Fire

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘Weren’t you scared?’ Peg asked.

  ‘A bit,’ Allie said, and couldn’t resist adding, ‘but the leader, Gary, was a really nice sort.’

  ‘You met him?’ Irene asked, clearly a little miffed because, for a change, someone else had done something more daring.

  ‘My dad says he’ll skin me alive if he hears I’ve been anywhere near a milkbar,’ Nyla said. ‘Though I have to say I do like those motorbikes they ride. They’re so…’ She stopped, obviously searching for a suitable description.

  ‘Sexy,’ Irene said.

  They all looked at her, uncomfortable with the bluntness of the word.

  ‘Well, they are, aren’t they?’ Irene protested. ‘All that power and noise and the way the girls sit on the back with their legs around the boys. It’s sexy.’

  ‘Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid,’ Beatrice said lightly. ‘The closest I’ve ever been to a motorbike is the bicycle I had when I was a child. And even then I wasn’t very successful at riding it. My legs were too short, you see.’

  Allie laughed as merrily as everyone else, though she was finding it slightly peculiar, having lunch with Miss Button, but Louise had said they should invite her because she was Daisy’s boss, and Daisy liked her. And she did seem to be a good sort. Like Miss Willow, really. Only Miss Button was half the height and twice as wide.

  ‘I propose a toast,’ Louise said, holding up her tea cup. ‘To Daisy and Terry. May they have a very successful marriage, loads of well-behaved children and a long and happy life together.’

  Everyone lifted their cups and said, ‘To Daisy and Terry’, and Peg added, ‘Pity it’s not champagne. Or even sherry.’

  Allie shot a glance at Miss Button, who only nodded.

  ‘I’m partial to a drop of good sherry myself,’ she said. ‘But we’d better not roll back to work smelling like we’ve been in a public bar all morning. Mr Beaumont would have kittens.’

  Daisy snorted tea out of her nose, which made everyone else laugh. Then, disconcertingly, Daisy’s giggles turned into tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said after several moments, dabbing at her eyes with a paper serviette that had a smear of piccalilli on it. ‘I seem to be bawling all the time these days. It must be—’ She stopped, remembering that Nyla and Peg and Miss Button weren’t supposed to know about her condition. ‘I mean, I was feeling so rotten this morning—I think I must be nervous about the wedding or something. But it’s lovely to have such good friends.’ She looked hesitantly at Allie. ‘And it will be all right, won’t it?’

  Allie patted her hand. ‘Of course it will, silly.’

  They were ten minutes late back to work, but as Miss Button was with them they felt they had a certain level of dispensation.

  Keith Beaumont didn’t, though. Unfortunately, he was having a conversation with Ted Horrocks just as they all trooped through the front door, and he ostentatiously checked his watch.

  Allie ducked her head and stared hard at a display of royal tour mementos: silk scarves patterned with images of Buckingham Palace, cups and saucers, cake plates, teapots, brooches, pens and pencils, and special folding seats you could sit on while you waited for the queen to go past. Allie wished she was sitting on one now, preferably on her own back lawn.

  ‘This is an unusual time for staff on the twelve-to-one lunch shift to be returning to work, isn’t it, Miss Button?’ Keith was in a very bad mood because he’d just lost yet another fifty pounds at Addington. Bloody trots—he knew he should have stuck to the gallops or the dogs. He’d never been any good at picking form for pacers.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, Mr Beaumont,’ Beatrice said, and sighed. ‘And as the senior staff member in the party I take full responsibility.’

  ‘I trust there’s a good reason for your tardiness?’

  ‘Of course,’ Beatrice replied. She leaned closer to Mr Beaumont, as if to impart a confidence, but barely lowered her voice at all. ‘We were out at lunch and one of our party unfortunately suffered a slight accident.’

  Mr Beaumont looked wary. ‘Accident? What sort of accident?’

  ‘Women’s problems, Mr Beaumont,’ Beatrice declared earnestly. ‘One of us is experiencing women’s problems and we were unforeseeably delayed.’

  While Allie and the others looked on in horrified glee, Mr Beaumont’s face went the colour of a ripe tomato. He tugged at the hem of his waistcoat. ‘Yes, well…’ he said, then turned and strode off.

  ‘That was a bit naughty, Beatrice,’ Ted said, trying not to smirk.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it was, wasn’t it?’ Beatrice replied, thoroughly unrepentant. ‘But he shouldn’t be so nosy, or such a stickler for the rules. It is Christmas, after all. Come on, girls, let’s get back to work, shall we?’

  When Allie apologized and explained why she was late back from lunch, Miss Willow only laughed, though she made a half-hearted effort not to.

  ‘Yes, well, they’ve never seen eye to eye, Miss Button and Mr Beaumont,’ she said. ‘But don’t be late again, please, Allie. We’re terribly busy.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ Allie said again.

  By five o’clock Allie’s feet were killing her and she’d barely squeezed in ten minutes for a cuppa and a cigarette at afternoon tea. Friday afternoons were always busy, but today, the last late shopping night before Christmas, was particularly hectic. The store closed at eight o’clock; she would get a thirty-minute break at six, but there were still another two and a half hours of serving panicking women who didn’t know what they wanted, or only wanted what they couldn’t, or shouldn’t, have. Women were the most difficult customers, Allie thought. They seemed to invest so much hope in the clothes they bought, expecting the garments alone to transform them.

  And there would be no time to go home tonight before she went out, so she’d brought her clothes into work, as had Louise and Daisy, so the three of them would change in the staff loos before they headed up to the Peter Pan. Irene still didn’t know if she was coming, but she was an office girl so she could get away at five o’clock anyway.

  By eight Allie was so exhausted that if she hadn’t been going out with Sonny, she might have told the others that she was just too tired, and gone home for an early night. But by the time they’d changed into their glad rags she felt a little better, and as the three of them hurried down the stairs to the side door on Wyndham Street, she realized that she was excited.

  Ted Horrocks was waiting to let them out. He considered that, just as it was his job to greet customers as they entered the store during the day, it was also his job to farewell the staff at night. It was something he enjoyed, especially on Fridays, because many of the younger ones were on their way out and he loved to see them all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and looking forward to an evening on the town.

  ‘Big night, girls?’ he asked as he held the heavy glass door open for them.

  ‘The Peter Pan,’ Louise said.

  ‘Ah,’ Ted said, ‘dancing the night away, eh? Well, have a marvellous time.’

  Daisy looked at him. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’

  Ted’s ruddy face beamed. He knew he’d never take up the offer—he was far too old for that sort of thing—but he was extremely chuffed. ‘Thank you very much, I must say. I have been known to cut rather a spectacular rug in my time, but I don’t think Mrs Horrocks would be very happy.’

  ‘If you went out on the town with three girls?’ Louise teased.

  ‘No, if I left her at home,’ Ted replied. ‘No, she’ll be putting the kettle on by now and getting out the baking tin. She does a tremendous sultana cake, does my Natalie, and we always have a slice or two with a cup of tea on Friday nights. It’s one of the real pleasures of my life.’

  Allie said shrewdly, ‘What, the sultana cake or sharing it with Mrs Horrocks?’

  ‘Well, girls, put it like this—if it was cardboard we were eating it wouldn’t make much difference to how I felt about it.’

  Allie got that nice warm feeling she so
metimes had with her parents: it must be wonderful to love someone that much.

  ‘Well, we’ll have a dance for you, shall we?’ she offered.

  ‘That would be just the ticket,’ Ted said. ‘Now, have a lovely night, eh?’

  Smiling to himself, he closed the door behind them.

  They were the last out—even Mr Max and that twit Keith Beaumont had left on time tonight. Must be all the posh Christmas dos they had to rush off to, Ted thought, though he wouldn’t swap places with either of them for quids, not when he had Mrs Horrocks and sultana cake to go home to.

  He started his rounds of the store, checking that every window was closed properly, every door locked, and every tap turned off in the kitchens and the restrooms. When he’d done that he rubbed his hands in anticipation, because now it was time to do one of his favourite jobs—turning on the lights on the Christmas tree in front of the big front doors. In all the time he’d been with Dunbar & Jones, the lights had never been switched on until precisely the weekend before Christmas. It had started when that sharp-tongued old matriarch Isobel Dunbar had been running the place—probably, he suspected, because she was too mean to pay for the electricity until she absolutely had to—but now it had become a tradition.

  He made his way downstairs, leaving strategic lights burning on each floor—‘We want the store to be lit up like a castle, Ted,’ Mr Max said every year, ‘a veritable fairy castle where people will all want to come and spend their Christmas bonuses’—until he reached the ground floor. He circled the Christmas tree, its topmost point almost reaching the high ceiling and crowned with a porcelain-faced Christmas fairy, relishing the way that the glass balls and satin bows and tinsel decorations already glittered. When he retired—which, he’d decided, wouldn’t be too far away now, because even he had to admit that he was getting a bit too old to be belting up and down three flights of stairs every morning and night—he was going to say thank you, but he didn’t want a gold watch or a mantle clock or whatever Mr Max’s secretary thought he should have. He was going to ask for a miniature version of this very tree, complete with decorations, that he could put up every Christmas in his own front room and look at to remind him of all the satisfying years he’d had at Dunbar & Jones. Yes, that’s definitely what he was going to do.

  He reached down to the power point set into the floor, and plugged in the cable leading from the thousands of tiny lights on the tree to the power socket. Then, out loud, he counted ‘One, two, three!’ and switched it on. The tree lit up dazzlingly and, stepping back, Ted had to admit that it really did look like something you might find in a fairy castle. It was just beautiful, there was no other word to describe it. And already, a couple outside had their faces pressed against the glass doors looking in at the spectacle. Ted waved, and they waved merrily back.

  Whistling, he collected his rucksack—a cherished memento of his army days—and made his way to the side door where he let himself out, and strode happily off up Wyndham Street.

  Behind him, in the basement of Dunbar & Jones, the ancient electrical wires strung across the ceiling began slowly to heat up.

  Allie’s face lit up like the store’s Christmas tree when she saw Sonny waiting on the street. He was with Terry and they’d both obviously had a quick tidy-up. Sonny was wearing the same clothes he’d had on to go to the pictures, and Terry was looking fairly smart himself in a sports coat and a loud blue tie with hand-painted ducks flying across it.

  ‘You’re wearing it!’ Daisy exclaimed delightedly as she yanked the bottom of the tie. ‘I gave it to him for his birthday,’ she said to Allie. ‘I ordered it from a catalogue. It’s different, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Allie answered truthfully, trying not to catch anyone’s eye.

  Sonny was wearing a tie, too, which didn’t match his outfit: Allie thought she might have seen it on Terry a couple of times.

  Louise looked at her watch. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’m meeting Rob there at half past eight. He’ll worry if I’m not there on time.’

  So they headed off up Queen Street, Allie arm in arm with Sonny, and Daisy holding Terry’s hand.

  ‘You look nice,’ Sonny said to Allie.

  She was wearing her full satin skirt in midnight blue, a violet lurex top and shoes with heels low enough for energetic dancing.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘So do you.’

  ‘I’ve only got the one decent set of clobber,’ he said.

  Allie could claim a reasonable wardrobe only because she got a discount at work. ‘You look pretty good to me.’

  Sonny smiled at her and squeezed her waist.

  The Peter Pan was already crowded, noisy and filling up with a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. Alcohol wasn’t served there because of the liquor laws, but the girls each had a small flask hidden in their bags, knowing they wouldn’t be searched. The band hadn’t started yet, but they were on stage tuning up and tapping microphones.

  The girls found seats at a large, round table while Terry and Sonny fetched jugs of orange juice from the bar. Rob had been waiting outside the cabaret for Louise, and they sat together now, sharing a joke. Watching them, Allie thought how lucky Louise was. Rob was a good-looking bloke, fit and strong and with all the character traits a girl—well, most girls—liked in a man. He was hard-working and generous and kind, and he clearly thought the world of Louise. And of Susan. He wanted to own his own garage one day, but not until after he and Louise had bought a home, which Allie thought was very sensible, if not the tiniest bit boring. She couldn’t see herself being that level-headed about money. Not that she frittered hers, what there was of it, but she did give quite a lot to her mother, and she bought things for Donna and Pauline, and she bought shoes and, well…it just sort of disappeared. And Louise just seemed so much more grown up, even though she was only three years older than Allie. She supposed it was being married and having a child. Would she feel grown up when all that happened to her? On the one hand she was getting a little worried that it wouldn’t, but on the other hand she was quite happy being single. Well, she had believed she was, before she’d met Sonny.

  She glanced at him and saw that he was watching her. He smiled. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’

  The question gave her a tiny fright. ‘Just relaxing, really,’ she replied. She could hardly say she was thinking about marriage and having children and taking out a mortgage, which would surely send him running for the hills.

  Lighting a cigarette, Louise nodded towards the door. ‘Here comes trouble.’

  Irene was standing in the doorway, pausing, no doubt, for maximum impact. She was wearing a scarlet satin dress with narrow shoulder straps, a very tight bodice and a tiny waist. But tonight the skirt was full, unlike the snug pencil skirts she usually favoured. The colour of the dress perfectly set off her pale, luminous skin and gleaming black hair, which fell over her shoulders and was fastened on one side with a diamante clip. She carried a minuscule black evening bag that matched her high-heeled satin sandals.

  Allie immediately felt like a frump.

  Terry muttered, ‘Crikey!’

  ‘Terry!’ Daisy said. ‘Though she does look very pretty, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I’m not sure if “pretty” is quite the right word,’ Louise countered.

  Allie glanced at Sonny to gauge his reaction, but he was half under the table topping up his orange juice with gin from the flask in her bag.

  Irene waved out and sailed over, a sea of admiring glances following her.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, over the sound of the band, and pulled up a chair. As Irene sat down and leaned back, her rigidly corseted and jutting breasts seemed to point straight at Sonny.

  Rob said in Louise’s ear, ‘Christ, she could take a spider’s eye out with one of those,’ and they both dissolved into a fit of giggles.

  ‘Couldn’t you get Martin to come out?’ Allie said across the table.

  Irene scowled. ‘No. He had some important papers to read. Has anyone got any
booze?’

  ‘In my bag on the floor,’ Allie replied.

  Irene poured herself a glass of juice and bobbed down beneath the table. Reappearing a moment later, she quaffed half of her drink in one go, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It was a very masculine thing to do, but somehow Irene managed to make it look stylish.

  ‘Who wants to dance?’ she asked.

  Terry declined politely, and Rob didn’t hear because he was talking to Louise again.

  Irene suggested, ‘What about you, Sonny? Fancy a dance?’

  ‘No thanks,’ Sonny said, sipping his drink.

  Leaning forward so that her cleavage was even more evident, Irene wheedled, ‘Oh, come on, I don’t bite.’

  Sonny looked as though he didn’t believe her. Then, to Allie’s surprise, he said, ‘Yeah, all right then.’

  He took off his jacket and he and Irene moved onto the dance floor, which was already filling with whirling couples. The band, renowned for playing popular, up-tempo dance tunes, was clearly on form tonight. But Allie barely noticed as she stared after Sonny and Irene, feeling hurt, annoyed and a bit of a fool. Sonny hadn’t even danced with her yet! She could feel Daisy and Louise looking at her, but refused to meet their eyes.

  On the floor Sonny took Irene’s hand and launched into a jive. He whipped her through a spin, brought her back in a return, then did a few basic jive steps before sending her out and reeling her back in again.

  ‘You’re good on your feet,’ Irene said.

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ he replied, doing a very tidy spin of his own.

  Irene glanced over his shoulder to where the others were still sitting, and remarked benignly, ‘Allie looks annoyed.’

  ‘You would too if some sheila’d just dragged your bloke onto the dance floor.’

  ‘I didn’t drag you,’ Irene said quickly. ‘I asked and you said yes.’

  Sonny did another spin. ‘Only because I wanted to get something straight. You want to think before you do things, Irene. About other people, for a start.’

  Irene didn’t like the way the conversation was going. She stopped dancing and parked her hands on her satin-clad hips. ‘What do you mean?’