No Peace for the Wicked

by Pip Granger

  ‘I promise I’ll pass on the odd little titbit – a harmless titbit that is,’ I told them, ‘but it’ll have to wait for another time. I’ll be late for the shop, and there’s a rush order for the chorus at the Windmill.’

  As I rose to go, Luigi glanced at the clock, high above the counter. ‘Is that the time? I’d better be going, too. Things to do, people to see, money to collect, all that. See you lot later.’ He grinned and ambled towards the door.

  I made to follow him and Madame Zelda got up too. ‘I’ll walk out with you, Liz. I’ve got my first client coming soon. I’ll be seeing you, Maggie, T.C.’ She buttoned her coat for the short nip next door.

  We parted on the doorstep and I turned my face in the direction of St Anne’s Court. As I walked to work, I marvelled at how a little human company – as long as it was the right company – could dispel the bleakest of moods.

  7

  There was a flap on when I got to the shop. Antony was standing in the middle of the workroom at the back looking furious. ‘What do you mean she won’t wear green? The designer said green.’ His voice was quiet, but steely, as he waved a thick sheaf of design notes from the Windmill job at Freddy. Antony’s blue eyes flashed dangerously as a pink stain spread rapidly across his pale features. His languid manner had been replaced with the fieriness that he reserved for creative matters.

  ‘We have to dress four complete acts and the whole chorus for the next season’s shows and time’s running out as it is, so changes at this stage are definitely not on.’ His voice remained quiet, but it was being forced between the gritted teeth of a very angry man. ‘It’s in these notes right here, in black and white. “GREEN,” he says.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Freddy gabbled sympathetically. ‘But she simply won’t wear it. Says it’s unlucky. She won’t even try it on, won’t let it touch her body. Says the minute it does, bad luck will follow. You can’t reason with a person like that.’ Freddy broke off as he spotted me in the doorway. ‘Tell him, ducky, tell him how blind these superstitious types are to reason,’ he pleaded, sidling towards me then nipping behind my back, so he was out of Antony’s direct line of fire.

  I tried to be soothing. ‘It’s true. I had an aunt who wouldn’t leave the house until she’d kissed the budgie. Said the one time she forgot, the house was robbed.’ I noticed that Antony had stopped waving his papers about.

  ‘Really?’ asked Freddy. ‘How did the budgie feel about that? Did he like to be kissed by a non-budgie?’

  ‘It’s hard to say with a budgie, especially as he never actually said much more than “Pretty boy” and “More tea, minister?” But he did bite her lip, she’d got the scars to prove it. Sometimes he made her bleed.’

  ‘So why did she keep shoving her smoochers through the bars?’ asked Freddy, fascinated and exasperated at the same time.

  ‘She’d decided it was a good luck charm against robbery,’ I reminded him.

  ‘But it makes no sense,’ Antony snapped, his mind still on the thorny question of the green dress.

  ‘You see!’ said Freddy triumphantly.

  ‘I see what, exactly?’ Antony’s voice tightened dangerously. I piped up swiftly, to deflect the threatened artistic outburst. Antony was a gentleman at all times, except when the flow of his ‘creative juices’, as Freddy called them, was being stemmed by things beyond his control.

  ‘What Freddy means is that superstitious people often don’t make any sense,’ I explained. ‘After all, there’s green everywhere. She can’t escape it all.’

  Antony was slightly mollified. ‘I suppose so, but if the featured artiste just refuses to wear her costume, where does that leave us?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘It’s the same design as the ones the chorus girls are wearing, isn’t it? If you take it in a little, you can swap it with the one that’s still left to do, the yellow one. There was blue, green, pink, yellow and then the red, wasn’t there? You’ve done them all except the yellow, so they can swap. No serious problem.’

  My employers thought about it for a moment then Antony smiled slowly. ‘You’re a genius, Elizabeth dear, that’s the solution. I’ll start on the yellow straight away,’ he said, then picked up his large cutting shears and snapped them playfully at Freddy, like a crocodile looking for breakfast.

  Freddy dodged aside and held up a tentative hand. ‘Except she’s a redhead; she’ll look dead uggers in that shade of yellow.’

  Antony set his jaw, put his hand on his narrow hip and tapped an elegant foot in mock high dudgeon. ‘And?’

  ‘True, true,’ murmured Freddy hastily. ‘If she wants to be a fusspot then she can wear the bloody yellow and like it.’

  ‘Precisely!’ Antony snapped the shears a final time for emphasis and picked up a bolt of yellow silk jersey. He flipped it expertly on to his work-bench so that the fabric spread itself out like a carpet of buttercups. Even in the pale winter light, the silk gleamed richly. Antony began to pin paper pattern pieces to the cloth and Freddy sighed in relief. Antony could be a holy terror when anyone got between him and his creations. He’d been known to down needle and thimble, point blank refusing to sew a stitch, if a customer had upset him too much. More than once, Freddy and I had toiled deep into the night to finish an order while Antony sulked.

  ‘So which aunt was it with the budgie?’ Freddy loved to hear about my eccentric aunts. ‘She certainly did the trick just now, taking his mind off her ladyship’s green frock.’

  ‘It was Auntie Glad, only she wasn’t glad at all, because she was married to Uncle Cyril, who was something of a misery. But then he had his reasons. He’d been gassed in the trenches. That, and the fact that it was Auntie Glad’s proud boast that he had never “troubled” her “in that way”, and that she would be returned to God “unopened”. That probably upset him a bit as well.’

  Poor Freddy choked on his tea, and I had to act quickly so he didn’t splutter it all over a bolt of purple silk. I was busy thumping his back when Cassie came through the door, closely followed by the same bespectacled man I had seen her with at Bandy’s. As Freddy said later, with a sniff, ‘If the cove had been any closer, she’d have been wearing him.’ The man did seem reluctant to let Cassie out of arm’s reach, and a short arm at that. I greeted them while Freddy gathered some breath to do the same.

  ‘I want something pretty made. May I look at some taffeta?’ Cassie asked. I nodded and pulled down a bolt of dark blue. Given her colouring, blue was always a good place to start with Cassie.

  ‘No thanks, Liz. I have a yen for something different, I could do with a change. May I have a look at the rose pink?’ I replaced the blue and pulled down the pink. It was a lovely shade, the colour of an old damask rose Uncle Cyril had grown in his back garden. London clay was good for roses, and the sulphur in the air kept black spot and other nasties at bay, or so Uncle Cyril had said. It was a pity he’d never managed to ‘open’ Auntie Gladys; he was good with children. I had spent many happy hours pottering about with him in his garden and shed. He’d always been very nice to me.

  ‘What do you think, Liz?’ Cassie asked, holding the fabric up to her face.

  ‘It suits you,’ I answered. In fact, it suited her very well. It brought a touch of colour to her pale cheeks.

  Freddy had recovered himself, and joined in: ‘Tell you what, stand over by the long mirror and we’ll get a length swathed around you, you’ll be able to see for yourself then how smashing you’ll look. Lizzie, grab a length of that drop pearl trim,’ he instructed, having assessed the thickness of the man’s wallet to the nearest pound simply by looking at his clothes. The Turnbull & Asser shirt, silk cravat and hand-made-in-Bond-Street brogues gave the game away. One glance and Freddy had decided the chap could run to top-of-the-range trimmings.

  I did as asked, and we traipsed over to the long mirror on the back of the workroom door. We could hear Antony singing a snatch of ‘Oh! What a Beautiful Morning’ as he cut out the final costume for the Windmill’s order. Freddy an
d I exchanged relieved glances. Harmony reigned once more.

  We spent a happy hour in the shop, as we plucked bolts of fabric from the shelves, then indulged in an orgy of tucking, pleating and swanning about in ostrich feathers, pearl drop and rhinestone trim, while Cassie’s friend watched adoringly from behind thick-lensed glasses.

  Cassie finally settled on Uncle Cyril’s damask rose pink, which she wanted made into a strapless sheath with a drop pearl trim around the bodice. Freddy, a salesman down to his socks, went in for the kill, skilfully addressing not Cassie, but the man with the wallet. ‘Of course, if you wish to see the lady in it any time soon, a nice lined shawl will be required, to save the poor darling’ – Freddy hesitated slightly, so that Cassie’s admirer could get his imagination going – ‘from freezing to death.’

  It took a matter of moments to scribble the order into the book for the matching shawl, lined with the softest pink ostrich feathers for extra warmth. That done, the man handed over a hefty deposit, in guineas, and Cassie was signed up for her first fitting.

  ‘You’ll need to have the dress boned, to keep it up. Fitting’s really important when you’re expecting teeny weeny bits of whale to defy gravity and keep you modest on the dance floor. When suits you best?’ Freddy asked as he flourished a large, leather-bound diary. The appointment was soon made and Cassie and her friend were gone.

  ‘I wonder if she’ll stick with him long enough to get the dress? Or whether she’ll ditch him and reclaim the deposit?’ Freddy tapped his teeth with his pen. ‘Hmm, I think we’ll hold off until she comes in for the fitting, just in case. Antony can always cut it out on the day, if it happens. It’s not a complicated number. What do you reckon, Lizzie? Is it a goer or will she be back in a day or two, little hand out for the readies?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. It was true that Cassie had sometimes cancelled orders and, on behalf of her male friends, had taken the deposit, even though she hadn’t paid it herself. And she got away with it for the most part. We’d only had irate men in chasing their money a couple of times.

  ‘I am,’ came Antony’s voice from the back room. ‘She’ll stick him out for a while, because that Harry is, according to current gossip at The French, worth about a million and counting; Grandmama hasn’t snuffed it yet.’

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’ Freddy asked.

  ‘I was in there the other day when he came in looking for Cass. Quentin and one or two of the others were in there, too. They said everyone had given him the once-over and made enquiries, but he was mainly interested in girls.’

  ‘Oh well, then,’ agreed Freddy, ‘go ahead and cut it out. She’s in for a fitting on Thursday. She’s opted for the expensive trim, too, and the ostrich feathers, bless her heart. I do love that girl. When she’s got it, she does so love to spread it about.’

  ‘Even when it isn’t hers,’ I said under my breath. Nobody had ever offered to buy me rose pink taffeta with drop pearl trim and ostrich feathers, pink ones.

  ‘Especially when it isn’t hers, dear,’ Antony sang out as he went back to his cutting table, carrying the bolt of cloth for Cassie’s frock. ‘Especially when it isn’t hers. That’s the whole point.’

  ‘Luckily, the bank manager doesn’t give a damn as long as it winds up being his, via our account,’ Freddy added.

  There was no arguing with that, so I went to make us a cup of tea and thought about all the beautiful colours I’d spent the morning with. I loved it. When I returned with the tray of steaming cups and a plate of assorted biscuits, a slight, damp figure was being blown through the door by a vicious gust of wind and rain. When the figure came to a halt in front of me and a pair of almond-shaped eyes blinked through a nest of very black and very wet rats’ tails, I realized that Peace was in the shop. Her normally glossy hair was sodden, as was the rest of her.

  ‘Peace!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’ It was not the way Mother had taught me to greet visitors, but Peace had not been in the shop since the day she had arrived.

  ‘Do you know where Aunt Bandy is, Mrs Robbins? I’ve rung the bell many times but neither she nor Mr Sugar are answering it.’ I suspected that her aunt might have still been in bed with her poet Malcolm, and it was anybody’s guess where Sugar had got to. He’d taken to making himself scarce outside of opening hours at the club.

  ‘Don’t you have a key, dear?’ I asked; not a very bright question in the circumstances, but the best I could come up with.

  Peace shook her wet head and dropped her eyes to the floor for a moment. Her face was solemn, but then it usually was.

  ‘Well, you’d better let yourself into my place, dry yourself off and at lunchtime we’ll go and have a look for them,’ I suggested, taking my key out of my bag. Peace whispered her gratitude. There was definitely something wrong with her, and I was more likely to get to the bottom of it if we were tucked up in a quiet corner like my flat, than I was in the shop, with Freddy and Antony to listen in on us.

  8

  Peace was very quiet, very polite, but her mind was far, far away – way across the China Sea I shouldn’t wonder. When I got in for lunch an hour or so later, I saw that she’d dried herself off and climbed into my winter dressing gown that I kept on the back of my bedroom door. I loved my winter dressing gown; Freddy and Antony had made it for me for my first Christmas at the shop. It was fire-engine red velvet with black trim around the mandarin collar and narrow cuffs. It made you feel warm just to look at it, and the cuffs guaranteed the sleeves never dangled in the washing-up or cups of tea. Peace was curled up on the settee in front of the gas fire, reading. She stood up as I walked through the door and looked demurely at the floor as she greeted me.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Robbins.’

  ‘Hello, Peace,’ I answered, thinking as I did so how nice it was to have someone to greet me when I came home. It had been a long, long time since I’d had that particular comfort. ‘I’ll get the kettle on. I’m parched.’

  I made beans on toast for two for our lunch, and we settled down at my tiny kitchen table to eat it, with the gas oven on to keep us warm.

  ‘So,’ I began, ‘why were you hanging about in the street this morning getting soaked to the skin? Why didn’t you at least have a coat and hat? You could have caught your death out there.’

  Peace hung her head and stared at the yellow Formica table top. I was so proud of that table; one wipe with a cloth and it was clean, and such a cheery colour too. ‘I am sorry to have worried you, Mrs Robbins,’ she said.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, call me Lizzie, everybody else does.’

  ‘But you are my elder, it is not respectful to call you “Lizzie”, Mrs Robbins,’ Peace argued seriously; still not answering me, I noticed.

  I thought about it for a moment, then found a compromise. ‘I am older than you, but I am also older than Rosie, and she gets round the problem by calling me “Auntie Lizzie”. You could do the same if you like,’ I suggested. ‘And you can also tell me why you were running around in the pouring rain, in inadequate clothing, getting soaked to the skin, when you could have been nice and warm at home.’ I added a smile to show that she wasn’t in trouble.

  ‘Aunt and I had an argument last night and I ran out this morning, before she woke up and could start shouting again.’ She paused briefly, then added, ‘Aunt Liz’, with a small smile.

  ‘I see,’ I said, although I didn’t quite. ‘What did you argue about, if you don’t mind me asking? Was it very serious? Were things said that can’t be unsaid?’

  ‘Aunt wants me to return to St Matilda’s and I said I would not.’ Peace hung her head again, so that I couldn’t read her expression. She either had to be very brave or very desperate to argue with her formidable aunt.

  I thought about it for a while. ‘Would you like me try to talk to your aunt, to see if she’s calmed down a little?’ I asked, more casually than I felt. Truth to tell, Bandy scared me to death when she was cross. I treated her with caution even when she wasn’t.


  Peace nodded. ‘Yes, please.’

  Bandy flung open the door a few minutes later and scared me so much that I took a step backwards. Her hair was in a wild tangle around her strong, hawk-nosed face, and her eyes glittered dangerously. As always, she was in her dressing gown. A rumpled Malcolm stood behind her, scantily clad in his underwear, and scratching. I stood on the small landing outside her flat, trembling slightly – with cold, of course.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, rather rudely I thought. Really, she was a very frightening sight when she started her day around lunchtime, even on normal days, and this one was obviously far from normal. Something had got on Bandy’s wick and she was cross, very cross indeed.

  ‘Well, spit it out, gal, I haven’t got all bloody day!’ she barked. Something about the ‘gal’ annoyed me. I was a grown woman, same as her, and only a few years younger.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, Bandy,’ I said, sharply.

  I could see Bandy was taken aback by my nerve – as was I, a little. Her mouth snapped shut the way the till at the shop snapped shut on a fiver. Her thin, arched eyebrows disappeared into her unruly hair and her eyes took on a speculative look.

  ‘I see, showing a bit of spunk, eh? Well, it’s about time. You’ve been creeping about like a church mouse, apologetic for taking up room, for far too long in my book. But I’ve had a telephone call from Peace’s school, wanting to know if she’s ever going back there. Meanwhile, it seems the child’s gone AWOL yet again. She was missing at roll call this morning.’

  ‘That’s what I came to tell you. She’s downstairs. She turned up at the shop again, looking like a drowned rat.’ I paused and looked over Bandy’s shoulder at Malcolm, who was still standing behind her, and still scratching. His vest was a few days off clean. ‘She tried to come back here, but got no answer, so she came to the shop to find me. I sent her back with my keys and she dried off downstairs.’