She was tall, with a plain, humorous face. She was no beauty, but she knew her way about, and there would be no nonsense from the men. And none from Renshaw either.
Gwennie was gone. No one had seen her on the streets. After a while the news got around that she was working in the city. Renshaw had been uneasy for days. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Verrendah would go to the police. Then Hughie’s death intervened. After the strain lifted, Renshaw had forgotten Verrendah, and Verrendah’s fear of scandal had prevailed. He had done nothing, after all.
But the event had shaken Renshaw. He must be getting clumsy. Losing his touch. He could scarcely remember when the last girl had run out on him. He remembered plenty with fight in them. Girls with pretty good technique at that. And he couldn’t say he really liked a pushover. Well, it would be a lesson to him. No more kids out of Sunday School. No, sir, not for him.
He stood watching Annie as she slapped the gummed paper onto the rolls. She could certainly handle that cloth. He noticed the length of her arms. Should have been a boxer, he thought. Colossal reach. Even for a man.
She upended a roll, and with one toss it fell into place on the trolley.
‘Hey—you want to be careful,’ Renshaw said. ‘We don’t want that paper splitting on us. It costs us money to re-roll that stuff.’
Annie turned the roll over. The covering was neat and whole.
‘When I do something wrong, suppose you tell me?’ she suggested. ‘I’ve been wrapping rolls ever since I was in napkins. And I don’t like you standing there all the time. I’m not used to being stood over. I been used to getting a sheet. I never went to no High School, but I can read and add up. If I had a sheet I could check, and there’d be no need for you to stand there, watching me all day. Gives you varicose veins, just standing still watching people.’
Renshaw moved to the presses.
Well, there was no doubt about old girl Merton. She certainly was a picker. No great believer in placing temptation in a man’s way.
‘Doing any good with Annie, Renshaw?’ asked Darcy Harrison facetiously. ‘The boys won’t be wearing a track to the wrapping bench, asking silly questions. I reckon she might be handy with her fists.’
Renshaw looked at her. Could be handy at that. But never fear, lady, it would be a brave man to front that citadel. There could be blokes, of course. They say there’s a bloke for every woman. There could be one lined up for Annie.
‘Be a bit of an armful,’ Darcy said.
He was a harassed little man in charge of the presses. He looked at the fixtures beside Annie. They were empty.
‘She keeps us rocking along,’ he said. ‘Must be about the best wrapper we’ve ever had.’
Renshaw moved on down to the drying area.
He stopped to speak to Barney. The cloth was feeding slowly through the dryer. Not too much spark in Barney these days, he thought. His missus had really got him tossed.
Bluey was packing down the hydro. Pulling the cloth as it flew on the winch, stacking it in expertly.
But the vats called. Standing outside the entrance to the dyeing area, he thought suddenly of Hughie; of the trouble over the instructions for the elasticized cloth for Best-Yet. If he could have seen ahead, got to understand a little bit more about Collins, he wouldn’t have moved so quickly over Hughie. In a rare moment of honesty, he asked himself why he had pursued Hughie. Yes, persecuted him. But it’s not me, he thought. Not really. It’s the way things are. Dog eat dog. The kind of thing that makes Larcombe circle warily around me. No one likes to look on the face of the rival. It feels safer with Hughie gone, even if the work’s harder.
But he’d better be careful. Not get too clever. Larcombe might decide to pull a few tricks, too. But he’d have to learn a bit more about the dyeing, and you didn’t learn that in a few weeks.
The mists reached out from the dye vats. Renshaw moved on and the mist closed in around him. He shouted a greeting to Oliver Henery, who stood like a shadow, stripped down beside the indicators. For a moment time was still. Everything was unreal. The clatter of the harnessed arms as they turned in the vats, the vapours, the apparitions that were less than men. Nothing existed. Only the wet floor, the walls of mist and the power and drive of the throbbing machinery as it turned the cloth in the vats.
He opened the door of the laboratory.
Here the mists were gone, but the air was damp. Water hung from the ceiling in beads, ready to fall. The floor was wet.
He opened up the daily production book.
The dyers’ instructions were shoved into the back of it. They were clamped together with a safety pin. Nothing had been written up for days.
‘What do you do?’ Renshaw said. ‘How do you find ways of filling in your time?’
He flicked the pages back. Here in Hughie’s slow, careful hand was a record of each day’s dyeing, and at the side a weekly total balance of the weight of cloth dyed.
If Collins saw the year out, he’d be lucky.
‘There’s nothing to this,’ Renshaw said evenly. ‘Can’t you write in a few figures and add them up?’
He was trying not to lose his temper. He’d have to put up with Collins for a little while, until he got onto a suitable boy.
‘All the work that’s gone through the last week wouldn’t give you writer’s cramp. In Hughie’s day he’d make this a snack.’
Renshaw looked up. Collins hadn’t budged from the sink. He stood stubbornly, head averted. But suddenly he turned around. He began to smile. He looked steadily at Renshaw, and the smile broadened.
When he spoke his voice was low but clear.
‘But there’s a difference,’ he said. ‘In Hughie’s day. Now, you know where you can shove it.’
All right, son, Renshaw thought. There’ll be a one-way ticket for you soon. You’ve had it coming, and you don’t want to be surprised.
He’d have to get old Merton or Patty to help out. He picked up the phone. He heard the click, and then Patty’s voice. It sounded clean, fresh and remote.
‘Very busy up there?’
‘Well, I’ve got enough. Never really seem able to catch up.’
‘Records in one hell of a mess here. Nothing written up for months. Collins either can’t or won’t. I don’t like calling on you, Patty, but I’ll have to get topside of this mess somehow.’
There was silence. What did she think she was doing? Who the bloody hell did she think she was? Well, he could try another tack with her: I want you down here, pronto.
But he waited.
‘Oh, well,’ reluctantly, ‘I’ll be down.’
She placed the phone on the hook and picked up her pen and pencils. The colour had risen in her cheeks, dyeing them pink. Her eyes were bright.
‘Mr Renshaw?’ Miss Merton asked briefly.
She glanced at Patty’s flushed cheeks and bright eyes. They never learn, she thought. Men like Renshaw draw them like a magnet.
Renshaw had the sheets on the table when Patty came in to the lab. He was sorting them up and arranging them under date headings. Collins was weighing up the dyes. Marj Grigson was busy stirring squares of cloth in a beaker over the bunsen burner. They had dyed several squares for the new mulberry, but none had really satisfied Renshaw. He had taken Collins off the experimental work, putting him on the more mechanical job of weighing up.
‘I suppose you could find a way of making a mess of that too,’ Renshaw had said.
Marj Grigson worked conscientiously, if unimaginatively, on the experiments. She recorded carefully.
When the business of Hughie had blown over, Collins would be out. It might be policy to wait a while. After all, he had given Collins a pretty big boost to Larcombe, in the days when he was trying to ease Hughie out. But he’d keep his eyes open. He needed a conscientious youngster with some feeling for the work.
‘Best part of a month. Nothing written up at all.’
Renshaw handed the papers to Patty. ‘I’m really stuck with it. No reason
for you to stick around in this wet hole, though. You could cart the whole lot up to the office.’
They walked together to the storeroom. Here Renshaw stopped. He placed his hand on Patty’s shoulder, holding her off at arm’s length.
‘You sure are a pretty kid,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you, Patty?’
She moistened her lips. She expelled her breath in a low sigh.
Yes, she was a pretty kid. She knew that. The appreciative whistles from the men told her; the wavy mirror on the dressing-table at Wentworth Parade assured her of it.
Renshaw’s hand dropped to his side. They began walking again. At the office he placed the records on the table.
‘It’s pretty straight-ahead work. Make up a date heading. Let’s see. What was the last number recorded? 1793. Number each vat. Make the next one 1794 and so on. It’s really pretty simple.’
He stood while she wrote in the headings and lifted out the first instruction. She began writing it in.
‘You could extend the daily weight total over here.’
Patty wrote in the extension.
She raised her eyes suddenly and looked at him. The bruise was gone from his eye, but just above his brow there was a fine white scar where Gwennie had hit him with the stone. Renshaw looked back at her. It was a long look.
‘What do you think of me, Patty?’ he asked. ‘I couldn’t rate too high with you. I don’t know what came over me. It’s not much use saying how sorry I am. But that’s the way it is.’
He was sorry. She thought about it. She thought of all the things she had talked over with Oliver. He’d have no trouble laying you on your back, Oliver had said. It was easy to say you were sorry. She picked up her pen and began to work. She felt suddenly embarrassed.
Renshaw turned around. He encountered Miss Merton’s steady gaze. Sanctimonious old busybody, he thought. But he backed out of Patty’s office. Well, the paper work was under way. And when things settled down he’d have a new kid in the lab. He’d nut that out as soon as he possibly could. The future began to look rosy again.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Barney grew more thoughtful as the time of Esther’s delivery approached and she entered the city hospital.
At the Dyehouse he was moody and irritable. Goodwin’s sly jokes and leg-pulling went over his head. He began to think of the future, of the fretful child wailing in the house, of Esther harassed and weary. It wasn’t as though they had wanted the child, had planned for it. It seemed incredible even now that the thing could have happened.
‘Be a lot of comfort to you when you’re older,’ Goodwin said. Barney grunted. He didn’t think kids were a comfort in a man’s old age. Selfish little brutes, usually stuck up to the ears in their own affairs. Couldn’t care less whether you sank or swam.
‘Never noticed it,’ Barney said.
He bent over his work. His mind was active, totting up the hospital bills, the cost of the new clothes to keep the kid warm, the special foods it would need for the first eighteen months of its life.
And at the back of his mind a secret thought had taken root. He brushed it aside, ashamed to have harboured it. But it came again and again. Sometimes, waking in the darkened house with the untidy kitchen, he felt the thought tapping away, like Morse code. He thought of fingers relentlessly sending out the message. On such occasions he would struggle groggily back to consciousness and light the lamp. He would sit up in bed with his arms crossed over his knees and his head leaning on his arms. But the thought persisted of itself. It was never put into words; never spoken of. It came unbidden. While he was pulling the cloth through the hydro, picking out the vats, helping on the mangle, it would suddenly be there.
What if the child died? What if it was stillborn?
He would put the thought aside. Concentrate on the vats. Call the numbers aloud to himself. Call out the weight of each number. Think of every action. The way he lifted the roll and flapped back the cloth. The way he stripped off the tickets. The way he placed them into heaps. The noise of the rubber bands as they snapped around the tickets.
He began to think of the day when Esther would come home. What he would do. How he would polish up the house. And again, how nice it had looked when Esther was home. The bed always made. The stove polished. The dishes washed and gleaming on the shelves. The curtains stiff with starch at the open window.
‘Certainly be a bit of company for you,’ Goodwin said. He was needling Barney gently. It was no good Barney pretending that he wanted the kid. Not to him. He knew better. But he knew, too, that kids had a way with them. Put one in a house and things were different.
‘Knew a bloke once,’ Goodwin said, ‘couldn’t stand kids at any price. Got one himself. Little sandy-headed rat of a kid with weak eyes. Different tale altogether. Couldn’t get home soon enough. Used to drive us crazy talking about it. So help me, you’d think no other kid ever grew teeth or hair before.’
Barney let go of the roll and straightened up. There was a steely glint at the back of his eyes. He looked levelly at Goodwin for a long time.
‘No offence meant,’ Goodwin said hastily. He retreated a little. ‘Just passing a remark. Just wondering.’
‘I wouldn’t wonder out loud too much, if I were you,’ Barney said coldly. He felt a sudden sense of fury. It was almost as though Goodwin had read his thoughts. As though he knew.
‘Well, I did you a good turn once. You were pretty glad to come and ask me. And after you backed out—not that I blame you altogether—you haven’t got a civil word for a chap.’
Goodwin walked towards the vats. Then he turned and stood for a moment, gazing nonplussed at Barney. He felt rebuffed and aggrieved. He had worked along well with Barney. They had been mates, in a way, for a long time. Something was eating Barney. The kid was there. There was no good feeling sore about it now. Nothing could alter things at this stage. If Barney had any sense, he’d stop this useless worrying. The time for bellyaching was gone.
But there was no time for further puzzling. Oliver was calling from the vats. The demanding labour was there. The work was coming off the hydro ready for the dryer. He walked back towards Barney.
They’d cracked it for the dryer. Maybe they could take it easy. Drag the chain just a little.
The tickets were thrown on the bench. The cloth was coming through. Piles of it. Rose swami, pale green swami, buttercup swami. Barney sorted the tickets, picking out the quality numbers and sorting out the roll numbers and the widths. He dragged up the trolley. The cloth was folding automatically into heaps on the table. Now and then he stretched up, straightened a fold, and the cloth fell into a heap of pale gold. I wonder why we do it, Barney thought. Every day. When I get a bit of money I’ll try for a boat. He thought of the fishing fleets that he had seen one year down the south coast. But it’d take a lot of money to buy a boat, a good boat. He looked up suddenly and caught Goodwin’s perplexed glance. His face cleared. Goodwin walked slowly across to him.
Everything was sorted and under way. He moved over, and Goodwin took up his position.
‘Nice bit of cloth,’ Goodwin said. He looked at Barney. ‘Wouldn’t mind a bit of this myself. Want to make sure you get a bit for the missus.’
He waited. He was friendly and apologetic.
‘No offence meant,’ he said to Barney. ‘I mean, about what I said. We’ve all got our touchy spots.’
‘That’s OK.’
Barney looked at him. At his lanky arms pulling at the cloth; at his shrewd, ferrety face; at his mouth, strangely and surprisingly generous.
They worked in silence. Goodwin was elaborately interested in the cloth as it fell to the table. Barney listened to the throb of the machinery. He isolated and identified every sound. Above the clatter he could hear the shrill voices of the laden women, the cries of the boys skylarking at the presses, Sims’ voice calling as he lowered a truck full of greige stock for the vats, Harrison calling from the presses.
Barney and Goodwin wheeled the trucks across the floor.
The pressers reached out for them. They pulled the spreaders from the wall. The cloth was stretched to the spreaders and began to run smoothly. The steam rose. The operators bent to the presses.
Goodwin tossed the bundles into the truck. He winked at Barney.
‘Know a good mate when I got one,’ Goodwin said.
Barney smiled back at him. But the thought was still there. Still there, ticking away at the back of his mind.
He began working hard again, pulling at the cloth, ashamed.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
The hospital was calling.
The phone rang in Miss Merton’s office. She let it ring while she finished writing up her report. People had been ringing all the morning and the work was piling up. The line was getting so busy lately that they could almost do with a permanent switch operator. But there’d be ructions if anything of that nature was suggested. She folded the report, picked up a sheaf of papers and took them into Renshaw’s office. Most of them had to be countersigned before they would be accepted by Mr Cuthbert’s staff.
She leaned over absently and picked up the receiver.
‘Southern Textiles Dye Works.’
‘Have you a Mr Monahan on your staff?’
‘Yes,’ Miss Merton said. It must be the call about the baby.
Miss Merton put down the phone and walked to Patty’s office. She was smiling.
‘Would you mind?’ she asked Patty. ‘It’s for Barney. I think he’s working near the hydro. Probably about his wife.’
She sat down at her desk.
Barney was working on the mangle. It was an easy job, merely guiding the cloth through. Barney didn’t like it. Time dragged. It was easy enough, but you’d want to be a zombie. It was exactly as Oliver Henery said, he thought. A man must get some interest out of a job or he’d go mad. Maybe there were blokes who liked to stand all day with their eyes almost shut, but not him. He’d almost rather be on the vats. Although the work was hard, there was interest and action. He watched Patty Nicholls as she walked across the drying area. She had changed a bit over the months, he thought. Lost a lot of that cheap, brassy look. She’d thinned out too. In some of those clothes that you saw on the pictures she could be quite a sort.
The Dyehouse Page 16