A Step Too Far Read Free Page B

finally gets to wakin’ up yoh might shift y’self an’ let a body get to that time clock!’
         A shove making her stumble a few paces, Alice turned a furious glare to a stockily built woman, steel curlers jutting from beneath a turban lying like a line of silver caterpillars on her brow.
         ‘Who d’ya think you’re pushin’!’ Alice’s demand sizzled like fat on a hot stove.
         ‘I don’t ’ave to think.’ The woman slotted her own card into the clock, slamming the lever down with a vicious thump. ‘I knows who yoh be, an’ I also knows yoh be a cheeky young bugger.’
         ‘You knows that does you? Then you must know this, but I’ll tell you again just to refresh your memory. A cheeky young bugger be a sight better than bein’ a miserable old bugger with a face ugly enough to stop that time clock should you look straight at it; but then you can’t look straight at anythin’, not with them cock eyes you can’t.’
         The woman’s one turned eye seemed to turn even more inward to touch her nose as she aimed a blow which Alice adroitly dodged.
         ‘Yoh waits ’til I sees your mother, see ’ow free y’be wi’ that tongue o’ your’n when ’er be finished!’
         The woman stomped away, threats rapidly lost among the slap of leather drive belts and the din of machinery.
         ‘Eeh Alice, you’ll be for it when your mum gets to hear of what you just said, and her will, Lizzie Baker isn’t one to lose the opportunity of makin’ trouble.’
         ‘Then somebody should tell Lizzie Baker the trouble that’ll bring on ’er. Her’ll find two can play the tittle-tattle game and who’ll come off best. Ain’t only Lizzie Baker knows of her rentin’ out that back bedroom to any who can pay five bob for a bit of hows-your-father.’
         Fastening the heavy duty green twill overall she preferred to the boiler suit type worn by most of the women, Becky cast a glance at the flushed face of her friend.
         ‘I can’t get over the difference in you,’ she said, the last button secured, ‘at school you wouldn’t say boo to a goose yet now you’re ready to have a go at anybody. Talk of a turnabout, yours isn’t so much a change as a transformation.’
         ‘I don’t know about transformations,’ the voice of the foreman boomed, ‘but I does know about transfers an’ that be what you pair will be gettin’ should it be I tells the management you don’t be pullin’ your weight, you’ll be gettin’ your callin’ up papers in next week’s post an’ the government don’t allow no pickin’ and choosin’ o’ jobs, you goes where they say, an’ seeing the shortage o’ farm workers I’ll be placin’ no bet on you both not gettin’ sent to one; see ’ow you likes workin’ sixty an’ seventy hours a week ankle deep in pig muck!’
         Wouldn’t prove much of a change, she already worked sixty hours a week! Head at a defiant tilt, Alice walked to her place then, as she touched the button which brought life to the as yet silent machine, called to Becky.
         ‘You know what his trouble is?’
         ‘Trouble?’ Becky’s film star copied eyebrows rose in a questioning arch.
         A sideways glance telling they were both still being observed by the foreman, Alice pulled sharply on a lever securing the machine’s heavy jaws about a rounded bar of metal before setting it to rotate.
         ‘Ar.’ She turned the turret of the Ward 3A Capstan, bringing into position the sharp cutting tool then watching it bite into the bar and slice away steel in fine silver ribbons. ‘He’s like a hoss left too long in the field . . . he ain’t gettin’ his oats.’
         Her brain a minefield of irritation, Alice let her dissatisfaction ride. Sixty hours slaving in this place week after week with the foreman watching every move, Lord you couldn’t go to the lav for what he didn’t count the time it took. The work