The Sugar Girls - Joan’s Story: Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End. Duncan Barrett

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СКАЧАТЬ did have one skill useful for office work – like her mother, she was an excellent mimic. When Mrs Cook secured her an interview for an office job at CWS Flour Mills in Silvertown, she reminded Joan to follow her example. ‘Talk proper,’ she told her. ‘None of your ain’ts and fings!’

      Putting on her plummiest accent, Joan sailed through the interview and soon found herself operating their switchboard. ‘Good afternoon, may I transfer you?’ she would ask demurely, before pushing the little wooden sliders up and down to connect the calls to the relevant offices. It was fun to begin with, but after many months in the job, with only a few old fogies for company, Joan was desperate for something more exciting.

      Her friend Peggy, whose parents could ill afford Joan’s mother’s prejudices about factory labour, had taken a job among the sugar-packing machines on the Hesser Floor at Tate & Lyle, and the more Joan heard from her friend about the life there, the more she felt convinced it was for her. ‘So you go out every weekend,’ she quizzed her, ‘and the company has its own parties?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Peggy replied proudly. ‘And the pay’s brilliant, what with the bonuses and all.’

      In the end, Joan chucked in the job at the flour mill without asking her parents’ permission. ‘Oh, Joan, what have you done?’ her mother wailed when she heard the news. But it was too late. Her daughter had already gone to the Personnel Office at Plaistow Wharf and got herself a position on the Hesser Floor, where an early and late shift were now running in addition to day-work.

      Joan couldn’t have been happier – she had found a lively, vibrant place to work, where she was surrounded by people her own age. Every day she left home with a spring in her step, eager to spend time with the other sugar girls. Her colleagues even seemed to appreciate her little rhyming poems, which she scribbled away in a notebook during her breaks. Once they realised what she was up to, they began to put in requests.

      ‘Can you write one about me, Joan?’ Peggy asked one morning, while a group of girls were gathered round smoking in the toilets.

      ‘All right then,’ Joan replied, happy for the challenge. She thought for a moment.

      ‘Peggy O’s a charming lass, her smile so full of grace / But if you pinch her on the ass, she’ll smack you round the face.’

      ‘You cheeky cow!’ Peggy squealed, between fits of giggles.

      Another girl on the floor was desperate for a ditty about the labour manageress, Miss Smith - or The Dragon, as she was known - who had just given her a particularly humiliating telling-off. Joan was happy to oblige.

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