by Mia Dolan
‘I’d prefer to be like Mary Quant,’ said Marcie. ‘Or Biba.’
Her grandmother shook her head. ‘I do not know these people I only know that there is no chic like French chic.’
Marcie had no ambition to be plain chic or French chic. She wanted to be fabulously fashionable in a young person’s way. For the younger generation, the biggest name of all was Mary Quant. That was who she wanted to be.
Joanna had settled down to sleep. Marcie was tired but determined to finish what she was doing even though her eyes were sore.
She fancied her grandmother was watching her.
‘The hospital job will not last. You know that, don’t you?’ her grandmother said softly.
There were very logical reasons why the job wouldn’t last, though Marcie had not voiced them. She nodded. ‘I know. It’s very boring work in any case. If I could succeed in the world of fashion …’
‘It will happen.’
Her grandmother sounded very sure about it and when Marcie looked up into her weathered face, she saw there what seemed like strength. She knew that look, knew what it meant. Her grandmother was willing her to succeed. Somehow the old woman was reaching out to her, offering her own strength to bolster her granddaughter’s. Either that or she knew what would happen in the future. She did that sometimes, seeing what people could not see for themselves.
There was a big party when Tony Brooks came back to Sheppey. That was the way it was with the Brooks family. He had money to spend and what was money for if not for spending? The music was loud, the voices were raucous and those neighbours that did complain were invited to join in.
He came home on a Saturday and, much to his wife’s annoyance, went round to see his mother before going home to see her.
‘Had to see my favourite girls,’ he said kissing mother, daughter and granddaughter in turn.
Marcie had just finished pressing the second dress she’d made that week for Angie’s Boutique. It had been two weeks since she’d taken the first two round and they’d sold within that time. Now there were two more ready to be delivered. Her father said he was proud of her.
‘Were you going on the bus with them?’ he asked.
She told him that had been her intention.
‘I’ve got the car outside. Hop in,’ he said, straightening his tie, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘You coming too, Ma?’ he said. ‘Bring the kid. After the frocks are delivered, I’ll get my old lady to make us a cuppa. How does that grab you?’
It grabbed them right enough, though how it would grab Babs to have everyone descend on her at Tony’s invitation was another matter. Especially seeing as he hadn’t reported home first.
Marcie could forgive him for that. Her stepmother was hardly top of the pops on her personal chart. They tolerated each other and that was it.
Angie was over the moon with the new dresses. She paid Marcie her share of the dresses she’d already sold. She also put in an order for what she wanted next.
‘I’d like some geometric ones,’ she informed Marcie. ‘The dress divided into four quarters: black on the right chest, white on the left, black from the waist down on the left and white on the right. They’re all the rage in London at the moment.’
Marcie didn’t need to be told that. She read every fashion magazine she could get her hands on. She promised she’d have two dresses of that style ready by the end of the following week.
The two dresses had sold for three pounds nineteen shillings and eleven pence each. Angie gave her seventy per cent of the sale as promised.
Marcie was over the moon. What with her wages of four pounds ten shillings and sixpence a week from the hospital, plus the extra from her freelance work, she wasn’t flush but was doing well enough.
Her father questioned the amount when she told him.
‘I thought you were going to get more than that.’
It was true. They had discussed her ending up with around fifteen pounds per week – a wonderful sum. Unfortunately Angie hadn’t been able to sell the dresses for as much as she’d initially hoped. They had to face hard facts.
‘This isn’t London. People aren’t going to pay that much for a dress here. In London I could make that easily. I could make even more if all I was doing was designing and running up dresses. As it is I can only do it in my spare time. I have Joanna to think about.’
Her father turned thoughtful as they headed for the council house he shared with Babs, the two boys and little Annie.
Babs wasn’t at home.
‘She’s having her hair set round Doreen’s,’ young Archie pronounced. ‘I expect she’ll come back with it in one of them bouffers or something.’
They all knew he meant bouffant but didn’t bother to correct him. Archie was almost eleven and swiftly growing into a know-all and hated being told he was wrong.
‘Better get round and tell her I’m home and we’re all parched for a cuppa.’
He gave Archie sixpence. His younger brother Arnold held out his hand too so he had to give him the same.
Marcie put the kettle on and got out Babs’ best tea service of yellow cups and saucers with white spots all over them.
Babs came running round with her hair still in curlers and a fag hanging from the corner of her mouth. A multi-striped towel flapped around her shoulders.
‘You didn’t tell me you was bringing the family over!’ she snapped at Tony.
Marcie’s grandmother fixed her with black button eyes. ‘Are we welcome or are we not?’
Eyes outlined in black pencil and caked mascara flickered nervously and Babs managed a tight smile. ‘Course you are, Ma. It’s just that I’d made arrangements to have me hair done. If he’d said he was bringing you over, the kettle would have been on. But that’s my old man. Never tells me anything,’ she added, throwing a look in his direction.
Tony ignored both her look and the accusation in her tone. He slid his hand into his coat pocket.
‘Here. Have a tenner. Buy yourself something nice.’
Marcie poured the tea, but didn’t miss a thing. If there was one way to get to her stepmother’s heart, a ten pound note would do very nicely.
The boys had been given sixpence each to fetch their mother, but their father added a further half a crown. ‘Get yourself some fish and chips.’
They didn’t need telling twice.
‘Like greyhounds at the White City,’ their father observed as they ran off, knees grubby beneath short flannel trousers and long grey socks at half mast.
Marcie felt her stepmother’s eyes on her as she gave Joanna and Annie, her half-sister, a biscuit each.
‘That’s a nice dress. I saw one a bit like it in that shop that’s opened – a boutique they call it.’
‘Angie’s,’ Marcie pronounced smugly. So! Even Bab’s had noticed the shop that was selling the dresses she made.
‘Marcie made it,’ her grandmother said, pride shining in her eyes. ‘And the one you saw in the shop was also made by her.’
Babs folded her arms and looked disbelieving. ‘Go on! That was one of yours? It wasn’t a home-made dress I saw. It was modern.’
‘Just because I made it doesn’t mean that it’s not modern. I made the pattern myself and measured it all out properly,’ Marcie said hotly. ‘And she’s sold them. And I’ve been paid my cut of the deal. Ask my dad.’
It never failed to surprise Marcie how much her father kept from her stepmother, almost as though he maintained an invisible partition between the two different sections of his family.
Despite her heavy foundation, Babs visibly reddened. There was a portion of hurt and a portion of anger in her eyes when she turned to her husband.
‘You didn’t tell me that. Well, isn’t that typical! Leave me to make a fool of meself!’
Tony Brooks had a temper threshold. ‘Shut it,’ he snapped, pointing his finger between her eyes. ‘Marcie makes frocks for the frock shop. Now you know. Now you can let the subject drop,
right?’
‘Must be making a fortune,’ Babs muttered defiantly.
‘Shut it,’ Tony said again.
On the drive back to Endeavour Terrace, Tony was unusually quiet. Marcie was pretty certain that this wasn’t about Babs. Their marriage was a series of arguments, misunderstandings and making up under the bedcovers on a regular basis. Something else was worrying him.
Marcie looked out of the window.
‘It’s going to rain,’ said her grandmother.
Marcie nodded.
A flock of sheep were grazing on the tough grass. At first the scene was peaceful, but then the sheep began to run and flock together for safety.
Marcie strained to see what had panicked them and thought she saw a shadow alternately loping and creeping along by the hedge.
For a moment she thought she recognised the figure, but the glimpse was so fleeting and the car was moving quickly.
Back at number ten, Endeavour Terrace, Tony knew better than to refuse his mother’s invitation to come in. More tea was consumed along with buttered crumpets. Rosa Brooks was of the unshakable opinion that her daughter in law did not feed Tony properly. That was why his cheeks were so gaunt and he’d lost weight. She refused to put it down to dividing his time between the job in London and his family on the Isle of Sheppey.
He followed Marcie up to her room when she went up to put Joanna down. The little girl had enjoyed her day out and was now quite spent. Her father looked down on the sleeping child with her.
‘Does she look like me, do you think?’ Marcie asked him.
The question seemed to take him unawares. He took some time thinking about it.
‘Well, yeah. I think so. It’s a shame though ain’t it?’
She frowned and looked at him. ‘What are you talking about, Dad?’
‘You having Joanna. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning you for having her. The little tike didn’t ask to be born and I know we wouldn’t unwish her for the world but I do wonder how far you’d have got up in the smoke without having a kiddy, what with these frocks and all that.’
His terminology was getting irritating. Marcie rolled her eyes. ‘Dresses, Dad! Dresses!’
‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’
She sighed. Her dad was of a certain age and old names stuck. Like the steel needle on a wind-up gramophone, he was stuck in a groove and couldn’t get out unless he was pushed. She determined to do the pushing.
‘They’re called dresses nowadays. Mini-dresses.’
‘Well, they are that,’ he exclaimed, a wicked glint in his eyes. Like everyone else he had seen hemlines rise further and further away from the knees until they were little more than tunics. Thank goodness somebody had invented tights to wear with them!
‘Well, Dad,’ said Marcie, ‘that’s fashion for you, and fashion is all about moving with the times.’
His smile was genuine enough but his face crumpled ever so slightly. ‘Your old man’s getting old. Christ! Never thought I would. Thought I’d stay twenty-one for ever.’
They both smiled, but his comment about Joanna still grated on Marcie’s mind. What had he meant by it? They both fell into an uncomfortable silence. He broke it first, the awkwardness nudging him into explaining.
‘All I meant was, it’s like you were saying, that a frock … sorry … dress shop in London would pay you shedloads of money, well, beyond what a local little place here would pay.’
‘But I’ve got Joanna,’ Marcie said abruptly.
It was obvious that he would have said more, but her abrupt intervention had brought him up short.
‘That’s right,’ he said, his voice soft and full of affection. ‘You’ve got Joanna and nobody and nothing is ever going to alter that.’
Chapter Nine
RITA TAYLOR WAS livid to think that her friend – her former best friend – Marcie Brooks had been having it off with her dad. Christ, what a little tart she turned out to be, and wasn’t she glad that they weren’t best friends any more.
It occurred to her to spread the word around that Marcie had got pregnant by her father. A warning voice in her head told her that wouldn’t be wise. People might blame her father seeing as he was a lot older than Marcie. Besides, she didn’t want to besmirch either his good name or her own. They had a position in the community. They had a nice house, a nice car and her father, although he hadn’t been so interested in business just lately, brought in a good income.
She was sitting in front of the telly watching Coronation Street with a chip butty for company. The people she considered friends hadn’t called for a few days because she’d been in such a foul temper. When she was in a bad temper she always resorted to food.
Her father was the only one who had phoned to say he was sleeping over at the car dealership he owned down in Deal. Deal was too far to travel if he’d been drinking, and she was in no doubt that he had. His consumption of alcohol had increased drastically over the past year. At first she’d put it down to her stepmother leaving, but now she knew the truth and the truth made her angry. She was set on exposing Marcie for the slut she considered her to be. Best of all she’d like to get her to leave Sheerness and Sheppey too. Trash like her didn’t belong here. That was her opinion anyway. But how could she get her own back at her? How could she do that without damaging either her or her father’s reputation?
The answer came just a few days later. She’d undertaken a secretarial course at the local college and through that had got herself a job as a clerk/typist in the offices of a local solicitor. Not for her the old job she’d used to have with Marcie selling candy floss to day trippers along the seafront at Sheerness. She’d made the decision to better herself so mornings and afternoons were spent buried up to her armpits in paperwork and typing. Lunch times were a welcome break when she could stroll along the high street, stuffing her face with a hot pie and chips bought from the local chippie.
It was during one of these lunch breaks that she bumped into Bully Price, though almost treading on him might have been a better description.
A pair of large black working boots was sticking out from beneath a broken-down car. Occupied with her thoughts, Rita tripped over them and fell against the side of the car. The car rolled slightly.
‘Oi!’
A face smeared in oil came out from beneath the car. ‘Rita Taylor! That’s my feet you’re treading on!’
‘Bully Price! You’ve got the biggest feet in Sheerness. No. Come to think of it, you’ve got the biggest feet in the whole of Sheppey.’
‘And you’re hardly bloody Tinkerbell the fairy, are you? And stuck-up with it, just like yer mate Marcie Brooks. Gets herself a job at the hospital and she’s all airs and graces.’
Rita had been going to walk on, but what Bully had said stopped her in her tracks. ‘She’s got a job as a nurse! Are you kidding?’
‘Nah,’ he said, sliding out from beneath the vehicle and getting to his feet. ‘She weren’t wearing a uniform or anything.’
So Marcie had a job at the hospital. Rita fingered her lip. One of the girls working in the solicitor’s office had once worked at the hospital. The girl’s name was Wendy Heale and she’d been sacked once she’d set the wedding date.
‘It’s hospital policy,’ she’d explained. ‘They prefer to employ single women in the support services like the canteen, the sewing room and such like.’
Rita almost whooped with joy at this. Marcie was good with a needle. She used to make a lot of her clothes. Poor cow had to. She couldn’t afford to buy straight off the rack like Rita could – thanks to her father.
She decided there and then that she’d find out exactly where Marcie was working. After that …
Chapter Ten
MARCIE FELT A sharp jab in the small of her back. ‘Hey! You!’
Jane Gale had started picking on her only days after she’d first started work in the hospital sewing room. When the first jab had occurred she’d smiled weakly and took it as a joke.
To turn the other cheek was the wrong thing to do when it came to Jane Gale. Retaliation and exchanging like with like was the only thing she truly understood. Marcie badly wanted to bash her one, but held back. Jane Gale was also something of a sneak. It didn’t help that she was Miss Pope’s niece and as such attracted some degree of protection.
‘Hey! You!’
The jabs were always accompanied with the same exclamation. Sometimes Marcie considered that Jane Gale practised those same words every night in front of the mirror. She wasn’t the brightest girl she’d ever met and her vocabulary echoed the fact. Being a bully was Jane Gale’s way of communicating that she really was better than Marcie, even if she could barely string two words together.
The turning point came when she jabbed at Marcie just as she was leaning over the sink washing her face.
Joanna had been poorly for a few days and so had kept her awake the night before. Sleep had been intermittent, punctuated with the wails of a red-faced child who wouldn’t settle. Marcie couldn’t wait for Wednesday and her day off, not that she’d be resting much. Angela Babbington had popped round to Endeavour Terrace with an urgent order for two more dresses in the geometric black and white style. Marcie felt obliged to fill the order as quickly as possible even though her grandmother told her to slow down, that there was no need to rush at things as though her wages might be cut short at any time. But that was exactly how Marcie felt about both her present and her future. She had to have financial security for herself, but mostly for her child. At the back of her mind was the nagging guilt about bringing Joanna into the world. She hadn’t asked to come, and it was her fault she was here, therefore she had to do everything she could to do her best by the child.
Tired and not in the best of tempers, this time she reacted to Jane’s bullying.
Jane gasped as Marcie grabbed her by the throat, her eyes popping out of her head.
