Christmas for the Shop Girls

by Joanna Toye

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Thank you! Oh, thank you!’ Lily almost went to kiss him, then drew back: she didn’t know him that well. ‘And it’ll be going to the war effort now, won’t it, which is as good as it heating a church hall or a children’s home, which was Jim’s other idea. Better, in a way.’

  ‘When you put it like that …’ Sam was smiling. ‘She’s very persuasive, your Lily, isn’t she, Jim?’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’

  ‘It’s the good training I’ve had at Marlow’s,’ said Lily primly. ‘Accentuate the positive.’

  ‘I must be mad,’ said Sam. ‘But OK.’

  The next time they knew for certain that Dora would be out for the evening, and well after a grey dusk had fallen, Sam arrived as they’d arranged. They’d talked it all through. They needed cover of darkness, but in case Jean Crosbie was on one of her nocturnal prowls, they’d also decided Sam shouldn’t park in the street, but at the end of the alley that ran between the backs of the houses. He and Jim would take the coal out the back way in the smaller sacks that Sam would bring with him. It would mean more trips, but they’d attract less attention that way.

  ‘And saves me landing up in the sick bay with a hernia,’ Sam had grinned. ‘All questions asked.’

  Now, with a weight far greater than a couple of hundredweight of coal lifting from his shoulders, Jim fitted the key in the padlock and unhooked the hasp. The door swung open and the shed’s criminal contents were revealed.

  ‘Right,’ said Sam. ‘A human chain’s what we need – well, a production line.’ He handed Lily a sack. ‘Here you go!’

  Crouched in the dark in her oldest of old clothes, Lily held open the sacks while Jim shovelled coal into them as quietly as possible, cursing when a rogue lump slithered away and clattered onto the brick floor. He then carried the sacks to Sam at the back gate; Sam took them down the alley to the jeep, covering them each time with canvas and carefully locking it up. It took an hour, but finally all the dreaded coal was re-bagged and stowed. Nearly there!

  ‘You take the paraffin, Sam, I’ll take the wood,’ Jim offered. ‘God, I’ll be glad to see the back of this lot.’

  Lily held the door wide and Jim began dragging the sack of wood into the yard.

  It was a night of ragged cloud, just as well for their secret operation, because the moon was waxing into a harvest moon. As Jim came out into the open, it shrugged off a ribbon of cloud and shone full on the yard. Lily put out a hand.

  ‘Wait a minute!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s something in there! Underneath the top bits of wood – something else. I saw it. Black – or dark anyway.’

  ‘A spider? A mouse?’

  ‘No!’ Lily was scrabbling in the sack. ‘Bigger than that! And not moving.’ She straightened up with a gasp. ‘Oh, Jim! Look!’

  She was cradling a pair of shoes, turning them over in her hands. The moon was still defying the clouds, and they could all see clearly now. They weren’t black, but a deep plum colour, suede, with a wedge heel, ankle straps and a flower appliqued to the front.

  ‘Beautiful!’ Lily breathed.

  ‘Shoes?’ Sam put the can of paraffin down carefully, so as not to make a noise. ‘What the devil are they doing there?’

  With a sick jolt, Jim remembered Bigley’s words. He’d said there was something in the shed for Jim, his landlady … and his girl. What had it been exactly? To warm the cockles of their hearts.

  ‘They’re another part of the bribe,’ he said in disgust. ‘Bigley buying us off.’

  ‘Well, it’s worked!’ Lily brought the shoes up to her face and laid one against her cheek. ‘I’m bought and paid for!’

  ‘Sam, tell her,’ Jim appealed. ‘She can’t keep them.’

  Sam took one look at Lily’s face and put his hands up – a white flag.

  ‘Hey, don’t involve me!’ he protested.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look,’ said Sam. ‘I’m sticking my neck out for you two already. If you think I’m cruising into Nettleford with a pair of ladies’ shoes as well as a load of coal and firewood, well, I’d have some very awkward questions to answer, I can tell you!’

  ‘You won’t have to.’ Lily was clutching the shoes to her chest. ‘These are not going anywhere!’

  ‘Lily!’ That was Jim, and she turned on him.

  ‘If you think I’m letting these out of my sight … I’ll lie down in front of the jeep if you try to make Sam change his mind!’ She bent and placed them reverently on the ground. ‘New shoes! The first new pair I’ve had since … well, virtually ever! And shoes like these, as well?’

  ‘They might not even fit!’

  Jim really was clutching at dandelions now.

  ‘They’ll fit,’ said Lily, ‘if I have to chop off my toes.’ She slipped off the old plimsolls she’d been wearing and slid her feet into the shoes, damp from the shed, deliciously smooth and cool. She bent and did up the ankle straps, turning her foot this way and that. ‘See? They do fit, anyway! Perfect!’

  They were perhaps half a size too big, but she wasn’t going to admit that. Easily solved with an insole.

  ‘They’ll squeak,’ said Jim accusingly. ‘Shoes you haven’t paid for always do.’

  ‘Superstitious nonsense!’ Lily turned to Sam. ‘Sam? What do you think?’

  ‘I think I’d better get this fuel away from here,’ he answered smoothly. ‘That’s all you asked me to take away. I’m simply obeying orders.’

  Lily could have hugged him, and this time, she did. Overruled, Jim sighed.

  ‘Fine, keep them,’ he said. ‘But you can be the one to explain to your mum how you came by them.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ retorted Lily, ‘that they were a present from an admirer. Meaning you, Jim, of course.’

  ‘Well, Jim must think something of you, that’s all I can say, sacrificing his coupons for a pair of shoes for you!’ was Dora’s comment. ‘But really, Lily, you might have chosen something a bit more practical!’

  ‘Oh, Mum …’

  ‘No, I take it back,’ said Dora, with a smile. ‘You deserve something pretty, love. And I know you’ll look after them.’

  ‘I will,’ said Lily firmly. ‘I know there’ll be no more where these came from.’

  Chapter 27

  When Lily was young, it had seemed as if Christmas would never, ever come. The waiting and the anticipation had been agonising. She’d always written her letters to Father Christmas by the end of November and hoped and hoped for something special on the day, even though the most she’d ever received was a stocking of small gifts with an orange in the toe. What wouldn’t anyone give for an orange now!

  Even as she grew older, the season had retained its magic. Helping her mum to make the Christmas cake and pudding on Stir-Up Sunday, dropping the silver sixpence into the mixture and making a wish; carefully hoarding her pennies and planning her gifts for family and friends. She’d still written a letter to Father Christmas in her head, even when she’d long ceased to believe in him, but instead of a doll or an annual, she’d wished for a dress or, more recently, stockings, always stockings.

  Last year had been different, of course, after the bomb. All she’d wished for then was to get better quickly and to get back to work, but Lily was determined not to look back. There was no time for that anyway.

  September had passed in a blur, trying to outwit Barry Bigley’s machinations. Sam, bless him, had managed to smuggle the coal, firewood and paraffin back onto the Nettleford base undetected. When Lily and Jim had thanked him, he made light of how difficult and just how risky for him it might have been, but Lily knew that she, Jim and by association Dora could never thank him enough.

  October and November sped by the same way, this time in a haze of Christmas stock deliveries. Customers had started calling in daily in the hope of pouncing on goods as soon as they were priced and put out. A stickler for tradition, Mr Marlow didn’t approve of the store’s Christm
as decorations going up until December the first. He turned out to be superstitious, too, because he didn’t want anyone staying after hours to put them up this year. Instead, he’d agreed to pay overtime for a few members of staff to come in on the final Sunday in November to get the store looking festive.

  Last year Sir Douglas Brimble had donated a massive tree from his estate but again, perhaps superstitiously, he didn’t repeat the gesture. Instead Jim had somehow sourced an eight-foot Norway spruce which would be delivered at the weekend and stand inside the main entrance. The boxes of tinsel and baubles were ready to decorate it and every department had their Japanese lanterns and paper chains standing by. The famous grotto – the fashion show catwalk creatively reshaped, whitewashed and decorated with painted gingerbread men and barley sugar sticks – was waiting in the basement. On Sunday Les would wheel it up on a trolley and it would be assembled in its place. Dobbin, the rocking horse, would have to make way for it on Toys, so space had to be made for him on Childrenswear, and on the last Friday in November, Lily and Miss Temple were re-arranging the rails in anticipation.

  Absorbed in the exact placement of a rack of party dresses to show them off to their best advantage, Lily didn’t see the woman approach. It was Miss Temple who noticed her first, and said, in her best Marlow’s tones:

  ‘Good morning, madam. How may I help you?’

  The ‘madam’ made Lily lift her head. Not a regular customer then, because they were addressed by name … no, definitely not! Not a customer at all! It was Mrs Quartermain!

  ‘Erm, if you don’t mind, Miss Temple,’ Lily interrupted, ‘I know this lady. Perhaps I could assist her?’

  ‘As you wish, Miss Collins.’ Miss Temple sounded slightly huffy. ‘I’ll go and see if I can thin out the boys’ waistcoats.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Lily waited for Miss Temple to walk away, then turned to Mrs Quartermain. When they’d met before, in May, she’d been in a light summer dress. Today she was wearing a silver musquash coat over a dark dress and a neat velour hat which almost covered her hair. Lily gave her a nervous smile.

  ‘Mrs Quartermain! This is a surprise. Can I … What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m looking for Gladys,’ said Mrs Quartermain simply. ‘Is she here?’

  Lily’s heart fluttered in her chest.

  ‘She’s not on the sales floor at the moment, I’m afraid.’ Gladys was busy in the stockroom. A long-awaited delivery of jigsaws had arrived, but some of the boxes had come open and she was having to try to sort them out so that on Christmas morning, eager children didn’t find the prow of a naval battleship sailing into the duckpond of their farmyard scene. ‘But she is in today. I’m sure she’d want to see you.’

  ‘I hope so, now I’ve come all this way.’ Mrs Quartermain seemed nervous too. ‘I realise we can’t talk here,’ she added. ‘In fact, you probably shouldn’t be talking to me at all without showing me some matinee jackets or something.’ That was sensitive of her, thought Lily, but then Mrs Quartermain had been in service herself: she knew what was expected. ‘But I presume you get a lunch hour? Could I meet her somewhere?’

  Lily thought quickly. Lyons or the ABC would be too busy, and Peg’s Pantry was too downmarket …

  ‘There’s a place called the Tudor Rose,’ she suggested. Popular with the sort of women who shopped at Marlow’s, it was an olde-worlde tearoom that did so-called light lunches. ‘It’s in Newton Street, not far. Gladys is on early dinner, I know. So she could be there just after twelve?’

  Mrs Quartermain nodded eagerly.

  ‘That’s fine. And Lily – it is Lily, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d like to come too, if you can.’ She smiled, a sweet smile. ‘I got the impression Gladys rather relies on you.’

  Making peace with Miss Temple by offering to take an armful of boys’ waistcoats to their own section of the stockroom, Lily escaped the sales floor and took the back stairs three at a time. At the far depths of the room, in the dim light from the high windows, she found Gladys at a trestle table surrounded by piles of jigsaw pieces. Breathless, Lily passed on the news.

  ‘Here? In Hinton? Today? Oh my gawd!’

  Gladys was so flustered she almost tumbled a pyramid of pieces to the floor.

  ‘Careful!’ Lily dived to save them. ‘I was knocked for six as well! But how did she know where to find you?’ She replaced the jigsaw pieces on the table. ‘We never told her where we worked – we didn’t get that far. I presume when you sent the invitation you told her your home address for a reply, but … do you think she went there and your gran sent her here?’

  Gladys had recovered herself a bit now.

  ‘She won’t have needed to go to my house.’

  ‘What? Then she must have been doing even more detective work than we did!’

  Gladys’s look was a mixture of shame-faced and defiant.

  ‘I wrote again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘After the wedding. And I told her things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘About me. About Bill. I sent her a copy of one of the wedding photos. And I told her Bill would be here all summer while his ship was in refit, in case she wanted to get in touch.’

  ‘Gladys! You never said!’

  ‘No,’ Gladys replied, quite sharply for her, ‘and is it any wonder? After you gave me such a hard time over me sending her a wedding invitation in the first place?’

  ‘Oh, Gladys.’ Lily felt bad. ‘I’m sorry … but what made you write again? You said the day you got married Bill didn’t need his mother. He had you.’

  ‘And he has, of course he has! But I couldn’t let it go, Lily. It didn’t feel right. And when Bill went back to sea, and I was on my own, well, I wrote one more time. You’ve been wonderful, and you are wonderful, such a good friend, and Bill may not need her, never ever, but I … somehow, I think I do!’

  Lily felt even worse. Poor Gladys – all she’d ever wanted was a family and with her own parents dead and Bill back at sea, who did she have? Only her self-centred gran and her ailments – imagine going home to that every night!

  Lily thought guiltily of her own home, where there was and always had been someone to have a chat with or share a laugh and a joke – first her mum and her brothers, now her mum and Jim and these days Sam too, and always something happening – rather too much sometimes! Mrs Quartermain was never going to be able to give Gladys that kind of company and support, but if they could at least be in touch …

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been wonderful at all,’ she said ruefully. ‘Far from it. But look, none of that matters now, or why Bill’s mum didn’t reply to the invitation or get in touch before. She’s here now, right here. She’s come all this way to see you. Let’s see what she’s got to say.’

  Lily had never been inside the Tudor Rose, but it certainly played up to its name: even the ropes of tinsel and paper chains for Christmas couldn’t cover it up. The oak-panelled walls were hung with portraits of Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives and the plate rack was crowded with half-timbered china cottages and hung with tattered silk pennants. An aquatint of Hampton Court Palace hung over the inglenook, and on the mantelpiece costumed dolls of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots cosied up incongruously. Lily looked around for customers of Marlow’s she might have to acknowledge but saw none. Twelve o’clock was a little late for coffee and a little early for lunch, and Mrs Quartermain was waiting for them at one of only three occupied tables. She gave them a wave as they stood in the doorway. Gladys was ashen with nerves and Lily had to give her a shove to propel her forwards.

  Mrs Quartermain stood up to greet them. On the table was a pot of tea and a plate of dainty sandwiches.

  ‘Gladys,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘How could I not?’ stammered Gladys. ‘I’m so pleased you’re here.’

  ‘Let’s sit down.’

  They each took a chair and Mrs Quartermain poured them all a cup of tea. Then everyone t
ook a sip, more for show than for anything else, and, cups down again, Lily and Gladys looked to the older woman.

  ‘I’m sorry not to have given you any notice,’ she said. ‘I was going to write, but after I’d left it so long, I thought you might have changed your mind.’

  ‘Never!’ Gladys spoke from the heart.

  ‘That’s very understanding of you,’ said Mrs Quartermain. ‘But what you also have to understand is that your turning up in London like that – it shook me to bits. When you came that Sunday, and what you said … I could hardly think straight. But I want you to know not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about how hard it must have been for you to track me down, and what was behind it, and how much it showed you care for Billy …’ She corrected herself. ‘For Bill. I’m ashamed of how I sent you away. But as I say, it was the shock.’

  Lily looked at Gladys. It wasn’t really for her to speak, but Gladys was looking dumbstruck. Then Gladys found her voice.

  ‘That was all my fault,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I dragged Lily and Sid into it. I could only see it from my point of view. And I was so fixated on that, what a good thing it’d be for Bill, and me – for everybody, I thought – that I never saw it might be like – well, like putting a bomb under your life. I can see that now, and I’m sorry, I really am.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ Mrs Quartermain’s rings sparkled as she instinctively put out her hand. ‘As soon as you’d gone, I regretted it. I don’t exactly know what I could have done differently, with things as they stood, but … anyway, then you sent the invitation. I took it out every day before the wedding, you know, and looked at it, but I knew I could never attend. I thought that would be the end of it, but when you wrote again, Gladys, with the photograph …’ Her voice shook. ‘It almost broke my heart. My boy. My baby. Married.’

  Gladys’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears and Lily swallowed hard.

  ‘I wanted to write,’ Mrs Quartermain went on. ‘I started so many letters. To you, Gladys, and directly to Bill. But what do you say to your son after twenty years? And I didn’t know, but I suspected, that you’d never told him you were going to look for me. So I might have been putting a … well, a bomb under his life. Under both of yours, if he’d been angry about what you’d done.’