by Betty Burton
‘You might not recognize her now that she has become such a grown-up young woman, and so blooming, brimming with health, but this is Miss Wilmott, Sarah. Louise Wilmott, from further along the street… both her parents died within a few days of each other.’
‘Of course, I remember. Your mother was ill for a very long time. I liked her, I used to call in sometimes. I remember how pleased she was when she got you away to convalesce after you had been ill yourself.’
‘I didn’t realize at the time how ill she was. I suppose I was too young.’
‘I’m glad to see you looking so well. You are right, Aaron, she’s absolutely blooming – except for your poor arm, but healthy bodies soon heal. I hope it’s nothing to keep you from your work.’
‘Sarah, Miss Wilmott is thinking of rushing back to work with a crust in her hand. We can do better than that, I’m sure?’
‘Do you like vegetable curry, Miss Wilmott?’
‘I don’t know, but if that’s what I can smell, I expect I do.’
‘Ha, Aaron, an adventurous eater, now that’s something you don’t come across every day in Lampeter Street. Come through, my dear, I was just putting out a bowl for myself. If you like it, I’ll tell you how it’s done.’
It was funny, suddenly the Steiners were ordinary people who asked you if you’d like a bowl of food. Until now, he’d been the tall man with a sad face seen in and around Lampeter Street every day, who opened doors without knocking and went upstairs two at a time, and Mrs Steiner was usually just a head and shoulders looking out of a little trapdoor and a hand that gave out bottles of medicine wrapped in stiff white paper and blobbed at the ends with sealing wax.
They had a living room crammed with everything. Odd and strange and different in a score of ways from anything Lu had come across. The brightly woven shawls thrown over old chairs, as well as shelves of books and collected objects, reminded her of Miss Lake’s room. That there were Jews anywhere but in the Bible was information that had not so far come Lu’s way, no more than the fact that there were European Jews and that Mr Ezzard had descended from them.
‘My husband is probably concerned that you are in danger of not knowing as much about yourself as he knows, Miss Wilmott. That isn’t why he suggested the vegetable curry (by the way these are matzos if you haven’t had them, a kind of bread), but I know he’ll feel easier in his mind if I ask you whether you have any problems. When I was your age, I had my mother. Girls do need their mothers when they are growing into full womanhood.’
She put down her spoon, smiled, and folded her arms across her large bosom. ‘Do you mind if I ask you about yourself?’
‘Not really, but I told Dr Steiner that I didn’t have any problems with… periods and that.’
‘And I’m sure you don’t. Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘No. Just sometimes I go to a social with one.’
‘Have you gone all the way yet?’
Lu did her best to appear unfazed. All the way was something girls whispered and giggled over when one of them had had a solo date.
‘No. And I wouldn’t anyway with a boy from round here.’
‘Do you know about protecting yourself? Preventatives… contraceptives?’
‘I know about boys getting Durexes from the barbers.’
Mrs Steiner said, ‘Did you know that women don’t have to rely on men? I don’t mean that it is safe to stand up, or afterwards to cough, or pass water, or jump around. What I mean is that women don’t have to rely on men to provide the protection; they can provide their own.’
Lu shook her head.
‘Not everybody would agree with what I propose doing – which is to give as many women of child-bearing age the knowledge and means to protect themselves. Now this is not something new. There are clinics in London that have been running for ages, but not here. Yet it is here as much as anywhere where there should be one. Sometimes Portsmouth appears to overflow with soldiers and sailors, doesn’t it?’
Lu had finished her stew and, without asking, Mrs Steiner served her a slice of sticky cake. ‘Oh, honey… lovely: it reminds me of my aunty’s place.’
‘Would she mind me talking to you like this?’
‘No. She told me to be careful, that it’s easy to say you won’t let anything happen with a boy, but sometimes you can’t help it.’
‘Then I hope she will be glad if I tell you that you can be prepared for that eventuality. Society is very touchy about unmarried women and girls obtaining information, as though we don’t fall in love until it is our wedding night.’
Lu was fast losing her embarrassment. ‘So why don’t Portsmouth have a clinic?’
‘Prejudice, religion, ignorance, money. Maybe one day, that’s the idea. But, until then, people like myself have to do what we can where we can.’
‘I reckon you’d have women lining up at the door if you started one.’
‘Understand, I am in no way offering or encouraging you to accept contraceptive advice. All I would say is that, if and when you ever want to come and see me, then I hope that you will. I neither condone nor disapprove of premarital sexual love, or casual love – we all have to sort that out for ourselves, don’t we? But it would be nice, wouldn’t it, if all children who were born were wanted, instead of so many by accident?’
‘What is it… I mean, how are the babies stopped from coming?’
In the dispensary, Mrs Steiner opened half a dozen of the assorted little boxes and rowed up their contents. ‘Simple, aren’t they? The eighth wonder of the world.’
‘What do you have to do with them?’
‘Once you know which one fits, it is slipped in and taken out. Clinic nurses explain these things.’
‘They look too big to—’
Mrs Steiner joined the tips of her left finger and thumb, pressed the sprung rim of the largest device with her right hand, slipped it into the space between the finger and thumb. It shot through like a freed animal, bounced on the desk, fell on to the floor where it rolled and wobbled across the linoleum. The dimpled smile appeared again. ‘That’s the general idea, but it was never intended to be inserted between finger and thumb.’
Lu left with only five minutes to sprint back to the factory before the gate was drawn and she was shut out for the rest of the day.
It was amazing how much better her arm felt when she got back to her machine. So much to think of. Every day there was something new. She felt blooming, she was blooming. She hummed quietly to herself as she fed strips under the foot and quietly burped memories of the tasty spicy new food.
I don’t know what to think about that. I know they are young men, but don’t want to think about my brothers going with girls.
Eileen Grigg. Lena Grigg has come back. She has grown fat. At least fat for Eileen Grigg who I remember as the skinniest girl with rickets in our street which is full of thin rickety children. She just appeared in the factory one morning, sat at a machine near Nellie and started work as though she had done it every morning for three and a half years like I and Kate Roles have. Lena is acting very strange, a bit like my Gran Wilmott is these days, it’s as though a bit of her brain has gone or been shut down. I never thought Lena would forget who I was. I would have sooner she had come and shouted and put her fist up to me than to see what somebody has done to her. Tomorrow I’m going to see Miss Lake about it. Somebody must be to blame for what has happened to Lena. One thing, Lena is a good machinist.
Kate hooked a thumb in Eileen’s direction and mouthed, ‘What’s going on?’ Lu shrugged and indicated, ‘Search me.’
Lu almost hungered for the money to save for dress fabrics, clothes and hairdressing appointments, but she was never reckless in the work she turned out; she made sure she made no rejects or let anything distract her.
Eileen Grigg attracted her attention all morning, so that she felt more than the normal relief when the dinner-time hooter sounded.
Kate nodded in Eileen’s direction and they chose her aisle to get
out of the machine room. It must have been the sudden cessation of the machines that attracted Eileen’s attention. She looked around her as though trying to fathom out where she was, then slid from her stool and made her way past the other machines in her row.
‘Hello, Lena,’ Lu said quite affably. She had no reason not to be. ‘Nice to see you back again.’
Lena dragged her eyes in Lu’s direction. ‘Oh, hello… Katie, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘I’m Katie, Katie Roles, that’s Lu… Lu Wilmott. We was all at Miss Lake’s together.’
‘Oh yes, Lu. I get mixed up… It’s been a long…’ She never finished, but went off touching the wall at every step, as though she might be counting the bricks.
‘Blinking Hell!’ Kate said. ‘She’s off her rocker.’
Lu thought it was more as though she had had the stuffing knocked out of her. She watched her with curiosity over the next few days and found that, although she was changed, she wasn’t off her rocker. She was sort of loose and baggy – not so much physically, but in the way her focus needed a moment to catch up with her gaze, her speech and her actions.
If anyone had asked Lu, she would have said that the last person she would find herself drawn towards would be Lena Grigg. Something about Lena’s whole demeanour was an affront. To whom? Lu couldn’t possibly have said. But somebody had done something to stamp on Lena’s old spirit. The deeper her studies and classes carried her along, the more certain Lu became of her opinions. She wasn’t above changing them frequently, but her mind was always alive and coming to conclusions about everything.
There was no such thing as bad luck; most situations had a root cause created by the men who made the rules. In a word, things happened to people – such as with Lena – because other people created the circumstances in which they were bound to happen.
Lena had no hand in what she had become.
This had been done to her.
Why? Why should any person have such power over another?
Who were they, the Theys who had decided what should be done about her? Who chose them? Who gave them the right?
From her evening classes she knew how the magistracy worked. Magistrates chose other magistrates. In secret. They chose their own kind. The same with Boards of Governors; how could that sort of person know anything about girls from Lampeter? And the same people kept on choosing one another for every position going in the city.
It was people like those who must have had something to do with changing Lena.
As soon as Cynthia Lake opened the door to Lu, she said, ‘It’s all right, Lu. I know exactly why you’re here. Come in. Sit down, pour yourself some coffee, take a cigarette, and tell me. What do you think?’
‘Kate says she’s off her rocker.’
Cynthia Lake rubbed her eyes. ‘Oh, dear. Is Lena really bad? I really hoped she’d find something there with a few of the girls she used to know.’
‘Oh, she’s all right at her work. She’s been a machinist a long time – you can tell the way she reaches out for her pieces without looking.’
‘Yes, she’s been in a similar factory in another town. But she had… she was quite ill.’
Suddenly her behaviour made sense to Lu. ‘She had a nervous breakdown,’ she said intuitively.
‘Come along, Lu, you know I can’t break a confidence.’
‘And you come along, Miss Lake, you know I would never either.’
‘Touché. Yes, she did have a slight breakdown. Of course, she hasn’t been under the care of the authorities for some time. However—’ she paused and blew out a long stream of smoke, then took a drink of coffee – ‘there was a move to send her for treatment in a mental hospital.’
‘Bung her in the nut house, out of the way.’
‘I don’t know why you do it, Lu. If you don’t know by now that factory talk doesn’t shock me, then you’ll never know. I’ve taught here for twelve years now; do you think there’s anything I don’t know about Lampeter Street? In fact, I could probably quote you a few choice dockyard words you’ve never heard. But if it suits you… Yes, there were people who thought that she would be better off being “bunged in the nut house”.’
‘Was it you stopped them?’
‘No. Actually, it was Mrs Steiner and the Reverend Crompton. It was I who asked Mr Ezzard to take her on.’
‘What did he charge to take her?’
‘Lu! Your cynicism doesn’t do you justice. Have you ever thought that you may not know Mr Ezzard well enough to make such judgements upon him?’
‘Speak as I find, miss.’
It looks as though Eileen Grigg is back for good. She has got lodgings in Lake Road. Miss Lake thinks she will be all right because Mrs Grigg has taken the pledge with the Salvation Army. I don’t know what it is makes me talk to Miss Lake the way I do. It’s as though I’m back in Standard Four and think it’s clever to say rude or shocking things. Cheeky. Sharp as a tack to get a laugh from the class. Afterwards, I feel so stupid. I admire Miss Lake above all women I know, except perhaps Aunty May, but they are admirable in different ways. I’m never rude to May, why do I have to be to Miss Lake?
The meeting which Lu had been hoping to attend as Ray’s visitor was not an NUR meeting, but a big conference with other organizations about the future of public transport, and was held at Bournemouth.
It was hard to see whether it was Ray or Lu who was the more excited about the event.
Ray said, ‘One day, and maybe it won’t be that long, this country’s going to be run by the socialists, so we’ve got to be ready. People with vision will be there, Lu. Good public transport can change people’s lives.’
Lu wouldn’t have minded had the conference been to discuss wooden blocks, provided she had a visitor’s ticket and was going away. ‘Is the Seaview Hotel big? Will we be staying near where the big shops are? Shall I take all my three dresses? I’m going to wear that new two-piece I made. Katie is making me a blouse to go with it. Oh, Ray, I can hardly wait. Fancy sleeping two nights in a hotel!’
Lu took a half-day off on the Friday and went to meet Ray at the station dressed in a new two-piece suit in the latest cafe-au-lait shade, worn with a cream Peter Pan blouse, silk stockings and high-heeled court shoes. She felt a million dollars. Because it was an object of real class, she carried Gabriel Strawbridge’s well-labelled leather grip with her overnight things. At Southampton, where they changed trains, Ray introduced her to a group of other NUR men, all a lot older than Ray, all going to the same meeting, who treated her with great awkward politeness and joviality. When the Bournemouth train drew in, Ray said he’d see them at the other end. ‘Why can’t we sit with them, Ray?’
‘Well, talk gets a bit well… you know.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Ray, go and sit with them. I’m not a kid. I go to and fro enough by train when I go out to Roman’s. I’ll find a seat on my own and read all the way. I’d rather, so go and sit with your old union blokes.’
But Lu didn’t read all the way. When a well-dressed woman sitting in the opposite corner couldn’t get her cigarette lighter to work, Lu offered her own box of matches, and they dropped into easy conversation about how good Ronson lighters were, how neat, how slim, how reliable – if one just remembered to put some fuel in. Although the woman sounded like a real lady, she was friendly, and questioning, and to Lu’s surprise she found herself talking about life at Roman’s Fields as though that was her home, and Ted and May her parents. She didn’t actually say they were, but when the woman referred to Lu’s ‘people’, Lu responded in that way.
Another small falsification was to do with her accent, which Lu had been gradually modifying whenever there was a chance to do so. Many of her WEA classmates were worth listening to and copying. She could have mimicked radio accents, but they were so crack-jawed that she would never get away with that. She practised her better way of talking when buying goods in shops where she wasn’t known, asking for a tram ticket, and quietly reading aloud to her
self on the sea-front. She didn’t try too hard with this woman, she just concentrated on vowels, word endings and aspirants in the right places. Because her mother had been Vera Presley, a dentist’s daughter and trainee teacher, there had always been a home way of speaking which was more careful than the outside way.
In her role as Louise, she was glad that she had been working hard on getting her hands and nails into some sort of shape so that they did not immediately announce her as a factory girl.
‘Are you holidaying in Bournemouth?’
‘My brother is meeting some people down here, and I’m just going along for the fun of it.’
‘Lucky you. It’s work for me. I’ve got a meeting. Transport! The Comrades, no less. The Brothers. Hundreds of them all under one roof. Talking about unions, underground trains and buses – and steam-engines too, I shouldn’t wonder. Can you imagine?’
Lu’s false heart sank. What a fool! ‘Oh?’ Is there a more lame-sounding response?
‘I’m a reporter, you know. Malou.’ She spelled it out. ‘Malou. French. I do fashion pieces.’
At this information, the third occupant of the compartment, a bowler-hatted, stiff-white-collared, dark-suited, grey-haired man who had been either asleep or deep in his newspaper gave the woman a glance of curiosity.
Idiot! A reporter. Lu did not know. Of course she did not know. Had she known she would have never dreamed of becoming Louise, the nicely-spoken girl whose home was in a lovely setting in rural Hampshire. It was so completely embarrassing. The weekend was ruined.
‘The thing is there are so many lady comrades these days, that my editor thought we ought to do a piece on their fashion sense… their style.’
This was the first Lu had heard of any women trade-unionists. Not that it mattered in view of having made such a fool of herself. Showing off to somebody she would probably meet again at the conference. A reporter!