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Sid shot her a look that mixed sympathy with ‘might have known’ as Lily went to do as she was told. This never happened to Bette Davis, she thought wistfully, drying her face on the rough roller towel. Even at my age.
‘She doesn’t mean it, you know, our mum,’ said Sid consolingly as he walked, or more accurately, limped, alongside Lily into town.
Their older brother, Reg, had been eighteen the month war was declared, and had signed up straight away – Sid, too, enlisting for the Navy the minute he was old enough in April. Reg was doing well – going to be made up to lance corporal soon, he’d hinted – but poor Sid hadn’t got much further than training camp. He’d managed to crack a bone in his foot landing badly from the vaulting horse and, to his frustration, was now stuck at home till it mended. Not the sort of thing, he’d remarked ruefully, that you ever saw happening to James Cagney in the films – unless it led to him meeting a pretty nurse. Which in Sid’s case, it hadn’t, only an unsympathetic naval doctor with bad breath, apparently.
‘Thing is, she’s had to be mum and dad to us, hasn’t she?’ Sid continued now. ‘That’s why she lays it on a bit strong sometimes.’
‘I know,’ said Lily.
She knew her mum wasn’t really that cross, because after checking that Lily’s face was scrubbed as clean as the day she was born, she’d lent Lily her white fancy-knit cardigan, with her lucky horseshoe brooch pinned to it, and given her a hug and a kiss before she left.
‘So have you got all your answers ready?’ smiled Sid.
‘I don’t know what they’re going to ask!’
‘They probably only want to see that you haven’t got two heads. Let’s face it, they’re not exactly spoilt for choice at the moment, are they?’
‘Thanks very much!’ retorted Lily. ‘If you weren’t already on crutches I’d put you on them!’
But she knew he was only joking. Sid was four years older than Lily, but since they were children they’d always enjoyed teasing each other. Reg, Sid’s elder by eighteen months, was the quiet one, good with his hands, good at mending things. He’d spent the war so far being sent here and there for unspecified ‘training’ – Reg was very discreet – but after all that had ended up back at the searchlight battery in Nottingham where he’d started. This was a mixed blessing in the Collins household: it wasn’t what Reg had joined up for; on the other hand, Dora’s worries could be contained. Then, at last, his technical skills were appreciated – he’d been an apprentice mechanic when war broke out – so after more training, which this time he was happy to tell them about, he was going to be transferred to REME – the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers – to his great satisfaction, but their mum’s growing anxiety. Reg would be twenty in September, which meant he’d be considered for overseas service. The Mediterranean? The Middle East? The Western Desert? It was all much too worrying to think about.
‘Here we are, anyway.’
They stopped before the sandbagged façade of Marlow’s, its corner site bridging the town’s two main shopping streets. Even the Splinternet tape stuck criss-cross against the huge plate-glass windows – four down one street, four down the other, and two graceful curving panes each side of the entrance – couldn’t mask the elegance of the approach. Anyway, Lily thought, it gave the place a sort of charm, like the latticed windows of a cottage, albeit a cottage more the size of a mansion. The store’s name stood out above the entrance in stylish black on gold and was picked out again in gold on the mosaic tiles of the entrance. The huge clock which overhung the doorway showed five to three.
‘Right then. “The time has come, the Walrus said …”’ Sid squeezed her arm.
Lily gulped.
‘Don’t leave me, Sid.’
‘Of course I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to look at the ties,’ said Sid airily.
Lily’s eyes widened. At Marlow’s prices?
‘You’re never going to buy one here! Anyway, you’ve got a dozen ties already!’
‘Looking’s free, isn’t it? And they can’t stop me.’
The uniformed commissionaire gave them a hard look as he held the door open, but Sid’s salute and rueful glance at his foot brought a twitch of recognition from an old serviceman to a younger one and he swept them through with a gracious wave of his arm.
Once inside, Lily froze again. Now she was inside, properly inside, she could appreciate Marlow’s true magic. She’d never seen anything like it – or imagined such a place could exist in Hinton, their workaday Midlands town.
‘War? What war?’ she felt like saying, because there didn’t seem to be any shortages here. Overpowering scents wafted towards her from the cosmetics and perfume counters in front of her. To her right, scarves and gloves were fanned out in a rainbow of summer colours – palest pink through mauve to cornflower blue, and white through cream to lemon. Beyond were umbrellas both furled and twirled, handbags and shoes. Behind them, notices pointed to menswear, footwear, stationery, and gifts.
‘Come on, Sis, you don’t want to be late. Who is it you’re to ask for?’
The name was imprinted on Lily’s mind.
‘Miss Garner, staff office.’
Sid motioned her towards the enquiry desk.
‘Now you really are on your own.’ He squeezed her arm again. ‘You’ll be fine, kid. Just be yourself.’
With that he was gone, swinging himself athletically on his crutches, and attracting as he passed, Lily noticed, interested looks from Elizabeth Arden and Max Factor – or at least their immaculately-presented salesgirls.
The enquiry desk was on her immediate right. Behind it was a woman in her fifties who regarded Lily over spectacles whose design made them look as if they wanted to take flight.
‘My name’s Lily – Lily Collins. I have an appointment. With Miss Garner. Three o’clock,’ she said – or squeaked. Her voice seemed to have been replaced by Minnie Mouse’s.
‘Let’s see…’
The woman ruffled a couple of sheets on a clipboard and placed a satisfied tick against a typewritten line. She replaced the clipboard in a wooden slot to her right.
‘They didn’t tell you, then?’ she enquired.
‘Tell me what?’
The woman raised her eyebrows higher than her aerobatic glasses, but her smile was kind.
‘This’ll be the last time you use the customer entrance. The staff entrance is in Brewer Street, at the back. That’s if you get the job.’
If I don’t get the job, thought Lily, it’ll be the last time anyway. I’m hardly likely to set foot in here again!
On the third floor, Miss Garner, the staff supervisor, was holding forth on her favourite subject – the difficulty of getting what she called ‘the right type of girl’.
‘I never thought I’d see the day’ – she indicated Lily’s letter of application, written not so much with the help of as by Miss Norris – ‘when Marlow’s had to take girls from anywhere but the grammar school!’
Cedric Marlow shrugged. He was sixty-three, the son of the founder of the original Marlow’s (‘Capes, mantles and bonnets – all the latest designs from Paris!’) and had been in the business since he was twenty. He’d seen plenty of commercial ups and downs, plenty of staff come and go, and more to the point had seen one war that was supposed to end all wars be followed by this one. If he’d learnt nothing else – and he’d learnt a lot – it was that a business had to adapt to survive and accepting reality and adjusting requirements to suit what was available was the only sensible strategy.
‘We don’t have a great deal of choice, do we?’ he said mildly. ‘And I can’t see things improving when—’
‘When they bring in conscription for women. I know.’
Miss Garner looked briefly at the floor. She didn’t ever mention it, but she’d done her bit. She’d served in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in the First War. She’d met her first love, too, when she’d nursed him back to health after the second battle of Ypres. Before he left for the front again, he’d asked her to marry him, and had become her fiancé, then her missing-in-action fiancé, then her missing-presumed-dead fiancé. His body, the body she’d bathed and tended back to health once already, was never found.
Miss Garner was too old now for nursing, or any interesting war work, and too useful anyway, doing what she did at Marlow’s, keeping the home fires burning, or rather somehow finding the staff to sell the coal scuttles and hearth rugs that flanked the home fires – while hearth rugs and coal scuttles were still available. Making do and mending, cutting her cloth … seeing the young, then middle-aged, staff leaving and replacing them with the halt, the lame, the very old – and the very young. Fourteen-year-olds, in fact.
A shaky tap on the door told them that the girl they were expecting had arrived.
‘Enter!’ called Cedric Marlow.
Lily’s interview was about to begin.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_8311863c-2f7a-54d3-9cfc-fff46fe21811)
‘So when do you start?’
‘Next week. Monday.’
‘That’s brilliant, Sis! Well done!’
Sid folded Lily in a huge hug and she relaxed for the first time that day. He was in the garden now, in an old collarless shirt and some ancient trousers, once their dad’s – nothing was ever thrown away in the Collins household. They were too big for him round the waist, so he’d found a huge leather belt which pulled them in tight and his braces were hanging down. Somehow, using the handle as a support, and putting as little weight on his bad foot as possible, he’d been hoeing between the lettuces, which were dangerously close to bolting, their mum said.
Now things were getting scarcer in the shops, Dora had taken ‘Dig for Victory’ to heart. She’d never done more than nurture the odd Christmas cactus or aspidistra for the front room, but now they grew what they could in a couple of small raised beds at the back of their terraced house. It had been nothing but a yard, but Lily and Sid had carted the soil in barrows half a mile from a bigger, boarded-up house with a garden. Every little bit they grew helped cheer up a diet that was becoming more and more repetitive and meagre.
Bacon, butter, sugar … they’d been rationed since almost the beginning of the war; even margarine had been rationed for almost a year now. Meat, tea, jam … sweets, of course … last month cheese and this month, eggs. One egg each a week!
Still, if it helped the war effort …
‘Where’s Mum?’ asked Lily. ‘I wanted to tell her straight away!’
‘Ah. She’s out,’ said Sid mysteriously.
‘She never goes just out.’ Lily looked puzzled.
‘She won’t be long,’ soothed Sid. ‘Anyway, you can tell me. Who was there? What did they ask you?’
‘Ohhhh,’ said Lily, covering her face. ‘It was dreadful. It wasn’t just Miss Garner, it was Mr Marlow himself! I mean, he seemed very nice, but … he asked what I’d liked at school and I said “all of it” and how I’d have liked to stay on, and then I thought that was the wrong answer ’cos he’d think I didn’t want the job … and then I blabbered on about how I liked meeting people, and talking to them, and about how I really really wanted to work there …’
‘Well, you do, don’t you? Better than that steamy laundry any day of the week. Or the Fox and Goose, with old Pearson trying to put his hand up your skirt.’
‘Sid!’
Sid grinned. ‘It’s true. There’ll be none of that at Marlow’s. Everyone there’s ever so well brung up, ain’t they?’ He lapsed deliberately into the strong local accent.
‘I suppose so,’ mused Lily.
‘Well, don’t sound so sorry about it! So no mental arithmetic or spelling? You were dreading that.’
‘Nothing like that,’ said Lily. ‘It’s only a junior’s job – in the Children’s department. I don’t suppose they’ll let me near a customer. And anyway I don’t know if I can take it. I haven’t got the right clothes!’
‘What, no uniform?’
‘They’ve scrapped it ’cos of the war. A dress in a plain dark colour, they said, or dark skirt and white blouse. And plain black shoes.’
‘Well, you’ve got those.’ Sid nodded at Lily’s best Sunday shoes.
‘They’ll never last the winter!’ cried Lily. She steadied herself against Sid’s shoulder and balanced stork-like to show him the soles, which were already worn. ‘As for a dress—’
‘Mum’ll come up with something. Or we’ll ask around. You know how it works in our street.’
Lily knew all too well. Hand-me-downs, making do. That was one thing the war hadn’t changed.
Sid went back to his hoeing.
‘Surely though, you’ll get some kind of discount? Buy some decent stuff?’
‘What, like a tie for you? On their prices, 90 per cent off wouldn’t be enough!’
‘They had some smashers,’ said Sid wistfully. ‘Silk. Still … one day, maybe …’
‘One day,’ sighed Lily. ‘When the war’s over …’
‘Dear me. A nice enough girl, but no polish.’
Miss Garner was assembling Lily’s staff manual, letter of engagement and terms and conditions of employment. Cedric Marlow was standing at the window of his office, looking down into the well at the back of the shop. A grimy pigeon was fluffing out its feathers in the sun and he was ashamed to realise that all he could think about was how good it would taste casseroled with bacon, mushrooms and shallots. His household could afford to buy its way out of the worst of rationing, and he could always eat out, but there was less and less variety on the menu.
‘I think she’ll suit very well,’ he said mildly.
‘She’ll need a few rough edges knocked off her.’ Miss Garner tapped the pages straight and pinioned them with a precious paper clip. They’d be the next thing to disappear. She’d make sure the girl gave it back once she’d signed her contract.
‘I daresay. But we’ve had worse.’
‘I’ll say.’
Her thoughts swung immediately to Beryl Salter on Toys. A year at Marlow’s had knocked off her rough edges, it was true, but at the expense of the girl giving herself a most uncalled-for air of superiority and what she obviously thought was a ‘refined’ accent.
Shaking her head, Miss Garner returned to the latest candidate.
‘Miss Collins is a little too keen to pipe up, I thought. “Likes talking to people” – she’d better not try that with the customers! She’ll have to learn to speak when she’s spoken to. But Eileen Frobisher will keep her in line.’
Miss Frobisher was one of Miss Garner’s protégées, having soared rapidly through the complex sales hierarchy to the dizzy heights of buyer on Childrenswear. They’d been so lucky to get her back. She wasn’t really a ‘Miss’ of course, else she’d have been in a munitions factory or the services by now, but Marlow’s convention was that all saleswomen were addressed as ‘Miss’ whether they were married or not. And Eileen was, with a husband serving overseas and a little boy of four, which excused her from war work. An elderly neighbour looked after him during store hours.
Cedric Marlow let the net drop back as the pigeon fluttered off.
‘How’s that new young man on Furniture and Household getting on by the way? James Something-or-other.’
‘Oh! You mean Jim. Jim Goodridge,’ confirmed Miss Garner. ‘From what I can gather from Mr Hooper,’ she named the Furniture buyer, ‘he’s made quite a good impression. He’s rather quiet, not the most pushy, but as third sales he doesn’t have to be. There’s plenty of time for him to learn. And with experienced salesmen like Maurice Bishop to learn from … Why do you ask?’
‘Oh … he simply popped into my head for some reason,’ Cedric Marlow replied. Then: ‘Did you notice that poor kid’s shoes? Literally down-at-heel.’
‘I’ll make sure her presentation on the sales floor is up to scratch, Mr Marlow, don’t you worry.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He turned away from the window. ‘The Queen may feel she’s able to look the East End in the eye, but sometimes … I wonder. I mean, I don’t suppose Lily Collins’ family were exactly flush before the war, her mother being a widow, but so many like them are suffering more than ever now. As is anyone who can’t buy their way out of it. And here we are, selling only the best … ’
Miss Garner cleared her throat. Mr Marlow wasn’t usually given to sudden enquiries about random members of staff, nor to such outpourings – and certainly not this kind of sentiment. It had been a long day, clearly.
‘It’s got very warm in here,’ she said. ‘Might I suggest you open the window? And I’ll ask the restaurant to send you in a tray of tea.’
‘Lay the table will you, love?’
Her mother’s voice carried over the clattering coming from the scullery.
Lily went to the sideboard for the knives with the yellowed bone handles and the tarnished forks and started doling them out on the cloth.
After the elation of getting the job, it had all been a bit of a comedown. Her mum had been pleased, of course, and Lily could see the relief on her face. But on hearing of the uniform requirements, she’d jumped up, gone upstairs and come back down with a hideous dress in navy gabardine.
