Chapter 65

Mr Johnston was as good as his word; the luton van he had promised to send over to pick us up turned up promptly at eight o'clock on Monday morning, just as we finished washing up the breakfast dishes.

The ten of us quickly thanked Mum for her hospitality and piled ourselves and our luggage into the van before the driver closed the back doors on us and set off for the factory. We slid around a bit on the plywood floor as he went round some sharp bends, but it was all good fun. Luckily it was one of those vans with a transparent roof, so we weren't in total darkness, which would have been more scary; there are a couple of double right angled bends on that road, and we all slid to one side, and then back again as the van negotiated them.

The driver took us round the back into the yard and dropped us at the caravan, which was now unlocked, so we stacked our bags in the 'lounge' and gathered in the canteen as instructed to await Mr Johnston. We discovered that we weren't the only ones starting this morning; there was also a quartet of students from Loughborough: they introduced themselves as John and Pam, and Hilary and Peter. They had all just completed their first year, were sharing a small rented house close to Taylor's Bell Foundry, and were going to be commuting daily in Peter's old Morris Minor.

We university students had about six weeks longer in the summer than the official school holidays, so Mr Johnston wasn't fully staffed yet. There were also half-a-dozen 18-year-olds who had finished their 'A' Level exams, and like Jen the year before, were able to work because they had no more school commitments, but the rest of the youngsters wouldn't arrive for another fortnight.

We all had the various safety and food hygiene briefings together, and the others seemed okay, it looked as if we'd get along with them. There was much mutual hilarity as the one piece overalls were handed out and tried on – Mr Johnston had got hold of a job lot of Army surplus green coveralls to add to his stock of blue ex-Royal Air Force ones, and it took quite a bit of sorting through to find ones small enough for Vee and a couple of the school leavers. In the end, they had to settle for rolling the sleeves and trousers up on some of their sets!

Jen and Julie were introduced to Mavis the canteen supervisor, and returned from her office all smiles.

"Great news! Not only will Mavis give us plenty of milk, teabags, sugar, bread and butter for breakfast and supper, but she'll put the crockery and cutlery through the kitchen dishwasher – no washing up! Oh, and I used her phone to ask Mum to nip to the cash and carry and get us some extras."

Lunch that day was a choice of braised steak and onions or a chicken and leek pie with shortcrust pastry; both were well cooked, even if they did remind us of school dinners. Jen and Hamish, used to canteen food in their Hall of Residence, actually commented that it was much more freshly cooked than the food they were normally served. There was plenty of potato and mixed vegetables to fill up on, and a rhubarb crumble and custard for those who wanted pud. It was certainly a bigger meal than we ever ate back in Cardiff at lunchtime.

We all made a point of clearing the table and taking our empty plates to the trolley so that we'd be in the catering staff's good books; we knew that upsetting them would be a really bad move!

By an hour after lunch, we were all working on the preparation line, half of us podding peas as fast as we could run our thumbs along the seams, and the others chopping the green leaves off young carrots before jetting cold water at them to remove the last traces of the rich black Fenland soil which had nurtured them. As Fred passed me, carrying a bin of carrot tops to the waste trailer, he bemoaned the fact that he didn't still have a pet rabbit.

"When I was a kid, I'd have biked ten miles for the chance of some fresh greens like these for the rabbits – they would have been a real treat. Most of the time all they got was cow parsley from the roadside verges, though that went down well too."

"Yeah, Jen's guinea pigs would have gone crazy for these as well!"

Mr Johnston popped into the canteen while we were having our short afternoon teabreak.

"I don't suppose I can ask you to all volunteer for a one-day First Aid course, can I? There's no extra money involved for having the qualification, but you will get a St Johns' Ambulance 'Appointed Person' certificate that you can add to your CV?"

We looked at each other. There was no reason why not, and as he said, it wasn't a bad thing to be able to add to our CV when it came to applying for jobs.

"Great! Thank you. Tuesday next week, 9.30 here in the canteen?"

He went on to make the same offer to the Loughborough students, who also agreed.

The ten of us had a quick discussion once he had gone as to how we were going to divide up the bedrooms. By popular consent (their proposal), the girls were elected to make the decisions, while we blokes went back for another couple of hours work. As we left the canteen, I noticed Julie collecting a milk crate from Mavis; it was piled high with a couple of loaves, a big box of teabags and a whole load of plates and mugs.

It actually ended up being a four hour shift, as another two lorries of peas had arrived; the girls rejoined us for the evening meal break, and came back to the line until eight o'clock.

As we stood together podding peas into a five-gallon stainless steel dixie, I asked Sheila if all the bedrooms had been allocated okay.

"Oh yes, no problems there. Jen's got the end one, then us, then Twin and Julie, then Vee, and Sian's claimed the sofa bed on the grounds that she's the tallest of us. All made up and ready to go."

"Oh god, we won't get a wink of sleep being next to my sister!"

She chuckled.

"Last I heard, super stud, you don't go to bed to sleep either!"

"I resent that remark!"

I tried to glare at her in my most forbidding way; somewhere in my facial muscles the message got confused, and it ended up being a lecherous leer, which just made her laugh. Then she flinched, as if in pain.

"Are you okay, Sheila?"

"Yeah, just a bit of tummy ache. Serves me right for laughing at your jokes."

"It's probably being on our feet all day. Jen and I took a while to get used to it last year."

She grunted in acknowledgment and we carried on with our work. Each time we filled a waste bin with the empty pods, though, I took it out to the waste trailer, rather than let Sheila carry it. I noticed that all of us were being gentlemen on this; none of the girls got a chance to lug the heavy stuff about. Don't get me wrong; I've always been okay with equal rights, but apart from Sian, none of the girls were built to heave half a hundredweight of vegetable waste about. Besides, it was one way we could say 'thank-you' for their efforts in sorting out the bedrooms.

None of us were sorry as the last box of carrots came up the conveyor belt, and the foreman soon announced that we were finished for the day. My hands were stained green from the pods, and my fingernails were full of mushy vegetation; the others were no different. Sian bemoaned her wrinkled fingers from having them wet for hours, and promised herself a good application of hand lotion before bed.

Still wearing our coveralls, we had a cuppa and a slice of toast for supper, all crowded into the 'lounge' which was now Sian and Malcolm's bedroom. Vee had set up her transistor radio for background music, and the room was already cosy and less temporary – all it needed was a couple of posters, and it would have been an ideal student bedsit.

"You weren't joking about the long hours, were you?"

"I didn't expect nine paid hours plus the induction the first day, I have to admit. Wait 'til payday – then it'll all be worth it! Mind you, once the schoolkids arrive, there'll be more bodies so fewer hours."

"The food's been good, so I'll trust you thus far – but now I want to find out if there's still enough hot water for a shower!"

There was. More than enough. Which was just as well – there would have been some major chuntering if we'd had to go to bed grubby.

Bedtime with Sheila that first night was suprisingly awkward; we lads had gone over to the male changing room with our towels and all had our showers while the girls were still chatting over a second cuppa, and they were absent when we got back. I was sitting naked on the edge of our bed when she came in, clad in her old dressing gown. To give her room to undress in the confined space which we were going to share for the next three months, I lifted my legs up and shifted over.

"Alright?"

"Yeah, fine thanks."

Sheila brushed her hair in front of the small polished metal square that passed for a mirror, rubbed some moisturising cream into her hands, took off her dressing gown, turned out the light, and got into bed, still wearing her nightdress. The external security floodlights of the cold storage plant cast a brightness through the high window that allowed us to see each other reasonably well.

It was almost as if we hadn't slept together before. I was tight up against the partition wall, so as to give her room on the narrow bed, and she seemed to be clinging to the far edge, not moving closer at all. There was an unusually wide gap between us; quite impressive given the small size of the bed.

"Are you really okay, Sheila? The truth, please?"

She sighed.

"Yeah, I'm okay, but I'm pretty sure that my period's just starting, so I'm feeling a bit grotty."

"Never mind, these things happen!"

"Yeah, but I'm probably going to be messy and a bit smelly. I've put a tampon in, and I just hope it'll be enough."

I rolled over towards her. This was a new side to Sheila that I hadn't experienced before – hesitant, awkward, lacking confidence. I sat up a bit, so I could look her in the eyes.

"Sheila, darling, it doesn't matter! You can't help it, you're doing your best to control it, so please don't worry!"

"But if I get into a mess, I can't just nip down the hall into the shower and clean up like I can back in Clifton."

"Well, let's try not to get you into a mess, but if it happens, I'll help you sort it out. I don't love you any less because your body is doing what comes naturally, you know."

I lifted up my arm and the quilt, and she moved across so she was just about touching me. She still wore the nightdress.

"Sheila, darling, it's fine! Don't worry! I always cuddle Julie when she's off games, to help with her tummyache. Do you want me to get you a hot water bottle?"

She moved closer and kissed me on the cheek.

"You are a darling! It's just that whenever I've had my period and slept with Twin in the flat, I've always known that I could get to the shower easily if I started leaking. I've never slept with you or Hamish when I couldn't make love, so it's all a bit new for me."

I kissed her back, this time on the lips.

That finally broke the ice; she snuggled in against my side and I put an arm round her.

"We've got three months of sleeping together ahead of us – you just wait and see – we'll be like an old married couple by September!"

That made her giggle.

"If you think that I'll come to bed wearing my curlers, or let you have your false teeth soaking in Steradent in a glass beside the bed, you're on the wrong track, buster."

I chuckled at the thought. At the tender age of twenty, although I had seen my grandparents' false teeth occasionally, I certainly couldn't imagine the day when I might need them myself.

"I can assure you, young lady, that all my teeth and hair are my own!"

This time her kiss came on my lips, before she laid her head on my shoulder and whispered 'Good Night'.

Okay, so I'd have preferred to have had the smell of Julie's hair in my nose, but the deal was that we'd stay with the twins. Sheila and I had never spent the night together on a weekday; our times together had always been passion-filled weekends. Not that I'd have ever kicked Sheila out of my bed; she was a very attractive girl and a great sexual partner, and I had indeed got very fond of her. But I mentally sent my girlfriend, who was just the other side of the plywood partition, a 'Good night and sleep tight!' thought.

We slept well, although in the morning I had to do some more fast talking to convince Sheila that I wasn't repulsed by her period and that I still found her as attractive as ever - her overnight flow had been so heavy it had overwhelmed the tampon and pantyliner, and she had got blood both on her panties and her nightdress. Ignoring her objections, I helped her on with her dressing gown, and we dashed across to the changing rooms without anyone seeing us.

I quickly kissed her as she pushed open the door to the ladies, and went on to have a shower myself.

She was waiting for me in the corridor as I eventually came back out, having decided to have a wet shave while I was at it.

"Thanks, Jon, I was worried about whether or not I'd make it without leaving a trail! I feel a lot better now!"

"No problem – it was the least I could do."

Everyone else waking up and having breakfast that first morning was chaotic. At least Sian and Malcolm had taken the initiative and boiled the kettle, so everyone managed a cup of tea as they took turns with their morning ablutions. As we all had lockers in the changing rooms, Sian and Malcolm were able to take their clothes with them, rather than have to get dressed in what was now a shared living room more than it was their private bedroom.

Because Sheila and I were washed and dressed before anyone else, we took charge of the 'cooking'. Without a supply of cereal, the choice was toast and butter, without the option. There were no complaints, although had the toaster been able to speak, it would have been chuntering about being worked so hard. Two loaves and two half-pound packs of (intervention) butter later, the cupboard was bare.

Mr Johnston knocked on the outside of the caravan and poked his head through the door.

"Everything okay so far?"

There was a chorus of assent.

"You look a bit cramped round that table – I've got a couple of trestle tables and some folding chairs stashed away somewhere, so you could have them for eating outside. Sorry I can't do the parasol or barbecue, but you might as well enjoy the sunshine while you can."

Mum turned up in her Mini a few minutes later, the back and passenger seats filled with big cardboard boxes containing the promised extra provisions. I went out to carry everything in for her.

"I hope this lot will keep you going for a while!"

"What did you get?"

She ticked off the items on her fingers.

"Catering boxes of cornflakes, shredded wheat, weetabix, and the variety pack, two boxes of mixed broken biscuits, two seven-pound tins of jam – and don't lose the plastic lids, please – oh, and there are jars of mayonnaise, salad cream and a dozen bottles of barley water in the boot."

"Crikey, Mum, you could feed an army on that lot!"

"Ten young people with appetites like yours and Jen's? It'll be lucky to last to the weekend!"

She was quite right. It looked like a big pile on the table in the living room, but when I mentally divided it by ten, it wasn't really all that much.

"What do we owe you?"

"It's about fifteen pounds; I've got the receipt in my handbag, but it can wait until after payday."

"Thanks, Mum!"

With a quick hug she was off on her way to work. We locked up the caravan, entrusted Vee with the key, and went to work ourselves.

Mr Johnston insisted that the line stopped for a morning teabreak of fifteen minutes, for a lunch break of half an hour at about one o'clock, and another break in the afternoon. When the work went on into the evening, the canteen served a meal at around half past six, but then we were on our own.

During the afternoon teabreak, Adrian and Sheila nipped to the public callbox outside the gate to 'phone their parents and report that they were still alive and well; Julie and Hamish did the same at teatime.

The next morning, two of the schoolkids failed to turn up by ten o'clock; there was a bit of discussion between their mates and the foreman, and he went off to tell the office. Whoever phoned their homes must have read them the riot act, because they were both back on the line by twelve. It was another day of peas and carrots – Fred told us at lunchtime that one of his cousins had worked at the Geest warehouse one summer, and now couldn't face the sight or smell of bananas!