A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  Gipsy had been right, trade began to look up. The Stock Exchange had reopened, and in February the blockade was declared, which had the effect of throwing English dressmaking back upon itself and stimulating home industry.

  Hilda Smythe left to be married, and so efficient had Julia proved herself that she was promoted, long before her time, to show-room girl, at a salary of eight shillings a week. The next event of importance was the opening of the Dardanelles campaign, to a flourish of trumpets and an accelerated heartbeat for the British nation. Soon after the first exploits of H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth, Ruby Safford came into the shop.

  There was not, at that moment, anything particular about being Ruby Safford, except to the girl herself, who thought it quite as important as Julia thought it to be Julia Almond. Ruby was playing a tiny part in a farce that was dragging on a precarious existence, but it was her first appearance in the West End. Nobody had heard of her, except a few theatrical agencies, managers of No. 2 touring companies, and a man named James Gordon, who heard so much of her—and from her—nearly every evening of his life, that he determined to put her on the map and share his responsibilities as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Ruby lived in a little flat in Maida Vale, and Mr. James Gordon, her friend, supported her in a style which, after being the youngest of a small tradesman’s large family in the Midlands, she thought very comfortable.

  Ruby was very pure. Mr. Gordon was an old friend of the family who was really just like an uncle. Ruby almost believed this herself. She was the type of woman who cherishes perpetual virginity, and has always never loved before. She was capable of marrying, of having several lovers, and two or three children, and of gradually forgetting husbands, lovers and offspring. For Ruby every fresh love affair would be the first time she had ever loved. Every child, since she would never have two by the same man, would be the first child she had ever had. She had the face of an angel, the brain of a hen, the heart of a sentimental barmaid—if there be such a phenomenon—the sexual equipment of a professional, and the attitude towards that equipment of the best amateur. She believed in love, every time.

  When Ruby Safford first came into the shop, Marian was away with Billy on a short leave—one of those intensive and intermittent honeymoons which those who married in the war, and those who did not marry, knew so well.

  Gipsy, followed at a discreet distance by Julia, who had, since her promotion, learned the art of hovering inconspicuously, went forward to greet her. Ruby was already such a self-assured brilliant creature, draped with furs and jangling with bracelets, that upon meeting her, people at once thought she was “someone”—not just a pretty human being, but a “real” person, the sort of person one reads about in the Sunday newspapers. Ruby had just that poise of the head—slightly thrown backwards—that only women who are very sure of themselves dare assume.

  She had seen a pannier frock in the window, a frock with only one pannier and a waggling fish-tail behind, that had attracted her careless notice. She bought the frock, and then tried on everything else in the shop, and, to do her—or Mr. James Gordon—justice, she bought nearly all, and paid cash. She bought frocks, coats, hats, and underwear, and then happened to mention that she wanted a silver fox.

  Nothing came amiss to l’Etrangère. Though it was really only a dress shop, Gipsy believed in helping the customers along as much as possible. L’Etrangère supplied travelling rugs, silk stockings, fitted suitcases, bath salts, fur coats and even railway tickets from Cook’s if the customer were too busy to see after such things herself. Partly this was policy, but chiefly pure friendliness. Gipsy had had too scattered an existence herself, and lived too long from hand to mouth, the hand being her own as well as the mouth, not to be sympathetic. Frequently she wasted her sympathy on women with plenty of money and plenty of time, who could quite easily have paid the full price for goods, and equally easily afforded the time to find them for themselves. These were, indeed, generally the women who were most keen on being saved trouble and money. Julia, Gipsy and even Marian spent a large part of their time in rushing round interviewing that strange race comprehensively known as “the wholesale.” Sometimes the customers repudiated the debts of which l’Etrangère could bring no proof, such as railway tickets and travelling rugs. It is easy to deny those transactions which friendliness has carried through, not in the ordinary way of business. Very seldom, even when customers paid, did the shop make on such deals, because the whole object being to get the goods at wholesale price, Gipsy hadn’t—if the customer were hard up—the heart to charge even a percentage. Obviously, in the case of railway tickets nothing could be charged over and above the ordinary price. But it was this readiness to help which gave l’Etrangère its peculiar charm, and made it seem like a friendly little club.

  It was also one of the reasons why shopkeepers and customers felt at once they were on friendly terms with each other, and also why they hated each other.

  Customers were pleased at first when l’Etrangère would provide them at a moment’s notice with a suitcase, or a fox fur, or a pair of dress-preservers, or some gloves; but when the moment came, as it generally did, when there was some trouble over a fitting, or the delivery of a frock on time, then the shop people thought: “And after all the trouble we have taken getting her a suitcase, dress-preservers, tooth-paste and what-not, with no profit to ourselves …” And the customer thought: “After all, I daresay I could have got that suitcase, dress-preservers, tooth-paste, or what-not much better at a proper shop, and they can’t be very real dressmakers or they wouldn’t do such a thing, and if they only had been real dressmakers my frock would have fitted.” Meanwhile, Marian, Gipsy and Julia would all be sitting up after hours frantically stitching, planning, and even eventually delivering the frock in a taxi so as to meet the requirements of a customer, who, quite unaware that a “little” shop has no particular means of delivery, would remain as calm and unperturbed as though the gown had arrived in the natural course of events from Debenham & Freebody’s.

  Julia grew to admire Marian and Gipsy more and more as she saw with what real difficulties they struggled, and how any private engagement they might have was considered as nothing compared with the convenience of the customer. She also grew to admire those customers who put up uncomplainingly, because of genuine friendship, with frocks that sometimes did not fit, or things that were quite different from those that they had ordered. Friendship worked both ways in a shop, Julia decided. Sometimes the shop people had to put up with unsatisfactory deals, and sometimes the customers; and always, however real the friendship, there was a curious antagonism ready to leap into being, except with the very well-bred.

  From the moment Ruby Safford left on that first day, Gipsy declared that she was going to be a tiresome customer. And Gipsy was right, as she generally was. Ruby was alternately affectionate and very unreasonable. She was wildly admiring, or extremely critical, and she was invariably unpunctual. She sometimes paid cash, and sometimes argued her bills almost out of existence. She was very friendly and embraced in her wide charity Marian, Gipsy, Julia, Mrs. Santley and even the “matcher,” to whom, with that wish for universal popularity which makes the successful artist, she invariably flung a kind word if she ran up against her. Ruby was prodigal of kind words—and Julia, in her inexperience, was grateful for them, and grateful also for the new world that began to open for her at the touch of Ruby’s careless, good-natured hand.

  iv

  Epanouissement

  It was Ruby who first admitted Julia to an equality of friendship, and Julia’s eager heart responded gratefully. Anne Ackroyd, her chief friend in the old days, was now beyond her ken, immersed in her studies. A mere list of the things she had to study at the Hunter Street School of Medicine made Julia gasp. Whatever did a doctor want with zoology and botany? thought Julia. Anne, lit by an insatiable flame that Julia could never know, seemed not for the ordinary traffic of friendship just now. None of the other girls from the
High School had mattered to Julia. Miss Tracey was long outgrown. Julia admired and imitated Marian and Gipsy, but they could not make a friend of her. Marian had often thrown her a kind word, but as a bone is thrown to a puppy. Gipsy had exacted the last ounce of work from her and given her a new hat, now a coat or frock; but Ruby did more—she treated Julia as a human being in whom she was interested. Ruby, of course, was lying, though neither she nor Julia knew it. Ruby was really only interested in Ruby Safford, the theatrical star of the future. But she had a sort of golden graciousness, which spilled over the rim of that lavish cup which was her personality, and the limpid drops were precious to Julia.

  For Julia, though she thought she had seen so much of a new world since coming to l’Etrangère, still took people at their own estimate. The strict etiquette of the Almond class, the equally strict lack of etiquette in that of Marian and Gipsy, had not prepared her for this warmth and easy friendship that, to Ruby, was a commonplace of existence.

  True, the lives of Marian and Gipsy resounded to the cry of “darling,” but only amongst their own kind. It was a password and a shibboleth. Ruby’s “dear” at first seemed to Julia more discriminating. Neither Marian nor Gipsy was vain, the admiration and affection of Julia would have held no flattery for them, but Ruby had the vanity that must be fed by love, however easily come by. In “taking notice” of Julia she was not putting herself out at all, she was following the line of least resistance. Difficult and delicate are the approaches of one soul to another if anything worth while is to be created, but to Ruby and Julia all seemed pleasant and easy. Julia was being granted glimpses of an enchanted and uncensorious world that she had never known; Ruby was being the generous, warm-hearted actress, who would as soon be kind to a little girl from a shop as to a duke’s daughter. But the kindness was genuine, as far as it went, which was never far enough to alter Ruby’s plans or incommode her in any way.

  Julia was sufficiently remarkable, especially since she had been promoted to showroom-girl, for people to notice her, but this particular friendliness was something new. Marian’s friends were nearly always not only polite but kind. If Julia, as sometimes happened, delivered a dress at the last moment, the customer would almost always say pleasantly: “Thank you, Miss … er …” And one or two might even give her a glass of wine and a biscuit, realising that she had probably missed some strange hour at which she should have fed.

  Several times it happened that not the wife but the husband would see Julia, the wife being in hysterics upstairs lest her dress did not arrive—for, of course, no customer ever had anything to wear if her new frock did not turn up in time.

  Once the husband was a grave and kindly man, whose looks thrilled Julia by embodying her idea of a statesman, and who did not seem to know that she crawled upon the surface of the earth; and once it happened that the husband looked at Julia and saw in her that quality which, for most men, she carried like a banner.

  On that occasion Julia behaved, as she told herself afterwards, very stupidly. She had not the courage to show that she noticed the arm that had slid about her waist; her heart began to beat rapidly, she liked the arm, the dark head above hers, the careless self-assured manner of a man with a girl whom he thought attractive. She was not insulted by the notion that he thought a dressmaker’s girl was his to flirt with if he chose. Julia was not a prude, she had a knack of seeing the essentials, and she passed over such superficial matters. The banality of “I’m not that sort of girl” was never hers, any more than it would have been Marian’s; she had that much of natural breeding. But she had a fear that was a weakness —she was fearful, as are most young girls, of seeming to make too much out of trifles and of being laughed at in consequence. While her heart was pounding so that she thought the man must feel it through the cloth of his sleeve, her mind was frantically thinking—I mustn’t show I’ve noticed … he’ll say I’m thinking things that don’t exist if I draw away. He’ll say I must have a nasty mind to make such a mistake, that he only thought I was a little girl. … I’ll just say good-bye and go. And she glanced up at him with a grateful, little-girl look. He at once kissed her on the mouth.

  “You’re a dear little thing, aren’t you. …” he said thickly, one hand still at her waist, and the other fumbling at her breast. Julia lost her head and sprang away screaming. It was one thing to imagine things in your own mind—even such things as having a marvellous elderly man in love with you, though he happened to be already married; it was quite another to have this sudden hot breath upon her cheek, to see his face, handsome as it was, looking oddly flushed and coarse so close to her own, to feel this strange hand, impersonal as the paw of a beast, at the opening of her frock. So she screamed, and at once the animal who held her changed to a terrifying gentleman, husband of a customer, in a cold rage.

  “You little fool …” was all he said, but Julia never forgot it. She had not possessed the knowledge that he had assumed, she had not realised that he expected an easy acceptance of his quite trifling attention, which was not meant to lead to anything. She had, in short, done exactly what she had been afraid of doing, made much too much of something that was really nothing at all. No one, mercifully, had heard her scream and she left the house, knowing that she had been entirely in the right, but having been made to feel entirely in the wrong.

  One day Ruby telephoned to the shop, and asked for several dresses to be brought up to her flat on approval, and Julia was packed off with two large cardboard boxes under her arm.

  Ruby received her with her usual golden eagerness, that made Julia aware of a warmth in herself that was very like affection. Here, at least, was someone who was kind and human, who would demand nothing unexpected of her.

  “You’re looking tired to-day, child,” said Ruby. “Had a hard day?”

  “No, madam,” said Julia, demurely.

  “Nonsense, I can see you’re absolutely fed up. Would you like to come and have a spot of dinner at the flat with me? I can give you a stall afterwards for the show. And you can come round behind afterwards. I’ll tell the stage-door-keeper. We could go on and dance later. You’re mouldy, that’s what’s the matter with you. It’s not overwork, it’s underplay.”

  “Oh,” breathed Julia, “I’d love it.” But she began to think of the practical difficulties … the dressing … and she had no real evening frock … the arriving at Maida Vale in time … for, of course, Ruby’s spot of dinner was early. Gipsy solved the problem.

  When Julia arrived back at the shop at about half-past five, with the glad tale that Ruby had bought three of the frocks, she found Gipsy already putting away the stock. It was unlikely that anyone would come in as late as this. Gipsy was very pleased with Julia’s success, and this emboldened Julia to ask Gipsy’s advice.

  “Miss Safford’s been very kind, Madam. She’s asked me if I’ll go to dinner with her and go and see her in her show afterwards. Do you think I can possibly dine, and go to the theatre in blue foulard? It isn’t a real evening frock at all, but it has short sleeves.”

  Gipsy considered her attentively. This was going to be a valuable girl, she told herself, combining a hard business head with the great gift of changing her manner to suit the person to whom she was speaking. And she could look anything she chose.

  “I tell you what you had better do, Julia,” she said. “You’ve been working very well lately, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a treat. You know that little black lace frock we’ve kept entirely for modelling in? Well, I’ll give you that. I don’t approve of borrowing clothes out of stock. You can have a pair of those sample stockings at cost price. I’ll stop them out of your salary. If you hurry away now, you have just time to go to Douglas’s and have something done to your hair. It looks as though the moths had been at it. I’ll see to shutting up the shop.”

  How really kind Gipsy was … she knew the things one minded about. Julia sent a telegram home—why wouldn’t Dad have a telephone?—
and rushed out to have a shampoo and wave.

  She knew she was looking her best that night. The black lace was slit up to the knee one side, and Julia had lovely legs. Her thin arms, still the arms of a young girl with the pathetic, slightly red elbows of adolescence, showed their pure and lovely line against the soft blackness. Her head looked like that of a lovely debauched boy, but her undeveloped figure with the upward lift of her small pointed breasts was very feminine and young.

  That was a wonderful evening. Julia, slightly released by champagne, called Ruby by her Christian name and was not reproved. It was the first time that Julia had ever done that to anyone whom she did not know to be her inferior.

  She felt that Ruby’s friend, Mr. Gordon, was the kindest and best man she had ever met. Perhaps he did not look very distinguished, but kind hearts were more than coronets, as somebody had said. They all three dined together, and then Ruby went through her little part, while Mr. Gordon prowled about the house like an uneasy leopard, and Julia sat self-consciously in the stalls. “Paper, paper,” said Mr. Gordon rapidly, when he came to speak to her during the show, gazing around him with disgust. Julia thought he must want an evening paper, and wondered why he didn’t send out for one.

  Then there came for Julia the great moment of the evening. Mr. Gordon had already gone through something he called the pass-door, but Julia found her way round to the outside of the theatre to the stage-door, and asked for Miss Safford. The stage-door-keeper, who seemed rather bored, and was picking his teeth with a match, handed her over to a pimply youth, and she was taken along a corridor that smelt like the Tube, and ushered into Ruby’s dressing-room, where Mr. Gordon was sitting gloomily and Ruby was dressing behind a curtain. Presently, she came out, clad in a frock of l’Etrangère’s, and Mr. Gordon cheered up and had a whisky and soda, while Ruby had a gin and tonic. Julia timidly asked for a little water, which surprised the dresser very much. Just as she was drinking this unusual beverage, a knock came at the door, and a voice said: “Still here, Ruby? It’s me.”