by Annie Murray
It took the employees at Lazenby’s a few weeks to get used to having a girl in the office. There was Miss Peters of course, but she was old enough to be most people’s mother, if not grandmother.
Rose became a familiar figure, running errands to and from the traders on the balcony of the huge meat market, delivering statements and cheques and invoices. At first they ribbed her because she was a girl, but after a few weeks she often heard, ‘Hello Rose! All right Rose!’ from the lads as she made her way round between the office and the trading area.
One part of the job she didn’t like was running messages down to the yard at the back of Lazenby’s. She found she was surprisingly squeamish about what went on down there. She’d already seen the slaughter yard at Camp Hill. Groups of kids often gathered there to watch when they did the killing early in the morning and she’d been dragged along once by Sam. The dogs chivvied the cows or sheep a dozen at a time into the pen which was open for all to see behind a fence of palings. The slaughterers caught the animals one by one as they shrieked, sweating in terror and running at the fence trying to escape. They drove a sharp stick like a poker into their heads through whichever orifice they could reach to penetrate the brain of the flailing, screaming animal. In through the eyes or ears until the damage inflicted on them reached their whole bodies and they writhed and twitched and finally lay still.
In the yard of Lazenby’s they dealt with everything leftover that could be sold. When Rose went down there the first time the stench turned her stomach. Slightly sweet and putrid, it was a smell she never got used to. The brick floor of the yard was covered with piles of cow hides which had to be examined to see if they had been holed by warble fly. Then they were rubbed over with salt and stacked in piles graded according to size. Sheep fleeces were dealt with in the same way.
Each time she went down there she had to contain her revulsion for the place and put up with the constant gibing of the yard men. The first time she stepped out into the yard they all straightened up from what they were doing and stood staring at her in their rubber boots and aprons, giving each other mischievous grins and making smart-alec comments. One of them was hideously disfigured. His head and neck ran into each other and a goitre was slung like a squashed pig’s bladder right round to the back. A cluster of bristles sprouted out of his nose.
‘What’re you doing here then?’ one of them called to her. ‘Come to do a turn for us, have you?’
‘I’ve got a note for Mr Freeman actually,’ Rose said timidly. They were gawping like idiots as she stood in the navy skirt and soft pink blouse that Catherine and Diana had bought for her – new! – as a present for starting work.
‘Ew – ectually!’ they mimicked.
Rose slowly walked across the yard where there were small pieces of gristle and fat and furry bits stuck on to and in between the bricks. She slipped and nearly fell on a lump of something yellow and greasy.
‘Watch your step,’ they sniggered.
‘This is where we keep some of the, er – accessories of the job,’ the goitre man said mockingly.
The smells and the fatty lumps on the ground and the great mauve bulge on the man’s neck were already getting all mixed up in her mind. He took her forearm with his huge hairy hand and led her towards a row of bunkers at one side of the yard. Inside two of them she could see roughly picked bones piled all together, and in the other, glutinous mounds of fat. Shiny green flies were buzzing round greedily.
‘And this one’s where we keep the salt for the hides.’
Rose could hear the goitre man’s heavy breathing as he stood beside her. She looked into the end bunker at the off-white heap of salt. Immediately she became aware that the pile was moving. It was a mass of maggots rubbing ceaselessly against each other’s bodies and between the large granules of salt.
Rose knew what the man wanted. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking squeamish, even though the sight sickened her. ‘Well, thanks for the guided tour,’ she said pertly, keeping her face quite calm. ‘Now, which of you gentlemen is Mr Freeman?’
The man pointed his thick arm, letting go of Rose with the other. ‘Him over there.’
As Rose made to walk off he said, ‘Oi, just a minute. What part of town d’you come from then?’
‘Birch Street, near by there,’ Rose said.
‘So you are one of us then. You look a bit poshed up in them clothes, that’s all.’
In the office, though, it was different altogether. There were three main rooms where they worked. Mr Lazenby’s office was up at the far end, shut off from the main workroom. You didn’t go into Mr Lazenby’s without permission and he sat with the door shut.
Rose sometimes knocked and crept in with messages. But she found Mr Lazenby disconcerting, although he was always polite to her, and even seemed to take an interest in her. He sat at his desk with its scratched leather top, all his things arranged on it extremely neatly: the blotter, penholder and account books or whatever he was dealing with. He was in his early fifties with a balding crown and soft, loose-looking cheeks. Rose expected them to slither down off his face at any moment. He had watery blue eyes and a rounded shiny nose. His manner was always quiet and courteous and he often asked how she was settling in with the firm and whether there were any problems.
Once, when she had come in with a message from the meat market, he thanked her and then said, ‘Now, you just come round here a minute. I’ll show you a picture of my kids. My youngest daughter is about your age.’
Rose walked obediently round the desk and leaned forward a little to look at the photograph. She suddenly felt Mr Lazenby’s breath close to her ear and jumped back abruptly.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t be nervous, my dear.’ And he put his arm round her waist for a moment in a fatherly sort of way to reassure her.
The photograph was another of the items placed neatly on his desk.
‘There, you see,’ he said. ‘My two sons and my little girl.’
Three faces smiled rather stiffly out of the grey photograph. They all looked very well dressed and one of the boys closely resembled Mr Lazenby.
‘Thank you,’ said Rose, blushing. Mr Lazenby was staring at her and she didn’t like being this close to him. He always smelt rather stale and sweaty. ‘It’s very nice of you to show me.’
‘You’re a good lass,’ he said as she escaped out of the door, her feet sounding too loud on the lino floor.
At the other end of the long office space there was a storeroom for stationery, next to the stairs, and the office in between was where Rose spent most of her time. She dealt with the post and record cards and the stencilling machine. In the same office Miss Peters did the main secretarial work, and Michael Gillespie, the clerk, kept the books.
Michael was seventeen. He towered over Rose, his black hair slicked back very smartly and his blue eyes full of warmth and fun. To Rose, Michael might have been a whole generation older than herself. He seemed so grown-up and knowing about the world, and he was already learning a proper skill which he could take on to other firms.
‘I don’t want to be stuck as an office dogsbody for the rest of my life,’ he told her. Rose could hear the very slight Irish intonation in his voice even though he’d been born and brought up in Birmingham. ‘There’s all the world waiting out there . . .’ He moved one of his strong fingers along the frayed edge of a ledger with a grin on his face, pretending it was a plane taking off. ‘Lazenby’s is just my runway to greater things.’
‘What greater things?’ Rose asked curiously, franking a pile of letters that Miss Peters had completed.
‘Well now, little Rosie, let me see.’ Michael sat back in the chair with the air of a tycoon surveying his latest acquisition. ‘There’s all sorts of things. One of these days I’m going to be running my own business. With a big office. And I’ll be able to sit at my desk and send someone running for cups of tea. And I’ll tell you what: you and Miss Peters can come and work for me!’ He sat
forward again, laughing loudly. ‘What do you say, Miss Peters?’
‘I can hardly wait,’ Miss Peters said, looking across at him over her round, black-rimmed spectacles. ‘Rose, are those letters going out this week – this month even?’
Rose smiled wryly at Michael, who jumped up and went to lean impishly over the back of Miss Peters’ black Remington typewriter.
‘You know what a wonderful woman you are, don’t you?’ He smiled appealingly, bending his head down towards her. ‘So efficient, so correct, such a sense of humour. You’re an example to us all.’ He sensed that Miss Peters was coming round to his charm in her prickly way. ‘Sure,’ he said, bouncing back to his desk. ‘I’d have you to work for me any time!’
Miss Peters made noises of exasperation and gestured at Rose to get off to the post. She ran down the stairs, laughing.
Rose was happy. She treasured the thought of Dora’s proud face as she set off, all dressed up on her first morning, and then when Rose had brought home her first wages. Even the pain of saying goodbye to Diana the week before seemed lightened by the fun she had in the office.
She had been at work on the day they actually left, so they said their goodbyes on the Sunday before. Ronald and Catherine had both embraced Rose as well as Diana, and even William shook her by the hand, rather stiffly, and said, ‘I hope we shall see you again, Rose.’
‘You’d blooming better,’ Rose said, being all joky so she didn’t start crying. ‘I’ll expect you down here to see me as soon as you can, Di.’
‘Oh, I shall come, I shall. But you must write to me very, very often. I shall miss you so much.’
They’d given each other a long big hug. They didn’t want to let go, and promised each other all kinds of things: above all, letters. And Rose had waved goodbye as she started for home, choked with sadness. When she reached her house she cried and cried.
Later she told Geraldine Donaghue that Diana had left. The girl’s face lit up maliciously. The two had spent a lot of time together at school, but Geraldine had always remained jealous of Diana, knowing that she and Rose shared something very special.
‘Going to lower yourself to speak to the rest of us now are you?’ Geraldine said.
‘I’ve always spoken to you,’ Rose said impatiently. ‘You know that very well. And if you hadn’t always been so green round the gills about Diana we could’ve been better friends all the time.’
‘Hark at her,’ Geraldine said. ‘Miss High and Mighty.’
Rose knew Geraldine was sore because she hated her boring factory job, and her dad had been laid off again. She knew the Donaghues were struggling, and none of it did much to improve Theresa Donaghue’s temper.
But Rose was not very bothered about Geraldine. She had only to be in Michael’s cheeky, vivacious company for a few minutes and she felt renewed and lively herself. She had been attracted to him from the first day there, though she was not thinking about courting. She knew Michael was a regular on the Stratford Road monkey-run and had had a succession of dates. She was very childlike and innocent still about relations between men and women, although she knew that sometimes she was flirting with him. Mainly he provided a figure for her to look up to, who had an infectious kind of drive and wanted to put a lot into his life and get a lot out of it. He made her feel more alive.
‘You’re a funny kid,’ he said to her one day as they were working together. Miss Peters, despite her crustiness, was very tolerant of their conversation so long as she knew the work would be done.
Michael looked appraisingly at Rose. ‘You come down here from Birch Street all dressed up in nice clothes that would set anyone back a bit. And sometimes you talk common like the rest of us, and other times you can turn it on and put on your aitches and sound quite posh. What’s your secret, eh, little Rosie?’ He grinned at her. ‘Are you a foundling from Buckingham Palace or something?’
‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’ she said rather pertly, and she knew once again that there was a mild flirtation going on between them.
She had come to Lazenby’s with enormous hopes, to learn, as a way of getting experience for better things and eventually moving on.
But not yet, she thought. I’ll stay and enjoy it while it lasts.
Eight
The summer ended. Rose walked to work on fine days in the rich slanting light of autumn. When it grew colder she put on Diana’s coat – one of a number of pieces of clothing that the family had left for her – and walked more briskly.
Though still small and thin Rose was not as painfully bony as she had been during the poorest days of her childhood. She was of a different build from Dora, more rounded, and her breasts had begun to fill out. With her dark wavy hair cut to the level of her chin and softly brushed back from her face and wearing Diana’s well-cut clothes she looked surprisingly elegant for someone so young. Her brown eyes shone with vigour and intelligence.
Twice every day she passed builders working on a nearby warehouse whose scaffold extended out across the pavement so she had to skirt round piles of bricks and a cement mixer. The lads working on the site, their boots dusted grey, gave appreciative whistles as she walked by.
It didn’t take her long to notice that one of the young brickies had taken quite a shine to her. As the days passed he seemed to be waiting for her, watching quietly. He wasn’t one of the whistlers. He was a thin, pale lad with spiky brown hair that looked as if no amount of Bryl or any other creem would force it to lie flat.
Then he began to smile at her and say hello whenever she walked by. Once, when she had almost passed them, she heard the others egging him on, ‘Go on – go and ask her name!’
Suddenly the nervous boy was beside her. ‘Er . . .’ The words stumbled out clumsily. ‘I just wondered – I mean – what’s your name?’
‘Rose,’ she replied, amused. ‘And what’s yours?’
‘Alfie,’ he said. ‘That is – Alfred – Meredith.’
‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘Hello then, Alfie.’
Alfie seemed to be quite struck dumb and as Rose was still hurrying on down the road he said, ‘Tara then.’
‘Tara,’ Rose said smiling, attaching no real importance to the meeting.
She was still smiling when she reached Lazenby’s and walked into the office. Michael was already sitting behind his desk and he looked up and grinned when he saw her. ‘All right, little Rosie?’ he said. ‘Don’t you look a picture this morning? Had some good news or what?’
‘Yes I have.’ She took her camel coat off and hung it up. ‘A letter from Diana.’
Rose had gradually told Michael about Diana and her own hopes to get on and do something with her life. She was rather afraid at first that he’d laugh at her and tell her she’d not got a hope. Sometimes she couldn’t make Michael out. He could be as kind and generous as anyone she’d ever met – even Diana – and innocent as she was, she realized that the hunger for life they both shared resulted in an electric kind of attraction between them. But there was also a wild streak in him. She knew he was already beginning to drink heavily, and he had come into the office a number of times with his face cut and bruised from fights.
When she told him her greatest ambition was to become a teacher of young children he looked at her and gave a low whistle.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You’re quite a girl, aren’t you? Can’t quite see you as one of them blue-stocking women though – let alone how you’re going to get there. But good luck to you all the same.’
She knew it was not an ambition he could really understand, but she was grateful to him for not making fun of her.
And hearing from Diana was always encouraging.
‘I can’t wait until Christmas when I come down to see you,’ Diana wrote.
I miss you and Birmingham so much. My school is all right I suppose, but I haven’t really made any friends properly yet. The school is rather a long way from where we live, as we knew it would be. So William, Judith and I all have to go to school on the bus e
very day. Mummy says it’s good for us! But I don’t like Manchester as much as Birmingham.
She told Rose that her father was enjoying his new job and Catherine was getting stuck into things as ever.
Missing you ever such a lot. With love from your good friend,
Diana. xxx
Things were looking less cheerful for Dora. She was pregnant again. At nearly forty-three she’d hoped this kind of sickness was something she’d seen the back of. And this time it came with an intensity and violence that she recognized from nearly twenty years earlier. It could mean only one thing.
‘It’s twins, I’m sure of it,’ she wailed to Rose and Grace as they helped her back up the stairs to bed. ‘I’ve only been sick this bad with babbies once before and that was with Sid and Percy. What the hell am I going to do? Twins at my age!’
‘It might not be twins, Mom,’ Grace tried to reassure her as they helped her on to the bed, so weak from the incessant retching that she could barely stand. ‘It might just be your age making it worse.’
‘Ooh,’ Dora groaned. ‘I feel as if someone’s trampled all over me ribcage.’
‘Look Mom,’ Rose said. ‘There’s no need to worry. You don’t have to do anything. The money’s coming in from me and Sam and our Grace’ll be out at work next year when the babby’s born. We’ll do everything round the house. You just take care of yourself for a change.’
‘What about Sid’s dinner today? You know how he carries on . . .’
