‘Oi, what do you think you’re doing there?’ The security man’s voice made her jump. He took the yellow paper from her hand. ‘You’re the other new Wilmott girl. Mr Ezzard sees you hanging about like that, you’ll be out on your ear before you even start. You come to find Mr George? Well, come on then, buck up, I’ll take you to him.’ As he led her through a side-door he said in a more kindly voice, ‘Don’t take no notice, sweetheart, me bark’s worse than my bite. Here you are. Don’t let ’em know you’re scared, they can’t eat you.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Only suck out your marrow.’
The noise was terrific! She could only surmise what he said by his quick march and beckoning finger. At the far end of the sewing room was a glazed mezzanine office giving the occupant full view of the work room. The security man knocked once and put his head round the door, handed over the yellow paper, said, ‘New girl, Mr George,’ and left Lu to it.
Mr George. Dressed in tweed jacket and trousers and no tie. He was not bad looking, younger than Mr Ezzard. But you could tell that they were brothers. He looked at the yellow slip. ‘You’re to start as a button-threader then. What do they call you?’
‘Lu, Mr George.’
‘And you are only fourteen? Big girl for your age.’ He cocked his head sideways in just the way Mr Ezzard had, and kept her talking, presumably to pass the time. Again, as in Mr Ezzard’s office, Lu answered in her best Portsmouthian whine which her mother used to detest. ‘Have to look at your hands – no good if you’ve got old breaks that have knit badly.’ He picked up her hand and inspected it. ‘You’ll do,’ then, indicating with his head, ‘this way.’ He led her down the length of the sewing room. Eyes flicked a glance at her, but not for long enough to slow down the flying shuttles and thrumming needles. He raised his voice to be heard. ‘You’ll be under Mrs Tuffnel. You know Mrs Tuffnel?’
Lu shook her head.
‘She’s overseer in this room. Nellie!’ he yelled, and a woman stood up from one of the worktables separate from the rest. She had big breasts straining her white apron, and shapeless ankles that seemed to brim over her shapeless bar-button shoes. She walked on very bad feet, worse even than Lu’s aunties’. A room filled with hunched backs and bowed heads, all bent close to the point where the needle pierced the fabric, so as to watch that there was not a hitch as the pink seams were sucked under the needle-foot.
Lu’s introduction to Mrs Tuffnel was brief and conducted in shouts, ending with, ‘All right, Mr George.’ Lu followed the overseer into a room off the machine room. The room, lit with a couple of old-fashioned oil-lamps hanging from beams, had walls of old, dark, bare brick, along which were gloomy recesses; windows of frosted glass were barred with iron and the floor had a cobbled surface like some of the old streets.
‘This is where you’ll be… I know it looks bad when you first come in, but you get used to it.’ She gave a brief, wry smile. ‘I started in this very room as a button girl. It an’t changed; I have.’
Mrs Tuffnel sank gratefully on to a bale of something. Now she looked at the yellow slip. ‘Which of the Wilmotts got you in?’
‘My Aunty Elsie spoke for me.’
‘That’s her married to Hec who drives the beer lorries.’
Lu nodded.
‘Knew Hec Wilmott years ago.’ She slapped her high stomach. ‘When me and him both was a bit lighter than we are now… Mine’s not beer, though. Know your granny too, poor old soul. Can’t hardly see now, can she? Corsets gets us all in the end, one way or another. I expect you know what button girls do. Nothing much to know. One reason why Ezzard’s likes to take on girls who has family is that they don’t come as strange to the work. Your ma went before, if I remember right?’
‘Yes, she passed on a few weeks back.’ Words like ‘dead’ were taboo.
‘She couldn’t have been no age, what took her?’
Cancer was a word equally taboo. The disease might almost be caught by hearing it said. ‘Growth’ was acceptable: it had the drama but not the dread. ‘She had a haemorrhage.’
‘Oh, the poor dear… but there are worse things. Anyway, you’ll be getting over it by now.’ There was no questioning inflection in the sentence, rather it was a positive statement: you are all right, you have to be; no use moping, you just have to get on with things.
Lu nodded. Mrs Tuffnel was right: nobody really wanted to know.
‘You’ll be run off your feet, I can tell you that for a fact, but you’re young. When anybody calls for buttons or straps you’d better move – you hold up a pieceworker and she’ll put her scissors in you… Not really, but nobody on piecework can afford to stop.’
‘Am I stopping you now?’
Now that she was here, Lu wanted to get going, to learn whatever she had to. ‘It part of my job training up new girls. Didn’t he tell you, Mr George?’
‘Only that you are the overseer.’
‘Well, it goes like this. While you’re learning the job, you’re supposed to hand over to me best part of what you earn. That way it don’t cost the firm anything and you learn quick.’
It quite pained Lu to see her first wages disappearing before her eyes. She had given up everything to get a pay-packet. ‘Mr Ezzard told me I won’t get paid for this morning.’
‘I know. This is a place where you don’t get summat for nothing. It’s hard work, the pay’s bad, but we survive.’
Lu thought briefly of her mum and the endless boxes of work. ‘My aunty said a girl can earn more in a factory than serving in a shop.’
‘Ah… factory girls are pretty much down the ladder, but I reckon shop girls come below because, no matter how hard they work, they don’t take home any more. On piecework, it’s the more you do the more you earn.’
‘I don’t mind hard work.’
‘That’s the spirit. And about the money you’re supposed to pay me. I know how it feels to earn your own bit of money, and I expect yours is needed now your mum’s gone on before. I never have taken money for learning a girl.’
‘Honest?’
Mrs TufFnel smiled. ‘Honest. But what I expect is that a girl takes notice of what she’s told first off so it don’t waste anybody’s time. That’s what it’s all about here: time. You’ve got to fill every minute you’re on the factory floor with Mr Ezzard’s work. He’s the paymaster, and there’s few enough of them about.’
Into Lu’s mind flashed the image of Mr Ezzard in his big office, seated behind his big desk keeping her waiting till it suited him to look up. The paymaster. She hadn’t heard the word before, but it fitted just right.
The door opened suddenly and a young woman in an apron and cap came in. ‘Straps, Nellie?’
‘Well, you know where they are, Katy.’
‘Hello, Lu, I haven’t seen you in weeks. Sorry to hear about your mum and dad. You give up going to the grammar? Can’t stop, see you dinner-time.’ She grabbed a box and made a stroke on a tally-board and gave Lu a wink. ‘Well, don’t let them catch you at it, Lu,’ and was gone.
Mrs Tuffhel smiled. ‘You know Katy Roles then? I suppose you’d have been in the same class as her.’
‘She used to be one of my best friends.’
‘Oh, well, that’s nice, I dare say there’s other girls you’ll know. A lot of your Wilmotts work upstairs. I expect you’d have liked to have got in with them; but still, it’s a nice bunch we’ve got down here.’
Lu wondered whether it made any difference because when she had come through the factory all she saw of the machinists were their figures hunched over machines concentrating, not talking, moving only where the stitching took them.
‘Let’s get the training done with then, Lu.’
She made her painful legs and feet take her round the room, and as she went she tapped many different boxes, thankfully all labelled. ‘Trimmings for the bust-tops and corsets, laces, ribbons, hooks and eyes, needles, made-up straps, boning, springs and cottons – make sure when somebody asks for “Sylko” it is “Sylko”, and when a fanner ask
s for a different colour, get the right one. Know what that’s for?’
‘Stitching fans over the ends of bones?’
‘That’s it! Being a Wilmott will be a help to you. Wilmotts, Samphiers, Tuffnels and half a dozen more families have been making stays in Pompey since Adam was a lad. You won’t need to touch any of this stuff till you’re a runner, but you might as well know now, save time then. All you need to know to start is the buttons, and how to prepare them. Really, a trained monkey could do it, which is why they won’t pay anything hardly, but it’s a job that’s got to be done and there’s more girls wanting to do button-threading than there is buttons wanting to be threaded. So you just get on and get it done: the sooner you learn, the sooner you’ll get on a machine.’
This time when Mrs Tuffnel rested, she supported her sagging stomach from below with linked hands, just as Vera used to do. Lu looked around at the grim walls and wondered whether her mother used to come in here. She had never been curious about the time when her mother worked in the factory. It was impossible to imagine her seated on a stool bent over a machine. Lu’s image of her was seated in the low, sagging armchair, as close as possible to the light, doing hand-finishing. One day, she thought, I’ll work out how many… No. To think of all those piles of finished work endlessly replaced by piles waiting to be finished made the walls seem to close in on her.
‘What’s he paying you?’
‘One and six, till I learn the job.’
‘You’ve just learnt it. Well, best get started.’ She hauled herself to her feet, still holding in place her women’s bits and pieces. ‘Things to remember… If you see a rat, don’t go panicking and throwing things at it, just bang hard on something so George can let Nig get at it. Go to wee before you come in because the WCs here are more often than not choked up. Don’t drop your scissors or you’ll have the whole shop floor on your neck. You’ll want to buy your own scissors – try not to get yourself into debt over them, but if you do come and tell me.’
Lu was still thinking of rats, her eyes searching the gloomy corners. None of the aunts had ever said there would be rats.
As Nellie Tuffnel often said to her husband: You could cry to see little bits of girls straight from school running their backsides off for a couple of coppers a day. Nellie was an angry woman, but it seldom showed. Certainly not with her girls.
‘Our Ray is good with money, he wouldn’t let me get into debt. I’ll probably get them on the Co-op card.’
Poor little kite, Nellie Tuffnel said to herself. Same poor little kite I used to be myself, and that don’t seem so long ago either.
Out in the main factory, the noise was overwhelming, but she quickly learned to interpret her orders and run back and forth, seeming to have to do a dozen things at once to keep the needs of the women she served supplied. There were other girls doing the same job, but they were ahead of her in experience and speed; Katy was one, and it was Katy who, on the run, would point at what Lu was supposed to fetch.
What fascinated her most was the speed at which the machinists worked, and the skill. Straps and binding zipped through so fast that she wondered how they could control what they did. She would have liked to stand and watch the different kinds of operations, but there was never a minute to spare, and she was very aware of Mr George watching everything that went on from his office. There was something about him she didn’t like. Whenever he left his office he had with him his black whippet on a piece of rope which he played out so that the horrible bony dog could sniff around under the benches for scent of vermin.
Although there were scores of women and girls, there was nobody she could talk to until the hooter went when, almost as one, they shut off their machines and made for the exit. There Kate Roles was waiting so that they could hurry along together. Kate, having started work whilst Lu was still at school, knew everything worth knowing. ‘I’m glad you decided to come to work, Lu. See you when the five-minute hooter goes. Don’t be late or you’ll get locked out.’ Katy’s dinner would be ready, but Lu would have to grab whatever was there and do a bit of shopping, which they had agreed would be one of her jobs. She determined that in future she would be more organized and try to make a sandwich before she left in the morning.
And so Lu worked her first day, her first week, her first month. Her whole day was controlled by the factory hooter. She would never be late, never risk having money docked. And whilst she was waiting to become a machinist, her life was the factory and the factory her life. She longed for a machine of her own, to have control of the speed, to learn to make seams pass under the needle so fast that it was impossible to see it move. Then at last Mr George called her in and said she could start on a machine. Soon she would be on piecework. George Ezzard said, ‘Any mistakes, dirty work, stains, crooked seams, spoiled work – in fact anything that isn’t perfect – Nellie will send back to be done again. You only get paid for perfect work. If it’s too bad to be salvaged, then rejects are deducted from your pay. Understood?’
‘Yes, Mr George,’ she said, her face sweetly grateful. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘You’ll find that Ezzard’s always looks after its promising girls.’
Hurrying home, Kate said, ‘You want to watch that George. Now he’s give you a leg up he thinks you owe him a favour.’
‘I know,’ Lu said.
‘When I started, I was warned about him, so I was careful, yet he still found a chance to catch me when I was getting stuff from the store. I never even knew he was in there.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘It was horrible, I was getting a heavy box off the top shelf, both hands, and there he was behind me, pressed up close. “Oh,” he says, “that’s a bit heavy for you, Kate, let me give you a hand.” Give me a hand! He did that all right, he squeezed my titty.’ She nudged Lu. ‘Know what I did? “Oh, Mr George,” I said, “you did put the wind up me. I never heard you,” and I turned round quick and cracked his nose with my elbow, and dropped the bloody box on his feet. You know how heavy plywood boxes are. I never told my dad or he’d have murdered him.’
Lu laughed at the imagined scene. ‘You was pretty smart.’
‘Presence of mind, Lu. It’s surprising how it comes to you. I always carry me scissors with me since then. You do the same.’
December 1933
At Roman’s Fields, May was preparing for the arrival of Lu, Ralph and Ken for Christmas. She cleared out the box room, painted it, put in two camp beds, trimmed the house and baked, excusing her abundance with the excuse that, ‘It never seemed worth it for just us, so I thought I’d have a bit of a splurge.’
Everybody had to be back at work on the morning following Boxing Day, so they piled everything into the two days.
Lu mostly spent her time beside the fire, curled up hugging her knees, in one of the big chairs, absorbed in a novel. Ted took Ken out with a gun, who suddenly found a sport more enthralling than football. Ted didn’t mind: he thoroughly enjoyed trudging over the frozen fields with his talkative young nephew. ‘Young Ken’s all right, May. I’ve took to him. You should have seen him – a natural shot. I wished for a minute I had two good arms so we could have had a proper shooting match. I should have liked that.’
Ray suddenly took to horses, and Bar, who had never got over her first sight of him back in that first summer, had a heart overflowing with love for him and a soul filled with joy at having Lu again. She had become a woman. Even wearing her usual breeches, shirt and man’s cap, one could see that. At seventeen she carried splendid round breasts high on a wiry, spare figure, which seemed almost too slender to support them. Her uncut, black curly hair, when she let it free to blow in the wind as she exercised a fast horse, made her look as untamed as she probably was.
Bar spent whatever time she had free from the stables in their company. On Christmas morning, before their coats could become spoiled by the Boxing Day chase of the fox over winter fields, she took Ray to see the hunters. They were beautiful animals and she was proud. She was on duty much o
f the time, but on Christmas evening she came in wearing a full black skirt and a knitted top, this so shrunken that both Ray and Ken found it hard to stop watching her all the time.
May said, ‘Didn’t Duke want to come?’
‘I told him I was coming over, but he never said. You can never tell with Duke, can you?’
Gabriel Strawbridge said, ‘He said he didn’t hold with Christmas, so I told him that the Yule log and the holly and mistletoe was pagan and nothing to do with Christmas. I thought he quite took to that idea. Hark… I think that’s his tread.’
At that point, Duke makes his appearance. Lu, who has been curled up cracking nuts, jumps up and brushes the debris into the grate. He is a grown man now and is beautiful. His boyish chin has squared off and his hollow cheeks show off his fine, high cheekbones. He has still not cut his hair, but wears it oiled and tied back and bound in a kind of black stocking tube. In spite of his boots, black trousers and a knitted fisherman’s jumper, nothing can stop the image of him standing on the bent willow from leaping into her mind.
‘Right on cue, Duke,’ Gabriel Strawbridge says. ‘I was just about to say you were on your way to making your fortune. You’ve got some nice horses up in the field.’
‘I have, Master Gabr’l, main good bloodstock. I reckon I’m ready to ask the estate to let me rent some of their spare stabling.’ Although he is speaking to Gabriel Strawbridge, his unwavering gaze is directed at Lu.
May says, ‘D’you know Ray and Ken? Well, you do now. Why don’t you take a plate, Duke, and help yourself to what you want whilst we go on clearing a bit of space?’
‘I shall, Mis Wilmott.’ He takes a plate, fills it with meat and bread and goes directly to where Lu is and seats himself beside her. ‘You’ve grown up.’ His eyes roam over her from ankles to breasts and back again, as men’s eyes do. ‘You out to work?’
The Girl Now Leaving Page 21