The Shop Girls of Chapel Street

by Jenny Holmes

  His hateful expression turned Violet’s stomach. Instead of walking away as she should have done, she challenged him. ‘You ought to be ashamed. Look what you’re doing to her. Your lies are making her think things that aren’t true.’

  ‘Goodness gracious.’ Undaunted, Barlow thrust Alice to one side and stepped down onto the pavement. ‘Between the two of you, you’re making quite a scene.’

  Anger fired Violet up and she decided that she would continue to stand up to him, not let him win. ‘You enjoy making women miserable but in the end it’s you who will suffer. People watch you. They know what you get up to.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less,’ he laughed, taking his wife by the wrists and shoving her across the pavement towards the car. He thrust her inside and slammed the door. ‘She knows she’ll end up back where I found her if she’s not careful.’

  The effort had made him red in the face. ‘As for you, Violet – who really listens to what you say? You’re a grocer’s girl with ideas above your station. A queen for the day, maybe. But in truth no one takes any notice of you.’

  ‘It’s not true. You’ll see!’ Anger against him choked her and she lost the ability to say more, but still she wouldn’t back down.

  ‘See what?’ Turning the key in the lock, Barlow trapped Alice inside the car. ‘Here I am, dining out with the Kingsleys as usual, driving my car and counting up my takings. There you are – a nobody with no one.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ she declared. I am someone in my own right. I have Eddie and Stan, Ida and Muriel to back me up. ‘I’d rather be me than you any day of the week.’

  Alice Barlow hammered her fist against the car window, mouthing desperate words that couldn’t be heard.

  ‘And that’s why you are where you are in life, and I am where I am.’ Case proven. Barlow turned away from Violet to find his dark-haired assistant standing in the doorway, her expression wary. ‘Take no notice, Glenda,’ he instructed, deliberately and brazenly brushing against her as he strode past. ‘Miaow – they were clawing each other’s eyes out, the pair of them.’

  The dispenser frowned at Violet and closed the door. Alice Barlow sobbed and subsided into the passenger seat. In silent anguish, Violet walked on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sitting on the train to Welby with Stan and with the blue velvet box in her handbag, Violet forced herself to concentrate on the task in hand. Swaying to the steady rhythm of steel wheels clicking over wooden sleepers, she looked out of the window at the weed-strewn banks, at fields opening up ahead of them, with three enormous, newly built cooling towers on the horizon billowing clouds of steam into the dismal sky.

  ‘Here comes the rain and we didn’t bring a brolly, worse luck,’ Stan said as the first spots streaked the window panes. He was dressed for work at the baths in his old jacket and cap, having managed to swap shifts at the last minute with another lifeguard. That gave him three hours flat to hop on the train with Violet, find the address on Albert Road that Donald Wheeler had written down and make their next move in Violet’s mission to find their father. Then back on the train in time to man the afternoon session at the baths.

  Violet continued to stare out at the gloomy scene until a tunnel cut off her view. As the carriage filled with the acrid smell of smoke, she turned gratefully to Stan. ‘I’m glad you’re with me.’

  ‘Anything for you, Violet.’ Beneath the usual bravado, he was sincere. Yes, things had turned on their heads and it had taken a lot of getting used to, to all of a sudden regard Violet as his little sister. But Stan had risen to the occasion and drawn a line under past flirtations and flattery. ‘You’ve been through a lot lately. This is the least I can do.’ That in a nutshell was why he was here on the train to Welby with Violet, doing something that he’d rather not do.

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him. ‘All I want to do is find our father and hear his side of things. Then I’ll be satisfied. That’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ he warned. The rain came down hard now, running in rivulets across the glass and distorting the maze of grey terraced streets that came into view at the end of the tunnel. The man’s a coward. His whole life is a lie. Stan kept these thoughts to himself as the train ran clickety-click along the rails.

  ‘I wonder how he’ll behave.’ Violet imagined the moment when the three of them came face to face and she showed Douglas Tankard the gold bracelet. It would be a shock at first, but after that there would be facts to be filled in, new pieces of the jigsaw to slot into place. Then, who knew what would happen? Her heart raced at future possibilities.

  ‘Here we are,’ Stan said as the train slowed down under a vast canopy of glass and ironwork. The brakes squealed and steam hissed and obscured the platform as they jerked to a halt.

  They stood up and filed out of the carriage. ‘Lead on, Macduff,’ Violet said as bravely as she could, though the huge station and busy platforms unnerved her so much that she didn’t take much in as they emerged onto a wide square with a soot-stained statue of Queen Victoria on a high plinth in the middle and with roads heading off in all directions.

  Stan hurried her across the square onto Wellington Street, across wide Gladstone Street onto the road they were seeking, which was narrower and less busy than the main thoroughfare behind them. ‘Mind the puddles,’ he warned as they crossed the road.

  And mind the trams and buses, the delivery boys on bicycles and the Model T Fords and Morris Oxfords. Concentrating on not getting run over helped Violet to overcome her nerves at the prospect of what they would find on Albert Road. It began with three-storey detached buildings, housing solicitors and city offices for the county’s wool merchants, manufacturers of steel and importers of sugar and tea. As it dipped steeply towards the canal, the buildings grew less grand – an ironmonger’s and a greengrocer’s, a pawnbroker’s displaying gold jewellery in its small window. Across the street from this row was an old chapel, squashed between a corn merchant’s and a low, plain-fronted building with its name carved in stone above the door.

  ‘Brace yourself – this is it,’ Stan told Violet, pointing it out.

  She studied the worn stonework and unadorned frontage of Wesley House. It had two storeys, a wide door with plain pillars supporting a triangular pediment and four tall windows to either side. From this distance there seemed to be no movement inside the building.

  ‘What is it – a kind of hostel?’ she asked, hanging back with a disconcerted frown.

  ‘That’s what it looks like,’ Stan confirmed. ‘It’s run by Methodists, to judge by the name of Wesley over the door.’

  ‘This isn’t what I expected.’

  ‘Nor me. A disease-ridden, rat-infested cellar – that would’ve been more like it.’ And more what Tankard deserved, his tone suggested.

  ‘We were wrong,’ she pointed out. ‘Well, at least this is better than we thought.’ She glanced at a disgruntled Stan. ‘What’s wrong, are you having second thoughts?’

  ‘No, I said I’d come with you, didn’t I? Let’s go.’

  Soaked through from the rain and wondering what Uncle Donald would have made of Douglas Tankard being reliant on the charity of Methodists of all people, Violet gathered her courage and crossed the street. She pulled at the old-fashioned bell to the right of the blue door and waited. After a long time the handle turned and the door was opened by a small, thin man with exceptionally bushy eyebrows and a flattened, crooked nose.

  ‘Yes?’ he enquired in a light voice that was neither hostile nor friendly. He cast an impartial eye over Violet and Stan while he waited for them to state their business.

  ‘We’re looking for Douglas Tankard,’ Violet explained, her heart skipping erratically inside her chest. Behind them the rain fell steadily, streaming along gutters and gurgling down a nearby drain.

  ‘There’s no one of that name here,’ the doorkeeper replied.

  Stan said nothing but was evidently ready to turn away. He wasn’t surprised – a man w
ith Tankard’s past wouldn’t stick to his real name anyway.

  ‘But we’ve been given this address,’ Violet protested. ‘Wesley House on Albert Road. I’m sure this is the right place.’

  Picking up the urgency in her voice, the man cocked his head to one side. ‘We look after twelve men here and I know the names of each and every one. None of them is called Tankard.’

  ‘You say you look after them?’ Stan was quick on the uptake as usual. ‘Why can’t they fend for themselves?’

  ‘Either they’re too old to manage,’ the man replied in the same impartial tone, ‘or else they’ve been injured.’

  ‘Injured – how?’ Stan interrupted.

  ‘At work or in the army. That throws them on the mercy of charities like us. We take them in and provide food and shelter.’

  ‘Do you have anyone called Douglas staying here?’ Violet asked. Frustrated by the apparent dead end, she strained to see inside the hostel but could make out only a shadowy entrance area with a low bench set against the far wall. ‘We don’t know much about him – what he looks like or what would bring him here – only that he was born in Welby then moved out to Hadley where he went from job to job before he got married then went to fight in France in 1915. We heard recently that he’d moved back here.’

  ‘I’m sorry – Tankard is not a name I recognize.’ Still showing little sign of curiosity, the man, who was wiry and agile-looking, prepared to close the door.

  ‘I’m his daughter, Violet Wheeler. Stan is his son,’ Violet blurted out.

  Stan cleared his throat and took a step backwards. Trust Violet to get straight to the point.

  The man blinked and cocked his head sharply to the other side, as if dodging an uppercut. ‘I’m Jack Towers, the superintendent here. We do have a resident called Douglas – a man in his fifties who has been living with us since 1926,’ he admitted. ‘There are things in common with the person you describe. We know him as Douglas Thornton, though, not Tankard. Please wait.’ Leaving the door ajar, he disappeared from view.

  ‘It’s him – I’m certain it is,’ Violet whispered to Stan, her eyes alive with hope.

  ‘Steady on,’ came the reply. ‘We don’t know anything yet.’

  ‘It is him.’ A man who had chosen to live incognito, injured either at work or in the army, living here for the past eight years. She prepared herself for the moment she’d envisaged in her dreams. An exchange of information followed by an embrace. A doorway into a happier future.

  Five minutes later the superintendent returned. ‘Follow me,’ he directed. He led them across the dark hallway and down a wide corridor at the back of the house into a small room with a scrubbed table and painted pine chairs. There were framed religious tracts on the cream walls and one small window overlooking a yard.

  ‘Sit down.’ Towers pulled two of the chairs from under the table. ‘I’ve told Douglas you’re here.’

  ‘Did you explain who we were? What did he say?’ Violet demanded of the superintendent. Her skipping heartbeat had turned to a heavy thumping as she put down her handbag and gripped the edge of the table.

  ‘I did tell him. He didn’t say anything but I could see it was a shock.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Stan muttered, hanging back in a corner of the room and looking ill at ease. ‘I’m not thrilled to be here myself.’

  Violet and Stan heard slow footsteps coming down the corridor towards them. Stan prepared himself by fixing his gaze on the flat stone roofs of the outhouses across the yard, watching two grey pigeons squat there in the rain. Violet stared straight at the door.

  The footsteps stopped outside. The superintendent darted nimbly to open the door then stood to one side. ‘Here they are, Douglas – your visitors,’ he announced before sliding out of the room.

  A tall man shuffled forward. His hair was thick and white. A shapeless grey jacket hung loosely over his stooped frame and deep lines on his spare face gave him a permanently miserable look. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses with black lenses obscured his eyes.

  Violet’s heart lurched and she sprang to her feet. ‘This way,’ she murmured, taking hold of his arm and leading him to the nearest chair.

  Douglas Tankard ran his fingers along the edge of the table then bent to feel the seat of the chair. He sat cautiously with a quick movement of his head towards Violet. ‘Who’s here?’ he asked.

  ‘Violet and Stan – your daughter and your son. We think.’

  There was a pause but no attempt at denial. ‘Flo named you after her favourite flower, did she?’

  ‘I didn’t know that. She died when I was born.’ Violet fell silent, pressing her lips together to bring herself back under control.

  There was a long sigh followed by silence. Then, ‘Yes – violets were her favourites. Never mind that; how did you two track me down?’

  ‘Uncle Donald wrote the address in a letter before he passed away.’

  ‘Dead then.’ The blind man’s voice didn’t express regret. It was low and rich – perhaps the last vestige of the attractive man he must once have been. ‘Stan, where are you?’

  ‘Here in the corner.’ Stan emerged from his first shock and saw in the wreckage of his father’s face and frame himself as an older man – they shared the same long limbs and prominent Adam’s apple, the same beak-like nose. He resisted a strong urge to run from the room and slam the door behind him.

  ‘Are you expecting me to say sorry?’ Tankard addressed Stan in a sharper tone. ‘Would it make any difference if I did?’

  ‘Not to me. I’m here to look after Violet, that’s all,’ Stan assured him, feeling muscles at the corners of his jaw twitch and jump.

  Tankard tapped the table with his fingertips. There was a tremor in his hand that he couldn’t control. ‘What about you, Violet? Why are you here?’

  ‘I found the bracelet and the note,’ she began before her feelings overwhelmed her – astonishment at what she saw and heard, followed by sadness wrenching at her heart and stinging disappointment that her father was not the man she’d hoped he would be. Words were not enough – she had to give the blind, broken man sitting at the hostel table time to work out for himself what had brought her here.

  ‘You want answers,’ Tankard guessed. ‘For a start, why I took up with Florence in the first place and why I ditched her.’

  ‘Yes.’ Struggling against the tide of feelings that washed over her, Violet fixed on the one question that mattered. ‘I want to know – did you love her?’

  In the corner of the room, Stan banged his fist against the wall. Then he strode towards the door. ‘I’m not staying to hear this,’ he vowed.

  Violet jumped up but was too late to stop him leaving. ‘Stan, I’m sorry,’ she called after him.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he muttered over his shoulder.

  ‘Leave him. He’s sticking up for his mother and I don’t blame him.’ Tankard sighed. ‘For what it’s worth, you can tell him afterwards that I loved them both – Gladys and Florence. Is that what you want to hear?’

  ‘Only if it’s true.’ She sat back down to face the blind man and hear him out.

  Tankard leaned his elbows on the table and let his head hang low. ‘As far as I could, I loved them. But the lad is right to be angry – I was young and callow back then and the type of love I could offer wasn’t enough.’

  ‘As far as you could, you loved them,’ Violet echoed. She let his answer settle like autumn leaves drifting from trees.

  ‘Anyway, I paid a high price,’ Tankard said bitterly.

  ‘Yes – what happened to your eyesight?’ Violet asked once she’d gained mastery over her voice.

  ‘Gas – that’s what happened.’ Tankard kept on tapping the table with an uncertain, drum-like beat. ‘Gravenstafel, the twenty-second of April, 1915. You understand me?’

  Violet dug deep into her memory of the accounts she’d read of war on the Western Front. ‘That’s when the Germans used gas against the allies.’

 
‘That’s right – at Wipers. The French were on the front line. We stood back and watched the green mist creep towards them. It killed thousands. They hadn’t got a clue what was happening so they breathed it in, started foaming at the mouth and choking to death. We saw them retreat, falling like flies. Then the wind changed direction and the gas came straight at us. I saw fellow Tommies a few yards ahead of me struck blind in a flash. As soon as I felt the sting of it, I ran.’

  Tankard relived the battle with his head still bowed. ‘I couldn’t see a bloody thing. I was down in the mud, crawling on my hands and knees, trying to stay ahead of the worst of it, right into a barrage of ack-ack guns from my own side. In the end, I found a crater made by a shell, dropped into it and stopped where I was until it died down. My eyes and lungs felt on fire. All I could hear was men screaming and bodies thudding down on top of me.’

  Violet closed her eyes at the horror of what he described. ‘And when it was all over?’ she queried.

  ‘Silence – I remember that. And darkness. I won’t tell you what I had to do to claw my way out of there. Up on the surface, there was still no sound, no sign of anyone. Then I made out a light in the distance and staggered towards it. The light came from a farmhouse half a mile behind the Front. I found a barn with hay in it. I crept in there and curled up like an animal.’

  ‘Still blinded by the gas?’

  Tankard nodded. ‘In the morning I crawled outside to find a water butt to cool the raging fire in my eyes. The farmer’s wife found me and bandaged me up. She kept me in that barn and never said a word about me going back to my regiment, even when the blisters started to heal. She’d lost her own son to the Germans in the first battle of Ypres and found me in the second so she nursed me and gave me the clothes and food I needed to get out of it for good.’

  ‘Which you managed to do for the rest of the war?’ The army record was proof of this and now Violet swung from any blame she might have felt to pure pity. ‘And your poor eyes – how much of your sight did you get back?’