The Shop Girls of Chapel Street

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Not Stan again,’ she broke in. ‘I thought we’d got past that.’

  ‘No, not Stan this time. It’s the bracelet I’m talking about. I thought if you still didn’t want to do anything about it, then perhaps I could do it for you.’

  ‘Do what?’ Violet felt a small shock run through her. ‘Eddie, you haven’t mentioned it to your mother …’

  ‘Don’t worry – no, I didn’t do anything you might not like. I just kept on thinking about it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I worked out that there were definitely two or three other people we could ask to find out who else the “D” might stand for.’

  ‘Who?’ A dozen roses was the easy way to say sorry, Violet thought. This showed something different and deeper – for Eddie to hold her in his thoughts even after they’d argued. It made her more prepared to tackle this other thorn in her side and so she wound her arm around his waist and asked him to go on.

  ‘How about Marjorie Sykes for a start? Her memory goes way back and she’s the sort who knows everything about everyone.’

  ‘Not Marjorie,’ was Violet’s first reaction. Asking her would be like opening the flood gates. ‘We’d never hear the end of it.’

  ‘Someone else, then.’

  ‘Yes – someone else.’

  On they walked, to the far edge of the Common, where they let their conversation drift into inconclusive silence. Instead, they stood arm in arm and looked out across the moors.

  Actually, Eddie thought, I don’t mind who we go to for information about what happened in 1914. Right now I’m here with Violet, turning for home as rain drops begin to fall. That’s all that matters.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Once Eddie’s idea of asking Marjorie for help had settled in Violet’s mind, she got over her first nervous reaction and began to consider it more carefully. For a start, it was true that Marjorie was the fount of all knowledge in the neighbourhood and that her memory stretched back to the time when her mother would have been a young woman. Secondly, though she was a natural gossip, she was warm hearted and had kept a close eye on Violet ever since Winnie’s untimely demise, so there was no doubting her desire to help if she could.

  Sitting on her bed early on Sunday morning, Violet opened the blue velvet box that nestled in her lap. She took out the small envelope and studied the name and address written in faded black ink – Florence Wheeler, 25 Railway Road, Hadley. Then she took out the note and reread the message.

  Puzzling over each word, Violet could see that the use of the word ‘Wheeler’ on the envelope meant for certain that the gift of the bracelet had been made after her mother’s wedding to Donald’s brother, Joe.

  Violet turned her attention to the bracelet itself, taking it up and draping it across her fingers so that the rose-gold padlock swayed like a pendulum. The details on it were finely executed, she realized – especially the inscription, ‘Xmas 1914’. This was careful workmanship, down to the miniature keyhole and the slender safety chain – a gift that she supposed must have cost more than a working man’s weekly wage in those days.

  The longer Violet studied the bracelet and held it between her fingers, the greater the urge to solve the mystery grew.

  It was only the sound of Eddie’s bike chugging down the alleyway beside number 1 that roused her from her reverie and made her return the bracelet to its box. Forgetting that she was in her petticoat, she dashed to the window and slid it open, leaning out to wave at him as he parked the machine in the yard. ‘What are you doing here, Eddie? I wasn’t expecting you.’

  Eddie looked up at the radiant, bare-shouldered girl calling from the upstairs window. ‘You’ll catch your death if you’re not careful!’

  ‘Hold on!’ Violet disappeared from view and minutes later she came downstairs dressed in her favourite red frock. ‘Have you come to take me out for a ride?’ she beamed.

  ‘Get your coat. You’re invited to my house for dinner,’ he explained, with a smile.

  ‘Again? Are you sure? Don’t forget what happened last time.’

  ‘That’s why Mother especially wants you to come. She and Ida have made a slap-up meal to show you how sorry they are.’

  ‘Right you are.’ This was all the invitation Violet needed. She ran back upstairs to fling on her coat and very soon she and Eddie were threading their way through the streets to Valley Road, arriving at the Thomsons’ house just as Ida took a leg of lamb from the oven. Emily was turning roast potatoes in their fat and prodding them to see if they were ready, while Dick and Harold kept out of the way in the front yard.

  ‘Now then, young lady.’ Dick’s greeting to Violet was phlegmatic as ever.

  ‘Hello, Mr Thomson.’ She responded cheerily to let him know that what had happened last time was all water under the bridge. Inside the kitchen she encountered the usual, cheerful domestic chaos – a dinner table only half laid out with mismatched cutlery, Crackers the ginger cat prowling perilously close to the joint of meat, which had been perched on the window sill to rest, and Ida suddenly exclaiming that she’d forgotten to make the gravy.

  ‘Here you are, Violet.’ Emily sank into the nearest chair and fanned her flushed face with Dick’s folded newspaper.

  ‘Yes – here I am!’

  ‘Just in time to set the table,’ Ida told her. ‘The dinner plates are on the draining board. Pass me that colander for the peas, while you’re over there. Shoo, Crackers – get away, you naughty cat!’

  Smilingly Violet lent a hand and by the time they all sat down to dinner, there were no clouds of embarrassment left over to spoil their enjoyment.

  ‘Harold’s knocking up a kitchen cupboard from some pine floorboards he rescued from Bradley’s rag and bone yard,’ Ida informed them. ‘If there’s any wood left over, he’ll put it towards a blanket chest for bed linen and such like.’

  ‘Have you even got a bed yet?’ Emily wanted to know.

  ‘I picked up two iron bed ends from Bradley’s while I was there.’ Harold’s face reddened but he ploughed on. ‘I asked them to be on the lookout for a frame to go with it.’

  ‘But not a mattress, I hope.’ Emily grimaced at the thought of scrap-yard fleas and tics. ‘You’ll need to save up for a new one of those.’

  ‘Yes and at this rate we’ll be drawing our old age pensions before we’re wed,’ Ida joked. She’d made room at the beginning of the meal for Violet to sit next to her and ensured that she got first choice of peas and potatoes.

  ‘Ida, this gravy’s got lumps in,’ Emily complained.

  ‘No it hasn’t, Mam.’

  ‘Yes, it has.’ She scooped thick gravy onto her fork. ‘What’s this if it’s not a lump?’

  ‘A pea,’ Eddie told her with a laugh.

  After dinner the cat chose Violet’s lap to sit on as she and Ida relaxed by the pond while Emily dozed by the unmade fire and the men tinkered with Eddie’s motorbike in the front yard.

  ‘I wasn’t joking earlier,’ Ida confessed, kicking off her shoes, rolling up her trousers and dangling her legs over the edge of the rock. ‘I’m tired of trying to save up enough money to buy furniture and so on, not to mention a deposit on any house we might be able to afford to rent. Oh and then there’s the cost of the wedding on top of that.’

  ‘It can’t be easy,’ Violet acknowledged then thought for a while. The cat settled down for a nap. ‘Have you and Muriel considered charging more for the dressmaking work?’

  Ida shook her head. ‘That would defeat the object, remember. We keep the orders rolling in because we deliberately pin our prices down lower than Chapel Street Costumiers. That way it works for both parties.’

  ‘So we have to work faster and put in longer hours if we want to earn more,’ Violet decided.

  ‘But then you know what they say: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Harold and I are still young. We need to have fun.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ In that case, Violet could see no way to help Ida save enough money to marry.
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br />   ‘Besides,’ Ida went on in a confidential tone, ‘I’m not sure I’m quite ready to give up my freedom just yet. I’m in love with Harold, of course I am. But I love my work, too. If I marry and have babies, bang goes my dressmaking time. Then how do I make my own way in the world?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Violet murmured as she stroked the cat’s soft fur. ‘Surely your mother would be able to help you?’

  The comment made Ida laugh. ‘I can’t imagine her getting involved in changing nappies again, can you? She’d tell you herself that she wasn’t the best mother in the world when Eddie and I were little. She was too busy gallivanting with her friends – your mother and aunty included.’

  ‘Did your mother really go about with my mother?’ Violet turned to Ida so sharply that the cat started from his sleep and jumped from her lap.

  ‘I expect she did,’ Ida replied. ‘Why?’

  Violet thought better of it and frowned. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Come on, Violet, what’s eating you all of a sudden?’

  Something about the warm isolation of the cosy nook they’d chosen and the confessional tone of the conversation made Violet open up to Ida in a way that she hadn’t expected and explain to her all about the mystery of the bracelet and her search for her family.

  ‘You don’t say.’ For once Ida was at a loss after hearing Violet’s story, but she soon rallied. ‘I see!’ she said with fresh energy. ‘You’re hoping that Mam will have some of the answers.’

  ‘Or someone who was part of the young crowd back then. But honestly, Ida, I don’t want to upset anybody by asking awkward questions.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Ida decided, springing to her feet and hauling Violet up with her. ‘Mam won’t mind. She loves a gossip as much as the next person.’

  ‘Wait – I’m still not sure,’ Violet protested.

  ‘But I am,’ Ida argued, marching Violet around the edge of the pond, through the yard and into the house to rouse her mother. ‘Wake up, Mam, and get your thinking cap on. Violet wants to talk to you about the old days.’

  ‘What was my mother like?’ Violet asked Emily once they’d furnished her with a reviving cuppa and Ida had provided a rapid preamble to the questions that Violet needed an answer to.

  Ida and Eddie’s mother sipped her tea and strolled willingly down memory lane. ‘Florence was just like you to look at – the same hazel eyes and her hair had your auburn tint, though it was long and she wore it up – as we all did in those days. She knew how to make the best of herself too, did Florence Shaw … You’ll have seen pictures of her, I reckon?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, no. Aunty Winnie was never big on photographs. There was no family album or anything like that.’ Fascinated by Emily’s snap-shot description, Violet was eager to hear more. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘She loved the music hall, if I remember rightly. She had a nice singing voice too.’ Emily turned to Ida. ‘You know the album I keep in the pine chest of drawers?’

  ‘In your bedroom? Yes. Do you want me to fetch it?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a photograph there of a group of us, including Florence, performing in a Christmas pantomime for the Hadley Players.’

  Violet smiled at the odd coincidence and waited for Ida to bring the dog-eared album down. She watched Emily open it at the right page then leaned in for the first ever view of her mother.

  ‘This is her in 1913.’ Emily pointed to a figure in the front row of a group of around a dozen women dressed in pale satin tunics and matching trousers, wearing elaborate stage make-up and with their hair tied back in pigtails. ‘We were in Aladdin, singing and dancing in the chorus. We had fun and games that year, I can tell you.’

  Violet peered closely at the photograph, taken just two years before she was born. Her mother was taller than the others, her smile not quite so broad for the camera and her head was tilted at a shy angle.

  ‘My – even under all that make-up you can see how lovely she was,’ Ida said in an admiring tone.

  ‘That was the trouble,’ Emily commented. ‘She could have had the pick of the bunch, could Florence.’

  As they looked and talked, Violet was aware that Eddie had come quietly into the kitchen. He stayed in the background while the talk continued.

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ Ida wanted to know.

  ‘That’s what I mean by fun and games. Joe Wheeler was falling over himself to ask Florence out, getting into scraps after rehearsal with Ben Hutchinson over who had first claim on her.’

  ‘Why does that sound familiar, I wonder?’ Ida said with a meaningful look at Violet and Eddie.

  ‘Ben Hutchinson?’ Violet echoed in disbelief, her gaze still fixed on the figure in the photograph.

  ‘Yes. Believe it or not, he was a smart young fellow about town back then, before he buried himself in dusty ledgers and stocktaking. There were others, too – I forget exactly who.’

  ‘So why did she plump for Joe Wheeler in the end?’ Ida wanted to know.

  ‘Don’t ask me.’ Emily shrugged and closed the album with a dull thud. ‘Why does anyone plump for anyone? The war came along soon after that picture was taken and the two of them married quickly, just as so many people did. Kitchener was pointing his finger from bill boards in every railway station and outside every town hall, telling us that our country needed us and Joe, Donald, Ben and the rest of them – they all went off like lambs to the slaughter.’

  A chill ran through Violet and she shuddered. ‘What about Joe?’ she asked. ‘What do you remember about him?’

  ‘Not much. Only that he was the opposite to his brother, Donald. Not so po-faced and holier than thou. And he was handsome with it, so I could see why a girl might fall for him, except that he had a bit of a bad reputation.’

  ‘In what way?’ Ida saved Violet the embarrassment of asking the obvious question, taking the empty teacup from her mother and refilling it from the brown pot on the hob.

  Emily narrowed her eyes. ‘Joe had lost his steady job down the mine in Hadley for bad time-keeping. After that he went from one place to another, just scraping by. They seemed to think he wasn’t reliable. That’s why we were all a bit taken aback when Florence upped and married him.’

  Saddened by the picture Ida’s mother had painted and by how short and troubled the marriage seemed to have been, Violet felt it was time to draw the conversation to an end. She had one last question but she hesitated over how to frame it without giving too much away. ‘Was there anyone else my mother might have been interested in at that time?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Besides Joe and Ben?’ Emily racked her tired brain. ‘There was Walter Briggs for a little while, when he was renting a cellar room on Canal Road. But he was married to Rhoda Preston by the time I’m talking about. And there was a friend of Ben’s – the two of them fell out over it. I forget his name. Oh, there must have been half a dozen others when I think about it.’

  ‘Anyone whose name began with a D?’ Ida said, blunt as you like.

  Violet’s stomach churned and she glanced across at Eddie.

  ‘D?’ Tiring of the subject and with her interest visibly waning, Emily gave over her second cup of tea to Ida and sat back in her chair. ‘Not that I can remember. Why?’

  ‘Vi was just wondering,’ Eddie said quickly. He’d stood by with the intention of plucking Violet out of the situation as soon as it became uncomfortable. ‘Evie and Stan are here,’ he told her. ‘They want to know if we fancy an afternoon ramble out to Little Brimstone. They’re outside in the yard waiting for an answer.’

  The impromptu hike out of town and into the countryside was just what Violet needed.

  Stan was on his best behaviour with Evie, who took his arm and laughed at his jokes and seemed pleased as Punch to have a young man with whom she could walk out on a sunny September afternoon.

  ‘I’m building up a thirst,’ Stan complained as they tramped the moor road on the way to the beauty spot.

  ‘Don’t worry – we’ll stop f
or tea when we get to Kitty’s,’ Eddie promised.

  By this time, the two girls walked behind while the men strode ahead. For a while they chatted about Violet’s upcoming birthday then the latest dress patterns and types of sewing thread before moving on to how Evie and Stan were getting along.

  ‘I like him,’ Evie confessed cautiously. ‘When we’re together he’s not brash and pushy the way I thought he might be. I think that’s all an act. Beneath it all he’s a little bit shy.’

  ‘So he’s quite the gentleman?’ Violet asked.

  ‘Yes. He holds doors open for me and sees me home properly. He’s polite to Father and funny with Arthur. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t ask for more.’

  ‘Blimey, don’t tell me he’s turned over a new leaf.’ Violet laughed. ‘Is this really Stan Tankard we’re talking about?’

  ‘Should my ears be burning?’ Stan turned and enquired. ‘I’m sure I heard my name mentioned.’

  ‘Evie’s telling me what a gentleman you turn out to be.’ Violet hurried to catch up.

  ‘That’s because I know you’d tear me off a strip if I stepped out of line,’ he said with the old bravado.

  However, Violet caught the genuine, gentle smile that Stan gave Evie behind her back and she decided not to tease him any more. Instead, she seized Eddie by the hand and pulled him along. ‘Come on, slow coaches – I’ll race you to the café!’

  They hurried the final mile on tired legs until they came to the track leading to the tea-rooms-with-a-view where Eddie, Violet and Evie chose a bench to sit on while Stan went inside to order tea.

  ‘Eddie, you’re the pantomime dame between two leading ladies,’ Stan quipped on his return with the tray of refreshments. ‘Move along, Evie, make some room.’

  They drank tea and ate fruit scones from plates balanced on their knees, taking in the panoramic view of the boulder-strewn, steep-sided valley until Violet and Eddie took a stroll to their favourite spot overlooking the waterfall while the other two polished off the last of the refreshments.

  ‘Let’s sit for a while.’ Eddie cleared early-autumn leaves from a ledge.