Gladys nodded.
‘Ready? One … two … three!’
They both yanked as hard as they could, but the factory-issue dungarees were sturdy. Gladys herself was now pressed right up against the machine. ‘It’s going to swallow me,’ she gulped.
Other girls ran over to see what the commotion was about and one of them began to scream.
‘Turn off the machine!’ shouted Barry.
‘But we can’t – we’re not allowed,’ said Maisie, flustered.
‘Turn it off now!’ screamed Gladys, silencing them all.
One of the other reel boys ran round to where a big red button waited, ready for the unthinkable act. He slammed his hand down hard and the machine whirred briefly before coming to a final, juddering halt. The spindle gave up its claim on Gladys’s trouser leg and she pulled it free, feeling the blood rushing back all the way down to her foot. She gave the machine a heartfelt kick of retaliation.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Julie McTaggart shouted, rushing out of the office. ‘And how dare you turn off this machine!’
Gladys opened her mouth to protest, but Julie didn’t give her a chance to answer.
‘Get to Miss Smith’s office immediately,’ she told her.
The other girls stared at Gladys as if she had just been handed a death sentence.
‘Good luck,’ whispered Maisie, anxiously.
‘The rest of you, back to work,’ snapped Julie, and they all hurried off to their machines.
Inside the Personnel Office the two Betties were typing away, but there was no sign of Miss Smith.
‘Oh, hello,’ said Betty Phillips. ‘We didn’t expect to see you again so soon.’
‘I couldn’t stay away,’ quipped Gladys, bitterly.
Miss Smith marched into the room and took her seat behind the desk, leaving Gladys standing awkwardly before her. ‘So what have you done? I’m waiting,’ she demanded.
‘They had to turn off my machine,’ Gladys admitted. ‘But it weren’t my fault! I only looked away for a second, and my trousers got sucked in.’
‘You shouldn’t have looked away at all,’ Miss Smith told her sternly. ‘Not only is it extremely dangerous, but if the machine has to be stopped then the company loses money.’
Gladys looked at the floor. ‘It would never have happened if they’d given me the right size uniform,’ she muttered bitterly.
‘I think you’ve forgotten my fourth rule,’ said Miss Smith.
‘What’s that?’ asked Gladys, struggling to recall anything before the life-threatening incident.
‘No cheek,’ said Miss Smith, firmly.
When Gladys returned to the Blue Room, the girls were astonished to see her. ‘We all thought The Dragon was going to sack you,’ Maisie whispered. ‘How come you’re still here?’
‘I dunno. Beginner’s luck?’ shrugged Gladys.
When break time finally came, the girls invited her to come with them for breakfast at the café across the road. ‘You don’t want to bother with the canteen here, it’s too dear,’ Maisie told her.
They joined a gaggle all heading across the road, some of them dressed in dungarees and checked shirts like her own but in a lighter blue. ‘Those are the Hesser girls,’ said Maisie, disdainfully. ‘Look at them, they’re like navvies!’
As they neared the café they saw two dockers who were about to go in. Hearing the girls’ chatter, the men glanced behind them and immediately changed their minds. ‘We’re not going in here, mate,’ said one to the other, as they hurried off. ‘Not when it’s full of sugar girls.’
Once inside, Gladys could see why. The place rang with the noise of female shift workers laughing, singing, chatting and shrieking, while the café owners ran around like maniacs trying to deal with the breakfast rush.
She looked at the menu. Eggs, bacon, tomatoes, bread and butter … and fried mushrooms! Gladys had never eaten mushrooms before, and after the events of this morning who knew if she’d survive long enough at Tate & Lyle to get another chance to try them?
‘I’ll have mushrooms on toast,’ she said confidently, as if ordering her usual.
The mushrooms arrived, tender and dripping with butter, and Gladys savoured each bite of her exotic treat, while trying not to appear too excited. As she did so, the other girls confided to her the secrets of the Blue Room. Printing was the easiest job in the factory, they told her, so she was very lucky to have been given it. Theirs was one of the smallest departments – much smaller than the Hesser Floor – and therefore far more exclusive. Peggy Burrows, the forelady, took such pride in her machines that every night at the end of the late shift the girls were told to stop work half an hour early to clean them with methylated spirits till they shone.
But the biggest source of pride was the fact that the Blue Room had acquired the unofficial title of the Beauty Shop, thanks to the svelte appearance of the girls. One of their number, Iris – a six-foot stunner – had gone down in legend for running off to Paris to join the Bluebell Girls as a topless dancer. It was beginning to dawn on Gladys that there were standards she was expected to uphold – and that she was rather ill-equipped to do so. Had Miss Smith sent her to the department for her own amusement?
‘Why are all your uniforms so tight compared to mine, then?’ she asked, butter dribbling down her chin.
‘They weren’t when we got them,’ winked Joanie. ‘The trick is, once you get them home, you put a seam up the front and back of the dungarees so they fit more snug. You’ll have to take your blouse in, too.’
‘Then you’ll have to get that turban up a bit higher,’ put in Joycie.
‘How do you do that?’ asked Gladys.
‘Knickers,’ she said.
‘Knickers?’
‘Yeah, you wind up the turban with stockings, knickers, socks, whatever you’ve got. Helps bulk it out a bit. Flo Smith don’t like it – a notice went up saying we wasn’t to do it no more, but bit by bit we’ve been sneaking them in again.’
Work finished at two p.m., but Gladys knew she still had a long afternoon ahead of her. She was determined to rein in her unwieldy dungarees before tomorrow, and that meant taking them in by hand – a laborious process, especially given her pitiful needlework skills.
She caught her two buses home and turned the corner into Eclipse Road, where she spotted the group of local lads she usually hung around with, going up the street with a football. Among them was a bespectacled boy called John, whose mother always made him wear a ridiculously short leather sports jacket. ‘Oi, Bum Freezer!’ Gladys shouted. This was her nickname for him, in return for which he called her ‘The Girl with the Lovely Legs’, which was guaranteed to annoy a tomboy like Gladys.
‘You coming for a kickabout?’ he asked her. ‘We’re going over Beckton Road Park.’
Gladys considered for a moment. She would dearly love the opportunity to give John a good thrashing at football, especially considering how stupid he looked right now in his jacket. But then the image of the glamour girls in the Blue Room floated back into her mind.
She sighed. ‘Can’t. Got more important things to do now, ain’t I?’
On Wednesday, Gladys went into Tate & Lyle with her head held high – very high, in fact. Her turban was now stuffed full of as many of her brothers’ socks as she could find, as well as several pairs of knickers