The Bells of Bow (8 page)

Her thoughts wandered and soon nagging worries about what Evie was getting herself into with Albie Denham crept back into her mind. But, Babs kept reminding herself, why should
she
be bothered what Evie was up to? She’d gone through all that earlier and look at the trouble it had caused. And Evie was seventeen after all, Babs tried to reason to herself, definitely not a kid. She could look after herself.

Still Babs couldn’t sleep. No matter how she tried to convince herself otherwise, she finally had to admit that it wasn’t only the idea of Evie getting involved with a crook that bothered her – after all, there were plenty in the East End who got by in all sorts of ways. No, what she really didn’t like, what she really hated, was the idea of being without her twin. The gnawing pain deep inside her felt as though half of her very being had been ripped away. It had always been her and Evie together, the Bell twins, that was how it was.

Her thoughts drifted and she remembered how she and Evie had shared the back bedroom and then, on the very night their mother had left them, how they had moved into the front. A terrible sadness came over her as she heard the sound of their parents’ rowing filling her head and her dad begging her mum to stay.

She stared up at the ceiling, not moving as tears trickled down her cheeks and ran down into her ears. Would she be like Georgie? Would she fall apart if Evie left her?

She must have eventually dropped off to sleep, because the next thing she knew was being woken by the sound of sparrows squabbling in the gutter outside the bedroom window and the sky bright with sunshine. She blinked the sleep away from her eyes and reached for the alarm clock on the side. Nearly half past seven – she’d forgotten to wind it.

She threw back the eiderdown and swung her legs onto the chilly, lino-covered floor.

‘Get a move on, Eve,’ she said automatically. Turning to look over her shoulder to her sister’s side of the bed, she added her usual brisk words of encouragement, ‘Come on, we’re gonna be late if yer—’

The words froze on her lips. Evie wasn’t there.

Lou, a freckle-faced, pink-cheeked young woman of about eighteen, looked up at the calendar on the factory wall. ‘First of September.’ She sounded relieved as she shouted the date to Babs over the sounds of the workshop. ‘Thank gawd it’s Friday at last,’ she added as she whizzed a strip of folded floral material under the foot of her sewing machine and then tossed the resulting sleeve onto a growing pile by the side of her chair, ready for another machinist to fix to the blouses. ‘I wish we could get a bit more of this piecework, Babs.’ She snapped the foot closed over another folded length of cloth. ‘Yer know, I just can’t seem to get by from one pay day to the next lately without having to have a sub off me mum. And she’s getting right cheesed off with it, I can tell yer. Still, I promised her I’d help when I get in tonight – to sort out the blackout curtains and taping over the windows and that. Bloody waste o’ time, if you ask me. You done your’n yet?’ Lou bent forward to bite through the thread of yet another completed sleeve, turning her ginger curl-framed face towards Babs as she did so. ‘Oi! You listening to me, Babs?’

Babs nodded.

‘Well, I only hope you are. The wardens are gonna make sure we’re all keeping the blackout from tonight, remember. Pathetic.’ Lou smiled happily to herself. ‘Still, at least it means I’m in Mum’s good books for saying I’d help her; not that I intend doing very much, mind. Not after working here all day, I don’t.’

Lou continued to chatter away ten to the dozen while Babs sat silently working at the machine next to hers. Lou did not appear to be overly concerned that her friend was so much quieter than usual. But the machinist who sat on Lou’s other side – Ginny, a tall, thin-lipped gossip in her mid-twenties – seemed only too interested in Babs’s unusually subdued manner.

‘I see that Evie Bell ain’t in again yet,’ Ginny hissed slyly to Joan, the slow, fat, easily led girl of fifteen who sat next to her. ‘Since she bleached that hair of hers last weekend she’s been late every single morning. Now, let me guess why.’

Joan giggled lewdly. ‘I dunno, Ginny. Why do you reckon?’

‘’Cos she’s no better than she ought to be, that’s why,’ Ginny muttered back. ‘Exactly like her mother, see.’

Not being a practised gossip like Ginny, Joan made the mistake of talking about other people’s business in far too loud a voice for her own good. ‘What’s the matter with Evie and her mother then, Gin?’ she asked, agog at the possibilities. She gasped: ‘Here, they ain’t a pair of old brasses or nothing, are they?’

Lou’s eyes widened as Babs stopped her machine dead, threw back her chair and strode along the bench to where the unfortunate Joan now sat shaking in her seat.

‘
What
did you say about me sister and me mum?’ demanded Babs. ‘I don’t think I could have heard yer right.’

Ginny, whose machine was now the only one in the workshop still going, kept her head down, apparently engrossed in the Peter Pan collar she was making. Even Maria, a quiet, second-generation Italian girl who always kept herself to herself and concentrated on her job of hand-finishing the garments, had stopped working and was now staring at the sight of Babs advancing on Joan with a pair of pinking shears in one hand and a heavy wooden yard stick in the other.

‘I never meant nothing, Babs.’ Joan tried backing away, desperately looking to Ginny for support.

‘Well, if yer never meant nothing why d’yer say it?’

‘What yer gonna do with that yard stick and them pinking shears, Babs? Measure her up for a wavy haircut? She needs something to liven her up, big-mouthed little mare. Just look at her. She’s as plain as a plum pudding with no currants.’

Babs knew the voice immediately; it was as familiar to her as her own. She looked round to see Evie standing in the doorway of the workshop, hands on hips, grinning from ear to ear.

‘Morning, everyone,’ she chirped, hanging her jacket and hat on the stand by the time clock. ‘Don’t s’pose it was you clocked me in, was it, Ginny?’ she asked sarcastically as she settled herself in the vacant seat at the end of the workbench. Up until Tuesday, the seat had been Lou’s, but when Evie had been so late in on Monday after staying out all night with Albie and had had her pay docked for her trouble, she had persuaded Lou to swap places and let her sit closest to the door. Now she could sneak in if she was late again, as she had been on every morning since and as she fully intended being on many other mornings.

‘Course she didn’t clock you in.
I
did,’ Babs glared at Evie as she settled herself back down next to her at the workbench. ‘So what was the matter with you this time? I couldn’t wake yer this morning, no matter what. Even with the cup o’ tea I went to all the trouble of bringing up to yer. And I suppose that’s still on the floor by the bed and all.’

‘You don’t half go on, Babs.’ Evie sighed and rubbed the backs of her shapely calves. ‘The roads was so busy out there, what with all them blokes painting white lines on all the kerbs and everything, I had to get off the bus at Vallance Road and walk all the way up here to bloody Aldgate.’

‘Cor, you had to walk a couple of hundred yards! Mind yer don’t wear yerself out.’

Evie scowled at Babs and unenthusiastically picked up the front panel and the facing of a blouse. She stuck one on top of the other then wearily plonked them under the foot of her machine. ‘I dunno what’s the matter with you, Babs. I got in late and overslept, that’s all.’

‘That’s all?’ Babs whispered fiercely. She felt like hollering, but wouldn’t give Ginny the satisfaction of hearing that she and Evie were rowing. ‘That’s
every
single night yer’ve been in late – if yer’ve bothered to come home at all. Every single night since Sunday.’

‘Since Saturday, don’t yer mean?’ Evie corrected her with a saucy grin.

‘Watch it, you two.’ Lou tapped Babs urgently on the arm. ‘Get yer machines going. It’s Silver.’

Babs and Evie immediately stopped their row and became pictures of industry, furiously working away at their machines. But young Joan wasn’t quite so quick on the uptake. ‘Silver? So what’s he want then?’ she called along to Lou. ‘Here, you sure? He hardly ever comes up here to the workshop.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ hissed Lou through clenched teeth. ‘Now pipe down.’

‘Well, what’s his game then? Why’s the four eyed old …’ Joan’s words faded away and she sat there, open-mouthed as though she was at the dentist’s. The bespectacled object of her abuse was standing listening to her from the doorway.

Mr Silver removed his glasses and slowly polished them on his pocket handkerchief. ‘My “game”, Joan, for your information,’ he said as he walked into the workshop and replaced his spectacles on the end of his nose, ‘is to keep you lot in employment, so perhaps you could manage a bit of courtesy’. He was addressing Joan but his eyes were fixed on the astonishing sight of the Bell twins with their contrasting hair colours. With an approving nod in their direction, he strolled up and down the line of workers, peering over their shoulders at the piles of work by their chairs.

‘Sorry, Mr Silver,’ mumbled the red-faced Joan. ‘I didn’t mean nothing.’

Ginny gave Joan a crafty nudge and whispered hurriedly in her ear. Innocent as ever, Joan did as she was told. ‘So what
are
yer doing up here in the workshop then?’ she asked, looking puzzled when the girls – all except Ginny – started laughing.

Ginny merely looked out of the corner of her eye, along the row to where Maria sat at the far end of the bench surrounded by a heap of blouses ready for finishing.

‘If you could possibly do me the honour of waiting a moment, Joan,’ Mr Silver said with an exaggerated politeness that had all the girls laughing again, ‘until the chaps from the warehouse join us, then your curiosity will be satisfied.’

The thought of the warehouse workers coming upstairs had the girls giggling and whispering to one another; even Ginny patted her hair to make sure it was tidy.

‘That’s enough,’ said Silver wearily. ‘They’re coming up to listen to what I’ve got to say, not to ask you lot to a dance.’

‘Here they are, Mr Silver.’ Joan pointed excitedly at the door. ‘Look, they’re here.’

Silver turned to acknowledge the warehouse staff who had just arrived. ‘Right, in you come, chaps,’ he said, beckoning them in with a tilt of his head.

There were five of them who variously sloped, strutted or walked slightly warily into the workshop and stood along the far wall from the workbench: one gangling, fair-haired youth who looked as if he’d just left school that morning and, from his bright red cheeks, wished he was still there; two good-looking young men – the very obvious objects of the workshop’s adulation; one much older man, Dick, who looked fit enough for work but also old enough to have retired to an armchair by the fire many years ago; and finally Tiddler, a handsome-faced man in his late thirties, who because of a diseased and sickly childhood reached barely four feet ten in height.

Turning back to face the whispering young women at the workbench, Silver raised his hand for silence. ‘Do us all a favour and shut up, ladies. I’ve got an important announcement to make. One you
all
should hear.’

Ginny muttered something to Joan who, without a second’s thought, piped up, ‘Here, no one’s getting the push, are they, Mr Silver? You ain’t sacking no one?’

Silver looked exasperated. ‘Let me get a word in edgeways, eh?’

Joan tutted and put her hands primly in her lap. ‘I only wondered,’ she said to herself.

‘Right, now if I’ve got your attention. I don’t think any of you would disagree that I’ve been easy on you lot for too long. I know you all reckon I’m a soft touch as a governor. But all that’s going to finish.’

Hurried, concerned glances passed between the workers.

‘Men out there are joining the army, they’re ready to fight for what’s right. And what do you lot do? You slope off early, you get in late.’ He stared at Evie, who didn’t even have the grace to blush. ‘And you nick gear out of the warehouse.’ He turned to the two good-looking men and nodded at them. ‘I’m not stupid, I know about the odd rolls that get “damaged”.’

The two men shuffled uncomfortably.

Mr Silver turned back to the machinists. ‘And yes, I know all about the cabbage. Sometimes I think there’s more of my garments on sale off bent stalls down the Lane than I’ve got in the whole of my showroom.’ He paused, letting them all squirm. ‘Well, that’s always been part of the rag trade, I suppose, but, like I said, things round here are going to change.’ He held up his hand. ‘Please, just listen, Joan.’ Silver clasped his hands behind his back and rocked backwards and forwards on his heels. ‘Now it’s going to be
your
turn. I’m giving you lot the chance to do your bit in fighting that, that …’ Silver ran his hand through his sparse grey hair. ‘That bastard Hitler,’ he finally managed to say.

Looks of surprise flashed round the workroom at the shock of the usually gentlemanly Mr Silver using bad language.

‘Because,’ he continued, ‘from now on we’re making uniforms.’ He paused again, listening to the workers’ discontented mutterings about the war not even having started yet, and what was he on about, and how were they meant to be able to handle all that heavy cloth. ‘Oh, and I should mention that it’s all piecework, and I’m personally going to see that there are some very attractive bonuses.’

All Mr Silver’s workers cheered, whether from patriotism, relief that nobody was getting sacked, or delight at the prospect of all that piecework wasn’t clear, but cheer they did. That is, all except Ginny. She raised her hand. ‘Mr Silver,’ she said in a low, wheedling voice.

‘Yes?’

‘What’s Italy gonna do in this war, Mr Silver?’ Ginny flicked her eyes along the row towards the olive-skinned Maria. ‘Not on our side, are they? More like friends of the Jerries, me dad says. Something about what they did in Spain, or something. Is he right?’

Silver shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Isn’t there enough hatred in this world?’

Ginny sucked in her cheeks and looked pained. ‘I only said what me dad reckons.’