The Shop Girls of Chapel Street (29 page)

‘Fingers crossed,' Evie agreed, stepping to one side to let Violet see the arrival of Alice Barlow's Daimler. ‘Here comes trouble,' she warned.

‘No – she's probably here to pay her dues at last.' Violet said goodbye to Evie, who slipped out as Mrs Barlow entered, but one look at her customer's angry face soon told her that her guess was wrong.

The bell shook violently as Alice Barlow slammed the door behind her, producing a jangling noise that echoed throughout the building. She looked wild eyed and in disarray – her hair dishevelled and the buttons of her mauve jacket wrongly fastened.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Barlow, how can I—' Violet began.

‘Hark at you!' Alice Barlow raised her voice to a high, scornful pitch. ‘To look at you, butter wouldn't melt. But you can drop the act right now, you sly customer!'

Violet steadied herself against the counter. ‘I'm sorry …?'

‘I'm telling you – it's a waste of time pretending not to know what this is about.' Alice Barlow advanced quickly and slammed her handbag down. ‘How long did you imagine you could keep it a secret – this carrying-on behind my back?'

‘Mrs Barlow, please—'

‘Did you honestly believe that it wouldn't get back to me – the perfume and the excuses, the secret assignations?'

Assignations? The word seemed ridiculously overblown and at last Violet found her voice. ‘Mrs Barlow, if you want to know the truth about the eau de cologne – believe me, I didn't want to take it. It's at the back of a drawer ready to be given to a raffle. And I've never made any arrangement with Mr Barlow, secret or otherwise – quite the opposite.'

‘That's right – I knew you'd try to blame Colin.' Alice Barlow's fury seemed to roll like a high wave over the counter towards Violet. ‘That's what girls like you do, isn't it? You lead a man on and wheedle presents out of him then you turn the tables by threatening to go to his wife. What is it that you're after now? Is it money? Well, I can see straight through you and your nasty ways.'

‘It's not true.' Violet sensed that the wave was about to break and crash down on her and she braced herself. ‘I haven't done anything.'

Eyes bulging, Alice Barlow leaned heavily on the counter and ignored the fact that her raised voice had brought Ida and Muriel hurrying down from the workshop. ‘Three words,' she hissed at Violet. ‘Listen carefully: Ash Tree House.'

A cold shudder ran through Violet. ‘Mrs Barlow, please—'

‘There! What's your answer to that? You don't have one. Ash Tree House on Monday afternoon. You set a trap by enticing my husband out of sight into the Kingsleys' garage but luckily he realized what you were up to and managed to escape your clutches.'

Outrage threatened to choke Violet. ‘No. That's not how it was.'

‘He didn't want to tell me at first but I got it out of him eventually – the reason why he came home with a cut on his face that evening.'

There was no reasoning with the woman. Violet sensed she would be swept off her feet and dragged under by a strong current and there was nothing she could do about it. Ida and Muriel stood at the bottom of the stairs, trying to take it all in.

‘Do you deny it?' Alice shouted.

‘I do.' Violet's answer was faint and her chest tightened with fear.

‘Which is why I made sure to find a witness,' her accuser went on triumphantly. ‘Guttersnipes always twist things around, but you won't get away with it this time.'

‘Mrs Barlow, please calm down.' With a worried glance at Violet, Muriel stepped in. ‘We need to talk this through. I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation.'

Alice turned on her with a vengeance. ‘Miss Beanland, did you or did you not send this girl out to Ash Tree House on Monday afternoon?'

‘I did.' Muriel accepted that this much was true. ‘I asked Violet to deliver a dress to Mrs Kingsley.'

‘And did she do it promptly?'

‘No, indeed. Violet was delayed.' Muriel fell silent and Ida took her turn to intervene.

‘There was an accident. Violet had blood all over her,' Ida explained.

Alice Barlow puffed out her chest and the triumphant expression took over her whole body. ‘Her blood or my husband's?'

‘Mr Barlow's name wasn't mentioned,' Ida admitted as she turned towards Violet, who simply shook her head.

‘You see – she has no answer. What does she say to Colin's injuries? That happened when he resisted her advances and she couldn't get her own way.'

‘That doesn't sound like Violet,' Muriel insisted. ‘You mentioned a witness, Mrs Barlow. May I ask who it is?'

‘Violet, will you tell them who else was there, or shall I?' Alice Barlow prompted, a glint of triumph in her eyes.

‘No one,' Violet whispered. She'd been alone and terrified out of her wits – Barlow had made sure of that.

‘Wrong!' The stinging contradiction preceded the breaking of the wave and the deluge. ‘Colin had been out shooting with a companion. Unbeknown to you, Violet Wheeler, Thomas Kingsley was present throughout, watching every sly move you made.'

‘Typical!' Ida bustled around the shop, rearranging stock that didn't need to be moved, trying to get her thoughts back in order. ‘Who does Alice Barlow think she is, throwing her weight around and flinging accusations here, there and everywhere?'

‘Without a scrap of real evidence,' Muriel added. She kept a wary eye on Violet who stood transfixed behind the counter like a rabbit caught in car headlights, trying to piece together the sentences she should have said to Alice Barlow and the truths she should have told. Too late, as it turned out.

‘That's what they do, these people,' Ida fumed. ‘They gang up on us, knowing we can't answer back.'

‘She's a woman who's never satisfied with her lot in life and in a way who can blame her? She's had a lot to put up with being married to Colin Barlow.' Sad rather than angry, Muriel judged it best not to address Violet directly until she'd come out of her trance of her own accord.

Ida displayed the Closed sign on the shop door then gave the window blind a vicious tug. ‘Can you believe it – she actually told us to send Violet packing on the strength of her husband's rotten lies? As if we'd do that!'

‘We wouldn't,' Muriel agreed.

‘No, we sent
her
packing instead. And who cares if we never get another penny out of her? Not me, for one. She doesn't pay her bills anyway. We can do without her.'

Violet heard Ida and Muriel's spirited defence as if through a thick pane of glass – faint and oddly disembodied. She was still too overwhelmed by the look of hatred that her adversary had thrown at her as she'd stormed from the premises to make sense of what was going on around her.

‘Can we, though? That's the question.' Muriel knew that a lost customer – even one as slow to pay as Alice Barlow – could affect them badly. ‘I can just picture her at her tea dances and soirées, recommending a new dressmaker and telling lies about us to Ella Kingsley and such like. That could be very bad for Jubilee in the long run.'

‘Don't worry – I'll leave Jubilee and find another job, somewhere a long way away, where nobody knows me.' Violet broke out of her daze and rashly volunteered the first solution that came to mind.

‘You will not!'

‘Don't be daft!' Muriel and Ida spoke simultaneously.

‘No, you're staying here with us,' Ida insisted. ‘We won't be bullied by Alice Barlow.'

‘Or done down by her lies,' Muriel added.

‘Lies that she'll no doubt spread far and wide, but eventually people will see them for what they are and everyone will take your side just as we have.'

Ida indicated that this was the end of the matter, but Violet wasn't so sure. She dreaded being the centre of such a scandal, even with Ida and Muriel's support, especially the sideways, salacious glances from men in the street and girls whispering gleefully behind her back. ‘I'm not sure I can face it,' she confessed tremulously.

‘It's either that or run away,' Ida pointed out. ‘And how would that help? It would only add fuel to Alice Barlow's fire. She'd win hands down.'

It was Muriel who, after a short pause, offered a temporary answer. ‘Listen to this, Violet. What do you say to staying out of the shop for the time being and spending your days in the workroom? There's plenty for you to do up there and that way you wouldn't have to face customers until this has all blown over.'

Ida disagreed. ‘I say go on as usual,' she argued. ‘You know the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones.”'

This is more than words that I have to overcome
, Violet thought miserably.
This is a deliberate attempt to ruin me.
She remembered again Alice Barlow's uncontrolled fury, trying to imagine what version of Monday's events her husband had seen fit to give her and how it had come to light in the first place.

‘I'll sleep on it,' she told Ida and Muriel, feeling the weight of the world sink onto her shoulders. ‘In the morning I'll decide what to do for the best.'

Within hours, Violet's fears had come true and word had got around. Alf Shipley knocked off from work that evening and went down to the Green Cross with his friend, Kenneth Leach. There, in the cosy confines of the snug, with its dartboard in the corner and men playing dominoes on copper-topped tables, Les Craven and the others overheard the tale of Colin Barlow having to fight off Violet Wheeler's unwanted advances. Les sloped off from the pub to meet Stan outside Brinkley Baths and pass on the story soon after. Stan blew his top then cycled up to Valley Road to find Eddie and warn him before the rumours got out of hand.

‘Eddie's not here – he's working tonight,' Ida informed Stan warily. She invited him in and sat him down at the kitchen table to find out what was the matter.

‘Violet's got herself into hot water,' he explained, out of hearing of Ida and Eddie's parents. ‘They say she's fallen for Colin Barlow's fancy promises and his missis got wind of it. Eddie should know there's bound to be trouble.'

‘This is Violet we're talking about,' Ida reminded him, fizzing like a bottle of shaken lemonade when the cap is taken off. ‘Anyway, it's old news. Muriel and I were there when Alice Barlow blew her top.'

‘Fancy that. Anyway, I didn't believe a word of it,' Stan said stoutly. ‘I gave Les a box around the ears for spreading lies and warned him we wouldn't pick him for tomorrow's match if he wasn't careful.'

‘Good, I'm glad.'

‘You know how these things get passed around, though. Before too long, Barlow's the hero and Violet's the villain of the piece.'

‘Yes,' Ida agreed as she got to her feet. She was already forming a plan to prove Alice Barlow wrong. ‘Violet doesn't deserve any of this. If something bad happened at Ash Tree House, there's not a shadow of doubt in my mind that Colin Barlow was the real culprit. Just you wait and see.'

The jetsam of Violet's life was flung here and there inside her own head. Foremost amongst the wreckage was the hot shame she felt that Colin Barlow saw her as the sort of girl who would fall for his charms. Was it the way she acted, she wondered, or the way she dressed? How might she have behaved differently to give him the clear message to leave her alone?

Perhaps Uncle Donald had been right all along. She recalled his dry, clipped voice warning her that her carryings on with Stan would get her name dragged into the mud and that she was heading for the gutter where she belonged. Well, his prophesy had come true and she couldn't rid herself of the conclusion that she should have followed his advice and chosen hymn singing and Bible study over lipstick and nice clothes.

There is only one thing for it
, Violet decided, alone in her room and without anyone to help her see sense.
I will pack up and leave after all. Whatever Ida and Muriel say, I know that Jubilee will be better off without me.

She took dresses from the rail in the niche beside the chimney breast and began to fold them and place them in a pile on her bed until an urgent knocking on the shop door interrupted her and she went down to open it.

‘You need to watch out – Alice Barlow barged into our shop spreading nasty rumours about you,' Evie began breathlessly and without preliminaries as she pushed past Violet and stumbled inside. ‘Sybil couldn't get a word in edgeways.'

As Muriel's predictions flickered into life and quickly flared out of control, Violet felt a jolt in the pit of her stomach. ‘That happened faster than I expected,' she murmured. ‘Mrs Barlow must have come up to you straight after leaving here.'

‘We know it's not true,' Evie went on, chin up and with her young, innocent face set in determined lines. ‘Sybil tried to say as much, but you know what Mrs Barlow is like. She claims she has a witness and that she'll turn all your customers against you if Muriel and Ida decide to keep you on.'

‘She can't do that if I pack up and leave,' Violet said, her mind more firmly made up.

‘You can't do that!' Evie gasped in alarm. ‘Jubilee is where you belong.'

They gazed around the dimly lit shop at the shelves stacked with haberdashery goods – cards of lace, spools of ribbon, boxes of buttons, Maud in her colourful house dress in the far corner – and at Gertie in the window, resplendent in her beautiful wedding gown, every stitch lovingly sewn. For a moment Violet felt dizzy and she leaned against the wall.

‘You can't go,' Evie repeated.

‘What else did Mrs Barlow say?' Violet asked faintly. Seeing the drastic effect she was having, Violet's informant was reluctant to go on. ‘It doesn't matter. It was all lies.'

‘Tell me, please.'

‘Well then, she used a word you read in the newspapers and in books. She said you “seduced” Mr Barlow.'