by Marie Joseph
Filled with optimism, she walked into the fish-and-chip shop just round the corner from Mill Street.
Fish, of course, was out of the question. Standing in line she watched the chip-shop owner slip-slap a fillet of white fish over and across the bowl of creamy batter. ‘A pennyworth of chips and two of dabs. Twice,’ she said grandly, when her turn came.
‘Salt and vinegar?’
Lisa nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
‘I’m going back,’ she told Delia later, as she bit into the crunchy batter of a nicely ovalled dab, feeling the potato soft, but not too soft, underneath. ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you, Mother?’
‘I’ll have to be, won’t I?’ Delia speared a portion of a crisp dab on her fork and looked at it without interest. ‘You come and go as you like. You treat this house, if one can call it a house, like a hotel. What happens to me is none of your concern.’
Lisa went on eating. She could, she knew, have flared up and pointed out to her mother that without her meagre wages from the shop they would starve. That they were living at starvation level as it was. That if only Delia would forgo just one of her three packets of cigarettes a day they could sometimes eat potted meat, or pig’s trotters from the tripe shop just round the corner from Mr Carr’s. That if only her mother would do just a little work around the house instead of leaving everything for Lisa to do on Sundays, her one free day, they might perhaps, even if only marginally, survive.
‘What do you do all day, Mother?’ she asked quietly. ‘If I bring home some marrow bones from the butcher and a pot-pourri of vegetables from the market, wouldn’t you like to make some broth? Mrs Ellis told me how. It’s really quite simple.’
Immediately the bright flush of anger stained Delia’s thin cheeks. ‘That’s just what your father would like to imagine me doing, isn’t it?’ Pushing her plate away, she reached for a cigarette. ‘I’ve never lived in a house without servants, and I’m not demeaning myself when I’ve done nothing to deserve it. Can you really see me standing at that dreadful stove stirring things round in pans?’
‘Father wouldn’t know.’ Lisa pulled Delia’s plate over. ‘I’ll eat this if you don’t want it. I don’t expect to be home much before midnight. I’ve three pairs of curtains to make, and it’s not going to be easy. I’m not even sure I can work the flamin’ sewing machine yet.’ Her chin lifted. ‘But I have to try. It’s velvet, and you know how it frays.’
Delia’s voice rose. ‘No, I don’t know! I don’t know anything about curtain-making or stewing filthy bones! I don’t want to know! You’ve developed a working-class mentality, did you know that?’ The words came out jerkily between fierce puffs at the glowing cigarette. ‘But I’ll never give in. Never!’
Already Lisa, in her mind, was back at the shop, laying the material out on the worktable in the back room, slicing through it with the big scissors, studying the list of measurements, calculating, guiding the long seams beneath the foot of the hand sewing machine. Trying to apply what she had learned at school in needlework lessons to a task she might find she was unequal to.
‘I’ll have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ll put these things in the bowl for you to wash up when you feel like it.’ She stood up. ‘Go to bed before I come in. You look very tired, Mother.’
What she had failed to see was that Delia Logan had passed from the stage of being merely tired and depressed into the dangerous state of total uncaring apathy. Sixteen is an age when girls should be laughing with friends, going out to first dances, wearing pretty clothes. And it is also an age when, with imaginations inflamed, young girls can be single-minded in their selfishness. And what mattered to Lisa at that moment was proving to herself that she could do what she had promised herself she could do.
‘I’ll kill myself!’ Delia’s voice rose and became shrill. ‘Then you’ll be sorry.’
‘No, you won’t.’ Cramming the yellow beret down on her head, Lisa started to button herself into her navy-blue school gaberdine. ‘There’s no need for you to do that because one day I’ll be rich.’ She nodded her head up and down vehemently. ‘You’ll see. Some day I’ll have my own shop, maybe two shops or three. An’ we’ll buy back The Laurels, and you’ll have a Mrs Parker in the kitchen, and we’ll be able to thumb our noses at all the people who don’t want to know us.’ She touched her thumb to the end of her short nose and wiggled her fingers. ‘This is only the beginning, you’ll see!’
A strange and watchful expression settled on Delia’s face, and suddenly Lisa turned back to put both arms round the fragile body which stiffened in her grasp. ‘Just try to keep hoping, Mother. Just hope, that’s all. I’m here looking after you now. I’m strong, and the best is still to be.’
Even as she spoke she acknowledged that the words had an overly dramatic ring. But she was high on a wave of euphoria, which lasted until half-past eleven that night when she folded the last of the curtains neatly, with only the hems to be hand-stitched into place. And realized she was tired halfway to death itself.
By the time the trees in the Corporation Park were skirted by daffodils, Richard Carr had taken on another assistant, a tiny girl who seemed to merge into the sewing machine in the back room, and who bent so close to the foot as she guided it through the long lengths of curtaining that Miss Howarth swore that one of these fine days she’d sew her nose into the seams.
A second machine had been bought for Lisa, a treadle model on which she did the more difficult bits, like inserting the tapes with just the right amount of frill at the top, or, more daringly, the pinch pleats she had learned to do from a book borrowed from the library. For the Town Clerk’s wife she had made a bedspread to match the long chintz curtains, agonizing over the piping, but getting it right in the end.
‘We’re not making up bedspreads and cushions free.’ Richard Carr took off his reading-glasses to polish them on a large white handkerchief, then put them back on again to examine the spread. ‘Those pleats must have taken some getting even.’ He flipped over a corner. ‘And you’ve lined the middle. I must say, Lisa, you’ve done a good job. Anyone might be forgiven for thinking you’d served an apprenticeship in this sort of thing.’
‘One can do anything,’ Lisa told him loftily, ‘if one makes one’s mind up to it.’ She frowned at a loose thread. ‘You’ll be paying me commission on spreads and cushions, won’t you, Mr Carr? After all, I still serve in the shop and do the bulk of the sewing in my own time.’ She smiled with a sudden sweetness belying her business-like approach of just a second ago. ‘It snowballs, don’t you see? The spread and day pillow wouldn’t have been ordered without the curtains, and without the offer of making them up free we wouldn’t have got the order in the first place.’
Richard hesitated, acutely aware of the fact that once again this young girl, whose pale face could lift from sadness into sparkling vivacity, was quoting her own terms, speaking to him not with grudging servility, but as if they were business partners. It was incredible, but since taking Lisa on the profits had almost doubled. Word got round, and there was nobody like a Lancashire woman for taking advantage of a bargain. And it went even deeper than that. He had seen women come into the shop merely to buy a yard and a half of 36-inch wide for a blouse, and go out with a skirt length to match, plus the pattern, plus the buttons and even a belt.
‘I know you can go into the Market House and have buttons covered to match, and even a belt, but accessories make an outfit. I’m sure you know that,’ Lisa would say, smiling in a conspiratorial way. ‘There was an article in Vogue only last month showing a model wearing a simple cotton dress with a crocodile-skin belt and a silk neck-tie. It looked a million dollars.’
‘Nay, love, I can’t afford no crocodile nor no pure silk.’ The customer had laughed out loud.
‘Well, of course not. Who can?’ Lisa had laughed with her. ‘But there are imitations which look just as good.’ With a flip of her wrist she had unhooked a rayon scarf from a stand and twisted it round her own neck. ‘See? Especially
with the bow tied like this.’
And to Richard’s amusement and admiration, yet another of the scarves he had given up all hope of selling had gone into the neatly wrapped parcel of material.
Lisa had mastered the technique of selling almost overnight. He was more than impressed by her enormous capacity for sheer hard work. Superior intelligence shone from those great eyes. Were they grey or blue? She was no more than a child, and yet she faced him now with the maturity of a woman twice her age, with a confidence that left him speechless.
‘We’ll work out suitable terms,’ he said at last. ‘I’m not a mean man.’
‘And I don’t want you to get too big for your boots and leave,’ he told himself as he moved away, his expression bleak as he envisaged the shop without Lisa’s bright presence.
‘Tha’s got our Mr Carr on one leg.’ Daisy Howarth twinkled at Lisa over the mid-morning cup of tea. ‘But don’t go underestimating him. He’s a hard nut like his father were afore him. Wouldn’t give his best friend the skin off his rice puddin’, the old man wouldn’t.’
At three o’clock that afternoon the telephone rang, and as Richard was out of the shop Lisa answered it.
‘This is Mrs Patrick Grey,’ a sweet voice said, giving her address. ‘I need two sets of curtains for my sitting-room, but I’m not able to come down into town to choose the material. I wonder if Mr Carr would come round? He came once before and brought some samples of material with him. Do you think that would be possible?’
Lisa stood with the telephone receiver pressed close to her ear. The shock of hearing Patrick Grey’s wife speaking widened her eyes and jerked her chin up. When she found her voice it was even and business-like, but her pulse had quickened so that a bright flush stained her cheeks.
‘Of course we can help, Mrs Grey,’ she said clearly. ‘Mr Carr is out of the shop at the moment, but when he comes back I’ll give him your message. Will you be there if he rings later this afternoon? I’m sure he’ll come to see you.’
‘I’m always here, my dear.’ Lying back on her cushions, Alice Grey’s delicately arched eyebrows were raised as she replaced the receiver. Mr Carr must have taken on another assistant, because that had certainly not been Miss Howarth answering the telephone. When she had phoned the last time Miss Howarth had said, ‘Hang about a bit, luv, whilst I find a pencil. I’d lose me head if it weren’t fastened down to me neck!’
‘She’s a nice woman, Mrs Grey is.’ Miss Howarth came over to peer at the message written down in Lisa’s neat schoolgirl hand. ‘It’s Grey the builders. Grey and Son Limited, General Building Contractors. I know them. Out on the Hoghton side. She’s a semi-invalid, but he’s a right mess.’ A finger was tapped against Miss Howarth’s beaky nose. ‘One for the women, he is, from what I’ve heard tell. Still, what a man can’t get at home he’s bound to … .’
‘Miss Howarth!’ Richard had come into the shop unnoticed. Over by the door two potential customers hovered, one of them already wearing an expression which said that she for one wasn’t going to wait to be served by an assistant who would obviously prefer to talk to her friend. ‘If you have time … .’
The quick temper so assiduously kept in check flared his nostrils and sparked anger from the light blue eyes. The first customer waited meekly for Miss Howarth to spread a length of dotted net across the counter, but the second escaped, letting the door bang to behind her to show exactly how she felt.
Lisa followed her employer into the back room. Miss Howarth had said that Mr Carr was a bully when roused, but this was the first time his anger had been directed at her.
‘I’m sorry. We didn’t see… .’ She looked up into Richard’s tight face. ‘I was explaining to Miss Howarth about this order.’ Holding out the piece of paper with Alice Grey’s address on it, she smiled. The smile failed to work.
Richard Carr believed that his private life was best kept completely separate from his working existence. He felt it was entirely his own business that at lunchtime he had driven home to be told by his housekeeper that the temperature his little daughter had been running for two days still showed no sign of coming down. The six-year-old Irene lay in her bed with parched lips and flushed cheeks, talking rubbish. Rambling. Tossing and turning and saying her head hurt. Richard tried to focus his attention on his assistant standing before him, her eyes pleading in the white oval of her face.
Was this the girl who at times had him tied in knots with the cool logic of her thinking? Making him feel as if her intelligence was superior to his own? Showing him by a glance, a word, that she understood the mechanics of retail selling as well if not better than he did himself? Just look at her in that washed-out cardigan and the black skirt bagged out of shape at the back. How, in the name of heaven, had she ever managed to get the better of him? Why, he could sack her on the spot and have the choice of at least a hundred applicants for her job.
‘Mrs Grey wants you to go to her house with some samples. I said as it was half-day closing tomorrow you would go then. Probably,’ Lisa added, realizing her mistake too late.
If the doctor hadn’t called by the time he got back, Richard would personally grip him by the throat and drag him to Irene’s bedside. What was the good of being told to wait to see if measles spots came out when it could be meningitis or worse? Richard turned a cold and baleful glance on Lisa.
‘You will go yourself, Lisa. I will give you the bus fare there and back, and you will never again promise a customer that I will do anything!’ Anxiety made his voice harsh. ‘You understand?’
‘But I can’t go, Mr Carr. Not to the Greys’ house.’ The words sputtered from Lisa’s mouth like boiling water from an overfilled kettle. ‘I can’t, because – because I have that order to finish for the orphanage.’
‘Hah!’ Richard slapped his hand down so sharply on the long worktable that a box of pins scattered to the floor. ‘We must be mad making up twenty-four sets of curtains free. You never thought your idea could backfire like that, did you?’
‘But we got the order!’ Lisa flashed back, forgetting her place. ‘And they’re simple to do. No linings or anything and no patterns to match. May has already done half the side seams. And it’s a colour that wasn’t moving… .’ She turned away. ‘Anyway, I can’t go to Mrs Grey’s house. For personal reasons, that’s why.’
Just for the space of a brief moment Richard forgot the tearing anxiety inside him. In that moment he no longer felt like an employer being cheeked by a young employee. This girl, this thin waif of a nobody who had come in from the street and demanded a job, yes, let him face the truth, demanded to be taken on, was besting him once more. She was actually turning her back on him and walking away.
The anger inside him caught in his throat. His hand shot out to grip Lisa by the arm, whirling her round to face him.
‘You either go to the Greys’ house tomorrow afternoon, or you take your cards and walk out of my shop right now.’ The wrist round which his fingers tightened shocked him by its fragility, but he would put this small girl in her place if it were the last thing he did. ‘Which shall it be?’
‘I’ll go to the Greys’ house tomorrow,’ Lisa said at once, rubbing at her wrist and walking with quiet dignity back into the shop.
As she left, Richard stared after her, bewildered and baffled, uncertain for once in his life, and his confidence seeped out of him like the air from a pricked balloon.
Lisa caught a red Ribble bus out of the town and, climbing the stairs, had the top deck all to herself. She was wearing a pale grey flannel suit that had once belonged to her mother, with the collar of a white blouse pulled out, and her dark hair had been brushed until the auburn lights gleamed. She knew she looked older than her sixteen years, and the thought gave her comfort.
There was a gnawing hunger in her stomach, but it was a familiar sensation. As pay day was tomorrow and Delia still had two packets of cigarettes in hand, Lisa was satisfied that the week’s budgeting hadn’t gone too awry.
Smoking
away food money was terrible, but dealing with a mother to whom cigarettes were as milk to a baby was even more terrible. She had tried to take them off her once, but Delia’s hysterical wailing, and the pleading in her hooded eyes had been too much to bear. Lisa squeezed her eyes tight shut and offered up a fervent prayer.
‘Please, God, don’t let her go back to the way she was before, shouting and screaming. Keep her quiet, because we’re managing. Things won’t always be as bad as this, and as long as I keep on the right side of Mr Carr, he won’t give me the sack. I’ve got to make myself so valuable to him, he won’t dare to get rid of me.’
When she walked up the long drive to the Greys’ house, she sighed with relief at the sight of the garage, its doors fastened back showing that neither Jonathan’s car nor his father’s was inside. If she was lucky she would be able to do what she had to do then go away without either of them being the wiser.
Shivering with apprehension, she pressed the bell set high in the big front door, then followed a maid in a white apron down the hall.
‘The girl from the curtain shop, Mrs Grey.’ Lisa moved forward into the high-ceilinged sitting-room, automatically switching on the professional smile she kept for customers.
‘Mr Carr couldn’t come, madam. I hope you don’t mind me coming instead.’ She hoped the dismay didn’t show on her face as she saw the woman lying on the wide chesterfield with a rug thrown over her legs, her face a pale mask against the faded chintz cushions.
Alice Grey had once been a beautiful woman, and even years of pain and suffering had not completely obliterated the sweetness in her expression. Hers wasn’t a sickness of deprivation or poverty, but the gradual erosion caused by a virulent illness. The wasting disease that over the years had been held in check by treatment and drugs was obviously in its terminal stages, leaving Alice Grey a tortured wraith of a woman with blue eyes that burned feverishly and hands that plucked nervously at the mohair rug.
