by Betty Burton
When the dinner-time hooter sounded it was as though the girls themselves were letting off steam with their sudden burst of loud chattering and rolling of stiff necks and shoulders. No one was even a minute late back, certainly no one risked being five minutes late and being shut out for the afternoon.
At three o’clock when there was usually a bit of coming and going for a pee and a puff in the toilets, there was very little disturbance. George kept looking up from his tally-sheets. There was something up. He’d been here a sight too long not to sense when something was up. He loosened Nig’s rope, which usually meant that, as soon as the dog saw the door open, he would scoot off out of the office and down the length of the factory like the whippet he was, causing the girls to look up and laugh. Nig went off as though coursing a hare, but nothing happened in the machine room. At four o’clock he went over to the main office and said, ‘Something’s up on the bottom floor today.’
‘What are you telling me for, George? Sort it out.’
‘I can’t put my finger on it. But they’re up to something.’
‘Somebody getting married?’
‘No, no. It’s nothing like that. When that’s happening, they get giggly and fidgety, and they come with their hair in curlers, same as when they’re going out randying. No, it’s just all quiet and the machines are going like merry hell.’
‘What do you want me to do then, go over and stop them working?’
‘All right, have it your way, but I tell you, there’s something going on.’
When his brother was gone, Mr Ezzard pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and tried to think, but couldn’t imagine what might be going on. The thing was, George knew the factory, and he knew female labour. God knows he should, he’d been in trouble with them often enough.
About fifteen minutes before the five-thirty hooter, Mr Ezzard tidied his desk, put on his Melton cloth coat, picked up his briefcase and said to his secretary that he was just going to have a walk over to the work shops before he went home.
At five-twenty the security man opened the factory door and ushered his boss in. Mr Ezzard stood for a moment. Nothing amiss, an industrious workforce doing what it was paid to do, keeping its head down, and earning its keep. He started, as he usually did when visiting the work shops, at a slow, determined pace, his tipped heels ringing on the concrete floor. As he progressed he sensed rather than heard that he was observed. George was right, there was something going on. The sound that went ahead of his progress was the whispered sibilants of ‘Watch out… Missster Esssard… Missster Esssard.’
It was only when he reached the row of machines that the fastest seamers always claimed as their own, that he realized that whatever was going on, was going on here. The girl was oblivious, and there was no doubt that she was the disturbing focus of attention of all the other workers. Even in her white head-cloth and with her head bent low, he knew who she was. He remembered her at first because Alma would ask him how Miss Lake’s clever little girl was progressing, then he had begun to notice her sometimes as she went out through the gates talking nineteen to the dozen, laughing, gesticulating. Several times recently, he had found himself standing at the window actually trying to pick her out. It was not difficult; she had a habit at the end of the afternoon shift of, as soon as she reached the gate, ripping off her head-cloth and shaking her bright chestnut hair free and running her fingers through it. Even in the rain. Against his will, he found her attractive – he would not let his mind admit to finding her desirable – but undoubtedly she had developed into a striking young woman.
‘Wilmott! What’s going on?’
Lu jumped out of her skin and her thumb went under the needle-foot. So fast was her machine working that it had made two stitches before it jolted to a stop. She sat there, pain streaming down her face in tears.
‘Don’t stand there, George! Fetch the mechanic.’
The mechanic was not always as swift in answering a call to free a machinist who had run over her fingers, but the news that Mr Ezzard was on the shop floor reached the whole factory almost before Mr Ezzard himself. Although the mechanic dismantled the machine-head quickly, Lu was pale and fainting by the time she could free her hand with the needle still embedded.
There were four outlets for her blood to flow: it dripped over her worktable, over the unstitched pieces, down her skirt and across the floor as she dripped her way to George’s office.
‘Get out your brandy, George.’
Lu was dazed, and allowed the spirit to be tipped into her mouth.
‘Fetch Nellie.’
‘I think she should go to the emergency at the hospital.’
Lu sat looking weak and pale; not so much from the injury to her thumb – although that wasn’t pleasant – but from eight hours of working flat-out at top speed, but Mr Ezzard wasn’t to know that. Through the glass partition she saw Kate, her machine still running, trying to see what was going on in the office. The hooter sounded, but tonight there was no rush to cover the machines and run for the door; instead they diligently tidied away every thread and brushed off every bit of lint. Nobody would know who had won until Nellie had counted the pieces Lu had been working on, and added them to her running total.
Nellie said, ‘It looks nasty, Mr Ezzard. I’ll send out to the chemist’s and get some sal volatile and something to put round her finger, and then I think somebody ought to see she gets to the doctor.’
Lu said, ‘Kate will. Ask her Nellie, please.’
The whole episode discomfited Mr Ezzard, and he wished to be away from George’s stuffy little office, away from George, away from the factory women with their secrets and that kind of silent, sullen exchange that they went in for. And he wanted to be away from the Wilmott girl, who had sat in George’s chair, straight-backed and looking as arrogant as any of the spoilt daughters of county mothers he had had the misfortune to meet – and infinitely more interesting. During the entire dismantling of the machine, she had hardly said a word. She had not even cried out or sworn at the mechanic like any normal factory girl. He had no wish to walk back through ‘the factory of a thousand eyes’ as he had once described it to Alma, but dignity, and not making mountains out of molehills, ensured that he must do so.
‘What happened, Wilmott?’ George said. ‘Did you nod off at your machine? Do you pay into a hospital scheme? You should. Always be insured for doctors and hospital treatment.’
Kate, indignant and blaming Mr Ezzard all the way, and Lu, her hand still with its needle covered with a piece of reject cloth provided by Nellie, walked through the streets to the hospital where the needle was removed.
As he drove out through the factory gate, Mr Ezzard was still puzzling about what had been going on. George was welcome to spend his time down there with hundreds of females. Always trouble, always mischief going on; women were so secretive. He never knew what was going on in Alma’s mind, even when she pulled up her nightdress and put her arms around him, he was never certain what she thought about it. A man had physical evidence that he had had pleasure, but neither of his wives had shown much response, even after five or ten minutes of his attentions.
‘TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE WINS’ chalked on the factory wall meant nothing to Mr Ezzard. But, the following week, when George saw the tally Wilmott had totted up last Friday, he guessed what had been going on. Wilmott was one of the fastest seamers he could remember, he guessed that she had been trying to break some sort of record.
When Lu came in with her thumb bandaged, she was greeted by a cheer, which brought George to the window and started Nig barking. Pam, who had kept the board and money, handed Lu three pounds and eighteen shillings.
On the weekend when she got her big pay-packet, she took what was left after her contributions to Ray’s box, plus her winnings, and caught the train to Southampton to meet Sonia; they went round the shops. Lu bought cosmetics, had a bright chestnut colour put on her hair, and bought a beautiful swing-back coat. They had tea in the art-deco surrou
ndings of the Odeon cafe, and then went into the cinema. Afterwards Sonia signalled a taxi as though they did it every day and, as they parted, Sonia said, ‘I say, Lu, you’re more fun than your Ken.’
* * *
Lu’s life was becoming more interesting and complex, but she kept each component separate from the others. Glamorous interludes in Southampton – window-shopping and dancing – contrasted with and – because there could be Louise as well as Lu – added spice to the other lives at Ezzard’s, at Roman’s Fields and at the WEA classes. Mr Matthews was now running a course on International Affairs, so she began to gain insight into people of different origins and different classes from her own, if not Miss Lake, then Jews generally and the Steiners in particular, and to learn that there were worse origins than those of an illegitimate child of a sailor born in the Pompey slums.
Eileen Grigg came into the factory day after day, plodding and unobtrusive, then sat industriously working until the hooter sounded. Lu, against her will, often found herself drawn to looking at her, always trying to catch a glimpse of the old Lena behind the expressionless face. It was the very placidity of her old antagonist that poked and prodded at Lu. On rare occasions Eileen would look up and catch Lu’s eye and at once jerk her attention back to her work. It bothered Lu that she could not see beneath the layer of fat that now overlaid the once jagged little skull that the fighting Lena used to thrust into Lu’s face.
Sometimes Lu hung about waiting whilst Eileen methodically tidied her table and cleaned lint from her machine. She would then fall in beside her to walk out of the factory and along the road to the corner. Kate Roles, irritated with Lu, said, ‘What you starting palling up with Lena Grigg for? She’s just a fat, boring old daftie.’
‘She’s not daft.’
‘Well, you can’t say she’s not boring.’
‘We–ell, I know, it’s a lot more fun with you, but don’t you feel sorry for her? I do.’
‘There’s a lot of people I feel sorry for, but that don’t mean I have to start palling up with them.’
‘You can’t just chuck people to one side.’
‘Oh, Lu! Sometimes you’re such a goody-goody.’
Lu flushed with resentful crossness and embarrassment. ‘That’s just stupid. How would you feel if people said I only went to the pictures with you because I’m sorry for you?’
‘It wouldn’t be true.’
‘Well, somebody’s got to mind about her. She used to be one of us.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘You know what I mean, you can’t get away from all those years we sat in the same classroom, can you?’
Kate wouldn’t see Lu’s point of view; perhaps didn’t suffer the same kind of guilt at how things had turned out with Lu and Kate having everything and poor old Lena nothing. ‘It’s not asking much just to be a bit friendly.’
‘I wasn’t never unfriendly… you were the one always falling out and fighting with her.’
‘We were just kids then.’
Kate went sulky: she resented her friends having other friends. ‘She probably likes her own company anyway; she don’t make much effort to talk.’
‘And it don’t take much for us, either.’
Kate flounced. ‘Do as you like, Lu, if it makes you feel any better.’
Even if trying to get some response from Lena wasn’t going to make Lu feel better, she felt compelled to try. Lampeter girls might be hard, touchy and belligerent, and develop into sullen, obedient workers, quarrelsome wives and harsh mothers, but they never withdrew into blank acceptance, nor removed themselves from their workmates as Lena appeared to have done. Two things especially troubled Lu: one, it scared her that such a young person could have had the stuffing knocked out of her; the other, nobody seemed very bothered that she had. Her old belligerent self was at least a girl you took notice of. Lu smiled to herself. If you didn’t, she’d smash you in the teeth.
Embedded somewhere within Lu’s mixed bundle of thoughts was that an injustice had been done. The Grigg family were certainly a nuisance: they didn’t fit in, they didn’t even seem to care. Nobody had ever had a good word for them and it seemed as though somebody had to be punished for being a Grigg. It had been easy to pick on Eileen.
‘Kate? Do you think it’s OK what’s happened to Lena?’
‘You don’t ever give up, do you, Lu? Look. Eileen’s quietened down and the Grigg family have been cleared out of our area into a council house. I can’t see what there is to keep on about.’
‘What’s to keep on about is that Lena’s a scapegoat.’
‘I tell you this, Lu Wilmott, if anybody’s changing out of all recognition, it isn’t only Lena Grigg.’
Kate was right; there were times when Lu couldn’t leave things alone. She waited for Lena one evening and asked her what she did after work.
‘Nothing really.’
‘Don’t you go out?’
‘Sometimes on the beach.’
‘Don’t you go to the pictures?’
Lena shook her head and turned off to where she lived without another word or look in Lu’s direction.
Lu ran after her. ‘Do you want to come to the pictures?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘You could come with me.’
‘If you like.’
‘We’ll go in the cheap seats.’
‘If you like.’
‘Shall I call for you?’
‘All right, then.’
‘First house or second?’
‘I don’t mind.’
It was like stirring custard powder with insufficient milk. ‘First house then, straight after work tomorrow.’
‘All right. Which one?’
The first spark of interest. ‘There’s one with Frederic March, do you like him?’
‘I don’t mind. I like musicals.’
‘All right then, shaU we go and see the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire?’
‘Yeah, all right.’
They sat side by side in the cheap seats, viewing the screen at a neck-aching angle, Eileen solidly in her seat eating her way through a bag of broken biscuits which she offered to Lu from time to time. When the lights went up at the interval, Eileen watched the progress of the approaching girl selling ice-cream. ‘Are you going to have one, Lu? They sell Eldorados here… better than Walls’s.’ Lena rummaged in her pocket.
Lu said, ‘I’ll treat you if you like.’
‘All right… can I have a tub?’
At twopence, a tub was an expensive treat, but Lu felt quite pleased that Lena was at least acknowledging her presence. Lu devoured a water-ice whilst it was still frozen and hard, but Eileen was still methodically dipping her wooden spoon into the tub well into the start of the big film. When the lights came up and the organist playing a Wurlitzer rose from the depths, Eileen sat on. ‘Are you going to see it round again?’
Lu felt that to say no would be like taking a treat away from a child; even so she said, ‘I ought to get home really. Anyway, I’m quite hungry.’
‘All right, then.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I like a musical.’
‘Are you going straight home?’
‘I’m going to get my chips.’
‘So will I, save me doing anything. Ray’s out tonight.’
Eileen was obviously well known in the chip shop. ‘Two penn’orth with scraps, open, same as usual, Eileen?’
‘Closed, I want them closed.’ Eileen’s eyes followed every movement of the shopkeeper as he scooped up two large portions of chips and three scoops of batter scraps in a separate bag wrapped in newspaper. Lu had a threepenny fish and a pennyworth of chips. At twice the price, Lu’s supper was a quarter the bulk when wrapped.
In that part of town where Lu and Eileen Grigg had grown up, scrap pudding, scraps with bread and vinegar, chips and scraps or simple scraps in a bag had in some families been part of the daily diet from the time when there were chip shops to provide it. Towards
the end of the week, when the money had run out, scraps were in demand. Children would hang around chip-shop windows and watch for the fryer to sieve out the bits of fried batter from the hot oil and then build them into small mounds on either side of the stove. Fried flour, salt and water, still not drained of delirious hot lard and oil, called to hungry children. Some fryers would not give scraps unless chips were bought too, so sometimes a penny needed to be scrounged or lifted, or winkled from a chocolate vending machine.
‘Don’t you like fish, Lena?’
Eileen shrugged. ‘It’s all right, but it’s threepence.’
On the following Thursday morning, Eileen waited for Lu at the factory gate. ‘There’s Shirley Temple on tonight, first house starts at quarter to six. I don’t want to see King Kong.’ Lu had some reading to do for Mr Matthews’ class, but because Lena had strung two sentences together and spoken before being spoken to, Lu derided to postpone her first plan.
‘All right then, Lena, but I shan’t stay on to see it round.’
‘That’s all right, I don’t mind.’
And so Lena and Lu, still in their working clothes, started to go together to first-house pictures on Thursday evenings, the pattern following the first outing. Lu didn’t tell Kate, but as Kate was going out with another new boyfriend, they were going through one of the periods when they saw very little of one another outside of work.
Ray said, ‘You lead a funny old life, Lu. The pictures and chips with Lena Grigg in your work clothes, and then posh shops and shows with Ken’s girl all dolled up to the nines.’
‘I know, I was just thinking the other day, it’s like having a row of little boxes and each one’s got a different Lu inside. When I get up I have to think which one has to come out today.’