The Quality Street Wedding Read online

  THE QUALITY STREET WEDDING

  Penny Thorpe

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Copyright © Penny Thorpe 2021

  The ‘Quality Street’ name and image is reproduced with the kind permission of Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.

  Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Jacket photographs © Robert Lambert/Arcangel Images (terraced houses), Shuttershock.com (all other images)

  Penny Thorpe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008406868

  Ebook Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008406882

  Version: 2021-05-11

  Dedication

  For Scott and all his colleagues in the NHS.

  Overworked, undervalued, underpaid,

  and now overwhelmed.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Author’s Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Penny Thorpe

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Easter Sunday 1938

  ‘But why is this the wrong wedding?’ The curate looked worried. He had agreed to perform the ceremony after receiving a personal entreaty which appealed to his sense of adventure, but he drew the line at illegality.

  ‘It’s not the wrong wedding – not in that way – it’s just we thought it would be very different when the day came.’ Reenie, realising that she had put her foot in it, tried to backtrack.

  The curate quickly consulted his paperwork, ‘These are the correct names on the marriage licences, aren’t they?’

  Mary hissed at Reenie not to ruin everything and then, rather too emphatically, assured the curate, ‘Those are exactly the right names, and the right signatures; everything is above board.’

  ‘And neither party is already married, or—’

  Reenie bit her lip and brought up the matter she least wanted to discuss. ‘No, no; it’s nothing like that. It’s just – well, you of all people know about the other wedding.’ She looked sadly at her friend Mary. ‘We had just expected that wedding more than this wedding, if you follow me?’

  ‘Ah … yes.’ The curate appeared to be casting his mind back to the ‘other wedding’, a ceremony which had involved a literal shotgun – the story of which he was sure he would dine out on for years to come.

  It wasn’t just Reenie and Mary who had been taken by surprise. This was not the Easter wedding which any of the girls had been expecting to attend. The toffee factory that spring had been a flurry of expectation, educated speculation and then plain gossip, but the girls on the Strawberry Cream line had all been agreed that there would be wedding banns for one of them before the summer began.

  ‘Well, these aren’t the decorations I thought we’d be having.’ Reenie poked her head inside the doorway of the chapel and sighed at the brightly coloured embellishments which had been left there by some other person, for some other purpose; Eastertide was very much in evidence. It was a shame they couldn’t have done things differently, but the wedding was going ahead and that was all any of them cared about now.

  ‘How long do you think we ought to wait?’ Mary was kicking at her shoes because she was wearing them without socks and her feet had slid down to the toe uncomfortably.

  ‘Why?’ Reenie asked with just a hint of friendly sarcasm. ‘Did you have somewhere else to be?’

  Bess giggled. Bess often giggled.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Mary was determined to treat the occasion as a solemn one and her sister’s silliness was getting on her wick.

  ‘You kicking at your shoe.’ Bess chuckled quietly, just sensible enough that she shouldn’t let the curate inside the door hear her. ‘You look like Reenie’s horse when he’s been given a job he doesn’t fancy doin’. He’s always kicking his shoes off.’

  ‘I’m not kicking them off, I’m just trying to get my foot straight. The insole’s all over the place.’

  All three girls turned to see the curate emerge from inside the chapel looking more nervous than they did, if such a thing were possible. ‘Ladies, this is really most irregular, I do think …’ The curate’s voice trailed off as he realised that he had no objecti
ons left to make. It was the other girl he needed to speak to – the one who was beautiful and terrifying. These girls were here at her express instruction and she had made the arrangements with him – only she could reassure him that this was all above board, despite appearances to the contrary.

  For months the toffee factory workers had been laying bets on who the next factory wedding would be. The smart money was on Reenie Calder who, though still only seventeen, had been courting a very sweet Junior Manager from the Time and Motion department for nearly a year and, according to rumour, had been negotiating with him on the terms of an engagement. Reenie’s friend, Mary Norcliffe, would not have seemed a likely candidate for matrimony a year before, but then life had wrought its changes and Mary was no longer known as ‘The Bad Queen’ behind her back because her bad temper had given way in response to the kindness she found in new friendships in the factory. Now that she had been given the chance to work in the Confectioner’s Kitchen and work closely with the handsome young widower who ran it, some (including her flighty younger sister, Bess) whispered that she might make a suitable stepmother to the Confectioner’s two small children.

  Meanwhile happy-go-lucky Bess, still known as ‘Good Queen Bess’ in the factory because her kindly nature never changed, was possibly the Quality Street girl who everyone hoped would wed; Bess was friendly and obliging to a fault, and her sister Mary was convinced that if she wasn’t guarded round the clock, she would get herself in the family way by obliging rather too much. There were always a few semi-serious suitors ready to take pretty Bess to a dance, but Mary was clinging to the hope that the new home which awaited her sister would be one where she could settle down in comfort – and give Mary’s blood pressure a well-earned rest.

  Then there was Diana Moore, but she was now so old by the standards of the factory girls that no one had seemed to think of her in matrimonial terms – and that was the way Diana had liked it; being the talk of the town lost its appeal for her years ago.

  Now the morning of the wedding was here and it had come in an unholy hurry.

  Reenie was resplendent in a satin gown and light fur cape which had been a gift from her young man’s parents when he’d told them they were to be engaged. Reenie was glad of the cape in the chill of the church and she felt sorry for Mary who shivered a little beside her while they waited just inside the nave door. Reenie was not surprised to see that Mary’s dress was of a slightly old-fashioned cut; it had echoes of a dress she’d seen Mary wear on another occasion to church, and she remembered how it had transfixed Albert Baum, the factory confectioner; it seemed fitting that Mary would choose something that he would have liked had he been the one to choose it.

  That more assertive factory girl the curate had been waiting for appeared at the bottom of the steps in a chauffeur-driven car and made her way quickly up toward them.

  ‘She isn’t coming.’ Diana did not sound disappointed. ‘The wedding can go ahead.’

  ‘Who isn’t coming?’ The curate found this whole situation most suspicious and he would have raised more vocal objections if a very large, ornate special licence signed by his superior’s superior had not persuaded him to go along with it. ‘Is this a person who knows of some lawful impediment why—’

  Diana cut him off before he could waste any more time. ‘There is no lawful reason why this marriage shouldn’t take place. It was a personal reason and I have dealt with it.’

  Mary looked a bit scared of Diana when she said that, but Reenie knew better and breathed a sigh of relief. A spring morning was warming the rooftops of Halifax and it was nearly eight o’clock; in just a few moments it would be legally late enough in the day for the wedding to begin.

  Chapter One

  Two Months Earlier

  Mackintosh’s toffee factory was invisibly falling apart. The bricks and mortar were sound – much of it new, thanks to rebuilding efforts throughout the preceding year – and money was pouring in to help with preparations for the war which everyone feared was coming. But workers weren’t pouring in; instructions for how to use the money, or how to prepare weren’t pouring in; help was not pouring in.

  If this war had appeared on the horizon ten years earlier – or maybe even two – they’d have been better equipped to tackle it, but it was January 1938 and the board of directors had decamped to the posh offices of their well-to-do chocolate factory in well-to-do Norwich. The experienced staff who had weathered the storm of the last war had been put out to pasture, and Major Fergusson – not just head of the Time and Motion Department, but also the glue which held so many departments together – was convalescing in a cottage hospital, leaving a power vacuum in the factory which had been filled by chaos, confusion, and the conflicting ambitions of rival managers.

  Reenie Calder – seventeen years old, and barely seventeen months on the payroll at the toffee factory – found herself in charge of a new toffee production line and new machinery which needed bedding in. She had received special dispensation from the factory manager to keep a group of talented married women on for this very task, but nothing else. This was the argument which always raged in the corridors of power at Mackintosh’s: could married women be allowed to work? A casual bit of seasonal work in a lowly production line job was just about tolerable, but married women couldn’t possibly be permitted to take the permanent place of a man who might need that job to provide for a family. The company had made an exception the previous year when they were rebuilding their factory after a catastrophic fire, but those had been exceptional circumstances and it had been all hands to the pump. Circumstances were different now; they were returning to normal and the marriage bar had to be reinstated. It didn’t matter how talented the female worker, or how incompetent and unwilling the male who presented himself at the gate, jobs must be given to men at all opportunities.

  Single women could continue to work, of course – they needed to support themselves without a husband – but they had a choice to make: keep the job which gave them joy, a feeling of belonging, and a tremendous sense of purpose with self-worth – or marry and start a family, and hope one day that they’d be allowed to return briefly during some seasonal rush, to wrap Easter eggs in tinfoil, or some other such triviality, far below their skill and dexterity, and smell the burnt sugar in the air again, and remember when they were seventeen and had felt like this could never end.

  ‘Where’s Doreen?’ Reenie was hurrying around her toffee production line, fretting to get everything right. Doreen was a talented worker, but not the most reliable of her married ladies and Reenie was worried that Mrs Starbeck would find out and disapprove of Reenie’s decision to keep her on. But what else could Reenie do? She was working such long hours at the factory that she thought she was seeing spots in front of her eyes; she certainly didn’t have time to ask Doreen why she was so often late. ‘Is she here?’ Reenie asked the clutch of women she thought most likely to know. ‘She’s not late again, is she?’

  Siobhan Grimshaw said something convincing about the other woman being out on an errand and Reenie nodded. ‘Starchy Starbeck is coming to inspect this line today and I don’t want her to have anything to complain about.’

  Doreen Fairclough was late for her shift and, unbeknown to her, she had a small toy soldier caught in her hair. She had missed the earlier tram to the factory because she’d had to spend fifteen minutes crawling on her front among one and a half inch tin replicas of the 92nd Regiment of Foot. She had been trying to prise her eight-year-old out from under the bed, then, just as she had got him into his shoes and coat, she realised that his sister had vanished and had wriggled into the same hiding place as her brother in an attempt to avoid compulsory school attendance.

  There was always some battle to be fought with those two and she decided that there wasn’t time to demand that they tidy up the toy soldiers – that she’d managed not to scratch herself on any of them as she’d wriggled out from under the bed, was mercy enough.

  All the way to work on the tram s
he’d caught people giving her funny looks and wondered if they knew she was late and were thinking ill of her. She hated being late and wished she was more like the other mothers whose homes ran like clockwork. Doreen dashed through the factory gates too quickly to see the watchman’s raised eyebrow and when she reached the cloakroom the other women had already departed for the start of their shift. Doreen changed hurriedly into her overalls, all the while cursing herself for being one of those people to whom things were always happening. If the kids weren’t hiding under the bed, then they were shaving the dog or eating a bee, and she was always late – and these things never happened to anyone else. Doreen hurriedly pulled her mobcap over her mousey hair that was lightly greying at the temples and sidled through the doors as unobtrusively as she could, entirely unaware that the painted tin leg of one of her son’s Gordon Highlanders was sticking out from underneath the elastic of her white cotton cap.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Siobhan hissed to her friend as she made room for her at the starch-moulding rack where molten toffee was deposited from the copper boiling pans behind it. ‘We’ve been up and running fifteen minutes already and Reenie Calder has been asking after you.’

  ‘I couldn’t get away in time for the tram,’ Doreen said with evident remorse. ‘I had to pull both kids out from under the bed to make them go to school.’

  ‘And how long does that take?’ Siobhan did not sound unkind, but she was exasperated by Doreen sometimes.

  ‘What did Reenie say? Am I for it?’

  ‘Just keep your head down and look busy. We’ve got an inspection from the Time and Motion manager today.’

  Doreen looked more anxious than ever. Mrs Starbeck – who was, of course, not married, but was senior enough in the factory management to be given the honorific title ‘Mrs’, had a reputation for arbitrary perfectionism. She liked all her workers to be young, pretty, tastefully made-up, and to look as much like each other as possible. However, the production line Siobhan and Doreen worked on could never aspire to this level of symmetry; they were mothers and grandmothers who had about as much time to spend on their hair and make-up as they did on writing epic poems or learning classical ballet. Mrs Starbeck would always find them wanting, but this didn’t stop young Reenie Calder from scurrying around the line in advance of a visit, helping her ladies to tuck loose strands of hair into their mobcaps, or straighten their overalls. It was on one of these rounds of inspection that Reenie Calder screamed, ‘Spider!’