Free The Factory Girl by Maggie Ford Page A

his shop at six-thirty and her stomach was all collywobbles, first and foremost at the prospect of the meeting itself and also at the idea of being taken to the theatre, the dress circle no less!
    She’d never been in the dress circle in her life, nor anywhere else in a theatre but up in the gallery, the gods as it was termed by those who could afford nothing else. She and a couple of girlfriends, with what was left of their weekly pay packet after handing over half of it to their mums for their keep, would line up outside and while they queued would be entertained by buskers, some every bit as good as the performers inside except that many were missing a leg or an arm or were blinded by courtesy of the trenches in which they’d fought, and all of them just about scraping a subsistence by kerbside entertainment.
    She and her friends would finally be admitted by a side door to mount endless flights of stone stairs between pockmarked walls to where the tatty, grubby balcony jutted out just below the theatre roof, its occupants required to sit on tiers of wooden steps each with the minimum of padding for a bottom to sit on, and certainly no backrests. The audience there would be in everyday clothes and any woman too overdressed would be seen as a tart or worse, and any finely dressed man would likewise be looked on as a pansy.
    Up there, laughter and catcalls were the order of the day, the rustle of sweet paper and crackle of peanut shells incessant. An attendant in that area was more a warder than a helper, watching for anyone dropping orange peel, apple cores, sweet papers or peanut shells down on the heads of those below, or dissuading the more unruly from giving out boos or catcalls during serious drama and seeing that no fighting broke out. The persistently guilty were hauled off to the delight of everyone, to be marched down the shabby back stairs to the street and thrown out. Being up in the gods was entertainment in itself and Geraldine had always enjoyed the treat.
    Now she was to be treated to the dress circle, not even the upper circle where she might have felt more comfortable. In the dress circle she’d have little idea how to deport herself. There was a feeling too that Anthony Hanford would have taken a girl of his own sort into the stalls with the fur-coated and bejewelled. Perhaps he was sparing her the embarrassment of rubbing shoulders with the extremely wealthy, but though that should have been a relief to her it annoyed her a little. Wasn’t she good enough to be with them in the really posh seats? Perhaps he didn’t see that by considering her feelings he was in fact embarrassing her already.
    Dad glanced up from his
Evening Standard
as she entered the back room. ‘Where you off to, all dressed up?’
    Mum was in the kitchen washing up with Evie wiping. They hadn’t gone to the pictures this Saturday being that Dad was short of money this week. Geraldine had hoped that was where they would have been so that she could have crept out in her best clothes without being seen. But no, it had to be Sod’s Law, didn’t it, that they’d be home on this particular evening of all evenings?
    â€˜I’m just going out, that’s all,’ she answered sharply.
    â€˜Must be somewhere posh. You ain’t worn that thing since Mave’s weddin’. Showing orf that time like you was rollin’ around in dosh.’
    She was churned up enough by this business without having to explain herself away to Dad. ‘I’m just going to see a friend of mine.’
    â€˜Bloke? New bloke. Posh is ’e?’
    â€˜That’s my business!’
    â€˜Well, you be sure of ’im bringin’ yer ’ome by ten-thirty.’
    â€˜I’m going to see a show, Dad. It don’t finish before then.’
    â€˜Eleven then. And straight ’ome, mind – no funny larkin’ abart, understand?’
    â€˜I’ve never done anything like larkin’