A Store at War. Joanna Toye
mug. He must be the one forking out for stockings already. Lily wondered how he could afford it.
So the time passed, awkwardly for Lily. Beryl prattled on, reading out snippets from the Reveille and Picture Post magazines that were being passed around. The hands on the clock passed five o’clock, then six … The ladies from the canteen came round with meat-paste sandwiches, and you could get a drink of water from a big urn if you wanted. Lily had one, but only took sips – she was sure there’d be a better arrangement than a bucket in the corner, but she was embarrassed to ask, and didn’t want to find out. But she had to admit, spending time in the shelter at Marlow’s, even with Beryl as company, was preferable to hours with Mrs Crosbie and Trevor. Though she couldn’t help thinking about her mum. She hoped she was safe in the Anderson shelter. Dora didn’t know yet about the safety precautions Marlow’s had taken, though surely she’d assume that a place with its sort of reputation wouldn’t take any risks with its staff, let alone customers. Lily had no way, anyhow, of letting her know she was all right – in fact that she felt safer here than she’d felt in any raid so far. At least she could breathe. At least she could stand upright if she wanted to. And at least there was light.
Finally, finally, Beryl turned away to torment her other neighbour, Mr Bunting, her boss. Lily saw him reluctantly put down his Just William book (‘Research!’ he’d claimed with a twinkle) to listen to Beryl’s chatter. He really was a softie, bless him.
At last Lily was free to look around. Though there was no aircraft noise that sounded close by, still less any bombs, Gladys was sitting stock-still and staring straight ahead of her. However bad the raids might be for Lily, she reflected, how much worse for Gladys, every one a reminder of what her parents had gone through. Miss Thomas was chatting to Miss Frobisher, she saw, Miss Frobisher as immaculate as ever, her skirt and jacket still looking crisp, her stockinged legs crossed, though in a concession to the situation, she’d kicked off her shoes. The other Childrenswear saleslady, Miss Temple (Lily couldn’t imagine ever feeling familiar enough with them to think of them as ‘girls’), was sitting not far away. She must have come down with a couple of customers. They had their coats with them, and handbags; the older woman had a couple of parcels. They looked like a mother and daughter, the girl not much older than Lily. They were holding hands, and tightly, Lily noticed.
She was just thinking about her own mum again, and that at least she had Sid with her, who’d be some comfort, and would talk sense about Lily being bound to be safe, when it happened. It came out of nowhere. One minute there was a hum of chatter from the hundred and fifty-odd people in the room, the next there was the sound of a plane and a terrific tearing, screaming sound, followed by a massive chest-constricting thump. Somehow, deep down as they were, however many floors of concrete and steel of Marlow’s were above them, it rocked people back in their seats and almost winded them. The lights suspended from the ceiling shook, flickered and went out, before coming back on again in time for Lily to see the girl opposite – the one who’d been holding her mother’s hand – jump up and start screaming.
‘Violet!’ Her mother tried to pull her down again. ‘Violet, it’s all right. We’re all right! Stop that!’
But Violet couldn’t. She stood there, shaking and screaming, screaming and shaking, all eyes on her, her mother trying hopelessly to calm her. Miss Frobisher wriggled her feet back into her shoes and got up to try to help, Miss Thomas following behind. A couple of other salesladies crowded round, offering a handkerchief dipped in water and smelling salts. Soon the girl was surrounded by well-meaning do-gooders, who were doing no good at all. Lily couldn’t bear it. Jumping up, she crossed the floor, found a way through the crowd, grabbed the girl’s shoulders, and shook her, hard. Violet stopped screaming momentarily, then started again. Without hesitation, Lily raised her hand and slapped her. Violet took a step back, opened her mouth to scream, then raised a hand to her face and sank down into her seat. Her mother put her arms round her and leant her head against hers as the girl started to cry. Then, apart from Violet’s sobs, there was a deathly silence broken only by the far-away clanging of fire engines as they rushed to the scene of the blast. Lily slowly raised her head and met Miss Frobisher’s eyes. Miss Frobisher shook her head. Lily put her own hands to her face, both of them. What had she done?
‘You’re all right! Oh, Lily! Thank God!’
Lily’s face was pressed to her mother’s shoulder, against the old plaid dressing gown with its frayed yellow piping. It smelt of her mum, of lily of the valley talc, of camphor, of home.
It was nearly midnight. The raid, or the danger to Hinton at any rate, had been over by ten, but it had taken Lily over an hour to get home in the blackout, trying and often failing to pick out the now patchy luminous paint on the kerbs. She stumbled a few times, often finding her way more by the glow of lit cigarettes than anything else. There weren’t many of those – though enough for her not to feel scared – but at least there were some people about, trapped in town, perhaps, like she had been, by the raid. She was more shaken by what she overheard. The bomb had dropped near Tatchell’s, the only decent-sized factory in Hinton, that had made carburettors and speedometers for cars before the war and was now making aircraft parts. But if it had been aimed at Tatchell’s, people were wondering, why not a bigger payload? Why only one bomb? Everyone had an opinion or had heard something different. The plane had been winged by an ack-ack gun … no, it had been hit in the fuselage and been leaking fuel … no, it was the pilot; he’d been wounded, so had hit the button to offload the last of his ordnance and headed for home … No one knew for sure and they probably never would, unless the plane had come down somewhere this side of the Channel, so what was the point of guessing, thought Lily. It was a sign of how tired she was that she didn’t care. She was usually the first to want to know; to try to make some sense of the nonsense of it all, death dropping from a summer sky on to a blameless row of houses and a pub, apparently … a few more lives and families destroyed. Again, rumour had anything between two and twenty dead, plus, people speculated, those dying, injured, trapped, survived …
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.’