The Shop Girls of Chapel Street

by Jenny Holmes

  ‘Now then, Violet,’ Stan said as he overtook Eddie and made a beeline towards her. ‘Long time, no see.’

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ she replied, putting a hand to her hair to keep it out of her eyes.

  ‘Too busy to drop in and see me at the swimming baths?’ he said and winked, at the same time shouldering Eddie to one side. ‘Don’t you know, I’ve missed you and your breaststroke!’

  Kathy giggled and nudged Violet with her elbow. ‘Aren’t you boys going to buy us girls a drink of ginger pop?’ she challenged.

  ‘You two feel free,’ Violet told Evie and Kathy, standing up without giving Stan or Eddie time to reply. ‘I won’t be joining you. I only came out for a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘Are you sure you won’t come?’ Eddie said, ignoring more giggles from Kathy and an exaggerated cry of disappointment from Stan. He fell into step beside her.

  She smiled up at him as they crossed the road together, noticing that his face was flushed from the recent exercise and his hair was ruffled by the wind. He walked with his jacket slung over one shoulder. ‘I’d love to,’ she told him, ‘but I’ve taken in more extra sewing work that I have to finish by Monday.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, trying not to let his disappointment show. Eddie still wasn’t altogether sure where he stood with Violet, who in his eyes looked lovelier than ever in a rose-pink dress made in a wrap-around style which, when the breeze was in the right direction, gave him a glimpse of a shapely calf. ‘You’re not making excuses?’ he checked.

  ‘No, honestly, I’d love to come.’ For two pins she’d abandon her plan and follow him to the ends of the earth, did he but know it. ‘But the rent’s due on Monday so I have to work.’

  ‘So is it all right if I walk you home?’

  She nodded and took his arm at the top of Chapel Street, in full view of Kathy, Evie, Stan and the others.

  ‘That’s all right, Eddie – no hard feelings!’ Stan yelled after them, striking a tragic pose.

  Eddie glanced over his shoulder then at Violet who raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Take no notice,’ she whispered, though she blushed bright red.

  ‘A chap can see which way the land lies!’ Stan wailed. ‘It’s because I only own a push-bike and Eddie has a 500cc Norton, isn’t it?’

  Eddie and Violet laughed and walked on. Eddie drew Violet closer to him. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks,’ he vowed. ‘You just say the word, Violet, and I’ll take you out on my motorbike any time you like!’

  Sewing and daydreaming, Violet got through the weekend. On Monday morning, on the way to work, she delivered more finished items to Ida then went on through the day, doling out sugar and flour, cornflakes and marmalade, cured ham and Cheshire cheese.

  ‘Wakey, wakey!’ Ben Hutchinson would bark whenever her mind didn’t seem to be on the job – when she spilled sugar onto the counter, for example, or else wiped her hands on her blue calico apron, leaving floury fingerprints on the bib for all to see. Then he would give her the nasty job of climbing the stepladder to bring down a greasy side of bacon from its high hook, ready to be sliced.

  ‘I’m on my last legs,’ she confessed to Marjorie, their final customer of the afternoon.

  ‘Ta, love.’ The kindly shopkeeper took her packet of tea and put it in her wicker basket. ‘Ben, I won’t have you working the poor girl’s fingers to the bone now that she doesn’t have Winnie to look out for her,’ she chided. ‘She’s a little slip of a thing, remember.’

  ‘Mind your own business, Marjorie Sykes,’ the charmless grocer snapped back as he drew down the window blind. In retaliation, as if Marjorie’s criticism was Violet’s fault, he kept her back for a full ten minutes after the shop had shut.

  ‘Drat – now I have to get a move on to be home in time for Mr Fisher,’ she grumbled under her breath, speeding down Chapel Street and through the back alley. Sure enough, when she reached home the rent collector was already rat-a-tat-tatting on the door.

  ‘Where is he?’ Fisher asked, stepping back and looking up at the front bedroom window. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say Donald Wheeler was up there hiding under the bed.’

  ‘Uncle Donald must have gone out,’ Violet said, hastily turning her key in the lock. She foresaw a difficult conversation ahead of her, but hoped that with luck she’d be able to gather her extra earnings together and produce enough money to tide them over until the following week. ‘Come in, Mr Fisher. Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Never mind about the tea,’ he said, taking off his hat and reluctantly stepping over the threshold. This was a touchy matter and privately, he wished it had been Donald Wheeler he was locking horns with rather than the niece. ‘You know that you have to pay extra again this week.’

  ‘Yes and I’ve been doing my best to get together what we owe you.’ Taking Fisher straight into the front room, Violet went to her sewing basket to take out both her week’s wage and the money she’d earned from her sewing work. ‘I don’t have the full amount,’ she began to explain, ‘but I’m sure I can make up what we owe before the end of the month.’

  Standing on the worn hearth rug, Fisher turned the brim of his hat between his hands and shuffled his feet. ‘My orders are to collect the whole lot in one go,’ he stated without expression.

  Violet lifted the satin-lined lid of the basket. She put aside reels of cotton and her box of pins, delving deep to draw out the small brown envelope containing her wage from Hutchinson’s. ‘There’s this for a start.’

  ‘The whole lot,’ Fisher insisted. ‘I’m not to leave with a penny less.’

  ‘Wait a second.’ Still hoping to reason with him after she’d produced the extra three shillings and nine pence that she’d hidden away in her old button tin, Violet prised open the lid. That was strange – she couldn’t hear any coins rattling and when she did succeed in getting the top off, the tin was empty. Her heart thumped as she went back to the basket and searched again. ‘It was in here the last time I looked,’ she said amidst rising panic. ‘Lord knows what can have happened to it!’

  ‘Look here,’ Fisher said, turning his hat this way and that, ‘you mustn’t try it on with me, young lady. I’ve seen it all before.’

  ‘Honestly, I’m telling you that I put the extra money in here, every last penny.’ Violet’s heart raced as she began to draw the only possible conclusion. ‘Uncle Donald must have found it and taken it for safe keeping. All we have to do is track him down and get him to hand it over.’

  ‘Three and nine, you say?’ Fisher did the calculation in his head. ‘That would still leave you a long way short of what you owe.’

  ‘I know but, as I said, I can soon make it up.’ Her mind whirling, Violet did her best to believe that things would still work out. After all, surely the stony-faced man standing there in his buttoned-up overcoat had a heart. ‘It won’t take me long, honestly it won’t.’

  ‘If you could find the three and nine pence, I might be more willing to believe you,’ the rent collector pointed out. ‘As it is, I have to stick to the rules. It’s the full amount or I’m obliged to serve you notice.’

  ‘Notice of what?’ Violet gasped as Fisher dipped one hand into his coat pocket and produced a long buff envelope.

  ‘Eviction,’ he said, his facial expression giving nothing away.

  ‘Eviction!’ Violet echoed in a faltering voice. It felt as though a hole had opened up in the floor and she was falling down it.

  ‘You have two days to pack up and hand back your keys,’ Fisher explained. The boards beneath his feet creaked as he made his way out into the corridor then through the front door. ‘Mr Gill wants you out of here, lock, stock and barrel, by Wednesday teatime, and that’s that.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The door slammed and Violet ran upstairs to her uncle’s room. She found him sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched and resting his elbows on his knees, sinewy arms bare and a cigarette hanging fro
m his right hand.

  ‘Where’s my money?’ she demanded, hardly able to breathe. She rushed at him, inhaling acrid smoke and pushing him with both hands, only to meet a strong resistance from his wiry frame. ‘What have you done with it?’

  Donald gritted his teeth and let the cigarette drop to the floor where it glowed unheeded on the bare boards. ‘Calm down. It’s only a few measly shillings,’ he sneered.

  ‘You stole it, didn’t you?’ Furious beyond belief, Violet wanted to shake him until he told her the truth. ‘I worked hard for that money. It was meant to keep a roof over our heads.’

  ‘It wouldn’t, though, would it?’ Donald stood up and went to the window, keeping his back turned. ‘We had to stump up the whole amount or we were out on our ear – you heard what Alec Fisher said.’

  ‘You were listening at the keyhole!’ If Violet had thought that her fury couldn’t get any worse, she was wrong. ‘There was I, hunting for my hard-earned cash, which you’d filched from the tin, and even then you didn’t let on!’ Giving a disgusted sigh, she ran out of words to describe her feelings.

  Without looking at her, Donald dipped into his trouser pockets, drew out some coins and scattered them on the floor. They rolled in every direction. A sixpence came to rest at Violet’s feet while a threepenny bit lodged itself between the floorboards.

  ‘Why?’ Violet asked. The sight of the stolen money on which she’d built her hopes somehow altered her mood. She swung from anger to the edge of sorrowful tears as she raised her gaze from the coins to her uncle silhouetted against the net curtains, then on to the tall mahogany chest of drawers and across the bed with its duck-egg-blue quilt, on again to the solid wardrobe against the far wall. ‘Don’t you want us to stay here?’ she asked tremulously.

  With his back stubbornly to her, Donald felt in his shirt pocket for another cigarette. He lit it with a click of his silver lighter, a gift from Winnie to mark his fiftieth birthday.

  That was exactly it, Violet realized and a cold shock ran through her. Her Uncle Donald wasn’t taking any chances – he’d stolen her money not because he wanted to fritter it away but to make quite sure that they were turned out of Brewery Road.

  ‘That was a wicked thing to do,’ she said in a defeated voice.

  ‘It’s all settled,’ he said in a tone hard as steel. He still refused to look at her, keeping his back turned and staring out through the net curtain, even when Violet broke down and sobbed her heart out. ‘From now on we’ll have no more to do with one another. We have two days to pack up our things and leave.’

  Violet spent the night in desolate confusion. How had it come to this? Just a few short weeks ago her life had been carefree, with only the cut and fit of her Gala Queen dress to worry about and the most important decision on her horizon whether or not to wear a string of pearls to set it off.

  Don’t gild the lily, Winnie had advised. Now, in the darkness of her bedroom, Violet yearned to hear those no-nonsense tones and to see those eyes gazing fondly at her. What would her aunty have said in a situation like this? What would she have done?

  There’s no use moping about feeling sorry for yourself would have been her common-sense line. Worse things happen at sea.

  That’s just it, Aunty Winnie. I feel that I’m all at sea and drowning. You don’t know how cruel Uncle Donald is to me now. He’s shut me out, thrown me overboard and he doesn’t care if I sink or swim.

  Grieving for lost happiness and afraid of the misery that lay ahead, Violet didn’t bother to undress or go to bed. She sat by the window, looking out at the backs of the houses on Chapel Street, at the low stone outhouses and ash pits, the small yards and the back lane running all the way up the hill to Overcliffe Road. She sat through the night, watching clouds scud across the black sky, wishing things could stay as they were, but knowing that they never would, with a cold fear of what tomorrow might bring.

  It wasn’t by chance that Eddie ran into Violet on her way to work next morning. In fact, he’d planned the meeting down to the last detail. If Violet had to be at Hutchinson’s for half past eight, she would have to leave home five minutes beforehand, rounding the corner of Brewery Road onto Chapel Street and passing the doorway of Jubilee with two minutes to spare.

  ‘What are you looking so starry-eyed about?’ Ida had challenged Eddie the night before as she sat with Harold on the settee squashed into a corner of the kitchen at Valley Road.

  In fact, Eddie had been working out how and when he would intercept Violet and ask her out to the pictures on Friday night, his next night off. ‘Nothing. I don’t know what you mean,’ he’d answered guiltily.

  ‘Oh no, butter wouldn’t melt!’ Ida had shot him down in flames. ‘You’re dreaming of a certain somebody, I can tell.’

  Eddie had cast a look at Harold that said, Help me out of a tight corner, pal, but the hoped-for back-up hadn’t arrived. Instead, Harold had buried his head in his newspaper, reading the reports on Saturday’s matches. ‘You’d better hurry up and ask her out before someone else we know tries again,’ Ida had chivvied as she cosied up to her fiancé.

  ‘All right, I will,’ he’d agreed, feeling more confident.

  But as he parked his bike and waited, his heart hammered and he ran through the reasons why Violet might turn him down. For a start, he wasn’t much of a catch in terms of job and prospects. Although he’d been a bright enough spark at Lowtown Junior School, nerves had got the better of him on the day of his school entrance exam and he’d failed. Painting and decorating brought in steady money, it was true, but he’d climbed onto the back of his dad’s business and hadn’t struck out by himself the way he should. As for working at the Victory – that was too new for him to know whether or not it would lead anywhere.

  ‘Now then, Eddie.’ Marjorie broke into his chain of thought as she cheerfully laboured up the hill. ‘What errand has Ida got you lined up for this fine morning?’

  His vague answer was lost in a throng of uniformed schoolchildren en route to the grammar school on Westgate Road, and when the pavement cleared there was only Evie and her married sister, Lily, deep in conversation, hurrying by with a smile. Moments later Violet emerged from the alleyway between numbers 10 and 12 and hurried on up the street, head down.

  Eddie kicked himself – he should have realized Violet would cut off the corner by using the alley as a short cut. Now he had to run to catch her up. In her pale blue dress and cream cardigan, Violet was a slim, dark-haired figure going against the tide of another group of schoolchildren, hesitating, looking round and finally catching sight of him, stopping to wait.

  The moment he saw her face he knew something was badly wrong. She looked pale and when she tried to smile, her large, heavily lashed eyes stayed sad. ‘What’s up?’ he asked without exchanging greetings.

  Eddie showing up out of the blue gave Violet a straw to clutch at after a night spent being tugged in all directions by the strong current of her conflicting emotions. She didn’t think to question what he was doing there at this time in the morning. ‘You won’t believe it,’ she declared. ‘Our landlord has only sent me and Uncle Donald packing. We have to be out of the house by tomorrow night.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Violet gave a short sigh. ‘I was hoping Mr Gill would give us a bit of leeway over the rent we owed, but you know what landlords are like – all they think about is having the money in their wallets.’

  Slowly Eddie gathered his wits. ‘This is a right carry-on. Have you got somewhere to move on to?’

  ‘Not yet. It’ll be me by myself, though. Uncle Donald has washed his hands of me.’

  ‘Never.’ Again, Eddie found that his words didn’t do justice to the disaster facing Violet. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him.’ She sighed again. ‘All I know is that ever since Aunty Winnie died, he hasn’t wanted anything to do with me.’

  ‘I could try to talk him round if you like.’ Eddie suggested the first thin
g that came to mind, but when Violet emphatically shook her head he quickly moved on. ‘Or else I can see if anyone has a spare room for you to rent?’

  At this Violet brightened a little. ‘Yes please, Eddie. That’s good of you. And I’ll pass the word around myself. Marjorie might know someone for a start, or even Mr Hutchinson if I catch him the right side out.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon find somewhere.’

  ‘Be sure to let people know that I’m no trouble,’ she said, raising her head and setting it at a more defiant angle. ‘I’ll keep the place clean and tidy and I’ll guarantee to pay my rent on time.’

  Eddie grinned. ‘They’ll be queuing up to take you,’ he assured her, realizing that he hadn’t got round to asking Violet out. When he saw Ben Hutchinson step out of his shop onto the pavement and look daggers down the street at the two of them, he knew it was time to go. ‘Ta-ta for now, Violet. And try not to worry.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ she said, bracing herself for a day behind the counter with an employer who looked as if he’d sucked on a lemon. The wall clock would tick away the hours until she found herself and her suitcase pounding the pavements, knocking on doors in a desperate search for somewhere to stay.

  Word of Violet’s dire situation soon spread and at half past twelve that day Marjorie popped her head around the door of the grocery shop to commiserate.

  ‘Here’s a nice scone for your tea tonight,’ she told Violet, bringing with her the sweet smell of baking. Her dumpy figure and flour-coated overall were matched by an old-fashioned cottage-loaf hairstyle. All aspects of Marjorie’s appearance gave away the fact that she lived and breathed the bread, teacakes and Victoria sponges that made up her daily routine.

  Violet took the proffered paper bag and thanked her.

  ‘I’m surprised at Donald Wheeler,’ Marjorie confided with a disapproving shake of her head. ‘Yes, he’s always had the reputation of a straight-laced, dyed-in-the-wool chapel-goer, but I expected if you scratched the surface you’d find a soft heart in there somewhere.’