Elm Tree Road Read Free Page A

lodgings foryou. If I get this job, you can start looking for work as well. It’d make a big difference to have us all bringing something in.’
    After they’d waited a few minutes outside the upholstery factory, Cliff came outside again. He looked so downhearted, Nell could tell at once that he hadn’t got the job. She didn’t like to remind him they were still hungry. Renie had wanted to buy a loaf, but she’d told her to wait. They weren’t spending a penny unless they had to, because who knew what they’d need their own money for? Cliff had far more than them. He’d been saving for years. She’d heard his workmates tease him about being tight-fisted.
    He looked at her. ‘I didn’t get it.’
    She went to pat his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Cliff. What shall we do now?’
    ‘The foreman said there might be a job in somewhere called Milnrow. I have to go there by train, but I think you’d better stay here in Rochdale. I don’t want to pay three lots of fares for nothing. I’ll see you later at my cousins’. Don’t go back there till teatime, though.’
    He was gone before they could do anything. He seemed quite desperate to get a job, and she could understand that, but it was only their first full day here, so if it took him a few days to find one, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It clearly meant a lot to him, though. When she thought about it, he’d had a job right from school, working for Great Western, first as a lad who did anything asked of him, then as an apprentice, then as an upholsterer, one of the better jobs in the railway works.
    This must be the first time in his life he’d not had a wagecoming in and he was panicking. That would explain why he was so … tense.
    But he could still have given some thought to them, and he hadn’t. Not even one minute’s consideration.
    She linked her arm in her sister’s and they started walking along by the river in the centre of town, which was crossed by several bridges. One of them was quite new, and when they stopped to look over the edge at the muddy shallow river, an old woman passing by stopped to chat and told them the Esplanade Bridge had only been finished the previous year.
    ‘Why is the water red?’ Renie asked.
    ‘From the dyeworks, love. It often changes colour, depending on what they’re using there.’
    Renie wrinkled her nose. ‘It doesn’t smell very nice.’
    The woman laughed. ‘Where there’s muck there’s money!’ She moved on, and as it started raining again, they followed her to the more sheltered Yorkshire Street, with its rows of shops.
    It was a long cold day and they didn’t always find shelter from the showers, so got wetter and wetter. At noon, Nell bought a stale lardy cake, cheap because it’d been baked yesterday. It gave you quite a lot for your money, and they shared that, finding a drinking fountain to wash it down.
    The next time it began to rain hard they went into the library for a while. Nell read the newspapers while Renie found a book about a maid who fell in love with her mistress’s son.
    They kept quiet, trying not to be noticed, but after a while a man came over to them. ‘Are you members of the library?’
    ‘Er … no. We’ve just come to live in Rochdale and we’re waiting to see if my … husband gets a job. I thought I’d see if I could find a job too.’ She indicated the newspaper.
    ‘Well, you can stay another hour till you’ve checked out the jobs, but we can’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry using the library as a shelter when it rains.’
    Nell remembered to keep her hand hidden inside her skirt so that he didn’t see her lack of a wedding ring. When he looked at her as if expecting a reply, she nodded and said, ‘Thank you.’ What a mean fellow! She went back to looking down the columns of jobs. Many of the job names meant nothing to her, because they were in the mills, and what did she know about mill work?
    Anyway, once she and Cliff were married, she’d have a house and