The Girl Now Leaving

by The Girl Now Leaving (retail) (epub)

  You won’t want to know, but I’m going to tell you about the parade. His Remoteness in a scarlet uniform wearing all his medals (for bravery in marrying Her Haughtiness, Kate said her dad said) was in a carriage with Her H. Everything was plumes, horses, jingling harness, swords, peals of bells, scarlet uniforms, busbies, bands and a dog that got in the way of everything and couldn’t be caught even by soldiers with swords and policemen with truncheons. Miss Lake said ‘Britain at its best’. Mrs Ezzard agreed. I thought they were being ironic (the dog). I hope they were.

  In the evening there was a street party. Ray says he can remember the Armistice party when the street was all decorated with flags and there was a supper in the middle of the street. Can you? The kids loved it. If I’m honest, we all did. Do you remember Eileen Grigg (who used to fight me)? She doesn’t have any friends, so I asked her to come. Her only pleasure in life seems to be food, so I thought that she would love all the jellies and cakes, but you’d think I had asked her to enter a lion’s cage the way she reacted. Something happened to her between the time she was sent away and the time she came back, it’s as though somebody pulled the heart and spirit out of her. When she speaks it’s a bit like she was talking in a different language from her natural one, just short sentences, no conversation, almost childish (no, childlike).

  Even Ray condescended to come and have a dance when it was dark. I’ll tell you something, Kenny, our Ralph’s a bit of a dark horse, he’s a really good dancer, so I suppose when he goes off on his old union ‘dos’ it isn’t always work. It did us both good. We’ve been like bears with sore heads lately. We miss you. Really. Forgive our lapse into monarchy (or is it royalism?). There’s a lot to be said for Maytime in England. Back to work on Monday (when I shall take a close look at Mr E to see if I can fathom what a nice person like Mrs E saw in him). Love, Lu.

  When she returned to work the day following the day off, Lu felt restless. Meeting Kate Roles at the factory gate, she said, ‘Come on, Katie, how do you feel about running away from home?’

  Kate Roles asked, ‘What’s up, you got the hump?’

  ‘You used to be the one who wanted to run away from home.’

  ‘I know, that was when I didn’t get my own way with my dad.’

  ‘I don’t think I can stand this place much longer.’

  ‘What you going to do then?’

  ‘I don’t know… something. I feel like a balloon that’s been blown up too much. If I don’t do something I’m going to explode.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go mixing with the nobs. What was she like, Mrs Ezz? Did you like the procession?’

  ‘It was quite good, the kids loved it.’

  ‘Quite good! You get a free trip to London to see the parade and all you can say is it’s quite good. There’s times when I could slosh you, Lu Wilmott.’

  They punched their time cards and walked down the aisle between the rows and rows of machines. Bright sunlight beamed through the barred windows, illuminating the disturbed motes of lint. ‘See, Kate, we breathe that all day. I expect our chests are full of pink fluff.’

  ‘I don’t know about yours, but mine isn’t.’ She jiggled her breasts up and down with her hands just as George Ezzard stepped out of his office. ‘Watch out, it’s Goodtime George… Trust him to get his eye full.’

  ‘When you two ladies have finished your little chat… The boss wants to see you in his office, Wilmott.’

  ‘What’s he want, George?’

  ‘How should I know? I just run the place.’

  ‘Somebody else got the hump. Must be catching.’

  ‘Get to work, Kate, and you get on upstairs.’

  ‘Why does he always call you by your first name and me Wilmott?’

  ‘Because he’s afraid of you.’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘Has he ever tried to touch you up?’

  ‘And he’d better hadn’t.’

  ‘There you are then. Makes you pretty unique in this place. You scare the pants off him.’

  All the way across the yard and up to the main office, Lu tried to think why she was being called upstairs. She wasn’t the most careful employee when it came to factory rules and regulations, but George was the one to give the dressings-down. The only contact she had had with Mr Ezzard was when he had made her jump out of her skin and stitch her thumb. She had often felt eyes boring into the back of her neck when she was in the yard, and had looked up knowing he would be at his window, but she never crossed his path. Perhaps she had said something she shouldn’t have to Mrs Ezzard; but Mrs Ezzard had seemed nice, not the kind to go complaining. She hadn’t been much help with the children, especially considering she had so many of her own, but she had been quite friendly and thankful for Lu’s help.

  It was four years since she had last stood before his desk. Full of anger and anguish I was then. He seemed so old then, yet I don’t reckon he’s much more than his mid-forties. This time he didn’t keep her standing long. ‘Well, Wilmott, is your hand mended?’

  ‘My hand…? Oh, yes sir… Mr Ezzard. It is… ages ago.’

  ‘I suppose you nodded off… Not a clever thing to do.’

  ‘I was working very fast, and it is not easy to hear footsteps in the noise of the machine room.’ Lu felt that she could almost read his mind. She sensed that she made him uneasy, as apparently she did George also. He didn’t seem able to look directly at her. But, no matter how much she despised him, he had the upper hand. She needed the job, for a while longer, until she had enough savings to do whatever it was she eventually decided to do. He knew well enough that he had been the cause of that accident.

  He looked at Cynthia Lake’s clever girl, as Alma had referred to her at breakfast. ‘Jacob, what do you think, one of Cynthia’s aides with the Jubilee outing was that clever girl who gave up the grammar scholarship. You know who I mean?’

  He did indeed. Often, when the hooter sounded, he would go to the window where he had a full view of the main gate. He could always pick her out, surrounded by her acolytes, chattering enthusiastically, flinging her hands, often laughing with a display of those strong wholesome teeth. She seemed unable to talk without gesturing. He did indeed know her.

  Sometimes she wore her hair knotted on top, showing off that long, slender neck, damp wisps and tendrils escaping, giving the primness of such a neck a confusing touch of amorality. Occasionally, as she was walking along, she would unleash that hair and allow it to flow round her shoulders like molten bronze. Her lively breasts were not shaped by ‘Queenform’; they moved, they swelled, they seemed too full ahd mature for a girl of eighteen. She wore her working apron tied tightly about her slender waist. The swing of her hips swayed her cheap, thin skirt into a rhythm of movement. She showed humility and respect that day in the factory, but she was not humble and the respect was false. If she had been a man, he would have suspected her of being an agitator and dismissed her. As it was she was an intriguing young woman, out of place on the factory floor, and he could suspect her of anything.

  What he didn’t know for sure of Cynthia Lake’s clever girl, he guessed at. The silkiness and length of her upper thigh, the density and colour of her pubic bush, the tight roundness of her behind and whether she was bare beneath her skirts. George, in explanation of a sudden temptation, had once said most of the younger girls wore no underclothes. She was an irritant, a touch of sweetness, an enigma. Twice recently she had turned and stared up at him, as though she had expected him to be there. That look had caused an arousal of a proportion that would have been a pleasure had it not had such a whore-touched origin. How could any man not sense when she was near? How could a man in his position not feel guilty at finding himself watching a common girl from the Lampeter slums?

  ‘Jacob? Did you hear? I met Cynthia’s protégée.’

  ‘Yes, Alma, I heard, she helped with the Jubilee outing. It must have been quite an occasion.’ He continued looking at his newspaper, giving the appearance that her breakfast-time chat
ter was distracting him from important affairs.

  ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Cynthia’s liberalism (with a small “l”) hasn’t brushed off on her. When a child asked what does the king do when he gets home, she (Cynthia’s girl that is) said, “Search me, perhaps he gets popped back into his box till the next time he’s needed.” She didn’t know that I had overheard her, perhaps I should have said something; but it was such a spontaneous reply and the child saw that it was a joke… and it was amusing. She has a brother who is exploring the Continent on foot. I don’t think she found that at all a strange thing to do for people of their sort. She is really an extraordinary young woman; she has views on everything. I felt quite unread and ill-informed at times. Cynthia says she attends evening classes – you should take her into the offices, Jacob.’

  He had already intended to give the girl a try-out in the filing department before Alma had mentioned it. Now she would believe that he had taken her advice.

  ‘How old are you, Wilmott?’ he asked Lu.

  ‘Coming eighteen, Mr Ezzard.’

  ‘And how long will it be before you are off getting married and leaving “Queenform”?’

  ‘Married! I haven’t even got a regular boyfriend.’ The ‘Mr Ezzard’ came a second too late to stop her reply being an indignant retort.

  ‘I won’t have young marrieds in the office. As soon as they are trained up and worth their salt, they start families. Factory work is best suited to married women.’

  ‘It’s best to be a young man, then.’

  That innocent little smile couldn’t hide the look in her eye. She knew exactly what she was saying behind the harmless words. Cynthia Lake and Alma were right, she was no ordinary factory hand. Any other factory hand, male or female, would be struck dumb at having been called up to the top office. He had been right himself when he had put a touch of arrogance into the character he had created for her when watching from his high window. What he should do was to get rid of her. That had been his same instinct when he had become interested in Alma. The last thing any employer needed were factory hands who believed in egalitarianism. One couldn’t even say that she believed that she was his equal; this young woman was certain of it. This was a mistake. Yet it could work, as it had worked with Alma. No one had believed that such a young widow with small children would be the best wife for a widower with his own established family to take on, but it had worked out very well, and he had had a life infinitely more interesting than he might have had with a safer woman nearer his own age.

  ‘I am prepared to give you a trial period as a trainee clerk in the filing department.’

  Lu was astonished but wouldn’t let him see it.

  ‘You know the kind of dress required?’

  ‘Do I have to decide straight away?’

  Mr Ezzard was astonished. ‘What is there to decide? The opportunities to work in the “Queenform” offices are few and far between. We have never taken a girl off the factory floor. Miss Lake thinks you are capable, and I am prepared to try this experiment. Yes, you do have to decide straight away. The filing department needs a clerk at once.’

  ‘I haven’t any idea how much clerks earn.’

  ‘If you live up to Miss Lake’s assessment of you, then you must see that money is not everything. Lady clerks have status; a girl like you could move up in the community. The salary is twenty-five pounds.’

  Ten bob a week! Is that all those stuck-up office girls got? Walking around in their cuffs and collars, filing bits of paper, typing letters. A girl off the factory floor in the office would put their noses out of joint. Apart from that, would the girls in the factory speak to her if she became a clerk? Office girls and factory girls lived in separate worlds. Office girls didn’t come from Lampeter Street. It would be nice to come to work in a decent skirt and blouse, though. Ray and Ken always left the house looking respectable and a cut above the rest. Why was working a typewriter posh and working a sewing machine common?

  ‘Thank you, Mr Ezzard, but the thing is… my brother and I have got our budget worked out, and I can’t see how we could manage.’

  He had never counted on her rejecting him. In his mind he had dressed her in a grey flannel skirt with white collar and cuffs, tied her hair in a black velvet bow, and set her walking in and out of his office in silk stockings and polished shoes, taking away papers and bringing him customers’ files.

  ‘There would be an increase of five pounds a year after six months if you prove satisfactory.’ That was a top-rate starting wage for a girl out of commercial college. ‘Reasonable sick pay, and one week’s paid holiday.’ He had never intended offering her so much. In a minute she would see how close to bargaining this was becoming. That was how Alma had come so close to being master in his own house – she had seen how pathetically weak his need of her was. George had no such nonsense. When a girl caught his fancy he didn’t offer to take her into the offices, he used her fear of losing her job. But he was not George, and this girl wasn’t one to be intimidated. Had she been then he would never have even noticed her. ‘There is also a bonus scheme based upon the profitability of the factory as a whole. It is intended for senior staff, but I am considering including more junior members.’

  ‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate the offer, Mr Ezzard, I do, but I think I’ll keep on with what I’m doing now.’

  ‘Very well.’

  As she made a move to go, he said, ‘You understand that everything said here is confidential?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Then I have your word that you will not talk in the factory about this?’

  Her colour rose. ‘Why do you need my word? I agreed it was confidential, that means I won’t talk about it – except for with my brother. We don’t keep things from each other.’

  ‘So much for your Miss Wilmott, Alma,’ he said later. ‘She prefers the factory floor.’

  ‘Really? I should have thought she would have liked to work with her head.’

  ‘She said that she needed the piecework.’

  ‘Do factory girls earn better money?’

  ‘A girl like that one can.’

  ‘What is the machine girl’s wage then?’

  ‘Factory hands don’t receive a wage. Their payment is by result, by piecework. A girl is paid according to how many pieces of work she turns out.’

  ‘And Miss Wilmott can earn more that way?’

  ‘Because she is one of George’s fastest and best workers, yes, she can.’

  ‘I wonder that she can stand such repetitive work. I really wish that we could do something for her. I liked her very much.’

  Jacob Ezzard continued to keep his head down in his newspaper. He too would have liked that. She had turned him down. Had even had the audacity to insinuate that he doubted her understanding of confidentiality. He had felt intimidated, half-ashamed of having watched her, guilty of the sexual thoughts she had caused in him; yet he was still unable, or unwilling, to do anything about them.

  * * *

  When Lu told Ray about the offer of the job as a filing clerk, his response was, ‘Is that all Ezzard’s pay them? I reckon office workers need a union as much as the rest of you. What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I needed piecework money.’

  ‘We could manage if you wanted to be a white-collar worker.’

  ‘You know we couldn’t.’

  It was a two-minute wonder. Having discussed it briefly they were soon lost in their food and reading. They still missed Ken, especially at their one meal of the day. Ray was no longer on shiftwork, but was working the same hours as Lu, and they would sit eating whatever the day brought: knuckle-bone ham, shop pie or fritters or fried fish or peas and faggots, or sometimes enormous potatoes left baking in a low oven whilst they were at work. As they ate they leafed through a shared daily paper, reading out any news items that might be affecting Ken in Spain. Much of it was disturbing news. When Ken wrote, it was usually not about the threats to Spain’s stability,
but about the people: how primitively they lived in rural areas, and how advanced they were in the cities. He had become enthusiastic about the history and architecture of the country. He was especially taken by the Moorish buildings of the south. ‘I shouldn’t mind settling down here, but there’s still a lot more to see. And then there’s Italy, I shouldn’t mind going on there eventually.’

  Lu said, ‘Do you reckon he’ll come back?’

  ‘Of course he will, people always want to come home.’

  ‘I don’t think 1 would, if I was in his shoes. I can’t imagine anything more exciting than to wake up one morning and be able to say, I’m leaving! To go and see elephants in the wild, or watch glaciers floating along, or get a job on a newspaper. It wouldn’t really matter what you were leaving for, just that you had decided to go and you went.’ At that moment something about her father flared up like a match-head, but she doused it before it had the chance of illuminating any similar desires in him. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it’s different if you’ve got responsibilities.’

  Ray kept his head in the newspaper and didn’t respond. Suddenly, she felt unreasonably irritable. ‘What are we going to do, Ray?’

  ‘What are we what?’

  ‘You might at least listen, Ray. I might only be a factory girl, an unimportant woman, but you could listen sometimes.’

  ‘I’m not going to let you pick another argument, Lu. Just say what’s up.’

  ‘You and me. What are we going to do? We’re just here, look at us, we’re like some old married couple when their children have gone. We sit here, one each side of the table, then we wash up and then we sit one each side of the fire, then we go into the scullery and get things ready for work, then we both have a cup of cocoa.’