Wartime for the Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  Like thousands before her, Eva had to admit that Tate & Lyle was the best-paying employer around, and duly donned her dungarees.

  Unlike Gladys, Eva immediately felt at home in the so-called Beauty Shop. At the end of each shift she would whisk off her turban and shake out her bouffant blonde hair, which, combined with her sparkling blue eyes, ensured that she caused quite a stir among the reel boys. Her status in the department was further enhanced by the fact that her family lived in East Ham, and were therefore considered rather posh.

  Maisie, however, was none too pleased to find herself with a rival for the unofficial title of Blue Room beauty queen. Although Eva was naturally shy, the reel boys were soon looking for excuses to stop by her machine for a chat, and in response Maisie began flirting more and more outrageously with Alex by the waste paper.

  ‘Maisie hates me like the devil hates holy water,’ Eva complained to Gladys in the café one morning.

  ‘Nah, she don’t really,’ Gladys assured her. ‘She’s just never met anyone with hair as big as yours.’

  After a while, Eva decided to play Maisie at her own game. For every button that Maisie undid on her blouse, Eva would ensure that one of her own came magically undone. Half an hour later, Maisie would respond by showing a little bit more cleavage herself, and, sure as anything, Eva would soon follow suit.

  ‘What’s the matter, beauty queens? Is it too hot in here for you?’ Gladys asked one day, prompting a contemptuous flick of the hair from Maisie, and a giggle from Eva.

  Gladys, Betty and Eva quickly became a trio, and Gladys was pleased to have a new friend around to spend time with whenever Betty was busy with her boyfriend Sid. The three girls soon discovered a new hangout, an Italian café on the Barking Road near Gladys and Betty’s bus stop. Bianchi’s was run by a little old man named Horace, and had the misfortune of still being open when the girls were coming back from their late shift. After they had been chained to their machines for eight hours, the last thing the three of them felt like doing was going home to bed, and if it was midweek a good natter over a cup of tea was just the ticket. Unfortunately, caffeine tended to enhance the girls’ manic energy rather than dampen it, and one cup of tea could often prompt an hour or more of hysterical laughter while poor Horace wiped his brow behind the counter and prayed for the night to end.

  After a couple of these encounters, Horace began to keep a lookout for the telltale checked turbans through the windows of the bus as Gladys, Betty and Eva drew up at Trinity Church each evening. As soon as he saw them, he would spring from behind his counter and hobble as fast as his little legs would carry him towards the door, attempting to slam it shut and lock it before the girls could reach him. ‘I am closing! Go home! I am closing!’ he would shout, as the three of them hurled themselves at the door, giggling and demanding ‘just one cup of tea for us hard-working sugar girls!’

  Their late-night tormenting of Horace led unintentionally to the suffering of someone else, however. Not long before Eva had joined the Blue Room, a young man called John Rodwell had returned to Tate & Lyle from his national service. John had just come back from Egypt and was sporting quite a tan. The sun had made his blond hair even lighter than usual, and the effect was very striking – at least in the eyes of the Blue Room girls, who got a good look at him when he came in one day on an errand.

  John only had eyes for the one person in the room whose blonde hair was even more brilliant than his own: Eva. One night, he spotted her getting off the 669 at Trinity Church and heading to Bianchi’s with Gladys and Betty. Unaware that she actually lived in East Ham, he assumed this was her regular route home and decided to hang around outside Bianchi’s after work the next day to ask her out, rather than risk humiliation in front of the entire Blue Room.

  Poor John waited in vain outside the café every day for a fortnight, hoping to catch sight of her, while inside, old Horace wondered what the lovelorn youth was doing there. In the end John realised his error and the golden couple finally got together.

  Like his new girlfriend, however, John came from a Tate & Lyle family, which meant it was virtually impossible to have a love life without all his relations finding out. Eva already knew his cousin Hester, the kind nurse in the factory surgery. A more formidable problem was his mother, who was a charge-hand in the syrup-filling department, where Eva’s sister Rosie also worked. ‘Dozy Rosie’, as she was known in the family, unthinkingly blabbed to some of her colleagues that her big sister was going out with the boss’s son, and before long the news had reached John’s mother. Mrs Rodwell promptly decided to take herself up to the Blue Room in order to assess her son’s new sweetheart.

  One afternoon, Eva was standing at her machine when she saw a middle-aged woman in a white coat fixing her with a penetrating gaze. Eva’s first thought was to hope she hadn’t inadvertently broken a Tate & Lyle rule in case her own father heard about it in the offices, so she was relieved when the strange woman left the department without even coming over to speak to her. Mrs Rodwell evidently approved of what she saw, because the workplace romance was allowed to continue – albeit under the watchful eye of both families.

  Eva wasn’t the only new girl in the Blue Room. Another fresh recruit was Irene, a girl who, like Betty, had lost both her parents. One Monday at break time Irene and Eva got chatting, and she told Eva it was her birthday.

  ‘Will you come for a quick drink in the Rec with me to celebrate?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh sorry, I’m not allowed to drink,’ Eva replied. ‘My Dad works here, and if he found out he’d kill me.’ Mr Browning had warned her and her sisters to steer clear of the Recreation Room, where he and his fellow workers spent many of their lunch breaks. In any case, Eva was too young to buy alcohol and he had assured her that if she so much as tried to get served there one of his moles around the factory would soon let him hear of it.

  ‘Well, you’re not doing anything wrong if you’re just sitting there,’ reasoned Irene. ‘Go on, I’ll only have time for one.’

  Eva had to admit that the other girl had a point, and reluctantly followed her over to the canteen and up the stairs to the Rec. She looked over her shoulder constantly as she went, checking to see that she wasn’t being spotted by a fellow Browning, but they managed to reach the bar undetected.

  ‘What’ll you have, love?’ the barman asked Irene.

  ‘I don’t know – whatever those men over there are having. With a straw.’

  The barman placed a bottle of cider on the bar, pushing a stripey straw down its neck.

  Eva dragged Irene over to some seats in the corner and sat with one elbow on the table, so she could shield her face with her hand in case a family member came through the door.

  With the help of the straw, Irene surprised herself by finishing the whole bottle of cider in a matter of minutes. ‘Just like drinking lemonade, really, ain’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Right, let’s go then,’ said Eva, jumping up.

  ‘Hang about, we’ve still got twenty minutes,’ replied Irene, whose cheeks were beginning to glow. ‘I can easily have another one and get back in time.’

  Irene headed to the bar again before Eva could stop her, and the second drink went down as quickly as the first, ending with a little hiccup.

  ‘We’ve really got to go now,’ said Eva, peering anxiously through her fingers to check that her father was still not in the room.

  But a young man who was passing spotted Irene’s empty cider bottle and offered to replace it. ‘Aw – thank you!’ she said. ‘Everyone’s really, really nice here, aren’t they?’

  At some point during the course of the third bottle, Irene lost the ability to sit up straight and, in a fit of giggles, began to fall off her stool. Eva rushed forward to catch her, and managed to pull her to her feet. She put her arm round Irene’s shoulders and led her towards the door.

  As they reached the entrance, she paused to let a group of men file in. The last of them stopped dead in his tracks. Eva looked up into the f
ace of her father.

  ‘Eva Browning, what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he demanded. ‘What did I tell you about drinking on the job?’

  ‘I didn’t drink a thing, Dad, I promise!’ Eva protested, struggling to keep the hiccupping Irene upright. ‘She just kept ordering more and more cider and I couldn’t get her to leave.’

  ‘Well, never mind that now,’ said her father, relenting a little at his daughter’s obvious distress. ‘You’d better get your friend back to the Blue Room, or you’ll both be in trouble for being late.’

  With great difficulty, Eva managed to escort Irene back to their department. ‘Maybe we should tell Julie you’re not feeling well,’ she said, looking at her dubiously. ‘I’m not sure you should be on the machines.’

  ‘You can’t do that, I’ll lose me job!’ the other girl wailed. ‘Promise you won’t tell her, Eva?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Eva, wishing to heaven that she hadn’t agreed to go to the Rec.

  As they started back on the machines poor Irene did her best to attend to her duties, but out of the corner of her eye Eva could see her stumbling around clumsily. Finally, Irene knocked over a barrel of ink, and when Eva looked over she was horrified to see that her face and clothes were covered in the dark-blue liquid.

  Julie McTaggart was furious. ‘Somebody take this girl down to the surgery!’ she barked.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Eva quickly, feeling guilty for having let Irene go back on her machine.

  Down at the surgery, Eva and Nurse Hester stripped Irene of her ink-splattered clothes and did their best to wash her down, before she was sent home in the company ambulance. At least Irene had no parents to read her the riot act, Eva thought to herself, knowing her own father would probably give her another ticking-off when she got home. To make matters worse, since Hester was her boyfriend John’s cousin, she knew there was no way of hiding the story from his family, either.

  The next day Irene returned to work rather the worse for wear, and in the Blue Room the girls were convinced that it was only a matter of time before she was sacked by Miss Smith. But to their surprise The Dragon came by on her daily round and didn’t say a word to her.

  The following day, and another, passed without any action from Miss Smith, and each time Irene saw her she became more jumpy. ‘I bet old Flo’s stringing it out on purpose to scare her,’ remarked Gladys.

  By the end of the week the anticipation had reached fever pitch, and poor Irene was a nervous wreck. On Friday afternoon the girls were just shutting down their machines when Miss Smith appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Irene!’ Her deep voice echoed across the floor.

  Irene froze, and all the girls’ hearts began beating in sympathetic terror.

  ‘Yes, Miss Smith?’ she replied meekly, stepping forward.

  ‘I believe you were drunk on the job on Monday. Is that correct?’

  Irene nodded, silently. Her cheeks were even redder than they had been in the Rec.

  ‘It goes without saying that I cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour in the factory.’

  ‘No, Miss,’ Irene said quietly. She hung her head, braced for the much-anticipated dismissal.

  But there was a long pause, and Miss Smith seemed to be wrestling with herself over what to say next.

  ‘I trust you have learned your lesson?’ she asked, eventually.

  Irene looked up in surprise. Could this mean what she thought it did?

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ she said, quickly. ‘Of course, Miss.’

  ‘Good. Then don’t let me see you covered in ink next week,’ said Miss Smith, turning on her heel and walking out of the room.

  As soon as she had gone, the girls all gathered round Irene, hugging and congratulating her. Gladys could scarcely believe that the girl had got off so lightly – and if she was honest, she felt a little bit annoyed about it. True, Irene had been subjected to a very public warning, but Miss Smith had not even threatened her with the sack, much less gone through with it. Gladys had had that threat dangled over her constantly ever since she started at the factory.

  ‘You know Irene don’t have no family,’ said Betty, when Gladys told her what she was thinking. ‘Maybe that’s why Miss Smith went easy on her.’

  The following week at work, the Blue Room girls were excitedly planning for an upcoming beano to Southend. ‘I know what we’ll need,’ said Gladys. ‘Paper hats!’

  ‘Oh, we can buy them when we get there,’ replied Eva.

  ‘Why wait?’ Gladys said. Checking that Julie McTaggart was out of sight, she grabbed a freshly printed sheet of paper. ‘We can make our own.’

  She folded the paper up until she had something vaguely resembling a hat. Nervously, the other girls followed her example, knowing that if they were caught they would be in big trouble for wasting good paper.

  ‘Now we need something to write on ’em,’ said Gladys.

  ‘I’ve got a pen,’ said Maisie, and began adding the time-honoured phrase ‘Kiss Me Quick’ across the front of hers.

  ‘That’s too boring,’ said Gladys, grabbing the pen with a mischievous smile. She leant over and began scribbling on her own hat, then put it on her head and turned to the others, hands on her hips. ‘Like it?’ she asked.

  In large letters were the words ‘Do Me Quick’.

  To her surprise the other girls hastily looked away and tended to their machines, crumpling up their hats and stuffing them into their pockets.

  ‘Well, don’t take offence!’ Gladys said, rather put out. She turned round grumpily to her own machine, her hat still on, and came face to face with Miss Smith.

  The labour manageress’s eyes flicked over the words on Gladys’s forehead. Then she reached over and whisked the hat off, crushing it in one large hand.

  ‘I am shocked at you …’ she began, fixing Gladys with her familiar, penetrating stare. Then she stopped and narrowed her eyes. ‘No, come to think of it, I’m not shocked,’ she said, turning to go. ‘It’s exactly the sort of thing I expect from you.’

  Was that it, thought Gladys – no punishment? Not even the ritual summons to the Personnel Office?

  As Miss Smith left the room, Gladys gave a careless laugh. ‘Maybe she’s keeping the hat for herself,’ she joked to the other girls.

  She knew she ought to be pleased that Miss Smith had gone easy on her, but she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. For the first time, her naughtiness had not provoked a reaction.

  13

  Ethel

  The winter of 1952 was bitterly cold, and families everywhere were throwing as much coal on the fire as they could afford. The timing could not have been worse. On Friday 5 December, an anticyclone settled over London, and combined with the cold weather it created a lid of warm air, under which an unliftable yellow-black smog began to form. The East Enders were used to pea-soupers, but this was on a scale never experienced before, and on Silvertown’s Sugar Mile, where the factories belched out their own smoke hour after hour, visibility was reduced to a mere foot.

  That morning the buses crawled the streets as slowly and carefully as they could, conductors carrying lanterns out in front in a desperate attempt to see through the smog. At the Plaistow Wharf Refinery, workers arrived in dribs and drabs, and even by midday less than half of the machines were fully staffed. In a rare act of generosity towards latecomers, the management announced that anyone who had made it in at all, however late, would be paid for the full day. Those who had stayed at home would be docked pay accordingly.

  Dave Price, who worked on the raw sugar landing, spent most of his morning stuck on the Woolwich Ferry. Halfway across the Thames, the captain of the paddle steamer lost his way, and the passengers were ordered to line the sides of the boat as lookouts, to warn of any incoming vessels. They endured a near miss from a petrol tanker and collided with a barge, before the captain decided it was best to stay where they were. Four hours later they were rescued by a police boat.

  When Dave finally made it in
to work, his supervisor demanded to know where he had been.

  ‘I’ve been marooned,’ he told him, ‘in the middle of the river!’

  ‘Oh well, you better go straight home again,’ his boss responded. ‘There’s no work on the landing today anyway.’

  The sugar girls had no such luck, since the Hesser Floor was still running. When the day came to an end they struggled as best they could to find their way home, stumbling from street to street and relying largely on memory to guide them. By the time one poor girl found her way back to Argyle Street, she had walked around St Luke’s Square four times. She got home to find that not only her dungarees but her underclothes had been blackened by the smog.

  Ethel had less distance to travel home from work than most, but she found it a challenge nonetheless. It was as if a velvety cloth had fallen upon Silvertown, smothering everyone and everything beneath it, and even the familiar sounds of the area seemed muffled.

  In the market at Smithfields, livestock were dying of suffocation, and they weren’t the only ones to perish. In the following weeks, the human casualties of the Great Smog reached 12,000.

  That weekend most families stayed indoors, and by the following week there was still little sign of improvement. On Tuesday the shop steward cornered Ethel to request that a girl with a particularly tough commute be allowed to leave early.

  ‘You’ve got to do something about Lucy Humphries,’ the woman pleaded. ‘She’s got to go all the way to Basildon. It ain’t right making her struggle through the smog for hours.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ethel responded, fearful of making an exception for one girl that might set a bad example to the others. Rules were rules, after all – wasn’t that what she had always told herself?

  ‘Come on, Ethel,’ the other woman continued. ‘You can’t see your own two feet out there.’