Wartime for the Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  It was only in the morning that Ethel understood clearly that her mother had died. The rest of the family spent the day together, dealing with the undertakers and arrangements for the funeral, while Louise’s spinster sister, Aunt Ethel, came up from Brighton to help look after the family. But young Ethel insisted on going to the factory as usual. She knew how proud her mother had been of her success at Tate & Lyle.

  Following her sister’s death, Aunt Ethel harboured hopes that her newly widowed brother-in-law might make her a nice husband, but she was to be disappointed. Not long afterwards, Jim started a relationship with Peggy, the woman whose loud voice Louise had found so distressing. Ethel thought back to what her mother had said when she was dying, and to her question about their father remarrying. Had she already known what was coming, when Ethel was too young and naïve to see it?

  Strangely, now that Louise was gone, Ethel and Dolly’s reactions to the prospect of a new woman in their father’s life had been reversed. For Ethel, the relationship came far too soon, and she still had an instinctive dislike of Peggy. Yet Dolly – who had argued against her dad moving on – quickly hit it off with her.

  The schism in the family became so bad that Ethel no longer felt comfortable in her own home, and she started spending her Sunday afternoons visiting Archie’s mother up the road. Maude Colquhoun was a widow and was bringing up a ten-year-old daughter called Honour on her own. She worked in a golf-ball factory not far from Tate & Lyle and, like Ethel’s father, played piano in the Graving Dock Tavern for a bit of extra money. Maude treated Ethel like a daughter of her own, saving her helpings of plum pie and custard whenever she came round.

  Seeing how unhappy her son’s sweetheart was at home, and with Archie away in the forces, Maude soon suggested that Ethel move into the Colquhoun household. To Ethel, it was the perfect solution, even though it meant leaving the house where she had spent half of her childhood. She might only be 16, but after all she was a grown-up now, and surely her future lay with Archie.

  Ethel quickly grew fond of Archie’s little sister Honour, spending her free time taking the little girl to the pictures or out to the park. Back in the Alleyne house, meanwhile, Dolly grew increasingly close to Peggy, and the two would often spend days out together across the river in Woolwich.

  On one such occasion they found themselves at the Army barracks, where a dashing young soldier named Paddy took a shine to Dolly’s blonde curls. A whirlwind romance ensued, and within less than a year Dolly had married him. Ethel was not invited to the wedding.

  Ethel felt that her family had been well and truly torn apart. She hadn’t spoken to her father since she had left home, and soon she learned that her youngest sister, Winnie, was now living with their Nanny Potter in East Ham.

  That Christmas, Ethel was about to sit down to a dinner of baked rabbit with Maude and Honour, when there was a knock at the door. She opened it and was surprised to find Dolly on the doorstep, kicking the snow from her boots.

  ‘Have you got a paper that Paddy could borrow?’ her sister asked her.

  Taken aback at the unexpected visit, Ethel didn’t know how to respond. ‘No, sorry, Dolly,’ she told her, ‘there’s no papers on Christmas day.’ Her sister duly went away again.

  Only later did Ethel realise that perhaps Dolly had been feeling lonely, and was trying to find an excuse to come and see her.

  Soon Dolly discovered the downside of being married to a soldier: long periods apart while her husband was posted abroad. Paddy went away for an 18-month stretch, leaving her to live with her Aunt Liz. He sent money back to his wife regularly, but one day it suddenly stopped.

  Dolly couldn’t understand it – had her husband forgotten all about her? She and Peggy hurried to the Army barracks in Woolwich to find out what had happened.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ an unsympathetic record-keeper asked her incredulously. ‘Your husband’s a deserter. We ain’t seen hide nor hair of him for months.’

  Paddy did finally show his face again, and he and Dolly did their best to make a go of things. They moved into a flat together in Custom House, and before long Dolly was pregnant.

  When Ethel heard that her sister had given birth, she hurried to the hospital, determined to be there for her. Paddy came too, but he refused to go up to see his wife.

  ‘Where’s Paddy?’ Dolly asked Ethel, as soon as she entered the room.

  ‘He’s sitting in the waiting room,’ she said awkwardly.

  Dolly was distraught. ‘I don’t understand. Why won’t he come up and see me?’

  ‘I don’t know, Doll, I’m sorry,’ Ethel told her.

  Soon Paddy had left Dolly for good, and before long they were divorced.

  The problems at home made Ethel throw herself into her work more than ever, and she was keen to rise up again from her position on the factory floor. Hauling bag after bag into perfectly stacked parcels, never allowing the slightest backlog to form, she did everything she could to prove to Ivy Batchelor that she was the best sugar girl the forelady had ever seen.

  Sure enough, her determination paid off, and before long she was invited up to the office and offered a second chance at promotion.

  Ethel was ecstatic, thinking about how proud her mother would have been. ‘Yes, of course, Ivy,’ she said. ‘I’ll start right away.’

  Ethel was in charge of the tally count for all the machines on the floor, marking down on a form the number of bags each had packed so that Ivy could see who was pulling their weight. She would scrawl out blocks of five on a rough sheet and then copy the results onto a neat one at the end of the day. Ever efficient, Ethel would save a few precious minutes in the afternoon by estimating the day’s count on the neat sheet first thing in the morning, so that it only had to be slightly amended later when the number of bags packed was known.

  This system worked a treat, until one day Ethel made a terrible mistake, copying down the whole of the day’s actual output in addition to the prediction she had already marked. She thought the sheet looked fuller than usual as she handed it in, but told herself it must have just been a good day.

  Of course the truth came out the next morning, when Ivy took her aside and told her she had overbooked the department. Her mistake had led to chaos throughout the factory as thousands of phantom bags of sugar were promised to customers.

  Ethel was mortified. ‘I’m so sorry, Ivy,’ she pleaded, fighting back tears.

  Ivy nodded sagely, aware of the poor girl’s distress. ‘It’s all right, Ethel,’ she said kindly. She knew that her mother’s death had taken a toll on her, and perhaps a few mistakes were to be expected given the circumstances.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to put you back on the machines,’ she continued. ‘We’ll start you on packing again for now, but perhaps if all goes well you can work your way up to bag filler and maybe even driver in due course.’

  Ethel couldn’t believe that once again she had sabotaged her own progress with a silly mistake. She felt as if she was playing a perpetual game of Snakes and Ladders, falling backwards again every time she managed to win a promotion.

  When Ethel got home, feeling low, Mrs Colquhoun was nowhere to be seen. Honour collared her in the passage. ‘Mum’s got a letter from Arch,’ she told her, ‘and as soon as she read it she disappeared into the front room.’

  Ethel’s heart sank even further – had something terrible happened to Archie? The door to the front room was locked, and when she and Honour put their ears to it all they could hear was the sound of Maude pacing up and down on the wooden floorboards.

  ‘I need you to help with something, Honour,’ Ethel told the little girl. ‘Can you find out what it says in that letter?’

  Honour nodded eagerly, pleased to be trusted with such an important duty. Ethel walked around the block a few times to give the girl a chance to speak to her mother. When she got back, Honour was there in the passageway waiting for her.

  ‘It’s about you, Et,’ she told her. ‘Archie says he’
s going to marry you!’

  Ethel was stunned. She had received her own letter from Archie that very morning, and he had said nothing of the sort. Despite the embarrassing episode of Lenny’s phone call, he had never brought up the subject of marriage.

  Ethel’s next letter to Archie was a model of artless naïvety. She claimed to know nothing of what he had written to his mother, only how Maude had reacted, locking herself in the front room and pacing up and down. What could he possibly have said to disturb her?

  Of course, Ethel’s feigned innocence smoked out the truth from her boyfriend, and with typical nonchalance he replied by the next post: ‘Don’t worry about Mum. I just told her I was going to marry you.’

  You might have asked me first! Ethel thought to herself. She immediately fired off another letter, accepting Archie’s proposal – and castigating him for his cheek.

  5

  Lilian

  Unfortunately for Lilian, who was nervous and accident-prone at the best of times, the can-making department was something of a pet project for refinery director Oliver Lyle. ‘Old Ollie’, as he was known to the girls, was a man in his mid-fifties with white hair and large black spectacles. He was an eccentric fellow who had once hired four fire hoses and a jet engine in order to test the claim that his newly installed windows could survive a hurricane (they did not). Mr Lyle was a natural obsessive, and prided himself on the intense personal interest that he took in the workings of his factory. Once, during a visit to a refinery in Hungary, he had fallen into a tank of sugar-beet juice, so intent was he on listening to the details of the production process employed there. The Hungarians got him out quickly enough, but his suit – the only one he had brought with him – crystallised on cooling, and was soon as solid as a suit of armour.

  Mr Lyle’s obsession with the little tins that still bore his grandfather’s iconic branding – the lion and bees, above the biblical quotation ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’ – meant that the girls in the can-making department felt particularly proud to be working there. But his frequent, unannounced visits also kept them on their toes. As soon as his white hair was spotted at the door, the message ‘Old Ollie’s coming!’ went round the room in a flash, and everyone stood up a little straighter, adopting an intensely focused attitude.

  As each day wore on, the department would get hotter and hotter, and the girls were in the habit of rolling up their dungarees to cool themselves. One morning, when Old Ollie came in on one of his inspections, Lilian was busy daydreaming of her lost love, Reggie, and didn’t heed the boss’s arrival.

  ‘Pssst!’ she heard from behind her.

  Lilian turned to see a short, blonde girl with dimples gesticulating wildly. She was mouthing something that looked like ‘Uncles’.

  Unfortunately, since Lilian generally kept herself to herself, her lip-reading skills were way behind those of most of the other girls. ‘What?’ she mouthed back.

  ‘Uncles! Uncles!’ the other girl repeated.

  Lilian suddenly noticed Old Ollie, who was bending over to inspect a syrup tin, and realised to her horror that she still had her dungarees rolled up almost to her knees. She hastily shoved them down to her ankles, realising as she did so what the girl had been trying to say to her.

  Old Ollie didn’t speak to the girls, but just smiled a benevolent smile. When he had passed her machine, Lilian turned round and gave the other girl a thumbs-up. She winked in reply.

  That lunchtime in the canteen, Lilian collected her food and was about to sit down to eat on her own as usual when she spotted the small, blonde girl waving to her. She hesitated for a moment but it was too late to turn back, so she took her tray and walked over to where the girl was sitting.

  ‘Lilian, ain’t it?’ the girl said in a high-pitched voice, motioning to her to sit down. ‘I’m Lilian too, but they call me Little Lil.’

  Little Lil turned to a very large, plump girl next to her who had short, curly blonde hair. ‘Lilian was flashing her legs at Old Ollie this morning!’ she told her.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ Lilian began to protest.

  The large girl broke into the heartiest cackle Lilian had ever heard. Several people turned around and looked over to see what the commotion was. As the girl laughed her second chin wobbled merrily, her huge frame heaved and she slapped an enormous hand onto the table.

  ‘Lilian, this is Old Fat Nell,’ said Little Lil.

  ‘Hello,’ said Old Fat Nell in a deep, rich voice, offering Lilian an enormous hand. Next to Nell, Little Lil looked even smaller and more birdlike than before. They were certainly a bizarre pair.

  ‘What’ll we call you, then?’ Old Fat Nell said, looking Lilian up and down and taking in her tall, lanky frame. ‘We’ve already got a Little Lil.’

  ‘She can be Big Lil!’ squeaked Little Lil, with another bright, dimpled smile.

  Big Lil, Little Lil and Old Fat Nell quickly became a firm trio, their matching fair hair but very different figures making them an eye-catching phenomenon around the factory. Lilian had never met such upbeat, cheery people before. Around them she had the distinct feeling of walking into the sunshine after a long, long time in the shade.

  Lilian liked the fact that unlike other girls, who wanted to spend their time dressing up and going out to dances to meet boys, her new friends were happy to spend their Friday nights going to the pictures or having a giggle over a pie and mash. Lilian had been burned too badly by her relationship with Reggie to even look at other men, and ever since she had been buried under the rubble at West Ham station she had developed a morbid fear of the dark, which put her off staying out late.

  One day, however, Old Fat Nell pleaded with the two Lils to accompany her to the Liverpool Arms in Canning Town. She had heard it was having a musical night and she was keen to get up and have a sing. ‘C’mon, Big Lil,’ she said. ‘We won’t stay out late. I’ll look after you.’

  ‘You have to hear this girl sing – she’s got a better voice than Vera Lynn,’ advised Little Lil, looking at Lilian hopefully. It was difficult to say no to Little Lil, and Lilian found herself agreeing.

  The three girls met at seven p.m. and headed into the pub together. It took a while for their eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. The place was busy and they struggled to push their way to the bar.

  Little Lil stood on her tiptoes and tried to catch the eye of the barman, but after five minutes she was still waiting to be served. Just as it looked as if he was coming over to them, he was distracted by a man with bleached blond hair who was holding out a note.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ moaned Little Lil. ‘I was here before him!’

  The man’s name was Georgie Nicholls and he was a well-known local ‘queer’ who had a penchant for wearing make-up. He was nevertheless hard as nails, and if any of the local dockers gave him lip he wouldn’t think twice about belting them with a killer right hook. It was said he had developed this fighting instinct because his father had beaten him as a youngster in an attempt to knock the ‘bentness’ out of him. Evidently, it hadn’t succeeded.

  However, Georgie’s hard-nut reputation didn’t deter Old Fat Nell. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pushing past a couple of men who instantly got out of her way. She brought her big hand down on the bar. ‘Oi,’ she called to the barman. ‘She was here first!’

  Her booming voice carried across the whole room and heads began to turn. The barman shrugged at Georgie apologetically, heading over to Little Lil instead. She smiled her sweetest smile and ordered two gin and limes, and a beer for Old Fat Nell.

  The piano started up and they heard a voice at the other end of the room warbling an awkward rendition of ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’.

  ‘You could do better than that, Nell,’ said Little Lil.

  When the song came to an end, Lilian watched uneasily as Old Fat Nell gulped down the last of her beer and marched up to the piano. There was a titter somewhere in the crowd and Lilian bit her lip, hoping that they would be kind to her.
/>
  ‘I’m not too pretty …’ sang Nell.

  ‘You’re not kidding!’ a man behind them shouted out, followed by a peal of laughter. Oh God, thought Lilian, covering her face with her hands, why did she have to sing that?

  ‘I know I’m not bright,’ continued Nell, oblivious. ‘But I can still dream a man’s holding me tight.’

  Her deep, sonorous voice rang out across the pub, and bit by bit the crowd fell silent. Lilian peeked out from behind her fingers and saw that everyone was watching Nell in awe.

  ‘Why can’t anyone see all the good that’s in me? And why shouldn’t I be in love too?’

  As soon as she finished singing, the crowd burst into applause. Nell pulled an enormous toothy grin and walked back to join her friends.

  ‘You were bleedin’ brilliant!’ said Little Lil, reaching up on tiptoes to give her a kiss. Lilian offered her congratulations too. Perhaps it was just the gin and lime, but she felt a rush of pride and happiness. She had found a group of people who she belonged to, and who belonged to her. And she hadn’t thought about Reggie once all evening.

  Back at the factory, the change in Lilian was noticeable. She seemed happier, more upbeat and less scared of making mistakes with her work. As the days and weeks passed without any accidents, Lilian’s confidence grew, and she was moved onto a more complex job, making the bodies of the syrup tins.

  One day, as she was switching her machine off, the forelady Rosie Hale approached her. ‘Lilian,’ she said, ‘I’ve been watching you recently, and you’re doing very well. I’d like you to go and see Miss Smith in the Personnel Office.’ She gave Lilian’s arm an encouraging squeeze.