The Quality Street Girls. Penny Thorpe

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       Chapter Three

      ‘Mother!’ Reenie threw down her old canvas shoulder bag as she banged open the back door and bounded into their farmhouse kitchen. ‘It’s wonderful! I love it! It’s brilliant!’

      Reenie’s mother was slicing up a freshly baked loaf at their kitchen table, and the house was filled with the welcoming aromas of warm bread, spicy sausage stew, and herb dumplings. ‘Alright, calm down, no need to worry the livestock.’ Reenie’s mother was amused by her daughter’s enthusiasm, she put down the bread knife and dusted the flour from her hands. ‘There are sheep in the far field that can hear you all the way from here, and they’re taking fright.’

      ‘Oh mother, you should have seen it.’ Reenie was in raptures as she hung her coat up on the aged brass hook inside the door. ‘It’s like something from a film or a novel. The girls are so glamorous, and—’

      ‘Glamorous? Factory girls?’ Mrs Calder moved to close the kitchen door that Reenie had left open, but her daughter darted out again and started looking through the dead summer plants that were drooping, brown and dry under the kitchen window in their boxes. Reenie carried on talking happily and enthusiastically to her mother in the open doorway all the while as though there were nothing out of the ordinary in her search of their little kitchen garden in the corner of the farmyard.

      ‘No, they were, they were glamorous. They’ve all got lovely manners, and they tie their turbans up in this fancy way at the front, so it makes them look all haughty, like. And I’m going to be in the strawberry cream room at the end where they wrap the sweets by hand and you should see them, Mother, they move like lightning. I’m going to be the fastest, but I need to practice with flowerpots,’ Reenie parted some out-of-season honeysuckle vines and called back to her mother. ‘Can you spare any?’

      ‘Spare any what?’ Mrs Calder was used to her daughter’s mildly eccentric schemes and took it all in her stride, leaning against the kitchen doorframe with her arms folded and her hair tied up in a knot on top of her head.

      ‘Flowerpots! I need flowerpots! It’s essential to my plan. I’m doing what Donna, the landlady does at The Old Cock and Oak.’

      Reenie’s mother started to understand why her daughter was poking about among last spring’s bulbs beside the kitchen door. ‘Is this what the other girls do? Have they told you something about flowerpots? Because it might be a wind-up, you know. I warned you about the overlookers sending you for a ‘long stand’, you remember?’

      ‘No, it’s my idea,’ Reenie had picked up a couple of larger terracotta pots and tested them for weight, covering her hands in soil and slimy green moss in the process, before discarding them and reaching for another. ‘I’ve been watching everyone on the line, and I can see how I can get to be the fastest, it was my idea.’

      ‘Well I’m glad you want to be fast, but I don’t think you need to be the fastest. At least, not while you’re new. You might put a lot of people’s noses out of joint.’

      ‘But why?’ Reenie was waving their small stone gnome around as though the answers might fall out of it if she shook it hard enough. ‘They said that if I work fast, then the girl I work beside gets better piece rates, so I thought that if I was the fastest, then—’

      ‘Come and sit in here,’ Mrs Calder beckoned her into the warm kitchen. ‘Come on. Leave those plant pots alone, they’re hibernating. Sit at the table while I put the kettle on.’ Without saying anything, Mrs Calder took a wet cloth to her daughter’s hands while steering her in the direction of the rough old kitchen table.

      Reenie didn’t try to resist but did complain. ‘Mother!’

      Her mother ignored her objection and carried on settling her down into a chair, closing the kitchen door, putting the kettle on and taking out a teacup for each of them. ‘Now, I think you’re right; they will be glad you’re quick, but if you try to do things differently, then you might get their backs up. Do you remember what I’m always telling you about the difference between speaking up and being outspoken?’

      Reenie turned on the dining chair, making it creak. ‘But this isn’t even speaking, this is working without talking.’

      ‘The day you work without talking is the day the King gives the crown to your dad. I know you, you’ll be a non-stop chatterer.’ Mrs Calder put the teacups down on the table and reached up to the top shelf of the dresser to bring down Reenie’s birthday tin of toffees. She thought that her daughter might like one with her cup of tea. ‘Now СКАЧАТЬ