The Fancy (8 page)

“Well, how about electing a new Committee and see what they could do?” suggested a diffident voice which had not even the confidence to get to its feet.

“I’d like to see them do any better without co-operation,” said the young man on the platform, his hair all over the place. “I don’t care who you elect. I don’t care if you put Jesus Christ on the Committee, he couldn’t do anything without co-operation.” He passed his hand over his face and gave a tug at his collar. The spotty youth, who had been crouching, half sitting and half on his feet ready to protest at he knew not quite what, wiped his mouth and prepared to speak again. He knew something was wrong somewhere but he couldn’t put his finger on it, nor find the words to say what he wanted to say. That was the trouble, arguing against these fellows ; they got you down every time by the gift of the gab.

“And look here, all of you,” the other was saying. “I’ll resign with pleasure if you like. The sooner the better. I’m just about sick of toadying round the Management and sweating my guts out for a lousy lot of bastards like you.” He sat down amid general and comfortable laughter. His audience enjoyed being abused. It always got a laugh, and as for him resigning, well, everyone knew old Jack Spiller would never resign. That was only his joke. Good old Jack ; he certainly put some life into the meetings. Pretty good speech on the whole. He’s quite right about production. Someone should see about it, but what can
I
do? I’m a craftsman, that’s me ; I like to work with my hands. In any case, everyone knows this is the worst run aircraft factory in England.

Men and women were saying this in every factory in the country. It is the creed of the factory worker—or rather, his motto. A truism in which nobody believes can hardly be called a creed.

The Chairman had thanked Brother Spiller for his oratory and said that although he himself was not a member of the Production Committee, he was sure, etc., etc., everyone would do his utmost, etc., etc., these things took time, but where the cause was just and the heart was right, no matter how great the difficulties, like David over Goliath we should pre without looking at him p alongvail. He had lifted this last sentence from a speech he had recently made at a Lodge dinner and it evoked a certain amount of applause. A few people stamped their feet soberly and the modest man clapped his hands softly as if he had gloves on and made a judicial little purse of his mouth.

Freda had relaxed now and was making mental notes to tell the girls when she got home. She shared a flat with two friends, one of whom was a Council School teacher and the other an industrial chemist. They were all confirmed meeting-goers, and went to the
kind of lectures advertised in the
New Statesman and Nation
as other people go to the cinema—for pleasure.

Reenie, who had been listening slow-eyed and wondering turned to Paddy. “Good, isn’t it?” she said.

“What is?” said Paddy.

“Well, I don’t know—Production and that. It’s just what my hubby always says, ‘We could win the war if we had more planes than the Jerries,’ he says.”

“Well, fancy that,” said Paddy. “Cigarette?” She lit one for Reenie, who smoked it hanging on her lower lip as her mouth would never stay shut, and offered one to Wendy on her other side.

“Oh, no, thank you,” whispered Wendy. “I don’t smoke. D’you know what the time is?

“Must be getting on for a quarter to.”

“Oh dear.” Wendy fidgeted with her bag and gloves and looked along the barrier of knees between her and the gangway. “I shall have to go in a minute.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Paddy. “Let’s just hear this next bit though ; it’s sometimes quite amusing.”

The meeting had now reached the time for miscellaneous questions. “I now invite any Brother or Sister who has a question to ask, to submit same to the Chair,” said Mr. Wheelwright, and sitting down with a bounce, spread his knees, leaned his elbows on the table and smiled encouragingly.

At least six people had popped up like celluloid dolls in different parts of the Canteen. One was an elderly female labourer from the Inspection Shop. She wore a pot hat and a long dirty coat of enormous checks over her black overall and she was waving a cracked and bulging patent leather handbag to attract attention. Mr. Wheelwright nodded at her.

“I think our Sister there was the first up,” he said. “Yes?”

“Well, it’s like this, Mr. Chairman,” she said, suddenly defiant at finding so many people listening to her. “What I want to know is when are they going to start a Day Nursery a bit nearer the factory, that’s what I’d like to know.” A lot of people appeared to want to know too and agreed audibly with this request.

The Chairman raised his hand. “Quiet please, and give our Sister a chance to finish. You’re not satisfied then, with the existing arrangements?”

“That I’m bloody well not.” The pot hat shook and the face below it grew red. “Look here, Mr. Chairman, how would you like to get up before five and get breakfast for your man and three kids and then go two miles out of your way to take two of them to the Day Nursery and then as like as not with the buses what they are be late in here into the bargain?”

“Yes, yes,” the Chairman nodded understanding, like a priest in the confessional. the bad smell in the Redundant Stores startlyh

“Not to mention,” continued the agitated pot hat, “having to do them same two miles out of your way on top of a day’s work, to fetch the kids and they so tired by that time they can’t hardly keep awake, let alone walk.” Some of the women made the cooing sounds that they made at the cinema when a dog came on to the screen.

“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.” The fat man behind the table leant forward. “What’s your suggestion then, Sister?”

“Well, what I say is, and there’s a lot of others say it with me,
I
know——” She paused for murmurs of corroboration which came even before what she said was made plain. “What I say is, there ought to be a Nursery right here in the factory, and so I hope to see before we’re all in our graves, what with one thing and another.” The pot hat disappeared suddenly as she sat down and tried to recover from the shock of finding that she had actually said what she had been boiling up to say for weeks.

All this time, the modest man had been taking notes like mad, hunched in his chair with his scribbling block on his knee. Each winter he promised himself to learn shorthand by correspondence in the long evenings, but each spring came round without his having done a thing about it.

“Thank you, Sister,” said the Chairman, addressing the spot where the pot hat had disappeared.

“Regardin’ the question of the smell of drains in the Redundant Stores——” A little bald man with a big nose and sad eyes, darted from his seat into the gangway.

“Half a minute, Brother.” The Chairman flapped him down with his hand. “We haven’t yet finished with the question in vogue. I think we’re all aware of the difficulties our Sister has spoken of. I can assure all you ladies”—he distributed a debonair smile over his audience——” we all appreciate how hard it is for some of you to manage in these days. As a matter of a fact, we’ve been looking into this question of Day Nurseries for some time, and I think now, that the time has come——” A hefty girl from the Machine Shop with untidy flaxen hair and a North Country voice jumped up.

“The time ’as come, Mr. Chairman, for less talk and more do! We don’t want any more promises. We want to know what you’re going to do about it!” she shouted, edged on by her mates, who tugged at her coat and said : “Give it ‘im, Win,” and “That’s right, tell ‘im straight.”

“Sit down, Sister Bellamy, you’re out of order,” said the Chairman unruffled. “I was just going to say,” he went on, “that the time has come to negotiate for a definite decision.”

“I’ll say the time has come,” said Sister Bellamy, standing her ground challengingly.

“That being the case, Brothers and Sisters, I suggest that a resolution be moved. If our Sister—where is she?” He searched for the pot hat, who was pushed to her feet, tongue-tied now that she had had her say. “Do you formally propose this motion, Sister, er——”

“Billings,” said someone for her. He repeated his question and she nodded and sank out of sight again.

“I second that,” said the North Country girl and a man in a plum man. “Thank you. What’s the name?”

“Brother Vernon,” he saidhe Ledward Strain. b, and lifting the skirts of the plum-coloured coat sat down again, satisfied with his bid for notoriety.

“Regardin’ the bad smell in the Redundant Stores——” It was the little bald man again, but five others were on their feet, thrusting up their arms like schoolchildren. One of them was waving something on the end of his arm, a brown paper bag, which caught the Chairman’s eye. He nodded at the sour-looking man who was waving it. “Go ahead, Brother.”

“It isn’t ’ealthy, Mr. Chairman, it isn’t right,” said the bald man, who was short-sighted and thought he meant him.

“Excuse me, Brother, I’m on my feet,” said the sour man, but the other, who was also slightly deaf was still piping away about typhoid. The Chairman played them both with his hands like a cricket captain arranging his field and also subdued an importunate woman who was trying to hark back to Day Nurseries.

“I shan’t keep you long, Mr. Chairman,” growled the man with the paper bag, as soon as he had the floor. “I’m a plain-speaking man and I say what I mean without wasting time, unlike some I could mention. What I want to know is, are the Shop Stewards aware that the food in the canteen is disgusting, inadequate and not fit for ’uman consumption and that the price charged for it may be called, in plain words, profiteering?” Murmurs broke out. This was interesting. Some of the murmurs were approving and Wendy wondered whether perhaps she was wrong in thinking the canteen lunches good.

The little twinkling man at the end of the platform spoke for the first time. “Any special complaint, Brother?”

“Yes. The meat last Friday was almost raw and I wouldn’t have given the jam tart to my pigs.”

“Just a minute. There was jam in the tart, wasn’t there?”

The sour man grunted.

“And the meat was meat? Both rationed food, I may remind you, that you were getting apart from your home ration. That’s a point to consider, Brother.”

“It’ s
not
the point. The point is that the canteen is making a profit out of selling inferior food. Look ‘ere!” He waved the paper bag. “What about this cheese roll? Threepence it cost me off the trolley this morning and what’s inside it?” He had pulled out the roll and
holding it above his head in both hands, he opened it dramatically : “Look!”

“What at?” asked the twinkling man, peering.

“What at? Ah, there you are. You can’t even see the bloody bit of cheese, let alone taste it.” A roar of laughter broke out and split up into arguments and promiscuous comment. Someone from the side wall told the sour man where he could put the roll if he didn’t like it, and was sternly reminded from the platform that there were ladies present.

“Twenty years,” a hot red man was saying, “twenty years before I with Brother Williams. I could sell those rolls at a penny each and still make a profit.”

“Blimey,” said the side wall, “you must have been pretty canny with the cheese, mate.”

“Now look here,” said the caterer. “I’ve not come here to be spoken to like that——”

“If you don’t like it,” chanted the side wall, “you know what——” bread and cheese blyh

“Order, order.” Mr. Wheelwright was slapping the table with the flat of his hand. “You’re all out of order. All remarks must be addressed to the Chair,
please
.“

“About the bad smell in the Redundant Stores,” shrilled the bald man, but the caterer’s voice was louder.

“Mr. Chairman, I protest against the remark made by our Brother over by the wall. As a Union Member, I’m entitled to an apology.”

“Sit down,” people told him, “you make us tired.”

“I shall not sit down,” he said, crimson in the face, “until I get an——”

“And in the meantime,” said the sour man, who was still holding the roll before him like a sceptre, “what about these bloody cheese rolls? Are we or aren’t we to go on being robbed? What are the Shop Stewards going to do about it?”

“I’m going,” said Paddy getting up. “I can’t stand any more of this. Coming Wendy?”

Mr. and Mrs. Holt had had Wendy very late in life. The doctor had taken a pessimistic view of Mrs. Holt expecting her first baby at the age of forty-three. “A great pity,” he had said, tut-tutting through his stained moustache at the prospective mother’s worn frailty. “You should never have taken the risk. I wonder your husband——”

Mrs. Holt did not tell him that it would have been as much as her or anyone else’s life was worth to dictate to Mr. Holt in these or any other matters, and in any case, her heart was singing with joy at the fulfilment of her twenty-year-old dream.

The doctor, who prepared Mrs. Holt for the ordeal of her confinement by making no bones about his doubts that she would come
through it, was only partially justified. The baby was little and colourless and ran the gamut of every childhood disease on its way to adolescence. Mrs. Holt was left with a heart that occasionally seemed to tip over and beat double quick time, leaving her gasping and speechless until she could get at her pills, and sometimes long after that. As for Mr. Holt, his nerves, which had always jangled at noises and disturbances, were red-hot wires every time the baby cried.

Mrs. Holt’s life became a struggle to keep the noises of childhood from him, but it was impossible in such a tiny house, although she, and eventually Wendy, were turned into mice on tenterhooks “not to disturb your father. “By the time Wendy had crept into her teens, his nerves were screaming, and he with them, every time a car backfired or he read something upsetting in the newspaper.

He was screaming now, and banging something, as Wendy hurried into the house. She closed the door softly behind her, wiped her shoes, put her umbrella in the stand and hung up her hat and coat before she went into the sitting-room to see what was wrong. No sense in going in with her outdoor things on, it only made him worse. He thought you were going to die of Pneumonia if you didn’t put on a coat every time you went out and take it off immediately you came in. Even if you only just popped out without a coat to post a letter, he would yell at you from a window, and although the neighbours must be used to him by now, it wasn’t very pleasant.