The Shop Girls

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2020

Copyright © Joanna Toye 2020

Cover © Gordon Crabbe/Alison Eldred (woman), CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images (front cover street scene), Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com (back cover bombed street)

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Joanna Toye asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008298722

Ebook Edition May 2020 © ISBN: 9780008298739

Version: 2020-04-28

Dedication

For Clara, with love from Shosho xxx

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Author’s Note

Don’t miss the next book in the Shop Girls series

Have you read the first book in the Shop Girls series, A Store at War? Read on for a taste …

About the Author

Also by Joanna Toye

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

August 1942

The writing above the clock on the first floor of Marlow’s read ‘Tempus fugit’. That, Lily had learnt, meant ‘Time flies’. Well, if time was flying this morning, it was a bird with a broken wing, a Spitfire spluttering home with half its fuselage shot away, a bee drowsily drunk on pollen. It might be half-day closing, but with the sale over and many customers away, Wednesday mornings in August could seem longer than full days.

August was the strangest month, thought Lily as she spaced the hangers on the girls’ pinafores the regulation half-inch apart. It had a sleepy, droopy-eyelids feel, and it was still summer, but it often felt as if summer was over, with a blank white sky, shorter days, the leaves crisping and the shadows lengthening on the grass. And things happened in August – not always good things. The Great War had started in August, and so had this one, pretty much, with the wait for Hitler’s ‘undertaking’ that had never come.

She looked across to Furniture and Household, hoping to catch Jim’s eye, but he was with a customer. He was tipping a kitchen chair this way and that, demonstrating its sturdiness. He took his job very seriously. Jim took lots of things seriously – and plenty not so seriously. It was a combination that had first attracted her to him – but whether he was testing her or teasing her, Lily had accepted the challenge.

‘Miss Collins! Customer!’

Lily snapped to attention and smoothed down her dress as Mrs Mortimer approached. She was one of the first customers Lily had served after her promotion from junior to sales, and a kind, tweedy soul so it had been a gentle dunking, not a baptism of fire.

Mrs Mortimer would only be looking – or ‘doing a recce’ as she put it – on behalf of one of her busy daughters or daughters-in-law before she, or they, returned with the essential coupons to make the purchase. But it was all good practice.

Lily began as she’d been taught.

‘Good morning, Mrs Mortimer, how are you? How may I help you?’

On Toys next door, Lily’s friend Gladys was dusting Dobbin, the much-loved Play Corner rocking horse, and thinking much the same about the time. When you had nothing to do on your afternoon off, a long morning didn’t matter, but when there was something you were looking forward to, my, did it drag!

This afternoon there was a little party planned at Lily’s, a welcome home for their friend Beryl’s husband. Les Bulpitt had been invalided home from North Africa, to everyone’s relief and delight, especially Beryl’s, now a proud mother to baby Bobby. Les had been away for Bobby’s birth, so hadn’t seen his son as a newborn. Now he was home they could be a proper family.

Gladys sighed happily. Thoughts of contented married couples always led to thoughts of her fiancé, Bill, and how contented she would be when they were married, and especially when they started their family. A husband and children were all Gladys had ever wanted, and Bill was the answer to years of fervent prayers. Had it been wrong to pray for something like that, Gladys wondered now, when there were bigger things to pray for, like an end to starvation and cruelty and persecution? She probably ought to pray for forgiveness for having been so shallow and selfish, but she was too busy praying for a speedy end to the war and for Bill to be kept safe in the meantime.

On Furniture and Household, Jim had made his sale.

‘If you’ll sign here, please, Mrs Jenkins, I’ll send this up to the Cash Office to get your receipt.’

He stuffed the sheets into the little drum, rolled it shut and inserted it into the pneumatic tube. Off it whizzed upstairs. Jim smiled at Mrs Jenkins, another of the store’s regular customers.

‘I’m not sure when we can deliver, I’m afraid,’ he began. ‘With the new petrol regulations …’

Mrs Jenkins held up her hand. ‘Don’t worry, a few days won’t matter. We’ve been without a kitchen chair for months – I had to give cook one of the dining chairs when the old one got past repairing. I’m grateful you had anything, even second-hand!’

‘The Utility Scheme will help,’ said Jim. ‘We should get more regular supplies.’

Mrs Jenkins looked sceptical.

‘Newlyweds get first dibs, though?’

‘Oh, yes. And anyone who’s been bombed out.’

The tube throbbed as the cylinder plopped back into the little cup at its base. Jim retrieved it and handed Mrs Jenkins her copy.

‘I’ll telephone,’ he promised, ‘with a date for delivery. I hope within the next week.’

‘Marvellous – well, as good as it gets these days! Thank you. Goodbye!’

‘Goodbye.’

Jim closed his sales book and looked across to Childrenswear, hoping Lily was looking his way, but she was with a customer. Lily’s blonde curls bent close to Mrs Mortimer’s grey head as they examined the smocking on a summer dress.

The clock showed half past twelve. Only half an hour to go before all four lights below it would be illuminated, the sign that the last customer had left the store and the commissionaire had bolted the doors and drawn down the blackout blinds.

Thirty minutes, then freedom … or was it? Jim had a funny feeling that there’d be a list of jobs for him ahead of the afternoon’s little party. No change there, then! In a year as their lodger he’d realised that it was Lily’s mother, Dora, who made work for idle hands. The devil never got a look-in.

‘Really, Jim, is that the best you can do?’

‘What? I’m at full stretch here, I’ll have you know!’

‘Come off it!’ Lily scrutinised his efforts. ‘What’s the point of a banner if it looks like a drooping petticoat?’

Jim lowered his arms and the ‘Welcome Home’ banner he’d been holding up slumped dispiritedly to the floor.

‘That’s better.’ He eased his neck and shoulders. ‘My arms were nearly dropping off.’

He might have known he wouldn’t get away with that.

‘How can they drop off when they’re above your head?’ Lily retorted. ‘Drop implies down, doesn’t it? Tch! And to think you’re the one with the School Certificate!’

Jim looked at her, head on one side, mouth twisted. Only a few weeks ago the two of them had finally admitted that their friendship had grown into more than just that. But their fledgeling romance didn’t mean they weren’t still friends first and foremost – friends who teased each other relentlessly.

To show she was on his side really, Lily dragged over a dining chair. Jim was over six feet tall but her mum had been adamant that the banner had got to be thumb-tacked to the top of the picture rail, not the front – she wasn’t having it look as if it had woodworm. To say Dora Collins was house-proud was a bit like saying Hitler had simply got out of bed on the wrong side on the day he’d invaded Poland.

‘Haven’t you two finished yet?’ Dora, pinny wrapped across her slender frame, hair bound up in a turban, appeared from the scullery, sounding stern, but only concerned that everything should be just so. ‘There’s lettuce to wash and tomatoes to slice, sandwiches to make …’

She was carrying a sponge cake on the best cut-glass stand. The icing and the little silver balls that Beryl had requested had of course been impossible, but it still looked delicious. Dora Collins wasn’t to be beaten in the cake-making stakes, and thanks to the hens they kept in the yard, cakes in this house didn’t have to be made with foul-smelling dried egg, either, even if it meant sacrificing sugar in tea.

Jim and Lily exchanged a ‘that’s told us’ look and Jim scrambled up onto the chair, having first, of course, removed his shoes. Dora might have been turned away, setting the cake in the middle of the table, but she had more eyes in the back of her head than a whole platoon of snipers. Lily passed up the tacks, and soon the banner was in place to everyone’s satisfaction.

Ivy and Susan, Beryl and Les, Gladys – Dora checked she’d set out enough plates. That was five, plus the three of them – yes, eight in total.

Banner fixed, chair replaced, Dora marshalled Lily and Jim into the kitchen.

‘Now,’ she instructed. ‘Let’s get a bit of a production line going. If I slice the bread—’

‘Jim can spread the marg, and I can fill.’ Lily finished the sentence for her.

Jim smiled to himself.

‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ was one of Dora’s many favourite sayings and it certainly explained where Lily’s organisational skills – he wouldn’t have dared call it bossiness, not to her face, anyway – came from.

‘Aw, you shouldn’t have!’

‘But we did! And it’s all for you, Les!’

Beryl hung on to her husband’s arm as they stood in the doorway, Les grinning at the spread. But he wasn’t the Les that Lily remembered. He looked very different; thinner, and paler than you’d expect after months in the desert. But she’d been silly to expect him to look brown, Lily realised – most of his tan would have disappeared in the weeks he’d spent in hospital and a further few getting home on a troop ship. He looked older somehow.

‘Me and Susan made the banner, Ivy and Dora’s done the tea …’

Beryl steered Les into the room as his sister, Susan, carefully carrying baby Bobby, came in behind them.

Beryl had scribed the ‘Welcome Home’ in big fat letters, but she’d let Susan do the colouring, which was why it was all wonky and went over the lines. Les’s sister was thirteen, but she’d been born with all sorts of difficulties, including a weak heart and poor eyesight. Co-ordination wasn’t one of her strong points, and as the doctor had gently put it, Susan would always be backward in her development.

‘How are you?’ Jim was enthusiastically shaking Les by the hand, but Lily could tell he was just as shocked as she was by Les’s appearance.

‘He needs feeding up, that’s what!’ clucked Ivy. Still in her shapeless duster coat and even more shapeless hat, Les’s mother was adding her contributions to the table – a plate of sausage rolls and a dish of junket.

‘That’s right,’ Les agreed. ‘Nothing a bit of home cooking won’t put right.’

‘Was it awful, the food out there?’

Lily was keen to know, as the story back home was that they had to do without to keep the Army marching on its stomach. Though frankly Les looked as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.

‘Not bad. A bit repetitive, that’s all.’

‘Sounds like here,’ said Gladys. She’d arrived earlier and was helping Susan, still holding the baby, settle herself in an easy chair. ‘Anyway, it’s lovely to see you home. And congratulations on being a dad!’

‘Isn’t he a little smasher?’ Les beamed at his son. ‘Hasn’t Beryl done wonders?’

Beryl glowed as everyone showered praise on her, the baby, and the general miracle of creation.

‘Don’t you want to sit down, son? It’s nearly wiped him out walking over here.’

As she spoke, Ivy was removing her coat and lowering her own sizeable behind onto the luckless dining chair that had drawn today’s short straw. Dora nodded in agreement. Physical opposites, Ivy large and expansive, Dora neat and trim, they’d become fast friends since Les and Beryl’s marriage, united by their unswerving devotion to their families.

‘Pull him up a chair, Jim.’

Common sense and a desire to appear manly tussled in Les’s face, but he gave in to the inevitable.

‘Maybe I will.’ He took the chair. ‘Just for a minute or two. I’m a lot better than I was!’ he added bravely.

‘I think he looks awful, don’t you?’ Lily asked Jim under the hiss of the kettle. They’d been sent out to the kitchen to make the tea.

‘Not great.’

The worry about Les had started after the battle for Tobruk back in June. Nothing had been heard of him, or Lily’s brother Reg who was also out in North Africa, for weeks. Finally, Reg had managed to send a wire saying he was OK. From Les, though, there’d been nothing till Beryl got a letter saying he’d been in hospital – and nowhere near the fighting! He’d been taken with something called West Nile fever – from a mosquito bite.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Lily. ‘Do you think it was more serious than he let on?’

Jim shrugged.

‘I can’t think why else a simple fever case would mean him being shipped home and discharged for good.’

Lily sighed.

‘Oh, Jim. This war! If so, where does that leave Beryl and Bobby?’

Chapter 2

It wasn’t till after tea that Jim got the full story out of Les. Under the pretence of giving Bobby, newly fed and changed, some air, they went out into the yard where the hens scratched tirelessly if pointlessly in their run. Les was already looking a bit less peaky. He’d certainly eaten a giant tea.

‘So, this fever …’ Jim began.

Beryl had already told them with a hint of pride that Les’s records had gone to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London as an interesting case.

‘I’d never heard of it,’ answered Les, shifting his body slightly to protect the baby’s eyes from the bright sky. ‘It’s not that bad in itself. But I had complications.’

‘Right …’ So there had been something else – just as Jim and Lily had suspected.

‘I carried on, see, thought it was gippy tummy or heatstroke – they were always warning us about that. By the time I came over real queer, it had taken hold. I had this kind of seizure, woke up in hospital and my legs had gone all floppy. You know how they hit you with that little hammer? Not a thing.’

‘My God, Les. Scary.’

‘It was. I thought it was polio or something. But they said … let me get this right … the fever had gone to … encephalitis, is it?’

Now Jim understood. Without telling anyone, even Lily, he’d gone to the library and read up on tropical fevers back when they’d first had the news that Les had been in the isolation ward. Encephalitis was a swelling of the brain.

‘But you got the feeling back?’

‘Yes, thank God, bit by bit. And I’m better now.’

‘Are you? Really?’

‘Well …’ Les looked shifty. ‘I get the odd headache. My heart races a bit. But I’m properly on the mend.’

‘They still invalided you out.’

‘Yeah. And compared to some blokes, lost a leg, blinded, burns and what have you, I’m darn lucky. But the Army can’t have me driving or handling machinery, let alone a gun. They can’t take the risk, “in a theatre of war” was how they put it.’

‘No, I should think not.’

‘But I could kiss that mosquito!’ The mosquito being unavailable, Les kissed the baby’s head. ‘Giving me a free pass home!’

This was more like the old Les.

‘Well, maybe it’s for the best,’ Jim said thoughtfully. ‘At least Bobby’s going to grow up knowing his dad. There’s plenty of kids who won’t have that.’

They both looked down at the baby. At four months he hadn’t quite mastered getting his thumb into his mouth but was happily sucking his fist. Les stroked his silky hair in disbelief and wonder.

‘What was it like out there, Les? Really?’

Les puffed out a breath.

‘What can I say? Like everyone tells you: heat, dust, sand, flies, more sand, more heat … What they don’t tell you is wearing the same clothes for days, soaked in sweat, drinking water that tastes of petrol from a rusty can, lying in a scrape in the sand being strafed by the Jerries, seeing the truck ahead of you hit a mine … and the things you see … fellers blown apart, bits all over the place … digging them a grave …’

Gently, he touched Bobby’s head again.

‘But at the same time, the lads, we had such a laugh – you had to. And the guts of some of them – injured and carrying on, could have got a Blighty pass no trouble, but raring to get back to it – and that’s officers and men. And not just us Brits. Indians and Aussies and New Zealanders … they’ve fought like lions.’

Jim was silent. He’d tried to join up when he’d turned eighteen but had failed the eye test. He still felt guilty about it, despite the fact that he did his ARP duty three nights a week and took his turn fire-watching on the roof of Marlow’s.

‘They should have kept you on – recruiting officer!’

‘No thanks! But, look, Jim, I want to talk to you about that. What’s the chance of my old job back?’

Until he’d been called up, Les had worked as a delivery driver at Marlow’s. Beryl had worked there too. It was how they’d all met.

Jim had been waiting for the question and he knew the answer would disappoint. Les had never been replaced and the store was hardly going to create another driving job now, with petrol rationed even more strictly.

‘Les. Be realistic. You can’t go back to driving. The Army have got a point.’ Les opened his mouth to object, but Jim carried on. ‘No, listen. There is a job coming up. Not driving – it’s warehouseman-cum-porter. I know it’s a step down for you. It wouldn’t be quite as well-paid, and you’d still have to convince them you were fit enough … Would you be up for that?’

‘With a wife and kiddy to support?’ Les nearly bit off not just his hand, but his whole arm. ‘I’d be up for anything! And I’ll work on getting myself A1 fit. Get my chest-expander out!’

‘Don’t overdo it!’ warned Jim. ‘One step at a time. I’ll have a word with Staff Office and try and get you seen. I should think they’d be glad not to have to advertise, and wade through a load of useless applications.’

‘Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it.’

Lily, Gladys and Beryl trooped out now, Beryl saying they ought to get going and get Bobby to bed. She, Gladys and Les formed an admiring circle round the baby as Lily squeezed in next to Jim on the wall of the veg bed. He put his arm round her.

‘Still on for the cinema?’

‘You bet!’

They were going to see The Magnificent Ambersons. Lily had been all for seeing Mrs. Miniver again, which was still playing at the Gaumont, but they’d tossed a coin in the end and Jim had won. He was a big fan of Orson Welles. In truth, Lily didn’t much care what they saw. It would just be a treat to be on their own, walking to the cinema, arms entwined, and having a quick smooch before the picture started – being Jim’s girl.

When Lily had first shyly confessed to her friends that she and Jim had finally moved things on from being friends, Gladys had leapt ahead to suggest cosy double dates with herself and Bill, as Lily had known she would. Gladys and Bill were going to get married on his next leave, though when that would be, neither of them knew. Bill’s ship was on escort duty in the Northern Passage so it might not be till well into next year. If the war lasted that long, of course.

Before Gladys could get to double weddings, though, Lily had firmly had to tell her that she and Jim were happy to let things unfold slowly – very slowly.

‘We’re no age, Gladys,’ she’d protested. ‘I know you and Bill aren’t much older, but just because marriage and babies is right for you, it doesn’t mean it’s right for us. I mean, can you see me as a full-time wife and mother, honestly?’

It was generally agreed that Lily’s attempts at knitting would have been useful colanders; Dora despaired of her daughter’s anything-but-light touch with pastry.

Gladys had looked baffled by Lily’s reluctance to swoon at the whiff of orange blossom and the idea of a ring on her finger, but Beryl, forthright as always, had weighed in on Lily’s side.

‘Look,’ she reasoned. ‘We all know Lily and Jim are marked out for something a bit better than the shop floor at Marlow’s. It wouldn’t affect Jim, but Lily could kiss goodbye to any idea of promotion if she got married, let alone up the duff.’

‘Rubbish!’ Gladys defended herself. ‘There’s loads of married women working now, and ones with children. In Marlow’s and everywhere else.’

‘Only because the men are away fighting! When they come home, they’ll take back their jobs and shove us women straight back in the kitchen, you wait and see!’

Lily nodded, grateful for the support, but then Beryl wasn’t a full-time wife and mother herself. She couldn’t be called up for war work now she had the baby, and her old job in the Toy department at Marlow’s, even if she’d wanted it, had been filled by Gladys. So, starting in a small way with her own wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses, she’d set herself up in business hiring out bridal wear from home. Les’s picture of himself as the family’s sole breadwinner was a complete illusion: Beryl had a five-year plan for Beryl’s Brides that would have had Stalin stroking his moustache.

‘Did you get much out of Les?’ Lily asked Jim quietly now. The adoring acolytes weren’t listening, still worshipping the wonder child.