All That Glitters Read Free Page A

where winter and summer she had been stuffed into scratchy, itchy flannel knickers, vests, liberty bodices and petticoats. She’d never thought she’d miss them. But she did. Especially when she had to cross the open yards in breezes strong enough to lift her skirt.
    ‘Hurry,’ Eira Williams, the trainee nurse, urged as Jane washed her hands and face. Jane rubbed a wafer of hard yellow soap vigorously between her hands in a vain attempt to produce a lather. The sister’s voice echoed in through the open window from the yard as she commanded the girls who had already obeyed her summons: ‘Square your shoulders, stand up straight, and get into line.’
    ‘What’s the job, Nurse Williams?’ Jane knew that the trainee should be addressed as ‘trainee’ not nurse, but hoped that flattery would gain her a few crumbs of knowledge.
    ‘Something you’ll steer clear of if you’ve any sense.’ Eira walked to the door. Sister was still talking to the Master and only three of the girls ordered to the line-up were in place. There were a few minutes to spare. ‘It’s a dosshouse over in Trallwn. Off Foundry Place. The couple who run it have taken two girls out of here in the last year and both have come back to the unmarrieds’ ward. They say it’s the class of girl we supply them with, but I’ve heard different from the staff on unmarrieds. Poor girls didn’t stand a chance.’
    ‘Williams! Is that girl ready yet?’
    ‘Coming, Sister.’
    Walking clumsily in her heavy clogs, Jane stumbled outside and into line. She was the last to arrive. Keeping her head low she focused on the ground at her feet just as her housemother in Church Village Homes had taught her.
    ‘They’re all good workers and strong, healthy girls.’ The Master extolled their virtues as though he were selling livestock. ‘I appreciate you’ve been unlucky with your last two, but I guarantee you won’t have problems with any of these. The first four -’ he nodded towards the end of the line where Jane was standing ‘- are orphans. Born here, and bred in the homes. I can vouch for their religious and moral training.’
    ‘What about this one?’ The obese woman Jane had seen at the gate pointed to a girl in the middle of the line. The sturdily built fair-haired girl began to tremble. Jane had no time for her. The job might be hard work, the man someone no sane woman would want to be left alone with, the woman grotesque, but collectively they offered a way out – an escape route from behind the ten-foot walls that towered over every waking and sleeping moment. She was prepared to do whatever was necessary to gain her freedom after eighteen years lived out behind barred windows. Drawing herself up to her full height, which was barely five foot in her stockinged feet, she raised her eyes and stared at the man in the hope of catching his eye. He was at the other end of the line listening to his companion’s observations on the fair-haired girl.
    ‘The big ones are too slow,’ he said dismissively. ‘Remember the first one we took in?’ His fleshy, ruddy face contorted as he spat a ball of phlegm on to the yard. Jane wondered if his high colour and broken veins came from too many beers, or too many hours spent toasting in front of a hot fire. She’d had no experience of beer and very little of fires or men, but she had once overheard two porters discussing a third. Perhaps the man had simply gone red and fat with age. His suit had evidently been made for a thinner man, possibly even himself at a younger age. Now, the cloth strained, tighter than skin across his shoulders, and the buttons on his jacket wouldn’t even meet the edge of the cloth let alone the buttonholes. Even his thighs looked like two bloated sausages ready to burst out of the rind of worsted that held them in check. He was big – weightier than any man she’d seen before. It certainly wouldn’t be as easy to knee him in the groin and push him away as she had the boys in