The Girl Now Leaving

by Betty Burton

  * * *

  Wealthy industrialist and factory hand. The encounter between them was as inevitable as between Lu and Duke. There had been no ignominious shut-out by the gateman, no instant dismissal by George; Lu was, as she knew was fitting, to be dismissed by the managing director. A small triumph, an acknowledgement that what she – they – had done was significant.

  The machines had stopped and all eyes were on her. Her mates knew she was for the high jump, and that this was no ordinary sacking. Nobody was fanciful enough to say that she was a contender in an unfair fight who had been forced to surrender, but as she shut down her machine and made her way slowly between the rows, touching girls on their shoulders as she passed by, that was not far from the general idea. As she walked through the factory knowing that this must be the last time, she was more filled with emotion than she would have believed, and she found it hard to hold back some tears. As she went through the big bay doors she did not look back. Her life as a factory girl was over. Every name, every voice, every position of every girl would be in her mind for ever. Set in aspic, domed in glass, they all would be a set-piece shelved in her memory, much as the loom-weight in the Alton museum. An appropriate label would be affixed: Machine room – Ezzard’s ‘Queenform’ Factory, Lampeter, Portsmouth, circa 1936.

  In his office, Jacob Ezzard made no pretence at being occupied. He knew that she must be on her way to see him now; all he could do was sit and wait and try to ignore the effect this business was having on his selfpossession. He had never been able to understand how it came about that of all the hundreds of ‘Queenform’ factory girls, this one had made such an impression upon him.

  Even now he could remember perfectly clearly how she had stood there on the day when she came to be set on. He hadn’t looked up at her, but had come to be aware that a contest was going on between them. She had stood it out, though, and when he had at last paid her some heed, he had thought that she meant to give him a reason for turning her down, yet there had been nothing… nothing at all to take exception to – the opposite, in fact.

  Until now, she had never behaved less than well. Her best piecework figures had never been topped before or since. She came from the Wilmotts, one of the true staymaking families who had been in the business as long as the Ezzards. Had she been a man, then he would have had no hesitation in promoting her to foreman and most likely to a sector manager.

  One thing he did have to thank God for: that he had not given in to the temptation on that visit to Lascelles in Paris. Perhaps it was best that she herself had given him this unquestionable reason for banishing her. There was not an employer in the whole city who would not do the same with such a trouble-maker. Even so, the reported success of her action had sent a cold chill through him. He was realist and intelligent enough to know that this could be the beginning of the end. Ideas had their time, and the idea that there should be some sort of accord between worker and employer was taking hold. Such ideas had struck at the foundations of the old order in Spain, then in France, and it was happening in a different way in Germany.

  The details of the meeting had been given him by, of all people, his own wife. Cynthia Lake had attended the meeting, that was obvious. Alma had thought that she would have loved to have been there to listen to the thrilling speech Cynthia’s girl had made, and to see that other pretty girl mount the stage so dramatically. ‘Like some heroine, Jacob, all swathed in bandages.’ He sometimes wondered whether Alma’s apparent prattle was as ingenuous as she made out: she’d sprinkled that information cleverly into a whole serving of inconsequential gossip.

  He had no choice but to get rid of her, and get her blacklisted in the city. Nellie Tuffnel and the Roles girl must go too, because they had presented themselves as obvious organizers. More than that was not necessary. He knew his workers, and this morning when he looked down upon them as they arrived, he had sensed their tension. He wanted no more trouble to upset production figures, especially now that they were getting enormous orders for the ‘Princess’ model. The dismissal of the three ring-leaders could stand for all the others he knew about. The Roles girl’s father had apparently threatened taking legal action, but he hadn’t a leg to stand on, or the money to go to law. The girl should have had her hair securely pinned.

  Jacob had read an article that purported to prove in terms of production figures that a happy workforce produced higher profits. Well, he wouldn’t go that far. In his own experience workers jumped when you said jump, because if they did not, then they knew that there was always somebody prepared to jump in their stead. Still, he could institute a few improvements that would show he was prepared to move with the times, but not prepared to set a trend that would upset his fellow factory owners. The whole of history proved that no one kept the upper hand by showing weakness. But, he saw sense in providing a few chairs in the women’s lavatories, and an experienced rodent exterminator would do a lot better than George’s dog. Simple medical kits on the premises made sense. He had already decided that George must investigate some form of safety guard around the belt drives. If the scarf had been around that Roles girl’s neck, she could have been strangled by it.

  They faced one another across his desk.

  ‘You are a very foolish and hot-headed young woman,’ Jacob Ezzard began. ‘You might have done very well for yourself at “Queenform”, instead of which you set yourself up as a spokesman for the rabble. You’re a troublemaker, and now there’s not an employer in the area who would let you through his factory gates. There is a blacklist, and you will find yourself at the top of it.’

  She was not wearing her working clothes, but a street coat with side pockets into which she thrust her hands nonchalantly – he couldn’t help finding the gesture seductive. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘And of course, by the same token, there is a blacklist of bad employers, and you’ll be at the top of that. Do you really think you can stop us? You can’t.’

  ‘I’m sacking you.’

  ‘You can sack me, sack Nellie, and Kate Roles, but we’re like the Hydra: try to kill us off and twice as many others will come in and take our place. But you won’t know who they are. How will you know who holds a union card and who doesn’t? They’ll all be there, gathering in numbers. Then one day you will discover that “Queenform’s” got a hundred per cent union membership. Then the machines will go off and everybody will walk out and you will have to meet your employees and talk to them like human beings.’

  She turned her back on him and walked out. He noticed that she wore high-heeled shoes and silk stockings. That was like cocking a snook.

  When Lu and Kate and Nellie came to collect their wages the following Friday, there was what seemed to be a spontaneous large gathering of girls and women waiting outside the factory gates. Among them, Eileen Grigg took her place beside her best friend, knowing that she was no longer going to be able to rely on Lu now that she had been given the sack. They said how sparkling Lu seemed to be, more like she was off on another trip like the one she’d had to Lascelles. Lu was delighted at the unexpected show of solidarity. Kate shook her wage-packet. ‘Come on, I don’t know how much there’s here, but let’s blow it down the Pier Cafe.’

  Lu said, ‘Yes, I’ll put mine to it. You coming, Nellie?’

  Nellie, who knew that the gathering was not entirely spontaneous, said, ‘No, these dos are for girls, but I’ll put in my packet.’ The Pier Cafe was a favourite rendezvous for factory girls; they could sit for ages over pots of tea and plates of buns and doughnuts, gathering tables together to accommodate whatever number of girls assembled. So, in dozens, they crammed on to the passing trams and tumbled off laughing at the pier.

  After half an hour, the initial hubbub quietened, and Kate Roles stood on a chair and told everyone to shut up. ‘I got something important to say, and now I’ve got the taste of spouting at meetings, it’s going to be hard to give it up. And I don’t intend to. I might be on the dole, but that won’t stop me going to all sorts of meetings and stand
ing up and asking awkward questions. But that’s not why I’m perched up here where half of you can see my stocking tops. I’m up here because of you, Lu Wilmott.’

  Lu, feeling intoxicated from the essential gaiety that groups of women exude when they are enjoying themselves and there are no men around, said, ‘Well, don’t blame me if you drop off your perch.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I said I wouldn’t cry. Here, Lu. We put together and got you this. It’s the dearest one we could find. There isn’t one of us here could make much use of one ourselves, but we know you will.’ Unceremoniously she thrust the highly decorated package at a surprised Lu.

  Although they all knew what the package contained, they still crushed around to see Lu’s reaction when she opened the leaving present. In a world where electric irons, sets of picture table-mats and embroidered tablecloths were luxuries, this was the first of its kind. Lu let out a ‘Waah!’, Portsmouth’s own particular expression of shock and surprise. ‘A proper fountain pen!’

  Lena said, ‘With a real gold nib.’

  ‘And my initial on it. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Go on,’ Kate said, ‘say it just the same. Come on, get up and show us your stocking tops too.’

  Lu went one better than Kate and climbed on to a table. ‘This… is the nicest thing anybody could ever ask for. Not just the pen, but that’s just wonderful too, but all of you coming here like this. I said to Nellie that we had got to find a way of getting together and making sure what happened a week ago don’t get lost, and this is the perfect chance for me to start getting on to you.

  ‘Keeping the union going isn’t going to be easy. You can be sure every time somebody puts their head above the parapet, the bosses are going to try to shoot it off. This time it was Nellie, Kate and me got our heads shot off, but we knew it was sure to happen when we organized the meeting, and none of us regrets it. But what you have got to make sure is that nobody else loses their job because they joined the union.

  ‘The bosses have got their secret ways: you might not have heard of what goes on, but there’s a club called the Freemasons that practically runs the city, there’s businessmen’s clubs, there’s associations, they meet at golf clubs, sailing clubs, they have dinners, visit each other in their homes… They settle things amongst themselves, to suit themselves, and none of them thinks that’s wrong.

  ‘The only weapon girls and women like us have against all these societies the bosses have set up to look after their interests is ourselves. They need us, they can’t do without us. Even if they tell you: There’s plenty more where you came from, don’t go into a panic and start kissing their feet. Sticking together is what counts, and sticking together is what being in a union means. In our factory, we’ve done the worst bit, we’ve had a meeting and got it going.’ The young women looked at one another and nodded: they knew that they had done something important last Friday.

  ‘When Mr Ezzard called me into his office to tell me what he thought of me, I told him that there would come a day when every woman and girl in “Queenform” would hold a union card. Then one day, when there’s a shutdown, or somebody asks for a washbasin to be installed and you refuse, you’re going to see every woman in the factory get up from their machines and walk out through those gates.

  ‘He knew I was right. You could almost hear the cash register in his brain working out how much profit would go down the drain. They’ve done it in other places, in other trades – the mines, steelworkers, ship builders. Not because there was more jobs than men, they got their unions working because they saw the sense in sticking together and standing up to the bosses. Now, a lot of the men’s trades have got proper arrangements with union leaders to speak up for them—’

  A young girl called out, ‘But you’re our leader aren’t you? If you go, who’s going to keep us together? Who’s going to take our subs and go to meetings and that?’

  The room was now totally quiet. Others were nodding in agreement with the girl, as Lu looked around at a sea of wide eyes. ‘Listen,’ Lu said firmly. ‘I’m not your leader, I never was. I was just the one who got mad enough to start the ball rolling. You don’t need me. You’ve got each other, you’ve got all this strength and spirit. It’s what keeps us slogging away day after day in a place that’s hardly fit to be called a dungeon, and still able to keep tabs on where George’s hands are, and still able to see the funny side of things.

  ‘And the other thing none of us must ever forget – and it’s easy to forget it because nobody ever gives us credit for what we do, and we never get a certificate saying we passed anything – but we are skilled workers. It takes ages to learn how to do what we do at such speed. That’s part of the skill, the speed; we work so fast that you can hardly see the needle.’ She held up her damaged finger and thumb. ‘Too damned fast sometimes.’ They laughed, they reviewed their own scars, the tension dropped, Lu Wilmott was one of them.

  ‘We aren’t female “hands”, we aren’t “factory girls”, we are women workers employed in the staymaking industry for our skill and knowledge. And now we are Members of the respected Garment Makers’ and Tailors’ Union. We count for something.’

  Somebody asked, ‘What you going to do, Lu?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m blacklisted in the Portsmouth factories – not that that means much. Kate and I have had offers to go into the Co-op bespoke tailoring department. Kate might go, but I don’t know yet. And as far as Ezzard’s is concerned, it doesn’t matter, I’m finished there. All you need for now is to decide who is going to take on collecting the weekly subscriptions and keeping tabs on things. You’ll get help from people like Gus and my brother if you need it. But why should you: you’re as good as any of the men.’

  ‘Please, Lu.’ Lena held up her hand as though in school. ‘I’ll do it if you like.’

  Lena. Lena Grigg, of all people, coming forward, offering herself in front of a room full of girls. Lena would be perfect. Conscientious and unlikely to allow defaulters to backslide.

  ‘I was always good at figures, wasn’t I, Lu?’

  ‘You were, Lena… She was. She was always near the top of the class.’ Lu grinned at Lena. ‘The times I could have thumped you for coming out top over me. I tell you what, I propose we make Eileen Grigg our… what? I don’t know. It’s going to be a Jack-of-all-trades job.’

  ‘Jill-of-all-trades,’ Kate said.

  ‘What shall I propose Lena as?’

  ‘I’ll be the “Queenform Union Representative”.’

  ‘Good!’ Lu said. ‘Then I propose Lena as Representative of the “Queenform” branch of the Garment Workers’ Union.’

  * * *

  Back home, Lu related what had taken place in the Pier Cafe. ‘Lena got up on a chair and made a little speech… can you imagine? She was wonderful. She said, “Anybody who don’t know me, I’m Lena Grigg, I’m Lu’s friend, and like she said, I’m a skilled machinist and I’m proud of that. I never owed nobody a penny piece, and I’m proud of that. If you don’t know me now, you soon will. I shan’t never try to collect money from you at Ezzard’s – I might look green, but I’m not a cabbage.” She was good, she made them laugh.’

  Ray said, ‘It’s amazing what people can do.’

  Bar said, ‘Not when it’s women, Ray, you shouldn’t never be amazed at anything women do. We can do anything when we puts our minds to it.’ She touched Ray on the back of the hand with one finger. Lu was astonished at how intimate the gesture was, and suddenly saw what she had been blind to: that Ray and Bar were openly in love. Bar continued, ‘Some of us can even get stiff-necked old railwaymen to propose to us.’

  ‘You and Ray?’

  Ray flushed, actually flushed like a youth when he said, ‘That’s right, Lu, we’re going to get married.’

  ‘We’re going to have a baby.’

  * * *

  Bar and Ray were married quietly at the Register Office. May and Ann Carter had come down by train, and Chick Manners and Lu stood as witnesses. When the s
mall celebration in Palccino’s was over, Lu collected her bag from Number 110, boarded the train with Ann and May, and went to Roman’s Fields where, as May put it, she would have time to sort herself out. It was one of the busiest times of year, so her labour was welcome there.

  They were strange days, for although Lu was as fit as a fiddle and as strong as a horse, she sometimes had the feeling that she was once again recuperating after an illness. She reasoned that she must be gathering strength for whatever came next. Something was coming: she knew it, sensed it.

  Sometimes in the late evening she would walk alone through the wood down to The Swallitt Pool, where she would sit on the bent willow and swish her toes in the still water. Inevitably she thought of Duke. She would hear a horse pass by in the lane and wonder what would happen if Duke were to show up there. Not that it was likely, for Duke now preferred to ride his thoroughbred motor car. Paid for, as Lu had learned from Ann Carter, by people who paid him very silly amounts of money to have their mares serviced by one of Duke’s two thoroughbred stud horses.

  She felt a strange detachment about him. It was as if he was somebody interesting she had read about, a character in fiction or mythology. She had no particular wish to see him again. She had erotic dreams in which Duke and David became one lover, being at the same time both dark and fair, slim and broad, courteous and negligent. The one thing they had in common was a long, fast racing car which only she was allowed to drive.

  During those weeks at Roman’s Fields, Lu was in limbo, gathering her wits and strength about her as well as building up her Post Office account. The outside world came in the form of Ken’s letters, which Ray sent on. These were to a great extent about the political situation in Spain and France.