The Buffer Girls (7 page)

Trip frowned. ‘Really? Father said that?’

‘Yes.’ There was a slight pause as Josh added hesitantly, ‘Why,
is something wrong?’

‘No – no, nothing. It’s just that we
do
have a vacancy that would be perfect for you. I’ve moved up the ladder as an apprentice a bit and the lad who took my
place was useless. He was sacked two weeks ago.’

‘That explains it, then,’ Emily said. ‘It’s longer ago than that since my mother spoke to your father.’

Trip’s face cleared. ‘Oh I see, yes, that’ll be it.’

Although, to Emily’s sharp hearing, there was still a note of uncertainty in Trip’s tone, but then he said, firmly, ‘Right, no time like the present. We’ll go and see Mr
Bayes this minute. Come on.’

When Josh and Emily arrived home well after dusk had fallen, it was to find Lizzie, washed clean of all the grime of her job, her hair shining in the lamplight and dressed in a
pretty floral
dress, waiting with Martha. But their mother was in a fine old temper.

‘Where on earth have you been? Out gallivanting when I could do with some help with your father.’

Josh put his strong arms round his mother’s waist, lifted her off her feet and swung her round. ‘Don’t be cross, Ma.’ It was his pet name for their mother, when he wanted
to get round her.

‘Put me down and stop your
silliness.’ Martha slapped him on the shoulder and he set her down on the floor again. ‘And why shouldn’t I be cross, pray?’

‘Because, Ma, I’ve got a job and I start on Monday.’

Martha’s anger evaporated in an instant and her mouth dropped open. ‘How? Where?’

‘At Trippets’,’ Josh said with a wide grin. Today was the first time Emily had seen her brother smile since their mother had
dropped the bombshell of her intention to move the
Ryan family to the city.

‘Trippets’? But—’ Martha bit her lip and for a moment she looked uncertain.

Quick to notice, Emily said, ‘What is it, Mam?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Martha said, a little too hastily. ‘Tell me how this has come about. Did you see Mr Trippet?’

‘No – we saw Trip.’

‘Thomas? Oh – oh, I see.’

Emily could
see that her mother’s mind was working furiously. ‘But – surely,’ Martha said at last, ‘Thomas isn’t in a position to hire folks. Is
he?’

Josh shook his head. ‘No, but he took us to see the foreman – a Mr Bayes. Of course, because it was Trip doing the asking, Mr Bayes said he was willing to give me a trial.’

But what would happen when Arthur Trippet found out? Martha was thinking, but
aloud she said, ‘Then that’s wonderful, Josh.’

Lizzie pulled a face. ‘It sounds as if you don’t need
my
help now.’

Emily put her arm round Lizzie’s trim waist. ‘Of course, we do. You’re going to take me to see Mrs Nicholson tomorrow, aren’t you?’

Mollified a little, though with her impertinent glance still on Josh, Lizzie said, ‘Tell you what, Emily, why don’t we go across to see her
right now? I know she’s
home.’

‘Will she mind?’ Emily was a little doubtful about troubling the woman after a long day at work.

‘Not the missus, no. Come on and then you’ll both be fitted up with a job on the same day.’

As they walked across the uneven cobbles, Lizzie confided, ‘I’d so hoped we’d all be working together at Waterfall’s. Ne’er mind, at least we’re living close
by.’

She knocked on the door and, after a brief pause, it was opened by a tall, fresh-faced young man with short, wiry red hair. He was still dressed in his working clothes but his smile was warm and
welcoming. Though he glanced at the stranger briefly, it was to Lizzie he turned, his gaze never leaving her face.

‘Hello, Billy. Is your mam in?’

‘Come in, Lizzie luv.’ As they stepped into
the light of the kitchen, he added, ‘And who’s this?’

‘My new friend, Emily Ryan. They’ve come to live next door to us and she’s looking for work. I just wondered if your mam—’

‘Of course.’ He turned and shouted over his shoulder. ‘Mam, visitors for you.’

The door from the inner room opened and a plump, middle-aged woman came in. She was round faced and smiling, yet the smile did not
reach her eyes, which held a deep sorrow. But then Emily
remembered. This poor woman had lost three of her family to the war. Billy was the only one she had left now. The Ryan family thought they had been hard hit, but it was nothing in comparison to Mrs
Nicholson’s loss or, for that matter, Rosa Jacklin’s. She nodded to both girls as Lizzie said swiftly, ‘Emily here is looking for work and
we wondered –
I
wondered
– if you’d give her a trial as a buffer girl, missus.’ Even at home, outside working hours, Lizzie still called the woman the name she was known as by the buffer girls in her
charge.

Ruth Nicholson looked the newcomer up and down. ‘Well, you look presentable enough, but you won’t by the time you’ve worked at a buffing wheel for a day. Are you sure
it’s what you
want to do, lass?’

‘I have to find work quickly, Mrs Nicholson. I’d be very grateful if you’d at least give me a chance.’

‘You’ve not done any of this sort of work before, then?’

Emily shook her head. ‘We’ve come from a small village in Derbyshire, but my mother wants my brother to have a chance to better himself.’

Lizzie grimaced. ‘He’s only gone and got himself a job at Trippets’
today. I was hoping he’d come to Waterfall’s too, but . . .’ She shrugged in
disappointment.

‘Well, well, we can’t have Trippets’ getting all the promising ones, can we?’ The woman was thoughtful for a moment and when Lizzie said softly, ‘Her dad
can’t work any more. I expect you can guess why,’ Mrs Nicholson sighed and said, ‘All right, lass. I’ll give you a try. Come in with Lizzie in
the morning and we’ll
get you kitted out and see how you shape up. We’ll start you off as an errand girl. The last one left last week and I haven’t had a chance to find a replacement yet. I’ll give you
a trial, at least.’

It was no hardship for Emily to be up early. At home – as she still called Ashford – she and Josh had always started their work at seven o’clock every weekday
morning.

‘That way,’ Josh had said, ‘we can allow ourselves an afternoon off on a Saturday and we can still see Trip then and on Sundays, when he’s home.’

The four youngsters had been friends from childhood. They had
attended school together, but when he was nine years old, Trip had been sent away to boarding school.

‘He’ll not want to know us when he comes home,’ Josh had said dolefully. ‘He’ll have made some posh friends.’

But Josh had been wrong. Trip was only too pleased to see them and when they asked him about his new school, he’d pulled a face. ‘I hate it,’ he’d said. ‘I wish I
could come
back to school here, but Father won’t hear of it. So it looks as if I’ve got to grin and bear it until I’m old enough to leave.’

To the nine-year-old boy and his friends that seemed an awful long way off. All they could do was spend as much time together as they could in the holidays. Trip didn’t even come home at
weekends in term time. Emily left school at thirteen and started working for
her father, often going to Bakewell Market to sell the candles on a stall with her mother. When Josh reached the same
age seventeen months later, they expected that he, too, would leave school at the end of term and begin work with Walter. But even then, Martha had had grandiose ideas for her son.

‘He’ll stop on at school,’ she’d declared. ‘Learning’s important for a boy.’

And so Josh
had stayed on, working with his father and learning the trade of a chandler at weekends and in the school holidays. But early in 1916, the House of Commons voted for the conscription
of all single men between eighteen and forty-one and two months later this was extended to include married men. Walter, at thirty-seven, would be obliged to go.

‘I’m not waiting to be called up,’ he’d told his
startled family one sunny May morning. ‘I’ve stood the jibes for long enough. I’ve volunteered and I
leave on Monday.’

And so – much to Martha’s chagrin – there was no choice; Josh left school. But by then, both he and Emily were skilled enough between them to carry on the business
together.

The four young friends had still met up whenever Trip was at home, but since he’d left to live
and work in the city, there’d only been the three of them. Soon, it became just Josh
and Amy, once Emily became aware of the growing affection between her brother and her best friend.

But now, their working life was to be very different. Emily helped her mother get their father down the stairs for the day and seated him in the chair by the fire, then, when Lizzie came to
collect her, the
two of them left with Josh to walk to work.

‘I do wish you were coming to Waterfall’s with us, Josh,’ Lizzie said, linking her arm through his as they walked to the bottom of their street. ‘You can’t even
walk to work and back with us. Trippets’ is in the opposite direction when we get to the end of our street to the way me an’ Emily will go. But it’d be nice to meet up at dinner
time
with you. Us buffer girls usually have a quick walk into town. Emily saw us yesterday, didn’t you?’ Lizzie glanced briefly towards Emily, but her gaze soon went back to looking up
sideways at Josh.

She was definitely making a play for him, Emily thought uncomfortably. One of them would soon have to tell her that he’d got a girlfriend back home. But first, Emily decided – though
the guilt
swept through her at her deception – she needed to settle into the job Lizzie had found her.

They parted on a corner where Josh set off towards Trippets’ and Emily and Lizzie headed to Waterfall’s in Division Street.

The other girls greeted her with friendly laughter. ‘Right, lass,’ Mrs Nicholson said as the other girls began to dress themselves in their calico aprons and wrap brown paper
or
newspaper around their legs. ‘Let’s get you kitted out. You’ll be doing the job of errand girl to start with but we’ll dress you up like a proper buffer girl and later on
I’ll give you a try at a wheel.’

Mrs Nicholson – or ‘missus’, as the girls all called her – tied a clean, white smock-like garment around Emily, tying it at the back. ‘This is called a buff-brat,
though don’t ask
me where the name comes from, ’cos I don’t know. It won’t stop this colour for long and it’s up to you to take it home and wash it. Once a
week’s enough, though it’ll be caked with the flying sand by the end of a week. I’ll lend you this one to start with, but when you start as a buffer girl, you’ll have to
provide your own.’

‘We have a washday on a Saturday afternoon in the court,’ Lizzie,
who was still hovering nearby, put in. ‘She can join us, can’t she, missus?’

Emily felt a stab of disappointment. Working hours, she’d been told, were weekdays plus Saturday morning and she’d hoped she would have been free on a Saturday afternoon to meet up
with Trip. Never mind, she told herself. There was always Sunday afternoon.

Over the buff-brat was a coarse, grey apron and then
Mrs Nicholson held out two pieces of red material. ‘Now, this is a head rag to protect your hair and there’s a neck rag too to
stop all the muck getting into your clothes, lass,’ she explained. She stood back to look Emily up and down. ‘Course if you were starting the buffing, you’d have a brown paper or
newspaper apron over all this to catch the worse of the dirt, but you needn’t put that on
today.’ She paused and frowned. ‘You’re a bit old to be starting as an errand lass,
but since you’ve had no experience, I’ve no choice. And I can only pay you half a crown a week to start with, but I reckon you’ll soon pick the buffing up. Watch how the other
girls work whenever you can. Now, you’re a bit late this morning. Not your fault, lass,’ she added hastily. ‘I knew Lizzie would have to
bring you the first morning, so I came in
early and got everything ready for them. You see, they’re paid piece rates. You know what that means, don’t you?’ When Emily nodded, Ruth Nicholson went on, ‘So, they
mustn’t be kept waiting for what they need. Usually, the errand lass must get here well before eight o’clock to get everything ready for the buffer girls coming in. So, from tomorrow,
that’s the time you must start. Now, first of all, you must light the fire in the stove and sweep up the workshop. I like everything nice and tidy. I’m a bit of a tartar for the place
being kept as clean as possible. Orreight?’ For the first time since Emily had met her, there was a twinkle in the woman’s eyes. It was good to see that she was sometimes able to forget
the dreadful sadness in her
heart, even if it was for only a brief moment. ‘After that, I shall give you instructions as to how to fetch the work and share it out amongst the buffers.
You’ll also have to run errands for me and for the girls so that they can keep working. They’ll ask you to do their shopping for them, but they’ll give you a list, so always mind
you’ve got a piece of paper and a pencil handy to write it
down, ’cos if you come back without something, they’ll only send you again.’ She leaned forward and whispered,
‘And I’ll ask you to get me a bit of snuff now and again.’

Emily managed not to look surprised or shocked; she would ask Lizzie about it later. Instead, keeping her face straight, she merely nodded.

‘Now, about dinner time,’ the missus was not finished with her list of jobs
the errand girl had to do. ‘A lot of the girls bring their dinners in a basin – a stew,
perhaps, or meat and potato pie – and it’s up to you to make sure it’s piping hot by the time they stop. Sometimes, they’ll send you out for fish and chips as a treat, but
mostly they bring their food from home. It’s cheaper. And then,’ on and on it went, ‘you need to mash tea for them and wash out the mugs
afterwards. On a Monday morning, your very
first job – and this is important, Emily – is to mix up a new bag of Trent sand and oil. The girls use it in the buffing process. Share it out to each girl’s place on t’side
– that’s the bench – near them. There, I think that’s about it for now. I know it sounds a lot to remember, but you’ll learn as you go along. And there’s other
little jobs you
can do when you get a spare minute but I’ll tell you about them when you’ve had time to settle in.’