by Jenny Holmes
‘Just off,’ Eddie grunted. Off across the crowded field, past fluttering flags and the ice-cream stall, past lithe gymnasts lining up to do acrobatics in the makeshift arena, out onto Overcliffe Road, down Ada Street for a disgruntled, bank-holiday pint all by himself at the Green Cross.
CHAPTER TWO
Tuesday morning brought Violet back down to earth with a bump. She was already hard at work behind the counter at Hutchinson’s, the grocer’s on Chapel Street, when Evie Briggs called in for a pound of sugar and a quarter of tea.
‘Have you got over yesterday’s excitement?’ she asked as Violet weighed out the sugar into a blue bag. At sixteen, Evie was yet to put herself forward for Gala Queen but she dared to hope that one day her turn would come. Meanwhile, she was full of admiration for the way the older girl had pulled off the role.
Back in the humdrum real world, Evie worked diligently alongside Sybil at Chapel Street Costumiers. This had been a good arrangement after Evie’s eldest sister Lily had left the business to get married and have a baby. In fact, Sybil and Lily’s friend Annie had left Chapel Street to start her own family at the same time and so Evie had stepped in to help Sybil sew beaded bolero jackets, jersey-knit two-piece suits and for their more daring customers, the fashionable harem pants worn by stars of the silver screen. She had been there ever since.
‘Yes, it all went by in a flash.’ Violet tamped down the sugar then folded the top of the bag. ‘Still, I revelled in it while I got the chance. A quarter of tea, did you say?’
‘Yes, please. I thought you looked lovely,’ awestruck Evie said shyly. ‘I’ve seen the dress pattern in the catalogue. The neckline looked a bit tricky to me.’
‘It was,’ Violet agreed, glancing round to check that her boss was still busy in the stockroom before plunging into details about interfacing and cutting cloth on the bias. ‘I was dead set on wearing something up to date,’ she confided in the younger girl. ‘I scoured the magazines to find a style that would suit me.’
‘And you pulled it off.’
Violet smiled at the memory of some of the highlights from yesterday that stood out in her mind – riding on the horse-drawn float, watching the brass band and applauding the gymnasts, then dancing the night away with the best-looking lads between here and Overcliffe. ‘I’m glad I handed the fancy dress prize to your Arthur.’
‘Yes, his little face lit up. We thought that sending him dressed as Mickey Mouse was a bit different to your run-of-the-mill nursery-rhyme characters.’
‘It definitely caught my eye.’ Pushing the weighed tea across the counter, Violet paused to study Evie’s open features and noticed that her fair curls, though cut short, refused to conform to the sleek bob that current fashion demanded. It gave her an innocent look, which was the opposite of the dark sophistication that she herself strove for. ‘I could lend you the dress pattern,’ she offered in a burst of generosity. ‘It doesn’t have to be made out of rayon – it could be a nice summer cotton or a light linen.’
Taking charge of her groceries, Evie smiled brightly. ‘That would be champion.’
‘Drop in tomorrow – I’ll have it ready for you.’
‘Ta very much. Ta-ta then.’
The shop bell tinkled as Evie left and Violet watched her through the window, following her progress up Chapel Street. She allowed herself a moment to ponder how life might be if, like Evie, she could find work as a seamstress – pinning, cutting and sewing cloth instead of weighing out flour and sugar, cutting cheese and slicing bacon all day long. Violet glanced around at the shelves stacked with cereal packets and biscuits, tins of salmon, sardines and mandarin oranges. There’s no point dreaming, she told herself as she dusted flour from her dark blue apron. There was no doubt about it – the Whitsuntide Gala Queen of 1934 had her feet firmly back on the ground.
That same afternoon Ben Hutchinson, family grocer and lifelong grumbler, made up the order for Jubilee Drapers shop. ‘Drop this off on your way home and no arguments,’ he told Violet in his dry-as-dust voice, which matched his cautious, penny-pinching ways. It was the same routine every Tuesday without fail – an order of digestive biscuits, tea, butter, Wensleydale cheese and Jacob’s Cream Crackers to be delivered to Ida Thomson and Muriel Beanland on the corner of Chapel Street and Brewery Lane.
‘Remember I’ll have to leave five minutes early if I want to catch them before they lock up.’
‘Have it your own way.’ Her curmudgeonly employer ticked items off a list then thrust the Jubilee box into her arms. ‘By rights I should dock your wages – these few minutes add up over the weeks, I’ll have you know.’
‘Ta, Mr Hutchinson.’ Resisting the urge to retaliate and glad of the early release from her humdrum work, Violet left with a spring in her step, carrying the order under one arm.
‘Hello, Violet!’ Their neighbour, Marjorie Sykes, was busy raising the canvas canopy that shielded her window display of bread and cakes from the sun. ‘I saw you up there on the Common yesterday. You did a grand job!’
‘Ta. It already seems a long time ago.’ And a world away, worse luck.
‘You did your Aunty Winnie proud.’ A low sun cast long shadows down the street as Marjorie leaned her hooked pole against the wall. ‘I did laugh about that donkey running off with Stan Tankard,’ she went on. ‘And the donkey man chasing after the runaway all the way up onto the moor.’
‘Who can blame the poor thing?’ Violet was eager to get away from the bread shop owner, who had become known as a good gossip since taking over the bakery following the death of her mother three years earlier. In fact, if you were in a hurry, you did your best to avoid catching the eye of the dumpy spinster in the yellow flowered overall.
‘You mean you’d run a mile from Stan too?’ Marjorie chuckled.
‘So would anyone with any common sense. Sorry, Marjorie – I have to dash and catch Muriel and Ida before they close.’
Violet reached the drapers just as Muriel was bringing down the blind and bolting the door. Spying the arrival of their grocery order, she quickly slid back the bolt and made way for Violet to step inside. ‘Come in, come in. We were beginning to think you’d got lost.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Miss Beanland.’
‘Muriel – please.’
‘I’m sorry, Muriel. Mr Hutchinson always cuts it fine getting the order ready.’
Entering the multicoloured Aladdin’s cave of buttons, bolts of fabric, ribbons and lace, Violet deposited the box on the spotless glass counter.
‘Never mind, you’re here now and I wasn’t in any hurry.’ Unruffled as always, the co-owner of the drapery shop put Violet at her ease. ‘You can help me unpack these new embroidery silks if you’ve got time.’
‘Ooh, I like those!’ Violet took several of the small skeins from Muriel and laid them across her palm. The colours of the silk thread shone like emeralds, sapphires and rubies. ‘Can I take a couple for Aunty Winnie and pay you at the end of the week?’
‘By all means. Let me wrap them in tissue paper.’ Muriel bent to her task with precise, careful movements, her small hands folding and tucking neatly, fair hair falling forward to hide her refined features. She was still single at thirty and despite her delicate good looks, was considered a settled spinster who devoted her time to good causes such as the St John Ambulance and the Red Cross. She ran the business she shared with Ida Thomson with quiet confidence. ‘How is Winnie – plodding on as usual?’ she asked Violet, whose attention had wandered to the array of zipped fasteners on display in the rack by the window.
‘Yes, she’s doing nicely, thanks.’
‘What do you think of the zips?’
‘I say they beat hooks and eyes or press studs any day.’
‘You’re right, they do, though putting them in takes practice. You need a special foot for your sewing machine. Come upstairs and I’ll show you.’
Eagerly following Muriel up some narrow stairs at the back of the shop and along a first-floor landing, Violet was
already planning to insert the newfangled fastener into an apple-green summer dress she was making. They went up a second flight of stairs to a small mending and alteration room where they found Ida hard at work.
It was the first time Violet had been invited behind the scenes at Jubilee and she was intrigued by what she saw. The white-painted room had bare floorboards and sloping ceilings with a dormer window that overlooked a back lane running parallel to Chapel Street from Brewery Road up to Linton Park. It contained two long tables laid out with garments, scissors and thread, plus a treadle sewing machine pushed back into the alcove formed by the dormer. It was here that Ida sat, a picture of concentration as she worked the treadle with her foot and eased silky fabric under the pounding needle to accomplish a perfectly straight seam.
‘Show Violet the foot you need to use for zip fasteners,’ Muriel instructed Ida before hurrying back downstairs to answer a loud knock on the door.
‘I’ll bet you anything that’s Mrs Barlow,’ Ida guessed. ‘She’ll be after stockings or such like. Something she can’t do without.’
‘Doesn’t she know you’re closed?’ Violet wondered, paying attention to the small metal contraption that Ida was showing her.
‘Shop hours mean nothing to the likes of Alice Barlow. She drops by regardless, knowing we can’t afford to turn away custom. See, you unscrew the normal foot then insert this new one, like so. Then you’re ready to sew in the zip fastener.’
Caught up in the ins and outs of the exciting innovation, Violet drew closer. ‘But you have to tack in the zip beforehand?’
‘To make a proper job of it, yes you do.’ Ida smiled up at her. Considered less stiff and starchy than Muriel, Ida’s dark brown eyes were lively and intelligent and she gave off the air of someone who took an interest in everything and everyone around her. ‘When’s your next day off?’ she asked. ‘I could show you exactly how it’s done.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Violet countered. Days off from Hutchinson’s were rare as hens’ teeth, and anyway her uncle constantly reminded her that she should jump at any chance of overtime because the household needed every penny she could earn.
Ida raised an eyebrow. ‘The old slave driver keeps you chained to the till, does he? Well, I’m here until half six most days so why not call in on your way home one evening? Oh, except Wednesdays – I leave early then because that’s my night with the Players. We’ve started rehearsing a new play – a murder mystery, very modern.’
It didn’t take much imagination for Violet to picture Ida treading the boards. At twenty-five, she had a slim, almost boyish figure, a mass of fair, wavy hair and a way of claiming your attention in whatever she did. Not that she was what you would call a show-off. It just happened naturally due to her quick, athletic grace and a genuine lack of awareness that people liked to look at her.
‘You should come along some time,’ she suggested, as if the idea had suddenly struck her. ‘We need extra people for the smaller speaking parts.’
‘Don’t look at me.’ Violet grimaced. Much as she’d enjoyed her turn as Gala Queen, she didn’t fancy getting onstage and being gawped at. ‘I don’t think Uncle Donald would like it,’ she offered by way of excuse.
Ida overrode her objections. ‘Well, my young man, Harold Gibson, he takes me over to Hadley on his motorbike but you know my brother, Eddie – he’ll give you a lift on his Norton if I ask him nicely.’
‘No, ta.’ As Violet shook her head in some alarm, she heard footsteps taking the stairs two at a time and blushed to see that it was Eddie himself who burst through the door.
‘Talk of the devil,’ Ida said and grinned. ‘Eddie, I was just telling Violet that you’d be happy to give her a lift to rehearsal tomorrow night.’
‘No, I said I wouldn’t, thanks,’ Violet interjected. She felt her face go red under Eddie’s gaze.
‘What’s up, Eddie? Has the cat got your tongue?’ Ida, who had an inkling about Eddie’s long-held but secret feelings for Violet, delighted in teasing her brother.
‘No. Sorry, I didn’t know you were busy up here,’ he told them. Finding this particular visitor in the workroom had come as a surprise and now he was forced to stumble his way through a conversation without giving away the fact that, despite his best efforts to steady himself, his throat was dry and his heart was thumping against his ribcage.
‘What did you want, Eddie?’ Deciding to call it a day, Ida folded up the dress she was altering and turned off the electric lamp.
‘Just to tell you I went after that job as a projectionist,’ he mumbled awkwardly.
‘The one at the Victory Picture House? How did you get on?’
‘I reckon I managed not to put my foot in it but I don’t have an answer yet. They said they’d let me know before the end of the week. Meanwhile, I’ve got plenty on my hands, helping Dad.’
As the brother and sister talked, Violet did her best to fade into the background. From what she knew of the Thomson family, both Ida and Eddie still lived at home with their parents. The house was on Valley Road, out on the edge of town – the only one in the short row that had been given a fresh lick of paint in recent years because their father was a painter and decorator by trade and it was important for them to put on a good show.
She’d known the family since she was small but never played with them or joined the same gang – partly because they were both a few years older than her, and partly because Aunty Winnie, with the best of intentions, had a tendency to shelter Violet and had taken her along to grown-up events rather than leave her to play in the street. This had set her apart from other children – something that both Winnie and Violet now regretted.
‘Violet was taking an interest in the alteration work I’m doing,’ Ida explained to Eddie, drawing Violet back in to the conversation. ‘By the way, Violet, I hear you’ve got hidden talents in the sewing department. Now, don’t be modest – everyone was saying how well you looked yesterday, weren’t they, Eddie? And that you made the dress yourself?’
‘Yes, well then, I’ll be off,’ Eddie said hurriedly. At over six feet tall, and broad shouldered, he felt cramped by the sloping ceilings and out of place amongst the female paraphernalia. And given Violet’s reluctance to catch his gaze, she was obviously as embarrassed as he was by the situation. He wasn’t surprised – she’d never shown any interest in him in all the years he’d known her, and despite acting decisively when the occasion demanded it, he didn’t have Stan’s brash confidence to push himself forward.
‘No need, I’m on my way myself. Ta-ta!’ Violet was nearest the door and able to slip out before Ida or Eddie could protest. She was already down on the first-floor landing when Ida caught up with her to thrust a printed leaflet into her hand. ‘It’s advertising our play,’ she explained. ‘Derek King’s Mistaken Identity. I mean it – why not give it a go?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Violet said as she fled downstairs into the shop, past Muriel laying out the latest Lastex girdles for her tardy customer and sidestepping Eddie’s motorbike, which he’d parked bang across the pavement, almost blocking her way.
CHAPTER THREE
‘Slow down – you’ll give yourself heartburn,’ Winnie remonstrated as Violet bolted down her poached eggs on toast.
The table in the back kitchen of their home on Brewery Road was laid out with the linen cloth that Violet’s aunt always insisted on with knives and forks, blue and white plates, a brown earthenware teapot and matching milk jug.
‘Where’s the salt?’ Uncle Donald demanded as he sat down, just in from shutting his barber’s shop directly across the street. He brought with him a whiff of Brylcreem and shaving soap and the permanent impression that any stray strand of hair or unruly whisker would receive short shrift.
‘There it is, right under your nose.’ Winnie hovered behind him, ready to refill the teapot from the kettle simmering on the gas cooker in the corner. ‘I’ve baked scones if you’ve still got room,’ she told her niece. ‘And don’t te
ll me you’re watching your figure.’
‘No time for scones.’ Violet was up and on the move before her uncle had a chance to have a go at her as usual – Violet, where’s your manners; take your elbows off the table; don’t talk with your mouth full. She knew he didn’t mean anything by it – it was just the way he was.
Slow, steady Uncle Donald, the methodical Methodist barber had been married to Aunty Winnie since before the Great War, though the two were chalk and cheese. Where she was cheery and friendly, he was dour and determined to see the worst in people. She was stout, whereas he was wiry and gaunt. Each evening she would chat, chat, chat as she knitted or sewed while he stuck his head in a newspaper and never said a word.
Their marriage was a mystery to Violet, as it was to the whole neighbourhood, and once, during her early teenage years, when Violet had overheard a series of arguments and ventured to ask her aunt what kept the two of them together, Winnie, with tears in her eyes, had squeezed her hand and whispered three little words: ‘You, love – you!’
Violet had considered this answer and convinced herself that she understood. After all, her aunt and uncle had stepped into the breach left by both her parents passing away in quick succession. First her mother, Florence, had died giving birth to Violet and in the same year her father, Joe, had been lost in battle, scrapping with the enemy for a few yards of mud in a Flanders field. Donald was Joe’s brother and it must have seemed the right thing to do for him and Winnie to step in and give a home to the poor orphaned baby.
‘I loved you the minute I clapped eyes on you,’ Winnie would often tell Violet during the years of her growing up. ‘Who could help it? You were such a bonny, magical little thing.’
To the best of Violet’s knowledge, the word ‘love’ hadn’t once crossed her Uncle Donald’s lips. ‘We did our Christian duty,’ he would tell people in his upright way, as if he ranked the care of a child alongside the meticulous shaving of his customers and the conscientious saying of prayers in chapel.