The Quality Street Girls

‘She’s Reenie, my server. She’s the fast one.’ Reenie’s wrapper (known to the overlooker as Number Twenty-Eight, because that was the conveyor position she occupied, but to the vicar who’d christened her, she was Victoria Scowen) didn’t sound enthusiastic about it, but Reenie felt that this still wasn’t going too badly.

‘I want to move to your end of the conveyor. I want to be up top behind that pillar. If you help me move you’ll get higher piece rates because I’ll be your server instead of Bad Queen Mary who’s always slow because she’s naffin’ about wi’ her sister.’

‘Hang on,’ Victoria Scowen didn’t like the sound of this. ‘What about my piece rates? You’re my server; what’s in it for me if I let you go up to the far end and leave me with God-knows who?’

‘You’ll get the same as you’ve been getting wi’ me.’

‘And how do you figure that one ou—?’ Victoria was about to ask about the logistics of the problem when Diana – who was Reenie’s intended target since she was the girl who had already warned her that if she had any bright ideas she had to take them to her first, and who appeared to have sway over all the girls on their line – cut in with a more important question.

‘What do you want to move up to my manor for? Are you planning a piece time racket? ‘Cause it sounds to me like that’s the only way you can be offering all three of us better rates. No one can be in three places at once so you’ve got to be talking a racket.’

Heather Rogers tried to move Reenie on by saying in a haughty Harrogate drawl, ‘We’ve got enough trouble up at our end with the Tudor Queens; we don’t need the aggro of some new kid who thinks they know all running a piece time racket right under Rabid Roth’s nose, thank you very mu—’

‘No, Heather, I’ve a mind to hear what the young ’un has to say.’ Diana ostentatiously moved herself into a more comfortable position and then indicated that she was ready to listen. Reenie could see that what she’d heard about Diana Moore was right; if Quality Street had three queens, then this was their true empress; she really did command all the other girls, and Reenie realised she was in luck.

‘Come in Number Four!’ Mrs Roth didn’t have an office of her own, but she marked her territory so firmly in the overlookers’ break room that it felt as though they were being beckoned into her domain.

The room was not salubrious, but it was large enough for ten women to sit and glare at each other over a chipped mid-morning teapot. A row of three desks along the far wall with typewriters for processing sick notes, shift patterns and the like, seemed to be the only thing that marked the space out as a factory work room and not the windowless, dingy, cave-like lair of an old witch.

Diana slid through the doorway with the lithe confidence of a cat, followed behind by wrapping girls Victoria and Heather, who were reduced to cowering in the presence of Mrs Roth.

‘Do you have something you wish to tell me?’ Mrs Roth’s words were sharp and threatening, and many a girl had turned and ran with their words left unspoken at that welcome, but Diana didn’t so much as turn a hair:

‘We’ve grown tired of covering up for Mary and Bess. We’ve come to tell you what’s what so that we don’t have to put up with them anymore.’

‘Covering up?’ Mrs Roth’s snakelike eyes had met Diana’s and were holding them unblinkingly.

‘They do nothing but talk all day long, and it makes them slow. They’re both perfectly capable of working faster, and I’ve seen Bess work like lightning when her sister’s not with her, but they will talk.’ Diana’s casual, regal, drawl seemed to imply that she considered Mrs Roth to be an intimate equal, rather than her supervisor. ‘It’s all sneaky whispers when you’re not looking, Mrs Roth. I can’t imagine what they find to talk about, but you always have trouble when sister’s sit together, don’t you?’ She held her gaze while she paused for effect. Reenie had been lucky indeed; Diana knew exactly how to play the woman she reported to. ‘We’d like to help if we can.’ She gestured casually to the two wrapping girls behind her, ‘If you move Reenie Calder up to my place, and Mary down to the far end to Reenie’s old place they’ll be as far apart as they can be. We’ll see how fast they work when they’re not gassing. I didn’t like to bother you with such a triviality, Mrs Roth, but when you’ve worked in production as long as you and I have, one knows that it’s the small things that make a difference.’

Mrs Roth seemed to be looking for some trap or trick, and she snapped at Victoria, ‘You! Why do you want to move Reenie Calder?’

This was what they had been afraid of; they didn’t want her to notice the Reenie side of the plan, because the answers to those questions were awkward. Victoria panicked and looked at their ringleader for a hint but didn’t get one, so just blurted out, ‘She’s doin’ my head in Mrs Roth.’

And that was enough for the overlooker, the idea that Reenie would do anyone’s head in was plausible. ‘Alright, but I don’t have time for this kind of thing. You’ll have to work it out amongst yourselves. And if I think there’s been any