The Quality Street Girls

John looked around in annoyance as he realised he’d been kept out of their circle, but his mother shushed him.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ Reenie, usually so loud and confident was quiet and nervous now. She turned the white, business-like envelope over in her work-worn fingers and took a deep breath.

‘Only one way to find out, love. But best hurry, eh?’ Her mother passed a clean table knife towards her daughter, and Reenie picked it up and slid it along the gummed seal.

There was a long silence as Reenie held her breath not daring to look at the page, and then she read aloud the first official letter addressed to her in her short life. ‘Dear Miss Calder, We are pleased to offer you the position of Seasonal Production Line Assistant in our Halifax factory …’ Reenie gasped in surprise and delight. ‘Oh, Mum! I’ve got a job! I’ve got a job! I’m going to Mackintosh’s! I’m going to Toffee Town! They’ve given me a job!’

‘I know, love; I wrote to them. They got a reference from Miss Dukes at your school, and a reference from the vicar, and we had such a time keeping it a secret in case it didn’t come off, and then they wrote and said they wanted you to start right away.’

‘Right away? Well, when right away?’

‘Today! So go and wash your neck and get a wiggle on. Your birthday present from me is a job.’

‘Don’t I have to have an interview?’

‘What sort of job do you think it is? Chief Accountant? You’re not going into the offices; you’re packing cartons, and every day’s your interview. Be faster than everyone else, and they’ll keep you until Christmas.’

‘If I’m faster than anyone they’ve ever had do you think they might keep me longer than—’

‘Now don’t go getting attached; you know what you’re like. Just be glad that you’ve got until Christmas and enjoy it. It’s not everyone that gets into Mack’s.’

‘But if I were really, really fast and they’d had loads of girls leave at Christmas for Christmas weddings—’

‘Christmas weddings? How many droves of girls are you expecting to leave for Christmas weddings?’

‘Well, just say if there were a lot, do you think there’s a chance that I might not have to go into service?’

Mrs Calder dried her hands on her apron and sat down at the edge of the table. ‘Now listen, you three, I know you all talk like goin’ into service is the worst thing in the world, and I know I used to tell you some terrible stories of what it was like in my day. Being in service now isn’t like it used to be; you hardly ever have to live-in, and they all send their laundry out. Look, what I’m saying is: if any of you do have to go into service I think you’ll have a wonderful time.’ Reenie’s mother tried to appeal to Reenie’s imagination, ‘Reenie, what if you went into service in a little place, and then a fine lady visited and spotted you, and you got to go to work in a big house and make friends with all the quality? Can you imagine?’

Reenie’s tight-lipped smile gave her away; she was trying to agree with her mother, but in her heart of hearts Reenie desperately didn’t want to. Reenie had hope now, and it was a letter from Mackintosh’s.

The overlooker who was showing the new girls their place marched them through the corridor of the factory walking two-by-two in what she called a ‘crocodile’. As far as Reenie could tell the overlookers were to the factories what the teachers were to her old school, and Reenie was immediately in awe of them. The overlookers decided where the girls went, which jobs they worked at, and how long for. Everyone wanted to stay in the overlookers good books.

‘No talkin’ at the back! Listen wi’ your ears, not wi’ your mouths! You are going to walk through here every day for the next several years if you’re lucky, but no one is going to show you where to go after today, so remember where you’re goin.”

Reenie followed dutifully, memorising the plan of the building in her head: up through the old Albion Mill, along a wide corridor where she could see the railway line running parallel, down three flights of stairs and up another two. By Reenie’s reckoning this older girl, who’d collected them at the gates, seemed to be doubling back on herself to make them go a longer route. ‘Excuse me!’ Reenie was a third of the way down the crocodile of obedient new girls, but she was near enough to the front to shout naive, well-meant questions. ‘Why did you take us down two flights of stairs and then up another two? Is there not some—’

‘No questions, you’re here to go where you’re told.’

‘Are you lost, though,’ Reenie tried to sound kind because she couldn’t imagine that this girl enjoyed being lost, ‘because if you’re lost, we could just stop someone and ask them for directions. Excuse me!’ Reenie called out to two gentlemen who were passing them in the echoing, whitewashed corridor. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ she paused for a happy moment as she realised that she recognised one of them, ‘but we’re on our way to the—’

‘We are not stopping! Follow me, please.’ The older girl tried to hurry the girls along, but the older of the two gentlemen raised his hand politely to indicate that they should all stay.

‘Good morning, ladies.’ He made a slight bow of his head in a style that was almost Victorian. He was an older man, perhaps getting close to retirement; thick silver hair, bold silver moustache, dark blue neatly cut suit. ‘I am Major Fergusson, and this is my colleague Peter McKenzie. Is this your first day at Mack’s?’

A chorus of ‘Yes, sir’ rang through the corridor and the crocodile line of girls all fixed their eyes on the young man beside Major Fergusson.

‘Well, isn’t that nice. And what is your name?’

‘Reenie Calder, sir.’ Reenie tried to look at him as she spoke, but her eyes darted to Peter to see if he would recognise her. She willed him to recognise her.

‘And where are you going to, Reenie?’

‘Don’t answer him!’ The girl in charge was determined to get them away, ‘They’re the Time and Motion men, and you don’t talk to the Time and Motion men without your Union present.’

In the face of such obvious rudeness, Major Fergusson and Peter remained pleasant and calm; this was a sign, Reenie thought, of what her mother called ‘Good Breeding’.

‘We are here to help everyone find a way of doing their jobs more easily,’ the Major said to Reenie, ‘sometimes we conduct tests on the way the line works and in those circumstances, we have to work with the Unions to make sure that we are all helping each other. You can all talk to us any time, there’s no need to be shy, or to ask permission of your Union.’

‘I think that’s quite enough—’ their guide was silenced with another polite bow of the Major’s hand. He clearly out-ranked her but didn’t enjoy showing it. The Major smiled at Reenie and permitted her to speak:

‘Can we ask you for directions?’ Reenie didn’t like to contradict her guide, but she suspected that the other girl needed some help. Reenie, in her naivety, believed she’d be doing the girl a kindness if she did the asking for her. ‘It’s just an overlooker is taking us to our new workstations, and we’ve been told to memorise the route that we’re going along because we’ll need to go this way every day, but I don’t think it’s right.’

‘What makes you think that?’ The Major was either ignorant of the girls gazing wistfully into Peter’s smoke-grey eyes, or he was used to it.

Reenie didn’t need time to think, ‘Well, we came in by green painted double doors at the end of the old mill. We passed the timekeeping office where there were three commissionaires having their breakfast butties; then we went under a staircase where some fella in shiny shoes was smokin’ and chattin’ up a lass. Then we went out a single door – which was right small for all of us – into a yard where there was some men unloading sacks of sugar off a waggon. At the other end of the yard there was a sign that said no waiting, and we went past that into a new block where we went up three flights of stairs, then down a big corridor with a pine floor and big window frame that smelled of new paint. From there we walked down two flights of stairs just back there through that door which you can see from the window is loopin’ us back to Albion Mills, so why can’t we just stay in Albion Mills in the first place? Are we lost?’

The Major gave Peter another knowing, amused look; he supposed that this rigmarole the guide was putting them through was more imaginative then sending them for ‘a long stand’.

‘You remembered all of that?’ the Major seemed to admire Reenie for it, and the other girls were intensely jealous of the beautiful, wide-eyed smile that Peter gave her.

‘Well, it has only just happened. I’m not a total doyle.’

‘Young lady,’ the Major was addressing Reenie again, but eyeing her guide with suspicion, ‘you mentioned that you had already met your overlooker. Where did she go after you met her?’

‘Well this is her, this is our overlooker.’

The guide gulped the air like a fish and stammered out defensively, ‘I’m the overlooker of the new girls on their first day when they go through to their new places. It’s very easy for them to wander about and get lost and someone needs to give them a firm—’

The Major ignored her and spoke directly to Reenie. ‘overlookers all have coloured collars on their white overalls. They are either red, blue, yellow, or green. If you see someone with a white overall, you know that they are the same rank and file as you.’ He didn’t point out that their guide’s collar was white, or that she’d been deliberately taking them a longer route so that they would be lost for the whole of their first week at Mack’s; he didn’t need to. ‘Now, let’s see if we can’t get you all on to your first day on the double. Peter, we’ve got time for a detour this morning, haven’t we?’

Peter nodded brusquely.

‘I think I can guess where you’re all going to. Quality Street line, by any chance?’ the Major asked Reenie.

‘Yes, how did you know that?’

‘It’s all hands on deck at Quality Street, my dear. Christmas is coming!’

Reenie and the girls followed the Major to their new line, and although Reenie caught Peter’s eye, he didn’t speak to her. He smiled, and then he smiled again, but he didn’t speak.

When Diana arrived at the toffee factory gates that Saturday morning, tired from very little sleep the night before, she was disgruntled to be stopped by the watchman. Diana tended to go in by one of the lesser-used entrances on the Bailey Hall road to avoid the undignified crush at the start and end of each shift. It added a few minutes to her journey, but Diana didn’t care; dignity was more important to her than an inconvenience. The morning was crisp but not cold; the Indian summer of 1936, but she still wore her father’s coat and her plain work shoes. A light wave of her ashes and caramel-coloured hair fell over tired eyes, and she slipped through the factory gate with her head down, her collar up, and her hands in her pockets like any other working day.

‘Diana Moore?’ The factory watchman had stepped out of his gatehouse cabin with a note in his hand.

‘You know I am.’ She said with an exasperated sigh.

‘Message for you.’ He handed over an internal memo envelope and went back to his business; answering queries from men who’d turned up on spec looking for work.