A Store at War

‘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.

‘Cousin Ida’s,’ she announced. ‘I knew it’d come in useful!’

Cousin Ida. Her mother’s cousin – a shrivelled spinster who worked as an assistant in a chemist’s so old-fashioned they practically had leeches in jars. Hardly a fashion plate at the best of times, this particular dress was at least ten years out of date, Lily could tell from its straight up-and-down shape. It was already seated in the behind and sagging at the hem, but Dora Collins loved nothing like a challenge. Lily had had to stand while her mother forced her to put it on – smelling of camphor and itchy in the afternoon heat – and primped about with a pincushion, tucking and pinching, prodding and poking, telling Lily to stand up straight, before proclaiming that with a few darts, a nice Peter Pan collar, and cuffs if they could run to them, it would do fine. A Peter Pan collar! Cuffs! As if they’d make it look any better!

Out came the cruet, the mismatched plates … What was the point, thought Lily, of getting a decent job if she was going to look such a frump? She might as well have been stuck slaving over a mangle at the laundry.

Sid came downstairs, spruced up after his stint in the garden. Dora had fretted that he’d overdone it, standing all that time on his injured foot, but she and Lily knew sitting about wasn’t his style – he wanted to be up and doing. He’d got to report to the local medical officer weekly, but the doctor had advised against going back to training too early. ‘You’ll only set yourself back’ had been his advice, so it looked as though they’d have him around for a while yet. Lily was glad. She loved her mum dearly, but Dora had always been so occupied with making ends meet and keeping them fed, clothed and shod – even more so nowadays – that there wasn’t much time or maybe energy left over for the smiles and cuddles which Lily had craved since she was a little girl. That was another reason she was happy to have Sid around. He was always ready with a joke and a hug.

On trailing feet Lily carried through the breadboard and breadknife with the inevitable loaf – they seemed to live on it – the pot of dripping, the dish shaped like a lettuce leaf with, yes, lettuce on it. A few tomatoes, a dish of radishes, half a pot of green tomato chutney. Was that it? Hardly a celebration tea. She’d hoped her mum might have conjured something tasty from somewhere – potted meat? Pilchards? Or at least fried up a few potatoes – Sid had dug some up, she’d seen – but it looked as though this was going to be their lot.

Sid carried the tea things through one at a time – he used a stick inside the house – and dispensed pot, milk jug and cups and saucers. Maybe that was the celebration, no milk bottle on the table. Lily thought he was limping more than he had been at the start of the afternoon and gestured to him to sit down, bringing him the rush-topped stool.

‘I could get used to this!’ he smiled as she stuck a cushion under his foot.

‘Well, don’t!’ she retorted. ‘Who’s going to look after you in the Navy? One of the Wrens? You hope!’

Sid winked.

‘Wouldn’t say no.’

Lily was pouring tea when her mother finally appeared, so she didn’t notice the serving dish till it went down in front of her. She lowered the pot in wonderment.

‘Oh, Mum!’

There, in all their jelly goodness, were three fat slices of pink, speckled brawn. Lily bent and sniffed the plate. It smelt heavenly.

‘Meat? On a Monday tea? Where did it – how did you …?’

Her mother sat down in her place with that little ‘Oof’ which she so often gave these days when taking the weight off her feet.

‘Never you mind,’ she said. ‘I wanted us to have something special. To celebrate.’

‘But – how could you be sure I’d get the job?’

Lily sat down too, almost in slow motion, still transfixed by the sight and smells in front of her. Sid was watching it all with amusement. Dora served a slice of brawn on to each of their plates.

‘I never had a minute’s doubt! I knew you’d impress them. If you ask me, they’re lucky to have you!’

Lily bit her lip. It was one of the nicest things her mother had ever said.

Her mother put her hand over hers.

‘You’ve done very well, love – and thank you.’

‘You’re thanking me? Why?’

‘Oh, Lily,’ said Dora. ‘You know and I know you should have stayed on at school. And you know as well as I do that you could have gone to the grammar school back along if things had been different.’

Lily knew. But she hadn’t even taken the exam, because she also knew her mother could never have afforded the uniform.

‘You’ve had to give up so many opportunities already,’ Dora went on. ‘I hope this job’ll be the start of something good for you. And it could be, you know, if you work hard.’

‘I know, Mum. And I will. I’ll do my very best to make them like me and keep me on.’

‘Course they will,’ Sid assured them. ‘Give her a few years, she’ll be running the place, won’t you, chick?’

Her mother squeezed Lily’s hand and they both had to squeeze back tears.

‘Oh, blimey,’ said Sid, offering his handkerchief to each in turn. ‘Women! Give over, will you? There’s a slice of brawn with my name on it in front of me! Can we get stuck in?’

Chapter 3

‘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?’