A Store at War

‘The thing is, Lily,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a telephone call. From Mr Marlow.’

So he knew as well! Lily’s cheeks flamed.

‘And he …’

Miss Garner removed her treasured paper clip from Lily’s forms and stowed it in a little japanned box on her desk.

‘He’d had a telephone call from Mrs Tunnicliffe. Violet Tunnicliffe’s mother,’ she added, inscrutably.

Lily bit her lip. Hard. Was Miss Garner going to deliver the killer blow, or would Lily be passed on to Cedric Marlow? Would he rant and rage? She didn’t somehow think that would be his style. More a sort of sad disappointment that she’d turned out so badly. Either way, it’d end with her being shown the door.

But Miss Garner was speaking again.

‘It seems that Violet’s very highly strung. They’ve had trouble with her before in air raids. The doctor prescribed a bromide, but they didn’t have any with them yesterday.’

‘That’s awful,’ said Lily. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, well, it gets some people like that, doesn’t it?’

The little japanned box had a picture of a temple or a palace or something on it, brilliant in gold and turquoise. When the sun poked through the taped-over window, it throbbed with colour. Miss Garner saw her looking at it.

‘My brother sent it to me. He’s out in Syria. Perfect for paper clips.’

‘I see,’ said Lily automatically, though she couldn’t believe they were talking like this, about paper clips of all things.

Please. Get on with it, she thought. Why are you dragging it out?

‘The fact is’ – Miss Garner couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice – ‘Mrs Tunnicliffe’s actually rather grateful to you. She can’t do anything with Violet when she gets like that. If it had gone on much longer she’d have screamed herself into fits, and it needed someone to bring her to her senses.’

Another ‘I see’ would have done well here, but Lily was too stunned to speak.

‘In fact, Lily, if you really want to know—’

Miss Garner herself sounded amazed as she pulled a piece of scrap paper towards her.

‘I wrote this down so that I could relay it correctly. Mrs Tunnicliffe couldn’t praise you highly enough. “Quick-thinking” was the phrase she used. And she told Mr Marlow to make sure you were properly thanked.’

‘Never!’ The word was out before Lily could help herself.

A brief smile touched Miss Garner’s lips.

‘That’s what she said. But—’

She couldn’t let this go without delivering something of a lesson.

‘You crossed a line, Lily, and I can’t recommend you ever do the same in future. Though let’s hope the situation won’t arise.’

‘No, Miss Garner. Of course not. But – have I got this right? Shall I … can I … can I stay on?’

‘Yes. You can consider yourself reprieved.’

Lily looked blank. It wasn’t a word she knew.

‘It means that it’ll go in the incident book, though I’m not quite sure under what heading … but when it comes to your staff record – well, it’s more likely to be entered as a mark in your favour than against. Anyway, leave that to me. We’ll say no more about it. Well, go on!’ she chided. ‘You’d better get to your department! Or you’ll be late!’

‘Yes, Miss Garner.’ Lily was beaming. ‘Of course! And thank you!’

She scuttled down to the basement and stowed her things away. As she straightened her hair in the mirror – no Beryl to hog it today, just a few stragglers, as the ten-minute bell had already gone – she still couldn’t stop smiling. She’d somehow got away with it, she’d lived to fight another day. No, bad choice of words – lived to work another day. And at Marlow’s, not at the laundry, not at the Fox and Goose!

‘Thank you, God,’ she breathed, as she walked on to the sales floor. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

Miss Frobisher looked surprisingly unsurprised to see her – Miss Garner must have tipped her off. Miss Thomas raised an eyebrow to Miss Temple but gave Lily a smile. Gladys was open-mouthed, her face a pantomime of astonishment, delight and relief. But best of all was Beryl, whose mouth also fell open – in shock.

‘Not so unlucky after all,’ she hissed as she passed Lily later that morning. ‘How did you do it? Who do you know up on the third floor? Got a mate up there, have you?’

‘No,’ said Lily.

‘Well, you’ve got away with it this time,’ said Beryl nastily. ‘But you’d better watch your step.’

‘Oh, I will,’ Lily assured her. With you and everyone else, she thought, as Beryl turned back to her own department.

She wouldn’t be taking any more chances.

Chapter 5

Over the next few weeks, as a thankful Lily settled in, she began to feel more and more at home at Marlow’s.

Miss Frobisher was certainly determined to make sure she ‘got to know the department’. Day by day she took Lily round the racks and display cabinets, pulling out drawers, showing off leather bootees with embroidered flowers (pink or blue), tiny but fully fashioned socks and miniature vests. In the toddler section for boys there were flannel shirts, elasticated bow ties, velveteen shorts, and child-sized braces. For girls, there were Liberty lawn dresses, corduroy pinafores and Viyella blouses. The party dresses, their protective tissue removed for the day’s trading, hung stiffly on their racks, crying out for jelly, ice cream and streamers. Some hope these days, thought Lily – though maybe not for the sort of children whose parents could afford these prices on top of their child’s coupons. Miss Frobisher pointed out again where items were missing – the sizes and styles Lily and Gladys had carted up to the stockroom. These were the ones the juniors would be sent to fetch.

Lily’s bond with Gladys was strengthening every day and Lily was so relieved that it was Gladys she worked with, not someone like Beryl, who continued to smirk when she saw them leaving the store arm-in-arm, and mockingly called them ‘the lovebirds’.

‘She’s just jealous,’ Lily reassured Gladys. ‘She doesn’t seem to have a single friend of her own on the staff.’

‘She’s more interested in boyfriends, isn’t she?’

They’d both seen Les, who, Lily learned, worked as a driver in Despatch, lounging with a cigarette by the staff entrance as he waited for Beryl to complete her elaborate toilette at the end of the day.

But there was something admiring and envious in Gladys’s tone, and Lily knew there was nothing her new friend would have liked more than to have a boyfriend of her own. But if Lily despaired about her looks, at least she had a pert little nose and wide-set blue eyes, unlike Gladys whose hair was poker-straight, whose looks were unremarkable, and who was prone to the odd outbreak of angry spots.

Gladys was almost as potty about the pictures as Sid, though naturally she preferred a ‘nice romance’ to the action-adventures Sid enjoyed. Her search for a Hinton-based Errol Flynn was hardly likely to be satisfied soon, though, if ever, and not just because of her looks. It was a shame, because Gladys was so kind and generous – such a good person – but the sort of person people took advantage of. As Lily had realised on that very first day, it was a good job Gladys had Lily to be her protector, even if only from the likes of Beryl.

Despite her bravado, Lily was still a bit nervous of Beryl herself. She had such a bold manner with men, and such a sharp tongue. Beryl would smile quite brazenly at Robert Marlow when he toured the first-floor departments, whereas Lily and Gladys tried, as the staff manual urged the juniors, to make themselves helpful but invisible.

Only with Jim did Lily risk a smile and a word on the shop floor. The day after the air raid, he’d arranged his Tudor-style dining set in the corner he’d identified, and set the table with cloth and crockery, but Lily hadn’t been invited to tea. He hadn’t witnessed the shelter incident but he’d heard about it, of course, because he’d grinned at her and asked where she’d learn to throw such a powerful right hook. Lily had blushed and he realised he’d perhaps gone too far.

‘One way to get yourself noticed, I suppose,’ he’d commented.

‘I shan’t be repeating it, don’t worry,’ was Lily’s response.

After work, as they walked to their respective bus stops, Gladys took her to task.

‘How do you do it?’ she demanded.

‘What?’

Lily wasn’t aware she’d done anything.

‘Talk to people – boys – like that Jim – the way you do.’

The question baffled Lily but it was true, Gladys blushed and stammered if anyone in trousers, staff or customer, young or old, gave her so much as a polite nod of the head and a ‘good morning’.

‘I suppose,’ said Lily thoughtfully, ‘it’s because I’ve grown up with them. Boys, I mean – my brothers. I’m used to having them around. I don’t think anything of it.’

Gladys sighed enviously. Apart from the father she’d adored, she’d never been exposed to male company the way Lily had.

‘Come to tea,’ said Lily impulsively. ‘One night soon. Then you can meet Sid for yourself. You’ll see, it’s impossible to be shy with him around!’

Gladys’s face lit up.

‘Oh, Lily, I’d love that!’ she cried. ‘Thank you!’

‘I’ll have to ask my mum,’ warned Lily. But she knew Dora wouldn’t mind. She was over the moon that Lily had found such a good job. Her wages helped with the housekeeping, and with Sid at home to help with the veg plot, life was easier all round. His foot was healing, but he needed to give it a while before he could fully put his weight on it without doing further damage, the doctor reckoned.

Before Lily knew it, she’d been at Marlow’s a month, and Miss Frobisher took her to one side. Her probationary period was up.

‘So, how are you liking us?’

‘Oh, Miss Frobisher, I love it!’ exclaimed Lily. ‘I feel so lucky, I really do!’

‘Well, that’s good to know. You’ve certainly knuckled down after your rather … rocky start.’

Lily knew what she meant and hung her head.

‘It’s all right, Lily,’ said Miss Frobisher kindly. ‘I think you’ll do very well. I need a bright girl like you. There used to be six staff on this department – myself, three full-time salesgirls and two juniors. Now all my full-timers have gone off to do war work, so there’s only you and Gladys, and Miss Thomas and Miss Temple, who retired years ago, really – and Miss Thomas only part-time. You could be serving customers sooner than you think.’

Lily glowed. And gulped.

‘Don’t worry,’ Miss Frobisher smiled. ‘Ask the others if you’re not sure. Gladys will give you all the help she can, I know, and the salesgirls if they’re not busy. But never let a customer see you look confused. Take your troubles away to a colleague. Is that clear?’

Lily nodded.

‘I’ll try not to let you down, Miss Frobisher,’ she assured her. ‘I really am grateful for this job. And, well …’ Her eyes met Miss Frobisher’s cool grey ones for a moment. ‘A second chance.’

‘Then prove it to me,’ she replied, but with a smile. ‘And you can start by tidying away those vests, please.’

As usual, without even seeming to move her head, she’d noticed that Miss Temple had finished serving a customer and was now escorting her to the lift. Miss Frobisher herself swooped off to attend to a woman dithering by a display of little Argyll pullovers.

‘Mrs MacRorie! How good to see you … how are your boys?’

Lily moved to the counter and started re-tying the ribbons on the little crossover vests. As she slid them as neatly as she could back into their cellophane packets, her gaze drifted to Household where she could see Jim serving a tall, bulky man with a military moustache. The man was jabbing his finger repeatedly, evidently making a point. And making sure Jim took it …

‘I said “usual arrangement”, didn’t I?’ he boomed. ‘What part of that do you not understand?’

Jim paused in wrapping the purchase, a fancy chrome ashtray on a stand.

‘All of it, I’m afraid, sir,’ he replied, genuinely puzzled. ‘The usual arrangement for a purchase like this nowadays can only be “Cash and Take” or “Account and Take”. Is that what you mean? I take it you have an account with us?’

Sir Douglas Brimble looked at him coldly.

‘Of course I have an account! Do you think you’re being funny, young man?’

‘No, Sir Douglas, I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Not your idea of a joke? Nor is it mine. I’m not talking about my account!’

Jim still looked baffled.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, the same arrangement that I have with Mr Bishop. Look, just fetch him, will you?’

Maurice Bishop was Second Sales on the department, a sharp-faced chap in his twenties – an Army reject on account of his supposed asthma.

‘I’m sorry, sir, Mr Bishop has taken his annual holiday this week.’

This was not the answer Sir Douglas wanted. Irritably, he leant further over the counter and the jabbing forefinger made contact with Jim’s lapel.

‘Do you know how much I’ve spent in this store over the years? This past year, even? It’s customers like me who keep places like this going, especially in these straitened times. We pay your wages!’

Jim had certainly seen Sir Douglas in the store, indeed on their department, but he’d always been served by Maurice Bishop until now.

‘That may well be, sir, but—’

‘Account and Take indeed!’

‘Don’t you have a car, Sir Douglas? Is that the problem?’

‘Of course I have a car! Impertinence!’

Sir Douglas Brimble of Holmwood House, stockbroker, landowner, former councillor, and past Mayor of Hinton, was a man accustomed to getting his own way. Instantly.

‘My problem, as you put it, is that my wife dropped me off. I shall walk to the station where I am catching a train to Birmingham for a business lunch. If you think I’m going to lug an ashtray on a stand round with me all day, you’ve another think coming!’

There was a pause while the bristling moustache bristled.

‘Usual arrangement!’

The one thing Lily was still uneasy about was going to dinner alone. For the first few days after the incident in the shelter, she’d had to endure a lot of sidelong looks and questions and it was hard to explain away how she’d managed to be kept on without revealing what Miss Garner had told her. Even a few weeks on, she still felt some of the staff were looking at her, judging her, and, not knowing of Mrs Tunnicliffe’s intervention, wondering how she’d managed to hang on to her job. Lily certainly didn’t feel she could share the real reason for Violet’s hysteria – the secret wasn’t hers to tell – on top of which she felt strangely protective towards Violet. In any case, if she wanted further vindication, customer confidentiality, she’d learnt when she finally got to the end of the staff manual, was paramount. At the same time, she knew that her first day’s dinner break with Gladys had been an exception: the two juniors couldn’t be off the department at the same time. Today, however, as she left the sales floor, by great good fortune Jim caught up with her and they walked down to the canteen together. Lily was still getting used to the menu and brightened when she saw it was Irish stew.

‘Don’t get excited. Gravy with gristle,’ warned Jim, but Lily eyed the ladleful on her plate with relish. There were the usual collapsing potatoes too, and cabbage – again. But there was roly-poly with currants (‘If you can find them,’ warned Jim) for afters – and Lily intended eating every mouthful. They carried their food to a long table, squeezing with their trays held high past men from the warehouse playing cards for matchsticks.

It was then, as they ate, that Jim related his odd encounter with Sir Douglas.

‘But what did he mean?’

‘That’s what I didn’t know. But I wanted to find out. So I had to pretend I did.’

‘How?’

‘Come on, you go to the pictures, don’t you?’ grinned Jim. ‘You know the bit where our hero has a sudden thought, or realises something, or remembers. They do this knowing sort of look. So I gave him one of those.’

‘Knowing?’

Lily stopped with a forkful of stew halfway to her mouth. She’d never heard anyone talk quite like Jim. Not to her, anyway, not even Sid, who had a pretty vivid turn of phrase when he liked, the more so since he’d joined the Navy – and not in a good way, Lily’s mum often scolded. Jim’s tone was sort of casual, but confidential, and chatty. Now he tutted impatiently.

‘Like this!’

He mimed an expression somewhere between surprise and ‘Aha!’

Lily nodded uncertainly.

‘I don’t think Clark Gable’s got anything to worry about,’ she smiled. ‘And then?’

‘And then I apologised profusely. Claimed I understood. So Sir Douglas huffed and puffed, said he should think so too. We made out his account as “Account and Take”, he signed it, I put the docket in the tube, it came back receipted from the cash office, he crammed his hat on his head, and off he stomped.’

‘Leaving you with his ashtray! But if you only pretended to know … and he left without it … what are you going to do with it?’

‘Not going to do, already done,’ said Jim triumphantly. ‘Are you eating that potato?’

‘Yes!’ said Lily.

‘Just thought I’d ask. You eat a lot, don’t you, for a girl.’

‘Oh, go on, have it then.’ Lily forked the potato on to his plate. ‘It’s got an eye in it, though. Be careful.’

‘Thanks.’ Jim attacked it eagerly.

‘You eat a lot, for one that’s so skinny,’ said Lily. ‘Doesn’t your landlady feed you?’

‘Not much,’ said Jim ruefully. The potato had already disappeared.

Lily returned to the subject in hand.

‘So, the ashtray. What have you done with it?’

‘Well,’ began Jim, leaning in and dropping his voice, obviously relishing the telling. ‘I don’t know if you’ve been told, and maybe it doesn’t apply to those tiddly little baby things you sell, but with petrol restricted to essential work only, we can only deliver larger items. Sofas and chairs and tables and beds and wardrobes – if we can get them to sell in the first place – but – well, you get the idea.’

‘Definitely not ashtrays on stands.’

‘Absolutely not. Anything like that the customer has to take away. Though evidently not in Sir Douglas’s case. So here’s the good bit. He goes off, I wrap the thing up, address it to him and take it down to Despatch. The office assumed it was an add-on to some bigger item, told me it was Les Bulpitt’s round, so I went and found him.’

‘Les …?’ Lily frowned. ‘Beryl – you know, on Toys – she goes out with someone called Les who works in Despatch. Same one?’

‘Tall, a bit of a swagger and a lot of Brylcreem?’

‘That sounds like him.’

‘Interesting … Anyway, I offer up the parcel, and say the magic words. “Usual Arrangement for Sir Douglas Brimble.” At which Les does a double-take and says, “You’re in on it now, are you? I suppose Maurice filled you in …”’

‘Maurice Bishop? In on what?’

Jim had demolished his pudding (not a bad number of currants, actually) in about four mouthfuls and was now eyeing Lily’s. She curled her hand protectively round her bowl. Defeated, he took a sip of water.

‘Les was due a break, so I went and stood on the loading bay with him while he had a smoke. Did the “all boys together” act. Pretended Bishop hadn’t had the chance to explain it all to me before he left. Asked a few discreet questions. With my coat collar turned up, of course, best gumshoe style,’ he added.

Lily never knew when Jim was joking. He was very like Sid in that respect.

‘Turns out,’ Jim went on, ‘Sir Douglas and a select few of his cronies still have everything they buy delivered, large or small. There’s a salesman in the know on every department they might use – Wines and Spirits, Tobacco and Cigars, Gents’ Outfitting, Household. There’s a “consideration”, naturally, for any salesman involved for adding the stuff on the van, and any driver involved for adding the delivery on to his round when he’s next in the immediate area. In fact, it turns out that’s how Maurice Bishop is spending his annual holiday – not in Stoke-on-Trent with his aged mum but in Blackpool, if you please. It obviously all tots up.’

‘But that’s …’ Lily hadn’t yet memorised every single line of the staff manual but ‘Private arrangements with customers are strictly forbidden’ was one sentence which she very much remembered reading. ‘That’s a sacking offence!’

‘Worse than that,’ said Jim. ‘It’s illegal. How are they getting their hands on the extra petrol, for a start? Les, Maurice, all the others involved and, worse, Marlow’s itself, could be prosecuted – and found guilty!’

‘But, Jim,’ Lily was aghast, ‘if you’ve given Les the parcel, you’re involved now, you’re as bad as the others!’

‘This is the clever bit,’ explained Jim. ‘I told him to hang on to it. Told a little white lie – well, a big white whopper. Said Sir Douglas might be adding a couple more small things to his order. Les was fine about it. He wasn’t going anywhere near Sir Douglas’s today anyhow.’

‘Fine,’ said Lily. ‘But now what are you going to do about it?’

‘Good question.’

Jim returned to his pudding bowl and scraped at an all-but-transparent smear of custard.

‘You’ll have to report it, surely?’

‘I will. But …’

‘But what?’

Jim leaned forward.

‘Thing is, I need to find out a bit more. Who knows, exactly who’s involved, names, how often it happens, how long it’s been going on. That sort of stuff.’

‘Can’t you ask Les?’

‘How can I? It’s not as if I know the bloke. And as I’m supposed to be in on it, I can’t pretend I’ve no clue what’s going on. I’ve asked enough already. It’s going to look too obvious.’

‘You’re stuck then.’

‘Not entirely.’

A cunning look, much more believable than his ‘knowing’ one, crossed Jim’s face.

‘Not if you’re right and Les and Beryl are—’

Lily could see where this was heading.

‘Hang on!’

‘No, listen – it’s brilliant. You know Beryl. All you have to do is get her at tea break, or go for a drink or something after work—’

‘A drink?!’

‘Only a lemonade!’

‘But, Jim, I don’t know her! And what I do, I don’t much like. And she positively hates me!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. How could anyone hate you?’ Jim smiled.

And instantly, still shaking her head in disbelief, Lily knew she’d do it. Quite how she was going to win Beryl’s confidence – and before Sir Douglas started wondering where his blessed ashtray was and caused a stink – was another matter.

‘I’d be so grateful. You see, Beryl, I haven’t really got a clue.’

Leaving a baffled Gladys to walk on her own, and gasping that she’d explain everything in time, Lily had managed to catch up with Beryl as they left the store. Now they were standing in the evening sun by the sandbagged Post Office on the High Street.

‘I’d be so grateful. Truly I would.’

Beryl took a step back and smiled. Though her smiles always seemed more like a sneer to Lily.

‘Well, I’m sorry, but where exactly do you expect me to start? Hair, clothes, shoes, socks – socks! – make-up – or lack of it – I mean, really!’

Lily looked meekly down at the offending shoes and socks. Her appeal had been one she calculated Beryl would not be able to resist – to offer the hapless Lily advice on clothes and make-up.

‘This is what I mean, Beryl. Anything you could do to help – not that I can afford much …’

She suddenly realised with alarm that Beryl might actually expect her to buy something to prove her new-found interest. Lily handed most of her wages over to her mum and did so gladly. The first thing she was going to spend her savings on, she’d decided, was a better birthday present for her mum than something from the market. And the second thing would be a tie for Sid. Only then was she planning on spending anything on herself.

‘Well, I hardly expect you to start off in Marlow’s! But I tell you what …’

Lily’s ruse had worked. Beryl was clearly flattered to be asked, though it would have killed her to have shown it.