Christmas for the Shop Girls

by Joanna Toye

  A day to remember? There was no chance of anyone forgetting – Gladys made sure of that. The day after the fete, she appeared at Lily’s with a huge scroll of paper – actually a tattered old sales poster from Marlow’s, paper being in short supply. On the reverse, she’d noted everything to be done in the run-up to the wedding – the final feeding of the wedding cake with its tot of rum and its covering with cardboard icing, her gran’s home perm, the collection of the flowers, the precise arrival time of the wedding car. There was more, lots more, and day-by-day Gladys ticked things off as they happened. Her gran had to be kitted out, and a navy crepe dress smelling only slightly of mothballs was brought round for Dora to let out under the arms. Gran’s straw hat was steamed back into shape, her cracked black patent shoes polished and an ancient fur tippet hung on to the line to air in case of a chilly day. On and on it went: the decoration of the hall, who’d sit where, the number of hoarded hairgrips, Sid’s best man duties, the colour of Jim’s tie. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue …

  Dora was endlessly patient (‘It’s her big day, bless her, and goodness knows she’s waited long enough!’) but Lily was dizzy with it all and Jim was almost beside himself. He’d taken to volunteering for extra ARP and fire-watching duties to escape Gladys’s regular visitations.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Lily, ‘But if I hear one more word about this wedding—’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’ Lily reached to smooth down his hair where he always ruffled it up when he was agitated. ‘You’ll scream.’

  ‘Worse than that,’ said Jim. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be responsible for my actions.’

  Bill wired on the Monday before the wedding to say his ship had docked, which removed one worry – at least he was in the country. But to make the most of their time together after the ceremony, he’d arranged his forty-eight-hour pass from the wedding morning, not the night before, something of a risk with the trains so unreliable. Bill, however, had no qualms, as he wired:

  SEE YOU AT THE CHURCH! I’LL BE THERE, RAIN, SHINE, HELL OR HIGH WATER!

  LOVE YOU

  So the bridegroom was confident – but there was still no word from his mother. She didn’t feature on Gladys’s wedding chart and Gladys didn’t mention her or the invitation again. Lily certainly wasn’t going to bring up the subject. Maybe she’d simply turn up on the day.

  Chapter 16

  Finally, finally, the wedding day dawned. The weather had been warm and sunny all week and Lily had been praying it would hold. Along with the trains – and Mrs Quartermain, of course – it was the only thing that was beyond Gladys’s control.

  Lily crept out of bed and, hardly daring to look, took down the blackout: had she heard rain in the night, or had she imagined it? She had. The dawn was pearly with the promise of real heat before the day was through. Lily opened the window and breathed in the fresh morning air. She knew it was the only moment of calm she’d have before nightfall.

  By nine thirty, having ‘not slept a wink’, Gladys was at Lily’s, her usually poker-straight hair softly waved and her make-up done. Gloria, of fashion show fame, had developed a little sideline doing make-up for special occasions. It was another good thing that had come out of the fashion show for Beryl, who took 10 per cent on any bookings she got for Gloria. This time, however, Gloria had given her services for free, in the same way as Beryl, who wasn’t, of course, charging Gladys or Lily for their dresses.

  ‘And they say there’s no sentiment in business!’ Les had said wryly.

  Coiffed and made-up as she was – Gloria had even painted her nails – Gladys could do nothing to help, so while she sat in Dora’s dressing gown staring dreamily into space, Dora and Lily charged back and forth to the hall with the food, while Jim was detailed to transport the cake, a heavy responsibility – literally, with its rum content. When they’d laid out the hall according to Gladys’s meticulous plan, they tore home to get ready, Dora into her claret-coloured dress and fawn jacket, Lily into her soft green bridesmaid’s dress. Then she helped Gladys, by now pale under her make-up and visibly trembling, into her dress and veil.

  It was a perfect fit. Lily did up the little covered buttons at the back, fixed the veil, and fastened Gladys’s rope of imitation pearls. Then she turned her friend to face the mirror. Gladys stared disbelievingly into the glass.

  ‘It doesn’t seem real,’ she murmured. ‘It doesn’t look like me.’

  ‘Well, it is, and it does,’ Lily said firmly. ‘It’s here, Gladys, your big day. And you look so beautiful. Bill won’t believe his eyes!’ Then quickly – ‘Ooh, I didn’t mean that like it sounded!’

  But it was a good thing to have said because suddenly the unreality of it all dissolved. They weren’t two people they hardly recognised in their fancy frocks and unaccustomed make-up – Gladys, learning from Gloria, had brushed Lily’s eyebrows and added a dab of powder and slick of lipstick. They were back to being the friends they’d always been from Lily’s very first day at Marlow’s.

  ‘Oh, Lily, thank you!’ cried Gladys. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve nearly driven you mad over the wedding – no, I have, I know I have!’ she insisted as Lily started to deny it. ‘But it means that much to me. I just want it to be perfect – for Bill!’

  Lily felt a rush of love for her friend, and everything, the balloons, the chimney sweep, the plate tea placement, the obsession with the tiniest detail, was forgiven. More than that, Lily understood in a flash the fuss over Bill’s mother.

  ‘Bill has you now,’ she said. ‘He won’t need anyone or anything else. Ever.’

  There was so much that could have gone wrong – Sid’s train to be late, or not run, or worse still, Bill’s. But when the wedding car with Gladys, Lily and Jim drew up at the church two minutes early – Gladys couldn’t wait a second longer – the first person Lily saw outside the church was her brother. All she could do was wave as he gave her a thumbs-up; she had to help Gladys out of the car and arrange her dress and veil while Jim conferred with Les, today’s photographer.

  Then Sid was there, shaking Jim’s hand and trying to hug Lily and Gladys without creasing their frocks. He reassured Gladys that Bill was in the church ‘as white as a sheet and shaking like an arboretum’. Bobby, Les added, was chewing happily on a prayer book and Beryl couldn’t wait to see ‘her’ bride. Then Sid scuttled back inside and Lily, Jim and the blushing bride posed by the wych-arch with Les telling them to ‘Say cheese!’ while the vicar waited tactfully in the porch. When he had greeted them and gone back inside, the three friends stood on the threshold of the church, dim and blessedly cool, its stained glass behind the chicken wire scattering jewels on the rich blue carpet. Jim winked at Lily.

  ‘All set?’ he mouthed.

  Lily smiled back. Almost two years ago, she’d been Beryl’s bridesmaid and Jim had been Les’s best man. In his speech, Jim had paid her a compliment which had been, really, the first inkling that he might rather like her. And now here they were again …

  They heard the first notes of the organ. Gladys was clutching Jim’s arm. He gently prised her fingers apart and covered her hand with his own.

  ‘It’s going to be fine, Gladys. Relax. It’s your big moment. So enjoy it.’

  Gladys took his advice – and a deep breath. She turned to look at Lily and gave her a radiant smile. Truly, she did look beautiful.

  ‘Thank you, Lily,’ she whispered ‘And you, Jim. For everything.’

  Jim smiled at Gladys, then at Lily. Lily smiled at Gladys, then at Jim.

  The organ crashed into the opening bars of the Bridal March. They were off.

  One minute it had seemed as if the wedding day would never come – then suddenly it was not just there, it was nearly over – and it had all gone to plan, right down to the appearance of the chimney sweep as the happy couple left the church. If Gladys could have borrowed a black cat to cross their path as well, she doubtless would have done, but Dora had sewn a scrap of blue ribbon into the hem of her unders
kirt and embroidered a tiny horseshoe, so surely that was luck enough? As if they needed it, anyway, both of them radiating happiness.

  When the kisses, handshakes and photographs were over, they’d taken the snaking mossy path to the church hall, Bill and Gladys brushing the dried rose petals she’d spent all summer collecting from their shoulders. Now the famous plate tea had been eaten and enjoyed and it was time for the speeches. Without her parents there, Gladys had told Jim that, grateful as she was that he was giving her away, she’d prefer not to have a stand-in ‘father of the bride’ speech. So Jim was off the hook and on the beer – or so he threatened, but Lily knew Sid and Bill, more hardened drinkers, would get through most of the limited supply they’d managed to smuggle past the hall’s caretaker.

  Sid, as best man, got to his feet and chinked his knife on his glass.

  ‘Pray silence for Mr William Webb, the blushing groom!’ he announced.

  To applause and catcalls, Bill stood up. He produced a sheet of paper from his pocket. He looked down at Gladys, who looked up at him adoringly, then met the eyes of their guests around the long table. He held up the sheet of paper.

  ‘It’s all here,’ he said. ‘Taken me weeks, it has, to write. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know where to start. I got most of it out of a book called “How to Make a Wedding Speech” – then all my shipmates started chipping in – not that I could include any of what they wanted me to say!’

  ‘Shame!’ That was Sid.

  ‘But do you know what?’ Bill went on. ‘Now I’m here, I know exactly what I want to say, and I don’t need any of it.’

  He put the paper down.

  ‘My wife and I—’

  He got no further. Everyone started cheering and clapping, and Les wolf-whistling, while Gladys blushed scarlet and hid her face in her hands. When the flurry had died down, Bill resumed, quite composed now.

  ‘My wife and I only met thanks to my mate Sid here. In fact, the first time we met was at another wedding.’

  Here he nodded towards Les and Beryl, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘Sid had set me and Gladys up as pen pals,’ Bill went on, ‘but the minute I set eyes on her I thought to myself “Pen pals! Blow that!” I knew from the first she was the only girl for me, and in – what is it now, Glad? – nearly two years, we’ve never had a cross word. She’s been the best girl and most loving fiancée any bloke could want, with her letters and cards – I can’t tell you what they mean when you’re away – and I know she’s going to be the best wife a man could want as well. Glad, this is for you.’ With that, he picked up his knife and began to tap something on his glass.

  Gladys looked mystified – they all did – till Sid translated.

  ‘Hah! Morse Code for “I love you”! Blimey, Bill, you great sloppy date!’

  Cue deafening cheers, foot-stamping and applause. And, inevitably, tears from Gladys – of joy.

  ‘It’s all gone so fast!’ she lamented later.

  She and Lily were in the Ladies so that Lily could help her change into her going-away frock. Soon Bill would be able to reveal the surprise he’d booked for their wedding night – the bridal suite, no less, at the White Lion. As he’d remarked to Sid, he hardly wanted to go back to Gladys’s, with her gran putting her ear trumpet to the wall. He had no intention of them going down to the hotel dining room that evening either – he’d arranged for sandwiches and a half-bottle of champagne in the room, so, he said, they could just be together. When Sid told her all this, Lily felt a new rush of affection for Bill. He was so thoughtful, just like Jim, just like Sid. He deserved Gladys and she deserved him. He was a husband now, but he was also a son any mother would, or should, have been proud of.

  Of Mrs Quartermain there’d been no sign. Lily hadn’t really expected it, though she still dreaded that Gladys had. But as she helped her friend out of her wedding dress, Gladys brought the matter up.

  ‘I thought our day wouldn’t be complete without Bill’s mum,’ she said, standing in her slip. ‘But I was wrong. We don’t need her. Not at all. Not now we’re together.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so happy you can see it like that at last,’ cried Lily, taking her hands. ‘She’s the past, Gladys, and you and Bill, you’re the future.’

  Gladys nodded and stepped into the going-away frock that Lily was holding ready for her.

  ‘That’s the way to look at it,’ she confirmed. ‘All he’s got to do is get through this war safe, and we’ll be home and dry.’

  Then, giggling at what she’d said, given that Bill would be going back to sea, Gladys buttoned her frock while Lily stood by, ready to tidy her hair.

  They might have giggled then, but when Bill pulled Lily to one side just before they left, her smile faded.

  ‘Look, Lily,’ he began. ‘You know I can’t say much about what I’ve been doing, but I can tell you it’s no pleasure trip out there. I’m below decks in the wireless room or jammed in the carpenter’s cupboard on the coding machine with God knows what going on above, knowing that if we got hit and holed I’d have not a cat’s chance of getting out.’ It was the first time Lily had ever heard him speak seriously about his life at sea and it sounded grim. Bill glanced towards Gladys, who was saying goodbye to Beryl and Les. ‘There’s been times when I thought this day’d never come, and thank God it has because if anything does happen to me, well, at least Glad’ll get some kind of a pension and’ – his voice cracked – ‘I know you’d do this anyway, but if I can’t look after her, you will, won’t you? You and your mum and Jim and Sid? Promise me you will. I’d die happy – well, happier – knowing that.’

  ‘Oh, Bill!’

  It was the longest and most serious conversation they’d ever had – almost the only conversation, he’d been serving away so much – and Lily could have hugged him. In fact, she did.

  ‘I promise we will – we would, I mean. But it’s not going to happen because you’re going to come through this, and you’ll be together for ever, you have to be!’

  Bill hugged her back.

  ‘That’s the plan!’ he confirmed, sounding more robust. ‘Let’s hope Adolf sees it that way too.’

  Gladys arrived then to claim him – they’d been apart for five minutes after all – and off they went in a hail of ‘confetti’. They’d used up all the rose petals at the church, but Gladys produced bags of tiny paper circles she’d had the secretaries at Marlow’s save from their hole punches. She really had thought of everything.

  ‘Goodbye! Good luck!’ they all called after the taxi, as if Gladys and Bill were emigrating when the reality was that Gladys would be back at work on Monday, and Lily would see her then: Bill would have taken the first train back to Portsmouth. The best news, though, was that his ship would be under refit for about two months, so he and Gladys could be together as often as he could get leave.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Sid, when they all trooped back inside. ‘I could do with a drink!’

  In their traditional gesture, Marlow’s had given Gladys a Marriage Grant and a bottle of champagne, which must by now have been coming from Mr Marlow’s own cellar. They’d cracked it open to have with the cake, but even with Dora having ‘just a touch’ to leave more for the others, Gladys’s gran had scorned warnings about her dyspepsia and had held out her glass for a refill. So, nice as it had been, one bottle hadn’t gone very far.

  ‘That’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,’ Dora told him. ‘We’ve got to leave this hall as we found it!’

  ‘Worse than blooming deck inspection!’ Sid muttered, but he and Jim set to, taking down Gladys’s decorations and stacking the chairs, while Lily and Dora heaved Gladys’s gran, red in the face and burping gently, into another taxi (Gladys’s master-plan again).

  ‘Nothing left but for us to go, I suppose,’ Dora concluded, when the hall met with her approval.

  Sid said his goodbyes. He’d warned them all along that he’d have to get back to London that same night. Lily hoped it might be for a date with the fellow he’d told
her about, but the reason, he said, was that he was on duty at 6 a.m. the next morning – there was ‘something pretty big’ afoot.

  ‘An invasion?’ Lily asked.

  The papers were always speculating – one week the Allies were planning to land in Normandy, then it was the South of France, then Greece, then Italy. It could have been any or all of them; they were all under Nazi occupation.

  ‘I could tell you,’ Sid replied smugly, ‘but then I’d have to kill you, wouldn’t I?’

  Brothers, even when grown up, Lily concluded, had an endless capacity to annoy.

  Chapter 17

  At home, not knowing quite what to do with themselves, Dora and Lily changed out of their finery. Dora wondered what, if anything, to do about tea.

  ‘It’s thrown me out, eating in the middle of the afternoon,’ she said. ‘My stomach doesn’t know what to think.’

  Lily didn’t know what to think either, or how she felt. Happy for Gladys, of course, but also somehow deflated.

  ‘I expect Jim will want something,’ she said, peering in the bread bin. He’d promptly taken off his suit, climbed into his old clothes and was out in the yard, lovingly examining his carrots and beans.

  The day’s early promise was holding out in a beautiful sunset. Lily could see it, apricot and amber, as they sat round the table with bread, dripping and the tomatoes that Jim had brought in, still warm from the sun. She wondered if Gladys and Bill were watching the sunset from the bridal suite as they had their sandwiches and champagne, though thinking about Gladys’s wedding night gave her a funny feeling.

  Beryl had always seemed older and more worldlywise, from the first time Lily had met her outside the staff entrance on her very first day at Marlow’s. But of the three of them, Gladys had always been the innocent, and though older than Lily by six months, had seemed the youngest. Now sweet, simple Gladys was a married woman too, and tonight for the first time she’d undress in front of her husband and slip under the covers with him. When Lily next saw Gladys she’d be a changed person, a woman, experienced in a way Lily wasn’t. She glanced at Jim, absorbed in the Chronicle’s crossword.