A Step Too Far Read Free Page A

   Resisting Becky’s push urging her to climb down from the bus, ignoring the murmurs attesting to several more concerns of ‘being quartered’, Alice’s icy reply did not cool the fire of her glare.
         ‘It had no need to, but it could be called upon to teach you how to wear a truss, for you see it won’t be your face will feel the blow. Though I guarantee you’ll remember the sting of it every time you wish you could use that which won’t never function the same way again. Like dough without yeast, it won’t rise.’
         Exclamations and tuts of disapproval at hearing such words from a young woman followed after the pair as they skipped onto the footpath.
         ‘That put the snotty nosed sod in his place!’ Alice glared defiantly after the receding vehicle. ‘He’ll think twice afore soundin’ that bell next time.’
         ‘He ought to have more sense than to have rung as quick as he did, he could see the aisle was blocked solid.’ Becky added her own condemnation as they walked along a street busy with people hurrying to various factories and steel foundries with which the town of Wednesbury was filled.
         ‘That bell will be the only thing he’ll be quick with should I tell our Rob he fingered my bum as I waited to get off the bus.’
         ‘But he didn’t!’
         ‘I know that and the conductor knows that,’ Alice answered airily, ‘but our Rob will know only what I tell him and I’ll tell him that man touched my bum.’
         ‘You wouldn’t!’
         ‘Wouldn’t I!’ Alice tossed her turbaned head. ‘One more smart arsed remark out of that one and it could be he won’t be able to talk for a month. In fact . . .’ She smiled, a wicked glint in her brown eyes, ‘if he’s on our bus goin’ home tonight I might just tell him my brother is wantin’ a word with him.’
         Passing through wide gates painted with splashes and streaks of green and brown, the whole camouflaged to resemble stretches of open heath, the two sprinted for the workshop as the gateman pulled a watch from the top pocket of a jacket as ancient as himself and mouthed the word ‘TIME’.
         Breathless from the dash across the wide yard, Alice snatched her card from a rack attached to the wall then slotted it into the large dialled time clock, breathing relief at seeing the resulting time stamped black and clear on the buff coloured card: seven twenty nine. One more minute and her pay would have been docked. In fact, it didn’t allow a minute, one second past seven thirty and a quarter of an hour would have been taken from her pay, and that would mean less pocket money given back from the wage packet which must be handed unopened to her mother every Friday teatime. Less! Alice’s irritation at the exchange of words with the bus conductor became sudden mutiny. Any less and her mother might as well keep the lot! With so many men pulled from the workplace and drafted into the forces, women had been put into the jobs left vacant; they did the job of a man but they did not receive the same wage. So much for government gratitude! ‘You are doing well to be earning as much as you do, many girls of twenty one and older earned nowhere near that sum.’ That had been the management reply when she had voiced dissatisfaction at a wage of seventeen shillings and ninepence in return for slogging her heart out sixty-one hours a week. Seventeen shillings and ninepence! And all she was handed out of it was half a crown. Two shillings and sixpence, her mother keeping the rest!
         A measly two and six! Alice’s thoughts were acid. How far did that go when it had to provide every article of clothing, every item of make-up? Lord, a lipstick, supposing you could get one, cost three bob on the black market, and stockings – the ‘spivs’ selling them asked no less than six. Six shillings for stockings which had cost three and elevenpence before the war.
         ‘When you