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

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СКАЧАТЬ The Dragon was going to sack you,’ Maisie whispered. ‘How come you’re still here?’

      ‘I dunno. Beginner’s luck?’ shrugged Gladys.

      When break time finally came, the girls invited her to come with them for breakfast at the café across the road. ‘You don’t want to bother with the canteen here, it’s too dear,’ Maisie told her.

      They joined a gaggle all heading across the road, some of them dressed in dungarees and checked shirts like her own but in a lighter blue. ‘Those are the Hesser girls,’ said Maisie, disdainfully. ‘Look at them, they’re like navvies!’

      As they neared the café they saw two dockers who were about to go in. Hearing the girls’ chatter, the men glanced behind them and immediately changed their minds. ‘We’re not going in here, mate,’ said one to the other, as they hurried off. ‘Not when it’s full of sugar girls.’

      Once inside, Gladys could see why. The place rang with the noise of female shift workers laughing, singing, chatting and shrieking, while the café owners ran around like maniacs trying to deal with the breakfast rush.

      She looked at the menu. Eggs, bacon, tomatoes, bread and butter … and fried mushrooms! Gladys had never eaten mushrooms before, and after the events of this morning who knew if she’d survive long enough at Tate & Lyle to get another chance to try them?

      ‘I’ll have mushrooms on toast,’ she said confidently, as if ordering her usual.

      The mushrooms arrived, tender and dripping with butter, and Gladys savoured each bite of her exotic treat, while trying not to appear too excited. As she did so, the other girls confided to her the secrets of the Blue Room. Printing was the easiest job in the factory, they told her, so she was very lucky to have been given it. Theirs was one of the smallest departments – much smaller than the Hesser Floor – and therefore far more exclusive. Peggy Burrows, the forelady, took such pride in her machines that every night at the end of the late shift the girls were told to stop work half an hour early to clean them with methylated spirits till they shone.

      But the biggest source of pride was the fact that the Blue Room had acquired the unofficial title of the Beauty Shop, thanks to the svelte appearance of the girls. One of their number, Iris – a six-foot stunner – had gone down in legend for running off to Paris to join the Bluebell Girls as a topless dancer. It was beginning to dawn on Gladys that there were standards she was expected to uphold – and that she was rather ill-equipped to do so. Had Miss Smith sent her to the department for her own amusement?

      ‘Why are all your uniforms so tight compared to mine, then?’ she asked, butter dribbling down her chin.

      ‘They weren’t when we got them,’ winked Joanie. ‘The trick is, once you get them home, you put a seam up the front and back of the dungarees so they fit more snug. You’ll have to take your blouse in, too.’

      ‘Then you’ll have to get that turban up a bit higher,’ put in Joycie.

      ‘How do you do that?’ asked Gladys.

      ‘Knickers,’ she said.

      ‘Knickers?’

      ‘Yeah, you wind up the turban with stockings, knickers, socks, whatever you’ve got. Helps bulk it out a bit. Flo Smith don’t like it – a notice went up saying we wasn’t to do it no more, but bit by bit we’ve been sneaking them in again.’

      Work finished at two p.m., but Gladys knew she still had a long afternoon ahead of her. She was determined to rein in her unwieldy dungarees before tomorrow, and that meant taking them in by hand – a laborious process, especially given her pitiful needlework skills.

      She caught her two buses home and turned the corner into Eclipse Road, where she spotted the group of local lads she usually hung around with, going up the street with a football. Among them was a bespectacled boy called John, whose mother always made him wear a ridiculously short leather sports jacket. ‘Oi, Bum Freezer!’ Gladys shouted. This was her nickname for him, in return for which he called her ‘The Girl with the Lovely Legs’, which was guaranteed to annoy a tomboy like Gladys.

      ‘You coming for a kickabout?’ he asked her. ‘We’re going over Beckton Road Park.’

      Gladys considered for a moment. She would dearly love the opportunity to give John a good thrashing at football, especially considering how stupid he looked right now in his jacket. But then the image of the glamour girls in the Blue Room floated back into her mind.

      She sighed. ‘Can’t. Got more important things to do now, ain’t I?’

      On Wednesday, Gladys went into Tate & Lyle with her head held high – very high, in fact. Her turban was now stuffed full of as many of her brothers’ socks as she could find, as well as several pairs of knickers and a few stockings for good measure. Her dungarees had been sliced almost in two to fit her skinny frame, and the crotch was now where it belonged.

      As she walked into the Blue Room, the girls nodded in approval. ‘I like your turban, Gladys,’ said Joycie. ‘It’s even taller than Maisie’s!’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Gladys, with attempted nonchalance, shoving the enormous bundle back into place as it began to slide down her forehead.

      To the girls, Gladys had come top in the day’s unofficial fashion stakes, but the boys saw her new headwear as an irresistible challenge – particularly since they knew what must be wrapped up in it. When the coast was clear, Robbie and Joey gave each other a quick wink and Joey walked over to Gladys’s machine with a concerned look on his face. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, frowning as he pointed to the ink duct. ‘I think you might be running out of ink.’

      ‘Really?’ said Gladys, peering into the duct, unaware of Robbie sneaking up behind her. ‘But I only just had it filled up.’

      She felt the turban sliding forwards again as she leaned over, and put up a hand to steady it. But before she even reached her brow, Robbie had already flung out an arm and whipped the turban clean off her head, leaving Gladys to grasp at nothing but a handful of ginger curls.

      ‘Oi, give that back, you buggers!’ Gladys shouted, spinning round in time to see the checked cloth flying through the air, her assorted underwear cascading out of it as it unravelled. The boys’ laughter was so loud it momentarily drowned out the noise of the machines. Then it stopped abruptly.

      Gladys followed their gaze and watched as a pair of white knickers finished its graceful flight and landed, with perfect precision, at the toe of a very large ladies’ shoe. She looked up at the shoe’s owner and found herself meeting the angry stare of Miss Smith, who had arrived on her daily round of the factory.

      ‘Pick up your things immediately,’ she barked, as Gladys scrambled to collect the offending items. ‘The turbans are for safety, not for making fashion statements.’

      Gladys hurried back to her machine, but when Miss Smith had circled the room she stopped by her again. ‘I’ve got my eye on you,’ she said, before marching out of the door.

      On Thursday morning, Gladys’s mother brought her freshly washed uniform up to her room, along with her bowl of bread and milk.

      As Gladys pulled on her dungarees, they seemed smaller than she remembered, and she had trouble getting her feet through the leg holes. By the СКАЧАТЬ