All The Nice Girls (19 page)

It was not until they reached double green doors marked ‘Inspection’ that Mr Tybalt’s words assumed their true meaning. Their guide opened one of the green doors, pushed them in, and stepped smartly back.

The Bodger and his party stood in the doorway, appalled.

The Inspection Department consisted of only one room but it was roughly half the size of a main-line railway terminus. The room contained nearly a thousand girls and its atmosphere was as steamy as a hot-house, with an odour compounded of nearly a thousand sources of perfume, talcum powder and deodorant. The noise level was at such a pitch as to make a perceptible physical impact upon The Bodger’s unaccustomed eardrums. There was the yammering of conversations, the rattling of trolleys, the tapping of feet and above everything else the relentless pounding of a rock-and-roll record being relayed at full volume through loudspeakers set in the roof.

The Bodger’s party were observed at once. Every conversation stopped in mid-syllable. Every trolley-wheel stopped in mid-revolution. Every tapping foot poised. The rock-and-roll record broke off in mid-beat.

For a few moments, there was silence. Then simultaneously the loudspeakers burst into ‘All The Nice Girls Love a Sailor,’ again played at full volume, and there arose from the girls a piercing wailing ululation, more blood-chilling than the howling of wolves, more penetrating than a police siren, gaining in power and intensity, swelling and growing until it reverberated from the air, from the walls, from the ground and from inside The Bodger’s very skull.

The Bodger, looking back afterwards, decided that stepping forward from that door into ‘Inspection’ at the ball-bearing factory was the bravest single act of his whole life. He shuffled forward, encouraged by the stout voice of the Chief Stoker behind him, saying ‘Pack together, men!’

Cautiously, almost back to back, like a wagonload of settlers moving through howling Sioux country, the party from
Seahorse
edged further into the room.

A petite, dark-haired girl in a blue nylon overall took charge of them. She had ‘Supervisor’ on a badge in her lapel and her name was Doris. She looked about twenty-five years old and she seemed to be in sole command. The Bodger found himself wondering humbly at a discipline which could single-handedly control a number of females corresponding to the ship’s company of a heavy cruiser.

They began to walk round, pursued by giggles, sidelong glances and crescendoes of sudden idiot laughter. Every sailor in turn, including Dagwood, received a hundred signalled invitations. All were invited, except The Bodger. As far as the girls were concerned, The Bodger might not have existed. The Bodger felt piqued.

The basic operation of ‘Inspection’ was very simple. The girls sat at long tables, fifty or sixty girls to a side, each girl having her own stall. Every stall had a small tray fitted with a sliding bottom and, above it, a bright light. Bags of ball-bearings were tipped into trays and the girls moved the tray bottoms so that the balls rolled over and their surfaces could be examined for flaws by the light of the lamps. Doris laid on a demonstration.

‘Here you are, Nessie,’ she said to one woman of about fifty. ‘Show the gentlemen what you can do. We call her Nessie,’ she added to The Bodger, ‘because of the monster, y’see.’

Every girl in ear-shot gave a shrill cackle. Nessie, who did not appear to The Bodger to be at all a bad-looking woman, smiled amiably.

Doris took a ball-bearing from her overall pocket and showed it to The Bodger. ‘It’s a flawed one,’ she said.

The Bodger examined the ball closely. He could just see, if he looked hard, a tiny chip in the surface.

Doris took the ball, dropped it into a bag and poured the contents of the bag into Nessie’s tray.

With a speed that baffled the eye Nessie pulled down her lamp, nudged her tray and deftly poured the shining flow of balls sideways into a shute. One ball remained on her tray. Nessie handed it up to The Bodger. The tiny chip on it was unmistakable.

‘Well I’ll be damned!’ said The Bodger, in astonishment. The whole performance had been as slickly executed as a conjuring trick. The Bodger acknowledged that he could never do Nessie’s job, not if he practised for a year. The Bodger had no doubt that if he were forced to work in this room he would be under the care of a psychiatrist inside a week.

The Bodger noticed that one stall was decorated with greetings cards, flowers, coloured streamers, and an old shoe.

‘What’s that mean?’ he asked Doris.

‘She’s getting married Saturday.’

Here and there, other stalls were appropriately decorated. Every major event in a girl’s life was commemorated. The Bodger could see several ‘Happy Birthday’ signs, one or two golden keys, and a scattering of significant stories. Almost every stall had a piece of red cord in the partition netting.

‘What’s the cord for?’

‘It means she’s had her first man,’ Doris explained.

The ball-bearing factory was patently more than a mere place of employment for the girls who worked there. It was an important part of their lives. They came to it from school, carried on after marriage and left only to have a baby. When their children were grown up they returned, like Nessie, to work until they were too old.

The Bodger had been so absorbed in his tour that he had failed to notice that his party had gradually been dwindling. He awoke just in time to see the Chief Stoker’s hat disappearing through a side door. Even Dagwood was trapped on the other side of the room, surrounded by a crowd of girls. The Bodger was isolated in ‘Inspection,’ with Doris. He intercepted a look flashed between Doris and another girl and it dawned upon him why he had received no welcoming signals. Doris was reserving him for herself. Without a word being spoken, the jungle drums had passed their message; like a banner being carried through the room, the word had been passed: ‘This one’s
mine
.’

Panic-stricken, The Bodger tapped the nearest girl on the shoulder.

‘Let me have a go at that.’

The girl got up readily. The Bodger sat down and Doris poured a bag of ball bearings into the tray. The Bodger pulled down the light and began to concentrate upon the balls as though his life depended on it. Every girl round about stopped work to watch him.

The Bodger had no doubt that the inspection was almost a formality. The odds against an imperfect ball reaching this stage of production must be several thousands to one. Nevertheless, it would be a triumph if he could find one. The Bodger moved his tray in and out for some time, without noticing anything. Then something caught his eye. It was no more than a suspicion, a reflection which was not quite true. Perhaps it was a minute speck of dust on that ball. The Bodger blew at it. It was still there. Feeling his pulse rate beginning to accelerate, The Bodger manipulated the tray again. Now, he was almost sure. One more roll, and he was certain.

‘There’s a flaw in it! ‘

The Bodger’s cry of glee was apparently the funniest sound he had ever uttered in his life. The girls slapped their thighs, doubled up, and hooted. Some of them staggered about, crying and coughing into their handkerchiefs, and supporting themselves on the table.

‘I tell you there’s a flaw in it!’ cried The Bodger again. ‘Just look! A flaw! ‘

Doris received the news calmly. ‘It’s a special visitors’ bag you got there,’ she said. ‘They’re all flawed.’

Dagwood kept in touch with the latest strike situation through Mr Tybalt’s grapevine. There seemed to be no other source of information; the yard itself was virtually shut down, Bob and Fred never visited ‘The Smokers’ again, and the newspapers had relegated the ‘Old Vic’ or ‘Plug-hole’ strike as they called it, to a small middle page paragraph once a fortnight. Only Mr Tybalt seemed always to have the latest gossip.

‘I was hoping to have some good news about the strike today,’ he told Dagwood, one brilliant May morning. ‘Last week the yard did the sensible thing and arranged with the foundry to have the bloody covers drilled before they get here. That was fine, but it meant that the foundry had to take on a driller and as they’ve never employed a driller before their men objected. So now they’re on strike and we’re back to square one again. It’s a case of Go straight to the Doghouse, Do not pass Go, Do not collect Two Hundred pounds. Maddening, isn’t it?’

‘Yes sir,’ Dagwood agreed. He could never have admitted it to Mr Tybalt but Dagwood was secretly enjoying the strike and would be sorry when it ended. Apart from the unexpected holiday it was giving him, it also had other, unforeseen, advantages. For instance the conquest of Barbara, the girl who worked in the Norwegian shipping firm’s office next door to Dagwood.

Dagwood had heard of girls being swept off their feet. He had heard of them succumbing to a cunning, waiting game. (One could, according to the best authorities, either play the part of a mixture of Young Lochinvar and the Sheik ofAraby, or a sort of amatory Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator.) But Dagwood would never have believed that a girl would drop into his arms, like a ripe plum, out of sheer boredom. Dagwood had never succeeded in getting on more intimate terms with Barbara than saying good morning and occasional sugar borrowing. From time to time the basin in Barbara’s office was blocked and Dagwood sent in his shock troops, Gotobed and Quickly, to clear it and possibly prepare the way for a closer relationship. But Barbara had hitherto remained aloof.

The strike changed everything. The Norwegian tanker had been within a fortnight of her launch date when the strike began, but when work on her was stopped the firm’s marine superintendent and his assistant, who were Barbara’s immediate employers, both vanished. Barbara was left with nothing to do for days on end but withstand the steady pressure of willpower exerted by Dagwood, lurking next door. Sometimes Barbara’s telephone rang, she would make a note, and occupy herself for an hour or two in searching through her files, typing and dispatching letters. The rest of the time she painted her nails, looked out of the window, and read ‘Woman’s Own.’ Next door, Dagwood watched and waited. His preoccupation was so intense that even Ollie noticed it. ‘Dagwood, you baffle me,’ he said. ‘For a bloke who says he doesn’t want to get married you’re acting in a bloody strange manner. You’re like a man who says he’s terrified of catching pneumonia and then spends all his time cavorting about in the snow in the nude.’

‘Who said anything about marriage? I didn’t say I was in love with the girl. A roll in the snow wouldn’t be such a bad idea, now you come to mention it.’

‘You don’t have to love a girl to marry her, in any case.’

‘Ollie, you cynical old devil.’

‘Good heavens, half the married couples you meet don’t love each other. Not any more, anyway. They
like
each other and that’s a hell of a lot more important, believe me. After all, it’s only comparatively recently that any idea of love entered into marriage.’

‘Do you love Alice, as well as liking her, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘I think so. I think I’m very lucky. The important thing is not to expect too much.’

‘How did you meet her?’

‘She was a Wren steward. I first noticed her when she let a plate of soup slip on top of the Commander and I heard the Chief Wren giving her hell afterwards. I just thought “Poor kid”.’

‘Oh
Ollie
, that’s the oldest trick in the book!’

Ollie reddened. ‘Maybe. I fell for it, if that’s what you mean. And I’ve never regretted it.’

‘What do you mean by love, Ollie?’

‘What do
I
mean by love? I don’t mean anything by love. Life just seems simply splendid, that’s all. You bounce around like a two-year-old. You feel all tense before you ring her up. You want to know all about her, who she met, what she did, what she thought about things, before she met you. You want to give her things. You’re always pleased when you compare notes and find that she must have been in the same town as you were before she met you. You’re surprised at the amount she eats when you take her out to dinner.’ Ollie suddenly blushed a vivid carmine colour. ‘Anyway, I don’t know why I’m telling
you
. Judging by your past record and present performance you ought to be telling me.’

‘No no, that was very interesting, Ollie.’ Dagwood had indeed been deeply interested and respectful; he had not expected such words from the pragmatical, down-to-earth Ollie. He recognised in them the authentic ring of personal experience. He was ashamed to think that he had served with Ollie for eighteen months without noticing that he was a romantic at heart.

There was a tapping of heels down the corridor.

‘Here she comes now.’

Dagwood sprang up to look through the glass window partition.

‘Hush you now, the fair Ophelia,’ he whispered. ‘She smiles! My lady she smiles at me! Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!’

Barbara reached her office door and smiled once more at Dagwood before going in.

‘Boy,’ said Dagwood thoughtfully. ‘I go for that woman. That bosom. Positively Byzantine! She’s like one of those girls you see doing the belly dance in Turkish night clubs. You know, lovely black hair, creamy complexion and a body like chewing gum! Licensed for Levantine lust! ‘

‘A rag, a bone and a hank of hair,’ said Ollie, disparagingly.

‘Give me that bone! ‘

‘You’d better get cracking then. Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say. She may not smile again for another fortnight.’

‘Right! ‘ Picking up his heels, Dagwood scudded along the corridor like a March hare, paused while he put on his best would-you-like-to-dance expression, and knocked on Barbara’s door.

‘May I come in?’

Barbara looked up from the do-it-yourself carpentry kit spread over her desk, with which she was paring her nails. (Those eyes, thought Dagwood, those eyes must surely have seen their first light by the Golden Horn. They were the eyes that welcomed Leander when he rose dripping from the Hellespont, the eyes which shed tears over Icarus dead).

‘If you’d like to.’ Barbara held out one forefinger and cocked her head appraisingly at the finger-nail upon it.