LITMIR.BIZ

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gear casings, electric motor housings and the like. The atmosphere was dense and smoky and the constant roar of the blast furnace, that melted the concoction of iron ore, scrap, coke and limestone ready for casting, meant they had to shout to each other to be heard.

      Clover pressed a foot pedal and the two halves of the corebox that bore the impression of the core she was making closed together with a sibilant hiss of compressed air.

      ‘Me and Charlie have decided to go to the seaside at Whitsun, Clover,’ Selina shouted over the din.

      Clover pulled on a lever and black sand, like a sudden fall of soot, was forced into the iron corebox under air pressure, filling the precisely machined space inside it. Black sand these days was a mixture of Bromsgrove red loam sand and fish oil, and smelt none too savoury. It was soft and easy to work and, by the time the cores came to be used, they would be cured hard and dry. In any case, oil sand was eminently preferable to muck sand, a mixture of coal dust and sand, with strands of hemp and horse manure to bind it together. When Clover opened the corebox again, the sand would have taken on the shape of the intricately engineered recess. The result was called a core. The molten iron would be poured into the mould at an exact, predetermined position, and would solidify around the core. By the time the iron cooled, the core would have disintegrated leaving its impression; a hole through the casting that its design and purpose ordained.

      ‘Where to?’ Clover asked. ‘Which seaside town?’

      ‘We thought about New Brighton. There’s a train early from Dudley Port.’

      Clover carefully eased the fragile core from its mould, inspected it and set it down gently on the table behind her. Then she began the whole process again. In a day, she would produce up to a thousand such cores.

      ‘Let’s hope the weather holds, Selina,’ she called.

      ‘Why don’t you come with us, Clover, you and Ned?’

      ‘I doubt if he’ll have time. Besides, I’m supposed to be helping him with some work. I’ll ask him though.’

      ‘Yes, ask him. Too much work’s no good for nobody. Going to the seaside would be a nice change.’

      At half-past twelve they had a half-hour break. Clover spent it with Ned outside in the warm sunshine, eating sandwiches as they sat on a crate of castings that were destined for Indian Railways, Lahore. She asked him if he fancied accompanying her to New Brighton with Selina and Charlie.

      ‘If the weather’s fine I’d rather try out the model of my new flying machine,’ he replied predictably. ‘I’ve done some wing-load calculations, Clover, and I reckon I need to increase the wingspan a bit.’

      Clover took a crunching bite out of a rosy apple.

      ‘I’m making some changes to the tail as well.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘I’m incorporating hinged flaps.’

      ‘I see.’ She didn’t. She never did when he launched into his technicalities.

      ‘I’ve been going over and over everything I’ve ever read about flying machines and one thing’s struck me, Clover.’

      ‘What’s that, Ned?’ She bit into her apple again.

      ‘The Wright Brothers have a patent for controlling direction and height by warping the wings in flight. All it does is induce drag – and it’s drag that gives you control. After four years of knowing about it, none of the Continental aviators have taken any notice at all and that’s why they can only get their machines to hop a few yards at a time. But I reckon I can get the same effect by incorporating flaps in the wings and the tail wings. Something a bloke called Sir George Cayley suggested a hundred years ago.’

      ‘A hundred years ago?’ Clover repeated, incredulous.

      ‘Oh, Sir George Cayley dedicated his life to the pursuit of flying. As long ago as 1809 he flew a full-size glider, unmanned at first but later with a young lad on board. Everybody seems to have forgotten the work he did. But I haven’t.’

      ‘Does that mean all my good work covering the wings was for nothing if you’re increasing the wingspan?’ she asked.

      ‘No, not all of it. Just bits. I need to test it all first on my new model, though. I’m certain it’ll work. I’m modifying the rudder as well.’

      ‘I hope all this will be worth it in the long run,’ Clover said. ‘Mind you, I have to admire your patience, Ned. And your determination.’

      He smiled warmly. ‘It’ll be worth it, Clover. I’ll be rich one day from making and flying these machines. You’ll see. Then I might even ask you to marry me.’ He said it as if in jest but Clover knew that this attempt at flippancy was merely a device to disguise how earnestly he meant it.

      She laughed dismissively. ‘Is there any fear of you achieving it in this century then?’

      ‘Well if I don’t, it won’t be for want of trying.’

      The hooter sounded and Clover picked up her lunchbox and the empty bottle that had contained her tea. ‘See you later, Ned. Shall I come and help you tonight?’

      ‘If you want. It’d be nice to see you.’

      Clover returned home to the Jolly Collier just after six o’ clock that evening. Although she had had a good wash in the ablutions block at the foundry and thoroughly brushed her hair, she felt she did not look her best. So when she popped her head round the door from the passage that led into the taproom and saw Ramona talking to none other than Tom Doubleday, she found herself in a dilemma: whether to stop and say hello and risk Tom’s silent disapproval of the way she looked in her working clothes, or allow Ramona, who looked delightful in a clean, pale-blue cotton dress, to have him to herself.

      But before she could escape, Tom had already spotted her. He smiled over Ramona’s shoulder and hailed her to join them.

      ‘Oh, I daren’t. I’m filthy. I must have a decent wash down and change before tea. And my hair…’ Clover rolled her eyes.

      ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ Tom assured her, seeing nothing untoward in her appearance at all. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’

      ‘He’s brought the pictures of the wedding, Clover,’ Ramona chipped in. ‘Come and have a gander. They’re ever so good.’

      Self-consciously, Clover stepped into the taproom and sat next to Tom. There were possibly a dozen other men in there, smoking, drinking, cursing, some playing crib. At one table a group were playing shove-ha’penny and beneath their table a mangy German shepherd dog lay, keeping a weather eye on the begrimed boot of one the more animated players whose foot shot out unwittingly from time to time in his excitement.

      Tom picked up the album from his lap and handed it to Clover. Smiling with anticipation she opened it and looked at the first photograph.

      ‘God! Look at Mother. She’s actually laughing,’ she said, delighted. She flipped over to another. ‘Oh, ’struth, look at me. I look awful.’

      Tom craned his neck to see the offending photograph. ‘To tell you the truth, Clover, I thought how nice you looked.’

      With a glow of satisfaction, she looked first at Tom then at her stepsister. ‘Has he been flannelling you like this, Ramona?’

      ‘He says I look like Ellen Terry,’ Ramona answered flatly.

      ‘Ellen Terry?’ Clover pulled a face of disapproval.

      ‘I said you look more glamorous than Ellen Terry, Ramona.’

      ‘I should hope so,’ Ramona said, her voice characteristically croaky. ‘She’s older than a flippin’ conker tree. She’s older than Mother.’

      ‘I only meant,’ Tom explained, ‘that you have similar poise. You must admit that Ellen Terry has poise. She’s very elegant.’

      Ramona

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