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of them. If she had to find another canteen somewhere for her, she’d do it, damned if she wouldn’t. ‘I’m afraid it’s you who is being a little less than reasonable. I simply
can’t
get any more. They’re having enough trouble with supplies for people to get their ration as it is. I’ve managed to get some saccharin, however, and – ’
    ‘Saccharin?’ Mrs Crighton actually snorted. ‘What good is that? It won’t give these poor creatures any nutrients, will it?’ And she rolled the word round her tongue with relish. ‘Nutrients are what it’s all about, surely?’
    ‘No it isn’t,’ Poppy snapped, her patience at last exhausted. ‘It’s about providing a few minutes to sit down and rest with a cup of tea and a sandwich or two before they have to go back and work again. They understand that even if you don’t. And I really must say’ – and here her control totally slipped and she let her anger show, well aware of her self-indulgence – ‘I really can’t understand how so much gets used when I’m not here. You’d almost think some people were taking it home with them.’
    Mrs Crighton looked at her with a face of stone and then, very magisterially, took off her frilled apron.
    ‘That does it. I shall leave now and I shall not return. If you can do no better when your errors of management are pointedout to you by an experienced person than hurl insults and accusations, then it is better that I take my valuable services where they will be appreciated. You will have to find someone else to handle tonight’s shift; I shall not be here. Good afternoon, Mrs Deveen!’ And she went stumping out of the canteen as a few weary firefighters and air raid wardens crouched over their tea and tired buns watched her with dispirited eyes.
    ‘Good riddance to that one.’ Maria, the tall and rather thin helper from the other end of the Whitechapel Road sounded deeply satisfied. ‘Rotten old bat – and I reckon you was right, Mrs D. She’s been ’elping herself to more sugar than anyone’s got any right to. A little bit’s fair enough, but not ’ole packets, like!’ And she mopped the counter with a vicious sweep of her dishcloth that wiped the haughty Mrs Crighton out of existence, and looked smug.
    Poppy sighed. She knew they all took some of the supplies as their perks; and she couldn’t blame them. The rations were getting less and less and so much had disappeared from the shops that feeding the weary families that still remained in the East End was a major problem for a housewife, especially if she was working as well and so had no time to queue at the shops. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so tough on Mrs Crighton; a pair of hands was a pair of hands, after all, and for a moment she considered going after her and asking her to come back.
    ‘If you only knew what she’s been like, when you’re not ’ere!’ Maria went on. ‘You’d think she was a duchess, honest you would. I mean, you muck in with the rest of us, you do, but not Madam ’Igh and Mighty Crighton. Oh, no, not ’er! Sits there and says she’s supervisin’ and makes a bleedin’ pest of ’erself. Listen, Mrs D, I can stay on if you like, for a bit, till five maybe, but I got to get ’ome then. My old man, with ’is back an’ all, ’e can’t get me old Mum down to the shelter, and there’s the kids to think of an’ all – can you manage on your own tonight? There ain’t no one else to ’old the fort, that’s the thing. Mrs Barnes got ’erself bombed out yesterday and she’s been sent off to ’Igh Wycombe or some such place and Mrs Knott, she’s ’ad to go and take care of ’er sister’s kids on account their mum’s gone into the ’ospital for her sixth and ’aving a bad time of it.’
    Poppy stood there in the canteen she had worked so hard to set up and run in the cellar of the abandoned dress factory inPlumber’s Row, and wondered how much longer she could go on. It was almost an academic exercise,