The Quality Street Girls. Penny Thorpe

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      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ