The Quality Street Wedding by Penny Thorpe

Author:Penny Thorpe [Thorpe, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-05-05T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘I brought you back a paper from town because there was an extra edition about some people in the ’ospital.’ Kathleen threw down her satchel, school coat, a newspaper, two bags of sweets, and two armfuls of books bound together with her father’s borrowed belts.

‘And where have you been?’ Mrs Calder was wielding a wooden spoon dripping with batter the way a magistrate might wave his gavel at an accused man. ‘I expected you home from school over two hours ago. I’ve been worried half to death! And what’s all this you’ve brought home? Is this more things to take up space on my dinner table?’

‘I went to the public library. I told you I was stopping at the library. I’ve got the loan of another couple o’ library tickets, so’s I can borrow more books.’ Kathleen hung up her school coat and then went to warm herself by the fire while she warmed to her subject. ‘Did you know,’ she began, ignoring entirely her mother’s annoyance, ‘that Halifax’s first public library was in the crypt under the parish church? The priest who was there in the 1430s wanted a book room, so he went down into the crypt, gathered up all the bones, took ’em outside, dug two pits his’self, and bunged ’em all in. Hey presto! – he had somewhere to keep his books. That was the only public library we had round these parts until the eighteenth century. They’ve still got all his books from the fourteen hundreds. The Librarian at Belle Vue showed ’em me and they smell awful.’

Mrs Calder put down her wooden spoon and the mixing bowl of batter while she cleaned her hands ready to look at the latest news from the Halifax Courier. ‘You’ve got an obsession with library cards and churches and I don’t think I like it,’ Mrs Calder said.

‘I dispute that. I’ve got a passion for learning and an enthusiasm for ’avin’ a job. It just so ’appens that right now my best means of learning is getting the loan of a couple of extra library tickets, and my best chance of further employment is to show my employer that I appreciate his mouldy old premises, which happen to be a chapel. It could be the Park Road Baths for all I care; I’m going to look lively and make sure he takes me on full-time in the holidays.’

Mrs Calder picked up the newspaper without looking at it; her eyes and her thoughts were still on her youngest daughter. ‘I’m pleased for you that you’ve found a job you like, but I’m really not sure about you keeping it on after the summer. Your father had talked about getting you some shorthand lessons at the college, wouldn’t you like a chance to—’ Mrs Calder didn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes had caught the headline of the extra edition of the Halifax Courier and she was motionless with shock. The paper carried a stark and urgent warning to all

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