The Factory Girl

As they left the shop on Saturday evening after work, Clara Maitland and Henzey stepped out into the bustle of market traders packing away their wares, and across the street to Clara’s tram stop. The days were getting longer, and it was still light, but the overhead wires, from which the trams drew their power, were swinging in the wind that was yet vigorous.

‘I haven’t seen that Billy all week, Henzey,’ Clara said, avoiding a handcart. ‘Hasn’t he been to see you? It’s unusual. Have you upset him?’

‘If I have I never intended to,’ Henzey answered, her eyes misting.

‘Oh?’

‘I haven’t told you, but I went out with him last Sunday afternoon. He stopped for tea and for supper and my mother invited him to our house tonight for my birthday…But I don’t expect he’ll come.’

They paused while a man loading sacks of potatoes onto a lorry blocked their way. He apologised for holding them up, and they walked on.

Clara said, ‘I suspect he hasn’t been to see you just to make you think about him all the more. Absence making the heart grow fonder, and all that. I wouldn’t think much of him if he accepted your mother’s invitation, then didn’t have the grace to show up.’

‘Oh, I don’t think it’s just that, Clara…’

‘What then? There’s something else?’

‘Well, I thought he’d given that Nellie Dewsbury up. At least that’s what he led me to think.’

‘And he hadn’t?’

‘No. So I told him I wouldn’t see him again until he had. I told him only to come tonight if he’d finished with her.’

‘Well, good for you, Henzey. He sounds a bit of a cad after all.’

‘I suppose I’ve put him off. I suppose he thought I was a bossy little madam. Did I do the right thing, d’you think, Clara?’

‘You did exactly right. You’ve let him know you weren’t going to be manipulated, or swept off your feet.’

‘Oh, but I’m swept off my feet, all right, Clara. I’m swept off my feet good and proper.’

‘And that’s what makes it hard for you, eh? Did your mother like him?’

‘She must’ve. She invited him tonight…’

‘Well, if he doesn’t come you’ll have lost nothing, Henzey,’ Clara said resignedly. ‘You’ll have escaped a lot of heartbreak. That’s the best way to look at it.’

But that was not the way Henzey wished to look at it. In the intensity of her infatuation she had her heart set on Billy Witts. Come the evening, Henzey contemplated him as she undressed herself, ready to put on her new frock, just in case he did turn up after all. If he did come, it would be to claim her, and she knew he would be far more demanding than Jack Harper had been. Jack was never any trouble to keep at bay. Only occasionally would she allow him to kiss her. But she was much more of a woman now. Her natural awareness of things sensual and erotic was infinitely more acute, and her emotions were intensifying, accelerated by her enduring hopes and dreams of being Billy’s girl. As she recalled how he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, her heart beat faster and her body seemed to glow.

It occurred to her that she might not want to keep Billy at bay at all. Her new adult emotions were less ambiguous, more profound. She was contemplating more and more what it would be like to go all the way with a man. Of course such things were for marriage and not before, and she understood that, but still she couldn’t help wondering. She closed the door to the bedroom and sat naked on her bed. With her eyes closed she gently squeezed her breasts, imagining Billy to be doing it, and an unfamiliar warmth of desire lit her up. She stood up, and for the first time seriously scrutinised her own slender body in the tall mirror standing in the corner. He breasts were firm and supple, and she saw how her nipples had awoken in response to her own sensuality, each standing proud like a small, pink raspberry on a smooth, cream blancmange. She stroked the skin of her stomach. It was silky smooth. Her face was fine-featured and strikingly beautiful, though she considered her nose too long and her eyebrows too thick. She twisted sideways and turned her head to inspect her body in profile. Her waist was tight, her neck elegant, her stomach gently rounded. Her legs were long, well-shaped and unblemished, and her buttocks protruded neatly. Without even trying she possessed the sort of figure every modern, young woman was striving for.

By this time Henzey was earning eleven shillings a week and could afford to buy a nice dress and decent shoes occasionally. That day she had been shopping and bought a pair of silk French knickers, and a blue, waistless dress the same colour as her eyes, in crepe de Chine, loosely fitted at the hips. It was barely knee length, and her flesh-coloured silk stockings enhanced the shape of her legs. Her lustrous, dark hair framed her face, and she rounded off the whole effect with a long string of glass beads and a dab of her mother’s Chanel No. 5 behind each ear. When she emerged into the scullery even Herbert commented on how lovely she looked.

On tenterhooks, she helped her mother with final preparations while Alice and Maxine changed into their Sunday best. The closer the hands on the clock moved towards half past seven, the more she trembled inside, praying silently that he would arrive, but resigned to the certainty that he would not. When her mother spoke she failed to hear, her thoughts only with Billy. Lizzie smiled to herself at her daughter’s preoccupation, and understood; she had been there herself.

But prompt at half past seven she heard a motor car pull up outside the house. Her heart pounded with anticipation as she ran into the front room where the table was laid out for a meal. She peered through the lace curtains. It was him. It was Billy. She breathed a sigh of profound relief and smiled, rushing to the back door to greet him, keeping her fingers crossed that everything had gone the way she wanted.

‘Here, I’ve bought you some flowers,’ he said, producing a bouquet of roses from behind his back when she opened the door to him. He smiled at her expression and placed a kiss on her cheek, which made her blush since her mother witnessed it. But everything was all right. He had come to claim her after all.

‘Oh, Billy. Red roses. Oh, they’re beautiful. You shouldn’t have, but thank you ever so much. Aren’t they beautiful, Mom?’

‘You’d better put them in some water right away,’ Lizzie replied.

The evening went well, and Henzey was pleased to see that her mother seemed less tense than she had been for some time, more able to enjoy herself. Jesse, too, was bubbling with even more humour than normal. It was good to see them so happy.

Afterwards, in Billy’s arms, as they stood in the entry as he was about to leave, Henzey said, ‘It would mean a lot to me if my mother and Jesse got married. I’ve dreamed about it for ages now.’

‘They seem well suited.’

‘Oh, they are.’

‘That Jesse seems a genuine sort of chap. Is he anything like your dad was?’

‘In some ways. Except my dad used to get upset with people. He was so deep sometimes – very serious. Other times he was just the opposite – soft as a bottle of pop. Jesse never gets frustrated or upset like my dad used to. Good as gold he is with us, ‘specially considering he isn’t our dad. He thinks the world of our Herbert.’

‘It seems to me he thinks the world of all of you, Henzey. I think your mom’s lucky to find somebody like him.’

‘I think he’s lucky to get my mom.’

He gave her a hug. ‘That as well. She’s a lovely looking woman for her age, your mom. I can see who you get your good looks from.’

Henzey shrugged. ‘Everybody says I’m like my father. I loved him, Billy. He was a lovely man. I did some drawings of him when he was alive. I can show you them one of these days.’ She forced back a tear. This was not the time to weep after so pleasant an evening. ‘So what about Nellie?’ She had been dying to ask. ‘You finally broke it off with her?’

‘Last Monday night. I went round to their house, and we went for a drink at The Saracen’s Head. We talked things over and decided to part friends. She took it better than I thought she would. I think she was half expecting it.’

‘Any regrets?’

‘No regrets, Henzey. No regrets at all. I’m happy if you are.’

‘Oh, Billy, I’m happy,’ she breathed, and snuggled into his open coat like a kitten seeking warmth. ‘You’ll never know how happy.’

He gave her a hug. ‘I’ve been dying to see you all week. D’you know, most o’ the time I couldn’t even remember what you looked like. Daft ain’t it?’

‘So why didn’t you come and see me? I’d have been glad to see you. I was dying to see you.’

‘I dunno, really. It was a sort of punishment for me. A test, in a way, denying myself the pleasure of seeing you. I knew it’d be all the sweeter when I did. The waiting made me all the more anxious. I haven’t felt like that for years. It was a sort of perverse enjoyment.’

She wallowed luxuriously in his embrace. ‘Mmm. I know what you mean. It’s been the same for me, Billy.’

‘Anyway, I’m certain of one thing, after it all.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That I’m in love with you.’

She trembled inside at his unexpected confession of love, while he bent his head and kissed her on the lips, a long, lingering kiss.

At length, he said, ‘Shall I see you tomorrow? We could go for a ride out into the country like last Sunday. The weather’s due to pick up. What do you reckon?’

‘If you promise not to take me round any more churchyards.’

Henzey had never been so happy. At last she had the love of Billy Witts. Boys like Harold Deakin, Jack Harper and Andrew Dewsbury paled into insignificance. But she had known them to good advantage; even Andrew Dewsbury. They had given her the experience she needed, to know how to handle men. Everything had been in preparation for this love of her life at the ripe old age of seventeen, and she knew it. Now she could not imagine life without Billy. He was her life, all of a sudden.

But there was something else afoot.

‘Me and your mother are gettin’ married on the 28th of April,’ Jesse announced one evening, with Lizzie at his side.

Henzey, utterly surprised, embraced her mother and then Jesse. ‘All my wishes are coming true,’ she said, weeping tears of joy at the news. She had Billy Witts and soon her mother would be Mrs Lizzie Clancey. ‘Oh, wait till I tell Billy. He’ll be that pleased. How’s Ezme taken the news?’

Lizzie smiled. ‘Let’s just say she’s come round to accepting it. She didn’t at first, but she does now.’

The next time the rent man called, Lizzie gave notice that they wanted to vacate their house by the 4th of May, which would give them ample time to shift everything to the dairy house, their new home. Henzey suggested to her brother and sisters that for the first few days after the wedding they should continue to sleep in the old house, thus giving their mother and Jesse a brief honeymoon alone.

And so the ceremony took place at St John’s church, Kates Hill, at twelve o’ clock, after matins. It was conducted by the Reverend John Mainwaring who knew the bride and groom well. Lizzie looked significantly younger than her thirty-nine years and quite radiant in her short cream satin dress with its fashionable uneven hemline. Maxine was the only bridesmaid and Dr Donald Clark, Jesse’s lifelong friend, was best man. Henzey wore a new short straight dress in cinnabar red with the row of pearls Billy had given her, and Alice, a beige flouncey dress and a borrowed fox fur. They all looked exquisite, enhancing the reputation they were rapidly acquiring of being the best-looking girls in the parish. And that reputation also included Lizzie in the eyes of a great many.

Later that evening when the hangers-on had left and Alice, Maxine and Herbert had drifted back to number 48, Billy Witts announced he ought to leave, too. It was after midnight and he’d got to be up early next morning. Henzey duly fetched her best hat and coat from the hall and gave Jesse and her mother a goodnight kiss.

‘It’s been a happy day for me seeing you two married,’ she confessed. ‘I know you’ll be happy.’

Lizzie wrapped her arms around her. ‘Thanks, my flower. You don’t know how much that means to both of us.’

‘Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Jesse.’ Henzey took Billy’s hand. Billy raised his free arm in a gesture of goodnight and they left the newly-weds to their first night together.

As Henzey and Billy walked across the street, Lizzie watched them from the front room window of the dairy house. She watched as they stood by his car holding each other in a clinch for about five minutes, pecking at each other’s lips occasionally, looking into each other’s eyes and laughing.

‘Are you coming to bed, Lizzie, or are you gunna stand ganning on them pair all night?’ Jesse called from the bedroom, after settling his mother for the night.

Lizzie dragged herself away from the chink in the curtains and climbed the stairs. ‘I just wanted to make sure Billy hadn’t gone in the house with her at this time of night.’ She kicked off her new shoes with relief and slumped onto their new, supple bed. ‘If they do, I’ll know they’re up to no good. I just don’t trust that Billy, Jesse.’

For Henzey it had been the happiest day of her life. For once she lay alone in bed – in Lizzie’s big bed – wide awake, thinking over what had happened that day. Life really was going her way now and she had every reason to be happy. Not only was her mother married to a man they all loved and respected, but she herself was deeply in love with a well set up young man. Who knew where it might lead eventually? Best not to dwell on it, but she fostered a few hopes and wishes already. Love was new, exhilarating and, every time she even thought about Billy, her pulse raced and butterflies stirred in the pit of her stomach. She would not see him tomorrow – she didn’t on a Monday – but he had promised to take her to meet his family soon and, on Saturday night, they were due to go to The Tower Ballroom by the reservoir at Edgbaston. She did not know yet what they would be doing on the other nights of the week, except on Wednesday, which was May Day. Doubtless they would join the throngs in the castle grounds that day and go for a drive into the country in the evening. She didn’t mind what, just so long as she was with him.

Henzey rolled onto her left side in the bed and shuffled herself comfortable. Yes, she really had got the better of Nellie Dewsbury. Whatever heartbreak Nellie was going through, somehow it served her right. Whatever that horrible girl was feeling she was only reaping what she had sown.

With these thoughts running through her head she was as far from sleep as it was possible to be. She sighed and closed her eyes again, and her thoughts meandered to her family. They, too, were settled. Herbert was doing well in Jesse’s dairy business, and Jesse had suggested they become partners when he was twenty-one. Already they were considering taking on other men and expanding the business. In an atmosphere of increasing economic gloom, it was fortunate that they were doing so well. Alice was coming fifteen and seemed to have settled in at George Mason’s. Henzey had taken her under her wing to some extent, showing her what to do and putting her right if she erred. She had also warned her about Wally Bibb whom she did not trust. Maxine was excelling at school, though that was to be expected, for they were always being told that she was the brightest girl in the class and she should go to university since more of them were accepting girls. But Maxine was set on music and her ambitions lay no further than her cello.

At last Henzey felt sleepy. She turned over and smiled contentedly again as she curled up in the big wide bed, all warm and snug. Soon she was dreaming of Billy Witts.

Henzey happily fell into the routine of seeing Billy Witts about three times a week. She had met most of his family, who were very nice to her. At weekends they went dancing at The Tower Ballroom in Edgbaston; one night in the week they usually went to the cinema and twice already he had taken her to posh restaurants. On Saturday mornings, while she was at work, Billy liked to play golf and, on summer Sunday afternoons, he usually played cricket for St. Thomas’s church team. She had accompanied him to a couple of matches. Those of his friends she had met seemed to like her as far as she could tell, and a girl-friend of one of them, Marjorie Lycett, told her how glad she was that Billy had finally ditched that snotty Nellie Dewsbury.

When Billy brought Henzey back home to the dairy house at night he would swing his Vauxhall through the wide entry and into the yard and stop the engine while they said goodnight. And sometimes it would take them a whole hour. Henzey knew that it would have been so easy to get carried away with Billy, for he always left her longing for him, breathless and tingling all over; but happy, for he wooed her with fine words.

She wanted him. He lit her up like a firecracker whenever he touched her, but she dare not make the running and he certainly seemed in no hurry, however passionately they kissed. But she never allowed herself to become preoccupied with such thoughts. Rather, she enjoyed being in love, with all the attention and sweetness it brought, and was content to let such physical matters take their course. Besides, she did not want to get into trouble, like Rosie Frost. She wanted no guilty conscience that she had gone against her mother’s wishes. Sex should be confined to the marriage bed; and she was happy to wait.

Then one Wednesday in the middle of May, when Henzey had come home from work, she went upstairs to change. Her mother was half-undressed in her bedroom, posing in the cheval mirror at the side of her dressing table. The door was open and as Henzey walked by she caught sight of Lizzie in profile. She stopped to talk, leaning against the door jamb, and saw how much weight Lizzie had gained.

‘I was just trying on this new frock,’ Lizzie said, pointing towards a heap of floral patterned voile. ‘Jesse and me have been invited to a Masonic do on the first of June. He reckons they might invite him to join. It’s his life’s ambition now to be a Mason.’

‘Coming up in the world, eh? Come on, then. Let’s see your new frock. I bet you’ve had to have a bigger size again. You’re really putting weight on, Mom. It must be contentment.’

Lizzie took the dress and slipped it over her head, adjusting it as it fell around her body.

‘Mother, it looks like a maternity frock,’ Henzey commented innocently. ‘You’re not that fat.’

‘No, not yet I’m not,’ she sighed. ‘But I soon shall be.’

‘Not if you watch what you eat.’

Then it dawned on her.

‘God! You’re not pregnant, are you, Mom?’ Henzey sat down on the bed and looked at her mother.

Lizzie turned away self-consciously. ‘Yes, I am, our Henzey.’

‘But you shouldn’t show yet.’

‘Henzey, I’m four months.’ Lizzie walked over to the window and stared out across the field behind the house and the vast industrial landscape that was spread out before her.

‘But you’ve only been married a fortnight…You mean you got married because you had to?’

Lizzie did not reply.

‘And all the time you’re preaching to me to mind what I’m doing? That I’m only seventeen…My God!’

Henzey felt ashamed of her mother, but she’d said enough. Never before had Henzey spoken to her like that, and she half expected a slap across the face for her trouble. Yet no slap came. For long seconds Henzey was silent while she tried to collect her thoughts. Abruptly, she stood up and turned away from Lizzie, biting her bottom lip in anger and distaste. Then, just as abruptly, she sat down again. Her mother – her own mother – had been having sex with Jesse before she was married…And at her age…It was disgusting. It was absolutely disgusting. It came as such a shock that Henzey felt she’d been punched in the stomach.

Lizzie remained at the window, looking out.

Henzey shook her head slowly in disbelief, then spoke again, quietly, composed. ‘What am I supposed to say, Mom, when folks start making jokes about my mother and the milkman?’

Lizzie remained silent.

‘And how d’you think our Herbert’s going to feel when his mates start laughing behind his back, making sarcastic comments?’ Henzey continued. ‘Dear God, what sort of an example d’you think you’ve set our Alice and Maxine? Come to that, what sort of an example d’you think you’ve set me, after all your preaching and finger wagging? Good God, Mother! I can hardly believe it.’

Lizzie continued to look outside with glazed eyes. Everything Henzey said was true. Every example she cited, as to the consequences for the family, she had herself considered. It was as if their roles had been reversed, as if Lizzie was the errant, wayward daughter and Henzey the fraught and angry mother. Now Lizzie felt ashamed –thoroughly ashamed. She had no wish to alienate her daughter over this, nor any of her family. What she needed above all was their understanding and their support, but particularly from Henzey.

Henzey saw her mother’s shoulders shaking and, at first, she thought she was laughing in defiance till she turned round and saw tears streaming down her agonised face. Lizzie took a handkerchief from a drawer in her dressing table and wiped her eyes. Then she sat on the bed by Henzey’s side and turned to face her, taking her daughter’s hands.

‘Don’t be judge and jury, our Henzey,’ she wept. ‘But for the grace of God it could be you pregnant.’

‘Then, Mother, for the grace of God I’d have to call the child Jesus,’ Henzey replied indignantly, ‘because it’d be another virgin birth.’

‘Oh, our Henzey, I knew it’d be like this when you found out. I wanted to tell you from the outset, but like a fool I decided against it.’ She wiped away another flush of tears. ‘I hoped you’d understand. It’s not as if Jesse and me are kids. We love one another and we wanted one another. We haven’t stalked out like a tomcat and a tabby to do it behind the miskins and then run off. It’s meant something to us – try and understand that. Don’t forget, either, that we aren’t too old for that sort of thing, even if you might think we are. We would’ve got married whether or no. My being pregnant has only made it happen sooner.’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have expected you to be a saint,’ Henzey said quietly, ‘but I never dreamed you’d get pregnant. My own mother. It’s so damned stupid…And at your age.’

‘Well, I confess I hadn’t counted on it, our Henzey. And I’ll confess to you that at first I didn’t want the child. But I’m stuck with it, nevertheless.’

‘Does Jesse want it?’

‘Oh, he’s happy about it. He’s like a dog with two tails. Can’t you tell? He reckons we won’t get a look in when it’s born. He reckons you girls’ll bring it up.’ She looked up at her daughter beseechingly, tears again filling her eyes, which now were showing signs of puffiness. ‘Henzey, I don’t need your condemnation, I need your support. It’ll be hard enough as it is without me feeling you despise me. Try to imagine yourself in this position. You’d want my support if it was you that was pregnant.’

‘If it was me that was pregnant, Mother, I’d consider it my just desserts.’

But it was not in Henzey’s nature to be hard, least of all with the woman who had carried her, fed her, sacrificed everything for her and brought her up against all odds. Especially when she was crying. Always she’d hated to see her mother cry. It reminded her of when she was a child, how she would be filled with anxiety at the sight of Lizzie weeping over her poor, invalid father. It was the same now. Already she was regretting her harsh words. She began weeping herself and opened her arms to Lizzie. They held each other tight, letting the tears flow unabated. Lizzie needed Henzey’s encouragement, she needed her love and not least her friendship. Henzey could no more refuse these things than she could walk out of her life.

There was instantly a new bond; a new kind of love; a mutual respect that had not manifested itself before. They both felt it. Henzey sensed her own maturity and, for the first time, realised her mother’s fallibility. Lizzie was merely flesh and blood, prone to all its weaknesses and likely to be submitted to its derision unless they outfaced this thing together. And Lizzie realised that her daughter was no longer a child; she was a woman and could be addressed thus. Why had she overlooked it all this time?