In the space of the few seconds before she crossed the threshold Miss Merton noticed the sweep of the lashes, the delicacy of the nose and chin, the fine bony structure of the face.
‘Come in,’ said the blonde.
She held the door open. Miss Merton passed reluctantly from the windswept Parade into the shadowy vestibule of the Dyehouse.
‘You come about the job?’
Miss Merton nodded.
The girl picked up a scribbler. She smiled at Miss Merton, pushed open the swinging glass doors and disappeared into the warehouse.
Miss Merton heard him coming before she saw him. In the rhythm of his step there was something exciting; Miss Merton thought of spurs, of chargers and banners. More than six feet tall, he swung across the warehouse floor and through the doors into the vestibule.
Miss Merton smoothed her gloves and put her hands together tentatively. He opened the door into his office.
It was a large room dominated by a huge table laden with rubbish. Bits of cloth, samples of dyes, cigarettes squashed into bottles, and in one corner a heap of soiled white cotton shirts that gave off a slight, acrid smell of perspiration. A pair of shoes and several socks lay dejectedly nearby. Miss Merton refused to allow her scandalized eyes to explore further. She concentrated on the rolls of cloth flung up onto a bureau, and endeavoured to overlook the shirt and trousers hanging over the back of the chair.
Mr Renshaw was looking at her, taking in her thin maiden-lady features, her neat bun.
Miss Merton lowered her eyes and looked calmly back across the pile of dusty papers and chewed ends of pencils.
He didn’t speak, and Miss Merton in her precise little voice began her recital slowly. His face was bland. No movement of muscle. No interest.
But there was something disturbing about his expressionless face. The fair, straight hair, the shrill eyes, the droop of the mouth. He picked up a pen and began doodling. A circle. Then another and another. And suddenly the eyes, withdrawn, opened wide. The dead mask of the face was swept away. The smile was sudden and electrical.
‘When could you start?’ he asked.
CHAPTER TWO
‘When can we start?’ asked the Chairman of Directors.
He was a small, bright-eyed man with bristling eyebrows slightly flecked with grey. He leaned back patiently, looking at the General Manager.
The answer, when it came, would not be exciting. And Larcombe would wrap it up in excuses. Harvison stared at the ceiling, thinking of the opening words of a trade-paper article he had read a few days ago. ‘Created by chemical magic, nylon, the miracle fibre, is revolutionizing our textile industry.’
Bloody revolution, Harvison thought. His lips tightened. Where’s the firing squad?
Southern Textiles had fallen flat on its face over nylon.
Larcombe moved uneasily. From the corner of his eye he saw the pile of newspaper cuttings on Harvison’s desk. Advertisements. Austin’s beating the drum about the nylon again. Nylon slips by Austin. Nylon panties by Austin. Long-legged girls in Austin nylon pyjamas. Little dreamy-eyed girls in filmy Austin nightdresses. The Sydney shops were bulging with Austin nylon.
‘There’s been a holdup out at the Dyehouse,’ Larcombe admitted at last. He picked up the nylon swatches and slid them through his fingers. ‘We’re still striking trouble. Renshaw’s still not quite topside of the dyeing and there’s trouble with the setter.’
‘There was trouble last month, and the month before, and the month before that.’
‘Yes,’ Larcombe admitted warily.
‘And all the time we’re lagging Austin’s are pushing more and more nylon onto the market.’
Harvison hit the desk with his fist.
‘What I want,’ he said suddenly, ‘is action. I want some results from Macdonaldtown. I want to see the next lot of nylon Renshaw gets out of the vats. I want to see it before it hits the setter. And I want to see it afterwards.’
He picked up the report on the Dyehouse and handed it to Larcombe. He pressed the bell and his secretary entered the room.
‘Get Mr Cuthbert,’ he said.
Cuthbert was the Company Secretary, a sharp-featured, pleasantly mannered man with slightly red-rimmed eyes; an astute accountant with a philosophic faith that all human enterprise must flow at last into the accountant’s net.
‘The Dyehouse,’ said the Chairman of Directors, looking at the Company Secretary.
Cuthbert produced his figures. He balanced production, expenditure, wages. Then he handed over the sheets and waited. He opened the door and glanced out into the General Office.
The racket of machines smote pleasantly on his ear.
Clack! Clack! Up came the carrier and ejected papers onto Mr Dennet’s table. There they lay: the Fanfolds! the Ledger Copies!
The Debits!
Mr Dennet took up his pen and began entering in the Control Book. The Comptometers sprang to life. Two young women with painted nails fell upon the papers.
Tic-tac, tic-tac. Now over to the files.
OK, Miss Brennan, you sort them out. City, Country, Government. Now break them up. A to K, L to Z, and into the files with them. Miss Bowden filed quietly, but Miss Graham sent the file flying. It flew back and forth, and her body swayed with it.
Out of the files. Find a Bulldog Clip.
Good! City Debits A to K ready.
Miss Thompson, you start the initial adding. Smart work, Miss Thompson. Tuck that initial listing under the Bulldog Clip, and now over to the Dissection machine.
Miss Thompson tried the machine, then cleared it.
OK, £3.15.7 into A, £2.12.6 into F, 9/6 into Tax, 3/6 into Miscellaneous. Damn, what is it? Packing charge.
Miss Thompson’s fingers flew over the keys. Clang, clang, clang, clang.
‘Don’t clear the machine,’ someone called. ‘Leave it for the Progressives.’
Miss Thompson flung the initial adding on the desk and unwound the dissection.
Plus this, minus that. Make the adjustments at the bottom. Luck, they agree.
Fill in the Summary Sheet.
Rush the Debits to the Ledger Room for posting. Soon they would be out again, when Mr Dennet would make another mark in the Control Book which meant that every Debit was accounted for.
OK, over to Miss Gleeson. Scissors, pincers, screws, paste, glue, book backing, white ink.
The Debits were finished for the day.
Mr Cuthbert closed the door reluctantly.
The Chairman of Directors was leaning well back in his chair. He was having nothing of Mr Cuthbert’s figures.
He kept knocking them with his knuckles, saying nothing, but shooting up his eyebrows.
‘Six months,’ he said suddenly, ‘and nothing to show for it. People still puddling about with dyes. Every other firm in Sydney with garments on the shelves.’
‘Renshaw says he’s practically on top of it now. Says he’s really got its back broken.’
‘He’d want to be,’ Harvison said savagely. ‘This isn’t a benevolent institution. We pay to get results. If Renshaw can’t get them, perhaps someone else will.’
He looked from Cuthbert to Larcombe sitting carefully on the edge of his chair.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘What about the setter?’
‘We’re getting uneven results,’ Larcombe said. ‘Uneven heating. Mayers is still experimenting. Getting the burrs off. We’ve had an odd good roll.’
‘An odd good roll. You’ve got a first-class electrician and an engineer out there, and you tell me you get an odd good roll. How long before we go into production?’
Larcombe took a deep breath and plunged.
‘Could be a month—even six weeks.’
‘Bah,’ said Mr Harvison.
He drummed with his fingers and looked at Cuthbert.
‘Things will need to tighten up,’ he said. ‘It could pay us to call in Jamieson’s efficiency people.’
He sat for a moment staring into space. He thought of
a machine he had seen once. A smooth, grey machine in a large engineering works. It had fascinated him. Precision of action, smooth integration of parts.
A company could be like that machine. A company should be like that machine. This company would be like that machine.
CHAPTER THREE
Renshaw had a conversation with Miss Merton on the day she began her new job.
He had not bothered to pick up his shirts; bits of paper still spilled out of the drawers of the desk; a cupboard door gaped open to disclose a miscellany of papers, shoe brushes, soap, old coathangers and accumulated junk. The floor had been swept.
Today his face was different. He seemed to be smiling a lot, and despite the mess in the office Miss Merton was conscious of the pleasant mingled smells of soap and hair oil.
She looked about for equipment. No filing cabinets, no typewriter, no adding machine. Books lay about everywhere. Every now and then a tall, goodlooking girl with flat feet would bawl through the door, ‘What’s to go on number six?’
‘What we need,’ said Renshaw, ‘is someone to organize a checking system. To hammer all this information into some kind of order, and then shoot it over to Head Office.’
Miss Merton was aware that he was approving her maiden primness, her almost old-fashioned posture, her hands folded quietly on her lap.
‘We need someone like you,’ he said. ‘Never had anyone to help with the women.’
He looked at her sharply.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to get you on the Staff.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Hugh Marshall woke long before dawn. Raising himself on his elbow, he listened. The milk cart went clattering down the street and the early trains were beginning to run.
There was plenty of time yet. He switched off the alarm and lay waiting for the shaft of sunlight to hit the top of the window. This was the signal to begin the day.
At fifty, Hughie was considered a pretty successful man by the inhabitants of Ring Street. He owned the neat, freshly painted semi-detached cottage in which he lived, and as he went past, clad in his clean white overalls, the neighbours said, ‘Hughie did pretty well for himself—Leading Hand on the dye vats, and his house in his pocket.’
Hughie was proud of his house. When he closed the door at night he left behind the steamy atmosphere of the vats, the ceaseless swish-swish of the water, the clatter of machinery, the shrill voices of the men calling through the mist. In here, with the old-fashioned curtains veiling the window and his armchair drawn up to the fire, he could forget the Dyehouse, except on those rare occasions when the hooter was turned on and the melancholy note floated out over Macdonaldtown.
Ring Street was in the best part of Macdonaldtown. The houses, though old and mostly built onto the pavement, had preserved respectability. The women swept the pavements early in the morning. The steps were scrubbed, and potted shrubs and palms were on the verandahs. There were individual touches, too: gleaming brass name-plates, wrought-iron bric-à-brac of sailing ships or islands, cutouts of South American peasants sleeping in the sun.
Behind the drawn lace curtains were glimpses of hallrunners, carpets, gleaming linoleums and comfortable chairs.
Few of the inhabitants of Ring Street worked at the Dyehouse. The older men were mostly retired railwaymen, and their sons were directed into trades. The Dyehouse, which sustained many of the residents of Macdonaldtown, found little favour in Ring Street.
It was a dead-end place.
But they all agreed that Hughie had done well. Leading Hand on the vats and a Staff man. He might end up anywhere.
Only Hughie, lying beside Alice in the still dark of the morning, knew the real story of his position at the Dyehouse.
Renshaw had used him. Learned what he could from him and done classes that he himself could never hope to do. He was still Leading Hand on the dye vats, but Renshaw ran the whole place now, shouting and cursing through the warehouse, hounding the men on the presses, sneaking up in the lab, talking new theories that confused him.
But, Christ! He had dyed more cloth than Renshaw had ever seen!
The light struck the window and he stirred. Alice sat up in bed and Hughie went to the kitchen to boil the kettle.
He felt no joy as he stepped into his overalls, nor any sense of joyous anticipation as he opened the door and stepped out into the morning air. The neighbours early abroad nodded as he passed.
He wondered, as he slipped his key into the lock of the Dyehouse door, why one man could make life a hell for so many.
John Thompson woke in his bedroom at Granville.
The alarm burred in the dark morning. It was only a little after five, but he had a long trip to the Dyehouse and there would be trouble if there was no steam up before 7.20.
He switched on the light and looked at Evelyn. She was still sleeping, her bronze hair flung out across her pillow, her eyes shadowed by her lashes. He could hear the children in the back bedroom.
He bent over her. After twenty years of marriage he still wondered at the miracle of Evelyn. Under his scrutiny she opened her eyes, smiling at his face in the circle of the bedroom light. He put his arm around her, lifting her and holding her with an ever-new sense of delight.
She was out of bed before him, the light on in the kitchen, the food sizzling in the pan. They had little time for conversation; quarter to six was a deadline, and she kept running, bringing his coat, his hat; and finally with the time at a quarter to six he leapt through the front door heading for the station.
Hughie opened the Dyehouse door, breaking the alarm circuit. He would have to ring Safety Signals and speak the code, the assurance that all was well. The warehouse was dark and silent. Standing there he had a sudden feeling of loneliness and defeat. At one time he had liked to come in, liked to open up; to feel the keys of office jingling in his pocket, to get onto Safety Signals and give the code.
He had felt adequate and happy.
In the still darkened warehouse the empty fixtures were shadowy and lost against the ceiling. Only the white cloth gleamed on the lower plane.
He walked restlessly, standing before the silent rollers of an examining machine. The light filtered in through the roughly frosted windows with their coating of dust and grime. He noticed the scissors, the tall cones of cotton, the needles already threaded, the open tin of sulphuric ether standing in the corner.
It was getting on. He went to the door and looked out into Richmond Parade. The smoke was blowing in from the railway yards. People were beginning to pass pretty frequently now, on their way to the factories further down the street. A dark green car turned the corner, and Hughie felt his heart contract. But it was not Renshaw’s car. It was too early for Renshaw, anyway. He closed the door and retreated to the dim warehouse.
Over and over in the night he had said to himself that he must have it out with Renshaw. Stand up to him. Win back his self-respect and the confidence of the men.
But how?
And he knew, suddenly sick and weak, that when Renshaw came in he would say nothing, hoping that Renshaw would be friendly, but meekly accepting his sneers and the lash of his tongue if he should choose otherwise. He felt shame and misery as he stood in the warehouse, uncertainly switching on lights and waiting for the fireman to come in.
The hooter suddenly broke the silence. Seven o’clock. And simultaneously John Thompson pushed open the Dyehouse door and reached for his bundy card.
Hughie followed him into the boiler-house, glad of the company. He had a few minutes, maybe ten, to spare. John put the billy on the gas with one hand and dropped his trousers with the other. He struggled into his boiler-suit. And while he was fiddling with valves, opening the boiler door, he was watching Hughie curiously. He wondered about Hughie. All the men were watching him and wondering what he was going to do about Renshaw.
But presently he ceased to wonder. He watched the gauges. The world was suddenly only pumps and gauges. The two sulky Colonials, lately converted to oil, sp
rang to life as at the right moment John applied the torch.
The lifeblood of the Dyehouse was beginning to flow.
CHAPTER FIVE
Renshaw was worried.
The textile game was jumpy. Stocks in the greige had been heavily eaten into, and there was much less margin for error.
In the old days, with the warehouse bulging with stock, mistakes were easily covered up. Streaky cloth due to faulty knitting, grease lines, or simply bad dyeing could be thrown aside to be considered later as re-dyes.
The demand now was for cotton, swami and nylon, and they handled little of the cheap milanese that had once sustained the Dyehouse. There was a considerable amount of commissioned dyeing in quality cloth. Renshaw enjoyed this. He had an eye for colour, and enjoyed the developing of rich purples, of new plums, greens, crimsons and royal blues.
The swami was standard.
His colours, as good as, and often better than anything offered by his competitors, satisfied him and presented no challenge to his ingenuity.
The cottons were troublesome.
When things went really wrong on the cotton, Renshaw was up and down the duckboards, cursing the pressers in a constant flow of obscenity, tearing the cards from the files, turning them over to read numbers, working out tallies.
Renshaw had ten pressers. They were thin itinerant workers who drifted in, worked for a while in the steam and heat, and presently drifted away.
Some men worked for years in the one dyehouse, and in the very large establishments the main body of the labour was stable. But in the smaller dyeworks labour shifted, working from place to place, pulling out, getting sacked, turning up again. Some men had been off and on at Macdonaldtown half a dozen times in five years. It was Renshaw’s boast that he could take a man off the streets and make a presser out of him in twenty-four hours.
Few men of independent character remained long with him. In this spot, isolated from the administration, Renshaw ruled with a cruel and arrogant hand.
The Dyehouse Page 2
