The Shop Girls of Chapel Street

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘The damage was done. For a few years I could see enough to get by – shapes and colours, that kind of thing. Then gradually it went completely. Right from the start I knew I wasn’t much good to anyone – not to Gladys or Florence, or to you and Stan, especially since it was me who’d buggered off in the first place. No, the best thing was for me to get back to the area I knew best, change my name and lie low here in Welby. Besides, the army was after me, remember. Gas or not, I ran the risk of being lined up in front of a firing squad for hiding in that barn.’

  ‘And all this time I’ve been living less than half an hour’s train ride away with Aunty Winnie and Uncle Donald, without any of us knowing the first thing about you.’ Even though the reasons had begun to take shape, Violet still felt the abandonment keenly. In her mind’s eye she was five years old again, smarting from Donald’s harsh criticisms and wondering what in the world she could do to please him. ‘Aunty Winnie was a mother to me – the best in the world – but I can’t say the same for Uncle Donald. The truth is, I needed a father in my life and you weren’t there.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have wanted me – not like this,’ Tankard insisted as he left off drumming and rested his hand on the table. The tremor continued. ‘I’m not asking for pity because I don’t deserve it. It was me – I cut myself off because I didn’t want anyone to see how low I’d fallen. That’s pride for you. And if you want to know whether I’ve thought about you and Stan over the years, the honest answer is no, I haven’t.’

  Across the table from him, Violet felt the cherished dream of being loved by her father shrivel and die. She thought again of the note Tankard had written to her mother and the words, lifelong affection. Not undying love that came from deep in the heart – only shallow affection that could be cauterized and cut out, despite Florence’s forlorn longing for a man who would stand by her. Violet took the blue box from her handbag and slid it across the table. ‘This is for you,’ she murmured.

  Tankard reached out and felt the velvet surface with trembling fingers. He seemed to recognize what it was but left it unopened. ‘I haven’t dwelt on the thought of you two growing up without me because there wouldn’t be any point. I was never going to change my mind and come looking for you.’

  ‘Why not? You must have known where to find us.’

  ‘I could have done it,’ he acknowledged. ‘But I was Douglas Thornton by this time, remember. For one thing, your uncle would have had it in for me because of what I’d done to Joe. And if I’d come to claim you, I’d have had the army on my back thanks to him.’

  It all made sense to Violet, who now had to swallow the bitter pill. Not enough love and a big helping of fear was the lethal combination that had kept her father away. ‘The note you wrote to my mother is still in the box with the bracelet,’ she told him, snapping her handbag shut.

  He pressed the catch of the blue box then lifted the chain from its satin nest. The tiny padlock gleamed pinkish-gold as he looped it over his gnarled, trembling fingers. ‘I got this from a pal of mine who worked in a pawnbroker’s. He sold me it at a knock-down price and I had the engraving done especially for Flo – “Xmas 1914”. She was pleased as Punch.’

  Violet had heard enough. She stood up jerkily. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a voice that didn’t seem to belong to her.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For agreeing to see me after all these years.’ And for unlocking the padlock of the past, releasing me from false hope and setting my heart free.

  ‘You know where to find me.’ Tankard raised his head and turned his face in Violet’s direction – perhaps a sign of hope that she would visit again.

  ‘I do.’ Her voice more disembodied than ever, she made her way to the door without making any promises. ‘And I do understand.’

  She’d opened the door and was out in the corridor when her father issued a last request. ‘Will you make sure the lad does too?’

  ‘I will,’ she agreed. She left without saying goodbye, only turning to glance over her shoulder at the blind man hunched at a table, carefully taking the note from the envelope, unfolding the heavily creased paper and with tremulous fingers tracing his long-ago, faint-hearted words to a woman he’d failed to love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Where was Stan while all this was going on?’ In the workroom above the shop, Muriel sounded irritated. ‘The idea was for him to go with you this morning to keep an eye on you, wasn’t it?’

  Violet pulled out some tacking stitches in a white blouse she was making for Kenneth Leach’s wife, Avril. The order had come in while she was in Welby and she’d started work on it as soon as she got back. ‘One look at Douglas Tankard was enough for him.’

  ‘Was it that bad?’ Muriel peered at Violet over the rim of her glasses, scissors poised.

  ‘Yes, Stan wasn’t in a mood to forgive. And I didn’t help by asking if our father had ever loved my mother. I put my foot in it good and proper. Poor Stan didn’t know where to put himself. That’s why he stormed off.’

  ‘But you’re glad you stayed to hear the man out?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say glad was the right word.’ The tacking thread slipped easily through the silky rayon material. Violet held up the half-finished garment and decided that it was time to start on the collar.

  ‘Sad then?’

  ‘No, not sad either.’ On the train journey home, Violet had pulled herself together and done her best to explain to Stan what had led Tankard to desert them but Stan was having none of it.

  ‘He was saving his own skin, that’s the truth of it. I don’t care if he was going blind – he should’ve been a man and owned up to what he’d done.’

  ‘Then he’d have had the army to deal with,’ Violet had reasoned.

  Stan had shaken his head and stared truculently out of the window, refusing to say another word about his father – not just now but for ever. He’d done his best to back Violet and look after her, but for him the subject was now closed.

  ‘Relieved?’ Muriel steered a lightweight worsted fabric under the pounding needle of her sewing machine as she made a tailored jacket for Ella Kingsley.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s it.’ Violet relived the moment when she’d handed over the bracelet and loosened the chains of the past. ‘Honestly, though, it would break your heart to see Douglas Tankard and to hear what he had to say.’

  ‘Your trouble is you’re too soft,’ Ida muttered.

  ‘Really it would. As it was, he wouldn’t let me pity him. But I can’t help it when I think about what he had to go through – the mud and the guns and the gas. It was enough to make me cry, just listening.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting that he ran away from his comrades?’

  ‘Crawled away,’ Violet insisted. ‘If you ask me, he only did what a lot of other men would have done given half a chance.’

  The ring of the shop bell down below told them that they had a customer. ‘I’ll go,’ Muriel said swiftly.

  She left Violet sewing interfacing to the collar piece, reflecting on where the day’s events had left her. Not glad, not sad. Relieved because she knew she was undergoing a sea change and what it boiled down to was this: it wasn’t her, Violet Wheeler, who wasn’t fit to be loved, but her father, Douglas Tankard, who couldn’t love.

  ‘It was the sight of him sitting there holding the bracelet that hurt the most,’ Violet confided in Eddie when he came to the shop that evening to take her to the rehearsal in Hadley.

  All day Eddie had been worried about her, hoping that Stan had been the right choice to go to Welby with her. Eddie had finished his decorating work early and arrived at Jubilee at half past five on the dot to find Violet pulling down the blind and putting up the Closed sign. ‘You did the right thing by handing over the bracelet to him.’

  ‘It belongs with him. But his hands were shaking and of course he’s blind so he couldn’t see to read the note he’d written to my mother.’

  ‘I know how to take your mind off things. Come
on, Vi – let’s go for a spin.’ Eddie’s sudden suggestion was aimed at pulling her out of the past into the present. ‘We’ve got time to stop at Little Brimstone if we set off now.’

  ‘But it’s raining.’

  ‘No, it’s nearly stopped. What are we waiting for?’ So they locked the door and climbed on the bike just as the clouds lifted and by the time they reached the moor road, the wind had swept them away completely.

  ‘Do we have to stop?’ Violet asked, her arms clasped around Eddie’s waist as he pulled into the usual siding. ‘Couldn’t we just ride on like this for ever?’

  He laughed and parked the bike. ‘If we follow our noses in that direction we’d be in Morecambe and the Atlantic would stop us. The other way it’s Scarborough and the North Sea.’

  ‘We could get on a ferry and keep going all the way to America,’ she said wistfully. ‘You and me without a care in the world.’

  Eddie kept hold of her hand as he led the way down the narrow path bordered by sodden bracken. ‘And live on what – fresh air?’

  ‘They need dressmakers in America, don’t they? We could ride to sunny Hollywood and you could show the latest flicks in the picture palaces where they’re made. I could sew costumes for Claudette Colbert.’

  ‘And pigs might fly.’ They arrived at the clearing to find Kitty’s café closed and boarded up in readiness for winter. Eddie chose a bench to sit on and together they gazed out over the eruption of black boulders scattered across the steep hillside. In the background they heard the sound of their very own tumbling stream. ‘I don’t think we’d fit in,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Hollywood. We’re Yorkshire born and bred. It’s where we belong.’ Rooted in the black earth of the open moors, treading the paved streets of the town shoulder to shoulder with mill girls and mechanics, shop workers, lamp lighters and delivery men.

  ‘I know that.’ Violet smiled back at him. ‘I don’t really care where we go.’

  ‘As long as we’re together?’

  She nodded. Her heart swelled with love for Eddie – for his laughing brown eyes and the way his black hair refused to stay slicked back no matter how much Brylcreem he combed through it. She loved him for the way he sat, legs splayed and stretched out in front of him, his head tilted back and resting against the green wooden boards of the window shutters, looking at her through half-closed eyes. ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’

  He sat up straight and drew his feet back under the bench. ‘That’s all right then. Listen – I want to say something but as usual it might not come out right.’

  ‘Try,’ she murmured, slipping an arm around his waist and nestling close.

  ‘First off, I realize you’re down in the dumps about Tankard. I know he wasn’t what you hoped he might be.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t too surprised, just sad. And it was upsetting to find out that he can’t see, and that makes me sorry for him.’

  ‘But you’re glum because you wanted to love him and now you can’t – that’s the heart of the matter.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Even as Violet protested she knew he was right. Meeting her father had drawn attention to a lifelong space in her heart that he would never be able to fill.

  ‘So if you want someone to love, why not try me?’ Eddie held his breath, waiting for her reply.

  ‘You already know I do. I told you,’ Violet said softly, reaching up to touch his cold cheek.

  ‘I mean I want to take it one step further,’ he murmured, turning his head to kiss her palm. ‘We love each other. We don’t need anyone else.’

  ‘That’s right – we don’t.’

  ‘So we can get married.’

  ‘Oh, Eddie!’ Violet pulled free, stood up and walked across the clearing.

  Eddie followed her, afraid that he’d picked the wrong time and so upset her. ‘Not straight away. Not if you’re not ready.’

  ‘Stop. I wasn’t … I don’t …’

  ‘I didn’t say it right, I’m sorry.’

  The doubt in his eyes made her take his hands between hers. ‘What about Jubilee?’ Could she marry Eddie and still sit at her sewing machine with Ida and Muriel? ‘Getting married doesn’t mean I have to stop work, does it? Only, that’s the way Ida sees it – she says she can’t marry Harold and expect to carry on working.’

  Eddie gave a small shrug. ‘Ida sees things in black and white, remember. Who’s to say you can’t do both?’

  ‘That’s right, I can!’ Violet saw it in a flash – a white wedding in a dress made in the Jubilee workshop, a rented house on Brewery Road or Chapel Street that Eddie would decorate, with two bedrooms – one for her and Eddie, one for the baby that would arrive in due course. She ran ahead of herself so far and with such a dazzling smile that Eddie couldn’t help wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close.

  ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way,’ he said, his lips touching her forehead.

  She tilted her head back. They were so close that his features blurred. She closed her eyes and kissed his mouth.

  After a while he drew back, still with his arms around her waist. ‘I know you don’t have any family left now, Vi,’ he said gently, ‘but I won’t run away and leave you on your own – not ever.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Despite the thrill of Eddie’s proposal, Violet had agreed to keep it quiet for the time being. At rehearsal Stan had been back on form, accusing Violet of looking like the cat that got the cream. As Violet had fumbled for an explanation, Ida had come, blue pencil tucked behind her ear, and dragged him up onstage.

  ‘Best not announce our engagement until I’ve had a chance to tell Mam and Dad,’ Eddie had said.

  ‘So we’re engaged now, are we?’ Violet had laughed.

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘Not until I’ve got a ring on my finger, we’re not!’ she’d declared, pulling him to his feet. ‘Come on. Ida will be champing at the bit to start the rehearsal. We’d better get a move on.’

  Then, next morning, after a night spent dreaming of wedding veils and bouquets, of ‘Do you take this man?’ and ‘I do’, Violet was charged by Ida with keeping secrets from her and Muriel.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to smile about. Didn’t Douglas Tankard turn out to be a dead loss?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Violet didn’t attempt to describe the mixed feelings she’d experienced in Welby. Instead, she went on unrolling and measuring out a yard of pale blue ribbon intended to adorn a baby boy’s christening gown.

  ‘Then why are you so blooming happy?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Muriel advised as she came into the shop and placed her wet umbrella in the stand by the door. ‘She’ll tell us when she’s good and ready. Violet, will you be all right down here by yourself this morning? Ida and I need to get on with that rush job for Ella Kingsley.’

  ‘We’ll be upstairs if you need us,’ Ida promised. ‘By the way, I was chatting with Evie on my way here and she let slip that Sybil intends to put a card in the window advertising for more help in their workshop. That’ll put her one step ahead of us if we’re not careful.’

  ‘We can’t sew any faster than we already are,’ Muriel pointed out. ‘Anyway, even if Sybil does shell out for another dressmaker that still doesn’t put her one step ahead. She’ll have a total of three and we’ve already got three. That makes us even.’

  As ever, the spirit of competition put wind in Muriel and Ida’s sails and they bustled upstairs to begin work, leaving Violet to tidy the window display and await their first customer of the day.

  It’s time we put Gertie into something more suited to winter than a wedding dress, she reminded herself as she squeezed past the mannequin then crouched to rearrange the folds in the flowing train. This will soon be me, she thought with a smile to herself – all dressed up in white and walking down the aisle with Eddie.

  In her happy daydream she was caught unawares by the jangle of the shop bell and couldn’t conceal her
panic at the sound of an agitated Alice Barlow announcing her arrival.

  ‘Shop!’ Mrs Barlow rapped her knuckles on the counter and when Violet stepped down from the window, she launched into a complaint about poor service. ‘Never leave your counter unattended,’ she told Violet. ‘It’s the first rule of shopkeeping.’

  ‘Good morning. What can I do for you?’ One look at her customer warned Violet that Alice Barlow was a loose cannon about to fire off yet another volley of accusations. She prepared herself for the attack.

  ‘The second rule is to smile at your customer and show good manners at all times.’ The challenge was issued in a high, strained voice and a closer study of her mottled skin and swollen eyes showed a woman on the verge of hysteria. With no umbrella to protect her from the rain, water dripped from her hair and soaked through the front of her light brown coat, making her shiver.

  ‘Mrs Barlow, if you’ve come to buy something, I’ll do my best to help.’ Violet tried to overcome her uneasiness and to stand firm.

  The patches on Alice Barlow’s neck grew redder, the shivering more pronounced. ‘Can I help you or not?’ Violet repeated.

  Outstared by Violet, Alice Barlow let out a long breath, like a balloon deflating. She glanced nervously towards the door and the street beyond. ‘Don’t worry – you can relax. It’s not your blood I’m after.’ When she spoke, her voice had lost the narrow, nasal quality that Violet disliked. It was broader, more hesitant.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not any more.’ Pushing her wet hair from her forehead, she rushed to the door and looked down the street. ‘If it’s anyone’s, it’s that sly little minx who works for us on Canal Road.’

  ‘Minx?’ Violet echoed. It wasn’t a word she was used to hearing except on the silver screen when well-dressed women in evening gowns argued and exchanged insults.

  ‘Glenda Morris. Colin is rubbing my nose in the dirt by cavorting right under my nose.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Glenda, the unfriendly, dark-haired dispenser. Violet felt a stab of pity for the unhappy woman before her.