Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts Read Online Free Page B

the first of the women marchers. Nellie saw rows and rows of women, filling the street as far back as she could see, some linking arms and singing, others carrying banners. One read: WE’RE NOT WHITE SLAVES, WE’RE PINK’S!
    The women around her called out excitedly. ‘There’s Pink’s Jam, can you see Crosse & Blackwell’s? Where’s Peek Frean’s? I can see Lipton’s. Have they all come? Have Hartley’s come?’
    Albert, their astonished foreman, was running up and down behind the line of women at the windows. ‘Get back to your benches, what d’yer think yer doing!’
    They pretended not to hear him and Nellie followed the others as they started to remove their smocks and caps.
    ‘This is it, Nell.’ Lily squeezed her hand. ‘You coming?’
    Nellie paused for a heartbeat, then bent down deliberately and reached into a bag hidden behind a trolley. She pulled out her best wool jacket.
    ‘’Course I’m coming, I’m not missing this!’
    Other women were putting on their fancy hats and feather boas, as they marched in orderly single file past the open-mouthed foreman. They joined a stream of women workers from higher floors. Jostling down the stone staircase, came the girls from baking powder and blancmange, distinguishable only by the white or pink powder coating them. When they reached the factory yard, Nellie glanced over at the jelly building. The foremen in charge of the great vats of fruit jellies had left the gelatine bubbling, coming out to stare incredulously as the jelly packers joined the other women marching out of the factory gates. They looked as if they were dressed for a day out, but they weren’t – they were on strike!
    Once Nellie was down among the crowd, she grabbed Lily, feeling overwhelmed by the mass of humanity surrounding her. She had never been in such a vast crowd, not even during the new King George’s coronation celebrations, earlier that summer. There must be thousands of women there today, choking the width of Spa Road, holding up carts and trams, drawing shouts from drivers and hoots from the odd motor car desperate to get through the crush. Women poured from side streets, like the tributaries of an unstoppable river. They seemed to Nellie to move in an orchestrated way and yet no one was in charge; they were merely surging forward in a common purpose. Astonished onlookers lined the pavement, unable to negotiate their way through the throng of banner-carrying women. Many of the men and boys stopped, mid-stride, to gawp openly; others, shoving their hands into their pockets, pointedly ignored the women and attempted to barge through them. Some called out as they passed, ‘Get back ’ome, and cook yer husbands’ dinners!’ and other less decorous suggestions. But Nellie felt safe enough, amongst the group of burly dockers who had turned out to march with them. Some of these shouted back at the hecklers.
    ‘Don’t I know yer missus, mate? She’s here somewhere!’
    Nellie pulled Lily in closer, linking arms. ‘Look, there’s Ted!’ She pointed towards the front of the crowd, where Lily’s brother and his fellow dockers marched.
    Nellie thought Ted looked heroic, with his red-gold hair shining in the bright sunshine, and his strong arms holding one end of the dockers’ union banner. At the head of the march she could see the colourful banner of the National Federation of Women Workers, bravely proclaiming that they would ‘fight to struggle to right the wrong’. Nellie guided Lily nearer to the banner, which was held aloft by two athletic middle-class young women. Beneath it, marching four abreast with the other strike leaders, was Eliza James, dressed in a long, flowing grey silk coat and a broad straw hat. With her white scarf flying out behind her, she was smiling and urging the women on, calling out to the male onlookers, ‘Come and join the struggle, these are your daughters, and your wives!’
    She looked magnificent, as bold and brave as Britannia on the