Wartime for the Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  When the next number was called she acted quickly. ‘Oi you,’ she whispered to Betty, ‘you owe me a favour. Sorry, mate,’ she said, turning to the man, ‘I’m going to have to dance with poor Bets because she doesn’t have a partner.’

  Before he could answer, she had whisked the surprised Betty onto the dance floor and they were whizzing away across the room.

  7

  Ethel

  Ever since she and Archie had fixed a date for the wedding, Ethel had been counting down the days until she became an official member of the Colquhoun family. As if 14 April wasn’t already engraved on her heart, Freddie James, one of the engineers on the Hesser Floor, had been chalking up the number of days remaining on a beam overhead. Every morning he would greet her excitedly when she came into work, bellowing across the floor, ‘Only fifteen days to go, Ethel!’ or ‘Only ten days left now!’

  At last the week of the wedding was upon her. Archie was scheduled to arrive home on Wednesday night, giving them a couple of days to get things ready before the big event on Saturday, and Ethel was determined that it should go absolutely perfectly. Archie was only coming home from the Army for his usual three weeks of leave, but she had been told that they could get a special licence to get married more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

  When she arrived at the town hall to put in for it, however, she found that not everyone was as keen to make the special day a success as she was.

  ‘Sorry, no can do,’ an official informed her breezily from behind his desk. ‘You both need to apply in person at least three days before the wedding.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Ethel replied. ‘My fiancé won’t be home until Wednesday night, so the earliest he could come in is Thursday.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ the man responded, leaning back in his chair and sucking in his cheeks. ‘Looks like you won’t be getting married after all, then.’

  ‘But it’s all been booked,’ said Ethel, who was sure she had organised everything down to a T. ‘My aunt’s lending us her caravan for the honeymoon!’

  He tut-tutted. ‘You can’t just turn up out of the blue and expect to get married, you know. We do have procedures for a reason.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Ethel replied, as calmly as possible, ‘but the date can’t be moved.’

  ‘Well, I think you’d better have a word with your fiancé then, and see if he can’t get home a bit quicker.’

  But if the official had thought Ethel would simply give up and go away, he had picked the wrong woman.

  ‘Look,’ she said, planting her hands firmly on the desk, ‘he can’t come home any earlier because he’s in the Army. Or do you think I should call them up and see if they can spare him so that you can have an extra day’s notice?’

  The man squirmed in his seat. ‘Well, if it’s the Army,’ he muttered, ‘maybe we can make a special exception.’

  Ethel wasn’t a girl for a big white wedding, so the nuptials were a simple affair at the registry office on West Ham Lane. She wore a beige suit with brown shoes and a brown hat, and Archie was in his Army uniform. The ceremony itself went off flawlessly, just as she had hoped.

  The only sadness for Ethel was that neither of her parents was there to see it. She hadn’t seen her father since their falling out after her mother’s death. Archie’s mum laid on a beautiful wedding spread, but there were only 13 people at the table.

  The couple were due to head off to her aunt’s caravan in Shoeburyness afterwards, but Archie asked Ethel if she would mind popping to the off-licence to buy him a drink before they went. She agreed, and Archie began to write down a list of beverages before giving her some money.

  When Ethel got to the shop she was surprised to see how many drinks were on the list, but shrugged her shoulders and bought them anyway.

  It was only when she got back that she realised what the drinks were for: a surprise party. Ethel was not going to be allowed to leave for her honeymoon without a good send-off.

  ‘Here you are Ethel, drink this!’ her aunt told her, offering her a glass. She was determined to get the normally sober girl tipsy on her wedding day.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ethel said, smiling. She had already raised the glass to her mouth before she spotted what was in it: a port and lemon.

  ‘Don’t drink that,’ said Archie, with a chuckle. Ethel was only too happy to let him take the glass off her.

  After the honeymoon, Ethel returned to the Hesser Floor, relieved that – unlike in many other departments – there was no rule there against girls staying on once they were married.

  Archie, meanwhile, went back to Germany. Now more than ever he regretted the commitment he had made to the Army, and he spent his final year in the forces miserably counting the days until he could leave. The letters that Ethel received from him had lost their old good humour, and one day he sent her a complaint: ‘When I first went away you used to write to me every day,’ he told her, ‘and now we’re married I go for weeks without hearing anything.’

  Ethel was astonished, and hurt by the accusation. She had done her best to continue writing every day, and after all, it was he, not she, who had signed up for so many years of separation. Calmly, she wrote Archie a letter, reassuring him that she was still writing as much as she possibly could, and that she looked forward to his return as much as he did.

  A few days later, Archie’s apology arrived in the post. On returning from manoeuvres, he had discovered a great tower of previously undelivered mail, and had devoured dozens of Ethel’s misplaced missives in a single sitting. ‘I’m sorry, Et, I shouldn’t have doubted you,’ he wrote back immediately. ‘When I get home I’ll be the happiest man in England.’

  At long last, Archie came out of the Army, taking a job at the ICI sodaworks in Silvertown. Ethel was ecstatic to have him back permanently, after so many years of only seeing him for three weeks every six months. She was keen to organise the next phase of their life together and sort out a home for them to live in. As kind as his mother Maude had been to her, she couldn’t wait to have her own household to run.

  Ethel approached a builder who lived nearby and who helped manage a number of properties, asking if he could find them a flat. One night, Archie was working the late shift at ICI and Ethel and his younger sister Honour were talking in the kitchen, when the builder came knocking on the door.

  ‘I’ve got the perfect place for you, just up the road,’ he said. ‘Only you’ll have to come quick, or it’ll be gone.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ethel said briskly, grabbing her coat. ‘Come on, Honour.’ She grabbed a torch from the passageway and strode out into the street. They followed the neighbour to a house at the far end of Oriental Road.

  ‘Upstairs or downstairs?’ Ethel asked him.

  ‘Both,’ he replied.

  ‘I only asked about a flat,’ Ethel remonstrated.

  ‘Look,’ he told her, ‘why don’t you take a butcher’s inside? There’s no flats coming up for a while, and I’m sure you’d like to get moving, a married woman and all.’ He nodded approvingly at the ring on her finger.

  ‘All right then, I’ll have a look,’ Ethel agreed, and she and Honour followed him inside.

  It was a good job they had brought a torch, because the electricity had been disconnected. As they made their way from room to room, casting the feeble light around them, Ethel could see that the house was a bit run down and in need of a good spring clean. The wallpaper was peeling in one corner of the front room, and there seemed to be some junk littering the passageway. But it was nothing a little sprucing up wouldn’t fix, she reasoned, and they would be getting a lot more space than they had expected.

  ‘What do you reckon, then?’ the neighbour asked her as they returned to the front door.

  ‘I’d better ask my husband first,’ said Ethel. ‘Can I let you know tomorrow?’

  ‘It’ll be gone by then,’ said the man, shaking his head, ‘what with the rent only being 18 shillings.’

  Eighteen shillings – for a whole house
? Ethel couldn’t believe it. She had assumed that she and Archie would only be able to afford a flat, but 18 shillings was well within their means.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said. Archie would just have to lump it.

  The next morning, returning with her husband, Ethel realised what a rash decision she had made. The junk she had noticed in the passageway seemed to be everywhere else too, and they kept tripping over it as she tried to show Archie around. In the back yard they discovered numerous dead chickens, whose feathers and blood littered the ground. The peeling wallpaper needed stripping completely, and when they began to remove it they found another, equally disgusting layer beneath it, and another beneath that, until, several hours later, the shredded remains of nine separate layers were piled up in the middle of the floor.

  Such problems were soon forgotten, however, once Ethel saw the state of the outside toilet. The moment she opened the door the rank stench assaulted her nostrils and it was days before she even dared to go near it. Archie’s mum grew increasingly puzzled as to why Ethel kept dropping round ‘just for a chat’ and heading straight for the loo.

  When Ethel finally got up the courage to clean the toilet, she scrubbed like a woman possessed, determined not to let a bit of muck defeat her, however putrid and repulsive that muck might be. Meanwhile, Archie spent every evening repainting and re-wallpapering the little house until well after midnight. In time their persistence won through, and the dilapidated wreck was transformed into the home-sweet-home Ethel so desperately longed for, complete with the most modern of conveniences: a gas boiler.

  Not long after they had moved in, Ethel’s Nanny Potter sent for her. ‘I’m getting old now,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to start thinking about your sister Winnie.’

  Ethel considered her grandmother’s words. She was now married, with a house of her own. For the first time she was in a position to offer the teenage Winnie a home.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘If Archie agrees, I’ll have her with me.’

  Archie’s permission was willingly given, and Winnie moved into the spare bedroom upstairs. For Ethel, who had not spoken to her father since she’d left home, it felt wonderful to have part of her old family back together. She took to the mothering role like a duck to water, and in time she even got her little sister a job in the syrup-filling department at Tate & Lyle, so that they could walk in to work together.

  On the Hesser Floor, gossip generally travelled fast. One day, when Ethel arrived to start up her machine, she found a group of girls huddled around in intense conversation.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked them.

  ‘Word is the bosses are sending a Hesser machine to the Ideal Home Exhibition,’ she was told. ‘They want some of us to go and demonstrate the sugar-packing.’

  Ethel had heard of the Ideal Home Exhibition, which was held at Olympia in Kensington and featured the latest domestic design and technology innovations. She knew Tate & Lyle had participated before, but this was the first she’d heard of taking a Hesser machine along.

  ‘Who are they sending?’ she asked, urgently.

  ‘They’re picking the best workers to go,’ one of the girls said.

  Ethel was elated. In the last few months she had worked her way up through the roles on her machine – from packing to filling, and now driving – and she knew she was one of the best girls on the floor. Surely if she pushed herself even harder for the next week or so, Ivy Batchelor couldn’t fail to include her in the team.

  All that week, Ethel worked like a Trojan, but to her surprise the forelady didn’t approach her about the exhibition. Another week went by and the event was drawing near, yet still she found she hadn’t been summoned. Ethel couldn’t understand it. Who was a more devoted sugar girl than she was?

  The next time she saw Ivy Batchelor she confronted her. ‘Why haven’t I been picked for the Ideal Home?’ she demanded. ‘I was told the best workers were going.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ethel,’ the forelady replied, reassuringly. ‘I think there might be something better in store for you.’

  Ethel returned to her machine, disappointed at missing out on the trip to Kensington, but wondering what Ivy’s cryptic remark might mean. What ‘something better’ did she have in mind for her?

  Seeing how dejected Ethel looked, her friend Beryl Craven from the office tried to console her. ‘I’ve been given two free tickets to the Ideal Home,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come with me on Saturday?’

  Ethel was still smarting from the rejection, but she was too curious about the Hesser machine demonstration to say no. That Saturday, after she had finished her morning’s work at the factory, she and Beryl took the Tube together to Kensington.

  Tate & Lyle had really gone to town on the event, and the two young women were astounded by what they saw. As the crowds snaked through the great glass-ceilinged hall towards the Tate & Lyle exhibit they were greeted by a life-size version of Mr Cube with state-of-the-art animatronic lips. The mascot had proved so popular during the company’s anti-nationalisation campaign that his services had been retained even now that the battle had been won.

  Mr Cube was locked in banal conversation with Daphne Tarsey, a 15-year-old warehouse girl from the Thames Refinery, who had been hand-picked for the role from the factory’s amateur dramatics society.

  ‘Did you know, Daphne, that in moderation sugar can actually aid slimming?’ Mr Cube demanded mechanically.

  ‘No, Mr Cube, I didn’t,’ the poor teenager replied, mugging desperately at the crowd.

  Beryl was transfixed by the bizarre spectacle, but Ethel was only interested in one thing: the Hesser demonstration. ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling Beryl away.

  They passed through an area where a crowd of visitors sat watching a film about the sugar-harvesting process in the colonies, while a black Trinidadian worker stood on hand to answer any questions. ‘No time for this,’ muttered Ethel, dragging Beryl up a flight of metal stairs onto a balcony, drawn like a moth to a flame towards the familiar hum and rattle of the Hesser machine. Sure enough, there it was below them, installed and working just as it would have been at the factory.

  At either end of the machine stood a woman supervising, and taking the occasional question from the crowd. One was Daisy Lewis, who had worked on the Hesser Floor since before the war. The other woman, however, was Betty Phillips, Miss Smith’s right-hand woman from the Personnel Office. ‘I don’t know what she’s doing here,’ Ethel commented angrily. ‘What does she know about Hesser machines?’

  She was also shocked to see that the women working on the machine itself were all pretty, young girls who had been made up to the nines, with the foundation, powder, lipstick, rouge and mascara of Hollywood starlets – scarcely representative of workers in a hot sugar factory. Had they been chosen for their looks rather than their ability? Poor Ethel felt utterly disillusioned.

  On Monday morning, Ethel arrived at work to yet another surprise. When she got to the Hesser Floor, the girls were once again talking in hushed tones.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘It’s Ivy Batchelor,’ one of the girls said. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean gone?’ asked Ethel, taken aback.

  ‘Up and left at the end of last week. Apparently she’s gone to the other factory.’

  Another girl chipped in urgently. ‘They’ve got her packing the sugar, back on the factory floor!’

  Ethel couldn’t believe it. ‘Why?’

  ‘Nobody knows.’

  In fact, unbeknown to Ethel, a rumour had already begun to spread around the factory to account for the forelady’s sudden departure. The story went that she had been having an affair with one of the managers – some said a member of the Lyle family itself. When the romance had finally been broken off, she had been conveniently dumped out of the way at the Thames Refinery, on a menial job, as though her 25 years’ service counted for nothing.

  The girls didn�
�t have to wait long to find out who was going to replace her. A notice went up on the departmental board announcing that former charge-hand Mary Doherty would be taking over as forelady immediately. To Ethel’s surprise, Mary came up to her machine a little while later and asked if she could have a word.

  ‘Of course,’ Ethel replied, a little anxiously.

  ‘Ivy left me some instructions about you,’ Mary said.

  Ethel held her breath, waiting for the other woman to continue.

  ‘I think congratulations are in order. You’re to be made a charge-hand – the youngest this company has ever seen.’

  8

  Lilian

  By the time Lilian was put on the coach to the convalescent home in Weston-super-Mare, she had given up trying to argue that the trip was unnecessary. All the darkness and bleakness of life that she had struggled to hold at bay seemed to have risen up like a tidal wave, crashing over her and leaving her aware of nothing else.

  On the coach, there were around a dozen other girls from both Tate & Lyle’s Silvertown factories, but Lilian barely took them in. Nor did she take much notice of the view out of the window as they left the East End behind and headed out of London into the countryside.

  Many hours later, the coach pulled up outside a limestone building that looked like a grand hotel, standing on a hill overlooking the bay. Lilian felt so drained that she doubted whether she could even find the energy to get off the bus, pick up her bag and climb the steps, but somehow she managed it. Inside, a middle-aged woman with a clipboard marked her name off and assigned her a room number. ‘Back downstairs at five p.m. in the Sun Room, please,’ she told her, but Lilian was too tired to reply, and headed straight to bed.

  A few hours later she was woken by a loud knock on her door, and groggily went to open it. A large girl with glasses stood before her. ‘They sent me to fetch you down to the Sun Room,’ she said.