Without a Trace (19 page)

George also wrote often, telling her not only the village gossip but echoing her mother’s words in saying Jack was much less grumpy, sometimes even jovial. He also said her mother was looking more relaxed and was getting out some afternoons to go to Mothers’ Union meetings and to visit her old friends. He always said he missed Molly and wished she’d come back for a weekend, and reminded her she could stay at his house.

Dilys said it was obvious he was in love with her, but Molly thought she was being silly, as surely a man told the woman if he loved her. But, sometimes, late at night when she couldn’t sleep, Molly would think of George and his kisses, and wonder if she should say something in her letters back to encourage him.

But she didn’t want him to think she was homesick and only latching on to him because of it. Besides, with her in London and him back in Somerset, it was never going to work out anyway.

One night halfway through November, Dilys and Molly were just getting ready for bed, when Dilys suddenly blurted out that she had to warn Molly about someone.

Molly’s three-month probationary period was up now, and she’d been moved from Haberdashery to Gloves a while ago. With autumn well under way, the department was a very busy one.

‘Who?’ Molly asked, and giggled. ‘Is it Stan in the stores? He does keep leering at me.’

‘No, he’s harmless,’ Dilys replied. ‘It’s Miss Stow. She can be a real vixen.’

Ruth Stow was the senior assistant in the Glove Department. She was a plain woman from Shropshire, in her mid-thirties. She’d worked at Bourne & Hollingsworth since she was seventeen, and she was always snooty towards the younger girls.

‘Have I put a pair of gloves back in the wrong drawer?’ Molly asked, grinning, because Miss Stow was always complaining about assistants who did this.

‘No, that’s your trouble: you don’t. She thinks you’re after her job.’

Molly pulled back the covers on her bed and climbed in. ‘That’s daft. All I want is to be moved to the fashion floor before long. What on earth gave her that idea?’

‘You’ve had a lot of praise from customers, I think,’ Dilys said. ‘Miss Stow knows her stuff, but she’s starchy. People like a bit of warmth and someone who takes a real interest in them.’

Molly frowned. She couldn’t see what could have upset the older woman. She’d tried to be friendly with her, not just behind the counter but talking to her here in the hostel. But her manner was always chilly and Molly had got the idea it was because she was the senior assistant and felt unable to mix with anyone more junior.

‘It’s not just in the shop,’ Dilys said. ‘You’ve become popular with most of the other staff, including some of those above us juniors.’

‘Me, popular?’ Molly asked.

Dilys laughed. ‘Yes, very. Surely you’ve noticed that the girls
always include you in anything going on and want to share a table with you at mealtimes. And I’ve heard some of the men are sweet on you, especially Tony in Menswear.’

Molly laughed. She was aware that Tony with the buck teeth was always gazing at her, but she hadn’t considered that people asking to share her table was a sign of popularity; she thought it was just because there was nowhere else for them to sit. ‘I have always attracted male lame dogs,’ she said. ‘Tony is good company, and he’s sweet, but not my type. But, tell me, what should I do about Ruth? Should I try and talk to her about it?’

‘I think that might just put her back up even more,’ Dilys said. ‘Just carry on normally and take no notice of her. Chances are she’ll decide all on her own that you’re no threat to her.’

‘But who told you this?’ Molly asked.

Dilys hesitated.

‘Come on, tell me,’ Molly urged her. ‘I’m not going to confront whoever it was.’

‘Well, it was Mr Hardcraft,’ Dilys said reluctantly.

Molly had been merely amused until then but now she realized that Dilys wasn’t just repeating a bit of harmless gossip. Mr Hardcraft was the floor walker, and his job was to look out for any kind of trouble, be it theft or anything else likely to disrupt business.

‘He wouldn’t have told you that Miss Stow was gunning for me. My guess is he asked you questions about me. So tell me the whole truth now,’ Molly insisted.

‘Well, okay, but don’t fly off the handle. He just asked me stuff like who your friends were and who you saw in the evenings.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Molly was bewildered.

‘I don’t know. I told him when you go out in the evening you’re always with one of us. He asked where you went on your day off, and I said you sometimes go to Whitechapel to see a friend there. Did I do wrong to say that?’

‘No, of course not. You aren’t the only one who knows I go to Whitechapel anyway, quite a few of the girls know, so it’s a good job you said it in case he got it from someone else. Do you think Miss Stow’s told him I’m keeping bad company?’ Molly asked. She knew staff could get fired for that.

‘Maybe, but if you’re asked you’ve only got to say your friend is in the Church Army – that’s not bad company. But forget about it, Molly. Everyone knows Miss Stow is nasty to anyone who shines too brightly.’

‘I’ll try to be especially nice to her in future.’ Molly laughed. ‘Maybe I’ll keep going on about wanting to work in the Fashion Department so she feels less threatened.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the week before Christmas, Oxford Street and Regent Street were congested with shoppers from nine in the morning until closing time. Yet even after that, until ten or eleven at night, there were still people thronging the pavements to see the Christmas lights and gaze into the beautiful and brightly lit shop-window displays.

Molly was no stranger to being rushed off her feet at Christmas. Back in her father’s shop at previous Christmases, sometimes it had seemed as if people were afraid they’d starve during the two days the shop would be closed.

Bourne & Hollingsworth, though, was much busier than she could ever have imagined, and she was astounded at how much money some people were spending. She and her sister had only ever had one present each from their parents, and a filled stocking from Santa Claus, the latter being mainly stuffed with cheap things like crayons, colouring books, a few nuts, sweets and a tangerine. But shoppers in London had long lists of things they were going to buy, and the cost seemed almost unimportant.

Every male customer wanted advice on which pair of gloves to buy his wife, mother or sister, yet few knew what size the recipients were. Women customers were more decisive and usually chose more utilitarian gloves, not the fancy red suede ones or those in white kidskin. Yet the Christmas spirit seemed to be in everyone, as they were mostly genial and patient, even when they had to wait a long time to be served.

Molly had been as excited as any six-year-old when the legendary lights in Oxford Street and Regent Street, which she’d always wanted to see, were switched on at the end of November. Coming from a small village where the only Christmas lights she’d ever seen were those on the tree in the village hall, to her, London’s lights were like a glimpse of Fairyland.

Her delight grew as the display team at Bourne & Hollingsworth put lights and decorations up in the store, too. Each day, as Christmas inched closer and closer, there was a gradually increasing excitement in the air; people smiled and laughed more as they chose gifts or bought clothes to wear for Christmas parties. Molly got a warm feeling inside each time someone wished her a Merry Christmas, and when the Salvation Army band played carols right outside the store she got a lump in her throat.

Aided and abetted by Dilys, Molly had dared to buy the kind of dress for the staff party that, at home, would be unthinkable. It was red shantung with a low neck, a very full skirt and a wide, waist-clinching belt. Her father would have claimed she looked like a harlot, but after a few months in London she no longer cared about his opinion. The party was to be held on the evening of the twenty-third because many of the staff would be going home to their families after the shop closed on Christmas Eve.

As Christmas Eve fell on a Friday this year, most of the staff were taking advantage of the three-day holiday to do this. But both Molly and Dilys were staying on at the hostel. They told anyone that asked them why they weren’t going home that a very long train journey after a full day at work was too much for them, but of course that wasn’t the real reason they were staying in London.

In the past four months, the girls had become close enough for Molly to tell Dilys about her bullying father; Dilys had confided that hers was a drunkard and that her home in Cardiff was a slum. Admitting to each other that they hadn’t come from a happy family when so many of the other girls boasted about how wonderful theirs were was liberating, and it bound them even more tightly together.

After telling each other about awful Christmases they’d had in the past, they resolved that this one would be wonderful. They hung paper chains up in their room, filled a stocking for each other with cheap little things, and they both had new dresses. There was also far more going on in London than there ever would be back home.

After the shop closed on Christmas Eve it was the tradition that everyone staying on at Warwickshire House would go down to Trafalgar Square for the carol service that was held around the huge Christmas tree. This was always followed by a pub crawl back, with a drink taken in every pub they passed.

Christmas dinner was cooked by the few kitchen staff staying on and, afterwards, everyone played party games. On Boxing Day, the Empire would be open, and that promised to be a great evening as, a fortnight ago, the girls had met Frank and Robert, two men from Notting Hill who they really liked, and they’d arranged to meet them again on Boxing Day. Dilys had said gloomily that they’d probably forgotten her and Molly already, but Molly had sensed that both men were pretty taken with the girls and that they would be there.

Molly was just thinking about the staff party the next evening and how she’d look in her new dress when Dilys stopped at the glove counter on the way back from a late lunch break.

‘Pst!’ she hissed, to get Molly’s attention, then pretended
to be studying a display of gloves tumbling out of a small basket.

Molly sidled nearer, opening a drawer beneath the counter and pretending to look in it. ‘What is it?’ she asked, concerned that they would be told off if they were seen chatting.

‘I just saw Miss Stow and Mr Hardcraft waiting for the lift together. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but they were talking, heads close together, and looked back in your direction before getting in the lift.’

‘So what?’ Molly said. ‘I expect they were just looking back to check there wasn’t a queue of people waiting to be served.’

‘Maybe, but I got a funny feeling about it – thought I’d warn you. Must go now.’

Molly smiled fondly as her friend scuttled off to the canteen. She thought that Dilys read too many thrillers and so saw intrigue everywhere. In fact, Miss Stow had been much less demanding recently. Molly thought it was because she’d finally come to the conclusion that Molly could be trusted to put unsold gloves back in the right drawer, not be rude to customers and that she wasn’t after her job.

It became even busier after four that afternoon. Schools had broken up for Christmas the day before, and so there were hundreds of mothers with children who had come up west to see the lights. It had started to rain heavily, so they were all taking shelter in the shops, and many of the children were badly behaved, touching everything and racing around.

‘Where on earth is Miss Stow?’ Julie Drysdale, the other assistant in the glove department, asked Molly. ‘Look what those blessed kids have done to the counter!’ She pointed to the sticky fingerprints all over the glass counter.

‘They’d have done that even if she had been here,’ Molly
said as she went to serve a lady in a stylish, red, wide-brimmed hat. ‘I love your hat, madam,’ she said to the lady. ‘We’ve got some gloves that would match it perfectly.’

‘I’m sure you have, but I’m after some sensible, woolly gloves for my sister, who lives right up in the north of Scotland,’ she replied, smiling at Molly.

Molly was just ringing up the sale when Mr Douglas, the security man, came along. Molly had never seen him on the shop floor before; he was always in his cubbyhole down by the staff entrance and exit. He was there to see that no one took anything out of the shop with them. Staff purchases went down to him, too; he had to make sure no one added anything to the bag after paying for their goods.

She finished serving the customer and wished her a Merry Christmas, then turned to Mr Douglas. ‘A pair of gloves for your wife?’ she asked with a wide smile. ‘I hope you know her size.’

‘No, Miss Heywood, I’ve come to fetch you,’ he said. ‘They want to talk to you upstairs.’

Molly looked at him. Staff were summoned upstairs to the personnel office for a variety of reasons, but the message usually came by telephone, or through the department manager. She’d never heard of anyone being escorted there by Mr Douglas.

‘Now, please,’ he said, more sharply.