The Sugar Girls

by Duncan Barrett

  ‘Pick up your things immediately,’ she barked, as Gladys scrambled to collect the offending items. ‘The turbans are for safety, not for making fashion statements.’

  Gladys hurried back to her machine, but when Miss Smith had circled the room she stopped by her again. ‘I’ve got my eye on you,’ she said, before marching out of the door.

  On Thursday morning, Gladys’s mother brought her freshly washed uniform up to her room, along with her bowl of bread and milk.

  As Gladys pulled on her dungarees, they seemed smaller than she remembered, and she had trouble getting her feet through the leg holes. By the time she had squeezed her thighs and bottom in, the once-baggy dungarees seemed to have become even tighter than any in the Blue Room.

  Gladys attempted to sit back down on the bed and felt a sharp pain around the tops of her legs as the material pinched her skin. She ate her breakfast standing up, before hobbling painfully down the stairs.

  At work, Maisie regarded her pityingly. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You didn’t take the dungarees in before you put them in the laundry, did you? They always shrink the first time you wash them.’

  Gladys spent the morning standing rigidly at her machine, trying not to breathe in too deeply and dreading the inevitable moment when Miss Smith would come by on her daily round. When she saw the matronly form entering the room, she rolled her eyes. ‘Here we go,’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘Gladys Taylor,’ said Miss Smith, with undisguised pleasure, ‘I know you’re intent on making an impression here, but how on earth do you expect to bend over in those?’

  By Friday, Gladys was almost beginning to feel at home in the Blue Room. She might not have been as glamorous as the other girls there, but they seemed to have accepted her as the department’s token tomboy. She had even proved useful by piercing a few of the girls’ ears in the toilets, and at break times she had begun to join the reel boys in a game of football in the yard rather than spending all her time chatting in the café.

  After a week of trials and tribulations, she felt she had been well and truly initiated into life at the factory. But the reel boys had other ideas.

  Among Tate & Lyle’s male workforce, the tradition of initiation rituals was strongly embedded, and usually involved sugar or syrup being poured down the new recruit’s trousers. Girls weren’t generally subjected to this sort of thing, but Gladys had unwittingly set herself up as fair game. So what was the appropriate initiation for a boyish girl?

  Barry, Joey, Johnny and Robbie put their heads together. It couldn’t be anything too mean, they reasoned, or they’d look like bullies. But Gladys didn’t seem like the kind who’d burst into tears at a bit of good old-fashioned fun, either.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Joey, with a sparkle in his eye. ‘The telpher.’

  The telpher was a large wooden crate which went around the outside of the building on a cable, carrying items from one department to another. It made its journeys a good twenty feet in the air and was most certainly not designed for human cargo.

  The others looked at him apprehensively. ‘What if she breaks it and falls out?’ asked Barry.

  ‘Nah, she won’t,’ insisted Joey. ‘She’ll be safe as houses.’

  The boys bided their time until after breakfast, when they saw Julie McTaggart go into the office to talk to Peggy Burrows. A quick wink between them signalled the moment, and once again Joey was dispatched to distract the unsuspecting Gladys.

  ‘I think your ink duct needs refilling,’ said Joey, struggling to keep a straight face.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Gladys, raising her eyebrows. ‘What are you buggers up to this time?’

  She turned and caught sight of Barry and Johnny attempting to sneak up behind her. ‘Oh no you don’t!’ she called, setting off at a sprint across the room. ‘You’ll have to catch me first!’

  The boys gave chase after Gladys, whose years spent playing football in Beckton Road Park had made her a lithe and speedy runner. As she zigzagged in and out of the machines she elicited cheers of ‘Go, Gladys!’ from the other girls. But with four boys to contend with she eventually found herself cornered.

  ‘You won’t find nothing in my turban but my brothers’ old socks,’ Gladys told them.

  ‘Oh no, we’ve got other ideas for you,’ Barry replied, as they scooped her up and carried her to the opening for the telpher.

  ‘You’re going on a little trip,’ said Joey as they deposited her into the crate.

  ‘Oh am I?’ said Gladys. ‘Fair enough then. I quite fancied some air!’

  She waved as the telpher set off on its jaunty journey and the boys waved back, clutching their sides with laughter. Gladys sat back in the crate, taking in the view of the sky while it made its way along the cable. It wasn’t a bad way to get out of work for a while, she thought to herself, although it was probably best not to look down.

  Eventually the telpher arrived back where it had started. Gladys scrambled to her feet to alight from the crate. ‘Anyone else fancy a ride?’ she called cheerily. Then her heart sank.

  Waiting for her by the opening was Miss Smith. ‘My office,’ she commanded. ‘Now.’

  4

  Ethel

  Up in the Hesser Floor office, Ethel was settling in well. She was thrilled to have taken her first step up the company ladder, and keen as ever to live up to her mother’s high expectations. The office work was dull, but much easier than the physical labour of manning the machines. Her duties included calculating the overall tonnage of sugar packed by the department, checking the timekeeping records for the girls on the factory floor and liaising with the delivery department about how much sugar was ready to be sent out.

  There were no typewriters in the office, so all the writing was done by hand. Ethel’s friend Joanie Warren, along with two other girls – Iris Lawrence and Beryl Craven – would sit hunched over their desks, scribbling away under the watchful eye of the forelady, Ivy Batchelor. Ethel found she clicked much more naturally with the girls in the office than the rough-and-ready types on the factory floor, and soon started going out with her new friends to the Imperial cinema in Canning Town or to the roller-skating rink at Forest Gate.

  But while her social life was improving, Ethel’s love life had hit a new obstacle. One by one the boys in her old gang had begun to volunteer for the forces. First Johnny went into the Air Force, then Alf and Lenny signed up with the Army. Ethel knew the inevitable was coming, and sure enough, her beloved Archie soon followed in their footsteps, becoming a private in the Royal West Kent regiment. He was sent to Germany, and from then on the two young lovers only got to see each other every six months, although they wrote to one another devotedly every day.

  One evening, Ethel was surprised by a visit from a neighbour – the only resident of Oriental Road who owned a telephone – announcing that there was a young man on the line for her. She rushed next door and grabbed the receiver, thrilled at the prospect of hearing Archie’s voice, but terrified that something might be wrong. What was so urgent that it couldn’t wait for a letter?

  ‘Arch?’ she shouted down the line. ‘Is everything all right?’

  There was a pause, and then she heard a voice she hadn’t expected.

  ‘Um, hello, Et. It’s Len here.’

  ‘Oh, Len …’ Ethel hadn’t seen Lenny Bridges since the boys had all signed up together. ‘What are you doing ringing me?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Lenny replied, hesitantly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering …’ Lenny’s voice trailed off.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I thought maybe you might like to marry me.’

  Ethel was flabbergasted. Lenny knew how devoted she was to Archie, and Archie was one of his best friends. Was it possible that all this time he had been harbouring his own feelings for her?

  ‘No thank you!’ she said shrilly, hanging up immediately. She backed away from the phone and rushed out the door.

  As soo
n as she got home, she wrote to Archie, explaining what Lenny had said to her and asking if he could shed any light on the matter. For the next few days she waited anxiously to receive his reply.

  When the letter finally came, Ethel couldn’t believe it. Far from the angry tirade she had been expecting, Archie’s response was calm and philosophical. He told her that he and Lenny had been drifting out of touch anyway, and this only served to make it more final.

  Ethel knew that in Archie’s shoes she would have responded very differently, but her mind soon turned to another question. Wasn’t it a bit odd that Lenny had beaten Archie to a proposal? Ethel had always assumed that they would marry once he came out of the Army, but he had never actually made his intentions clear. Soon she was worrying again, on this new, more troubling score.

  Not long after, Joanie Warren invited Ethel over to her house in Canning Town for a party to celebrate her grandfather’s birthday. It was a good old-fashioned knees-up, and by the time she arrived the alcohol was flowing freely.

  ‘What’ll it be, young lady?’ the host demanded, as she entered a room which was full to bursting with people having a good time. Ethel realised that she didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t normally the type to go out to dances or parties, and barely ever drank. She dimly remembered her father pouring her mother a port and lemon in the past, so she asked if she could have one of those.

  The drink arrived and Ethel discovered it was surprisingly tasty. She knocked it back more quickly than she had expected, and soon asked for another. Apart from anything else, it was a useful way of avoiding joining in with the general singing and dancing going on around her.

  But after a while, with her glass constantly refilled, Ethel found she wasn’t quite so averse to joining in after all. Before long, she had linked arms with a circle of people and was jigging around the room. She had spent her life always being the sensible one, and this new wildness felt wonderfully liberating. Soon she had lost count of the number of port and lemons she had necked, and was well and truly letting her hair down.

  ‘I wish the party could go on forever!’ she announced to a rather surprised Joanie. The evening was beginning to wind down, however, and it was time for people to make their way home.

  Ethel’s body was not used to alcohol, least of all the impact of innumerable port and lemons – made worse by the fact that she and Joanie had also gobbled a large quantity of sweets, bought using some ration coupons they had found in the street. By the time she got home her stomach had begun to protest, and soon she was hit by an overwhelming wave of nausea. She did her best to ignore the persistent lurching feeling, but it grew worse and worse, so she took one of her mother’s buckets out of the scullery and put it within easy reach of her bed. It wasn’t long before she was making good use of it.

  Every time Ethel was about to drift off to sleep her stomach began to convulse again and she clambered frantically over to the bucket, holding back her dark frizzy hair as she threw her guts up once again. This sorry routine continued all night long and she was retching well after the last of the weekend’s excesses had been expelled.

  On Monday morning, as the first rays of light began to stream through the curtains, Ethel felt like each one was stabbing right into her brain, and her stomach was still doing somersaults.

  ‘Time to get up!’ her mum shouted, at what seemed like a deafening roar.

  ‘Too sick,’ Ethel croaked, pulling the bedclothes over her head. Missing a day at Tate & Lyle was almost unthinkable to her, but on this occasion even she had to admit defeat. She spent the rest of the day in bed, and at lunchtime Joanie came to see how she was doing.

  The next morning Ethel’s stomach was still in a pretty tender state, but she managed to haul herself into work regardless. When she got up to the office, Iris, Joanie and Beryl had their heads buried in their work, and Ivy Batchelor was waiting in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Ethel said anxiously.

  Ivy looked at her with an expression of disappointment. ‘You’ll be back on the factory floor today, Ethel,’ she told her, ‘packing on machine number one.’

  Ethel was crushed. ‘Yes, Ivy,’ she said quietly. She went down to take her place on the belt of the machine, trying to avoid making eye contact with any of the girls around her. She was sure they would be having a good laugh at her expense.

  The packing was every bit as exhausting as she remembered, and it did nothing for the queasy feeling in her stomach. At the height of summer, it was now desperately hot on the glass-roofed Hesser Floor, and the girls were soon dripping with sweat. A girl from the canteen brought up a jug of so-called Jungle Juice, a concoction specially formulated to replace salts lost from their bodies, but in her delicate state Ethel found it virtually undrinkable.

  She also struggled with the rowdy culture on the factory floor, which seemed more raucous than she remembered from her previous stint on the machines. While they were working, the Hesser girls would shout and joke non-stop, and whenever a poor boy was sent to the department to plug a gap in numbers, the teasing would be merciless.

  ‘Come on then, pretty boy!’

  ‘Ooh, get a look at those big, strong arms!’

  ‘Come and give us a cuddle then!’

  By the time Ethel left at the end of the day, her uniform was stiff with sugar. She had forgotten how messy the packing could be. The last time she had worked on the machines she had found the whole experience rather exciting, but now it seemed the ultimate humiliation.

  When Ethel got home that afternoon she hurriedly took off her sticky clothes. She was dreading having to explain to her mother what had happened at work. All she could think of was how she had reacted when Ethel’s friend Gladys had not progressed beyond sweeping the factory floor.

  When it came to it, Louise Alleyne was remarkably restrained. Perhaps she could see the distress on Ethel’s face, and couldn’t bring herself to compound it with criticism.

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ she told her daughter, pulling her close. ‘You’ll be up there again before long. I know my girls.’

  It was small consolation for Ethel, who felt she could scarcely sink any lower in her own estimation, let alone her mother’s.

  It was not long, however, before the family had more serious problems to deal with. Louise had been in poor health for a while, and one night after the evening meal, when Ethel and Dolly were still sitting at the kitchen table and Winnie was playing outside, she posed a troubling question to her two elder daughters.

  ‘If anything happened to me,’ she asked, ‘would you want Dad to get married again?’

  There was an awkward silence while the question hung in the air.

  ‘Well,’ Ethel said thoughtfully, trying her best to channel a wisdom that belied her 16 years, ‘I suppose so, if that’s what Dad wanted.’

  They both looked at Dolly to see what her response would be.

  ‘No,’ she said, impulsively. ‘I wouldn’t want him to.’

  Of course, Louise’s question had not just come out of the blue, and before long the truth was revealed to the children: their mother was dying. She had been suffering with heart trouble for a while now, and when she caught pneumonia the illness left her weaker than ever. The doctor gave her strict instructions to rest, but, despite Ethel’s protestations, she insisted on hobbling around the house, busying herself as usual. Soon she had developed dropsy.

  After a spell in hospital, Louise was sent home to spend her final days with her family. As she lay in bed upstairs, the sound of a woman shouting in the street outside irritated her greatly. The woman’s name was Peggy, and every time Louise heard her voice she would say to her daughters, ‘I wish that woman would just be quiet.’

  Ethel couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about Peggy made her dislike her too.

  One night, Ethel was woken before dawn by her father. ‘Come and say goodbye to your mum,’ he whispered, as he led her, Dolly and Winnie along the corridor to their paren
ts’ room. Louise was lying there in perfect silence, as though held in a trance, and Ethel felt half bewitched herself as she walked over, kissed her on the cheek and then stumbled back to bed again. The whole thing felt like a strange dream.

  It was only in the morning that Ethel understood clearly that her mother had died. The rest of the family spent the day together, dealing with the undertakers and arrangements for the funeral, while Louise’s spinster sister, Aunt Ethel, came up from Brighton to help look after the family. But young Ethel insisted on going to the factory as usual. She knew how proud her mother had been of her success at Tate & Lyle.

  Following her sister’s death, Aunt Ethel harboured hopes that her newly widowed brother-in-law might make her a nice husband, but she was to be disappointed. Not long afterwards, Jim started a relationship with Peggy, the woman whose loud voice Louise had found so distressing. Ethel thought back to what her mother had said when she was dying, and to her question about their father remarrying. Had she already known what was coming, when Ethel was too young and naïve to see it?

  Strangely, now that Louise was gone, Ethel and Dolly’s reactions to the prospect of a new woman in their father’s life had been reversed. For Ethel, the relationship came far too soon, and she still had an instinctive dislike of Peggy. Yet Dolly – who had argued against her dad moving on – quickly hit it off with her.

  The schism in the family became so bad that Ethel no longer felt comfortable in her own home, and she started spending her Sunday afternoons visiting Archie’s mother up the road. Maude Colquhoun was a widow and was bringing up a ten-year-old daughter called Honour on her own. She worked in a golf-ball factory not far from Tate & Lyle and, like Ethel’s father, played piano in the Graving Dock Tavern for a bit of extra money. Maude treated Ethel like a daughter of her own, saving her helpings of plum pie and custard whenever she came round.