‘Hey, wait a minute, Mary, you’re wearing the drawers off me! I can’t keep up with you.’
Mary turned, smiling, ‘It’s all right, Doris. I won’t do you out of your job as stoker, don’t worry – this is a temporary arrangement only. How’s that boy of yours, growing like a stick I expect?’
Doris smiled broadly. ‘Big as a pea pod about to burst, he is, fine and handsome just like his dad.’
Mary hid a smile. ‘Any sign of that man of yours putting a ring on your finger?’ she asked and Doris snorted inelegantly.
‘Gawd, I’m lucky if he comes home to me half the time. I think he’s servicing most of the girls in the neighbourhood – all those that will have him anyway.’ She smirked. ‘But he always comes back to good old Doris in the end, so I’m keeping my trap shut. Don’t want him going off me altogether.’
‘Well, watch you don’t get your belly full again,’ Mary warned, ‘One mistake is all right, two is daft, mind.’
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Doris said smugly. ‘I got Mrs Benson to give me something that stops you from clicking for a babba. I won’t have any more – can’t afford ’em, need my money too much I do. There’s no relying on my man to bring anything in.’
Mary eased her back, rubbing it with the palm of her hand. ‘Right then, we’d better get on – don’t want the boss man breathing down our necks, do we?’
Doris spat deliberately on to the dust of the floor. ‘That’s what I thinks of ’im for doing this to you, Mary.’ Nevertheless, she took her scuttle and hauled it back into the boiler house.
Mary spent the rest of the afternoon deep in thought. She worked without effort, loading coal into the scuttles, feeding the fires, doing three times as much work as Doris. Once Sarah commented on the brilliance of the fire and the busy way her washing was boiling in the steaming water, but Mary simply smiled absent-mindedly.
She wondered apprehensively what would happen at the end of the week, for she could not believe that Mr Sutton would simply reinstate her. She feared that he would keep on pecking at her until she lost all patience and gave up her job.
Mary was shrewd enough to know that Mali would insist that the present staff be kept on at the laundry, so it was doubtful that the new owner would dismiss her out of hand – rather he would do all in his power to make it impossible for her to stay.
And she needed her job, relying on the good wages she earned to pay for the upkeep of her beautiful home.
She had moved to Canal Street about six months ago, renting a fine clean, airy house which she had made her own with the introduction of warm curtains and good second-hand furniture. It was her pride and joy, a symbol of her achievement. From poor beginnings, she had gradually made a better life for herself and for Heath and she would not willingly see it all disappear into the mist.
Her thoughts turned to Mrs Delmai Richardson, who called once a month to collect her rent. Always dressed in finery, she was; ladylike on the outside but with an unsatisfied glow in her dark eyes that betrayed her as a wanton. And who could blame her, married to Rickie Richardson?
He was so different from his brother that the two did not look even remotely alike. Sterling was a golden man, handsome and tall with smiling eyes, while Rickie had a meanness in him that not even good grooming could conceal.
Mary, like everyone else in Sweyn’s Eye, had heard the gossip about the Richardson inheritance. Sterling, though born in wedlock, was said to be a by-blow, the result of an illicit passion between Victoria Richardson and James Cardigan. That the story was in all probability true did not bother Mary one little bit. In marrying Mali he had flouted convention, but then Mali was an unusual woman who had made a success of her life against all odds and Mary was proud of her.
When Mali had sold the laundry she had believed that Dean Sutton would be running it himself. She knew that the American had been good to Billy Gray and believed he would be equally kind to Mary. In any event, it was all over and done with now and Mary felt she must make the best of it. Maybe after her week of penance, as Katie had called it, she would find herself back in the packing room as though nothing untoward had happened.
She held her head high as she once more took up the coal scuttle. While she was boiler-house girl, she would do the job well and show Mr Sutton that he could not break her spirit. In spite of herself her lips quivered; she longed to fling the fuel to the seven winds and tell the new boss what he could do with the Canal Street Laundry. Then she thought of Heath, lying in his bed back home, his face pale and his body thin and weary with coughing and with a sigh, she went back to work.
* * *
The early morning light shone into the small neat kitchen as Heath Jenkins pushed back the sheets and began to dress. He stifled a cough, fearful of waking Mary, for she would be on his back like a virago, telling him to keep to the bed she had made up for him near to the fire. Always mollycodling him, she was, like a mother hen – but she was all right, was his sister.
He grimaced as he thought of Mary’s humiliation, for the gossip had spread like wildfire along Canal Street and Heath was soon aware of her demotion to boiler stoker.
He drew on his knee-length flannel drawers and tied the tapes neatly about his legs. His moleskin trousers creaked and cracked as he buttoned them around his thin waist, for they were stiff with sweat and spilled water gone rusty. His flannel shirt, traditional among tinplate men, was short, reaching just below his ribcage which made for coolness in the face of the furnace fire. Around his neck he swung a sweat rag made of soft gauze. Now he looked like the tinworker he was and he was proud of it.
He let himself out of the house and paused in the street to put on his clogs before joining the stream of men making their way to the Beaufort Works.
The stacks of the blast furnaces rose high into the air and on a dark night when the tapping out was done the entire sky was illuminated for miles around. It was not in the iron that Heath spent his time but across the river in the tinplate section of the works.
As yet he was only a behinder, and at his age, lucky to find work in the mill at all. Later he would be promoted to the position of doubler, or ever rollerman. He would be earning high wages then and Mary could give up her job altogether, stay at home the way a woman should do.
‘Mornin’ boyo, how’s that fine sister of yours then?’ A man tall and as thin as Heath himself fell into step with him. Heath grinned. ‘Well, Ianto, she’s just as lovely and just as far away from your grubby hands as ever.’
‘Tut tut, will you listen to the boy? There’s a nice thing to say to a fellow who is in every respect a gentleman. Not to mention being the best doubler in the business.’
‘That’s something I do agree with,’ Heath said smiling. ‘If I get to be half as skilful with the steel as you then I’ll be a happy man.’
Ianto swelled with pride. ‘A damn orator you’ll be, boyo with that silver tongue, or perhaps a member of parliament. Wasted you are in the tinplate anyway.’
The mill was shimmering with heat, the furnaceman having been more than liberal with the coal.
‘Got some iron in the oven for you, Ianto,’ he said. ‘There’s a rush on. It seems that Mansion Polish sent in a big order and Mark’s been over here screaming for tinbar like it was gold.’
‘Let ’em scream, Rees, they don’t give you no medals here if you kill yourself.’ Ianto shrugged off his coat and drew on a clean duck apron. ‘The boss sure as hell won’t pay a man for spoiled pieces of eight and that’s all that comes of rushing the job. Where’s Kenny? Can’t start the heat at all without a rollerman.’
Heath tied an apron round his thin frame and over it a piece of sacking. He rolled up his sleeves and wiped his face with his sweat rag, preparing for the long shift that was ahead of him.
His job was to accept the sheets from the rollerman. The razor-sharp steel would come hot and fast through the taw pair, the first of the rolling mills, and Heath would grip the tongs ready to grasp the flexible sheet and
swing it back to the rollerman. Once begun, the heat was a never-ending round of activity continuing until all the pieces had been doubled four times.
He grinned to himself, remembering his first shift in the mill. He had been so overcome with the heat and had drunk so much water that his belly had swelled and he had been violently sick.
‘Sorry, boys, didn’t mean to be late.’ The rollerman hurried into the mill tying on his apron, his hair flattened across his forehead. ‘My Ida just gave birth again – six we’ve got now, all boys; she’ll kill me if I father another teapot with a spout on it.’
Rees was busy taking the iron from the first of the two furnaces that stood side by side the fires roaring like wounded beasts. He pulled the door open and with long tongs manhandled the hot iron over to the rollerman.
‘Not so much talk and more work, is it?’ he said dryly.
The thick pieces of iron baulked and banged through the rollers with a bone-shuddering noise but Heath scarcely noticed it. He took a draught of water, thirsty already, the sweat beading his face and catching in the fine hairs of his upper lip.
He fell quickly into the rhythm of the heat. The sheets went from furnace to rollerman and then to him and, deftly, Heath lifted the hot metal over the pair of rollers and when it was returned to him swung it neatly onto the floor.
Ianto wielded the tongs with great skill as, with his clogged foot resting on the hot sheet of metal, he flipped the edges over so that a crease was formed. It appeared as simple as folding a blanket, Heath thought as he watched Ianto manipulate the sheet onto his table.
The piece was returned to Rees, whose fourteen-inch tongs deftly wielded the steel back into the furnace. The heat would continue until the sheets had been folded four times, making pieces of eight.
Heath breathed deeply, sandwiched between the sizzling gusts of air belching from the furnaces in front of him and the growing stack of hot sheets neatly piled behind him. He prayed that his chest would not play him up, for a bout of prolonged coughing would throw the heat right out of balance. He paused to drink some water, his muscles aching and sweat running from the nape of his neck along his spine. The work was gruelling, but it was man’s work and Heath was proud of his part in it.
The heat had just finished when Heath became aware of the boss coming across the floor of the mill. The men touched their caps in respect, but Mr Brandon Sutton waved the gesture aside impatiently. He was an American and far more familiar with his men than any of the other bosses in the neighbouring works.
‘I want to talk to you,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest. He was a fine man, tall and strong with muscles like a navvy. Heath was willing to bet that Mr Sutton would not be above taking off his coat and rolling up his shirtsleeves and joining the men in the heat.
‘Talk away, sir, you’ve chosen your time right, there’s a heat just finished.’ Rees, as senior man in the mill, spoke up for the others: ‘You don’t look too cheerful, sir – bad news, is it?’
Brandon Sutton nodded. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to accept a cut in wages,’ he said. ‘I’m speaking bluntly now, man to man, for it’s either that or lay some of you off.’
‘But I thought Mansion Polish was crying out for tin,’ Heath surprised himself by saying forcefully.
Brandon Sutton looked at him levelly. ‘While that’s true, there are also other considerations. You’ve doubtless heard that in some steel mills men are striking. I’ve tried my best to keep your wages fair but without a scale of pay properly set down and recognised by owners, I guess it’s a pretty difficult task.’
Heath pondered this a moment. ‘But then you said you’d try to implement such a scale; there’s talk that you’re working on it now.’ He was amazed at his own boldness, but Brandon Sutton had a reputation for honesty and fair play and Heath believed they might as well learn the worst from him right now.
‘That’s right.’ The American allowed himself a smile. ‘And you can bet your last dollar that I’m making myself mighty unpopular round these parts. So much so that it’s affecting trade, I’m being squeezed out you might say.’ He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘If you men stick by me now, we have a chance of winning through and there’s a lot more than my profits at stake.’
The older men had fallen silent and it seemed to Heath that unless he asked questions no one else would.
‘I’m willing to accept a cut in wages for a start,’ he said firmly. ‘But there’s something I would like to ask; how would this wages scale work?’
Brandon looked at him with interest. ‘You’re Heath Jenkins, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘Mary Jenkins’ brother? I guess there’s a great family likeness between you.’ Heath hid his surprise, for he had had no idea that his boss knew anything about him or his sister. Before he could think of a reply, Brandon was speaking again.
‘As it stands now, you only get paid by what comes out at the end of a watch. Any spoiled tinplate, any under the correct weight or cut short by the shearers is wasted time and effort. Apart from that, a man might cut seventy boxes of sheet and find at the weigh-in that half of them are rejects. Is that not so?’ He paused, looking round at the men as though trying to gauge their reactions.
‘My aim is to have set prices for work done so that no one is cheated at the end of the day.’
‘Sounds very grand,’ Rees said doubtfully, ‘but will it work, sir?’
Brandon Sutton regarded him steadily. ‘I don’t know, but we can at least give it a try. Now, what do you older men say about a cut in wages? I hope it will be a temporary measure but I can’t say for sure. I guess you’ll suffer most, Kenny, since you have a large family to support, but some economies must be made and soon.’
‘I’m with Heath,’ Rees said. ‘Things are bad in the valleys, I know that; I don’t go round with my eyes shut and if taking a drop in pay now will keep me my job, then I’m all for it.’
‘Then I guess everyone is in agreement.’ Brandon turned to look at the neat stacked sheets and nodded approvingly. ‘That’s what I call work well done and I wish I was giving you a raise instead of a reduction in pay, but don’t despair – that time might come and sooner than we think.’
Heath watched as the boss strode away. He was strong, a man of principles and Heath admired his guts.
‘Duw, I don’t know what my old woman will say.’ Ianto wiped his face with his sweat rag and shook his head slowly. ‘Times are getting bad, boys. I sometimes wonder what the world is coming to.’
Rees stared at him levelly. ‘Well, we still have a job,’ he said reasonably, ‘and a boss who knows how much skill goes into the sheets, so things could be much worse, man.’
As another heat began, Heath was deep in thought. He would ask Mary if she knew the boss, for it was strange he should mention her by name. Not that Heath blamed any man for looking at his sister – she was a fine woman, tall and beautiful with thick abundant hair and a gleam of health in her face.
He wondered wryly if he had been the runt of the litter; at sixteen he was still small, though his shoulders were beginning to fill out a little now and the muscles of his arms were hard and strong. Perhaps what Mary had told him was true and the Jenkins family were slow developers, becoming tall only after twenty years of age was reached.
Deftly he swung a hot steel sheet over the pair and smiled at Kenny as he accepted it with his tongs. Kenny winked back. ‘Don’t work too hard now, boyo, save some of your sap for the girls, is it?’
A picture of Rhian Gray sprang to Heath’s mind. She was a pert girl, very full of herself and he felt like taking a pinch out of that pride of hers. Though since Billy’s imprisonment she had become a little quiet, grieving for her brother no doubt.
Mary was looking after her well though; she had even managed to find Rhian a job in the laundry. Pretty eyes Rhian had, and a lovely slim body. And it was her resistance that excited him, even thinking about her brought a tingling to his loins.
He suppressed a smile. In one aspect at least
he was not lacking, as many a girl from the wash house would readily testify. He sighed and looked up at the small patch of sky that could be seen through an overhead window. Tonight, in spite of Mary’s mollycodling, he would be out tomcatting – it was what made all the hard toil of life seem worthwhile.
Chapter Five
‘But I didn’t want to work in the laundry in the first place!’ Rhian Gray sat in the front parlour of the house in Canal Street staring rebelliously at Mary Jenkins. Her small face was set into lines of obstinacy and her large dark eyes flashed with fire. ‘And now that that old goat owns it, I want nothing more to do with the place.’ She placed her small hands in her lap, folding her fingers together as though that was the end of the matter.
Mary listened to the morning bells ringing from the Church of St Nicholas on the Hill, trying to quell the impatience rising within her.
‘That’s all you ever do, is complain, Rhian,’ she said mildly. ‘You grumble that your aunt treats you like a baby and then it’s Carrie who’s at fault for expecting you to help more around the house. Try to remember that Carrie is good to come in and work every day –you’d be in a fine pickle without her. You can’t have everything your own way, you know.’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Rhian flung back her long hair. ‘I can’t live with Aunt Agnes for ever; I’ll need a home of my own before long.’
Mary sighed, knowing that Rhian had the foolish idea that she could coax Heath into marrying her. Little did she know that he was out this very moment with another girl. But Mary tried to make allowances for Rhian; she was young and thoughtless, she didn’t mean to hurt anyone with her outspokenness. All the same, she needed putting in her place now and again.
‘Your auntie has been like a mother to you, mind,’ Mary said quietly. ‘She gave you and Billy a home all those years ago when your own mam died. You mustn’t think of up and leaving her now that she’s getting old and needs you.’
Proud Mary Page 6