The Shop Girls of Chapel Street (10 page)

Within seconds Eddie had dashed into the house and picked up the necessary parcel from Ida. ‘How about that – she had it ready and waiting,' he reported to Violet as he invited her to hop onto the pillion seat.

There was no time for second thoughts – they were off along Valley Road, with Ida standing at the window, a smile playing on her lips, watching the two lovebirds fly.

Mrs Barlow's parcel was safely carried to Bilton Grange.

‘What's this?' Colin Barlow asked as he took delivery and turned over the brown package tied up with string. The owner of the thriving chain of chemist shops didn't bother with niceties unless they suited his purposes. He was tall and slim with wavy fair hair and a trim moustache and this evening he was dressed in fawn slacks and a blue blazer, with a yellow silk cravat that gave him a dandyish, matinée-idol air.

‘It's for me!' Alice Barlow trilled, appearing behind her husband in the wide doorway of their elegant, modern house. ‘I asked for a jacket to be altered and here it is, right on time!'

‘Altered – how?' Colin tussled with Alice as she tried to seize the parcel. He seemed annoyed for a reason that neither Violet nor Eddie could fathom.

‘I've had it shortened, Colin – not that it's of any interest to you.' Finally, wresting the jacket from him, she tore at the paper as if taking out her bad mood on it.

‘It might fit you better if you'd had it let out at the seams.'

As Colin had intended, his ungallant remark caught his wife off guard and reduced her to instant tears. She rushed across the hallway, out of sight. Lightly stroking his moustache, he raised an eyebrow at Eddie. ‘Never criticize a lady's weight,' he advised mockingly before looking Violet up and down. ‘Not that it would be necessary in your case,' he added.

Their job done, Eddie and Violet beat a hasty retreat. ‘What did you think of Errol Flynn back there?' Eddie said over his shoulder as they left Bilton Grange behind.

‘Not a lot,' Violet answered. In fact, she wondered how it was possible for two people to be so obviously miserable, living in a grand house with a Daimler in the drive and flower beds decked out like a public park.

‘Me neither.' Once they'd dropped the parcel off and begun their journey home Eddie drove more slowly than usual up onto the moor top, wanting to make their time together last longer. When their route home took them past Little Brimstone, he turned once again to ask if she wanted to stop by what he now thought of as their glen.

Violet smiled and nodded. After all, who cared if she had to stop up past midnight to sew those buttonholes? ‘You're a bad influence,' she grumbled as they dismounted and made their way to the same smooth rock as before. ‘I'm meant to be doing other things at home, not out enjoying myself.'

‘You are, though?' he checked tentatively as he sat next to her. ‘Enjoying yourself?'

‘More than I should be,' she confessed guiltily. ‘Considering it's no time at all since we lost Aunty Winnie.'

‘Well, I'm glad you came, Violet.' He sat back, legs dangling over the edge of the rock, casting sideways glances at her and soaking up the moment.

‘I'm sorry if I've been stand-offish,' she said, catching his eye and smiling briefly. He wasn't talking as much as last time and it fell to her to fill the gaps. ‘I've told Ida I'll be forced to back out of
Mistaken Identity
, what with keeping an eye on Uncle Donald and having to earn a bit extra. So I won't be coming to any more rehearsals.'

‘Now it's me that's sorry,' he admitted, leaning forward to gaze down at the mossy green rocks and tumbling water of the glen. He gave Violet the space to carry on talking if she wanted to. If she didn't, he felt that very soon he would make a move to put an arm around her shoulder and draw her to him.

Violet was ready to prattle on but then the peace of their surroundings registered with her and she too fell silent. She joined Eddie in gazing at the beauty below them – water drops falling on ferns, glistening spiders' webs stretching from branch to branch of green saplings, the gurgling stream. She felt his hand reach out to clasp hers.

‘I've waited a long time for this,' he told her plainly and simply.

‘What do you mean?'

‘For us to come here again, not having to talk, just sitting.'

That was the exact moment when she fell in love, Violet realized afterwards. Eddie saying there was no need to talk, holding her hand, looking into her eyes. She wanted to tell him how she felt but it seemed too soon and instead he kissed her and held her close.

There was a sliver of silver moon in a clear sky, a breeze that made her shiver.

‘Come on, I'll take you home,' Eddie said, offering his hand to help her stand. ‘At this rate I'll be getting you into trouble and that's the last thing I want to do.'

I should be in seventh heaven
, Violet told herself as she sat at her sewing machine in the front room of number 11, the wireless playing in the background. The long summer evening meant that she didn't need to turn on the gas mantle and instead used the daylight to complete the close work on Sybil's rosebud blouse. Buttonholes were complicated – you had to cut out a small rectangle of material and place it right sides together against the edge of the right front of the garment. The next stage was to machine-stitch a still smaller rectangle that you then cut into with a razor blade before turning the whole thing right side out. Then – eureka! – once you'd ironed it flat you had your finished buttonhole.

‘Carefully does it,' Aunty Winnie used to say for a job such as this. ‘One little slip-up and the whole thing is ruined.'

As the sun sank and dust mites danced in its last rays, Violet banished a sharp regret that she wasn't at Hadley Institute rehearsing her part for the Players. She concentrated hard until she'd completed six of the eight buttonholes then paused to look around the room at the bric-a-brac that her aunt had collected – a photograph of Violet as a baby taking pride of place on the mantelpiece, alongside a Minton vase with a pattern of red roses and a clock that no one had bothered to wind since Winnie died.

I
am
happy
, she told herself, recalling the soaring feeling she'd had when Eddie took her hand and tenderly kissed her. Floating and drifting, pressing her lips to his, not daring to believe.

But then again it's not right to feel this way – not so soon and not while Uncle Donald is miserable, not to mention the difficulty over paying the rent. It's wrong of me to fill my head with Eddie and his dark brown eyes, thick, long lashes and that way he has of looking up from under his fine straight brows, a slight smile on his lips.

As Violet drifted off once again into her happy memory of last night's kiss while the wireless played a lively jazz tune, she hardly noticed her uncle's footsteps descending the stairs and it was only the opening of the door that brought her crashing back down to earth.

‘What the dickens …?' he grumbled, striding across the room and abruptly switching off the wireless. ‘The window's open. Do you want the whole world to hear that din?'

Anxious to avoid another pointless argument, Violet bit her tongue and went back to her sewing.

‘It's bad enough listening to your contraption rattling on without the wireless belting out that racket,' Donald continued. ‘It's giving me a headache.'

‘This extra work will help us pay the rent,' Violet explained then continued with short bursts on the machine. ‘I'll be finished in half an hour, I promise.'

‘Then you'll be gadding off as usual, I expect.' Donald's next step was to go over to the window and slam it shut.

‘Could you move out of the way of the light, please?' Violet asked, growing more exasperated but not anticipating the explosion that followed.

‘Can't a man go where he likes in his own house?' He turned from the window and advanced on Violet, towering over her. ‘I'm asking you a civil question – who are you to stop me standing where I like, doing whatever I like?'

Sitting in his shadow, Violet found herself trembling. Her uncle's face was sunken, the skin pulled taut across his sharp cheekbones, the corners of his mouth downturned beneath his grey moustache and there was a trace of spittle on his bottom lip. Nevertheless she stood up for herself. ‘I don't call that a civil question,' she said quietly.

‘Don't answer me back,' he snarled. ‘I won't have it, not from the likes of you.'

‘What do you mean, the likes of me?' It was no good – Violet felt herself drawn in despite her earlier resolution. ‘What have I done wrong?'

‘Ask anyone on Brewery Road and all the way up Chapel Street what you've done wrong. You'll find plenty of people willing to give it to you chapter and verse.' Donald thumped his fist on the work area surrounding Violet's machine, dislodging a box of pins that fell onto the rug and scattered everywhere. ‘There's your carrying on with Stan Tankard for a start.'

Violet stood up. It was his sneering, holier-than-thou tone that angered her more than anything. ‘Once and for all, Uncle Donald, can you please tell me what you have against Stan?'

‘Oh, so you don't mind having your name dragged into the dirt along with his?'

‘A girl can have a lark with him,' Violet insisted. ‘What's wrong with that?'

‘There's plenty wrong. He's got himself a bad name, the way he struts around reckoning he's cock of the walk. And what is he really? A loom tuner at Kingsley's, that's all.'

‘No. Stan's got a job as a lifeguard at Brinkley Baths as well,' Violet said before realizing that this would set the seal on her uncle's bad opinion.

‘That's why you're so keen on swimming all of a sudden, is it?' Donald's sneering contempt reached a new peak. ‘Those lifeguard costumes are downright indecent, if you ask me …'

‘No one did ask you,' she muttered.

‘Not to mention the skimpy outfits you girls wear these days. It proves what I'm saying – you and Stan Tankard are heading for the gutter, which is where you both belong.'

Incensed and with trembling hands, Violet put away her sewing things. ‘Aunty Winnie must be turning in her grave,' she whispered. ‘You'd never dare say such things if she was still alive.'

Donald took a step back and a look of shame flickered in his eyes. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Well, she's not,' he declared with renewed bitterness. ‘So it's me you have to answer to now, not her.'

‘Worse luck,' Violet said after a long pause. She put her scissors into her sewing basket then crouched to pick up the scattered pins from the rug. ‘Don't worry, I'll do my best to stay out of your way from now on, Uncle Donald.'

‘Good job too,' he said, taken aback by her sudden capitulation.

‘It'll be best for both of us.' Her heart felt sore and her head was in a spin as one by one she put the pins back in their box and Donald slammed the door behind him.

‘I thought you'd be pleased.' Muriel studied Violet's sad expression when the younger girl called in at Jubilee to collect some mending work during her dinner break next day. ‘According to Ida, this is what you've been hankering after – sewing more zips and hems, and such like.'

‘It is.' Violet tried to put on a cheerful front, though she'd slept badly and she still felt unhappy after the argument with her uncle. ‘I'll do a good job, I promise.'

‘Have you got time for a cuppa?' the older woman asked, coming out from behind her counter.

Just being in the shop raised Violet's spirits – surrounded by cards of lace trim, rayon undergarments, racks of embroidery thread, calfskin gloves and packets of silk stockings, she felt in her element. ‘Yes, please. I've got fifteen minutes before Mr Hutchinson sends out the troops.'

‘Tea and biscuits, it is.' Fashionably neat in her straight grey skirt and a fitted lilac top, with grey leather shoes that had a small heel and a bar across the front, Muriel led the way into a small kitchen at the back of the shop. ‘Ida's out getting her hair cut at the new hairdresser's on Canal Road, but I can nip through to serve a customer if I hear the shop bell ring.'

‘How's she having it done?'

‘Shorter, in an Eton crop. You know Ida – she's daring in that respect.'

‘It'll suit her,' Violet predicted. Sitting down to accept her cup of tea, she was startled to feel tears well up and trickle down her cheeks before she could stop them.

‘Oh, love, what is it?' Muriel asked.

‘I'm sorry, I haven't got a hankie.'

‘Take mine.' Muriel's handkerchief was edged with lace, with a blue flower embroidered in one corner. She gave it to her then rested a hand on Violet's shoulder. ‘What's the trouble? Would you like to let me in on it?'

‘It's Uncle Donald,' Violet sobbed. ‘I don't know what's got into him ever since Aunty Winnie died. He's shut his barber's shop and now we're struggling to find the rent. He's coming down on me like a ton of bricks, saying I belong in the gutter and I don't know what else.' Her troubles poured out until at last she blew her nose and pulled herself together. ‘I'm sorry, it's just that I don't have anyone to turn to.'

Muriel nodded. ‘I know. It can be a lonely life without brothers and sisters. I look at the Briggs girls and what they've been through, especially Margie when she had her baby and there was no father in the picture. That was a bad time for the poor girl – she went to ground at her granddad's house on Ada Street and for a time things looked bleak. But it all turned out perfectly well because she had Lily and Evie to help her. Now Margie is nicely set up in an office job and her little girl is happy playing all day with Lily and Annie's bairns. That's what having a big family does – it pulls you through the hard times.'