Free The Bells of Bow by Gilda O'Neill Page A

closed over another folded length of cloth. ‘Yer know, I just can’t seem to get by from one pay day to the next lately without having to have a sub off me mum. And she’s getting right cheesed off with it, I can tell yer. Still, I promised her I’d help when I get in tonight – to sort out the blackout curtains and taping over the windows and that. Bloody waste o’ time, if you ask me. You done your’n yet?’ Lou bent forward to bite through the thread of yet another completed sleeve, turning her ginger curl-framed face towards Babs as she did so. ‘Oi! You listening to me, Babs?’
    Babs nodded.
    ‘Well, I only hope you are. The wardens are gonna make sure we’re all keeping the blackout from tonight, remember. Pathetic.’ Lou smiled happily to herself. ‘Still, at least it means I’m in Mum’s good books for saying I’d help her; not that I intend doing very much, mind. Not after working here all day, I don’t.’
    Lou continued to chatter away ten to the dozen while Babs sat silently working at the machine next to hers. Lou did not appear to be overly concerned that her friend was so much quieter than usual. But the machinist who sat on Lou’s other side – Ginny, a tall, thin-lipped gossip in her mid-twenties – seemed only too interested in Babs’s unusually subdued manner.
    ‘I see that Evie Bell ain’t in again yet,’ Ginny hissed slyly to Joan, the slow, fat, easily led girl of fifteen who sat next to her. ‘Since she bleached that hair of hers last weekend she’s been late every single morning. Now, let me guess why.’
    Joan giggled lewdly. ‘I dunno, Ginny. Why do you reckon?’
    ‘’Cos she’s no better than she ought to be, that’s why,’ Ginny muttered back. ‘Exactly like her mother, see.’
    Not being a practised gossip like Ginny, Joan made the mistake of talking about other people’s business in far too loud a voice for her own good. ‘What’s the matter with Evie and her mother then, Gin?’ she asked, agog at the possibilities. She gasped: ‘Here, they ain’t a pair of old brasses or nothing, are they?’
    Lou’s eyes widened as Babs stopped her machine dead, threw back her chair and strode along the bench to where the unfortunate Joan now sat shaking in her seat.
    ‘
What
did you say about me sister and me mum?’ demanded Babs. ‘I don’t think I could have heard yer right.’
    Ginny, whose machine was now the only one in the workshop still going, kept her head down, apparently engrossed in the Peter Pan collar she was making. Even Maria, a quiet, second-generation Italian girl who always kept herself to herself and concentrated on her job of hand-finishing the garments, had stopped working and was now staring at the sight of Babs advancing on Joan with a pair of pinking shears in one hand and a heavy wooden yard stick in the other.
    ‘I never meant nothing, Babs.’ Joan tried backing away, desperately looking to Ginny for support.
    ‘Well, if yer never meant nothing why d’yer say it?’
    ‘What yer gonna do with that yard stick and them pinking shears, Babs? Measure her up for a wavy haircut? She needs something to liven her up, big-mouthed little mare. Just look at her. She’s as plain as a plum pudding with no currants.’
    Babs knew the voice immediately; it was as familiar to her as her own. She looked round to see Evie standing in the doorway of the workshop, hands on hips, grinning from ear to ear.
    ‘Morning, everyone,’ she chirped, hanging her jacket and hat on the stand by the time clock. ‘Don’t s’pose it was you clocked me in, was it, Ginny?’ she asked sarcastically as she settled herself in the vacant seat at the end of the workbench. Up until Tuesday, the seat had been Lou’s, but when Evie had been so late in on Monday after staying out all night with Albie and had had her pay docked for her trouble, she had persuaded Lou to swap places and let her sit closest to the door. Now she could sneak in if she was late again, as she had