The Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  The girls waited anxiously, their eyes glued to the cloakroom door, but before long the urgent footfalls passed away again, and they breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Those are Renie’s boots you’ve ruined,’ Betty giggled. ‘What’s she going to say when you tell her?’

  Jeanie shrugged her shoulders, helplessly. ‘I didn’t know what else to do!’ she said.

  Ethel’s strict adherence to the rules was not always appreciated, and she soon became tired of hearing at second hand that one girl or another had been moaning about something she’d done. Despite her best efforts to navigate the tricky waters of being a boss, it seemed that everyone had something to say about the way she was doing her job.

  At night, when she went to bed, Ethel found herself worrying about the Hesser Floor. Every time she was about to drift off, thoughts of work would flit back into her head and stop her from sleeping.

  ‘What’s the matter, Et?’ Archie asked one night, after she had been tossing and turning for hours as usual.

  ‘Just thinking about Tate & Lyle,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, not again!’ he muttered, turning over and going back to sleep.

  Before long, Ethel decided that a new, direct strategy was called for: she would summon all the girls with complaints up to the office one by one, and let them tell her exactly what they were unhappy about. Surely, she reasoned, once she had explained her thinking to them, they would have to understand her position.

  On the appointed day, Ethel waited in the Hesser Floor office for the complainants to arrive. There was a knock on the door and the first girl shuffled in.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Ethel, motioning to a chair.

  The girl sat down and waited.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Ethel.

  ‘Every time the machine stops, you always want to know why,’ the girl blurted out.

  Ethel smiled. ‘Well,’ she countered sweetly, ‘I have to know why it stopped because if one of the managers comes along and asks me, I need to know what to say to him. If I say I don’t know, I won’t be doing my job, will I?’

  The girl seemed to accept this explanation and silently got up and left the room.

  That shut her up, thought Ethel.

  Next, a check-weigher came in to see her. ‘You always want to know when people go outside for a loo break,’ she grumbled.

  ‘That’s right,’ responded Ethel. ‘You’re only allowed ten minutes outside, and you’re supposed to wait for a relief girl to cover you so that there are always two people on the job. If you don’t wait for cover, one day someone’s going to notice that one girl can manage on her own, and they’ll turn it into a one-woman job.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And then you could be out on your ear.’

  One by one, the complainants trickled in, and to each in turn Ethel explained that, while they might not be happy with how things were, there was always a good reason behind her behaviour. At the end of the day she went home utterly exhausted, but convinced she had made some headway with the Hesser girls.

  Ethel’s next challenge, however, came in the form of an older woman from another department. Walking past the area where the engineers worked, Ethel spotted her sitting down and chatting to them over a cup of tea. Since eating and drinking were strictly forbidden on the floor, she could hardly walk past and let the situation continue. She marched over immediately and told the woman to stop drinking.

  The woman left without any trouble, but the male engineers were furious. ‘What right does a girl like you have to tell a woman of her age what to do?’ demanded one of them. ‘It ain’t proper!’

  ‘No one’s allowed to drink on the factory floor,’ Ethel replied coolly. ‘It’s against the rules.’ She walked off, leaving the men seething.

  The next day Ethel was called into the office of her foreman, Tony Tunkin. He was a stocky man with bleached blond hair and was known in the department as The Canary, but he did his best to maintain an air of authority nonetheless.

  ‘I’ve had a complaint about you from one of the engineers, Ethel,’ he said. ‘What’s this about you telling off an older woman from another department?’

  ‘She was drinking tea, Tony,’ Ethel explained calmly. ‘And it don’t matter what department she’s from or how old she is, rules is rules. What if one of my girls saw me walk on by without saying anything to her? How would that make them feel?’

  Tony sighed. ‘Look, just try to stick to your own department, Ethel.’

  ‘I ain’t doing no more than my job, Tony. If a rule is good enough for one, it’s good enough for all.’

  Tony could see he wasn’t going to win the argument. ‘All right, Ethel, you can go now,’ he agreed reluctantly.

  With Tony and the other managers, Ethel was becoming known for speaking her mind, and her straight-talking, fair-is-fair approach didn’t always go down well with them. One day Tony summoned her to help vet some girls who were being transferred from the Thames Refinery. Ethel went down to the other factory with him, where they interviewed the candidates together. She accepted all of them except one, whose father had many years’ service with the company but who Ethel felt wasn’t up to the job.

  On hearing what had happened, a senior manager at Thames marched into the room to remonstrate with Ethel. ‘Why didn’t you take her?’ he protested. ‘She comes from a very good family.’

  ‘Well, I’m not employing her family!’ Ethel retorted.

  There was nothing the manager could say to that, and the girl was not hired.

  Since Ethel prided herself on being a stickler for rules, she couldn’t afford to be seen failing to apply the same high standards to herself as she did to others. One day, however, she was caught off guard.

  Every week the Hesser department ran a raffle, with the proceeds going to Guide Dogs for the Blind. It was a popular activity, both among the girls, who regularly gambled what little they could spare from their wages, and in the offices, where the little pewter dogs offered by the charity as thanks were displayed with pride.

  The top prize in this weekly competition had traditionally been a set of sheets and towels, which meant that whoever was running it had to go shopping every week in Rathbone Market. When Ethel took over she hit upon a time-saving alternative: she would simply give the money for the sheets and towels to the winner as a cash prize. The Hesser girls were delighted, since for many of them buying a new pair of shoes or a dress was infinitely more appealing.

  Ethel congratulated herself on a brilliant piece of innovation. Until, that is, she arrived at work one day to find Tony Tunkin waiting outside the department office for her.

  ‘Ethel,’ he asked anxiously, ‘have you been running a cash prize in your raffle?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied proudly. ‘The girls love it.’

  ‘Oh.’ His face dropped. ‘I think you’d better come inside.’

  Tony shut the door. ‘The police have just rung,’ he said. ‘They’ve heard about your raffle. Apparently it’s against the law to have a cash prize!’

  Ethel was stunned. ‘Why?’

  ‘They said it’s basically a lottery,’ he replied. ‘And those are illegal.’

  Ethel didn’t know what to say. ‘What am I going to do, Tony?’ she whispered.

  ‘We’ll just have to tell them you didn’t know you were doing anything wrong,’ Tony said. ‘And that it will stop immediately.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ethel agreed, quickly.

  She went back to the floor feeling mortified. How could she face her girls if they ever found out she was in trouble with the law? Her reputation would be shot to pieces. And what if the police decided to prosecute?

  Before long, Ethel saw Tony hurrying over to talk to her. The police had been back on the line.

  ‘Well, I told them it won’t happen again,’ he said, breathlessly, ‘and they’re going to let it go – this time.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Ethel cried, overwhelmed with relief.

  Rules might be rules, but in this instance Ethel was gra
teful that they hadn’t been too stringently enforced.

  The next time a worker got into trouble, Ethel was on the side of leniency. An engineer by the name of Frank had been having a particularly difficult day, summoned onto the floor again and again by a sugar girl who just couldn’t get her machine to work properly. First the weighing mechanism was miscalibrated, then the bags got stuck going along the belt, then there was a problem with the glue trough. Every time, Frank gritted his teeth as she called him over to attend to the next minor difficulty.

  After the seventh or eighth incident that morning, however, Frank’s goodwill had dried up completely. ‘What is it now?’ he demanded, as the girl asked him to look at the machine.

  ‘It’s still broken,’ she complained. ‘Can’t you fix it properly?’

  Frank had had enough. How dare she complain, when it was he who had to do all the repairs and adjustments and she just sat there having a break?

  ‘Maybe it’d work better if you took a bit more fucking care, you stupid cow,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘What did you say?’ the girl demanded loudly.

  Frank immediately apologised for the outburst, but it was too late – the girl was already in floods of tears and complaining about how cruelly she had been treated. She was duly taken away to calm down in the factory surgery, where Ethel heard the whole unfortunate tale.

  Frank was waiting outside the surgery, looking penitent. ‘I’m sorry about this, Ethel,’ he said.

  ‘All right, Frank,’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  The next day, when Ethel arrived at work, Frank was nowhere to be seen. When she inquired about what had happened to him, she was told he was on suspension while the management decided what to do with him. A little while later, one of the managers came into the office to speak to Ethel.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked her. ‘Do you reckon we should let him go?’

  Although swearing on the floor was certainly frowned upon, Ethel couldn’t help but feel sorry for poor Frank. After all, he had spoken in the heat of the moment, at the end of a frustrating morning, and had apologised straight away. Surely nothing would really be gained by punishing him.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said firmly.

  The manager was taken aback. This wasn’t what he had expected from Ethel.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well, she swears with the other girls,’ Ethel pointed out. ‘I don’t swear, but if a man swore at me and said he was sorry, as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it. Besides, Frank’s just getting the hang of those machines, and if we get rid of him we’ve got to start training someone else up all over again.’

  Her reasoning was hard to argue with, and the manager went away, scratching his head.

  A few days later, a grateful Frank was back on the job.

  Gaining the respect and acceptance of the girls, learning to deal with the higher tiers of management, and knowing when to be strict and when to be lenient wasn’t always easy. But after a while it was clear that Ethel’s efforts were paying off. Her superiors remarked that whenever she was on the factory floor the amount of sugar packed would noticeably increase.

  One afternoon, while Ethel was roaming the department, doing her best to keep the girls in check, a distinguished guest stepped onto the floor. Within seconds a whisper went round the room, and the girls busied themselves intently with their work.

  Ethel looked up to see Oliver Lyle approaching. To her surprise he walked straight towards her as if she was the person he had come to see.

  ‘You must be Ethel,’ he said, beaming.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, as he shook her by the hand.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you personally that we all know what an excellent job you’re doing.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she replied, proudly.

  That night, much to Archie’s relief, Ethel slept blissfully all night long.

  11

  Lilian

  For hard-working factory girls in the East End, the beano – a company-sponsored day out at the seaside – was a highlight of the year. Each company in Silvertown had its own trips, usually to Margate, Southend or Clacton.

  At Tate & Lyle every department had a beano, as did each of the sports teams. To transport the merry-makers, coaches were hired and in some cases whole trains commandeered. The Royal Daffodil, a twin-funnelled pleasure steamer, was frequently used to ship workers from North Woolwich pier down to Margate and back. The boat had a distinguished history, having previously transported 9,000 people safely home from Dunkirk in a total of seven trips across the Channel.

  As each beano approached, male and female workers alike anticipated the opportunity to turn workplace crushes into something more, aided by cheap booze, sea air and an absence of managerial control. ‘Who are you going to cop off with?’ was the question most heard in the lead-up to a beano. Couples had been known to disappear behind the bushes during a pit stop on the way back from the seaside, emerging grass-stained and grinning before boarding the coach once again. Thankfully, a ‘what happens on beano stays on beano’ mentality prevailed.

  One young man called Alan, however, seemed unaware of this golden rule. A husband and father of two, he got off with a female colleague who was also married. But on the journey home neither of them felt like returning to reality. Instead, they booked into a hotel that night, and never went back to their spouses again.

  As the can-making department’s beano to Margate loomed, the girls on Lilian’s floor were in a flurry of excitement as usual. Since she had managed to avoid all the previous trips, Old Fat Nell and Little Lil were determined to make sure she came this time.

  ‘C’mon, Big Lil, we’ve never all been on a beano together,’ begged Little Lil, looking up at her with beseeching eyes.

  ‘Think of all the fish and chips,’ added Old Fat Nell.

  Lilian was about to plead family commitments, but then memories of Weston-super-Mare popped into her head. The walks along the promenade, the feeling of the sun on her face, the laughter of the other girls – she had discovered a lighter side of life on that trip. Why shouldn’t she have another taste of it now?

  ‘I’m in!’ she told them.

  The can-making girls met their coach at eight-thirty a.m. outside Trinity Church on the Barking Road. By the time Lilian got there, the luggage hold was already being loaded up with crates of beer. ‘Oh, were we meant to bring some?’ she asked nervously. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I brought something far more useful,’ a girl next to her said, blasting her ear with the noise of an accordion. ‘No beano’s complete without a bit of music, eh?’

  Lilian got on the coach, sitting next to Little Lil, while Old Fat Nell spread out across two seats behind them. As the vehicle drew away, a gaggle of little boys ran after them shouting, ‘Chuck out your mouldies! Chuck out your mouldies!’ Purses were obligingly taken out and coppers rained down on the excited children, who scrabbled around picking them up.

  The accordion was put to immediate use, accompanying a few rounds of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’, ‘Roll out the Barrel’ and ‘Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner’, sung at an astonishing volume which caused the coach driver, Dave, to grimace. Lilian sang along quietly; if the girls were this noisy at eight-thirty, she thought, what would they be like after the crates of beer were cracked open?

  The singing stopped abruptly, however, when the passengers spotted a coach driving past that was packed full of young men. Windows were wound down, this time for some less child-friendly behaviour. ‘Oi, give us a mooner!’ the shout went up, and a few of the boys willingly turned round and dropped their trousers.

  An hour or so later the girls were ecstatic when the other coach pulled in at the same pub as theirs for a pit stop. Looking harrowed already, Dave promptly hit the bar, while his passengers set about getting to know the young men, who came from Pinchin Johnson’s paint factory. Lilian, Little Lil and Old Fat Nell concentrated on their
drinks. Lilian had no intention of getting entangled with some boy she would most likely never see again. From what she had so far seen of men, he would probably turn out to have a wife and kids at home.

  Eventually Dave marched the girls back onto the coach, and the boys waved them off with calls of ‘See you in Margate!’

  The crates in the hold were raided for the second leg of the journey, and by the time they finally reached their destination the singing had become even louder. They drew into an enormous car park full of coaches just like their own, but the girls soon spotted the one with their boys on it, and hurried off to find them. ‘Meet back at the coach at six p.m. sharp or you’ll be spending the night here!’ shouted Dave. He shook his head, knowing from experience that at least one person would fail to heed the warning.

  Towering overhead was the train track of the great Scenic Railway, the centrepiece of Dreamland amusement park. The park was the big draw in Margate, and with their posse of paint factory boys now in tow to pay for all their rides, the girls intended to make the most of it.

  A crowd of people surged through the archway into the park, many of them families with children but a good number, from the looks of them, on beanos too. Rows of girls in their best dresses, arm in arm, hitched up their skirts as they danced and sang, eyed up by gangs of lads smoking cigarettes and trying to look cool.

  Inside, an aroma of candyfloss and onions immediately hit Lilian’s nostrils. ‘Hot dogs!’ said Old Fat Nell, sniffing the air and dragging them towards a small stand. Lilian and some of the other girls opted for candyfloss instead, which they washed down with the last of the drinks they had brought from the coach. She was already starting to feel pleasantly tipsy.

  The next essential item was a paper hat, printed with the requisite seaside slogan. Little Lil opted for ‘Too Young to Be in Love’ which, combined with her diminutive height, was unlikely to do her any favours with the boys. Lilian surveyed the other options. She had no desire to broadcast commands such as ‘Kiss Me Quick’ or ‘Take Me Home for Luck’, so she opted for ‘Drunk Again’, hoping that it didn’t sound too maudlin. Old Fat Nell was finishing off Lilian’s candyfloss for her, underneath a hat that read: ‘My Resistance is Low’.