The Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  To Gladys’s annoyance, as soon as a girl became coupled up, it seemed they instantly wanted her to be coupled up too. She lost count of the times she was asked, ‘When are you going to get a bloke, Gladys?’ or ‘Why don’t I set you up with my brother?’

  One afternoon, feeling exasperated, she went down to the sports ground after her shift finished, to see if there was anyone there who wanted to have a kickabout. As she neared the field she spotted a small group of lads playing football. They looked so happy and carefree in the afternoon sun, and normally Gladys would have run straight over and tackled them for the ball, the way she had in the old days with Bum Freezer and his mates at Beckton Park. But now that she was here, she realised that she just didn’t feel like it. Instead, she sat down and watched the group of boys, idly picking at the grass beside her. Gladys had been a tomboy all her life, but now she felt the world was trying to force her in a different direction, and to be always swimming against the stream was becoming tiring. There was nothing for it, she decided, but to get a boyfriend.

  The solution came in the form of Eric Piggott, a young man she had met at a dance who had been pursuing her relentlessly ever since, despite repeated brush-offs. Eric was quite a bit shorter than Gladys, and she didn’t find him the least bit attractive, but he did have the advantage of being in the Air Force, which meant he was away for long periods of time.

  Despite Gladys’s lukewarm opinion of him, Eric’s ardour was more than enough for the pair of them, and he was thrilled to finally have her on his arm. He beamed up at her in adoration, and no amount of frosty goodbyes at the end of the night, or cinema trips spent sitting at the very front of the auditorium, could dissuade him from the belief that the sun shone out of Gladys’s backside. His whole family seemed very happy about the relationship too, and treated Gladys like their own daughter, a fact that led her to avoid their house as much as possible.

  Now at least when the Blue Room girls were gossiping excitedly about their boyfriends in the café at lunchtimes, Gladys no longer had to put up with their attempts to set her up with any available single men. ‘Me and Eric are doing fine, ta,’ she would say, happily tucking into her food.

  This bought Gladys some time, but inevitably the new question she had to face was, ‘When are you bringing Eric out to meet us?’ For a while, Gladys found it easy enough to explain away her boyfriend’s absence. ‘Oh, he’s gone off again with the Air Force,’ she would tell the other girls, who accepted this with understanding nods. But as time went on she started getting the inevitable jokes about whether Eric really existed.

  It was clear that, sooner or later, Gladys was going to have to introduce her boyfriend to the others, but whenever she pictured the meeting in her head she recoiled from the thought of it. Deep down she knew that the reason she was putting it off was that she was embarrassed of him.

  In the end, Eric resolved the situation for her. Exasperated by Gladys’s unavailability, he turned up at the 669 bus stop outside Trinity Church one evening, determined to catch her on her way home from work.

  On the bus, Gladys was laughing about with Betty when she caught sight of Eric’s hopeful face looking up at the window. ‘Oh, Christ,’ she cried. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Gladys?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Well, you wanted to meet Eric, didn’t you?’ Gladys said, pointing. ‘There he is!’

  After a quick glance in Eric’s direction, Betty gave Gladys a shove. ‘Very funny,’ she said, laughing. Then her expression changed as she realised Gladys wasn’t joking.

  As they descended from the bus, Eric immediately gave Gladys a kiss on the cheek. ‘This is my mate, Betty Brightmore,’ she said, pushing him off.

  ‘Eric Piggott. Good to meet you,’ he said, shaking Betty’s hand. Though Betty tried her best to smile back, it was clear from the look on her face that she wasn’t too impressed with Gladys’s new beau.

  Gladys may have introduced Eric to Betty, but she was damned if she was going to start bringing him out with her every Saturday night. Eric, however, had been granted a particularly long period of leave, and it became harder and harder to keep him at arm’s length. One night, just as Gladys was about to go out with her friends, the doorbell rang and her heart sank as she heard the sound of Eric’s voice.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Taylor. Is Gladys in?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Of course, Eric. Why don’t you come in?’ her mother said, studiously ignoring Gladys hissing, ‘I’m not here, I’m not here!’ from the top of the stairs.

  ‘Oh hi, Eric,’ Gladys said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m just on my way out.’

  ‘You can’t go out – Eric’s on leave!’ her mother replied, ushering him into the room. Rose was greatly relieved her daughter had finally brought home a man, and as far as she was concerned he wouldn’t be going anywhere unless it was over her dead body.

  Behind both their backs, Gladys’s mischievous father could be heard whispering to her, ‘Go on! Go out if you want to – have a dance!’

  The devil and the angel on her shoulders tugged at Gladys’s conscience until she gave in and spent the evening with Eric.

  Betty was keen for Gladys to come out with her and Sid, so one week she suggested they go for a double date at Sid’s favourite hangout, the British Legion.

  ‘Eric won’t be able to make it,’ lied Gladys.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Betty lied back, and promptly invited Joe instead, the friend from church who had set her and Sid up in the first place.

  The idea of inviting Joe got Gladys thinking, and by the time she met the others on the Barking Road she had decided that if she had to have a boyfriend he would be a far better choice than Eric. If the evening went well and he seemed interested, she would end it with Eric and cross her fingers that Joe asked her out instead.

  As she walked up to Betty and the two men, Gladys pushed her red hair behind her ears and did her best to give Joe an alluring smile. The four of them had just started walking up the road when Gladys experienced a sudden jolt of recognition. There, on the other side of the street, was Eric.

  She quickly turned her face away, towards Betty. ‘That’s a nice dress, Bets. Where did you get it from?’ she asked, a little unconvincingly.

  Betty looked at Gladys suspiciously. Behind her, she could see a man waving on the other side of the road.

  ‘Oi, Gladys,’ she said, ‘isn’t that –’

  ‘Shh!’ said Gladys, trying to silence her. But it was too late – Eric had already started to cross the road, and he looked very pleased at having found his sweetheart. Gladys silently cursed her mother, who she felt sure must have told him where she was going.

  ‘Hi, Eric,’ she said ruefully as he bounded up to the group. ‘Sid, Joe, this is my, er, boyfriend – Eric Piggott.’

  Gladys watched with a sense of resignation as the two men shook Eric’s hand. Joe was never going to be interested in her now.

  ‘You lot enjoy your drink,’ she told Betty. ‘I’ll see you later.’ As the three of them disappeared into the distance, she reluctantly took Eric’s arm.

  Rather than simply dumping Eric, Gladys soon found herself more entangled than ever. Like Betty, the other Blue Room girls were fast acquiring engagement rings, and break times were now filled with excited squeals and gushing comments about the latest rock on a girl’s finger. Before long, Barry and Rita, Joey and Joycie, and now Eva and John were all betrothed.

  ‘They’re dropping like flies,’ Gladys complained, unwisely, to her mother.

  Sure enough, the next time she was out with Eric he came to a sudden stop outside a jewellers’ shop. ‘Gladys,’ he said, ‘do you think we should choose a ring?’

  Gladys felt her mouth open in protest, but as she looked at the sparkling jewels in the window, somehow no noise came out.

  ‘I thought maybe this one,’ said Eric, pointing to a particularly expensive-looking ring.

  ‘Eric, that’ll cost a fortune!’ Gladys protested
.

  Eric looked suitably gratified.

  Well, she reasoned, he was about to go off on another tour of duty. Maybe it would be kindest just to go along with it for now. She would have plenty of time to work out what she really wanted once he was gone.

  The next day, it was Gladys’s ring the girls were gushing and squealing about in the café at break time. But once they got back to the Blue Room, the reel boys rather ruined the moment.

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ one of them said, loudly. ‘You’re going to be Mr and Mrs Piggott – and your kids will be little piglets!’

  17

  Joan

  Joan had joined Tate & Lyle expressly for the social life, and she was determined to make the most of it. She could see that her old friend Peggy already had an established group of her own among the sugar girls, so she set about building a new set of friends. It wasn’t difficult for Joan, whose cheerful self-confidence, natural chattiness and naughty sense of humour acted as a magnet to those around her.

  She had soon found a best friend in Kathy, a shy, sweet-natured girl who was the perfect complement to Joan’s big personality. Kathy came from a local factory-working family: her sister was at Tate & Lyle too, and her father spent his days getting his hands stained black at an ink works. She was a decent-looking girl but remarkably thin, which she considered a personal disaster. To disguise this perceived flaw she always wore high collars, fixed with a brooch. ‘Why can’t I look like Lana Turner or Jane Russell?’ she would moan.

  Kathy and Joan could often be found at Mrs Olley’s pie and mash shop on Rathbone Street, or at Chan’s Chinese restaurant, one of the few places you could get dinner after the cafés and fish and chip shops closed. Kathy would eat as much as she possibly could, but invariably stayed as skinny as a rake.

  Another of Joan’s new friends was Rosie. She had a little chubby face and came from a family who, unlike Joan’s own parents, knew how to party. Many was the night that Joan and Rosie would collapse exhausted onto the put-me-up in Rosie’s front room after roller-skating all evening at the Forest Gate rink – only for her brothers to carry on partying around them as they slept.

  A sugar girl called Doris, meanwhile, shared Joan’s passion for shopping. Unlike most girls at Tate & Lyle, Joan didn’t have to pay ‘housekeeping’ because her family were so well off, so she could dedicate every last penny of her wages to fashion. She would get paid on a Thursday, and by Saturday the money had usually evaporated.

  Joan and Doris’s favourite haunt was the market at Green Street, Upton Park, where they had dresses made in imitation of the film stars they had seen at the cinema the week before. If they were feeling really flush, they went to Blooms in Canning Town, where the bright new colours and fabrics dangled tantalisingly in the window.

  But it was at Queen Bee’s in Green Gate that Joan truly fell in love. There, in the display, were the first half-cup bras she had ever seen in her life.

  ‘Cor, Doris – look at those!’ she said, her face pressed to the window. ‘They must be what the actresses wear.’

  ‘You’d fall right out of them,’ her friend protested.

  ‘Yeah, that’s the point!’ she replied, already adding up in her head the number of weeks’ pay it would take to buy the whole lot.

  Every Friday thereafter, Joan visited Queen Bee’s and handed over as much of her hard-earned cash as she could afford. Week after week she returned, until the whole window display was safely in her underwear drawer at home.

  When no one else was around, she tried on the exotic new items in front of the mirror. She had no particular use for fancy lingerie – not yet at least – but the sheer glamour made her feel like a million dollars.

  Like all good consumers, however, Joan quickly tired of her latest purchases and was soon aching for new ones. Not long after the bras had been triumphantly attained, she set her sights on a fresh target: an exquisite green suede coat that she had seen in the window at Blooms.

  ‘I’ve got to have it,’ she wailed to Doris, ‘but I’ve spent this week’s wages already!’

  ‘We’ve got a bonus coming next Thursday,’ her friend reminded her. ‘You could blow that.’

  ‘But how can I wait that long, knowing it’s there?’ asked Joan, reluctantly allowing herself to be led away from the shop.

  The following week, Joan made sure to plan a big night out with the girls, to show off the new coat she was intending to buy. After they had picked up their pay packets on Thursday afternoon, she and Doris got the bus to Canning Town, Doris paying the bus fare on the way there and Joan promising to pay it on the way back, as was their usual arrangement.

  They headed to Ideal Hairdressers, where they could be found every Thursday, having their hair curled and set in preparation for the weekend. ‘Do it like Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder,’ instructed Joan, scrunching her hair up at the sides to demonstrate.

  As the hairdressers bustled around them, the two girls chatted about the outfits they were going to wear on Saturday night and where they would go. Doris favoured the Lotus Ballroom at Forest Gate, but Joan had her heart set on the Ilford Palais.

  They were still debating the question half an hour later when they got to the bus stop. As she mounted the bus, Joan reached into her bag for her purse to pay both their fares as agreed. She and Doris were both carrying large open bags, which were not only trendy but handy for stuffing any last-minute buys into on the way home.

  ‘Where’s me darn purse?’ Joan said, scrabbling around inside. ‘I can never find anything in this huge bloody thing.’

  ‘Get a wiggle on, love,’ said the man behind them in the queue.

  Joan had to admit defeat, and she and her friend pushed back past the queue of annoyed people onto the pavement, where they promptly tipped the huge bag upside down. But the purse was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘My whole bonus was in there!’ Joan cried. ‘Someone must have nicked it.’

  ‘Well, it ain’t difficult to do with bags like these,’ reasoned Doris, ‘but let’s get back to the hairdressers and see if it’s turned up there.’

  The two girls legged it back to Ideal Hairdressers, but the purse had not been seen.

  ‘How am I going to pay for the coat now?’ Joan asked, distraught. She felt tears prick her eyes. ‘I was going to wear it to the Palais.’

  ‘You mean the Lotus,’ Doris corrected her. ‘C’mon, I’ll pay our bus fares home.’

  By the time Joan got back to Otley Road there were tears streaming down her face.

  Her mother met her at the door. ‘What’s the matter, love?’ she asked, whisking her inside with a quick look up and down the street to check that none of the neighbours had witnessed her blubbing.

  ‘I lost me bonus at the hairdressers,’ sobbed Joan, ‘and now I can’t buy the green suede coat.’

  The thought of her beloved daughter going without the latest must-have item speared Mrs Cook to the heart. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort something out.’

  Joan cried herself to sleep that night, and the next day when she got up for work the reflection in the mirror made her gasp. Her hair, which had been perfectly curled the day before, was a stringy mess, her eyes were so red and puffy she looked as if she was suffering from a nasty tropical disease, and her skin was pale and blotchy.

  ‘I can’t go to work like this, Mum!’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t make me.’

  ‘Now, now Joan,’ said her mother brightly, ‘keep your chin up. It’ll be right as rain, you’ll see.’

  Reluctantly, Joan pulled on her blue dungarees and scraped her ruined hair back from her face. Don’t matter if it’s a mess now, she thought, I’ve got no money to go out anyway.

  As she rode the bus to work, Joan retraced in her mind the events of the previous afternoon, trying to think where she might have lost the purse. Could the man behind her in the bus queue have slipped his hand into her bag when she wasn’t looking? Could someone have taken it while the bag
was by her feet in the hairdresser’s?

  As soon as Joan walked onto the Hesser Floor, it was obvious that news of her catastrophe had spread fast. Girls shot her sympathetic looks and even people she barely knew seemed to be talking about her and pointing. They all lived for their bonuses, and her misfortune was quickly passing into legend, sending a chill down the spine of every sugar girl.

  ‘God, you look like you’ve been socked in the eye,’ remarked Doris helpfully, when she saw Joan’s face.

  Joan turned to Kathy instead. ‘Don’t suppose my purse has turned up here, has it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, ’fraid not,’ said her friend. ‘Sorry.’

  That coat’ll probably be gone by the time I get enough cash together again, thought Joan, turning miserably to her machine.

  The day’s work seemed to drag more than ever, and at the end of her shift Joan was desperate to run straight home and spend the evening under her bedcovers. But as she was about to leave, she heard Doris say, ‘Now!’, and saw her give Kathy a little push.

  ‘Um, Joan,’ said Kathy, with a shy smile, ‘we’ve got something for you.’

  Joan noticed that Rosie and a crowd of the other girls were also gathering round. What on earth were they up to?

  From behind her back, Kathy produced a Tate & Lyle sugar bag, which was bulging with something that didn’t look like sugar. She presented it to Joan. ‘From all us girls,’ she said, ‘to make up for your purse getting nicked.’

  Joan took the bag from her with both hands, realising as she did so that it was full of coins. Between them, her colleagues had managed to raise the entire sum of her lost bonus.

  ‘You lot are brilliant!’ said Joan, her puffy eyes crinkled with joy. ‘Bleedin’ brilliant!’

  She raced off to catch the bus to Canning Town and arrived at Blooms out of breath and sweaty.

  In the shop, she pulled out the sugar bag and poured all the coins onto the counter. The sales assistant, a middle-aged woman, looked at Joan with a twinkle in her eye. ‘You’ve been saving up to get married, haven’t you?’ she said with a nostalgic smile.