The Quality Street Girls

Chapter Four

Reenie’s grandmother had always told her that she had a good heart, but she liked the smell of trouble too much. As far as Nanna Martin was concerned, Reenie was a lost cause, and they would all just have to do their best to keep her on the straight and narrow and keep her in work until she could be safely wed.

Reenie didn’t think her family were fair on her. It was true that she found herself in the stew quite a lot, but she didn’t deliberately go out of her way to find trouble; it just found her. It was just this kind of situation that Reenie was walking into at the Mackintosh’s factory known as Toffee Town.

‘Do you know those two girls up at the far end? The one’s that work behind the pillar?’ Most of the girls sat in the same space that they had found themselves in on their first day at break time, and talked to the same handful of friends, never venturing out into the territory of other girls. Reenie, however, went round trying to make friends with everyone during her break. Impervious to any snubs she mostly won them over, but there were two exceptions: the two girls that she had watched on her first day, and who had given her a warning look. One of them was small, with a doll-like face; the other was plain with a red birthmark on her cheek like a blood-red tear. Today Reenie was passing the time of day with the boys who worked as porters on her floor and who filled the cages with the materials that the server girls needed to do their jobs. When the workforce wasn’t segregated by order it seemed to naturally segregate itself; it was typical of Reenie that she would drift beyond the bounds of shop floor etiquette and mix with everyone.

‘They call the younger one Good Queen Bess.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because her older sister’s called Mary, and she’s a Bess, so it’s like the queens who were sisters.’

‘Oh, of course.’ Reenie had no idea who the queens were that the boy porter referred to, but she thought it was wise to act as though she did.

‘She’s the lovely one so she’s Good Queen Bess, but her sister’s miserable so they call her Bad Queen Mary.’

‘Not always.’ One of the older porters put in matter-of-factly. ‘Not to her face.’

‘Aye, that’s true. But mostly she’s known as the Bad Queen.’

‘Bess and Mary? Right-o. Thanks for that. I’ll go and see if they want to make a new friend.’

‘Good luck with that. Those two don’t talk to anyone except Sarah who works in the dining hall.’

‘That’s a shame for them. You wait here while I go and find out why.’

The boys laughed and shook their heads. They liked Reenie, but she didn’t know what was good for her.

‘Everyone at home calls me Queenie Reenie.’ She put out her hand to shake the other girl’s. ‘I hear they call you Good Queen Bess,’ Reenie turned to smile at Mary too and hesitated, the words, ‘and they call you Bad Queen Mary’ hanging in the air unspoken, but cracking like an electric storm. Her voice faltered as she said, ‘… and you’re … her sister, aren’t you?’

Mary said nothing, but Bess laughed to break the ice and said, ‘Two Queens! Oh no, Queenie Reenie, which of us will be Queen of Quality Street?’

Reenie tried to shake the other girl’s hand, but as she touched it she felt the thin skin, the delicate bones, and worried that she would break it. Up close Bess seemed like a little bird, lighter than air and just as fragile; her huge blue eyes seemed all the sharper for the dark circles round them.

‘What do they call you Queenie for? I’ve never heard of a Queen called Reenie.’ Mary wasn’t taking Reenie’s hand to shake it, although Reenie did offer it.

‘Well it just sort o’ rhymes wi’ Reenie. My real name is Reenie, but you know: Reenie, Queenie, they just sound …’ Reenie trailed off in the face of such obvious hostility.

‘I think we need to get back to work. If we’re going to work as fast as you we’ll need to start early.’ Mary said it bitterly, as though she resented Reenie’s pace.

‘Oh no, don’t think of it like that, it’s not a competition. Everyone works differently. I just like trying to be the fastest because then I call tell me’ mam that I’ve done as she asked.’

‘And does your mam know that the faster you go, the more likely the Time and Motion men are to see that it’s possible to do our jobs faster, and then force us all to work faster so that we can never keep up with all the work that we have to do? And does your mam also know that that will mean we’ll all earn less, if we manage to keep our jobs at all?’ Bad Queen Mary was squaring up to Reenie now, hostile and cold.

‘Mary, love, there’s no need.’ Her sister gently put a worryingly pale hand on her shoulder and tried to draw her back. ‘Reenie doesn’t mean any harm—’

‘I don’t care what she means and what she doesn’t. This isn’t how we do things here.’

Reenie hadn’t realised when she came to work at the factory that everything would be so complicated. Instead of being paid a set amount of money for the time she spent working on the line, like she would if she’d worked in a shop, Reenie had been told they would all be paid for how many pieces of work they completed; depending on which department she worked in it might be how many cartons she filled with sweets, or how many tins she could make on the tin making machine. If she got though twenty boxes of sweets a minute she would earn the minimum rate for the day, if she got through ten percent more boxes she would earn ten percent more; twenty percent more boxes meant twenty percent more pay or ‘piece rates’. However, there was a maximum, once you made your maximum piece rates you had to carry on working even though you knew that you weren’t earning any extra money. Reenie didn’t mind this at all, she just enjoyed working alongside so many other girls her age. ‘Oh, but I can give you all some of my extra work if you like, you can keep the piece rates if you want to. I always reach my maximum and then after that I can’t get paid for any more so I just do it for fun—’

‘It’s fun for you, but not fun for the rest of us who have to keep up with you. Did you ever think what you having fun does to everyone else?’

‘But I’ll give you my extra—’

‘That’s a piece rate racket. You cannot share your extra work with other girls or they’ll sack all of us. Do you understand? If you try to do what you’re suggesting then there will be no more work for any of us because we will all be tarred by the same brush and no one else will take us without a reference.’

‘But why? I don’t understand! I can’t see why they wouldn’t just want me to work as fast as I can so that they get more sweets at the end.’

‘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.

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