A Step Too Far (3 page)
The man’s terse reply brought murmurs of approval from some of the passengers and Alice’s irritation flared to anger. Who did this smart arsed bugger think he was talking to! Clearing the last of the people blocking the aisle, she halted on the minute platform where the conductor stood.
‘We all ’ave schedules!’ Brown eyes blazing fire played on the man’s face. ‘My own bein’ a half past seven start in that munitions factory; now should it be I get quartered, that I lose fifteen minutes pay along of clockin’ on after that time cos you was in so much of a monkey’s wrassle to be away you didn’t give time for me to get off the bus, then you’re goin’ to ’ave a sight more to worry over than gettin’ to the depot canteen in time for a cuppa.’
The conductor sniffed. ‘Oh ar, you goin’ to report me to the bosses for wantin’ to mek sure the rest of these folk gets to work on time? Fat lot of notice they’ll tek of that!’
‘No, I won’t do any reporting. Unlike the specimen standin’ afore me I don’t need no bosses to fight my battles, I can do that very well for myself.’
The conductor laughed in open mockery. ‘You says the war has taught a lot of things, has it also taught you to box?’
Resisting Becky’s push urging her to climb down from the bus, ignoring the murmurs attesting to several more concerns of ‘being quartered’, Alice’s icy reply did not cool the fire of her glare.
‘It had no need to, but it could be called upon to teach you how to wear a truss, for you see it won’t be your face will feel the blow. Though I guarantee you’ll remember the sting of it every time you wish you could use that which won’t never function the same way again. Like dough without yeast, it won’t rise.’
Exclamations and tuts of disapproval at hearing such words from a young woman followed after the pair as they skipped onto the footpath.
‘That put the snotty nosed sod in his place!’ Alice glared defiantly after the receding vehicle. ‘He’ll think twice afore soundin’ that bell next time.’
‘He ought to have more sense than to have rung as quick as he did, he could see the aisle was blocked solid.’ Becky added her own condemnation as they walked along a street busy with people hurrying to various factories and steel foundries with which the town of Wednesbury was filled.
‘That bell will be the only thing he’ll be quick with should I tell our Rob he fingered my bum as I waited to get off the bus.’
‘But he didn’t!’
‘I know that and the conductor knows that,’ Alice answered airily, ‘but our Rob will know only what I tell him and I’ll tell him that man touched my bum.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘Wouldn’t I!’ Alice tossed her turbaned head. ‘One more smart arsed remark out of that one and it could be he won’t be able to talk for a month. In fact . . .’ She smiled, a wicked glint in her brown eyes, ‘if he’s on our bus goin’ home tonight I might just tell him my brother is wantin’ a word with him.’
Passing through wide gates painted with splashes and streaks of green and brown, the whole camouflaged to resemble stretches of open heath, the two sprinted for the workshop as the gateman pulled a watch from the top pocket of a jacket as ancient as himself and mouthed the word ‘TIME’.
Breathless from the dash across the wide yard, Alice snatched her card from a rack attached to the wall then slotted it into the large dialled time clock, breathing relief at seeing the resulting time stamped black and clear on the buff coloured card: seven twenty nine. One more minute and her pay would have been docked. In fact, it didn’t allow a minute, one second past seven thirty and a quarter of an hour would have been taken from her pay, and that would mean less pocket money given back from the wage packet which must be handed unopened to her mother every Friday teatime. Less! Alice’s irritation at the exchange of words with the bus conductor became sudden mutiny. Any less and her mother might as well keep the lot! With so many men pulled from the workplace and drafted into the forces, women had been put into the jobs left vacant; they did the job of a man but they did not receive the same wage. So much for government gratitude! ‘You are doing well to be earning as much as you do, many girls of twenty one and older earned nowhere near that sum.’ That had been the management reply when she had voiced dissatisfaction at a wage of seventeen shillings and ninepence in return for slogging her heart out sixty-one hours a week. Seventeen shillings and ninepence! And all she was handed out of it was half a crown. Two shillings and sixpence, her mother keeping the rest!
A measly two and six! Alice’s thoughts were acid. How far did that go when it had to provide every article of clothing, every item of make-up? Lord, a lipstick, supposing you could get one, cost three bob on the black market, and stockings – the ‘spivs’ selling them asked no less than six. Six shillings for stockings which had cost three and elevenpence before the war.
‘When you finally gets to wakin’ up yoh might shift y’self an’ let a body get to that time clock!’
A shove making her stumble a few paces, Alice turned a furious glare to a stockily built woman, steel curlers jutting from beneath a turban lying like a line of silver caterpillars on her brow.
‘Who d’ya think you’re pushin’!’ Alice’s demand sizzled like fat on a hot stove.
‘I don’t ’ave to think.’ The woman slotted her own card into the clock, slamming the lever down with a vicious thump. ‘I knows who yoh be, an’ I also knows yoh be a cheeky young bugger.’
‘You knows that does you? Then you must know this, but I’ll tell you again just to refresh your memory. A cheeky
young
bugger be a sight better than bein’ a miserable
old
bugger with a face ugly enough to stop that time clock should you look straight at it; but then you can’t look straight at anythin’, not with them cock eyes you can’t.’
The woman’s one turned eye seemed to turn even more inward to touch her nose as she aimed a blow which Alice adroitly dodged.
‘Yoh waits ’til I sees your mother, see ’ow free y’be wi’ that tongue o’ your’n when ’er be finished!’
The woman stomped away, threats rapidly lost among the slap of leather drive belts and the din of machinery.
‘Eeh Alice, you’ll be for it when your mum gets to hear of what you just said, and her will, Lizzie Baker isn’t one to lose the opportunity of makin’ trouble.’
‘Then somebody should tell Lizzie Baker the trouble that’ll bring on ’er. Her’ll find two can play the tittle-tattle game and who’ll come off best. Ain’t only Lizzie Baker knows of her rentin’ out that back bedroom to any who can pay five bob for a bit of hows-your-father.’
Fastening the heavy duty green twill overall she preferred to the boiler suit type worn by most of the women, Becky cast a glance at the flushed face of her friend.
‘I can’t get over the difference in you,’ she said, the last button secured, ‘at school you wouldn’t say boo to a goose yet now you’re ready to have a go at anybody. Talk of a turnabout, yours isn’t so much a change as a transformation.’
‘I don’t know about transformations,’ the voice of the foreman boomed, ‘but I does know about transfers an’ that be what you pair will be gettin’ should it be I tells the management you don’t be pullin’ your weight, you’ll be gettin’ your callin’ up papers in next week’s post an’ the government don’t allow no pickin’ and choosin’ o’ jobs, you goes where they say, an’ seeing the shortage o’ farm workers I’ll be placin’ no bet on you both not gettin’ sent to one; see ’ow you likes workin’ sixty an’ seventy hours a week ankle deep in pig muck!’
Wouldn’t prove much of a change, she already worked sixty hours a week! Head at a defiant tilt, Alice walked to her place then, as she touched the button which brought life to the as yet silent machine, called to Becky.
‘You know what his trouble is?’
‘Trouble?’ Becky’s film star copied eyebrows rose in a questioning arch.
A sideways glance telling they were both still being observed by the foreman, Alice pulled sharply on a lever securing the machine’s heavy jaws about a rounded bar of metal before setting it to rotate.
‘Ar.’ She turned the turret of the Ward 3A Capstan, bringing into position the sharp cutting tool then watching it bite into the bar and slice away steel in fine silver ribbons. ‘He’s like a hoss left too long in the field . . . he ain’t gettin’ his oats.’
Her brain a minefield of irritation, Alice let her dissatisfaction ride. Sixty hours slaving in this place week after week with the foreman watching every move, Lord you couldn’t go to the lav for what he didn’t count the time it took. The work was tiring, twisting that turret every couple of minutes, heaving long rods of steel, feeding them into the machine had her longing for the clock to reach six. But that labour, hard as it was, she didn’t mind, it was her way of fighting this war, and she should really look for no reward other than the knowing of that. But there ought to be more! Certainly more than a half crown a week.
‘Your Country Needs You.’
The slogan on the posters pasted onto the walls of almost every building flashed its picture into Alice’s mind. It needed every man and woman . . . but not necessarily working in a ’munitions factory.
‘. . . You’ll be gettin’ your callin’ up papers . . . the government don’t allow no pickin’ an’ choosin’ . . .’
No it didn’t. Alice swung the turret, excitement adding strength. Not if you waited for conscription, the government order for every able bodied woman under forty years of age to take employment of her choice or be compelled to accept that ordained by them, refusal resulting in imprisonment. That would not be the case should she volunteer for the forces; if she did that she would be able to choose which service to join.
‘. . . See ow’ you likes workin’ sixty an’ seventy hours a week ankle deep in pig muck . . .’
But she would not be ankle deep in pig muck, nor in any kind of muck. Messing about with animals or grubbing in fields was not for Alice Butler; but the WRNS, the Women’s Royal Naval Service – the uniform alone was worth anything the job called for. Or maybe the WAAF, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force – that uniform was equally sexy.
Pique vanishing beneath a mental aura of glamour, Alice gave herself to the romance building in her mind.
Another of those letters. Violet Hawley stared at the white envelope on the hall carpet.
She had known it would come. Fingers woven tight together she felt the blood chill in her veins. She had known it would come, and now it had.
What would it say? What demand would it make this time? For that was what that letter was, a demand. She did not need to open it to see that, she had seen it twice before. And twice before had refused to acknowledge it.
This would be no different, whatever it dictated she would not do it, they could not force her!
She must act exactly the same way as those other times: she must burn the letter, destroy it, pretend it had not been received. That was the logical thing to do, the sensible thing; if it had not been received then there was no demand to answer.
Slowly, a step at a time as though approaching some living threat, Violet walked to where the letter lay. Nobody would know it had been delivered, nobody could hold her word in question. Sustained by the thought she snatched up the envelope and carried it quickly into the kitchen.
She turned to the dresser and took from a shelf the box of matches kept along with a supply of candles for use in the Anderson shelter Jacob and some of his fellow members of the Home Guard had erected in the garden. Shelter! Violet shuddered. A few pieces of corrugated sheeting bolted together and covered with soil, what protection could that afford against a bomb? And being inside it, spending hours in near total darkness lying on those narrow framed bunk beds covered by rough grey war issue blankets, the dank smell of earth filling the nostrils, fear leaving you almost unable to breathe as the whistle of a falling bomb came ever nearer . . . It was like being buried alive, alive to the horror of waiting, listening, praying the next bomb to rock the earth would not land on your little bit of it. A living nightmare. She had tried to make it more comfortable. Every day she aired the blankets and every day sprinkled ‘Aunty Sally’ over the metal strips of those beds, splashed it on the walls and the packed earth floor but disinfectant did not eliminate the sour odour of damp nor did it deter spiders and beetles. Like the prayers she whispered night and day asking this war be ended, her efforts were ignored.
Ignored! She turned again to the unopened envelope. That was what she must do. She must ignore this letter, what was not read could not be worried over. But what if someone came to the house, if the demand written be made in person?
Dread snatched breath into her throat. They would knock . . .
Anyone coming here would have to knock, have to announce their arrival and thus warned she would refuse to answer.
Solution arrived at, she struck a match and held the flame to one corner of the envelope, watching the gleam of orange gold lick across the paper, leaving in its wake a blackened curl. The flame almost touching her fingers, she carried the charred remnants to the sink a smile on her lips as the last vestige burned to a crisp. Should anyone call to enquire after that letter? She turned on the tap and flushed away every shred of evidence. She would simply not be at home.
