Wartime for the Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  Something about the weary, resigned look on the girl’s face reminded Lilian of herself. Silently, she slipped on her shoes and followed her downstairs.

  In the Sun Room, the Tate & Lyle contingent had been joined by another dozen girls from a number of other factories, including several from a biscuit company in the North. The middle-aged woman with the clipboard was in the midst of giving a welcome speech. ‘In between meals, your time is your own,’ she said, ‘but remember, you have come here because you’re not well, so we expect early nights, please. Curfew is at eight p.m. sharp.’

  Lilian looked around the room. None of the others looked obviously sick or disabled. Could they be there for the same reason she was – that they were simply sick of life?

  The convalescent home was the closest thing to luxury Lilian had ever encountered, and usually she would have been marvelling at every detail. But that evening eating in the dining room was just too overwhelming. The courses came and went, and Lilian’s plates returned to the kitchen almost exactly as they had arrived. As soon as she could, she excused herself and went to bed again, sleeping for 12 hours straight.

  When she awoke the next morning, the long rest seemed to have turned the bleak, desperate feeling inside her into something less sharp. At breakfast she managed to drink a cup of tea, keeping her head down as the other girls chatted around her. Some of them were planning a trip down to The Sands, but Lilian didn’t want to get involved, so when they set off she tried to sneak back to her room.

  The woman with the clipboard caught her at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Off you go,’ she said briskly, with a shepherding motion. ‘A bit of fresh air will do you good.’

  Reluctantly, Lilian trailed behind the others as they headed down to the bay. After a while she noticed that the large girl with glasses who had knocked on her door earlier had dropped back from the rest of the group too.

  ‘Still tired?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I reckon I’ve just about woken up, thanks,’ Lilian replied, aware that her voice sounded flat.

  ‘Ain’t I seen you at Plaistow Wharf?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘My name’s Lilian Tull.’

  ‘I’m Molly – Molly Humphries,’ said the other girl.

  ‘Humphries is my gran’s single name,’ said Lilian with a slight smile.

  ‘Oh, do you reckon we’re related then?’ asked Molly. ‘Maybe it runs in the family!’

  ‘What does?’ Lilian asked.

  ‘Breakdowns.’

  ‘I ain’t had a breakdown!’ said Lilian, shocked.

  The girl looked at her blankly. ‘Ain’t that why we’re all here?’

  It was high summer, and every day on their walk to The Sands the girls were confronted with the vibrant atmosphere of a seaside resort in full swing. Children ran into the waves, splashing joyfully, or dug earnestly at the muddy sand with their spades. Couples strolled hand in hand along the promenade eating chips out of newspaper cones, and by the Grand Pier the sound of excited screams could be heard from the wooden rollercoaster in the amusement park.

  Fun, laughter, sunshine – all of it was impossible to avoid here, and bit by bit Lilian felt it wheedling its way into her heart. It was having a similar effect on the other girls, too. They were starting to look a bit more like any other group of friends on an outing to the coast, hitching up their skirts for a paddle and eating melting ice creams in the sun.

  After a while they even began to spend some of their afternoons in the pub, sneaking back just before the eight p.m. curfew and trying not to make it too obvious where they had been.

  When Lilian was with Molly and the other girls, the life she had left behind her in the East End seemed a million miles away. But whenever she was alone in her room a nagging feeling of guilt came over her, and she thought again of her mother. An anxious knot would form in her stomach as she remembered the desperate sense of responsibility she had felt to keep the Tull family from plunging yet again into crisis.

  One day at breakfast Lilian received a letter from home. She recognised her brother Harry’s handwriting on the envelope, and immediately panicked. What terrible thing could have happened to prompt him to write, rather than her parents? She rushed upstairs to read the letter in private.

  ‘Lilian,’ it read, ‘I just wanted to say, you deserve to look after yourself for a change. No one could have done more to take care of us all than you have. I hope you have a good time at the seaside.’

  The words brought tears of relief to Lilian’s eyes. From then on, she no longer felt guilty about enjoying herself at Weston-super-Mare, and she determined to make the most of her stay.

  By the time Lilian got on the coach back to London, the dark shadows under her eyes had faded and the painful blisters on her body were almost completely healed. Instead of sitting quietly on her own, she now sat next to her new friend Molly, and the two young women chatted all the way home.

  Back at the factory, once again the change in Lilian didn’t go unnoticed. This time, she was approached to become a union rep.

  ‘What does that involve?’ Lilian asked hesitantly.

  ‘Oh, you know, just collecting up the money from the other girls,’ she was told.

  Lilian’s natural shyness made her recoil from the idea of demanding money from people, so she declined the offer. But inwardly she glowed with pride that she, Lilian Tull, had been asked to represent the other girls in her department.

  Meanwhile, Molly also had a new glow about her, and Lilian couldn’t help thinking it was down to more than just the sea air at Weston-super-Mare.

  ‘Lilian,’ she said one lunchtime, ‘if I tell you a secret, do you promise to keep it?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘I’ve met a bloke … and he’s got a car!’

  ‘A car?’ Lilian was speechless. No one she knew had a car. ‘Who is he? Where’d he come from?’

  ‘He’s one of the engineers here at the factory,’ her friend replied, lowering her voice. ‘But you mustn’t tell a soul. He says he don’t want it to come out at work.’

  Lilian nodded, but something about it didn’t seem right.

  Molly had met her new man while waiting for the bus to work on the Barking Road. Drawing up in his bright-red Lagonda alongside the queue of people, Bob had caused quite a stir, and when he rolled down the window and asked Molly if she needed a lift to the factory she was stunned. She followed her gut instinct and said no, but as the car sped off into the distance she felt a stab of regret. Who was this mysterious man with such a smart set of wheels?

  The next day the Lagonda reappeared at the bus stop, and this time Molly couldn’t resist. Ignoring the stares of the people in the queue, she hopped in beside Bob and together they cruised down the Barking Road.

  Soon Molly was being chauffeured to and from work every day, and before long the lifts had progressed into dates.

  Despite Bob’s insistence that no one should know about the liaison, inevitably word got out at the factory and the gossip soon spread. But when Lilian heard the story repeated, she was surprised to hear a worrying addition to it. ‘I heard Molly’s bloke’s a married man!’ one of the other girls told her. Lilian was horrified, and relayed the information to Molly as soon as she saw her.

  The next time Molly had Bob captive in the Lagonda, she quizzed him about it.

  ‘No, darlin’ – I was married,’ he told her, ‘but I’m not any more. I’m living with me mum and dad off the Barking Road.’

  Molly looked at him, doubtfully.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he reassured her. ‘We’ll stop in on them on the way home.’

  Molly was promptly taken round to Bob’s parents’ house, and left convinced of the truth of the tale. The next day at lunch she told Lilian there was nothing to worry about.

  That afternoon Lilian was turning off her machine when the forelady Rosie Hale approached her with a grave look on her face. ‘I’ve heard some things from the girls that I had to pass on to Miss Smith,’ she told her. �
��She wants to see you in her office before you leave today.’

  Lilian gulped. Had she done something wrong – made a mistake she wasn’t even aware of? As she crossed the factory yard and headed to the Personnel Office, she felt the old familiar anxieties returning.

  Miss Smith was waiting for her. ‘Take a seat, Lilian,’ she commanded. ‘You’re friends with Molly Humphries, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Miss. I met her at Weston-super-Mare.’

  ‘Rosie tells me that Molly’s struck up an affair with another employee. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘She’s going out with Bob, Miss,’ Lilian said innocently. ‘The one with the Lagonda.’

  ‘I see,’ said Miss Smith, with a look of concern. ‘And you do know he’s married?’

  Lilian felt as if she were in the dock being cross-examined. ‘He was married before, but he’s not any more,’ she protested, repeating what Molly had told her. ‘He’s living off the Barking Road with his parents.’

  Miss Smith snorted. ‘He most certainly is not. He is living with his wife, I can assure you.’

  What was it with married men? thought Lilian. First her sister Edie and now Molly had found herself unknowingly caught up with them. Why couldn’t they be trusted to keep their rings on their fingers?

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she blurted out.

  Miss Smith nodded. ‘Well, perhaps for your friend’s sake you could let her know.’

  Lilian could see that Miss Smith was genuinely concerned for Molly, but she wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. ‘Is that all, Miss?’ she asked.

  Miss Smith gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Yes, Lilian, I suppose so.’

  Lilian hurried away before she changed her mind.

  The next time she saw Molly she tried to raise the subject, but her friend didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and Lilian didn’t feel able to push her. Perhaps Molly knew the truth already, or perhaps she didn’t want to know. Either way, she and Bob kept seeing each other.

  The two friends grew apart, but some time later Lilian heard that Bob had left his wife and was now living with Molly. She was pleased for Molly, but had already made a mental note for herself: never accept a lift from a stranger with a flashy car.

  The longer Lilian worked at Tate & Lyle, the more she realised that Bob wasn’t the only one there who was having an extra-marital affair. With thousands of young men and women working together in the factories, there were abundant opportunities for illicit romance. Two of the canteen workers – both of them married – were widely known to have been carrying on together for years. A foreman and a forelady, meanwhile, were enjoying a furtive romance in a storeroom accessed only by a ladder. They regretted their choice of location one day, when two young men spotted them going up there and promptly removed it.

  Some jobs offered more opportunities to stray than others. Dot Cartwright was married when she started working in the post room at the Thames Refinery, but while delivering the mail to the garages she got friendly with a senior engineer called Billy. Her daily rounds gave them ample chance to chat, and soon they were enjoying evenings at the Institute together and having a full-blown affair. When she returned late from a dance one night, her husband had been waiting up for her and told her to leave. She promptly did so, and married Billy instead.

  A young man called Dave, another Thames employee, had the perfect job for indulging his love of sugar girls. Tasked with making sure the Hesser floors were well stocked, he spent much of his time chatting to the girls there, and also had the keys to a storeroom in which he could privately entertain them. Dave wasn’t the best-looking man in the world but he was a natural talker, and the girls always felt he really listened to them, so he was never short of female attention. In fact, Dave went out with so many Tate & Lyle girls that he struggled to remember their names, but this problem was easily solved by giving them the same pet-name: ‘Sparkler’.

  It was with the gift of the gab that Dave managed to score with Elsie, a tall girl with auburn hair and very large breasts. She was the belle of the icing-sugar floor, and young men would often wander through the department for the most spurious of reasons just to get a look at her. Elsie was engaged to someone else, and was fully aware of Dave’s other liaisons. ‘Just tell the last girl when she leaves to make sure all your buttons are done up,’ she told him one day in the storeroom. But Dave took one too many risks by going on a date with Elsie outside the factory. Her fiancé found out, and the next time Dave saw her, Elsie was sporting a black eye.

  Dave only entertained the ladies during the working day, because in the evenings he dedicated himself to sport. Soon, however, he discovered that there was a demand for his storeroom after hours, from male colleagues pursuing extra-marital affairs. Dave was happy to loan them the keys, as long as they were left in an agreed pick-up place ready for him to collect the next morning.

  Dave always warned his conquests not to expect a serious relationship, and although the sugar girls claimed to be fine with his no-strings-attached approach to sex, some of them couldn’t help trying to change him. One girl named Maggie knew she wasn’t the only visitor to the storeroom, but told him that she didn’t want to know the details. ‘When I’m not with you, it’s nothing to do with me,’ she said. Taking her at her word, Dave continued the affair. But one day Maggie declared, ‘Dave, why don’t we just pack our bags, get the first train out of London and be together!’

  Dave was taken aback. ‘I told you from the beginning I’ll never do that,’ he replied.

  ‘I know you said that, but now I want to be with you all the time,’ the distraught girl cried. ‘I don’t think I can take this any more!’

  Maggie served the week out and quit Tate & Lyle that Friday. Dave saw her at the gate as she was going, and pulled her into a telephone box to kiss her goodbye. ‘That’s our last kiss,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to walk over the bridge across the railway tracks, and I’m not going to look back.’

  He watched her go – and she didn’t look back.

  9

  Gladys

  Despite the unfortunate incident with the curling tongs, Gladys and Betty had been going out to dances together more and more. One night, they were out in Canning Town when they bumped into a young man called Joe, who Betty knew from church. Joe asked if he could bring one of his friends over to meet them, who had just come out of the Army.

  ‘He’s a bit of a war hero,’ said Joe. ‘Almost lost his leg in Normandy, but he don’t like to talk about it.’

  Betty was intrigued, and told Joe that she’d like to meet the stranger. He duly introduced her to Sid, a stocky man with black hair who seemed far more grown up than any of the boys she had encountered at Tate & Lyle. He had a noticeable chunk missing from one ear which she was dying to ask about, but after what her friend had said she didn’t feel she could.

  As it turned out, she didn’t need to. ‘So what happened to your ear, then?’ Gladys asked, unashamedly.

  There was an awkward silence, before Sid replied, ‘I went in for a haircut and the barber’s hand slipped.’

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ gasped Betty, wide-eyed.

  In fact, Sid’s ear had been shot through by a German bullet during his time serving with the Devonshire Regiment. He was one of the Pegasus Bridge heroes, who had crossed enemy lines at night in gliders to seize two bridges in Normandy as part of Operation Deadstick. Their brave efforts prevented the enemy from sending in reinforcements, helping to pave the way for the D-Day landings the following morning, and their mission was later immortalised in the film The Longest Day.

  Gladys could see that Betty was impressed with Sid, and wasn’t at all surprised when the two started dating. She was happy for her friend, but couldn’t help noticing that around him Betty’s characteristic giggle was less in evidence.

  ‘He’s making a lady out of me,’ Betty insisted, proudly. But she also knew that Sid wasn’t too keen on Gladys roping her into every mischievou
s plan she had going.

  With Betty busy dating, Gladys threw herself into a love affair of her own: sport. She had always been as fast as the boys when playing football in the park, but at Tate & Lyle she finally had the opportunity to hone her athletic talents.

  The company laid huge store by its sports facilities and had established sports centres at each refinery back in the thirties, with Vernon Tate himself running the one at Thames. Between them, the two clubs had bought a sports field on Manor Way, Beckton, where their various teams could practise and where the summer sports day – the highlight of the Tate & Lyle social calendar – was held. Clubs and teams on offer ranged from athletics, football and cricket to archery, judo and rifle shooting. The company also had a wide range of non-sporting organisations, from pet clubs to photography societies.

  Gladys was disappointed to discover there was no women’s football team, but she decided to join the athletics club and the netball team – which had recently graduated to the first division in the London Business Houses League. She already knew one person on both teams, Miss Smith’s secretary Betty Harrington.

  On the day of her first netball practice Gladys bolted out of the factory at two p.m. and headed across to the sports field. As she neared the netball court she saw a young man lying on his back, enthusiastically pumping his legs in the air in a cycling action. What a show-off, she thought to herself.

  As she walked past him, Gladys noticed that the man’s shorts were hanging down loosely around his buttocks, leaving a large gap from which a particularly sweaty body part could be seen. It jangled around grotesquely in time with his exercises, and Gladys quickly looked away, shocked. Surely that wasn’t what a grown man’s willy looked like? She recalled her father telling her about nurses having to hold old men’s private parts while they wee’d, and thanked her lucky stars she had heeded his warning. Nevertheless, she thought it worth making the most of the opportunity for research and, after walking a few feet, turned back to get a second look.