The Quality Street Girls - Penny Thorpe Quality Street

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when their tubs are full; and you have to be as fast as you can be.’ As if to emphasise the point the supervisor stressed the next words one at a time. ‘If you are too slow you will slow down the production line and people won’t get their sweets when they go to the shops. Do you understand?’

      A chorus of ‘Yes, Miss’ rose up into the chocolate and strawberry scented air, and Reenie scanned the room for the fastest workers. There, at the back of the room, was her new role model. A girl a year or two older than her and a foot taller was supplying two wrappers at the same time by picking up multiple boxes with her fingers. Reenie had seen the landlady at The Old Cock and Oak do the same thing with empty pint glasses, and Reenie made a mental note to practice with flowerpots as soon as she got home. If she could build up the strength in her fingers, she could do the same thing. But as Reenie was watching, the taller girl caught her eye and shook her head. A second girl, like a prettified miniature copy of the first, appeared from the door at the far corner of the workroom and scurried to her place beside her older sister; she picked up where the other had left off, but not half as quickly, and they both looked round furtively to check if their switchover had been seen. The taller girl was no longer carrying multiple boxes at once, but she was looking daggers at Reenie.

      Reenie realised that she had seen something that she wasn’t meant to see, and her eyes snapped back to the supervisor. ‘You go to the cages and fetch a box of the foils and put them on her right. Then you go back to the cages and fetch a box of cellophanes and put that behind the foils, before you pick up the tub on her left that she has filled and add it to the pile on the pallet nearest you at the edge of the room.’ The young supervisor was about to use that trick again of stressing every word with a pause in between, Reenie could tell. ‘When you place that tub on the pallet you must pull up the flaps at the side of the tub,’ the supervisor picked up a tub and demonstrated in a manner as exaggerated as her voice. ‘You must fold them over, like so, and then you must make sure that they overlap, like so. Does anyone not understand?’

      ‘No, Miss.’ All the new girls sang together.

      Reenie dared to raise her hand, ‘Please, Miss?’

      ‘What don’t you understand?’ The young supervisor was abrupt, but not unkind as she frowned on Reenie.

      ‘Why don’t the girls pick up two boxes at a time to go faster?’ Reenie mimed the action that she had seen with her fingers.

      The young supervisor couldn’t suppress a laugh, ‘Well you’ll go far. What’s your name, love?’

      ‘Reenie Calder.’ Reenie wasn’t quite sure what she’d said to amuse, but she thought she regretted saying it.

      ‘Well, Reenie Calder, if you can carry more than one box at a time, and keep it up for a whole shift, and do it every shift for two weeks, I’ll double your wages. For every day that you can do the work of two girls, I’ll give you the pay of two girls. But don’t get your hopes up, love, you’ll have your work enough cut out for you keeping up with one job, let alone two.’

      One or two of Reenie’s classmates had looked excited at the promise of double pay, but most of the girls had smirked at Reenie’s mistake. These were girls whose brothers and sisters and fathers already worked in the factory and who knew how hard it was to keep up the speed of everyone else, let alone double it. Reenie was a little embarrassed, but she was also privately sceptical; if she could manage her father and a horse at the same time, and if she got in enough practice to strengthen her hands, she thought she stood a fair chance at making good speed. Little did Reenie realise then that her speed would get her into more trouble than she could handle on her own.

       Chapter Three

      ‘Mother!’ Reenie threw down her old canvas shoulder bag as she banged open the back door and bounded into their farmhouse kitchen. ‘It’s wonderful! I love it! It’s brilliant!’

      Reenie’s mother was slicing up a freshly baked loaf at their kitchen table, and the house was filled with the welcoming aromas of warm bread, spicy sausage stew, and herb dumplings. ‘Alright, calm down, no need to worry the livestock.’ Reenie’s mother was amused by her daughter’s enthusiasm, she put down the bread knife and dusted the flour from her hands. ‘There are sheep in the far field that can hear you all the way from here, and they’re taking fright.’

      ‘Oh mother, you should have seen it.’ Reenie was in raptures as she hung her coat up on the aged brass hook inside the door. ‘It’s like something from a film or a novel. The girls are so glamorous, and—’

      ‘Glamorous? Factory girls?’ Mrs Calder moved to close the kitchen door that Reenie had left open, but her daughter darted out again and started looking through the dead summer plants that were drooping, brown and dry under the kitchen window in their boxes. Reenie carried on talking happily and enthusiastically to her mother in the open doorway all the while as though there were nothing out of the ordinary in her search of their little kitchen garden in the corner of the farmyard.

      ‘No, they were, they were glamorous. They’ve all got lovely manners, and they tie their turbans up in this fancy way at the front, so it makes them look all haughty, like. And I’m going to be in the strawberry cream room at the end where they wrap the sweets by hand and you should see them, Mother, they move like lightning. I’m going to be the fastest, but I need to practice with flowerpots,’ Reenie parted some out-of-season honeysuckle vines and called back to her mother. ‘Can you spare any?’

      ‘Spare any what?’ Mrs Calder was used to her daughter’s mildly eccentric schemes and took it all in her stride, leaning against the kitchen doorframe with her arms folded and her hair tied up in a knot on top of her head.

      ‘Flowerpots! I need flowerpots! It’s essential to my plan. I’m doing what Donna, the landlady does at The Old Cock and Oak.’

      Reenie’s mother started to understand why her daughter was poking about among last spring’s bulbs beside the kitchen door. ‘Is this what the other girls do? Have they told you something about flowerpots? Because it might be a wind-up, you know. I warned you about the overlookers sending you for a ‘long stand’, you remember?’

      ‘No, it’s my idea,’ Reenie had picked up a couple of larger terracotta pots and tested them for weight, covering her hands in soil and slimy green moss in the process, before discarding them and reaching for another. ‘I’ve been watching everyone on the line, and I can see how I can get to be the fastest, it was my idea.’

      ‘Well I’m glad you want to be fast, but I don’t think you need to be the fastest. At least, not while you’re new. You might put a lot of people’s noses out of joint.’

      ‘But why?’ Reenie was waving their small stone gnome around as though the answers might fall out of it if she shook it hard enough. ‘They said that if I work fast, then the girl I work beside gets better piece rates, so I thought that if I was the fastest, then—’

      ‘Come and sit in here,’ Mrs Calder beckoned her into the warm kitchen. ‘Come on. Leave those plant pots alone, they’re hibernating. Sit at the table while I put the kettle on.’ Without saying anything, Mrs Calder took a wet cloth to her daughter’s hands while steering her in the direction of the rough old kitchen table.

      Reenie didn’t try to resist but did complain. ‘Mother!’

      Her mother ignored her objection and carried on settling her down into a chair, closing the kitchen door, putting the kettle on and taking out a teacup for each of them. ‘Now, I think you’re right; they will be glad you’re quick, but if you try to do things differently, then you might get their backs up. Do you remember what I’m always telling you about the difference between speaking up and being outspoken?’

      Reenie turned on the dining chair, making it creak. ‘But this isn’t even speaking, this is working without talking.’

      ‘The day you work without talking is the day the King gives the crown to your dad. I

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