The Shop Girls of Chapel Street
Page 8
Violet smiled and nodded. After all, who cared if she had to stop up past midnight to sew those buttonholes? ‘You’re a bad influence,’ she grumbled as they dismounted and made their way to the same smooth rock as before. ‘I’m meant to be doing other things at home, not out enjoying myself.’
‘You are, though?’ he checked tentatively as he sat next to her. ‘Enjoying yourself?’
‘More than I should be,’ she confessed guiltily. ‘Considering it’s no time at all since we lost Aunty Winnie.’
‘Well, I’m glad you came, Violet.’ He sat back, legs dangling over the edge of the rock, casting sideways glances at her and soaking up the moment.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve been stand-offish,’ she said, catching his eye and smiling briefly. He wasn’t talking as much as last time and it fell to her to fill the gaps. ‘I’ve told Ida I’ll be forced to back out of Mistaken Identity, what with keeping an eye on Uncle Donald and having to earn a bit extra. So I won’t be coming to any more rehearsals.’
‘Now it’s me that’s sorry,’ he admitted, leaning forward to gaze down at the mossy green rocks and tumbling water of the glen. He gave Violet the space to carry on talking if she wanted to. If she didn’t, he felt that very soon he would make a move to put an arm around her shoulder and draw her to him.
Violet was ready to prattle on but then the peace of their surroundings registered with her and she too fell silent. She joined Eddie in gazing at the beauty below them – water drops falling on ferns, glistening spiders’ webs stretching from branch to branch of green saplings, the gurgling stream. She felt his hand reach out to clasp hers.
‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ he told her plainly and simply.
‘What do you mean?’
‘For us to come here again, not having to talk, just sitting.’
That was the exact moment when she fell in love, Violet realized afterwards. Eddie saying there was no need to talk, holding her hand, looking into her eyes. She wanted to tell him how she felt but it seemed too soon and instead he kissed her and held her close.
There was a sliver of silver moon in a clear sky, a breeze that made her shiver.
‘Come on, I’ll take you home,’ Eddie said, offering his hand to help her stand. ‘At this rate I’ll be getting you into trouble and that’s the last thing I want to do.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
I should be in seventh heaven, Violet told herself as she sat at her sewing machine in the front room of number 11, the wireless playing in the background. The long summer evening meant that she didn’t need to turn on the gas mantle and instead used the daylight to complete the close work on Sybil’s rosebud blouse. Buttonholes were complicated – you had to cut out a small rectangle of material and place it right sides together against the edge of the right front of the garment. The next stage was to machine-stitch a still smaller rectangle that you then cut into with a razor blade before turning the whole thing right side out. Then – eureka! – once you’d ironed it flat you had your finished buttonhole.
‘Carefully does it,’ Aunty Winnie used to say for a job such as this. ‘One little slip-up and the whole thing is ruined.’
As the sun sank and dust mites danced in its last rays, Violet banished a sharp regret that she wasn’t at Hadley Institute rehearsing her part for the Players. She concentrated hard until she’d completed six of the eight buttonholes then paused to look around the room at the bric-a-brac that her aunt had collected – a photograph of Violet as a baby taking pride of place on the mantelpiece, alongside a Minton vase with a pattern of red roses and a clock that no one had bothered to wind since Winnie died.
I am happy, she told herself, recalling the soaring feeling she’d had when Eddie took her hand and tenderly kissed her. Floating and drifting, pressing her lips to his, not daring to believe.
But then again it’s not right to feel this way – not so soon and not while Uncle Donald is miserable, not to mention the difficulty over paying the rent. It’s wrong of me to fill my head with Eddie and his dark brown eyes, thick, long lashes and that way he has of looking up from under his fine straight brows, a slight smile on his lips.
As Violet drifted off once again into her happy memory of last night’s kiss while the wireless played a lively jazz tune, she hardly noticed her uncle’s footsteps descending the stairs and it was only the opening of the door that brought her crashing back down to earth.
‘What the dickens …?’ he grumbled, striding across the room and abruptly switching off the wireless. ‘The window’s open. Do you want the whole world to hear that din?’
Anxious to avoid another pointless argument, Violet bit her tongue and went back to her sewing.
‘It’s bad enough listening to your contraption rattling on without the wireless belting out that racket,’ Donald continued. ‘It’s giving me a headache.’
‘This extra work will help us pay the rent,’ Violet explained then continued with short bursts on the machine. ‘I’ll be finished in half an hour, I promise.’
‘Then you’ll be gadding off as usual, I expect.’ Donald’s next step was to go over to the window and slam it shut.
‘Could you move out of the way of the light, please?’ Violet asked, growing more exasperated but not anticipating the explosion that followed.
‘Can’t a man go where he likes in his own house?’ He turned from the window and advanced on Violet, towering over her. ‘I’m asking you a civil question – who are you to stop me standing where I like, doing whatever I like?’
Sitting in his shadow, Violet found herself trembling. Her uncle’s face was sunken, the skin pulled taut across his sharp cheekbones, the corners of his mouth downturned beneath his grey moustache and there was a trace of spittle on his bottom lip. Nevertheless she stood up for herself. ‘I don’t call that a civil question,’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t answer me back,’ he snarled. ‘I won’t have it, not from the likes of you.’
‘What do you mean, the likes of me?’ It was no good – Violet felt herself drawn in despite her earlier resolution. ‘What have I done wrong?’
‘Ask anyone on Brewery Road and all the way up Chapel Street what you’ve done wrong. You’ll find plenty of people willing to give it to you chapter and verse.’ Donald thumped his fist on the work area surrounding Violet’s machine, dislodging a box of pins that fell onto the rug and scattered everywhere. ‘There’s your carrying on with Stan Tankard for a start.’
Violet stood up. It was his sneering, holier-than-thou tone that angered her more than anything. ‘Once and for all, Uncle Donald, can you please tell me what you have against Stan?’
‘Oh, so you don’t mind having your name dragged into the dirt along with his?’
‘A girl can have a lark with him,’ Violet insisted. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘There’s plenty wrong. He’s got himself a bad name, the way he struts around reckoning he’s cock of the walk. And what is he really? A loom tuner at Kingsley’s, that’s all.’
‘No. Stan’s got a job as a lifeguard at Brinkley Baths as well,’ Violet said before realizing that this would set the seal on her uncle’s bad opinion.
‘That’s why you’re so keen on swimming all of a sudden, is it?’ Donald’s sneering contempt reached a new peak. ‘Those lifeguard costumes are downright indecent, if you ask me …’
‘No one did ask you,’ she muttered.
‘Not to mention the skimpy outfits you girls wear these days. It proves what I’m saying – you and Stan Tankard are heading for the gutter, which is where you both belong.’
Incensed and with trembling hands, Violet put away her sewing things. ‘Aunty Winnie must be turning in her grave,’ she whispered. ‘You’d never dare say such things if she was still alive.’
Donald took a step back and a look of shame flickered in his eyes. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Well, she’s not,’ he declared with renewed bitterness. ‘So it’s me you have to answer to now, not her.’
‘Good job too,’ he said, taken aback by her sudden capitulation.
‘It’ll be best for both of us.’ Her heart felt sore and her head was in a spin as one by one she put the pins back in their box and Donald slammed the door behind him.
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’ Muriel studied Violet’s sad expression when the younger girl called in at Jubilee to collect some mending work during her dinner break next day. ‘According to Ida, this is what you’ve been hankering after – sewing more zips and hems, and such like.’
‘It is.’ Violet tried to put on a cheerful front, though she’d slept badly and she still felt unhappy after the argument with her uncle. ‘I’ll do a good job, I promise.’
‘Have you got time for a cuppa?’ the older woman asked, coming out from behind her counter.
Just being in the shop raised Violet’s spirits – surrounded by cards of lace trim, rayon undergarments, racks of embroidery thread, calfskin gloves and packets of silk stockings, she felt in her element. ‘Yes, please. I’ve got fifteen minutes before Mr Hutchinson sends out the troops.’
‘Tea and biscuits, it is.’ Fashionably neat in her straight grey skirt and a fitted lilac top, with grey leather shoes that had a small heel and a bar across the front, Muriel led the way into a small kitchen at the back of the shop. ‘Ida’s out getting her hair cut at the new hairdresser’s on Canal Road, but I can nip through to serve a customer if I hear the shop bell ring.’
‘How’s she having it done?’
‘Shorter, in an Eton crop. You know Ida – she’s daring in that respect.’
‘It’ll suit her,’ Violet predicted. Sitting down to accept her cup of tea, she was startled to feel tears well up and trickle down her cheeks before she could stop them.
‘Oh, love, what is it?’ Muriel asked.
‘I’m sorry, I haven’t got a hankie.’
‘Take mine.’ Muriel’s handkerchief was edged with lace, with a blue flower embroidered in one corner. She gave it to her then rested a hand on Violet’s shoulder. ‘What’s the trouble? Would you like to let me in on it?’
‘It’s Uncle Donald,’ Violet sobbed. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him ever since Aunty Winnie died. He’s shut his barber’s shop and now we’re struggling to find the rent. He’s coming down on me like a ton of bricks, saying I belong in the gutter and I don’t know what else.’ Her troubles poured out until at last she blew her nose and pulled herself together. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t have anyone to turn to.’
Muriel nodded. ‘I know. It can be a lonely life without brothers and sisters. I look at the Briggs girls and what they’ve been through, especially Margie when she had her baby and there was no father in the picture. That was a bad time for the poor girl – she went to ground at her granddad’s house on Ada Street and for a time things looked bleak. But it all turned out perfectly well because she had Lily and Evie to help her. Now Margie is nicely set up in an office job and her little girl is happy playing all day with Lily and Annie’s bairns. That’s what having a big family does – it pulls you through the hard times.’
Violet blew her nose a second time. ‘If I worked in a mill, it might be different. I’d make friends with the other girls, there’d be a big gang to pal up with and go dancing with at a weekend. I sometimes think that’s what I should do – get a job at Calvert’s or Kingsley’s.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ Muriel advised. Like Sybil, she was all too aware of the grinding effects of mill work. You only had to look at the worn faces of the women trudging through the entrance to Calvert’s at half past seven each morning to know that a life of spinning and weaving was no solution to Violet’s problems. But, sorry to see Violet so crushed and unhappy, she made a confession of her own. ‘I was by myself when my young man let me down. I was all set to be married – the dress was made, the church was booked. But then at the last minute my fiancé, Ron … well, he got cold feet.’
‘Did he tell you why?’
‘No. I never got a clear explanation from him, not even a note to say where he’d gone. Ron left me high and dry and I never saw him again.’
‘That’s awful.’ Violet looked long and hard at Muriel’s calm face. ‘What about your family?’ she asked.
‘Like I said, I was on my own. Mother got diphtheria when I was eight. There were complications and she never got better. She died when I was ten. Father was killed a few years later in the war. After that, it was up to me to see what I could make of my life.’
Violet shook her head as if making space for common sense amongst her muddled emotions. ‘And here’s me going on about my worries. What must you think of me?’
‘I think you’re going through a bad patch,’ Muriel sympathized with a soft smile. ‘And if you need someone to lean on, you know where to find me.’
Violet said a heartfelt thank-you as she handed back her empty cup and she felt her sadness ease. ‘I’ll have your mending done by Saturday,’ she promised, chin up and ready to go back to work.
Out on Chapel Street the sun shone brightly and strains of ‘Night and Day’ drifted through the open door of Sykes’ bakery.
‘You’re late,’ Ben Hutchinson challenged the moment she walked into the shop.
‘No. I’m dead on time,’ she countered. ‘And don’t you dare go on about docking my wages, or else.’
Saturday came and the work for Sybil, Muriel and Ida was finished and returned on time. Muriel and Ida paid Violet on the spot and right there and then offered her more hems to sew, so she was pleased with herself when she went home after work to enter details of her earnings in the back of the rent book kept on the kitchen mantelpiece. She stashed the money away in her sewing box in the front room before escaping again into the fresh air as soon as she heard the sound of her uncle’s footsteps coming downstairs.
Where should she go on this fine evening, she wondered, perhaps hoping to bump into Eddie if she made her way up to the Common where a group of pals often got together for a kick-about after the regular Rovers fixture. In fact, she was disappointed not to have heard from him since Tuesday and had begun to wonder if she’d read too much into the situation.
Eddie Thomson kissed you, she reminded herself, enjoying the breeze on her bare arms and legs as she walked up the hill. He definitely made the first move – I’m not making it up. He admitted he’d waited a long time for us to be together and he looked deep into my eyes.
So what? A small, doubtful voice wormed its way into her head and set up a dialogue with her hopeful, love-struck self. What’s in a kiss?
Two kisses, actually.
Once the moment has passed, what’s to stop a man changing his mind?
Not Eddie. Eddie doesn’t lark about like Stan. He’s sincere.
But you never know. Look what happened to Muriel – jilted at the altar, no less. And anyway, the point is – why hasn’t he been in touch?
Violet reached Overcliffe Road and her thoughts came full circle. Because he’s been busy, just like me, she told herself, waiting for a tram to rattle by before she crossed the road.
There, on the Common, she was pleased to make out the usual group of devil-may-care local lads booting a scuffed leather ball over the rough grass. They yelled instructions to each other – ‘To, me, Stan!’, ‘Shoot, Eddie, shoot!’, ‘Take it down the wing. Now pass to me!’ – and raced for goal, roaring with happiness if their side scored or moaning in despair if the shot misfired.
Smiling, Violet kept her distance. She spotted Evie and Kathy on a bench close to the entrance to Linton Park and glad of a chance to have a chat with them both, she joined them.
‘We missed you on Wednesday night,’ Kathy told her pleasantly as she made room for her to sit.
‘I was busy,’ V
iolet replied without going into detail.
‘Did Ida tell you that she’s given your part of my sister to Evie here?’ Kathy went on.
Evie looked embarrassed. ‘You can have it back if you like,’ she said quickly. ‘It wouldn’t bother me.’
‘No, it’s all yours.’ Violet settled in to watch the five-a-side match. She saw Stan belt up the wing with the ball, only to be brought down by an opponent and curl up on the ground as if in agony. A concerned Eddie bent down to offer him a hand but Stan rolled and sprang high into the air like a March hare, calling again for the ball.
‘Stan’s a card.’ Kathy grinned. A breeze ruffled her fair hair and she kept the hem of her skirt pinned down with both hands.
‘But look at Eddie – he’s got the ball now.’ Violet watched with admiration as Eddie dribbled towards goal. With the sleeves of his collarless white shirt rolled up and a broad leather belt buckled tight around his slim waist, he cut a dashing figure.
‘Look – he’s going to score.’ Evie held her breath.
‘Shoot, Eddie!’ Kathy cried.
Eddie let fly with a hefty kick. The ball cannoned past the goalkeeper and shot on towards the hawthorn hedge at the far side of the Common. Someone scrabbled after it, going down on all-fours to retrieve it.
‘Now, Eddie on the other hand …’ Kathy began. She didn’t have to say any more for Evie and Violet to know what she meant.
Eddie Thomson was someone you couldn’t take your eyes off. He was naturally athletic, moving with good balance and coordination. He ran faster, swerved with more agility, kicked with more force than the rest of his team put together.
‘Yes,’ Evie and Violet agreed with a sigh.
Eddie’s goal drew the impromptu match to a conclusion, it seemed. Once the ball had been rescued, the players shook hands and someone suggested an adjournment to the Green Cross. They picked up their jackets and caps then sauntered towards the bench where the girls sat.