Our Best Attention

by Jane Tulloch

  OUR BEST

  ATTENTION

  Jane Tulloch

  ©Jane Tulloch, 2016

  All rights reserved

  This Amazon edition published 2016

  by Comely Bank Publishing

  Available in print format from good bookshops

  Contents

  Her Best Attention

  Operation Limelight

  New Girl

  Bequest

  Downfall

  The Square Peg

  Storm In The Teacups

  The Inside Outsiders

  Weepers

  Barry’s Crusade

  The Third Miss Paterson

  A Day At The Races

  Furry Friends

  Company

  Rooftop

  Elizabeth’s Day Out

  Miss Murray Muses

  Historical Note

  Murrays Department Store, Staff List 1975

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Chapter 1

  Her Best Attention

  Assuring you of our best attention at all times,

  Yours faithfully for Murrays,

  Margaret Murray (Miss)

  Managing Director

  Miss Murray sat back and contemplated what she had written. She had written this so many times over the past 35 years that she realised with a start that she had become blind to its old-fashioned terminology and phrasing. She made a mental note to bring this up at tomorrow’s management meeting. It was time that Murrays moved into the 1970s. She stood up and stretched. She’d been crouched over her desk for the best part of three hours. It was late afternoon on a Sunday, and she wearily considered the forthcoming week and what it might hold. As managing director of this large store she had responsibilities far beyond what she might have expected had her brother lived. Nevertheless, she relished the challenges that each week might bring. She was tired now. She yawned and stretched again.

  Miss Murray was a largish woman, not exactly overweight but not apparently undernourished either. She had a pleasant face, its expression usually, but not invariably, indicating a secret source of amusement. This could have been taken for superciliousness but anyone spending any time with her could easily see that this masked an extremely kind nature crossed with an acute business brain. She was dressed appropriately for a woman in her fifties on a day off, and her fading reddish hair was styled quite neatly considering her lack of interest in her personal appearance.

  A knock at the door and the vague clink of crockery heralded the arrival of Mrs Glen with tea.

  “I’ve done you a few scones, Miss Margaret,” the dumpy figure informed her, “and put out the new jam,” she added with a certain emphasis.

  “How lovely, Mrs Glen,” replied Miss Murray knowing what a significant event this was for Mrs Glen. “The new jam. Terrific.”

  Mrs Glen nodded meaningfully as if to say, ‘and mind you enjoy it’. She didn’t need to say this out loud. The two had known each other for Miss Murray’s whole life. Mrs Glen had started as her nanny then moved onwards and upwards, depending on how you saw it, within the household. Now only she and her husband remained. He, to keep the garden neat and tidy and drive Miss Murray’s elderly (but tasteful) Bentley. She, to be housekeeper and act as cook and general factotum to her ‘Miss Margaret’. They remained verbally on formal terms but were as close as any family. Miss Murray sometimes wondered what she’d do when they finally retired. The Glens were both well into their seventies but showed no signs of flagging. She tried not to worry.

  The late afternoon light was fading and Mrs Glen went around the room turning on the various lamps. Miss Murray never liked overhead lighting and the lamps, as they were switched on, gradually cast a warm glow over the study. Although it was referred to as the study, it was unlike any office or library. The only intimation of its actual function as a room was the overflowing desk and battered leather chair that Miss Murray insisted on keeping, as it had been her father’s and grandfather’s before her. She fought an ongoing battle with Mrs Glen about it. Mrs Glen’s view was “Why have a lovely furniture department in your own shop and not take advantage of it?”

  Miss Murray’s slightly unconvincing answer was, and remained, “because I don’t want to.”

  The tea tray had been placed on a low table next to one of the two comfortable fireside chairs and she moved over to sit on it. Leaning over the tray she split and buttered a scone, carefully avoiding spilling any crumbs on the Persian carpet. Mrs Glen watched her through narrowed eyes. She was perfectly prepared to hoover up after her and was uncomfortably aware that perhaps Miss Murray was trying to avoid inconveniencing her. The last thing she wanted was for Miss Murray to pander to her. She had often wondered herself what would become of them when she and Glen were too old to look after her. They both tried their hardest to appear fit and well and up to the job.

  “Thank you, Mrs Glen, that was delicious – particularly the jam.”

  Mrs Glen nodded self-deprecatingly. “It’s cold roast beef and salad tonight. I’ve left it in the larder so that cat” (her quite literal bête noir) “won’t get it.” She reminded her employer, “Me and Glen are off to the church concert tonight.”

  “Lovely,” said Miss Murray. “Take the car, it’s a cold night.”

  Mrs Glen had secretly hoped she’d say that. She was a determinedly humble person, but there was no doubt – as she had told Glen innumerable times – “It says something about a person, arriving in a Bentley.”

  Glen was less sure about what exactly it said about arriving in someone else’s Bentley but kept quiet. As usual. He wasn’t daft.

  As Mrs Glen left the room, a cat emerged from a cosy shadow near the fire and leapt onto Miss Murray’s knee. Unsurprised, she hugged the now stentoriously purring creature to her and sat back with a luxurious sigh. She wondered what the forthcoming week might hold.

  One never knew with a store like Murrays. It was a vast kaleidoscope of space: ever-changing displays, colours, staff, customers and events. New problems appeared with monotonous regularity, planning ahead was often difficult. Times had changed so much over the past hundred years since the store had been opened. In fact, this year was its centenary. How could this be marked? Almost more urgently, how could the store be dragged into the 1970s?

  So much to think about. It was such an old-fashioned building. She loved it though. She loved every irregular square inch of it, from the darkest of the mahogany-lined offices to the opulent Grand Hall with its tiered galleries under the arching stained-glass cupola and all the small departments that seemed to perch in unexpected nooks throughout the rambling building. It sometimes seemed to her like a theatre: the glittering departments with their staff on best behaviour and smartest dress, but with an obvious backstage: the echoing, tiled, staff staircases and cheerless cloakrooms, to say nothing of the steamy Canteen, home to all the gossip of the store. Each department had its cast of players among the staff and customers, every day a tiny drama enacted among them. Sometimes comedies, more often mundane soap operas, sometimes excitement or even tragedy. She had witnessed all of these in her time working in each department of the shop. Her time in China and Glass was a highlight, and she remembered with a smile the high jinks the youthful staff had got up to under the buyer’s nose: the secret Easter-egg hunt around the entire shop, involving dozens of the youngsters rushing through the various departments turning all the stock upside down in the search for the chocolate treasures. More sadly, she thought of poor old Mr Melbury found dead at his desk in the Accounts department: all his ledgers faithfully up to date. What a pity he had deferred his retirement. She thought of all the blossoming romances she’d seen and, of course, all the customers she’d got to k
now: those whose custom she’d appreciated and those less so. Her time with the store detective had been chastening.

  She was always glad that her father had insisted on her spending time really getting to know her inheritance and responsibility. Her mother had not been pleased. Miss Murray had been educated at the best girls’ school and had attended the University to study French. Her mother had looked forward keenly to her only daughter finding a suitable young man and settling down. The late Mrs Murray had possessed firm views as to what constituted a ‘suitable young man’. These tended not to coincide with Miss Murray’s own. However, when her brother, Gordon, had died so suddenly in that car accident – too young, too rich, too soon – Mr Murray had poured all his hopes and expectations into his daughter, and she had been sent to work in luxurious stores in New York, then Paris and London before returning home. She had been surprised to find that he then wanted her to work in every department in Murrays, but now really appreciated what she had learned from this. She’d seen the opportunities for theft, for example; she now understood the high turnover of staff in certain departments and instituted some key changes after observing the inefficiencies of some of the working practices and systems. Her new ideas gained from her international experiences had been listened to and many of them introduced. It was a highly satisfactory career, she often thought. There had been no time for ‘suitable young men’ although she had garnered some wistful looks. Her father was very proud of her, but her mother died a disappointed mother of the bride and thwarted grandmother.

  Along the way, Miss Murray had made allies among the staff as well as a few enemies. She was glad of the friendships she’d made. Chief among these was Louise Pegram. Mrs Pegram was a Miss Jones when they’d first met while working in window display. Miss Murray had smiled as she rejoiced at her friend’s wedding to handsome Captain Pegram and wept at his funeral only a few years later, victim of an IRA bomb. Mrs Pegram had been glad to return to Murrays when offered the opportunity by her friend and was now personnel manager. The two women often let their eyes meet in silent laughter at some of the more outrageous suggestions or comments seriously made by their male counterparts at the daily management meetings. Oh yes, Miss Murray thought to herself, Louise is definitely a good thing.

  Making up her mind to get organised for the evening, Miss Murray stood up suddenly, startling the inert cat who leapt free then settled to clean himself pretending, with dignity, that his precipitous departure from her knee had been his choice. Miss Murray let herself out of the room with a backward look at him and went in search of her salad. She hoped there’d be some rhubarb tart left.

  The next morning she stared vacantly out of the Bentley window as Mr Glen piloted the old car along the familiar route to Murrays. Miss Murray’s thoughts ran to that day’s management meeting. She sighed. The management team was a necessary evil she recognised, but at times she wished she could run the shop as her father had: as a dictatorship. A benevolent one, of course, but what he had said had been done, and he brooked little in the way of argument.

  Only one of his senior staff remained. The irascible Mr McElvey. He was a bachelor, tall and thin to the point of angularity. A vain man, he dressed smartly and expensively and viewed the world through stylish tortoiseshell spectacles balanced on the end of his long, sharp nose. Miss Murray always felt that he was keenly intelligent, however highly critical he was of her at times. Perhaps he was vaguely resentful of her? He had, after all, been her father’s protégé for a while when she was travelling and working in New York and Paris. He must have felt that he’d just been keeping the place warm for her.

  The other two senior managers, Mr Soames and Mr Philipson, were much easier to work with. Both were younger than Miss Murray. Mr Soames had worked his way up from his start as a junior in Haberdashery. (“With his wife pushing him all the way,” opined Mrs Pegram in an unguarded moment late one evening.) Mr Philipson was of a cheerful disposition and had a happy family and social life outside his work. Mr McElvey had openly disparaged this and once ventured to express surprise that Mr Philipson could fit work into his busy timetable of golf, choir and children’s sports fixtures. Mr Philipson had just laughed. He usually did.

  These three, along with Mrs Pegram in Personnel, comprised the management team chaired by Miss Murray. They met almost daily in the beautiful old boardroom. It was panelled in rich mahogany retrieved from a ship that was being broken up. Paintings of old Mr Murray and his father (very) old Mr Murray glowered down at the assembled team from either end of the room, as though daring them to make a mess of their shop. The windows were of stained glass from the same ship and featured the motto: A mari usque ad mare – from sea to sea. Not tremendously relevant to a department store but (very) old Mr Murray had felt that it conveyed a certain dignity to the room, besides, no one seemed to know what it meant. There was a vaguely intimidating atmosphere and Miss Murray and Mrs Pegram often held meetings in their own much smaller but pleasanter offices further down the corridor.

  That day the matter of the store’s centenary was on the agenda. There was much to be discussed.

  Chapter 2

  Operation Limelight

  It was the time-honoured custom at Murrays for staff joining from school to become ‘juniors’ or, as they were more colloquially known, ‘bairns’. Bairns followed a circuitous training route around the various departments until they finally found their niche – a department where they fitted in nicely and their permanent location there was requested by the buyer, generally at the behest of the other staff members. This led to the development of happy teams that worked well together and the harmonious atmosphere somehow seemed to lead to impressive sales. A good situation for all concerned.

  There were, of course, those who went from department to department, unloved and unwanted. Typically, this sad transit led inevitably to that last resort of unpopular ‘bairns’ – Luggage. There, juniors became seniors over time by default and became resigned to their depressing fate. This department was gloomily located and gloomily staffed in the basement. It was the department that no one wanted to work in. The staff there was an assortment of unfortunate ladies of various ages and uncertain temperament, and one defeated man who frequently returned from long liquid lunches to sigh at customers and exude the alcoholic fragrance of the aforementioned mealtimes. No one bothered to complain. There was no point. The erstwhile buyer was off on long-term sick leave, in some hospital or other. No one had enquired, and it had not occurred to anyone, other than Annie (Miss Smail), to so much as send a card or express any good wishes to the unfortunate man. With a bad grace, other buyers grudgingly covered for their absent colleague but keenly anticipated the appointment of a full-time buyer for Luggage.

  Annie had fallen into Luggage by a series of unfortunate events. That she was lucky to have a job at all was constantly emphasised to her by her stepmother Aunt Lil. She had been told all her life that with her looks and personal problems, she shouldn’t really be seen in public. This never-ending litany had served over the 38 years that they had lived together to destroy every last vestige of confidence that she might once have had. In her journey around the other departments, she had rarely ventured to speak or ‘squeak’ as Shirley in China and Glass had put it. She had become known as ‘the mouse’, and it was hard to say whether she had grown into this nickname or if her mouse-like persona had given rise to it in the first place. She was as near happy as she ever ventured to be in Luggage and felt that it was somehow appropriate that she had come to rest here in this unhappy department of unwanted misfits. She sniffed luxuriously, for she suffered from a range of allergies which led to a constantly dripping nose. Her hair clung tenaciously to her head in string-like threads. However, despite her unfortunate outward appearance, inside there lurked a kind heart and a will to please others in whatever way she could. It was only a pity that she couldn’t seem to find a worthy recipient for her pent-up and unsuspected goodwill. As Mrs Goodwin said, “it was hard to say what wa
s worse, when she actually speaks or when she doesn’t.” Overhearing this, Annie bowed her head and went to adjust the label on an elderly suitcase.

  The stock in the Luggage department seemed to echo the shortcomings of the staff. It was unattractive, slightly out of date and vaguely musty. There were few customers for this substandard stock, and the management examined the accounts with some concern.

  “Should we not just close the department?” asked Mr McElvey. “Things have never been the same since people stopped sending their children to boarding schools and having to buy trunks.”

  “Good point,” admitted Mr Philipson. “But how can we hold our heads up as a credible department store without a Luggage department?”

  “Maybe we should try to recruit a new buyer to reinvigorate the department,” suggested Mrs Pegram. “Give it one last try?”

  “It’s an idea,” said Mr Soames. “Let me give it some thought.”

  The others looked at one another. They knew what his thoughts usually led to.

  Mr Soames was a nice man. He lived a life in thrall to his wife, Pauline, a large woman whom he had met when they were both juniors in Haberdashery and who retained a keen interest in her previous workplace. He usually talked over the events of the day with her. That night he raised the topic of the Luggage department.

  “So what do you think?” he asked at dinner.

  “Well, actually I do have an idea,” she replied.

  “Go on,” he said encouragingly.

  “It’s Rory, you see,” she blurted out.

  “Rory? You mean Rory who’s in the Army?” he asked.

  “Well, not any more. I gather he’s left under somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

  Her nephew had always been a puzzle for the family. Her sister had been curiously evasive when she had coincidentally phoned that day to ask if there was any possibility at Murrays for the erstwhile second lieutenant.