A Step Too Far

by Meg Hutchinson

  ‘I have to say I agree with Isaac, we are both of more use in the workshops, that new machinery—’

  ‘Can wait! Oh Christ, Jacob I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.’

  ‘Forget it, we have all been under a lot of stress.’

  Why had it been decided they need come here? Arthur Whitman glanced again at his watch, a nervous harassed move. Disturbance to the working day was a hindrance in time of peace, but in wartime hindrance became a hazard, a danger that time lost in producing armaments allowed the enemy that much more time to increase its stranglehold on the world. Would it not have been more convenient to have Isaac, Jacob and himself travel to London, to meet with people there? No! His brain answered immediately. Most folk of Wednesbury considered themselves fortunate to get an annual day outing to Bewdley, to sit beside the river with a home-made sandwich and tea from a flask; or maybe a trip to Clent to walk among grass not turned black by smoke and grime from the chimneys of a thousand iron and steel works, where the daytime sky was a canopy of blue dotted with milk-white cloud, not the grey poured into it by the issue of those same chimneys. No. He glanced at the two men locked in discussion. To suddenly whisk them off to London would create a stir, whys and wherefores would not remain within the confines of this factory. Despite being reminded by placards plastered over walls that ‘Loose Talk Costs Lives’, human nature being just that – human – talk of a trip to London would have spread across the town as unstoppable as the very smoke that choked it.

  ‘Mr Whitman, you asked me to remind you of the time.’

  Turning to thank Katrin as she entered his office, Arthur Whitman smiled grimly. This was one moment he would never need reminding of, one a frontal lobotomy would not have him forget. A retinue of cars swept through the factory gates as he muttered, ‘I wasn’t at liberty to tell either of you about this beforehand, it all had to be done under the tightest security! It was all so strictly hush-hush I was afraid to let myself even think about it!’

  ‘It be as well you said naught for ’ad I known o’ this then neither the Devil ’isself nor all the cohorts o’ hell would ’ave fetched me ’ere today.’

  Isaac spoke through gritted teeth as he watched the procession of uniformed men, acres of medals flashing bravely across each left breast, follow behind one whose decoration outshone the rest.

  ‘Then what would I have told our distinguished visitors?’ Whitman murmured, shifting anxiously foot to foot.

  ‘That would ’ave been your worry.’ Isaac’s mouth dried as the parade moved nearer. ‘You and Jacob be better at talkin’ wi’ folk than I be, so if there be questions asked then you answer ’em.’

  ‘Mr Eldon and Mr Hawley, the designers of the machinery and method of producing Finished Cavity Shell Forgings.’

  Isaac heard the introduction as if from a distant place. Then his hand was taken by the foremost member of the group.

  ‘Ah yes. An achievement to be proud of. We are most thankful to you both. Please, might I ask to be shown this new method of production.’

  ‘There were never a word o’ it spoke, not to me not to anybody, Arthur Whitman’s mouth had been closed tighter than the vaults along o’ Barclays Bank; I tells you, girl, I was bothered as a bum baillee in an empty ’ouse when I seen who it were offerin’ of ’is hand.’

  Her father flustered? The man who had dealt so calmly with problems brought to him? The quiet, sensible man who, unlike some, had never raised a hand against anyone? A father she, Robert and—stopping herself short of finishing the thought, she took the used plates and cutlery across the small cramped kitchen to the sink. She must forget that terrible day, she must never allow herself to think of it. Yet the spectres would, in the darkness of night, creep into her mind, phantoms which played over and again the happenings of those terrible days, ghosts whose cries of agonised sorrow called in her brain until she felt she too must scream.

  ‘You should ’ave seen the faces o’ the workers when they walked into that factory along o’ Jacob an’ me, weren’t one of ’em you couldn’t ’ave knocked over wi’ a feather, the King of England askin’ Isaac Eldon an’ Jacob Hawley to show ’em how shells be made!’

  ‘It wasn’t just the King, though, was it, granddad?’

  ‘No lad, weren’t just the King.’ Isaac smiled fondly at his grandson. ‘The Queen were there right alongside o’ him; weren’t no airs an’ graces about ’er neither, wouldn’t ’ave no fuss but went atwixt them machines with no thought o’ muck or grease touchin’ of her clothes: smiled an’ spoke a word wi’ every one o’ the women in that workshop while the King done the same, passin’ a word wi’ each man, eh!’ he breathed, ‘this’ll be a day long remembered in Wednesbury.’

  ‘Why would the King choose to come to Wednesbury?’

  ‘Why?’

  Reuben’s delighted laugh rang along the cheap metal saucepans set on a shelf across from the gas stove. ‘ ’Cos Wednesbury is the only place has the technology.’

  ‘What?’ Miriam frowned.

  ‘He means it be only Prodor ’as the knowin’ o’ how Finished Cavity Forgin’ be done.’ Isaac answered his daughter. ‘The young bugger knows a deal more’n he should.’

  ‘And whose fault would that be!’

  It was true he talked to his grandson more than he ought, but he had made no mention of that process of shell manufacture. Isaac heard the remonstrance in his daughter’s tone. He had drummed into the lad the need to keep silent on the subject when Reuben had confided the talk he had overheard when walking home behind several workmen from one of the town’s steel mills.

  ‘It wasn’t granddad.’ Reuben’s defence followed swiftly on the heels of her accusation. ‘I heard it talked of in the town.’

  Miriam hung the drying cloth over a thin rope strung across the room and answered firmly. ‘Then mind you don’t go repeating any of it beyond this house.’

  ‘Mmm, I agrees wi’ you, Miriam, wench.’ A covert wink directed at his grandson, Isaac rose from the table. ‘I be advisin’ o’ him to keep a closed mouth on the rest o’ what ’appened today, that he don’t go tellin’ you no more’n you’ve heard already.’

  What more was there to hear? ‘All right you two, you win. I know when I’m beaten, so what is it I haven’t heard?’

  Isaac mused quietly. ‘Don’t know as I’d go a’tellin’, seems to me a woman who gives no credit to a lad for the keepin’ o’ a quiet mouth shouldn’t go enquirin’ o’ him that which he needn’t tell.’

  ‘You are right, granddad. Like Mr Conroy said, it’s my secret.’

  Miriam turned sharply to her son. ‘Mr Conroy!’ she demanded. ‘What has he got to do with this?’

  Recognising that the teasing could be that step too far, Isaac glanced at the boy trying desperately to hide his own smile.

  ‘Best tell ’er, lad, we don’t want that elastic to go bustin’ outta ’er drawers!’

  ‘Mr Conroy came to the school.’ The words burst eagerly. ‘I didn’t know ’til the headmaster sent for me, I thought I must have done something wrong, that I was in for a telling off, but no, he said a visitor wished to see me, that visitor no other than Mr Conroy.’

  Her blood chilling rapidly to ice, Miriam’s teeth barely allowed words to pass. ‘Reuben,’ she half choked, ‘Reuben you haven’t agreed to – you haven’t said you will do anything!’

  Deep brown eyes laughed into hers, eyes so like those others, eyes which in those lonely hours speared her heart. Miriam’s soul called in its fear, ‘Tom, protect our son, protect him from himself.’

  ‘Relax.’

  It was not Tom speaking, but it was Tom’s voice she heard.

  ‘There is no need to fret. Mr Conroy did not ask those things like last time, in fact he didn’t ask I do anything at all.’

  Thank you, Tom. But why had she not been consulted, her permission sought before her son was approached? She would have words to say to that headmaster!

  Aiming to reduce the tension, Isaac smiled at his
daughter. ‘Let them porcupine bristles lie ’til you hears the all o’ it. I were spoken to on your behalf.’

  ‘I’ve been able to speak for myself since I were fourteen!’

  ‘Ar wench, an’ d’aint we know it, me an’ your mother both. But this were different, you couldn’t be fetched from your work an’ no tongues wag, it were for that reason I couldn’t be asked to go along o’ the school an’ tek Reuben from it.’

  ‘Take Reuben from school! But he said . . .’

  ‘Miriam!’ Isaac interrupted. ‘Why not sit you quiet an’ let the lad tell his story.’

  ‘Mr Conroy explained why you were not with him, he said he had talked with grandfather at Prodor before coming on to the school. He said he was not free to say more except the choice of whether I went with him or not was mine to make.’

  So he went! Miriam sighed.

  ‘I asked where it was we were going,’ Reuben talked on joyfully, ‘but Mr Conroy wouldn’t be drawn, he said wise heads carried a still tongue. He took the towpath along the canal and turned into Prodor the back way, into the offices. I was scared then granddad had met with an accident, one so bad they thought you shouldn’t see. Mr Conroy guessed what I was thinking for he assured me nothing was amiss, that in a few minutes I would know what it was all about. I thought I must be seeing things. I was completely tongue-tied, my mind not believing what my eyes saw; it was the King, mum, can you credit it, the King right there in that room! He looked so smart, his uniform gleaming with medals.’

  Reading his daughter’s puzzled look Isaac supplied, ‘Uniform of Marshal of the Royal Air Force, or so I were told.’

  ‘He spoke to one or two people stood along of us in the boardroom,’ Reuben passed over the interruption, ‘then his eye caught us and he came direct across asking was I the young man he had heard so much of. When Mr Conroy said yes, he took my hand. The King!’ Eyes gleaming with pride switched from mother to grandfather. ‘You saw it, didn’t you, granddad? You saw the King shake hands with me.’

  Isaac Eldon’s heart swelled with the pleasure of the moment. He had seen England’s King congratulate one of Her young sons.

  ‘He said I had been very brave and that I could be proud of what I had done to preserve the safety not only of the factory and town, but of the country as a whole. It were then he took this from a man stood just behind him. He said he were sorry it were not presented at Buckingham Palace, war placing many restrictions, but that it were given in no less gratitude.’

  Miriam looked at the box Reuben laid open on the table, a box in whose blue velvet heart nestled a silver medal inscribed ‘For Bravery’.

  ‘That’s not all, mum.’ Reuben met the eyes glittering with tears.

  Her heart would not take any more, it was already filled to breaking. Her son, hers and Tom’s, had been honoured by the King.

  ‘The Queen talked to me as well. Oh mum, I wish you had been there to see. She looked so beautiful in her pale blue dress and matching coat that was trimmed with a creamy white fur collar, its tips reaching down over the hips; and her hat . . . it was exactly the same colour blue with a fur cockade slanted to the front of the brow, it all matched mum, blue leather gloves, shoes, handbag all of it even to the creamy roses pinned to her shoulder . . . I didn’t know you could get roses in winter.’

  I didn’t know I had a son quite so poetic. Miriam smiled to herself.

  ‘But it wasn’t so much her outfit or the pearls around her neck struck me most, it was her eyes, they were so very blue and they smiled as much as her mouth, I’d say if stars were blue then the Queen has stars for eyes.’

  ‘She smiled at you, did she?’ Miriam asked.

  ‘More than smiled wouldn’t you say, granddad?’

  Shaking his head Isaac responded. ‘I be sayin’ naught lad, this be your tellin’.’

  ‘It was after the King had moved on.’ Reuben required no exhorting to continue. ‘The Queen came to where Mr Conroy and myself were standing. She smiled and asked would he mind if she spoke to me alone. Well, he couldn’t refuse, could he mum, he couldn’t go saying “no” to the Queen of England. Anyway he moved off and after convincing herself no one was close enough to overhear she said, “Will you keep a secret if I share one with you?” ’

  ‘I bowed.’ Reuben grinned. ‘Then said I could keep a secret along with the best. “So Mr Conroy informed us,” she laughed. Then, bending closer she whispered, “His Majesty has graciously given his permission for me to tell you that arrangements have been put in place whereby once you are of age, and should you be of a mind, then a place has been set aside for you at Sandhurst. If it is still your wish you will be trained as an officer of His Majesty’s Army and when you emerge you will be a real lieutenant.”

  ‘Think of it, mum, a real lieutenant. I only wish dad could have known, it would have pleased him, wouldn’t it?’

  Everything about their son would have pleased him. Tears burning along her cheeks, Miriam stared into the past, at a soldier kissing his son goodbye, a soldier whispering to the wife he loved, ‘While you have Reuben you and I can never be parted, we are together in him.’ Together! Reuben was her life. But he could not take the place of the husband her heart cried out for.

  28

  ‘Eeh, it be that cold I be piddlin’ icicles!’

  Seeing the thin woman who dashed into the toilets, faded yellow headscarf tied turban-fashion over protruding steel curling pins, Alice grabbed Becky’s arm and pushed her into an empty cubicle. ‘Don’t go comin’ out, not ’til Nosy Nora be gone, let her see you in that state and it’ll be all over the factory afore knockin’ off time.’

  ‘I thought Becky Turner were along o’ you, it were ’er I seen I be sure.’ Leaving her cubicle, Nora glanced around the washroom.

  ‘In the lav.’ Alice nodded toward a closed cubicle.

  ‘Don’t ’er be well?’ Nora Bates’ internal antenna snapped into operation.

  Hands held beneath a running tap, Alice answered nonchalantly, ‘Be her period, Becky always has a lot of pain with that.’

  ‘Don’t be no pleasure in that for any wench.’ Nora’s faded yellow turban swung back and forth. ‘But be a lot less pleasure when it don’t come, I knows for ain’t I got six kids that be the provin’ of it?’

  ‘Be like my mother says, Mrs Bates, if you don’t want the puddin’ you shouldn’t do the mixin’.’

  Shaking water from her hands, Nora walked across to where the oil-stained towel hung on its roller. ‘Your mother be right, but try a’ tellin’ that to my old man an’ like as not you’d greet the mornin’ wi’ not just a belly full of child but a pair o’ black eyes along wi’ it.’

  Reluctant to leave the wash basin, Alice turned off the tap then made a show of shaking excess water from her hands. Nora Bates would recognise she was dawdling and that recognition would not lie wasting on a still tongue. Praying Becky would guess the reason of what she said, she called, ‘We’ll ’ave to get a move on Becky, the big picture starts at half seven.’

  ‘Goin’ to the pictures then?’ Nora made no attempt to leave.

  ‘Mmm.’ Becky and me are goin’ to see Gone With the Wind at Darlaston.’

  ‘Darlaston!’ Nora’s brow rose questioningly. ‘Wouldn’t it be better for you to wait ’til it be shown ’ere in Wednesbury, save you goin’ all the way to Darlaston?’

  For God’s sake, Becky, answer! Anxious her friend’s silence would arouse the very suspicion she was trying to allay, Alice said quickly. ‘Ain’t no certainty the Gaumont will ’ave the film, there’s been no advertisin’ of it as I’ve seen; besides I’d walk a lot further than the four miles it be to Darlaston to see Clark Gable, ooh!’ She leaned her face dreamily against the damp towel. ‘Clark Gable, he’s a man could fetch the ducks off the water, I’d leave ’ome for one like him any day of the week.’

  ‘Ar,’ Nora snorted, ‘an’ be back a few months later groanin’ in agony pushin’ out that he’d run off leavin’ you to fend for!’

&n
bsp; Alice closed her eyes, displaying emotion which in truth she was far from feeling. ‘Not Clark Gable,’ she murmured, ‘Clark would never do a thing like that.’

  ‘Hmph!’ Her sniff pure disparagement Nora retorted stonily, ‘Clark, Tom, Dick or ’Arry they be all the same, mark my words you let a man ’ave what brings ’im to market afore the ring be on the finger an’ it’ll be the wench as pays the price; you think on that Alice Butler an’ tell Becky Turner to think on it an’ all; remember an ounce o’ advice be better’n a ton o’ sympathy.’

  As Nora departed Alice called the all clear to Becky.

  ‘Christ, you look awful!’ Alice gasped. ‘Oh my God! You ’aven’t . . . ? Becky, you ain’t . . . ? Oh Lord, say you ain’t pregnant!’

  Her dark-circled eyes stark against an ashen face, Becky bent heaving over the basin.

  She was! Alice tried to think clearly. They both had their ‘monthly’ at the same time, it had been a sort of bond between them from its first occurring. That had scared the life out of both of them; their teacher had found them in the school toilets each crying they had some terrible disease, that they would be dead before ever seeing their mothers again. If only those mothers had forewarned, explained as that teacher had explained that what they were experiencing was perfectly natural and would happen every month, it was simply a part of growing up.

  ‘It’ll be the wench as pays the price.’

  Nora Bates’ words clanged loudly in Alice’s mind but were as loudly rejected. Becky would not have to pay, she and Earl were to be married. She stared at the girl still retching into the basin. But should Becky’s mother find out her daughter was pregnant then marriage, no matter how soon, would not save Becky from the woman’s anger; and neither would that anger be lessened should the news be passed around Prodor and halfway around Wednesbury before reaching her. Thank heaven they had both finished their shift. Grabbing her coat, she flung it over the other girl’s shoulder and dragged her out into the yard.