Shop Girl

by Mary Portas

  ‘Joooooooseph!’ Aunty Cathy would call, as she walked into the salon pulling her shopping trolley and ready for a cut and blow-dry.

  After Joe had spent ages perfecting and drying Cathy’s thick head of hair, she would invariably ram her woolly hat onto her head before coming to give me a kiss.

  ‘Are you eating enough?’ Cathy would say, as she looked at me. ‘You’re so thin, these days. I’m going to drop you round a casserole. Now, how is college going?’

  All of Mum’s friends came in and had their hair done for free by Joe. It was a chance to see them, have a cup of tea and catch up on news.

  ‘All Harry does these days is watch golf,’ Sheila would tell me. ‘It only takes him a few hours to read the gas meters and then he’s home under my feet. I preferred it when he was on the buses.’

  Local girls, like Jackie, Joanne, Annette, Carolyn and Loretta, became our friends. They were always popping in to get their hair done and tell us what pub or club they were going to that night. Seriously interested in fashion and haircuts, they had jobs whose sole purpose was to earn them enough to pay for the weekends. Mark, the colourist, also spent all his money on fashion. He was obsessed with Vivienne Westwood and permanently in a pair of bondage trousers. Lynn, the stylist, had a blonde pixie, wore baggy jodhpurs and slouched behind her clients as if she was waiting for a bus. Terry looked like a young Clint Eastwood.

  Everyone had a fashion tribe and it seemed there were no rules. Soul boys in Hawaiian shirts and jelly shoes; Rockabilly boys wearing vintage Levi’s with checked lumberjack shirts; girls in peg trousers and baggy white shirts; both sexes in denim dungarees with a woollen hat wedged on the back of their head and a leather workman’s jacket. Time and effort went into creating looks, and those without money scoured Camden and other markets while those with a wage headed to the King’s Road or Kensington.

  But there was one shop unlike any other, and even though it didn’t contain a stitch of clothing, Joe and I had walked open-mouthed through Habitat when it opened in Watford. Did people really have houses that looked like something from Scandinavia and were filled with pasta jars? When he bought me a white bedspread, I swore I’d never actually sleep under it.

  Unexpected news

  Michael, Tish, Joe, Lawrence and I sit wordlessly in the living room listening to raised voices in the kitchen.

  ‘What are you thinking, Sam?’ Aunty Cathy says. ‘You can’t just up and leave them. Where will they go? What will they do?’

  ‘They’re adults, Cath. It’s time to make their own way.’

  ‘But Mary is still studying. Lawrence hasn’t even left school.’

  ‘He will soon enough. He’s joining the police cadets and then, when he’s old enough, he’ll become an officer. It’s a good career and Dunstable is too far away to commute into school around here so he can’t move in with me. He’s going to apply and start in a few months.’

  ‘But he’s only sixteen, Sam! He’s still grieving for his mother. And if Lawrence thinks that you don’t want him then of course he’s going to agree to sign up. What are you thinking of?’

  ‘Rebecca and I want to make a life together. The kids don’t need us now.’

  ‘Of course they do.’

  ‘They’re adults, Cath. They’ll all be gone soon, and what will I do in this house alone? Tish and Michael have already moved on. Joe’s more than old enough to get his own place. Mary’s eighteen. An adult. And Lawrence wants to go.’

  ‘But this is ridiculous! What would Theresa say if she was here?’

  ‘Without being bloody rude, I think you should keep your nose out of it, Cathy. I’ve got a chance. I need the money from this house if Rebecca and I are going to move. I’ve worked hard enough for it.’

  ‘Be that as it may, what you’re doing is wrong. And I for one am not going to sit by and say nothing.’

  ‘Well, I’d thank you to keep your opinions to YOURSELF,’ roars Dad.

  The door to the kitchen is wrenched open and we hear Aunty Cathy’s steps in the hallway. The front door slams and then there is silence.

  Dad has finally taken leave of his senses. We should have seen it coming but we were sure he would realize how mismatched they were and that Rebecca would disappear as quickly from Dad’s life as rapidly as she had appeared in it. But this shadowy figure, a person we never see or speak to, a woman we hardly know, is seemingly in charge now.

  We all know Dad thinks he’s in love but he’s clutching at straws. Rebecca is something to hold onto without Mum. But doesn’t he understand that she will never replace her? Where Mum was soft, Rebecca is hard; where Mum was warm, she is cold; where Mum laughed, she is humourless. There is no one who could be less like the woman Dad cherished for so many years. I understand that he never really had a family before Mum came along. Dad’s mother died when he was young and he was brought up by a housekeeper. He never really knew what family was until Mum gave him one and then he lost her.

  I want to be patient. But all I feel is rage that Lawrence is being pushed into joining the police cadets when anyone can see it’s the last thing he should be doing.

  ‘Can’t you see how he’s struggling?’ I’d demanded, when Dad spoke to us a few days ago.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  ‘You’re a joke,’ I said hotly. ‘You can’t sell this house and leave us nowhere to go.’

  ‘You’re being hysterical, Mary. You’re old enough to look after yourself.’

  ‘But I’m still at college. What will I do for money?’

  ‘You had that job offer at Bosch and turned it down. You’ll find somewhere and you can start earning. I’ve got a new life now with Rebecca and I can’t have two women in my kitchen.’

  ‘I didn’t plan on being in it for ever,’ I screamed. ‘Let her bloody take over. In her posh clothes and high heels.’

  As Joe rounded on Dad, rage written across his features, the atmosphere in the room snapped. ‘You’re a fucking embarrassment,’ he snarled.

  ‘Joe!’ Michael yelled. ‘Listen to me, Dad. Selling the house isn’t the answer. This is ridiculous.’

  ‘DON’T YOU DARE TALK TO ME LIKE THIS!’ Dad bellowed. ‘I WILL NOT HAVE IT.’

  ‘Why not, Dad?’ Tish said.

  We looked at her in surprise. Tish and my father never argued.

  ‘This is our last link with Mum,’ she said, as she started to sob. ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘You’re not even living here any more! You and Phil are engaged. You’ll be getting your own place soon. I’m supposed to keep this house on just so you can visit, am I?’

  ‘But what about Mary and Lawrence? All you ever think of is yourself.’

  ‘Don’t you dare backchat me!’ Dad screamed. ‘That’s enough!’

  We haven’t spoken about it since. Silence has settled over the house but the air is tense, meals are hurriedly eaten without a word before everyone goes their separate ways. Joe and I huddle in my bedroom to chat about it.

  ‘What is he thinking of?’ I say.

  ‘No idea. I don’t know what he sees in her. Doesn’t he realize how ridiculous he is? He’s an embarrassment.’

  ‘But what are we going to do? Where are we going to go?’

  ‘Dunno. Let’s hope it takes ages to sell this place. We’ll work something out.’

  ‘You’re sure, Joe?’

  ‘Course I am,’ he replies, as he gives me a hug. ‘I can afford somewhere. We can stick together.’

  But no one can make Dad see sense. Not even Don and Harry.

  ‘This is her doing,’ they mutter, when they come over.

  But it isn’t. Not really. Dad is our father. And I don’t feel angry or sad about what he’s doing. I just feel ashamed. I don’t want anyone to know what is happening. Surely they will think that we must have done something to deserve this. Because, if not, what kind of father makes his own children homeless?

  Hotpoint fridge

  Michael, Joe, Tish, Lawrence and I draw closer and cl
oser together. We’re such a tight-knit group that the only outsiders we let in are John and Phil. We eat and laugh together, socialize, argue and look out for one another. We move as a tribe because we’re all each other has got.

  Joe and I took Lawrence to my friend Jackie’s house party not long ago and a bloke started chatting me up in the kitchen.

  ‘Stuck-up bitch,’ he’d slurred, when he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere. ‘Think you’re so high and mighty, do you? Fucking skinny cow.’

  The next thing I knew, Lawrence had lifted the guy off his feet. As he pinned him to the fridge, Joe threw a single punch. The man slumped in a heap as my brothers looked at me with fire in their eyes.

  Harvey Nichols

  It is the smell that hits me first as I walk through the store doors: a blend of sweet leather and perfume, plus the sharp tang of starch. As I look at ladies with blue rinses and delicate marcasite brooches pinned to cashmere cardigans browsing display cabinets, I know what I am smelling: money.

  Dora had seemed reluctant when I’d asked her if I could go to Harrods during my work-experience placement at the end of my first year at Cassio.

  ‘I know you want to go there with Danielle,’ she said. ‘But she at least has put some effort into this course, which is why I’ve put her forward. You have not.’

  ‘Well, I can’t go to Clements. My dad works there.’

  ‘How about Miss Selfridge?’

  ‘No! I don’t want to work on the high street. I want to go to a big department store.’

  At least then I could go to see Tish at UCH when I finished work or nip to World’s End to look at the shops with Danielle.

  ‘Very well, then,’ Dora said, with a sigh. ‘If you really insist, then I know someone at Harvey Nichols. But please make sure you apply yourself, Mary. We have a reputation at Cassio and I don’t want you to damage it.’

  I stand looking around as a doorman stares at me. I am wearing red Kicker boots, dungarees and my hair has been sprayed so much that a gale-force wind won’t make an impact.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’ he says.

  ‘I’m here on work experience with the display team.’

  ‘Then you need to use the staff entrance in Harriet Walk. Go down the stairs into the basement and straight ahead. The studio is at the end of the corridor. You’ll find them all in there.’

  Five minutes later, I walk into a huge room filled with noise and activity. A radio is playing and the air smells of glue and paint. Men in brown coats are pushing trolleys filled with rolls of fabric as people run around with hammers, staple guns and tool kits. In the middle of the room, a tall guy with bright red hair is wearing a feather headdress and the tightest drainpipes I’ve ever seen. With a glue gun in his hand, he dances like Salome with her veil in front of a mannequin whose face is covered with beads.

  ‘We’ve got to get her into some Janice Wainwright and up to the Evening and After Sex department,’ he drawls.

  Spinning around, he spots me. ‘Oh, hello. Are you the work-experience girl, then?’

  The only other man I’ve ever heard speak like him is Larry Grayson.

  ‘Yup,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, good!’ he replies, with a smile. ‘Now, what rotten job can we give you?’

  ‘Not so fast,’ another voice calls, and I turn to see a man of about thirty walking towards me.

  With sandy-coloured hair and a warm gentle smile, his woollen suit is cut like a glove and he is wearing beautiful tasselled oxblood loafers. He is the most glamorous thing I’ve ever seen. ‘So you’re the girl from Cassio?’

  ‘Yeh. I’m Mary. Mary Newton.’

  ‘Good to meet you. I’m Andrew. Now why don’t you come into my office?’

  He leads me to a small room unlike any office I’ve ever seen. The walls are draped in fabric, there are candles and lamps everywhere, and bookshelves stacked with names like Fortuny, Helmut Newton and Cecil Beaton. Andrew gestures me into a chair.

  ‘You’re here for two weeks, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘First work experience?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I felt exactly the same when I was at Cassio.’

  ‘You’re from Watford?’

  ‘Oh, yes, darling,’ he says, flicking back his sandy hair. ‘I hide it well, though, don’t I? I’m in charge of all this. I’m the display manager.’

  He smiles kindly as he leans back in his chair, rolling a black Mont Blanc fountain pen between his fingers.

  ‘Now, soon enough we’ll find you something to do,’ Andrew says. ‘But first things first: how on earth are you surviving at that God-awful college?’

  I fall straight in love.

  Hermès scarf

  Harvey Nichols was like a Rolls Royce: classic, comfortable and reassuringly expensive. The store of choice for the grandes dames of Knightsbridge, all they asked in return for their unwavering loyalty was understated and dependable luxury. They didn’t want high fashion. They expected discreet expense, the kind that didn’t scream money but whispered it, using cashmere, pearls and kid leather.

  The twenty-strong display team was responsible for showcasing everything that Harvey Nichols had in store. They were made up of a mixture of understatedly chic men – like Andrew and his assistant, Paul, who talked in a voice honed by private school and sat in an office lined with books about architecture – young people dressed in the latest fashions, and screaming queens, whose barbs and histrionic mood swings were delivered with razor-sharp wit. These men were as exotic to me as Marc Bolan had once been. Homosexuality had only been decriminalized twelve years before and it had not yet reached Watford, as far as I knew.

  One tier below Andrew and Paul were the senior dressers and under them a team of juniors, who toiled like worker bees serving their queens. Huge store-front windows had to be filled to entice passers-by inside; mannequins styled and placed at the top of escalators to beckon people into departments; pedestals topped with products that customers had never known they wanted until they saw them; glass cabinets stuffed like treasure boxes to make people stop and stare.

  The studio was the hub of the process, the place where everything that would bring the designs to life was stored or made. Mannequins were stacked – some naked, others wearing wigs but all ready to be transformed into a fantasy – beside huge bales of felt in every colour waiting to be stapled onto window floors, walls and ceilings to create backdrops. There were rolls of PVC and wire netting; shelves of shoes, socks, hosiery; boxes of props ranging from Japanese paper umbrellas, Spanish fans and Venetian carnival masks to lights, feathers and gilt cherubs.

  The process started with the senior dressers making a three-dimensional drawing of the window that was signed off by Andrew and Paul. Then everything that was needed to fill it was prepared – props were made and products signed out from every department by the juniors.

  ‘I’ve got the Dunhill jumper from Menswear,’ they’d call to whomever they were assisting.

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Pale yellow.’

  ‘But I need sunshine! Think of the Côte d’Azur. Not your Aunt Ethel’s lemon curd. Now go and find me something else.’

  The radio was constantly on, ironing boards up and steamers going. Senior dressers pinning, pleating and styling while their juniors clutched tool kits containing display wire, a glue gun, hammer, nails and double-sided tape, ready to fix a product into place at the arching of an eyebrow. When everything was ready the dressing teams would head off into the store to install the displays.

  As people worked, I heard them chatting about what clubs and bars they’d been to, what theatre and exhibitions they’d seen and which clothes they were saving up to buy. It was a world of fashion, music and experimentation.

  ‘I swear I’m going to have that Loewe belt if it kills me,’ a dresser would sigh. ‘I’ve not eaten for days. But I’ve lost an inch off my waist and saved myself thre
e quid.’

  As I stared at the huge store-front windows at the end of the day, I suddenly glimpsed the possibility that Cassio might offer for the first time. Sitting in a lecture, I’d heard that Salvador Dalí had designed windows. So had Andy Warhol. Now I understood why. These windows were art, drama, a fantasy landscape where anything could be played out, a performance. They were a stage, and through them the audience of passers-by were transported just as they were when they watched a play. My love of drama had found a new outlet.

  Suddenly the final year at Cassio didn’t seem like a prison sentence any more as I worked in the studio making cups of tea, sweeping the floors and occasionally getting out a glue gun to stick something together. If I could work somewhere like this – a place where dreams were played out in the windows, rather than sticking a T-shirt on a mannequin at Chelsea Girl – I wanted to do it. But while I was desperate for a chance to put some of the ideas I had into practice, I didn’t get a chance to go near a display until my final day.

  ‘I’ve got you an accessory case by door number five,’ Duncan the redhead says, as he walks up to me.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you’ve been chirping like a budgie ever since you got here so let’s see what you can do on your own, shall we?’

  ‘But what do you want in it?’

  ‘Anything you like.’

  We walk up the staff stairs and onto the ground floor where we stop in front of a two-foot-wide glass display case close to one of the back doors.

  ‘Everyone who parks in Harriet Walk or Cadogan Place walks in here and past this case so don’t mess it up,’ Duncan says. ‘Any problems, I’ll be up on the first floor. I’ll come and find you in an hour.’

  ‘But what do I do?’

  ‘It’s simple, darling. Make it sing!’

  With a wink, he turns on his heel and leaves me staring at the accessory department.

  There are scarves and belts, wallets and jewellery, small leather goods, fountain pens and fragrances. Walking around the floor, I peer into glass-topped counters as I wonder what to put in my case. A pile of colourful silk scarves catches my eye. They remind me of the silk ties that I loved as a kid when I visited Austin Reed with Dad. One in particular stands out: orange, yellow and red. I pick it up and feel it slip between my fingers. The softest silk. The label says ‘Hermès’.