Lights Out Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Bugger off, you socialist scum,’ her father would yell back. ‘I didn’t force her to sell it, did I?’

  In the end, Jack usually got a few bob extra for the old lady and went off, only partially satisfied, while her father sat muttering all night, complaining, somewhat unfairly Jessica thought in retrospect, that he’d been robbed. After all, he did make an enormous profit on the stuff he bought, and it was a bit unfair to take advantage of poor people when they were hard up.

  Jessica stood at the window feeling slightly astonished. She’d never looked at it that way before. In the old days, she’d always considered it was Jack Doyle who was being unreasonable, though it hadn’t stopped her from falling head over heels in love with him. Not that Jack knew, and if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. She was only fourteen and he was eight or nine years older and already courting. The fond, yearning memory of the tall fiery young man had gone with her to Walton and hadn’t faded until she met Arthur, six years later.

  The two men had disappeared into the house next door. Jessica sat in front of the dressing-table mirror, fluffing out her red hair, applying a fresh coat of lipstick. Her cheeks were pinker than usual, her eyes brighter. Seeing Jack Doyle had made her feel young again, made her relive feelings she hadn’t had in a long, long time.

  When Arthur came home, she ran downstairs, more cheerful than she’d been since they left Calderstones.

  The foreman was a sour-faced man in his fifties. ‘This,’ he said sarcastically, ‘is a capstan lathe.’

  Eileen Costello nodded knowingly. The machine looked like three motorbikes joined together, and very complicated. A long narrow piece of metal had been fed in sideways and protruded out several feet.

  ‘Now, what you’re making is distance pieces, three-quarter inch diameter with a half-inch hole.’

  ‘Right,’ said Eileen, nodding again. It was her first day at Dunnings, the aeroplane parts factory in Melling, and she was determined to do well. She’d been put in the workshop, a vast single-storey building with a metal roof. There were about twenty other women working on similar machines, all, like her, dressed in navy cotton drill overalls covered with a thick canvas apron and a white scarf tied turban-wise around their heads, which seemed to take away each woman’s individuality. Eileen thought they looked like a flock of giant birds.

  ‘To start the lathe, you pull this lever and turn the stop.’ He reached under the machine, then pointed to a six-sided plate on top. ‘See that? That’s the capstan, and each point is a different tool which relates to the position of this handwheel.’ He began to turn the wheel and the capstan shot along a ridge and back again. ‘This is the bar feed which releases the collet, there’s the centre drill, the plain drill, the reamer …’

  Eileen felt herself begin to panic. She’d never remember all this. He droned on about cross sticks and more levers, chucks and variable speeds, until her mind became a blur.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘set it up the way I told you, like, while I keep an eye on you.’

  ‘I can’t remember how to begin,’ she confessed weakly.

  The foreman closed his eyes, bit his lip and leaned on the machine without saying a word, clearly at the end of his patience. All that careful explanation and she hadn’t taken in a word. Bloody women! They were useless with machinery.

  Eileen watched him, feeling guilty. ‘If you could just go through it again,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Eh, Alfie, sod off, and let me show her.’ A jolly-looking girl of about twenty stopped the machine next to Eileen’s with a deft flick of a lever and came over. The curls escaping from underneath her turban were dyed an unnatural shade of orange and her lips were painted vivid purple. ‘You’re bloody useless at explaining. I bet when you started work in the last century, you didn’t get the hang of it in the first five minutes.’ She turned to Eileen. ‘Hallo, luv, I’m Doris.’

  Alfie departed with a filthy look in Doris’s direction. There was a cry of ‘Good riddance’ from the other girls in the workshop.

  ‘I’m Eileen, and I’m sure I’ll never understand how this thing works,’ Eileen said pathetically.

  ‘It’s quite simple, really. By the end of the week, you’ll find it as easy as shoving meat in a mincer.’

  Doris managed to make the operation appear much less complicated. Eileen watched, fascinated, as the long strip of metal was separated into little pieces, each neatly drilled with a hole, and dropping into a container underneath the machine.

  ‘Come on, Eileen, you have a go, but take it careful, like.’

  ‘I’ll take over now, Doris.’ A tall willowy girl with a thick fringe falling into her eyes, who was on Eileen’s other side, approached. ‘I’m Pauline. We can’t stop for long, else we lose pay. Did they tell you, you’re on piecework? You’re allowed two minutes each for these.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Eileen stammered, full of confusion. These helpful girls were losing money on her account.

  ‘Well, don’t be. Alfie couldn’t learn a monkey to pee,’ Pauline said scathingly. ‘We always help the newies out. Next Monday, it might be you expected to lend a hand if someone starts.’

  Eileen couldn’t for the life of her imagine such a situation. ‘What’s that stuff?’ A white liquid was spewing up around each finished piece of metal and covering the front of her canvas pinafore with a fine spray.

  ‘That’s the cooling liquid. It stops the metal from getting too hot. It don’t half pong.’

  ‘Is that what the smell is?’

  ‘You need a good wash every night to get rid of it.’

  With the help of the other girls, Eileen managed more or less to get the hang of the lathe, though her progress was painfully slow. When the tea trolley came round at eight o’clock, she sat on the little stool in front of the machine, never more grateful for a cup of tea and a cigarette. Another six hours to go, and she already felt exhausted. Not only that, she was suffocating in her heavy overalls and canvas pinafore; she could feel perspiration running down her armpits, and her neck felt clammy.

  Doris noticed her predicament. ‘You’ve got too many clothes on, haven’t you?’

  ‘It was cold out. I wore a thick jumper.’

  Doris grinned and her purple mouth seemed to extend from ear to ear. She undid the top buttons of her overall to reveal a grubby white cotton bra. ‘I’ve only got me bra and keks on, all of us have. When you go to the lavvy next, put your jumper and skirt in your locker, else you’ll melt away to nothing in here.’

  ‘I will,’ said Eileen fervently. ‘I’ll go the minute I’ve finished me tea and this ciggie.’

  ‘Miss Thomas would’ve told you that, but she’s not in yet this morning. She usually has a talk to the newies before they start work.’

  ‘Who’s Miss Thomas?’

  ‘She’s the women’s overseer. I reckon she’s still at the hospital with Ginnie Macauley from the Tool Shop. Ginnie keeled over on Friday night, and you’ll never believe this, Eileen, but she had a bun in the oven and didn’t know.’

  ‘Jaysus! How could you not know?’

  ‘Beats me.’ Doris shrugged. ‘She didn’t, though, she just thought she was getting fat. Oh, here’s Miss Thomas, now.’ A petite middle-aged woman with cropped hair, wearing a too-large navy-blue pin-striped suit and sensible flat shoes, came into the workshop. ‘How’s Ginnie, Miss Thomas?’ Doris yelled.

  ‘She was delivered of a fine six-pound baby boy on Saturday afternoon,’ Miss Thomas answered in a crisp, refined voice. ‘She’s not so well herself, though I think it’s more shock than anything. I’ve sat with her two nights in a row, the poor lamb can’t stop crying.’

  ‘You’re an angel, Miss Thomas, you really are,’ another girl shouted.

  ‘Get away with you, Beattie,’ Miss Thomas said dismissively. She came up to Eileen and smiled. ‘You’re Eileen Costello, aren’t you? I’d like you to come into my office so we can have a little chat. I’m sorry I wasn’t here first thing, but as you will have understood, I was
otherwise engaged.’

  The woman was about to leave when her eye fell on Pauline, and she said sharply, ‘Tuck that fringe beneath your scarf immediately! You know it’s against regulations.’ Her tone changed. ‘Come on, Eileen.’

  Once they were in the spartan glass-fronted office with its bare wooden floor, Miss Thomas pointed to a chair in front of the scrupulously tidy desk, and instead of sitting behind the desk, she perched herself on its end. She wore no make-up or jewellery and her freckled face had a scrubbed fresh look. Despite the lack of concession to fashion, her animated expression and lively brown eyes somehow made her appear attractive.

  ‘How are you getting on so far, Eileen?’

  ‘Not so well,’ Eileen confessed. ‘Though I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it.’

  ‘You will, eventually,’ Miss Thomas said confidently. ‘Now, I have to ask this. Did you bring your gas mask?’

  ‘Well, no. I’ve only taken it out with me once. I can’t imagine using it and it’s such a nuisance to carry.’

  ‘I agree, and so, it would seem, does everybody else. Well, I’ve done my duty and given you a reminder, so that’s out of the way.’ She smiled briskly. ‘My real reason for seeing you is to stress, if you have any problems, please bring them to me. Any problems, of any sort. I blame myself for not having guessed about Ginnie Macauley, but if the girl herself didn’t know, I don’t suppose I could be expected to. Husband problems, boyfriend problems, health problems, I’m always here to listen.’ She picked up a sheet of paper from the desk behind her; Eileen recognised the form she’d completed when she’d come with Annie for an interview several weeks ago. ‘I see you have a little boy, Eileen. Do you have someone to take care of him while you’re at work?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Eileen said indignantly. As if she’d come out and leave Tony on his own! ‘There’s me friend, Annie, for one, she’s starting work here this avvy. Annie’ll be seeing him off to school any minute now. Then there’s me sister, Sheila, and me neighbours. I’ll never be short of someone to look after our Tony and I would never have left him if I were.’

  Miss Thomas looked suitably contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Eileen, but some women go out to work without giving a damn if their little ones are being properly looked after.’

  ‘Well, I’m not one of them,’ Eileen muttered. She didn’t like the woman’s patronising attitude. She wouldn’t have dreamt of discussing ‘husband problems’ with a total stranger and resented the assumption that she would. And she wasn’t Jack Doyle’s daughter for nothing. She also resented being called Eileen, when she was supposed to address the woman as Miss Thomas.

  Miss Thomas seemed to sense the slight antagonism. She sighed and moved to sit behind the desk. ‘There’s just a few more things. I keep a supply of sanitary towels in my office in case any of the girls are caught short with their periods, and I always have a plentiful stock of aspirin to save you going to First Aid.’

  Eileen would have loved a couple of aspirin there and then, her head was thumping from the strain of the morning, but there was no way she would ask for them. She’d put a bottle of her own in her bag tonight – and a sanitary rag.

  ‘I expect you’ve already noticed how hot it gets in the workshop?’ Miss Thomas went on. ‘The girls work in their bras and pants. I’ve been pleading with those on high for softer, finer overalls, so there wouldn’t be a need for such extreme measures, but I’ve had no luck so far.’ She smiled. ‘I’m afraid management aren’t very accommodating when I ask for special treatment for my girls.’

  Eileen bristled inside. She’d no wish to be one of Miss Thomas’s ‘girls’. ‘I was about to take me jumper and skirt off as soon as I’d drunk me tea,’ she said, and Miss Thomas nodded approvingly.

  ‘Finally,’ she said, ‘you’ll have already been lectured on this by Alfie, but please ensure your hair is kept well back from your face with your bandana. Even a fringe like Pauline’s is dangerous. If you bend over the machine and your hair gets caught!’ She paused, shuddering. ‘I can’t understand why some girls put glamour before safety.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ Eileen said politely.

  ‘Well,’ Miss Thomas smiled, ‘I think that’s it. I hope you enjoy working here, Eileen. There’s a nice atmosphere, everybody’s very friendly. You should settle down in no time.’ Then, almost to herself, she went on, ‘Though let’s hope the pundits are right and this phoney war is over soon and there won’t be a need for such a massive rearmament programme.’

  ‘My sister doesn’t think it’s a phoney war,’ Eileen said shortly. ‘Not since she lost her husband last month on the Midnight Star.’

  ‘Oh, dear! I’m so sorry,’ Miss Thomas looked genuinely concerned. ‘How is she taking it?’

  ‘Everyone thinks she’s taking it very well, but I know she isn’t.’ Eileen stood up. ‘Well, thank you for the talk. I’d better be getting back to work.’

  Work had already re-started when she returned to the workshop. As the morning wore on, the coarse seams of the overalls began to rub against her bare flesh until it felt sore and the slightest movement hurt. Although she’d worn her most comfortable shoes, her feet felt as if they’d swollen to twice their size.

  A pretty Chinese girl came round and examined the work Eileen had done, and pronounced it satisfactory.

  ‘That’s Winnie Li, the Quality Inspector,’ Doris shouted when the girl had gone. ‘Isn’t she lovely? She’s had terrible trouble with her dad, because he wants her to work in his restaurant. Though you’re not to call him Hoo Flung Dung, else she’ll be annoyed.’

  Eileen smiled without answering. The other girls seemed able to keep quite a conversation going above the noise of the machines. Every now and then, one would burst into song and the others would join in. A favourite seemed to be When They Begin the Beguine, which they sang repeatedly, closely followed by Roll Out The Barrel, and Little Sir Echo. Whenever Alfie, the foreman, appeared, the girls would stop singing and there would be a deluge of insults, mainly directed at his sexual prowess. After Alfie had left, cringing with embarrassment, they’d begin singing again at exactly the point they’d left off. Eileen noticed the long piece of metal sticking out of the machine had been used up. She told Doris, who screamed, ‘Billy!’ and a weedy little man without a single hair on his head came along and inserted another.

  ‘What’cha doing tonight, Queen?’ he asked Eileen, winking.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Fancy a date?’ He winked again.

  ‘No, I bloody don’t,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Please yourself, Queen.’ He left, not looking the least bit hurt.

  ‘Did he ask you out?’ asked Doris.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He asks all the newies out. If one of ’em said yes, he’d faint. In fact, we all would.’

  It seemed strange to sit down to a big meal at half past ten in the morning. The canteen was even hotter than the factory; the gleaming silver counter where they queued for their steak and kidney pie, cabbage and mashed potatoes, was wreathed in steam and the women, serving behind in their green overalls and turbans, were red-faced and perspiring. The meal was good value at ninepence, and fourpence for the apple pie and custard.

  Eileen carried her tray over to the table where Doris had promised to save her a place, and where half a dozen girls from the workshop already sat. Doris introduced them. ‘You already know Pauline, and this is Carmel, Beattie, Theresa, Lil, Patsy …’

  ‘How d’you do?’ Eileen glanced down at the plate heaped with food. ‘I’ll never eat all this!’

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Theresa said comfortably.

  ‘Aye, I suppose I will.’ It seemed impossible to believe that she would get used to the heat and the noise and the awful smell, the funny hours, the uncomfortable overalls and being on her feet for seven hours a day, but if the other girls could, then so would she. In fact, close up, some of the ‘girls’ looked quite old; Lil and Beattie were well into
their forties, and Carmel, who appeared to be entirely toothless, was sixty if she was a day. She watched, fascinated, when the woman took a full set of false teeth out of her overall pocket and put them in before attacking the meal.

  Eileen picked at her own meal until Doris offered to eat it for her and she handed it over gladly. ‘Is it possible to go outside? I’m gasping for some fresh air. I’ll be back in time for a cup of tea and a ciggie.’

  Pauline pointed to double doors in the wall on the far side of the canteen. ‘Go through there, then through another door, and you’ll find yourself outside. We used to sit out during the summer, but it’s too cold now.’

  ‘The summer? You mean you were making aeroplane parts during the summer? I thought this factory only opened when the war began.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she was assured. ‘We’ve been here a good year.’

  ‘So Chamberlain wasn’t as unprepared as everyone thinks,’ Eileen remarked.

  The women looked at her blankly. ‘Well, I’ll be off,’ she said hastily.

  ‘Don’t forget your coat, otherwise you’ll get pneumonia,’ Doris shouted. ‘You’re stripped naked underneath them overalls.’

  There was a chorus of whistles from the men on the next table and Eileen fled, her face red, to the cloakroom to get her coat from the locker.

  She emerged from the factory through a side door and to her delight found herself on a soil path next to a little stream which gurgled along over a layer of moss-covered rocks and white pebbles. The water was beautifully clear. Eileen knelt on the damp grassy bank, removed her scarf and splashed her face, rubbing her chafed and aching neck with her wet hands. She took several deep breaths of bracing fresh air and glanced around. It was a nondescript sort of day, neither bright nor dull, the sky was a mishmash of hazy clouds with patches of anaemic blue here and there and little sign of the sun making an appearance. Despite this, it seemed extraordinarily bright, and the brownstone bridge which spanned the narrow stream about twenty feet away on her left and the cows grazing in the field opposite were sharply defined, as if they’d been picked out by a spotlight. Further down the bank, a man in a corduroy suit and a wide-brimmed hat was sat fishing, apparently oblivious to the fact he had company. The smells, compared to the smells inside the factory, were wholesome: damp earth, damp grass, wild flowers. It was such a peaceful scene Eileen felt it was obscene that, in the midst of such beauty and tranquillity, parts were being made for aeroplanes which would eventually carry bombs to drop on the innocent citizens of Germany.