Factory Girls Read online

  The sight of Mary scowling beside the factory doors brought Maeve back to her senses.

  “Right, ladies,” Mary said. “C’mon with me.”

  They followed her through the double doors, then stopped in front of a board full of cards.

  “Here’s where ye get yer cards. Yer name’s on top and they’re sorted in alphabetical order. Find yer card, clock in here and put it back where ye found it.”

  Maeve found her card and fed it into the machine. It made a wee thock noise as it stamped the time deep into the paper.

  7 . 57 a m

  Aoife punched her card, then inspected it before slotting it back into place. Caroline fumbled her card, then apologized to the woman bristling with impatience behind her. The lifers clocked in, then pushed past with bored, resigned faces. When the thick of the crowd was through, Mary growled at them to enter the factory. It was clear that Mary was not a morning person, and Maeve had a suspicion that she might not turn out to be an afternoon, evening or night person, either.

  As they crossed the factory floor a bell rang, bringing Mary to a sudden halt. “Right, ladies and gentlemen,” she guldered. “It’s eight o’clock and youse know what that means!” Mary eyeballed the clusters of murmuring women until they broke up. The machinists squeezed themselves into their stations and the clatter of sewing machines began to ricochet off the bare walls.

  Maeve felt like the whirring needles were stitching her skin onto her bones. She dug her fists deep into her fleece pockets against the feeling and allowed Mary to hoosh her into the office. She sagged with relief when the door shut against the racket.

  Mary lifted a page from her desk, read it, then frowned at Caroline. “Miss Jackson, Andy wants you on the machines. Basic training for wan week and then we’ll see if you’re fit for full production.”

  “Aye, grand. Thanks, Mary,” Caroline said, tugging at her curls.

  “You two, Andy wants youse on pressing.”

  Maeve’s mouth opened a split second before Aoife said, “Pressing?”

  “Aye,” Mary said, crushing her eyebrow together. “Pressing. Every shirt has tae be ironed before it goes out the door. Andy reckons you’ll get the hang of it quick enough. And if ye don’t, ye know where tae find the door.”

  Maeve’s mam had taught her that ironing clothes was a mug’s game because most clothes — ironed or creased — looked the same after an hour or so anyway. She only brought their iron out on special occasions, balancing it on top of their rickety ironing board, where it dribbled water before spitting a grey crust onto anything her mam pressed.

  “Ah’ve asked Marilyn Spears tae show youse the boards and irons.”

  The name Marilyn Spears was as Proddie as they came. A cross-community experience was looming.

  “Youse two should be off basic the morrow.”

  Maeve waited for Aoife to pipe up.

  “What’s basic?”

  Mary sighed and took out a fag. “Basic is yer hourly rate.” She lit up before continuing. “Ye get paid a set rate for every hour you’re here, even if ye never do a tap.” Mary started to cough. She hacked for so long that Maeve got the smack of her lungs on her tongue. “On top of basic, everyone has a target. If ye hit yer target, ye get a bonus.” Mary lifted a finger at Aoife’s opening mouth. “But don’t youse worry your heads about targets for now. When ye’re training ye’re kept on basic.”

  Aoife’s mouth snapped shut.

  “Miss Jackson here hasn’t much hope of hitting a target until well after she’s trained in. Sewing’s hard work. Professional work.”

  “How come Andy has me on sewing, though, Mary?” Caroline said, sliding deeper into her fleece. “I’m only here for the summer. Is there nothin’ easier I could be doing? Like packing? I could fold and box the shirts?”

  “Miss Jackson,” Mary said. “Andy makes the decisions. And he wants ye sewing.”

  It killed Maeve that Caroline was reluctant to sew — an actual skill that’d be useful her whole life long, whether she was just fixing her own clothes or making curtains. Pressing was like scouring toilets — one of those things everyone assumes a woman has mastered, but nobody respects. Maeve’d be in no hurry to add “pressing” to the skills section of her CV.

  “Now, you pair,” Mary said, narrowing her eyes. “By the end of the line things don’t flow the way they do at the start. Youse might get shirts through in drips and drabs or in wan big burst. So when there’s shirts tae be got out the door, you’re expected tae work on overtime for as long as it takes, even if it’s past clock off.”

  “How much do we get for overtime?” Aoife asked.

  “Time and a half unless there’s exceptional circumstances,” Mary said with a sniff. Maeve knew Aoife wouldn’t be able to resist the bait.

  “And what might exceptional circumstances be?” Aoife asked.

  Mary shook her head and ground her fag out before answering. “Ye can cross that bridge when ye come tae it. What ye need tae know fer now is if ye find yerself idle during the day, you’re expected tae lend a hand around the factory.”

  “Doing what?”

  “According to your CV, Miss O’Neill, you’re a right clever clogs. So use yer initiative. If the floor needs sweeping, sweep it. If Billy needs a hand with the fabric cutting, go help him roll the material out. If ye see me doing an inventory, check if ye could be of use. Just use yer friggen cop.” Mary sighed, giving the impression that her life had been long and hard, and meeting Maeve, Aoife and Caroline hadn’t eased her burden one iota. “Right. Time for yer tour.”

  When the door swung open, the racket of needles, engines and an English radio presenter assaulted Maeve. She hoped she’d harden against the noise, the way she’d hardened to the crash and clang of secondary school. Mary started the tour with the bolts of fabric resting at the back of the factory, ready to be unrolled and cut into shirt pieces. Then she took the girls up through the ranks of sewing machines and demonstrated how the hot plates of the fusing presses were used to sear the tops and bottoms of collars and cuffs together. They toured the racks, boards and tables at the top of the factory, where the shirts were examined and pressed before being boxed.

  As Mary was showing them how to use the stain removal gun, the hairs on Maeve’s neck prickled. She looked up and saw Andy standing on the mezzanine above them. He raised his eyebrow and grinned at her. She dipped her burning face back into the mist of cleaning chemicals, her head spinning.

  Finally, Mary left them in her office with the factory’s health and safety handbook. They reviewed where the first aid boxes and emergency exits were, learned which extinguisher worked for what fire, and identified who was trained in emergency first aid. They discovered that they weren’t allowed to eat on the factory floor (to avoid staining the shirts) or have sex anywhere on the premises (a rule that Maeve suspected wasn’t entirely related to keeping shirts pristine). They scanned a long list of “contentious articles” that they were instructed not to wear or wave, in the interests of fostering an “excellent and harmonious working environment.”

  “Caroline,” Maeve said, shutting the rulebook with a snap. “Is a Union Jack flag draped over a sewing station contentious?”

  “Is the Pope a Catholic?”

  “Aoife, what about wearing a Nirvana T-shirt?”

  “Kurt’s an international icon! How could he be contentious?”

  “Calm down. He’s neutral. Caroline, what about a Rangers top?”

  “Contentious and sad.”

  “Correct. Aoife, what about a balaclava and sunglasses?”

  “Perhaps permissible when it’s below minus 20° and sunny.”

  “So, unlikely to happen, then,” Maeve said. “Caroline, would wearing a Celtic top be contentious?”

  “Suicidal more like.”

  “What about Union Jack knickers displayed on the premises?”

  “Provocative in more ways than one.” Caroline snorted as a bell rang.

  Through the window Maeve sa
w the women who’d been squashed into small seats for hours stop sewing. They got up and tore over to the canteen.

  Paddy Quinn, who’d been a bit of a Rah-head when they were in school — decorating his bag and books with technically brilliant drawings of Armalite rifles — opened the office door. “Tea time, ladies. Goes faster than ye think so yeez had better get a move on,” he said, then walked off.

  Maeve, Caroline and Aoife scrambled to their feet, but were still the last to arrive in the steamy canteen. They joined the tail end of the queue as the tables filled up with people clutching mugs brimming to the lip with tea, chewing on toast and smoking fags. Maeve’d never seen so many people work so hard at eating, drinking and smoking before. Soon she had her own toast — soggy with margarine — and a mug of scalding-hot tea in her hands. She sat down at an empty table and started to eat. She’d only bitten into her second slice when the bell rang.

  Across the room, people huffed, crushed fags out, then scraped chairs back and got to their feet, stretching. As everyone moved towards the doors, Maeve crammed her toast into her mouth, then eyed Aoife’s untouched plate. “Not hungry?”

  “Don’t like margarine,” Aoife said, wrinkling her nose.

  Maeve grabbed a slice and Caroline snatched the other. Then she blew on her tea and tried to take a sip, but it scalded her lips. “Fuck’s sake,” she spat.

  “Go heavier on the milk,” a culchie-sounding fella said from behind, startling Maeve. He sidled up to the table, looking just as farmer as he sounded. “Ye want yer tay as warm as cow’s plash,” he said. “Then ye can pour it down yer throat.”

  “Well now, that’s something they didn’t teach us in school,” Maeve said, grinning.

  “There’s plenty youse didn’t learn in school that ye’ll learn the hard way in here,” growled an older woman, who’d the look of a leather glove dried out over a too-hot radiator. She rose to her feet and started hobbling to the door.

  “What’s cow’s plash?” Aoife whispered.

  Maeve sighed. Aoife often needed country talk translated. “Cow’s pish.”

  Aoife still looked at Maeve blankly.

  “He’s saying your tea should be the same temperature as bovine urine.”

  Maeve took a moment to savour the look on Aoife’s face before heading towards the canteen doors, where Mary and Marilyn stood chatting. They stopped talking and glared at Maeve’s toast as if it was a particularly contentious article.

  “Rule three,” Aoife murmured, nudging Maeve.

  “What?”

  “No food on the factory floor.”

  Maeve shoved the toast into her gob and chewed, but she’d no slabber left, so it stuck to the roof of her mouth the way Holy Communion did when she was hungover.

  “Miss Jackson, you’re coming with me,” Mary said. “And youse two, youse are with Marilyn.”

  As Caroline slunk off, Maeve felt panic scuttle through her guts. She’d no idea how to be natural with Prods. Thanks to segregated housing estates, schools, churches, shops, pubs, takeaways and Christmas trees, she’d had limited exposure to the fifteen hundred Protestants who made up the Other Side of their town, despite living in it with them for over eighteen years. But, lit by a spirit of peace and reconciliation, she adopted what she hoped was a bright, cheery smile.

  “Hi, Marilyn! I’m Maeve. And this doll here’s Aoife.”

  Marilyn looked sideways at Maeve as if she was messing. “Just so youse know, as long as ah’m training youse muppets, ah’m on basic. So can yeez get a move on?”

  Marilyn barged through the doors and let them swing back in Maeve’s face, teaching her factory lesson number one: Work here long enough and you’ll turn into a right cunt.

  Maeve wiped the toast crumbs from her face, then stalked out to the pressing station. The ironing boards were mounted on sturdy bars that were anchored to the floor with fat screws. A thick silvery cushion covered the boards. Maeve pressed her thumb into it and let go. The indent receded like a footprint on the seashore.

  Marilyn slammed her hand onto the board. “Do youse know the run of this place?”

  Aoife shook her head.

  Maeve was half ready to kill her and half delighted to keep Marilyn on basic for as long as possible.

  “Give me strength.” Marilyn huffed. “Right. Billy’s on cutting. And he . . .”

  “Sorry, Marilyn — Billy? Which one’s he?” Maeve kept her face all innocence while Marilyn released a sigh nearly as long as the Loyalist marching season.

  “Him. With the tattoo. Billy,” Marilyn said, pointing at a skinhead down the back.

  Maeve eyed the fella’s right arm, which was decorated with a bloody red hand tattooed between a Union Jack and an Ulster flag. His left hand was hidden in what looked like a chainmail glove. “I see him now. What’s the glove about? He doesn’t look like no Michael Jackson fan.”

  “Billy cuts the shirts out. The cutting blade would take the hand clean off ye. Thon glove’s for protection.”

  Maeve watched Billy unroll a bolt of fabric on the cutting table. There was something oddly hot about him, with his metal glove, paramilitary tattoos and barely concealed hatred of Catholics.

  “Billy cuts out the backs, plackets, sleeves, cuffs and epaulettes,” Marilyn said. “Does them in bundles. Us girls sew our pieces. Mickey there fuses the cuffs and collars. Karen does the buttons.”

  Maeve assumed that Karen, with her blonde hair and well-scrubbed face, was a Prod.

  “Finished shirts get sent up tae Fidelma in quality control.”

  Fidelma Hegarty stopped clipping threads off a shirt clamped to a rack and scowled in their direction. Maeve knew Fidelma in passing, for she’d been a few years ahead of Maeve in school. She lived in a caravan out the back of the chapel and was famous for her sour puss and brawling. Fidelma’d never learned to box formally — she was pure natural. Maeve’d seen her in action a few times, battering some of the lads in her class just for the craic. She’d heard tell of Fidelma taking on full-grown men after she left school. Maeve sometimes saw her with a split lip or a black eye, but she’d never heard tell of her losing a fight.

  “After Fidelma finishes with the shirts, youse press them so they’re ready for folding and packing. Got it?”

  Maeve and Aoife nodded.

  “Right,” Marilyn said, cracking her knuckles. “What pressing have youse done before?”

  “I do a fair bit of ironing at home,” Maeve lied.

  Marilyn stared at her as if to say, “Aye, right.” Then she eyed Aoife, who’d gone very pink.

  “I haven’t really done very much ironing, to be honest.”

  Maeve knew that Kitty Kelly “saw” to the O’Neill house each week, to allow Mrs. O’Neill the time she needed to focus on her “job” of being an artist. While Mrs. O’Neill painted canvases in her garden studio, Kitty Kelly ironed acres of blouses, shirts and white linen bedsheets. Maeve’d never seen Mrs. O’Neill — let alone Aoife — lift an iron.

  “Right, well, Maeve is it, you’re called?” Marilyn said. “You need to forget everything ye think ye know, for factory pressing’s a whole different show.”

  Maeve’s ears tingled as Marilyn adjusted the ironing board down to her level.

  “First thing ye need tae learn is the vacuum suck,” Marilyn said. She stepped on a footboard that triggered a vacuum. The ironing board sucked in a deep, sort of terrified breath.

  “It pulls the shirt tight tae the board,” Marilyn said, rolling up her sleeve. “Keeps it flat for ironing.” She laid her forearm on the ironing board, then sucked and released her flabby skin as an expression close to pleasure flitted over her face. “Now, these irons are different to the wans ye might have at home,” Marilyn said, pointing.

  The irons were powered by cables that coiled over their heads, clipped in place so they wouldn’t catch on the boards or shirts. Maeve picked one up, expecting it to weigh heavy in her hand. But it was light as an empty kettle and ran over the cushioned board as if it
were greased. A sudden cloud of steam hooshed in Maeve’s face.

  “Ye’re not trained yet,” Marilyn said, brandishing an iron. “Put that down.”

  Maeve slowly replaced the iron on the board, then folded her arms.

  “The steam comes through on automatic when yer iron’s on, but if ye need tae give a shirt an extra blast, ye press this button.” Marilyn hooshed a jet of steam into the air, then put the iron down and kicked a large plastic container that was under the board. “That’s the water reservoir,” she said. “Fill it up in the canteen whenever it’s empty.” Then Marilyn took off her fleece and pulled a stopwatch out of her pocket. She handed it to Aoife. “Time me.”

  When Aoife pressed the top button on the stopwatch, Marilyn plucked a shirt off the trolley, unpinned the sticker tag, popped the pin in her mouth and stuck the sticker on her left shoulder. Then she threw the shirt on the ironing board and pressed the vacuum pedal. The shirt clung flat to the board and she ran the iron over the collar. She released the vacuum and twitched the shirt off the board and flicked it so the front left of the shirt stuck to the board. She ironed the front, released the vacuum, then flicked the shirt over to iron the back. She pressed the front right, then did the sleeves and cuffs before throwing the shirt onto the rail.

  Aoife stopped the timer. “Thirty-two seconds!”

  Maeve hated that Aoife sounded impressed. She herself was wearing her bored-off-me-tits-here-love expression.

  “So,” Marilyn said, wiping a lick of sweat off her forehead. “Have youse got it?”

  Maeve nodded, for now was no time for telling the truth. But she didn’t like the sly way Marilyn was looking at her.

  “So, show me, ladies,” she said, all smug.

  Maeve’s heart sank but she picked up a shirt and started to iron like her life depended on it. She felt like she was back in school, in competition with Aoife, only now she had the added pressure of proving to Marilyn that Catholics could be just as fast and accurate as Protestants. So she was pure delighted when she was first to throw a shirt onto the rail. She stood there, waiting for Marilyn’s approval.