The Fancy by Monica Dickens Read Free Book Online

back curved like a sapling.
    “This is Mrs. King,” said Bob. “Paddy—your new charge hand. You’ll find sulks don’t have the same effect on him as they did on Tom.” Paddy looked at him from under her lashes. Owing to the lines of her mouth in repose, she had suffered all her life from being told not to sulk when she was perfectly happy, which immediately made her feel sulky.
    “How do you do,” she said, hoping Edward was not as earnest as he looked. He might get interfering. If she was allowed to get on with the job in her own way, she was all right.
    Madeleine sprang off her stool and beamed at Edward. “How do you do,” she said, and laughed nervously, pushing back her hair.
    “Mrs. Tennant does the pumpsh,” said Bob. “Oil, fuel and coolant. She’s very good at the job.”
    “It’s very nice of you to say so,” said Madeleine seriously, “but I’m afraid I make an awful lot of mistakes. What about that time I passed a cracked casing and it wasn’t discovered until the whole pump was assembled? That was terrible.” The lapse had passed almost unnoticed, but the memory of it had haunted her for months. She had worked with desperate concentration ever since, convinced that it was being held against her and that she was being watched for the slightest slip. She woke sometimes in the night, thinking about whatwould have happened if the crack had not been discovered. She saw the whole fuel pump disintegrating in mid-air like a rotten apple, heard the engine stutter, cough and then cut out completely as the plane hurtled to earth. But most clearly of all, she saw the face of the pilot, blackened and charred sometimes, sometimes floating, flat and pale, just under the surface of the sea.
    “And this is Kitty,” said Bob Condor with relish. He liked her tight young satiny skin and the unused look about her. Edward liked her too ; he liked her friendly, guileless smile. He could imagine her curled up on the floor in front of the fire, prattling. She looked like a prattler. She was working on a box of oil pipes and it was with a shock that he noticed an engagement ring on her filthy left hand. He saw her then as a child bride, going sacrificially to the altar in cloudy white, without knowing what it was all about. with the flat of his hand. p along Kitty liked him too ; she liked everybody.
    Sheila was working next to her on the reduction gear, an enormous wheel and a little wheel that reduced the crankshaft speed to a suitable speed for the airscrew. Edward felt at home here. He had worked on this unit for a long time.
    “This is the reduction gear,” Bob was saying, ignoring Sheila, who he knew didn’t like him. “There’s a grinding scheme on the front of the shaft here you’ve got to watch out for.”
    “R.S.C. 119,” murmured Edward casually. “Er—how do you do, Miss, er——”
    “I’m Sheila,” she said, wishing she couldn’t see her nose shining out of the corner of her eye. Not that this man was attractive or anything except that the structure of his face was like Conrad Veidt, but you should never let anyone think of you as a girl who shone. You should never shine, anyway. You never knew—supposing some pilot came round. When Bob had moved on to the next girl, she turned her back and took her flapjack out of her overall pocket.
    Grace Matthews was checking valves with speed and efficiency. She was homely and house-ridden. Her hands were not cracked and calloused from valves, but from cleaning behind the wardrobe and under the kitchen stove and all sorts of places that nobody would ever see. “Mrs. Matthews is one of our good, steady workers,” said Bob, as if she were a cart-horse. Edward was glad, because he didn’t know much about valves.
    “How do you do,” said Grace. “I’m awfully worried because there isn’t an engine number on this set of valves. Supposing they’ve got mixed?”
    “Make a note to see about that, Ledward,” said the foreman. “Take it up with