Tides of Honour by Genevieve Graham Page B

possibly?”
    â€œWe could be with our boys in them trenches,” volunteered a woman with a heavy Scottish brogue. Her cheeks were blackened and her apron filthy, but her eyes sparkled. “They be breathin’ in dirt and blood and explosives, just hopin’ to catch another one of them foul breaths.”
    Audrey clutched at the wall, her stomach lurching. She felt sick at the thought of the trenches, sick at the stink of the factory, sick at her own weaknesses. She wiped away a runaway tear, realizing too late that her hand was sticky with grease.
    â€œHush, Frances. You’re upsetting the girl.”
    â€œAh, there ye go,” Frances said, her teeth startlingly white in her filthy face. “Now she’s officially one of us. There ain’t no goin’ back now.”
    Audrey frowned, puzzled, until the woman came over, still smiling kindly. She took out a cloth, stained beyond saving, and dabbed at Audrey’s cheek.
    â€œLike a battle wound, aye? Never ye mind that. The black won’t never quite leave your skin, I’m afraid. Tears won’t wash it off neither, missy. But now you’re like the rest of us. Greasy canaries, they call us. But we’re proud of that, we are. We be doin’ our part.”
    If she’d needed more reason to stay at the job, that was it. Yes, she would do her part.
    Day after day she rolled out of bed at five in the morning, joining the army of women packed onto the tram, marching into the sweltering factory. She’d left the Bedford and moved into the barracks where most of the other factory women worked. It was easier, moving with the crowd, and the rent wasn’t bad. The barracks took away her privacy, but she soon felt comfortable among the colourful mixture of women from all walks of life. They were doing what they could, and they all got along for the most part. As well as hundreds of women could get along, she supposed.
    The tram dropped them off outside the factory’s gates, and the ocean loomed beyond that. She’d heard the ocean had a strong smell, but it was nothing against the stink of the two rival sugar refineries located nearby. After her first experience of choking over the stench, Audrey wrapped a woolen scarf over her nose and mouth, and it didn’t bother her as much.
    When the workers boarded the tram at the end of the day, she rarely managed to snag a seat, but if she did, she used the opportunity to press her nose against the window and watch the pawnshops go by, noticing how the items in the windows rarely changed. Loose women stood on the roadside, their made-up faces fogged by warm clouds of breath. Occasionally, if she got lucky, she spied an exotic foreigner—or at least “exotic” was how she liked to think of them—hunched in corners, just like the locals, against the cold.
    Her lungs and nostrils eventually hardened against the acidicstink of the air in the factory, but the shiny black ooze of the place haunted Audrey’s dreams, spilling over her memories of yellows, blues, and greens, drowning the red of wild roses in the fields at the farm. The sun hadn’t yet risen when she went into the building, and it had retired for the night by the time she walked out, dragging her feet but holding her head high. Autumn was in the air, its cool grey a dull canvas, though no colours appeared in contrast. Everything was grey these days. Grey or black. Especially now that summer was gone. How she tired of it. Back at the farm the trees would be turning, soon the ground would be littered by gold. There would be apples. And fresh eggs. The maple leaves would sweep underfoot, made slippery by the cool autumn rains. She could almost smell them . . . But she mustn’t think that way. She’d made a choice and moved on.
    Besides, she made her own colour, didn’t she? When she closed her eyes she could see every shade, and the moment she was free to grab her paints, she