The Quality Street Wedding

by Penny Thorpe

  Amy Wilkes stirred the envelopes on her desk with her fingertips, ‘If any of them are about that blasted horse you can return to sender and point out that it’s not our problem. There are no women in the factory stables; Men’s Employment need to deal with it.’

  Diana raised an eyebrow at her manager; she had wondered how long it would take that piece of news to reach the senior management. Diana had heard it from Reenie Calder, and it was only a surprise that it had remained secret for so long. ‘The mare’s female.’

  Amy Wilkes pursed her lips; she supposed she should have expected that sort of dry response from Diana. ‘I don’t want Men’s Employment to think of that. It’s their problem and I want it to stay that way.’

  Diana Moore knew all about the mare in foal down in the factory stables, and she was delighted to work a good distance away in the Women’s Employment Department. As far as she had heard – and Diana Moore heard about everything – the factory stables were now a hotbed of suspicion and frayed nerves. The irritability of the staff was feeding an irritability in the horses, and factory work had been disrupted a few times because wagons were not where they needed to be at the time they needed to be there; there had been a toffee spill that morning as the wagons carrying the finished goods to the railway sidings collided with an empty wagon on its way back. There was more at stake than the bills for the vet; this was harming productivity.

  However, it was the prerogative of the Men’s Employment Department; there were no female staff in the stables, and Diana and Mrs Wilkes counted that as a stroke of luck for their workloads. This would be a rotten headache for someone, but not for Diana or Amy. Men’s Employment would have to create a disciplinary policy for the act of allowing a mare to be covered on company property – and decide whether it was a misdemeanour, an oversight, or an act of criminal responsibility – aside from the trouble of investigating, finding the culprit, and putting them through a tribunal. So long as the misdemeanour didn’t turn out to be the fault of a female member of staff, Diana and her manager would be safe from the mêlée of nonsense.

  Diana thought she could see this landing on their desks all the same, ‘And if the Men’s Employment Department request our advice on how to manage the general mess they’ve got themselves into?’

  Mrs Wilkes looked up from her correspondence, her interest piqued. ‘How have Men’s Employment caused it?’

  ‘Mr Davidson in the Men’s Employment Department is the one who persuaded the factory stables to buy his mare off him at an inflated price. They’d only had geldings until then.’

  ‘Bloody managers and their bloody kickbacks. I tell you, half the problems in this place are caused by some man who thinks his swollen salary isn’t enough, and wants to get a bit more cream off the top. They’d get a short sharp shock if they had to try to live off a woman’s wage for a week or two. Now what’s on the agenda for today? Any meetings we don’t need to have?’

  Diana consulted her carefully ordered list, ‘You’ve got an appeal hearing of Tilly Tweddle who had a fling with her Overlooker—’

  ‘She’s appealing is she? Good for her! A girl on the production line gets herself in the family way and she’s out on her ear and taking all the blame for her Overlooker’s indiscretion; but one of their precious horses looks likely to drop and they’re all up in arms to find the culprit and see justice done. If God could give them eyes for irony.’ Amy Wilkes took a rapid slug of tea while slicing open envelopes with a Mackintosh’s embossed letter opener, ‘Anything on air raid precautions?’

  ‘Nothing new. The trenches the Estate Department dug are still full of water, so they’re looking for a new site.’

  ‘What’s Mrs Starbeck up to this week? Do I need to throw salt over my shoulder and carry garlic, or is she still terrorising the Engineering Department?’

  ‘At the moment she’s intercepting post from other departments to vet its contents, and she’s doing it with the cooperation of Mr Pinkstone in the post room.’

  Amy Wilkes took off her spectacles in surprise, ‘She’s doing what?’

  Diana produced an envelope from her pocket which was addressed to Mary Norcliffe. Inside it was a dull memorandum about the ratio of sugar to butter in a toffee recipe, and an exhortation to work with efficiency. It had been typed on an Empire typewriter which – like Diana’s own machine – had a slight misalignment of the letter ‘e’. Mary had typed it in her office secretly that morning, forged Albert Baum’s signature, and then spent a good fifteen minutes apologising to Diana for the whole mess, and worrying about everything from her manager to the state of the nation. Diana decided that Mrs Wilkes didn’t need to know any of that and instead said, ‘She tried to intercept this one, but it came to me instead. She thinks the volume of correspondence Albert Baum sends to his subordinate in the kitchens in suspicious.’

  Amy Wilkes rubbed her temples. ‘I have a feeling this is going to be a long day, Diana. A long day.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Reenie had woken that Monday morning with a feeling that if she could just get her experimental line back from Mrs Starbeck, then all could be right with the world. Her horse seemed to be thinking the same thing as he clopped down the Bailey Hall road with an imperious tilt to his chin.

  Ruffian the horse had settled back into his old routine of taking Reenie from the family farm to her job in the town each day. As Reenie dismounted her horse at the factory gates and beamed a happy grin at the factory watchman she wondered what good thing the day had in store; good things were always happening and she was confident that she could expect another one at any moment.

  Perhaps Ruffian would allow himself to be led into his stall in the stables the first time of asking; or maybe he’d volunteer himself for some factory work instead of eating all the hay he could, and then glaring at the other horses when he got bloat.

  Ruffian was not a stranger to hard work, but he did object to any work which he appeared to deem to be unnecessary. He was a little less shiftless in the spring and summer, but on dark mornings he had to be coaxed out to work with the twin temptations of sweet hay and fragrant russet apples. Reenie was more understanding with her old friend than some farmers’ daughters might be and rather than sending him to the knacker’s yard as an impatient owner could have done, she kept him on by insisting that he was cheaper to keep than saving up for a bicycle (which was not true in the slightest) and used him to ride into town on for her shifts at the factory.

  Truth be told, it gave Reenie’s mother some peace of mind to know that her daughter was being escorted home by the old horse. After that Christmas Eve blizzard the year before when Reenie had been fool enough to try to trudge home to the family farm outside the town Mrs Calder had become convinced that Ruffian had saved her daughter from an icy fate.

  Another benefit of owning Ruffian was that his presence provided Reenie and her friends with a kind of clubhouse at the factory. Since Ruffian had acted with heroism in the fire which nearly destroyed the factory, the stable manager had awarded Ruffian the Freedom of the Stables, which he’d said meant ‘bed and board whenever he was in town’. Ruffian was no trouble; the workaday horses who pulled wagons of finished goods around the factory yards all bided in the new factory stables while Ruffian bided alone in one of the disused old stable blocks. Bess had been so delighted to discover that Reenie and Ruffian had been assigned a special stable that she had gone to all kinds of lengths to kit it out with posies of flowers, pictures of the king and matinee idols, old blankets, and piles of magazines to while away their dinner-hour breaks when they would sit on hay bales beside the horse and natter. They would even occasionally meet at breakfast time, an hour before their shift, if they had a particular reason.

  On that morning, Reenie arrived at the old stables early to find her friends waiting for her with hot bread rolls, salted golden butter, cherry jam, and a cheery welcome. Their lunchtime chit-chat had been cut short the preceding Friday because Reenie had been called away to her experimental
line and they’d agreed to resume at breakfast on Monday.

  While Reenie led Ruffian in to his stall, Mary and Bess made themselves comfortable on hay bales. Mary had brought not only fluffy white rolls, but also an enamel pot of hot cocoa swaddled in many layers of cotton oven rags. As she laid out her handkerchief like a tablecloth and set to serving up their breakfast, she asked the innocent question which was to bring so much trouble later. ‘Are you coming in a different way to work now? You usually come in to the old stables from the other side.’

  Reenie gave her friends a confiding smile. ‘No, I’m just keeping out the way of the new stables. There’s been some brouhaha about one of their mares and no one wants to be around the stable manager just now if they can help it.’

  ‘What’s a brouhaha?’ Bess liked the sound of the word and hoped it was a kind of party where cocktails flowed like water and handsome young men wanted desperately to find a partner for the dance music which played on through the night.

  ‘It’s like a scandal or a fuss. One of their mares is in foal and she shouldn’t be. Someone’s let her in with a stallion and when the stable manager finds out who it was they’ll be for it.’

  Bess was frowning in that way she had which told her sister and Reenie that she was trying to fathom the mysteries of the universe, but drawing a blank. Reenie offered the explanation, which was obvious to a farmer’s daughter, but which she supposed would be opaque to a town girl like Bess.

  ‘The other horses in the factory stables are geldings, not stallions …’ Reenie saw that this was not enlightening Bess any further. ‘Geldings are boy horses what have had their you-know-whats snipped off by the vet …’

  Bess’s eyebrows shot up in horror; this was clearly new information to her. ‘That’s awful! Who would do that to a poor horse?’

  ‘It’s quite normal.’ Reenie shrugged in apology for this veterinary fact of life. ‘It happens all the time with workhorses on farms and at factories. It makes them better workers and they do as they’re told.’ Reenie added for emphasis, ‘They’re safer round a factory yard if they do as they’re told.’

  Bess looked pityingly at their old friend Ruffian and whispered, ‘Has Ruffian had his … you know?’

  ‘No, that’s why he never does as he’s told. But he’s not bad for a stallion.’ Reenie patted the flank of her irritable old friend with affectionate pride. ‘Ruffian’s always been all right if he thinks he’s doing a favour for one of the family, but he won’t take bossing about. We think he was tret’ badly when he was a foal and that’s why he’s so loyal to m’ dad for rescuing him and bringing him to our ’ouse. He’s not like most stallions, he’s the quiet kind of stubborn, not the lively kind of stubborn.’

  Mary’s eyes had narrowed in thought as her own pondering of the mysteries of the universe came up anything but blank. She sat on the hay bale with her arms folded and her back leaning against the creaking stable partition and asked carefully, ‘Reenie …’ There was a hesitation as she tried to master her panic that they might be responsible for yet more trouble in the factory. ‘If … if Ruffian is the only stallion in the factory stables, is it … has he … has he got this mare in the family way?’

  Bess gasped in delight at the thought of a ‘baby horse’ and Ruffian having a sweetheart. ‘Oh, yes! Let’s hope it’s Ruffian’s baby horse!’

  Reenie rolled her eyes at Bess’s all-round noodle-headedness. ‘It can’t be Ruffian’s foal; he’s never been in her stable.’

  Bess was not to be put off now that she had caught onto such an enjoyable idea. ‘But how do you know that he hasn’t? You’re not with him all the time. He could have gone round to see her while you were in the factory on shift. It might be a secret love affair.’ Bess curled a ringlet of golden hair around her finger and sighed dreamily at the thought of an improbable romance of the sort she saw on the cartoons at the cinema between talking cats and dogs.

  Mary said nothing, but raised an eyebrow at Reenie which plainly said, I’d like to know if there’s a better explanation.

  ‘I wouldn’t leave him in her stable and I’d notice if he’d been moved from here. I know he’s old and lazy, but I still wouldn’t risk leaving him in with a mare; I’m not as daft as you are cabbage lookin’!’

  But Mary didn’t take her eyes off Reenie and a tiny kernel of worry began to take root. Ruffian was the only stallion in the stables, and a mare not a hundred yards away was in foal.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dolly Dunkley had plenty of work to be doing, but she was avoiding it by walking up and down some of the factory corridors with a clipboard, attempting to look like she was on her way to a meeting. Dolly’s motive for this strategy of avoidance was partly an inveterate laziness on her part, but also a deep-seated knowledge that she was incompetent and that the work she had been given to do was beyond her limited capabilities; even if she had possessed the inclination to do a job of work, she would not have known where to start, or how to ask for help. It wouldn’t be so bad if the job had been forced upon her and she had risen to the challenge to do her best in the aid of others, but this was a job which she had demanded as her due and wheedled her way into in the most unpleasant ways. Dolly was in two minds about her job, and this was the problem with being congenitally dishonest: she could not easily be honest with herself and admit that she was not the brilliant junior manager that she had assumed she would be and that it would be better for everyone if she resigned.

  Dolly had chosen a corridor which led from the Harrogate Toffee line to the grand staircase at the north gate. This was the place where the VIP parties were led by Mackintosh’s tour guides on their way around the factory. The VIPs were rarely especially celebrated people (excepting the visit they had received in the previous summer from His Majesty the King), but they would often include one or two of the Mackintosh family members, or a local politician. Sometimes the guides showed round a radio announcer, or a variety entertainer, but in the main the visitors tended to be dull. This didn’t matter to Dolly, who had deluded herself with the fantasy that any day now she would bump into the youngest and most attractive of the Mackintosh family heirs and he would fall immediately in love with her. To this end she had doubled the quantity of ill-applied make-up she usually wore and had begun to resemble nothing so much as a puffin who has recently received surprising news. Dolly thought she looked ravishing; Dolly thought a lot of things.

  Dolly had been loitering at the end of the corridor for several minutes – long enough for her too-high heels to make her toes ache – and had been thinking about going to the factory’s technical library to complain about the stock when the sound of approaching footsteps made her heart flutter: VIPs were just around the corner.

  ‘We have a staff of ten thousand here in Halifax and another six thousand at our factory in Norwich.’ The tour guide sounded unenthusiastic about the success of her employers, but presumably one could only repeat the same information so many times before it lost its magic. ‘And still more employees at our factories in Canada, Germany, and South Africa.’

  Dolly waited with bated breath for the wave of glamour and importance she expected to appear around the corner, but the sound of the footsteps should have forewarned her that this was a small party; just one tour guide and one visitor. The tour guide was evidently bored, and perhaps a little affronted to be showing someone round who was not important enough to warrant a VIP guide. The visitor recognised Dolly Dunkley immediately. ‘Dolly!’

  It was an exclamation of surprise, but also of confusion; he clearly found it puzzling to see the girl in this context. The tour guide, on the other hand, gave a very slight roll of her eyes, which Dolly did not understand.

  The visitor was a young man in his early twenties; his smartly cut suit was tailored, but not expensively so, and his shoes – which did not look new – squeaked from lack of use. He was not tall, he was not handsome, he did not appear rich or dashing, but perhaps he was influential. All that was important was that he wa
s a VIP visitor and he had stopped to speak to Dolly when she was looking for reasons not to go back to work, so she took her chance and simpered an ingratiating smile.

  ‘You have me at a disadvantage …?’ Dolly was trying to place the young man’s face; it hovered somewhere between blandly unmemorable, and just ugly enough to ring a bell.

  ‘Percy,’ he said, turning his back entirely on the tour guide who was no longer disguising her boredom in the slightest. ‘Percy Palgrave. You were at the Grammar School at the same time as my cousin Evaline; I remember you reading an essay on speech day.’ He cast a look up and down her, giving the impression that he was remembering the old Dolly in detail. ‘Your shoes were white.’

  ‘Oh, well, there were lots of people at speech days so I wouldn’t remember everyone.’ Dolly tended to be short on charming conversation, but she was aware that she needed to make more of this encounter to justify her extended and unnecessary absence from the office. ‘Why are you on a tour? Are you a politician?’

  ‘No, work for Burmah Oil, colonial office. Back on leave. My godfather is a friend of the Mackintoshes; he can’t get the time to see me again this visit so he organised a tour of the factory.’ This was evidently the first the tour guide had heard of it and she did not look pleased that this long-suffering godfather had palmed his awful godson on to her instead of doing his duty and seeing the little horror for himself.

  Dolly’s eyes widened. She had heard three things which impressed her: he had a connection with some important people, he worked for an oil company, and he was stationed in a colonial office. Percy Palgrave began to take on an immediate appeal. He possessed no personal qualities which she liked, but congenitally dishonest, Dolly did not even register this fact – she was already entranced by the frisson of excitement which came with hints of money, power, and social connection. Dolly did not think to ask herself why someone making a success of a career in the East would be home on leave at the wrong time of year, or why he would be entirely alone.