Chapter 14
14
Eloise had often accompanied her father down to Samuel Hudson and Sons’ Textile Mills between their own pretty village of Beddingfield and the smaller neighbouring village of Little Micklethwaite, just a couple of miles further down the road. She’d always found the crashing looms, the constant noise of machinery and voices shouting to be heard, the smell of grease, somewhat fascinating if not a little scary. She’d been particularly captivated by the towering machines: row upon row of clattering weaving looms in one shed and the long, newly installed carding machine in another. It was the engineering expertise behind these great monsters that had both enthralled and terrified, when she was a little girl, hiding behind and clutching onto Ralph’s pinstriped trouser leg, and he’d stopped to speak to the foreman or one of the workers on the shop floor.
The miserable, unusually overcast skies of the previous day had shifted overnight westwards across the Pennines and out towards the Irish Sea, leaving a glorious summer’s morning, the sun already warm in a cerulean-blue sky. Part of Eloise – actually most of her – wished she could spend the day wandering the gardens at Hudson House, discovering new plants, breathing in the scents of rosemary, oregano and mint in the herb garden as well as watching how others had grown and changed during her time away in Lausanne. And all the time she could have been taking photographs of the ones she found the most beautiful and interesting with her brand-new camera.
Instead, she was joining the world of grown-ups, becoming part of the day-to-day grind of making a living producing the fabulous worsted cloth for which Hudson and Sons had become internationally famous.
‘Right, Eloise, I’m going to leave you with Miss Baker.’ Eloise could tell Ralph was eager to be off.
‘Your secretary?’
‘Yes. She’ll take you across to the main suite of offices where Miss Gray, the office manager, will show you the ropes, show you where to leave your coat…’
‘I don’t have a coat, Daddy.’ Eloise held up empty hands.
‘I was being metaphorical, Eloise. All right, the Ladies, where you can powder your nose; coffee et cetera…’ Ralph was already losing interest, needing to get to his office and sort the problems he’d left behind the previous evening.
‘Dad…?’ Her brother Brian was at the door to his own office, waving the phone in Ralph’s direction.
‘Right, Eloise, I’ll leave you,’ Ralph said vaguely, giving her a little push towards the neatly dressed, but quite tiny woman in her mid-forties standing waiting for her. ‘Enjoy yourself.’
‘Right, OK.’ Eloise, her leather tote bag and precious camera over one shoulder, walked in the direction he’d indicated.
‘Hello, dear, your father wants to keep you occupied, I believe? Get you out from under your mother’s feet.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that…’ Eloise started, slightly indignant. Why was everyone – apart from Granny Maude – intent on treating her like a naughty child no one knew what to do with or how to keep entertained? ‘Actually, Miss Baker, I’m very pleased to be here. I’m interested to learn more about how the place is run: what the sales figures are like – profits and margins et cetera.’ Eloise was proud of that last sentence – she’d learned a little in the business studies module at Chateau Mont-Choisi that only herself and Ting Lo from Hong Kong had signed up for in preference to ‘Pick up that champagne glass correctly!’ (From the bottom of the stem, she’d learned afterwards from the other girls intent on practising this difficult feat of engineering and good manners.)
‘Well, dear, I’d leave the task of actually running Hudson’s to your father and brother – men’s work, don’t you think? – and we’ll find you a bit of filing to keep you occupied.’
‘I can type,’ Eloise demurred as she followed the diminutive woman along a corridor lined with framed proof of the superiority of Samuel Hudson Textiles’ worsteds. These were interspersed with myriad photographs of her ancestors and relatives – all men – both past and present, who had directed the company to the dizzying heights of world dominance in the textiles trade. Eloise glanced down at her size seven feet in their flat beige leather sandals, comparing them somewhat unfavourably with the size three (at a guess) navy leather stilettoed feet leading the way along the long, monogrammed-(SHT)-carpeted corridor. A good job, whoever had ordered the carpet, hadn’t decided to boast of the mill being international textiles, Eloise thought to herself, stifling a nervous giggle when, despite the size of her feet and long legs, she had to break into a run to keep up.
‘Ah, Miss Munro.’ (Was everyone so polite round here?) Miss Baker came to a sudden standstill as an extremely pretty girl in, Eloise assessed, her late twenties, exited a door on their right, a pile of files in her arms. ‘This is Eloise, Mr Hudson’s daughter. We’ve been looking for Miss Gray, but would you take her to the filing office and show her the ropes?’
‘Oh, thank goodness, I thought I was going to have to get someone from the pool again. And Marjorie is never impressed when I pinch one of her girls. I’ve been on to the temping agency already trying to get an office girl, but it’s July and every temp on their books appears to be off to Majorca or Benidorm.’ The girl spoke quickly and seemed flustered, appearing unwilling to acknowledge Eloise, who was now patiently awaiting her orders.
‘I’ll leave her with you, then.’ The older woman almost smirked her response and Eloise felt a tension between them, taut as a stretched rubber band. ‘I’m sure you’ve both… plenty in common.’ She raised both eyebrows in the younger woman’s direction before turning on her heel and heading back to Ralph Hudson’s private office.
‘So, what do you do here?’ Eloise asked, putting into practice one of the many ways she’d been instructed during the finishing school sessions of: “Introducing another into polite conversation.”
‘I’m Mr Brian’s secretary,’ Miss Munro replied, scurrying along the seemingly never-ending monogrammed carpet towards a door at the end of the corridor.
‘Brian’s secretary?’ Eloise guffawed. ‘You poor thing. I hope he doesn’t trump in your office like he does in the sitting room at home. And then try to blame the dog.’ Then as Eloise realised this mode of conversation most certainly was not, and never had been, on Chateau Mont-Choisi’s curriculum, she blushed scarlet to the roots of her long blonde hair.
Paying scant attention to any attempt on Eloise’s part to be friendly, Miss Munro led her past a huge typing pool where, through a glass door, she glimpsed rows of girls, their heads down, clattering away under the watchful eye of a severe-looking supervisor. It reminded her of the rows of chained slaves aboard the Roman galley in Ben-Hur – one of her absolutely favourite films – the centurion in charge beating out a rhythm with his two mallets. Were those poor typists actually chained to their station? Eloise mused. She had little time to speculate further as Miss Munro ushered her into the spacious General Office where several women were at work. Eloise thought it a grim, dusty room that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Dickens’s novel. Several large mahogany desks each held a phone, an in-and-out tray, an impressive array of rubber stamps and seemingly endless towering piles of pink, yellow and blue paper. Four grey metal filing cabinets stood at the far end of the office, presiding over the room like beings from another world.
‘Miss Gray? I’m delivering Mr Hudson’s daughter to you. She’s going to do some filing.’ And with that, Miss Munro immediately turned on her kitten heels, her short blonde Twiggy hairdo, her red miniskirt and endless long legs in their pale tights soon to be just a fleeting memory.
‘Oh, hello , my dear.’ Miss Gray at least was friendly. ‘My, you’ve grown since I last saw you. Quite the beanpole, aren’t you?’ She laughed delightedly, patting Eloise’s arm to show affection rather than offence. ‘Now, have you done any filing before? It’s not difficult. Let me take you through it…’ She took a pile of the coloured invoices from one desk, immediately demonstrating how they were to be filed in alphabetical order in one or other of the drawers of the metal filing cabinets.
By lunchtime, Eloise’s stomach was growling reproachfully. They’d stopped for ten minutes at ten thirty for a cup of weak Nescafé and a KitKat but now, two hours later, as soon as the buzzer sounded its raucous klaxon warning, the four women in the office immediately downed tools, reached for bags, greaseproof-papered packs of sandwiches and Tupperware boxes and were off.
‘Now, what did your father suggest you do for lunch?’ Miss Gray asked kindly, but glancing longingly at the pack of ham and mustard she’d brought out of her shopping bag.
‘He didn’t,’ Eloise replied, embarrassed that the other woman had seen her look just as longingly at the sandwiches in her hand.
‘Well, there’s the canteen across the yard,’ Miss Gray suggested. ‘You can get a nice plate of pie and chips there as well as the day’s specials; they seem to be doing a lot of that awful curry stuff these days. The chippy down George Street will be open, but there’s generally a queue… Or, if you head into Beddingfield village – just a five-minute walk – there’s a very nice sandwich shop. A bit pricey, but…’ Again she trailed off, obviously considering the boss’s daughter, straight from finishing school in Switzerland, would not be unduly concerned with spending a few shillings on her lunch.
‘Oh, look, please don’t worry about me.’ Eloise smiled. ‘Honestly, I really could do with some fresh air. I’ll explore the place; see how much it’s changed since I used to come down with Daddy… with my father… with Mr Hudson…’ For heaven’s sake, what was wrong with her, reminding this woman who’d been in charge of the General Office since Methuselah was in nappies who her father was?
‘If you’re sure?’ Miss Gray looked anxiously at the clock and then towards the door.
‘Oh, please, please don’t let me spoil your lunch hour.’
‘Forty-five minutes,’ the other woman warned. ‘Back here sharp at one fifteen.’
Miss Gray finally hurried out, a white M some knitting in between bites of sandwich, a feat which Eloise, staring, found dextrously resourceful as well as riveting.
‘Miss Hudson, are you all right?’ Shirley from the General Office was on her feet.
‘Oh, Eloise, please…’
‘Have you not had lunch? I think they’ve just about finished serving now.’ As she spoke, the metal shutters came down on the hatch in the corner of the canteen.
‘Oh, not to worry, I really wasn’t very hungry anyway,’ Eloise lied. ‘I’ll get a cup of tea back in the office…’ And with that, she hurriedly left the room, taking the outer door and the steps on her right, bringing her out onto a patch of grass where ten or more girls from the weaving shed were laid out, stockings and tights off in an attempt to tan their pale legs in the hot sunshine. Trying to avoid their curious stares, while acting as if she always took this route through a sea of sunbathing girls and knew exactly where she was going, Eloise purposefully looked at her wristwatch as though she had an important appointment to keep.
‘Did you get your pie?’ one of the girls called.
Eloise turned to find half the girls now sitting up, staring after her.
‘’Fraid not.’ Eloise pulled a face.
‘You hungry?’ The girl, her hair in curlers and nylon headscarf, began to pull on a pair of stockings, fumbling under her lime-green overall for the suspenders to hold them in place. They were an old-fashioned shade of Calvados, Eloise noted, and there was a long ladder in one.
‘Starving,’ Eloise called back, fed up of answering to the contrary.
The girl stood. ‘D’you want a sandwich? I’ve a couple left. My mum always makes too many for me. Potted meat?’
Eloise’s stomach gave another rumble and her mouth watered. She hesitated and then walked over to the group of girls, who were now all sitting up, looking blatantly her way, an obvious object of curiosity.
‘That’s terribly kind of you,’ Eloise said. ‘I can’t tell you how jolly hungry I am.’
‘You look like you could do with some grub down you,’ another said. ‘Blimey, how d’you keep so thin? You could be a model.’
‘Twiggy.’ Another nodded in agreement.
‘She’s taller than Twiggy,’ a girl in a pink-checked overall said, eyeing Eloise from head to toe. ‘Twiggy’s only five foot six. It was in Jackie last week.
‘More like Veruschka,’ another said sagely.
‘Who?’ The girls all turned.
‘Veruschka. German model. She’s six foot. Mind you, she’s old. She’s nearly thirty.’
‘D’you want this sandwich or not?’ The first girl proffered the sandwich, its flabby white slices oozing a thick brown paste.
‘Thank you so much.’ Eloise went to sit on the grass beside the girl and bit, cautiously at first, into the bread. The sandwich was absolutely delicious and she demolished it – paying absolutely no heed to how a lady should eat as taught at Chateau Mont-Choisi – devouring the lot in three greedy mouthfuls.
‘Goodness,’ Eloise said, embarrassed as the ten girls watched in awe as she wolfed down the sandwich. ‘I ate like a gannet there! Sorry!’
‘I wouldn’t say that, love,’ one of the girls said, her face straight. ‘But there was a load of gannets over there tekking notes.’ She started laughing and the others joined in.
‘So, are you new to the office? Are you with Dorothy in the General Office?’
‘Dorothy?’
‘Miss Gray. They’re all so bloody formal up there. Up their own backsides an’ all. They all look down on us weavers.’
‘And menders,’ another girl sniffed. ‘Don’t forget us menders.’
‘Yes, I’m helping out with the filing.’ Eloise smiled.
‘Helping out?’ The girls were curious. ‘Temping, you mean?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Well, if you want to have your dinner with us, we’re always sat here. In the summer, anyhow. Unless it’s cold and raining.’
‘Listen, would you mind awfully if I take your photograph before you go back in? I’ve a new camera and I’m still trying it out.’
‘Ooh, not with me rollers in, love.’
‘You’ve always got your rollers in, Janice.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. Come on, then.’
The ten girls ran hands through their hair, backcombed the sides with their fingers, straightened fringes and reached in bags for lipstick and eyeliner. Two minutes later they were ready and Eloise took the first of several photos before the klaxon heralded the end of the dinner break.
With much swearing and tutting, the girls gathered their bags and headed back to the various sheds.
‘What’s your name?’ Janice turned and called.
‘Eloise,’ she called back, ridiculously happy to have made new friends. And then without thinking added, ‘Hudson. It’s Eloise Hudson.’