“I shan’t keep you long, Mr. Chairman,” growled the man with the paper bag, as soon as he had the floor. “I’m a plain-speaking man and I say what I mean without wasting time, unlike some I could mention. What I want to know is, are the Shop Stewards aware that the food in the canteen is disgusting, inadequate and not fit for ’uman consumption and that the price charged for it may be called, in plain words, profiteering?” Murmurs broke out. This was interesting. Some of the murmurs were approving and Wendy wondered whether perhaps she was wrong in thinking the canteen lunches good.
The little twinkling man at the end of the platform spoke for the first time. “Any special complaint, Brother?”
“Yes. The meat last Friday was almost raw and I wouldn’t have given the jam tart to my pigs.”
“Just a minute. There was jam in the tart, wasn’t there?”
The sour man grunted.
“And the meat was meat? Both rationed food, I may remind you, that you were getting apart from your home ration. That’s a point to consider, Brother.”
“It’ s not the point. The point is that the canteen is making a profit out of selling inferior food. Look ‘ere!” He waved the paper bag. “What about this cheese roll? Threepence it cost me off the trolley this morning and what’s inside it?” He had pulled out the roll and holding it above his head in both hands, he opened it dramatically : “Look!”
“What at?” asked the twinkling man, peering.
“What at? Ah, there you are. You can’t even see the bloody bit of cheese, let alone taste it.” A roar of laughter broke out and split up into arguments and promiscuous comment. Someone from the side wall told the sour man where he could put the roll if he didn’t like it, and was sternly reminded from the platform that there were ladies present.
“Twenty years,” a hot red man was saying, “twenty years before I with Brother Williams. I could sell those rolls at a penny each and still make a profit.”
“Blimey,” said the side wall, “you must have been pretty canny with the cheese, mate.”
“Now look here,” said the caterer. “I’ve not come here to be spoken to like that——”
“If you don’t like it,” chanted the side wall, “you know what——” bread and cheese blyh
“Order, order.” Mr. Wheelwright was slapping the table with the flat of his hand. “You’re all out of order. All remarks must be addressed to the Chair, please.“
“About the bad smell in the Redundant Stores,” shrilled the bald man, but the caterer’s voice was louder.
“Mr. Chairman, I protest against the remark made by our Brother over by the wall. As a Union Member, I’m entitled to an apology.”
“Sit down,” people told him, “you make us tired.”
“I shall not sit down,” he said, crimson in the face, “until I get an——”
“And in the meantime,” said the sour man, who was still holding the roll before him like a sceptre, “what about these bloody cheese rolls? Are we or aren’t we to go on being robbed? What are the Shop Stewards going to do about it?”
“I’m going,” said Paddy getting up. “I can’t stand any more of this. Coming Wendy?”
Mr. and Mrs. Holt had had Wendy very late in life. The doctor had taken a pessimistic view of Mrs. Holt expecting her first baby at the age of forty-three. “A great pity,” he had said, tut-tutting through his stained moustache at the prospective mother’s worn frailty. “You should never have taken the risk. I wonder your husband——”
Mrs. Holt did not tell him that it would have been as much as her or anyone else’s life was worth to dictate to Mr. Holt in these or any other matters, and in any case, her heart was singing with joy at the fulfilment of her twenty-year-old dream.
The doctor, who prepared Mrs. Holt for the ordeal of her confinement by making no bones about his doubts that she would come through it, was only partially justified. The baby was little and colourless and ran the gamut of every childhood disease on its way to adolescence. Mrs. Holt was left with a heart that occasionally seemed to tip over and beat double quick time, leaving her gasping and speechless until she could get at her pills, and sometimes long after that. As for Mr. Holt, his nerves, which had always jangled at noises and disturbances, were red-hot wires every time the baby cried.
Mrs. Holt’s life became a struggle to keep the noises of childhood from him, but it was impossible in such a tiny house, although she, and eventually Wendy, were turned into mice on tenterhooks “not to disturb your father. “By the time Wendy had crept into her teens, his nerves were screaming, and he with them, every time a car backfired or he read something upsetting in the newspaper.
He was screaming now, and banging something, as Wendy hurried into the house. She closed the door softly behind her, wiped her shoes, put her umbrella in the stand and hung up her hat and coat before she went into the sitting-room to see what was wrong. No sense in going in with her outdoor things on, it only made him worse. He thought you were going to die of Pneumonia if you didn’t put on a coat every time you went out and take it off immediately you came in. Even if you only just popped out without a coat to post a letter, he would yell at you from a window, and although the neighbours must be used to him by now, it wasn’t very pleasant.
Her mother came out into the hall, her little monkey face screwed up to say Hush. At sixty-five she was an old lady. She wore shawls and long black old-fashioned dresses, with a locket on a chain hanging right down her front and tucked through her belt. In the tomorrow.”an alongstreet she wore button boots and a high archaic hat balanced on her puffed grey hair. For reading and sewing, she had gold-rimmed spectacles with half-lenses which she wore either right at the end of her nose, which still didn’t make them very far away from her eyes, or hanging in a little leather bag from her waist.
“Is he upset because I’m late?” asked Wendy. “I did say I would be.”
“He was at first,” said her mother, “but it’s his potatoes now. He says they’re waxy.”
“But they always are this time of year, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but he says the shops sell nice ones to everyone but me. Oh dear, I wish I’d baked them, but I didn’t like to use the oven just for that.”
“What about—you know—what we planned this morning?”
“Oh, I don’t know, dear. I haven’t asked him yet. We’d better wait and see how he goes on. Perhaps it would be better to leave it for tonight and go another evening when he’s not upset.”
“But the picture will be off then.”
“Oh, dear—well, I don’t know——”
They were talking in whispers, with one ear on the measured thumping that came from behind the sitting-room door.
Wendy gave her mother a quick kiss and went in. Her father was leaning back in his chair, banging on the table with a spoon. At sight of her, his untidy eyebrows shot to the top of his long narrow head and he rocked his chair forward with a crash. “Aha!” The eyebrows came down again ; the left one grew forward and the right one hung down at the corner, almost into his eye. “So you’re home at last? If you’d stay home instead of rushing about with this ridiculous nonsense about work, I might get some comfort in my own house. The Lord God knows your mother has as much idea of housekeeping as a—as a——” He clawed the air for words.
“It’s all right, father.” Wendy bustled round him, straightening the tablecloth, patting his shoulder. “Look, I’ll make you some toast, shall I, instead of the potatoes? It’s much nicer, really.”
He liked toast. He smacked his lips, but growled something.
“What’s that? Oh, your teeth! I’ll get them. You drink your tea and you shall have hot buttered toast with your second cup. I shan’t be a minute.” She flew upstairs.
While the bread was toasting, Wendy washed her hands in the little scullery off the kitchen. The scullery was scarcely more than a cupboard with a sink fitted across and a window high up, heavily barred, although it was too narrow to admit even a hipless sm
all boy. The kitchen was not much bigger. Standing in the middle of it you could reach stove, store cupboard, breadbin, saucepans and the hinged shelf that did duty for a table without moving your feet. There was no back door ; the window looked on to the railwaymen’s allotment strip and the roofs of electric trains shuttling through the cutting below the cindery slope.
Wendy washed her hands meticulously ; she could not bear to leave a speck of the factory dirt, although they would be just as dirty again withing five minutes of her arrival tomorrow. The oily dirt always lodged in that old screwdriver cut. She scrubbed away at it like Lady Macbeth, continuously stepping into the kitchen to watch the toast, which was no use to her father if it was a shade darker tha and there was nothing I s.n the exact golden-brown.
When it was buttered, she covered it with another plate and opened the oven door to get out her own food, which her mother always kept hot for her, as Mr. Holt would not wait for his tea until Wendy got home. The gas was out and the shepherd’s pie congealing on the plate.
“You never kept my food hot, mother,” she said, more as conversation than reproach as she sat down to it at the sitting-room table. It wasn’t very nice but she was hungry.
“But, Wendy, I did, dear. I put it in the oven.”
“I turned out the gas,” said Mr. Holt complacently, his teeth shifting up and down on the toast. “I never saw such wicked waste. If she is late for meals, she must expect to find her food cold I say.”
“But, Dad, you know I can’t get back earlier.”
“Perhaps,” ventured Mrs. Holt, whom forty years of marriage seemed sometimes to have taught no prudence, “it would be better if we waited until Wendy got back——” Dark blue veins knotted and swelled in her husband’s head and his adam’s apple bolted up and down his throat. Quickly, before he could swallow his mouthful and speak, Wendy changed the subject with : “How’s the toast, Dad?”
He was understood to mutter that it was all right, and passed his cup for more tea. He ate in silence, his eyebrows working with his jaws, while Wendy and Mrs. Holt whispered together at the other end of the table.
“All right, ask him then Wendy, but I really think it would be better to stay in tonight. We can go next week.”
“But the picture won’t be on next week. Dad!” She cleared her throat and spoke louder. “Dad, you wouldn’t mind if mother and I just popped round to the Odeon for an hour, would you?”
He snorted a little cascade of toast crumbs on to the tablecloth. “And what am I supposed to do meanwhile, eh?”
“Well, you know you’re supposed to go to bed early. I’ll make you ever so comfortable with a hot bottle and your big cushion and the paper. You wouldn’t even need us if we did stay in, and you’ve got Lassie to keep you company.” Lassie was a grotesque, naked mongrel, with starting eyes and a rat tail, who long ago had decided it was politic to suck up to Mr. Holt. She sat by his chair now, sickeningly attentive, while he dropped titbits carefully into her mouth from time to time. She was the least attractive, but the favourite of his three slaves. What affection there was in his nature exhausted itself on her.
“Well, can we?” pursued Wendy eagerly. He had not said no.
“Since you evidently don’t mind leaving me at the mercy of house-breakers and murderers … “There was a lot more in that strain, but he had not said no. Wendy cleared the table quickly. They could wash up when they got back. She urged her father to bed, helping him up the stairs, for his joints were silted up with rheumatism. He was maddeningly slow getting to bed, and they would miss the beginning of the picture, but at last they were in the hall, and Mrs. Holt had lowered on to her hair the hat that would have to be unseated again in the cinema if there was a troublesome film-goer behind, Wendy wore a blue pixie hood. They were both excited at the expedition.
She turned out the hall light and opened the front door. “Got your torch, Wendy?” said her mother, holding on to her arm. “It’s pitchy dark.” Ass point of viewan along they stepped outside, a shout made them both jump and turn round to look up the black staircase. Wendy shone her torch, and there in the wavering spotlight stood the furious, pyjamaed figure, menacingly fore-shortened, his hair on end, Lassie staring from the crook of one arm, the or themselves,&
Chapter 4
*
The first time Edward heard one of the girls say : “What’s the good of asking him? He won’t know what the limit is on that bearing,” he pretended not to mind. Why should he know what the limit was? He couldn’t learn everything at once. A few days later, when he heard one of them say : “He’s about as much use as a charge hand as my Aunt Fanny. I wish we had Tommy Presser back,” he told himself that it was ridiculous to care what a shrew like Ivy Larter said.
He would not have cared if she had not voiced his own opinion of himself. Every day in the Inspection Shop was strengthening his conviction that he was not and never would be any use as a charge hand ; they should never have given him the job. The responsibility of it weighed on him like a thunderstorm. It was all very well for the girls ; when they came up against something dubious, they simply slung it at him with : “Take a look at this, Ed,” and shifted the responsibility for a subsequent mistake on to him.
And there were mistakes. The A.I.D., the body of technical purists installed by the Air Ministry in all aircraft factories to supervise the work and drive the foremen demented by their pre-occupation with quality rather than quantity at the expense of the Output Bonus, had jumped on Edward several times. He got a persecution mania about Mr. Rutherford, who brushed his hair up at the sides like a devil, and seemed always to be hovering over the engines that Edward’s bench had inspected, beckoning him over with malevolent glee if he found anything wrong.
There was so much to learn. Edward knew some of the units thoroughly, but others only sketchily. He spent hours poring over blue prints and modification sheets and littered the table at night with text books when Connie wanted to cut out a blouse, but there were certain things which he could never know until he came up against them in practice. without looking at him“ly. He hadBob Condor was no help to him. Stimulated from above, he was having one of his periodic production drives, which involved rushing agitatedly about the shop all day, with a don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy attitude to every question.
Edward could go for advice to Jack Daniels, the charge hand on the other bench, but after he heard Ivy say : “Look at little Eddie, running to Mother. We might as well save time and ask Jack ourselves,” he became self-conscious about going over. He would stroll across, pretending to be going for a light, with a gear concealed in his hand, but he felt their laughter on his back. It was not only Ivy who despised him. With the possible exception of the rabbit-girl, who never took her eyes off her work, he felt that they were all watching him to see how he would shape, resenting him as an interloping fitter.
He saw with envy the way Jack Daniels’ girls treated him, hanging round him with endearments and accepting his word as law, instead of going and asking somebody else afterwards, like Edward’s girls. Dinah was nice to him, but then she was nice to everyone. The others were seldom more than polite, if that. His nervousness of them made him call them Miss So-and-so, which they thought silly, and his carefully thought out jocularities turned to ashes in his mouth.
He should never have been given the job. He would probably lose it soon, with the unfavourable reports of him that must be going through. Worry made him moody and the factory remained with him when he left it at night. He no longer enjoyed his walks to and from work ; the very air seemed to have lost its freshness and his legs were tired from scuttling about the Shop.
“You look tired, dear,” Ruth Lipmann said to him when he went in for some pickles. “Doesn’t he, Ma?” she yelled across the shop full of people. Everyone turned to look at him and Mrs. Greenbaum made sympathetic gurglings in her throat. Mrs. Lipmann approached to inspect him with her hands on her hips, swinging her head from side to side disapprovingly. “Working too hard,” she
said. “You were my boy, I should make you take a rest.”
“How could he, Ma,” shouted Ruth, “working in a factory? He’s on essential work. Going to have the gherkins, dear, or the mixed?”
“Ach, this war,” said a very old refugee, with a moustache but no teeth, from the bench under the sausages, “the old ones can do nothing and the young ones must do too much. It is very sad,” Everyone said how sad it was and Edward left the shop feeling momentarily a hero and ten years younger than thirty-five, instead of ten years older, as he had for weeks. Care soon returned, however, as he remembered that tomorrow was Friday, and time for his weekly talk with the Department Manager. Next time he walked down Church Avenue, he might be a charge hand no longer. Well, he wouldn’t be sorry, but how would Connie take the smaller pay packet again?
Even his pleasure in his rabbits was tainted by the thought of having to go to work next day. He could not whole-heartedly enjoy Queenie’s litter, who were promising superbly, and even Backyard Breeding had lost some of its potency. He no longer snatched it out of his pocket at every odd moment on Thursday. There had been no odd moments today, anyway, with his bench two engines behind and a girl short, with Paddy King away ill, and Mr. Gurley, the Department Manager, incessantly shooting up the little window between his office and the Inspection Shop to shout about Production. Even at tea-time, when everyone else was sitting down, Edward had to run about the Fitting Shop with a half-eaten bun in his hand trying to locate, before the A.I.D. d cockatoo’s crest p alongid, an engine that he had passed through without a new modification on the wheelcase.
No chance to read that evening either, as it was Thursday. The card players had taken to having their meal earlier with him, as Dorothy got so hungry these days. “Just like me when I was carrying her,” droned Mrs. Munroe. “Eat, eat, eat, you couldn’t satisfy me, especially being wartime. But with Connie now, that was different —remember, John? I could hardly keep a thing down.” … She sighed. “It was a very trying time.”
The Fancy Page 7