on this Friday there was merriment.
As they passed The Boar, the girls were met with catcalls from the drinkers who had spilled out into the street outside the various pubs that filled the centre of town. Diana supposed the catcalls were not unfriendly, but they irked her none the less. There had been a time when Diana had painted the town red; when she’d been bright-eyed and infamous in Halifax. Back then she’d been the queen of all she surveyed; and then six years ago all that had changed.
