The Quality Street Wedding Read online

  Doreen froze. Reenie was looking directly at the back of her neck and she had an odd feeling that something had shifted underneath her mobcap at the same moment that Reenie had screamed.

  ‘Doreen,’ Reenie said, with slow, deliberate reassurance, ‘you mustn’t move. Stay completely still. It’s a big one. I can see its leg just under the edge of your cap. Stay perfectly still and I’ll swat it out with my hand.’

  Doreen’s neck and shoulders became rigid as her muscles tightened in fear; she hated spiders and they sometimes saw exotic species of spiders and other insects in the toffee factory, creatures which had travelled there from foreign climes in the sacks of imported cocoa beans and Brazil nuts. These insects usually all died out in the winter, but it was warm in the factory and this might be one of the bad ones. Doreen held her breath and she could see Reenie do the same thing as she raised her arm and swatted tentatively at the back of Doreen’s mobcap.

  ‘It bit me!’ Reenie looked down at her fingers where a little drop of crimson blood was blooming on a tiny scratch.

  There was a pause as they looked at one another in shock, then Doreen shrieked and began frantically flicking at her hair and shaking her head wildly while hopping from one foot to the other in panic. Then a chorus of shrieks rang out through the production hall as the tiny offender, exotically coloured and with multiple limbs, whizzed through the air and landed with a plop in one of the open vats of molten toffee which were about to be poured into starch moulds.

  A hush descended on the workforce, a hush just low enough to allow them all to hear the squeak of a door as Starchy Starbeck entered to perform her inspection at the newly-created production line. She did not look happy.

  Chapter Two

  ‘We can have these sent on to your workroom, you know. Or your manager.’ The freckled youth who manned the service hatch of Mackintosh’s factory post room had long since grown tired of Mary Norcliffe’s thrice-daily visits, and wasn’t shy about showing it. He’d have forwarded her letters on to Timbuktu if it meant he didn’t have to check for her blasted foreign letters three times a day.

  ‘Thank you, no.’ Mary was tight-lipped and determined. A pulse beat hard in her throat as it always did when she went to wait for word from Albert Baum.

  ‘Happens my superintendent wants to know what’s in these letters of yours.’ And the freckle-faced youth called out into the office behind him, ‘Mr Pinkstone! She’s ’ere again!’

  Mary’s blood ran cold and she gave the lad at the service hatch an icy look. ‘You don’t need to know what’s in my letters. It’s confidential Mackintosh’s factory business and I’ve got permission.’

  Mr Pinkstone, a balding, snivelling sneak who spent his days griping about improperly wrapped parcels, sniffed his way over to the service hatch where Mary waited.

  ‘What’s all this?’ He wrinkled up his nose as though the smell of caramel and sweet roasted almonds which wafted in from the factory corridor offended his finely tuned olfactory sense which could tolerate only the delicate aromas of gummed envelopes and brown paper. ‘I need to know what’s in all these letters. You get too many for company purposes, so they must be illicit.’

  Mary noticed that the freckled youth was smirking in triumph and she clenched her teeth as she said, ‘You know what’s in my letters, sir; it’s company correspondence. I’ve been coming here to collect it for the past ten months. My head of department is stranded in Düsseldorf and he sends me my instructions by daily airmail.’ Mary’s voice wavered as she thought of the last letter her manager had sent her. It had read, ‘My darling Maria, I beg you not to think of propriety, but to write as often as you can. Your letters are the sunshine to my darkest of days.’ Mary’s letters might have started as business correspondence, but if they were opened they wouldn’t pass scrutiny now.

  Mr Pinkstone sniffed. ‘Stranded, is he? Stranded in his own country?’

  ‘Herr Baum has been appointed as the Head Confectioner of this factory and as soon as the Home Office grant his work permit he will return. Until that time you’d do well to show his correspondence the same respect you’d show that of any other head of department.’ Mary gulped down an angry sob. She was sick and tired of hearing people talk about her Albert with derision because he was foreign, and Jewish, and powerless. He was the only person in the world who could make her worries melt away with a glance and he was worth ten of Mr Pinkstone.

  ‘Well, it’s my job to see to it that people don’t abuse the system. It costs a lot to send letters abroad and I must safeguard company funds. I’ve left your letter with Mrs Starbeck at her request—’

  ‘You’ve done what!’ Mary’s anxiety bubbled over into indignant rage and her voice was loud enough to startle some factory workers in the next corridor. ‘You have no right. Those letters are addressed to me and to me alone.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve got nothing to hide you won’t mind a senior manager looking—’

  ‘She’s not even remotely my manager, she has no jurisdiction in my department!’

  ‘Well, as long as your manager is away in his own country I must air my concerns to someone in a senior position.’

  ‘Then talk to the employment Department; talk to Mrs Wilkes, or to her secretary Diana Moore.’

  ‘Your friend, do you mean?’ the freckled youth offered the unwelcome heckle with another triumphant smirk.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know that you only went to Starchy Starbeck because she’s your friend. Don’t think I don’t know that you’re all in the same nasty little club, with your uniforms and your political meetings. I know this isn’t about postage, it’s about Herr Baum being a Jew and you being one of Oswald Mosley’s stinking lot. You’re fooling no one!’ Mary was crying with rage now and she didn’t care who saw her. She stormed down the factory corridor towards the workroom where she knew she would find her friend Reenie. Only Reenie could help her now, because Mary knew, without having read it, what would be in that most recent letter which was with Mrs Starbeck – and it wasn’t Mackintosh’s company business.

  Chapter Three

  ‘All these notices can come down.’ Cynthia Starbeck waved a hand in the direction of a staff noticeboard where the factory medical department had put up posters warning workers to be vigilant against seasonal outbreaks of influenza. ‘It only encourages girls to make a meal of things if they’re under the weather. Nine times out of ten it’s a common cold; and if they’re weak enough to catch real influenza, they weren’t constitutionally fit to work here in the first place.’ Starbeck looked to her assistant who was nodding vigorously, but doing nothing. ‘Well, take them down, Dunkley; don’t just look at them.’

  Verity Dunkley, who preferred to be known as Dolly and was constitutionally averse to work of any kind, looked in surprise at her manager. ‘You want me to take them down?’

  ‘Yes, you; take down any nonsense about influenza. These noticeboards are for advertising the Time and Motion Department’s piece rates, not medical scaremongering from Nurse Munton. She’s got her own noticeboard outside the factory sick bay, that’s enough for her. I’m not having her taking over all of mine.’

  Dolly looked mortified at the thought of having to undertake any task more strenuous than agreeing slavishly with her manager and moved to take down the notices, pin by painstaking pin.

  Mrs Starbeck was evidently not impressed by her assistant’s snail-like progress. ‘Come along, quicker than that, stop dawdling. Take down the rest from the corridor and take them to my office. Quick about it, Dunkley, come on now.’

  Young Dolly Dunkley, her face screwed up into a scowl, stomped out of the factory workroom, more like a thirteen-year-old sulking at their mother than a twenty-year-old who owed their promotion from the factory floor to Mrs Starbeck.

  Cynthia Starbeck pulled back her shoulders, pulled straight the cuffs of her cream satin blouse, and surveyed the workroom. The workroom was much quieter than usual and something was clearly amiss. She knew they were expecting
her for a scheduled inspection of the new production line, but this was not the hush of expectation. The rows of women who wrapped sweets from dawn until dusk were whispering to each other, while the conveyor which brought them naked, glistening sweets was silent and still.

  The line had clearly been shut down and Mrs Starbeck could see a commotion in the far corner of the hall where a gaggle of staff were anxiously pouring out a whole copper boiling pan of toffee with exaggerated slowness. This was just the kind of time-wasting inefficiency she was there to stamp out.

  ‘What is happening here?’ Cynthia Starbeck’s tone was bright as pear drops and her almond-shaped eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile that was almost maternal. It was a manner which fooled plenty of people who hadn’t encountered her before, but the women on the experimental toffee line were not so green; they held their breaths.

  ‘We’re looking for a spider, Mrs Starbeck,’ Reenie said, careful not to suggest the involvement of any other colleague by name, although Doreen Fairclough and Siobhan Grimshaw were clearly implicated by their proximity.

  ‘A spider?’ Mrs Starbeck’s smile was still fixed in place, but its warmth dropped by a degree or two. ‘And what would a spider be doing in a twenty-four gallon copper boiling pan of molten hot toffee?’

  Reenie cleared her throat. ‘It flew in, Mrs Starbeck.’

  ‘It flew in? Do spiders usually fly? Would you think me unreasonable if I said that I suspect you left a window open – contrary to factory regulations – and allowed a bluebottle to contaminate the toffee and are even now attempting to conceal your misdeed with a false tale about a spider?’

  ‘No, really, Mrs Starbeck,’ Doreen implored, ‘there was a spider. It bit Reenie and made her finger bleed. It had crawled up my neck and got onto my hair and she tried to swat it off. If it hadn’t been for Reenie it might have poisoned me.’

  Siobhan nodded earnestly, with the plausibility of a thirty-something mother of four; this was not the nonsense of young girls, it was the serious claim of grown women. ‘I saw it too. It was a big bugger, and colourful. It moved too fast for me to get a good look at it, but you could see that it was something tropical. We thought perhaps it was one of those foreign ones come in on the crates of Brazil nuts for Quality Street.’

  Mrs Starbeck’s attitude abruptly changed. The appearance of tropical pests was not unknown at the factory and they had a strict code in the circumstances. ‘Have you sent for the factory pest controller?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Reenie still looked half afraid of the senior manager. ‘We thought we’d get it out of the toffee first so we’ve got something to show them. For identification, like.’

  ‘Well, I doubt it will be in a recognisable state after it’s been boiled in sugar. Reenie, go and use the telephone to summon the pest controller immediately.’ Mrs Starbeck nodded to the man who had been holding back the last of the molten toffee and he resumed the task of lowering the edge of the copper pan in its frame, and gently pouring a thin ribbon of caramel into a one-gallon tin tray waiting below. The tin tray filled, the man pulled back the edge of the pan, replaced the tray with another empty one, and began again. The women waited and watched in anticipation for what could only be an unpleasant sight among the dregs of the sugar solution – the spider would surely be in pieces – but the tin tray was replaced again, and then again once more, and still there was no sign of the broken body of the dreaded tropical spider.

  Reenie ran back across the workroom to where the copper was almost empty and said, ‘The pest controller is on his way as fast as he can; he’s bringing a couple of men from the laboratory to analyse it – see if it’s poisonous – and a nurse from the sick bay to see to our bites.’

  Mrs Starbeck frowned into the pan. ‘This is turning into a very expensive enterprise for the company, but I’ll grant it’s necessary given the foreign intruder.’

  Another tin vessel of molten toffee was drawn away and the women edged closer to see what would be revealed in the last dregs of sugar.

  It was a leg that appeared first, sticky and brown with toffee, but straight as that of any soldier in the British Army. Then an elbow appeared. Finally the torso of a tiny child’s toy emerged in one piece from the tide of toffee and, poured over the lip of the pan, landed in the waiting tray with a plop.

  Mrs Starbeck took in an angry breath through flared nostrils. She reached over to a nearby workbench, seized a pair of steel tongs and plunged them into the one-gallon tray of toffee. It was only a moment before the tongs re-emerged, grasping the offending article. Mrs Starbeck squinted at it in disgust, before turning her beady eyes on Doreen Fairclough, who had so ill-advisedly admitted that the tropical spider had been flicked from her hair.

  ‘Is this a tropical spider?’ Cynthia Starbeck hissed in a deliberate whisper.

  ‘No, Mrs Starbeck.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Doreen did her best to meet the manager’s eye, but it was not easy, ‘It’s a Gordon Highlander of the 92nd Regiment of Foot, Mrs Starbeck.’

  ‘And why is it in a factory workroom?’

  ‘I-I think it must have got caught in my hair when I was crawling under the bed, Mrs Starbeck.’

  Mrs Starbeck’s lips curled in contempt. As she launched into a merciless dressing-down of the assembled factory staff, she failed to notice that Mary Norcliffe had appeared at the door and almost as quickly vanished again in the direction of Mrs Starbeck’s empty, unguarded office.

  Chapter Four

  Diana Moore was watching the clock on the office wall and she could have sworn its hands had gone backwards. She was not usually one for clock-watching, but on this occasion she had good reason. She needed to leave the office exactly on time if she was going to be able to fit in a bath and a change of clothes at her boarding house before she went on to the charity dinner she’d been roped into.

  Diana had never thought she would be the sort of girl to attend posh charity functions, or to sit at a smart desk in an important office, or to worry about ‘dressing for dinner’, but as life had taught her, people will do all kinds of things for love. In Diana’s case it was love for the seven-year-old everyone believed was her sister.

  Diana usually rattled off her work at a fair speed, but that afternoon had been something of a blitz. She had dealt with all the factory memoranda from her in-tray (mostly other departments boasting about their own achievements and easily ignored); typed up all of her managers’ meeting minutes (even the ones she hadn’t been permitted to attend because the discussions were too secret for secretaries – who did these managers think typed up their secret minutes?), and delivered her correspondence to the factory post room by hand (so that Mr Pinkstone couldn’t claim it had arrived too late for the last collection). The plants were watered, the inkwells emptied and cleaned, the pencils sharpened and their shavings binned. It was five minutes until close of business on Friday afternoon and, if nothing else landed on her plate, she would be able to clock out her timecard and make a dash for it. For once there was no great crisis engulfing the toffee business and she was not required to find thieves, poisoners, or miracle workers in order to save the business from collapse, so she was reasonably confident that she would be leaving on time. The clock ticked the passage of another minute away, and Diana heard the heavy rumble of running feet in the plushly carpeted hallway outside her door.

  ‘I’m in a lot of trouble!’ Mary was out of breath and she slammed Diana’s office door behind her with the caution of someone who feared they were being pursued.

  Diana did not lift her gaze from the clock on the wall. She did not move in her seat, she did not register surprise, she did not so much as raise an eyebrow. She simply sighed. She was used to Mary. ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘I’ve just stolen something from Mrs Starbeck’s office and she’s going to know it was me.’

  Diana’s head snapped up and she looked at her friend with undisguised astonishment and more than a little admiration. This was not like Mary Nor
cliffe. Her sister Bess, perhaps; their friend Reenie Calder almost certainly, but not Mary. Mary feared rule-breaking the way that witches were meant to fear water. Diana pushed her chair back from her desk, rose without undue haste, and moved to drag a chair over for her visitor to sit on. Diana’s office was more of an ante-chamber to the office of her head of department, but it was better than any other 27-year-old factory girl at Mackintosh’s could boast. There was a fat iron radiator which belted out heat behind her; a frosted glass chandelier providing steady electric light above her; and a portrait of the late John Mackintosh – the Toffee King – before her on the wall to provide the only company she needed while she worked. Diana liked this new, quieter working day. She wasn’t entirely solitary – there were meetings to attend and dictation to take – but after a decade on the factory floor, wrapping sweets with scores of rowdy – and frequently melodramatic – girls, she was glad of the change.

  Mary had been one such of those melodramatic girls with whom Diana had wrapped toffees. So too her sister Bess and their friend Reenie. Diana offered Mary the seat in front of her; Mary took it for a moment but then sprang up again as though the seat was on fire and only pacing the room would put it out.

  ‘Out with it, then. What is it you’ve taken?’ The telephone rang on Diana’s desk with a shrill chirrup, startling Mary and irritating Diana; she disliked the rude intrusion of the telephone into her otherwise quiet office. It rang out once and then stopped as abruptly as it had started; perhaps the person at the other end of the line had lost the courage they had briefly raised to telephone Mrs Wilkes’s notorious secretary. Diana shrugged and returned her attention to Mary. ‘Be quick, I haven’t got all day.’