Angie’s mind was racing. ‘My sister works just across the road. Will you stay here and I’ll go and get her? She’s the money person. She’ll be thrilled, and you can explain everything to her and what we need to do.’
‘That’s a good idea’ Miss Darling said. ‘But before you go, can I ask you one thing? I think it’s time you called me Barbara.’
‘I’m not sure if I can. But you can call me Angie!’
EPILOGUE
Three years later
DOREEN WAS ALONE IN THE SHOP. She had the sales book in front of her. Quickly she added up a list of figures. Things were going well. She had just got off the phone from the London store. She looked down at the numbers in the book. They were very satisfying. Sometimes she really could hardly believe how far they had come from that very first day when they had delivered those first few dresses to the boutique. Now they had two boutiques of their own, and even employed staff. Doreen still spent most of her time in Chelmsford, but Angie had fulfilled her dream and she not only ran the London shop but had a flat in Chelsea. They met up at least once a week to discuss the business and Angie enjoyed these times, staying with her sister and playing with her niece.
Angie came into the shop now with two special order dresses. ‘They’re going mad in the workroom. Maureen says the new pop-art design is doing her head in.’
‘And was Cath able to do that embroidery?’ Doreen asked.
‘Look. It’s fantastic!’ Angie pushed back the cellophane cover and showed Doreen some intricate needlework on the collar of the short white wedding dress. She laid the dresses carefully on the counter and took a blue airmail letter from her bag. ‘You have got to read this!’ she said to Doreen.
‘Is Mum still having a ball?’ Doreen asked.
‘Yes, but read it.’
Doreen unfolded the letter and looked at her mother’s neat handwriting. She scanned the page. ‘I can’t believe she keeps having all these barbecues.’
‘Well, she and Joe like company.’
Doreen looked up. ‘Don’t you think it’s amazing that a woman who never went out into our garden is now throwing all these parties at the home where she lives with a man she’s not married to.’
‘That’s what happens when you wear Regina shorts.’
‘She loved those shorts.’
‘And she sold four pairs to her new mates.’
‘And now she’s happier than she’s ever been in her life.’
‘Yes, but carry on reading.’
Doreen turned back to the letter. ‘Oh she’s still on about the baby. Why didn’t I tell her? Why did we wait till she was half way round the world before the news got out?’
‘You know why she says that.’ Angie shook the two dresses.
‘I know. We’re waiting for you two and little Alexandra to come and visit!’ Doreen read aloud. ‘I understand the business is doing well. There was a picture of one of your dresses in our local paper. Some article about Carnaby Street. You should sell them here, you know. Joe is all set to start a campaign, and there’s a lovely little shop in town that I can see myself running.’ Doreen looked up. ‘Bloody hell, Angie, we’re in Australia! Give my love to Cath and Maureen, you were very lucky to find such talented girls to help you with the business. And when Miss Darling pops in for her cup of tea, tell her that she’s done my girls proud.’
‘She has,’ said Angie. ‘This shop, Carnaby Street, Petticoat Lane and Portobello. We couldn’t have done it without that money.’
‘And paid off all our debts. And we’ve paid her back too, with interest.’
‘It’s who supports you at the beginning that counts,’ Angie said. ‘If Gene hadn’t decided to close his boutique, we’d never have had this shop, and the goodwill that went with it.’
‘Yes, Gene was very good at goodwill.’
For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Angie shook her head.
‘And we mustn’t forget Cliff Evans,’ Angie said. ‘He got us that first stall.’
‘Yes, hooray for Cliff!’ Doreen said.
‘Where was the last postcard from?’ Angie said.
‘Somewhere in . . . Argentina, I think,’ Doreen said.
‘Oh, you say that, sounding so uninterested!’ Angie laughed. ‘I know you keep all the postcards. And the letters.’
‘Well, funnily enough, he writes very nice letters.’
‘Which is, of course, why you write back.’
‘It would be rude not to.’
‘And why you have a letter in your bag right now with a South American stamp.’
Doreen looked down at her bag, on the floor beside her. There were three letters in there from Cliff. She liked to carry them with her. She liked to read them when there was a quiet moment in the shop. When the pressure of being stared at in the street had got too much, with the bump of her pregnancy and then the pram in the garden, his letters had been a sort of balm. At the beginning, just after Alexandra was born, some people on the estate had been quite unkind, seeing her only as an unmarried mother, someone who’d broken the rules. They cut her dead, crossing the road, turned their heads. Once or twice she’d even wondered whether she’d made the right decision – for her, for Alex – when she failed to get on the ship to Australia. But Cliff knew all about her and still he cared for her. ‘I like the paper he writes on,’ she said. ‘And he’s got nice handwriting.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll just hang these dresses up in the back.’ She went into the store room.
Doreen raised her voice. ‘Mrs Pippin and her daughter are coming in for them at dinner-time. They’ve paid a twenty pound deposit, and they’ve got the rest to settle. And now I’ve got to go and pick up Alex before Miss Darling starts giving her her dinner. We’re going to Galleywood Common on the bus this afternoon. She’s very excited. And so am I.’
‘Don’t you want a drink?’
‘No thanks. I’ll pop into Roberts’s on the way home, pick up something for tea. Are you in?’
Angie came back into the shop.
‘No, I’m treating Roger and I to a beer in the Golden Fleece.’
‘You and Roger! Don’t tell me . . .’
‘There’s nothing to tell. But he was so good, doing that delivery down to Brighton, last week. Roger is just a good friend.’
‘He’d have to be. All that transporting he did at the beginning – London, Bristol, Manchester.’
‘God, yes, remember those days. And you with the baby. Sometimes I thought we’d never make it.’
‘And yet here we are! But don’t you wish sometimes it had worked with Roger?’ Doreen began rolling notes from the till into elastic bands.
Angie thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t. I really don’t. Anyway, I think he’s got a little thing for Cath.’
‘As long as he doesn’t carry her off and marry her, that sounds good.’
Angie was in the stock room waiting for the kettle to boil and Doreen was making some final notes in her ledger. The doorbell tinkled
‘Can I . . . ? Doreen began. She looked up. ‘Well, well.’ In spite of herself, she felt her cheeks warm. He was wearing jeans and a very white shirt. His hair was a little longer, curling at the neck. She began to smile. ‘Home is the hunter.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Cliff said. ‘I’m back from the sea.’
‘I didn’t know you were due back so soon. I only got your letter this morning.’
‘I beat it home, obviously.’
‘How long are you here for?’
‘That depends . . .’
He looked around him, at the rails of dresses, skirts, coats. ‘This is impressive.’
‘We think so.’ There was a pause. ‘Have you come to buy something?’
He laughed. ‘No. I came to see you.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Do you mean that?’
She looked at him. ‘Yes, yes I do.’
‘You got my letters?’
‘Yes, I did. And I hope you got mine.’
‘I did. It was the best part of the voyage, going into port and seeing if there was any mail, and recognising your handwriting on an envelope.’
She laughed. ‘It was the least I could do after you gave me that expensive sweater.’
‘Well, I’ve got a sheepskin rug for you in the car.’
‘That sounds nice but does it mean I’ve got to write more letters?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The ship leaves again on Thursday. I’ve got to decide if I’m going to be on it.’
Her heart quickened. ‘Well, today’s Monday. You’ve got three days to make up your mind.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, I have. I’d like to spend some of them with you.’
She smiled back at him, gazing into his eyes. Then she started. ‘Oh, but Cliff, I’m sorry.’ She was picking up her bag, shrugging into her coat. ‘This is a bad time. If I’d known you were coming . . . I’m just going to pick up Alexandra. We’re going to have a picnic at Galleywood. Ham sandwiches and marshmallows.’ She didn’t know why she was giving him so much detail.
‘That’s OK,’ Cliff said. ‘I like ham sandwiches. I’ll take you in the car.’
‘Oh, but we’ve got to go on the bus. I promised.’
‘I’ll come on the bus then.’
She smiled. ‘OK.’ She turned and called to Angie. ‘We’re going now.’ Cliff pulled open the door and as the bell tinkled above them, together they stepped out of the shop and into the street.
Angie walked out of the stock room, holding her mug of tea. She watched Doreen and Cliff standing by his car, laughing and chatting. Doreen was so happy. Angie looked round the shop, at the glowing colours of the clothes on the rails, her dresses, her skirts, her designs. Doreen was happy and so was she.
Acknowledgements
I’D LIKE TO THANK CHRIS WILKINSON, Gill Butler, Maureen Hanscomb and Roy Kelly, for keeping the faith and offering coffee and support when it was needed; Yvonne Peecock for giving me another room of my own in deepest Essex where I could write in the prettiest of surroundings; Kit Habianic, James Young, Iris Ansell, wonderful writers, who gave me critical support and ideas; Amanda Manley and Chris Jacobs, my old school pals, who provided me with a real feel of what art schools were like in the ’60s; Brian Southall for being a tall journalist; Wayne from Buckhurst Hill, an original modernist, who supported the idea of telling the story of mods from outside London; Graham Staples who went to Clacton on his scooter and had a horrible time but shared his story with me; and all the people in Chelmsford who have talked to me about their experience of the ’60s, face to face but also on Facebook and Twitter.
Huge thanks to Tara Loder and the team at Zaffre who have guided this book through to completion, and to my agent Annette Green for her support and encouragement.
And thank you to Chris Wallace, who went through the ’60s with me, and of course, a never ending thank you to Caroline Spry, without whom none of this would ever have been put down on paper.
Welcome to the world of Elizabeth Woodcraft!
Keep reading for more from Elizabeth Woodcraft, to discover a recipe that features in this novel and to find out more about Elizabeth Woodcraft’s inspiration for the book . . .
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www.MemoryLane.club
Dear Reader,
I hope you’ve enjoyed this new book about Chelmsford in the ’60s, where sisters Angie and Doreen follow their dreams. My last book, The Saturday Girls, was about life as a mod girl, a life that I had lived, and for The Girls from Greenway once again I dived into my diaries to give me inspiration for the book.
It’s hard to remember what life was like in those days. No mobile phones – a lot of people didn’t even have a phone in the house. Women’s education was still not always seen as important, since it was assumed that girls would get married as soon as they could after leaving school, and as for having an illegitimate baby – well! That was almost the worst thing a girl could do.
Morals and mores were quite strictly adhered to, so when young people in the ’60s tried to break out, to have their own fashions, their own music or their own style, the establishment didn’t really know how to handle it. I became a mod, my friends were mods – we were all fairly quiet, we drank frothy coffee in our coffee bar and danced to the music of Tamla Motown on Saturday evenings. But the newspapers wanted to talk about hooligans and fights at Clacton and Brighton, which as far as the girls in Chelmsford were concerned, passed us by.
But other things were beginning to change, and on television there were exciting new programmes, not just Emergency Ward 10 and Coronation Street, but Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play, where every week a new play would appear on the screen, dealing with the issues of the day, showing a different side of life.
I’ve tried to capture some of those feelings of uncertainty, of hope, of excitement, in this book. Angie’s parents want her to have a sensible job in the local factory, and earn a decent regular wage. But Angie wants something more, and she’s going to get it!
While I was writing the book, I listened to a lot of the hits from those days, because they always take me back to the coffee bars and the dance halls of the time, and what we were doing and wearing at the time.
Then a friend in Essex asked me if I’d like to come and stay in her little nineteenth century cottage where I could have a room to write in. It was the most wonderful room on the first floor – a little bed, a small table and chair, and a French door that opened on to a tiny balcony from where I could look at her garden, with its tangle of fruit bushes and scented flowers and fish ponds. It was like a dream. I sat and contemplated my computer with just the buzzing of bees and the tweeting of birds outside the window as an accompaniment. The words poured out. It was a strange mixture of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century life – because of course I had the Internet so I could check some of the facts of the day.
I do hope you enjoyed the book as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope it brings back some memories of your own. If you did, please do share your thoughts on the Memory Lane Facebook page MemoryLaneClub.
Best wishes,
Elizabeth Woodcraft
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
A real classic of the 1960s and one that was regularly on the menu for our school dinners! Doreen chooses this rich indulgent dessert in chapter seven while out for dinner with Angie and their mum. Sweet, delicious and beautiful, it is a perfect summer treat.
You will need:
For the topping:
50g unsalted butter
50g light muscovado sugar
7 slices tinned pineapples in juice
14 glacé cherries
For the cake
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
100g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pineapple juice (from the pineapples used for the topping)
Custard, cream or ice cream to serve.
Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4.
2. For the topping, cream together the butter and light muscovado sugar in a bowl.
3. Spread this mixture across the base and a little up the sides of a 20cm round cake tin. Place the pineapple slices on top, keeping back the juice for later. Place the glacé cherries in the centres of the rings, and use the remainder to fill in any gaps.
4. For the cake, mix the butter and caster sugar together in a bowl until smooth, then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing thoroughly. Sieve in the flour, baking powder, then add the vanilla extract and leftover pineapple juice. Stir until smooth.
5. P
our the cake mixture into the tin over the pineapple, then smooth until flat on top.
6. Bake for 30–40 mins. If the top starts to burn, cover with tinfoil and return to the oven.
7. Remove from the oven, then leave to stand for 15 minutes before turning out onto a plate upside-down.
8. Serve warm with custard, cream or ice cream.
9. Enjoy!
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2019 by
ZAFFRE
80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
Copyright © Elizabeth Woodcraft, 2019
Cover design by Debbie Clement.
Cover images © Gordan Crabb
Background images © Shutterstock.com
The moral right of Elizabeth Woodcraft to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Girls from Greenway Page 29
