Wartime for the Shop Girls. Joanna Toye

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      ‘I should think that’s the least of it, Mrs Collins.’ Jim gave one of his wry, twisty smiles. ‘Right, Reg?’

      ‘You don’t know the half of it! But don’t worry, Mum, I won’t be using any language while I’m home. Especially not now Lily’s gone all posh on us, working at Marlow’s. I didn’t see you crook your little finger drinking your tea, though, Lil. Tut, tut!’

      Lily flapped her hand at him and Reg ducked out of the way, laughing. He was relaxing now; they all were, with the warmth of some food inside them and the fire nicely banked up.

      ‘So tell me, what’s new at the swankiest store in town? What’s the best-dressed baby wearing this winter, Lil? Had a run on cut-glass decanters for the folk with cut-glass accents, have you, Jim?’

      This time Lily and Jim were the ones to exchange looks. So much had happened in Lily’s first few months at Marlow’s that the last few, apart from the flurry before Christmas and the January sales, had seemed quite tame in comparison.

      She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could begin, they heard the latch on the back gate click, followed by footsteps across the yard and then by someone opening the back door itself.

      Lily’s heart leapt. Surely not! It couldn’t be, could it? Not Sid? Though it would be just like him to take them all by surprise. And who else could it be, turning up right in the middle of Sunday dinner?

      ‘Only me!’ trilled a voice approaching though the scullery.

      Of course! Beryl! That’s who.

      Shy, tactful, reserved – not words you could ever use to describe Beryl. But what could she possibly want this time?

       Chapter 2

      As it turned out, on this occasion simply a free meal – or at least a pudding.

      ‘How does she do it?’ Lily demanded as she and Jim washed up. ‘She must be able to smell Mum’s cooking from right the other side of town!’

      ‘I know. The War Office should use her as a sniffer dog. Perhaps she could do the same with explosives.’

      ‘I always think that’s so hard on the poor things,’ fretted Lily. ‘Imagine being a little puppy, thinking life was all chasing your tail and gambolling about with your brothers and sisters, then going to some nice family as a pet – instead you’re crawling about on a battlefield or a bombsite.’

      ‘On the other hand you might grow up to be a rescue dog,’ offered Jim. ‘That’d give you a nice warm glow, finding people alive in the rubble.’

      ‘True,’ Lily conceded. ‘They ought to give them medals … but we’re getting away from Beryl! Inviting herself in like that and taking the bread out of our mouths!’

      ‘The rice pudding, you mean,’ lamented Jim. He’d been looking forward to seconds. ‘Not to mention the—’

      ‘Exactly! Mum even gave her the skin. The best bit!’

      Lily finished his sentence for him: she often found they were thinking the same thing at the same time. It was one of the things which made Jim so easy to get along with, and they did get on, most of the time – except when he was teasing her about her attempts at knitting, or her deficiencies with the weeding, or when he used a long word she didn’t understand – he’d been able to stay on at school to take his School Certificate, lucky thing. Lily usually gave as good as she got, though – she’d had enough practice with her brothers. But this time she knew she and Jim were in total agreement.

      ‘Not a scrap left for you or me – or the hens!’ she grumbled.

      ‘Oh well. To be fair, she is eating for two.’

      Jim shook the washing-up water from his hands and wiped them on his trousers: woe betide anyone who needlessly ’wore out’ Dora’s towels. She’d sworn by that thrifty dictum for years, and tea towels too, and since the latest Government advice had instructed people to leave crockery to drain to avoid that very thing, she could congratulate herself on having been right all along. When the handy tip had been broadcast on the wireless, she’d permitted herself a smile that could almost have been described as smug. Lily had only dried off the cutlery and the saucepans – being in the kitchen was more about letting off steam over Beryl than being much practical use.

      ‘We’d better go back through,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’s not fair to inflict Beryl on poor Reg.’

      When they did, though, Beryl seemed well ensconced. Dora was knitting yet another balaclava – her hands were never idle – and Beryl, whose were, and were folded over her pregnant stomach, was holding forth to a glazed-looking Reg.

      ‘I wonder if you and my Les’ll ever meet up?’ she mused, raising a hand to twirl a strand of her shoulder-length blonde hair with a painted fingernail. Beryl might have been getting on for the size of a tank, but she was a glamorous tank, camouflaged with powder and peroxide.

      It was a pretty dim question, given that there were two million men in the Army now, and it wasn’t as if recruitment was organised in the same way as in the First War, with towns raising Pals’ Battalions.

      Reg, who’d been a mechanic before the war, had been quickly snapped up by the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, while Les, he’d already learnt, had joined the local regiment. Reg tried gently to point this out, but Beryl seemed convinced his path and her husband’s would cross, because Les, she informed them, had been transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps and was now officially an Army driver.

      ‘How did he manage to swing that?’ quipped Jim, hauling over a couple of dining chairs for himself and Lily. ‘If they’d seen the way he used to take corners in our delivery vans …’

      Till he’d been called up, Les Bulpitt had been a driver at Marlow’s. Beryl had worked there too – it was how they’d all met.

      Beryl pregnant … that had been just one of the many things that had happened since Lily had started at Marlow’s. Lily thought back to that terrifying first day, standing frozen with fear outside the Staff Entrance, and Beryl sweeping by, all scent and smart remarks, even though she was only a junior herself, (a more senior junior maybe, but still a junior). But when Beryl had found herself in trouble, she’d had to throw herself on Lily and Dora’s mercy, the start of the most unlikely friendship since Fay Wray and King Kong.

      If Les and Beryl’s wedding had had the whiff of the shotgun about it, everyone had rallied round to disperse the cordite and make the day the best they could. They’d been a merry party – Les and Beryl, Lily as bridesmaid, Jim as best man and official photographer. Dora had made the dress, Sid had made it home to walk Beryl down the aisle – well, into the Register Office – and Les’s mum, Ivy, had tapped up no one liked to think what black-market contacts to help lay on a magnificent spread.

      Now, with Les’s dad in the Merchant Navy, and Les away at training camp, Beryl was left living with Ivy and Les’s younger sister, Susan. Susan, bless her, was a bit backward – quite a lot backward in fact – more like age two than twelve. From the time she’d spent over at Ivy’s since the wedding, Lily had to admit that watching Susan laboriously try to do a simple jigsaw СКАЧАТЬ