Authors: Monica Dickens
Nervous for her future, Rodney tried to make Joy go down there at least, and explain.
‘I wouldn’t waste my off time. Anyway, you say I smell,’ argued Joy. ‘The old girl wouldn’t let me within a mile of the place. She’s got a nose like a gun dog.’
‘If I hire you a car,’ began Rodney in the new conciliatory way to which the buffets of war were chastening him. He was even conciliatory to shop assistants and the waitresses who had replaced the male staff at the Club.
‘Not me,’ said Joy. ‘She was bad enough when she was only running a family. Good Lord, Uncle Roddie, what must she be like now she’s got a hospital to run?’
She dreaded the idea of ever going to Astwick again. Sometimes she almost dreaded the end of the war. The free-and-easy independence of the factory was spoiling her for the life of a baronet’s niece, or the wife of the most eligible young man in the Midlands. It was a relief to be able to say what you liked to anyone, even the boss, for the only taboos at the factory were slacking and stealing. It was a relief to be able to sprawl, or to stand with your arms crossed and one hip stuck out without Rodney clucking that you would throw your pelvis out of shape. It was fun to make jokes that did not have to try and be witty, and to get away with any old expressive cliché. Rather fun, too, to have your bottom slapped by every man bringing springs to the machine, and to gossip endlessly with the other girls about films and fellows and internal diseases.
It was not only because the Portobello Road was not far off her way home that she went more often to see Mrs Abinger. She more often wanted to go. Sometimes, she even wondered, whether she could be Joy Stretton after all, for at the factory she felt more like Jo Abinger. It reminded her of the old life, the best parts of the old life; the noise and warmth and safety of a herd; the incurious, rackety bonhomie, the honest show of affection or dislike, and the whistling at the cinema, instead of ‘Darling’ breathed to friends and enemies alike and the shocked shushing when people clapped at concerts.
Mrs Abinger rejoiced that the factory brought Joy nearer,
although she was troubled lest it was a come-down for the lady Joy had grown to be. The rest of her kind, however, were doing goodness knows what, as Mrs Abinger saw from the magazine pictures of Lady Rowena mud-spattered on a motor bike, the Hon. Deirdre up to her pretty neck in oilskins, and even Princess Elizabeth emerging from under an Army lorry.
She was glad because Joy seemed happy, and was doing for the war what Mrs Abinger herself would dearly love to do if she were not such an old crock. George’s sister Phyll was working at Talbot’s up by the railway, half killing herself with getting up at five to see the family off to work, leaving baby Barry at the day nursery, shopping in her dinner-hour, and coming home to get supper and do her wash. Doris Evans was doing part time, and even old Granny Slessor was making nuts and bolts somewhere and had got her picture in the evening paper as the factory Granny with the biggest output.
Kitty, who was sticking to her post behind the counter so that the Portobello Road could march to victory on a stomach full of ever-breadier sausages, treated Joy with pity and veiled scorn. She was inclined to draw away her skirts from Joy’s trousers, and always reversed the cushion in a chair where Joy was going to sit.
Joy did not mind. ‘So what?’ she laughed. ‘I know I’m filthy. Uncle Rodney will hardly have me in the flat. He makes me change my shoes outside the front door. Pretty soon I suppose he’ll be making me change my trousers in the lift.’
‘Ah, I knew you’d come to this,’ gloated Mr Abinger, swinging his head about. He had got very thin lately. His neck could barely support his great box of a skull. It swayed and flopped like a heavy apple at the top of a tree.
‘Pride comes before a fall,’ he crowed, ‘eh Kitten, eh? What did I always say? Now what
did
I say?’ He bumbled round the flat foolishly, as if looking for his lost wisdom. Joy did not bother to be annoyed with him. He had gone badly to pieces since the air raids and was drinking more than usual, anything he could afford or cadge.
He was terrified. Ellison’s had made a shelter of the cellar under their shop across the road, and every evening, at least half
an hour before dark, Mr Abinger would be ready with his blanket and a bottle of something in each pocket, fidgeting for Kitty to join him with the sandwiches and thermos. Mrs Abinger stayed in the flat. She would not pander to Hitler like that, she said. She could always be brought down if things got really lively. But one night when they tried it, with a bomb fallen on the railway and the whole northern sky ablaze, she had proved too unwieldy to get down in a hurry, and Kitty had left her propped with cushions half-way down the stairs and scuttled back to the shelter. After that, she did not come across any more until the All Clear sounded at dawning and Abbie wanted his tea.
Mrs Abinger did not tell Joy that she was up there in the flat night after night on her own. Joy thought she went to the shelter, and Mr Abinger and Kitty were not going to disillusion her in case she fussed and tried to interfere in what was none of her business.
Norman Goldner was with Mrs Abinger on the night when the strange visitors came. It was right that they came after dark. They were nocturnal people, out of their element in daylight, wearing fusty black clothes to which the sunlight would be merciless. The woman was haggard, with white powder botched over the make-up of yesterday, and probably the day before. He was a hopeless looking kind of dim, middle-aged figure, but she was bravely hatted for the occasion; a rearing coal-heaver monstrosity with a swoop of matted ostrich and a great glittering clip which was shedding its stones. It emboldened her, this hat. She could go anywhere in it, even through the blacked-out streets whose desolation echoed her tapping heels. No one could be bombed in a hat like this.
There were no planes over London to-night, but Mr Abinger and Kitty had gone to earth long ago with the domino set which was his latest passion, although it took him hours to muddle through a game. Mrs Abinger was glad to be alone when Norman came. She had not seen him since his last leave and it was nice to have the chance of a quiet chat. She took up the socks she was knitting for Joy to wear inside her heavy factory shoes, and Norman lit a short crusted pipe and made himself at home in Mr Abinger’s chair. He was much more sure of himself these days, Mrs Abinger noticed. It was wonderful what the Army would do for a boy.
The downstairs bell made them jump. When Norman came up again, he said: ‘It’s someone asking for you. She wouldn’t give me a name, said you wouldn’t know it. I left them in the shop, because I didn’t know – they didn’t look – ’
‘Visitors! Well, good gracious, whoever can it be at this hour?’ It was a long time since Ellie had had callers. ‘Bring them up, Norman boy. No – wait a minute.’ She fussed about herself, taking down her legs, plumping herself up, ramming
in hairpins, and putting away her knitting. ‘Visitors, eh? Well, well, you’ve come on quite a lively evening, haven’t you? First Joy and now two surprise callers! ’
Joy had been just leaving when Norman arrived. She was on the night shift at the factory, so she could not stay, but it was enough to awaken all the old yearnings which Norman thought he had crushed for good. She seemed nearer to him now, working at the factory; comically dressed in overalls, a turtle-necked sweater and bicycle clips; thinner and paler, but beautiful to him in a more approachable way than when he had seen her in full bloom at the canteen.
She had said something too, which he could not forget. When he had said: ‘Fancy you working in a machine shop!’ she had answered: ‘Well, you shouldn’t be surprised, since it was seeing you that time in uniform made me snap out of myself, and want to do something to back you up.’
‘What a pretty speech, dear,’ beamed Mrs Abinger, but Norman looked at his boots and said: ‘Oh shucks.’
Joy had gone then, but afterwards, while Mrs Abinger chattered on about how Mrs Moore had come down to bring her two eggs and see how she was, Norman had sat pondering over what Joy had meant. Did she mean, could she mean, that there was a chance for him again?
‘You’d think Mrs Moore would evacuate herself, wouldn’t you? She’s the means for it, after all, without calling on the charity of the government. But not she. And Nanny too; they sleep in the Anderson in the backyard.’
Could Joy possibly have meant that she had gone to the factory to bring herself back to his level?
‘They make tea, Mrs Moore was telling me, and cook porridge over an old stove. Isn’t it wicked to think how Hitler’s lowered people like that who’ve always known everything just so? It’s not right, you know.’
Could
there be a chance for him? He was not going to be made a fool of a second time, but he’d have her back – oh God, he’d have her back. And now that he was due for his third stripe …
‘And there’s Wilfred a doctor in the Navy, doing operations
at sea, Mrs Moore said. “Well,” I said, “I’m not surprised, him that was always so good with his hands.”’
But it was daft. Bloody silly. He was kidding himself. Joy was engaged to that wet in the Guards, wasn’t she? What must he think of his girl being a grubby little factory hand – unless her being one meant that she’d broken it off?
‘Out in all weathers, Tess is. All through the City fire she was, and picked up a nigger once without a head. Poor Mrs Moore, as I said to her, “you could hardly credit it,” I said, “’er that was only a while ago in pigtails diving in and out of my sultana sacks.”’
Jo had looked so different, more like the old days. No, before that; more like when they were kids. She’d sounded different too, ever so friendly, almost as if …
‘And there’s Billy a lieutenant already, though young for it, Mrs Moore said. I said, and she had to laugh, “He’ll be catching his father up one of these days,” I said.’
Norman echoed her laugh without knowing why. ‘Fancy,’ he said. ‘I say, Mrs Abinger.’ He cleared his throat and eased his neck in the rough collar that had worn a purple groove in his brick-red skin. ‘That fellow Jo took up with – pardon, Joy, I mean. I never seem like, to remember. What does he – isn’t she – ?’
It was then that the bell made them jump, and Norman had to go down to open the street door, and then down again to bring up the two strange visitors with the funny sounding name; the dry little man, as silent and sombrely shabby as a mute at a cheap funeral, and the overpowering woman who nearly sent Mrs Abinger into a stroke by announcing that she was Joy’s mother.
Apart from the cold, and that last hopeless hour before the skylight showed that the night must, after all, have its ending, Joy liked the night shift. It was less noisy and strenuous, but the sense of importance was even greater. Joy had never worked through the night before. There must be a real urgency about a job that made her do it. Rodney did not like it at all, and wanted to write to the Ministry of Labour.
He had been afraid at first that he would suffer, for he was increasingly dependent on Joy. Mrs Traill was stealthily whittling down her hours at both ends, coming a little later and leaving a little earlier until soon she would only be there for an hour or two in the middle of the day.
However, Joy got home in time to bring him tea and run his bath and clean his shoes and give him his breakfast while she had her own supper before going to bed. In fact she was able to do more for him than when she was on the day shift and had to rush off before he was awake. After a day’s work, she was too tired to think of more than a bath and a drink and an arm-chair. After a night, she was long past relaxing. She was so exhausted that she could only go on plodding about her jobs until her legs crumpled beneath her. Sometimes she even plodded out into the Park with Rodney and Lady, until her dragging feet and grey pinched face, stiff with swallowed yawns, made Rodney hail a taxi and send her home to bed.
In the evening, if Mrs Traill had left without finishing the dinner, Joy would get up early to do what was necessary. If there were guests, she would stay for a drink with them before pedalling away into the night, looking almost as tired as when she had gone to bed.
Rodney deplored her life and said that he was going to write to Archie and tell him she was ruining her looks.
Joy fired up. ‘I’m not. It’s good for me, and anyway, I don’t do half as much as the other girls. They have to come home and get the family breakfast and then do their housework and shopping, and they have to get up far earlier than me to get high tea for starving children and surly husbands. When they are in bed, it’s not on a wonderful soft mattress, with drawn blinds and an uncle padding about in slippers so as not to wake them. It makes me feel quite terrible sometimes to be living here when I think what they put up with.’
‘Oh poppet, not that dreary Socialist clap-trap,’ groaned Rodney. ‘It’s so absurdly
vieux jeu
now that we’re all down to the level of the masses. Still, I suppose you’re the age; the young always go through it. Though I never did,’ he reflected proudly. ‘Come now, why not throw up the factory and do something
sensible? I could get you released on medical grounds – just look at you – and into the M. of I. any day. You’ve proved you could be tough, and England’s proud of you I’m sure, but you’ve done it long enough. That factory is warping your outlook. I don’t like it.’
‘I can’t help that, Uncle Roddie; it’s the way I feel. And I wouldn’t dream of leaving the factory, not if you bribed Churchill himself to order me out. I like it. It’s real, much more worthwhile than all this kind of easy living.’
‘My God,’ said Rodney, looking moodily round the drawing-room, ‘is this what you call easy living? This pigging it, camping out in this lamentable way?’ For to save one fire, they had shut up the dining-room and had the table at one end of the drawing-room. ‘I don’t see that we live easier than anyone else.’
‘That just
shows
how out of touch you are!’cried Joy. ‘Do you think everyone in England has boiling baths and maids and drinks and accounts at all the most fabulous grocers and hired cars and a Club – ’