A Step Too Far (4 page)

‘Might be a long time before you buy any more of them.’ A trace of envy in her voice, Becky Turner spoke to the young woman who was twisting about to check the seams of her stockings were straight.

     Damn! Katrin swore silently. She had hoped to be gone from the washroom before any of the factory girls came to wash their hands prior to eating their packed lunch. There really should be a separate washroom for office personnel; she could most definitely do without the smell of slurry oil wafting from grimy overalls onto her clothes. She ran both hands along each leg in turn before replying. ‘Why is that, are they all sold? I was really hoping to get another pair.’

     She wanted a pair,
another
pair at six bob a go? Becky felt the swift pang of envy.

     Katrin Hawley was allowed to keep half of her wage, so she said, and considering the style she kept herself in there was no denying it. Envy bit again. She could afford a pair of them stockings every week while Alice and Becky needed to save sixpence a week out of their pocket money and in the time it took to reach the price of one pair they had long gone.

     ‘It must be great being able to wear them every day.’ Becky sighed wistfully.

     Katrin took a deliberate moment, savouring the knowledge that neither Becky Turner nor Alice Butler could afford to wear stockings such as these except perhaps once in a blue moon. Disguising the pleasure the thought inspired, she said matter of factly. ‘It is nice, you should do the same.’

     ‘I wish.’ Becky sighed again. ‘But they come too pricey.’

     ‘Mm. They are expensive, but then quality never does come cheaply and Kayser Bondor Fully Fashioned Pure Silk are the best, so if that is what you want then you have to be prepared to pay, no matter that the price may be rather high.’

     ‘And you certainly done that, seeing who it was you bought them stockin’s from. They come by way of Freda Evans; tell me if I’m wrong.’

     Lowering the hem of her fashionable straight knee-length grey worsted skirt Katrin met the stare of a young woman entering the washroom.

     ‘Don’t bother,’ Alice Butler went on, ‘I know it’s true. You weren’t the only one purchased from the black market. There are other wenches here bought stockin’s but they likely won’t get the next pair as easy, least not from Freda Evans they won’t.’

     ‘Lord, it was so awful Freda being caught, if only . . .’ Becky bit her lip.

     ‘If only what?’ Alice asked sharply. ‘If Freda hadn’t brought them stockin’s here? Then her would have sold them some place else, there are always some ready to buy no matter what’s offered nor no matter the price asked.’

     Was that a dig at her, a reference to not only pure silk stockings instead of lisle but also her stylish new coat? That could hardly have gone unnoticed. But then she would hate to think it had. Katrin smiled to herself. Any advantage she could boast, any emotion she could effect in Becky Turner and Alice Butler: envy, resentment, inequality, all or any of those feelings were sweet to her, and Katrin Hawley had a penchant for all things sweet. She turned to the wash basin. Eyeing the tablet of coarse brown soap, its uninviting appearance rendered more so by streaks of oily black left by its previous user, she let it lie, simply holding her hands beneath the running tap. These two had forgotten that day in the school playground, forgotten words thrown in childish anger. Shaking droplets of water from her fingers, Katrin watched them fall like tears . . . tears she had shed many times since that day. Yes they had forgotten, but Katrin Hawley had not forgotten. Nor would she ever forgive.

3

‘Of course I didn’t put a false date of birth, I’m not that stupid.’

     ‘Not stupid but vain.’ Ella Robson looked at her sister perched so nearly on the edge of a chair as to not be sitting on it at all. ‘You’ve been that way from Jacob gettin’ the job of manager along of Titan Engineerin’, treating folk who’ve known you from being born as though they be beneath you. Remember Violet, walkin’ with your nose in the air, talkin’ as though pound notes grows on trees in your back garden don’t make you no different, we all comes from the same stock though you likes to pretend otherwise, but vanity brings its own rewards and could be the reward you gets will be one you’ll ’ave no liking for.’

     Feeling the sting of truth, Violet retorted sharply. ‘I did not come here to listen to talk like that!’

     Ella’s head lifted sharply, her glance noting the tight mouth, the eyes which did not slide away quickly enough to hide the flash of recognition.

     ‘No you d’aint come to hear talk such as that, you come hopin’ to hear the lies you needs to bring you comfort of mind.’

     ‘Lies! Just what do you mean by that?’ Her patience exhausted by long hours of the previous night in the air raid shelter, tired in mind and body, Ella rounded on her sister. ‘Mean!’ she snapped, ‘I’ll tell you what I mean, you be as noggin’ ’eaded now as you was years ago, you be still daft if you think to pull the wool over the eyes of them sendin’ that letter.’

     ‘I’m not pulling the wool  . . .’

     ‘Oh for God’s sake Violet!’ Ella banged the teapot onto the table. ‘I said a minute since it were vanity has you act the way you do but I were wrong, it be stupidity. But I warns you, keep your ’ead in the sand, refuse to face up to reality an’ sooner or later you’ll get your arse kicked.’

     ‘I can’t be forced!’ Violet’s mouth snapped like a clam.

     Drawing a long breath, Ella poured tea into two heavy pottery cups using the moment to suppress an anger she found more difficult to combat with her sister’s every visit. ‘No I suppose you can’t,’ she said at last, ‘but the consequence of refusal could be just the straw needed to break the camel’s back.’

     ‘You think you be so clever, but talking in riddles is as useful as a sty with no pig in it.’

     Ella stirred the few grains of sugar she allowed herself from the weekly ration into tea as spared of milk, then looked at the figure on the opposite side of the kitchen table. Violet was regarding the heavy cups with undisguised dislike. But then cups given by the rag and bone man in exchange for a bundle of old clothing, or a tin pot with so many holes it could double as a colander, was not the only thing Violet Hawley found distasteful. Truth was another, but like it or not, she was going to hear that now.

     ‘Then let’s put the pig back in the sty. You think that pretending not to have received that letter is all it be goin’ to take. But that be a blindness of the sort you suffered from twenty years gone, a blindness you be sufferin’ still if you thinks Jacob ignorant of the fact that by marryin’ you he walked a trodden path. Oh no, he weren’t told by any of the family but by the man who put a child in your belly, the child old mother Hanley took from you with a long knitting needle, almost takin’ your life the same time she took that of the babe. Yes, Jacob knew of your lying with a man who refused to wed you, just as he must have known it was no miscarriage you had twelve months after his taking you to the altar. Your so called loss was a pretence to cover the fact you could never again carry a child, that your backstreet abortion had deprived him of a family.’

     Violet was attempting to hold the cup with little finger affectedly raised.

     ‘That’s a lie.’

     ‘Then why not bring him here to this house, have him stand at this table while I repeat what I’ve just said. Let me ask him if he was on the verge of leaving you when you were both asked to take the child of a dying woman, to be father and mother to it; it were that child kept Jacob Hawley at your side. It was duty, you hear that Violet, he felt it his duty to care for and rear that child, a child he came to love. You tricked Jacob Hawley but be warned, others might not fool so easy, and that could mean not only the loss of a husband but also a daughter and that be the root of your fears don’t it Violet? Deep inside you knows that once the girl be married and gone from your house then will Jacob leave it and with his going so will go the lifestyle you’ve built for yourself. It be this knowledge has you dress that wench like a band box, only the best for the daughter of Violet Hawley . . . except it don’t be the girl you be thinkin’ of do it? It be yourself, yourself as it has ever been. That were why she went to grammar school while every other kid in the street went to the council school. That’s why you pays a fortune for clothes from Jim Slater and his black market friends, why you scheme to ensure her were given no job workin’ on a factory floor but were taken on for office work. That way her stands a better chance of bein’ noticed by them as has money, a better chance of landing a fish wealthy enough to keep Violet Hawley in her trumped up little world. It be your future you be lookin’ to Violet, your future, not that of the wench and that be a truth even you can’t deny.

As the third bus, already packed to the seams, passed the long queue of would-be passengers, Alice Butler tutted her vexation. The day had not gone well, a broken die had meant her machine lying idle for more than half the morning until the part could be repaired. ‘We don’t ’ave no spare.’ The tool setter had been crusty as a fresh baked loaf. ‘I can’t go puttin’ in what don’t be ’ad, I ain’t no magician.’

     He was no Clark Gable either! His rat-like features and whining voice made even Peter Lorre look like a sex god. Half a morning! She shuffled restlessly, her eyes in search of the next bus. Half a morning she had been forced to log as day work, the flat hourly rate which paid half that she could earn at the newly introduced piece work; with piece work the more she produced the more money went into her pay packet, but for all the extra she worked her heart out, she saw no more of it than the regular half crown. ‘You don’t never miss what you ain’t never had.’ Her grandmother’s saying whispered in Alice’s mind but the answer was a shout in her brain. She did miss what she never had! She missed the pleasure of drawing pure silk over her legs, of seeing herself dressed in expensive fashionable clothes instead of those she wore now, government controlled Utility, drab things which might well have been designed by Methuselah.

     Casting a furtive, beneath the lashes glance at the figure next in line in the queue, a figure who could have stepped straight from the pages of one of those woman’s magazines she herself only ever glanced at in the newsagent’s shop, Alice felt the hot rise of envy. Why? Why did Kate Hawley have so much while she had so little? How come her clothes even now were ultra smart? They were certainly not bought from Peacocks or Appleyard’s draper shop.

     Alice’s covetous glance ran over the smartly tailored camel coloured coat, the brown leather bag slung across one shoulder, a gloved hand grasping the box containing a gas mask. She felt bitterness join with envy. Young ’uns! Why have as many kids as her mother had borne, as most women in these parts seemed to have? Kids older brothers and sisters had to work to help feed and clothe. She loved every one of her family, of course she did, but that didn’t mean she ought to have to finance it quite so heavily.

     ‘About time!’ An exasperated voice heralded sight of another bus. ‘My feet be singin’ and it don’t be no Vera Lynn toon.’

     ‘What do they be singin’ then Edie . . . “Underneath the Arches”?’

     Edie shook her head over the ripple of laughter. ‘Don’t know about “Underneath the Arches”, Bert,’ she answered, ‘but I’ll ’ave fallen arches if I be standin’ ’ere much longer.’

     Caught by the shuffle of bodies pressing forward as the double-decked vehicle approached the stop Alice stumbled slightly. Murmuring an apology to the person she had knocked against she saw the fully laden bus sail past once again. ‘Lord, we ain’t never gonna get home!’

     ‘We ain’t if we depends on them there buses!’ The woman who moments before had complained of aching feet shook a fist in the wake of the bus. ‘What do the government be doin’? It be damned sure they ain’t standin’ in no bus queue after a ten hour day sloggin’ away like a Trojan. It be one thing bein’ called up, conscripted into factories and the like doin’ the work of a man; doin’ our bit they tells we and God knows we all be happy to, but the least them lot sittin’ along of the House of Commons could do is mek sure there be buses enough to get women home o’ nights.’

     ‘Well I’m not standing here any longer.’

     ‘Me neither.’ Making to follow Alice, Becky Turner cast a glance at the girl behind. ‘What about you Kate? Could be half a dozen more will pass before you get one with space enough for a fly; you far better walk with Alice and me.’

     This was the last thing she wanted, to be seen walking home with girls who worked in a factory, girls dressed in clothes the rag man might well refuse, girls with scarves tied turban fashion over curling pins. Katrin Hawley gauged her situation. Refusal would no doubt offend, not that offending either Alice Butler or Becky Turner would worry her unduly, but for a while she needed to remain on speaking terms with both.

     ‘Seems you may be right Becky.’ Smiling, Katrin too vacated her place in the line of hopeful travellers.

     ‘Edie Jones was only saying what everybody else is thinking; folk shouldn’t have to walk long distances after a hard day lifting bars of steel and mauling heavy machinery.’ Alice seethed.

     ‘I don’t dispute that.’ Becky answered. ‘But a long walk home is better than a short walk back into a prison cell and that is the only walk Freda Evans will be taking for many a night yet . . . I know which I’d rather have.’