‘How kind, thank you.’ She had always balked at using her femininity as a weapon, but now she employed it liberally, holding the chubby figure with her dark, sparkling eyes, responding with the utmost admiration and respect.
‘I fear you might not think me so when you hear what I have to say.’ Mr Burdock leaned his plump backside against a cupboard. ‘Our policy is to take on only school-leavers. It’s our experience, you see, that young women of your age will in all probability leave in a few months to get married.’
Feeling that she just could not win, Etta held the pasty face and said firmly, ‘I assure you, Mr Burdock, that I have no intention of marrying.’
‘Ah, that’s what they all say, Miss Lanegan!’ He donned an indulgent smile. ‘The number of young women to whom I’ve given the benefit of my experience, trained them for weeks, and then off they sail with a husband. In fact I’m surprised that a pretty young thing such as yourself wasn’t snapped up ages ago.’
Etta wanted to scream.
‘However…’ Mr Burdock studied her thoughtfully, ‘…the post has been advertised for some weeks and you are the only one to apply. So, Miss Lanegan,’ he announced with a beam, ‘I’m pleased to say I’m prepared to give you a chance.’
Etta bit her tongue at the condescending tone and replied graciously, ‘Why, thank you!’
‘You can start tomorrow at a quarter to nine,’ added Burdock. ‘The wage will be eleven shillings per week minus stoppages. Naturally you’ll have to work a week in hand.’
Alarmed to hear both adjuncts – she had been accustomed to receiving thirty-five or even forty shillings from Marty – Etta told herself that at least it was a job, as she rose and was escorted from his office and thenceforth from the shop.
With a sigh of gratitude, she made her weary way home. But there was to be no welcome, an agitated Aggie bearing down on her the moment she entered. ‘Where’ve you been all this time?’
Exhausted, Etta felt like strangling her. ‘I’ve been –’
‘Ssh! You’ll wake the nippers, I’ve shoved them in bed with Jimmy-Joe. We’ve been waiting on you to come, I’ve found yese a nice wee house down the street, one like this with a back entrance too.’ Some of those on the other side lacked this facility. ‘Peter Bechetti’s horse has been hitched up for ages, he’s waiting to shift your furniture!’
‘Now?’ Etta gaped.
‘Well, unless you want to fork out that nineteen and six back-rent,’ riposted Aggie.
Etta covered her mouth, but did not think too long about the offer, especially when her mother-in-law added that she and Red had generously paid for the initial lease. Forgoing the longed-for cup of tea and the need to gaze upon her sleeping children, she hurried back into the night. By midnight, her furniture was once again ensconced in Hope Street.
Unprepared for the move, her pictures, ornaments and other belongings all willy-nilly where Mr Bechetti had dumped them after the clandestine flit, Etta had been overwhelmed by the task of putting everything into some semblance of order and had broken down in tears before finally staggering off to bed for the few hours that were left before she must rise again.
Mercifully, with the children already at Aggie’s, she had only herself to dress and feed. Even so, not daring to be late she tore through a hasty slice of bread whilst also buttering one to take for lunch, managing only half a cup of hot tea before she was on her way.
All that rushing was needless. When she arrived, the interior of the shop was still in darkness. After peering through the glass door, she wandered out of the shadows to consult a church-tower clock. There were fifteen minutes to go. Rather than dither here and fall under the curious eye of street-sweepers, she decided to stroll up and down the parade of shops which, one by one, were opening.
Perhaps, though, she had underestimated the time this would take, for when she returned the doors to the shoe shop were ajar and the manager was sitting behind the glass partition of the cash office. Instead of a smile of greeting he took his watch from his waistcoat and consulted it disapprovingly as she entered.
Etta quickly explained. ‘I was here earlier but there was no one around.’
Her affability was not returned. With a sound of intol-erance he came out of the booth, grasped the revers of his frockcoat and told her, ‘Your colleagues are already upstairs in the staff room – come, I’ll introduce you.’
Meekly, she followed him up the dark staircase.
At the intrusion everyone turned – though she had to blink in order to see them through a choking haze of cigarette smoke. Apart from the man she had met yesterday, they didn’t appear a very friendly lot, looking her up and down without a word of welcome, though Etta conceded this might have something to do with the earliness of the hour if they felt as bad as her.
‘This is your new colleague Miss Lanegan,’ Mr Burdock told them, then briskly pointed each of them out to Etta. ‘Mr Tupman…’
Etta extended her hand to the middle-aged man with the wavy ginger hair and flashed a smile, which induced the same response, his grip warm and dry.
‘Mr Vant…’ A decrepit but immaculately suited old codger rose slightly, who, it appeared, was the one responsible for filling the room with smoke. Before shaking her hand he took a lengthy drag of his cigarette, as if desperate to get his money’s worth.
‘Mr Ficklepenny, our trainee manager – in my absence he will instruct you in your duties.’
One glance at the fuzzy cheeks told Etta that Mr Ficklepenny was a recent newcomer to long trousers and she felt loath to grace the lad with a title and even less so to take orders from him. Nevertheless, she swallowed her pride and offered her hand respectfully. ‘How do you do, Mr Ficklepenny?’
This gained instant favour, the youth dealing her a schoolboyish grin and a brisk handshake.
‘Miss Sullivan, Miss Jackley, Miss Wimp, Miss Binks…’
The first three merely nodded, but the latter, a dull-looking girl provided her Christian name. ‘Mary-Ann.’
‘But not on the shop floor,’ Burdock warned sternly. ‘And finally Miss Bunyon, our book-keeper and cashier.’
Etta couldn’t resist a friendly titter. ‘An apt name for a shoe-shop assistant!’
Miss Bunyon was lofty. ‘It’s B-u-n-y-o-n, not b-u-n-i-o-n. And I’m not an assistant.’
Etta murmured an apology and touched her chin self-consciously, noting with distaste that her hand reeked of stale tobacco courtesy of Mr Vant.
Having completed introductions the manager went downstairs, the cashier closely following. With lame expression, Etta glanced around at the collection of rickety chairs then perched on one.
‘Take no notice of her,’ advised Mary-Ann, who without smiling managed to convey amicability. ‘She reckons she’s a cut above. Now, let’s see if we’ve got an old overall in the cupboard till you’ve time to go for a fitting.’
‘I trust that will be soon.’ Her eyes beginning to water as a result of Mr Vant’s chain-smoking, Etta was dismayed by the article that was presented to her, which looked clean enough but billowed with staleness when she tried it on.
‘Oh, not till Wednesday afternoon when we’re closed,’ replied Mary-Ann.
‘That’s a good fit,’ observed Maude Wimp, a bespectacled, middle-aged spinster with translucent skin that was marbled with a network of blue veins. ‘Miss Duncan was skinny like you. Doubt she’ll be coming back for it now, you might be able to keep it.’
‘What luck.’ Etta hardly dared breathe.
Misinterpreting the sardonic comment, the dull-looking Mary-Ann nodded, ‘Yes, then you’ll only have to buy one.’
Etta looked shocked. ‘No one mentioned that I’d be required to buy two overalls!’
Mary-Ann explained in simple terms, ‘One for wearing while you wash the other.’
‘I meant –’ Etta broke off, looking testy at being interrupted by a racking cough from the elderly smoker. ‘I meant, how am I to afford them?’
Mr Tupman, who had
been admiring her from a distance, sought to ease the fraught expression. ‘They knock it off your wages, threepence a week, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.’
Etta responded indignantly, ‘It is when every farthing counts!’
All turned to eye her curiously.
Flushing, she told them, ‘I live in lodgings with no one else to support me and I’ve been without work for some time and fallen behind on the rent, so you might imagine my reluctance to part with hard-earned cash.’
There were murmurs of empathy from the women.
Then young Mr Ficklepenny consulted his watch and announced bumptiously, ‘Come along now, ladies and gentlemen, time to go down!’
Etta finished buttoning her overall. Mr Vant wrapped his grey wrinkled mouth around his cigarette to take a final deep inhalation. Mesmerised, Etta pictured him sucking his socks up through his legs into his chest, so strenuously did he pull on it. Her last button fastened, she looked down at herself despondently, wondering if she would be able to bear the stench of the overall and hoping she could make do with just the one by washing it overnight.
The youth clapped his hands as one would to a child. ‘You too, Miss Lanegan, let’s start as we mean to go on!’
Hating being under such rule but having no choice, Etta went down to begin instruction.
However, later in the morning, after a ten-minute break for tea, when the manager went out into town for a cup of coffee, she was to discover that there remained enough of the schoolboy in Mr Ficklepenny to provide a humorous interval, his main party-piece being to tip methylated spirits onto a counter and set it alight.
‘Ooh, he’s a card,’ sniggered Mary-Ann, hand over mouth as blue flames danced across the counter before the pyromaniac expertly smothered them with a flourish. ‘He’ll get copped one of these days.’
‘Nay, I’m too wick,’ bragged Cyril Ficklepenny, acting the showman. Withdrawing a bag from his pocket he thrust it at Etta. ‘Here, have one.’
About to delve into it, she noted with surprise, ‘It looks like India rubber.’
‘It is. He cuts them into bits and scoffs them.’ Mr Tupman wandered up to join the circle that had gathered, the more relaxed in the manager’s absence. ‘He’s flipping crackers.’
Etta watched in astonishment as a grinning Mr Ficklepenny partook of the contents of the bag, relishing the pieces of eraser as if they were sweets.
‘Here, have a proper one.’ Mary-Ann handed round a bag of toffee, Miss Sullivan and Miss Jackley from the children’s department being first to delve in.
Etta rarely ate this confection but accepted a lump just to be sociable, looking from the corner of her eye at the cashier who remained aloof in her small glass booth. ‘Miss Bunyon looks disapproving. Will she tell?’
‘No, she hates Dandy as much as we do,’ said Maude Wimp.
‘Dandy?’
‘Our esteemed manager,’ provided Tupman, toffee in cheek. ‘Short for Dandelion, you know, as in dandelion and burdock. Mindst, he’s been called all sorts. We used to call him Buttercup at one time.’
Etta laughed at the apt description, and agreed that the shape of his face with its limpid brown eyes reminded her too of a cow’s, especially as on either side of the bald pate was a little tuft of hair, the placing and arrangement of these making them appear like horns. The red-haired man grinned back at her, this and the smiles of others engen-dering a feeling of camaraderie. Perhaps things were not going to be so loathsome here after all.
‘Oh damn,’ issued Maude at the entry of a prospective customer. ‘I knew somebody’d come in the minute I’d put this in my mouth.’
‘As the actress said to the bishop,’ leered Mr Ficklepenny.
‘What do you mean?’ enquired Tupman, straight-faced.
‘You know!’ the youth grinned lasciviously.
Tupman remained mildly puzzled. ‘No, we don’t, do we, Mr Vant? Tell us.’
‘Well, it’s just – it’s just summat you say!’
‘You don’t know, sonny, do you?’ admonished the older man. ‘In that case it would be wiser not to voice such vulgarities in front of ladies.’
‘Especially as you’re meant to be in a position of authority,’ added Mr Vant, wagging a shoehorn.
Ficklepenny blushed crimson, his amusement petering out at being so humiliated. Etta had no understanding of the comment, and neither, she suspected from their blank expressions, did the other women, but she was grateful to Mr Tupman and Mr Vant for their chivalry.
Unfortunately, her smile brought her under attack from the trainee manager. ‘Don’t just stand there, go with Miss Wimp and learn your job!’
Following Maude’s example, she discreetly spat the lump of toffee into a twist of paper and rushed to attend the customer.
For the next seven hours, except for the one allocated for lunch and a short tea-break in the afternoon, Etta was inducted into the ways of the shoe trade. She attempted to retain all that she was taught, the rules and regulations, especially the one that decreed that the customer was always right even if he or she was blatantly offensive, this latter rule being the most difficult to uphold and the new assistant very nearly finding herself sacked on her first day when a woman took exception to being told that the shoes she had selected did not flatter her and walked out.
‘But she requested my opinion!’ a tired Etta objected, upon the manager’s reprimand.
‘She expected you to tell her they looked splendid,’ scolded Mr Burdock, the fat on his double chin wobbling. ‘And so do I. Your role, Miss Lanegan, is to sell the product.’
Towards the end of a very long day when it looked as if another awkward customer might cost her her job, Etta despaired as she scanned the wall of shoe boxes for a solution, her own footwear having rubbed blisters on the two swollen lumps of hot meat on the end of her aching legs, when she felt a sweaty presence at her side.
‘Take her these.’ Mr Burdock’s pudgy hand tugged a box from the fixture. ‘They match the colour of her hat.’
‘They’re not what she asked for; she won’t like them.’
‘Miss Lanegan, have you listened to nothing?’ The fat, impatient face jutted towards hers. ‘Make her like them. That is the art of a saleswoman.’
Moving slightly away, she beheld him in protest. A dark shadow of stubble had begun to sprout on the perspiring, lardish jaw. On top of his manner she found it immensely irritating. ‘I can’t force her to buy them.’
Burdock was firm. ‘No, but with a little charm you might persuade her. And as an added incentive, this one carries a spiff.’ He pointed to a ticket on the box. ‘Every pair of old stock you move will earn you an extra sixpence in your wage packet at the end of the quarter.’
For someone on eleven shillings per week this was sufficient to make Etta put aside her principles. Perking up, she bore the outmoded shoes directly to the customer, telling her, ‘I omitted to show you these, madam. They are just in and very modern – but perhaps too modern for madam’s tastes.’
Watching her, Burdock groaned at the new assistant’s idea of charm.
But there was a certain method to Etta’s words as she added, ‘All the young ladies are wearing them.’
‘You’re not.’ With acid features, the mature-looking woman glanced down, then indicated Mary-Ann. ‘And neither is she.’
‘Only because I’m unable to afford them,’ confessed Etta sadly. ‘They are rather superior quality to the ones I buy – such a pretty colour too.’ She affected to admire the garish hue. ‘In fact, they’re an exact match for the ribbon on your hat.’
The woman sought out a mirror and her suspicious frown departed. ‘So they are.’ And, though still dubious, she tried them on and paraded before the admiring assistant. ‘Well, they were not what I came in for…but you’re right in saying they match my hat. Do they suit me, do you think?’
‘Admirably,’ confirmed Etta.
‘Mmm…’ a moment’s indecision. Then, ‘I’ll take them.’
&nbs
p; A triumphant Etta was picking the spiff off the box before wrapping it when she felt the manager’s hot breath in her ear. ‘Well done, Miss Lanegan – but wait, if you can persuade her to buy a handbag there’ll be another little bonus in it for you.’
Her tactics this time proved not so successful. Even so, Etta was grateful to have earned herself a precious extra sixpence, and yet more grateful upon being told that it was time to take her receipt book to the office in preparation of closing.
At long last the working day ended and she said perfunctory goodbyes to the other assistants. Whilst not as bad as she had feared upon being introduced to them this morning, none of them were of the type with whom she could strike up a close friendship – but then she was not there to make friends but to keep a roof over her children’s heads. How desperate she was to cuddle her brood after being apart from them since yesterday morning.
Alas, when she went to pick them up from their grandmother’s they were too drowsy to care, the youngest one being particularly crabby at this disruption to his life. Etta wanted to weep, and yet again cursed Martin for destroying her family.
And no sooner had she taken them home than it was morning and time to give them back. So exhausted was she that it hardly registered how oddly Aggie greeted her when she entered, and she did not notice or comment on all the scurrying and guilty looks.
Besides which, Aggie spoke first, her awkward expression being quickly replaced by a look of eagled-eyed concern as she demanded, ‘Where’s your wedding ring?’
It was Etta’s turn to shrink with guilt then. She had expected someone to comment on this last night but, probably because it was dark, no one had noticed. Defensively, she retorted, ‘I don’t even know if I am still married. Your son hasn’t granted me the courtesy of knowing whether he’s alive.’
Uncle Mal shared an uncomfortable look with Red then shuffled out to the closet with a newspaper.
Aggie remained intent on Etta’s denuded ring finger. ‘Ye haven’t pawned it?’ she gasped.
Etta shook her head and spoke truthfully. ‘I’ve been forced into taking it off because no one would employ a married woman.’
The Keepsake Page 28
