by Betty Burton
‘I didn’t like Lena Grigg, Miss Lake.’
‘I know, and that is why I am so pleased that you have stood up for her.’ She smiled. ‘I remember you two being parted on the first day you came to school. Did you know that it was my first day there too?’
Lu shook her head. ‘I might have given her my hair-ribbon if she hadn’t tried to snatch it off me,’ Lu grinned, ‘or maybe I wouldn’t. She thought I was too soft to fight her back.’
‘I don’t really approve of little girls scrapping in the playground, but you were right to stand up for yourself. We can’t just go about the world taking what isn’t ours.’
‘But that’s what people did to Lena, isn’t it, miss? They’ve took away her ordinary life.’
‘Do you smoke yet? It’s all right, I know that most of my girls do by the time they’re thirteen.’
Lu looked rather abashed. ‘Sometimes… not much, sometimes Ken give me one of a Saturday or Sunday.’
Cynthia Lake offered a box of cigarettes and watched Lu take one and accept the light skilfully. ‘It’s inevitable, it’s harmless and pleasant – we all do it eventually. But, Lu, if you are going to smoke cigarettes, take a tip from me and do it with a bit of style… not stuck in the corner of your mouth with the smoke trailing up your face.’ She folded her arms across her chest, twisted her mouth and half-closed one eye, and became Dotty leaning against a doorjamb watching the world go by.
Lu grinned.
‘I should go.’
‘Finish your cigarette. Listen, Lu, no one knows it, but I am keeping in touch with the institution where Eileen has gone, and I shall do my best for her when she is no longer under the care of the authorities. The family is moving to a council house where there will be more room.’
Cynthia Lake had been glad to get the headship of the Lampeter Street school because she was a socialist and so against the takers of all kinds. The docks, the Navy, the sweated-labour factories and breweries, the shops that stayed open till midnight, all in cahoots with the system bent on keeping workers ignorant and plentiful. She watched this one as she walked away from the house, the girl of whom she had very high hopes. Lu Wilmott wasn’t a victim. Surely she would not become one. She had a fine, bright mind, and she wasn’t afraid of speaking it. If that girl, and a few others like her, did not clamber away from this smothering, dulling cycle of marriage and poverty, then Cynthia Lake thought she may as well give up now and spend the rest of her life exploring in some remote regions of the world.
* * *
Lu is no longer one of Miss Lake’s girls. She has jumped her last rope, chalked her last hopscotch squares, scrumped her last vicarage orchard, had her last school holiday at Roman’s Fields. Perhaps she has not bought her last ha’penny bun and sat eating it on the doorstep, nor perhaps picked her last penn’orth of chips and scraps from a hole in the newspaper, but these occasions will not be so appealing when she is a factory girl. If a factory girl has time to play, she will choose quite different games.
But Lu is not a factory girl quite yet; she has first to confront Mr Ezzard.
Mr Ezzard, as seen from the factory floor, is harsh, and nose-grinding.
The majority of school-leavers’ jobs in the Lampeter area of Portsmouth are in the gift of Mr Ezzard.
There are very few jobs and many girls out of work, but the aunts have put her name forward, and Miss Lake has sent a supporting letter for a place at ‘Ezzard’s Royal “Queenform” Factory’.
Outwardly self-possessed, Lu’s stomach turns with anxiety as she walks smartly along the road to present herself before the great Mr Jacob Ezzard. When she reaches the factory which is within high walls, the main gates are shut as they always are after the hooter has sounded; thereafter entrance and exit must be sought from the gatekeeper’s hut. He was too slow by half for Lu’s eagerness. Having said who she was, she waited patiently whilst he looked for her name. ‘Another of the Wilmotts? Lord love us, we shan’t be able to move for you before long.’ He smiled genially. ‘I shouldn’t have thought there were any more of you left.’
‘There aren’t. I’m the last of the cousins, the youngest.’
‘Ah well, it’s a good solid family. I doubt you’ll come away empty-handed. But you’re lucky, they aren’t really taking on any more girls. That way, across the yard and up the stairs. There’s a little cubby-hole office at the top, ask there and they’ll tell you where to go.’
The ‘Queenform’ factory is one of the largest in the city. Built three storeys high of reddish-grey brick, its small, squared, gothic-style window-lights are set in regimented rows. It is probably these window-lights that give the building the appearance of a church rather than a factory. A rather gloomy church, too, for what with the colour of the brickwork and the mean lights, one immediately has the impression that the interior must be dismal. There are various buildings corralled within the walls; although Lu has never been beyond the gates, she knows of course that this is box-making, this is packaging, this is the old stables where the vans are kept, and these are the stairs up to the offices.
She has never seen Mr Ezzard, but his reputation as a hard, feared and unpleasant man has gone before him. But with luck, after the first interview, Lu is scarcely likely to be in his intimidating presence again.
When she is shown in, Mr Ezzard, without looking up, says, ‘Stand there.’
His ears are large and stand away from his head, further than any Lu ever remembers having seen; or perhaps they are just ordinary and she has never been kept standing for so long studying a person’s head from this angle. They are long minutes during which the only sounds are Mr Ezzard’s scratchy pen, the loud ticking of a pendulum wall-clock and the rumbling of her own nervous stomach.
Lu, remembering the drilling she has received from the aunties, stands exactly there and has not moved or even fidgeted. He has not looked up once, not even when he opened desk-drawers to take another sheet of paper and a paper-clip. Wilmotts – mostly the women, but Grandpa Wilmott was a cutter – have worked at stay-making for the Ezzard family since the original Ezzard set up in a small back room not far from where he stepped off the boat as a refugee. Generations on now, the Ezzard factory has grown to a great corset empire. It is still run by Ezzards and for Ezzards. The pool of unemployed female labour is still full.
Mr Ezzard laid down his pen and turned over some handwritten pages. He frowned and pursed his lips as he read them to himself.
Dear Mr Ezzard,
I enclose herewith a character reference regarding the ex-pupil I mentioned to yourself and Mrs Ezzard at the annual dinner of the Dickens Society. You were kind enough to say that you would interview the girl. I am sure that you will find her a most willing worker.
Yours most sincerely,
Cynthia Lake
Re: Louise Wilmott
I am pleased to recommend this girl for consideration as an employee. She has been an exemplary student, and has gifts which, I sincerely hope, may some time in the future be developed to their full potential. She was perfectly capable of continuing her education but it has not proved possible for her to do so.
I am aware that she is applying for factory work, but I know her to be capable of a clerical or secretarial position. She is honest, trustworthy and gives her full attention to any task given her.
Cynthia J. Lake
Miss Lake had said Lu might read it before she sent it off. It was the first character reference Lu had seen, and she was impressed by the language as it applied to herself. She could have recited every word. Now, submissively standing looking at Mr Ezzard’s ears, she felt gratified and proud. Even so, she continued to stand respectfully before Mr Ezzard’s desk.
As the office clock struck the half-hour, her prospective employer threw down the pages and at last sat back and looked at her. His eyes, which were surprisingly blue and hedged by thick, black lashes, held Lu’s attention there. ‘So, you are another of the Wilmotts?’
‘Yes, sir.’
�
��However many of you have we got already?’ He probably knew, and so did Lu, but she perceived that it was not a question.
‘And your mother is dead?’
(Don’t do none of that lah-de-dah talk.) ‘Yes, sir, she used to be one o’ your outworkers, she put ’and-stitched lace and bows on “Queenforms” and I used to help her.’
‘And now you want me to give you a job.’
‘Yes, sir, please, sir, if you will take me on.’
‘I’m told that you are clever, a bit of a brain-box, that right?’
Lu fixed her eyes on his tie-pin – perhaps it was a real diamond. ‘Not particular, sir.’
‘Come now, come.’ He picked up Miss Lake’s reference. ‘I’m sure you know what this is?’
‘Is it a letter from Miss Lake, sir. She said she would give me a character.’ Call him ‘sir’ till he takes you on, then you start calling him ‘Mr Ezzard’. George Ezzard, his brother… don’t never let yourself get in a corner with George Ezzard: he takes advantage.
‘Yes.’ He peered up at her, with his head on one side, looking her up and down. ‘You’re tall… rather developed… you’re only fourteen?’
Lu felt herself begin to blush. ‘Last June, sir.’
The sudden thrust of his stiff forefinger as he leaned towards her across the desk made her stiffen and start back as he probably intended. ‘Miss Lake says you could be clerk material.’
Aunty Glad said, ‘Don’t think that Mr Ezzard’s going to be impressed by anything except how fast you can work a treadle. He won’t care if you can talk double-Dutch.’ Like the mistake of showing off the pink slippers, it had been a mistake to give a rendition, at Granny Wilmott’s Christmas party, of the French national anthem she and Bar had learned from Aunty May.
Lu’s heart sank. ‘Um… yes, sir.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m not bad at sums, and my writing’s neat enough.’ She hated doing this to herself, but it was safer than letting him think she was a smart-ass.
‘And you think you’re good enough to be a clerk?’
She longed to say, ‘Yes, yes, I could do it standing on my head. I can add up and do decimals and long division and say up to my sixteen-times-table, and I know all the capitals of Europe, I know who Circe and Ulysses are, and Quasimodo the hunchback, and about the girlhood of Beatrice and Hero… and in a glass case in Alton Museum there is an Iron Age loom-weight labelled, “Howton’s Ford Field-Walk 1929 – Presented to the Museum by Miss Louise Wilmott”.’
Instead, she cast her eyes deskwards. ‘I really don’t know, sir.’
‘Miss Lake seems to think that you might, but I have no vacancies in the offices. But I’ll take you on as a button-threader. If you prove yourself quick-fingered enough not to keep the pieceworkers waiting, you can go on to be a runner – you know what a runner is?’
‘Yes, sir, my mum started as a runner with old Mr Ezzard.’
Nodding impatiently, he said, ‘Good, good,’ and scribbled something on a pad of yellow paper.
The interview had gone on quite long enough; he had only prolonged it because Alma and Miss Lake belonged to the same society. He liked to please Alma. Perhaps, after a few months, when he saw how the girl shaped up in the factory… Alma was his second wife – young, pretty; and in five delightful years of marriage had added four new children to the eight bequeathed her on the death of his first wife. In total he now had five sons, all of whom would be needed in the expansion of the ‘Queenform’ factory he envisaged now that big London stores such as Swan & Edgar were looking for specialists to undertake high-quality, made-to-measure work. Expansion was imperative – twelve Ezzard offspring all needing to be fed, clothed and educated.
Ripping the sheet from the pad, he held it out to Lu. ‘Take this to Mr George… you know Mr George?’
‘Yes, Mr Ezzard.’
He gave a brief smile. ‘Right, I guess the Wilmott regiment has been briefing you. In the factories I’m Mr Ezzard, my brother is Mr George and my father likes to be referred to as…?’
‘Mr Queenform.’
Mr Ezzard nodded. ‘And that’s no joking matter. My father created the famous “Queenform” pattern, and it’s patented… you know “patented”?’
Ingenuousness in her gaze, she denied knowing.
‘It means that the pattern is ours under the law. If anyone tries to copy it, then they can be taken to court – indeed would be taken to court. It was my father’s father who instituted the tradition that no one other than the head of “Queenform” takes on its workers. This is a family concern, up here and down there on the factory floor. Owner and worker come face to face, we now have a common interest: the well-being of “Queenform”. Now go.’
‘Thank you, Mr Ezzard… thank you for the chance.’ Clutching her passport to the great ‘Queenform – Stay-makers to Royalty’ empire, Lu turned to leave.
‘Stop! Your time will start from when you clock on after dinner. It’s already going on for nine o’clock, and by the time you’ve found Mr George, and he’s given you to your overseer, half the morning will be gone. Understood?’
‘Yes, Mr Ezzard.’
‘I haven’t finished. Don’t think that this letter gives you any privileges. And don’t think you will ever get into these offices until you have worked at every job and on every machine in the factory. I have taken note of what Miss Lake has said, but all that means is that I shall be keeping my eye on you. If you don’t come up to scratch you haven’t got an ice-cream in Hades’ chance of getting your backside on a clerk’s stool. Understood?’
None of the aunts had mentioned that the great Mr Ezzard used words like ‘backside’. Never mind what they said about Mr George, Lu had seen the way this one’s eyes had roamed over her. ‘Yes, Mr Ezzard.’
One and six a week. He wasn’t doing her any favours: that was the lowest pay anybody started on. Mary, who had already started in the same machine room as her mother and Aunty Phil, had started on two shillings. Uncle Ted had paid better than that picking and packing stick-beans, and although she had been tempted at first to go back to Roman’s Fields, she felt it was necessary for her and Ray and Kenny to stay together.
There were times when she longed to be back there, seated at the kitchen table after a day in the fields, listening to Uncle Ted speculating on the chance of rain before the beans went stringy and beany, or to Mr Strawbridge painting a word-picture of Zulu ‘rondavels’ built of dried mud, or the vastness of the ‘high veldt’ and the awesomeness of the mountainous regions. Or to be with Aunty May, out in the fields, early morning on a good day, pegging down the runners to grow new strawberry plants, squatting over the lines, keeping up with the skilled ‘casuals’, and with Bar chattering on telling the latest village gossip: Brown’s the Butcher bought the Smithfield champion and hung it in his cold store a month; the Co-op’s going to open a shop in the village; Warwick’s has got their daffodil bulbs in; the flagpole on old Cat’s tower fell off. Bar and The Swallitt Pool. Duke breaking in his own bred gelding. Duke giving her long looks and flirty winks.
Bar had already got herself a job on the Boarhunt Estate. Stable-hand. A boy could have called himself a groom, but Bar’s job was not dignified by a name. Bar hadn’t thought this any kind of a problem; she was strong, good with horses, and unlikely to cause indignation in the village by taking the job a village girl could have done with. No village girl would want a job mucking out stables and exercising horses, and these days the village lads wanted something a sight better than mucking out horses when there were towns within cycling distance. So no one raised any eyebrows at Bar doing the job.
Lu crossed the gravelled yard between the office and the factory. This famous workplace where the famous ‘Queenform’ stays and corsets were created. The antithesis of open bean-fields. No blade of grass, petal, or leaf of tree intruded here; the only thing God-given in this whole area of industrial Portsmouth was the sky; even that was veiled with smoke from factory chimneys, from workers’ homes
, from railway engines, road traffic, firing ranges and naval vessels.
The noise that came from the factory was a familiar one to Lu – not only to Lu, but to most of the inhabitants of the poor areas of Portsmouth. Here, many staymaking factories had sprung up generations ago and expanded into every available space. It was a huge industry.
In the building for which she was making, there were at least one hundred machinists passing work beneath the needle-foot of one hundred machines. Some machines had four or more needles. Each needle-foot gave out a sound like no other – not like the spinning or the cotton-looms of Lancashire, the stocking machines of Derbyshire or the knitting machines of Nottingham. The first sound to catch the ear of a stranger passing by on the pavement outside the walls of the Ezzard factory was the regular beat of the forty-horsepower engine rotating a great iron wheel, then the ear caught the flip-slap of the driving bands, then the whir of spinning drive-wheels and the unique sound of hundreds of precision-made sewing machines at work spearing closely woven Courtiel or twill fabric.
Although Lu had been born and bred into one of Portsmouth’s staymaking families and had grown up familiar with the language of that huge industry – ‘seaming’, ‘fanning’, ‘binding’, ‘flossing’, ‘flat binding’, ‘boning’, ‘slotting’ – she had never seen the inside of a factory.
At the side-door of the sewing room she paused a minute to quell her fears. She was about to start work in a corset factory. For a moment she was forced to confront what that meant. The lives of her sour grandmother Wilmott and of the aunts who had married Wilmotts showed in the hard lines of their faces, their petty jealousies and the caustic tongues. Please God, don’t let me get like them…
Her mother had gone on working for Ezzard’s even when she must have guessed she had a growth in her. Rage at such unfairness was never far from the surface, made her want to hammer her fist into something. Somebody must be to blame for keeping them so poor that her mother had had to hand-sew lace and bows for a few pence a dozen. If it hadn’t been for Ray, what would they have done all those years when her father was away?