Page 57 of Lessons in Life

19

JULY 1968

Eloise

‘Eloise? Eloise, come on, come and have your dinner with us.’ Janice was beckoning a hand and shouting as Eloise somewhat hesitantly began making her way towards the patch of grass in the hope that one of the girls would invite her to join them again. Her second day helping out in Samuel Hudson and Sons Textile Mills’ General Office, and this time she’d come prepared, having got up early to make sandwiches to eat once the klaxon sounded to down tools.

‘Eloise, what are youdoing?’ Muriel, nursing one of her heads and looking for aspirin, had come into the kitchen in her housecoat, her feet, despite the warm July morning, ensconced in fluffy pink mules.

‘I’m making a pack-up,’ Eloise had said, standing at Muriel’s newly acquired LEC fridge and gazing into its chilly depths. ‘Only there doesn’t seem much to put into it.’

‘A pack-up? What on earth is a pack-up?’ Muriel closed her eyes, drawing long red talons across her forehead. ‘Surely you’re having lunch in the directors’ dining room with Daddy and Brian and… and… the others?’ She waved a pale hand in Eloise’s direction, indicating her daughter must know who the others were even if Muriel herself, having nothing whatsoever to do with the mill – other than spending its profits – did not.

‘Brown Windsor soup and the roast of the day?’ What had sounded an absolute feast yesterday, had she been invited to join the directors, now sounded utterly stuffy and banal compared to a picnic shared – hopefully – with the girls from the weaving and mending sheds. ‘Mummy, what can I put in my sandwich?’

‘Well, you’re looking in the wrong place for the bread, to start with. The bread bin’s over there.’

‘Yes, I know that, but what can I put in it? We must have some cheese and… and tomatoes or something.’

‘Of course there is. You’re just not looking in the right place.’

‘Is there no white sliced bread?’

‘Mother’s Pride? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Eloise.’ Muriel tutted her distaste, but finally relented. ‘There’s a large sliced loaf somewhere. It’s the only thing that’ll keep Michael from starving to death once he’s home, this afternoon. You know what thirteen-year-old boys are like.’ Muriel’s sour face softened at the thought of her favourite child. ‘Just don’t take it all or he’ll soon be complaining when he needs feeding. And don’t let anyone in the office see you with the stuff, Eloise. They’ll think it’s what we eat here.’

‘Nothing wrong with Mother’s Pride,’ Brian said, coming into the kitchen and shaking his keys in Eloise’s direction. ‘Lived on the stuff when I was over at Huddersfield Tech. Come on, if you’re coming. Dad went an hour ago; he’s off to Bradford. Five minutes,’ he warned when he saw Eloise collecting bread, butter and a huge hunk of Gorgonzola.

‘Is this the only cheese we’ve got?’ Eloise sniffed at the package. ‘I can’t make a sandwich with this.’

‘No, you can’t. That’s for your father – insists on the stuff after dinner. Oh, I don’t know, Eloise, just eat with Daddy in the dining room. You are a Hudson, after all. I’m taking my head back to bed.’ Muriel had picked up a copy ofWoman’s Ownand her cup of tea and left the kitchen, giving a string of instructions to Mrs Baxter, the daily, on her way out.

‘Don’t see how she can go back to bed without her bloody head,’ Eloise had muttered to herself and, hearing Brian impatiently revving up his little Austin-Healey on the drive, had grabbed the forbidden cheese, placing huge sticky lumps of the stuff between two slices of white bread, before hastily wrapping her lunch in greaseproof paper and heading for the door.

* * *

‘Eloise, don’t be so stuck up! Come on,’ Janice shouted once more in her direction as she made her way across the scrubby patch of grass towards them.

‘She’s the boss’s daughter, Janice,’ Eloise heard Gail mutter under her breath as the rest of the girls, bright as a flock of tropical birds in their different-coloured nylon overalls, turned as one in her direction. ‘She’ll be off to the directors’ dining room for her dinner. Or at least to the office canteen.’

‘Thank you.’ Eloise, finding herself tongue-tied under the girls’ continued scrutiny, went to sit beside Janice, folding her long legs underneath herself like a newborn colt.

‘Blimey, what’s that’s smell?’ Susan, to Eloise’s right, swallowed her mouthful of currant teacake, sniffing the air like a Bisto Kid. ‘It’s your bloody feet again, Andrea.’

‘No, it bloody well isn’t,’ Andrea said indignantly. ‘Stop having a go at my feet.’ She bent over, grabbing hold of her stockinged foot and sniffing it before thrusting it towards Susan. ‘See!’

‘Ugh, summat smells,’ Rita agreed. ‘What is it?’

‘Are we sitting in dog shit?’ The girls all turned to inspect their own patch of grass, while Eloise unwrapped her cheese sandwich.

Following their noses, the girls turned again, this time to Eloise.

‘What you got in that sandwich, love?’ Janice spoke first.

‘Cheese,’ Eloise said.

‘Not Kraft slices!’ Janice exhaled, waving the evidence of her own orange, but odourless, cheese sandwich in the other’s direction.

‘Oh, sorry!’ Eloise was scarlet. ‘It’s Daddy’s Gorgonzola. He does like a bit every evening after dinner. Mummy’s not keen on it, but…’ Eloise broke off when she saw that, for some reason, her words appeared to amuse the others. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’m starving.’ Eloise bit into the pungent sandwich, her expression immediately acknowledging she’d been overzealous with the amount of cheese. ‘Golly, thatisstrong,’ she eventually stuttered. ‘Shall I go and sit somewhere else?’

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