The Shop Girls of Chapel Street (12 page)

‘Notice of what?' Violet gasped as Fisher dipped one hand into his coat pocket and produced a long buff envelope.

‘Eviction,' he said, his facial expression giving nothing away.

‘Eviction!' Violet echoed in a faltering voice. It felt as though a hole had opened up in the floor and she was falling down it.

‘You have two days to pack up and hand back your keys,' Fisher explained. The boards beneath his feet creaked as he made his way out into the corridor then through the front door. ‘Mr Gill wants you out of here, lock, stock and barrel, by Wednesday teatime, and that's that.'

The door slammed and Violet ran upstairs to her uncle's room. She found him sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched and resting his elbows on his knees, sinewy arms bare and a cigarette hanging from his right hand.

‘Where's my money?' she demanded, hardly able to breathe. She rushed at him, inhaling acrid smoke and pushing him with both hands, only to meet a strong resistance from his wiry frame. ‘What have you done with it?'

Donald gritted his teeth and let the cigarette drop to the floor where it glowed unheeded on the bare boards. ‘Calm down. It's only a few measly shillings,' he sneered.

‘You stole it, didn't you?' Furious beyond belief, Violet wanted to shake him until he told her the truth. ‘I worked hard for that money. It was meant to keep a roof over our heads.'

‘It wouldn't, though, would it?' Donald stood up and went to the window, keeping his back turned. ‘We had to stump up the whole amount or we were out on our ear – you heard what Alec Fisher said.'

‘You were listening at the keyhole!' If Violet had thought that her fury couldn't get any worse, she was wrong. ‘There was I, hunting for my hard-earned cash, which you'd filched from the tin, and even then you didn't let on!' Giving a disgusted sigh, she ran out of words to describe her feelings.

Without looking at her, Donald dipped into his trouser pockets, drew out some coins and scattered them on the floor. They rolled in every direction. A sixpence came to rest at Violet's feet while a threepenny bit lodged itself between the floorboards.

‘Why?' Violet asked. The sight of the stolen money on which she'd built her hopes somehow altered her mood. She swung from anger to the edge of sorrowful tears as she raised her gaze from the coins to her uncle silhouetted against the net curtains, then on to the tall mahogany chest of drawers and across the bed with its duck-egg-blue quilt, on again to the solid wardrobe against the far wall. ‘Don't you want us to stay here?' she asked tremulously.

With his back stubbornly to her, Donald felt in his shirt pocket for another cigarette. He lit it with a click of his silver lighter, a gift from Winnie to mark his fiftieth birthday.

That was exactly it, Violet realized and a cold shock ran through her. Her Uncle Donald wasn't taking any chances – he'd stolen her money not because he wanted to fritter it away but to make quite sure that they were turned out of Brewery Road.

‘That was a wicked thing to do,' she said in a defeated voice.

‘It's all settled,' he said in a tone hard as steel. He still refused to look at her, keeping his back turned and staring out through the net curtain, even when Violet broke down and sobbed her heart out. ‘From now on we'll have no more to do with one another. We have two days to pack up our things and leave.'

Violet spent the night in desolate confusion. How had it come to this? Just a few short weeks ago her life had been carefree, with only the cut and fit of her Gala Queen dress to worry about and the most important decision on her horizon whether or not to wear a string of pearls to set it off.

Don't gild the lily
, Winnie had advised. Now, in the darkness of her bedroom, Violet yearned to hear those no-nonsense tones and to see those eyes gazing fondly at her. What would her aunty have said in a situation like this? What would she have done?

There's no use moping about feeling sorry for yourself
would have been her common-sense line.
Worse things happen at sea.

That's just it, Aunty Winnie. I feel that I'm all at sea and drowning. You don't know how cruel Uncle Donald is to me now. He's shut me out, thrown me overboard and he doesn't care if I sink or swim.

Grieving for lost happiness and afraid of the misery that lay ahead, Violet didn't bother to undress or go to bed. She sat by the window, looking out at the backs of the houses on Chapel Street, at the low stone outhouses and ash pits, the small yards and the back lane running all the way up the hill to Overcliffe Road. She sat through the night, watching clouds scud across the black sky, wishing things could stay as they were, but knowing that they never would, with a cold fear of what tomorrow might bring.

It wasn't by chance that Eddie ran into Violet on her way to work next morning. In fact, he'd planned the meeting down to the last detail. If Violet had to be at Hutchinson's for half past eight, she would have to leave home five minutes beforehand, rounding the corner of Brewery Road onto Chapel Street and passing the doorway of Jubilee with two minutes to spare.

‘What are you looking so starry-eyed about?' Ida had challenged Eddie the night before as she sat with Harold on the settee squashed into a corner of the kitchen at Valley Road.

In fact, Eddie had been working out how and when he would intercept Violet and ask her out to the pictures on Friday night, his next night off. ‘Nothing. I don't know what you mean,' he'd answered guiltily.

‘Oh no, butter wouldn't melt!' Ida had shot him down in flames. ‘You're dreaming of a certain somebody, I can tell.'

Eddie had cast a look at Harold that said,
Help me out of a tight corner, pal
, but the hoped-for back-up hadn't arrived. Instead, Harold had buried his head in his newspaper, reading the reports on Saturday's matches. ‘You'd better hurry up and ask her out before someone else we know tries again,' Ida had chivvied as she cosied up to her fiancé.

‘All right, I will,' he'd agreed, feeling more confident.

But as he parked his bike and waited, his heart hammered and he ran through the reasons why Violet might turn him down. For a start, he wasn't much of a catch in terms of job and prospects. Although he'd been a bright enough spark at Lowtown Junior School, nerves had got the better of him on the day of his school entrance exam and he'd failed. Painting and decorating brought in steady money, it was true, but he'd climbed onto the back of his dad's business and hadn't struck out by himself the way he should. As for working at the Victory – that was too new for him to know whether or not it would lead anywhere.

‘Now then, Eddie.' Marjorie broke into his chain of thought as she cheerfully laboured up the hill. ‘What errand has Ida got you lined up for this fine morning?'

His vague answer was lost in a throng of uniformed schoolchildren en route to the grammar school on Westgate Road, and when the pavement cleared there was only Evie and her married sister, Lily, deep in conversation, hurrying by with a smile. Moments later Violet emerged from the alleyway between numbers 10 and 12 and hurried on up the street, head down.

Eddie kicked himself – he should have realized Violet would cut off the corner by using the alley as a short cut. Now he had to run to catch her up. In her pale blue dress and cream cardigan, Violet was a slim, dark-haired figure going against the tide of another group of schoolchildren, hesitating, looking round and finally catching sight of him, stopping to wait.

The moment he saw her face he knew something was badly wrong. She looked pale and when she tried to smile, her large, heavily lashed eyes stayed sad. ‘What's up?' he asked without exchanging greetings.

Eddie showing up out of the blue gave Violet a straw to clutch at after a night spent being tugged in all directions by the strong current of her conflicting emotions. She didn't think to question what he was doing there at this time in the morning. ‘You won't believe it,' she declared. ‘Our landlord has only sent me and Uncle Donald packing. We have to be out of the house by tomorrow night.'

‘You don't say.'

‘It's true.' Violet gave a short sigh. ‘I was hoping Mr Gill would give us a bit of leeway over the rent we owed, but you know what landlords are like – all they think about is having the money in their wallets.'

Slowly Eddie gathered his wits. ‘This is a right carry-on. Have you got somewhere to move on to?'

‘Not yet. It'll be me by myself, though. Uncle Donald has washed his hands of me.'

‘Never.' Again, Eddie found that his words didn't do justice to the disaster facing Violet. ‘Why would he do that?'

‘You'd have to ask him.' She sighed again. ‘All I know is that ever since Aunty Winnie died, he hasn't wanted anything to do with me.'

‘I could try to talk him round if you like.' Eddie suggested the first thing that came to mind, but when Violet emphatically shook her head he quickly moved on. ‘Or else I can see if anyone has a spare room for you to rent?'

At this Violet brightened a little. ‘Yes please, Eddie. That's good of you. And I'll pass the word around myself. Marjorie might know someone for a start, or even Mr Hutchinson if I catch him the right side out.'

‘Don't worry, you'll soon find somewhere.'

‘Be sure to let people know that I'm no trouble,' she said, raising her head and setting it at a more defiant angle. ‘I'll keep the place clean and tidy and I'll guarantee to pay my rent on time.'

Eddie grinned. ‘They'll be queuing up to take you,' he assured her, realizing that he hadn't got round to asking Violet out. When he saw Ben Hutchinson step out of his shop onto the pavement and look daggers down the street at the two of them, he knew it was time to go. ‘Ta-ta for now, Violet. And try not to worry.'

‘Easier said than done,' she said, bracing herself for a day behind the counter with an employer who looked as if he'd sucked on a lemon. The wall clock would tick away the hours until she found herself and her suitcase pounding the pavements, knocking on doors in a desperate search for somewhere to stay.

Word of Violet's dire situation soon spread and at half past twelve that day Marjorie popped her head around the door of the grocery shop to commiserate.

‘Here's a nice scone for your tea tonight,' she told Violet, bringing with her the sweet smell of baking. Her dumpy figure and flour-coated overall were matched by an old-fashioned cottage-loaf hairstyle. All aspects of Marjorie's appearance gave away the fact that she lived and breathed the bread, teacakes and Victoria sponges that made up her daily routine.

Violet took the proffered paper bag and thanked her.

‘I'm surprised at Donald Wheeler,' Marjorie confided with a disapproving shake of her head. ‘Yes, he's always had the reputation of a straight-laced, dyed-in-the-wool chapel-goer, but I expected if you scratched the surface you'd find a soft heart in there somewhere.'

‘He hasn't got over Aunty Winnie,' Violet explained. ‘He's not been himself lately.'

‘Good for you, love, for sticking up for him,' was Marjorie's response. ‘And I promise I'll keep my ears open for you. If I hear of a room going begging I'll be sure to let you know.'

This was the pattern throughout the afternoon – customers coming in and offering sympathy, badmouthing money-grabbing landlords and telling Violet that a similar thing had happened to a cousin or a friend. ‘Don't you worry, love, you may be out on your ear but people don't end up without a roof over their heads, not round here,' was the general opinion, which was some comfort to Violet but didn't bring her closer to a concrete solution.

‘Cheer up,' Ben Hutchinson told her more than once as closing time drew near. ‘With a face like that you'll curdle the milk.'

Forcing a smile for the mill workers who poured out of Calvert's and Kingsley's and called in for pork pies and cured ham for their teas, Violet was relieved to stay busy. She served potted beef to Frank Bielby, Wensleydale cheese to Kathy and Jacob's Cream Crackers to Alf Shipley, dressed in the pale grey uniform that the Barlows provided, with black gloves tucked into his belt and peaked hat under his arm. Out on the street she caught a glimpse of Colin Barlow himself ensconced on the back seat of his gleaming car, the window wound down to allow him to flick cigarette ash onto the pavement.

‘That'll be nine pence halfpenny,' Violet told the chauffeur after he'd added more items. He was her last customer and when she followed him out of the shop to raise the awning with the long pole kept by the door, she found herself skewered by the sharp gaze of his boss who had stepped out of the car to grind the stub of his cigarette into the pavement.

From under the brim of his fawn trilby hat Barlow looked her up and down, taking in her blue apron and rolled-up sleeves, clearly not concerned that his scrutiny made her uncomfortable. ‘Weren't you this year's Gala Queen?'

‘I was,' she answered, red in the face and awkwardly holding the pole in both hands.

‘Hmm,' the shop owner concluded with a shake of his head. Alf Shipley held open the door and Barlow got back in the car.

What did he mean by ‘hmm'? Violet wanted to know. Did he mean that he was disappointed to see that the glamorous Whitsuntide Queen turned out to be a lowly shop girl, because that's what she'd read into it. Anyway, who was Colin Barlow to lord it over people, or any of the mill bosses and shop owners round here, for that matter? Violet hadn't been brought up to kowtow and just because she served cream crackers and Colman's mustard to the man's chauffeur, she wasn't about to start.

Still tetchy over the Barlow incident, Violet was inside the shop taking off her apron when Muriel rapped her knuckles against the glass panel and Violet unbolted the door. ‘I'm sorry, we're closed – it's gone half five,' she began but Muriel breezed in and spoke over her.