The Girl Now Leaving

by Betty Burton

  The unabashed appraisal doesn’t make her bridle as it often does with men at the factory; instead it makes her unconsciously breathe deeper and raise her rib-cage, provoking his interest. ‘I’m a machinist.’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ He opens his mouth to the bread and Lu watches his teeth as they bite through the crust and then his tongue as he cleans his lips of powdery flour. Without thinking, she brushes a stray crumb from the corner of his mouth, and a fleeting sensation like a sweet, pleasurable twitching, almost a pain, flashes between her thighs.

  ‘I work a sewing machine in a corset factory.’

  ‘I thought you was going to college.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I gave it up.’

  He laughs. ‘Fancy that. And there’s me thinking about you all dolled up in one of them posh uniforms. What d’you wear to be a corset girl then?’

  He sits just a couple of feet from her, and she is more aware of his presence than she has ever been, even more than on the significant day at The Swallitt Pool. She still can’t stop herself from thinking of that image of him ready to dive. Lean, white body with patches and lines of growth of dark hair, brown arms, feet and face, black hair plastered to his head… and the thing that was the focus of her attention, the unforgettable thing – which as yet doesn’t have a name because playground words are too silly and the others she doesn’t yet know.

  ‘You’re making fun of me.’

  ‘I’m not. What’s wrong with asking?’

  ‘Nothing, but it’s just any old skirt, and an overall.’

  His direct gaze and direct way of asking what he wants to know puts Lu in mind of her aunts’ blunt manner of questioning. The corners of his mouth lift a little and his eyes incite. ‘Do you go swimming?’

  There! Now she stirs herself and looks directly back at him and, keeping her voice so that it doesn’t carry to her brothers, almost snaps, ‘Yes. Do you?’

  ‘When the mood takes me. Do you go in the sea?’

  ‘When the mood takes me.’

  ‘In your skin?’

  She knows that she has flushed and is annoyed with herself. ‘Not since I grew up.’

  ‘That’s a shame. It’s the best way.’ Half smiling, he bites into a slice of tart. ‘I don’t see what growing up’s got to do with it, anyway. I enjoy myself in any natural way I can. So should you.’ He sucks a bit of stickiness from his fingers. ‘I’ll come down your way and see you one of these days.’ Without a further glance in Lu’s direction, he puts his plate on the hearth and goes. ‘Thanks for the supper Mis Wilmott. I’ve still got the horses to water.’

  Ray is sitting easily, smoking a cigarette and talking about his union work, Bar listening quietly. Bar, who hardly knows what a union is, let alone a shop steward, is absorbed in the workings of that earnest world.

  Ken is listening to Ted explain the distracting tactics of some game birds.

  Gabriel has nodded off.

  May is filling hot water bottles.

  Lu sits with her knees drawn up to her chin, gazing into the burning log fire recalling that he said – there’s me thinking about you all dolled up. Did he mean her to know that he’d been thinking of her? The unsuspecting virgin has been visited by one of the darker gods, who has left her with an exciting image of potent unconformity.

  * * *

  In the new year, Lu, putting up her hair in a tidy bun and her age from sixteen years to eighteen, enrolled in a WEA class in local government – not because she was particularly interested in the subject, but because she had made up her mind to do something to educate herself, and local government was the only evening class that wasn’t dressmaking or cookery – which wasn’t her idea of education. Mr Matthews, the tutor, said he wasn’t supposed to take anyone under nineteen, so he bent the rules – and rather more than he realized.

  The prospect of not being accepted for a class she hadn’t been particularly keen on in any case made Lu determined they should take her. ‘It’s supposed to be the Workers’ Educational Association, isn’t it? I’m a full-time worker, so why shouldn’t I be able to join?’

  Mr Matthews being a man who gave all his spare time to educating workers in civic affairs, thought that no such arbitrary rule should keep a youngster so eager for his subject out of his classroom.

  On Friday evenings, until Kate started going out with a regular boyfriend, Lu and Kate went to the cinema, the ‘Royal’ or the ‘King’s’ for a show, no matter what the programme. Sometimes they went to the cinema again on Sundays. They bought Picturegoer, and argued over their favourite stars. The boyfriend put paid to those outings unless the Pompey team had an away game, in which case the girls could have that Saturday evening together.

  Whenever she could manage to fit in the cleaning and ironing during the week, she went out to Roman’s Fields on Saturday afternoon and returned on Sunday evening. By running to the station after she had taken her machine to pieces, cleaned and oiled it on Saturday morning, she was just in time to catch the train to Fareham, where half an hour later she would arrive to find Uncle Ted waiting with the new second-hand pick-up truck that was big enough to get the strawberry crop to the station more quickly than waiting for the unreliable carrier’s cart. It also proved invaluable in getting about for pleasure. Mr Strawbridge loved a trip a few miles out to a country pub. And so, throughout the year, Lu became such a regular visitor to Roman’s Fields that she kept a change of clothes there, and took to wearing breeches and a shirt like Bar.

  Bar had taught her to ride without a saddle on her father’s work-horse – a strong, fluffy-hoofed mare; and Ted had taught her to drive the van. As with her work as a machinist, the synchronization of foot and hand was paramount, and she worked hard to become a competent driver.

  She kept her two worlds quite separate. Kate tried to pump her about what she got up to when she went away, but Lu would only say that she went to stay with her aunty and uncle. The fact that she could ride and drive now would have made her different from the girls she worked with, especially now that she had lived down her short episode as a scholar.

  When the WEA course finished after the spring term, Mr Matthews suggested that the class should go for a fish-and-chip supper. The course had been surprisingly interesting, and she had never missed an evening of listening to him describing how a council worked, how the electoral system worked, what democracy was.

  Over the chip supper, he asked, ‘Have you ever attended a meeting of the full council, Miss Wilmott?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know we could until you said.’

  He leaned forward, his glasses glinting with enthusiasm. ‘You should go. If you’re a bit apprehensive about going to a place like the Guildhall for the first time, I’d be pleased to show you. Could you get time off?’

  She grinned, ‘I could probably be sick enough to go to something like that.’

  ‘But you’d lose an afternoon’s pay.’

  ‘They say you have to pay for experience. It might even be better than going to the pictures.’

  The Guildhall, which as a child she supposed must belong to somebody important, was a revelation, as was the council in special session, the mayor and aldermen in robes, the mayor wearing a heavy gold chain; the polished wood panelling of the council chamber reflecting the blaze of lights.

  Mr Matthews was, it appeared, quite well known to many of the council officials. He gave her a short conducted tour along some of the many impressive corridors.

  ‘You said the ratepayers paid for all this, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, in a way it is the official home of the mayor, and he’s Portsmouth’s representative.’

  ‘But what’s it for? Why does it need to be so big and grand?’

  As so often over the past weeks, this questing girl had put him on the spot with her simple questions. He did his best to give her a reasonable explanation about civic pride and its effect on the population as a whole.

  ‘It doesn’t work though, does it? How can peop
le be proud of paying for a place like that when half of them are out of work? People where I live can hardly afford paint for their walls or lino for their floors. The council could run just the same without spending all this money on robes and cars and stuff that doesn’t matter, couldn’t it?’

  She had learned well over the months. Mr Matthews did not have an answer that would sound convincing to a girl who lived in a place like Lampeter Street. ‘I’m afraid my answer will be too lame for you. But it is traditional, and such trappings give dignity to the office, wouldn’t you agree to that?’

  ‘No. It just seems silly. It’s all right for children making each other into princesses with daisy chains; I don’t think grown-ups ought to. If I was a councillor, I’d put a stop to it.’

  For the tutor, it was one of those moments that made all the winter evenings spent in stale, cold classrooms worth while. ‘Perhaps one day you will be.’

  ‘Me? No, I don’t think so. I expect I shall go away when I’m a bit older, there’s so many other things to do.’ Until then, she hadn’t known that this was what she intended.

  He offered to buy her tea in a cafe, and she accepted with the kind of pleasure that made the occasion a pleasure for him. She intrigued him. She had the kind of eagerness for learning that he used to have when he was her age – still did have for that matter, the only difference being that he had found a channel into which he could guide his enthusiasm, whilst hers appeared to be uncontained and ready to break out in all directions. That was how it should be in the young.

  In the tea-shop she still questioned him closely about the ethics of spending ratepayers’ money on pomp and luxury. Stock answers were not for her: she taxed him, made him question what he had not questioned for years, put him on the spot, until almost in self-defence he asked her about herself. She told him about having won a free place at the grammar school, which did not surprise him. What a bright light she must have been in that backstreet school amidst the terraces and factories. What a bright light she was in his class.

  ‘I know it’s too late now, but I do sometimes wonder how I would have got on there.’

  ‘There are more roads than one to education.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, and why I started your classes. I’ve learned things with you that I shouldn’t ever have learned at the grammar.’

  The ageing tutor admired the girl’s confidence… wisdom even. She shouldn’t be lost to factories and babies. ‘But they do give you that piece of paper that opens doors to opportunity.’

  ‘That’s all right if they’re the sort of doors you want opened. I mean, would I want to be a teacher? It’s what everybody said I could be. It’s what my mother would have been if she hadn’t met my dad.’

  It suddenly occurred to him that she was even younger than the age she had given to get into his classes. She was simultaneously innocent and wise. A young woman teacher with a Lampeter Street background would be exactly what poor schools could do with. Much better than the usual tired teachers with nowhere else to go, or the modem, idealistic products of private education and university.

  ‘What job would you like?’

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. I only know that I couldn’t bear to stop around here. I’d like to go everywhere. When I told Ray – that’s my brother – he said I’d got itchy feet, which perhaps I have because I sometimes just want to run and run and run.’

  ‘Where?’ He watched as her eyes searched inside her head.

  ‘Where? I remember in geography we used,to have tests about places: names like the Russian steppes, Guadalajara, Minnesota, and then there was this poem about Xanadu, and another that went, “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree… ” And there’s the place where they thought all the gold was – El Dorado. I used to say names like that to myself, over and over, I just used to wish that I had a magic carpet to go to places with names like that.’ She came back, smiling, looking a bit shy that she had opened up like that. ‘Then I’d wake up and still be in Pompey… I mean, Pompey!’

  He could have said, The world is full of Pompeys with names like Minnesota; instead he encouraged her. ‘When I was about your age, I saw an illustration of the Acropolis… you know? I longed to go there, but to travel back in time and see it when it was gloriously new; sadly that’s something I can never fulfil. But I have travelled in the region of Guadalajara myself.’

  The revelation seemed to quite take her breath away. ‘Guadalajara? Have you really?’

  ‘So you won’t stay and change things here? Do away with the mayor’s funny hat and spend the ratepayers’ money on better schools?’

  ‘I don’t think things like that could be changed.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He watched her face reflect the goings-on in her thoughts. ‘Because it would take too long. You said yourself that a lot of that stuff goes on because it always has gone on.’ She grinned mischievously. ‘Anyway, men like big funny hats, don’t they? You know, like admirals and the king?’ She giggled, quite out of character for the young woman with the upswept hair and the ever-ready notebook. ‘All those feathers. I expect it’s because of the hats that they have to travel about in posh cars.’

  As he walked with her to her tram he asked, ‘Will you be enrolling next term?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve only just started.’

  When the new term started, there she was, her eager pencil poised over her ready notebook. The prospect of hearing her views on Parliament and national government cheered Mr Matthews. So, on the first evening of term he proposed that there should be a debate to consider whether the luxurious trappings were essential to good government.

  For a while after she had started at Ezzard’s factory, whenever she’d passed by the grammar school, or seen a girl wearing the uniform, a satchel of books slung over her shoulder and carrying a tennis racquet or hockey-stick, Lu had felt a hot pang of jealousy to be one of them. But now she began to think differently. The curriculum of a grammar school was planned to cram the brain but not to broaden the mind. Here she had a real chance to extend her knowledge and think for herself.

  With all this new experience, it might have been expected that she would neglect to keep up the journal Gabriel Strawbridge had started her on five years ago, but she did not. In fact, most nights she quite looked forward to sitting at the scullery table with a mug of cocoa or packet soup before bed, writing whatever came to mind.

  Inevitably many of her entries were to do with her working day.

  Ezzards is a very old building, with whitewashed walls. These get done every year when they close down for the first week of August which is when we take our holiday. Factories that close down the last week in July get an extra day because of August bank holiday, but if anybody was to suggest that Ezzards give an extra day, he would just say as he always does, ‘If you don’t like it, you know what to do.’ Which I don’t think is fair.

  We are all glad to get away because the place gets as hot in summer as it gets cold in winter. It wouldn’t be so bad if the heat from the boiler room came up through the floor to warm our chapped ankles when it’s cold, but it seems to wait till the sun is belting down before it does that. The running belt and the treadles make the spindles and wheels warm, and the belt seems to carry the heat right through the room. The windows have all got bars and don’t open, so that the only air that comes in is from the end door which is propped open. It might let in a bit of air, but it is warm air. Upstairs in the offices, they have got ordinary windows that open and blinds they can pull down. I don’t know why people who come to work in suits and dresses need better treatment than us. If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t have jobs, but I don’t expect that they would see it like that.

  If it wasn’t for us losing our wages, shut-down week would be a nice break. But still, seeing as there is nothing we can do about it, I try not to let it stop the fun I get out of going to Roman’s Fields. I can’t hardly wait to be on the train there. Bar said she would ask if she could bo
rrow one of the horses – ‘hacks’ she calls them – so we can go riding together. When I am sitting at my bench with sweat running down my sides, it is as though this is all happening in a different world from where Roman’s Fields exists. But I like being with the other girls, we have a lot of laughs.

  Ezzards factory isn’t a lot of laughs though. It is a really harsh place. Perhaps if I never got away to Roman’s then I wouldn’t be able to judge, but I do, so I can. Factory owners live comfortable because we do not. Sometimes a girl will say ‘I wish somebody would put a bomb under this b—y place.’

  [Later] Mr Ezzard knows he can treat the girls like that because there are so many women and girls desperate for work no matter how bad the money. As Ray says, the bosses hold all the cards in this game as well as making up the rules as it suits them. It’s like the houses we have to live in, nobody would live in places huddled together and falling apart and having to be fumigated if there was anywhere else to go. Dotty has applied for one of the nice council houses in Portsea, but she won’t get one, nor will we because Lampeter Street is not as bad as a lot of other streets. It’s only when I sit down to write that these things make me angry, it’s best not to think about it but to enjoy yourself as much as you can.

  I didn’t used to know that I was Lower Class. Now I know what it means I hate it that there are people who think I’m that. When I walk past all the big houses on Southsea Front, I get so bitter I would like all of them to get bugs and cockroaches and bad drains and damp under the floors. Yet another part of me wants to have one of the houses and a garden with a wall round so nobody could see in. I would have a high gate with ‘Beware of the Dog’, and red tiles on the roof. I really hate being common and working class. I won’t always be. I’m going to be Somebody! I have made myself a promise.

  I was telling Kate Roles how I felt about wanting to get out of Pompey and do something exciting. She thinks getting a good-looking husband and a home of your own is exciting so she doesn’t really know what I’m talking about.