Joanna Toye - A Store at War

It was all too much for Lily. She’d got home in a daze and was still in a daze when Sid pressed a mug of cocoa into her hand. He was dressed – he’d been out looking for her and couldn’t think why he’d missed her on her way home.

Lily looked down through the coiling steam of her cocoa. She felt the warmth of the mug and held on tight. It seemed like the only real thing in the world.

‘I came through the park,’ she confessed.

‘The park! What were you thinking?’ cried her mother. ‘You don’t know who could have been hanging about in there and—’

But at Sid’s warning look, Dora held up her hands in submission and turned away.

‘You were just trying to get home double quick, weren’t you, Lil?’

Sid was trying to help her out and Lily nodded. She couldn’t tell them she’d walked home in such a state she hadn’t really noticed which way her feet were taking her. She’d been too busy replaying the awful aftermath of what she’d done.

Violet and her mother had been quickly led away to another part of the shelter. In fact, Lily had learnt, there was a sort of dormitory where anyone who wasn’t feeling well could go and lie down. There were half a dozen camp beds screened off from the rest of the space by a wooden partition, and the store’s nurse had a basic medical kit for use in emergencies. Lily had been led away too, by Miss Frobisher, out on to the stairs.

‘I don’t quite know what to say.’

Miss Frobisher was lighting a cigarette. Like everything else about her, the whole action was elegant – the cigarette tapped on a green enamelled case and lit with the snap of a matching lighter. She drew a deep breath and the tip of the cigarette glowed in the gloom. She seemed as cool and in command as ever but smoking on the premises by staff, except in the canteen, was strictly forbidden, so Lily could gauge the extent of her boss’s agitation.

‘I’ve simply never had to deal with anything like this before.’

‘I’m so sorry, Miss Frobisher,’ stammered Lily. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

Except she did. She knew, because she’d seen one of the teachers do it, when they’d been caught in a raid at school, the very first time the sirens had gone, and Deborah Lowe, with her silly fringe and freckles, had gone glassy-eyed with fear, and started an awful wailing, and one of the teachers had given her a good smart smack which had sorted her out.

‘Only … no one else seemed to be doing anything much and what they were doing, well, didn’t seem to be working. And I do believe that –’ Lily was basing this on a newsreel she’d seen – ‘if one person gets upset and panics, it … well, it can affect other people too.’

‘That may well be,’ said Miss Frobisher, puffing a ribbon of smoke up the stairs with a toss of her head. ‘But it’s beside the point. If it had been another staff member, even someone senior to yourself – well, that would have been one thing. Bad enough, but we could have dealt with it internally. But a customer …!’

Lily hung her head. Was she going to break all records at Marlow’s, and not in the way she’d hoped? The first person to be sacked before they’d even completed a full day’s work?

‘I shall have to take it to Miss Garner. As I said, it’s beyond anything I’ve ever had to deal with before.’

‘I’m really sorry if I did wrong, Miss Frobisher,’ said Lily again.

‘And she’ll have to take it to Mr Marlow, I should think. Oh, Lily. And I really thought I could perhaps make something of you.’

Looking down now into her cocoa, Lily bit her lip. She’d let everyone down, her mum, Sid, Gladys, herself. It’d be the laundry or the Fox and Goose after all. And thinking about the opportunity she’d lost somehow unfroze everything she’d been keeping in. Her lip wobbled and tears dripped into her cup.

‘She’s washed out, Mum, get her to bed,’ Sid took away the mug. ‘She’ll have to be up again in a few hours.’

Dora put her arm round her daughter, regretting her previous outburst. She’d only spoken that way because of the fear and the worry. Why did anxiety so often come over as anger?

‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry,’ said Lily obscurely, apologising not for the park, but for something her mother didn’t even know about.

‘Don’t be silly. I’m sorry for going off like that. It was only because … oh, never mind. We’re all a bit beyond ourselves, aren’t we?’

Lily nodded.

‘Bet this feels like the longest day of your life, eh, Sis?’

Sid patted Lily’s shoulder and she nearly crumpled. Please don’t be nice to me, she thought, forcing her eyes wide to stop the tears, or it’ll all come out!

‘Tell you what. You can sleep in with me tonight, love,’ offered her mum. ‘Would you like that?’

Lily nodded dumbly.

‘Yes, please,’ she whispered.

She didn’t imagine she’d sleep much, wherever she was.

Miss Frobisher had told her not to go down to the lockers the next day, but to take the service lift up to the third floor, the floor where Miss Garner – and Mr Marlow – had their offices. The floor where only a week ago, Lily had had her interview, and had left with such high hopes. She wasn’t sorry not to have to mix with the others, to see the stares and the nudging. She was sorry not to see Gladys, to say goodbye if nothing else, but never to see Beryl again could only be a blessing.

She had to squash into the lift with a cage of gents’ socks and caps steered by a grizzled man with a moustache, presumably on his way up to the stockrooms. He manoeuvred his load wordlessly aside so Lily could get in with her gas mask and bag, which contained the contract of employment she’d signed only yesterday and hadn’t had the chance to drop off at the staff office. Nice waste of paper and ink that had been!

‘It’s you, in’t it?’ the man said as they creaked up past the first and second floors. ‘The little miss who slapped that other little madam down the shelter last night?’

‘Don’t, please.’

‘No need to apologise, love. There’s plenty on the staff who’d love to land one on a few of our customers, and without the excuse of a Jerry overhead! And on a few of the management, come to that! You only did what no one else dared. It raised a smile with some of us, I can tell you.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right then!’

‘Sorry, chick. I didn’t mean … you’re new, ain’t yer?’

‘Newer than new. Yesterday was my first day,’ Lily confessed.

‘Dear oh dear! Start as you mean to go on, eh?’

‘I don’t think there’ll be any going on,’ said Lily sadly.

Her new friend shook his head.

‘That’s a pity. Even more of a pity there’s no union here that might fight your corner. We’re trying to set one up, but these family firms …’ He tutted and rolled his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be able to join till you was sixteen, of course, but at least a union’d look out for you if you was in trouble.’

‘Well, that’s good to know. For other people,’ said Lily. ‘But it won’t come in time for me, I’m afraid.’

‘In that case you’ll have to stick up for yourself, won’t you? You don’t seem backward in coming forward.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Lily sadly as the lift clanked to a halt at her floor. ‘That’s what got me into trouble in the first place.’

‘My forms from yesterday, Miss Garner.’

Lily placed them on the desk.

‘I’d already signed them, I’m afraid. I’m sorry about the waste of paper. But I know you wanted the paper clip back especially.’

‘I did, Lily. Thank you.’

Miss Garner was still trying to come to terms with all she’d learned about the events of the previous evening from Eileen Frobisher, who’d sought her out to explain the situation. This was, of course, precisely the sort of thing Miss Garner had dreaded with the type of girls she was having to take on. She’d anticipated most things – or thought she had. Slapdash appearance, grubby fingernails, slatternly habits, dropped aitches, mispronunciations … chatting amongst themselves or, worse, over-familiarity with the customers … that was as far as her imagination had taken her. Assaulting the customers had never occurred to her. But …