The Shop Girls

Jim kept his voice low, even so.

‘It may not be quite as bad as we thought. He had a horrible infection, but it sounds as if he’s going to be OK. Like he said, he just needs to build his strength up.’

‘Thank goodness for that. Did you tell him about the job?’

‘He jumped at it.’

‘Good.’

Lily sighed contentedly. The worry had mostly subsided; there was still the cinema to look forward to. After the long, dull morning, and the concern over Les, what a perfect end to the afternoon.

It was getting on for six by the time everyone had gone, the last of the crocks were put away and the banner could come down. Jim was shutting up the hens.

‘It hasn’t got Les’s name on it,’ Lily said as she folded the banner carefully. ‘We can use it for Reg.’

She really was starting to think, or at least hope, two things – first, that the war might be over soon, and second, that both her brothers might get through it unscathed.

Reg was a mechanic with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, attached to the Eighth Army. General Montgomery was leading them now, experienced, energetic, determined: everyone was hoping against hope that he was the one who’d finally drive Rommel into the sea. Lily had an even better reason to hope for the safe return of her other brother, the middle one of Dora’s children. Sid had joined the Navy but an injury picked up in training meant he’d had to settle for a desk job. He was up in Scotland at a place called Largs, and though he wasn’t thrilled at being a penpusher instead of a fighting man, he’d had to acknowledge that it took away some of the worry back home.

Dora, though, wasn’t one to cross bridges or to count chickens: hope for the best but take what comes was nearer the mark for her. She changed the subject.

‘Hadn’t you better get a wriggle on if you two are going out?’

‘Yes! You’re right. We should.’

Dora smiled fondly at her daughter. She was thrilled that Lily and Jim were courting. They were always discreet about it in front of her, but no one could fail to notice the even readier smiles, the even more affectionate teasing, the sneaked glances, the surreptitious squeezes. Lily had always been bright and strong-minded; she needed someone like Jim to catch her, and then to match her. He might seem the quiet type but he was no pushover. He was quick and clever too – Lily needed that.

‘Off you go then. But see to your hair before you do!’

Lily’s blonde curls, as strong-minded as she was, had a tendency to resist arrest, and the fact that her few precious hairgrips had long since lost their grippiness didn’t help.

‘Beryl says I should get a permanent, now I’m a salesgirl proper, but I’m not sure … Jim?’ Lily broke off as Jim came in from the kitchen. He was ghost-white.

‘The bucket,’ he said blankly. ‘I was taking it to the pig bin and I met him in the street. The telegram boy.’

Oh no, not Reg! Please, not Reg! Not today – not any time, but especially not today!

Dora held out her hand for the telegram, but Jim shook his head.

‘It was for me,’ he said. ‘It’s my mother. She’s had a stroke.’

Chapter 3

Wasn’t that just like life, thought Lily, as she stood and watched Jim fling a few things into a bag. At the start of the afternoon they’d been worrying about Les, and when she’d heard the word ‘telegram’, she’d automatically assumed it must be about Reg. Even then, when Jim had said it was for him … of his parents, the one you’d expect to get bad news about was his father, gassed in the Great War and left semi-invalided with a bad chest. Yes, just like life, to creep up and sandbag you from behind when you were looking in the other direction!

Jim zipped up his holdall and turned to face her.

‘I’m sorry about the cinema.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m sorry for you. And your mum. Will you go straight to the hospital?’

Jim’s family home was in Worcestershire, in a small village, Bidbury. The telegram had said his mother was in the Cottage Hospital at Pershore.

Jim spread his hands.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got to get there first.’

You couldn’t count on the trains, when or if they’d run, and there was no direct train. Jim would have to go from Hinton to Birmingham, change there for Worcester, then for the branch line, a slow, jolting journey in a blacked-out carriage with long waits in between.

Lily put her hand on his arm.

‘They wouldn’t let you see her in the middle of the night anyway. Perhaps you’d be better going home to see to your dad. He can’t manage on his own, can he?’

Jim pushed his hands through his hair, making it stick up in the way that flipped Lily’s heart.

‘Can you tell them at work? I haven’t got time to write a letter.’

‘Of course. Don’t worry about that. Come here.’

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. He rested his chin on top of her head and sighed. They both knew what this latest development meant.

The situation with Jim’s parents had been complicated enough already. He was an only child, and was only here in Hinton because his mother, Alice, had traded on a never-before-exploited family connection to write to the store’s owner, Cedric Marlow. She’d hoped that he’d help Jim through Agricultural College, but she hadn’t dared to ask outright and instead Cedric Marlow had offered a Jim a position at the store. With neither of them feeling that he could turn it down, Jim had moved away to the town, and Marlow’s – and Lily. His mother, frustrated at losing him, had spent the entire time since hoping that he’d return. In fact, she’d done more than hope – she’d as good as schemed to get him back.

Just a few weeks earlier, seeing that looking after his dad, the house and the garden was getting too much for her, Jim had started going back to Bidbury every other weekend, leaving after work on Saturdays and taking Mondays off unpaid to make the lengthy journey worthwhile.

The new regime had coincided with Lily and Jim confessing what they felt for each other, and if it was a brake on their relationship, at least it was better than the screeching full stop that Lily had feared. She’d had moments when she’d genuinely thought Jim was going to leave Hinton for good, and the fact that he was still there at all felt like deliverance.

But now this.

Jim pulled away and looked sadly down at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘We’ll make things work, Lily, I promise.’

Lily stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

‘I know.’

Jim held her tight and kissed her back. ‘I’d better go.’

‘You had.’

Lily saw him to the front door. He kissed her again, for longer this time.

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

‘I’ll see you when I see you,’ she said, as brightly as she could. ‘Give your mother my best, won’t you?’

Jim smiled thinly. He knew that Lily’s good wishes were the last thing that his mother would want and in her heart of hearts, Lily knew it too. The two of them were gambling for Jim’s affections, and, though a stroke was hardly something you could fake, or plan, and she felt wicked for thinking it, it still seemed to Lily as though Alice had played an ace.

‘Poor Jim!’ Gladys, the next day, was sorry to hear the news. ‘His poor mum, of course. And poor you, Lily!’

Lily shrugged the sympathy away.

‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not the one in hospital.’

‘And the telegram didn’t say how bad it is?’

‘No.’

Gladys pushed a bit of potato round her plate, trying to robe it in the thin gravy. The friends had managed to get off to dinner together, and the clatter of the Staff Canteen was all around them. The meat dish of the day was roast heart, which Lily couldn’t fancy – a bit too much like her own. She was doing her best with a lump of grey fish in a heavy sea of white sauce.

‘Who sent it anyway?’ Gladys managed to transfer the dripping chunk of potato to her mouth. ‘His dad never leaves the house, does he?’

Lily paused, knife and fork arched.

‘I never thought. I never asked. A neighbour, perhaps?’

Gladys nodded. She was such a sweet soul; she was really feeling for Jim, Lily could see.

‘I suppose so. Oh dear. And we’d had such a lovely afternoon.’

It was early afternoon by the time Jim got to the hospital. He hadn’t got back to Bidbury till dawn, trains cancelled or diverted, stuck in a siding in Birmingham to let troop trains pass, then the sirens going, hearing planes overhead, straining to hear if they were German Dorniers, then realising they were Lancasters, probably on their way back to base from a raid of their own.

Exhausted, he’d had to walk the last few miles, letting himself into the darkened cottage to find his father asleep in the chair with the dog loyally at his feet. Jim had a couple of hours’ sleep, washed and shaved his father and himself, and at nine had walked back into the village to get some food in. From the shop-cum-post office he’d telephoned the hospital to hear that his mother’s condition was unchanged, and that visiting was from two o’clock till four.

Now he was standing nonplussed in the ward with its shiny lino and tidy beds, trying to see which pale figure, pinioned by the bedclothes, was his mother. A nurse came by with a cloth-covered tray, so he asked.

‘Far bed on the left,’ she said, swishing off on rubber heels to the sluice room.

Head down, uncomfortable and feeling out of place, Jim made his way past the other patients, who, apart from one jolly woman surrounded by a tribe of relatives, seemed to be largely elderly and unloved, or at least unvisited. But as he neared the end bed, he realised that wasn’t the case with his mother – there was someone there already. A young woman was sitting at the bedside with her back to him.

‘Margaret?’

The girl spun round and stood up rapidly, rattling the chair back. She looked almost as out of place as Jim in her cord breeches and shirt, with tanned arms and her brown hair cropped close into her neck.

‘Jim! You made it!’

Jim caught the chair as it rocked.

‘Yes, finally. How is she?’

He could see straight away there was no point in addressing the question to his mother. She was asleep, or seemed to be, her face white and her lips a thin mauve line.

Margaret motioned him to one side. She kept her voice low.

‘The doctor was leaving as I got here. They’ve given her something to calm her down – she was getting what he called “agitated”. She hasn’t said much, so they can’t really tell about that, but it’s taken her movement, Jim, down her right side.’

‘Oh, God.’

On the long journey Jim had speculated about how the stroke might have affected her. A mother, especially his mother, who could get about but not communicate was as bad as one who was physically impeded but still had the power of speech. Now it seemed his mother might have lost both. He reached for the only possible straw.

‘People do get better, though, from a stroke? With exercises …?’

Margaret lifted her shoulders minutely.

‘It’s too early to say. But the doctor did say the stroke was a relatively mild one.’

‘That’s something.’

It still left him with a heck of a problem, he knew.

‘Look, Margaret,’ he offered. ‘I’ll sit with her now. I can stay till she wakes up. It’s good of you to have come. And thank you so much for sending the telegram.’ His father, who seemed bemused by the whole thing, had told him that much. ‘I’ll give you the money.’

‘Don’t be silly. That’s all right.’

‘How did you … how did you even know it had happened?’

‘Oh,’ said Margaret. ‘But I was there. I was with her.’

His mother showed no sign of stirring, so they went outside to talk. There was a small garden with a sundial and some benches where recuperating patients and their visitors could sit. Jim was too tense to sit down, so they walked round and round the narrow crazy-paved paths.

‘I’ve been dropping in when I could,’ Margaret explained. ‘I know you’ve been coming at weekends, Jim, but I think your mum was lonely. Your dad sits in the chair dozing most of the day. She asked me to call if I had time, so I did. I think she just wanted company.’

‘I see.’

That wasn’t all his mother had wanted and Jim knew it. Margaret was the daughter of a local farmer. Both her brothers had been killed in the war and, unbeknown to her, she was part of Alice’s scheme to get Jim back. If Alice could pair Jim off with Margaret, that was not one, not two, but three birds with one stone. Jim would be back home, with a wife on his arm and running the farm down the lane, country trumping town, her son secure and with a promising future.

Jim knew his mother felt she’d been dealt a rotten hand in life. Now it seemed to have turned into a winning one, because if she didn’t make a good recovery – and who knew? – he’d surely have no option but to come back to Bidbury for good.

While Jim had been thinking, they’d continued their aimless circuit of the garden, Margaret brushing her hand against the tall spines of lavender and releasing their scent. Jim’s mother had claimed that Margaret held a torch for him – always had – and there was no doubt she’d make a wonderful wife for a farmer. She was milking her father’s herd by herself these days, butter-making, delivering the churns, delivering and looking after the calves, too – and she had other talents. She’d wanted to go to Art School, but that had been scotched by the war and she’d taken on her new role uncomplainingly. Jim liked her very much, admired her, even, and felt sorry for what she’d had to give up. All in all, Margaret was a thoroughly nice girl and, if things had been different, they might even one day have made a match. But things were different. He had Lily now.

When Lily got back to her department after dinner, Miss Frobisher was waiting for her. Lily instinctively looked at the clock but Miss Frobisher held up a reassuring hand.

‘You’re not late, don’t worry!’

‘Good! Did you want me for something, Miss Frobisher?’

‘Yes, I do. Not now, but on Monday. I want you to come with me to Ward and Keppler.’

Lily’s mouth made a fair imitation of her dinnertime fish being landed.

Ward and Keppler were big manufacturers of children’s and babywear – their Robin Hood brand was top quality and they chose their outlets very carefully. The only shops in Hinton favoured with their goods were Marlow’s and their big rival, Burrell’s.

‘You may well look surprised,’ Lily’s boss went on. ‘I was due to go with Miss Naylor, but she has to be at home that day for the ruins recorder.’

Miss Naylor was the buyer on Schoolwear. Her house was in a terrace that had been part-destroyed when a bomb had dropped on Hinton the previous year. The council’s inspector had to make regular visits to make sure the houses still standing were safe to live in.

Poor Miss Naylor – but lucky Lily! Lucky Miss Frobisher too, though she’d never have let on. She and Miss Naylor were not the best of friends and Miss Frobisher had always felt her presence on the trip, on the basis of girls’ gym knickers and boys’ rugby socks, was superfluous.

‘The expenses had already been cleared and the tickets bought,’ Miss Frobisher went on, ‘so rather than waste one …’

Her eyebrows signalled it might be a good idea if Lily made some response, and she found her voice.

‘Miss Frobisher, that would be wonderful!’ she managed. ‘Thank you!’

‘It’s intended to be instructive,’ said Miss Frobisher firmly, in case Lily thought it was to be a jolly day out – which she hadn’t. ‘Selling’s only one aspect of running a department. This will show you where and how it all begins – the buying process.’

Lily knew she should be listening as Miss Frobisher explained how she’d cleared Lily’s absence with the first floor supervisor, Mr Simmonds, when they’d need to leave and when they’d get back, but her mind was running ahead.

‘One aspect of running a department?’ Of running a department? Lily knew she wanted to progress and she knew Miss Frobisher thought she had it in her … but buying? Was her boss really implying she could see Lily going that far at Marlow’s?

Things really did happen in August – and they weren’t all bad, either!

Chapter 4

Lily hugged the news to herself for the rest of the day. She told Gladys about it as they left the store but made sure to talk it down as much as she could.

‘I expect she just wants company,’ she explained. ‘You know what the trains are like.’

Lily knew from past experience – look at the way Gladys had reacted to Lily and Jim getting together – how her friend loved to build things up and she didn’t want her reading any more into it than she only half-dared to herself.

She had to tell her mum as well, naturally, because who knew when she and Miss Frobisher would get back and she didn’t want her to worry. But Dora wasn’t to be fooled.

‘She must think something of you, Lily!’

‘Oh, well, maybe.’

Dora wiped her hands on her apron – she’d been peeling potatoes – and came to give her daughter a hug. She hadn’t been very free with her hugs when Lily and the boys had been growing up – too busy keeping them fed and clothed after she’d been widowed. Her life was hardly any easier now she was living through the second world war of her lifetime, and she missed and worried endlessly about her sons – but if that had made her more demonstrative to the child she did have at home, Lily wasn’t complaining.

‘I did promise when I started at Marlow’s that I’d try my hardest. But I’m so lucky with Miss Frobisher. Not all the buyers are like it, but she wants to help me along.’

‘And up, by the sound of it!’ Dora had a sudden thought. ‘Lucky you got that jacket at the rummage the other week. And if you want to borrow my horseshoe brooch for the lapel, you’ve only to say.’

The only person Lily could really confide in about her hopes was Jim, but when he came back on Sunday, he was understandably preoccupied.

‘Flying visit,’ he said, surprising Lily and Dora by turning up as they were finishing their meagre, virtually meat-free stew.

Dora immediately fetched him a plate and served out the rest – so much for Monday’s planned cottage pie – and Jim answered their questions between mouthfuls. The answers weren’t encouraging.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ he confessed. ‘Mother’s hardly been out of bed, but they’re chucking her out tomorrow.’

‘That can’t be right!’ Dora protested.

‘No, that’s not quite fair. Someone’s been coming to walk her up and down – her leg’s not too bad, though she needs someone to lean on. But she can hardly move her arm. Still, they need the bed, apparently.’

‘What are you going to do? You’ll have to stay on, won’t you?’

Jim turned to answer Lily, but she knew what he’d say.

‘There’s nothing else for it, till I can sort someone out to look after her and my dad. I’m only back to collect some clothes.’

He’d finished his stew in what seemed like seconds and Lily trailed upstairs after him to watch him pack for the second time in five days.

‘I wish there was something I could do,’ she said.

‘There is,’ said Jim. He produced a letter from his pocket. ‘Take this in to work; it’s telling them I’ll need a bit more time off.’

He gave a huge sigh and sank onto the bed, pulling Lily down beside him.

‘What a mess it all is.’

Lily put her arms round him and pulled him close.

‘It’ll get sorted,’ she said, trying to sound convincing. ‘Things do.’

Jim smiled thinly. He didn’t tell her that Margaret had instantly offered to help, though he’d rebuffed that straight away – she had a more-than-full-time job on the farm. No, he’d have to find someone else in the village, though the only available candidate so far was Mrs Dawkins, a rather chaotic woman who cleaned – and frequently drank – at the pub. Jim couldn’t see her meeting with his mother’s approval. Still, she might have to put up with it.

Within the hour he was off again for another wearisome journey. Lily saw him to the door. It didn’t seem the right time to start going on about her day out with Miss Frobisher, and what it might mean, but when Jim kissed her briefly, Lily did mention that she’d been invited on a buying trip with her boss.

‘Oh, good,’ said Jim distractedly. ‘You’ll still be able to get that letter to Staff Office, though, won’t you?’

Lily didn’t say that she and Miss Frobisher were meeting at the station, so she’d have to set out early to divert to Marlow’s first. But it was the least she could do.

‘Good morning! You’re looking very smart.’

Lily, already a little pink from her detour with Jim’s letter, blushed some more. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious that her jacket was a black and white bird’s eye check – Miss Frobisher had a bird’s eye suit in navy – or that her black barathea skirt was not unlike the skirt of Miss Frobisher’s black barathea costume with its back pleat. Fortunately her boss wasn’t wearing either of them today, but a camel coat and skirt, and court shoes the colour of conkers. Lily surreptitiously wiped the toes of her own black lace-ups on the back of her legs to buff them up a bit. If only she could be as polished as Miss Frobisher.

Miss Frobisher flourished the tickets.

‘Platform three. And wonder of wonders, they’re not predicting any delays.’

Wonder of wonders, ‘they’ were right for once. Settled smugly in the train – they even managed to get seats – Miss Frobisher began to fill Lily in on what to expect.

‘I deal with Mr Ward directly,’ she explained as the train pulled out in a hiss of steam and a shower of smuts. ‘It’s a relationship I’ve built up over many years – in fact, I was the one who persuaded him to sell through Marlow’s. I dealt with him when I was at Marshall and Snelgrove’s.’

Lily gaped. ‘I had no idea you’d worked anywhere but Marlow’s!’

‘I started out at Marlow’s as a junior like you.’ Miss Frobisher put out a hand against the window as the train jolted on the tracks. ‘In Ladies’ Fashions. Ran around unpacking boxes and ironing out creases and picking up pins. Then gradually worked my way up through sales.’

That explained it! Miss Frobisher always looked like a fashion plate. How she did it on clothing coupons had always fascinated Lily; perhaps she still had contacts in the trade.

‘But at the time – before the war, before the staff shortages we have now – there was no movement above me. No progress that I could see in any department. And then … one of the reps recommended me and I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Junior buyer – in London.’

‘London!’

‘I only came back to Hinton because of the war. I … well, I had my son by then, I didn’t want to risk it.’

Lily knew Miss Frobisher was married: it was one of the store’s quainter conventions that its women employees were addressed as ‘Miss’. Her son, she also knew, was only about four – a neighbour looked after him during the day. As for her husband, he was serving abroad. That was all anyone knew. Miss Frobisher never talked about him and she was hardly the kind of person you could ask. It wasn’t their place, Lily and Gladys had agreed, and it wasn’t uncommon; it was the way some women coped with the separation. But at the same time they’d convinced themselves that he couldn’t be talked about anyway because he was engaged on some kind of secret hush-hush work – he’d obviously be doing something glamorous, in keeping with his glamorous wife.

Now Lily knew Miss Frobisher had lived in London, which was presumably where she’d met him, it turned the speculation into certainty. London was another world, exciting and different. Anyone Miss Frobisher might meet there – over champagne at the Café de Paris, no doubt – was bound to be too.

But Miss Frobisher had gone as far as she intended with her personal revelations – further perhaps – and she drew the subject to a close.