The Fancy (44 page)

“The three stage variable data boost control,” he read, while she was saying softly : “What is it about me that you don’t like? I can’t help feeling miserable when you’re so mean to me and I do try so hard.”

“What I don’t like about you,” he said, shutting the book with a snap and turning to see her face poised ready to weep or seduct according to what he was going to say. “What I don’t like about you is your damn fool mistakes, that’s all. I’m not interested in you as a person, I’m only interested in your work, and I’m telling you here and now, it stinks.”

For the rest of the afternoon Rachel sat at the bench with tears streaming down her face on to the gearwheels, but the only person who paid any attention was Edward, who said : “If you go on like that, we’ll have to send those gears for anti-salt water corrosion treatment.”

Mr. Gurley had left Ivy until the last, putting off what he knew was going to be an unpleasant interview. She stood before his desk, not meeting his eye when he spoke, trying to read upside down what was written against her name in the book on his desk.

He was convinced that her mistakes were the result of neither carelessness nor stupidity. She made them deliberately, it seemed, to get her own back on the unspecified “they” who embittered her life. Mr. Gurley was tired of Ivy and her mistakes. He had tried threats, reasoning, ridicule and once even sympathy, but she had accepted them all with her sideways look as if she had just poisoned your tea, and continued to make the mistakes. The A.I.D. was tired of Ivy, too. They had told Mr. Gurley he had got to either pull her up or get rid of her, so he said, without even bothering to discuss her black marks : “I’m giving you a change, Ivy. I’m taking you off the sump and putting you back on valves. You can do the valves for both the benches and Winnie and Grace can get on and learn another job.”

“But Mr. Gurley,” said Ivy in a voice that began shrill and grew
strident. “You can’t do that to me. I was promoted from valves months ago. You can’t put me back on a job that gets less money.”

“Can’t I?” said Mr. Gurley with pleasure, as a matter of fact.”. b. “That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t know what’ll happen about your money ; that’s not important. What is important is that you do those valves properly. Even you ought to be able to, but if I catch you out on them”—he jerked his thumb towards the door—“out on your ear.”

“You can’t do this to me,” began Ivy, through lips drawn back to a thin line, but he picked up the telephone and dialled a number, any number. “Hullo?” he said to the dialling tone. “That you, Mr. Levy? Gurley here. All right, Ivy that’s all.” He waved a hand at her. “Look, Mr. Levy, what I was going to say——”

“Look ‘ere, Mr. Gurley,” Ivy was saying, “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’d like you to know——”

“It’s about those new type coolant pumps,” he went on, pressing the receiver to his ear so that she could not hear the dialling tone. “We’re still getting them through without couplings, you know. What’s that? Yes … yes, I understand, but the point is … “He talked on without looking up until he heard the vicious slam of the door. Then he hung up the receiver, blew out his cheeks, looked at his watch, and wished that someone would walk in through the door with a tall, bottomless drink in which ice clinked.

It was a disgrace to go back on valves. Everyone knew that. You started on valves when you first came, and soon discovered that once you had mastered the simple technique, it was the easiest and most monotonous job on the bench. You simply tried each valve in the gauge and then turned it round and round under a strong light and a magnifying glass. If it was cracked or damaged, you put it on your left—Unserviceable ; if it was pitted where the rocker struck it, you put it on your right—Redundant ; if it was neither, you put it back in the box—Serviceable, That was all. Any novice could do valves after a day’s tuition, and the most enthusiastic novice would tire of them in a week. Grace had been unlucky ; she had been on valves for several months because everyone else refused to do them, but she didn’t really mind. It was a nice safe job and it gave her plenty of opportunity to plan her evening’s chores and how she was going to lay out her points.

When she came out of Mr. Gurley’s office, Ivy returned to her stool without a word and went on inspecting an oil filter as if nothing had happened, But somebody heard Bob Condor talking to Edward, and the news spread like wildfire round the bench : “Ivy’s been put back on valves!” She pretended not to notice them looking at her and whispering. The girls on the other bench were staring, too, enjoying the smug little thrill of it not having happened to them. Hardly anyone liked Ivy, and what little sympathy was offered, she rebuffed.

“Oh, please don’t be sorry for
me
,” she said, shaking Madeleine’s
hand from her arm. “I’m sure I don’t mind. It’ll make quite a change.”

“Poor Ivy, she’s taking it very well,” Madeleine said to Dinah, but Dinah and everyone else knew how Ivy felt. Sour at the best of times, she must be fermenting now.

On the following morning she moved her stool round to Grace’s corner and started work at once. Grace excitedly joined Dinah on the other side of the bench and approached with awe the subject of slipper gears. Ivy hardly spoke a word all day. When she had finished one set of valves, she took her bulb out of the light, picked up the gauge and her stool and tool box and crossedem;
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. blyh to the other girls’ bench, where she went through their valves in equal silence. When she had finished, she looked round to see whether her own team had started a new engine, and rejoined them aloofly as if they were strangers.

At tea-time she did not get out her magazine as usual and read avidly until the last possible moment. She simply sat puckering her lips to the hot tea, eating nothing, staring into space with eyes that were narrowed to slits of malice.

By the afternoon, having two people’s work to do, she was beginning to fall behind, but when some foolhardy person offered to help her, she snapped their head off and went on turning the detested, winking valves round and round under the light, turning her bitterness round and round in her heart.

At half-past five Bob Condor padded up to her. His shoes never had to be re-heeled, because he always walked on the ball of his foot.

“How are you getting on, Mrs. Shaunders?”

“All right,” she said without looking up.

He picked up a valve and peered at it suspiciously. “No mishtakes, I hope. Valves are one of the most important parts of the engine, valves are. You can’t afford to let anything through.” Ivy took the valve out of his hand without answering and put it into the gauge. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay on and do a little overtime tonight,” he went on. “There’s a stack of valves that were held up last week just come through from the Dishmantling. The engines are being held up for them, so I want to rush them through. There shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours’ work at the mosht. I’ll see the Timekeeper about your overtime money.”

Ivy looked at him as if he smelled. “I can’t stop on,” she said. “I’ve made arrangements to go out.”

“I’m afraid I must insist that you do. It’s an order, Mrs. Shaunders, not a request. I’m sorry to upset your plans, but in wartime work comes before pleasure, you know.”

She gave him another look, and he said : “You can telephone from my office if you want to let anyone know. That’ll be quite all right.”

“You can’t make me do overtime,” said Ivy defiantly. “I’m entitled to go at six o’clock, that’s my rights. I’ll tell my Shop Steward about this. The Union won’t stand for it.”

“You’re wrong there,” said Bob. “The Union is more interested in advancing progresh than hampering it as you seem to think. I’ve been into the whole question of overtime with them, and I’m glad to say that I have their whole-hearted shupport in any demands I think necessary. And this is necessary.” Necessary was an unwise sibilant for him, but he liked using it.

Edward strolled up with the genial air of a man who sees knocking-off time in sight.

“Anything the matter, Bob?” he asked. “Don’t tell me this girl’s made a bloomer. She’s been working like a saint all day.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Bob. “Hope she goes on as she’s started. No, the fact is, Ted, I was just telling her she’s got to stop on for a while tonight and get those outstanding valves cleared up.”

“Yes, I suppose she’ll have to. That all right with you, Ivy?” asked Edward.

“Oh, don’t consult me,” she took a step nearer to her mother,ouaf said huffily, shrugging her thin shoulders. “
I’ve
got no say. It seems it’s all the same whether it upsets a person’s arrangements or not. I thought I was working in a factory, not a Concentration Camp.” She turned her back on them and began to put valves one after the other into her gauge with angry speed. Bob and Edward looked at each other. Bob looked concerned. It was not correct for people to be rude to him, but Edward smiled tolerantly. “Difficult girl,” he mouthed.

Bob nodded. “I’ll get the cards ready. She can let me have them tomorrow morning,”

“Bad lack, Ivy,” said Edward to Ivy’s hunched back when Bob had gone. “I know it’s annoying when you’ve counted on getting away. Still, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping the jolly old war effort. It’s an important job, you know.” Fortunately he could not tell from her back what she was thinking about him.

“I tell you what,” he said, enjoying the unselfish impulse that came over him. “I’ll stay on with you and help you out if you like. Two of us ought to be able to get them packed up in no time. What d’you say?”

“You can if you like,” she said ungraciously. “Please yourself. I’m sure I don’t trouble one way or the other.”

There was no nightshift in the Inspection Department. It was quite an eerie feeling to be sitting in an island of light at the end bench, while behind you the Shop stretched away into darkness, unfamiliar in the silence that had followed on the mad trampling exodus at six o’clock. Except for the click of the valves as Ivy and he dropped them into the gauges there was only the faint hum from behind the distant doors of the Fitting Shop, and the occasional hiss and gurgle of a relaxing water pipe. Here and there bits of metal unaccountably ticked, like furniture creaking in a slumbering house.

At first, Edward tried to make conversation to Ivy. They might as
well have a chat if they were going to be shut up here together for an hour or so, but she was more than unresponsive, she was actively discouraging. He soon gave up the attempt, and worked away in a silence as unbroken as hers, examining each valve with deadly care. He was not going to let anything get by him ; it would look too bad—he a charge-hand, slipping up on work that he supervised all day.

Occasionally he looked along the bench at Ivy, isolated from him by the dark space in between their two circles of light, and removed in spirit so much farther than those few yards. It reminded him of those jokes about people being stranded on a desert island for months without introducing themselves.

“How are you getting on?” he asked, his voice breaking the long silence startlingly. They had been working for nearly an hour.

“I’ve nearly finished,” she said. “I’m going in a minute.”

“You’re nearly—Good Lord, you’ve been quick! I’ve got half a dozen more boxes to do.” They had divided the work up equally between them. “Hope you’ve inspected them properly,” he said.

“Of course I have. I don’t intend to spend all night here though, even if you do. I’ve got better things to do.”

Ten minutes later, she slammed the last box on to the pile at her end of the bench and stood up.

“Well, that’s that, thank God,” she said. “I’m off.” I met a chap the other day p along

“Don’t worry about me,” he said unnecessarily. “I’ll just carry on and get these finished. I don’t know how you managed to do yours so quickly. Slow but sure, that’s me.” Ivy put on her hat and coat and switched off her lamp, leaving him alone in his little island of light. He heard her feeling her way to the door.

“Well, good night,” she called from the darkness. “I suppose you’ll be here till morning,” and was gone without a word of thanks, to salvage the remains of her evening’s entertainment.

He heard the little door within the double doors click open, saw with surprise that it was only twilight outside the blacked-out Shop, and then he was alone with the long lines of engines crouching behind him. He had to look over his shoulder from time to time because of an absurd fancy that they were creeping up on him.

Knowing that Ivy was furious at being made to work overtime, he had quite expected her to stay out or at least come in late the next morning by way of protest. But when he arrived himself at twenty-past seven, she was already sitting at the bench in her overall, reading as if she had been there for some time.

It was not until that afternoon that the trouble started. Edward was in conference with Freda over a cracked supercharger casing when Bob Condor came up to him, with a fitter from the cylinder section in tow, who clutched a number of valves in his hand like a bunch of metallic flowers.

“Hullo, Bob,” said Edward, “I want a word with you. We’ve got a rear half-casing here. It’s a moot point whether it’s salvageable.”

“And I want a word with you,” said Bob, unusually brusque. “The blower can wait.” He took Edward over to an empty bench and motioned to the fitter, who laid the valves down with a righteous air.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Edward. “One of my girls been making a fool of herself?” He picked up one of the valves. “Whee-ee-ew! Is this supposed to be serviceable? Blast that Grace. She’s been long enough on the job to know better than to let a thing like that through.”

“No,” said Bob, “it’s not Grace.”

“But Ivy’s only been on them since yesterday. Hers wouldn’t be through to the next Shop yet. Unless they’re what she did last night—they went straight through, didn’t they?”

“No,” said Bob, monotonously, “it’s not Ivy.”

“Then why come to me? Jack Daniels is your man.”

“I only wish it were one of the girls,” said Bob, and sighed.