The Bright One (32 page)

‘Yes?'

‘I've come about the vacancy,' Breda said.

‘And what vacancy would that be?'

What an idiot I am, Breda thought! As if it would be the only one. ‘In the Fabrics department.' She fished in her handbag and brought out the advertisement she had cut out from yesterday's newspaper. ‘Third sales,' she added. She would have liked to ask the woman what that meant, but she looked far too fierce.

‘Take a seat,' the woman said. ‘I'll find out if someone can see you.' She finished her conversation with her colleague, then picked up the telephone.

‘Miss Bainbridge will see you now,' she said to Breda. ‘Since you're going in that direction, will you show her where it is?' she asked her colleague.

Breda followed the woman along a maze of narrow corridors. She wanted to ask her who Miss Bainbridge was, if she was frightening, what it was like working at Opal's. There were a dozen questions she'd have liked to have put but the woman was too intimidating. Also she walked too fast, keeping well ahead of Breda.

Miss Bainbridge was not at all frightening. Breda gave silent thanks at the sight of her: plump, grey haired, rosy cheeked, wearing a pink cardigan.

‘Tell me something about yourself,' she invited.

What is there to tell, Breda asked herself? But whatever there was, Miss Bainbridge had it all out of her in no time at all without ever seeming to probe.

‘And do you think you'll be staying in Akersfield, Miss O'Connor?' she asked. ‘It won't be just a few weeks, then on your way?'

‘Oh no! 'Twill be permanent,' Breda assured her.

‘And is there anything you'd like to ask me?' Miss Bainbridge said.

‘I think you've explained everything,' Breda said. ‘Except . . . '

‘Yes?'

‘I was wondering. What
is
a third sales?'

Obviously not something you had in your stepfather's shop, Miss Bainbridge thought!

‘Well, there's a chain of command in each department. The Buyer is the head. The first sales comes next, then the second, then the third. Last of all the junior. We usually promote the junior but the girl on Fabrics isn't quite ready for it. Each saleswoman has her duties, part of her training. The Buyer says what they are. And now, if you're interested in the job I'd like the Buyer, Mr Stokesly, to see you. Miss Opal insists that buyers meet prospective staff before they're engaged.'

‘Does that mean I've got the job?' Breda asked. She could hardly believe it.

Miss Bainbridge smiled. ‘Not exactly. I have more interviews to do. But you'll have an equal chance with the others. Now I'll go and find Mr Stokesly and bring him back with me. He'll want to ask you a few questions. In the meantime, there's a house magazine on the table there. It will tell you something about Opal's.'

‘You'll like this one,' Miss Bainbridge said to John Stokesly a few minutes later.

‘Is she pretty?' he asked.

‘She's pretty. She's also bright and pleasant. She doesn't have much experience. Anyway, come and see for yourself!'

Breda's knees knocked when Mr Stokesly came back into the office with Miss Bainbridge. It was not until long afterwards that she learned that he warmed to her from the first; that after she'd left he said to Miss Bainbridge: ‘She's the one! There's something about her. She'll be an asset to my department!'

Now he asked her a few questions, to which she hoped she gave the right answers, then he shook her by the hand and left.

‘Is your aunt on the telephone?' Miss Bainbridge asked.

‘She is, so,' Breda said. ‘Will I write down her number for you?'

‘Do that, please. We'll get in touch with you.'

Breda did not have long to wait. At nine-thirty next morning, her aunt answered the telephone.

‘It's for you, Breda.'

Breda listened, said ‘Yes' several times, then put down the receiver and screamed.

‘I did it! I did it! I've got the job!'

Her one regret was that she couldn't tell Tony, since he had already left. But never mind, she would write to him. And she would be here when he came home on his next leave.

‘It's as well your uncle leaves early,' Josephine said as Breda came into the kitchen. ‘Otherwise there'd be a fight for the bathroom every day. I don't know how either of you manages to spend so much time in there!'

She said it without the least rancour. It was impossible to take offence at Auntie Josie, Breda thought. She was a person who constantly oiled the wheels for the smooth running of the lives of everyone else in the household. It would still be easy, though, to get on the wrong side of Uncle Brendan, even though she now understood more about him. She was glad that their timings meant that she seldom saw him before he left the house in the morning. Her best plan, she thought, was to keep out of his way as much as she could. Usually she waited until she heard the door slam, as she had done this morning, before going down to her breakfast.

‘I have to look my best,' Breda said. ‘Miss Opal insists on everyone being properly turned out.'

She had not actually heard Miss Opal say this, but the great lady was constantly quoted and her edicts followed. On Breda's first day in the store, before she was even allowed to start work, she had been treated to a string of them. All new staff were required to attend a short induction course taken, to Breda's relief, by Miss Bainbridge. She liked Miss Bainbridge, felt comfortable in her presence. But even coming from Miss Bainbridge, the list of rules, of ‘dos' and ‘do nots', sounded alarming. It was very different from Luke O'Reilly's shop. She wondered if she would ever remember them all and what would happen to her if she didn't.

‘First of all,' Miss Bainbridge said. ‘Staff must clock in no later than eight-thirty and be on the floor by twenty to nine, ready for opening at nine o'clock. You'll find that there's quite a lot to do on the department before you're ready for the first customer. And ready you must be.'

Which was why, now, Breda ate a piece of bread and jam and swallowed a cup of tea while standing. The bus left the bottom of the road at 8.15 sharp and deposited her at Opal's just in time to punch her clocking-in card before 8.30.

‘If you would get up just ten minutes earlier,' Josephine said, not for the first time, ‘you would be able to sit down to a bit more breakfast.

‘So what does Miss Opal mean by being well turned out?' she added.

On that first day, Miss Bainbridge had told them exactly what it meant. Smart, but never fancy, black dress, long sleeved, white collar permissible, no jewellery. Hair tidy, shoes polished, finger nails clean. Make-up allowed, but it must be inconspicuous. ‘And make sure your shoes are comfortable as well as polished,' she'd advised. ‘You'll be on your feet most of the day.'

‘Oh, all the usual,' Breda told her aunt. ‘Some of the girls say it's worse than when they were in the forces!'

The only thing which had put her out, but not for long, so grateful was she to have been given the job, was that she did not have a black dress. She had had to buy material, giving up coupons for it, and spend the entire weekend before her first Monday making the dress. It was a success though. It fitted well, looked stylish yet simple, and was well sewn.

‘I didn't know you were so good with a needle,' her aunt said.

‘But it's not all bad,' Miss Bainbridge had said. ‘All members of staff are allowed a penny in the shilling discount on all purchases in the store except food, and you may have twenty minutes' shopping every morning, as long as two people are left on the department – never leave only one person – and you're back at your post by ten o'clock.'

There were lots more instructions – it took two hours to go through them before they were each ready to go to their department.

Fabrics was on the ground floor, down a few steps from the store's side entrance from which, when the wind was in the east, which it usually was, a sharp draught blew around one's feet. We should have been advised to wear snow boots, Breda thought before the first day was over.

Mr Stokesly had seemed quite pleased to see her. ‘Welcome to Fabrics!' he said, all smiles. ‘And now let me introduce you to the rest of the staff.'

She looks so bright, he thought, from the top of her curly red head to the toes of her gleaming shoes. But the brightest of all was her face, with its country complexion, cheeks like polished apples, her blue-green eyes alight with intelligence.

‘This is Miss Craven,' he said. ‘Our invaluable First Sales. She's been at Opal's longer than I have. She came when the store was first opened. Isn't that so, Miss Craven?'

‘Indeed it is, Mr Stokesly!' She spoke in a slow voice with a refined Edinburgh accent, which surprised Breda though she didn't know why, and gave a condescending nod in Breda's direction.

‘And Miss Wilmot is our Second Sales. Miss Wilmot is engaged to be married to some lucky man.'

‘Jewellery is not encouraged,' Miss Bainbridge had said, ‘but an engagement ring is different.' And sure enough a small diamond flanked by two smaller sapphires gleamed from the third finger of Miss Wilmot's left hand.

‘And last but not least, Miss Betty Hartley, our Junior,' Mr Stokesly said.

Betty Hartley was pale and pinched and, Breda thought later, must have been sickening for something at the very moment of introduction, since that very same day, and before Breda had had a chance to get to know her, she went down with a bad case of tonsilitis, thus leaving the Junior duties to Breda, to be added to her own.

‘Which goes to show that Miss Opal is right!' Miss Craven said as Betty Hartley thankfully obeyed Mr Stokesly's order to get off home and go to bed.

‘What about?' Breda enquired.

‘Miss Opal always says that anyone who has a cold or flu, or anything infectious, should stay at home at once. No point in spreading it around the whole store. Not,' she added in a warning voice, ‘that one should stay at home for a little-finger ache. I'm sure you agree with that, Miss O'Connor?'

‘Oh yes! Yes of course!'

Would she always be addressed as Miss O'Connor? It sounded strange in her ears. Until she came here it had never happened to her.

I don't suppose she'll stay, Hetty Craven thought. She's young. She's quite attractive in a countrified sort of way. She'll either get married or move on to something new, neither of which things will ever happen to me. She had no illusions left about that. She was forty-eight and plain. Her Scottish refinement was all that set her slightly apart from some other members of staff. She cherished it. And now – nature was so unkind – she was in the middle of the change of life and subject to frequent and humiliating hot flushes which she could hide from no-one. She hated bodily manifestations. Until this thing had come upon her she was pleased to say she had never perspired.

‘We have an hour for lunch,' she informed Breda. ‘And we take it in turns. You and I will go first, then Miss Wilmot and the Junior, when we have one, second. Mr Stokesly, being the Buyer, goes when it suits him, but usually late.'

‘Do we all use the same canteen?' Breda asked.

‘We do. Miss Opal won't allow separate canteens for different grades of staff.' Her tone of voice made it clear that she did not agree with her employer.

‘But in fact,' she added, ‘you'll find that most people sit with their equals, buyers with buyers, first sales with first sales, and so on.' And all getting as close as possible to their immediate superiors, she could have added.

I shan't know who to sit with, Breda thought. How could you spot a third sales on sight? On the other hand, she didn't particularly want to spend her dinner time with Miss Craven even if the privilege was allowed her.

That first day had seemed twice as long as any day since, perhaps because it was a Monday and there weren't many customers, perhaps because she had known so little of the department that she couldn't find odd jobs to fill her time. She had just stood and stood, and stood again on the crowded bus back to Waterloo Terrace.

She walked into the kitchen and sank into the first chair to hand.

‘I am
knackered
!' she said.

‘Then what you'd be like if you'd done a real day's work, I can't imagine,' Brendan said. ‘If you'd been shovelling sand, carrying bricks.'

‘I
have
worked in a shop before,' Breda said. ‘This just seemed harder.'

‘You've been spoilt,' he said. ‘I dare say Luke O'Reilly's was easy stuff.'

‘Well, it was easier,' she admitted.

She thought with longing of the days she had made the deliveries for Luke, scorching down the hill on her bicycle, the wind blowing through her hair. ‘Though I dare say I shall get used to this quite soon,' she said.

And she had. It was three weeks now since that first day. She had learned a lot about many things and, in addition, her body had adapted to the physical regime. She was still tired at the end of the day's work, but not so tired that after she had had her tea and a wash she couldn't have gone out and enjoyed herself.

She had not had the chance to do that. There was no-one to go with. This evening Brendan sat in his chair, reading the newspaper as he did most evenings.

Josephine was knitting. ‘This is for Maureen's next,' she said, holding up a small white garment. ‘I like knitting baby clothes. You soon get through them.'

‘I need a new cardigan,' Grandma Maguire said. ‘I'm sick of this one. I'd like a nice bright colour; red, or green. I suppose you'll tell me I don't have the coupons!'