Читать книгу The Quality Street Girls - Penny Thorpe - Страница 7

Bess sauntered along behind her sister Mary who was moving at a quick pace, eager to get home to bed. Mary walked awkwardly in the stranger’s grey wool coat; she was glad of the warmth, but not the circumstances in which she’d acquired it, and the almost inaudible rustling of the fabric lining felt deafeningly loud to her.

Bess didn’t seem to notice the cold, she lost her balance every so often in her silver, t-strap Louis heels, but then with a click against the cobbles, she’d right herself again, scattering some of the ha’penny bag of chip shop scraps in her wake. Chip shop scraps were all they seemed to eat for their tea these days, and on this occasion, Bess was lucky that they’d been passing a chippy that was still open so that Mary could get her something hot on their way home.

Bess offered some to her sister as she trotted faster to try to keep with her. ‘Don’t you want any? They’re lovely and tasty; I love the smell of hot vinegar when it gets into the paper and goes all tangy.’

‘You eat them. Mother’s not got us anything in for breakfast so that’ll have to do you until dinner time at work.’

‘I don’t mind. I don’t get hungry in the morning.’

Mary’s wandering mind was interrupted by a call from the house opposite to their own:

‘You found her then?’

‘Yes, thank you Mrs Grimshaw.’ Mary tried to shove her sister unceremoniously through the soot-blackened front door. Leaping at the chance to start a cheery conversation with the neighbour, Bess called over Mary’s shoulder:

‘Goodnight, Mrs Grimshaw! Thank you for the lovely bread you left—’

‘Don’t start that, just get inside.’ Mary whispered to her sister, ‘You’ll wake the whole street.’

‘You’re alright.’ The neighbour sucked casually on her old white clay pipe as she stood on her doorstep, placidly waiting for Mary knew-not-what.

She always did that, Mary thought to herself, she was always standing on her front step in her slippers and housecoat smoking on a pipe waiting for nothing in particular when they got back late. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Mrs Grimshaw always seemed to go out for a pipe when Bess was out late, and Mary had gone to fetch her. What must the woman think of the pair of us? Then Mary realised that if Mrs Grimshaw thought her younger sister was a dirty stop out, then she was, in fact, correct. However, Mary preferred to think that her sister was somehow a special case and that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Then she remembered what Bess had told her the preceding week and realised that it was worse.

‘I don’t know why you won’t let me pass the time of day with Mrs Grimshaw.’ Bess tottered into the front parlour that opened straight onto the street. She clattered over the bare boards on silver high heeled shoes as silly as herself while her sister lit a slim, farthing candle from the table beside the front door.

‘Take your shoes off; you’ll wake Mother.’ Mary didn’t need to look over to the corner of the parlour to know that their mother was asleep under grandad’s old army coat in her chair beside the dying embers of the range. As far as Mary could remember their mother had never stayed awake to see that they came home safely because, like Bess, her mother took it for granted that they always would. The reason she slept in the parlour was no late-night vigil for her only children, but the practical solution to the problem of space; since their father died they had been forced to make do with a one-up-one-down. Mary and Bess shared a bed upstairs in the only bedroom. At a squeeze, Mrs Norcliffe might have been able to fit into it with her daughters, but she had moved down to the parlour years ago.

Bess unfastened the dainty t-straps of her shoes and carried them with her up the creaking stairs to their bedroom. She didn’t lower her voice because her mother was deaf as a post and wouldn’t hear them, but they were both careful to tread softly, and in stockinged feet, to avoid shaking the floor and waking her that way.

‘I like her ever so much.’ Bess dropped the shoes onto the floor beside the dresser and hung up her coat on the open door of their wardrobe. ‘I think she wishes you’d talk to her more because I know that she’s very fond of you.’

‘Mrs Grimshaw does not like me.’ Mary said it as though it were a fact that she had come to terms with long ago and only shared in passing as she folded the stranger’s coat neatly and laid it in the corner furthest away from her as though it were a dangerous animal that might attack.

‘Oh, but she does!’ Bess’s large, blue baby-doll eyes were wide with concern and love, and she reached out to rub her sister’s shoulder reassuringly, ‘You worry too much, and if you’d just talk to people and let them get to know you—’

‘You’re too trusting.’ Unlike her sister, Mary didn’t have to remove cheap costume jewellery and climbed into their lumpy, old, but nonetheless welcome bed. ‘You’re used to everyone liking you, so you don’t see when you’re getting yourself into trouble.’

Bess had pulled on her nightdress and thrown her silk stockings carelessly over the top of her messily heaped shoes. ‘Your trouble,’ she threw her arms around her sister’s neck to give her a goodnight hug, ‘is that you’re too hard on yourself!’ Bess giggled, kissed her sister on the cheek and then wriggled down beneath the coverlet to sleep.

Mary was sitting up in bed, about to lean over and blow out the candle beside her, but in her exhaustion her mind caught up with what she had seen. Her sister had just taken off a pair of fancy-looking stockings, so Mary picked the candle up to cast the weak light a little higher. ‘Bess?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Are those silk stockings?’

‘Mmm.’ Bess hummed the affirmative contentedly into her pillow ‘They’re lovely.’

‘Where did you get them from?’

‘Tommo, he gave them to me as a present at lunchtime when I saw him at the factory gates.’

Mary turned to look down at her younger sister who had already closed her pretty, long-lashed eyes, and put her head on her faded-grey pillow. The candle wax melted down Mary’s knuckles but she ignored it. ‘I cannot believe you sometimes! I thought I told you that you weren’t to see him anymore. If he thinks that he can just—’

Bess pulled herself up in bed for a moment, leant over, and blew out her sister’s candle, plunging them both into darkness. Mary could feel Bess plonking her head back on her pillow and settling down to sleep. She sat up for a moment longer, debating whether or not to waste a match re-lighting it and trying to pursue the subject, but she knew better than to try. Her sister would never see reason, Mary would have to take matters into her own hands.

Diana could hear a church clock striking four o’clock in the morning somewhere down near Queen’s Road. She was standing in the dark, galley kitchen waiting for Tommo to return; she had waited all night. To pass the time Diana had attempted to clean up some of the usual detritus that littered her stepmother’s kitchen. An empty Oxo tin was lying on the flagstones, the crumbs trodden into the floor along with innumerable other ills. Diana had cleaned what she could without waking little Gracie and her stepmother. She had swept up crumbling shards of plaster that had fallen from the damp, mould-blackened walls; she had reset the rusted mouse trap and returned it to its place under the stove that badly needed blacking, and she had folded up the dirty sheets of newspaper that her stepmother had laid out on the kitchen table. None of them ever read much of the pages from the papers these days; the sheets were there to eat their bread and dripping off instead of crockery, and they were always a few days out of date.

As she had folded up the dirty sheets of the West Yorkshire Gazette, she’d cast her eye over stories about Italy, Spain, and Germany and fascists. The stories all seemed to weave into one another; the Spanish were fighting their fascist leader, the Germans were bombing the Spanish to stop them fighting the fascists, the Italians were with the Germans, and Londoners in the East End rioted. They’d shouted, ‘They shall not pass’ in Spanish when the British Union of Fascists had tried to march through Whitechapel. Fascism was spreading across Europe like the plague, and carefully constructed treaties were toppling all over the world like a flimsy house of cards.

A photograph in one of the newspapers caught Diana’s eye; it showed a razor-necked Oswald Mosley in his black, military-style uniform. He wore a black peaked cap like a police sergeant but his was emblazoned with the lightning bolt of the BUF, and the shiny peak was tilted rakishly over his right eye to disguise a slight squint. His uniform had echoes of Great War army officers, and an official status that he clearly longed for, but did not possess. Diana spat on his face before screwing up the damp-softened news sheets and cramming them into the empty grate of the stove. She didn’t like leaving anything about Mosley and his lot lying around if she could help it. Her stepbrother had a weakness for joining with the biggest bullies he could find, and she worried that it was only a matter of time before he realised there were even bigger fish than the criminals in Leeds that he so idolised.

Diana laid out fresh newspaper and saw a happier headline: Essie Ackland was singing at the Crystal Palace. Diana’s father had loved Essie Ackland, and she still had his wind-up gramophone in the parlour with his collection of records. She was feeling melancholy, and decided to put on one of her father’s favourites very quietly in the parlour so that the family upstairs wouldn’t hear. She crept through to the room at the front of the house and the cheap and dirty pine shelves that were built into the alcoves either side of the fireplace. In the right-hand alcove, a row of yellowing paper record sleeves stood as a lone reminder of happier times in a better place. Diana gently ran her fingertips along the record jackets that were so familiar to her now that she could tell them by their worn corners without reading their labels. She picked out Essie’s recording of ‘Goodbye’. It was an old favourite, and as she lowered the needle to the shining black disc, she felt she even remembered the pattern of crackles that preceded that haunting opening bar.

Diana lowered herself into the horsehair armchair that had seen better days, and closed her eyes, imagining she was in the Crystal Palace with her late father.

Her moment was rudely interrupted as she heard Tommo fighting with the lock of their front door. She pulled herself up out of her chair, lovingly returned the record to its sleeve, and its sleeve to its shelf, and returned to the darkness of the kitchen before he’d even managed to get his latchkey into the door. She waited with arms folded.

The house they shared with Tommo’s mother was only a two-up-two-down which meant that from where Diana leant against the kitchen sink she could see straight into the hallway. As Tommo entered the house, he could see her in the shadows.

‘Wharra you lookin’ at?’ Tommo was even more disgusting to her than usual. A cigarette butt clung to the wet bottom lip of his wide and ugly mouth. As he sneered at her, he revealed dirty, crooked teeth. It was times like these that she pitied Bess; the girl could do immeasurably better than Tommo Cartwright.

‘You didn’t pay the rent.’ Diana walked through to the parlour but didn’t get very close before the fumes of beer and gin on her brother’s stinking breath hit her.

‘You pay it for a change. What do you think I am? Yer bleeding …’ Tommo waved a skinny wrist around ‘… money machine.’

‘I buy the food. Where’s the rent money.’

‘I spent it.’

Diana knew that he wouldn’t be short of money. It might not be his, but he always had some. ‘Are you telling me you’ve got nothing? Are you telling me you’re no better than anyone else on this street?’ She knew that would rile him and if he had any money it would soon show itself just to prove his superiority; Diana had been pressing her stepbrother’s buttons for years and it was second nature now, undignified though it might be.

Tommo pulled himself up an inch or two taller and with drunken slur said, ‘I’m never penniless.’ He reached into his various pockets and pulled out a crumpled, damp pound note and a collection of coins and detritus, all of which he threw onto the floor disdainfully.

Their rent was ten shillings, and Diana had no intention of taking any more or less than that. She bent down and picked it up coin by coin in silence and with as much dignity as she could muster.

‘What’s this?’ she said, unfurling a slip of paper.

Tommo sniffed and snatched it out of her outstretched hand. ‘That’s me being clever, that is.’

Diana had seen what it was; a betting slip from an illegal bookmakers that had been written out by hand. They’d been taking bets on whether or not the coronation of the new King was still going to happen in a few months’ time, and Tommo had put on five shillings against. ‘How is that you being clever?’

‘I saw it in the paper, didn’t I? Everyone’s saying it won’t happen. He’ll off hisself before then. That’s how them toffs get out of a jam; no brains.’

Diana didn’t say anything. There was no point telling him that he was disgusting for laying bets that another human being would take his own life; king or not. Diana turned to walk up the stairs. ‘Keep your voice down,’ she told him, ‘I don’t want you waking the house.’

Diana returned upstairs to the room she shared with little Gracie. All the houses in their street were two-up-two-down, but being the middle house in Vickerman Street, they had one small extra attic room that jutted out of the row of rooftops; to Diana, it was a lifesaver. When her stepmother had offered it to Diana, she had been apologetic about the damp, the smallness, the drafts and the mice, but Diana had been too relieved to care. Diana was still glad not to have to share a room with her stepmother; her stepmother was a kind woman, but she snored like a drain.

Diana went to her single small window that looked out over the town; it wouldn’t be light for hours. The street lamps picked out the undulations of the valley, the warren of tightly packed tiny rooftops, silhouettes of enormous factory chimneys rose up like an industrial forest of brick-built trees giving life and death to the town simultaneously, with their jobs and their smoke.

Diana couldn’t go back to bed now; she was too wide awake, and she didn’t want to wake Gracie. Now that she had money to pay the rent, that was one battle over, but as soon as she won one battle there was always another. Life was a never-ending series of battlegrounds, and she had no one to fight by her side. She missed her father so much it hurt; he had been her sole champion, and he had never taken any of Tommo’s nonsense. Diana remembered the first time Tommo had talked about getting himself involved with the Leeds gangs, and her father had locked him in the coal shed until he had agreed not to go looking for trouble. What would her father say if he could see her now? Living in Ethel’s attic room, the house full of stolen goods that Tommo was fencing to his Leeds connections, and not a hope of ever escaping. Her father would have laughed Tommo to scorn for giving himself a ridiculous name like ‘The Blade’, and he’d have made sure that Diana didn’t have to live in a house with stolen goods inside. Diana wished her dad was there; she wished he’d been there to help her save Gracie from the dirt, the damp and the life they were having to live.

It was the tenth of October, and when Reenie woke up she remembered that it was Saturday and today was her birthday. Her little brother’s present to her was to muck out Ruffian’s shed, so she didn’t have to and her sister had promised to bake the bread. They had both got up early to do her jobs and had given her the bed to herself, and she was delighted.

As she lay, like a starfish, across the lumpy mattress that she had shared with Katherine since as long as they could remember, she planned her day. Reenie liked to plan her day so that she could get the absolute most out of it she possibly could. Today she thought she’d bring forward wash day; nothing gave her a feeling of achievement quite like the sight of sheets being bleached by the sun on a dry day. All those girls she’d known at school who had gone off to get fancy jobs in shops, and tea houses, and the coveted piece-work places at the sweet factories, they couldn’t possibly know the true satisfaction of a successfully completed wash day. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. She was better off at home; those stuck up girls could keep their stinking jobs, she had enough to do. And as for going into service; she didn’t even want to think about that.

Reenie couldn’t help dwelling on the words of the Salvation Army lady that she had met the night before; it was too late for Reenie to go back to school now that she was sixteen, but her mother was always nagging her about secretarial classes, or teaching herself shorthand. ‘If you don’t do something with your life you’ll end up living from week to week in the pawnbrokers like your Uncle Mal,’ her mum was always saying. Reenie had just never been any good at school work or anything like that; she would always prefer to be useful at home than useless in a classroom. She didn’t necessarily like all of the jobs that she did at home (the ones she particularly disliked she had farmed out to her siblings that day), but working at home gave her a sense of purpose, and that was what she wanted. Reenie did have a dream, but she tried not to think about it; better to be useful.

‘Reenie!’ Her mother called from the kitchen, ‘Reenie, are you up yet?’

‘It’s my birthday! I don’t have to do ’owt!’

‘You’ve got a present!’

‘I know, and I’m making the most of it!’

‘You’ve got to come down here and open it!’

Reenie sat up. Open her present? She never had presents that you opened; there’d sometimes be something for one of the younger ones, but she was sixteen now and past all that stuff. Reenie threw off the thick, warm layers of blankets that she’d been hiding in like a cocoon, and fumbled for her father’s old slippers and her coat to put on over her nightshirt so that she didn’t freeze on her way down to the kitchen. Even though it was only October, it was still Halifax in October. She ran a comb through her shoulder-length, bright auburn hair and tied it back hastily hoping that if she did it herself, her mother wouldn’t pounce on her with a brush while she tried to eat her breakfast. She turned and neatened the bedclothes, disappointed that she was having to leave her warm cocoon so early, and then made her way down the stairs that she’d swept only the day before.

‘There you are! I thought you’d never get up. Sit down and open this.’

Reenie looked down at the scrubbed kitchen table where an ominous-looking parcel was waiting for her, wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. Reenie sidled into the middle of the bench underneath it and looked up at her family, trying to conceal her confusion. She lifted the parcel gingerly, the crisply ironed newspaper still warm against her fingertips; she could tell immediately what it was. She wondered what precious object they had sold or pawned to raise the money to buy her something so unnecessary, and how long it would take them to buy it back. She hoped they hadn’t pawned the kettle because she wanted her tea.

Reenie turned over the parcel in her hands and made a show for her family of being excited and surprised, but out of the corner of her eye, she was scanning the kitchen to see what was missing. The ramshackle, low-ceilinged, worn-out old farmhouse kitchen looked unchanged: the freshly blackened range was hot enough to be boiling the kettle (which was a minute or two off singing); the pink china that her mother saved for best was drying on the wooden rack beside the sink that was big enough to bathe in. The old pine table and benches, discoloured with age and use and her daily scrubbing, were all where they should be. Out of the windows, she could see Ruffian chewing up the paddock, and wondered how much longer he could last with no money for the vet.

‘Are you checking on Ruffian!’ Her brother had caught her furtive glance out of the window and was outraged. ‘I told you I’d see to him, and I will, I just—’

‘All right, that’s enough you two, don’t start.’ Reenie’s mother went to see to the kettle. ‘Reenie’s got to hurry up this morning. Reenie, open your present, love.’

‘Why have I got to hurry up?’

‘Just open your present, love, there’s a good lass.’

Reenie tentatively pulled at the string of the parcel. She was almost certain she knew what it was before she opened it, but as the inky paper fell away, she furrowed her brow in puzzlement. There, as she had expected, was a ½ lb tin of toffees that they couldn’t afford, but what she hadn’t expected was the envelope stuck to the top of the tin with her name typed on a typewriter; they didn’t know anyone with a typewriter. These weren’t cheap toffees either, these were Mackintosh’s Celebrated Toffees. Even the tin, decorated with dancing carnival figures, and a lid edged in red and gold, was alive with magic.

‘Go on, keep going, open that too.’

Reenie was stunned into silence, and she was about to open the lid of the tin when her younger sister said: ‘No, silly, open the envelope.’ Reenie could see that Katherine was even more excited than her, and that her mother must have let her in on the surprise.

John looked around in annoyance as he realised he’d been kept out of their circle, but his mother shushed him.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ Reenie, usually so loud and confident was quiet and nervous now. She turned the white, business-like envelope over in her work-worn fingers and took a deep breath.

‘Only one way to find out, love. But best hurry, eh?’ Her mother passed a clean table knife towards her daughter, and Reenie picked it up and slid it along the gummed seal.

There was a long silence as Reenie held her breath not daring to look at the page, and then she read aloud the first official letter addressed to her in her short life. ‘Dear Miss Calder, We are pleased to offer you the position of Seasonal Production Line Assistant in our Halifax factory …’ Reenie gasped in surprise and delight. ‘Oh, Mum! I’ve got a job! I’ve got a job! I’m going to Mackintosh’s! I’m going to Toffee Town! They’ve given me a job!’

‘I know, love; I wrote to them. They got a reference from Miss Dukes at your school, and a reference from the vicar, and we had such a time keeping it a secret in case it didn’t come off, and then they wrote and said they wanted you to start right away.’

‘Right away? Well, when right away?’

‘Today! So go and wash your neck and get a wiggle on. Your birthday present from me is a job.’

‘Don’t I have to have an interview?’

‘What sort of job do you think it is? Chief Accountant? You’re not going into the offices; you’re packing cartons, and every day’s your interview. Be faster than everyone else, and they’ll keep you until Christmas.’

‘If I’m faster than anyone they’ve ever had do you think they might keep me longer than—’

‘Now don’t go getting attached; you know what you’re like. Just be glad that you’ve got until Christmas and enjoy it. It’s not everyone that gets into Mack’s.’

‘But if I were really, really fast and they’d had loads of girls leave at Christmas for Christmas weddings—’

‘Christmas weddings? How many droves of girls are you expecting to leave for Christmas weddings?’

‘Well, just say if there were a lot, do you think there’s a chance that I might not have to go into service?’

Mrs Calder dried her hands on her apron and sat down at the edge of the table. ‘Now listen, you three, I know you all talk like goin’ into service is the worst thing in the world, and I know I used to tell you some terrible stories of what it was like in my day. Being in service now isn’t like it used to be; you hardly ever have to live-in, and they all send their laundry out. Look, what I’m saying is: if any of you do have to go into service I think you’ll have a wonderful time.’ Reenie’s mother tried to appeal to Reenie’s imagination, ‘Reenie, what if you went into service in a little place, and then a fine lady visited and spotted you, and you got to go to work in a big house and make friends with all the quality? Can you imagine?’

Reenie’s tight-lipped smile gave her away; she was trying to agree with her mother, but in her heart of hearts Reenie desperately didn’t want to. Reenie had hope now, and it was a letter from Mackintosh’s.

The overlooker who was showing the new girls their place marched them through the corridor of the factory walking two-by-two in what she called a ‘crocodile’. As far as Reenie could tell the overlookers were to the factories what the teachers were to her old school, and Reenie was immediately in awe of them. The overlookers decided where the girls went, which jobs they worked at, and how long for. Everyone wanted to stay in the overlookers good books.

‘No talkin’ at the back! Listen wi’ your ears, not wi’ your mouths! You are going to walk through here every day for the next several years if you’re lucky, but no one is going to show you where to go after today, so remember where you’re goin.”

Reenie followed dutifully, memorising the plan of the building in her head: up through the old Albion Mill, along a wide corridor where she could see the railway line running parallel, down three flights of stairs and up another two. By Reenie’s reckoning this older girl, who’d collected them at the gates, seemed to be doubling back on herself to make them go a longer route. ‘Excuse me!’ Reenie was a third of the way down the crocodile of obedient new girls, but she was near enough to the front to shout naive, well-meant questions. ‘Why did you take us down two flights of stairs and then up another two? Is there not some—’

‘No questions, you’re here to go where you’re told.’

‘Are you lost, though,’ Reenie tried to sound kind because she couldn’t imagine that this girl enjoyed being lost, ‘because if you’re lost, we could just stop someone and ask them for directions. Excuse me!’ Reenie called out to two gentlemen who were passing them in the echoing, whitewashed corridor. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ she paused for a happy moment as she realised that she recognised one of them, ‘but we’re on our way to the—’

‘We are not stopping! Follow me, please.’ The older girl tried to hurry the girls along, but the older of the two gentlemen raised his hand politely to indicate that they should all stay.

‘Good morning, ladies.’ He made a slight bow of his head in a style that was almost Victorian. He was an older man, perhaps getting close to retirement; thick silver hair, bold silver moustache, dark blue neatly cut suit. ‘I am Major Fergusson, and this is my colleague Peter McKenzie. Is this your first day at Mack’s?’

A chorus of ‘Yes, sir’ rang through the corridor and the crocodile line of girls all fixed their eyes on the young man beside Major Fergusson.

‘Well, isn’t that nice. And what is your name?’

‘Reenie Calder, sir.’ Reenie tried to look at him as she spoke, but her eyes darted to Peter to see if he would recognise her. She willed him to recognise her.

‘And where are you going to, Reenie?’

‘Don’t answer him!’ The girl in charge was determined to get them away, ‘They’re the Time and Motion men, and you don’t talk to the Time and Motion men without your Union present.’

In the face of such obvious rudeness, Major Fergusson and Peter remained pleasant and calm; this was a sign, Reenie thought, of what her mother called ‘Good Breeding’.

‘We are here to help everyone find a way of doing their jobs more easily,’ the Major said to Reenie, ‘sometimes we conduct tests on the way the line works and in those circumstances, we have to work with the Unions to make sure that we are all helping each other. You can all talk to us any time, there’s no need to be shy, or to ask permission of your Union.’

‘I think that’s quite enough—’ their guide was silenced with another polite bow of the Major’s hand. He clearly out-ranked her but didn’t enjoy showing it. The Major smiled at Reenie and permitted her to speak:

‘Can we ask you for directions?’ Reenie didn’t like to contradict her guide, but she suspected that the other girl needed some help. Reenie, in her naivety, believed she’d be doing the girl a kindness if she did the asking for her. ‘It’s just an overlooker is taking us to our new workstations, and we’ve been told to memorise the route that we’re going along because we’ll need to go this way every day, but I don’t think it’s right.’

‘What makes you think that?’ The Major was either ignorant of the girls gazing wistfully into Peter’s smoke-grey eyes, or he was used to it.

Reenie didn’t need time to think, ‘Well, we came in by green painted double doors at the end of the old mill. We passed the timekeeping office where there were three commissionaires having their breakfast butties; then we went under a staircase where some fella in shiny shoes was smokin’ and chattin’ up a lass. Then we went out a single door – which was right small for all of us – into a yard where there was some men unloading sacks of sugar off a waggon. At the other end of the yard there was a sign that said no waiting, and we went past that into a new block where we went up three flights of stairs, then down a big corridor with a pine floor and big window frame that smelled of new paint. From there we walked down two flights of stairs just back there through that door which you can see from the window is loopin’ us back to Albion Mills, so why can’t we just stay in Albion Mills in the first place? Are we lost?’

The Major gave Peter another knowing, amused look; he supposed that this rigmarole the guide was putting them through was more imaginative then sending them for ‘a long stand’.

‘You remembered all of that?’ the Major seemed to admire Reenie for it, and the other girls were intensely jealous of the beautiful, wide-eyed smile that Peter gave her.

‘Well, it has only just happened. I’m not a total doyle.’

‘Young lady,’ the Major was addressing Reenie again, but eyeing her guide with suspicion, ‘you mentioned that you had already met your overlooker. Where did she go after you met her?’

‘Well this is her, this is our overlooker.’

The guide gulped the air like a fish and stammered out defensively, ‘I’m the overlooker of the new girls on their first day when they go through to their new places. It’s very easy for them to wander about and get lost and someone needs to give them a firm—’

The Major ignored her and spoke directly to Reenie. ‘overlookers all have coloured collars on their white overalls. They are either red, blue, yellow, or green. If you see someone with a white overall, you know that they are the same rank and file as you.’ He didn’t point out that their guide’s collar was white, or that she’d been deliberately taking them a longer route so that they would be lost for the whole of their first week at Mack’s; he didn’t need to. ‘Now, let’s see if we can’t get you all on to your first day on the double. Peter, we’ve got time for a detour this morning, haven’t we?’

Peter nodded brusquely.

‘I think I can guess where you’re all going to. Quality Street line, by any chance?’ the Major asked Reenie.

‘Yes, how did you know that?’

‘It’s all hands on deck at Quality Street, my dear. Christmas is coming!’

Reenie and the girls followed the Major to their new line, and although Reenie caught Peter’s eye, he didn’t speak to her. He smiled, and then he smiled again, but he didn’t speak.

When Diana arrived at the toffee factory gates that Saturday morning, tired from very little sleep the night before, she was disgruntled to be stopped by the watchman. Diana tended to go in by one of the lesser-used entrances on the Bailey Hall road to avoid the undignified crush at the start and end of each shift. It added a few minutes to her journey, but Diana didn’t care; dignity was more important to her than an inconvenience. The morning was crisp but not cold; the Indian summer of 1936, but she still wore her father’s coat and her plain work shoes. A light wave of her ashes and caramel-coloured hair fell over tired eyes, and she slipped through the factory gate with her head down, her collar up, and her hands in her pockets like any other working day.

‘Diana Moore?’ The factory watchman had stepped out of his gatehouse cabin with a note in his hand.

‘You know I am.’ She said with an exasperated sigh.

‘Message for you.’ He handed over an internal memo envelope and went back to his business; answering queries from men who’d turned up on spec looking for work.

Diana moved out of the stream of other workers and found a quiet recess in a soot-blackened brick wall where she could stand apart and read the message. The note was evidently from someone who knew which gate she always used, or they’d left a note at every gate; either way she felt a slight discomfort about it. Diana was well known, but she didn’t like to be that well known.

Mackintosh’s Women’s Employment Department

October 10th,1936

Dear Diana,

Please present yourself at the office of Mrs Wilke’s on your arrival today.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Watson

Secretary to the Women’s Employment Manager

Diana realised that Mrs Wilkes of the Women’s Employment Department was waiting for her. This was unusual, but it didn’t worry her; she knew that her job was not at risk. Diana knew that the factory couldn’t run half the lines without her. This wasn’t arrogance on her part; arrogance would mean that she enjoyed her position. In reality, Diana simply didn’t care anymore. There had been a time, years ago when she had relished ruling the roost, but now the daily pettiness was exhausting, and keeping the younger girls in line was just one more battle for her.

Diana assumed that she was going to be asked to use her influence, unofficially, with some wayward girl or other; perhaps put down a group of troublemakers before they could put their own jobs at risk. It happened often enough. The senior management of the Mackintosh’s business had realised long ago that it was more efficient to allow the girls to manage themselves, and Diana would occasionally be invited to the grand old directors’ floor of the Art Deco office block to be unofficially asked to ‘Have a word.’ She never met the directors themselves; they were all down in Norwich at the newly acquired Caley factory. Rumour had it that they thought Norwich was more refined and they were moving there en masse to run the business remotely. It didn’t make any difference to Diana, they sometimes came down to the factory floor to talk to one another while pointing out different machines, but they didn’t speak to her or any of the other girls.

She folded the note and slipped it into the inside pocket of her old coat and began weaving her way in and out of the workers, wagons, and factory outhouses to the opulent main office building, and her interview with Mrs Wilkes.

Diana knew her way to Mrs Wilkes’ office; she’d had to go there nearly six years previously when a different Women’s Employment Manager had been in place. Diana had gone there to make her case for an extended leave of absence to care for a sick relative in the country, and whether the manager at that time had believed her or not, she’d argued persuasively and they’d let her go. Diana went in through the deco door decorated with M’s, and up the six flights of winding white stairs with crisscrossed iron bannisters like giant strings of cat’s cradle. The upper landing opened onto a hexagonal hallway, lined with the doors to the director’s offices. She didn’t want to linger long, her objective was to get in and out and back to work as quickly as possible.

In the centre of the hallway was a large antique hexagonal table, decorated with an intricate pattern of walnut veneer. High above, there was a sparkling, domed ceiling in every colour of glass, as though the hallway were a tin of cellophane-wrapped toffees bursting into the Halifax sky. Diana marvelled at the extravagance of it.

Following the narrow corridor at the other end of the hexagon, Diana found the door of Mrs Wilke’s office. It looked like it would be less out of place in a stately home, oak-panels were decorated alternately with an acorn, oak leaf or the letter ‘M’. The Mackintosh family were proud of the acorn from which their great oak of a business had grown.

Diana knocked three sharp raps and then waited.

‘Come!’

Diana realised that although she knew Mrs Wilkes name well enough, she didn’t think she had ever seen her and was surprised by what waited for her on the other side of the door. A straight-backed woman in a cream silk blouse looked up from paperwork on her grand desk, but she was not an ogre like her overlooker Frances Roth; she had the potential to be far less easy to manipulate. Diana made immediate assumptions about this Mrs Wilkes: grammar school girl, father a doctor, comfortable upbringing but not so comfortable that she didn’t have to work hard at school, turned down an offer or two of marriage from an earnest young man because they didn’t have enough money. Probably thinks all the factory girls are no more than beasts of burden, or wayward children.

Mrs Wilkes was undoubtedly a woman who had always possessed good looks; she was perhaps ten or fifteen years older than Diana. She still had a trim figure, and her neat, glossy hair framed her face in a way that enhanced its symmetry.

Diana thought that she could respect Mrs Wilkes, but she didn’t know if she could really trust her. Mrs Wilkes didn’t mix with the factory floor workforce; she was strictly an office manager and rarely ventured out of the smart Art Deco tower. Diana was more accustomed to life in the old mill buildings where her co-workers made the chocolate and toffee. Diana didn’t know Mrs Wilkes’ first name; she knew that the woman wasn’t married because married women weren’t permitted to keep their jobs at Mackintosh’s Toffee Factory. But then again, married women weren’t allowed to keep their jobs anywhere after they married, unless there was another war.

‘Mrs’ was a courtesy title afforded to women of an overlooker’s grade or above, although Diana sometimes had girls on her own line try to call her ‘Mrs’ as a show of respect for her unofficial position of authority. Each time she refused the title and instead was known by the number of her position on the line: Number Four.

Mrs Wilkes unnerved Diana, as she politely gestured to the seat in front of her desk, ‘Miss Moore?’

Diana nodded; waiting for more as she lowered herself into the fancy wooden chair. To be called ‘Miss’ by a superior rather than by her Christian name unsettled her; it was unexpectedly respectful.

‘I’ll come straight to the point as I’m sure we both have plenty of other people’s work to be getting on with: we would like to offer you the position of overlooker on the new Toffee Penny line.’

Diana gave a wry smile; so this was what they wanted her for. Although it was a surprise to be called all the way up to the Employment Manager’s office, it wasn’t a surprise to be offered the promotion. She asked, with seeming politeness, ‘Is it that time of year again?’

‘Excuse me?’ Mrs Wilkes shifted the balance of her delicately rimmed glasses, as though the very slight bite of sarcasm she’d detected had been a trick of her eyesight and not her hearing.

Diana regretted being flippant; it lost her her dignity. She explained, with a slightly apologetic tone this time, ‘I’m offered an overlooker’s job about once a year. You’ll have read my employment file, I’m sure.’

‘Yes; that’s why I asked to see you personally this time. I hoped that we could help you to overcome any obstacles that might be preventing you from taking the position.’ She paused. Diana suddenly had a horrible feeling that this woman knew her secret and that this was a trap, but she gave nothing away. ‘The line that you presently work on is making, wrapping, and packing the new Quality Street sweets by hand, but you know as well as I do that hand-making is only ever intended to be temporary in a factory; by Christmas the Engineers and the Time and Motion Department will have the new, mechanised line ready and you’ll be able to do your job with the help of a machine, but it will be a very different job. There will be other hand-making positions that we can move you to, but those will be temporary too. Wouldn’t this be an ideal time to think about your future? Wouldn’t you like to take a step up?’

‘As you’ll have seen from my records, I always turn down any offer of promotion.’

‘I understand in the past you’ve had family circumstances that have made you unable to accept the position, but it has not gone unnoticed that you have been performing several of the duties of overlooker without formal recognition and if your family circumstances have now changed—’

‘My family circumstances have not changed.’ Diana took in a deep breath and tried to disguise her weariness as she repeated the same words she’d recited for the last six years, ‘Although I’m grateful for the compliment you’re paying me by offering me promotion I must on this occasion decline. I have a young halfsister who I care for in the evenings, and if I took an overlooker’s job I’d have to spend my evenings in Union meetings, or employment department reviews, or typing up reports and shift patterns.’

Mrs Wilkes removed her fashionable, tortoiseshell-framed spectacles as though to indicate that she were now talking to Diana woman-to-woman, and not in a professional capacity, ‘But Diana, you have to think of your own advancement and your own prospects. Think of the extra money you’d be earning if you became an overlooker. You’d more than be able to pay for someone to care for your halfsister in the evenings.’

‘I prefer to care for her myself, thank you.’

‘Then think of the things that you could buy for her with the extra money, wouldn’t you like to earn more to help your family?’

Diana thought about the money that her stepbrother had thrown onto the floor that morning as though it were nothing to him and that she had picked up so she could pay the landlord’s man. Money was a problem, but it wasn’t her biggest problem. ‘I’m very fast, and when I’m working with girls who are as fast as me, I can make good piece rates, and that’s enough for my family.’

‘You said ‘when’. Is there a problem?’

It was Diana’s turn to be confused. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘You said that when you’re working with girls who are fast, you can make good rates.’ Mrs Wilkes was determined not to let Diana get on with her job; she was determined to dig in. ‘Are you saying that the girls that you are with now are too slow? Can changes be made on the line—’

Diana suddenly wondered what she was getting at. Perhaps she’s seen something in me that she can use to build her own status? ‘No, they are very good, but we’re on a temporary hand making line which not everyone can do fast. When we move to our next line, we’ll be faster.’

There was a silence, and Diana wanted to leave, but she could sense that Mrs Wilkes wasn’t finished with her.

Mrs Wilkes tried a different tack, ‘There are several very senior managers at the firm who think that you could become a manager yourself one day and that taking the position as overlooker would be the first step. Major Fergusson has watched your progress through all the years since you joined us and he feels that you are more than ready for advancement.’

‘I have a great deal of respect for the Major; he’s a kind man and he tries to make time for the Halifax factory floor workers. But you know as well as I do that everyone calls him Major Misfits, and if he takes anyone under his wing, it’s because they’re a strange bird. I don’t like the idea that the managers here think I’m a misfit.’

‘No one thinks you’re a misfit, Miss Moore.’ The Employment Manager said, ‘You’re an educated young woman, I can tell that—’

Diana snapped, ‘No. No, I’m not.’ She pulled up her chin imperiously; the Employment Manager had touched a nerve. ‘I left school as fast as I could. And for the record, telling girls that they’re clever and that they’re not living up to their cleverness doesn’t help them, it just tells them that there’s one more thing they’ve got to feel rotten about. I’m exhausted, and the last thing I need is some woman in shiny brogues telling me that on top of everything else I’ve got to do I’ve got to live up to my cleverness as well. All the girls on my line are clever; it’s just that people with posh accents think talking Yorkshire means you’re daft.’ Diana got up to leave, and as she pushed the chair back into its original position, Mrs Wilkes said quietly:

‘I heard you discussing European politics with one of the other girls.’

This took Diana by surprise. She couldn’t imagine this woman deigning to come down to the factory floor long enough to overhear anything, but Diana had an answer for her. ‘My father was a Union man. You’ll find a lot of the girls around here are very learned thanks to the Union. They have free public lectures and a library. Will that be all?’

Mrs Wilkes rose from her desk to calmly show Diana out of her office. ‘And what would your father say if he knew that you were turning down the opportunity for advancement; to better yourself?’

‘He would understand.’ Diana said, biting her tongue. ‘And he would tell me that the job doesn’t better me; I better the job.’ With that Diana left, stalking down the corridor in a foul mood and with her head held high, not stopping to think why one of the Mackintosh’s brass nobs should be taking such an interest in her and her conversations with the other girls.

Reenie had taken her mother’s words to heart, and while the other new girls were concentrating on what their supervisor was telling them, Reenie was watching the woman’s hands and learning far more about how to work fast. It was a school day like no other; Reenie and her new factory classmates were in a room as vast as a cathedral, noisy as a day at the races, and as exciting as anywhere that Reenie had ever been. A conveyor belt ran down the centre of the room, flanked on either side by girls who were older than her and who, Reenie felt, were so much more sophisticated. They scooped up sweets with uncanny speed and somehow, beneath their hands they magically covered them in sparkling foil and then red and green cellophane and then dropped them into a box ready to move on. Hovering on nimble, rubber plimsolled feet by the wrapping girls’ sides were white-aproned girls of Reenie’s age who were waiting to take the filled boxes and place them onto the next part of the production line.

‘Your job, girls,’ their supervisor called over the din of the workroom. ‘is to keep the wrapping girls supplied with everything they need to wrap the chocolates, and move the chocolates on when their tubs are full; and you have to be as fast as you can be.’ As if to emphasise the point the supervisor stressed the next words one at a time. ‘If you are too slow you will slow down the production line and people won’t get their sweets when they go to the shops. Do you understand?’

A chorus of ‘Yes, Miss’ rose up into the chocolate and strawberry scented air, and Reenie scanned the room for the fastest workers. There, at the back of the room, was her new role model. A girl a year or two older than her and a foot taller was supplying two wrappers at the same time by picking up multiple boxes with her fingers. Reenie had seen the landlady at The Old Cock and Oak do the same thing with empty pint glasses, and Reenie made a mental note to practice with flowerpots as soon as she got home. If she could build up the strength in her fingers, she could do the same thing. But as Reenie was watching, the taller girl caught her eye and shook her head. A second girl, like a prettified miniature copy of the first, appeared from the door at the far corner of the workroom and scurried to her place beside her older sister; she picked up where the other had left off, but not half as quickly, and they both looked round furtively to check if their switchover had been seen. The taller girl was no longer carrying multiple boxes at once, but she was looking daggers at Reenie.

Reenie realised that she had seen something that she wasn’t meant to see, and her eyes snapped back to the supervisor. ‘You go to the cages and fetch a box of the foils and put them on her right. Then you go back to the cages and fetch a box of cellophanes and put that behind the foils, before you pick up the tub on her left that she has filled and add it to the pile on the pallet nearest you at the edge of the room.’ The young supervisor was about to use that trick again of stressing every word with a pause in between, Reenie could tell. ‘When you place that tub on the pallet you must pull up the flaps at the side of the tub,’ the supervisor picked up a tub and demonstrated in a manner as exaggerated as her voice. ‘You must fold them over, like so, and then you must make sure that they overlap, like so. Does anyone not understand?’

‘No, Miss.’ All the new girls sang together.

Reenie dared to raise her hand, ‘Please, Miss?’

‘What don’t you understand?’ The young supervisor was abrupt, but not unkind as she frowned on Reenie.

‘Why don’t the girls pick up two boxes at a time to go faster?’ Reenie mimed the action that she had seen with her fingers.

The young supervisor couldn’t suppress a laugh, ‘Well you’ll go far. What’s your name, love?’

‘Reenie Calder.’ Reenie wasn’t quite sure what she’d said to amuse, but she thought she regretted saying it.

‘Well, Reenie Calder, if you can carry more than one box at a time, and keep it up for a whole shift, and do it every shift for two weeks, I’ll double your wages. For every day that you can do the work of two girls, I’ll give you the pay of two girls. But don’t get your hopes up, love, you’ll have your work enough cut out for you keeping up with one job, let alone two.’

One or two of Reenie’s classmates had looked excited at the promise of double pay, but most of the girls had smirked at Reenie’s mistake. These were girls whose brothers and sisters and fathers already worked in the factory and who knew how hard it was to keep up the speed of everyone else, let alone double it. Reenie was a little embarrassed, but she was also privately sceptical; if she could manage her father and a horse at the same time, and if she got in enough practice to strengthen her hands, she thought she stood a fair chance at making good speed. Little did Reenie realise then that her speed would get her into more trouble than she could handle on her own.