The Quality Street Girls

Diana laid out fresh newspaper and saw a happier headline: Essie Ackland was singing at the Crystal Palace. Diana’s father had loved Essie Ackland, and she still had his wind-up gramophone in the parlour with his collection of records. She was feeling melancholy, and decided to put on one of her father’s favourites very quietly in the parlour so that the family upstairs wouldn’t hear. She crept through to the room at the front of the house and the cheap and dirty pine shelves that were built into the alcoves either side of the fireplace. In the right-hand alcove, a row of yellowing paper record sleeves stood as a lone reminder of happier times in a better place. Diana gently ran her fingertips along the record jackets that were so familiar to her now that she could tell them by their worn corners without reading their labels. She picked out Essie’s recording of ‘Goodbye’. It was an old favourite, and as she lowered the needle to the shining black disc, she felt she even remembered the pattern of crackles that preceded that haunting opening bar.

Diana lowered herself into the horsehair armchair that had seen better days, and closed her eyes, imagining she was in the Crystal Palace with her late father.

Her moment was rudely interrupted as she heard Tommo fighting with the lock of their front door. She pulled herself up out of her chair, lovingly returned the record to its sleeve, and its sleeve to its shelf, and returned to the darkness of the kitchen before he’d even managed to get his latchkey into the door. She waited with arms folded.

The house they shared with Tommo’s mother was only a two-up-two-down which meant that from where Diana leant against the kitchen sink she could see straight into the hallway. As Tommo entered the house, he could see her in the shadows.

‘Wharra you lookin’ at?’ Tommo was even more disgusting to her than usual. A cigarette butt clung to the wet bottom lip of his wide and ugly mouth. As he sneered at her, he revealed dirty, crooked teeth. It was times like these that she pitied Bess; the girl could do immeasurably better than Tommo Cartwright.

‘You didn’t pay the rent.’ Diana walked through to the parlour but didn’t get very close before the fumes of beer and gin on her brother’s stinking breath hit her.

‘You pay it for a change. What do you think I am? Yer bleeding …’ Tommo waved a skinny wrist around ‘… money machine.’

‘I buy the food. Where’s the rent money.’

‘I spent it.’

Diana knew that he wouldn’t be short of money. It might not be his, but he always had some. ‘Are you telling me you’ve got nothing? Are you telling me you’re no better than anyone else on this street?’ She knew that would rile him and if he had any money it would soon show itself just to prove his superiority; Diana had been pressing her stepbrother’s buttons for years and it was second nature now, undignified though it might be.

Tommo pulled himself up an inch or two taller and with drunken slur said, ‘I’m never penniless.’ He reached into his various pockets and pulled out a crumpled, damp pound note and a collection of coins and detritus, all of which he threw onto the floor disdainfully.

Their rent was ten shillings, and Diana had no intention of taking any more or less than that. She bent down and picked it up coin by coin in silence and with as much dignity as she could muster.

‘What’s this?’ she said, unfurling a slip of paper.

Tommo sniffed and snatched it out of her outstretched hand. ‘That’s me being clever, that is.’

Diana had seen what it was; a betting slip from an illegal bookmakers that had been written out by hand. They’d been taking bets on whether or not the coronation of the new King was still going to happen in a few months’ time, and Tommo had put on five shillings against. ‘How is that you being clever?’

‘I saw it in the paper, didn’t I? Everyone’s saying it won’t happen. He’ll off hisself before then. That’s how them toffs get out of a jam; no brains.’

Diana didn’t say anything. There was no point telling him that he was disgusting for laying bets that another human being would take his own life; king or not. Diana turned to walk up the stairs. ‘Keep your voice down,’ she told him, ‘I don’t want you waking the house.’

Diana returned upstairs to the room she shared with little Gracie. All the houses in their street were two-up-two-down, but being the middle house in Vickerman Street, they had one small extra attic room that jutted out of the row of rooftops; to Diana, it was a lifesaver. When her stepmother had offered it to Diana, she had been apologetic about the damp, the smallness, the drafts and the mice, but Diana had been too relieved to care. Diana was still glad not to have to share a room with her stepmother; her stepmother was a kind woman, but she snored like a drain.

Diana went to her single small window that looked out over the town; it wouldn’t be light for hours. The street lamps picked out the undulations of the valley, the warren of tightly packed tiny rooftops, silhouettes of enormous factory chimneys rose up like an industrial forest of brick-built trees giving life and death to the town simultaneously, with their jobs and their smoke.

Diana couldn’t go back to bed now; she was too wide awake, and she didn’t want to wake Gracie. Now that she had money to pay the rent, that was one battle over, but as soon as she won one battle there was always another. Life was a never-ending series of battlegrounds, and she had no one to fight by her side. She missed her father so much it hurt; he had been her sole champion, and he had never taken any of Tommo’s nonsense. Diana remembered the first time Tommo had talked about getting himself involved with the Leeds gangs, and her father had locked him in the coal shed until he had agreed not to go looking for trouble. What would her father say if he could see her now? Living in Ethel’s attic room, the house full of stolen goods that Tommo was fencing to his Leeds connections, and not a hope of ever escaping. Her father would have laughed Tommo to scorn for giving himself a ridiculous name like ‘The Blade’, and he’d have made sure that Diana didn’t have to live in a house with stolen goods inside. Diana wished her dad was there; she wished he’d been there to help her save Gracie from the dirt, the damp and the life they were having to live.

It was the tenth of October, and when Reenie woke up she remembered that it was Saturday and today was her birthday. Her little brother’s present to her was to muck out Ruffian’s shed, so she didn’t have to and her sister had promised to bake the bread. They had both got up early to do her jobs and had given her the bed to herself, and she was delighted.

As she lay, like a starfish, across the lumpy mattress that she had shared with Katherine since as long as they could remember, she planned her day. Reenie liked to plan her day so that she could get the absolute most out of it she possibly could. Today she thought she’d bring forward wash day; nothing gave her a feeling of achievement quite like the sight of sheets being bleached by the sun on a dry day. All those girls she’d known at school who had gone off to get fancy jobs in shops, and tea houses, and the coveted piece-work places at the sweet factories, they couldn’t possibly know the true satisfaction of a successfully completed wash day. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. She was better off at home; those stuck up girls could keep their stinking jobs, she had enough to do. And as for going into service; she didn’t even want to think about that.

Reenie couldn’t help dwelling on the words of the Salvation Army lady that she had met the night before; it was too late for Reenie to go back to school now that she was sixteen, but her mother was always nagging her about secretarial classes, or teaching herself shorthand. ‘If you don’t do something with your life you’ll end up living from week to week in the pawnbrokers like your Uncle Mal,’ her mum was always saying. Reenie had just never been any good at school work or anything like that; she would always prefer to be useful at home than useless in a classroom. She didn’t necessarily like all of the jobs that she did at home (the ones she particularly disliked she had farmed out to her siblings that day), but working at home gave her a sense of purpose, and that was what she wanted. Reenie did have a dream, but she tried not to think about it; better to be useful.

‘Reenie!’ Her mother called from the kitchen, ‘Reenie, are you up yet?’

‘It’s my birthday! I don’t have to do ’owt!’

‘You’ve got a present!’

‘I know, and I’m making the most of it!’

‘You’ve got to come down here and open it!’

Reenie sat up. Open her present? She never had presents that you opened; there’d sometimes be something for one of the younger ones, but she was sixteen now and past all that stuff. Reenie threw off the thick, warm layers of blankets that she’d been hiding in like a cocoon, and fumbled for her father’s old slippers and her coat to put on over her nightshirt so that she didn’t freeze on her way down to the kitchen. Even though it was only October, it was still Halifax in October. She ran a comb through her shoulder-length, bright auburn hair and tied it back hastily hoping that if she did it herself, her mother wouldn’t pounce on her with a brush while she tried to eat her breakfast. She turned and neatened the bedclothes, disappointed that she was having to leave her warm cocoon so early, and then made her way down the stairs that she’d swept only the day before.

‘There you are! I thought you’d never get up. Sit down and open this.’

Reenie looked down at the scrubbed kitchen table where an ominous-looking parcel was waiting for her, wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. Reenie sidled into the middle of the bench underneath it and looked up at her family, trying to conceal her confusion. She lifted the parcel gingerly, the crisply ironed newspaper still warm against her fingertips; she could tell immediately what it was. She wondered what precious object they had sold or pawned to raise the money to buy her something so unnecessary, and how long it would take them to buy it back. She hoped they hadn’t pawned the kettle because she wanted her tea.

Reenie turned over the parcel in her hands and made a show for her family of being excited and surprised, but out of the corner of her eye, she was scanning the kitchen to see what was missing. The ramshackle, low-ceilinged, worn-out old farmhouse kitchen looked unchanged: the freshly blackened range was hot enough to be boiling the kettle (which was a minute or two off singing); the pink china that her mother saved for best was drying on the wooden rack beside the sink that was big enough to bathe in. The old pine table and benches, discoloured with age and use and her daily scrubbing, were all where they should be. Out of the windows, she could see Ruffian chewing up the paddock, and wondered how much longer he could last with no money for the vet.

‘Are you checking on Ruffian!’ Her brother had caught her furtive glance out of the window and was outraged. ‘I told you I’d see to him, and I will, I just—’

‘All right, that’s enough you two, don’t start.’ Reenie’s mother went to see to the kettle. ‘Reenie’s got to hurry up this morning. Reenie, open your present, love.’

‘Why have I got to hurry up?’

‘Just open your present, love, there’s a good lass.’

Reenie tentatively pulled at the string of the parcel. She was almost certain she knew what it was before she opened it, but as the inky paper fell away, she furrowed her brow in puzzlement. There, as she had expected, was a ½ lb tin of toffees that they couldn’t afford, but what she hadn’t expected was the envelope stuck to the top of the tin with her name typed on a typewriter; they didn’t know anyone with a typewriter. These weren’t cheap toffees either, these were Mackintosh’s Celebrated Toffees. Even the tin, decorated with dancing carnival figures, and a lid edged in red and gold, was alive with magic.

‘Go on, keep going, open that too.’

Reenie was stunned into silence, and she was about to open the lid of the tin when her younger sister said: ‘No, silly, open the envelope.’ Reenie could see that Katherine was even more excited than her, and that her mother must have let her in on the surprise.

John looked around in annoyance as he realised he’d been kept out of their circle, but his mother shushed him.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ Reenie, usually so loud and confident was quiet and nervous now. She turned the white, business-like envelope over in her work-worn fingers and took a deep breath.

‘Only one way to find out, love. But best hurry, eh?’ Her mother passed a clean table knife towards her daughter, and Reenie picked it up and slid it along the gummed seal.

There was a long silence as Reenie held her breath not daring to look at the page, and then she read aloud the first official letter addressed to her in her short life. ‘Dear Miss Calder, We are pleased to offer you the position of Seasonal Production Line Assistant in our Halifax factory …’ Reenie gasped in surprise and delight. ‘Oh, Mum! I’ve got a job! I’ve got a job! I’m going to Mackintosh’s! I’m going to Toffee Town! They’ve given me a job!’

‘I know, love; I wrote to them. They got a reference from Miss Dukes at your school, and a reference from the vicar, and we had such a time keeping it a secret in case it didn’t come off, and then they wrote and said they wanted you to start right away.’

‘Right away? Well, when right away?’

‘Today! So go and wash your neck and get a wiggle on. Your birthday present from me is a job.’

‘Don’t I have to have an interview?’

‘What sort of job do you think it is? Chief Accountant? You’re not going into the offices; you’re packing cartons, and every day’s your interview. Be faster than everyone else, and they’ll keep you until Christmas.’

‘If I’m faster than anyone they’ve ever had do you think they might keep me longer than—’

‘Now don’t go getting attached; you know what you’re like. Just be glad that you’ve got until Christmas and enjoy it. It’s not everyone that gets into Mack’s.’

‘But if I were really, really fast and they’d had loads of girls leave at Christmas for Christmas weddings—’

‘Christmas weddings? How many droves of girls are you expecting to leave for Christmas weddings?’

‘Well, just say if there were a lot, do you think there’s a chance that I might not have to go into service?’

Mrs Calder dried her hands on her apron and sat down at the edge of the table. ‘Now listen, you three, I know you all talk like goin’ into service is the worst thing in the world, and I know I used to tell you some terrible stories of what it was like in my day. Being in service now isn’t like it used to be; you hardly ever have to live-in, and they all send their laundry out. Look, what I’m saying is: if any of you do have to go into service I think you’ll have a wonderful time.’ Reenie’s mother tried to appeal to Reenie’s imagination, ‘Reenie, what if you went into service in a little place, and then a fine lady visited and spotted you, and you got to go to work in a big house and make friends with all the quality? Can you imagine?’

Reenie’s tight-lipped smile gave her away; she was trying to agree with her mother, but in her heart of hearts Reenie desperately didn’t want to. Reenie had hope now, and it was a letter from Mackintosh’s.

The overlooker who was showing the new girls their place marched them through the corridor of the factory walking two-by-two in what she called a ‘crocodile’. As far as Reenie could tell the overlookers were to the factories what the teachers were to her old school, and Reenie was immediately in awe of them. The overlookers decided where the girls went, which jobs they worked at, and how long for. Everyone wanted to stay in the overlookers good books.

‘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 her head down, her collar up, and her hands in her pockets like any other working day.

‘Diana Moore?’ The factory watchman had stepped out of his gatehouse cabin with a note in his hand.

‘You know I am.’ She said with an exasperated sigh.

‘Message for you.’ He handed over an internal memo envelope and went back to his business; answering queries from men who’d turned up on spec looking for work.

Diana moved out of the stream of other workers and found a quiet recess in a soot-blackened brick wall where she could stand apart and read the message. The note was evidently from someone who knew which gate she always used, or they’d left a note at every gate; either way she felt a slight discomfort about it. Diana was well known, but she didn’t like to be that well known.

Mackintosh’s Women’s Employment Department

October 10th,1936

Dear Diana,

Please present yourself at the office of Mrs Wilke’s on your arrival today.