Our Best Attention

by Jane Tulloch

  New Year would pass similarly. Father would ignore the alcoholic haze permeating the area for days after Hogmanay as the local farmers drove erratically about.

  It was a relief to get back to school in January. So much for the Festive Season.

  Eventually Father died, as he lived, a lingering miserable death subject to the inept ministrations of my mother. His funeral was attended by some of the local dignitaries, some farmers and, surprisingly, some ‘people up from Edinburgh’. At the pathetic tea in the church hall one of these elderly men told me how much of a scholar my father had been, how high the hopes had been of his making a stellar career for himself. The Moderatorship had not been thought to have been outwith his grasp some day. Joining us, the others shook their heads as they wondered what had happened to the brilliant young man he had been. My mother looked on, tongue-tied as ever. The fruit-cake she had made had not been a success but fortunately a kindly neighbour had made mountains of sausage rolls and the butcher had handed in a ham. I hadn’t realised that previously parishioners had handed in to the Manse gifts of cakes, joints of meat and bottles of sherry, particularly at Christmas, but my father had insisted on these being passed on ‘to the poor’.

  There was a lot I hadn’t realised: I hadn’t realised that there was no point in my working hard at school. There was no possibility of my ever going to university, college or even to study nursing. I was to stay at home ‘with mother’ in the time-honoured way. There was also to be no possibility of my forming a relationship or marrying. It was made clear to me that my duty was to care for my elderly mother and provide companionship in her old age. I was told by the lawyer when we met after Father’s death that there would be sufficient funds to provide for me even after Mother’s demise. So my life improved slightly. We moved out of the Manse of course but didn’t go far. A small house in the village became available so we moved there.

  Life outside Father’s shadow was significantly easier but we still lived a life of parsimony and thrift. During the war, which followed soon after, this became a way of life for everyone, so I had no reason to mind it. The war provided opportunities for me to get more involved in village life and I enjoyed the social life that I had previously missed. I dug for victory, sewed for success and willingly handed in our bashed and burnt aluminium pans to build new planes. We had whist drives, put on little shows and made up parcels for prisoners of war (I pitied the unfortunate recipients of Mother’s rock-hard toffee). Although it’s a terrible thing to say – I did enjoy the war. I loved the sense of community it engendered. I had friends of a sort. It was a new life for me.

  After the war, life slowly reeled out, the seasons marked by local events: Easter Sunday, sheep-dog trials, Sunday School picnics, Harvest Thanksgiving and of course Christmas. Christmas was much better than when Father was alive but somehow we still felt guilty enjoying the little treats that we allowed ourselves. I once found Mother staring sadly at a box of orange and lemon slices, a particular favourite of hers. “Should I, Mary?” she asked. “What would your father say?”

  I was bolder then but even so I bit back my instinctive response, “Sod him,” (I was bitterly resentful of him and his repressive regime by then) and just told her to enjoy them.

  “Thank you, dear,” she smiled at me.

  She became more childlike as she grew older and, eventually, looking after her was a full-time matter. I couldn’t leave her for a moment. I was on my own with her. Kind neighbours had died or moved away and incomers to the village weren’t interested in the old spinster and her ailing mother. These new people didn’t want to ‘get involved’ for fear of being taken advantage of? Perhaps. As time went by Mother didn’t always know who I was, which was wearing, and I often wanted to scream at her. I didn’t though, which I’m proud of, there was something defenceless about her mild eyes and perpetual slight frown. Her death was more of a fading away. She dwindled to nothing, vaguely apologetic to the end. I sometimes wonder if I miss her but she had become such a burden latterly that I’m not sure if I do.

  I had a surprise, a very big surprise indeed, when I saw Mr Miller, the family lawyer, after Mother’s death. He outlined to me the extent of my fortune and I nearly fell off my chair. It seemed that Mother had come from a very wealthy family and, as an only child, she had inherited everything. Father had deplored this and had forbidden her to touch a penny of it regardless of how hard our lives were. It was all mine now. It was a larger sum than ever due to astute investment and reinvestment by Mr Miller. I thanked him profusely for his efforts. He assured me that it had been a pleasure. He had been a young man when Mother and Father had first met and had always felt sorry for my mother. She had married the handsome (handsome? Father?) young theological student against her family’s wishes and had been told that she had been cut off without a penny. Needless to say this had not been the case but Father, dogmatic to the end, had refused her access to it. Typical, I thought.

  Anyway, it was mine now. No more parsimony and thrift for me.

  I started a new life after that. It wasn’t easy, at least not at first. I decided to move away from the village. I wanted to move into a new life. It was to be busy and full of fun, sociable, friendly: everything I’d missed out on since the war. Looking back I think I needed to recover from the long years of looking after Mother. I hadn’t been able to have a full-night’s sleep when she was at her most ‘wandered’ and lost track of time. Gradually we had become cut off from other people as I was so wrapped up in caring for her. However, I now threw myself and my money into locating and purchasing a smart bungalow in the outskirts of Edinburgh. I said farewell to the people I’d known, albeit distantly lately, and set off into the future.

  At first all went well. My new neighbours were welcoming up to a point but soon it was clear that they were immersed in their own lives. I found that wherever I went, and I travelled a lot over the ensuing years, people tended to just politely withdraw from me. I never knew why. I tried. God knows I tried. I invited people in and plied them with expensive alcohol and extravagant food but I tended not to be asked back or only to large parties where I struggled to find any way of talking to people. I didn’t have much confidence choosing what to wear or how to present myself. In shops I just bought what the sales assistants told me I suited. Part of me knew I looked ridiculous but that didn’t stop me. I was trying to buy friendship from them too I realised.

  With Christmas approaching one year I decided that all this was to change. I made a plan. First I went shopping to Murrays to find the best tree, decorations, lights, toys, food, drinks, chocolates, sweets, cakes and flowers. I shopped day after day becoming well-known to all the staff. Finally, I was prepared and everything was bought that needed to be bought. The house was a Christmas fantasia. Then I went shopping for my largest gift to myself. I took my time about it. I went back day after day looking for just the right one: just the right child. I was looking for someone of my own to spoil and love and to give the best Christmas ever: one that I had never had, everything that I had never had.

  I thought I’d look for a little girl. The toy department was the obvious place to look and I surveyed the crowded scene from the top of the steps down to it. Sure enough, harried parents angrily snapped at their little ones for touching things or asking for too much. I thought I’d like a smallish one but not still in nappies. About three or four years old would be ideal but I’d be willing to take up to a seven or eight year old if necessary, as long as they still believed in Santa. I took a supply of sweets and chocolate with me in my pocket. As I observed the families, sometimes casually falling into conversation with stressed mothers I realised that it might be harder than I thought. In Toys parents were very much looking at and talking to the children. Children were the focus there. I might be luckier in another department where parents were more distracted. Parents with three or more children would be ideal as they might be less likely to miss one. One bright Thursday morning three days before Christmas I finally found exactl
y what I had been looking for: a mother with three children, two younger boys, one in a push chair, and a little girl of about five. A pretty little thing she was too. Red cheeks and eyes stinging with tears after being shouted at by her mother for trying to touch the display of gloves in the Menswear department. The mother was clearly under pressure and trying to choose a present for her husband. I passed close by and winked at the little girl. She looked back at me in surprise. I smiled and half pulled the sweets out of my pocket. I raised my eyebrows and indicated that they were for her. With a glance at her mother now fully occupied with a sales assistant she slipped through the small group of other people around the counter and came up to me smiling expectantly.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go!” and took her little hand in mine as we set off up the back stairs. I had cunningly planned to go up rather than down as people might be more likely to suspect that she had run outside. She resisted a little at first but I put on my most authoritative voice and said, “It’s fine, just come along with me. We’re playing a little game with Mummy.”

  She looked at me dubiously as we tramped up and up the stairs. Eventually we arrived on the fourth floor. Furniture and Soft Furnishings. Out of breath after all the stairs, I had to sit down for a little rest on one of the large sofas and she sat down obediently with me. I gave her a bar of chocolate. “All for me?” she queried

  “Yes, sweetheart, it’s all for you. It’s all, all for you. I want you to have the loveliest Christmas ever.”

  I think that’s when I made my big mistake. In a surge of loving warmth for the little girl I gave her a hug. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of it or maybe she just suddenly realised that she’d made the cardinal error of going with a stranger but she set up the most unearthly wail. It was embarrassingly loud. I saw a staff member look up from his desk in alarm. His telephone rang. Answering it he looked over at us.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” I reassured her but the wail increased in volume and now also in pitch. As the sales assistant, now stood up and began to make his way over to us threading his way through low stools and little tables, I panicked, tried to pick up the little girl and run for the door to the stairs. I don’t know how I thought I could somehow carry this substantial child all the way down the stairs, but I did. I was told later that I was at a funny age. Maybe I was.

  I saw the staff close the doors to the department and men slowly circling towards me. The little girl made a run for it to a tallish lady that I later found out was Miss Murray herself who had heard the disturbance from her office.

  The upshot was that I was arrested and charged eventually with plagium, the legal term for child abduction. I had resisted arrest, of course, which didn’t help my case and I assaulted a number of police officers, but I had to somehow convey to them and to Murrays’ staff that I meant the child no harm: the opposite really as I would have given her the most wonderful Christmas. One she wouldn’t have to share with her brothers and I would never shout at her like her mother did. I did shout that day though. I shouted and screamed and kicked out at the fat security man. A lifetime’s anger and disappointment and misery poured out of me there in Murrays Furniture and Soft Furnishings department. Finally I collapsed exhausted on to the same plump sofa. I allowed myself to be marched downstairs, to my shame, in handcuffs and taken out to a waiting police car.

  I was very surprised to be found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison for this kindly, well-intentioned act. I had hoped that Mr Miller, my old lawyer, might have spoken up for me but he had, of course, retired and moved away or was even dead and his young colleagues knew nothing of me personally. No one knew anything of me personally.

  I’m writing this now in my cell. Association time is over and we’re locked in for the night. The gentle snoring of my cell-mate, Gillian, reminds me that I’m not alone. I find it comforting. It wasn’t at first. In fact I had a frightening time when I was first admitted. The other women don’t like people who harm children but they soon realised that I was not a danger to little ones. I only want them to have what I didn’t have. Now the other women are my friends. I enjoy the company. We play games in the evenings and work together in the kitchen or library during the day. It all reminds me of the more sociable times during the war. I’ll miss them all so much when I’m liberated next month. It will nearly be Christmas then. I’ll need to sort out my house and get it all decorated and ready again. I think I might try for a little boy this time. I might have more luck with a boy. If the worst comes to the worst the most that will happen is that I’ll come back here. Either way I’ll still have company for Christmas.

  Chapter 15

  Rooftop

  The discovery of the Joshi family living in the eaves of the building set Miss Murray thinking about the store as a whole. Were there any more secret cupboards or corners that she was not aware of? It’s my store and I should know every inch of it, she reasoned to herself in the car on her way to work one morning.

  On arrival, she summoned Mrs Pegram to discuss this.

  “Are you thinking we might find more stowaways?” Mrs Pegram asked. “Mind you, the way things worked out couldn’t be better. What an asset Mr J is to the Carpets department. Gavin is always singing his praises.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Miss Murray replied, getting back to the subject on her mind. “I just suddenly realised I didn’t know every nook and cranny of the place and I really should.”

  “OK, so what do you want to do?”

  “Get Timmins up here. We can get him to take us round. He should have all the keys and things we’ll need. Maybe he’s got a plan of the building?”

  Timmins was the caretaker who worked from a tiny office by the staff entrance.

  Mrs Pegram shrugged her shoulders “OK, you’re the boss. I’ll give him a ring. He should have finished clocking everyone in by now.”

  Miss Murray gave her a reproving look. “I wish you wouldn’t go on about me being the boss.”

  “Well you are!” Mrs Pegram was the only person who knew Miss Murray well enough to take that tone with her. Miss Murray shook her head and raised her eyes in mock despair. Theirs had been a long friendship.

  The two women, with Timmins in attendance, duly started their tour of inspection. They started in the basement and cellar areas. These dank dungeons below street level were dark and cavernous. They provided a lot of storage space for excess stock or newly arrived stock on the long, deep shelves that lined each cellar, until such time as it was required on the store floor. This area was presided over by Jim, the head porter, a pale man half-drowned in his brown overall. He had the look of a plant grown in the dark with large heavily shadowed eyes. He spoke in a sighing voice. He was tremendously intimidated by the sudden presence of the two ladies from ‘the management’ and immediately thought he was in trouble. As usual, Mrs Pegram put him at his ease and explained the reason for their visit.

  They formally inspected every last corner and cupboard there before moving onwards and slightly upwards to Packing and Dispatch. There they met with a great number of people busily occupied with wrapping and packaging a huge number of items of varying size and shape. The packers’ nimbleness and expertise was remarked on and this praise was modestly accepted at the time. However, it was loudly repeated by the recipients of this praise in the canteen later to the clear irritation of the porters.

  One by one, each and every department in the old store was visited and the various cupboards, partitioned-off sections, and every odd space not immediately obvious to the usual visitor was scrutinised. The staff members in the various departments looked at one another in alarm, mystified by Miss Murray herself apparently rooting about in their areas.

  Toys, Ladies Separates, Menswear, Model Gowns, Ironmongery, Haberdashery, Perfumery and Cosmetics, Carpets, Luggage, Children’s Wear, Millinery, in fact every department as well as all the offices and the canteen itself was visited during the course of the morning. No space was ignored but, equally no surpris
es were found. All was pretty much as Miss Murray had expected.

  Moving on slowly and inexorably throughout the large old building they finally came to the attic floor, which had many been used many years ago to house dormitories for young male staff members. Looking down the corridor at the rooms branching off it, Mrs Pegram exclaimed in amazement, “Just look at this. All these rooms.”

  Miss Murray had always known about the old dormitories, indeed, one or two of the older bachelors had still lived there when she had started at the store. Because it was strictly a ‘gentlemen only’ area, she had never thought to venture there and it had quietly been forgotten by everyone except by the night security patrols. It was one of the areas that Stan and Sabre ran through singing loudly. Departed spirits of some of the young men were thought to inhabit the area. They looked into the largely empty rooms. In one, obviously a kitchen, an old-fashioned kettle stood on the elderly stove still poised, ever ready to make tea.

  Mrs Pegram shivered. At the end of the corridor just as they were about to turn back they spotted in a particularly shadowed corner, a short flight of steps leading up to a small locked door.

  “What’s up there?” asked Miss Murray.

  Timmins glanced down at the clipboard he was holding. “Just the roof, Miss Murray. I haven’t been up there myself. Do you want me to try to find the key? I don’t seem to have it here.”

  “Yes, please,” said Miss Murray crisply. “Will you have to go down to your cubby-hole to get it?”

  He reddened at this disparaging reference to his office. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s not on the main key ring. I don’t know when it was last used.”

  “The war, I expect,” cut in Mrs Pegram. “I remember hearing about some of the staff doing fire-watching duty at night up there.”

  “Goodness,” said Miss Murray faintly. “Oh well, yes please, Timmins, go and fetch the key. It’ll take a while for you to get it so Mrs Pegram and I will check the outside of the building and meet you back up here in say half an hour? That would give you a chance to have your break.”