She must have known it ever since then, and he had known it too. She looked at her father. He looked at her. ‘All right, Dad,’ she said wanly. ‘I don’t mind. It’s all right.’
And although he had always resented the High School, and threatened powerlessly countless times to remove her, what he saw now in her face made him say: ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ and look away, ashamed.
Just when Josephine was getting over her first unhappiness, she had to go for an interview with the headmistress, and the pain was awakened again. Term had begun, and the girls who went home for dinner were returning by the basement cloakroom entrance in their blazers and blue velour hats with the shields and striped ribbons.
Josephine, in her ordinary coat and beret, had to go in by the front door, which she had only passed through once before as a new girl two years ago. Her knees felt weak as they had then. Some girls sprinting down the corridor glanced at her uncertainly as if they only half-recognized her.
Winnie Marsden slithered to a stop and came back. Jo saw that she was wearing the bronze brooch which meant she had been elected class captain. Jo herself might have been wearing that brooch this term. Everyone had said they would vote for her. Unreasonably, it seemed like treachery that they should vote for Winnie Marsden, even in Jo’s absence. They should have hung the brooch on her peg, or laid it on her desk, like keeping an empty chair for a dead person. But someone else would be sitting at her desk now, wondering idly perhaps what the carved J. A. stood for, as she had often wondered about the other initials during the doldrums of geography.
‘Hullo, Abinger,’ Winnie said. ‘Have you been ill? When are you coming back?’
‘I’m not,’ Jo told her. ‘I’ve left. Got to look after my father’s business.’ The words were grand enough, but her voice faltered.
‘Oh, rotten swizz,’ said Winnie.
‘It is rather.’ Jo looked down at her feet.
‘You’d have been captain of Second Netball this year, wouldn’t you? I wonder who they – Gosh! Tonks will be it, I suppose.’ With a perfunctory farewell to Jo, she sped away to break the glad news to Tonks Tonkinson, who was her best friend.
Though not bedridden, Mrs Abinger had to rest in the afternoons. Jo walked straight through the shop, averting her eyes from her father’s imbroglio with the coffee grinder, ran upstairs and threw herself on her mother’s bed in despair. If Mrs Abinger had not already felt as bad as possible about being the cause of Jo leaving High School, she would have felt worse now. Nothing she could say could make it any better, so she waited for Jo to speak.
‘Mum,’ Jo mumbled into Mrs Abinger’s pillow, ‘she said I wasn’t to leave.’
‘Said you weren’t to – what do you mean, childie? It’s no say of hers.’
‘She said it was a wicked waste. She said I had – what was it – talent and a promising future.’ Jo sat up and repeated the headmistress’s praise glumly. It did not elate her; it only made things worse.
‘She said she’d ask the governors about special fees or something. I tried to explain it wasn’t the money, but she wouldn’t listen. You know what she is, Mum.’
‘And what is she? Why would she not listen?’ Mr Abinger had left the coffee grinder in pieces and followed Jo upstairs to listen outside the door. ‘Who does she think she is to set up her opinion? I always said you’d regret that school, Ellie. Giving people ideas. I’ll settle her. What’s more, I’ll do it now while I’m warmed to it.’
‘George, you can’t. The shop – ’
‘Jo can take over. She’ll have to get used to being on her own sometimes. A man with all my outside connexions can’t be tied by the leg like a tame pig. Now I ask you – will you listen to that bell? Can’t leave the shop for a moment without they’re on you like ravening wolves.’ He went through the sitting-room to yell down the stairs: ‘Shut that infernal door!’ The buzzing continued. ‘Jo,’ he came back into the bedroom, untying his apron strings. ‘Go down and pull that door off its hinges.’
At the High School, he found his way to the headmistress’s room and stormed in without knocking. The headmistress was drinking tea from a tea set painted with the Newnham crest. She put down the cup quickly and rose, feeling at a disadvantage without her gown.
‘What do you want?’ she asked the unfriendly looking man, who had not even taken off his hat. ‘You can’t come in here without an appointment.’
‘I can’t be bothered with all that Tommy-twaddle,’ he said. ‘I’ve come about my daughter, Josephine Abinger.’
‘Oh, so you’re Mr Abinger.’ She sat down again and studied him. ‘You’re the father who wants to spoil his daughter’s chances. Criminal. Absolutely. To waste that gel’s brains behind a counter. I won’t have it.’ She reached behind her for her gown and hitched it over her shoulders. Bad show to be caught without it. Getting into slack ways. Mufti at teatime. Lax. Absolutely.
‘You won’t have it!’ His eyes popped. ‘And who might you be, pray, to dictate? Let me tell you she’ll be far better doing some good honest work for me than wasting her time here with fiddle faddle about stamens and je suis, tu es. Oh, don’t think I don’t know what goes on. I’ve followed her work. I’ve seen where it’s getting her.’
‘Mr Abinger,’ said the headmistress with studied control. ‘You don’t understand. The girl has a good brain. She’s intelligent. Above average. Personable. She might go anywhere.’
‘I don’t want her to go anywhere,’ he said, emphasizing his words with wags of his head. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the life I give her. I was against this school from the start. She’s not been the same since she came here. There’s many a parent would sue you for alienation of affection.’ Although he had resented the adopted baby at first, because she had not been his idea, he had grown throughout the years to think of Josephine more and more as his own. He never wondered about her parents, or made allowances for any alien traits in her character. He expected her to grow into a replica of himself. He could imagine nothing better for her than that.
‘Come now,’ said the headmistress, ‘surely you want the best for her?’
‘Well, what’s wrong with the grocery business? I know you bluestocking women – giving girls unsettling ideas.’ He looked round the study at the chintz and the ornaments and the tea tray with its sandwiches and sugar cakes. Smug little hole. So this was where his money went, he thought, as if he had paid the fees.
The headmistress stood up again, shaking her gown into place. She was taller than he. ‘I must speak plainly. You’re doing a very wrong and unfair thing,’ she said, looking down on him as if he were a member of the third form caught with the dates of the Kings of England written on her cuff. ‘You’ll regret it.’
‘My only regret is that I let her come here in the first place,’ he capped her triumphantly. ‘Good day.’ He strode out and was nearly knocked down by a couple of sprinting girls, and the ‘cello of Beryl Myers, going at a jog trot to her music lesson.
All the way home in the bus, he muttered to himself, jerking his head triumphantly, until the old lady next to him changed her place, fearing he was mad.
‘I got the better of that schoolmarm all right,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ve given her something to think about.’
He had. He had given her the subject for her lecture at the teachers’ conference. ‘Whither democracy? The prejudice of uneducated parents is sabotaging our ideal of equal opportunity for all.’
Although she was glad that Jo was settling down, it sometimes wrung Mrs Abinger’s heart to see the forward little High School girl who was to have scaled the heights slip back into the unpropitious slough of the Portobello Road.
There was nothing unusual about a girl of nearly fifteen starting regular work. Gracie Snell was in Woolworth’s, and Joan Lupin already earning good money at the button factory; Violet had left school to be apprenticed to a wholesale dressmaker. It had happened to all the other girls, but Jo was not other girls. Mrs Abinger’s dreams had been so dif
ferent.
Now that she had more spare time, Mrs Abinger, alone upstairs with her anxiety about how they were managing below without her, would sometimes unwrap the little gold crucifix and ponder over it, pudding-faced in thought. Time and again she relived the moment when she had thrust it on to the surviving baby, to prove it hers. Often she tormented herself with the rights and wrongs of that impulsive action.
She would never have done it if she had known she was going to turn out such a broken reed. Useless thing that she was, she thought, watching her reclining bulk in the dressing-table mirror during the long winter afternoons when no one came near her, and it seemed that they would never be up for tea. Useless lump of bungling fancies; she was not fit to adopt a baby – any baby – let alone one who might be a princess, turned now by her into the Cinderella shop girl running about down there at everyone’s beck and call.
Joy or Josephine? Mrs Abinger’s pendulum conjectures ticked away the winter afternoons. There seemed to be no clue in the child herself. She was so adaptable. Equally attracted to the Moores and the Goldners; escaping to the streets as if she was gutter-born, or prinking out her skirt in a lady’s drawing-room. Flourishing at High School, fitting in with the difficult Grays, and now falling so rapidly into her place in the shop that her whisking, bright-haired figure in the gay flowered overalls was soon as much a part of the Corner Stores as Mrs Abinger’s butcher-blue solidarity had once been.
She seemed to pick up in no time things which had taken her mother years to learn. George had grumbled at first about having to teach her the job, and then felt slighted when she seemed to need so little instruction. She could have taught him a thing or two if he would listen. His lack of method maddened her. He would keep packets of salt on a high shelf, and things like mincemeat, which was only wanted once a year, well within reach. If she moved things about, he would get his own back by making her fetch what he wanted, saying he could not lay his hands on it. She had to obey, because if he could not lay his hands on a thing, he was liable to sweep everything else off the shelf and leave it for her to clear up.
She tried to cure his habit of going to and fro, to and fro between the counter and the store-room, fetching one thing at a time, instead of taking the whole order at once and collecting everything in one journey.
The idea was novel to him. He did not like it. He had always served customers the other way; the frequent journeys had been one of his favourite grievances. He continued to make them, but when she went up to have her dinner, he sometimes tried it the other way, with half an eye on the stairs in case she came down and caught him at it.
Jo was ambitious. She wanted the shop to make money. Ellison’s had just installed a refrigerator and a supercharged bacon slicer. The manager had bought a second-hand car. She nagged at her father to bring the Corner Stores more up to date, getting a rise out of him every time by comparing their trickle of customers to Ellison’s milling crowds.
‘We could do as well as that, Dad, if we were more go ahead. They started from less than us, not even a small shop. Old Mr Ellison used to push a barrow.’
‘How do you know?’ George frowned. Ellison’s was forbidden ground to his family. He did not even like them to walk on that side of the street.
‘One of their girls told me,’ she said airily. ‘I was in there pretending to buy something, to study their display.’
‘Oh you were, were you? Well, I forbid you to do that again, is that clear?’
‘No,’ said Jo pertly. ‘I like to go and see their prices and what new lines they’re selling, and how they advertise and that. We’ll never do half their business, if we don’t make more of a show.’
‘I don’t want their business,’ he blustered. ‘I’ll have no truck with this catchpenny modern salesmanship. Never have and never will.’
‘Never made any money and never will,’ sang Jo under her breath.
He deemed it more dignified not to hear. He cleared his throat and orated a little. ‘It’s vulgar shops like Ellison’s have brought this neighbourhood down. I can remember when this street was all little family businesses like ours, with their regular customers, and when all’s said and done, my fine know-all young lady, it’s the regular custom that counts in the end. You’ll see. We shall stand firm long after the rubble of Ellison’s downfall has been swept away.’
It was bad luck on him that the one time he made a true prophecy, he never knew it.
Listening to their arguments, Mrs Abinger admired half-fear-fully how Jo stood up to her father. She herself could never have crossed him like this without arousing his monumental wrath. But Jo could often reduce him. Everything about him seemed smaller and slower these days. He was becoming a woollier, less strenuous man altogether. He spent more time in his chair and might have been nailed to his bed when it was time to get up in the morning. He was not so finicky about his clothes, never won the whist drives or bridge prizes, campaigned less often at the Debating Club and ambled more frequently up to the Sun in Splendour.
In the spring, he went away for a two days’ Fellowship Conference at Clacton. He talked about it for weeks beforehand and did practically nothing in the shop but manoeuvre it into conversation with customers.
On the morning of his departure, although his train did not leave until the afternoon, he got up later than ever and did not put on an apron, but strutted about the shop, touching things with his fingertips, as if he were already removed from sordid commerce. He was too pleased with himself to notice that Jo was going into a grin when she looked at him, or that Herbert Merriman, who was usually forlorn, was whistling gently between his teeth as he collected groceries, and still whistling when he came back for the next lot.
At the last minute, sensing perhaps that his departure was upsetting nobody, Mr Abinger grew a little stricken and maudlin. Carrying his fibre suitcase, his hat on as straight as if he had used a spirit level, he paused at the street door.
‘Are you sure you can spare me?’ he asked. ‘Can you manage? I’m afraid of you sneaking downstairs, Ellie, to help them out. I won’t have it said that I’ve signed your death warrant.’
‘I’m not done for yet,’ said Mrs Abinger, taking the opportunity of being allowed downstairs to see him off to sort out the custard powders from the blancmanges.
‘I don’t think I ought to,’ he declared nobly.
‘Of course you must,’ said Jo aghast. ‘It’s a bit late to start worrying now when everything’s fixed up, and you know wild horses wouldn’t stop you. Get on Dad, do, or you’ll miss your train.’ It would be terrible if he came back. She winked at the delivery man. ‘Herbie and I’ll get on a treat.’
‘We’ll get on a treat,’ echoed Herbert Merriman. He always sided with Jo and copied what she said. He was in love with her. He had discovered this when she came back from the seaside, suddenly almost grown up through her tears and trouble. She had brought him a toothbrush holder called: ‘Souvenir of Seacombe.’ He never brushed his teeth, but every night he removed his pencil from behind his ear and put it into the toothbrush holder, because she had given it to him and he loved her.
Josephine walked towards her father, as if to urge him out of the door. ‘We’ll get on like a house on fire,’ she said. ‘Herbie’s going to leave the deliveries till the afternoon so as to help me with the morning customers.’
‘There you are!’ Mr Abinger set down his suitcase to clasp his flat cheeks in despair. ‘I knew it. Flying against me the moment my back is turned. People want their groceries delivered before dinner. That’s always been one of my maxims. I go so far as to say that on that I have built my solid family connexion.’ He thumped the counter.
‘Hush, George,’ said Mrs Abinger soothingly. ‘You’re not at the conference yet.’ She put the suitcase into his hand and got him away.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Jo. ‘You go on upstairs. It’s time for your rest.’
‘Can’t I just stay and help you down here for a while?’ asked Mrs Abinger wistfully. �
�I see your half-pound rices want making up – ’
‘Upstairs,’ said Jo, pointing. ‘You know what the doctor said.’
When they had got rid of her, Jo turned to Herbert Merriman and drew a great breath. ‘Now!’ she said, and a giggle bubbled up inside her like a spring.
‘Now,’ he echoed, rapture on his white clown’s face with its haunted, triangular eyes and half-moon mouth.
Jo took a quick look up the stairs, ran back to bolt the street door, hung inside the glass notice saying: ‘Closed for Alterations’ and thumbed her nose at Miss Loscoe, who was peering in and shaking the handle.
‘Now that’s just what you don’t want to do,’ said Herbert. ‘Chokin’ off the customers before we’ve even started.’
‘I don’t care if I do choke her off,’ said Jo ‘She doesn’t spend more than a bob a week here. Herbie, you and I are after the big money.’
‘You and I,’ he said. ‘You and I.’ Two days of it.
‘Buck up,’ she said, ‘and don’t be so moony. Get that paint and the brushes and I’ll tell you what we’ll do first.’ She began to boss him about. They were both very happy.
Miss Loscoe watched and waited. She waited for two days, and when George arrived on the Underground at Notting Hill Gate, she was at the station to meet him.
He thought he was seeing things. The conference’s farewell party had begun in Clacton, continued on the train, and been wound up in the refreshment room at Liverpool Street. Miss Loscoe was wearing a long Paisley coat with what had once been fur round the bottom. On her head was a kind of tarnished turban, which might have sported an aigrette in its 1910 days. She carried a large black beaded bag with a chain handle, and for some reason had put on long amber ear-rings, like drops of congealed machine grease.
Joy and Josephine Page 20