The Girls from Greenway

by Elizabeth Woodcraft

‘Well, am I impressing you?’ he said.

  She let her eyes roll over him slowly. She enjoyed this kind of conversation. He was wearing an expensive sheepskin coat, open to show a white polo neck underneath. It was a fine-knit polo neck. You never got that much style in the Saracen’s. She looked back at his face. He smiled. ‘What’s the verdict?’

  ‘It’s a good look. Of course, I haven’t seen your lower half.’

  ‘Haven’t you?’ he said. ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘I’ll just get the vodka,’ she said. She couldn’t get drawn into that sort of conversation when she was behind the bar.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said, as she pushed the glass towards him, ‘tonight we have ice.’

  ‘I would say, “Have one for yourself”,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t like to think of you drinking alone.’

  She looked at him. ‘Oh I shan’t be drinking alone,’ she said. ‘Take this G&T to that table over there and I’ll be with you in a jiffy. I think I’ve done enough behind the bar for one night.’

  He glanced across to the table, then back at Doreen. He smiled knowingly. Oh, she liked that kind of confidence, that self-assurance. He picked up her G&T and took his own drink at the same time. ‘See you in a minute.’ He moved through the crowd like Moses parting the waves. The sheepskin coat sat really well on his shoulders, and the tan of the sheepskin accentuated the dark shine of his hair, she noticed with her professional eye. She had to open a new box of crisps and she was called down to the far end of the bar. ‘I’ll stay another five minutes,’ she said to Phil as she passed him. ‘Then you’re on your own.’

  ‘Thanks, Reen,’ he said. ‘Take a quid out of the till and get yourself a drink.’

  She pulled two or three more pints and half pints, a rum and black for a little mod who didn’t look old enough to be out on his own, let alone drink, and a Coke and lemon and a pineapple juice for two girls who didn’t look old enough for anything, made herself a G&T, took a pound note from the till and slid out into the room. The rush was over, the early evening crowd had gone home for their tea, and the high-livers who started their evening at half past eight weren’t out yet.

  She was afraid he would have gone, found some other girl to chat to, flirt with, kiss even, but he was still there, waiting, leaning back on the seat, watching her as she walked over to him.

  She sat down next to him and picked up her drink.

  ‘I’m afraid the ice in your G&T has melted,’ he said.

  ‘In Chelmsford that’s nothing new. Cheers, anyway.’

  She looked at him over the rim of her glass. He was watching her. ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

  ‘I was just wondering . . .’

  ‘Oh yes?’ She wanted to know what he would say, ‘Wondering what?’

  ‘How a lovely girl like you comes to be sitting in a bar in Chelmsford with me.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, that’s easy. I live here and you work here. And,’ she added daringly, ‘we’re the two most attractive people in the place.’

  ‘How right you are,’ he said, smiling.

  He took the complement for himself and accepted the truth of what she said. How mature, how unlike the boyish retorts that such a comment would usually receive in this town. She realised that what she would like now would be to kiss him.

  As if he had had the same thought at exactly the same moment, he slid his arm along the back of the seat and bent his head down towards her. He kissed her on the lips.

  A bell rang. Phil, the barman, called, ‘Last orders, gentlemen please. And ladies!’

  ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ he said, his arm still loosely round her shoulders.

  ‘I would love to, but . . .’ she said.

  ‘You already have somewhere to go?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ She wasn’t sure why she was being so coy. Perhaps it was all about Angie. After what she’d said to her about that Christmas kiss, she could hardly go home with the bloke herself. Or perhaps it was that she didn’t want this just to be a quick fumble out in the car park. Perhaps she wanted more than a one-night stand with this man. ‘I’ve got my car,’ she said. ‘Do you need a lift anywhere?’

  ‘No, it’s just a short walk to my humble abode.’

  An image of the bed in the back room of the boutique flashed through her mind. Yes, she was better off going home. It could only end in tears. But she wouldn’t mind another kiss. She could still feel his mouth on hers, the confident way he’d held her. She wound her arms round his neck and pulled him to her. She pressed her lips against his. He opened his mouth. She slipped her tongue inside. I could get used to this, she thought.

  She stood up and said, ‘Thank you for a lovely evening.’

  ‘We must do it again sometime,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  ‘I’m usually in here or the Fleece on a Saturday night, before I get the train. Might see you then?’

  ‘If you’re lucky.’

  CHAPTER 6

  ANGIE SAT AT HER TABLE AT English Electric. She’d spent most of the day fitting tiny pieces of copper wire into the ceramic shapes that would become valves. The job wasn’t bad, but she was definite this was not going to be her future. She had hopes for something bigger and better. She had had so many dreams at school. A lot of them she’d given up on – she couldn’t see herself as the inventor she’d dreamed of when she was seven, but she had some dreams she would never let go.

  When she was at primary school she had dreamed of going to college, being a teacher, perhaps a doctor or a scientist, travelling round the world. Anything seemed possible. Then her mum and dad said she couldn’t take the eleven plus exam and she knew she must change her dream to something less academic, less fantastic.

  There was no sense in wanting things to be different. You had the parents you had. They’d said she wasn’t brainy enough to take the eleven plus, and anyway what did she want with a fancy education and exams? She was only going to get married and have children. She didn’t need exams for that, and, her dad had added that what she really needed was to get herself a job and pay back some of the money it had cost to bring her up. There had been a terrible row. Angie had shed tears of frustration and rage that they thought she couldn’t do it, that they thought she didn’t deserve the chance. Especially since Doreen had sat the exam and Carol was going to take it. She didn’t care that Doreen had failed it, and then so had Carol, at least they’d been given the chance. So Angie and Carol had gone to the local secondary modern together. It was nice to have your best friend with you, but Angie still felt cheated.

  But it was at secondary school that she had found her real dream. Miss Darling, the old, strict needlework teacher had introduced Angie to the delight of sewing; to French seams, to lazy daisy stitch. She taught Angie how to read a pattern and turn a piece of material into a beautiful garment. It was like magic and Angie was a good magician. She was so good that Miss Darling had said at one point that she personally knew people in the fashion houses of London and even Paris, where haute couture dresses were designed and made for wealthy customers. Miss Darling had worked there. That was a shock – Miss Darling had worked in France! In fact, she said, if her health hadn’t let her down, she’d be working in those famous design houses still. Miss Darling said couturiers would be very pleased to offer a job to someone as nimble-fingered as Angie. Angie could work on designs made in the thickest, richest materials – silks, brocade, shantung – sewing on pearls and diamonds, pinning on handmade lace. The pay would at first be low, very low, but in five or ten years’ time she would be able to move up, as she had, to cutting and maybe even more. Angie had started to have dreams.

  Angie still felt sick with rage, remembering her dad’s response. He’d laughed in her face. ‘Five years before you start earning a decent wage? Who does this old bat think you are? Making dresses for posh nobs, dresses you’ll never be able to wear. Come off it! My mother would have had a fit if I’d said I
wanted to work in some measly workshop on tuppence a week. Angie, that’s not what we do. Get back to reality!’

  There’d been nothing she could do when her parents said she couldn’t take the eleven plus, but this time she wasn’t prepared to give up. Yet as she approached her fifteenth birthday, the pressure at home began to mount. She had to have a job. Her dad said it. Her mum said it. Even Doreen said it. She had to earn her keep. And not just her own keep. She had to help keep the household together. Still she had argued she’d like to stay on at school and maybe take some exams, or maybe go to the local tech college. It would pay off, she’d said. It would mean she’d get a better job in the long run. Her mum’s answer had been immediate. ‘Oh no you don’t! We can’t afford it. Especially not now. You’re lucky you can stay on till you’re fifteen. I had to leave school at fourteen. The rent’s due every week and it doesn’t pay itself. The electric doesn’t come for free. The gas doesn’t come through the pipes for nothing. You say you want a new carpet in your room? We CAN’T afford it!’

  Angie had made the mistake of shouting, ‘Why don’t you say that to Dad? Where do his earnings go? That’s when he bothers to go to work. He drinks it all away! So now I’ve got to go to work to pay for Dad. Isn’t it a dad’s job to pay for his family? Or at least pay for himself.’

  Her mum had slapped her face and then burst into tears.

  So when the time came to leave school, Angie had taken the job at English Electric. It was good money but to Angie it felt like a step backwards. She’d been a Saturday girl in the fabric department in Bonds. She’d loved it. They’d let her buy the materials cheap, cut-offs of velvet, snips of satin, pieces of crêpe. She’d smuggled them into her bedroom, concealing them at the bottom of her basket. She didn’t want anyone seeing them, there’d only be a row. But working in the fabric department couldn’t lead anywhere. Not in Bonds. If you were lucky you might be allowed to order the fabrics, like Miss Sharpe who had been there all her life. There was nowhere else to go. And it certainly didn’t pay enough.

  English Electric was where her mum worked. True, she had ended up in the department where she needed to be good with her hands instead of the shop where the general bits of valves were made. In the workshop you had to wear a white coat as you bent over the delicate components, the thin pieces of copper, the small pieces of ceramic. She appreciated the logic and the purpose of the work and even the beauty of it. The construction of the valves was quite an art – twisting the wire, joining it to the ceramic, getting it into the right place, at the right angle, to look neat and perfect – but it wasn’t the job of her dreams. At first there were only two of them in the team, Angie and Graham, her boss. Then a year later the junior, Mandy, started and Angie shared the skills she now had. She and Mandy laughed together a lot, sitting at their benches, leaning over the valves, carefully wielding their screwdrivers and pliers, talking about the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore programme and Top of the Pops, and Graham didn’t mind as long as they got the work done. Sometimes they all went out at dinner-time, in the hot weather, and sat by the river. Sometimes, when there was food in the fridge at home, she brought sandwiches that she’d made.

  She had been at English Electric for over three years, and she was well on her way to achieving the first few items on her list of ambitions that she had written before she left school:

  1. Have a job

  2. Get engaged

  3. Save up for a house

  4. Get married

  5. Have children

  She knew this list made sense. It was sensible. And she had already achieved number one – she had her job at English Electric. As for number two on the list, she had Roger, which might lead to an engagement. He had asked her, about two weeks after they met, if she would marry him. She had thought about what it would mean, choosing a ring, wearing the pretty diamond on her left hand, watching it flash as she made a point, casually waving her hand in front of the girls at work, being one of those girls who aroused envy in the others, moving into a small house in Chelmsford, having children . . . No, she didn’t want that. Not yet. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it at all. But she had started saving, a few bob a week. She told her mum it was for her bottom drawer, a wedding maybe or maybe for the house on her list. But what she was really saving for were the things on her secret list. The dream she wouldn’t give up on!

  1. Learn everything there is to know about fashion

  2. Work in the fashion industry

  3. Design fashion

  4. Fashion fashion fashion

  Angie had done some research, found the names and addresses of fashion houses and designers, as well as fashion colleges. There were places in Soho and Kings Road. And there was always Oxford Street. That’s where she would like to go.

  She bought Honey magazine, and pored over the pages. Honey was for young, modern girls. She recognised herself in the springy, smiling models. She studied the shapes and the lines of the dresses and skirts; she thought about the fabrics and how easy or difficult it would be to create something similar. Sometimes, if she was lucky at the dentist or if it was busy in the newsagent’s and Mr Johnson wasn’t watching, she got the chance to flick through the more expensive magazines, sometimes Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, drinking in the sumptuous textiles and the elegant draping of glittering evening dresses, frowning at the classic tight shapes of the suits worn by the serious long-legged models.

  And she was determined to be practical. She signed up for an evening class, at the technical high school on the far side of the estate, dipping in to her savings to buy the fabrics and tools she needed. Miss Darling had suggested it. Angie had told her mum it was shorthand and typing and she bought herself a notepad and an official looking pencil. She did squiggles in the book, in case anyone came looking, but they didn’t. The course, every Thursday evening, was in fact fashion design. Those evenings were the best part of the week for her. She studied patterns, how to create on paper the shapes of the dresses she and Carol, and Mandy at work, and even Doreen, wanted to wear, cutting the flimsy paper, pinning it carefully following the weft and weave of the material, learning how the fabric moved, how to create different effects. For those three wonderful hours she used the language of creation, lining, ruching, draping; peplums and bodices, gathers and pleats. It was a marvellous world of strange words and special skills.

  At first, she didn’t say a word about the class to anyone, not even to Carol. The family she knew would be outraged, although Doreen would probably just laugh. Roger wouldn’t understand, he would probably look sad and be worried that she was going to leave him. And he’d probably blurt it out to his mum or worse to her own mum. As for Carol, Angie was afraid that her friend would think she had ideas above her station as her dad would say, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for anyone to criticise her work.

  But last week she had completed a dress that even the tutor, Miss Brown, had been impressed by. Miss Brown had stood by Angie’s side and had stopped the class so that everyone turned to look at Angie and the dress, displayed on her tailor’s dummy. She had drawn the attention of the class to the fit of the sleeves, the position of the darts, and the way Angie had used two different fabrics, to create a modern but classic look.

  This wonderful experience was what she had wanted to talk to Carol about on Friday, in the Orpheus, but instead they had spent the night dancing and laughing to the rock ‘n’ roll classics that Mark Shelley and his group had played. It had been great. But tonight Carol was coming round, and Angie was going to tell her all about it.

  Carol had brought some magazines for Angie to look through. It was their arrangement. Carol bought Woman’s Own, which was weekly; Angie bought Honey, which was monthly. Now Carol flicked through a copy of Honey that Angie had put by her pillow. She knew better than to take it home, since Angie used it for inspiration.

  Now that she was here, Angie was suddenly shy. What if Carol did think it was a stupid idea to want to work in fashion? What if she didn’t lik
e the dress?

  ‘Oh, I like this one.’ Carol held up the magazine and pointed at a model wearing a small beret and a dress with long sleeves and a curvy hem.

  ‘Really?’ Angie said. She was thinking she could have made one ten times better than that. And Miss Brown thought she could too. ‘What about this?’ She went to the wardrobe and drew out the dress that she had smuggled home from her class. It was in two shades of blue, in a geometric pattern, with a round neck and short sleeves. In one panel was a hidden pocket.

  ‘That’s fab!’ Carol breathed. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I made it,’ Angie said. ‘Do you really like it?’

  Carol stood up. ‘Ange, it’s gorgeous. Those colours are lovely. Did you really make it?’

  Angie held it up against herself and twirled round. ‘Yes, I did. I’ve been going to a class, at the Tech.’

  ‘As well as the shorthand and typing?’

  ‘I’m not doing shorthand and typing. I’m doing fashion.’

  ‘You sly dog!’ Carol laughed. ‘So when are you going to work in Carnaby Street?’

  ‘As soon as I can.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been applying for every fashion job I see, and I’m building myself up to go to London to see what’s up there. You never know . . .’ Angie laid the dress gently on the bed. They both stared at it. ‘But you know what my mum and dad are like.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re supposed to be doing shorthand and typing?’

  ‘Yes. They think I’ll earn even more if I’m a secretary.’

  ‘Oh, Ange, you can’t be a secretary,’ Carol said. ‘Fashion needs you. You’ve got to keep at it.’

  ‘I could make you a dress if you like,’ Angie said.

  ‘Like this? Could you? I can’t believe you’ve been doing this and not telling me. I thought you were going to be taking a letter in some swanky office in Marconi’s.’

  ‘But actually, I’ll be crawling round on my hands and knees, sticking pins in models. I didn’t dare tell you in case you thought I was stupid.’