by Karl Quentin
The room was piled from floor to head height with clean but creased laundry in steel baskets. There were stacks of pink and white dresses, white slips, grey blouses and skirts, and huge containers of white cotton vests and bras and panties. Ironing boards stood around the walls, bolted to the bare concrete floor. A murky November afternoon light of 1956 crawled through the grimy reinforced windows, across which thick bars reduced even further the available illumination. Rain spattered the glass in a dispiriting tattoo. Within, however, the heating was turned up so high it was almost like a sauna. Lunch time had just ended at Adlestrop Reformatory for Wayward Girls and Young Women, and a long afternoon of manual labour suitable for the fair sex was about to begin under the watchful eyes of the reformatory officers.
Out in the corridor keys jingled and the lock slammed loudly. A strong bare female arm opened the heavy metal door and four young women marched smartly in, in step, their arms swinging and their heads high. They were each wearing the same short sleeved pink and white check calf-length dresses, white ankle socks and black pumps. Their hair was contained beneath nets, and over each left breast was sewn an identification number.
They stood smartly to attention in a row in the middle of the room, panting slightly. Following them in came two officers in shiny grey caps, short sleeved grey blouses with blue epaulettes, tight knee length grey skirts and heavy black shoes. Their eyes were hard and alert, and from their leather belts hung the symbols of their authority that were yet more than symbols: a heavy bunch of keys, a small oval paddle and a nasty looking two tailed tawse. The women were stocky and tough, though one - Officer Sarkozy - was tall with it while the other - Officer Campbell - was short and broad.
The four girls lined up awaiting their pleasure; 'trainees' they were called in the parlance of Her Majesty's prison service, and although uniformly dressed were equally different one from the other. On the left of the row was a tall well-made girl with abundant curls in the most startling shade of red, and an open pleasant freckled face to match; though it was a face that could when occasion demanded, flush with anger. And then you had better watch out; unless, of course, you possessed the right to ply the tawse across her bare bottom! Her name was Eileen O'Connell, and she hailed from Kilburn in London. She was nineteen years old, and a bare four months previously she had had a job working on the counter in Timothy White's.
Next to her, and looking extremely diminutive in comparison, stood twenty-one year old Melody Durrant. Of all the girls, tousle haired Melody found it hardest to stand rigidly at attention, or indeed to obey all the pernickety and minutely detailed rules of the reformatory. Somehow she made her dowdy rather childish uniform look almost bohemian on her. Perhaps it was her dark gypsy colouring (in fact if anyone could be called a gypsy it was Eileen) and her turned up nose in her elfin little face. Now her face had a haunted look, as though punishment was always around the next corner. Her dark eyes darted left and right, aware of the officers behind her. Four months previously she had been rehearsing for her part in Hedda Gabler.
Beside her, every muscle taut, stood Linda Dowle. Midway in height between Eileen and Melody, she was a sturdy brown-haired lass of eighteen. Her pink and white uniform dress strained across her prominent full bust and ripely rounded firm bottom. Her face was blank and her eyes stared straight ahead; she gave nothing away, certainly not to the fucking screws. Her mum and dad had drilled it into her that when faced with any kind of authority you lied, you deceived, anything to keep the bastards off your case. And she started practicing on her parents. Four months ago she had been bent over the sofa getting her dad's belt for getting caught shoplifting.
Finally on the far right was another tall girl, of twenty. She was a willowy blonde, chocolate box pretty like a sugar mouse. She alone had a complexion suited to pink and white. Her blue eyes were troubled with fear and anxiety as she trembled in her stiff pose. Her bare calves were long and shapely, and her figure was svelte and round. Her name was Alexandra Cunningham-Hoare. Four months ago she had been drinking Orange Pekoe and studying history before the fire in her room in St Hilda's College, Oxford.
"Stand easy!" barked Officer Sarkozy. "Turn around!"
Instantly the four girls obeyed, though Melody and Linda were fractionally slower.
"Right girls. This afternoon we've a spot of ironing for you to do. Exactly what you need to be good at if you're going to marry and make a home with some nice boy once you've been reformed."
Alexandra studied her toes; she had, or had had, other expectations of life.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you, Cunningham-Hoare! That's better, missy. I want your full attention, if you please, or your bare bottom will be getting my full attention!"
Alexandra blushed a fetching red all over her face and neck. Officer Sarkozy gave her a hard look as she announced, "OK, each girl to an ironing board, on the double, and get going. I want two of these laundry baskets filled by each of you by four o'clock. Any idlers who don't give me my quota know what to expect, eh, Durrant?"
And now it was Melody's turn to blush as she whispered, "Yes miss!"
Quickly the four trainees separated to their work. Each board had an electric iron attached to an overhead cable. Eileen and Linda had theirs turned on immediately. Melody fumbled, but soon followed suit, leaving Alexandra still fiddling with hers. The officers exchanged glances with eyebrows raised.
"Oh for Christ's sake, girl, can't you work an iron? Are you an imbecile?" snapped Officer Campbell, impatiently showing the girl what to do.
"I'm sorry, miss, I - I'm not used..."
"Just get on with it."
"Yes miss," said the upper class twenty year old miserably.
Soon the room was full of the sounds and smells of girls in detention paying their debt to society through strict discipline and hard work. The irons hissed, the ironing boards creaked, the laundry flapped and piled up. The concentration of the four girls, mindful of the tawses and paddles, was intense. Soon it was clear that Eileen and Linda's piles of neatly ironed clothing were higher than Alexandra's, and far higher than Melody's.
At first the two supervising officers paid minute attention to what their convicted charges were doing. They prowled around, examining the quality of the ironing, snapping at the soon sweating girls when it was not (poor Alexandra!), occasionally administering a quick smack to the seat of a dress for encouragement. But after a while the close stuffy steamy atmosphere of the room got to them, and they sat down and opened women's magazines. Some while later again, Officer Sarkozy sighed with boredom.
"You girls!" she called. "Why don't you sing us a song while you're working?" This was a blatant flouting of the regulations, which clearly stated that work was to be undertaken in complete silence. But some officers liked to have their helpless charges perform for them, and ignored the rules, while most of the girls themselves welcomed the chance to break the monotony and drudgery of their daily lives.
At once Maureen began to sing, in a soft Irish voice:
"Where the strawberry beds
Sweep down to the Liffey
You'll kiss away the worries from my brow
I love you well today
and I love you more tomorrow
If you ever loved me Molly love me now."
"Very nice, dear," said Officer Campbell, and indeed it was.
I wish I had a sweet natural voice like hers, Melody thought. Such a nice girl beneath that rough exterior, thought Alexandra. What lovely quaint songs the Irish know!
Then Linda struck up Blue Moon of Kentucky followed by That's All Right, swivelling her hips as she ironed. The officers laughed at her enthusiasm and alas at her rather tuneless voice, and clapped along.
"What songs are those, Dowle?"
"Elvis, miss!" said Linda, scandalised. The officers shrugged. Maureen sang Spancil Hill, and the work suddenly seemed to be going with a real swing. All four girls were caught up in it. Shyly, Melody broke into an aria from Don Giovanni and the stuffy room was suddenly filled with a rich trained mezzosoprano. The officers gazed at her open-mouthed, and her companions stopped work for a moment to listen. When she had finished Melody blushed deeply and returned to work with her head down.
"That was lovely dear," said Officer Sarkozy. "Cunningham-Hoare. What about you?"
Alexandra looked up from under her long delicate eyelashes and blushed. She looked round at her fellow inmates for a moment before suddenly striking up, in a hesitant voice that became stronger: "Arise, ye starvelings from your slumbers! Arise, ye criminals of want!"
But that was as far as she got. Eyes ablaze, Officer Sarkozy strode across the room and slapped Alexandra hard across her face, left cheek, right cheek.
"How dare you! How dare you sing that to me! With Russian tanks in the streets of Budapest even as we stand here! You stupid naïve little girl! My family are still living there!"
The room had gone deadly silent. The three watching girls were white-faced. Alexandra crouched down like a hurt animal, tears standing in her eyes as she soothed her burning cheeks. She looked up at the big woman who had slapped her with blurred incomprehension. What had she done wrong this time? This place was impossibly horrible!
Officer Campbell had been watching the other three closely. It was at times like these that prisoners could start rioting, and she didn't trust O'Connell at all. The girl was incarcerated for a particularly violent crime, after all. "Show's over, girls! Back to work, you three! I said back to work!" She stepped forwards, loosening the tawse at her belt. Slowly the three trainees took their eyes from the suffering form of their friend and took up their irons again.
Officer Sarkozy took hold of Alexandra by her beautiful blonde curls, some of which had escaped from her hairnet, and yanked her up straight. The girl cried out in pain. Two bright red patches glowed across her wet face. "Back to work you as well! And I'd advise you not to annoy me any further today!" She pushed the tall girl firmly back to her ironing board.
"I think we'll do without any singing from now on," said Officer Campbell dryly. And the work went on as before, in total quiet but for Alexandra's sniffles that she could not quite suppress. She felt quite sick from the aftershock of the slaps, and kept her head down and her eyes on the laundry. Indeed, so clumsy was she at ironing that the work needed all her attention at the best of times. At home her mother had had a housemaid who took care of all such work. The other girls stole a glance at her from time to time, to express their sympathy and to keep her spirits up, but she did not see.
Her whole intent was to become as invisible as possible, and keep out of the way of trouble. Alas, after a while she began to feel a pressing need in her bladder. She tried to suppress it, to hang on until the end of the work period, but it was no good. She squirmed and wriggled over her ironing until she felt she must burst. At last she reluctantly put up her hand.
"Well, Cunningham-Hoare?"
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