waiting to go out?’ Randall asked.
‘Send them. Get the people in and start training them.’
*
The letter did not arrive until a full two weeks after the interview, long enough for Liz to think that she had handled the interview all wrong – would it really have hurt her to humour that fella a bit more? – and for Robert to have conceded magnanimously that right enough the extra few pounds coming in might have been handy.
She sat at the table in the dinette for most of the afternoon, turning the page over and over to make sure that she had not misread it. Only when she heard the boys come barging in the front door and charge up the stairs to their room did she shake herself and get the potatoes peeled and the leeks washed and chopped. Then she sat down with the letter again, her eye drawn back time and again to the starting salary: the starting salary.
Her last pay packet, from the Water Office, had been eight pounds nine and eleven, after deductions. She had started in there as a trainee clerk-typist three weeks after her final O level, had her photo taken for the school magazine, standing in front of the assembly hall with another girl, Paula, who had got a job in the Electricity Board. The utilities – they had been taught it since they were old enough to spell it – were second only to banks in the jobs-for-life stakes. Or jobs for as much of your life as you cared to work.
Robert had been in the Water Office a couple of years already, one of a group of young lads who used to come into the canteen together at lunchtime and carry on with the women behind the counter – ‘Put a few more chips on there for me, Myrtle. Ah, go on, I’m a growing boy.’
‘He’s a fat bastard, he means.’
‘Language now, ladies present.’
‘Are you kidding? Myrtle could teach us words. Couldn’t you, Myrtle?’
‘I’ll teach you a lot more than words.’
And so on.
Liz knew pretty much from the get-go that he had his eye on her – because you do know, don’t you? You just know – and tell you the truth she wouldn’t have been a bit shy about saying in those days that she was a worthwhile place for an eye to linger. They were married a fortnight after her twentieth birthday, and two months before her twenty-first – one month before the birth of her eldest – she took home her last eight pounds nine and eleven.
The Water Office closed in 1973, its functions taken over by the Department of the Environment and a third of its workers handed their cards. Robert was straight down to the dole office the next morning and within the week had started in the City Hospital’s Purchasing and Procurement department. Less money than he had been getting in Water, but he was in somewhere, that was the main thing. A few of those no longer young lads he chummed around with found themselves all of a sudden out in the cold.
He worked, Robert. Whatever else you might have thought of him you couldn’t deny that: he worked.
She did not know he was home until he was standing in the kitchen doorway, an expression on his face she could not read. She stood up from the table, letter still in her hand.
‘Guess what?’
‘You got the job,’ he said, flat as you like. ‘Good for you.’
He threw the evening paper down on the countertop and spun it round with his hand so that the headline was towards her. Her stomach turned over. Body Found is German Industrialist .
‘Now tell me,’ he said. ‘Why would anyone want to set up a factory here except to make a fast buck and get out?’
*
Randall had been walking along a corridor in the old carpet factory when he caught the name coming from a transistor on one of the secretaries’ desks.
He doubled back, put his head round the door. The secretary – her name was June – switched the radio off. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I just put it on to hear were there any traffic hold-ups before I headed home.’
‘No, turn it on again.’
She was trying to put the radio back into her
‘Send them. Get the people in and start training them.’
*
The letter did not arrive until a full two weeks after the interview, long enough for Liz to think that she had handled the interview all wrong – would it really have hurt her to humour that fella a bit more? – and for Robert to have conceded magnanimously that right enough the extra few pounds coming in might have been handy.
She sat at the table in the dinette for most of the afternoon, turning the page over and over to make sure that she had not misread it. Only when she heard the boys come barging in the front door and charge up the stairs to their room did she shake herself and get the potatoes peeled and the leeks washed and chopped. Then she sat down with the letter again, her eye drawn back time and again to the starting salary: the starting salary.
Her last pay packet, from the Water Office, had been eight pounds nine and eleven, after deductions. She had started in there as a trainee clerk-typist three weeks after her final O level, had her photo taken for the school magazine, standing in front of the assembly hall with another girl, Paula, who had got a job in the Electricity Board. The utilities – they had been taught it since they were old enough to spell it – were second only to banks in the jobs-for-life stakes. Or jobs for as much of your life as you cared to work.
Robert had been in the Water Office a couple of years already, one of a group of young lads who used to come into the canteen together at lunchtime and carry on with the women behind the counter – ‘Put a few more chips on there for me, Myrtle. Ah, go on, I’m a growing boy.’
‘He’s a fat bastard, he means.’
‘Language now, ladies present.’
‘Are you kidding? Myrtle could teach us words. Couldn’t you, Myrtle?’
‘I’ll teach you a lot more than words.’
And so on.
Liz knew pretty much from the get-go that he had his eye on her – because you do know, don’t you? You just know – and tell you the truth she wouldn’t have been a bit shy about saying in those days that she was a worthwhile place for an eye to linger. They were married a fortnight after her twentieth birthday, and two months before her twenty-first – one month before the birth of her eldest – she took home her last eight pounds nine and eleven.
The Water Office closed in 1973, its functions taken over by the Department of the Environment and a third of its workers handed their cards. Robert was straight down to the dole office the next morning and within the week had started in the City Hospital’s Purchasing and Procurement department. Less money than he had been getting in Water, but he was in somewhere, that was the main thing. A few of those no longer young lads he chummed around with found themselves all of a sudden out in the cold.
He worked, Robert. Whatever else you might have thought of him you couldn’t deny that: he worked.
She did not know he was home until he was standing in the kitchen doorway, an expression on his face she could not read. She stood up from the table, letter still in her hand.
‘Guess what?’
‘You got the job,’ he said, flat as you like. ‘Good for you.’
He threw the evening paper down on the countertop and spun it round with his hand so that the headline was towards her. Her stomach turned over. Body Found is German Industrialist .
‘Now tell me,’ he said. ‘Why would anyone want to set up a factory here except to make a fast buck and get out?’
*
Randall had been walking along a corridor in the old carpet factory when he caught the name coming from a transistor on one of the secretaries’ desks.
He doubled back, put his head round the door. The secretary – her name was June – switched the radio off. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I just put it on to hear were there any traffic hold-ups before I headed home.’
‘No, turn it on again.’
She was trying to put the radio back into her
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