A Waltz for Matilda (2 page)

It worked.

The hands let go of her for a precious second as she slumped into a bundle of skirts and shawl on the footpath. She rolled twice, till she was past their legs, then surged to her feet, lifting her skirts so she could run faster all in one movement. She was a yard away from them before they knew what had happened.

Laughter echoed along the lane behind her. A twelve-year-old girl couldn’t out-run the Push, or not for long. But she only had one block to go before she reached the factory.

She could hear the clomp of boots behind her, almost feel their hands reaching for her, but there was the factory, dark and silent at the end of the street, the metal fence around it.

‘Bruiser!’ she shrieked.

She hurled herself over the fence, landing hard, heard boots thud onto the ground next to her. ‘Got yer, yer little —’

Todger screamed. It was a good sound. Matilda stood, trying to get her breath, as Bruiser tugged and tore at the young man’s arm. Blood dripped onto the gravel.

‘Bruiser, down.’

The big dog glanced at her with one yellow eye, as though to say, ‘Don’t stop me. This is fun!’ No one knew what sort of dog Bruiser was, not even Tommy. Part German shepherd, perhaps,
or something even larger. Part lion, more likely, Matilda thought, escaped from a circus.

‘Let him go, Bruiser,’ she said again.

Bruiser opened his mouth.

The young man cradled his arm to his chest, his breath coming in deep sobs. Suddenly Matilda wanted to cry too, to run back to Aunt Ann’s and the safe days of love and buttered toast. But those days were gone. She had to stop the Push waiting for her again. Mum depended on her now.

She tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Better get the doctor to disinfect that bite. Bruiser’s got rabies.’

She stroked Bruiser’s ears. ‘See all his spit? That’s mad-dog spit. Anyone he bites goes mad, unless they get it disinfected fast. It’s called hydrophobia. If you see a drop of water you’ll start screaming and screaming and you won’t be able to stop.’ It wasn’t true, but she hoped it sounded terrifying. The other boys watched warily over the fence.

Matilda smiled at them grimly. ‘If Todger touches you, you might go mad too. Better stay away.’

She turned her back, forcing herself not to run. Bruiser followed at her heels as she walked to the factory doorway. By the time she’d sat down, with her shawl around her, the Push had gone.

It was cold huddled in the doorway, even with Bruiser for comfort. The big dog gnawed the soup bone she had brought him. There was no meat on it — not after two days’ boiling on Mrs Dawkins’s wood stove — but the dog seemed to like it.

Matilda stroked him again, the torn ears, the scars on his side from kickings. Bruiser cowered whenever Mr Thrattle
came near. Anyone else he savaged. Except Matilda. Matilda was his friend.

Now at last she could sleep. She huddled down, her shawl around her, trying to ignore the ache of her bruises and the cold of the concrete below her. She couldn’t afford to lose this job. Not with rent to pay and food for Mum.

Matilda smiled in the gaslight shadows. Tonight Mum could eat the peach.

‘Oi! Wake up, young coot. Breakfast’s here.’

Matilda opened her eyes. Tommy lounged in the doorway, grinning at her, showing off the gap in his teeth where one of the Push had hit him when he was a kid.

Tommy was fifteen now, and the best mechanic around. If Snagger or Todger wanted to keep their precious bicycles on the road they needed to stay in good with Tommy these days. She stood up stiffly, and stretched.

‘Here.’ He handed her a packet wrapped in greaseproof paper. Tommy had brought her sandwiches since her second day at the factory, when he saw she didn’t have any lunch.

Matilda bit into the first one eagerly, then grinned up at him. Roast lamb and chutney, with big cold hunks of butter. Six big chunks of bread, so lopsided he must have cut them himself. She’d eat two sandwiches now, keep one for her lunch.

‘Thank you.’

‘No worries. Them arms of yours look like a match with the wood shaved off. We need to fatten you up.’

Tommy nodded at Bruiser, standing at her side and growling at him softly. ‘Tie him up, will you, so I can get inside. Need to
see to the big pulley afore I start the burners. That pulley’s almost rusted through, but the old bast— er …
biscuit
is too cheap to buy a new one. The whole dashed place runs on spit and rubber bands.’ He grinned again. ‘I got a new idea too.’

Matilda swallowed the mouthful of bread and meat. ‘What is it?’ Tommy had built half the machinery here, even the big thing he called a ‘conveyer belt’ that carried the cans of hot jam. He was so full of ideas she expected to see them leak out of his pockets.

‘Grapples,’ he said triumphantly, then saw her blank face. ‘To hold the cans of jam with, like, so you girls don’t burn your hands all the time.’

Matilda gazed down at her hands automatically. Three months had left them scarred and callused. ‘Can you make them today?’

He shook his head. ‘Will on Sunday though.’

Trust Tommy, she thought, to spend his only day off working. But for Tommy, machinery was never work.

Tommy blew on his hands to warm them. ‘Come on then. I want a good scrounge in the junk heap for bits and pieces to make ‘em afore I light the burners.’

Matilda nodded, her mouth full again. She led Bruiser over to the fence and tied the rope to his collar. She hated to do it. A dog like Bruiser needed to run. She’d go mad too, tied up all day. But the dog was Mr Thrattle’s, not hers.

Behind her Tommy had already slipped inside the echoing factory. Matilda felt her eyes closing again. Just a few moments more of sleep …

‘No time to be napping, young lady. This is a place of work. Put your apron on and look lively.’

Matilda pushed herself to her feet. The sky was grey with dawn and smoke. ‘Yes, Mr Thrattle.’

Women straggled along the street. Inside she could hear the whoosh as Tommy hosed down the floor.

The day had begun.

Six hours later her feet ached. Her back ached. Even her elbows ached from keeping them close to her side so she didn’t jostle the aproned women next to her.

The world had shrunk to the few feet of space by the conveyer belt, can after can after can, the air thick with smoke from the fires under the giant vats of water and the steam from boiling fruit. Her hands stung from checking the seals on each hot can, then pressing on a label.

The sooner Tommy worked out his grapple thing the better. She glanced around quickly, wondering where he was now — the pots of hot jam came too fast to look away for long.

Men trundled boxes of fruit or barrows of coal, the older women slicing, slicing, slicing at the endless mounds of plums and chokos. Chokos were cheaper even than plums, and no one was supposed to know the difference, just like when Mr Thrattle added marrow to the strawberry jam, with red food colouring to make it look good.

Another hour till lunch, then five hours more till she could go home. At least the endless stench of jam stopped her hunger. She’d never eat jam again …

For a second she heard Tommy’s laughter close behind her. She hoped he didn’t come up and talk. The women weren’t allowed to speak while they were working. Mr Thrattle wouldn’t sack Tommy, but she didn’t dare attract the boss’s attention in case he docked her pay.

She risked another glance up. Tommy winked at her, then moved away, past the vats where the fruit stewed, to the big coppers where the sugar was added. The mix had to be stirred by hand, two men working giant paddles back and forth, till the jam was thick and bubbling like a volcano, ready to be tipped out into the giant funnels that filled the cans.

Matilda was glad she wasn’t on the filling station. Hot jam could burn you to the bone. Jam burns got infected. Mrs Dawkins had told her about one of the women who’d lost an arm, and two of the women worked nine fingered.

Can after can … pick up a label, dip it in the glue, slap it on the hot tin, pick up a label, dip it in the glue …

Beside her women coughed, deep coughs that wracked their bodies, made worse by steam and smoke. Everyone who worked at the factory coughed after a few years. It was the factory cough.

Pick up the label, dip it in the glue, slap it on a tin, wait for the next …

Her hands kept working even when her mind was elsewhere — back at Aunt Ann’s cottage, or Dad’s farm … she had never seen it, couldn’t remember her father either. But Aunt Ann had had a book about a farm. The farm kitchen was painted white, with a yellow cloth on the kitchen table and a fat brown cow peering through the window. And in the background white lambs with wriggly tails and fat pink pigs.

She peered up at the factory clock again. Forty minutes to go. Behind her the brackets creaked as another vat of plum jam was swung over into the funnel.

Something cracked, loud as lightning. Men yelled.

She turned in time to see the giant vat swing off its hinges, spilling the jam onto the floor.

Tommy had said the whole thing was rusted … for an instant she felt nothing but pleasure that he’d been right, that Mr Thrattle would lose the profits of a whole vat of jam. Maybe he’d even let them take some of the spilled jam home …

And then she saw a shape among the red.

‘It’s young Thompson!’

‘My oath! Help him, someone!’

Matilda’s skin crawled cold, despite the steam. That shape was Tommy, half buried in the still bubbling jam.

Why did no one move? Were they afraid of getting burned? Her mind moved faster than her body … pulling him away from the jam wouldn’t be enough. The jam would stick on his flesh, still burning to the bone.

Somehow she was already at the giant hose, turning it on full force. Within seconds the crowd was saturated. They moved apart, some in anger, others seeing what she was trying to do.

It had to work! It had to!

The top layer of jam began to sizzle. Slowly it began to move, washing back bit by bit, showing the details of the shape beneath.

Matilda let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She had imagined Tommy burned to a skeleton. But part of the mechanism had sheltered him. Only one arm and the side of his
face had been burned: they were revealed, red as the jam, as the water washed him free.

Men moved now, using the jam stirrers to move the still-hot cauldron away from him. Tommy’s face stared up, mouth open, eyes shut, one side stark white, the other blistered red. His left leg was folded under him at a strange angle.

‘Is he dead?’

Matilda didn’t know who spoke. She stood, the hose still in her hands, vaguely aware that someone had turned it off.

‘Move away there.’ It was Mrs Eastman, the steadiest of the women on the line. She held her skirts up out of the jammy water while she kneeled by Tommy’s body, her hand on his neck, then ran her hands along his sides.

He didn’t move.

Mrs Eastman looked up. ‘Bring one o’ the doors. Now!’

Men moved. Mrs Eastman nodded at Matilda. ‘Good work,’ she said shortly.

‘Is he … is he alive?’

‘He’s breathing. One leg broke, I think. Might lose the arm too.’ She spoke with the dispassionate voice of a woman who had lost ten of her twelve children to disease and a husband to drink. ‘He’d have been a goner if you hadn’t got that jam away. You saved his life.’