‘I wish the party could go on forever!’ she announced to a rather surprised Joanie. The evening was beginning to wind down, however, and it was time for people to make their way home.
Ethel’s body was not used to alcohol, least of all the impact of innumerable port and lemons – made worse by the fact that she and Joanie had also gobbled a large quantity of sweets, bought using some ration coupons they had found in the street. By the time she got home her stomach had begun to protest, and soon she was hit by an overwhelming wave of nausea. She did her best to ignore the persistent lurching feeling, but it grew worse and worse, so she took one of her mother’s buckets out of the scullery and put it within easy reach of her bed. It wasn’t long before she was making good use of it.
Every time Ethel was about to drift off to sleep her stomach began to convulse again and she clambered frantically over to the bucket, holding back her dark frizzy hair as she threw her guts up once again. This sorry routine continued all night long and she was retching well after the last of the weekend’s excesses had been expelled.
On Monday morning, as the first rays of light began to stream through the curtains, Ethel felt like each one was stabbing right into her brain, and her stomach was still doing somersaults.
‘Time to get up!’ her mum shouted, at what seemed like a deafening roar.
‘Too sick,’ Ethel croaked, pulling the bedclothes over her head. Missing a day at Tate & Lyle was almost unthinkable to her, but on this occasion even she had to admit defeat. She spent the rest of the day in bed, and at lunchtime Joanie came to see how she was doing.
The next morning Ethel’s stomach was still in a pretty tender state, but she managed to haul herself into work regardless. When she got up to the office, Iris, Joanie and Beryl had their heads buried in their work, and Ivy Batchelor was waiting in the doorway.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Ethel said anxiously.
Ivy looked at her with an expression of disappointment. ‘You’ll be back on the factory floor today, Ethel,’ she told her, ‘packing on machine number one.’
Ethel was crushed. ‘Yes, Ivy,’ she said quietly. She went down to take her place on the belt of the machine, trying to avoid making eye contact with any of the girls around her. She was sure they would be having a good laugh at her expense.
The packing was every bit as exhausting as she remembered, and it did nothing for the queasy feeling in her stomach. At the height of summer, it was now desperately hot on the glass-roofed Hesser Floor, and the girls were soon dripping with sweat. A girl from the canteen brought up a jug of so-called Jungle Juice, a concoction specially formulated to replace salts lost from their bodies, but in her delicate state Ethel found it virtually undrinkable.
She also struggled with the rowdy culture on the factory floor, which seemed more raucous than she remembered from her previous stint on the machines. While they were working, the Hesser girls would shout and joke non-stop, and whenever a poor boy was sent to the department to plug a gap in numbers, the teasing would be merciless.
‘Come on then, pretty boy!’
‘Ooh, get a look at those big, strong arms!’
‘Come and give us a cuddle then!’
By the time Ethel left at the end of the day, her uniform was stiff with sugar. She had forgotten how messy the packing could be. The last time she had worked on the machines she had found the whole experience rather exciting, but now it seemed the ultimate humiliation.
When Ethel got home that afternoon she hurriedly took off her sticky clothes. She was dreading having to explain to her mother what had happened at work. All she could think of was how she had reacted when Ethel’s friend Gladys had not progressed beyond sweeping the factory floor.
When it came to it, Louise Alleyne was remarkably restrained. Perhaps she could see the distress on Ethel’s face, and couldn’t bring herself to compound it with criticism.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ she told her daughter, pulling her close. ‘You’ll be up there again before long. I know my girls.’
It was small consolation for Ethel, who felt she could scarcely sink any lower in her own estimation, let alone her mother’s.
It was not long, however, before the family had more serious problems to deal with. Louise had been in poor health for a while, and one night after the evening meal, when Ethel and Dolly were still sitting at the kitchen table and Winnie was playing outside, she posed a troubling question to her two elder daughters.
‘If anything happened to me,’ she asked, ‘would you want Dad to get married again?’
There was an awkward silence while the question hung in the air.
‘Well,’ Ethel said thoughtfully, trying her best to channel a wisdom that belied her 16 years, ‘I suppose so, if that’s what Dad wanted.’
They both looked at Dolly to see what her response would be.
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