Читать книгу Heartache for the Shop Girls - Joanna Toye - Страница 11

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped as Frank took her elbow and steered her to one side so that the departing swell of Marlow’s staff could get by.

‘This is my patch, remember?’

‘Yes, but … Miss Frobisher didn’t say you’d been in today.’

The reps never came to the sales floor. They saw the buyers in the management offices or, if there was a problem, in the stockroom.

‘Very good, Miss Marple!’ Frank wagged his finger at her. ‘I’ve been in Birmingham, at Rackhams and Lewis’s, if you must know. I’ll be calling on Miss Frobisher tomorrow.’

‘Oh! Right. Do you want me to give her a message?’

Frank shook his head, laughing.

‘No! Of course not! I want you to come and have something to eat with me.’

‘What?’

‘It’s no good pretending. I know you eat. Someone had been at those ginger nuts in Mr Ward’s office. It can’t have been him because he’s got sugar diabetes and he’s not allowed. And Miss Fro doesn’t look the type to smudge her lipstick. So, call me Sherlock, but I conclude, Miss Lily Collins, that it was you.’

He had some nerve. And talk about the gift of the gab!

‘I can’t just go off with you!’ she protested. ‘I don’t know you!’

‘So let’s get to know each other over a nice cup of tea and … hmm, I could rather fancy a Welsh rarebit. At Lyons. See? All perfectly harmless and innocent. Not some backstreet dive, not a pub – where’s the harm?’

Lily frowned. There was no harm, of course. The reality was that Jim wouldn’t be back till midnight at the earliest, because he never was. Monday was Mrs Dawkins’s day off, so he cooked the evening meal for his parents, ate with them and, though it was highly embarrassing for both of them, helped his mother into bed. Only then could he begin the long trek back to Hinton.

‘Oh, come on,’ wheedled Frank. ‘Take pity on me. A new boy in town … all on my lonesome, you’re not going to consign me to a miserable supper and a lonely evening reading a penny dreadful in my digs, are you?’

Lily relented.

‘All right then. A cup of tea. A quick one.’

‘Don’t do me any favours, will you?’ said Frank, but he was grinning. ‘Good girl. Come on.’

Lyons wasn’t one of Lily’s regular haunts. She and Gladys favoured Peg’s Pantry, which was cheaper – if nothing like as swish. As they queued for a table, Lily looked around – in part for the atmosphere, but mostly checking for anyone from Marlow’s – she didn’t particularly want to be seen with a stranger. Thankfully, there was no one she recognised. Then Frank spotted a couple leaving a table for two by the side wall and pointed it out to the hostess, which meant they could leapfrog two groups of four ahead of them.

‘Got to have your eye to the main chance,’ he said as they sat down. The waitress was still laying the new top cloth. Frank smoothed it and helped her to reposition the cruet and the little vase.

‘While you’re here,’ he said to her, ‘you may as well take our order. Save your legs, eh? Tea and Welsh rarebit for two, please.’

The elderly waitress gave him a ‘Get on with you!’ look but was clearly charmed as she scribbled the order on her pad. Lily was dumbfounded.

‘When exactly did I say I was going to eat with you?’ she demanded as the waitress walked away.

‘Oh, don’t start all that again,’ said Frank, leaning forwards with his elbows on the table and chin on his hands. ‘Tell me something interesting about yourself. I’m sure there’s lots.’

‘I’m not in the least interesting,’ said Lily. ‘Like everyone else, I get up, I go to work, I go home to my mum …’

‘Right,’ said Frank. ‘Tell me about that, then.’

Exasperated but amused, Lily told him about Dora and Sid and Reg, and how long she’d been at Marlow’s, and how she loved it.

‘I can see you do.’ Frank sat back, pulled down his cuffs and adjusted his cufflinks. They were oval with a blood-red stone. ‘You’re a bit in love with Miss Fro as well, aren’t you? Still, Mr Ward thinks a lot of her, so as a role model, you could do far worse.’

‘She’s taught me a lot,’ said Lily frostily, annoyed at being so transparent. ‘And I’ve got lots more to learn yet. But what about you?’ she probed. ‘Why are you repping? Are you filling in time till you’re called up?’

‘That’s a sore point,’ said Frank. ‘I tried to join up. Last year, the minute I could. But they didn’t want me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Promise you won’t laugh? You’ve got to promise.’

Lily nodded.

‘Flat feet.’

Laugh? Trying not to, Lily spluttered.

‘Oh dear!’

‘Yes, yes, I know, it’s like a music hall joke! They’d never been a problem, not once! I hadn’t a clue till I went for the medical.’

Lily was about to say it had been the same with Jim and his eyesight, but somehow she didn’t. Frank was carrying on anyway.

‘They’ll get desperate enough to take me in the end and I hope they do! My feet are fine – football, running, the lot; I was regional under-sixteen boxing champion!’ He extended an arm. ‘Want to feel my muscles?’

‘No, thank you!’

‘Your loss.’ Frank was unperturbed. ‘Ah, here’s our tea. Are you going to be mother?’

And so it went on. Frank might say he’d rather be doing something different – he didn’t see himself as a babywear rep all his life, he declared – but there was no doubt he was in the right job. He was so persuasive and talkative – cheeky, too. Lily had to laugh at some of his stories – he could have sold sand to the Arabs.

Try as he might, though, as they left Lyons, having insisted on paying for them both, he couldn’t persuade Lily to join him for a drink.

‘I don’t mean some spit and sawdust pub,’ he coaxed. ‘You’re worth more than that. The White Lion’s the place to go, isn’t it, round here?’

The White Lion was utterly respectable, but Lily stood firm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh, come on. Not even a Tizer? Or a cordial? Would that be demure and ladylike enough for you?’

‘That’s not the point. I’m late as it is. My mum will worry.’

‘All right, you win,’ Frank conceded. ‘I’m not in the business of putting girls’ mums’ backs up. Not when I hope to see them again.’

This time Lily didn’t falter.

‘It’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ said Frank easily. ‘Someone as attractive as you. Away in the Forces, is he?’

‘No, actually—’

Her reply was irrelevant. Frank was continuing, smoothly, smiling.

‘Well, whatever. He’s obviously not around at the moment, or not all the time, or you wouldn’t have entertained the possibility of spending the evening with me.’

‘I did try my best not to!’

‘Well, I’m glad you changed your mind.’ Suddenly he sounded sincere. ‘Very glad. I am grateful, Lily. It’s the bit of the job I don’t like, the evenings on your own in some strange place.’

‘Hinton’s not that strange.’

‘Well, it is if a girl can’t go out for an innocent cup of tea and a bite of cheese on toast with a colleague, don’t you think?’

A colleague … was that what he was? She supposed so. And maybe … there were things she’d learnt from him tonight, like making yourself think up good points in an item you don’t think much of, and what he called ‘linking the benefit to the customer’. There was a lot more she’d be interested to find out about his side of the business. Then perhaps she could really impress Miss Frobisher.

Frank could see her mind working and he let it work. He wasn’t a salesman for nothing.

‘I have to go,’ she said finally. ‘But … maybe. When you’re next in town.’

‘Attagirl! It won’t be for a while, you heard what Mr Ward said. But think of me in the wilds of Wales with the autumn gales blowing.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll survive.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Get some of those Army combinations that Ward and Keppler are making.’

Frank threw back his head and laughed.

‘You’ve got a very strange image of me if you think I’d be seen dead in those!’

Lily blushed and turned her face away. She wasn’t sure she wanted to have any image of Frank Bryant, let alone one of his muscled torso in his underwear.

‘Bye, then,’ she said. ‘Thanks for my tea.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ grinned Frank. He tipped an imaginary hat at her. ‘Till next time, Miss Collins.’

Jim spooned the stew he’d made onto plates. His father had already shuffled to the table, but his mother was hovering behind him, watching critically as Jim pulled the scraps of meat apart and mashed down the vegetables into the gravy. Both his parents needed soft, mushy food; almost what you’d feed a baby. Jim thought, not for the first time, how dreadful it was – for everyone – when you had to parent your own parents.

‘Go and sit down, Mother, I’ll bring the plates through.’

With a grunt, his mother obeyed – she was more compliant at the end of the day, when she was tired. In the mornings she was querulous and demanding, and barely a month into the new regime, Mrs Dawkins had twice threatened to walk out. Jim didn’t think she was serious – the money was too useful – but it was another pressure. He wondered if he dared to ask his mother to be a bit more patient with her.

The meal dragged. No one spoke, both his parents laboriously eating. Jim’s father had never been a talkative man, and nowadays breathing was so much of an effort that he had no energy for using his voice. Jim had one eye on the clock, wondering if he’d make the 9.35 from Worcester. If he struck lucky and thumbed a lift straight away, he might. Last week it had been nearly two when he’d got back to Hinton, and he’d had to be up at seven for work the next day. But, Army life, Navy life, certainly life in the RAF was far more demanding, night after night with little or no sleep, and no break in sight, which at least Jim got from Tuesday to Friday. Count your blessings. Like everyone, he’d become practised in making the best of things.

His mother put down her spoon and tugged at the napkin Jim had tied round her neck.

‘Like a two-year-old!’ she muttered, or something like it. Officially her speech had been unaffected; in reality it was indistinct because the whole side of her face now drooped.

‘Come on, Mother, you’ve hardly touched it. It’s got to be better than Mrs Dawkins’s offerings!’

His mother gave a snort.

‘You get with Margaret, we’d be rid of that slut!’

Jim winced. The stroke hadn’t taken his mother’s powers of speech, but it had certainly made them cruder. The old, proper, Alice would never have used a word like that.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said firmly. ‘Margaret’s a very nice girl, but as I’ve told you, Mother, Lily and I are courting.’

His mother mumbled something under her breath which Jim feared was ‘hussy’, then pushed her plate away as if it was something from the cesspit.

‘Bed. Now.’

Jim sighed and stood up. At least once she was in bed, he could safely go. She still insisted on sleeping upstairs, painful as it was to see her haul herself up. His father slept on the settee, the stairs being too much for him. He was a much more compliant character, and Jim thanked his stars for that.

In her room, he settled Alice, looking away as he stripped off her dress and petticoat and handed her the flannel to wash herself, then quickly slipped her nightdress over her head before unrolling her stockings. She fell heavily back on the pillows, and Jim made sure she had a glass of water and her stick beside her to bang on the floor if she needed anything.

‘I’ll pop up again before I go,’ he told her, as he always did.

With any luck she’d be asleep and he could avoid having to kiss the grooved forehead, see the distorted mouth. Alice turned her face away.

Downstairs, his father was already unwinding the first of the mufflers he wore, the start of his bedtime preparations. Jim smiled ruefully at him and got on with clearing the table. In the scullery he scraped the leftover stew into a dish and put a plate on top of it while a kettle boiled for the washing up. There was something infinitely depressing about the greasy plates and he shook more washing soda than was needed into the sink, plunging his hands in the too-hot water in penance.

He was drying his stinging hands when there was a tap on the back door. No one ever called at night, and Jim stiffened. Not long ago the navigator from a crashed German reconnaissance plane had knocked on a cottage door in a neighbouring village, tied up the occupants and then stole money, food and clothes before being captured.

‘Who is it?’

‘Only me!’

‘Margaret?’

‘I came to see how you were getting on,’ she explained as he let her in. ‘I thought if I put your mum to bed, you could get off a bit earlier.’

‘You’re very kind,’ said Jim, moved. She was a nice girl, turning out like this after a long day of her own. ‘But she’s gone to bed early, thankfully.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m leaving myself soon. I’ll walk you back. You shouldn’t be out on your own.’

‘It’s all right. Dad’s going to pick me up, he’s gone to an NFU meeting. So I’ll stay anyway and sit with her. And – look – I wanted to give you this.’

From the pocket of her old mac she produced a brown paper parcel.

‘For me?’

‘It’s nothing. Honestly.’

As she was talking, Jim was unwrapping the parcel. He brought out a dark blue knitted scarf, beautifully made with a tasselled fringe.

‘That’s … you shouldn’t have!’

Margaret blushed.

‘I noticed the one you had was a bit … tatty. In fact, your mum said it was a disgrace, and as she can’t knit any more …’

Jim grimaced. There was some truth in his mother’s opinion, but if she or Margaret thought the holes were wear and tear, they were wrong. That was just Lily’s knitting.

‘Now the nights are getting colder,’ smiled Margaret, ‘it’ll be chilly on those station platforms. I don’t like to think of you catching cold.’

‘I’ll wear it tonight,’ said Jim. ‘Thank you.’

He leant forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. She really was a very nice girl.

The journey back was no more lengthy or tedious than usual, but Jim’s mood was low. From what she’d said at supper, he knew his mother would never give him and Lily her blessing, and as her only son, that mattered to him, especially now she’d been robbed of so many other things in life.

As he sat on the final train, with Margaret’s scarf tucked against his chest, he felt complete despair. Even if Margaret had made it in all innocence, his mother had goaded her into it and made her a partner in her conspiracy. With every turn of the wheels, Jim worked himself up into a frenzy of guilt. He should never have accepted it. It was deeply disloyal to Lily. But it was very warm …

Exhausted, he dropped off to sleep, only woken by the train slamming against the buffers when they arrived in Hinton. Outside the station, he tore off the scarf as if it was choking him and stuffed it in the inside pocket of his coat. He extracted Lily’s holey offering from his knapsack and wound it round his neck. He felt the difference straight away: it was spitting with rain and the night air pierced his throat, but he set off walking smartly and swung his arms to keep warm.