The Victory Girls

by Joanna Toye

  ‘I-I’m sorry!’ Lily exclaimed. ‘Erm …’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better help the lady myself.’ Rita swooped in smoothly. She picked up a calfskin purse, the most expensive style, naturally. ‘If I may, madam, this is the one I’d recommend. Beautifully soft, but also hard-wearing.’ The woman took it from her. That was all Rita needed. ‘And for colour I always think navy’s the best. Not as stark as black.’

  Mr Marlow didn’t really believe in the hard sell, but in this case, Lily could see that it was the only way, and it worked. The customer paid and left, seemingly happy with her decision that hadn’t been her decision at all.

  Rita nodded to the junior to tidy everything away and pulled Lily to the other end of the counter.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ she demanded. ‘You were miles away! We could have lost the sale altogether!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Rita was right. ‘I saw someone I thought I knew and … I got distracted.’

  ‘Someone you thought you …’ Rita raised her pencilled eyebrows. No gravy browning for her: she had a friend on Cosmetics. ‘I don’t care if it was the Queen of Sheba! When you’re working for me, you keep your mind on the job, OK?’

  Lily nodded. She had no doubt that from now on Rita would be on her back with her full weight of authority. That was going to be fun.

  Lily had never been so grateful for the working day to end. She’d almost given herself lockjaw, so fixed had been her bright and cheerful smile, and in attempting to please Rita, she’d actually driven one customer away by being too pushy. She opened her locker to get her outdoor things with relief, only to hear the dread words: ‘Locker and bag check!’

  ‘Do you know what they’re looking for?’ she asked the girl next to her.

  Spot-checks happened from time to time, usually because there’d been an incident of shoplifting and in case one of the staff was the culprit.

  ‘A scarf, I heard. Jacqmar – one of the pricey ones.’

  It would be. But the news came as balm to Lily. She’d been terrified it was something from Small Leathers, one of the key fobs or ‘oddments’ that could have disappeared while her attention had wandered. In a further panic – not like Lily at all – she’d even wondered if Rita could have taken something herself and would try to blame her for it. She’d better get a grip on herself; she’d be dreaming Rita was chasing her and pelting her with purses next.

  The check didn’t take long and nothing unusual was found. Lily had never been so glad to get out into the fresh air – nor had Gladys by the look of it.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten it’s my midwife appointment tomorrow, have you?’ Gladys asked anxiously.

  She looked exhausted. It was a long day for her now. Lily had asked Jim to keep an eye on her when she’d moved to the ground floor but, like many men, he treated pregnant women like unexploded bombs, so she wasn’t very hopeful that he was doing it.

  ‘Half-day closing and a trip to the clinic? I feel quite spoilt!’

  Half-day closing meant five hours less of Rita. That was the real treat.

  Lily’s spirits rose even more as she left the store with Gladys again next day. The morning had been misty after rain, but it had turned into a bright and breezy April day by lunchtime. There were bunches of daffs outside the greengrocer’s and a sky of china blue. You couldn’t help feeling cheerful.

  ‘Remember the old days when we were both young and single and carefree?’ she joked. ‘Soup and a roll at Peg’s Pantry and a matinee at the Gaumont? A pennyworth of toffees each? Now it’s meat-paste sandwiches while we wait for the midwife!’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Gladys’s face had clouded.

  ‘Of course not! The Gaumont’s a vile, smoky flea-pit anyway. What were we thinking? This is far nicer!’

  The clinic was crowded with women the size of battleships, so Lily stood while Gladys took the only remaining seat, swapping with her when Gladys was called in, and pulling out her murder mystery from the library. The culprit was just about to be unmasked when Gladys reappeared, looking a bit flustered.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Lily stuffed her book back in her bag.

  ‘My blood pressure’s a bit up since last time. She asked if I was getting enough rest.’

  ‘Does she know what you do for a job? Of course you’re not, you’re standing all day!’ Lily picked up their gas masks from the floor and stood up herself.

  ‘Not much I can do about that, is there?’

  ‘I’m not so sure. You’ve got two months to go and you’re only going to get bigger. We’ll have to think of something.’

  Gladys looked horrified. Bill might be a serving sailor, but she’d never been one for making waves.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’m not the first person to have a baby at Marlows.’

  Together they moved towards the door.

  ‘And that’s exactly what’ll happen,’ Lily scolded. ‘It’ll pop out one day on the sales floor if you’re not careful.’

  She held the door open and they emerged into the street.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ Gladys queried. ‘I have a lie-down on one of the beds in Jim’s department?’

  Lily stopped dead, which usually meant she’d had an idea.

  ‘You’re on to something there. Not a bed, but why not a chair for you behind the counter?’

  Gladys stopped too, in the middle of putting on her gloves.

  ‘Mr Marlow’ll never agree to that! Chairs are for customers!’

  ‘A stool then,’ Lily improvised. ‘Or a ledge for you to perch on.’

  ‘A ledge?’ Now they were both laughing. ‘You’re making me feel like a pouter pigeon!’

  Lily took her friend’s arm. She decided to drop the subject – for now. She could always have a word with Jim later.

  ‘Come on, Peg’s Pantry for us. You can take the weight off your feet and fluff up your feathers in there!’

  Thank goodness she was in the WVS and not the ATS. Here, with her friend, was where Lily’s war work lay, no doubt about it.

  Chapter 4

  A couple of weeks later, spring had well and truly sprung and nowhere more so than on the ground floor of Marlows. With so much leather needed for Army boots and belts, not much new stock came in to Lily’s department, but those whose goods still managed to follow the seasons were showing a few different styles for spring. Plaster hands twirled lacy gloves or gaily patterned scarves, and tilted umbrellas almost made you long for April showers. On Costume Jewellery a stand held a new line in taffeta-covered beads and bangles which Lily rather coveted. They weren’t that expensive, especially with her discount, and she was trying to decide whether she could justify a purchase when she saw her again. This time there was no doubt in her mind. The woman was definitely someone she recognised. It was Violet’s mother – Mrs Tunnicliffe.

  Lily had been thrown together with the pair of them during an air raid on her first day at work, when Violet had had hysterics and Lily had calmed her down. She’d been devastated when the girl had been killed the following year in an air raid. She hadn’t seen Mrs Tunnicliffe since, but now here she was shopping at Marlows again.

  Lily wondered if she should catch her eye – Mrs Tunnicliffe was browsing the same bangles Lily had been looking at. Then, suddenly and very swiftly, she took one and slipped it into her pocket. Lily blinked. That couldn’t be right. Mrs Tunnicliffe was very well off. She could have bought the entire display if she’d wanted to. So why was she now leaving the store as if nothing was amiss, smiling graciously as the commissionaire opened the door for her and sweeping out into the sunshine?

  ‘And what planet are you on this time?’ Rita, back from her break, caught Lily staring at the store’s heavy glass door as it rocked gently shut. ‘I hardly dare go on my break; one day I’m going to come back and find you’ve wandered off!’

  Lily would have liked nothing more – not to wander, but to run out after Mrs Tunnicliffe, catch her by the arm and … what? Tell her what she’d seen?
Ask what was going on? Bring her back to face the music? It was shoplifting, after all.

  But Lily couldn’t do any of those things, not without thinking through the consequences. And she couldn’t leave the department, anyhow, because Rita informed her she was off to ‘a meeting’ with the Handbags buyer – in other words, a surreptitious cigarette with her on the delivery bay. Still in shock, Lily was left to mull over what she’d seen, though not to understand it. What was going on with Violet’s mother? And more to the point, what should she do about it?

  At dinnertime, she managed to secure a place for herself and Jim at the far end of the staff canteen. When she told him what she’d seen, he stopped shovelling fish pie for a full minute to absorb it.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Lily asked.

  ‘You said it yourself,’ said Jim reasonably. ‘It’s shoplifting. Theft. You have to report it.’

  ‘But Mrs Tunnicliffe … How can I?’ Lily objected, then sighed. ‘You see, I don’t think it’s the first time she’s done it.’

  ‘What?’ Jim put down the knife and fork he’d only just picked up again. ‘You don’t mean you’ve seen her at it before?’

  ‘No, not exactly. But you remember that scarf that went missing? The Jacqmar one? Mrs Tunnicliffe was in the store and at that very counter the same day. I reckon she took that as well.’

  ‘Come on! You’re putting two and two together and getting five thousand!’

  ‘No, she took it, I know. There was something about the way she was acting today – she’s done it before, I could tell.’

  ‘But she’s got pots of money! Look where she lives, how she lives! She’s loaded!’

  ‘I know, I thought that. But money isn’t always why people steal, is it?’

  Jim took off his glasses, looked at them, and put them on again. It meant he was thinking.

  ‘You mean she’s funny in the head? Like Violet was?’

  ‘Violet wasn’t funny in the head!’ said Lily indignantly. ‘She had a nervous disposition, that was all.’

  ‘Yes, OK, sorry.’ Jim backtracked. ‘But she was on tablets for it. Maybe her mother’s on tablets too, for some condition or other. Something physical, even. And they make her a bit dopey, so she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Or maybe it’s the … well, you know … the “change of life” that women go through.’

  ‘Oh, thanks very much. Us women all go doolally in the end, do we?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You didn’t have to!’ Lily sighed. ‘I can’t leave it like this, Jim. Whatever I do, I’ll have to do something, won’t I?’

  Miraculously, there was no locker check at the end of the day: either the bangle hadn’t been missed, or the staff on Costume Jewellery were covering up its absence in the hope it had been mislaid and would reappear. That happened sometimes with small items – they rolled under a fitment or even under another counter. Ideally, the cleaners would find them overnight. If not, the department would have to report the loss.

  All next day Lily turned the problem over and over in her head. She saw the Costume Jewellery buyer talking intently to Mr Simmonds. That evening there was a locker check, as she’d known there would be; obviously nothing was found. Lily knew what she had to do.

  ‘I can’t report it,’ she told Jim after tea when her mum was upstairs fetching some mending. ‘Not just like that. Not till I’ve given Mrs Tunnicliffe the chance to explain. I’ll have to go and see her.’

  Jim smoothed the frown from her forehead with his thumbs.

  ‘All right. But I’ll come with you,’ he said.

  It was a lovely spring evening for a walk. As they left the narrow streets around Lily’s home for the better parts of town, the gardens were exploding vividly into life. Blackbirds and starlings shot in front of them, fearless or desperate, searching for supper for their chicks, while the turtle doves lulled theirs to sleep with their low burbles. Jim had Buddy on the lead. The dog was thrilled by a more exciting walk than his usual trot round the block or along the canal. He slowed their progress, of course, but in the evening sun, neither of them minded.

  Mrs Tunnicliffe lived in the smartest part of Hinton, on Juniper Hill, one of the nicest roads. The houses were large with pillars at the ends of their drives and noble-looking trees in the centre of well-groomed lawns which still had flower beds instead of being turned over entirely to veg. The houses had names, not numbers, and on Mrs Tunnicliffe’s side of the road, a view over open countryside at the back.

  The house looked much as Lily remembered it, with daffodils and narcissi round a monkey puzzle tree on the lawn. But the flowers were wizened and shrivelled and the lawn straggly, the urns by the front door long past their best, and the door-knocker looking tarnished. Jim tied Buddy’s lead to the boot scraper while Lily rang the bell and, after a long pause, the door opened.

  Last time it had been opened by a maid: now it was Mrs Tunnicliffe herself standing there. Everything fell into place. The maid and the garden boy must have been called up, hence the neglect. Mrs Tunnicliffe was changed, as well, now Lily saw her close to. She’d been well-dressed and elegant before, with hair that was still brown and softly waved. She was still elegant, but her hair had a lot more grey in it, and her tweed skirt looked loose about the waist.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You don’t remember me,’ said Lily. ‘It’s Lily. Lily Collins? It’s been a little while.’

  Mrs Tunnicliffe’s hand went to the twin rope of pearls at her neck.

  ‘Lily,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, of course. From Marlows.’ There was a note of puzzlement – or was it caution? – in her voice.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’ve changed. Your hair’s different … You’re taller … Your face is thinner.’

  Lily blushed.

  ‘Oh, my hair!’ Her blonde curls had often been a source of frustration when they wouldn’t behave. ‘I’ve got better at managing it, that’s all!’

  In the last couple of years she’d got much better at taming her hair: it was softly waved now too, and longer so that she could roll it up for work.

  Mrs Tunnicliffe nodded vaguely. Lily didn’t know how to move things on; they couldn’t stand on the step talking about her hair all day. But Jim stepped forward and held out his hand.

  ‘Jim Goodridge. I’m a colleague from the store. And a … friend of Lily’s.’

  ‘A colleague?’ The nervous note was back, then Mrs Tunnicliffe smiled as if she only half-remembered how to do it. ‘Oh, Jim! Yes, I remember you. Lily and I talked about you. You’re her young man, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, that too,’ Jim admitted. ‘The thing is—’

  ‘I saw you take the bangle,’ Lily blurted out. ‘I’m working on the ground floor now. I’m sorry, Mrs Tunnicliffe, but—’

  Mrs Tunnicliffe went white. She swayed and clutched at the door jamb. Jim reached out and caught her arm.

  ‘May we come in? I think perhaps you should sit down.’

  They sat Mrs Tunnicliffe down on a high-backed chair in the hall and let her be. She folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes low. On her previous visit, Lily had been quickly led through to a sitting room at the back of the house: only now did she notice the lovely Minton tiles on the hall floor. A console table held a vase of peonies reflected in a gilt-framed mirror. But the flowers were faded; a drift of petals had fallen on some unopened letters and into the saucer of a tea cup, which must have been there some time because the dregs were clotted and scummy. Standards had definitely slipped. Something was going on here, more than the loss of a maid and a garden boy.

  Lily looked at Jim, who shrugged and mouthed, ‘Give her a minute.’

  Lily crouched down so she was on a level with Mrs Tunnicliffe.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘A drink of water? A cup of tea?’

  She didn’t know where the kitchen was but guessed she could find it.

  Mrs Tunnicliffe shook her head.

  �
�No, no, I’ll be fine. Thank you.’ Her shoulders rose and fell as she gave a deep sigh. She looked up at them. ‘I just needed to gather my thoughts.’ Pressing heavily on the arms of the chair, she stood up. ‘You’d better come with me.’

  Lily looked at Jim, who nodded agreement. Mrs Tunnicliffe didn’t take them to the sitting room, as Lily had expected. She began to lead the way upstairs. Jim and Lily followed in silence.

  At the top, there was a large square landing. Mrs Tunnicliffe turned to the left and stopped in front of a closed door. She took a key from the pocket of her skirt, put it in the lock and turned it. Then she stood back and indicated that they should go in.

  Jim stood back to let Lily go first. As she stepped through the door she knew at once it had been Violet’s room. The wallpaper was just what she would have chosen herself: a trellis pattern entwined with honeysuckle. Sun streamed through the window between the lemon-coloured curtains that matched the skirt on the kidney-shaped dressing table and bounced off its triple mirror.

  Lily turned to say something to Mrs Tunnicliffe about how pretty the room was and then she saw it. The bed with its silky coverlet was behind the door and it was covered with things – a powder compact, a lipstick, a comb, a purse, a velvet hairband, tins of talc, and a bar of soap – and two more which Lily recognised at once. A taffeta-covered bangle and a Jacqmar scarf.

  Mrs Tunnicliffe was speaking before Lily had a chance to say anything and once she started, it seemed as if she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I can’t help myself,’ she said. ‘It’s for Violet. They’re all for Violet. She loved pretty things, Lily, you know that. And before … before it happened, and before the war, if I saw something I knew she’d like, I’d buy it and stow it away. And by the time her birthday or Christmas came around, I’d have a proper little hoard to give her. I’d wrap up them up and her face when she opened them … I can see it now … She could never believe I’d been saving all these things up for her, buying them bit by bit. And she’d fling her arms round me and—’

  She was looking unsteady again and Jim guided her to the bed, where she sat down among the sad offerings. Lily was feeling a bit wobbly herself. The poor woman. She was trying to keep Violet alive – no, to bring her back from the dead.