Читать книгу A Store at War - Joanna Toye - Страница 8

‘Are you coming, going, or going to stand there all day thinking about it?’

Lily’s feet had brought her as far the staff entrance of Marlow’s, but they were showing a complete inability to take her any further.

‘Oh, never mind!’

A sharp-shouldered blonde pushed past her in a swirl of cheap perfume and peroxide and disappeared through the door.

‘Take no notice,’ said a voice at Lily’s side. ‘She’s like that with everyone.’

Lily smiled gratefully. The girl was shorter than Lily, and plumper, with straight brown hair in a pudding-basin shape. Under a too-small jacket, she was wearing a plain black dress. With her intimate knowledge of second-hand, Lily could tell from its greenish tinge that, like her own, the dress had had at least one previous owner. The girl’s white lacy collar, too, had suffered many launderings – but never mind her clothes. Best of all, from Lily’s point of view, she was wearing a smile.

‘You wouldn’t happen to be the new junior on Children’s?’

Lily nodded.

‘I was the same on my first day – stomach feels like it’s in a lift!’

Lily nodded again. Her head would fall off at this rate.

‘Don’t be. It does get better. I’m Gladys, by the way. I’m a junior on Children’s too. Well, I suppose I’m the senior junior now! We’ll be working together!’

‘Lily.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’

They shook hands awkwardly.

‘Come on, I’ll show you what’s what.’

Gladys pushed open the door and Lily entered another world.

If what she’d seen of Marlow’s on the day of her interview was like something from a fairy tale, this was more like the reality Lily knew. There was nothing fairy tale here. The corridor walls were scuffed where pull-along wagons delivering goods had bumped against them, the lino was worn, and the stairs which led to the basement staff cloakrooms were stone, dipped from years of footfall and as far away from the soft-carpeted dove-grey staircase inside the store as it was possible to get.

All around them staff moved purposefully this way and that. Men in brown coats rattled past with sack trucks or shoved metal cages full of boxes into a creaking goods lift. Shop-floor staff, some in outer coats going in their direction, others without their coats and ready for the day ahead going in the other, pulsed and flowed in a human tide. Lily dodged as best she could until Gladys pushed through a swing door into a long, low room alive with noise and movement. Wooden benches with pegs above ran down the centre and the walls were lined with pitted metal lockers.

‘My locker’s along here,’ explained Gladys, leading the way. ‘Let’s see if we can find you one close by.’

‘Oh, look, it’s Slow and her new friend Slower.’

The girl who’d accosted Lily outside was patting her hair in a cracked mirror fixed to the wall before retying the bow at the neck of her blouse.

‘Don’t ever go to the zoo, you two, will you? You might get dizzy watching the tortoises whizz round!’

She smiled to herself at her witticism and turned away.

‘Who is she?’ whispered Lily. ‘Or who does she think she is?’

‘Beryl Salter,’ muttered Gladys. ‘Junior on Toys – well, fourth sales she calls it, though there’s no such thing. And Toys is right next to our department, unfortunately.’

‘There’s always one, my mum says.’

Gladys said nothing more, so Lily bundled her gas mask, bag and cardigan into the locker Gladys indicated and checked that the clean handkerchief her mother had insisted on was still tucked up her sleeve.

‘But we don’t have to take it, you know.’

Gladys shook her head. ‘You don’t answer Beryl back.’

Lily had already noticed that, in front of Beryl, Gladys looked like a rabbit being hypnotised by a snake.

‘You may not,’ she responded. ‘But I’m here now.’

‘Well, Lily, you join us on something of an unusual day.’

Lily was hardly listening to a word Miss Frobisher, the Childrenswear buyer, was saying, so dazzled was she by her appearance. Though Lily was no judge of age – anyone over twenty-five was simply ‘old’ – Eileen Frobisher was probably not much over thirty. Tall and imposing, she had a proper figure (hour-glass, Lily would tell Sid later) outlined in a fitted grey pinstriped costume. Her enviably smooth toffee-blonde hair was swept round her head into an elegant French pleat in which not one single hairpin showed. How did she do it?

‘For reasons that … well, reasons you don’t need to know, Furniture and Household are having to move down from the second floor to join us here on the first. So we shall have to condense our stock. The good news for you, Lily, is that you’ll get to know everything we sell straight away. The bad news for the two of you’ – she included Gladys – ‘is that we’ll be losing a display counter, drawers and several racks. So in future you girls’ll be running back and forth to the stockroom a lot more.’

Lily and Gladys nodded dutifully. The department’s two saleswomen – or salesgirls, as Lily learnt they were called – Miss Thomas and Miss Temple – were already going through the racks, removing the covers that protected the stock from dust and dirt overnight. As the morning ticked away, along with Miss Frobisher, they pondered party dresses and picked out little summer coats. Beautifully smocked romper suits, tiny embroidered blouses, fluffy pram covers and soft leather bootees piled up on the counters as they made their decisions over what should stay and what should go.

As she smoothed and folded, Lily marvelled at the detail, the workmanship in every garment – all in miniature – and tried not gasp when she saw the contrastingly enormous prices. Not that she had much time to gasp. Her job, with Gladys, was to carry armfuls of tiny clothes and boxes of accessories to the stockroom and stow them away under the supervision of Miss Thomas, who was now stationed up there. Occasionally, to rest their legs, they folded fresh tissue and cut holes for the hangers to protect the clothes from the stockroom’s much dustier atmosphere.

But their main task, as it turned out, was trying to avoid Beryl, whose own department was also being reduced in size. Despite her self-styled senior status, Beryl had been set the same job, carrying boxes of Meccano, train sets and soft plush toys off the sales floor and up three flights of unforgiving stone stairs to the fourth-floor stockrooms – with accompanying moans.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she complained as they toiled up the stairs for the umpteenth time. ‘But Toys have already moved once to make space for the Red Cross and St John Ambulance stalls. Now I’ve got to lug this stuff about again! Where are the porters?’

‘Helping bring the furniture down, I suppose,’ panted Lily as she plodded on up.

‘Children’s has moved too,’ pointed out Gladys mildly. ‘From ground to first. That was soon after I came,’ she explained to Lily. ‘To make way for the Permits Office and the interpreter’s desk. For French and Belgian refugees,’ she added, when Lily looked blank.

Lily couldn’t help but be impressed. It seemed there was nothing Marlow’s wouldn’t do to attract custom. Mr Marlow must have a very shrewd brain.

‘And now it’s the Air Ministry!’ snorted Beryl, grabbing at a velveteen monkey as it tried to make a break from the armful she was carrying.

‘What?’

‘Oh, hasn’t Frosty Frobisher taken you into her confidence? I wonder why?’

‘I don’t think she’s frosty.’ Lily was defensive. ‘She seems very nice.’

‘Thinks a lot of herself, if you ask me.’

‘She’s not the only one,’ muttered Lily to Gladys, thinking that Miss Frobisher had a lot more right to than Beryl, about whom you could say the same.

‘I suppose she knows you two dumbclucks’ll do as you’re told without asking questions. I asked Mr Marlow.’

Gladys’s eyes widened.

‘Robert Marlow. Floor supervisor,’ she mouthed to Lily. ‘Mr Marlow’s son.’

‘The management have known about it for weeks but the communiqué’ – Beryl rolled the word around triumphantly like a diver surfacing with a rare pearl – ‘only came through on Friday. They’ve requisitioned half the second floor for aircraft parts.’

‘Come along, come along!’

Miss Thomas was waiting for them at the double doors to the stockroom.

‘Come along, girls! The war’ll be over before we get our stock moved at this rate!’

But she gave them a smile and when dinnertime finally came – Lily’s stomach had been growling for over an hour – Miss Frobisher let them both go off together as it was Lily’s first day – as long as they only took forty minutes instead of the usual hour.

At last, in the basement canteen, where Marlow’s provided a daily hot meal for all their employees, Lily got a chance to take stock instead of moving it.

As they chewed their rissoles – not as good as her mum’s, but they were grateful for anything; you had to be these days – Lily learnt that Gladys was six months older than she was and had started at Marlow’s just before Christmas. As soon as she heard where she’d been born – Coventry – Lily had a horrible feeling she knew what Gladys was going to say – and she was right. Worried for their only child’s safety, her parents had sent her to stay with her gran in Hinton soon after Dunkirk – and they’d also been right in their thinking. When Coventry had taken its pounding from German bombers the previous November, the cubbyhole under the stairs where Gladys’s parents had been sheltering was no protection against a petty burglar armed with a paper knife, let alone the Luftwaffe. The house had been completely obliterated and Gladys’s mum and dad with it. With no home or other family to go back to, Gladys had had no option but to stay on with her gran – and since she’d never enrolled in school in Hinton in the first place, she thought she might as well find herself a job. She thanked her lucky stars every day, she said, that she’d been taken on at Marlow’s – her chances boosted by the fact that her parents had run a small corner shop and she’d always helped out there.

‘What happens if there’s an air raid here?’ asked Lily. ‘I mean, there must be over a hundred staff, more maybe, and with customers too …’

‘I’ll show you when we’ve finished.’ Gladys forked up a final shred of cabbage and a chunk of watery potato. ‘There’s an air-raid shelter down here, big enough for all the staff and as many customers as Mr Marlow thinks could be in the store at any one time.’

Lily couldn’t help but be impressed again by Cedric Marlow’s foresight.

‘And he’s had a door cut through that leads into Burrell’s basement too.’

‘Burrell’s! But that’s way down Market Street!’

Burrell’s was another big store and, Lily would have assumed, a rival.

‘Their basement and ours meet in the middle. Weird, isn’t it? So if there was a raid and we got hit, we could get out through their shop, and the other way round.’

‘What are you two gassing about now?’

Beryl plonked her tray down on the table and plumped down beside them – naturally assuming there’d be no objection. Lily noted that, however much she appeared to despise them, she didn’t seem to have anyone else to sit with.

‘Air-raid precautions.’ Lily sipped her water.

‘Hah! I suppose Little Miss Muffet’s been telling you how they say it’s all about “protection not profit”. Has she told you how long we have to wait till we can go down the shelter?’

Lily shook her head. Beryl sprinkled salt and pepper vigorously over her rissole and pushed her cabbage disgustedly to one side.

‘It used to be that we all went down the minute we heard the siren. But now they’ve got plane spotters on the roof – with flags.’

‘So have Burrell’s. And Marks and Spencer. And Boots. And—’ added Gladys.

‘Yes, thank you, we don’t need the entire Trade Directory.’ Beryl didn’t appreciate being interrupted. ‘White for the alert, shop to shop, then red once they actually see a plane,’ she continued matter-of-factly. ‘Then it’s all bells and whistles on the sales floor and everyone scuttling down as fast as they can. Well, you have to make way for customers, of course.’

She didn’t sound too impressed with that, either.

‘But sometimes the air-raid warnings can last all night,’ objected Lily. ‘What then?’

‘You’re stuck, ducky.’

‘It’s never actually happened,’ said Gladys consolingly. ‘And we’ve never actually been seriously bombed, have we, in Hinton. There’s only a couple of factories, and nothing big like Birmingham or West Bromwich or …’

She obviously couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Coventry’.

‘No, but … well, they can always get things wrong,’ said Lily. ‘Burrell’s got hit last winter.’

‘That,’ said Beryl dismissively. ‘A couple of incendiaries the Jerries couldn’t be bothered to lug back with them.’

‘I suppose.’

Lily was glad she’d be able to tell her mum about the precautions at Marlow’s. She knew it had been bothering her. Dora would be relieved Lily had had a hot lunch too. It wasn’t just Lily’s wage which was going to be a help to their household budget.

‘Why does Beryl have to be so snide all the time?’ she asked Gladys as they made their way back to the sales floor. ‘I notice she still had to sit with us. Obviously nobody likes her. And fancy asking the boss’s son what was going on!’

‘I know,’ Gladys sounded resigned. ‘But that’s Beryl. She seems to get away with it. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” is what she says.’

‘Yes,’ replied Lily. ‘And one day you might get more than you’re asking for, like the sack!’

Gladys shook her head.

‘Not Beryl. Mr Bunting, the buyer on Toys, you’ve seen him—’

Lily had. Short, plump, with a frill of white hair round a bald crown, he looked like the old toymaker in the fairy story. It had come as no surprise to Lily to learn that he doubled as Santa at the staff Christmas party.

‘He’s been here years. He’s a soft touch – that’s what I heard Miss Frobisher call him.’ Gladys hesitated. ‘Beryl calls him something quite different, of course.’

Beryl would, thought Lily.

Lily was on her hands and knees, trying to brush up the nap of the carpet where a set of glass-fronted drawers had stood, when she was aware of a little cough behind her.

‘Excuse me …’ It was the first time a male voice had spoken to her since she’d stepped through the staff entrance and the first time that day that anyone who might be senior had given her, however nicely phrased, anything but an order or an instruction.

Without looking round – surely it wasn’t Mr Marlow Junior, the floor supervisor? What had she done? What hadn’t she done? – Lily scrambled to her feet. Her hair, tamed by her mum that morning, had gone its own way with the effort of her scrubbing, and she pushed it out of her eyes with the back of her hand. With the other she smoothed down the skirt of her dress, horribly aware of the dust and fluff it had attracted. And she’d been congratulating herself on being put on a carpeted department instead of having to stand on a hard parquet floor all day!

‘Will you be much longer? Only I rather fancy the dining set that we’ve got on promotion in that little area. Sideboard in carved oak, Tudor – well, Tudor style – to the right, draw-leaf table central, a couple of chairs … Think I’ll have room?’

‘Erm, probably, as long as you’re not planning on Henry VIII sitting there with a goblet and throwing a chicken bone over his shoulder as well,’ offered Lily.

‘Hah! Hadn’t thought of that!’ said the young man. ‘But now you mention it …’

‘I was only joking!’ said Lily quickly.

‘I realise that. But I could set the table to make it look more tempting. Sorry, I should introduce myself. James Goodridge. Jim. Third sales, Furniture and Household.’

‘Lily. Lily Collins.’

Lily found herself looking up into deep-brown eyes behind wire-framed glasses. And looking a long way up. Sid was tall, but this lad – Jim – must be well over six foot, and skinny with it – a right bean-pole, her mum would have said.

‘I’m sorry if I’m holding you up. It’s my first day,’ she added.

‘I thought I hadn’t seen you before. Well, seems we’re going to be neighbours.’

‘Looks like it.’

She couldn’t place his accent. Not Midlands, definitely, but not posh, like old Mr Marlow, and not put on, either, like she could tell Beryl was trying to do. It was sort of natural, gentle, like the hills on the calendar her mum kept in the kitchen, the one that had come as a pull-out with Woman’s Weekly at the turn of the year. And then she heard herself saying – a bit forward, perhaps, but he seemed so normal and friendly …

‘Perhaps once you’ve set the table I can come for tea.’

‘You’re on! So what do we need? I’ll half-inch some stuff from Small Household – tray, tray cloth, crockery, teapot …’

‘Cake stand,’ suggested Lily. ‘No cake, we’ll have to pretend that …’

‘Cake stand! Of course! You’re going to be good at this sales lark, Lily.’

‘Well …’ Lily was pleased with the compliment, but cautious. ‘I’ve got to be good at being a junior first.’

‘It’s not so bad. You can soon work up.’

‘I hope so.’

Then, in case anyone was looking, she added quickly:

‘I’d better get on. Or you’ll never get your stuff moved in time for breakfast, let alone tea! You should probably check with Miss Frobisher, but she told me and Gladys she wanted our old sales space clear for you by three o’clock.’

‘Perfect. See you later!’

Lily watched him go, skirting a display of soft toys in his dark suit, watched him stop by Miss Frobisher, checking with her as she’d suggested, presumably, and then bound back up the stairs. He was all angles, tall and gawky, nothing like as smooth as the other salesmen she’d observed, with his wrists poking out from his shirt cuffs, his thatch of dark hair, and his glasses ever so slightly askew.

He seemed awfully nice, though. Friendly. And he’d spoken to her like a human being although he was a salesman proper, and she was a very junior junior.

She might be bounded on one side by bitchy Beryl in Toys, but with Household and Furniture on the other, Gladys an ally on her own department, and Miss Frobisher to learn from, Lily, as she went back to her brushing, felt very fortunate indeed.

Then it happened. The air-raid sirens began their wailing in the street outside. Above her head a bell shrilled, across the floor a whistle sounded, then another, sharper, longer … There was a flurry of alarm, then the buyers took charge, shepherding customers towards the stairs, prising people who were insistent on completing their purchases away from counters, making sure they had their own belongings and, crucially, their gas masks, with them. Lily looked round, not sure what to do, but Gladys was at her side.

‘Wait till Miss Frobisher tells us we can go. Or gives us a customer to take down.’

‘A customer?’ Lily looked horrified.

‘Don’t worry, it’s never happened yet,’ Gladys assured her.

Luckily, because of the disruption of the move, there weren’t many customers on the first floor and within seconds Miss Frobisher beckoned them over and told them to take the back stairs as quickly as they could. Lily had hoped to get away from the ear-splitting bell but another was clanging on the stairs, which with the ringing of feet on stone and the carrying of voices up and down the stairwell – some anxious, some bored, some annoyed – was even worse. And then, worse still, there was Beryl.

‘All we need!’ she cried. ‘Me and Les are going to the pictures tonight! Well, supposed to be!’

She glared at Lily.

‘I hope you’re not going to be bad luck!’