‘Because, you total doyle, if it is possible for a human being to work that fast. They will make us work even faster, and faster, and faster if we want to earn our basic rates for doing the minimum, and they will go on and on and on until we are all in our early graves. The Time and Motion men do not care about you or I, they care about the time it takes to do the work.’
‘But I’ve seen you do your sister’s work lots of times. Why don’t they complain about that if they’re so fussed?’
Bad Queen Mary’s eyes widened with an icy rage and her words came out in a controlled hiss. ‘You have never, ever seen us do anything of the sort. And don’t even think about telling anyone else that poisonous lie.’ Mary turned on her heel and left. There was a stunned silence from the other girls, and though Bess tried to offer Reenie a look of apology, she had to go after her sister, who was marching to her place on the production line.
Reenie was hurt and angry that anyone would treat her like that when she had clearly not meant any harm. She was particularly angry at being called a liar. If her grandmother had been there she’d have told Reenie to let it go, but in her absence Reenie began hatching a plan to make certain that Bad Queen Mary would never be cold with her again.
Reenie worked a little more absentmindedly that afternoon, thinking about how she might get closer to Mary and Bess, the Quality Street factory’s very own Tudor Queens. She watched them carefully from her side of the conveyor, and every time Mary caught Reenie’s eye Mary would give her an icy, threatening look.
Reenie noticed several things, that Mary had to look at her work all of the time in order to follow what she was doing, and could only look over at Reenie occasionally. This was Mary’s first mistake, the trick to speed was not to look, but to work by a instinct.
Reenie also noticed that Bess was markedly slower than everyone else on the line, as though she just didn’t have the strength. She took work from her older sister almost constantly. If the overlooker could see them then Bess would keep going, but she’d struggle to keep up even with surreptitious help from her sister. The wrapping girls were clearly unhappy about the situation, but tolerating it grudgingly. There was an understanding with them, Reenie thought, but they were not allowing it to happen out of friendship. Here was Reenie’s opportunity: she would target the wrapping girls.
‘Do you want to earn the highest piece rates of anyone on our floor?’ Reenie had not bothered with introductions; she just presented herself at dinner time beside the wrapping girls’ table and stated her proposition.
The dinner hour was just as segregated as the workroom; the older girls who wrapped the sweets chose to sit on tables apart from the younger girls. While the younger ones gossiped animatedly and leant over one another’s dinners, snatching at leftovers and sharing comics. The older wrapping girls looked as still and bored as the portraits of Hollywood starlets in Vogue magazine.
The dining hall was not so different from Reenie’s kitchen at home; there were scrubbed wooden benches below scrubbed wooden tables, but the difference here was that there were six hundred benches, and a sea of women all dressed the same. It was like finding a needle in a haystack, but she found them, sitting in the warmth of the corner near the kitchen hatches that were serving everything with a rich, mouth-wateringly fragrant beef gravy.
‘And who are you when you’re at home?’ Heather Rogers, a wrapping girl with long, platinum blonde hair looked up from her dinner, and down her nose at Reenie. This was exactly the reception that Reenie had anticipated; which was why she had chosen to skip introductions and start with what was in it for them.
‘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