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Lily shook her head. She didn’t see, either. Then Jim spoke, flatly.
‘That’s me, Lily. Eyesight not up to it. Rejected.’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Jim, I’m so …’
What could she say? Her feelings trumped each other in a game of emotional whist.
First of all, and mostly, she was sorry for Jim, desperately so. She could see how bitterly disappointed he was, ashamed even, though it was hardly his fault. How could anyone have known? Yes, he wore glasses, but Lily certainly hadn’t guessed how bad his eyes were – and presumably Jim didn’t think they were either, or he’d never have seemed so casual about the medical in the first place. Now she wondered how much he compensated for his eyesight and remembered how often he rubbed his eyes when he’d been reading, how it always took him a while to adjust when he came into the house out of the sun, and how he squinted at small print.
On top of that came guilt at how beastly she’d been that morning, how hard she’d made it for him, and how hard it must have been for him to tell her now. Then came dread for him at having to tell other people – her mum and her brothers, Gladys, Beryl, neighbours, colleagues at work, strangers, even. Oh yes, because some people weren’t above accosting any young men of serving age who were still at home, calling them conchies and cowards without even asking if they’d tried joining up. But then – and here was the ace on top of all the others – she had to admit it. On top of all of that, she was relieved – so relieved. She was so relieved that she pulsed with it.
‘Jim—’
She held out her hand.
‘Don’t. Please.’
‘I’m—’
‘Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Just leave it.’
He went into his bedroom and quietly closed the door.
Lily bit at a shred of loose skin near her thumbnail – a habit she’d been trying hard to break. She’d got what she wanted – Jim wouldn’t be going anywhere after all. She should have been happy. But she wasn’t, because he wasn’t. Why were feelings so complicated?
Over the next few days, the full story slowly emerged. Jim’s short sight needn’t in itself have been a problem, but the eye test had revealed that he was as good as blind in one eye.
‘Such a shame, he should have been patched as a child,’ Dora told Ivy Bulpitt. The two had become fast friends since Les and Beryl’s wedding, and Ivy ‘popped in’ almost as much as Beryl did, usually with Susan in tow.
Ivy tutted and graciously allowed Dora’s hovering knife to cut her another piece of Swiss roll. Thanks to the hens, there was usually something in the cake tin in the Collinses’ household, even with sugar on ration.
‘Just a small one. Got to watch my figure!’ Since Ivy was the size and shape of a barrage balloon, the damage had been done, but Dora cut her the generous slice she knew would be expected. ‘Still, I daresay his mum’ll be relieved. He’s her only one, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’ Dora passed Ivy’s plate back. ‘They say you worry about a single one more, but I find you just worry about them all equally, in different ways.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ mused Ivy, contemplating her plate with satisfaction. ‘Still, Jim having to stick around is good news for you, Dora. He’ll still be here to dig your veg bed and do the hens.’
‘That’s true. And bless him, now he’s had the chance to take it in, he’s trying to turn it into a funny story. He said he wasn’t doing too badly in the tests with his right eye, but with his left – never mind the chart, they could have held up a couple of dustbin lids and he couldn’t have seen them!’
‘Bless him, he’s a good lad.’ Ivy plucked a crumb off her sizeable bosom and popped it in her mouth. ‘And it won’t affect his job at Marlow’s?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. He’s been managing on his good eye all these years, school, work and everything. You can, can’t you? If you close one eye and look around.’
Ivy tried it, screwing up her puddingy face in the process.
‘I see what you mean. Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.’
She burst out laughing at her unintentional joke, and Susan, poring over a picture book, looked up and smiled her innocent smile. Ivy got up to wipe a skein of dribble spooling from her daughter’s mouth.
‘A bit more cake, Susan, love?’ asked Dora kindly. ‘Then you can help me wind some wool, can’t you?’
Jim might have tried to turn his disappointment into a joke against himself in front of most people, but ten days on from his medical, deep down he seemed depressed. He’d been delighted to hear about Lily’s promotion, and Gladys’s, of course, genuinely delighted, but in private, with Lily, he was still so low in himself that he’d managed to convince himself that his job at Marlow’s was under threat.
Lily had never seen him like this before, and it unsettled her. But then she’d never suffered a setback like his. Perhaps Jim was entitled to be fed up.
‘I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil than on this plate,’ he observed glumly, prodding at his food in the staff canteen. ‘And you need a pneumatic drill for these potatoes.’
‘Oh come on,’ Lily tried to rally him. ‘Just because you were looking forward to getting fat on Army rations!’
It was as if he hadn’t heard her.
‘Still, I might not be eating here much longer.’
Lily laid down her knife and fork.
‘Not that again! For the last time, Mr Marlow is not, not now, not ever, going to get rid of you – you of all people!’
What Lily knew, and no one else did, was that Jim was related through marriage to the Marlows: his mother’s sister had been married to Cedric Marlow. She’d died young giving birth to their son Robert, and the two sides of the family hadn’t been in contact till Jim had come to work at the store. But having Cedric as his uncle surely meant his position had to be secure?
Jim knew what she was driving at, but he didn’t agree.
‘Lily, you’ve got eyes in your head – better eyes than mine. There are six girls leaving – seven if you count Beryl. They’ve managed a neat trick shuffling you and Gladys about, but are any of the others being replaced? No.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’re going to give anyone else the chop – far from it!’
Jim shook his head.
‘Marlow’s can’t afford to carry extra members of staff, whoever they are. Margins are tight, profits are down. And why’s Simmonds been appointed? To be a new broom, right? Well, they sweep in corners. And there’s no dustier corners than in Furniture and Household. You know we’ve got hardly anything to sell!’
‘Who has? That applies to every department. And every shop in Hinton!’
‘Maybe,’ said Jim, ‘but I’ve seen the way Simmonds has been looking at me lately. He’s watching me all the time.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! He looks at everyone, it’s his job!’
‘Hm. With that same shark-eyed stare?’
‘Shark? You’ve seen too many newsreels about the Nazis, you really have!’
But Jim wouldn’t be told.
‘He’s got to get rid of someone from our department,’ he reasoned. ‘There’s a limit to how long Marlow’s can still employ all five of us. I had a woman in this morning asking when we’d have lead crystal dressing table sets again. I felt like telling her a crystal ball would be more use.’
‘Fine. Get one. And what future do you see for yourself if not here? Another job? Where? And doing what exactly?’
‘Well, good question.’ Jim pushed his plate away, unfinished – unheard of. ‘I’m considering lots of options, actually.’
‘Are you?’ There was something in his tone, and Lily pushed her plate away too. It was one thing to dismiss his suspicions about Mr Simmonds, but this sounded serious.
Jim looked at his watch.
‘I should go. I’m due back soon.’
‘Jim!’ protested Lily. ‘You can’t leave it like that! Aren’t you going to tell me what these options are?’
‘Not till I’ve narrowed them down a bit.’
Lily made a conscious effort to stay calm. ‘Let me narrow them down for you. You stay here and get promotion after promotion till you take over from Mr Marlow.’
‘Hang on!’ Jim looked into the distance and pretended to shade his eyes against an imaginary sun. ‘What’s that I see? Oh yes. A flying pig.’
‘Well, why not?’ protested Lily. ‘His son’s not interested, and he’s got to hand it on to someone.’
‘Well, that’s a nice little fantasy.’ Jim tipped back on his chair. ‘You carry on with it. Maybe in your world, Lily, we’re not even at war – men, women, children dying every day while I’m telling our customers why we haven’t got any tray cloths.’
Like a round of mortar fire his words hit home. Suddenly, with horrible clarity, she knew. Idiot that she was! Why hadn’t she realised Jim wasn’t the sort to take ‘no’ for an answer?
‘You’re going to re-apply, aren’t you, to the Army? Tell them you want a desk job.’
‘Well, there’s enough of them,’ Jim said reasonably. ‘Someone’s got to keep things going behind the scenes.’
‘Pen-pushing?’
‘It’s still a lot more useful than what I’m doing here. And they can’t say I’m not suitable for that!’
Lily swallowed hard.
‘But Jim … it could be … you could be sent anywhere!’
‘That’s rather the point with work of national importance,’ said Jim, stressing the ‘national’. ‘Or there’s plenty of other kinds of war work. Factories, shipyards, the mines—’
This was getting worse.
‘The mines?’
‘They’ve lost a lot of men to the Forces. They’re going to have to replace them somehow, and it’s one job women can’t do.’
The vision of a blackened Jim humping coal was even worse than one of him jabbing someone with a bayonet.
‘You, a miner? You can’t be serious.’
Jim looked at her straight, sincere.
‘Lily, please. Put yourself in my shoes. In all conscience, how can I stay here selling tray cloths, day in day out – if we had any to sell? How do you think that makes me feel?’
‘Well, all right …’ It made him deeply unhappy, she could see. ‘But—’
‘If you don’t see me as a miner or a steelworker – and I’ll give you that, you could be right, then at the very least I could jack this in and go home. There’s plenty of work on the land.’
Of course! Jim had grown up in the country – his mother had moved away from Hinton and met his father there. She would be over the moon if he made that choice. And farming was a reserved occupation.
Jim suddenly tutted and looked at his watch again.
‘All this talking – you’ve made me late!’
He stood up and pushed his bowl of plums and custard towards her.
‘You can have this. I’m not hungry anyway.’
Lily looked up at him, speechless.
‘See you,’ he said casually.
He smiled briefly and walked away.
Lily looked down at the bowl in front of her. She found she wasn’t hungry either. In fact, she felt rather sick.
Surely he – she – hadn’t had a reprieve from the Army just for him to go off somewhere else?
Chapter 7 (#u21c8cd86-824c-5fca-a4a2-cd52d07923b1)
Dinner break over, plums untasted, Lily went back to her department with a heart that felt as if it was strapped into the Big Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach – as if it hadn’t had enough ups and downs lately.
Instinctively she glanced across to Furniture. Jim was nowhere to be seen, but Gladys, busy straightening the rails, mouthed ‘Delivery’, which gave Lily some relief. At least that explained his absence. He wasn’t up on the management floor handing in his notice. Yet. Even so, Lily found it difficult – impossible, actually – to share Miss Temple’s outrage over the fact that Gentlemen’s Outfitting had received a quantity of caps when Miss Frobisher had had children’s pixie hoods on order since before Christmas.
‘It’s getting ridiculous!’ Miss Temple complained, but her indignation only emphasised Jim’s point. If they couldn’t get the goods to sell anyway, Marlow’s would be happy to let staff go. Why shouldn’t Jim take the decision for them?
The afternoon dragged. It more than dragged, it positively limped towards five thirty and going-home time.
At last the final customer had left, the department was tidy, and Lily could make her escape. Jim had returned to his department mid-afternoon, and her plan was to intercept him before he got to the back stairs and gave her the slip. She’d spent the hours since dinner, when she was pretending to listen to Miss Temple, formulating her plan. She might not have any hope of persuading Jim out of this notion of leaving, but she could at least urge him not to do anything hasty. It was her only hope.
But it was not her day. Before she was halfway across the sales floor, she saw Mr Simmonds approaching. Like an avenging angel he bore down on Jim, his famous clipboard turned, in Lily’s mind, into a flaming sword. She couldn’t tell from that distance whether he had a particularly shark-like look in his eye – which would have sat rather oddly on an avenging angel, she realised.
But whether he had or not, could Lily trust Jim not to take the chance to blurt out that he was thinking of resigning? Surely Mr Simmonds, ex-Army as he was, would heartily endorse it. The mood Jim was in, he’d probably convinced himself that Simmonds thought he was ducking his duty anyway.
Whatever, it was too late. Mr Simmonds steered Jim through the double doors to the stairs – and Lily’s chance was gone.
Miserably she trudged home. Even the first catkins on the alder trees in the park couldn’t cheer her, nor the blackbird chirping from a chimney pot as she turned into their street.
Inside the house, she found her mother pinning on her hat in readiness for another evening of rolling bandages. Wordlessly, but smiling, Dora nodded towards a postcard on the mantelpiece.
Standard Forces’ issue – and Sid’s writing!
Lily snatched it up.
